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it just comes out sometimes

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended

 

 

If someone had told Myra two years ago that the person she had most in common with was an art loving receptionist from Scranton, PA she probably would have laughed in their face.

 

She had, objectively speaking, a pretty great life. She was attractive (but not gorgeous), smart (but not brilliant), in medical school (but not at the top of her class, not by a long shot), beloved by her parents (that part was unconditional) and her multitudes of friends (except for the one that mattered).

 

Two years ago she had the perfect life, not because she was engaged to Dan, but because she had Him. Unlike Pam, there had never been a moment of Myra’s life where Adam hadn’t been there for her. He was literally the boy next door (except he lived a block away, but when your parents are best friends and share a practice it’s almost as if he does live next door.)

 

He was there for every heartbreak and triumph; he told her she was pretty even when her face was one giant zit and her hair so full and frizzy that she could have hidden an army in it. He encouraged her, he stuck up for her, he teased her, he made her laugh. He did everything he could for her, except tell her that he loved her.

 

Well, at least not until it was almost too late.

 

She was dating Dan when The Office first started; he thought it was stupid, she thought it was funny. She and Adam would TiVo the episodes and laugh until their sides hurt and the next day their walls on facebook would be covered in memorable quotes from the episode. The semblance between her life and Pam’s struck her immediately. Sure, she was a med student and Pam was a receptionist, but neither of them had followed their dreams at the insistence of their boyfriends (Oh, how Myra loved to write), both of their boyfriends had turned into rather boorish but ultimately good-hearted fiancés and both of them had adorable, fabulous best friends who lit up their somewhat dreary existences.

 

It wasn’t until Myra noticed Jim falling in love with Pam that realized that maybe, just maybe, Adam’s feelings for her weren’t entirely platonic. And it wasn’t until That realization that she let her begin to imagine her life with Adam instead of Dan.

 

Adam with the kind light brown eyes. Adam with the funny laugh that would sometimes end in hiccups. Adam with the hands too soft to be a man’s. Adam with the jeans so frayed that they threatened to rip at any moment. Adam with a heart too kind to be a truly great lawyer. Adam with a smile for all of their parent’s older friends, Adam ready to play with all of her nieces and nephews. Adam who looked at her like she was the sun and the moon. Adam whose smile made her melt. Adam whose breath on her neck made her weak in the knees.

 

She should have said something then. She didn’t.

 

So it was only after Dan proposed that Adam kissed her. It was just a regular Thursday night, and he did it while the credits rolled after the ‘Booze Cruise’.  Her eyes had fluttered up at him in surprise as his lips hit hers. She had never felt so warm in all her life; she had never felt so safe.

 

When she looked up at him, she swore she could see a hint of a tear in his eye, “I didn’t want to be Jim,” he said quietly staring at his hands. “I love you Myra, you know that but I had to show you I mean it.”

 

“I didn’t know,” Myra replies, it’s a lie but come on her parents had just put down deposits on everything. This wasn’t a TV show- you couldn’t change your life because of a kiss or because you were marrying the wrong guy.

 

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” his voice is quiet as he stands up and runs his hands through his unruly curly hair. “I’ve got to get going I have an Intellectual Property midterm next week and …”

 

“Are we going to talk about this?” Myra asks as she tugs on the hem of his t-shirt.

 

“Are you going to marry him?” he asks, his voice tired because he already knows the answer.

 

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need to…”

 

“Forget it My…just forget it happened ok?” he says as she stands and steps towards him. She follows him to the door, and even though she can’t remember how it happened, he’s kissing her again and this time it’s even better than the first and she just wants to pull him into her arms and never ever let go. But her family from India has already bought tickets to come to the wedding and there’s a party for her and Dan next week…

 

While she’s thinking he leaves and unlike TV he doesn’t transfer or do anything drastic. They’re still friends even though it’s totally different and he doesn’t want to talk and she doesn’t want to do.

 

When he gets offered a job in New York she tells him it’s a great opportunity and hates herself for it. He takes the hint and leaves.

 

She postpones the wedding the next day.

 

When she calls him and tells him she misses him so much she can’t breathe, he’s silent and she almost hangs up until she hears, “Wait…I miss you too My…it’s just not enough though.”

 

She decides to get over him, she decides that by December everything will be fine and that by December everyone will be over all this drama and that by December she’ll marry Dan and never ever think about Adam’s kiss or his hands or his smile or his…

 

The only thing that happens is that she gets more miserable, she and Adam drift apart, her grades fall, her parents panic and Dan calls off the wedding.

 

Now it’s a year later and she just learned that she’s matched to a program in Philadelphia. That’s less than two hours from New York, an hour by the Acela…But the only time she hears from Adam now is via facebook. All she got when she changed her profile to single was a message from him the next day “I hope you’re Ok.”

He doesn’t put up quotes from The Office anymore.

 

She had stopped watching for a while, trying to sort out her own life without worrying about Pam’s but now that she’s watching again she’s more hooked than ever. She starts reading fanfiction online, even starting to write it. All her stories end happily at first back when she has hope. She crushes her fictional Karen’s with the iron fist of Pam’s love for Jim. She writes so much fluff that her teeth hurt from reading it.

 

Then she sees on facebook that he isn’t listed as single anymore and that a gorgeous girl named Melinda has been posting on his wall a lot. It figures. This isn’t TV, he’s not going to wait forever. He’s moving on in that final, ‘I used to love you but now all I feel for you is nostalgic tenderness kind of way.’

 

Suddenly her fanfics aren’t so light and airy and full of hope anymore. Now more often than not Pam is left loveless or dead or stuck in a bad marriage. Jim is happy and carefree and Karen has practically tattooed Mrs. Halpert on her shoulder. Her readers start to dwindle, but Myra doesn’t care anymore. Fanfic isn’t catharsis, it’s just pain. When ‘Cocktails’ airs she starts to sob, really, really breakdown. Not because she’s afraid that she would ever get back together with Dan and break Adam’s heart again (because in real life when your fiancé calls of your wedding you don’t get back together…instead he starts banging a mutual friend); but because of the look on Pam’s face as she runs out of the bar. The look that says she’s got nothing left, the look that says that she’s tired of running away. It’s as if Pam is looking at Myra and telling her, “Don’t make the same mistakes I did.”

 

Myra knows thanks to her Psychiatry Clerkship that this is called being Delusional. But she doesn’t care. She buys a ticket to New York for two weeks from now (if this was TV she would have bought it for tomorrow morning but that costs $800 bucks and she’s still just a poor med student). She doesn’t think about the ticket or what she’s going to say (or worse what he’s going to say) until the day she leaves, she knows that this is called Suppression but she doesn’t care.

 

On the plane ride up all she can think about is all the different ways he can reject her. All the reasons he’s perfectly justified to be cruel. But she knows he won’t be cruel, he’ll just be achingly kind and sympathetic. He’ll just hold her while she cries and agree that real life sucks and that man he wishes he could change the past too. And then he’ll go back to his super hot girlfriend, she found out that Melinda is in PR whatever that means, and she’ll go home.

 

And amazingly she’s ok with that, she’s ok with it not working out; she just has to give it a shot, just on the off chance that he’s completely nuts and still has some feelings for her. She has to try. Pam told her to after all.

 

When she gets to New York she calls him when she is a block from his apartment (they still have the same friends so it isn’t terribly difficult to get his new number and address). He sounds surprised, well shocked. He says he’s at dinner at a restaurant a block down from his place but she’s more than welcome to join him and his friends.

 

When she gets there she has to swallow some tears at just how happy she is to see him. If it was a TV show they would both excuse themselves from dinner and scream it out on the street outside or end up making out in the hallway by the bathroom. Instead she is polite and funny and his friends love her, even Melinda smiles at some of her jokes. Unfortunately, Melinda is prettier than her pictures.

 

When dinner is over Myra feigns a yawn and casually asks Adam to walk her back to her friend’s apartment where she is staying. Since this isn’t TV Melinda doesn’t shoot Adam death glares and Adam doesn’t look worried or eager. He just smiles and says ‘sure,’ kisses his girlfriend and waves to his friends telling them that he’ll meet them at the bar they are headed to.

 

When they get to her hotel, he quirks his eyebrows in that Adamesque way and she just looks at him and says, “What did you want me to say in front of your friends, I paid $200 bucks for a hotel room so that I could come talk to you?”

 

He just laughs and so does she and the knot in her stomach relaxes when she realizes that he still takes his walking home very seriously and that he’s going up to her hotel room door.

 

When she gets to the door she opens it with one hand and grabs his hand with the other pulling him in.

 

Since it isn’t a TV show she doesn’t maul him or begin to cry. She just holds out her hands and says, “I didn’t want to be Pam.”

 

He says he doesn’t understand. He says it was too painful to watch so he just stopped. She starts to talk and he’s just as understanding and kind as she knew he would be. When she finishes she waits for the final, “I’m sorry Myra but I just don’t…” to come. It doesn’t.

 

Instead he just looks at her in a way that makes her feel uncomfortable and beautiful all at the same time.

 

“Now what? He asks.

 

“You tell me,” she replies as she picks at some imaginary lint from her pants.

 

“Come on Myra, you know I still love you. A blind man could see that,” he says this as he cups her face with his hand. It isn’t as romantic as something she would write in fanfic but somehow it’s a thousand times hotter and maybe she’s read too much fanfic or watched to much TV but before she knows it, she’s kissing him and he’s kissing her and their clothes are everywhere and suddenly it’s better than anything she’s ever written, read or seen because he’s finally hers and that’s all that matters. When she wakes up in the morning, he’s smiling in his sleep and when she nestles her hand in his downy soft chest hair and sighs she finally feels complete again.

 

When Jim and Pam finally, painfully get together years later (two weeks before the series finale, the writers managing to draw out their relationship as much as humanely possible) Myra is lying on the sofa, her head in Adam’s lap. Even though her residency is almost over she was on call last night but she had to stay up to watch this. When Jim finally kisses Pam again, Myra starts to cry. Adam chuckles at first at his sentimental wife, since she had gotten pregnant her hormones have kicked into overdrive; but when Myra starts to sob, to seriously bawl he gets concerned. He picks her up and cradles her in his arms as she clutches his shirt.

 

“What is it sweetheart?” he asks as he brushes some tears from her face.

 

“Nothing, it’s just…I’m just so happy.” She says as she laughs and he kisses her half-amused, half-amazed, totally in love.

 

Chapter End Notes:
lemme know if you like it, or if you don't or if you hate me (that's always important to know)


fasterthansnakes is the author of 17 other stories.
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