Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, but they fascinate me and so I am borrowing them for my own purposes. Mu-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhh. No copyright infringement is intended.

BLINK

She's been watching the door since she came in—half an hour early—this Friday morning. She doesn't want the cameras to see, but they do.

They see the way she glances up every time the door opens, and bites her lip and ducks her head when she sees it's not him. The cameras capture her chewing on her pen, something she hasn't done since she was twelve or so, and tapping her fingers and running through game after endless game of Solitaire, eyes filled with the green background, the zigzag pattern on the backs of the cards. They catch her draining her third cup of coffee and still yawning.

No sleep last night.

She's blinking more than she usually does. Her eyes flick to the doorway and back to the screen, flick to Michael when he strides into the office and straight over to her desk.

"Pamalamadingdong!" He is shouting, slamming his fist on the desk in a way that usually makes her jump. "Messages, faxes, anything?" He stares at her. "Bueller? Bueller?" he says, grinning, waiting for a return grin.

She blinks at him and shakes her head. Nothing.

His smile fades. He eyes the camera. "Wassa matta, Pamela? Lose too much money last night?" The grin is creeping back onto his face. She stares. "Too many tequila, senorita?" he says, pulling out the big guns, putting on a bad south-of-the-border accent.

Nothing: just the deadpan glare, the pressed-together lips.

He taps her desk with his fingertips and walks off, with another glance and a tiny shrug at the camera. She flicks the cards one by one, playing for money, losing on purpose.

She's scribbling something on a post-it when he finally walks in. He's carrying his briefcase like it's empty this morning, like it's an afterthought. It hits his legs as he walks, toward her, looking only at her. He fumbles as he reaches for a jellybean, unusually clumsy. They look only at each other, their mouths open, and the cameras see.

He's late.

She's biting at her lower lip.

He raises his eyebrows a few millimeters.

"Hey," she says, as he pops the jellybean into his mouth. Her voice is choppy and untried, as if this is the first word she has spoken all day.

He takes a deep breath, gives her the beginnings of a lopsided grin.

The phone rings.

It's the first call they've gotten all morning, and her hand is reaching for the phone before her brain can take over, her brow creasing in an Oh-God-why-now? kind of way, and he's lowering his eyes and sliding off to the side, moving toward his desk but letting his hands linger on her desktop, and she's picking up the handset. He drops his briefcase—it still seems empty—and drops down into his chair. Her eyes are on him, only on him.

"Uh," she says into the phone. "Um…"

Dwight leans forward, his beady eyes narrowing. "So Jim, what was the holdup this morning? Dog puke on the carpet? Car break down? Perhaps…" He wiggles his eyebrows and grins, showing his teeth. "A hot date last night? I know that even if I had had one…" he glances over toward Accounting… "I would still have been on time, and I think it sends a very unfavorable impression…"

Jim hunches down in his chair and does not reply. He does not even appear to be listening. His chin rests in his hand and he is not looking at her any more; his eyes are scouring the top of his desk, his phone, his blank computer screen, but his body is turned her way, his knees and his shoulders pointed toward the front desk in a way the camera cannot miss.

"Uh, D…Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam," she says. Squeaks, rather. Her eyes fall to the desktop and rove around while she talks, her body turning away from him.

There is a silence in which only the tapping of keys, the shuffling of feet and the dropping of change into the vending machine can be heard, during which he seems to hold his breath, motionless.

She laughs a little; it is a nervous laugh, short-lived and thin, unlike her normal pot-boiling-over giggles. "Sorry Jan. Yeah, I'm a little out of it this morning." Her voice is shaking.

He blinks and shakes his head a bit. He stands.

"Yeah, Michael is, ah…" she says.

He knocks on Michael's office door and enters before he is invited.

She frowns, staring after him. "Um…actually, he just went into a meeting."

Another silence. She stares at the office door, her mouth slightly open, the phone about to fall out from between her ear and her shoulder.

"Yeah, do you want his voice mail?...Okay, here you go." She punches a few buttons. She hangs up the phone and stares at the office door. She starts another game of Solitaire. She drums her fingers and clamps her teeth down on her pen.

The door does not open.

She forwards the phones to voice mail and stands up a little more quickly than she'd intended; when her chair rolls backward across the carpet and nearly knocks over the coat rack behind her, she seems genuinely surprised. She blinks a few times at the coat rack.

She stalks to the break room and pours herself another cup of coffee. She drops an ice cube into it so that she can drink it right away, and quickly. She takes her eyes away from Michael's door.

Michael's door opens.

Michael is smiling in a strained, I'm-not-happy way, and is followed by Jim, wearing a careful no-expression. He's not looking at her.

"Announcement, everybody!" Michael is shouting again. Toby rolls his eyes and leans back in his chair; Dwight's head pops up like a prairie dog. Others turn their heads with guarded interest, sensing that one of Michael's trademark highly inappropriate speeches is on the way. Pam leans against the break room doorway.

"Very shortly we will be losing one of our best salespeople," Michael continues. He claps Jim on the shoulder. Jim does not look up; his hands are stuffed in his pockets. "He is transferring to our Stamford branch, effective immediately after his upcoming vacation. He…" And Michael seems to be talking louder and louder at each moment, chuckling to himself. "He wanted me to keep this quiet. Didn't want to make a big deal out of it. But I think I speak for everyone when I say…"

People are exchanging glances, looking back and forth from Jim to Pam. She doesn't seem to be listening any more. She's watching his face; the way his eyes rove around, taking in everything but her, the way he's half-smiling now, going along with Michael, nodding his head slowly.

And then her hand lets go of the cup, and the coffee is splashing, hot, onto her white sneakers.

"Oh," she says, looking from the brown-stained carpet to her empty hand. Aware that everyone is watching, that the cameras are seeing. She stares, blank-faced, directly into one of the cameras for a few seconds. Then: "I'll get some paper towels."

She disappears into the break room, and does not come out until Michael is finished talking about "We'll miss him around here," and "Employee loyalty," about "Still within the same company" and "Probably run this place some day," only half-joking. She does not come out until everyone is back at their desks and no longer patting him on the back and softly wishing him well, until after Ryan has raised his eyebrows from across the room and Jim has shrugged his shoulders back, his hands still buried in his pockets. She stays in the break room until Dwight has finished shooting Jim dagger-eyes and is sulking, seething, to himself.

She sops up the mostly-dried coffee from the carpet and retreats back behind her desk.

………………………………….

The email comes at 10:30.

She has been very good. She has barely looked at him once in the past hour, though two of her pens are now unusable and she's been lucky to fit two coherent words together over the phone. There is practically nothing for the cameras to see, except that high up on her cheeks are two patches of flaming red, on her bottom lip are the imprints of her front teeth, and on her computer screen is an unfinished game of cards, at which she is still losing badly.

Then the email comes, and it all becomes real.

It's from him, and it says, Give me a reason to stay? And if you can't, please forgive me for asking.

The patches of red spread down through her cheeks until her entire face is flushed, and she bolts up from her desk and jogs, chin trembling, to the bathroom. She leaves the email open on her computer screen.

……………………………………

He gets her reply at 11:00, after she's come back from the bathroom and missed three calls.

The reply is another question, which he reads and then stares at, blinking rapidly.

Why are you leaving me now? And why didn't you tell me?

……………………………………..

You know why, he answers at 11:05. There's no future for me here. Not without

And he leaves her to fill in the rest.

……………………………………..

She doesn't answer that last one. During lunch hour she disappears, and he sits alone in the break room, eating nothing. Roy wanders through the office just after lunch, asking if anyone's seen Pam? Really? We were supposed to have lunch together. Son of a…

Jim sits alone, chin in hand, and does not appear to notice that Roy is there.

Fifteen minutes after lunch is over, Pam opens the main door and shuffles into the office. Her eyes are reddened and her nose is running. Her sleeve catches on the doorknob and she swears softly as she untangles herself. Michael sees her through his office window, comes to his door and opens his mouth. She freezes him with a tight-lipped glare. Michael closes his mouth and backs into his office. He closes his door and pulls the blinds.

Every eye is on her that afternoon. She says nothing and does not look at him. She gives a hearty sniff now and then, and that is all.

And at 3:31, she gets the final email.

Just say the word, it says. One word. That's all I need.

………………………………………..

Friday evening, 5:30, and they are the last ones in the office, again. They've watched everyone else trickle out the door, not saying much, some congratulating Jim again, others simply looking from one to the other and shaking their heads. Angela says nothing to either of them, only graces each of them in turn with a disapproving smirk and slams the door behind her, leaving only the two of them.

Well, the two of them and Michael, but he has not shown his face since his Announcement.

She plays Solitaire, losing spectacularly.

He stands to leave.

She drops her pen to the floor, the third pen today with chew-marks all down the sides.

He picks up his briefcase and sighs, nearly inaudibly, but the camera picks it up.

She presses the pen with the toe of her coffee-stained sneaker.

He is almost at the door.

"Don't go," she says, and even the camera can barely hear it.

………………………………………….

He freezes with his hand outstretched for the doorknob, and the cameras jiggle and waver, jockeying for final position. They capture his back, standing stone-still before the doorway, and his hand, which slackens on the briefcase handle, then tightens into a fist.

She has not moved, but her hands are twisting together in her lap and her eyes are closed.

He turns.

…………………………………………..

His face is gentle for her, his eyes soft and aching with hope.

"But it's 5:30," he says.

She blinks and frowns. There is a beat of silence and her eyes slide downward in confusion. "Huh?"

"Don't I usually leave at 5:30? I mean, especially on a Friday…" He trails off, and the teasing half-grin eases off his face as he catches her look. A wide-eyed plea that he will be serious, this once.

Silence again.

"How can you leave now?" she says. Her hands are trembling.

"I…" He drops his briefcase and grips the edge of her desk. "I have to."

Her chin trembles. This time, she seems angry, and her voice shakes with it. "Were you even going to tell me?"

"I…tried."

"And how can you say you have no future here?"

"Future," he echoes. His voice is hollow and his face is so tired, so shadowed. He has not slept, either. He gazes at her and she stares back. "When I think of my future,"

……………………………………………..

"I see you. You're all that I see. You're sitting on an old, beaten-up sofa, you're propped up with pillows that don't match and you're holding a baby, cradling the baby's head in your hand. And you're smiling at me…so sweetly."

……………………………………………

Her face crumples.

…………………………………..

"And I don't want to be in a place where I can't see that any more. Where I can't have that in my future. I don't want to be here after you're married to someone else. And maybe that's selfish. I know it is. But that's the way it's gonna be. Because…"

…………………………………..

He gazes down at her face, like he's done so many times before, when she didn't know what he was thinking.

"Because I can only take so much, Pam."

"Shut up." And she's standing. The words are so clipped, so angry, that the cameras joggle and waver again, in what seems to be confusion. They just barely catch her stalking around the desk and right up to him. "What right do you have?"

"I…"

"Shut up." And she closes her eyes at him; when she opens them again, they are shining and wet. "That was a hell of an ultimatum to give me, last night. No more friendship, no halfway, just all or nothing. The hell with what I feel. The hell with what I want." No one has ever seen Pam like this. Not even Pam.

"But I don't want…"

"I don't want to hear any more about what you want."

"Just listen." He takes hold of her shoulders, gently, to steady her and make her look at him. She tries to shake him off but he holds on. "You're right. I don't want halfway. Not with you." That lone tear escapes from his eye again, crawls down his cheek. He shakes his head. "Not with you."

"Just…" She sputters, and half laughs. "Just shut up."

She takes his face in her hands and pulls him down and kisses him.

……………………………

This silence is longer.

His face, when they finally break apart, when he is stroking her curly hair with one hand and the other is at the small of her back…his face is a study in puzzlement and awe.

Her face, though, is streaked with tears. She shakes with trying to hold them in. "What am I going to do?"

He pulls away. "Hey," he says, brushing at her cheeks with his thumbs. "Hey."

She buries her face in his shirt and moans something unintelligible into his chest.

"Huh?"

She pulls away. "I said two words."

"Oh."

"Not just one."

"I know."

"I feel like such a terrible person…"

"No."

"What am I going to do…" she repeats.

He shrugs, his face reflecting her pain but carrying, now, a few scraps of unbelieving hope: you can see it in the eyes, wide and glistening, and in the mouth, the corners tugging upward. "I have no idea," he whispers.

She half-laughs again. "Oh, great."

"But I do care about how you feel, and what you want." His hands are on her shoulders again, steadying her gaze.

"Oh. Great."

He bites his lip. "So…how do you feel?"

She looks at him, just looks at him: her eyes are soft as she closes them, slowly, and opens them again, and her mouth curls into a smile just for him. She lays her hand on the side of his face: gently, gently.

His smile: it is joy and love and yearning and hope.

"But," she says, and his smile falls, and so does hers. "But," she continues, "I just need…I mean, I can't…I need…some…"

"Time?"

"Yeah. I mean, I just…wow."

"Yeah," he says. He steps back and runs his hands through his hair, shaking himself, trying to snap himself out of it. "So I should…go?"

"Well…" She steps toward him and catches him by the elbow as he tries to back away. "No, I don't…it's just…Oh God, I don't know what I want yet. Besides you. And everything you said last night…I mean, I just…"

"Yeah."

"Yeah. Please don't go."

"I won't."

She closes her eyes again. "Please, please don't."

"I won't. Not ever."

They half-laugh through the tears; they join hands and they smile at each other in a cautious way and they even kiss again, albeit more briefly than before.

"What are you going to do?"

She sighs and her face crumples again. "I don't know. But I have to do it soon. The wedding…"

He releases her and steps back. "Yeah. The wedding." There's a slight question in his voice.

She opens her mouth to reply.

……………………………..

Roy interrupts her from the doorway.

The cameras swivel and shake, just barely managing to catch his angry red face in the dim light of the hallway.

"I'm glad someone remembers there's supposed to be a wedding."

………………………………

A/N: Sorry about the ending…I will continue if you want me to. Reviews?