Secret Santa Fic for _carly_
Title: Up on the Rooftop
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Warnings: None
Disclaimer: I don’t own Community, yo.
Summary: Jeff and Annie meet on a snowy rooftop to discuss family, life, love and jewelry.
For _carly_, who prompted: Jeff and Annie's presents to one another are *not* what they expecte
Up on the Rooftop
Jeff sat at the dining room table of the Trobed/Annie apartment, his leg bouncing nervously beneath the oak tabletop. The room was alight with conversation: a drunken Troy and Britta declaring the depth of their love in the most sickening and hilarious ways, Abed arguing about sci-fi with Pierce and Shirley sliding between the kitchen and dining room with new dishes for the group to devour.
This was their annual December 23rd group Christmas - the day they all gathered together without anyone else to celebrate as a team. As of the 24th each person would slink back to their actual ‘families’ for holiday traditions, but this was their day. And sure, this was only the second year they’d done it, but to Jeff, it felt like a pretty important tradition. He did spend Christmas day with his mom, but this was by far the most important part of the holidays for him, especially this year due to a certain something burning a hole in his pocket.
Choosing gifts for his friends was rarely a difficult chore for Jeff. He honestly didn’t care much about giving or getting presents, so he didn’t typically put much effort into the process. A DVD for Abed, novelty gifts for Troy and Pierce, something Jesus-y for Shirley and maybe a book about something hipster-y or anarchistic for Britta. Even Annie, in prior years, had been easy to buy for: pens, a notebook, something with kittens on it. She was cinch.
But that was all in the past, Jeff realized as he began his shopping this year. Picking things out for the majority of his friends was, as usual, not an arduous task, but for Annie something kept niggling at the back of his mind whenever he tried to steer himself toward the stationary aisle. It was the same thing that had been bugging him for the last year or two whenever it came time to give her a gift. There was something he knew he had to give her, something that, in his mind, already belonged to her.
But it was just such a scary thing to actually give it to her.
Jeff wasn’t one for knickknacks in relationships. Not that he and Annie were in a relationship, though he suspected that status would change once he gave her this thing that was, for him at least, the giant elephant in the room. Or, at least, the giant elephant in his pocket (insert dick joke here).
So concerned, was Jeff, with the thing he was going to give Annie, that he very nearly missed it when she got up from the table and wandered to the door, pulling on her boots and coat, and slipping out into the hallway. The rest of the group seemed completely oblivious to her sudden departure, but Jeff couldn’t help but notice. Truth be told, he noticed most everything Annie did these days. She was like a magnet for his eyes (insert boob joke here).
Jeff muttered a small ‘excuse me’ to the group, who didn’t pay him any attention as he, too, got up from the table and dressed for the weather before following Annie. He entered the hallway just in time to feel a gust of wind from upstairs. Brow furrowed, he followed the cold until he reach the door to the roof, propped open with a rock. He peeked outside and found the object of his search peering over the ledge, her arms crossed on the wall and her chin propped on them.
“What are you doing out here?” Jeff asked, re-propping the door open before wading through the ankle-deep snow to where Annie was standing.
“Troy and Britta,” she explained, not elaborating beyond that point.
“And you left?” Jeff asked in mock surprise. “We should be recording that in case they say anything incriminating.” Annie attempted to hide a small laugh, while simultaneously trying to glare at Jeff. She failed in both efforts.
“You’re trouble.” He offered a small grin.
“I do my best.” They stood in companionable silence for a few moments, watching the snow continue to fall in large flakes, accumulating over everything, creating hills and valleys over and between parked cars, and long, seamless blankets of white down city streets. Annie sighed. It wasn’t necessarily a happy sound, Jeff noted.
“Hey, you okay?” he questioned, nudging her slightly, the rough wool of his coat sliding against hers. She smiled sadly.
“I’m fine,” she said in a breath. “It’s just this time of year, you know? It makes you think about all of those things you’d rather just forget.”
“Like what?” She offered a small, almost imperceptible shrug of her shoulders and turned around, leaning back against the shoulder-height wall that surrounded the roof of the apartment complex.
“Just... stuff. Family stuff.” Jeff nodded understandingly and turned to mimic her position, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Anything you want to talk about?” Annie looked at him sceptically,
“You want to hear about my family problems?” she questioned with a raised eyebrow. Jeff offered a one shouldered shrug and slipped himself down the wall to rest on the snowy cement of the roof.
“Ahh! Cold!” he exclaimed, jumping back up immediately. Annie laughed brightly at his antics. Jeff wiped the snow off of his butt and turned to her with a faux glare that only made her laugh harder. “Is there some reason we have to have this conversation outside in the middle of a blizzard?” he questioned.
“It’s nice out here,” Annie argued lightly. She looked around at the lights on the roof that cast a diffused glow over the winterscape. Jeff followed her gaze.
“Sure, if you actually like being cold and wet.”
“You can go inside if you want. I won’t be long.”
“Nuh-uh,” Jeff said firmly. “You’re not getting out of this that easily.” She made a face.
“Am I that transparent?”
“Like a Ziploc bag,” he confirmed. She side-eyed him for a moment, as if testing his commitment to getting the story, before relenting with a sigh.
“Alright,” she allowed, crossing her arms in a vain attempt to warm herself. Jeff fell silent as she gathered her thoughts.
“My dad left during Christmas,” she opened, her voice steady, just stating the facts. Jeff tried to keep his face neutral so she could recount her story without his natural anti-dad-ness seeping in. “He took me to the Christmas Eve service at his Episcopal Church, and I didn’t think anything of it. Some years we went, other years we didn’t. It usually just depended on his mood.” She took a breath.
“I hadn’t seen much of him during the day. He tended to leave his shopping until the last minute, so I was used to him being gone all day on Christmas Eve and coming home with a massive pile of gifts. I guess I didn’t notice that he didn’t bring anything home with him at the end of the day. I was fourteen, I had ‘more important’ things to do than keep an eye on my dad’s comings and goings.” She looked down at her feet and kicked off the snow that had started to accumulate on her boot-tops.
“After church he drove us home, but when I went to get out of the car, he put his hand on mine to stop me. He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a little box and handed it to me without a word.” Annie unbuttoned the top of her coat and pulled out the small heart-shaped locket that Jeff had never seen her without. She tinkered with it a moment before sliding her nail into the seam and flicking it open. Jeff leaned in to look at the two small pictures held inside.
"That’s me and him on the left, and a picture of my mom on the right,” she told him, before clicking it closed again and tucking it back into her coat, re-buttoning against the chill of the cold December night. “I asked him why he was giving it to me on Christmas Eve instead of in the morning, and he told me that he was leaving that night. If I’d been paying attention, I probably would have noticed that the car was full of bags and boxes holding his belongings, not our gifts.” Jeff frowned, feeling a seed of fire building in his stomach.
“He left on Christmas Eve?” he asked. Annie shook her head.
“No. I cried and begged him not to leave and he agreed to stick around for Christmas. He ended up leaving on Boxing Day - but it still weighed heavily on all of us Christmas Day. I couldn’t think of anything other than my dad leaving, so between presents and our turkey dinner, I just ran away to my room to cry. I didn’t know what else to do. My dad was leaving, and there was no way I could change his mind.” Jeff could hear a small hitch in her voice, and detected the vaguest hint of tears in her eyes, though none fell.
“I’ve talked to my dad plenty since he left,” Annie said, almost as an afterthought when considering who she was speaking with. “Up until the end of high school, he stayed in pretty constant contact - but when I went off to rehab we lost touch, and neither of us ever really bothered to find each other again.” She offered a sad smile and put her hand over her heart, where the locket was tucked safely beneath her layers of warmth. “I’ve worn this locket every single day since he gave it to me. I don’t know why, really. It’s not like it represents a good memory. Sometimes it feels more like a gravestone around my neck than a token of affection.”
“Have you ever thought about taking it off?” Jeff asked. He was no stranger to family issues, and most certainly not a stranger to ‘daddy issues’. Of course, when his father left, he hadn’t left Jeff with a physical reminder of the abandonment.
“Thought about it,” Annie allowed. “Sometimes I think it would be the best thing to do. Cut that last string and just move on.” She took a long breath and let it out slowly, the puff of warm air visible in the night. “Mostly though, I’m just afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” he asked, brow furrowed.
“I’m afraid that if I let this go, then it means I’m giving up on him; on what we could have.” She frowned. “I never wanted to do that, but lately...”
“Lately?” he prompted. She shrugged and turned around again to peer over the ledge. Once again, Jeff followed her lead.
“Lately I’ve been thinking that it’s time,” she admitted. “I mean, I’m about to graduate from college. I’ve got a new family in you guys, a new home here with Troy and Abed. What am I holding onto that I don’t have right here?” Jeff nodded his understanding.
“Doesn’t make it any easier to let go, though,” he allowed. She huffed a small, humourless laugh.
“No,” she agreed. “It doesn’t.”
A thick silence descended between the pair as they watched the snow following, creating a beautiful, if hellish drive home for the study group members that didn’t live in the Trobed/Annie apartment.
It was then that Jeff remembered what had driven him to the roof in the first place. He reached down inconspicuously and palmed the small box in his pocket. If Annie noticed, she didn’t make any mention of it. Jeff took a deep breath, steeling himself for the moment.
“Do you think you might consider replacing that locket, if something else came along?” he asked. Annie regarded him curiously.
“What are you talking about?” He pulled the box out of his pocket and held it up for her to see.
“I’m just thinking - maybe it’d be easier for you to move on if you had something to move on to,” he explained. Annie peered down at the small velvet box and her breath caught in her throat.
“Jeff...”
“Don’t worry, it’s not what it looks like,” he jumped in. He saw Annie visibly relax, a small grin peeking at the side of her mouth. “This is just the box my grandmother gave it to me in.” He could see her curiosity grow more at that small tidbit.
“Your grandmother?” Jeff nodded.
“Okay, before I give this to you, I just want to explain,” he said. She smiled with slight amusement, but nodded for him to continue.
“My grandmother gave this to me shortly before my dad left,” he began. “It was something that she got from her mother, who got it from her mother, and so on and so forth... you get it.” She nodded her understanding. “Right, so... she gave this to me when I was four,” he admitted. Annie’s eyes widened. “She didn’t have any daughters to pass it on to, and knowing my dad, she figured he’d probably pawn it if she let him have it, so she passed it on to me.” Jeff could sense Annie’s apprehension as she looked at the small box that was still closed against the cold air.
“Jeff, this is an heirloom...”
“No, let me finish,” he interjected. She shut her mouth, but her hesitation was still clear. “When my grandmother gave this to me, she told me I had to hold onto it until I found someone I wanted to give it to.”
“You should be saving this for someone...”
“Someone special,” he finished for her. “Exactly.” She looked up and met his eyes.
“Why me?” she asked, confusion evident in her gaze. Jeff took a deep breath and steeled himself once again.
“Because you are special to me, Annie,” he admitted quietly. He saw her pull her lower lip into her mouth as she began to nibble it nervously. “When I was trying to find a gift for you, nothing was right, and I knew it was because I already had the perfect gift. It’s been sitting in a shoebox in my closet for 30 years, and this being our last Christmas together as Greendale students, I realized I probably shouldn’t put it off any longer.”
“Jeff...”
“Annie,” he said firmly. “This is me saying all of those things you’ve wanted me to say for years.” He finally popped open the small jewelry box, the small diamond pendant catching the light of the moon and glinting into the night. He saw Annie take in a small, shuddering breath, the tears back in her eyes now for an entirely different reason.
“I know you want the words, Annie, and you deserve the words.” he said quietly, pulling the necklace from the box before slipping the velvet case back into his pocket. He unclasped it and held it open for Annie as she unbutton her coat and unclipped her pendant, slipping it into her own pocket. He closed the space between them and reached around her neck to clasp it in place. “But for now, I’m hoping this will suffice.”
“Jeff,” she breathed, his body now incredibly close to hers. She looked up and met his eyes. “I just need one word.” He swallowed hard, his hands caressing down her arms before looping around her waist, pulling her tighter. “Are you serious about this? Are you really ready to commit?” she questioned. Jeff offered a small, crooked grin at her uncertainty, even after all that they’d been through, even after all they’d discussed that night.
“Yes,” he whispered. “If you’re still willing, then yes.” She attempted to contain her smile.
“Okay,” she allowed with a small nod. “Then I’m ready to trade in the locket... on one condition.” Jeff’s brow furrowed.
“What condition?”
“Kiss me, Jeff,” she said firmly. He laughed lightly at her unexpected demand, and pulled her in closer.
“That, I can do.”
End
Hope you liked it _carly_! Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays everybody :)