Pam Beesly and Jim Halpert are actors, hired by Hollywood.  Or NBC.  Whatever. 

Sometimes she’s desperate to scream that at people who really don’t understand and who take the term “reality T.V.” way too literally. Like, yeah it says Pamela Anne Beesly on her birth certificate, and she comes up with like thirty five percent of her own lines, in the moment, but actually she auditioned and was hired and gets paid to pretend to be someone she isn’t who’s actually not pretending at all.

Basically how it works is that the plot is “suggested” to them in vaguely written script format.

It’s reality in as much as any reality television show is real, and she signed a contract that said she would never reveal how truly scripted the entire thing is. Jesus, she grew up in Hobbits Glen, Maryland and went to college in New York City. It isn’t like she’s actually a receptionist. Not really.

Although, she spends most of her time these days answering the phone at Dunder Mifflin-Scranton, so she guesses it’s more her life than she likes to admit.

She gets compensated nicely and she has a dressing room downstairs with her name on the door, and her Bachelor of Arts in drama from NYU seems to come in surprisingly handy whenever they ask the actors to ad lib. Which is actually really often.

She’s sleeping with a guy on the weekends named Graham who has a British accent and a flare for the acoustic guitar.

Jim is seeing some girl from As the World Turns, and sometimes during the shoot Pam teases him about it, asking if the girl pauses in the middle of their conversations to give an imaginary camera her reaction shot. He rolls his eyes at her and stands impatiently on his mark, waiting for direction from someone who isn’t her.

Off camera he does this thing where he plays with the coins in his pockets. It drives her crazy and she finds herself staring at the shadowed shape of his hand, outlined by the gray or brown or black of his pants, and blinking stoically, royally, chewing on her lip in irritation. It took her three months of working with him before she finally opened her mouth about it.

“Do you have like twenty dollars in quarters in there or what?” she’d wondered frostily. His hand had gone still and he’d looked at her, bored, unapologetic.

“Yeah,” he’d answered, and she’d day-dreamed for the rest of the afternoon about punching him in the mouth.

Sometimes she wonders if the problem is that she actually does find him attractive.

Devastatingly attractive.

She tries to avoid those kinds of men usually at all costs, attractive ones, ones that make her feel warm. Graham has an overbite and she finds that she is much more comfortable conversing with him than with someone who looks like Jim Halpert, and so she figures it’s actually the way that Jim’s torso makes her mouth go dry that originally made her hate him with every fiber of her being.

His arrogance only added to it.

He’s the type of actor who does read-throughs in a navy blue baseball cap with three days worth of stubble on his cheeks, looking gloriously masculine and grinning at anything female in the room because he can and because it works. She’s the kind of actress who does read-throughs in a messy bun, glasses, and an old sweater, looking unfortunately unkempt and going basically ignored by everyone else at the table.

She hates him.

She doesn’t smile off camera when he flirts with her, and usually he gets the message and just stops trying, instead matching her contempt with some of his own. He sarcastically calls her ‘sunshine.’ He points out her flaws.

She figures he’s just constantly angry with her because she refuses to bend over and French kiss his ass like all the other women on set.

Sometimes she thinks it’s unfortunate that they happened to be cast this way, so that when the cameras are rolling she’s forced to laugh at him and flirt with him and stare at him longingly when his back is turned. If Kelly had been cast as the receptionist Pam was sure Kelly would have had no problem gazing at Jim and giggling when he lifted his eyebrows in her direction, and then maybe their fans could have had the ‘reality‘ back in their reality television.

She tells herself to suck it up because this is why she gets paid the big bucks.

Acting.

The camera does a close up as he leans over her desk and she lets herself stare at the curve of his cheek and the straight line of his nose, she lets herself admit that he’s tall and attractive and really she’d like to throw him down on any flat surface available. She grins at him.

Acting.

He’s telling her something about marijuana and it takes her a second to realize it’s because they’re filming an episode about drug testing and she laughs with him instead of rolling her eyes like she’d originally wanted to. She’s sure the real Jim Halpert gets high all the time, but this fictional Jim Halpert is less likely to smoke up and she likes him better. She lets herself like him better.

Acting.

Later in the day she jinxes him and she tells herself that it doesn’t send an actual thrill down her spine to spend hours with him without his speaking, full of this certain kind of tension that comes from the mystery behind his eyes. It’s just her character. It’s just the fictional Pam Beesly that likes the performance he puts on for Michael and the warm way he looks at her when he finally buys her a coke. It’s just television.

Just acting.

She hates him, really.

Someone yells cut and he grunts in relief, mumbling to her that he needs a cigarette and practically knocking her over in his race to the door. She sighs and heads for the break room, silently thanking god or buddha or allah or whoever that they all have next week off and can be more themselves than this for seven whole days.  Jim will probably just go and have sex with As the World Turns girl and smoke pot for hours, not bothering to look at any of the notes they've gotten for the last two episodes of the season.  He'll probably run around signing autographs for twenty year old girls while she sits at home and watches America's Next Top Model reruns on MTV.

Yeah, definitely. She definitely hates him.

*** ...Like sands through an hour glass... ***

He comes back from his smoke break predictably smelling like smoke and she rolls her eyes at him.

“Can’t you buy some Febreze or something? Like spray a little air freshener after yourself?” she requests quietly and he tilts his head at her and offers a sarcastic grin.

“No because I love the look of disgust on your face every time I walk past you,” he informs her. She narrows her eyes and shakes her head and he laughs, which fuels her fire.

“It’s like they put an ad in backstage and listed all of the qualities I hate in a person when they were casting your part,” she mumbles for probably the thousandth time since they’d started working together. He shrugs and nods and looks over at Heather the makeup girl and winks at her in that way that is so Jim Halpert off camera. Pam tugs at the corners of her shirt and wonders when the last time was that she got a hair cut. Wonders if she should go blonde.

They yell action and she picks up the half cup of coke he pushes toward her and nods when he tells her that Dwight has retired from being a sheriff’s deputy, the camera filming them from the other side of the door and making her feel like she can say what she wants since she knows the sound will be covered with a voice over. She clears her throat.

“So are you going to donate your ruined lungs to science after you die of cancer?” she wonders, a grin on her face and laughter in her throat because she knows she has to look like they’re still talking about the office. He laughs at her and nods and takes a sip of his coke.

“I’m actually leaving them to you in my will,” he tells her and she looks excited for the sake of the camera.

Acting.

She’s having a terrible time.

“Great,” she tells him, “I’ll make them into earrings or maybe lamps for my living room.  Lung lamps.” She hears one of the sound guys chuckle and her grin widens a little because really, she’s funny. She is. He nods and looks like he’s considering her ideas.

“Don’t lie, Pam,” he accuses and she raises her eyebrow in interest, “You’re just going to add them to the shrine you’ve already built in my honor. And if I may, a little suggestion?”

She hums at him.

“Please,” she prods, gesturing for him to continue.

“If you start selling tickets at O’Flannigan’s you could probably turn that shrine of yours into an actual museum,” he reaches up and strokes his chin for a second as if in thought and she literally starts to feel bile rise up in her stomach. “I’m sure there would be hundreds of ladies who would spend lots of money to see my sexy black lungs,” he mutters and she shakes her head, rolling her eyes and downing the rest of the coke in hopes that it will bring this filming to a close that much sooner. As if answering her prayers, the director yells cut and crosses his arms, tilting his head at them and giving them both a look of resigned acceptance.

“Fascinating conversation, guys, thanks,” he tells them sarcastically. Pam wastes no time and stands, walking off set like she can’t get away fast enough because, really, she can’t.

“No problem,” she mumbles and heads straight for her dressing room. On the way she passes Toby who’s shedding a leather jacket, eating something that looks like a roast beef sandwich, and talking on his cell all at the same time. She smiles at him and shakes her head. “Impressive. I have no idea why they made talking on your cell and driving at the same time illegal.” He raises his eyebrows in answer and she pushes at the door to the room labeled “Pam Beesly” with her shoulder.

“Hey, you coming out to O’Flannigan’s tonight?” he calls after her, his mouth full and his jacket finally draped across one arm. She shrugs.

“Who’s going?” she wonders, thinking of the bathtub and recently purchased Miles Davis CD patiently waiting in her apartment.

“I don’t know,” Toby answers, “everyone who’s anyone,” and she laughs because it’s sort of a standing joke between them.

“Well then I guess I’d better be there,” she calls out, finally pushing into her dressing room and locking the door behind her. The lights are a little too bright and she squints, shedding her cardigan and skirt immediately in favor of a pair of well worn jeans and an old “ESPRIT” sweatshirt that she’d cut apart sometime during the 80’s.

She pulls her hair up into a bun and bends down over her mirror to put on some more blush and a little mascara. She stands back and looks at herself for a second, eventually just shrugging because she doesn’t really care that much.

O’Flannigan’s it is, she thinks, picking up her hobo purse and her sunglasses and exiting the room only to literally run into a now casually dressed and baseball cap wearing Jim Halpert, who holds up his hands like she’s going to accuse him of grabbing her breasts or something. She sighs and steps back.

“Sorry,” she offers and he wags his eyebrows at her, grinning, silent because he’s smart and probably figured out how much it had unnerved her earlier in the day. “You can talk, you know, the jinx is over,” she reminds him, bored. He purses his lips at her and pushes his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You can also get out of my way,” she adds, belatedly realizing she’s supposed to be hostile toward him. A smile starts to pull at his lips and he stares at her for a second, assessing. She shifts and huffs because she hates it when he does this. Finally he steps to the side of her, bending at the waist a little and sweeping his hand out in front of him in a very Shakespearean invitation that she should proceed. She glares at him and walks by, reaching into her bag in search of her car keys and refusing to look back.

“See you at O’Flannigan’s,” he calls and she rolls her eyes. “Get those shrine tickets ready, it’s Friday. You never know when I might drink too much and kick the bucket,” he tells her as the door swings closed and she’s finally gloriously outside and beginning the week she has off and away from the cameras. She inhales deep and she unlocks her car and slides in, turning the radio station to Rock 107 and rolling down her window.

It‘s April and the weather in Scranton is almost nice.  She thinks it must be a goddamn miracle.

***...these, then, are the days of our lives. ***

O’Flannigan’s practically shuts down for them.

Part of the setback of being on a pretty popular reality T.V. show is that it’s hard to go places and get plastered if everyone is staring at you all the time, so some day someone had sweet talked John O’Flannigan himself, who’s actual last name is like Roberts or Boulder or something, and got him somehow to agree that if somebody called ahead, he would limit the number of patrons in the bar and he would seal off the back so that the cast could enjoy themselves like normal people.

Toby is always calling ahead, and so everyone is always at O’Flannigan’s. She thinks John Roberts or Boulder or O’Flannigan or whatever his name is would probably be pissed except for the fact that they all basically spend their entire pay check drinking his beer. She pulls off her sunglasses and leans against the bar with a warm and convincing kind of smile.

“John, how are you?” she asks sweetly and he levels his gaze at her and puts down the glass he’s washing to hold out his hand. She places her purse in it and blows him a kiss as he sets it on the back of the bar so that nobody will touch it and so that she doesn’t have to worry about it the entire time she's there. “What would I do without you, John, seriously?” she wonders and he rolls his eyes.

“Hang your purse on the back of a chair like every other girl in here?” he guesses and she chuckles, heading to the back corner where Kelly, Ryan, Roy and Toby are already organizing pitchers and pizza.  Well, Kelly, Ryan, and Roy are organizing pizza...Toby is on his phone.  Predictably.

“Pam Beesly, who the hell invited you?” Roy wonders, feigning irritation and pouring himself a Sam Adams. She smiles.

“Hi,” she offers simply, and with that she leans down and kisses his cheek and he smiles at her and she actually doesn’t mind that most of the time she has to pretend to be his fiancé. At the moment she probably doesn’t mind because she knows she has seven days ahead of her of not pretending to be his fiancé, but she honestly does like him and she honestly is secretly hoping the writers don’t have the two of them break up so they can phase him out of the show. Then she’d be left with Jim and, gee, wouldn’t that be thrilling.

“So listen, you know Deb in costumes?” Kelly asks, and Pam glances at her as she sits down, not sure whether Kelly is really talking to her or not.

“Yeah, Deb, sure,” Ryan responds, biting into his pizza and scooting his chair a little closer to the table because Pam is sure he doesn’t want to drip any cheese on his Burberry golf shirt. Ryan is independently wealthy and sometimes Pam glares at him when she really doesn’t mean to.

“Oh my god I got into a huge fight with her today,” Kelly informs them. “She wants me to start wearing olive green and like orange and stuff and dressing super conservative again like I used to before the show actually got good and people started like watching and caring and everything.”

Pam glances at Roy and rolls her eyes and Kelly doesn’t notice.

Kelly had originally been cast as a conservative kind of ambitious small town career woman, but had become the person on the reality show who was basically unable to keep her actual attributes to herself, and whose real personality ended up being more interesting to the viewers and writers anyway. Basically her overly excited, superlative and exclamation point heavy ‘character’ is real.

And how unfortunate, Pam thinks to herself.

“Shoot me in the face,” Ryan mutters in response, and Pam and Roy laugh quietly at his dry reply. “Where’s Jim?” he wonders, and Pam sighs because sometimes Ryan is pathetic in his hero worship.

“I don’t know,” Roy answers, “Pam?” he turns to her and Ryan and Kelly both laugh around mouths full of beer and pizza, “Where’s Jim?” he asks, barely able to keep his own laughter inside because the contempt she harbors for Jim has become a kind of cast-wide joke. She glares at him and bites back a smile.

“Probably looking in the mirror and listing all of the things that he loves about his own reflection,” she answers, shifting to sit cross-legged on the wide-seated wooden chair beneath her. Ignoring the mocking laughter and the wide smiles of the other three, she reaches out in front of her and knocks at the empty spot in front of Toby. “Hey, Alexander Graham Bell, get off your damn phone and be part of the group,” she requests loudly. He grimaces at her and waves her off so that she turns to Roy and holds out her hands in bewilderment. “Who is he always talking to?” she wonders and he shrugs.

“He never even says anything except ‘uh huh’ and 'ok' so I’m guessing it’s either his very talkative mother, or his agent,” he answers, squinting in thought and handing her an overly foamy glass of beer.

“Thank you,” she mutters. “So, I hear Toby has herpes,” she proclaims, her head tilted a little bit toward him so that her voice will carry over the din of clinking plates and old-school rock piping in through the mounted speakers. Roy shakes his head, amused. “And I heard he used to be in Cats on Broadway," she adds, "playing Skimbleshanks the railway cat. Great reviews for that one,” she says, glancing at Toby and lifting her eyebrows at the death stare he’s giving her. “And also,” she tells Roy, “I hear he loves Grey Poupon mustard, like he puts it on everything and can’t get enough.”

“Hey, sorry, I have to go,” Toby suddenly mumbles into his phone and Pam’s hands shoot up into the air in victory as Roy claps for her and looks genuinely impressed. Toby tosses his phone toward her on the table and shakes his head, disappointed. “That was cruel,” he tells her. “You know I love French’s,” and she laughs so hard her stomach hurts.

Eventually she excuses herself and heads into the ladies room beacuse when she works she drinks countless bottles of water all day long until at the end of the day she feels like she might explode.

When she comes out, Jim is standing at the end of the bar next to a 5 foot blonde with practically no fat or muscle or body at all and Pam frowns in annoyance, wishing she were better at ignoring things. He glances at her as she rounds the corner and bends down to whisper something in the girl’s ear, which Pam assumes is I'll come back for you or Don’t move from this spot or something equally as stupid, and he meets her about halfway to their cast's table.

“Sunshine, god how I’ve missed you,” he tells her, slinging his arm around her shoulders and peering down at her beneath the brim of his hat. She presses her lips together and nods. “How could I ever survive without your hostility and angry feminist comebacks?” he asks, bending down low like he had with the girl at the bar. She shoves an elbow into his ribs to get him to back off.

“I think you and your right hand would manage just fine,” she tells him. He presses a hand to his chest like she’s shot him in the heart and she laughs a little because really it’s funny. “Does Susan Lucci know that you do this?” she wonders, jerking a thumb back toward the girl he’d left and strategically weaving her way through the wooden tables and chairs. He tilts his head at her.

“Susan Lucci?” he wonders and she grins to herself while her back is turned to him, erasing it once she turns around and he can see her face.

“As the World Turns…what’s her name?” she asks innocently and he nods at her, squinting one eye and tipping his mouth a little, like he’s straining to hear something or pretending to have a stroke.

“Her name is Dawn, like the dish soap,” he reminds her, his tone clearly indicating that he knows that she knows that.

“Oh right, dish soap,” she breathes, returning to her seat at the table and quirking her eyebrows at Roy. “I found Don Juan sexing it up at the bar,” she tells him. He nods and doesn’t say anything and she takes a deep breath because sometimes she worries that she’s a minion or a pawn or really obvious in how much Jim actually affects her and her stupid twisting stomach.

“Jim, hey!” Ryan calls out and Pam rolls her eyes at the paper plates in front of her.

“Hey, man, how’s it goin?” Jim answers, sliding into the seat next to her and leaning down again so he can whisper in her ear. “Don’t hurt yourself with the hostility, it isn’t my fault that people love me,” he murmurs, the rumble of his voice making her lift her shoulder to her ear in discomfort.

“I’m not hostile,” she responds, crinkling her nose and leaning away from him angrily. He lifts his shoulder in half of a shrug and nods, smiling primly.

“I can tell,” he responds, turning away and toward the door as Toby calls out: Michael Scott is in the house! and all the men start barking because apparently that’s their thing. Michael laughs and holds up his hands like he’s trying to quiet them, and Kelly and Pam glance at each other and shake their heads.

“The party has arrived,” Jim yells, shaking Michael’s hand and then clapping like they’re all at a sporting event or something.

“Quiet down in the back!” John shouts at them, and the barking peters out because none of them want to be banned from O’Flannigan’s.

“Stay cool, ma babies,” Michael croons, sitting down next to Toby who hands him a beer. “We’re drinking already? It’s 3 in the afternoon,” he glances down at his watch while taking a sip of the Sam Adams and swallowing full mouthed in a guy kind of way.

“It’s five o’clock somewhere, Mike,” Jim responds, getting up to reach over Pam’s head and grab his own glass of beer from Ryan, who is more than willing to pour it for him and probably wax his car or pick up his dry cleaning. “Hey, Pam, what’re you doing tomorrow? Wanna hang out?” he wonders loudly for comedic effect and Pam pretends to think while grabbing a second piece of pizza to set beside her uneaten first one.

“Uh I was actually planning on never seeing you again,” she tells him and a chorus of ooo’s and ouch’s rings out across the table. Jim chuckles and nods, turning his chair so that it’s backwards and straddling it, wrapping his arms around the back, his knee bumping up against Pam’s thigh, much to her chagrin. She thinks she should probably go home and shower. She thinks she’ll have to call Graham tonight and hook up with him.

“Too bad,” Jim responds, “cause your contract kind of makes that impossible.” She nods solemnly because she’s realized that a thousand times before. She couldn’t get rid of Jim Halpert if she wanted to.

And she does want to.

Really. She does.

She sucks down the last of her beer and gestures to Toby to refill it. Jim stands up, restless, and moves to head back toward the front of the bar where five foot no-body girl is still probably waiting for him with baited breath.

“Uh oh,” he’s saying, pointing down at her and picking up his own beer, “Mom’s getting drunk.”

She sighs and she rolls her eyes and she turns to Kelly because anything is better than watching him pick up another number one fan.

He likes her, really.

Or he doesn’t dislike her. He’s not really sure how he feels or what it is that they do all of the time because he’s never really had a relationship, in work or anything else, that has been anything like this. He’s sort of always been a surface kind of guy who’s nice to the people around him, especially the ladies, but never really gets to know any of them. And it isn’t that she’s different because he’s gotten to know Pam, it’s just that she’s different because he isn’t nice to her.

But it’s only because she isn’t nice to him and he’s not sure how else to respond to that.

Their first day of working together he’d been talking to Meredith when Pam had walked in, late and frazzled and sort of self-conscious in that Pam Beesly kind of way, and she’d been wearing this purple sweater and jeans and he’d thought she was adorable. Like nice. Not exactly raucous sex at four in the morning, but just…nice. Normal. He’d taken his time, but eventually he’d made his way over to where she was reading her script and her notes and he’d sat down beside her.

“I have that same sweater at home,” he’d murmured quietly, almost whispering because women usually liked that, “but I didn’t wear it because it’s in the wash,” he told her shaking his head at himself and clicking his tongue sadly, already practically grinning in anticipation of the moment that she would start to smile or would blush or would laugh or…god, just something. But instead she’d kind of readjusted the very sweater he had teased her about and she had barely looked at him, frowning. She had frowned. He remembered distinctly the frowning that had gone on.

“Is that like,” she’d started, sighing, “Are you joking?” she’d asked icily and he had tilted his head and chuckled uncomfortably and basically removed himself from the conversation and the seat as quickly as possible, glancing over at her sometimes in curiosity because of the way she was so warm with everyone else. The way that she gave Toby half of her blueberry muffin and the way that Michael had given her five when he’d first gotten there and made it clear that they already knew each other. He’d watched it all while laughing down at Angela or exchanging cards with Dwight, and he’d gotten it fast. Loud and clear. Pam Beesly was not interested in playing nice with Jim Halpert.

He thought it was weird then and he still kind of thinks it’s weird now because…well, people are always nice to him. Women…are always nice to him. Smiling at him and laughing at his jokes and tossing their hair and acting like they like him and want to like cook for him or something and just generally acting like they like him. Except for Pam, who just generally acts like she hates him. Only he doesn’t think it’s much of an act at all. She really does hate him. No matter what he does. No matter how much he grins or jokes or touches or…strokes…great, he’s mentally rhyming now.

He sighs and nods at the girl he’s talking to at the bar, trying hard not to think about Pam and trying hard not to acknowledge the way he’s sure she’s right to hate him because who the hell is he, anyway? He‘s not at all worth liking really, except for the fact that he‘s good looking. And his job, he thinks triumphantly.

His job is fantastic. He loves his job.

He’s not going to lie about it and he’s not going to apologize for it and he’s certainly not going to acknowledge people who want to judge him for taking advantage of any and all of the perks involved in said job. People like Pam, just to pick one out of thin air.

Does he sleep around a little? Well, yeah of course he does. What guy wouldn’t?

Is he dating a super hot soap star who also happens to be named after soap? Yes. And he’s proud of that.

Ok well actually he’s a little less than proud. It isn’t like he’s told his mom about her or anything, but still. And it isn’t like they’re really dating because, well, she lives in the city and it’s just like sometimes they talk on the phone and sometimes they see each other when he gets vacations. Except this week because he just didn’t feel like…well, anyway, still.

No apologies.

To anybody.

Besides, he thinks sometimes that he’s not sure what people expect him to do. He’s not a serious actor and he isn’t trained in anything, he’s just good at flirting…really good at flirting, and he’s attractive enough that he looks good on camera. He doesn’t have any actual skills. He’s not a rocket scientist or a celebrity defense attorney or something impossible like that. He’s not that intelligent, he knows that for sure. He’s just a guy who got lucky and who somebody picked to pretend to be someone he’s not…someone simple and good and funny and nice.

He’s not that intelligent and he’s definitely not nice.

He gets that.

And every night he thanks his lucky stars and beyond that, he’s not sure what people like Pam expect him to do. She’d made it clear to him from the first day that they’d met each other that women like her are not interested in men like him, not that he’d needed reminding of that fact, and beyond that he’s just not sure what she expects. He can’t build her a rocket and he can’t free her of her murder charges, so…

Whatever, anyway, he tells himself, Pam is hyper judgmental and she’s full of herself and he could never be into her.

She’s sleeping with some guitar player, he reminds himself. Plus she hates him with a fiery kind of passion, and he’s not sure he blames her. It’s just that it’s different tonight, or maybe for the past few weeks, because usually her hating him doesn’t really register and doesn’t really bother him. Usually he’s just…cool. Aloof. Unconcerned. Because obviously there’s not much he can do about it, and she’s extremely unwavering in her dislike, so it’s not like he has any kind of hope most of the time. He’s resigned to his fate in this area.

But then sometimes…god, he thinks, sometimes it’s just…

It’s like she likes him.

Like sometimes she’ll look at him in this certain way, lately especially, and he’ll think yes. He’ll think this is me that you’re seeing and talking to and he’ll hope that she can gain some kind of telepathic power just in that second so that she‘ll hear him and suddenly get it. Sometimes she’ll smile at him or flirt with him and he’ll believe it…he’ll believe her, until he gets hit in the head with a boom or until somebody yells cut and he’s reminded that the cameras are rolling and, unlike him, Pam is an excellent and skilled actress. Pam has a fancy degree that makes it really easy for her to pretend to like someone she actually hates. But sometimes he forgets that and those are really the moments that he loves his job.

Plus the ‘girls falling all over him’ thing. That’s good too.

He’s looking at her from across the bar and he thinks she seems tense tonight. He thinks she’d seemed particularly dedicated to their scenes earlier, almost like she was enjoying herself, and he thinks she seems tense now…her shoulders held tight and her fingers almost white around her mug of beer. He’s always accidentally paying attention to these things with her. Things he would never notice normally, things he would especially never admit to noticing, and things that kind of make him feel like he has to avert his gaze every time she tries to make eye contact with him. He feels sometimes like he has to be careful. Like he has to be really careful because if he isn’t he might notice just enough about her to get to know her, to know intricate things about her, and that would definitely knock him out of the “surface kind of guy” territory. He definitely would no longer be aloof or cool or unconcerned.

The girl in front of him…what’s her name, Mitzy or something stupid like that, pulls on his sleeve and he remembers he should be grinning down at her because, after all, this is his rocket science. This is the best that he can do. He looks away from Pam and gives Mitzy a wink so that she’ll immediately forgive him for drifting for a second, and predictably she does, giggling and saying something about his show and he has to grab onto the bar hard to keep himself from rolling his eyes.

He’s sick of talking about the damn show. He’s sick of people watching it and thinking he’s that guy…thinking he’s that Jim Halpert who’s so just…so much better than the actual Jim that he really is. He shakes his head and part of him blames Pam, for some reason. Part of him always blames Pam.

“Hey, hon,” he mutters and she frowns because it isn’t a good cover-up for the fact that he forgets her real name and has been calling her Mitzy in his head, which is shamelessly derogatory. He grimaces and then grins. “My friends are, um…” he waves a vague kind of hand toward them and chuckles at himself, internally kind of shocked by this…by the bailing he’s doing because normally he would take this girl home with him. “I’m gonna go,” he blurts, “over there,” blurting again, “but um, nice talking to you.”

Jesus. He exhales a long and hefty breath on his way back to the cast table and shakes out his shoulders a little because…what the hell was that? Damnit, he tells himself, this is Pam Beesly’s fault. He’s really bad at separating his work stuff from his personal stuff, and she’s so great and obviously smart, and she’s so good at separating things that it gets to be a little bit on the confusing side and…ugh he just wants more beer.

And then he hears her say oh god under her breath as she looks up and sees him coming their way and he feels himself fall apart a little inside like he’s a house of cards. He guesses maybe he is.

He sits down across from her and gives her a solid and honest look that he would normally save for the cameras.

“Lay off,” he tells her, and she reels back a little and smiles, her eyes shifting to their coworkers in discomfort. “You can be an impossible bitch, you know?” he informs her, his voice sharp and his eyes flashing with anger and suddenly everyone is silent and staring. He shifts uncomfortably and scratches at his forehead beneath his baseball cap. “Why don’t you just go like,” he’s mumbling now, lacking in the ability to backtrack properly and feeling himself slide down and down until there’s not much left to grab onto, “Just go freeze something somewhere or something,” he tells her, “because frigid does not even start to…” and she’s pushing her chair back and he feels like a huge asshole.

“Right,” she spits, cutting him off in the way he deserves to be cut off. “I think I actually see someone I know, so…convenient for both of us I guess,” she mumbles, extricating herself from the chair she was draped in and scooting around the table and the people sitting at it. Beyond that he has no idea what she’s doing because he has his head resting in his hands and he’s staring down at the table in shock at himself.

What the hell?

“What the hell?” Toby mutters, fingering his phone because apparently he just can’t let the stupid thing go.

Jim sighs audibly and ignores the way that stilted and uncomfortable conversation eventually starts up at the other end of the table, repeating to himself his mantra in life of cool and aloof and totally unconcerned. Eventually he repeats it enough silently that he believes it and remembers it and eventually he joins in on the debate between healthy and sugared cereal, joining the team for sugared and proclaiming that nobody makes cereal quite like the people who make Fruit Loops, the whole time trying to ignore Pam’s noticeably empty seat and trying not to think about the way she’d looked at him.

Like he’s exactly the person she thought.

And like he is definitely, definitely…not nice.

“Jimmy,” Michael starts and Jim almost grins at him because the nickname is obviously annoying and used in response to the fact that off camera Jim calls Michael ‘Mike.’ He nods instead of smiling.

“Yeah, what’s up? More beer?” he asks, reaching out toward the pitcher and filling his glass up first before topping off Michael’s.

“That wasn’t what I was going to say, but…thank you,” he mutters, sitting down next to Jim and taking a gulp of beer because that’s pretty much the only way Michael drinks it. Three gulps and it’s gone.

“I’m afraid to ask what you were going to say,” Jim admits, readjusting his baseball cap and slumping a little in his chair like the petulant child he guesses he is. Michael nods and kind of sighs and Jim thinks this is going to be a nightmare because Pam is basically like a sister to Michael and what big brother has ever in the history of brothers let their sister get kicked around by a first class idiot? None. Never. Michael takes his second gulp and Jim continues to get nervous.

“Are you ok?” Michael finally asks, and Jim is caught off guard.

“Huh? Yeah, I’m fine, what are you…”

“You put on a little show,” Michael explains and Jim thinks maybe he’s slipped into an alternate universe where this is an Italian restaurant and Michael is somebody’s godfather. “And lately you’ve been kind of jumpy or something and I was just making sure there isn’t something I can do,” he explains and Jim definitely thinks this is the godfather. He kind of wants to request that Michael whack somebody for him.

“Jumpy?” he repeats incredulously. Michael smiles at him and takes his third gulp.

“Just freaked out, you know?” he continues, “Spooked,” and Jim is sitting up a little bit straighter because he wasn’t sure anybody had noticed that he was…whatever, spooked. He purses his lips and weighs his options, trying to decide how honest he really needs to be. He shrugs.

“I mean I think I’ve just been, um, I haven’t been sleeping that well,” he confesses, keeping a vein of truth in the lie because it’s true that he hasn’t slept much, but that’s not really the spooky part. Michael nods and inhales a deep and audible breath.

“Look, whatever,” he states, slapping Jim on the back and standing. “I think you should apologize to Pam,” he says, and then he leaves the table and heads back to the bathrooms and Jim is left there, annoyed and guilt-ridden.

He wonders if Mitzi is still up at the bar.

He thinks maybe he’ll go up and talk to her again, maybe take her home.

Instead he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his phone, browsing through his contacts and hitting send once he gets to “Dawn”, listening to the ringing while he waits for her to answer. She finally does and the sound of her voice makes him frown and swallow and wonder what he’s doing…what he’s been doing.

“Dawn Bennet,” she answers, and she sounds formal, business, she sounds like she has no idea who’s calling her. He clears his throat.

“Hey, it’s me,” he tells her, wondering if something had happened to her phone that would keep his name from flashing on the front of it when he called her. She pauses on the other end and he takes a sip of beer.

“Me who?” she wonders and he almost chokes because she’s genuine, she’s honest and she really doesn’t know who’s calling her. If he felt bad before he feels like total shit now and he just wants to go home or step in front of a bus or like…just…

“It’s Jim, are you kidding me with this?” he asks, his voice harsh enough that once again the people at the table around him turn their heads and look at him with wide eyes. He tosses a grin at them and gets up to head toward the front door of the bar, going outside so that he can yell at her in private and so that he can smoke, so that maybe the temptation of diving into oncoming traffic will dissipate and disappear.

“Oh, Jim, hey how are you?” she wonders and he inhales the nicotine and begs for patience.

“I’m fucking great, Dawn, how are you? Busy?” he wonders, sarcastic, unhappy. She heaves a sigh.

“Yeah, actually, not that you’d know,” she spits and he thinks this is perfect because what girl doesn’t feel like giving him a headache today? Anybody? He shifts and flicks his cigarette.

“I know I haven’t called in a while,” he tells her and she barks a laugh.

“Like three weeks,” she tells him and he flinches, not having really realized that it’s been that long because he guesses he’s been distracted lately. He’s been confused and distracted and he’s been cheating on her most of the time, so he guesses he’s not that surprised he hasn’t called her.

“Sorry,” he offers, quiet and defeated, and she sighs again.

“Yeah whatever, look I’m out so can we just call this what it is and get it over with?” she asks and his vision kind of blurs and he stares across the street at the hardware store and watches as the owner locks it up and turns off all the lights. He licks his lips before lifting his cigarette and inhaling again, rhythmic, habitual. He exhales smoke and he sniffs.

“Yeah go ahead, call it what it is, enlighten me,” he finally offers, sounding quietly dejected and she clicks her tongue and he wonders what he ever really saw in her anyway.

“Over, Jim. Wake up.” He rolls his eyes. “Christ, Jim, I’m a fucking celebrity, and you’re like fucking Omarosa or something, nobody’s gonna remember who you are in a year. Get over yourself,” she instructs him before hanging up abruptly and leaving him with his phone pressed to his ear and nobody to talk to on the other end. He nods and shrugs and closes his cell so that he can shove it back into his pocket, taking another drag, clearing his throat, pushing some rocks around on the ground and flicking ashes away from his fingers. He thinks this is probably better anyway. He thinks this is probably for the best and that he didn’t really like her that much, but still once he drops the Salem from his fingers and steps on the lit end, once he opens the door to O’Flannigans and his eyes readjust to the low lighting and he spots Mitzi sitting at the bar and nursing something that’s pink and probably tastes like cherries or cotton candy or something, he just can’t bring himself to sit down next to her. For some reason, he can’t do it. He doesn’t even acknowledge her as he makes his way back toward the table and he sits down without talking and that’s where he stays.

Silent.

Alone even though he‘s sitting next to Toby and even though Kelly and Ryan are bickering like four year olds over who‘s going to pay for the pizza and Roy is building a salt and pepper shaker tower across from him. He’s so alone most of the time, and he can’t even complain because it’s probably his own fault. Sometimes he wishes he was closer with his brothers so that he could call them on nights like this, complain to them, hate the world out loud. But something had happened like five or ten years ago involving Jim’s car and Jon’s car and some level of intoxication and they’d pretty much written Jim off as an asshole, so there had gone that connection. And now he's always here like this, hating the world quietly in his head.

He thinks that whoever had said that no man is an island has obviously never met him.

Finally the sounds of Kelly’s complaints and the sound of Ryan’s hefty sighs are too much for him, are making his skin itch and his lips twitch into something close to a frown and he’s restless. He’s always restless. He wonders if Pam is still here somewhere and he thinks maybe Michael was right and he should just make sure she’s ok. He’s sure she is because nothing he does or says ever really effects her much, but still he thinks his anxiousness most likely has more to do with the fact that he’d been a jerk to her than with the fact that he’d just gotten predictably dumped. He looks over his shoulder and he thinks maybe he should just go look for her.

He thinks he’s pathetic.

He tells Toby he’ll be right back and Toby doesn’t look up and Jim hates himself just enough that when he finally sees Pam across the room he thinks she’s probably going to stab him with a fork once he gets over there.

He goes anyway.

She’s standing and leaning against the bar, ignoring John and drinking a vodka tonic really really slowly so that she’ll still be able to drive herself home, and she's kind of embarrassingly weepy because sometimes she does this, like sometimes she can’t help it and it just rises up. Luckily, though, she’s silent except for the occasional sniffle so nobody has noticed her at all, like usual. She sips from the too small straw and she rolls her eyes at herself because she’s not really sure why she cares about any of this.

Jim is always a jerk. He’s always saying the perfect thing to strike these certain cords inside of her that hum for hours afterwards and make her glare at her own reflection.

He reminds her of someone and that makes her glare, too.

She thinks she should’ve gone home and taken a bath like she’d originally planned. She wishes Toby weren’t as convincing as he is with his stupid leather and carelessness, and she wishes nobody had been sitting at that table when Jim had yelled at her because that had been beyond embarrassing. God, she’s such a mess, she thinks as her eyes mist over with a fresh set of tears and she wonders if she should see a therapist and get on like some kind of anti-depressant so that she’ll never cry again. But then she’s not sure how great of an actress she’d be so she figures it’s a bad idea, and she’s grateful for her art. She’s glad she gets paid to be angst ridden on camera because otherwise she’d just be angst ridden for no reason, and at least this way normally she has an outlet, an excuse.

She sips at her drink again and she thinks Jim is a colossal waste of her time.

Then it’s like electrical currents run through her because his hand is on her arm...she knows it's his...and she’s too shocked to get it together because he’s never chased after her in the entire time she’s known him. Twenty minutes have gone by since he'd called her a bitch and she’s sure she must be hallucinating, or having a nightmare, at least she hopes she is because really she doesn’t want to have to look at him. Plus she's sure that he isn't here to play nice, so she's a little bit afraid of his presence.  She hastily swipes at her cheeks and hopes he doesn't notice.  When he eventually speaks she's surprised again because his voice is low, beaten into sumbission, and he doesn't even mention the way that he'd put her promptly into her place a half hour ago.

“Hey Pam we need your help I think to figure out things about the bill.”

Her surprise deflates a bit because Jim has followed her to ask her for money and she almost can’t believe her own life.  She finally turns around as he continues, rolling her eyes at him. 

“I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed but Kelly and Ryan? Not so great at the numbers thing and um…are you…you’re crying,” he mutters, sounding shocked and jerking back and it makes her flinch.

“Yeah, um no I’m fine. What about the bill? How much do I owe?” she asks him, searching the ground like her money is down there and shifting on her feet like she’s warming up for the forty yard dash. He touches her shoulder and she veers away from him sharply, accidentally, her eyes shifting so that she's looking right at his confused expression, so that she's cutting at him with her anger and her irritation.  Something resigned crosses his face and she's thrown off for like the hundredth time because she'd expected him to match her hostility with some of his own, she'd expected for him to say something inappropriate and then ask her for like fifty dollars to cover the pizza and beer.  She hadn't expected this look, like he was almost sorry.

“You’re crying because of my stupid…thing back there,” he states, less of a question and more of a resigned assumption. She sighs and looks back toward her drink for a second, longingly.

“I’m fine, I was crying but it wasn’t because…” she sighs again, “I’ve actually never been really good at the whole silent tears thing so I’m kind of impressed with myself, maybe I can use it for the season finale,” she tangents, and he’s staring at her like this matters to him, like he gets her, and she’s really honestly confused. “What is the matter with you?” she asks, suddenly defensive and thinking if only the camera’s were here, she’d probably win an Emmy for the countless number of emotions she’s going through all in a thirty second period. He dips down and looks at her harder, squinting and almost daring her to tell him more than nothing, daring her to explain herself.  Then it seems like he finds something in her eyes, like he understands something, which she didn’t think was possible. Finally he nods at her.

“I’m going to go kill myself,” he announces and it makes her lean back in surprise.

“What?” she asks, unable to censor much.

“I am. I’m going to go right now and just jump off of…” he sighs, “That made you cry before. I made you cry?” he asks mostly himself and she shifts again, chewing on the skin inside of her cheek. “You hate me,” he declares because it‘s true and he says it like it‘s his reason for being surprised by her tears. She huffs a laugh.

“Oh yeah,” she mumbles rolling her eyes, “With every fiber, etcetera etcetera,” she offers, wishing she could sound more earnest or at least more light hearted. He watches her, completely still for what feels like forever and she's nervous because this sort of conversation is new for them and she's only used to his defensive and combative attitude, she isn't used to this kind of honesty.  He just watches her and her discomfort and self-consciousness, until eventually he sighs and shakes his head at his own thoughts.

“Listen let me buy your beer or something,” he offers, “I mean I have no idea how to…we’ve never really done this whole actual…like…person thing, unless there were cameras and a script and…”

“And unless I was getting paid to be around you, I know,” she mutters flippantly, glad to have something to joke about and distract herself with. He smiles and her stomach flips and she almost gets fresh tears in her eyes because he seems like the Jim Halpert she likes, for a second.

“Can I buy your beer?” he offers again and she shrugs and shakes her head no. “Please?” he asks, grinning, reaching his hand up like she's the other Pam Beesly and like he's not even thinking about it and pushing a stray hair back from her face and she stands there…floored…totally, just…floored.

Damnit she hates herself.

“Yeah ok fine whatever,” she finally concedes, hoping to just get out of this situation and get back to normal, and he chuckles quietly.

“Don’t put yourself out, though, I mean, come on,” he teases and she lightly smacks his arm, scolding, trying to pretend to be her normal self who can’t deal with his nearness. He reaches his hand out again like maybe he wants to give her a friendly kind of hug, but then her eyes meet his, confused, and he freezes, his arm mid-air and awkwardly hanging there for a second before he lets it just drop down to his side and he averts his gaze and she thinks that’s weird. She thinks the look on his face is weird, and the way he's unsure of himself is weird.  He licks his lips and looks everywhere but at her. “Ok, well, let’s get back to um…”

“Get back, yeah,” she agrees stupidly, still distracted. She wipes at her cheeks again and pushes past him, heading back to the table and lifting her chin as high as she can muster because she’d rather not have anybody asking her questions. She ends up giving Ryan twenty bucks for pizza and she’s not sure what Jim pays, but when she’s hugging Roy goodbye and laughing at some comment Toby’s making Jim is watching her and she’s not sure what the hell happened tonight, but she’s really glad she’s going home for a week because something has shifted and she’s not sure how she feels about that.

This week off has perfect timing, she thinks as she kind of awkwardly waves at him and heads toward John to get her purse.

She needs the time to remember how much she loathes everything about him...or at least how much she wishes he would leave her alone.  Right, she thinks, pushing out the door and heading toward her car.

She really wants him to leave her alone.

She’s making faces at herself in the mirror on Saturday when the phone rings.

“This is Pam,” she says, practicing, trying to look bored and simple.

“This is Graham,” he mimics and she smiles at herself, internally kind of hating the way that their names rhyme because like, really? How often does that happen? Pam and Graham…wow. “What are you doing?” he asks, sounding British and cute and kind of boring. She blinks at herself.

“Practicing my reaction shots,” she tells him, trying to look injured and then trying to look amused and then trying to look disgusted as he’s chuckling on the other end.

“Aren’t reaction shots supposed to be actual reactions to bits of dialogue?” he asks and she thinks he sounds like Simon Cowell. “Can you rehearse that?” he wonders. She sticks her tongue out at the mirror and nods.

“Yes, you can always rehearse,” she promises, her voice mockingly draped in an English accent of her own. She does that a lot because she can’t resist, but he has yet to complain so she guesses he doesn’t mind her making fun of him. “What are you doing?” she asks, this time sounding extremely American and trying to raise her non-dominant eyebrow at herself.

“Uh, I was thinking about you,” he tells her, “and wondering if we could get together today, maybe for lunch or dinner or not eating at all and just shagging instead.” She accidentally smiles when she’s trying to look angry because she loves it when he purposely sounds like Austin Powers and she loves it that she’s dating the kind of guy who just comes right out and suggests shagging as an option instead of dinner. She turns from the mirror, resigned, hoisting herself up onto the counter top in her bathroom and staring now into her empty shower thinking she should probably clean it soon. It’s Saturday and she figures shagging is a brilliant option to have at her fingertips and she’s just decided to agree to whatever he wants when she opens her mouth.

“I’m actually thinking of going to my sister’s for the day.” Huh.  That was definitely a lie.  “She’s having a little get together and mentioned she needs some help setting up.” Two lies. “And so I sort of said I would stop by and like hang streamers or something.” Lie. She shakes her head in bewilderment and frowns, accidentally thinking of Jim, which makes her frown deepen because what the hell does he have to do with anything?

“Oh right,” Graham interjects, “No problem. Listen why don’t you call me tomorrow then and we can shag instead of going to brunch?” he suggests and she feels guilty because he’s so easy going and so kind to her that she thinks she’s just an idiot for lying. She wonders if Graham would’ve been able to tell that she was making all of this up if he was standing in front of her.

Sometimes she hates being an actress.

“Sounds perfect,” she tells him, smiling and burying her feelings of guilt and confusion in the same way she had the night before when Jim had basically pulled the rug out from under her by being genuine and nice and totally not himself. Ignoring it was really the only way she could sleep at all, so that’s what she’d done. Graham offers her some kind of cute and british goodbye that she’s not really listening to and she says talk to you soon even though she isn’t sure she means it, and she’s just glad they aren’t the kind of couple who says they love each other all the time or anything because she’s not sure she’d be able to get it out right now.

She hangs up and hops off of the counter, turning to look at herself and offering her reflection an expression of bewildered surprise, something she’d usually conjure after one of Michael’s patented nonsensical monologues. She finds it interesting that she’s the one doing things that warrant that expression now.

Sighing, she decides to go to the grocery store to kind of distract herself with the monotony of boxes of rice and cans of green beans.

The thing about whatever that had been with Jim the night before is that it has her constantly thinking about him, wondering what he's doing, worrying that he'll be nice to her all the time now because last night had weakened her, and usually if something he did made her weak he would take total advantage of that and do it all of the time until she literally wanted to jump out a window.

He’d seemed so different. He’d seemed sorry and unsure and she’s gotten so used to him being grossly full of himself that at the time she had no idea what to say, how to react, who he was to her when he was acting that way. Was he still her arch nemesis? Or was he suddenly the Robin to her Batman? Like, he’d paid for her beer…what the hell was that about?

God, she’s doing it again, obsessing, thinking about him way too much. This is her week off, she tells herself as she pulls into the parking lot of Price Chopper and finds a spot next to one of the cart return things because she always likes to be able to just get rid of her cart right away.

Right, she tells herself, nodding and getting out of her car. Week off. No Jim. Just get groceries and forget about it.

She’s in the produce section deciding between red potatoes and sweet potatoes when she gets that electric sizzle down her arm again and for a second she thinks maybe she really has stepped into an alternate universe where thinking about him conjures him up somehow.

The second after that she thinks she should greet him by throwing a round house kick in his direction because she hates how everywhere he is lately, and how it's like she literally can't do anything without him somehow showing up.

“Jim Halpert,” she says instead, shaking her head and staring at him blankly in his baseball cap and t-shirt and all stubbly and delicious looking. She thinks it’s fitting that he should be in the fresh produce section and then she shakes her head again, a little more forcefully, because…wow, really? He raises his eyebrows and glances at the potatoes in front of her.

“I’d go with the sweets, they’re healthier,” he tells her and she’s relieved because really she was worried he'd be charming. She tugs a bag off of the dispenser and opens it, making a show of reaching out and filling it with red skins and he laughs. “Ok,” he states and nods.

“Can you not leave me in peace at all?” she asks him, “You have to haunt my grocery excursions too?” He shifts the empty basket that he’s carrying from one hand to another and shrugs.

“Well I didn’t know you’d be here or I would’ve gone to Wegman’s,” he admits and she deposits the potatoes into her cart with a chuckle.

“Cute,” she tells him, glancing at him over her shoulder as she pushes off and heads toward the fish market.  He follows her and she can’t tell if she’s annoyed or pleased.  She can tell though that he looks just a little too proud of himself.

“Well, I try,” he confesses. She walks up to the counter and asks the man there for some flounder, pretending Jim’s not standing there and pretending the man isn’t looking from her to him and back again with that expression on his face like he watches their show religiously. She tries to shoot him a warning glance that says please just get my damn fish but it doesn’t really work because he says something anyway in that Pennsylvania accent she’s come to hate so much.

“You guys shop together?” he asks and she feels her cheeks get red when Jim laughs behind her, amused and pleased and totally annoying.

“No,” she promises and the guy looks skeptical at best.

“Don’t lie,” Jim tells her, stepping forward and leaning against the counter in that classic frat boy kind of way. The fish guy grins and nods at him like congratulatory and Pam wants to vomit all over both of them. “We sometimes do this,” Jim tells the man, and she sticks out her hip and huffs, arms crossed petulantly because one of them is lying and it’s definitely not her.

“Jim, we do not sometimes do this,” she mutters, and she feels her anger ratcheting up as the guy turns and calls into the back for someone named Sophie, telling her that Jim and Pam are here and they’re shopping together, and Sophie comes running out holding raw meet in fingers covered by bloody rubber gloves, her face bright and thrilled that they’re standing there. Jim looks down at Pam and grins quietly at the expression on her face. “You’re an asshole,” she mumbles and he laughs.

“They shop together!” Sophie exclaims and Pam’s worried for a second that the woman is going to toss the meat right at their faces.

“Could I just get my flounder?” Pam wonders, sounding like an eighth grader who’s just been put in the corner for bad behavior. The fish guy looks flustered for a second and apologizes and Jim waves him off telling him it’s no big deal.

There are a couple moments of awkward silence as they all stand there, Sophie looking thrilled, and Jim looking smug, fish guy looking down at the flounder and making sure he calculates right because after all it’s for a celebrity, and Pam looking like she’s going to spontaneously combust at any moment. Finally Sophie breaks the silence and it’s so predictable that Pam wants to dig a hole for herself so she can crawl into it and die.

“If I can just…” Sophie starts, and Pam feels her stomach drop as the woman and her meat take a step closer to Pam. “Why are you with Roy, honey?” she asks in a stage whisper and Jim’s expression melts into total amusement, “I mean he’s no good for you and Jim here is so good looking,” she informs Pam, gesturing toward Jim with a fist full of ground round. Pam nods and grabs her fish as the man hands it over to her wrapped securely in white paper.

“Oh believe me I’m well aware of Jim’s good looks," Pam tells her, "Just ask him and he’ll tell you all about it,” she states dryly, tossing the fish into her cart and pushing it away, ignoring the way that Sophie’s face has fallen into a look of total confusion, and ignoring the way that Jim is apologizing to their fans and running after her.  She's gotten pretty far with her cart because, jesus, she wants to get out of here.  Like fifteen minutes ago.

“That was unnecessary,” Jim murmurs in her ear when he finally catches up to her in the greeting card aisle, and she lets her head hang back in defeat between her shoulders.  "Can't you let the fans have their fun, Pam?  Don't you appreciate their advice about your love life?  God, just give the people what they want," he offers and she glares at him because she's not sure what else to do in response to that.

“Don’t you have someone else to annoy?” she wonders and he pretends to ponder that while she pretends to look at the Shoebox cards in front of her. “Like, I thought you’d be going to visit soap this week, why are you still here?” she looks up at him and pauses in concern when he shifts his gaze down to his shoes and looks seriously put on the spot and uncomfortable.

“Oh um yeah that’s not really working out, she’s too…um…she just isn’t what I’m, uh…” Pam huffs and tilts her head at him.

“What’s the matter did she gain ten pounds or something?” she quips and he looks at her hard, not unlike the way he’d looked at her last night just before he'd yelled at her, and she feels nervousness and regret inside of her because maybe she shouldn't have said that.  His stare lingers and her anxioiusness thickens, but then his expression breaks open into a half grin and he reaches up to tug on his baseball cap.

“Fifteen,” he answers and she laughs because she’s glad he didn’t call her out and tell her how frigid she is again. “Look, I’m gonna go get some coke but um, I’ll meet you by the eggs in five minutes and we can exchange recipes,” he tells her and she laughs again, nodding in mock agreement and watching him as he basically bolts from her side, quick and escaping, and she thinks that maybe he was right last night.

Maybe there are things that she doesn’t know, and maybe she really should lay off.

She thinks she needs dish detergent and she heads to the aisle full of cleaning solution, promising herself that the next time she talks to him she won’t bring up soap.

At all.

He heads over to the eggs just in case and starts laughing before he even comes to a complete stop because she left a post-it on the “2 for 1” sign that says:

And he can’t decide whether he’s pissed that she knew he’d check and see if she was waiting for him, or if he’s thrilled that she bothered to leave him a note. He rips it off the sign and folds it up, slipping it into his wallet because it’s funny and he wants to save it, and then he reaches out and grabs a dozen eggs even though they weren’t on his list of things to buy, figuring maybe he’ll fry some up later and have a delicious and healthy snack.

At least he thinks it would be healthy, the professionals keep changing their minds about whether or not eggs are good for you. He looks down at the soda and Doritos in his basket and figures that the eggs will be relatively healthy so it doesn’t really matter what the professionals think.

He can’t believe he ran into her in the grocery store. And he can’t believe the way that he’s been so unable to hide his feelings from her, or not his feelings but like his…stuff, whatever. His stuff. He wonders if it’s because their on screen tension has gotten so high lately, and he figures he can probably blame it on the writers for giving them all those scenes where he wasn’t allowed to speak to her. Or maybe he can blame it on her and her attitude, her ever shifting and foundationless attitude that has now left him standing alone and totally bewildered.

He’d been blown away by her tears yesterday and he was still a little bit confused by the gleam that he keeps catching in her eye when they’re together. She’s almost flirting, almost teasing, almost human and he can barely stand it. Why is it that when a girl like Pam treats you like dirt for two years and then suddenly bestows a smile on you it knocks you off your rocker? Shouldn’t Mitzy have been more interesting yesterday, he wonders as he stands in the checkout line? Shouldn’t he have told Pam to kiss his ass and bent over to make it easier for her, instead of almost hugging her to make her feel better? Shouldn’t he have run in the other direction just now when he’d seen her debating the potato selection instead of approaching her and following her shamelessly around the store?

Like…what is his problem? He thinks maybe he’s gone absolutely certifiable and he should ask someone for some medical attention. Pills or an oxygen tank or maybe just like a swift kick to the temple would be fine.

He’s actually not sure that would work though because he’ll probably do anything to get Pam to smile at him, even if he’s just been kicked in the temple. Which is really pathetic because, chances are, she’ll be the one doing the kicking. He sighs and pays for his groceries, making his way out of the store and just kind of nodding at someone who shouts out his name and waves manically. He doesn’t feel like giving autographs. Which is also out of character for him and he starts to feel this thing that might be worry setting in.

He’s supposed to be cool and aloof. He’s supposed to be uncaring and he’s definitely not supposed to avoid being famous. These are the things that he likes about his life, right? What is his problem? He’s tempted to go back to the manic-waver and offer to sign their receipt or something just to make sure he’s still Jim Halpert. He shakes out his shoulders and pours himself into his car, peeling out of the parking lot at a speed that is probably unsafe, but not really caring that much. There, he thinks happily. Not caring that much. Perfect.

Ok, Jim, he tells himself, it’s fuckin’ Saturday.

Time to go out and get laid.

And so he calls up Gary the sound guy and asks if he’s up for a little Tinks because, who can’t get laid at a place named Tinks? And Gary thankfully says yeah sure he’ll be there and Jim is disproportionately glad. He goes home and puts the eggs in the fridge and forgets that he ever bought them.

He gets ready like usual and he wears dark jeans and a black button down shirt, thinking he should at least kind of try to look like he didn’t just roll out of bed. He drives to the club and parks down the street, sitting in his car for a second with the radio cranked loud so that he can drown out the doubts in his mind and so that he can look at himself in the rearview mirror and see someone who isn’t going home alone again. He just wants to stop being alone like this. Eventually there’s a little bit of a change in his expression and he looks good…confident…full of hip hop and savvy and he climbs out of his car and locks it without turning back.

Tinks is crowded and Jim steps past the line outside and shakes hands with the bouncer, who lifts up the rope and tells him to go on in. The music thumps loud through the floor boards and Jim’s head kind of bounces with it, looking casually around the bar for Gary and finding him already sitting next to some blonde in a low cut shirt. Jim heads toward them and ignores the random girl pulling on his arm and asking him to sign her hand.

He doesn’t think about how he’s still the same as he was at the grocery store and how he still doesn’t want to fucking sign anything.

“What’s up, man, how’s it goin?” he asks Gary, who just kind of lifts his chin at him and then goes back to the blonde, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and whispering something into her ear that makes her tip her head back and laugh. Jim rolls his eyes because what’s the point of a wing man if your wing man is gonna get to the club an hour earlier than you and pick up a girl before you even get there? He sighs and orders a Guinness, asking the bartender to start up a tab and glancing around him for somebody worth his time.

There’s a red head at the other end of the bar, alone, and he catches her eye, grinning. She smiles back and takes a sip of her vodka-cranberry, pursing her lips afterward and making Jim think about all sorts of other things. He thanks the bartender for his beer and carries it over to where the girl is perched on a stool.

“Hey,” he yells down at her, his voice carrying over the din of Mims explaining why he’s hot, which always makes Jim kind of lift an eyebrow because…if you have to announce it, it might not be true, and his arm snakes out to brace himself on the bar next to her drink. She grins coyly and tosses her hair.

“Hi,” she answers, and he pretends not to hear her so that he can lean down and feel her breath against his neck. “I said hi!” she yells and he chuckles, shrugging an apology. He points down at her half-gone vodka and motions that he’ll buy her another one. She nods, and that’s how the rest of the night goes, until she’s hanging on his shoulder and he’s pouring her into his car, driving to her place because he’s done this enough times to know he doesn’t want to bring her to his place.

She smells like perfume and booze and he kisses her hard because he can and because he tells himself she probably likes it. His thoughts are confirmed as she reaches out for his belt and they stumble toward her bedroom, laughing and stripping and falling into bed, skin to skin, and for a second he thinks about the grocery store before stopping himself because…wow, Jim, highly inappropriate.

He tells this girl he thinks she’s pretty and she laughs up at him and hands him a condom.

He pushes into her, briefly wondering if he’s going to have to go to the walk-in tomorrow and have himself checked out for whatever diseases she’s probably carrying, and as he pumps and works above her, all he can see is her hair spread out over her pillow and the pinkness of her skin and he can’t breathe because he’s so close and he pumps harder and she moans into his ear and god damn she’s wrapping her legs around him and it’s so good, so good, so good…

He comes hard, and unfortunately when he does, he calls out “Pam,” and that’s when everything goes totally motionless.

Shit, he thinks angrily after the red head has kicked him out of her apartment.

His life is totally over.

He’s like a maniac.

Really he’s like a freaking maniac.

He showers like four times when he gets home and it’s ridiculous because he’s never been that guy who feels the need to shower a girl off of him, but tonight at like 3:30 or whatever the hell time it is he showers again for the fourth time and he can still feel it. He can still feel that something that has him beside himself and crazed.

He cleans his apartment. He uses Dawn soap on all of his dishes and he vacuums and he windexes and he dusts the blinds, which he has never done before in his brief history of cleaning this apartment, and he stares at himself in the mirror and shakes his head.

He doesn’t sleep.

God, how could that have happened? How could he have said that during…that? He’s freaked out mostly because he’s never said anybody’s name during sex. Not even his own, which sounds weird but really for him it’s not outside the realm of possibility. He’s not a screamer, not a talker, he just kind of breathes heavy and gets it done…usually. And then tonight he goes and like blows the fucking roof off of some girl’s house with a name that he’d never planned on screaming in ecstasy, ever. Never. What the hell?

He changes his sheets and he mops the kitchen floor and somehow he ends up standing stock still in front of his open refrigerator and staring at the infamous carton of eggs. He crosses his arms and just looks at them, menacing, daring them to say something and call it like it is.

Like, ok, yeah so she’s pretty and she’s challenging and she does always kind of tighten the knot in his stomach, but it’s not like he thinks about her naked all the time. He thinks about her naked sometimes but not a lot. Not every day or anything. Definitely not enough that he should be thinking of her when he’s in bed with a smoking hot one night stand who’s basically down on all fours and asking him to please her. He’s totally blown away.

He lights a cigarette and stands there staring at those eggs like they’ll answer all of his questions.

Why did she have to be all cute with the egg thing, too? What was that about? Could she just contain herself and stick to her British boyfriend instead of throwing herself at him in the grocery store?

Ok, he thinks, resigned, so that was ridiculous and she definitely hadn’t thrown herself at him. She wasn’t even interested in him which was what made this that much worse. If she ever, for some ungodly reason, found out about this she would laugh. That’s what she would do. She would look sorry for him for a second and then she wouldn’t be able to help herself and she would laugh at him, call him an ape or a caveman and walk away with her ponytail bouncing behind her. He slams the refrigerator door and takes a drag of his cigarette, shaking his head and tapping his toe in impatience with himself.

Maybe, he thinks, he should try calling Dawn again. Maybe he can convince her to give it another go and he can drive to New York and he can pretend he’s never been to Scranton at all and he can just quit and audition for like the revival of The Glass Menagerie or something. He can just walk away from this.

No, actually, he realizes, he can’t because he’s bound by his contract, and he’s addicted to his fame. Dawn had been right. If he gives up the show people would totally forget who he is. Plus he’s sure that he’s mostly just famous in Scranton, and in New York or L.A. he’d just blend in with all of the other famous people and nobody would care if they saw him walking to get milk or something. He sighs and heads into his living room, flicking on the television and settling for some infomercial selling knives, figuring maybe he should buy them and keep them around in case he ever needs to stab anybody.

He has dark thoughts lately, he thinks. He’s like…he should just grow his hair a little longer and paint his lips black and be done with it.

He blames Pam.

Pam.

Jesus Christ he said Pam’s name during sex. What kind of a thing was that? What is he supposed to do now that that happened? How is he supposed to just be sarcastic and mean to her on Monday when he said her name during sex?

He wants to melt into the floor and just become part of the carpet or something. Humiliating. He’s been humiliated. And emasculated. And like…just…ugh he wants to punch himself in the face.

He stares at the woman on the television screen telling him that the knives can cut through cans and he thinks she’s probably never called out some random girl’s name during sex. He tilts his head and thinks that actually maybe she has because she has that kinky kind of look in her eye and she is selling cans, so who knows. He starts to picture her in bed with two other girls and one of them morphs into someone with auburn and curly hair and a kind of angry expression and he shuts off the T.V. and jumps off the couch, alarmed.

How is this happening?!

He’s not really thinking clearly and it’s finally like seven A.M. and he calls Roy because Roy is a good guy and Roy will know what to say to make him stop feeling absolutely insane. He doesn’t answer until the ninth ring and Jim realizes this is probably mean of him.

“Roy?” he asks and Roy kind of grunts on the other end and Jim thinks he can hear him shifting around between sheets. “Did I wake you up?” he asks and then he rolls his eyes at himself because of course he woke him up, it’s Sunday and it’s seven o’clock and as far as Jim knows Roy isn’t religious and has no reason to be alive at the moment.

“Uh, yeah, buddy, you definitely woke me up,” Roy tells him, sounding groggy and annoyed, “Is something wrong?” he asks out of obligation. Jim inhales audibly and nods at his stove, shifting on his feet and planting his free hand on his hip.

“Yes, yeah, something is wrong,” he answers and Roy responds sounding much more awake.

“What’s the matter?” he asks, panicked, and Jim braces himself.

“I said Pam’s name during sex,” he confesses and there is utter and total silence on the other end of the line. Finally Roy clears his throat.

“You…I’m sorry, what did you just say?” he croaks and Jim scratches at the back of his head and his eyes glaze over in thought, his brain racing because of the situation and also because of his lack of sleep.

“I said I said Pam’s name during sex!” he repeats loudly and angrily. Roy sucks in a whistling kind of breath and Jim imagines him sitting up in bed and scratching at his forehead, because that’s what the fuck Jim would be doing if he were Roy.

“You said you said…what?” he asks again and Jim huffs.

“Come on, man,” he mumbles and Roy chuckles and it only makes Jim that much more restless and unhappy. “Can you not…” he sighs, “It’s not funny!”

“It’s kind of funny,” Roy answers and Jim almost wants to hang up.

“Shut up, what do I do about this?” he wants to know, “I haven’t slept all night it’s driving me insane,” he explains and Roy is still chuckling sporadically and Jim feels a half of a smile breaking out across his face because the sound of Roy’s laughter is very persuasive.

“Who were you with? Were you with Dawn?” Roy wonders and Jim grimaces and waves his hand through the air like a dismissal.

“No, no, Dawn and I aren’t really…” he sighs, “I was with some girl I met at Tinks,” he explains and Roy actually whistles this time.

“Dude, you went to Tinks? That place is a cesspool.” Jim shrugs and shakes his head and mentally agrees but like, wow is that the point at all right now? No, he tells himself, no it is not the point.

“That is not the point,” he forces out, and Roy laughs again.

“I can’t believe you said Pam’s name during sex,” he mumbles through his laugher, “She hates you,” he tells Jim, like that is news. Jim nods at nothing and bites his lower lip for a second.

“Yeah I know,” he answers quietly, pensively, hating himself even more and feeling kind of sorry for himself because it’s not like he meant for this to happen. In fact he did practically everything to try to prevent it, it’s just that playing someone who’s in love with her is so confusing and he has to stare at her all the time and he’d yelled at her and then he saw her at the grocery store and…

Ok he’s been over all of this before.

“So?” he demands of Roy, kind of angry because he didn’t need any reminders of how much Pam loathes him. “What do I do?” Roy is silent for a moment, thinking, probably chewing his lips and scratching at his chin and doing all of those Roy things that Jim always gets annoyed by. Finally he sighs.

“I don’t know, man,” he offers, “Take her out to dinner?”

There’s a long pause as Jim wonders if he’s heard him right, frowning, blinking quickly and wishing he could just fall asleep instead of doing this, and it only takes a second for him to exhale angrily.

“Shut up, you’re totally useless,” he mutters and Roy starts laughing in earnest less at his own joke and more at the fact that Jim had thought about it for so long. “Don’t tell anybody about this,” he warns and Roy sighs through his laughter.

“Yeah, yeah, it was only a dream. I get it,” Roy murmurs sleepily.

Jim hangs up because he can’t stand how stupid that was, and he ends up standing in his kitchen again and staring at the damn eggs, cursing his fate.

She thought of him during sex.

But she tries really hard to cut herself some slack because…of course she thought of him, right? She’s around him all the time and her job is basically to ogle him and he’s pretty good looking so it seems perfectly normal that every once in a while she should have the occasional thought.

Right?

Yeah her arguments aren’t really that convincing.

No, but seriously, she tells herself, it’s ok. She has a lofty imagination, it’s what makes her so good at her job. Like sometimes she thinks about what it would be like for someone to grab her ankle in the middle of the night and pull her from her bed (she would kick and scream and get that panicked feeling in her lungs so she could barely catch a breath) or what it would be like to wake up to the sound of pounding on her door and somebody screaming for help (she would hide under her blanket for a second before she realized that she was awake and she should really see if she could do anything) or what it would be like to live in San Francisco (she would definitely need a sweater) or…like, just to pull something out of nowhere, what size Jim’s penis is (hopefully proportionate.)

She’s imagined these things recently. It isn’t her fault. It’s not a big deal.

At least she didn’t scream his name during orgasm or something. God, that would’ve been pathetic.

She just kind of had a passing thought, a fleeting image in her mind’s eye of how he would look all sweaty and naked and lounging on her bed in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

Ok, she’s having a panic attack. She takes it all back, this is not normal or ok and she wants to just erase him from her memory completely like that movie with Jim Carey and Kate Winslet. She wonders how much that operation would cost before realizing that it’s probably fictional and shaking her fist at the sky.

Graham leaves her place around 4 PM on Sunday and she sends him off and promises to call him later in the week, but really she doesn’t think she’s going to because the thought of “shagging” at the moment makes her tongue tighten in that “wow I’m really, really going to puke” kind of way. So she just waves and smiles and swallows and thinks don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it, until eventually the feeling passes and she sits down on her futon and watches reruns of Who‘s the Boss on some cable channel for like two days straight.

Monday and Tuesday pass that way, with her kind of just sitting there and sometimes getting up to cook herself meals and sometimes moving to her bedroom for like five hours of sleep, but mostly just sitting in her den and watching Mona give terrible advice because it’s mind-numbingly distracting. Tuesday afternoon she experiments with some new eye shadow colors, trying green and plum and chestnut before eventually just deciding she likes herself better without eye shadow at all. She hates looking like she’s trying too hard. She wonders how many of the girls Jim has slept with wear plum colored eye shadow and guesses probably like fifty percent of them, which calculates as like three hundred and seventy five girls or something.

Ok so that’s an exaggeration, but she can’t help it. He’s just so…obviously good looking and so smug and so like making jokes in the fish market and grinning down at her and she can’t stop thinking about him and it’s driving her insane because she’s been with guys like him before and it’s always turned out badly. Some times have been worse than others, but always bad. She likes Graham and his overbite, she tells herself firmly as she cooks some pierogi for her dinner, frying them up with some onion and ignoring the voice in her head that’s telling her she should have a little protein with all those carbs. She puts catsup on them (despite the echoing protests from her many polish friends and ancestors) and decides that that’s good enough…

She thinks that on Monday she’ll just act like the grocery store never happened. She’ll pretend she didn’t think of him naked and she’ll pretend he didn’t yell at her on Friday and she’ll pretend they’re the same as always and she hates him in the very core of her, because she does.

Really.

Seriously.

Hate and loathing and disdain and the fire of a thousand suns or whatever.

She finishes her dinner and changes the channel and settles on something about psychics solving murder mysteries and she finds herself wishing she had some kind of super power. Like she wishes she could be invisible. Or that she could absorb other people’s super powers like what’s his name on Heroes. Or, she thinks, excited, she wishes she could bend time and space like Hiro from Heroes because then she could go back to Friday afternoon and come home instead of going to O’Flannigan’s and none of these Jim Halpert shenanigans would’ve ever happened.

She sighs and wonders if there are really people in the world with crazy super-human abilities.

She flips the channel again because she feels like that’s maybe not the healthiest route for her thoughts to be taking and she feels that tightening of her tongue again as she passes TBS and they’re playing her show in syndication. It’s the episode about the basketball game and she stares at it like she doesn’t know what’s going to happen, she watches Jim and his facial expressions and she finds herself laughing at his jokes and his tone and his glances at the camera and she turns the television off like it was sent to her from Satan himself because she’s disgusted. She’s turning into some sniveling fan who wants him to sign her boobs or something.

Ugh.

Gross.

She gets up and changes her clothes, having guiltily wolfed down her dinner of potatoes and dough, and decides a run is probably a fantastic idea since she has to be on T.V. and gaining like six hundred pounds during her week off is not a good idea. She pulls on her sweats and ties her hair up on the top of her head, pulling on her running shoes and heading out the door with a solid nod of her head. Good idea. Run this out of her system.

Her feet hit the pavement hard and her breath heaves in her lungs and she thinks she’s running a little more vigorously than is normal for her. She’s like Marathon Molly all of a sudden, and she’s rounding corners and she’s huffing and she’s still running when the sun goes down and the street lights flicker on one at a time like some kind of Matchbox 20 music video or something. She even does the running in place thing when she’s waiting for a light on Linden Ave to turn red. She’s never done the running in place thing, in fact she usually makes fun of people who do and says they should take a break for a second like the rest of the world. Now she’s one of those people who can’t take a break because her thoughts will seep in again and she’ll be thinking Jim Halpert instead of thinking right left right left breathe breathe breathe, and god knows she can’t allow that. The light changes to red and a Lincoln Continental crawls to a stop and she runs by, wondering if the people inside of it are making fun of her for her running in place.

She’s sweating and it’s dark and so she figures she should head back home and she’s running and she’s rounding the corner onto her street and she’s thinking left right, left right, breathe, breathe, breathe, and she’s definitely not thinking about Jim’s penis because that was the whole point of this, to stop thinking about his penis and she’s running and all of a sudden her left right left right turns into penis penis penis penis and her cheeks are red and she’s sure it’s from the run and she’s penis penis penis penis and when she finally gets to her driveway and she’s finally slowing her pace and definitely not thinking about Jim’s penis she looks up and he’s standing there on her porch. Holding a plate, which is random and weird. And she sighs in exhaustion and thinks ok universe, you win, what the hell? 

And she focuses really hard on not looking down at his pants because that would be inappropriate.

Instead she says “Hey, what are you doing here?” and he shuffles in place and looks really uncomfortable and she thinks her bizarre week off just got that much more bizarre, and she looks down at the plate pointedly and huffs air in and out and tries to catch her escaping breath. He tips the plate toward her and kind of shrugs.

“Eggs,” he explains and she smiles and everything is upside down.

“Well,” she says, trying unsuccessfully to hide her grin and to stay herself even though he’s dressed in a loose fitting hoodie and jeans and he looks so casual and ruffled and innocent like Jim Halpert from television and she wants to kind of run her ‘Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam’ fingers through his hair. She clears her throat. “Do you want to come in?” she asks, and he looks kind of afraid of her and she likes that.

“Yeah, ok,” he agrees easily, standing back as she pulls out her keys and unlocks the front door, cursing her fate and the way that she’s like beyond disgusting looking right now, and then wondering why she cares that she looks disgusting. He’s seen her in her secretarial costume, after all, and she’s not sure anything is worse than that. She tugs at the bottom of her t-shirt and she unrolls the waistband of her “NYU” sweatpants as she kicks off her sneakers next to the door and tells him he can sit down and she’ll be right back. She runs into her bedroom and tugs on a sweatshirt that says “Waffles are delicious” and she rushes back out, red-cheeked and frazzled and totally unsure about what she should do at this point. When she gets back into the living room he’s sitting on her futon still holding that plate and she laughs at the sight of him, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips, and he looks up at her and grins back, because she figures he knew it would be funny when he sat down.

“Give me the damn eggs,” she tells him, feigning annoyance and taking the plate from him, reaching an arm into the kitchen to grab a fork and returning to sit across from him in an arm chair.

“They’re probably cold by now,” he tells her, and she shrugs her indifference, “And also I think they’re more over medium and less over easy,” he says, sounding just this side of concerned about it, “I’m not exactly an egg expert,” he explains. She takes a bite and she laughs around her mouthful because they taste pretty bad, but damnit she’s going to eat them all because he made them and she thinks it’s hilarious and she refuses to back down from this kind of challenge. He watches her, wary, waiting, and she meets his eyes with a daring kind of look.

“Where’s the toast?” she requests and he laughs, the tension breaking and his nervousness seeming to settle a little bit because she’s kind of promising that she’s still the same. He glares at her.

“Shut up, you’re lucky I made you anything,” he spits and she hums her disinterest, continuing to eat and swallowing with effort because…wow he’s not good at cooking eggs at all. “You were gone for like two hours,” he states, frowning, and she feels her feathers ruffle a little and she wonders how he knows that. She just nods though, her mouth full of rubbery yolk. “Do you always go for two hour runs?” he presses. She sighs.

“No,” she answers simply. They sit there in silence for a while as he watches her eat and he has that squint to his eye again that makes her nervous because she’d never thought he really saw her before, and now it’s like he’s always seeing her…always looking for her and searching through her defenses to find her reality buried underneath somewhere. It’s a huge pile he’ll have to search through, though, she tells herself, so she’s sure he won’t actually ever find much.

“No,” he finally repeats, “Ok so why today?” he asks and she huffs and shifts in her seat, defensive and annoyed and not wanting to answer him since the answer involves, you know, his penis. Jim, I ran for two hours today because I was thinking about your penis sounds a little on the crazy side, she thinks, amused.

“What is with you lately? You’re like stalking me and being nice and it’s totally unnerving,” she admits, staring down at the plate in front of her because it’s easier than looking him in the eye. If she’d looked up she would’ve noticed his half of a smile but she didn’t, so she didn’t.

“I’m not stalking you. I don’t stalk people, people stalk me,” he reminds her and she rolls her eyes at him, chuckling and swallowing more of the eggs. “I feel really bad about the other night,” he admits quietly, spitting it out like its been rolling around in his head for days, and her eyes snap up to his and she feels suddenly like the egg whites are stuck in her esophagus or something and she’s having a hard time breathing. She’s sure her eyes are the size of quarters.

“What? Why? Don’t even worry about it,” she offers breathlessly and he lifts his left cheek, shaking his head, and she feels totally just…taken with him.

“I am worried about it. That was my stuff and I took it out on you,” he explains, avoiding her stare and looking at her television like it’s on when really it isn’t. “Really,” he reiterates, “I just want to, I don’t know,” he shakes his head again and she feels her throat close up a little bit more. “If I’m bothering you just tell me and I’ll leave you with your poorly cooked eggs,” he finally forces out and she’s the one shaking her head now, automatically, without even thinking.

“No, no, you’re not…” she starts and then she wonders if she’s crossing some kind of line she’d drawn for herself before because he reminds her of someone, she thinks. He reminds her of things. “Um, it’s fine,” and her voice has dropped and has recovered some of its iciness without her meaning for it to, and he frowns a little. She wonders if she ever hurts his feelings. She licks her lips. “When did skateboarding become socially acceptable again?” she asks him lamely, her voice strange and strangled sounding and her thoughts spinning with Hi, I’m Pam Beesly and I’m an idiot. He kind of tilts his head at her and laughs once because it’s out of the blue, but she thinks he’s amused and she thinks he’s going to stay and she can’t decide whether she’s glad or disappointed or just totally terrified.

“I don’t, um, that’s kind of a good question,” he responds and she nods, chewing her eggs and hoping her cheeks aren’t red with her discomfort. Calling this awkward is the understatement of the century. “What have you been doing with your time off?” he asks and it’s so mundane sounding and it’s such a normal question that something in her stomach settles. She forks the last bite of egg and glances up at him.

“Honestly?” she asks, and he smiles at her and nods, bracing his elbows on his knees and looking so fantastic on her futon that she has look down at that last bite and concentrate hard on getting it successfully into her mouth. She’s chewing when she answers and she figures she should maybe put effort into acting more demure or something. “Watching Who’s the Boss and spending all day in my pajamas,” she confesses around the food in her mouth and he laughs outright then and she smiles at him, pleased that she’s funny and glad that he’s there and then concerned with herself. She frowns then though, part of her wondering when it is that she’ll stop being concerned every time she’s happy he’s around. She motions toward him with the empty plate and reaches back with her tongue to loosen something from one of her molars. “The eggs were awful,” she tells him, standing and making her way to her kitchen sink, where she runs water over the oil-covered plate and squirts some Palmolive (purposely not Dawn) soap onto it so that she can dry it off and give it back to him.

“You ate them, so they weren‘t as bad as I thought they‘d be,” he calls over the sound of running water and she smiles at the plate, washing it quickly and drying it off and heading back into the den. She hands it to him and he nods his head at her in thanks.

“You didn’t have to do this, you know?” she tells him, and he looks up at her and seems thoughtful, warm, lacking in his normally grossly cocky demeanor and instead seeming just…Jim. He squints at her and her stomach tightens.

“I know,” he tells her and it’s soft and she wonders what he sounds like late at night, laying in bed and watching the clock tick slowly past midnight and then one and then two in the morning. She wonders if he ever stays in bed with anybody that long. She wonders if he’s ever been in love.

She clears her throat.  He must see that as some sort of cue because suddenly he shifts and he looks like he's embarrassed and she hates herself because she always does this.

“Oh, um, ok well I guess I’ll go,” he mutters, standing up and shoving his hands into his pockets.

She’s frantic then all of a sudden, wanting to keep him exactly where he is and wishing he would just sit back down and wishing she could just be warm, too, like he is. Wishing she could just be nice. Wishing he was less handsome and wishing he was less irritating seventy five percent of the time. She reaches out and grabs his arm and he freezes, staring at her like she’s told him she’s carrying his child or something.

“Stay,” she requests simply, smiling, and she swears his eyes widen in shock. “Hang out with me,” and god it’s like she’s saved herself and doomed herself all in the same breath.

But he just looks saved, and she figures there’s something in that.

Can he just admit to himself that he’s totally infatuated?

Because as soon as she announces that she’s going to teach him the proper way to cook an egg he can’t stop smiling at her and he can’t stop staring at her and her name is like this tom-tom beat in his head, like his pulse, and actually it’s starting to freak him out.

“Favorite fast food restaurant,” she requests. They’ve been doing this. Kind of twenty questions only lazier, and they’d already covered prom dates and favorite books (Sports Illustrated apparently doesn’t count as a book, although he’d argued her to death about it) and the town where they grew up. He picks on her for coming from a place named after Hobbits and she tells him that New Hampshire is boring and he should feel embarrassed. Now he purses his lips in thought because she’s asked him about fast food and that means it’s just gotten serious.

“That’s tough, Pam,” he admits, sighing, leaning against the counter beside her stove and watching as she cracks the eggs open and does something with them that he can‘t really follow. What’s with them and eggs, he wonders? Is it like a symbol of the fact that he wants to jump her? The universe’s way of saying Hey, fertilize now! “I have to go with McDonald‘s,” he decides, cutting off his own thoughts, “I know it’s predictable, but, whatever, it’s how it is. The Big Mac is my life,” he tells her, grinning because he thinks maybe if Michael were here he would turn that into a double entendre. Pam reaches into her refrigerator and pulls out green onions, handing them to him along with a knife.

“First of all, chop these,” she instructs, “And second of all…disgusting,” she tells him and he laughs an angry and insulted kind of laugh.

“What?!” he exclaims, setting the onions down on a chopping board and cutting them into little pieces.

“McDonald’s? Really?” she wonders, “Did you not see Super Size Me or what?” she asks and he scoffs because that movie was a stupid waste of his time. Newsflash: cheeseburgers are unhealthy. Yeah, pretty much already knew that.

“I saw it and I slept through it,” he informs her, pausing in his chopping to watch her as she expertly does a little work with a spatula. That’s kind of distracting, he thinks, annoyed with his own lack of cool. She glances at him and gives him a look.

“Keep chopping, there, we’re on a time schedule,” she informs him and he raises his eyebrows in amusement. Pam Beesly the drill sergeant…

“Ok, fancy McDonald’s hater, enlighten me. What is your favorite fast food restaurant? And Subway doesn’t count cause you have to stand there and like practically make it yourself and that is not fast food.” She chuckles and watches the eggs sizzle on the pan for a second and he chops more onion even though he has no idea why he’s doing it.

“Arby’s,” she finally offers.

And he’s so put off that he cuts himself.

“Shit,” he hisses, pulling his hand back and running like a girl over to the sink so that he can rinse off his pointer finger and kind of dance around in place. Yeah ok so he’s squeamish, so what?

“Oh god, you cut yourself,” she states, panicked, pulling the eggs off the stove and setting them on a towel, and he kind of glares at her because…uh, yeah…obvious. “Hang on hang on, here’s a paper towel,” she offers, tearing one off the spool and handing it to him and telling him he should wrap it around the cut tight and follow her to the bathroom and he’s smiling now because he loves when the ladies get all Nurse Nightingale.

Nurse Nightingale? Is that his best choice, he wonders? Or is it like Nurse Come Over Here and Take Off Your Clothes, maybe? Ok, he tells himself, wishful and inappropriate thinking.

Anyway it doesn’t matter because Pam has hoisted herself up and is sitting on top of the bathroom counter with her legs spread open like…he swallows. He thinks about fertilizing eggs and he thinks about what sort of underwear she wears when she isn’t playing a character and he thinks Pam Pam Pam until she gives him a funny look and he shakes himself out of it.

She’s pulling open a band-aid and she’s twisting open a tube of Neosporin and he feels like she’s getting ready for surgery.

For some reason he can feel this phrase like: “Funny story, I said your name during sex the other day,” kind of bouncing around in his head, and he literally bites his tongue to keep himself from saying anything remotely like that. He’s sure she would not respond well. Instead he goes with stating the obvious because it’s always an easy solution.

“You’re sitting on the counter,” he mumbles, leaning in the doorway and pressing the paper towel tight against his cut which hurts, but he‘s glad for the distraction. She frowns at him.

“I always do this,” she states, and he shrugs because…that wasn’t really what he meant. She motions for him to step closer and he swallows again and he inhales a deep breath and he steps up to her, waiting for the moment that some kind of other worldly creature is going to explode from her throat and eat him alive or something.

Or maybe she’ll have sex with him and then eat him in his post-coital bliss, like those certain kinds of spiders that everyone always talks about.

That thought frightens him for a myriad of reasons.

She reaches out and grabs his hand and her fingers are so cool against his skin that he has a really hard time existing, and she pulls away the paper towel and makes a kind of sympathetic sound because it’s kind of a long cut, somehow (because he’s an idiot, he can’t believe he cut himself) and she kind of breathes on it like that will help him. It doesn’t. Because between the little moan or whatever the hell that had been and the breathing it’s like in his head they’re already naked together. He kind of wants to just tell her to forget the cut and he wants to like reach his hand around her and hoist her up against him.

He fidgets because he at least just wants to lean forward and kiss her, and that would probably be the opposite of a good idea. Instead he croaks out one word with his eyes glued to his own hand, telling himself to keep it together.

“Arby’s?” he questions, incredulous, and she chuckles.

“I like the little hat on the sign,” she tells him, dabbing some Neosporin on the band-aid and reaching forward to strap it onto him…to strap it onto…ok his brain is short-circuiting. He breathes deep and she glances up at him and smiles reassuringly because he figures she thinks he’s in pain, which he is but again…not what she’s thinking.

“Your favorite fast food restaurant is Arby’s because of the cowboy hat logo? Is that a joke?” he asks quietly, everything is suddenly so quiet, and she laughs then and she’s so close to him and he just wants to…

“Also because their beef ’n cheddars are delicious,” she adds, her voice soft and low and her finger still kind of pressing against his cut to make sure the band-aid is on like it should be and instead of Because their beef ‘n cheddars are delicious he kind of hears something like hey, you stud muffin, you’re beefy and delicious…or something like that…and he can’t believe he went from being the guy that she hated to being the guy that she’s like…tending to, like they’re in the old south. She’s pretty, he thinks, like beautiful in an actual kind of way and she doesn’t go self-tanning and he thinks that’s…really attractive. Her skin is probably like pristine and clean looking and um…right, he tries to focus and he tries not to get all…affected by her nearness, but seriously?

He can’t help himself.

“Arby’s is the worst,” he whispers and something in his tone of voice must catch her off guard because it makes her eyes snap up and lock on his, and something she sees in his stare makes her lean forward a little, and god he can feel her breath against his face and he’s standing in between her legs and she’s Pam and he’s Jim and it’s so close to perfect he can’t even stand it. “Pam?” he whispers, trying to be something close to a gentleman and give her a chance to snap out of it, because he‘s totally about to just shove his tongue down her throat.

He can’t believe himself because when has he ever been a gentleman in this kind of situation? Just kiss her already, he thinks. Fertilize her or get all beef ‘n cheddar on her or whatever. Ok so that was kind of gross, but he’s distracted and injured, so…

But as soon as he breathes her name she blinks, and he hates that he gave her a chance to snap out of it because that’s literally exactly what she does. She pushes at him and says sorry and hops down and flees the room and he’s left standing there with a little bit of a “situation“…and a cut on his finger.

He shakes his head at his reflection and thinks about as many not-sexy things as he can muster, tries to ignore the way that he has to be with her or he might explode…

And he tries to come up with a battle plan.

Ok so he’s been thinking about this for three days.

The alleged battle plan.

And he thinks he’s got it, or that is to say, he thinks he’s got something, or he’s sort of come up with like a vague kind of idea that could shape up to be something, or…uh…right, no. He’s got it. That’s what you’re supposed to say when you’re Sherlock Holmes and solving a crime, and that’s kind of the vibe he’s going for here, so, yeah. He’s got it.

A plan. A Plan, actually, with a capital P.

His Plan, his idea, his genius resolution to the problem of Pam is…Drum roll! (Or, also known as: too much time around the fictional Michael Scott,)…To do nothing.

Yeah. Good, right? Solid plan. Ok, no, seriously there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Here’s the thing about him, he’s always kind of doing a lot. He’s always thinking and trying to sound like someone else or making sure the people around him think he’s funny or imagining he’s some historical figure…like for example the whole Sherlock Holmes thing earlier. That was classic Jim Halpert.

And he thinks he’s figured out that the showiness, the self-aware persona that he carries around with him, is exactly the thing that puts Pam off. It’s the thing that makes her huff and roll her eyes and look at him like he’s insane, it was the thing that drove him to yell at her on Friday and it’s the thing that has kept her at arm’s length for almost two years.

He thinks.

He’s pretty sure, like thirty percent. Which actually isn’t that sure, but it‘s better than the ten percent sure he was twenty four hours ago, so he figures he‘s doing a pretty good job of working himself into this.

Therefore, henceforth, ergo, his plan is to just stop. Just be kind of quiet and calm and get all zen and really just focus on being Jim. Other people are themselves all the time, so it can’t be impossible. He’s gonna do it.

His plan is to do nothing and it’s genius. It’s a winner.

He keeps reliving the end of the other night and the look on her face as she’d walked him to the door. She’d been nervous. She’d been careful of him since the situation in the bathroom (because wow could that have been any more obvious?) and she’d been short with him, half making conversation and half praying for him to leave, probably. So eventually he had. He’d given in, and she’d walked him to the door.

“Well, goodnight, I guess,” she’d told him quietly and he‘d nodded and he was thinking about trying to make this right again and how he could fix whatever kind of mess he‘d made in a matter of minutes.

“Yeah, definitely. Have a good one,” he’d offered, and with that he’d bent down and he had kissed her.

Yeah, he did.

Not a hot and heavy kiss, not even a lingering kiss, just like a friendly kiss. A goodnight kiss. A ‘tell your Aunt Edna and Uncle Sal I said hi’ kiss. Not that it didn’t send a bolt of deadly electricity shooting through his body, because wow it did, but it was still just a plain old peck, none the less. And when he’d pulled back she’d looked even more freaked out than before, like he’d confessed that he sometimes sends people bombs in the mail. She’d looked shocked. She’d looked frozen.

And he had bolted because he had no idea what that was. They were kissing each other goodbye now? Like they’d been friends for years? What kind of sense did that make, and what had he been thinking? He guesses he really hadn’t. Or he had but it’s just that his thoughts were like…raunchy, so really he’s surprised he didn’t just shove his tongue right down her throat.

Oh whatever, he thinks. The point is he’d bolted then. The point is he has a Plan now and it’s definitely going to work. It might work. It could feasibly work.

But he figures it can’t hurt to run it by someone so he calls Dwight (Roy is really not good at this kind of thing) and he explains the situation, except he calls the girl “Vivian” to throw him off the scent.

He tells him the whole thing about how she’s hated him all this time and about how he’s somehow become obsessed with her accidentally and about how he was inappropriately calling out her name during sex with other people and that was when he put his foot down and about how now he has this plan. And Dwight listens intently and patiently (that’s the part Roy isn’t good at) and once Jim has finished he’s silent for a long while, quiet and breathing on the other end of the phone, but Jim just waits. Because he’s practicing for when he’ll be calm like this with “Vivian.”

“Question,” Dwight begins and Jim nods.

“Shoot,” he responds.

“This Vivian,” he starts, “Does she have red curly hair?” he asks, and Jim like…basically he practically passes out. He should’ve known better than to call Dwight, maybe the most intuitive person on the planet, and to paint this picture that was so obviously him and Pam. Damnit, he thinks angrily.

“Uh, what?” he answers, trying to avoid saying yes or lying no. Dwight sighs like a teacher to his pupil.

“Does she sometimes dress very conservative, and sometimes dress a lot less conservative?” he asks, and Jim presses his palm to his forehead and thinks he’s basically the most colossal idiot on the face of the planet.

“Dwight, come on, I didn’t call so we could play twenty questions,” he interjects angrily, still avoiding the issue and kind of shifting uncomfortably on his feet. Dwight hums.

“One more question and then I’m done,” he promises. “Is. She…” Jim holds his breath, “Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.” And Jim barks out a laugh because that was not what he had expected.

“Yes,” he answers, short and finished with this because he’s nervous it’ll all wrap around to Dwight admitting he’d figured out that it was Pam and he was just kidding about the Pretty Woman thing. Jim figures he’ll say yes and avoid giving Dwight any other guesses.

“I knew it,” Dwight admits, “As soon as you said the name Vivian I knew she used to be a call girl,” he has the uncanny ability to maintain an audible straight face even when he’s being off the charts ridiculous and Jim is laughing on the other end, mostly because Dwight is so stone-cold sober.

“Can you not be an idiot about this?” Jim requests and Dwight finally laughs a little bit and concedes, saying he’ll try to hold it in as long as he can, and Jim thanks him. “Ok so? Thoughts?”

“Sounds like the perfect plan to me,” Dwight responds. Jim blinks in surprise.

“Really?” he asks, and Dwight says yeah and goes on and on with some explanation that Jim is not listening to but that probably makes tons of sense and is actually really worth while, it’s just that Jim is distracted again by Pam and how she’d made him an omelet and how she’d stood there and watched him eat it with this careful kind of grin on her face and how they hadn’t said much else that night but he’d felt like (aside from the obvious of feeling like an idiot) he‘d felt like he‘d had fun? Maybe?…he’d felt something, anyway, and he was sure she did too. Or, pretty sure. Like thirty three percent sure. Thirty two percent, maybe. Thirty two point five.

He thinks about how she’s pretty hot really and he hadn’t noticed before. The band-aid thing had been hot. The Waffle sweatshirt had seemed hot at the time. The cooking-for-him thing had been totally hot. The only thing that hadn’t been hot was how clear it had been that Jim is an asshole. He keeps thinking about her hair. He’s not sure why, it’s just she has this great hair that he kind of wants to…touch…He thinks about how much he wants to like just grab her and run his fingers down her…uh, ok well he’s gotten a little ahead of himself here. Maybe he should focus.

Right.

“…and that’s why sometimes with women I like to play my harmonica first, and then follow that up with singing the national anthem backwards, and Jim it is so obvious that you aren’t listening to me at all but I can’t come up with any other ridiculous things to say to you to get your attention at this point,” Dwight’s saying and Jim laughs at him and says he’s sorry and he’s listening and he shakes his head at himself and begs himself to get it together.

“Seriously, I really am sorry and I swear next week I’ll like… I kind of know how to cook an omelet now so maybe I can do that,” he says, feeling like he owes Dwight something for this. Dwight sucks in a breath through is teeth.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I do not want to ingest anything you’ve cooked so why don’t we just say…you owe me one round of Mario Kart,” he offers and Jim laughs and agrees.

“Cool, that’s fine. Look, man, I’m gonna go, but thank you for listening and um I’ll talk to you on Monday, ok?” he offers, already mentally off the phone and looking through his refrigerator for something…he was sure he had a half a ham sandwich in there that he’d been saving.

“No problem, Jim, I’ll talk to you then. And, hey, let me know how it goes with Pam, ok?” Dwight finishes, hanging up before Jim can register it or deny it or defend himself or react at all, and he wonders if he should ignore that or if he should freak out. He goes with ignoring it because he’s still practicing being cool and being calm and being zen or whatever, so not freaking out is the best idea and he‘ll deal with this newest event in a long line of events whenever he‘s forced to deal with it. Which is not now. Right? Right. No freaking out. He forgot to breathe for a second there, but now he’s good.

Ok, he thinks, he has a plan and Dwight thinks it’s good and he’s gonna do it and that is how this is going to work. He’s going to be himself and be calm and he’s going to win Pam over with honesty and genuine interest, and wow, he’s scared shitless.

But he holds steady, and on Monday when she walks by him toward her dressing room instead of saying God, Sunshine, how much have you missed my hot body? he says “Morning, Pam.”

And she does a double take. And that is just oh, so satisfying.

He said good morning to her.

Like it was no big thing, just “Morning, Pam.” Like he hadn’t randomly shown up at her apartment three or four days ago and like he hadn’t randomly kissed her goodnight, or pecked her goodnight, and like he hadn’t been making her insane since then because all she can think is what the hell was THAT? She’s been like pacing floors and shaking her head at her own thoughts and doing this thing that her mother does where she like taps her fingers against her lips one at a time, over and over again.

Yeah. She’s acting like her mother. And it’s his fault because he’s the one who gave her a dry peck, which was practically worse than if he’d offered to shake her hand, and she doesn’t even know why the hell she cares.

She’s with Graham and he’s got an overbite, so really she’s all set. She’s thinking about Graham. Graham is great. Graham, Graham, Graham, great, great, uh what was she…oh right, Graham is great. Except for that there was this thing with Jim kissing her…so she’s actually thinking less and less of Graham by the second…and he’s kind of seeming less great than he was like a week ago…

Jim had sort of kissed her. Plus there was the thing in the bathroom which was an entirely different kind of thing from the barely-there kiss. The bathroom was some kind of pre-sex first aid ritual that she’d never really experienced before, like she’d never quite “dressed a wound” in the way that she’d wrapped his cut up in that band-aid, strapping it on there like she was some health teacher with a banana. She’d been sitting on the counter with her legs spread open, she thinks now, and she should’ve just written Come and get it in Marks-A-Lot on the crotch of her pants because like she’d been sitting there all inviting him to come stand in front of her, and what the hell had she been thinking?

God that was hot, though. So hot. Ugh she gets flushed just thinking about it.

And then he’d kissed her and there the hotness had gone. He’d just like used one of those fireman’s hoses on her and sprayed it right in her face so she was left there dripping and totally confused with a little bit of a hose-burn on her skin. There’s a sex-joke there, she thinks, but she doesn’t really want to get into it.

He’s driven her certifiably insane all weekend and he’s turned her into her mother with the tapping of her lips. And apparently that isn’t enough. Apparently he needs to add to her insanity by coming in today and smiling at her.

By being nice.

Acting like he’s some kind of nice guy, like Mr. Brady or something.

“Morning, Pam!”

He might as well be pulling on a cardigan and walking down the hall, crooning, accompanied by little dancing babies in tap shoes. Morning!…Morning!…Yeah she’s totally going insane.

It’s disconcerting, is what it is. It’s odd, and she isn’t sure what to think, how to respond. Was she supposed to say good morning back? Just kind of accept his off the wall pleasant behavior and respond with some of her own and pretend he hadn’t invaded her life like a virus or the plague? Maybe he’s high. Maybe he’s just totally like smoked up and he doesn’t even know what’s going on and that’s why he’s acting like this, she thinks. Maybe he’s been replaced by a clone of himself who’s like his non-evil twin, so he’s himself but really not. Maybe she should be thanking her lucky stars and be embracing this ‘nice guy Jim’ with his saying good morning and his smiling and his Mr. Rogers friendliness.

She shouldn’t complain, right?

Except she kind of misses the hostility. She kind of liked the hostility.

Ok, wow, dysfunction, party of one?

But really it’s true. She’d liked it when he teased her, she knew how to respond to that, she was happy in her place of anger and eye-rolling and she isn’t sure what to do now that she’s kind of floating out in this non-angry abyss of simple greetings and kindness. Niceness.

Who’s nice? What is that?

She makes it through the entire morning of filming parts of “Conflict Resolution” without saying something. She just shoots him weird glances and frowns when he actually laughs at her jokes and she just shakes her head when people stare at her in wonder. She has no idea. Thank god there’s so much tension written into the episode or else she’s not sure what she would do. It would just be too much niceness.

Then lunch comes around and there’s an Arby’s beef ’n cheddar sitting in her dressing room and she just…she loses it.

She goes storming up to him by the vending machine and she taps him on the shoulder and she crosses her arms and she just lets it fly.

“What the hell is this about, Jim?” she wonders in a frantic whisper and he raises his eyebrows like he doesn’t know what she means. He acts like he doesn’t know what she means! Ugh, she wants to just…push him.

“What’s what?” he wonders.

“’Good morning’ and the sandwich and all this smiling and stuff, what is wrong with you?” she demands, her voice still hushed to avoid the inevitable prying ears all around them. He kind of looks down at her with concern, though, so her volume control slips for a second. “See!” she exclaims, “Stop that! Stop looking at me like that!” and he frowns further.

“Like what? Are you ok, Pam?” he asks, and it’s genuine. It’s a genuine question. She’s going to explode with hatred.

“Am I…” she exhales and shoves a hand through her hair haphazardly, “Are YOU ok. Are YOU. Because you seem like someone possessed your body with the soul of like the mom on Leave it to Beaver,” she accuses, and he tilts his head at her.

"June Cleaver," he informs her and she holds up a hand and stops him because she does NOT care what the Beave's mother's name is at this point at ALL.

“And you came to my house and you got that stupid cut and then you…whatever you did, whatever," she mumbles awkwardly and he nods.

“I kissed you goodbye,” he fills in, calm, and she waves her hand through the air in concession.

“Right, whatever, not really though because when you kiss someone you should actually kiss them with like the grabbing onto them and kind of lingering there for longer than a millisecond, but whatever, and now you’re here all like encouraging my obsession with Arby’s and you’re just…”

“Hang on now, wait, I am not encouraging your obsession with Arby’s. I just thought it might be nice,” he tells her and she stands there and stares at him like he has five or six heads.

“Nice?” she repeats, and he nods, confused. “Nice? No! No, no nice. We are not nice to each other that is not what we do.” He pushes his hands into his pockets and she’s so confused now, she’s so disoriented and for a second she can’t tell if they’re filming or if this is really happening.

“It can be what we do, though,” he offers, “I mean we don’t have to hate each other, do we?” And she’s beyond words. It’s official. He has officially just convinced her that she’s having a waking dream because her Jim Halpert, or not her Jim Halpert but, whoever, the Jim she knows, would never suggest that they stop hating each other. What kind of a thing is that to say? What the hell?!

“This is the Twilight Zone,” she mumbles, “I’m in an episode of the Twilight Zone.” He purses his lips and looks up at the ceiling in thought.

“No, this is The Office. We’re filming the episode where I file a complaint about you with Toby,” he reminds her, and she kind of is frozen in place staring at him, wishing she were someplace else and that things could make sense to her again. All she keeps thinking about is the way he’d been in her bathroom that night, the way his eyes had gotten dark and the way he had leaned against the counter and the way she could feel his breath fanning against her skin and the way she’d wanted to…just, touch him. And then he’d kissed her. Like, pecked her, like fucking second grade behind the swing set or something. Who even kisses like that anymore? She practically gets more action from her cousin, but um that thought is kind of gross or creepy and not really true so she forgets it.

“Jim,” she sighs, reminding herself that she’s having a conversation with him, “I would love it if from now on you could be selfish and rude and egotistical,” she requests quietly. “You know, like your actual usual really irritating and gross self. Please.” And he almost cracks that smile she’s grown so accustomed to, the one with the one cheek lifted and the glint in his eye and that kind of cocky attitude that’s all Jim Halpert, but before it can really arrive, before she can really swim in it and enjoy it, it turns into this saccharine, genuine, Leave it to Beaver June Cleaver smile. A smile. She hates it.

“I’ll do my best, Pam,” he tells her, and instead of gracing that with a response she just clenches her fists and clenches her jaw and she stomps off in the direction of her dressing room.

And she eats her beef ‘n cheddar because…really how could she not?

By the end of the day she’s completely unhinged.

Confused, nervous, slightly schizophrenic, and definitely totally unhinged. She keeps having warm-Jim thoughts, and then stopping herself thinking that’s the other Pam, and then she gets into which Pam she’s supposed to be right at the moment and then she wonders if maybe both Pams are really her and maybe she’s been best friends with Jim this whole time without knowing it and maybe this is ok…and then she frowns at herself and thinks…I am a lunatic.

She watched that interview once with Whitney Houston and Diane Sawyer where Whitney explains that crack is whack, speaks about herself in the third person, and states that 'Whitney will never be fat,' and Pam’s starting to see herself somewhere in there. Like, crazed and nonsensical and frightening to all the people around her. She just keeps thinking of Whitney Houston, and sometimes of Anne Heche, and she thinks probably she’ll be next on that list. She’ll start wandering the streets and doing interviews on news shows explaining how her new friend Jim is so kind and thoughtful and he brings her beef ‘n cheddars, and everyone who knows him will think…nope. Pam Beesly has lost her marbles. Give her some weirdly short bangs and some blonde highlights and she’s Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted.

She can feel it kind of ticking inside of her, this bomb of unrest and anxiousness. Every time he looks at her during the shoot and smiles, or when he returns from what she’d assumed was a smoke break with two Dr. Peppers and hands her one, or like when Toby asks him about Dawn and he calmly explains that she isn’t the kind of girl he wants…Pam feels it ticking. It’s easy for her to conjure up red and angry cheeks when fictional-Jim tells her he complained about her and it’s easy for her to seem irritated and confused because she is. She is irritated and confused. She’s going to lose it. She knows it hours before it happens, but she‘s not really sure what she can do to prevent it.

The last straw falls at the end of the day when she’s thankfully back in her normal clothes and has taken some comfort in the normality of her messy bun and her baggy sweatshirt. Jim taps on her dressing room door and pokes his head in. He says everyone’s going to O’Flannigan’s for dinner and he wants to know if she’s interested.

Really it’s a valid and normal thing for him to ask. Really it’s not that big a deal that he’s the one who’s inviting her and he’s speaking to her in this flat and non-asshole tone and he’s wearing his black baseball cap (which just happens to be her favorite) and he doesn’t glance down at her boobs once. Not once. It isn’t a huge deal, but god she feels that ticking time bomb inside of her like let out a .2 second warning whistle before it just explodes, and she throws her hands into the air like shrapnel in defeat.

“We can’t do this!” she practically yells, and then she just stands there staring at him out of breath, and he glances behind him into the hallway and smiles awkwardly at Dwight as he’s passing by before he just steps into her room completely and lets the door swing closed behind him.

“We can’t do what?” he wonders. She huffs and flinches and tries really hard to pretend she doesn’t have this lump of panicked emotion lodged in her throat. It’s just that she’s confused. He’s confusing her. It’s ok, she’ll be fine, she’s just…she swallows like that will help.

“Just,” she starts, swallowing for a second time, “Whatever you’re doing. I’m so…we can’t do this!” she repeats. She keeps waving her arms out to her sides and then slapping them down against her thighs like she’s announcing how helpless she is, how much she has no idea what’s going on. It’s like he senses her panic and purposely remains calm. Although he’s been doing that all day, so… “What are you doing to me with the Dr. Pepper and the smiling and the invitations for drinks? This is insane,” she tells him, her voice dropping down to a normal level and her eyes dropping down to the steel gray carpet beneath her feet. She rubs a hand against her forehead and is restless in all sorts of ways.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, “I just thought,” and she looks up at him in honest interest because she’d genuinely love to know what he’s thinking right now, and as soon as she makes eye contact with him it’s like he deflates. It’s like he exhales his calm and his cool and she could swear he becomes more himself. He shifts and becomes restless, mirroring her, planting his hands on his hips and shaking his head, biting his cheek, sniffing once and quirking his eyebrows at nothing. “Um, I guess I thought we could be friends,” he tells her, “or…I don’t know what I thought,” he mumbles and she gets the distinct impression that this is probably difficult for him but in a rash and heated second she decides she doesn’t care because he’s made her life a living hell for the past two years. He’s been arrogant and full of himself. He’s been on cloud nine and rubbing it in her face and she’s had to smile and deal with it.

And now he wants to be her friend and he wants her to feel sorry for him or something. She’s so…just…What is going on?

“Well we can’t be friends,” she tells him harshly, blindly grasping at anything familiar and not really thinking too hard about the fact that he’s gone pale and he’s visibly uncomfortable and she’s almost hyperventilating from trying so hard to ignore everything about him right now. “We can’t because you are not this guy, Jim,” and she gestures toward him with a slicing hand, “Whatever this is that you’ve been doing today is not really you and actually you’re a jerk. You’re selfish, and you’re egotistical, and you’re misogynistic, and you don’t care about anybody but yourself. You lie. You cheat on your girlfriend. You barely have a family, from what I can tell. And really you’re not very good at your job.”

The list rolls off her tongue without a thought, without consideration, without eye contact with him, and she can feel her cheeks burning after she’s done. She realizes, after she’s done, that her eyes are wet and that her fists are clenched and that her stomach feels like it’s been ripped out by an alligator or a lion. She blinks and she focuses on him, like really looks at him, and she stops breathing because he looks totally…

The muscles in his jaw are jumping and he’s staring down at the carpet, and she can‘t quite make out his expression beneath his hat but she‘s pretty sure she doesn‘t want to see it anyway. His shoulders are slumped. His muscles are clenched tight, and his hand is braced on the doorknob like he can’t wait to escape from her, and she thinks oh my god what did I just do? She thinks why would I say those things out loud right now, after he‘s been so nice to me all day long?

She hadn’t even meant it.

She doesn’t believe it.

Especially not these days, especially not after his visit to her house and the way he’d been with her. Especially not based on the way that he looks defeated right now…beaten down by her. She bites at her cheek and begs herself not to lose it.

“Jim,” she forces out, sounding audibly apologetic and worrying that whatever she just did is irreversible. He shakes his head at the floor.

“Yeah no you’re right,” he tells her. “You’re right I don’t know what I was…um…”

He licks his lips and hazards a glance up at her as he’s pulling open the door. She can’t breathe. She can’t move. He pins her with a stare like maybe he doesn’t know her at all, fictional Pam or real Pam or any version of her that he spends every day around.

“I’m gonna go,” he tells her in a whisper, and he’s gone before she can even ask him to stay. Before she can tell him she was wrong and she only said it because maybe she’s confused… Maybe she’s the other Pam and maybe he’s the other Jim, or maybe they’re both both or maybe…

She just wants to explain to him that she keeps making mistakes and she’s sorry.

But he doesn’t give her a chance, and she doesn’t blame him. She wouldn’t give herself a chance either.

There’s a knock on his apartment door and he’s annoyed because whatever it is he doesn’t want it.

He doesn’t want to see anybody, he doesn’t want to talk to anybody, and he doesn’t think he’s been this depressed since he was in middle school and Cleveland Cleveland (yes that was really his name, Cleveland twice, and no he has no idea what the child’s mother was thinking) got picked first for the basketball team over Jim. That had been upsetting, specifically since the kid’s name was a city stuck on repeat, but obviously this is worse. Mostly because he’s inexplicably and totally obsessed with Pam still even though she just ripped him a new asshole, and also because he’s exhausted from having been so nice and honest all day long, and also…because when she’d ripped him a new asshole actually he thinks Pam had been right.

She was.

About everything.

He’s made plenty of mistakes and he’s ignored all of them, assuming that things were unfixable, assuming there wasn’t really a reason to pretend to be a good person when he knew deep down he wasn’t. But now maybe he is. He thinks maybe he could be. He feels like himself when they’re filming and he knows that when the camera is on him he’s a good guy. A steady and solid kind of go-to guy who’s polite and gentlemanly. He wonders if he could’ve been that guy all along, growing up, instead of smoking and drinking and sexing the way that he had.

He thinks of his brother Ben and figures Jim probably had the means to be a better person, because lord knows Ben is a fucking saint.

It drives Jim crazy.

Jim thinks he’s aged like ten years in the past hour and a half. Or like maybe he’s been standing still for twenty years and now he’s finally catching up to where he’s supposed to be. And he’s still thinking about her.

He moves on slow feet, thinking about Pam and tugging on his pajama pants and scratching at his too long hair, and he eventually finally gets around to resignedly pulling the door open. There’s nobody there and he stands there, confused, for a good solid minute before he looks down at his feet and sees a little display all set up. He thinks whoever left it (not that he doesn’t already know) must’ve been thrilled that it took him so long to answer the door because it gave her ample time to leave it there and run. He sighs and stoops down, picking up a McDonald’s Big Mac and a bag of jelly beans, with a card taped to the front that says Jim in Pam’s very neat and very girly hand-writing.

He tears open the card and grins when he finds that it’s just a plain piece of computer paper, on which she’s drawn a very unhappy looking donkey. Her ability to draw is one trait that she shares with the fictional Pam, one of those little pieces of gold that the producers discovered during her interview and wrote into the show. Anyway it’s a picture of a crying donkey and it says in big block letters “From one ass to another. Truce? Your friend, Pam.”

Friend is underlined three times.

He doesn’t know whether to laugh or frown or be mad and ball it up.

He goes with laughter because he’s a simple kind of guy, and because really he is an ass, so it‘s not exactly an insult. It‘s actually more of a favor because she‘s placed them on the same playing field.

He hangs it up on the refrigerator and rips open the Big Mac, biting off half of it and barely chewing before he swallows. He figures he can accept this, eat it, shove her peace offering down his throat, because he’s a forgiving guy and maybe it’ll help clear up all the confusion he can feel kind of waltzing around in his head. Maybe it’ll help him face her tomorrow and film the season finale and maybe it’ll help him fall asleep tonight without thinking about how many things he’s done wrong in his life, the way that he has been since he’d kissed her in the door of her house and especially since she’d yelled at him like four hours ago.

He finishes the burger on his second bite and shakes his head. He appreciates that Pam feels guilty but he honestly doesn’t think she has anything to feel guilty for. All she did was tell the truth.

All she did was have the balls to say out loud the things that everyone else around him has been thinking for the past like eighteen years or something. He admires it. He admires her, really.

He hates himself, but he admires her.

He badly, badly wants her to think he’s a good man. Or a nice guy. Or a person, at least. He imagines how he would’ve reacted to her outburst if it had happened two weeks ago or something. God, he would’ve gone postal on her right in the room. He figures he would’ve pointed out her many faults and called her names and it wouldn’t have been unlike the scene he’d made at the bar. But he’s glad he didn’t do that. He doesn’t want to do that anymore. Eventually he has to be the guy who brings a girl home to his mom, right? He can’t keep up this one night stand, smoking and drinking asshole thing he’s been doing all this time and expect a woman, an actual woman who isn’t named after dish soap, to fall in love with him.

He wonders if that’s what this is. He wonders if this is that he wants Pam to fall in love with him.

Him. The actual Jim Halpert. He wants the true and honest Pamela Anne Beesly to fall head over heels in love with him.

Yikes, that’s kind of scary.

He figures he probably likes her because she’s the only woman who refuses to flirt with him at all. Christ she won’t even smile in his general direction.

And until now he’s not sure he’s given her much evidence of the fact that he is a person. He’s pretty sure he’s acted like an ape. Or an untrained puppy. Or like a character in a movie who ruins everything for the hero. (Ok so that would be the villain but he hates thinking of himself that way.)

Whatever, he thinks, this is way too much thinking for his over-tired brain. He needs to just relax. Watch T.V. Forget that Pam hates him for one night because tomorrow is a new day and he can be nice again and she can yell at him if she wants, that’s fine. He’ll just let it roll right off his shoulders. He’ll just try to imagine that he’s good deep down in some darkened corner of his soul. He’s good and nice. Somewhere.

He thinks.

Maybe.

He turns on Ghost Hunters and wonders how it can still be on the air when they never fucking find anything. He falls asleep on the sofa and just before he does he thinks, Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow this will make sense, and Pam will magically like me. Or maybe hell will freeze over and the Ghost Hunters will have high tea with Queen Anne herself…

He sleeps.

The next day he’s in his dressing room making faces at himself in the mirror (practicing, obviously) when Pam steps in without knocking and just stands there behind him, grimacing into the mirror at him like she’s afraid he’s going to pull a grenade out of his back pocket. He meets her eyes in the reflection but refuses to turn around and face her.

“Morning, Sunshine,” he greets, tossing out the old nickname because he can’t help himself. Her grimace falters and she grins at him.

“Jim,” she starts, almost like it’s a sigh of relief or like she’s greeting someone who’s been missing, “Listen I am so sorry about yesterday, did you get my present?” she wonders, practically spitting the words out like she’s still nervous and still afraid he’ll tell her to go to hell. Instead he just nods at her reflection.

“Oh yeah, ate it in two bites, thank you,” he informs her and she nods back, chewing on her bottom lip nervously, and he notices that she’s fidgeting and that she seems uncomfortable so he turns and faces her finally, throwing her a kind of silent bone and crossing his arms thoughtfully. “You didn’t have to do that, really, it wasn’t a big deal,” he promises and she shakes her head.

“It was a big deal to me,” her voice is firm and he’s surprised, “I have no idea why I said all of that, I didn’t mean it,” she says, almost pleading with him and taking another step into the room and he thinks this was very brave of her. Or else she has a seriously guilty conscience.

“Sure you meant it,” he mutters and her eyes widen. He’s quick to reassure her, tipping his head to the side and kind of shrugging, “It was all true, it’s ok,” he tosses out, easy and careless and trying hard not to care about the fact that she knows him well enough to know that he’s an egotistical, misogynistic, selfish jerk with practically no family and no skill whatsoever. He usually tries really hard to keep his relationships from getting to that point and he’s not sure how she was able to slip under the radar.

“It isn’t true, though,” she’s still adamant and he looks up at the ceiling quick and resigned because he’s still kind of skeptical of her, sure that this is just her wanting to stroke his ego and make him feel better since it’s obvious that she feels so guilty, but really he doesn’t blame her and this is all unnecessary. She frowns at him. “I’m serious, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop rolling your eyes,” she finally orders. He stares at her in surprise and his thoughts go suddenly quiet as she continues. “I am…so sorry because you aren’t…any of those things,” she looks down at the carpet and her brow furrows and he thinks she looks like both Pam’s at once. She continues quietly and he holds his breath. “You’re brilliant, and funny, and you’re excellent with people, and like you have this ease about you that I totally envy,” she smiles and shakes her head and looks back up at him, straight at him. Hard. “And you’re a fantastic actor,” she assures him firmly, “I mean really you pull from a place that is so real,” she’s still quiet and calm and honest and he can’t believe she’s saying any of this. He definitely thought he’d have to work a little bit harder to get her to look at him at all today, never mind compliment him in a way that he‘s never really been complimented before. People usually just call him ’hot’ or ’cute’ and leave off the parts about him being funny and brilliant. She’s still talking but he’s having a hard time figuring out what exactly is going on, how this happened. “You’re not a jerk, Jim, you’re a…” she swallows and almost flinches in surprise at herself as she says “nice guy,” and he chuckles at her. She smiles but sobers quickly. “You are. And I like you. I spent all night thinking about this and wondering how that could be true because usually you act like a total dick and I can’t stand being around you, but sometimes I really do think you’re nice, and sometimes I really do like having you around. I do,” she repeats like she feels like she has to convince him, which he guesses she does, “And I am so sorry. Really.”

They watch each other for a second, she seems afraid for her life and he’s just sitting there, soaking that in, kind of enjoying it because he’s not sure where this speech was coming from since he doesn’t even think he’s nice or good or brilliant or funny most of the time. But really he trusts her judgment better than his, so something inside of him gets warm and something inside of him believes her. He sees for a second in his mind’s eye the person that he maybe could be if she would stick around, if she would say things like this and look at him the way that she does in her weaker moments, the way that she is right now. He swallows because between this little confession of hers and the memories of the other night, the bathroom, the kiss goodbye, he’s suddenly back to picturing her naked and he’s kind of wishing he weren’t because he doesn’t think that’s what a nice guy would be thinking at the moment.

He smiles at her. Slow. Warm. Genuinely grateful, and she visibly relaxes. He’s sure she assumes she’s forgiven, which she is. She smiles back.

“Look don’t worry about it,” he sighs out, “I was really just trying to get a Big Mac out of you, so…” she laughs and it tightens something inside of him and he wishes he could just stand up and walk over to her, wrap his arms around her, shut her up with his mouth against hers, but instead he sits there and instead he just grins and shrugs, “I win,” he proclaims, and she rolls her eyes at him, chuckling quietly and pulling his dressing room door open.

“You’re an asshole,” she proclaims and he raises his eyebrows at her and puckers his lips, making a kissing noise which brings a little bit of a blush to her cheeks…which he loves.

“You love it,” he tells her, quietly and she tosses him a flirty kind of smile that he’s only ever gotten from her on camera.

“Yeah, well, don’t let it go to your head,” she responds, closing the door behind her and leaving him sitting there with a wide kind of smile on his face and his chin propped on his hand, thinking that she’s unbelievable and he can’t stand the fact that she admitted that she likes having him around…he can’t believe he wants her to know all sorts of things about him and he can’t believe he wants to be the kind of guy she would do crosswords with on Sunday mornings. How did this happen so fast?

The thought crosses his mind that maybe he’s in love with her, and it makes him so uneasy that he clears his throat at the empty room and stands up from the chair he’s perched on, shifting uncomfortably on his feet and leaving to go find Kelly, because lord knows she’ll have enough mindless chatter to distract him from this for a second.

He feels like maybe he’s coming down with a fever.

Or maybe Pam is just…

Just stunning and kind and funny and just generally amazing. Ok no stop now, he thinks, he has to work and not be acting like some kind of Care Bear or whatever, with the warms and the fuzzies and the girlishness. Man up, he tells himself, think annoyed and angry thoughts.

“Hey, Kelly,” he greets and she squeals at him and claps and starts to ask him about the finale and he can’t really handle that conversation so he flinches and changes the subject. “What’s up with Brad Pitt, lately?” he wonders, “Anything good?” and she squeals and claps and starts talking about how hot he is and his body and all of the things that make Jim think about shooting her in the face, which is totally manly and he much prefers this over thinking about stripping Pam’s clothes off of her or imagining himself dropping down to one knee…

Yeah he definitely doesn’t want to be thinking that.

So his fantasies of stapling Kelly’s mouth shut are a welcome and much needed distraction.

The parking lot is his mortal enemy.

Why did all of this have to happen at once this way? Fucking casino night and fucking confessions and crying and all of this bullshit stuff that’s just a ploy to spike ratings and he hates everyone at the moment. He’s supposed to be distracting himself from his feelings for Pam, not proclaiming them in the middle of the parking lot. The script sucks, he thinks angrily.

They’re standing there not looking at each other and waiting for someone to say action and she looks about how he feels. Like she wants to vomit all over the pavement. She looks so much like she wants to vomit actually that their director yells for make-up and barks that somebody should get a little blush on her or something because she looks like shit. She rolls her eyes and says thank you and Jim laughs, and she looks over at him and their eyes meet for like a millisecond before they both look away in obvious discomfort.

Timing. Fucking timing, man. He wants to just give everyone the middle finger.

Somebody powders something on Pam’s face and somebody else adjusts the lighting and Jim hears Roy laughing somewhere in the distance and then all of a sudden they’re yelling action and Jim asks Pam if he can talk to her and she jokes about stealing all of his money.

“Did you want to go do that now?” she asks.

He fakes a chuckle and tries really hard to swallow and get into this. He frowns.

“No,” he tells her.

“We can go inside,” she suggests, smiling, “I’m feeling pretty good right now,” she lies and he looks at her, hard and she goes kind of pale, and he says:

“I was just, um…uh…” and he looks down at the pavement again and shoves his hands in his pockets and he thinks about Arby’s and he thinks about eggs and he thinks about bathrooms and how beautiful she is and god he can’t do this. He looks up at the camera and shakes his head. “Sorry, can we go back?” he requests, and everyone is patient because he does this a lot, needs a second take. Pam shakes out her hands and rolls her head on her shoulders and sighs and he just stands there and stares at her and her dress and her hair and the smoothness of her skin and he figures that later he’ll just tell her this scene was so convincing because he’s been taking classes or something…he’s been honing his craft or some bullshit like that. Not because he’s actually wondering if this is for real. Not because he’s confused. Definitely not…

They yell action and it starts all over again.

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

“About me taking more of your money? Did you want to go do that right now?”

“What? No.”

“We can, you know. Because I’m feeling kind of good tonight.”

“Listen, um…I was just…” she goes totally still and quiet, looking at him curiously, and he licks his lips and he thinks say it, goddamn it, but he’s clenching his jaw again and he’s got his hands in his pockets again and he’s shifting on his feet and he’s looking past the camera at the production staff and shaking his head. “It’s not working,” he mumbles.

“Jesus Christ,” the director mutters and Jim wonders if the tightness in his throat is from embarrassment or fear.

“Sorry, one more time and I’ll get it,” he swears. Get it together, he tells himself angrily.

They do it again, and after she announces how good she feels he just stands there again at that exact moment, silent, feeling terrible for any number of reasons and he’s sweating and he thinks he’s having a nervous breakdown. Seriously. He wonders if maybe he should ask for some water or some ice or a stretcher. He wonders why they’re paying him so much money if he can’t just say five fucking words that the writing staff has been building toward for two entire seasons. He should be fired. Now.

He rubs his face with his hands as they kind of angrily yell cut and he bends over at the waist, sucking in a huge lungful of air and telling himself this has nothing to do with the fact that he’s never said this to anybody but his mother and now he’s going to say it to Pam and he’s terrified that he’s going to mean it.

“Hey,” Pam whispers, and he stands up straight and his hands slide away from his face so he can look her in the eye and apologize. “Are you ok?” she wonders, soft and concerned. He clicks his tongue at himself and his brow furrows.

“I’m really sorry, I don’t know what’s…” but he doesn’t finish because he does know and whatever he was about to say was going to be a lie. He sighs and reminds himself to man up. To grow up. To be braver and better than this, and act thirty years old instead of two. He reminds himself that he’d like to be good and he’d like to be respected and he’d like to not get fired today over this. He wants to do it and make it good…for her, mostly, which is yet another frightening thought. He wants to do things for her, to be things for her, to be in her life or to just be near her life or to just be a part of something that she’s proud of. He licks his lips and thinks of honesty. He takes a deep and calming breath. “I got it, I can do it,” he tells her, and she nods like that’s obvious, like she knows he can. And he’s standing there watching her look at him like she trusts him and like she believes in him and she’s beautiful and he feels that ache tighten up and he feels something like total openness inside of him and he doesn’t look away from her when he tells the crew “Go, let’s go.”

They yell action.

He asks if he can talk to her.

She jokes about stealing his money.

He says: “I was just, um…” and he inhales and looks her in the eye, squinting, and the words tumble off his tongue without any effort at all, without any acting technique or mantra running through his mind. Simple. He just says “I’m in love with you,” and he means it, but it’s ok, and he can tell by the look on her face that she’s shocked with the honesty of it. She goes white and her eyes get glassy and he can feel his throat tighten further, he can feel this hope humming in him that maybe she’ll go off script and say it back or…

He has no idea what’s happening, who they are, what this is.

“What?” she asks. And he realizes she’s in the script, so he is too, and he goes on with what he’s supposed to say and eventually he’s almost crying because she’s rejecting him so well, so soundly, and an actual tear finally slips out because deep down he’s sure it’s for real…or that it feels real…or it‘s close to what real might be…or…

God, he doesn’t even know which way is up right now.

For the first time since this all started, he thinks he really, really hates his job.

He walks away from her.

Uh, hello total and utter confusion. How’s it going today? Great? Perfect.

She needs to sit down.

She needs to do that brown paper bag trick with the breathing and the blowing even though she’s pretty sure that never actually works. How can breathing in and out of a paper bag help someone who can’t breathe get fresh air? It doesn’t make any sense to her. Not that anything does at the moment. In fact she’s pretty bewildered. Confounded. Pick a word from Jane Austen that means totally fucked up and that’s what she is.

Jim either deserves some sort of Oscar/Emmy/Olympic-Medal combination, or else everything she thought she knew has spiraled into things she knows nothing about very, very quickly.

She’s going with the second option and she has no idea what to do about that. She wonders if this is because she apologized. Or maybe because their chemistry is ridiculous. Or maybe it’s just that his penis could hear her calling out to it all weekend and now it’s just answering, responding…ok this is just an insane train of thought.

She stands still as wardrobe steams her dress while she’s wearing it, and hair and makeup touch her up so she can film a few last scenes: some voice overs, a stray scene with Roy that they’ll probably cut anyway, and then the final scene of the episode which just happens to be a flash forward to the big ‘is this stupid bitch really going to marry that loser?’ moment. So…perfect.

She wants to vomit. She wanted to earlier and now she really does. Like…really. She breathes deep and focuses on centering her energy because usually that helps her to not puke.

“Are you…feeling ok?” Susan from make-up asks, and Pam nods, finding herself unable to really reply. Is she feeling ok? No, she’s not. She’s feeling confused. Befuddled. Distressed. Fucked up.

Also, queasy.

The way he said he was in love with her…god the way he looked at her…

Like he wanted her. Like she was killing him just by existing. Like if he had his choice of any woman in the world, in that moment, he would’ve chosen her without a single thought. She wants that look. She covets it. She wants to push him up against the wall and run her hands over him until that look is burned onto his face forever and every time she so much as glances at him he looks at her that particular way. Every time she breathes in his direction she wants him to forget Dawn and every other woman he’s ever laid his eyes on…

And she is way beyond unhealthily into him at this point.

But it’s just…he’s just so hot. And charming. And vulnerable, with her, lately. He’s been so…everywhere she is, and it’s addictive, and she loves the tightly coiled thrill that slips down her spine every time he grins at her.

Ugh maybe they should just…like…fuck and get it over with.

She’s sure it would thrill all the “Jam” fans of their show. (Yeah so she looks herself up online, whatever)

The problem with sex though is that she really genuinely does enjoy his company…she really genuinely does think that he’s brilliant and funny and talented and whatever else she told him this morning and she’s a little concerned for herself that this could really easily slip into something very intensely serious. She could fall in love with him, she thinks, maybe…probably…definitely.

Here comes the puke again. She swallows. She breathes through her nose.

This isn’t like Graham. She can have sex with Graham until the cows come home, but he’s boring and she doesn’t really have any kinds of feelings for him at all and she‘s sure she‘ll never be in love with him. He walks in a room and she says “hey.” Jim walks in a room and she has a level four nervous breakdown and turns into some kind of spastic jungle animal who can‘t decide whether she wants to eat him or sleep with him. Or something like that.

Ok so she is not going to panic. She is not going to lose her cool and faint or puke or hyperventilate or do any of those things that would be considered losing her cool. She’s going to remain calm. Be professional. This kind of thing happens all the time.

Hell, in college she did a scene with a totally nude male model standing right next to her and she didn’t falter once.

This can’t be harder than that.

Right?

Look, she thinks angrily, the problem is that whatever it was that just happened in the parking lot felt strange…like too much. Like real. It felt real, which never happens to her. She’s an expert at maintaining her mental distance and controlling her emotions in these kinds of scenes and somehow this particular one happened to shit all over her professionalism. God, he’d looked so affected. He’d looked so terrified and so vulnerable and he’d spoken to her between takes in this tone of voice that was like…help me. It was like he needed her to reach out and hold his hand or let him cry on her shoulder or something, like he had genuine desperation. She’d lost her cool.

She was in that scene. Really in it. And when she had rejected him, when she’d pulled out the specific words that were finely crafted to break the fictional Jim’s heart, her own heart kind of broke a little because…

Jesus he’d cried.

Now, thinking about it, she thinks she might cry. In fact the tears are imminent and Susan looks at her in warning, unsurprised because Pam cries kind of a lot, or she has lots of sort of random impulses of emotion.

“Hey, watch it,” Susan instructs, “you have on a bunch of mascara.” Pam nods and waves her hands in front of her face in a vain and girlish attempt to keep her tears at bay. “What’s the matter?” she wants to know and Pam just kind of sighs.

“Season finale,” Devon from wardrobe murmurs flatly, like Pam is just some over-emotional actress (which she is) who’s having an irrational response to the end of the season (which maybe she is.) Susan hums and accepts the response, and Pam’s just annoyed enough to stop crying.

“Are you two done?” she demands, shifting uncomfortably and ignoring the thoughts in her mind that spell J-I-M. They sigh and kind of stand back, looking her over. Finally they both nod and tell her she can leave and she thinks she just has to make it through this last scene and then she can get back in her own clothes and back to her own life and this will all go away.

Or else it won’t because she’s obsessed with Jim Halpert. Either way.

She comes up the stairs toward the office and he’s leaning by the elevator, against the wall, looking all brooding and delicious, and he stands up straight when she comes around the corner and she can’t breathe. At all. She doesn’t look at him and walks right by and then she stops and thinks shit. That was not what she meant to do. She meant to smile at him or reassure him or something…

She retraces her steps and he’s still standing there and she‘s really glad. She leans around the corner and grins at him.

“Hey,” she starts and she has to clear her throat because she almost doesn’t have a voice, “Um, are you going to the thing tonight at O’Flannigan’s?” she asks, kind of red faced and embarrassed because she’s not really sure what she’s asking him, but she just knows she wants them to still be them…to still have something kind of normal…and he smiles at her and she feels the sick feeling in her stomach subside for a second.

“Yeah,” he answers quietly and she bites her lip and raises her eyebrows at him.

“Good,” she proclaims, “Also, um,” she clears her throat again, “are you…like, ok?” she asks, amazed by her own bravery because she hadn’t planned on coming right out and asking him that, but her amazement fades as his smile falls and his eyes flash at her defensively.

“What?” he wonders.

“In the parking lot, you seemed not ok, or just…that wasn’t like you,” she continues, trying to explain herself without hurting his feelings but dying to know because she can’t stop thinking about it. He licks his lips and pins her with a stare and…wow, ok. She can’t breathe.

“Yeah,” he tells her firmly, “It was,” and she has no idea what that means.

So she just kind of nods awkwardly and says she’ll see him later before turning and heading into the office with that tight spiral of Jim Magic running slick and heavy down her spine.

She shakes herself as she heads toward the conference room to check in with the writers to see if anything’s been scripted out for these couple of solo scenes she has to do. Nothing has, so she heads out to lean against Jim’s desk and she waits for someone to tell her they’re ready to get going, and she tells herself to forget about the look on his face and to stop trying to figure out what exactly he meant.

Somebody yells action and she presses the phone to her ear, ad-libbing a one-sided conversation with her fictional mother and feeling her voice shake in a very real sign of impending tears. She has too many emotions. God, she hates this. Some people on the crew start whispering to each other and she hates that, too, so she has to clench her fingers into a fist to keep from breaking and rolling her eyes at them.

Then as she’s kind of mumbling something weepy to her imaginary mother she hears the door to the office swish open, and she waits for someone to yell cut because Jim is coming around the corner (still brooding and delicious) and…he isn’t in this scene.

She doesn’t remember him being in this scene.

But nobody says anything.

So, she stays in it, thinking ok, Pam, ad lib, this is what they pay you for, and she hangs up the phone, muttering Listen Jim like she’s about to apologize or like she’s going to ask him what the hell he’s doing here because that’s what she’s thinking, and then she stops thinking for a second because he isn’t pausing to hear her or to speak or to breathe, he’s just in front of her and he’s grabbing her.

He grabs her and he pulls her up close to him and she can’t breathe and then she doesn’t need to breathe because he’s doing it for her and he presses his mouth against her and her life is over.

This is it, she thinks. Oh my god.

He’s kissing her white hot like lava slipping down the side of a mountain and she barely suppresses some sort of moan or sigh because he smells so good and she only realizes now, in this moment, that she’s been waiting for this.

God she’s been waiting for this.

And her hands reach up and twist themselves into his hair and he kind of moans against her and his tongue snakes out and she can’t stand it, she feels hot and impatient and she opens her mouth to him and his tongue slides in and smoothes itself along the roof of her mouth and his hands are gripping her dress hard, and then he’s reaching down and running his hand along the curve of her ass and she chuckles into his mouth because he’s doing it on purpose because he knows she hates that kind of thing. She chuckles but she doesn’t push him away. She can’t push him away.

She turns her head a little and she wraps her arms totally around his neck and she runs her tongue along his bottom lip because she’s always wanted to do that.

She’s always wanted to do this.

She thinks his name over and over again and it’s like there aren’t any cameras. It’s like they’re not filming anything and this is just them.

Them.

Two regular people.

He breathes “Jesus” against her mouth and she nods her agreement and it’s like he wraps his arms around her tighter and she thinks he’s about to lift her up and set her on the desk behind her, or maybe it’s just that she’s dying for him to lift her up and set her on the desk. She’s kissing him smoky like she’s known his mouth before this and then she starts to think about pressing herself up against his naked skin…about unwrapping him and touching him and his muscles and bones and that’s when, suddenly, like a bucket of cold water she remembers that they are on camera, that the studio is magically silent, that this has happened in front of everyone they know and that there’s no way the writers and producers will cut it because it’s too good.

This belongs to other people now, she thinks in a moment of sudden clarity. This is going to be ripped apart by fans and watched and re-watched and analyzed like Jim and Pam are the people that they’re not…

She pulls back from him and he looks at her like heavy lidded and wanting and hot for her and she takes a deep breath and whispers: “What the hell was that?”

They’re staring at each other and she can tell that he’s overwhelmed and confused but somehow that doesn’t make her feel any better because she needs this to be just the two of them or she’ll die, she’ll totally collapse into herself because this should be just the two of them…or…

Jesus, what the hell was that.

They’re both totally frozen in place and she’s hot for him and angry with him and confused by him all at the same time. His stare on her is warm, full, and she doesn’t know what to say, how she feels, how she can talk to him in a room full of microphones.

They both jerk and look away from each other when the director yells cut and runs onto the set laughing and clapping and smiling and the studio erupts into applause and cat calls as panicked tears leap up into Pam’s eyes and her stare floats back to Jim’s face, to the way he’s biting his lip and the way he’s looking down at the carpet and the way he’s breathing heavy and she’s so confused…she’s so…

The director shakes his hand and then pats her on the back and calls them a couple of geniuses and she looks over at him, stunned, totally freaked out.

And that’s when she realizes that no matter what she does, this thing between the two of them is going to partly belong to somebody else. This is somebody’s script and somebody’s concept and somebody’s favorite television show and she feels powerless…she feels control slipping away from her, and she looks back at Jim, panicked, with these tears hanging in her eyes because how can this be her life? How did this happen? She looks back at him and she thinks maybe she’s silently begging him to tell her this wasn’t for the show…this wasn’t him being somebody else…she’s silently begging him.

He’s just looking back at her careful and he opens his mouth like he’s about to say something and god she so needs to hear whatever it is, but then…

“Do we want to try this again with a little less tongue, kids?” the director wonders, “We’re not on Showtime, you know,” and then he laughs and turns away from them and points at the camera guy, “Did you know about this? Did they tell you they were going to do this?” Everybody on set shakes their heads including Pam because…nope nobody told her they were going to do this.

Jim kind of fakes a laugh and looks over at the director and then at the crew, but it’s only for a second and then he’s back to looking at her with that furrow to his brow and with the sheen of her kiss on his lips and he takes a step closer to her and speaks to her low and intimate, and it sends another thrill down her spine, and she doesn‘t know whether to be angry or to kiss him again.

“I’m sorry,” he starts, “I um…I wasn’t really thinking about…um…Are you ok?” he asks, and she sucks in a deep and audible breath and nods at him. “We can ask for five,” he tells her and she thinks he sounds the way she’s imagined he might in the bedroom, all low and gravelly and delicious, but she stops herself because it doesn’t matter how he sounds in the bedroom. It doesn’t matter how painful it is that her honesty is being sold to the highest bidder. It doesn’t matter what’s real because she’s getting paid to film a television show.

She’s getting paid to do this.

Now.

She blinks at him and steadies herself, hardens herself, pushes her feelings down and away.

“Nope,” she says, “Let’s do it,” and it’s like a call to arms or a battle cry or a white flag waving in the air. He squints at her for a second, assessing, seeming almost sad for her or sorry for her, but then it’s like he accepts it, accepts her and this and cameras and contracts, and he hardens, too, nodding in agreement and heading back out to the hallway.

She picks up the phone and they yell action and she’s talking to her mother and this time she’s determined to be calm. This time her voice is shaky because she makes it shaky and she’s regrouped somehow and found her composure and she thinks it’s because of how much in this with her he is, and she knows what‘s coming and everything will be fine.

But then he turns the corner, still brooding, and her breath genuinely catches in her throat.

She hangs the phone up and he’s standing in front of her and she’s going to cry, and this time he like sweeps her up.

He doesn’t grab her, he smoothes his arms around her and he kisses her soft and real and this makes her heart beat even faster than the first one because the first kiss had been unexpected and full of their obvious lust for each other…

This kiss has don’t cry and it’s ok and thank you laced through it. The first kiss was good, but this kiss is something else and she has no idea what to do with it.

She presses her mouth back against him and runs her fingers through his hair and she holds onto him because that’s the only way she won’t fall apart right now.

He kisses her like he’s sorry and like he’s concerned and like he’s in love with her, and she’s completely dying inside because she thinks she‘s been dreaming about somebody kissing her like this her entire life and she‘s sure she‘ll be remembering this kiss forever even though it might not be meant for her, really meant for her, because she doesn‘t even know who she is anymore.

When he pulls away and they look at each other she feels herself start to cry again and she wonders how this could be happening like this, how she could be so connected to him and how she could be confusing reality with fiction so soundly, and she wonders which parts of all of this have been true all along. She wonders which parts of this are a lie.

They yell cut and Jim starts to say something to her but she doesn’t think she can stand to hear it, so she brushes past him and heads to her dressing room so that she can fall apart without a fucking audience.

For once.

She’s like sobbing in her dressing room.

Or not really sobbing but she’s got the messy tears and the tissues and the hiccups and everything. There’s no moaning or groaning, but it’s pretty involved crying, she would say. And she hates herself for it because she doesn’t have any real problems, she’s doing fine, she’s not starving in Africa or anything. She’s on T.V. She’s got a nice house and a caring mother and she has plenty of money in the bank.

So she has no excuse for this teary mess that she is at the moment.

Except for the fact that it feels like somebody pushed a lawn mower through her insides and bagged up what was left to scatter it around the nation. Or something like that. She blows her nose and feels sorry for herself for a second.

Then she sits and she stares at herself in the mirror. Quiet. Honestly looking for something.

Looking for someone.

She’s trying so hard to figure out which of these people she really is and the only thing she can come up with is that she’s all of them…she’s all of this, and all this time she’s been so concerned with professionalism and the proper way to play a role when in reality she’s just…

She’s just always been Pam. She stares at herself in the mirror.

She thinks if she’s always been Pam than Jim has always been Jim, and she thinks the parking lot was him and those kisses were him and she believes him and this is all them and it feels dangerous and she’s going to have to do something. This thing with them is probably the most real thing she’s ever had, and she thinks that’s poetic. Or sad.

The first thing she did was get out of that stupid dress and pull on a pair of jeans and a sweater because she thought if she was in somebody else’s clothes for one more second she would dissolve into them and lose herself. But now, sitting here in these jeans without make-up and looking much more like the person she knows, she still isn’t sure…she still feels like there’s something hard to recognize in her reflection. She doesn’t really know herself anymore.

But, god, it seems like she knows Jim. Like she knows his emotions and his defense mechanisms. She knows every line and curve of his face. She knows his body (to an extent, although not as much as she‘d like, but that is not what she‘s supposed to be figuring out right now,) she knows his clothes, she knows his smell…

She knows him and she never really realized that until she had her tongue in his mouth.

Fitting, she thinks sardonically, half-chuckling at herself and pushing her hands through her hair in defeat. At least the crying seems to have stopped and she can focus now. She’s settled and still now for what feels like the first time in months. She doesn’t know what she wants or who she is, but she knows she’s tired of thinking. She’s silent.

She breathes.

There’s a tap at the door and she doesn’t look up, doesn’t respond, because she’s tired and she knows he’ll come in without an invitation. She accepts that she knows things now.

She knows that he does what he feels. She knows that he takes what he wants, and she likes it.

She knows that he’s really hot, and it’s unfortunately distracting.

Just as she predicted he steps into the room and closes the door behind him, and she turns to look at him, to take in the way that he’s standing there with his hands on his hips, dressed in his own clothes and looking just as ‘I somehow survived a tornado’ as she does. Looking just as still and quiet as she does. He looks at her, sweeps his gaze along her face and her red-rimmed eyes and her messily unkempt hair and he exhales a big sounding breath. He puffs out his cheeks with it like he’s totally…just…

And she nods because she gets it.

He shifts on his feet and looks down at the floor, frowning in thought, and then he kind of tips his head to the side and she grins because it’s cute. He’s cute. He’s so…

“I, uh,” he starts, and she chuckles and he looks up at her in surprise, probably having expected her to demand his head on a platter, not expecting her to laugh because this is all so…unplanned. He breathes out a laugh, too, and holds his hands out to either side. “I don’t even know what to say at this point,” he tells her, still laughing, and she nods and stands up, hazily heading over to the cupboard in the far corner of the room, pretending she doesn’t notice the way his eyes follow her as she moves, and pulling out a Hershey’s bar, ripping it open and offering him half.

He nods, and she hands it to him and eats some of it herself because, Jesus, does she need chocolate right now.

She thinks she should tell him it’s ok. She thinks she should confide in him and explain how much she doesn’t want this to have been some other Jim and some other Pam, but based on the look on his face she thinks maybe he doesn’t need to be told that and it makes her glad, plus she keeps accidentally looking down at his pants and like licking her lips which is really stupid of her, so she’s afraid instead of saying something good and honest she’ll say something raunchy, and, with that in mind, she doesn’t say anything. Because really she’s too afraid.

So eventually she sits down, and his eyes follow her as she pulls her legs up and sits Indian style, and she’s just there eating and looking at him and trying not to remember the way he’d tasted, and he sits down in the chair next to her, all masculine with his elbows braced on his knees, and he eats too and they just sit there. Silent. The air kind of humming with that particular Jim-and-Pam brand, only tighter, kind of tension that they’re both really, really trying to ignore. Sometimes she sighs, and sometimes he sniffs, sometimes he shakes his head at his own thoughts and sometimes she nods at hers in quiet resignation.

And they just sit there.

Together.

Wondering who they are, and wondering what they’re supposed to do now, and she thinks probably wondering what exactly they both look like naked and all in the sheets and pretzeled. She‘s wondering that, anyway. She’s also back to thinking about his penis because he’s sitting here, so, like…really what the hell is she supposed to think about? Damnit why does she have to know what it’s like for him to kiss her? It’s so fucking distracting…

“Are you staying here during the hiatus?” he asks and she’s ripped from her thoughts and she nods, and he looks down at her lips and he nods.

And they sit there, and she tells herself not to undress him in her mind.

“Did you talk to Toby about whether or not we’re supposed to bring anything to the cast party?” she asks and he blinks and swallows his candy.

“Uh, no, I didn’t ask.” And she nods. And they sit there. And the silence stretches and she’s terrified to say anything about anything substantial and so she just chews because it’s something else to do with her tongue besides say something stupid or stick it in his mouth or ear or wherever, and then he takes a deep breath and she feels her stomach get tight because she knows before he says anything that he’s going to say something. “So, should we talk about the fact that we just made out in front of everyone?” he asks, almost comically but not quite, almost depressed, but not quite. She sucks in some air.

“Yeah, probably,” she answers, but then she goes silent again and they’re both kind of looking at the floor and his knee starts to bounce as he nods his head and takes another bite of the candy bar and the tension just keeps getting thicker. He’s chewing and she’s chewing and neither of them are talking at all because she just can’t get herself to ask the important questions or state the important statements.

She sits there and she tells herself not to think about how his skin would feel against her once he’d worked up that perfect amount of Jim Halpert stubble that she sometimes notices.

“Did you want to talk about it now?” he asks and she licks her lips and he stares at them and she thinks if they talk about it now she‘ll jump him so it‘s probably a really bad idea...

“Not really,” she admits and he exhales loudly, like thankfully, and stands, rubbing his hands down his thighs like his palms are sweaty and she watches him and she thinks: Damnit, I have to get out of this room, which is feeling smaller and smaller by the second, because otherwise I‘ll be the one running my hands down his thighs. And then she blushes because…really?

“Great, me neither,” he mutters and she smiles because they’re ridiculous and too aware of each other and they both know it, but it’s something more than being nothing and looking at herself in the mirror and sitting by herself and wondering who the hell she’s supposed to be. At least this way they’re ridiculous and tension filled and they’re doing it together, even though she’s sure this version of whatever this is won’t last very long because she‘s literally going to lose it, if she hasn‘t already. He inhales. “Except can I just…” and she narrows her eyes at him in warning, but he ignores it because…of course he ignores it. He sits back down and she sighs. “I have to say that it was pretty fantastic,” he mutters, and she kind of almost opens her mouth to respond, but he stops her. “The kissing,” he explains, his tone flat and carefully unconcerned like he’s a science teacher explaining a Bunsen burner, and she raises an eyebrow at him and shakes her head and ignores the blush that‘s still staining her cheeks and the way that she loves that he’s said out loud exactly what she’d been thinking this whole time.

“Oh yeah, definitely hot,” she tells him, her voice kind of matching his in its scientific analysis-type sound, and he looks at her, smiling, happy almost and she thinks she likes that about him. How he can be happy during things like this, during confusion and chaos. “The first one, specifically, was hot,” she clarifies, still flat sounding, and he chuckles.

“Impulsive kisses are always hot,” he says and he looks like he‘s remembering something, but she ignores that, because she’s not sure she wants to know. “The second one was also good,” he argues and she shrugs and pretends to consider it.

“The second one was…different,” she tells him, almost testing the waters, but still too nervous and wary of him to come right out and say exactly what she thinks of that second kiss…what she thinks it means. He nods at her and kind of looks down at the carpet thoughtfully.

“That kind of kiss is good,” he states, quiet, and she’s sitting there pondering him again, wondering what exactly goes on in his head, thinking she’d like to know everything about where he comes from so that she can understand him better. “But impulsive is always better,” he mumbles finally, jarring her from her considerations. She shrugs because…what the hell are they even talking about at this point? She is not always good with a metaphor, particularly when she’s distracted by kissing and penises and things. She chews on the inside of her cheek in thought.

“Yeah, I guess,” she says and he looks up at her for a long and kind of bottomless moment.

“Anyway,” he finally sighs and she feels one side of her mouth pull up in a half smile and she thinks her grandmother would call her ‘smitten’ at this point, but, god look at him. Of course she’s smitten. “O’Flannigan’s?” he asks and her half smile turns into a full one and she nods, standing and reaching to grab her purse, and her fingers are wrapping themselves around the strap when she feels him reach out and grab her forearm and her eyes close in defeat because really…uh…she’d almost made it out of here alive.

He pulls her fast around to face him and he slides his fingers through her hair and he bends down low and presses his already open mouth against hers and she thinks he tastes like chocolate this time and she thinks she’s going to die. He’s going to kill her with this shit. She moans into his mouth and wraps her arms around his neck and drops her purse onto the floor behind him because she really can’t hold onto much of anything right now, including her own composure. His fingers slip up and beneath her sweater and hit the skin of her back and she arches against him because it’s so much what she wants and he spells her name out on her mouth, and she breathes his name out into his. His hands inch down until they’re wrapped tight around her hips and pulling her up hard against him and she’s biting at his lower lip and he’s gripping her jeans like they’re his ever-slipping control and she shifts so that her thigh is pressing up and into him and he groans, but it‘s like a we can‘t keep doing this because I’m losing my cool sort of sound and she recognizes it immediately.

She recognizes it and she backs off because otherwise they’ll never make it to the cast party and they’ll end up doing something they’ll regret.

He exhales heavy and pulls away from her and it’s like he’s blinking the haze from his eyes. He shakes himself and she presses her hands to her forehead because she almost can’t see straight with the lust pumping through her veins and her breath is heaving in her chest and he‘s licking his lips and she stares at them before forcing herself to look up at his eyes, which are annoyingly amused. She drops her hands to her sides and glares at him.

He reaches back and picks up her purse and hands it to her.

“See?” he bends down and whispers into her ear and she kind of shivers and hates herself for it, “Impulsive,” he states and she leans away from him and rolls her eyes.

“O’Flannigan’s,” she says and he sweeps an arm out toward the door, sighing in amused resignation.

“After you.”

“Did you want to ride together?” he asks her, trying to keep his grin from showing as he glances with interest at the very similar grin he can see trying to emerge on her lips. Come on, he thinks impatiently, smile so I can smile. Do it. But she doesn’t, and so he doesn’t. “We can take my car,” he offers.

“No,” she spits and he almost laughs because it‘s like they haven‘t gotten to like each other…it‘s like almost back to her hating him and for some reason he thinks he kind of likes that. Like for some reason that pulls tight on his muscles and makes him feel warm.

“No?” he repeats incredulously. “Really? We’re going to the same place,” he informs her, and she shoots him an irritated look, which eggs him on to continue, “Same street. Same parking lot. Same beer once we get inside. Same cast, same show, same uh, I don’t know I’m running out, but the point of this is that we’re both going to O’Flannigan’s so I just think it might be better for the, um, the environment if we…”

“Hey,” she interrupts and he feels a bit victorious because he thinks he can finally see that smile of hers really poking through.

“Yes?” he wonders innocently.

“Shut up.”

He feigns insult, pressing a hand to his chest, and she glances at him and finally she smiles…but it’s like more, it’s like she smiles wide and toothy and warm and he feels this kind of tightening like a tug in his chest and he has to look away from her. He has to look away or else he’s really afraid he’ll plant a fourth kiss on her and he figures at some point he should let her take the lead in this. He should back off and try to really figure out what she’s feeling instead of knowing for sure what he’s feeling and groping her because of it. She should get to do some of the groping. Although, he thinks, it’s not like she hasn’t been doing her fair share…

It takes him a second to realize they’ve both gone suddenly silent and are just standing there in the parking lot staring down at the blacktop. He figures it’s his fault. He clears his throat awkwardly and inhales audibly and drags his stare up to look her in the eye.

“Uh, ok,” he concedes, kind of having lost track of what they were even discussing. Car-pooling, he realizes finally, and he nods once at her. “Well, I’ll see you over there then, I guess,” he offers and she kind of squints at him and tilts her head and he‘s transfixed by her. He figures he should be walking away at this point but instead he‘s just standing there, and he really can’t move once she reaches out and brushes her fingers against his arm and he glances down, surprised, confused, feeling her touch like it’s lit matches or fresh ice.

His stare lingers there until she pulls away like she’s ashamed or embarrassed. Like she only just then realized she was touching him. She shakes herself.

“Um,” she mumbles and he almost finds her amusing, except for that he’s not sure this is a laughing matter because he feels like his life is changing, shifting in front of his eyes, drifting like a magnet that‘s been flipped. He swallows and raises his eyebrows at her in encouragement. “I was just…” she tries again, and she looks down and laughs at herself, shakes her head at herself, tucks an errant strand of hair behind her ear and it makes him itch to reach up and do it for her. Wow, this is all…new. “Um, I guess I was thinking of walking since it’s so nice out,” she confesses and he nods in interest.

“Huh, and here I am talking about the environment like an idiot, when you’ve already gone all San Francisco on me,” he mutters and she chuckles and he feels this humming kind of pulse in his veins because her laughter is like alcohol or pot or heroin, not that he really knows what heroin is like but he hears it’s super addictive, so…

Anyway.

She laughs. God. She laughs and he thinks he really is in love with her.

And that thought probably makes him go pale, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“Walk with me,” she offers, and it reminds him of the other night in her apartment when she’d asked him to stay. It reminds him of things. He sucks in a heavy lungful of air and nods at her slowly.

“Yeah, ok,” he says, “But just because I don’t want you to be in any danger walking alone,” and she huffs indignantly and he’s pleased because that was the reaction he’d been hoping for.

“In Scranton? What am I, like, ten years old?” she scoffs, “Forget it, drive yourself,” she says, giving him a gentle shove back toward his car and he laughs down at her and she looks up at him and god he feels like Harrison Ford or something. He wonders if anybody has ever looked at him this way, all shining and happy and enjoying his company. He figures probably not. He thinks she looks at him like that because she really sees him. He thinks she knows him, somehow.

He’d thought it earlier, here in this parking lot, and again when he’d kissed her in the office, with the cameras rolling and his insecurities completely on display. He’d been afraid, nervous, skittish, and he’d needed her to be with him and to help him out a little, to tell him it was ok, to hear him and to trust him and to just stand there and be strong and good and to understand that this was him and he wasn’t lying to her…he wasn’t playing at anything…he’d needed that. He’d needed her to forget with him. To forget the cameras. To forget the script. To be with him and to kiss him back. And in those moments, god, it was like she totally got it. She had this look on her face like she knew, like she believed him, and she’d never really looked at him that way before and it had been…

He’d wanted to pocket that look.

He’d wanted to have that on her face forever because really there have been a lot of times when he could really use someone who believed in him. He thinks he could really use someone around who can look at him like that, like he’s somebody, like he’s real and he has genuine stuff inside of him. He’d needed her earlier and she had totally been there and he’d thought, ok this is it, I‘m going to have this in my life starting right now.

And since then it’s like he’s afraid to be away from her for too long because he thinks maybe it’ll wear off.

Can understanding wear off, he wonders?

Can knowing somebody be forgotten like you forget your locker combination over the summer during high school?

He figures it can, which is why he’d shown up in her dressing room after filming was over and which is why now he follows her when she turns and starts to walk toward O’Flannigan’s. He doesn’t want this particular fifteen minutes to be their summer vacation. He doesn’t want that look to fade away. Does this count as stalking, he wonders? Does this count as creepy? Probably, but he’s not entirely sure he cares.

“So,” he starts, really mostly trying to distract himself from his own thoughts, trying to keep things clean and rated PG instead of NC17. “What does Pam Beesly do during her time off?” he wonders and she crosses her sweater-covered arms and sighs in thought, considering the question and tipping her head to the side in a way that makes him grin down at his shoes.

“Umm…” she hums, “water polo?” And he laughs.

“Very Ralph Lauren of you,” he assesses. She squints up at him again and he really likes it when she does that.

“Excuse me,” she argues, “but Ralph Lauren implies plain polo, regular polo, the polo with the horses and chaps and everything. I will be playing the aquatic version, the kind in the pool with the throwing of the thing with the…”

“You have no idea what water polo is, do you?” he asks and she laughs again and he’s not sure he can even be around her right now. He’s got all of this kissing dancing around in his head and she’s charming and intelligent and so different from the other women he usually surrounds himself with and she looks at him in that certain way. He thinks he’s going to spontaneously combust from wanting too much from her before the night is over.

“Not…really.” And she grimaces at herself and he thinks she’s adorable, kissable, totally just…ok, and they’re almost there but he stops walking. He turns to her and he pulls at her arm so that she stops too and she looks confused. He feels bad for a second because he genuinely doesn’t mean to act so…weird. Annoying? Stupid. Pick something and he doesn’t really mean to be that. What he means to be is whatever the hell she thinks she wants right now in this moment.

Wait, no. No, shit, he means to be himself. Right. Be himself. Jim. Jim Jim totally Jim all of the time. He squares his shoulders and readjusts his belt a little.

“Hang on just…um…” He shakes his head. “We’re not going to talk about this…us…whatever this is, right?” he asks and she looks serious then, afraid maybe. He wants to kiss her so badly. That thought only urges him forward with this, though, so he furrows his brow down at her.

“Uh, yeah, right,” she says, nodding, glancing around like she’s nervous they’ll be overheard. He chews on his bottom lip for a second and considers this, considers what it is he’s getting at, what he wants to say to her.

“Right, so…let’s…um,” and he shakes his head in frustration, “We’re cool, right?” he asks, and she starts to grin, to chuckle, and he almost wants to be insulted or something but instead he grins too.

“Are we cool? Like you mean rad?” she mocks, “Like hip to be square, or something?” she wonders and by the time she gets to that he’s laughing out loud and he hates that she’s so funny because she’s making this impossible. “Yes, I think it’s safe to say we’re cool, dude,” she tells him like she’s some kind of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or like she’s Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.

“Ok, ok,” he concedes, “That’s cute, you’re very cute, are you finished?” he wonders, and she looks smug and pleased with herself. She chews on the inside of her cheek and watches him with sparkling eyes and he’s even more defeated by her than he ever was before. “I’m just saying, let’s just…have fun. Be normal or whatever like let’s not…you know?” and she nods and it’s mock serious and he rolls his eyes at her. “Whatever, I’m an idiot,” he decides, starting to walk away until she reaches out and grabs his sleeve, stopping him cold.

“No, you’re right, you’re right. Let’s be normal and have fun,” she agrees. “And in the spirit of being normal,” she says in a very official sounding voice that makes him raise an eyebrow down at her, “you need cologne or something,” she tells him, “You’re practically an ash tray standing there. You’re like a D.A.R.E commercial or like those pictures in the dentists office with the yellow-ness and the rotten gums and all the like blood and missing teeth or whatever,” and she starts to back away from him and he’s kind of turned on despite the disgusting imagery, like he wants to push her up against this wall over here and take off her clothes and just…right…he’s an idiot.

“Wow, Sunshine,” he responds, playing along, matching her wit with his own, “I am going to take that as a compliment. In fact, you go ahead inside and I’ll stay here and have a cigarette, just for you,” he decides earnestly and she tips her head at him like she’s touched.

“Favors, promises…god,” she sighs, “I swoon.”

He chuckles as she walks away and heads inside, glancing at him over her shoulder and tossing him a wink and he’s a goner but he’s not sure he cares…at all. He lights a cigarette and shakes his head, wondering if he should be concerned by the fact that everything seems different now. Brighter. Better. Full of Pam.

Fantastic, he thinks, and he doesn’t even notice the crowd of barely dressed girls that Toby invited pushing their way into the bar. He doesn’t notice much, really. He’s distracted.

He’s smoking distracted, and then he’s heading into the bar distracted, and then he’s saying hi to everyone totally distracted and trying to find her in the darkened room while Kelly is rattling on about nail polish and Ryan is following him around asking if he can get him anything and Dwight is playing his harmonica mock-seriously and standing on top of a table. He spots Pam standing on the floor in front of Dwight laughing and clapping and just looking so girl-next-door adorable that Jim decides to head over there and, whatever, pretend not to like her.

He’s taken three steps when someone wraps their arms around his waist from behind and he’s really irritated before he turns around and then once he does turn around he’s practically disgusted because it’s a stranger. Some girl he’s never met before, or at least doesn’t remember meeting, who’s giggling and smiling and tugging at the hem of his t-shirt. He figures he should probably be thrilled. He remembers that there was a time not that long ago (A week? Two weeks?) when he would’ve been thrilled. But right now really all he’s thinking about is the fact that Pam is over there and he badly wants to go talk to her and then he realizes that maybe Pam is seeing this and getting the wrong idea and uh…shit.

Shit.

He’s trying to extricate himself from this no-named girl’s arms and he’s planning what he’ll say and what sort of escape route he’ll take to flee from her when she grabs his shoulders and then just leans forward and sticks her tongue in his mouth.

She just sticks her tongue…in his mouth.

He has no fucking clue who she is. God, he thinks, people are bizarre. Or pathetic. Or just gross, maybe.

He grabs her by the shoulders and pushes her away, confused, still distracted, wishing she’d just evaporate or hoping he’ll wake up and realize he hit his head and this was all a freak kind of nightmare or something and he’s not really standing here with this laughing drunk girl and her wandering tongue.

“Oh my god,” she mumbles, “I’m a huge fan!” And he just stands there and readjusts his cap and tugs at his belt and kind of frowns down at her trying to come up with an appropriate response to whatever just happened. He’s pretty much at a loss.

“Uh…” he mumbles, and he glances over his shoulder and Pam is standing right where he last saw her, but she’s standing there with this look on her face and her arms all crossed and she looks… He swallows.

She looks pissed.

She looks really…royally pissed.

Shit.

This stupid bitch and her stupid tongue just totally ruined his night.

Here’s the thing, he feels like it’s beyond obvious that this didn’t mean anything. The, whatever, the attack of the stranger’s tongue. He feels like it’s totally obvious, like he reacted right away, he pushed her off of him, he’s pretty sure he looked like somebody had puked on his shoes or something, and yet, still, for the past hour he’s been carefully shadowing a very frosty and very restless Pam Beesly around the bar while she tries to escape him like he‘s a leper or Godzilla. She won’t turn around, she won’t look at him, she won’t talk to him, and instead she’s practically running around making a spectacle of herself, laughing and clapping and having a purposefully good time deliberately without him.

Yeah, whatever, he thinks angrily, he gets that she’s mad.

He doesn’t get why she’s mad. But he gets that the madness is there and reigning like Napoleon or Fidel Castro. He gets that she’s all Taming of the Shrew, and apparently he is her Petruccio, the bane of her existence. Again. Or still.

He’s ashamed of himself really. He’s gotten all But soft what light through yonder window breaks about this Pam situation and it’s embarrassing. He’s supposed to be Don Juan. Joe Cool. He’s supposed to be Peter Gallagher in Sex, Lies, and Videotape and instead he’s, like, James Spader with the impotence and the girlishness and that fucking hair and everything.

But he isn’t sure he can do anything about the transformation from Jim Halpert to James Spader. He isn’t sure he wants to do anything about it. Because she is this person who he thinks maybe he’s supposed to have around. Or…he thinks if he believed in past lives, which he doesn’t because he really doesn’t believe in much of anything, but if he did, he might say that in all of the lives he’s already lived, Pam Beesly has been there. Somehow. Looking at him in that certain way. Bringing this certain sizzle to his veins and making him smile. Sometimes. He catches her eye from across the room and she only looks at him for a second but it’s like instant lethal injection and he can feel the poison of it seep into his blood stream and render him completely useless and disinterested in any of the other girls in the bar.

This, he thinks, is a fucking first.

He feels defeated and he feels like he wants to grab her and kiss her and get inside of her life. He wants to confess things to her and like get all up in her space and her house and like leave his sweatshirts in her closet and stuff. He wants in. He wants in her life and in her place and in her head and in her body and whatever else he can get in that she owns, he wants in.

And he’s terrified of everything.

He thinks maybe he’s a little bit drunk. Off of either one thing or another.

Not a lot. Not like a panelist on the Match Game, or Dean Martin in concert, or his mother on most national holidays. Not wasted. Just kind of full of beer. Full of Pam.

Warm.

He decides he doesn’t give a shit if she’s pissed at him. He decides if he has to man up, she has to man up and just say it, just yell at him or punch him or do whatever it is that she wants to do, because the silent treatment makes him want to shoot himself in the face. He’d really like permission to tell her some things. He’d really like for them to be honest with each other.

He thinks he sort of remembers them agreeing not to talk about any of this tonight, but he orders another beer and ignores that, chugging down half of it and receiving a kind of skeptical look from John O’Flannigan. He glares back at him, and sets the beer down and decides this is going to happen right now. He’s going to do this with her right now.

He wipes his mouth and he heads over to where she’s wrapping her arms around Roy’s neck from behind, and she’s laughing at something and she’s taken off her sweater because it’s hot and all she has on is this tank top, which is amazingly snug, and she’s bending down just perfectly and he swallows and he hates that she’s been flirting with everyone else all night. He taps her on the shoulder and then he bends down low so he can speak directly into her ear and he tries to ignore the eyeful of cleavage that he‘s getting because he won‘t be able to do any of this if he focuses on that at all. She rolls her eyes at him.

“Can I see you outside for a second?” he wonders, and she sighs dramatically and shoots a look at Roy who kind of raises his eyebrows at her and turns away from the situation wisely, because Roy is always pretty good at this kind of thing, turning a blind eye.

“I am trying to enjoy the cast party,” she informs him and he bites at the inside of his cheek and plants his hands on his hips.

“It’ll only take like thirty seconds, your highness, then you can get back to whatever it is you’ve been pretending to do,” he offers sarcastically and she chuckles at him, bitter, cynical, angry, and he thinks for the thousandth time that he’s not sure he gets it. He’d like to be enjoying the cast party, too, and that is what drives him to grip her elbow and pull her outside, where thankfully nobody is smoking or lingering and they can do this without an audience for once in their lives. He stops a few steps from the door and he pivots so he’s facing her, and she pulls her elbow out of his hand like a petulant five year old. They both just stand there having some kind of pissed off staring contest until he eventually can’t stand it.

“Go ahead,” he offers impatiently, sort of waving his arms toward her and shifting on his feet and trying really hard to ignore the way that the temperature has dropped out here and he’s a little bit cold.

“Go ahead what?” she wonders, her eyes on everything but him and her arms crossed angrily over her chest, and she‘s all skin and he can‘t stand it. He sighs.

“Just say whatever you want to say. I can’t deal with the glaring and the heaving sighs and all that bullshit, my mother fed me plenty of it growing up. So, just…speak,” he orders, readjusting his baseball cap so that he can see her more clearly in the evening lamp light. She’s chewing on her lower lip and she looks…he thinks she looks mostly sad. But then she inhales and the anger is back and she spits it out at him like it’s something she sucked out of a wound.

“It’s fine,” she offers and he almost rolls his eyes at her, “Whatever I don’t have anything to say,” she declares, staring at the hardware store across the street hard like if she just focuses enough the glass will shatter. He clears his throat.

“Yeah I can tell,” he mumbles and she finally turns her head, she finally pierces him with a stare and she finally squares off like maybe her tongue is actually a fully loaded machete, and maybe he‘s totally a dead man.

“Look, you can do whatever you want and you can go around just…whatever…kissing” she mutters, “whoever you want. It’s fine, you run around meaninglessly kissing everyone and that’s totally fine with me, it’s not even my business anyway, so I’m not mad and I have nothing to say,” she decides and it’s so much less than convincing that he squints down at her and shakes his head. He thinks this is more jealousy and less anything else and he thinks she keeps making things impossible for him on purpose…he thinks this is her shit piled up on him, and he wishes she‘d quit doing it. He thinks she looks really hot right now. He clears his throat again.

“Pam that was not my fault, I have no idea who that girl is and she just…she grabbed me,” he explains and he realizes he sounds stupid about halfway through the sentence, so his volume kind of deflates until he’s barely speaking aloud. This is all backwards, or dishonest, certainly confusing he thinks. Certainly bottomless and like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole. She’s rolling her eyes and sighing and he feels his jaw clench. “Can you lay off with the attitude?” he wonders. “You‘re killing me, here, Pam,” he mumbles, looking down at her and getting distracted by her skin and her shoulders and, god…he sighs. “Where is your sweater?” he asks, lacking in patience and feeling the beer he’s had swimming around in his head a little, “And you’ve been flirting and smiling at practically everyone except me, and…just…You‘re murdering me with like a really dull edged sword,” he sighs again and rubs at his eyes in exhaustion.

“What?” she shouts and he jerks his head up in surprise, “What the hell does that even mean?! I mean…what is with you?!” she finally barks and he thinks her yelling is probably better than stewing in silence so he’s almost relieved. “What is with you and all of this? You‘re like everywhere I go and you‘re cutting yourself and you‘re in my bathroom and just standing there looking at me like…I mean, look at you right now! You‘re like standing there all good looking and,” she looks him over, “tall, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with that.” Good looking and tall, he thinks. Fascinating. And he would love to interrupt and linger on that statement, but she just continues her rant without giving him a chance. “How am I supposed to handle all of this stuff with you? I mean I just I’m so confused and I have no idea how this even happened! This is not supposed to be like this! I mean, jesus, I hate you. Remember how I’m supposed to hate you?” He’s not sure what kind of question that is, so he just shrugs at her. “Ugh, we said we weren’t going to talk about this today,” she reminds him and he nods and crosses his arms, mirroring her, tilting his head and considering her, quietly enjoying the fact that she‘s accidentally admitted to finding him attractive.

“Yeah well obviously that didn’t work out,” he assesses with a grin. She sighs and leans back against the building and seems pensive for a moment, seems thoughtful and looks up at the darkness of the sky like that will help her, save her, will do something to make this easier. He’s pretty sure though that that isn’t going to happen. “Good looking?” he asks, joking because he doesn’t know how else to help her, how else to be the sky for her in this moment, and she huffs.

“So not the point, Jim,” she scolds and he kind of chuckles quietly, but his amusement is short-lived. “I just…” she says, and she shifts her stare to the sidewalk beneath their feet and she pushes at some non-existent gravel beneath her sneakers and he thinks he can imagine her as a little girl, forced into dresses and patent leather shoes and holding her mother’s hand with unenthusiastic fingers, pouting, adorable. He shakes himself and tries to focus and not be quite as completely in love with her as he is. “This is all a little bit confusing for me,” she admits almost tearfully and he starts to nod, he starts to agree, but then he waits because he doesn’t know whether he should voice his agreement or just shut the fuck up and let her keep talking. He goes with the silence, and eventually she continues and suddenly she’s angry again, and he‘s an idiot, he guesses. He keeps staying quiet when he should say something, and he’s a hypocrite because he’s the one standing here begging her to speak and he‘s really the one choosing silence over and over again. “Whatever,” she says for like the thousandth time, in that way that girls do with the toss of the hands and the cock of the head, “I didn’t even want to talk about this but you dragged me out here, so I mean,” she sighs, “just forget it,” she orders, pushing off the wall and turning toward him and looking him in the eye so he gets that fix of poison again and he feels himself losing whatever little bit of cool he might have left.

“Pam, come on,” he tries, reaching out and grabbing onto her shoulder to keep her from walking away and she rips herself away from his grasp.

“Don’t,” she orders. “Just…Kiss whoever you want,” she spits and he just stands there staring at her and he stands there angry with her and he can’t even see straight anymore because…shouldn‘t this be easier? She’s making things impossible. He can’t really breathe, he can’t really…he just…

She sighs again and shakes her head and turns from him and starts to head back inside but he knows she’s in this as deep as he is and he thinks there‘s no way he‘s letting her jump ship right now, and then he’s grabbing at her arm and he’s pulling her hard against him, and he’s pressing his mouth against hers because if he’s going to kiss whoever he wants, he’s going to kiss her. Like he means it.

It’s a hard-edged kind of kiss and he pushes his tongue into her mouth and she moans against him, wrapping her fingers up in his t-shirt and clenching them so that he’s trapped here in front of her, held against her and he thinks that’s exactly the right place for him to be, he thinks this always feels right. His hands are restless, framing her face and then gripping her neck and then spanning her back like he can’t find the part of her that will guarantee that she’s not going to walk away from this again, that she‘s in this with him and she needs something from him the way he needs things from her. He breathes out against her lips and pushes her up against the brick wall behind her like maybe he can press himself into her life or like he can reach into her and find her honesty, her emotion. He’s reaching up so that his palms are pressed against either side of her head, trapping her there and kissing her frantic, desperate, angry.

She’s kissing him back like she wants to tear his clothes off and he’s not sure he’s ever been this turned on, this connected, this much into someone so that he can‘t find his way back out again.

She bites at his lip and he groans and that’s when he pulls away from her like he had in the dressing room. He thinks he keeps stopping things because she isn’t one night stand material and she isn’t a stranger in a bar and he keeps accidentally kissing her when he should be talking to her instead, explaining himself and turning this thing with them into more than it is right now. He pulls back and his head is hanging down next to hers and his breath is heaving in and out of his lungs and she has her eyes closed, like she’s been defeated by him. He presses a soothing kind of kiss against her ear and he sighs.

“Wake up, Pam,” he whispers, “this is real,” and he reaches out and he frames her face with his hands and she’s not breathing and her eyes are wide and he just stands there, holding her face and trying to get her to get it. He wishes he was better with words because he has all of this inside of him and if he could just give it to her he thinks everything would be better. Instead his fingers slip soft along her forehead and her eyebrows and the curve of her cheek and she’s just blinking at him and her eyes are suddenly full of water. “Damnit,” he mutters to himself because tears are never really what he wants from her, “I just think this can be good, Pam, we can make this…something really good,” he breathes and he moves his palm along her throat, gentle, careful, and he finally dips down and he kind of rests his mouth against hers. Light and easy and just trying to be with her, somehow, and she gasps against him, quiet and honest. He pulls away and he looks down at her and he has no idea what this is, what he’s doing, but he‘s pretty sure that whatever it is, she‘s doing it, too. “Just wake up,” he tells her, his voice barely phonating, and he looks at her pointedly, searching for something, wanting something from her, but she just stands there staring up at him, teary-eyed and shocked and silent, and so he plants one last kiss against her cheek, and then he pushes away from the wall and turns away from her because sometimes this nothing is too much for him.

He figures he’ll go drink like eight more beers and fall asleep at the bar, and he’ll just try to forget about all of this because he’s drained.

But then her hand reaches out and she wraps it back up in his shirt again, and she pulls him back toward her and, before he can focus, her arms are around his neck. Her arms are around his neck and her lips are pressed up against his skin and he thinks he hears her sniffle, he thinks he feels her crying, but it’s hard for him to tell because his ears are buzzing with how much he feels her and how much he feels at home wrapped up in her this way. They stand there, quiet and heavy for a while, until she inhales and wraps her arms around him a little tighter.

“Wake up?” she whispers and he smiles into her hair, “What are you like John Hughes now? Great line, Jim, very impressive,” and he’s laughing because she’s amazing. He’s grateful and he’s warm and he’s so in love with her it hurts.

“I hate you,” he sighs against her curls and she laughs and this is the most right he’s felt in years.

He kisses her again outside of O’Flannigan’s and the only thing that keeps her from reaching into his pants is the age old misfortune of being interrupted.

It’s so predictable she has to remind herself that none of this is scripted.

The door swishes open and she pulls her mouth from Jim, panicked, for some reason terrified of being caught with her tongue in his mouth, and Kevin lumbers out of the bar in a pair of very unnecessary sunglasses and a pocket-heavy fleece. She deflates in relief because contrary to the character he was hired to play, Kevin is actually a very disinterested kind of guy who barely notices anything and completely ignores everything he does notice. This is no different and he kind of glances at them for a second, taking in the way that they’re all wrapped around each other, before turning to cross the street and rummaging through his trunk. Probably looking for pot. Pam rolls her eyes because even though Kevin doesn‘t care at all that they‘re playing doctor out here, this still serves as a bucket of ice cold water and she’s very aware suddenly of how many times Jim has kissed her today.

A lot.

This makes five to be exact.

She wonders how big his penis really is.

“Should we make a pros and cons list about whether or not I’m taking you home with me?” she asks and she can practically hear him swallow, which was kind of the point. She grins up at him and he shakes his head.

“I’m insulted,” he mumbles and she nods, glancing over his shoulder at Kevin and wishing he’d just hurry up and get high or whatever so that they can get back to speaking without words, so to…speak… “No really,” he says, interrupting her thoughts, “I feel like an object.” She feigns a pout and pats him on the chest in sympathy.

“You are an object,” she confesses, amused, staring at his mouth and thinking about all of the places she would really like it to be. She’s had some vodka. She gets vulgar when she’s tipsy.

“Is that a pro or a con?” he wonders and she laughs and her fingers drift up to the pocket of his pants and kind of take up residence there. Hanging. Sitting there and teasing him and he looks down at them pointedly and then back up at her and she smiles at him mischievously. He sighs. “Wicked,” he calls her, and she nods.

“That one’s a pro,” she promises and finally she hears the thud of Kevin slamming his trunk and she watches out of the corner of her eye as he lumbers past them again and slips back into the bar, sketchy as always, but she doesn’t take much time to consider what he was doing or what’s in his pockets because now she’s alone again with Jim and she wants to get back to the kissing and she thinks kiss number six will probably be just as devastating as kiss number five and she starts to lean forward toward him.

She doesn’t fully realize the look on his face until he’s stopping her. It’s a look like…thoughtful. Careful. He keeps stopping her in her journey to the wonder that is his nudity and it’s starting to get on her nerves. Isn’t he supposed to be some kind of man whore? He sure seems prudish to her. She sighs unhappily as he pushes her shoulders away from him and shakes his head down at the ground beneath them.

“Why will you not just let me have my way with you?” she wonders kind of angrily and he chuckles.

“Wow,” he comments dryly and she frowns a little further, “I’m not sure I want to grace that with a response.” She doesn’t answer and just stands there looking at him, crossing her arms and biting her lip to stop herself from reaching out to him in any kind of way. He sucks in a deep breath. “I don’t want to do this like…” and he shakes his head and starts again. “I’ve picked up a lot of girls in bars.”

She waits for more because…that can’t be what he meant to say.

Eventually when he doesn’t go on she tilts her head at him and raises an eyebrow.

“Congratulations?” she murmurs, unsure what exactly the appropriate response is when what she really wants to do is get her name on that list immediately. He squints down at her and looks at her long and hard and she’s starting to love it when he does this, which is weird because like yesterday she distinctly remembers hating it. “What?” she asks.

“I don’t want this to be that,” he tells her and she thinks he’s really brave. He’s really attractive and manly and brave and she figures sometime she’ll get around to telling him that out loud. “I’ve had like four beers or something, and you’ve had a few vodka cranberries and I just think maybe…” and she nods to get him to stop talking because the last thing she needs right now is somebody pointing out to her that her decision making skills are on the fritz due to alcoholic beverage intake. She always wants to have sex with him, this isn’t a drunk thing. She’s not really drunk on alcohol…

“Too fast,” she assesses and he nods, relieved, taking a step toward her which kind of contradicts the whole slowing down idea, but she doesn’t call him on it because she likes him oh so much better when he’s brushing up against her. “Everything happened in one day,” she says, but she thinks that’s a lie. She thinks this is two years in the making. He nods again and she thinks that’s all he’s capable of doing.

“It’s late,” he tells her, his head dipping down so his mouth is hovering just in front of hers and she feels victorious over him, fantastically wicked and fantastically intoxicated and she reaches out and slides a hand up and under his t-shirt, letting her fingers trip against the skin of his back. The breath catches audibly in his throat and she smiles.

“These are the cons that we‘re listing,” she points out, her voice a hoarse whisper and her mouth drifting a quarter of an inch closer to his. His tongue snakes out to lick his bottom lip and she can almost feel it slide against her.

“Cons,” he repeats and she loves the dazed expression on his face and she loves that he means this and she loves how tall he is and it takes her a second before she remembers that they’re supposed to be stopping right now. He said he wants to stop this. So she pulls her hand out of his shirt and she pushes him back and away from her and he goes from looking dazed to looking…still dazed, actually.

She backs away from him and reaches out for the door of the bar.

“I’m going back inside now,” she tells him and he just stands there looking at her and she thinks she’s a cruel, cruel woman.

“I’m gonna go jerk off somewhere,” he tells her and she barks out a laugh because she had not expected that. He laughs back at her and she thinks this, really, this right here is actually what she loves about him.

She wishes him luck with that and retreats into the bar to pick up her purse and her sweater because really all she wants to do is get home and think about him jerking off. Or get home and get friendly with herself since apparently she’s as on her own as he is and something certainly needs to be done because she‘ll never be able to sleep in this state.

When she walks out onto the street again she’s fully expecting him to be gone, expecting the sidewalk to be empty and expecting to have a quiet stroll back to Dunder Mifflin alone. She’s expecting to be able to think. But instead he’s still standing there, leaning against the wall with his hands shoved into his hair and his cap dangling from his fingers and she looks at him and feels warm all over because there’s something so honest in the way he’s standing there. He looks over at her and catches the look of affection on her face and she blushes.

“Come on,” she tells him, “I’ll walk you back to your car.” He stands up tall and pulls his hat back on, and she kind of misses the mess of his hair and the boyish charm of his distress.

“My hero,” he mutters sarcastically and she rolls her eyes at him. They walk a while in charged silence before he finally blurts what she knows he’s been thinking. “So one pro, if I was going home with you, which I’m not, is that I am amazing at sex,” he confesses and she laughs.

“According to whom?” she wonders, “All of the many girls you pick up in bars?” And he kind of shoots her an incredulous glare and shakes his head.

“According to everyone, Pam,” he promises, “Ask around.” She bites back a smile and nods thoughtfully and they’re almost turning the corner into the parking lot and she sighs, her mind flashing for a second to the way he‘d said I‘m in love with you earlier as that particular spot of blacktop comes into view. She tries not to think about that because it makes her chest get tight and her eyes water.

“Well if we’re listing pros,” she says as he stops next to his car and leans there, watching her as she makes her way toward hers, tossing a kind of grin at him over her shoulder, “I am double jointed,” she promises, “And also I follow a diligent and extensive work out plan.” And he groans in frustration, pulling off his hat and throwing it comically to the ground in defeat, and then he’s laughing as she gets into her car, and she doesn’t pause because he’s just so perfect like that, head tilted back and smiling and arms crossed and watching her pull out of the lot, that she doesn’t want to ruin it by continuing the conversation any further. She waves and he lifts his chin at her in response, not moving to pick up his hat or to get into his car at all, and he’s still standing there watching her drive away when she looks into her rearview mirror, and she feels that sizzle of sex-appeal burn down her spine like lightning.

On her drive home, though, everything kind of softens. She stops feeling like she might explode from wanting him and instead starts feeling lethargic…romantic…emotional in a way that’s almost foreign to her. She’s careful with men. She’s stand offish and careful particularly with men like Jim Halpert, but now she wonders if she’s been wasting her time pushing those kinds of men away because she’s never felt quite this brand of good before. Maybe, she thinks, not all men are prone to walking away. Maybe sometimes they stay where they are and they’re good and honest and maybe some of them are reliable.

She thinks of women like Bette Davis and Lauren Bacall, she thinks of Katharine Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman and she wonders if she could ever fit into that soft lighting and those swelling soundtracks. She remembers wanting black and white romance as a young girl but since then things have happened and reality has become her companion and she’s forgotten what scenes in a grayish drawing room even look like. But on her drive home she remembers and she thinks it’s because of Jim.

She changes into pale blue satin pajamas once she gets home and she brushes her teeth, smiling, unconcerned with whether or not this pleasant ache is due to vodka or men and fully prepared to dream of both of those things all night long. She thinks of getting a cup of coffee in the morning and it sounds so good it makes her crawl into bed without checking her email and it makes her try hard to drift off to sleep.

She tries for about an hour and a half, but her mind keeps tripping around Jim like it’s playing ring around the rosie and rest is proving very difficult. He’s just so…earnest, sometimes. He’s so good looking and earnest and he’s like a chocolaty bad boy with a delicious soft peanut butter center. He’s a rebel who’s actually a hero who’s actually just total eye candy. He’s just…she wants so badly to get in bed with him. And she just keeps hearing his voice in her head telling her to wake up, promising that he’s good at sex, teasing her about smoking and Arby’s and going on about impulsive kisses, and then she starts reliving the kissing that had gone on and she wonders how this could’ve all happened so fast. And now she’s restless like wanting him again and she kicks the sheets off of her because her skin is on fire.

She stares up at the ceiling and thinks that tomorrow she’ll call him and see if he wants to grab dinner…or maybe he’ll call her, and that’s another thing that pulls a smile to her face.

She’s twelve.

She’s rolling her eyes at herself and huffily refluffing her pillow when somebody knocks at her door and she goes completely motionless.

She stares at the clock and blinks a few times, seeing if the 1:53 AM will morph into something more sensible like a 7 or an 11. It doesn’t and at first she’s worried, but that wears off and she ends up just being curious, but either way she rushes to the door because there’s adrenaline pumping through her veins.

She pulls it open and it’s like the 2 AM hazy fog is slapped off of her because she’s all Bette Davis in her satin pajamas and he is…he is standing there all Jim Halpert in his t-shirt and jeans and he’s just so good looking and tall that she thinks she might be dreaming.

“Jim?” she mutters, and he’s scanning the sight of her, looking her over with a furrow of concentration in his brow and he sniffs and kind of nods and she feels that pang of worry again, along with a hot burning trail everywhere his gaze touches. “Are you ok?” she whispers and he finally looks her in the eye and she thinks maybe she asked him the wrong question. Maybe she should’ve asked him to come in, or asked him how jerking off worked out for him, because his stare is hot, intense and clouded with desire. He stands there looking at her and when he finally speaks she thinks maybe she’s never been this turned on by anything in her life.

“I’m sorry, I just…um…I…” he swallows and his eyebrows dip down a little with his own thoughts, until finally he braces himself and finishes the sentence. “…want you,” he confesses like he has to spit it out or it’ll eat him from the inside out, and her eyes widen. “I can’t help it.”

She just stands there, staring at him, and she wonders why he feels the need to voice some kind of apology because, god, she wants him too. She wants him and she can’t believe he’s standing here like this. She’s suddenly really glad she’s wearing her satin pajamas because it gives her the courage to push the door open a little bit wider and step back, like an invitation.

“Come in,” she breathes, finding herself unable to pull her stare from his, unable to say much more than that because the only thing she can think is I want you, too and she figures that would be redundant, and Bette Davis would say something much more clever.

He steps in and his gaze shifts down to the hardwood floor and he seems overwhelmed, restless, desperate for her and she closes the door and turns to him, still a little concerned because of how tortured he seems and she’s about to ask him if he wants some water except she doesn’t get a chance.

He’s kissing her for the sixth time. He’s kissing her.

Real. Deep and hot and she doesn’t realize she’s up against the door until his hand slams against the wood beside her head and she feels it shake through her whole body, and he’s tipped toward her, his body slanted and diagonal, and it’s like without the support of her mouth and the door he would fall to the ground or maybe he wouldn’t exist at all. His free hand is spread out hot against the satin of her pajamas and she thinks she can hear the thudding of his pulse, or maybe it’s hers. Maybe they’re both in sync or maybe he’s kissing his blood into her because she feels like she can taste the person that he is, she can taste him more than just his mouth and it makes her dip her tongue a little further into him.

It makes her groan.

God it makes her totally hot.

She grabs at him and squirms against him and his mouth is open and breathing warm onto her skin and she wants him inside of her. She briefly wonders if she should be more level headed about this, but it’s like for the past two weeks someone has been stretching her taut like a rubber band and now finally they’ve pulled just tight enough and she wants so badly to snap.

He’s still frantic and he reaches up and runs his hand across the top button of her pajamas and she feels the electric sizzle of him and she’s gasping for air.

“Want to prove how good at sex you are?” she wonders desperately, breathlessly, and he smiles against the skin of her neck.

“Only if you prove you‘re double jointed,” he counters and she lets her head fall back against the door and she lets her eyes slide closed as his teeth graze her throat and his tongue traces branding words against her skin and she thinks god and yes and why have we not done this before...

“Good morning, you’ve reached Bread! Bread! Bread! We bake your bread and also your cake, give us your order, we don’t make mistakes!”

Pam rolls her eyes and wonders when buying bread turned into something that needed rhymes and enthusiasm. She decides to sit Indian style on her shaky legs instead of pacing on them, because maybe that will help her calm down, but the lid on the toilet seat creaks a little as she lowers it and she freezes, cocking her head and looking at the closed bathroom door with wide eyes, listening for any kind of movement in the next room. She doesn’t think she hears any…

“Hello?” the cheerleader turned baker on the other end prompts.

Pam shakes herself and presses the phone to her ear a little bit harder to try to keep the volume of the woman on the phone from floating out into the atmosphere and waking anybody up. Any people around her apartment that might be sleeping in her bed. Just like whoever might be…sleeping.

Jim.

She has a flash of the muscles of his arms stretched taught against her headboard and she blinks and shakes her head.

“Hi,” Pam whispers, “Can I talk to Heather, please?” she requests.

“What?” the woman asks loudly.

“Heather,” Pam whispers again, trying to be as loud as she can without actually speaking.

“I can’t hear anything you’re saying ma’am. Do you have Verizon? Because I’ve heard that in some parts of certain buildings Verizon doesn’t get any service, like only one or two bars. Or I guess bars is an AT&T thing…”

“I NEED TO TALK TO HEATHER!” Pam finally shouts, and then she immediately covers her mouth with her hand in surprise. Shit, she thinks, running to pull the door open a crack so that she can peek out, but he’s just laying there, all sprawled out and beautiful looking, and he doesn’t move at all, so she figures he must be a sound sleeper.

She remembers him whispering her name into her ear and she shivers.

“Oh, sure,” the stupid woman is saying, “Hey Heather? You’ve got a call!” And Pam closes the door again and sits down on the toilet with her head hanging down between her knees because just looking at him is making her feel like she might faint.

“This is Heather,” her friend greets tiredly, flatly, and Pam thinks that is much more appropriate than the over-zealous attitude of the first woman she spoke to.

“Heather, it’s Pam,” she whispers, “I’m freaking out right now. I’m totally freaking out,” she tells her hurriedly and she can practically hear Heather’s confusion on the other end.

“Pam?” she repeats and Pam nods at the black and white tiles of her bathroom floor. “Are you driving through a tunnel or something?” she asks and Pam shakes her head.

“Uh, no, no,” she promises, still whispering and still a little bit out of breath, “I’m just…um…” she clears her throat and the next thing she says is like vomit rising up in her, it’s like her tongue tightens and she just can’t keep it in anymore so it comes spitting out of her mouth uncontrolled. “I had sex with Jim.”

There’s a moment of silence and Pam feels heat flood her cheeks.

“Oh my GOD,” Heather finally exclaims, and Pam grimaces, “I thought you weren’t supposed to tell me what happens in the finale,” she accuses and Pam opens her mouth to respond but doesn’t get the chance. “You and Jim have sex in the finale? Really? Can they do that on a show that runs during prime time? I mean, my mother is going to die. Wow, so, what? Did you have to take your top off?” Heather wonders and Pam blinks to try to keep any sign of tears from her eyes and she sits up and shoves a hand through her hair.

“Yeah I took my top off,” she mumbles, mostly for her own amusement, and Heather lets out a kind of cat call. “Heather, stop it and listen to me,” Pam instructs.

“It’s ok, Pam, that’s how Mother Nature intended for it to be,” she promises, her voice still kind of flat in a Heather kind of way, “Mother Nature did not invent clothing. That was Eve’s idea, not that I blame her because can you imagine how grabby Adam must’ve been?” Pam wishes she were less distracted because she’s pretty sure that would’ve been funny in another time and situation.

“Heather,” Pam pleads. And finally Heather goes silent and Pam can tell from the quiet that she’s standing with a hand on her hip and an annoyed frown on her face. “I slept with Jim.”

When she receives no response she decides maybe she should clarify that further.

“We had sex,” she spells out, remembering just how much they really did have sex, “In real life. Without cameras,” she promises and she turns and looks at herself in the mirror with questions draped across her face because she’s terrified that this was the wrong thing to do.

“Wha…uh…right,” Heather starts, sounding dazed, kind of, or just… “Wait a second…you WHAT?” Heather cries. “Where are you, are you at home right now?” she asks, but again Pam isn’t given the chance to answer because Heather has moved on, “Wait right there, I am coming over and we are discussing this over a cup of coffee. The bread can bake itself,” she decides and Pam is fast to interrupt.

“Whoa wait, wait, you can’t come over here right now,” she tells her emphatically, pulling a tissue out of the tissue box and dusting off the bathroom counter just for something to do with her hands. Dusting with a tissue is actually kind of counter-productive, she realizes, as the tissue leaves a trail of white behind it. She sighs and throws it in the garbage can.

“I can’t?” Heather repeats, “Why not?” she wonders knowingly, obviously smiling on the other end, and Pam huffs and rolls her eyes. “Jim Halpert is still in your bed.” Pam doesn’t answer. “He is. He’s there, isn’t he? Jesus, Pam, what the hell? Like three days ago you hated Jim Halpert. I mean you literally asked me if my friend from New Orleans knows voodoo and could make you a doll with shaggy hair and a messenger bag that you could stick pins into. Do you remember asking me that?” Heather wonders and Pam nods down at the sink.

“I do remember asking you that, yeah,” she admits, and Heather sighs. Pam feels her mouth twist into a tired kind of frown. “I don’t know what happened,” she confesses, “I just…Heather I am like beyond confused here,” Pam’s voice is just above a whisper now and she’s praying to some kind of deity that Jim won’t wake up for at least another fifteen minutes so that she can have a second to clear her head without him standing there and looking at her. “I actually think…I mean I might…I think I like him,” she admits, “Or I could like him. Or I have some feelings for him beyond like wanting to run him through with a butcher’s knife,” she shakes her head as a memory of his hands against her thighs flashes through her mind and she closes her eyes tight, overwhelmed, “Oh god, ok, what do I do? You’re my best friend, give me some advice,” she pleads, tugging on her pajama bottoms and tank top and wondering how this could’ve happened.

“Yeah, uh, I don’t know anything about this kind of thing, honey. I got married at the age of twenty four to a web analyst, so the whole hot angry sex thing is completely beyond me,” she confesses resignedly and Pam nods and chews on her lips in defeat, trying to ignore the thoughts of where exactly her lips had been last night and trying to ignore the heat that comes to her core as a result of those other thoughts she‘s supposed to be ignoring.

“Right,” she mutters. She thinks of the way he looked standing at her doorstep and she almost can’t breathe. “Just really any advice at all would be great,” she mutters and Heather hums.

“Ok I’ll give you advice if you just tell me how good it was. It was good, right? I mean Jesus Christ look at the guy. You could practically climb him like a fucking tree,” she assesses and Pam laughs without meaning to and she’s glad she called Heather, because at least she’s laughing.

“Is that appropriate Bread! Bread! Bread! talk?” Pam wonders and Heather groans her irritation into the phone.

“Uh, no, you‘re right…um…wait, though, you‘re the one calling me begging to talk about Jim Halpert’s…whatever…his baguette,” she tosses out, and Pam’s laughing again and covering her mouth to try to keep herself from making any actual noise and she hoists herself up onto her bathroom counter and tries to ignore the thoughts of Jim’s cut and the band-aid. And Jim’s naked baguette in her bed, also.

“You’re an idiot,” Pam whispers, and Heather agrees happily.

“Seriously,” she eventually prods, “how hot was it?” she wonders. “I’m an old married woman, I need to live vicariously through you,” she pleads and Pam smiles and closes her eyes and leans her head back against the mirror and thinks.

How hot was it?

She’s pretty sure hot is a fucking understatement.

She remembers that the bedroom was practically full of mist things were so hot, like she thinks if she’d tried she could’ve written her name on the window. She remembers that she’d had on only her pajama top and underwear because somewhere between the front door and the bed her satin bottoms had taken one for the team, and she remembers that she was kissing him. She was kissing him and trying really hard not to outwardly celebrate the fact that in a few minutes he’d be naked and she would finally get to meet her nemesis. Or her ally. Or her…

Whatever. His penis.

She was going to see and become totally, closely acquainted with Jim Halpert’s penis and it had seemed like some kind of fairy godmother had heard her prayers. God, she hadn’t been able to see straight with the amount of anticipation and lust pumping through her veins.

She remembers that he was sitting on the edge of her bed doing that thing that guys do where they try to look everywhere at once, try to touch everything at once, and he was frantically trying to pull her to him and against him, but she had resisted because she’d rather do the looking first and the touching second. She’d rather do one thing at a time.

She had reached out a hand to still him and she’d pressed her palm to his cheek, and she guesses that had worked because he’d gone totally motionless except for the heaving of his breath and he had looked up at her with a kind of self-deprecating grin.

“Slower,” she’d whispered and he’d raised his eyebrows, “The world isn’t going to end tonight or anything,” she’d assured him and he had shaken his head at her.

“Yeah,” he breathed, “I don’t know about that.” And she remembers that that had been honest. She had been able to hear his honesty and he’d glanced down at the carpet and she could tell that this was something…she had thought about the parking lot.

And that had made her bend down and push her tongue into his mouth because nobody had ever made her feel this much. Nobody had ever made her feel like this much of a person, a woman. She remembers wanting to show him all of it. She’d wanted to touch it onto him and confess it with her hands and her body because she’s better this way, better silent than speaking, and she had wanted to tell him things like he had told her. She’d wanted to give him back something for all of the honesty he’s been giving her for weeks.

She’d kissed him slow and had tried consciously to put the brakes on this race to the finish they’d had going on, and she’d laced her fingers through his hair. She remembers him just sitting there, his hands by his side, probably trying to slow down, and she remembers that he hadn’t moved again until she had knelt up on the bed, straddling him.

And then his fingers had flexed, she remembers that distinctly, and it was like he’d considered things for a second, it was like he’d considered, but eventually lost the fight, giving in with a breathy kind of moan and his hands had smoothed up onto her.

She remembers his fingers.

They slid against the skin of her legs and ended up resting where her thighs met her hips and she remembers being perched on top of him and she remembers his fingers and his body and she thinks she’d been able to feel the things she wanted to know about him throbbing through his clothes.

She wonders why she hadn’t figured out before that sex between them would be a game of chicken.

His eyes were dark and hooded and dangerous and he’d pierced her with his stare all night, looking at her so intently that she would quirk her eyebrows at him in response, afraid, nervous, unsure of a lot of things, her own self included. He had licked at his lips and his fingers had flexed, this time against her, and he had pulled her forward. He’d tugged at her so that she was more solidly against him and she had let out like a sigh. A female kind of noise.

He had kissed her, and she had reached out and pulled off his shirt.

She remembers that, too.

She had felt him.

She had run her fingers from his chest to his back and she had wrapped her arms around him so that when he kissed her she could feel his muscles working in his back, feel how he had shifted and arched away from her, feel how he’d moved and how much he was masculine. She remembers his fingers and how they had snaked up beneath the back of her shirt and she thinks now that he must have been jealous of her hands.

His breath had been hot and his teeth had teased her lips and she presses her fingers to them now, thinking, wondering how much of her belongs to him this morning that didn‘t this time yesterday.

Jesus, though, she thinks, it had so totally been worth it.

She’d thought last night that she was going to die.

She’d thought he was going to kill her with his heat and his body, or maybe it was just that she wasn’t going to be able to do anything but be with him for the rest of her life. Either way, she’d thought she was finished. She was somebody else starting right then. Somebody different.

She had forgotten slow somewhere along the way, once they were stretched out blessedly horizontal and once he was exhaling against her ear and breathing words against her that had never sounded quite so good, and her hand had snaked down between them, flicking open the button of his jeans and reaching inside because she had known that he was too hot and too hard for her to ignore it any longer.

She remembers this.

She had reached between his clothes and she had wrapped her hand around him and it was like… god she’d thought she might come just from touching him.

Actually, she’d thought he might come just from her touching him, based on the sound he had made and the way his head had fallen back and the way his fingers had tightened against her legs. She had wrapped her hand around him and the only thing she can remember thinking was a resounding Oh my god…

And it had been like he could hear her thoughts because right in that moment he had reached up and had run his fingers through his own hair and he’d said “Oh my god” to the ceiling.

And she had smiled victorious and said:

“We haven’t even gotten to the double jointed part, yet,” and he had laughed with his eyes closed and she’d gone still and had looked down at him and thought…

She’d thought that he was amazing. Wonderful and perfect and she had never been sentimental during sex before, but god. He had laid there so still and swallowed and he’d been trying so visibly to keep himself under control that it made her bend down and smooth her lips across his, soft. It made her loosen her grip on him and run her fingers across the skin of him gentle and easy and he had swallowed again and he had sighed.

And she remembered wanting to know him in every possible way.

She’d said his name.

She had said Jim and he had looked practically pained and he had exhaled long and hard and solid and she had waited there with her fingers against the part of him she’d dreamed about and he had licked his lips and opened his eyes and he had pinned her with that stare of his, that stare that said that there was so much more he wasn’t telling her.

“Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?” he had suggested and she had laughed as he flipped her over and planted his mouth against her neck, teasing and biting and licking at her in the exact right spot, and she had moaned her approval as his hands started to roam across her stomach and she remembers that he had pushed the flat of his hand up and beneath the middle of her pajama top until it was resting hot between her breasts and she had been unable to catch her breath. She had reached down toward him again, wanted to grip at him and pull at him, and she remembers that he had stilled her this time. He was the one who had stopped her cold. “Hang on,” he breathed, “you said slow before and how am I supposed to prove my stunning ability to follow direction if you contradict yourself?” he’d wondered and she had smiled spicily up at him. He tugged on the hem of her top and he pulled back so that he could look down at her. “I need this off,” he’d requested and she had stared at him.

She remembers feeling anxious.

She’s not the kind of woman who enjoys being naked. Like she doesn’t pull her blinds closed and prance around her living room without any clothes on so that she can feel free and one with the earth, despite the fact that her old college roommate insisted that it’s very spiritually cleansing. Pam is not a nudist.

In fact really the only time she doesn’t wear clothes is when she’s in the shower.

Usually during sex she keeps her shirt on. Or her bra. Or socks maybe, although she doesn’t ever remember doing that. Just something. She keeps something on so that she doesn’t feel totally just…exposed. She guesses she’s self-conscious.

But he had looked down at her in that certain way that he had and he had asked her, said he needed it, and she hadn’t even really thought for very long, she hadn’t even really hesitated in any kind of noticeable way, she’d just nodded and she’d reached out with her very shaky hands and she had unbuttoned her top one slow button at a time and she had sat up silent to pull it down off of her shoulders and he had coaxed her clothes off of her. He had somehow coaxed her vulnerable and somehow coaxed her open and exposed, and he hadn’t given her the time to be self-conscious because he had smoothed his fingers across her.

She remembers his fingers.

He had touched her in the places she’d dreamed of him touching her and he had touched her in the places she’d been suddenly certain that he’d dreamed of, too, and she remembers that he had been much too gentle. Feather light in that way that women always said could drive them crazy. Teasing her. Slow and purposeful and almost mean and obviously testing her because he kept looking at her and squinting, assessing, pushing her because he could, and it had driven her insane because she refused to stop him and she refused to beg.

She remembers biting down on the inside of her cheek to stay silent as his fingers drifted down across her thighs and into all the spaces in between.

But, god, eventually the combination of the fire of challenge in his eyes and the barely-there feel of his touch made her break beneath him and she reached out and she wrapped her arms around his neck and she pushed her mouth up against his, impatient and breathless.

“Do it. Now,” she had ordered, and he had chuckled but it had been short-lived because her request seemed to have gone straight to his head, and he had pushed himself completely into her like he couldn’t wait another second, and her thoughts had gone someplace else entirely.

God, she so remembers that.

“Pam?”

She practically jumps at the sound of Heather’s voice and she kicks herself for going there, for remembering and for reliving it because she‘s supposed to be thinking of something other than his penis, for once. She hops down off the counter and peeks out into the bedroom again and he’s sort of rolling over and it makes her totally nervous. She closes the door and lowers herself into the bathtub, tugging at the curtain so that it’s closed, in some foolish notion that that will keep him from waking up. Or hearing her. Or totally screwing her brains out again.

“Please tell me you are not reliving your orgasmic escapades with me on the line, just sitting here, because that would be really…mean,” Heather accuses and Pam pulls her knees up close to her chest and rests her head on the palm of her free hand. “You were,” Heather assesses from the silence. “Nice, want to share those thoughts out loud or anything? Maybe write them down? Name it Reality Television Love or Pam and the Amazing Penis and sell it for nine ninety nine at Barnes and Noble?” she wonders and Pam laughs unhappily. “I’d buy it,” Heather admits.

“Shut up, I’m not going to give you a play by play,” she scolds and Heather hums in disappointment. “My mind just…wandered, I’m sorry, look what should I do? I mean, how do I feel about this?” she asks and there’s a lengthy pause on the other end.

“You’ve been doing this show for too long if you’re seriously asking me to tell you how you feel…” Heather’s voice drifts away from the speaker as she shouts out to the front of the store that she’ll be right there and Pam hits the palm of her hand against her forehead a few times in a Charlie Brown attempt at clarity. Damnit. “Listen, just you know, talk to him about it maybe. Try to rein in your animalistic urges for ten minutes and actually talk. I mean,” she sighs, “to be honest I have no idea how you even got to this point, so I’m not sure what to tell you,” she admits again and Pam sniffs and nods and taps her foot against the ceramic of the tub.

“Yeah, maybe talk to him. The problem is that every time he’s standing there, he’s like…standing there…and I have no idea what’s going on. My thoughts turn into like penis thoughts and I just my brain like shorts, you know? I mean…”

“Penis thoughts, wow,” Heather interjects, but Pam doesn’t respond because she’s gone totally silent because the bathroom door has opened and she can see a hand wrapping itself around the shower curtain and it pulls back and she kind of grimaces and smiles simultaneously because she can feel the heat of embarrassment flooding her face. She clears her throat.

“Uh, two loaves of the cinnamon raisin should be fine,” she offers meekly and Jim raises his eyebrows at her and all he’s wearing is a pair of black boxers (which is exactly what she always pictures him wearing) and he’s…tall.

“Two loaves of…what?” Heather is saying on the other end. “What the hell are you talking about?” and Pam starts to scramble to stand up and she tries to look anywhere but at him and she tries to kind of launch herself from the tub, which of course makes her trip and fall and he has to catch her and he wraps his arms around her and chuckles and she can feel it inside of her bones. She feels like an absolute fucking idiot. “Is he standing right there? Is he naked? Are you having penis thoughts? Pam?” Heather fires the questions rapidly, and Pam thinks it’s really loud, and she’s sure that since she’s wrapped up in the skin and arms and everything of him he can probably…totally hear Heather.

“Two loaves!” Pam barks before fumbling with the phone and hanging up. He looks down at her incredulously and she feels his morning…whatever…surprise or baguette or whatever brush against her leg and it makes her jump back and away from him like he’s burned her. He laughs a quiet kind of laugh and she feels like she’s twelve and he’s thirty and she still has no idea what this is…why she feels like she maybe might cry.

“Morning,” he greets and she blinks at him and offers a meek kind of smile.

“Ok,” she says.

She’d really like to crawl in a hole and die.

He’s had a lot of sex.

A lot.

Tons, really.

He has spread his seed and he has grazed his pastures and he has bobbed for apples on many a Halloween, so to speak.

And the thing is, he’s so that guy who badly wants one thing until he has it, and then suddenly he’s pulling on his wrinkled shirt at three in the morning and he’s participating in the parade known as the “walk of shame”-- except he’s never really all that ashamed. He’s pretty much always been that guy. Hell, he dated Dawn because his manager said it would be good press. He’s an asshole. He uses girls. He’s disinterested and unconcerned and heartless and he has the whole “Hey baby why don’t you come over here and rub up against me” strategy down to a fucking science.

Or he used to.

But last night he watched Pam sleep for like an hour. Not in the creepy Hannibal Lector kind of way, more in the sentimental John Cusack kind of way, and he did it by accident. He accidentally found himself transfixed by her pale moonlit skin and the untamed spread of her hair across the pillow and the gentle rise and fall of her breath and her pursed lips and her hip pressed up close against his. He was riveted. He was…

And this morning he’s still here. His shirt is still laying in a wrinkled heap in the corner and the sun is out and he’s still in Pam Beesly’s house because he just can’t bring himself to leave. He can’t quite pry himself away from wanting to see how she brushes her teeth or maybe what color her towels are.

Jesus Christ, he’s a woman.

He is a woman and he should be castrated or stuck under a hair dryer or fitted for a prom gown. He should be run out of town and disowned and unemployed and publicly flogged…except for that he still doesn’t think he would care about any of that. He wouldn’t care. He could be fired right now on the spot and he’d just kind of chuckle.

He thinks this must be what love is like.

He’s standing in her bathroom and she’s sitting in the shower, adorable, and he’s pretty sure she just ordered cinnamon raisin bread and he’s also pretty sure that she looks absolutely mortified and self-conscious and uncomfortable, and he’s practically naked, but he doesn’t care. He’s unconcerned, but in a very different way than normal. He’s happily unconcerned. He’s…he catches her on her fall out of the bathtub and he’s amused unconcerned.

He kind of grins down at her and she huffs. He thinks he hears whoever she’s talking to on the phone say something about penis thoughts, but she barks the phrase two loaves in response like it’s the eagle flies at night and he thinks he must’ve misheard, so he cocks his head at her in confusion and tries to just focus on the so good it‘s almost sick feeling of having his arms wrapped securely around her. She hangs up and pushes away from him.

“Morning,” he greets and she offers him a meek kind of smile and she shifts and he chuckles at her.

“Ok,” she responds and he finds her adorable. He’s seen her totally naked and he finds her adorable.

“You look like you’re about three seconds away from having a heart attack,” he assesses and her head drops forward in defeat and she lifts the telephone up to kind of tap it against the side of her head.

“More like a nervous breakdown, I think,” she admits, and he just nods because…whatever. “Everything’s a little bit, like…um…foggy,” she tells him and he’s not sure he’s ever seen her so unsure of herself or so, what’s the word, concerned. Maybe. He thinks he should try to make her feel better.

“Foggy?” he repeats taking a step forward, and her eyes are fixed on the bathroom floor and she nods, chewing on her bottom lip and frowning and still tapping the phone against her temple.

“I wasn’t drunk last night,” she spits and he smiles because she’s so confused and he is so…not confused.

“No you weren’t,” he agrees easily, taking another step closer to her and hoping she doesn’t look up and notice that he’s stealing away her personal space.

“You weren’t either, I don’t think,” she mumbles and he frowns in mock thought, amusing himself, amused by her, still finding her adorable while being sort of distracted by the dusty rose tank top she’s wearing and the fact that he’s pretty sure she doesn’t have any underwear on beneath those satin pajama bottoms.

“No I wasn’t drunk,” he tells her, soft and honest and taking another step. She huffs and the phone drops down to her side and she finally looks up at him, and he watches the surprise register on her face because she honestly didn’t notice his approach and he almost has her cornered at this point. He loves this game of cat and mouse that they play. God, she turns him on.

“So we just…” she starts and he bends down and presses his lips up against hers and she kind of squeaks, she kind of gasps in surprise, but she doesn’t resist (she almost never resists) and that’s the part that always pulls his stomach tight and makes his blood rush south. Because it’s like a chemical reaction, it’s like something she can’t control, that when he grabs onto her and he kisses her she melts into him like wax in a fire and he ends up holding her up, keeping her on her feet by sheer willpower and upper body strength. She melts. She wraps her arms around his neck and he only sort of notices the clatter of the phone dropping to the ground as his hands slip up and beneath the hem of her shirt.

“Had sex?” he finishes for her, husky against her mouth with his torso kind of tipping down toward her and his mind really focused on getting her up onto that counter that he’s been so distracted by for the past week. Her head falls back on her shoulders as he trails his tongue along her throat and he wants to keep doing this until she realizes how much inside of her he really is. How solid and real they are and how much there aren’t any microphones suspended over their heads. He’s just going to keep doing this. He lifts her up and sets her down on the counter top and she tilts her pelvis forward until the friction against him makes him see white.

“Shit,” she breathes, “This is exactly what I was saying…” she mumbles and he has a feeling she’s more talking to herself than to him. His hands slide down and beneath the waist of her pants and it’s all skin against skin and he feels victorious because he knew she wasn’t wearing underwear…

He pulls his mouth away from her and looks her in the eye with a cocked eyebrow and she grins, seeming much less embarrassed than she was before, and there’s victory in that for him as well.

“Penis thoughts?” he asks and she laughs and so does he until she kind of swivels her hips so that she‘s grinding herself against him and then his laughter fades into something less smug and amused and more breathless and defeated.

“You heard that?” she asks and he plants a hand solidly against her collarbone and coaxes her until she’s leaning back at like a forty five degree angle, not that he’s any good at calculating that kind of thing, with the back of her head resting against the mirror. He takes a second just to look at her and he grins. “That‘s embarrassing,” she admits, reaching up to cover her forehead with her hand and flinching in self-consciousness and he laughs down at her and he bends forward so that he can push up her shirt and plant his mouth against her stomach. She squirms beneath him.

“It’s ok,” he promises, “I said your name during sex,” it’s a breathy kind of confession, and she lets out a moan when his fingers wrap themselves up in the elastic of her pajama pants and he tugs.

“I know,” she breathes, “I was there,” and he tries really hard not to blush at that because he’s pretty sure he did more than just say her name, it was closer to yelling, or maybe groaning or…just something super gut-wrenching and animalistic. She lifts her hips and he slides her pants down and off and then he kind of just stands there as she sits up and runs her fingers through her hair and he thinks he’s finished. He’s a different person because of her and he wants to wake her up.

“Yeah, um no,” he says, bending forward and planting his lips on hers again, tracing the line of them with his tongue and dragging his palm along the small of her back until she’s perched on the edge of the counter. “It was with someone else,” he mutters, and he feels more than sees her eyes go wide.

“What?” she asks, the sound clouded with a combination of laughter and lust, and he chuckles kind of and reaches down to readjust his boxers, letting them slide down around his ankles and kicking them aside.

“Like two weeks ago,” he tells her and then he’s pushing himself into her and she’s letting her head fall back again so that he can’t resist planting open mouthed kisses against her pulse and the place where her neck turns into her shoulder. Her skin is white, clean, soft and feminine and he’s totally transfixed by it. He pulls out of her and pushes back in, slow and long and deep, and she says oh god with slow and long and deep sounding vowels.

“This is insane,” she tells him and he watches as she reaches down and pulls off her shirt and he thinks that in the light of day she’s way more beautiful than she was in the middle of the night and he’s never quite seen any other woman like this in the daylight and he has to close his eyes tight to keep himself from toppling over the edge of things without her.

His eyes are closed and he’s not moving because sometimes it’s better to take a second and make things last longer, so he doesn’t see her lean forward and he doesn’t realize she’s doing it until she’s pressed completely against him and she wraps her arms around him tight and she breathes with him and he thinks that before he had everything all wrong. He thinks that getting what you want and holding on is sometimes so much better than walking away and he thinks that he’s been waiting for her and he thinks that he should tell her something. He rests his forehead against her shoulder and he breathes for a second and then he speaks against her skin that’s pale in that way he loves so much, and she pushes her fingers through his hair.

“I think it’s actually just starting to make sense,” he tells her and she nods and he moves inside of her and she moans and she says: Jim, and he can’t breathe right without the ebb and flow of her showing him how.

This time doesn’t last as long as the night before because she’s wrapped completely around him and he’s overwhelmed by her and he tries really hard to have those ever elusive things called stamina and cool, but they’re slippery and hard to hold onto when emotion and lust and sunlight are so heavy and so blinding. So he just goes with it, and she seems satisfied anyway so he doesn’t really bother to regret losing control. God, she looks sated. He likes that look on her and so he smiles at her, pleased, when she slides off of the counter top and raises an eyebrow of irritation at him.

“Oh my god get over yourself,” she reprimands, and he sees more than a glimmer of the old angry Pam and it sends a kind of warm tingle down his spine.

“You’re so affectionate, I can’t even stand it,” he says mockingly and she rolls her eyes, giving him a gentle shove in the direction of the bedroom. The banter is so familiar that he doesn’t even really notice that they’re doing it naked. Not really. Although, his eyes do kind of take a wandering journey but…what the hell. He’s a guy, right?

“Get out of here so I can shower,” she orders and he holds up his hands in surrender.

“You know we could shower together,” he offers, tipping his head to the side like he’s selling her a used car, and she wrinkles her nose at him.

“No, that’s weird. I want to get clean, not dirty,” she points out and he raises his eyebrows and laughs at her and she grins at him as she swings the door closed and it takes him a second to realize that his boxers are in there. He doesn’t care.

He wanders around the room and finds his jeans and pulls them on, wondering where exactly the term commando came from and he thinks it’s gross and it reminds him of Rambo or something so he shakes his head to dislodge the train of thought altogether. He’s silently pleased with himself as he stands at her refrigerator in his unbuttoned jeans, without a shirt, deciding whether he wants juice or iced tea and scratching at the back of his neck where he swears he can still feel the heat of her fingers. Things are surreal. Things are really good and surreal and fantastic.

He’s reaching for apple juice when he’s interrupted by a knock at the door and he glances over his shoulder, going totally still and pursing his lips in thought. He listens and can still hear the water running in the shower, and then he listens as there’s a second set of knocking, so he buttons and zips his pants and he kind of tosses a grimace at the ceiling, wondering if this is inappropriate.

But he answers the door anyway.

A woman is standing there with a brown paper bag, her hair a perfectly fashioned black bob, wearing a tan colored trench coat and navy blue pants and looking absolutely like she’s swallowed her tongue. Jim raises his eyebrows at her as the silence kind of stretches and he belatedly realizes he should’ve pulled on a shirt.

“Hi,” he offers, and the woman kind of shakes herself and smiles at him, wide and overly forced.

“Hello! I’m um…well it doesn’t matter really who I am because I don‘t really know you anyway,” she mumbles, looking down at the floor because apparently anywhere else she looks she’d be getting an eyeful, but Jim doesn’t show her any mercy because he isn’t sure he cares very much, and instead of running back inside to find his shirt, he just stands there, smug. “I just came to deliver the um…the bread and…my goodness you do look different in person,” she tells him, her brown gaze sweeping over him and he feels himself smile, amused.

She’d be very Jackie O if she wasn’t so flustered.

“I look different without clothes, too,” he fills in for her and she laughs too loudly and he raises his eyebrows a little further.

“Yeah,” she kind of drawls and then she just stands there…staring, obviously distracted. He points to the bag and she shakes herself for the second time. “Right,” she barks, “Right, well I was just delivering Pam’s bread because you know the order seemed…urgent…” she finishes and he nods as he figures out that this is the penis thoughts person. “I’m Heather,” she introduces as a response to the realization that he figures has probably flooded his face.

“Heather,” he repeats, reaching out and pulling the bag from her clenched fingers. “I’m Jim,” he introduces unnecessarily.

“Oh I know,” she tells him and then she laughs again and he kind of chuckles uncomfortably because he’s not sure what else to do.

“Thanks for the bread,” he tells her and her hands flail out to her sides in a kind of hyper shrug and she tips forward into what he can only figure is a really awkward bow and he watches her, fascinated.

“Ok, well, um,” she clears her throat, “Maybe don’t tell Pam I was here,” she instructs, squinting one eye at him and making the OK sign with one hand and he nods in agreement and takes a few steps back, unsure whether he should be amused by her or wary of her.

“Ok,” he responds and she laughs and he tries really hard not to roll his eyes. “Bye Heather,” he says teasingly, winking at her and feeling a little bit bad for her because he realizes he’s kind of a sight at the moment. She waves at him and he closes the door, relieved, turning to the kitchen and setting the bag of bread on the table and just sort of standing there staring at it, smiling.

When Pam rounds the corner with damp hair, adorned in her ‘Waffles are delicious’ hoodie, he’s too distracted to remember that he should explain the bag, so he just stands there looking at her, licking at his lips, until her frown registers and she points a finger at the table in confusion.

“Oh yeah um someone delivered your bread,” he tells her and her cheeks turn red and she reaches up to place her palms against them, either to cool them off or to try to hide them from him, and he smiles. “Two loaves,” he tells her conspiratorially, and she offers a weak chuckle and shakes her head down at the ground beneath her feet.

The phone rings and she dives for it and answers with frantic fingers.

“Hello?” she asks, mouthing the words one second to him and heading back into her bedroom and he can hear her hushed and irritated voice say something like “I cannot believe you came here with bread!” and he laughs at the empty room and thinks that this is maybe his favorite day of all time.

It’s at least a close second to yesterday, and since it’s only ten A.M. he figures that’s good enough for him.

“Do you want to cook me eggs, Pam?”

He tries really hard not to laugh at the look on her face and the way she’s leaning in the bathroom doorway watching him get dressed. He showered, he used her mouthwash, her towels are olive green, and he thinks her irritation is way more attractive that she’d like to believe.

“I know you like cooking for me,” he tells her mock-earnestly, “and you didn’t get to wear your apron last time, so…” He offers her an understanding kind of shrug and she narrows her eyes at him.

“Did your parents like just…toss you around as a baby? Like one said ’go long’ and the other one went running through your house, and then they just…” she pantomimes throwing something heavy and he laughs, “like a football?” she wonders and he nods and pulls on his t-shirt, reaching up to run his fingers through his damp hair and taking the few steps toward her so that he can brace himself on the doorframe beside her head and lean in to kiss her. She doesn’t kiss back and it makes him smile.

“That’s cute,” he tells her and she quietly laughs against him, finally leaning forward to press her lips against his and reaching out to tug at his t-shirt in a way that reminds him vividly of the night before. He swallows.

“Ok seriously, tell me you need coffee and my life will be so much better right now,” she tells him and he squints at her and walks past her into the bedroom, stooping down to pick up his sneakers.

“I need coffee,” he parrots and she claps and that makes him smile, too. Can anything not make him smile today, he wonders? He’s like…he should be on Wal Mart commercials. He should be a flight attendant. He’s Bobby McFerrin. “Get your shoes, I’ll drive,” he tells her and she’s already pushing her feet into a pair of Keds and wandering into the kitchen in search of her bag, so he reaches down to tie his sneakers and he tries not to think too hard about the fact that he’s casually sitting on the edge of her bed and they’re going to go get coffee together like they’ve been doing this for years. He tries not to think about it because he’s afraid it’s too good, too easy, and as soon as he focuses on it something will definitely ruin everything. So instead he just watches her search for her keys and he grins when she finds them behind a stack of magazines on her coffee table.

“I still feel like I’m forgetting something,” she tells him but then she shakes her head at herself and shrugs, “Whatever, let’s go,” she coaches and he nods and follows her out the door.

They’re already in her driveway when he pauses because he remembers that he tossed his baseball cap into the potted plant by her door at the last minute last night because he figured he shouldn‘t be wearing it when he confessed that he wanted her naked. He figures now that retrieving it while she’s standing there is less embarrassing than her finding it later, and so he turns back.

She stops and watches him run and fish it out and when he turns around she looks simultaneously confused and endeared by him.

“There are so many questions I could ask you right now,” she states and he chuckles.

“My mom told me never to proposition a girl while wearing a baseball cap,” he explains simply and she shakes her head at him and pulls on her sunglasses as he dusts the dirt off of the hat and pulls it on, reaching into his pocket for his car keys. “Let’s roll, Beesly,” he suggests and she chews on the inside of her cheek to try to hide her smile but he can see it anyway and everything is warm and he’s glad it’s finally spring.

The joy wears off, though.

Quick.

They pull out of the driveway and she’s already reaching out to change the radio station, and he thinks maybe if she were a guy he would literally punch her in the face. He has some pet peeves. This is one, and she knows it because they’ve ridden in his car together before. Once. He forgot that this is what she does.

He glares over at her and she smiles sweetly at him and he knows she’s trying to irritate him on purpose and because of that he doesn’t say anything. He just looks back at the road and kind of leans away from her, bracing his elbow on the window ledge and tugging his cap down a little bit lower as she lands on some station playing Celine Dion. He bites at his cheek and he prays for some form of patience.

When she doesn’t get the particular response from him that he figures she was dying for she moves on to put down each window one at a time and she reaches forward to turn Celine up loud enough to be heard basically throughout the entire city. He feels his jaw muscles clench but he tells himself to stay cool and he still refuses to react, even when his baseball cap gets caught by the wind and flips back into the backseat and lands somewhere on the floor. He just sits there, but his sense of victory is practically non-existent because she’s laughing anyway and clapping and he thinks he’s totally going to get her back for this.

His dangerously high blood pressure must be showing on his face because eventually she folds and puts the windows up and turns the radio off and he thinks there is peace in the world until she opens her mouth.

“So this is your ashtray, here, huh?” she starts and he sighs. “Pretty gross,” she assesses, her voice heavy on the consonants and he presses his lips together and nods. “Like really really gross actually,” she goes on, “I mean it’s like this little box of cancer sitting here in between our seats and I just feel like it’s keeping me from really getting close to you, Jim.” He looks over at her flatly and she smiles. “I just want to be close to you,” she promises mockingly and he nods. “If only this cancerous death trap weren’t sitting here separating us I would feel so much more a part of your life,” she confesses and he practically shouts his thanks to the heavens as he turns the wheel and pulls into the coffee shop parking lot. He throws the car into park and turns to her, reaching out with a purposely delicate hand and lifting the ashtray up and out of its resting spot so he can dump the contents into the closest garbage can, which he does all while staring at her angrily. Then he reaches back into the backseat and retrieves his hat, pulling it on so that the brim sits low and sulking his way up to the door. She chuckles as she walks up to meet him.

“I bet babysitters loved you,” he tells her as he holds the door to the shop open and she wags her eyebrows at him victoriously. “I hate you,” he tells her, and she wrinkles her nose at him. He shakes his head. “Find a table, I’ll order,” he tells her and she nods her agreement. “Wait, what do you want?” he asks and she purses her lips in thought, pulling off her sunglasses and glancing up at the menu like she’s never been here before. He waits with raised eyebrows.

“Uh, I’ll just have a medium iced decaf café mocha with skim milk and Splenda,” she tells him and he blinks at her…silent. “Ok?” she confirms, pausing in her trip to the back to find a place to sit and looking at him in confusion. He sighs.

“That’s not even…what is the point of getting coffee if it’s decaf, non-fat, and cold?” he asks her and she rolls her eyes at him and turns away and he scratches at his forehead and shrugs at nobody because, whatever. He orders a large coffee, black, and mumbles his way through her order in embarrassment, not used to ordering on behalf of a weight-conscious female, and he’s pretty sure when they finally hand him the drinks that hers is wrong, but he doesn’t say anything when he sets it down in front of her and he figures a little actual calcium won’t hurt her in the long run, and he‘s sort of happy to be getting back at her in any way he can, so he‘s not sure he cares how wrong her order is. She takes a sip and squints at him.

“You ordered this wrong,” she tells him, and he smiles at her in response.

“You’re welcome.”

“Do you do things like this because you’re so good looking nobody ever calls you on it?” she wonders cheekily and he grins and he thinks…god, all he thinks is that he hates her so much he’s in love with her.

That’s all he can think.

And he’s in love with her in that gut wrenching kind of way. In the way where if he looks her in the eye for too long she’s definitely going to figure it out, so he looks away and he nods and he stares down at his coffee like that will maybe quiet down his insides, which at the moment are all twisted up and battling between wanting to kiss her and wanting to tell her too many things that are way too honest for a casual Wednesday cup of coffee. He stares down at it, his eyes safe behind the shadow of his hat, and he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t look up. He bites on his bottom lip and he waits for her to make another joke or to sigh in impatience with his lack of response, but instead she reaches out and she taps on the brim of his hat, gentle like, and he frowns down at his coffee.

“You remind me of my dad, you know?” she tells him, and her voice is soft and he takes a second to blink away his shock before he picks his head up again because he figures that kind of sentence deserves a warm kind of response. So he looks up at her, warm, and she’s looking back at him, warm, and he feels like his other self for a second. Like maybe he should sell somebody a ream of something.

“No kidding,” he mutters, his voice barely audible over the African percussion of the piped in music.

“No kidding,” she repeats and her eyes smile at him while her lips take a sip of her non-skim mocha. “He‘s tall, like you,” she says after swallowing and he grins at her, “and he’s totally charming and he does this thing where he kind of squints and smiles and seems dangerous all at the same time, which is definitely something you do,” she promises with a chuckle, “and he‘s funny, so there‘s that,” she admits, and he’s about to comment on how awesome her dad must be when she sets her drink down and sniffs, and something about that makes him think he’d be wise to hold that thought. “I actually don’t know him that well,” she spits, her eyes fixed on her coffee.

This casual Wednesday just got a little bit intense, he thinks to himself warily.

She keeps talking and he feels his eyes squint at her in concentration, and then he consciously relaxes them because…right.

“I mean I just, he shows up a couple times a year,” she admits, “Christmas, usually, and during summer vacations when I was a kid...” He nods at her and he studies the lines of her face and the curl of her hair and he thinks that being compared to her dad suddenly hurts a little bit somewhere. “He really is handsome,” she tells him, “Like you,” and he nods again and he takes a sip of his coffee that he doesn’t really want anymore. “He’s charming and handsome and he wears jeans and rides a motorcycle, and every time he pulls up in front of the house my mom gets this look on her face…” she shakes her head at the table and chuckles and he doesn’t think anything is funny. “When I was younger I…” she swallows. “We always thought he was going to stay,” she says and it’s clear her father never did and she picks her head up and she pins Jim with this look. This look like…like a challenge. Like a question.

He figures out in this moment of almost clarity why she’s hated him all these years and he thinks it has something to do with disappointment and patterns and the look that had always been on her mother’s face. He thinks maybe she’s been looking at him and seeing someone else all along and he thinks maybe this whole time she’s just been trying to keep that look from happening...her mother's look. But he doesn’t think he could ever be the guy who leaves a trail of dust and Pam behind him, and that knowledge makes him feel…something. Better about himself. Sure of something, maybe. Sure of her.

“Pam,” he starts, soft, solid, and he thinks he’s about to say something good because he thinks it should steal the breath from her lungs. He thinks that even the air should pause to listen to him, to stare at him in shock, and he feels something inside of him vowing to be a good man and he feels like handing that over to her. Like giving that to her because she’s already made him so much better than he is.

“Well, this seems cozy.”

The statement from a third party makes the words die on his tongue, and it makes her blink and shift and look up and away from him, and it’s like her skin goes totally white, and he thinks if the air was still before it’s fucking buzzing now because something about casual Wednesday coffee is totally fucked up, he decides. He watches her swallow in sudden discomfort.

“Graham,” she greets, surprised, and Jim feels like maybe making a quip about having tea with the queen, but instead he just sits there. Instead he just doesn’t say anything.  Instead he kind of smiles at Graham in interest.

Instead he just waits.

She thinks there are tigers, and then there are housecats.

She thinks there are tigers, and lions, and jungles full of these powerful types of cats who have intelligent eyes and long, lean torsos and shoulder blades and hip bones that move like see saws every time they walk. Predators. Hunters. The type that could make a person freeze just by casting a glance in their general direction.

She thinks there are men, like Jim, who are tigers. Lions. Men who are like Jim because they have that certain hint of danger and that certain look that makes a woman feel like maybe she might be dinner. And also dessert. And probably breakfast if everyone is lucky.

And then there are men like Graham.

Housecats.

Easy and lazy and careless and content to just sit on a bench while the afternoon sort of rolls by. There are definitely men like Graham who only need their tails stroked every once in a while to be pleased as punch and don’t really challenge a woman much, don’t really make her feel like if she doesn’t run she might be sorry. Simple and satisfied types of men.

And she has to admit that she’s been thinking a lot more lately about what it would be like to be attacked by a lion then she has about how much she wants to train a tabby to pee on a piece of newspaper.

Actually she hasn’t thought of tabbies at all, which is probably what has her stuck in this situation, and caught completely off guard.

But, god, even pissed off, Graham seems harmless. He seems easy to appease and easy to reassure and easy to take care of in that boring and housebroken kind of way. She could just jump up and wrap her arms around him and make up some excuse about how she and Jim bumped into each other, and he would swallow it whole and ask her to dinner. It would be really that easy. Housecats are very simple creatures.

But for some reason, which probably has something to do with her sudden craving for the kind of cat that will pin her down and show her no mercy, she just sits here in this café and she just looks up at Graham in palpable and awkward discomfort. She doesn’t hop up, she doesn’t wrap her arms around him, and she’s having a really hard time saying much of anything, let alone making up an excuse. She licks at her lips and blinks at him.

“What are you doing here?” she finally spits, and that was probably a stupid thing to say since this is a fucking public place and Graham can buy a cup of coffee if he wants to. He tilts his head at her and she thinks of shorthairs and longhairs and bobtails and Persians.

“I’m getting a bloody cup of coffee,” he responds, his consonants harsh and his tone attempting anger, “What the fuck are you doing?” and with this question he looks from her to Jim and back again, clearly insinuating that he pretty much knows what she’s doing but wants to actually hear it spoken out loud. She’s not sure why he would want that, but that seems to be what he’s waiting for. She swallows and instead of responding right away she notices Jim’s silence, his smug smile and the way he raises his eyebrows at Graham in acknowledgement, and gee, she thinks he’s hilarious…really fucking funny. She sighs.

“I’m um,” she stutters, looking down at her mocha and praying for some kind of intervention, wishing Jim would help her out a little. “I am also getting some coffee,” she tells him lamely, frowning.

“Sans the blood,” Jim offers, clearly amused by his own joke, and she shoots him a glare in warning because if he’s going to open his mouth she’d really like him to say something helpful instead of something…not…helpful. He shrugs at her and bites his cheek and she works really hard not to smile back at him. Damn him and his irresistibility. Fucking tigers and their charm, she thinks.

She genuinely feels sorry for Graham. She kind of wishes that she was the sort of girl who could chuckle and brush him off easily and without remorse. She wishes she were dish soap, or a bar girl, or a bar of dish soap, or any one of the many women Jim has allegedly laid. Instead she’s herself and she just says she’s getting coffee, too, like Graham can’t see that for himself.

“Brilliant,” Graham offers, the word in direct contrast with the fact that he sounds beyond pissed. And as he pops his hip out to the side in a way that kind of lessens his demeanor of seriousness she thinks that maybe Americans are better at getting angry. Brilliant and Bugger don’t really have the same effect as Hey buddy I’m gonna clean the floor with your fucking face. Not that she’s ever said that to anybody, but it seems like an American kind of thing to say.

She feels her eyebrows narrow in consideration of his tapping fingers. He’s always tapping his fingers against his thighs and it drives her crazy, but she figures she’s only noticing it now because she’s trying really hard to come up with an excuse for why she’s being awful to him. For why she didn’t just call him three days ago and let him down easy when she first felt the hints of this Jim and Pam hot and heavy, wake up and I need you kind of love story.

Why didn’t she give her stupid housecat away to somebody else once she realized that she was being hunted by a goddamn mountain lion. A panther. A leopard or a jaguar or some sort of really fast, really demanding and focused kind of creature. It’s like Jim has been wearing her down for days, weeks, and she should’ve figured it out and told Graham to get his milk someplace else.

But, god. How was she supposed to know that she and Jim would turn out to be the fucking couple of the twenty first century? Also probably the couple of the twenty second century if last night was anything to go by. She glances at Jim and tries to silently ask for some help, an excuse, a scenario that might make sense to the rest of the world or at least to this one guy standing here, but Jim just looks at her, still amused, and she thinks of tigers and housecats and she wonders why she maybe couldn’t just be happy with Graham, despite his overbite. She rolls her eyes at Jim and he chuckles at her, which is fitting.

“We um, we’re just…” she starts to stutter, looking back up at Graham and trying to stay cool despite the glint of accusation nestled into his eyes. “We’re only having a cup of coffee, Graham, really,” she says and it has that kind of bitter, metallic taste of a lie and she doesn’t dare look over at Jim for fear of the squint that she knows he’s probably giving her. Whatever, she’s just trying to make this better. Easier.

“Coffee,” Graham repeats, and he does hazard a look over at Jim and she figures whatever he finds on Jim’s face makes it perfectly clear that ‘coffee’ must be what the kids are calling it these days, because he bites at his lower lip and he fidgets and his cheeks turn red and he seems really angry.

Ok so she’s a big whore.

She cheated on her sort-of boyfriend, mostly boy Friday, and she should be wearing a mini skirt and hanging out at Tinks.

She sucks.

She was really just trying to make herself look better, in all honesty, by saying that this was just coffee, just a casual Wednesday cup of coffee which is actually anything but since she‘s already confessed her intense father issues and before Graham interrupted she was pretty much about to suggest that Jim basically quit his entire life so that he can more readily become her very personal and well-endowed sex slave. Not exactly the textbook definition of casual Wednesday.

Her stare shifts back down to her mocha because she’s not really sure where to look at this point, like which one of them will be less angry with her. The silence stretches and she’s basically playing dead and hoping that neither of them will pounce.

“Pam, darling, have you slipped into a coma?” Graham finally wonders aloud and she huffs out a hefty breath and looks up at him, offering a little bit of a guilty smile.

“No, I’m…sitting here,” she mutters. She’s stupid. She’s really stupid in so many ways. Jim shifts in his seat and she’s worried for a second that he’s going to get up and challenge Graham to a duel or something, but of course that was a silly thought because Jim is married to just sitting there and doing nothing apparently.

“Am I missing something?” Graham asks, “Are you two filming? Or…” and he does that I’m a really big fan of your show kind of thing where he looks around himself for a camera or some guy wearing a headset just to see if maybe he’s accidentally on television. She bites at her cheek and shakes her head.

“No we’re not filming, we’re just…um…”

“Having coffee,” Jim fills in, and his tone is like a warning and he’s looking at her with laser-beam eyes and she feels really really beyond uncomfortable. She spreads her expression out at him, like she raises her eyebrows and she presses her lips together and she widens her eyes as if to say chill out, I’m working on it, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move, doesn’t nod in acknowledgement and ok, she thinks, she gets that everyone is pissed off at this point. She gets it.

What do they want her to do? God.

“So I’m assuming you’d like to cancel our four o’clock date, then?” Graham wonders, still hoping apparently that somehow he’s misinterpreted this and she’ll say she doesn’t want to cancel and could they just go elope right now. And part of her thinks maybe that would actually be the smartest idea because what sane person walks willingly into a lion’s den? What sort of normal, level-headed woman would do that?

“Uh, yeah I guess that would be…” and she shakes her head and swallows and grimaces and runs quickly through all of the guilt-ridden and apologetic reaction shots she’s ever practiced. “That would be best,” she finishes and Graham nods and huffs out this sarcastic sounding laugh that makes her skin crawl and she’d be waiting for him to yell at her except that housecats don’t yell. At least not in public. She glances at Jim and he’s staring at her with his head tilted and his eyes squinted and she thinks lions, however…tigers…they yell whenever and wherever the fuck they want. She takes a sip of her coffee like that will make her feel better.

“Grand,” Graham finally spits and she thinks he’s totally British. He’s like the Pink Panther or something. He should wear a bowler and a trench coat and solve murder mysteries in Eighteenth Century London.

“Grand,” Jim parrots, in a very American and very ironic sounding voice. She glares at him and he almost narrows his eyes at her in a challenge.

“You’re very funny,” Graham spits, sounding nervous but just angry enough to say it anyway, “No wonder you’re on a television show,” and his sarcasm drips from his tongue like it’s saliva and she shakes her head at this situation.

They’re all idiots. She hates this.

“Thank you,” Jim responds flatly, and something about it reminds her of the tone an adult takes with a pretentious child. She figures she’d better interrupt or Jim will make a comment about Graham’s acoustic guitar and everyone will end up dumping their coffee on each other or something.

“Graham, I’ll um…I’ll call you tomorrow,” she offers, hoping that will serve as the olive branch to end this encounter and get her back on solid ground, and he kind of scoffs at her and rolls his eyes, taking a few steps back and away from them and holding out his hand in refusal.

“Don’t bother,” he tells her and she feels awful for so many reasons, not the least of which is that she feels like something completely safe and normal and familiar has just been ripped away from her by her own desire for exciting and new. She’s sixteen and begging James Dean for a smoke, or something. She’s an idiot who pushes away a good and solid kind of guy so she can hang out with the biggest jerk in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Graham walks away without another word and she swallows and feels tears in her eyes and she looks down at the table and she thinks this is all sorts of wrong.

“So,” Jim starts eventually, “raise your hand if you totally forgot that Graham cracker exists,” and she’s a little bit relieved by the joke because at least he doesn’t sound angry, so she lifts her hand sheepishly and guiltily, and so does he, except there’s no guilt in him as he does it and he grins at her. “Welcome to my universe, Pam Beesly,” he tells her and she flinches and takes a long gulp of her practically empty mocha.

“This isn’t funny,” she finally says after swallowing and his eyes lose their glint and he stops grinning and he just kind of watches her and she thinks of tigers. “He’s a nice guy,” she says, “He’s…that was probably a really stupid thing to do,” she mutters mostly to herself. “He’s reliable. I…don’t know, I trust him and I know he won’t…I just trust him, I guess,” she explains and as soon as it’s out of her mouth she realizes that some things are not meant to be confessed, sometimes.

She’s seriously really an idiot.

Jim looks resigned, like he’s been expecting that, and he looks down at his coffee and kind of nods and his mouth tips in that certain way that always tugs on her heart strings and she feels awful all over again.

“Yeah, no, I um…” he clears his throat, “I get what you mean,” and she’s quick to reach her hand out across the table and brush it against his forearm.

“Don’t, Jim I didn’t mean anything, I just feel bad. I don’t normally do this kind of thing,” she explains and he’s still nodding and he doesn’t pull his arm away from her hand, so she figures that’s something, but when he picks his head up his eyes are fierce. Lion-like. Hungry with something and she isn’t sure what. She stops breathing and tries not to move.

“I’m not your dad,” he spits, like it’s been simmering there on his tongue this whole time, and she’s totally mute, totally transfixed by him, practically begging for him to finish her off right here and now. She jerkily offers up a nod and she blinks to try to get herself together.

“Uh, yeah, no I know,” she tells him earnestly. He’s still staring at her, still piercing her with his gaze and still hungry, hunting, assessing her and wanting something from her.

“Do you know, though?” he asks, and she finds she can’t really respond. “It’s fine if you don’t, I’ll just keep reminding you,” he promises and god that sends something right down to her stomach, that tightens her up so that every nerve ending and every atom is buzzing and humming and leaping out across to him. He apparently doesn’t expect a response because he just nods once and the tension drips off of him and she’s jealous of his ability to address a situation and then move right on. She’s jealous of the casual look on his face right now. “Do you want another cup of coffee?” he asks, and she’s…what? She’s like…uh…he‘s fascinating. She wants to know everything about him.

“Yeah,” she croaks and he nods at her and reaches out and takes her empty mocha and it’s like he didn’t just steal her breath from her lungs and strike her practically mute. He’s acting like he didn’t just totally…

“Do you want to have dinner with me tonight?” he asks as he’s getting up to go get her refill. She’s still frozen in place and she nods up at him with wide eyes.

“Yeah,” she repeats and he smiles down at her.

“Wow, you are…so agreeable right now,” he states and she feels her cheeks lift up in an involuntary smile and she’s probably blushing but she doesn’t care. “Want to give me a hundred dollars?” he asks and she nods.

“Sure,” she responds.

“Want to go sky diving without parachutes?” he wonders, and she chuckles.

“Ok,” she agrees.

“Want to have sex right now on this table in front of all these people?” he asks her, wagging his eyebrows and she laughs and a couple of heads turn to look at them in interest and she’s definitely blushing now.

“Yes, I do,” she answers firmly and he nods at her happily and mutters nice in appreciation and she…she really, really likes him. So much so that she kind of crooks her finger at him in that way that’s all 1940’s and makes her feel like she should have on bright red lipstick and a pencil skirt and he braces himself on the table and bends down low so his ear is at her mouth like she’s going to whisper something to him. Instead she reaches up and plants her hands on his cheeks, and she leans forward and kisses him, soft and gentle and earnest and honest and all of the things that she wants to give to him in apology for calling him “only coffee” and he smiles against her.

Once he pulls back his eyes are intelligent and his torso is long and he’s certainly looking at her like she might be his dinner.

“How dare you?” he whispers quietly and she laughs and pushes him away so that he can go refill her coffee. He grins at her over his shoulder and she watches his hips sway like a see saw and his legs move like a jungle animal and she thinks that maybe it’s her turn to play with bigger cats, and his saunter and his smile and that dangerous look that he gets in his eye is exactly what she wants right now.

And he said he’s not her father and she kind of believed him.

She thinks housecats are for frightened women, and she swears to god she isn’t going to be scared anymore.

She makes him drop her off at her house and she tells him to go home and get clothes or something. She says she wants like an hour to herself and he just nods at her and agrees and gives her an adorable kind of wave as he’s pulling back out of her driveway and she’s glad for a little distance because this is all starting to seem really surreal.

Like totally surreal. Like she didn’t actually believe things like this happened in real life until it, you know, happened, and now she’s still wanting to look at herself in the mirror and say out loud “You slept with Jim Halpert” because she figures that will make it seem more actual, more real, more her life instead of somebody else’s. She thought he only dated girls whose names end in y. Girls named Mitzy and Muffy and Cindy and Julie. Although technically Julie doesn’t end in y but it’s the same sound, so, Pam figures it counts.

Actually she didn’t think he dated at all. She doesn’t think he does. Which means…something…overwhelming, so she just shakes her head and unlocks the door and she’s totally unsurprised that the phone is ringing inside and she has five messages on her answering machine.

She picks up, dropping her purse on the floor and pushing her sunglasses so that they’re perched on top of her head.

“Yes?” she greets, already knowing who it is.

“Oh thank god, you’re home, is he there? Are you naked?” Heather asks frantically and Pam rolls her eyes.

“No he went home for clothes,” she responds, trying to sound calm and unaffected but really feeling just as jittery as Heather sounds.

“Perfect, I’m coming over,” she announces and before Pam has a chance to tell her that that is probably the worst idea in the history of ideas, Heather hangs up and Pam is left standing there with the phone in her hand, frowning. Sometimes she wishes this reality show was an actual reality show because she figures Heather would be a huge crowd pleaser on camera, all energy and spunk and comedic timing. But the show is not really real, so she doesn’t spend very long considering it.

She sits down on her futon and kind of rests her head in her hands and tries really hard to catch up with her life right now.

Jesus, she’s still kind of stuck outside O’Flannigan’s last night, or maybe somewhere in the parking lot at work, and she’s pretty sure that she’d like to take this time to recall the rest of what happened. Last night. And definitely this morning. And she guesses maybe whatever that just was in the coffee shop.

Why does she feel like she’s in an episode of 24 all of a sudden? Like, is this much stuff supposed to happen this quickly? Shouldn’t there be some sort of rule in the universe that says the president can’t be kidnapped on the same day that Russians purchase all the nuclear weapons on the face of the planet? Shouldn’t like the alignment of the stars only point to one huge world altering event at a time?

Ok, like kissing Jim probably would’ve been enough because lord knows he’s fucking great at it and it basically turned her brain into that anti-drug commercial with the frying pan and the butter and the egg. And before that there was the scripted dialogue that felt really…somehow not scripted. She remembers it feeling honest and real and shocking and she remembers the look that was on his face and how it seemed like he had needed her in that moment and, god, she thinks.

That had been intense.

Then her dressing room had happened, which she doesn’t even really want to think about for too long because it’s basically guaranteed to get her all hot and bothered, and that isn’t even venturing into what happened outside the bar, or him showing up at her door last night looking all…

Ok she needs a glass of water or something.

She has never had a man want her who was so fucking delicious in so many ways. And that’s not just his body or his intensity, but like his actual personality is delicious. His attitude and his honesty and his total openness around her. The way she feels like she knows him maybe better than anybody else, and the way that she had no idea she knew him that well. Like it happened when she wasn’t looking. Like it happened when they were both pretending to hate each other. She thinks of some stupid cliché about hate being love in disguise and it makes her kind of gag a little it’s so corny.

She’s turned into a person who thinks in corny clichés.

She’s Kelly.

She starts to cry because she’s also Pam and this is sort of what she does a lot of the time and really it’s a big part of why she’d asked him to go home. She knew this was coming. Damn her stupid overactive emotions, but she can’t help it. She’s totally overwhelmed and it’s not necessarily a bad thing it’s just…

She has a habit of crying. Whatever. No big deal.

Her mind drifts for a second to the fact that she’s pretty sure that this morning when they were indisposed in the bathroom, aka totally hot and naked, she’s pretty sure that he confessed to having yelled her name during sex with someone else…

She definitely remembers him saying something like that.

Doesn’t that mean he’s been thinking about this for a while? Like he’s been wanting her or liking her or picturing her naked before all of this really even started? That’s…she hisses out a breath…that blows her mind.

Mostly because he’s Jim. With the baseball caps and the autographs and the sweet talking in bars. One night stand Jim. Don Juan have you missed my stunning good looks this weekend, Sunshine? Jim. Hot and cocky and seemingly totally disinterested in anybody with an IQ over 7. Disinterested in anybody not wearing Ugg boots and anybody who hasn’t been tanning in the past twelve hours. She doesn’t tan. She doesn’t own Ugg boots. She’s pretty sure her IQ is somewhere north of 7.

She is Pam.

Like…oversized sweatshirt wearing, makeup minimalist, prudish and moody Pamela Anne Beesly from Hobbits Glen, Maryland, and she never thought there was any way Jim would ever lust after her. In fact she spent a lot of energy making sure he didn’t. Part of her thinks the sweatshirts and lack of makeup were deliberate and all to do with silently putting Jim in his over-sexed, seemingly unintelligent place. And yet…

Here she is, totally pleased by him, and pretty much positive the sweatshirts hadn‘t done a damn thing because he‘d kissed her in front of the entire world. She had had some serious sex with him last night and she remembers distinctly the way her name had sounded on his lazy and lust-heavy tongue, the way his hands had pressed themselves against her headboard and the way he had looked so fantastically focused and undone by her. He’d clutched at her. He had definitely wanted her.

So she figures her ugly purple sweater must secretly be a turn on or something.

There’s a knock at the door and she gets up, swiping at her cheeks and pulling it open resignedly because she knows it’s Heather, and there’s nothing she can do to get her to go away.

“Oh, god, you’re crying,” Heather greets, rolling her eyes and pushing her way into Pam’s living room like she owns the place, and Pam sighs and kind of tosses her hands out to her sides in response.

“Yeah, well,” she mutters and Heather stretches out on the futon, tossing her khaki trench onto the armchair by the window. “I’m having a lot of feelings right now,” Pam explains feebly, picking the coat up and hanging it in the closet where it belongs.

“I know, honey,” Heather responds gently, “This must be very overwhelming for you,” but, predictably, the sympathy only lasts for like three seconds and Pam raises her eyebrows in amusement when Heather moves on with practically no sense of decorum at all. “I need to know literally every single detail of your life that might explain how the hell this happened,” she proclaims and Pam plops herself into the now empty armchair and sighs, pushing her hands up into her hair without realizing her sunglasses are there. They go tumbling to the floor and she just stares at them, too lazy to bend down and pick them up. Heather looks down at them, too, and purses her lips, waiting.

“He made me eggs,” Pam offers, still a little bit on the weepy side, and Heather frowns at her in confusion.

“This morning?” she wonders, and Pam shakes her head.

“No like last weekend,” she responds, “He just showed up here with eggs and then I invited him in and he cut himself and it was just like…that’s it,” she mumbles, thinking that must’ve been the moment she was hooked. Or maybe it was when he touched her hair in O’Flannigan’s after he called her a frigid bitch. Or maybe it was the first day she met him. Ugh, she thinks, who the fuck knows.

“He showed up with eggs, and then he cut himself?” she repeats, and Pam nods, “That’s the story you’re telling me right now?” Pam nods again and Heather kind of huffs. “There’s no nudity in that story, when does the nudity happen?” she wonders, and Pam rolls her eyes and shifts around so that she’s draped across the chair with her legs hanging over one armrest and her head propped up against the other. She stares up at the ceiling in thought. “Was it angry sex? It was, right? I mean you hate him, so…”

“I don’t hate him,” Pam admits quietly.

“You don’t,” Heather states, confused, and Pam does not blame her. It’s all confusing. Even Jack Bauer would be confused.

“Not at all,” she says and Heather gasps and sits up.

“You’re in love with him!” she accuses, pointing at her and smiling wide.  She's practically clapping in excitement and Pam just turns her head and gives her a watery kind of resigned expression and shrugs.

“Am I?” she asks and Heather laughs at the ceiling.

“Oh my god the universe is SO fucked UP!” she calls and Pam kind of silently agrees. “I mean like this must be the dawning of the age of Aquarius, Pam, because I did NOT see any of this coming,” and Pam gives her a doubtful look and tries to shake her head against the armrest but ends up just making a mess of her own hair.

“These are the moments when I realize that you’re older than me,” she mumbles and Heather laughs.  “I don’t know, everything happened way too fast,” she assesses as she resumes the squinting at the ceiling that she had been doing.  She puffs her cheeks out to try to loosen the muscles around her mouth, which she’s been holding too tight since Graham showed up at the coffee house.

“That’s how this sort of thing is supposed to happen, though, sweetie, because fate doesn’t want to give you time to think too hard.  Which is exactly what you’re doing with the weeping and the wailing, by the way,” she points out and Pam considers that, thinks that maybe she’s right and thinks that maybe she should relax into things.  Maybe she should accept her feelings instead of questioning them.  She hums.

“Maybe,” she says to the off white spackling above her.

“Definitely,” Heather corrects.  “So, I don’t want to seem insensitive or anything but…um…can we skip ahead to the part where he rips your clothes off?” she suggests and now Pam is laughing because she can’t help herself.  “Or maybe the part where he rips his own clothes off in like a frenzy of heat and manliness?” she offers suggestively.

“Oh god,” Pam drawls, shooting Heather a glare of disgust and sitting up straight so she can wrap her legs around and sit Indian style. Heather wags her eyebrows and smiles wide.

“All I know is he looks fantastic without a shirt,” she explains, reaching out and kind of flexing her fingers in the air like Jim’s pecs are there.  Pam just watches her with a raised eyebrow, feeling a little bit proud of herself for maybe having accidentally wooed such a fine specimen when nobody was looking. “I mean…holy crap, Pam,” Heather states simply, and Pam nods.

“I know,” she agrees, “He showed up here in the middle of the night,” she explains, sounding hushed and excited, “and he was just like Pam I want you, I can’t help it, and then he just like pinned me up against the door,” she finishes breathlessly and Heather’s mouth is hanging open in thrilled surprise.  She’s staring at Pam with twinkling eyes, her hands reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ears and then hanging there in the air to fan her face.

“Why do these kinds of things always happen to you and not me?” she wonders, jealous, and Pam twists her mouth at her incredulously.

“Because you’re married?”  

Heather shrugs and waves dismissively.

“Whatever, who cares, get to the naked part,” she begs, and Pam suddenly shakes her head in puritanical determination.

“No you know what, I am not going to relay to you every…breathless…and torrid, and hot, and steamy and…totally…huge detail,” she announces with humore and mischief in her eyes. Heather hoots and claps her hands.

“I knew it! I knew he was totally equipped to get things done!” she declares like she’s Robert E. Lee or something, and Pam grins like the cat that ate the canary.

“He’s definitely equipped,” she admits, laughter laced through her voice and her mind wandering back to her encounter with Jim on the counter this morning.

She feels her cheeks get red, and she thinks her fair skin seems to be betraying her a lot lately and embarrassing her more than necessary in already embarrassing situations.

She goes on to explain to Heather the way his hands had been, the way he’d looked at her yesterday and this morning, the way he’d kind of confessed to having thought about her before, and Heather hangs on every word until finally she interrupts with a slice of her hand through the air.

“You cannot let him wander off, Pam, you should tattoo your name on his ass or something,” she declares.  Pam clicks her tongue at that.

“Jesus, he’s not a cow,” she scolds and Heather’s head tilts at her in thought.  There's a solid kind of thoughtful pause.

“There’s a joke in there somewhere, but I’m just gonna let it go,” she decides and Pam nods her thanks.

“Great, I love that idea,” and they’re chuckling and Pam is about to describe this morning in more detail when somebody knocks at the door and they turn to each other with wide eyes. Pam gasps and sits up a little straighter.  “I bet that’s Jim. I told him to come back in an hour...oh my god, has it been an hour?” she wonders, standing up and kind of tugging at her Waffles hoodie and hoping she doesn’t look like she’s just been laying around, crying, and discussing his penis. Heather shrugs and stretches out a little further on the sofa.

“How should I know if it‘s him, who am I, Dionne Warwick?” she asks, “Or um…” she snaps her fingers as Pam kind of bites at her lip, concerned, wiping at her eyes and hoping like hell she looks normal. “Who’s the other one?” she wonders.

“Miss Cleo,” Pam supplies distractedly as there’s another knock at the door.

Then realization and some form of horror crosses Heather’s face and she leaps up and starts circling the room in a panic. Pam just watches her in interest.

“Oh god, wait don’t answer! He knows me, I brought the bread here and made a total ass of myself.”

Pam grimaces.

“Yeah don’t remind me,” she states and Heather sort of laughs before totally sobering again and kind of hopping around the living room looking for some way out of this situation.

“No I mean I…I did like a bow or something, I was really…” she confesses in a frantic whisper, “I can’t be here!” she says and Pam just stands there, amused by the little dance of discomfort going on in front of her because honestly she‘s usually the one feeling uncomfortable.

It isn’t until Heather finally opens the closet door and starts to climb in that Pam lets out an amused and shocked sounding exclamation.

“Oh my god, you are not going to hide in the closet,” she tells her forcefully and Heather kind of deflates and then shrugs in acceptance, climbing back out and turning around herself in a circle, frantically looking for somewhere else she can go. Pam sighs. “Just, whatever, you’re the one who barged over here twice today, you have to deal with the consequences,” she states like she’s Heather’s mother or very wise aunt and Heather huffs and crosses her arms and rolls her eyes as Pam steps up to the door.  She grins at Heather's unhappy stance, watching her over her shoulder and pulling the door open to reveal a very privy and amused looking Jim.  Silence kind of lingers for a moment while Jim watches Pam and Pam watches Heather.

“Did you need more time to talk about me?” he asks, stepping inside and closing the door behind him.  Pam turns and finds herself a little distracted because he‘s changed his clothes and is wearing black pants and a long sleeved gray t-shirt and she thinks he looks dangerous and delicious. She blinks when he turns back to look at her and she offers him a smile.  He grins. “Because I can leave and come back,” he suggests and Heather laughs uncomfortably, prompting Pam to give her a questioning look and wave her into silence. Jim glances over at Heather and kind of frowns. “How’s it going?” he greets.

“Uh, no, it’s…you know…” Heather stutters, and Pam just stands there, totally entertained and definitely planning on letting Heather just marinate in her own awkwardness. “Fine,” she finally finishes, and Jim nods.

“Did Pam tell you I’m not her dad?” he wonders, and Pam feels her stomach drop and a kind of soft grin light up her face as she stands there looking at him. Basically he makes her melt and she can’t even do anything to stop it. Heather looks at him curiously and pauses.

“No, she didn’t, but I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that,” she states sardonically and Pam kind of chuckles and looks down at the floor to avoid the warm way Jim is watching her because she‘s feeling way too many things at the moment. But she picks her head up when Heather suddenly and without prompting reaches into the closet and retrieves her coat.  She then kind of...trips her way to the door, muttering apologies the entire time. “I’m gonna go,” she announces, and Pam nods her approval. “Call me later, honey, ok?” Heather requests and Pam says ok and waves weakly at her, unsure whether she should be laughing or grimacing.

The door swings closed and Jim turns to Pam with his eyebrows raised and his lips pressed together in amusement. She shrugs and kind of puffs air out of her mouth. 

“She’s just…um,” she starts but any excuse dies on her tongue because really there isn't one for Heather.  Jim nods and squints at her.

“You were just talking about my penis for an hour, weren’t you?” he asks and she laughs because um…yeah they were and she isn’t really sure how to admit that. So she just stands there and kind of flinches and shifts and he crosses his arms and grins at her. “You can say it, Pam. I mean I’ve seen you naked, what’s left to be embarrassed about?” he points out and she clicks her tongue at him and turns away and heads toward the kitchen because her stupid blushing skin is giving everything away and it drives her crazy.

“Do you want some water?” she asks, hoping to distract him and change the subject. He chuckles and follows close on her heel.

“Just say it,” he requests and she shakes her head at the cupboard of glasses she’s pulled open as she reaches up for two, leaning forward against the counter and stretching up onto her toes so that she can pull down some smaller cups from the top shelf. She’s not really surprised when she feels Jim press himself up against her back and reach up to wrap his hand around hers and pull the glasses down for her. He breathes into her ear and she tries really hard not to shudder as she grins down at the counter top and enjoys the long and tight feel of him behind her. “Say it,” he says, a chuckle tickling his words, and she shakes her head again and presses herself back against him. “Say, ‘Jim,” he leans forward and lets his tongue trace the shell of her ear and her eyes slide closed. “’Heather and I were discussing your penis,’” he whispers into her ear and he’s laughing and so is she because…really? What kind of thing is this to be talking about?

She braces herself and she turns, pinning him with her stare, offering him a saucy kind of expression and grinning.  She reaches up to wrap her arms around his neck and she tips her hips forward so that they’re pressed tight against his.

His arms wrap down around her waist and he sets the glasses down onto the counter top so that his fingers can clutch at her in that way that they do, and she feels a thrill slip down her spine.

“Jim,” she says quietly before leaning forward and pressing her lips to his briefly. He smiles against her.

“Uh huh,” he offers, feigning curiosity.

“Heather and I were discussing your penis,” she parrots in a husky whisper and he hums, pleased, snaking his fingers down to trail against her back pockets and she pecks him on the lips and pulls back. “Now get us some water while I go change my clothes,” she orders, shoving him away from her and pulling the smile right off of his face. He lets his head drop forward in defeat and he reaches out to grab her as she slips by. She however is stealty and avoids his hand, tossing him a smile as she heads to the bedroom.

“Do you really expect me to stay out here when I know you’re in there taking all of your clothes off?” he calls and she laughs and looks through her closet for something…good to wear to dinner.

“If you have any concern for your own well being, yes I do,” she calls back and she listens to him laugh and she reaches out for a black tank top and a sexy sheer black blouse that she hasn’t worn since she bought it, and she figures…what the hell?

Honestly?  She kind of just wants to see the look on his face.

“Hey, Pam, your neighbor just called and apparently there’s some kind of emergency that requires that you strip naked and climb on top of me.”

No, he thinks, saying that would sound gross.

Maybe something more like “Hey, Pam? Were you planning on killing me now or later? Because if it was later you need to go change your clothes.”

Or maybe like “Pam? Is that actually you or did you get bitten by a vampire in your bedroom?”

Like…what sort of shirt is that? He squints and tries to figure out if she’s really standing there. Jesus, she’s all…long black legs and black high heels and this sheer kind of shirt that makes his breath get shallow and his vision blur. It doesn’t matter that she’s wearing a second shirt beneath the sheer one because really it’s the psychology of the thing…really it’s the fact that the possibility exists that at some point she could feasibly wear the sheer shirt by…itself…she would probably never do that because usually women are sensible when men are…not. But jesus…that fucking shirt makes him need to maybe sit down and put his head between his legs.

Or her legs.

He’s really out of control.

Maybe, he thinks dazedly, he should say “You’re a goddess, please don’t ever snap out of this and remember how much you hate me,” but he figures that would just be reminding her that she hated him and he doesn’t want to do that. Instead he just swallows.

Instead he just says “Wow,” and he leaves it at that, but he figures she gets it because she looks over at him and blushes a little and grins and digs through her purse for something…some kind of potion probably or maybe like a fucking pair of handcuffs or something since she seems to just be one surprise after another.

“I don’t know where we’re going. Am I too dressed up?” she wonders, her eyes focused on her bag so that his can take their like ninetieth journey down her body and back up again.

“You are not too dressed up, no,” he tells her, his voice sounding kind of choked and husky, “you are, however, running the very serious risk that I might grope you during dinner,” he confesses and she laughs and he loves the sound of it like he loves the sound of his name on her lips. He tilts his head at her when she looks over at him like he’s informing her that he’s serious and she seems extremely proud of herself.

“That would be ok,” she tells him and he feels his heart kind of skip four or five or six beats. Or maybe it stopped two weeks ago and he’s died and gone to fucking heaven because this woman is ridiculous. Really more than he’d ever imagined. She’s way more than a girl next door, and way more than the less than intelligent bar-girls he usually gets with. She’s like sweet and sour. Or maybe like barbeque chicken because she’s comforting and spicy at the same time…

Maybe he’s hungrier than he realized, since he’s regressed to comparing her to food all of a sudden.

“Should we go?” he asks and she nods, and he’s maybe a little nervous because of how good she looks and how much he realizes that this is important.

He sometimes thinks of his life in terms of an autobiography and he sometimes thinks about which people would be an entire chapter in his book. Yeah whatever, it’s been established that he’s arrogant, so just…whatever. He thinks about this kind of thing. Before today he knew for sure that his parents would be a chapter. And his brothers, who actually might each get their own because lord knows they’ve all had their problems with him and a good book needs tension, right?

But now he thinks there’d be chapters and chapters devoted to Pam in the book of his life, and before he didn‘t even realize it. He thinks Pam Beesly is like…the second half of his autobiography. The part where he grows up and changes and becomes the kind of guy who writes Christmas songs for starving children in Africa.

Because who doesn’t love ‘Do They Know It‘s Christmas?’ Right?

He feels the pressure of that second half of his autobiography now. He feels the intensity of it and he wonders if he can do this right. As Pam passes him and heads for the door she reaches up almost without thinking and kind of pats him on the cheek…simple and elegant and sure of herself and he figures if he can just trust her…if he can just let her push him along in the right direction, he’ll be ok.

He figures this will be ok.

She doesn’t touch the radio on their drive to the restaurant and he’s glad, so he looks over at her and grins and she looks back, happy. He likes her happy. He feels totally taken with it, and he feels partly responsible for it and god…that makes him proud. Or maybe pleased. Or just…

He’s happy, too, he guesses.

Happy.

What a fucking foreign concept.

He pulls into the parking lot of El Rincon and finds a spot close to the door, shifting into park and looking over at her with a nervous kind of grin on his face.

“Tell me you like Mexican food,” he says and she chuckles and shakes her head and he’s so afraid for a second that he’s going to have to walk in there by himself and explain that they’re going to go someplace else and sorry for the confusion…

“Mexican food is my life,” she tells him cheekily and he exhales, relieved, and opens his door.

“Perfect, because I called ahead,” and he tries not to look excited and he tries not to seem nervous and he tries really hard to just be cool and normal even though he’s never really done anything like this before. He definitely hasn’t, actually, so he swallows and braces himself and holds the door open for her. She gives him a look and he laughs down at the sidewalk.

“Jim, they said you called ahead,” he hears from inside and he picks his head up and steps up to the hostess table.

“Yes I did,” he announces, glancing down at Pam and winking at her impressed facial expression.

“I guess that means you don’t want to hang out with me and drink margaritas all night,” Mae assesses, feigning insult, and Jim feels Pam get tense next to him, straightening her spine and kind of leaning away from him until he reaches out and presses his hand to the small of her back, like saying chill out.

“Mae, you’re married,” he reminds her and the woman clicks her tongue and rolls her eyes, putting down her pen and paper and taking a step back and away from them.

“He says that every time,” she tells Pam conspiratorially and Pam laughs and gets warm against him and he can feel her melt into his touch, and he doesn’t blame her for her hesitancy. He’s become excellent at burying his troubles into the flesh of strange women, but he figures now he can give those troubles to her, and he figures that changes everything. Mae murmurs something to the bartender at the front of the restaurant and then motions for Jim and Pam to follow her. “You two are upstairs tonight,” she tells them and Jim nods in confirmation.

Yes they are. Oh god he’s so nervous he can’t even deal with it.

The restaurant is crowded for a Wednesday night and it’s early so the lighting is still pretty bright and it bounces happily off the orange and yellow and pink designs on the stucco walls as Jim and Pam follow Mae through the main dining room. Pam is looking around and grinning and Jim bends down so that she can hear him over the clink of silverware and the top 40 being piped in through the speakers on the ceiling.

“Have you been here before?” he asks her and she nods.

“Once or twice, yeah,” she confirms and he nods too and he tries to keep from yelling out to Mae never mind and they’ll just sit down here and that will be fine. He holds his tongue long enough for them to climb the back staircase and come out on the little balcony, this fantastic little second story deck that he only recently found out exists when Mae and her husband invited him up for an after hours beer. Pam’s mouth drops open once they get far enough up the stairs and she turns back to look at him in surprise.

“We can sit downstairs if you want,” he finally spits and he hears Mae chuckle at his awkwardness.

“No, this is amazing,” Pam announces, “I had no idea this was up here,” and Mae nods and motions toward the little table she set up for Jim specifically, the only little table that can really fit up there.

“Nobody knows about it because it isn’t open to the public. Jim’s a regular and the only celebrity who ever comes here so…I figured if he asks for something special he gets it,” she explains, “although I guess now you’re a celebrity who comes here, too, huh?” she asks warmly and Jim feels something get kind of tight and warm in his chest, like there’s something about that that makes him have to clear his throat. “Two celebrities,” Mae says on an amazed sigh, “Maybe we should start one of those walls with the signed pictures,” and Pam laughs airily and Jim is in love with her as she sits down in one of the chairs at the table and jokes with Mae about autographs and how Scranton is the only place where she gets recognized at all. Mae tells her that’s just because the people in other cities are too cool to say anything and Pam chuckles and says that maybe that’s true.

Finally Mae leaves and Jim is left sitting across from Pam and looking at the way she’s looking at him.

He’s left with this thing that he did and the candlelight and the cast iron table and chairs and the sunset, and he wishes he had more experience with being a nice guy. He wishes he’d gotten to rehearse this.

He swallows.

She shakes her head at him and bites back a smile.

“What did you do?” she asks, flirty, light-hearted and pleased with him.

“To be honest,” he starts, looking down at the place setting in front of him and licking his lips, “I have no idea. You’ve turned me all romantic, Sunshine,” he tells her, trying to sound angry but it comes out sort of quiet and he feels himself start to sweat in nervous embarrassment, but then she looks at him in this certain way. Soft…honest, and he stops worrying.

“I like it,” she says, “Esepcially since I‘m already sure I really like the, um, the other things, romance doesn‘t hurt at all,” and he laughs because she wags her eyebrows at him and he’s left thinking about her damn shirt again and how much he’d like for her to wear only that every single day of the rest of his life.

It’s warmer out than he expected so he pushes his sleeves up and he leans forward on the table so that he can see her better, so that he can feel her a little more, so that this will be more the two of them together and less him feeling alone, across from her. He feels less alone than he has in a while, really, and he’s grateful.

“Ok so I have three rules for how to become a better actor than you are, and apparently NYU did not teach you any of this,” he tells her and she tips her head at him in interest, wary, unsure of this topic of conversation and he takes a sip of his water.

“Ok,” she says, and he swallows and points a finger at her.

“This is serious, so you should probably take notes,” and she nods at him mockingly, pulling his quiet laughter into the air. He licks his lips and ticks the rules off with his fingers. “First, you should never go by the script because you always know better than the writers,” he starts and the realization that he’s joking seeps onto her face until she’s grinning at him and nodding her head and she’s leaning forward, too, braced on her elbows, “Second, you should sexually harass all of your co-workers because it brings more steam to the screen,” he tells her, “and third, be me.” She laughs out loud and he nods his ‘you’re welcome’ at her.

“You’re right, I should’ve taken notes,” she says and he shrugs at her and sighs.

“You don’t listen, Pam, that’s really your other problem,” he confesses like he’s delivering bad news and it looks like she’s about to comeback with a clever sounding quip when they’re interrupted by the clomping of feet on the stairs. Jim turns his head and feels his expression kind of melt into incredulousness. Is it really necessary to stomp up the stairs, he wonders? He shoots Pam a look and wonders what the hell the problem is until Steve comes around the corner and the question answers itself.

Mae did this on purpose to amuse herself, he thinks.

“Jim this is ridiculous,” Steve grumbles angrily, reaching down into his back pocket and pulling out his notepad with exaggerated effort. “Why don’t you just sit downstairs with everybody else?” he asks and Jim presses his lips together and watches the romance of the evening just kind of float off in the direction of Upstate New York.

“Because I am trying to impress someone,” he states plainly and Pam laughs despite the fact that Steve is rolling his eyes and kind of shifting impatiently on his feet, huffing and puffing and trying desperately to blow their little house of happiness down.

“You couldn’t impress her downstairs?” Steve asks as if Pam isn’t even sitting there and Pam glances at Jim and raises her eyebrows.

“I’m so over first floors,” she says, sounding bored, “they’re so last year,” and Jim is biting his cheek and trying not to laugh and Steve is just staring at her, not amused and not concerned.

“What do you want?” he finally asks and Jim feels his eyes narrowing in warning.

“A new waiter?” he requests and Steve shakes his head.

“Sorry I drew the short ass stick and nobody else wants to haul food all the way up here. I’m getting paid extra to do it,” he admits and Jim shoots another annoyed look at Pam and shifts in his chair.

“Then stop complaining,” he orders. “I’ll have seven margaritas and a large bowl of really hot chicken broth,” he says trying to come up with something just to get Steve that much more aggravated. Pam grins and nods happily.

“And we’d actually like to choose the cow for our meat so if you could bring some of those up here too that would be great,” she requests sweetly and Steve just stands there looking at them, expressionless, holding his pad and pencil and waiting for them to finish their ’joke.’

“Ok stop pouting, I’ll have a margarita on the rocks with salt,” Jim finally concedes and Pam nods. Really he prefers his margaritas frozen but some snobby bartender friend of his once told him only the lamest of margaritas come frozen, so he hasn’t ordered one since.

“Same,” Pam says and Steve huffs and stomps his way back down the stairs, muttering the entire time about famous people and how they should stay in Hollywood where they belong. “Wow,” Pam comments dryly.

“He’s always like that,” Jim explains, waving him off, and Pam smiles at him and nods and gets that warmth about her again that makes Jim want to tell her all sorts of things, offer up confessions, give her his past. As if on cue she props her cheek on the palm of her hand and he thinks of Romeo and he kind of hates himself for it.

“So, tell me something about your life,” she requests quietly and he furrows his brow and feels his nervousness re-emerging. “I mean I told you about my dad, right? That means you owe me one really traumatizing story from your past,” and she says it with a smile so that it doesn’t sound quite as frightening as it really is and he appreciates that. He clears his throat.

“A traumatizing story?” he asks and she nods at him.

“It seems fair. Here we are again sitting at a table, we’re about to have alcoholic beverages delivered to us by our very angry waiter, I think the scene is wonderfully set.” Her eyes kind of twinkle at him and he wonders how she can do this, how she can know just when he’s vulnerable enough, just when he’s enough in love with her to tell her anything she wants to know. He watches her for a long moment and he purses his lips in thought, in assessment, and he wonders which part of his story he should tell her.

He decides to just let her have it.

“Four years ago my fiancée fell in love with my brother,” he tells her, all in one breath, and it’s really the first time he’s talked about it since…

Since he walked into his apartment and she was sitting there, crying…sitting there all tears and gasping breaths… She told him she couldn’t help it, that Ben wanted a family and that Ben could support her, that she didn’t mean to but somewhere in between before and after she fell in love with someone else.

Ben.

She said that Ben was a better man.

And she fell in love with him, just like that. Like it’s a pair of jeans you can exchange, or a plane ticket you can postpone. One brother for another, just easy and careless and so much worse than it sounds, which he realizes is saying something because it sounds rough.

Pam’s just sitting there staring and he kind of grins at her because…yeah, well…whatever.

“They are happily married,” he admits on a sigh, “and she’s pregnant and really it’s better, probably, because I wasn’t ready to get married to her. I mean I was too young, I think, and she was too…um…” he shrugs and Pam is watching him and frowning and doing that thing that she does where she lets her mouth hang open just a tiny bit, enough so he can see just the edges of her teeth. He feels self-conscious, or maybe afraid and he feels his expression kind of harden in self defense. “Are we even?” he asks, heated because he feels so uncomfortable…so much in the spotlight in exactly the way he’s been trying to avoid and he’s not sure how he got himself into this. At all. He’s about to bolt or sneeze or jump off the edge of the building to his death. He’s about to basically do anything to get away from how intently she’s looking at him and how much he remembers that he probably shouldn’t trust her, but then she speaks.

She says: “I’m not sure we are even, actually, because my confession was followed directly by the grand entrance of my boyfriend, who caught me cheating on him with my very smart-alecky costar. So I think, unless whoever this tramp is shows up here right now all pregnant and angry, I totally kicked your ass, Halpert.”

And instead of leaving he laughs, instead of running he stays. Instead of pushing her away he smiles and he lets this happen to him because sometimes hiding from life is too tiring. Sometimes he wants other things, and maybe he’s been waiting for this all along and he just had no idea. He wonders if he’s been waiting for this.

Steve chooses this moment to clomp his way up the stairs and as he plops their margaritas down Jim nods his head once in acknowledgment.

“Thank you,” he says, and then he holds a hand out toward him and inhales a deep lungful of air. “Pam, meet my brother. Steve.”

She stares at him, shocked for the second time and silence kind of hangs in the air for a while.

“I’m not his brother,” Steve finally mumbles disgustedly, “if I was I would kill myself.”

And Pam laughs and shakes her head at him and he can’t keep himself from smiling back at her, pulling his cheeks tight and showing his teeth and letting his eyes glint and just trusting her with this…with everything.

“Thanks, Steve, that’s nice,” he murmurs.

“You are such a jerk,” Pam accuses and he shrugs at her like he has no idea what she means.

“I was just trying to even out the score, that’s all,” he explains and she shakes her head and glares at him and takes a sip of her drink and…damn he’d love to be kissing her right now. Really just…

He’s never told anybody that story about his brother. Never. And now he feels this certain kind of happy that really makes him want to just take her home.

“Steve, buddy?” he starts, still watching Pam and ignoring the way their waiter, who isn’t his brother, once again has an angry pencil poised against his pad of paper, ready to take their order. Steve huffs, predictably, and shifts and sighs and pouts and Jim glances up at him happily. “Can I get some extra salt in a little cup?” Jim requests. Steve rolls his eyes and starts to write it down. “Now?” Jim specifies, and Pam’s biting her lip to keep from laughing, and stirring the ice in her glass.

Steve sighs angrily and Jim laughs as he storms back down the stairs, still muttering to himself about reality television and how it‘s all a hoax and he wishes their show would get canceled.

“You’re mean,” Pam tells Jim quietly, still smiling and still stirring her ice, and he raises his eyebrows at her, amused.

“I will take that as a compliment,” he says, and then he drinks his margarita.

Their first time together had been like record breaking heat.

It had been hungry and lust-heavy and clutching in a way that he hasn’t experienced in years, really. Their first time had had that special kind of blind desire that’s impossible to describe like slick and sweat-covered palms, like oil on leather. It had the intensity of unresolved tension, and he remembers distinctly his tongue against her thigh and his hands against her shoulders, he remembers distinctly the fire that had been in her eyes and the way she had crawled backwards across the sheets and pulled him up against her. Jesus just thinking about it makes him sweat.

And then there was the next morning, this morning, which was light drizzle witty, grinning kisses and not as new as the night before. Languid muscles because things were more lazy and less desperate, and he’s pretty sure he’ll never look at a bathroom counter the same way again. This morning had hard-to-hear sighs instead of earth shaking moans but, god…her self-consciousness combined with that look that she gets, like that stare and that breathlessness of hers, she basically reaches into his lungs and clutches at them until he can’t see straight. This morning was fun. Satisfying and hot and easy and fun.

And now tonight…

Tonight he can already feel this kind of hum that says something has changed.

He can feel the buzz of intensity and the thumping of his own pulse rapid and insistent that makes him think maybe he should just drop her off and go home. Walk away from this before he feels that certain pinch, that certain puncture or tight fingered grip that he’s only ever heard about, read about, thought maybe was possible someday, sometime.

This feels like the thing that makes men drop down to their knees and beg for mercy.

He can feel it and they’re only just leaving the restaurant.

He can feel it and she’s still fully clothed. She’s not even looking at him. She’s barely paying any attention, really, as she folds herself into the passenger seat with a small, contained smile on her face.

But he can still feel it.

Humming.

Thumping.

Pulling at him and making him pause for a second before he pulls out of the parking lot, making him look at her long as she reaches up and rests her elbow on the window sill, lets her fingers sit motionless against her neck and waits there, expecting the car to move. When it doesn’t she looks over at him, questioning, and he sighs and turns the ignition and the car roars to life, the humming of the engine matching pitch with the humming of his thoughts, the pulsing of the wheels beneath him keeping time with the pulsing of his blood.

He feels this different.

Different like wax melted or like the slow burn of a drink rich and expensive sliding smooth down his throat. He thinks she feels it different, too, because she rolls down her window and closes her eyes on the drive, like she wants the wind to reach in and cool her, like she wants to remember what the air is like, because with the two of them, here, right now, there’s no air. Only electricity. Only this thumping that he feels, this humming. He swallows.

When was the moment, he wonders, when he decided to forget the other things he wanted? Forget signing autographs and doing body shots, forget New York City and dish soap and fame, forget brothers like maybe they never existed and never took away his life, forget fiancées and forget microphones and cameras… When was that moment when the person he is sometimes became the person he is? How did that happen?

He watches her careful as he waits for a light to turn green. Her eyes are still closed, her face is still turned to the 9 PM breeze, and he wonders if it’s crazy that two days ago she was just a coworker of his. Two days ago she was a person he got paid to pretend to want.

It’s not crazy, he guesses, because he figures he’d never really been pretending.

The light turns green and he turns left instead of right, heading toward his apartment instead of hers because he’s already broken almost all of his rules anyway, and now it‘s like he wants desperately to break the rest. He wants to quietly point out all of the places nobody else has ever been so that she can stand up and exist there. He wants sentiment, he thinks, and he wonders if that means he’s in trouble. Danger. He thinks women are like lions that eat men for dinner, and he figures everything he’s doing with Pam is like he’s just begging to be sautéed and served next to a pile of white rice.

The thing is, he doesn’t care.

He’s inherently a risk taker and he’s inherently addicted to the sting of his own pain, so he’s not sure this is any different than exploiting his emotions on national television or smoking at least a pack of Salems a day. He’s excellent at committing to things that will eventually be bad for his health.

And now he’s going to take her to his apartment because before this he’s been strict with no women allowed. No morning coffee and no showering together and no taking women back to his place because it’s like inviting them into your life, into your stuff and your comfort zone and into the places that are reserved for your secrets and your honesty. He doesn’t ever, ever, bring women back here. He doesn’t want them here over night, and he doesn’t want to wake up next to them, to smell them on his pillow, to find their hair pins underneath his bed. Before this he’s been totally insistent.

Pam’s eyes flutter open when he puts the car in park and she looks around in confusion at the parking lot, her brow furrowing and her lips pursing in an unasked question.

“This isn’t my house,” she finally states and he inhales deep and pulls the keys out of the ignition, glancing at her with bottomless eyes.

“No,” he agrees quietly, unsnapping his seatbelt and opening his car door, “It’s mine,” he explains and with that he’s out of the car because he doesn’t really want to see the look on her face and he’s nervous and scared by this but god that makes his adrenaline pump heavy and hot. She doesn’t ask questions and he’s relieved when he hears the snick of her door and the sound of her heels against the pavement behind him. He’s relieved.

He’s terrified.

He presses the up button for the elevator and he looks down, anxious, at the floor beneath him all white cracked linoleum lit by fluorescent lights and covered in the footsteps of other people. She stops beside him and crosses her arms and his gaze shifts over to the toes of her boots peeking out at him from beneath her clean black pants.

“I feel like I’ve been kidnapped,” she tells him sounding amused and a little bit shaky and he hazards a glance at her face, which is grinning at him but has a hint of knowledge, like she knows that his blood is thick for her and she knows that his life is changing because of her. He squints and ignores the thought that it reminds her of her father.

“You absolutely have,” he admits as the elevator dings its arrival and the doors slide open loud and abrupt. She lifts her eyebrows in acceptance and steps into it first, leaving him to follow her and wonder who is hunting whom.

The ride up to the seventh floor feels long and he watches her lean back against the wall and cross her ankles, casual, feigning comfort where he’s pretty sure there isn’t any.

He thinks back to the rest of their dinner and he remembers the way she had laughed at his impression of his phone call with Roy, the morning after Jim had said Pam’s name during sex. She had shaken her head and she had called him a caveman, and he thought he remembered predicting that that would be her response, but somehow it isn’t as bad as he’d thought because she says it affectionate instead of demeaning and she says it with an open mouthed smile like he’s genuinely funny.

He had teased her about Graham, and he had told her his grandmother thought Pam was really his girlfriend because she’s confused by reality television, and she had confessed to being attracted to him that first day they met when he’d made fun of her sweater. It was practically a novel by Nora Roberts the way that they laughed and leaned toward each other, not that he’s ever read anything by Nora Roberts because he definitely hasn’t because that would definitely be vaguely feminine of him and he would never admit to owning any of her books…because he doesn’t.

But really it was the kind of dinner that women probably imagined late at night, the kind that men never confessed to wanting or having, and the kind that left him wondering who the hell he was to be worthy of any of this. Sometimes bad boys turn good, he guesses, and sometimes good girls aren’t as good as you think.

That makes him smile down at the carpet in the elevator and she tugs gently at his sleeve.

“What’s so funny?” she asks into his ear and he feels that humming again, that thumping like change and he looks down at her, considering it.

“I just never would’ve predicted any of this,” he admits and she takes a minute to look at him, takes a second to hear him because things have been moving fast for them and every once in a while he’s noticed that she likes to pause. She likes to pause and look at him intently and soak things in and he just lets her do it because he understands. Eventually she smiles as the elevator dings their arrival on his floor and the doors slide open again.

“Really?” she mutters, “Because I had it figured out months ago,” and with that she turns and walks off the elevator, leaving him behind her, chuckling, shaking his head.

“7H,” he tells her and she stops next to his door, waiting, grinning at him still and chewing on her lower lip in anticipation.

“Should I be afraid of what’s on the other side of this door?” she wonders and he reaches down to push his key into the lock, feeling his stomach get tight for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that she’s about to be inside of his apartment.

“Are you afraid of dead bodies?” he asks cheekily, turning the knob without actually pushing the door open, wasting time, teasing her, prolonging the inevitable.

“No,” she says, crossing her arms and popping her hip, leaning to the side and bracing her shoulder against the wall. He offers her a half grin and pretends to think.

“What about ropes and handcuffs…chains…things like that?” he tosses out, staying expertly serious and quirking his eyebrows at her in interest. She bites back a smile and shrugs.

“Nope,” she confirms easily, sighing false boredom at him and he grins and starts to push the door open, but then he pauses and he turns back to her, letting his stare sweep the length of her body and watching in interest as her breath quickens and her arms shift slightly, readjusting, oversensitive to the heat of his gaze. He looks her in the eye and she swallows.

“Wild animals?” he asks quietly and she takes a step toward him and reaches out to push the door open herself, her arm snaking out and brushing hot against his stomach and she’s standing so close he practically groans.

“That depends,” she whispers, moving past him and into his living room, the click of her heels against the hardwood sharp on his ears like the ticking of a time bomb. He flicks on a light and he watches her circle the room, reach out and run her fingers against his sofa, stand back and grin at the framed Vertigo poster on the wall. He watches her look things over and he watches her turn back to him, intent, the energy in the room noisy like static and full of the things he’s feeling and the things he’s letting her know.

“I don’t bring people here,” he admits and she nods at him, slow, deliberate, predatory. “I mean,” he corrects, “I’ve never brought anybody up here.” The difference in meaning is palpable and he watches her carefully. She stands there and looks at him, and he thinks she looks different than usual, like a Bond girl or like a wet dream in her see-through shirt and her tall black boots. Then he thinks that it doesn’t really matter what she’s wearing or what she looks like because even if she were dressed in a brown burlap sack she’d still be standing here in this place, standing here with him and with that look on her face like she sees right through him and suddenly it’s like he can’t swallow, he can’t breathe, he can’t exist standing this far away from her but he‘s pretty sure he‘ll die if he gets any closer.

Then he reminds himself that he wants to be better and be brave and so he strips off his jacket and he hazards a few steps toward her, licking his lips and looking everywhere but at her face because he’s so on display and ready to run right now he can’t even handle it. He’s nervous with wanting her and with having her here because everything is too much, and his anxiousness drives him to speak, to spit words at her, awkward and abrupt.

“I know I have this reputation,” he starts and he has no idea what her face looks like but her body isn’t moving at all and he wonders if she’s holding her breath. “I mean I know that you think that I’m, uh, callous with women and basically lacking emotions in general but actually…that is…” he heaves in a breath and braces himself and he looks her in the eye, hard, “not true,” he finishes solidly and she blinks at him and she cocks her head and her hands move slow like she’s afraid of scaring him. Her hands move slow up to the buttons on her shirt and she flicks them open one at a time with excruciating deliberateness.

“Jim,” she says, and it’s only three letters. He tells himself it’s only three letters because somehow it feels like way more, like it’s oceans and rivers and life as he knows it all nestled in between two consonants and a vowel. He thinks for a second that if you changed two letters his name would be hers and he figures that means something…or he figures maybe he got high somehow without realizing it because that definitely sounds like something he’d be thinking after a few hits and a beer. Eventually he figures out she’s waiting for him to say something so he licks at his lips and croaks out a word.

“Yeah?” He almost shakes his head at himself, because he feels like he’s sleeping, like he’s drowning or like he’s dying, but then she’s smiling at him so he guesses maybe everything will turn out ok. Like he guesses maybe she likes him and maybe she looks good standing in his apartment. Maybe she belongs here.

“I want you,” she tells him, the smile still lingering and dancing through her voice, and he narrows his eyes at her because despite how drunk with desire he might’ve been he still vividly remembers everything about last night, and despite how much he’s hungry for her now he can still sense the teasing lilt in her words. “I can’t help it,” she continues and her joke gives him something new…courage, steadiness, reassurance that she’s still Pam and he’s still Jim, somehow. Her joke gives him the drive to close the gap between them just as she lets the sheer shirt drop down around her feet.

“You know what?” he mumbles, her nearness making it impossible for him to resist swooping down after the words are out so that he can press his lips wet and warm against hers. She hums and he takes it as a response, when really he’s pretty sure it’s just her lust finding voice. “That isn’t funny,” he tells her firmly, his hands snaking down and finding the slope of her thighs, reaching down and finding the places that make her squirm against him and make her pin him with that stare he wants so badly. “This is serious,” he breathes, and he means it more than just a line, more than just this joke that she’s made, but he figures he can sneak that by her since he’s almost out of sound, almost out of things to say because her eyes and her body and the curve of her make him think maybe his tongue was made specifically for this. He looks down at the arch of her hip and he pulls his fingers along the dip of her waist and his arms and his hands and his lungs are working and grasping and heaving until she touches him.

And then he’s still.

She reaches up and she presses her palm against his cheek and he goes absolutely still.

She’s done this before, once or twice, and god every time it makes him freeze, makes him feel too much and makes him know too surely that he’s human. It makes him think maybe she’s a part of him, or maybe he belongs to her.

She presses her palm against his cheek and waits there until his eyes are locked with hers and he can see the softness there, the intention, the transformation from teasing to truth, from Bond girl to Pam, and he can see the way that she has things to give him, too. He can see the way that she knows he’s too open and she knows that this is a thing she has to handle with care. She knows. He looks at her and he feels his jaw muscles twitch.

“Jim,” she says again, and really it’s been years since anyone has said his name like that and it makes him need her like she’s a sort of healer and he’s some kind of broken. He exhales heavy and bends forward to kiss her, hard…to wrap his tongue around hers and own that certain way that she speaks to him and own “Dunder Mifflin this is Pam” and own her sentiment and her honesty and pull out of her the things that are real. He kisses her, serious. He kisses her with his hands against her cheeks and with his eyes pressed closed and with his breath gushing in and out only when hers does, too, because he would rather do this and die than back away and breathe. He would rather die right here.

He kisses her and he pulls her back toward his bedroom and she clutches at him and she spreads herself out on his bed where there has never been another woman sloping, curving, or sleeping and he thinks her hair looks so totally right against the hunter green of his sheets. He thinks her hands are like matches striking up fire on his skin and he thinks her sounds are different tonight…he thinks she feels this different. Because when he stretches himself out on top of her she moans like she maybe might cry and when they’re finally skin against skin she sighs like she’s finally finished a long, winding race. She sighs like this is it, like she’s finally found something she didn‘t realize she was looking for, and he feels like he relates to that. He thinks his sighs might sound the same way.

He doesn’t think he’s ever been with a woman like this. Whatever this is, he thinks this is different.

He feels this different.

And when they’ve wrapped their limbs around each other and he’s looking down at her and breathing heavy and all furrowed brow in concentration she smoothes her fingers through his hair. She pauses. She looks him over. She does this thing he’s noticed her doing where she takes a moment, and so he takes one, too, looking down at her like this is all brand new, like he hasn’t seen her this way because he figures maybe he hasn’t.

He feels this different like he wants to drop down to his knees and beg her for mercy, beg her to touch him deep and somehow heal him. He feels this.

Humming.

Thumping.

Right and solid and sober and real.

And so he doesn’t make a joke or tease her or smile. He doesn’t try to make her laugh and he doesn’t work hard to make sure that he’s charming because really there isn’t room. Things are too full with whatever this is…things are too electric, and there isn’t space for his running commentaries and punch lines because he’s pressed close to her in too many different ways.

He looks down at her and he wonders for the thousandth time how this happened to him and how he could ever be this kind of man.

And then he moves inside of her and he sighs and he lets his forehead fall against her shoulder because even though honesty is hard for him there isn’t room for anything else. He lets her comfort him with her sweeping fingers, with her soft, dry kisses pressed careful against his neck, and with the gentle and easy cradle of her hips.

He lets this happen.

He lets it change.

The room is dark and heavy with his sleeping and she’s lying here next to him, spread out between his sheets and watching him with half-lidded and totally satisfied eyes.  She feels almost like a voyeur, or like an unnoticed intruder into his world, but she tells herself that this is the kind of thing that women do. They contemplate. They lie awake at night and think. They watch men close their eyes.

She feels the air around her warm like maybe his space is wrapping itself around her, welcoming her in, reassuring her that she’s not at all intruding and that really, somehow, she belongs here. She wants badly to belong and so she trusts the air and she props herself up on her elbows, trying without much success to keep herself from staring, to keep herself from giving into her desire to reach out and run her fingers across him.

She lets her eyes roam along the planes of his face, his nose, his full and satisfying mouth, the arch of his sandy brown eyebrow, all these things she’s finding she had memorized before without realizing it. All these things that had crept into her mind sometime between her first Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam and his last I’m in love with you. Like sometime between the rules of jinx and misinterpreting friendships she had somehow, without intention, learned his features and his face and the way he leans against her desk, the way he looks when he’s really and truly himself and how his honesty can somehow reach inside of her and clutch tight at her lungs, clutch tight at her stomach and plant some kind of something deep there. She thinks that back when they had first met his flirting and his callousness had only been his defense mechanisms, and she thinks that her hostility had only been her fear. She feels like maybe all of that is finally gone and she can see him clear and honest, like she can watch him while he’s sleeping and like she already knows which parts of him will be smooth against her lips.

She thinks the two of them are different, now, and she can relax into him. She thinks she knows him better than before.

She wonders what color his dreams are.

He’s sleeping so still and so sound that she thinks maybe his dreaming has something hazel in it and maybe it stretches over the muscle of his mind, pulsing with his unspoken desires and his sometimes-illogical fears. Or maybe, she thinks self-indulgently, maybe his dreams have the subtle auburn of her hair inside of them and maybe they spread themselves out across his pillow, gentle-easy, so that somehow she’s accidentally had a hand in making his expression this calm content thing she’s been watching for what feels like forever. She’d like to think she’s in that.

She’d like to think she’s a part of him.

She’s honestly never been this calmly sentimental and this earthy in her attraction, her connection, her need to be near him, and something about the way their limbs are long and golden against the green of his sheets makes her think of lions again, and something about it makes her pleased like they might be the king and queen of something, like they maybe reign over the world’s lust and emotion. If he were awake she would tell him, she would confess her recent obsession with cats and the way she covets his physical form and her own fierceness of emotion and she would say something like “I can’t believe this took us so long,” and he would say she sounded like her reality T.V. self. She would probably agree.

But he’s asleep and she’s awake, and so instead of confessions she gives him her hand against his chest, her mouth against his shoulder, grown up things and speaking in the way that doesn’t interrupt the atmosphere with sound. If she believed in falling in love she would do it now, with him asleep beside her, but years of “I love you” meaning “goodbye” have trained her somehow to associate love with negative things like with leaving, and disappointing, and falling away and behind, so she’s found that the words themselves have never graced her lips. But she figures the falling might feel like this.

She’s possessed now by the heady feel of her skin brushing feather soft against his and so she reads his body with her fingers, trailing them along the slopes and valleys of his arms, down toward the straight line of his waist and across the curve of his hip. She feels the rise and fall of his breathing and is fascinated by the way this feels like a waking dream and the way that she’s left her fear behind and become this confidence, this sureness and this solid affection.

She’s amazed by how he changes her. Quietly. She can feel it in her fingertips.

Her hands trace him and slide across him and when she reaches the masculine slant of his jaw she realizes that he’s open-eyed and watching her, quiet and unmoving but most definitely awake with the warmth of his stare grabbing onto her and holding her still.

She pulls her hands back and smiles at him with only her eyes, offering a little bit of a grimace of self-consciousness.

“Sorry,” she whispers, “I didn’t mean to wake you up.” And really it sounds like a lie despite the fact that she sincerely felt that pinch of nurturing concern that told her to let him rest. Sometimes she finds that her hands have a mind of their own, and now they’re clutched together and pressed beneath her chin like the act of pulling them close to her will keep them from disrupting him again. He grins over at her in the shadows of his room and she’s hazy with wanting things.

“That’s okay,” he tells her, just as quiet as her thoughts and just as unmoving as the way she feels.

“Were you dreaming?” she finds herself asking and it‘s accidental because really she‘s unsure if this is her business yet, if she‘s allowed to ask him about how he sleeps and where his mind takes him when he‘s wrapped up inside of it. But he kind of nods without worry and so she feels secure again.

“Yeah, something, um…” he starts and she feels her interest humming as he stifles a yawn, “where I found out Angela’s hair is all fake,” he admits, squinting, remembering it, and she rolls her eyes because for all of her romantic intentions and all of the things she’d hoped he might think with his eyes closed he’s still himself and of course he was dreaming about Angela being bald. Of course. He chuckles softly at the expression on her face and she likes him, permanent and certain as he leans forward and kisses her all ease and simplicity.

“Do you have food in this apartment?” she asks against his lips and he sucks in some air like he doubts it.

“There might be take-out in the fridge or something. You can check,” he tells her, “I need to brush my teeth,” and she nods emphatically, teasing him, feigning disgust with his breath even though really she didn’t notice it at all. He responds by opening his mouth wide and exhaling onto her and she laughs and gives him a push off the bed with the force of her legs. He grins all the way to the bathroom and she sits up and plants her feet on the floor, feeling cold suddenly in her tank top and underwear and looking around for something to pull on. She settles for a long sleeved t-shirt she finds draped on a chair and she pulls it over her head and inhales the scent of him, heading into the kitchen on lazy feet and liking the grayness of the overcast night.

She stops short when she gets to the fridge and her laughter pulls him toward her with a toothbrush stuck between his teeth.

“What?” he wonders, the sound of his consonants muffled by plastic and bristles.

“You hung this stupid picture on the refrigerator?” she asks, pointing to her drawing of a donkey and her messy handwriting spelling out “From one ass to another” in black marker from the day she‘d said awful things to him and he had quietly accepted it. He shrugs and nods happily and she’s momentarily distracted by the way he’s pulled on a pair of flannel pants that hang low on his hips and drag long against the floorboards. She’s momentarily and understandably distracted by the height of him, the broadness of his shoulders, the messy mop of the hair on his head and the spread of his chest, the curve of his hip muscles peeking out at her, teasing, masculine and mouth-watering and basically the perfect place for her to wrap herself around him. She bites at her lower lip for a second and he tilts his head at her, grinning and aware of the trip her eyes have taken. “You’re way too good looking,” she tells him in explanation, shaking her head as he raises his eyebrows at her, reaching up to keep brushing and smiling wide through his toothpaste.

“I say that to myself every morning,” he tells her before he turns away so he can spit into the sink of running water.

“Oh god,” she mumbles as she pulls the fridge open, propping a hand on her hip and tilting her head in interest. She’s standing here with the kind of look on her face that she figures usually she might save for the cameras. All at once confused, amused, and honestly a little bit disappointed in her lack of options, she squints, not exactly surprised, but puzzled enough to warrant standing and staring for a few minutes, like maybe something will change if she just waits.

Her legs are getting chilly, which she guesses is what happens when she lingers in only her underwear, and she perches one foot on top of the other like that will warm her up.

Four cans of coke, a case of beer, a carton of eggs, and three bottles of mustard.

These are the things in Jim Halpert’s refrigerator.

She figures the first few things are probably from the time she saw him at the grocery store, since she knows for a fact that was the day he bought the eggs, but...the three bottles of mustard are inexplicable.  Totally confusing.  She’s pursing her lips to keep in whatever words might want to tumble out of her as he moves through the doorway into the kitchen, wiping his mouth against the palm of his hand, his steps slowing down a little in hesitation as he registers the way she’s standing there.

“What’s the matter?” he asks, his eyes wide and worried. She looks over at him with a furrowed brow and gestures into the fridge, her hand kind of careless.

“Did you want me to make you a mustard sandwich, Jim? Or some mustard soup?” she asks, and his worry breaks into a sigh and he rolls his eyes at her, backing away and heading into his living room just to avoid being chastised. She lets the fridge swing closed, resigned to staying hungry, and she follows him, pausing in the doorway because she’s unable to keep herself from watching him, looking at him, essentially ogling him as much as she possibly can with the length of his spine arching deliciously into the elastic of his pants, and as he turns back toward her she’s hypnotized again by his sex-muscles, sweeping like commas and disappearing somewhere beneath the flannel at his hips. She inhales a deep breath and tries hard to focus. “How exactly did you end up with all that French‘s?” she wonders, and he’s settling himself on his bench-like windowsill, leaning back against the glass and watching her with crossed arms, his skin all full of shadows, and she wants him.

“I told Toby I don’t like it about a month ago, and every week since then a bottle of mustard has mysteriously appeared inside my gym bag,” he explains half-heartedly. She laughs at that, and she thinks she’s laughing a lot lately. Smiling a lot. She thinks she’s happy now, with him, all joking and teasing and Jim and Pam in all sorts of ways. “Nice shirt,” he tells her and his voice is heavy-rough, partly from sleeping and partly from that lust-heavy feeling that she can tell is pumping through him because of the deep kind of look in his eye.

She licks at her lips and feels her pulse get fast, but her conscience and her thoughts want her to stay slow, prolong this calm, this talking, this existing here without giving into their chemistry and jumping right back into bed. So with that in mind she doesn’t answer him, doesn’t respond, and instead redirects her gaze to the frame of the door where she’s standing. Noticing that it’s covered in yellow post-it notes, she clears her throat.

“What’s all this?” she asks quietly, sobered by the feel of his gaze on her and the knowledge that he still wants her heavy, like the same way that she wants him.

“Things I have to do,” he responds and the sound of him is granite and gravel and deep. “Reminders, whatever.” The explanation is tossed away, disinterested, wanting badly for her to leave the doorway and come a little closer, but because she’s Pam and because he’s Jim, and because part of the appeal, she thinks, is the way that they tease each other into some kind of desperation, she stays where she is and she reads his post-its instead.

One at a time. Slow.

And they make her smile because they’re all masculine and slanted and disorganized, like “Get out of jury duty.” or “do laundry. no socks!”

“Call mom” and “Photo Shoot, 5/15” are written out and stuck up here so that this frame is like his life mapped out and these are all hints of the things he wants to do or needs to do or hasn’t gotten around to doing, and she’s happily reading them until her eyes stop, blinking in surprise when she gets to one that says “Be nice to Pam. Buy beef ‘n cheddar?”

She freezes and her breath gets just a little bit shallow because it’s her and it’s here and it’s planned where she thought he’d been directionless and impulsive.

It’s planned instead of being accidental and that makes her like him so much more, because there’s something childishly earnest in that and there’s something amusing in the fact that he felt the need to remind himself to be nice. He wrote her down. He’s written her here like something intentional and important and in the schedule of his life, literally planned here, Beef ‘n Cheddar, like her lunch is vital to him. Like her choice in fast food is something he writes down so he won’t forget. She reaches up and brushes a finger against it and she feels like she wants to tell him her appointments and her birthday and the things she likes to do so that eventually her name will be on every post-it and will cover up and span the paint here, make the wood look completely yellow and full of her. She swallows and she looks him in the eye across the room and he’s watching her, careful like he knows exactly what she’s thinking, what she saw, and what it means to her.

He’s looking at her in that certain way and, god, it’s so totally inside of her and her fingers are itching and her body is cold and she can’t stay this far away from him. She can’t stay standing here when his stare is tugging at her and so she takes a few steps toward the window and she only pauses when he blinks.

“Is there anything else in here that might betray your cool exterior?” she wonders, the question a little bit intense and genuine and painted with her interest, and his expression is unmoving as he watches her look around, watches her smile a little at the cast pictures on his desk and the framed photo of him and his brothers. He watches her while she runs her hand across the scattered pieces of things that used to be in his pockets and she touches things here like she’d touched him before and her desire just to know his life a little bit better pulses in her fingertips.

He’s silent until she finally reaches him and climbs up so that her knees are settled and pressing against his hips, so that she’s facing him and warmed by him and her hands reach to trace the arches at his hips that have had her so transfixed, that have teased her and distracted her since he came out of the bathroom. She figures it’s the feel of her that finally pulls a sigh from his lips. He leans his head back and his hands spread up onto her thighs and pull her a little bit closer. She bends forward and she kisses him.

“The note you left on the eggs is in my wallet,” he confesses breathily and she laughs into his mouth, reaching up so that her palms can feel the stubble on his cheeks and so that her torso is flush against his and feeling his heartbeat fast inside of him.

“Oh, Jim,” she sighs, “I like you,” and her voice is more air than sound as she plants an open mouthed kiss beneath his ear and it’s the last thing she gets to say out loud because her mouth would rather tell him things silently and her hands would rather write her thoughts down, paint them across him in the blackness of the shadows. He pulls the t-shirt off of her and she thinks he must want to paint her, too, like maybe he wants her flushed pink and wanting him. But she’d rather be this calm, this gray with him. She’d rather have this cloudy middle of the night darkness because it’s so much more An Affair to Remember and so much more what she’s always wanted with its black and white and its romance and she feels him solid like he’s Humphrey Bogart. She’s against him fragile like she’s Ingrid Bergman and she knows now that if she wants this romance, if she wants this swelling soundtrack of emotion and intention, all she has to do is ask him for it, take it from him, tell him something honest and female and good.

She knows now that if she wants to be his Katherine Hepburn she has to let him be her Cary Grant, and maybe that’s why her life has been painfully Technicolor for so long. Maybe that’s why things are only now turning 1930’s and silver screen and only now being filled up with romance and a dependable man.

She kisses him soundly and when he picks her up and carries her back to the bedroom she imagines falling in love.

She imagines Bette Davis and she thinks she must’ve felt like this.

She’s never actually considered a career in covert ops before, but she’s starting to wonder if she missed her calling.

She’s wondering if she should’ve been a Russian spy or a detective who busts drug dealers because she is on fucking television once a week and somehow she does not get recognized on the street. Ever. And she’s inclined to credit that to her diligent sunglass-wearing and her baby blue baseball cap. Like she figures it must be because she’s stealthy and highly intelligent with how she only travels on side streets and how she got new semi-blonde highlights right before she left Scranton a week ago, and she figures it has nothing to do with her own lack of fame or the general unimpressed attitude of the good people of New York City.

Actually, this is a lie, she did get recognized once, but the person thought she was “that lady from the View,” so… She’s not sure what that means. She guesses it means she either looks like Barbara Walters, Meredith Vieira, or Star Jones, but it doesn’t really matter because whoever the person was, they didn’t think she looked like Pam Beesly, and that means she‘s safe. She’s still undercover. She’s still skilled and she should still maybe become a private investigator or a CIA agent or somebody on Dateline.

She is officially excellent at going unnoticed.

Which is fantastic, because apparently Jim Halpert is physically incapable of existing without the entire world stopping to gasp in adoration.

This is the seventh day in a row that she has come around the corner onto his street and found him signing autographs and posing for pictures on the front stoop of the apartment he’s subletting. It’s the seventh day in a row that she’s sort of elbowed her way through any number of faceless, nameless, and definitely drooling ladies so that she can just get upstairs into his place and put a few groceries away or something.

Today she can hear him, even though she’s a few feet away, telling some fan of his that he’s in New York visiting a cousin and he’s really sorry but he can’t tell her what happened with Pam and no he can’t tell any of her four friends either and she’ll just have to tune in and see and yes he does like her shirt, and Pam thinks she would be literally vomiting in her mouth right now if she didn’t find him so endearing. And does she ever find him endearing. Wow, something about Jim in the summer, she thinks, with the sunlight, and his tan, and his sort of shorter haircut, and all of the things she knows about him now that make her think about his penis probably twice as much as she used to back when she hated him. Which is saying something, because God knows his penis haunted her then.

She breezes past the little clump of girls and she can actually feel his eyes on her, hot and watching her walk by, his head tilted, grinning at her with the inside joke of all of this and sweeping down her body with a rich kind of intention, and she reaches up and readjusts her sunglasses to hide her smile. It’s the seventh day he’s done that, too, and it’s the seventh day she’s enjoyed it way too much. Considering the fact that she’s supposed to be incognito, his staring at her does not help because she‘s terrified that the women standing around him will all notice and look around and mutter to themselves when they realize she‘s Pam and she‘s climbing the steps into Jim Halpert‘s apartment. But of course none of them turn to look because they’re all hypnotized by his hazel eyes and his damn smile. And she does not blame them at all.

Once she’s blessedly inside, the apartment is cooler than usual and she’s glad as she pulls off her hat and toes off her sneakers, liking the way she left the window open so the barely-there summer breeze can kind of ease its way through the living room. She’s been thinking about having a beer and reading a book with a fan blowing right at her face since she left to go shopping this morning, and it’s like a line backer could not stop her journey to the fridge she’s so set on it. The bottle of Sam Adams is cold in her hand and she pulls off her t-shirt in favor of a little yellow tank top, lounging on the sofa with Nora Roberts and bare feet.

Thank God, she thinks, taking a long chug of her beer and then setting it down on the coffee table.

She’s got one week left of her official vacation from Scranton, and she intends to spend it exactly like this. Stretched out and barely dressed, drinking beer, reading shameless romance novels, and climbing Mount Halpert, who will hopefully be equally as naked. The writers and producers told her she had fourteen days to disappear but by day fifteen she had to be back in Pennsylvania just in case anybody is paying attention. She’s learning, though, that nobody is. And she doesn’t really care. Because the fact that nobody notices her and the fact that New York is New York means she can be with Jim and not care, she can stay with him and nobody will even realize it‘s happening. She can have her totally wicked way with him and the world will be none the wiser.

She’s got seven days, and she intends to take full advantage of every single one of them.

The door swings open and she doesn’t look up as he comes strolling in, whistling, very pleased with himself and his own popularity. She rolls her eyes at her book and turns the page even though she has yet to read a word of it.

“You know,” she starts, staring down at page 43 of Jewels of the Sun and still not really reading it, “I had a dream that it was my birthday and you gave me a present that was in a tiny little box,” she sees him kind of freeze in interest just inside the door, understandably, “and when I opened it up it had your autograph inside,” she finishes flatly. He chuckles and reaches out to grab her beer and she finally looks up at him as he takes a long, slow swig. “That’s mine,” she says, staring as his throat works the liquid down into his stomach. He raises his eyebrows at her.

“So are you telling me you want my autograph?” he asks, handing the beer back to her and turning to lazily stroll into the bedroom where she watches him strip off his white t-shirt and change into a lighter-weight gray one. She licks her lips and wonders what he would look like in suspenders, or maybe just some of those high-waisted dress pants and a tank top like men used to wear in the 30’s. It takes her a second to realize he’s standing in the doorway staring at her with a bemused smile on his face and his hands on his hips, and she offers up an exaggerated flinch of embarrassment that makes him chuckle. “You were just comparing me to Humphrey Bogart in your head, weren’t you?” he mutters and she never should’ve confessed the little thing she has for old fashioned Hollywood because now he calls her out on it, every time.

“No,” she lies and he laughs and shakes his head because he knows that’s exactly what she was doing, and she thinks he secretly likes it. She can tell. She sighs and looks up at the ceiling in consideration. “I just don’t understand how people always ask you about me, but I never actually get recognized,” she confesses, readjusting her position on the sofa so that her feet are stretched up and leaning against the wall instead of the cushions. He pokes his head in and shoots her an incredulous look that makes her want to punch him right in the mouth.

“Uh, maybe because you go out dressed like Michael Jackson after surgery?” he guesses and she clicks her tongue at him.

“I do not,” she says. Her hat is cute, she thinks, and her sunglasses are really more to protect her eyes. Macular Degeneration runs in her family. “Maybe we should’ve gone to Canada for my vacation. I bet I’d get recognized there.” He finally emerges from the bedroom in his typical jeans and t-shirt and her eyes follow him almost of their own accord. He reaches into the fridge and pulls out a beer of his own, popping it open effortlessly and offering her an amused look.

“Canada? You think you have a fan base in Montreal or somewhere?” She shrugs and pretends to go back to reading, holding out her hand for his beer and taking a long, slow swig when he gives it to her.

“Now we’re even,” she explains cheekily and he nods at her.

“Are you happy?” he responds like a second grade teacher, sitting down in the arm chair across from the sofa and she looks up at him from behind the top edge of her book and smiles, warm, genuine.

“Yeah, I am,” she admits and he smiles back at her and the moment kind of stretches in that way that she’s noticed happens a lot with them, where it’s like neither of them really realize they’ve been staring for so long until something from the outside world reminds them. This time it’s a car horn, which she thinks is kind of stereotypical. She blinks and he squints and she thinks that maybe her cheeks feel warm. “What?” she asks, the word stretched out and comfortable on her smiling lips. He takes another sip of his beer.

“Jewels of the Sun?” he asks, lifting his chin toward her book and she looks down at it and now she knows her cheeks are warm.

“Yep,” she answers, concentrating hard on not looking embarrassed. Whatever, she thinks, she can read what she wants.

“That’s a good one,” he says and before she can really register what the hell that meant he’s standing up and stepping over the coffee table, which she thinks he does way too easily, and he ends up perched above her with his lips dragging a smile along her neck. She leans her head back and sighs.

“You’ve read Jewels of the Sun?” she wonders airily, a little bit distracted by the way he’s so much bigger than she is and the way he’s practically radiating pheromones. He kind of twists his mouth up and shakes his head in response.

“No, somebody told me…it’s uh…So, hey what do you want for dinner?” he breathes out, and she grins at the diversion but doesn’t push him on it because she figures that they still have to have some things to discover about each other, there should still be these little surprises and this one seems totally worth waiting for. She files it away and purses her lips in thought, running her hands up and beneath his t-shirt so that she can feel the way his skin is warm from the summer heat.

“Do you want to skip dinner and just have sex?” she wonders and he laughs against her skin and she’s sure he shouldn’t be this good looking, this hot, this totally up against her in a way that makes her sweat. His hotness must create some kind of imbalance in the universe, like some kind of rip in time or something like ‘e’ no longer equals ‘mc’ or whatever the hell it is.

“Absolutely I do,” he tells her and she rolls her eyes at him.

“Don’t do that,” she instructs firmly, feeling a little bit of amusement color her words even though she’s pretty serious. Like really serious. He feigns confusion and she thinks she’s going to kill him.

“Don’t do what?” he asks and she pushes him off of her and down onto the floor as she reaches to pull off her tank top and stand. He’s laughing and then standing to follow her when she starts to make her way to the bedroom.

“Come on, seriously,” she mumbles.

“What?” he wonders, running to catch up with her and she unbuttons her khaki pants and lets them fall, turning to him and heading backwards toward the bed, watching him pull off his own t-shirt and feeling totally feminine, totally in charge of this and turned on by him and liking the way the air feels against her skin and the way the sheets are silky beneath her as she climbs up onto the bed.

“I hate when you quote the show, Jim, and you know I hate it,” she scolds, but she figures it‘s less than convincing when she‘s looking at him all lusty the way she probably is.

“Oh, you hate it. All this time I though you liked it, sorry,” he teases, and she pretends to glare at him as he climbs up onto the bed and stretches out above her, chuckling and peppering kisses along the line of her bra and it’s really hard to concentrate on being annoyed when he’s doing that…jesus. She feels his tongue on her skin and her breath catches. “So like you’d hate it if I told you, uh, you, have to take a chance on, um,” he starts to say, his mouth moving along her collarbone and his hands sliding up the dip of her waist and around her back, tangling in the hook of her bra while she reaches down to wrap her hands up in the denim of his jeans, “on something, sometime, Pam,” he says and she laughs against him and closes her eyes to enjoy the feel of his lips. “Do you want to be…oh god,” and his hips press against her and she likes the way his jeans are rough against her thighs, “Do you want to be a receptionist, always…”

“Shut up, Jim,” she says.

“Are you fine with your choices, Pam?” he breathes out into her ear as his hand snakes down between her thighs, and she can’t decide whether she’s laughing or sighing from the heat of him as she runs her fingers through his hair and bites gently at his ear, letting her tongue kind of trail along the shell of it and listening happily to the acceleration of his breath.

“Jim?” she whispers, kind of squirming beneath him and feeling her pulse get quick, feeling that heady thing she always feels when she thinks about being with him like this forever, when she thinks she never wants to leave him. She swallows.

“Pam, I’m in love with you,” he whispers overdramatically and she bites her lower lip to keep her smile from getting too big, “I know it’s weird for you to hear, but I needed you to hear it,” he finishes, grinning down at her and she grabs onto his shoulders and squints up at him, shaking her head against the pillow and sighing her resignation.

“Jim, can I have your autograph?” she counters and he rolls his eyes at her because she knows it bugs him, because they’re both doing this on purpose and because she knows for a fact that he’s actually embarrassed by the way girls follow him around without shame. She laughs and stretches up to plant her mouth against his, to slide her tongue against his teeth and to taste the beer that’s still haunting his mouth. She pulls away and wags her eyebrows at him. “Now take off your pants,” she instructs and he laughs for a second, looks down at her for a second and considers the look on her face and the golden tan of her skin.

“Wow, ok,” he answers, sitting up so he can pull his jeans off and it’s like summer in the best kind of way, it’s like baseball and sunscreen and vacation and swimming and she remembers all of the times as a little girl when she wondered who she would be when she grew up. She thinks about how she used to dream about her soul mate and how she never thought it would be someone like Jim, but god she’s glad it is. “You know when you go back to Scranton I’m going to go insane, right?” he asks her and she grins at him and crosses her arms, pleased by that for some reason.

“You know when you’re in Stamford I’m going to kill myself, right?” she counters and he laughs and nods and she thinks he realizes the truth in that, how hard this is all actually going to be, and he looks over at her seriously and kind of pauses for a second.

“We’ll figure it out, Pam. I’ll drive back to Scranton in the middle of the night if I have to,” he promises and her stomach tightens and her heart jumps and she sighs out her contentment with that answer because it’s so much better than anything else he could’ve said.

“So, seriously,” she starts, changing the subject because otherwise she might cry or something, “what’s with all the autographs? Are you like Brad Pitt now, all sought after and popular?” she asks him and he’s gloriously naked and crawling back toward her and she’s totally in love with him.

“Before I answer that,” he starts and she rolls her eyes at him, “Are you Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie in this scenario?” he asks and she chuckles and pretends to think.

“Angelina,” she answers finally and he nods.

“Good choice. Ok so you’re asking if I’m going to fall victim to your wit and athleticism while we’re filming a multi-million dollar action movie,” he begins, pausing to kiss her and she kisses him back with fervor, “and then break up with Jennifer Aniston so that I can be the father to your multiple adopted third-world babies, and so that you and I can be weirdly good-looking together and also way too philanthropic for the comfort of most other celebrities?” he finishes, flipping them over so that she’s perched on top of him and she presses her palm to his cheek affectionately and takes in the sight of him.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m asking,” she says, a twinkle of humor dancing between the words and she can’t tell if it’s that or him that’s making her feel warm everywhere.

“Then yes,” he tells her, reaching up to gently push her bangs off of her forehead, “I think I am exactly like Brad Pitt, and you are totally my Angelina Jolie.”

“Only hotter,” she assesses and he’s laughing against her and sighing her name and she bends down so that she can kiss him again.

“And way more famous,” he says against her lips.

“Definitely,” she agrees.

“But not as famous as me,” he corrects and she scoffs, shocked, pulling back from him and laughing despite the insult.

“Oh my god!” she accuses and he chuckles into her hair and wraps his arms tight around her.

“I’m kidding,” he promises, kissing her neck and laughing against her and she thinks he’s a total asshole.

“You aren’t kidding!” and her distress and surprise is evident in her voice and he’s still laughing, and she figures this bullshit will never end with him.

“You’re right, I’m not,” he admits, “but listen tomorrow we can go to Canada so that you can sign some autographs, too, ok?” he offers and she laughs and agrees and kisses his lips and it’s like they’ve known each other like this for way longer than they actually have. It’s like she doesn’t even remember why she hated him before, although she thinks it might have had something to do with this ego of his, but she doesn’t care, now. She totally loves him. And she tells him so because maybe those three little words aren’t as bad as she thought they were.

“I love you,” she whispers into his neck and he doesn’t move for a second and she can tell he’s surprised, she can tell he wasn’t expecting it because he knows her well enough to know she doesn’t say that. He pulls back and he looks her in the eye and he smiles at her, warm, happy and Jim and all of the things that are so familiar to her now.

“See? It sounds good,” he tells her and she agrees and it’s been weeks in the making, years in the making really, but she’s glad she waited to say it until now.

She wraps her arms tight around him and she says it again, into his ear and soft, and she means it, like soulful, and she doesn’t think of answering phones or pulling pranks or giving a camera reaction shots or pretending to be shy. In fact, she doesn’t think of Scranton at all, and that’s an amazing thing.

Pam Beesly and Jim Halpert are actors. Hired by Hollywood. Or NBC. Whatever. And everything they do is scripted and planned, handed to them by teams of writers and directors and producers and covered in makeup and costumes and lit by carefully constructed lighting and spoken with intention into a microphone.

Only not really.

Actually they’re just people who happened to meet each other on the set of a television show. They’re just people, and the actual, honest Pamela Anne Beesly from Hobbits Glen, Maryland kind of wants to tell everyone on the face of the planet that she somehow fell head over heels in love with the actual, honest, and totally full of himself James Adam Halpert from Bath, New Hampshire. She wants to admit that she loves him even more off camera than she’s ever pretended to on, and she wants to tell everyone that he loves her, too, and that they’re happy. She wants to tell everyone to re-watch that scene where he tells her he loves her and realize that there’s something different about them in that parking lot, realize that that kiss wasn’t scripted and that something important really did happen right then, that things changed. She wants to run out into the street and tell everyone in New York City, everyone in the United States and all of her many fans in Canada, that this is all amazingly real and that she hasn’t been acting for weeks, like she wants to proclaim that this is her real life and it is so much more fantastic than television.

And she swears to god nobody could’ve scripted it any better.