Disclaimer: I sadly do not own the Office.


What Understanding Doesn't Change

by BoarderKC

Sometimes she wonders if Roy really gets it. It happens on those days when she finds her shoulder slumping heavily and she can't help but question every decision she's ever made. Happens after she's spent the day avoiding Jim's eyes and smiling sweetly through Karen's boyfriend complaints. Happens after those long nights of returning to an empty apartment, bland TV dinners and crying herself to sleep.

But in those morning afters, when the sun is filtering through the blinds in warm yellow streaks and she awakes, sore and tired and clutching her pillow, she remembers that it wouldn't change anything.

They eat lunch together sometimes. On days when Michael is just too much or sitting in the break room is too daunting, she finds herself outside the warehouse, brown bag in hand. They sit on the bench where the smokers usually crowd, but no one bothers them as they exchange sandwich halves, Roy's sloppy peanut butter and jelly, for her tuna. He apologizes every time, shuffling his feet like a child because he knows she hates grape jelly, but she can't blame him because she knows he loves it and she reassures him with a crust-less tuna half and a hand full of jellybeans.

They talk and it's simple and surface. He asks about her art classes and her mom and offers to fix her leaking kitchen sink. She thanks him, though she'll never take him up on it and talks like she's happy. Talks like she's sure.

He never calls her on her strained smile or the falter in her voice and she wonders how they could have feigned love for so long.

Then there's the day when they see them . It's late March, and the sun dances on her face, glowing in her hair and she reveling in the warm air. It's the first day she could sit with him without her heavy wool coat and he is doing his best not to stare at her curves. Then they appear with an ice chest in hand, checked blanket under an arm and searching for a sunny spot, hand in hand. She remembers Kelly squealing about some month anniversary, but she had tuned it out, focusing on Michael's latest one-man reenactment of improv class.

Roy sees them just after she does and he goes quiet, watching them; watching him specifically as his face set to something unreadable. She can't look at him and her because there's burning in her chestor the man beside her because he knows its not him she wants to be sitting with and she's questioning herself again as she stares down at her ridiculously white Keds.

When Roy speaks, his voice is dark and strained and he's looking everywhere but her as he rolls a jellybean between his fingers. "What's it like never getting what you really want?" There is hate in his voice and it hurts her to know that it's not entirely directed toward the shaggy-haired man reciting lame poetry through snickers on the checked blanket across the parking lot.

But it's over within seconds as he turns to her with a soured expression, smirking at how gay poetry is and his voice is lighter and he's pretending he can't see the

Sometimes she wonders if Roy really gets it. But there is grape jelly on her fingers and tears in her eyes at the thought of lame poetry never delivered to her, month anniversaries long ignored and she remembers it wouldn't change anything.


A/N: Please just review. That;s all I ask.