[community] Common Sleep Disorders
Title: Common Sleep Disorders
Fandom: Community (pre-Jeff/Annie, if you squint [and I encourage you to squint]; PG-13)
Word Count: 6900
Summary: Annie's been having trouble staying awake this week. In case you were wondering, no, Jeff is not worried about her. Not in the least. And he's not actively going out of his way to find out why she's tired, either. So you can all stop looking at him like that. Any day now.
Author's Notes: Baby's first Community fic! Only, it's technically my second, but the first one wasn't working. So, yeah. Have at it.
On the kind of morning where the world is sullen and bleakly gray, Annie tends to be a bright ball of motivated sunshine in the midst of everyone's gloom.
On the kind of morning where the birds are atwitter and the flowers are aTumblr and the something elses are another social networking site, Annie is nothing short of a real-life Disney princess, Technicolor sparkles and all.
And on all the mornings in between, Annie is Annie-driven, cheerful, and spirited.
In short, in the morning, Annie is very, very annoying, but after almost two years, Jeff's proud to say he's built up a tolerance.
So when one morning Annie is found sleeping in the library, Jeff's tolerant world halts, tilts its head, and furrows its eyebrows at her in confusion.
She has her arms curled around a hardcover textbook and is using it for a pillow, her hair fanned out in limp brown strands all around her. From the looks of it, she's pretty deeply asleep, deep enough that Jeff almost has second thoughts about sitting down and dropping his books onto the table with a loud, solid thump.
Almost.
"Huwhuzzat," Annie says, jolting awake immediately.
Jeff snorts. "Good morning, sunshine."
"Morning, it's-what?" gets out in between a lengthly yawn. Jeff shakes his head. "What time is it?"
"Almost eight o'clock. A.M., in case you were wondering."
Annie sits up, blinks, and then blinks again, like a baby animal first tottering out into the sunlight. "When did that happen?"
Jeff takes the time to really get a look at her. Bags under bloodshot eyes. Hair out of place. Lack of makeup. Wrinkles in her cardigan. Something's amiss. "Annie, are you-"
And the rest of the group sweeps into the room. Annie prods herself awake before anyone can comment and Jeff sits back in his chair, frowning.
--
She seems okay when they pass each other in the hallways. A little groggy, but functioning, and that's good enough to get through Greendale, right? Maybe he just… overreacted?
The thought slinks and slips down Jeff's spine as he walks into Anthropology. He doesn't overreact, he's calm and cool and collected. He doesn't worry, for God's sakes, especially about how many hours of beauty sleep someone's getting. Even if that someone's a friend. And even if that friend probably still needs to get nine hours of sleep every night exactly.
Look, she's fine, he coaches himself when she sits down two desks away. She's sitting, she's talking to Britta, she's piling her textbooks one on top of the other, she's-
She's out like a light.
Jeff's eyebrows pull down. Annie doesn't sleep in class. Ever.
He slips his phone from his pocket and speed-texts. Britta. Wake annie up.
Britta twists around in her seat and shakes her head.
Why not?
shes sleeping jerk leave her alone, she texts.
Yeah. Annie doesnt sleep in class. Whats going on?
Again she twists around, this time to pull a DUH face. shes tired?
Why?
do i look psycic to u i dont know, Britta replies.
Youre such a big help, Jeff sends, and that's all he's gonna get out of Britta, her phone's away and Duncan thunders in with a massive hangover, which gets everyone to shut up right quick.
Phone wedged against the desk and his thigh, Jeff starts a seventy-five minute round of Snake, to take his mind out of Anthropology and off things. Out of the corner of his eye, Britta gently nudges Annie into cold, wakeful reality; she sits up and blinks several times and then, finally, whirs slowly back to life.
And, see, she's okay. And he's not worrying, not watching, overly wary. Because she's fine, she's nothing to worry about.
His snake crashes into the wall three minutes before he even notices.
--
Jeff Winger is not a worrier. Worrying is something other people do-they fret and coo and fuss and show emotion in unchecked, embarrassing amounts as they let their imaginations get ahead of them. Not his style. Jeff Winger is the consummate, distilled essence of not a worrier.
So Annie's notable lack of awareness isn't doing anything to ruffle his feathers, because his feathers don't ruffle in the slightest.
Not at all. Not even a little bit.
You can't make him cop to anything, you know.
--
The first day Annie shows up extra-sleepy to classes, it's a fluke.
The second day she arrives with her eyes bloodshot and her knee-highs mismatched, it's a coincidence.
Only an idiot would ignore the problem when it happens three days in a row, and Jeff is not an idiot. Not worried, mind you-just not an idiot.
But he's starting to get a little concerned.
--
"Dude. You're borderline creeping on her. Knock it off."
Britta, it turns out, has a peculiarly powerful grasp for someone so sticklike. Jeff's bicep finds this out the hard way.
"I am not-" Jeff protests, and accidentally catches the attention of the Latin Mock Senate congregated at a table nearby. Dropping his voice, he hisses, "I'm not creeping on her. What are we, sixteen?"
"You've been watching her like a hawk in class, you practically shadow her in the hallways, and I know for a fact you paid the Anime Club to keep tabs on her for you."
"Okay, number one: I didn't pay the Anime Club to keep tabs on her, I promised them a two-week supply of Pocky if they… watched out for her."
"Nice spin."
"Thanks. Two: how are you not worried about her? She wore navy and black knee-highs together the other day, did you see?"
"The horror," Britta says dryly.
"You know this isn't typical Annie behavior," Jeff tells her.
"You're right. It isn't."
"Then why aren't you worried?" he demands.
Britta's brows rise. "Are you accusing me of being a bad friend?"
"No, I'm accusing you of being blind as a freaking bat. Britta. She's sleepwalking to her classes."
"Figuratively speaking."
"Something's not right," Jeff says, mouth twisting. "I just don't know what."
Then it gets all too quiet-even the Latin Mock Senate shuts up to listen in. Britta whisks her gaze over to a blinking light fixture.
And Jeff gets it, suddenly, and he leans in, all narrow eyes and a deep dark scowl. "You know something," he says, voice low.
"You know, I think the janitor should take a look at that light," Britta remarks. "Looks kinda faulty."
"Britta Perry, what," Jeff breathes, "are you hiding from me."
"I'm not telling you," Britta says, in a voice that sticks its nose in the air for her. "'Cause that's what a good friend does."
"You know what's wrong with Annie."
"Nothing's wrong with her," Britta replies curtly. "Otherwise, yes."
"Tell me."
"Why don't you ask her yourself," Britta says, her eyes flashing-dammit, she's gonna win this one, "instead of creeping around and spying on her?"
And, yep, she whirls around and struts off in pleather boots and a cloud of satisfaction. Dammit.
The Latin Mock Senate watches him expectantly.
"Uck-fay off-ay," he tells them, fuming.
--
Three things.
One. Britta point-blank refuses to give Jeff the littlest crumb of information. It's not her decision to make, she says, patronizing him all the while, Annie's a big girl and if you want to know so badly, bite the bullet and ask her.
Two. Black tights and brown flats. Really, Annie? Really?
Three. He knows he can't be the only one out of the loop, but as the week drudges through the calendar, Jeff finds himself fighting the increasingly unpleasant notion that maybe, in fact, he is.
This is highly unsettling, but not something to get in a tizzy over, he decides later that afternoon, waiting outside the computer lab for the Anime Club to conclude their meeting. There has to be a reason why he hasn't been informed. A good reason, one that will put everything in context and illuminate vast oceans of understanding once it's been revealed.
… She's probably caught the flu, he thinks darkly. Or rabies. And no one told him because they were afraid he'd freak about getting coughed or foamed on. They underestimate the lengths he'll go to for his friends, they really do. Typical.
The door flutters open and out stream the club members, most blinking like faulty lightbulbs… and then, "Troy?"
Troy jumps an inch. "OhhiJeff!" he squeaks, smiling unnaturally wide. "Ididn'tseeyouthere!"
Clearly. "When did you join the Anime Club?" Jeff asks.
"I didn't-" Troy protests hotly, but Jeff's evil smirk stops him short. He sighs. "I'm here for Abed."
"How sweet."
"No, like." Conspiratorially, Troy leans in, lowering his voice. "They keep asking him to come to meetings, but he's usually busy filming, so, I show up in his place."
"Why do they keep asking Abed to come to meetings?"
Troy narrows his eyes. "They wanna ask him something," he says. "I don't know what exactly, but I'm ninety percent sure it involves ninjas."
Jeff blinks. "Right," he says. "Anyway. While you're here. Do you know what's up with Annie?"
"What, the whole zombie thing she's got going on?"
That was easy. "Uh. Yeah."
"No clue," Troy says simply.
Easy come, easy go.
--
And the Anime Club's findings are either useless or redundant-he knows she's been nodding off in her Psych class and Stats and Anthropology and while standing on line for lunch and just outside the girls' bathroom and once right in the middle of the hallway, and he does not need to know, Garrett, exactly what brand of deodorant she prefers. "Really creepy, dude."
"You said you wanted to know everything," Garrett mutters around a stick of Pocky.
"That's a little too much everything," Jeff says.
All right, time to regroup, rethink, restrategize. Seated in the comfort and relative privacy of his car, Jeff lays out the facts. He knows:
That Annie is falling asleep during the school day, a very un-Annieish thing to do;
That Britta knows why Annie is so somnolent all of a sudden, but thinks he should find out on his own, meaning it's something Annie may have asked her not to spread around, meaning…
Meaning Jeff slams his head against the steering wheel. It doesn't help, but he figures it was worth a shot.
With his forehead against the cool wheel, Jeff considers his options. Maybe he should just, you know. Ask her. See what's up. Totally casual, just for the sake of curiosity, not asking because he's afraid she might be legitimately sick or narcoleptic or getting tortured into exhaustion by mad scientists or the U.S. government, and hey, when was it illegal to just ask questions for the sake of asking, huh? What is this, 1984?
… He's gonna see if Shirley knows anything, first.
--
He catches her just outside the girls' bathroom by the cafeteria. "Shirley."
"Oh hello, Jeffrey, I was just about to-"
"What's wrong with Annie?"
Shirley's smile wavers. "She didn't tell you?"
"No, she didn't tell me. Why, is there something to tell?"
"Well," Shirley says, hedging her words, "not really-"
"But there is something."
"It's nothing to worry about, Jeffrey," Shirley says.
"Who's worried? Not me, I'm not worried. I don't worry. I can't. It's statistically impossible," Jeff says, one right after the other, like bullets. "I'm just curious is all."
"Well, have you asked Annie?"
"No, because in case you missed the memo, I am not worried about her."
"That's not what Britta says," Shirley says, her eyes narrowing.
Stops him dead. "Britta," he growls under his breath.
"Mm," Shirley says, one eyebrow curved in a perfect arch. Jeff guesses he must look kinda pathetic, or strained, generally very un-Jeff-esque, because Shirley's expression softens with-and it pains him to admit it-pity. "If you're really… interested-"
"Thank you."
"-in Annie's business, I suggest you go and talk to her. She doesn't bite, you know."
"Dunno, it's always the nice ones that get you," Jeff mutters. Shirley pats his arm in sympathy.
--
"She's fine," Pierce tells him dismissively-he's much more concerned with trying to snag one of the last seven remaining chicken fingers at lunch. There are eleven people ahead of them. Even with current draconian rationing Jeff thinks it's a long shot. "Annie's built of tougher stuff than you'd expect."
"I'm waiting for that to turn anti-Semitic," Jeff says mildly.
Pierce harrumphs. "Annie's a bright, bold young woman who can handle what life throws at her," he says. "It's you who needs to man up and go talk to her if you're so worried."
"One, not worried about her, and two, wait, me?" Jeff says as they slide along the line. Down to three fingers and seven people, they might just make it. "Why me?"
"Well, look who's been snooping around in her business!" Pierce says. "Sneaking around, stalking her every move. Slippery slope, Jeff-next thing you know you're stealing into her walk-in closet late at night to install security cameras while she's in the shower. Trust me, it'll end a relationship in no time."
"We're not in a-" He stops, right in line, to the annoyance of whoever bumped into him from behind. "Wait, have you-"
"Third marriage," he says, face falling. "Thought she was having an affair with Bob Hope."
After a brief pause, Jeff asks, "Was she?"
"Nope. Bob Woodward," Pierce says. "Wrong Bobby."
They stand on line long enough to make things awkward and further irk the people behind them. "I'm sorry," Jeff says, lame as anything, but what else can you do, make a halfhearted joke about Deep Throat?
"I'm sorrier," Pierce tells him. "We didn't talk much."
There's one chicken finger left when they get there, fat and juicy and beautifully breaded, all for the taking-and he must have the flu or something, because he doesn't want it anymore. "Actually, I had a big breakfast earlier," he says, somewhat thickly. "You take it." Oh, it's definitely the flu.
"Suit yourself," Pierce says, and the chicken finger lands in a warm, delicious heap on his plate. They get off the line and Pierce turns to Jeff, serious-faced. "Take a lesson from me-just go talk to her. You won't regret it."
Jeff doesn't follow Pierce to a table right away. It's a sobering kind of moment, he's not used to those.
--
He's alone in the library, at his usual chair, at his usual table but surrounded by a whole lot of nobody. He appreciates it, actually. Gives him time to hear himself think.
The day's drawn to a slow, muggy close, seconds crawling through the afternoon molasses slower and slower. He has nothing to do here. He could go home.
Jeff flicks a paper football across the table. It hits Pierce's chair. Touchdown. Nothing to do.
Annie has an Environmental Club meeting today, five-thirty to seven. They're trying to save the koalas because, as Annie explained it, soft light shining in her big doe eyes, they're in danger of extinction, and everyone likes koalas, right? And they're hosting the Greendale Down Under Fair this evening, but it might not take the entire ninety minutes, and yes, she could meet you in the library when she's done, why do you ask?
Flick. No reason.
"Touchdown," Abed says from the doorway.
Jeff twists in his chair. "What are you still doing here?"
"Meeting with the president of the Anime Club," Abed says. "Just finished."
"Oh yeah? How'd that go?"
Abed shrugs, and hitches his backpack more firmly on his shoulders. "All right," he says. "They're trying to make a series about Greendale as a ninja academy and they wanted to know if I would direct. Has that light fixture always been faulty?"
"Er," Jeff says eventually, when he remembers oh hey, words, "no, it's just been doin' that."
"Cool," Abed says, mostly to himself, peering intently at the light. "Cool."
"I take it you said yes," Jeff says.
"I convinced them it'd be better as a live-action short film," Abed says. "Like cosplay, only scripted and more socially acceptable." He cocks his head. "Why are you still here?"
"Oh. Uh." Jeff glances at his phone-no text, she said she'd text when she was finished. "I have to talk to Annie about… something."
"Like what?"
Jeff doesn't want to call the uncomfortable body shift he does in his chair squirming. "You know she's been sleeping her way through classes, all week, right?"
"I know," Abed says.
"And that's not normal."
"Sure it is. Troy sleeps through Contemporary Mathematics every other morning," Abed replies.
"For her, I mean. It's." He not-squirms again.
Abed frowns; Jeff's convinced he can hear him pulling the rest of the story out of wherever, the collective unconscious of the cosmos, maybe, and making total, lucid sense of it. "You're wor-"
"Don't say it," Jeff says, bitten out.
Abed doesn't.
"'Cause I'm not," he adds quickly.
It's a deafening sort of silence.
"And," Jeff continues, "no one will tell me why, they just insist I ask Annie for myself. So." He gestures wide, long arms extending into a kind of shapeless shrug. "Here I am."
"Mm," Abed says.
"You don't happen to know what her deal is, do you?" Jeff asks.
"Nope." Abed makes to leave, but pauses, and regards Jeff with the sort of grave intensity Jeff's only seen on Seacrest on the Idol finale. "For what it's worth, I think this is a step in the right direction for your character. You're developing. Embrace it."
"Way to-" Jeff starts, but Abed leaves then, cutting short his quip about being talked to like a prepubescent girl. "Yeah," he finishes, lamely.
His phone buzzes. Hey, I just finished up! I'll be there in a minute ~Annie
He could bail. He really could. Run out the door before Annie finds him, tell her tomorrow that he had to go pay taxes or something, dig up dirt on Annie's problem using other (shady, and possibly allergic to shampoo) sources. If he even cares, anyway. He could go home.
The library is immensely quiet this hour of the evening.
"Jeff?"
Jeff sorta freezes.
"I'm here," Annie says from the doorway, gesturing to her very present self. "You wanted to talk to me about something?"
He gathers his wits in record time. "Um, yeah, uh." Or not. "It's just a question, so don't be offended or anything, but. Um. Why are you-"
"Sleeping in class?" Annie says, and just about floors him, too.
How'd you know? he thinks, freely dumbfounded, his mind whizzing through possibilites ranging from the mundane to the Abed.
"I know, how'd I know, right," Annie says, with a small, sheepish draw of a smile on her lips. "I was kinda warned. By everyone. That you'd ask, I mean."
"We're worse than Twitter," Jeff says.
"Tell me about it," she says, dropping into Britta's chair. She looks-well, the same as she has all week. Paler, duller. Jeff's mouth twists.
"Are you sick or something?" he asks. "I got this doctor off once for drug trafficking, I'm sure I could hook you up, if you wanted."
Annie's little mouth smushes into an amused kind of grimace. "That's okay," she says. "I'm not sick, anyway."
"Then what?"
She looks wary. "Promise you won't be mad."
"Annie. Seriously."
"Promise."
Whatever. "I promise."
She hesitates. "They're filming COPS in my neighborhood."
Okay, that doesn't sound… wait.
COPS? Bad boy, bad boy, whatcha gonna do-COPS? The show you watch when nothing else is on except for QVC and Wendy Williams-COPS?
Seriously?
"You promised you wouldn't get mad," Annie tells him sternly. But then she yawns, which takes the edge off her tone, so it ends up being kinda cute.
"I'm not-" he starts, then stops, because he's not sure what to call the smorgasbord of bewilderment, amusement, and morbid interest he's feeling. So he settles on a plain "What?" and that works well enough.
"COPS," Annie repeats. "You know. The TV show? They've been filming for about a week now, or trying to film, anyway, both on my street and in my apartment building and the store downstairs, and." Her shoulders draw up, in. "They're noisy."
"You haven't been getting any sleep," Jeff says slowly, piecing it together like a preschooler's puzzle, "because COPS is keeping you up at night?"
"Well," Annie says, "yeah."
"Ever heard of these little things called earplugs? They're these totally radical new inventions, block sounds and all, you should look into them."
Annie scowls, insulted. "Oh come on, like I didn't get the biggest industrial-size earplugs after the first night. I don't think you understand how loud criminal justice really is, Jeff."
"I'll bet," Jeff mutters, feeling only a little stung-lawyer for how long, now? "Did you, oh I don't know, talk to anyone? Your landlord, maybe?"
"There wasn't much he could do besides pay for my earplugs," Annie says.
"You could've stayed with someone for a week," Jeff points out. "Not like you don't have six good friends with room to spare or anything."
"I know that," she says, glowering. "I just."
She pauses. He prods her. "You just…?"
"I don't like having to ask for help if I don't need it," she says finally.
"You're literally sleeping your way through half your classes, Annie, I think that qualifies as 'needing it,'" he says. "You know, for someone so smart, you can be pretty dumb sometimes."
Annie deflates a little. "It's not that terrible," she hedges. "I mean, I'm not falling behind or anything. They'll be gone soon enough and everything will go back to normal."
"You missed the point about a mile back."
She shoots him a stare that would wither a lesser man. "You don't think I could do it."
"This isn't a commercial for Gatorade, Annie," Jeff tells her. "If you needed a place to stay, all you had to do was-"
"Ask, I know, Jeff, thanks for the update," she interrupts. "But… I don't want to rely on other people forever. I wanted to do it on my own."
To be nineteen again, oh the joys. Jeff pinches the bridge of his nose.
"And I did," Annie continues. "And I'm fine."
Someone starts vacuuming outside. It's quite soothing, actually, clearing his head quite well from the Annie-induced fog it's in. Maybe there's an app for it.
"So. Yeah," she says, stilted.
"Okay. Just." Breathe out, nice and easy. Focus on the vacuuming. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Oh, that," Annie says, sounding somewhat surprised.
"Yeah. That."
Annie shrugs. "You kind of treat me like a little girl," she says, "and I knew you would react-like how you reacted."
He tries so hard not to clench his jaw. So. Very. Hard, Your Honor.
"If it means anything, I didn't tell anyone either, they all asked."
… It kind of helps.
"I just asked them not to tell you."
That didn't last. "You don't trust me."
"It's not that I don't trust you," Annie defends, "it's just… I know you. And this is how you react to things. By overreacting."
"I did not overreact."
"Really. Then why did I catch half the Anime Club trailing me in costume on my way to lunch this afternoon?"
Dammit, he told them to be discreet. "That was… it wasn't-"
"Overreacting?"
As masterful a debater Jeff is, he does know when to fold. "All right, maybe, maybe, I went a little overboard. I wouldn't have had to if you hadn't been so stubborn."
Annie just smiles. "I know my limits better than you do," she says serenely.
Jeff glowers.
And she relents, just a bit. "Hey. I'm-I know you care. And I know you have kind of a weird, emotionally-repressed way of showing it. But you can give me a little more credit sometimes. I'm a big girl, I pay for my own gas and buy my own groceries and everything." She stands up, smoothing out her skirt, and then looks him in the eye. "I'll be fine."
Jeff remains seated, still glowering.
"Now if that's all you wanted to say to me," she says in this very final, but gentle, sort of tone, "I have to go get my koalarama to take home." She slings her backpack the size of a small gnome onto her shoulders, pats Jeff's arm twice, and then walks out of the library.
The light fixture flickers weakly overhead, sparks once, twice. In another world, it would be some sort of coded message, and Jeff would take it to mean he should run after Annie, declare on bended knee that he cared about her, a lot, and everything would be Sweethearts and Hershey's Kisses after that, the end, close the book and put it away.
What he does, instead, is check for his keys, stand up slowly, and leave.
Koalarama, huh.
--
It takes him several minutes of dedicated searching before he finds the Environmental Club's Greendale Down Under Fair. Several minutes, because Greendale in the evening is like evil Hogwarts: classrooms that weren't there that morning suddenly appear, cold and drafty yet sinisterly used; doors vanish and reappear with casual regularity; and shadows lengthen and draw out and have a nasty tendency to breathe when you're not looking at them too hard.
The only room that looks in any way alive right now is the biology lab, light spilling out from under the door. The rest of the hallway practically drips foreboding.
He'll just really quickly make sure Annie got her koalarama out to her car, then he can be on his way to sweet, sweet freedom.
Deep breath, then he opens the door and takes his first step inside.
The Fair's over at this point, and the biology lab is littered with its carnage-taken-down posters of sad-eyed marsupials, a few stray photocopied pictures of the late Crocodile Hunter, more than one Men at Work CDs. None of these catch Jeff's attention as much as the one other living person in the room, fast asleep in a chair, her head pillowed on a paper-mâché koala.
Let the record show that Jeff's ice-cold heart melted for a single split-second that evening, and no more than that.
He crouches down and very gently shakes her shoulder. "Annie, time to go home."
"Fi' more mins," Annie mumbles, burrowing further into the koala.
"C'mon. I'll take you home, even."
Her eyes crack open. "Jeff, what're you-" And then they fly open, and she startles. "Oh, God, Jeff, sorry, I was just-um-"
"Resting your eyes?"
Annie flushes, but it's kinda hard to tell; half of her face is covered in pink paper-mâché marks to begin with. She looks up at him, way way up, then sighs and gently thunks her forehead against that of the model koala's. "I give up."
"Hey, you made it this far," Jeff says, pulling up a chair and dropping into it. "I mean, a whole week with what, maybe four hours of sleep? You're like a real college student now."
Annie nods solemnly, paper-mâché rustling against her forehead.
"Look." And she does, barely, blinking sleepy doe eyes that almost-almost-disrupt his train of thought. "It's not-it's okay, to ask for a little help sometimes. You're twenty, no one expects you to go it alone."
"I know that." She shifts, frowning. "But I like being independent."
"Which most of us do too," Jeff agrees, "and you're a strong, confident, independent young woman. But sometimes, being strong is about asking to crash at a friend's place when you know you really need it."
Annie narrowly him for a moment. "Do you like, memorize self-help books or something?"
Jeff bristles. "No."
Annie snorts.
"I don't," Jeff says again, and Annie nods and snuggles further into the koala's gray tissue paper fur. "I'm just saying-"
"I know," Annie mumbles, slurred and soft, "you're just worried."
Jeff's throat chooses that exact time to needlessly jam up, like a printer choking on the dot matrix paper he's pretty sure Annie has never even seen. For the love of all that is holy and sacred, when will anyone believe him when he says-
The lights go out.
Jeff blinks. And blinks again, for good measure.
The entire biology lab is suddenly flooded with coal-black shadow, save for the eerie, misty light filtering in from the adjoining greenhouse. Except, the greenhouse now looks like one of those haunted forests kindly woodsmen advise young heroines Never To Go Into. And the biology lab looks like that haunted forest, gnarled shadows and creepy crevices, sharp edges and strange shapes, and-
And Annie is soundly asleep, lost in a land of Lisa Frank dreams, far away from this place.
Lucky.
Jeff stands up and looks around, eyes darting from formless shadow to formless shadow-nothing, as far as he can tell. Greendale's a ghost town at this hour.
"You could always crash in the library if you needed to."
It takes a Herculean fucking effort for Jeff not to shriek like a six-year-old girl, right then and there. "Troy?"
Troy pulls away from the shadows that almost fade into his-good Lord, what is he wearing. Jeff's seen less spandex at a Poison concert.
"Troy, what are you doing?"
"Getting into character," Troy says, shrugging. "The whole club's doing it."
"The whole-" And Jeff's voice tapers off, he can see it; the shadows are softly swaying. And wheezing, in Garrett's case. "How did-"
"Ninja skills, man," Troy says, with a quick flicker of a grin. "Anyway, the library's closed, but we can sneak you guys in, if you wanna stay the night there."
Spending more time than he has to at Greendale was never high on Jeff's list of priorities. Then again, it'd probably be safer-less of a risk of her accidentally driving into a rail or a ditch or a semi on her way home from school…
Also, if she's content enough to sleep on a koala, a crummy, fuzzy couch isn't much of a step down.
Jeff gently nudges Annie. Her eyes slit open. "Hey, Annie, we're gonna crash in the study room for a night, okay? We've got a whole team of ninjas backing us up, is that okay?"
"Mrrfm," Annie mumbles, and goes back to sleep.
"Good enough," Jeff says, then nods at Troy. "All right, let's go."
They steal through the hallways-Troy in front, slipping through shadow; Jeff next, with Annie's backpack on one shoulder, Annie herself in a fireman's carry. The rest of the Anime Club guard the rear like silent, swift shades.
You'd think it would feel pretty absurd. Not so much, Jeff finds. Or maybe he's just desensitized.
The library is as dark as the rest of Greendale, and Jeff's never felt more grateful to see it. A nameless ninja grunt unlocks the door and ushers them inside.
Curiously, the ninja all stay outside the door, none of them taking a step into the room. Jeff gestures with his free hand in bemusement. "Door's open, guys, you can-"
"Sorry," Troy says, in his best chain-smoking Batman voice. "A ninja's work is never over. Also, Abed wants to discuss our scene objectives with us, so…"
"Oh, yeah, totally-"
"We'll be around," Troy says, and adds, "if you can see us." Then he vanishes into the night without another word.
"Y'din' thank them," Annie says, muffled into his shirt.
Jeff almost drops her. "You're awake?"
"Can't sleep wi' you movin' so much," she grumbles. "Put me down."
Jeff lays her down carefully on the couch. "I know this is pretty, um, unorthodox, and if you want to go home it's totally-"
Annie has started to snore.
"Or that," Jeff says, and puts her backpack down, too.
It's been a long, confusing, and endlessly weird sort of week. Jeff is tired, inside and out. His and Annie's cars are out in the parking lot, vulnerable to vandals and car thieves and unexpected bad weather; he has an Anthropology Powerpoint presentation due tomorrow that he hasn't even started; and this whole Annie situation's been keeping him from getting a normal night's sleep too-
And Jeff drops down besides Annie's couch, his head unconsciously tilting back into the cushion, feeling strangely warm, and slowed-down, and content. Annie snuffles quietly and curls a little closer. Jeff breathes out, and closes his eyes.
He gets one of the best night's sleep he's ever had.
--
Jeff's lost in a really good dream. He's off the coast of an island with pearl-white sands and sparkling azure ocean, warm summer sun and shady palm trees with fronds as long as his body. Maybe there's a mai tai in his hand, maybe there isn't. Maybe he'll go surfing later. Maybe a hot girl in a grass skirt will bring him to a luau. But right now he isn't doing a goddamn thing except laying on the beach and forgetting the world exists.
A hermit crab sidles up to him. It starts to poke him in the shoulder. Jeff brushes it away, eyes closed. The hermit crab merely pokes him harder.
Then the hermit crab addresses him. "Sir?"
"Mrmm," Jeff tells it distractedly.
The hermit crab grows insistent, and the pokes turn sharp and painful, taloned. "Sir?"
Then Jeff realizes that hey, hermit crabs can't speak English. And he's not on a tropical island. And the hermit crab is not a hermit crab at all, but the morning cleaning lady peering intently into his face and poking his shoulder repeatedly.
"Sir?"
"Oh. Um. Hi," Jeff says.
"Sir, are you all right?" the morning cleaning lady asks.
"What? Yeah, sure. Thanks." Oh so eloquent, that Jeff Winger is. "What time is it?"
"About a quarter to twelve," she responds promptly, and shit, shit, that Anthro presentation was worth a good chunk of his final, he barely has even fifteen minutes to scrape something together-hey wait. Where's Annie?
For about this time, Jeff's realized that Annie is nowhere to be seen. Not on the couch, not under the couch, not at the library table bent over her notes. Annie's gone.
He twists around wildly to the cleaning lady, making her startle and almost drop her dustbuster. "Hey, um, excuse me-did you happen to see a short brunette around here somewhere?"
The cleaning lady raises both bushy brows. "Sir, I've seen a lot of short brunettes around here somewhere, sir," she says.
"Yeah, I know, this one's got a giant backpack, wears flats, looks like she hasn't slept in a week…" Right, Jeff, just describe forty-six percent of Greendale's female population ever, that'll get you what you want. He needs coffee, badly.
The cleaning lady blinks at him slowly. "Did you try calling her?"
Screw the coffee, he needs a good, stiff drink. "Thanks," he tells the lady, and scrambles outside, hurriedly tugging his phone from his unforgivably creased jeans.
WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU???
All caps might've been overkill, he thinks a moment later. Too late for it now. Time for a hasty Anthro Powerpoint. Right. He breaks into a run.
She's fine she's fine she probably left early she's fine, Winger, you need to focus now, Annie is A-OK and you need to stop-
And Jeff skids to a stop in front of the computer lab, and leans on the wall, and then slams his forehead against it. His heart's pounding. And it's not because he was running.
Fuck his life sometimes, really.
--
It just so happens that Annie calls him in the middle of his presentation, a scrapped-together Winger family tree with more fictional characters than Harry Potter. Jeff's in the middle of embellishing upon his great-great-great-grandfather's, Sirius Regulus Winger's, contributions to modern astronomy when his phone starts to ring.
Flashing the class his most charming grin, Jeff quickly steps outside and answers. Yep, it's her. Wonderful. "Annie," he hisses, "where. Are. You."
"Where are you?" she asks him right back.
"Anthropology," Jeff says, teeth gritted.
"I'm sorry, I thought you were gonna sleep through class!" Annie says, so apologetic, so sincere-Jeff is probably going to throttle her next he sees her. "I wouldn't have called, I'm really sorry. Did I interrupt you?"
Jeff forces himself to take a very deep, long, yogatastic breath. One, two, ten. Let it all out. "Yes. You did."
"I'm sorry, I'll call back-"
"Why aren't you in class?"
She pauses. "I-had to do something," she says.
"Annie Edison, do not play coy with me right now. What did you have to do."
"Um," Annie says. "You know what? I'll tell you after class, you go finish your thing."
"Fine," he growls, and hangs up with a violent push of the End button.
--
She meets him by the main entrance, twisting the hem of her little floral sundress in one hand, gripping her backpack strap with the other. Bites her lip. She looks nervous.
Good, Jeff thinks darkly, she should be.
"I didn't interrupt anything important, did I?" she asks, when they're within speaking distance. "When I called, I mean."
Just twenty percent of thirty percent of his grade. "No."
"Oh. Good," she says, visibly relaxing. "I was worried about that."
Jeff can almost choke on the irony. "Is that all you wanted to ask me?"
Annie shakes her head, straightens out her dress in short pulls. "I wanted to thank you, actually," she says. "For worrying about me last night."
"I wasn't worried," Jeff says, and wonders for the umpteenth time why no one in this godforsaken school will take his word for it.
"Well, whatever you were, then," Annie dismisses. "It made me think about things."
"There's a new one."
She grins, big and bright. "And I thought, maybe I haven't been getting that much sleep this past week."
"And?"
"And," she says, standing up straight and defiant, "I drove home this morning, talked to my landlord, and told him I wouldn't stand for the noise anymore."
"Well good for you," Jeff says, honestly impressed. "So what, they're gonna stop filming at night or something?"
"No," she says, frowning. "He told me if I didn't like it I could leave. So I'm staying at a Howard Johnson's just a few blocks from here. Just for a few days."
Oh. Well. Jeff shuffles oddly on the pavement and says, "That sucks."
"No, you know what? I feel good," Annie says. "And you helped. Which is why I wanted to thank you."
"Thank me. For helping you shack up in a motel."
"I was being stubborn, and you helped me sorta stop and take a look at myself," Annie says. "And I needed that."
Jeff sighs. "You weren't being stubborn. You were just… overestimating yourself."
Annie's mouth presses into a grim scowl. "And look where that got me," she says derisively. "Do you know, I had to ask for an extension on Duncan's Powerpoint presentation? Twice? I present in two days and I'm barely even a third of the way done."
"It's not that hard," Jeff says, shrugging; Annie's still wilting under the pressure-and pulling at his abused heartstrings, dammit. "I could help, I'm pretty practiced at it."
It's worth the pain of future Powerpoint tedium to see her eyes light up like the fourth of July. Then she knocks the wind out of him with a hug around his chest and a megawatt grin and Jeff thinks he should help her bullshit her homework more often, if it would make her happy.
"Just-promise me one thing," he says when she releases him. "Don't neglect yourself like this ever again, all right? You promise? 'Cause-"
"It worries you?" she says sweetly.
All right, Universe, uncle. Jeff hangs his head in defeat. Shameful, shameful defeat.
"It's okay to worry, Jeff," Annie tells him. "It's kinda cute."
"It is not cute," Jeff mutters automatically. "Cute is puppies and kittens snuggling for Youtube hits, not-"
She's really in his personal space, Jeff notes, and she has enormous Bambi eyes and soft lips, and his word flow dries up like a desert stream.
"Um," he says, articulately. "Annie?"
And the lights of Greendale promptly go out.
No, that was not a metaphor. They really do go out. Not that Jeff can tell, the weather being so very Californian, but the sudden excited shouts of "FUCK YEAH, BLACKOUTS!" from inside do kind of confirm his suspicions.
Annie draws away from him to frown sidelong at the school. "A blackout? Really?"
Jeff has a feeling he knows who's responsible, too. Then he sees a ninja slip out of the school and yep, he definitely knows. "They'll probably cancel classes for the rest of the day," Jeff says, smirking.
"Yeah," Annie says with a sigh. "Probably."
"So we could get your Powerpoint done today, if you wanted."
Annie blinks. "You were really serious about that?" she asks.
Jeff shrugs. "Sure."
It's gotta be one of the nicest feelings in the world, watching a smile bloom and unfold on Annie Edison, it's like a time-lapse video of something really spellbinding you find only in the purest parts of nature. Her eyes light up and the tip of her nose twitches and he offers his arm to her with a short, graceful bow.
She ends up slipping her hand down into his, instead, as they walk to her car. Her palm is smooth and warm and small, and her fingers lace themselves through his own.
He doesn't mind.
--
--
Fandom: Community (pre-Jeff/Annie, if you squint [and I encourage you to squint]; PG-13)
Word Count: 6900
Summary: Annie's been having trouble staying awake this week. In case you were wondering, no, Jeff is not worried about her. Not in the least. And he's not actively going out of his way to find out why she's tired, either. So you can all stop looking at him like that. Any day now.
Author's Notes: Baby's first Community fic! Only, it's technically my second, but the first one wasn't working. So, yeah. Have at it.
On the kind of morning where the world is sullen and bleakly gray, Annie tends to be a bright ball of motivated sunshine in the midst of everyone's gloom.
On the kind of morning where the birds are atwitter and the flowers are aTumblr and the something elses are another social networking site, Annie is nothing short of a real-life Disney princess, Technicolor sparkles and all.
And on all the mornings in between, Annie is Annie-driven, cheerful, and spirited.
In short, in the morning, Annie is very, very annoying, but after almost two years, Jeff's proud to say he's built up a tolerance.
So when one morning Annie is found sleeping in the library, Jeff's tolerant world halts, tilts its head, and furrows its eyebrows at her in confusion.
She has her arms curled around a hardcover textbook and is using it for a pillow, her hair fanned out in limp brown strands all around her. From the looks of it, she's pretty deeply asleep, deep enough that Jeff almost has second thoughts about sitting down and dropping his books onto the table with a loud, solid thump.
Almost.
"Huwhuzzat," Annie says, jolting awake immediately.
Jeff snorts. "Good morning, sunshine."
"Morning, it's-what?" gets out in between a lengthly yawn. Jeff shakes his head. "What time is it?"
"Almost eight o'clock. A.M., in case you were wondering."
Annie sits up, blinks, and then blinks again, like a baby animal first tottering out into the sunlight. "When did that happen?"
Jeff takes the time to really get a look at her. Bags under bloodshot eyes. Hair out of place. Lack of makeup. Wrinkles in her cardigan. Something's amiss. "Annie, are you-"
And the rest of the group sweeps into the room. Annie prods herself awake before anyone can comment and Jeff sits back in his chair, frowning.
--
She seems okay when they pass each other in the hallways. A little groggy, but functioning, and that's good enough to get through Greendale, right? Maybe he just… overreacted?
The thought slinks and slips down Jeff's spine as he walks into Anthropology. He doesn't overreact, he's calm and cool and collected. He doesn't worry, for God's sakes, especially about how many hours of beauty sleep someone's getting. Even if that someone's a friend. And even if that friend probably still needs to get nine hours of sleep every night exactly.
Look, she's fine, he coaches himself when she sits down two desks away. She's sitting, she's talking to Britta, she's piling her textbooks one on top of the other, she's-
She's out like a light.
Jeff's eyebrows pull down. Annie doesn't sleep in class. Ever.
He slips his phone from his pocket and speed-texts. Britta. Wake annie up.
Britta twists around in her seat and shakes her head.
Why not?
shes sleeping jerk leave her alone, she texts.
Yeah. Annie doesnt sleep in class. Whats going on?
Again she twists around, this time to pull a DUH face. shes tired?
Why?
do i look psycic to u i dont know, Britta replies.
Youre such a big help, Jeff sends, and that's all he's gonna get out of Britta, her phone's away and Duncan thunders in with a massive hangover, which gets everyone to shut up right quick.
Phone wedged against the desk and his thigh, Jeff starts a seventy-five minute round of Snake, to take his mind out of Anthropology and off things. Out of the corner of his eye, Britta gently nudges Annie into cold, wakeful reality; she sits up and blinks several times and then, finally, whirs slowly back to life.
And, see, she's okay. And he's not worrying, not watching, overly wary. Because she's fine, she's nothing to worry about.
His snake crashes into the wall three minutes before he even notices.
--
Jeff Winger is not a worrier. Worrying is something other people do-they fret and coo and fuss and show emotion in unchecked, embarrassing amounts as they let their imaginations get ahead of them. Not his style. Jeff Winger is the consummate, distilled essence of not a worrier.
So Annie's notable lack of awareness isn't doing anything to ruffle his feathers, because his feathers don't ruffle in the slightest.
Not at all. Not even a little bit.
You can't make him cop to anything, you know.
--
The first day Annie shows up extra-sleepy to classes, it's a fluke.
The second day she arrives with her eyes bloodshot and her knee-highs mismatched, it's a coincidence.
Only an idiot would ignore the problem when it happens three days in a row, and Jeff is not an idiot. Not worried, mind you-just not an idiot.
But he's starting to get a little concerned.
--
"Dude. You're borderline creeping on her. Knock it off."
Britta, it turns out, has a peculiarly powerful grasp for someone so sticklike. Jeff's bicep finds this out the hard way.
"I am not-" Jeff protests, and accidentally catches the attention of the Latin Mock Senate congregated at a table nearby. Dropping his voice, he hisses, "I'm not creeping on her. What are we, sixteen?"
"You've been watching her like a hawk in class, you practically shadow her in the hallways, and I know for a fact you paid the Anime Club to keep tabs on her for you."
"Okay, number one: I didn't pay the Anime Club to keep tabs on her, I promised them a two-week supply of Pocky if they… watched out for her."
"Nice spin."
"Thanks. Two: how are you not worried about her? She wore navy and black knee-highs together the other day, did you see?"
"The horror," Britta says dryly.
"You know this isn't typical Annie behavior," Jeff tells her.
"You're right. It isn't."
"Then why aren't you worried?" he demands.
Britta's brows rise. "Are you accusing me of being a bad friend?"
"No, I'm accusing you of being blind as a freaking bat. Britta. She's sleepwalking to her classes."
"Figuratively speaking."
"Something's not right," Jeff says, mouth twisting. "I just don't know what."
Then it gets all too quiet-even the Latin Mock Senate shuts up to listen in. Britta whisks her gaze over to a blinking light fixture.
And Jeff gets it, suddenly, and he leans in, all narrow eyes and a deep dark scowl. "You know something," he says, voice low.
"You know, I think the janitor should take a look at that light," Britta remarks. "Looks kinda faulty."
"Britta Perry, what," Jeff breathes, "are you hiding from me."
"I'm not telling you," Britta says, in a voice that sticks its nose in the air for her. "'Cause that's what a good friend does."
"You know what's wrong with Annie."
"Nothing's wrong with her," Britta replies curtly. "Otherwise, yes."
"Tell me."
"Why don't you ask her yourself," Britta says, her eyes flashing-dammit, she's gonna win this one, "instead of creeping around and spying on her?"
And, yep, she whirls around and struts off in pleather boots and a cloud of satisfaction. Dammit.
The Latin Mock Senate watches him expectantly.
"Uck-fay off-ay," he tells them, fuming.
--
Three things.
One. Britta point-blank refuses to give Jeff the littlest crumb of information. It's not her decision to make, she says, patronizing him all the while, Annie's a big girl and if you want to know so badly, bite the bullet and ask her.
Two. Black tights and brown flats. Really, Annie? Really?
Three. He knows he can't be the only one out of the loop, but as the week drudges through the calendar, Jeff finds himself fighting the increasingly unpleasant notion that maybe, in fact, he is.
This is highly unsettling, but not something to get in a tizzy over, he decides later that afternoon, waiting outside the computer lab for the Anime Club to conclude their meeting. There has to be a reason why he hasn't been informed. A good reason, one that will put everything in context and illuminate vast oceans of understanding once it's been revealed.
… She's probably caught the flu, he thinks darkly. Or rabies. And no one told him because they were afraid he'd freak about getting coughed or foamed on. They underestimate the lengths he'll go to for his friends, they really do. Typical.
The door flutters open and out stream the club members, most blinking like faulty lightbulbs… and then, "Troy?"
Troy jumps an inch. "OhhiJeff!" he squeaks, smiling unnaturally wide. "Ididn'tseeyouthere!"
Clearly. "When did you join the Anime Club?" Jeff asks.
"I didn't-" Troy protests hotly, but Jeff's evil smirk stops him short. He sighs. "I'm here for Abed."
"How sweet."
"No, like." Conspiratorially, Troy leans in, lowering his voice. "They keep asking him to come to meetings, but he's usually busy filming, so, I show up in his place."
"Why do they keep asking Abed to come to meetings?"
Troy narrows his eyes. "They wanna ask him something," he says. "I don't know what exactly, but I'm ninety percent sure it involves ninjas."
Jeff blinks. "Right," he says. "Anyway. While you're here. Do you know what's up with Annie?"
"What, the whole zombie thing she's got going on?"
That was easy. "Uh. Yeah."
"No clue," Troy says simply.
Easy come, easy go.
--
And the Anime Club's findings are either useless or redundant-he knows she's been nodding off in her Psych class and Stats and Anthropology and while standing on line for lunch and just outside the girls' bathroom and once right in the middle of the hallway, and he does not need to know, Garrett, exactly what brand of deodorant she prefers. "Really creepy, dude."
"You said you wanted to know everything," Garrett mutters around a stick of Pocky.
"That's a little too much everything," Jeff says.
All right, time to regroup, rethink, restrategize. Seated in the comfort and relative privacy of his car, Jeff lays out the facts. He knows:
That Annie is falling asleep during the school day, a very un-Annieish thing to do;
That Britta knows why Annie is so somnolent all of a sudden, but thinks he should find out on his own, meaning it's something Annie may have asked her not to spread around, meaning…
Meaning Jeff slams his head against the steering wheel. It doesn't help, but he figures it was worth a shot.
With his forehead against the cool wheel, Jeff considers his options. Maybe he should just, you know. Ask her. See what's up. Totally casual, just for the sake of curiosity, not asking because he's afraid she might be legitimately sick or narcoleptic or getting tortured into exhaustion by mad scientists or the U.S. government, and hey, when was it illegal to just ask questions for the sake of asking, huh? What is this, 1984?
… He's gonna see if Shirley knows anything, first.
--
He catches her just outside the girls' bathroom by the cafeteria. "Shirley."
"Oh hello, Jeffrey, I was just about to-"
"What's wrong with Annie?"
Shirley's smile wavers. "She didn't tell you?"
"No, she didn't tell me. Why, is there something to tell?"
"Well," Shirley says, hedging her words, "not really-"
"But there is something."
"It's nothing to worry about, Jeffrey," Shirley says.
"Who's worried? Not me, I'm not worried. I don't worry. I can't. It's statistically impossible," Jeff says, one right after the other, like bullets. "I'm just curious is all."
"Well, have you asked Annie?"
"No, because in case you missed the memo, I am not worried about her."
"That's not what Britta says," Shirley says, her eyes narrowing.
Stops him dead. "Britta," he growls under his breath.
"Mm," Shirley says, one eyebrow curved in a perfect arch. Jeff guesses he must look kinda pathetic, or strained, generally very un-Jeff-esque, because Shirley's expression softens with-and it pains him to admit it-pity. "If you're really… interested-"
"Thank you."
"-in Annie's business, I suggest you go and talk to her. She doesn't bite, you know."
"Dunno, it's always the nice ones that get you," Jeff mutters. Shirley pats his arm in sympathy.
--
"She's fine," Pierce tells him dismissively-he's much more concerned with trying to snag one of the last seven remaining chicken fingers at lunch. There are eleven people ahead of them. Even with current draconian rationing Jeff thinks it's a long shot. "Annie's built of tougher stuff than you'd expect."
"I'm waiting for that to turn anti-Semitic," Jeff says mildly.
Pierce harrumphs. "Annie's a bright, bold young woman who can handle what life throws at her," he says. "It's you who needs to man up and go talk to her if you're so worried."
"One, not worried about her, and two, wait, me?" Jeff says as they slide along the line. Down to three fingers and seven people, they might just make it. "Why me?"
"Well, look who's been snooping around in her business!" Pierce says. "Sneaking around, stalking her every move. Slippery slope, Jeff-next thing you know you're stealing into her walk-in closet late at night to install security cameras while she's in the shower. Trust me, it'll end a relationship in no time."
"We're not in a-" He stops, right in line, to the annoyance of whoever bumped into him from behind. "Wait, have you-"
"Third marriage," he says, face falling. "Thought she was having an affair with Bob Hope."
After a brief pause, Jeff asks, "Was she?"
"Nope. Bob Woodward," Pierce says. "Wrong Bobby."
They stand on line long enough to make things awkward and further irk the people behind them. "I'm sorry," Jeff says, lame as anything, but what else can you do, make a halfhearted joke about Deep Throat?
"I'm sorrier," Pierce tells him. "We didn't talk much."
There's one chicken finger left when they get there, fat and juicy and beautifully breaded, all for the taking-and he must have the flu or something, because he doesn't want it anymore. "Actually, I had a big breakfast earlier," he says, somewhat thickly. "You take it." Oh, it's definitely the flu.
"Suit yourself," Pierce says, and the chicken finger lands in a warm, delicious heap on his plate. They get off the line and Pierce turns to Jeff, serious-faced. "Take a lesson from me-just go talk to her. You won't regret it."
Jeff doesn't follow Pierce to a table right away. It's a sobering kind of moment, he's not used to those.
--
He's alone in the library, at his usual chair, at his usual table but surrounded by a whole lot of nobody. He appreciates it, actually. Gives him time to hear himself think.
The day's drawn to a slow, muggy close, seconds crawling through the afternoon molasses slower and slower. He has nothing to do here. He could go home.
Jeff flicks a paper football across the table. It hits Pierce's chair. Touchdown. Nothing to do.
Annie has an Environmental Club meeting today, five-thirty to seven. They're trying to save the koalas because, as Annie explained it, soft light shining in her big doe eyes, they're in danger of extinction, and everyone likes koalas, right? And they're hosting the Greendale Down Under Fair this evening, but it might not take the entire ninety minutes, and yes, she could meet you in the library when she's done, why do you ask?
Flick. No reason.
"Touchdown," Abed says from the doorway.
Jeff twists in his chair. "What are you still doing here?"
"Meeting with the president of the Anime Club," Abed says. "Just finished."
"Oh yeah? How'd that go?"
Abed shrugs, and hitches his backpack more firmly on his shoulders. "All right," he says. "They're trying to make a series about Greendale as a ninja academy and they wanted to know if I would direct. Has that light fixture always been faulty?"
"Er," Jeff says eventually, when he remembers oh hey, words, "no, it's just been doin' that."
"Cool," Abed says, mostly to himself, peering intently at the light. "Cool."
"I take it you said yes," Jeff says.
"I convinced them it'd be better as a live-action short film," Abed says. "Like cosplay, only scripted and more socially acceptable." He cocks his head. "Why are you still here?"
"Oh. Uh." Jeff glances at his phone-no text, she said she'd text when she was finished. "I have to talk to Annie about… something."
"Like what?"
Jeff doesn't want to call the uncomfortable body shift he does in his chair squirming. "You know she's been sleeping her way through classes, all week, right?"
"I know," Abed says.
"And that's not normal."
"Sure it is. Troy sleeps through Contemporary Mathematics every other morning," Abed replies.
"For her, I mean. It's." He not-squirms again.
Abed frowns; Jeff's convinced he can hear him pulling the rest of the story out of wherever, the collective unconscious of the cosmos, maybe, and making total, lucid sense of it. "You're wor-"
"Don't say it," Jeff says, bitten out.
Abed doesn't.
"'Cause I'm not," he adds quickly.
It's a deafening sort of silence.
"And," Jeff continues, "no one will tell me why, they just insist I ask Annie for myself. So." He gestures wide, long arms extending into a kind of shapeless shrug. "Here I am."
"Mm," Abed says.
"You don't happen to know what her deal is, do you?" Jeff asks.
"Nope." Abed makes to leave, but pauses, and regards Jeff with the sort of grave intensity Jeff's only seen on Seacrest on the Idol finale. "For what it's worth, I think this is a step in the right direction for your character. You're developing. Embrace it."
"Way to-" Jeff starts, but Abed leaves then, cutting short his quip about being talked to like a prepubescent girl. "Yeah," he finishes, lamely.
His phone buzzes. Hey, I just finished up! I'll be there in a minute ~Annie
He could bail. He really could. Run out the door before Annie finds him, tell her tomorrow that he had to go pay taxes or something, dig up dirt on Annie's problem using other (shady, and possibly allergic to shampoo) sources. If he even cares, anyway. He could go home.
The library is immensely quiet this hour of the evening.
"Jeff?"
Jeff sorta freezes.
"I'm here," Annie says from the doorway, gesturing to her very present self. "You wanted to talk to me about something?"
He gathers his wits in record time. "Um, yeah, uh." Or not. "It's just a question, so don't be offended or anything, but. Um. Why are you-"
"Sleeping in class?" Annie says, and just about floors him, too.
How'd you know? he thinks, freely dumbfounded, his mind whizzing through possibilites ranging from the mundane to the Abed.
"I know, how'd I know, right," Annie says, with a small, sheepish draw of a smile on her lips. "I was kinda warned. By everyone. That you'd ask, I mean."
"We're worse than Twitter," Jeff says.
"Tell me about it," she says, dropping into Britta's chair. She looks-well, the same as she has all week. Paler, duller. Jeff's mouth twists.
"Are you sick or something?" he asks. "I got this doctor off once for drug trafficking, I'm sure I could hook you up, if you wanted."
Annie's little mouth smushes into an amused kind of grimace. "That's okay," she says. "I'm not sick, anyway."
"Then what?"
She looks wary. "Promise you won't be mad."
"Annie. Seriously."
"Promise."
Whatever. "I promise."
She hesitates. "They're filming COPS in my neighborhood."
Okay, that doesn't sound… wait.
COPS? Bad boy, bad boy, whatcha gonna do-COPS? The show you watch when nothing else is on except for QVC and Wendy Williams-COPS?
Seriously?
"You promised you wouldn't get mad," Annie tells him sternly. But then she yawns, which takes the edge off her tone, so it ends up being kinda cute.
"I'm not-" he starts, then stops, because he's not sure what to call the smorgasbord of bewilderment, amusement, and morbid interest he's feeling. So he settles on a plain "What?" and that works well enough.
"COPS," Annie repeats. "You know. The TV show? They've been filming for about a week now, or trying to film, anyway, both on my street and in my apartment building and the store downstairs, and." Her shoulders draw up, in. "They're noisy."
"You haven't been getting any sleep," Jeff says slowly, piecing it together like a preschooler's puzzle, "because COPS is keeping you up at night?"
"Well," Annie says, "yeah."
"Ever heard of these little things called earplugs? They're these totally radical new inventions, block sounds and all, you should look into them."
Annie scowls, insulted. "Oh come on, like I didn't get the biggest industrial-size earplugs after the first night. I don't think you understand how loud criminal justice really is, Jeff."
"I'll bet," Jeff mutters, feeling only a little stung-lawyer for how long, now? "Did you, oh I don't know, talk to anyone? Your landlord, maybe?"
"There wasn't much he could do besides pay for my earplugs," Annie says.
"You could've stayed with someone for a week," Jeff points out. "Not like you don't have six good friends with room to spare or anything."
"I know that," she says, glowering. "I just."
She pauses. He prods her. "You just…?"
"I don't like having to ask for help if I don't need it," she says finally.
"You're literally sleeping your way through half your classes, Annie, I think that qualifies as 'needing it,'" he says. "You know, for someone so smart, you can be pretty dumb sometimes."
Annie deflates a little. "It's not that terrible," she hedges. "I mean, I'm not falling behind or anything. They'll be gone soon enough and everything will go back to normal."
"You missed the point about a mile back."
She shoots him a stare that would wither a lesser man. "You don't think I could do it."
"This isn't a commercial for Gatorade, Annie," Jeff tells her. "If you needed a place to stay, all you had to do was-"
"Ask, I know, Jeff, thanks for the update," she interrupts. "But… I don't want to rely on other people forever. I wanted to do it on my own."
To be nineteen again, oh the joys. Jeff pinches the bridge of his nose.
"And I did," Annie continues. "And I'm fine."
Someone starts vacuuming outside. It's quite soothing, actually, clearing his head quite well from the Annie-induced fog it's in. Maybe there's an app for it.
"So. Yeah," she says, stilted.
"Okay. Just." Breathe out, nice and easy. Focus on the vacuuming. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Oh, that," Annie says, sounding somewhat surprised.
"Yeah. That."
Annie shrugs. "You kind of treat me like a little girl," she says, "and I knew you would react-like how you reacted."
He tries so hard not to clench his jaw. So. Very. Hard, Your Honor.
"If it means anything, I didn't tell anyone either, they all asked."
… It kind of helps.
"I just asked them not to tell you."
That didn't last. "You don't trust me."
"It's not that I don't trust you," Annie defends, "it's just… I know you. And this is how you react to things. By overreacting."
"I did not overreact."
"Really. Then why did I catch half the Anime Club trailing me in costume on my way to lunch this afternoon?"
Dammit, he told them to be discreet. "That was… it wasn't-"
"Overreacting?"
As masterful a debater Jeff is, he does know when to fold. "All right, maybe, maybe, I went a little overboard. I wouldn't have had to if you hadn't been so stubborn."
Annie just smiles. "I know my limits better than you do," she says serenely.
Jeff glowers.
And she relents, just a bit. "Hey. I'm-I know you care. And I know you have kind of a weird, emotionally-repressed way of showing it. But you can give me a little more credit sometimes. I'm a big girl, I pay for my own gas and buy my own groceries and everything." She stands up, smoothing out her skirt, and then looks him in the eye. "I'll be fine."
Jeff remains seated, still glowering.
"Now if that's all you wanted to say to me," she says in this very final, but gentle, sort of tone, "I have to go get my koalarama to take home." She slings her backpack the size of a small gnome onto her shoulders, pats Jeff's arm twice, and then walks out of the library.
The light fixture flickers weakly overhead, sparks once, twice. In another world, it would be some sort of coded message, and Jeff would take it to mean he should run after Annie, declare on bended knee that he cared about her, a lot, and everything would be Sweethearts and Hershey's Kisses after that, the end, close the book and put it away.
What he does, instead, is check for his keys, stand up slowly, and leave.
Koalarama, huh.
--
It takes him several minutes of dedicated searching before he finds the Environmental Club's Greendale Down Under Fair. Several minutes, because Greendale in the evening is like evil Hogwarts: classrooms that weren't there that morning suddenly appear, cold and drafty yet sinisterly used; doors vanish and reappear with casual regularity; and shadows lengthen and draw out and have a nasty tendency to breathe when you're not looking at them too hard.
The only room that looks in any way alive right now is the biology lab, light spilling out from under the door. The rest of the hallway practically drips foreboding.
He'll just really quickly make sure Annie got her koalarama out to her car, then he can be on his way to sweet, sweet freedom.
Deep breath, then he opens the door and takes his first step inside.
The Fair's over at this point, and the biology lab is littered with its carnage-taken-down posters of sad-eyed marsupials, a few stray photocopied pictures of the late Crocodile Hunter, more than one Men at Work CDs. None of these catch Jeff's attention as much as the one other living person in the room, fast asleep in a chair, her head pillowed on a paper-mâché koala.
Let the record show that Jeff's ice-cold heart melted for a single split-second that evening, and no more than that.
He crouches down and very gently shakes her shoulder. "Annie, time to go home."
"Fi' more mins," Annie mumbles, burrowing further into the koala.
"C'mon. I'll take you home, even."
Her eyes crack open. "Jeff, what're you-" And then they fly open, and she startles. "Oh, God, Jeff, sorry, I was just-um-"
"Resting your eyes?"
Annie flushes, but it's kinda hard to tell; half of her face is covered in pink paper-mâché marks to begin with. She looks up at him, way way up, then sighs and gently thunks her forehead against that of the model koala's. "I give up."
"Hey, you made it this far," Jeff says, pulling up a chair and dropping into it. "I mean, a whole week with what, maybe four hours of sleep? You're like a real college student now."
Annie nods solemnly, paper-mâché rustling against her forehead.
"Look." And she does, barely, blinking sleepy doe eyes that almost-almost-disrupt his train of thought. "It's not-it's okay, to ask for a little help sometimes. You're twenty, no one expects you to go it alone."
"I know that." She shifts, frowning. "But I like being independent."
"Which most of us do too," Jeff agrees, "and you're a strong, confident, independent young woman. But sometimes, being strong is about asking to crash at a friend's place when you know you really need it."
Annie narrowly him for a moment. "Do you like, memorize self-help books or something?"
Jeff bristles. "No."
Annie snorts.
"I don't," Jeff says again, and Annie nods and snuggles further into the koala's gray tissue paper fur. "I'm just saying-"
"I know," Annie mumbles, slurred and soft, "you're just worried."
Jeff's throat chooses that exact time to needlessly jam up, like a printer choking on the dot matrix paper he's pretty sure Annie has never even seen. For the love of all that is holy and sacred, when will anyone believe him when he says-
The lights go out.
Jeff blinks. And blinks again, for good measure.
The entire biology lab is suddenly flooded with coal-black shadow, save for the eerie, misty light filtering in from the adjoining greenhouse. Except, the greenhouse now looks like one of those haunted forests kindly woodsmen advise young heroines Never To Go Into. And the biology lab looks like that haunted forest, gnarled shadows and creepy crevices, sharp edges and strange shapes, and-
And Annie is soundly asleep, lost in a land of Lisa Frank dreams, far away from this place.
Lucky.
Jeff stands up and looks around, eyes darting from formless shadow to formless shadow-nothing, as far as he can tell. Greendale's a ghost town at this hour.
"You could always crash in the library if you needed to."
It takes a Herculean fucking effort for Jeff not to shriek like a six-year-old girl, right then and there. "Troy?"
Troy pulls away from the shadows that almost fade into his-good Lord, what is he wearing. Jeff's seen less spandex at a Poison concert.
"Troy, what are you doing?"
"Getting into character," Troy says, shrugging. "The whole club's doing it."
"The whole-" And Jeff's voice tapers off, he can see it; the shadows are softly swaying. And wheezing, in Garrett's case. "How did-"
"Ninja skills, man," Troy says, with a quick flicker of a grin. "Anyway, the library's closed, but we can sneak you guys in, if you wanna stay the night there."
Spending more time than he has to at Greendale was never high on Jeff's list of priorities. Then again, it'd probably be safer-less of a risk of her accidentally driving into a rail or a ditch or a semi on her way home from school…
Also, if she's content enough to sleep on a koala, a crummy, fuzzy couch isn't much of a step down.
Jeff gently nudges Annie. Her eyes slit open. "Hey, Annie, we're gonna crash in the study room for a night, okay? We've got a whole team of ninjas backing us up, is that okay?"
"Mrrfm," Annie mumbles, and goes back to sleep.
"Good enough," Jeff says, then nods at Troy. "All right, let's go."
They steal through the hallways-Troy in front, slipping through shadow; Jeff next, with Annie's backpack on one shoulder, Annie herself in a fireman's carry. The rest of the Anime Club guard the rear like silent, swift shades.
You'd think it would feel pretty absurd. Not so much, Jeff finds. Or maybe he's just desensitized.
The library is as dark as the rest of Greendale, and Jeff's never felt more grateful to see it. A nameless ninja grunt unlocks the door and ushers them inside.
Curiously, the ninja all stay outside the door, none of them taking a step into the room. Jeff gestures with his free hand in bemusement. "Door's open, guys, you can-"
"Sorry," Troy says, in his best chain-smoking Batman voice. "A ninja's work is never over. Also, Abed wants to discuss our scene objectives with us, so…"
"Oh, yeah, totally-"
"We'll be around," Troy says, and adds, "if you can see us." Then he vanishes into the night without another word.
"Y'din' thank them," Annie says, muffled into his shirt.
Jeff almost drops her. "You're awake?"
"Can't sleep wi' you movin' so much," she grumbles. "Put me down."
Jeff lays her down carefully on the couch. "I know this is pretty, um, unorthodox, and if you want to go home it's totally-"
Annie has started to snore.
"Or that," Jeff says, and puts her backpack down, too.
It's been a long, confusing, and endlessly weird sort of week. Jeff is tired, inside and out. His and Annie's cars are out in the parking lot, vulnerable to vandals and car thieves and unexpected bad weather; he has an Anthropology Powerpoint presentation due tomorrow that he hasn't even started; and this whole Annie situation's been keeping him from getting a normal night's sleep too-
And Jeff drops down besides Annie's couch, his head unconsciously tilting back into the cushion, feeling strangely warm, and slowed-down, and content. Annie snuffles quietly and curls a little closer. Jeff breathes out, and closes his eyes.
He gets one of the best night's sleep he's ever had.
--
Jeff's lost in a really good dream. He's off the coast of an island with pearl-white sands and sparkling azure ocean, warm summer sun and shady palm trees with fronds as long as his body. Maybe there's a mai tai in his hand, maybe there isn't. Maybe he'll go surfing later. Maybe a hot girl in a grass skirt will bring him to a luau. But right now he isn't doing a goddamn thing except laying on the beach and forgetting the world exists.
A hermit crab sidles up to him. It starts to poke him in the shoulder. Jeff brushes it away, eyes closed. The hermit crab merely pokes him harder.
Then the hermit crab addresses him. "Sir?"
"Mrmm," Jeff tells it distractedly.
The hermit crab grows insistent, and the pokes turn sharp and painful, taloned. "Sir?"
Then Jeff realizes that hey, hermit crabs can't speak English. And he's not on a tropical island. And the hermit crab is not a hermit crab at all, but the morning cleaning lady peering intently into his face and poking his shoulder repeatedly.
"Sir?"
"Oh. Um. Hi," Jeff says.
"Sir, are you all right?" the morning cleaning lady asks.
"What? Yeah, sure. Thanks." Oh so eloquent, that Jeff Winger is. "What time is it?"
"About a quarter to twelve," she responds promptly, and shit, shit, that Anthro presentation was worth a good chunk of his final, he barely has even fifteen minutes to scrape something together-hey wait. Where's Annie?
For about this time, Jeff's realized that Annie is nowhere to be seen. Not on the couch, not under the couch, not at the library table bent over her notes. Annie's gone.
He twists around wildly to the cleaning lady, making her startle and almost drop her dustbuster. "Hey, um, excuse me-did you happen to see a short brunette around here somewhere?"
The cleaning lady raises both bushy brows. "Sir, I've seen a lot of short brunettes around here somewhere, sir," she says.
"Yeah, I know, this one's got a giant backpack, wears flats, looks like she hasn't slept in a week…" Right, Jeff, just describe forty-six percent of Greendale's female population ever, that'll get you what you want. He needs coffee, badly.
The cleaning lady blinks at him slowly. "Did you try calling her?"
Screw the coffee, he needs a good, stiff drink. "Thanks," he tells the lady, and scrambles outside, hurriedly tugging his phone from his unforgivably creased jeans.
WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU???
All caps might've been overkill, he thinks a moment later. Too late for it now. Time for a hasty Anthro Powerpoint. Right. He breaks into a run.
She's fine she's fine she probably left early she's fine, Winger, you need to focus now, Annie is A-OK and you need to stop-
And Jeff skids to a stop in front of the computer lab, and leans on the wall, and then slams his forehead against it. His heart's pounding. And it's not because he was running.
Fuck his life sometimes, really.
--
It just so happens that Annie calls him in the middle of his presentation, a scrapped-together Winger family tree with more fictional characters than Harry Potter. Jeff's in the middle of embellishing upon his great-great-great-grandfather's, Sirius Regulus Winger's, contributions to modern astronomy when his phone starts to ring.
Flashing the class his most charming grin, Jeff quickly steps outside and answers. Yep, it's her. Wonderful. "Annie," he hisses, "where. Are. You."
"Where are you?" she asks him right back.
"Anthropology," Jeff says, teeth gritted.
"I'm sorry, I thought you were gonna sleep through class!" Annie says, so apologetic, so sincere-Jeff is probably going to throttle her next he sees her. "I wouldn't have called, I'm really sorry. Did I interrupt you?"
Jeff forces himself to take a very deep, long, yogatastic breath. One, two, ten. Let it all out. "Yes. You did."
"I'm sorry, I'll call back-"
"Why aren't you in class?"
She pauses. "I-had to do something," she says.
"Annie Edison, do not play coy with me right now. What did you have to do."
"Um," Annie says. "You know what? I'll tell you after class, you go finish your thing."
"Fine," he growls, and hangs up with a violent push of the End button.
--
She meets him by the main entrance, twisting the hem of her little floral sundress in one hand, gripping her backpack strap with the other. Bites her lip. She looks nervous.
Good, Jeff thinks darkly, she should be.
"I didn't interrupt anything important, did I?" she asks, when they're within speaking distance. "When I called, I mean."
Just twenty percent of thirty percent of his grade. "No."
"Oh. Good," she says, visibly relaxing. "I was worried about that."
Jeff can almost choke on the irony. "Is that all you wanted to ask me?"
Annie shakes her head, straightens out her dress in short pulls. "I wanted to thank you, actually," she says. "For worrying about me last night."
"I wasn't worried," Jeff says, and wonders for the umpteenth time why no one in this godforsaken school will take his word for it.
"Well, whatever you were, then," Annie dismisses. "It made me think about things."
"There's a new one."
She grins, big and bright. "And I thought, maybe I haven't been getting that much sleep this past week."
"And?"
"And," she says, standing up straight and defiant, "I drove home this morning, talked to my landlord, and told him I wouldn't stand for the noise anymore."
"Well good for you," Jeff says, honestly impressed. "So what, they're gonna stop filming at night or something?"
"No," she says, frowning. "He told me if I didn't like it I could leave. So I'm staying at a Howard Johnson's just a few blocks from here. Just for a few days."
Oh. Well. Jeff shuffles oddly on the pavement and says, "That sucks."
"No, you know what? I feel good," Annie says. "And you helped. Which is why I wanted to thank you."
"Thank me. For helping you shack up in a motel."
"I was being stubborn, and you helped me sorta stop and take a look at myself," Annie says. "And I needed that."
Jeff sighs. "You weren't being stubborn. You were just… overestimating yourself."
Annie's mouth presses into a grim scowl. "And look where that got me," she says derisively. "Do you know, I had to ask for an extension on Duncan's Powerpoint presentation? Twice? I present in two days and I'm barely even a third of the way done."
"It's not that hard," Jeff says, shrugging; Annie's still wilting under the pressure-and pulling at his abused heartstrings, dammit. "I could help, I'm pretty practiced at it."
It's worth the pain of future Powerpoint tedium to see her eyes light up like the fourth of July. Then she knocks the wind out of him with a hug around his chest and a megawatt grin and Jeff thinks he should help her bullshit her homework more often, if it would make her happy.
"Just-promise me one thing," he says when she releases him. "Don't neglect yourself like this ever again, all right? You promise? 'Cause-"
"It worries you?" she says sweetly.
All right, Universe, uncle. Jeff hangs his head in defeat. Shameful, shameful defeat.
"It's okay to worry, Jeff," Annie tells him. "It's kinda cute."
"It is not cute," Jeff mutters automatically. "Cute is puppies and kittens snuggling for Youtube hits, not-"
She's really in his personal space, Jeff notes, and she has enormous Bambi eyes and soft lips, and his word flow dries up like a desert stream.
"Um," he says, articulately. "Annie?"
And the lights of Greendale promptly go out.
No, that was not a metaphor. They really do go out. Not that Jeff can tell, the weather being so very Californian, but the sudden excited shouts of "FUCK YEAH, BLACKOUTS!" from inside do kind of confirm his suspicions.
Annie draws away from him to frown sidelong at the school. "A blackout? Really?"
Jeff has a feeling he knows who's responsible, too. Then he sees a ninja slip out of the school and yep, he definitely knows. "They'll probably cancel classes for the rest of the day," Jeff says, smirking.
"Yeah," Annie says with a sigh. "Probably."
"So we could get your Powerpoint done today, if you wanted."
Annie blinks. "You were really serious about that?" she asks.
Jeff shrugs. "Sure."
It's gotta be one of the nicest feelings in the world, watching a smile bloom and unfold on Annie Edison, it's like a time-lapse video of something really spellbinding you find only in the purest parts of nature. Her eyes light up and the tip of her nose twitches and he offers his arm to her with a short, graceful bow.
She ends up slipping her hand down into his, instead, as they walk to her car. Her palm is smooth and warm and small, and her fingers lace themselves through his own.
He doesn't mind.
--
--