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Author's Chapter Notes:
Also, an email is written and sent.

“Operation No Stamford? Operation Kelly-Will-Kill-Me? Operation Suck-It-Dwight?” He’d spent the last ten minutes pitching names to her while Pam sat typing at the computer, and she’d rejected every one. He was down to the dregs, and he knew it.

 

“It’s like you’re not even trying.” She laughed, though, so he counted it as a win.

 

“Hey, now, I was going to say you had to give me credit for trying. It’s been ten minutes. And I still think Operation Jan was a perfectly good name.” Well, actually he didn’t, but he had been profoundly unable to come up with anything better and it had at least the value of being short.

 

“Well, I don’t. So I won’t.” She stuck her tongue out at him and then pointed at the screen. “But while you were tiring my ears with your pathetic attempts at code names, I was doing real work on Operation Scrantonicity.”

 

“And don’t think I’m not grateful. But…Operation Scrantonicity?” He raised an eyebrow at her as he slid into the chair she’d just vacated. She stood over him for a moment and he realized what she was waiting for and patted his lap. She settled in with an arm around his shoulders as he read her words and spoke directly into his ear.

 

It was rather distracting, especially for certain parts of him.

 

“Operation Scrantonicity, yes. For three reasons.” She laid one finger on his shoulder—his far shoulder. “One: did you know that Dwight offered Kevin and his band the gig for our wedding? I desperately need a better association for that name.” She ran the finger down his chest.

 

He gulped. He was definitely not getting the email she’d written to Jan read at this rate. “I suppose that makes sense. And the others?”

 

“Two.” She put two fingers on his shoulder again. “It has the right sound, you know—just enough Scranton in it, a sense of motion in the ‘-nicity’ part, but not quite as simple as something like ‘Operation Scranton.’” Given that he’d suggested Operation Scranton seven and a half minutes ago, he supposed she had to have a reason it was better than that name. Not that he cared, but he would keep playing along as long as she kept sliding fingers, two this time, down his chest.

 

“And the third?” She met his eyes, which were definitely not looking at the computer screen, and put three fingers on shoulder.

 

“Well, it is, Kevin’s band name, and since you told everyone when we were waiting outside during the fire, everyone knows exactly who it is in Scranton that you’re absolutely dying to see again.” She slide the fingers down his chest. “Which is Kevin, obviously.” And with that she jumped up from his lap, kissed him on the cheek and headed for the door. “Now read that email, and come on upstairs when you’re done. I’ll be waiting.” And then she was out the door to the computer room with a little wave.

 

Well. He really hoped she was as good at writing formal emails as she was at driving him insane, because he’d have Jan agreeing to this switch in no time if so. He flirted with not even reading it, but no—she’d probably ask him at some point what it said, and he wasn’t going to be the kind of boyfriend who lied about whether he’d actually read her work when he said it was good. Besides, they’d agreed that he needed to approach Jan in writing about this first (once he knew Ryan was onboard) and only then talk to her by phone, so there were high stakes here, higher than one night.

 

That didn’t mean he didn’t read it really, really fast. And there was one typo, which he suspected Pam had put in there intentionally (it was in his name), so he at least had something to confirm he had read it when she inevitably asked.

 

**

 

She ran up the stairs and into her room, knowing full well that Jim was definitely, 100%, for sure going to be coming up those same stairs in only a few minutes. The email she’d drafted to Jan was short and to the point, but that had actually made it much harder to write: long and flowing rhetoric was all very well, but how did you flatter someone, suggest that they do you a favor, and make it seem like their idea all in short, normal sentences? Normally, of course, that would have been Jim’s job—he was the salesman—but Pam actually handled most of the correspondence for Michael (OK, almost all of it) and so she knew a lot about what made Jan Levinson-Gould tick. As a manager at least—she had no idea how the woman worked as a human being, given that she was apparently at least a little interested in Michael Scott. But she knew Jan’s business style inside and out in a way she didn’t think she could exactly express to Jim in order for him to write to her, so the easiest solution had been just to write it herself.

 

But now she was not focused on that, not at all. She was focused on the fact that Jim was coming up the stairs probably already right now (it really wasn’t a long email) and for once it was a really good thing that she’d just thrown all her clothes into these two suitcases when she’d moved out of her…Roy’s house. Because if she’d made decisions; if she’d actually packed for this trip only; if she’d thought about it for more than one second, she would not in any of the infinite possible worlds imagined by Gottfried Liebniz, not even the best of all possible ones that he believed we lived in (Pam had taken a freshman philosophy course in college that had really stuck) have packed the lingerie that she frantically pulled out of (of course) the second suitcase she looked for it in.

 

It was red. It was stringy—but only in all the right places. It was, in fact, what she’d been given at a very embarrassing bridal shower by her aunt Ginny, of all people, in front of God and everyone. They’d all—not her, but her relations, Izzy, and Kelly—been pretty well soused at that point, and the revelation of this particular gift had been greeted with whoops and hollers.

 

She’d never intended to wear it. She hadn’t even planned to wear it on her wedding night (which meant, thankfully, that she had neither any compunctions about having kept it—there was no way she was acknowledging its existence enough to return it to aunt Ginny or the store, anyway—or about wearing it now). It had no relation, in her mind, to Roy, to her old life, to anything but the fact that for once in her life—or really, for one person in her life; no, make that two, she was a person in her own life too—she now felt sexy and empowered.

 

She was a fancy new Beesly, and she was going to show Jim Halpert just how important those two adjectives were. Although, if she was honest—and she was honest with herself and him, if no one else, about this—she loved that he hadn’t needed her to be either one to fall in love with her.

 

Just as she finished dressing in record time, and before she had time to do more with her hair than let it fall down (and out, and poof, and dammit there was no time), there was a knock on the door. She peeked out through the eyehole and saw Jim leaned up against the wall. She took a moment to ogle him, then realized she could do that just as well inside.

 

She opened the door, grabbed him by his forearm (thank God he kept his sleeves rolled up even in the winter, because she liked him that way) and pulled him into the room.

 

In the end, her brand new lingerie ended up being worn for less time than her family had laughed about it at her bridal shower. But then again, she wasn’t counting.

Chapter End Notes:
We'll see how Jan responds in the morning after. Thanks to you all for reading and reviewing! 

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