The biggest of thanks go out to Hypnotoad76 for the original idea, to crittab for saving me from screwing it up too bad, and to the readers and reviewers – all of them.

Annie didn't hallucinate or pass out on the way to the hospital; thank God for small favors.

Jeff drove her in his Lexus, while Troy, Abed and Britta squeezed into the backseat to soothe her. Much to her relief, Troy didn't make any ambulance siren noises, Abed didn't use any ER gibberish, and Shirley backed down without a fight when she lost a "rock, paper scissors" game to Britta and had to ride with Pierce.

In any case, they checked Annie into the hospital and then began the longest waiting game of their lives.

Not all of it was spent waiting for Annie, however. The police interviewed them to confirm what happened, and Jeff handed over the pen camera to help seal Annie Kim's fate. But re-telling everything that happened, reliving how he knocked away the coffee – and why he was frightened enough to do it – did a number on Jeff.

Troy, Abed and Britta, sensing his distress, opted to distract him for a few moments, much to his relief and annoyance. Despite the irritation of Britta's "director's cut" of her most infamous rants, their efforts did help Jeff get his mind off Annie for a little while, if nothing else.

But unbeknownst to Jeff, their efforts were not only a distraction from the situation with Annie. They were also a distraction from the guilt-ridden Rich, who had entered the waiting room not long after they did. Technically, he was responsible for giving Annie Kim those pills, but he just seemed so sad, and he was so lovable that they just couldn't let Jeff kill him. Of course Rich understood, because he was sickeningly good like that; he left long before Britta ran out of material.

Rich's departure turned out to be well timed, as Annie's doctors chose that minute to reappear and give the group the news.

Annie would be fine. They'd pumped her stomach as a precautionary measure, but Annie Kim had only succeeded in forcing a few new pills down there, leaving Annie's mind relatively stable.

The next few hours went by in a blur for Jeff. But it wasn't like he was just moping and waiting around. Shirley let it slip that she got a text from Rich, then Jeff asked out loud if he could call the cops back over for another statement, get Rich shot in friendly fire, and get a vacation in the mental ward.

Then the group remembered to ask him what the hell he and Annie had been doing since yesterday. Jeff responded by lecturing them for not believing Annie, and then they got kicked out of the waiting room at least twice before finally shutting up.

But for all the arguing, Jeff couldn't remember any of it by the end. Annie was still too fresh on his mind, even though he knew she was alive and healthy. It was almost like his brain, or some other organ, wouldn't be satisfied until she was here and in his –

In his orbit. That was all.

But even Jeff knew that was a new low for his denial. As if slapping away drugged coffee and barely having it work out could be topped.

"Jeff?"

However, seeing Annie walk towards them, and pretending he didn't almost leap up and hug her on the spot, might have come close.

Still, Jeff managed to get up with a bit more dignity than that. He waited until Shirley and Britta hugged Annie before hugging her, then made sure to note that she spent less time hugging Troy, Abed and Pierce. But before he got too caught up in that, he remembered there was something he had to remind the others to do.

"Annie, I've filled the others in on our investigation. And now that all the facts are out, I believe they have some words for you. Right?" Jeff asked without leaving any wiggle room.

The others looked appropriately guilty, even without Jeff's glares, as Shirley spoke for them first. "Annie, we realized that maybe we….assumed the wrong things about you."

"Not that it was our fault! But maybe we made things too easy for that psycho Annie, I guess," Britta added awkwardly.

"In TV we'd be instantly forgiven, so that the status quo would return to normal next week. Unless we were in a February sweeps arc. But if you wanted to prove we're not on TV by not forgiving us…..we'd completely understand. You deserve to be angry at us for a few sweeps periods," Abed admitted.

"It'll be the hardest thing I've ever done to cut my pill stories to a PG-version! But I'll do it to help you get better, and that's how sorry I am!" Pierce promised.

"Aw, Pierce…." Annie complemented, which made Jeff both relieved and upset that she was still so forgiving. But there was one more piece of the sorry puzzle left.

"Troy? You roped them all into this crusade in the first place. Care to end it now?" Jeff insisted.

Troy stepped forward with a sad look on his face. But it wasn't his cartoony sad face before a bout of cartoony crying.

"Annie, this is my fault. They wouldn't have thought you were riding the Adderall monkey if I didn't think it first," Troy confessed. "This is what thinking does when it's in the wrong brain!"

"Troy, your brain wasn't all wrong. None of your brains were," Annie acknowledged.

"But you didn't take it on purpose, and I should have known that!" Troy pressed. "You kept saying you weren't who you were in high school anymore. The funny thing is, I went so nuts because I didn't want to be who I was either. I didn't want to be that guy who ignored you and didn't help you when you were in trouble. Not again."

"You couldn't have helped me then because you didn't know me," Annie remembered. "And as much as I obsessed over you, I didn't know you either."

"But I know you now, so there's no excuse," Troy answered back. "I mean, you're my roommate. And you're my best friend, too. At least my best friend who's not also my soul mate." Both Abed and Britta lit up a little bit from that, then looked somewhat uncertain.

But for once, Troy didn't notice either of them as he finished up with Annie. "I didn't want you to be all alone and on drugs this time. You shouldn't be any of those things, anyway. I just tried to prove it all wrong, that's all."

"Troy, you haven't been 'that guy' for a long time. I knew that long before all of this," Annie smiled.

"Well, I'm never gonna think you could be that girl in high school again, just in case. Like we should have done and we're all gonna do from now on. You're that important to us," Troy promised.

Annie didn't say anything, but she said enough when she went over to hug Troy. The rest of the group added exclamation points by making it a group hug, But Jeff went to the back in case he looked too uneasy, since Troy was the one who said those words to Annie instead of….other people.

After they broke apart, Jeff stayed quiet as he watched Annie fill in the rest of what happened, how she'd need to rest in bed for the weekend, and how she'd be starting group therapy after school every day. This meant she'd have to cut down her school work for her final semester as a result.

She didn't seem too upset about that – and something else about her looked off to Jeff as well.

As such, when they finally had to leave the hospital, Jeff volunteered to drive Annie home. Her car had been parked in Greendale since Thursday morning, and the group wasn't up to challenging Jeff again just yet. After exchanging a few more hugs with the gang, Annie went back into the Lexus to start her trip home.

Halfway through the ride, Jeff couldn't ignore how Annie hadn't said a word. He broke the silence and the ice with a bit of bragging, to fall back on comfortable stand bys. "Well, at least I shamed them into a good apology. You'd think your awesome Annie Kim slam down would have been enough, but I had to finish the job. So you weren't the only one who had a kickass day. Results wise, anyway."

After a few final seconds of silence, Annie answered, "They didn't have to apologize."

"They didn't have to believe you'd take pills by yourself, but they did that too," Jeff pointed out.

"Jeff, I was mad at them because I didn't think I could take Adderall again, and they did," Annie qualified. "But I should have known that I'll always be capable of it."

"Annie, the police should give me the pen camera back soon. Do I need to 'film' your rehab doctors before I give it back to Abed's friend?" Jeff wondered. "If they're telling you nonsense already, I guess I'll have to."

"It's not nonsense, Jeff," Annie said simply. "No matter how I had them, I've had two Adderall breakdowns in my life. Three if you count how stupid I was to almost drink it today!"

"But you didn't. I almost dragged you out of class at least four times before you put that coffee down. But I barely managed to trust you, and it paid off," Jeff informed.

"Until you knocked it away the next time," Annie added.

"Hey, how could I know you weren't planning to drink it then? It's not like you explained it to me," Jeff reminded. "You know I'm not as good at reading your mind as I should be."

"I didn't expect you to freak out that much either. So I guess we're even," Annie evened out. Then she had to wonder, "So why didn't you do that the first four times? Why did you trust me to put the coffee down on my own?"

"Because I trusted that you didn't willingly take Adderall the last two weeks either. And I was right. Against all odds and idiot friends, I was right," Jeff recapped. "I figured that earned you some trust this time too. And you rewarded it. But when I thought you changed your mind after all….I went blank."

There was so much room to ask why he went that blank, and why he felt that scared. But if Annie asked that, she would have been bogged down in it for the rest of the car ride. And she had still a more important point to make.

"Jeff, I don't know if you should have trusted me. Sure, I was strong enough to see how dumb I was in the end. But just barely," Annie recounted. "No matter how much I said I'm not who I was, a part of me will always be like that. It came back worse than ever these last two weeks. And because of that, I'm right back to where I was five years ago. Back to group therapy and picking myself up all over again."

"Well, there are a few major differences, obviously," Jeff butted back in.

"And even with all that, it almost wasn't enough. As loved and as happy and as blessed as I am, I almost let myself ruin it anyway," Annie regretted. "As long as I live, there's a chance it could happen again. And that's how long? 60, 70 years if I'm lucky?"

Jeff would have joked/sincerely added, "If we're all lucky," before Annie answered for him.

"I spent five years getting better. Five incredibly hard, soul searching years. It took so much out of me, Jeff. And I barely survived it," Annie recapped. "How am I going to survive 70 more years without relapsing again? I couldn't do it for five! What if I make another enemy who tries this crap again? Or what if I just get tired of being strong? The odds are that I'll be tempted at least one more time!"

Jeff wanted to jump in and say otherwise, but he sensed that Annie wasn't done venting yet. And he was right, as she finished, "I'm not saying I'll stop fighting it, because I never will. You've all made sure of that. But I'll never stop being capable of slipping up, either. It's going to be like this for the rest of my life, in one way or another. And there's too much time left for me not to fall off again."

"That will never happen. Ever," Jeff took advantage of his open window.

"How do you know that for sure, Jeff?" Annie asked, then realized, "Right. By that logic, how do I know for sure that I'll relapse? Good one, future Jeff."

Present and future Jeff hadn't planned to make that point yet, but the Jeffs weren't about to refuse credit for something anyway. Yet present Annie wasn't finished.

"But seriously, how do you know? How do you know I won't slip up for good next time? How do you know I didn't slip up this time?" Annie zeroed in. "I mean, you never answered that one. How did you know I didn't take Adderall myself all this time, when none of them did?"

Jeff didn't know if he could explain how he really knew it in his heart. He was barely ready to explain it to himself, much less to Annie. He didn't even know if he had a good enough answer to help her out here. Plus they were almost at her apartment, which gave him less free time to work with.

They stayed in silence for the next minute, although Jeff knew Annie would assume he had no answer after all. He couldn't let her think that, but he was just about to park in front of the apartment, so time was short.

And how could he sum up everything about Annie that let him see the truth – to her, himself or anyone? How would it even look? Should that even matter? Why shouldn't Annie be more important to him than that by now? She was….

Somehow, this unlocked the answer for Jeff just as he stopped the car.

Before Annie could think to get out, Jeff revealed his answer without over thinking it, over fearing the consequences, or caring about anything but her.

"You're Annie Edison."

Annie froze in her seat. Not over the words, since Jeff had said her full name before. But there was something different in how he said it now. Something filled with awe and reverence.

Then he added, "That's the only thing I needed to know."

Annie had seen schmoopy looks from Jeff before, even if he denied making them or if she called them something else in public. But none of those looks compared to this one. None of them made her feel as valued as she did right now.

For a moment, Annie could almost see herself through Jeff's eyes. Seeing herself through her own eyes hadn't been much fun today, or the last two weeks. But seeing herself the way Jeff saw her was startling. Like she was some kind of superwoman; which was pretty much what Jeff thought during the Annie Kim showdown anyway.

Seeing such belief in her through his eyes – through anyone's eyes – was so foreign to Annie, yet still so powerful.

Annie usually did believe in herself. She did when she didn't drink the coffee, and when she told off Annie Kim. But in those times when she doubted herself, she could take a while to remember how strong and capable she was. And she tended to do stupid things in the meantime, like plan to willingly drink laced coffee.

Yet Jeff didn't look like he needed to build himself up before believing in her. He just did it. It seemed to come naturally to him in that moment. It must have come naturally when he believed in her these last two weeks, even when no one else did.

To be worthy of such esteem was unfamiliar to Annie. But it was like a drug in its own right.

All her life, Annie had tried to be someone who could do everything, and it often came at a cost. And yet for the first time, after seeing and realizing how Jeff believed in her, she finally felt like someone who could do anything.

Annie felt tears coming down her face as she took that in. However, she wasn't sobbing. These tears were quiet and more meaningful, and not necessarily out of sadness.

"Thank you," Annie said in a whisper. When that opened the floodgates, she added, "Not just for that, or today, but for everything. For being…." She couldn't put what Jeff was into coherent words right now, so she settled for repeating, "Thank you."

Annie wiped her tears and brought herself to look at Jeff again. She carefully put a hand on his arm, unsure if she could go any further. Jeff didn't tend to let heartfelt gestures land for too long, especially the really big, out of character ones; or at least out of the character he made himself out to be. So he might be closing his heart up again, or working on a joke to defuse the seriousness.

Instead, he put an arm around her waist and gave her permission to come in closer.

Once Annie wrapped both arms around him, Jeff let his free arm hug her too. She shook a bit in his arms, but she wasn't in one of her old crying jags. In fact, once her body straightened up, Jeff's began to slump. The fact that she was safe in his arms, after a whole day of fear that she might be lost to him, was overwhelming.

He meant to think she might be lost to everyone.

No he didn't. That was one lie too many.

Jeff didn't go so far as to cry. But his body started to sink in Annie's arms, after everything that she and his own emotions put him through today.

Yet before he could get too emotional, Annie tightened her hug. She patted his back twice, then began to rub it soothingly. Before long, the added intensity and warmth of Annie's hug made Jeff's body straighten back up.

It was like she instinctively knew to prop him up when he needed it. Just as he somehow knew how to do it for her. How they knew to do that for each other.

Somewhere deep down, Jeff knew they could do that at their best. Somewhere deep down, he knew he didn't let that happen as much as he should have. At this moment, he had no idea why. His old time honored excuses seemed unbelievably stupid now.

All that mattered was that for the second time in 24 hours, he was holding Annie and was just happy to hold her. There were no sexual thoughts, no nerves about what it meant or looked like, and no need to dismiss anything that any of them felt. This was enough.

This was enough for a lot of reasons.

However, Jeff was snapped out of his epiphany when Annie pulled away.

"I guess I'll head up now," she said evenly. "I've got a whole weekend of resting and doing nothing ahead of me. I'm sure that won't be too weird for me by spring break." She gave a mild chuckle, then looked at Jeff for just a second before stating, "I'll see you on Monday, Jeff."

As soon as Annie opened the car door, Jeff didn't want her to leave. It might have been out of fear again, even though she was perfectly safe. Yet he felt a window of opportunity would be closing if he let her leave now.

But that could be another case of irrational fear making him feel things he shouldn't feel, and wouldn't under normal circumstances. Therefore, it didn't count for real.

It did count when he knocked that coffee away, although it was actually completely unnecessary and almost ruined everything. And acting on this would count enough to inevitably ruin everything too, whether it did so tomorrow, or next month, or in a year, or 10 years, or 50.

But this was a world where Annie beat her addictions twice on her own, and kicked an evil doppleganger's ass twice over on her own. In that world, anything was possible.

And this new fear over her leaving wasn't because she might be gone for good soon. He knew that fear well enough to know this wasn't it. This was fear that if he missed whatever opportunity he had now, he'd be too dumb and gutless to try again.

His more rational side still said it was too reckless, yet there was a good reckless and a bad reckless. When it came to the least dumb and gutless person he'd ever met, Jeff had been a bad kind of reckless long enough.

"Annie, wait!" Jeff called as she made it to the front door. He got out of the Lexus in a flash, before he could second guess himself. Yet it made him forget to come up with more words before he got to the door.

As Annie looked a little puzzled and curious, Jeff put together the best words he had, under the circumstances. "I know you need a while to recover, but when you're up for it, maybe we could find time to celebrate your recovery. Like at a restaurant or movie theater, or some other third thing."

Annie's curiosity and confusion ratcheted up, as she started to put it together. "Do you mean it like a d-" she asked before clamming up.

She probably didn't want to jump to conclusions, although this was the right one. Thanks to Jeff's past dismissals, she probably didn't want to assume or 'read into' anything and was holding herself back.

This was the absolute last straw Jeff needed to go further. He didn't want Annie to hold anything back for him anymore.

No matter how touchy-feely, nerdy, girly, moral or smiley she could be, Jeff wanted to see every part of her, and the parts he hadn't seen yet, as much as possible now. He wanted all of Annie in his life, and he wanted it right near the center – if not closer before too long.

"Yes, Annie. Like a d. Also known as a date."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX

Jeff and Annie could be incredibly strong and incredibly fearful people. When they weren't strong, they allowed various insecurities, self-doubt, and denial about who they were and what they really wanted to consume them.

When that happened in the past, they turned to destructive crutches to protect and defend themselves. In Annie's case, it used to be Adderall. In Jeff's case, it was being a jerk and putting himself above all others.

As better as they were at handling fear over the years, something as stressful and important as a date together could have paralyzed them. Even if their old crutches weren't as available or tempting anymore, they could have still been easily afraid enough to hide behind other vices.

But then their date came weeks later. And after they first saw each other, their pulses didn't go up for the rest of the night.

Not out of fear, anyway.

THE END