“Welcome to paradise!” 

Jim squints up at the beaming dark haired man on the dock. It’s not just the sun making him squint - the guy is wearing the brightest Hawaiian shirt Jim has ever seen. Clashing wreaths of flowers adorn his neck and head, augmented by a tray of coconut cocktails in either hand, complete with sparklers and lurid pink umbrellas. 

He’s eagerly beckoning for them to get off the boat. 

Jim exchanges a glance with his wife. She’s hot and sweaty from their flight, her hair all over the place from the boat ride to the island, irritable from one of their very loud and obnoxious fellow passengers…but her brow quirks at Jim when she sees the man on the dock, and Jim has to swallow a grin. 

“Please,” Isabel mutters faintly. “Don’t tell me that’s Michel.” 

Mark is just staring, mouth agape. 

“Out of the way!” 

It’s their loud and obnoxious fellow passenger who barrels up first, elbowing Jim and Pam aside to let his own wife go in front. 

Jim has to catch Pam to steady her, his hand sliding to the small of her back.“Hey,” he says to the other guy. “Watch out.” 

He’s just met with a scowl. “It’s not my fault you need better sea legs.” 

Jim decides not to ask what sea legs are. He and Pam figured out pretty soon into their half hour boat journey that asking this guy anything seems to result in a lecture. About the boat engine, and the tropical climate, and why Jim and Pam’s jeans and t-shirts are completely inappropriate island wear. 

Jim’s not sure what kind of island the guy seems to think they’re going to, but if his belted shorts, socks, sandals and mustard camouflage shirt are anything to go by…well, it’s not the same island their cocktail clutching host has clearly envisioned. 

Although the guy’s wife, who’s climbing off the boat without so much as a thank you, looks like she’s dressed for an Amish tea party. So god knows. 

“Oh my god, cocktails!” 

Jim turns to see that the fourth couple on the boat, who spent most of the journey making out, have finally broken apart. The squeal came from the woman, who’s now bounced up and is eagerly making her way to the front. She’s wearing a bright polka dot swimsuit and not much else, much to the evident disapproval of the Amish lady. 

Her make-out partner, who’s been left to wrestle three enormous fuchsia suitcases, looks decidedly less enthusiastic. Jim and Mark offer to help, and then somehow end up being the only ones carrying the pink suitcases as the guy goes on ahead. 

“Nice,” Mark mutters to Jim as they haul the baggage up. 

“Yeah.” Jim rolls his eyes at his friend. 

The couple are now happily accepting their cocktails, luggage forgotten. They’ve started making out again. Meanwhile, mustard shirt guy and his Amish wife both seem to have refused the coconut drinks. The former looks like he’s scanning the palm trees for some kind of threat. 

Jim realises too late that he’s left Pam to manage their own bags. He turns just in time to catch her before she overbalances, wrapping his hand under her elbow to pull her up onto the safety of the dock. 

“Careful, Bees.” 

Her expression is sheepish as he grabs the bag with his other hand. His brow furrows as he feels how heavy it is. 

“Why didn’t you get me?” 

He says it teasingly, but he’s not sure why she’d struggled with the bag in silence, why she hadn’t just - 

He catches it, the briefest glimmer of surprise on her face that he’d noticed. 

Which throws him. 

Before he can open his mouth, though, he and Pam are being ushered towards the other couples, cocktails thrust into their hands. 

“Welcome,” their host says again. “To Edan Island!” 

“Like the cheese?” Mark cracks, hopefully. Isabel cuts him an exasperated look. 

Their host appears confused. “Non, non - like, heaven! Paradise! All here, on one island.”

The Amish looking woman’s lips have pursed in further disapproval. 

“Told you,” Isabel says under her breath to Mark. He makes a face back. 

It had been another argument between them, the origin of the name. Jim hadn’t told Mark as much, but he’d tended to agree with Isabel that it probably wasn’t a cheese-themed couples retreat. The argument had ended in Isabel asking Mark why he couldn’t take one goddamn thing seriously - not even this, which was meant to be about saving their marriage - before she’d stormed out. 

It was something she’d normally have laughed over. 

And that was the point when Jim and Pam had realised that maybe their friends weren’t exaggerating about their relationship problems. 

When they’d first suggested the retreat, Jim and Pam hadn’t been able to believe it. 

“We’re just…fighting all the time,” Mark had said, tiredly. 

Pam had pointed out that they always fought. Bickering was an integral part of their relationship. They’d been introduced through Jim and Pam - Jim’s best friend from high school, Pam’s from college - and after Isabel had snortingly dismissed Mark’s attempts to hit on her, much to his dismay, they’d formed a sort of rivalry. 

Until they’d slept together at Jim and Pam’s wedding. Jim and Pam had been anticipating sparks between their best man and maid of honour - just maybe not quite like that. 

But they’d been happy. 

Only, seven years and their own wedding later, they were telling Jim and Pam they weren’t. 

Fortunately the retreat’s host continues speaking now, before they can get into another fight about the name.  

“I am Michel Le Scarn,” he declares. “And I will be your guide for ze wonderful journey you are about to embark on.” 

No way, Jim thinks, is this guy’s accent real. He glances sideways at Pam, who’s clearly thinking the same thing.

“Four journeys begin today.” Michel beams round at the eight of them. He gestures towards the couple still making out. “Le Kapoors, from Las Vegas.” 

The woman glances up first. Her pink lipstick is smeared round her partner’s mouth. He mumbles something like, “It’s Howard-Kapoor-”

But she’s already interrupted him. “Oh, we’re not actually from Las Vegas. We just got remarried there!” 

“Remarried?” Mark is unable to resist asking. 

“We eloped! We ran off into the sunset, it was so totally romantic. But this time we’re going to do it right, aren’t we, babe?” She twines her arms around her (new?) husband’s neck. “We’re here to fix Ryan’s commitment issues.” 

Ryan doesn’t look thrilled by this prospect. But Michel has already moved onto the next couple, mustard shirt guy and his wife. 

“Le Schrutes, from Scranton.” 

It turns out Mr Schrute’s name is Dwight, which Jim instantly adds a second syllable to, and he’s a paper salesman. Because of course he is. He announces this like it’s vital information. Jim cocks his head at Pam in amusement, and she has to cover her mouth. 

“We’re only here on doctor’s orders,” his wife, Angela, adds shortly.  

“Yes. We’re not here to talk about our feelings.” Dwight looks repulsed by the idea. 

Jim is just wondering what kind of doctor would recommend a couples retreat if not a therapist, when Michel enthuses that there will be plenty of talking about feelings over the next two weeks. 

Ryan grimaces. His wife Kelly is delighted. “That’s exactly what we need, Ryan, more talking! Now you can really listen to me.” 

“And,” Michel finishes, ignoring Dwight’s appalled expression, “Le Porebas,” - Mark and Isabel raise awkward hands in greeting - “And Le Halperts, from Philadelphia!” 

He smiles widely around them. 

“All of you are here because your relationships are damaged. Broken. Ruined. But don’t worry! I am here to tell you that ze healing starts today.” 

Kelly nods avidly, and Ryan rolls his eyes. Dwight and Angela have stiffened, but don’t say anything. Isabel and Mark look nervous. 

As Michel starts going on about the island’s programme of nurturing their loves like flowers or chou-fleurs (he’s definitely mixing his metaphors at several points, but…anyway), Jim gives Pam’s hand a light squeeze. Her mouth curves self-consciously back at him. 

They’re not here because their relationship is damaged, of course. Isabel and Mark had begged them to come as part of a group discount, promising them they could just enjoy two weeks on a tropical island while Mark and Isabel did all the couples therapy stuff. They couldn’t afford it otherwise. 

Jim and Pam had looked through the glossy photos of all the couples snorkelling and going for moonlit beach walks, and they’d talked about it and agreed they couldn’t. Not with everything that was happening with Athleap. Pam had agreed, totally understanding, and put the brochure away without looking at it again. 

Jim had guiltily told Mark no, and promised to help him find another couple they could go with. 

Pam hadn’t brought it up again. 

It had been Cece, of all people, who had. 

Jim had taken her to a basketball game - work-related, but their daughter’s always desperate to go, more than happy to strike up conversation with Jim’s clients or sit on his shoulders yelling about free throws - and she’d been merrily stuffing her face with popcorn and burbling away to Dr J, when he’d said something that had made her squint up at Jim. 

“How come you never take mommy on holiday any more?” 

Jim had laughed. “What do you mean?” 

She’d pointed at a photo of a young Dr J with some bikini-clad models. “Mommy was looking at a swimsuit, but she didn’t buy it. I know why now, it’s ‘cause she’s got nowhere to wear it. ‘Cause you don’t take her to the Bahamas, or on a yacht, or anywhere. How come you don’t take her anywhere, daddy?” 

Jim had tried not flinch, because - Pam had been looking at swimsuits? When? 

His daughter was still glaring at him expectantly. 

He’d exhaled. “Now’s just not the right time, kiddo.” He’d hoisted her onto his lap. “But listen, once work gets a bit quieter-”

“That’s what you always say,” Cece had whined. “At Christmas, and on mommy’s birthday, and last summer. When is it gonna get quieter? I’m bored of your boring work.”

Jim had raised a brow at her. “Oh, so you don’t wanna come to these games any more?” 

He’d tickled her until she laughed, and she’d protested that no, dumb dumb, she still needed to come to the games - and he’d smiled as she snuggled into him to watch the rest of the match. She’d soon been distracted howling when the referee missed a foul. 

But he’d been unsettled, underneath it all. Stricken. The feeling had lasted the rest of the game, and all the way home. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about it. When was the last time he’d taken Pam away? Not to the Bahamas, but just to somewhere she’d wanted to go? Somewhere that was just for her? (Or them?) It had been a long winter - an even longer year - and he didn’t think they’d had a single moment to relax. She hadn’t had a moment. She hadn’t said a word. She hadn’t complained, because she never did. 

And apparently it was so bad that his seven year-old daughter had noticed. And needed to call him out on it. 

He’d wondered if Phil had noticed too. Phil has always been less outspoken than his older sister, quieter and sensitive like Pam, but he’s no less observant.

Jim had got home to find Pam and Phil curled up on the couch asleep. (Phil finds the games too loud - he’d cried the last time Jim took him, totally overwhelmed - so he and Pam have movie time whenever Jim and Cece go). Pam had looked pale, and tired, and it had made him feel even guiltier as he’d dropped a kiss to her forehead. 

He’d scooped Phil up to put him to bed, with an overexcited and now sleepy Cece, who insisted she wasn’t tired, daddy, even as her eyes were fluttering closed. 

When he’d come back downstairs, Pam was in the kitchen making them both tea. 

He’d watched her for a moment, standing at the counter in her favourite sweater with a hole in it, making tea without him needing to ask. He’d crossed the kitchen and drawn her into his arms. She’d turned in surprise, smiling as he kissed her. He tried to remember the last time he’d had a moment to kiss her properly, as his arms slid around her waist, and he couldn’t. 

“I’ve been thinking.” 

“Always dangerous.” She’d rested her head on his shoulder, and he’d repressed a grin against her hair.

He’d run a hand down her spine. “I think we should go with Mark and Isabel.” 

She’d paused at that, and pulled back to look up at him. “But, Athleap-”

“-Can wait.” He’d brushed her hair back as he held her. “Come on. We can do two weeks.” 

She’d still been hesitant. “Are you sure?” 

She looked like she couldn’t believe it, like she couldn’t quite let herself hope, and for a moment that had made him feel even worse. (Just how many things had he postponed or cancelled this year?) 

“Yes,” he’d said firmly. “So…get your swimsuit packed, baby.” He’d kissed her again as she’d laughed. “We’re going to Edan.” 

Her smile had been so luminous, over such a simple thing, that he’d resolved to start paying more attention, to not to let it get this bad again. 

Of course, taking two weeks holiday had meant things at work were a nightmare in the run-up to it, and he’d barely had a moment to think since he’d made that resolution.  

But they’re here now. And he’s determined to give his wife the vacation she deserves.  

Michel finally seems to have concluded his monologue about true love and soupsnakes (maybe English is his second language?), and is now herding them over to a golf cart to take them to their villas.

Or love shacks, as he calls them. Angela’s lips thin. 

Jim’s in the process of climbing up beside Pam when there’s a loud laugh, and he glances over to see a group of girls in bikinis getting off another boat. They don’t quite look like they’re here for a couples retreat. 

He doesn’t miss the way the Ryan guy has suddenly perked up. Neither does Ryan’s wife. “Who are they?” Kelly demands, glaring over at the girls. “I mean,” she acts like she’s lowering her voice, but she doesn’t, and it carries, “Trashy much?” 

The girls pause in between flipping their ponytails and snapping selfies, slightly taken aback. Kelly doesn’t baulk. She’s got her husband’s hand in a death grip. Ok, Jim reflects. Maybe she’s not all sunshine and polka dot swimsuits. She looks about ready to claw their eyes out. 

Michel is frowning too. “Just - ugh, ignore them. They’re going to ze other side of ze island. To Eden.” He sounds disgruntled. Jim sneaks another glance at Pam, and he somehow knows that the other side of the island is spelt right. He can tell she does too. She nudges her thigh against his to stop him from snickering. 

Ryan is still trying to subtly stare after the girls. “What’s on the other side of the island?” 

“Ze singles resort,” Michel dismisses. “Don’t worry about zat. The guy who runs it is a total loser.” 

(Jim knows from the way Pam tilts her head at him that he’s not imagining how suddenly, inexplicably American Michel’s loser sounds). 

Ryan’s gaze flicks back to the flowers in Michel’s hair, his garish shirt. “Right.” 

It’s Dwight who intervenes. “You’re here for the couples experience,” he reminds Ryan officiously. “You can’t deviate.” He’s half bristling, and Jim wonders again who the hell this guy is. He can only hope the Schrutes spend the whole time in therapy, so that he and Pam can snorkel and go for beach walks in peace. 

Kelly still hasn’t let go of Ryan’s hand. He represses a sigh, and stops gazing into the distance (or rather, into the retreating gaggle of girls as they disappear into a separate golf cart). “I wasn’t planning to,” he mutters. Not very convincingly. 

Kelly pulls him round to kiss him again. Jim slips an arm around Pam so that they’re not subjected to watching more of the couple sucking each other’s faces. Unfortunately the golf cart, as it trundles off into the palm trees, isn’t quite loud enough to drown them out. 

But Pam leans her head against him, and he can sense her excitement as she takes in the island, and… it’s nice. It’s really nice. Pam’s quiet excitement is one of his favourite things. It reminds him of their first date, of giddy picnics in the park, apple-picking, day trips down to the sea, even just taking her up onto the roof of his office. Exhibitions, her hand in his as she dragged him round all the paintings. That time he’d put together Phil’s room to surprise her, his hands over her eyes, her shining gaze as she’d drunk it all in, the way she’d kissed him with their son growing between them. 

He hasn’t seen her like this in a while.  

Because, he realises, he hasn’t done anything like this with her in a while. (When was the last time he even got home in time to cook her dinner, much less do anything to surprise her?) 

And the island is gorgeous, he reflects as he follows her gaze. 

He’s finally got a moment to enjoy the feel of the sun soaking into his shirt, and Pam’s shoulders starting to relax under his arm. 

Athleap and Philly feel miles away. 

Although as soon as he thinks that, he starts thinking about Athleap, and then has to make a concerted effort to derail that train of thought. Because thinking about Athleap will only lead to fretting about Athleap. He knows that. There’s a small voice in the back of his mind that points out he never needed to try to switch off from work before. But things are different now, he reminds himself. 

He realises a moment later that Pam has snuck a look up at him. “You ok?” 

He feels a flicker of guilt. She can always read him too well. He presses his mouth against her hair and promises her that he’s great, and her smile back is tentative. 

They’re distracted by Michel pointing out the dining hut - all you can eat buffet and unlimited drinks, which makes Jim and Pam grin at each other (they devised their strategy for the buffet on the plane) - and the huge infinity pool, and the tranquility spa. Even Mark and Isabel are smiling now. 

Mark flashes him a triumphant look from the seat in front, like what did I tell you? 

Jim can’t argue with him. 

Especially not when he and Pam get dropped off at their own villa. 

It’s a hut on stilts, and it’s incredible. They’re greeted by an eager member of staff called Andy, who takes them through their private hot tub, their private balcony with the steps leading down to the sea, the emperor sized bed and waterfall shower, the huge fruit basket and champagne…

Jim and Pam spend a while giddily exclaiming over every feature - “Jim, look at the bath robes!” “There’s a whole bowl of M&Ms, Pam!” - while Andy indulges them. He seems very pleased with their reactions. 

It’s amazing, and Pam is practically fizzing, and Jim really should have known there was a catch. 

It arrives when Andy presents them with their itinerary. Unprompted. Jim wasn’t aware of any itinerary. 

“Uh.” He blinks down at the embossed paper in confusion. “Sorry, I think there’s been some kind of mistake?”

“Mistake?” Andy echoes. “We don’t make mistakes here, good sir.”  

Pam squints over Jim’s shoulder at the same thing. “Um, yeah. We didn’t sign up for the…6am couple building exercises?” 

(No way, Jim thinks, is 6am holiday time). 

“Or the two hour therapy session,” he adds. Andy looks non-plussed. “We’re just here to do the fun stuff?”

Andy straightens.“Oh, no. I’m afraid that’s not an option.”  

Pam’s eyes flicker to Jim’s in mild alarm. “No,” she tries to explain, “But we don’t need any of the relationship help.”

“Our marriage is fine,” Jim agrees, nodding vigorously. “Totally great. It’s just our friends who-”

“No,” Andy tuts, “If you’re here, you’re here for the full package. Those are Michel’s rules.” 

“But-”

“Unless you want to leave?” he suggests. “We can call the boat back.” 

Jim and Pam stare at each other. Pam’s gaze slips to their ocean view. Jim lingers on the hot tub. 

“I mean…” 

“…That’s not what we’re saying,” Pam finishes uncertainly, looking to Jim again. 

He half shakes his head. 

“Great.” Andy goes back to beaming. “Now, I’ll need you to hand your phones over.” 

“Our - what?” 

“Michel’s method is very clear,” Andy nods. “No distractions. It will help you focus on each other.” 

Jim and Pam exchange another glance. “But we need our phones,” Pam starts, and Jim can hear the anxiety in her voice. “Our kids-”

“You’ll get them for half an hour every day,” Andy assures her. “And you’ll be contactable in the event of an emergency.” 

Jim has a wordless conversation with his wife as Andy waits. He doesn’t love it. But at least half an hour a day means they’ll make Cece and Phil’s bedtime. He can tell Pam is thinking the same thing. 

So they hand their cell phones over, once Pam has texted her mom to let her know what’s happening.  Andy nods encouragingly and tells them they won’t regret it, and it means they can really reconnect. Jim feels a little guilty about what he knows is still in his back pocket. But it’s a necessity, he tells himself.  

“Ok,” Andy says brightly once they’re done. “I’ll leave you folks to it, but just ring the bell if you need anything! Anything at all. I’m your man.” 

He lingers, as if he’s hoping they’ll tell him they need something now. When they don’t, and still haven’t several moments later, he finally strolls away. They can hear him whistling as he goes. 

Leaving Jim and Pam alone in their luxurious villa. 

They face each other. Jim picks up the itinerary again. “So…” 

“Yeah.” 

He exhales, shaking his head. He can’t believe it. All he wanted was to give her a nice holiday. Is that really so hard? 

“You still ok with this?” He’s dubious. 

She glances down at the itinerary, and back up at him. “I mean…it’s only during the mornings, right? And then we can do the fun stuff in the afternoon.” She sounds hopeful. 

He gently tugs her to him, because her optimism is one of the things he loves most about her. “I guess.” 

Her smile is unsure. “How bad can some couples building workshops be?” 

“Yeah. We’ll probably ace them,” he reflects, after a beat. “Especially if we’re up against the Howard-Kapoors.” 

That makes her laugh. “Bets on them lasting the retreat?” 

“Pam.” Jim shakes his head at her. “Michel’s programme is going to transform their love. I can’t believe you’d doubt that. He’s a marriage miracle worker, remember?” 

He likes this, he thinks, her laughter bubbling against him. He’s missed this. 

“It’ll be a miracle if he can keep that Ryan guy away from Eden,” she tells him wryly.  Her eyes are sparkling. 

“…Yeah. It really will.” 

He’s got his arms wrapped right the way around her waist now, and he lowers his head to kiss her. Her lips are soft, and warm, parting beneath his as her hands reach up to cup the back of his neck. She tastes of coconut and rum. She’s slightly cautious against him at first, until he deepens the kiss. 

(He’s not sure where it’s come from, that cautiousness).

But as his hands trail down her sides it occurs to him that they’re completely alone in this villa.  Alone for the first time in ages. 

He can feel his mouth curling against hers as he bends to pick her up. “Do you want to just get room service for dinner?” 

She’s distracted as he hoists her up, as her breath catches and her legs wrap instinctively around him. “Mark and Iz-”

He nuzzles her neck. “I guarantee you they’re not going to make it out of that villa past nine.” Pam considers, but she knows as well as he does that their friends are late for everything. “Mark will be loading up on the free snacks as we speak,” he assures her, already angling her back towards the huge bed. 

“I’m all gross from the plane,” she protests as he eases her down on the mattress. His body follows, arms framing her. 

He’s already started unbuttoning her jeans. “You’re never gross.” 

“Jim,” she laughs - 

“That’s what the hot tub’s for,” he insists, nudging her t-shirt up. His lips graze her stomach and she whimpers a bit, and he knows then that it’s been way, way too long. 

He hasn’t even seen her naked in a while, he thinks, agonised. Their love-making recently has tended to be hurried and in the dark, only when they can squeeze it in between Athleap and the kids. 

But he doesn’t need to hurry now. And it’s definitely not dark. 

He reaches for the hem of her t-shirt to pull it up and off her - and his back pocket vibrates. 

She’s so busy kissing him that it takes her a moment to realise what the noise is. It takes him a while too, he’s so focused on her body, on her. 

“What’s that?” she asks dazedly. He’s all set to ignore it and go back to kissing her, his fingers reaching for her t-shirt again.

But she’s bewildered beneath him and it’s still vibrating. 

He swears, then, as he remembers. “Shit. Sorry.” He sits up from her. 

She looks a little bereft as he reaches away from her. 

He pulls his blackberry out from his pocket. Sheepish. She blinks at it for a moment, and then she’s yanking her t-shirt down, scooting backwards.

It’s Isaac calling him. As he worries about what the guy wants, he almost misses Pam’s next words. “You didn’t…” And then, “Oh.”

Guilt flickers through him. “I’m really sorry. I told them to only call in emergencies, so I should probably-”

“Yeah.” Is it him, or is her voice strangely flat? “Sure.” 

“Pam-”

“No, no, you should answer it.” 

He darts forward to kiss her. “I swear, I’ll get rid of him quickly.” 

He hurries off the bed and through to the balcony, answering the phone as he goes. He tries hard to make it as quick as possible, to get Isaac off the phone, all too aware of Pam still in their bed. 

But it turns out they’re having a nightmare with one their investors, and Isaac takes nearly half an hour to calm down. Which makes Jim feel even guiltier about not being there. Because if they lose this investor, they’re fucked. 

“Sorry, man,” Isaac says as they eventually wrap up. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your vacation.” 

Jim knows this was the trade-off, though, the only way he was able to take these two weeks off. 

“It’s ok,” he sighs. 

He glances back into the villa, but he can’t see Pam from where he’s standing. He just wants to get back to her. 

He only realises once he’s hung up that the sun has started setting. Crap. How long was he on the phone for? 

He heads back inside, stuffing his blackberry away. 

Pam is no longer on the bed. She’s showered and changed into one of the bathrobes, and his mouth dries as he takes in her damp hair, as he catches the fresh scent of her shampoo. She’s bent over the room service menu. She doesn’t look up as he approaches her. 

“Hey.” 

She jumps, a bit, and he wonders how lost in thought she was that she didn’t sense him. That almost never happens. What was she thinking about? 

“Oh. Hi. Everything ok?” She’s not quite looking at him. 

“Yeah.” He reaches for her, but she eases past him to put the menu down. “Listen,” he starts, “I’m so sorry about that.” He feels like a dick. He tries to explain what Isaac was panicking about, and she nods.

“It’s ok.” 

She’s still not quite meeting his eye, though. So he catches her. “I’m really sorry.” 

She finally relaxes in his hold, just a little. Finally looks at him. “I ordered room service. They have gourmet hot dogs.” She flashes him a grin, and it starts to feel a bit easier again. 

“Oh yeah?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Did you get-”

“Oh, I got me one. You’re having quinoa salad.” 

“Beesly,” he groans, and she slips away from him, still grinning in that way that lets him know she got two. He reassures himself that means things are fine, even if she is moving away from him, out of his hold. It’s just so she can clear a space for the food. 

He vows to make it up to her tonight. And every night over the next two weeks. 

The hot dogs are delicious, and his blackberry doesn’t go off again. 

They’re sitting Indian style on the bed once they’ve finished eating when he leans into her. She’s flushed and so beautiful, and he’s determined to tug the fastening loose on her robe and let every inch of her body know how sorry he is. 

He’s aching with want for her. He's missed her, and she smells so good. 

He pulls at her robe - and she catches his hand.

“Um, hey. I’m kind of beat.” 

He pauses. “Oh.” 

She’s never had to tell him she’s too tired before. He can normally tell without her needing to. He scans her now, wondering how he missed that. 

“Just…the flight was early, and the jet lag.” She’s already shuffling backwards, and is he imagining the fact that she’s avoiding eye contact again? 

He hesitates, studying her. “Are you ok?” 

“Yeah.” She nods quickly. “Just tired. And we’ve got that 6am start, so…” 

It sounds a bit weak. He’s about to push her on it, but then he wonders if she’ll feel like he’s trying to pressure her. Which is a horrible thought, with Pam, and not one he’s ever had before. And that confuses him enough that he just says, “Yeah. Of course.” 

She starts getting ready for bed, and he has no choice but to do the same. He’s still disquieted as he brushes his teeth.  

When he comes back from the bathroom, she’s already curled on the bed with her back to him. The bed that looked so extravagant earlier now seems stupidly big, dwarfing her. She looks so small and lonely for a moment that he can’t bear it. He slides in behind her, not caring how much of the mattress he has to cross until he’s nestled against her. Until he can feel her warmth. Feel her. 

He slides his arm around her, and after a moment’s pause (so fleeting he’s not sure if he imagined it again), she lets him. He settles his chin against her hair, breathing her in. 

“Hey,” he murmurs into her. “I know today has been kind of weird. But I’m really glad we’re here.” 

She softens a little. Her voice is quiet in the darkness. “Me too.” 

She doesn’t say anything else, and as he listens to her deep, even breaths, he tries to shake the feeling that she might not be any more asleep than he is. 

“So. How are you feeling about our latest intake?”

Michael glances up as Holly comes into their work hut. He’s been finishing up the programmes for the new couples, but he’s always happy with a distraction. Especially when that distraction is Holly. His favourite relationship therapist on the island. Well, probably his favourite person on the island. 

(Maybe his favourite person period).  

Oscar, who’s been working on the table next to him, makes a point of motioning towards the unfinished programmes. Michael ignores him. He’s the boss, anyway. Oscar can’t tell him what to do. 

“Great,” he enthuses to Holly. “I’ve got a really good feeling about these ones. Even better than the Vances.” 

And the Vances have been a real success story. 

“I think the Schrutes might be a problem,” Oscar observes, more cautiously. “Dwight has already sent five emails and three voicemails asking to be excused from counselling. Actually,” he amends with a wince, “He didn’t exactly ask.” 

Michael waves a hand. “Holly will have them talking in no time.”

Oscar’s brow creases. “I thought we agreed I was going to take the Schrutes’ therapy, and Holly was doing the Halperts and the Howard-Kapoors? We’ve both done all the prep-”

“Hm?” Why, Michael wonders, does Oscar always go on about these things? “Yes, yes, fine.”  

Oscar sighs and goes back to his paperwork. Thank god. 

“How did Michel go?” Holly asks Michael warmly. Finally, a question that matters. He can always count on Holly for that. 

“Really well,” he announces. “They all loved it. Better than the Italian, I think.” 

He’d retired Micello Biscotti (Holly had helped him come up with the name, brilliant) and his moustache. He’d really thought Italian was the answer - that’s amore, country of love, it had seemed obvious - but now he’s thinking that actually it’s the French who are the real experts on love.  So Michel Le Scarn it is. 

“I think they’d love Michael Scott too, you know.” Holly’s gentle. 

Michael considers this. “No, no, we need to be authentic.” 

Oscar makes a sound that’s a bit like a muffled snort. Michael wonders if he’s choking. 

“Well,” Holly tells him, “I can’t wait for tomorrow.” 

Michael beams at her, because she’s so great, and she really gets it. And she’s so pretty, and he finds himself wondering again - 

No, no, no, he remembers. He can’t. Not allowed. Forbidden. It’s like that Beatles song, you can’t always get your satisfaction. 

(He’s made a point of memorising love songs, because some of them have very powerful messages that he needs to share with the people he helps. Like Bye Bye Baby, for that couple who lost their son. Or Relax, for the couple with the impotence problems. They’d really appreciated the group singalongs. It was a sort of spiritual healing for them. But with music).

So he can’t have Holly, but that’s ok, because he can make sure everyone else gets their happy ending. 

That’s what she - heh, no. Obviously not like that. He’s running a couples retreat, not a massage parlour. No one ever really told him what those happy endings entail, and every massage parlour he’s been in gets angry when he asks, but he knows it’s dirty. 

Anyway. He’s getting distracted. 

Where was he? 

Oh yes, putting the finishing touches to his couple tailored programmes. They’re not going to know what’s hit them. 

"Let the healing begin,” he declares. 

Oscar might have raised his eyes heavenwards. 

But Holly smiles. 

Tomorrow’s going to be a good day, he can feel it.  

“Morning morning morning!” 

Jim squints blearily at Pam as she takes a sip of her green tea. Like the tea will somehow fix the fact that the sun’s only just risen. Or how loud Michel’s voice is as he bounds in front of the eight of them. 

He’s wearing…Pam isn’t sure what the guy’s wearing. They look a bit like buddhist robes. With a bandana. She tries to work out whether this outfit is better or worse than the one yesterday. It’s less bright, she guesses.

They were woken at the crack of dawn by Andy, and his enthusiasm was considerably less welcome as they’d been stumbling out of bed. He’d hovered excitedly until Jim had kicked him out of their villa so that Pam could get dressed. The guy hadn’t seemed to understand what the issue with him being there was. 

He’d taken them to a thatched pavilion overlooking the beach, where an equally sleepy looking Mark and Isabel were already waiting. They’d been confused to see Jim and Pam - and then deeply apologetic when Jim explained what had happened.  

“I swear,” Isabel had said as she searched for coffee (she’d pulled a face when she discovered there was only herbal tea), “That wasn’t anywhere in the small print.” 

Mark had grunted in agreement as he loaded up on pastries from the food-laden table. He wasn’t a morning person, Pam knew. “Sorry, guys.” 

They didn’t mention how their night had gone. Pam thought she could probably guess, based on how far apart they’d been standing when she and Jim arrived. 

(She and Jim hadn’t spoken much about their night either. But she’d moved a little closer to him and his hand had brushed her lower back, gentle, their first contact all morning). 

The Schrutes had arrived a minute later. They’d fastidiously refused the food - “We had breakfast an hour ago,” Dwight frowned, as if in disgust that no one else had - and both of them looked wide awake and fully alert. Angela had made a point of only accepting water, because she didn’t drink foreign tea. 

It took another twenty minutes for the Howard-Kapoors to arrive, and it was clear from the lovebites all over Ryan’s neck what they’d spent last night doing. 

“Well,” Isabel had muttered, “At least someone’s getting some.” 

Pam had forced a smile, looking down at her cup instead of at Jim. She’s not sure if she’d felt his eyes on her.

(She’d thought about it, for a second, his warm body over hers and the feel of his lips and what might have happened if another interruption that was more important than her hadn’t-)

Then Michel had burst into the pavilion, and she’d made herself stop thinking about it. 

“We are gathered here today to answer ze eternal question,” Michel is saying now, as he gives each of them a beatific smile. “Can anyone tell me what zat is?” 

Dwight raises his hand instantly. Michel ignores him, turning to Ryan instead. He looks hopeful. Kelly, who informed everyone she was on a no carb diet, isn’t even pretending to listen as she heaps honey and sugar onto her plate of melon. 

“What’s the meaning of life?” Isabel finally attempts, when it becomes clear Michel isn’t going to go to Dwight, and Ryan isn’t going to say anything. 

Michel tuts, shaking his head. Mark snickers until Isabel makes a face at him. There was a time, Pam remembers, when they used to love mocking each other. But Isabel’s not smiling now, and as he sees the same thing, neither is Mark. 

Michel zeroes in on Mark next. “Any ideas?” His expression is bright and expectant. 

“Uh.” Mark scratches his jaw. “Will the Eagles ever win a Super Bowl again?” 

Michel chortles, at that, and Isabel rolls her eyes. 

Jim gives Mark a deliberate elbow, mock outraged. It dispels the tension for a moment, and Pam loves him for that. It’s the Jim she knows, the one who notices when the people he cares about are struggling and goes out of his way to help them. That’s the warm, thoughtful goofball she fell in love with, the one she sees in Cece and Phil all the time. 

Dwight interrupts then, clearly unable to take any more. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snaps. “The eternal question is whether nurture or nature will help you survive the apocalypse. For example: Schrutes have the advantage of both-”

“No, no, no.” Michel cuts him off as Pam tries very hard not to laugh at the look on Jim’s face. “That’s not - shh.” He looks like he’s restraining himself from telling Dwight to shut it. “Ze eternal question is: how do we make it work.” 

He draws himself up like he’s just imparted something very profound. 

There’s a silence. 

His brow puckers, stymied by their lack of response, and he goes on. 

“Zis is ze question we’ll be looking to answer as we go on our journey. Edan’s personally designed programmes will challenge you both as a couple,” he spreads his hands between Jim and Pam, “And as individuals.” He beams at Ryan, who looks uncomfortable. “I will be here to hold your hand every step of ze way, as you spread your wings and take flight.” 

It takes Pam a moment to realise that the fluted music increasing in volume with Michel’s speech is not in her head, but coming from Andy. It takes her another moment to realise that the song he’s playing on his bamboo instrument is On The Wings Of Love. She feels Jim grip her shoulder, silently shaking. She knows she’ll break if she catches his eye. 

Michel clears his throat when Andy gets carried away with the bridge, temporarily drowning him out, and at that point Pam has to press her face into Jim’s arm. Isabel and Mark are both slack-jawed. 

Angela’s arms are crossed, Dwight nodding seriously. 

“Ok.” Michel claps his hands. “It is time to start our first exercise of ze day. Zis is all about discovering your partner.” He gestures towards the beach. “Please, line up on ze sand. Men in one line, women in another.” 

The sand is already starting to warm under Pam’s feet as they file onto the beach, the sun glittering off the turquoise waves. It’s beautiful enough that she thinks of the sketchbook she packed last minute, the one crammed down the bottom of her bag. Jim bought it for her months ago, a thick book with a pretty marbled cover and exactly the paper she likes. She hasn’t told him, and he doesn’t seem to have noticed, that she still hasn’t filled it. 

It takes them a while to organise themselves on the beach - “Facing you partner,” Michel cries, exasperated, as though he can’t understand why they didn’t get that form his vague instructions - and Pam finds herself between Isabel and Angela, Jim opposite her. 

“Now look at your partners,” Michel instructs. “Really look at them.” 

Jim holds Pam’s gaze, both of them trying to keep a straight face. She loves it when he smiles at her like that, eyes dancing, his hair mussed and product free for once. He didn’t have time to shave this morning, and she can see the shadow of yesterday’s stubble on his jaw. She hasn’t seen him like this, sleepy and dishevelled, in what feels like forever. It makes her heart clench briefly. 

There’s a noise to the left, and she makes the mistake of allowing her attention to shift to the man at Jim’s side. To…Dwight. Who’s staring intensely at Angela like he’s determined not to blink, body tensed, hands fisted and gaze laser focused. 

Pam wonders if he thinks this is a staring contest. 

She can sense Jim craning his head to look too, now that he’s noticed where her attention’s gone, and Dwight snarls at him to focus on his own wife. Without blinking. 

“All right,” Michel calls. “Now - disrobe!” 

For a second Pam wonders if she’s misheard him, until she sees that he has literally just shed his own robe. Leaving him in nothing but a pair of tight speedos. He’s smiling widely. 

She stares. 

“I can’t look away,” Isabel murmurs from her side, horrified, like she’s watching a car crash. 

“Come on!” Michel encourages. “You must remove your mask. Bare yourself to your partner!”

Jim’s face tells her exactly how creepy he thinks this is. 

“You have nothing to hide,” Michel insists. “You are all beautiful! Be at one!”

Dwight has already started unbuckling his belt. Pam tries to avert her eyes. Jim looks like he wants to be over there covering them for her. 

At least Michel has kept his speedos on. Which surely means they’re not going fully bare. Surely. If he looks for one second like he’s reaching for those speedos, she’s out of here. 

“Take your clothes off!” 

Andy has started fluting Hot In Here, followed by We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off when Michel frowns and signals for a slower song - which has surely, Pam reflects, missed the point entirely. 

Jim grimaces at her as he reaches for his t-shirt. That’s when she realises they’re doing this and she’s going to have to get undressed too. 

Which…she was not envisioning this early. She’d packed a cute swimsuit, sure, but she’d planned to wear it in the water or lying down on a sun lounger. Or with her beach cover-up. Not lined up in front of Jim, fully exposed in the too bright light of the morning. 

And she’s not even wearing the swimsuit now. She’s wearing underwear that she probably should have replaced months ago, faded cotton bra and panties that don’t even match. 

Great. Just great. 

Isabel doesn’t seem particularly bothered as she pulls her dress over her head, but then Isabel hasn’t had two kids, and even if she had, she’s never been bothered about stuff like that. 

Her underwear is also much nicer than Pam’s. 

Pam bets even Angela - oh, Angela seems to be wearing some kind of frilly slip, or petticoat, so Pam can’t see much of her at all. Why the hell didn’t Pam think of that? 

She lets her summer dress pool at her feet and stands there awkwardly, trying to fight the urge to wrap her arms around herself. 

For some reason she’s finding it very hard to look at Jim, her eyes landing on Dwight’s pale thrust out stomach instead. He’s wearing y-fronts. 

She remembers a time when Jim used to wear y-fronts, when he didn’t care what his underwear looked like and Pam was always teasing him to branch out from what his mom bought him as a kid. 

Her gaze finally slips to her husband now. He’s wearing black boxer briefs, like she knew he would be. They look good on him. He spends time on his underwear now, like he spends time on his suits, and his haircuts, and she’s never been able to pluck up the courage to tell him that she loves him whatever he wears. 

He looks sexy and professional and grown-up now, and as much as she adores that, there’s a part of her that also aches for a floppy-haired Jim in baggy jeans who didn’t care about any of that stuff. 

Her underwear hasn’t changed in years, and she doesn’t know when she got so out of step, when she started to fall so far behind.  

She raises her eyes to his, nervous, and almost hiccups. He’s looking at her with such warmth, with such naked admiration, that she wonders why she doubted him. (Wonders why she keeps doubting him). His gaze is soft and reassuring. He knows she’s uncomfortable, and he knows what she needs. Like he always used to. (Like he still does, she thinks, when he has time to). 

She smiles embarrassedly, and he grins back. 

Michel is telling them to explore and appreciate their partners’ bodies. “But just with your eyes! No touching.” 

Jim quirks an eyebrow at her, and she feels a blush creeping over her cheeks. His gaze trails her, slowly. She finds herself thinking of the first time they’d had sex, the way he’d looked at her then, the way he’s looked at her countless times since. She remembers him kneeling over her on the narrow bed in her tiny apartment, his hands and his lips so reverent as he undressed her for the first time. 

He’d told her he loved her for the first time that night too. Not when he was kissing her in her doorway or when she was leading him by the hand to her bedroom, or when she was arching beneath him moaning his name, or even in the giddy post-orgasmic haze in each other’s arms afterwards.  

He’d told her when she’d tripped coming out of the bathroom in just his t-shirt. 

She’d been thinking it for a while (maybe a while before their first date, even) and from the way it had slipped out of him then, she’d realised maybe he had too. Her heart had felt ready to burst out of her chest as he’d pulled her back into bed, as she’d kissed him and told him she did too.

He’s looking at her now in a way that makes her wonder if he’s remembering the same thing. She pushes aside the thought that she always used to know what he was thinking without needing to ask. She follows Michel’s instruction, instead, and focuses on…appreciating him. 

His long legs, the hair on his chest, the small scar from his appendicitis that she’s run her fingers over and kissed.

It’s been so long since she’s actually had time to look at his body, without him having to hurry out of the door or the kids coming in, or any number of things that always seem to interrupt. (Like a hidden blackberry).  

She loves his body. She used to be able to map it with her eyes closed. She used to look at him, sometimes, and wonder how she got so lucky. How she got to touch his ribs and kiss his spine and feel his long fingers threaded through hers, the curve of his smile against her neck. She hasn’t had time to do that in a while. He hasn’t been there, really, to let her. 

She takes him in now. He’s always been so lanky, broad-shouldered and gangly, and she knows the muscles in his chest, his toned stomach, are new.  He goes to the gym more now, because there’s one at work, and all the other guys at Athleap do. 

The moms from Cece’s class had told her over too much wine that her husband was definitely a DILF. They’d ranked him top of the dads, one of the few times he’d been around to do pick-up this year. “Seriously, Pam. How do you keep your hands off him?” 

She hadn’t told them that she’d struggled to keep her hands off him long before he’d started working out. The work-outs, conversely, have made it a little easier, because they compress the already limited time they have for sex. Jim can’t do lazy mornings in bed if he’s getting up to go to the gym. She knows why he does it, knows he wants to be there as a member of the team, to create the right kind of environment over there. She knows all that. 

And it’s not like she can’t appreciate - really appreciate - what those gym sessions have done for his body now, as she studies him. 

(It’s just that she thinks she’d take their lazy mornings in bed, Jim’s drowsy smile and his hands sliding under her pyjamas, over his well-defined abs any day). 

She thinks again of what could have happened last night, and it makes her chest hurt. 

“Why are you still wearing pants?” 

Michel’s voice drags her back. She turns, confused, and realises that he’s talking to Ryan. Who is indeed still in his shorts.

“I’m not wearing any, uh…”

Kelly giggles loudly, and Ryan colours. 

“I told you going commando wasn’t a good idea,” he hisses at his wife. 

“Just let it all hang out, babe!” 

It takes Michel a while to cotton on. “Ah, well if you’re not wearing le underwear, it’s clearly ze way it’s meant to be.” He lifts a shoulder. “You must unmask yourself.” 

Ryan is sulking now. “No.” 

“But-”

“Nobody needs to see that,” Angela cuts in. She sounds disgusted. “I refuse to be subjected to indecent exposure.” 

“It’s perfectly decent,” Michel protests. “It’s in ze name of love!” He shakes his head when no one agrees with him. ”You’re the one making it dirty.”

Angela glares over at Dwight. “Are you going to stop this?” 

Dwight seems momentarily torn between his wife and his need to obey the rules. “Michel said-”

Angela stiffens, then, and Dwight pauses as he realises his mistake. 

“Monkey-” 

But she’s turned away from him and doesn’t say anything else. 

Pam can’t help but feel the smallest flicker of pity for the guy. He’s now standing there rigidly like he doesn’t know what to do. 

“Maybe we could move onto the next part of the exercise?” she suggests to Michel. 

Michel harrumphs, a bit, but glances at a still unmoving Ryan and seems to decide it might be best to pick his battles. 

“Very well.” He turns to walk back between the two lines. “Now…you must tell your partner a truth.” He claps a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “A beautiful truth. Because ze truth will set you free. Free to fly into ze wind and…be at one.” 

The fluting has started again, Pam notices. She thinks Andy’s playing Free Bird this time. 

Michel nods encouragingly for Mark to go first.

Mark glances at Isabel. They’re both a little awkward as they stand there facing each other. Isabel’s expression is guarded. Mark’s got a chance, Pam thinks, to take that away. To say the right thing. She silently urges him to.   

“I’ll still remember you,” he tells Isabel solemnly, as the flute continues in the background, “If you leave here tomorrow.” 

His face is already cracking into a grin, irresistible, and Pam doesn’t need to look to her right to know that Isabel’s will have fallen. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Hilarious.” 

“Yes,” Michel agrees, “Beautiful! What do you have to say back?” 

Isabel’s voice is flat. “You really can’t change, can you?” 

The grin slides off Mark's face. “Iz, come on-”

“What’s the point in us being here if you’re just going to treat everything like a joke?” 

“That’s not what I’m…” Mark makes a noise of frustration. “You know, you used to be able to take a joke.” 

They’re not nice words, and Pam sees Jim’s head swivel to look at his friend. Maybe not so much at the words as the fact that Isabel doesn’t even flinch at them, like they’re used to saying stuff like this to each other now.

“And you didn’t used to think our relationship was one,” she fires back.   

“Ok, ok,” Michel sounds a little alarmed. “Let’s - ah, beautiful truths, remember? Only beautiful.” 

Dwight, meanwhile, is taking the task very seriously. “Your breasts are symmetrical,” he informs Angela. She doesn’t respond. He tries again. “Your hips are set at the perfect angle for birthing a child.” 

For some reason that makes Angela stiffen even further. “Just stop.” Her teeth are gritted.  

“Please,” Jim adds under his breath, clearly intending for only Pam to hear.  

But unfortunately Dwight catches it too. “Stick to your own beautiful truth,” he barks at Jim. “You’re not a part of this conversation.” 

“Oh believe me, I don’t want to be.” 

Dwight bristles, and Michel intervenes to tell them to create a fortress of solitude with their own partners. “Do not let ze other noises distract you.”

Pam’s not entirely sure how that’s meant to work, when they’re all standing next to each other. But anyway. 

Andy has started playing what sounds like the Superman theme tune. Pam shoots Jim a quizzical look. 

“Fortress of Solitude,” he explains. 

She swallows a laugh. “Is your beautiful truth going to be comic book related?” 

He arches a brow at her. “You’re my…kryptonite?” 

“Oh, no.” 

Jim grins. 

(Andy is now playing The Sound of Silence, as if they can’t all hear Kelly telling Ryan what sounds like a hundred beautiful truths, with a level of appreciation about certain parts of his body that no one needs to witness. Except Michel, apparently, who keeps encouraging her). 

Pam’s still trying not to giggle as Jim’s eyes move over her and he tells her, quietly, “You’re beautiful.” 

“That’s a cop-out,” she attempts, but the words get stuck in her throat with the way he’s looking at her. Drinking in every inch of her. Not joking any more. 

His mouth crooks. “Still true.”  

She can feel her skin flushing, her insides suddenly liquid as she swallows. “Well…you’re beautiful too.” 

“Now that’s a cop-out. You can’t just steal mine.” 

She means it, though. She looks at him and she wants nothing more than to cross the sand and wrap her arms around him, to press herself against his bare chest, to feel his hips and kiss the hollow of his throat. She wants to feel his body against hers again. 

It’s on the tip of her tongue - I want you - when she looks down and catches the glint of metal sticking out of his shorts pocket. 

Her heart sinks as she realises what it is. He couldn’t leave it in the villa for one morning? 

She stares blankly at it, and as Michel prattles on in the background she has the sudden nasty thought that if he were to see it, now, he’d probably confiscate it. 

And then…Jim wouldn’t have any way to do work this holiday. And he’d panic, and it’s pretty horrible of her to be thinking about that, to even want that. Pretty pathetic, really, to have to resort to wanting someone else to take her husband’s phone. And for what - so that he can be even more stressed than he already will be when they get home? 

Michel walks past, and her breath stalls in her throat, and for a moment she wonders, if she’s looking at it, if maybe Michel will - 

He doesn’t notice. 

“Hey.” Jim is staring at her now, forehead scrunched. She feels even worse at the concern in his voice. “What is it?” 

She drags her eyes away from the blackberry and forces a smile. Forces back the sudden urge to cry. “Nothing.” 

The Schrutes are proving to be as difficult as Oscar predicted. They’re sitting on opposite ends of the couch for their first therapy session, refusing to talk to each other. Well, actually, they’re just refusing to talk. 

“Dwight,” Oscar attempts. “How would you describe how you and Angela face problems?” 

He’s been careful to avoid phrases like how do you feel, having quickly discovered how much they seem to trigger the couple. He’s been trying to keep his questions factual to ease them in. 

Dwight narrows his eyes. “Efficiently.”

“Angela?” Oscar prompts, when he realises he’s not going to get anything else out of Dwight. 

“Effectively.” 

“That’s…good.” Oscar knows he needs to be encouraging. He supposes one word each is better than none. “And your recent situation-”

“There is no situation,” Dwight cuts him off. “We’re fine.” 

Oscar hesitates, steepling his fingers. “A lot of couples find IVF-”

“We’re not a lot of couples.” Angela glares at him. 

Oscar refrains from pointing out that a lot of couples think that. “I’m sure it can’t be easy,” he says gently. 

“We’re fine,” Dwight repeats. “The only reason we’re here is because the clinic mandated it. We don’t need therapy.”  

“Our problems are biological,” Angela adds, her voice taut. “They’re not going to be solved by sitting here talking.” 

“We just need to complete the programme, and then we’ll be out of here.” 

Well, at least they seem to be united on that front. Oscar’s not sure if he should be trying to find something positive in that or not. 

Sometimes Oscar thinks about his two psychology degrees and wonders what he’s doing here himself. The irony that it’s mainly because of his own failed relationship is not lost on him. 

Gil had wanted to come here. And then Gil had left him. 

And then Michael had offered him a job - either because he felt sorry for him, or because he was desperate. Desperate, after his main therapist turned out not to be such a believer in true love, and abandoned him to set up the more lucrative singles resort. 

Or at least that’s how Michael tells it. Minus the more lucrative part. Knowing the singles resort is more lucrative would require some knowledge of his own resort’s financial position. Which would require not hiding the bills, or making paper aeroplanes out of the cash statements, or doodling smiley faces on the final warning notices, or leaving them all with Oscar and hoping for the best.

The job offer could also have been because Michael hadn’t wanted Oscar to sue, of course, but Oscar suspects that would have been a little too sensible for the guy. (He’s only just convinced Michael to drop Edan’s your love restored or your money back! tagline). 

And Oscar had accepted the job because…he wasn’t in his right mind? Because the pay and benefits were good, and he was lured in by the (mai-tais and charming bartenders) rich Polynesian culture? Because he likes puzzles. He likes reasoning people through their problems, in a way that he and Gill never managed to do. 

(Maybe because a small part of him wants to believe that love is real and relationships can be saved. Maybe an even smaller, non-cynical, part of him likes that Michael Scott thinks that). 

It’s why he wants to crack the Schrutes. 

“I see,” he says in the end, when the couple don’t say anything else. 

They just glower at him. 

This is going to be a long two hours, he thinks.

“…So anyway, that’s when I realised baby pink totally isn’t the right colour for everyone, and just because I look great in it doesn’t mean other people do. I guess that’s how sometimes trends go in your favour, right? Because we would not be having this conversation if Kim’s dress had been hot pink.”

Holly blinks as she realises Kelly has finally stopped talking. Some instinct tells her that it’s best to get in now, before the woman can take another breath. She’s barely managed to keep up with her notes.  

“That’s lovely,” she assures Kelly. “But, erm, the question was how do you feel about Ryan?” 

Kelly looks perplexed. “I just told you? Were you even listening?” She shakes her head. “Oh my god, you’re just like that shrink I had when I was sixteen, he never listened to anything I said either, and then he told my parents I had a problem with pathological lying. Which like, wasn’t even true. He was the liar. Is there something wrong with shrinks today? Seriously, what is the-”

“Ryan,” Holly says desperately. “You’ve been very quiet. Why don’t we hear from you for a change?” 

Ryan spares her a glance. His smile is thin, almost pitying. “It’s better if you just let her talk.” He goes back to examining his cuticles. 

Kelly launches into another monologue, and Holly thinks that it’s going to be a very long two hours indeed. 

The Porebas are different to the Schrutes. They don’t spend the whole session glaring at Oscar, for one thing. Just at each other. 

“So, why did you want to come on this retreat?” 

Oscar has spent a while trying to find a question that won’t set them off. He’d been hoping this might be the one. 

Isabel turns to her husband. “Mark?” Her gaze is challenging. 

Maybe not. 

Mark takes a breath. “We decided-”

Isabel snorts, at that. 

“Isabel,” Oscar reprimands. “Is there something you’d like to share?” 

He’s had several words with them already about how this is a safe space, free of sarcasm and disparagement. Which they seem to remember fine until one of them gets worked up. 

“Yeah, Isabel?” 

“Mark,” Oscar reminds him, warning. 

Mark falls silent. 

“We didn’t decide anything,” Isabel says in the end. “I decided, and I made him go. Why don’t you just tell the guy what you’re really thinking?” she throws at her husband. “I forced you to do this.” 

That makes Mark frown. “You didn’t force me to do anything. I’m here because our marriage is in trouble, Iz, and I don’t know how else to fix it.”  His voice rises a bit. It might be the first genuine thing he’s said all session, the first sentence that hasn’t been them sniping at each other. 

Isabel stares at him. 

Progress, Oscar thinks with relief. Maybe all hope isn’t lost for these two. 

“Well,” Isabel murmurs at last. “I don’t either.” 

“Ok,” Oscar tries to insert some positivity. “That was good communication, you two.” Baby steps, he knows. He consults his notes. “Let’s move on to an exercise called the gratitude list.”

He waits for Mark to make a snarky comment, like he has after every exercise Oscar’s named, and for Isabel’s subsequent frustration. For a moment, Mark doesn’t say anything, and Oscar lets himself hope. 

And then - 

“I thought Thanksgiving had already been and gone?” 

Isabel clenches her teeth at her husband, who just folds his arms. 

So close, Oscar thinks. 

“How would you describe your relationship?” Holly asks. 

She’s trying hard not to massage her temples, now that her session with the Howard-Kapoors is finally over. Fortunately the Halperts don’t seem to have quite so much to say. (Ok, she feels a little guilty for thinking that. Especially as a therapist. But her head hurts). 

“Great,” Jim nods. “It’s really good.” 

Holly glances at Pam, who she can’t help but notice has been a little quieter. “Pam?” 

“Yeah,” Pam echoes. “It’s great.” 

Holly considers. “Would you like to expand on that?” 

She notices the way Jim looks to his wife, as though checking she’s ok, and then speaks when he sees she’s less keen to. 

“Pam’s my best friend,” he tells Holly. “She’s the love of my life. Being married to her is…there’s nothing better than that. She makes me happy, every day.” 

Holly spots his hand creeping over Pam’s, and the pink staining Pam’s cheeks as she gazes back at him. Her whole face has softened. But she’s still, Holly sees, ever so slightly rigid.  

She wonders if Jim has spotted the same thing. 

“And how do you feel, Pam?” 

“The same,” Pam swallows. “Jim’s my soulmate.” 

It’s not that Holly doesn’t think she means it. She can tell from the look in her eyes that she means it. 

(Yeah, Holly knows that look. She feels it more and more these days, when she tries to reassure herself that being friends is enough. Seeing him every day and working beside him is enough. It was at first. She loves her job, and she has fun with him every day, so she can’t really complain). 

So it’s not that Holly doesn’t believe Pam. It’s more that she doesn’t think that’s the only thing on her mind. She waits, patient, but Pam doesn’t say anything more. Which is ok, Holly knows. Some people take time.

“You mentioned you recently started working for a new company,” Holly says to Jim. “How's the change been?” 

Pam has started twisting her wedding ring. She doesn’t seem aware that she’s doing it. 

“Uh…yeah. Over a year ago now.” Jim shifts in his seat. “It’s been kind of busy.” He glances at Pam. “But that’s - you know, that’s part of the reason why we came here. For a break.” 

Holly doesn’t think she’s imagining the slight note of defensiveness in his tone. 

Pam’s still twisting her ring. 

“How about you, Pam?” 

She jumps a little. “What?” 

Holly surveys her, and then decides to go in more softly. “What do you do?” 

“Oh, I’m a receptionist. But mainly I take care of the kids.” She relaxes a bit at the mention of their children.

“You’ve got two?” 

“Cece and Phil,” Pam smiles. 

Jim’s smiling now too. “They’re pretty much a full time job.” 

“And how about outside of work and the kids?” 

Pam falters, at that. “What do you mean?” 

Holly means that Pam hadn’t sounded all that interested in her job as a receptionist, which is a far cry from how Jim sounded about his own job. 

“Any hobbies?” she prods. “Or other interests?” 

“I…uh, like to draw.” She makes it sound like a question. 

“She’s really good,” Jim adds, more firmly. 

“How often do you get to draw now?” Holly asks her. 

“Every now and then,” Pam mumbles, fidgeting. “They’re mostly just doodles.” 

“No,” Jim says, “They’re not just doodles. They’re amazing. Seriously,” he tells Holly. “She got a place at Pratt.”  

“You went to Pratt?” 

Pam shakes her head. “No, I - well, I got the place. But then I found out I was pregnant with Cece…so.” 

“That’s a pretty big sacrifice to make,” Holly observes. She thinks she might have been right in her assumption now. They are young parents. 

Pam looks up as if she’s just realised how that sounded. “Oh no. It wasn’t a sacrifice. I mean, it was one of the best things that could have happened. And Jim had to - his college buddies were just starting Athleap, and he couldn’t do that either. So it wasn’t-”

“It wasn’t the right time,” Jim stops her. He’s slipped an arm round her shoulders. “It wasn’t a sacrifice for me either,” he says, firm again.

“But you’re working for Athleap now?” Holly tests. 

“Another opportunity came up last year,” Pam explains. “And I told him to go for it.” 

Now she’s the one who sounds defensive. 

“Interesting,” is all Holly says. 

Jim and Pam look at each other. “What’s…interesting?” 

Holly just gives them a comforting smile and takes another note. “Our session is almost at an end. Shall we talk about some communication exercises you can do in your free time?” 

It doesn’t escape her notice that Jim’s arm is still draped over Pam’s shoulder, and Pam is still slightly tense. 

She makes a final note. 

This couple are going to have their work cut out for them.

“Did you find your therapy session a bit…weird?” Jim asks Mark as he helps himself to lobster claws. 

Pam’s hitting the bread rolls and cocktail station, part of their strategy to divide and conquer the dinner buffet. 

Mark’s expression is bleak as he heaps his plate with prawn skewers. “If by weird you mean really painful, then yeah.” 

Isabel looks like she’s going hard on the cocktails, which tells Jim that her experience of the session must have been the same as Mark’s. 

“I’m sorry, man,” Jim exhales. 

Mark lifts a shoulder. “I don’t think anyone said therapy was meant to be fun.” 

“Yeah. It’s just - I don’t know.” Jim balances a plate for Pam in his other hand. “It sort of felt like our therapist was trying to create problems?” 

He’d felt uneasy after their session, but tried to dismiss it. He’d mostly succeeded. 

Until they’d had their after lunch activity, the last one before Michel let them go for the day. Trust falls, he’d called them. 

He’d had them lined up on the beach again, and it should have been simple. 

All they had to do was fall back into their partners’ arms. 

Jim and Pam have never had trust issues. He’d figured it would be a breeze. He was mainly just looking forward to watching how the Schrutes and Howard-Kapoors did. 

The Howard-Kapoors hadn’t failed to deliver. Jim had tried not to choke as he watched Kelly launch herself backwards at Ryan and knock him to the ground. Several times. 

He’d stopped laughing when it was Mark and Isabel’s turn. Mark had dropped her, as a joke. Isabel hadn’t found it so funny. Jim wanted to tell his friend to stop with the jokes already, but he also knows it’s what Mark reverts to when he’s nervous. He’s pretty sure there’s a part of Isabel that knows that too, on some level, because she knows Mark back to front. But it hadn’t stopped her disappointment, again. She’d refused to do any more after that. 

Jim had attempted to cheer himself up by watching the Schrutes. But Dwight had caught Angela with military precision, no hesitation at all. From either of them. 

“I know Dwight has perfect reflexes,” Angela had told Pam, dismissive.  

They were both a bit smug. Dwight in particular. Mark had been sniggering, until Isabel told him that at least some guys knew when to take things seriously. Dwight’s chest had puffed out further. 

So Jim had been determined that he and Pam were going to ace the activity too, to shut the Schrutes up. He’d been confident. He’d stood there with his arms out, waiting for her to fall. Knowing he’d catch her. 

And she…couldn’t do it. 

She kept stopping herself at the last minute. 

She couldn’t let go, couldn’t fall back into him. She’d just got tenser, and more nervous, the more times she’d tried. 

“Hey.” He’d given her a quick squeeze. His lips had grazed her ear, reassuring. “I’ve got you, Beesly.” 

Normally that would have been enough to make her relax. He’d held his arms out. 

It hadn’t. 

In the end, Michel had sadly told them they needed to go away and work on their trust. 

Pam hadn’t quite been able to face Jim as she’d left the beach. He keeps trying to tell himself it meant nothing. 

His wife trusts him. Of course she does. It’s Pam. It’s them. 

She must have been…he doesn’t know. Maybe the other people on the beach had thrown her off. Maybe it was just being asked to do it over and over, with an audience. He knows she hates that kind of pressure. 

It was just a dumb activity. It’s not like it’s a symbol of their marriage, or anything. It’s not. 

He can’t help but feel like the therapy session is at least partly to blame. Maybe Dr Flax and her interesting had unsettled Pam more than he’d realised. He wants to tell his wife to ignore her, to ignore Michel’s dumb activities and Angela’s superiority, because this is them.   

Mark follows his gaze to where Pam and Isabel are standing at the drinks bar. Pam seems to be listening to Isabel. She glances up as though sensing Jim’s eyes on her, and her smile is not very convincing before she looks away. Again. 

Isabel grabs another pina colada. Jim knows then that she felt Mark’s gaze too. 

“I wish I could say the same,” Mark responds, glum. “But our problems are definitely real.” 

Jim tries to ignore those words as Pam continues to…not entirely avoid him, but also not entirely look at him, over dinner. She’s just helping Isabel. He’s just helping Mark. Refereeing more of their arguments between multiple courses isn’t easy. 

He can tell she’s worried about them, afterwards. 

Her hand slips tentatively into his as they head back to the villa. It makes him start. He doesn’t like that. He grips her fingers to pretend he didn’t. 

They don’t have sex that night. 

After Jim had seen her on the beach this morning, his mouth drying as he’d gazed at the most he’d seen of his wife in weeks (maybe months), he’d resolved that tonight would be the night. He kept thinking about how she looked bathed in the morning light, in that bra he knew and loved, the familiar curves of her body that he ached to touch. 

He’d been planning to do a lot more than appreciate and explore her with his eyes tonight. And she’d looked at him, for a moment, in a way that made him think maybe she was too. 

Until she suddenly wasn’t looking at him like that at all. 

He keeps thinking of the set of her shoulders, her stumbling upright, so uncertain, before she let him catch her. The expression on her face when she’d told Holly I told him to go for it. When she’d put her art down, dismissed her drawings in a way Jim hasn’t heard her do in years. 

(Although he tries to remember the last time they spoke about her art, and he can’t. Maybe not since that sketchbook he bought her - which, now that he thinks about it, he still hasn’t seen her use. Although he hasn’t really been around to see her use it). 

He remembers when they’d first found out about Cece. 

They’d barely been going out eighteen months, still so new and dizzily in love, and he had an engagement ring in his pocket that he was waiting for the perfect moment to give to her. He’d known a long time before their first anniversary that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. 

They’d stopped at a gas station. It had been raining. 

She’d told him she was late, that morning, wide-eyed and anxious as he’d squeezed her hands and promised her it would be ok. He’d been pacing outside the gas station bathroom.  They hadn’t planned for it. Hadn’t even really spoken about it, other than jokingly, other than to agree they wanted kids at some point in the distant future. After they were married. After she’d been to art school, and his dream career had taken off. 

Her Pratt acceptance letter was pinned to their refrigerator. He was due to call Wade back the next day to discuss his first investment. 

Her face had filled with equal parts delight and terror when she’d seen the result, and he hadn’t needed to look at the stick. 

He’d pulled her into his arms, held her tight as the rain drummed on the metal roof above them, and promised he’d support her whatever she wanted to do. His heart had been beating very fast. 

A truck had roared past them as she’d looked up at him, trembling, and told him she wanted this. 

There had been tears in her eyes, and his, as he’d asked her if she was sure. But with the huge smiles splitting both their faces, he knew they were sure.  He’d kissed her, and kissed her, as they’d stood in that tiny gas station, their future altered forever.

He’d tried to suggest she could still do Pratt, that they’d make it work. That he’d do whatever it took for her to get her dream. But it was a three-year course, and she’d pointed out that she needed to be making money, not racking up more student debt. The starving artist ideal wasn’t quite so romantic with a baby depending on them. 

She’d promised him it was what she wanted. 

He’d called Wade the next day and told him it wasn’t the right time for a risky investment, and he’d shredded the resignation letter he’d been planning to hand in for his dull admin job with the stable salary.

He’d meant what he’d said in therapy today. 

It hadn’t been a sacrifice. He’d wanted to do it. And he wouldn’t have traded Cece for the world. 

Yeah, he’d hated his old job. But it had been worth it. 

Except he’s since had a second chance at his dream - one that he took, with Pam’s encouragement. And Pam hasn’t. She’s never even spoken about it. 

He couldn’t decipher her expression in the therapy session. Or on the beach. 

She’s shutting him out, he realises as he listens to her shower. For a moment the thought hurts more than he can put into words. They don’t do that to each other. 

Do they? 

This time he’s the one who says he’s tired, when she comes back out of the bathroom. She doesn’t question him.  And that hurts and confuses him too. 

He goes to reach for her shoulder once they’re lying down. Until the memory of the fear on her face earlier springs unbidden into mind. Fear that he wouldn’t catch her. His hand falters. 

He can’t tell if she’s noticed as they lie there in silence. 

“Pam?” he murmurs at last. It’s been playing on his mind maybe more than the sex, since their therapy session. He realises he’s never going to fall asleep if he doesn’t at least ask her. “You know if you wanted to go back to school-”

“I don’t.” 

She’s not facing him, and she says it too quickly. And that’s not…when did she get so definitive on that?  

“You don’t?” he tests in the darkness, because he can’t believe it. 

“No.” 

“Why not?” 

She shifts against the mattress. “Because I like our life.” She says it quietly, so quietly that for a moment he’s not sure if she said like or liked. 

“Ok,” he attempts. “But I just-”

“Jim? I’m fine with my choices.” 

She said fine, he thinks. Fine. Not happy. Fine. 

“It was just a stupid therapy session,” she mumbles into the pillow. “That lady had no idea what she was talking about.” 

Jim wants to argue with her, but he remembers his earlier thought that Dr Flax was creating problems, and finds he doesn’t know how. 

The lady had no idea about them, he wants to say. But maybe she’d had some idea about Pam’s art. Because he can tell, even with her back to him, that she’s not fine. And he wants her to be happy, anyway, not fine. He doesn’t understand what it is she’s so…scared of. Is she scared? How has he not noticed this before? 

He falls asleep with his eyes trained on the curve of her spine - close enough to feel the rise and fall of her ribs, close enough for his breath to stir her hair - but still not quite touching. 

Andy is no less enthusiastic when he wakes them up the next morning. At the same godawful hour as yesterday. 

Jim has to throw a pillow at him when he pops his head into their villa to tell Pam she should wear pants for today’s first activity. Pam yelps and ducks behind the door, still only half-dressed. Andy looks a little hurt at the pillow in his face. 

Once he’s sure Andy’s gone, and there’s no danger of him walking in on Pam again, Jim consults their itinerary. Their first activity of the day just says physical reconnection session. For three hours. 

“Do we think this one’s going to involve touching?” 

Pam sounds full of foreboding, and Jim crooks a half grin at her.

“Wait,” he says. “Do you think this entire retreat is just building towards a mass orgy?”

“Don’t even-”

“Michel does keep saying ‘be at one’,” he points out, rubbing his chin.  

She lobs the thrown pillow back at him. It misses him by several feet, which makes him laugh. She does too, a bit, and the sound is startling after the silence between them last night. They both pause, as if realising the same thing. 

“No amount of unlimited cocktails would convince me to stay for that,” she assures him in the end. Her voice is soft. 

It’s a relief. He smiles back. 

Although he can’t help but realise, as he heads out of the villa with her, that he misses her laugh in the mornings. He’s always rushing out the door these days before he has a chance to catch it. 

“Remember,” he whispers in her ear as they follow Andy down the tree-lined path, because he wants the sound of that laugh again, “If the flute starts playing Come Together…that’s our cue to leave.” 

“Or Let’s Get It On.” She has to cup her hands around her mouth to whisper back to him, fighting a grin, and it’s very cute. (When was the last time they did this?) 

He thinks for a moment as they walk. “Or Sexual Healing.” It’s possible he doesn’t have to lean quite so close to whisper to her, but he does it anyway. 

“You know what?” she reflects, after a beat. “Anything by Marvin Gaye.” He’s very close now, but she makes no effort to move away from him. (He tries to remind himself that that shouldn’t be unusual). 

His fingers graze hers, their shoulders brushing. “Or Barry White.” 

“Ooh, or Boyz II Men.” 

He can’t help but chuckle as he sees the way her face has lit up. “You mean that song from your sexy times playlist?” 

She goes to hit him, and he catches her hand. “I told you, that was not my sexy times playlist.” She glares at him, but she doesn’t pull away as his fingers thread through hers. “It was just…a playlist.” She’s holding his hand back now. “And it just so happened to have-”

“All the songs that get you in the mood on it.” He nods. “Sure.” 

For a moment he wonders if the topic’s a little too sensitive to joke about at the moment. Because getting Pam in the mood is one of his favourite things to do, and it’s been so damn long now. But he slides a glance at her, and he knows she’s remembering their conversation from years ago instead.

She’d made the mistake of sharing her iPod with him in the really early days, before they’d even started dating. And he’d been very intrigued by that playlist. Although she’d been blushing too much, and he’d been too worried about sounding creepy, for him to grill her on it until after they’d started dating. 

“Ok,” she protests now, “That playlist also had Cotton Eye Joe on it.” She’d tried to claim that at the time, too. Except, knowing Pam’s occasional technology mishaps, he suspects that song had snuck on there by mistake. 

“Hey.” He raises his other hand. “I told you, I don’t judge.” 

She makes this face at him, their palms still locked, and it’s so Pam that he’s now almost convinced the weirdness yesterday was just a product of those dumb activities. See, he wants to say as they reach the beach pavilion. They’re fine. He’s not going to let her shut him out again. 

(Maybe he just needs to wait for the right time to bring up the art. They need to have a proper conversation about it, he knows, and maybe this crazy island isn’t the place).

Isabel and Mark are…less fine, judging by the physical distance between them. 

They’re also both hungover.  Isabel mutters something about needing to lay off the cocktails, and Mark makes a noise of agreement. They look momentarily surprised to have something they agree over, their smiles at each other brief and wry. Jim and Pam exchange a hopeful glance. 

The Schrutes don’t look anything resembling hungover. Which is not a huge surprise, because Jim’s fairly sure he didn’t see them anywhere near the cocktail bar last night. Not that he’d lingered too long to check. 

Angela is standing there tight-lipped and frowning. Jim’s not sure he’s seen her with another facial expression. Other than abject disgust, perhaps. Dwight appears to be doing…lunges? For the physical reconnection session, Jim assumes. 

As the guy squats down particularly low, Jim gives Pam a nod - orgy preparation - and her eyes widen in mock horror. She’s biting her lip to stop laughing, and it reminds him so much of the first time he fell in love with her, just watching her do that, his heart hitching in his chest. 

She’s teased him about this since - you did not fall in love with me the first day you met me, it was a crush - but he’s always been adamant. She’d told him she’d fallen in love with him in phases. It had crept up on her, one moment a time, until she couldn’t imagine ever not loving him. That’s what she’d told him that night with the power cut, when they’d been lying face to face on his bed, their noses touching and his fingers skimming her waist. 

(The power cut had ruined all his plans to cook for her, but she’d lit citronella candles and promised him, over cold cheese sandwiches, that it was very romantic. He couldn’t help but agree as he’d gazed at her soft smile in the flickering light). 

He’s interrupted from reminiscing by the arrival of Michel. It’s a considerably less romantic image. 

Today Michel has opted for what looks like a woman’s sweatsuit, a fluorescent band wrapped round his head, all pumped up and ready to go. 

He’s trailed by Kelly and Ryan. They do not look pumped up. In fact, they both look like they’ve been forced out of bed. 

“I can’t do anything that cuts across my cardio routine,” Ryan is saying. 

“And I don’t exercise before 12,” Kelly whines. “Or on weekdays. That’s like, gospel. Goop says you should never-”

“Ok, ok, ok!” Michel waves them off. “Zis session is mandatory, guys. You must participate.” 

Ryan and Kelly are both pouting a bit as they join the other couples. 

Michel beams like they’re not. “Welcome to day two of your journey! Today is all about physical re-coupling. Rediscovering ze joy of your partners’ bodies and all ze wonderful things they can do with yours, together, as one…” 

Jim shakes his head at Pam. He’d been kidding about the orgy thing. He’s less sure now. He can tell the same thought is occurring to Mark and Isabel as Michel continues, as he starts talking about unusual positions and reaching their peaks. 

Only Dwight is nodding. 

“So this is like survival of the fittest?” he demands. 

Michel pauses. “Ze fittest romantic partners, yes!” 

He’s mid-flow about the merits of passionate flexibility when Kelly raises her hand. 

(Jim’s trying to find any way - literally, any way - that Michel might not be describing sex, and he can’t). 

“My plastic surgeon says I can’t do stretching.” 

Michel looks baffled. “Your plastic surgeon?” 

“Well,” Kelly amends, “When I get one.” She twines her arm through her husband’s. “We’re saving up, aren’t we, Ryan?” 

Ryan rolls his eyes. “I told you you don’t need one.” He says the next part in a mutter. “You’re perfect the way you are.” 

“Ryan!” Kelly squeals. “You’re the sweetest. Oh my god, you guys, isn’t he the sweetest?” 

She starts plastering him with kisses, and Michel is full of encouragement again as everyone else tries to block the sound out. 

“You see,” Michel cries. “Le programme is working already!”

He goes back to talking about special bodily intimacy, and as he monologues on, Jim wonders if this is the real reason for the 6am starts. To allow time for these monologues. And for Michel to lose track of what he’s saying. More than once. 

Jim’s just shifting his weight to stop his leg falling asleep, tempted to lean against Pam, when he hears Kelly breathe - 

“Who is that?”

She’s no longer kissing Ryan. 

Jim sees Isabel’s eyes widen. Even Pam does a double take. Even Angela is staring. 

There’s a man striding towards them on the beach. He’s tall and practically rippling with muscles, the barest hint of sweat glistening on his dark skin, his dark eyes narrowed. 

“Michael.” His voice is deep and authoritative. Angela and Isabel both straighten a little. Kelly is openly drooling. (Michael, Jim thinks? But no one else seems to have noticed, thanks to the new man in their presence). “Our session was supposed begin at 6am sharp,” he says curtly. He looks annoyed, whoever he is.  

Kelly looks enthralled. Angela looks…well, not unbothered. Isabel is still staring. Mark is now too, and Jim doesn’t miss the discomfort on his face as he notices his wife’s reaction.  

Jim glances over at Pam. She seems too mystified by Angela’s pink cheeks to pay much attention to the glowering and ridiculously good-looking guy.   

“Ah,” Michel is blustering, “I had to give zem a pep-talk!” 

“For half an hour?” The other man sounds sceptical, and Angela’s hand flutters at her collar. Kelly doesn’t seem to care what he’s saying. Her eyes are trained on his - jesus, what is that, an eight-pack? 

Mark mutters something like, wear a shirt, much? Jim snorts, and the guy’s gaze whips to him. 

“Something funny?” he asks coolly. 

Jim clears his throat cover it up. “Uh, no.” 

The guy doesn’t look impressed. In fact, Jim gets the distinct impression after the swift, assessing gaze he spares him that he’s found him somehow lacking. Jim tries not to squirm. Angela is looking more impressed by the second. Kelly is still just drooling.  

He cuts a glance at the other couples. “Major Charles Miner,” he introduces himself. “I’ll be running the bootcamp.” 

“Major Minor?” Mark whispers just loud enough for Jim to hear. And Isabel, Jim knows. Deliberately. 

Isabel doesn’t rise to it. 

Jim sniggers before he can help himself, though. And then realises his mistake as the Major’s focus zeroes on him again. “Please.” He dips his chin. “Feel free to share the joke with everyone.” 

Jim suddenly feels like he’s back in middle school, fumbling with the wrong answer under the guy’s withering expression. Angela and Dwight are both glaring at him. 

“Oh no, just…uh, you’re in the army?” 

So it wasn’t the brightest question, but Jim’s not sure it deserves the guy’s cocked head. Like Jim is a special brand of idiot. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise three tours in Afghanistan and two in Iraq were so…hilarious.” He says it flatly. 

“That’s - no. No, yeah, of course. I wasn’t-”

Pam slides her hand into his, and it’s a relief, because he’s not sure where he was going with that sentence. 

The Major has already turned away, anyway. “Since we’re half an hour behind schedule, we’ll have to add a half hour to the end.” 

“But,” Michel attempts, “We’ve got our bongo session-”

The Major ignores him. “Follow me,” he instructs the gathered couples. “We’ll be doing a light jog up to the exercise ground, where we’ll begin our stretches.” 

“Tantric yoga,” Michel jumps in. “Remember, Charles? They’re not just stretches. We said-”

“In formation,” Charles orders, as though Michel hasn’t spoken. “I want you in pairs, so that I can assess your fitness levels.” 

Angela and Dwight both jump to obey. Even Kelly is scrambling to get in position. Although that position just seems to be, as close to Charles as possible. Ryan looks put out. 

Jim falls in next to Pam at the back. 

“Ok,” Michel yells from behind them. “Allez! Laufen! Let’s go!” 

He’s started jogging on the spot. 

Charles does turn, then. “You’re not needed at this session. Remember?” 

“But-”

“No. Not after the Alfredo incident.” 

“That was one time! I can-”

“We’ll see you in three hours.” The Major’s tone brokers no argument. 

Michel’s face falls, a little, and Jim can’t help but think he cuts a rather forlorn figure as he stands there watching them jog away from him. Jim throws the guy a sympathetic smile over his shoulder, which makes Michel brighten a bit. 

“Enjoy ze tantric yoga! Remember to delve into your partner’s core!” 

Pam gives Jim her yikes face. 

Kelly is now asking Charles for running tips. “I’m a really practical learner, so any hands-on guidance you can give me will really help.” 

She’s almost elbowed out of the way by Dwight, who wants to ask Charles about his military experience. “What kind of ammo did you use? Mainly M14s, I assume. Or can you not tell me in front of the civilians?” 

But it turns out Charles’ light jog is -

“Not a light jog,” Pam gasps as they crest yet another hill. (Seriously, where the hell have these hills come from?) 

Jim is finding that he’s less fit than he’d expected. Maybe because he doesn’t have as much time to play basketball these days, or cycle places. The Athleap guys are all about weight-lifting. None of them own bikes. 

But he’s perfectly happy to lope along at Pam’s pace anyway. He has no interest in shooting ahead to speak to Charles. 

In fact, fifteen minutes later, Dwight and Isabel are the only ones still keeping pace with him.

Kelly is valiantly trying. And failing. 

Mark is running behind Isabel, a look of grim determination on his face. 

Ryan is sulking at the back. 

Angela is…ok, Jim’s trying not to laugh at her run, but it’s clear she’s studied some kind of running technique and is putting it into far too precise practice, jaw set and elbows tucked in tightly.  

“Good form,” Charles nods at her. He’s barely even breaking a sweat as he loops back to assess them. 

Jim takes it back. Angela does have other facial expressions. The one she’s wearing now is ridiculously smug. Particularly as she passes a panting Kelly, whose sleek hair is drenched with sweat, her make-up running. 

“Are you the sports guy?” Charles asks Dwight as he observes him still in the lead. 

“Ugh, no. That’s Jim.” Dwight says it with disdain, but Jim’s surprised to realise he paid that much attention to what his job was. 

Charles follows to where Dwight has gestured, and casts Jim a disbelieving look. 

“That guy’s an athlete?” 

Jim’s ears burn. He wishes he wasn’t quite so breathless - seriously, why is Major Minor picking now for this conversation, and what happened to jogging in silence? - as he manages to call back, “No. Sports marketing.”

Charles’ expression clears. “Ah, right. So not really sports at all. What do you do, stand around in suits while the athletes do all the real work?”

Dwight guffaws, and Jim…well, he doesn’t have a reply. Because when Charles puts it like that, it pretty much is what he does. 

“Sometimes we do calls,” he mumbles. He’s too out of shape to come up with a pithy response right now. 

“Athleap is one of Philly’s most successful start-ups,” Pam says. “Jim basically came up with the whole idea himself, and they’re redesigning the way sports branding works.” 

Or at least, that’s what she tries to say. Jim thinks. 

She’s so out of breath at this stage that he’s pretty sure all Charles hears is, “Athleap…start-up…whole idea…sports branding.” 

But he loves her for it anyway. 

She’s red-faced and her ponytail is coming loose, and he really, really loves her. 

He reaches for her hand and she high-fives him instead, her chin raised. That’ll show him. He grins back, despite his heaving chest and burning legs. 

Charles is no longer listening. 

“Kelly,” he directs from the front, “You’re flapping your arms too much when you run. If you put your shoulders back-”

At that, Kelly throws herself to the ground. “I can’t go on.” She sprawls backwards, moaning, one arm tossed over her face. 

Charles frowns briefly. “We’ve not been running for that long.” 

Jim and Pam come to a stop as they reach her. “Are you ok?” 

“Keep moving, Jim.” Charles narrows his eyes. “This isn’t an excuse to stop.” 

“I was just-”

“Why don’t you save that breath for running? You look like you’re going to need it for the next hill.” 

Jim pulls a face. Fine. Whatever. 

Charles comes to squat down beside Kelly. “What’s the problem?” 

“I think,” she whimpers, “I might need you to check my legs.” 

Charles glances them over. “They seem fine.” 

“But how can you tell,” Kelly persists, wiggling them in front of him, “Without feeling them?” 

Ryan rolls his eyes from behind. 

Charles merely says, “They’re not swollen.”

Kelly throws a dramatic arm over her face again. “I can’t move,” she insists. “I just can’t get up.” 

Charles frowns, again, and holds out a hand. “Well, let’s try-”

“No! I can’t do it.” She peeks out from under her arm. “I think you might have to carry me.” 

Angela’s head has snapped round, at that. She looks furious. “You don’t need to be carried.”

“I mean, I’m so dainty, and you’re so strong, you probably won’t even notice.” Kelly flutters her eyelashes up at him. “Can you lift seventy-five pounds?” 

“I don’t even weigh seventy-five pounds,” Angela hisses.   

Jim is tempted to point out that both of them are here with their husbands. Literally on a couples retreat. But Ryan is still lagging at the back refusing to participate, and Dwight seems as fervent as his wife in his admiration of the Major. 

Charles straightens. “I’m not carrying anyone,” he informs them. “Either you complete the run, or your can go back to your villa. I’m sure someone will send a buggy.” 

His tone suggests that someone is probably Michel, and that he won’t think any better of the person getting into the buggy than he does Michel. 

Kelly stumbles upright. “Oh my god, I feel better already. I think you’ve healed me.” 

Angela scowls. Charles gives a nod, and jogs on. 

When they finally, finally reach the exercise ground - Jim’s convinced Charles has just had them run in one giant circle, which seems pointlessly cruel - Pam can barely stand. She stays bent double for a moment, Jim’s hand steadying her back. Her tank top is soaked, the small of her back warm and damp under his fingers. 

“Major Minor,” she says between wheezes, “Is a sadist.” 

Mark makes a choking noise of consent. He looks like he’s in just as bad shape. 

Isabel, meanwhile, is only lightly perspiring as she stretches. Jim forgot that she’s run several marathons. 

“Are you ok?” She glances at her husband, and there’s genuine concern on her face. And for a moment, Jim thinks, a glimmer of genuine fondness.

Isabel always used to love kicking Mark’s ass on the basketball court. They’d get so competitive. She’d used to run him round the entire court, and they’d spend the whole time fouling and blocking each other until one of them got the upper hand, triumphant and grinning and sweaty. They’d usually end up kissing. And their forfeits were always insane. 

It occurs to Jim that it’s felt a bit like they’re competing with each other since they got here. Only with less of the underlying fondness. And none of the fun. 

But it’s definitely fondness on Isabel’s face now. She looks like she’s about to go over to Mark and put a hand on him too, to check he’s all right.

But then Charles arrives from rounding up Ryan and Kelly. 

Kelly is supported between the two of them, limping a little too much to be believable, and looking very pleased with herself. “I twisted my ankle,” she tells them proudly. “Charles had to check for swelling, and Ryan had to pick me up. It was totally like An Officer And A Gentlemen, you guys, but like if there was actually an officer and a gentleman. Plus you’re way hotter than Richard Gere.” 

Ryan smirks - and then realises Kelly’s rapturous gaze is on Charles. Not him. His cocky smirk disappears. 

Angela is still scowling. 

Dwight mutters something about the uniform in that movie being completely inaccurate. Jim wonders when, exactly, the guy watched a Richard Gere romance.  And at what point he’d realised the movie was a romance and not a war film. 

Mark is suddenly standing upright, now that Charles is here, fighting to pretend his breathing is even. There’s sweat trickling down his face. 

Isabel’s brow furrows. 

Charles surveys the eight of them with slight disbelief. “Come on,” he shakes his head. “That was just the warm-up.” His gaze lands on Jim, who’s still crouched down with Pam. His lips curls. 

“I’m definitely warm,” Kelly enthuses, fanning herself. Angela’s doing the same thing. She stops when she sees Kelly is. 

“Ok,” Charles sighs. “Everyone on all fours. Table position.” 

Kelly, Dwight, and Angela, drop to the floor instantly. Even Isabel seems to quite like being ordered around. Which Mark notices. 

Jim sinks to his hands and knees beside Pam. “Hey,” he murmurs across his shoulder to her, voice lowered. “Have you noticed that Major Minor is like-”

“-Every single guy Iz dated before Mark? Yeah.” Pam worries her lip as she watches their friends with him. “Although,” she reflects, “Maybe not as weird as some of them.” 

Yeah, Isabel had pretty terrible taste in guys before Mark. 

Jim is about to reply, when Charles makes a pointed comment about poor posture from guys who spend all day behind desks. This leads to more ridicule from Dwight, even though Jim’s pretty damn sure being a paper salesman is also a desk job. 

“He seems weird enough to me,” he mumbles back irritably.   

“Does this look like a mother’s meeting to you?” Charles has come to stand over him. His arms are folded. 

Jim swallows. “No.” 

“All right. Then why don’t you stop distracting your wife and focus on actually stretching.” 

“Charles,” Kelly calls out, interrupting them, “I think my ankle might be hurting again! Could you come check?” 

“You’re fine.” 

“But-”

“Ok, everyone up into downward-facing dog.”

Jim turns to Pam to make a joke - and sees, with surprise, that she seems to know what the move is and is already arching up into it. For a moment he can only stare, because he’s not sure he’s seen her body do that before. And maybe it’s the wrong time to be having this thought, but she’s wearing kind of tight pants, and as his eyes travel over the smooth line of her body to her ass -

“Excellent.” Charles comes to a stop behind her. “You do a lot of yoga?” 

No, Jim wants to say, she’s never - 

“Just, um, in the mornings.” 

Pam has gone pink. 

Jim blinks. When had she started doing that? 

He’s feeling disquieted enough, when Charles takes hold of her hips. “You should arch a little more,” he instructs her, “Make sure you stretch your calves properly.” 

He’s standing there behind her, all muscled and perfect with his large hands on her, her body angled up into his…Jim nearly loses his balance. 

“There. Does that hurt?” 

“No,” Pam says as she bends further into the guy. She sounds surprised. “Actually, that feels good.” 

Charles is still gripping her hips, and he’s literally got her -

“You sure it doesn’t hurt?” Jim can’t stop himself from asking. 

Charles spares him a glance. A dismissive one. “Maybe you could teach your husband a thing or two.” 

He lets her go. 

“Am I stretching my calves properly?” Dwight yells.

“What about me?” Kelly shouts.

Charles ignores them. “All right, down into cobra position.” 

Jim has to watch Pam to work out what cobra position even is. She’s bending in a different direction now, her torso angled upwards, and the way it’s making her breasts press against her tank top is kind of painful to watch. 

“You never mentioned the yoga,” he says, trying to hold his own pose and not get too distracted. 

He’s not quite sure how to pitch his voice. He’s torn somewhere between feeling impressed - because seriously, look at her - and very weird about the fact that he hadn’t even noticed. How could he not have noticed Pam taking up a whole new hobby?

“It’s just…something I do when you’re at work, sometimes.” 

There’s something strange in her voice too, and it occurs to him just how much time he must have spent at work lately for her to have done this. And to be this good.  

“Well,” he manages, “It’s really cool.” He means it. He just wishes he’d - 

“Any time you want to stop gossiping and do some exercise, Jim, feel free.” 

Jim bites back a retort and resumes the damn cobra pose. Pam flashes him a brief smile, an eye roll, and then he finds he doesn’t mind quite so much about the Major and his disparagement. 

Mark minds, when Charles makes them do something called the happy baby pose, and demonstrates on Isabel. It involves Isabel on her back, legs lifted and stretched over her head as Charles holds them. 

Kelly and Angela both look deeply resentful that he didn’t pick either of them to demonstrate. Although Angela snaps that it’s only because she wanted to make sure she was getting it right. Dwight agrees. 

Jim glances down at Pam when Charles tells them to get on with it themselves. 

“I’ve never done this one before,” Pam admits. 

She peers round to where Isabel is, but it doesn’t help her much, because Mark’s not having a lot of luck replicating what Charles demonstrated. 

Jim waves a hand. “We’ll figure it out. You’re a pro.” 

“Yeah.” She sounds dubious.  

“Come on, I’ve got you.”

He remembers, too late, the trust falls from yesterday. 

But she’s getting into position now. 

He tries to block out the weird hunched pose that Dwight has got himself in with Angela, to his left, as Pam lies down gingerly on her back. He crawls over her, his knees framing her, and reaches for her legs. 

She’s flexible - which he knew, but not because of yoga - and as his hands wrap around her ankles, the front of his shorts brushing against where her legs are spread, it’s the wrong time to remember how he knows that. 

“Um.” She shifts, pressing the lower half of their bodies closer together as she wriggles underneath him, trying to adjust herself. “I’m not sure we’re doing it right?”

Her forehead is creased in concentration, and she’s very warm in his hold, stretched and pliant beneath him. He can see the smallest bead of sweat trickling down her tank top, between her breasts, and he’s not really thinking about the yoga pose any more. 

“What’s the problem, Jim?” Charles’ dry voice cuts into his thoughts. “This is literally called baby pose. And all you have to do is stretch her - she’s the one doing all the work.” 

Jim holds Pam’s ankles a bit tighter. “There’s no problem.” 

“Stand aside,” Charles says with a sigh. “Let me show you-”

“Nope,” Jim says between gritted teeth. “I got it.” 

No way is he letting the guy do this with Pam. Pam realises that Jim is basically on top of her and looks a little relieved that Charles won’t be taking his place. 

Charles makes a doubtful noise, but he moves on when Jim doesn’t budge. (Kelly’s calling something about needing him to come check Ryan’s doing it right, anyway). 

“So how do we do this right?” Jim half whispers once he’s gone, glancing back down at his wife. 

“Uh…” 

She’s distracted, and it takes Jim a moment to realise she’s now properly clocked what position they’re in, and is maybe no longer thinking about the yoga either. 

He slides his finger along the underside of her calf to check, before he can stop himself, and she makes a faint noise under her breath. 

“Pam?” 

She’s looking adorably flustered underneath him.  

He hasn’t seen her like this in a long time.

“Are you ok?” 

“Great,” she squeaks.

He can’t resist sinking just a little lower into her, bringing them closer together. Her eyes almost close. “Yeah?” he tests. 

“Yep.” 

God, he’s missed this. (Not weird couples yoga with the Major, but…this. Her). 

“Hey,” he murmurs, seriously, dipping his head down to her. His fingers are still tracing her leg. “Can I ask you something?” 

She looks up at him, eyes wide. 

“Are you…” 

“What?” she whispers. She looks for a moment like she’s unsure of what he’s going to say. 

His thighs are pressing into the swell of her ass where he’s got her legs lifted, and a curl has fallen loose across her face.

He presses a little closer. His voice is low against her ear. “Are you delving into your partner’s core?” 

“Stop.” She’s laughing now, the sound a bit breathless as he grins down at her. 

He steals a kiss from her then, yoga forgotten, and it makes her breath catch fully. 

He can feel her heart beating beneath his, and he opens his mouth to say he’s sorry he’s been working such shitty hours lately, sorry he hasn’t been paying attention, sorry he let work interrupt them again the night before - 

“Hey!’ Dwight sounds indignant. “That’s not part of the pose. Charles, Jim’s messing around again!” 

“And Pam,” Angela adds spitefully. Charles has now praised Pam twice more than her. She’s not forgotten. 

“Jim.” Charles sounds weary. “If you’re not going to take this seriously, you might as well leave. I’m sure we can find your wife a better partner.” 

Pam’s hand tightens on Jim’s arm. “No way.” 

Jim fights a wide smile, despite himself. 

Charles puts them through an increasingly gruelling set of stretches as the hour wears on, until Pam and Isabel are really the only ones managing to do them. 

Jim hasn’t missed Mark’s expression on the several occasions Charles has come over to Isabel to help correct her posture. In fact, Charles seems to have spent most of his time with Isabel. When he’s not pointing out how bad Jim is. 

In spite of all of Kelly’s efforts to get him to help her release her tension, and Dwight’s insistence on ensuring he’s got the moves exactly right. Angela had been trying to do the same, but now she just seems pissy that she’s too tight to do some of the poses. 

She snits something about yoga being for hippies and tall people, anyway. 

Then Charles gets them to do push-ups. And sit-ups, and squats, and jumping jacks. None of which are very hippy. He makes Jim drop and do another twenty for messing around again, after he catches him holding Pam’s knees to help her with her sit-ups. 

By the time the Major announces that they’re going to jog back to the beach to wrap up, Jim could quite happily have pushed him over a hill. If he wasn’t, you know, a hundred times faster and stronger than Jim. Maybe if Jim catches him off guard. Charles probably would kill him if he tried. And he probably knows how. 

With the exception of Dwight and Isabel, they’re all close to collapsing when they finally get back to the beach. 

Michel, who’s come bounding over to greet them, looks dismayed when he sees what state they’re in. 

“Charles, I thought we - you were going to go easier on zem, remember? Le programme-”

“I did go easy on them,” Charles shrugs. “They couldn’t handle it. With the exception of one or two,” he glances briefly towards Isabel, and Mark stiffens, “It’s a pretty sorry group of people you’ve got here.”  

Jim can’t help but think that last bit was aimed right at him. Pam squeezes his hand. 

“Zat’s not - no. Zat’s not true. Ignore him,” Michel tells them. “You are all special!” 

Charles rolls his eyes, slightly, and says that he’s going. Kelly and Angela both sigh as he strides away. Dwight looks equally disappointed. 

Michel mutters something about how all he wanted was a romantic yoga instructor for sexual healing, and is that really so hard, and he doesn’t understand why no one else replied to his job ad, which was very clear on what he wanted. “That’s the last time I let Oscar edit anything.” 

He brightens when Andy appears, laden down with several tribal drums and tambourines. 

“Ok! It’s bongo time, everyone. Get ready to beat out your love.” 

He ignores the muted groan from the group. 

Pam is slightly dreading their second therapy session. 

Bongo time was about as weird as she’d expected. Maybe more. Michel did an interpretive dance to Let’s Get Physical, Andy got carried away with the tambourines, and Dwight over-shared in graphic detail when Michel asked each of them to rap a truth about themselves to the beat of the bongos. A physical truth this time. In keeping with today’s theme. 

So really, Dr Flax’s soothing hut with the low couch and jasmine infusions should be a relief. 

But as Pam slides down next to Jim and is met with Dr Flax’s reassuring smile, she finds herself wishing she was running up another hill, or doing another hundred jumping jacks, or flailing for another excruciating rap about her curly hair while Michel clapped along and Jim tried not to die laughing.  

Jim had tugged her to him afterwards, eyes crinkling, and told her she was the best rapper he’d ever seen. 

Because the weirdness is totally fine when it’s them facing it together. 

It’s less fine when the weirdness is just…them. 

There are no tambourines or bongos or sadistic Majors to distract from whatever it is Dr Flax is going to ask now.

And this morning has been so good between them that Pam really doesn’t want the therapist to ruin it all. When Jim had kissed her on the yoga mat, his long body hot and sweaty against hers, his fingers wrapped around her, with this look in his eyes that had made her think maybe - 

Maybe things were ok after all, and she didn’t need to worry, because it was her and Jim. 

So she doesn’t need it to be her and Jim and a therapist now. She doesn’t need someone bringing up her art again. Or asking her, in front of Jim, how she feels about the career change that she knows he deserved. 

Dr Flax seems perfectly nice, and all, but Pam really doesn’t need any of that. 

(She’d felt trapped and exposed yesterday, sitting there next to Jim under the woman’s scrutiny. Blocked, like the words wouldn’t come. And she knows from experience that it’s when she feels like that the most that she ends up saying completely the wrong thing, completely the wrong words. Words that she regrets. And she really, really can’t let that happen now). 

But Dr Flax seems to be taking a different approach today. She has Jim and Pam turn to face each other on the couch. 

“As you know,” she tells them, “Day two of our programme is all about physical reconnection.” 

“Oh,” Jim mutters, “We know.” His knee bumps up against Pam’s. “We’ve been getting physical.” 

Pam swallows a smile - maybe they can get through this if they just laugh at it - and Dr Flax brightens. 

“Michel did the dance, then?” 

Jim and Pam glance at each other. Not quite the reaction Pam was expecting. “You’ve seen the dance?” she hedges. Maybe there’s another, more normal dance, that the therapist is thinking of. 

“Well,” Dr Flax sounds sheepish, “To let you in on a little secret…I actually helped him choreograph it.” Jim and Pam both stare at her, and she explains, “We had to make sure it worked with the bongos.” 

Ok then, Pam thinks. Definitely the same dance. But Dr Flax is smiling warmly, without a trace of mockery. Her entire face has softened. She looks almost…wistful? 

Over the dance, Pam wonders, or over Michel? 

The therapist clears her throat when she realises Pam is looking at her instead of at her husband. “Anyway. We should focus on you two.” 

Pam would actually much rather have focused on whatever’s going on between her and the crazy resort owner - but it seems that’s not an option. 

Dr Flax tells them to take each other’s hands. 

Jim gives Pam his let’s see how awkward this gets face. 

She slides her hands into his, trying not to feel too self-conscious as Dr Flax tells them to really focus on where they’re touching. 

Jim’s lips pull up at the corners, his eyes twinkling at her, and she relaxes a little into his hold. Ok, yeah. It’s just a dumb exercise. 

He squeezes her. She’s always loved how big and warm his hands are, the way they envelop hers, the feel of his fingers twined through hers. Those long, almost graceful fingers, always so gentle and clever as they wander her body, cup her face, trace her smile, wipe away her tears.  

Maybe it’s because of what they’d talked about yesterday, but she finds herself thinking of his hand on her swelling stomach with Cece, so reverent and amazed. His fingers soothing her 2am worries that she had no idea what she was doing, or how to raise a baby, or how they’d afford any of it. His hands holding their tiny bundle of a daughter once she was born, rubbing Pam’s back as she’d struggled through breast-feeding, gripping hers as he promised her she was an amazing mom and they’d got this, gently lying her back down in the middle of the night as Cece wailed and he mumbled that it was his turn (even though it wasn’t, always). 

Pam couldn’t have imagined a world where they didn’t have Cece, couldn’t have imagined loving anything more. But that didn’t mean that first year hadn’t been hard. Really hard, sometimes. She’d thought then that it surely had to be the biggest challenge, the biggest test for her and Jim. And he’d been through it all with her, been there for her every step of the way, however hard it got. Which was how she’d never doubted that they’d somehow make it through. 

He only had to take her hand, and she knew that they would. 

So that must be true now, she thinks. Surely. 

“Sometimes,” Dr Flax is saying, “We get so caught up in our lives that we forget to just be with each other. To appreciate the small things, like touching each other. Something as simple as holding your partner’s hand.”

Jim runs his thumb lightly over her knuckles. Pam feels like she’s blushing, and she’s not sure why. But she doesn’t mind all that much, not with the way Jim’s looking at her. 

“Jim,” Dr Flax says. “Can you remember the first physical contact you had with Pam?” 

Pam blinks at the question. Well…maybe it’s a step up from talking about her art. Or Athleap. She casts her mind back, because they’re talking about nearly a decade ago now. Surely, she thinks, there’s no way he’ll be able to remember -

“Uh, she was reaching up to get a bottle.” Jim is gazing at her, a faint smile playing round the edges of his mouth. “I was worried she might fall, so I-”

“You steadied me,” Pam murmurs. She’s staring back at him. 

She remembers his hands at her waist that day, remembers her heart beating a little too fast as he’d stood behind her.  It’s not like they haven’t spoken about those early days since, or about the first time they’d met, but she’d never realised he might have remembered such a small moment as vividly as she did. 

She remembers a lot of those touches in the early days, back when he’d first started working at Meredith’s bar with her. The start of a sweltering June, when he was fresh out of college in what was meant to be a temporary summer job. For both of them. 

His height had been the first thing she’d noticed about him. Then his smile. She’d been confused by the cuteness of that smile, and how warm it made her feel. And then doubly confused when he spent his first day talking to her instead of drooling over the other barmaid Katy, like all the new hires did. (The old hires too, if Creed and Kevin were anything to go by).

But it had been Pam, not Katy, who Jim Halpert had spent all his shifts with from then on. Pam who he leaned against the bar to chat to, Pam who he joked with, Pam who he walked out at the end of their shifts, who he spent way too long lingering in the parking lot with after everyone else had gone home. Which was funny, really, because Pam had always been the first out of the door before Jim started. And then she’d found herself clinging to excuses to stay just a little longer in the parking lot, to prolong the sound of his laugh and the feel of his smile on her.  

She remembers exactly how physical contact with him had made her feel, back then. However small. 

The way her heart picked up whenever their arms brushed over the bar, or he held her shoulder as he laughed, or nudged her in a joke that was just between them. She’d made up dumb excuses to touch him too, like high fives and thumb wars and even palm-reading at one point. He’d enthusiastically participated in all of them. 

She remembers with almost painful clarity the first time he’d hugged her. And the feel of his t-shirt under her hands that time they’d got drunk off Meredith’s sketchy tequila and she’d clung to him a little too tightly, her arms around his neck and her laughter bubbling up between them, their lips almost but not quite grazing. 

She’d told herself she was ok with being friends. Because he’d be leaving at the end of the summer anyway, so she shouldn’t start thinking about more, shouldn’t be so presumptuous. 

Meredith’s bar was a dive, and the hours were terrible, so he had no more reason to stick around than she did. She’d be lucky if they stayed friends afterwards.

Then September had come and gone and he was still there. They both were. 

Fall turned into winter, and he’d still made no noises about leaving, and she’d started driving herself crazy with hope and not quite daring to let herself hope. 

“Do you remember the first time you kissed?” Dr Flax asks now. 

Jim quirks a brow at Pam, and she feels her cheeks heat. 

(She also really, really hopes that Dr Flax is not building up to asking about the first time they had sex, because there is no way she’s sharing that with a stranger). 

“Yeah,” Jim says. His voice is low and thick. “I remember.” 

Yeah, Jim remembers. He knows Pam does too. They’ve spoken about this moment plenty, although maybe not for a while. 

It had been the night of their Christmas party. 

(He’d soon discovered Christmas party was a loose term, and more of an excuse for Meredith to stage a lock-in at the end of the year and go nuts behind the bar). 

But he hadn’t known that at the time. 

So he and Pam had arranged a Secret Santa, and spent the morning covering the bar in tinsel and mistletoe and fairy lights, to the bemusement of Meredith’s usual customers. 

Pam had been buzzing with very cute excitement, dressed in a red sweater and Christmas earrings. He’d taken one look at her and known he needed to do it that night. Well, technically, he’d decided that when he’d heard about the Christmas party.  He was finally going to tell her how he felt. Because Christmas was the time for that, right? It had to be. 

His parents had been dropping hints for months about when was he going to get a real job, and most of his friends had already started working in the city, and he couldn’t articulate to any of them why he just couldn’t. 

He knew he needed to do something about it. 

Needed to stop procrastinating, chickening out, overthinking, worrying he’d ruin his friendship with her or make her feel uncomfortable by hitting on her like some of the gross guys at the bar. Because it was becoming harder and harder to deny the part of him that wanted her as more than a friend, the part that was terrified that if he waited around any longer, he’d miss his chance forever.  

Mark had told him that enough times. In between telling him to stop going on and on about the girl at work and just ask her out already, Halpert. 

Mark would have done that first week, probably, but Jim wasn’t Mark. 

But he’d had a plan for the Christmas party. He’d got Pam for Secret Santa, and he’d had butterflies in his stomach that afternoon, as he’d slipped her gift into the sack in the back room with all the others. 

The gift itself wasn’t the reason for his butterflies (although he really hoped she liked the teapot, which he’d got because Meredith refused to stock tea in the bar, much to Pam’s chagrin). No - the butterflies were because of the card he’d written her. The one he’d spent all night writing. 

The one that told her exactly how he felt about her. 

He’d been jiggling with nerves all evening. And god she was so beautiful as she grinned at him across the fairy lights, rosy-cheeked in her sweater, taking clandestine sips of Irish Cream with him because there was no eggnog and it was Christmas, Jim. They’d shared the bottle between them and he just couldn’t stop sneaking glances at her. 

He’d struggled with what to put in the card for a while. 

He’d never met anyone who made him laugh like she did, who he could be so totally himself with. Anyone so warm and kind and funny, whose dorky smile made his heart flop in his chest, whose soft laugh made his breath catch, who he could talk about everything and nothing with and never want the conversation to end. 

He’d wanted to kiss her. Badly. Which was far from the first time he’d had that thought, but it had been particularly all-consuming that night. 

And that night…had slowly turned into a disaster. 

It had worn on, and everyone else got progressively drunker and rowdier, and the right moment had failed to present itself. He’d attempted to sneak out with her a couple of times, to find a quiet corner to talk to her properly, only to be dragged back in for another round of shots or karaoke, or a wasted customer, or a handsy Meredith, or Kevin’s pleading attempts to set him up with Katy. 

He’d been holding out hope for the Secret Santa. His last chance. 

Except when he’d finally managed to escape to the backroom, Pam in tow and his heart thumping - the sack was gone. 

Pam had been upset. Jim had been beside himself. They’d gone on a long and fruitless hunt until they’d finally got to Meredith. Who’d shrugged something about throwing the sack out, because health and safety were knocking around and she’d assumed it was more trash. 

Jim had been filled with despair at that point. Maybe it was a sign. 

But then things got even worse, because Pam’s mom had called. And asked her to come home, because her dad had slipped on some ice. 

Pam had been full of apologies as she’d pulled her coat on and left. Jim hadn’t even been able to walk her out to her car, because a customer threw up and Creed needed his help changing a stupid fucking barrel. 

That was it, Jim had thought bleakly as he was pulled into another slurred round of toasts afterwards. She’d gone. He’d missed his chance. 

He doesn’t remember much more of the rest of the night. Or at least, not of the party. 

Just the end. 

The end, when he should have gone home after the lock-in had finally wrapped up and the last drunken person had staggered out. He’d been full of stupid self-pity as he’d stood there alone in the darkened bar. It had felt like even the tinsel was mocking him. Merry Christmas, he’d thought miserably. 

He probably should have gone home. 

Instead he’d found himself…rooting through the trash. Yeah, he’d been that pathetic. But he’d spent so long writing the card, and it was hers, and he’d thought that if he could at least find it, it might somehow be a sign that all hope wasn’t lost. Maybe he could salvage something. 

He’d been so immersed in his ridiculous task that he almost hadn’t heard the bar door open. 

“Jim?” 

He’d turned, stilling, hardly daring to believe it. 

Pam had been standing there. 

Still in her coat, cheeks flushed from the cold, snow melting in her hair. 

And so perfect his chest hurt.  

His mouth had dried as he’d moved towards her. She was here. She’d come back. His heart was suddenly singing. 

“Are you ok?” He’d been fighting to keep his voice halfway normal, he was so pleased to see her. “Is your dad-”

“He’s fine.” She’d moved closer to him too. “The hospital sent him home with some painkillers. I thought I’d come see if…” She’d trailed off, swallowing. “But, uh, what are you still doing here?” 

“Cleaning up,” he’d offered lamely. 

Not wallowing and hunting through the trash like a crazy person. Or anything. 

They’d stood there in the dark bar, maybe a foot between them. 

He’d kept thinking that she was here, and he suddenly hadn’t known what to do. Because what he’d wanted to do was close that foot and take her in his arms and kiss her, but the night had already gone so badly, and he hadn’t wanted to mess it up even more, and it had felt like a crazy, crazy thing to do at that point -

“Um, hey.” She’d pointed nervously above their heads. “Mistletoe.” 

He’d stared down at her, trying to read her. Trying to work out if that was an invitation. Was he just projecting? He’d taken a half step towards her. “Yeah.” He’d been hoarse, sort of questioning. She’d been so achingly close.

He’d seen her throat bob. 

They’d spoken at the same time. 

“Pam-”

“I-”

They’d both stopped. 

And then she’d suddenly seemed to decide something. She’d closed the last of the distance between them, stretched up on her toes - and kissed him. 

Her mouth had been warm and hesitant, pressed against his. 

“Merry Christmas,” she’d whispered against his lips. 

She’d still tasted of Irish Cream. Her eyes had been bright, and wide, drinking him in, her small hands brushing his chest. 

He’d been overwhelmed as he’d gazed back down at her. She’d smelt of cinnamon from their earlier attempts at Christmas cocktails, the cold night air clinging to her skin and the lingering sweet scent of her shampoo under his nose. From where she’d washed her hair that morning, for the party, the one that had turned into such a disaster.   

And then not. Not at all. 

It had felt like a Christmas miracle. 

He’d regained his senses just enough to wrap his arms around her waist before she could pull away, to lower his head and kiss her back. 

And then they were kissing. Really kissing. Her curls were damp from the snow, her skin cool as his hands had moved over her, wondering at her, pulling her closer. He was kissing her. He was finally kissing her, and she was kissing him, and it occurred to him that not doing this months ago really had been a feat of incredible self-restraint. Or incredible idiocy. Because every inch of her tasted and felt amazing, and right, and as her hand buried in his sweater and her body pressed into his, he knew (if he hadn’t before) that this was what he’d been waiting for. 

She was what he’d been waiting for. And the thought that he might have even risked losing this chance with her had felt suddenly absurd, suddenly terrifying. 

They’d both been breathless and giddy when they broke apart.  

“Uh.” He’d been dazed. “Merry Christmas to you too.” 

He’d still been gripping her waist as she’d laughed. It had been a quiet, dizzy sound between them.  

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he’d admitted. 

Her smile had been tremulous. “Me too.” 

He hadn’t really noticed the snow when they’d eventually stumbled outside, her hand in his. He’d kissed her a final time against his car as the icy flakes had settled in his hair, their breaths mingling, and he’d had the hazy thought that he really couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas present, ever. 

Their first kiss had been how they’d started. 

So - to answer Dr Flax’s question - yeah. He remembers every single moment of it. He’s never going to forget that. 

(Of course, Meredith’s bar subsequently had been shut down over health and safety issues, which was how they’d ended up in their dull office jobs. The ones that were meant to just be another stopgap between Pratt and Athleap.  

Except Pam is still a receptionist for the same company. And that brimming confidence that she’d developed in her art when they’d started dating seems to have vanished now. And he doesn’t know when that happened. Or how).

She’s still holding his hands as they sit on the couch. 

And as he looks at her, the woman he’s as head over heels in love with now as he was ten years ago, he thinks back to how she’d been the first one to bridge the gap between them then. The first one to surprise him. 

And he knows what he needs to do tonight. 

After their morning of physical exertion, they get to spend the afternoon in the spa. The women in the hot rooms, the men in the cold, with the idea that they’ll reunite in a room in the middle. Andy insists that that’s how couples spas are meant to work. According to Michel. 

The spa staff smile politely and don’t say anything.  

“So was your second session any better?” Pam asks Isabel as she shifts on the baking wooden bench. 

Kelly is sprawled on the one opposite, caked in a mud mask, chattering to Angela over her copy of Heat. Kelly is the only one doing the chattering, of course. Angela just keeps pointing out between gritted teeth that this is meant to be a tranquility spa. 

“Oh, you mean when Mark wasn’t sitting there making fun of Charles?” Isabel rolls her eyes. “Sure.” 

Pam hesitates, surveying her friend. “I think he’s jealous, Iz.” 

“He should be,” is all Isabel retorts. 

“Of Major Minor?” 

Isabel gives her an elbow. “You’re as bad as he is. And don’t pretend you didn’t notice that man’s body.” She arches an eyebrow at Pam. “The stretching felt good, did it?” 

Pam flushes. “That wasn’t…” 

“Oh my god,” Kelly crows, distracted from her magazine. “You totally liked it!” 

“You should be ashamed.” Angela sounds irked. “Your husband was right there.” 

“Oh, pipe down.” Isabel gives the blonde a look. “So was yours.” 

Angela falls silent, at that. Fuming.  

“Being married doesn’t make you blind,” Isabel continues to Pam, stretching her legs in front of her.  

“Well, I thought he seemed like a jerk.”

Isabel shrugs. “A jerk who knows what he’s doing.” 

Pam catches Isabel’s arm then, lowering her voice so Kelly and Angela can’t hear. “You don’t mean that.” 

Isabel stops for a moment. Her shoulders slump. “I don’t…yeah.” She sighs. “I just get so mad sometimes, Pam, and I just - I don’t know.”

She sounds troubled, and Pam feels troubled, because Isabel has always been so unfalteringly sure about what she wants. She never hesitates or questions herself. Pam knows Mark has never been her usual type, but Pam had always thought that was a good thing. 

She still does. 

Is it possible that Isabel doesn’t?

Isabel shakes her head. “How was your session, anyway?” 

Pam glances at her, but she can tell when her friend wants to stop talking about something. 

She thinks of Jim’s hands covering hers and the memory of their first kiss. “Uh, yeah.” She glances down with a smile. “It was ok.” 

“Ok, that’s the happiest I’ve ever seen anyone look about a therapy session,” Isabel snorts. She leans back against the warm wood. “So things are good?” 

“They’re good.”

(It’s in the back of Pam's mind, the thought that their past has never been the issue. But she remembers her resolution that she doesn’t need to worry and they’ll make it through this, and she pushes the thought aside). 

Things are good. 

“Remind me why freezing your balls off is meant to be relaxing?” 

Mark is rubbing at his arms as they sit in the cold room, and Jim has to agree as he tries not to shiver. 

Dwight makes a loud scoffing noise. “You think this is cold? The Schrutes practice Überwintern-Eistauchen for the first ice every year. This is a warm bath in comparison.” 

Mark squints. “Uber what?” 

Dwight looks at him like he’s an idiot. “You go out with your ice pick, make an incision of a foot and a half radius, then-”

“Not two feet?” Jim asks, seriously. 

Dwight scowls at him. “No, not two feet. That would be too big. Obviously.” 

“Obviously.” 

Dwight continues. “Then you lower yourself into the water for exactly fifteen minutes, followed by a fifteen minute run around the ice, and then fifteen minutes birch-slapping. It’s excellent for the immune system.”

“Huh.” Jim sucks a breath between his teeth, pondering. “I heard fifteen and a half minutes was better.” 

Dwight rounds on him. “What? Who told you that?” 

“Birch-slapping?” Mark still sounds confused. 

“Who does the slapping?” Jim enquires.  

“Well, my cousin Mose-”

“You hit yourself with birch sticks?” Ryan is sitting up now.  

Dwight rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t expect you idiots to understand.” He flexes his pasty chest. “Charles would. I bet they do this sort of thing all the time in the army.” 

“Bet they don’t,” Jim says under his breath. 

Mark, however, just looks disheartened by the reminder of Charles. 

“Maybe that’s what she wants,” he mutters. “Someone who enjoys sitting in a fucking cold room.” 

“Come on.” Jim knocks his friend. “You know it’s not.” 

Mark just lifts a shoulder. “Maybe I don’t any more.” He sounds tired, and frustrated, and Jim feels a flicker of concern. Because this isn’t like Mark. 

“You ok?” 

“Yeah,” Mark sighs. “Just…therapy sucks, you know?” 

Jim feels a little guilty, at that, because his therapy session hadn’t sucked quite so much today. Maybe sitting there holding his wife’s hands is the kind of couples therapy he can get behind. 

“Are you girls talking about your therapy sessions?” There’s a sneer in Dwight’s voice. “Pathetic.” 

Mark cocks his head at him. “You know that’s the point of this whole thing, right? Talking?” 

“Yeah,” Dwight scoffs, “Right.” 

It takes him a moment to realise Mark, Jim, and even Ryan are all giving him incredulous looks. 

He frowns. “You’re complete morons if you think talking ever solved anything.” 

“So you and Angela-”

“None of your business.” 

Mark glances at Jim, and raises his eyes heavenwards. 

Jim figures it’s probably best to change the subject at that point. 

Things are good. Pam repeats that to herself when Jim leaves the spa early, saying he just needs to sort something. 

She hadn’t even noticed him checking his blackberry this time. He must have somehow found a way to sneak it into his swimming trunks without her noticing. 

It’s only ten minutes, she tells herself. Except she knows how quickly ten minutes becomes half an hour whenever Athleap is concerned, and she’s half expecting him to still be on the phone when she gets back to their villa. 

Half excepting and half dreading it. 

They’ve had a nice day, she reminds herself. She’d just…she’d been hoping they might be able to have a nice night too. For once. That she might get her husband’s attention - might get her Jim - for at least twenty-four hours. Which isn’t asking for all that much. Is it? 

He’s just coming in from the balcony when she returns. He crosses the room and tugs her into his arms by the band of her robe, kissing her. He smells of sunscreen and eucalyptus from the spa. His hair is slightly fluffy under her fingers, and the temptation to melt into him is almost excruciatingly high.  

“Mm,” he murmurs against her skin. “Maybe I should have stayed for the sugar scrub. Is that vanilla?” 

His nose is grazing her neck, and she can’t help but laugh as his hands trail the thin fabric of her robe. “Yeah.” She keeps her voice light. “You missed out.” 

He gives her this grin, and she remembers that things really are good. 

But she can’t help but feel that he’s hurrying her into the shower, a little, as he pulls the balcony blind shut behind her. 

And then during their call with the kids, when she tries to take the phone outside to show them the hot tub, he interjects to point out that they’re late for dinner. 

And then, throughout that dinner, she can’t help but notice that he’s ever so slightly distracted. Just a little. Enough for her to notice, even if no one else does. 

When the meal ends, she suggests they stay for another round of cocktails, maybe another round of dessert. Her smile is hopeful. 

He says he’s feeling kind of beat. She tries not to let her heart sink. 

It’s early. 

So early that not even Dwight and Angela have gone back to their villa yet. 

And maybe he is tired after the Major’s bootcamp this morning. Or maybe he’s got a blackberry waiting for him, the same blackberry that kept him out on the balcony and made him want to hurry through dinner. 

“I might stay here with Iz, if you want to go back.” She says it before she can stop herself - and then she sees his face really fall. 

Which hurts her. 

But what does he want her to do? Go back and go to bed while he stays out on the balcony for whatever urgent call or email he needs to work on?  

He mumbles that he’ll stay with them, then, but she can see that he doesn’t actually want to. Because she knows him. And there’s a part of that wants to snap at him to just go, because she wants him to want to stay with her, not just because he feels guilty. 

In the end they stay for one more half-hearted cocktail before she relents and suggests they head back. 

He’s quiet on the way to the villa, and she tries to work out how this has all gone so wrong, again. How it is that the third night into their romantic getaway looks like it’s shaping up to be another silent night of lying in the darkness with her back to him. 

It had been so good earlier. 

Jim has still barely said a word and she feels suddenly, stupidly, like crying as they let themselves into the villa. 

“Hey.” His voice is husky. “Will you come outside with me, for a second?” 

“I just need to go to the bathroom.” She just needs to pull herself together before she actually cries. 

He hesitates. “Ok. Uh…I’ll be on the balcony, then.”

She nods and ducks towards the bathroom. But not before she sees him grab his blackberry from the bedside table as he heads outside. 

She tries to get a hold of herself in the bathroom. 

She can’t work out if the hot tears burning her eyes are anger, or frustration, or just…she misses him, and she wants to kiss him properly, and she wants to never have to think about that goddamn blackberry again. 

When she’s gathered herself enough, she heads back out. 

She’ll just go out to the balcony, and tell him it’s ok, she’s kind of beat too. Or maybe she’ll throw his blackberry off the balcony. Yeah. Right. 

She pushes open the door, bracing herself - and then she comes to a stop. 

There are rose petals scattered all over the balcony. Candles all round the edge of the hot tub, a bottle of champagne with two glasses, and a bowl overflowing with chocolate coated strawberries. And music playing. From the blackberry, she realises. Boyz II Men. 

Jim is standing there, rubbing the back of his neck. Her breath stills. He looks a mixture of sheepish and nervous as he takes her in. He takes a step towards her, studying her face for her reaction. 

He’s so painfully handsome in the candlelight, she thinks dumbly, his hair rumpled like he’s run his hands through it a few times. He’s half gulping and just so Jim that for a moment she can’t speak. 

“I’m sorry,” he groans when she doesn’t say anything. “I asked Andy if he could help, and…” He gestures round the rose petals. “He went a little overboard.” 

Pam still says nothing. 

“I know this is, like, unbelievably cheesy. And lame. I know that. I just - I wanted to surprise you.” He knots his fingers in his hair as he gazes helplessly at her. “But we can…I mean, we can just go back inside, and-”

“This is why you left the spa early?” 

He pauses, still unsure of her reaction, and nods. “It was much more romantic in my head.” He sounds morose as his eyes follow hers to the strawberries. “I think Andy might have seen Pretty Women one too many times. ” 

She releases a strangled laugh. 

He catches her hands. His voice is soft. “I’m sorry.” 

She shakes her head, slowly. “I love it.”

“Really?” He stares down at her. 

“Yeah.” 

He looks so utterly relieved as his arms slide around her, as he draws her into his chest. She presses her face against the front of his shirt, his breath warm in her hair, and she feels tears of a different kind stinging her eyes. 

She doesn’t know how she can explain those to him, though, so she keeps her face buried in him until they dissolve. His hand runs over her back, the other tangling in her hair as he holds her. 

“Wait,” she mumbles into his chest, a moment later. “Is this Ginuwine?” 

“Hm? Oh, yeah. Pony.” 

She pulls back to look up at him. “Do you…how do you remember what was on that playlist? I deleted it!” 

“Oh, I didn’t forget a single one.” He grins down at her, waving his blackberry. “I’ve got them all queued up.” 

“How-”

“I spent weeks agonising over those songs, Pam. Trying to work out if there was some hidden meaning to ride it, get on it-”

“Ok, shut up.” She’s properly laughing now, even as her cheeks flame. 

“Don’t even get me started on that week you came in with a ponytail.” 

She swats at him. He grabs her hand, still smiling, and then he kisses her. 

She stands ensconced in his arms, feeling her body slowly relax into his as her eyes close. It’s dark enough on the balcony that he hopefully can’t tell she’s been crying. 

And she doesn’t want to cry now, anyway. 

She just wants to kiss her husband. 

“Jim?” 

“Mm?” He’s distracted as he cups her face, his lips seeking hers again. His fingers are grazing her waist. 

She’s a little breathless against him. “Do you…want to get in the hot tub you wouldn’t let Phil see earlier?” 

His face lights up. “Oh, yeah.” 

Mark and Isabel had stuck to their pact to go easy on the cocktails, and headed back to their villa not long after Jim and Pam left. 

It’s been weirdly quiet between them. They’re never usually quiet. Even at their worst, they’re at least arguing with each other. 

Mark feels a sort of restless energy bubbling under his skin now. They’re never this quiet, never go to bed this early. 

Isabel seems to be feeling it too. 

“I’m going for a swim.” 

He watches her come out of the bathroom in her bikini, hair twisted in a ponytail, and feels that usual aching stab of want low in his gut. Wanting her has never been the problem. 

Fighting and make-up sex had never been the problem, either, until the make-up sex stopped happening. 

He can’t do it. Can’t sit here in the villa by himself thinking of her in that bikini, the look she’d shot him in therapy, her ponytail bouncing away from him up another hill, or the way she’d arched into the hands of the guy that’s basically her every fantasy wrapped into one muscle bound package. 

He stands. “Mind if I join you?” 

She turns, surprised. He’s not sure if it’s because of how he’d asked - polite, almost cautious, for them - or the fact that he’d asked at all. He wouldn’t have wasted time asking, once upon a time. It would have just been assumed he was going too. 

But she nods. 

He changes into his trunks, and is then surprised himself to find her waiting for him on the balcony. 

Dr Martinez had told them earlier that they should try to do one kind thing for each other a day. It’s such a low bar. One fucking thing. When had they stopped being kind to each other? 

But Iz is still there, waiting for him. And he feels it.  

He gives her a half smile. 

She returns it, briefly. He steps up beside her and she dives into the moonlit waves without bothering to use the steps. 

Some people - people like Jim and Pam, maybe, who tend to overthink themselves into circles - think that Iz is the type of person who jumps without looking. Mark can see how it might seem that way to them. He knows better. He knows that she jumps, sure, but she does always look. 

So he knows he never has to look when he jumps after her. 

The seawater is cool and tingling against his skin as he slices through it, cutting a path in his wife’s wake. They fall into racing each other pretty easily, and he matches her stroke for stroke, both of them silent apart from their rough breathing and the splashing water. 

It feels good.

Not as good as sex, but it’s better than nothing. 

He beats her back to the ladder to finish, and for a moment they’re grinning at each other, hair slick and breathless. 

He pulls her out of the sea once he’s up. He knows he doesn’t need to. They both know that, really. He pulls her onto the balcony, and then their wet bodies are pressed against each other, thrumming from their swim. His hand slides over her bare stomach.

He kisses her. Hard. 

He could push her up against the villa wall, drag her into the bedroom, and he knows that she’d like it. She likes it when he takes control in sex. He’d discovered that he liked it too, just with her; like she’d discovered that she also liked lazy sex, or laughter in between their rough kissing. 

Sex has never been the problem between them. Even if it hasn’t happened for a while. But it’s not the sex.

“I’m never gonna be like that, Iz.” 

He’s panting a little. Not joking any more, or teasing her, or reaching for that sarcastic quip that he knows will drive her mad, that he can’t stop himself from making anyway. He’s not doing that now, as they stare at each other in the moonlight. 

“You’ve always known that.” 

He can be commanding in the bedroom, sure, when it’s good and kinky - but he’s not Major Charles Miner outside of it. And that’s not going to change. He’s never pretended it would. So he doesn’t know why it’s felt, more and more, like she’s suddenly got a problem with that. 

She’s gone still. 

“I know,” she says. She looks at him, and he sees her flex like she’s digging in for another fight. Instinctive. “I’m not asking you to be.” 

This is the part where he fires back, and she retorts, and they wind up arguing until they’ve had all of it out, every jibe and accusation and comeback, because neither of them know how to repress anything. Until they end up laughing, or fucking, or walking away from each other. 

Except the walking away always used to be a pre-cursor to the eventual laughing or fucking. 

Not so much any more.  

Mark just shakes his head. “Aren’t you?” 

And his wife, who has a response to everything, stalls for a beat. Like she doesn’t have a response to that. 

She stares at him. 

He pulls away from her and walks back into the villa. 

He falls into bed, not for the first time since they got here, with an uncomfortable hard-on. And with the even more uncomfortable question of whether he’s been wrong for years, and it’s not that sudden. 

Dr Matinez told them to list the things they liked today. 

Which was stupid. 

All of Dr Martinez’s exercises are stupid. 

Angela likes routine. She likes that Dwight likes routine too. Dinner, chamomile tea, teeth-brushing, evening sex, prayers. Well, she prays. Dwight is quiet while she does, and she likes that too. 

She hadn’t necessarily liked that he didn’t pray, at first, but she had liked that he stuck to his principles, that he wouldn’t change his mind. He’s more principled than any Christian boyfriend she’s ever had, and she loves that about him. 

So she knows she doesn’t need to pray for his soul. She does pray for the soul of that giant stupidly athletic harlot tonight, because Isabel Poreba probably needs it, and Angela is nothing if not a good Christian. 

And she prays for a baby, again, even though it’s a part of her routine that she’s stopped liking quite so much. 

She doesn’t like the evening sex as much any more, either, now that every time feels like a constant reminder, a ticking clock counting down her failure. Now that she and Dwight are counting every thrust, monitoring every position, checking off every single piece of guidance from the fertility clinic (who she’s starting to think don’t know anything either, despite being their last resort after months of Schrute family edicts and believing God would provide had yielded nothing).

She’d used to like the way Dwight diligently monitored her cycles and knew when she was ovulating and the perfect time for sex, but she likes that less and less these days too. 

There was something about the Major today that had reminded her of how things used to be with Dwight, before the nagging worry that there was clearly something wrong with her, with them, if they couldn’t perform the most basic of biological functions. Pam had casually let slip that they had two children, earlier. Two. The Halperts, who could barely run up a hill or get through an exercise without sniggering or making out like teenagers, had done it twice. 

She says a prayer for the Halperts’ children now, because with parents like those, they probably need it too. 

(And if she can pray for other people’s children, then doesn’t she deserve to be a mother?) 

She finishes her prayers and stands up. 

She changes into her flannel nightgown, and Dwight puts his pyjamas on, and finally takes his glasses off before he gets into bed with her. She likes the way he takes his glasses off, firm and precise, and the sheet corners that he re-tucks for her every night because the resort staff don’t do them tightly enough. 

She’d snapped at him after their sex tonight. Before her prayers. Because he’d told her she hadn’t stayed lying down for the full fifteen minutes. 

“What difference,” she’d hissed, “Is thirty seconds going to make?” 

He’d looked shocked. Almost betrayed. Not because she'd snapped, she knew, but because they always followed the rules to the letter. That one had come from Angela’s mother, backed up by Dwight’s farm experience. Even the fertility clinic had said it couldn’t hurt. 

And now they’re lying stiffly on their backs, not speaking. 

“Good night,” he says at last. 

She wants to apologise. Dwight is one of the only people she’s ever prepared to apologise to first. Apart from God, of course. But she doesn’t want to think about it again, the nasty fear that maybe those thirty seconds might have made a difference. And the knowledge that they won’t have done, at all. 

She doesn’t like that. She doesn’t like that at all. 

She lets her arm touch his, for a moment, which is almost an apology. But she can’t bring herself to say anything. 

She just responds with, “Good night.” 

Ryan knows that Kelly’s pretending to be drunker than she is, so that he’ll carry her back to the villa. 

But his legs are killing him from that stupid run earlier, and then the pointless yoga with Mr Army Guy, and he’s really not in the mood. 

As Kelly wraps her arms around his neck and wails into his shirt - “Come on, it’s not even that far, and I’m so tired, Ryan, my legs are killing me and you’re supposed to be my husband, you’re supposed to do this stuff for me!” - he finds himself thinking longingly of what might be happening in Eden right now.

It’s not that he doesn’t love Kelly. He does. She’s it for him. He can’t stay away from her. He doesn’t want her to be with anyone else.  It’s just that maybe some people aren’t meant to be monogamous. It’s just that maybe he also loves hot blondes and body-shots, both of which he’s pretty sure are happening every night on the other side of the island. Is that really so bad? 

At least he’s honest about it. 

Or he will be, when he eventually ditches Kelly and makes it to the other side of the island. 

He’s not going to ditch her, ditch her. Just for a night. Maybe two. Just long enough to get away from that freaky Michel guy and the Schrute weirdos and any more bongo sessions. 

He’s not a perfect person. And he came, didn’t he? He’s here with her, working on his commitment issues. Which hasn’t been easy for him. Their ‘therapist’ said today that relationships were about give and take, and not being selfish - which was actually good advice. He hopes Kelly had been listening.  

“Maybe I should call Charles,” Kelly whines now. “He’d be able to carry me no problem.” 

Ryan scowls. He turns back, and hefts his wife up. Maybe the other side of the island can wait, just for tonight.  

“I love you so much,” Kelly sighs happily as she gets comfortable. 

He smirks. Yeah, Charles is not the one taking her home tonight. “I love you too.” 

He really does. And he’s totally getting to that singles resort tomorrow. 

Jim’s hands span Pam’s hips as he coaxes her to move over him, her bare arms twined around his neck, their bodies pressed together under the warm water. 

She’s hot and tight around him as she rocks. His fingers find the small of her back,  urging her on, easing her closer as she whimpers his name. With her eyes half closed and her teeth pressed into her lower lip, her damp hair curling around her face, she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

She’s always the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

She’d been hesitant again. Just for a moment. Strangely hesitant about straddling him, until he’d pulled her into his lap and his mouth had found her collar bone. She hasn’t been shy with him in years, and he hadn’t been sure what to make of it. It’s Pam. It’s him. But she’d loosened as his fingers had slipped down the band of her soaked panties, seeking her familiar heat, and when she’d moaned as he’d entered her he hadn’t known what the hell he’d been doing all this time, if not this. 

She’s pressing her face into the join between his neck and his shoulder now, as his hands slide down to cup her ass. Sinking more deeply into her. 

“Pam,” he groans, a bit strangled. 

She clings to him tighter, face still buried against his neck, as she rocks harder. 

He can feel himself inching closer. God, he’s missed this so much. Not just the sex. Being with her. Uninterrupted. Splashing her in the hot tub as they joked, pressing slow full kisses against her skin, tugging her to him in the water and finally setting aside their champagne glasses to kiss her properly. Unhooking her bra as her hand slid over him, stroking him, biting her lip as she focused. 

(He’d told her keeping underwear on was just silly). 

She pushes down into him now, and his hands tighten on her. 

He’s close. 

He wants to look at her, though, and he gently catches her jaw to tilt her face up to him. She makes a faint noise. Her pupils are dark in the candlelight as he rests his forehead against hers, moving her hips up and down. 

“I love you,” he whispers, hoarsely, and he can see that love shining back at him. 

And something else, for a second, a soft glimmer in her eyes - 

But then she shifts against him, involuntarily tightening, and it’s about all he can take. 

His moan is low in her ear as he finally comes. She shudders in pleasure as he empties himself inside her, her fingers gripping his shoulders, her lips seeking his. He kisses her, long and deep, as he rides it out. 

Their breathing is uneven. 

She feels so good. She stays curled tightly around him, like she doesn’t want to let him go. He doesn’t either.  

His fingers move dazedly over her spine, her head resting against his chest. 

Yeah. It’s been way too long since they did this. 

He threads a hand through her hair, almost unconscious, his fingertips grazing her scalp. She nestles closer and his heartbeat gradually settles as they lean into each other. It’s also been way too long since he had time to just hold her, he realises. Properly. Like this.  

She’s the one who breaks the silence a while later. 

“Jim?” 

Her voice is a quiet murmur against his shoulder. 

“Hm?” His response is a little drowsy, his thumb occupied tracing circles over her bare arm as the water bubbles around them.

For a second he wonders if she - 

“Is that…an ice sculpture?” 

He squints, turning his head to where she’s looking. “Ah.” He feels his lips twitch reluctantly. “It…was.” It’s deformed now, half melted. He buries his face in her hair as she blinks. “I told you Andy got carried away.” 

He senses the tremor of her laughter. “What was it meant to be?”  

“Two swans mating,” he mumbles back. “I think. I was hoping the ninety degrees heat would take care of it.”  

“Oh, yeah. It’s much better now.” She smiles, and his mouth crooks back as he shakes his head. Then she peers over at it again. “…Mating?”

He drags her back to kiss her. “Don’t ask.” 

“Like-”

“And definitely, definitely don’t ask about the messenger doves. Or Andy’s serenade package.” He kisses her again. “Just trust me when I say you don’t want to know.” 

Her laugh is soft and all his, and he wasn’t quite expecting the sound of it to sting his chest as much as it does. 

He holds her close and makes another silent vow that he’s not going to go so long without surprising her, or making love to her, or making her laugh again. 

He’s not. 

“Welcome to day three!” 

Day three is mental reconnection day. One of Michael’s favourite days. Physical reconnection day used to be his favourite, but since stupid mean Charles stopped letting him - 

Anyway. Today is going to be great. 

Mental reconnection is always great. 

And it means he gets to wear his Carnac costume, which is perfect. He hopes this crowd get it better than the last one did. He doesn’t want to be accused of racism again. Honestly, some people have no idea about the greats. He’d tried to explain that that Sadiq guy did not have a monopoly on turbans, and also that he didn’t even like monopoly. Terrible game. But no one listened to him.  

(Maybe the the costume worked better when it was called psychic reconnection day. Oscar was the one who wanted them to change it, after that one time - maybe two or three times, but who’s counting? - Michael got psychic and physical the wrong way round. Whatever. He doesn’t have time to do spell checks when he’s saving people’s marriages, ok?)  

He smiles brightly round the couples in need of saving now. 

He doesn’t get too many smiles back - Angela looks like she’s frowning at his cape - but that’s probably just because he’s not fixed their relationships yet. Right? Once he does, they’ll be beaming in each other presences. 

He does a surreptitious stock-take, like he does every morning. 

Mark and Isabel look tired. Ok, they definitely had sex last night. A win for physical reconnection day! The programme’s clearly working like a dream for them. 

Jim and Pam are holding hands. Oh no, no sex for them last night. They wouldn’t be standing there so chastely if they had, Jim’s arm at Pam’s waist. They obviously need more work. 

Dwight and Angela…he can’t really get a read on them. They’re pretty weird. But Angela’s hands are on her hips, which are sort of close to her stomach, so…maybe they’re getting closer to making peace with the baby thing? It’s not what Oscar said yesterday after their therapy session, but maybe Oscar was wrong. 

Ryan and Kelly are all over each other. (Michael can’t blame Kelly). So Ryan’s commitment issues must be well on the way to being mended. 

This is great! 

Two - maybe three, if he’s right about Angela - couples out of four is not bad at all, for only day three. 

The other reason he likes mental reconnection day is that Holly comes out to help with the first exercise. Oh, and Oscar. But having Holly doing the exercises with him always makes them so much more fun. And she always wears the suit like McMahon, which it would never occur to Oscar to do. 

Michael sneaks a glance at her now. She’s smiling. Her smile always makes him feel…just, good. Like everything’s right with the world. And only Holly could wear a man’s suit and look that beautiful, and sexy, and - argh, it’s so hard to remember that he’s not allowed to think that. 

As he drags his eyes away from her, he thinks he catches Pam Halpert watching him. Why is she…right, of course. She’s waiting for his guidance. 

He gives her a wise smile back. 

“Today is all about reforging your brain connections with your partners,” he announces. "Getting back onto ze same wavelength. Ze great philosopher Jung believed in a collective unconscious. Which means, if you really love each other, you should be able to read each other’s minds.” 

Oscar looks pained. “Actually, Jung is pronounced with a ‘y’-”

“So it’s time to put zat to ze test!” Michael barrels on. “For our first exercise, you will be with you partner…and some ‘ermetically sealed envelopes!” 

He pauses for laughter.

There is none. 

Seriously, he thinks as he looks round their blank faces. This crowd too? 

“Hermetically sealed envelopes,” he repeats, really hoping they’ll get it this time. Maybe it was just his French accent? 

Nothing. 

Dwight opens his mouth. Finally. Michael would’ve preferred it if maybe one of the funnier guys like Jim got it, but -

“Where’s the hermetic seal?” Dwight demands, squinting round the pavilion. “I can’t see one. Are you sure they’re sealed?”

“That’s not - ugh.” Michael snatches up the envelopes and starts stuffing them into the couples’ hands. “Just take some,” he mutters sulkily. Sometimes he doesn’t know why he bothers. 

Dwight is frowning at his. “This definitely isn’t hermetically-”

“Carson! Oh my god.” Michael shakes his head. “Just…”

“Aha!” It’s Holly who jumps in, startling him. “So you’ll each take an envelope to write on, and in your mystical and borderline divine way, you will ascertain the answers to the questions we ask your partners!” 

She’s beaming. 

There are more blank looks. But Michael doesn’t care so much now. Right now his heart feels like it’s soaring with - something, maybe a bird of paradise - because Holly is still beaming at him. And her McMahon impression is so good, and so cute. 

And now something is dawning slowly on Mark’s face. “Oh, like the…skit?” 

Isabel is looking at Michael’s turban, and her face has cleared too. And she’s sort of almost - grinning, is she almost grinning at her husband? 

“Yes!” Michael cries, triumphant. At last. Oh, man. He knew this was going to be a good day. And it’s all because of Holly. He wants to hug her. He really wants to hug her. No, wait. He can’t. 

Better get on with the exercise. 

“Divide into your partners,” he calls out brightly. “It’s time to get…metaphorical.”  

Silence. They all look confused. Huh. He swears that joke normally kills.  

“Metaphysical,” Holly whispers. She gives him a small wink, and it makes him beam again as realisation dawns. 

“It’s time to get metaphysical!” 

If he wasn’t quite so busy basking in the glow of his and Holly’s shared joke, he might have noticed Oscar’s wince. And Mark’s faint groan. 

But he’s still basking, and he doesn’t.

This morning is going so well. 

This morning is going…well, Pam guesses it’s no less weird than any other morning since they got here. 

She’s not feeling very metaphysical. She’s not sure Michel knows what metaphysical means, though, so it’s probably ok. She’s currently sitting cross-legged opposite Jim. Their knees are brushing and they’re trying not to grin at each other. 

She’d fallen asleep in his arms last night, after he’d finally carried her in from the hot tub and they’d wound up tangled in the sheets. 

She can’t remember the last time they had that much time together, interrupted. The last time he’d picked her up like that, or spent that much time so unhurriedly just on her. So languorous and thorough as he urged her, his body rediscovering hers, his hazel eyes dark and soft and just so…Jim. His voice low and taut and rich against her ear, his hands wandering, his lips full and familiar, his smile warm in the darkness - 

She can’t remember the last time it had been like that. Like no one else existed but the two of them. Not even her fear, for a while. Her fear felt silly, ridiculous even, when she was lying curled in Jim’s arms, his body nestled into hers and his hand secured tightly on her waist, his mouth against her hair. 

It is silly. She doesn’t want to think about that now. 

(Just like she doesn’t want to think about the fact that his blackberry had died on the balcony last night after all the music playing, and whether that’s the reason it had been so good). 

Because things are good. They’re great.  And god, she loves him so much. 

For this exercise, they’re being asked a series of questions about their partners. They each have to write the answer on a sheet of paper, and put it into an envelope. The envelopes are then…it wasn’t entirely clear from Michel’s instructions, but Pam thinks they’re meant to be revealed to each other later. Maybe. To see if they’ve matched what their partners put. 

“So,” Mark had muttered a few minutes in, “We’re basically playing Mr and Mrs?” 

It had earned him a filthy look from Dwight. “I have no idea what that is, idiot, but this isn’t a game.”

The effectiveness was somewhat diminished by Michel squawking, “Yes! My favourite show!” 

Mark had smirked at Isabel, who’d said nothing. Not even an eye roll. Which wasn’t like her. 

Pam could sense Jim noticing the same thing, his brow slightly furrowed.

Pam’s not sure, but she thinks something’s bugging her friend more than usual this morning. Other than the briefest glimmer of a smile over Michel’s costume choice today, Isabel’s barely spoken to Mark. She doesn’t look like she’s slept much. Neither does he.  

Something’s up. Pam just doesn’t know what. 

“Ok,” Michel is calling, “Now write down your partner’s favourite colour!” 

Jim catches Pam’s eye and sucks his pen, pretending to look thoughtful. She knows that look. 

“If you’re writing eggshell,” she whispers under her breath - 

His grin widens. “No conferring, Beesly.” 

Eggshell, she’d decided while they were re-decorating their house, was not a colour. He’d dutifully come home with an entire swatch book of different eggshell shades for their kitchen, and she remembers chasing him round said kitchen to wrestle it off him, Cece giggling from her highchair. He’d swept her into his arms once she caught him, swatch book tossed to one side, and she’d been breathless with laughter as he kissed her.  

He’d helped her pick out the most perfect blue afterwards. She knows exactly what his favourite colour is. 

She slides a glance at him now. Smirking, she writes fuchsia on her paper. 

He’s regarding her with deep amusement. “You’re wrong,” he whispers, knee pressing into her as he leans closer so that only she can hear. His breath is warm.  

She cocks her brow back at him. She knows he can’t see what she’s written. “I don’t think so.” 

He shakes his head. “I happen to like that colour on you.” 

She feels an unexpected heat rising in her cheeks. He’d noticed her swimsuit. “No conferring,” she shoots back, but he’s already caught her smile. 

(When was the last time they did this? Flirted like…giddy teenagers? And how is it possible, she wonders, for him to still give her this many butterflies?) 

“And now you partner’s favourite sex position!” 

Jim’s eyebrows quirk this time, and Pam tries to stop her ever-creeping blush as she thinks about last night. She knows, from last night, that Jim hasn’t forgotten her favourite position. (Although if she’s being honest, any position that involves Jim in some capacity is her favourite). And she’s well aware of his favourite - 

“That’s private,” Angela hisses from beside them, interrupting her thoughts. “Stop writing!” 

Dwight, who’s started writing furiously, looks momentarily confused. He appears, Pam realises, to be midway through a list.

“But Michel said-”

“No. That’s classified information.” 

Dwight frowns, but grudgingly puts his pen down. 

Ryan and Kelly, meanwhile, are still bickering. “Kel, I told you, you can’t keep putting reverse cowgirl just because of that dumb Cosmo quiz! That’s not even-”

Dr Flax clears her throat. “No discussing your answers, please.” 

“Yes,” Michel chirps. “Silence!” 

Ryan falls silent, clearly sulking. Kelly ignores him and continues writing. 

Still nothing from Isabel or Mark. 

“And now,” Michel says, “You must write down your partner’s deepest, darkest fear.” He delivers this in the same chipper voice as their favourite sex positions, before remembering himself and adopting a more somber expression. “Really dig deep, everyone.”

 Pam scrunches her face up at Jim. 

Heights, she writes. 

He still gets a little nervous on planes sometimes, still opts to take the car or bus when he could fly for business trips. And when he really can’t get out of it, lately, the thought of him pretending to be calm in his suit surrounded by the Athleap guys always makes her heart squeeze. He’d had to climb up a tree once to get Phil down, and even though he’d put on a brave face, it was hard to tell who was more scared - him or a tearful Phil - once they finally got down to the ground, Jim cradling their son tight to him. 

And ok, yeah, her really tall husband being scared of heights is also a little bit funny. Sometimes. 

Pam was the one who took Cece on the high roller coasters the last time they went to a theme park. Their lanky daughter had skipped from ride to ride, stretching on her tiptoes to make sure she was tall enough to get on, her whoops wild and her hand tight in Pam’s. Cece has always been fearless, in a way that Pam’s only been a handful of times in her own life. She’s always loved that.

Luckily for Jim, Phil had been happy to stay on the nice safe choo choo train. Jim must have ridden it at least ten times with him, knees comically crushed and attention entirely focused on Phil’s gleeful smile as he pointed out the same scenery over and over. He’d been tickled by just how tickled their son was every time he saw the same hoopla stall, the same tree, the same dog, his grin soft and patient as he played along with him.  

Pam’s pretty sure he would have ridden it with Phil an eleventh time without complaint, if Cece hadn’t insisted on dragging her little brother to the hoopla stall to win him a stuffed bear.

(They haven’t had time to go to a theme park since).

Dr Flax pauses to glance at what Jim’s written. “Is that really digging as deep as you can go?” she asks gently. 

Jim stalls a beat, looking disconcerted. 

Pam’s now pretty sure he must have written clowns for her biggest fear. She’s about to stick her tongue out at him when Dr. Flax stops by her too. “Come on,” she coaxes. “Try to really be honest. It’ll help you get the most out of this.” 

Pam hesitates too, then. 

What is Jim’s deepest, darkest fear? 

She swallows. She thinks she might know. She risks a glance at him, but his forehead is creased and he’s not quite meeting her eye as he writes something else on his own paper. What’s he writing? 

The thought that he might somehow know she - 

Hand gripping her pen tightly, she scribbles down not fitting in for him. She feels almost disloyal for writing it, a stab somewhere low in her gut. But she thinks of the past year and she knows it’s true. He is scared of that. She knows him, and she’s maybe always known that. 

(Although maybe she hadn’t realised quite how much until this past year). 

She stuffs the paper into an envelope and tries not to think about what Jim might have written for her. Or what the expression on his face means. 

Luckily, she doesn’t have to dwell too long on it, because Michel is already launching into his next question. 

“Now write down your partner’s celebrity crush!” 

Safer territory by far, Pam knows as she deliberates between Larry Bird or Hilary Swank. The return of Jim’s smile as he writes something down for her (she’s pretty sure he’ll be holding that one time she’d let slip about Conan O’Brian against her now) tells her he’s thinking the same thing. 

They’re good, she reminds herself. They’re good. 

The mental exercise ends about as chaotically as Oscar could have predicted. 

Although not as badly as the last time they tried to do this, which had dissolved into Michael trying to teach their clients about…apartheid. In South America. Led by Gandhi. Needless to say, Sadiq and Leila Patel did not stay the whole two weeks after that. 

This time the exercise is cut shut short by a sudden flash of tropical rain. The downpour sends Michael into a tizzy, leaping around snatching up envelopes while the couples duck for cover and he tries to bleat something about how romantic and cleansing the rain is.

“Julia Roberts didn’t even notice it was raining, you guys! Where are you going?!”

Only Holly stays out there with him.  She almost seems to be enjoying getting soaked with him, which…well, Oscar’s not sure he’s ever going to understand that. 

After it becomes apparent that no one else here thinks Michael is Hugh Grant, he’s forced to conclude that the exercise is over. He tells them use their therapy sessions to discuss their answers. “And enjoy ze enlightenment!” 

Which is why Oscar is now sitting in his hut with a slightly bedraggled Mark and Isabel, and some damp envelopes. This part of the exercise can be the most difficult - rife with misunderstandings, gulfs in expectations, accusations of how can you not know what my favourite movie is - and he’s not sure how it’s going to play out with the Porebas now. 

He’s asked them how they found the exercise. He’d been expecting Mark to make some kind of quip, but he finds the couple oddly subdued. 

He’d wondered if Mark might have provided jokey answers during the exercise - and been half braced for Isabel’s subsequent disappointment - but it turns out they’ve guessed nearly all of each other’s answers correctly. Which should be a good sign. Except it doesn’t seem to be making Isabel feel much better. She’s coiled, like she’d been expecting the jokey answers too, like she’s just waiting for one. And that expectation hasn’t escaped Mark’s notice, either. 

It’s like they don’t know what to do if they’re not bickering.  

When they get to the deepest fear question, Oscar glances down at Mark’s answer for Isabel. 

He doesn’t appear to have put a joke for this one either. In fact, his answer is…quite stark. It’s also not anything they’ve touched on in any of their sessions so far. 

Oscar clears his throat. “Mark, you put that Isabel’s fear is not living up to her father’s expectations.” 

And at that, Isabel finally does snap. 

“What the hell?” She springs to her feet. “Daddy issues, Mark? Seriously? That’s what you put?” 

But Marl has jumped up too. “Yeah. That’s what I put.” 

He’s angry, and so is she, but Oscar thinks there’s also the smallest sense of relief there. Relief, at slipping back into what they both know. Fighting. 

Oscar raises a hand, trying to be the voice of reason. “Maybe we should sit back down and talk this through-”

“Are you kidding?” Isabel shows no sign of wanting to sit down. 

Mark’s jaw is set. “You haven’t spoken about him, Iz.” He’s blunt. “It’s been a year, and you won’t even talk about him. It’s not like you.”

He’s not joking around any more, not even close, and for a moment it looks like Isabel might falter. 

But then she fires back, “Jesus, I’m sorry I don’t want to spend every day talking about my dead dad. Who, by the way, you hated. But you don’t get to use that as an excuse for all our problems-”

“I hated him because he was an asshole to you. And it is a problem.”

“You not taking our relationship seriously has nothing to do with my father!” 

“This is really valuable communication,” Oscar attempts. “Actually, you’d be surprised by how many couples-“

Mark doesn’t seem to have heard him. “If I’m the one not taking this seriously,” he demands, “Then why do you blow up or walk away every time we get close to talking about something real?”  

“Bullshit,” Isabel snaps. “You’re the one who walked away last night.” 

“Ok, fine.” Mark lifts a shoulder, challenging. “Let’s talk about how I’m not what you want.” 

Isabel flinches. “That’s not - for fuck’s sake.” She shakes her head. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.” 

“Oh, sure. Convenient.” 

Isabel makes a noise of anger, or frustration - Oscar’s not sure which - and then turns and stalks out. 

Mark swallows, his jaw clenched uncharacteristically tight. “Great session,” he mutters. “Really great communication.”  

Oscar tries to explain that anger’s actually an important part of the process, but Mark isn’t listening any more. His eyes are about as bright as Isabel’s as he strides out of the hut. Heading, Oscar sees, in the opposite direction to his wife. 

Oscar glances down fruitlessly at the answer Isabel had written. Her actual deepest darkest fear, which they didn’t even get on to. 

Losing Mark. 

And the fear Mark had written down for himself, Oscar reads, is losing Isabel. 

He releases a sigh. Yes, he thinks. Great communication. 

“Oh my god, Ryan! How could you possibly think my celebrity crush was Ryan Reynolds? You know he’s my second favourite Ryan now, ever since La La Land. He doesn’t dance, or play the piano, and he’s so gross in that movie where his face burns off. It’s like you don’t know me at all!” 

Ryan starts yelling something about the genius of subversive superhero movies in response to his wife, and Holly remains perplexed as she tries to take notes. 

The Howard-Kapoors had actually got most of their answers for each other right, including on the more serious questions - but for some reason it’s the celebrity one that’s causing the most upset now. 

Kelly had launched into a twenty minute rant after it emerged Ryan’s wrote Priyanka Chopra as his celebrity crush, for reasons that a furious Kelly did explain in great detail but that Holly still didn’t really follow. Something sanctimonious and gazelle legs and someone called Jonas?

And now they’re arguing about different famous Ryans. Holly thinks. 

“Shall we move on from this exercise?” she tries. 

But Ryan’s busy saying something about how he thought he was Kelly’s favourite Ryan, and she’s crying that of course he is, duh, and now they’ve started making out, and…well, Holly doesn’t know whether she should count this as progress or not. 

But if they go much further, she’ll have to tell them they can’t use her couch for sex.

She sneaks a guilty glance at the clock as the sound of their enthusiastic kissing continues. Another whole hour left. 

Oh dear. 

Oscar had assumed Angela and Dwight would deem the exercise as stupid as they’ve deemed everything else that Oscar has tried to suggest. But instead, they seem to be taking a smug sort of triumph in all all the answers they’re getting right. 

“That’s right,” Angela says demurely. “Eggshell is my favourite colour.” 

Dwight’s smile is satisfied. 

But Oscar pauses, glancing at the envelope. “Actually, it says ‘blue’ here.” 

“Blue?” Dwight scoffs. “Who likes blue?” 

 Angela’s face has wrinkled in disgust too. “That’s ridiculous.” 

The paper very clearly says blue. Are they lying, Oscar wonders with a frown, or did one of them just make a mistake? He decides it might be best to move on. 

“Ok, the next question was about sex positions-”

“We’re not discussing that,” Angela hisses. “Move on.” 

Oscar pauses again, but looks at Angela’s face and decides that might be for the best too. He’s not sure why Michael insists on this question every time. Even for the couples that need to discuss intimacy issues, it’s hardly the best way in.

“Let’s move on to the question about your fears.” 

Oscar doesn’t think he’s imagining the way Angela’s stiffens, slightly, or Dwight’s shift in his chair. 

“Dwight, you wrote that Angela’s biggest fear is change.” 

Angela’s scowl is instant. “What?” 

Oscar glances at the next answer written down in front of him, and feels a flicker of surprise. “Angela,” he says gently, “You actually wrote that your biggest fear is not being enough.”  

“What?” Dwight interrupts. “That can’t be true. And I didn’t-” 

Oscar holds a hand up. “Let’s hear from Angela, Dwight.” 

But Angela is frowning too. “That’s not my biggest fear.” 

“I know it might be difficult to admit,” Oscar begins understandingly - 

“No.” Angela has folded her arms. “That’s not what I wrote. Not enough? What’s that even supposed to mean?”

“Exactly,” Dwight scoffs. “How could she ever not be enough? Unless we’re taking about cannibalism or flesh-eating zombies, in which case-”

“No cannibals, Dwight!” Angela glares at Oscar. “What kind of stupid exercise is this?” 

Oscar holds out he sheet of paper. “I’m just repeating what’s written-”

“I told you, I didn’t write that!” 

“I didn’t write that.” 

Pam sounds confused, and Holly looks down at the paper again. 

“You didn’t write that you think Jim has no fear?” 

“Uh…no.” Pam exchanges a glance with Jim, who looks equally perplexed. And a little amused. 

They’re sitting much closer on the couch today, Jim’s hand settled at Pam’s back, and they’ve told Holly that they’re great. Really great. They keep sneaking smiles at each other. 

But Holly couldn’t help but notice that neither of them seemed very comfortable once they reached the fear question. So she’s pretty sure that, however good things might be, they haven’t actually discussed or resolved their issues yet. 

She’s not sure what’s happening now, though. 

She skims Jim’s answer to the same question. “Jim,” she continues, “You put that you think Pam’s biggest fear is…the death of Sprinkles Junior?” 

The couple are both just staring at her now. 

“…No?” Jim’s brow is creased. "Who’s Sprinkles Junior?” 

Huh. Holly looks down at the papers again. She remembers her and Michael’s attempts to grab the envelopes in the rain, and how distracted she'd been by Michael's wide smile, and she has a nasty feeling she might know what’s happened. 

A look at what each person had written down as their actual fear - infertility, on both sheets of paper - confirms which couple’s answers she must now be holding in her hand. Not the Halperts’. 

Oh, no. She’ll need to talk to Oscar after this. 

Jim and Pam are still staring, so she hastily puts the envelopes away. “I’m sorry,” she offers, “There seems to have been a mistake. Why don’t we end the exercise there?” 

Jim and Pam exchange another glance, nonplussed, and then nod. Jim’s arm relaxes around Pam’s shoulders, and Pam leans closer into him. 

Like they’ve dodged a bullet, Holly can’t help but think. 

Oh dear again. 

They’re given some free time to have lunch after therapy, before their final exercise of the day. Jim has been in such a good mood since last night - and this morning, he thinks, recalling waking Pam up with drowsy kisses, her body curving up into his until Andy interrupted them - that even their therapy session had felt ok. (Especially once the envelopes got put to one side). 

Dr Flax must surely be starting to see that they don’t need therapy. They just need…this. 

Pam bantering with him over their club sandwiches, and the way the sunlight’s hitting her flushed face as she grins at him, and her hand slipping into his as they stand up from the table. 

He needs lazy lunches with his wife, and time to meander hand in hand through the trees before they’re dragged into another insane exercise. 

He needs the way her breath catches when he grabs her waist and tugs them behind a palm tree to kiss her properly. 

The leaves are still damp from the rain earlier, his arms sliding around her to keep her dry. He deepens the kiss as he toys with the back of her shorts, as her fingers curl in his t-shirt and she moans, slightly, against him. He squeezes her tight.  

She’s smiling when they eventually break for air, her hands pressed against his chest. “What was that for?” She’s dizzy and warm and familiar, and this is what he needs. Her smile. 

He shrugs his shoulders. “Felt like it.” 

She squints up at him. “Ok.” But she’s still smiling. 

He lets his fingers wander over her top, settling her in his arms as she leans against him. She’s wearing that swimsuit underneath, and he still doesn’t think he’s gotten to appreciate it properly. Or her. He could do with another few hours just appreciating her. 

“Hey,” he murmurs, his voice a little husky against her ear, “How about we blow off this afternoon’s exercise and head for that beach round the-”

“Yeah, great idea Iz, let’s do another stupid exercise where we don’t actually talk to each other.”

They’re disturbed by Mark’s angry, sarcastic voice, and two sets of footsteps slapping along the path. 

“If you think this is all so stupid, why the hell did you bother coming?” 

Isabel sounds pissed. And upset. 

“You know, right now I’m asking myself the same question.” 

Jim winces, and so does Pam. They let go of each other by silent consent, Jim briefly squeezing Pam’s fingers, and then head after their friends. 

Isabel has stormed on ahead, and Pam practically has to run to catch up with her. 

Mark slumps when he sees Jim. Like all the fight’s left him. “Sorry, man. Did you hear all that?” 

“Are you ok?” 

Mark shakes his head miserably. “Nope.” 

Jim puts a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder, at a loss for what else to do. “I’m sorry.” He’s not sure he’s ever seen Mark look this defeated. 

“Yeah,” is all Mark says. “Me too.” 

They hear the sound of the gong in the distance. Michel’s signal for them to gather for the next exercise. They’ve discovered he’s incapable of hitting the gong just once, though. Right now he seems to be beating out…We Will Rock You? Jim can’t be sure. Whatever it is, it’s loud. 

“Guess we better get this over with,” Mark sighs when the noise doesn’t stop. 

“You sure?” Jim surveys his friend. “I can cover for you with Michel if you don’t want to.” 

“What, so Iz can accuse me of not taking this seriously again?” Mark snorts, giving his head a shake. “Besides, what else am I going to do - sit alone in the hot tub? Cocktails for one?”

He’s bitter, and it stings. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jim asks softly. 

Mark pinches the bridge of his nose. “Maybe later. Just…I don’t know.” He gestures ahead of them as the gong continues. “Let’s just go see what Michel’s got cooked up now.” 

“Ok,” Jim allows. 

They continue up the path in silence, Jim giving Mark space, and it’s only as they’re drawing closer to the pavilion that he realises his blackberry has been buzzing. 

He hangs back, feeling guilty as he tugs it out his shorts pocket. He hasn’t even thought about work since yesterday. 

It’s Lucas. Jim thinks about Pam’s smile, and something makes him stay back from the pavilion, out of sight, as he calls him back. 

“Everything ok?” 

“Ok, don’t panic.” Lucas sounds panicked. “We’re having a little crisis with Bridgeport, but I think we’ve almost got it sorted.” 

Jim can feel his own stress slowly start to reignite. “Bridgeport? We can’t afford-”

“I know, dude, I know. It’ll be ok. I’ve got to run to another meeting now, but I’ll keep you posted?” 

Jim makes him promise to do just that. 

He feels a little ill as he hangs up. He realises, too late, that Mark is watching him. 

“Pam know you’re taking work calls?” His voice is easy, so Jim doesn’t know why his guilt lurches up again. Or why he suddenly feels so defensive. 

“Yeah. Of course.” 

Mark just nods. “We should go.” He spares Jim’s blackberry the briefest glance.“You’d better hide that from Michel.” 

Jim doesn’t need telling twice. He shoves it back into the safety of his pocket, wishing he could also shove aside his inexplicable guilt and mounting worry as he follows his friend to the pavilion. 

Pam smiles when she sees him, and he has to force a smile back. 

She notices. Because she always does. 

But with any luck she’ll put it down to concern about their friends, and not the lump of metal that’s now weighing his pocket down like a rock. He slides his hand back into hers and tries to pretend everything's fine. 

Pam tries to reassure herself things are still good as Jim’s hand brushes hers and Michel announces that the final mental reconnection exercise will be a treasure hunt. And the treasure is…each other. 

Pam’s confused. She’s not the only one. 

Jim is too, but he’s also distracted. And she doesn’t miss that. However brief. She catches herself wondering if it would be easier if she didn’t know Jim as well as she does. If she hadn’t just had twenty four hours where he wasn’t distracted. She finds herself wishing that she didn’t know, after a whole year of it, exactly what Jim’s work stress looks like.

But Michel is now busy dividing them up into pairs. 

And not their relationship pairs. 

Pam gets put with Dwight, and Jim with Kelly. Angela ends up with Mark, who looks nervous as she scowls up at him. Isabel gets Ryan, who seems briefly interested as he sizes her up. As though he’s noticing her for the first time. 

Mark notices that. So does Kelly, who immediately starts loudly asking Jim about cheating. Jim shoots Pam a look of mild panic, which almost makes her forget about his distraction as she swallows a smile back. 

Isabel doesn’t notice, possibly because she’s still upset from the therapy session. Or possibly just because, at a head shorter, Ryan is below her line of sight. Yeah, Pam thinks. Good luck to him with that one. 

Dwight is busy sizing Pam up too, but she suspects it’s for very different reasons to Ryan. Her suspicions are confirmed when he asks her how much she weighs. 

“Uh,” she attempts. “That’s kind of personal?” 

He scoffs. “I’ve seen your running. If I have to carry you, I need to know.”

Pam shakes her head. “You’re not going to-”

“For zis exercise, you will go on a journey!”

Michel’s eager voice interrupts her. Dwight gives a nod of confirmation, cracking his knuckles as he assesses Pam’s body again.

Now it’s Pam’s turn to shoot Jim a panicked look. Except Jim is not quite paying attention, his brows drawn with something he’s not letting her in on - and it feels like a sudden kick to the stomach. Like reaching behind her during that stupid trust fall exercise to find no waiting arms. 

She always used to be able to count on him noticing everything, seeing everything. Seeing her. Even when no one else did. She used to know she only had to turn her head and he’d catch her eye, angle his head, give her a grin that only she understood.

It’s a split second now. It’s just one look. She knows that. She’s being stupid. But it creeps up on her again, that fear that maybe he doesn’t look at her the same way, doesn’t see her, like he used to. What if he doesn’t? 

What if she’s not - 

“Your mission is simple,” Michel declares, halting her mini spiral. “Ze men will take zemselves to a place on the island and plant a flag. And zen ze women must find zem!” 

He’s met with expressions of bewilderment. 

“How are we meant to find them?” Isabel ventures at last, when no one else does. 

Michael makes an impatient noise. Like it’s very obvious. “By thinking like zem, of course! You must think like your partner to hunt zem down.” 

“…Right.” 

There are more confused faces. 

“Can we go anywhere on the island?” Ryan asks suddenly.

“Anywhere!” Michel confirms, unperturbed by Ryan’s sudden interest. “But,” he frowns, “You cannot take a boat and leave ze island.” He adds, in a grumble, something that sounds like, not this year.

They’re told they have forty-five minutes for the men to find somewhere to plant a flag. And then, wherever they are, their wives will have to start looking for that flag. Michel seems inordinately pleased with the concept of this exercise. Apparently it’s one he and Dr Flax came up with. 

Pam is still confused.

But Dwight has already snatched his flag from Andy and started limbering up. He tells Pam she’d better be able to keep up, or he’ll have to reassess the carrying situation. Pam wonders whether she should remind him that the whole point of this exercise is for Angela to actually find his flag. Angela is busy snitting something at an unenthusiastic Mark, though, so she figures she should just leave it. 

Jim finally catches her gaze and gives her one of his looks. One of their looks. She smiles back, weakly, as he waves his flag. 

His forehead wrinkles. 

“Hey.” He takes a step towards her. “Are you-”

“No conferring!” Dwight is outraged as he yanks Pam away from her husband. “There’ll be no cheating under my watch.” He glares between the two of them. “Not a word.” 

Jim opens his mouth to protest, but Dwight is already frogmarching Pam off. Pam can only give Jim one last helpless glance over her shoulder before she’s barrelled away. 

(She spotted his hand still hovering over his pocket. And she can’t stop it, the brief nasty thought that maybe his flag will just end up by the nearest phone charger). 

“How about we just plant the flag by the dinner buffet?” 

Angela turns her head in disbelief. Mark - she’s fairly sure it’s Mark and not Jim, although they’re practically interchangeable, both tall and moronic and in desperate need of a haircut - is standing there slouching, his flag trailing from his fingers. 

Like he can’t even be bothered to do this. 

Angela had seen Dwight striding on ahead, a familiar strategic gleam in his eye. Her heart had swelled with pride and…well, let’s just say she enjoys watching him do these exercises. A lot. Which is perfectly appropriate, because he’s her husband. 

So to be faced with this, instead? No wonder, Angela thinks, Isabel had been lusting after the Major. 

Not that that’s any excuse. Obviously. 

Mark is already clumping on ahead, his flag still dangling, and Angela finds herself irrationally irritated by his lack of effort. If there’s one thing she can’t abide, it’s laziness. And uncleanliness. And disorganisation. And carelessness. And stupidity. And window salesmen.

Oh, and dogs. 

And democrats. 

But laziness? No, laziness is too much. For someone to let their marriage end because they can’t be bothered, when she and Dwight are here trying every day and have actual problems beyond their control, when they can’t even - it’s just, disgusting. It’s disgusting. 

“Certainly,” she retorts under her breath. “How about you just file for divorce while you’re at it?” 

Mark freezes. “What did you just say to me?” 

Oh. Perhaps that hadn’t been as under her breath as she’d thought. 

Well, Angela considers after a beat, she stands by it. Yes. She turns her nose up at him. “I think you heard.” 

Mark gapes at her. She refrains from making a comment about letting the flies get in and takes advantage of his gawping to march on ahead. If the idiot behind her can’t be bothered to work out where to plant his flag, then she’s going to get a head start on finding her own husband. She knows Dwight will have headed for high ground. 

She represses a sigh when she realises Mark is still loping after her. He’s sliding his jaw, flag still gripped in his hand. 

She ignores him. 

He’s apparently not willing to let her do that, though, because he asks, “What? You don’t think I’m working on my marriage?” 

For goodness sake. Angela was not asking for a conversation on this. Especially not if it’s just to point out the obvious. 

“I’m sure your therapist has told you as much,” she answers primly. Pointedly. 

“You have no idea-”

“And I don’t want to,” she cuts him off. “I have no interest in your relationship.” 

“But you’re interested enough to pass judgement,” Mark shoots back stubbornly. 

Angela rolls her eyes. “An observation. That’s all.” 

There’s a brief silence. Angela continues to head for the hills, hoping that’s the end of it - but to her disappointment, Mark shows no sign of dropping back. He continues to pace along next to her, his flag dragging. 

Stupid long legs, she thinks. 

“Ok,” he says (like she was asking for some kind of answer), “Fine. Here’s an observation for you, then.” She opens her mouth to point out that she doesn’t want any of his observations - but he doesn’t let her. “You’re not going to make your marriage any better if you keep dismissing your therapy sessions.”

Angela goes rigid. “What would you even - that’s,” she splutters, “Ridiculous.” 

And how does he even know - 

“All you and Dwight do is sneer at them,” Mark responds. “Call me crazy, but I don’t think you’re going to fix things just because you can find his flag.”

“We don’t need to fix things,” Angela hisses back. “Not like that. Our marriage is perfectly fine.” 

“Then your therapy sessions should be a breeze.” 

Angela opens her mouth, and then closes it. She can feel her lips pinching. “They are,” is all she spits in the end. 

She’s still fuming as she stalks off. 

But Mark doesn’t go away, and neither does the deeply unpleasant realisation that she can not, will not, be in a world where an idiot like that might be right. 

“You know, this exercise is actually kind of fun!”

At first Kelly was pissed that Michel made them split up - how’s she meant to jump Ryan’s bones if they’re apart? - but it turns out Jim’s a pretty nice guy. And a great listener. And she probably wouldn’t have realised that if she was busy finding palm trees to make out with Ryan under, so that’s cool. 

Like, maybe she’d still rather be jumping Ryan’s bones, but talking is important too. And if they hadn’t been talking, then Jim wouldn’t have told her that Isabel wouldn’t even consider a guy under six foot, and Kelly would still be asking him about all the different things Isabel and Ryan might be getting up to. So instead, Kelly’s moved on to telling Jim about all the times Ryan’s come back to her after he realised she’s always been the one. So many times. He’s left two fiancée’s for her now, and that’s without even mentioning the baby.  

“Nothing can get in the way of true love,” she explains to Jim as she bounces along next to him. “No matter what the obstacle is. It like, you just have to forget about all that other stuff, and get to the one person who makes everything worth it.” 

And she’s that person for Ryan. She’s always known that. Ryan has too, even if he sometimes forgets. 

Which is why, she continues to Jim, she already knows where Ryan will have planted his flag. 

“There’s this totally romantic hidden waterfall that I mentioned to him once,” - ok, she’s mentioned it to him every day since they got here, and printed out photos from a review online to put under his pillow, but: guys need all the help they can get - “And I just know that’s where he’ll be waiting.” 

“Yeah?” Jim says. 

This is what Kelly has discovered she likes about him. He’s so good at listening and engaging at all the right moments. 

“Yeah,” she sighs dreamily. She can’t wait until the forty-five minutes are up so that she can head straight for that waterfall. She steals a peek at Jim’s watch - only fifteen minutes left! Time really does fly when you’re having fun. “So,” she remembers, “Have you decided where you’re going to plant your flag yet?”

She’s been so engrossed in their conversation, she’s not really been paying attention to where they’ve been walking. 

Jim rubs the back of his neck. He’s done that a couple of times, she’s noticed, which makes her think he must be stressed about something. And he keeps touching his pocket. She’s good at reading body language when she wants to be, although she’s normally only interested when she can use it to work out if her crush likes her back. 

But she’s kind of interested now. 

“Are you worried Pam won’t be able to find it?” 

The other thing Kelly’s good at is phones, because she can’t live without hers, and she can totally recognise the outline of one in his pocket. She’s pretty sure she’s seen him checking it a couple of times when he thought she wasn’t looking. (She’s not going to judge, she’s managed to hide two of her own so that she can make sure her Insta feed doesn’t suffer). Jim looks like one of those hapless guys who doesn’t have a clue about social media, though, so maybe he’s just hoping he can use his now to cheat at the task with Pam. Maybe he’s worried about failing. 

Kelly can sympathise with that. She knows not everyone can have the connection she has with Ryan. And actually, she’d be up for helping Jim cheat. She’d really like to help their relationship. 

But Jim makes this weird face - sort of guilty, sort of pained? - and mumbles, “No, that’s not…no.” 

Okaay, then Kelly’s not sure she gets what his problem is. She makes what she hopes is a sympathetic noise as she tries to work out the quickest way to find the waterfall from here. 

“Pam knows me better than anyone,” Jim says quietly. 

Kelly notices that he looks even guiltier now, but he also sounds like he’s maybe speaking to himself? So she leaves him to it while she checks for the trail. Hey, she can multitask. And this looks like something he needs to work out for himself. 

Damn, why do all these rock formations look the same? She can’t even tell which path they’re on. Jim’s saying something now about Pam looking upset, which kind of intrigues Kelly and kind of makes her feel sorry for him - but also, she has other priorities, like finding that waterfall. She’s got her own relationship to focus on. And besides, the quicker they’re all reunited, the happier everyone will be. 

She tells him that while she roots around in her bra for her phone, in the hope that google maps might help. She’s so busy trying to get signal that it takes her a moment to realise Jim has now noticed and is staring at her. 

“You didn’t hand your phone in?” 

“Duh,” Kelly answers. Man, why is the map taking so long to load? Dumb island. She told Ryan they should have checked out the coverage first. “You can check yours,” she adds to Jim offhandedly as she thumbs the device. “I’m not gonna tell. We can just put the flag here if you want to drop Pam a pin.”  

Jim had been reaching for his pocket, but he suddenly seems to have stopped, at Pam’s name. Kelly spares him a glance just long enough to see that weird expression on his face again, half frozen, before she goes back to her own phone. 

“Yes!” She’s triumphant as she sees the screen has finally loaded. “Ok, I’ve got directions for the waterfall. If we head now, we can get there in twenty minutes.”

There’s a pause. Jim does not appear to be heading. “You really think Ryan is going to go there?” he asks, at last. 

Of all the questions to ask. 

“Obviously, Jim.” Kelly’s a little exasperated. Has he been listening to anything? She holds up her phone. “It’s like, the most gorgeous place on the island. And completely private.” 

Jim is squinting at her phone now. “That does look…amazing, actually.” He sounds surprised. 

Honestly, some guys. 

“Duh,” she says again. 

“Hey, is it in the brochure?” 

Kelly laughs. “Of course it’s in the brochure! Didn’t you read it?” 

Jim looks uncomfortable and starts muttering something about work being busy, but Kelly’s not really listening, because who wants to hear about work anyway? 

“Oh my god,” she shakes her head, “You’re even worse than Ryan. And let me tell you, that is saying something-” 

“I want to go to the waterfall next.” 

Jim sounds decisive - which, great, except for the part where Kelly’s been telling him this for the past forty minutes. She’s been on a course, and she has girlfriends, and she knows mansplaining is not ok. Even if she sometimes lets Ryan do it to make him feel better. Actually, she lets lots of men do it. Some men look hot when they think they’re explaining things she doesn’t know, ok, and she shouldn’t be judged for that. 

Jim, not so much. 

But…he’s got this expression on his face, like a very determined puppy, and she feels mean about trampling on that. “You need to plant your flag first,” she reminds him. 

He nods, just as they round the corner onto an empty beach. “It’s going here,” he declares. “I just need to write a message.” 

Kelly glances round the beach. “You think this is where Pam’s going to come looking for your flag?” 

“We found it the other day,” Jim admits. “We were thinking about sneaking off after lunch, before…” He stops himself, like he’s just remembered who he’s talking to, and his ears have gone red.

Kelly is delighted. “Jim! I didn’t know you had it in you. Nasty.” She considers him for the first time, tries to picture him and Pam…well, she’s struggling to see it, because Pam’s so quiet and Jim seems like such a dad, but - maybe? People can have different levels of passion, she guesses. 

She’s also now mentally adding this to her list of hook-up spots for her and Ryan. She won’t tell Jim that, she decides. 

Jim turns away from her, ears still red, and sticks his flag in the ground.  He grabs a twig to start writing in the sand next to it. 

Kelly cranes over his shoulder to see what he’s writing. 

Come to the waterfall.

“Oh my god,” she squeals as she catches on. “Jim, this is so romantic!” She clutches his arm. “And perfect! This is the cutest thing ever, Pam’s going to be so lucky.”

Kelly’s so happy for him that she doesn’t even mind sharing the place she’s going to be seducing Ryan in. She decides she’ll let him and Pam have a corner. 

When she informs Jim as much, he smiles politely but doesn’t say anything else. 

He looks dubious about something, she can see, but she decides to ignore it because they have a waterfall to get to. 

This is going to be so perfect. 

“Perfect,” Isabel says between ground teeth. “Just perfect.” 

They’re lost. 

They’re lost, because Ryan has failed in his completely transparent attempts to get to the singles resort. And part of the reason he failed, Isabel eventually worked out, was because he got distracted trying to hit on her. 

If you could call that hitting on someone. Which Isabel doesn’t, by the way. 

He’s now sulking because she pointed that out. Which is a win, really, because she’ll take a silent Ryan over a sleazy Ryan any day. 

She’s half hoping he’ll give up. Or fall back down the hill she suggested they climb to get a better sense of their location. Either would work for her.

She just - god, she just wants to yell at someone, and that someone is not Ryan. It’s not Ryan Howard-Kapoor, who stares sullenly back at her and doesn’t say anything, just pouts. Ryan Howard-Kapoor with the wrong smile and the wrong height and the wrong stupid gelled hair. She wants a man, not a spoiled little boy.  

She can feel him thinking that she’s a bitch, and she doesn’t give a shit about him, except that she has been a bitch lately. And she does care about that. 

And now she’s going to fuck up this stupid exercise and she’s not going to find Mark’s flag - she’d put her money on him planting it by the dinner buffet for a joke, and she’d been prepared to roll her eyes at him for it - except now she’s not going to find it in time because she has no idea where they are. 

And wouldn’t it be just her luck to die of exposure on a hill in a tropical resort in the middle of a couples building exercise with a guy like Ryan frigging Howard-Kapoor? 

Ok, she knows she’s not going to die of exposure. Her dad taught her better than that. Her brothers taught her better than that. She needs to get a hold of herself. 

(Ryan, on the other hand…there’s a thought. Especially if he looks at her ass one more time).

“Remember how we talked about eyes out front, Howard-Kapoor?” She doesn’t mind using her full height as she says it. It would be so easy, she thinks, to push him back down the hill. He could do with remembering that. 

Ryan scowls. “You were in my way. I wasn’t looking.” 

It’s a feeble lie, and they both know it. Isabel just stares him down. He pulls a face, and drops his gaze. She knows he’s not going to challenge her. She could tell he was a lazy coward within a few minutes of meeting him. The kind of guy her dad would say - 

She catches herself. She’s been doing that a lot lately. Thinking like her dad. Thinking of what he’d have said about something. 

Which is normal, right, after you lose someone? Everyone thinks about stuff like that. She knows that. 

He was an asshole to you. 

Yeah, ok. Mark’s right. She knows that too. Her dad was an asshole. A domineering bully who never knew how to relax and never forgave her for marrying someone with no interest in joining the police or special forces. Her brothers would’ve been disowned. 

Which was why she hadn’t spoken to her dad for well over two years before he died. 

It's just that she’d always assumed she’d make up with him eventually. Or that he’d come around. He had to. 

It’s such a stupid cliche, the daddy issues, but the truth is that she’d had years of competing with her brothers to make him proud, and when she’d realised it was gone - really gone, this time, forever - it had made her pause. She couldn’t help it, and she couldn’t explain it to Mark, because how do you explain that to your husband? She couldn’t even really explain it to herself, which was a first. She always knows exactly what she’s thinking. Exactly what she wants. 

And it’s so dumb, but every time Mark turns something into a joke lately, or gives her one of his eye rolls or shrugs, every time he doesn’t look like he’s trying, she just…she keeps picturing her dad’s expression, his I told you so, and wondering.  

Her fault for not marrying a man’s man, for not marrying someone disciplined or strong enough to match her. She remembers those thoughts written plain as day all over her dad’s face during Mark’s speech at their wedding. The speech that hadn’t mentioned providing for his daughter or respecting her parents, but had made Isabel cry with laughter and then genuine happiness. She’d told Mark afterwards, when he’d whirled her onto the dance floor for some pretty terrible moves, that she wasn’t a sap who cried at weddings - and he’d smirked and called bullshit, until she’d kissed him to shut him up. 

She wants to be that sure again. That’s what she wants. But it was somehow easier to feel surer when she could look her dad in the eye and know he was wrong. When she’d been confident that he’d come to the same realisation over time. 

And maybe it’s not even really about her dad any more. Maybe it’s about her, and Mark, and maybe at the end of the day they’re just not compatible. 

But thinking like that makes her feel physically sick. Thinking about losing him - 

She also just feels pissed off, all the time, and she can’t tell if it’s Mark that she’s pissed off with or just herself. Because she is not this woman. She knows what she wants, and she goes after it. She’s not afraid. 

She’s not Pam. 

She loves Pam to pieces, but she’s not Pam.

She wonders briefly how her friend is getting on with the exercise. She’s willing to bet that at least Dwight won’t have got them lost. At least Dwight seems competent. Unlike the guy whining about a stone in his shoe behind her.

In fact, she bets Dwight will have stuck his flag on top of the tallest hill. That’s probably where she’d have aimed for. At least Pam is in safe hands. Although Isabel also wonders if she’ll now be doubting her ability to take charge and find Jim’s flag. 

It’s not that Pam is a pushover. Far from it. She’s shy at times, sure, but she’s not a wallflower. It’s just that sometimes, she’s so freaking bad at processing her feelings and working out how to ask for what she wants. 

And Isabel has never had that problem. 

It’s why Isabel hadn’t pushed Pam on the Athleap thing, at first. At least not too hard. (Not as hard as she maybe wanted to). She’d known there was an element of Pam needing to get there herself.

Pam needs to work out, for herself, that she’s not happy with her current situation. And then she needs to get over her fear that telling Jim that somehow means she’s not a good partner, or that Jim Halpert, who looks at her like the sun shines out of her every fibre, is somehow going to think a job is more important than she is. 

And yeah, Jim needs to get his head out of his own ass too, and stop assuming that he and Pam know each other so well that they don’t need to, you know, communicate. Like actual people. 

It’s an easier conversation to have, Isabel thinks, than I sometimes worry my father was right and you’re wrong for me, but I can’t I can’t work out if that’s a post dead dad midlife crisis talking, or what it says about me if it is. Especially when actually, Isabel suspects the problem is that Mark has already worked that out and doesn’t know how to respond to it. She thinks perhaps they both know it’s there, in every fight, in every furious accusation and denial that they've hurled at each other recently. 

She’d seen it in Mark’s face as he’d turned and walked back into the villa last night. She knows she had. 

Lack of communication may not, in fact, be their biggest problem.

But for Jim and Pam…well, let’s just say, Mark and Isabel do have other couple friends that they could have invited on this retreat. Yeah. Sorry Jim. Although Isabel genuinely hadn’t been trying to trick them into two weeks of therapy. Just two weeks away, with each other, to move them along with their communication process. It hadn’t been totally devious. 

It had been the one thing she and Mark had agreed on, outside of their decision to come here. 

They’d been sure they’d be able to guilt their friends into joining them. The fact that even that hadn’t cut through Jim’s work obsession or Pam’s silence was mildly concerning, but thank god for Cece. Isabel always knew her goddaughter was a little genius. 

And Isabel now reckons that the therapy - and even Michel’s crazy exercises - might not be the worst thing in the world for them. 

For her and Mark…she’s less clear. 

Because what if they come through these two weeks and realise they really aren’t right for each other? Isabel’s pragmatic side - the one she’s used to - knows that would still be an outcome, and at least then she’d know she needed to move on. Hell, it was would be a miracle if Michel Le Scarn’s insane programme gave her even a fraction of that clarity. 

But her pragmatic side doesn’t seem to have communicated with her head, or her chest, or her stomach, which revolt every time she so much as thinks about her life without Mark in it. The thought of losing him is physically painful. 

And she knows that with all the guys she’s dated before, who were all exactly her type, she’s never - 

“I see it!” 

Ryan has suddenly perked up. 

She follows his gaze to the cluster of buildings on the other side of the island. She can make out the dance floor from here. In fact, more than one dance floor. She knows it’s the singles resort because it’s in exactly the opposite direction from where Ryan had been so cockily heading earlier.

She rolls her eyes. Yeah, she’s not going there. She’s long past her spring break days. And really, so is Ryan. 

“Be my guest,” she tells him. “I have no interest in getting a body shot or a free STD.” 

Because if the singles resort is that way, then the dining hut in their own resort must be due west. She finds herself thinking about the first time she’d taken Mark camping. He’d been camping before, sure, but not Poreba style. His camping involved beer and thrown together tents and limited efforts to consult a map. Classic Mark. 

She remembers him laughing at her side as she strode forcefully up the mountain route she’d plotted, remembers the taste of sweat on his skin as he’d pulled the compass from her hand after they’d bickered about the best path, and he’d convinced her - several times - that a detour wouldn’t hurt. And then more bickering as she’d had to teach him how to navigate by the stars after their last detour lasted a bit too long. 

She remembers his grin under the stars and his arm so easy around her waist, remembers thinking it was the best camping trip she’d ever been on. 

She looks back down the hill she’s just climbed now, and thinks of him sprawled down in the dining hut with that same grin, and she just…argh. 

Ryan, meanwhile, seems to have taken umbrage with whatever he thinks she’s suggesting. “I’m just saying, there are buildings there. It would make sense to go in that direction.” 

“Yeah,” Isabel sighs. “Right.” 

Yeah, she can’t be bothered with this. 

“You know,” Ryan rounds on her. “You’re so judgemental, I bet you-”

She loses the rest of his sentence, though, as he loses his footing and overbalances. And then starts falling down the hill. 

For a second Isabel can only stare. Did she make that happen? 

And then her instinct kicks in and, repressing a groan, she hurries after him. 

Ok, he didn’t fall that far. But he’s now lying on his back, moaning in pain. 

She comes to a stop over his prone body. 

“Get away from me,” he grunts when she bends down next to him. “That was your fault.” 

Isabel rolls her eyes again. “Sure, you tripping over was all on me. Hold still,” she adds, as she scans his legs. “You might hurt yourself more.” 

“I think I broke something,” he retorts between gritted teeth. 

Isabel assesses him. “It doesn’t look like you did.” 

“Last time I checked, a dental hygienist wasn’t the same as a doctor. It’s like, people do one first aid course and suddenly they’re - ow!”

Isabel straightens, releasing his leg with grim satisfaction. “Nope. Not broken.” 

Ryan glares up at her. He mutters something about how Mark wanting a divorce is starting to make more sense, and Isabel just about resists the urge to kick him. Because he’s not broken anything, but she’s pretty sure the swelling at his ankle means he’s at least sprained it. 

“Can you stand?” she asks instead. 

Ryan tries, slightly pathetically, and then falls back down. “No,” he snaps. But some of his bravado is disappearing as he realises the situation he’s in. He shoots Isabel another look. She thinks she catches a small flicker of panic. “You know, if you leave me here and something happens to me, Kelly will sue.”

Isabel raises a brow. “I’m pretty sure I’d be doing Kelly a favour if I left you here.”

“Ok, that’s not even funny-”

“Oh, relax.” Isabel is beyond done with this guy. “I’m not going to leave you.”

Ryan relaxes, marginally, although he still sounds suspicious. “How are you going to fix this, then?” 

For once, Isabel refrains from pointing out that this is not her mess to fix - although the look she gives him leaves him in no doubt - because she’s assessing her options. She reckons she could probably carry him, but a) he’ll be a nightmare the whole way, and b) it will be a very long way. It’ll take her at least an hour.

Great. Just great.  

“What are you doing?” Ryan demands when she reaches for him. He’s flinching back now, like he hasn’t just spent the past hour staring at her ass, and she’s sorely tempted to whack him. “Don’t touch me,” he snits.  

Isabel’s eyes are in danger of rolling to the back of her head at this point. “Oh, I can’t help myself,” she responds drily. “You’re just so irresistible.” 

Ryan’s gaze narrows as he realises she’s being sarcastic. “Yeah, cause you’re so hot.” 

“Wow,” Isabel muses. “You get nasty when you’re feeling like an idiot, don’t you?” 

She’s genuinely wondering whether she should try to knock him out, so that she can carry him without all this aggro.  Seriously, of all the things that had to happen. If she had another person with her, or if she just had -

“Hey. Everything ok?” 

She looks up, startled to discover a shadow has fallen over them. A tall, well-muscled shadow. 

She blinks as she realises Charles Miner is now standing before her. 

He’s holding a hand out pull her to her feet before she can think better of it. He’s strong. She can’t deny that. He’s also clearly just been out on a run, his bare chest gleaming with sweat. 

Wear a shirt, much? 

It’s Mark’s voice that she can hear as she takes Charles in. But, she thinks bitterly, it’s not Mark who’s here when she needs someone to step up. And maybe it's not a fair thought, but nothing about this situation feels fair at the moment. 

She remembers herself and makes a gesture behind her. “Ryan fell.” 

Charle’s gaze skims over the guy, and his evident disdain makes her smile. Just a little. And so does his dry, “Guess your wife isn’t the only one who can’t seem to stay upright, huh?” 

He rolls his eyes at Isabel, and she can’t deny that it feels good as she grins exasperatedly back. 

It also feels good when Charles immediately takes charge, helps her lift Ryan, and has them heading back down the hill within moments.

“So which exercise was it today?” he enquires as they reach the bottom.

They’re both ignoring Ryan, which suits Isabel just fine. 

“The flag one,” she answers wryly, pointing to Ryan’s useless flag. “Although I don’t think anyone’s wife is going to be finding that.” 

Charles just scoffs. “No.” He shakes his head. “I don’t understand how the man even comes up with…anyway. It’s a joke.”  

“You’re the one who works for him,” Isabel laughs. 

Charles sighs back. “Don’t remind me.” 

Isabel laughs again, despite herself, because talking to an adult after an afternoon with Ryan Howard-Kapoor just feels undeniably good. 

It feels less good when she realises Mark and Angela have just descended from the opposite hill. 

Mark. 

He’s not in the dining hut at all. 

He’s standing there, flushed with exertion from his climb, staring at her. Staring at her as she laughs with Charles Miner. 

She’s vaguely aware that Angela appears to be clutching Dwight’s flag. Although Angela doesn’t seem all that smug about it, which Isabel might stop to consider if her eyes weren’t already moving back to Mark. 

Mark is empty handed. 

She takes a step towards him. “Ryan fell.”  

“Right,” is all Mark says. He’s looking at her, not Ryan. And he’s looking at Charles. “Well, I’m glad you’re ok.” 

He turns and walks away from all of them. 

Isabel stands for a moment, clenching her jaw, and then she heads after him. 

He’s going faster than she’d expected - she almost has to run to catch him. Which is a first. She waits until they’re out of earshot from the others, in the trees, before she starts.

“What’s your problem?” 

“Nothing.” Mark’s voice is flat. 

“Come on, Mark.” She can feel her voice rising. “I told you Ryan fell. That was a complete overreaction, and you know it.” 

Mark doesn’t slow his pace. “Nope.” 

“What do you mean, nope? No, you think that was a normal reaction? If you can’t even trust me-” 

He finally turns to face her, at that. “I mean, nope. I’m done.” He looks drained. “I can’t do this any more, Iz.” 

“What are you-”

“I can’t watch you wish I was someone else, ok? It’s exhausting.” He runs a hand through his sweat dampened hair. “If you want to be with a different guy, then just go be with that guy.” 

She feels her stomach whoosh. “That’s it? You’re just…done trying? Just like that?” 

Mark lifts a shoulder. “Yeah. I guess I am.” 

She can see it now, her dad’s I told you so. Mark doesn’t say anything else. He’s not looking at her anymore. 

She thinks about her dad, screaming at her brother, Porebas don’t quit. 

“Ok then,” she says at last. Her voice is dry, almost raspy. “Fine.” 

Maybe she didn’t need to wait two weeks for her answer after all. 

As he squints along a row of palm trees, Dwight has never felt closer to Sun Tzu. He only wishes he’d brought his binoculars. He doesn’t think the unruly mop of Jim Halpert’s hair should be too difficult to spot among the foliage, though. 

He’s like a big, particularly ugly, species of stupid bird. A dodo, perhaps. The thought makes Dwight smirk. Yes. That fits well. 

“What’s so funny?” 

Pam sounds slightly out of breath, and also further behind him than he’d thought. Oh yes. He keeps forgetting that he needs to check his stride so that the woman can keep up. He comes to a stop, impatient, and spares her an assessing glance. 

She looks like she’s already on the verge of giving up. Her cheeks are pink and her hair is exceptionally frizzy. They haven’t even been going for that long. He wonders if he should say something rousing. 

“You know, you’d be in better shape if you got up and ran round your backyard every morning.” 

There, that was encouraging. 

It’s the same advice he gave Mose for his dog last year. 

Pam Halpert really seems to be struggling with this exercise. Dwight had climbed the hill to plant his flag for Angela in record time, which he’d thought was actually quite generous of him, since it gave Pam more time to find her own husband’s flag. And he really didn’t think that task would be hard, since he’d doubted Jim would’ve gone far. 

But the issue was, Pam hadn’t seemed able to decide where he might have gone. 

She’d spent a while dithering, before she’d mumbled something about maybe back to their villa. Dwight had thought that sounded credible for a slacker like Jim Halpert and marched off, Pam in tow. 

But the villa had been empty. 

So now Dwight has taken matters into his own hands. He’d assured Pam he was entirely capable of getting into his enemy’s mindset. He’d done it in 2008 with the Scranton beet bandit, and again in 2010, and again in 2012. Which was how he’d managed to catch the criminal when the police had failed. (Actually, the police hadn’t even really tried. Dwight’s still not sure why). 

Pam had asked, sounding bewildered, when Jim had become his enemy. Dwight had ignored her, since she obviously didn’t understand how modern warfare worked. Everyone on the island who might beat him at these exercises is an enemy, and if Pam doesn’t see that, then there’s no hope for her.

But Dwight thinks he’s doing a pretty good job of trying to imagine he’s a directionless clown now, so that he can retrace Jim’s footprints. He’s also keeping an eye out for Jim’s actual footprints. Obviously. If he ever needed proof that his tracking skills were a key addition to his CV, and that all those recruiters were wrong, then this would be it. He doesn’t need proof, of course. He already knew that. But he can’t deny that the vindication feels…satisfying. 

He crouches down by some crushed leaves. Inhales. 

“This way,” he informs Pam. “We’re getting closer.” 

Pam looks confused as she stumbles after him. “How do you know?”

Dwight taps his nose. “Because I can smell alcohol.” His nostrils flare. “And sweat.” 

“Uh…ok?” 

Dwight refrains from rolling his eyes. It’s sort of like teaching a small child. (And he needs to know that he can - do that. He must be able to do that). “Fact. Your husband has not returned to the villa, and he’s not by the pool. Since I can’t imagine he would ever survive in the wilderness,” Dwight snorts a little at the mere idea, “He must have gone to the only other place offering shelter, food, and an easy time.”

He gets a blank look back. Pam, Pam, Pam. 

“The singles resort,” he explains with a nod. “That’s where he’ll be.” 

Pam comes to a stop then. A complete stop. It takes Dwight a second to notice, and to see that she’s now covered her face with one of her hands. “He’s not going to be there.” Her voice is muffled and weary and a bit strange. 

Dwight scoffs. “I’m sure you’d rather he wasn’t, but-”

“Dwight. That’s not where he’ll be.” She definitely sounds tired. 

And, he sees, she’s now sitting down. She’s sitting down! Just in the middle of a forest, with no regard for where she’s planting her posterior. Like she thinks they’re having some kind of picnic. 

Or is she having a breakdown? Dwight’s not sure. 

“We need to go,” he points out. “You’re not going to find him like this.” 

But Pam doesn’t move. Perhaps she really is having a breakdown. She’s still covering her face. Her shoulders are hunched.

He doesn’t know the best way to handle this. Children don’t have nervous breakdowns. Do they? 

He thinks about what he does when Angela gets upset. She needs physical contact, usually. She likes being squeezed. Well, that, or left alone entirely. It’s a fine balance. 

He considers Pam. Pam, he knows, is not Angela. 

He could treat her like one of his nervous fillies. That approach sometimes works with other women. Yes, he decides. 

“Just because your husband’s gone to the singles resort doesn’t necessarily mean he’s having an affair.” He keeps his voice low and gentle, soothing. Just like he had with his cow Urte, that time she’d run into difficulties calving. “I doubt many women would find him attractive there anyway. He’s well past his prime.” He’d actually just assumed Jim would be looking for a drink or a burger, rather than a woman.  

Pam makes this strained noise. 

Dwight crouches down next to her, reaching out a hand to pat her shoulder. Horses like that. And, he remembers, so do children. “I have no doubt that you’d get custody if it came to it. Jim seems like he’d be a useless father.” 

(It’s on the tip of his tongue, the foolish urge to ask her about her children. Foolish and irrational, he remembers sternly, because he should have no interest in the Halperts’ children. Or Jim Halpert’s fatherhood skills). 

“Jim’s not having an affair.” Pam’s shaking, and it takes Dwight a second to realise she’s - laughing? Is she laughing? Laughing or groaning, he’s not sure which. Maybe she’s crying. 

Dwight might have questioned her assertion, but it seems like the first thing she’s been sure of all afternoon. 

“Unless that affair is with someone called Athleap,” she adds miserably.

Dwight frowns. “That’s a stupid name.” 

“That’s…yep. He didn’t choose it.” 

She starts saying something about how Jim would have chosen it if he’d joined when he was meant to join, which doesn’t make much sense. But Dwight remembers that small children speak gibberish sometimes, and decides it’s for the best to just let her prattle on for a bit. 

He pats her shoulder again once she’s done. “So where do you think Jim might be now?” He uses his best, most patient, voice. “With this Athlead person?” 

He did a headcount on the boat, and he’s been keeping a watchful eye out for intruders, so he can’t see how this person could be on the island. But maybe he’ll be able to decipher a clue from whatever it is Pam thinks she’s saying. 

Pam makes a noise under her breath. She looks like she’s about to answer something, mouth twitching, but then seems to change her mind. “Maybe.” She’s very quiet all of a sudden. “He might have got distracted.” 

She looks dejected enough, for a moment, that Dwight leaves his hand on her shoulder. No one should be making her look that dejected. Least of all her husband. “That’s unacceptable,” he informs her. “This exercise is supposed to be about your relationship. You can’t get distracted from that.” 

It’s a no-brainer. Jim Halpert really is an idiot. 

Pam hesitates. “That’s not…I mean, he might not be - I don’t know.” She shifts in her spot. She’s back to looking uncertain again, her forehead all creased, which Dwight doesn’t like. 

“There should be two people in your marriage,” Dwight reprimands her. “Not three. You need to tell him that.” He straightens. “I say we go find this Athleak whore and destroy her.” He pauses. “Or him.” (That might make sense, actually). 

Pam looks up at him. There’s the faintest trace of a smile on her face now, although she still looks troubled. But she lets Dwight pull her to her feet. 

“Where do you think Jim might have been going before he got distracted?” Dwight prompts her as he relocates the path. He’s going to crack this.

Pam pauses, worrying her lip. “There’s this beach that we were thinking about. He might’ve tried to go there.” 

Excellent, Dwight thinks. Progress. “Lead the way,” he instructs. (Now he just has to hope her navigational skills are better than the average female’s). 

But once Pam gets moving, after a bit more hesitation, she does seem to have some idea where she’s going. Dwight even remembers not to stride on too far ahead. And he stops her getting hit in the face with some branches, and helps her over a stream. Her husband, he thinks, should be the one doing this for her. But Dwight will do it if not. 

When he tells her this, she swallows and shakes her head. 

“Jim does this kind of stuff.” Her voice is soft as she clambers over some roots.  “It’s part of the reason I fell in love with him. He’s always so thoughtful, and caring, and just…Jim.”

Dwight gives her a beady-eyed look. “Don’t get any ideas.” He’s happily married, after all, and Pam is far from his type. And it’s not about being thoughtful and caring, anyway, it’s about practicality. Men are supposed to look after their women. 

Pam makes a choking noise. Dwight wonders if she accidentally swallowed a fly. “No, yeah. Uh, you’re ok.” 

“Well,” Dwight points out, once he’s satisfied Pam’s not about to launch herself at him, “Maybe Jim needs someone to remind him to do it now.” He tries not to sound too superior (although not too hard, because why should he). “Some men need that.” 

Dwight is not one of those men. He would never shirk his duty. Or get distracted. 

“It’s not that he doesn’t…” 

Pam can’t quite finish the sentence, though, because they both know Jim isn’t here now. And if she could have relied on him to be where she’d expected, then perhaps they might have already been reunited. 

Dwight, for example, is perfectly confident that Angela will have found his flag by now. Which he doesn’t hesitate to remind Pam of, as he shoves aside another branch for her. 

He just hopes Angela timed herself. Really, Michel should have been timing them, but he keeps telling them he hasn’t whenever Dwight asks. Actually, he seemed to get quite annoyed when Dwight asked again after the last exercise. Maybe the heat got to him. But how else are Dwight and Angela supposed to know whether they’re winning? 

“Aren’t you worried about how high she would’ve had to climb to get your flag?” 

Pam’s question interrupts his thoughts. He blinks, then narrows his eyes. Well, that’s a stupid question. Why’s she asking that? 

“Of course not,” he dismisses as they continue through the trees. “She would’ve expected me to put in the highest spot on the island. Anything less would be weakness.” 

Pam seems to consider this. He doesn’t know what she needs to consider. It’s obvious. 

“My wife wouldn’t want to be married to someone weak,” he explains testily, since Pam still doesn’t seem convinced. And that’s clearly the difference between Angela and Pam. He’s about to point that out, when Pam says - 

“But surely by now you don’t need to keep proving that to her?” 

Dwight stiffens. 

“I’m just saying,” Pam goes on, cautiously, “Couldn’t you, um, take a break, for once? Or just…do something to make things easier for her? For both of you?”

Dwight can feel himself bristling. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffs. He doesn’t take shortcuts. Neither does Angela. 

“I don’t think that’s ridiculous.” 

Dwight’s gaze shoots to her. But she’s got that quiet certainty about her, again, as she looks back at him. It throws him. 

And maybe that’s why he finds himself responding, voice rigid, “False. I do need to keep proving it to her.” He can feel himself scowling, the words sticking in his throat. “There are other ways to be a weak husband. To not provide.” 

Because even Jim Halpert has managed to provide Pam with that much. Jim Halpert has given his wife a family. Dwight hasn’t. So there will be no shortcuts or slapdash exercises or losing on this island. Because he’s not going to let Angela down, or show a single failing, in any other aspect of their lives. Not one. 

He slashes at some overhanging foliage. “Now,” he demands, “Where’s this beach?” 

He can feel Pam gazing at him. She says, finally, softly, “I’m sorry.” Something about the way she says it makes Dwight still, because he hadn’t realised she might be that perceptive. Maybe it’s just a woman’s intuition. That sounds plausible. She pauses, and shakes her head. “Dwight,” she murmurs, “I don’t think that makes you weak.” 

The words hang between them, and Dwight feels something strange loosen inside him. He reminds himself that Dwight K. Schrute does not apologise. “Why are you sorry?” He kicks a stone out of the way. “Have you forgotten where the beach is?” 

Pam opens her mouth, then closes it. She shakes her head again. “No,” she says at last. “It’s the next left.” There’s still something gentle in her tone, but he ignores it. He doesn’t have time for - that. 

Fortunately she seems to have got the hint. Which is good, because they need to focus on the task at hand. Which he now feels an odd compulsion to help her with. It’s a stronger compulsion than before. 

Anyway. 

He marches on, because they’ve got a beach and a useless Halpert to locate. 

“Oh my god Jim, we’ve been waiting for so long. Do you think something happened to Ryan? What if something happened to him, Jim?” 

Jim doesn’t think that anything has happened to Ryan, unless that thing is a gaggle of girls from the singles resort. But he can’t bring himself to tell Kelly that. He glances round the waterfall instead, trying to make himself feel better by appreciating its beauty again. It really is a gorgeous spot. Tucked out of sight behind a cave, the only sound the rushing water, dappled in the afternoon sunlight. 

It reminds him of their wedding. Of another, bigger waterfall and Pam’s warm hand in his, the spray in her damp hair as he kissed her against the boat railings, his heart thumping and her laugh soft and all his.   

He knows Pam will have seen it in the brochure. He knows she’d have wanted to come here, even if she hadn’t said anything.  

He knows she’ll love it. 

When she gets here. 

If she gets here. 

He’d felt quietly confident when they’d arrived. Confident that she’d have headed straight for the beach, and that she’d see his message and be on her way. 

He remembers the scavenger hunt he’d done for her that first Valentine’s day after they’d started dating. Remembers waiting anxiously in the parking lot outside Meredith’s (by then closed) bar, where they’d had their first kiss. His brothers had snorted that it was a lame idea, rife for disaster, when he’d made the mistake of mentioning it in front of them. (He now makes sure his brothers are out of earshot if his mom asks him about any of Pam’s gifts).

What if she doesn’t find you, Jimmy? 

For a moment, waiting in that lot, he’d let it get to him. The fear that maybe the clues might not have meant the same to her as they did him, that maybe he’d put too much significance into the small things and Pam would be stuck alone and confused in her apartment, on Valentine’s day, wondering what her boyfriend was playing at. 

He’d just been fumbling for his cell, ready to call her to apologise - when she’d appeared. She’d looked slightly, adorably dishevelled as she’d hurtled into the lot, her gaze seeking his. And then her smile when she’d seen him had made him forget everything else. 

“I’m sorry,” she’d panted as he’d pulled her into his arms, as his lips had found hers, as she’d buried her face in his neck. “I found all your clues, but then I couldn’t find my keys, and I thought,” she’d gulped, shaking her head, “I thought I was going to miss you because I couldn’t find my stupid keys.”

She’d sounded so agonised that he’d felt a laugh rumbling in his throat as he’d held her. “Were they in your coat pocket from yesterday?” he’d murmured, one hand running over her back. 

She’d clung to his collar. “See,” she’d been sheepish. “This is why I need you.” 

He’d grinned down at her. “I knew there had to be some reason you wanted to go out with me.” 

“Yeah,” she’d whispered as his lips met hers again, and she melted against him, “I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason.” 

(They'd moved in together not long after that, and the first thing he'd bought her had been a key rack. She's still got it hanging in their house in Philly now, and she still constantly forgets to use it).  

She’d found him then, all those years ago. So he’d been confident that she’d find him at the waterfall. 

But the minutes have ticked by, and now that worry is starting to gnaw at him again. Because, Kelly’s right. They have been waiting here for a long time. Nearly an hour. 

And there’s no sign of her. 

He wonders if something has happened to her, if Dwight’s done something, and he can feel his chest tightening. Then for a second he wonders if he’s as deluded as Kelly.

But this is Pam. 

It’s them. 

Right? 

Kelly pulls her cell out. He’s already checked, though, and he knows there’s no reception here. And now he’s thinking about Athleap, and Bridgeport, and the ball of worry in his chest is only expanding.

“We need to leave,” Kelly declares. “I need to call Ryan and make sure he’s ok.” 

Jim hesitates. He knows that he can’t call Pam, because she doesn’t have her phone. And what if she’s on her way here? He’d told her, all those years ago in the parking lot, that she didn’t have to worry about missing him, because he wouldn’t have gone anywhere. 

(But he also remembers her pulling away from him during the trust fall and he can’t help the thought that slithers into the back of his mind now. What if she’s not on her way?) 

“Ok,” he says at last. He tears his eyes away from the waterfall, the sparkling water  that’s now starting to feel like it’s mocking him. “Let’s go.” 

There’s still a part of him that keeps hoping, as they head out of the clearing, that Pam will appear. That he’ll find her panting and dishevelled and hurrying towards him. So that he can draw her into his arms, and drink in her quiet smile and her laugh until everything feels ok again. 

But she’s not round the corner. And she’s not on the path. 

And he just - 

He wants his wife. He wants Pam. 

They continue along the path, and there’s still no sign of her. No sign of her when they start crossing the rope bridge over the river, either. She can’t have gone to the beach, he thinks. Why hadn’t she gone to the beach? Had something happened with Dwight, or had she just…not gone? He thinks of that expression on her face, just before they’d separated for the exercise, and it hurts. 

“One bar!” Kelly yells from behind him on the bridge, at the same time as he feels his pocket buzz. 

For a moment he ignores it. 

He feels drained, and dejected, and right now the last thing he wants to do is deal with Athleap and that familiar tangle of stress that’s been wearing him down for months. 

But his blackberry keeps buzzing. And buzzing. And he remembers all the reasons why he needs to deal with it, why he can’t just slack off like he would’ve done with his previous job, why he can’t afford to fail at this. 

He’s dimly aware of Kelly now speaking to Ryan on the phone - “Wait, what? Isabel tried to kill you?!” - but he forces himself to tune her out as he tugs his own phone out of his pocket. He’s got twelve missed calls, he sees, which makes him feel even sicker. 

He braces himself and picks up. 

Lucas is beside himself on the end of the line. “Finally, man. Where have you been?” 

Jim pinches the bridge of his nose and resists the urge to snap, on holiday. He can hear the panic in Lucas’ voice. Which isn’t a good sign. “What’s wrong?” 

“It’s not good,” Lucas tells him. “It’s really not good. We…we lost Bridgeport.” 

Jim feels a bit dizzy. “You’re kidding.” 

No no no. This can’t be happening. 

“No, man. They pulled out.” 

Months, Jim thinks weakly. He spent months trying to land Bridgeport. Months of missing dinners with Pam, working weekends instead of playing with Cece and Phil. All meant to be worth the sacrifice, because it had got them forty percent of their investment. Forty percent. Gone. This seriously can’t be happening. 

“Can’t you call them back in?” he attempts, half desperate. “Look, just get them on the phone, and I’ll-”

“THAT’S NOT ALLOWED!” 

There’s a howl that Jim barely has time to register, before something slams into him. 

“What the hell-?” 

Jim’s grunt is muffled as his blackberry goes flying out of his hand. Out of his hand, and over the side of the bridge. He lunges for it, panicked, but he can only watch as it smashes down into river below. It bounces once, twice, three times against different rocks, before it splinters into what looks like twenty pieces in the rushing water. 

Jim stares at the ruined fragments of metal and thinks numbly that he’s not sure he knows how to call Lucas back on that.

He’s so stunned that it takes him a second to realise that the weight on top of him is a victorious Dwight. 

“You were supposed to hand your phone in,” Dwight declares smugly. He hasn’t budged off Jim’s chest. “No more secret calls to Athleaf for you.”

Jim can feel anger surging with his wild panic now. 

“What the hell, Dwight? Get off me!” 

He shoves, hard, and Dwight growls and reaches for his wrists. “I know fifty different ways to incapacitate you, so don’t even try it-”

“Dwight. Get off him.” 

Jim is so incensed, and still so uncomprehending about what just happened, that Pam’s voice is a jolt. 

And what’s even more surprising is that Dwight seems to listen. He releases Jim’s wrists and clambers to his feet. 

Jim jumps up after him, his fists clenched. “What the fuck was that,  Dwight?” He’s now only half aware of Pam as he rounds on the other man. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” 

“Yes,” Dwight informs him. “Saved your marriage.” He draws himself upright. “You’re lucky I don’t go and tell Michel right now, and get you thrown off this island.”

Jim wants to scream. “Who does that? What is wrong with you?!”

“Oh my god,” Kelly whispers, still on the phone to Ryan. “Baby, I think Jim and Dwight have just gone psycho too. These people are all cray-cray.” A beat. “Yeah, don’t worry, I’m totally filming them.” 

It’s Pam who intervenes then. “Jim. Let’s go back to the villa.” 

“I’m not going anywhere until he fixes my phone!” 

Jim is vaguely aware he may, in fact, sound like a crazy person at this point. But he still can’t believe what Dwight has just done. And he has no idea what the hell he’s meant to do now. 

Dwight just smirks triumphantly back. “Believe me, no one’s fixing that phone.” 

“Then - give me yours!”

Jim feels Pam catch his arm. “Jim,” she says again. 

Dwight is now spluttering, outraged, that he handed his phone in. “I don’t cheat, unlike some people!”

Jim tenses again, and it’s only Pam’s fingers against his forearm that bring him back. Standing here yelling, he realises with hopeless frustration, is not going to bring his phone back. Or fix any of this. 

He’s still shaking - with rage, he thinks, and disbelief - as he lets Pam steer him away. 

“I can’t believe he did that,” he says blankly, when they finally get back to the privacy of their villa.  

He hears Pam swallow. Her hand is still on his arm. “I’m sorry.” 

“I need…can I use your phone?” He needs to call Lucas back. He needs to sort this. 

Pam goes still. “I only get my phone for half an hour, remember? To call the kids.” There’s something strange about her voice, but he’s too wound up to stop and think about it. 

“I know. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.” 

She’s let go of him now. “Is it really that important?”

“Yes, Pam!” 

Her question stings. Does she seriously not believe him? 

He’s about to say more, when there’s a knock at their door. 

Jim is more than ready to tell Andy to get lost when he opens it, because unless he’s bringing Pam’s phone, that guy is the last thing they need right now. 

Only it’s not Andy. It’s Isabel. And she looks distraught. More distraught than Jim has ever seen her. 

“Hey.” She run a hand through her hair. “I’m really sorry to interrupt, guys. I just…Pam, do you have a second?” Her voice sounds like it’s on the verge of breaking. 

Pam’s brow is already knitted in concern as she sees the same thing. “Yeah. Sure.” She moves over to her, away from Jim. “We’ll go outside.” She barely looks in his direction. "You can use my phone,” she mutters, "When Andy brings it.”  

The door shuts behind her. 

The villa feels deafeningly quiet in her absence, and as he stands there, one of his fists still clenched, he realises he’s not sure what to do about it. 

Ok, so deciding to get wasted after that clusterfuck of an exercise might not have been the wisest decision Mark ever made. 

But also, if his marriage is ending, then maybe it is the wisest decision. 

All he knows is, the bartenders here are very liberal with the rum, and pina coladas are not as much fun when he doesn’t have Iz there to tease about drinking girly drinks. He’d once told her anything with a pink umbrella fell into that category, so she’d made a point of buying pink umbrellas to put into his beer for weeks. 

He hates the dumb lonely unfunny pink umbrella in his dumb drink now. 

Fuck. 

“There you are.” 

The familiar, relieved voice makes him glance up from his drunken haze. 

“Jesus, Halpert.” Mark squints at his friend. “You look even worse than I do.” 

Jim pulls a face as he drops down onto the bar stool next to him. “Thanks.” His shoulders are tight. 

“What happened?” 

Jim shakes his head. “It’s…a long story. What’s going on with you and Iz?” He sounds concerned. “Are you ok?” 

Mark sucks some more pina colada through a straw. “Maybe not such a long story.” He looks dully at his wedding band. “I told her I didn’t want to do this anymore.” 

Jim’s eyes widen, which Mark could’ve predicted. But yeah, he still can’t really believe he said those words either.  Or if he even…he meant it, he thinks. He meant it when he said he was done, because feeling like this is shit, and he’s tired of it. He meant it, but he now he feels even shittier, and he hadn’t meant - he hadn’t meant that he wanted to lose her. But that’s what he’d said, right? 

He doesn’t really know where that leaves him. Or what he’s meant to do now. 

And did he mention he hates pina coladas? 

“Are you sure?” Jim murmurs. 

Right, because this is Jim, and Jim knows him. Unlike the bartender who’d just nodded understandingly and poured him another drink. 

“I…honestly? I have no idea.” Mark lets the rum and coconut burn his throat. “About anything, really.” 

Although he does know that whoever thought cream and Bacardi was a good combination is a sadist. They’d had pina coladas on their honeymoon, and she’d tasted so good that he hadn’t stopped to think about it. Maybe they only taste good with her. 

He’s tired. He’s so goddamn tired. (And scared. He’s fucking terrified, under all of this, and he knows it). 

And speaking of tired and/or scared - 

“Seriously, Jimbo. What’s up with you?” 

Jim’s jaw slides. “I’m thinking about flying home at the end of this week.” 

Mark levels a stare at him. Oh, Christ. “Is Pam happy with that?” He thinks he already knows the answer to that one. 

“I haven’t spoken to her yet,” Jim manages, proving him right. “I just…asked Michel what the flights were like. I don’t know.” 

“Well, that sucks.” 

Jim starts saying something about Athleap, and Dwight throwing his phone off a bridge, and Dwight freaking Schrute is really not someone Mark wants to hear much about now. The guy been in the bar earlier, bragging about how he and Angela had won the flag exercise, and that was when Mark had started on the pina coladas. Dwight also hadn’t seemed to notice, in all his glee, that his wife maybe wasn’t quite as gleeful as he was. Mark’s sure he caught her giving him a quick look, before she scowled and turned away. 

Maybe it was because of their conversation earlier, or maybe it was just because she likes scowling. Who’s to say, really? 

All Mark knows is that he blames the Schrutes for the last four pina coladas that he definitely shouldn’t have had. And it’s probably the Schrutes’ fault that Jim is now reaching for a pina colada too. 

“Dwight Schrute is the worst,” Mark tells him. 

Dwight Schrute is also Isabel’s type. Mark isn’t. And he doesn’t know what to do about that any more.  

“He is.” Jim’s fingers tighten round his glass. “I just - ugh. I wish someone would take him down a peg.” 

Mark drains the sickly remnants of his drink. “You should prank him.” 

“Aren’t we meant to be adults now?” Jim glances sideways at him, his mouth half curling.

Mark’s laugh is hollow. “Yeah.” 

Yeah, adults definitely wouldn’t do this. If they were acting like adults, Jim would go and talk to his wife about this stupid Athleap mess before he makes things ten times worse, and Mark would… 

Well, Mark still doesn’t know the answer to that. 

Fuck.

“I really want to take Dwight down,” Jim states. 

Mark is dimly aware that there’s something wrong with his friend, because this is not Jim Halpert speak, and Jim Halpert is not stupid enough to not know that he doesn’t need to talk to Pam like right now. But Mark is also drunk, and he doesn’t like pina coladas, and he thinks he might have finally gone too far and lost Isabel for good.  

So he just says, “Ok.” 

Pam wakes to an unfamiliar body sprawled on the mattress next to her. Snoring. Loudly. 

She rolls over onto her back, rubbing her eyes. She forgot how much Isabel snores. Mark is the only person Pam’s ever met who always seems completely unfazed by it. He just finds it hilarious. 

Or, he did. 

(He must still do. Surely. You don’t just stop loving that about someone. Do you?)

Pam lies there and gazes up at the tendrils of dawn light creeping over the ceiling. 

It’s early enough that she can hear the low hum of cicadas or crickets outside, and the distant swell of waves under Isabel’s snores. Sounds that remind her of their honeymoon, of summer vacations and that trip to Jamaica where he wrote their initials in the sand and kissed her with the surf breaking around them. Where he went back and carefully collected the smoothest whitest pebbles he could find just because she’d murmured something about wanting to capture the moment that night. That moment with the feel of his arms around her and his breath stirring his hair, and the way the moonlight glittered off the pebbles as he held her. 

Sounds, she thinks now, of a holiday that she just wanted to enjoy with him. 

She’s not normally up first. The past few mornings, Jim has been the one waking her, gently murmuring her name while she buries her face in the pillow and groans for a few more minutes. It was only yesterday morning that she’d woken to his lips trailing her bare shoulder, his smile sleepy and unfocused as he gazed down at her.

He hadn’t woken her up like that for a while. 

And now she can’t imagine when he’s going to do it again. 

He’d turned up late last night, and she could smell the rum on his breath. But whatever he’d drunk with Mark hadn’t slipped him into tipsy adorable Jim, the one with the goofy smile and rumpled hair and lopsided affection that always makes her laugh. There had been no twinkle in his eye, or bursts of singing, or giggling. She hasn’t seen that Jim in a while. 

He’d been distracted instead, his shoulders still tight, frown lines etched into his forehead. 

And he’d been mumbling something about getting Dwight, and how he needed her help, like that was his only focus. It had hurt her all over again. She couldn’t find a way to put that into words, though, because she never can. Not when she’s feeling like that, blocked and choked and…she doesn’t know. 

So she’d just told him that Isabel was going to crash, and he should probably head to Mark’s villa and sleep there for the night. 

He’d paused, looking down at her. “Yeah,” he’d said at last. “I guess that makes sense.” 

He’d looked like he wanted to say something else, but at that point she hadn’t wanted to hear that he was planning to cut their holiday short, or that he’d booked the next flight back, or whatever it was she was sure he’d been considering. So she’d ducked away from him, her chest aching, and said, “Night.” 

She’d ducked his kiss, too, his lips grazing her cheek instead. 

“Night,” he’d murmured thickly. His head had still been bowed from where he’d moved to kiss her, his mouth close and his voice low. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

She could see his lashes against his cheek as she stood there, close enough to breathe him in, his hand hanging loose at her side. And for a second, the urge to catch his hand and guide him back to bed had been overwhelming. To pull his body against hers, to feel him warm and unsteady and laughing again as she pushed his hair out of his eyes and they tumbled onto the mattress. To feel his familiar smile on her. To forget. 

Except he wasn’t smiling, and neither was she. 

And she’s so sick of trying to forget, and pretending everything’s fine, and swallowing down her hurt and fear and guilt every time it threatens to lurch up and ruin everything. 

So she’d just nodded, and slid back into the room before he could see her cry. 

Fortunately Isabel had been in the bathroom, which meant she hadn’t seen her cry either. 

Pam’s worried about her. And Mark. Isabel rarely gets upset by things, so the state she’d been in last night was concerning enough, even without what she’d told Pam about her conversation with Mark. 

Pam had tried to convince her that Mark couldn’t possibly have meant what he’d said. 

“He still said it,” was all Isabel answered. Like that was answer enough. 

All Pam could really do then was hug her, and plead with her to talk to Mark again once they’d both cooled down. Isabel hadn’t looked convinced. 

“Ok. What’s going on?” 

Pam jumps, now, at the drowsy voice behind her. She realises too late that the snoring has stopped. She turns to find Isabel’s narrowed sleepy eyes on her, her friend now propped up on one elbow as she studies her. 

“Nothing.” Pam clears her throat. “How did you sleep?” 

“Terribly. And don’t tell me nothing.” Isabel gives her a nudge. “You’re the worst liar, Pamela Morgan Beesly. You looked like you were about to burn a hole in the ceiling.”  

“Halpert,” Pam corrects weakly. It was meant to sound jokey, but the name - his name, their name - gets a bit stuck in her throat. Stupid. She’s being so stupid. 

Isabel shakes her head. “All right. What’s going on with the other Halpert?” 

Pam starts to say nothing, again, until Isabel fixes her with a look. “He’s…having a tough time with work,” she eventually admits. 

Her friend regards her. “He’s on holiday, Pam.” 

“I know.” 

But, she thinks. There always a but, always a reason, and she always understands it - she does, she really does - but she’s so sick of…just. She doesn’t want to understand it any more, she wants to tell him it’s not fair and she wants her husband back and she doesn’t want to share him with Athleap or a smashed blackberry. 

But how’s she meant to tell him that? 

So she just says to Isabel, again, uselessly, “I know.” 

She can feel Isabel still watching her. In the end Isabel just sighs, and squeezes her arm. “Some holiday, huh?” 

“Yeah,” Pam manages. She squeezes her friend back. 

They’re interrupted by the arrival of a very chipper Andy. Who takes a few seconds to realise that Pam is not currently in bed with Jim. His jaw drops when he does. 

“You’ve - who’s - oh. Ohh. By all means, please continue!” He waves between the two half-dressed women, almost looking away, but not quite. “Or maybe - erm, don’t? Technically, you are meant to be here to work on your marriages. But that’s not to say that - I mean, I’m completely cool with this, obviously. No problems here. No sir. Ma’am. Ma’ams. Right on!”

Pam glances at Isabel, who snorts. “Great,” she says drily. “Thanks.” 

Andy beams and nods. “Anything I can get for your two ladies? Anything at all, I’m your man. Not that you need a man, or anything. Hah!” 

Isabel rolls her eyes. “Maybe you could get out? We need to shower.” 

The guy’s face lights up. “Together?” 

“Shut the door behind you.” 

Andy looks a little disappointed, but also like he’s not about to cross Isabel. “Of course. Right this secondo. Leaving now. Unless you need anything?”  He sees Isabel’s arched brow, and starts backing off. “Oh,” he adds, “But I should also just tell you that you need to be at the pavilion in treinta minutos for Michel’s first exercise of the day.”  

Oh, god. Pam’s not sure she can face another exercise right now. Isabel looks about the same. The temptation to just slide back into bed, once Andy has finally gone, is strong. 

She doesn’t, though. She makes herself get up. Because she knows that Isabel needs to talk to Mark, and because she can’t do that to Jim. (Even if a horrible part of her wonders if he’s already got himself booked on a flight home). But she knows he’ll be stressed, and she can’t stand him feeling like that. She can’t just leave him. 

And maybe…maybe she should follow her own advice, and speak to him now that they’ve had a chance to cool down. Maybe he’ll have come back to himself after a night’s sleep. 

Yeah. Maybe. 

“Today is natural reconnection day! Time to be at one with ze nature, and ze birds and bees, and ze fishes, and…er…” 

“Each other,” Oscar supplies. 

“Eh?” Michel gives him a blank look. This morning he’s wearing some kind of animal skin with a wreath of leaves around his neck. And paint, Jim thinks. On his face. Jim’s not sure what it’s meant to be.  “Oui, oui,” Michel dismisses, waving Oscar away. “Anyway! For ze first exercise, you will be-” 

Jim tunes out the rest of Michel’s explanation about their first exercise, though, because he’s acutely aware that Pam is still not quite meeting his gaze. 

He’d been miserable without her last night, and even more miserable waking up without her in his bed. (Not his bed, really, without Pam in it). It had reminded him of business trips and nights tossing and turning in lonely hotel rooms. 

Except last night he hadn’t had the thought of going home to her to help him sleep. Of her smile when he walked through the door and Cece hurtling herself into his arms and Phil wrapping himself round his legs, and all the familiar scents of their house and Pam’s hair under his nose, and that look in her eyes that’s just for him, that tells him he’s home. 

Instead, last night, all he could think about was the fact that she hadn’t been smiling at all when he’d come into their villa. 

She looks tired now, he thinks with a pang. He knows he must look even worse, based on how he felt when he woke up this morning. About as bad as Mark, in fact, who’s currently slumped against the side of the pavilion with his arms folded. He’s barely even pretending to listen to Michel. 

Isabel is standing on the other side. As far away from her husband as possible. Pam’s with her, and Jim tries to tell himself it’s just because she’s being there for friend.

Just like when she turned Jim away last night. 

Except she hadn’t turned up at the waterfall, and he’d known even through his drunkenness that there was something wrong with her last night, and now she’s not looking at him. 

He’d resolved this morning to do what he’d been avoiding and talk to her properly. To explain what had happened with Athleap, and ask her about potential flights home. 

Michel had been surprisingly accommodating last night when he’d caught him, and even let him use his phone to call Lucas back. Actually, he’d just seemed delighted one of his guests had sought him out. (Which made Jim suspect it didn’t happen often. If ever). Anything for you, Jimbo! 

Lucas and the rest of the team had sounded despairing. It was too late to get Bridgeport back on the phone at that hour, so Jim had agreed that the only option left was for him to try to get back to Athleap. Maybe then they could head to Bridgeport’s offices in person.

And Jim feels like the shittiest person and the worst husband in the world for asking Pam if they can cut their holiday short (which, he knows, is why he’s been putting the conversation off), but he doesn't know what else to do. They can’t afford to lose Bridgeport. 

And, he tries to justify to himself, if Pam tells him she really doesn’t want to leave early - then he won’t. He’ll find a way to make it work. Somehow. 

Except…Pam’s not looking at him. 

So how’s he meant to - 

“Move it, idiot.” 

It takes Jim a second to realise Michel has wrapped up his monologue, and that Dwight has just shoved past him. 

Jim feels his jaw tighten. 

He hasn’t forgotten that Dwight is the entire reason he’s in this position. 

His other resolution this morning, with the memory of Pam’s face last night, had been to put the Dwight thing behind him for now. He knows, really, that his focus needs to be on talking to his wife, and not the half baked revenge pranks he and Mark had come up with at the bar. 

(Mark always finds Jim’s pranks very funny, but Jim forgot that Mark is actually…less good, at the actual pranking part. There’s only one person who thinks the same way Jim does about this stuff, who actually improves his ideas and comes up with her own genius ones, who knows how to execute them perfectly with him without even trying. Which is why the idea had suddenly seemed less appealing when he’d gone to her last night, and her face had just fallen when he’d mentioned it. Because if his partner in crime isn’t interested then…well, he doesn’t know what to do).

But Dwight throws a sneer over his shoulder now, as he struts on ahead to wherever they’re meant to be going, and good god he’s unbearable. 

“Hey.” 

Pam’s quiet voice behind him temporarily snaps him out it. 

“Hey.” He turns to face her, swallowing. “Are you ok?” He studies her. “Did you…sleep well?” 

She hesitates. “Yeah. Ok.” She’s fiddling with her wedding ring. 

She’s lying, he knows. “Yeah?” He goes to reach for her hand. It’s a little clumsy, a little tentative, but she stills. Stops her fiddling as his fingers brush hers. As he grazes the gold of her ring, the matching band to his own. It still gives him a warm thrill this many years later. He’ll catch himself twisting his own ring sometimes when he’s stressed, a quiet comfort. 

He sees her expression soften infinitesimally at his touch. 

“Well. Isabel’s snoring was…kind of intense.” Her gaze finally meets his. There’s a half smile on her face, and he lets his hand squeeze hers as he gives her a small grin back.    

“She’s still just as loud?” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“Well,” he tells her, “I think my back’s bruised. Mark must have kicked me at least twenty times last night.” 

It’s not the best joke, but it’s enough to make her laugh a bit. Even if she is still uncertain. Her hand is still in his. “I have no idea how they share a bed,” she murmurs.  

Their smiles dim, slightly, as they remember exactly why their friends hadn’t been sharing a bed last night. Jim follows her gaze to where Isabel has marched off after the Schrutes without Mark; and back to where Mark is still slumped against the pavilion. 

“I should go check she’s ok.” 

Jim knows he should be checking on Mark too. But he can’t quite bring himself to let go of Pam’s hand yet. “Do you have any idea what exercise it is we’re all heading off to?” he asks, stalling. 

“Um, no.” She looks sheepish. “I wasn’t really listening. Something about fish?”

“Oh, good. Totally relevant to saving our relationships, then.” 

She might usually have laughed at that - because their relationship doesn’t need saving - but she doesn’t, quite. And then he’s not laughing either. 

He takes a breath. His fingers tighten round hers. “I know we need to talk.” 

Her eyes flicker downwards. “Yeah,” she says at last. 

His chest is tightening now too, as he looks down at her. “Maybe after this exercise-”

“Yeah,” she says again, quickly. “Ok.” Her hand slackens. “I’m going to go after Iz, ok?” 

And with that, she pulls herself free and hurries off. He can’t help but notice her shoulders are bunched as she goes, her head down. Because she doesn’t want to talk to him?  

“Let’s go, Jimster! Marky Polo! Don’t fall behind.”

Michel is beckoning eagerly to both of them. Some of the leaves have fallen out of his wreath, and his face paint is already smudged. Jim’s not sure how his outfit is going to last the rest of the day. 

“Allondsey, people!” 

Jim represses a sigh, and heads over to Mark. “You coming?” he asks. He’s aware that it had been a struggle just to get his friend out of the villa this morning. 

“What’s the point?” Mark mutters now. 

He’d said the same thing last night, several pina coladas down. When he’d told Jim that he’d get on the next flight with him, and Jim had tried to convince him that he didn’t mean that. Jim’s pretty sure his friend doesn’t mean it, really, but Mark had just shaken his head. 

“Come on,” Jim attempts. “You can’t abandon me to this exercise, Marky.”

Mark gives him a wry look. 

His gaze has shifted ahead, to where Isabel is now walking along the beach. Pam has caught up with her. Jim can see, even from this distance, that his wife is trying to convince Isabel of something. It gives him another pang. 

Isabel is shaking her head, and Jim spots the muscle that jumps in Mark’s jaw when he sees the same thing. 

“Please,” Jim begs. “Just…let’s get this one over with.” 

He knows, and he knows that Mark knows, what message he’ll be sending to Isabel if he doesn’t participate this morning. It feels worryingly like it might be a final nail in the coffin. Only, based on his reaction to Isabel shaking her head (however slight the reaction had been), Jim is almost certain that Mark doesn’t want that final nail. Not really. (Not yet?) 

Even if he does take a while to unfold his arms, and pulls a face as he heaves himself upright and follows Jim out of the pavilion. 

“Just this one,” he warns under his breath. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

Jim glances at his friend and lays a brief hand on his shoulder. As they follow after the others he tries to take comfort in the fact that Mark has, at least, agreed to this one. He doesn’t want to think about what will happen for the next one. 

By the time they join the others on the beach, Jim realises Michel is directing them towards a boat. So maybe Pam wasn’t wrong about the fish. 

“Look who finally showed up.” Dwight’s voice is laden with scorn as he looks between Jim and Mark. He is, Jim sees, currently zipping himself into a wetsuit. And flippers. They seem to be his own. Jim wonders how long he’s been carrying them around for. “You’re not going to accomplish anything lagging at the back.” 

Is he taking notes from Major Minor, or something? 

Mark rolls his eyes as Jim tries not to rise to it. He decides his best tactic is just to ignore the guy. It’s hard, though. Even harder when a wet-suited Dwight elbows him out of the way to clamber onto the boat first. His flipper nearly hits Jim in the face. He reaches behind him to haul Angela, and then Isabel and Pam, onboard too. 

“Seeing as your husbands can’t be trusted,” he says loudly. 

Jim glowers as he pulls himself onto the boat. He realises Mark is watching something, and turns just in time to see Angela’s pursed lips. She doesn’t look thrilled that her husband has taken the time to help two other women onto the boat. Her back is stiff. But Dwight is too wrapped up in his smug lecture to notice.

He really is the worst. 

As the boat chugs away from the beach, Andy starts handing round masks and snorkels. Essential tools, Michel tells them, for their one-ness with nature. Like goggles into another soul. Or eye windows. Or something.  

(Andy gives Jim a wink when he hands him his, with a weird nod in Pam and Isabel’s direction. “Totally awesome, by the way.” When Jim asks him what he’s talking about, he holds his hands up. “I accept relationships in all their different forms, bromigo.” Then he pauses for a moment, looking between Mark and Jim like something has just dawned on him. “Wait, does that mean…say what! Swapping. That is very cool.” He’s grinning broadly. Jim thinks about it, and decides it’s better not to ask). 

Ryan refuses the snorkel, saying that there’s no way he can join in with the activity because of his injuries. He throws Isabel a dirty look as he says it. She ignores him. 

Jim thinks he sees Mark’s mouth twitch, faintly. If Jim didn’t know any better, he’d say Mark was feeling pretty proud of his wife in that moment. But he doesn’t say anything. 

Ryan’s got crutches and a big plaster cast (for a sprain, Jim wonders?), and a doting Kelly at his side as he stretches out on the deck of the boat. Although Kelly seems prepared to be magnanimous to Isabel, now that she’s established there’s definitely no chance she’ll steal her man. She tells Ryan to shush as she fusses over him.

“I don’t think I can join in either,” she announces to Michel. “I’ll just stay here on the boat and keep Ryan company.”

“Don’t worry,” Michel assures her. “I can do that!” He looks delighted by the prospect of quality time with Ryan. 

Ryan does not. 

“You know, on second thoughts, maybe I should just go back to shore…” 

“Oh, I’m sure Michel would be happy to go back with you,” Mark intercepts blithely. “Escort you back to your love shack?” 

Ryan baulks - and Jim just catches it, the faintest ghost of a smile on Isabel’s face. He knows that Pam caught it too. Her expression is hopeful. 

And then Dwight ruins it all by opening his big mouth. “Don’t be stupid,” he barks. "Michel can’t just abandon the exercise! What are you thinking?” He makes a disparaging noise. “When are you clowns going to learn to take this seriously?” 

Which are exactly the wrong words to say. Mark clams up, then. He doesn’t look at Isabel again as he goes to stand on the other end of the boat. 

“Hey Dwight.” Jim is uncharacteristically sharp. “Maybe you should focus on your own marriage, all right?” 

Angela straightens. 

So does Dwight. “My marriage,” he hisses at Jim, “Is perfect. I’m not the one crying over a broken phone.” He’s triumphant now. “Did you have a nice distraction free night?” 

Jim opens his mouth, temper rising, but Michel beats him to it. 

“He did,” he announces proudly. “He borrowed my phone!” 

Jim feels Pam shoot him a look. One that he’s not sure how to interpret. But it’s not a good look, and his stomach twists unpleasantly. 

Dwight, meanwhile, is now hopping. “He what?” His expression is almost betrayed. “But you - Michel - that’s not allowed! You said no phones. The rules were clear!” 

Michel waves a hand. “Rules are zere to be broken! Especially for friends.” 

(Friends, Jim wonders?)

Dwight looks mutinous. “Jim Halpert is not anyone’s friend.” When Michel looks non-plussed, Dwight scowls and rounds on Jim. “What were you doing?” he demands. “Wasting your time on that slutty Athleach again, instead of with your wife? Did you tell Michel about that?” 

Jim sees Pam flinch out of the corner of his eye.  

“You know what, Dwight-”

“Who’s Ashley?” Michel sounds confused. 

“Jim,” Dwight responds with evident satisfaction, “Is a dirty cheat!” 

Michel gasps. “No, Jimbo. You wouldn’t!” Now it’s his turn to look betrayed. 

“Ok,” Pam tries, her cheeks pink, “I think everyone just needs to calm down-”

“Don’t try to defend him, Pam.” Dwight pulls himself upright. “You don’t need to anymore. It’s time to take a stand. Tell this filthy good-for-nothing-”

“Ok, Dwight. That’s enough.” 

Dwight frowns at Pam, and - ok, is Dwight defending Pam’s honour? Dwight? Jim can’t explain why that rankles him as much as it does, or why Dwight’s self-righteous expression as he glares at Jim makes his blood boil like it does. 

He knows that he doesn’t want to see it for another second, though. 

He yanks himself away. 

“Yeah,” Dwight scoffs. “That’s right. Go and hide, coward.” 

Jim ignores him (and now it’s his turn to not quite be able to look at Pam; for some reason he just can’t), and walks off to join Mark at the back of the boat.

Mark is staring glumly at the waves. Dwight’s fault, Jim thinks. 

“You remember the idea we had last night?” Jim’s face is set as he leans against the railings. 

Mark spares him a glance. “The bear one?” His lip pulls up. “Hate to break it you, buddy, but I’m not sure that’ll work out here.” He motions half-heartedly towards the open water. 

“No. But I think we can adapt it.” 

Mark looks at him again. “Really?” 

Jim thinks about Dwight’s insufferable face, and his smashed blackberry, and all the misery the guy has caused in the last twenty-four hours. 

“Really.”

Yeah. 

Forget rising above it. 

Pam’s still not really sure what they’re meant to be doing for this exercise. She’s currently clinging to a float in the water, snorkel mask heavy on the top of her head, as Michel extols the virtues of opening their eyes and plumbing new depths. 

“Put your faces to ze water! Look at ze life beneath you! Ze colours, ze coral, les poisons…” 

(Pam remembers just enough of high school French to hope he doesn’t actually mean there’s anything poisonous beneath them. She’s not sure she can say the same for Dwight, who’s muttering feverishly about venomous pufferfish as he scans the waves). 

Pam’s not sure what they’re meant to be doing for this exercise - but whatever it is, it’s not what Jim is currently doing. 

He and Mark are sharing a float, their heads bent. She can tell even from here that they’re focused on Dwight, and not on any of the fish below. 

Isabel can too. “They’re idiots.” There’s none of the usual warmth in her voice. 

She’s sharing Pam’s float, after their husbands elected to go together. Mark’s not even trying, Pam thinks miserably, and Jim is distracted. Again. Caught up in something else more important than her. Again. 

She remembers how excited she’d been about the snorkelling in the pamphlet. 

She’d wanted to go snorkelling on their last vacation, but the boat trip got cancelled. She’d been disappointed until Jim had pulled her into the pool, his hands wrapped round her waist, and murmured that there were different things they could explore in the water together. She’d laughed at him for being cheesy. (Until she wasn’t laughing any more, her breath caught and her fingers sliding down his trunks under the water, his lips against her neck).  He’d bought her a giant stuffed fish the next day, eyes soft and grin tucked in his cheek as he slid it into her arms. I can get way cheesier than this, Beesly. They’d gone to the aquarium when they got home, his hand in hers as they’d wandered through the tunnels together.

Back when he’d had time to do things like that. 

She sleeps with the stuffed fish when he’s on business trips now, and sometimes the memory of his grin is enough to get her through the night. Sometimes. 

They could be snorkelling now, she thinks. 

And instead Jim is…what? Plotting against the guy who took away the phone he wasn’t even meant to have? It’s not like it had stopped him calling Athleap anyway, from the sound of it. 

Fine, Pam thinks suddenly. Because there’s that familiar stinging in her eyes, again, and she’s gotten so sick of it. If he’s going to do whatever he wants, then…so is she. And what she wants is to go snorkelling. She doesn’t need him to do that. Right? 

She takes a breath, and pulls her mask down over her eyes. She feels Isabel glance at her, but her friend doesn’t comment. The snorkel is rubbery and strange in her mouth. She straightens it like they got showed, and then carefully lowers her face to the water. 

She grips the float tight, the seawater cool against her cheeks and her scalp, praying she won’t see any of the pufferfish Dwight’s so worried about. Her breath is loud through the snorkel. 

And it’s - kind of amazing, actually. 

It’s dark and quiet under the waves, and the water is so clear that she can see right the way down to the bottom. For a moment she feels vulnerable, her pale legs dangling so far from the sea bed, nothing beneath them. But it’s not nothing, she realises. There’s a whole world that she hadn’t even been aware of, just a few feet below. Heaps of coral and plantlife teaming with fish. There must be hundreds of them under her feet, glittering silver and they flit about, oblivious to the clumsy humans above them. 

She feels her breath hitch in unexpected pleasure as she spots a starfish. She’s never seen a real one before. 

She pulls her face out of the water. “Iz, this is really cool! You should try it.” 

Isabel smiles and waves her hand. “I’m ok.” 

“No, but seriously-”

“Seriously, I’m not in the mood for snorkelling.” Isabel relents a bit when she sees Pam’s face fall. “Hey. You go. Enjoy it. I’ll be all right.” 

“We can go back if-” 

“Pam.” Isabel sounds fondly exasperated. “Just go do something for yourself for a change. Ok?” 

Pam’s still hesitating, so Isabel gives her a push. 

“Go. Have fun. Be at one with the fish, or whatever.”  

Pam’s gaze flickers back to Michel, who’s still calling out nonsensical instructions from the boat. She considers her friend one last time, but it seems clear she’s not going to change her mind. “Ok,” she says at last. “But let me know if you do want to go back?”

Isabel just waves her off. 

Pam can see that Jim and Mark are still conspiring (subtlety when it comes to pranks is not Mark’s forte), Jim’s focus still on Dwight, who’s trying to convince Angela to get on his back. She’s just clinging rigidly to the float, her mouth pinched. She doesn’t look happy. 

Pam takes another breath. 

She makes herself push all of them from her thoughts and lowers her face back into the water.

As she sinks back into the silent underwater world, she feels some of the tension leave her shoulders. She can feel her thoughts emptying as she tracks the different schools of fish, the sun’s rays filtering through the seaweed, the patterns in the coral. 

It feels good. 

It’s a sort of calm that she’s only really been able to reach when she’s painting or drawing. Not from all her hours of yoga, however much she tries. She hasn’t been able to find that calm in what feels like forever. She’s missed it. Recently all she can think when she tries to pick up a pencil, or a paintbrush, is how out of practice she is. How none of the shapes she’s trying to commit to paper turn out right. 

(How what if she was never actually that good at art, and not going to Pratt just saved her from finding out). 

But she doesn’t have to think about any of that now as she breathes through her snorkel. Now she can just drink in the colours, and the light, and everything that she enjoyed doing when she first started to draw. 

She watches a blue fish that keeps darting out of sight, noticing the yellow tips at its fins, its silvery underbelly. 

It dives down to the right - and she pauses for only a moment before she lets go of the float and moves after it. She catches a glimpse of Jim’s long bare legs in her periphery, and her heart clenches as she wonders what he’s doing. But then he slips out of sight too. Everything feels light and easy as she lets herself drift, eyes glued beneath her. She’s finally doing it. Snorkelling. Trying something new. 

It’s a quiet but undeniable thrill as her arms and legs slide through the water. 

It’s not until a while later that she realises she’s lost track of time. And that she can hear a distant muffled noise over the sound of her own breathing. 

Shouting, she thinks. 

She comes to a stop, lifting her face from the water. 

For a moment she’s disorientated. She’s startled to see how far she now is from the boat, from the others. She squints over to where they are, the salt starting to sting. She can just about make out Michel waving. She thinks. 

And there’s definitely someone shouting. A male voice. Shouting - 

“Shark! Shark!” 

Pam freezes. What? 

She turns, trying to see - 

They’re all heading back to the boat. Her stomach lurches. They’re all heading back to the boat, except Dwight, who for some reason is stuck where he is. Out in the open water. 

He looks like he’s thrashing, and it takes Pam longer than it should to realise that he must have caught himself on something. He’s bellowing about the shark. Pam is still frozen in place as she tries to look for - she doesn’t know, a fin, or - 

Where’s Jim? 

Angela is screeching for Michel to do something, and Michel is screeching back that he can’t - he doesn’t - swimming isn’t - he doesn’t know how - 

She thinks she can hear Andy yelling something about vaseline and nipples as he takes his shirt off. 

Where the hell is Jim? 

Dwight is still trapped. He’s trapped, she can see, and Andy’s not going to be able to get to him in time if there is a shark. 

And maybe that’s what finally spurs her into action. Before she can think better of it she’s swimming towards Dwight, her heart pounding as she reaches for him. 

“Save yourself,” Dwight hisses when he sees her approaching. “Get back to the boat!” 

But she can’t just leave him. 

She draws on a courage that she didn’t know she possessed as she plunges into the water to try to work out what he’s caught on. Please, she thinks. Please don’t let her run into a shark underwater. But there’s a strange adrenaline pumping through her as she locates Dwight’s foot. His flipper, she finally sees, is caught between some coral.

She dives down to free it. She nearly gets kicked in the face, but she doesn’t let that stop her. She’s really not sure where this determination has come from. She just knows that she’s not going to let Dwight get left behind. 

She feels a rush of victory as the flipper comes loose. 

She kicks back up to the surface, to where Dwight has started berating her for her recklessness. She ignores him, grabbing his arm to pull him back to the boat. “Move, Dwight.” 

To be fair to him, Dwight kicks straight into action then. He reaches for her to drag her along with him, but actually - she can swim by herself. She breaks free and pushes ahead. 

Her strokes are rapid, her breath short, as the boat gets closer. Almost there, she thinks. Almost to safety. Just a bit further - 

She reaches the side of the boat at the same time as Dwight does. There’s triumph in his eyes that matches her own, and then before she can protest he’s shoving her ungracefully up and over the railing. 

She lands on the deck in a heap, in time to hear Michel’s squawked oh my god, oh my god - and someone - Kelly or Isabel? - say, “That was badass, Pam!” 

A hand reaches for her, and - Jim. It’s Jim. He’s here. She reaches up to wrap her arms around him instinctively, her whole body still trembling with the adrenaline rush as she presses into him. His palm runs over her shoulders, her back. 

She can’t believe she just did that. For a second she lets her forehead rest against his bare chest. His arms are warm around her, his skin still slightly damp. He smells of the sea.  

Michel is now proclaiming her a shark saviour while Andy cheers. Even Kelly’s still squealing about it.  

She did that.

It’s when she tilts her face up to look at him, an incredulous smile stretching her lips, that she sees the expression in his eyes. 

Her smile fades. 

Because she knows that look. Because she knows him.  

“There was no shark,” she realises, slowly, as she stares up at him.

Jim winces. “It was - I’m really sorry.” His throat bobs. “I didn’t realise you were…I didn’t think he’d get stuck.”

Not a shark. A prank on Dwight. A prank that she fell for too, apparently. That’s what he’d been doing. 

Jim looks shame-faced, and uncomfortable - and she feels an uncharacteristic anger starting to rise within her. 

“What the hell?” It’s Isabel that speaks from behind them. She’s looking at Mark in disbelief. “Dwight could’ve been hurt, you idiot.”

Mark makes a noise. He is, Pam can see, just a little bit defensive as he glares back at his wife. And bitter. “Because god forbid Dwight should-”

“Pam could’ve been hurt.”   

At that, Jim visibly flinches. Mark falls silent. 

“What’s going on?” Michel sounds confused.

There’s a long pause. 

“Nothing.” Isabel’s tone is flat as she turns away from Mark. “Just a couple of assholes.”

She stalks off without a backwards glance. Mark’s jaw shifts, but he doesn’t go after her. He just stands there. 

Michel blinks a few times, clearly none the wiser. But he starts babbling about getting back to shore when he finally picks up on the awkward atmosphere and realises no one’s going to answer his questions. 

Pam had been expecting Dwight’s outrage once he cottoned on, but he’s strangely silent on the other side of the boat. 

She’s only half aware of that, though. Jim’s hands are still resting on her hips. His fingers are curved against her spine. “Pam,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

Slowly, she pulls herself free. “Yeah.” There’s an odd ringing in her ears.  

“C’mon,” he murmurs, “Don’t-”

“No.” The sharpness of her voice catches them both. She shakes her head. “No, I… I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

She doesn’t, she realises. 

Her ears are still ringing as she walks away to join Isabel. 

Oscar is generally quite fond of island life. But it is a remote island, and there are certain things that aren’t as readily available as they are on the mainland. Museums and theatre, of course. Art, certainly. 

And red wine. 

Michael orders in a wine selection, sure, but he gets bundle deals of new world pinots. Fruity. Stainless steel barrels. Screw tops. The type of wine that guests can knock back in sangrias and be none the wiser. Oscar understands it. It makes good budgetary sense. He’s even steered Michael away from more expensive packages before (with some regret).

But sometimes…sometimes Oscar just needs a nice dry, dark chianti. A full-bodied, cedar-infused merlot. He needs the promise of a crystal decanter and a proper corkscrew and the reassuringly expensive squeak of an aged cork. Wine that's actually had time to breathe. Wine that’s sophisticated enough to need time to breathe. Wine with tannins and complexity in every mouthful. 

Sometimes he just needs to treat himself. To indulge. 

And right now is one of those times. 

Which is why he’s headed for his secret collection. Perhaps it’s mean to smuggle wine onto the island and not tell anyone about it. But after he’d made the mistake of offering Michael a glass of his 1999 Clos de la Roche burgundy (one of the few bottles remaining for that vintage, only available to order directly from the vineyard, and a good chunk of Oscar’s disposable income), and then witnessed his boss putting ice into his glass…no. Never again. Oscar just can’t. 

He thinks he can live with that if it makes him a terrible person. 

Still, the sneaking under cover of darkness to the locked cupboard with ‘accounts’ stamped on the front (guaranteed to make sure Michael never tries to open it) does make Oscar feel a little guilty. But not for too long. Because then he’s pulling out his decanter and one of his favourite cabernets - he thinks he’ll go for Bordeaux tonight, he likes varying his regions - and, well, he really does need this. 

Ideally he’d have a little French cheese to go with it, but he’s had to ration himself on the camembert lately. He’s read about the supply chain shortages that are making it pricier to smuggle in. He suspects some Indo-Pacific tensions, but…the only person he really has to talk global politics here with is Andy. And he still can’t quite bring himself to let someone self-monikered the Nard Dog into his secret wine club. He just can’t. Especially not since he saw the man gargle a chardonnay for a joke. Just…argh. There’s a time for jokes, Oscar thinks, and that time is not fine wine time.

Sorry. 

So a club of one it is. 

Oscar’s even got a table set up behind the staff quarters, hidden out of sight in the trees. With a table cloth, and a scented candle, and some of his favourite philosophy books. He busies himself setting it all up now. And a little music, of course, provided he keeps the volume on his phone down low. He feels like some Schubert tonight. 

Some Schubert is definitely needed, after the afternoon he’s had.  

He settles back in his chair and takes a first appreciative sniff of the wine. Oh, he can already tell this is a good one. 

Hopefully good enough to take his mind off yelling Schrutes and absent Porebas and the faint worry that all the therapy in the world might not be enough for this intake of couples.  

And the suggestion, shot at him from a tight-lipped Mrs Schrute two hours ago, that he clearly doesn’t know anything about how marriages or babies work anyway. 

This afternoon had not been a good one. 

Whatever had happened on Michael’s boat trip…well, it certainly doesn’t seem to have brought anyone closer. 

Which is strange, actually, because usually the snorkelling is a success. Or at the very least, it’s an activity where Michael has limited scope to make things weird. Usually if the couples have got through his other exercises, then by this point the snorkelling offers some light relief. 

But apparently not today. 

Oscar had been told as soon as the boat returned that Isabel wasn’t feeling up to it, and wouldn’t be coming to their session. The stony expression on her face had informed him that there was probably nothing medically wrong with her. But she’d gone back to her hut anyway. 

Oscar had asked Mark if he wanted a solo session - which he’d felt the guy could have used, actually - but Mark had just shaken his head. 

“Sorry. I think the only session I need is with Salvadore.”  

It had been a defeated attempt at humour, Mark’s brow drawn and his shoulders set. Oscar knows all too well what sessions with Salvadore the barman entail, having done the same after Gil left him. Hours of cocktails and despair.  

Not a good sign at all. 

So the Porebas aren’t even speaking to each other now. And as for the Schrutes - 

“Hello! Sorry. I don’t mean to intrude.”

Oscar startles upright, nearly spilling his wine. 

Uh-oh. 

Holly is now standing before him. 

He wonders hastily whether he should blow out the candle, or if there’s any way he could hide the bottle. He curses himself for getting such a big decanter. (But the wine really does need the breathing space). He fixes what he hopes is a nonchalant smile on his face as he subtly turns down the Schubert. 

“Erm, hi. Hello. I was just…” 

Holly’s gaze follows his to the solitary wine glass on its neat coaster. The Voltaire. The hand-picked grapes. All right, there’s not really any way he can hide any of this. He lowers his head in defeat. 

“Just unwinding,” he mutters. 

“It’s all right,” Holly reassures him. “I won’t tell a soul.” She smiles, slightly. “I promise I've never told Michael what’s really in the accounts cupboard.” 

Oscar feels himself flushing. “Wh…ah. Thank you.” 

“I just-” she gestures at the other chair. “Would you mind if I joined you? It’s been a long afternoon.” She says it with a small sigh, and Oscar notices then that she looks about as weary as he feels. 

Curiosity and empathy get the better of him. “Of course.” He nods. 

Perhaps the boat trip hadn’t gone any better for any of the other couples. He’d tried to get out of the Schrutes what had happened - because whatever it was, it seemed to have upset both of them - but all he’d received was hissed accusations of other women from Angela, and rigid silence from Dwight. 

In the end Angela had got up, and in between insulting Oscar, had asked her husband why he couldn’t even get therapy right for her. (Which seemed like a slight shift from her previous stance that said therapy was a waste of everyone’s time. But anyway). Oscar thought he might have seen tears in her eyes as she’d walked out, although he couldn’t be sure. 

And for a moment Dwight had looked absolutely stricken. He’d stood up too, muttering something about stupid and traitor and flipper, and…Oscar couldn’t really get any sense out of him before he stormed off. 

So, no. Oscar has no idea what had happened on that boat. 

As Holly makes herself comfortable in the chair opposite him now, he knows he really should offer her some cabernet. He braces himself. “Would you…?” He holds up the decanter. 

“Oh, no.” Holly shakes her head. “Please. That’s your wine.” 

As much as Oscar wants to, he knows he can’t really justify an entire bottle to himself. He’s not that rude. And, well, wine is meant to be shared. There’s a part of him that misses that. 

“Please,” he counters. “I insist.” He reaches for another glass. 

He can still feel himself tensing ever so slightly as he hands it over to her. He just wants someone who appreciates how good a wine this is. Is that…really so unreasonable? 

He can’t help but watch her out of the corner of his eye. He finds himself encouraged when she swirls the glass and sniffs it. Does she-? Is it possible? Could he finally have found someone who knows how to enjoy - 

“Do you have a straw?” she asks brightly. 

He tries not to choke. Oh, god. He recovers enough to shake his head, heart sinking. So much for that. 

She glances at him, and then chuckles. “I’m kidding.” Her voice is warm. “I know you’re not meant to drink wine with a straw.” 

He’s a little relieved. “Yes. Exactly.” 

“Michael likes it with a straw.” She’s still smiling, and Oscar tries not to wince. (Actually, he’s seen their boss drink champagne from a tikki cup with an umbrella and three tablespoons of sugar, so this really shouldn’t come as a shock). Holly doesn’t seem to notice Oscar’s reaction. She turns conspiratorial as she admits, “It does make it kind of fun, sometimes.” 

She maybe sounds a little wistful. 

Oscar makes a polite noise. “Mm.” Sure, he can’t stop himself from thinking. If you call ruining the entire body of a wine fun. 

He doesn’t say that, of course. And he feels a little mean for thinking it, because he does like Holly, even if she’s not the wine companion he’d been hoping for. She’s a nice woman. And she tends to make working with Michael bearable. Which is impressive.  

And that wistfulness… 

He regards her for a moment. “Michael does always seem to have fun with you.” He’s unexpectedly gentle, briefly taking himself by surprise. 

“We’re good friends,” Holly agrees. Her smile is sad. 

Oscar considers, but decides it’s not his place to push any further. “Yes.” 

“…Anyway.” Holly collects herself a few moments later. “Tell all. How bad were your sessions this afternoon?” 

Oscar shakes his head. “I don’t know about the Porebas,” he admits, taking a slow sip of his wine. (Holly, he sees, does at least seem to be enjoying her glass. So that’s something). 

Holly looks concerned. “You don’t think they’ll make it?” 

“I don’t know.” It pains him to say it. He doesn’t like not having answers. “There’s a lot of stubbornness there. A lot of anger.” 

Holly reflects on this. “But love?”  She tilts her head. “There seems to be some love there too.” 

“Yes,” Oscar concludes. “There’s love.” 

Despite all the anger. But is love enough?  He knows it’s a question the experts go back and forth on. Logically, reasonably, it’s not enough. Relationships also need communication, patience, compromise, understanding. Time, and effort.  

“Well,” Holly says. “That’s something.” 

“Hm.” Something is not nothing, he knows, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s enough. “What about you?” he enquires. “How were the Howard-Kapoors today?” 

He doesn’t envy her the sessions she has to sit through with that couple. (Although are they worse than the Schrutes? Oscar’s not sure). The Howard-Kapoors had at least still seemed to be all over each other when they’d got off the boat. So maybe whatever had happened at sea hadn’t happened to them. 

But Holly sighs and takes another gulp of her wine. “You know, our session started so well. Or…as well as their sessions can go.” She sounds a little sheepish for admitting it. But Oscar knows what she means. 

“And then?” 

“They got into a fight,” Holly frowns. “Only this time it seemed to be a serious one.” 

Yes, Holly has started providing a running tally of the couple’s squabbles. Only because she seems baffled by them. If Oscar recalls correctly, yesterday it had been over what moisturiser Ryan should be using. But from the sound of it, their fights inevitably lead to heavy make-out sessions, even if there’s some sulking in between. Again, Oscar only knows this because Holly has asked him and Michael for tips on how to end the make-out sessions when the couple lose track of time. And personal space. And boundaries. 

(Perhaps the Howard-Kapoors are worse than the Schrutes. Perhaps).

But this time, Holly tells him, there was no make-out session at all. It had started with Ryan re-telling the story of how Isabel had attacked him during the treasure hunt yesterday (to help with the trauma, he claimed, although it sounds a little bit to Oscar like the guy’s trying to work out whether he can sue her for PTSD). 

And then he’d let slip that he’d fallen down a hill. 

Which, from the sound of it, was a detail he hadn’t told Kelly before. 

And then - Holly is shaking her head now - it had emerged that Kelly somehow has a brilliant (apparently topographical, and previously unknown) memory when it suits her, because…she’d somehow managed to discern from this that Ryan couldn’t have been anywhere near the waterfall that she’d been waiting at. 

In fact, he would’ve been on the opposite end of the island. 

At which point Kelly had accused of him of trying to find those skanks in the singles resort, and shoved the sprained ankle that she’d been resting so lovingly on her lap straight to the floor. And then flounced off, ignoring Ryan’s howl of pain.  

Holly shakes her head again. “The strangest thing was, as she left, Kelly was quoting things I’d said in earlier sessions about being a selfish partner.” Holly sounds bemused. “I didn’t think she’d been listening to a word of any of that.” 

Maybe Kelly’s been listening more than any of them assumed. It’s a slightly unnerving thought. 

“Anyway,” Holly ponders, “I think Ryan might finally have gone too far.”

“Wow.” Oscar’s not sure what more he can say. 

Is he surprised that Ryan Howard-Kapoor seems to have been heading to the singles resort? No. Not at all. He’s a little surprised that Kelly seems to have taken a hard line on it. But perhaps it was time.

Holly hesitates. “I do wonder if maybe…well. It’s just that their relationship doesn’t always seem like the healthiest.” 

“You think they’d be better off apart?” 

That, Oscar knows, is a pretty damning indictment. Especially coming from Holly. 

“Maybe,” she confesses at last. 

They exchange knowing looks. 

Holly exhales. “How about the Schrutes?” 

Oscar needs more wine to answer that question. Good thing, he thinks again, that it’s such an excellent wine. The flavour really increases in depth with every sip. There’s a part of him that’s itching to ask Holly if she’s noticed the peppery aftertaste yet. Very telling of the west bank. 

He reluctantly forces his thoughts back to the Schrutes. “They’re still very unique,” he settles on in the end. 

“So no progress in today’s session?” Holly sounds sympathetic. 

Oscar thinks about it. Would he call it no progress? It had been…a different approach. A development. He just doesn’t know if it was in the right direction. 

“Honestly, the Schrutes aren’t really following any of the normal milestones.” 

In some ways it’s progress that one of them might have acknowledged the need for therapy. Or that their marriage might not be perfect. But in other ways…well, Oscar has no idea how the Schrutes will actually react to that. They both looked vaguely homicidal at points today. 

He’d found himself feeling sorry for Angela, though. Even if she had insulted him. Which is a first. (Feeling sorry for her, that is, not the insulting). And maybe even sorry for Dwight. 

“I think they’re as messy as the rest of them,” Oscar eventually sighs.  Holly nods, understanding. “Did you make any progress with the Halperts?” he asks her. 

She sucks in a deep breath. “Well. Yes. Of a sort.” 

Holly is trying desperately not to let Oscar know that she really doesn’t like the wine he offered her. She can tell that it matters to him. She knows him sharing it with her was very kind. But…oh, it’s horrible. 

She generally prefers white wine anyway, and if she drinks red at all then it’s the nice easy to open bottles that Michael gets. Or his fun sangria.

It’s not this. She’s been gulping the stuff down in the hope that she can make it disappear. It’s actually even worse if she takes small sips. 

She made the mistake of taking an especially big mouthful before talking about the Halperts, though, and now it’s a struggle to keep her face neutral.  

The Halperts. 

It had certainty been an interesting session. 

She’d noticed that something was different as soon as they’d sat down on her couch. Usually they sat pretty close together, Jim’s arm slung round the back of the couch over Pam, her knee knocking into his. They weren’t all over each other like the Howard-Kapoors, but usually they were touching in some way. Just slightly. Or within touching distance. And always acutely aware of what the other was doing. Usually, even if they were uncomfortable with the session or the questions she was asking, they’d always be sneaking looks at each other, quiet smiles. Even if just for reassurance. Even when Pam was uncertain. 

But this afternoon they’d been sitting on opposite ends of the couch. 

And Pam didn’t look…uncertain. She looked something. But not uncertain. Her hair was still damp and wild from the snorkelling and she was sitting up straighter - and Holly doesn’t know what happened out to her there, but it was something.   

Pam had been silent at first. Jim’s gaze kept shifting to her. (It’s painful for Holly, sometimes, to see how much they clearly love each other). He’d tried to make jokes and small-talk, to put everyone at ease, and they’d just fallen flat. 

Holly had asked Pam towards the end, as always, if she had anything to share. Usually, when Holly asked her that, Pam looked away and said she didn’t. 

She’d started to look away. And then she’d swallowed, glanced up, and said, “Yes, actually. I do.” 

Jim’s attention had shot to her immediately. And Holly had been - excited? Nervous? Pleased for her, if she was finally ready to share. Silently willing her on. She knows it’s not easy. 

“I’m…not happy, that Jim didn’t hand his blackberry in.” Pam’s voice had shaken a bit. 

Jim’s brow had furrowed. Like whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. “Uh.” He’d tried to catch her gaze. “Ok. Should we maybe talk about this-”

“Pam’s talking about it now,” Holly had pointed out calmly.

More furrowing of Jim’s brow. But he’d fallen silent, eyes flickering over his wife. She’d been twisting her hands. Holly knows that Jim had seen that. 

“I didn’t even keep mine to talk to the kids. And neither did Jim. But he kept the blackberry. To talk to Athleap.” Pam sounded like she'd been thinking about it for a while. Maybe sitting on it for a while. 

Jim had opened his mouth, and then closed it. “That was…come on. That’s not fair. Pam.” He’d stared at her. “You don’t seriously think I-”

She’d bitten her lip hard. “We’re meant to be on holiday.” 

Jim had got defensive, then. He’d seemed unsettled that they were doing this in front of Holly, unsettled that he couldn’t tell what his wife was thinking. “Yeah, I know. And you don’t think that if there was some way - literally any other way - that I didn’t have to work, then I’d be doing that?” 

Pam’s voice had risen when his did. “What I know,” her hands had been clenched, “Is that I’m sick of months of putting the kids to bed alone, and - and going to PTAs alone, and barely getting you at the weekends, and barely getting you just…ever. Not even for two weeks. It’s just two weeks.” 

“Oh, and you haven’t seen me at all? I’ve spent no time with you this vacation?” 

Holly hadn’t missed the flinch in his gaze at Pam’s alone, the hurt and shock under his knee-jerk sarcastic response. 

(She would normally have intervened at this point to remind them that this was supposed to be sarcasm-free zone, but Pam’s mouth was opening, and Holly figured it was better not to stop her when she was actually speaking).

“Sure,” Pam had struggled, “When you haven’t been on the phone, or wishing you were on the phone, or trying to get revenge because someone broke your phone, or - or booking flights home-”

Jim had blanched a bit. Like she’d landed an inadvertent blow. “That’s not…look, I’ve been trying as hard as I can to-”

“That’s the point, Jim.” Pam’s eyes had been bright with tears. “This was supposed to be our holiday.” She’d gulped. “You shouldn’t have to try to spend time with me.” 

“Pam…” 

“I just wanted to go snorkelling,” she’d mumbled. “I’m sick of it. I’m sick of Athleap, and I’m sick of never seeing you, and I just - I can’t do this any more.” She’d got louder. “Maybe I don’t want to do this any more.” 

Jim’s eyes had widened. “What are you saying?” His voice had been hoarse. And then - “Is this why you didn’t come to the waterfall yesterday?” There’d been a horrible expression on his face. “Because you’re…sick of me?” He’d knotted a hand through his hair. “I - when were you going to tell me any of this?”

“I’m not sick of you, I’m sick of your stupid job!” And then she’d seemed to realise what she’d said. She’d stopped. “I don’t…” 

Her voice had suddenly faltered. But she hadn’t been able to take it back. She’d been frozen and unable to take it back. 

They’d just stared at each other.

“Right,” Jim had said at last. “Ok.” 

Holly had decided to wrap up the therapy session there. “Pam,” she’d intervened. “I know that was hard, but I’m really proud of you for speaking your truth.” 

Pam swallowed and looked down at the floor. 

“And Jim,” Holly went on. “Thank you for listening to Pam’s truth. I’m sure some of that wasn’t easy to hear.”  

Jim looked at his wife, and then at another spot on the floor.

Holly had wondered if they knew that they both set their jaws in the same way when they were angry or upset. “Well,” she cleared her throat. “That’s…probably given you two a fair amount to think about. Shall we reconvene tomorrow?” 

They hadn’t been holding hands when they left. 

As Holly relays some of this to Oscar now, he winces. “Well. I guess real honesty does take courage.” 

“Yes, exactly.” Holly waves her hands. “And it’s good that Pam found some, right?” 

Holly had found it inspiring. After all, if a woman as quiet as Pam Halpert had suddenly just decided to be brave, then maybe a woman a little more confident, perhaps a little more mature, a little kookier, could - 

“Certainly,” Oscar reflects. “But I can see why Jim might be - not thrilled.” 

“Hm.” Holly pulls a face. “Is there a right time to speak your truth?” 

(She finds that she’s not quite thinking of the Halperts any more, and…she probably does need to stop this). 

She realises Oscar is giving her a mildly curious look. She straightens. “For…ahem, our couples. I mean.” 

“I think honesty is always better than not,” Oscar replies, carefully. 

Yes, Holly thinks. Yes. Honesty and courage, those two things she’s always telling her patients to pursue. And here she is - 

“So is Michael busy tonight?” 

Holly tries not to feel too flustered. “Michael? What?” She adjusts her pants. “Ha, who said anything about Michael?” 

Oscar clears his throat. “I just wondered, tonight.” He gestures to his (previously undisturbed) table. "You usually like to debrief with him.” 

This is true, of course. Not that Oscar and Holly don’t debrief, just that it usually is brief. And during working hours. If Holly’s had a long day, or a difficult session, then Michael is usually the first person she wants to cheer her up. She doesn’t usually seek Oscar out after hours. And she suspects he’d rather seek the contents of his accounts cupboard than her. 

Not that this hasn’t been nice, actually. Despite the wine. She wonders if she can sneak the rest into the bushes when Oscar isn’t looking. Oh no. He’s reaching for a top up. 

“Yes,” she blurts, partially to avoid the question of him refilling her glass. He seems to be hesitating about doing it, and she’d, er, prefer it to stay that way.  “Yes, I know. It’s just - hard, sometimes. Talking to him about a couple who are so obviously great for each other and…just can’t seem to work it out.” 

Yeah. Sometimes it's really hard. Today it had felt especially hard.

She knows she likes Michael. More than likes him. She’s pretty sure they would be great together. There’s no one who makes her laugh like he does. There are times she’s sure that he more than likes her too. 

But when she’s tried to to bring it up before, or hint at it, he’s shut her down. In fact, he’d once told her he was definitely not not not not attracted to her. 

So she’d told herself friends was ok.  

But she just…doesn’t understand, why not more. But she’s nervous about asking him outright in case that somehow ruins their friendship. 

So yes, sometimes the honesty and courage are somewhat lacking in her own life. 

Oscar is giving her that mildly knowing look again, which means she’s probably revealed too much. 

“Well. It’s difficult to talk to anyone about that.” 

“Of course,” Oscar nods. 

He looks like he’s picking up the decanter again, slowly, and Holly’s just wondering if there’s some way she can cause a distraction - when a distraction does, miraculously, appear.

In the form of a hysterical Andy racing round the corner crying something about a zombie apocalypse, and everyone leaving him, and this being just like his 6th grade slumber party all over again. 

Holly has never seen Oscar move so quickly. 

He leaps up, throwing the table cloth over the contents of the table and stashing the wine underneath it. And then moving very rapidly away from the incriminating evidence. 

‘Andy! What a nice surprise.” He’s doing a strange sort of shuffle, and it takes Holly a moment to realise he’s trying to block the table from sight as he steps forward. 

“Oh my god.” Andy throws himself into Oscar’s arms. “You’re still here! You haven’t left me.” He’s almost sobbing. 

Oscar looks taken aback. (But also, Holly thinks, slightly relieved that Andy is too distracted to notice the table). “Erm…yes? I wasn’t doing anything out here. Just, er, smoking. Disgusting habit. We should probably head back-” 

Then Andy spots Holly. “Oh my god, you’re here too!” He nearly jumps on her. 

Holly pats his back, bewildered. “Of course. What’s wrong?”

“I thought,” Andy chokes, “That everyone had just…packed up and gone. First the Halperts’ was empty, then the Porebas, then the work hut, and the bar, and staff quarters - and thought, if you guys have abandoned me, and top dog Mike, then I really just-”

“No,” Holly soothes. “We’ve just been round here. And I’m pretty sure Michael’s just on the beach.” He’ll be gathering sea shells, Holly knows, for tomorrow’s costume. Mermaid Mike. A real classic. Usually she helps him. But tonight, after the Halperts, she just hadn’t felt up to a moonlit beach walk with him.  

“Thank god.” Andy’s chest is heaving. “Ok, I can’t tell you how worried I was. Phew! What a relief.” 

Oscar and Holly exchange perplexed looks.

“Well, as I was saying.” Oscar motions ahead. “Perhaps we should all go back to staff quarters-”

“Crisis well and truly averted, let me tell you.” Andy beams. “In that case, it’s just the guests who are all missing.” 

Oscar and Holly both stop, mid-step. “What?” 

“Oh, none of them are in their huts.” Andy says with a shrug. “At first I figured it was a repeat of 2010 and they’d all arranged a secret boat out of here - which is why I was coming to find you - but then I realised all their stuff is still there.” He scratches his head. “Unless those were like, very good decoys. Which I guess is-”

“The guests are missing?” Oscar echoes. “All of them?” 

“Yup. Halperts, Porebas, Schrutes, Howard-Kapoors.” 

Oh no, Holly thinks. No, no, no. Surely not again. And if they haven’t taken their stuff - 

“They’re not in the pool?” she tries urgently. 

“Haven’t you been listening to me?” Andy laughs. “I just told you I looked everywhere.”

Holly tries to tell herself not to jump to conclusions, but she’s pretty sure this can only mean one thing. How on earth is she going to tell Michael? 

She and Oscar look at each other, and she can see Oscar thinking the same thing. 

If they’ve not left the island, then there’s not really another explanation for where their guests could be.

Oscar shakes his head. 

“Toby,” he says, slowly. 

Holly shuts her eyes and gives a nod of despair. 

Toby. Flenderson. 

It turns out Michael isn’t at the beach. 

There aren’t even the tell-tale lopsided sandcastles or wonky ‘I heart MGS’ carvings in the sand that indicate he might have been and gone. (Holly is the one who deduces that).  

He isn’t in his hut, either. Andy is singing doo wop detective songs as they move between the palms, to the point where even Holly starts rubbing her temples. 

She looks increasingly worried when they get to Michael’s empty hut. It’s surprisingly neat, Oscar notes, despite the tacky memorabilia and - are those toys? - lining the shelves. But that’s not what Holly is focused on. “He left his sunglasses here. He wouldn’t go anywhere without his sunglasses.”

(“Ain’t no sunglasses when Michael’s gooooooone,” Andy harmonises in the background. He doesn’t seem to notice Holly’s wince). 

Oscar glances up at the dark sky. He considers the distinct lack of sun. But if anyone understands Michael and his obsession with his Ray Bands, then it’s Holly. 

Not Oscar, whose protestations about the incorrect spelling were drowned out by Michael’s loud insistence that there was no way he’d spent $150 on a knock-off pair, and that it was perfectly acceptable to buy designer gear from Captain Darryl and his associate Big Roy off the back of a boat. In cash. Which also explains Michael’s lurid array of Guci and Armanii shirts, and his 100% real fur coat that never fails to bring him out in a rash. Holly has kindly suggested it might be a heat rash, because she’s sweetly deluded and in love. Oscar knows polyester when he sees it. He suspects Captain Darryl does too. But apparently the coat is a long-term investment. The coat, and not the savings account with the perfect interest rate that Oscar had so carefully researched after Michael begged him to be saved from financial ruin. In the end, only Holly had been able to convince the guy to compromise and put some of his money into an account, instead of buying more fur coats for a side business in luxury winter wear. On a tropical island. 

(“Miiiii-chael, Miii-chael, Michael, Mikey Mikey Michael Mike Mike.” Andy is falsettoing to the Pink Panther bridge now.) 

Anyway. Oscar digresses. 

They re-trace their steps through the dining hut and swimming pool, until Oscar and Holly are forced to conclude that their boss isn’t anywhere in Edan. 

“Do you think he went with them?” 

“Maybe.” Although Oscar’s struggling to see any situation where their guests would have willingly taken Michael along.

“Oscar, Andy, Holly, on the huuuunt. Scooby, doooby, ba-da-ba-baaa-”

“Enough!” Holly cries before Oscar does, startling Andy out of his Starsky and Hutch style side. “Please,” she adds, remembering herself. 

Andy blinks. “Something more mellow for the lady?” 

“No more music,” Oscar cuts in swiftly, before Holly has to. “Please.” 

Andy pauses, frowning. “Sheesh,” he grumbles, “Who’s got your goat?” 

He then immediately breaks into some sort of goatherd yodel. Like he can’t stop himself. 

Holly and Oscar make an executive decision to ignore him. 

“Michael must have realised where they were going,” Holly decides. “And hurried after them to stop them. It’s the only thing that would make him forget his sunglasses.” 

“Toby,” Oscar confirms. It makes sense, actually. Michael’s hatred for Toby Flenderson tends to make him even more irrational than usual. 

Holly shakes her head. “But what would make them all leave like that?” 

Three hours earlier 

“Guys, I am officially done with Ryan Howard-Kapoor forever. I need to spend some time on me for once. I need a new man!” 

Kelly’s declaration was met with a confused furrow (Pam), an arched brow (Isabel), and a scowl (Angela). 

The four of them had been sent to the spa for some female bonding time after the disastrous boat trip and even more disastrous therapy sessions. 

Well, Pam assumed the others’ were as disastrous as hers. Based on Angela’s even more pinched face, Isabel’s uncharacteristic silence, and Kelly’s dramatic removal of her wedding ring. Twice. 

They’d been put in the ice room this time, and even though Pam could barely feel her nose, her numb fingers and chattering teeth were somehow still preferable to the prospect of facing Jim after everything she’d said to him.  Or half shouted at him. Panic blurted, in fact. Sick of your job. Every time she shut her eyes, she saw the hurt on his face, the helplessness, and it made hot tears prickle behind her lids. She’d thrown her ugliest truth out there, and as expected all it had done was disappoint the one person she never wanted to disappoint. 

If Kelly was hoping for overwhelming girl support from their female bonding, she didn’t get it. 

Not that she let that stop her. “Come on, you guys! We need to let loose. Ditch the men. Can’t you see they’re making us all sad losers? When was the last time any of you did anything crazy?!” 

There was a pause. 

“Never,” Angela sniffed. She sounded quite smug about it. 

“I did a pop-up art show once,” Pam ventured timidly, when she felt bad about the growing pause. 

She remembered that show vividly, even years later. She’d come close to chickening out, but back then all it had taken was Jim’s warm smile, his hand in hers - his unwavering belief, just in her - for her to take a leap and do it.

It felt crazy now. Like another life. 

The thing was, in that moment she wasn’t sure why. 

She was so caught up in that disconcerting thought that it took her a moment to realise Isabel’s dark eyes had narrowed. She hadn’t answered Kelly’s question. 

“What crazy thing are you suggesting?” she enquired, drily. “The singles resort?”

Kelly shrugged. “It beats sitting around here freezing our asses off.” She glanced pointedly at Pam’s (admittedly slightly pathetic) shivering. “And I am not going back to the hut with Ryan tonight.” 

Something else flickered in Isabel’s gaze, and Pam felt a twist of concern. She opened her mouth - but then Isabel just rolled her eyes. “Sure. Nothing screams independence more than horny frat boys and tequila shots.” 

“Exactly,” Kelly smirked. Isabel cocked her head, and said nothing more. Kelly’s face fell into a pout when she realised there was still no one leaping to their feet. “You guys!” She placed her hands on her hips. “Fine. You can sit here and wallow in your stupid failed relationships. I’m going to actually have fun.”  

She grabbed her towel, prepared to flounce off, and Pam glanced at her watch with some concern. The sun would be setting soon. Was Kelly being serious? “You’re going to go to the other side of the island alone?” 

Kelly rolled her eyes. “Unlike Ryan, I actually know how to use google maps.” 

Isabel looked vaguely amused by that. And vaguely on Team Kelly. Her arms were folded, and it took Pam a second to realise she wasn’t going to get any back-up from her friend. Isabel seemed to be in an unpredictable mood. Pam wasn’t sure how to read it. Or how to help. 

To everyone’s surprise, it was Angela who spoke up. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped. “You can’t go blundering around the island in the dark.”  

“Watch me,” Kelly fired back. 

Angela’s lips tightened further. “You’ll get us all in trouble. Michel said-”

“Michel,” Kelly interrupted, “Said Ryan would stay true to me forever. That guy is full of crap! I’m going to Eden.”  

And with that, she swished her towel over her shoulder and pranced out. 

Angela was practically vibrating. With rage, Pam assumed. Pam shot Isabel a helpless look, but her friend just shrugged. “She’s not wrong about Michel being full of crap.” 

“But…” 

Angela had suddenly jolted to her feet. “We can’t just let her go by herself.” Her shoulders were rigid, her tiny fists clenched. “We need to go after her.” 

Pam was speechless. Not because she disagreed, exactly, but because she hadn’t expected Angela of all people to be the one volunteering to go after her. Didn’t Angela hate Kelly? 

But Angela was already marching out of the spa, and Isabel was shrugging again and unfolding her long legs to follow. “Beats sitting here,” she quoted Kelly.  

Something in Isabel’s tone, and the flat smile that didn’t meet her eyes, made Pam feel another jolt of unease. 

She hesitated on the cusp the ice room, and then scrambled after them. It crossed her mind that she should find Jim to let him know where they were going, but then she was thinking about Jim, and facing him again, and she…she hurt. 

So she hurried away into the darkening night instead.  

Jim had been wrestling with trying to get Mark to leave the bar, and the temptation to see whether drowning himself in cocktails again would get rid of the sick feeling in his stomach (he wasn’t sure whether it was guilt, anger, betrayal, or some uneasy mix of all three), when Dwight came charging in.

The sun had set, and Jim’s thoughts kept straying to whether Pam would be back in their hut yet, whether she’d have gone to dinner, whether she was crying. Whether there was anything else she’d been keeping from him. 

(Like going to bed alone, and the PTA alone, and not telling him-)

“Angela’s been kidnapped,” Dwight declared. 

Jim glanced round at him, and Mark raised a brow over the pina colada he’d been nursing for the past hour.  The pina colada that Jim didn’t think he’d taken a single sip of. Like he’d given up on even that. 

“Kidnapped?” Jim echoed. 

“Yes, Jim. Kidnapped.” Dwight looked at him like he was a moron, and Jim fought a flicker of irritation. He wasn’t sure how much more Dwight Schrute he could put up with today. Especially not after everything that had gone down on the boat. 

“Ok, well-”

“She wasn’t on time for our evening copulation,” Dwight snapped. Jim repressed a grimace at the thought of the Schrutes copulating, but there was something weird and intense about Dwight’s face. “I went to find her in the spa,” the other man continued feverishly, “And she wasn’t there. She’s not anywhere. She must have been taken.”

Mark snorted into his drink. 

Dwight wheeled on him. “What? Do you know something?” 

Mark shrugged. “If you can’t find her, she probably doesn’t want to be found. She’s probably had enough.” 

Jim winced. Mark’s bluntness didn’t usually stray into being quite so harsh. But there was none of the usual warmth in his best friend’s tone, like he was past caring. Jim also had a flashback to Dwight leaping on him and wrestling him to the ground, and found himself stepping between Mark and the now bristling guy

“That is not what’s going on,” Dwight snarled. “Your wives must have kidnapped her!” He drew himself up. “I’m going to report this to Michel immediately.”  

Jim choked back a laugh. “I don’t think…”

“Oh, you don’t think, Jim?” Dwight was savagely triumphant now. “Then explain why they’ve vanished too!” 

Jim’s smile faded. “What?” 

It was enough to knock Mark out of his own stupor. “Vanished? Iz?” He’d got to his feet. 

Jim felt his gut twist. He told himself Dwight was obviously leaping to conclusions, and Pam must have been with the others if Dwight couldn’t find them, which meant she was surely - 

“Do you think they’ve left the island?” Mark asked blankly. 

No, Jim thought. Pam wouldn’t have just left him here. However unhappy, however mad -  

I don’t want to do this any more. 

He could see her eyes, filled with tears, her pale face and flushed cheeks. 

“I’m going to Michel,” Dwight growled. “No one can leave without his permission.” 

He stalked off, and Mark and Jim exchanged glances before hurrying after him. 

Jim hadn’t realised how much he was hoping Michel had dragged all the women off for some kind of bonding exercise until they found the guy in his hut (wearing a beret and saying weird things into his mirror, which Jim decided not to touch), and his response to Dwight’s demands was just a non-plussed expression. He had no idea where Pam, Isabel, or Angela were. He hadn’t seen them. He’d thought they were in the spa. 

His face lit up. “Hey, maybe they’re planning romantic surprises for you guys! You know, to keep le magic going after our great snorkelling trip.”

Even Dwight couldn’t justify that with a response. 

At the very least, they managed to glean from Michel that they couldn’t have left the island, because there were no ferries operating this late. But, given it was now dark, that just ended up making Jim more worried about where Pam could be. 

Michel still hadn’t given up on the romantic surprise idea, and was proceeding to pull out a map to show them all the island beauty spots their wives might be waiting for them in. 

Jim raked his fingers through his hair as Dwight seized on the map and started shouting something about reconnaissance. 

He was overreacting, assuming the worst. Pam and Iz had probably just found somewhere to get some space. His wife needed space. From him. Pam didn’t want to face him. 

He found himself thinking irrationally of that time her car got stuck in the snow, his growing anxiety when she hadn’t come home. He’d gone out to find her in the end, and he remembered the relief that had gripped him when he’d spotted her tiny familiar Toyota, half-submerged, and her small figure standing helplessly in the drift, swaddled in that puffy pink coat of hers. His hands hand been numb, her cheeks and nose wind-chapped as he’d pulled her into his arms, pressed his face into her curls, both of them half crying in stupid relief.

He’d found her then, in the middle of a snowstorm. So why was finding her on this tiny island proving so hard? Why couldn’t they find each other here? 

There was no dangerous ice here, he reminded himself. No chance of freezing to death. And she was hopefully with Isabel. And Angela? And - 

“Where’s Kelly? Was she with them in the spa?” 

Michel and Dwight were too busy arguing over coordinates on the map to pay Jim much attention, and Mark just had his arms folded, agitated. 

Jim pressed the heel of his hand against his temple, and it was as he turned towards Michel’s desk that he spotted some familiar handwriting on a slip of paper. Crumpled and dried from the rain. He leaned closer, squinting. Temporarily distracted. It was the word fuchsia. In Pam’s writing. He’d know her loopy ‘f’ anywhere. 

It made him think of her swimsuit earlier, and then of her giggles against his ear and the afternoon sunlight in her hair as they’d sprawled on their old couch years ago, while he’d teased her for all the different shades of pink in her box of oil pastels. I swear fuchsia’s even not a real word, Beesly. Her dragging the pastel across his skin to prove to him that it was. The box shifted to the floor and his hand sliding over the warm skin under her blouse, his nose brushing her collar bone, breathing in vanilla and shampoo and Pam. Her green eyes, the faint freckles across her nose, her face soft with love as she gazed up at him. 

Afterwards the fuchsia had accidentally smeared all over the cushion, and he’d declared it was the worst colour ever. 

He’d meant it when he’d told her he liked the colour on her though. The deep pink bikini against her soft white skin, the swimsuit that she’d bought trying to enjoy the holiday that he’d promised her. When was the last time, before that, that she’d bought anything for herself?   

There was a crash outside just as he was reaching for the paper, and he didn’t have time to do much more than shove a bunch of them into his pocket before Michel noticed. 

“What was that?” Dwight hissed. He’d snatched up a stapler from Michel’s desk and was now wielding it like a weapon. “I knew it,” he muttered as he peered through the hut window. “I knew there were intruders on the island. They must be the kidnappers-”

There was another crash, and a muffled curse word from outside.

They all poured outside - just in time to find Ryan, who appeared to be in the middle of stealing golf cart.  Or rather, failing to steal a golf cart. He’d just crashed it into the others. He sat in the white vehicle with a sulky expression, ducking his head and pulling a face when he realised he’d been discovered. 

“What are you doing?” Dwight thundered, seizing his shirt before he could slope off. “Explain yourself!” 

“Ow, let go-”

Dwight did not let go for a second. “What have you done to Angela?!”

“Nothing, jeez.” Ryan rolled his eyes, trying to adjust his shirt. “They’ve all gone to Eden.” 

Jim blinked. Mark stared. Dwight released a loud scoff, his gaze narrowing. “A likely story. Angela would never go there.”  

Ryan rolled his eyes again, and held up his phone. “Wanna bet?” 

They all crowded round the screen. It was a photo. A text from Kelly, Jim realised. She was pouting up at the camera, one hand on her hip, the other holding a tequila glass. There was unmistakably a dance floor behind her, and several gyrating guys. She’d captioned it #livingmybestlife #singleandreadytomingle #ryanhowardsucks. 

Mark smirked a bit at the last hashtag, despite himself. “That should be trending.” 

Dwight was having none of it. “That just proves your wife is a harlot,” he barked. “My wife is definitely not-”

Ryan showed them the next text. Also from Kelly. 

Pam says to say all the girls are here too. Looks like it’s divorces all round, suckers! 

Michel had gone white. “Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no.” He was suddenly, inexplicably, no longer French. “Toby.” 

Dwight was disconcerted now. “There’s no photographic evidence-”

“I’ve let you down,” Michel howled, grabbing Ryan’s shoulder. “They’ll be snuggled up with boyfriends half their age by morning. That’s how he gets them. Every time!” 

Pam was ok, Jim thought with relief. And, he realised, smart enough to try to use Kelly’s phone to let them know they were safe. Even if she hadn’t told him where she was going. Or let him in on what was happening. 

Mark looked less certain. He was staring numbly at the word divorce. 

Dwight was now interrogating an inconsolable Michel about who Toby was. (“The devil,” Michel groaned, still gripping Ryan. “Toby Flenderson is the actual devil. And he’s the grossest, lamest, most boring man you’ll ever meet.”)

Jim tried to reassure Mark. “Come on, you know how much Iz hates frat boys.” 

His friend didn’t return his smile. “I know her going to a singles resort sends a pretty clear message.” 

“Mark-”

“That does it, then. We need to rescue them from this Toby person.” Dwight was cracking his knuckles. “Do you have a baseball bat, Michel? Or a crow bar,” he amended, “That might work.”  

Michel brightened. “A rescue mission! Yes! We can stop Toby once and for all.” He was so excited that he failed to notice Ryan trying to slink away, or Dwight reaching for a tree branch. 

He was also, Jim observed, 100% American.  

“Is that what you were doing with the golf cart?” Dwight suddenly wheeled on Ryan. “Trying to rescue them?” 

Ryan paused, caught in the act of sneaking off. He blinked his blue eyes. “…Yes.” 

Michel started crowing about how brave and heroic he was, and Mark raised his eyes heavenwards. 

“Don’t worry, guys, I know a shortcut to Eden. I’ll have us there toot sweet!” 

Michel was already ploughing into the trees, accompanied by an amped up Dwight and dragging a vaguely reluctant Ryan. 

“Are you coming?” Dwight yelled over his shoulder at Jim and Mark. “Or are you going to leave the real men to rescue your women?” 

Jim glanced at Mark. He hadn’t moved. 

"I wouldn’t be so sure they want to be rescued,” his friend shot back.

Jim thought of Pam on a dance floor, being made to do shots and surrounded by horny guys. With Angela and Kelly for company.  It made his heart clench, even as he wondered whether she’d find that preferable to being with him at the moment.