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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.

 

 

xox (Karen, Andy, pre-Merger) xox

 

Karen knows there should be some solace that she can take comfort in, some bit of mantra that she can repeat in her head and make it all seem okay that she moved to the fucking middle of nowhere for a guy that barely even registers her existence. She checks at the bottom of her glass for that string of words, but all she finds is a crushed bar peanut magnified by the glass and the watery drudges of her vodka tonic. Maybe it’ll be enough, because she’s just a little drunk and that always seems to help.

 

“My my my, and I thought I was the only one to have discovered this fine place of business. I guess you beat me to the punch.”

 

Andy tries to punch her in the arm as the dotted period to the end of his sentence, but she glares and he drops his fist.

 

“How did m’lady end up here? I’m assuming you accepted the job offer at Scranton as well?”

 

Karen nods but doesn’t say much more; she really isn’t in the mood to humor him.

 

“I’m surprised Big Tuna isn’t here to keep you company. I guess he’s probably too busy catching up with all his local pals. You think he’ll even recognize us here? I, for one, know my hair looks completely different under fluorescent lighting.”

 

He doesn’t register that what he’s said might upset her, and that doesn’t surprise her. She wipes a tear away with her cocktail napkin discretely as he orders another beer and later, after the bar is closed and she feels a tad nauseous, she makes out with him by her car. The next morning she pretends she doesn’t know what he’s talking about and it sort of works.

 

 

 

xox (Kelly, Toby) xox

 

“Ohmygod Toby! Did you see this? Paris Hilton’s puppy went missing! She’s putting up flyers all over Hollywood!”

 

“Okay Kelly.”

 

“Okay? Are you even listening to me? A dog has been kidnapped!”

 

“I thought you said it was missing? Not kidnapped.”

 

“Yeah but Paris is, like, super rich. I bet some black market puppynappers took it for ransom.”

 

“But there’s no evidence that… no. Kelly, I have to get back to work.”

 

“Don’t you even care Toby? You are an awful person.”

 

“There’s no need to cry, Kelly, it’s just a dog.”

 

“Just a dog? I can’t even imagine how scared Tinkerbelle must be right now. Out on the streets, in the cold…”

 

“In LA…”

 

“… with no one to help it, looking for its mommy. If I were Paris I’d be totally freaking out right now.”

 

“It’s okay Kelly. I’m sure someone will find… Tinkerbelle soon.”

 

“Yeah totally… Ohmygod have you seen the new pictures of Brittney? She looks hideous. Leather is so not her color.”

 

Toby sneezes.

 

“Are you okay? You’re not getting sick are you? Because I have a date tonight and I am sooo not going all snotty and gross.”

 

“No, I just think I might be developing an allergy. To… the desk.”

 

 

 

xox (Angela, Michael) xox

 

Her sister isn’t well, but she can’t call her because that would be giving in and Angela would rather die by pitchfork than admit defeat. Her cat is sick and her hot water is broken and even though this is her job, Michael could at least stop acting like a petulant child long enough to actually step out of her way. She doesn’t expect help, just for him to stop hindering her.

 

She’d been stringing popcorn necklaces for a week and searching for the right shade of table cloths for twice as long, but nobody cares what color the tables are when they’re doused in spilt Vodka and Cheetos.

 

Orange is a whorish color.

 

The tears come before she can hold them back and she actually dials seven out of ten digits in her sister’s phone number before she hangs up.

 

“Damn you to hell, Michael,” she whispers under her breath, and slips a bottle under her coat.

 

 

 

xox (Jan, Ryan, Michael/Jan; post-The Job) xox

 

Jan fingers the stark fabric of her Italian suit one last time before hanging it in the back of her closet and setting a mental guideline for herself to forget it’s there. The sweatpants feel elastic and soft and foreign as her thighs brush together on the trek down the stairs, but she tells herself to ignore that as well. This is her life now and, despite how drastically different it is from the one she was living a week ago, she’s never met a hurdle she couldn’t clear. 

 

The hot-pockets she takes out of the oven are a little blacker than they probably should be, but a bit of burned bread never hurt anyone so she arranges them in a pyramid shape on a Muppets’ plate, covering Kermit’s face gratefully (she’s always had an irrational fear of frogs).

 

Jan glances at the clock: 4:52. She’d be in an afternoon meeting with the executives right now, negotiating some deal breaker in fancy wording that really meant “we’re going to take all your money and there’s nothing you can do about.” She misses that. There’s the brief flicker of Ryan in her chair, running her meetings, flirting with her secretary, taking her calls, looking up college-age porn on her computer, but her physiatrist’s voice is in her head, reminding her that it isn’t hers anymore.

 

She clips coupons while she waits for Michael to keep her mind off it, but she still can’t help picturing Ryan’s face under the snip of her scissors and in the end she throws the damp coupons away.   

 

 

 

xox (Meredith, Dwight; post-Business School) xox

 

Most of the time Meredith is afraid of needles.

 

Yet here she is, in a paper medical gown that shows everything except her best assets, an unattractive doctor coming at her with a fucking urchin spine.

 

She can almost still feel the noisy thump-thump of that flying rat’s wings against her ears, the suffocating darkness of the garbage bag around her head. She could have sworn that thing had red glowing eyes but her blood sugar had been low at the time and she wasn’t exactly sober. If she were a superstitious woman she’d say it was bad luck that she walked under a ladder just behind a black cat but she’s not so she’ll just say it’s… bad timing. Or the product of stupidity. Dwight’s, not hers. There’s the stinging smell of antiseptic and then he’s gouging her arm.

 

“Ow, god damn it!”

 

It takes longer than it should and then he hands her a bundle of gauze to stop the bleeding, patting her arm (which also hurts) when he notices her eyes have red rims. Nothing a little Bailey’s can’t cure. But her arm still really hurts.

 

“Fucking Dwight.”

 

 

 

xox (Phyllis, pre-series) xox

 

It really wasn’t anything unusual today.

 

Dwight made her feel insignificant and Michael made her feel old and Stanley made her feel invisible. And maybe she was. Phyllis told herself that she had her cats and her online poker and the faded photos of her and the girls at Mario’s strip bar, before Jamie got married and Kim got killed and Fran found religion.

 

But it was Kevin again today, and maybe he hadn’t meant it to hurt her, maybe he figured that she was okay with her weight, but she hadn’t told him that it did upset her and that’s what was really bothering her. There were days when she just thought it would be better to follow Tom on the path of taking mortality into your own hands.

 

It’s not like anyone would miss her.

 

But she stops herself right there. That’s just… too dangerous. Wouldn’t want to fall back into old patterns. Besides, there’s this cute guy who works downstairs, Bob if she recalls correctly, that’s been flirting with her.

 

Phyllis traces the sixteen year old scars on her wrists and lets the tears on her pillow be enough for tonight.

 

 

 

xox (Pam, Jim, Jim/Pam; circa-Back From Vacation) xox

 

Pam cries because they’re happy. She cries because she made them that way.

 

She cries because it’s all her fault, and all his fault, because it’s no one’s fault.

 

She cries because she wonders when it’ll be her turn to be selfish without everyone looking at her like she ran over their grandma, when she’ll stop chaining her self to the stocks with every time the word Karen bites a little as it rolls of her tongue.

 

She cries because it never seems like she can shrug all the monkeys off her back and it’s getting a little crowded back there. She thinks she deserves to score a point in this cosmic game of her versus the universe, although she can hear her dad’s voice in the back of her head: “you don’t win because you deserve to, you win because you’re better than everyone else.” But she doesn’t suppose he knows what it’s like to go toe to toe with the world.

 

She thinks she can feel a tiny piece of glass embedded in her leg from when she shattered a cup this morning, even though she knows every shard is still in her dust pan at home, but still.

 

It hurts. 


xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

 

Chapter End Notes:
Don't worry, the guys will get what's coming to them ;)

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