Closing The Door (4/5)
Title: Closing the Door
Author: robert3A-SN on ff.net
Character/pairing: Jeff/Annie, Britta/Troy, Annie/Troy friendship
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,200 words in chapter 4, 12,206 words overall
Genres: Romance, friendship, humor
Summary: Chapter 4: Annie has a talk with Britta and Troy.
Disclaimer: If I owned Community, everyone involved in it would be back in S4, but I don’t and they won’t.
A/N: The fic is also at ff.net at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8516567/4/, but feedback is encouraged to be left on here.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Annie had never been more relieved she didn’t share her afternoon classes with group members. She could regroup and keep her head down, except when she answered half the questions - which was still down from her usual 65 percent. But when classes were over, she couldn’t leave Greendale, since then she’d have to go home.
Even if she didn’t come home to see Troy crying in heartbreak, seeing him happy with Britta might not be a huge improvement. Not once she stopped being relieved and they got back to rubbing in Annie’s failures with Jeff. And that kiss might have been a pretty big failure.
Whatever it all meant, she couldn’t figure it out while she was near Troy, Britta or Jeff. Maybe she could sleep and study in the lounge area until things died down. Annie did manage to sit on the couch, study and nap for a while after class. Yet not long after waking up before sundown, she saw two of the three people she didn’t want to see.
Well, since Britta and Troy were arriving together, that might be a good sign. And Troy’s eyes were only semi-red from tears - even better.
But then he went into sad crying mode and declared, “I told her everything! Like two seconds after we got in the storage closest! You weren’t there to keep me from spilling any longer! You weren’t there!” he whispered out.
“Oh…..that’s right, I wasn’t,” Annie barely muttered.
“Yeah, you missed a big show,” Britta said, although at least it wasn’t in a ‘kill Annie’ voice. “We had at it for about an hour or two. But it was the big, open, honest talk I guess you wanted us to do all along. Then after we got everything out there, we…..had at it in other ways for a bit. And now I’m one step away from going to Steppinwolf.”
That was her way to get around saying she was his girlfriend. But Annie didn’t care whatever code she used, as long as she translated it like that. “That’s great!” Annie cheered, before guilt set in again. “But if you only did it because I almost kissed him, I guess it isn’t. Because I wasn’t really going to do it! And he didn’t want me to!”
“I know. Trust me, I know everything about your little old scheme!” she added with a British accent that almost sounded Southern.
“That’s not your accent for your Inspector Spacetime auditions, right?” Troy wondered. “Abed won’t give you a good part with that, even with my casting pull! The best you’d get is some lame companion like Geneva!”
“Back off Geneva, okay?” Annie ordered. Yet her annoyance with Troy couldn’t erase her nerves around Britta. “Britta, it wasn’t his idea at all! I made up the whole thing! I thought it’d get you jealous enough to want Troy for good! I guess it worked, but that doesn’t make it right. I shouldn’t have manipulated you like that, or made him do it with me, and I’m sorry,” she got out.
“You already said that before you….” Britta actually dropped it there and sat down next to Annie. Nevertheless, Annie got ready in case Britta moved to slap her.
Instead, Britta said, “I could explain how my issues, and how I’m not used to healthy relationships, made me scared to start one. Or even be in one, really. But I think you know about that stuff better than anyone. Yet you did this anyway.” Annie silently and sadly agreed inside, but kept quiet for now.
“I did need a kick in the ass to make me get off it. And boy, you gave me one. You know how? As scared as I was to be with Troy, ruin it and get my heart broken….it was nothing compared to how scared I was when you almost kissed him. Okay, it was a hoax, but it was still scary! And honestly, I never want to be that scared again! But if I keep running from a good thing, I’ll be that scared forever,” Britta confessed, as Annie began to suspect she might not get slapped after all.
“Yeah, you pissed me off and I was a few seconds from dunking you in oil again. In a not hot way, mind you! And I will give you two some payback later, you know! You don’t lie and trick an emotionally fragile woman, and a friend, and not get revenged on!” Britta assured. “But it finally made me face and talk out a few things, and it didn’t kill me after all. So I still have to thank you. I guess.”
This was the best Annie had hoped for - and it still didn’t make her completely better. “I’m really glad to hear that. But I’m still really sorry I did it that way. I hope I didn’t force you into this before you’re ready. I’d never forgive myself if I did.”
“I don’t know how ready I am. But I’ll never be ready if I keep going it alone,” Britta understood. “Maybe going through it with Troy’s help will work better. Not much can work worse, right?”
“Well, if I did that much,” Annie conceded, keeping her guilt to herself for now.
“Are you kidding? You even fooled me with that last speech! I swear we didn’t plan it, she just improv’d it! I still don’t know what movie she got it from!” Troy exclaimed. And therein lay the second nagging problem of the day.
“I didn’t get it from a movie,” Annie revealed. She thought about how to explain further, then started with, “You told her Jeff knew about this the whole time, right?”
“Yeah, he’ll be properly ‘thanked’ for the heads up soon enough,” Britta warned.
“Yeah, I was trying to make sure he didn’t get in the way. Then he said I only did this to make him jealous. Or to live out my old fantasies with Troy one more time,” she stated in Troy’s direction. “He thought, or made it look like he thought, part of me still wanted you if you couldn’t get Britta. Or if I couldn’t get Jeff. For a while, I thought he was right. Maybe he was.”
“Okay. If I’m doing the girlfriend thing, I should learn to fight the jealousy thing, right? Even if it’s why I’m a girlfriend to begin with?” Britta asked herself, notably sitting on her own hands.
“Britta, don’t worry! I took care of that already!” Annie promised, then went back to telling Troy why she had to.
“Troy, you didn’t do anything. Well, then again, you kind of did,” Annie recalled. “I did remember how I once thought about you, but that was before the plan! It was after you called me your best friend other than Abed and Britta. Then I came up with the plan a minute later to help you. Fancy that,” she reflected.
“So it was just you being a weird best friend? Troy has that effect on people,” Britta admitted.
“Well, that too. But I mean, I was so crazy about Troy back then. Then I just dropped it in an instant for Vaughn and Jeff. But I guess it was dumb to think it would totally go away,” Annie conceded.
“Not that I thought I could really be with you!” she corrected to Troy. “It’s just….with the way our lives have gone, and how close we are now, I guess I started thinking ‘what if?’ About how different things would have been if we were together then. Or now. And I got screwed up thinking about it for a while. It’s stupid, really.”
Annie was set to leave it at that - until Troy added, “No, it’s not.” Just in case, Annie made sure Britta still sat on her hands before listening to Troy go on.
“You said it yourself, things would be easier if we were….that way. Not better, I never said better!” Troy preemptively told Britta, who just nodded and kept to herself. He then focused back on Annie and went on.
“But I’ve thought about that stuff too. Why wouldn’t I? I mean, if I’d noticed you, I never would have let you get hooked on pills! At least I really hope not,” he admitted. “But I know if we were friends back then, or anything else, you’d never let me get nervous and lose that scholarship! We could have gotten everything we wanted back then if we were together!”
“And then you wouldn’t have met Abed. Or Britta. And I wouldn’t have met everyone else, found real friends, or become a more complete person,” Annie nitpicked. “And you wouldn’t have found out who you really are, embraced your inner nerd, or become the real leader you are now. But we were so screwed up back then, we couldn’t have done any of that together. So it’d have been the biggest mistake of our lives if we were.”
“I guess. If we were who were were back then,” Troy added. “But if I was like this back in high school, and you were who you are now….” he hesitated before completing, “Heck, you’d probably be my Abed in that world! Except we’d be naked a little more.”
Annie blushed and tried to brush past that last part for Britta’s sake. “Well, who knows? Maybe we’re like that in one of Abed’s timelines, so it balances out!”
“Not the evil one! You can’t pull off a goatee in a mental institution! Not the way Abed tells it!” Troy randomly called out. At the least, it made them stop imagining that timeline in front of Britta.
“Anyway, Troy, it all worked out. You have Britta, I have a real life for the first time, and we’re real friends now. I wouldn’t change that, or how we got there, for anything,” Annie assured.
“You’re right. I still kind of wish I could change your pill part and get away with it,” Troy conveyed. “I should wish that, right? I mean, I meant what I said on Saturday! You are the best not-Abed and not-Britta friend I have! And….I really wish I’d have done something for you back then like you did for me and Britta,” he regretted.
“You did something way better than that. You let me live with you and Abed. You gave me your old room, and you let me live with a real family who loves me no matter what. I’ve never had any of that before. And I never would have if high school was different for us!” Annie almost teared up. “So now we’re even. Okay?”
This finally made Troy concede and nod his okay. Annie briefly thought about kissing his cheek as a final thank you, to come full circle. Yet when she thought about kissing him, she didn’t feel anything at all. No anxiety, no anticipation, no flashbacks to the past - nothing.
But it did inspire Annie to just give him a hug as a thank you. And that was okay with her.
As Troy hugged her back, she finally felt herself closing the door of their past for good. Although her old feelings had first been buried years ago, now they were truly a part of her no more. On that realization, she gave him an extra big squeeze before breaking away.
Troy looked a little out of breath, but he chuckled and smiled anyway. As Annie smiled back, she realized this wasn’t one of the fake long looks that they’d acted out this week. This was just a real, genuine long smile between dear friends who’d shared a meaningful moment.
Annie wasn’t used to having moments like that - at least not without any tension or deeper meanings underneath. She wondered if she’d ever had those simple, pure moments with -
“Okay, I think that’s settled, then,” Britta interrupted. “Not because I’m jealous! But you two are setting the gooey, nauseating bar a little high. Hell, you looked almost as gooey as Annie and Jeff!”
Well, that was good to know.
Annie sighed and instantly lost her happy mood. “Right. There’s that other problem left,” she exclaimed. “Like there’s any chance of solving that. He’ll just stay in his apartment and run out the clock until this gets swept under the rug too. If it even affected him at all.” Yet despite her uncertainty over how to feel about that, she noticed Troy and Britta were looking even more uneasy.
“You really didn’t see what he did, did you?” Britta asked.
“The whole point was not to look at him! Then I could leave and get the last word! Why?” Annie asked curiously at the end.
“Oh, that’s why you got away before he hugged you!” Troy realized.
“That wasn’t a hug, Troy. He was a split second from grabbing her and tonguing her lungs out before she left! His arms stayed up for a whole minute and everything!” Britta informed.
“Oh,” Annie exclaimed while she searched for another reaction. “Well, it was probably just another ‘Man is evil’ moment for him. He didn’t drop an evil wheelchair guy, but other than that, it sounds about the same.”
“On it’s own, maybe. Not with the looks, though,” Britta commented.
“What looks?”Annie wanted to know, forgetting she shouldn’t care that much. But she did calm down a bit more to ask, “Britta, what do you know?”
“You know, I should be the one to leave you hanging, after what you pulled on me,” Britta proclaimed. Annie sighed, knowing she probably had that coming. “But Troy wouldn’t like me being mean to his best friends. So you’re lucky I’m being a good girlfriend right off the bat,” she let Annie off the hook, albeit with a teasing underlying tone.
It did reassure Annie that she and Britta would be okay again soon. As for her and Jeff, it seemed to be in Britta’s hands now.
“I really didn’t want to look at your heads touching. So I tried to look at anything else, and that turned out to be Jeff,” Britta revealed. “When it looked like you might kiss Troy….he looked more nervous and scared than I’ve ever seen him. Worse when he ran out of hair gel and the store didn’t have his regular brand! Maybe as worse as me!”
Annie searched for explanations to excuse that - anything other than what Britta might say - and came up with, “But now you know he knew I was acting. He was probably acting too, so no one would suspect he knew.” She did know that was nonsense, since he hardly wanted to help Annie. Yet compared to the possible alternative….
“No, that makes it more incredible! I was so scared I’d lose Troy because I didn’t know it was an act! Jeff knew you were lying, but he still looked worse than me! And when you stopped, he looked more relieved than I’ve ever seen him. Of course when I noticed that, he tried to cover it up and smirked or something,” Britta reminded.
A blown away Annie had only one way to discredit Britta’s story now. “Did anyone else see it? If it was just you while you were panicking about Troy….” she left hanging to convey her doubt.
“No, it wasn’t just her. Abed told us he saw it too. He even said Jeff looked worse than Britta when you almost kissed me,” Troy confirmed. “Shirley said it too! Sure, they waited till Jeff left a few minutes after you did. But it still counts!”
It probably did. Goddamn it, it did. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Annie wondered. “Okay, I know what it might mean! Probably does mean. But the only reason I can’t believe it is….well, it’s Jeff. And it’s not like he’s explaining himself!”
“Then I guess you’ll need to confront him. We could use a quieter day tomorrow, so it should probably be tonight,” Britta offered.
Annie’s brain flashed back to all their past confrontations, and all the ways this one could go even worse. This made her complain, “Well, why do I have to make the first move? I did it before and he hurt me every time! Shouldn’t he take the leap first? Britta, you took the leap with Troy, so now he’s even less evolved than you!”
“Huh. Maybe if you listened when I said that three years ago, it wouldn’t be such a shock now,” Britta dug in at Annie and Jeff.
“Britta, I don’t think she needs to be shocked by your greatness right now,” Troy warned.
“Fine, fine!” Britta huffed, although she lit up a little at the greatness part. She then got up and addressed Annie again. “Come on, if he’s depressed and stuff tomorrow, I can’t brag how I beat my fear of intimacy first! I’ll have to wait until some other day after you two bang and make up.”
“Britta!” Annie squeaked. “We can’t even get on the same page to kiss, much less….that! For all those times I thought we were you and Troy….we’re not. Otherwise we’d be together now, and we’d both want to be together. Maybe that’s a sign it’s not meant to be.”
“You gave me a lot of signs that some things weren’t meant to be,” Britta reminded. “But they were lies, just like Jeff’s. And I gave Troy a lot of signs that I didn’t want him. But they were lies too, just like Jeff’s. The difference is, for all his years of lying, he’s a lot worse at it than we are now. And you and me know him better than anyone, so it’s even more obvious to us. Well, me anyway.”
“It would be obvious to me if it wasn’t for him!” Annie exclaimed. “I just don’t want him to mess up my mind anymore.”
“It seems impossible, I know. But it seemed impossible I’d let myself go all in with Troy. Technically, you never lost faith I could do that anyway,” Britta pointed out. “Maybe having faith in something not-Jesusy can pay off. Even if it takes a few years.”
“What if I don’t know how to use that faith anymore?” Annie wondered - all but conceding she still had it somewhere.
“Well, maybe he doesn’t need manipulation to get the message anymore,” Britta actually gave Jeff credit. “Maybe for him, a big kick in the ass is knowing someone won’t leave him. That even if he acts mean, nasty or emotionally brain dead, he really can’t drive someone away before they break his heart first. I couldn’t, and look at me now.”
Annie did look at Britta as she finally left with Troy. She also looked at Troy waving goodbye and promising to see her at home. Yet with the way she saw him gazing at Britta, it probably wouldn’t be safe for Annie to be there if they were.
She then looked at the floor as she ran over everything one last time. Finally, she looked at her backpack - just to make sure she didn’t forget it before she headed for her car. But she wouldn’t be heading home, even if Troy and Britta weren’t there.