Meeting

pt. 1

It all starts when she turns twenty-one. Not that it's on her birthday or anything, but it's around that time when being able to drink is still really cool. And it's not a hip bar at all, it's one of those dive sort of places where men in Nascar t-shirts hold sweating Bud Lights in their hammy fists and glare at her like she's rubbed herself in Vasoline and is standing naked. She's oblivious, per usual, unbuttoning her cardigan so that the very top swell of breasts glisten when she says, "Whew. It's kind of hot in here isn't it?"

The point isn't her breasts exactly. Okay, maybe the point is always her breasts, because he is a red-blooded male after all (and let's face it, they're great), but the fact is that they she buys them a round of scotch and she drinks it. She drinks the scotch. Annie Edison, Disney-eyes and all, swinging scotch like she's some sort rough and tumble old man. He can't remember why they went there or why exactly they were there. It might have had something to do with the fact that she finally got a job (at Dildopolis, but still), or the fact that they had somehow, with the grace of Greendale academics, had passed another semester of classes. Really, it doesn't matter, because they were there, and this little dive bar, by themselves. Normally, this situation would terrify him, because well, he has to look something in the face: there's something about this girl (and he has to keep telling himself that she is, after all, a girl) that he can't get out of his mind. Little Annie, little little Annie, has this magnet or something inside of her that keeps drawing him in and he can't help but feel the pull. He has to chide himself though, to keep himself from deconstructing himself too much. He breaks it down like this: He is a male with a penis and she is a girl with boobs and so what if she's sweet and funny and a little mean and too driven and calls him out on his bullshit and has the same driving ambition that he finds in himself, so what? It's not a big deal after all. But now she's drinking scotch, and the bar is starting karaoke, and he's buying the next round, and now they're rather drunk.

The way he sees it, this is going to go one of two ways: They are going to hate each other after tonight or they are going to fuck. And he hates this, he wishes he could stop it, but she's getting rather drunk and they have a long conversation about how The Muppets was the best TV show of all time and how maybe he should go back to law school and how she's thinking of going into law school someday too. And he's never realized this, but she's rather charming. Not in the Disney-eyeflutter sort of way, but in an easy-to-talk-to sort of way. She's full of good ideas, smart for her age and oh shit, her age. He's drunk and he's thinking of having sex with a twenty-one year old girl. Jeff Winger feels suddenly like an even shittier human being, but she has that affect on him – he grows a conscience real quickly with Annie Edison.

This is where it happens, and he's worried, because she's just wearing this tank top and he can see her pink bra strap as it slides down her arm. She is dragging him onto the small stage that's in the corner of the bar, and somehow she has convinced him that a karaoke rendition of Teenage Dream would be a good idea. The burly bar crowd is jeering her, most telling her to show some boob and hackling him, but she ignores them, taking the mic and laughing and she turns to him and says, "I'm so scared! I can't sing! I'm so scared." She smiling though, and when she starts singing, her voice cracked and her voice slurred, she's doesn't seem to mind in the least that the men are drooling and that her hair is getting that drunky mussed look. She doesn't care. And in this second, looking at her and hearing her voice, in the second right before he joins in the singing, he realizes that he doesn't want to sleep with her, or even kiss her or anything. He realizes that he, Jeff Winger, Mr. Handsome himself, finds the most purest of friends in this girl who is off-pitch and actually really fucking drunk.

So it begins. Jeff Winger, for the first time in his life, has a friend who is a girl, who he could sleep with (but doesn't want to and he is sure she doesn't either), and he decides he loves her with a goodness and a platonic love it takes him off guard. For once, he isn't confused about Annie Edison, and surprisingly, she drops her confusion about him.

It's the day they become friends, no sex-strings attached. They will have hangovers the next day, but in the next day, they meet for lunch and eat fatty hamburgers and when she says, "You wanna go to that new scary movie and make fun of the people who get killed?" he can only grin and nod his head.

–

She doesn't know what to think about it, and for once, she doesn't want to think about it. Which is saying a lot for Annie Edison, because she thinks a lot about a lot of things. But right now, she isn't bothered by the fact that her and Jeff are hanging out at the museum of art together, eating chips that she stored away in her backpack.

"Do you know how bad these are for me?" Jeff asks, looking at her. "I'm supposed to be going carb free so that I can start focusing on my core more."

She rolls her eyes before poking him in the stomach. It's as hard as concrete and she simply spits out, "You're psychotic. If your midsection was any firmer, you could cut... things with it."

He laughs, eats another chip before saying, "Well played, Edison. You're always so clever with those things we call words."

She gives him a swift punch to the shoulder, pretending she is frowning, but she can't suppress the little smile that grows at the corner of her lips. "You're being mean, Jeff."

He smiles down at her, that small Jeff smile that is part smug, part genuine. "Forgiveness, m'lady?"

Pretending to consider this question, she finally shrugs and says, "Forgiveness granted. M'lord. But seriously, you've got to let go of this whole... thing. You have. With your body."

They stop in front of a painting that is a naked lady, but she's made entirely of fruit. He stops, laughs and says, "The thing with my body? What thing are you referring to exactly?"

Raising her lip up in disgust, Annie punches him again. "Don't be gross, Jeff. And I wasn't referring to any sort of... body appendage." Her face grows red a little bit because there's this part of her still that thinks PENIS in bright red letters across her mind and there's still a part of her past with Jeff when this would have made her hugely uncomfortable (she can still feel the press of him when his hands were laced through her hair, his breath against her tongue). But – she has reasoned with herself – that she has grown slightly. She is a grown woman, fully capable of compartmentalizing her past and her romances and sealing them off with a label that says, "FORBIDDEN." And anyways, she doesn't have those same nervous feelings that she once had, not for Jeffrey Winger at least, and she's thoroughly convinced herself that in fact, she never really liked him, but more the idea of him, with his slick-phrases and stubbled jaw and handsome older-ness. And so, she was fine just being able to tell him whatever and not worry about romantic entanglements. Plus, she found that once she wasn't worried about trying to impress him, Jeff Winger was a good listener and generally nice guy who got too caught up in being too good and wouldn't cut himself enough slack. And she knew what that was all about, being hard on yourself, so in the end, the both of them worked.

So that's why she says, "And plus, you don't need to worry about your body. It's just... fine. I'm sure most everyone is impressed by it."

He laughs at this, but in a stilted sort of way that seems to indicate that he doesn't quite believe her. Or maybe that he can't trust her, she can't tell. But he turns his face towards the painting, the one with the naked fruit-lady, and says, "Are her nipples made of kiwis? I can't... or grapes? I can't quite tell."

They examine the woman for a second, eyes squinted, before deciding that they are, in fact, kiwis.

"Wouldn't strawberries or, um, something more flesh-colored been more appropriate? I mean, I'm for," and she wags her fingers to air-quote, "artistic liberties but I've never seen a woman with green nipples. And I am pretty sure that is anatomically impossible."

He chuckles before raising an eyebrow devilishly at her, "Not if you've seen the things that I have seen."

She swats him, reaffirms that he is gross ("And I don't even want to even begin to know how you know that, Jeff Winger!"), but eventually he gets her laughing and the conversation drifts and he's reassuring that she probably got a perfect score on her Family Law exam that that she has probably shamed the law world already ("Except for that one guy named... oh, let's see... Jeff Winger") and she shouldn't worry so much, it was stressing him out.

"All your stress is giving me wrinkles. And you're going to have a lot of angry hot woman on your hands if you manage to scar this face," he jokes and she simply rolls her eyes before buying them both glasses of wine in tiny cheap plastic wine glasses in the lobby downstairs, which they sneak out of the museum and drink in the cool of the beginning night and she thinks this is going to last, I can feel, I can't believe it, but I know it.

–

"It can't last," Abed tells him, pointing an index finger at him. He is not grinning. He isn't joking.

They are sitting outside the quad and Abed is eating an ice cream cone that's the size of his head. The day is that sort of day where it can't decide whether it wants to rain or not, and it's kind of chilly, but Abed is eating ice cream like it's the middle of summer.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," He notes, watching as Abed takes a large bite and a part of the ice cream rolls down his chin. "It means a lot coming from a guy who's eating ice cream when it might just snow today."

He does his Abed head turn and frowns into his ice cream. "It's a new thing that I'm doing... I call it the man-eating-food-in-every-scene trope. Like Brad Pitt's character in Ocean's Eleven."

Jeff smiles his shit-eating grin, asks, "And how's that going for you?"

Abed considers this before shrugging in consent, "Not well. Lots of heartburn." Taking another large bite, he winces before saying with a full mouth, "And brain freeze. Which goes to show that tropes can't last. The attractive man-and-woman-only-as-friends trope never works. Didn't work in Friends, didn't work in Clueless."

"Abed, I hate to break it to you but the early 90s were when you were still sucking your thumb... might be time to start updating your pop culture references," Jeff says, frowning while he eyes the ever-growing pile of gray clouds building on the horizon.

Shrugging, Abed looks at him – a chocolate strip of ice cream covering his nose – and says, "You're right. In order for it to be a relevant trope, it needs to be Poppy-ish. Cultural-ry. Cool. Cool, cool, cool." He jumps up, throws away the ice cream. He starts to walk away, stops, turns, and looks at him, "But the point still stands, outdated trope or not. A trope is still a trope. I'm perfectly aware that real life and movies are... segmented, Jeff. But it seems you don't. A trope works in tv, movies. It can't work in real life. It's can't last forever. You can't run from your feelings forever. It will sneak up on you later on."

For a second, they hold each other's gazes, Abed's eyebrows slightly raised. Suddenly though, the sky opens up, a slight rain, one steady enough that they know that there's no more conversation left for them to discuss. It isn't so much as to whether he is right or wrong, but it's a matter now that no one can tell, but it's more that people have noticed the new found friendship. Even Abed, who he figures usually doesn't deem this sort of things necessarily interesting, has latched on to it like a new story arch in Couger Town. He wonders how long it will be before the whole campus notices, before Britta starts calling him a misanthropic pig and Shirley has to keep reminding him that she's praying for him.

But he's Jeff Winger after all and so he says, "Well, this has truly been informative, Mr. Rogers. But you're missing one crucial point here: You've stuck your tongue down her throat for a much longer period of time than I have. A full make-out session wasn't it? If I'm not mistaken, I should be the one questioning the intentions of your friendship with little Miss Annie Edison." He leans back, impressed with himself, glad to see that his lawyer skills have not atrophied even since his time at Greendale. He's still got it, he's still Jeff Winger, wonder boy of the Greendale (although he knows that means nothing, he decides to not care).

And he's right, he knows it, he's had to have hit a cord with Abed. But Abed, per usual, is unmoved, and simply stares at Jeff for a second before raising his index finger and saying, "Annie and I happen only when we are not being ourselves whatsoever. We play roles and mostly those roles follow conventions and conventions usually end pretty quickly. You and Annie happen only when you decide to be yourselves and not be the dumb facade that you put on. The hardened-exterior trope." He shrugs his shoulders before saying, right before the rain turns hard and cold, "Tropes are dangerous things. If you already know your script, you'll be fine. If you don't, then it turns cliché and the whole story just sort of collapses on itself. I just hate to see your relationship with Annie collapse on itself. You two... are special, Jeff. They write stories about these kinds of things."

He has no words for a second, and now the rain is falling too hard and Abed has already walked away. He knows he should get up and say something snaky to Abed, something that will let him have the last word. Because Abed is wrong, he knows that. Or maybe he just wants to believe that? No, he knows that. Because Annie is a good, good friend. One of his best, and he's going to keep it at that.

"Write stories about these kinds of things?" He says sarcastically, leaning his head back and looking as the rain falls flat on his face. "Oh, you're so meta, Abed. You're so meta you must be right." He pretends a little mocking laugh, but something inside him shifts ever so slightly, if ever so lightly, and it makes him very, very uncomfortable.

–

They have numerous... interests. And he's candid about how he feels and what he does with said interests, holds nothing back when describing their dates and other... encounters.

"And let me ask you this," he says, sitting up and munching thoughtfully on a mouthful of popcorn. They are sitting on the floor of her apartment, watching a heavily edited and commercialed version of When Harry Met Sally and she has turned it up loud enough that they can't hear the videos that they play downstairs at Dildopolis. "Let me ask you this: If a girl says that she wants to Take things slow, but she isn't referring to sex – I mean, she definitely not referring to sex, trust me – then what does that mean? Take it slow? What do you women mean?"

Annie wrinkles her nose and grabs a handful of popcorn. Recently, he's been seeing this girl named... Miranda? Melissa? Marisa? She can't remember, and honestly she can't keep the girls that he sees apart. They all, with their slim bodies and polished faces and their smoothness (something she isn't good at replicating at all), they have started to blur in her head. Not that she particularly feels squeamish about talking about it. Well, alright, once he wanted her opinion on if he should be worried about a... growth... and she an squealed, in a monotone robot-voice, "I AM A GIRL I AM A GIRL. PLEASE LEAVE YOUR CLOTHING ON I AM A GIRL." And he seemed to snap out of it, like she had slapped him before apologizing and saying, "I'm just really freaked out about it, you know."

But the line is kind of blurry now, where the two can't really tell who is who since the both of them have sort of dis-gendered the other. And so, she guesses that she, being of the opposite sex, has become the ultimate in giving advice since she is both A) a girl, and B) some sort of honor-inducted bro. The strangest thing about this predicament, minus the almost-pants-dropping situation, was that she was generally nonplussed by all of this. Sure, sometimes Jeff's sexual escapades were cringe-able, but she never felt a strange bubble of jealously curl in her stomach, never felt the odd tangles of possessiveness crawl under her skin. Everything between them was easy, and although she had her theories why (they were the same person in so many ways, with the crippling fear of failure, their undaunted desire to be popular, and their tendency to be self-centered even if their hearts were sweet after all) she decided to just let the whole thing be. Annie Edison had spent a majority of her life trying to figure out why she was the way she was, and for once she wasn't going to question it. Her friendship with Jeff Winger was so sweet that she just let it stay where it was, not bothering to uproot it and examine it and kill it in the process.

"So, what you think, M'lady?" He asks, catching her off-guard with the nickname. He hadn't used it a lot in the past. Although, he had used it with increasing frequency in the past couple of weeks, seemingly right after Abed had confronted her in the hallways at Greendale and said, "Jeff and I had a talk. He's going to act weird. Get ready" before Abed sauntered off in a pencil-straight line. She hadn't thought much of it, because, well, it was Abed. But since then, yes, Jeff had been acting weird and giving her the "long stare" as she had once known, that out-of-the-corner look that only meant he was thinking... something. The Annie of it all? No, no, no nonono. No. That wasn't it, she had to be sure of it. Perhaps it was just Miranda or Melisa or Marisa or whoever that had him acting weird. Yes, she was sure that was it. There needn't have anything to do with her, not at all. The Miranda (or whoever) of it all.

And so that's why she says, "Maybe the sex with Jeff Winger isn't as good as you think."

He stops chewing instantly, stares at her wide-eyed. She laughs at him, throws a piece of popcorn at him, which hits him square on the forehead. He doesn't even notice though and says, "Wha... what do you mean by that?"

Shrugging, she stuffs some more popcorn in her mouth and watches the screen thoughtfully. It's at the part where they were at the batting cages, Billy Crystal failing miserably while swinging. Then she said, "I mean, if she's theoretically taking it slow, maybe she doesn't think that she wants to take the relationship further because. Well. You're – like Britta said, mind you – not as good at sex as you think."

There is a strained silence, and suddenly, without wanting to, she realizes that she has hit some kind of nerve with Jeff Winger. It was a joke, of course, but there was something very deep inside of him that she always sort of knew was there, because she felt it herself. This feeling, this deep dark fear, kept her awake at night, afraid that the next step that she took was going to be wrong. That what you're doing, at any given second, is a failure and because of it, you yourself are one big failure. And so, when she sees his face, she says, "Oh, you know. You could be great. You are probably great at sex. Definitely. Yep. Jeff Winger, master at... sex... things." She raises her hands in the air like there something to cheer about, wiggling them a little in the air, "Yaaaa... ayyy."

He is still looking at her with that look like she might have punched him right in the gut, his eyebrows slightly scrunched together and his mouth a little agape. Suddenly he says, "You're full of bullshit. You think I'm bad at sex!"

"What. No. That's not true at all," Annie says, too quickly, with no inflection and even as the words hit her own ears, she knows they are falling flat and are void of genuineness. And Jeff is a bullshit detector, had warning lights that seem to be going off in his eyes. But she can't help it, because as much as she wants to lie to him (and even in her seemingly very distant past there were sweat-filled nights waking up to flashy and emotive dreams), she can't lie to him: she thinks of having sex with her and her gag reflex kind of activates and all she can think is that he's too oddly tall and he'd be too worried about his hair getting mussed and he'd just be thinking about working too hard that it would all feel very scripted. Which Annie Edison is a fan of the script, but in this case, it feels weird and strange and so she can't be enthusiastic when she says, "I bet having sex with you would be great. Like, super. Extra awesome. A girl could only be so lucky."

His face turns more severe and she instantly wishes that she had kept her mouth shut because he points a finger at her and says, "It's true. You think I'm bad at sex! Well, first: I am great at sex. Nay, I am mind-blowingly awesome at sex. And second: How would you even know what good sex was and wasn't, miss first-and-only-time-was-in-a-closet-with-a-dude-pretending-I'm-a-dude?"

Now it was her turn to look offended, rearing back her head. Annie, although offended by many things (academic slackers, girls who wore tube tops, and the word "Jew-y" to name a few), felt a little piece in her flare up instantly and she couldn't really help it when she squealed in indignation before snapping, "I'll have you know, Mr. Jeff I'm-too-tall-to-take-serious-sexually that I have slept with a few very handsome and very hetereosexual young men. All of which have had glowing reviews of my... prowess." She said that last word like it might be a hiccup, or a cough or something that sort of came out involuntarily and she couldn't help but stare to the side when she said it.

He was standing down, looking down at her, backing away like she was saying something that he might catch, like a disease. "Wa wa wa wa wait. First off, I'm am not too tall. My height has been praised by numerous individuals for providing excellent leverage..."

She cringed. "Jeff. Eww..."

But he wasn't finished, and she saw as the knots near his temples started to harden, and pop out against his skin. "And second, prowess? If they are actually saying the word prowess then you are making an actual habit of sleeping with exclusively gay men."

Another squeak of indignation and suddenly she found herself on her feet, backing away from him too, her hand slowly curling into little fists. "You, Jeff Winger, are just jealous of the fact that I've been having uber amounts of sex that is both satisfactory and... well reviewed."

"Ugh!" He threw his hands in the air, before cocking his head and squinting at her. "Are you having sex or getting an opinion about the new Katherine Heigl movie?"

"How dare you! We both know that Katherine Heigl's films are horrid."

His voice is slow and deliberate when he says, "You heard me."

There is a stunned silence for a brief period, but it's so thick Annie thinks that she could literally punch it with her white-knuckled fists. She can feel the blood in her chest pumping hard and angry and there is a part of her that wants nothing more to just slap Jeff Winger's disgustingly smug face. A part of her – a very small part – just wants to throw her hands in the air and just concede that okay, you're right and Jeff Winger is amazing at sex whatever whatever WHATEVER. But a big part of her, the biggest one with the thrumming blood and the very Annie part of her that's mean and always trying to prove itself, the part that screams of competition and need for perfection, that part says, "If you're so good at sex, why don't you prove it?"

It catches them both off guard, but only for a second. She can see it in his face, this sort of shift, like she had thrown down a better hand of Poker than he had thought. He thought she had been bluffing. But now she wasn't and suddenly his face uncreases and his mouth falls open a little from surprise and for once, Jeff Winger is speechless. Only for a second, just a mere second, and then his Poker face is plastered back on and he looks just as angry as ever, "Prove it, huh? You couldn't handle it."

"You wanna bet?" She spits back and then throws her hands in the air, "If you're so great, so wonderful, and I'm so awful, why don't you come over here and prove it."

These moments in between when she says this, when she lays down the dare, and the moment when Jeff Winger does what he does are long and thick and seem to almost stop the clock. She can process every second like it might be something she should study for her class. His face turns from angry to determined to something else that she doesn't quite recognize for a second until she realizes that she's seen it before, years and years ago. His jaw, famous for clenching together, fastened close and he firms his mouth in a straight line and when his eyes find hers she discovers her body betraying her, because now she recognizes the look. And when she recognizes it, she almost wants to scream, "No! Just kidding, just a joke, let's not prove anything, we'll ruin it all, we'll ruin everything." But she can't, the words won't come out because a warmth has spread everywhere, all over her, and it won't let words come out. This warmth, his look, she hasn't felt it so real and so strong in awhile and when she feels it coursing through her veins, she thinks, uh-oh, I want him, I want him, I want him. The look of desire, the feeling of want and it's too late, much too late, because he's strode across the room, taking her whole body in his arms so quickly and easily it seems unreal and his mouth is on hers, hot and determined and a little angry.

More angry than anything, she thinks at first, and maybe her lips are just as angryagainst his too. Because perhaps there's something to prove here. She's pretty sure that there's something to prove, but she can't remember what it is. All she can think about is his hands are against the bare skin of her back and that the other hand is in her hair, tangled up and pulling her head back so that he can get closer to her mouth, get a better angle. He is tall after all, so much taller than her that it makes sense that he has to pull her hair to arch her back, into an angle that makes it easier for him to slide his tongue slowly against her lips and then curling into her mouth. The taste of him, something she has known before, she could remember for the rest of her life: something peppery, a little like the bitter wheaty taste of scotch, a little bit of the musky smell of his own body.

His tongue somehow ends up running down the length of her ear, tracing it down to the lobe. His voice is hot against her ear when he says, "Surrender?"

The voice that finds itself in her doesn't sound like her, the sweet Annie Edison with a sugary pitch, but rather the guttural growl of something inside of her that she only feels most of the time, sometimes flaring inside of her and now bursting forth: "Never," she growls before repeating, "Never."

She presses her palms against his chest before pushing him back. He falls back on her couch, his face still in a firm line. However, as she glowers down at him, she could see the cracks there: of confusion, of a little shock. He raises an eyebrow, seemingly shocked by her strength before saying, "Woah there, M'lady. You been working out or..."

"Shut-up, Winger," she mumbles before, in two large strides, she covers his mouth with hers. She manages to straddle him, pinning his hips in between her knees. And then, with the same type of growl she says, "Take my shirt off."

He blinks. "Wait. Wha..."

She raises an eyebrow, "Is that you surrendering?"

Then there is that look again in his face, where the jaw turns into a line, and there's something in his eyes that says that this is it, there's no going back, and when he takes off her shirt and his own and suddenly she's pressed herself against his shoulders which are broad and tough, there are shivers rumbling throughout her body.

But then of course there's something else there than the actual carnality of it all (and she is shocked by how savage he is when his tongue traces the area of her collarbone and then reaches the swell of her breasts, when she says to hell with the foreplay and rotates her hips into him). The carnality isn't all of it though, and it shocks her because this isn't what she had in mind. The competitive side of her has been silent for a while now, now that he is inside her fully and oh god, oh god, she can't breathe. Something is happening to her, inside, because Annie Edison swore, ever since the day she lost control and went screaming through glass plate windows, that she would be perfectly aware what is going on in her body. She would be master of her own body. But now, there's something happening inside of her that isn't in her control, she knows it. And it's not just the movement of her hips against his, not the warmness of two bodies inside the other, not the small building of explosion that spreads from her lips to the tips of her toes, not any of that. Now there's something small breaking inside of her, like the way dead skin pulls away from a healing wound, exposing the pink tender skin underneath. It's the breaking, the lifting away, and it's happening so organically, like the ocean tide rolling out for the morning, or the seasons shifting slowly into each other. There's nothing she can do, nothing, and suddenly it happens upon her that Annie Edison can't control everything. There's just no way. And it scares her to the core.

Stupid girl, she says to herself while Jeff groans, wrapping his hands around the nape of her neck and suddenly the two of them are looking at each other. His eyes, fever-wrapped, look deeply at hers and gone is the anger, the indignation, the sheer competitiveness. Instead, there's something raw there, like a curtain has been pulled back and she's seeing something that has been boiling inside him for a while. And she sees something else – the fear. The fear that she is sure is reflected in her own eyes and she says to herself, You stupid girl, Annie Edison, because there's no going back now, you've ruined it all now, ruined it easily and quickly.

Because she had thought for once in her short, silly life that she had figured out one thing and come to a resolution: Jeff Winger was the closest thing she had to the best of friends, the one that you couldn't help but put your life down for, the one that you could hold their hand and tell them that they are a sonuvabitch but you loved them just the same, and someone who would be honest and sweet and just good to you. All her life, Annie Edison had done without this kind of her person, had only the judgmental look of her mother and the aloofness of her father and the mocking of her peers. And here came along this handsome man who, at first, they had messed up hormones for awkwardness but now all was well, it was perfect, and she had ruined it.

(Or maybe she had been wrong all along, that she wasn't wrong at first, that she had been wrong for so long, that their bond was too precious to just be full of popcorn and buying rounds at a bar and being each other's wingman and too precious for good advice and parting ways at the end of the night, maybe she had been wrong all this time and they had been kidding themselves for too long now, far too long, and the awkwardness was there only because it revealed too much, too much…)

But oh god. She feels her body hitch and she knows what is about to happen, because after all, he is inside her and her hips are still moving and suddenly everything is faster and their bodies are slick with sweat. His thumb moves up to her face and she takes it in her mouth, moving her tongue over it before groaning.

His eyes aren't moving from hers and when he says, "Annie. I. Oh god," he moans before sitting up so that they are flush against each other. He swivels his hips so that he is different inside of her and it's suddenly too much for her. She gasps, the breath knocked out of her. Her eyes roll back into her head and as he rocks into her fully, she feels something like a small implosion ripple through her, like something had burst inside her and was tremoring all over her.

"Stay with me, Annie," she hears him growl into her ear, and at first she thinks she might pass out, and maybe he's referring to this, that she might let go of consciousness before he is able to finish himself, but as her head stops ringing and she realizes he means to keep going, that he means that the night is hardly over, that he means something else, that when he looks her right in the eyes, and he murmurs, "Stay with me. Oh god, Annie," that it means something very different and she can't quite figure it out but at the same time a part of her very deep inside knows what he means. He means something more than just staying the night, more than staying for an extended session of very, very good sex. This might not be about sex at all, she decides, and as she pushes him on the bed and sits on top of him, she thinks, Stupid girl, stupid girl, you've started something that isn't going to go away.

He says it again, "Stay with me," and she hushes him by rolling herself over him and saying, "Have I ever left? I'm your Annie. I'm always here."

But, then again, the next morning, the panic inside of rises like boiling water and so she plays the scene out in her head when he wakes up: The empty apartment, the bustle of Didolpolis downstairs, a note on the side of the bed that says, "You win. I surrender. Congratulations. See you around – Annie." It might be cruel, but she's sure that he's woken to the scene a hundred times. Jeffrey Winger has had the casual one-night stand before and the casual sex partner (even within the study group) and this scene will hardly affect him, she's sure. Cruel? Probably the opposite. And as she walks briskly the streets of Greendale, no place to go, she thinks maybe she can eradicate the feeling in her lungs, in the middle of her, the part that Jeff Winger has pushed himself into and won't leave.

"I'll make you leave," She says to the chilly autumn air. She isn't crying, because she doesn't want to, but she feels something tearing inside of her, like hunger, like she's starving. "I'll make you leave," She says to herself, Annie Edison, master of her body, master of her feelings, master of maybe nothing, she can't be sure, but she's got to try.

end part 1