(no subject)
Title: a natural progression, or, Four Times Kelly Really Freaks Ryan Out and One Time She Doesn't
Author: amazingly_me
Rating: PG for minor language
Characters/Pairing: RyanxKelly
Spoilers/Warnings: Um. Just general spoilers for the show's premise and characters, but if you're here you probably know about those. ;]
Disclaimer: Not. Mine. Can't get much simpler (or sob-worthy) then that. :P
Notes: This doesn't take into account The Job. It's basically something that could be set any time during Season 3, or even, if you ignored one little sentence, any time after Ryan and Kelly started dating. Also: this pairing is addictive! :] Oh, and it's my first shot at one of these "Five Times..." fics, so let me know how I've done! Constructive crit is always welcomed. :]
i.
He's giving her a ride home because she begged (and begged, and begged) and threw in some stuff about how honestly, when is he going to start doing boyfriend-y stuff? and that was when everyone in the office started to stare. So he had sighed, resigned, and grabbed his car keys. There was jumping, and squealing, and clapping, and now here they are, driving through the outskirts of Scranton as Kelly flips through the pages of her Cosmo.
"Oh my God!" She says suddenly. "Okay, this says you should put the moisturizer on second but I know that isn't true, because --"
And then she cuts herself off suddenly, eyes wide, and sits up straight. "Ryan, stop the car. Ryan!"
He panics and hits the brakes hard and before he can ask her what's wrong she has jumped out of the car and rushed to examine the For Sale sign in front of it. First he groans and then his eyes widen in panic, because why the hell is she looking at a For Sale sign anyway?
She comes back waving the flier and grinning like she's just done something monumental. "Oh my God Ryan, trust me, the colors in that house are adorable. I mean I've seen them before, when my friend was touring it? And they have this awesome purple accent wall in the bedroom, and I have to see it again."
There is a pause in which he wonders what an accent wall is and why, why he offered to drive her home because if she asks his opinion on pink for a rug in, oh God, their future home, he may very well stop the car and run away.
"Just for ideas." She says in a rush. "My friend's getting a new apartment."
They ride the rest of the way in silence. He never does find out why exactly the moisturizer can't go on second.
ii.
The phone rings and he reluctantly abandons flipping through the channels. There's nothing good on Thursday night TV until at least 9:00. He knows that. He glances slightly guiltily at the neglected homework on the table and hopes it isn't his mom calling. Somehow she always knows.
He picks up the phone on the fifth ring and no, it isn't his mom.
"Hey, Ryan? Hi!"
Definitely not his mom.
"Hey Kelly." He says, trying to sound tired. After all, he really should be studying, and --
"What're you doing?" Kelly asks in her bubbly way. She makes it sound like that question is something new and astounding -- like no one's ever asked it before until she, Kelly Kapoor, came up with it in a sheer stroke of genius and wow, is it going to revolutionize small talk or what? And besides that --
"Nothing. Just studying. Homework and stuff." Ryan says automatically.
"No you weren't." She says immediately. "You were watching TV weren't you? Okay well, whatever, you better not have ordered pizza yet because I'm coming over to make you dinner. See you in ten!"
She hangs up in a whirlwind of half-formed dinner plans, and he is left to stare at his phonebook, lying open on the counter with the number of Domino's circled.
iii.
He makes her a cupcake for her birthday.
It isn't much, and yeah, he did burn it a little because he was watching basketball on TV, but he stuck a candle in it to make up for it, and hopefully she won't notice that the place with thicker frosting is also the place where the cupcake is two or three shades darker than it should be. And he made it chocolate, because he cannot make the concession to strawberry and pink, and fall any deeper into boyfriend territory.
He gives it to her in the kitchen at lunch, and clings to the desperate hope that she will just clap her hands quietly, with minimal squealing, and then they can both go back to work.
But instead she screams and sticks her head out the door, and waves the cupcake around so that the glob of frosting covering the burnt spot falls onto the carpet. She steps on it in her excitement, and he prays Dwight doesn't find it before he gets a chance to clean it up.
Then Pam insists they sing Happy Birthday (and God, he's sure her intentions are good but why must she prolong this?) so he blushes bright red as Kelly excitedly tells Phyllis about how Ryan made her this cupcake, oh my God isn't it amazing, and Phyllis smiles and nods and tactfully does not mention the burnt spot.
And so he has to endure Dwight's commentary (fact: singing this inane and foolish song is a waste of our time) and Andy's embellishments (sickness sorrow and despair, people dying everywhere, on your birthday, oh happy birthday), and Angela's severe examination of his "poor frosting application" and all the while Kelly is grinning and telling everyone within earshot that Ryan made this cupcake, oh my God isn't he the greatest?
If he hadn't already used his remaining sick day after the lip gloss fiasco, he would never have come in to work the next day.
iv.
"Oh my God I love this song." She says suddenly, tuning the dial of his crappy car stereo and cranking the volume up at least three more notches than even remotely necessary. He waits to see if it will be Brittany Spears or Kelly Clarkson, and then his weary suggestion (Kelly could you turn it down just a little?) dies on his lips because it's Greenday.
Kelly is sitting in the passenger seat of his car bopping her head to Boulevard of Broken Dreams and he just narrowly stops himself from tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. Somehow that would just be to much.
v.
She's coming over tonight and he doesn't even glance at the phonebook. It hasn't been open to the Domino's page in weeks, maybe months, and he doesn't really mind. He's already put Love, Actually into the DVD player, and made popcorn -- the regular stuff for him and that low calorie stuff she is always horrified to find he hasn't made yet. He made cupcakes too -- he didn't burn them either, and even Angela would have to be proud of the frosting job he did. They're still not strawberry, because he just can't go that far, but that will probably be okay.
It's probably the popcorn that makes him freeze in the middle of the kitchen, the popping sounding in the background.
He isn't sure how this happened, but somehow, he doesn't really mind.
He hauls the bucket of paint out from under the sink and glances at the title. It proclaims itself to be "Lovely Lavender" but he's taken a look at it and it is, thankfully, not so much lavender as it is purple, and truthfully he can probably handle lovely. It's just one wall after all (he looked up accent wall on Wikipedia), and it can be the one behind the couch, so he won't have to look at it all the time. He grabs his spare apartment key out of his back pocket and tapes it to the lid, because if there's one place he draws the line it's this:
If his living room wall is going to be "Lovely Lavender," she's going to paint it.
Author: amazingly_me
Rating: PG for minor language
Characters/Pairing: RyanxKelly
Spoilers/Warnings: Um. Just general spoilers for the show's premise and characters, but if you're here you probably know about those. ;]
Disclaimer: Not. Mine. Can't get much simpler (or sob-worthy) then that. :P
Notes: This doesn't take into account The Job. It's basically something that could be set any time during Season 3, or even, if you ignored one little sentence, any time after Ryan and Kelly started dating. Also: this pairing is addictive! :] Oh, and it's my first shot at one of these "Five Times..." fics, so let me know how I've done! Constructive crit is always welcomed. :]
i.
He's giving her a ride home because she begged (and begged, and begged) and threw in some stuff about how honestly, when is he going to start doing boyfriend-y stuff? and that was when everyone in the office started to stare. So he had sighed, resigned, and grabbed his car keys. There was jumping, and squealing, and clapping, and now here they are, driving through the outskirts of Scranton as Kelly flips through the pages of her Cosmo.
"Oh my God!" She says suddenly. "Okay, this says you should put the moisturizer on second but I know that isn't true, because --"
And then she cuts herself off suddenly, eyes wide, and sits up straight. "Ryan, stop the car. Ryan!"
He panics and hits the brakes hard and before he can ask her what's wrong she has jumped out of the car and rushed to examine the For Sale sign in front of it. First he groans and then his eyes widen in panic, because why the hell is she looking at a For Sale sign anyway?
She comes back waving the flier and grinning like she's just done something monumental. "Oh my God Ryan, trust me, the colors in that house are adorable. I mean I've seen them before, when my friend was touring it? And they have this awesome purple accent wall in the bedroom, and I have to see it again."
There is a pause in which he wonders what an accent wall is and why, why he offered to drive her home because if she asks his opinion on pink for a rug in, oh God, their future home, he may very well stop the car and run away.
"Just for ideas." She says in a rush. "My friend's getting a new apartment."
They ride the rest of the way in silence. He never does find out why exactly the moisturizer can't go on second.
ii.
The phone rings and he reluctantly abandons flipping through the channels. There's nothing good on Thursday night TV until at least 9:00. He knows that. He glances slightly guiltily at the neglected homework on the table and hopes it isn't his mom calling. Somehow she always knows.
He picks up the phone on the fifth ring and no, it isn't his mom.
"Hey, Ryan? Hi!"
Definitely not his mom.
"Hey Kelly." He says, trying to sound tired. After all, he really should be studying, and --
"What're you doing?" Kelly asks in her bubbly way. She makes it sound like that question is something new and astounding -- like no one's ever asked it before until she, Kelly Kapoor, came up with it in a sheer stroke of genius and wow, is it going to revolutionize small talk or what? And besides that --
"Nothing. Just studying. Homework and stuff." Ryan says automatically.
"No you weren't." She says immediately. "You were watching TV weren't you? Okay well, whatever, you better not have ordered pizza yet because I'm coming over to make you dinner. See you in ten!"
She hangs up in a whirlwind of half-formed dinner plans, and he is left to stare at his phonebook, lying open on the counter with the number of Domino's circled.
iii.
He makes her a cupcake for her birthday.
It isn't much, and yeah, he did burn it a little because he was watching basketball on TV, but he stuck a candle in it to make up for it, and hopefully she won't notice that the place with thicker frosting is also the place where the cupcake is two or three shades darker than it should be. And he made it chocolate, because he cannot make the concession to strawberry and pink, and fall any deeper into boyfriend territory.
He gives it to her in the kitchen at lunch, and clings to the desperate hope that she will just clap her hands quietly, with minimal squealing, and then they can both go back to work.
But instead she screams and sticks her head out the door, and waves the cupcake around so that the glob of frosting covering the burnt spot falls onto the carpet. She steps on it in her excitement, and he prays Dwight doesn't find it before he gets a chance to clean it up.
Then Pam insists they sing Happy Birthday (and God, he's sure her intentions are good but why must she prolong this?) so he blushes bright red as Kelly excitedly tells Phyllis about how Ryan made her this cupcake, oh my God isn't it amazing, and Phyllis smiles and nods and tactfully does not mention the burnt spot.
And so he has to endure Dwight's commentary (fact: singing this inane and foolish song is a waste of our time) and Andy's embellishments (sickness sorrow and despair, people dying everywhere, on your birthday, oh happy birthday), and Angela's severe examination of his "poor frosting application" and all the while Kelly is grinning and telling everyone within earshot that Ryan made this cupcake, oh my God isn't he the greatest?
If he hadn't already used his remaining sick day after the lip gloss fiasco, he would never have come in to work the next day.
iv.
"Oh my God I love this song." She says suddenly, tuning the dial of his crappy car stereo and cranking the volume up at least three more notches than even remotely necessary. He waits to see if it will be Brittany Spears or Kelly Clarkson, and then his weary suggestion (Kelly could you turn it down just a little?) dies on his lips because it's Greenday.
Kelly is sitting in the passenger seat of his car bopping her head to Boulevard of Broken Dreams and he just narrowly stops himself from tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. Somehow that would just be to much.
v.
She's coming over tonight and he doesn't even glance at the phonebook. It hasn't been open to the Domino's page in weeks, maybe months, and he doesn't really mind. He's already put Love, Actually into the DVD player, and made popcorn -- the regular stuff for him and that low calorie stuff she is always horrified to find he hasn't made yet. He made cupcakes too -- he didn't burn them either, and even Angela would have to be proud of the frosting job he did. They're still not strawberry, because he just can't go that far, but that will probably be okay.
It's probably the popcorn that makes him freeze in the middle of the kitchen, the popping sounding in the background.
He isn't sure how this happened, but somehow, he doesn't really mind.
He hauls the bucket of paint out from under the sink and glances at the title. It proclaims itself to be "Lovely Lavender" but he's taken a look at it and it is, thankfully, not so much lavender as it is purple, and truthfully he can probably handle lovely. It's just one wall after all (he looked up accent wall on Wikipedia), and it can be the one behind the couch, so he won't have to look at it all the time. He grabs his spare apartment key out of his back pocket and tapes it to the lid, because if there's one place he draws the line it's this:
If his living room wall is going to be "Lovely Lavender," she's going to paint it.