Darryl has three sisters, all older. When he was little they used to read him fairytales in an attempt to rectify the fact that he had a Y chromosome. (But they read him Grimm’s, so the affect was lost.)
The stories were mostly horrible, with bloody feet shoved into too small shoes, witches waiting in candy houses while parents abandoned their children to forests. They sometimes gave Darryl nightmares.
-
Darryl meets Pam on a Wednesday, right after finishing the second largest job of his life and right before starting the first. Roy introduces her, hand on the small of her back, head titling in a silent question of approval, what do you think?
Pam’s all hair and eyes, smile too big for her mouth, which has far less lipstick on it than any receptionist Darryl’s ever seen. Before today, he’s only ever glimpsed her in pictures. He even lets Roy keep a shot of the two of them in his office – he’s the foreman and he’s the only one who gets an office and Roy had asked, so. It’s positioned in such a way that the light from the window only ever falls on Roy. (And, Darryl thinks, if this were a movie that would mean something. If this were a movie a lot of things would mean something.)
But now Roy’s standing there with the real life version of Pam, and the only light falling on either of them is cheap and florescent.
Darryl gives a half-nod, partly because, yeah, Pam’s alright (but mostly because he likes validating Roy more than he should).
Roy grins at him, easy, happy, and tightens his grip on Pam like he’s proud.
-
Darryl has a nightmare the way he hasn’t since he was a child.
In it he’s sometimes The Beast and he’s sometimes The Beauty. And even though it’s after the happily ever after and the Beast looks like a man, he really isn’t. You can still see the claws.
“I was wrong,” Beauty says. “You are a monster.” She leaves while he’s sleeping, but doesn’t make it as far as the rose garden. He’s still a beast, and he catches her.
Darryl wakes up. (And he wishes, really wishes, that he would dream about flying instead.)
-
Darryl and Roy actually sort of owe their entire friendship to Michael. Darryl doesn’t like to think about it too much, because owing Michael things is not something you want to bring up, ever. (And also, if he knew, Michael would probably ask for someone’s firstborn child.)
This is the beginning:
It’s so long before the cameras that it’s blurry around the edges, no lens to bring it into focus, and Michael opens his mouth (and it’s a pretty sure bet that things of a ridiculous nature follow). Roy catches Darryl’s eyes, grinning.
And that was that. Because there are rules for this sort of thing, rules that everyone knows at least by the time they’re six, knows so deep and so hard that they might write them down and title “The Way Things Are, by us.”
A shared smile, everyone knows; that’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
-
When Darryl was little, he’d once taken a roll of aluminum foil, third drawer under the stove, and covered his bedroom with it, floor to ceiling. Then he’d lain on his back on the carpet and pretended that he was inside a spaceship.
Darryl told Roy this once, just for shits and giggles, and Roy had laughed and said, “god, that must’ve taken forever to clean up.” But on Darryl’s birthday, Roy somehow got the guys to cover one of the forklifts in foil. And for the entire day, they’d all called him Captain.
“’Cause it was a hell of a lot cheaper than getting you a real gift,” Roy said.
And if this is something like nine months after Darryl had first told him the story, they don’t mention that.
-
Roy comes into work alone after the company gambling night.
“Shouldn’t have left her with him in that dress.” They’re lifting boxes, heavy ones, and the lost look in Roy’s eyes is just so inappropriate next to this demonstration of strength. Darryl wants to hit him, sucker-punch, hard and quick.
“It was a nice dress,” he says instead.
Between box sixteen and box one-thousand, Roy whispers: “It wasn’t the dress, was it.” It isn’t a question and Darryl doesn’t answer.
-
When Columbia crashed, scattered over Texas, Roy had suggested that they take a road trip. Pick up a piece. He’d probably only been half-serious, but Darryl had said okay. (And they’d only made it as far as the nearest stadium, but.)
“Hey, remember that time…” Darryl says, and Roy does. So Darryl tells him about how, in a recent discovery, they’ve determined that these really tiny research worms had lived through the crash. “Of all the things—,” Darryl looks at him sideways.
“No shit,” Roy nods.
-
But then Jim Halpert leaves on a plane, it’s two days before the wedding, and Darryl wonders how there can be air left anywhere, what with the way Roy’s been holding his breath.
He finds Pam, red-eyed and hunched, hovering on the landing between the warehouse and first floor. She still doesn’t have nearly enough lipstick on to be a receptionist.
“So,” he says, leaning against the wall next to her, “what’s your favorite fairytale?” (And he hopes that it’s Cinderella, because the going rate for a carriage to Australia is something like three-thousand, and he has that. He has that.)
-fin-
