Fic: Circles (3/?)
fandom: Community
pairing: Annie/Jeff
rating: R for language
word count: 3,034
spoilers: Debate 109, Politics of Human Sexuality
a/n: So, some of this was paraphrased exactly from my beta, crackers4jenn, because she is way too amazing and makes me feel better when I send her a big pile of stuff I have no idea what to do with. And, she unintentionally prompted me with even more stuff for this story, and other random futurefic, so who can complain, right? Oh, and she has some epic bangs. :) And THANK YOU FOREVER TO tempertemper77 for the html win!!
ETA: So, hey, this is the lost chapter! In which I remember to explain how Jeff got his car back before school on Monday :) Don't be alarmed that the beginning is the same as the original version of this chapter; the new stuff is there, I just wanted it all to flow together :)
Annie sits at the desk in her room in front of her open laptop on Sunday afternoon. She props her head up on one hand and stares glassily out the window.
She'll never tell anybody in a million years (and you better not either), but she's taking a break from typing up Spanish notes (putting in all those accent marks is so time consuming) to mentally choose the font with which she'll have the pillow cases embroidered. Specifically, the pillowcases she'll have when her last name is Winger.
Annie Winger. It just sounds . . . great, doesn't it? Even better than Annie Edison. They'll have a mahogany California king size four poster bed (because anything smaller will barely fit Jeff let alone the both of them), and snow white 1,000 thread count sheets with a navy blue monogram. Nothing too ornamental, because Jeff's not a girly cursive kind of man. Something sleek and yet still traditional.
Annie sighs, the kind of melancholy, unsatisfied, wonderful sigh that slips out when you can't hold on to a daydream any longer. She’s not terribly good at this - at daydreaming. This is surprising, because Annie has always excelled at most things she’s put her mind to. It’s so much like waiting, and so unlike accomplishing. But still, she lets herself have these little moments. No, it's not real; she knows that. But what can it hurt? Call it greed if you want, but she deserves to revel in the lovely impossible while she can, gosh darnit.
Her phone chimes with a text message - at least she thinks that's what it is because she hasn't heard it since she set her ring tones.
"New Text Message from Winger, Jeff" it says simply.
Just like that. Like Jeff Winger texts Annie Edison every day of the week just to say hello. (Um, he definitely doesn't). She gets a little thrill in her stomach. Forget the actual message, for a few seconds the fact that there is a message kind of clouds her mind. She cautiously reaches out and slides her phone across the desk in front of her. She stares at the screen. The backlight turns off, but the alert still displays faintly: "New Text Message from Winger, Jeff."
She steels herself, and flips open the phone. She presses a button, and the message appears like magic. Oh, the things they can do with technology today, really just astounding, isn't- READ IT, Annie.
"From: Winger, Jeff
good morning"
That's all. "good morning" No punctuation or capitalization. Which seems about right for Jeff, doesn't it?
"good morning"
She can almost hear him saying it, scratchy with sleep when he's just waking up. He'll roll over and wrap an arm around her and she'll smile and say good morning back and run her fingernails over his arm like she always does because she knows he likes it. They'll lie there in their huge bed with the perfectly white monogrammed sheets and the sunlight pouring in and their adorable scratchy sleep voices and . . .
It takes another fifteen minutes of the other kind of day dreaming, which is more like day nightmaring, which Annie is much more adept at, before she remembers she should reply. She glances frantically around her room, trying to figure out what to say.
Her corkboard covered in blue ribbons and gold stars offers no advice. Her bookshelves stuffed with required and extra reading aren't piping up either. Was the cryptic "good morning" some sort of test? No, Jeff avoids tests like the plague. Well, she could do some quick research; maybe pull a few quotes to - No, Annie. This is real life, and this is Jeff.
So, what do you say back when someone says "good morning" at (she checks her watch) 2:13 p.m. on a Sunday (after kissing you back in a debate, and then you mace him and drive him to the hospital and then you have to drive him home and he kisses you again and you bolted like he'd coughed on you or something (well he did, on your neck in the car, but that was because of the mace, so it's not his fault) and then texts you the day before you have to hold your composure when you see him at school)?
"From Annie
It's after 2 silly"
(Silly? SILLY? She just called a thirty . . . something (oh my god I don't know how old he is. I don't even . . . he could be almost forty!) year old man 'silly.' Any second now he's going to just delete her name from his phone and never speak to her again. Ever. This will really put a strain on the study group. What happens if-)
"From Winger, Jeff
its sunday theres no such thing as morning"
"From Annie
My alarm clock begs to differ, Sir."
"From Winger, Jeff
your alarm clock sounds pretty bossy madam"
"From Annie
"On the contrary we've had many good years together."
"From Winger, Jeff
you havent had very many years yourself kid"
"From Annie
I thought I was madam? Am I aging in reverse?"
"From Winger, Jeff
dear god i hope not"
"From Annie
:)"
Oh, yeah, that just happened. "kid." "Kid" just happened. So, so, so wrong, dude.
Look, Jeff doesn't get nervous around women. That's like saying Chuck Norris gets nervous when he's about to land a roundhouse kick to the face. For Jeff, like the good lord Norris, it's more of a reminder of the knowledge that he is now and ever shall be an irresistible beast of a man.
(What about Britta? She rejected the hell out of you. Like, repeatedly, in fact. 1) Britta is a special case. What kind of special case? The poor sad rejected Jeff kind? NO. The she's actually kind of a cool person, with whom I also wouldn't mind having sex, and she keeps sticking around, obviously because she recognizes how many redeeming qualities I possess kind. Everyone benefits. Yeah, because you contribute a lot to a relationship. Shut up, asshole. Sorry, get back to pumping yourself up after your epic fail with Annie just now. Epic fail? Really? What is this, Xanga? You never made your second point about how you're a beast who never gets nervous around women. STFU.)
But, smiley face right? So, all in all, not a complete loss? The smiley face is a tricky bastard in this situation though, because it could mean a couple of different things, coming from Annie. Observe and consider the possibilities:
Annie Smile #1 - The "I Rule Because I Got My Way and Now My Plot for World Domination By Way of Community Planning Can Never Fail" Edition. (She's the fucking Barack Obama of talking Jeff into things.)
This is the scary one. This one means this is all part of her aforementioned plot, which means Jeff is some sort of unwitting collateral whose future in The World According to Annie depends on his ability to produce bags of ice, sleeves of cups, and a modicum of humanity. That's an unreasonable amount of pressure for a lawyer.
Annie Smile #2 - The "I Am A Sweet, Luscious, Cupcake of A Woman Who Was Just Well and Thoroughly Kissed By Jeff Winger" Edition
. . . As witnessed the previous evening. There is nothing in the free world wrong with this.
But he’ll be damned if he’s going to risk asking her out for coffee or something only to get roped into attending a party for some manner of holiday celebrated only by the Dutch and signed up to bring five dozen mini pigs in blankets and a pack of napkins.
So instead, Jeff decides to spend his Sunday glancing cautiously at his phone from the corner of his eye a lot while watching a Law & Order marathon and reminiscing about the good old days he spent with liars, frauds, and sundry other brands of criminal. Sigh. He mentally hums a few bars of “Yesterday” as he reaches for the remote.
_
Just when Jack McCoy - perhaps the lawyer of all lawyers, even if he is a prosecutor - has completed another shouty tirade, witnessed by one of his countless slim brunette ADA/girlfriends, Jeff’s cell phone chimes signaling he has a new text message.
Jeff flails an arm out and feels blindly for the phone and slides his thumb across the screen to unlock it as he brings it up to his face.
“New Text Message from: Annie”
Hm. Jeff raises his eyebrow. After their brief text message conversation from earlier, he hadn’t expected to hear from her again before he saw her at school tomorrow. Which, god, could his life be any more . . . whatever the word for a thirty-four year old waiting until a freaking passing period to see his . . . whatever Annie was?
He taps the screen and up pops her message:
“How are you going to get to school tomorrow?”
Um, hi, awesome car, in which he may or may not have slept once or twice, and which FOR THE RECORD, is most likely awesomer than the average house, so no, pathetic is not an appropriate word to apply to that situation, thank you very much. HEY. NOT PATHETIC, OKAY? Cut it out, Hyundai Driver, I see you smirking in the corner over there.
Then it occurs to Jeff, as he’s about to text Annie a slightly truncated version of his previous thought process, that his awesomer-than-the-average-house car . . . is currently parked at Greendale Community College, where he’d left it upon being wedged into Annie’s car for that misguided hospital run meant to assuage the effects of her even more misguided mace-usage.
So, crap.
“From: Winger, Jeff
maybe i just wont go”
“From: Annie
JEFF YOU CAN’T SKIP SCHOOL!!!!!!!”
Here he facepalms for a few reasons; 1) Annie’s cuteness physically hurts his head sometimes, like pounding a whole Big Gulp of Mountain Dew at once. With about fourteen Sweet & Lows in it. And like, frosting or something. 2) CAPSLOCK PRODUCES LOTS OF MURDERY FEELINGS IN HIS TINY SHRIVELED HEART, 3) This girl. You guys, this girl.
“From: Winger, Jeff
says you”
“From: Annie
*formidable face on*”
“From: Winger, Jeff
does this mean ur picking me up?”
A few minutes later, Annie pulls the Formidable Face on a little higher and marches out her front door, tossing an excuse about needing a reference book from Greendale’s library over her shoulder to her parents. On the drive to the motel she plays the radio a little louder than she normally would.
She’d been steadfastly refusing to be distracted for the past three hours before she texted Jeff late that afternoon. Eventually she’d tried to shut down her day dreaming and study just like she always did on Sunday afternoons, but Jeff just wouldn’t leave her thoughts.
She’d tried everything; playing music, reprinting and highlighting her notes, adding petals to all the three-hole punches in the paper to make little flowers, underlining all the proper nouns, everything, and there he stubbornly was at every turn: Jeff. In mental italics, which sounded like a breathy little sigh of approval in her head, which was also definitely not helping her not think about him.
Finally the thought popped into her head as she stared out her window at the cars passing by every now and then on her quiet street: Jeff’s car.
Of course her thought process then devolved into thinking about her car, and maneuvering all six feet and four inches of mace-debilitated Jeff into her car, and leaning over him to buckle his seatbelt with her hand on his shoulder and just how solid he felt under her hands, and how he smelled really good and when she’d said goodnight at his motel room door he’d blinked kind of slowly and licked his lips after he kissed her and . . .
But the point was that Annie was concerned about Jeff’s ability to transport himself to school on Monday. That was the point.
_
“Wow, you weren’t kidding about the face, were you?”
“Come on, Jeff.”
“What’s the hurry? Oh, wait, don’t tell me, you need to study.”
“Jeeeeeeeeeff!”
He grins indulgently and cocks his hip out, one shoulder leaned against the doorframe.
“Present.”
Annie blushes a little - or a lot - and rolls her eyes and before she knows it Jeff rolls his eyes back, grabs her hand and yanks her into the room, kicking the door soundly shut behind him.
Here his plan seems to have stalled, because once they’re facing each other alone in his motel room with the bed silently mocking them (bedbedbedrumpledbedbed) and the bathtub piping up with its own inconvenient truths (Bathtubwetnakedbubblesslidewarmnakednakednaked) from beyond the bathroom door, he sobers and pulls his hand away from hers quickly.
Annie seems to mentally psych herself up for a moment. Her chin angles out defiantly and she crosses her arms.
“Fine, you think I can’t be a cool time-wasting slacker even though I have studying to do? Well . . . maybe I can!”
Her can-do smile cracks to show a hint of mental-tragedy at the thought of not studying when she thinks she should be, but Annie swallows roughly and forces herself to sit primly on the edge of the bed. She gives him a triumphant raised eyebrow when she finds the remote amongst the covers and turns on the TV.
(Jeff has never been quite so glad to have NOT been watching porn.)
Jeff glances between her and the screen a few times as she flips through channels, her face a mask of casual over a reality of “take that, Sarcasmo!”
Eventually he slouches and sighs, shoving his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans so his shoulders jut forward and his elbows stick out. He rolls his neck all the way to one side, lolling his head dramatically.
“Oh my god why are you going so. Slow,” he moans, referencing her measured pace of channel surfing.
Annie glances up at him briefly, then back to the TV. “Why are you standing up?” she asks evenly. Jeff raises an eyebrow suspiciously even though he can feel his face going red.
Game on.
He slides over and sits on the bed, leaning back on his palms with his legs stretched out comfortably to the floor. He peers at Annie from the corner of his eye and she knocks into him with her shoulder.
“Don’t be weird.”
“Weird? Moi? I thought we were just going to get my car.”
Annie tips her head down so her hair swings forward, masking her face, and picks at a piece of lint stuck between two worn down remote buttons.
“I thought we should . . . hang out . . . just, before school tomorrow. Because . . .” she trails off and shakes her hair back off her face to look over at him again. “I just don’t want things to be weird.”
Jeff regards her silently for a moment before he begins.
“Annie,” he says, with a deepened tone of authority and wisdom - he hopes - “I don’t know if you’ve been aware of, oh I don’t know, anything that’s happened since the beginning of the semester, but I think you’re going to have to tolerate some weird because, and believe me I’ve tried, there’s no getting away from it around here.”
She considers this for a moment before lifting one corner of her lips in a half-hearted smile before she looks back at the TV resolutely.
Jeff’s not exactly sure if his little speech had the desired effect (which, weird, because Jeff’s speeches always have the desired effect) so he nudges her shoulder back the way she’d done. Annie looks over, appearing to have to tear her gaze away from the Animal Planet special she’s stopped on for some indecipherable reason.
“Hey.”
She blinks.
Jeff swallows, shoving a stubborn rock of nerves back down his throat, and tries to grin at her reassuringly. “This is Jeff Winger, hanging out,” he informs her stupidly.
Annie studies him for a moment, then smiles back, blindingly bright and joyful in the easiest way. “Okay.”
She scoots closer and leans her temple on his shoulder, still clutching the remote in her lap. “Thanks,” she says softly.
“Don’t mention it,” he mutters, and he’s being literal, because if she runs around blabbing that Jeff Winger sat on a bed with her for two hours watching Animal Planet on a Sunday night, or that after she said “thanks” just then he turned and kissed her hair (in a totally casual and friendly and non-adorable way, just so we’re clear), or that when they were walking out of the hotel room to finally go get his car that night he kind of put his hand on her back like guys are wont to do when women are walking through doorways ahead of them, or that when they got to Greendale and sat there for a minute in her car and she actually leaned over and kissed him (attacked might be a more accurate word here) he was the one to very gingerly extract himself from the vice grip her tiny little girl hands had on him and say all breathlessly and stupid and crap, “Um,” like that’s some kind of meaningful thing to say and not a total pussy move when there’s a hot girl making out with you.
“Sorry, I-” she starts immediately.
“What?”
“What?”
“No, don’t be sorry,” Jeff tells her (because, yeah.) “Just. I mean. Yeah.”
Annie smiles again, one of those Annie-smiles and okay, maybe he kisses her again. A few times. Or something. But then he totally gets in his sweet Lexus and retreats to his bachelor’s quarters and puts on a smoking jacket and drinks brandy and other sundry sophisticated and manly things.
Her certainly doesn’t go back to a shitty motel room and spend all night thinking about the eighteen year-old-girl he just spent the evening with and counting hours until he goes to school in the morning.
Because that would be lame, okay?
Jeff Winger doesn’t do lame.
_
pairing: Annie/Jeff
rating: R for language
word count: 3,034
spoilers: Debate 109, Politics of Human Sexuality
a/n: So, some of this was paraphrased exactly from my beta, crackers4jenn, because she is way too amazing and makes me feel better when I send her a big pile of stuff I have no idea what to do with. And, she unintentionally prompted me with even more stuff for this story, and other random futurefic, so who can complain, right? Oh, and she has some epic bangs. :) And THANK YOU FOREVER TO tempertemper77 for the html win!!
ETA: So, hey, this is the lost chapter! In which I remember to explain how Jeff got his car back before school on Monday :) Don't be alarmed that the beginning is the same as the original version of this chapter; the new stuff is there, I just wanted it all to flow together :)
Annie sits at the desk in her room in front of her open laptop on Sunday afternoon. She props her head up on one hand and stares glassily out the window.
She'll never tell anybody in a million years (and you better not either), but she's taking a break from typing up Spanish notes (putting in all those accent marks is so time consuming) to mentally choose the font with which she'll have the pillow cases embroidered. Specifically, the pillowcases she'll have when her last name is Winger.
Annie Winger. It just sounds . . . great, doesn't it? Even better than Annie Edison. They'll have a mahogany California king size four poster bed (because anything smaller will barely fit Jeff let alone the both of them), and snow white 1,000 thread count sheets with a navy blue monogram. Nothing too ornamental, because Jeff's not a girly cursive kind of man. Something sleek and yet still traditional.
Annie sighs, the kind of melancholy, unsatisfied, wonderful sigh that slips out when you can't hold on to a daydream any longer. She’s not terribly good at this - at daydreaming. This is surprising, because Annie has always excelled at most things she’s put her mind to. It’s so much like waiting, and so unlike accomplishing. But still, she lets herself have these little moments. No, it's not real; she knows that. But what can it hurt? Call it greed if you want, but she deserves to revel in the lovely impossible while she can, gosh darnit.
Her phone chimes with a text message - at least she thinks that's what it is because she hasn't heard it since she set her ring tones.
"New Text Message from Winger, Jeff" it says simply.
Just like that. Like Jeff Winger texts Annie Edison every day of the week just to say hello. (Um, he definitely doesn't). She gets a little thrill in her stomach. Forget the actual message, for a few seconds the fact that there is a message kind of clouds her mind. She cautiously reaches out and slides her phone across the desk in front of her. She stares at the screen. The backlight turns off, but the alert still displays faintly: "New Text Message from Winger, Jeff."
She steels herself, and flips open the phone. She presses a button, and the message appears like magic. Oh, the things they can do with technology today, really just astounding, isn't- READ IT, Annie.
"From: Winger, Jeff
good morning"
That's all. "good morning" No punctuation or capitalization. Which seems about right for Jeff, doesn't it?
"good morning"
She can almost hear him saying it, scratchy with sleep when he's just waking up. He'll roll over and wrap an arm around her and she'll smile and say good morning back and run her fingernails over his arm like she always does because she knows he likes it. They'll lie there in their huge bed with the perfectly white monogrammed sheets and the sunlight pouring in and their adorable scratchy sleep voices and . . .
It takes another fifteen minutes of the other kind of day dreaming, which is more like day nightmaring, which Annie is much more adept at, before she remembers she should reply. She glances frantically around her room, trying to figure out what to say.
Her corkboard covered in blue ribbons and gold stars offers no advice. Her bookshelves stuffed with required and extra reading aren't piping up either. Was the cryptic "good morning" some sort of test? No, Jeff avoids tests like the plague. Well, she could do some quick research; maybe pull a few quotes to - No, Annie. This is real life, and this is Jeff.
So, what do you say back when someone says "good morning" at (she checks her watch) 2:13 p.m. on a Sunday (after kissing you back in a debate, and then you mace him and drive him to the hospital and then you have to drive him home and he kisses you again and you bolted like he'd coughed on you or something (well he did, on your neck in the car, but that was because of the mace, so it's not his fault) and then texts you the day before you have to hold your composure when you see him at school)?
"From Annie
It's after 2 silly"
(Silly? SILLY? She just called a thirty . . . something (oh my god I don't know how old he is. I don't even . . . he could be almost forty!) year old man 'silly.' Any second now he's going to just delete her name from his phone and never speak to her again. Ever. This will really put a strain on the study group. What happens if-)
"From Winger, Jeff
its sunday theres no such thing as morning"
"From Annie
My alarm clock begs to differ, Sir."
"From Winger, Jeff
your alarm clock sounds pretty bossy madam"
"From Annie
"On the contrary we've had many good years together."
"From Winger, Jeff
you havent had very many years yourself kid"
"From Annie
I thought I was madam? Am I aging in reverse?"
"From Winger, Jeff
dear god i hope not"
"From Annie
:)"
Oh, yeah, that just happened. "kid." "Kid" just happened. So, so, so wrong, dude.
Look, Jeff doesn't get nervous around women. That's like saying Chuck Norris gets nervous when he's about to land a roundhouse kick to the face. For Jeff, like the good lord Norris, it's more of a reminder of the knowledge that he is now and ever shall be an irresistible beast of a man.
(What about Britta? She rejected the hell out of you. Like, repeatedly, in fact. 1) Britta is a special case. What kind of special case? The poor sad rejected Jeff kind? NO. The she's actually kind of a cool person, with whom I also wouldn't mind having sex, and she keeps sticking around, obviously because she recognizes how many redeeming qualities I possess kind. Everyone benefits. Yeah, because you contribute a lot to a relationship. Shut up, asshole. Sorry, get back to pumping yourself up after your epic fail with Annie just now. Epic fail? Really? What is this, Xanga? You never made your second point about how you're a beast who never gets nervous around women. STFU.)
But, smiley face right? So, all in all, not a complete loss? The smiley face is a tricky bastard in this situation though, because it could mean a couple of different things, coming from Annie. Observe and consider the possibilities:
Annie Smile #1 - The "I Rule Because I Got My Way and Now My Plot for World Domination By Way of Community Planning Can Never Fail" Edition. (She's the fucking Barack Obama of talking Jeff into things.)
This is the scary one. This one means this is all part of her aforementioned plot, which means Jeff is some sort of unwitting collateral whose future in The World According to Annie depends on his ability to produce bags of ice, sleeves of cups, and a modicum of humanity. That's an unreasonable amount of pressure for a lawyer.
Annie Smile #2 - The "I Am A Sweet, Luscious, Cupcake of A Woman Who Was Just Well and Thoroughly Kissed By Jeff Winger" Edition
. . . As witnessed the previous evening. There is nothing in the free world wrong with this.
But he’ll be damned if he’s going to risk asking her out for coffee or something only to get roped into attending a party for some manner of holiday celebrated only by the Dutch and signed up to bring five dozen mini pigs in blankets and a pack of napkins.
So instead, Jeff decides to spend his Sunday glancing cautiously at his phone from the corner of his eye a lot while watching a Law & Order marathon and reminiscing about the good old days he spent with liars, frauds, and sundry other brands of criminal. Sigh. He mentally hums a few bars of “Yesterday” as he reaches for the remote.
_
Just when Jack McCoy - perhaps the lawyer of all lawyers, even if he is a prosecutor - has completed another shouty tirade, witnessed by one of his countless slim brunette ADA/girlfriends, Jeff’s cell phone chimes signaling he has a new text message.
Jeff flails an arm out and feels blindly for the phone and slides his thumb across the screen to unlock it as he brings it up to his face.
“New Text Message from: Annie”
Hm. Jeff raises his eyebrow. After their brief text message conversation from earlier, he hadn’t expected to hear from her again before he saw her at school tomorrow. Which, god, could his life be any more . . . whatever the word for a thirty-four year old waiting until a freaking passing period to see his . . . whatever Annie was?
He taps the screen and up pops her message:
“How are you going to get to school tomorrow?”
Um, hi, awesome car, in which he may or may not have slept once or twice, and which FOR THE RECORD, is most likely awesomer than the average house, so no, pathetic is not an appropriate word to apply to that situation, thank you very much. HEY. NOT PATHETIC, OKAY? Cut it out, Hyundai Driver, I see you smirking in the corner over there.
Then it occurs to Jeff, as he’s about to text Annie a slightly truncated version of his previous thought process, that his awesomer-than-the-average-house car . . . is currently parked at Greendale Community College, where he’d left it upon being wedged into Annie’s car for that misguided hospital run meant to assuage the effects of her even more misguided mace-usage.
So, crap.
“From: Winger, Jeff
maybe i just wont go”
“From: Annie
JEFF YOU CAN’T SKIP SCHOOL!!!!!!!”
Here he facepalms for a few reasons; 1) Annie’s cuteness physically hurts his head sometimes, like pounding a whole Big Gulp of Mountain Dew at once. With about fourteen Sweet & Lows in it. And like, frosting or something. 2) CAPSLOCK PRODUCES LOTS OF MURDERY FEELINGS IN HIS TINY SHRIVELED HEART, 3) This girl. You guys, this girl.
“From: Winger, Jeff
says you”
“From: Annie
*formidable face on*”
“From: Winger, Jeff
does this mean ur picking me up?”
A few minutes later, Annie pulls the Formidable Face on a little higher and marches out her front door, tossing an excuse about needing a reference book from Greendale’s library over her shoulder to her parents. On the drive to the motel she plays the radio a little louder than she normally would.
She’d been steadfastly refusing to be distracted for the past three hours before she texted Jeff late that afternoon. Eventually she’d tried to shut down her day dreaming and study just like she always did on Sunday afternoons, but Jeff just wouldn’t leave her thoughts.
She’d tried everything; playing music, reprinting and highlighting her notes, adding petals to all the three-hole punches in the paper to make little flowers, underlining all the proper nouns, everything, and there he stubbornly was at every turn: Jeff. In mental italics, which sounded like a breathy little sigh of approval in her head, which was also definitely not helping her not think about him.
Finally the thought popped into her head as she stared out her window at the cars passing by every now and then on her quiet street: Jeff’s car.
Of course her thought process then devolved into thinking about her car, and maneuvering all six feet and four inches of mace-debilitated Jeff into her car, and leaning over him to buckle his seatbelt with her hand on his shoulder and just how solid he felt under her hands, and how he smelled really good and when she’d said goodnight at his motel room door he’d blinked kind of slowly and licked his lips after he kissed her and . . .
But the point was that Annie was concerned about Jeff’s ability to transport himself to school on Monday. That was the point.
_
“Wow, you weren’t kidding about the face, were you?”
“Come on, Jeff.”
“What’s the hurry? Oh, wait, don’t tell me, you need to study.”
“Jeeeeeeeeeff!”
He grins indulgently and cocks his hip out, one shoulder leaned against the doorframe.
“Present.”
Annie blushes a little - or a lot - and rolls her eyes and before she knows it Jeff rolls his eyes back, grabs her hand and yanks her into the room, kicking the door soundly shut behind him.
Here his plan seems to have stalled, because once they’re facing each other alone in his motel room with the bed silently mocking them (bedbedbedrumpledbedbed) and the bathtub piping up with its own inconvenient truths (Bathtubwetnakedbubblesslidewarmnakednakednaked) from beyond the bathroom door, he sobers and pulls his hand away from hers quickly.
Annie seems to mentally psych herself up for a moment. Her chin angles out defiantly and she crosses her arms.
“Fine, you think I can’t be a cool time-wasting slacker even though I have studying to do? Well . . . maybe I can!”
Her can-do smile cracks to show a hint of mental-tragedy at the thought of not studying when she thinks she should be, but Annie swallows roughly and forces herself to sit primly on the edge of the bed. She gives him a triumphant raised eyebrow when she finds the remote amongst the covers and turns on the TV.
(Jeff has never been quite so glad to have NOT been watching porn.)
Jeff glances between her and the screen a few times as she flips through channels, her face a mask of casual over a reality of “take that, Sarcasmo!”
Eventually he slouches and sighs, shoving his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans so his shoulders jut forward and his elbows stick out. He rolls his neck all the way to one side, lolling his head dramatically.
“Oh my god why are you going so. Slow,” he moans, referencing her measured pace of channel surfing.
Annie glances up at him briefly, then back to the TV. “Why are you standing up?” she asks evenly. Jeff raises an eyebrow suspiciously even though he can feel his face going red.
Game on.
He slides over and sits on the bed, leaning back on his palms with his legs stretched out comfortably to the floor. He peers at Annie from the corner of his eye and she knocks into him with her shoulder.
“Don’t be weird.”
“Weird? Moi? I thought we were just going to get my car.”
Annie tips her head down so her hair swings forward, masking her face, and picks at a piece of lint stuck between two worn down remote buttons.
“I thought we should . . . hang out . . . just, before school tomorrow. Because . . .” she trails off and shakes her hair back off her face to look over at him again. “I just don’t want things to be weird.”
Jeff regards her silently for a moment before he begins.
“Annie,” he says, with a deepened tone of authority and wisdom - he hopes - “I don’t know if you’ve been aware of, oh I don’t know, anything that’s happened since the beginning of the semester, but I think you’re going to have to tolerate some weird because, and believe me I’ve tried, there’s no getting away from it around here.”
She considers this for a moment before lifting one corner of her lips in a half-hearted smile before she looks back at the TV resolutely.
Jeff’s not exactly sure if his little speech had the desired effect (which, weird, because Jeff’s speeches always have the desired effect) so he nudges her shoulder back the way she’d done. Annie looks over, appearing to have to tear her gaze away from the Animal Planet special she’s stopped on for some indecipherable reason.
“Hey.”
She blinks.
Jeff swallows, shoving a stubborn rock of nerves back down his throat, and tries to grin at her reassuringly. “This is Jeff Winger, hanging out,” he informs her stupidly.
Annie studies him for a moment, then smiles back, blindingly bright and joyful in the easiest way. “Okay.”
She scoots closer and leans her temple on his shoulder, still clutching the remote in her lap. “Thanks,” she says softly.
“Don’t mention it,” he mutters, and he’s being literal, because if she runs around blabbing that Jeff Winger sat on a bed with her for two hours watching Animal Planet on a Sunday night, or that after she said “thanks” just then he turned and kissed her hair (in a totally casual and friendly and non-adorable way, just so we’re clear), or that when they were walking out of the hotel room to finally go get his car that night he kind of put his hand on her back like guys are wont to do when women are walking through doorways ahead of them, or that when they got to Greendale and sat there for a minute in her car and she actually leaned over and kissed him (attacked might be a more accurate word here) he was the one to very gingerly extract himself from the vice grip her tiny little girl hands had on him and say all breathlessly and stupid and crap, “Um,” like that’s some kind of meaningful thing to say and not a total pussy move when there’s a hot girl making out with you.
“Sorry, I-” she starts immediately.
“What?”
“What?”
“No, don’t be sorry,” Jeff tells her (because, yeah.) “Just. I mean. Yeah.”
Annie smiles again, one of those Annie-smiles and okay, maybe he kisses her again. A few times. Or something. But then he totally gets in his sweet Lexus and retreats to his bachelor’s quarters and puts on a smoking jacket and drinks brandy and other sundry sophisticated and manly things.
Her certainly doesn’t go back to a shitty motel room and spend all night thinking about the eighteen year-old-girl he just spent the evening with and counting hours until he goes to school in the morning.
Because that would be lame, okay?
Jeff Winger doesn’t do lame.
_