Title: Which Is the Way With Hours
Fandom: The Office (US)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Ensemble
Length: 3600 words
Summary: Post-"Branch Wars", series of vignettes.
AN: Thanks much to Annakovsky for a beta.
Andy is waiting for Angela outside the bathroom at the International House of Pancakes. She likes it, or at least didn't turn it down when he offered, and ergo dates uno, zwei, and trois have all been here. The waitress recognized them this time, giving them a big smile when they walk in, a hand on her hip. Angela doesn't like it, feels it's overly familiar, so he's thinking about other places to take her. There's an Applebee's at the Viewmont Mall.
Date number three. This could be the big one, he thinks, beating out a 2/3 beat against the wall. Maybe tonight he'll kiss her. Maybe even with tongue. He's played it out in his head enough times now that it seems like it's already happened, kinda. In his head, here's how the cookie crumbles: he leans in, she looks down, then up, her eyes are wet from how much she wants him, and then their lips touch, and he's reaching behind her head and unwraps her hair like a present, like a gift.
Jeez, what is taking her so long?
-----
Darryl's daughter is still young enough that there's no dislike of Kelly. She sits on the couch as the girl walks around with a weird stumble, like how guys walk when they're really drunk, bringing her random things with a big smile. A set of car keys. A half-naked Barbie. The back of the remote control. At first it's awesomely cute, and then it's kind of exhausting, so Kelly picks the girl up and puts her in her lap and hands her the Barbie. The girl begins to do something to the doll's hair, whispering babble to it.
Darryl's house is in a nicer part of town than she would have thought, but it's definitely small -- two bedrooms, a living room with the kitchen attached, a tiny backyard. It's the decor is totally Single Guy -- everything is black, brown, or gray to hide stains, with a few framed pictures of his daughter, and a TV that's way too big and makes the living room feel too small. Still, it's clean and picked up, which is more than she could say for Ryan's place.
Darryl comes in, his skin still gleaming from the shower, wearing a nicer shirt than he wears at work, but not nicer than the ones he wears when they've gone out. "I'm sorry 'bout the kid," he says, looking down at the girl. "Sheila had to do something. She's usually sleeping by eight, so." He sits down next to Kelly, and takes his daughter, smiling big at her and sitting her down on the floor, in between his legs, and handing her down a stuffed octopus. He cups her head absently before leaning back up, and suddenly Kelly feels her chest pulse once, twice, and is close to blinking away tears, but he's looking over at her, his eyes half-hooded but his smile warm. "So what's this Next Top American Model show all about?"
Kelly takes the remote, presses power, and begins to order her thoughts.
-----
Phyllis is wearing a veil and a halter top, and remembering how good it felt to dance.
-----
Michael is getting used to the new bedspread. It's thousand-point Ethiopian cotton or something, and it makes it so he feels like he's kinda sliding around all over the place. Jan is on top of him, her hand grabbing at his chest hair so hard it sorta hurts, but he's learning not to mind. Jan's got that distant face that she gets when the sex is real good, like she's trying to memorize something. He leans back a bit, trying to disengage her hand from his chest hair, tilting his waist, and suddenly she's gasping and looking down at him and pulling even harder now, which is for realsies starting to hurt, but then she leans down and breathes into his ear, "Oh Michael, Michael, I dream about you when you're not inside of me, I feel empty without it, I really do," and he starts laughing, and can feel a blush starting to work its way through his cheeks and shoulders.
-----
Stanley is stretched out in his recliner, his glass of merlot in hand. Tonight is Inspector Lynley, who's no Rumpole of the Bailey, or even Inspector Morse, but Mystery is still a damn sight better than this CSI stuff they've been putting on the past few years. Who wants to watch a people picking semen out of a carpet? The animated sequence is beginning before he remembers to hustle over and turn the ringer on his his phone off.
-----
Oscar has slowly been putting together his new apartment. Gil had all the nice things, so he's starting from scratch. Is it depressing to find yourself buying a coffee table for under a hundred dollars when you're a few months shy of 40? Yes. Is it worth it to be able to watch Friends without sarcastic comments? Yes again. It's not that Oscar is against high culture (see: the semi-ridiculous tea party at work), or that he doesn't realize that Scranton, Pennsylvania isn't a particular hot spot for the arts, but he also is pretty happy with where he lives, what he watches, who he is, and if someone else doesn't like that, well.
Still, he's learned something from Gil. With newspaper spread over his pasteboard coffee table, he glues together a shadowbox, careful with the glue gun. Van Morrison plays softly in the background (if he ever has to listen to Beuna Vista Social Club again...) as he lays one slat atop the the other. While the glue dries, he walks over and checks his email. Three responses to the personal, and one of them actually seems OK -- he's even funny. Oscar opens up Outlook and begins to write back.
It's funny you should mention crazy bosses...
-----
It's been good for Meredith since they've finally worked out custody. Every other week she gets both the kids, and the house feels better when they're both there, full of purpose again. But it also means she gets a whole week when they're not there at all, and Poor Richard's is only a few blocks away. Her head is feeling pleasantly full, the vodka tonics doing their sweet, slow dance against her forehead. The guy, he's sweaty and drunker than her, but he's looking at her like she's the only thing in the room. Happiness, she's learned, requires a kind of willful ignorance. Which reminds her. "Another one, and don't drown it in tonic this time."
-----
Toby is out running, but it's not working for him anymore. It used to be, when he was running, he'd feel like he was running towards something, even though all he was doing was making a wide circuit through the neighborhood, but now every step hurts his shins and just reminds him that he's one step further away from home, and that he'll have to run that back somehow. So he starts to veer towards the river, and slows the run down to a jog, and then a walk, and then he's there outside Poor Richard's.
When he steps inside, he can already see Meredith swaying on a barstool, and Dwight in a far corner looking like he's about either murder everyone in the place or break down crying. He needs to find another bar. Still, he's here, so he gauges eyelines, spots a corner table, and takes a seat. Someone's left an issue of the Tribune-Times on the empty seat next to him, and he picks it up, feeling the sweat cooling on the back of his neck. The waitress comes over, snapping gum, asks what he wants.
"I'll have a Brandy Alexander," he says, and she turns to go away before he speaks up, "and a shot of bourbon back. Two actually."
When the waitress comes back with his drinks, he asks her for a pen, and starts to work on the Soduku. When he hears Meredith's voice come closer, he pulls his ballcap down a bit, and her voice continues on past him without stopping. When Dwight stumbles out, he doesn't even bother to hide, and watching the only person he knows walk out the door, he finds muscles he didn't even know he had relaxing all at once, like he's lowered himself into a warm bath.
-----
Kevin just got a new high-hat for Scrantonicity II, and it sounds amazing. He looks out at the four people in the bar, and he's pretty sure the guy in the black t-shirt is Lucas from Scrantoncity I, probably taking notes on their performance so he can steal it. He purposefully flubs a drum fill.
-----
Karen is watching TV in her completely awesome new apartment, thinking about Jim. But there's no tears in it this time. If anything, there's something else -- she keeps replaying his awkward shuffle out the door of her office, in his ill-fitting shirt, and man, is she actually turned on? She presses her thighs together a bit, and goes off to her bedroom, laughing out loud to herself. Sometimes, she realizes, life shits on you, but then sometimes life kisses you right on the mouth.
-----
Bob Vance shifts again in his chair, watching Phyllis. She clicks her fingers together in time to the music and he's already on his feet, moving towards her, before he's even aware of it.
---
Creed is in a kid's garage, pulling a guitar strap over his shoulder. It started when he was leaving the 7-11, and two kids asked him to buy them some booze. Creed knew they were high, because they were 18 -- why'd they need him to buy them a case of brews? Last time he checked, this was America, you had to be 21 to vote, 18 to drink. But he pocketed the change and bought them some Yuengling and asked where they scored the grass. One thing led to another, and now he's here.
He pawned his last guitar in maybe '87 or '02, one of those lost years he's stopped worrying about a long time ago, so his fingers are raw and singing a few minutes in. The kid playing rhythm guitar, he's terrible -- all sloppy power chords, total amateur. But this other kid, on drums, he cooks. Creed is watching him, and shifts his strumming into a Roy Orbison-style bolero, and the kid keeps time without missing a goddamned beat. The other kid is being left behind, and he doesn't even know it, but Creed's watching the drummer. He can't remember why he left Grass Roots anymore -- something about too much drugs, or maybe not enough, but he hasn't missed playing music in a long time. Right now, though, man, he's feeling it.
The kids sell him a decent lid and drop him off at the storage locker facility, and he waves goodbye. He just got a hot plate, and he's going to make a little soup tonight. He's got a righteous case of the munchies, so that'll be good.
-----
Here's the thing about New York City: it's huge, and Ryan doesn't like to admit that he's not quite sure how it all fits together. So when the girl suggests going back to her place in Fort Greene, he has no idea it's going to be a thirty-minute cab ride, or that it means he'll have to get up at, like, five to even be able to make it back to his insanely expensive apartment and change and get into work at a decent time.
Worse than that, though, is the girl, Sydney. Once in the cab, she pulled out a glassine baggy of coke, offered him some, and hey, it'd be impolite to say no. Now she's sniffling and talking in increasingly angry tones about her "fucking father who doesn't even get that I, like, didn't go to Sarah Lawrence because I wanted to be, like, an accountant or a salesman or something, but every time I try to tell him about opening my vintage store he gets crazy, just crazy." It's a bit, what? Listening to this beautiful girl, with her perfectly askew scarf and cuffed jeans and teardrop of a nose and hair like polished oak and a voice that drips of money, he begins to realize she has nothing, absolutely nothing, going on, that she is basically Brooklyn Kelly, right down to her non-need to have him speak at any point, and as the coke begins to turn on him he wonders if he himself really has anything going on, beyond the new job and the new suits and the new life -- the only person who calls him and asks how he's doing anymore is his mom and she always sounds worried, even when he's describing the view from his apartment, and he finds himself halfway fantasizing about the cab hurtling off the Brooklyn Bridge, everything silent except for the wind whipping through the windows and the water so dark you can't even see it coming until whamp the windshield buckles in and the East River is filling his eyes, his nose, his ears, his mouth.
Later on, kissing the hollow of her collarbone, he feels much better about the whole thing, but the idea stays there, nagging at him, like an important email he's forgotten to respond to.
-----
Darryl listens as Kelly explains the show to him, his daughter bumping back and forth against his shins. There is something in the way she's talking about all of the girls on the show, this crazy chatter, that worries him. He takes her hand, which is gesturing wildly at the screen, and it still takes her a moment for the momentum of her words to slow down and look at him.
"You know you're sexy as hell, right?" he asks, "Way, way more than these little stick women."
He's good at reading people, mainly from growing up with a mom who'd jump between affection and rage like she wasn't sure which one she liked better, so watching her face dance between delight, suspicion, anger, gratitude, and uncertainty is second nature. When she kisses him, though, he has to wait until she pulls away to ask her what that taste on her lips is.
Turns out it's Mandarin Mango.
-----
Jim is folding his laundry, nervous. It seems stupid now. He started the blog on a whim, a three weeks ago. www.76ermoms.blogspot.com. The idea is basically he writes out what a certain player's mom would say after each game. So like Andre Miller's mother chimes in with how she thinks a player with seven triple-doubles needs a run 'n' gun offense set up around him and also he needs a haircut. He timidly submitted a post to another 76ers blog, which linked to him, and now he's seeing a couple of comments on every post.
Which means nothing, he thinks as he folds a pair of jeans, just the Internet showing that anything will attract at least a few losers. But tonight, after ordering in some China Moon, he decided to show Pam, and she waved him off while she read it, which means he's folding laundry and feeling mildly like he may have to throw up. He's always been a pretty private person (Michael not withstanding), and showing her this feels like he's showing her, what? The Jim that wishes he'd been blessed with a bit more creativity and ambition, the Jim that isn't quite satisfied with selling paper to the businesses of Lackawanna County, and (if he's honest) the Jim that came back to Scranton not just because he realized Pam Beesly loved him, but because New York also scared the shit out of him.
He hears her walk up behind him, and when turns around she's smirking. "You really channel people's moms, Halpert. What's up with that?"
"I ate the heart of a mom a few years back. Gained her powers."
"Wow. You and Dwight did some hunting?"
"Oh, you know. Steamtown Mall, a crossbow, a duck stand in the food court fountain. It was a weird time in my life."
"I hear Dwight uses every part of the suburban mom."
"Waste not, want not."
They're smirking at each other now. It's a familiar place.
"So, that's what you want to do?" she says, stepping forward and pushing a little on his chest.
"Maybe? I mean, I like it for now. More productive than figuring out how to make Dwight think there's a hobbit living in the air ducts. I guess." Why is his heart beating so fast right now?
"It's good. I mean, I don't get all the basketball so much, but it's funny."
"Okay."
“Okay.”
“I, ah, thanks for reading all--”
"Wanna stop folding laundry for a while?"
-----
Jan sits up in bed with her laptop illuminating her face while Michael drools into the new pillowcases next to her. Lately she's feels so energized after sex, like she's had four cups of coffee, but with none of the twitching and all the feeling that every action she's taking is the exactly right one. The lawyer is assembling the case, a short woman who seems all-too-happy to try to take a huge chunk out of a paper company that fired its only female C-level exec. She reads over the latest email, and begins to write back, and with each bullet point the sense of rightness grows within her.
She smokes a cigarette outside (their compromise), watching clouds pass over the moon.
-----
Dwight has reunited with his laser tag team. He's stopped for a while, to spend more time with his girlfriend. It made sense at the time. But it also meant that getting back into has been harder than he would have thought. Not only is the league is completely different now -- their one-time rivals, Team Destruction, have all quit, and now there's a new group of punk college kids, Lazercats, that are wiping the floor with everyone and being real jerks about it. He's also finding it harder to stay focused during a match. His attention wanders, only to come to and realize that the buzzing against his chest means he's out for the rest of the match.
Still, they ended up winning, and now they're at Poor Richard's (a terrible bar, he now knows, after seeing it through someone else's eyes), and he's getting drunk. But even this isn't like before. Back then, he felt like how a Viking must've felt, a warriors with his grog after slaying thousands of enemies and drinking their blood, reveling in his total dominance. Now each drink is making him feel like everything inside of his chest is getting bigger, like it's going to swell up and explode everything out of him, and it's getting harder and harder to follow what Lewis is saying about practicing new squad formations.
A short blond walks in, and he sits up, but her hair is too loose, her clothes too revealing, her earrings too gaudy, and it peeves him off to the point where he puts a twenty down on the table (too much for what he's drank, but getting the dollar twenty back from the guys would take too long) and gets into his car. He drives his car too fast and listens to R.E.M. and hopes Mose was able to fall asleep without a story tonight because he honestly just cannot deal with that right now.
-----
Jim snores sometimes. Loudly. Like a lot of other things with him, learning that has been a weird cocktail of irritation, endearment, and gratitude that she gets to know that about him. She gets up carefully, turns on his bedside lamp with the bulb pointed towards a far wall. He doesn't move an inch.
She has an Ebony and her sketchpad in her purse, and pulls them both out. Settling herself in the chair next to his desk, she looks over at him, and begins to coax out a few lines describing the shape of his cheek into his upper arm, but the light is shitty. She glances around the room, and finds herself looking at herself in the mirror against his closet door. She has serious sex-hair going on, a big tuft at the back of her head, but the light from the lamp is pretty much perfect on her. Turning the page, she takes the pencil and begins to describe the slightly bent angle of neck as she leans over her sketch pad, her lines quick and assured, and coal-black as the night outside Jim's windows.
-----
Angela is going back and forth in her head as Andy follows her up the path to her apartment. She doesn't dislike Andy -- he seems kind, likes animals, wants to go to church with her -- but she doesn't like him either. He makes too many jokes. He's already making up nicknames for her, which is entirely too early. He doesn't seem strong -- unlike other men she has known, there doesn't seem to be some sort of deep, unbending steel within him. But.
She turns, looks up at his face with that strange little triangle smile on his face, she carefully takes his lapels into her hands, closes her eyes, and thinks about nighttime outside of the city, crickets and windblown wooden doors slapping against their frames and of the warm smell of freshly tilled dirt.
-----
E lucevan le stelle
And the stars shone, and the earth unstoppered
its perfumes, the garden gate scratched
open, footsteps lisped along the path
and they were hers, and she was mine.
And my hand shook the more slowly
I unwrapped and dawdlier I kissed her,
and her aromas rose, and the hour fled,
which is the way with hours.
And I’ve unveiled myself of any hope,
and death’s steps rasp along the path,
and, like any star, I have nothing
to burn but the life I love.
-- William Matthews
