They’re probably making a mistake. A big one.

She doesn’t remember exactly how they ended up here. It’s cramped and she’s sweaty and he’s pumping into her hard, her skirt hiked up past her waist and his fingernails digging tiny crescents into her hips. Her elbow knocks the phone off the desk, her hip pushes down against the keyboard. 

Jim said there was nothing romantic about the office and he was right; this isn’t romantic. This is the furthest thing from romantic they’ve ever done. 

But it just might be the hottest.

They are nose to nose, their eyes locked in an intense gaze that’s both perfectly familiar and somewhat novel: the mere idea of having sex in the office is thrilling enough without the added element of how he’s always able to make her feel. Pam hadn’t had a second to remove her shoes but they fall off anyway as she wraps her legs around his waist tighter, reaching underneath his armpits, around to his back, pulling and clawing at the fabric of his shirt. It’s the blue one, her favorite. She hopes she rips it. 

The glow-in-the-dark stars on the walls create a soft light in the dark closet that’s not quite green, not quite blue, as if they’re floating underwater. And she can almost imagine that’s the case as he sets a rhythm like a rising tide, and she rides it with him, up, up, up, waiting for the inevitable crash. 

Breaking the spell, she tears her eyes away from his to glance over his undulating shoulders. She idly wonders why the hell it says “Eat at Hanks” near the ceiling, but she doesn’t really care: she doesn’t want to wonder, she doesn’t want to think, so she closes her eyes and just lets herself feel.

The computer monitor juts into her back and the edge of the tiny desk feels like it’s carving a thin groove into her ass. It hurts, but it’s the very best kind of hurt; the kind she’d be willing to get fired for. 

And they might, honestly. Anyone could walk in. The closet door doesn’t lock from the inside.

The idea of getting caught unexpectedly makes her more excited, and she can feel him now moving into her even deeper, oh god, hitting that elusive spot he can always manage to find at home: in their bed. Or the shower. Or wherever.

He lunges forward to kiss her, his lips meeting hers savagely, his tongue still tasting like bottomless champagne. She knows they need to make this fast, they should get in and out as quickly as possible (that’s what she said) but then she feels his large hands against her back, sliding up beneath her shirt, guiding her backwards into an arc until she’s practically draped over the monitor and begins kissing his way down her neck. She appreciates his desire to prolong this escapade, to attempt some romance, but there isn’t really time. 

She’s already close, so close, and she can feel herself dangling at the edge of the plateau but for some reason something is refusing to let her get there. Maybe it’s her slightly inebriated state, maybe it’s being in the office, maybe it’s the mere thought of their fellow employees being twenty feet away from them but she can’t quite get there.

She’s never, ever faked it with Jim -- she’s never had to -- but she thinks maybe today it might benefit them both. 

“Mmm…” she hums, locking her thighs around his waist and pulling him in even deeper. “I’m gonna…” 

She’s a terrible actress and he knows it.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he growls into her neck like he’s reading her mind. 

“Just finish, baby,” she breathes, a little frustrated. “It’s okay.”

“I’ll finish when you do.” 

He lifts her back up so his face is right next to hers, his hot breath in her ear. The sound of him panting echoes around the closet and the monitor falls back against the wall with a thud. Readjusting their position, he cups one hand under her knee, lifting it up, and his other thumb slips beneath her skirt, between them, finding her most sensitive spot. 

She knows without a doubt that, in his mind, there are no ifs, ands or buts about it… he will get her there. He always does.

A jolt goes through her body and her arm flies out in response to his touch, wildly grasping at the wall in an attempt to gain purchase, knocking supplies down from the shelves next to them. Something big hits the ground and she hears a loud clank. She’s fully sitting on the keyboard now and hopes she isn’t accidentally shipping paper somewhere it isn’t supposed to go.  

Her mind grows hazy as Jim works his magic and she starts thinking in expletives: Fuck, fuck, fuck. It always happens when he’s doing everything right, but this time she knows it’s because what they’re doing is oh so wrong. 

She can’t believe how quickly he’s making it happen but she feels her peak approaching and throws her arms around his neck, clinging to him tightly, beginning to cry out. She bites her lip to stop herself and feels her eyes practically rolling backwards into her head. It’s sweet relief, but also overwhelming gratitude for the orgasm she’d been prepared to deny herself, and it runs through her veins like fire as Jim pushes her over the edge.

He knows her responses so well -- her true, authentic responses -- that when his lips press against hers once again she can feel him smiling, triumphant, absolutely proud of himself. 

Motherfucker, she thinks with a grin of her own, still feeling him twitch inside her as she rides out the reverberations of her climax like tiny aftershocks. 

Her own release behind her, she redirects her focus on to his, and notices that he’s harder right now than she thought possible. She’s surprised; this impromptu tryst was, to her, more of a challenge for them than anything else. A game, a dare. Just playing around, the way they usually do. 

One of his hands is bracketed behind her for leverage and the other has slid up to the base of her skull, his fingers tangled in her hair, grasping, squeezing. She begins to feel herself slipping off the desk, and instinctively grabs his tie, hanging on for dear life. The desk shifts and she sees a broom slide down to the floor in her peripheral vision. Her other hand moves to his hair and she doesn’t mean to muss it up, it just sort of happens. Oops. 

He groans, louder than he should, and comes so hard he pulls on her hair reflexively. She loves it when he does that. Lying back as far as she can, she brings him down with her, breathing heavily, cradling his head against her. 

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” he whispers, his mouth against her cheek, still hovering in that place between ecstasy and reality. His words fill her heart and she turns to kiss his temple, marveling at the way he’d somehow found the romance in this tiny closet after all. It’s Jim, so she shouldn’t be surprised. 

She closes her eyes, the edges of her mouth curving up towards the star speckled ceiling. They’ve finally had sex in the office. She feels satisfied in more ways than one. 

“That was amazing,” he says softly after a few moments. “I can’t believe we haven’t done this before.” 

And then suddenly, completely without warning, her mind jumps to a horrifying place. 

“Have you?” 

The words are out before she realizes what she’s asked him. She doesn’t even think she wants to know the answer. She hasn’t thought about it in a very, very long time, but she isn’t the first person he’s had a relationship with in the office. 

Jim pulls away, his face an inch from hers, his eyelids droopy, sated. 

“What?”

Fuck. It must be the champagne, it has to be. Why did she say that? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. She’s thinking in expletives again, but not in a good way.

“I don’t know why I said that,” she says, her eyes widening. 

“Pam, what? What are you asking me?” 

She’s disgusted with herself. Why is she thinking about this now, of all moments? The whole thing is so ridiculous. Karen is so far in their past it shouldn’t matter. But this isn’t about jealousy, or insecurity, or any of that. As much as she wishes she hadn’t said anything at all, the fact remains: it irks her to think that this place, their place, is something he might possibly have shared with someone else in such an intimate way.

And if he had, it would be her fault. All of it would be her fault.

“I just meant… before me,” she says, hating herself for even saying it. Why did she have to put this on him right now? He’s still buried inside her, for god’s sake. 

She can see beads of sweat across his brow and she hates that even though she helped put them there, she’s now wondering if someone else might have done so in this very office.

The question is out now, in any event, and despite everything else, she studies his expression in a search for truth she never wanted to embark upon. She waits for him to look embarrassed, maybe even ashamed. To unwittingly reveal something he’d probably never intended her to find out in the first place. 

He looks hurt, however, which is something she hadn’t expected. She feels like total shit. She looks into his eyes, her fist still curled tightly around his tie, her heels locked around his waist. She wishes they could go back in time, back before she let those words escape her lips. 

“Jim, I’m really sorry, I don’t know why I said that. Let’s please just forget about it, okay? Please.”

She tries to sit up a bit so she can kiss him, foolishly thinking he can forget what she asked and she can forget what she wants to know or doesn’t want to know. They will forget and move on.

He doesn’t. 

“Are you asking me if I had sex with Karen at the office?”

She closes her eyes, her body flush with the feeling of having made some irreversible mistake. 

It doesn’t sting anymore, it doesn’t hurt. She’s married to Jim, they have a child together. What happened in the past shouldn’t matter. But now she can only think of a specific moment from that very past: when her heart had burst wide open with a hopelessness she’d never thought possible. 

Jim had been hers; he’d always been hers, somehow, even when he wasn’t. This was something she’d felt ever since she met him, something she’d known deep in her soul even after he left Scranton. 

And watching him with Karen in the parking lot that day had broken her. 

She sighs. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

Jim must see something in her face; the memory of that awful moment surfacing, a visual manifestation of her past pain, because his own expression softens and he brings his hand around to her forehead, pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes.

“Has this been bothering you? Why haven’t you ever asked me before?”

She shakes her head. “I swear it hasn’t. Not until right now.”

To her great relief, he smiles. “Well, no. The answer is no.”

The knots inside her stomach instantly untwist. Maybe it does matter after all, she thinks. 

She’s certain he wouldn’t lie to her, especially about something like this, but on the off chance he is lying to spare her feelings she feels a great desire to give him an out.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you had,” she says. “Just so you know.”

“I wish you knew what that year was really like for me, Pam,” he says quietly. “Just being in the same room as you was absolute torture. Every time I looked at you, it only reminded me that you didn’t want me.”

She does know what it was like. It had been torture for her, too. She doesn’t say at least you had someone else, even though she’s thinking it.

She shakes her head. “And I was convinced you were over me.”

“I tried, I’m not gonna lie. I tried to get over you. But there was always a part of me that hoped, and it’s that part of me that could never have done what you’re asking. With anyone else. Ever.”

She closes her eyes, relieved. And even though he didn’t ask, she feels like it’s only fair to add, “...Me neither.”

He smiles, and perhaps she imagines it but in his eyes there seems to be a tiny glimmer of his own relief. He leans in to kiss her, still connected to her in the most intimate way possible. As awkward and uncomfortable as being in this closet is, she feels a strange desire to just stay here with him, in the office, fused together, looking into his eyes. There’s a strange sense of closure coming over her now that she hadn’t realized she’d even needed.

She unwraps her thighs from his waist and he slowly withdraws himself. It crosses her mind that a condom would have probably been wise in this situation but it’s too late now, anyway. Jim buckles his pants and helps her down, and they can’t help but look at each other with a shared expression of victory.

They silently pick up the things they’d knocked over, putting everything back the way they’d found it. There’s one thing, however, she can’t seem to locate.

“Jim!” she hisses, looking at him, panicked. “I can’t find my underwear!”

He returns her look of panic, his eyes searching the tiny closet, and she’s momentarily horrified that not only will she have to go commando for the rest of the day, but that Ryan will certainly be the one to find them at some point in the future. Luckily, Jim doesn’t make her wait too long before his expression breaks into a grin, producing the lost article from his pocket.

“Oh, you mean these?” he asks, extending them to her. 

She snatches them out of his hand and quickly pulls them back on.

“Not funny.”

He shrugs. “I disagree.”

He flicks the light on and glances at her -- ready to go? -- but she can’t leave yet. Maybe it’s the office administrator part of her, or simply the idea of Ryan coming back in here to work, but she locates a container of disinfecting wipes and hands one to Jim.

“Everything we touched,” she says, and he doesn’t need to be asked twice. They wipe down the desk, the computer, the keyboard, all of it. 

“Disgusting,” he says with a smirk after they deposit the wipes into the wastebasket. 

“Absolutely appalling.”

She turns to face him, standing so close she can still feel the heat radiating off them both from their little adventure. He grins and tries to straighten her sweater a bit, and she reaches up to fix his hair. Both attempts are for naught.

“Look… I’m sorry, for earlier. For asking that. I don’t know what I was thinking,” she says quietly.

He gives his head a slight shake. “I’m kind of glad you did, actually. Because I’d want you to know. And I’m not sure how else that would ever have come up.”

He has a point. If she hadn’t said anything, it might always have bothered her, maybe even subconsciously. 

“Thanks.”

“Anyway, what really matters is we’re finally on the cool list.” He holds up his hand for a high five.

“I don’t think being on any list with Michael and Meredith and Dwight could be considered a cool list,” she points out, but slaps his hand anyway. She never leaves him hanging.

“Well, I thought it was pretty cool. I’ll be thinking about it for the rest of the day.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh yeah. You’d be absolutely shocked at the sheer volume of filthy thoughts I’ve had about you in this place, Beesly,” he says, leaning in close until his breath dances across her lips. “Shocked.”

She places both hands on his face and pulls him in for one last kiss, one last display of affection before they have to leave this tiny sanctuary and try to go back to work.

“Maybe we should do this again sometime,” he suggests when they pull apart. 

“Sure,” she winks. “You know where to find me.”