Fic: No Time to Waste (1/2), Jeff/Annie (Community)

[nakannalee]

Fic: No Time to Waste (1/2)
Author: Nakanna Lee
Characters: Jeff/Annie, ensemble
Rating: R for themes
Word Count: 6000
Disclaimer: I don’t own Community or any other pop culture references.
Summary:  After a float competition goes awry, Jeff is there to help Annie out.
A/N: I suck at titles. Promise it gets better. ;)


The first weeks of the Fall flew by. Annie was taking a full course load and then some. She had a To Do List in each notebook, tacked on her bedroom wall, and also in the bathroom, just in case she missed something.

The To Do List was color coded, of course. Blue were papers, green were tests, pink were homework assignments due the next day, red were assignments due not the next day but soon, and purple was free time.

A lot of the purple had been crossed out and replaced with the other colors. Like all the purple.

The group was back and clicking well, but Annie was busy she didn’t have much time to hang out beyond time spent studying. Britta even invited her to a party, where she was pretty sure they’d let her underage drink and maybe even get drunk. She’d only done that once, in high school with vodka shots, and it resulted in sharpie marker drawn over her snoozing face. She’d never done it with people she actually liked. Or have liked her.

But she had to say no because the party fell on the Friday of homecoming. That was such a crucial event that Annie went out of the box and circled it in orange, which hadn’t even been part of the color scheme. Sometimes things called for daring.

“Why is this important again?” Jeff asked her when she mentioned it at study group.

Troy laughed, once. “Because it’s the biggest football game of the season.” He glanced around the table, unsure. “Right?”

“Dean Pelton announced Greendale’s first ever float designing competition,” Annie said, brimming with enthusiasm. “The theme is Forbidden Places.”

“You should make a float of Greendale,” Jeff said.

The truth was Annie has a lot riding on this. And not just because a winning homecoming float would look good on her transcript, which she’d been preparing for a whole list of transfer colleges.

The truth was, Annie needed to redeem herself.

She told the group she couldn’t make Wednesday or Thursday review, and probably not Friday’s either. There was the float competition to think about. One of the art teachers had granted her access into her room in the late afternoon and evenings. Annie spent hours painting cardboard and gluing green banners to things. There was also a lot of glitter.

Abed asked if she wanted help or needed additional characters, but she said it wasn’t necessary.

She had to do this herself.

Which was why, an hour before the float parade starts, she was in the art room alone. She’d just put the finishing touches on the Bermuda Triangle (which had turned into Atlantis, because it was prettier) when tragedy struck.

Apparently she’d been sobbing louder than she thought. Jeff walked into the room, scanning the arts-and-crafts strewn over tables, chairs, and floor.

“I think you got some float on you,” Jeff said. He nodded at her sequined dress that was half glitter, half globs of green.

Annie must have looked surprised to see him, so Jeff said,

“Homecoming football game. Troy wanted me to reassure some scouts he’s not that great.”

Annie nodded, her face scrunching again. “Jeff, everything’s ruined.”

“You look fine. And even if you didn’t, the AV crew never showed with the lights. So it’s dark out. And a little overcast. No one’s going to see you.”

“No,” Annie said. “No one’s going to see me because I’m not going to make the competition.”

“You mean the parade of cardboard on wheels.”

“Yes, the competition.” Annie gestured to her sprawling float. “It’s too big to get through the door.”

Jeff looked at her, then the float, then back to her. The smallest of smiles planted itself on his face. He started to laugh. Annie threw up her hands and gave another cry.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I have to do this.”

She was afraid Jeff was going to get curious, ask why. She flailed for a believable lie.

Instead he turned his attention back to the float. “Okay. So how quickly can we dissemble and reassemble this?”

“Everything’s glued,” Annie said.

“And can be re-glued.”

“There’s not enough time-”

“Annie, you have a very structured understanding of time. Me, on the other hand…” Jeff reached out and dislocated part of the float. Annie gasped. “I find time is more flexible than that.”

“That’s only because you don’t care,” Annie said. She jumped a little as he took apart one of the glittering buildings. “Time isn’t like-like play-dough.”

“But it is,” Jeff said. “You’ve just left your play-dough sitting out for too long and now it’s hard and… unshapable.”

“Well your play-dough is just-globs!” Annie said. “And you don’t make anything with it. You’re like the person who picks up newspaper pictures with play-dough. That’s cheating. It’s still a glob. You didn’t do anything with it, you just made people think it looked nice.”

“As much as I’d like to continue this metaphor,” Jeff said, “dissembling would go a lot faster if you helped.”

Annie reluctantly pried loose a dolphin. She winced, but after doing it a few times it actually felt a little fun. Even relieving. She yanked out a jellyfish like it was a bad tooth and laughed. Jeff took one of the towers in both hands and ripped it forth with a victorious, “Excalibur!”

Within a half hour they had piles of sea creatures, palm trees, and a sunken cityscape. It would have gone faster had Jeff not goaded her into a sword fight with trunks of the palm trees. Annie won, though, so it was worth it. She had him backed up against an art table, a green leaf of construction paper posed at his neck.

“Do you surrender?”

“Milady doesn’t fight like a girl,” Jeff said, amused.  Annie poked his scruff with the palm tree and it must have tickled, because he grinned. Then he looked at the clock and his face dropped. “Oh no, we’re late for the parade!”

“What?” Annie spun, and just as her guard dropped Jeff scooped her up by the waist from behind. Annie flailed, swinging her legs to escape, but Jeff was too strong. Really strong. He made her feel weightless. Annie leaned back against his chest and swatted at his hands, laughing. He’d lied. They still had a half hour. And what was time, anyway?

Jeff lifted her onto the flatbed of the float. It was narrow enough to wheel through the door now that all the trees, cities, and beachscape were trimmed down. Jeff piled the decorations beside her, told her to hold on, and wheeled her out of the door.

They got outside just in time for it to start raining.

“It’s fine, it’s just a drizzle,” Jeff assured her.

The skies opened up.

Annie tried to hold the towers in place while Jeff dumped more glue on them, but it all was washing away. Beneath them were puddles of glitter and paint. The cardboard was starting to curl in on itself. Everything smelled like garages and empty pizza boxes.

“Okay, no big deal. We could hold the trees in place,” Jeff said. But Annie knew it was useless.  She sat in the middle of the flatbed, expressionless, her knees pulled to her chest. Across the front lawn was the incoming parade of floats, most of which were weather-equipped with canopies.

A couple flooded and overturned, too, but the point was they were in the parade, and Annie was not.

“It’s kind of wet,” Jeff said after a few minutes.

Annie didn’t say anything. She even forgot Jeff was there, until he reached for her hand and helped her down from her half-constructed piece of cardboard on wheels.

“Want a ride?” he asked, and she nodded, because waiting for a bus in this weather would be awful and calling her parents didn’t sound much better.

***

It turned out her parents weren’t around to call, anyway.

Jeff parked in front of her house. The fact that it was completely dark inside didn’t mean anything. Her parents were usually in bed by 8:30pm, and they expected Annie to be in a similar state by 10pm, after her three hours of studying. It was 10:15pm now and she expected to hear about it the next morning.

“That was fun,” Jeff said.

Annie looked over at him like he’d lost his mind.

“You are an excellent swordsman. Swordswoman. I’d challenge you to another duel but I doubt you’d be so kind as to let me live again. Or are you only looking for a six-fingered man?”

Sometimes Jeff made Annie feel like she wanted to cry.

She blinked back the burning in her eyes and reached to unbuckle. Jeff caught her midway through. His fingers brushed softly against her nose.

Annie turned her head towards him, her mouth half open in a question.

“Glitter,” Jeff said. “I think you’ve spread your float disease onto my car, too.”

Annie’s face burned, but she was sure the suburban streetlights didn’t provide enough light for him to notice. She glanced down at the seat and tried to brush it clean as she left.

Past the curving sidewalk and the azalea bushes, she found that her front door was locked. Which wasn’t unexpected.

What was, though, was her lack of keys.

She turned but Jeff had already driven off.

She rang the doorbell a few times but no one answered. She wracked her brain, trying to remember her parents’ schedule. True, her father was on business a lot, and when he wasn’t he was taking her mother on weekend vacations to make up for it. She couldn’t remember if this was one of those weekends, although it clearly looked that way.  She’d been so obsessed with her own schedule she’d forgotten any plans her parents might have had.

And now her house was empty and her set of keys was probably lying in a paint-ridden puddle on Greendale’s front lawn, or abandoned in the mess of the art room. Or her keys could have been anywhere else she’d been that day.

Going back to the school to search now seemed useless. She didn’t know the night bus schedule anyway. For a second she considered knocking on the neighbors’ doors, but the only thing she knew about them was that they lived in two-story houses with two car garages identical to hers. The neighborhood wasn’t exactly sociable.

Isolated without a cell phone, also lost like her keys, Annie couldn’t think of any more options. She sighed, too exhausted and disappointed to really work herself up into more tears, and slumped down onto the front stoop. The rain pelted her skin and hair. She was already wet, though, and didn’t notice much difference.

She was alone. Again. She almost wished she’d gone to Britta’s party now, even if she decided not to get drunk. She wondered if that’s where Jeff was headed now, after chatting with Troy’s scouts. She was pretty sure there would have been a lot of loud girl music she didn’t know, but dancing was fun, and Troy and Abed would have been funny to watch. She could’ve even started trying to be more like Britta’s friend, rather than a study buddy.  She tried to think of all the friends she ever had. None of them had ever really been a best friend. But that was mostly because she was busy trying to be like them, and it was hard to be yourself when you were preoccupied with imitating. Or going on pill benders.

Annie sighed and leaned back. Her hand hit the ceramic frog that set on the corner of the stoop. Something metallic dragged along the concrete. Annie scooted the frog to the side and squinted. A brass key to the front door stared back at her.

A car horn honked.

Annie looked up to see Jeff’s car slowing to a halt in front of her house. He was going the other direction, and Annie figured his city brain got confused trying to navigate suburbia, with all its cul-de-sacs and looping streets named after trees.

“That’s funny. Being inside your house looks a lot like being outside of it,” Jeff called. “Are you locked out?”

Annie glanced at the key beneath the frog.

“Yes,” she said.

“I could help you smash a window. That is if you haven’t got that home security alarm.”

“We do,” Annie said. “My mom’s kind of paranoid.”

“Okay. Well.” Jeff tapped the side of his car, thinking. “You can crash at my place if you want.”

Annie stood up, unsure, then with a small smile and some confidence skittered back over to the passenger’s seat, ducking against the rain.

“Thanks, Jeff,” she said, pulling the door closed.

“No problem, Glitter Face. Just try not to get my condo all sparkly. That’s not how a man’s den works.”

Annie smiled, relieved to be dry and warm, but her stomach flip-flopped.

continued:  http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/154405.html#cutid1.