A/N: So this is Becki and Shelbee's first combined fic. Becki wrote the Jim paragraphs and Shelbee wrote the Michael paragraphs. If that's confusing for you, we don't know what to tell you.
Disclaimer: Neither of us have been to London so some stuff might not be accurate at all. We tried our best and did warn you, so don't get pissed if we screw stuff up. Also, we don't own The Office or anyone in this chapter. Except maybe Mr. Fitz.
As the plane touched down in London, Jim looked out the window. Much like America, it was cold and gray. He didn't really expect anything less in the middle of winter. Plus there was a rumor going around that London was always cold and gray. Even though it wasn't exactly a tropical island, a two week trip to London was definitely a more interesting way to spend some of his break than sitting at home in Scranton, playing video games with Michael and eating Christmas cookies. Not that there was anything wrong with that. "So what do you think?" Jim asked Michael, pulling his backpack out of the overhead compartment. "Is this going to be better or worse than sitting around for a month doing nothing?"
"It's gotta be way better," Michael responded quickly, jumping up from his seat and cutting off the people behind him to try and pull out his bag from the overhead before it got too crowded. "I mean, I could be pulling this out of my ass, but I'm almost a hundred percent - but not quite sure, that chick's here are loose as hell and will sleep with anyone." He looked over at Jim with raised eyebrows and a wide grin as his elbow knocked into the girl behind him.
"Yeah, I don't think they put that in the brochure," Jim said, smiling apologetically at the girl Michael had just elbowed. She looked pretty offended, even though she was part of their group and Michael hadn't technically been talking about her. There were about 30 of them that had forked over a pretty sizeable chunk of money to spend half their winter break in London instead of seeing all their old friends and getting wasted every night. Jim's brothers thought he was an idiot. No surprises there. Having never been outside the country, Jim had jumped at the chance to spend time doing something more interesting than sitting at home. Michael had too, although Jim was pretty sure he was going to spend two weeks looking for a hot girl with an accent to hook up with.
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean we can't do it." Michael retorted quickly, following behind him as he slung the bag over his shoulder. "Obviously this is a college trip, they're not going to put in the brochure 'Hook up with thousands of foreign ladies, and be crowned king of London'." He smirked at his own joke. Thousands of girls is definitely what he'd like, especially given the fact they didn't know who he was - therefore they didn't know about all the things girls judged him on back home. Mostly stupid things he'd done in his past. "We're gonna have to set up a system, because if I'm getting it on with a girl in the hotel room, I don't want you walking in on us."
"System, good idea," Jim said. Not that he actually thought Michael was going to be bringing strange British girls back to the hotel room, but it was hard to tell with that kid sometimes. They had already been roommates for over a year and Jim had yet to walk in on Michael with a girl (with or without a system) but that didn't mean he was so innocent. At least to hear him tell the stories. And he liked to tell stories. "You know we actually have to do some group stuff here, right? You can't spend the entire trip scouring the city for girls to hook up with." Knowing Michael he would find a way around the mandatory group trips, though. Jim wouldn't really mind it either. Sitting through a Shakespeare play? Two of them, in two weeks? Not his idea of a good time.
"Yeah, a system. But we can't use that scrunchie system, that's girly. Plus I don't have a scrunchie." He paused, looking up at Jim and shrugging. "Maybe you do, you've got more hair than I do." He didn't have enough hair to fit into a scrunchie, but Michael liked to bother Jim any way that he could. "Group stuff.. right. No one wants to actually do that shit, it's boring. And I doubt that Mr. Fitz wants to do it either, so I'm sure if I told him that I had more important things to do, he'd let it slide - and most likely understand." Mr. Fitz was a pretty cool teacher, he was also relatively young. So Michael had come up with the theory that he'd be looking for a hot British girl as well.
He had a point there. Nobody really wanted to spend their break actually teaching students. "Yeah, you're actually probably right about that." Not that he liked to admit it. "And I don't have a scrunchie, weirdly enough. So you're probably going to have to come up with something different." Knowing Michael he would probably actually put a decent amount of time into coming up with a system. He tended to take these things very seriously, even if they didn't really matter at all. He put a lot more work into stuff like this than he did his school work, which was why he always ended up copying Jim's homework, just like he had been doing since they were in the same math class in middle school.
"When am I not right? This is just another Michael Scott lesson in life," That was the name of the book he was writing. He'd written more pages in that book than he had ever written for school. He knew Jim was the reason he made it to this college, because he'd definitely lived off of copying Jim's work. "I'll figure out a system, don't worry." He muttered loudly as they passed two police men that were standing beside the gates. He realized it probably wasn't the best thing to say, so he hung his head and continued walking. "I always imagined the first time I went on a plane, that I'd have some long lost love waiting for me at the end."
"Long lost love? You haven't lived long enough to have some long lost love waiting for you to get off a plane." Plus that seemed a little bit too much like a cheesy movie to actually happen in real life. "There's no one waiting for us here, sorry. Unless you count our bags, but I'm pretty sure those don't count." The airport looked a lot like all the other airports Jim had been in. At least they weren't in a country where people spoke a language other than English. Jim would probably get lost within ten minutes. "Maybe when we get back home some long lost love will be waiting for you there. Or some poor girl you hooked up with at a party who doesn't realize that you don't remember her name."
"I could have known a girl in preschool, and maybe she tracked my Facebook down... She saw that I'm in England and the whole reason our friendship fell apart was because... she moved to England. So she called the airport, asked for the flight number, she found the gate and now she's waiting for me." Michael had a vivid imagination, and that was part of the reason why his life felt so dull. Because nothing in his imagination ever came true. "It's not my fault if I don't remember their names," Michael was just really bad with names. He wasn't even that drunk at parties, he just couldn't for the life of him, remember the names. He hung his head as he walked to the baggage claim, waiting for his to come around. "Maybe there's a pretty lady in my bag."
"Wow," Jim said. "That's an impressive story. And very realistic." If Michael put as much time into his schoolwork as he did into making up random scenarios and working on that mysterious book of his then maybe he would actually know what it was like to do his own work. That seemed improbable though. Copying off Jim was probably easier. He didn't really know since he had no one to copy off of. "If there's a pretty lady in your bag she's probably going to pretty mad at you since she's been stuck in a bag for several hours," he pointed out, grabbing his own suitcase. "Especially if you don't remember her name."
Michael quickly reached for his suitcase, pulling it beside him and not wasting any time on trying to get away from the rest of the class. "I don't need to know her name, I'll just call her 'teacup' and 'scone' and all the other love names they use over here." At least, it seemed like names they'd use. But Michael would have to listen closely. "Do you know how to hail a taxi?" He asked as they were walkign towards the exit, "Because we need one to get to the hotel." He pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it, "This is the address. It should be easy, right?"
Jim looked at the paper. "That's the same road we're already on. And I'm pretty sure we're all walking there as a group." Michael didn't seem to understand that this was a group trip and not Jim and Michael Tour London. While it might be a little annoying to stick with the group there was going to be a lot of free time, and Jim didn't want to be the first thing he did in London to be getting lost. There would be plenty of opportunities to do that later on in the trip. "Also, I don't think 'teacup' and 'scone' are names over here. I'm not sure, but it's just a guess."
"Oh, really?" Michael pushed open the doors to the exit and looked over at the street sign. "Huh, you're right for once. That's a change." He leaned against the concrete wall of the building and stared at the doors. "I get that we have to walk with them, but they're taking forever. I just wanna go to the hotel and drop my bags off, and then party."
Jim checked his watch. "It's two in the afternoon. You're going to go party in a foreign city at two in the afternoon? People are going to think you're an alcoholic." The drinking age was lower here, though. Maybe people just drank more. Even so, there probably wasn't a lot of good partying going on in the afternoon. Jim could just picture Michael bouncing from bar to bar and leaving once he realized there weren't any hot chicks there.
"Oh." Michael looked at his watch, and then quickly dropped his arm when he realized it wouldn't do any justice - because it wasn't like he could say that he mixed it up with America's time, because it was much earlier there. So instead he looked towards Jim with a sheepish grin. "Maybe I'll wait until night time..."
"Night would be better," Jim agreed. By his best calculations it was only something like 8 am back home, which just made the whole thing even less okay. It was already after lunch time and all Jim wanted was some breakfast. He had slept for basically the entire plane ride and it felt like it should be morning to him. He wanted bacon and Michael wanted to party. Of course.
Instead of responding, Michael groaned, mumbling meaningless curses at the glass doors every time they opened to reveal anyone but their classmates. He was thankful Jim was on this trip, because Michael definitely would have been lost - since he liked going wherever he wanted to. Though Michael wouldn't have signed up if Jim didn't. He took a few steps, looking inside to see the rest of the class coming. "Okay, good, great, grand it's about damn time."
"You wouldn't know patience if it bit you in the ass," Jim said as the rest of the group joined them. He was fine with being part of a group and doing scheduled things. They were going to be there for two weeks. That was plenty of time to see the parts of London they didn't tour as a group. And to be quite honest, Jim didn't really care about seeing old castles and things that were of no significance to anyone outside of England. Did that make him a typical American? Probably. But at least he was seeing the city.
"I'd know if it was a girl named Patience, and she literally bit me in the ass." Michael spoke quietly, ignoring the fact that they had just been talking about how Michael didn't remember girl's names. "Wanna get something to eat when we finally get to the hotel? I could go for some French toast. Something good, because I feel like I'm going to die from the lack of things in my stomach right now."
"You really think a girl named Patience would bite you in the ass?" Patience sounded like one of those names chosen by very religious people. And very religious girls probably did not go around biting people's asses. "Food sounds good," Jim agreed. "But there are like five bags of peanuts in your stomach right now." Michael had taken it upon himself to eat Jim's peanuts after he fell asleep and then regaled him with a tale of how he flirted with the flight attendant for even more peanuts. Apparently it had been some of his best work and Jim had missed it. Bummer.
"I don't know how people are around here, it could happen..." He muttered. At least it wouldn't be that girl Precious, from that movie. She scared the hell out of him. It was also a really sad movie. Probably one of the only movies he'd ever cried at, though he didn't really know why he cried. It was almost as if he knew other people were crying, so it made him cry. It was a chain reaction. "Yeah, but peanuts don't fill anyone up. Hence, why I needed five bags in the first place." It was sad that Michael had been just a few more minutes away from the Mile High club with the air hostess. Well, that's what he believed anyway. If only he had had a bit more time.
"I don't know much about English girls but I think if they had a thing for biting asses we would have read it somewhere." Michael had conducted a very thorough investigation on British girls before they left to figure out how he could hit on them most effectively. Jim usually only chimed in when he said something that sounded like a seriously bad idea but some of the facts Michael found were interesting, despite the fact that the most credible-sounding ones had nothing to do with girls. "That's true. Plus you wanted to hit on the flight attendant." Even in the last hour of the flight when Jim had been awake Michael had called her over five times.
"That reminds me, you know, bringing up reading." He waved his hand, as if trying to get Jim to think of what he was thinking. But it was no use. He never thought the way that Michael did. No matter how long they'd been friends. "I wanna get some British Playboy. They must have it, right? Full of British chicks? There's gotta be some tips in there on how to pick them up." He said simply, looking over at the girls from class that ended up beside him, glaring. He rolled his eyes, "I wonder if they'll find our accents hot."
"You know British girls probably look a lot like American girls when they're naked, right?" The one defining factor seemed to be their accents, and pictures didn't exactly have accents. "But maybe there will be tips." Jim had been humoring Michael since they were kids and now it was something of a habit. Besides, Michael always said he was a dreamer and Jim wasn't about to crush that for him. "I'm sure they'll find our accents amazing," Jim said. He couldn't imagine why they would, but maybe it would happen.
"You don't know that. What if they look completely different? They've got to look a lot hotter than these American girls." Michael waved his hands towards the girls from class. "Or else I'm going to be pretty pissed about the money I've spent to go on this trip." Sure, it was great to get out of America and see other places. But honestly, nothing they were doing was that interesting to him. "Do you think? I mean they can't be hearing American accents too much, so maybe they'll find it just as hot as British accents are to us." He finally pointed towards a big building, squinting his eyes. "Is that the hotel?"
"I think it's probably the hotel. Because you know, all of our classmates are going in there. It's just a guess though." It was a pretty nice looking hotel. Two weeks there wouldn't be so bad, especially since he and Michael were sharing a room and he was used to that. "America is like the movie capital of the world," Jim pointed out, though he didn't know if that was actually true or not. "I'm sure they've heard American accents a million times before." Of course he didn't think their accents were all that great, but he didn't find British accents as fascinating as the rest of America seemed to. Not that there was anything wrong with them. They were just accents.
"Okay, smartass. No one over here is going to like your sarcasm." He muttered, narrowing his eyes and walking with the class inside the hotel. He looked around with a wide smile - it was nice. Definitely worth the money. His eyes followed a few English girls (or who he assumed were English) walk out of the hotel. "Yeah, maybe.. but maybe not. Don't keep acting like us Americans aren't hot. We're hot. And we know it."
"Sarcasm? I wasn't being sarcastic," Jim said, following Michael into the hotel. Mr. Fitz was already at the desk and motioned for the group to join him.
"Hey guys, we're all checked in. Once you put your stuff in your rooms feel free to get out, check out the city for a while. Meet back here at six for dinner, though. We're going to try to get used to the time change as quickly as possible so we've got a bit of a schedule to stay on." With that Mr. Fitz handed out the room keys and headed toward the elevators. They had roughly four hours to do whatever they wanted and Jim was definitely not against it.
Michael immediately dodged through the other people in the class, retrieving the room key and passing the other one to Jim. "You hear that? We have four hours to do whatever we want!" He told him excitedly, heading towards the elevator and quickly clicking the up arrow, over and over and over. The more he clicked, the faster it would appear. "This is going to be the best two weeks of our lives!"
"I did hear," Jim said, following Michael at a slightly more normal pace. "Because we were listening to the same person doing the talking." The elevator (or lift, as it was called here) arrived quickly and within ten minutes they had ditched their stuff in their room and were back outside. "Okay, which way?" It was a pretty busy street with what looked like a lot of businesses on it, which was good. They could see stuff without wandering so far that they got irrevocably lost before they had to be back to the hotel for dinner.
Michael looked to the left, and then the right, and then the left again. He wasn't sure which one would be better. But all he knew was there was a nice looking shop to the left - with some fancy but somwhat slutty looking wear. That would mean girls that were in there would be interested in wearing those clothes. He paused, looking towards Jim with the same grin he had on earlier. "That store is where I wanna go. Can you imagine the hotties in there?" He shook his head, heading right towards the store. "C'mon."
Jim looked at the store. "Seriously? That's where you want to go?" He shook his head. "I think I'll take a pass on this one. I'll wait here though. Unless you're in there forever. I'll probably just leave then."
"Uh, yeah seriously! If someone's going in here, then they have a naughty side. And Jim, that is a side I'm willing to search for." He wasn't surprised Jim didn't wanna come in, but he wasn't gonna back down. "Fine, you don't have to come. But you better be here when I get back." He pointed his finger at Jim as he slowly backed into the store, his eyes narrowed.
"I will be," Jim promised as Michael walked into the store. And it seemed like an easy promise to keep, until he had been waiting for ten minutes, then fifteen, then twenty. That was where he drew the line. Down the street there was a little place with a menu chalkboard outside the door, which could only be a café or a restaurant of some type. Food. Bacon. It all sounded so good at that moment. He didn't even get to eat his airline peanuts. And he could always text Michael, right? He looked through the window of the store, but couldn't see Michael. Maybe he had found a girl to hit on. If that was the case, Jim could be back before Michael even noticed he was gone. Making a new promise to himself to get a seat by the window and text Michael in fifteen minutes if he didn't see him walk by first, Jim headed off to the café down the street.
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