1.
Kelly loved pink Post-It notes. They were the only kind she used. She hoarded them in her second desk drawer, the one that she stored all her Cosmos and In Styles in so she could thumb through them while on a particularily boring call. She never used up a whole stack, starting a new one once the first one was about half used. She didn’t like the way a half empty stack of Post-Its looked, so she started fresh, throwing the old stack away.
She also loved to write on her pink Post-Its with her purple gel pen. It had sparkles in it, and made her loopy writing shimmer irridescently under the fluorescent lights of the office. She made excuses to write little notes to herself … “Pick up cute dress from Macy’s” or “Call Ryan!!!” … things she’d remember without the notes, but wrote down anyway because it was fun to do.
But her favorite things to write were notes to Ryan. She drew little shiny hearts in the corners and professed her undying love for him across the little pink page. She liked sticking them to the corner of his computer monitor when he was in the break room, giggling a little when she did because it was just so cute, and so was he.
When Ryan got back to his desk, he’d sigh loudly and rip the pink paper from his computer, making a show of crumpling it and shoving it deep into his pencil drawer as he rolled his eyes.
When the cameras weren’t looking, he pulled the little pink paper ball from the back corner of the drawer, smoothed it out gently, and read it twice before slipping it into his briefcase. He hoped no one ever found the growing pile of wrinkled pink Post-Its he had hidden in his sock drawer.
2.
Michael made sure he called Jan as soon as he got into work. The call usually rolled over to voicemail, and he’d ramble on about good mornings and love and how his car wouldn’t start and did she like waffles, because he made some today. Then, he’d make a few sales calls before pulling out his latest toy (this week, a giant inflatable football helmet) and entertaining his troops (he had a really great joke about quarterbacks that was e-mailed to him and just HAD to tell it in costume, to keep morale up.)
Lunch rolled around, and Michael made sure to call Jan again. He really wanted to share his quarterback joke (it was just too funny, really) but Jan wanted to discuss numbers and ended the call abruptly when Michael started talking about going away for the weekend (“Just two days! Come on, Jan. Please? We can rent a cabin and go ice fishing! I’ve always wanted …”)
He made sure to call Jan as he was leaving, again getting her voicemail. “Hello, this is the voicemail of Jan Levinson,” (he still smiled when he didn’t hear the “Gould” bit). “Please leave a detailed message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m able.” He left her a very detailed message, asking if she wanted to come over for supper, whether she’d call him back, did she prefer red wine or white, because in Jamaica all they drank were Piña Coladas and those are TECHNICALLY white but they don’t really compare to wine because they’re fruitier. He’d stumble about love and wanting to see her and end the message when the beep cut him off.
When the cameras weren’t looking, and Michael was sitting at home watching Prison Break, Jan called him and told him that she was sorry his car wasn’t working, and she liked pancakes better than waffles, unless the waffles had whipped cream, and she’d love to go away with him (but not ice fishing … why not somewhere warmer?) and that she very much wanted to come over for dinner, and that white wine would be great, and that she loved him, too.
3.
Creed really just liked to steal things. It wasn’t much of a secret, but no one really seemed to notice anyway, so why should he come clean about it? He took paperclips from the supply shelf, stacks of Canary Yellow paper from the warehouse, big empty refrigerator boxes from Vance Refrigeration, pencils from that receptionist’s desk (was her name Susan or Kate? Maybe it was Phyills. He was never really good with names, anyway.) He stole sandwiches from the fridge, boxes of tea from the cupboards, and someone’s red scarf off the coat rack.
He would keep all his newly garnered posessions under his desk, in a plastic bag, careful to hide his evidence until it was evening and everyone was so intent on getting home that they didn’t really pay him any attention (and that tall guy with the messy brown hair was always looking at the receptionist these days anyway, so he didn’t feel bad when he took his stapler) and snuck out with his loot.
When the cameras weren’t looking, he made paperclip necklaces and gave them to Daisy, the lady who sat on the corner near the liquor store who wore a tinfoil hat and collected silver jewlery. He made Canary Yellow paper airplanes with his nephew and had contests to see whose plane made it furthest across the cancer ward room that housed the little boy’s chemo treatments. He helped build a spaceship out of the giant cardboard box with the kids on the cancer ward and laughed when they fought over who the captain would be.
Then, he went home and drew pictures of the woman he’d loved (she lived in China, and he wasn’t sure if she was still around but DAMN was she gorgeous) with the pencils he’s taken from the receptionist’s desk (Pam. That was her name.) before taking the sandwiches next door to his blind neighbor Irving, who really liked the ham and cheese ones, but hadn’t been overly fond of the tuna. He made a cup of tea for Irving’s wife.
He made sure to drop the red scarf off with Daisy when he passed her in the morning on the way to work. It was supposed to snow tomorrow night, and he didn’t want her to get cold.
4.
Karen hated making phone calls. Which was strange, since it made up a large portion of her job. She just didn’t like having to talk to someone she wasn’t really wanting to talk to in the first place, when she could be doing better things with her time. Discussing reams of heavy-stock paper with the office supply manager at the Portland, Mind and Crake lawfirm wasn’t something she wanted to be doing.
She wanted to watch Jim, to see if she could read him when he wasn’t putting his defences up in front of her. She wanted to watch Pam, to see if she glanced up at Jim more often these days, now that she knew how insecure Karen was about how things were going. She watched them both so intently as he stood up to grab a jellybean from Pam’s desk, watched as he lingered and she smiled, that she lost track of what the man on the other end of the line was saying and ended up having to get him to repeat his entire order, which he wasn’t too happy about.
When the cameras weren’t looking, Karen dialled Jan’s number in New York, twisting her pen between her fingers to hold her emotions back as she asked about job opportunities at corporate.
5.
Jim could always sense when Pam was looking at him. He wasn’t sure if it was something he’d grown to know, or something he’d always been sensitive to. What he did know was that she watched him even more these days, and he knew it had something to do with the fact that she knew he was drifting away from the dark-haired woman across the room.
So he worked hard to school his features when he went up to Pam’s desk to grab his messages. He kept his tone light yet stern, trying to put up the façade of a guy in charge who didn’t let things like true love and such get in his way of corporate success.
But Pam started to put Jelly Bellies in her candy dish, instead of those M&M’s. And he started to drift up to her desk more often, under the guise of grabbing a few of his favorite candies (she even picked out the peanut butter ones, because he knew that she knew how much he despised them.)
He waited for her one night (as Karen breezed out the door without a word), laughing with her as she put on her fluffy pink coat, talking about Michael’s constant messages to Jan (“At least three times a day! I’m not lying! And she never calls him back!” she giggled.)
When the cameras weren’t looking, she stopped him in the parking lot, grabbing his hand as he headed off towards his car after saying goodnight. She told him he hadn’t misinterpreted anything, that she could, and that she was ready. He told her everything she needed to hear when he gathered her into his arms and kissed her gently, finally, their breath mingling into a haze in the cold winter air.
Author's Chapter Notes:
This is my first foray into Five Things fic! Written for a friend on LJ, from her impressive list of prompts.
I don't own them. And if I did, this would be how the story would go ;)
Chapter End Notes:
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falldownmore is the author of 11 other stories.
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