Residue from Last Night (2/2)
Title: Residue from Last Night (2/2)
Author: veryspecial0ne
Rating: R
Word count: ~3000
Disclaimer: Nothing has ever been less mine than Community.
Spoilers: Through the end of Season 2.
Summary: He refuses to feel inappropriate though, because how could it possibly be his fault that someone tried to break into Annie's apartment and that there was practically a hurricane (hurricanes are bad, Troy) going on outside and lightning makes Annie flinch and squirm just a bit closer to him with every strike?
A/N: Part two of the fic prompted by khan81 over at the Annie fanworks meme at community_tv : "Jeff/Annie-She stays at his apartment after hers is broken into." I took the opportunity to rework something I had been messing around with back in November or so. Title is from "Armour" by Ane Brun. This part got a little, um...more explicit? than I originally thought, so we're making it an R rating. Thanks so much to everyone who's read and reviewed so far, and I hope you enjoy the second half!
He used to be able to deal with this. He used to be able to act however he wanted around Annie when they were alone and pretend she was too young to sexualize when other people were around, pretend the parts of their lives that only happened when they were alone didn't exist. But then the men's room happened and the fight in the study room happened. And now he has to be all careful because it's not safe to act like he used to, like he wants to, around Annie anymore. After all, he never knows when she's going to confront him in front of a crowd…or even worse, in the bathroom. He wonders, not for the first time since getting into bed, how he neglected to even think of the effect it might have on his night's sleep to know that Annie's sleeping on his couch, twenty feet away from him, with her outfit for tomorrow neatly laid out on his coffee table where her books had previously been.
Jeff rolls over, unable to get comfortable, aware that this inability has nothing to do with his actual bed, and hating the feeling. He doesn't know what to do with himself right now. And the habit he's formed, when he doesn't know what to do with himself, is to call Britta. He wants to. Not because he wants to sleep with her, because he was being as honest as he thinks she was being when they came to the snap but firm decision that it was time for their ongoing tryst to end. But Britta never throws Jeff for a loop anymore. He knows what to expect with her. Somewhere along the lines of learning which aspects of foreplay get her hot the fastest, he also learned the names of all the cats she's ever had and that she won't ever miss the Daily Show as long as she remembers it's on (Jeff succeeded in making her forget twice).
In spite of her own best efforts, Jeff thinks as he punches his pillow again, Britta's kind of learned who she is. Which enabled Jeff to learn. And they both even sometimes kind of like who Britta is. Which means both that at this point there's really no chance of Jeff screwing Britta up (any more), and that sometimes he would call her just to tell her what new way Chang had figured out to drive him crazy or some other trivial piece of information that needed to be shared to make it real and rational.
Jeff stills in his relentless shifting when he thinks he hears a noise from the front room, but close listening reveals nothing more, so he settles back into the tangle of sheets and blankets he's created and inhales deeply, hoping to trick his body into sleeping by replicating its breathing patterns.
Calling Britta would probably be a bad idea. They're friends, yeah, but that doesn't mean she's not still touchy about -- Jeff rolls his eyes at himself for even thinking the phrase -- the Annie of it all. Only irony-free Annie would come up with that one.
He doesn't have to do anything, Jeff acknowledges to himself. He's in control here. He's not a puppet, he's the puppet-master. Within an hour or two he's sure he'll fall asleep, and things will seem much easier in the daylight. She'll get in her car and drive back to her re-secured shithole, and tonight will just be this weird thing that happened that they don't really talk about.
Jeff is finally drifting away when a burst of light illuminates the inside of his eyelids, sending a pink flash to his brain. And just as Jeff opens his eyes to figure out why someone is taking flash photography in his bedroom at midnight, a crashing noise rings through his ears. It isn't long before rain is pounding against his west-facing window.
Jeff groans and grabs one of his extra pillows, clutching it to his head in hopes of blocking out the noise and regaining that elusive, blissful feeling of floating away into dreamland when he hears a creak from the floorboards behind him, so loud it's even audible through Jeff's polyester-stuffed barrier. He lifts the pillow and cranes his neck to find Annie standing in his doorway nervously, sleepily, twisting her fingers in the fabric of her pink patterned pajama top.
"I hate storms," she says without preamble, her voice a little raspy from what must have been interrupted sleep.
Jeff nods. "I'm not too big a fan of them either right now."
And though he knows rationally that it had something to do with Annie flinching at the next crash of thunder and hastily explaining that when she was eight, a bolt of lightning had passed not ten feet from her window and hit the house behind hers, Jeff still can't figure out how on earth he would explain to anyone the sequence of events that leads to Annie sliding into his bed beside him, taking the left side as Jeff eases over so that he's between her and the window. He refuses to feel inappropriate though, because how could it possibly be his fault that someone tried to break into Annie's apartment and that there was practically a hurricane (hurricanes are bad, Troy) going on outside and lightning makes Annie flinch and squirm just a bit closer to him with every strike?
But the limits of his denial are being severely tested as her body inches closer to his and he can feel the heat coming from her body before they even make contact. The first contact they make is her forehead to his chin; when she feels it she tilts her head up to meet his eyes, touching her forehead briefly before rubbing one finger through the scruff on his chin. The next points of contact are their entire bodies, basically, as Jeff loops an arm around her waist and hauls her the remaining few inches across the pale blue sheets. Lightning strikes once more, the curtains on the window doing little to mask the bright flash as it illuminates Annie's face, and the next parts of their bodies to join are their mouths.
The chapstick Jeff watched her painstakingly apply earlier -- how long ago was it? His clock says it was less than an hour but he could swear he's been lying here for days -- has sunk in and her lips are soft, like, really soft. Her tongue tastes like mint, too, and god, he hasn't been with a woman after she brushed her teeth for the night since Slater, not even Britta. It's kind of scary, but not as scary as the experience of actually sharing the bathroom sink with her, and it's a nice change from that fruity, too-sweet tang of sugary pink drinks he became accustomed to from his usual conquests. Annie pulls his bottom lip between her teeth and sucks, and he decides to stop thinking so much.
They've still been lying side by side all this time, but now Jeff rolls over so he's half on top of her, and Annie wraps her arms around him, not grabbing or caressing but just holding him to her, and he'd call it chaste if she wasn't also pressing her cloth-covered breasts up against his bare chest and swirling her tongue around his like a tornado of young, barely repressed sexuality. Thunder crashes again and she holds him just a little tighter and kisses him a little harder and Jeff has just enough time to think that maybe this is Annie's first introduction to the link between fear and arousal before he catches himself in another train of thought that can lead nowhere good. Luckily, Annie chooses this moment to roll them over -- maybe he should take that purple belt more seriously, because it seems awfully easy for her to seize the upper hand -- and the noise in his brain is significantly quieted, if not muted.
If there's one thing he knows about Annie it's that she doesn't do anything in moderation. The cruder way to say it would be that she has an addictive personality, but that puts the word "addict" into the equation and it's another part of Annie's life he's never liked thinking about. Locking thoughts of the pills into a little imaginary medicine cabinet in his head, Jeff instead thinks of all the things he's seen Annie throw herself into head first -- studying, campus safety, paintball, keeping the study group together at whatever cost -- and decides that he's never enjoyed any of them more than her new dedication to that spot between Jeff's neck and shoulder. He gropes blindly for a breast, finding it immediately and bolstered by the fact that it doesn't seem to trip her up one bit. In fact, she pulls her torso back a little bit to give him more room while grinding her hips down into his. Jeff fondles and she licks, he squeezes and she sucks, he runs a thumb firmly across the center and she bites gently on his collarbone.
Eventually it becomes conspicuous that Jeff is mostly naked and Annie is mostly clothed, and the next time they switch positions -- Jeff has no problem being on the bottom but Annie's hair keeps getting in his face -- Jeff slides the hand that's now working her other breast over, just a few inches, to her sternum, usually masked by cleavage but currently exposed and vulnerable thanks to her bralessness and gravity. The top button of her short-sleeved pajama top lays directly over the flat bone and Jeff taps it with his fingernail, making four barely audible clicks. He has no intention of voicing the question; he does have some dignity.
Annie pushes him back several inches, but she's not stopping things. She forgoes the buttons and whips the pink top over her head before settling back down. Her cheeks barely have time to turn a matching shade of pink before Jeff is back to work and she's embedded her fingers into his hair. From then on it's really just a fantastic mix of sweat and Annie's boobs and those little squeaks she makes.
(And at one point Annie breaks away to tell him hesitantly but firmly that he has no chance of getting laid by her tonight, and Jeff insists that he never assumed he would, but the look in Annie's eyes says that she can tell that even if he didn't assume it he was probably hoping for it, and maybe it doesn't bother her.)
But she doesn't freak out when he hooks her knee around his hips and presses himself harder against her, even though they're looking at each other so he knows she can see the way his eyes go half-lidded. And then he's holding her waist in both hands and dropping open mouthed kisses all over her torso and he doesn't bother stopping himself from hooking his hands into her pajama bottoms. He doesn't pull down, he just leaves his fingers resting in there as he dips his tongue into her belly button, but the muscles tense under his mouth and Annie finally speaks again.
"I don't know…" she says doubtfully.
It's not a "no" and Jeff's pretty sure he could convince her to let him continue. Even though she's stiffened a little, she's still clinging to his shoulders and hasn't actually pulled away. He's about to give her his most reassuring smile and lean up to whisper "let me do this for you" into her ear in a way that's been well proven to be extremely persuasive, but in the moment between the sentence forming in his head and actually leaving his mouth, he's suddenly assailed by a memory of Britta, crouched with him behind a barricade built of study room furniture as paintballs whiz above their heads and burst on the walls, urgently saying "let me do this for you!" before taking his face in her hands and…
So instead of saying that to Annie, Jeff just nods and says "okay" as he uncurls his fingertips from the inside of her waistband. He lifts his weight from her and flops over to the right on his back with a mighty exhale. She pulls the sheet that's bunched around her hips up to shield her bare chest at first, as they lie side by side, not touching, catching their breath. When the room has grown silent -- even the rain has finally stopped -- Annie sits up, still clasping the sheet.
Jeff makes an inquisitive sound deep in his throat. "Hmm?"
Annie doesn't look at him; Jeff didn't notice at the time but he now sees that when she yanked off the top to her pajama set earlier, she didn't fling it across the room. It's been sitting in an unobtrusive little pile on Jeff's bedside table the whole time. He chuckles without voice, a little breath bursting out of his nose as he grins. Annie slides the shirt back on and turns to him, catching his eye before looking out the window as if to acknowledge the end of the storm.
In response, Jeff turns over on his side, facing her, and holds out his left arm. Annie slides into the vacant space with a smile, fitting back against him and squirming a little in apparent pleasure. Jeff drapes an arm over her midsection as she speaks unexpectedly, murmuring, "You totally planned this whole thing."
"I plead the fifth amendment on the grounds that I might incriminate myself."
When Jeff wakes up in the morning his hand has traveled from resting on Annie's stomach to softly cupping her breast through the cloth of her pajamas, but Annie doesn't seem to mind -- her hand is on top of his, loosely holding it in place. Even while enjoying the weight in his palm and flexing his hand ever so slightly to savor it, he tries to figure out how to play this. Before he can get his self-reproach muscles in gear, though, he hears tinny music coming from his living room, audible through the door that Annie left ajar when she joined him last night. He's just identified it as "The Old Apartment" by the Barenaked Ladies (really, Annie?) when the weight from his hand is gone, along with the warmth pressing along the front of his body, and Annie is darting through his bedroom door to answer her phone.
"Hello?"
Her conversation continues as Jeff rolls out of bed, throws on a t-shirt and a pair of track pants, and plods into the bathroom.
"And you have a duplicate copy of the receipt for me, right?"
Jeff closes the door and relieves himself. As he's washing his hands, he gazes in the mirror out of habit. His hair is even messier than usual. His lips look swollen and feel sensitive to the touch. He shakes his head at himself as he splashes some cold water on his face, marveling at the difference between the last time he stared in this bathroom mirror with Annie in his living room and now. When he's brushed his teeth, he opens the door and leans into the hallway with his head tilted towards the front of the apartment, leaving his feet planted on the cool bathroom tile. He's expecting to see Annie standing in the middle of the room, hands folded demurely in front of her like she does when she doesn't have backpack straps to cling to, smiling nervously with Disney eyes in full force.
She's standing there, all right, but she's already dressed and her hair is brushed, even though she's still devoid of make-up. Her overnight bag is slung over her shoulder and both of her hands hold fast to the strap. She's not smiling nervously, either, it's just…a smile.
"Okay, so that was my landlord and everything's fixed! Thanks for letting me crash. I'll see you at Shirley's birthday, right?" Without waiting for an answer, Annie spins dismissively on the heel of her ballet flat and sails through the door of Jeff's apartment.
Jeff hasn't moved from his spot when there's a knock on that same door maybe ten seconds later. He walks cautiously to the door, sees Annie still on the other side of it through the peephole, and opens it.
"Gotcha."
And there's nothing to say, because…she did. So Jeff just steps back to allow her room to reenter. Annie drops her bag back on the floor and heads to the kitchen.
"Do you know how to make omelets? I want an omelet."
"Yeah," Jeff says, "but I only have egg whites."
"That's fine," says Annie.
She chops some vegetables and grates cheese while Jeff cooks, and occasionally she breaks into a tiny little fit of giggles over the look on his face when she abandoned him in his own apartment. The third time it happens, Jeff throws a little piece of bell pepper at her. Annie catches it in her mouth and crows in triumph. Jeff turns back to the stove so she won't see him grinning at the fact that the same school that he complains feeds on his coolness has taken Little Annie Adderall and made her kind of awesome.
Annie lets Jeff triple-check her new deadbolts, files the locksmith's receipt alphabetically with all her other important documents, and doesn't move out of her apartment. It's a shithole, yes, but it's the first place she lived besides her mother's house and rehab, and it's hers, so she's not ready to leave. Jeff, however, is given permission to see her home nightly and, if he decides there is suspicious activity about, to insist she come spend the night with him, provided he doesn't abuse that power. He is also required to spend one out of every five of those nights at Annie's instead of his own apartment.
("One out of every ten."
"Three."
"Eight."
"Three."
"Annie."
"Five is my absolute and complete final offer, or I'll be sleeping there, alone, every night."
And Jeff gave in, with the additional circumstance that she was never to use that particular bargaining chip ever again.)
Author: veryspecial0ne
Rating: R
Word count: ~3000
Disclaimer: Nothing has ever been less mine than Community.
Spoilers: Through the end of Season 2.
Summary: He refuses to feel inappropriate though, because how could it possibly be his fault that someone tried to break into Annie's apartment and that there was practically a hurricane (hurricanes are bad, Troy) going on outside and lightning makes Annie flinch and squirm just a bit closer to him with every strike?
A/N: Part two of the fic prompted by khan81 over at the Annie fanworks meme at community_tv : "Jeff/Annie-She stays at his apartment after hers is broken into." I took the opportunity to rework something I had been messing around with back in November or so. Title is from "Armour" by Ane Brun. This part got a little, um...more explicit? than I originally thought, so we're making it an R rating. Thanks so much to everyone who's read and reviewed so far, and I hope you enjoy the second half!
He used to be able to deal with this. He used to be able to act however he wanted around Annie when they were alone and pretend she was too young to sexualize when other people were around, pretend the parts of their lives that only happened when they were alone didn't exist. But then the men's room happened and the fight in the study room happened. And now he has to be all careful because it's not safe to act like he used to, like he wants to, around Annie anymore. After all, he never knows when she's going to confront him in front of a crowd…or even worse, in the bathroom. He wonders, not for the first time since getting into bed, how he neglected to even think of the effect it might have on his night's sleep to know that Annie's sleeping on his couch, twenty feet away from him, with her outfit for tomorrow neatly laid out on his coffee table where her books had previously been.
Jeff rolls over, unable to get comfortable, aware that this inability has nothing to do with his actual bed, and hating the feeling. He doesn't know what to do with himself right now. And the habit he's formed, when he doesn't know what to do with himself, is to call Britta. He wants to. Not because he wants to sleep with her, because he was being as honest as he thinks she was being when they came to the snap but firm decision that it was time for their ongoing tryst to end. But Britta never throws Jeff for a loop anymore. He knows what to expect with her. Somewhere along the lines of learning which aspects of foreplay get her hot the fastest, he also learned the names of all the cats she's ever had and that she won't ever miss the Daily Show as long as she remembers it's on (Jeff succeeded in making her forget twice).
In spite of her own best efforts, Jeff thinks as he punches his pillow again, Britta's kind of learned who she is. Which enabled Jeff to learn. And they both even sometimes kind of like who Britta is. Which means both that at this point there's really no chance of Jeff screwing Britta up (any more), and that sometimes he would call her just to tell her what new way Chang had figured out to drive him crazy or some other trivial piece of information that needed to be shared to make it real and rational.
Jeff stills in his relentless shifting when he thinks he hears a noise from the front room, but close listening reveals nothing more, so he settles back into the tangle of sheets and blankets he's created and inhales deeply, hoping to trick his body into sleeping by replicating its breathing patterns.
Calling Britta would probably be a bad idea. They're friends, yeah, but that doesn't mean she's not still touchy about -- Jeff rolls his eyes at himself for even thinking the phrase -- the Annie of it all. Only irony-free Annie would come up with that one.
He doesn't have to do anything, Jeff acknowledges to himself. He's in control here. He's not a puppet, he's the puppet-master. Within an hour or two he's sure he'll fall asleep, and things will seem much easier in the daylight. She'll get in her car and drive back to her re-secured shithole, and tonight will just be this weird thing that happened that they don't really talk about.
Jeff is finally drifting away when a burst of light illuminates the inside of his eyelids, sending a pink flash to his brain. And just as Jeff opens his eyes to figure out why someone is taking flash photography in his bedroom at midnight, a crashing noise rings through his ears. It isn't long before rain is pounding against his west-facing window.
Jeff groans and grabs one of his extra pillows, clutching it to his head in hopes of blocking out the noise and regaining that elusive, blissful feeling of floating away into dreamland when he hears a creak from the floorboards behind him, so loud it's even audible through Jeff's polyester-stuffed barrier. He lifts the pillow and cranes his neck to find Annie standing in his doorway nervously, sleepily, twisting her fingers in the fabric of her pink patterned pajama top.
"I hate storms," she says without preamble, her voice a little raspy from what must have been interrupted sleep.
Jeff nods. "I'm not too big a fan of them either right now."
And though he knows rationally that it had something to do with Annie flinching at the next crash of thunder and hastily explaining that when she was eight, a bolt of lightning had passed not ten feet from her window and hit the house behind hers, Jeff still can't figure out how on earth he would explain to anyone the sequence of events that leads to Annie sliding into his bed beside him, taking the left side as Jeff eases over so that he's between her and the window. He refuses to feel inappropriate though, because how could it possibly be his fault that someone tried to break into Annie's apartment and that there was practically a hurricane (hurricanes are bad, Troy) going on outside and lightning makes Annie flinch and squirm just a bit closer to him with every strike?
But the limits of his denial are being severely tested as her body inches closer to his and he can feel the heat coming from her body before they even make contact. The first contact they make is her forehead to his chin; when she feels it she tilts her head up to meet his eyes, touching her forehead briefly before rubbing one finger through the scruff on his chin. The next points of contact are their entire bodies, basically, as Jeff loops an arm around her waist and hauls her the remaining few inches across the pale blue sheets. Lightning strikes once more, the curtains on the window doing little to mask the bright flash as it illuminates Annie's face, and the next parts of their bodies to join are their mouths.
The chapstick Jeff watched her painstakingly apply earlier -- how long ago was it? His clock says it was less than an hour but he could swear he's been lying here for days -- has sunk in and her lips are soft, like, really soft. Her tongue tastes like mint, too, and god, he hasn't been with a woman after she brushed her teeth for the night since Slater, not even Britta. It's kind of scary, but not as scary as the experience of actually sharing the bathroom sink with her, and it's a nice change from that fruity, too-sweet tang of sugary pink drinks he became accustomed to from his usual conquests. Annie pulls his bottom lip between her teeth and sucks, and he decides to stop thinking so much.
They've still been lying side by side all this time, but now Jeff rolls over so he's half on top of her, and Annie wraps her arms around him, not grabbing or caressing but just holding him to her, and he'd call it chaste if she wasn't also pressing her cloth-covered breasts up against his bare chest and swirling her tongue around his like a tornado of young, barely repressed sexuality. Thunder crashes again and she holds him just a little tighter and kisses him a little harder and Jeff has just enough time to think that maybe this is Annie's first introduction to the link between fear and arousal before he catches himself in another train of thought that can lead nowhere good. Luckily, Annie chooses this moment to roll them over -- maybe he should take that purple belt more seriously, because it seems awfully easy for her to seize the upper hand -- and the noise in his brain is significantly quieted, if not muted.
If there's one thing he knows about Annie it's that she doesn't do anything in moderation. The cruder way to say it would be that she has an addictive personality, but that puts the word "addict" into the equation and it's another part of Annie's life he's never liked thinking about. Locking thoughts of the pills into a little imaginary medicine cabinet in his head, Jeff instead thinks of all the things he's seen Annie throw herself into head first -- studying, campus safety, paintball, keeping the study group together at whatever cost -- and decides that he's never enjoyed any of them more than her new dedication to that spot between Jeff's neck and shoulder. He gropes blindly for a breast, finding it immediately and bolstered by the fact that it doesn't seem to trip her up one bit. In fact, she pulls her torso back a little bit to give him more room while grinding her hips down into his. Jeff fondles and she licks, he squeezes and she sucks, he runs a thumb firmly across the center and she bites gently on his collarbone.
Eventually it becomes conspicuous that Jeff is mostly naked and Annie is mostly clothed, and the next time they switch positions -- Jeff has no problem being on the bottom but Annie's hair keeps getting in his face -- Jeff slides the hand that's now working her other breast over, just a few inches, to her sternum, usually masked by cleavage but currently exposed and vulnerable thanks to her bralessness and gravity. The top button of her short-sleeved pajama top lays directly over the flat bone and Jeff taps it with his fingernail, making four barely audible clicks. He has no intention of voicing the question; he does have some dignity.
Annie pushes him back several inches, but she's not stopping things. She forgoes the buttons and whips the pink top over her head before settling back down. Her cheeks barely have time to turn a matching shade of pink before Jeff is back to work and she's embedded her fingers into his hair. From then on it's really just a fantastic mix of sweat and Annie's boobs and those little squeaks she makes.
(And at one point Annie breaks away to tell him hesitantly but firmly that he has no chance of getting laid by her tonight, and Jeff insists that he never assumed he would, but the look in Annie's eyes says that she can tell that even if he didn't assume it he was probably hoping for it, and maybe it doesn't bother her.)
But she doesn't freak out when he hooks her knee around his hips and presses himself harder against her, even though they're looking at each other so he knows she can see the way his eyes go half-lidded. And then he's holding her waist in both hands and dropping open mouthed kisses all over her torso and he doesn't bother stopping himself from hooking his hands into her pajama bottoms. He doesn't pull down, he just leaves his fingers resting in there as he dips his tongue into her belly button, but the muscles tense under his mouth and Annie finally speaks again.
"I don't know…" she says doubtfully.
It's not a "no" and Jeff's pretty sure he could convince her to let him continue. Even though she's stiffened a little, she's still clinging to his shoulders and hasn't actually pulled away. He's about to give her his most reassuring smile and lean up to whisper "let me do this for you" into her ear in a way that's been well proven to be extremely persuasive, but in the moment between the sentence forming in his head and actually leaving his mouth, he's suddenly assailed by a memory of Britta, crouched with him behind a barricade built of study room furniture as paintballs whiz above their heads and burst on the walls, urgently saying "let me do this for you!" before taking his face in her hands and…
So instead of saying that to Annie, Jeff just nods and says "okay" as he uncurls his fingertips from the inside of her waistband. He lifts his weight from her and flops over to the right on his back with a mighty exhale. She pulls the sheet that's bunched around her hips up to shield her bare chest at first, as they lie side by side, not touching, catching their breath. When the room has grown silent -- even the rain has finally stopped -- Annie sits up, still clasping the sheet.
Jeff makes an inquisitive sound deep in his throat. "Hmm?"
Annie doesn't look at him; Jeff didn't notice at the time but he now sees that when she yanked off the top to her pajama set earlier, she didn't fling it across the room. It's been sitting in an unobtrusive little pile on Jeff's bedside table the whole time. He chuckles without voice, a little breath bursting out of his nose as he grins. Annie slides the shirt back on and turns to him, catching his eye before looking out the window as if to acknowledge the end of the storm.
In response, Jeff turns over on his side, facing her, and holds out his left arm. Annie slides into the vacant space with a smile, fitting back against him and squirming a little in apparent pleasure. Jeff drapes an arm over her midsection as she speaks unexpectedly, murmuring, "You totally planned this whole thing."
"I plead the fifth amendment on the grounds that I might incriminate myself."
When Jeff wakes up in the morning his hand has traveled from resting on Annie's stomach to softly cupping her breast through the cloth of her pajamas, but Annie doesn't seem to mind -- her hand is on top of his, loosely holding it in place. Even while enjoying the weight in his palm and flexing his hand ever so slightly to savor it, he tries to figure out how to play this. Before he can get his self-reproach muscles in gear, though, he hears tinny music coming from his living room, audible through the door that Annie left ajar when she joined him last night. He's just identified it as "The Old Apartment" by the Barenaked Ladies (really, Annie?) when the weight from his hand is gone, along with the warmth pressing along the front of his body, and Annie is darting through his bedroom door to answer her phone.
"Hello?"
Her conversation continues as Jeff rolls out of bed, throws on a t-shirt and a pair of track pants, and plods into the bathroom.
"And you have a duplicate copy of the receipt for me, right?"
Jeff closes the door and relieves himself. As he's washing his hands, he gazes in the mirror out of habit. His hair is even messier than usual. His lips look swollen and feel sensitive to the touch. He shakes his head at himself as he splashes some cold water on his face, marveling at the difference between the last time he stared in this bathroom mirror with Annie in his living room and now. When he's brushed his teeth, he opens the door and leans into the hallway with his head tilted towards the front of the apartment, leaving his feet planted on the cool bathroom tile. He's expecting to see Annie standing in the middle of the room, hands folded demurely in front of her like she does when she doesn't have backpack straps to cling to, smiling nervously with Disney eyes in full force.
She's standing there, all right, but she's already dressed and her hair is brushed, even though she's still devoid of make-up. Her overnight bag is slung over her shoulder and both of her hands hold fast to the strap. She's not smiling nervously, either, it's just…a smile.
"Okay, so that was my landlord and everything's fixed! Thanks for letting me crash. I'll see you at Shirley's birthday, right?" Without waiting for an answer, Annie spins dismissively on the heel of her ballet flat and sails through the door of Jeff's apartment.
Jeff hasn't moved from his spot when there's a knock on that same door maybe ten seconds later. He walks cautiously to the door, sees Annie still on the other side of it through the peephole, and opens it.
"Gotcha."
And there's nothing to say, because…she did. So Jeff just steps back to allow her room to reenter. Annie drops her bag back on the floor and heads to the kitchen.
"Do you know how to make omelets? I want an omelet."
"Yeah," Jeff says, "but I only have egg whites."
"That's fine," says Annie.
She chops some vegetables and grates cheese while Jeff cooks, and occasionally she breaks into a tiny little fit of giggles over the look on his face when she abandoned him in his own apartment. The third time it happens, Jeff throws a little piece of bell pepper at her. Annie catches it in her mouth and crows in triumph. Jeff turns back to the stove so she won't see him grinning at the fact that the same school that he complains feeds on his coolness has taken Little Annie Adderall and made her kind of awesome.
Annie lets Jeff triple-check her new deadbolts, files the locksmith's receipt alphabetically with all her other important documents, and doesn't move out of her apartment. It's a shithole, yes, but it's the first place she lived besides her mother's house and rehab, and it's hers, so she's not ready to leave. Jeff, however, is given permission to see her home nightly and, if he decides there is suspicious activity about, to insist she come spend the night with him, provided he doesn't abuse that power. He is also required to spend one out of every five of those nights at Annie's instead of his own apartment.
("One out of every ten."
"Three."
"Eight."
"Three."
"Annie."
"Five is my absolute and complete final offer, or I'll be sleeping there, alone, every night."
And Jeff gave in, with the additional circumstance that she was never to use that particular bargaining chip ever again.)