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Story Notes:
First off, this story was not my idea! It was suggested by Firthgal, and I ran with it! She was gracious enough to let me use the idea and see where I took it. Second, Elly is a fantastic beta and this would not be possible without her! Story title is from "Pink Bullets" by The Shins.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Chapter title from "Keep Breathing" by Ingrid Michaelson. I do not own the song or anything at all relating to The Office. I'm a poor law student...don't sue me.
One of the fluorescent lights was about to go out. It was buzzing obnoxiously, distracting Jim from the work he was already having a hard time focusing on. He thought about picking up the phone and calling someone in building maintenance, but it would take them several hours to send someone up to fix it, and even without the annoying buzz he wasn’t going to get anything done. The beautiful woman sitting just a few feet away seemed to have permanently hampered his once stellar work ethic, reducing him to this pathetic, anxious, wreck of a human being who couldn’t even focus long enough to write a few numbers and sign his name on a couple forms.

Today was expense report today. Once a month his boss presented them each with the forms, and they all groaned in misery as they grabbed their pencils and scrambled for receipts and documents they’d probably misplaced over the last few weeks. Usually he didn’t mind doing the expense reports. It was a one day respite from making cold calls and coming up with new creative ways to convince people to buy paper from a company that, admittedly, was more expensive and less convenient than other companies. He could only come up with so many different ways to convince people of their “great customer service” before he wanted to slam his head against his desk.

Selling paper had never exactly been a dream of his. Like many other misguided college students, he went through a plethora of majors before finally settling on English. His mom was an English teacher, so it seemed like the easy answer. He tried his hand at political science his first semester, then realised he cared nothing for politics after all. While studying for a final in the library, he met a beautiful, perky redhead who was majoring in communications. After a few hours of flirting with her, he was convinced communications was his true calling and promptly went home and registered for a few courses. A year later, he and Katy were no longer together, and he abandoned the communications idea for something a little more interesting. He was suddenly entertaining the notion of being something great, feeling a little overshadowed by his older brother the future lawyer. When Matt got accepted to a prestigious northeastern law school and he was still just drifting along making adequate grades at a state school, he decided he needed to do something equally impressive. So he started taking science courses and telling people he was going to be a doctor. Doctor Halpert had a nice ring to it, and for a few months, his mother beamed with pride and told everyone she met about her sons, the future lawyer and the future doctor. He did okay, for a while, until organic chemistry. The weed-out course weeded him out, and he was left a first semester junior with no clue what to do with his life. So he picked English, just like his mom. He liked to read, and he was a pretty decent writer, so it seemed like an okay fit for him. At least better than all the other alternatives.

Once he graduated, however, he felt as aimless as he had in college. He never had any aspirations of being a teacher, and he wasn’t really cut out for an advanced degree. Matt might thrive in academia, but he just wasn’t the type. Still, his pride wouldn’t allow him to move back in with his parents and work some minimum wage job while he “found himself” and figured out his true calling. He saw an ad in the newspaper for Dunder Mifflin, and it seemed like a great start-up position. He originally applied for a position in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he grew up. His family had since relocated to Allentown, but he still had some friends in Scranton. When the company offered him the position in Stamford, two hours away from Scranton, it didn’t take him long to warm up to the idea. It was a new city, a new place, but it was also right on the coast, and Connecticut seemed like a pretty great place to live.

It was supposed to just be temporary. Just a job. He used his graduation money to pay his first month’s rent on a small but comfortable apartment, and he planned on working for Dunder Mifflin for six months, a year at most, while he saved up some money and figured out what it was he really wanted to do with his life. It wasn’t an entirely bad deal. His boss was fairly laid back, his co-workers were quirky but entertaining, and he turned out to be pretty good at sales. His natural charm and easy-going ways seemed to win people over, and when some of his colleagues couldn’t close the deal, he almost always could. But he still didn’t want to stay there forever. Who really wanted to work at a mid-size company selling paper to an increasingly paper-less world? Everyone knew the company would probably be obsolete in a decade or so, and Dunder Mifflin wasn’t really doing anything to edge out the competition. He was on board a sinking ship, and he planned on getting out as soon as he saved up enough to coast for a few months while he looked for a new job.

He was really about to do it, too. He’d always been the kind of guy who just stuck with inertia, but sometimes he had nightmares about staying here forever, about waking up one day and being a forty-something paper salesman. Josh was an okay guy, a good boss, and they even had fun every now and then, but he didn’t want to be Josh. He was thinking about putting his English major to good use and taking some courses in journalism at a community college nearby, maybe someday getting a job as a sports writer. He wouldn’t have to go back to school full-time, and it would be something he actually enjoyed, something he could be passionate about. He even went so far as to pick up a course catalogue at the community college and earmarked a few pages with classes that piqued his interest.

Then she arrived. Just when he was ready to leave, she walked in the door, tossed her long hair over her shoulder, and flashed him a smile.

Four years later, he still remembered that moment as the first time he fell.

She was gorgeous. He didn’t date a whole lot through high school or college, but when he did, they were usually the same type. Cute, all-American type girls, girls with perfect smiles and bright, happy laughs. But she was different from the rest. She took everything he knew and flipped it upside down. Suddenly, all he could think of was olive skin and dark, gleaming hair. She wasn’t particularly perky, didn’t laugh loudly at all of his jokes. In fact, sometimes she didn’t laugh at all. She would just give him a look, like she couldn’t believe he’d just said that, and then after a moment she would finally crack a smile but roll her eyes and return to her work.

Every time she did it, he fell all over again.

Karen was smart. Karen was sophisticated. She grew up in New York City, and he could see it in her attitude and her tastes. She didn’t take crap from anyone, and she held her own with every single client she ever faced. Every day, she walked into the office looking perfectly polished and put together. She would walk by his desk, smile that delicious little half-smile, and casually say, “Hey Halpert.” Then he would spend the next fifteen or twenty minutes trying to come up with something clever to say to her, something that would elicit that eye roll or maybe, just maybe, her sarcastic laugh.

In the first month after Karen arrived, his sales figures dropped over ten percent, prompting a call from Josh into his office to talk about his productivity issues. He did his best to recover, but knowing that she was sitting just behind him made it incredibly hard to focus on anything even remotely related to paper. He was always turning around and making goofy little faces at her, forcing her to stick out her tongue at him or swivel around in her chair to try to ignore him.

It was immature, foolish, and severely cutting into his plans to leave Dunder Mifflin. But every time she smiled at him, every time he won a laugh or heard her call him by his last name, he decided it was more than worth it. He put away the course catalogue and resolved to register for classes the next semester, when he was just a little more financially secure. Of course, he knew it wasn’t about money, but he wasn’t ready to admit he was letting a silly crush interrupt his life plans.

Eventually, Karen became his reason for getting up, his reason for dragging himself into work each morning. A few months after she started at Dunder Mifflin, one of the other salesmen was fired for stealing company supplies. To replace him, Josh hired Andy Bernard. In Andy, Jim saw an opportunity to get closer to Karen. The new guy began his first day by doling out nicknames – Big Tuna for Jim, since he just happened to be eating a tuna sandwich for lunch – and ended it with an impromptu a capella performance. Clearly, something had to be done.

He started out small. After warring with her all day over a squeaky chair, he solved the problem by giving it to Andy. Her eyes lit up a little when she realised what he’d done, and he decided his plan was going to work. They would team up together against Andy, and somehow, he would win her over. She would discover his sense of humour, get to know him better, and decide he wasn’t just a suck-up paper salesman in desperate need of a haircut.

One day, he found a box of Jello in his pantry. He couldn’t even remember the last time he bought Jello, but he vaguely recalled a few parties with gelatine shots and figured it must have been leftover from his college days. It got him thinking, and when he went to work that morning, he stuck the Jello in his messenger bag….just in case.

When Andy discovered his calculator encased in Jello, Jim earned his very first out-loud Karen laugh. It was intoxicating, and he stopped caring about his sales figures altogether. Josh quit caring as long as he got his work done, and though he was living a little more frugally, he felt at least ten times more alive than he did before he met her.

By the time the next semester rolled around, the course catalogue was shoved somewhere in his desk, hidden beneath extra order forms and pencils and other various office supplies. He felt a brief wave of regret as he resigned himself to another few months at Dunder Mifflin, but then she threw a pencil and hit him square in the back to get his attention. “Halpert,” she called in a whisper that could be heard on the other side of the office.

“Do you mind? I’m in the middle of something incredibly important,” he answered without turning around.

“This is so much more important,” she assured him. “Your assistance is required. Immediately.”

“Well, when you put it that way.” He turned around and offered his hand in a dramatic display of devotion. “At your service.”

“They’re out of my chips in the vending machine.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Would I kid about that?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

He knew she wouldn’t. Karen was very serious about her potato chips. He couldn’t remember a single day since she started that she didn’t retreat to the break room and buy a bag of Herr’s potato chips sometime between lunch and quitting time. The distress on her face, though mostly feigned, began him on a mission that took the rest of the day. They made phone calls, affected accents, assumed identities, and finally, he tracked down her precious chips in the office across from theirs. He realised when he went home that night this was more than just a little crush. When he spent three hours of his working day trying to find chips and went home without feeling the least bit guilty or disappointed in himself, it was serious. Before that moment, he knew he was infatuated. He knew he was spending entirely too much time thinking about her, and he knew if there was ever a good opportunity to ask her out on a date, he would take it. But he also believed in a little subtlety and romance. He wasn’t the only guy falling over his feet for her, and if he wanted a real shot at a relationship with her, he needed to be better than a stumbling invitation to get a drink or check out a movie together.

“So what’s the deal with you, Halpert?” she asked him one day as he sat down across from her in the break room with his bagged lunch.

“I’m afraid I might need you to be a bit more specific,” he chuckled as he pulled a sandwich out of the bag.

“Big Tuna!” Andy announced, straightening his J. Crew tie and giving them both a ridiculous smile as he joined them in the break room.

“Andy, he hasn’t had a tuna sandwich in like, six months,” Karen pointed out.

“Once a Tuna, always a Tuna.”

“That….doesn’t even make sense,” Karen shook her head.

Andy just grinned and stuck his coffee in the microwave. “You were saying?” Jim asked, doing his best to ignore their colleague as he launched into yet another terrible falsetto solo.

“What’s the deal with you?” she repeated. “Single? Gay? Engaged to your high school sweetheart?”

“Gay?” he repeated. “Seriously?”

“Well, you do carry that messenger bag and listen to questionable music.”

“Okay, that one time you heard me flipping through radio channels does not count,” he tried to defend himself.

“You were playing drums on your steering wheel and singing along to…what was that? Britney Spears?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. But to answer your question, definitely not gay, and pretty sure there’s no high school sweetheart, so…single.”

“Single, really. Interesting.”

“Why is that interesting?” he asked, trying to hide the fact that his heart was suddenly racing in his chest. He never expected her to be the one to bring it up, but maybe he should have. She wasn’t really one for gender roles, and if she wanted something, she went out and got it. Of course, he hadn’t deluded himself enough to really believe he was what she wanted, but…well, was it too ridiculous to hope maybe just a little?

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “You’re an attractive guy. I just figured you’d be attached.”

“Well, I’m not,” he said very clearly, somehow managing to restrain himself from asking if she’d like to perhaps to apply for the position. “What about you?”

She gave him one of her trademarked mysterious smiles, then stood up, threw away her trash, and headed back to her desk. He spent the rest of his afternoon attempting to interpret the various meanings behind that cool, enigmatic smile. One thing for certain: Karen Filipelli was nothing short of a force of nature.

That day in the break room took place four years ago. Four years, and he was still working at Dunder Mifflin. Eventually he threw away the course catalogue and replaced it with mementos of their friendship. His hopes and dreams had been systematically swapped out for a few post-it note messages and a couple of photographs. For the last four years, he spent the majority of his weeknights with her. They would grab a drink at the bar down the street, or try dinner at some trendy new spot, or occasionally catch a movie or go to a concert. In four years, they’d been on one date. He bought tickets to see one of her favourite bands and took her out to a nice dinner beforehand. They made out between bands, and then she came home with him. In the morning, he woke up alone. She called him two days later, met him for a drinks at one of their usual spots, and acted like absolutely nothing had happened between them. The next Friday, when he casually mentioned a movie he knew she wanted to see, she smiled and asked for a rain check.

It didn’t take him long to figure out what was going on. Karen was not a relationship type girl. Karen loved to date, but she was just looking for fun. She didn’t want phone calls at night before they went to bed, didn’t want to spend every night in an apartment that wasn’t her own or be forced to share her bed with a boyfriend just because they were dating. For four years he watched her casually date men of all types, but one thing always remained the same. The first time he called her at work, the first time she received flowers, the first time he said “I love you,” she promptly ended the relationship.

He tried to play it by her rules. If she didn’t want a relationship, he wouldn’t force her. If she didn’t want to be the typical schmoopy couple who made up pet names for one another and spent every waking moment holding hands or kissing, he wouldn’t be that kind of guy. She wasn’t looking for a potential spouse. Not yet, anyway, so he wouldn’t make himself out to be her future husband. Of course, he wanted to get married someday, and sooner rather than later. He wanted kids, wanted a house in the suburbs. He wanted to have a dog and family dinners promptly at six every night. But he also wanted her, and if he couldn’t have both, he was willing to compromise.

He’d done a lot of compromising since Karen Filipelli walked in the door of Dunder Mifflin Stamford. It started with school, continued with his career, and eventually culminated in his pride. He really wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing anymore. For the last few years, he’d been little more than a friend with benefits. She still dated other men, returning to him when she got bored, when the other guy got too clingy, when she needed something familiar and comforting. Matt kept telling him she was bad news, that she was just using him. And maybe his brother was right. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the way she did always come back to him. Sometimes it would be a month, sometimes two or three, but eventually she would break up with her boyfriend and call him or show up at his apartment. So he lived for those times and told himself that one day, she would realise she didn’t want to date around, didn’t want fun and excitement anymore and just wanted him, the way he’d always wanted her. She was still young, still fiercely independent, still hip and cool and sophisticated and not ready for a minivan and a golden retriever. One day she would change. One day she would get tired of fancy dinner dates and new guys every week and just come home to him. He could wait. Finding the right person wasn’t supposed to be easy, and so what if he figured it out before she did? How could he just give up on her?

He was starting to realise that not giving up on her meant giving up on himself. Five years and he still had the same fucking job. He still sold paper and sat in the exact same desk as he did on his first day. He’d watched people rise through the ranks, get promoted, get transferred, get out of the paper business altogether and find something more exciting, more rewarding. But not him. He just stayed the same. He could do better, he could apply himself and get a better job or a pay raise, something to justify the last five years he spent at this company, but instead, he thought about the way the light caught in her hair or the way she laughed at his jokes.

In the last year or so, “downsizing” had become the word on everyone’s lips. Jan, their boss at corporate, had driven down a few times for closed-door meetings with Josh, and the meetings were always followed up with motivational pep talks laced with desperation. Their company was struggling, and soon, they wouldn’t be able to justify all the branches currently operating in the northeast. The heat was on to prove which branch was the best. People started working through lunch, staying late, coming in early. He just couldn’t bring himself to care. He knew he needed to keep his numbers up or risk getting laid off, so he somehow managed to do the bare minimum required to scrape by, then spent the rest of his day hoping something would change.

Five years at Dunder Mifflin, four years in love with her. He actually wrote the numbers down on his expense reports, staring down at the sad truth of his life. Five years at a job he didn’t really like, five years he could have spent trying to better himself. Four years wanting a woman who couldn’t make up her mind, who sometimes wanted him but more often didn’t. His temporary job became his career, and every day that passed was another nail in the coffin of his previous hopes and dreams.

He wasn’t sure how much longer he could take it. And he really wasn’t sure how much longer he could take working on this boring stack of papers with her right behind him, her brow furrowed in concentration, her hair falling in front of her eyes. Without saying a word, he grabbed his cell phone out of his top drawer and fled the office. There was only one person he could call right now, and it was a sad testament to his last five years in Stamford. He occasionally hung out with people from work, and he made a few friends with people in his apartment building, but for the most part, his life revolved around her. There was no one here he could count on, no one he could bare his heart to, no one who knew the hell he subjected himself on a daily basis.

Against his better judgment, he flipped open his cell phone and dialled his brother’s number. Matthew was a good guy, a good brother, but he wasn’t really the best at advice. It was so obvious to Matt that Karen was bad news from the start, and he never understood why it was so hard to walk away.

“Hey little brother, playing hooky today?” Matt greeted him.

“No, just uh…just taking a break.”

“Uh oh.”

“Wow, is it really that obvious?”

“Jim, come on. How long have I been getting these calls now?”

“Um, it’s been about four years,” he admitted. “And counting.”

“Jim,” his brother sighed.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Matt,” he confessed, bringing a hand to rub his aching temple. He searched around for a place to sit outside the office, but ended up just slumping miserably against the wall. “I’m going out of my mind.”

“So do you really want my advice, or do you just want to vent?” his brother asked. “You’re welcome to either, but I don’t want to piss you off, so…”

He considered for a moment, knowing what would happen if he asked for his brother’s advice. Usually he wanted to just vent, to have a sympathetic ear and maybe a few words of encouragement. Advice meant he had to change. Advice meant doing something to actually improve his life, and for the last four years, he hadn’t been ready for that. But every day, it was becoming a little more clear he couldn’t live like this. Maybe it was time to let his brother talk. Maybe it was time to start listening. “I want you to tell me what to do,” he answered desperately. “I can’t…I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“You know what I’m going to tell you, Jim. You have to get out of there. You’re never going to get over it when you work right next to her.”

“What am I supposed to do? I can’t…we’re supposed to be friends, Matt. What the hell am I supposed to do? If I quit, she’s still going to call me and come over and nothing will ever change.”

“Then you need to leave,” Matt answered simply. “What’s keeping you in Stamford? A job you hate and her. She’s your only tie to anything there, so just cut your losses and leave, Jim.”

He wanted to protest, wanted to say he could find a way to be strong and courageous and walk away from her with his head held high, but he knew it was impossible. He spent four years letting her call the shots, allowing himself to deny everything he ever wanted for just a chance she might someday change her mind. If he stayed here, he would do it all over again. She would smile at him or invite him for a drink and he wouldn’t be able to stop himself. He’d justify it in his mind, tell himself she really did love him and just needed a little more time. He’d give her another day, another week, another month, and then another year would be gone and he would only be more miserable than before.

“Still with me?” Matt asked after a moment.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

“Look, have you thought about transferring?” his brother questioned. “I know you hate your job, but at least it would be something to help you relocate. Didn’t you say they had another branch in Scranton?”

“Yeah, but I’ve heard stories. I don’t know, Matt, I’m not sure I could do it.”

“Well, it’s just an idea. Obviously there are other places you could go, but you still have friends in Scranton. Wouldn’t that be better than starting all over? It could at least be something you do just for a while, just to get back on your feet and figure out what else you want to do.”

For the first time, his brother’s advice seemed to make sense. He did hear horror stories about the Scranton branch, but he hadn’t exactly made things easy for himself. He didn’t have enough money saved up to just move somewhere with no job to pay the bills, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay in Stamford without blowing his brains out. “It makes sense,” he conceded, “but Matt…I don’t know if I can…”

“What, leave her?” Matt asked incredulously. “Come on, Jim, what are you really leaving?”

“She’s my friend,” he tried to defend himself weakly.

“Who you’re in love with.”

“She doesn’t know that,” he pointed out.

“Don’t,” his brother warned him seriously. “She’s not going to change, Jim. No matter what you say to her, she’s not going to change, and she’s just going to rip your heart out.”

“You don’t-”

“Yes, I do know that,” his brother countered. “Jim, she might not be a bad person, but she doesn’t want to settle down. She wants to have you when she wants you, and that’s it. You say you’re friends, but you’re not friends. You love her, and she just…she doesn’t want that. And the longer you stay there, the worse it’s going to get.”

“I guess….maybe I’ll call corporate.”

“I think you need to, Jim. I really think it’ll help.”

“Okay, well, I guess I better get back in there. I’ll give you a call later.”

“Yeah, please do,” his brother requested. “Good luck, Buddy.”

“Thanks, Matt,” he said gratefully before snapping his phone closed. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, giving himself a moment to get his thoughts together again before he had to return to the office again. There was still an expense report waiting to be filled out, and he couldn’t make any sales calls until he completed it.

Sighing heavily, he shoved his phone back in his pocket and headed back upstairs. “Hey Halpert, what was that all about?” Karen inquired as soon as he slumped back into his chair.

“Oh, just…needed some fresh air,” he shrugged, tossing her a quick smile before turning back to his paperwork.

“Hey, so I was thinking while filling out these never-ending forms, and we should try that new bar tonight. By the harbour. You down?”

“Oh um…”

“Come on, when else are we going to go?” she whined.

“I don’t know? Tomorrow. I just have to get some stuff done tonight.”

“What kind of stuff?” she crinkled her nose. “It’s Thursday. What could you possibly have to do on a Thursday?”

“I do have a life, Filipelli.”

“No, you really don’t,” she shook her head. “Come on, Halpert. We can’t go tomorrow. I have a date.”

“Oh. Um. Well, I really shouldn’t tonight. Maybe next week,” he shrugged. “I better get back to work, though.”

“Fine, but you suck,” she pouted.

“Yeah, I know,” he sighed dramatically before spinning his chair back around and trying once more to focus on his expense report. When Karen got up a few minutes later to refill her coffee, he pulled up the Dunder Mifflin website on his computer and quickly checked for job openings in their other branches. He wasn’t sure if he felt better or worse when he saw a single opening for a salesman in Scranton.

When Karen walked back to her desk, he quickly closed the window and pretended to be checking his e-mail. He finished his expense report and made a couple of cold calls, making sure to keep himself busy until she left for the evening. “See ya, Halpert,” she called as she gathered her things together. “Give me a call if you change your mind.”

“Yeah, will do,” he smiled weakly. He waited until she was gone, then picked up the phone and called the corporate office.

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