Work Text:
Dylan G sat at his desk, doing generally nothing.
Or, at least, that was what he'd come to consider a work he was generally good at, and which had more than a billion times been described as being mysterious and important. Maybe the first remained untouched, there being still no way of understanding it, but the important bit seemed to have put the moronic in oxymoronic the moment Michick had handed Irving B his walking papers.
At that precise moment, the work had seemed trivial more than important, monotonous more than actually worth doing.
That was probably how Irving had felt when Burt had retired, Dylan understood.
His favorite perk had been taken off the request list.
It wasn't the same without Irving being there, to try to ruffle the man's feathers, or to make him smile inspite of himself, or do what he was doing near the end of things: Keeping the man's head above the waters so he didn't drown in unshed tears over that disemboweler from over at the O&D.
Dylan knew he had never properly told the man how he really felt about him...Irving had almost guessed it that one day in front of the exit, but he'd never confessed or owned up to it. Now he never could and all that there was left to do was sit at his desk, pay the occasional uncomfortable yet exciting and all-too-short visit with Gretchen, while missing-beyond-the-telling the one human that had truly meant something more than any other to his little Innie heart.
The worst part of all, was that Irving was out there some place, somewhere in that big outside world, not missing him at all.
Because he couldn't even remember he'd existed.
Great.
Just great.
Dylan lamented.
It suddenly felt worse than if he had just up and died.
Worst of all, one day he'd up and get fired or retired too and there would go all of the memories he had of Irving to go with him. Their relationship would pop like a bubble, nothing inside but air. Their they, us, we and any other word that summed up their being togetherness would be gone forever. That felt a greater travesty than not existing suddenly...forgetting all the people you'd ever loved, so they didn't exist either, especially the you you made together.
If that made any sense.
His chubby fingers pressed into the keyboard, generally making his monitor show signs of confusion and he dreaded the possibility that Miss Huang would show up, looking like she should be partaking in some stupid spelling bee than giving them all orders and rewards which no longer felt like rewards.
He didn't need it spelled out that he was aching to see Irving B again.
Possibly to prevent having to see her too young face instead, Dylan pulled his hands off from the keys and tried to find some numbers that scared the crap out of him, like a talisman that could ward Miss Huang away.
Unless he was rewarded with something.
God forbid another finger trap.
It was then that Dylan G began to seriously think of all his finger traps again and how he could put them to good use...
He had accumulated them for some reason, labeled them as his perks...
"I'm your favorite perk," he remembered Irving saying again, his eyes twinkling about as much as his cursed mustache had been twitching in smug glee.
The uppity bastard.
But then he'd had the gall to leave him all alone, which wasn't really fair. Because Mark had Helly, and Helly had Mark and even Milchick had Huang to annoy him, but all he had was Gretchen's visits for a few measley minutes where he was left feeling like they were both cheating on his Outie.
More emotional pain to heap on him when he was already drowning in it.
To help deal with the pain, Dylan began to think, if ever he should manage to escape, he would take his vast collection of finger traps with him and hunt down the cursed bastard Outie Irving B, and he would somehow contain him, as he'd done with his Innie at the Lumon doors, until he darn well remembered him!
And he would prove his superiority by using his finger traps to do it!
The very same things that Irving used to tease him about.
The dumb things had to serve some purpose after all.
Yeah, if things turned out as they should, he'd find Irving B, wrestle him to the floor, like in those dumb ideographic cards he had stolen, the ones which had started the whole Overtime Contingency mess, and he'd strap a finger trap to the end of each of Outie Irving's corresponding fingers.
Then.
If he was really daring.
He'd try to see if they'd somehow work on his toes too. Two toes, per each end, per trap, and the corresponding toes bookending another. It was something he'd often wondered about, had even teased Irving about trying once, and where the present idea had sprung from, he believed.
"Hey Irv? You think these could work on the toes?" he'd asked, when he'd become more than a little bored playing with one as usual...not that he'd ever actually admit that he was bored.
Irving had looked at him like he'd just smelled a Lumon food package that was way past the expiry date.
"You'd dare demean one of Kier's work incentives just to idle away your time?"
"Look, man, I don't think Kier even knew finger traps existed, did he? I mean the guy was ancient," Dylan had commented. His eyes had drifted to his shoes then, half considering it, mostly just wanting to irritate his friend. "I think I'll try it...I'm going to take off my shoes."
He'd actually been reaching for one, when Irving had reached across and touched his hand, stopping him.
"For goodness sake don't try it!" Irving had exclaimed in dread. "Don't you dare remove that shoe! The whiff alone will peel the paint from off the walls."
His hand trembling on his at the word paint, Dylan hadn't been able to stop himself from leaning over and whispering, "So you think these things would work on a...you know? If I really, really stretched it first?"
Irving B had followed his gaze downward and then blushed, pulling his hand away but looking slightly intrigued. That was probably one of the first confirmations he'd ever received about Irving's romantic tastes, Dylan remembered now fondly.
Now, hundreds of elevator trips later, sitting at his desk, playing with a finger trap, Dylan thought, yes, he'd go against Innie Irving's words and use a finger trap on his Outie, an Outie whom probably still had clean and wonderful smelling toes, just like Irving B most likely had.
And then he'd bring Irving back home to them.
Dylan looked around shyly, as Mark and Helly tried not to show how madly in love they were, thinking to himself, yes...
That was what this was.
The Severed floor and the MDR department truly felt like home to him.
To them all.
And one of their own was missing.
Dylan felt the tears stinging his eyes, desperate to see Irving again but not knowing how...there was only one way to stop the tears from coming now and escape from a truly embarrassing situation where everyone would know how he really felt for the missing member of their family.
"Hey, where you going," Mark S asked as Dylan stood up from his desk. "You about to use your hall pass?"
"Yeah, want us to come with?" Helly R asked, peeking over her computer and offering a kind smile.
Dylan smiled back. They were both nice, but he knew that they would rather be together and he really wanted to be alone right now.
"No, it's good...just gotta use the washroom."
He smiled at them both and then headed in that direction.
It was only when they heard him calling out in pain a few minutes later that Mark S and Helly R went running quickly after him.
* * *
Several hours later, Milchick was walking down the hallway, shaking his head. He had no idea how this would look on his next Performance Review.
He didn't want to think of it or what the stupid little drawing might look like beside it.
Luckily, they'd gotten the man help in time, otherwise he'd have had no idea what they were going to tell Gretchen. Seriously, if Dylan G wasn't biting him, or helping to start uprisings, he was finding other ways these days to help make his job at the office generally miserable and humiliating, Milchick bemoaned.
Miss Huang meanwhile merely looked confused, the only good thing about the whole affair. A few feet taken down the hall, she looked up at him in confusion..."And so you mean to tell me that he put one on his..."
"Yes, Miss Huang, that's precisely what I mean to tell you," although he wasn't sure she was old enough to hear it.
A few feet more before she asked him, "Why?"
Seth considered explaining to her his full suspicions, but decided against it. Instead he merely replied, in the smallest possible amount of words he could think of, "Memory and longing."
She looked on the verge of asking what that meant, but Seth Milchick hurried down the corridor ahead of her, hoping he need not say anything more and grateful that he would never miss Miss Huang, if ever they should thankfully part, as much as Dylan G missed his Irving B.