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Author's Chapter Notes:
Pam draws what she sees.

The rest of their time at the Zoo was extremely similar to the time they’d spent watching kangaroos, partly because, of course, there were kangaroos here too. Jim wasn’t entirely sure why this place hadn’t come up when he’d looked for places to find kangaroos—maybe he’d looked for “wild kangaroos” and these were technically enclosed. Not that the others could actually leave the reserve, of course.

 

He was, as before, quite happy to watch Pam in her element as she got basic sketches of all the wild variety of animals they had never seen before. Buttontail merged into pygmy goose into honeyeater and he honestly had no idea what birds he was looking at. The kangaroos were even more confusing, if it was possible. Apparently his brain had one category labeled “kangaroos” and everything with a pouch and two big legs and two small arms was one. Wallabies, both agile  and swamp might as well be the same—and don’t get him started on the red-necked wallaby and the red kangaroo.

 

He pointed this out to Pam, who asked if that meant that Roy was a kangaroo when he wore a hoodie.

 

Jim agreed that he was.

 

He also thought that the fact that they could joke about Roy was progress.

 

The one creature that truly amazed him, jolting him out of his haze of novelty into sheer excitement, was the platypus. Apparently early explorers had sent platypus skeletons back to Europe and been accused of gluing parts of various animals together (a duck, a beaver, a stoat, etc.). Well, Jim could respect that, because he could see the living thing and he still thought it must be three muskrats, a duck, and a beaver in a trenchcoat.

 

Pam somehow made it look graceful on the page, but he knew what he saw.

 

On the other end of the spectrum, wombats were both cuddlier and smarter than koalas, he discovered, and he desperately wanted one until Pam pointed out that it was not only illegal to steal them but probably hard to smuggle them into the US.

 

He still kind of wanted one.

 

**

 

Pam was having so much fun she was extremely sad when the time came for them to leave and head back to the rest of Sydney. Normally she would have been ecstatic about the opportunity to recreate the kiss they’d just shared on the trip over, and if she was honest she still was pretty excited, but she was also sad to have to leave before she’d filled up every page of her notebook with sketches.

 

OK, she had filled every page of her notebook with sketches, but there was still the emergency backup notebook shoved into the side-interior pocket of her purse, which was only like 98% full.

 

They got back to Circular Quay with night falling over the lights of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and she used some of that precious last 2% to capture the grandeur—after Jim had captured her lips again. She could definitely get used to this kind of silence with him. It was hard to speak mid-kiss, but she definitely wasn’t cold anymore.

 

They had a lovely dinner out—almost at the same place they’d had that first dinner, but as they were walking up to it they turned to each other at the same time and, perfectly in synch, suggested that they really ought to try a new place. They’d doubled down on the Silly Tart, but they only had so many other chances to try the food in a place neither of them necessarily expected to ever visit again.

 

Instead they found themselves eating street food again under the stars by the Anzac Memorial, trading quips and thoughts about the day and just generally enjoying each others’ company. This was what she’d wanted, she thought, from a real adult relationship. Not just the sex (though she was not adverse to heading back to the hostel soon); not just the kisses (though the boat had been a very good idea); not just someone who loved and supported her (though Jim did and it was like breathing after too long underwater), but a relationship where she could be entirely herself and be sure that the other person was being himself too.

 

Knowing Jim like she did meant that she was pretty sure this was unadulterated him. He was loose; he was free; so was she.

 

When they got back to the hostel Jim sorrowfully excused himself, saying he really had to get back in touch with Jan and Ryan and Toby about the transfer-that-wasn’t. He ducked into the computer room while she headed upstairs, swapping her notebooks for her secondary backup notebooks in her luggage.

 

She had always had a ton of blank books, courtesy of well-meaning parents and friends who had no idea what else to get her, and she hadn’t wished to leave any of them with Roy, so she had a lot of available pages to sketch on still.

 

An idea struck her as she put the filled notebooks away, and she carefully ripped out a couple pages of the newest blank book and set to work. She traced and copied from the day’s sketches, filling in details as they occurred to her minds’ eye. That was the blessing of her mind—had been the blessing ever since it had become obvious that Roy didn’t really want her to spend any time actually painting or sketching in their home (but not so obvious that they could actually have it out and talk about it)—that she was able to keep whole scenes in memory in sufficient detail to put them into her private notebooks when she had a moment. Now she used that skill, honed over years of repression, for a different purpose, recalling tricks of light and details of shading that she hadn’t had the time to capture precisely in the frantic rush to get everything down and remember it. She pulled out proper pens and colored pencils—also remnants of gifts from her parents over the years, and wasn’t it odd that none of them came from Roy, who supposedly knew her so well—and added color and depth to the black and white and gray.

 

When Jim knocked on her door later that evening, she flung it open and hustled him inside, not like that first night together when she’d jumped him immediately, but with a similar excitement and singularity of purpose.

 

This time, however, when she dragged him towards the bed she gestured with her leading hand at the array of drawings clustered on the duvet. There were a series of caricatures drawn lovingly from life: Phyllis the quail, her round body quivering with suppressed merriment; Ryan the kookaburra, his gelled crest rising off his beaklike head; Michael the bandicoot, peering hopefully across the page; Kelly the lorikeet, pleased with her plumage; Angela the cassowary, ready to attack; and high above them all staring down from the eucalyptus tree in which he perched, Dwight the koala munching on a handful of leaves.

 

They ended up in Jim’s bed that night, because he didn’t want to disturb the pictures.

 

It turned out that bed was just as good—because of course, it was all about the company.

Chapter End Notes:
OK, one more full day in Australia, one day of travel, a first day back at Dunder Mifflin, and then it's on to the greatest hits of AU S3. Thanks to all who've read and reviewed!

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