[fic] do's and don'ts at community college
fic: rule number one - don't fall in love with a girl who is more you than you
fandom: community/btvs
pairing: annie/dawn
word count:1754
disclaimer: fml dawn is my queer queen okay? let's see how many girls she can kiss this week (aka this is all doris' fault. do not recommend.)
summary: she's just like you... only a little less rachel berry and a little more thora birch
[omg what is my life?!?!!?]Annie Edison always has the right answer.
Annie Edison always is the first to raise her hand.
Annie Edison always keeps her books neat and her pencils sharpened.
Annie Edison absolutely never has ink stains on her fingers or mascara smudged under her eyes or a run in her stockings.
Annie Edison has done one thing right in her life and that's being a student at Community College.
(She doesn't count High School as getting it right.)
(Abed says everyone gets a training level and while his metaphors are usually about television and not about video games she nods along to this as they brush their teeth side by side in the matching pj's Troy sent them in this month's care package because she firmly believes in being properly trained for any undertaking.)
Annie Edison is a model student (and she is not going to be sad that this is her greatest achievement, she is not) and every hair is in place and her earrings match her shoes match her necklace match her panties because she dresses for the part (goddamnit).
Which is why it is absolutely reprehensible that the girl with scribbled-upon sneakers and smudged mascara and oversized t-shirt snapping her gum while reading a paperback with her legs propped up on her desk should have gotten the highest grade on the pop quiz in Applied Linguistics 120.
(“There’s a hole in her jeans. And I don’t even think it was intentional,” is Britta’s comment and Annie thanks her with a smile.
“I’ve never heard her talk,” Shirley says with her arm around Annie’s shoulder in the bathroom after class, “Maybe she cheated!”
“It seems like her oversized t-shirts and holey jeans are neither ironic nor a symptom of true poverty, which suggests she is just neglectful about her appearance, which has never happened her before,” Abed says mostly to his notebook. He keeps tallies on most of the students of interest at the school.
And a girl who surpasses Annie Edison in Applied Linguistics 120 is definitely a student of interest.)
Three weeks into the semester the girl with long brown hair that gently (but not at all attractively) curls at the ends suddenly loses the baggy t-shirts and dirty jeans and replaces them with a wardrobe of cute leggings and mini-skirts and flowy tops and a shoe collection that Annie does not, definitely does not, notice NOR covet.
That would be silly.
She also interrupts Annie’s correct answer to a very, very tough question in gibberish. (With her legs still on her desk and her mouth still full of gum and a paperback still in her hands and no notes or highlighters or even a textbook to be seen.)
“Well, I’m pretty sure if the professor wanted us to all speak in gibberish, he would have asked,” Annie bites out without deigning to turn her head in the girl’s direction.
(In her periphery she can see the girl put her feet on the floor and rest her elbows on her knees, the paperback held in one hand with her forefinger keeping her place.)
“Forgive me, of course answering the question about Archaic Latin by using Archaic Latin was rather silly, wasn’t it?”
(Annie does not, definitely does not, linger outside the Linguistics office with her ear to the door, unsuccessfully eavesdropping on the girl helping the professors with their research into ancient languages Annie is 99.999% positive the girl with the really nice shoes who used to wear baggy t-shirts just made up to get attention.)
(Annie does not, definitely does not, linger outside Abed’s door that night begging him to teach her Arabic refusing to take no for an answer and falling asleep propped up against his door and does not (surely not) have a text from Jeff in the morning warning that if she falls asleep in the hallway again he’s not coming over to rescue Abed and she’ll just have to stay there, he’s not coming all the way down there to carry her to bed again and a text from Troy saying that she’ll always be the smartest girl he knows even if she only speaks English and some conversational Spanish and a few bad words in Italian and a basket of muffins waiting for her in the library from Shirley.)
“Hey do you know anything about this?”
The girl is standing next to her and its rather unsettling because Annie has never really focused on her standing and she’s much taller than she expected.
“I’m sorry, what?” she says as coldly as she can (after clearing her throat not at all nervously first).
“I’ve seen you in my Statistics class, right? Well I’m falling behind because,” she shrugs. “Anyway, you seem to have a real knack for numbers. Mind if I … I don’t know. Study buddies? I’ll supply you in coffee and baked treats?”
“We have Applied Linguistics together,” Annie says not at all coldly and mostly just confusedly.
“Yeah,” the long-legged girl with really pretty hair that used to cover them up in ragged jeans and baggy band tees and who always reads paperbacks in class but still knows all the answers plops down next to Annie in Shirley’s spot in the library because Annie is alone and defenseless and leans into her like they are old friends. “And you’re like… the only one who seems to have a clue what’s going on in that class. But we’re also in Stats. You probably didn’t notice ‘cause I sit way in the back and am sometimes asleep because hello math is so not funny unless terodactlyes are involved, right?”
Annie just stares back stupefied.
“My name’s Dawn, by the way. You’re Annie, right?”
“So… you need my help?”
“Seriously math is the bane of my existence. You’d be doing me a huge favor.”
“Um. Sure. How about at my apartment around seven?”
“I’ll bring pizza if you bring your brain.”
“ . . . “
“That sounded way less creepy in my head.”
(When she leaves, Abed remarks, “She’s just like you. Only a little less Rachel Berry and a little more Thora Birch from American Beauty. You know?” He then stares at her suspiciously. “You aren’t going to be performing any musical numbers in the living room are you, because that’s strictly against the apartment rules unless in cases of zombie apocalypse or Jeff coming out of the closet.”)
(Abed did not, definitely did not come home to find Annie straddling the untidy girl with really great shoes on the couch, her hands wrapped up in that long brown hair and pulling a little harder than she’d ever like and that bottom lip between her teeth.)
“Hope you don’t mind anchovies.”
“Um. Gross?”
Dawn laughs and opens the box, “Don’t worry, I only had them put it on my half. I got you plain cheese because I figured that was safest.”
Studying with Dawn is an exercise in futility because she doesn’t sit still - ever - and gets pizza sauce on her notes and falls over her own feet every time she tries to balance herself down the narrow hallway to the bathroom. She’s wearing old jeans and a Def Leppard t-shirt that is so stretched out it hangs off one of her narrow shoulders (not at all attractively).
“Um.” Annie nearly works up the courage to ask but then just leans back in her chair and smiles uncomfortably because personal questions lead to personal revelations lead to a person sitting across from her at the table instead of a nemesis and a nemesis is so much easier to hate than a girl who can’t stop smiling and is so endearingly terrible at math and apparently has zero control over her limbs at any given moment.
“Um?” Dawn’s eyes twinkle and Annie finds herself smiling back (but not at all affectionately).
“It’s just… the … clothes?”
Dawn looks down, “Guh my roommate… there was some sort of accident or something and my wardrobe got caught in the crossfire so everything is in the wash or at the cleaners and I had to borrow his stuff. Again.”
“His stuff? Again?”
Dawn rolls her eyes and pulls her feet up onto her chair, hugging her knees to her chest, “My sister’s boyfriend actually. Here babysitting me. Or vise versa. I don’t know.” She shrugs and takes a swig of soda from the can in front of her, “I was rushed her to start semester and so I had to wear his old stuff for the first few weeks. I don’t even know where he’s been hiding all this stuff. Probably has had it all for forever.”
“Where’s your sister?”
“Hell if I know. Maybe Rome. She moves around a lot… for… um… her job.”
Annie nods like she understands, “It must have cost a fortune to ship all those shoes back over from Europe.”
Dawn’s nose wrinkles up as she smiles mischieviously, “Most of them aren’t even mine. She felt so guilty for sending me out here, she let me take stuff from her closet.”
“I wish I had a sister I could guilt-trip shoes out of.”
“Nah,” Dawn twirls her way to the couch and plops down on it, her feet (devoid of socks and with mismatched painted toes, as if she started a pedicure and changed her mind halfway through… three times) slung over the back, “ ‘Cause then you have a sister who has something to feel guilty for.”
Afterwards, Annie will insist that she was seduced. All those legs and talk of guilt - she just wanted that impish smile back. (They will all smile and not suggest that’s what she wanted all along.)
“The thing about perfection,” Dawn muses to herself while playing with Annie’s fingers, bringing her back to wakefulness from a small doze, “is that nothing else can ever quite measure up... I’d rather not measure up and be free to fall down than be too afraid to move.”
Annie Edison sometimes sleeps in past her alarm.
Annie Edison sometimes burns the pancakes (especially when her girlfriend kisses her on the back of the neck and wraps her arms around her waist).
Annie Edison sometimes gets distracted and doesn’t finish her homework two days ahead of schedule anymore.
Annie Edison sometimes stays awake to see the sunrise and is surprised by it.
Annie Edison is learning how to achieve perfection in new and slightly messy ways.
(But her panties still match her earrings because let’s face it, she’s not a heathen.)
fandom: community/btvs
pairing: annie/dawn
word count:1754
disclaimer: fml dawn is my queer queen okay? let's see how many girls she can kiss this week (aka this is all doris' fault. do not recommend.)
summary: she's just like you... only a little less rachel berry and a little more thora birch
[omg what is my life?!?!!?]Annie Edison always has the right answer.
Annie Edison always is the first to raise her hand.
Annie Edison always keeps her books neat and her pencils sharpened.
Annie Edison absolutely never has ink stains on her fingers or mascara smudged under her eyes or a run in her stockings.
Annie Edison has done one thing right in her life and that's being a student at Community College.
(She doesn't count High School as getting it right.)
(Abed says everyone gets a training level and while his metaphors are usually about television and not about video games she nods along to this as they brush their teeth side by side in the matching pj's Troy sent them in this month's care package because she firmly believes in being properly trained for any undertaking.)
Annie Edison is a model student (and she is not going to be sad that this is her greatest achievement, she is not) and every hair is in place and her earrings match her shoes match her necklace match her panties because she dresses for the part (goddamnit).
Which is why it is absolutely reprehensible that the girl with scribbled-upon sneakers and smudged mascara and oversized t-shirt snapping her gum while reading a paperback with her legs propped up on her desk should have gotten the highest grade on the pop quiz in Applied Linguistics 120.
(“There’s a hole in her jeans. And I don’t even think it was intentional,” is Britta’s comment and Annie thanks her with a smile.
“I’ve never heard her talk,” Shirley says with her arm around Annie’s shoulder in the bathroom after class, “Maybe she cheated!”
“It seems like her oversized t-shirts and holey jeans are neither ironic nor a symptom of true poverty, which suggests she is just neglectful about her appearance, which has never happened her before,” Abed says mostly to his notebook. He keeps tallies on most of the students of interest at the school.
And a girl who surpasses Annie Edison in Applied Linguistics 120 is definitely a student of interest.)
Three weeks into the semester the girl with long brown hair that gently (but not at all attractively) curls at the ends suddenly loses the baggy t-shirts and dirty jeans and replaces them with a wardrobe of cute leggings and mini-skirts and flowy tops and a shoe collection that Annie does not, definitely does not, notice NOR covet.
That would be silly.
She also interrupts Annie’s correct answer to a very, very tough question in gibberish. (With her legs still on her desk and her mouth still full of gum and a paperback still in her hands and no notes or highlighters or even a textbook to be seen.)
“Well, I’m pretty sure if the professor wanted us to all speak in gibberish, he would have asked,” Annie bites out without deigning to turn her head in the girl’s direction.
(In her periphery she can see the girl put her feet on the floor and rest her elbows on her knees, the paperback held in one hand with her forefinger keeping her place.)
“Forgive me, of course answering the question about Archaic Latin by using Archaic Latin was rather silly, wasn’t it?”
(Annie does not, definitely does not, linger outside the Linguistics office with her ear to the door, unsuccessfully eavesdropping on the girl helping the professors with their research into ancient languages Annie is 99.999% positive the girl with the really nice shoes who used to wear baggy t-shirts just made up to get attention.)
(Annie does not, definitely does not, linger outside Abed’s door that night begging him to teach her Arabic refusing to take no for an answer and falling asleep propped up against his door and does not (surely not) have a text from Jeff in the morning warning that if she falls asleep in the hallway again he’s not coming over to rescue Abed and she’ll just have to stay there, he’s not coming all the way down there to carry her to bed again and a text from Troy saying that she’ll always be the smartest girl he knows even if she only speaks English and some conversational Spanish and a few bad words in Italian and a basket of muffins waiting for her in the library from Shirley.)
“Hey do you know anything about this?”
The girl is standing next to her and its rather unsettling because Annie has never really focused on her standing and she’s much taller than she expected.
“I’m sorry, what?” she says as coldly as she can (after clearing her throat not at all nervously first).
“I’ve seen you in my Statistics class, right? Well I’m falling behind because,” she shrugs. “Anyway, you seem to have a real knack for numbers. Mind if I … I don’t know. Study buddies? I’ll supply you in coffee and baked treats?”
“We have Applied Linguistics together,” Annie says not at all coldly and mostly just confusedly.
“Yeah,” the long-legged girl with really pretty hair that used to cover them up in ragged jeans and baggy band tees and who always reads paperbacks in class but still knows all the answers plops down next to Annie in Shirley’s spot in the library because Annie is alone and defenseless and leans into her like they are old friends. “And you’re like… the only one who seems to have a clue what’s going on in that class. But we’re also in Stats. You probably didn’t notice ‘cause I sit way in the back and am sometimes asleep because hello math is so not funny unless terodactlyes are involved, right?”
Annie just stares back stupefied.
“My name’s Dawn, by the way. You’re Annie, right?”
“So… you need my help?”
“Seriously math is the bane of my existence. You’d be doing me a huge favor.”
“Um. Sure. How about at my apartment around seven?”
“I’ll bring pizza if you bring your brain.”
“ . . . “
“That sounded way less creepy in my head.”
(When she leaves, Abed remarks, “She’s just like you. Only a little less Rachel Berry and a little more Thora Birch from American Beauty. You know?” He then stares at her suspiciously. “You aren’t going to be performing any musical numbers in the living room are you, because that’s strictly against the apartment rules unless in cases of zombie apocalypse or Jeff coming out of the closet.”)
(Abed did not, definitely did not come home to find Annie straddling the untidy girl with really great shoes on the couch, her hands wrapped up in that long brown hair and pulling a little harder than she’d ever like and that bottom lip between her teeth.)
“Hope you don’t mind anchovies.”
“Um. Gross?”
Dawn laughs and opens the box, “Don’t worry, I only had them put it on my half. I got you plain cheese because I figured that was safest.”
Studying with Dawn is an exercise in futility because she doesn’t sit still - ever - and gets pizza sauce on her notes and falls over her own feet every time she tries to balance herself down the narrow hallway to the bathroom. She’s wearing old jeans and a Def Leppard t-shirt that is so stretched out it hangs off one of her narrow shoulders (not at all attractively).
“Um.” Annie nearly works up the courage to ask but then just leans back in her chair and smiles uncomfortably because personal questions lead to personal revelations lead to a person sitting across from her at the table instead of a nemesis and a nemesis is so much easier to hate than a girl who can’t stop smiling and is so endearingly terrible at math and apparently has zero control over her limbs at any given moment.
“Um?” Dawn’s eyes twinkle and Annie finds herself smiling back (but not at all affectionately).
“It’s just… the … clothes?”
Dawn looks down, “Guh my roommate… there was some sort of accident or something and my wardrobe got caught in the crossfire so everything is in the wash or at the cleaners and I had to borrow his stuff. Again.”
“His stuff? Again?”
Dawn rolls her eyes and pulls her feet up onto her chair, hugging her knees to her chest, “My sister’s boyfriend actually. Here babysitting me. Or vise versa. I don’t know.” She shrugs and takes a swig of soda from the can in front of her, “I was rushed her to start semester and so I had to wear his old stuff for the first few weeks. I don’t even know where he’s been hiding all this stuff. Probably has had it all for forever.”
“Where’s your sister?”
“Hell if I know. Maybe Rome. She moves around a lot… for… um… her job.”
Annie nods like she understands, “It must have cost a fortune to ship all those shoes back over from Europe.”
Dawn’s nose wrinkles up as she smiles mischieviously, “Most of them aren’t even mine. She felt so guilty for sending me out here, she let me take stuff from her closet.”
“I wish I had a sister I could guilt-trip shoes out of.”
“Nah,” Dawn twirls her way to the couch and plops down on it, her feet (devoid of socks and with mismatched painted toes, as if she started a pedicure and changed her mind halfway through… three times) slung over the back, “ ‘Cause then you have a sister who has something to feel guilty for.”
Afterwards, Annie will insist that she was seduced. All those legs and talk of guilt - she just wanted that impish smile back. (They will all smile and not suggest that’s what she wanted all along.)
“The thing about perfection,” Dawn muses to herself while playing with Annie’s fingers, bringing her back to wakefulness from a small doze, “is that nothing else can ever quite measure up... I’d rather not measure up and be free to fall down than be too afraid to move.”
Annie Edison sometimes sleeps in past her alarm.
Annie Edison sometimes burns the pancakes (especially when her girlfriend kisses her on the back of the neck and wraps her arms around her waist).
Annie Edison sometimes gets distracted and doesn’t finish her homework two days ahead of schedule anymore.
Annie Edison sometimes stays awake to see the sunrise and is surprised by it.
Annie Edison is learning how to achieve perfection in new and slightly messy ways.
(But her panties still match her earrings because let’s face it, she’s not a heathen.)