A/N: I wanted to get back into the groove of writing for the TGP weekly events. This week's The-Fic-Place prompt was "Humor." There were so many wonderful, fantastic moments in the first season of Michael just hamming up all of his interactions with the humans. It's up to you if you think this is legitimate or not, but either way, it was hilarious to write. Enjoy!
Eleanor hated being on the "Fix the Neighborhood" committee of two. She was trapped dealing with late nights and early mornings dogging Michael's increasingly more frantic footsteps throughout the entire Good Place checking for shifty-looking plants or uncannily organized cobblestones.
It was enough to drive her to exhaustion even without worrying about her own mixed up identity being discovered. Eleanor stopped them on their third evening of scanning for a quick coffee break. Michael hadn't wanted to pause his careful tally of street lamps along the road that was until he smelled the double caramel, triple espresso shot lifesaver that Eleanor ordered.
"Let me try one of those. It's supposed to help against human tiredness, right? I always wondered what drove you to want to drink it. Though you mask the bean taste by the syrup?" Michael asked. Eleanor had tried to keep him from ordering the same concoction without knowing how caffeine might affect him, but he wouldn't be swayed from sampling the exact same order.
He sniffed the steam that curled from the lip of the cup. "So I just drink it all in one gulp, right?" Michael questioned. Before she could reply, Eleanor watched in mixed horror and not a small amount of jealousy as the architect downed the entire venti coffee in one motion.
There was little change in the man's behavior, at least for the remainder of the hour. Eleanor wanted to cry when the next point on Michael's checklist was studying the refractive indices of everyone's windows for aberrations. She stood to the side as Michael looked through a pair of opera glasses at each pane.
"My hand's shaking," Michael commented. Eleanor looked up from the almighty to-do list. He was right. The bronze glasses trembled between his fingers.
"That's normal," Eleanor assured him.
His eyes widened and he turned to regard her. "That's normal? You just… ruin your fine motor skills and are okay with that?"
Eleanor snorted. She was still nursing her own coffee, praying that it would last her until they finally called it a night. "A little shaking is better than falling asleep halfway through work," Eleanor insisted.
Michael switched the opera glasses to his other hand, frowning at the first. It still trembled even when he clenched his fingers into a fist. "You've broken me," he grumbled.
"It'll wear off. And I told you to get a small," Eleanor said.
She had to take over using the glasses, squinting through the tiny lenses at the window in front of her. Everything looked pretty much the same, big surprise. She still feigned examining each forking pane to satisfy Michael.
"Are you sure that that one wasn't just a bit orange? I feel like the reflection is mocking me. That's not normal. It's got to be what's wrong with the neighborhood," he rambled.
His commentary now went on continuously. "Oh Eleanor, I don't know what I'll do if I can't find the source of the problem."
"You're all supposed to be happy and enjoying everything you earned from your lives on Earth, and I'm just a big, ol screw-up ruining eternity. I can't even even make windows right."
"I was never supposed to be an architect. I should have just stuck to Janet maintenance."
When he started to malign his "foolish" decision to use kentucky bluegrass instead of ryegrass, Eleanor turned on her heel. She thrust the opera glasses back to him. "We're done for the night. You're spiraling into caffeine anxiety. It's all fake, you're going to be fine, but you're driving me up the forking wall," she hissed.
Michael bounced on the balls of his feet, concern still warping his expression. "Eleanor, I'm sorry. I just… how do you deal with all these… these fluttery feelings? My stomach is in knots and my thoughts are racing at a thousand miles a minute," he said.
Eleanor dropped her clenched fists and counted to ten like Chidi encouraged. She was supposed to be getting better at sympathizing or empathizing or whatever-the-right-word-was-tizing with others. Michael certainly didn't deserve her snapping, not when she was the cause for all his misery.
She placed her coffee on the ground and grabbed the architect by the elbows. "Michael, repeat after me: the caffeine lies," she said.
"The caffeine lies," he parroted.
Eleanor nodded. "Everything is going to be fine."
"Everything… well it might be fine," Michael amended. Raising her eyebrow, Eleanor waited until Michael said, "Everything is going to be fine."
She smiled and said again, "Everything is going to be fine."
"Everything is going to be fine."
"Once more, like you mean it. Everything is going to be fine."
Michael smiled weakly. "Everything is going to be fine," he said with a nod.
"I'm going to listen the next time that someone tells me a lightweight shouldn't drink multiple espresso shots."