Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or The Office. No copyright infringement intended. 

♥ 

Jim set the date on Dwight’s computer to April 4, and returned to his desk just in the nick of time, Dwight strolling into the office with his chin parallel to the floor and his back stiffly upright as usual. He walked up to his desk, and suddenly became very paranoid. As Dwight spun in circles, flailing his briefcase from side to side as he turned, searching for his things, Jim pretended to be too absorbed with work to notice.

"Jim!" Dwight fumed. "Where is all my stuff?"

"At your desk," Jim said. He kept his eyes locked on his computer screen, and spoke with annoyance cutting through his words of obviousness.

"No, they’re not! There is nothing here except a computer." Jim sighed, leaned back in his chair, and folded his arms up over his chest.

"Look, I’m busy, and I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Dwight. You switched desks weeks ago, remember? You said that you needed to keep an eye on Creed’s productivity, so you moved over there." Dwight stood puzzling for a moment, his brows furrowed and his opalescent eyes bulged.

"Dwight, I have some messages for you," Pam called at him, holding up some thin slips of paper. He collected them from Pam, and stood to read them for a moment.

"Wait a minute. This says today’s date is April 4?"

"Yeah, so?" Pam asked as she pretended to be busy checking the voice mails.

"Today is March 7, not April 4." The frustration was growing in his emphasis. Pam looked up at Dwight, and raised an eyebrow at him.

"Umm... Okay, Dwight. March 7 was almost a month ago, but whatever." Pam returned her full attention to the phone, and Dwight took cautious steps towards Creed’s area of the office, still examining the date with baffled curiosity, where he found all of his things neatly arranged as usual on the desk across from Creed. He sat down, and checked the date on his computer. April 4. He leaned back in his seat, rested his hands on his thighs, and absentmindedly looked up at the ceiling as he tried to remember the past three weeks.

Pam glanced over at Jim. He shook his head, restraining laughter, as she smiled back at him, her teeth gleaming, and she curled into a ball of strangled chuckles. Jim unbuttoned the buttons of his cuffs, and rolled up his sleeves a little before turning back to his work.

♥

"Oh, please, you have to do it," Jim pleaded with Pam in the kitchen as she poured herself a cup of coffee. Pam laughed, and almost spilled the coffee on the counter.

"Should we take it that far though?"

"Yes! Absolutely. It’ll be perfect, Beesly."

"He’ll talk to Angela, and she’ll tell him that the whole thing is untrue. Might as well quit while we’re still ahead."

"C’mon, Pam. You know them. They won’t talk on company hours, and he’s going to find out the truth by the time he gets home anyway. Tomorrow, we’ll act like he imagined the whole thing, and that’ll really mess with his head."

"Alright, alright. I’ll go ask him," Pam said as she left the kitchen. She went up to Dwight who was shuffling through papers and folders.

"Hey, Dwight. I was just wondering how your head’s feeling," she asked, feigning sincerity. His gaze shot up at her, his bright eyes glowing like moons.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean since that head injury you got yesterday. Remember? That shelf fell in the warehouse, and hit you on the head. You had to go to the hospital and everything. Does your head still hurt?"

"No... I’m fine..." Dwight said, lingering over the words as if he was asking himself a question. He looked out the window, lost in thought.

"Okay, well, that’s good to hear. Talk to you later then," Pam said. She walked away, and watched Dwight finger his skull like a phrenologist. Jim was already back at his desk, and Pam flashed him a large smile of accomplishment when he looked to her for confirmation on how the mission had gone.

Pam couldn’t help the smile permanently stitched to her face. She tried hiding it behind tight lips, but it manifested itself in her feet dancing idly under her desk and the sparkle in her eyes. For the first time in a long time, Pam Beesly was giddy at work. How could she help it? Things between her and Jim were back to the way they were supposed to be: pranking Dwight, laughing over things that no one else could understand, smiling at one another. They were Jim and Pam again. They were the elusive pranksters, the unstoppable due, the partners in crime once more, and it brought a whole new meaning to being in a good mood. Pam reached up, and pet a loose, crisp curl of her hair, and thought about maybe softening her curls for work tomorrow.

She wondered if something had happened between Jim and Karen. They avoided eye contact, they hadn’t spoken all day, and Karen wasn’t giving her dirty looks every time Jim leaned over her desk to talk to her. Although she didn’t want to extract joy out of Karen’s sadness, she couldn’t tame the excitement and happiness welling up inside her. And maybe, just maybe... Jim was happy that they were back to normal too. But that might be hoping for too much, Pam thought.

♥

The lunch hour rolled around, and Jim grabbed his ham and cheese sandwich as he headed for the break room. He bought a grape soda from the vending machine, and returned to the table in the kitchen. As he unfurled the brown paper bag with his lunch, he hoped and hoped that any minute now, Pam would come through that door with a mixed berries yogurt and a plastic spoon to sit with him just like the old days. He smiled to himself at the thought, and even found it semi-plausible. Everything today was just like the old days, and it felt better that way. He didn’t even totally care that Karen was probably going to break up with him or that he was letting himself fall in love with Pam all over again.

Jim picked up his grape soda, and began pacing about the kitchen. Yes, he was letting himself be in love with Pam, and he hadn’t done that in months. He thought that he would be afraid of not having a girlfriend, Pam being single, and the two of them conspiring together like they used to, but he wasn’t. This was the happiest he had felt since the day he and Pam hid Andy’s cellphone in the ceiling. Maybe it was okay to be in love with her. Maybe...

That’s when Jim looked through the glass of the kitchen door, and his stomach turned over. Leaning over Pam’s desk was a burly warehouse worker, his arms folded across the counter, speaking inaudible words to her. She laughed, dropped her head, and that was the most he could bear to see before turning away.

She was never going to fall in love with him. No matter how hard he tried. She would never love him. Never.

The kitchen door opened and shut, and Jim turned around to find Karen leaning against the door, her bottom lip tucked in under her teeth. She shoved her hands in her pockets, and searched the floor between them for the right words.

"I’m sorry about my reaction last night," she said. "It’s just that I had this perfect plan of how everything was supposed to go, and it suddenly turned out in the last way I would’ve wanted it to. Has that ever happened to you?"

"...Yeah, it has," Jim whispered.

"And that’s what happened to me. I’m sorry for being a rude, I was just hurt. If you can’t say it back yet, that’s okay with me. I’m more than willing to wait for whenever you’re ready, okay?" Jim looked up at Karen. His eyes were sullen, satiated with empty pain. He was hardly able to keep himself together, his heart shattering just a bit more every second he saw Roy and Pam talking together at reception behind Karen. She didn’t understand,

but he coiled his arms around her waist, nonetheless.

"You have no idea how glad I am to have you," he said. And he had meant it. Just not in the way Karen would’ve wished, or in the way that she interpreted it.

♥

Pam sat at her reception desk, setting the phone to automatic voice mail. She had seen Jim go into the kitchen earlier, and decided that, yes, Ms. Fancy New Beesly was going to be a big girl, and make the move to sit with Jim for lunch today. But as she began to standup, Roy came into the office, and leaned over the desk.

"Hey, Pammy," he said in a morose murmur.

"Hi, Roy," she said in such a halfhearted attempt at politeness that she couldn’t even convince him. He knocked his fists on the desk inattentively.

"I’m really sorry for how I reacted at Poor Richard’s. Okay?"

"I don’t want to talk about this here, Roy," she said. Pam ducked her eyes, and was waiting for Jim to come into the room to pull her into his arms and rescue her from this horribly awkward conversation.

"What’s so shameful? I just wanted to apologize."

"Roy. It’s over." She looked him in the eye, and her voice was stern. Roy smiled.

"Yeah, okay. I understand. But I really am sorry, and I wanted you to know that." Pam smiled. Was he being sincere? "I mean, Kenny and I did kind of go fucking crazy, didn’t we?" Pam laughed, and leaned into her elbows against the desk.

"Yeah, just a tiny bit," she said sarcastically. "Thanks for apologizing though. That’s really mature of you."

"So did you tell Halpert how I flipped?"

"I... no, I didn’t tell him that you know what happened." Roy pulled away from his desk, and rubbed the back of his neck. Pam couldn’t read his reaction... It was a strange mix between contemplation and some kind of unusually wry grin.

"Okay, well, uhh... I’m glad we straightened things out then. See ya, Pam." With that, he turned around, and left the office. Pam stood up out of her chair, but paused halfway between reception in the kitchen. On the other side of the door, Jim had his arms wrapped protectively around Karen’s waist, and they were smiling at each other like ... a couple.

She must’ve forgotten that she was standing in the middle of her workplace, her arms fallen limply to her sides, and her cheeks flushed with the promise of tears. She didn’t know what to do or where to go, who to go to. The look of heartbroken shock, of hollow insides, was unmasked on her face. It didn’t take long before she felt completely exposed in front of everyone, and fled to the stairs that led down to the ground floor.

Pam didn’t cry. She didn’t. She only sat down on the steps, hugged her knees, and breathed into her plain brown skirt.

♥

"So everything’s okay now?" Karen asked.

"Yeah, definitely," Jim said.

"Okay, so I need to ask you something."

"Go ahead."

"I don’t want to sound clingy or jealous or anything, but why did you switch desks a week or two ago? I mean, it just seems like an inconvenience to switch desks when there was nothing wrong with the one you were at before, and it only made a difference of what, two feet?"

Jim wasn’t sure he could answer honestly without mentioning that he’s a creature of habit, his old desk held good memories of sideways glances shared with Pam, and that it gave him a better view of the receptionist.

"I guess I just missed my desk back from my pre-Stamford days. If you want me to switch back, I will."

"Would you?"

"Sure."