Title: Jam fluff

Series: The Office

Theme No.: 22; potentiality knocks on the door of my heart

Pairing: Jim/Pam

Rating: PG-13

Notes: This is based on the song "Let's Get Married" by Archie Star, which has been rattling around in my head for days and days. I'm hoping that it will finally leave me alone if I give it a story; so here it is, more sugar-overload fluff for your reading pleasure. Thanks to all my reviewers, past and future. Enjoy!

The knock on the door came at precisely nine o'clock, three quick raps followed by two slow. Jim made a very great show of not immediately getting up to answer it; he continued watching TV until the end of the commercial, and when he finally heaved himself off the couch he only wandered generally doorwards, checking the popcorn in the microwave, riffling through the stack of DVDs that sat on the kitchen table. After several minutes and another, much shorter and angrier knock, Jim finally threw the door open, rearranging his face into a mask of surprise.

"Hey," he said, eyes wide. "What are you doing here? I think it's past your bedtime."

"And on a school night, too," Pam answered, grinning up at him. "I'm just awful. Now, aren't you going to invite me in?"

"So bossy," Jim exclaimed, moving aside to let his girlfriend squeeze past him into the apartment. "Anything else you'd like me to do, your Majesty?"

"You could get my bag," Pam called, already busy clanking away in the kitchen.

Jim heaved a theatrical and much put-upon sigh; but he grabbed the duffel bag Pam had left in the hall, and retreated into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him. "Are you ready for the grand tour?" he asked, smiling as Pam stared around his apartment with a quizzical air. It wasn't the way she'd left it; it was a good deal cleaner, for one thing, and Jim had done what appeared to be a sort of schizophrenic feng shui with the living room furniture.

Jim took Pam's raised eyebrow as an affirmative. "Okay, then," he began, gesturing at the kitchen table. "If you look to your left, you will notice the bag of marshmallows, which are absolutely essential… we have quite a wide selection of DVDs for your viewing pleasure this evening, and popcorn. And to your right, we have the finest blanket fort materials known to man."

"Nice," Pam laughed, picking up a pillow from the floor and weighing it one hand experimentally before tossing it away. "And when we're done being twelve, then what are we going to do?"

"Please," Jim snorted. "This is nothing like being twelve." Suddenly he was standing beside her, with one arm around her waist, pulling her in against him so that the whole world filled with his warmth and his voice shivering through her bones. "This," he continued, "is a science. The lifelong quest to produce the perfect sleepover."

Then, while she was too busy stifling giggles to be at all on guard, he leaned in and kissed her. She returned the kiss immediately, pressing up onto her tiptoes, and before they knew what was happening her hands were tangled in his collar and his were on the small of her back, and there was absolutely nothing twelve-year-old about it.

When they finally broke apart, they were both breathing hard, both grinning like lunatics (a year of dating had not been enough to dull the adrenaline rush, like a burst of lightning to the brain, in every kiss). It was with much reluctance, and the promise of many more un-twelve-year-old things to come, that Pam grabbed her bag and retreated to the bathroom to shower and change.

Jim shook his head to clear it, and set about clearing off the living room floor, sorting the pillows by size and shape for later use. By the time Pam came back, he had slotted the latest Harry Potter movie into the DVD player, and was happily immersed in Hogwarts; but not so immersed that he didn't look up when his girlfriend showed up in the doorway and quickly, quietly turned off all the lights.

They made it through Harry Potter without incident, which Jim thought was a prodigious feat; they even managed to sit in opposite ends of the blanket fort for the first three-quarters of the movie. But then, as midnight rolled around and Pam insisted on The Princess Bride as the second part of their double feature, Jim found that somehow without his noticing they had ended up curled up together, with her head resting on his chest and his arms around her waist.

The credits of Harry Potter ended, but Jim found himself disinclined to get up, let alone turn the lights on and fiddle with the TV. He was infinitely comfortable just as he was; from the way Pam was not moving off his lap, he guessed she was, too.

He sighed contentedly as the DVD started to play over again. "You should get your apartment painted more often," he murmured, inhaling the scent of her shampoo; the sharp tang of fresh paint still clung to her, even after her shower.

"I think I should," she replied, sleepily. "Having sleepovers is fun." There was no sarcasm this time; just pure, unadulterated happiness, the same sort of slow golden feeling that Jim was having so much trouble fighting off.

"Yeah," he said quietly. Suddenly something like sunrise happened inside his head; he realized that right here, right now, was an absolutely perfect moment, with the world dark and quiet all around him and the love of his life falling asleep in his arms. He realized that he probably could not ask for anything more than to have this feeling again, to have it as often as he could for the rest of his life; to have boundless opportunities to stay up all night with Pam in his arms. The world was silly and meaningless, when Pam knocked on his door; anything was possible, potential was unbounded when he could feel her heart beating in time with his.

"I should sleep over here all the time," Pam continued, her voice growing drowsier with every word. "Then you could come and sleep over at my place…"

There was a moment of absolute silence, which was broken when Jim said exactly what he was thinking, and all he consequences and potential came later; "We should just move in together."

"Fine," Pam murmured, "but we're going to move into my apartment, because I just got it painted, and yours is too small anyway."

"Okay," he affirmed, and realized with a jolt that they had just made a major decision in their relationship, pretty much by accident, under the influence of Harry Potter and The Princess Bride and too much popcorn and one o'clock in the morning. And he wouldn't have had it any other way.

There was another moment of silence, as Jim's brain tumbled over itself and got tangled in possible futures. "We could get married," he said.

"In the morning," Pam yawned, and then her breathing slowed and she was asleep; holding his breath for fear of waking her, Jim carefully slipped out from behind her, and quickly switched the movies in the DVD player before settling back against the couch and, despite his best efforts, starting to drift off himself.

"We could get married," he said again, because he liked the sound and the taste of it on his tongue. "We could." Together, they could do anything. They could get married; they could learn to fly. All it would take was a joke, a sly sarcastic quip, that certain mischievous glance which meant something pranksterish was afoot; sleep-dazed, he realized that the golden feeling of being-in-love was everywhere, if he looked for it. So much possibility, so much potentiality in every glance…

Slowly, he fell asleep; and on the TV screen, Westley and Buttercup found and lost true love, over and over again, until morning.

I've noticed a sort of pattern in my fics; I tend to alternate stories like this, which I tend to think of as Good Old-Fashioned Happy Fluff, with more serious or differently-structured stories...

You've all been so inspiring in the past; don't stop now! I beg you, bolster my failing imagination with your thoughtful reviews!