Pam relaxed into Jim’s arms. This felt right. This felt safe. How was it that they’d never done this before?

Oh, right. She’d just broken up with Roy—and Jim was too much an officer and a gentleman to be cuddling her while she was with someone else. Just as she had been too wrapped up in that relationship to acknowledge her own need for him. What was it her mother had said? “You can always count on Lieutenant Halpert for whatever you need.” Even her mother had been able to see it.

Well, what did she need?

She needed Jim.

It really was that simple, she’d realized. Oh, she needed professional and personal fulfillment, but Jim would support her on the way to that—and she was closer to achieving it in the last few months with him around than she ever had been. And she had needed to be free of Roy, and of all the various neuroses and complexes she’d accumulated around that relationship. She’d needed to rebuild herself as something—someone—other than Pammy Beesly-soon-to-be-Anderson. But she’d done that. She’d done it herself (with a little help from her friends over the course of the last few months of spaceflight). She’d become this Fancy New Person, “Comms,” and she’d found the inner strength she’d needed to tell Roy that it was over.

And now she needed Jim. Because while Comms was free, part of being free was being able to choose what you wanted to do. And she definitely wanted to do Lieutenant Jim Halpert.

Ahem.

Maybe it was just the presence of his arms around her, but that was feeling more and more likely with each passing moment. Given that he’d confessed he loved her—scratch that, was in love with her, and could you come up with a clearer, more specific declaration that it wasn’t just brotherly love if you tried?—just yesterday, and he’d showed her today the amazing plans he’d made just for her for her wedding day, she was pretty sure it was more than just possible. But she knew Jim, and she knew she’d have to find a very clear way to express it to him: clearer even than “I can’t,” because she had to overcome the wariness he was probably feeling given that she’d managed to reject him just last night. Still, she figured, telling him about Roy probably helped. As did forcibly insinuating herself into his arms, as she’d just more or less done. She’d just have to find the words to follow up on those actions.

Speaking of words, he’d just pretty much told her to answer Kelly’s call, so she might as well do it.

“Comms here.”

“OHMIGOD COMMS! I KNOW YOU DID NOT JUST HANG UP ON ME AFTER TELLING ME YOU AND ROY BROKE UP.” She was grateful for the volume adjustment on her datasleeve, which meant that Ice didn’t actually blow out her eardrums. She glanced up at Jim—nice angle, this—and decided against switching the call to her suit’s earbuds. Instead she winked up at him and shrugged, trying her best to silently convey the thought “this is why I didn’t answer before.”

He grinned down at her. Message received, she supposed.

“Sorry, Ice. I had something to take care of.” She raised an eyebrow at Jim, who stared blankly back at her. Message only partly received, apparently.

Kelly, of course, had taken that little bit of information and run with it, fortunately at a slightly lower volume.

“Ohmigod! Was he still with you? Did you have to push him out of the compartment? How did this happen? Seriously, Comms, I’m dying down here, I need details! Ohmigod, is this why you had me wake him up? Was it because you wanted to break up with him? You should have told me! I could have, like, dosed him with one of those tranquility drugs or something, or maybe a truth serum! Seriously, there’s like a billion bottles down here, there’s got to be something that would have made it easier for you. But why did you break up with him? Was it because of the drinking? His blood-alcohol content was still super high when we loaded him into the Warehouse, you know. Like, I’m not really supposed to check those things or anything, but it’s on the screen, and it’s not like I’m not going to look, you know?  Anyway, you are so much better off now, I bet, though it’s sad you’re not going to have the wedding. Can I still be a bridesmaid? I know that doesn’t really make much sense when you’re not going to be a bride, but I had the best little modification planned for my suit and Ryan was just going to die when he saw it and I can’t bear to not wear it now. I can’t believe you’re not getting married! We’ll have to have a girls night out! Or I guess in, it’s not like we can get off the ship or anything, but you know what they say—after enough drinks in the Almanac it’s not like you can tell! We need to celebrate your freedom! Just don’t go after Ryan, he’s all mine. You can have Toby though. His office is across from mine and he’s always making the weirdest faces. Ohmigod! Roy’s here! I have to go! Call me! We’ll get drinks!”

And the line shut off.

Pam giggled. She’d been doing a lot of laughing, actually, in the last twenty-four hours, which seemed odd given that she’d also done so much crying when Jim had told her how he felt. But after the tears there was really nothing left but laughter, and everything was just so absurd and despite it all, she realized, she was just so happy. Because something about hearing it from Kelly (which meant that everyone else on the ship would know in a matter of a single shift, if she knew anything about shipboard gossip) meant that it was no longer in her control; no longer her problem. She and Roy were done, and she could just move on. A little part of her, the part that still loved Roy for all the years they’d been together, was glad to hear that he’d actually made his way to Cryogenics—not just because if he was back in the Warehouse she didn’t have to feel like she was disrespecting him by telling Jim how she felt, but also because it meant he hadn’t gotten lost or hurt on the way there, or decided to just hole up with an automat and drink. He’d be OK in the Warehouse. And he wasn’t her responsibility there—literally, he was Ice’s, and morally, he was his own.

She looked up at Jim as the giggle fit faded away and was surprised to see he wasn’t joining in with her laughter. That was one of the things she loved about him—yes, she could admit it to herself now, she loved it about him—that he was so open to her moods. So why wasn’t he laughing now?

He gently disentangled her from his arms and set her down on the solid flooring of the corridor. In her surprise,  she let him, even as every fiber of her being was screaming “no.” What was going on?

He smiled sadly at her—she’d never noticed that he could look like Toby before—and finally spoke.

“Ice is right.” He gave her arm a squeeze and released it. “You should go enjoy your freedom. No obligations, right?”

“I was!” What was his problem?

“Then I’ll leave you to it.” He turned to go.

Suddenly it clicked for her. He knew she was referring to Roy as an obligation, that she was savoring her freedom from him. But he thought she meant any relationship; that her freedom was from having to consider someone else, rather than from having to let her thoughts be dominated by what Roy wanted to do. That wasn’t it at all. She was free, yes, but freedom wasn’t freedom if it didn’t include the option to share it with someone else. And not just someone else: Jim.

She grabbed hold of his hand before he could walk away and used it to propel her upwards. Thank God for low-G she thought as she rose above her tiptoes to the level of his face, then used his arm to stabilize herself. He had frozen in place—all the better for her to maneuver around him.

She stared into his eyes. His head jerked, as if eye contact with her was difficult, and she reached out a hand to move him back into eye contact with her. She left her hand on the side of his face, stroking it.

“But if you leave, I won’t get to do this.” She leaned forward slowly and kissed him.

For a moment he didn’t respond, and she was worried she’d somehow misjudged the situation, just like she’d accused him of doing the night before. But then his arms slid around her, and she let her legs slide around him, and they were kissing for a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity, like a beam of light wrapping itself around the event horizon of a black hole. It might have been a second, a minute, an hour: she wasn’t aware and she didn’t want to be. After that undefined, limitless time they pulled back and she could see his face was heated. She was sure her own was too.

But he was smiling, and she knew from the ache in her lips that she was also doing that as well.

“Well,” he said. “We wouldn’t want you to miss out on that, would we?”

She shook her head no, then realized it was probably a good idea to say something out loud. This is Jim, she thought to herself. Just be honest.

“What would be the point of being free if I couldn’t do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe having no cares, no worries, no obligations?”

She pecked him lightly on the lips again, and had to restrain herself from another round of more intensive kissing. “You aren’t a worry or an obligation.” Another peck. “But I do care for you.”

“Not just about me?”

“Not just about you. For you. I love you, Jim.”

This time he definitely kissed her, but otherwise the effect was much the same as that first time—only neither of them pulled back until her datasleeve pinged again.

“You gonna get that?”

“Not on your life, Halpert.”

Low-G was a very good thing, she decided. Otherwise, she’d end up with a crick in her neck from leaning up for all this kissing. Not that it wouldn’t have been worth it, but still—it was probably better when they were the same height. And if it wasn’t? They’d have plenty of opportunities to find out.