Community Fanfic - Jeff/Annie - "Sartorial Inspiration"

[wordybee]

Title: Sartorial Inspiration
Author: wordybee
Spoilers: none.
Rating: PG. PG-13 if you're a real stickler.
Warning: Recently-established relationship; (not-too-distant) future-fic.
Word Count: 1,641
Disclaimer: I don't own, blahblahblah legalcakes.

Summary: Jeff is wearing a suit.

 

Jeff is wearing a suit.

It’s not a six thousand dollar suit (apparently, Jeff only wore those on special occasions – like Halloween parties) but it’s black and sleek and sharp and wonderful. Everyone stares when he enters the study room (four years of that study room and Annie is pretty sure the amount of actual studying, if added together, would only equal two… Maybe two and a half) because, for everyone else, it’s completely out of left field but Annie knows Jeff is wearing it for a consulting job at his old firm. She can’t know that in front of them, though, so she feigns interest when Troy asks ‘what’s up with the suit?’, and she concentrates on not drooling.

They’ve been secret-dating for two months now, and Annie has gotten quite used to congratulating herself every day for not launching herself at him in public places and completely blowing their cover, but this could possibly be too much for her. Because he looks very put-together and sophisticated with an undercurrent of scruffy youthfulness and she is – though two years past being a legitimate “teenager” – still slightly high-strung on the hormones front. Which is okay because Jeff is in his thirties and he’s still slightly high-strung on the hormones front, too. But she’s always been able to curb the base animal urges and function rationally.

It’s a bit of a shock to Annie, the woman who had wanted Troy the Would-Never-Wear-A-Suit Jock and who had dated Vaughan the Wouldn’t-Even-Wear-A-Shirt Hippie, to be so very turned on by Jeff wearing a suit, but she was.

And it wasn’t as if he’d never worn a suit before, but the first time he’d worn one Annie had been too clueless and the second time he’d worn one she’d been too cautious and the last times he’d worn one she’d been too heartbroken to care. This was the first time in the four years she’d known Jeff Winger that the stars had aligned in the proper order, and she was attracted to him, he was attracted to her, and they both knew what each other’s mouths tasted like and what each other’s bodies felt like through fabric that was simultaneously too thick to get a proper idea and too thin to serve as legitimate protection for whatever came next that they weren’t ready for. They knew each other’s breath and scent and heartbeat, but that was all they knew of each other. It would be too much too fast (though Annie felt like four years of crushing on him and two years of being achingly in love with him, and two months of finally, finally having him was very slow, indeed) if they didn’t break apart after the touching and tasting and breathing, so they always did…

But with Jeff in that suit and Annie suddenly aware of her particular fondness for a well-dressed man, she was thinking that maybe they should learn to know a little more about each other, now.

Like, right now.

 

So on the way out of the study room, Annie pleasantly asks Jeff to stay after to help her with moving her diorama (she’d learned that “help with my diorama” was a pretty safe excuse because Annie “always” had a diorama and none of the others ever really wanted to see it for proof if she didn’t), and when everyone else hears the magic word “diorama” they scamper away as fast as their fear of boring presentations can carry them. When the coast is clear, Annie fixes Jeff with a look that makes his eyes widen and his Adam’s apple bob against his bleached-white shirt collar.

That look, she’s pretty sure, is what makes him follow her down the deserted halls of the school (lunch time on campus somehow always meant no one in the halls), to a supply closet that might have been the same one his Conspiracies class had been “located” in a little less than two years ago. She knows the closet is unlocked, because that’s how things were sometimes and also because she had insider’s knowledge that the Dean had merely painted the image of locks onto several of the doors in order to save some insignificant sum of money. Annie, facing Jeff, still with that look, reaches behind her back and turns the closet knob. The door slowly creaks open.

Her look gets a shade more courageous as she touches a hand to his chest and slides her fingers underneath his cool-grey tie. She can feel the warmth of his body and the faint thump thump of his heartbeat through the thin shirt fabric. She tugs the tie free from its place, clipped against his shirt, and pulls him with her as she backs into the supply closet. When she can’t go any further, she tugs him down so their lips meet, mouths immediately opening and exploring and tasting in a way that had become familiar but not at all boring, and Jeff kicks the door closed behind him as his hands fly immediately to her waist.

They kiss until they have to come up for air, but they’re constructive with their interlude as Annie works to loosen Jeff’s tie and Jeff slides his way out of his suit jacket. With their need for oxygen satiated again, Jeff leans back down to resume previous activities, branching out to kiss Annie along her jawline and neck before returning to her lips. His hands move from her waist to her hips to a cautious, but almost unconscious skim underneath her blouse and cardigan. Annie is pulling his shirt from his trousers and running her hands along the skin just above his waistband when Jeff apparently realizes: this is not a normal make-out session. This is not a casual bout of fondling through layers of paradoxical too-thick-too-thin clothing. There is skin being touched here.

He pulls away from Annie and looks down at her, breathing heavily and trying to get her to stop tugging at his belt (which was completely hypocritical, as he still hadn’t stopped inching his way up under her shirt with one hand).

“Annie, what are we doing?”

Annie fixes him with a frustrated look and says, in a sardonic voice she only possessed under moments of great emotion, “Uh, I thought that was kind of obvious, Jeff.”

But Jeff knows her very well and she knows that her “mean voice” wasn’t any sort of deterrent when it came to him. Tears would have Jeff Winger at her mercy, but snide words were his bread-and-butter and merely bounced off his cool, lawyer armor. He fixes a look of his own at her, and she averts her gaze, suddenly embarrassed.

She’d been so in the moment, so taken by this Jeff in a Suit, that she’d just barreled into this without much thought. He was Jeff Winger. He moved faster than some bacteria, she’d told him years ago – and it was true. It just wasn’t true for her, and Annie feels an onslaught of all the other emotions she’d felt every other time Jeff had worn a suit: clueless, cautious, heartbroken. Mostly the latter, but a lot of the former, and a significant bit of the middle as she emotionally closed down.

Annie is looking at her feet, trying not to sniffle because it’d alert Jeff that she’s moments from crying and yet still trying to keep snot from oozing out her nose. Pride is a messy business, she decides, and sniffles anyway. It does exactly what she thought it would do, and Jeff leans down to try and catch her eyes but she’s averting her gaze too well and he’s too freakishly tall to ever be at eye level with her. Instead, he finally moves the hand from under her shirt (the other one is still holding her hands away from his belt) and lifts her chin up.

She wants to continue looking down, or to the side, or anywhere but in his eyes. However, a risky glance at his expression and she’s stuck.

Annie doesn’t think she’s ever seen Jeff look so… unarmored. A mixture of vulnerability and fear and affection and, yeah, since they’d only stopped what they’d been doing a few moments ago, there’s some lust there, too. But there’s love, mingled in with the rest of it, and Annie can’t look away from him again.

“I don’t want to have sex with you in a closet,” he says frankly. It’s his turn to look away, briefly, as he’s not at all used to this level of honesty. “You’re worth much more than that.”

Annie smiles a bashful sweet-Annie smile. She lifts herself up on her tip-toes to press a soft, almost chaste kiss on Jeff’s lips. He lets her move away completely before diving back in, full gusto, and they’re back to gasping and kissing and brief touches of dangerous, dangerous skin.

During one of their oxygen breaks, Jeff leans his forehead against Annie’s and they both just breathe.

“Feel free to smack me for this,” Jeff pants against her hair, “But would you be entirely opposed to having sex in my car, instead?”

Annie smacks him.

A hurried scramble for clothes and an agonizingly long fifteen-minute drive later, though, and Annie is not at all opposed to having sex in Jeff’s apartment, in his bed.

It’s only afterward, when Jeff is re-dressed for the meeting he’s verging on late for and Annie is wrapped up in his sheets watching as he tries to flatten out the wrinkles in his suit with the palm of his hand, that he turns to her and asks where the sudden “enthusiasm” had come from.

Grinning, Annie simply answers: “You look really good in a suit.”

Jeff, because he’s a narcissistic bastard, answers “I know,” and Annie throws a pillow at his head, and swears to never again compliment Jeff Winger.

Even if he’s wearing a suit.