Home (4/5)
Author’s Note: Fic Exchange Gift for rashaka (Prompt: kissing, non-age related angst, someone supporting Jeff/Annie, Bonus: almost caught on campus) Err… change “on campus” to “in hotel room” and it’s all there.
PART I
PART II
PART III
Part IV
like it’s only you and me
~*~*~*~*
Jeff is getting dressed when there’s a knock on his door and it’s not just a simple knock three times knock, it’s an incessant, continual knocking that’s almost banging so he knows when he opens it that Britta’s going to be on the other side.
“What do you want?”
She sweeps in past him, takes in the unmade bed with a raised eyebrow, drops her purse on the table and turns toward him with her hands on her hips.
“Just making sure you’re alive. We can’t be late for Annie’s graduation.”
“I’m a grown man Britta,” he says, walking back into the bathroom.
“Well that’s debatable.”
“So,” she calls out to him a few minutes later, “How late did you and Annie stay down at the bar?”
There’s a crash and Britta imagines a cascade of hair products falling to the ground. She smiles.
“Uh. Not long.”
“You didn’t let her drive home did you?”
There’s a pause. Then, “no.”
“Hmmm.” Britta looks toward the bed. “Did she sleep here?”
Another pause. “Yes.” He walks out of the bathroom and gives her a hard stare. “But you knew that already so why are you asking questions?”
She shrugs. “Abed saw Annie walking out of the elevator this morning, in a shirt that didn’t belong to her. I was just wondering if you were going to fess up to it.”
“Nothing happened.” He sits at the edge of the bed to put on his shoes.
Britta rolls her eyes, “You’re an idiot, you know that right?”
Jeff throws his hands up in the air, “I told you nothing happened. Get off your -
“Maybe that’s the problem,” she interrupts.
He stops, looking taken aback for a moment. “Wait. What?”
She purses her lips, then moves to sit down next to him. “Jeff. Do you know why we broke up?”
The look on his face it so comical that it almost makes her laugh but she bites it back as he shakes his head in confusion and says slowly, “Well. You’re kind of a pain in the ass.”
“Cute. But no. We broke up because you’re immature.”
He stares at her, “I’d like to go back to the, you’re a pain in the ass thing.”
“It’s true. You’re immature. But. So am I. And two immature people does not a mature couple make. In twenty years if we were still together we’d still be doing the same stupid crap.”
“Okaayyy. Where are you going with this? What does this have to do with-” He stops himself and leaves Annie’s name hanging silent in the air between them.
“I’m just saying.” She shrugs and then stands up and grabs her purse. “Anyway, we’re meeting downstairs in 20 minutes.”
Jeff is squinting at some unseen point in front of him and she pats his shoulder gently, “You’ll figure it out.”
He finally looks up and smiles, “You’re not like a lot of girls, are you Britta?”
She laughs, “Uhh. I really hope not.” And then she winks at him and leaves.
Jeff stares at the closed door.
“Four years,” he mutters, “It was only supposed to be four years.”
And it’s suddenly clear that things are never really going to go back to the way they were before Greendale and before this study group turned group of friends and honestly, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t even mind anymore.
~*~*~*~
October 13, 2012
Sometime in the fall of her senior year Annie started having a recurring dream about a kitchen table.
Sometimes it was round; sometimes it was square or rectangular. Sometimes it was covered in a spread of food and silverware and wine glasses. Sometimes it was just empty.
There were voices and blurred faces of people walking around, talking and laughing but only one person ever sat down and joined her at the table. She couldn’t see his face, just the form of this person, and in the dream she knew him and wanted him there.
Sometimes he was across from her, sometimes he was next to her and sometimes everyone else disappeared and it was just the two of them.
But she could never, ever see his face.
On this particular day she woke up from the dream, the same way she usually did, feeling groggy and confused. Something about it gnawed at her stomach and it didn’t make sense because it was just this silly, stupid, nothing dream about a kitchen table.
Annie pried her eyes open and groaned a little, feeling hungover even though she hadn’t been out drinking the night before. She tried to chalk it up to senior year related stress or the fact that she hadn’t been eating a lot of fruit lately.
David was on the other side of the bed, his face buried in his pillow. She watched him through squinted eyes for a few minutes until he started stirring.
He stretched his arms out over his head and smiled at her. “Morning.”
“Hi.”
He blinked a couple times, then rolled over and got out of bed.
It was a Saturday and she didn’t want to move, or do anything except stay there with her cheek pressed against the pillow. She listened to David moving around in the bathroom brushing his teeth, and couldn’t help but scowl. It was this little dumb thing but she hated brushing her teeth before breakfast - it made everything taste weird - and sometimes when he did it made her want to scream a little.
She buried her head in the pillow, determined not to be like that. Picking stupid fights over stupid things that didn’t matter. But it was that dream - continuing to eat away at her like a persistent fly buzzing around her head.
David walked out of the bathroom and went around to her side of the bed, “You want breakfast?” He leaned down and kissed her, closed mouth, but she could still taste the lingering mint of his toothpaste against her lips. She nodded and smiled as he ran his hand down her arm.
Annie waited and listened for the sound of him moving around in the kitchen before she stretched out long, diagonally across the bed, spreading her arms out and trying to fill as much space as possible. She stayed like that for a long time, thinking about tables, before finally getting up and stumbling out toward the kitchen to help David with breakfast.
~*~*~*~
Annie pulls into the school parking lot feeling strangely calm. This is her Graduation Day. This is the day she’s worked towards for so long and in a few hours she’s going to be walking across the stage to accept her diploma but it just doesn’t even seem that important anymore.
There was a day in the distant past, before Greendale, before the pills (and maybe a little bit, the reason for the pills) when all she could think of was getting to this point. Getting the Ivy League degree. And then moving onto the next thing. A Masters degree. A PhD. A six-figure salary. Everything was a step to something else.
But now, in this strange weird place of after it all fell apart, those things just don’t matter. Maybe one day she’ll get that six-figure salary and the house to match and the perfect husband. But right now? She just wants to sink into this moment and enjoy it for a little while.
Her mind tumbles over the memories of last night. Being with her friends. Laughing. Talking. Sitting around a table with these people who have become so familiar over the years. She can’t imagine life without Abed’s disturbingly keen observations, and Troy’s way of making even the most illogical things make sense. And Britta’s jaded hipster, secretly lined with frilly hearts, view on life. And Pierce’s daftness and Shirley’s sweetness and Jeff’s….
She tries for a moment to push him out, looks at this big picture of her life and tries to cut out the part wherein he exists but she can’t do it because somewhere in the timeline, he snuck in everywhere, filtered in through all the little cracks and he’s the first person she thinks of to call when she’s excited or worried or bored and she just wants to share these things with him.
Her breath hitches as she remembers waking up at the hotel and being wrapped up so entirely in him.
“Damn.” She rests her head on the steering wheel and wills herself to breathe.
There’s a knock at the window and her head shoots up, heart racing. It’s Abed. She stares at him for a second and he blinks back at her before she reaches over to roll down the window.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
“It looked like you were having a moment of critical introspection and character development so I wasn’t going to interrupt. But then I remembered. You’re my friend. So I thought maybe you could use one of those.”
Annie ducks her head and smiles, “Hold on.”
She rolls the window back up and then grabs her cap and gown off the passenger seat.
Abed’s standing near the trunk of the car with his hands in his pockets. He tilts his head to the side, “I feel like something significant has happened.”
She opens her mouth, then shuts it again and sighs, “Is everyone else here?”
“They’re taking a tour of the campus. We wanted to get here early so that we could get good seats.”
It still overwhelms her sometimes, that she has these people who care so much.
“It’s probably going to be pretty boring. Lots of speeches and names being called. I’m sure it won’t live up to your graduation ceremony. We don’t have Harry Potter robes.”
She’s teasing him but it’s Abed so he considers this seriously. “It depends on what you’re hoping to take out of the experience. Our production quality was inadequate. But it did have heart.”
Annie smiles, “Heart is good.”
He’s examining her closely, “Your character arc has been especially similar to Jeff’s.
Annie starts and looks up at him. His expression is unreadable but she narrows her eyes and offers him a half smile.
“It’s surprising,” he continues, “Because that’s not the way it was outlined from the beginning. But then again, a lot of things have gone off script.”
She tilts her head, “And maybe learning that is your character arc.”
He considers this, then smiles brightly. “Maybe.”
“You know Abed.” She loops her arm through his, “Chandler and Phoebe should have had more storylines together.”
He nods, “They were the two most inherently humorous characters.”
“Agreed.”
~*~*~*~
January 17, 2013
“I kissed Jeff.”
It seemed like a good idea, this going to visit Annie over winter break. David was out of town and they made a girls weekend of it, going shopping and eating junk food and watching sappy movies that Britta claimed to hate (but Annie looked over at one point and Britta’s eyes were glistening and she had always been full of crap about things like this so it wasn’t surprising).
On Saturday night, after consuming an entire pizza, they decided to start doing shots and trading secrets about first kisses and crushes and Britta decided that she liked this new slightly less repressed version of Annie who still blushed and wouldn’t give details but admitted to liking sex and finally understanding what the “fuss was all about.”
It was somewhere around the third or fourth shot when the “I kissed Jeff” slipped out.
Britta froze, her shot glass halfway to her lips. She set it back down slowly, her brain trying to muddle through the haze of alcohol, trying to make sense of Annie’s words.
“You kissed Jeff,” she said slowly.
Annie looked pained, her eyes wide.
“Okay.” Britta looked at the half empty bottle of Jose Cuervo. The drinking was a bad idea. Drinking with Annie was a bad idea.
“When?”
“Um.” Annie jumped up and started pacing back and forth, wringing her hands. “We were both confused that night and he was…. And I had just broken up with Vaughn…. And he was there and we… I really never meant to hurt you.”
“Annie.” Britta held up her hand and closed her eyes. The pacing was making her stomach churn. “Annie, you broke up with Vaughn like three years ago.”
“Two and a half.”
“You kissed Jeff two and a half years ago and just now you’ve decided to,” Britta opened her eyes, “Get all insane about it? Like I care what happened that long ago?”
“It was at the Tranny Dance,” Annie said quickly and then practically threw herself back to the ground, “I’m so sorry.”
“The…” Britta shook her head and then her eyes went wide, “After I…?”
Annie nodded and Britta leaned back against the couch. “Oh.”
“Oh, you hate me now. I knew it. I knew this would happen.”
“No.” Britta tilted her head a little. This didn’t matter. It was a long time ago. She picked up the discarded shot and downed it quickly, wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “I had sex with him. During paintball.”
Annie was following suit and pouring another shot. Her hands shook slightly and she ended up sloshing tequila all over the carpet. This barely seemed to register though as she raised the glass and swallowed it quickly, shivering a little. “I know. Shirley told me.”
“On the study table.”
“I know. Shirley told me.”
Both women were quiet. Annie picked nervously at a spot on the carpet.
“Annie?”
“Yeah?”
“Did anything else ever…?”
Annie shook her head. “No!” Then she paused. “Well, there was this other time. Before I left for school. But it was just… it was nothing.”
Britta closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the couch. This was suddenly a lot to take in. She searched through the mental card catalogue of memories in her head for anything labeled Annie or Jeff, Annie and Jeff and there were a lot of those… and this was suddenly making a strange amount of sense.
“When I was twenty-one I dated this guy for awhile who was forty-two. His name was Grant. We met at a Greenpeace rally in… Boston? Maybe it was Detroit.”
“Oh. Okay?” Annie looked perplexed.
Britta wasn’t entirely sure why she was letting Annie into this little piece of her history. It had something to do with Jeff. And Jeff kissing Annie (Eighteen-year old Annie, fresh out of high school Annie, who actually wasn’t eighteen years old anymore and had her own apartment and liked sex and wasn’t as shrill and…)
Is that what Jeff wanted? Or needed? Or.
Britta lifted her head up and fuck, the room started swimming around her.
“Did you ever tell David about any of this?”
“What?” Annie seemed genuinely confused at this. “Why would I? It was two years ago.” She searched Britta’s face and suddenly looked panicked. “Should I tell him? Does he need to know? Do you think he’ll be mad?”
Okay, so maybe Annie could still be as shrill as she used to be.
“Annie. Annie.” Britta waved her hand in the air and Annie fell silent.
Two and a half years ago. Two and a half years ago. This really, really didn’t matter.
She leaned forward and grabbed Annie’s hand. “Annie, I forgive you.”
Annie beamed back and suddenly seemed to forget any worries about telling David. “Britta! Thank you!”
“And fuck Jeff Winger.”
Annie flushed but nodded in approval and held up her shot glass in cheers.
“Oh!” Britta gasped, her eyes lighting up with excitement. “You know what we should do? We should call him and tell him that.”
“Oooh!”
They did.
Jeff didn’t answer but the next morning he found a fifteen minute voicemail wherein “Fuck you Jeff Winger” turned into a discussion about that “awful professor Slater” he used to date and then Britta imitating Jeff’s cowboy accent which lead into a five minute conversation on how Abed actually made a pretty sexy Batman (a conversation that Britta seemed entirely too giggly about) and then they were suddenly talking about their favorite childhood cartoons until they began warbling out the theme songs to iconic television shows. The message cut off just as Annie started singing, “I’ll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour” and Britta cut in with, “You know what we should do? Call Jeff.”
Jeff saved the message just in case.
~*~*~*~
In Jeff’s estimation, the graduation ceremony lasts about fifteen hours. It’s an endless run of boring speeches and overblown rhetoric about reaching for the stars and standing out in a crowd and whatthehellever, followed by the long monotonous roll call of names.
He starts to nod off at one point but Britta elbows him and gives him a pointed look and he somehow manages to remain conscious enough to hear “Annie Edison, Magna Cum Laude” and watch as she practically skips her way across the stage.
They all scream and cheer and then it’s just over and Annie’s back in her seat as the endless roll call continues.
“Can we leave now?” he mutters to Britta. She glares at him but five minutes later he looks back over and she’s half asleep with her head on Troy’s shoulder. Hypocrite.
Annie’s parents are there but sitting further down the bleachers and it’s strange because after four years this is still the first time they’ve all met.
He’s not sure what he expected from her parents. Maybe that her dad would be this imposing figure in a business suit who casts distain on his daughter’s ragtag group of friends. Or that her mom would look like one of those political wives in a two-piece suit complete with heels and pearls and perfectly coifed hair.
But Annie’s parents, well, look like Annie. Her dad is wearing khaki pants and a polo shirt and her mom has long dark hair and Annie’s exact eyes, except with more creases around the corners and maybe this is what Annie will look like in thirty years.
Something about this, imagining Annie in thirty years - what’s she’ll look like, what she’ll be doing, if she’ll be attending her own daughter’s graduation - makes Jeff’s heart rate speed up.
After the ceremony (after they all wake up again and blink dazedly into the sunlight and Britta looks horrified to find that she’s drooled on Troy’s shirt) he finds himself standing next to Mr. Edison as they wait for Annie.
“Oh, call me Todd.”
Jeff nods and slides his hands into his pockets, “You must be proud of her.”
“Of course.” Todd frowns and Jeff recognizes the expression from Annie when she’s thinking about something that’s bothering her, when she’s feeling uncomfortable.
“Do you have kids Jeff?”
Jeff snorts out a laughing, “No,” then coughs and sputters when he realizes this is a serious question. “Um. No.”
Todd nods, “You can’t really understand until… You know, you think you know what’s best but sometimes…” he falls silent and Jeff shifts uncomfortably.
Annie’s talked enough about high school that Jeff knows the role her parents played in what happened and that the relationship there has never truly been mended. It’s easy to cast them as the villains for wrapping their daughter up in such a precarious web of insecurity and doubt for so long. But now that he’s standing here, Jeff can’t help but feel a little sorry for them.
He clears his throat, “Well she’s-”
She’s what? She’s in a good place and she survived Little Annie Adderall and figured out her own way and she did it surrounded by the first people in her life to truly accept who she already was.
“Your daughter’s pretty awesome.”
Todd turns and looks at him sharply but then they hear Annie’s voice and she’s running towards them, her hand on her mortarboard so that it doesn’t come flying off. She reaches Shirley first and they throw their arms around each other and start jumping up and down until Troy and Britta join them and it’s this four-person hug of laughter and maybe a little tears and no one minds when Pierce throws his arms around all of them and rests his head on top of Britta’s.
Abed stands to the side and regards them with a critical eye and Jeff just watches it all with a smile until Annie finally untangles herself and turns toward where he is standing next to her parents. She starts toward him but then seems to change her mind and goes to lean into a side hug with her dad. Todd doesn’t say anything, just nods and presses a kiss to the side of her head as her mom pats her cheek and smiles fondly.
“We’re very proud of you honey.”
When she does reach Jeff they both kind of laugh as they step into a hug (and it almost feels like it did three and a half years ago in the study room again) but he wraps his arms around her, bending down so that his mouth is next to her ear. “Congratulations,” he whispers against her and then can’t help the way his lips ghost over her cheek as he pulls away.
Annie ducks her head so he can’t see her eyes but he knows what he’d see and the certainty with which he knows this almost knocks him off his feet.
And suddenly, it just makes sense.
~*~*~*~
March 20, 2013
It happened two months before graduation and it happened pretty much exactly the way she’d always pictured it.
New dress, fancy restaurant, roses, a violin. He held her hand and told her he loved her, told her she was beautiful and that she was the most amazing woman he’d ever known and then he was getting down on one knee and there was a ring and it caught the light just right so that it seemed to sparkle from within. Her breath hitched and there were tears in her eyes.
And suddenly she had to idea what to say.
She looked at the ring and looked at him and her mouth opened but nothing came out and she was feeling a little dumbfounded and stupid while he gazed up at her, everyone in the restaurant watching them eagerly.
“Um.”
It was like a scene in a movie and everyone leaned forward as she began to speak.
Yes. Yes. The word you’re looking for is yes.
“I have to pee.”
“What?”
“I have to…” And then she grabbed her purse and fled toward the bathroom.
There were a couple women already in there that threw her startled looks as she came banging in though the door and it was no wonder she thought, as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her face was radiating out a look of utter frenzy.
She locked herself in the corner stall and started digging through her purse, realizing that she still had the ring box in her hand.
“Fuck.”
Her own voice startled her and she clasped her hand over her mouth. Luckily, the other women had walked about already and no one heard this completely out of character moment for little Annie Edison.
She finally found her phone and stared at it for a second. Shirley. Britta. Her mom. Each of them would tell her different things. Each of them would give different advice in various degrees of truthfulness and she wasn’t really sure what she needed or even wanted to hear in that moment.
So she pressed speed dial 5.
Each successive ring pulsed under her skin until:
“Jeff Winger. Leave a message.”
At the beep she opened her mouth to say something, then quickly changed her mind and hung up. She pressed the phone to her forehead. “Oh god. Ohgodohgodohgod.”
David. She loved David. And it wasn’t like this moment came as a surprise, not like they hadn’t talked about it and already made plans to move in together after graduation when her lease was up. He was going to go to law school while she kept working at the paper and then eventually they would buy a place and have their two children and everything would be perfect and the way they had always planned.
All she had to do was say yes.
For a moment she allowed herself to imagine the alternative, what it meant for tonight and tomorrow and two weeks down the road. It meant staying in her own place, maybe moving, going somewhere she’d never dreamed about, Europe maybe where she could have a torrid love affair with an artist named Pierre. Or she could stay, paint her living room purple, buy a cat and fall asleep every night by herself.
Or maybe -
Oh.
The ring box was clutched tight in her hand as she dropped the phone back into her purse and exited the stall. Her reflection gazed back from the mirror, looking decidedly less frantic. This was not the same Annie from high school, from four years ago, from even ten minutes ago.
She closed her eyes and took one deep breath before pushing through the door to the restaurant and walking back calmly to the table.
~*~*~*~
When her parents offer to take everyone out to dinner Annie immediately starts trying to come up with excuses.
Something about spending an extended amount of time in a room with these two parts of her life makes her feel a little hysterical. But everyone else seems excited by it and her dad is pulling out his cell phone to call ahead at a local Italian restaurant.
She tries to focus on other things - she won’t be a fatalist, this isn’t the end of the world - like walking across the stage to accept her diploma, the sound of her friends cheering her name, the warm press of Jeff’s hand lingering on her back a beat longer than necessary after he pulled away from their hug.
This last one she sinks into, adds to the expanding corner of memories she’s stored up from the past four years - brief touches, looks... kisses. She keeps them separate from all those other Jeff memories, the ones where he’s just a friend, just the person in her life she can go to with anything, for anything, at any time. These two sets of memories need to be kept apart and she’s maybe afraid of what it means when everything starts melting together.
“Annie.” Shirley tugs on her hand and she shakes herself from wondering and follows her friends to the parking lot.
When they get to the restaurant they’re seated at a long rectangular table near the back and Annie starts to relax a bit as she realizes that this melding of worlds hasn’t caused some sort of crack in the space time continuum.
There’s a brief moment of panic when Pierce starts talking to her dad but it’s just about Hawthorne Wipes and original startup costs and it doesn’t seem to be anything that Pierce will be able to turn offensive. Her mom is talking with Britta about cats and apparently Britta’s newest cat has hairball issues or something disgusting that Annie tries to stop listening to.
“Not too bad right?” Jeff leans over and whispers to her. She smiles.
“No. I guess not. Although, I suppose it’s only a matter of time before Pierce says something that makes my mom’s head start spinning around.”
“Well, now that might actually be kind of fun.”
She laughs and turns toward him more to say something else when suddenly her mom’s voice breaks through the din.
“Oh, David was just such a lovely young man wasn’t he?”
Annie stiffens visibly, her hands clenching the seat of her chair at the sides.
Down at the end of the table her mom just continues to smile and shake her head, “We had so hoped that he would be the one for our Annie. But I guess you never know.” Her voice drips with actual pity over this situation - it’s nothing vindictive but this theme of “disappointed parents” has been so ever present in her life that Annie knows it when she hears it.
Her dad is nodding in agreement and Pierce just looks confused as everyone else throws troubled glances in Annie’s direction. Something warm settles against her closed fist and she looks down to find Jeff’s hand closing over hers under the table.
“You know, this is actually a common theme in movies and television.”
Everyone turns to stare at Abed at the other end of the table. He’s watching Annie with a frown, then turns his gaze toward her parents.
“At the beginning the main character will be set up with someone that appears perfect, everything they’ve been looking for but in the end it turns out that they are only a foil for the person that they’re supposed to be with - someone less than perfect, but perfect for them.”
He stops and thinks about, “Sometimes the foil is even discovered to be the actual villain or antagonist of the story. But I don’t think David displayed any villain-like tendencies, did he Annie?”
She smiles, in parts gratitude and amusement. “No.” Then she sneaks a peak over to her parents who both look a little befuddled.
Her mom leans over to Britta and whispers, “I’m not sure what that young man is talking about.”
Britta purses her lips to hold back a smile and coughs before she can say anything “Don’t worry about it.” She looks across the table, “So Pierce, tell us, exactly what kind of award is a moist towelette eligible for?”
Pierce puffs up his chest, and glances around the table proudly, “Well Britta, I’m glad you asked,” and he promptly launches into in the tale of the hotly contested Arapahoe County Moist-Off of 1998.
Everyone else suddenly breaks off into their own, unusually loud, conversations and Annie’s parents bear the lost expressions of two people just running to keep up.
Annie has to swallow thickly before she can look up again. Jeff is turned toward Shirley as they laugh about some guy they saw at graduation wearing overalls but against the back of Annie’s hand his thumb taps softly a couple times. She fights back this smile that threatens to bloom completely across her face but at the same time her hand is unclenching and she’s turning her palm and sliding her fingers between his.
He coughs suddenly and in the middle of his conversation he turns and catches her gaze, his lips turning up slightly, his eyes - Annie’s not even sure how to describe it but there’s something there that’s deepening, softening and she’s never seen him look at anyone else like this. Her ears buzz with all the ambient noise of music playing through the speakers and her friends laughing and then there’s just Jeff and his eyes on her and his hand in hers.
All those memories that have been pushed apart and quarantined away suddenly flood together in a wave and she just knows.
She’s in love with Jeff Winger.
PART V