As usual, don't own the characters, don't make any money from this, yadda yadda, yadda.

This is the first fanfic I ever wrote, so for people (most of you!) who have already seen it, there's nothing new here. It's set during season 2, before Casino Night, and was written before Casino Night ever happened. It's not so relevant now, but still, it was my first. At this point, actually, some things in here have become fanfic cliches, but when I wrote it I think it was something like number 34 at FF.net.

When he’s not looking at her, he’s watching the clock. He does this every day, but today especially. Today is his last day at work before his big vacation. The one he booked before he realized that he’d never traveled alone. Never traveled anywhere, really, outside of quick business trips, and now he’s going almost all the way around the world, by himself. He thinks he might be crazy, or maybe just stupid, to think that putting physical distance between them would be enough to fix his problem. He took the extra days off because he can’t stand to be here, with her, while she does her last minute planning. Besides that, he’s got some last minute stuff of his own to take care of, so he’s taking two days off before his flight leaves on Thursday. Hearing her on the phone is almost more than he can stand, so when his phone rings he’s grateful for the interruption.

“Jim Halpert.” It’s a client. For a moment, he’s able to forget about his dilemma and focus on work. He’s distracted when Roy comes up from the warehouse to see if Pam’s ready to leave for the day.

She makes excuses and then tells him she’ll meet him at home later. She doesn’t want to go home with him tonight, although she doesn’t really know why. She knows Jim’s leaving Thursday, and that today’s the last day she’ll see him before she becomes Roy’s wife.

Roy’s wife.

Just thinking those two words together used to warm her up, never all the way to her toes the way it happens when she catches Jim looking at her in a certain way, and not the way it did when Roy put his hands on her on Prom Night for the very first time, but still, warm and fuzzy and happy. Now, it leaves her a little cold. Cold enough that she doesn’t even realize she’s wrapped her sweater a little tighter around herself in Roy’s wake, and that she’s hugging herself tightly enough that her fingertips are white. She tells herself that it’s just cold feet, that this is what she’s been waiting for since practically high school. She tells herself that she just wants to walk out with Jim because she’s going to miss him while he’s gone.

“You okay, Beesly?” Jim looks at her curiously. She looks like she always does when Michael’s given her a particularly difficult day, or when he’s come up with yet another stupid nickname she’s forced to pretend to find amusing. She nods.

“You’re leaving Thursday?’ She asks, even though she knows the answer. She’s put a hash mark on the calendar for that day. She has one for today, that only she knows means it’s the last time she’ll see him for weeks, and one for Thursday. She’s not sure exactly what that one means, but it’s not just the day he gets on the plane.

He nods. “Yup. I’m going to be a world traveler. If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll bring you back a stuffed kangaroo. ” Or maybe I won’t come back at all.The only thing keeping me here is you.

For the first time since the cruise on Lake Wallenpaupak, he’s able to force a question out of himself. “Where are you and Roy going for your honeymoon?”

“Jamaica. Roy said I didn’t need a passport for it, but I got one anyway because I was hoping he might surprise me with something slightly more exotic.” She crinkles her nose at him in that adorable way she has, and quickly looks away. She doesn’t want him to see that she’s disappointed that Roy didn’t think of Paris, where she could see works of art firsthand that she’d only seen in books, where she could imagine what it would be like to be a respected artist, or sit in a café and sketch people walking by.

Jim gets up and starts gathering up his things and she knows she’s got to say something before he leaves, but she doesn’t know how and she doesn’t know what to say anyway. I’ll miss you. Don’t leave me. I can’t do this without you.

So she settles on, “Would you walk out with me?” and he looks at her, surprised and pleased.

“Where’s Roy?” He pretends he didn’t notice her sending him away. He’s used to pretending he doesn’t notice a lot of things when it comes to Roy.

“He wanted to go out with Darryl anyway, so I….”

“Got it. Ok, hang on one minute.” And he reaches into his top desk drawer. It’s the only one with a lock on it, but he rarely locks it. It’s locked today, and Pam finds that perplexing. She watches him out of the corner of her eye as she puts on her coat against the still cool June evening. It was supposed to be warmer by now, but it still gets cold at night. And she sees Jim unlock the drawer and slip something thick and white and larger than normal envelope size in his pocket.

He finally looks at her, and smiles. “Ready!”

They stand in silence by the elevator and wait for the doors to open. When he looks down at her, she looks back up at him expectantly and smiles one of her half smiles like she does when she wants to say something.

“What?” He asks, with a lopsided grin. “Going to miss me, Beesly?”

It’s a shot in the dark, really, but he hopes she’ll say something. Anything. Just enough to tell him what to do.

But she doesn’t say anything. She just quickly looks down at her sensible white tennis shoes that have worn gray since the Dundies and when the elevator doors open she’s the first one in. She doesn’t meet his gaze until the doors slide shut.

He feels a warmth spread from his toes to the top of his head, and he knows he must be turning a hundred shades of red, but the look in her eyes says that she needs him, that she’s trying so hard not to say the things she wants to say because she shouldn’t even be thinking them, let alone saying them.

“Jim, I want…” And he knows. He wants too. He reaches over and pulls the emergency stop because there are only two floors in the buildingand if he doesn’t pull it, the ride will be over before he has a chance to do what he needs to do while he’s still the decent guy taking his last chance. If he doesn’t do it now, later he’ll be the guy trying to steal another guy’s wife. He doesn’t have much time because the alarms are ringing and it’s only a matter of time before Dwight breaks into the elevator with the fire axe.

He pushes her up against the wall of the elevator and carefully cups her face in his hands. He doesn’t get any resistance, which surprises him. Her eyes are steadily on his, and when her tongue darts out to touch her lips he can’t stand it anymore. His mouth is on hers and she’s returning the kiss, slipping her hands up his hips to pull his shirt out of his pants so that she can feel his skin against hers. He gasps a little when her cool hands slide up to his chest, and he moves his hand down to her waist.

She moans when he takes his hand off of her, but doesn’t stop kissing him. He slides something into her coat pocket and then forces himself to break away from her. He pushes the stop back in and the elevator lurches back to life.

“Wait, Jim…” But he’s already tucking his shirt back in and not looking at her. He can’t look at her because he’s afraid that if he does she’ll see how broken he is. But she already knows. She could feel it the moment he broke off the kiss. Her heart falls into her stomach and she doesn’t have any idea what to say to fix this.

“Listen, Pam. What I stuck in your pocket is for you. It’s not for you and Roy, it’s not a wedding gift. It’s yours. You do what you want with it. Hell, don’t even open it if you don’t want to. But if you think you need a push, it’s a push.”

A push? What does he mean by that? She wants to ask, but he’s already out the door and halfway to his car. She can’t follow. If the warehouse guys see her they’ll immediately run to Roy. They don’t trust Jim, even though Roy doesn’t think he’s a threat.

When she pulls it out of her pocket, she knows what it is. She doesn’t open it. She’s already made a decision. She made the decision three years ago. Opening it would mean that she has options, and Pam knows better than that. She’s never had options.

She remembers Jim’s hot breath on her face, and the way he made her knees buckle when his hand went round to the back of her neck and the way he tasted like wintergreen Lifesavers and she’d wondered for so long how that would feel and now she knows that she’s done more than just wonder, she‘s waited, as though it were an inevitability. And she remembers more than anything the way he looked at her, like she was the only thing in the world and she thinks she might have seen options in his eyes and she suddenly realizes that they’ve been there all along, in his eyes. She’s never let herself think about it, but now she’s thinking about it.

She slips her pinkie finger under the flap of the extra large envelope and cuts herself a little as she starts to tear.

And what she thinks is push.