Improv!fic: Tell Her About It (Kelly/Andy)
Title: Tell Her About It (Part III of the Billy Joel Trilogy)
Pairing/Characters: Kelly/Andy
Word Count: 2,190
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Andy deals with post-break-up Kelly.
Spoilers: Through "The Job"
Author's Notes: The last of the trio of Kandy improv fics. Elements suggested by dollsome (listed at the end of the story). Five elements, two hours, no beta. All goofs and mistakes are my own and I hope to God I find them before y'all do.
Andy thinks that Kelly is doing pretty well, considering that Ryan the douchebag dumped her the way he did. Now, if it was him-- not that he'd be dating a guy, 'cause Andy is one-hundred-percent-o hetero sexual-o, thanks-- he wouldn't have gone and told everybody in the office just how that went down, 'cause man, those details are harsh. Anyone else would end up looking like a serious tool if they went around telling everyone that a guy dumped them the second he found out he had a big promotion and a transfer to NYC, because that's like telling everybody "hey, I was just being used for sex because I was convenient, I must totally suck." The way Kelly does it, though, it puts the douchebaggery totally on Ryan. Pretty impressive display of self-confidence, really. Head held high and all that stuff. It rocks.
Three days later, he finds Kelly in the break room trying to feed a five-dollar bill into the vending machine, over and over again, with this quiet, baffled look on her face. Which is weird, because Kelly doesn't do quietly baffled, although she sometimes does loud shrieky baffled, which is a totally different breed. Andy takes the five away from her, puts one of his singles in the machine, and hands her the Skittles with her five tucked around it like a cummerbund. She just kind of blinks at him, nods a few times, and wanders back to her cube without even saying thanks. Sheesh.
In retrospect, it's a total warning sign, but since Andy isn't fluent in crazy-lady body language, he misses it. Not his fault.
* * * *
It's nine-thirty and Kelly isn't at her desk yet. Weird, and also very annoying because when Andy went back to ask if she'd seen the trailer for the new Hugh Grant movie and she wasn't there, he had to deal with Flenderson, who still wants some dumb form filled out, like the world would end if Andy didn't, sheesh. Flenderson looks even more tired than usual, and it gives him a disquieting, zombie-esque air. That kind of freaks Andy the hell out, and he gets away as fast as he can.
On his way back through the kitchen, Andy hears something. It sounds like Kelly, if she were yelling at the top of her lungs underwater. The minute he gets through the door to the main part of the office, it becomes clear that Kelly has taken the express train to looney-land; she's standing up by Pam's desk, bawling, mascara all over her face, and saying quite a lot of stuff about Ryan that even by Andy's standards is tee-em-eye.
"And you know, he always said that he likes being on bottom, but I think he was just too lazy to be bothered actually having sex with me and he wouldn't even touch my boobs while he was down there, I had to do it myself like I was in some sort of stupid porno--"
Andy looks for Dwight, because even though the guy is a freakball and has some serious control issues, he's generally good in a crisis, and Andy's pretty sure this counts as a crisis. Except, shit, it's Wednesday, and on Wednesday Dwight usually spends the morning annoying the guys in the warehouse for some reason that Michael once confided to Andy was complete B.S., so, no Dwight. Michael, who is taking a personal day today, and isn't here to get control of the situation. Big Tuna keeps looking at Pam like she's going to do something, and Pam is looking at Tuna like he's going to do something, totally fucking useless, both of them; everyone else is just gawping like they're watching it on TV or something, and it probably will end up on TV because the dickhead camera guys are zooming in on Kelly's face like they know this will be great stuff for sweeps week.
Decisive action is not Andy's strong suit (he's been meaning to work on that), but, just, this is Kelly, and she's lost it, so the "deciding" part of "decisive" is pretty easy for once. He goes over to Kelly, puts one hand on her elbow and the other on her back, and steers her out the door, into the elevator, and then outside, around the corner to the only vaguely private spot on the property. She keeps talking and crying the whole time, but he's not really paying attention to that part, 'cause it's not stuff he really has an opinion on, besides the obvious fact that jeez Ryan is a fucking douchebag, but anyone would think that. Some things are just facts, and that is one of them. Any guy that would treat Kelly Kapoor like she was something out of a hotel minibar-- annoyingly expensive, and not exactly what you had in mind, but acceptable because it's right there so you might as well use it-- is clearly, no doubt, absolutely, positively, 100% asshole. Just a fact. No opinion to be had there.
He stands there with Kelly, lets her cry and talk, and kind of pats at her back on a safe friend-type place up near the top, in the middle between the bra straps. He has a book on successful business body-language (which unfortunately he left back at his mom's house) and he vaguely remembers a picture showing which parts of the body are considered "safe zones" for the opposite sex to touch in a friendly manner. Arms from the elbow down are safest, he remembers that, but the rest of it is kind of fuzzy in his memory so he's guessing the best he can.
"I thought you were doing okay," he says at last, and that was apparently not the thing to say because Kelly lets out a wail and turns into his chest, whanging her hard little head against him, which would be kind of cute and sweet except ow, holy crow, just ow. He has to reach around carefully to avoid touching anything off-limits when he pats her back.
"Oh God, I've lost it," she sobs.
"It's okay," Andy says, because it seems to be a pretty safe thing to say. "Everyone flips out sometime."
"Gee, thanks," she snaps, still pushing her head against his chest, and flails a hand at him, smacking him right in the ribs, and again, ow. This seems like unfair abuse considering that Andy's supposed to be the nice one in this situation; he's letting her stain a perfectly good $15 shirt with tear-drippy makeup, for pete's sake, that really ought to earn him some consideration. "I didn't want to flip out."
"Duh," he says. "If it was something you wanted to do, it wouldn't be flipping out, it would be... like... on purpose, or something."
"I was just--" She sighs. "I don't know, Pam was saying that if I wanted, she'd set me up on a blind date with this guy from one of her classes, and I was like, yeah, sure, that sounds good, and I started thinking about what I was going to wear, and I remember thinking about this one pair of super-cute shoes that would really show off my new toenail polish that I got yesterday, and then I remembered that the last time I painted my toenails and wore those shoes was on my last date with Ryan, and--" She starts crying again.
One of the warehouse guys comes around the corner and stops, gawking at them. Andy makes a face at him and does a shooing motion, mouthing get outta here. The guy holds up his hands as if to say dude, whatever and goes back around the corner.
"It's okay," he says again, because, seriously, what the hell else do you say in this situation? There should be some kind of class he could take so he wouldn't have to say this same shit over and over. A Girl Is Crying, What Do I Do? Make a book out of that: instant best-seller, totally.
Kelly growls a little, which makes her sound like an ill-tempered hamster that Andy had once, which, again, would be cute if you didn't know that hamsters have very sharp teeth and are not shy about biting the hell out of you when they're pissed off. "It is not okay," she says, which really goes to prove the point that there has got to be something better to say. "This is totally not fair. I didn't do anything to deserve this. If he didn't like me, he shouldn't have been dating me. People aren't supposed to date people they don't like."
"Liking someone is the whole point," Andy agrees. He is, after all, Totally Agreeable Andy, the new and improved Andy 2.0, who lets girls cry on him over other guys.
"I mean, I thought-- I know he always acted like he didn't like me, but he kept dating me, so I thought, well, listen to what he does, not what he says, right?" Kelly heaves a sigh and burrows her head against Andy's shirt, her hands balled up between them. He tenatively puts his arms around her, hands in the safe zone, all contact kept very light. "I guess that was stupid."
"No, no, no. Not stupid." Andy can't exactly find a good reason why that wasn't stupid, except for how this is Kelly, so, clearly, not stupid, duh. "I don't know," he says at last, "it's just how things work. People spend time with people they like. I spend time with you, right?"
The minute it's out of his mouth, he realizes that he meant to do the jokey voice on that and totally forgot, and oh, balls, that's going to make it sound like he's, well, that thing that he doesn't think about. Which isn't the case, of course, and even if it was this would totally be the worst time ever to mention anything, and shit, shit, shit, this is going totally wrong.
"That's sweet," Kelly mutters, and puts her arms around him in a real hug. "That's really sweet."
Hope fizzes up in him like a Mentos popping into a two-liter of Diet Coke, and he lets his tenative embrace become a little stronger. She's just the right height for him to rest his chin on her hair when she's in his arms (in his arms!) like this, and she's soft, and she smells nice, and oh, man, he has no idea what to do now. Billy Joel, who knows all, has a whole song on this sort of thing, but Andy's pretty sure that "Tell Her About It" is about a guy who's already dating a girl, and that if B-Joel had written about the subject currently at hand the song might have been called "Keep Your Trap Shut, You Moron, And Definitely Don't Touch Her Butt". So, in deference to that unspoken wisdom, Andy stays quiet.
Kelly heaves a sigh and snuggles against him, which is just, wow. "Why can't more guys be sweet like you, Andy?" she asks.
Oh. So she meant-- oh. Well. Not like he was seriously considering it, anyway. No big.
Andy lets his voice go into sexy-jokey mode. "Don't'cha know, baby? I'm one of a kind."
"Shut up," Kelly laughs, and pulls away so she can slap him right in the chest, which is all ow again, good grief. "God, I must be a mess," she says, touching her face under the eyes, then she looks down at his shirt. "Oh, oops, I got a little make-up on you."
"No worries," he says, all light and casual. "I got one of those Tide pen things for just this kind of occasion."
"Well, I hope it takes out mascara," she says dubiously. "Otherwise you're gonna spend all day looking kind of weird."
"I spend every day looking kind of weird," he tells her in his best braggy voice, and it's worth it because she giggles and seems like she's back to normal, almost, like he fixed her. Which is, well. Awesome.
Back in the office, Tuna raises an eyebrow at the stains on Andy's shirt. Andy's already got six different things lined up to say in case Tuna asks about it, because Tuna always wants to make a smart remark about everything, but all the guy does is nod a little, like the shirt has proven something he'd already expected, and then he goes back to work. Weird. Even weirder: Andy feels kind of disappointed by Tuna's non-reaction, like Andy'd thought this was kind of important, maybe, but everyone else keeps treating it like it's nothing, so it's just another reminder that he was wrong. Whatever, though; it's just Tuna.
The Tide pen takes out the makeup very very well indeed, so all Andy ends up keeping from the whole shin-dig is a wet spot on his shirt that dries into a faint ring, like he'd been suckered onto by an octopus, and a lingering chemical odor reminiscent of his mom's hair right after she gets a permanent. He doesn't really mind. It's something, at least.
Author's Notes: The elements, as given by dollsome: A blind date, toenail polish, a Hugh Grant movie, a $5 bill, crying in public. 7:42 AM-9:54 AM. Special credit goes to annakovsky for summarizing, in a comment on Waking Expectations, boy-reactions to female weeping as "boys and their emotional retardation... that panicky, a-girl-is-crying, what do I do? Kind of stomping around in the dark", which I totally poached for Andy. While I'm at it, "super-cute shoes" comes from something honey_wheeler said once upon a time, about "Katy kicking off her super-cute shoes to give Jim the business". I only steal from the best, I guess!
Pairing/Characters: Kelly/Andy
Word Count: 2,190
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Andy deals with post-break-up Kelly.
Spoilers: Through "The Job"
Author's Notes: The last of the trio of Kandy improv fics. Elements suggested by dollsome (listed at the end of the story). Five elements, two hours, no beta. All goofs and mistakes are my own and I hope to God I find them before y'all do.
Andy thinks that Kelly is doing pretty well, considering that Ryan the douchebag dumped her the way he did. Now, if it was him-- not that he'd be dating a guy, 'cause Andy is one-hundred-percent-o hetero sexual-o, thanks-- he wouldn't have gone and told everybody in the office just how that went down, 'cause man, those details are harsh. Anyone else would end up looking like a serious tool if they went around telling everyone that a guy dumped them the second he found out he had a big promotion and a transfer to NYC, because that's like telling everybody "hey, I was just being used for sex because I was convenient, I must totally suck." The way Kelly does it, though, it puts the douchebaggery totally on Ryan. Pretty impressive display of self-confidence, really. Head held high and all that stuff. It rocks.
Three days later, he finds Kelly in the break room trying to feed a five-dollar bill into the vending machine, over and over again, with this quiet, baffled look on her face. Which is weird, because Kelly doesn't do quietly baffled, although she sometimes does loud shrieky baffled, which is a totally different breed. Andy takes the five away from her, puts one of his singles in the machine, and hands her the Skittles with her five tucked around it like a cummerbund. She just kind of blinks at him, nods a few times, and wanders back to her cube without even saying thanks. Sheesh.
In retrospect, it's a total warning sign, but since Andy isn't fluent in crazy-lady body language, he misses it. Not his fault.
* * * *
It's nine-thirty and Kelly isn't at her desk yet. Weird, and also very annoying because when Andy went back to ask if she'd seen the trailer for the new Hugh Grant movie and she wasn't there, he had to deal with Flenderson, who still wants some dumb form filled out, like the world would end if Andy didn't, sheesh. Flenderson looks even more tired than usual, and it gives him a disquieting, zombie-esque air. That kind of freaks Andy the hell out, and he gets away as fast as he can.
On his way back through the kitchen, Andy hears something. It sounds like Kelly, if she were yelling at the top of her lungs underwater. The minute he gets through the door to the main part of the office, it becomes clear that Kelly has taken the express train to looney-land; she's standing up by Pam's desk, bawling, mascara all over her face, and saying quite a lot of stuff about Ryan that even by Andy's standards is tee-em-eye.
"And you know, he always said that he likes being on bottom, but I think he was just too lazy to be bothered actually having sex with me and he wouldn't even touch my boobs while he was down there, I had to do it myself like I was in some sort of stupid porno--"
Andy looks for Dwight, because even though the guy is a freakball and has some serious control issues, he's generally good in a crisis, and Andy's pretty sure this counts as a crisis. Except, shit, it's Wednesday, and on Wednesday Dwight usually spends the morning annoying the guys in the warehouse for some reason that Michael once confided to Andy was complete B.S., so, no Dwight. Michael, who is taking a personal day today, and isn't here to get control of the situation. Big Tuna keeps looking at Pam like she's going to do something, and Pam is looking at Tuna like he's going to do something, totally fucking useless, both of them; everyone else is just gawping like they're watching it on TV or something, and it probably will end up on TV because the dickhead camera guys are zooming in on Kelly's face like they know this will be great stuff for sweeps week.
Decisive action is not Andy's strong suit (he's been meaning to work on that), but, just, this is Kelly, and she's lost it, so the "deciding" part of "decisive" is pretty easy for once. He goes over to Kelly, puts one hand on her elbow and the other on her back, and steers her out the door, into the elevator, and then outside, around the corner to the only vaguely private spot on the property. She keeps talking and crying the whole time, but he's not really paying attention to that part, 'cause it's not stuff he really has an opinion on, besides the obvious fact that jeez Ryan is a fucking douchebag, but anyone would think that. Some things are just facts, and that is one of them. Any guy that would treat Kelly Kapoor like she was something out of a hotel minibar-- annoyingly expensive, and not exactly what you had in mind, but acceptable because it's right there so you might as well use it-- is clearly, no doubt, absolutely, positively, 100% asshole. Just a fact. No opinion to be had there.
He stands there with Kelly, lets her cry and talk, and kind of pats at her back on a safe friend-type place up near the top, in the middle between the bra straps. He has a book on successful business body-language (which unfortunately he left back at his mom's house) and he vaguely remembers a picture showing which parts of the body are considered "safe zones" for the opposite sex to touch in a friendly manner. Arms from the elbow down are safest, he remembers that, but the rest of it is kind of fuzzy in his memory so he's guessing the best he can.
"I thought you were doing okay," he says at last, and that was apparently not the thing to say because Kelly lets out a wail and turns into his chest, whanging her hard little head against him, which would be kind of cute and sweet except ow, holy crow, just ow. He has to reach around carefully to avoid touching anything off-limits when he pats her back.
"Oh God, I've lost it," she sobs.
"It's okay," Andy says, because it seems to be a pretty safe thing to say. "Everyone flips out sometime."
"Gee, thanks," she snaps, still pushing her head against his chest, and flails a hand at him, smacking him right in the ribs, and again, ow. This seems like unfair abuse considering that Andy's supposed to be the nice one in this situation; he's letting her stain a perfectly good $15 shirt with tear-drippy makeup, for pete's sake, that really ought to earn him some consideration. "I didn't want to flip out."
"Duh," he says. "If it was something you wanted to do, it wouldn't be flipping out, it would be... like... on purpose, or something."
"I was just--" She sighs. "I don't know, Pam was saying that if I wanted, she'd set me up on a blind date with this guy from one of her classes, and I was like, yeah, sure, that sounds good, and I started thinking about what I was going to wear, and I remember thinking about this one pair of super-cute shoes that would really show off my new toenail polish that I got yesterday, and then I remembered that the last time I painted my toenails and wore those shoes was on my last date with Ryan, and--" She starts crying again.
One of the warehouse guys comes around the corner and stops, gawking at them. Andy makes a face at him and does a shooing motion, mouthing get outta here. The guy holds up his hands as if to say dude, whatever and goes back around the corner.
"It's okay," he says again, because, seriously, what the hell else do you say in this situation? There should be some kind of class he could take so he wouldn't have to say this same shit over and over. A Girl Is Crying, What Do I Do? Make a book out of that: instant best-seller, totally.
Kelly growls a little, which makes her sound like an ill-tempered hamster that Andy had once, which, again, would be cute if you didn't know that hamsters have very sharp teeth and are not shy about biting the hell out of you when they're pissed off. "It is not okay," she says, which really goes to prove the point that there has got to be something better to say. "This is totally not fair. I didn't do anything to deserve this. If he didn't like me, he shouldn't have been dating me. People aren't supposed to date people they don't like."
"Liking someone is the whole point," Andy agrees. He is, after all, Totally Agreeable Andy, the new and improved Andy 2.0, who lets girls cry on him over other guys.
"I mean, I thought-- I know he always acted like he didn't like me, but he kept dating me, so I thought, well, listen to what he does, not what he says, right?" Kelly heaves a sigh and burrows her head against Andy's shirt, her hands balled up between them. He tenatively puts his arms around her, hands in the safe zone, all contact kept very light. "I guess that was stupid."
"No, no, no. Not stupid." Andy can't exactly find a good reason why that wasn't stupid, except for how this is Kelly, so, clearly, not stupid, duh. "I don't know," he says at last, "it's just how things work. People spend time with people they like. I spend time with you, right?"
The minute it's out of his mouth, he realizes that he meant to do the jokey voice on that and totally forgot, and oh, balls, that's going to make it sound like he's, well, that thing that he doesn't think about. Which isn't the case, of course, and even if it was this would totally be the worst time ever to mention anything, and shit, shit, shit, this is going totally wrong.
"That's sweet," Kelly mutters, and puts her arms around him in a real hug. "That's really sweet."
Hope fizzes up in him like a Mentos popping into a two-liter of Diet Coke, and he lets his tenative embrace become a little stronger. She's just the right height for him to rest his chin on her hair when she's in his arms (in his arms!) like this, and she's soft, and she smells nice, and oh, man, he has no idea what to do now. Billy Joel, who knows all, has a whole song on this sort of thing, but Andy's pretty sure that "Tell Her About It" is about a guy who's already dating a girl, and that if B-Joel had written about the subject currently at hand the song might have been called "Keep Your Trap Shut, You Moron, And Definitely Don't Touch Her Butt". So, in deference to that unspoken wisdom, Andy stays quiet.
Kelly heaves a sigh and snuggles against him, which is just, wow. "Why can't more guys be sweet like you, Andy?" she asks.
Oh. So she meant-- oh. Well. Not like he was seriously considering it, anyway. No big.
Andy lets his voice go into sexy-jokey mode. "Don't'cha know, baby? I'm one of a kind."
"Shut up," Kelly laughs, and pulls away so she can slap him right in the chest, which is all ow again, good grief. "God, I must be a mess," she says, touching her face under the eyes, then she looks down at his shirt. "Oh, oops, I got a little make-up on you."
"No worries," he says, all light and casual. "I got one of those Tide pen things for just this kind of occasion."
"Well, I hope it takes out mascara," she says dubiously. "Otherwise you're gonna spend all day looking kind of weird."
"I spend every day looking kind of weird," he tells her in his best braggy voice, and it's worth it because she giggles and seems like she's back to normal, almost, like he fixed her. Which is, well. Awesome.
Back in the office, Tuna raises an eyebrow at the stains on Andy's shirt. Andy's already got six different things lined up to say in case Tuna asks about it, because Tuna always wants to make a smart remark about everything, but all the guy does is nod a little, like the shirt has proven something he'd already expected, and then he goes back to work. Weird. Even weirder: Andy feels kind of disappointed by Tuna's non-reaction, like Andy'd thought this was kind of important, maybe, but everyone else keeps treating it like it's nothing, so it's just another reminder that he was wrong. Whatever, though; it's just Tuna.
The Tide pen takes out the makeup very very well indeed, so all Andy ends up keeping from the whole shin-dig is a wet spot on his shirt that dries into a faint ring, like he'd been suckered onto by an octopus, and a lingering chemical odor reminiscent of his mom's hair right after she gets a permanent. He doesn't really mind. It's something, at least.
Author's Notes: The elements, as given by dollsome: A blind date, toenail polish, a Hugh Grant movie, a $5 bill, crying in public. 7:42 AM-9:54 AM. Special credit goes to annakovsky for summarizing, in a comment on Waking Expectations, boy-reactions to female weeping as "boys and their emotional retardation... that panicky, a-girl-is-crying, what do I do? Kind of stomping around in the dark", which I totally poached for Andy. While I'm at it, "super-cute shoes" comes from something honey_wheeler said once upon a time, about "Katy kicking off her super-cute shoes to give Jim the business". I only steal from the best, I guess!