Jeff/Annie - Chances

[wordybee]

Title: Chances
Author: wordybee
Spoilers:  None.
Rating: G
Warning: It makes sense in my brain, but it might not (probably won't) in yours.
Word Count: 570
Disclaimer: I don't own Community

            When Annie tells him (something along these lines): “Jeff, I want a relationship. A real one. I’m done playing this game; I’m attracted to you, and you’re attracted to me, and we should stop pretending it’s not true,” Jeff has to think about it.

            He’d learned how to think about things since meeting his group of crazy misfits. He’d never really had to do it before. Solutions would come to him as easy as breathing, and while most of those solutions tended to be on the shady side of morality it was still easier than actually having to think about the things he was doing in life.

            Six years in. Six years since he sat on the steps of Greendale Community College’s library and realized that he’d have to learn how to learn. Realized that his actions had consequences, and he couldn’t just slip by in life anymore. Of course, it took him roughly two years for this realization to really sink in, and two more years before thinking became more natural than skating through on lies and misdirection, but those steps on that night – the first gathering of Greendale’s most ridiculously diverse study group that never really studied anything – was when it started.

            So upon hearing Annie’s words, six years later, Jeff thought. Jeff asked himself, What could happen?

            He got an image of himself and Annie, ten years in the hypothetical future. They are fighting because Jeff has cheated and Jeff is trying to find a way to manipulate the situation in his favor, but he’s out of practice and every word fails to give him an escape route. He’s caught with his hand in the metaphorical cookie jar, and he’s too changed by Annie to lie his way back into her good graces but he’s not changed enough not to hurt her in the first place. A rock and a hard place, trapped between Annie’s expectations and that devastation in her eyes.

            Or perhaps it will go like this: Annie and Jeff will last a while before she realizes that dating her teenage crush isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. They go their separate ways but remain friends. Jeff watches her get married, have children, live her life. He remains alone, because he learned how to not be selfish but he never learned how to share himself with anyone outside that damned study group, and no one else will have him, either.

            The possibilities are endless, really. Jeff hurting Annie. Annie hurting Jeff. Hurting each other. Disappointing each other.

            Then Jeff thinks, maybe… and he sees himself and Annie, too far in the future to really pinpoint, old and gray and smiling with the knowledge of their life and their family and their friends. Children, grandchildren, a dog or something; Jeff doesn’t really know, can’t picture it as clearly in his mind as he can all the painful possibilities, but there’s something there that’s like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. A finale that lacks certainty but is charged with something that Jeff is drawn to. He’s always been a cynical man, but maybe it’s time for that to change.

            In the present, Jeff says, “Okay,” and Annie looks at him, surprised at how easily he’s given in.

            Jeff learned how to think six years ago.

He learned how to hope six seconds ago.

He takes Annie’s hand and they walk toward the bright, hazy future.