Closing The Door (3/5)
Title: Closing the Door
Author: robert3A-SN on ff.net
Character/pairing: Jeff/Annie, Britta/Troy, Annie/Troy friendship
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,810 words in chapter 3, 8,916 words overall
Genres: Romance, friendship, humor
Summary: Chapter 3: Annie speeds her plans along while rethinking them - and rethinking about Troy and Britta and Jeff- at the same time.
Disclaimer: If I owned Community, everyone involved in it would be back in S4, but I don’t and they won’t.
A/N: The fic is also at ff.net at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8516567/3/, but feedback is encouraged to be left on here.
Part 1 Part 2
Annie was less vocal in the meetings with Troy and Abed that night. It was partly from thinking about her battle with Jeff, and partly from being extra careful with Troy now.
Yet it did help her suggest they should take it down a notch tomorrow. After all, if they were just starting to like each other more now, it should make them more hesitant for a while. Maybe Britta would use that window of opportunity to talk to Troy and steal him back. It’s not like they were making her think she had time to waste.
Making her think that. Annie hoped that was still her plan.
She lay awake in bed going over the plan and its ethics again - albeit a day or two late. It was telling that Abed didn’t say it was out of character, since she had her share of destructive, manipulative plans before. All of which taught her a rough lesson about being selfish and controlling and childish.
Yet Annie had let this plan slide because it wasn’t selfish. It wasn’t about keeping friends or winning an election or competition. It was about trying to get her two dear friends together, while getting nothing for herself in return - which made the manipulation barely okay. But if Jeff was right and it was about her own desires, she’d have no excuses left.
She knew that consciously, she didn’t do this to make Jeff want her. And she certainly didn’t plan to make Troy fall for her and forget about Britta. That would be really stupid on Troy’s part - and although he knew less about some things than others, he wasn’t stupid.
So Jeff was really insulting him and his commitment to Britta as much as he was demeaning Annie. As much as Annie was insulting it by making it look like Troy could want anyone but Britta. But Annie didn’t believe he could - right?
Even if Annie wanted to lure Troy deep down, she could never pull it off. He was unattainable all over again - except this time, he knew Annie existed and thought of her as a best friend. That made it even more painful - ironic!
It was all in Annie’s head, she knew that. Besides, she’d been told she was quite capable of seeing things that weren’t there. Being this close to Troy - closer than she’d ever been - was just bringing back memories of her old, dumb Troy fantasies. And it was right while her old, dumb fantasies of Jeff were being packed away, which was a deadly combination.
Yet that, in a way, was what Jeff had been telling her this afternoon. If he was right about that, then maybe he was right about….
Annie left those thoughts blank for the rest of the night. It would have easier if she slept through most of the night, but she couldn’t have everything. But after years of sleepless nights studying, she had a tolerance for a lack of sleep.
She tried to keep the momentum going by following her script that morning. Annie and Troy exchanged their share of looks, smiles and moments at the study table and class, but they spaced them out more than yesterday. It gave the likes of Shirley and Pierce more time to question what was going on, yet Abed helped deflect them with movie parallels, and Annie and Troy had enough planned out responses for them.
Yet Britta didn’t make any moves towards Troy, as she just sat there and tried to keep still. Her will power was indeed strong - damn her. If she was that determined to avoid facing her feelings, even now, this could drag out longer than Annie wanted. And right now, she just wanted it to end before she got more tangled up.
At that thought, she looked at Jeff and noticed him smirking at her. Like he knew he was being proven right and was just waiting for Annie to give up and admit it. Admit he was right - and give him less of a reason to examine himself.
If Jeff knew Annie’s game deep down, or liked to think he did, then Annie knew Jeff’s. Avoid and deflect by any means necessary. Which meant winning a game of wills, being proven right, and convincing himself he was too awesome to need love or honesty. As if Annie would give him love even with honesty now - or so she was telling herself.
As long as this dragged on, Jeff had all the time in the world to be proven right. So perhaps it was time to speed this along, and get through a big step without any more hiccups.
To that end, Annie pulled Troy aside before they reached the cafeteria and filled him in. “We’re doing our first almost kiss in the afternoon study session. Today.”
“But you said we didn’t have to until tomorrow!” Troy said a bit too loud. “Didn’t you read the script girl’s notes that you wrote?”
“We both think we need to move this along,” Annie stated. “We’ve done enough slow stuff for today. The faster we ramp this up, the faster Britta will only want you to kiss her.”
“Oh good! I’m glad I won’t be the only one doing that anymore,” Troy exclaimed. When Annie felt a bit annoyed at that, she knew she was making the right call to speed up.
The process started when they sat together at lunch again and ramped up their banter. They were almost thrown when Shirley finally questioned why Britta wasn’t doing anything. Yet Britta just tossed out a few anti-religion statements as a distraction, which made Shirley ready to drop the Annie/Troy subject. So that both helped and hurt the cause - but at least Jeff was too busy pretending to play with his phone.
Since Britta still wasn’t budging, the near-kiss would have to go on as planned. As such, when they returned to the study room that afternoon, Annie stated she would sit next to Troy and help him with his work. She took her chair away - from Jeff’s left - and moved it to the corner of the table between Troy and Abed.
“Great, first you break up Troy and Britta, now it’s Troy and A-bed?” Pierce remarked. “I thought I raised you better than that!”
“Oh please, you raise fake daughters worse than our oppressed migrant workers raise…” And right on cue, everyone else groaned before Britta could rant. Yet the way she stopped before they groaned suggested that’s just what she wanted - anything to change the subject.
Still, Annie changed it by ‘accidentally’ bumping Troy’s hand while reaching for a pencil. As planned, they acted awkward and apologetic, then Annie smiled her special smile when Troy handed her the pencil himself. She tried not to let it get bigger when Troy smiled back, and thought she’d succeeded.
Judging by how Jeff buried his head into an actual book and not his phone, maybe she didn’t. Now Annie didn’t even want to look at Britta next. So she went back to studying quietly with Troy, waiting for the right time to start the real show.
The plan was once she said, “Oops, excuse me a minute,” she would lean in and then Troy would lean way too close to hear her - close enough that their heads and lips would almost touch. Then after a few seconds of laughing it off and looking at each other’s lips, they would shrug it off as if nothing happened. And if they had to, they’d do it a few more times until something finally gave.
But what if nothing gave? What if Britta wouldn’t act until Annie ‘accidentally’ kissed Troy for real? Would it take that much for Britta to see the light - and if not, what would do it for her? Or Jeff? No, not Jeff!
Damn it, how did Annie put herself into these messes?
Whatever the answer was, she got herself in this anyway. And she promised Jeff and herself she would get out, no matter what she had to face. Now was as good a time to do it as any.
As she pretended to study, she tapped into her old lovesick feelings for Troy so she could face them once and for all. They were so strong and irrational back then, it would be quite a rush to be flooded with them again. Take on the last remnants of an old, ancient, five year old time where Annie was so different from today.
But so was Troy.
In fact, the Troy that Annie obsessed over five years ago, and even three years ago, was pretty much dead. The Troy who Annie loved wasn’t a nerd, was still an athlete, was content to be nothing but popular, was far less mature and grown up in his own way, and didn’t know Annie existed. The Troy that Annie had all those feelings for was no more - and he’d been replaced by something far better.
That probably made things worse, actually.
If Annie could be in love with a shallow, non-geeky, less sweet Troy, how much more could she feel for the far better version who cared about her? Who cared about a lot of things he didn’t before? Who had integrity and loyalty and who loved someone that everyone else called the worst?
Who only did this because he was so desperate for Britta to let herself love him?
He only had eyes for Britta, and Annie was making him convince her he didn’t. That sure helped her feel better.
But it was Britta’s fault for being so scared! Didn’t she know what she had in Troy, if she could just accept it? Even now, she was still trying to be cool and emotionless, as if this and him meant nothing!
Yet when Annie looked over, she saw Britta burying her face in her psych textbook - then glancing up at them with a rather vulnerable look. One that Annie had never seen from Britta before - but one she knew all too well.
This was the kind of scared look Annie had whenever she thought she would lose her friends. And it was a look Annie knew she had before both her father and mother left her. If Britta had that look, it meant they were really getting to her. It meant she really was afraid she was losing Troy.
It should have made Annie happy and relieved. But it also made her feel guilty, because Britta wasn’t even close to losing Troy. If she only accepted how much Troy didn’t want to abandon her and make her feel like crap, they’d have gotten together long ago and Annie would never have done this. Yet it looked like it was getting through to Britta - just as it kept getting through to Annie that it was because of lies and tricks.
However, maybe this meant one more lie or trick would finish the job. Just one more of those, and Britta could finally overcome her fears and make Troy hers for real. If Annie could do that for them - for these people she loved and who she sadly manipulated - wasn’t it worth it?
Even if they would have each other afterwards and Annie would have no one? When her own Britta was deeper in denial than ever before?
Ironically, the Britta-like voice in Annie’s head who said she didn’t need any man had been largely ignored. She must truly be the Britta of Annie’s voices, indeed. Well, in any case, if this was going to happen, it might as well happen now.
“Oops, excuse me a minute,” Annie said as planned. She leaned in a little close, then Troy said, “What?” leaned in a lot closer to hear her and nearly butted their heads together. So far, so good.
But then the voices told Annie to do it. Just close the gap and kiss him. See what it’s like at least once. Kiss someone she….had a past with once again - it had been too long since she did that, anyway. She was owed this, something, anything for all her heartache and heartbreak. She’d been patient long enough. She -
Heard Britta gasp in fear.
“I can’t, I can’t!” Annie heard herself say before turning away. After a second, she understood why.
This was exactly what Britta was so afraid of. Giving her heart to someone for real, only to have it crushed like this. And with her past, being crushed like this one more time - like she might be a second away from feeling - could destroy her.
Even feeling it now didn’t guarantee she would go for Troy, as she could just run further away to never feel that raw pain again. Raw pain that Annie made possible.
And Annie made her feel that as a cruel way to teach her a lesson. And she made Troy do it too. All for some misguided idea, or some other selfish reason. She was so anxious to help them, she let some really rotten ends justify the means - which tended to happen more than she liked to admit.
If she was really so smart, why did she keep coming up with flawed plans like this? Even when she saw the flaws in this one from the start, she still kept going until she almost broke someone’s heart.
If Britta could feel that, what about…..no, she couldn’t go there yet.
Still, Annie had to look up sometime, and she couldn’t look at Troy or Britta. So she glanced up at Jeff - who gave her a private, cocky smile, knowing she had been undone.
That little….well, she’d deal with him later. First things first.
She used her rapid-fire brain to reassess the situation, and how to slip out of it. Then she remembered saying “I can’t!” when it looked like she would kiss Troy. And suddenly, she had her graceful exit - or the closest thing to it. It might even save Britta and Troy yet.
Annie took a breath and focused on Troy, needing to face him first before she could face Britta. After seeing his confused face and remembering all she’d realized about him, the words soon poured out of her.
“Troy, I’m sorry. Helping you lately, well, it made me remember how I once thought about you. So I wondered what it’d be like if we’d ever....I mean, it’d be simpler than liking who we like now! What wouldn’t be?” Annie broke up with mockery, then got serious again.
“But I can’t do it. You’re not mine, and you never were, but that’s okay. A part of me will always love you, but I like the way I love you now, not then. Now it’s as one of the best friends I’ve ever had. And as someone I can’t take away from who you do belong with. Okay?” Annie assured.
Since this was decidedly off script, Troy was still confused, but that did fit the improvised scene. So when Troy just said, “Okay….that’s cool,” it fit as a proper bit of closure.
With that, Annie got up to see Britta and her stunned, overwhelmed face. All she had to say for her, as genuinely as possible, was, “I’m so sorry, Britta.”
Then she went to the front of the study table and saw Jeff, who wasn’t smirking - but the memories of him smirking were still fresh. As was the aggravation he put her through yesterday, and the last three years in general.
But the sad part was that Annie couldn’t have done what she just did without him. And after the new way she understood Britta and her fears, it had to apply to Jeff too. Whether this meant Annie loved him or should love him, she didn’t know. She’d have plenty of time to go mad solving that later.
Yet it might be a good first step to offer an olive branch now - and it would help close out that little scene just now. So she simply said, “I’m sorry, Jeff,” and bent down to kiss his cheek.
Maybe the kiss wasn’t completely necessary. However, it would further convince Britta that she didn’t want Troy, and give Jeff something to think over. Plus she was able to break after a second and walk out without looking back, instead of doing something more extreme. Annie could be proud of her self-control there, if nothing else.
However, because she kept her eyes closed and off Jeff the whole time, she didn’t notice how Jeff reached out for her right as she walked away. Or how he left his arms up, frozen in shock with the rest of him, long after she left.
But everyone else in the group noticed. And it took the heat off the Troy/Britta/Annie drama for the time being. So at least something went right at the end.