fic; Community: show me the side streets in your life.
All right, like, two months ago I said: I've started another Community fic! This is it. I don't know why it took me so long to finish it. More importantly!: It's a CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE-PAIRING. Seriously. Like, there's a point in the story where it splits and you click one link for Jeff/Annie or the other link for Jeff/Britta. That's how on the fence I am about which one I like more! THIS SHOW COULD NOT BE MORE AMAZING.
Also, if you saw Thursday's episode and then read this, one thing might not match up. Explanation (but it's a spoiler, so I'll cut it) is ----- SPOILER ----- the Britta half of this was written way before Thursday's episode aired and so, Britta has a dog, not a cat. I'm going to pretend that the picture of the cat was on Britta's Facebook because she thought it was funny, but she doesn't know that cat at all and was just trying to cover by saying it was hers. If you're a canon-little-details purist, you should try and think that, too, or the dog thing may upset you! I mean, not every cat you've reblogged on Tumblr, belonged to you, right?
ETA: I just realized I owe comment on my last Community fic! I promise I will do that in the morning and I'm sorry! D:
title: show me the side streets in your life.
fandom: Community.
pairing: Jeff/Annie OR Jeff/Britta. Seriously, two different second halves.
rating: PG-13?
words: 12,650 for the whole thing; 8,813 if you just read Jeff/Britta; 7,801 if you just read Jeff/Annie.
spoilers: A few general things for the whole series up through and including The Science of Illusion.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't own anything here.
notes: I think I already covered notes? HELLO WORLD! Also: this fic is not in second person.
Here's something Jeff's learned about community college: if you're there, there's nowhere else to go.
Maybe you're there to save up the money to transfer to some fancy, private university. Maybe you're there because you're, uh, 70 (Pierce) and have no idea where the fuck your high school transcripts are because they didn't have computers back then. Or ballpoint pens. Maybe you're there because there are surprisingly strict laws about practicing law.
Really, though, nobody cares why you're there. You just are. And you're stuck. So stuck that when your manic dean announces that a life skills class is now a requirement, there's literally no recourse. Take the class or leave.
(But, again, since you have nowhere to go, you're just going to take the class.)
This is how Jeff, and everyone he ever bothers to talk to, ends up in a goddamn camping class.
Annie, perfect, wonderful, organized Annie, was so stressed over a Spanish exam that she completely mixed up the date of registration. And since it's not like anyone else is going to pay attention to the important things, all seven of them ended up picking classes a full day late. All the good "life skill" lectures -- Gambling 101, Not Getting Cancer 210, Passive Aggression 301, maybe not, whatever, close enough -- were full up.
Jeff blew it on his role (lobbying against injustice using lawyer speak), too, so they were all just fucked.
(In retrospect, he should've seen the flaw in arguing against camping as a "life skill" because -- as the dean quickly pointed out -- at that point in Jeff's life when he was vaguely homeless, he could've using his skill at camping to not, oh, say, live in his car.)
&&.
The first day of camping class (this is Jeff's life now), they spend the whole hour literally in sleeping bags. There are no desks in the room, just a wide expanse of dirty, barely-tiled concrete. They each spend five minutes in a bag, write down their thoughts and move on to the next. It should be easy enough, except this happens:
Pierce doesn't sleep with clothes on. Before anyone can intercede, he's "field testing" his first bag totally naked. The professor, some visiting hippie, tells him, "That's not cool, or, like, sanitary, man." Pierce reluctantly listens on the subsequent bags, but the damage is done on that first one -- a purple, cushy thing that zips up all the way around your head.
No one wants to get in that bag after him and everyone does the reasonable thing and accepts that they're just going to lose five points from the assignment.
Everyone except Annie.
Once that announcement is made -- that there's a penalty for an incomplete -- Jeff sees her eying the bag. She darts over and is just reaching for the zipper when he hears himself and Britta yell out.
Annie glances up, but doesn't stop, she's moving, moving, kneeling -- oh god.
Britta's all the way across the room, panic face and feet tangled in a shiny, silver bag and Jeff's only got one option. He jumps over the lump of Abed and Troy in a two man bag and grabs Annie by the waist. He pulls her all the way up, her feet dangling inches above the ground.
She's squealing, writhing in his arms, and she's so fucking light and he forgets, briefly and suddenly, about Pierce's naked body sliding against purple nylon and thinks instead about Annie's body sliding against his own.
He drops her with a thud -- enough to bring him back to class and reality and containing a biohazard.
"It's not worth it, Annie." Jeff's trying to get across just how gross it is that Pierce was naked in that bag without actually bringing it up. (He doesn't need to suffer through another speech about Pierce's more-than-healthy body image. They're so frequent and so creepy.)
Jeff's expecting more of a fight -- maybe a speech of Annie's own, about dedicating yourself to your education -- but Annie's just staring at his chest. Before he can say anything else, Britta's finally there, grabbing Annie by the shoulders and then they fall into some synchronized, don't-you-ever-do-that-again parenting lecture.
It's weird when he and Britta are on the same team, but it's not totally unwelcome.
&&.
It's not like Jeff was expecting things to get better, it's just that, Pierce had already taken his clothes off -- how much worse could it get?
Turns out: a lot worse.
Professor Hippie is, predictably, friends with Vaughn. Vaughn who'd come back from a vision quest and broken Annie's heart. (He'd "just begun to know himself, how could he know another person?" Eyeroll.) Vaughn who'd had that thing with Britta. Vaughn who never wore shoes.
Vaughn who was now standing at the front of the classroom wielding poles and fabric and talking about following the will of your tent.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Because Greendale is Jeff's own personal hell, the tent lesson was going to span the next three lectures, too, so: awesome.
Things momentarily get better in the second class when Vaughn asks for a volunteer to help him assemble a particularly elaborate tent. Jeff sizes up the sharp, sharp tent poles and immediately raises his hand. He knows a million and one things about making this whole thing look like an accident, at least to a jury.
Shirley intercedes before Jeff can even get to his feet. On her way up to the front, she passes him and chirps, "You're too pretty for prison, Jeffrey."
Jeff feels vindicated when Shirley accidentally gets Vaughn in the forearm with a pole. It's even better when Vaughn calls it an "owie" and then has to wear a fluorescent pink bandage because the professor's hemp ones have mysteriously disappeared from his desk.
(After lunch that day, Jeff watches an abridged version of Band of Brothers, performed by Abed, Troy and three separate rolls of hemp gauze.)
&&.
It's not until the goddamn fifth class that things actually become, in their own way, useful. Jeff realizes this is going to be short lived, but he's got a map and a compass and Troy and Abed have leftover war paint from their quad reenactment, so it's not that bad.
Jeff's sporting simple under eye lines, but Abed and Troy have covered their entire faces. Annie even gets into the spirit with a dot of green on her nose. Britta matches Jeff's marks, but somehow it looks better. Britta tells him something about how the makeup industrial complex is finally paying off. Or, that's what he thinks she would've said, if he hadn't dragged a finger down her face in the middle of her sentence, smearing her paint and effectively drawing sides for that day's assignment.
Professor Hippie had hidden something somewhere around campus. The first person or group to return with it gets a pass for the day, everyone else, a fail. Jeff's pretty sure this isn't an ethical way to give out grades, but he's going to be the first to find it, so who gives a fuck about ethics? Winning: that's where it's at.
With Britta and her smeared paint clearly not on his team, he grabs Troy and Abed and starts off in the direction the compass is pointing. Pierce trails behind them, waving a Sharpie in the air, "Someone draw on my face, too!"
He turns around long enough to see Britta pull Annie and Shirley into an honest-to-god huddle, arms over each other's shoulders and everything.
What feels like five hours later, but is really only about 10 minutes, Jeff's literally commando crawling toward the Luis Guzman statue, trying not to think about about how he's ripping his favorite olive green American Apparel t-shirt (the one he got at the box sale from a pile of rejects, but that's he's prepared to tell everyone is just a super rare limited edition cut, should anyone ask). He's in the spirit of this thing and even though Abed's only four feet behind him, and cell phones aren't always walkie talkies, he's whispering into his iPhone like fucking Patton or something.
"Target acquired: Guzman's got a package tied around his neck."
Abed answers back, but he hears Troy's shriek first: "Those are not friendlies!"
Annie, in a feat of athleticism and grace Jeff hasn't seen since Johnny Weir at the Vancouver games, is scaling Guzman, untying the knotted rope with her teeth, while her arms hold on to the statue's shoulders.
It's totally hot in the most inappropriate of ways and Jeff's glad he's stomach down on the concrete because if anyone even thought they saw any part of his pants twitch, he'd have no way to explain. He'd be the kind of freak society ostracizes or gives reality shows to.
He rests his head on his forearms just for a second, not exactly giving up, but like, regrouping. But then Britta's cheering and Shirley's clapping and he hears Annie land softly somewhere in front of him.
"We won!" He's not sure who said it, but it wasn't anyone on his team and in a second, he's the old Jeff. The Jeff that would do anything to win a court case and who drove a sweet car and didn't care about feelings or fairness.
It's that that Jeff looks into Annie's huge, proud doe eyes and doesn't see someone to protect, he sees prey. In one swift move, he's snatched the packet from Annie's hands and taken off toward the classroom.
Because he's not actually the old Jeff anymore, he slows up and comes back to himself. He stops, panting, crouching over to rest his hands on his knees, just in front of the doors of the building.
Then Britta barrels into him and suddenly he's lying prone on the ground again, this time with a woman on his back.
(He lets it sink for just a moment -- because, while this isn't the ideal configuration, Britta's still on him.)
She wraps her hands around his waist and up between his stomach and the ground.
"Give. That. Back," she's grunting into his ear, her fingers digging into him.
Jeff knows he should say something here, get her off of him, something, but even if he overpowered the old Jeff before, the new Jeff isn't a fucking eunuch or anything.
"Give what back?" He tries for the most innocent tone he can muster. The package, and his hands, are actually up under his neck, but she can find that on her own.
(There's just so much squirming.)
"That's ours!" She curls her fingers up tight into his abdomen.
"Is it?" Jeff's actually smiling, he can feel it.
Britta's hands, without much space between his body and the ground, are worming their way down.
"Warmer, warmer."
He can feel her knuckles scrape the concrete as she jerks her hands upward.
"Cold, getting colder."
"Where is it," she grinds out just as the rest of the group catches up.
"Why, Britta, I still have no idea what you're talking about."
Jeff can hear Annie's voice over everything, "Jeff! You're better than this!" Pierce is cheering him on, something about women having no follow through and that's why they have the right to vote, but can't be drafted (what). Abed and Troy are running commentary, like it's a wrestling match.
He has a brief thought of explaining that he wasn't actually going to do it, take the package to the professor. It was just an impulse. But then Britta's hands are crawling back down his stomach. His shirt's riding up and then suddenly the tips of her fingers get caught on the top of his jeans and then --
Oh shit.
-- right past his boxers.
He can feel every part of it, her fingers on his skin, just under the elastic, the way the rest of her fingers are splayed out, her palms pressing against his abdomen, half skin, half shirt.
There's a noise, like a choking noise, coming out of him and then he's on his feet. Britta falls off with a yelp and starts to say something, but then Jeff watches her eyes zero in on the package.
"All right there, Chyna," he makes a show of his cracking his neck. "I'm giving it back."
Jeff turns away from Britta to find Annie somewhere between "red and fuming" and "on the verge of tears."
"Aw, hey, hey," he brings a hand up to her shoulder.
"Here," he offers up the package with his other hand. "Listen, I'm sorry, I was just --"
What's he supposed to say? Not practicing impulse control? Being kind of an asshole? Focused on winning at the expense of everything else?
"-- goofing off," he finishes lamely.
"Sure you were, psycho," Britta's smirking at him, he can practically feel it, but he stays focused on Annie.
Annie's head snaps up, she looks him in the eye like she knows something. It's some horrifying, sexy mixture of amusement and drive and condescension and he's right back at the debate with Annie, the super hot grown up. In a matter of seconds, she's snatched the package from his hands and is tearing off through the doors toward class.
Ho-ly shit.
&&.
Because there aren't any, like, bears to trap on campus, the food unit should be anticlimactic. Apparently last semester at a different school, some overeager student went fishing in the koi pond and Professor Hippie still hasn't recovered emotionally.
They end up having to list foods you can eat while camping, while the professor writes them down on the board. Things are starting to get out of hand and overly detailed (Cheese Doodle, Cheez Puffs, Cheez-Its, Chee-tohs) when someone knocks on the door.
It's a FedEx guy, looking apologetic, "Sorry, this was supposed to get here yesterday, but your regular route driver is having some personal probl--"
For someone that's a part of a stereotype generally regarded as sensitive and loving, Professor Hippie grabs the package and slams the door with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm.
"All right, class, let's get hands on."
Inside the box, there's at least 100 different packages of freeze-dried astronaut-type food. The professor's doling them out in groups, snacks, dinners, desserts, but within minutes it's a free-for-all.
Through some impressive football spin moves and a whole lot of blocking from Jeff and a surprisingly agile Pierce, Troy manages to get them the entire pile of desserts (the best type of freeze dried food, hands down).
Then they eat.
Abed dissects his food with scientific precision, breaking the vanilla, strawberry and chocolate off the neapolitan ice cream perfectly. He does the same thing with the ice cream sandwich, snapping off the chocolate wafers from the vanilla with an adept flick of his wrist.
Pierce, on the other hands, shoves a sandwich into his mouth whole and chokes for 10 seconds before it starts to disintegrate.
Troy uses the fact that Pierce didn't die to do some Troy Science.
"Hey, they disappear!" He breaks a chunk of strawberry from one of Abed's pieces and tosses it into his mouth. Around it, he mumbles, "Watch!"
Troy sticks his tongue out and, for reasons Jeff can't articulate, they all actually watch. The pink cube slowly oozes around the bottom, where it's on Troy's tongue and, while it doesn't entirely disintegrate, it definitely kind of, like, shrivels and gets smaller.
Before Jeff can stop and think about how ridiculous he's going to look with a big white blob on his tongue (on second though, maybe not the vanilla), they've all grabbed their own pieces.
Shirley keeps her mouth resolutely closed, like it's a Communion wafer or something, but she has a pleased smile on her face. Pierce shoves another entire sandwich in his mouth after proclaiming, "Well, if I'm not going to die!"
Abed breaks off equal pieces of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla and puts them in his mouth. He does an Abed head tilt for a few seconds and then swallows. It's more exciting than it sounds.
Jeff's quietly enjoying the act of pushing the ice cream against the roof of his mouth and feeling it liquify when he notices Troy's convinced Britta and Annie to try the tongue out method.
Jeff chokes this time.
Annie's got the ice cream, a tiny little piece of cookies and cream, on the very tip of her tongue, looking down at it almost cross-eyed. Britta's got more of her tongue out, the ice cream a little more centered. It's absolutely ridiculous, they all look ridiculous, but Jeff doesn't feel ridiculous.
He just sees tongues.
Class finally ends, but naturally it has to be popsicle day in the cafeteria.
&&.
For the class on starting a fire, Professor Hippie just gives everyone a lighter.
This was an obvious mistake.
As they stand outside the building, cops and firefighters swarming, the professor rolls it into the law enforcement lesson.
The sum total of that lesson: don't trust The Man.
&&.
Jeff's not going to admit, because the whole damn course has been some sort of prolonged tease, with his attraction to both Britta and Annie thrown into sharp relief, that's he's maybe accidentally dreamed about the first aid unit a couple of times.
(But he has. CPR dreams, shirtless bandaging dreams, kiss-it-better dreams and, once, a threesome safety dream. Fuck yes.)
So, it stands to reason, that the one lesson with actual potential to be interesting, is the worst.
Should Jeff have expected Vaughn to come back? Yes, through the power of reasoning, logic and how much everything just sucks all the time, he should've expected that. But he didn't.
They haven't even been in class five minutes when Vaughn's got every girl in class on the hook.
Oh, Vaughn, saving a life is such a big deal.
Oh, Vaughn, you make the Heimlich so sexy.
Oh, Vaughn, I'll pretend to be the victim of a near fatal raccoon attack.
Jeff's about 99 percent sure he didn't say anything out loud, but Abed's still there, being Abed.
"It's just hero worship, Jeff," Abed starts. "Society and popular culture have taught us that only when we truly recognize the fragility of life, can we begin to appreciate it in --"
There's probably more to that sentence, but Jeff's already gone.
"I know CPR," Jeff's voice sounds loud and gruff over the lilting fairy tones of Vaughn's. (Well, that's how Jeff hears it.)
Professor Hippie's just raising his eyebrows, when Dean Pelton is bursting through the door.
"We haven't had that CPR dummy safety certified," he peers over his glasses. "For your protection, you can demonstrate on me."
If Jeff were Abed, right now he'd probably appreciate how everyone's eyes are bouncing between Jeff, the dean and Vaughn. But Jeff is Jeff, so instead the words, "I'll pass" are on the tip of his tongue, but what barrels out in front of them is an irritated (yet determined), "Fine."
Jeff hasn't done CPR since he was 17 years old and lifeguarding at the local pool. What's more, he didn't even technically learn CPR, he just slipped the instructor -- a petite, blonde little college freshman -- the tongue during the demonstration and, boom, CPR certified.
(He's also pretty sure you can kill somebody doing CPR either the wrong way or the right way, if they're not passed out. But it's Dean Pelton and he's got Vaughn to show up, so: acceptable risk.)
What happens next is like punching a doctor's stupid clay vase, wearing shorts to play pool and finding out he left Britta a 45 minute long voicemail, all rolled into one.
He actually hurts Dean Pelton. Something about where he placed his hand and how hard he pressed down and then the dean's eyes roll back and Vaughn has to swoop in to save the day.
He can't decide if it's worse that Annie rushes to fawn all over Vaughn once Dean Pelton's recovered or that Britta gives him a smug look and an even smugger line.
"Typical reckless male bravado." And she's out the door.
&&.
It didn't occur to Jeff that the final exam for a camping class might actually be camping (and it's not like he read the syllabus), so it's kind of a surprise when it creeps up on him.
(He actually only realizes it because Pierce uses the first half of lunch to discuss how he's going to bring his guitar and play songs around the campfire. Troy and Abed insist ghost stories are the way to go. They spend the next 20 minutes telling one about how the forest spirits get angry at people who don't know their chords and strangle bad musicians with their guitar strings. Jeff can just picture Pierce at home that night, burying his guitar in the very back of his closet. It's a nice thought.)
Turns out: not realizing the class was going camping was a pretty huge mistake. There were sign ups and sleeping arrangements and he's way late on a single man tent.
It breaks down like this:
Troy and Abed in a two-man tent. (Jeff refrains from asking if they'd also picked up the two man bag they'd field tested at the beginning of the course -- it just seems tacky to ask. And also kind of obvious). Abed starts in on a "no room at the inn" thing and then Shirley's perks up because, well, the Bible and it takes five minutes to get back on the topic of where the fuck Jeff is going to sleep.
Pierce is bunking with Starburns in a family tent. This doesn't make any sense until that afternoon when Starburns' cellphone rings and his ringtone is the theme to Ghostbusters. Of course Pierce would think that means protection.
Annie and Shirley are in another two man, but a deluxe, which maybe, possibly, means room for a third -- if the third doesn't have a penis. "We're going to take Cosmo quizzes and braid each other's hair!" Shirley just seems so happy and Jeff doesn't have the heart to explain that camping is an altogether different thing from a sleepover. And from being 13.
Britta, who proudly, chin jutted out, announces that she'd gotten to school at 4 a.m. the day sign ups were posted, has a single.
Because Jeff can't choose between possibly clawing his own ears off (Pierce's tent) and metaphorical castration (Annie and Shirley's), he doesn't put his name down anywhere on the sign up sheet.
If he can't find somewhere to sleep, he'll just get in his car, drive to a hotel and drive back before everyone wakes up. In fact, if that had been on the sign up sheet, he'd have written 'Jeff Winger' under it, in capital letters.
&&.
They are legitimately camping in a park. Like a city park, a community park, not a national park. Jeff once defended a guy arrested for sleeping (all right, and urinating) in a park like this and even the idea that, "If Americans can't sleep in parks, then the terrorists have won," couldn't dissuade a judge from labeling it illegal.
So either Greendale has some fancy permits or Professor Hippie was pretty serious about his whole lecture on law enforcement and The Man.
Either way you slice that, and regardless of the professor's stance on Johnny Law, you can't start a fire in a park. That means campfire singalongs, ghost stories, s'mores, whatever the fuck else people do in movies that isn't just get drunk and make bad decisions, is out.
Vaughn, boring, predictable, omnipresent Vaughn, is taking students on a nature walk and although he knew he wasn't going to be traipsing down some grant-funded gravel path, Jeff's surprised to see her staying behind, too.
Click here for Jeff/Britta
Click here for Jeff/Annie
ETA: There was a poll here about which one you read (if you read anything) because I was kind of curious? APPARENTLY THAT POLL IS BROKEN AND I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO FIX IT. Livejournal: getting a punch in the face soon. So, instead, there's not a poll and just some white space and this text!
Also, if you saw Thursday's episode and then read this, one thing might not match up. Explanation (but it's a spoiler, so I'll cut it) is ----- SPOILER ----- the Britta half of this was written way before Thursday's episode aired and so, Britta has a dog, not a cat. I'm going to pretend that the picture of the cat was on Britta's Facebook because she thought it was funny, but she doesn't know that cat at all and was just trying to cover by saying it was hers. If you're a canon-little-details purist, you should try and think that, too, or the dog thing may upset you! I mean, not every cat you've reblogged on Tumblr, belonged to you, right?
ETA: I just realized I owe comment on my last Community fic! I promise I will do that in the morning and I'm sorry! D:
title: show me the side streets in your life.
fandom: Community.
pairing: Jeff/Annie OR Jeff/Britta. Seriously, two different second halves.
rating: PG-13?
words: 12,650 for the whole thing; 8,813 if you just read Jeff/Britta; 7,801 if you just read Jeff/Annie.
spoilers: A few general things for the whole series up through and including The Science of Illusion.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't own anything here.
notes: I think I already covered notes? HELLO WORLD! Also: this fic is not in second person.
Here's something Jeff's learned about community college: if you're there, there's nowhere else to go.
Maybe you're there to save up the money to transfer to some fancy, private university. Maybe you're there because you're, uh, 70 (Pierce) and have no idea where the fuck your high school transcripts are because they didn't have computers back then. Or ballpoint pens. Maybe you're there because there are surprisingly strict laws about practicing law.
Really, though, nobody cares why you're there. You just are. And you're stuck. So stuck that when your manic dean announces that a life skills class is now a requirement, there's literally no recourse. Take the class or leave.
(But, again, since you have nowhere to go, you're just going to take the class.)
This is how Jeff, and everyone he ever bothers to talk to, ends up in a goddamn camping class.
Annie, perfect, wonderful, organized Annie, was so stressed over a Spanish exam that she completely mixed up the date of registration. And since it's not like anyone else is going to pay attention to the important things, all seven of them ended up picking classes a full day late. All the good "life skill" lectures -- Gambling 101, Not Getting Cancer 210, Passive Aggression 301, maybe not, whatever, close enough -- were full up.
Jeff blew it on his role (lobbying against injustice using lawyer speak), too, so they were all just fucked.
(In retrospect, he should've seen the flaw in arguing against camping as a "life skill" because -- as the dean quickly pointed out -- at that point in Jeff's life when he was vaguely homeless, he could've using his skill at camping to not, oh, say, live in his car.)
&&.
The first day of camping class (this is Jeff's life now), they spend the whole hour literally in sleeping bags. There are no desks in the room, just a wide expanse of dirty, barely-tiled concrete. They each spend five minutes in a bag, write down their thoughts and move on to the next. It should be easy enough, except this happens:
Pierce doesn't sleep with clothes on. Before anyone can intercede, he's "field testing" his first bag totally naked. The professor, some visiting hippie, tells him, "That's not cool, or, like, sanitary, man." Pierce reluctantly listens on the subsequent bags, but the damage is done on that first one -- a purple, cushy thing that zips up all the way around your head.
No one wants to get in that bag after him and everyone does the reasonable thing and accepts that they're just going to lose five points from the assignment.
Everyone except Annie.
Once that announcement is made -- that there's a penalty for an incomplete -- Jeff sees her eying the bag. She darts over and is just reaching for the zipper when he hears himself and Britta yell out.
Annie glances up, but doesn't stop, she's moving, moving, kneeling -- oh god.
Britta's all the way across the room, panic face and feet tangled in a shiny, silver bag and Jeff's only got one option. He jumps over the lump of Abed and Troy in a two man bag and grabs Annie by the waist. He pulls her all the way up, her feet dangling inches above the ground.
She's squealing, writhing in his arms, and she's so fucking light and he forgets, briefly and suddenly, about Pierce's naked body sliding against purple nylon and thinks instead about Annie's body sliding against his own.
He drops her with a thud -- enough to bring him back to class and reality and containing a biohazard.
"It's not worth it, Annie." Jeff's trying to get across just how gross it is that Pierce was naked in that bag without actually bringing it up. (He doesn't need to suffer through another speech about Pierce's more-than-healthy body image. They're so frequent and so creepy.)
Jeff's expecting more of a fight -- maybe a speech of Annie's own, about dedicating yourself to your education -- but Annie's just staring at his chest. Before he can say anything else, Britta's finally there, grabbing Annie by the shoulders and then they fall into some synchronized, don't-you-ever-do-that-again parenting lecture.
It's weird when he and Britta are on the same team, but it's not totally unwelcome.
&&.
It's not like Jeff was expecting things to get better, it's just that, Pierce had already taken his clothes off -- how much worse could it get?
Turns out: a lot worse.
Professor Hippie is, predictably, friends with Vaughn. Vaughn who'd come back from a vision quest and broken Annie's heart. (He'd "just begun to know himself, how could he know another person?" Eyeroll.) Vaughn who'd had that thing with Britta. Vaughn who never wore shoes.
Vaughn who was now standing at the front of the classroom wielding poles and fabric and talking about following the will of your tent.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Because Greendale is Jeff's own personal hell, the tent lesson was going to span the next three lectures, too, so: awesome.
Things momentarily get better in the second class when Vaughn asks for a volunteer to help him assemble a particularly elaborate tent. Jeff sizes up the sharp, sharp tent poles and immediately raises his hand. He knows a million and one things about making this whole thing look like an accident, at least to a jury.
Shirley intercedes before Jeff can even get to his feet. On her way up to the front, she passes him and chirps, "You're too pretty for prison, Jeffrey."
Jeff feels vindicated when Shirley accidentally gets Vaughn in the forearm with a pole. It's even better when Vaughn calls it an "owie" and then has to wear a fluorescent pink bandage because the professor's hemp ones have mysteriously disappeared from his desk.
(After lunch that day, Jeff watches an abridged version of Band of Brothers, performed by Abed, Troy and three separate rolls of hemp gauze.)
&&.
It's not until the goddamn fifth class that things actually become, in their own way, useful. Jeff realizes this is going to be short lived, but he's got a map and a compass and Troy and Abed have leftover war paint from their quad reenactment, so it's not that bad.
Jeff's sporting simple under eye lines, but Abed and Troy have covered their entire faces. Annie even gets into the spirit with a dot of green on her nose. Britta matches Jeff's marks, but somehow it looks better. Britta tells him something about how the makeup industrial complex is finally paying off. Or, that's what he thinks she would've said, if he hadn't dragged a finger down her face in the middle of her sentence, smearing her paint and effectively drawing sides for that day's assignment.
Professor Hippie had hidden something somewhere around campus. The first person or group to return with it gets a pass for the day, everyone else, a fail. Jeff's pretty sure this isn't an ethical way to give out grades, but he's going to be the first to find it, so who gives a fuck about ethics? Winning: that's where it's at.
With Britta and her smeared paint clearly not on his team, he grabs Troy and Abed and starts off in the direction the compass is pointing. Pierce trails behind them, waving a Sharpie in the air, "Someone draw on my face, too!"
He turns around long enough to see Britta pull Annie and Shirley into an honest-to-god huddle, arms over each other's shoulders and everything.
What feels like five hours later, but is really only about 10 minutes, Jeff's literally commando crawling toward the Luis Guzman statue, trying not to think about about how he's ripping his favorite olive green American Apparel t-shirt (the one he got at the box sale from a pile of rejects, but that's he's prepared to tell everyone is just a super rare limited edition cut, should anyone ask). He's in the spirit of this thing and even though Abed's only four feet behind him, and cell phones aren't always walkie talkies, he's whispering into his iPhone like fucking Patton or something.
"Target acquired: Guzman's got a package tied around his neck."
Abed answers back, but he hears Troy's shriek first: "Those are not friendlies!"
Annie, in a feat of athleticism and grace Jeff hasn't seen since Johnny Weir at the Vancouver games, is scaling Guzman, untying the knotted rope with her teeth, while her arms hold on to the statue's shoulders.
It's totally hot in the most inappropriate of ways and Jeff's glad he's stomach down on the concrete because if anyone even thought they saw any part of his pants twitch, he'd have no way to explain. He'd be the kind of freak society ostracizes or gives reality shows to.
He rests his head on his forearms just for a second, not exactly giving up, but like, regrouping. But then Britta's cheering and Shirley's clapping and he hears Annie land softly somewhere in front of him.
"We won!" He's not sure who said it, but it wasn't anyone on his team and in a second, he's the old Jeff. The Jeff that would do anything to win a court case and who drove a sweet car and didn't care about feelings or fairness.
It's that that Jeff looks into Annie's huge, proud doe eyes and doesn't see someone to protect, he sees prey. In one swift move, he's snatched the packet from Annie's hands and taken off toward the classroom.
Because he's not actually the old Jeff anymore, he slows up and comes back to himself. He stops, panting, crouching over to rest his hands on his knees, just in front of the doors of the building.
Then Britta barrels into him and suddenly he's lying prone on the ground again, this time with a woman on his back.
(He lets it sink for just a moment -- because, while this isn't the ideal configuration, Britta's still on him.)
She wraps her hands around his waist and up between his stomach and the ground.
"Give. That. Back," she's grunting into his ear, her fingers digging into him.
Jeff knows he should say something here, get her off of him, something, but even if he overpowered the old Jeff before, the new Jeff isn't a fucking eunuch or anything.
"Give what back?" He tries for the most innocent tone he can muster. The package, and his hands, are actually up under his neck, but she can find that on her own.
(There's just so much squirming.)
"That's ours!" She curls her fingers up tight into his abdomen.
"Is it?" Jeff's actually smiling, he can feel it.
Britta's hands, without much space between his body and the ground, are worming their way down.
"Warmer, warmer."
He can feel her knuckles scrape the concrete as she jerks her hands upward.
"Cold, getting colder."
"Where is it," she grinds out just as the rest of the group catches up.
"Why, Britta, I still have no idea what you're talking about."
Jeff can hear Annie's voice over everything, "Jeff! You're better than this!" Pierce is cheering him on, something about women having no follow through and that's why they have the right to vote, but can't be drafted (what). Abed and Troy are running commentary, like it's a wrestling match.
He has a brief thought of explaining that he wasn't actually going to do it, take the package to the professor. It was just an impulse. But then Britta's hands are crawling back down his stomach. His shirt's riding up and then suddenly the tips of her fingers get caught on the top of his jeans and then --
Oh shit.
-- right past his boxers.
He can feel every part of it, her fingers on his skin, just under the elastic, the way the rest of her fingers are splayed out, her palms pressing against his abdomen, half skin, half shirt.
There's a noise, like a choking noise, coming out of him and then he's on his feet. Britta falls off with a yelp and starts to say something, but then Jeff watches her eyes zero in on the package.
"All right there, Chyna," he makes a show of his cracking his neck. "I'm giving it back."
Jeff turns away from Britta to find Annie somewhere between "red and fuming" and "on the verge of tears."
"Aw, hey, hey," he brings a hand up to her shoulder.
"Here," he offers up the package with his other hand. "Listen, I'm sorry, I was just --"
What's he supposed to say? Not practicing impulse control? Being kind of an asshole? Focused on winning at the expense of everything else?
"-- goofing off," he finishes lamely.
"Sure you were, psycho," Britta's smirking at him, he can practically feel it, but he stays focused on Annie.
Annie's head snaps up, she looks him in the eye like she knows something. It's some horrifying, sexy mixture of amusement and drive and condescension and he's right back at the debate with Annie, the super hot grown up. In a matter of seconds, she's snatched the package from his hands and is tearing off through the doors toward class.
Ho-ly shit.
&&.
Because there aren't any, like, bears to trap on campus, the food unit should be anticlimactic. Apparently last semester at a different school, some overeager student went fishing in the koi pond and Professor Hippie still hasn't recovered emotionally.
They end up having to list foods you can eat while camping, while the professor writes them down on the board. Things are starting to get out of hand and overly detailed (Cheese Doodle, Cheez Puffs, Cheez-Its, Chee-tohs) when someone knocks on the door.
It's a FedEx guy, looking apologetic, "Sorry, this was supposed to get here yesterday, but your regular route driver is having some personal probl--"
For someone that's a part of a stereotype generally regarded as sensitive and loving, Professor Hippie grabs the package and slams the door with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm.
"All right, class, let's get hands on."
Inside the box, there's at least 100 different packages of freeze-dried astronaut-type food. The professor's doling them out in groups, snacks, dinners, desserts, but within minutes it's a free-for-all.
Through some impressive football spin moves and a whole lot of blocking from Jeff and a surprisingly agile Pierce, Troy manages to get them the entire pile of desserts (the best type of freeze dried food, hands down).
Then they eat.
Abed dissects his food with scientific precision, breaking the vanilla, strawberry and chocolate off the neapolitan ice cream perfectly. He does the same thing with the ice cream sandwich, snapping off the chocolate wafers from the vanilla with an adept flick of his wrist.
Pierce, on the other hands, shoves a sandwich into his mouth whole and chokes for 10 seconds before it starts to disintegrate.
Troy uses the fact that Pierce didn't die to do some Troy Science.
"Hey, they disappear!" He breaks a chunk of strawberry from one of Abed's pieces and tosses it into his mouth. Around it, he mumbles, "Watch!"
Troy sticks his tongue out and, for reasons Jeff can't articulate, they all actually watch. The pink cube slowly oozes around the bottom, where it's on Troy's tongue and, while it doesn't entirely disintegrate, it definitely kind of, like, shrivels and gets smaller.
Before Jeff can stop and think about how ridiculous he's going to look with a big white blob on his tongue (on second though, maybe not the vanilla), they've all grabbed their own pieces.
Shirley keeps her mouth resolutely closed, like it's a Communion wafer or something, but she has a pleased smile on her face. Pierce shoves another entire sandwich in his mouth after proclaiming, "Well, if I'm not going to die!"
Abed breaks off equal pieces of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla and puts them in his mouth. He does an Abed head tilt for a few seconds and then swallows. It's more exciting than it sounds.
Jeff's quietly enjoying the act of pushing the ice cream against the roof of his mouth and feeling it liquify when he notices Troy's convinced Britta and Annie to try the tongue out method.
Jeff chokes this time.
Annie's got the ice cream, a tiny little piece of cookies and cream, on the very tip of her tongue, looking down at it almost cross-eyed. Britta's got more of her tongue out, the ice cream a little more centered. It's absolutely ridiculous, they all look ridiculous, but Jeff doesn't feel ridiculous.
He just sees tongues.
Class finally ends, but naturally it has to be popsicle day in the cafeteria.
&&.
For the class on starting a fire, Professor Hippie just gives everyone a lighter.
This was an obvious mistake.
As they stand outside the building, cops and firefighters swarming, the professor rolls it into the law enforcement lesson.
The sum total of that lesson: don't trust The Man.
&&.
Jeff's not going to admit, because the whole damn course has been some sort of prolonged tease, with his attraction to both Britta and Annie thrown into sharp relief, that's he's maybe accidentally dreamed about the first aid unit a couple of times.
(But he has. CPR dreams, shirtless bandaging dreams, kiss-it-better dreams and, once, a threesome safety dream. Fuck yes.)
So, it stands to reason, that the one lesson with actual potential to be interesting, is the worst.
Should Jeff have expected Vaughn to come back? Yes, through the power of reasoning, logic and how much everything just sucks all the time, he should've expected that. But he didn't.
They haven't even been in class five minutes when Vaughn's got every girl in class on the hook.
Oh, Vaughn, saving a life is such a big deal.
Oh, Vaughn, you make the Heimlich so sexy.
Oh, Vaughn, I'll pretend to be the victim of a near fatal raccoon attack.
Jeff's about 99 percent sure he didn't say anything out loud, but Abed's still there, being Abed.
"It's just hero worship, Jeff," Abed starts. "Society and popular culture have taught us that only when we truly recognize the fragility of life, can we begin to appreciate it in --"
There's probably more to that sentence, but Jeff's already gone.
"I know CPR," Jeff's voice sounds loud and gruff over the lilting fairy tones of Vaughn's. (Well, that's how Jeff hears it.)
Professor Hippie's just raising his eyebrows, when Dean Pelton is bursting through the door.
"We haven't had that CPR dummy safety certified," he peers over his glasses. "For your protection, you can demonstrate on me."
If Jeff were Abed, right now he'd probably appreciate how everyone's eyes are bouncing between Jeff, the dean and Vaughn. But Jeff is Jeff, so instead the words, "I'll pass" are on the tip of his tongue, but what barrels out in front of them is an irritated (yet determined), "Fine."
Jeff hasn't done CPR since he was 17 years old and lifeguarding at the local pool. What's more, he didn't even technically learn CPR, he just slipped the instructor -- a petite, blonde little college freshman -- the tongue during the demonstration and, boom, CPR certified.
(He's also pretty sure you can kill somebody doing CPR either the wrong way or the right way, if they're not passed out. But it's Dean Pelton and he's got Vaughn to show up, so: acceptable risk.)
What happens next is like punching a doctor's stupid clay vase, wearing shorts to play pool and finding out he left Britta a 45 minute long voicemail, all rolled into one.
He actually hurts Dean Pelton. Something about where he placed his hand and how hard he pressed down and then the dean's eyes roll back and Vaughn has to swoop in to save the day.
He can't decide if it's worse that Annie rushes to fawn all over Vaughn once Dean Pelton's recovered or that Britta gives him a smug look and an even smugger line.
"Typical reckless male bravado." And she's out the door.
&&.
It didn't occur to Jeff that the final exam for a camping class might actually be camping (and it's not like he read the syllabus), so it's kind of a surprise when it creeps up on him.
(He actually only realizes it because Pierce uses the first half of lunch to discuss how he's going to bring his guitar and play songs around the campfire. Troy and Abed insist ghost stories are the way to go. They spend the next 20 minutes telling one about how the forest spirits get angry at people who don't know their chords and strangle bad musicians with their guitar strings. Jeff can just picture Pierce at home that night, burying his guitar in the very back of his closet. It's a nice thought.)
Turns out: not realizing the class was going camping was a pretty huge mistake. There were sign ups and sleeping arrangements and he's way late on a single man tent.
It breaks down like this:
Troy and Abed in a two-man tent. (Jeff refrains from asking if they'd also picked up the two man bag they'd field tested at the beginning of the course -- it just seems tacky to ask. And also kind of obvious). Abed starts in on a "no room at the inn" thing and then Shirley's perks up because, well, the Bible and it takes five minutes to get back on the topic of where the fuck Jeff is going to sleep.
Pierce is bunking with Starburns in a family tent. This doesn't make any sense until that afternoon when Starburns' cellphone rings and his ringtone is the theme to Ghostbusters. Of course Pierce would think that means protection.
Annie and Shirley are in another two man, but a deluxe, which maybe, possibly, means room for a third -- if the third doesn't have a penis. "We're going to take Cosmo quizzes and braid each other's hair!" Shirley just seems so happy and Jeff doesn't have the heart to explain that camping is an altogether different thing from a sleepover. And from being 13.
Britta, who proudly, chin jutted out, announces that she'd gotten to school at 4 a.m. the day sign ups were posted, has a single.
Because Jeff can't choose between possibly clawing his own ears off (Pierce's tent) and metaphorical castration (Annie and Shirley's), he doesn't put his name down anywhere on the sign up sheet.
If he can't find somewhere to sleep, he'll just get in his car, drive to a hotel and drive back before everyone wakes up. In fact, if that had been on the sign up sheet, he'd have written 'Jeff Winger' under it, in capital letters.
&&.
They are legitimately camping in a park. Like a city park, a community park, not a national park. Jeff once defended a guy arrested for sleeping (all right, and urinating) in a park like this and even the idea that, "If Americans can't sleep in parks, then the terrorists have won," couldn't dissuade a judge from labeling it illegal.
So either Greendale has some fancy permits or Professor Hippie was pretty serious about his whole lecture on law enforcement and The Man.
Either way you slice that, and regardless of the professor's stance on Johnny Law, you can't start a fire in a park. That means campfire singalongs, ghost stories, s'mores, whatever the fuck else people do in movies that isn't just get drunk and make bad decisions, is out.
Vaughn, boring, predictable, omnipresent Vaughn, is taking students on a nature walk and although he knew he wasn't going to be traipsing down some grant-funded gravel path, Jeff's surprised to see her staying behind, too.
Click here for Jeff/Britta
Click here for Jeff/Annie
ETA: There was a poll here about which one you read (if you read anything) because I was kind of curious? APPARENTLY THAT POLL IS BROKEN AND I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO FIX IT. Livejournal: getting a punch in the face soon. So, instead, there's not a poll and just some white space and this text!