Fic: It's Always Open Season On Princesses Part 24
Title: It’s Always Open Season On Princesses Part 24
Spoilers: Through S2
Word Count: 3394
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine.
AN: So this chapter starts what I would call the third and final act of this story. There's not much here though. More of a bridge chapter than anything. It can't all be morning sex and angry fights though. I can't tell you how much I love you guys for staying with this thing. It really means a lot. And we keep getting new posters! There aren't many more chances to come out of the woodwork, people. I promise not to bite. Unless you're into that kind of thing.
"Fine."
Annie looked up tiredly to see Jeff stomping away from the ticket counter they had situated themselves closest to. He seemed distracted as he forced his giant form into a molded plastic seat two spaces away from her. Without acknowledging him, Annie bent her head and went back to her crossword puzzle. They had been at the Pittsburgh airport for several hours now, waiting to get onto a connecting flight back to Greendale.
“She can’t find any tickets,” he grumbled in Annie’s direction. She nodded in response. He sighed. “Annie.” Biting her lip, she frowned down at her puzzle in concentration. “Annie,” he tried again. “So…this ignoring me thing going to go on indefinitely?”
Don’t look at him.
Since the moment Annie had finished reading the contract, curled up on the bed she and Jeff had almost had sex on, she had not been able to look at Jeff without a certain level of distrust. And anger. And, sadly, most of all regret. Was it really possible that within the last forty-eight hours, she’d been naked underneath him and loving every second of it? More importantly, he’d been loving every second of it. How could he not have told her the whole truth from the very beginning? And when she’d dared question him about it, he’d gotten defensive and actually yelled at her.
And the worst part, the most heartbreaking part of the entire thing was that he hadn’t actually denied any of the accusations she’d unfairly thrown at him. The dull ache in her chest had been constant for the last day straight as a result.
“Well, can I borrow your phone?”
“I’ll tell you if someone calls, Jeff.” Annie answered as lightly as she could manage.
“You didn’t when Troy called earlier,” Jeff pointed out, turning his body toward her.
She pressed her pen against the paperback book balanced on her knee as hard a she could. “You were in the bathroom, Jeff. Should I have interrupted you in the bathroom?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he shot back in a quiet tone.
“Maybe,” Annie stated with a sarcastic smile, “if you hadn’t thrown your phone in a pool, you could talk to people.”
“Fine,” he growled and stood quickly to stride away. Annie watched him go in silence, praying to herself that he wasn’t going off in search of another ticket agent to berate. She knew he was stressed and at least part of it was her fault, but she just couldn’t bring herself to talk to him just yet. And in light of what had happened in Colorado while they’d been in Italy, it seemed selfish to even think about it.
Stage three prostate cancer. How was that even possible? For how much of the last year had Pierce known he might have cancer and never once mentioned it to any of them? After her short vague conversation with Britta, Annie had been forced to turn to Jeff and explain why they had to catch a flight back to Colorado as soon as possible. When she’d first told him, Jeff’s response had been to roll his eyes and claim that Pierce was faking. It was only when she’d left him and hurried up the stairs to pack that he had started to take her even slightly seriously. He had planted himself in her doorway and watched her quietly pack for a full minute before he’d even spoken again.
“You’re going back now?” he’d asked, clearly surprised.
Annie had turned her eyes on him in shock. “Yes, of course I’m going right now. Pierce is having cancer surgery, Jeff. Britta called because she thinks we should come home.”
“By the time we get there, the surgery will already be done.”
Feeling her spine stiffen, she’d met his gaze determinedly. “You can stay here, but I am going.” With that, Annie had gone back to packing and managed to ignore his large frame still slouching in the doorway. Another minute of silence and he had wandered toward his own room with a deep sigh to pack himself.
“Flight one fifty-three to Honolulu is now boarding at gate twelve,” a brittle woman announced over the loud speaker and Annie glanced up at the couple across from her. Beth and Ted were on their honeymoon, Annie had learned from the brief conversation she’d had with them when they’d sat down opposite she and Jeff almost an hour ago.
“That’s us,” Ted noted with a soft grin and reached over to grasp his new wife’s hand. “Ready?” She gave him a small secretive nod and they rose in tandem from their chairs.
“Well Annie,” Beth said as she stepped toward the brunette. “I really hope everything works out for you and…” The other woman’s forehead wrinkled.
“Jeff,” Annie supplied with a tight smile. Beth gave a small unsure nod. “And he’s not usually so…” She trailed off with a glance toward him. He was most definitely berating another ticket agent. Possibly about her big calves or her even bigger hair. “…intense?”
“He’s just worried,” Ted spoke up as he approached the two women with a suitcase. “I’m sure he’s concerned about your friend.” Annie didn’t have the heart to tell them that it likely had more to do with the fact that he didn’t want to spend another moment with her than he had to. That didn’t seem a pleasant thing to say to the newlyweds.
Honest, but not pleasant.
“Thanks,” Annie murmured to them with a smile. “It was great getting to know you.”
“You too,” Ted and Beth agreed in unison and then chuckled to each other. Annie felt a pain in her chest, but it only lasted a moment and then was gone.
Swallowing down her own drama, Annie reached out to shake Beth’s hand and was instead pulled into a hug. “Have a great time.”
“He’ll come around,” Beth whispered into her ear and Annie stiffened against the stranger. When she pulled out of the hug, she gave a small discreet nod to Beth and then she and her new husband were strolling away hand in hand.
So even strangers understood.
That wasn’t embarrassing at all.
Annie dropped back into her seat and tried to focus on the crossword puzzle she had in front of her. In the Roman airport, when faced with the idea of spending a ten plus hour flight with Jeff, she had bought the crossword puzzle book, a paperback novel, and a book of Italian trivia. She just wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. No, that wasn’t it. She wanted to talk to him, she wanted to pin him down and question every moment they’d had since he’d shown up, ask him at exactly what point he’d decided that her feelings were secondary to anything else that might have been happening between he and Pierce.
The part that still made her stomach churn a full day later was the moment he’d implied that he was only going to have sex with her because she’d been there. If someone else had crawled on top of him, if it had been Camilla, would Jeff have had sex with her? It completely changed her perception of him. How could it not? She still didn’t want to believe that what it meant for them was that he’d never had any real intentions of being with her. Even though he’d been able to fly across the ocean to stop her from the possibility of happiness with someone else, it still didn’t mean he was ready to admit that it was for his own selfish purposes that did relate to her. Instead, he’d said he didn’t really know what had made him get on the plane in the first place. And even if she didn’t believe that, in the end it didn’t matter. Not if that was what he thought.
Which meant they were right back where they’d started.
Her phone rang in from the pocket of her jeans and she pulled it out to glance at the screen before answering it. “Hi Abed.”
“Hey Annie,” he greeted her. “Shirley asked if I would call and get the status report.”
“We’re in…” Annie scrunched up her face in thought, unable to remember for a moment. “Philadelphia?”
“Pittsburgh,” Jeff corrected as he turned to address her from the ticket counter. “Who is that?”
She frowned at him. “Abed,” she stated before turning away from him as much as she could in her chair.
“Let me talk to him,” Jeff said, striding toward her with outstretched hands to take the phone from her. When she didn’t immediately drop the phone into his waiting palm, he rolled his eyes. “Can I please talk to him?” he tried again.
“No,” Annie replied. “He called me.”
“Well,” Abed spoke up from his end of the conversation, “Jeff isn’t answering his phone.”
“You’re the one who threw your phone in Pierce’s pool,” Annie reminded Jeff before raising her eyebrows meaningfully. Jeff glowered at her before turning and walking away from her. When he passed the ticket agent, Annie watched the older woman sigh in relief before shooting Jeff a dirty look.
“He did?” Abed asked sharply. “So he’s on edge then.” Annie furrowed her brow. “Did you guys have a fight?”
She sighed. “Yes.”
“I thought so,” the filmmaker stated. “I meant to ask this earlier and forgot. Did you get any footage of the Milvian Bridge?”
Annie froze, waiting for her sudden bout of nausea to settle. The way he’d looked at her that night… It was a far cry from the perturbed expression he was currently giving her. At the time, that had seemed so overly dramatic in her stupid college-girl brain and now things were five times more complicated between she and Jeff. And it was unlikely that it would ever be resolved in the way she wanted it to be. What were her other options? She didn’t have any. He was the one who’d basically told her that the idea of a relationship was still not worth paying back a loan he’d gotten. There was no way to make that seem positive.
“I…didn’t, no.” She heard Abed sigh.
“That will be okay,” he stated. “I might have to rework the plot a little bit then.”
“What is the plot of this movie, Abed?” Annie asked, feeling a headache forming above her ears.
“Not important,” was the answer she got and she sighed.
“How is Pierce?” she inquired a moment later and frowned over at Jeff when his jiggling leg caused their entire section of chairs to vibrate. “When’s the surgery?”
“In a couple hours,” Abed answered. “He asked for you. So, has Jeff officially gone to his crazy-pants place yet?” Abed asked in a curious tone.
“Yeah, kind of.” She looked back in the direction he’d taken off but couldn’t see him. “He threw his phone into the pool.”
‘Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me,” Abed noted in a distracted tone. “He tends to act out when he’s overly anxious about something.” He paused. “Is it you?”
“Is what me?”
“Are you the reason he’s overly anxious, Annie?” She sucked in a deep breath and shook her head silently. She could feel Jeff’s gaze on her back, but didn’t dare turn around. “Are you why he threw his phone in the pool?” Annie stilled and felt her heartbeat pick up. She had never understood his innate ability to read any of them, including her. He was even able to tell what was going on in her head from across the country.
Maybe he was a warlock?
“Abed,” she started in a hushed tone. “Why do you think he came?”
“Why do you think he came?” he parroted back.
“Abed,” Annie snapped as loudly as she dared and looked back at Jeff. He was watching her agitatedly, his leg shaking again. “Stop it.”
“Why did you want him to have come?” he tried again. She bit her lip and stared out the window she was standing next to. The answer to that question was much easier for her to answer. She wanted him to have come to Italy because he loved her and couldn’t bear to be away from her. But that wasn’t even on the top ten list of likely reasons that Jeff had shown up on Pierce’s doorstep. “Annie, I can tell you that you called me and I mentioned that Rich was with you and then Jeff broke his toe and got on a plane,” he offered after a moment in his normal robotic voice.
Before her mind could sprint forward like she wanted to, her phone beeped at her ear. She pulled it away and frowned. “Abed, it’s Rich on the other line. I’ll call back as soon as we get a flight out.”
“Can you take some footage of the airport before you leave?” he asked, causing Annie to shake her head confusedly.
“Uh, yeah.” She paused. “Abed, wha-”
But he’d ended the call already and the line switched over to Rich’s call. “Annie?” he asked unsurely.
“Rich,” she answered with a sigh. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he replied in a distant distracted tone. “Have you heard anything on Pierce?“
Annie turned around to find Jeff‘s seat empty. “He is going in soon.”
“I called the hospital and his surgeon is the best on staff. He sure is a nice guy,” Rich intoned in a positive voice.
“Good,” she nodded to herself. Pierce had a great surgeon and he would be just fine by the time they got home and she could thank him for doing so much for her in the last couple weeks. And ask him herself what exactly had compelled him to draw up a contract and make Jeff sign it. “That’s good,” Annie repeated.
“Where are you guys?” Rich asked.
Annie frowned. “Philadelphia.”
“Pittsburgh,” Jeff stressed suddenly from right behind her. Annie gasped in surprise and whipped around to face him. He frowned and stretched his arm out in her direction and she glanced down at it to see a paper-wrapped sandwich in his hand. When she reached out to take it from him, their fingers brushed ever so slightly and Annie felt a tingle at the base of her spine.
“Thanks,” she whispered, not trusting herself to answer more loudly. She held his gaze for a second too long and watched him blink into awareness and then Jeff shifted almost imperceptibly closer to her, his head bent forward.
“Annie,” he murmured softly and her stomach clenched.
“Annie?” Rich echoed from the phone at her ear.
“Yeah,” she answered without taking her eyes off the man in front of her.
“Is that Jeff?”
Annie swallowed over the sudden lump in her throat. “Yeah,” she repeated. Jeff’s eyes glinted with something she couldn’t place and then he was walking away from her again. She swallowed over the sudden lump in her throat as her eyes followed him. He’d been about to say something, and Annie hated how desperate she was to know what it might have been.
“…and I should have everything cleared up here within in the next day or so.” The brunette shook herself out of her daze to focus on the conversation she was still in the middle of.
Frowning, Annie cleared her throat to speak again in what came out as a shaky voice. “And then you’re coming home? Why don’t you stay and spend some time with Sergio?” He fell silent on the other end of the phone. “Rich?”
“Yeah,” he answered after another moment of silence. “I don’t think Sergio and I are going to work.”
“What?” Annie asked in surprise. Rich had seemed so happy only a day or two ago. “What happened?”
The doctor sighed. “He’s been lying to me, Annie. He was lying to both of us.” Annie frowned to herself. “That’s why I came to your room yesterday morning.”
“That was yesterday morning?” she asked as she stared blankly down at the sandwich in her hands.
“Yeah,” Rich replied. “Annie, I need to tell you something. It’s kind of important. Sergio was talking to me about Camilla, and he said that she is-”
“-no no. Thank you,” Jeff snapped from across the terminal from her. He turned away from the ticket counter attendant he’d been talking to and began to stomp toward her. Annie’s eyes stayed on him as he approached her quickly.
“Rich? I gotta go,” Annie muttered into the phone, causing Rich to stop speaking abruptly. “I’ll call you as soon as I know something, okay?
“I- yeah, okay.” Rich paused. “I hope everything works out for you, Annie.” She furrowed her brow in confusion. What a strange thing to say to her.
“Bye,” she murmured and ended the call with wide eyes turned up toward Jeff. “What’s up?”
“We aren’t going to be able to get out of here for a least a couple more hours,” he groused with a sour look back in the direction of the beehived ticket agent. “We got bumped off the next flight. We are on standby for a flight in about five hours.” Annie frowned up at him, not understanding what he was saying. “So…our options are that we can stay here for the night or…we can…” Jeff sighed and brought a hand up to rub his forehead. “We can go to a hotel and get some sleep and come back later.” Annie sucked in breath loudly, surprising herself with the reaction to his words. Her eyes stayed on him even as he made a concerted effort to look anywhere but at her.
“Oh,” Annie finally said softly with a nod.
“Yeah,” Jeff answered. “So, what do you want?”
She wanted him to give her an honest answer about what they were or where they were. She wanted Jeff to tell her in clear precise terms exactly why he had come to Italy in the first place and she wanted to be able to ask him if he’d really meant it when he’d told her he wanted her. Annie had promised herself that she would be happy with whatever he could give her, but she knew now that she’d been just trying to convince herself of something that wasn’t her. The idea of spending the night in a hotel room with Jeff was both thrilling and terrifying. Annie knew herself well enough to know that she would never be able to sleep or breathe in that close of quarters. She wouldn’t be able to keep herself from speaking, from asking him every single question that had been in her head since he had cornered her in a dingy shower stall after paintball only three weeks ago.
“I think…” Annie inhaled deeply and stared down at the sandwich she was still gripping. “I think we should probably just stay here.” Jeff’s eyes hardened. “In case a flight opens up,” she continued.
“Yeah,” Jeff said gruffly. His eyes stayed on her for a moment too long before he turned around and started to leave her again. But instead of stomping away, he was spinning back to face her. “I’m-” he cut himself off before quickly. “I shouldn’t have said…that.”
“Said what?” Annie asked, feigning ignorance that neither of them believed for a second.
“Annie,” Jeff intoned with a roll of his eyes before letting his eyes soften and she felt that tell-tale sensation in her chest again.
No.
Next he would smile and charm her and she would forget why she was mad at him in the first place. Annie knew exactly how this worked now, and she couldn’t get sucked in again.
She couldn’t.
Biting her lip, she stared down at the floor between them before gathering up a small amount of courage. “Thanks for the sandwich,” she said quietly. Jeff cleared his throat.
“Yeah, anytime.”