Title: 75 Things A Man Should Be Able To Do

Author: Humatheguma

Chapter: 1

Rating: PG

Pairing/Character: Ryan/Kelly, ensemble

Spoilers: None

Warnings: fluff under the guise of something more; at times OOC

Chapter Summary: Ryan and Kelly have a tense conversation by the vending machines, all Dwight-and-Angela-like.

Author's Note: This is based on Esquire Magazine's list of 75 things a man should be able to do. I plotted a chapter for each item on the list. Some chapters are shorter and fluffier, others are longer and more substantial. There may be some OOC moments just because this is a romantic story, and I will never be fully convinced that Ryan Howard knows how to be romantic. :-P I may have fudged up some details among the other characters just to make it fit better for this story, but all such changes will be made clear in the chapters. There are 75 items on the list with one chapter per item, so this story should be about 72 chapters long.

Give advice that matters in one sentence.

[…Sex. Sex. We had sex.]

He was sitting in the break room by himself with a can of Diet Coke and the morning paper – Business section, obviously, even though the news about the economic downturn made him want to curl into the fetal position and suck his thumb – when she walked in.

Ryan's gaze flicked up to hers immediately, all thoughts of American Express's requested $3.5 billion bailout forgotten, and Kelly stopped abruptly. He could see her eyes dart to the side and knew she was weighing her options. After a few seconds she tipped her chin up and strode into the room, pointedly heading straight for the vending machine.

Ryan eyed her back, noticing how stiff her shoulders were under the dark purple cardigan she wore. He took a sip from the can and set it down again, noticing how she visibly cringed at the metallic sound.

"So you're going to be completely awkward around me from now until whenever one of us stops working here?"

He could see her reflection in the glass and saw Kelly square her jaw. "I'm not completely awkward."

"My mistake," Ryan allowed smoothly, crossing his arms over the table. "I thought practically running out of the room when you saw me in here showed a hint of awkwardness. Just a little."

Her lips contorted into a sneer and the sight surprised him for a second. He was used to Kelly's smiles, not her sneers. "Me, running from you? Please, Ryan – you only wish."

There was an edge of bitterness to her voice, and he looked away as she jiggled two quarters in her hand. With a heavy sigh, Ryan pushed himself up from the table and walked around it over to where she stood. Kelly went entirely still, her back ramrod straight, so he slipped his hands into his pockets and watched her shoulders relax a little, presumably because at least she knew he wouldn't touch her.

"We have to talk about it sometime."

Her fingers tightened around the quarters pressed into her palm. "I don't have to do anything. Especially not because you say so."

He wasn't used to this. Frankly, because he never thought it was possible that she'd be this way. Ryan was so used to Kelly being her typical smitten-kitten self around him that now that she was freezing him out and refusing to deal with him, he had no idea how to proceed. It made him angry, it made him reckless, and it made him stupid – three words he rarely used to describe himself.

"Kelly, we slept together."

She didn't say anything.

"Twice."

He heard the hard clink of metal as she snapped her wrist, focusing hard on the candy lined up in front of her.

Ryan tapped his foot restlessly on the carpet. "We can't just ignore that."

"I'm not ignoring anything," she fired back, glaring at him. "I'm figuring out what I need to do and I'm taking care of it. You don't fit into the equation, Ryan. So drop it and leave me alone."

"Really." The corner of his mouth curled downward in disgust. "I don't fit into the equation. You could have let me know that when you let me come up to your place after Poor Richard's, or last night when-"

They heard giggling and a rusty chuckle and from the corner of his eye, Ryan saw Jim and Pam enter the break room. They stopped and looked at the two of them standing rigidly by the vending machines, instantly wary, and Ryan cleared his throat.

"You should get the Sour Patch Kids. Definitely. They have a new flavor out and everything."

Kelly nodded as if she was actually considering this and Jim and Pam, satisfied and once more at ease, slipped back out and presumably into the kitchen where they could talk and giggle alone. As soon as they were gone, Kelly glared at his reflection.

"Smooth, Ryan. Next time, you wanna try keeping your voice down?"

"It worked, didn't it?" he asked, but he still kept an eye on the door. Dear God, they were becoming Dwight and Angela…

She closed her eyes and let out a small, sad sigh, the kind he never would have even thought her capable of. "Just leave me alone, Ryan."

"No."

Kelly almost whirled around and faced him, but couldn't quite bring herself to do that and settled for shooting him a bewildered, beseeching look through the glass. "Why not?"

Amazingly, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and had the nerve to look unsure. "Because I don't know how," he finally admitted.

"It's real easy, I swear."

"Kelly-"

"No, Ryan. I'm not doing this again. I'm not."

"Fine." He pulled his hands from his pockets and planted them on his hips, watching her eyes dart there at the movement. "What are you going to do?"

"That's none of-"

"What. Are you going. To do." He waited a minute and when she didn't reply, Ryan rested a hand on the corner of the machine and turned slightly so he could see her profile. She didn't look up from the Famous Amos cookie packages.

"Kel, look. I – I know we didn't plan on this." She snorted and he rolled his eyes. "Okay, so you didn't plan on this. I was actually pretty aggressive about it, fine."

She didn't say anything and let him continue.

"But it happened – twice – and-"

"Will you stop reminding me of that? That it was twice?!"

He pursed his lips together and kept quiet for a few seconds before pushing on. "And I know I really messed things up for you. And you're trying to ignore me and figure this out on your own, but you don't have to. I was there, too. And even though you don't want to, that doesn't really matter, because we have to talk about it."

Kelly kept her arms folded over her chest and didn't speak for so long that Ryan was about to give up and storm off back to reception, but then she rubbed her forehead and let out a sigh.

"I'm not being fair to Darryl. None of this – is fair to him. He doesn't deserve it."

She braved a glance up at him just in time to catch Ryan rolling his eyes, and her temper flared. "What, Ryan? You really wanna be that way? You don't care about any of this, do you?"

"About Darryl?" he challenged, brows raised. "No. I don't care about him. I don't give a shit about Darryl-"

"You're such an asshole, Ryan Bailey Howard!"

It was weird that he actually liked it when she used his full name while angry. Very weird. "Yeah? Why? Because I don't care about your boyfriend's feelings?"

He practically sneered the word – boyfriend – because he could remember a time when that word was reserved exclusively for him, as much as he had hated it. "Well, I don't. I'm selfish that way."

"You don't have to tell me," she grumbled.

"I just care about you and what you're going to do – and what we're going to do," Ryan continued quietly, a little stunned that he meant it so sincerely. "Kel, you don't want to be with Darryl. You never would have slept with me if-"

That did it. She smacked a hand against the other side of the vending machine and turned a murderous glare on him. "Don't tell me what I do or don't want – you don't know anything about that."

He surrendered immediately, actually seeming to recognize that after his stunts this past year upon getting the job at corporate, she'd changed considerably and maybe, just maybe, he couldn't read her as well as he used to.

After a long pause, during which she just stared at him and dared him to be an asshole some more, Kelly finally turned and looked at the candy bar row in the machine.

"…I'm going to have to break up with him," she said quietly. "The first time, I thought it was okay. It was just a one time thing, it was a mistake, it didn't matter."

She didn't see him flinch at the word 'mistake,' a word he'd sometimes used to describe their pre-Valentine's day hook up.

"But the second time…" Kelly shook her head and folded her arms around herself. "That's not fair to him. He deserves better than that, better than someone who'll do that to him. I have to break up with him."

It was the best news Ryan had heard all day and he tried not to look too pleased when he nodded slowly. "Okay."

He was almost proud of himself: okay was such an acquiescing, bland, non-committal word. Much better than, say, smirking and hissing, "yesssss."

Stupid Darryl.

She didn't seem to take notice of him and was squinting at the packages of breath mints. "…I've never broken up with someone before."

Ryan stared at her. "Really?"

Kelly nodded. "In high school, my boyfriend and I kind of just drifted apart and decided together that we'd be better off if we weren't a couple anymore. My boyfriend in college ended up getting into medical school in England, so we decided a long distance relationship wasn't our thing. Stuff like that always happened, and I never had to dump anyone on my own before."

The corner of her mouth hitched up. "I should talk to Pam. She's, like, the Queen of all Dumpings since she gave Roy his ring back. Like, twice, almost, because they got back together. She really knows the right way to break up with a guy."

"You'll find a way," Ryan heard himself say. It was awkward to be having this conversation from her, but it didn't diminish the smug satisfaction he felt knowing that Darryl would soon be getting the boot. "…Doing it sooner rather than later is probably better…"

That might have been pushing it.

Thankfully, Kelly was a little too distracted right now to notice, and she kept jiggling those coins together in her hand. "I don't know what to say. I hate saying things like this. I hate ending things. Endings are the worst."

Had he stopped to think about it, Ryan would have grasped the subtext. He would have put those words together with the fact that Kelly never dumped anyone, with the fact that she stayed with him even though she was secretly unhappy, with the fact that she liked to watch the same few romantic comedies over and over again, with the fact that her sister had died and Kelly never talked about it.

But Ryan wasn't interested in the subtext at the moment and was focused on how to quickly and efficiently get Darryl out of the picture. It wasn't even all about Kelly, even though getting her back was a big part of it. He just hated Darryl. Darryl represented every single insecurity he had about himself, and though he'd never admit it out loud, it intimidated him that Kelly had started dating the warehouse foreman so soon after they'd split.

"I guess…um…" He scratched the back of his head and thought about it. "Be firm and clear, but be gentle, too."

Something cold glittered in her eyes and she tilted her head toward him. "You mean, like you were? Is this another lesson from the Ryan Howard Playbook of Looooove?"

It was her turn to sneer that word, the word she would never believe he ever associated with her, and Ryan snapped his mouth shut, knowing instantly that he'd lost.

"You're right," Kelly sniffed, "I'll just go down to the warehouse right now and walk up to him and say, 'you and I are done.' It'll totally work."

She scoffed and turned to move past him, noticing the cameraman that stood in the doorway looking all too interested in their conversation. "And I'll take the camera with me."

Still seething, she slapped the two quarters against his chest and turned on her heel, stalking out of the room.

"Asshole."