-1My Monkey, My Angela

Author's Note: My first Dwangela fic! Wow! Okay, well tell me what you think. nods yah...

All our might can't change it at all
Speed of light is slowing down to a crawl
And now we find that we'll take flight only when we fall

It was her third cup of coffee, black. No cream. No sugar. A hint of cinnamon. She gulped it down and slammed the mug down onto the matching saucer. Schnoogle, one of her many (but not enough) cats, rubbed against her bare leg affectionately-pleased to have her home so early in the day. Angela Martin didn't believe in getting sick, nor did she believe in sickness preventing one from going to work. What really got under her skin was the fact that she was neither sick nor at work. It went against everything she believed in, or rather, what she didn't believe in. In her kid-sized PJs, she brooded at the kitchen table, torn between crying and reading liberal blogs on the internet just to get her blood boiling. What would the other employees say when she didn't show up? When she didn't show up the day after Dwight had...

Maybe we should fall in Love

The verse and the chorus
The birds and the bees
May smite or ignore us despite our pleas
What is this terrible thing brings us towering to our knees?

"So where's Angela?" Jim asked his enemy/friend innocently.

Dwight frowned at the raised-brow look, a look he knew was fake. Jim and his precious Pam had probably been yucking it up all evening over the phone, or perhaps even snuggled in each other's arms in one of their dinky little apartments. He could easily picture it-the two of them talking about how sad Dwight was to have actually...

"How am I supposed to know?" Was his answer. "We don't own each other."

"Psh. Obviously," Kevin said from across the room, an impish grin spreading across his face.

Jim sighed and rolled his chair back and forth a few times. His arched brows furrowed slightly, raised again, furrowed, and finally settled on being straight lines. It was a real workout. "Seriously," he said with a small shrug, "I commend you, Dwight."

Dwight scoffed. "Cram it, Jim."

"No, seriously," Jim leaned closer. "I would have never had the kind of guts to do what you did."

Maybe we should fall in Love

No you
No me
Baby only we
Melt like sugar
Into black coffee

It was actually kind of relaxing to be at home with nothing to do, Angela realized. Maybe getting sick and missing work wasn't so bad after all. She had finally collapsed onto her sofa with a bag of vegan-friendly cookies, her furry friends fighting for spaces to curl up beside her. For such a tiny person, she could certainly hog furniture well. She petted each of them absent-mindedly, gorging on the cookies, barely noticing that she was getting crumbs all over her expensive love-seat.

Our race is run
Our chase is done
No longer may we flee

Work was long for Dwight. He actually kind of wished Jim would play some foolish prank on him. It was awkward, humiliating actually, to have the younger employee acting kindly towards him out of pity. Even Michael, who rarely had any tact, seemed to find comforting words. Had the whole world gone crazy? Pam, a naturally sympathetic woman, continuously gave him little smiles here and there, so that was the only normal gesture he seemed to receive.

Maybe we should fall in Love

It mattered little to him, however. His feelings were hurt, his heart was broken. It was a new feeling to him, really. Not a nice one, but certainly new. Dwight was not a man of selflessness-or he hadn't been anyway. Not until Angela Martin came along. The small, yet booming woman who reminded him of a cross between Xena and Clint Eastwood, if that mixture was some sort of hobbit as well. Well, not a hobbit. More like a nymph or even a pixie of some kind. There was something about the petite warrior that just made his knees buckle and his normally self-absorbed mind cloud. He suddenly wanted to make her happy all the time, he wanted to see her smile, even if it was the one that was squished up to one side of her nose.

So it's official now

What was love anyway, Angela thought as she read gay adoption blogs. Well, obviously it was meant for a man and a woman, but still...what made people so crazy about each other that they could completely throw their image and beliefs away. What person was worth so much that another person could do something so insane it was almost...nice? She posted her usual negative comments to the blog, and then switched over to Her own felines were much cuter, and certainly more healthier-by the looks of Cuddles' not-so-glossy coat, but everyone seemed to really enjoy Cuddles. However, Angela didn't. Cuddles may have been popular, more attractive than other cats, but he didn't stand out one bit. What could his owner possibly brag on? It's not like Cuddles ran the Cozy-Kitty-Corner with an iron-fist. Cuddles probably couldn't even tell one the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek.

There's nothing we can do

Dwight pounded on the apartment door. He knew she probably still really angry, probably ready to take his neck in her teeth and give him a good shake, but he was prepared for anything. He needed her to know that his opinion wasn't going to change, and he wasn't sorry. For once in his life, he'd done something he'd never believed in, and it felt great. Better than great in fact. He finally leaned into the door and called softly, "Monkey?".

Now you're a part of me and I'm a part of you

"What?" She leaned against the door too, holding Schnoogles in case she actually got the urge to open the door.

"Monkey, please, just open the door." He sounded annoyingly like she did when she stepped on one of the tails of her cats. "Please...Angela?"

She turned around, her back to the door and asked, "Why did you do it, Dwight?"

Dwight sighed. "I had to."

"You didn't have to do anything," The woman inside argued. "I told you never to say anything, and so that means you lied to me. That makes you a liar."

When Dwight said nothing, Angela became nervous and licked her dry lips. Against her better judgment, she set Schnoogles down and opened the door, slightly. To her surprise, Dwight was holding a bouquet of flowers with a big card on the front.

"Flowers?" She asked. "You think that's going to solve everything?"

Dwight shook his head. "No."

"Then why buy them? Flowers are expensive, you know." God, she could argue with a wall if she had the chance.

"These aren't normal flowers," Dwight explained, picking a petal off one of the plants. "I would never buy my monkey-I mean, you, something so simple."

As she opened her mouth to argue even further, maybe even raise her voice, Dwight popped the petal into her mouth, leaving a gritty, sweet taste on her tongue.

"Edible flowers," he explained. "Not only are they aphrodisiacs, they're vegan."

Angela swallowed the petal and stood there silently. She couldn't decide whether to be more angry at his appearance, or her failure to argue against it. She shifted her weight slightly and finally said, "You confessed your love for me in front of everybody. Our relationship was supposed to be a secret. You know how I feel about P.D.A."

Dwight shrugged. "And you know how I feel about Jim and Pam acting like giggling, middle-school chumps."

And we can see how one and one makes more than two

Angela's heart sank slightly. "So you wanted to compete with Jim?"

"Jim could never compete with what I have," Dwight replied. "And I could never compete with you, I realized that today. I thought it'd be easy to keep everything a secret, but I can't do it. I love you too much. I'm too proud. I'm too..." He stopped when he saw a strange expression cross Angela's face.

"You what?" She repeated, taking a step backwards.

"I," he looked around nervously. He had said the forbidden word. A word that had become so generalized, it felt silly to use it in the real context.

Angela shook her head slightly. "Dwight, you can't love me...if something happens, and I get hurt, I don't know what I'll do...".

Dwight set the bouquet down carefully on the two-seater porch swing and pulled the tiny woman close to him. "Angela, you are the most beautiful, most confident, and most unique woman I have ever met. I promise, on my Grandfather's beet farm, that I would never love somebody else."

A cold wind suddenly irritated the wind chimes, and Angela's sensitive skin through the thin material of her pajamas. She shivered slightly and drew closer to Dwight. "Would you like to come in? I don't know what goes good with edible flowers, but I have some wheat-grass tea in the refrigerator."

Dwight ran his hands up and down her tiny arms and kissed the top of her head. "It sounds superb."

Their eyes met, then averted, met again, and they smiled slightly. Love never really worked out like it did in the movies, where it ended with a big soppy kiss. It was still somewhat awkward, still somewhat new. However, it was nice, and Angela could feel her anger seeping out of her and into the autumn air.

"Maybe I shouldn't bother getting dressed," she suggested. "It's cold out."

"Much too cold," Dwight agreed, seriously.

As they walked into her apartment, Dwight opening the door, and picking up the bouquet, Angela turned to him. "Now that everyone knows about us, will you still call me 'monkey'?"

"Would you like that?" He frowned. "Because if you don't, I wouldn't even address you by a name."

"No," Angela shook her head. "I actually, think I would kind of like that."

They walked inside, and Angela was happy that Dwight never pointed out that she missed work when she wasn't sick. Maybe it was because she had been sick. After all, who could argue that being love-sick wasn't an ailment bad enough to stay home from work once in a while?

Maybe we should fall in Love