Fic: This Lexus Makes a Stupendous Foxhole (1/1)
title: This Lexus Makes A Stupendous Foxhole
fandom: Community
pairing: Annie/Jeff
rating: PG
word count: 1,978
spoilers: Modern Warfare, though it goes AU pretty early on.
a/n: My contribution for the Annie/Jeff Modern Warfare Rewrites at milady_milord!
Jeff woke up from a very perplexing dream (he was called to mediate a legal matter for a family of wizards. It was hard to get an accurate read on the situation since he was also a goldfish) to Annie pounding on his passenger side window and shrieking maniacally.
Jeff sat up and blinked several times to get his eyes to focus. He peered through his window at Annie for a second before cracking the window an inch. He winced as her baby seal voice infiltrated his air space.
“THEY’RE COMING JEFF! JEFF! THEY’RE COMING! JEFF!? NOW YOU LISTEN, WINGER, EVERYBODY KNOWS YOU LIKE TO PRETEND NOT TO CARE ABOUT SCHOOL, BUT I DON’T HAVE TIME TO PRETEND. KNOW WHY? BECAUSE I DEFINE MY VALIDITY AS A HUMAN BY MY LEVEL OF ACADEMIC SUCCESS AND MY THERAPIST SAYS I NEED TO GIVE MYSELF PERMISSION TO BE FRIVOLOUS SOMETIMES AND YOU HAVE TO ADMIT PAINTBALL IS BY DEFINITION FRIVOLOUS SO I’M PRETTY SURE IF THEY GAVE GRADES FOR THERAPY I WOULD BE GETTING AN A FRIGGIN’ PLUS RIGHT NOW AND I AM NOT GOING TO BLOW THAT BY GETTING KILLED BY THE GLEE CLUB SO LET ME IN YOUR CAR!”
Jeff sighed. He closed his eyes and pushed the automatic door lock button. He listened to the rustle of Annie getting in the car, the slam of the door, and the “chunk” of the door locks reengaging. Then it was quiet. Eerily quiet.
Jeff cautiously opened one eye and slid it over toward the other side of the car.
“WHAT THE HELL ANNIE!?”
Annie opened her eyes a little wider and tightened her grip on the giant neon green gun in her hand. Jeff instinctively put his hands up in front of him as if it was a real giant green gun (which, let’s be clear, the gun was “real,” in a way that leads to neon-stained clothing, and Jeff has a deep-held moral indignation for activities that lead to neon-stained clothing, especially when it’s his.)
“Now you listen up, Jeff,” Annie started, her voice deadly-low and intense. “I don’t know how many are left. I don’t know where they are, if they’re still armed. What I do know is Greendale’s turned into a war zone. What I do know is everybody wants the prize. And what I especially know is I AM GETTING THE PRIZE, OKAY?!”
“Okay! Okay! Just don’t shoot me!”
Annie backed off a little, and Jeff lowered his hands.
“So,” he started, “I take it the paintball assassin game has gotten a little out of hand.”
“Out of hand? OUT OF HAND? YOU CALL THIS OUT OF HAND?!” Annie bellowed, shaking the gun in Jeff’s face again while he yelled over her to put it down (and a few “I’m sorry!”’s). In the midst of the freak out four paintballs exploded against the windshield. Annie and Jeff reacted immediately with more screaming and ducked down low in their seats.
It went quiet again, except for some distant shouts and the low “pop pop pop” of the guns.
“Did they see us?” Jeff whispered.
“I don’t think so. I think it was just crossfire. I think we’re okay.”
Jeff nodded and glanced over at Annie, who was now kneeling on the floor with her elbows on the seat.
“We have to get out of here, Jeff.”
“Why? If we stay in the car, we can just wait it out, and then you win.”
Annie’s eyes glazed over for a moment, then widened again. “But that sounds like . . . cheating.”
Jeff scoffed, and leaned over the center console conspiratorially. “Do you want to win, Edison, or do you want to play nice?”
“But what if we get disqualified?”
“We? Annie, I’m not playing.”
“Jeff,” she answered gravely, “everybody’s playing.”
“Yeah, everybody except me. No rinky-dink prize this school could come up with is gonna be worth the effort.”
You don’t know what the prize is . . .” Annie realized. In a split second she was up on the seat again with the gun trained on his chest. He shrank away until he was pressed against his door with his hands up again, with Annie kneeling on the center console over him. “Alright, I’m gonna talk you through this nice and slow, okay?”
“Alright, whatever, just put the gun down!”
“Not a chance,” she muttered threateningly. “It’s priority registration. Whoever’s the last one left gets their pick of classes for next semester. Front of the line, no waiting lists, no having to scramble for the good teachers.”
Jeff snorted. “Good teachers? Annie, really, it’s Greendale, how good . . .” he trailed off as it sunk in. He straightened a little in his seat. “Priority registration?”
Annie nodded.
“No getting up at 2 a.m. to log on to the website only to get kicked off when the server’s overloaded?”
Annie shook her head.
Jeff’s eyes grew almost as large as Annie’s, then narrowed. He looked her up and down and sat up a little straighter.
“Jeff,” she said warningly. “Just remember which one of us is holding the gun, Jeff.”
“I need that prize, Annie. I need it, you don’t understand-”
“Oh, I don’t understand? Excuse me, aren’t you the one who only gets excited about blow off classes? You still owe me for convincing me to enroll in that awful accounting class last semester.”
“I owe you? Whatever, it’s called free will, Karate Kid. You didn’t have to take that class, you wanted to.”
“It was a waste of three perfectly good credit hours!” Annie cried, gesturing widely with the gun. “I could have spent that time actually learning something instead of standing on a desk while Professor Whitman fed us his existential mumbo jumbo!”
“Hey, he taught us how to seize the day!”
“He taught us how to brainlessly quote Emerson!” Annie huffed as she fell back into her seat.
She fiddled affectionately with the safety lock on her gun. “I did like that pottery class though. You know I got extra credit for that vase I made?”
Jeff gulped. “Really.”
“Uh-huh! He never even explained why, he just said it was a thank you because he felt like he could actually feel my hands shaping and caressing it when he looked at it and that was the sign of a true artist.”
“Well. It was a . . . great . . . vase,” Jeff mumbled, entranced by the memory.
Annie glanced over and eyed him a moment, and if Jeff were less distracted by thoughts of Annie’s vase-making skills he might have noticed that her scary game face was all but gone. As it was he was extremely confused when she said with a sly smile,
“I guess we could. I mean, it is Greendale.”
“What? Could . . . what?”
“Stay in the car. Wait out the competition? You said it, it’s Greendale. We can do whatever we want. I have to warn you though, when it’s down to just you and me, I am going to win.”
Jeff slowly worked himself out of his trance and returned Annie’s smile.
“Yep. Greendale. Full of possibilities.”
_
One hour later
_
“What was that sound?”
“What sound?”
“That sound you made.”
“I was just stretching. It’s important to keep your muscles limber, Jeff. You never know when we might need to make a break for it.”
“Well you sound like a baby velociraptor.”
_
Thirty-seven minutes later
_
“Iiiiiiisssss iiiiiiiiitt a chemistry book?”
“Nope. That's eleven.”
“Is it bigger than a chemistry book?”
“Who’s chemistry book? Mine had a bunch of pages ripped out when I got it. Nine questions left.”
“Jeff! You should have taken it back to the book store! You’re missing valuable information!”
"Eh, I’m not worried about it. I get all my notes from the girl who sits next to me anyway.”
“. . . Jeff.”
“What? Oh, are you offended that I’m getting notes from someone else? You know you don’t have a monopoly on note-taking Annie.”
She adjusted her ruggedly-sleeveless cardigan primly.
_
Two minutes later
_
“You’re not even IN my chemistry class! Where do you get off being mad?”
“I took chemistry first semester, and if you ever listened to anyone, maybe you would have remembered that! It’s called being a good friend Jeff. I guess you haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Wow.”
“What.”
“Wow, we are getting seriously crazy right now. We need to get out of this car.”
“What?! No! Anybody could be out there waiting for us! They could have traps set and snipers and-”
“Annie. It’s like ten o'clock at night. We’re probably the last ones here.”
Annie leaned toward him intently and started making the crazy eyes again.
“Or they just want us to think we’re the last ones so we go crazy and kill each other so they can get the prize!”
Jeff leaned in as well as he answered. “Or, we sit all alone in this car for the next three days, slowly going completely insane and starving to death.”
They stared at each other, inches apart.
“All alone,” Annie said quietly.
Jeff nodded. “Completely . . . insane . . .”
Annie swallowed down a nervous giggle.
Half of her expected another stray paintball to fly by . . .
or the Glee Club pop up, bleating a chorus of “You Give Love A Bad Name” . . .
or even Disco Stu to go careening across the hood of Jeff’s Lexus . . .
None of those things happened.
Jeff’s eyes jumped from Annie’s eyes to her parted lips and back again, and she felt a dark blush climbing from her cheeks down her neck.
And then Senor Chang appeared in the rearview mirror, training twin gold pistols with laser sites on Jeff and Annie’s heads, cackling with uproarious laughter.
“Hey Winger! Surrender now, bone later!”
Annie and Jeff jumped apart and whirled around in their seats.
“Wait, what’s Rachel Berry doing in there?!” Chang yelled in surprise when he saw Annie.
Annie looked perplexed and cracked open her window to answer, “No, it’s me! Annie Edison? From your Spanish 102 class? I sit in the front, and-”
“Ugh, same difference,” Chang sighed, rolling his eyes.
Jeff cracked open his own window to retort, “And who are you supposed to be? Jackie Chan in Miami Vice?!”
Chang ignored the comment, scratching his head with the barrel of one gun. “Out of the car, losers! Come meet your fate so I can finish this bitch and go home to my perplexingly attractive wife!”
Jeff glanced over at Annie. She silently held out the empty magazine from her gun so he could see it.
“You’ve been out of ammo this whole time?!” He whisper shouted at her.
Annie just gave him an enigmatic smile and shrugged. Jeff scoffed back at her, and she glanced meaningfully at the keys in the ignition. He widened his eyes and whispered, “are you sure?”
She wavered for a moment, but then turned forward in her seat and nodded.
“Chang’s not even a student,” she said, resigned. “If it comes down to it we can stage a trial like you did with Britta to prove I’m the real winner.”
“Oh really?” Jeff asked incredulously. “What makes you think I’ll be so quick to help you win the prize? What if I use my lawyering skills to get it for myself?”
Annie said nothing, faced him in her seat and turned on her most convincing doe-eyed smile. Jeff shrank back and groaned.
“Oh god! You’re horrible!”
Annie giggled and patted his arm, and Jeff turned the key in the ignition. Behind them, Chang let out a string of curses in Spanish and got off several rounds at the retreating vehicle.
“Y’know I don’t know why anybody else even bothered to play,” Jeff sighed as he pulled out of the Greendale parking lot. “Even without ammo you’re still deadly.”
_