“I just don’t understand,” Oscar muttered, shrugging helplessly. “When two people, obviously in all sorts of love, are locked in a sauna together, what else is supposed to happen?”

“Maybe we should have locked it.” Kelly nodded and rubbed her right eye sleepily. “Pam wouldn’t have been able to get out…”

“And why didn’t we lock it?” Phyllis asked from the corner.

“Because locking the door of a sauna is extremely dangerous, people!” Dwight exclaimed from his perch on top of a stool at the front of the room. “There could be an accident, or a malfunction in the steam heating, and the room could overheat and literally cook the patrons alive. Cooked Jim. And Pam. Do we really want that?”

“You don’t want to go with cannibalism,” Creed said from his own stool. He shook his head and tucked his fingers under his chin.

“I just don’t know what to do anymore.” Oscar sighed and leaned back in his chair. “What else could we possibly do? Nothing.”

“Well…” Kelly reached down into her fake Gucci purse and pulled out a brightly colored brochure. “If absolutely necessary…”

Dwight’s eyes went wide. “Where did you get that? Why have you been hiding it?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly nervously fingered the edge of the brochure. “It was at the airport. Beside TV Guide’s Sexy Issue.”

“It’s absolutely perfect,” Dwight breathed, reaching forward on bended knee to take the brochure into his hands. “Kelly…thank you.”

Kelly shrugged. “Last-ditch attempt. I mean, seriously, if you guys had locked me and Ryan in a sauna back when we were the case, we might not have had to get so drunk.”

Ryan bit his lip. “Maybe.”

Phyllis leaned over and meekly raised a finger. “What if we’re wrong? What if Pam really doesn’t want to be with Jim?”

A long silence.

Then, Kelly: “That’s, like, the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Kevin snickered, and Dwight just shook his head. Phyllis slunk back down in her seat. It was just a thought.

~~~!~~~

“Ladies and gentlemen, into the conference room, stat!”

Pam looked up from her game of Bubble Shooter and immediately wished she hadn’t. Michael was standing in front of the conference room with a big grin on his face. With his shirt unbuttoned. In his boxers.

The Dunder Mifflinites filed into the conference room with mortified, blank stares, each trying to keep their eyes off of Michael’s chest hair. Toby was last in line. Michael stopped him at the door.

“Toby, this is a body image seminar,” Michael whispered. “I’m afraid you can’t be a part of it. We can’t have any negative reminders of body image in this conference room.”

Toby shrugged and went back to his desk. From inside the conference room, Jim raised a finger. “Uhh…Michael, is that a naked woman on the wall?”

Kelly gave a shriek. “Oh my god, it’s Paris Hilton!”

Kevin and Creed made the same sighing noise and shifted left to right in their seats. Ryan’s eyes were wide, and Oscar looked bored.

Michael shut the door before Toby could look over again. “Welcome to the Dunder Mifflin Body Image Seminar of 2007!”

Pam looked like her cat had just been shot. “Body image….?”

“The media gives us…so many negative indications of our own body image. And I feel that there are some people in this office who need a self-esteem boost now and then.” Michael pulled a Sharpie out of his pocket. “Paris Hilton is not a perfect woman!” He circled the nose in the poster, drew ten little arrows pointing into the circle. “Look at that! Just look at that!”

Pam’s mouth dropped open and she turned her head to Jim, sitting in the row ahead of her. At the exact moment, he turned around with a smothered grin on his face, but the minute their eyes connected, they sharply looked away as if somebody had Tasered them both at the exact same time.

Pam shifted her legs and rested her elbow on the arm of her chair, traced the edge of her lip with her pointer finger and tried to focus more on Michael’s seminar and less on the memory of Jim’s chest under her fingers, his heartbeat on her palm.

Dwight slowly dropped his pencil and leaned down to pick it up, pulling on Creed’s shoelace in the process. Creed cleared his throat three times and scratched his head twice. Meredith leaned back and propped her feet up on the chair in front of her, applying gentle pressure, and forced Stanley out of his stupor. Kelly took note of Stanley’s quickly opening eyes and reached under her chair to pull out the brochure.

“Do you need this, Michael?”

“Yes, thank you, Kelly. This is excellent. Now, to talk about the average female American vagina…”

~~~!~~~

At lunch, Dwight and Kelly came to a realization: Jim and Pam were, like, totally awkward around each other now.

And it was their fault.

Dwight had a plan.

Kelly quietly shoved her brochure back in the second drawer. It would be unnecessary.

~~~!~~~

“Okay, listen up everyone,” Michael called when all were seated for the afternoon session. “This is now a self-esteem-building activity.”

He held up a stack of what looked like forms. “This is a questionnaire. Each of you will fill out one of these, front and back, and hand it in at the end of the activity. If you choose not to fill it out, hand it in, or fill it out with ridiculous answers, you will receive a pay dock.”

“What?” Stanley balled his fists up.

“You heard me!” Michael nodded. “You heard me.”

“Michael, that’s ridiculous,” Pam piped from the back. “You can’t dock our pay because we refuse to do a questionnaire.”

“Lalalalalalalaaa Lucy in the sky…With diamonds…I can’t hear you, Pam, in fact, I don’t even know what you’re saying right now. You might not be saying anything right now. I don’t know. Anyway.” He turned to face the other side of the room. “Partner up, and each one of you take a questionnaire. Actually, no. I’ll assign partners. Partnering up fosters choosiness and…clickers in the workplace.”

“You mean cliques?” Phyllis asked.

“No, Phyllis, don’t be ridiculous,” Michael looked disgusted. “A clicker is a socially selective group of people. A clique is something a ten-year-old puts in her hair.”

He turned his attention back to the group at large. “Uh…Stanley and Phyllis, go to the break room. Ryan and Kelly, go to your little hole. Uh…make things interesting, Creed and Meredith to the parking lot. Jim and Pam to the stairwell. Oscar, go with…Kevin. You’re basically gay anyway, and that is perfectly fine.” He turned to leave, and then turned back again. “Oh, yeah. Dwight and Angela, just go to a hallway or something.”

Jim and Pam stood up at the same time and shuffled out of the room with their heads down, trying not to look at each other.

Dwight grinned and took a questionnaire. “It’s working,” he whispered to Angela as they walked back to her cubicle.

~~~!~~~

“All right,” Pam sighed as the heavy stairwell door swung shut. “Let’s get this over with. First question: What do you think is the best part of my personality?”

Jim exhaled. “Uh, your unbelievably strong attraction to Dwight.”

“Jim, this is serious, stop screwing around.” Pam sat down on the floor by the window. The stairwell smelled like rubber and scuffed shoes. Jim sat down beside her, and she got up and moved to the top stair.

“Whoa now,” Jim looked more than a little surprised.

“I just want to get this over with.” Pam nervously tapped her pencil on the edge of her questionnaire. “C’mon.”

Jim’s gaze softened. “Pam, I think we need to talk.”

“No we don’t, no we don’t, dammit,” Pam shook her head. The tapping intensified. “Just hurry up – what’s the best part of my personality?”

Jim nodded and swallowed once, then looked at his questionnaire. “Uh, you? Um…your sense of humor.”

Pam scribbled it down and spoke directly into her paper. “What’s the best part of my body?”

“Your eyes. And nose. And hair. And cheeks. And shoulders.”

Pam bit her lip and wrote it all down. Her voice shook as she asked the next question: “If the building was on fire and you saved me, what would the reason be?”

“You’re, uh…” Jim folded the top edge of his paper and unfolded it again. “You’re a friend.”

Pam’s voice floated from her hunched figure on the stair. “How many dates would have to happen before you would kiss me?”

Jim folded the edge again, then slowly shredded it off. “One.”

“Do you think I’m prettier than Katy was?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think I’m prettier than Karen was?”

“Yes.”

“No matter who you end up with, do you want kids?”

“Yes.”

Pam’s voice was ragged. Jim stopped shredding his paper when he realized that she hadn’t written anything down in a long while.

“If we were in a relationship, would you register it with Human Resources?”

“Yes.”

“If we were in a relationship, would you want to move in within the year?”

“I’d want you to move in with me. But yes.”

Pam choked a little on her words, and buried her head further into her paper. “Do you consider yourself a good kisser?”

Jim lowered his voice to a gentle timbre. “Yes.”

“Do you like my hair?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like my clothes?”

“Yes.”

“If I showed up at your door one morning at 3 AM, would you let me in?”

“Yes.”

“Jim, am I a good kisser too?”

He exhaled. “Yes.”

“Oh, fuck it – “

Pam stood up and her paper went flying down the stairs, her curls went flying over her shoulder and she launched herself at Jim. Her momentum carried them across the space he had been pacing through and gently slammed his back into the wall beside the window, his legs and her hips sandwiched between the rail and the heating unit. Her mouth was on his and her hands were behind his ear and on his chest again and she was pressing her knee between his. Oxygen was never an issue. Neither, for that matter, was the window. All he could hear was the sound of their breathing and the rustle of fabric as she slid her skirt off of her hips and clenched at his shirt.

She broke off for half a second to look into his eyes. “I wanted to kiss you, Jim.”

He chuckled. “I know.”

“I meant on Casino Night.” Pam’s eyes were new and dangerous, filled with a light Jim hadn’t seen before. “I wanted to kiss you.”

Jim brought his lips back to hers in response, and couldn’t resist smiling into the kiss as she let out a little groan and brought one of his large hands down the curve of her side and to the soft skin of her thighs. His fingers found wetness at the exact moment her hands slid under his shirt, and the stairwell dissolved into brightness and the rough feeling of painted brick on his back.

~~~!~~~

Dwight’s Discovery Channel binoculars were near-identical to Michael’s. They were also excellent for viewing through stairwell windows from a parking lot many meters away.

“Whoa, look at them go…”

“Ohmygod!” Kelly grabbed Phyllis’s hands and danced around in a circle. “Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod!”

Creed shook his head and peered through his telescope. “O ye of little faith.”

Michael came out of the building and approached the group on the pavement with his own Discovery Channel binoculars in hand. “What’s going on here? Birdwatching?”

“Not quite.” Dwight’s mouth dropped open. “Damn, they moved onto the other wall. Can’t see them now.”

“What’s going on?” Michael peered up through his prized possession. “Oh my God, is that Jim? And Pam?”

“Yup.” Ryan looked oddly happy.

“Ohhhh!” Michael chortled and started running for the building. “I’m so busting them!”

Dwight, Kevin, Creed, Toby, and Kelly were in front of him in a flash.

“Don’t even think about it,” Kelly hissed.

“Not a good idea,” murmured Toby.

“Michael, no.” Kevin shook his head slowly and made a slashing movement with his arm. Dwight just glared.

Michael looked at his much taller employees and retreated back to the corner of the pavement, peering up through his binoculars again. “Well, okay, I guess it can wait.”

~~~!~~~

Jim and Pam came running out of the stairwell half an hour later, both extremely flustered and haphazardly dressed. Angela was waiting.

She glanced at the two of them with a raised eyebrow, then pointed at the stack of questionnaires on the conference room table. “Got your papers?”

They ran back into the stairwell to find them. Just before the door swung shut, a snippet of conversation echoed up to Angela’s waiting ears.

“Jim, let me get that – your tie is crooked.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Jim, c’mon, it’ll only take a second – Jim – ah!” An overflow of giggling. “No, it’s not fair, you know I’m so ticklish right there – ah – ahhhh…I’m not ticklish there...“

The door slammed shut just as another peal of giggling came rising up. Angela reached down to rearrange the stack of female papers and let herself smile a little. Just a little.