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Author's Chapter Notes:

So, about that updating thing... 

 

His jaw is starting to ache. He’s smiled more today than he has in months. Muscles long forgotten are flexing under the use. 

He’d solemnly asked Josh if he could take a half day early on and maybe implied that there was something wrong with one of his parents so he really shouldn’t be smiling this much, but he can’t help it. 

It’s not like he’s consciously instructing himself to grin every time a phone rings or the receptionist so much as breathes. It’s just that these things remind him so much of how his life has turned around in the past thirty-six or so hours. 

 

He finds himself watching the receptionist.

It aches in a familiar way. It’s a heady combination of a twinge of hope mixed with everything that brings him joy. 

And, sure, this receptionist is nothing like her. But she’s answering the phone with Dunder Mifflin, this is… and it’s enough for his memory to fill in the blanks. 

Linda, the receptionist here - honestly he forgets her name half the time, looks utterly baffled each and every time he beams at her. He’s gone from blank, brooding staring to unbridled enthusiasm. She’s dumbfounded at his about-face and he doesn’t blame her. 

He can’t see anyway to explain himself that doesn’t seem at least a little insane so he doesn’t. She can live with the mystery. 

All he cares about is getting through the next couple of hours of work so he can hit the road. 

He’s penciled in time for a complete breakdown at about the moment he hits the Scranton city limits. 

He can only remember one other time he’s been this nervous and yeah, that really hadn’t ended well. He’s going to need a minute to pull himself together. The nervousness buzzing through him has him bouncing in his seat, on edge and throwing wide smiles over towards reception. 

The evening can’t come quickly enough. 

 

Pam has given up on her tally.

She looks at Ryan’s desk every seven seconds with wide, frantic eyes and pinkened cheeks. 

Ryan notices because he’s not a complete idiot and glares at her with raised brows. 

He comes over to reception and hisses, “your staring is starting to get as weird as Michael’s.” 

She blushes, her cheeks warming like the midday sun. “Sorry,” she murmurs. “It’s not… you.”

He rolls his eyes at that and strides back to his desk muttering as he goes about how he needs to get out of this place. 

Michael had been pretty… enthusiastic about Ryan moving to Jim’s desk. There had been a couple of days of Michael beaming at Ryan through the blinds. Pam grins at the memory. At the time, she hadn’t been able to appreciate the humor in it. The ache in her heart too ever present. The loss at Jim’s desk still too raw. There was nothing funny about someone else seated in the place that Jim had once sat. 

But now? Now, it’s hilarious and she finds herself giggling at the memory. 

Ryan continues to glare at her, but his wrath means nothing and she continues to grin in his direction whenever the mood strikes her - which is all kinds of frequently. 

The day can’t pass quickly enough. 

 

Jim is practically electric by the time he leaves the office. The steady hum of nerves has him generating enough frantic energy to power a small city. 

The drive disappears far too quickly and not quickly enough. He hasn’t had time to gather himself and his hand threads through his hair again and again, leaving him looking as if he’s just crawled out of bed. At the same time, he doesn’t want to put this off any longer. He just wants to be where Pam is. 

It’s strange, this new energy he has, and sure, it’s mostly nerves. It takes him a while to realize that this undercurrent bubbling deep in his gut that leaves him feeling like a soda can on the brink of explosion is renewed hope. 

Huh. After that pummeling rejection and all this time, it’s amazing how quickly the word date spilling from Pam’s lips has turned him hopeful. 

Another mile ticks by and he inches his foot further down the accelerator, his anticipation taking the wheel. What’s a speeding ticket or two on the way to everything he’s ever wanted? 

 

Pam leaves the office in a flurry. Her hair is a frizzy mess and she wants to gentle its chaos ever so slightly. She assesses herself in her mirror critically. She doesn’t need blush, her frayed nerves have painted her cheeks a frantic shade of splotchy red. She wills herself to calm down, with no success. 

Nerves are supposed to be quiet, delicate things that twist your stomach on the wings of butterflies, soft and persistent. A careful fluttering that evokes gentle anxiousness. Pam’s are nothing like this. Her nerves are stray cats fighting, spitting and hissing and darting all over the place. Her stomach is up and down and across the room, never stilling for a moment. 

She might throw up. 

After she’d called it off with Roy and Jim had disappeared, she’d considered how strange it would be to date. She couldn’t see herself with anyone who wasn’t her fiance… with one exception, but he had left and it had seemed final at the time. 

This feels different. It takes her a moment to realize the extra chaos she’s feeling is excitement. The cats continue tying her insides in knots. She lets her upside down stomach remind her of how important this is. It’s her shot and she’s not going to miss. 

There’s a knock on her door. She gives up on doing anything with her hair. 

It’s Jim she reminds herself, in an attempt to settle her annoyance at her slightly less refined than ideal appearance. It’s Jim her heart trills and any sense of control she thought she had exits stage left. 

 

He stands on her doorstep. His heart is pounding so loudly he’s afraid she’ll come and answer the door from the rhythm it beats before his hand has the chance to formally knock. 

He needs a moment. He steadies himself, instructing the frantic beating to settle down. It does, as he raises his knuckles to rap against the door. After the first knock, his chest stills so much that he’s terrified he may pass out. He can see his heart in his mind, a bright cartoon approximation that’s shying away from the interaction that’s about to take place, nervous and scared and trying to hide behind his ribs and pretend it doesn’t exist. He’d laugh if it wasn’t so painfully accurate. The poor little guy is terrified of being hurt again, he’s all huge beads of sweat and averted eyes. 

She answers the door and smiles like she’s never smiled at him before. It’s almost as if anytime she’s ever smiled at him before a tiny part of her brain had whispered Roy-Roy-Roy and she’d held a part of herself back. 

Her smile now is unrestrained. Free. 

She smiles at him and his heart is clawing through his ribs in an attempt to get to her. Gone is the reluctance and fear. 

There is only her

 

She answers her door and there he is.

She has to fight herself from rubbing at her eyes and confirming the reality before her. The eyeshadow she’d just hastily scraped on the only thing steadying her hands.

Somehow, he’s even more handsome than she remembers. She smiles at him in greeting, wearing her heart on her sleeve and smiling like she’s always wanted to smile at him and never quite been able to under the spectre of Roy and loyalty and pretending she didn’t see what was right in front of her.

“Jim,” she breathes and he steps tentatively towards her, like she’s a skittish creature that he expects to recoil in fear. When she doesn’t flinch away, it must buoy him and he crosses some invisible line and softly brushes his lips to her cheek. 

Her flesh flames under his touch and she rises her cool fingers to trace where his lips have touched. 

“Hi,” he rumbles, his voice rough with emotion or nerves or something she’s not quite sure how to name. 

“Do you want to,” she jerks a thumb over her shoulder. 

He nods and she steps back. He mirrors her, their steps in sync, and he’s over the threshold and in her apartment. 

She chews her lip nervously as his eyes dart around the room before flicking back to her, bright and appraisingly. 

It’s only then she notices the delicate bouquet cradled in one of his hands. He notices her noticing it and it seems to remind him that he’s holding them. 

He blushes slightly and the cats in her stomach purr in delight. He stretches the flowers towards her. “I, umm, got these for you,” he offers softly. 

She raises a brow and reaches for them, carefully and deliberately letting her fingers brush against his. There’s current humming at the points where they connect. 

How has she been able to push this from her mind for the past few years? She’s been blind, stuck in the dark behind a blindfold of her own making. Ridiculous. 

“Thank you,” she manages to murmur, with one last brush of her fingertips against his. His forearms are bare, his sleeves rolled up the way they always are and she catches a sheen of goosebumps flittering across his skin. 

“It’s been so long since someone has brought me flowers,” she muses somewhat unthinkingly as she feels tension float through the air. 

Right, note to self, don’t talk about ex-fiancé on first date. 

But, it’s Jim and he’s always known how to make her feel better. He smiles gently at her and shrugs. “It’s been a long time since I’ve bought flowers for someone on a first date.” 

“Pulling out all the stops?” she teases. 

“You bet,” and his gaze burns with an intensity that has her heart drumming in her chest. 

She forces an unsteady smile to her lips. “Do you want to stop and get some dinner somewhere? Before we descend on the insanity that’s sure to come?” 

 

She invites him to dinner. He knows that’s supposed to happen, because this is a date after all, and food is usually a part of that equation. But, she asks him to dinner and he wonders if he’ll ever get used to this, her saying yes to him

He nods and tries to clear some of the joy from his mind to form coherent words. “Dinner sounds great. Where would you like to go?” 

She glances at her watch and he takes in her slightly furrowed brow. “It’ll have to be somewhere quick,” and she sounds slightly disappointed which sends his spirits soaring. She wants more time with him, and just him. 

She’s saying yes to him. 

Is this happiness? It’s been so long and this is so unlike anything he’s felt before - everything else pales in comparison, it’s almost unrecognizable. 

“Do you want to split a pizza?” he suggests. It’s quick and not quite as unsophisticated as drive thru burgers. He wants some sort of elevation to this evening. It needs to be special. 

“Alfredo’s?” she agrees. 

 

He knows exactly which buttons to push and he pulls away from her curb in the direction of Pizza by Alfredo. This elicits a practiced glare. 

“Really, Jim? You’ve been gone from Scranton for so long you can’t even remember where the good pizza it at. Seriously,” she huffs. “What are we going to do with you?” 

He laughs, shaking the last vestiges of nerves from his body. It’s Pam. He knows how to be with Pam. This is easy. It’s as natural as he always told himself it would be. 

He presses his blinker down and turns into the next street, towards Alfredo’s Pizza Cafe. He grins at her as she shakes her head at him, without a shred of actual annoyance. 

“You can take the boy out of Scranton,” she murmurs. 

“This isn’t amateur hour, Beesly. Nothing but the best pizza Scranton has to offer.” 

She hums her agreement. “I should hope so.” 

 

Jim’s joking with her and it takes her a moment to remember that this is a date, and not just them hanging out like they have so many times before. 

The awareness races through her and Jim’s car feels a whole lot smaller than it actually is. 

Their shoulders are nowhere near touching, but she swears she can feel the warmth radiating from his in the little confined space. 

It’s a date her mind gloats over and over again. A date! She decides she may as well act accordingly. 

Jim’s right hand is settled on the center console. His car is an automatic, so it’s not like his hand has anything important to do. 

She steels herself, and tries to tell her heart that there’s no chance of rejection and then she plunges. 

She reaches out her hand and winds her fingers into Jim’s. He sucks in a ragged breath and then tightens his fingers around hers. 

He’s still watching the road, but she swears the edges of his eyes are brighter. 

She lets her thumb rub soothingly over the edge of his hand. Her always cold fingers gradually warming in his grip. She wonders if he can hear the steady hum of her cat-nerves purring and kneading deep in her chest. 

She takes a moment to catalogue the differences. This hand is more slender than the one she’s used to. His fingers longer and somehow more graceful. And then she stomps down on her thoughts. No more comparisons. There is no comparing. She’s never felt quite like this before. This first date matters in a different way to the few others she’s been on. She focuses on that. 

“The usual,” Jim asks a little gruffly as they pull up at the cafe. 

“Please.” 

He glances down at their intertwined hands and she has to stifle a giggle at the tortured expression that flashes over his face, like he can’t decide between dropping her hand and going in to order their dinner. 

She can’t laugh though, because she gets it. She doesn’t want to let him go either. 

She squeezes his hand gently and reluctantly untangles her fingers. She misses the warmth of his hand immediately. 

He offers her bashful smile and darts from the car. “Be back in a second,” he tells her, like she doesn’t know where he’s going. 

She watches him enter the cafe, leaving her with her swirling emotions. 

This is… good, she settles on. She’s happy. Happier than she’s been in months. Years even, if she really examines herself. 

 

He swears pizza has never taken so long to bake. His leg bounces uncontrollably. He gives in after what has probably been all of sixty seconds and returns to his car to wait with Pam. 

She’s a balm which calms him instantly and the pizza can take as long as it wants. 

He feels heat rises up his neck at the thought that it’s being away from her that makes him antsy and not his impatience over reasonable pizza preparation time. 

“What?” she murmurs, eyes tracking the blush spreading up his neck. 

“Nothing,” he lies weakly. 

“It’s so nice to be here with you,” she breathes and settles her hand on his console, an invitation he can’t refuse. 

He’s spent years feeling like he knows her best, like he understands her in a way that no one else does. For a while recently, he was sure he was wrong. He had misinterpreted. He’s struck with the knowledge that she knows him best too. She can read him, better than anyone. She gets him. Her words, her actions, everything declares that she can answer his unspoken thoughts. 

He loves her. He never stopped. He never will stop. As long as the sun rises and sets, this is it for him. 

 

She fills him in on her day as they wait. “I wanted Dwight in the right mood for your return,” she starts and he grins in response. 

“Gently agitated? So that my appearance will push him over the edge?” 

“Exactly,” she deadpans. “Toby ran in a half marathon last weekend and he was telling me about it. Dwight butted in about how he could crush Toby’s time.” 

“Of course he did…” 

“So I challenged Dwight to run around the office and said I’d compare the time to Toby’s.” 

Jim chuckles at the image that paints. “Lovely.” 

“Maybe it was a little mean, but I didn’t actually time him. I didn’t even have a stopwatch. I had a digital thermometer,” she shrugs. “He was pretty annoyed when I told him that Toby had beaten him by an entire minute.” 

“I bet he’s been grumbling about that all day,” he grins. 

“He sure has. He’s primed and ready to be reunited with his favorite coworker of all time,” she rubs his hand to punctuate her point. He could get used to this. 

He hears the faint call of their number and leaves the car a little less reluctantly. He can just take her hand again when he returns. It’s that easy. 

 

He drives to the nearest park and leads her to a picnic table. 

She sits across from him and leaves one hand casually splayed on the table whilst grasping a slice of pizza in the other. He’d be an idiot to refuse an opening like that. It doesn’t go unnoticed, that she keeps offering her hand to him. His heart blooms in his chest. She wants him too. 

He slides his hand over hers, tethering himself to his reality once again. This is really happening. 

They eat in comfortable silence. 

“This is going to be great,” she beams at him. “Michael is going to be ecstatic. He was genuinely devastated at the thought you weren’t coming.” 

“I only saw him last week,” Jim shakes his head. “I thought that would have cushioned the blow somewhat.” 

“I think he was sad on my behalf,” she smiles seriously. “He’s a good man.” 

“Oh. That’s…” 

“If I had to guess, I’d say half the reason for this party was to play matchmaker,” she furrows her brow. “He’s more perceptive than I give him credit for sometimes.” 

He shakes his head. “That’s my fault, probably. Like I said on the phone, he was sure I had left because he wasn’t a good enough boss. I felt it would be kinder to tell him the truth. So, I told him I left because you were getting married.” 

“Well,” she sighs. “That explains his enthusiasm to get us back in the same room.” 

“You’re not annoyed about him knowing far more than he should?” 

“You did what you had to do,” she shrugs. “Although, Michael? Of all confidants. You really expected him to just sit on that knowledge?” 

“He’s harmless, mostly…” 

She grins widely at him. “Uh-huh. You keep telling yourself that.” 

He wipes his greasy fingers on a napkin. “You ready to do this?” 

“Umm,” she hedges, mirth sparkling in her gaze. “How could anyone be truly ready for whatever it is that’s about to greet us?” 

“Good point,” he chuckles. “Let’s do it.” 

“Let’s,” her eyes light up and she rises gracefully from her bench. 

 

The ignition settles into silence as they pull up at just down the street from Michael’s condo. 

A single, slightly deflated balloon hangs from his mailbox. He turns to grin at Pam and they breach the entry together. 

“Oh this is…”

“Perfect,” Pam breathes and then clasps a hand over her mouth to keep the giggles from spilling out. 

Beige half inflated balloons hang precariously from the ceiling. Taped to the dining room wall in plain typeface, the words it is your condo’s birthday are declared. 

That’s it. That’s the extent of the decorations. 

He’s so delighted with how absolutely perfect it all is, that it takes a moment to register. They’re looking at the decor. Everyone else is looking at them. 

He catches Michael’s gaze first and watches him process their arrival. 

Michael’s jaw drops. He rubs his eyes in comical exaggerated movements, as if he expects them to disappear when his hands drop. They’re still there. 

“Oh. My. God.” Michael erupts. Eyes wide and flicking between them. “I did this,” he gasps. 

He’s overflowing with exuberance. 

 

His thoughts are racing a mile a minute. He very nearly chokes when Jim gently threads his fingers through Pam’s. He can’t stay silent any longer. He, Michael Scott, has saved the freaking day. 

“Pam was going to bring a date. Jim was going to go on a date. I told Pam to do something and look at this,” he gestures wildly towards Pam and Jim. “I made this happen!” 

He rushes towards them and bundles Jim into a frantic hug. 

Jim huffs out a warm breath and pats him on the back. 

“My heart soars with the eagle’s nest!” he exclaims and turns to Pam. 

“No Michael,” she murmurs gently and he finds Jim stepping between them to wrap an arm over his shoulder. He gets it. He sees Pam everyday. Jim wants his attention. It’s only natural. 

“The place looks…” Jim trails off, sharing one of those looks with Pam and he feels so damn smug that he’s made this happen. They’re looking at each other again like that because of him

He’s never been more proud. Or annoyed at Dwight. 

He shakes his head and glances around the condo. “The Party Planning Committee,” he pouts, “refused to decorate because someone,” he glares at Angela who is across the room glaring right back, “said that this party wasn’t an office event.” He sighs. “And then, Dwight,” his name is a curse, “said he would decorate and this,” he waves his hand dismissively, “is all he managed.” 

He shakes his head sadly. “That’s why he’s been banished.” His gaze flickers to the patio and Pam and Jim follow the incline of his head. 

Pam gasps. Dwight is pressed to the sliding glass door. 

“Can I come in now, Michael? It’s been,” he glances at his watch, “seven and a half minutes and you said I had to stay out here for five?” 

“Fine,” he grimaces. “But, no snacks.” 

Jim’s arm around him shakes with silent laughter. He loves that he’s the kind of boss, no… the kind of friend who makes people laugh. He’s not quite sure what the joke is, but it doesn’t matter. 

His best friends are happy. He’s happy. This is the best party of all time.

 

Chapter End Notes:
Thanks for reading! 


JennaBennett is the author of 25 other stories.
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