Community Fic: disable with care
For lenina20. Because I promised. Because I want to write something that doesn't have anything to do with work for the moment. Because I can’t quite figure out why I still watch L&O lol. And I'm sort of sleepy? Enjoy!
disable with care
community ; jeff/annie ; 6,000 words ; PG
so it’s true. your mother didn’t tell you about this one. general spoilers.
-
Her heater breaks.
Annie is convinced that this is part of the universe’s master plan to make her as miserable as possible by Friday. What follows is a series of uncomfortable events: she is late to anthropology and has to sit next to Starburns, her landlord is creepier than ever and leaves two weird messages on her voicemail, and her mother wants to have an early dinner on Thursday to talk about things. Whatever that means.
“I’ll just buy more sweaters,” she tells Britta weakly. They are in the bathroom after lunch, waiting for Shirley to meet them. Annie sits on the sink, swinging her legs and staring at the floor. “I think Starburns smiling at me this morning was the biggest sign of all.”
Britta shakes her head. “Yellow teeth?”
“Yellow teeth with spots,” Annie confirms.
Both girls grimace.
“I would tell you could stay with me,” Britta says quickly. Annie raises an eyebrow but the other girl shrugs. “But I think for the sanctity and sanity of our friendship, it’ll be a better idea if you didn’t.”
This isn’t about charity, Annie wants to say; part of her is almost ready to go and pull out the fit. But she remember it’s the morning, and there’s probably some cosmic reasoning behind the fact that her heater broke and she’s already obsessing. Instead, she forces a smile and tries not to jump when the door to the bathroom flies open.
Shirley starts spitting things out about Chang. Annie shakes her head. “Thanks,” she says. “I appreciate it. I just - I’ll figure it out.”
She hopes it says quiet.
Except it doesn’t. Of course, it doesn’t. In fact, it was stupid enough to think that she’d make it all the way through Literature and then the library before someone says to her, “oh hey, Annie, heard about your place,” like she’s afflicted with some rare, unseen form of leprosy. It wasn’t Britta because Britta tries to explain to her that Shirley, even ranting, caught the tail end of their conversation and decided that instead of ranting about Chang it might best to worry about Annie.
It’s all about good intentions, apparently.
But she’s not in the mood, so much so that she takes to walking in between shelves and stacks until she finds a corner of the library that doesn’t look into the study group room or out of it so that anyone of them can come and find her and make her face the firing squad around the table.
“It’s just a heater, guys,” she says out loud. She opens her homework over a table by the window. It’s too small and she ends up balancing her biology book against the glass. The chair’s awkward too but she keeps practicing. “I’ll take care of it. It’s just a heater.”
“What?”
She jumps and there’s Jeff, over her shoulder, leaning into her space with a mix of amusement and irritation. Her book trips against the glass and stumbles onto her table and her homework; it slams hard and there’s a loud shh from somewhere up front.
“You’re such a creep,” she whispers loudly.
“Why are you here?”
Annie rolls her eyes. She doesn’t turn around.
“Other than the obvious,” Jeff continues. “You’re fifteen minutes late and I’m, well, I’m only the search party because I had a call.”
“You always have a call,” she says.
He smirks. “What’s wrong with your heater?”
She throws her hands up. Sweaters, she thinks. Just buy a lot of sweaters. It’s a logical assumption considering it’s going to be spring soon and then she can get away with opening her windows. There’s the noise, but she’s not going to humor the noise and what they don’t get is that this place is hers, very much hers, and heater or not she’s going to stick it through.
Her mouth closes. Jeff raises an eyebrow. “I said that out loud,” she groans. She claps her hand over her mouth and groans again. Of course, she did. “You should just … go away,” she mutters.
Jeff shrugs and steps away from her, moving to the window ledge. He drops his stuff and slides up onto the ledge, leaning back against the glass. He’s studying her curiously. She doesn’t know if she’s uncomfortable or not; the trick, really, is to let it be until after whatever conversation takes place.
She’s not going to analyze it. No, no. It’s bad enough that this morning she thought she was going to die when the pipes snapped and that low, weird moan seem to come from inside the wall. She’s seen too many horror films thanks to Abed and the last film project that he had - zombies and axe murders, even on budget, are not the greatest combination when you live alone.
“If you’re skipping,” Jeff says. “So am I.”
“What are you, five?”
He shrugs. “I’m just saying. I’m embarrassed everyday when I’m there, what makes you any different? So if you skip, I’m skipping.”
She rolls her eyes.
“And besides, unlike me, those people in there are, however misguided, actually worried about you and that crappy apartment that you live in. I’m not saying jump the gun and actually accept whatever creepy offer Pierce will throw at you by the end of the day, but -”
“I’m not going in,” she says. “And I appreciate it. Really, I do. But just because you get five minutes all the time, doesn’t mean I can’t. Or Troy can’t. Or Shirley. Or Britta - you don’t have a monopoly on wanting five minutes to yourself, Jeffery.”
“If I fix the heater, will you go in?”
Annie laughs. Annie actually laughs. She tries to picture Jeff, hunched over a manual and trying to read about pipes and wrenches. She’s entirely sure that it involves miracles and hospitals if he’d even attempt to fix it anyway. Jeff, like Pierce, will probably throw money and give some guy a call. Well, Pierce would just throw money.
“You’re going to hurt yourself on the account of me?” she asks, and then laughs one more time. There is a loud shh and both of them turn towards the librarian that’s standing at the end of the row. Her hands are on her hips and she’s glaring hard at the both of them; Jeff rolls his eyes.
Annie leans forward, voice low.
“I mean,” she drawls. “Not that I don’t appreciate the idea of monopolizing your time, but I’m pretty sure I can manage.”
He shrugs. “My time’s still free.”
She’s confused. Or suspicious. Or confused and suspicious with a little bit of amusement. Lately, that’s all that she’s had, amusement and Jeff, amusement in the most unexpected way too - he’s been comfortable around her, or she’s sure that it’s more of a collective thing where Jeff is comfortable with them all. She’s okay with that. Really. She’s much more okay with that than even she expected; the point is that she’s coming to terms with him or maybe it’s the reverse. She’s learning still. That time management thing.
“So …” she trails off. She stands, brushing her hands against her hip. The librarian is still watching them, waiting. Annie raises an eyebrow, but then moves to Jeff anyway. “You want to fix my heater. Or you want to make it seem like you want to fix my heater. Is this just - do you just want to come over? Is that it?”
Jeff throws his hands up. “I’m talking good deeds for the day, Annie. That’s all. No strings attached.”
She crosses her arms in front of her.
“I’m serious,” he insists.
This is a bad idea. This is the worst kind of idea. Her head starts to spin with all kinds of bad luck scenarios that involve Jeff, her apartment, and the next morning. She stops herself from going too far; mostly because this is Jeff and she doesn’t want another headache, as much fun and weirdly complicated that kind of extra step is.
But she’s moving forward again, and her fingers draw over the collar of his jacket. She’s absent and not really thinking about it. She bites her lip. She studies the long slope of his throat and the way his jacket seems to cut against his skin. There’s room for a stupid comment but her throat grows tight and this is, well, this is a library and she doesn’t need that kind of trouble on top of everything else. Really. She doesn’t.
Annie sighs before she answers. “Fine,” she says.
There is an interlude. Or an intervention. Well, Britta’s convinced that it’s an intervention. Shirely’s convinced that Annie’s going to listen to them both when they hear that Jeff’s coming over at the end of the day to work with her heater or something. She isn’t exactly sure what he said to them.
They corner her in the bathroom.
“Jeff?” Britta says, and Annie pauses over the sink, washing her hands carefully. She doesn’t like being the bathroom too long. Yeah, okay. Girlfriend code - but girlfriend code should never leave seedy nightclubs or your high school experience, she decides.
Her lips purse.
“If I ask Abed and Troy,” she says slowly, “they’d go and try to build robots out of my heater and the parts. And since I can’t have one without the other, it just won’t work. You’re,” she points out too, “working tonight and working late and Shirley, you have your kids after school. The logical choice here, as much as I hate it, is Jeff and Jeff apparently thinks that since he’s a guy and somewhere in there car parts and heaters are sorta, like, the same thing, I figured that I should humor him.”
Both Britta and Shirley stare at her wide-eyed. Maybe she’s too calm. Maybe she’s too good. There is a little bit of panic starting to flutter in her stomach; she has an idea of why they’re here.
She turns, resting back against the seat. One of the stall doors open and another student comes out, ear buds on and iPod playing loudly. Annie blinks and shakes her head.
“Or maybe he gets lost and we call it a night.” She shrugs.
Britta frowns. Shirley gasps. She even starts to flutter her hands around, dropping her bag and heading to grab Annie’s hands.
“Is that even proper?” Shirley says. She frowns hard and places a hand on her belly instead. “Good lord. What if I have a baby girl? I don’t want my baby girl alone with a -”
“A Jeff Winger?” Britta snorts.
“He picked me up before. Like once because of the bus,” she says defensively. “And anyways, neither of you, as much as I appreciate it, are not my mother.”
They leave it alone then. Or they don’t. Both Britta and Shirley erupt into an argument about the finer points of raising a child to not like boys who fall into the Jeff Winger model. Annie wants to laugh, but figures it’s much wiser to ignore them both, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes.
This isn’t the best idea, she tells herself.
Good intentions?
Annie checks her watch. Maybe.
Definitely maybe. Jeff makes her put her bag in the back of his car, and then moves it to his trunk because he decides that her bag’s going to make too much of a dent in the leather.
“You didn’t have to come,” she tells him dryly. They arrive at her building in one piece. Or rather, Annie arrives at her building in one piece. There was a point in the drive where she saw him gun it over to eighty on the back roads and actually thought about calling her mother.
She forgets why she never asks Jeff for a ride. Never, ever asks Jeff for a ride. Usually the whole ‘life flashing before your eyes’ thing should sink in. Usually. She’s just tired of trying to figure out any inclinations she has for and because of Jeff. Not an excuse, of course. Really.
“I’m a gentleman, Annie.” Jeff rolls his eyes. “I thought you knew,” he says.
She snorts. “Say that with a straight face.”
He throws his hands up and she drops her bag. It’s freezing in the apartment. It doesn’t help that she’s left the window by her bed open, pulling in the rest of the nighttime air.
Annie changes her apartment around every once in awhile. She likes to keep it new. It’s a weird thing, she knows; there’s something about having your own place though, paying rent with money that she works for, and going home and actually meaning it. She doesn’t think that anyone gets it. Of course, they haven’t met her parents.
She pulls off her shoes, watching Jeff. He’s tentative. He pulls at his jacket, before dropping it and letting it rest against the back of her couch. He looks uncomfortable. Or maybe she wants him to look uncomfortable, watching as his eyes dart around her place, as if he hasn’t really seen it before. At least, she can now forget that Pierce has been here.
“It’s very … you,” he says slowly. “I mean, you have a lot of color in here. I was expecting more pink than usual.”
She shrugs. “It was pink awhile ago,” she says. “But then paint was on sale around the corner and I wanted to do something different. So it was the white and then I just splurged on a lot of flea market stuff.”
She points to her bed and the iron rails, the quilt that drapes haphazardly over the bed. There are pillows too, white and blue, and a mess of her sweaters and skirts from earlier in the morning. She points to the heater next, away from her window and looking like an odd appendage of her apartment. It’s painted white and chipping, and there are specks from the last two times she decided to go a little crazy with moving and changing things, red over the summer and yellow for the fall.
“Go fix it,” she says.
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
Annie groans and Jeff shrugs. They both stare at each other until Annie breaks away and rubs her eyes. She moves to her kitchen and slides herself onto the counter.
She lets out a loud, exaggerated sigh. “So how does it work then?”
“Tell me what happened,” he says. He moves to her too, leaning against the counter but not quite leaning against the counter. His hand grazes her knee. “Start from the beginning, I guess.”
So she’s a skeptic, okay. She picks out the different tones in his voice: usually when Jeff wants something it fluctuates between condescending and … condescending, maybe with too much effort and a little mix of being overly sweet. She’s thinking too much and she knows it, but part of her is too curious about why he’s here and in her space.
“It made a noise,” she says finally.
“Annie.”
She throws her hands up. “Jeff, it rattled. Then the pipes made this sound where it was like somebody was being held captive in my wall - ”
“Is there?”
“Jeff,” she smacks his arm. “Really? The walls moan. Then there was the smell and then I thought about calling my landlord but he looks like he could be on, well, Dateline and I’d rather not be a news story that people end up talking about me like that poor little girl who -”
“Not going to happen,” he cuts her off.
Annie glares.
“So what?” she asks too. “What are you going to do?”
Jeff shrugs. Of course. Of course.
It happens that two hours later, she is sitting on the bed and he is sitting on the floor, stretched out and staring at her heater like it’s some great medical mystery. She’s offered twice to call her landlord since, at the very least, he’s here and the man’s less of a creep when there’s company. But Jeff gets insulted and mutters something about pizza.
“It’s not going to fix itself,” she sings. The pages of her psychology book seems so fascinating all of the sudden; they’re sticking together and she tries not to watch Jeff as he gets up. “I mean, unless you’re magic.”
“Some people think I am,” he drawls.
She rolls her eyes.
He moves to her and the bed. He drops backwards and hits her bed hard, causing her papers to go everywhere and her pens to roll off onto the floor. She shakes her head.
“Right.”
He meets her gaze. “It’s not that bad in here,” he says. “You could actually be comfortable. Or you should just give in and buy more blankets.”
“Thanks,” she says dryly.
A part of her wants to ask, really ask: why are you here? She feels like they have this conversation all the time though, in both little and big ways. Sometimes there’s a moment and there are other people, too many people involved. Other times it’s just the two of them, and it’s the two of them being completely and utterly stupid, that the moment is nearly lost until one of them - both of them apologizes.
Jeff pokes her knee. She jumps and blushes, figures that she must’ve been staring at him. The corners of his mouth twitch.
“Don’t say it,” she murmurs, and shakes her head. She shifts and forgets about her books. She moves to sit on her knees, pressing her hands into the blankets. Her fingers flex nervously. “I’m not calling him now. It’s too late.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
She rolls her eyes. “Are you comfortable?” and she tries to be dry and avoid the obvious, but he’s looking at her, all of the sudden, like there’s nowhere else to hide and she doesn’t know how to take it. It starts like this too: her throat gets tight, her fingers curl in her skirt, and she’s trying to remember if she did, in fact, call her landlord and somehow, she’s the one that’s making excuses. It’s likely. Well, no. But she feels like it all of the sudden.
“You’re going to ask me,” he guesses.
“No -” she sighs. “I guess I’m a little curious.”
“Liar.”
Her mouth twitches. “You came,” she points out. “And you haven’t left.”
“I’ll call your landlord for you.”
“That’s not the point,” she laughs. She shakes her head, rubbing her eyes. “You’re not good at this, huh?”
“What gave it away?” he asks, rolling his eyes.
She shrugs. “Your face.”
Jeff smirks. There’s a weird pause and then he starts to laugh. It’s nervous, but it’s not awkward - she only shifts uncomfortably because it’s very, very Jeff. He sits up too, rubbing a hand over his face and then standing. He looks down at her and then reaches forward, tugging some of her hair away from her eyes. She bites the inside of her cheek, watching him.
“I should go,” he says, and she’s suddenly very, very relieved. The questions are there, of course. But they’re always going to be there - she has to accept that one way or another.
Her hand brushes against his, pushing it away.
“Give me the number,” he tells her. “Then I’ll go.”
Her eyes roll. “So - okay,” she says slowly. She’s not going to try and give this any thought. She’s going to try. But it’s been awhile and she can’t think of any other reason why he just decided to stay. “I’m confused,” she murmurs.
“Don’t mess with a good thing,” he says. “Like me being good company. And yeah, okay, I guess I could’ve tried to fix your heater but then I’d have a third roommate and let’s face it, joining the priesthood would look a lot better.”
She throws her hands up. She groans too, slipping off the bed. Her skirt is a mess against her legs and she nearly trips over her shoes, heading back to the kitchen. This isn’t a surprise, she thinks.
And then idea starts to frustrate her more. It builds and builds until she stops in the kitchen, over the tea kettle and she’s just so angry that her stupid heater won’t work and none of them can do anything without each other - which is nice, it’s really nice when she doesn’t want to have five minutes to herself and she isn’t overly curious as to why Jeff is still, well, Jeff in the scheme of everything that is her life.
“You’re a jerk,” she snaps, whirling around. She nearly drops the kettle and her hands shuffle it back onto the stove. Jeff stops moving around with his jacket, watching her curiously. “Is this one of your things? You know, when you like to go and prove a point? Or whatever. I don’t know. I don’t know or get either, Jeff.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. He shrugs too and that, well, that makes everything even worse. Her eyes narrow. He holds up a hand. “I just came to -”
“Did they pick you?” she cuts him off.
“No.” She glares. He sighs. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t want to feed the fire, but Shirley’s got some serious power with that -”
“Finish that sentence and I’ll make you fix my heater. In fact, I’ll make you pay for it,” she says. He smirks. It’s challenge or she makes into a challenge, moving forward again and sort of cornering him in the middle of her apartment. Her lip starts to quiver. Her eyes brighten and grow larger. Her hands move to her hips. “Jeff -”
“Stop it,” he warns.
“Jeff.”
“Stop it. Stop doing that face. Stop - I get it.”
She almost smirks. “Jeffery,” she says. She lowers her voice. She bats her lashes. She’s not stupid and if anything, that kind of self-awareness that she spent years hiding from has come out in full-force. She reaches forward and pokes his chest. Her gaze calms and she flashes an easy grin. “You’re too easy,” she shakes her head. “Just go and I guess - just tell everybody everything is fine and I’ll figure it out in the morning.”
“Fine,” he says.
“Fine,” she says.
For a moment, she thinks there’s going to be something more - only because it’s Jeff, it’s really Jeff who doesn’t like not having the last word. He stares at her and sighs. He shakes his head too, stepping back and then around her. Her shoulders slump without waiting and this is the part, she thinks, where she starts to wrap her head around the idea that he may or may not have just willingly spent time with her that went well-past a favor for the others.
Turning though, she just catches him at the door.
Her heater is still broken. She is late to anthropology again; her landlord came too early in the morning with promises to fix it and then just … didn’t. Her seat at the back table is empty and for that, she’s grateful until Abed turns and waves and she realizes that Jeff, in fact, is taking the seat next to her in the middle of the lecture and somewhere from the back.
“Late night?” he asks dryly. He pushes over a cup of coffee and she blinks, taking it gratefully while shooting him a cautious smile.
“Thanks,” she manages. She takes a sip and doesn’t burn her tongue. “I mean, I think,” she adds. She waits for the others to turn in their seats too, half-expecting some sort of selective intervention that involved their entire psychology class without the luxury of going somewhere and hiding in embarrassment. Which, well, she would totally head to the library or the bathroom but she’s not that great, obviously at hiding from any of them.
“Did you read?” Jeff asks.
“Yeah,” she says. “I did.”
It’s the extent of the conversation. Starburns and Britta erupt into a mildly fascinating argument on human nature, society, and cocaine that she’s pretty sure Britta wins only because Starburns and cocaine and in a public setting is creepy enough.
She applauds for her friend too because girl power, or whatever, and smiles appropriately for her and, well don’t tell him, for Jeff when Shirley turns around to check on him and her. She doesn’t ask why he’s late too, doesn’t bother; if it were a point of contention, she’d feel some real need to get involved but lately she’s just sort of checked out.
“Fix your heater?”
She blinks. Her fingers brush over the lid of her coffee. “No,” she says to Jeff. They watch the front now. There’s a presentation, or, well, something that’s supposed to be a presentation. Everybody’s watching as one of the students tries to explain the hunter-gather societies with interpretive dance - Amanda, Jenny, Bunny? She looks up at Jeff for confirmation. He raises an eyebrow and then holds up his hands.
“I didn’t,” he says.
She smirks. “I didn’t anything.”
“But you were.”
She laughs softly. “I didn’t have to.” They watch as Bunny, Muffy - maybe it’s really Bunny, bends down and tries to explain the process of picking. Annie shakes her head.
“I’m not going to even look at you,” she adds. “Because -”
“At least I’m subtle,” he says.
“Or so you’d like to think.”
He snorts. “You’re almost funny when you’re cranky.”
She rolls her eyes. She doesn’t say anything else because she’d really like to try and pay attention, that being relative of course.
Jeff’s elbow brushes against her arm. Her hand curls around the coffee, if only to protect it because if it spills, and it’s probably going to spill since everything ridiculous seems to happen in this classroom, she’ll lose it.
But it’s not about that either, it’s about the fact that she doesn’t understand, and she doesn’t know if she wants to go and be that girl again when she’s not and all he really does is make her overanalyze herself to death. Both her parents do that enough to her already. Sitting here and wondering if she’s going to get out of this and actually get everything done is doing that already. Why is it, she wonders, is that the most uncomplicated complicated is the one that gets under her skin.
“I should send you my heater repair bill,” she mutters to him.
Annie swears she hears something like a laugh. It’s easy to think though: saved by the end of class.
She avoids the girls’ bathroom. It gets pretty obvious by her fourth class when Abed looks at her, blinks, and says: “it could be worse,” like she’s substituting her life with a romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore.
Her mind goes back to the signs of the universe again, well-placed and just irritating. Her mother hasn’t called yet. But she will. No one’s given her advice yet. But they will. She’s probably, like, doomed to lose her phone, her bus pass, and tear her skirt, stockings or her backpack. She’s seen Jeff too and just decided to walk the other way.
But he catches her, or scares the hell out of her, right when she’s walking out of her English class and into the library, pulling her back to the corner where they were yesterday. Where she was until he decided to interrupt. Tomato, tomatoe.
“What,” she breathes. He gives her one more light push, his fingers wrapped around the straps of her backpack. “What do you want?”
“You’re avoiding me,” he says, “and before we do this whole you’re avoiding me, you’re not avoiding me, I don’t want Shirley to give me the eye or Britta to kill me because Shirley’s giving her the eye because she will and she is and let’s get this out.”
And it’s stupid, really. It’s really stupid because she’s looking at him and not really sure where this is going to go because she can’t think about where it’s going to go, she, well, she promised herself, she keeps promising herself that she’s not going to think this hard. Oh god.
“We’re going there,” she blurts. She waves her hands forward, pushing Jeff’s away from her. Distance. Space. Necessary. “Why are you going there? Why are you making me think -”
“So it’s my fault?”
She snorts. “Jeff, like, ninety-four percent of the time I’m actually okay with sort of being your friend and am well-adjusted enough to navigate through your mood things because of the several learning experiences you provide all of us.”
His mouth quirks and he leans forward. “Mood swings, huh?”
“Stop,” she narrows her eyes. She waves her hands again. “Stop doing that,” she says. “We’re the library -”
“And who the hell cares?”
I do, she wants to say. I care. I care too much and really I should be worried about my creepy landlord and going home to find out that half my underwear drawer is missing. But she doesn’t say that.
Instead, she stops thinking. Stops thinking about universal signs; or that fact that it’s stupid, all of this is really stupid, and maybe he’s half right about his maturity and her maturity and oh well what the hell.
She kisses him.
She kisses him with her hands thrusting forward, her fingers grabbing onto fistfuls of his stupid sweater. His books drop and they hit the carpet. There’s a laugh and she remembers, or well, she lies to herself - something about being in the library but hidden against a bookshelf or close to one or -
Oh.
She’s still kissing him. Oh.
His mouth opens slowly. She doesn’t really care if it’s because he’s surprised or shocked or whatever; she can taste coffee, just as his tongue rolls over hers, and feels his hands push into her hips. His mouth isn’t supposed to be this warm, she can’t remember it as this warm and she’s tugging him closer and closer trying to get back those small memories like it’s a habit. Her bag feels heavy against her shoulders too and he turns, no, she turns and he presses her back against one of the shelves. She feels some of the books wobble against her shoulders and oh, there’s that brief thought of what if -
“We’re going to get caught,” she finishes against his mouth, and she feels him smile too. One of his hands moves to her hair and she’s not really sure if he’s thinking straight either. “And then -” her teeth nips at his lip, “- and then we’re going to do that thing where you try to act mature -”
“Probably,” he agrees.
He pulls her back against him and she opens her mouth against his, sighing softly as his fingers slide back against her neck, then along the straps of her bag to pull it off. It hits the ground too, joining his books and she almost, just almost goes and wraps her arms around his neck. But that’s too soon.
When she pulls back, her eyes are closed. She feels his mouth graze hers again, one more time, before she makes a grab for his hand.
Their fingers lace; she doesn’t smile, not yet, or maybe it’s more of a moment where she doesn’t need to. It’s comfortable and it’s one of those weird things where it’s supposed to be comfortable. She gives him a half-smile and he leans over, as if it were nothing special, catching the corner of her mouth with his. She flushes. He shrugs and she tries not too much of it because it shouldn’t be.
It always feels like there should be something to say. They can hear the group coming and she’s letting herself imagine the scenario where the librarian heads back and catches the mess on the floor.
Well, never a dull moment. He’s still the first to let go.
(There’s always an interlude though; this isn’t the part that they talk about it, but it’s the part where if you caught her, instead of catching him, she’d gently explain to you that it’s their version of five minutes away from everybody else. It’s not that she doesn’t know how to talk to him, or that he doesn’t know how to talk to her; it’s about patience and Annie’s been here a lot longer than he has.
Interludes with Jeff are different and that much she knows, she understands, so when he says, “let’s go grab something,” and looks at her like he expects her to get it, she gets it and decides to lead the way. It’s not about him and that much she can give him; if he wants her, and she wants him, it has to be something honest.
He buys her another coffee before study group. He says something that makes her laugh in line but it’s too quick and she wants to, well, give in and really touch her lips or some romantic inclination. She wants to have one and she can only smile. They’re late getting back to the room then and she doesn’t care.)
It’s all about circles, unfortunately.
The next time it’s a book.
She forgets her book in his car. Not just a book, the book, but the very last book she needs for her project due the next morning. It's stupid, right? But Jeff giving anyone of them a ride home in his car gives them anxiety; it's usually a round of: jesus, don't touch that or really, Britta are you trying to give me a heart-attack? Which is probably why none of them like to go home with Jeff. Or, well, the near-death experience like the last two times before this one.
But it's one of those weird, rare moments when she does and she forgets her book. You know, the one she needs to write a paper for her history class. The one that's making her stare down at her phone like it's a strange, foreign object that she's never seen before.
There is a knock on her door.
Annie is quiet, confused and checks the clock by her bed. It's late and she moves carefully, taking measure of the bat balanced near her coat rack. It's a dangerous neighborhood and she's not stupid.
"Here," Jeff says. The door isn't even open halfway and he's shoving the book into her hands. He looks sleepy. "I could hear you stressing out from all the way across town."
She snorts. "I - uh, thanks?" she takes the book and folds it against her chest. Downstairs, there is a loud burst of laughter and the sound of glass breaking. She rolls her eyes. "You could've -" she stops because she doesn't know what to say.
He slides his hands into his jacket. His mouth purses and she watches him shift from foot to foot. She wonders if she just go and say goodnight, but she's, well, suddenly unable to find her voice. Or the desire to move.
"Just call next time," he says, and finally, there's this weird crack of a smile, his mouth twisting - it's just never quite there. He gets this look too and she can feel the heat rise to her cheeks. Her head cocks to the side. "We'll figure it out," he mutters.
So Annie does the sensible thing. Her hand curls in his jacket and she leans up to kiss him - no, no, not like that. That's trouble, she remembers. She remembers the library and the two stupid times before that. Instead, her lips press against his jaw. She lingers, maybe sighs a little, and his hand pats her hip. Good friends, right?
When she pulls back, she manages breathe. "Thanks," she tells him.
Jeff offers an awkward smile and shrug. Her fingers curl around her door and she considers, considers saying something like talking might be nice now but she’s tired and she has a paper and there’s nothing like regretting an invitation that sounds that lame.
Annie steps back to opens the door a little wider. He looks surprised and she’s not going to ask, she decides. Baby steps. He can always leave. She can always ask him to leave. She could make a list of excuses and one by one argue for reasonable interest of why he should go or stay or go again.
So she says it: “The heat is working.”
disable with care
community ; jeff/annie ; 6,000 words ; PG
so it’s true. your mother didn’t tell you about this one. general spoilers.
-
Her heater breaks.
Annie is convinced that this is part of the universe’s master plan to make her as miserable as possible by Friday. What follows is a series of uncomfortable events: she is late to anthropology and has to sit next to Starburns, her landlord is creepier than ever and leaves two weird messages on her voicemail, and her mother wants to have an early dinner on Thursday to talk about things. Whatever that means.
“I’ll just buy more sweaters,” she tells Britta weakly. They are in the bathroom after lunch, waiting for Shirley to meet them. Annie sits on the sink, swinging her legs and staring at the floor. “I think Starburns smiling at me this morning was the biggest sign of all.”
Britta shakes her head. “Yellow teeth?”
“Yellow teeth with spots,” Annie confirms.
Both girls grimace.
“I would tell you could stay with me,” Britta says quickly. Annie raises an eyebrow but the other girl shrugs. “But I think for the sanctity and sanity of our friendship, it’ll be a better idea if you didn’t.”
This isn’t about charity, Annie wants to say; part of her is almost ready to go and pull out the fit. But she remember it’s the morning, and there’s probably some cosmic reasoning behind the fact that her heater broke and she’s already obsessing. Instead, she forces a smile and tries not to jump when the door to the bathroom flies open.
Shirley starts spitting things out about Chang. Annie shakes her head. “Thanks,” she says. “I appreciate it. I just - I’ll figure it out.”
She hopes it says quiet.
Except it doesn’t. Of course, it doesn’t. In fact, it was stupid enough to think that she’d make it all the way through Literature and then the library before someone says to her, “oh hey, Annie, heard about your place,” like she’s afflicted with some rare, unseen form of leprosy. It wasn’t Britta because Britta tries to explain to her that Shirley, even ranting, caught the tail end of their conversation and decided that instead of ranting about Chang it might best to worry about Annie.
It’s all about good intentions, apparently.
But she’s not in the mood, so much so that she takes to walking in between shelves and stacks until she finds a corner of the library that doesn’t look into the study group room or out of it so that anyone of them can come and find her and make her face the firing squad around the table.
“It’s just a heater, guys,” she says out loud. She opens her homework over a table by the window. It’s too small and she ends up balancing her biology book against the glass. The chair’s awkward too but she keeps practicing. “I’ll take care of it. It’s just a heater.”
“What?”
She jumps and there’s Jeff, over her shoulder, leaning into her space with a mix of amusement and irritation. Her book trips against the glass and stumbles onto her table and her homework; it slams hard and there’s a loud shh from somewhere up front.
“You’re such a creep,” she whispers loudly.
“Why are you here?”
Annie rolls her eyes. She doesn’t turn around.
“Other than the obvious,” Jeff continues. “You’re fifteen minutes late and I’m, well, I’m only the search party because I had a call.”
“You always have a call,” she says.
He smirks. “What’s wrong with your heater?”
She throws her hands up. Sweaters, she thinks. Just buy a lot of sweaters. It’s a logical assumption considering it’s going to be spring soon and then she can get away with opening her windows. There’s the noise, but she’s not going to humor the noise and what they don’t get is that this place is hers, very much hers, and heater or not she’s going to stick it through.
Her mouth closes. Jeff raises an eyebrow. “I said that out loud,” she groans. She claps her hand over her mouth and groans again. Of course, she did. “You should just … go away,” she mutters.
Jeff shrugs and steps away from her, moving to the window ledge. He drops his stuff and slides up onto the ledge, leaning back against the glass. He’s studying her curiously. She doesn’t know if she’s uncomfortable or not; the trick, really, is to let it be until after whatever conversation takes place.
She’s not going to analyze it. No, no. It’s bad enough that this morning she thought she was going to die when the pipes snapped and that low, weird moan seem to come from inside the wall. She’s seen too many horror films thanks to Abed and the last film project that he had - zombies and axe murders, even on budget, are not the greatest combination when you live alone.
“If you’re skipping,” Jeff says. “So am I.”
“What are you, five?”
He shrugs. “I’m just saying. I’m embarrassed everyday when I’m there, what makes you any different? So if you skip, I’m skipping.”
She rolls her eyes.
“And besides, unlike me, those people in there are, however misguided, actually worried about you and that crappy apartment that you live in. I’m not saying jump the gun and actually accept whatever creepy offer Pierce will throw at you by the end of the day, but -”
“I’m not going in,” she says. “And I appreciate it. Really, I do. But just because you get five minutes all the time, doesn’t mean I can’t. Or Troy can’t. Or Shirley. Or Britta - you don’t have a monopoly on wanting five minutes to yourself, Jeffery.”
“If I fix the heater, will you go in?”
Annie laughs. Annie actually laughs. She tries to picture Jeff, hunched over a manual and trying to read about pipes and wrenches. She’s entirely sure that it involves miracles and hospitals if he’d even attempt to fix it anyway. Jeff, like Pierce, will probably throw money and give some guy a call. Well, Pierce would just throw money.
“You’re going to hurt yourself on the account of me?” she asks, and then laughs one more time. There is a loud shh and both of them turn towards the librarian that’s standing at the end of the row. Her hands are on her hips and she’s glaring hard at the both of them; Jeff rolls his eyes.
Annie leans forward, voice low.
“I mean,” she drawls. “Not that I don’t appreciate the idea of monopolizing your time, but I’m pretty sure I can manage.”
He shrugs. “My time’s still free.”
She’s confused. Or suspicious. Or confused and suspicious with a little bit of amusement. Lately, that’s all that she’s had, amusement and Jeff, amusement in the most unexpected way too - he’s been comfortable around her, or she’s sure that it’s more of a collective thing where Jeff is comfortable with them all. She’s okay with that. Really. She’s much more okay with that than even she expected; the point is that she’s coming to terms with him or maybe it’s the reverse. She’s learning still. That time management thing.
“So …” she trails off. She stands, brushing her hands against her hip. The librarian is still watching them, waiting. Annie raises an eyebrow, but then moves to Jeff anyway. “You want to fix my heater. Or you want to make it seem like you want to fix my heater. Is this just - do you just want to come over? Is that it?”
Jeff throws his hands up. “I’m talking good deeds for the day, Annie. That’s all. No strings attached.”
She crosses her arms in front of her.
“I’m serious,” he insists.
This is a bad idea. This is the worst kind of idea. Her head starts to spin with all kinds of bad luck scenarios that involve Jeff, her apartment, and the next morning. She stops herself from going too far; mostly because this is Jeff and she doesn’t want another headache, as much fun and weirdly complicated that kind of extra step is.
But she’s moving forward again, and her fingers draw over the collar of his jacket. She’s absent and not really thinking about it. She bites her lip. She studies the long slope of his throat and the way his jacket seems to cut against his skin. There’s room for a stupid comment but her throat grows tight and this is, well, this is a library and she doesn’t need that kind of trouble on top of everything else. Really. She doesn’t.
Annie sighs before she answers. “Fine,” she says.
There is an interlude. Or an intervention. Well, Britta’s convinced that it’s an intervention. Shirely’s convinced that Annie’s going to listen to them both when they hear that Jeff’s coming over at the end of the day to work with her heater or something. She isn’t exactly sure what he said to them.
They corner her in the bathroom.
“Jeff?” Britta says, and Annie pauses over the sink, washing her hands carefully. She doesn’t like being the bathroom too long. Yeah, okay. Girlfriend code - but girlfriend code should never leave seedy nightclubs or your high school experience, she decides.
Her lips purse.
“If I ask Abed and Troy,” she says slowly, “they’d go and try to build robots out of my heater and the parts. And since I can’t have one without the other, it just won’t work. You’re,” she points out too, “working tonight and working late and Shirley, you have your kids after school. The logical choice here, as much as I hate it, is Jeff and Jeff apparently thinks that since he’s a guy and somewhere in there car parts and heaters are sorta, like, the same thing, I figured that I should humor him.”
Both Britta and Shirley stare at her wide-eyed. Maybe she’s too calm. Maybe she’s too good. There is a little bit of panic starting to flutter in her stomach; she has an idea of why they’re here.
She turns, resting back against the seat. One of the stall doors open and another student comes out, ear buds on and iPod playing loudly. Annie blinks and shakes her head.
“Or maybe he gets lost and we call it a night.” She shrugs.
Britta frowns. Shirley gasps. She even starts to flutter her hands around, dropping her bag and heading to grab Annie’s hands.
“Is that even proper?” Shirley says. She frowns hard and places a hand on her belly instead. “Good lord. What if I have a baby girl? I don’t want my baby girl alone with a -”
“A Jeff Winger?” Britta snorts.
“He picked me up before. Like once because of the bus,” she says defensively. “And anyways, neither of you, as much as I appreciate it, are not my mother.”
They leave it alone then. Or they don’t. Both Britta and Shirley erupt into an argument about the finer points of raising a child to not like boys who fall into the Jeff Winger model. Annie wants to laugh, but figures it’s much wiser to ignore them both, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes.
This isn’t the best idea, she tells herself.
Good intentions?
Annie checks her watch. Maybe.
Definitely maybe. Jeff makes her put her bag in the back of his car, and then moves it to his trunk because he decides that her bag’s going to make too much of a dent in the leather.
“You didn’t have to come,” she tells him dryly. They arrive at her building in one piece. Or rather, Annie arrives at her building in one piece. There was a point in the drive where she saw him gun it over to eighty on the back roads and actually thought about calling her mother.
She forgets why she never asks Jeff for a ride. Never, ever asks Jeff for a ride. Usually the whole ‘life flashing before your eyes’ thing should sink in. Usually. She’s just tired of trying to figure out any inclinations she has for and because of Jeff. Not an excuse, of course. Really.
“I’m a gentleman, Annie.” Jeff rolls his eyes. “I thought you knew,” he says.
She snorts. “Say that with a straight face.”
He throws his hands up and she drops her bag. It’s freezing in the apartment. It doesn’t help that she’s left the window by her bed open, pulling in the rest of the nighttime air.
Annie changes her apartment around every once in awhile. She likes to keep it new. It’s a weird thing, she knows; there’s something about having your own place though, paying rent with money that she works for, and going home and actually meaning it. She doesn’t think that anyone gets it. Of course, they haven’t met her parents.
She pulls off her shoes, watching Jeff. He’s tentative. He pulls at his jacket, before dropping it and letting it rest against the back of her couch. He looks uncomfortable. Or maybe she wants him to look uncomfortable, watching as his eyes dart around her place, as if he hasn’t really seen it before. At least, she can now forget that Pierce has been here.
“It’s very … you,” he says slowly. “I mean, you have a lot of color in here. I was expecting more pink than usual.”
She shrugs. “It was pink awhile ago,” she says. “But then paint was on sale around the corner and I wanted to do something different. So it was the white and then I just splurged on a lot of flea market stuff.”
She points to her bed and the iron rails, the quilt that drapes haphazardly over the bed. There are pillows too, white and blue, and a mess of her sweaters and skirts from earlier in the morning. She points to the heater next, away from her window and looking like an odd appendage of her apartment. It’s painted white and chipping, and there are specks from the last two times she decided to go a little crazy with moving and changing things, red over the summer and yellow for the fall.
“Go fix it,” she says.
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
Annie groans and Jeff shrugs. They both stare at each other until Annie breaks away and rubs her eyes. She moves to her kitchen and slides herself onto the counter.
She lets out a loud, exaggerated sigh. “So how does it work then?”
“Tell me what happened,” he says. He moves to her too, leaning against the counter but not quite leaning against the counter. His hand grazes her knee. “Start from the beginning, I guess.”
So she’s a skeptic, okay. She picks out the different tones in his voice: usually when Jeff wants something it fluctuates between condescending and … condescending, maybe with too much effort and a little mix of being overly sweet. She’s thinking too much and she knows it, but part of her is too curious about why he’s here and in her space.
“It made a noise,” she says finally.
“Annie.”
She throws her hands up. “Jeff, it rattled. Then the pipes made this sound where it was like somebody was being held captive in my wall - ”
“Is there?”
“Jeff,” she smacks his arm. “Really? The walls moan. Then there was the smell and then I thought about calling my landlord but he looks like he could be on, well, Dateline and I’d rather not be a news story that people end up talking about me like that poor little girl who -”
“Not going to happen,” he cuts her off.
Annie glares.
“So what?” she asks too. “What are you going to do?”
Jeff shrugs. Of course. Of course.
It happens that two hours later, she is sitting on the bed and he is sitting on the floor, stretched out and staring at her heater like it’s some great medical mystery. She’s offered twice to call her landlord since, at the very least, he’s here and the man’s less of a creep when there’s company. But Jeff gets insulted and mutters something about pizza.
“It’s not going to fix itself,” she sings. The pages of her psychology book seems so fascinating all of the sudden; they’re sticking together and she tries not to watch Jeff as he gets up. “I mean, unless you’re magic.”
“Some people think I am,” he drawls.
She rolls her eyes.
He moves to her and the bed. He drops backwards and hits her bed hard, causing her papers to go everywhere and her pens to roll off onto the floor. She shakes her head.
“Right.”
He meets her gaze. “It’s not that bad in here,” he says. “You could actually be comfortable. Or you should just give in and buy more blankets.”
“Thanks,” she says dryly.
A part of her wants to ask, really ask: why are you here? She feels like they have this conversation all the time though, in both little and big ways. Sometimes there’s a moment and there are other people, too many people involved. Other times it’s just the two of them, and it’s the two of them being completely and utterly stupid, that the moment is nearly lost until one of them - both of them apologizes.
Jeff pokes her knee. She jumps and blushes, figures that she must’ve been staring at him. The corners of his mouth twitch.
“Don’t say it,” she murmurs, and shakes her head. She shifts and forgets about her books. She moves to sit on her knees, pressing her hands into the blankets. Her fingers flex nervously. “I’m not calling him now. It’s too late.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
She rolls her eyes. “Are you comfortable?” and she tries to be dry and avoid the obvious, but he’s looking at her, all of the sudden, like there’s nowhere else to hide and she doesn’t know how to take it. It starts like this too: her throat gets tight, her fingers curl in her skirt, and she’s trying to remember if she did, in fact, call her landlord and somehow, she’s the one that’s making excuses. It’s likely. Well, no. But she feels like it all of the sudden.
“You’re going to ask me,” he guesses.
“No -” she sighs. “I guess I’m a little curious.”
“Liar.”
Her mouth twitches. “You came,” she points out. “And you haven’t left.”
“I’ll call your landlord for you.”
“That’s not the point,” she laughs. She shakes her head, rubbing her eyes. “You’re not good at this, huh?”
“What gave it away?” he asks, rolling his eyes.
She shrugs. “Your face.”
Jeff smirks. There’s a weird pause and then he starts to laugh. It’s nervous, but it’s not awkward - she only shifts uncomfortably because it’s very, very Jeff. He sits up too, rubbing a hand over his face and then standing. He looks down at her and then reaches forward, tugging some of her hair away from her eyes. She bites the inside of her cheek, watching him.
“I should go,” he says, and she’s suddenly very, very relieved. The questions are there, of course. But they’re always going to be there - she has to accept that one way or another.
Her hand brushes against his, pushing it away.
“Give me the number,” he tells her. “Then I’ll go.”
Her eyes roll. “So - okay,” she says slowly. She’s not going to try and give this any thought. She’s going to try. But it’s been awhile and she can’t think of any other reason why he just decided to stay. “I’m confused,” she murmurs.
“Don’t mess with a good thing,” he says. “Like me being good company. And yeah, okay, I guess I could’ve tried to fix your heater but then I’d have a third roommate and let’s face it, joining the priesthood would look a lot better.”
She throws her hands up. She groans too, slipping off the bed. Her skirt is a mess against her legs and she nearly trips over her shoes, heading back to the kitchen. This isn’t a surprise, she thinks.
And then idea starts to frustrate her more. It builds and builds until she stops in the kitchen, over the tea kettle and she’s just so angry that her stupid heater won’t work and none of them can do anything without each other - which is nice, it’s really nice when she doesn’t want to have five minutes to herself and she isn’t overly curious as to why Jeff is still, well, Jeff in the scheme of everything that is her life.
“You’re a jerk,” she snaps, whirling around. She nearly drops the kettle and her hands shuffle it back onto the stove. Jeff stops moving around with his jacket, watching her curiously. “Is this one of your things? You know, when you like to go and prove a point? Or whatever. I don’t know. I don’t know or get either, Jeff.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. He shrugs too and that, well, that makes everything even worse. Her eyes narrow. He holds up a hand. “I just came to -”
“Did they pick you?” she cuts him off.
“No.” She glares. He sighs. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t want to feed the fire, but Shirley’s got some serious power with that -”
“Finish that sentence and I’ll make you fix my heater. In fact, I’ll make you pay for it,” she says. He smirks. It’s challenge or she makes into a challenge, moving forward again and sort of cornering him in the middle of her apartment. Her lip starts to quiver. Her eyes brighten and grow larger. Her hands move to her hips. “Jeff -”
“Stop it,” he warns.
“Jeff.”
“Stop it. Stop doing that face. Stop - I get it.”
She almost smirks. “Jeffery,” she says. She lowers her voice. She bats her lashes. She’s not stupid and if anything, that kind of self-awareness that she spent years hiding from has come out in full-force. She reaches forward and pokes his chest. Her gaze calms and she flashes an easy grin. “You’re too easy,” she shakes her head. “Just go and I guess - just tell everybody everything is fine and I’ll figure it out in the morning.”
“Fine,” he says.
“Fine,” she says.
For a moment, she thinks there’s going to be something more - only because it’s Jeff, it’s really Jeff who doesn’t like not having the last word. He stares at her and sighs. He shakes his head too, stepping back and then around her. Her shoulders slump without waiting and this is the part, she thinks, where she starts to wrap her head around the idea that he may or may not have just willingly spent time with her that went well-past a favor for the others.
Turning though, she just catches him at the door.
Her heater is still broken. She is late to anthropology again; her landlord came too early in the morning with promises to fix it and then just … didn’t. Her seat at the back table is empty and for that, she’s grateful until Abed turns and waves and she realizes that Jeff, in fact, is taking the seat next to her in the middle of the lecture and somewhere from the back.
“Late night?” he asks dryly. He pushes over a cup of coffee and she blinks, taking it gratefully while shooting him a cautious smile.
“Thanks,” she manages. She takes a sip and doesn’t burn her tongue. “I mean, I think,” she adds. She waits for the others to turn in their seats too, half-expecting some sort of selective intervention that involved their entire psychology class without the luxury of going somewhere and hiding in embarrassment. Which, well, she would totally head to the library or the bathroom but she’s not that great, obviously at hiding from any of them.
“Did you read?” Jeff asks.
“Yeah,” she says. “I did.”
It’s the extent of the conversation. Starburns and Britta erupt into a mildly fascinating argument on human nature, society, and cocaine that she’s pretty sure Britta wins only because Starburns and cocaine and in a public setting is creepy enough.
She applauds for her friend too because girl power, or whatever, and smiles appropriately for her and, well don’t tell him, for Jeff when Shirley turns around to check on him and her. She doesn’t ask why he’s late too, doesn’t bother; if it were a point of contention, she’d feel some real need to get involved but lately she’s just sort of checked out.
“Fix your heater?”
She blinks. Her fingers brush over the lid of her coffee. “No,” she says to Jeff. They watch the front now. There’s a presentation, or, well, something that’s supposed to be a presentation. Everybody’s watching as one of the students tries to explain the hunter-gather societies with interpretive dance - Amanda, Jenny, Bunny? She looks up at Jeff for confirmation. He raises an eyebrow and then holds up his hands.
“I didn’t,” he says.
She smirks. “I didn’t anything.”
“But you were.”
She laughs softly. “I didn’t have to.” They watch as Bunny, Muffy - maybe it’s really Bunny, bends down and tries to explain the process of picking. Annie shakes her head.
“I’m not going to even look at you,” she adds. “Because -”
“At least I’m subtle,” he says.
“Or so you’d like to think.”
He snorts. “You’re almost funny when you’re cranky.”
She rolls her eyes. She doesn’t say anything else because she’d really like to try and pay attention, that being relative of course.
Jeff’s elbow brushes against her arm. Her hand curls around the coffee, if only to protect it because if it spills, and it’s probably going to spill since everything ridiculous seems to happen in this classroom, she’ll lose it.
But it’s not about that either, it’s about the fact that she doesn’t understand, and she doesn’t know if she wants to go and be that girl again when she’s not and all he really does is make her overanalyze herself to death. Both her parents do that enough to her already. Sitting here and wondering if she’s going to get out of this and actually get everything done is doing that already. Why is it, she wonders, is that the most uncomplicated complicated is the one that gets under her skin.
“I should send you my heater repair bill,” she mutters to him.
Annie swears she hears something like a laugh. It’s easy to think though: saved by the end of class.
She avoids the girls’ bathroom. It gets pretty obvious by her fourth class when Abed looks at her, blinks, and says: “it could be worse,” like she’s substituting her life with a romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore.
Her mind goes back to the signs of the universe again, well-placed and just irritating. Her mother hasn’t called yet. But she will. No one’s given her advice yet. But they will. She’s probably, like, doomed to lose her phone, her bus pass, and tear her skirt, stockings or her backpack. She’s seen Jeff too and just decided to walk the other way.
But he catches her, or scares the hell out of her, right when she’s walking out of her English class and into the library, pulling her back to the corner where they were yesterday. Where she was until he decided to interrupt. Tomato, tomatoe.
“What,” she breathes. He gives her one more light push, his fingers wrapped around the straps of her backpack. “What do you want?”
“You’re avoiding me,” he says, “and before we do this whole you’re avoiding me, you’re not avoiding me, I don’t want Shirley to give me the eye or Britta to kill me because Shirley’s giving her the eye because she will and she is and let’s get this out.”
And it’s stupid, really. It’s really stupid because she’s looking at him and not really sure where this is going to go because she can’t think about where it’s going to go, she, well, she promised herself, she keeps promising herself that she’s not going to think this hard. Oh god.
“We’re going there,” she blurts. She waves her hands forward, pushing Jeff’s away from her. Distance. Space. Necessary. “Why are you going there? Why are you making me think -”
“So it’s my fault?”
She snorts. “Jeff, like, ninety-four percent of the time I’m actually okay with sort of being your friend and am well-adjusted enough to navigate through your mood things because of the several learning experiences you provide all of us.”
His mouth quirks and he leans forward. “Mood swings, huh?”
“Stop,” she narrows her eyes. She waves her hands again. “Stop doing that,” she says. “We’re the library -”
“And who the hell cares?”
I do, she wants to say. I care. I care too much and really I should be worried about my creepy landlord and going home to find out that half my underwear drawer is missing. But she doesn’t say that.
Instead, she stops thinking. Stops thinking about universal signs; or that fact that it’s stupid, all of this is really stupid, and maybe he’s half right about his maturity and her maturity and oh well what the hell.
She kisses him.
She kisses him with her hands thrusting forward, her fingers grabbing onto fistfuls of his stupid sweater. His books drop and they hit the carpet. There’s a laugh and she remembers, or well, she lies to herself - something about being in the library but hidden against a bookshelf or close to one or -
Oh.
She’s still kissing him. Oh.
His mouth opens slowly. She doesn’t really care if it’s because he’s surprised or shocked or whatever; she can taste coffee, just as his tongue rolls over hers, and feels his hands push into her hips. His mouth isn’t supposed to be this warm, she can’t remember it as this warm and she’s tugging him closer and closer trying to get back those small memories like it’s a habit. Her bag feels heavy against her shoulders too and he turns, no, she turns and he presses her back against one of the shelves. She feels some of the books wobble against her shoulders and oh, there’s that brief thought of what if -
“We’re going to get caught,” she finishes against his mouth, and she feels him smile too. One of his hands moves to her hair and she’s not really sure if he’s thinking straight either. “And then -” her teeth nips at his lip, “- and then we’re going to do that thing where you try to act mature -”
“Probably,” he agrees.
He pulls her back against him and she opens her mouth against his, sighing softly as his fingers slide back against her neck, then along the straps of her bag to pull it off. It hits the ground too, joining his books and she almost, just almost goes and wraps her arms around his neck. But that’s too soon.
When she pulls back, her eyes are closed. She feels his mouth graze hers again, one more time, before she makes a grab for his hand.
Their fingers lace; she doesn’t smile, not yet, or maybe it’s more of a moment where she doesn’t need to. It’s comfortable and it’s one of those weird things where it’s supposed to be comfortable. She gives him a half-smile and he leans over, as if it were nothing special, catching the corner of her mouth with his. She flushes. He shrugs and she tries not too much of it because it shouldn’t be.
It always feels like there should be something to say. They can hear the group coming and she’s letting herself imagine the scenario where the librarian heads back and catches the mess on the floor.
Well, never a dull moment. He’s still the first to let go.
(There’s always an interlude though; this isn’t the part that they talk about it, but it’s the part where if you caught her, instead of catching him, she’d gently explain to you that it’s their version of five minutes away from everybody else. It’s not that she doesn’t know how to talk to him, or that he doesn’t know how to talk to her; it’s about patience and Annie’s been here a lot longer than he has.
Interludes with Jeff are different and that much she knows, she understands, so when he says, “let’s go grab something,” and looks at her like he expects her to get it, she gets it and decides to lead the way. It’s not about him and that much she can give him; if he wants her, and she wants him, it has to be something honest.
He buys her another coffee before study group. He says something that makes her laugh in line but it’s too quick and she wants to, well, give in and really touch her lips or some romantic inclination. She wants to have one and she can only smile. They’re late getting back to the room then and she doesn’t care.)
It’s all about circles, unfortunately.
The next time it’s a book.
She forgets her book in his car. Not just a book, the book, but the very last book she needs for her project due the next morning. It's stupid, right? But Jeff giving anyone of them a ride home in his car gives them anxiety; it's usually a round of: jesus, don't touch that or really, Britta are you trying to give me a heart-attack? Which is probably why none of them like to go home with Jeff. Or, well, the near-death experience like the last two times before this one.
But it's one of those weird, rare moments when she does and she forgets her book. You know, the one she needs to write a paper for her history class. The one that's making her stare down at her phone like it's a strange, foreign object that she's never seen before.
There is a knock on her door.
Annie is quiet, confused and checks the clock by her bed. It's late and she moves carefully, taking measure of the bat balanced near her coat rack. It's a dangerous neighborhood and she's not stupid.
"Here," Jeff says. The door isn't even open halfway and he's shoving the book into her hands. He looks sleepy. "I could hear you stressing out from all the way across town."
She snorts. "I - uh, thanks?" she takes the book and folds it against her chest. Downstairs, there is a loud burst of laughter and the sound of glass breaking. She rolls her eyes. "You could've -" she stops because she doesn't know what to say.
He slides his hands into his jacket. His mouth purses and she watches him shift from foot to foot. She wonders if she just go and say goodnight, but she's, well, suddenly unable to find her voice. Or the desire to move.
"Just call next time," he says, and finally, there's this weird crack of a smile, his mouth twisting - it's just never quite there. He gets this look too and she can feel the heat rise to her cheeks. Her head cocks to the side. "We'll figure it out," he mutters.
So Annie does the sensible thing. Her hand curls in his jacket and she leans up to kiss him - no, no, not like that. That's trouble, she remembers. She remembers the library and the two stupid times before that. Instead, her lips press against his jaw. She lingers, maybe sighs a little, and his hand pats her hip. Good friends, right?
When she pulls back, she manages breathe. "Thanks," she tells him.
Jeff offers an awkward smile and shrug. Her fingers curl around her door and she considers, considers saying something like talking might be nice now but she’s tired and she has a paper and there’s nothing like regretting an invitation that sounds that lame.
Annie steps back to opens the door a little wider. He looks surprised and she’s not going to ask, she decides. Baby steps. He can always leave. She can always ask him to leave. She could make a list of excuses and one by one argue for reasonable interest of why he should go or stay or go again.
So she says it: “The heat is working.”