He drives and drives and drives. He feels the space of the empty seat beside him, of the silence filling his head. He feels the miles as they pass beneath him, ticking over on the dash, changing the scenery and the smell and the taste. Bringing him closer to her.

He doesn’t call, doesn’t know if he can. Doesn’t know if he can bring himself to type the numbers and hear the dial tone and hear her voice and feel the rejection. Again. A third time. Doesn’t know if this drive is taking him back to where he belongs, or simply away from Karen.

He drives and drives and drives until he sees the sign for Slough Avenue. He sees the differences to New York immediately, the lack of cars on the road, the lack of people and pets and excitement and uniqueness. He sees the greys and the blacks and the beiges and the cars that have driven too many miles. He sees the cracked sidewalk and the streetlights and the fences containing ugly rectangular buildings containing ugly round people. He sees the tree that Michael once ran his car into and knows he is almost there. The bitumen underneath feels familiar, feels welcoming. The sky is the same as he left it not a day ago, thin and low and shallow. Scranton Business Park is brown and small and uninviting, and yet it is here that his heartbeat chokes him, it is here that he parks and waits for a moment. Hesitating. He wishes he wouldn’t.

He opens the door, forces himself to stand. Closes the door, takes the requisite number of strides to reach the front doors. He sees Hank, sees him slouching and flicking through a magazine, sees him wishing a thousand times over that he had never taken this slow, boring, dull Scranton job. But he is happy to see Hank, smiles and waves as he calls the elevator. Hank returns neither gesture. The comfort in the familiarity is overwhelming.

He is alone in the elevator and he likes it better this way. The ride up two floors is slower than it should be, much slower than he remembers it being. He feels like he has been gone for such a long time. Too long.

There is the glass door with the Dunder Mifflin lettering printed across it. There is the handle beneath his hand, hot and buzzing and terrifying to touch. There is reception, empty and silent. She is not there. She is gone. He scans the bullpen for her, scans the faces of his co-workers as they play solitaire or shop on eBay or do any number of things that are not in their job descriptions. He hears a voice from the conference room, and there she is, back towards him, and that is where he needs to be. He is not afraid anymore. He is no longer hesitating. He is walking towards the conference room and pushing open the door and her eyes are snapping up to greet him and he is saying her name and there is a camera pointed at him. He glances over to it, unabashed. Glances back to her, ready.

“Are you free for dinner tonight?”

“Yes.” Her reply is immediate, eager, completely certain. He sees her, truly sees her, sees her eyes taking him in and her hands clenched in her lap and her hair the same way it has been every day that he has known her.

“Then it’s a date.” It is the most important thing in the world that he clarifies this last piece of information, that she knows what she is getting into. He is almost prepared to hear her recant, to take back her single syllable and tuck it away for someone else. But she doesn’t. And when he closes the door he leans against it for a moment, breathing and seeing and feeling the crisp circulated air of the office. The only place he ever needs to be.

“Back so soon, Jimbo?” Michael has spotted him from his own office. His eyes take him in, and the empty seat behind him where Karen should be. “Where’s Karen?”

“I came back alone,” he says, and his words fall between them like lead. Michael takes a moment, performs the rigorous cognitive functions required to come to the conclusion that, “You broke up?”

He nods, and for once Michael asks nothing more.

When the door opens he is seated with his sleeves rolled up and his eyes on reception. He is afraid to move in case he shatters the illusion he has built for himself. But she heads to his desk and bumps her hip against the corner, rattling his computer screen. He looks up, catches her eyes, watches her nestle into her familiar spot on his desk from which he has watched her laugh, talk and complain for what feels like his entire life.

“Oh, sorry,” she laughs, and she is a little breathless. “Didn’t see you there.”

“Alright, Beesly,” he counters, throwing his arms up in surrender. He wants to throw them around her waist. “You don’t need to haze me. I’m just the same as all of you, remember?”

“Are you sure you didn’t let the deadly fumes of Corporate get to your head?” She raises an eyebrow. She is only half joking.

“I am as insane as I have ever been,” he says, gesturing to himself with a flourish. “Don’t you worry, Beesly, Corporate could never lure me away.”

She is thoughtful for a moment. Her gaze falls to the ground, to her shoes against the worn grey carpet. “Have you come back?” Her voice is soft and shaky. She doesn’t look at him.

He dares to shift closer, to put a hand over hers as it steadies her against the desk. “I’ve come back.”

She looks at him and smiles, and it lights up her whole face. “I’m glad.” She stands and gently moves her hand out from under his, folding her arms across her chest in her usual manner. “Well, I’ve probably got at least one whole voicemail to attend to,” she says, taking an uncertain step away from him. “See you around, Halpert.”

“Don’t miss me too much, Beesly,” he calls after her as the distance between them grows.

She looks him in the eye as she replies. “Now I don’t have to.”

He counts twenty long minutes before he permits himself to lean over her desk and reach for a jellybean. She is about to complete a hand of solitaire but abandons it at the sound of the candy rattling against its plastic confines.

“So, what do you feel like tonight, Beesly? Chinese, Italian, seventeen courses of Poor Richard’s finest chicken wings?”

He hopes to elicit a smile, but she meets his joke with a brow furrowed in confusion. “I think you’ve got me mixed up with somebody else. I’m going to the CIA’s ice-cream social tonight. They had to postpone it when their guest of honour didn’t arrive last time.”

“Well, I have no choice but to accompany you. You have no idea what types of hooligans these events attract, Miss Beesly.”

She laughs, and he laughs, and he looks at her for as long as he dares. He has been away for such a long time.

She leans forward, the joke abandoned. “I dare you to surprise me.”

“Challenge accepted.” He winks, drawing the blood up to her cheeks. He feels his pulse through his ears at the sight of it, at the knowledge that it is because of him. He pulls in the smell of her, the clean floral fragrance of her perfume. He lingers, and he wonders if he has stayed too long when she glances down at the phone, silent and unmoving.

“Angela is watching,” she murmurs, the corner of a smile tugging at her mouth. He turns ever so slightly and catches a stripe of blonde hair between the fronds of the resident office flora. He allows himself his own smile before turning back to the woman in front of him and announcing his departure. He can feel her eyes on him as he covers the five feet from her desk to his. He is absolutely delighted.