The three of them spent a good long time up in the relaxation room, even after they’d finished their meals, just sitting and watching the world go by. It seemed to Jim that the room was well-named. He hadn’t really been able to relax before. He’d been too something every time there was an opportunity: too excited about the sudden turn his life had taken that led to him dating Pam, mostly, but also too much in pain at times, too concerned about the future, even too bored when Pam wasn’t there, which was its own special irony. No one should be too bored to rest, but Jim Halpert knew that feeling all too well from every day at Dunder Mifflin—except when his favorite receptionist (and now girlfriend, he exulted) decided to revive him.

Now he could finally relax. He didn’t have to worry about Pam not reciprocating his feelings; she was right here. He didn’t have to worry about the future, really, not with her moving to New York and him to the suburbs. He didn’t even have to worry about Roy, apparently, and that was a new and relieving sensation. Pam’s hand was intertwined with his, and his kid sister was giving him an approving smile for once, and he just let the world slip on without him for a little while. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to experience the world—if anything, he wanted it more intensely than ever, since it had revealed itself to be so wonderful after all—but rather that he no longer had to in order to distract himself from himself. He could just be Jim, and it was enough.

Jim slept.

This time no dreams disturbed his slumber. No buckets, no monuments, no worry, no panic. He slept the sleep of the happy, the sleep of the blessed, the sleep that mattress manufacturers promise, but which Jim’s sleep (achieved as it was in a hospital wheelchair not designed for sleeping in the slightest) proved was independent entirely of the surface upon which one slept. And if Pam and Larissa did not sleep, well, they enjoyed the fact that Jim was, and engaged themselves in a comfortable silence so as not to wake him: Larissa reading a newspaper that someone had left in the room at some point, Pam sketching Jim’s sleeping face with her free hand, the other being entangled gratefully in Jim’s. Occasionally Larissa would pass over the paper with her finger indicating a particularly interesting article, or Pam would slide the draft of the sketch over to Larissa and point at the difficulty she was having, but by and large they too simply enjoyed the experience of rest and relaxation.

The end of this idyll came only when Larissa’s phone beeped at her, reminding her of her obligation to go pick up the Halpert parents at the airport. They had managed to find a connecting flight into Scranton-Wilkes Barre Airport, so she had only about a fifteen minute drive ahead of her, but not knowing if their plane would be on-time or even early meant that she had set an alarm a few minutes earlier than she would normally do so to allow her time to get out of the hospital parking lot and check in on their flight on the boards posted outside the airport. She gave the newly-awakened Jim a hug and a kiss on the forehead and reminded him that their parents would be there soon, “so you better be on your best behavior, young man, since you’ve spoiled their vacation,” and said goodbye.

She gave Pam a long hug before she went and whispered in her ear. “They’re going to love you.”

Pam, who was evincing a certain degree of nervousness at the proximate arrival of another set of Halperts to explain her own presence to, was only slightly calmed by this. Larissa saw it as she pulled away and squeezed her arm. “I mean it. They’ll be over the moon that you’re here now.” She frowned. “Don’t leave before I get back.”

Pam smiled at Larissa’s obvious concern both for Jim and for her—as well as at her somewhat correct guess that Pam’s first instinct was probably to bolt, which she would have if these had been Roy’s family and not Jim’s coming to meet her for the first time. Of course, she’d been sixteen then, so things had been a little different. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Larissa slipped away, and Pam turned to her boyfriend, who was doing an excellent impression of someone who had fallen back asleep. “Come on lazybones. We’ve got to get you back to the room before the nurse thinks I’ve stolen you.”

His eyes peeked open, with a familiar expression of mischief in them. “But Beesly, you’ve already stolen my heart! If you don’t steal the rest of me you’re condemning me to live without a heart, and you wouldn’t do that, would you?”

She lightly slapped his arm. “I think you’ll live. After all, I’m not going anywhere, except back to the room with you.”

“So you’re coming back to my place, huh?” Jim’s eyebrows waggled.

“I am,” she confirmed. “What do you think we can get up to before your parents get home?”

Jim wasn’t sure where this new, confident Beesly had come from—he was still a little convinced he’d simply conjured her out of his fantasies, but the fact that Larissa saw and interacted with her too was a good sign—but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He blushed hot red when he thought about what she was implying, then laughed as his blush—or rather, the obvious thoughts behind it—conjured up an answering blush on her cheeks.

“Well, we better get back soon so you can put me to bed.” He might be blushing, but he was damned if he wasn’t going to win the blush war with her.

“How long have you been waiting to say that to me?” Nope, he was wrong, she was definitely winning.

“Too long.”

“Well, let’s do it.” She rolled him back to his room, and he had never felt so content.