Fiction: Just Like You Would To Your Girl Or Guy
Title: Just Like You Would To Your Girl Or Guy
Rating/Warnings: T
Pairings: Jeff/Britta, Troy/Annie
Disclaimer: It's a rental.
Summary: what if they were community college teachers instead
A/N: Written for bebitched's prompt at Rewriting History in about two hours. I seriously don't even know.
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Here’s the thing about working at a community college: it sucks.
No one wants to be there. The students are all too broke to go anywhere else or too stupid to try, so it’s not even like you’ve got the whole shaping the minds of the future vibe going for you. There are just a lot of unhappy people who’ve made a lot of bad decisions, trying to pretend as though the simple act of getting up in the morning doesn’t make them want to take a swan dive off the top of the gymnasium’s asbestos-coated rooftops.
Jeff is only here because he has to be. He’s out of job options after his former law firm blackballed him throughout the entirety of metropolitan Colorado and the dean at Greendale always used to offer him a chance to lecture while he let his eyes linger on his lower half at the Starbucks they used to frequent (Jeff changed up that commuting routine somewhere between “Would you consider yourself a dog person?” and “Can I have the contact info for your personal trainer? Someone's getting a bonus check in the mail!”) So he pockets a couple grand each month and scrolls through apartment listings in San Diego every other night. This is temporary. It’s a means to an end. Or at least that’s what he tells his reflection in his daily pep talks.
He shows up to his classes in his hundred dollar fuck you sunglasses, sipping a lukewarm cup of coffee, and playing Bejeweled on his phone. Introduction to Criminal Justice, the most expensive study hall in the tri-county area.
He’s almost bested his high score when the door to his room cracks open and Edison pops her head in. Those who’ve bothered to show up are sleeping, talking amongst themselves, or generally not giving a fuck.
He pulls his feet from the edge of his desk and bolts upwards for a moment before clearing his throat. “Okay, guys. I’m going to talk to Ms. Edison about - something - continue to plan your group projects. Be ready to hand in an outline by the end of class.”
A few of the students look outraged at being suddenly assigned work for the first time that semester but the only audible response is a loud snore from Leonard somewhere in the back. Jeff rolls his eyes and shuffles Annie out into the hall.
She isn’t having any of this, of course. Hands on her hips and frown deep-set on her face from the second he shuts his classroom’s door. His greeting is all false enthusiasm and sarcastic eyebrows, as usual. “Hey, Annie! What can I do for you?”
“I was going to ask if you wanted to do a booth for Parents Weekend, but if you’re going to put the same amount of effort into it that you give to that class, in there, I’m not sure why I even bothered...”
He doesn’t know what it is about her, but there’s something about those big, Disney-princess eyes that makes him feel like a parent letting down their kid on Christmas morning. Who wants to be that guy? He sure as hell doesn’t. Plus he hooked up with her those two times, last year. That just adds a really creepy element to the Christmas analogy and makes him hate himself even more. So, he shuts his eyes and sets his jaw. “What booth do you want me to do, Annie?”
“The Kissing Booth,” she chirps back, all evidence of sadness vanished and Jeff’s reminded of the hundred or so other favors she’s gotten out of him the same way. He’ll never learn.
“I thought they changed that to the Eskimo Kisses Booth, last year.”
“The Butterfly Kisses Booth, actually, with that Bob Carlisle song playing on a loop -- since they caught Pierce Hawthorne offering Business and Marketing extra credit to any students who’d make out with him.” Annie cringes. “Even though no one took him up on it.”
“So?”
“So, twenty-six cases of pink-eye and a civil suit against school prayer later, it’s the Kissing Booth and Mr. Hawthorne is banned from attending.”
Jeff sighs, leans his head against the door and wants to get back to his phone and away from this unwanted school commitment. “Is that it?”
Annie nods, but not before trying to peek through the small window in the classroom’s door. “You know, if you ever want to take a look at some of my lesson plans, I’m sure…”
“Goodbye, Annie.”
When he’s back inside the classroom, a skinny kid with glasses too big for his face raises his hand nervously. “Do we really have a group project outline due in an hour and a half?”
Jeff laughs, flops into his chair, and kicks his feet back up onto his desk.
.
Britta hates guys like Jeff Winger. They swoop in, take all her non-committal mojo and make her question why she’d even taken a job here in the first place. She’s always liked to appear academic and telling people you’re a college professor almost always got an eyebrow raise in response. (Unless she slipped and added community in there, first. Fucking stupid social stigma. Like she even cares what you think. She helped Thom Yorke order coffee in Italy, okay.)
Still. Here Jeff Winger was, strolling into the cafeteria and charming his way through the lunch line without even paying. This college wasn’t hipster enough for the both of them and even though she knows that her Women’s Studies classes are home to actual discussion and knowledge, objectively, it’s just as easy a class as his. She designed it that way, so that people wouldn’t resent her for helping to open their minds.
Then Winger sets up shop two hallways down and from what she hears he just gives out A’s. Whether you show up or you don’t, if you sleep or text or make out with your girlfriend the whole time (hotness or girl on girl permitting). There’s easy classes and then there’s Criminal Justice.
Most of the other teachers hate him (which she, at least, tries to not let on because she thinks it somehow makes him enjoy it more), but she definitely has the most reason to. On the days when he hits on her, she spends an extra twenty minutes at the start of her lecture ranting about patriarchal societies and misogyny in modern culture.
If she happens to have him in mind during some - or most - of that time, well, her students don’t need to know that. Sleeping with him was definitely a mistake. A big one.
.
Abed likes running The Greendale Years, he does. It’s got the charm and depth of a small-time sitcom, but with a quarter of the operating costs. It doesn’t take up a great deal of his free time, either, so any independent projects he wants to produce or film are always an option.
It’s just difficult when he knows the scope of the show is so perfect that it would fit in perfectly on a national network, just as easily. Probably wouldn't work on FOX or CBS, and he’d need a solid lead-in and a decent timeslot, but he’d have a fan base. He already did, here at Greendale. It seems like a lot of potential wasted.
He’d be lying if he said that his life’s plans were to teach film and pop culture classes at a community college. He might not have gone to Tisch or written any blockbusters, but not everyone could be Scorsese. In fact, many successful screenwriters and directors started out in much humbler positions than his.
So, he sits at lunch and takes notes on his colleagues’ interactions. There’s a heated exchange between Jeff and Britta over his repeated manipulation of the cafeteria staff that is rife for parody.
He texts Troy to see when he’ll be done football practice so they can throw around some dialogue to see what sticks. His scripts are always better when there’s a pseudo writers’ room setup to pick apart the lines and plots he can’t properly edit on his own.
He wants to capture the correct motivations behind his characters’ actions. He’s always shooting for something like Saved By The Bell with a touch of Undeclared, only a bit less bleak and definitely less cancelled.
He checks his watch and puts away his notes. That was enough entertainment for the day, he thinks to himself. He has another class to teach.
.
Annie’s running around, practically in circles, trying to get the booths set up correctly. She’s had classes all morning and still has at least one GreenDAILY (the college’s interactive blog and social network, created, maintained, and updated by her) post to get to.
Despite asking several of her colleagues to help run booths with her, not only had she been met with a lot of hemming and hawing, but here she was alone trying to lug fifty pound tables across the school’s side parking lot. (There were still cars here, too. Dean Pelton wouldn’t spring for tow trucks so she was just going to have to rearrange the original layout and hide the shame of knowing that pretty much everyone ignores her emails.)
She stubs her toe on a crack in the pavement and starts swearing loudly to an empty parking lot. Keep it together, Annie. You’re doing this for the students. They’ve never let you down. She says this to herself all the time and she’s nearly managed to convince herself it’s true.
She had a hard time in college and a harder time in high school. At some point, after accepting a job as a professor at Greendale and taking on her fifth class load of students, she realized that she’s always assumed that being an adult - graduating and having a career - would be the easy part.
Then she tries to do simple things like start a scholarship fund or raise money for the school paper’s field trip to the Denver Post or host a Parents Weekend. Then she comes face to face with people like Jeff Winger who clearly consider this job a total joke. It’s no big deal that to some this is clearly a career and one that they mostly enjoy, no. What matters is that this isn’t what they consider cool and hip and worth their time.
When Troy comes bounding around the corner of the building with a hammer and a stack of orange traffic cones, she bursts into tears.
.
“I’m …sorry …do you want to be …alone?” Troy’s face is scrunched up and scared-looking, so Annie tries to reel in the dramatics for long enough to get a few reassuring sentences out.
After a minute of trying she succeeds. “Thank you.”
“You’re …welcome,” Troy offers, awkwardly. He’s sending looks over his shoulder so Annie panics and grabs hold of his arm, the one that’s put down the traffic cones by his side and gives him a desperate look.
“Please, don’t go. I’ve been doing this all on my own since noon and I cancelled an entire afternoon of office hours and I’m probably not going to get it done on time and the parents are supposed to be here at seven and I don’t even know if everyone’s going to have their booths ready in time - this is a total disaster -” She smoothes out her hair as she tries to calm herself down, even though the words just keep tumbling out. She finally settles her gaze on the things Troy brought with him as he stares, still agape. “What are those?”
“You said we were doing booth organization and construction in your email, this is all I could find. I don’t know, hopefully it helps.” He shrugs and gives a genuine smile.
Troy went to the same college as Annie. It’s weird sometimes because here she’s so confident and over involved. In college, well, she was still both of those things, but she was also awkward as hell with really unfortunate bangs and adult braces. Then there was the pill addiction, complete with the Jessie Spano-style freak out -- only hers was about robots and not Pointer Sisters' lyrics, which, at least to Troy, was an upgrade.
When he started working here, a year and a half after her, teaching Kinesiology and coaching the football team, he didn’t even realize it was the same girl. Woman - same woman. But in moments like this, when she’s making horrible squishy faces and rambling on about how no one cares about Greendale and she’s a joke, he sees that other Annie.
He’s a lot more mature, now. The old Troy would’ve been too busy laughing with friends in between keg stands to care about the emotional issues of Little Annie Adderall.
He likes Greendale, actually. It’s not the NFL or even the AFL, but it’s a place where people can try hard without being afraid of failing (because, let’s be honest, if you’re here - you’ve probably already done that, one way or the other). He likes movie nights with Abed and the chicken fingers in the cafeteria and when Shirley leaves her leftover Family and Consumer Sciences' meals in the Teacher’s Lounge for everyone to finish off. It’s a family. A dysfunctional, crazy, goofy-ass family, but nine times out of ten it’s better than his actual family, so he’ll take it.
When Annie presses her lips against his (next to, of all places, the Kissing Booth) he drops the hammer to the ground and wraps his arms around her waist.
When he gets a text from Abed about running lines later, he responds with okay and ac slater was cool, rite??
.
“If you want my advice: never get involved with students, never get involved with faculty, never get involved with conniving two-faced men who care more about some home wrecker-”
“Whoa, Shirley, we don’t know that this other woman even knows that your ex-husband was a slime ball.” Britta has that smile on her face that makes Shirley want to politely shake her until it disappears.
“I’m sorry, Britta,” she says, instead, if enunciating the second half of her name a little more than necessary. “I’m merely trying to warn Annie off making the same mistakes I’ve made. If you think that she should dive head-first into a relationship with a fellow staff member, maybe I didn’t get the full story about what happened between you and Jeff last year. I would’ve thought you’d agree with me.”
Abed wanders up with a snow cone, eyes wide. “Oh, snap,” he supplies, dead-pan.
“Shut up, Abed,” Britta mumbles. Her interest in the conversation has vanished and she’s had enough of the brownies and cupcakes being sold at the FCS booth to feel slightly sick. She shuffles away wordlessly to find a nice distraction amongst the activities.
So of course she runs directly into the aforementioned devil and his Kissing Booth. (Put the Seacrest doppelganger with strategically worn out Express Men jeans in charge of kissing people. Real original, Annie.
She temporarily considers slipping Abed a twenty to see if he’ll go stand in Jeff’s line. Take that, patriarchy.)
Jeff’s voice is louder than it needs to be when he calls out to the small crowd walking between where Britta’s loitering awkwardly and his booth is set up. “Kisses for the Kids, one dollar!” He pointedly watches a young brunette walk past, before turning back to smirk at Britta. “Tongue’s extra!”
“So do you take some sick pleasure in grossing out the women of Greendale, or is it just a natural byproduct of your oily, former-lawyer self?”
“If I say both, does that make me a pig or a sociopath?”
“If I say both, will you stop treating your students like pieces of meat?”
Jeff grins, thinking her response over and turning back towards her. “Well, since you’re not a student, I guess I could make an attempt, so long as I can still try to baste you.”
She rolls her eyes and begins searching the crowd to figure out where Abed had gotten that snow cone. “That was weak, Winger. Even for you.”
Britta moves over to where he’s sitting and takes in the frilly hearts and kisses all over the front of the desk. She gives him a look.
“I think the pink makes me look a little pale, but Annie insisted.”
Britta snorts. “Please, if anything it makes you look kind of orange.”
He holds a hand to his chest. “Ouch, right to the core. Right to the core.”
“Why did you agree to this, anyway? Last year you said you were too busy with your sick iguana to risk spending a night away from home.”
“Oh, Chewie. May he rest in peace,” Jeff sighs.
“He wasn’t real, jackass. I mean, you’ve gotten out of worse, and you hate everything that Greendale chooses to be, so.” She shrugs. “I’m just surprised you even showed.”
“Annie can guilt like a baby animal. A cartoon baby animal, even. I’m surprised you got out of it.”
“I wanted to be in it, but she didn’t think Pin the Tail On the Charlie Sheen Character was going to be a crowd pleaser.”
Jeff frowns. “I would’ve been all over that. He ruined Scary Movie 3, for me.”
Britta gives a short laugh, to keep from smiling. “Maybe next year?”
“Definitely.” There’s a minute or two of silence where neither of them knows what to say. Last time, they filled this gap in conversation with really excellent sex in the Teacher’s Lounge, after hours.
Jeff hazards a glance towards her and from the look on her face it’s all she can think about, too.
Britta is practically pushing the words out of her mouth, trying to come up with anything other than stumbling away and making things even more painfully awkward, when she speaks. “So, how much have you earned?”
Their eyes both shoot to his tiny metal tin where the money’s being collected. “Three hundred and twelve dollars, so far.”
Jeff’s always been good at poker (he was a lawyer, after all). Britta’s just always been slightly better. “How much have you really earned?”
Jeff’s face shifts from his smarmy grin to a huffy half-smile. “Six dollars.” He gives a pained look skyward. “Five of which are from Pelton.”
Britta can’t really recall what she was thinking at the time, but it was probably something to do with her leftover resentment over not being able to stick a pin in Charlie Sheen’s cardboard dick and the way Jeff’s sleeves were rolled up just past his forearms, but whatever it was it happened fast. She feels like Cary Grant or George Clooney, or someone else who’s powerful and debonair but with lady parts (fucking Hollywood needs to cast some more badass chicks).
She feels around her back pocket and pulls out a twenty, throws it on the table, and reaches down her hands to pull Jeff into a deep kiss. They’re practically necking and although it’s college (a community college, at that) she’s pretty sure that teachers making out with one another in front of students and their parents is probably not the greatest idea. So she withdrawals her tongue and rocks back on her heels, memorizing the way Jeff’s eyes stay closed for a split-second after they’ve stopped kissing.
She purses her lips together, giving a tight smile, as she starts to walk away. But not before turning back with a smirk. “Keep the change.”
Mary Wollstonecraft would’ve been fucking proud.
.
It’s not that he’s ever warmed to the idea of staying here or teaching here, but Jeff just - he doesn’t think about it as much, anymore. His class is still a total joke and he’s pretty sure that he’s not going to be named Teacher of the Year by anyone, but he’s happy.
Because, a year later, he’s taking pictures of Britta defiling Charlie Harper while Annie tries to deflect passersby from seeing or understanding what’s going on. Abed has parked his camera in front of them for the night, giving up any pretense that he wants to film the students or their parents at all. Troy is stuck watching the scene from across the narrow walkway in the High Five Booth. (Renamed and re-imagined, yet again, thanks to Starburns’ alleged cold sore from last year.
Although Jeff continues to claim innocence since, a) he didn’t kiss Starburns, b) he’d never kiss Starburns, and c) he made out with Britta for, like, an hour that night and she was fine, so.)
Shirley and Pierce are off arguing with Chang about what she shouldn’t name her baby, but you can still hear the comforting sound of bickering as it echoes against the side of the gymnasium.
It’s weird and it shouldn’t work, and yet. He hasn’t looked at apartments in San Diego for months, but he has looked at a few locally. They’re one bedroom, but spacious. It’s not like he needs the extra space, but it’d be good to have - you know - just in case.
Rating/Warnings: T
Pairings: Jeff/Britta, Troy/Annie
Disclaimer: It's a rental.
Summary: what if they were community college teachers instead
A/N: Written for bebitched's prompt at Rewriting History in about two hours. I seriously don't even know.
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Here’s the thing about working at a community college: it sucks.
No one wants to be there. The students are all too broke to go anywhere else or too stupid to try, so it’s not even like you’ve got the whole shaping the minds of the future vibe going for you. There are just a lot of unhappy people who’ve made a lot of bad decisions, trying to pretend as though the simple act of getting up in the morning doesn’t make them want to take a swan dive off the top of the gymnasium’s asbestos-coated rooftops.
Jeff is only here because he has to be. He’s out of job options after his former law firm blackballed him throughout the entirety of metropolitan Colorado and the dean at Greendale always used to offer him a chance to lecture while he let his eyes linger on his lower half at the Starbucks they used to frequent (Jeff changed up that commuting routine somewhere between “Would you consider yourself a dog person?” and “Can I have the contact info for your personal trainer? Someone's getting a bonus check in the mail!”) So he pockets a couple grand each month and scrolls through apartment listings in San Diego every other night. This is temporary. It’s a means to an end. Or at least that’s what he tells his reflection in his daily pep talks.
He shows up to his classes in his hundred dollar fuck you sunglasses, sipping a lukewarm cup of coffee, and playing Bejeweled on his phone. Introduction to Criminal Justice, the most expensive study hall in the tri-county area.
He’s almost bested his high score when the door to his room cracks open and Edison pops her head in. Those who’ve bothered to show up are sleeping, talking amongst themselves, or generally not giving a fuck.
He pulls his feet from the edge of his desk and bolts upwards for a moment before clearing his throat. “Okay, guys. I’m going to talk to Ms. Edison about - something - continue to plan your group projects. Be ready to hand in an outline by the end of class.”
A few of the students look outraged at being suddenly assigned work for the first time that semester but the only audible response is a loud snore from Leonard somewhere in the back. Jeff rolls his eyes and shuffles Annie out into the hall.
She isn’t having any of this, of course. Hands on her hips and frown deep-set on her face from the second he shuts his classroom’s door. His greeting is all false enthusiasm and sarcastic eyebrows, as usual. “Hey, Annie! What can I do for you?”
“I was going to ask if you wanted to do a booth for Parents Weekend, but if you’re going to put the same amount of effort into it that you give to that class, in there, I’m not sure why I even bothered...”
He doesn’t know what it is about her, but there’s something about those big, Disney-princess eyes that makes him feel like a parent letting down their kid on Christmas morning. Who wants to be that guy? He sure as hell doesn’t. Plus he hooked up with her those two times, last year. That just adds a really creepy element to the Christmas analogy and makes him hate himself even more. So, he shuts his eyes and sets his jaw. “What booth do you want me to do, Annie?”
“The Kissing Booth,” she chirps back, all evidence of sadness vanished and Jeff’s reminded of the hundred or so other favors she’s gotten out of him the same way. He’ll never learn.
“I thought they changed that to the Eskimo Kisses Booth, last year.”
“The Butterfly Kisses Booth, actually, with that Bob Carlisle song playing on a loop -- since they caught Pierce Hawthorne offering Business and Marketing extra credit to any students who’d make out with him.” Annie cringes. “Even though no one took him up on it.”
“So?”
“So, twenty-six cases of pink-eye and a civil suit against school prayer later, it’s the Kissing Booth and Mr. Hawthorne is banned from attending.”
Jeff sighs, leans his head against the door and wants to get back to his phone and away from this unwanted school commitment. “Is that it?”
Annie nods, but not before trying to peek through the small window in the classroom’s door. “You know, if you ever want to take a look at some of my lesson plans, I’m sure…”
“Goodbye, Annie.”
When he’s back inside the classroom, a skinny kid with glasses too big for his face raises his hand nervously. “Do we really have a group project outline due in an hour and a half?”
Jeff laughs, flops into his chair, and kicks his feet back up onto his desk.
.
Britta hates guys like Jeff Winger. They swoop in, take all her non-committal mojo and make her question why she’d even taken a job here in the first place. She’s always liked to appear academic and telling people you’re a college professor almost always got an eyebrow raise in response. (Unless she slipped and added community in there, first. Fucking stupid social stigma. Like she even cares what you think. She helped Thom Yorke order coffee in Italy, okay.)
Still. Here Jeff Winger was, strolling into the cafeteria and charming his way through the lunch line without even paying. This college wasn’t hipster enough for the both of them and even though she knows that her Women’s Studies classes are home to actual discussion and knowledge, objectively, it’s just as easy a class as his. She designed it that way, so that people wouldn’t resent her for helping to open their minds.
Then Winger sets up shop two hallways down and from what she hears he just gives out A’s. Whether you show up or you don’t, if you sleep or text or make out with your girlfriend the whole time (hotness or girl on girl permitting). There’s easy classes and then there’s Criminal Justice.
Most of the other teachers hate him (which she, at least, tries to not let on because she thinks it somehow makes him enjoy it more), but she definitely has the most reason to. On the days when he hits on her, she spends an extra twenty minutes at the start of her lecture ranting about patriarchal societies and misogyny in modern culture.
If she happens to have him in mind during some - or most - of that time, well, her students don’t need to know that. Sleeping with him was definitely a mistake. A big one.
.
Abed likes running The Greendale Years, he does. It’s got the charm and depth of a small-time sitcom, but with a quarter of the operating costs. It doesn’t take up a great deal of his free time, either, so any independent projects he wants to produce or film are always an option.
It’s just difficult when he knows the scope of the show is so perfect that it would fit in perfectly on a national network, just as easily. Probably wouldn't work on FOX or CBS, and he’d need a solid lead-in and a decent timeslot, but he’d have a fan base. He already did, here at Greendale. It seems like a lot of potential wasted.
He’d be lying if he said that his life’s plans were to teach film and pop culture classes at a community college. He might not have gone to Tisch or written any blockbusters, but not everyone could be Scorsese. In fact, many successful screenwriters and directors started out in much humbler positions than his.
So, he sits at lunch and takes notes on his colleagues’ interactions. There’s a heated exchange between Jeff and Britta over his repeated manipulation of the cafeteria staff that is rife for parody.
He texts Troy to see when he’ll be done football practice so they can throw around some dialogue to see what sticks. His scripts are always better when there’s a pseudo writers’ room setup to pick apart the lines and plots he can’t properly edit on his own.
He wants to capture the correct motivations behind his characters’ actions. He’s always shooting for something like Saved By The Bell with a touch of Undeclared, only a bit less bleak and definitely less cancelled.
He checks his watch and puts away his notes. That was enough entertainment for the day, he thinks to himself. He has another class to teach.
.
Annie’s running around, practically in circles, trying to get the booths set up correctly. She’s had classes all morning and still has at least one GreenDAILY (the college’s interactive blog and social network, created, maintained, and updated by her) post to get to.
Despite asking several of her colleagues to help run booths with her, not only had she been met with a lot of hemming and hawing, but here she was alone trying to lug fifty pound tables across the school’s side parking lot. (There were still cars here, too. Dean Pelton wouldn’t spring for tow trucks so she was just going to have to rearrange the original layout and hide the shame of knowing that pretty much everyone ignores her emails.)
She stubs her toe on a crack in the pavement and starts swearing loudly to an empty parking lot. Keep it together, Annie. You’re doing this for the students. They’ve never let you down. She says this to herself all the time and she’s nearly managed to convince herself it’s true.
She had a hard time in college and a harder time in high school. At some point, after accepting a job as a professor at Greendale and taking on her fifth class load of students, she realized that she’s always assumed that being an adult - graduating and having a career - would be the easy part.
Then she tries to do simple things like start a scholarship fund or raise money for the school paper’s field trip to the Denver Post or host a Parents Weekend. Then she comes face to face with people like Jeff Winger who clearly consider this job a total joke. It’s no big deal that to some this is clearly a career and one that they mostly enjoy, no. What matters is that this isn’t what they consider cool and hip and worth their time.
When Troy comes bounding around the corner of the building with a hammer and a stack of orange traffic cones, she bursts into tears.
.
“I’m …sorry …do you want to be …alone?” Troy’s face is scrunched up and scared-looking, so Annie tries to reel in the dramatics for long enough to get a few reassuring sentences out.
After a minute of trying she succeeds. “Thank you.”
“You’re …welcome,” Troy offers, awkwardly. He’s sending looks over his shoulder so Annie panics and grabs hold of his arm, the one that’s put down the traffic cones by his side and gives him a desperate look.
“Please, don’t go. I’ve been doing this all on my own since noon and I cancelled an entire afternoon of office hours and I’m probably not going to get it done on time and the parents are supposed to be here at seven and I don’t even know if everyone’s going to have their booths ready in time - this is a total disaster -” She smoothes out her hair as she tries to calm herself down, even though the words just keep tumbling out. She finally settles her gaze on the things Troy brought with him as he stares, still agape. “What are those?”
“You said we were doing booth organization and construction in your email, this is all I could find. I don’t know, hopefully it helps.” He shrugs and gives a genuine smile.
Troy went to the same college as Annie. It’s weird sometimes because here she’s so confident and over involved. In college, well, she was still both of those things, but she was also awkward as hell with really unfortunate bangs and adult braces. Then there was the pill addiction, complete with the Jessie Spano-style freak out -- only hers was about robots and not Pointer Sisters' lyrics, which, at least to Troy, was an upgrade.
When he started working here, a year and a half after her, teaching Kinesiology and coaching the football team, he didn’t even realize it was the same girl. Woman - same woman. But in moments like this, when she’s making horrible squishy faces and rambling on about how no one cares about Greendale and she’s a joke, he sees that other Annie.
He’s a lot more mature, now. The old Troy would’ve been too busy laughing with friends in between keg stands to care about the emotional issues of Little Annie Adderall.
He likes Greendale, actually. It’s not the NFL or even the AFL, but it’s a place where people can try hard without being afraid of failing (because, let’s be honest, if you’re here - you’ve probably already done that, one way or the other). He likes movie nights with Abed and the chicken fingers in the cafeteria and when Shirley leaves her leftover Family and Consumer Sciences' meals in the Teacher’s Lounge for everyone to finish off. It’s a family. A dysfunctional, crazy, goofy-ass family, but nine times out of ten it’s better than his actual family, so he’ll take it.
When Annie presses her lips against his (next to, of all places, the Kissing Booth) he drops the hammer to the ground and wraps his arms around her waist.
When he gets a text from Abed about running lines later, he responds with okay and ac slater was cool, rite??
.
“If you want my advice: never get involved with students, never get involved with faculty, never get involved with conniving two-faced men who care more about some home wrecker-”
“Whoa, Shirley, we don’t know that this other woman even knows that your ex-husband was a slime ball.” Britta has that smile on her face that makes Shirley want to politely shake her until it disappears.
“I’m sorry, Britta,” she says, instead, if enunciating the second half of her name a little more than necessary. “I’m merely trying to warn Annie off making the same mistakes I’ve made. If you think that she should dive head-first into a relationship with a fellow staff member, maybe I didn’t get the full story about what happened between you and Jeff last year. I would’ve thought you’d agree with me.”
Abed wanders up with a snow cone, eyes wide. “Oh, snap,” he supplies, dead-pan.
“Shut up, Abed,” Britta mumbles. Her interest in the conversation has vanished and she’s had enough of the brownies and cupcakes being sold at the FCS booth to feel slightly sick. She shuffles away wordlessly to find a nice distraction amongst the activities.
So of course she runs directly into the aforementioned devil and his Kissing Booth. (Put the Seacrest doppelganger with strategically worn out Express Men jeans in charge of kissing people. Real original, Annie.
She temporarily considers slipping Abed a twenty to see if he’ll go stand in Jeff’s line. Take that, patriarchy.)
Jeff’s voice is louder than it needs to be when he calls out to the small crowd walking between where Britta’s loitering awkwardly and his booth is set up. “Kisses for the Kids, one dollar!” He pointedly watches a young brunette walk past, before turning back to smirk at Britta. “Tongue’s extra!”
“So do you take some sick pleasure in grossing out the women of Greendale, or is it just a natural byproduct of your oily, former-lawyer self?”
“If I say both, does that make me a pig or a sociopath?”
“If I say both, will you stop treating your students like pieces of meat?”
Jeff grins, thinking her response over and turning back towards her. “Well, since you’re not a student, I guess I could make an attempt, so long as I can still try to baste you.”
She rolls her eyes and begins searching the crowd to figure out where Abed had gotten that snow cone. “That was weak, Winger. Even for you.”
Britta moves over to where he’s sitting and takes in the frilly hearts and kisses all over the front of the desk. She gives him a look.
“I think the pink makes me look a little pale, but Annie insisted.”
Britta snorts. “Please, if anything it makes you look kind of orange.”
He holds a hand to his chest. “Ouch, right to the core. Right to the core.”
“Why did you agree to this, anyway? Last year you said you were too busy with your sick iguana to risk spending a night away from home.”
“Oh, Chewie. May he rest in peace,” Jeff sighs.
“He wasn’t real, jackass. I mean, you’ve gotten out of worse, and you hate everything that Greendale chooses to be, so.” She shrugs. “I’m just surprised you even showed.”
“Annie can guilt like a baby animal. A cartoon baby animal, even. I’m surprised you got out of it.”
“I wanted to be in it, but she didn’t think Pin the Tail On the Charlie Sheen Character was going to be a crowd pleaser.”
Jeff frowns. “I would’ve been all over that. He ruined Scary Movie 3, for me.”
Britta gives a short laugh, to keep from smiling. “Maybe next year?”
“Definitely.” There’s a minute or two of silence where neither of them knows what to say. Last time, they filled this gap in conversation with really excellent sex in the Teacher’s Lounge, after hours.
Jeff hazards a glance towards her and from the look on her face it’s all she can think about, too.
Britta is practically pushing the words out of her mouth, trying to come up with anything other than stumbling away and making things even more painfully awkward, when she speaks. “So, how much have you earned?”
Their eyes both shoot to his tiny metal tin where the money’s being collected. “Three hundred and twelve dollars, so far.”
Jeff’s always been good at poker (he was a lawyer, after all). Britta’s just always been slightly better. “How much have you really earned?”
Jeff’s face shifts from his smarmy grin to a huffy half-smile. “Six dollars.” He gives a pained look skyward. “Five of which are from Pelton.”
Britta can’t really recall what she was thinking at the time, but it was probably something to do with her leftover resentment over not being able to stick a pin in Charlie Sheen’s cardboard dick and the way Jeff’s sleeves were rolled up just past his forearms, but whatever it was it happened fast. She feels like Cary Grant or George Clooney, or someone else who’s powerful and debonair but with lady parts (fucking Hollywood needs to cast some more badass chicks).
She feels around her back pocket and pulls out a twenty, throws it on the table, and reaches down her hands to pull Jeff into a deep kiss. They’re practically necking and although it’s college (a community college, at that) she’s pretty sure that teachers making out with one another in front of students and their parents is probably not the greatest idea. So she withdrawals her tongue and rocks back on her heels, memorizing the way Jeff’s eyes stay closed for a split-second after they’ve stopped kissing.
She purses her lips together, giving a tight smile, as she starts to walk away. But not before turning back with a smirk. “Keep the change.”
Mary Wollstonecraft would’ve been fucking proud.
.
It’s not that he’s ever warmed to the idea of staying here or teaching here, but Jeff just - he doesn’t think about it as much, anymore. His class is still a total joke and he’s pretty sure that he’s not going to be named Teacher of the Year by anyone, but he’s happy.
Because, a year later, he’s taking pictures of Britta defiling Charlie Harper while Annie tries to deflect passersby from seeing or understanding what’s going on. Abed has parked his camera in front of them for the night, giving up any pretense that he wants to film the students or their parents at all. Troy is stuck watching the scene from across the narrow walkway in the High Five Booth. (Renamed and re-imagined, yet again, thanks to Starburns’ alleged cold sore from last year.
Although Jeff continues to claim innocence since, a) he didn’t kiss Starburns, b) he’d never kiss Starburns, and c) he made out with Britta for, like, an hour that night and she was fine, so.)
Shirley and Pierce are off arguing with Chang about what she shouldn’t name her baby, but you can still hear the comforting sound of bickering as it echoes against the side of the gymnasium.
It’s weird and it shouldn’t work, and yet. He hasn’t looked at apartments in San Diego for months, but he has looked at a few locally. They’re one bedroom, but spacious. It’s not like he needs the extra space, but it’d be good to have - you know - just in case.