Title: Broken Hearts and Boxed Lunches
Fandom: The Office
Pairing: Michael/Karen
Rating: PG
Word Count: 524
a/n: My title's lame, I'm aware.
The really nutty thing about it was that Karen’s dad had actually been a GI. Course her mother was from Long Island. But still, kinda crazy.
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The camera crew is going to be so disappointed. They love this sort of crap, eat it up by the sugary, sweet spoonful in fact. The whole bit where the unlikely pair, the two coworkers who never even share small talk at the coffee maker have one of those Moments.
But here she is, wiping snot on the sleeve of her tailored shirt while Michael Scott awkwardly pats her shoulder.
When he goes in to hug her, Karen only stiffens a little and she thinks she might be trying to smile, but it’s hard to tell when her face is simultaneously screwed up and squinched like that from all the crying.
He pulls back and his eyes shift left, locking onto something passed the window and through the blinds. She knows before she turns to verify.
Those camera bastards don’t miss anything. Obtrusive little fuckers.
She wonders for a second if he’s only being so nice to her for their benefit.
When he reaches past her to turn the blinds closed, she does the same smiling while crying thing all over again. She’s sure she looks a fine mess. Michael doesn’t mention it, he squeezes her arm and passes her a paper towel. She smells his cologne. It’s surprisingly subtle for so loud a man. Nice.
She wipes her cheeks and he opens the fridge. “What’s for lunch today, Filippelli?”
Karen didn’t bring a lunch. She was going to go to Wendy’s with Jim. She likes their salads and he likes the baked potato with a cup of chili. It’s their Tuesday thing lately.
She doesn’t tell Michael this. Instead she sits and he tells her that he always packs too big a lunch because that’s what his mother did and it’s a hard habit to break.
They share his sandwich. It is neither ham nor tuna fish.
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Even nuttier than the GI thing? Karen thinks she might have grown to like these people more than she ought to.
She thinks it might be a mistake to leave because her heart is maybe a little broken.
She comes in on Monday and Jim’s back goes straight as she passes his desk, but she just says “hi” because there’s nothing quite like the high ground. The thought reminds her a little of Angela and she’s more disturbed at the fact that it doesn’t disturb her. She slides into her chair and smiles at Kevin while she checks her messages.
Later, when Michael crosses her desk he asks her, “What’s for lunch today, Filippelli?”
The accent is so bad and so put on that she laughs out loud before she struggles to answer. It’s only a silly, frozen Lean Cuisine.
Michael makes a face that Karen thinks he must have perfected from a similar one at age 5.
“I got turkey on wheat. Lunch room at 12:30 if you’re interested.”
The one good thing about frozen lunches is that they’ll keep until tomorrow, and she might just want turkey instead.