Wow, I so cannot hold my alcohol
Um, hi y'all. *blushes*
So to distract you, I'm sharing a couple of little ficlets I wrote last year as parts of longer fics that it looks like I'm not going to get to finish. The Office, of course. Creed and Kevin, set post-Benihana Christmas. And another, Toby/Pam, set the morning of Branch Closing.
Creed takes advantage of Michael's Jamaican vacation by slipping out of the office at noon on Boxing Day. He treats himself to lunch at the deli across Main Street from the county government complex, where he has the lentil soup and a tuna salad sandwich, plus a number of starlight mints he scrapes out of a dish near the register, for $4.99. After lunch, he wanders over to the criminal courts to watch some voir dire (his favorite). There's only one courtroom with any action going on the day after Christmas, so once the jury is empaneled and the excitement dies down, he follows Juror Number Four, a buxom twenty-something with bouncy red hair, across the slushy courthouse parking lot to the Scranton Public Library. But when she strides much too purposefully towards the children's section, he veers off in the other direction and peruses the periodical shelves, finally picking up the November issue of Better Homes and Gardens (they always have lots of decorating tips when you're trying to stretch a dollar, and he's got that little place up in Canada that needs brightening).
On his way out two hours later, he's scanning the "Take One/ Leave One" table in the entrance hall of the library when a very interesting paperback book with a picture of a mouse on the spine catches his eye. He peers over the top of his glasses to read the title on the front, Who Moved My Cheese?, and he thinks he hasn’t read a book written in a mouse's point of view since he was a child, if even then. Could be perspective-building, he decides, and slides the book into his coat pocket. He doesn’t leave another book on the table; he’ll bring the same one back once he’s finished reading, if he remembers.
It's not until he's almost halfway through the book that he realizes it’s not a mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie after all. He really should have known better than to take government-subsidized reading material at face value.
About five days before Christmas, Kevin’s online late at night when he suddenly remembers that he hasn’t gotten a gift for Stacy’s daughter Abby. Last week, Stacy suggested that since she had gotten Abby an iPod for Christmas, perhaps he could get her an iTunes gift card. They even sell them at places like CVS, she tells him, so it would be really easy to buy. But see, the problem is that Abby is already disdainful of her mother's fiancé and his (admittedly) half-hearted attempts to reach out to her. So he'd decided it would be better if he picked something out that she might like, in addition to the iTunes card, so she knows he made a real effort.
Abby's always taking a book with her wherever she goes, even if she's already read it. He thinks it's pretty dumb to read the same book over and over if you already know what happens, and he's mentioned this to Abby multiple times, but she usually gets pissy and gives him that glare he hates and he suffers enough glaring at work through a certain glass divider. He navigates to Amazon.com for something new, and that way he can make his point to Abby without risking "the glare" on Christmas morning. He loves to kill two birds with one stone; it makes him feel efficient. So there, Angela.
He starts by searching for the Wish List feature, hopeful that Abby's already conveniently made a list of books she’d like to have. He’s easily distracted, however, and soon he’s searching for titles with double (and single) entendres and adding the best to his shopping cart "for later," smirking at his computer screen. He e-mails himself at his work account the link to his saved shopping cart so he can show the funniest of his discoveries to Creed and the Penguin in the morning.
They make it too easy to buy things on Amazon, so once he refocuses on Abby it takes fewer than five clicks to ensure that The Traveling Sisters or something will arrive by Christmas Eve. He worries she might already have it and it's too late to check her bookshelf in her room, but even so, he doesn’t bother to check the site’s exchange policy. He rationalizes that it’s enough to have gotten her something in addition to a gift certificate. And just in case Abby already does have the book, he decides to take a last-minute chance to look good to Stacy by purchasing an Italian cookbook that he thinks she will like and is hopeful she will use often (bonus: the chick on the cover is HOT). He's afraid this cookbook might trigger another diatribe from Stacy about exceeding his points total, as if that’s supposed to mean something to him, but he's almost positive... pretty sure... well, he's hopeful that she'll lighten up on him since it's Christmas, right?
He stays online a while longer, browsing things he himself might like since Stacy tends to give him gifts that they can share, because they're engaged now and she regularly insists that they're supposed to share things like car payments and new vacuum cleaners. So when Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson arrives along with the books for Stacy and Abby on the 24th of December, he slips it into the bottom drawer of his nightstand, where he keeps a magazine or two that Stacy pretends he doesn't ever use. Merry Christmas to me, he thinks.
In bed on Christmas night, he waits until Stacy has been breathing evenly for a full five minutes before he eagerly digs the book out from his nightstand and dives in. He doesn't want her thinking that his spending is getting out of control or else she'll make him track all of his expenses in Quicken and then confront him at the end of the month with all these reports and pie charts and percentages, like she did last year when they were saving up to buy the house. He gets enough confrontation with numbers at work.
Just as he's on the last page of chapter ten, Stacy turns over in her sleep towards him, then winces at the light from his reading lamp. She huffs, "What are you doing up, still reading?" as she flops onto her side away from him.
He assesses the number of remaining pages and finally slides the book back into his nightstand, reaching up to turn off his lamp. There hasn't been any mention of sex yet, and if this dude hasn't lost his virginity by chapter eleven, Kevin's not sure it's worth reading about anyway. But on the upside, he’s kind of looking forward to taking up hot-air ballooning in the spring, when the weather improves.
Most weekday mornings, Toby expends significant effort dragging himself those last few feet from the elevator through the door of the office. Mondays would require the most energy, but it's the only day that he's consistently managed to time his appearance to ensure that Pam is already seated at the reception desk with her pink cheeks and her smooth skin and her shapely shoulders and and and. It's a fair exchange, the death of his weekend for those few seconds it takes for her lips to catch up to her smiling eyes as he approaches her desk.
"Morning, To-bee," she says, inhaling over the last syllable and covering her mouth politely to suppress a yawn, and now his intractable imagination is conjuring various contexts in which he might be lucky enough to hear her breathy voice again. She tosses a manilla folder aside and he follows the graceful arc of her forearm as it turns upward and gifts him with a glimpse of the inside of her wrist and the delicate web of veins that peeks out from her pink sweater. Under the flourescent lights her skin has a blueish tint, almost violet. Like... purple-ish indigo, or maybe amethyst-
"How was your race?" she asks.
His eyes jump up to hers and he hopes his startled expression doesn't give him away as a wrist-ogler. He allows himself a few seconds of eye contact before he slides his gaze over her hair (a pretty ponytail today) and focuses on the pattern in the laminate of her desk. The very tips of his fingers turn white from pressing against it. "Good, yeah, thanks," he says. "I- I met my goal pace-"
"Ten-thirty?" she interrupts, but he doesn't mind, he's pleased and surprised that she remembers, she actually - "That's great, Toby!"
"Thanks," he manages, though it sounds a bit strangled, like he didn't have enough breath left in his lungs to speak. Embarrassed, he glances up to see if she's noticed, but her smile is bright like the ring around the edge of an eclipse, and he'll go blind if he stares at her too long.
"So when's the next race?" she asks.
"Um, a couple weeks - the Turkey Trot?" His voice rises at the end, like he's asking a question.
"Thanksgiving Day?"
He nods and swallows.
"Oh, well maybe I could-" she starts, and he can't help it, his lips are turning up and his teeth might actually be showing.
But she breaks off when the door behind him swings open. He turns in time to see Michael come to a halt ten feet away from Pam's desk and focus tactlessly on the Teamwork poster behind reception. "Good morning, Pam," Michael says.
"Jan's on her way here, Michael," Pam says, holding out a pink message slip to him.
Michael takes an exaggerated step toward the desk, but he's still too far away to reach Pam's outstretched hand. Toby takes the message from Pam and offers it to Michael. "Morning, Michael," he says.
Michael snatches the slip out of his hand and starts toward his office. "Whatever," he says under his breath, even though both Toby and Pam can hear him. "Did Jan say what she wanted?" he calls over his shoulder as he disappears beyond his office door.
Pam shares a sympathetic look with Toby and doesn't respond. Toby wonders if maybe she's trying to make a point on his behalf, ignoring Michael the way Michael ignores Toby. An unfamiliar mix of hope and gratitude bubbles up through his chest at the thought, and his fingers dance on the side of the counter, just out of Pam's view.
But when Michael appears again, standing just behind Toby and to the side, she says, "Something about an important board meeting last night."
Toby sighs and scrapes his toe across the bottom of Pam's desk. The leather of his left wingtip is scuffed, and he makes a mental note to go out at lunchtime to pick up some tan shoe polish.
"Do you mind?" Michael says, and Toby looks up to see that Michael is glaring at him.
"I'm talking to Pam," Toby protests.
"Michael-" Pam starts, but Michael is talking over her. "You know what, Toby?" he sneers, "you should just... stay up here at reception and talk to Pam all day, eat her candy and fall in love with her, so she can reject you already so you'll have to transfer to another branch and I won't ever have to see you again."
Pam inhales sharply and nobody moves. Toby stares down at the counter, trying hard not to think about how Pam looks with her mouth wide and her face slack with disbelief and like she might start to cry any second.
The phone rings, an outside call, and Pam doesn't reach to answer it. She's still looking at Michael, who's still glaring at Toby.
He reaches over the counter after the second ring. "Dunder Mifflin, this is Toby."
It's Jan, calling from her cell phone. He offers to transfer her to Michael, but over the static of the poor connection she says she wants to talk to him, if he has a few minutes. She has news to share. Toby puts her on hold so he can take the call at his own desk.
Pam has moved to the far corner of her desk area and is reaching around the side of the industrial shredder to feel for the power switch. Michael's in his office and Toby can hear the rustle of newspaper as he passes by on his way back to the annex. He sighs, consciously telling himself to relax his grip on his faux leather attaché case, and wonders what Jan will tell him.
So to distract you, I'm sharing a couple of little ficlets I wrote last year as parts of longer fics that it looks like I'm not going to get to finish. The Office, of course. Creed and Kevin, set post-Benihana Christmas. And another, Toby/Pam, set the morning of Branch Closing.
Creed takes advantage of Michael's Jamaican vacation by slipping out of the office at noon on Boxing Day. He treats himself to lunch at the deli across Main Street from the county government complex, where he has the lentil soup and a tuna salad sandwich, plus a number of starlight mints he scrapes out of a dish near the register, for $4.99. After lunch, he wanders over to the criminal courts to watch some voir dire (his favorite). There's only one courtroom with any action going on the day after Christmas, so once the jury is empaneled and the excitement dies down, he follows Juror Number Four, a buxom twenty-something with bouncy red hair, across the slushy courthouse parking lot to the Scranton Public Library. But when she strides much too purposefully towards the children's section, he veers off in the other direction and peruses the periodical shelves, finally picking up the November issue of Better Homes and Gardens (they always have lots of decorating tips when you're trying to stretch a dollar, and he's got that little place up in Canada that needs brightening).
On his way out two hours later, he's scanning the "Take One/ Leave One" table in the entrance hall of the library when a very interesting paperback book with a picture of a mouse on the spine catches his eye. He peers over the top of his glasses to read the title on the front, Who Moved My Cheese?, and he thinks he hasn’t read a book written in a mouse's point of view since he was a child, if even then. Could be perspective-building, he decides, and slides the book into his coat pocket. He doesn’t leave another book on the table; he’ll bring the same one back once he’s finished reading, if he remembers.
It's not until he's almost halfway through the book that he realizes it’s not a mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie after all. He really should have known better than to take government-subsidized reading material at face value.
About five days before Christmas, Kevin’s online late at night when he suddenly remembers that he hasn’t gotten a gift for Stacy’s daughter Abby. Last week, Stacy suggested that since she had gotten Abby an iPod for Christmas, perhaps he could get her an iTunes gift card. They even sell them at places like CVS, she tells him, so it would be really easy to buy. But see, the problem is that Abby is already disdainful of her mother's fiancé and his (admittedly) half-hearted attempts to reach out to her. So he'd decided it would be better if he picked something out that she might like, in addition to the iTunes card, so she knows he made a real effort.
Abby's always taking a book with her wherever she goes, even if she's already read it. He thinks it's pretty dumb to read the same book over and over if you already know what happens, and he's mentioned this to Abby multiple times, but she usually gets pissy and gives him that glare he hates and he suffers enough glaring at work through a certain glass divider. He navigates to Amazon.com for something new, and that way he can make his point to Abby without risking "the glare" on Christmas morning. He loves to kill two birds with one stone; it makes him feel efficient. So there, Angela.
He starts by searching for the Wish List feature, hopeful that Abby's already conveniently made a list of books she’d like to have. He’s easily distracted, however, and soon he’s searching for titles with double (and single) entendres and adding the best to his shopping cart "for later," smirking at his computer screen. He e-mails himself at his work account the link to his saved shopping cart so he can show the funniest of his discoveries to Creed and the Penguin in the morning.
They make it too easy to buy things on Amazon, so once he refocuses on Abby it takes fewer than five clicks to ensure that The Traveling Sisters or something will arrive by Christmas Eve. He worries she might already have it and it's too late to check her bookshelf in her room, but even so, he doesn’t bother to check the site’s exchange policy. He rationalizes that it’s enough to have gotten her something in addition to a gift certificate. And just in case Abby already does have the book, he decides to take a last-minute chance to look good to Stacy by purchasing an Italian cookbook that he thinks she will like and is hopeful she will use often (bonus: the chick on the cover is HOT). He's afraid this cookbook might trigger another diatribe from Stacy about exceeding his points total, as if that’s supposed to mean something to him, but he's almost positive... pretty sure... well, he's hopeful that she'll lighten up on him since it's Christmas, right?
He stays online a while longer, browsing things he himself might like since Stacy tends to give him gifts that they can share, because they're engaged now and she regularly insists that they're supposed to share things like car payments and new vacuum cleaners. So when Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson arrives along with the books for Stacy and Abby on the 24th of December, he slips it into the bottom drawer of his nightstand, where he keeps a magazine or two that Stacy pretends he doesn't ever use. Merry Christmas to me, he thinks.
In bed on Christmas night, he waits until Stacy has been breathing evenly for a full five minutes before he eagerly digs the book out from his nightstand and dives in. He doesn't want her thinking that his spending is getting out of control or else she'll make him track all of his expenses in Quicken and then confront him at the end of the month with all these reports and pie charts and percentages, like she did last year when they were saving up to buy the house. He gets enough confrontation with numbers at work.
Just as he's on the last page of chapter ten, Stacy turns over in her sleep towards him, then winces at the light from his reading lamp. She huffs, "What are you doing up, still reading?" as she flops onto her side away from him.
He assesses the number of remaining pages and finally slides the book back into his nightstand, reaching up to turn off his lamp. There hasn't been any mention of sex yet, and if this dude hasn't lost his virginity by chapter eleven, Kevin's not sure it's worth reading about anyway. But on the upside, he’s kind of looking forward to taking up hot-air ballooning in the spring, when the weather improves.
Most weekday mornings, Toby expends significant effort dragging himself those last few feet from the elevator through the door of the office. Mondays would require the most energy, but it's the only day that he's consistently managed to time his appearance to ensure that Pam is already seated at the reception desk with her pink cheeks and her smooth skin and her shapely shoulders and and and. It's a fair exchange, the death of his weekend for those few seconds it takes for her lips to catch up to her smiling eyes as he approaches her desk.
"Morning, To-bee," she says, inhaling over the last syllable and covering her mouth politely to suppress a yawn, and now his intractable imagination is conjuring various contexts in which he might be lucky enough to hear her breathy voice again. She tosses a manilla folder aside and he follows the graceful arc of her forearm as it turns upward and gifts him with a glimpse of the inside of her wrist and the delicate web of veins that peeks out from her pink sweater. Under the flourescent lights her skin has a blueish tint, almost violet. Like... purple-ish indigo, or maybe amethyst-
"How was your race?" she asks.
His eyes jump up to hers and he hopes his startled expression doesn't give him away as a wrist-ogler. He allows himself a few seconds of eye contact before he slides his gaze over her hair (a pretty ponytail today) and focuses on the pattern in the laminate of her desk. The very tips of his fingers turn white from pressing against it. "Good, yeah, thanks," he says. "I- I met my goal pace-"
"Ten-thirty?" she interrupts, but he doesn't mind, he's pleased and surprised that she remembers, she actually - "That's great, Toby!"
"Thanks," he manages, though it sounds a bit strangled, like he didn't have enough breath left in his lungs to speak. Embarrassed, he glances up to see if she's noticed, but her smile is bright like the ring around the edge of an eclipse, and he'll go blind if he stares at her too long.
"So when's the next race?" she asks.
"Um, a couple weeks - the Turkey Trot?" His voice rises at the end, like he's asking a question.
"Thanksgiving Day?"
He nods and swallows.
"Oh, well maybe I could-" she starts, and he can't help it, his lips are turning up and his teeth might actually be showing.
But she breaks off when the door behind him swings open. He turns in time to see Michael come to a halt ten feet away from Pam's desk and focus tactlessly on the Teamwork poster behind reception. "Good morning, Pam," Michael says.
"Jan's on her way here, Michael," Pam says, holding out a pink message slip to him.
Michael takes an exaggerated step toward the desk, but he's still too far away to reach Pam's outstretched hand. Toby takes the message from Pam and offers it to Michael. "Morning, Michael," he says.
Michael snatches the slip out of his hand and starts toward his office. "Whatever," he says under his breath, even though both Toby and Pam can hear him. "Did Jan say what she wanted?" he calls over his shoulder as he disappears beyond his office door.
Pam shares a sympathetic look with Toby and doesn't respond. Toby wonders if maybe she's trying to make a point on his behalf, ignoring Michael the way Michael ignores Toby. An unfamiliar mix of hope and gratitude bubbles up through his chest at the thought, and his fingers dance on the side of the counter, just out of Pam's view.
But when Michael appears again, standing just behind Toby and to the side, she says, "Something about an important board meeting last night."
Toby sighs and scrapes his toe across the bottom of Pam's desk. The leather of his left wingtip is scuffed, and he makes a mental note to go out at lunchtime to pick up some tan shoe polish.
"Do you mind?" Michael says, and Toby looks up to see that Michael is glaring at him.
"I'm talking to Pam," Toby protests.
"Michael-" Pam starts, but Michael is talking over her. "You know what, Toby?" he sneers, "you should just... stay up here at reception and talk to Pam all day, eat her candy and fall in love with her, so she can reject you already so you'll have to transfer to another branch and I won't ever have to see you again."
Pam inhales sharply and nobody moves. Toby stares down at the counter, trying hard not to think about how Pam looks with her mouth wide and her face slack with disbelief and like she might start to cry any second.
The phone rings, an outside call, and Pam doesn't reach to answer it. She's still looking at Michael, who's still glaring at Toby.
He reaches over the counter after the second ring. "Dunder Mifflin, this is Toby."
It's Jan, calling from her cell phone. He offers to transfer her to Michael, but over the static of the poor connection she says she wants to talk to him, if he has a few minutes. She has news to share. Toby puts her on hold so he can take the call at his own desk.
Pam has moved to the far corner of her desk area and is reaching around the side of the industrial shredder to feel for the power switch. Michael's in his office and Toby can hear the rustle of newspaper as he passes by on his way back to the annex. He sighs, consciously telling himself to relax his grip on his faux leather attaché case, and wonders what Jan will tell him.