Title: The Many-Worlds Theory (Or, A Study In Causality)
Author: wordybee
Rating: PG-13/R for language
Warnings: Swearing.
Word Count: 5000+
Disclaimer: I don't own Community
Summary: In another universe, Annie is the one who tells Jeff the kiss doesn't mean anything.
A/N: Written for a Ficcy Friday prompt over at the milady_milord LJ community.
How it starts.
It wasn't really in Annie's plan to move away from her mother's house so soon – especially since she has no job and no income beside grants for school and savings, and there is really no apartment close enough to Greendale that's within her near-nothing price range – but it happens. She finally takes a look at her pink-and-white bedroom (floral pattern wallpaper, a Princess Model vanity and bed set she's had since she was seven, stuffed animals all along the walls on shelves, named things like Goober and Mr. Rabbit and Princess Frills) with the background noise of her mother's voice shouting from the bottom of the stairs:
You were supposed to be better than this! and Think of what the women at the Garden Club are saying about me right now!
(These rants have been repeated ad nauseam since Annie broke through those windows in a drug-induced episode months ago, and they echo rants that had been repeated in different words during different periods of Annie's life.)
She decides that there's no way she'll ever be that girl. The girl who fit in this place, lived in this room with bars on its windows (because there are. Black ones that clash with the white-and-pink theme of her bedroom, made of iron and built to either keep the world out or to keep Annie out of the world; she hasn't decided yet).
That girl took one too many pills and changed herself into someone completely different.
She can move away from home and still be Annie, though. She can live on her own and still be driven, A-Type Annie Edison, future Health Administrator and Successful Career Woman. This is terribly out of her comfort zone, but it's something she has to do.
(She makes herself feel better by saying that. "It's something I have to do." That way, it's not a whim. It's not just Annie trying to live in the moment. It's Annie trying to keep on living.)
When Annie, eighteen years old and smart and poor and very much on her own, stands in front of a shop called Dildopolis holding a slip of paper that advertises ROOM FOR RENT, she keeps telling herself: It's something I have todo.
At least here, the bars on the window are necessary. It's a pretty bad neighborhood.
Annie clings tightly to the idea that this will not change her.
(She is wrong, but it's still only the smallest of steps.)
There is something terribly wrong with Jeff, he thinks. There is really no other way to explain why he'd just made out with oh my god she's only nineteen a teenager less than half an hour ago.
There is something even more wrong with him because he's actually contemplating doing it again.
Yes, god knows Annie is attractive. She is all big blue eyes and perfect smile and when her hair falls over her face and she has to brush it back in that she-doesn't-even-know-how-attractive-she-isway, well, Jeff notices. He notices a lot.
But noticing certain aesthetically pleasing parts of Annie and shoving his tongue into her mouth are twocompletely different things. He should be full of regret and shame and he should be awkwardly (with an affectation of smoothness, of course, because Jeff could obviously never be anything but smooth in a situation like this; dealing with the ladies was what he does, after all, and a brief make-out session outside the cafeteria should barely be a blip on his radar) texting Annie that they needed to keep this discreet and, by the way, never mention it to anyone, ever, and please delete it from your memory entirely. He should be insisting to her that it was a mistake, that it would never happen again, that he had no intention of ever letting it happen again because emotions had been high and neither one of them should be held responsible for what had happened that night.
He should not be entertaining the idea of texting her with plans to meet somewhere to maybe discuss how he'd very much liked kissing her, and how much he'd like to do it on a more regular basis.
Something like a groan of despair escapes from Jeff's throat and he throws himself face-down on his bed. This was stupid. This was the stupidest situation he has ever been in (and he's been in some goddamn stupid situations this past year) and he just wants it to go away.
When he realizes that he's sort of suffocating himself with his own pillow, Jeff rolls over and pulls his phone from his pocket. He turns it on, hits the buttons for a new text message to Annie, and stares at the text entry field for a few moments before typing out, We should talk, and hitting send.
(That's his first mistake.)
No matter what Jeff is thinking of doing, it was true: he and Annie should talk. They needed to talk, though Jeff would never use a word like need. He was cool, remember?
The pause after sending the message is long enough that the phone's screen goes to black, and Jeff is left staring at his own tired, slightly blurry reflection in its shiny surface.
He certainly doesn't look cool.
A buzz and chime and his reflection is gone, replaced by a new message on his screen:
FROM ANNIE
Tomorrow? Second St. Starbucks at noon.
He doesn't feel so cool, either. His throat is dry as he types and sends an agreement to the meeting place.
He has no idea what their conversation is going to be about. He has no idea what he's going to say, whatshould be said – how does he make sure that Annie isn't hurt? How does he make sure she isn't offended when he tells her they're never going to amount to anything at all? What if he tells her that they should give it a try, maybe, and screw anyone who looks at them funny? – and his mind keeps flipping back and forth between tell her it's never going to happen and kiss her in the middle of the Starbucks on Second Street, dammit, she's what you want isn't she?
Jeff doesn't fall asleep until it's nearly dawn, when his brain finally stops shuffling around different permutations of what could happen and might happen and what he wanted to happen and what should happen.
He turns his alarm off before he goes to sleep. Punctuality isn't something he's prioritizing right now.
(That's his next mistake.)
It takes a kiss from Jeff Winger and almost running off to Delaware for Annie to stop and look at her life.
There are flashing lights outside her window - blue, red, and white – that she knows are the lights of a squad car because the lights for Dildopolis's advertising campaign are only ever white and blue. The bars on that window are made of steel, and they're a necessary installment, not a paranoid fixture like the ones she'd had in her old room, in that suburban neighborhood where the worst that ever happened was someone's newspaper was swiped from a well-manicured lawn.
She is holding a canvas bag containing only a few weeks' worth of clothes, because she'd wanted to buy new clothes that fit the new her when she got to Delaware and started her new life with Vaughn. Her backpack is heavy with books she couldn't handle not taking, but the clothes – the clothes had been quite easy to pick and choose from and her closet and dresser are both nearly full with things she'd been willing to leave behind.
There is something inside Annie that wonders if maybe Jeff was always right about Greendale. Maybe that college did drive people sort of insane, get inside them like a virus and change them. There is nothing else that she can think of that could explain the person she's turning into, the person that she doesn't – can't – recognize as herself.
Annie lets her bags fall onto her couch and sighs. She sits on the edge of her bed, looks around her apartment (walls painted purple to hide the dinginess and mold, her Princess Model bedroom set bathed in the blue-red-white-blue-red-white flashing lights, the white-painted steel bars that match her bedroom set quite well, actually) and nearly jumps when her phone beeps and vibrates from the purse still slung over her shoulder. She takes it out and presses the icon alerting her of a new text.
FROM JEFF
We should talk.
Heartbeats thud painfully against Annie's chest and she closes her eyes. It feels like it did just before the breakdown, just before she went completely out of her mind and changed. The last time Annie made decisions like this she'd ended up in rehab, estranged from her family and cut off from any form of financial support. She can't deal with this, and she decides it's time to hit the breaks on her life before she spirals even further into someone she just isn't.
She realizes now that she'd been moving way too fast for it to ever succeed and it was time to backtrack before everything really went to hell.
SENT
Tomorrow? Second St. Starbucks at noon.
The response is almost instantaneous:
FROM JEFF
See you there.
Annie powers off her phone. Her head falls forward to rest on the palms of her hands and she justbreathes. She feels almost like she did in high school, all full of panic and regret and why are these things happening? She thinks about Vaughn, and Delaware, and Greendale, and Jeff, and staying, and she tries earnestly to organize everything. She tries to file and highlight and notate and alphabetize, tries to do the things she's good at.
Ranks, groups, charts, and categories have always been much easier than real life, real people, and real problems. That is, of course, the very reason why Annie's attempt to simplify the painfully complicated just doesn't work.
In the end Annie just falls back onto her pillow, fully dressed, and slips into the deep sleep of the emotionally exhausted.
Jeff wakes up at around 10:30 and his brain starts shuffling again.
Maybe you can just try something casual, he thinks as he's drinking his morning protein shake and staring at his sparsely furnished apartment.
Later, when he finishes washing his face he looks at himself in the bathroom mirror and says, "Jeff Winger, she is nineteen," and he ignores the evil part of himself that says so what?
After that, while he's brushing his teeth, he's thinking, It's not like there wasn't any chemistry. There was definitely chemistry.
While he's getting dressed, he thinks, This is ridiculous, just find a way to let her down gently and move on.
In the car he wonders if this whole situation might have ruined one of the only friendships that Jeff had. On top of a completely different friendship with Britta, which was also probably ruined.
"You've seriously fucked this up, Winger," he mutters as he pulls into the parking lot of Starbucks.
Fifteen minutes later, at 12:15 PM on a Friday as he sits at a table and watches Annie walk through the door, it's absolutely the only thing he's managed to agree with himself on.
You've seriously fucked this up, Winger.
Annie sits across from Jeff and smiles.
"Sorry I'm late," she says, "Traffic was terrible." And I had to pepper-spray a hobo in order to get into my car.
The air is full of awkwardness and the smell of overpriced coffee.
Jeff looks vaguely ill and Annie wonders if he's trying to find the words to tell her that what had happened the previous night had been a mistake, like she is. She wonders – if he is in fact trying desperately to find the right words – if he notices the irony of the manipulatively smooth, silver-tongued lawyer and the Queen of Planning Ahead being utterly without direction here. Annie takes a deep breath and opens her mouth to finally say something, anything, when Jeff suddenly sits up straight and barks, "Do you want a coffee?"
She blinks and says, "Sure," but he's gone to the counter before she even finishes the syllable. Annie weighs the weirdness potential of getting up and following him to the line for a few moments. Maybe it's easier to talk about stuff like this if you're standing up? That makes no sense, Annie, she says to herself. It's the same discussion whether they're sitting or standing and –
Jeff is suddenly back at the table. He sets something icy and topped with whipped cream in front of her then folds himself back into his chair.
"How long were you gone?" Annie asks, shocked at his sudden return. Jeff raises an eyebrow. Annie shakes her head and takes a deep breath. Now or never, Edison,
"Jeff, I know you're trying to find the best way to tell me that last night never happened but you don't have to worry, I totally get it and you don't have to say anything – I know you, Jeff, and I know you were in a weird place mentally last night, with Slater and Britta (have you spoken to Britta yet, by the way?) and everything that happened and I don't know, maybe the kiss was something like a manifestation of your happiness that I wasn't moving away? Which would be very sweet, but of course I did kiss you first and you just reacted to the moment, and for that I'm really, really sorry – I crossed some lines, I think, and I'd like to just re-draw those lines right now so that we can be friends again without all this discomfort because you're one of my best friends, Jeff, and I really don't want to lose you."
Slightly embarrassed by her sudden verbal flash flood, Annie sucked a bit of her coffee through her straw and tried her best not to turn a completely obvious shade of bright red. Jeff looked about as bemused as she felt, with his mouth hanging open slightly and his eyes wide.
"I… uh… Yeah," is all he says and Annie smiles, nodding to herself. Good, that's settled.
There's a piece of Annie that's disappointed, of course – Jeff is attractive, cool, and kissing him had been one of the most thrilling, wonderful moments of Annie's life – but she stamps that down immediately. She'd only been saving Jeff from saying what would basically be the same thing (though Annie thinks Jeff would have probably worded the ideas a lot better, and would've maybe paused for breath at some point) after all, so it didn't matter. It completely, totally did not matter, and it was all for the best. Everything would go back to normal, back to before she'd made ridiculous decisions about her life and nearly messed it all up.
She says, "This is good coffee," and waits for everything to fall back into place.
Classes start up again and Jeff faces Annie for the first time in months, since that meeting at the Starbucks on Second, where he'd almost fucked up everything by finally deciding what he was going to say ("I liked kissing you, Annie," he was going to tell her, and he was going to follow that statement up with – not "however" or "that being said" or "but" – something along the lines of "I think we could work.") Thank god Annie had spoken first.
Thank god.
(Jeff suspects that if the timing had been different – if Annie had arrived just ten minutes earlier, or twenty minutes later, his words would've been very similar to hers. But she hadn't, and Jeff's cycle of Let her down gently and I think we could work thought processes had been in the I think we could workphase.)
Annie's choice had been absolutely fortuitous, not disappointing or nausea-inducing at all. Jeff had totally not scowled at everything afterward, fuming with some unnamable anger that wasn't quite jealousy and wasn't quite resentment but some weird hybridization of the two. And he hadn't purposely ignored Annie's texts for a month. He'd been busy. She knew that.
(And, after all that stuff that didn't happen, Jeff realized he was being a middle school girl about the whole thing. He picked up his phone the next time Annie called, and almost accepted an invitation to lunch. He'd hung out with Troy and Abed that summer, and had had drinks with Shirley one night, and lunch with Annie was not a big deal. Not at all. But there was something that made him say, "Maybe some other time," and even though Annie had responded with a cheerful, "Okay," he and Annie still didn't make any plans with each other for the rest of the summer.)
Within the context of Greendale, with the other members of the group standing around him and smiling, Jeff settles that part of him that had been angry at Annie's rejection (seriously, he was Jeff Winger. She should've been totally head-over-heels for him! Not that he'd want that, of course, because that would be awkward). He can feel things slipping back into the usual GCC groove and he thinks, This is exactly what I needed to get over last semester.
Then Britta's a school hero, Jeff is a pariah, there's an anthropology professor that obviously wants him – and all her other students, probably – dead, Annie is as friendly-cheerful-naively lovely as she was last year (she's back to skirts and dresses in floral patterns and bright colors, the professor look now apparently tucked back into the dark recesses of her closet) and in spite of all the insanity that happens that first week of classes, Jeff can't help but reserve a part of his mind to feeling slightly… disappointedthat the kiss with Annie was so easy for her to forget.
He tells himself that it's just his bruised ego that's bothering him and resolves to focus more on surviving another year at Greendale and less on his nineteen-year-old friend.
Annie sabotages Greendale's Space Simulator because she knows that her priority should be school, should always be school, and if Greendale is known as the school with a butt flag she doesn't want to be a part of it. She would rather be at City College, where things are taken so much more seriously, where she might actually get an education that helps her in her career.
(It isn't Jeff she's avoiding. It isn't.)
She knows she's had fun at Greendale. She knows that, last semester, she would have done just about anything to keep the friends she made – and she did – but she also knows that "friends" were not a priority. They are not listed in her plan, not like Earn a Master's Degree in Health Administration orGet an internship. Those are the important things, and City College is the place she needs to be in order to achieve them.
(The piece of Annie that forever lives in high school, alone and friendless and work-work-work tells her,Are you insane? Make friends! You'll get a career either way, but you'll never get friends like these!and as she's talking to City College's Dean she spends the entire time trying to shut it up.)
All it takes is some discussion of times and locations and the deal is done. Annie can go to City College and get back on track in life, starting immediately.
(She's wrong. It's okay, though.)
The year has not been as ideal as Jeff would have liked. He's spent most of it trying to avoid looking at Annie for longer than socially acceptable and for his troubles and self-restraint the Universe had locked him in a room with her. Near-naked. Both of them.
The rest of the group is there too, but the rest of the group hasn't been the source of his personal frustration since summer.
Because, as much as Jeff would truly like to believe that he was capable of putting Annie out of his mind, he knew deep down that he wasn't.
Timing is everything.
(If Annie had arrived just ten minutes earlier or twenty minutes later…)
The timing was off and Jeff's universe was off and there is a half-naked Annie Edison across the room from him. He is angry because he is naked, too, and because he'd spent all day locked in a room with his friends because Annie's pen was missing and Jeff had to care that Annie's pen was missing.
(If Jeff had just texted his rejection: impersonal and so very him. If he'd done it instead of inviting Annie out to talk… If he'd done it as soon as he'd gotten home, when he'd been at his most self-condemning…)
He is angry because Annie had spoken first, and she wasn't interested, even though he is Jeff Winger and they were so in sync, like a perfect duet or great se—
Had she read this all wrong?
Jeff has been normal with her. There were a couple moments at the beginning of the year where he was a bit off – gave her significant looks and smiles, talked to her in that kind of sincere voice, the one he'd used during their heart-to-heart after the Transfer Dance – but for the most part, he'd just been Jeff. He'd been flirty-snappy with Britta (and when she'd found out that Jeff and Britta had had sex because Britta had told her during what she'd called a Cliché Female Bonding Session, well… Annie insisted to herself it didn't matter, filed that painful stuttering in her heart away in her head and marked it DO NOT OPEN UPON PENALTY OF MESSING UP EVERYTHING YOU'VE WORKED SO HARD FOR. SERIOUSLY, ANNIE, LEAVE IT ALONE, THIS ISN'T PART OF THE PLAN) and as charming with every attractive woman he met as he ever was. There had been very little sign that Jeff even remembered the Tranny Dance kiss, let alone cared about Annie in any more non-platonic a way because of it.
But now Annie is standing in the men's bathroom and Jeff is leaning over the sink, and she's confused and furious with him because he's acting like they'd been something more when they'd both agreed (they'd both agreed!) that nothing was going to happen. He's acting like a spurned boyfriend in a jealous snit, and she's just angry because if he felt anything for her at all, he should've said so.
"Jeff, can you please explain to me what the hell you've been doing?"
Jeff frowns at her and continues washing his hands, "Well, Annie, when a man loves food and beverages –"
"Cut the crap, Winger," she snaps, much to Jeff's obvious surprise. "We agreed that last semester wasn't a big deal. We both sat down and decided that it was a mistake, and we weren't going to let it affect our friendship, so what is your deal with Rich?"
"I've hated Rich since pottery class, Annie, and if I recall correctly, you word-vomited something about mistakes and friendship at me in the middle of a Starbucks and I had very little to say on the matter."
He breezes past her and out the door, and Annie doesn't really know what's just happened. She stands in silence until the door opens again and Britta stumbles in.
"Annie?" the other woman asks. There's an extended silence while the two contemplate the fact that they're grown women who have somehow both found themselves standing in the men's bathroom.
Britta frowns. "Have you seen Jeff?"
Annie lets out a frustrated growl and stomps out of the room.
There is something in her that wants to keep stomping until she reaches Rich. She wants to ask him out. She would stand in front of him and edge into something like, Maybe some coffee? and she would use all the flirtatious charm she'd acquired since arriving at Greendale and realizing she wasn't acne-ridden, metal-mouthed Annie Adderall anymore. She wants to think that Rich would agree, and they would go out on their little coffee date and she would giggle at his anecdotes or gasp at his more heroic actions or listen intently and aw as he waxed poetic on his passion for helping helpless animals. On their date, she wouldn't think about Jeff Winger once, and it'd serve him right to be not-thought-about because Jeff Winger is an infuriating jerk.
Annie goes home. She drinks a fruit smoothie and watches her tiny, cheap television until she falls asleep around one.
Greendale once again looks like a warzone. Or, perhaps, the dilapidated shell of a building used as the site for a particularly war-like rave.
Jeff is walking to his car from the main office of Greendale, where he – along with every other student involved in the paintball fight – had had to sign some forms about damage done to the school and the summer semester cleanup and some other crap he hadn't actually read or cared about. Just another year at Greendale Community College, really.
Around this time last year, he'd kissed Annie. He'd been sitting in a Starbucks and options – good ones, bad ones, morally grey ones – had been cycling through his head because he'd just kissed his nineteen-year-old friend, and she'd told him she wasn't interested.
Now Jeff holds his car keys in his hand and is walking through the near-deserted parking lot and hethinks.
A year ago, Annie had walked through a Starbucks door not ten minutes earlier or twenty minutes later but at 12:15 PM. She'd actually been late, which wasn't like her, and Jeff had been early, which wasn't like him. She had been the first to speak, and the words out of her mouth were the ones that Jeff hadn't wanted to hear at the time. Their little dynamic hadn't been quite the same since, and Jeff can probably admit that he'd been a little jealous and resentful.
Okay, a lot jealous and resentful.
(In another universe, Jeff had been late to Starbucks. He'd bought Annie a coffee just the same, but he'd spoken first and he'd said things like Let's use discretion and it was a mistake. Annie had nodded and smiled but she'd been too happy to really take those words in, and when classes started up again she'd been more than a little love-struck. That Annie had wanted a relationship and Jeff and something brightin her life. This Annie had wanted stability and normalcy and something that kept her life on track.)
Now Annie – an orange Annie, which makes Jeff smirk – is standing next to Jeff's car.
"I hope you don't think you're getting in my car covered in paint," he tells her, but he's smiling as he says it. She's smiling back.
"Please? I really don't want to go on the bus like this."
"The bus?" Jeff jingles his keys in his hand – not quite nervously, but just as something to do. He eyes Annie suspiciously. "Is a hobo holding your car hostage again?"
There's a blush that's visible even through the orange paint. "I'm out of pepper spray. And there's a chance he's hostile toward the color orange, by the way, so would it be okay if you maybe walked me to my door?"
Jeff sighs. "Fine," he says. He unlocks the car and pops the trunk, where he keeps a bunch of stuff he'd never bothered to clear out from when he was living in his car. There's a towel back there that's mostly clean, a clean t-shirt, and a blanket that smells like mothballs.
Jeff gives Annie the shirt to put on over her clothes and lines the passenger seat of the car with the blanket and towel. She grins at him and gets in, awkwardly holding what Jeff recognizes as Abed's (or, rather, Starburn's) vest in her lap.
"What's with that, anyway?"
Another blush through orange paint, and Jeff tells himself not to be jealous of whatever it is. It's Abed, after all. It's just emotionally clueless Abed (Who has quite a record for charming women, Jeff's subconscious supplies). He gets behind the wheel of the car.
"Nothing, really," Annie says, but she settles the vest a little more closely to her body.
By the way she's acting, Jeff doubts that it's nothing, but he puts his seatbelt on and puts the key in the ignition and doesn't push the subject for fear of jealousy raising its ugly green head again and getting a repeat of the Rich Incident. He pauses before turning the car on. He looks at himself in the rearview mirror and is about to speak when Annie speaks instead,
"We were in Starbucks last year," she says. A smile flutters across her face and she turns to Jeff, "I mean, you remember last year?"
"I was just about to mention that, actually."
Annie fidgets with the vest. Orange paint flecks off of her and there's really nothing Jeff can do about it.
"Do you ever think about… What we talked about?"
Jeff blinks, wary. "Yes."
"I think we made the right choice," says Annie, and Jeff's chest constricts.
He was about to say the complete opposite.
"A lot's changed in a year though," Annie continues. Jeff is watching the dusting of orange paint more than he's looking at her. "I think I've kind of figured out what I'm supposed to be doing… I think that… conversation we had, that's what did it. I feel like I got a chance to deal with some stuff, more than I would have if we'd… Um…"
"If we'd started dating."
"Yeah."
A lot's changed in a year, though, Jeff repeats her words in his head. He finally looks Annie in the eyes and finds that she's already looking at him. Probably has been the entire time he's been awkwardly staring at the orange specks now scattered all over his car's interior. The vest is at her feet and she's leaning closer toward him, which surprises Jeff.
"To be honest, Annie, I haven't really stopped thinking about that conversation since it happened."
Annie nods.
(In another universe, Annie isn't ready to tell Jeff Winger she's actually interested in him. In another universe, Jeff Winger isn't ready to hear it. In that universe Annie hadn't wanted plans and stability and therefore hadn't realized she didn't need them, not to the point of excluding all else. In that universe, Jeff isn't conscious of Annie as anything but potential trouble for him. There, they are both emotionally and mentally too immature for anything beyond friendship, anything beyond recognizing a mutual attraction, and while it's perfectly possible that, in that other universe, the time for them to fess up and realize what's in front of them is still quite a ways in the future, in this universe it is not.
Timing is important.)
Jeff kisses Annie. It's quick and almost chaste, considering that he's Jeff Winger and everything. He kisses her because he realizes now that the only option cycling through his head is I think we could workand he's not sure when that became his only choice, but he's glad it is.
Fifteen minutes earlier.
Annie catches sight of herself in a window and she laughs. She's covered in paint that smells, that tightens her skin in an uncomfortable way as it dries, and that will probably result in being attacked by the crazy hobo that hangs out in the Dildopolis parking lot, but she laughs.
Being involved in the second school-sponsored paintball war in as many years was not part of her plan. Being covered in bright orange paint from head to toe was not part of her plan. Kissing yet another friend – albeit a friend who was definitely playing a part – and realizing that she really did want to be kissing that other friend was not part of the plan.
Annie checks the time on her cell phone and hopes she's not too late.
As she's standing next to Jeff Winger's Lexus she thinks, Screw the plan.
She waits.
He arrives.
Things go wonderfully off track.