Fic: "the girls with the stars in their eyes" (Community)
I think, given that it's September now, I missed the window for summer-fic, but, well. I came across this file tonight and decided to finish it.
Britta/Annie, with Troy and Abed. Title from The Gaslight Anthem. Thanks to
sionnain for looking it over.
Britta's car breaks down on the side of the expressway, just far enough away from everything to be annoying and inconvenient. She stands on the shoulder and glares at it long enough that she can feel the skin on her nose start to redden and sting. The car is a symbol of waste, destruction, and decadent capitalism, and now it's wrecking her skin, too.
A few people stop to help, but they're all gross, chauvinistic assholes and she waves them off. After the third one she goes around to the trunk, where she keeps emergency protest supplies, and makes up a quick sign that reads ONLY HELP ME IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BE A DICK ABOUT IT.
Nobody stops after that.
She stands there for another half-hour, her whole face starting to hurt and her hair frizzing wildly in the humidity, before she gives up on the kindness of strangers and digs out her cell phone. She totally intends to call her mom, or maybe her cousin who dated a guy who drove a tow truck until he broke his parole, but for some reason she barely scrolls through her contacts at all before she hits the dial button.
Annie shows up with sunblock, two cold bottles of Gatorade, and the number for the towing place her dad swears by. When it turns out there are cars dying all over the place today and it'll be at least three hours before a truck can get to Britta, they go to the nearest mall for manicures and smoothies.
It had been a kind of silent pact around the study group that they wouldn't see each other until anthro in the fall, but as far as Britta's concerned, silent pacts totally don't count. When Annie drops her off at her house once the stupid car is finally at a shop having a transmission-ectomy or whatever they do, Britta asks "What are you doing tomorrow?"
Annie blinks. "I don't know. It's supposed to be really hot, so I was probably going to hide in my room with the AC on higher than my parents approve of and read something trashy."
"We should go to the pool."
"You want to get skin cancer?"
"We'll bring umbrellas." Annie seems to think about that for a minute, and Britta stares at her, trying to communicate I have been so lonely I think I might actually start talking to my plants with her eyes.
"Okay," Annie says, smiling a little. "Sure. Do you need some eyedrops? You're, like, not blinking at all."
**
The pool is in Annie's neighborhood, near her old high school, so really Britta shouldn't be as surprised as she is when the first person they see is Troy. She should be even less surprised when Abed emerges from the water with a shark fin strapped to his head, but she had thought that other people took silent pacts more seriously than that.
"Teen comedies require summer shenanigans," Abed says, adjusting his fin. "Ideally we should be at a lake house owned by a wealthy friend whose parents are out of town, but our only wealthy friend is Pierce, and his parents are dead."
"My parents are dead," Troy moans.
"No," Abed corrects patiently. "That's not Pierce, that's Batman."
"Oh." Troy nods and hops into the pool. Britta frowns as she notices that he has some kind of long green tube tied to his waist.
"Loch Ness Monster," Abed says. "That's his tail."
"This is a suburban community pool," Annie points out. "Sharks and Loch Ness Monsters don't really fit."
"We're mainly freaking out the under-five crowd," Abed says, "but we're owning that demographic, so I'll take it. Come on, Troy."
"Ladies," Troy purrs, making a vague gesture that might be tipping a hat, or hailing a cab, before pushing off into the water.
"I don't know about those two," Britta says, laughing a little and lying back on her towel. Neither one of them had actually remembered an umbrella. The sun feels nice, carcinogenic radiation and all.
"They're not very good at the whole teen movie thing." Annie takes the sunblock out of her bag. "I mean, we're sitting right here in bikinis. Shouldn't they have offered to lotion us up?"
Britta turns onto her stomach, hiding her face against the towel. The skin there is still bright red and really sore. She probably shouldn't make it worse. "We'd have to turn them down due to the inherent sexism and creepiness, but it would be nice to be asked."
"Is it creepy for me to get your back?"
"No, that's empowering and also very nice of you, yes please?"
Annie laughs and a moment later Britta squeaks as the sunblock hits between her shoulder blades. She turns her head to the side, looking over at the pool and watching as a little kid steals Troy's tail and runs screaming off the diving board.
**
A week later Annie calls, sounding both cheerful and bored. "Troy and Abed got banned from the pool. But I guess the community center in Abed's neighborhood is doing twilight movies in the park. You know, projecting them on the side of a building. You want to go?"
"What's the movie?" Britta doesn't know why she's asking. Her entire schedule consists of soap operas and re-painting her toenails. She hasn't talked to the plants yet but she has named all of them.
"Tonight is Return of the Jedi," Annie says, "which, if we're watching with those two, should be an experience."
"I'll see you there."
Abed and Troy recite all of the dialogue along with the actors, in a kind of dreamy monotone while staring at the screen with glazed-over eyes. Before they're even off Tatooine, Annie catches Britta's hand and drags her off farther away. The guys don't even notice.
She and Annie sit in the very back of the crowd, passing a bag of gummi bears back and forth. Britta usually likes the sour ones better, but tonight she's pretty okay with sweet.
**
Abed is invited to join the twilight movie committee, which is great the next week--Raiders of the Lost Ark, with free popcorn if you wear a fedora--and ends with him banned the week after that.
"I thought themes would be fun," he says, helping Britta move her plants aside to clear the table for pizza.
"They can be," Annie agrees patiently, "but Birth of a Nation is not really a theme movie."
Abed sighs and carries another plant off into the living room, and Britta shakes her head. "He's not real."
"Oh, but he is." Annie sets a stack of plates on the table. "I love your place."
"It's all right." Britta shrugs. "I don't really have people over very often."
"You should. It's really nice."
Britta looks around skeptically, but arguing with Annie is like arguing with...something it makes you feel bad to argue with. Like a kitten. One that will quietly destroy something you value to punish you for arguing with it. "We could do a regular movie night, or something," she says instead. "Maybe."
"You mean with the whole group?" Annie makes a face. "Can you imagine getting everyone to agree on anything? I mean anything. The movie. Dinner. What time. Whether or not we want to do themes."
Britta has to laugh. "Good point. Maybe a more...selective group."
Annie sets the plates out carefully, one by one, centering them on the squares of the tablecloth. Britta's pretty sure she's smiling. "Yeah."
Britta feels like she wants to say something, but she has no idea what it is, and it's really inconvenient for her brain to come up with stuff in that order, the impulse before the thing. She ends up just standing there, opening and closing her mouth like a fish, until Troy shows up with the pizza.
**
Somehow it turns into August. Britta can't figure that out. She knows the time must have gone somewhere; two of her favorite couples on her soap operas have gotten married and divorced, and another character has had an entire evil twin saga play out. Plus the plants are completely taking over her apartment. Still, it seems like there should be more time left.
It's Annie's idea to go to the county fair, because God knows none of the rest of them would have thought of it. Britta hasn't been since she was nine, and Troy and Abed have never gone at all.
"It's awesome," Annie says sternly as she hands them their tickets outside the gate. "There's horrible food and a lot of flashing lights. Those are the sort of things you three like best."
"There's also live animals," Troy says. "And live animal by-products."
"Carnival rides," Annie shoots back.
"Um, carnival rides assembled by carnies." Britta hangs back at the curb, watching some people go flying along through the air on a machine that she can hear rattling from all the way over here. "That's taking your life in your hands."
Troy and Abed look at each other. "I'm on it," Abed says, and they take off running for the gate.
Annie shakes her head and smiles at Britta. "We don't have to do the rides if you don't want to."
"I can only stay for like an hour, anyway," Britta mutters, but she follows Annie through the gate.
She agrees to the merry-go-round, because that at least stays on level ground, and anyway, she falls back into that nine-year-old's weakness for the pretty painted horses as soon as she sees them. Then Annie points out that there are real, actual horses not that far away, so they go visit that barn, and Britta gets to pet an actual pony, and the pony licks her, which is so cool and so totally gross. There are sheep, and llamas, and tiny cows, and by the time they step back outside again, it's been three hours and the sky is getting dark.
They get cotton candy, and elephant ears, and walk slowly along the midway. "This is nice," Britta says. "I had fun."
"I knew you would." Annie stops in front of one of the games, looking up at the row of brightly-colored cowboy hats hanging on hooks along the awning. "I wish these games weren't totally rigged. I like the zebra-print one."
It's a shooting game. Britta grins and hands Annie her purse. "Oh, I got this."
The game is, in fact, totally rigged, but it still only takes her two rounds to win Annie the hat, and the way Annie laughs when she puts it on is totally worth the six dollars. "Awesome," Annie says. "Thank you. I'll buy you some lemonade, c'mon."
"This is more junk food than should be allowed in one place."
"It's part of the whole point. It's fun." Annie glances at her and then reaches out, brushing her fingers over Britta's wrist as they walk. Britta turns her hand without thinking about it, and Annie threads their fingers together.
"This is nice," Britta says.
"Yeah."
"I think I said that already, didn't I?"
"Yeah. But it's okay." Annie squeezes her hand lightly, and Britta takes a breath.
"I don't think I really need lemonade."
"Okay."
"And I have no idea where Troy and Abed are."
Annie tilts her head a little toward the sound of a commotion by one of the feats-of-strength type games. "I'm sure they couldn't possibly be in this direction."
"Totally not." Britta tugs her hand a little, guiding her the opposite way, back behind the row of food trailers. "Let's look for them over here."
Annie laughs and laughs, until Britta kisses her to make her stop. The brim of the hat bumps against her forehead, which is sunburned yet again, and Annie's mouth tastes like cotton candy, and Britta is glad there are two more weeks of summer, because she isn't done yet.
The Dreamwidth copy of this post has
comments. Comment there or here, as you like!
Britta/Annie, with Troy and Abed. Title from The Gaslight Anthem. Thanks to
sionnain for looking it over.
Britta's car breaks down on the side of the expressway, just far enough away from everything to be annoying and inconvenient. She stands on the shoulder and glares at it long enough that she can feel the skin on her nose start to redden and sting. The car is a symbol of waste, destruction, and decadent capitalism, and now it's wrecking her skin, too.
A few people stop to help, but they're all gross, chauvinistic assholes and she waves them off. After the third one she goes around to the trunk, where she keeps emergency protest supplies, and makes up a quick sign that reads ONLY HELP ME IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BE A DICK ABOUT IT.
Nobody stops after that.
She stands there for another half-hour, her whole face starting to hurt and her hair frizzing wildly in the humidity, before she gives up on the kindness of strangers and digs out her cell phone. She totally intends to call her mom, or maybe her cousin who dated a guy who drove a tow truck until he broke his parole, but for some reason she barely scrolls through her contacts at all before she hits the dial button.
Annie shows up with sunblock, two cold bottles of Gatorade, and the number for the towing place her dad swears by. When it turns out there are cars dying all over the place today and it'll be at least three hours before a truck can get to Britta, they go to the nearest mall for manicures and smoothies.
It had been a kind of silent pact around the study group that they wouldn't see each other until anthro in the fall, but as far as Britta's concerned, silent pacts totally don't count. When Annie drops her off at her house once the stupid car is finally at a shop having a transmission-ectomy or whatever they do, Britta asks "What are you doing tomorrow?"
Annie blinks. "I don't know. It's supposed to be really hot, so I was probably going to hide in my room with the AC on higher than my parents approve of and read something trashy."
"We should go to the pool."
"You want to get skin cancer?"
"We'll bring umbrellas." Annie seems to think about that for a minute, and Britta stares at her, trying to communicate I have been so lonely I think I might actually start talking to my plants with her eyes.
"Okay," Annie says, smiling a little. "Sure. Do you need some eyedrops? You're, like, not blinking at all."
**
The pool is in Annie's neighborhood, near her old high school, so really Britta shouldn't be as surprised as she is when the first person they see is Troy. She should be even less surprised when Abed emerges from the water with a shark fin strapped to his head, but she had thought that other people took silent pacts more seriously than that.
"Teen comedies require summer shenanigans," Abed says, adjusting his fin. "Ideally we should be at a lake house owned by a wealthy friend whose parents are out of town, but our only wealthy friend is Pierce, and his parents are dead."
"My parents are dead," Troy moans.
"No," Abed corrects patiently. "That's not Pierce, that's Batman."
"Oh." Troy nods and hops into the pool. Britta frowns as she notices that he has some kind of long green tube tied to his waist.
"Loch Ness Monster," Abed says. "That's his tail."
"This is a suburban community pool," Annie points out. "Sharks and Loch Ness Monsters don't really fit."
"We're mainly freaking out the under-five crowd," Abed says, "but we're owning that demographic, so I'll take it. Come on, Troy."
"Ladies," Troy purrs, making a vague gesture that might be tipping a hat, or hailing a cab, before pushing off into the water.
"I don't know about those two," Britta says, laughing a little and lying back on her towel. Neither one of them had actually remembered an umbrella. The sun feels nice, carcinogenic radiation and all.
"They're not very good at the whole teen movie thing." Annie takes the sunblock out of her bag. "I mean, we're sitting right here in bikinis. Shouldn't they have offered to lotion us up?"
Britta turns onto her stomach, hiding her face against the towel. The skin there is still bright red and really sore. She probably shouldn't make it worse. "We'd have to turn them down due to the inherent sexism and creepiness, but it would be nice to be asked."
"Is it creepy for me to get your back?"
"No, that's empowering and also very nice of you, yes please?"
Annie laughs and a moment later Britta squeaks as the sunblock hits between her shoulder blades. She turns her head to the side, looking over at the pool and watching as a little kid steals Troy's tail and runs screaming off the diving board.
**
A week later Annie calls, sounding both cheerful and bored. "Troy and Abed got banned from the pool. But I guess the community center in Abed's neighborhood is doing twilight movies in the park. You know, projecting them on the side of a building. You want to go?"
"What's the movie?" Britta doesn't know why she's asking. Her entire schedule consists of soap operas and re-painting her toenails. She hasn't talked to the plants yet but she has named all of them.
"Tonight is Return of the Jedi," Annie says, "which, if we're watching with those two, should be an experience."
"I'll see you there."
Abed and Troy recite all of the dialogue along with the actors, in a kind of dreamy monotone while staring at the screen with glazed-over eyes. Before they're even off Tatooine, Annie catches Britta's hand and drags her off farther away. The guys don't even notice.
She and Annie sit in the very back of the crowd, passing a bag of gummi bears back and forth. Britta usually likes the sour ones better, but tonight she's pretty okay with sweet.
**
Abed is invited to join the twilight movie committee, which is great the next week--Raiders of the Lost Ark, with free popcorn if you wear a fedora--and ends with him banned the week after that.
"I thought themes would be fun," he says, helping Britta move her plants aside to clear the table for pizza.
"They can be," Annie agrees patiently, "but Birth of a Nation is not really a theme movie."
Abed sighs and carries another plant off into the living room, and Britta shakes her head. "He's not real."
"Oh, but he is." Annie sets a stack of plates on the table. "I love your place."
"It's all right." Britta shrugs. "I don't really have people over very often."
"You should. It's really nice."
Britta looks around skeptically, but arguing with Annie is like arguing with...something it makes you feel bad to argue with. Like a kitten. One that will quietly destroy something you value to punish you for arguing with it. "We could do a regular movie night, or something," she says instead. "Maybe."
"You mean with the whole group?" Annie makes a face. "Can you imagine getting everyone to agree on anything? I mean anything. The movie. Dinner. What time. Whether or not we want to do themes."
Britta has to laugh. "Good point. Maybe a more...selective group."
Annie sets the plates out carefully, one by one, centering them on the squares of the tablecloth. Britta's pretty sure she's smiling. "Yeah."
Britta feels like she wants to say something, but she has no idea what it is, and it's really inconvenient for her brain to come up with stuff in that order, the impulse before the thing. She ends up just standing there, opening and closing her mouth like a fish, until Troy shows up with the pizza.
**
Somehow it turns into August. Britta can't figure that out. She knows the time must have gone somewhere; two of her favorite couples on her soap operas have gotten married and divorced, and another character has had an entire evil twin saga play out. Plus the plants are completely taking over her apartment. Still, it seems like there should be more time left.
It's Annie's idea to go to the county fair, because God knows none of the rest of them would have thought of it. Britta hasn't been since she was nine, and Troy and Abed have never gone at all.
"It's awesome," Annie says sternly as she hands them their tickets outside the gate. "There's horrible food and a lot of flashing lights. Those are the sort of things you three like best."
"There's also live animals," Troy says. "And live animal by-products."
"Carnival rides," Annie shoots back.
"Um, carnival rides assembled by carnies." Britta hangs back at the curb, watching some people go flying along through the air on a machine that she can hear rattling from all the way over here. "That's taking your life in your hands."
Troy and Abed look at each other. "I'm on it," Abed says, and they take off running for the gate.
Annie shakes her head and smiles at Britta. "We don't have to do the rides if you don't want to."
"I can only stay for like an hour, anyway," Britta mutters, but she follows Annie through the gate.
She agrees to the merry-go-round, because that at least stays on level ground, and anyway, she falls back into that nine-year-old's weakness for the pretty painted horses as soon as she sees them. Then Annie points out that there are real, actual horses not that far away, so they go visit that barn, and Britta gets to pet an actual pony, and the pony licks her, which is so cool and so totally gross. There are sheep, and llamas, and tiny cows, and by the time they step back outside again, it's been three hours and the sky is getting dark.
They get cotton candy, and elephant ears, and walk slowly along the midway. "This is nice," Britta says. "I had fun."
"I knew you would." Annie stops in front of one of the games, looking up at the row of brightly-colored cowboy hats hanging on hooks along the awning. "I wish these games weren't totally rigged. I like the zebra-print one."
It's a shooting game. Britta grins and hands Annie her purse. "Oh, I got this."
The game is, in fact, totally rigged, but it still only takes her two rounds to win Annie the hat, and the way Annie laughs when she puts it on is totally worth the six dollars. "Awesome," Annie says. "Thank you. I'll buy you some lemonade, c'mon."
"This is more junk food than should be allowed in one place."
"It's part of the whole point. It's fun." Annie glances at her and then reaches out, brushing her fingers over Britta's wrist as they walk. Britta turns her hand without thinking about it, and Annie threads their fingers together.
"This is nice," Britta says.
"Yeah."
"I think I said that already, didn't I?"
"Yeah. But it's okay." Annie squeezes her hand lightly, and Britta takes a breath.
"I don't think I really need lemonade."
"Okay."
"And I have no idea where Troy and Abed are."
Annie tilts her head a little toward the sound of a commotion by one of the feats-of-strength type games. "I'm sure they couldn't possibly be in this direction."
"Totally not." Britta tugs her hand a little, guiding her the opposite way, back behind the row of food trailers. "Let's look for them over here."
Annie laughs and laughs, until Britta kisses her to make her stop. The brim of the hat bumps against her forehead, which is sunburned yet again, and Annie's mouth tastes like cotton candy, and Britta is glad there are two more weeks of summer, because she isn't done yet.
The Dreamwidth copy of this post has
comments. Comment there or here, as you like!