A/N: This takes place in season three for a few reasons: One, it's a ripe breeding ground for angst; two, in earlier seasons, we don't know about Karen (and this way she and Pam both get to be angsting about Jim AT THE SAME TIME. Yay!); and finally, season three was my favorite. I miss eet. That said, I'm not sure if the time of year I've placed this in matches up, but do I care? (Well… maybe a little. But if you could overlook it, that would be fabulous.) If any other slight continuity issues (which I'm sure must be in there somewhere. I'm not dedicated enough to go rewatch and analyze episodes…) bother you, I'm sorry, and you may bitch about it over there in a review. (Although please, try not to let things get too bitchy. There's only so much my self-esteem can take…)
WARNING: Contains Pam/Karen femslash. Which you already knew, right?
DISCLAIMER: Believe it or not, a teenage girl typing pathetically away at her laptop does not own The Office.
And now, after this ridiculously long author's note, get onto readin'!
Early February days always seem to be the coldest.
This is what Pam thinks, at least, in the interim between locking her car and relishing in a burst of warm, circulated air after she pushes open Dunder Mifflin's heavy glass door. It doesn't so much blow over her skin, raising small white dots atop the flesh, more than it skips over her shell and slices straight to her bones. She tugs the rosy pink coat that matches her tingling cheeks closer around her as she approaches the entrance.
Once she's in the office, however, warm and uniformly apathetic at her desk, her bones still ache. Her gaze automatically jumps to J—Ryan's desk, blushing when she meets his eyes. Those eyes aren't Jim's laughing puddles of sea; they're colder, somehow, and biting back a hint of something bitter. She lowers her gaze and turns back to her work.
Two hours later, Michael emerges from his office, waving something excitedly over his head. He trots to Pam's desk, where she sighs and raises her head wearily.
"Ask me what I have in my hand," he whispers.
Pam clears her throat. "What?"
He raises his eyebrows encouragingly. "Do you…" he prods.
Another sigh, audible and empty. "What do you have in your hand?"
It's a sheet of printer paper, Pam discovers, as he unfolds the creases carefully. "This," he announces, "is a love letter. Carol's love letter, to be exact."
A few people scattered throughout the office shift, gaining attention. Michael feeds on it.
"This," he continues, "has all of her feelings in it. Her feelings for me. I mean, look at this, she's—" his eyes scan the letter—"'tickled' by me. Wait," he snorts, "—that's what she said."
"That's very sweet, Michael," Phyllis acknowledges.
Michael grins. "I know, I know," he says happily. "As soon as I send it to her—"
"Wait, what?" Pam asks, eyebrows furrowed. "Michael, didn't Carol give this to you?"
"What? No. Did I say that? I wrote this for her. You know, about how she feels about me."
Pam accidentally throws another glance in Ryan's direction, the disappointment she knows all-too-well rocketing through her bloodstream. Absently, she wonders if she could ask a member of the camera crew to arrange a few clips of "Jim" faces for her. (Well, a lot of clips.) And then burn them on a CD. So she can take them home. And watch them for six hours straight while eating straight from the tub of triple chocolate ice cream as she lies curled in her pajamas.
She snaps back to reality to find that Kelly has joined the conversation.
"…I mean, who even came up with Valentine's Day? It's just, like, a legit month of crying even when you're in the best relationship of your life. Why can't girlfriends and boyfriends just get each other presents when they feel like it, or, like, when someone asks for one? Because I'm just so, like, sick and tired of all this pressure February brings. I mean, God, no one can be the best girlfriend ever all the time! I think I'm depressed," she wails, running off to the bathroom. Pam looks at Ryan, her eyes wondering if she should follow her. Ryan keeps his gaze locked on his computer screen and shakes his head.
At this point, Dwight swivels in his chair to face Michael. "I think Valentine's Day is good for women. Reminds them not to stray too far. Also, they face more pressure to enter a relationship, significantly lowering the singles rate. And who wants that breed running around?" His eyes dart to the camera. "If this whole feminist movement catches on, we will have a lot more lesbians and a lot less children. Valentine's Day is the perfect chance to take action."
"God, Dwight," Michael groans, turning back to his office. "You don't understand the first thing about love."
Dwight's lips curve up almost imperceptibly to the camera. Angela smiles and sits back down at her desk.
"Wait," Pam calls after Michael, suddenly remembering something. He turns around, his hand still on the doorknob. "…Maybe I should read that letter before you send it to Carol." She smiles in what she hopes appears to be a helpful way.
"Oh," Michael says. "That was just a copy of the email. I already sent it to her." He grins before shutting his door.
Pam sighs (she does that a lot lately. Either that, or she's just beginning to take notice of it) right as the phone begins to ring shrilly. Her fingers graze the black plastic. Part of her wants to ignore it.
Karen doesn't go to work today.
Part of it's because, yeah, she has a lingering cold and a head that feels like it's being smashed by fifteen larger-than-average hammers, but the small bottle of ibuprofen is sitting primly on top of her dresser. She knows she could take a pill, and she does. (But she calls in sick anyways.) It feels a little strange not to be going to work, but instead, she jumps in a cold shower, throws on some jeans and a yellow shirt she finds on top of the laundry basket, then grabs a bagel and gets in her car.
She doesn't know where she's going, exactly. It's her brother's birthday, so she could, she reasons, drive down to Stoneybrook and visit him there.
This, for lack of better options, is what she ends up doing.
Karen and her brother haven't talked in awhile, after he came out as being gay a few months back. Karen doesn't have a problem with that, but the conflict arose when she discovered that Kenny had told her weeks later than the rest of the family. Actually, he didn't tell her at all. It was her mom who brought it up last Thanksgiving, which resulted in her surprise at Karen's being in the dark and stabbing death glares from Kenny over his turkey and mashed potatoes.
In all fairness, maybe Karen did slightly-possibly deserve it. She used to call Kenny "gay" when they were young, an insult she, truthfully, never really thought too much about until now. But she never meant anything by it, and it's only after her snotty teenager phase that she realizes what a bitch she was at age sixteen.
The light is on in Kenny's front window when she pulls up, and she spends a few nervous minutes in her car with the much-needed heater on, wondering what in the hell she's supposed to say. She's stopped at a Walgreens and bought him a cheesy card, King-Size Snickers bar, and a gift certificate to Blockbuster, but they're not wrapped and anyway—what if he has Netflix?
(He does, and Karen will notice this later as her eyes skim over the red-and-white envelope on his coffee table, but he will say nothing about it and neither will she.)
So she steels herself and knocks on the door.
His green eyes light, if only for a moment, when he sees her, and his mouth forces itself into a smile. "…Hey."
"Hi, Kenny," she answers stupidly, thrusting the plastic bag towards him. "Happy birthday."
She hears a voice call from back in the kitchen, "Who is it?"
Kenny blushes. "It's Karen, Daniel," he calls back. "Sorry," he says to her. "It's just that…"
But Karen smiles, and he no longer feels the need to apologize. With whatever he was going to explain before lost, he invites, "Um, come in."
She does, and Daniel slices an ice cream cake and pours milk and they sit around and begin to talk. At first the air is thick and raw with tension, but it slowly erodes as Karen watches Kenny and Daniel. She smiles inwardly at the way his arm finds its way around his waist, playing with the faded edges of his shirt, and how they chuckle softly at a joke no one else seems to know. How their softly exchanged nuzzling words fill her with happiness and ache and longing all at once.
Because she's happy Kenny's with Daniel. She really is.
But sitting across from them as they inch closer on the loveseat, watching their feet touch ever-so-slightly at the ankles, makes her yearn for one thing: Jim. Jim, with his brown hair she could (and, incidentally, does) stare at for hours and hours, wondering how it'd feel to playfully run her fingers through it in ruffles, and his eyes that she's sure could melt butter in a cold frying pan. She wants absolutely all of that and something else she can't quite flatten under a microscope.
But Karen's never been the shy, wimpy heroine in cheap paperback romance novels—she's hardworking; dedicated. She gives relationships her all without holding back, and sometimes it comes back to bite her squarely in the ass. But with Jim, she's…different, somehow. She won't—can't?—admit these feelings to anyone yet, because God knows how long it took for her to open them up to herself.
So she tries not to think about that, simply spending time with her brother on his birthday, and enjoying a day off from the office.
But it's after she's said goodbye to Kenny and Daniel, parked on a quaint-looking Main Street and digging around in her purse for change for the parking meter, when her phone buzzes. And it's the way her heart clogs her throat when she sees that syllable light on her screen, the message You're missing out. Incredibly fun expense reports today. ;) What's up? that makes her wonder, shamefully, what would've happened if she hadn't patched things up—at least a little—with Kenny. And it's the way she fumbles for a response, eventually snapping shut her phone and "forgetting" to respond to the one person she wants to talk to most right now, that makes her wish that she'd gone in today.
All right, thar ya go! And yes, no slash right now—and no actual, physical Karen in Stamford (with Jim… ;)), either—but it's coming! I promise! (Updates should be arriving shortly.) Anyway, did you like it? Want a hobo to rape it, throw it in a blender, and then burn it in a house fire? Let me know! Hopefully I got the characterizations all right. Oh, and bonus points (in the form of either Schrute Bucks or Stanley Nickels, which can be discussed at a later time) if you know where the fictional town of Stoneybrook (which I also do not own) is from!