There needs to be TWO HUNDRED FICS WHERE JEFF IS ANNIE'S LAWYER. Seriously, why has this trend not caught on in a massive, epic way? Fandom, don't fail me now.

Summary: AU. Jeff is Annie's lawyer. Prompted by the Placebo song "Special Needs"

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Six Months Off For Bad Behavior

"Congratulations, Annie." Jeff swung himself down into the metal chair, legs sprawling in every direction. He smiled like a thousand bucks, which-funny enough-was about how much his smile went for on a daily charge. "You, young lady, are sentenced to six months community service."

"Six months?" snapped Elijah Edison from across the table. Beside him, Annie slouched in orange coveralls. "Is that what I pay you for? What's my daughter supposed to do for six months, scrub park benches while her scholarship goes to some pimple-tongued ass kisser?"

Annie tried to hide her face in the table, but it was refusing to swallow her up. Jeff, on the other hand, relaxed into his sprawl and brought one knee up. "Community service is a cakewalk for two counts of possession and creating a public disturbance. I get paid for a lot of things," he said, and Annie's head shot up to glare murderously in his direction, head tilted in a direction her father couldn't see. It took all of Jeff's self-control not to wink.

"But wasting your money isn't one of them," he concluded, reaching out to tap the legal contract on the table. "Sign here, Miss Edison, and we'll have you out before your first group shower."

Before her father could bluster any more, Annie grabbed the single pen and scribbled her name at the bottom of the consent page. With her eyebrows raised imperiously, she shoved it across the table at Jeff. He did wink this time.

"Thank you, Annie."

She smiled a little. "You're welcome, Jeff."

"That's 'Mr. Winger', Annie," her father corrected absently. "Now let's get you out of here."

"Speaking of that," said Jeff, pulling out a reusable grocery bag and setting it on the table. "I brought a change of clothes for Annie, since I know you've been so busy at home, and they had to take her clothes as evidence. She won't be getting those back for months."

"That's very thoughtful, Mr. Winger," Annie said through her teeth.

"Very thoughtful," agreed Elijah. He frowned at the grocery bag. When he looked back up Jeff smiled benignly at him. Annie wore a matching expression of pleasant blankness as she gathered the clothes up. He added, "We'll be outside dear, when you're ready."

The guard opened the cell door and the two men sauntered out, Annie remaining behind them. After they passed through security checks and sought chairs in the entrance lobby to the jail, Elijah put his hands together between his knees and sighed.

"I've known you for six years, Jeff," he said.

Jeff nodded, making notes on a half-sized legal pad. "Has it been so long? I don't really pay attention to timelines, but I've appreciated representing you and your family. You guys are too level-headed to do anything too difficult to defend, and I've enjoyed our occasional lunches."

"In six years," said Mr. Edison, "I have never seen you wink at my daughter."

"Uh..." he was too cool to fumble the pen, but words were proving elusive. "Did you mean just now? Of course, I winked at her to signal that everything is okay, and she was getting off fairly light."

Elijah continued as if Jeff hadn't spoken. Whereas in the cell he'd been all bravado and volume, out here his voice was cool and even, the voice of a competent businessman. "If I find out that you've winked at my daughter at any time before last April when she turned eighteen, you're going to end up with your small intestines decorating my wife's sago palm."

"Right," said Jeff, and made a mental note that her birthday was in April. Girls liked it when you knew that stuff without asking. "Nothing to worry about."

Formalities concluded, the two men sat in the Greendale County jail's administration lobby and waited for Annie Edison to come back to them.