Spoilers are contained for a few S3 episodes in one late paragraph.
Millions of kids can never sleep on Christmas Eve night, due to what the morning will bring. But since Annie never just celebrated Christmas, she only had that excited anxiety on the night before the first day of school.
They were torturous nights, capping off months of torture away from Greendale – yet it usually wasn't that bad before spring semester started. But those semesters usually followed just one month off. This one was different, as it had been three whole months since she stepped foot in a classroom. That was hard enough to survive in the summer without enduring it in winter as well.
But at long last, Dean Pelton and the board of trustees had come to reality. Despite attendance problems, and that ill-fated attempt to let more "award-winning, big city institutions" use the campus for rent, Greendale would finally open for classes again. Although City College was more powerful than ever – and now earned more money than the American Karaoke chain empire – Greendale's board realized it just couldn't match them no matter what. So it was best to just open classes again, take whatever small upticks they had and just do enough to reopen next year.
Despite how depressing that was and how it still left doubt for next year, Annie didn't care. She already had paranoid freak outs scheduled for that in late April anyway. For now, she was just so relieved that March 15 was almost here, and that she would be back on campus tomorrow at 8 a.m. But for tonight, she wanted to go to sleep and wake up already.
This was even worse than the last night of summer; at least three summer months off were right on schedule. This unscheduled three month break was much worse, especially since Annie thought it might never end until three weeks ago. But knowing when they'd come back, only to then wait three more weeks for that blessed day, was almost the worst part of all.
Still, Annie had gotten to bed on the night of March 14 without going in a mental ward first. That was more than part of her expected – and probably more than most of her friends expected. Somehow, she had made it this long without school and Greendale and only had to endure several more hours. Looking back, it seemed unreal that she had survived this long.
But it seemed unreal that she'd survived the first two-and-a-half years in Greendale too. And the group had powered her through that as well.
It did help that this break wasn't spent anywhere near Dildopolis. Past vacations in her old home had involved loneliness, horrible walks, the loud Dildopolis intercom, futile attempts at apartment improvement, and other forms of anxiety. While the anxiety remained in different forms, Annie didn't feel so alone now that she lived with two of her closest Greendale and group friends. As such, she felt tethered to Greendale and the group all the time, which made her miss them a tiny bit less.
Although there was no school work to keep her occupied, Troy and Abed's games started filling the gap after a month or so. Once Annie survived her initial withdrawal symptoms from textbooks, playing around with her roommates became a….okay substitute. Now she couldn't imagine living without them – not just because her last two homes set a very low bar. At least she knew that staying home in her last regularly scheduled summer and winter breaks might be fun too.
It also helped that she stayed in touch with the friends she wasn't living with, unlike in other breaks. The longer the school stayed closed, the more bored they were, and the more they needed each other to pass the time. Of course, Annie knew extended time with Britta, Shirley and Pierce could have driven her crazy; a greater risk than ever now. But they didn't see her enough to drive her completely mad – yet they came by just enough so she wouldn't miss them even more.
And Jeff….
Naturally, before those memories could soothe Annie, she heard her phone's ringtone go off.
It didn't surprise her that she forgot to turn it off, in her rush to go to sleep. Not that it helped, especially since she saw it was almost midnight. Two hours had passed by while she tried to drift off, yet 8 a.m. still seemed so far away.
Annie groaned and tried to distract herself by reading her next text message. But the actual message, and who it came from, helped a lot more.
"How long have you been trying to sleep?" Jeff had typed as if he just read her mind. Annie knew he was getting better at that in person, yet doing it from his apartment was a nice touch – if not kind of unsettling.
But she settled for giggling over it and typed back, "About two hours, if you want to know."
"My money was on four. Good thing I only had imaginary friends to bet imaginary money with." Jeff sent a minute later.
"I'm glad my insomnia amuses you, Jeff." Annie typed, not even all that sarcastically. Texting with Jeff would probably help a few hours go by. But unfortunately, Jeff probably wanted all the sleep he could get before braving Greendale again. In spite of all the….various developments in the last few months, he still wanted to pretend going back to Greendale was a tragedy.
"Well, imagining you doing cartwheels tomorrow amuses me more." Annie chuckled at that, while wondering if she really could pull that off. She'd have enough adrenaline to try, but… "Especially since it'd give me a preview of flexible you can be."
"Jeeeeffff!" Annie typed after she gasped, hoping she used enough e's and f's to get her scandalized tone across. After all, they hadn't even gone all the way yet, in spite of their plans to change that soon….
"You have things you lose sleep over waiting for, and I have mine, okay?" Jeff responded. Annie grudgingly gave him a wink emoticon, flattered just enough that Jeff was losing sleep over waiting for Saturday night. Yet he was the one who agreed to wait, so Annie would have two days to celebrate Greendale's reopening….then use her remaining excitement for the weekend.
It was shocking that Jeff had waited this long already. But it was his own fault, since it took two years and then two months of hanging out during the break to finally want to be with her. Yet that did kick off the best week of her life – prior to this one – since Greendale's re-opening date was announced four days later. Somehow, Annie juggled starting a secret relationship with her back to school prep – and got in the required three dates before sex just under the wire.
Once they had their big weekend, they worked out that after two more weeks to settle back into Greendale, they'd tell the group about them – minus the NC-17 material. That is, provided they were still going strong and that Abed hadn't let anything slip – given how he obviously figured it all out two weeks ago at the latest. Although this gave Jeff a little wiggle room to back out if he still wanted to, Annie chose to trust him for now.
"You're sure you don't want them to know before you cartwheel tomorrow and Saturday?" Darn it, his mindreading was close to Abed levels now! Or maybe it was a side effect of being a better secret boyfriend than he expected to be. Still, Annie had no illusions that Jeff actually wanted them to know sooner than they had to. Yet giving her another chance to change the schedule had to be a good sign somehow.
"I'm sure, but thank you. Tomorrow's too great a day to have that kind of drama. At least to me." Annie punctuated with a wink emoticon, knowing she was the only one who thought tomorrow was great. At least the only one who would admit it out loud, or in text.
"I figured that, too." Jeff obviously meant he knew it was great to her, not that he thought it was great too. Or at least Annie was 90 percent sure. " But I'll let you have fun while us normals wish we were still on break. Especially after an unforgettable break like the last one."
Annie almost literally typed "Awww" to echo what she said out loud. Yet she settled for a big smiling face emoticon to be less cheesy. She then decided to reward Jeff by not cutting into his last hours as a free man. "Well, you go ahead and enjoy your last eight hours of freedom."
"All right, if I must, Milady." Jeff typed back in sarcastic mode.
"Then by my command, good night to you, Milord. 3" Annie crammed two seconds of heavy thinking in before deciding to add the heart. She hoped her comical last words would help balance it out and make Jeff feel less uneasy. Then she remembered she probably shouldn't forget to turn the phone off again.
But before she finally turned it off, one last message came from Jeff. "Night. 3"
Annie got halfway through typing an "Eeeee!" before coming to her senses and shutting the phone down. She laid back into bed, reflecting on how it took Jeff 25 seconds before he sent that. The fact it took that long to make himself send the heart symbol was adorable, since he did make the right call. It probably would have been bigger if he was the first to type a heart, but Annie beat him to it anyway. So she'd save testing him on that for next time.
Now Annie felt ready to drift off with Jeff rattling around in the brain. Although this forced extended vacation was trying, to say the least, it yielded some good parts. The least of which was how Annie found more time to spend with Jeff outside of Greendale – and how Jeff was bored enough without it to come to her. Then the rest was long awaited, yet sooner than expected, history.
As such, while she was lacking a lot of things in this "hiatus," as Abed kept phrasing it, she gained more things in return than she had imagined. And eventually, she'd get to take them into Greendale as well – after the group got their concerns/objections/meddling out of the way in a few weeks.
Annie started to dream about the other things this long awaited new semester could bring. Maybe Jeff would get to act like a lawyer again somehow – or maybe Troy and Abed would break their blanket fort records. Shirley and Andre were due to get married again at some point, so perhaps that could be fit in. Maybe after that, it would be easier for her and Jeff to come forward and get away with it. And for that matter, she was surprised they hadn't acted out a heist movie yet!
But as long as no one died and people like Alan didn't come back, Annie supposed all would be okay. It had better be all right enough to let them come back on time in September – that much she knew.
The next thing Annie knew, she felt herself waking up. In a fit of excitement, she rose up and called out "And we're back!" just like Abed. But her clock told her that it wasn't sunrise, as Annie thought it was – it was actually closer to 4 a.m. After pouting and groaning for a good 15 seconds, Annie laid back down and tried to get in three more hours of sleep somehow.
The next time Annie woke up, she checked the clock first – and found out it was only 6 a.m. But she wasn't going through this again, so she called out "And we're back!" again before going to get dressed. She wanted to wake up Troy and Abed so they'd be up and ready too – if only so she didn't kill the next aggravating 90 minutes alone. But they probably wanted their dumb sleep, and Abed likely prepared them not to get woken up by their hyperactive roomie.
So after getting dressed and triple checking her backpack in the next 10 minutes, Annie figured she'd tiptoe into the living room and try to watch TV. At least for 20 minutes before re-reading her class schedule for the next 70. However, when she sneaked into the living room, she jumped when she saw Troy and Abed already in their recliners.
"We knew you'd be up early, so we figured we'd wake ourselves up early for you," Abed explained. "Actually, we thought you'd be here a half-hour ago. If Jeff were here, he'd say your school pride was slipping."
"Well he's not, so stop accusing him, it's not his fault anyway!" Annie shot off, before apologizing and remembering Abed wasn't asking about her and Jeff. At least not this time, anyway. She only had a few weeks to keep that secret from less intuitive people, so she should cover it up a little better at the end – especially today.
"Oh God, there's a 5:40 and a 6:10 a.m. too?" Troy asked as he checked his watch. His brain was clearly too sleepy or more scrambled than usual from break, or probably both. Either way, it changed the subject and got this glorious day to a less ominous start. Yet the fact that Troy and Abed got themselves up so early for Annie – if only to avoid her waking them up herself – helped negate the rough patch already.
"Okay then. I'll make us our Thursday morning cereals, then we can watch TV and go over our class schedules! Oops, should have said spoiler alert before that one," Annie self-corrected, then left once Abed gave an approving nod.
Technically it was still like a worse Christmas morning. Although Annie was up, she still couldn't open the gift of Greendale for 105 more minutes, even with her parents/roommates up. But after three painful months of waiting for this day, she could at least try to hold out before 8:00 came.
She'd worry about the actual classes, Jeff, the weekend, the weeks after that, a shorter than usual semester, and the fate of the next two semesters a little later – probably 8:30 at the earliest. Yet at 8:00, once Annie set foot in the study room again at last, all the problems of the past and a few in the future would finally fade away. If only for a half-hour until school, Jeff and certain first times got more difficult to think about again.
Still, after all this, it had better be a really good half-hour for all she went through. She felt she deserved at least 12 of them.