Community Fic | Institutional Hegemonics and Introduction to Maturescence | Part 2/2
Part One
--
Shirley’s Brownies opens on a Saturday afternoon. Annie’s exhausted from staying up all night helping Shirley repaint what seemed to be a perfectly fine shade of cream with grey trim to what appeared to be a slightly darker shade of cream with a virtually identical shade of grey trim. She’s eaten so much batter that her stomach aches, but still she grabs another square of brownie off the sample tray and tries to swallow it subtly as she carries the tray around to offer everyone who’s arrive for the Friends and Family event. Some of them are actual friends and family of Shirley, but a lot of others seem to be people who have flocked in from the street. The Free Brownies sign Pierce put up really was a good idea.
Shirley’s flushed and focused, barking orders and slamming the oven doors. She’s wearing a white chef’s apron, but she looks more like a business woman, with a careful eye on everyone and everything.
She’s not opening officially until Monday, so they close the store at four. Annie flops onto the ground, which is covered in crumbs but she doesn’t care. And in a moment, Shirley hits the ground beside her.
“Oh my god,” Shirley says. “Oh my god.”
“You did it,” Annie says, nudging Shirley in the side with her elbow.
“Oh my god,” Shirley said. “I need to find better mint chocolate chips; those were way too melty.”
“You did it,” Annie says again. “Everything was perfect. You’ve got your store!”
“I have my store,” Shirley repeats, so awed and exhausted and proud that Annie has to lean sideways and wrap her arm around Shirley. She feels like she’s going to start crying with how happy she is for Shirley, how exhausted she feels right now. How strange it feels to be watching someone get everything they’ve always wanted.
Jeff shows up once the event is already over, wearing a full three piece suit even though it’s Saturday afternoon. He’s wearing a watch that probably cost more than Annie’s rent for the year, and when he sees her sitting on the floor - Shirley has long since gotten up to finish cleaning - he extends his hand and pulls her to her feet. The firm grasp of his dry palm and the way he doesn’t let go right away once she’s standing means they’re very close together for a long moment. He’s wearing enough cologne that Annie thinks she can taste it in the back of her throat but in the best way.
Annie thinks - maybe, because Jeff’s hand around her wrist makes her skin ignite. The whole day has been wholesome and fulfilling, exactly what she used to love, but now the sweetness makes her teeth hurt a little. She feels out of place like she never used to. She feels like she might do something stupid because it hurts even worse to do the right thing.
Over Jeff’s shoulder she can see Abed watching them with his huge eyes, his face impassive. Troy keeps looking back and forth between her and Abed, worried. He catches her eye and doesn’t look away.
Annie blinks. Squares her shoulders and gives Jeff a little shove until he’s not close enough to smell any longer, giggling while she does it, sweet but firm.
“So, how’s the practice?” she asks, nodding in all the right places and tuning Jeff’s story out entirely.
--
Customers are wretched but Annie's almost friends with some of her coworkers. They seem to drink a lot more than she does so usually she says no when they invite her along to the bar after work, but tonight she goes. She nurses the same vodka and soda for an hour (it doesn't taste any better once it's warmed from her hands) and tries not to feel out of place. A lot of her coworkers are older than she is, and there's this whole, like, scene. They meet up with other people who work in the food service industry and go to this place that's open after hours, and the cooks from the kitchen come out and eat with them once the food is ready. There's this whole other nightlife that she never knew about, that she would never have known about if she were in grad school and then working the office job she'd been imagining.
She's trying to think about life as experiences now and stop worrying if they're good or bad, and she's successful about 21% of the time. On a good day. If that.
It's just past midnight when she catches the bus back home. Everyone is raring up to go someplace else, but she doesn't have the cash to get drunk and doesn't have the energy to stick it out sober. She doesn't have the energy to get drunk either, if she's being honest, but that sounds almost sadder than actually wanting to drink the night away.
She walks in the door, takes one look at Troy and Abed sitting on the couch and feels her stomach turn to lead. Oh. So this is how Troy knew right away when it was her and Abed: it’s just that obvious.
Troy and Abed both look at her with their faces, and it’s terrible. If they’re dating now, she’s going to move out of the apartment. It will be an idiotic decision, because there’s no way she can afford anything on her own and where will she live, but it’s what she’ll have to do.
“Annie,” Troy says carefully. It feels like her cheeks have ignited, and they can probably see her flush.
“You were already in love with each other,” Annie says. “This can’t be some big revelation.”
They look at each other, look back at her. They've got the same tilt to their heads and they might be blinking in unison. It's creepy or maybe it's cute, but right now Annie's sick with how it feels to never have any of the things she wants.
"I'm going to bed," she says, and then walks directly to her bedroom and closes the door. She can hear them discussing something intently and then they linger in the hallway in front of her door for what feels like a very long time before finally knocking softly.
"Annie?" Troy calls out gently.
"I'm sleeping," she yells, and then actually sits down on the side of her bed so that it's less of a lie. She should have made a pitstop in the bathroom first because she's still wearing all of her makeup and now she's trapped in her bedroom with no way to wash her face.
"Can we come in?" Abed asks.
"No," Annie says. She realizes that it probably looks like she's throwing a temper tantrum right now but she wants to. She wants to throw an absolute fit and wreck the apartment and scream at the top of her lungs and for them to give all their attention to her and to never touch each other when she's not there. Also, she wants a new phone, while she's sending impossible wishes to the universe.
"Are you mad?" Troy asks.
"Yes," Annie says.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Abed asks.
"No."
"Are you really sleeping?" Troy asks.
"Yes."
"Okay," Troy says, disappointed. There's this shuffling sound as they move around, but she can tell they're still standing right in front of her door. She can imagine the longing looks their sending at her through the wood, their stupid pathetic faces at being denied something they probably didn't even want that much in the first place.
She lies down on top of the comforter and waits, staring at the ceiling. She can't hear them breathing or anything, but there's enough noise through the door that she knows they're still there, like maybe even though they're with each other, they're still thinking of her. Her eyes prickle as she blinks at the ceiling.
She falls asleep for just long enough that she's completely disoriented when she wakes up, cold for lying uncovered, her eyes tacky from the day's mascara.
The door squeaks when she opens it, and Troy and Abed look up from where they're sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall. They're holding hands, but they let go when they see her standing in front of them, and instead of looking guilty they just seem so, so happy that she's opened the door.
"I have to wash my face and brush my teeth," Annie says, her voice soft and warmer than she realizes it’s going to be.
"Abed downloaded Empire Records," Troy says, squinting a little as he looks up at her. "You said you wanted it watch it with us."
"Okay," she says. She cleans her teeth and wipes off her makeup and changes into a pair of yoga pants and an oversized, grey Greendale sweatshirt and walks back to the living room to find them sitting on either end of the couch, room in the middle for her. She sits down, folding her legs beneath her. Troy reaches out and wraps his fingers around her ankle, and Abed leans over until his shoulder is pressed against hers.
Do they know how good it feels when it's all three of them? This can't all be in her head.
But it feels like it’s been a long time since she knew how to get the things she wanted for herself, so she sits quietly, falls asleep again against Abed’s shoulder, Troy’s hand around her ankle anchoring her to the couch. She wakes when Abed starts singing along, s-s-sugar high, and laughs in spite of herself. Eventually she drags herself back to bed, falls asleep as the sun starts to rise while Troy and Abed tuck themselves into their bunk beds.
--
Troy and Abed are gone when she finally gets up (well after noon, but she works in the evenings and has been switching to later and later hours). She gets a call while she’s watching a rerun of Desperate Housewives, but it’s doing admin work at a chiropractor’s office where she’d be earning even less than she does now because there wouldn’t be tips. It was one of the jobs she applied for right off, when she was searching frantically for anything, but now that she’s settled into the panic, she knows it’s not even worth the time it would take to go in for an interview. She doesn’t want scraps, she wants the real deal.
Saying no feels horrifying, but it’s also the most relieved she’s been in months. Another thing to add to the list of things she can never ever tell her parents about. She doesn’t call home much these days.
--
Annie’s napping on the couch after her shift, because she’s convinced herself that if she just rests her feet and her eyes for a few minutes she’ll suddenly have the energy to go out again, when Troy and Abed come home. It’s been days since she’s seen either of them for longer than a passing hello and goodbye.
"I finished my documentary," Abed says, plugging a cord into his laptop and playing the video on the TV. He sits down at her feet, and Annie pulls herself up so that there’s room for Troy to sit on her other side.
The opening shot pans over a crowd of tents littering the quad, moves around to settle on Abed's face.
The students of Greendale have had enough, he says in his tattered jeans and stained black t-shirt.
He actually managed to get interviews with most of the teaching staff (the Dean sitting behind his desk in a checkered suit, his hands pressed into a steeple and resting against his chin in a strong showing of sobriety as he says, Greendale never promised to set its students up for careers, this is just a place of learning. I'm still a good dean!) and a few local business owners. Somewhere over the last few months there was even a call to the local police force, so he got some great shots of the blue and white standing, confused, off to the side while a group of students play hopscotch, drawn in chalk, on the baseball court.
It's coherently comprehensive and close enough to unbiased that Annie says breathlessly, "Abed. This is really good."
"I know," Abed says.
"Like, really really good."
"I know," Abed says again. Then, awkwardly, "Thank you."
The closing credits roll and the screen clicks back to Abed's desktop.
"So is it - done? Then?" Annie asks.
"I got all the footage I needed."
"But what about all of the students camped out on campus?"
"They're probably still there."
"But," Annie starts, feeling herself frown, "aren't you going to go there anymore?"
"I have my documentary," Abed says.
"They trusted you to be their leader," Annie says.
"They trusted me to speak for them," Abed says. "And that's why I've done. There can be no leader in a true democracy, only a means of facilitation. I can't direct a movement, I can only direct my movie. And my movie is finished."
"But that's so-"
"Realistic?" Abed asks. "I'm making a documentary - if I can't be truthful with you, how can I be truthful about my project? A candy coating would be a disservice to everything we've tried to accomplish."
"These were real people," Annie says.
"And this is a real documentation of their journey. There is no greater truth than art."
"It's a good movie," Annie says again, grudgingly this time. "I just don't think it's nice for you to start something without finishing it."
"I finished my film," Abed says. "There is no ending to life."
"Well. That's. Okay," Annie says. "I guess that's-"
"True,” Abed finishes. “Which is why TV is superior to the real world.”
“And you,” she says, standing, because she suddenly feels trapped sitting between them. She looks at Troy, “You’re fine with this?”
“It’s a good movie,” Troy says.
“The movement? You’ve been camping out there for months as well. You’re fine just letting it all go? You don’t - you stop caring just because Abed tells you to?”
“I care,” Troy says. “Protests aren’t forever. This seems like as much of an ending as there’s ever going to be.”
“You’re both cold,” she says. “You’re completely wrapped up in your own worlds, and you don’t care who gets hurt in the crossfire.”
“You’re upset,” Abed says, calculating. “You were never out there with us, so this can’t all be about Occupy.”
“You started dating,” Annie says, and then doesn’t know how to finish.
“We slept together,” Troy says, doing that thing where he raises his voice at the end of each sentence so it sounds like a question. “Just like how you and Abed slept together? Because sometimes that’s a thing that we all get to do?”
“I don’t want you to sleep with each other and not sleep with me,” Annie yells. “I mean, okay, literally you do sleep with each other in the bunkbeds, and I like having my own room, but I don’t want you to have - sex with each other. And not with me.”
“That’s what we want,” Troy shouts, exasperated, his voice doing that high hysterical thing that usually means he’s about two seconds away from stomping off somewhere.
“Wait, what?” Annie asks.
“I keep trying to talk about it,” Troy huffs, his voice still so high, “but it’s really awkward to bring up, and I didn’t want you to feel like you were being, I don’t know, harassed or whatever.”
“Really?” Annie asks.
“Yes,” Troy says, rolling his eyes.
“And you?” Annie asks Abed.
“I’m used to people approaching me,” Abed says. “And you didn’t, except that one time, so.”
“And you never approached me at all,” Troy says. “Even though you said you liked me during high school. Do you only like me when I’m playing football?”
“No,” Annie says. “Dummy. I just - it seemed like it would mean something, with you.”
“And you don’t want it to mean anything?”
“It’s too late for that, I guess,” Annie says. “I couldn’t help that after all.”
“So,” Abed says, gesturing with long fingers. “You do want it to mean something, and you do want both of us. And we both want you, and we want it to mean something. We all want the same thing.”
“Um, yeah,” Annie says, still reeling.
“Are we actually doing this?” Troy asks, his eyes so wide that Annie is actually able to see white all the way around his irises. “Seriously? This is the best.”
“We haven’t actually done anything,” Annie says. “So you really have no way of knowing that.”
“Yes I do,” Troy says, stubborn, and then he walks over and catches her hip with one hand and says, “So I can kiss you now, right?” Like he’s too excited to wait another minute.
“Yeah,” Annie says, and he does. She spent so much time thinking about this in high school, and it’s nothing like she imagined because it’s real. It’s not that different from kissing Abed, except Troy’s mouth is softer and his hand goes right to her boob. She wonders if she should feign outrage, but they’ve basically already agreed to have sex, so it just makes sense that they’d start doing the things that people do before they have sex. Before they have a threesome. This is not what Annie imagined for her post-college experience. It’s not something that she ever planned for, but it’s really, really good.
“Do we have to - talk some more?” Annie forces out, suddenly breathless as Troy kisses down the side of her neck.
“Do we?” Troy asks. He lifts his head and looks so eager and sweet that Annie can’t help leaning in for another kiss.
“Maybe not,” Annie says. Kissing is better than talking.
Abed comes up behind her, reaching for the hem of her cardigan and pulling it off without undoing the buttons. It ends up being really fast to get naked when there are two sets of hands working on it, like no time at all passes and she’s stripped to everything but her panties, and then Troy’s kneeling on the floor, curling his fingers under the waistband of her underwear and asking, “Can I?”
And then she’s completely and utterly naked.
Troy kind of, like, nuzzles her, gives her pubic bone a kiss that makes her clench her thighs together against the surge of arousal.
He turns to Abed next, takes his pants and boxers down as well. Abed is hard and his dick is standing straight out in front of him. Boys can’t hide anything, and it’s really hot to be able to see.
“So, I can just-” Troy trails off, this hungry distracted look on his face as he bites his lip and waits for them to answer.
“What?” Annie asks. How much can they really do when they’re all in the middle of the living room like this?
“Troy’s going to suck my dick,” Abed says.
Annie gasps. “Abed.”
“What,” Abed says, intonation just shy of a question. “He's going to.”
“You can’t just say that.”
“Troy likes it,” Abed says patiently. “He wants to suck my dick. I’m not saying anything that isn’t true.”
“Okay, but.” Annie looks over at Troy. His mouth is open a little, like probably he does want to - like probably he wants to suck Abed, like probably he’s thinking about it right now. Of course he’s thinking about it. Annie’s thinking about it.
She watches them together until she feels like she has to do more, and then she helps Abed take his t-shirt off, runs her palm over Troy’s head. Kneels down and touches her fingers to the edge of Troy’s mouth, touches her mouth to Abed’s cock.
They move to her bed. Abed holds her hand while Troy fucks her, watches them move together, and touches them both, his hand between Troy’s shoulder blades, stroking her hair out of her face, reaching between their bodies to rub her off. It seemed like it would be hard to navigate, three bodies, but it just means there are more hands to touch her the way she wants to be touched, and eventually she closes her eyes, stops trying to track hands and just does what feels good.
--
Annie wakes and there are two boys in her bed, which is approximately two more people than her bed comfortably sleeps. She's about to fall off the edge and her calf is numbly cold from being uncovered all night. She stands up, adjusts the blanket over the bare stretch of Abed's shoulder, and picks up her clothes on the way out of the bedroom.
Closing the door to the bathroom, she dresses, rubs baby powder into her hair and pulls it into a ponytail.
She doesn't know where she's headed until she finds herself in front of Shirley's Brownies. It's early on a Sunday morning, but there are a couple of people in the shop, sitting at the bar to re-sugar themselves.
Annie walks inside, stands behind the man who's already in line. Shirley doesn't recognize her at first, so focused on taking orders and making change, but when she finally does her face lights up and she says, "Annie! You came to see me."
"Hi," Annie says. "Just walking by."
"You want to help for a little while?" Shirley asks and passes Annie an apron without waiting for her to reply.
The store gets a little busier before quieting down and Annie chases down the empty plates left on the bar, collects the napkins that didn't quite make it into the garbage can. She didn't sleep enough last night, and it's not until she steps into the kitchen and leans against the wall that she realizes how tired she is. She slides down to sit on the floor - such a mess, but she's already wearing dirty jeans so it doesn't matter at this point - and blinks against the throbbing in her temples.
Shirley bustles in eventually, slides a new pan of brownies into the oven and setting the timer. She smiles at Annie on the floor before easing herself down as well.
"My feet," Shirley moans.
"I know," Annie says.
"My feet," Shirley says.
"Yeah."
"You okay?" Shirley asks. "Not that I don't like seeing a familiar face, but it's awful early."
"I'm fine," Annie says. "Just couldn't sleep. I was going to check the job posting board in front of the library, but then I came here instead."
"How's that going?" Shirley asks.
"Well, I'm a waitress, so."
"Nothing wrong with working in the food service industry," Shirley says, pointedly.
"I know," Annie says. "It's just."
"It's just not what you were hoping for."
"No," Annie says. It's not even in the same category as what she had been hoping for; it doesn't even feel like the same country most days.
“I think of you more as a friend,” Shirley says, “since we’re not that different in age, but as someone who is slightly older and has just a little more life experience, believe me on this - you’re going to be fine.”
“You don’t know that,” Annie says, her voice going high and sharp. “You came to Greendale, and you learned how to start your own business, and everything’s going exactly according to plan for you.”
“Oh, honey,” Shirley says. “This is one of a whole lifetime of plans. I didn’t plan for Andre to leave, and I didn’t plan little Ben. I thought I was going to be happy being at home until I wasn’t any more - you don’t know how it’s going to go or what’s going to really matter when everything else rinses out in the wash. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but you’ve still got so much time.”
“This isn’t what I wanted,” Annie says, feeling her face crumple horribly. “This isn’t how I thought things would be.”
“I know, sweetie,” Shirley says, pulling Annie in.
Shirley is so soft and her perfume smells like flowers. It’s a hug from a mother - better than a hug from Annie’s mother because Annie’s mother doesn’t want Annie to be sad, and now, just like always, when things are hard, she’s just gone. Shirley doesn’t want Annie to be sad either, but she’ll still sit here with her.
“I’m sorry,” Annie says, wiping at her face. “I’m being a baby.”
“You’re a smart, hard working, resourceful young woman,” Shirley says. “And we’re all allowed to get a little down sometimes.”
Annie feels herself go red as her eyes prickle threateningly again. She wishes she could think of the perfect thing to say in reply, something that would be worthy, but instead she blurts out, “I think I’m dating Troy and Abed.”
Shirley’s eyes widen and then she blinks hard.
“Well,” she says, “the Lord does not condone that kind of behavior, strictly speaking, but I guess it all just comes down to love in the end."
Annie ducks her head, more ashamed than she would have been if Shirley had started lecturing because they haven't talked about love, but she told Shirley and the world didn't end and Shirley's still sitting beside her, this warm, comforting presence. Like maybe, at least in this moment, who Annie is matters more than what she does.
"You want to bring something back home to your boys?" Shirley asks, pushing to her feet and rubbing her hands across the front of her apron before she reaches down to help Annie up as well.
"Yes, please," Annie says, following Shirley out of the kitchen.
--
"Where were you?" Troy demands when Annie walks into the apartment. "We woke up and you were gone."
"I went on a walk," Annie says. "Stopped in at Shirley's bakery. She gave us a pie. You want it now or should I put it in the fridge?”
Troy’s eyes get all big, so Annie walks the pie over to the counter and grabs forks while Troy sprints into the kitchen and leaps for the plates.
“Yes,” he says. “It’s apple, right?”
They sit on the couch, eating pie out of bowls because it's less messy than using plates. Annie's a little sore, achy between her legs in this way where she wants to prod at the hurt. She thinks that once she's done eating, she might go back to bed, but when she finishes the pie, it's too comfortable to stand again, and she slowly slouches lower and lower, dropping her head to rest on Troy's shoulder and tucking her feet under Abed's thighs. Their arms come around her, fingers overlapping.
“This is good, right?” Abed asks.
She can feel Troy nodding his head. She reaches over to rest her hand on Abed’s leg, and says, “Yeah.”
“I thought so,” Abed says.
--
Abed doesn't want to come to convocation - his film has been getting some local buzz and even though he's not actively camped out, he's still the face of Occupy Greendale - but she and Troy manage to convince him to attend.
Leonard is reading out students' names, which is worse than she had hoped for but also exactly what she should have expected. They've been ordered alphabetically. Troy's in the first group; he fist bumps the Dean and pumps his fist above his head once the tassel on his cap has been moved to the other side and he's exiting the stage underneath the Class of 2013 banner.
Annie's group lines up next, and as she stands and waits her turn, she picks out faces in the audience - Britta and Pierce sitting beside each other, both looking pained. Her parents holding up the camera and tracking her movements. Jeff's wearing sunglasses and is holding his mortarboard instead of putting it on his head; Shirley's cheering so hard that she's half out of her seat. Troy makes his way back to his seat, wiping away tears with a quick swipe of his sleeve. Abed's face is blocked by the giant video camera he's using to pan over the crowd - she doesn't know if this will make its way into the extended cut of the documentary or if he'll keep the footage for his personal archive.
Two more people left to be called and then it's Annie's turn. She curls her hands into fists and tries to ignore the way her heart is thudding in her chest, all nervous and exhilarated and overwhelmed. She remembers the first day of classes, how excited she was to have a fresh start. The way it felt to leave Greendale on the last day of classes. Everything she's learned and all the ways that she's still just as scared, just as hungry to prove herself, just as anxious to find her place. There are a lot of faces in the crowd smiling just for her and she feels grounded in a way that she never did before. She has more questions today than she did when she first started college, but somehow she still feels like she’s gotten smarter. The panic's still there but it's quieter now, more easily comforted.
Leonard reads out, "Annie Edison," and she steps up onto the stage.