You'd Be Nice to Come Home to | Community | Jeff/Annie
You’d Be Nice to Come Home to
Community, jeff/annie
Jeff helps Annie move, but he’s not exactly happy with her moving in with her old flame and the guy she made out with during paintball. Inspired by a prompt by tilie12 at milady_milord.
And it seemed like if he didn’t say something soon, she was really going to have to walk away, back upstairs to her new room that was still mostly in boxes and hang out with the Hardy Boys for every one of her evenings. So, it came out too quick and a little strained, but it was like something erupting from inside him, something very deep and very real. “You know, if you needed to have a roommate,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and sticking his hands meekly inside his sweatpants’ pockets, “if you were needing to save some money and needed to have a roommate, you could have just asked me.”
You’d be Nice to Come Home to
Jeff Winger knew better.
He knew better than to be coerced into helping friends move. He knew that friends didn’t move, but hammy-fisted, lunchmeat-smelling movers moved. He knew better than to have a pair of pale doe-eyes and a tight cardigan change his mind on what he, Jeff Winger, did and did not do. He knew much, much better than to find himself in a pair of sweatpants and an old t-shirt and up much too early on a Saturday morning. He knew better.
But here he was, lugging up the seventh box that was marked Pillows in a perfect, girly cursive across the top. The “out of order” sign on each elevator door, on every level of the six-story apartment building, glared at him squint-eyed, a silent mockery. He was forced to repeatedly climb a smelly and poorly-lit stairwell; he started feeling a lot like a subject in a merciless Escher drawing,
“I’m pretty sure a homeless man died in here,” he yelled up the stairwell, hoping that the rest of the group would hear him. Either they did and didn’t respond, or he was alone, lugging up the endless stream of pillows. “And I’m pretty sure he urinated everywhere in here before he died.”
He tried to ask earlier about the need for so many things. The boxes labeled Binders: Grades 10-11, Biology textbooks, and (the best of all) Lady Things! DO NOT OPEN TROY AND ABED AND JEFF AND ESPECIALLY YOU PIERCE! And, of course, the pillows.
“What’s it with girls and pillows? Are you all creating a nest or something when you sleep?” He asked on the third properly-marked box of pillows.
Britta leaned over the railing of the stairwell above him, and gave him a smark-alecky smirk. In the stairwell’s florescent lighting, her blonde ponytail was almost a radioactive color. “Actually,” she started, in a tone that seemed to insinuate I’m-more-informed-than-you (a tone that made Jeff suddenly wish very, very much that he could be instantly struck deaf), “actually, Jung said that women’s nesting tendencies don’t come from a mothering persona, but rather the shadow persona, which links back the sexual urge to have flesh-like qualities approximate to your body while sleeping.”
Jeff smiled halfly before saying through gritted teeth, “Tell whichever one of your cats that convinced you to become a Psychology major that they need to keep their one good eye open while they sleep. Because the more you talk, Britta? The more that cat’s life is in danger.”
He watched as her smile faded and a sudden very sour expression crossed her face. Jeff managed to shove quickly past her, only hearing the first half of her retort, “Just because you’ve got serious Daddy issues, Jeff Winger, doesn’t mean you can be a fu-“
He turned the corner of the stairwell that led to the top floor of the apartment building. He assumed that while apartment hunting, Troy and Abed had figured that cost was a more important factor that, say, safety. Or cleanliness. Or working elevators.
The door was already opened to the apartment, and inside he could hear a cluster of voices, all of which he recognized as a most-definite argument. For a second, the thought occurred to him that he could lay the box of pillows down, march down the stairwell, ignore Britta’s needlessly defiant psychobabble, and be in his own very clean apartment in about fifteen minutes. And he almost went ahead with his plan if he hadn’t poked his head around the corner.
At once, four heads swiveled towards him. Their faces, all flushed, stared wide-eyed back at him.
Dammit, his head scolded as he looked across the range of faces. Troy looked like he was about to cry, Annie had that don’t-fuck-with-me face painted on her too-big eyes, Shirley was shaking her head, and Abed, well, was unsurprisingly nonchalant.
“Do I have some kind of tracking device on me?” He said, shifting the box of pillows in his arms. “Like, it makes some kind of noise when I get close to you?”
Nobody, as usual, actually answered his question, (Pierce did poke his head out from the kitchen and remarked, “A tracking device for your gayness!” But no one paid him any attention, as usual). Instead, Annie folded her hands across her chest, and huffed her small snort of irritation, one he knew well.
“Jeff,” Troy started, holding something out to him. In Troy’s hand was a hardcover book that had some sort of kiddy illustration covering the front of it. “Jefffffff, Annie won’t let me have my book in my bathroom.”
“First off,” Annie started, her finger suddenly pointed accusingly towards Troy. “That bathroom is now also my bathroom. And, while I am... bathrooming, I do want to have a book about, about, about!” Jeff watched her eyes grow large before fluttering away, too infuriated and embarrassed to keep her gaze even with Troy’s.
“A book about poop?” Troy asked, closing the distance between himself and Annie. “A book that deals exclusively about how everyone poops? What isn’t greater than that, Annie? You know how I feel about butt stuff. You know!” And this was the breaking point, because Troy’s voice was getting higher, and Jeff knew almost instantly that if he didn’t intervene now there was going to be all sorts of tears, both male and female.
“Alright, listen. First off: I can tell this roommate situation is going to go splendidly. Second: Troy, are you six?” Raising an eyebrow, Jeff glared at Troy, who’s bottom lip was quivering ever so slightly. Behind him, Abed was raising both eyebrows in expectation.
“Seriously, Troy. Are you six? Seriously.”
Troy frowned at him. His eyes were level with Jeff’s. Then, pouting, he said, “No. No, I’m not six. But…”
Jeff rolled his eyes and said over Troy, “You may not know that male cats do, in fact, have penises, but. Come. On. There’s a time in every man’s life where he has to let go and realize that poop isn’t as funny as he might had thought it was.”
Shirley shook her head in agreement and said, “Why don’t you have a baby and then you’ll think about how funny poop really is.”
Jeff waved his hand, looked squint-eyed at Shirley before saying, “Don’t encourage reproduction here, Shirley.”
The room was silent, except for Pierce’s voice in the kitchen saying that he could “stand to hear more about reproduction.”
He was still clutching the box when he said, “And Abed? Troy? Let’s just say this: you have another roommate. This is her apartment now, too. You two better not get too involved in your sexually-ambiguous exploits that you forget that she has a right to. Well. To her own self. As much as you two would seriously be happy role-playing the epic final battle of the second Death Star” -(here, a delighted gasp from Troy and an approving eyebrow raise from Abed)-“you still need to know that Annie is a girl. And she has girl… things. So. You know. Don’t go in the shower when she’s in there. Or I will find you, and I will reenact the epic final battle of the Death Star on you.”
It wasn’t so much the stunned silence that pervaded throughout the room that made him uncomfortable, like deeply uncomfortable. But it was her face, bright and open-eyed, her lips turning into a pleased, surprised smile that caught him right in the naval, like she punched him in the gut.
So, of course, he had to sabotage himself: “And Annie, I hope you know that this is not the second, but the seventh box of pillows that I have brought up. I know that whole poop book is stupid, but seriously? Are you creating a small, fluffy fort for kittens or something with these things?”
He heard Shirley say, “Oh, kitt-ens. Wouldn’t that be nice?” and Troy and Abed say, “The new Blanket Fort is the Pillow Fort!” and Pierce said, “Sex kittens, you mean!” And Britta was behind him saying something along the lines of, “Does nobody listen to the easy psychological reasons why women have to sexually attach themselves to…” But it didn’t matter, none of their voices. All he could see was her squinted eyes and her lips turned in a fine line and suddenly he realized that she had caught on, that he was a goner.
Jeff was good at sneaking out. He did it from school when all he wanted to do was listen to his walkman and smoke clove cigarettes behind his high school. He did it from many a woman’s apartment, early in the morning, leaving notes that said something like: Cool place, Jeff xoxo. He did it from court cases, from friendships, from women saying at dances that they loved him. He was the expert at running from things, and now was no exception. He lowered the box over the conversation of:
“We’d need, like, a support beam or something for all those pillows.”
“A support beam made of kittens!”
“I’ll show you my support beam!”
“Pierce!”
And he was heading down the stairs quicker than he realized, quicker than he could be bothered to realize. He was already half-way down the stairwell that it dawned on him where he was and that he was running. He sucked in a tight breathe of air before halting.
He blinked, then sighed. “Nice one, Winger,” he mumbled to himself before rolling his eyes, his lips in a thin line. A sudden, weird wave of anger rolled over him, like the beginnings of a panic attack. It was thick feeling of self-frustration, of irritation, only at himself, only at this guy who was standing alone in a urine-stained stairwell and hating himself for just saying creepy shit again.
“She not a little girl, you idiot,” he groaned between gritted teeth. He had clenched his hands into tight fists. He slowly loosened his knuckles, saw the pink and white half-moon shapes from his nails digging into his skin. “You can’t keep acting like a protective daddy to her. She can. She’s...” but he didn’t finish, not sure what exactly he wanted to say. She’s too good to live in a shit-hole like this. That: she deserves better. That: she deserves better than this. That: she deserves better than me.
Outside, the air was cool and clear. The parking lot was dim, and the outside lights kept flickering like a cliché horror film. For some reason, Jeff had the sinking suspicion that this was Abed’s doing.
“There’s going to be a chainsaw or creepy flute music or something,” Jeff said to the navy night sky. “Or Chang is going to pop out behind some car and threaten to eat my face. Yep. That sounds about right.”
“I checked all crevices where he could hide before I moved in,” came a small voice behind him. He spun around quickly on his feet, nearly knocking into the smallness of her. She managed to step back in time, making a sligh “Oh!” before staring up at him, her eyes saucer-wide.
“I. Uh.” She giggled slightly, before folding her lips in an amused grin. “You kind of thought I was Chang.”
“Uh. Yeah I thought you were Chang. You have the sneakiness of a swift-footed Korean ninja.” He cleared his throat, trying to take the surprise out of his voice. “You been taking lessons from him or something, Annie?”
She laughed a little before crossing her arms across her chest. “My dad always said I walked on my heels.” She puffed out her chest a little and raised her hand pointedly, “Like a damn elephant just crossed the room! Do you have rocks in your shoes or something, Edison?” She laughed a little, that nervous sort of laugh that showed that a little piece of her has broken free from the buried sadness she kept buried inside of her, like her laugh was her trying to bury everything again, deep deep inside of her. “So. Anyway. I’ve learned to be light on my feet.” She smiled, the sad little one of hers that looked almost upside-down, could almost be a frown. And then, inside of him, he felt that same sadness, knew it well, could almost hear his father’s head in his voice, stern and angry and aloof: No, I can’t make it to your birthday, son and Give the phone to your mother.
He blinked at her, trying to process everything, trying to process her small frame against the dim light of the parking lot, her exposed skin milky and goosepimpled in the night air.
“Um,” he took off his jacket hastily, clumsily, too quickly. The arms got turned inside out and tangled up in his quickly moving hands. “I. You’re cold. Here’s my coat.” He held it out to her like a high school boy might with a bouquet of dirty, hand-picked flowers on his first date ever.
She took it, grinning but eying him with a level of skepticism. The coat engulfed her shoulders, went too many inches past her hands, landed lazily against the perfect white mountains of her knees. “Thanks,” she drawled before coughing. They stood awkwardly in the coolness of the evening. Somewhere off, there were crickets chirping. Appropriately chirping, in fact, he thought with a pang in his stomach.
The awkwardness between the two of them was normal on a lot of levels. And then again, it wasn’t. Maybe it wasn't awkwardness. Maybe it was just tension, because being with Annie was easy, casual, like hanging out with your best sort of childhood friends. Inside, he felt, something small inside of him drawn to her, like two magnets that find each other because it’s in their nature to find each other. But then, the awkwardness of who they were created this small piece of tension that knotted inside of him when she walked into a room, while a part of him lit on fire, telling him, she’s dangerous, Winger. Dangerous. Because this little girl who had turned into a woman had found some way to get her voice inside his head, her face inside his brain, had become a sort of light that guided him through life. Honestly, it scared him to death, this growing feeling inside him, because he hadn’t felt it before. She did something strange to him. Annie Edison was a puzzle he was trying to figure out because she was important to him in a way that other people had never been before. And if he ruined it now, well. Annie Edison wasn’t simple for Jeff Winger, and it scared him to death, shook him to the very center of his chest.
It was Annie who finally spoke. “I just. I wanted to thank you for coming tonight. I know that you’re Jeff Winger,” she said his name like it was something important, like someone announcing a guest speaker. “And I know that Jeff Winger doesn’t do heavy lifting, or work for free, or. You know.” She gestured towards him and laughed, “Or wear sweatpants.”
“Hey,” he interjected. “I’ll have you know that these sweatpants are a silk-blend cotton.”
She rolled her eyes but laughed lightly. Then, shrugging her coat further up her shoulder, she said, “So, I just wanted to thank you. It means... a lot to me that you were here. A lot.”
There’s was that grin, that grin of hers that broke him a little, like a piece of this very hardly-won tough exterior was chipped away. He found himself start to spiral inward, like she was draining him of something inside of him, a bad part of him and he was becoming something a little different, a little more evolved.
But there was a knee-jerk reaction in him still, a survival instinct. Instead of doing what he wanted (her hair in his hands, her mouth against hers, the smell of her against him), he simply said, “Yeah. Well. Listen, that’s what’s friends are for. Right, kiddo?”
Her smile dissolved, quickly. “I thought you weren’t going to call me that any more.”
Even before he had that word, kiddo, he had already chided himself, hating himself. We can’t keep doing this, he thought before she even said anything.
He wanted to say to he was sorry, say that he was a real serious douchebag, but instead he said the one thing he didn’t want to say, the one thing that he had been holding deep inside his chest, “You know, if you really needed to move in with someone to save some money. You could have. I mean, be careful with Bert and Ernie.” He smiled awkwardly, but Annie just looked at him like he had said something kind of strange, and something she didn’t understand.
“Troy and Abed?” She asked. “Uh, I think I need to be more afraid of their dirty laundry than any. Um. Bad intentions? I don’t think they have a badly-intentioned bone in their body. They don’t even know how to bring bad intentions to... Bad Intentions Town.”
“Sure!” he said, trying to act calm, but he could feel his slightly crazed face raising all the way to his eyebrows. “Sure! They’re harmless even despite the fact that you had a crush on Troy all through high school and partly through college and that you stuck your tongue down Abed’s throat under the illusion that he was a Corellian nerfherder!”
He expected an Annie gasp, the kind that happened high in her throat and was almost squeal-like. But instead, there was a thin grin, a knowing sort of smile. She said, slowly, like she was reading class notes off his face, “Are you... jealous?”
“What?!” He reared back. The insides of his palms were slick with sweat, and he found himself rubbing them against the silk-blend cotton of his sweatpants. “Me? Jealous? I just. I just don’t want you feeling, well. I don’t think you deserve to feel like a third wheel in your own apartment.”
She smiled. Her in his jacket sent a weird shiver through his body. “Well, let’s just say that I’m not going in their shared bedroom for a million dollars. Even when they start asking for help. My self-defense class taught me that.”
He laughed, shortly, grinning widely at her. “I don’t know how far you can trust those self-defense classes though. Doesn’t Duncan teach all the self-defense courses?”
“Yeahhhhh,” she drawled, drawing up her lips in a grimace. “He said that sexual advances weren’t creepy or illegal as long as the person doing it had a British accent.”
They were both smiling, a good casual sort of feeling extending from him to her, a perfect line that he had felt before (the night that he had first drawn her to him, her lips soft and her mouth tasting like soda pop and sugar-free chewing gum), but the two of them stood where they were, a few feet apart from each other. There was a part of him, a very real part of him, that wanted to close the divide, he couldn’t help it, just wanted to get a step or two closer to her at any given moment. But. But they were always in the men’s room, or in a dangerous parking lot, and so what could be done but just sort of watch her from a good, respectable distance?
And it seemed like if he didn’t say something soon, she was really going to have to walk away, back upstairs to her new room that was still mostly in boxes and hang out with the Hardy Boys for every one of her evenings. So, it came out too quick and a little strained, but it was like something erupting from inside him, something very deep and very real. “You know, if you needed to have a roommate,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and sticking his hands meekly inside his sweatpants’ pockets, “if you were needing to save some money and needed to have a roommate, you could have just asked me.”
Her eyes turned wide, unblinking. “Oh. I. Thanks, but I. I don’t need any handouts. I learned that’s a bad idea when Pierce almost convinced about six-dozen teenagers to develop a drug habit.”
“No. No, that’s not what I meant,” he said, laughing. “I meant you didn’t have to live with Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum. You. I mean, we could have been roommates.”
There was a long pause, and her hands loosely dropped to her side. He couldn’t tell from the dim, flickering parking lot lights, but her cheeks looked slightly flushed. She said slowly, matter-of-factly, “But Jeff, you live in a one-bedroom apartment.”
He smiled, kept his eyes level with hers. “We could have figured something out,” he said before he realized that it was coming out wrong, that’s not how he meant it. Now, she was definitely blushing, a deep scarlet on her face, but she didn’t have that strange, anal Annie look on her face, like she might loose it in a long, loud Nooooooooooo, hair flying every which way around her face and her fists curled into small white balls. Instead, she looked shy, not really sure what to do with this information, what exactly she should say to the whole proposition in general.
“No!” He said, a little too loud, a little too quickly. He wanted to say that he’s not a creep, but then he realized they’d already gotten past that, that she knew that, so he shut his mouth, formed his lips into a thin line before saying, “What I meant to say was… there are two-bedroom apartments in my building. I could have. You know, done the lawyer thing, gotten them to switch over my lease to a two-bedroom. No problem. I mean, I know you think I’m kind of a nasty bachelor, but I have my charms. I cook a mean spaghetti and meatball. I have my own washer and dryer. Nice, huh?”
Annie smiled, raised her eyebrows, “Ooooohhh. Fancy.”
“Right? It’s high-rolling over at my place. Just wait until you hear about the dishwasher!” They both exchanged silent grins before he ran his hands through his hair nervously, glad that she hadn’t slapped him, hadn’t told him that he was gross and that she hadn’t given him that look that meant I’m-not-talking-to-you-for-a-whole-week. Instead, she was still there, standing with the arms of his jacket dangling way over her fingertips and looking a little disheveled, a little chilled. But she was still there, he told himself. She was still there.
It suddenly occurred to him that he wanted to stay there, wanted both of them to just stay there forever, if they could. And so what came out of his lips wasn’t a very Jeff Winger thing to say, not at all, but he found he couldn’t stop it, he just wanted her to stay, stay please.
“Plus, uh,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “it would have been nice to have someone else there. You may not believe this, but my apartment gets really quiet. Like, serial killer quiet. I have had to watch that new show Whitney just to have something to listen to. Whitney. Do you know how painful that is?”
She made a face before laughing.
“So, you know,” and before he knew it he was stepping closer to her, closing the gap. Inside his head, he saw red lights, red warning flashing lights that seemed to say, Stop yourself, because you can’t go back, you can’t, it’s not in you to walk away from her. “It’s just that, even though I am the awesome Jeff Winger” (she snorted at this before grinning), “Jeff Winger still. He… I get lonely. And it would be nice to have, well, someone to come home to. I don’t think I’ve had someone to come home to really, um, ever? So, you know, I wouldn’t have minded coming home to your school notes and ironed cardigans and those Glade plug-ins that you use that smell like laundry and vanilla. I think that would be. You know, kind of nice. I think you would be nice to come home to.”
As that all came out, he felt himself losing those words, those words he’d wanted to say since the first time he heard: I’m moving in with Troy and Abed, Jeff! Isn’t that great? All of those things that went through his head the second she said that just sort of came out and now he was afraid that he had really done it now, had really blown it. She was going to laugh at him, tell him that he was weird, and that whatever he said was never ever going to happen, not ever.
But instead, her face was soft, her eyes still big but this time watery, completely unarmed, like the perpetual curtain of skepticism and guardedness was wiped clean off her face. She tilted her head slightly to the side and her mouth formed into a small smile.
The night between them was a small space. He could feel the her body’s heat close to his, could see the small worry lines that were already starting to etch themselves across her forehead.
It was her that closed the gap, her mouth at first cool against his and then swiftly turning warm. It happened quickly, so quickly he couldn’t even react; his hands lay dumbly still in his pockets. Her fingers were firm against his face as she stepped back and blinked rapidly at him, in that way she did when she was completely flustered, her eyes never quite closing.
“Uh,” was all that came out his mouth, all that he could manage at the second. The only thing going through his brain is that she tasted like the cleanness of mint and he could still feel the warmness of her mouth against his.
She shook her head, as if she was trying to clear her head. Her hair tickled the side of his face. Then she said, “I. Maybe sometime I can still come over?” She looked at him and there was something written on her face that took him a second to decode. Slyness. The gleam in her eye was suggesting something, and it took him a second to process it all. Then she said, “I mean, maybe sometime I could use your washing machine. See if your spaghetti and meatball is all its cracked up to be?”
He raised an eyebrow, smiled suspiciously at her before saying, “Uh, yeah. Yeah. That. I mean, your mind would be blown by how well I heat up Prego spaghetti sauce.”
They remained close for a few second. At one point, she leaned close, her face almost up to his; she caught herself and gave her head a little shake.
“Well,” she said, taking a couple of steps back, still looking at him. “Troy and Abed wanted to initiate the new apartment by watching all six of the Star Wars films. So, I guess I better unpack my earplugs and my school supplies so I can ignore them. Also, I probably need to get out the new lock I got for my door. We have a Biology test in a week and half, remember!”
“Annie, you do realize that the test is about whether we know what is and isn’t living. Like, as in: is a panda bear a living thing? Is a candle? The only tricky part that they could possibly throw our way is, Is Pierce a living thing?”
They both laughed and then got quiet. She had been looking at her feet, shuffling them awkwardly before she looked up at him, her eyes wide. Her gaze caught him off-guard (like it always did), and she said in a small voice, “By the way, thanks. I mean, I’m not exactly the best roommate material. I get it. Anal Annie, that’s what they all say.”
“Yeahhh,” he drawled. “So you finally found out, huh?”
She ignored him. “But, seriously, Jeff. I think that it was very. You can be sweet when you want to, you know.”
He grinned at her, cocked his head. “Hey now, I’ve got a reputation to protect. So don’t tell anyone that. Especially Pierce. It will just give him another bullet in his ammunition on his campaign that I’m less than heterosexual.” He held her gaze for a second before adding, “You know, the offer still stands. I mean, about being my roommate. If those two keep trying to convince you that Jar Jar Binks is an existential character, or that you should act in their Kickpuncher movies, you can always pick up and you know. Come on down to the Winger residence. You say the word, Annie, and I’ll be there. Seriously.”
Her eyebrows raised and her eyes got wide and sad, almost in a way that made him that she might cry for a second. But then, she swung her arms from side-to-side and said, “Again, there you go again, being sweet. You better be careful. Pierce is going to catch you in the act.”
“Oh god,” he said. “I might just kill him if he gets ahold of that material.” He rubbed his forehead before saying, “Uh. Look, keep the jacket. I’ve got, like, seventy of them at home. Literally. I’m pretty sure I’ve counted them before.”
She wrapped her index finger around the jacket’s collar. “I look better in it, too.”
“Uh,” he said, eying her. “Yeah. I’d say you do.”
This time, she definitely blushed, he was sure of it.
They were quiet for a second, and then she said, “Well. I guess I better go. I seriously do want to study for Biology.”
“I know you do.”
She folded her hands across her chest before turning, leaving. His jacket slapped lazily against the back of her thighs. She looked back once, waved. He waved back, a short sort of wave that he thought probably looked pretty stupid, but for once he didn’t care, because he could still taste her on his tongue and could feel her still inside of him like a magnet trying to find its other force, like a magnet drawing him closer and closer home, closer and closer to her.
fine
Community, jeff/annie
Jeff helps Annie move, but he’s not exactly happy with her moving in with her old flame and the guy she made out with during paintball. Inspired by a prompt by tilie12 at milady_milord.
And it seemed like if he didn’t say something soon, she was really going to have to walk away, back upstairs to her new room that was still mostly in boxes and hang out with the Hardy Boys for every one of her evenings. So, it came out too quick and a little strained, but it was like something erupting from inside him, something very deep and very real. “You know, if you needed to have a roommate,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and sticking his hands meekly inside his sweatpants’ pockets, “if you were needing to save some money and needed to have a roommate, you could have just asked me.”
You’d be Nice to Come Home to
Jeff Winger knew better.
He knew better than to be coerced into helping friends move. He knew that friends didn’t move, but hammy-fisted, lunchmeat-smelling movers moved. He knew better than to have a pair of pale doe-eyes and a tight cardigan change his mind on what he, Jeff Winger, did and did not do. He knew much, much better than to find himself in a pair of sweatpants and an old t-shirt and up much too early on a Saturday morning. He knew better.
But here he was, lugging up the seventh box that was marked Pillows in a perfect, girly cursive across the top. The “out of order” sign on each elevator door, on every level of the six-story apartment building, glared at him squint-eyed, a silent mockery. He was forced to repeatedly climb a smelly and poorly-lit stairwell; he started feeling a lot like a subject in a merciless Escher drawing,
“I’m pretty sure a homeless man died in here,” he yelled up the stairwell, hoping that the rest of the group would hear him. Either they did and didn’t respond, or he was alone, lugging up the endless stream of pillows. “And I’m pretty sure he urinated everywhere in here before he died.”
He tried to ask earlier about the need for so many things. The boxes labeled Binders: Grades 10-11, Biology textbooks, and (the best of all) Lady Things! DO NOT OPEN TROY AND ABED AND JEFF AND ESPECIALLY YOU PIERCE! And, of course, the pillows.
“What’s it with girls and pillows? Are you all creating a nest or something when you sleep?” He asked on the third properly-marked box of pillows.
Britta leaned over the railing of the stairwell above him, and gave him a smark-alecky smirk. In the stairwell’s florescent lighting, her blonde ponytail was almost a radioactive color. “Actually,” she started, in a tone that seemed to insinuate I’m-more-informed-than-you (a tone that made Jeff suddenly wish very, very much that he could be instantly struck deaf), “actually, Jung said that women’s nesting tendencies don’t come from a mothering persona, but rather the shadow persona, which links back the sexual urge to have flesh-like qualities approximate to your body while sleeping.”
Jeff smiled halfly before saying through gritted teeth, “Tell whichever one of your cats that convinced you to become a Psychology major that they need to keep their one good eye open while they sleep. Because the more you talk, Britta? The more that cat’s life is in danger.”
He watched as her smile faded and a sudden very sour expression crossed her face. Jeff managed to shove quickly past her, only hearing the first half of her retort, “Just because you’ve got serious Daddy issues, Jeff Winger, doesn’t mean you can be a fu-“
He turned the corner of the stairwell that led to the top floor of the apartment building. He assumed that while apartment hunting, Troy and Abed had figured that cost was a more important factor that, say, safety. Or cleanliness. Or working elevators.
The door was already opened to the apartment, and inside he could hear a cluster of voices, all of which he recognized as a most-definite argument. For a second, the thought occurred to him that he could lay the box of pillows down, march down the stairwell, ignore Britta’s needlessly defiant psychobabble, and be in his own very clean apartment in about fifteen minutes. And he almost went ahead with his plan if he hadn’t poked his head around the corner.
At once, four heads swiveled towards him. Their faces, all flushed, stared wide-eyed back at him.
Dammit, his head scolded as he looked across the range of faces. Troy looked like he was about to cry, Annie had that don’t-fuck-with-me face painted on her too-big eyes, Shirley was shaking her head, and Abed, well, was unsurprisingly nonchalant.
“Do I have some kind of tracking device on me?” He said, shifting the box of pillows in his arms. “Like, it makes some kind of noise when I get close to you?”
Nobody, as usual, actually answered his question, (Pierce did poke his head out from the kitchen and remarked, “A tracking device for your gayness!” But no one paid him any attention, as usual). Instead, Annie folded her hands across her chest, and huffed her small snort of irritation, one he knew well.
“Jeff,” Troy started, holding something out to him. In Troy’s hand was a hardcover book that had some sort of kiddy illustration covering the front of it. “Jefffffff, Annie won’t let me have my book in my bathroom.”
“First off,” Annie started, her finger suddenly pointed accusingly towards Troy. “That bathroom is now also my bathroom. And, while I am... bathrooming, I do want to have a book about, about, about!” Jeff watched her eyes grow large before fluttering away, too infuriated and embarrassed to keep her gaze even with Troy’s.
“A book about poop?” Troy asked, closing the distance between himself and Annie. “A book that deals exclusively about how everyone poops? What isn’t greater than that, Annie? You know how I feel about butt stuff. You know!” And this was the breaking point, because Troy’s voice was getting higher, and Jeff knew almost instantly that if he didn’t intervene now there was going to be all sorts of tears, both male and female.
“Alright, listen. First off: I can tell this roommate situation is going to go splendidly. Second: Troy, are you six?” Raising an eyebrow, Jeff glared at Troy, who’s bottom lip was quivering ever so slightly. Behind him, Abed was raising both eyebrows in expectation.
“Seriously, Troy. Are you six? Seriously.”
Troy frowned at him. His eyes were level with Jeff’s. Then, pouting, he said, “No. No, I’m not six. But…”
Jeff rolled his eyes and said over Troy, “You may not know that male cats do, in fact, have penises, but. Come. On. There’s a time in every man’s life where he has to let go and realize that poop isn’t as funny as he might had thought it was.”
Shirley shook her head in agreement and said, “Why don’t you have a baby and then you’ll think about how funny poop really is.”
Jeff waved his hand, looked squint-eyed at Shirley before saying, “Don’t encourage reproduction here, Shirley.”
The room was silent, except for Pierce’s voice in the kitchen saying that he could “stand to hear more about reproduction.”
He was still clutching the box when he said, “And Abed? Troy? Let’s just say this: you have another roommate. This is her apartment now, too. You two better not get too involved in your sexually-ambiguous exploits that you forget that she has a right to. Well. To her own self. As much as you two would seriously be happy role-playing the epic final battle of the second Death Star” -(here, a delighted gasp from Troy and an approving eyebrow raise from Abed)-“you still need to know that Annie is a girl. And she has girl… things. So. You know. Don’t go in the shower when she’s in there. Or I will find you, and I will reenact the epic final battle of the Death Star on you.”
It wasn’t so much the stunned silence that pervaded throughout the room that made him uncomfortable, like deeply uncomfortable. But it was her face, bright and open-eyed, her lips turning into a pleased, surprised smile that caught him right in the naval, like she punched him in the gut.
So, of course, he had to sabotage himself: “And Annie, I hope you know that this is not the second, but the seventh box of pillows that I have brought up. I know that whole poop book is stupid, but seriously? Are you creating a small, fluffy fort for kittens or something with these things?”
He heard Shirley say, “Oh, kitt-ens. Wouldn’t that be nice?” and Troy and Abed say, “The new Blanket Fort is the Pillow Fort!” and Pierce said, “Sex kittens, you mean!” And Britta was behind him saying something along the lines of, “Does nobody listen to the easy psychological reasons why women have to sexually attach themselves to…” But it didn’t matter, none of their voices. All he could see was her squinted eyes and her lips turned in a fine line and suddenly he realized that she had caught on, that he was a goner.
Jeff was good at sneaking out. He did it from school when all he wanted to do was listen to his walkman and smoke clove cigarettes behind his high school. He did it from many a woman’s apartment, early in the morning, leaving notes that said something like: Cool place, Jeff xoxo. He did it from court cases, from friendships, from women saying at dances that they loved him. He was the expert at running from things, and now was no exception. He lowered the box over the conversation of:
“We’d need, like, a support beam or something for all those pillows.”
“A support beam made of kittens!”
“I’ll show you my support beam!”
“Pierce!”
And he was heading down the stairs quicker than he realized, quicker than he could be bothered to realize. He was already half-way down the stairwell that it dawned on him where he was and that he was running. He sucked in a tight breathe of air before halting.
He blinked, then sighed. “Nice one, Winger,” he mumbled to himself before rolling his eyes, his lips in a thin line. A sudden, weird wave of anger rolled over him, like the beginnings of a panic attack. It was thick feeling of self-frustration, of irritation, only at himself, only at this guy who was standing alone in a urine-stained stairwell and hating himself for just saying creepy shit again.
“She not a little girl, you idiot,” he groaned between gritted teeth. He had clenched his hands into tight fists. He slowly loosened his knuckles, saw the pink and white half-moon shapes from his nails digging into his skin. “You can’t keep acting like a protective daddy to her. She can. She’s...” but he didn’t finish, not sure what exactly he wanted to say. She’s too good to live in a shit-hole like this. That: she deserves better. That: she deserves better than this. That: she deserves better than me.
Outside, the air was cool and clear. The parking lot was dim, and the outside lights kept flickering like a cliché horror film. For some reason, Jeff had the sinking suspicion that this was Abed’s doing.
“There’s going to be a chainsaw or creepy flute music or something,” Jeff said to the navy night sky. “Or Chang is going to pop out behind some car and threaten to eat my face. Yep. That sounds about right.”
“I checked all crevices where he could hide before I moved in,” came a small voice behind him. He spun around quickly on his feet, nearly knocking into the smallness of her. She managed to step back in time, making a sligh “Oh!” before staring up at him, her eyes saucer-wide.
“I. Uh.” She giggled slightly, before folding her lips in an amused grin. “You kind of thought I was Chang.”
“Uh. Yeah I thought you were Chang. You have the sneakiness of a swift-footed Korean ninja.” He cleared his throat, trying to take the surprise out of his voice. “You been taking lessons from him or something, Annie?”
She laughed a little before crossing her arms across her chest. “My dad always said I walked on my heels.” She puffed out her chest a little and raised her hand pointedly, “Like a damn elephant just crossed the room! Do you have rocks in your shoes or something, Edison?” She laughed a little, that nervous sort of laugh that showed that a little piece of her has broken free from the buried sadness she kept buried inside of her, like her laugh was her trying to bury everything again, deep deep inside of her. “So. Anyway. I’ve learned to be light on my feet.” She smiled, the sad little one of hers that looked almost upside-down, could almost be a frown. And then, inside of him, he felt that same sadness, knew it well, could almost hear his father’s head in his voice, stern and angry and aloof: No, I can’t make it to your birthday, son and Give the phone to your mother.
He blinked at her, trying to process everything, trying to process her small frame against the dim light of the parking lot, her exposed skin milky and goosepimpled in the night air.
“Um,” he took off his jacket hastily, clumsily, too quickly. The arms got turned inside out and tangled up in his quickly moving hands. “I. You’re cold. Here’s my coat.” He held it out to her like a high school boy might with a bouquet of dirty, hand-picked flowers on his first date ever.
She took it, grinning but eying him with a level of skepticism. The coat engulfed her shoulders, went too many inches past her hands, landed lazily against the perfect white mountains of her knees. “Thanks,” she drawled before coughing. They stood awkwardly in the coolness of the evening. Somewhere off, there were crickets chirping. Appropriately chirping, in fact, he thought with a pang in his stomach.
The awkwardness between the two of them was normal on a lot of levels. And then again, it wasn’t. Maybe it wasn't awkwardness. Maybe it was just tension, because being with Annie was easy, casual, like hanging out with your best sort of childhood friends. Inside, he felt, something small inside of him drawn to her, like two magnets that find each other because it’s in their nature to find each other. But then, the awkwardness of who they were created this small piece of tension that knotted inside of him when she walked into a room, while a part of him lit on fire, telling him, she’s dangerous, Winger. Dangerous. Because this little girl who had turned into a woman had found some way to get her voice inside his head, her face inside his brain, had become a sort of light that guided him through life. Honestly, it scared him to death, this growing feeling inside him, because he hadn’t felt it before. She did something strange to him. Annie Edison was a puzzle he was trying to figure out because she was important to him in a way that other people had never been before. And if he ruined it now, well. Annie Edison wasn’t simple for Jeff Winger, and it scared him to death, shook him to the very center of his chest.
It was Annie who finally spoke. “I just. I wanted to thank you for coming tonight. I know that you’re Jeff Winger,” she said his name like it was something important, like someone announcing a guest speaker. “And I know that Jeff Winger doesn’t do heavy lifting, or work for free, or. You know.” She gestured towards him and laughed, “Or wear sweatpants.”
“Hey,” he interjected. “I’ll have you know that these sweatpants are a silk-blend cotton.”
She rolled her eyes but laughed lightly. Then, shrugging her coat further up her shoulder, she said, “So, I just wanted to thank you. It means... a lot to me that you were here. A lot.”
There’s was that grin, that grin of hers that broke him a little, like a piece of this very hardly-won tough exterior was chipped away. He found himself start to spiral inward, like she was draining him of something inside of him, a bad part of him and he was becoming something a little different, a little more evolved.
But there was a knee-jerk reaction in him still, a survival instinct. Instead of doing what he wanted (her hair in his hands, her mouth against hers, the smell of her against him), he simply said, “Yeah. Well. Listen, that’s what’s friends are for. Right, kiddo?”
Her smile dissolved, quickly. “I thought you weren’t going to call me that any more.”
Even before he had that word, kiddo, he had already chided himself, hating himself. We can’t keep doing this, he thought before she even said anything.
He wanted to say to he was sorry, say that he was a real serious douchebag, but instead he said the one thing he didn’t want to say, the one thing that he had been holding deep inside his chest, “You know, if you really needed to move in with someone to save some money. You could have. I mean, be careful with Bert and Ernie.” He smiled awkwardly, but Annie just looked at him like he had said something kind of strange, and something she didn’t understand.
“Troy and Abed?” She asked. “Uh, I think I need to be more afraid of their dirty laundry than any. Um. Bad intentions? I don’t think they have a badly-intentioned bone in their body. They don’t even know how to bring bad intentions to... Bad Intentions Town.”
“Sure!” he said, trying to act calm, but he could feel his slightly crazed face raising all the way to his eyebrows. “Sure! They’re harmless even despite the fact that you had a crush on Troy all through high school and partly through college and that you stuck your tongue down Abed’s throat under the illusion that he was a Corellian nerfherder!”
He expected an Annie gasp, the kind that happened high in her throat and was almost squeal-like. But instead, there was a thin grin, a knowing sort of smile. She said, slowly, like she was reading class notes off his face, “Are you... jealous?”
“What?!” He reared back. The insides of his palms were slick with sweat, and he found himself rubbing them against the silk-blend cotton of his sweatpants. “Me? Jealous? I just. I just don’t want you feeling, well. I don’t think you deserve to feel like a third wheel in your own apartment.”
She smiled. Her in his jacket sent a weird shiver through his body. “Well, let’s just say that I’m not going in their shared bedroom for a million dollars. Even when they start asking for help. My self-defense class taught me that.”
He laughed, shortly, grinning widely at her. “I don’t know how far you can trust those self-defense classes though. Doesn’t Duncan teach all the self-defense courses?”
“Yeahhhhh,” she drawled, drawing up her lips in a grimace. “He said that sexual advances weren’t creepy or illegal as long as the person doing it had a British accent.”
They were both smiling, a good casual sort of feeling extending from him to her, a perfect line that he had felt before (the night that he had first drawn her to him, her lips soft and her mouth tasting like soda pop and sugar-free chewing gum), but the two of them stood where they were, a few feet apart from each other. There was a part of him, a very real part of him, that wanted to close the divide, he couldn’t help it, just wanted to get a step or two closer to her at any given moment. But. But they were always in the men’s room, or in a dangerous parking lot, and so what could be done but just sort of watch her from a good, respectable distance?
And it seemed like if he didn’t say something soon, she was really going to have to walk away, back upstairs to her new room that was still mostly in boxes and hang out with the Hardy Boys for every one of her evenings. So, it came out too quick and a little strained, but it was like something erupting from inside him, something very deep and very real. “You know, if you needed to have a roommate,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and sticking his hands meekly inside his sweatpants’ pockets, “if you were needing to save some money and needed to have a roommate, you could have just asked me.”
Her eyes turned wide, unblinking. “Oh. I. Thanks, but I. I don’t need any handouts. I learned that’s a bad idea when Pierce almost convinced about six-dozen teenagers to develop a drug habit.”
“No. No, that’s not what I meant,” he said, laughing. “I meant you didn’t have to live with Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum. You. I mean, we could have been roommates.”
There was a long pause, and her hands loosely dropped to her side. He couldn’t tell from the dim, flickering parking lot lights, but her cheeks looked slightly flushed. She said slowly, matter-of-factly, “But Jeff, you live in a one-bedroom apartment.”
He smiled, kept his eyes level with hers. “We could have figured something out,” he said before he realized that it was coming out wrong, that’s not how he meant it. Now, she was definitely blushing, a deep scarlet on her face, but she didn’t have that strange, anal Annie look on her face, like she might loose it in a long, loud Nooooooooooo, hair flying every which way around her face and her fists curled into small white balls. Instead, she looked shy, not really sure what to do with this information, what exactly she should say to the whole proposition in general.
“No!” He said, a little too loud, a little too quickly. He wanted to say that he’s not a creep, but then he realized they’d already gotten past that, that she knew that, so he shut his mouth, formed his lips into a thin line before saying, “What I meant to say was… there are two-bedroom apartments in my building. I could have. You know, done the lawyer thing, gotten them to switch over my lease to a two-bedroom. No problem. I mean, I know you think I’m kind of a nasty bachelor, but I have my charms. I cook a mean spaghetti and meatball. I have my own washer and dryer. Nice, huh?”
Annie smiled, raised her eyebrows, “Ooooohhh. Fancy.”
“Right? It’s high-rolling over at my place. Just wait until you hear about the dishwasher!” They both exchanged silent grins before he ran his hands through his hair nervously, glad that she hadn’t slapped him, hadn’t told him that he was gross and that she hadn’t given him that look that meant I’m-not-talking-to-you-for-a-whole-week. Instead, she was still there, standing with the arms of his jacket dangling way over her fingertips and looking a little disheveled, a little chilled. But she was still there, he told himself. She was still there.
It suddenly occurred to him that he wanted to stay there, wanted both of them to just stay there forever, if they could. And so what came out of his lips wasn’t a very Jeff Winger thing to say, not at all, but he found he couldn’t stop it, he just wanted her to stay, stay please.
“Plus, uh,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “it would have been nice to have someone else there. You may not believe this, but my apartment gets really quiet. Like, serial killer quiet. I have had to watch that new show Whitney just to have something to listen to. Whitney. Do you know how painful that is?”
She made a face before laughing.
“So, you know,” and before he knew it he was stepping closer to her, closing the gap. Inside his head, he saw red lights, red warning flashing lights that seemed to say, Stop yourself, because you can’t go back, you can’t, it’s not in you to walk away from her. “It’s just that, even though I am the awesome Jeff Winger” (she snorted at this before grinning), “Jeff Winger still. He… I get lonely. And it would be nice to have, well, someone to come home to. I don’t think I’ve had someone to come home to really, um, ever? So, you know, I wouldn’t have minded coming home to your school notes and ironed cardigans and those Glade plug-ins that you use that smell like laundry and vanilla. I think that would be. You know, kind of nice. I think you would be nice to come home to.”
As that all came out, he felt himself losing those words, those words he’d wanted to say since the first time he heard: I’m moving in with Troy and Abed, Jeff! Isn’t that great? All of those things that went through his head the second she said that just sort of came out and now he was afraid that he had really done it now, had really blown it. She was going to laugh at him, tell him that he was weird, and that whatever he said was never ever going to happen, not ever.
But instead, her face was soft, her eyes still big but this time watery, completely unarmed, like the perpetual curtain of skepticism and guardedness was wiped clean off her face. She tilted her head slightly to the side and her mouth formed into a small smile.
The night between them was a small space. He could feel the her body’s heat close to his, could see the small worry lines that were already starting to etch themselves across her forehead.
It was her that closed the gap, her mouth at first cool against his and then swiftly turning warm. It happened quickly, so quickly he couldn’t even react; his hands lay dumbly still in his pockets. Her fingers were firm against his face as she stepped back and blinked rapidly at him, in that way she did when she was completely flustered, her eyes never quite closing.
“Uh,” was all that came out his mouth, all that he could manage at the second. The only thing going through his brain is that she tasted like the cleanness of mint and he could still feel the warmness of her mouth against his.
She shook her head, as if she was trying to clear her head. Her hair tickled the side of his face. Then she said, “I. Maybe sometime I can still come over?” She looked at him and there was something written on her face that took him a second to decode. Slyness. The gleam in her eye was suggesting something, and it took him a second to process it all. Then she said, “I mean, maybe sometime I could use your washing machine. See if your spaghetti and meatball is all its cracked up to be?”
He raised an eyebrow, smiled suspiciously at her before saying, “Uh, yeah. Yeah. That. I mean, your mind would be blown by how well I heat up Prego spaghetti sauce.”
They remained close for a few second. At one point, she leaned close, her face almost up to his; she caught herself and gave her head a little shake.
“Well,” she said, taking a couple of steps back, still looking at him. “Troy and Abed wanted to initiate the new apartment by watching all six of the Star Wars films. So, I guess I better unpack my earplugs and my school supplies so I can ignore them. Also, I probably need to get out the new lock I got for my door. We have a Biology test in a week and half, remember!”
“Annie, you do realize that the test is about whether we know what is and isn’t living. Like, as in: is a panda bear a living thing? Is a candle? The only tricky part that they could possibly throw our way is, Is Pierce a living thing?”
They both laughed and then got quiet. She had been looking at her feet, shuffling them awkwardly before she looked up at him, her eyes wide. Her gaze caught him off-guard (like it always did), and she said in a small voice, “By the way, thanks. I mean, I’m not exactly the best roommate material. I get it. Anal Annie, that’s what they all say.”
“Yeahhh,” he drawled. “So you finally found out, huh?”
She ignored him. “But, seriously, Jeff. I think that it was very. You can be sweet when you want to, you know.”
He grinned at her, cocked his head. “Hey now, I’ve got a reputation to protect. So don’t tell anyone that. Especially Pierce. It will just give him another bullet in his ammunition on his campaign that I’m less than heterosexual.” He held her gaze for a second before adding, “You know, the offer still stands. I mean, about being my roommate. If those two keep trying to convince you that Jar Jar Binks is an existential character, or that you should act in their Kickpuncher movies, you can always pick up and you know. Come on down to the Winger residence. You say the word, Annie, and I’ll be there. Seriously.”
Her eyebrows raised and her eyes got wide and sad, almost in a way that made him that she might cry for a second. But then, she swung her arms from side-to-side and said, “Again, there you go again, being sweet. You better be careful. Pierce is going to catch you in the act.”
“Oh god,” he said. “I might just kill him if he gets ahold of that material.” He rubbed his forehead before saying, “Uh. Look, keep the jacket. I’ve got, like, seventy of them at home. Literally. I’m pretty sure I’ve counted them before.”
She wrapped her index finger around the jacket’s collar. “I look better in it, too.”
“Uh,” he said, eying her. “Yeah. I’d say you do.”
This time, she definitely blushed, he was sure of it.
They were quiet for a second, and then she said, “Well. I guess I better go. I seriously do want to study for Biology.”
“I know you do.”
She folded her hands across her chest before turning, leaving. His jacket slapped lazily against the back of her thighs. She looked back once, waved. He waved back, a short sort of wave that he thought probably looked pretty stupid, but for once he didn’t care, because he could still taste her on his tongue and could feel her still inside of him like a magnet trying to find its other force, like a magnet drawing him closer and closer home, closer and closer to her.
fine