"You really thought I was actually angry at you?" Annie asked as she walked out of the bathroom into their lavish shared hotel room. Jeff took a moment to appreciate the way the towel wrapped around her slim form and how the wet and tangled mass of her hair clung to her head and neck in contrast to the way it usually hung in perfectly straight lines. She saw his appraising gaze, and merely rolled her eyes, not even bothering with a huff of annoyance. She was slowly learning how to avoid Jeff's usual array of distractions and circumlocutions when he didn't want to answer something. She merely stood at the foot of the bed and worked on drying her hair, maybe adding in a few unnecessary shimmies to tease the man. Finally he met her eyes and seemed to realize that she was not going to rise to his ogling.
"You were pretty convincing, I have to admit. The drink to the face caught me by surprise." She finished toweling away her wet tangles, so Jeff leaned over and grabbed her brush off the bedside table and tossed to her. Annie took it gratefully and began to fix the damp mess. "That was an expensive shirt, you know," he pointed out, half from habit.
"Of course it was. Why do you think I chose a glass of water? If I was being serious, I would have chose something that stained." Jeff narrowed his eyes at that, and she stuck her tongue out in reply. "Besides, we both know you aren't that shallow anymore. I mean you don't complain anymore if you lose a button when we... and you ruined your clothes for the Hunger Deans, voluntarily."
"Worse, I did a tango with him, and somehow gave him the idea to move in next door to me. Half the reason I agreed to this trip was to get away from him for a while." Annie's expression darkened at his admission.
"And the other half was to hang out at a different bar?" she snapped bitterly, catching him by surprise.
"You wanted me to come, so I did! Just like you wanted to do a couples costume, and I agreed to that, too. I'm trying to be New Jeff, here!" he shot back defensively.
"Yeah, the costume thing worked out so well, didn't it? And you didn't even go to the party in the end with me! And I wanted you to come and have fun with me, not brush me off and hang out with some random girl and a scotch!" Her hair was now ignored, and she stood with hands on her hips as she finally started venting some of her recent frustrations.
"You're actually mad, aren't you? That wasn't entirely an act earlier," Jeff guessed rather hesitantly, and she suddenly deflated. She dropped the brush on the foot of the bed and walked around to the side, sitting down and then scooting over to curl up next to Jeff. The now cooling feel of her damp hair felt weird against his bare chest, but he wasn't going to complain as she leaned into him.
"It's just that...I've been thinking about things." Jeff bit back the obvious rejoinder about how she always thought about things, but this seemed like an important moment. "About us. About what if..." she hesitated. "What if this was not an act, but it had been real." She felt Jeff tense up and waited for him to back away, to try to change the subject, but surprisingly, he didn't say anything. In fact, he grabbed the remote and clicked off the soccer game that had been playing on mute. She wasn't really much on sports, but she had learned enough to see that it had been Jeff's team playing. She stalled for time by rearranging the towel she was wearing to cover a bit more of her thighs, then finally decided that while she would rather not bring all this up in the middle of this lovely hotel room, it would be the adult thing to actually talk about her concerns with him. Especially if Jeff seemed willing to listen, at least for the moment. "I know we have never really talked about what we are, and you said you didn't want to define it, but I was imagining what it would be like if we were married, to each other."
Again, she waited for Jeff to try to change the subject, but he remained oddly still and quiet. She glanced at him quickly to make sure he had not fallen asleep or something, but he was looking at her, though avoided making eye contact. "I don't know if I was right or not, but when I imagined us together, we weren't exactly happy." She didn't go into details, but it had been along the lines of her imaginations of life as a hospital administrator that led her to start looking seriously into forensics. She hadn't changed majors yet, but she was starting to lean in that direction. Annie trailed off, having said what she was worried about, but unsure where she wanted to go with it.
"Yeah," Jeff sighed. "I have too. I can see us happy, but I can also picture what you are talking about, all to easily."
"Oh." Annie replied in a small voice. She liked Jeff, and while they had their differences, quite a few of them admittedly, when she was around him she felt more centered and confident, like a valuable person who mattered in life, rather than a little girl just going through the motions. Plus the sex was a lot of fun, as long as she didn't think too hard about where he might have learned some of his various little tricks. She also knew that she was good for him as well, letting him expose his human side more and actually act like the good man that she knew he was, rather than the gross hipster lawyer he liked to portray. But if thy both pictured their future as an unhappy one, what did that mean? Was it inevitable that what they felt would fizzle out over time, and end up a disappointment? She could tell Jeff was trying to meet her half-way on most things, and she had been resisting the urge to try to change him, but some days it was harder than others. She fought back tears at the idea that this might be the beginning of the end for them, that the person she once claimed to love and could see that becoming true was just too incompatible.
"I don't want to give up though." The words broke through her mounting misery and she looked at his face again through watery eyes, where he finally met her gaze with a pained expression. The few lines in his face that he fussed about so much were more prominent than usual as well. "You know how I feel about the idea of marriage, and a little about my Dad, and have probably figured out a lot more about my family growing up."
Annie nodded, having heard many of his rants personally, and some of the more personal stuff she found out from Britta, who was trying to be helpful, and Abed, who really could not hold his alcohol at their first Cougartown marathon and somehow got onto the topic of Jeff's character development.
"My father wasn't a very good dad, or a good husband. It's not like he beat us regularly, or tried to control our lives or any of those Lifetime Movies clichés, but he just wasn't meant to be in a family. He could be a little bit violent sometimes, and drank way too much, but most of the time he just wasn't there. Finally mom asked for a divorce, and after that was all taken care of, he would either ignore us most the time, or disappear for a while, until one day he just didn't come back." Jeff was rather matter-of-fact about the whole thing, but Annie resisted the urge to give a sympathetic aww, and simply curled into his side further. "During the divorce, the person who I looked up to were the lawyers involved, who came in, did their jobs, then went home in their fancy cars, which is why I ended up going into law myself. They seemed to have the life I wanted, without any sort of worries or stress, enjoying the nicer things. Then I came to Greendale, and met all of you, and especially you, Annie. You finally made me realize that I can care about others and still be happy myself. And you managed to wiggle into my life more and more, until when I would look inside myself at the things that made me happy, all I saw was stuff, and you. And boobs, but most of the time they were yours." His sudden joke lightened the mood for a moment, and she lightly swatted him.
"But you were young and innocent at first, and it took me a while to accept that you were growing up into a strong, smart woman. One who deserved better than me. So I tried to bury my feelings deep down, but you somehow managed to get over the crush you had and actually see something in me that I'm not sure is even there." He paused for a moment, so Annie prodded him gently to continue.
"And now we have this quiet thing going on, that the others seem to suspect even if they haven't brought it up yet," she pointed out. Shirley might know, but Pierce still liked to pretend Jeff was gay, Troy and Britta were slowly hashing out their differences and trying an actual relationship, and Abed was either too preoccupied with all the changes going on, or knew all about it and was being inscrutable.
"Yeah. I thought we had a close call at Halloween when Britta made her couples costume joke." Jeff gladly took the opportunity to change the subject for a moment, allowing him to regroup after opening up to her. "You made complete hash out of it though," he grumbled.
"Well, if we had actually talked about it, you could have explained what you meant, and I wouldn't have thought to look at Abed's movie collection for an explanation." Her voice dropped into a sultry tone. "If I had known that you were going to be showing off in silk all night..." Jeff leaned over and planted a kiss on the top of her head.
"You may not watch sports, but you were certainly interested in boxing that night!" he teased, and she blushed in memory.
"Well, I didn't hear any more complaints about my costume after I showed you what was under it, did I?" she shot back. They both thought back to later that night when she had come over to his apartment after leaving the party, finding him still wearing his costume, and the hot, sweaty passion that had followed. Jeff tried to worm a hand underneath her towel, but she slapped it away gently. "You still haven't finished yet."
"All right. Well, you are pretty distracting." She merely raised an eyebrow in a way Abed taught her. "Truth is, I bet your imaginations involved me ignoring you, or drinking, or running off with other women. Right?" She nodded. "Well, I'm scared that you might be right. And if you can't picture me as a good...husband," he choked the word out quickly, "then I don't know if I can be. I might be too much like my father, and I care about you too much to put you through all the crap that my Mom and I went through with him. That's part of the reason I tried to deny any feelings between us for so long." Now it was Annie's turn to tense, as he managed to unconsciously point out their predicament. It was like a vicious little cycle where he was scared of hurting her and backed off, making her less confident in their future and reinforcing his own fears. Not one of the romantic comedies she loved could solve that thorny problem, and Annie felt her heart tighten. She didn't want to lose Jeff, but she couldn't see a way to fix things. And the most frustrating part was that nothing really needed fixed at the moment, it was all fears about the future that threatened to become self-fulfilling. If only there was a real Inspector Spacetime to help sort out the future mess. "...that's the main reason I finally called him."
"What?" She had practically tuned out his voice as her internal doubts chewed away at her.
"I realized Gilbert and even Britta were right. That my father abandoning me affected more than I was willing to admit. So I called him, finally."
"You called him? You found him?" She had known offhandedly that he had started searching for his father, but it was not exactly a topic he had been willing to open up about to her before today.
"Yeah. That's why I didn't go to the party. I went home and drank a few glasses of scotch, looked at his old boxing gloves, and thought about how it screwed me up that he left, and how I don't want to screw up like that with you. I had his number for three weeks, but that was the first time I actually called it." Annie noticed a tension in the room, produced by the both of them, thick enough to choke on.
"What happened?"
"He answered. And I wasn't ready for it, so I hung up and almost threw my phone against the wall. But a couple more glasses of MacCallan and I tried again, and tried again. I told him who I was, and we talked for a few minutes."
"And?" she prompted. He shrugged.
"It's strange. After all these years and all the things I imagined or remembered about him, he seems like just a normal guy." He inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly. Talking to Annie was less difficult than he had imagined.
"So what happened?" Annie wondered if she would ever reach that point with her own mother, or if their acrimony was still too recent.
"I called him a few more times this last week, and he called me back once."
"That's good!" Annie encouraged and squeezed him with a hug.
"Don't ruin it by approving of it," he smirked at their private little joke. "Anyways, he asked if I wanted to meet him in person, but I said I had to think about it. I'm not sure if I am ready to go that far, yet."
"I know you are, babe," she offered. She was careful not to use the endearment in front of the others, but it just slipped out this time.
"Yeah, well, we'll see. When Shirley was talking to me about Thanksgiving and guests, I blurted out that I was talking to my dad, and she suggested I invite him. I'm not ready to face him alone, and I know that our family holiday isn't really the place, but I wanted it to be a time where you could all be there when I need support." He looked at her pleadingly, seeking her approval, and Annie felt something crystallize inside.
There was no way this man laying next to her was like his father. Her imagination, her fears, they might be true. He may be hard to open up, or try to drink away his problems sometimes, or be a bit too flirty and vain for her comfort, but she didn't give him enough credit. She didn't know if she would be able to face the elder Winger if she was in the same situation, and Jeff was doing it not just for himself, but for her, for them. Where she might have given into despair about her fears for the future, Jeff had finally decided to do something about it.
She knew he was a better person than he gave himself credit for, but this was even more than she had expected. Her imagination returned, and brought her images again of her unhappy or angry, but this time she saw Jeff there as a pillar of strength and calm in her life, and realized that she wanted to hold onto that hope tight. Jeff must have say it in her eyes, because he relaxed, and the tension seemed to drain out of first his shoulders, and then the room and they silently realized their fears were baseless.
"I'll be here for you, no matter what," she told him fiercely, "and I know you are here for me, as well." She glanced at him from beneath her lashes, the same look of hesitation and invitation he had seen once before, after she had kissed him the first time at the Tranny Dance. It was the look that had gotten Jeff into so much trouble when he had decided to kiss her back, so much drama and confusion, but now also excitement and happiness. It was a dangerous look that burned through shields and melted hearts. It wasn't a look that Jeff could return, as she had a freaky mastery over her eyes, but he could do something equally as telling.
His face stretched into the smug grin Jeff brought out for special occasions, the one that managed to mix both smug and confident into one triangular expression. "That's right. I'm here for you, no matter what, because that's what a boyfriend does for the girl he loves." It wasn't his most eloquent speech ever, but it may end up as the most profound. Annie's jaw dropped as he not only said the L-word for the first time, but willingly defined them as being in a relationship.
Finally, Jeff got tired of the serious mood the evening had taken, and reached over to roll her on top of him with a squawk, his intentions clear. "I just got a shower, Jeff!" she scolded, but her eyes glittered.
"Yeah, I can tell. You're all wet, and your damp towel is making me feel clammy." She hesitated for a moment, then her mouth met his for a kiss, and the towel joined her hairbrush at the foot of the bed.