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~Undies for Dundies~

Michael has brought everyone gifts in and Ryan opens his with a little trepidation. Everyone’s packages are exactly the same, except for his.

Different wrapping, different shape.

When he finally liberates his present, he has to hold it for a horrified second before it really filters in what it is.

Package of five pairs of black boxer briefs.

“Ayup, wear those myself. Keeps everything in alignment if you get my drift-er-rin-o,” Michael pipes up, doing this weird little shimmery shake which Ryan desperately wishes he could unsee but knows will stay with him forever and ever, possibly keeping him awake at nights.

Jim looks at Ryan over his own package of pharmacy bought cologne and raises his eyebrows.

Later, when the cameras are on him, Ryan holds up the package of underwear, looks at the camera, looks at the underwear and looks at the camera again.

He doesn’t need to say anything.

The thing is, Ryan really doesn’t want to make any connections.

He just wants to work in this place long enough to get on his feet and get going properly in business school. He really doesn’t want a niche, he just wants to do his job, nine to five and get the hell out. He already has friends and doesn’t feel the need to make any more.

Halpert puts paid to that. Ryan automatically likes him and it’s annoying. Perhaps it’s because Jim seems to be about as bored as he is with this life, but he finds himself saying yes to a BBQ at Jim’s place on a Friday night where he will be interacting with work people outside of, you know, actual work.

At least Michael isn’t invited.

He’s in the backyard around the side of the house when he hears voices. Ryan freezes because he would know that clipped tone anywhere and Angela still hasn’t forgiven him for breaking one of her cat figurines, or at least accusing him of breaking it. He actually saw Dwight do it and told her as much and she had simply said “There is a special place in hell for liars.”

She’s got that same tone going, but instead she’s saying stuff like, “Well, perhaps if we’re quick and forgo the foreplay.”

Ryan could have lived his entire existence without hearing Angela say the word foreplay, especially to Dwight and so when he spies an open window above his head, he uses a pipe to boost himself through and when he hits carpet and gets up, brushing himself off, Jim’s flatmate is watching him from the doorway with a bemused expression.

“I owe Jimbo twenty bucks after this little shindig,” he says cryptically.

When Ryan hears strains of “Islands in the Stream” and realises it’s Michael singing, he digs into his pockets and finally pulls out a twenty. He hands it over silently and Mark first raises his eyebrows, then accepts it and steps out of the room, shutting the door.

He didn’t mean for anyone in his real life to meet anyone from the office, but somehow he ended up at a club called ‘Minxy’ with Kelly pressed to his side and the four of his friends he was supposed to be actually hanging out with all crowded together on the other side of the booth they’re sharing.

Kelly has been talking for about half an hour and every now and again someone opens their mouth to interject but no one actually can.

Ryan looks at the Appletini Kelly has been nursing and half of it is gone but he can’t remember her actually drinking any because surely she would have had to have paused in her tirade to do that.

Maybe she has the power to absorb it through her skin.

He looks across at Damien who has been his best friend since high school and who now mouths ‘Make it stop’ with such a baleful glare that Ryan isn’t sure they’ll be friends anymore after this night if he can’t.

Ryan does the only thing he can think of. He leans across and plants his mouth on hers and for a few seconds she is still talking so he pushes his tongue across her lips and she finally stutters to a stop.

When he pulls back she kind of blinks at him and smiles and then touches her lips and says something, but the music has chosen that moment to get really loud and he doesn’t catch what she says. She excuses herself to run to the bathroom and when she disappears, his friends are looking at him with wide eyes.

“Man, are you crazy?” Damien breathes and Ryan frowns.

“What? It was the only way to stop-“

“It’s February thirteenth!” All four men say in horrified groans and Ryan takes a beat to stare at them.

The next thing he knows his forehead has smacked into the table and he wonders if the strange tightness in his chest is his very first heart attack.

There is this kind of disbelief that runs through the office at the very idea of Jan and Michael but Ryan can kind of see how it happened.

There are a few moments, a very few where Michael shows a flash of being, you know, a person and you are so desperate to make that moment stretch that you would do anything.

Apparently Jan Levinson-former-Gould made out with Michael in one of these rare instances.

She’s horrified of course and regrets it. Ryan can hear it in her tone when Michael makes him sit in on a conference call so he can claim the call isn’t personal. She sounds desperate to make the horror stop and Ryan can relate. When she hangs up, Michael mid-sentence, Michael sits back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head and looks at Ryan for a few moments.

“So, how do you think that went?” he asks, scratching his eyebrow with the back of his thumb. “I mean, does that sound like she wants to… you know, maybe take a break or something? A step back from our relationship?”

Ryan blinks, but recovers admirably. “Oh, well, yeah. I mean, she’s just gotten divorced so maybe she’s scared by the depth of feeling you’ve invoked.”

Michael makes a contented noise and dismisses Ryan with an imperial wave. Ryan has learned that the shortest route to escape is to tell Michael exactly what he wants to hear right off the bat.

Also, the staring and the inappropriate gifts have eased since Michael’s little tryst and Ryan isn’t above throwing someone else to the wolves in his place.

So, Jim is in love with Pam.

Ryan knows more about these people’s interrelationships than he would particularly like to, but for some reason Kelly is the conduit through which all office gossip flows and she is nice enough to break it down into point form and email him a summary at the end of each day.

He wouldn’t read it, but sometimes she quizzes him and it’s just easier when he knows the answers.

He’s in Chilli’s on a Sunday night, not by his choice but his cousin Fran really likes it for some reason, and spies Jim at the bar. He excuses himself and slides onto the stool next to Jim, watching as he tries to unsuccessfully liberate a wedge of lime from the neck of his beer.

Jim’s hands are unsteady and while it’s usually pretty hard to get drunk at a Chilli’s, the girl behind the bar has had her eye on Jim for a while and so serves him more beer than she probably should.

Ryan reaches for the beer and Jim instinctively curls it towards his chest, before his eyes slide sideways and he realises who it is. “Oh, hi,” he says a little too brightly.

Everything within Ryan screams at him not to do it, but he says, “Are you okay?”

Jim kind of half snorts, half laughs. “You don’t need to ask me that.”

“I know, but I just did so you have to answer. It’s the rule.”

“I’m fine,” Jim assures in the most unconvincing way Ryan’s ever heard, but he’s tried and there isn’t much else he can do.

“Okay, well, I’m just over there if you need anything,’ Ryan gestures towards the table that has his cousin and a couple of her friends but Jim doesn’t even bother to look where Ryan is pointing.

Ryan claps him on the shoulder and leaves him to it.

“Who is that and why have I never met him before?” Fran demands when Ryan dumps himself into the booth seat next to her. Ryan looks back at Jim for a second, rumpled and drunk and apparently still appealing as he watches the bar girl sidle back over to him. Jim says something to which she laughs too loud and Ryan winces.

“He’s nobody, just a guy from work,” Ryan answers.