Jeff/Annie - "Communication in Romantic Verse"
Title: Communication in Romantic Verse
Author: wordybee
Rating: Possible T for swearing.
Warnings: Do I have to warn for poetry?
Word Count: 1,838
Disclaimer: I don't own Community or the characters of Community. Sonnet XVII is by Pablo Neruda.
Summary: Annie teaches Jeff the value of poetry.
A/N: It's National Poetry Day! Okay, that's just for the UK, but I used it as an excuse to put poetry in a Community fic. And I should mention that I imagine this taking place during the summer before Season 3.
It was nine o’clock on a Friday night and Jeff didn’t expect anyone to be in the study room, especially since it was summer semester and the school usually shut down around eight during the summer (something about saving money on electricity or security or whatever, Jeff assumed). Of course, Jeff had been paying the janitor a little something extra every week for access to the library and Study Room F after-hours, so the fact that he was there wasn’t really unexpected. It was Annie being there, though - that was the surprise.
She was just sitting at the table, in Troy’s usual seat rather than her own - probably so that she could face the door and feel slightly safer in the security-free school late at night, but Jeff wondered why she bothered seeing how she wasn’t even paying attention. Annie was completely immersed in her Study Zone, eyes closed as she muttered to herself for a few moments before she looked down at one of her notebooks (there were like, nine of them, and a few scattered pieces of loose paper, too) for a bit. She nodded to herself and closed her eyes to mutter some more, and through it all she hadn’t even noticed Jeff was standing in the doorway. He suspected that he probably could sit down next to her and she still wouldn’t notice, but instead he called out, “Annie?”
She jumped. She looked at him and her eyes slid into focus on Jeff standing there and for a second she seemed confused and worried.
“Did I study all night again?” she asked, and Jeff rolled his eyes.
“No,” he said, finally moving to sit down. He sat in his usual seat and it was kind of weird to see Annie across from him instead of to his left. “It’s 9:00 at night. What are you doing here?”
Annie gestured to the books and notebooks and paper taking up roughly half of the study table and gave Jeff an expression that clearly articulated the age-old human concept of duh. Jeff raised is eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders in a way that clearly articulated Yes, I know, explain right back to her. Deep down, he thought it was wonderful that he’d found friends with whom he could communicate wordlessly; on the surface, Jeff was pissed that he’d been giving the janitor money every week when apparently just anyone could saunter into the library, free of charge.
“I have to memorize a poem for my literature presentation on Monday,” said Annie. “I’m trying to find the perfect one.”
“I know a great poem about a guy from Nantucket you could use.”
“Jeff! Ew!” She shut the poetry anthology book she’d been taking notes on and opened a different one. It was full of multicolored post-it notes that marked pages and Jeff could read a couple of the tags in Annie’s bold-but-still-feminine “headline” handwriting. They said stuff like Death, Spring, and Music. The same words were written on a couple of the loose-leaf papers above lists of - Jeff assumed - poem titles.
“Why are you doing all of this-“ he gestured to the massive amount of research material “-for a poetry class? Just pick one that’s short and rhymes and call it a day.”
“Jeff, some of us actually try to excel in the world of academia,” she said, giving Jeff’s one three-ring binder and American Government textbook the stink-eye.
Jeff was instantly offended. “I am trying! I’m here on a Friday, aren’t I? And, I’ll have you know that I even have notes in this notebook.” He opened it and held it up to her as proof. It was like, five pages of notes and half a pack of blank paper but still. And Jeff was taking summer classes! That alone should have been evidence of his devotion to learning. Or getting his degree on schedule. Whatever.
He set his notebook down and opened his Government textbook with irritated force. “And for the record, everyone knows that getting an English credit is 89% bullshit and 11% showing up for class.”
“We have to write papers, too.”
“Okay, so my math’s a little off. Doesn’t change the fact that most of it is bullshit, Annie. The papers are bullshit, the discussion is bullshit. Talk to any English major and he’ll tell you the same, after a while.”
Annie was aghast. “It’s not! Analyzing poetry and prose exercises your critical thinking abilities, expands your vocabulary, and helps with things like… empathy, and perspective. For instance, my presentation, I have to choose a poem and present it, and I have to deliver it in a way that I feel is ‘in line with the meaning of the poem’s words and the intention of the poet.’” The last bit was definitely a quote from her syllabus, Jeff was pretty sure.
“In other words, guesswork.” Jeff sighed. “Annie, take it from me - I know when someone’s talking out of their ass, and poetry analysis is definitely people talking out of their ass. Asses?" He shook his head. "Doesn’t matter.”
“I think you just don’t understand poetry,” she said primly, flipping through her anthology book without really looking at the pages. She stopped on one page marked with a bright pink post-it and smiled just a bit. Jeff tried to look at the label on the post-it but it was curved up weirdly. She said, “Want me to teach you how to understand it?”
Jeff blinked. “Uh.”
“I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire,” said Annie. Jeff’s heart stopped at the word ‘love’ until he realized Annie was quoting something. He relaxed a little and, in an attempt to dam up any first- or second-hand embarrassment at Annie quoting poetry, Jeff held up his hands.
“Annie, this is completely unnecessary-“
But she ignored his protests, looking him in the eyes as she kept quoting, “I love you-“ there was the word again, and Jeff wondered if Annie intentionally chose a love poem to make him squirm “-as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.”
She was standing up and her lips were still moving, still reciting the poem. Suddenly, Jeff didn’t like interrupting her, didn't feel embarrassment - not really, not as he expected to feel embarrassment. His attention was caught between Annie’s words and Annie’s lips and the fact that she was moving closer with every one of those words. It wasn’t like she was prowling or anything - she wasn’t being seductive, wasn’t slithering up to him like a panther - but she was a steady rhythm of words and movement that Jeff found captivating. And terrifying.
“I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers,” she said, the pitch in her voice pulling up in just the right way and pushing down in just the right way, “and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.”
Jeff’s mouth had gone dry somewhere around dark things are loved, secretly and it was only getting worse by the second. His hands were frozen, entwined on top of his textbook, and he consciously ripped them away from each other to settle around the edge of the table in a way that he hoped was casual but would probably be more accurately described as a death grip.
“I love you without knowing how,” Annie said, and took a step, “or when,” another step, “or from where,” there was a pause. Annie blinked, slowly, “I love you simply, without problems or pride…”
She was right next to Jeff, one hand delicately touching the study table in contrast to Jeff’s white-knuckle clutching. She licked her lips, as if running the words she was about to say through her head before she could say them, and something about her shifted.
“I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you,” she said, softly, and she stopped moving her feet but she was still getting so, so, so very close to him. He ignored that shift in her, that little switch in her voice that turned an honest recitation of poetry into something frighteningly more sincere.
“So intimate,” said Annie, and it was absolutely impossible for her to get any closer to Jeff without crawling on top of him, and if she did that, well… Jeff didn’t know what he would do (or he did know; he knew perfectly well what he would do, but he tried to ignore it) “-that your hand upon my chest is my hand-”
Jeff’s hands remained locked down on the edge of the table, his mouth was the fucking Sahara, and his heart was hammering in his chest like he’d just run a mile or seven. He could smell her sweet perfume, the bubblegum flavor of her lip balm, could feel her warm breath on his face as she said, “so intimate… that when I fall asleep… it is your eyes that close.”
She closed her eyes again, slowly, and Jeff sat there for a few frantic heartbeats, breathing in Annie’s perfume-and-lipbalm presence, feeling the warmth of her body and the occasional stray hair tickle his face and he didn’t move. He didn’t relax his grip on the table and he didn’t move away, or forward, and maybe he should have - because Annie’s eyes opened, and she was just Annie again. Whatever spell had been cast by the recitation of that poem Jeff didn’t know (but would, he would definitely know soon) was broken and Annie moved away from him. She walked smoothly back to her chair, sat down, and it was like the world had started spinning again. It was like it had never stopped in the first place, but Jeff had felt it.
It was still a while before Jeff started to relax. He carefully raised his hands from the table and surreptitiously flexed them as he did his best to clear his throat without being obvious about that, either.
Jeff said, “Uh…” and Annie looked away from her book and up at him, questioning. He hadn’t looked away from her. There was something very important about that - something about the idea that Annie was perfectly capable of looking away while Jeff wasn’t - that frightened him as much as the poem had.
“You aren’t going to recite that one to your class, are you?” he asked.
Annie just smiled. She peeled the post-it note off the page she had been looking at just before everything happened, balled it up, and tossed it toward the center of the table.
Jeff waited. Well, he kept looking at her, and it felt like waiting. Time passed and kept passing - the world was spinning - and eventually Jeff looked at his textbook instead. In the back of his mind he remembered, I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly…