This is an alternate version of what occurs after 1.22, "The Art of Discourse". Anything that happened on the show subsequent to that episode has been ignored.
Certain aspects of the story have been adjusted, such as the location of the newspaper office. Here it's in the library, but the show never makes it clear exactly where it is, and it may be in another campus building. I am also choosing to exclude the "Banged Mark's mother. Twice." caption shown in 1.22 from events.
Any other errors are because of my oversight, and feel free to point them out. All comments and criticisms are welcome as well, of course.
Jeff Winger doesn't like to think about how his life has regressed in the past nine months. How he had been a powerful, justifiably prideful individual with a valuable professional degree and the income to match, a man in the prime of his career, physical attraction, and sexual prowess, a man who was assured a steady stream of bedmates, the quality and desirability of which was only rivaled by his stellar credit score. How his moments of poor judgment and immaturity only occurred while in extremis, or when under the effects of expensive alcohol, a recalcitrant judge, or a few discretely-ingested lines of fine white powder.
Now he's crouched in the shadows of a darkened hallway in the library of a third-tier, barely-accredited community college, playing a game of hide-and-go-seek with a senior citizen, a single parent, an underachieving malcontent, and three recent high school graduates, and all he's got left of his prized list of attributes are the ones having to do with his corporeal self, even if he hasn't gotten laid since Amber and the cafeteria menu is wreaking untold damage upon his abdominals and arteries.
At least it's high-stakes hide-and-go-seek. Finals week is getting to all of them. First to be found has to ingest various remnants of the week's worth of fast-food and cafeteria detritus which has been retrieved from Abed's dorm, dark corners of their study room, and the group's cars and backpacks. Ingredient combinations are to be chosen by Abed and pureed in a blender he'd produced with a flourish. "It is derivative, I know," he'd said. "Several sitcoms have used this device, and it's usually employed to exemplify the immaturity of adolescent characters, but in this situation I think it will give a classic playground game that extra fillip of excitement and danger."
Not Jeff's idea of prime hijinks, especially when the probability that he will fail at least two of his classes is interrupting his sleep and rendering even the most palatable study-snacks indigestible lumps in his stomach, and if he can't pass these fucking remedial high-school classes how does he have a chance in fuck of retrieving his career before he's forty? But that's not the issue here: he is doing this for the rest of the group. They all need a break from the stress. Britta has been as prickly as if she were once again experiencing nicotine withdrawals, Troy has been muttering Biology definitions under his breath for days, and Shirley has been vehemently deeming everything to be not nice at all. Plus, yesterday he had been sent on a mission by the rest of the group to talk Annie through an anxiety attack after she had incorrectly conjugated three consecutive irregular Spanish verbs and had locked herself in the dankest ladies' room on campus. She had finally stuck her face around the door, pale and desperate but dry-eyed.
"I'm going to fail, aren't I? I'm going to fail here and be stuck in community college forever and never transfer to a university and never get into graduate school and never get a good job and my life is a complete waste just because of one mistake I made in high school and it's not fair! But I probably can't perform without pills anyway, and my GPA last semester was just a fluke and now - "
He had wedged a shoulder behind the door and then put a hand on her shoulder. "Annie. Stop."
And she had opened the door the rest of the way and just sort of melted onto him, not hugging him, but leaning on his chest and letting him take most of her weight. The memory of how nice it had been still disturbs him. He would like to believe it was simply because of the human comfort – soft mother monkey instead of wire mother and primates' need for touch and all those sociological details – but the way she had turned her head into his chest with something alarmingly close to a nuzzle had shot straight to his gut and made him jerk his spine straight as he had attempted to create distance between their bodies. "Crick in my back," he grinned down at her, disguising his reaction. "C'mon, we've got studying to do."
He's got a real crick now from squatting so long, more like a charley horse really, and Abed is taking his sweet time in his seeking mission. He's stiffening up and he's bored without even his iPhone to entertain himself (Abed had insisted that all cell phones be left in the study room "to discourage cheating by collaboration," and that had nearly made the group mutiny). Ready to stand up and lean against the wall, fearsome loser's penalty be damned, Jeff is suddenly silenced by someone's hand over his mouth and half-blinded by long hair draping around his face as they lean over him from behind. "Shhh!" Annie hisses in his ear.
"Mmph." He tries to pry her hand off his mouth, finally succeeding before standing and turning to face her.
"You've got to help me! And yourself!" she whispers frantically. "Abed found a can of sardines in Pierce's car. I heard him laughing about it with Troy. Those are going in the blender and I can't eat that no matter what! We have to hide somewhere better!"
He rolls his eyes but nods in acquiescence, because the thought of a sardine smoothie is turning his stomach too, and this half-assed hiding place won't cut it. "I know a place," he says. "Follow me." Without thinking, he holds out his hand. She takes it, suddenly smiling up at him and giving a little bounce on the balls of her feet.
"This is kind of fun though, isn't it?"
"Kid, you need to get out more often." But he doesn't let go of her hand.
As far as he can tell, the library is completely deserted aside from their group. Even the front check-out desk is unmanned, even though the library is open 24 hours a day during finals week. Either someone is napping on the job, or the campus is relying on the keycard-activated doors to keep out all but students. He almost doesn't expect them to reach their destination without being spotted by Abed's eagle eye, but they make it to the little campus newspaper office unhindered.
Annie frowns. "In here? It'll be the first place he looks."
"Nope. In here."
Here is the office's tiny closet, the door of which is almost completely hidden behind a hulking and obsolete overhead projector on a wheeled cart. It is astonishingly heavy and precariously balanced, as Jeff discovers as he shoves it to the side just enough to get the closet door open before grabbing for the a broken backpack strap that's been laying on the office floor for months.
"We're going in and it's going half-way in front of the door. Thing hasn't been moved since the Clinton administration or the invention of PowerPoint, whichever came first." As he talks he's tying one end of the strap around a leg of the cart. He ushers her into the closet, then squats down, sticks an arm out of the partially closed door, and with strap in hand begins pulling the cart back into position.
"PowerPoint," Annie says from behind him. "That was in 1987, but I'm pretty sure they would've used this after that. And I was in elementary school during the Clinton administration, and I still remember projection screens being used then...are you sure that's a good idea?"
"Christ." He's irritated with the effort of pulling the beast, and with one last heave he gets it close to where he wants it. "You said you didn't want to be found. No way Abed's looking back here." Jeff stands up, flips on the light, and closes the closet door with a little more force than necessary.
Which is a mistake. The strap, still partially inside the closet and still attached to the cart, is closed firmly between the door and the jamb, and Jeff's slam exerts enough force on the strap to topple the projector off of the cart and onto the floor directly in front of the closet door. It makes an impressive crash.
"He'll definitely hear that!" Annie yelps. Jeff is going to open the door quietly to assess the damage, but the door doesn't open. Within six tries, his attempts have escalated from doorknob-jiggling to full-on shoulder slams, all to no avail.
"Wait, can we not get out? Maybe the strap is making the door stick. Here, let me try, Jeff." He lets her, since his efforts have dwindled to sub-vocal but heartfelt swearing.
"It's wedged shut somehow, maybe with the projector in front of the cart in front of the desk, I don't know," he says. It's only now that that he begins to realize just how tiny the closet is. It must have been built specifically for the projector and its cart, since it's no more than four feet by five and illuminated by a miniature fixture containing a bulb that's a dim thirty watts. Probably the whole thing isn't up to code for the 21st century; it's a lawsuit waiting to happen. There is a large grilled vent cover on the ceiling, so there must be some air flow.
"Don't just stand there, help me! Maybe both of us can get it open if we shove together." Annie is brimming with frustration.
It's worth a try. "Okay. You stay in front and keep the knob turned. On three, throw all your weight against the door." He'll have to stand behind her and use his hands over her head, since there's no room to push side-by-side. "One. Two. Three." The door doesn't budge.
"Go again!" she says. They do, and again.
He hangs his head down between his arms. "Annie, it's not working. You're just wearing yourself out." She doesn't, though, and keeps shoving against the door ineffectually. But each time she does she leans back a little farther until her bottom comes into direct contact with his groin and, as if burned, he lunges backward the scant distance the closet allows.
"Whoa!" He reaches for her upper arms to draw her away from her assault on the door, but she whirls around to glare at him.
"I knew it wasn't a good idea to put that thing in front of the door! Now we're stuck in here for who-knows-how-long and it's your fault! What if we're still in here during finals? What if we miss them and get an automatic fail?"
"Hold on, how is this my fault again? It was your desperate flight from sardine smoothies that made us come in here; if it hadn't been for you I'd still be snug in that hallway looking forward to watching Pierce consume pureed garbage!" They're both upset.
He sees the anger go out of her face at almost the same moment when logic seeps into his brain. "Well - "
"Yeah - " They both begin at once.
Annie goes first because he is a gentleman. "It won't do any good to fight. We were both stupid and short-sighted," she allows graciously.
"Plus, there's no way we're in here for more than a few hours, worst case scenario. The newspaper nerds are still working on the last edition of the semester, and they'll let us out first thing. It's, what, one AM now? Then - only six more hours." It's a sad solution, and he knows it.
Annie slumps visibly. "I need to be studying, not stuck in a closet. Or at least getting REM sleep in order to solidify what I've learned into my long-term memory!"
"Well, there is the air vent." He gestures toward it. "I've got it on good authority that Troy and Abed have explored most of this campus's duct work, so you might fit?"
She grimaces, but nods. "How will I get up, though?"
He leans down and makes a step with his joined hands. "Step in with a foot and I'll hoist you."
It's when he's got one of her feet in each of his hands that Jeff wonders why he didn't suggest her getting on his back instead. Annie's not heavy, but his arms and chest are already beginning to burn even with his back braced against the wall. She shifts forward as she fumbles overhead with the vent cover, and in doing so brings her skirt-clad abdomen into full contact with his face.
With what he considers astonishing moral fortitude, he turns his face to the side, sets his mind on uplifting topics, and asks her, "What do you see? Can you get the cover off?"
"Yes, it's got thumb twists to hold it, not screws." The vent cover twangs as she pries an edge of it away from the wall.
"Got it?"
"Uh, let me see – oh, no!" she wails. "The duct is tiny! It doesn't match the size of the cover at all, and there's no way I can get in there!"
"What?" he snaps. "That's impossible." He cranes his neck up to see between her outstretched arms as she looks down at him, which shifts their balance just enough to start her swaying dangerously.
"I'm going to fall, let me down!" she gasps.
"Bend down and put your hands on my shoulders." When she does, he tries to transfer his grip from her feet to her waist, but he nearly drops her instead, and she slips partway down his body before getting a solid grip where she clings fast, legs wrapped around his waist and arms clasped at his shoulders. It costs him a grunt of effort to remain upright, and he shifts to let her down when he realizes she has made no move to do so, and is staring him straight in the face.
"You okay?" he asks, still panting a bit with exertion, and beginning to realize the intimacy of their position.
Instead of replying, she brings her lips to his, and licks into his shock-slackened mouth with considerably more enthusiasm than finesse. Jeff discovers two things in short order: first, that his recovery time in regards to Annie's unexpected decisions has improved, and second, that his dick does not care about the niceties of her kissing technique.
Furious that he somehow deems it necessary, he breaks away from her after a few heady seconds. "What about Vaughn?" he asks, and hates how breathless his voice sounds.
"Broke up with him last month. I don't think our personalities were a good match." He can't argue with that, and she doesn't give him a chance to before she seals her mouth back over his.
Jeff knows he should have at least several more important objections, but ignores them all in favor of sliding down the wall to a more comfortable position sitting on the floor, with Annie now straddling his lap. He looks down to see that her skirt has rucked up obscenely around her hips, and tries not to focus on the triangle of white cotton between her pale thighs. Nine-months-ago Jeff would have slipped his fingers into those panties without a moment of contemplation. Nine-months-ago Jeff also wouldn't have been making out with a teenager in a closet, but that's beside the point. He's a better man now, and he needs to be the literal and figurative adult in the situation and end it gracefully, no matter how amazing Annie's lips feel on his neck.
His resolve vanishes when Annie takes his hand in hers, and brings it up to her breast. He cups it instinctively, and runs his thumb over the nipple. Jeff can feel her breath against his jaw as she whimpers, so he does it again, intensely grateful for the filmy blouse and lace bra that allows him to do so. That's when she begins to wiggle in his lap, at first tentative, but then her hips start a rhythm and he realizes what she's doing. Annie's eyes are closed and she's biting her bottom lip between her teeth as she moves, and it's the hottest fucking thing he's seen in his life. She's rocking right over his dick, which is hard and throbbing inside his jeans, making this equal parts pleasure and torture. He wills his hips to keep perfectly still, to not thrust up against her like he so desperately wants. Annie moans and shudders, then collapses against him, limp, her face buried against his shoulder. Jeff smooths her hair behind her ear and presses a kiss against her temple. Not something he'd ordinarily do, but by now he's so far off the charts that it scarcely matters.
He is, he reflects, a lecher and a fool. A very aroused lecher and fool. "Annie, could you - ?" he puts his hands on her shoulders to shift her.
"What?" she looks up at him, then glances down at his lap. "Oh." She blushes painfully and scrambles up, pulling her skirt back in to place as he gets to his feet and attempts to readjust his pants. The closet seems even smaller than it was before, if that were possible.
They don't meet one another's eyes, so to break the silence he says, "Guess the vent's out as an option, then."
"What? Oh, right. Yes, that's...not practicable."
A familiar voice penetrates their prison. "Jeff? Annie? You in there?"
"Abed! Yes!" Jeff yells.
"Both of us are in here, Abed. Can you get to the door? It's stuck." Annie sounds perfectly normal.
There are heavy scraping sounds as Abed drags away the impediments. Jeff shoves the door open, and Abed sticks his head in. "Found you."
"Is the game still going on?" Annie asks.
"Nope. Britta found out we were going to put sardines in the concoction and she called the game off because she said we were threatening her vegetarianism. I wouldn't have been able to find her first, anyway." Abed shrugs, then cocks his head to the side. "You know, the two of you being stuck in here like this reminds me of the classic caper film How to Steal a Million. Audrey Hepburn. Peter O'Toole. They have to share a tiny closet, which leads to propinquity issues and a predictable, if well-filmed, romantic sequence."
Jeff uses his exasperated voice. "Abed, that's absurd, those are spoilers, and are you going to let us out of here, or keep blocking the door all night?"
Abed steps aside. "I know, but since I'm pretty certain Annie's seen it and you probably don't care, it didn't seem important to give a spoiler warning. Why didn't you yell? I would have found you earlier."
"Ahh - " Jeff begins weakly.
"We didn't want to be found first, and besides, we could've gotten that door open from the inside, right Jeff?" Annie finishes for him.
"Sure, right." he agrees.
"So, Abed." Annie walks alongside him as they lead the way back to the study room. "What happened to your concoction?" she asks brightly.
"Troy drank it. He said it reminded him of a protein shake, and wasn't half bad, actually. Then Pierce wanted some, but there wasn't enough to go around, so he left to buy more sardines."
Outside the door of the study room, Jeff pulls Annie back to stand beside him. "Have you seen How to Steal a Million?" he asks her.
"Yes," she smiles up at him.