Fic: It's Always Open Season On Princesses 5/?

May 20, 2011 21:41

Title: It's Always Open Season On Princesses 5/?
Spoilers: Through 'For A Few Paintballs More'
Word Count: 1917
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Dan Harmon own all of this. 
Summary: How Jeff & Annie Spend Their Summer Vacations

AN: I really want to thank everyone for the crazy awesome support you've been showing me and this thing that is kind of eating me alive.  This is a great fandom and I'm proud to be a part of if, even if as a whole we're viewed as a bunch of 17 year old girls who have crushes on Joel McHale and nothing more.  I could keep rambling, but I doubt anyone is reading this.  I would have already scrolled down to see what Jeff decided.  Seriously, scroll down already guys!


He flipped a page, not reading a single word there. ‘People’ wanted him to know that Osama bin Ladin was still dead and that Ashton Kutcher was taking over Charlie Sheen’s crappy sitcom. Whatever. The magazine might have been the worst purchase he’d ever made.

And he used to own a pair of Zubaz pants.

The tiny child in the seat next to him slid down to the floor and gave him a slobbery grin. Jeff glanced over at her mother, who was too busy texting to pay attention to the foot-tall saliva factory that was closing in on him. The little girl had springy brown curls and the biggest blue eyes he’d ever seen.

Well, maybe second-biggest.

Not shy at all, she reached over a tugged on his two hundred- dollar jeans with a chubby hand. Jeff grimaced and looked over at the girl’s mom again, to no avail. “Um,” he finally said in the direction of the woman. She looked up sourly before seeing her daughter.

“Lucy, don’t.” That was it. Back to her phone she went.

Lucy smiled up at him again, all gums and extra chins. In spite of himself, Jeff felt his lips tug upward into a smile of his own at the little girl. She gurgled in response before turning away from him to hide her face. Okay, so now he was flirting with someone who was literally still in diapers. Great.

“This is the final boarding call for flight one thirty-seven to Dallas. Flight one thirty-seven to Dallas, final boarding call.” Lucy’s head shot up to the sound coming over the loudspeaker before she glanced back at Jeff. He raised his eyebrows at her and she smiled widely again.

Jeff had been back and forth over this a million times in his head the past fifteen hours, he really had. He had stared at the ticket, sitting on his coffee table for a solid twenty minutes before he’d even touched it. It was definitely real. And she’d just left it for him. Implicit trust in him, when he deserved it not at all. Annie was an adult, and this was the decision she had made. She was going to Italy and she wanted him with her, so who was he to stand in her way? They would go to Rome and he would give her three perfect fairytale weeks with all the romance she wanted. He could do it. And then, when they got back he would inevitably turn back into him and let her down in some way, causing them to fizzle out into something tepid and safe again in time for fall semester.

It would probably be simple.

It wasn’t that Jeff didn’t care about her feelings. Of course he did. And it wasn’t that he didn’t think she believed herself to be in love with him. She probably did think that. But Jeff was almost one hundred percent sure that she didn’t really love him, couldn’t. Loving him meant knowing all of the bad parts, the gross underneath parts that he kept so well hidden at all times, and still loving him. He knew, he knew that Annie would never be able to actually do that.

Lucy moved again, unsure on her toddler legs, and stumbled forward. Jeff swooped forward on instinct, catching the small child before she fell to the linoleum floor. “Whoa,” he murmured as he hands easily spanned the little girl’s entire torso.

It was in that moment, with his arms full of OshKosh B’Gosh, that Annie swept into the terminal. She was pulling a suitcase on wheels and had her damn backpack on her shoulders. She looked around the terminal, seemingly lost, her eyes the size of saucers. Jeff felt something incredibly heavy settle on his chest. He glanced back down at the toddler who was still in his grasp and then back up at Annie.

He closed his eyes tightly.

Lucy squirmed slightly and Jeff’s hands fell away from her, that same feeling of being pushed off a cliff present and accounted for. It felt like a bad thing to do, like a wrong thing to do to her. How could he do that to her? Her eyes looked so sad.

But he’d already decided. The magazine slid back up to cover his face easily as he reclined into his previous position, legs crossed at the ankle.

Whether or not he thought her feelings were real, she did. They were real to her because she’d never experienced anything bigger. Annie was…too sweet. She didn’t deserve a relationship with a pre-planned end date. She deserved better than what he could give her. Even if she didn’t speak to him for six months after coming back, it was still better than getting involved with her and having it end badly. Jeff didn’t want to be her ex-anything, he knew that for damn sure. And he couldn’t go into this knowing in the end it would hurt her.

The moment she had passed the area he was sitting in, Jeff rose and moved quickly toward the door Annie had just entered through, his own luggage in tow. With a quick glance back at the still-unwatched Lucy toddling across the floor to another unwitting stranger, he left the building. He winced away from the mid-day sun as he hurried to his car, parked in the very last spot of the ‘long term’ parking. When he approached her car, dented and rusty, Jeff paused. She would be devastated. She would never speak to him again. She would leave the study group and it would be all his fault.

But it was Annie who had given him the ultimatum. She had to have considered that there was a fifty-fifty chance he would turn her down, right? Even if he had kissed her like he wanted to push her to the hardwood floors and do bad things to her. Right? He moved on in the direction of his Lexus, a suitcase in each hand. He could handle being seen as a chump who turned down a free trip to Europe. They didn’t understand the situation.

But neither did he, really.

One ten minute road rage-filled car ride later, Jeff pulled into his own parking lot. He wondered idly how long Annie had probably sat in her own car the previous night, working out what to say to him, how best to convince him. That crushing sensation on his sternum gave a twitch and Jeff dropped his head against the steering wheel. It was lame to be caring this much, right?

He climbed out of the car and drug his suitcases into the building toward the elevator. An old man he didn’t recognize was just getting off. “Going somewhere?” he asked Jeff amiably as he held the door open for him.

“Just getting back,” Jeff lied easily.

“Trips are a nice change of pace,” the old man stated matter-of-factly the moment before the doors closed and Jeff was alone again. He stared at his own reflection in the reflective metal surface of the elevator door. He looked tired. And sad.

He needed a better moisturizer.

The elevator stopped on his floor and he drug the suitcases out to the end of the hall and stopped only long enough to fit his key into the lock. When he opened the door, he was met with the sound of ‘Sixteen Candles’ turned up to volume setting eleven. The apartment was dark save the light from the television. Abed and Chang sat side by side on the couch, enthralled with the action on screen.

“Guys,” Jeff demanded. “What is going on? Abed, what are you doing here?”

Abed paused the DVD before turning to address Jeff. “We’re watching ‘Sixteen Candles’. Would you believe Ben has never seen it?”

“That’s crazy,” Jeff mumbled as he shuffled to the kitchen to pull a beer out of the fridge. Chang was at his heel like a terrier.

“I thought you were going to Europe,” he stated as he hopped up onto the kitchen counter easily.

“Get your ass off my counter,” Jeff remarked and rolled his eyes when Chang didn‘t move. “Why would you think I was going to Europe?” he asked after he took a long pull from the bottle.

“Because you packed two giant suitcases this morning like you were going to be gone for-”

“-three weeks,” Abed filled in as he joined them in the darkened kitchen. Jeff stared at Abed with narrowed eyes. Abed had managed to kiss Annie and not have it mean anything. Maybe he was the one that Jeff needed to be taught by.

“Yeah, three weeks.” Chang picked up Jeff’s oversized jar of protein powder and began tossing it from hand to hand. “And you took your passport.”

Jeff frowned. “How did you know I- stop going through my stuff!” he shouted and Chang dropped the jar to hold up his hands in a defensive manner.

“I didn’t mean to,” Chang reasoned. “I was looking for the TV Guide.”

“In my nightstand?” Jeff countered angrily.

“Also,” Ben continued, “there was that plane ticket that was sitting on your nightstand last night.”

Jeff finished the beer and grabbed another from the fridge. “Just out of curiosity, how many hours a night do you spend watching me sleep?” he asked after he drank down half of the second beer.

“It’s calming,” Chang defended. “I had a bad shift last night.”

Jeff let out a frustrated groan. “You have to get out of my apartment.”

“But I haven’t fully Chang-ed your life yet.”

“God!” Jeff stalked past an engrossed Abed and moved toward his bedroom. “I’m going to bed. Wake me up in the fall.”

“So, you didn’t go to Italy with Annie,” he noted from behind Jeff. “Interesting.”

“Yeah?” Jeff snapped as he turned to face the thin man. “Why is that, Abed?”

“Because you wanted to.” He cocked his head to the side and Jeff got the sensation of him trying to use some sort of mind-reading technique on him. What was that thing in Harry Potter called?

“Legilimancy,” Abed said quietly and Jeff thought about beating his head against a wall.

“Nice seeing you today, Abed.” Jeff spun back around and headed to the bedroom. “And I’m locking my door, Ben!”

“Like that could stop me if I wanted in, Winger!”

Jeff locked the door and dropped onto the bed with a dull thud. Reaching into the drawer of his nightstand, he pulled out a bottle of Excedrin PM and popped three gel caps into his mouth before washing them down with the rest of his beer and placing the empty bottle on the nightstand. He purposely left his mind as blank as he could while he drifted off.

He definitely didn’t think about Annie’s naked body.

He definitely hadn’t thought about that at all in the last week.

His phone beeped an unknown amount of time later and Jeff cracked an eye open. He’d gotten up to pee three times and had eaten a bowl of Raisin Bran at about eleven last night, but hadn’t checked his phone once since he’d gotten home. Pulling it out of the jeans he’d left in a pile on the floor, he read the screen.

Text from Annie.

His fingers were shaking to a stupid degree when he opened it.

‘Landed -safe & sound. Everything is beautiful. Will send pics soon. Love you!’

He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and checked the screen again. She must have sent a text to the whole group. There was no way she had meant to text him that message. Unless she was proving to him that she didn’t care.

‘Safe and sound.’

Jeff saved the message before rolling over and going back to sleep.

fanfiction

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