A/N: New Michael and Holly story. At first I was planning to make this a multi chapter fic, but I really like it the way it is and think it's much better as a oneshot. I know there are some tense shifts; they're intentional. Review and make my day.

Disclaimer: I don't own The Office or any related characters; if I did, Holly and Michael would be living happily ever after.


Strangers

truthfully, once if strangers (who deep our most are selves) touch: forever

- ee cummings, "If Strangers Meet"


Memories of the day engulfed her mind. Life is a highway, I'm gonna ride it all night long. Did Daryl touch you? Years of just a few hours every weekend? He's gone. She can't sleep since it's a strange house and he's gone. How is it that he's gone? Are they really over, just like that?

Everything happened within a blink of an eye, practically. If she had any complaints about her relationship with Michael, the only one would be that it was too short. One day in Nashua, the next transferred to Scranton. Get settled in Scranton, meet Michael, date. Date, kiss, laugh. Let's get ethical, ethical! If we hung you from under the ceiling and stood under you, we'd have to kiss. Then, transferred. Transferred back, transferred away.

It was too short. Their time together was all together too short. I'm MJ Michael Scott and I am hot. She's DJ Jazzy Flax and she is the best. Are you a Holly-gram? Wicca Wicca what?

They were a prologue, ripped short. And she would never know. She would never know how their novel ended. What of the epilogue, and all chapters in between?

She would never know.


Her morning routine stayed the same in both Nashua and Scranton: wake up, get ready, drive to work. Where it had differed throughout the few months was the faces she was greeted with upon arriving there. In Nuasha there was John and Amy and Chris. In Scranton there was Meredith and Kevin and Jim. Now there was John and Amy and Chris again. She didn't mind them, really, but after spending the hours in between nine and five with the likes of Dwight and Creed, she found the people in Nashua a bit boring.

Nashua threw her a welcome back party on her first day of work, which was sweet. She told them about Kevin how Dwight had told her he was slow. She told them about Kelly and Ryan and Jim. She didn't tell them about Michael and how they had seemed so in synch with each other. Some things just weren't fit for water cooler gossip. Some things just weren't fit to leave the sacred space of her heart.


She thought about him. She thought about him incessantly. She daydreamed about Scranton during conference room meetings. When she dove home, with a KT Tunstall song playing on her stereo, she remembered the fun they had had together. The smiles, the laughs; she remembers them all.

Their first date had been filled with both. He picked her up at seven, dinner at his favorite restaurant. She had quickly fallen in love with that particular Chili's, too. He told her of the Dundies three years ago, of him singing Elton John, of Pam wining the Whitest Sneakers award, and she wished she could've been there. An award ceremony like that summed up Michael pretty well: trying to be a friend, and being silly in the process.

One of the things that she loved so much about him was that he hadn't been judgmental towards her. With the other men she had dated, she had felt the need to hold certain things back. Too many impressions would make her weird, she worried. He wouldn't get that reference, so she would keep quiet. But with Michael, she hadn't felt the need to do that. He liked it when she made reference to something; he understood what she was talking about, always. He understood her, and she could be herself around him.

Holly had been in Scranton for less than a year, and Michael had managed to forever touch her heart during that time.