Disclaimer: I don't own the office or Harry Potter

Spoilers for The Job

"Pam"

"Yes?"

"You don't know how much this means to me…"

"It's not-"

"No, let me finish." Static rushed into Pam's ear as he sighed into the phone. "It's just...you know when you've been with someone for forever, but they just can't take a hint?"

"Michael, just tell Jan you want to break up."

"What, do it like a band-aid?"

"Yeah…well that's…yeah, like a band-aid."

"Yeah! That's genius! Cause you know what comes after you take off a band-aid?"

"Um-"

"A kiss from your mom, right, to make you feel better?"

"Isn't that before-?"

"Little boy's gonna get a kiss tonight! Or girl…Jan's a girl. She's the one with the band-aid getting ripped off her heart. Not me. I'm the mom. Who gives the kiss. And by kiss I mean…well you know…"

Silence from Pam. She stopped listening to Michael's metaphor a long time ago.

"Wha-yeah. Do that. Listen, Michael, I'm…I'm heading into a tunnel. I'm going to have to call you back, alright?"

"A tunnel in Scranton?"

"Yeah, didn't you hear about it? They just built it for…sewage reasons. Anywaygottagobye."

Pam snapped her cell-phone shut and relaxed back into Jim's arms on her couch.

Jim put on a mock-deep-in-thought face and tapped his chin. "New tunnel in Scranton…Huh. For going under that non-existent city or that non-existent river?"

"I hate you."

"That's not what you said last night."

"Shut up."

"If you say so."

"What are you giving me the silent treatment now?" Pam joked.

Jim shrugged and gave her the flat-mouth-wide-eyed look.

"Oh my god, you're really giving me the silent treatment!"

Jim waggled his eyebrows.

"Dork."

Jim pointed at her Harry Potter collection of books.

"You're still the dork."

His look said clearly I'm not the one with Hedwig mug holders. At least, that's how she interpreted it.

"You leave my mug holders alone." She poked him in the stomach. He opened his palms in an I didn't say anything way.

She laughed and snuggled in closer.

"Do you know what this reminds me of?"

Jim looked politely puzzled.

"Last year I jinxed you, remember? It was the day Dwight found a joint in the parking lot, and you pretended to cry to get out of telling your story of tragic drug use at the meeting?"

Jim nodded against her cheek and smiled.

She grinned too, but then her face changed as something else occurred to her. "I said you could tell me anything."

Jim didn't move, didn't make a noise but she could tell he had tensed.

Pam was almost afraid to ask, their relationship was literally days old. But it was, after all, Jim. And she wasn't the Fancy-New-Beesly for nothing. "What was it that you would have said, Jim?"

Jim sat in silence for a moment, choosing his words carefully. "When you said anything, I thought-"

Pam's phone jangled into life to the tune of Dido's "White Flag".

"Go on, it's probably just Michael," said Pam.

"Ignoring your boss, Beesly-not the best career move." Jim said. Not the cleverest thing he's ever said, but it was more to break the tension in the room than anything.

"So, worst case scenario I'll get fired. Big deal."

"It is a big deal-what happens when you get replaced by a smoking hot new receptionist? I'm going to be tempted and it'll be all your-ow-hey, kidding, kidding-you know I'm crazy about you."

Pam had whacked him on the chest (not very hard of course), but felt slightly mollified.

"Answer it, we can talk after. Michael could be having a meltdown right now without his number one confident."

Pam pouted a little. "Can't I still be in a tunnel?"

"Oops-guess not." Jim flipped open the phone and handed it to her.

"Hate you" she mouthed as she took it from her flat-mouthed boyfriend.

"Dund-I mean-Hello?"

Jim smirked and shook his head lovingly.

"Pam? Listen, I'm pulling up to my driveway. Oh god, what do I do? Oh god. Hahhhhhhh-I can't do this. I mean what do I say to her? You've probably had a lot of guys break up with you; how did the guy do it who made it…the least painful, so you could still be friends. But without spending anytime together, or calling each other, because Jan is driving me to the brink of insanity! I am literally teetering over the cliffs of insanity. Like on the Princess Bride," Michael breathed heavily into the phone.

Pam let the comment about all of the breakups she must have had slide, and said "Michael-could you hold on a second-I'm getting another call, I think it's from my mother."

"Nice," whispered Jim.

Pam winked at him. "Alright…yeah, hold on one second." She put the phone down. "What should I tell him?" she whispered to Jim. "He wants to break up with Jan, and he wants to know what to say to her."

"How about 'I'm sleeping with your sister'".

"Jim!"

"Well, if he wants to make a clean escape..."

Pam giggled, but suddenly her eyes squinted down at her hands in the way they did when she had a great idea.

"I have a great idea," she whispered.

"Yeah, Micheal?" she said into the phone.

"Mmmhmm?"

"What is Jan doing right now?"

"What Jan is doing...?"

"Michael, if I'm going to be your coach you have to answer me and obey without question," she said recklessly. She wouldn't have dared to toy with her boss this much, even a week ago, but with Jim there, it was just as hard not to.

"Um," he said, a little confused.

"I'm hanging up, Michael."

"Wait-no-Pam-I'll do it-I'll do whatever you say, as long as Jan and I are no longer an item after tonight."

"Good." She held in a giggle and adopted a brisk, no-nonsense tone. "What is Jan doing right now?"

"I don't know, watching a movie maybe? What has this got to do with-"

"Michael."

"Oh. Right. Okay. Zipping up the lips." He laughed nervously.

"I want you to go to her and say this, exactly: 'Jan. Please pause your movie, I have something to say to you. You have been the Catherine Zeta Jones to my Zorro. Yet, like the masked hero, I am a loner at heart. So, I must ask that we part now. Your spirit will linger on in my condo for years to come.'"

Jim gave her the same look of admiring disbelief as he had on Dundies night when she made her acceptance speech for whitest Keds. She blushed.

"That was beautiful," said Michael. "Thank you, Pam. You are truly a wise woman. And hot, too. Not like Yoda, she's all green and wrinkly."

"Yoda isn't a woman."

"Really? Oh. Good thing. I don't even think Kermit the frog would hit that."

Silence.

"Whoo, well I've got a heart to break. Cheerios, Pam."

"Bye Michael."

She closed her phone and looked at Jim. "What have I done?"

"Don't worry, Jan'll just think that's Michael being Michael."

"I mean what about Michael himself? What woman besides Jan could ever stand to date Michael Scott?"

"That is one of the great mysteries of life," said Jim, nodding. "But remember Carol? He'll do all right for himself."

"Yeah."

"Mmmm," said Jim, nuzzling her close.

Pam breathed him in for a minute before plowing on with the thing that was nagging at her incessantly. "So what were you going to say earlier?"

"Oh. I see you haven't let me wriggle out of that one. Well, I bet you've probably already guessed this, but when you said 'you can tell me anything', I thought about, I don't know, everything that I had been holding in for four years…stuff that scared me, or embarrassed me-most of it was stupid stuff I never told you, like how I split my costume in my third grade Christmas play, and pretty much mooned everyone in the audience, including my parents. But there were other things, too. Like the day my grandma died, but you had just arrived at Dunder Mifflin a few weeks ago, so I didn't tell you, even later on. And as hard as that day was, that was the second worst day of my life."

Jim paused, not sure how to continue.

"Second worst?"

Jim took a deep breath and said "The day you said I could tell you anything, I thought of telling you the worst thing I could possibly say, that watching Roy announce the date of your wedding on the Boose Cruise was just-that was the worst night of my life. I guess before then, when there was no deadline, no definite wedding, I thought maybe there was still a chance you'd call the whole thing off and, I don't know-" he Jim-shrugged- "run away with me into the sunset. But then the date was set and that was that. You were going to be another man's wife. That's what I was thinking when you asked me."

Catching the pained expression on Pam's face, Jim added "But look how wrong I was, right? Now I can tickle you whenever I want to-" Pam shrieked suddenly with delight as Jim pulled her closer and got all of the spots he knew set her off.

"Jim! Ah-no! No no, no, no, no, stop!" she laughed. "I give! I give!"

"Say 'uncle'", said Jim as he tickled on relentlessly.

"Uncle!" said Pam.

"What? Can't hear you, Beesly."

"UNCLE!" said Pam and Jim together, and Jim promptly added "Jinx."

Pam opened her mouth to protest, but Jim quickly stifled her. "Sorry. The rules of jinx are unflinchingly rigid. Looks like you're going to have to buy me a coke."

Pam just threw his own "Jim look" right back at him with a tilt of the head. You think so? her face said.

The phone rang.

She looked at him in panic.

"Something wrong?" Jim said, pretending to look deeply concerned. "You look like you have something important to say, but you just can't for some reason."

Pam giggled and looked mutinous at the same time.

"You could just let it go to voicemail…except it looks like you just answered," he said, flipping open the phone and handing it to her.

Pam made wide flapping gesticulations with her hands, but it was too late. All she could do was submit or effectively hang up on her boss.

"Pam? You there?"

Grunt.

Laughter erupted over the phone. "You'll never guess what happened-"

Curious grunt.

"Well I told Jan exactly what you said and guess what? She didn't get it at all-we ended up role-playing and one thing led to another-"

Pam made a noise like an angry rhinoceros, hoping he'd get the hint.

"Jeez, you sound like death. Might want to ease up on all that hard work I make you do. Ha!"

Pam tried to do something between a grunt and a laugh and ended up snorting.

"Okay, well that's sort of disgusting. Anyway, Pocahontas is waiting. Don't worry though, I will update you every hour on the hour, so we can regroup and attack again. Make a Vinny de Vinci!"

Panicked, Pam attempted a negative grunt, but Michael was having none of it.

"Okay Pam, take it easy." And he hung up.

"Looks like it went well," said Jim conversationally, who had been watching her expressions become more and more desperate.

"Shut up" she mouthed.

"All right Beesly, you win," he said picking up his keys and her coat. "Let's go buy that coke. It seems like we never get to talk these days."

A/n Alright, that turned out a lot heavier than I planned. Tell me if Jim sounds too cheesy-SeriousJim turned out to be incredibly hard to write convincingly.

A huge thank you to all of you reviewers out there!