#or hey you could teach a class on that at greendale

[absolutely-not-my-main-blog]

I sincerely think if Dennis Reynolds and Jeff Winger were to makeout, it would benefit them both immensely, in fact, it’d be good for their health

[kimpossibly]

[001] BEING THE YOUNGEST IN THE STUDY GROUP (nbc community headcanons)

Because I am talking about a big group, I made a little color-coded list so there should be no confusion as to who is speaking! Also, this is set about halfway through season one, so that explains the timeline.

Reader = Purple Jeff = Blue Britta = Orange Annie = Yellow Abed = Green Troy = Red Shirley = Pink

pairing: fem!reader x platonic!community warnings: none

The choice to go to community college hadn't exactly been an ideal one

You had accidentally filled out all your actual college applications wrong and didn't realize they never went through until all the application dates had passed.

So, weighing your options, you decided that Greendale was your best option.

By then you had to enroll in all the leftover classes that still had spots open

You had taken French all throughout high school and barely retained a word of it. You'd hoped to jump into some French classes for an easy A, but all of the French classes had already filled up.

The solution? Spanish 101.

You showed up to the first day of class determined to make the best of the awful hand you had been dealt.

And surprise, surprise! Spanish was nothing like French.

The teacher was a little kooky and he severely overestimated how much work his students could do before the next class.

Before you knew it, you were drowning in work that you didn't know how to do and suddenly your grade started to drop.

When your next door neighbor took a liking to blasting loud music while you were trying to study, you decided to head to one of the study rooms to try and be productive.

But when you got there, you found the table was already full of people.

"Oh! My bad, sorry-"

You tried to leave, but, due to your immense surprise, one of the girls at the table recognized you.

"Hey, wait - aren't you in our Spanish class?"

Before you could confirm, someone answered for you.

"Yeah. She sits in the third row and color codes all her notes."

You looked at him in confusion.

"I'm Abed."

And then another woman in the room smiled at you.

"You color code your notes?"

You nodded and took them out to show her, but a douchey looking guy in a leather jacket scoffed.

"The only people who color code notes are horse girls and psychopaths."

Four years of going to public school has made you immune to assholes...and excellent at shutting them down.

So you slapped down your color coded notes and took the chair beside him.

"I bet this psychopath's color coded notes can teach you more Spanish in five minutes than an entire semester of whatever blow-off class you're taking."

And again, to your surprise, he almost looked impressed.

"I'm Jeff Winger."

"Y/n L/n."

And just like that, you were in.

You met with the group every day after class to work on the Spanish homework and study for upcoming tests and quizzes

But, to be honest, you guys weren't always great at staying on task.

"Okay, um... yo nací en mil novecientos noventa y dos."

"Hang on, that can't be right. You just said you were born in 1992."

"No, that's right."

"Y/n, that would make you seventeen."

"...Yeah?"

Needless to say, they kinda lost it.

"You're even younger than me! Wait, I'm not the youngest anymore? Ha! Suck it, Y/n!"

"I started school a year early and I have a late birthday! I don't know what the big deal is."

"No big deal, I just didn't know that there was a child in our midst."

"I am not a child."

"Aw, look at them pouting! They're so little and adorable."

Thus began your long journey of trying to prove to your friends that you were not a child.

Your first step? Changing up your look.

And boy did you turn some heads when you walked into the study room in a leather jacket and thick eyeliner

"Okay Wednesday Addams, give us our Y/n back and no one gets hurt."

"Jeff, I'm trying to prove a point."

"Is the point that you lost a bet with the cosmetology class?"

So...yeah. That didn't go as well as you were hoping.

Even so, they stuck by you through all of your erratic, split second decisions that you made without really considering the consequences

Like when you walked into the first day of second semester with bangs you had cut yourself over the break.

Surprisingly, Abed seemed to be the one most enthusiastic about them.

“It’s likely that we’ve just began a new season, so one of the main characters changed up their look to provide a jumping off point and to keep viewers interested.”

Silence followed…

“I like them.”

“Aw, thanks Abed!”

But, obviously, you endured some teasing—mostly from Jeff.

“Okay, remind me not to let Mia Wallace near a pair of scissors ever again.”

“Did you just Google ‘female characters with bangs’ and use the first one on the list?”

"…No.” (Jeff said as he slyly put his phone back in his pocket.)

The group became like a family to you, but sometimes you missed your family

Especially when they called and said that they couldn't make it to Family Day. You had had the sneaking suspicion that they were disappointed that you ended up at Greendale, but this seemed to confirm it.

You did your best not to let on how upset you were by brushing it off when you were asked.

"Y/n, how worried should I be about interacting with your parents on a scale of Helicopter Mom to Cougar?"

"Actually, my parents aren't coming to Family Day."

"Oh no, why not?"

"They were just busy. It's fine, I saw them a couple weeks ago. No big deal."

Family day approached and you were actually feeling pretty okay about the situation. Acting like you didn't care had actually made you not care, which you thought at the time was a good thing.

But as you sat in the quad and watched everyone walk around with their relatives, talking and touring, you realized just how upset you really were.

So you left.

You found yourself hunched over your Spanish textbook in the empty study room reading the same sentence over and over and mindlessly writing unhelpful notes that you'd never actually study.

You weren't sure how long you'd been there before you noticed someone looking over your shoulder.

"That's odd, these Spanish notes are in black and white."

"I wasn't in the mood to color code. Plus Abed stole all my pens to make mini lightsabers."

Jeff sat next to you, taking your textbook and notebook and placing them on the other side of the table.

"Look, I know that I spend a lot of time trying to act like I'm older than I am, but I'm still a kid. Know how I know? Because I miss my mom and dad. I was always a little afraid to leave home, so when I had to come here for school, I had to admit that I felt a little relieved to be only an hour away from where I grew up. I felt safer knowing my parents would only be a short car ride away. But now it just feels like they might as well be on the other side of the country. I know they're disappointed I didn't go to an Ivy League or get to go out of state for college, but I wish they'd just get over it and accept it. I have. Why can't they?"

Jeff never considered himself particularly good at the advice thing. Sure, he could talk until hell froze over and manipulate anyone into doing his bidding, but he could never figure out how to make sad people be less sad. You may have been young, but you weren't naive - he knew that.

He saw you now like a younger sibling rather than a jury member or someone he was trying to con. So he decided to speak accordingly.

"People are stupid. Parents are stupid. Greendale may not be Ivy League, but it's something. You could've blown off college and stayed at home where it's safe, but you didn't. You cared enough to pack your stuff, drive sixty minutes away, rob an entire Office Depot, and enroll in the last classes they had available. You did all that because you care. And if they can't see that, then that's on them. I may not know a whole lot about warm, fuzzy, familial relationships, but I do know this: you have a family here at Greendale. A weird, messed up, occasionally problematic family. So screw Family Day. We're a study group. And I wouldn't trade that for the world."

You hadn't expected to tear up, but you did anyway. You said nothing and hugged Jeff, who reluctantly returned it.

"I'll steal your pens back from Abed."

"Thanks."

The rest of the year progressed smoothly. Sure, you guys had your ups and downs of course, but you always found yourselves back in the group study room after class

But that, you supposed, was what a family did.

Author's Note: Can you tell I'm obsessed with Community??? Ugh this was so fun to write, I genuinely love the headcanon format because it's how my brain just functions, so this was really good for me to write to get out of my head for a bit. It's also funny bc this is how it is with my friend group, all of which are in college except for me, so it was fun to draw from some real life experiences. I hope you guys had a lovely week and I hope this makes you smile! Much love 💗🖤

[abbatoirablaze]

Down The Rabbit Hole, Chapter 1

Word Count:  1.6k

Warnings:  none

“He’s a self-righteous prick is what he is.”

“Then teach the guy a lesson,” you shrugged, looking at the professor you’d been working with for a few weeks now.  Professor Duncan looked at you, curious at your response.  You raised a brow at him, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I just think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you talk about anyone like that,” he admitted, “Tawney…you’ve never even met my lawyer.  For all you know he could be an upstanding-“

“First of all, Professor Duncan, he's not even a real lawyer. He scammed his way up the ladder. Then, he wanted to blackmail you into giving him the answers for this semester,” you chuckled as you cut him off.  He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk, “Professor Duncan, anyone who comes to you asking for the answers, and trying to use your connections as a professor clearly isn’t going to be some upstanding guy.  And you said it yourself, he’s here because he faked a law degree.  Who does that?”

“Jeff Winger,” he chuckled, “that’s who!”

“So, teach the guy a lesson,” you shrugged in response, “I mean…he’s going to have to learn at some point in his life that he can’t bully others into giving him what he wants.  He might as well get his taste of the real world now!”

“Before you say anything, you may want to think about the gift that I’ve given you!” Professor Duncan said quickly as Jeff Winger pushed the door to his office open.

“An excuse to punch a hippie?” he asked as he leaned against the frame.

“No…no, not that!  An important lesson,” he smiled, tapping on his desk, “you see, the tools you acquired to survive out there, will not help you here at Greendale.  What you have, my friend, is a second chance at an honest life!”

“Give me my keys!” he groaned as he stopped at the Professor’s desk.

Duncan looked at him, baffled at the request.  He put the glass of wine he’d been sipping on down, “what?  No.  I have to keep your car for the lesson!”

Jeff made a move towards Professor Duncan and he flinched, tossing the keys to the Lexus at him.

“JEFFREY?  JEFFREY!  Are we cool?” he asked, as the student started walking out of his office with the keys, “We cool!”

He sighed as Jeff Winger disappeared, and Professor Duncan leaned back in his chair, picking up the glass of wine.  Then he looked to his teaching assistant, “I don’t even think he noticed you!”

“I think he was more upset about the car,” you giggled.  Professor Duncan chuckled and sipped on his wine, “and the fact that the packet didn’t have the answers to anything!”

“What did you put in that packet?”

“Boo-yah!” you giggled in response. 

Duncan chuckled and finished his glass of wine, before putting the long-stemmed glass back in the bottom drawer, “well that’s the end of my office hours for tonight.  Do you have any more questions, Tawney?”

“No,” you sighed, shaking your head.  He nodded as you packed up your bag and slung it over your shoulder, “I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning.”

“Hey Jeff there’s something that the group would like to talk to you about!” Britta said slowly, looking to the rest of the group.  Everyone immediately started disagreeing with her statement and she rolled her eyes at them, “okay, if you’re going to study with people it would be cool of you to show up on time.”

“Oh, were you waiting?” Jeff asked innocently.

“No…we just-oh TAWNEY!”

The rest of the group was quietly disagreeing with Britta’s statement as Abed ran towards the door and waved you down. 

You had been minding your own business, heading towards the reference section to get some books for Professor Duncan, but Abed had stopped in front of you, waving brightly.

“Hey Abed,” you smiled, your hands rising up to the straps of your backpack.  You pulled on them gently, a coping mechanism of your own anxieties, “it’s good to see you outside of class!”

“We have a Spanish study group!” he said quickly, pointing into the library where everyone was talking about something.  You noticed Jeff flipping open his empty binder and Annie cooing at him, before passing him the notes.

He smiled at her and put them in his binder, making a joke about getting a C. 

Abed must have noticed you cringe, “what’s wrong?”

“Huh?”

“You’re cringing…like you don’t like what’s going on!”

“That Jeff Winger guy,” you shrugged, fiddling with the straps of your backpack once more, “he’s such a creep…I don’t know how you can stand him.”

“Yeah…” Abed said slowly, “I-uh, I came out here to see if you wanted to join the study group.  We have one more seat and-“

“I don’t know…”

“Come on,” he begged, “I mean, you actually know Spanish…and we could really use someone like that to keep us on track!”

“Abed, I don’t kno-“

Before you could finish your sentence, however, Abed had pulled you into the library, “hey guys, this is Tawney.  She’s in our Spanish class too!”

Everyone stopped speaking, and you felt your anxiety creeping up as Jeff turned to look at you along with everyone else. 

“Uh…hi…” you said awkwardly. 

“We have an empty seat!” Abed said quickly, pulling out the chair beside Jeff, “I told Tawney she could study with us!”

“Oh, Abed…” Shirley said sweetly, “you didn’t consult with the rest of the group!”

“I-it’s okay…I didn’t-“

But Annie cut her off, a frown lacing her features as she looked at Shirley, “I think Tawney would make a great addition to the group!”

“I like her!” Troy smiled, shooting you a sweet smile and a little wave.

“I’m with the wonder boy!” Pierce chuckled, “Shakira looks like her hips don’t lie!”

Your mouth dropped, a quiet gasp leaving your lips.

“PIERCE!” Britta scolded. 

Your self-conscious attitude got the best of you, and you let your hands fall away from your backpack, only to wrap around yourself as you suddenly felt vulnerable around the group.

“Jeff tell Tawney she can stay!” Abed urged, “she actually does know Spanish and could really help us out!”

Jeff looked at you, eyeing you up and down before shrugging, “welcome to the group, Tawney!”

“Every once in a while a student will come up to me and ask, Senor Chang, why do you teach Spanish,” Professor Chang said from between Annie and another student, “they say it just like that!  Why do you teach Spanish?  Why you?  Why not math?  Why not photography?  Why not martial arts?  I mean surely it must be in my nature to instruct you in something that’s ancient and secret like building a wall that you can see from outer space!  Well I’ll tell you why I teach Spanish.”

The student beside you awkwardly cleared your throat and he looked at them, “it’s none of your business why!  Now, I don’t wanna have any conversations about what a mysterious, inscrutable man I am!”

He began laughing, stroking a long fake beard, his laugh getting higher with each breath of laughter. Abed looked at you, his eyes widening momentarily to reference how he thought Senor Chang was a bit…out there, and you couldn’t help but giggle. 

“I AM A SPANISH GENIUS!” he yelled, pointing at himself, “In Espanol my nickname is El Tigre Chino!  Because my knowledge will bite her face off!  So don’t question Senor Chang or you’ll get bit.  Yeah, bit!  YA BIT!”

“Okay, Friday manana we’ll be having conversations with the rest of the class using some phrases we learned!” Senor Chang announced, clapping his hands together, “You’ll be partnering up in pairs of dos!  So if you look under your desk you will find a card with either a picture or a word on it, okay?  Por ejemplo, blondie, aqui!  Has card with a picture of a house on it.  SO that means that the person with the card with the word ‘casa’ on it, is her partner.  Compmrende, star-burns?”

“What?” Alex asked, as Senor Chang pointed him out to the rest of the class.

“Okay, see you Friday,” Senor Chang finished up, “find your partners and have a great day!  And what do we say at the end of every class?”

“Hasta luego!” Everyone chorused.

“Come on, hands!  That’s 90 percent of Spanish!”

“Hasta luego!”

“Excellente!  Excellente.  GOOD!” Senor Chang waved everyone off, and they started searching for partners.  You noticed Jeff and Abed talking, and you couldn’t help but see how they were exchanging the rights for partners.  Meanwhile, you looked around for the person who had a bathroom picture as your word was bano. 

You frowned when you noticed Britta switching cards with a girl in the corner a few moments later.  She smiled, walking up to you, holding up the toilet card, “partners?”

“Yeah…sure…” you said, keeping a firm upper lip, “when do you want to work on the project?”

“Free later today?” she asked.

You nodded, “yeah…just have to go to Professor Duncan’s office and pick up some papers that need graded…but we could work on the project in my dorm or the library!”

“I’ll meet you at your dorm later today,” she agreed, nodding her head, “I got to talk to Senor Chang…do you have my number?”

You shook your head, and she took a piece of paper from her notebook.  Scribbling down the digits, she passed it off to you.

“Okay…I’ll text you when I’m free!”

“Great,” she smiled, “if you want, you can grab takeout and I’ll bring beers.”

“I-I’m not old enough to drink, Britta…I’m only 20.”

She shrugged, “you’ll be in your dorm…what’s it matter?  Text me later, and we’ll figure it out!”

Chapter 2

Tag List:  @lohnes16, @mckeeee-1

[ellewritesathing]

Ten Things    II

Summary: If there’s one thing you have to know about Harvey Kinkle, it’s that he rarely thinks things through. So when he meets (and falls for) Sabrina Spellman on his first day of Baxter High and finds out that she can’t date anyone until her tempestuous sister does, it seems like the obvious solution is to get someone to date her so he can go out with Sabrina. A not so obvious choice for the challenge is Caliban, but, hey, it’s not like Harvey thought that far.

Masterlist  Prev. | Part 2

Word-count: 1.8k+

A/N: this part is a little short but i hope you guys like it!!

Though Sabrina didn’t know very much about him, one thing was very clear: Harvey Kinkle was determined. It had taken him only a few days to figure out that she tutored people during study hall for extra money, and then he’d been letting her teach him chemistry every day since then. 

Harvey was sweet, and a good listener. He had a slight problem staying focused but his distractions always left her with little drawings on her study notes. For all intents and purposes, Harvey was the perfect boy next door. He would make the perfect boyfriend, too, if she didn’t still have feelings for Nick. 

But Sabrina couldn’t date Nick or anyone else until you did. So, for now, the fact that Harvey could make her laugh would have to be enough. 

“Hey, what are you thinking about?” Harvey asked quietly, bumping his elbow into hers lightly. 

Sabrina smiled and started closing her books, noticing a drawing of a flower in the margins that hadn't been there before. “Oh, nothing. How long was I out?” 

“About a minute. And you say I’m the one with concentration issues.” Sabrina laughed but when she didn’t say anything else, he added, “Hey, can I ask you something?” 

Sabrina looked up from packing away her things long enough to see how nervous Harvey was. He was twisting his pencil in his hand when she looked at him. “Sure, what’s wrong?” 

“Oh, uh, nothing’s wrong,” Harvey stammered. He leaned back ever so slightly and started fiddling with his pencil with a new intensity. “I was just wondering if you ... If you’d like to go out sometime. With me.” 

“Harvey, I…” 

“Oh no.” Harvey groaned and put his head in his hands. “You don’t like me like that and I just made things super awkward, right? Ugh, I’ll show myself out. Don’t worry about-” 

Sabrina couldn’t help but laugh as she reached out and tried to pull his hands away from his face. She held his hands in hers as she tried to calm him down. “Harvey, no. It’s not like that.” She took a breath and adjusted, putting her hands on the table. “My aunts have this rule where I can’t date anyone until my sister does.”

“Oh,” Harvey said softly. He looked down at where her hands used to be holding his and Sabrina felt a pang of guilt in her chest. 

“Yeah, and she’s not really …” Sabrina looked away. “There’s no one here that would- that she would …” 

Harvey was quiet for a few minutes before he looked back up at her. “What if I know a guy?” he asked. 

---

Ever since that day outside the principal’s office, Harvey had mostly stayed away from Caliban. He was a senior so they didn’t have any of the same classes, and it’s not like he was exactly a team player so Harvey never saw him at basketball practice. Harvey was also a little scared of him, if he was being honest; there were a ton of rumors going around about him that weren’t exactly family-friendly. Staying away was easier. 

Finding him was surprisingly easy. Speaking to him was not easy.

“So, uh, what do you think?” Harvey asked after he explained the whole story. Caliban continued to sprawl out on the bench and flick his lighter on and off so Harvey repeated himself. 

“You want to get together with blondie-” Caliban pointed to where Sabrina stood on the field, getting ready for cheer practice. “But you can’t because her sister is a devout nun, who you want me to corrupt. Is that about it?” 

Harvey shifted uncomfortably under Caliban’s gaze. When he put it like that, it sounded awful. “Yeah, that’s about it.”

“Why me?” Caliban asked. 

“I hear her sister’s, uh, kind of …”

“Tempestuous?” 

“A raging bitch is what comes up more often, but, uh, let’s go with that,” Harvey said. “So will you do it? I can’t pay you, but if you’re good with this then I’m pretty sure I can get Nick Scratch to.” 

Caliban hummed slightly, making Harvey more nervous than he wanted to admit. “Nicholas Scratch. How’d you manage that one?” 

Before Harvey had the chance to answer, a soccer ball came flying at them and he jumped away to avoid being hit. Caliban narrowly avoided setting himself on fire with his lighter. 

“What the bloody hell was that?” Caliban hissed as he got to his feet, capping his lighter angrily. 

“That-” Harvey took a breath as he put an arm around Caliban’s shoulders and pointed you out on the field “-Was your new girlfriend. Say hi.”

Caliban had this weird look on his face when Harvey looked over at him. His mouth turned up and he waved at you. You flipped him off. He smiled a bit wider. 

“I’ll do it,” Caliban said. 

---

Believe it or not, Caliban actually liked Greendale. The people stopped all their ‘being friendly’ crap pretty soon and started leaving him alone, he’d found a place that made decent coffee, and there was a stray cat behind the bleachers that purred whenever he came close. But now he was being harassed by a guy who used more hair gel a day than they sold in the bottle, and Caliban’s patience was starting to slip. 

Nicholas Scratch. Nick. They’d had a few classes together so far, but he made it clear he had no interest in Caliban and Caliban had no interest in him so they rarely talked. Now dear Nicholas had no problem talking. 

“So what’s it gonna take, man?” Nicholas asked for the third time. “Someone to do your homework? Money?” 

It’s not that Caliban disliked talking - he had no issues when Harvey was doing the talking - it’s that he disliked Nicholas. 

“Twenty bucks is as high as I’ll go.” 

“Well, let’s see-” Caliban let out a breath as he stood up and started walking around Nicholas “-I take her to the movies, and I pay for both of us because I'm a gentleman. That’s $20. Since she’s a lady, I also buy her popcorn and those little sour candies. That’s $40. Then there’s the gas it takes to get there, the probable dinner she’s going to want … Let’s round up at $100, shall we?” 

Caliban would ask you out for free. Not for Harvey or this asshole, but because you had a lovely little habit of rolling your eyes at everything he said and then, very badly, trying to hide the smile that tried to spread across your face. 

Nicholas tightened his jaw as he thought about the offer. 

“Fine. Here’s the money,” he said as he dug out his wallet. Of course, he was the kind of person to keep one hundred dollars in cash on him. “Make sure she goes to the party next Friday. If you can get her to prom, I’ll double it.” 

“Triple it. I don’t own a tux.” 

Again, Nicholas clenched his jaw and looked away for a second. “It’s a deal. Don’t screw it up.”

--- 

Caliban had been bugging you all week. He put notes in your locker that featured either lame pickup lines or little tidbits about people who’d done something dumb that day (begrudgingly, you had a favorite: when Billy walked face-first into an open locker), watched your practices but was long gone by the time you changed out of your uniform, and left his smoker smell on your stuff. It was a wonder you hadn’t punched him yet, but the day was young. 

You were ready to track him down after school but found him waiting for you by your locker with his usual annoying smile on his face. 

“What is your problem?” you asked when you’d stomped close enough for him to hear you. 

“Hello to you, too, princess,” Caliban said sweetly. 

“Don’t say hello to me and don’t call me princess.” You poked his chest on the second ‘don’t.’ “Why are you stalking me?” 

“Stalking is a bit of a leap, isn’t it?” Caliban asked. His eyes sparkled with an infuriating sort of amusement, but he stepped aside so you could get to your locker. 

“No, it isn’t. You leave me gifts, watch me, and never actually speak to me,” you said, punching in your combination. The lock popped open as you continued, “It’s creepy.” 

“I’ll admit, it’s not my best attempt at getting your attention, but you walk away whenever I try to speak to you in person,” Caliban said. 

“Gee, I wonder if there’s a reason for that,” you said as you lifted a hand to your chin to feign thinking about it. “Have you ever thought it’s because I don’t like you?” 

“How could you not like me? I’ve been flirting with you for almost a week,” Caliban said. 

“Well, stop flirting with me! First of all, you’re bad at it.” You shoved a book into your locker when it refused to cooperate with a huff. “And second of all, I don’t date smokers.” 

“Good thing I don’t smoke.” 

You snorted and turned to look at him. He was a liar with the smile of an angel. He also had a lighter in the front pocket of his dumb leather jacket. You reached over and pulled the old, silver zippo lighter from his jacket.  “You sure about that, Sparky?” 

Caliban smiled and took the lighter out of your hand. Though it only touched yours for a second, it was far warmer and softer than you’d expected. “Have you ever thought I just like to set things on fire?” he asked. 

“An arsonist and a stalker. Are you sure you’re single?” you asked as you tried to steady your heart again. 

Caliban laughed under his breath and looked down at the ground for a second before giving you a surprisingly unguarded smile. “So, if I stop smoking, you’ll date me?” 

You rolled your eyes and closed your locker. You adjusted your bag before turning back to Caliban and giving him a smile of your own. For a second, all of Caliban’s cockiness faded as you grabbed a handful of his shirt to pull him closer to you. In a low voice, you said, “I don’t think you’re ready to date someone like me, Sparky.” 

You let go of his shirt, patted his chest, and took a few steps backward before turning on your heel and walking towards the parking lot. 

---

You left without turning around to see Caliban with the most dumbstruck look on his face. Caliban was never ‘dumbstruck.’ He was the one that left people looking like this, he was the one doing the striking. But you’d struck him first. 

And if you kept striking him, Caliban was bound to do something dumb like fall in love with you.

Tagged:  @t-a-i-l-o-r-m-a-d-e  @miss--moose​  @marrypuffsstuff​  @harryscarolinaa​  @igorsbby​​  @foji2000​​  @hxlalokidottir​  @artaxerxesthegreat​​  @thxmagic​​  @strawberriesandknives​​  @xealia​​  @hotmessindisguise​  @acciomaximoff​  @reheated-coffee​​  @shelby-x​​  @perseny-blog​​  @millie-753​​  @luneerius​​  @shizzybarnaclee​​  @lettherebelovex​​  @throughparisallthroughrome​  @ietss​  @thebookwormlife​  @mechanicalanimalz​  @mariamermaid​  @nqbmf​  @caliban-is-my-girl  @shephard17895​  @music-movies  @luquincy  @olivia-west-allen  @drrramaaaqweeen​  @roxytheimmortal​  (struck through wouldn’t tag)

[lynelovespopculture]

THE CHILLING ADVENTURES OF ZELDA: CHAPTER 16-THE NEW GIRL

 CORDELIA SPELLMAN, NOW 12, FEELS UNEASY AROUND THE NEW GIRL IN HER CLASS…

Cordelia Spellman, smiled at herself in her full-length mirror, as she finished buttoning her blouse and admired her new skirt. Then she sat down at her vanity and picked up her golden chain with a single crescent moon attached. Ever since her parents had given her the necklace as a Yule gift 6 years ago, Cordelia never left the house without her necklace. Whenever she felt anxious or upset, Cordelia would hold the half-moon and pray. Guess being the daughter of a high priestess made you believe a little more. It was a long-standing family joke that if Sabrina’s black headband was her trademark then the necklace was Cordelia’s. After fastening the chain to her neck, Cordelia gathered her school books together and putting them in her backpack when she heard a bird. Turning around, she saw a dove in a tree right outside her bedroom window. A dove that Cordelia knew well.

“Hello, October.” Cordelia greeted the dove before grabbing her backpack and exiting her room. Out in the hallway, Cordelia encountered another animal. A huge brown greyhound lay across the floor, directly in Cordelia’s way. However, this was no mere dog. This was the familiar of Cordelia’s brother, Jake.

“Come on, Apollo, move! You’re in the way!” The dog did move when Cordelia scratched him behind his ear. The dog and the 12-year-old walked through the living room together. As they neared the kitchen, Apollo ran ahead, searching for food and his master. Cordelia stayed behind just long enough to put her book bag down on a hallway bench. Inside the kitchen, Cordelia found the usual suspects: her parents

“Good morning, Mom and Dad.”

Her brother was now feeding Apollo a strip of bacon, and Vinegar Tom, her mother’s dog wasn’t far behind.

“Morning, Jake.”

And her cousin, who unlike her parents and her brother, didn’t live there but worked there and often showed up early enough for breakfast.

“Hey, Ambrose.”

Plus 1 new face around the table.

“Hey, it’s the good doctor.” Cordelia hugged her big sister before sitting down next to her.

“Good morning, Cordy!” LJ smiled. “You don’t seem that surprised to see me here.”

“I’m not,” shrugged Cordelia as she dug into her oatmeal. “Perhaps that’s because I just saw a certain dove perched outside my window not 5 minutes ago.”

“Damn that October! I swear that familiar of mine spoils all my surprises! Anyway, the official reason I’m here is to drop off some medical forums for the boys but I also wanted to check up on you. Are you sure you’re ready for what you need to do today?”

Cordelia couldn’t help but smile. Not only was today the 1st day of school, but it was also Cordelia’s 1st day of 7th grade at Greendale Middle School, the very class that her father taught since she was 4.

Annoyed, Faustus came forward with his cup of coffee. “Hey, you have been teasing your sister all summer about being in my class. I wish you would stop it. I’m a good teacher and you, Cordy, don’t think I’m going to be easy on you because I’m your father.”

Cordelia shook her head. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Dad. I going to pass 7th grade with hard work and good grades, the same way I’ll become a top student when I attend the academy.”

Zelda smiled at her daughter. “Now, that’s the right attitude.”

“Butt kisser.” Jake teased his sister good-naturedly.

 10 minutes later, everyone left the kitchen. Ambrose and Jake went to work in other parts of the house, while everyone else was heading out the door. Zelda, to morning assembly at the academy, LJ was heading to the hospital to start her rounds and Faustus started the engine to his white VW bug as Cordelia climbed in beside him.

“So, did you and Mom have the talk today?” she asked her father.

“What talk?” Faustus asked his daughter.

Cordelia shrugged. “The talk, the talk you and Mom have at the start of every school year.  The one where Mom asks you to come to teach at the academy and every year, you turn down Mom’s offer.”

“You know about that?”

Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Everyone in the family knows. What I don’t get is why you keep turning her down. When I was little, you told me that Ambrose is the most powerful warlock in the family but I’ve known for a long time that it’s you. Plus, I heard Uncle C and Aunt Hilda talking about how you used to work there and- “

“Cordy, I don’t feel comfortable talking about this.” Faustus cut in.  “Yes, I used to work at the academy, but that was a long time ago, before the curse.”

“Of course!” His daughter spat. “Whenever I try to bring up anything about your past, all you ever say is it happened before the curse. Never mind that you always say you’ll tell me about this curse someday, but you never have. Dad, I’m 12 now, whatever this curse is, I can handle it.”

Faustus sighed as he pulled into the school parking lot. He couldn’t blame Cordelia for her anger toward him. She was right, of course, he brought up the ‘before the curse’ line a lot but what the child didn’t know was that he tried twice as much to tell his daughter what the curse actually was. Yet, he just couldn’t do it. Even when Zelda was right there beside him to support and help him to explain it all. But 1 look in Cordy’s innocent, trusting eyes, and Faustus chickened out every time. You’re weak, boy, you’ve always been weak. His father’s words were never far in Faustus’s mind. No words could be enough to express how thankful and grateful he was to the Spellmans for their unending understanding and support of him for the last 13 years. However, no matter how loved, safe, and secure his family would make him feel, something always happened, a memory, a nightmare, (last week’s was a real doozy) to trigger his never-ending guilt yet again. That’s why he declined Zelda’s yearly offer to return to teaching at the academy.  It was no longer a school to him, just a scene of his crimes. He felt the same way about the church, though he found it easier to avoid the school. When he did go to mass, he sat in the very last pew, even if as the spouse of the high priestess, it was his right to sit upfront with the rest of his family. He liked to get in and out, to see as less of the coven as possible. Even if the coven and the family’s forgiveness had lasted for 13 years, Faustus still lived his life as if that forgiveness could be revoked at any moment. This is why he couldn’t tell the youngest Spellman that it was only because of her mother that he wasn’t trapped forever inside a wicked, murdering husk. Sometimes it felt like Cordelia was the only 1 left in the world who didn’t know of his crimes and, selfish or not, he liked it that way.

“No, your mother and I didn’t have ‘that talk’ today, we had it yesterday.” There, it was all Faustus was willing to say on the subject. Faustus parked the car and pointed. “There are your friends.”

Thankfully, the sight of her best friends, blond triplets Emily, Erin, and Erica Warner, was enough to distract Cordelia from their current conversation.

“Thanks, Dad,” Cordelia pecked her father’s cheek, left the car, and made a beeline for her friends. “Hi, guys!”

“Hey, Cordy,” Said Emily.

“Hi, Cordelia” Replied Erica.

Erin just waved.

Cordelia frowned. “What’s wrong with you 3? You all look like you didn’t sleep a wink all night long.”

“We didn’t,” mumbled Erin.

“How could we when Mom and Dad had another all-night screaming match.” Emily agreed with her sister.

“Again?!” Cordelia frowned, the triplets confided in her that their parents were having marriage problems for quite some time.

“Hey there, girls!” came a voice from behind.

“Sara!”  All 3 Warner girls cried and turned to embrace the girl coming towards them.

Cordelia wasn’t sure what disturbed her more.  The fact that she had never seen this new girl a day in her life or that she got a warmer welcome from her besties than she did. However, Cordelia easily dismissed the thought when Erin turned back to her.

“Cord, this is Sara Reed. She just moved 3 doors down from us about 2 weeks ago. Sara, this is Cordelia Spellman, she’s been our best friend since, like, ever.”

“So, I’m finally meeting the famous Cordelia Spellman.”

“Well, I don’t know about famous,” Cordelia smiled.

The bell rang so the girls headed inside the school.

“Are you kidding?” Sara told Cordelia, “the triplets talk about you all the time. To hear them tell it, your family owns the town.”

“Hardy,” Cordelia giggled. “Truthfully, they only own 2 businesses, but they are all over town. Let’s see, my uncle owns Dr. Cerberus’s books and spirits and he runs it with my aunt Hilda.  She herself co-owns the Spellman Sisters mortuary with my mother but Mom teaches high school with my oldest sister, Prudence. So the mortuary’s day to day business is run by Ambrose, my cousin, and my brother Jake. Not too far from Uncle C’s shop, is the new office of my other cousin, Sabrina, who’s a therapist. LJ, my other sister, is a doctor.”

“What about your father?” Sara asked.

“Oh, Dad’s right here,” Cordelia answered. “Dad has been teaching 7th grade at this school since I was 4.”

“Which means that Mr. Spellman is our teacher this year.” Erin pointed out.

This made Sara confused. “Wait, I thought you guys were going into 8th grade?”

Emily shook her head. “Nope,7th.”

“I’m going into 8th.” Sara declared.

“I thought she was 12, like us,” Cordelia whispered to Erica.

“She is, but Sara is so cool, I’m not surprised she skipped a grade.”

“Oh yeah,” Cordelia smiled. “What makes her so cool?”

“She’s a Wiccan.”

Her friends didn’t notice when Cordelia froze and her smile disappeared.

 Nina Robinson was the school’s new 8th-grade teacher and she was not at all happy to be there. Some teachers’ passion was children, but Nina’s true passion was men. That was got her in her current troubles. If her boyfriend-correction, ex-boyfriend, had simply told his wife about them, he probably could have avoided a political scandal.  Yet here Nina was, in a backward hic town instead of her beloved New York.

How am I going to find Mr. tall, dark and handsome here in the middle of Nowhere, USA? Nina thought to herself just before Mr. tall, dark, and handsome walked by.

Luckily, Nina was standing right next to Theo Putnam, the vice-principal of the school.  “Um, Mr. Putnam? Who is that?” Nina asked, pointing.

“Oh, that’s Faustus Spellman, he’s been teaching 7th grade here for 8 years. His niece, Sabrina, is a childhood friend of mine.”

Nina could care less about childhood friends as she checked out this Faustus guy and she liked what she saw. Most women would back off when they saw Faustus’s wedding ring, but not Nina. She liked a challenge.

  “So, how are you today, Mr. Wilson?” LJ smiled at her favorite patient.

“Much better now that you’re here.”  Mr. Wilson took LJ’s hand and kissed it.

“Well, I’m certainly glad that those 3 surgeries didn’t rob you of your charm.”

LJ turned as the door opened and there was a man LJ didn’t know. “Excuse me, Mr. Wilson? I was sent here to check your I.V. and do some bloodwood.”

“Well, do it, then. Can’t you see I’m trying to flirt here?”

LJ chuckled as she moved to allow the stranger room to work. LJ also check the chart at the end of Mr. Wilson’s bed. “Everything looks good here. I’ll check back on you this afternoon.”

LJ and the man left the hospital room together. “I’m sorry, but have we met?” LJ asked the man out in the hallway. “It’s just that I’ve worked here for the last 5 years and I can’t place you.”

The man smiled. “Nor should you. I’m part of a group of interns that just transferred here from Moon Valley.”

“Oh, okay. Well, welcome to Greendale Memorial Hospital. How are you liking it so far?”

“I like it very much. I mean, the people are great. There’s only 1 thing I’m nervous about.  My pals keep telling me how tough our supervisor is. I haven’t met him yet; some guys say that our new supervisor is some hard ass resident named Dr. Spellman. Oh, where are my manners?” I’m Peter, Peter Watson.”

“LJ. LJ Spellman.”

Peter stopped walking. “You’re kidding, right.”

LJ kept smiling as she shook her head. “Afraid not.”

“Look, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“After I get my foot out of my big mouth, how about I apologize properly by buying you a drink after work?”

LJ’s smile got bigger. “I would like that.”

 Over the years, some found it odd, that everyone at Greendale middle school, both staff and students alike, all had their lunch break at noon sharp. Yet today, it was a blessing. For at 10 after 12, a fire broke out in the southeast end of the school. Far away from the cafeteria and the teacher’s lounge. By 12:30, all the fire alarms were screaming at full force and the firetrucks were arriving just as the yard was filling with people. By 1 pm, the principal and vice-principal were busy calling parents to tell them not only about the fire but also the happy news that no one was hurt. To give the school a chance to air out all that extra smoke, afternoon classes were held outside, made possible by the nice weather. Although the flames were brief, it did ruin 2 rooms. The library and the 8th-grade classroom were burnt and would be unusable for months. By 3, it was safe to come back inside. By 3:30, the school was over and Cordelia was putting some books in her locker before heading into the girls’ bathroom. Cordelia pushed open the door and froze. There, among a dozen lit candles, were her 3 best friends and the new girl, Sara, all hovering over an Ouija board.

[hobi-gang]

community | knj/ot7

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 – an unlikely group of people at a Greendale Community College form an unlikely Spanish study group. One thing Kim Namjoon wants to know about the standoffish girl from Spanish class is; "What's her deal?".

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞 – pure crack, humor, community college au, angst if you squint, they’re all 100% stupid

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 – knj x reader

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 – 9.5k

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 – mentions of aspergers, mentions of past drug abuse, namjoon is a bit of a dick oops, smoking (cigarettes)

𝐚/𝐧 – this is like... a straight up copy of the pilot to the tv show ‘community’, but i desperately wanted to see bts in that hilarious enivornment. i do not own the show ‘community’ nor do i own bts. this is just straight up crack. mcthank you.

"What is 'community college'?" A voice blared through the speakers around the quad, causing many students to pause and look at Dean Bang on his small podium with his microphone at the center of the busy square, the stupidly bright sun shining a light on him and all his khaki and white button-up glory. "Oh, wait, that's... That's the wrong card, let me start over."

After an awkward moment had passed and Dean Bang had properly sorted his notes, he spoke up into the microphone again, "Okay, good morning! Many of you are halfway through your first week here at Greendale Community College and as your dean, I thought I'd share some thoughts of wisdom and inspiration," he smiles then continues, "What is 'community college'? I know most of you have heard that it's loser college for remedial teens."

At the mention of remedial teens, Jeon Jungkook, a young boy with dark brown hair and jock attire, stopped scanning the campus map for his English class and looked around himself to find the source of the voice behind the speakers, tugging on his Letterman jacket nervously.

"They say it's for 20-something dropouts."

____ looked up from her Spanish study book and her eyes fell on the Dean and his pathetically small podium, rolling her eyes at him and feeling somewhat attacked and embarrassed by his accurate but harmful words.

"Or middle-aged divorcees."

Kim Seokjin, a tall and straight-back young man with kind eyes, plump lips, and short brown hair stops reading the pamphlet in his hand given to him by a member of the Chess Club that passed him by, looking around to find who's voice was blaring from the quad speakers. I'm not middle-aged... am I? he asked himself thoughtfully.

"And old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity."

Min Yoongi's ears perked up at the mention of that, sitting up on the bench that he was slowly falling asleep on. His light violet hair making him stand out, he pulled his hoodie over his head so only his face was visible through the opening, scowling at the words 'old people', being reminded of how often he gets called a grandpa by his classmates for his somewhat lazy demeanor. I'm not middle-aged... am I? he asked himself thoughtfully.

"That's what you've heard, however," the Dean grins excitedly, "I wish you luck!" He thrusts his arm into the air in a victory pose.

He looks around at the small number of students that had bothered to stay in the quad in front of his small podium, looking at them expectantly before realizing and looking at his cue cards, "Oh, okay. Uh-oh. There's actually more to this speech. Can you all look around your immediate areas," He asks the students awkwardly, "There's a middle card missing, I actually really wanted to finish that properly-"

"I'm actually fully Korean, the son of immigrants. My parents are U.S citizens now, but they're not threats to national security. A lot of people wanna know that because my dad has an angry energy but he's not angry at America, he's just angry at my mom for leaving him. Although she did leave him because he was angry and he was angry because she wasn't. My name's Taehyung by the way."

"Well, Taehyung," Namjoon says wearily, glancing next to him at the younger, slightly shorter boy with ridiculously bright blue hair and a boxy smile following him like an eager puppy around the quad, he shakes his hand, "It was nice to know you and then meet you, in that order," he says to him with raised brows, "Now, about that question that I asked?"

"Oh, it was," Taehyung checks his watch, "11:05 when you asked-"

"Taehyung," Namjoon says abruptly, raising his hand to stop the younger boy from walking beside him, nodding towards the young girl across the quad with her face stuffed in a book. "What's the deal with the hot girl from Spanish class?"

"I only talked to her once when she borrowed a pencil," Taehyung says monotonously which makes Namjoon deflate a bit but he is quickly impressed by what the younger boy says next.

"But her name's ____, she's 23, birthday in September. She has two older sisters and one of them teaches a dance class that I might wanna lookup. Oh, and she thinks she's gonna fail tomorrow's Spanish test so she really needs to focus and she's sorry if that makes her seem cold," Taehyung finishes his gesturing and his confident spewing of words, looking up at the older, pink-haired boy with no indication of emotion.

Namjoon's mouth hangs agape for a moment, "Holy crap, Taehyung," he says in awe, "I see your value now." He pats Taehyung on the shoulder and gives him a meaningful look before he turns to walk into the school, leaving the younger boy behind.

"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me!" Taehyung shouts to his older classmate as he's walking away, his finger pointed in the air as if for exclamation.

"Kim Namjoon, genius at law!"

"You gotta stop saying that, Lee Hyun... I'm kidding, keep going," Namjoon grins widely, closing the door behind him and stepping forward into his former client's cramped office to shake his hand across his wide, messy desk littered with papers and tools of all sorts.

"So," Hyun leans his arms atop the slew of papers on his desk and tilts his head slightly to look up at his much taller friend, "Tell me. What is my lawyer doing here?"

"Actually, I'm... a student now," Namjoon says with a timid smile, taking a seat on the couch of Hyun's office.

Hyun raises his eyebrows in surprise, "Well, that can't be an inspiring story."

"I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm in a bit of a kerfuffle... The state bar has suspended my license and they found out that my college degree was... less than legitimate." Namjoon confesses with as much confidence as he could muster, finding it difficult to spill the beans to his former client turned friend.

"I thought you had a degree from Columbia?" Hyun questions him, brows knit in confusion.

"Now I have to get one from America," Namjoon chuckles then sighs longingly, "And it can't be an email attachment."

"Well, you've picked a fine school," Hyun smiles, leaning back in his office chair with his arms crossed behind his head.

Namjoon snaps his fingers and agrees, "Yes! And I'm hoping that our friendship will yield certain advantages. You're the psychology professor, y'know, so I could really do with some academic guidance, maybe some moral support and... every answer to every test for every one of the classes that I'm taking this semester," Namjoon pulls a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his sport's jacket. "This is my schedule-" "Okay, Namjoon, just by asking that you are insulting the very integrity of this entire institution," Hyun chastises his friend, abruptly standing up which mildly alarms Namjoon but he is surprised to see Hyun grabbing a cane next to his desk and knocking on the window behind him. Through the open blinds and dirty windows, Namjoon can see the shape of a person that appeared to be urinating on a garbage skip. "Oi! Not a bathroom. Not. A. Bathroom." Hyun shouts out the window and then he scowls when the assailant quickly tucks their business away and runs off.

Namjoon exhaled noisily through his nose, "Hyun, you seemed less into integrity the day I convinced a dozen of your peers that when you made that U-turn on the freeway and tried to order hot wings from the emergency call box that your only real crime was loving America." He said with the hope that Hyun was finally going to turn over for him and help him cheat his way through college.

A moment passed and Hyun sighed, "I'll look into it."

"Thank you," Namjoon immediately took to his feet and reached over his friend's desk to shake his hand one last time. "Hyun, you are a good man." he smiled, going to the door.

Hyun rolled his eyes, "Namjoon, are you familiar with the adage 'cheaters never prosper'?"

The taller of the two scoffed and opened the door, "No, and if I wanted to learn something, I wouldn't have come to community college."

Hyun sighed and gave his friend a concerned look before waving him out of his office.

Namjoon found himself wandering the maze-like corridors of the school and ultimately ended up in the cafeteria. After purchasing a bottle of water and a suspiciously cheap packet of apple slices, Namjoon was lucky to spot a familiar head of soft brown hair. Walking over quietly, he steps closer to the girl from his Spanish class and spoke to her with an expression of surprise, "Oh, hey, Spanish?"

"Don't hit on me, okay?" the brown-haired girl answered with an annoyed tone, too engrossed in her work to even look up at the person speaking to her.

"I... wouldn't dream of it," he saved face, chuckling nervously. "I just wanted to let you know about... my Spanish study group!"

At the mention of a Spanish study group, she finally looked up and couldn't hold back the snicker bubbling inside of her at the prospect of who was standing right in front of her. Though his ego was a little hurt, he put on his charming smile paired with his signature dimples, almost as if he were modeling for her.

"Woah, the guy sitting in the back of class playing on his phone all day has a Spanish study group?" she gasps with faux excitement, raising a brow of suspicion at him. "Can I sign up twice?"

"Ha-ha," he precedes, "I'm taking the class for an easy credit, I'm actually a board-certified Spanish tutor," he says in a matter of factly manner to sound as convincing as possible.

"Can you say that in Spanish?" the brunette girl quickly responded.

Namjoon was stumped for a second but said the first few Spanish sentences that first came to his head. "Duermo tarde español, una hora más, no rasque mi coche," he said as smoothly as possible with a smirk. He didn't know it, but what he actually said was "I sleep late Spanish, one more hour, do not scratch my car," and he was praying that she didn't know either.

The look she was giving him was making him nervous, it was as if she knew he was lying and he was just about to tell her that he was lying until she slammed her book shut and leaned closer to him with wide, desperate eyes. "I really need help with Spanish," she confessed in a low voice.

"Yeah, I was willing to bet," Namjoon chuckled, extending his hand to her as a sign of goodwill. "I'm Namjoon by the way, or... Jefe," he smiled as she took his larger hand in her much smaller one. The comparison alone made his heart just a little bit more tender.

"The, uh, group meets in the library at four."

"I'm ____, and thanks." She smiles up at him, letting go of their handshake. She gathers her things and shoves them into her well-used canvas side bag and she stood up to leave.

"You're gonna be there, right?" he asks her and she just smirks at him one last time before turning her back on him and walking away.

"Un poquito más!" he shouted after her. "That means 'see you there'!"

Nope. It really meant 'a little more', but he could care less as long as she believed that he was right.

Namjoon sat alone at an eight-seater table in one of the library's study rooms, repeating the phrase for 'good afternoon' to himself in solitary, the library's population lowering as the minutes went by.

"Buenos tardes, buenos tardes, buenos tardes..." he repeated under his breath while tapping his pencil against the table, making sure he was right. With such a simple phrase, he couldn't get it wrong otherwise the hot girl from Spanish class would finally figure him out and he just can't let that happen.

"Hey," she enters the study room with a cheeky grin, her heavy bag slapping against her hip as she walked.

"Buenos tardes!" he says to her with pride, immediately straightening his posture and giving himself an internal high-five for getting it right, "Welcome to my Spanish study... uh, group. I've got the whole table."

"You've got the whole room," she adds with raised brows, taking the seat closest to him.

Namjoon digs around in his pocket for a piece of paper and he brings forth a crumpled chess club pamphlet that he remembers getting from the quad earlier that day. He flattens out the paper as best as he can before thrusting it towards her on the table along with his pencil. "Here's the, uh, contact sheet. Just put your number down there," he asks her and she snickers before accepting his pencil and jotting down her number.

Namjoon pretends to look around the room and out the doors to the rest of the library with exasperation, "Man, where's the rest of the group? They must be running late... But you and I can get acquainted in the meantime."

She finishes her jotting and puts the pencil on top of the paper before pushing it back towards Namjoon, "You might have noticed earlier in the cafeteria, I'm not that great at small talk."

"That's actually kinda great, I like big talk. What's your deal?" he smirks, leaning an elbow onto the table and raising his brows at her.

"That's not small talk?" she tilts her head to the side with a tight smile.

"What's your deal and is God dead?" he quickly adds to his previous question to make it fit her requirements.

She inwardly scoffs and lays her hands flat onto the table, "Okay, you wanna know my deal?" she asks him and he nods in response, "My deal is, above all else, honesty."

"Honesty..." Namjoon repeats, biting his cheek nervously.

"Yeah, if you're honest with me, I will like you. If you lie to me, I will never talk to you again. That's my deal."

With it all laid out in front of him, he felt compelled to tell her the truth. Sure, he may have lied to her before but he won't just lie to her now that she had just asked the truth of him so... He'd give her the truth. Well, an incomplete truth. It wasn't entirely lying but it wasn't entirely telling the truth either. It was a gray area, and as much as he liked this girl in front of him, he also liked having a smidge of integrity.

From the first day, he saw her in Spanish class and his attention was mostly on her throughout the entirety of each lesson. He'd look above the screen of his phone to watch her soft brown shoulder-length hair moving against her slender neck, he'd observe how her back was always straight and her shoulders were always pulled back. He also observed her unique and incredible fashion. He liked the bold, solid-colored sweaters and t-shirts and her high-waisted, wide-leg pants paired with stylish shoes of all kinds, all of it just made her hard to ignore, though she always carried the same, tattered canvas bag. Her sense of style clearly indicated that she preferred comfort over the other hundred pleasantries that women's fashion often offered, such as heels and skinny jeans. He liked that about her.

Today, her bright orange shirt and beige high-waisted, wide-leg pants only managed to highlight her feminine features more, making his focus and his breathing stray by just the smallest bit. The smallest. He didn't want to admit just how breathtaking she was, and she tended to take his breath away a lot without even trying and that's what was driving him to do whatever it took to keep her there in that study room with him, within reason of course.

"That's a pretty good deal," he told her honestly, irony aside.

"So," she crossed her arms over her chest, "what's your deal?"

"My deal?" Namjoon repeated, and she nodded in return.

The incomplete truth.

"I..." he looked at her and gulped, "I would, um, I would have to say... Uh, honesty. Because... I, uh, would say anything to get what I want and I-I want you to... To like me," for the first time since he had known her, and that hasn't exactly been a long time, he looked away in embarrassment and didn't look back up at her until she spoke up.

With a reluctant hmph, she says "That was a very honest answer. Okay, I like you now." And that makes his eyes widen in surprise.

"Really? Wow, you're easy," he says with disbelief, his heart slowing down just an ebb.

"Hey, guys!" someone spoke up behind Namjoon, making him turn in his chair to see that familiar head of bright blue.

The young brunette squealed with joy, "Taehyung in the house! Woo, yeah!" waving the blue-haired boy over excitedly.

"Woo!" Namjoon unenthusiastically whoops, brows knit in confusion watching as the boy grabbed a chair from the corner of the room and bringing it over to the table. "Woo! Woo-why?" he laughs confusedly.

Taehyung places his chair in the middle of both of their chairs, seating himself between the brunette girl and Namjoon. "Oh, ____ invited me! Is that cool?" he smiled, looking at the older boy with an oblivious smile.

"I can't think of a single logical reason why not!" Namjoon says through gritted teeth, a faux smile gracing his features. His eyes fall on the sheet of paper on the table, he immediately thrusts it towards the blue-haired boy, urging him to put his information on the paper.

"Cool... Cool, cool, cool," Taehyung murmured to himself as he slowly wrote his number down onto the paper. "This is kind of like Breakfast Club, huh?" Taehyung quips randomly.

"We are in a library," the brunette girl points out, patting Taehyung on the knee. Namjoon spotted that gesture out of the corner of his eye and felt the jealousy growing in his chest. Jealousy aside, he looks at Taehyung's number on the paper and he pulls his phone out, drafting a text to send to the blue-haired boy seated between him and the girl of his dreams.

"Yeah, I'm sure we've all got an issue balled up deep inside us that would make us cry if we talked about it," Taehyung says to his peers nonchalantly, but the worry etched on the brunette girl's features were all too serious.

She places a hand on his forearm and earnestly asks him, "Do you have something balled up inside of you?"

Taehyung looks up to the ceiling as if in thought and he responds, "Well, I do have a little doozy in the chamber if thing's get a little emotional."

Suddenly, Taehyung's phone pings and Namjoon puts his phone away, looking at the blue-haired boy expectantly, watching as the boy brings his phone out from his pocket and his eyebrows are raised in surprise, "Ooh, it's a text message! Let's give this bad boy a read," he says cheerily.

Namjoon panics, realizing that if he reads the text aloud, then the brunette girl sitting across from him would find out that it was him. "Oh, Taehyung," Namjoon says nervously, "I think it might be private."

"I've never gotten one of these before," Taehyung continues, ignoring the older boy's urgencies. Namjoon would've felt a little bit of pity in his chest at the sound of how sad that sentence actually was if it weren't for the fact that he was very close to being exposed.

"Say you have to pee, I need to talk to you." The blue-haired boy reads aloud with a confused tone. "Say you have to pee," he repeats, holding his phone screen towards the brunette girl so she could read it and she looked just as confused as he did. Her confusion quickly turned to suspicion, looking at the two boys sitting next to her.

"That is weird," she commented. "What does that even mean?" Taehyung questions both of them and Namjoon quickly shrugged.

"I don't know man, that sounds strange. Do you even have to pee?" Namjoon asks and Taehyung shakes his head 'no'.

"Hmm," Namjoon murmurs, "I'm stumped, that sounds very creepy."

"That makes two of us," Taehyung concurs with a shrug. In the corner of his eye, Namjoon can see the brunette girl eyeing him and he knows that she knows that it was him.

Namjoon's phone chimes and he looks to make sure that it wasn't Taehyung messaging him back and further making him fall into a pit of mortification. He reads the text that was sent to him and realizes it's Lee Hyun, his former client and now his possible conspirator and hero.

'con-4-s-8-tion on football field now!!! - Hyun"

"What's that?" The brunette girl asks him and he is brought out of his bubble.

"Does it say 'you have to pee'?" Taehyung asks.

"Oh, no, it's just someone with an impossibly bad grasp on abbreviations. I've gotta step out for a bit," he says, getting out of his chair and shoving his phone into his pocket, "I'll be back in like five minutes but, uh, go ahead and start studying verbs... In, uh, Spanish," he concludes, waving to his peers before stepping out of the study room.

Once he's out of ear-shot, the brunette girl smiles and nudges Taehyung on the knee, "What's your read on that guy, Taehyung?"

Taehyung looks at her and tilts his head to the side, appearing as though he were analyzing her.

"You look like my interpretation of God," he says randomly, making her raise a brow in confusion.

"Ethnically ambiguous," he adds, and she forms an 'o' with her mouth and nods at his words.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the school, Namjoon's light jogging has turned into a brisk walk as he finally spots his friend standing at the edge of the school's football field, the football team on the field practicing on a variety of equipment in the heat.

"Suppose I say to you 'it's possible to get those test answers'?" Hyun says aloud once he realizes Namjoon is next to him.

"I would say 'go with that' and 'you could've put that in a text'," Namjoon responds frustratedly. "I'm asking you if you know the difference between right and wrong," Hyun eggs on.

"I discovered at a very early age that if I talk long enough, I can make anything right and wrong. So, either I'm God or truth is relative. In either case, booyah."

"Oh, interesting! It's just that the average person finds it difficult to say 'booyah' to moral relativism."

"Hyun, you don't have to play the shrink to protect your pride. I accept. You're chicken," Namjoon smirks at his friend, expecting a reaction that came faster than he anticipated.

"I'm a professor, you can't talk to me that way!" Hyun huffs loudly.

"A six-year-old girl could talk to you that way!" Namjoon retorts with a scoff, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Yeah, because that would be adorable!" Hyun thrusts his arms into the air in exclamation.

"No, because you're a five-year-old girl and there's a pecking order!" Namjoon bites back.

"Fine, I'll do it!" Hyun argues back with his hands flapping about.

"Thank you," Namjoon smiles, patting Hyun on the shoulder before walking away and leaving Hyun to stand in the field by himself with a look of shock etched into his face.

Namjoon found himself getting closer to the entrance of the library study room and began reciting his prepared excuse aloud from memory, "You guys aren't going to believe this but the rest of the study group-"

The words were snatched right out of his mouth when he finally came to the doorway and found that all but 2 seats were full. 2 empty seats remaining for him and... for the brunette girl from Spanish class.

"Is here..." Namjoon finishes under his breath, looking at each of the new faces in the room, except they weren't very new. He recognized them from somewhere, he just couldn't pinpoint where.

"Are you the 'board-certified' tutor?" One of the new faces asked, his light violet hair peeking out from beneath his hoodie and both hands tucked into his pocket, a bored expression on his face.

"That means you'll do my homework, right?" A rather young boy with a letterman jacket spoke arrogantly, a cheeky grin on his face and his hand already extending out towards Namjoon, a thin stack of papers gripped between his fingers.

"I'll need to call my babysitter if we're gonna be staying later than 10," Another young man spoke up from the table, his proper attitude shining with his posture and articulate words, his plump lips pulled into a gentle smile.

"What board certifies a tutor?" A rather small and slender boy speaks up from the side of the table, his eyes examining Namjoon beneath his clementine bangs with a speculative gaze, both arms crossed over his chest tightly.

"Aren't you the guy that plays games on their phone in the back of the class?" A giddy boy chirps from the other side of the table, his round cheeks and light brown, gleaming eyes drawing his attention.

Namjoon raised his brows at the group of rather attractive young men gathered at the table. His gaze falls on Taehyung's bright blue head. "Where's ____?"

"Not sure, but I invited more people from Spanish class. Is that cool?" Taehyung says. Ah, so that's where he can recognize them from.

"That's the... coolest," Namjoon manages to squeeze out from between his teeth with as enthusiastic a tone as possible, trying his best to hide his frustration. Taehyung gives the older man a thumbs up and a smile. "I'm gonna go to the bathroom," Namjoon begins to say, collecting his things that he had left on the table previously, "and I'm gonna bring my jacket, wallet and my keys with me... In case there's a fire."

Namjoon tucks his items in his arms and leaves the study room.

Exiting the library, Namjoon bumped into someone and almost chastised them until he realized who it is.

"Busted," she says with a smirk, making Namjoon's heart pound in his chest. "Uh, listen-"

"Now you know. I'm a smoker," she says shamefully, lifting a lit cigarette into view and putting it back down to her side so the smoke doesn't get in their way.

"Yeah, but... They're filtered so that makes them safe," his chest rumbles with a chuckle, making her smile after she had made quite the admission.

"You ready to get started? Looks like the rest of your group showed up," she asks him, teasing him with a gentle bump of her shoe on his shin.

Namjoon hisses in faux pain and laughs, "Yeah, that's not my group. I think maybe Taehyung took out an ad on Craigslist," he says with uncertainty, "and I was trained never to say this but... I think that group may be untutorable."

"Oh really?" she says in a sing-song fashion, only egging him on.

"So, why don't you and I study verbs over-"

"Dinner?" she says in an attempt to finish his sentence.

"Or, uh, drinks..." he shrugs carelessly.

"I think we should actually prioritize here and study first and then go to dinner," she offers, "And if they really prove to be untutorable, we'll slip out early."

Discarding her finished cigarette butt to the ground and stomping out the heat with her chunky sole, she slipped into the library and the look she gave him before slinking away behind the closing door made Namjoon bite his cheek to contain his excitement. "Oh they'll be untutorable, alright," he says to himself, his minding already running with ideas on how to make or ruin the fastest study session in history.

Namjoon wanders into the study room and finds everyone in their seats, looking up at him with anticipation. He finds himself at the head of the table and he musters up the energy to try and turn this night into a disaster or into the fastest study session anyone has ever seen.

"All right," he begins with a tight smile, "Look at this group, ready to study all night."

"Well, I can stay at least till ten," The proper young man says amongst the quiet murmurs coming from around the table.

"But," Namjoon interjects, "Who studies with strangers, right? My name is Namjoon."

"Namjoon, it's a pleasure. My name is Min Yoongi," the man at the end of the table stands up to reach over the table at an attempt to shake Namjoon's hand, "And yes that is Min as in Min's Mics," Yoongi stops his reach for the handshake, making Namjoon awkwardly slink back into his chair, "The award-winning microphone production company."

"I was just about to ask..." Namjoon bumped his eyebrows up in annoyance.

"I'm also a toastmaster, so perhaps I should do the introductions!" Yoongi insists with a lazy grin.

"Definitely!" Namjoon encourages, already sensing that Yoongi's loose and unbothered energy was bound to mess things up in the room.

Yoongi claps his hands again and immediately gestures to the brunette sitting beside Namjoon, "You already know ____,"

The brunette girl immediately corrects him and Namjoon can't help but snicker at the incredibly fast screw-up.

"Hockey sock," Yoongi points toward the boy sitting to Namjoon's right side.

"It's Hoseok," the brown-haired boy spoke up, pausing his sketching to correct the man at the other end of the table with an amused look.

"Tater tot."

"My name is Taehyung," the blue-haired boy chided.

"Junk food."

The boy sitting beside Yoongi gave him a look of confusion, "I literally just told you my name like four minutes ago, dude, it's Jungkook."

Yoongi then gestures to the orange-haired person on the other side of the table, "That's Prince Jam."

"Jimin," the young boy narrowed his eyes at the self-proclaimed toastmaster.

"And finally, this is Seokjin," Yoongi smiled gently, staring for just a second too long at the man sitting right next to him.

"Is that even close?" Namjoon asks the supposed 'Seokjin', and he receives a timid nod in return, the young man squirming uncomfortably under Yoongi's continued gaze.

"Can you teach us how to say curse words in Spanish?" Hoseok asks, tapping his pencil against the table. "Unfortunately, no," Namjoon answers with a sigh.

"How do I become board-certified? And I actually agree with Jimin, what board certifies a tutor?" Hoseok persists, Jimin agreeing with his questions with a curt nod.

"That's actually a really great question. Next?" Namjoon smiles innocently, turning his attention elsewhere to avoid any more questions about his faux tutoring origins.

"Yeah, well, I'd like to know why I had to find out about this group on accident," Jimin sits up, raising his chin in a show of confidence.

Taehyung's brows are knit in anticipation, "Oh this is getting way more like Breakfast Club now."

"There's breakfast?" Yoongi asks confusedly.

"Okay, um, maybe we should-" the brunette girl began to speak up in an attempt to break the tension.

"You know," Namjoon interrupts her and he receives a glare in return, "I've been a part of a lot of study groups that fell apart because of unresolved tension. Shouldn't we address Jimin's concern? Did we not invite him?"

"Oh, Jimin, honey, it's not behind your back. We just didn't want to-" Seokjin tries to comfort the younger boy sitting next to him but is immediately interrupted. The brunette girl was starting to notice that interrupting each other was becoming a trend, and she didn't like it at all.

"Can we stop with the 'honeys' and the 'sweeties'? Being younger does not make me inferior, if anything, your age indicates that you made bad life decisions!" Jimin responds sharply, almost shaking with equal amounts of nervousness and irritation.

Seokjin inhales quickly and starts shaking his head, making noises of disagreement, as though he were trying to hold back the hurtful words that wanted to slip off his tongue by instinct.

"Seokjin has a reply to that," Namjoon says, making the brunette girl's head snap in his direction, utterly confused as to why he would try to stoke the flames of this argument.

Everyone around the table except for the brunette girl murmurs their agreements, seeing Seokjin narrow his eyes at the smaller, younger boy sitting beside him. "Okay, okay. I'm sure... I've made s-some bad life decisions, I am a single, divorced father of two after all but maybe Jimin's life decisions will be better! But I think he needs to decide whether he wants to be considered a child or an adult because children get pity but not respect, and adults, they get respect! They also get the back of their heads grabbed and their faces pushed through jukeboxes!" Seokjin quickly says at the end of his sentence, his eyes wide, fierce and full of unsubtle rage.

"Why don't we try learning 'jukebox" in Spanish?' The brunette girl speaks up, trying to divert everyone's attention but it doesn't appear to work.

"What are you doing? Are you seriously falling asleep right now?" Seokjin says aloud, everyone's eyes falling upon the purple-haired Yoongi at the end of the table, who is dozing off on the spot.

Jungkook snorts, "Really, grandpa?" he says jokingly to his older classmate, Hoseok unable to hold in his laughter at the teasing going on in front of him.

"Hey. I am a prominent business leader and a highly sought-after dinner guest and I will not be made fun of by some- some teenage boy," Yoongi responds with a sloppy snarl.

"Well, this teenage boy is a quarterback and a prom king," Jungkook retorts, adding a flourish to his argument with a tug of his collar.

Jimin scoffs amusedly, "You're not prom king anymore, Jungkook. This isn't Riverside High."

"How'd you know I went there?" Jungkook asks Jimin with a confused expression.

The orange-haired boy's smile falters from his face but he straightens his back nonetheless, "Because you're still wearing your stupid letter jacket, and more importantly... I sat behind you in Algebra!" Jimin scans Jungkook's face for any sign of realization and he feels a bit better once he sees it flash across Jungkook's features, but his stomach drops with what he hears next.

"Wait, aren't you the guy that got hooked on pills and dropped out? You're little Jammy Jimin," Jungkook laughs, clapping his hands and doubling over.

Jimin gasps, "Oh yeah? And you're a stupid jock who lost his scholarship by dislocating both shoulders in a keg stand!"

"Keg flip! They are very hard to pull off! No-" Jungkook corrects him, then everyone erupts into overlapping arguments. As everyone begins shouting at each other, the brunette girl's face is that of a witness to absolute horror, especially once she sees Namjoon looking at all the drama unfold with an amused look. Suddenly, Taehyung slams his hand down on the table, garnering everyone's attention and effectively shutting them up.

"You know what I got for Christmas? It was a banner year at the Bender family. I got a carton of cigarettes. The old man grabbed me. He said, 'Hey, smoke up, Johnny.'," Taehyung says animatedly, "No, dad! What about you?" he ends with one last shout, leaning back in his chair, the satisfied smile on his face indicating that he had completed his bit.

"Well, that actually was from Breakfast Club," Namjoon points out and everyone finally understands what Taehyung was talking about, their mouths forming 'o's.

"Nobody puts Baby in the corner," Taehyung murmurs again. "Dirty Dancing," Namjoon responds and he receives a smile and an excited 'yeah' from the blue-haired boy in return.

In the midst of everyone looking at each other with confused expressions, Namjooon's phone buzzes once again and sees that someone is trying to call him.

Namjoon answers his phone and is greeted by Hyun talking in a deep, unusually gravelly voice. "It's Professor Lee Hyun, come to the parking lot now."

"What's wrong with your voice?" Namjoon scrunches his nose at the unpleasant sound coming through the receiver. "I'm... disguising it." Namjoon was about to smugly inform his friend that there was no point in trying to disguise his voice if he was going to tell him his name in the first place, but Hyun hung up on him before he had the chance.

Tucking his phone back into his pocket, he announces to the group that he is leaving for a bit, "but while I'm gone, you guys need to hash this stuff out. No stone unturned... Go!" he declares, quickly escaping once more. Before he even laid a step outside the study room, he could already hear the sounds of their bickering - a sign of their very close and very eventual turmoil and his very inevitable date with the hot brunette from Spanish class.

As soon as Namjoon stepped outside the school gates, he spotted Lee Hyun in a comically small blue smart car right in the front of the school. After managing to squeeze his gangly limbs into the passenger seat, he slammed the car door shut and reached out for the large and thick manila folder that was resting in his much smaller friend's hands.

"Every answer to every test in your curriculum this semester," Lee Hyun said proudly. "I knew you could do it, buddy. Thank you," Namjoon sighed thankfully but Hyun was snatching the folder away before he managed to grab a hold of it. "Woah there, cowboy. What do I get out of all this?"

"Uh, the satisfaction of being even?" Namjoon says as if it's the most obvious thing that there was. "Even, fairness, right, wrong, there is no God, booyah, booyah," Hyun listed off in an annoying tone that made Namjoon cringe.

"What do you want from me?" Namjoon asked reluctantly.

"Your Lexus."

"My car? For a semester's worth of answers?" Namjoon scoffed in disbelief.

"Will it be just a semester though, Namjoon? Won't you be taking the easy way out for the next four years? I want payment in advance. I want leather seats with built-in butt warmers," Hyun grinned mischievously.

"What am I supposed to drive?" Namjoon asks through gritted teeth, "You should take this car! It's good for the earth," Hyun smiled at him.

"So is wiping your butt with a leaf but it's not how a man gets around!" Namjoon shouted in frustration. Hyun visibly deflated, shoulders slumped and manila folder waiting patiently for the taking from the palm of his hand. Namjoon eyed the folder in his friend's hand and weighed the options in his head. With a groan, Namjoon snatched the folder out of his hand and hopped out of the impossibly cramped blue smart car as quickly as possible.

____ spots Namjoon weaving through the library entrance and she darts out of the study room to leave the arguing mess of a study group to confront its creator. "It is a disaster in there!"

"Yeah, untutorable. Do you like Thai food? I love Thai food."

"Wait, so... This is a game to you?" the young brunette girl asked with arms crossed over her chest and resting her weight on her right leg. "You put a group of human beings into a state of emotional shambles just for a shot at getting in my pants?"

"Why can't you see that for the compliment that it is?" Namjoon stressed.

"Unbelievable," she sneered, clenching her fists against her chest in anger. Namjoon didn't mean to look at her chest at that time, it was just where her hands were and the sight of them clenching and unclenching somehow made his heart race. It wasn't fear or disbelief, but he couldn't quite pinpoint what the emotion was. As he noticed that her brown eyes were intensely watching him, he quickly averted his gaze and pretended to submit to her to see what she wanted and if he felt like he was bothered enough to keep jumping through these high hoops for her.

"What do you want me to do?" he asks her, tilting his head to look down at her. "Oh, maybe one decent thing you can do is go in there and clean up your mess," she tells him, looking at him expectantly.

Namjoon pursed his lips and looked into the "Okay, if I do that, then dinner... Right?" he questions her with a perked brow.

The young brunette's mouth hung agape in disbelief and she laughed quietly, her eyes unable to leave the sight of the unbelievable man she'd ever seen. As selfish and egotistical as he was, there was an underlying part of her that felt flattered by his drive and want for her. It was a very small part and the group's needs very clearly trumped that.

"Yeah, fine, whatever," she said with a shrug, stepping back into the study room. "As if there's a dinner on earth that can make me forget that you are a shallow douchebag."

Watching her walk away was something he had the pleasure of doing a handful of times already, and each time felt better than the last but this time, he couldn't quite find the appeal when she was very clearly mad at him. "Oh, you are gonna eat those words when you see my new car!" His face falls when he remembers the trade he had just made with the psychology professor just moments ago.

"Alright, everybody!" Namjoon shouted above everyone else, slamming his Spanish textbook onto the table, everyone's attention now on him. "I wanna say something. Everybody, sit down." "You don't have to yell," Seokjin muttered under his breath, situating himself back into his chair, the others following suit.

"You know what makes humans different from other animals?" Namjoon asks rhetorically, but Jungkook immediately answers, "Feet."

"No, no. Come on, beers have feet," Yoongi said smugly but by the look on Seokjin and Jimin's faces, it was clear he was wrong.

Namjoon quickly put them back on topic, "We are the only species on earth that observes 'Shark Week'. Sharks don't even observe 'Shark Week' but we do, for the same reason I can pick up this pencil, tell you it's name is Steve and go like this," Namjoon picks up his pencil from the table and snaps it in half, earning a quiet chorus of gasps and pained groans.

"And part of you dies just a little bit on the inside because people can connect with anything. We can sympathize with pencils, we can forgive a shark and we can give Ben Affleck an Academy Award for screenwriting."

Yoongi cringes at the mention of Ben Affleck and Taehyung agrees with him, everyone at the table nodding their agreements.

"People can find the good in just about anything but themselves. Look at me, it's clear to all of you that I am awesome but I can never admit that because that would make me an ass but what I can do is see what makes Jimin awesome," everyone turns to look at Jimin who is fighting the rush of blood that is desperate to get to his cheeks and the pull of a smile against his lips, "Jimin is driven. We need driven people or the lights go out and the ice-cream melts," Namjoon says.

"And Yoongi. We need guys like Yoongi. This guy has wisdom to offer," Yoongi scrunches his nose. "Is this part of the grandpa joke? Come on-"

"We should listen to him sometime! We wouldn't regret it. And Seokjin," Namjoon gestures to Seokjin with a pointed finger, "Seokjin has earned our respect. Not as a husband, not as a father, but as a man. And don't test him on that because the thing about the jukebox was way too specific to be improvised," Seokjin's eyes widened a little bit at Namjoon's speculation but he gave no indication as to whether he thinks Namjoon had stumbled upon the truth or not.

"And Hoseok, the guy that keeps asking questions. We need intuitive people like that, we need people that keep asking questions otherwise people we will never find the answers, Hoseok is the answer," he points at Hoseok who is giving him a shy smile in return.

"And Jungkook. Who cares if Jungkook thinks he's all that? Maybe he is," Jungkook looked nervous from the moment Namjoon started giving his opinions on each of the group members but a small smile fell on his face after hearing the caring words that the older boy had for him.

"And Taehyung. Taehyung is a shaman. You ask him to pass the salt, he gives you a bowl of soup. Because you know what? Soup is better. Taehyung is better. You are all better than you think you are, you are just designed not to believe it when you hear it from yourself," Namjoon tells them, his gestures becoming wilder to continue to be engaging as his speech went on.

"Soup?" Yoongi says confusedly.

"Turn to the person next to you," Namjoon tells them. He watches as Jimin turns to Seokjin, Yoongi turns to Jungkook, Taehyung turns to Hoseok, as the young brunette girl turns to him and looks up at him with her wide, gleaming eyes.

"I want you to extend to the person the same compassion that you extend to sharks, pencils and Ben Affleck. I want you to say to that person 'I forgive you'."

He watches Jimin, Seokjin, Taehyung, and Hoseok express their forgiveness to each other, inwardly smiling to himself at the warming sight but his attention is piqued when he sees that Yoongi is being reluctant.

"I forgive you," Jungkook says to his partner earnestly. Yoongi rolls his eyes and calls him a little twerp. "Yoongi," Namjoon urges, "I'd like you to say 'I forgive you'."

Yoongi exhales slowly through his nose, his features tense as he quickly and quietly mumbles out an "I forgive you" to Jungkook who grins in return.

"You've just stopped being a study group, you have become something unstoppable. I hereby pronounce you a community," Namjoon proclaims proudly.

Seokjin awe's, "Oh, that's nice," he shares with a gentle smile, joining the rest of the people on the table in applauding Namjoon for his powerful speech.

"This isn't like Breakfast Club anymore, now it's like Stripes or Meatballs, anything with Bill Murray really," Taehyung adds with a pointed finger. "I agree with Taehyung here, tonight has been very special. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a dinner engagement with ____," Namjoon says, looking down at the brunette girl with a grin and an extended hand.

She looks up to him sweetly before saying, "I lied. Thanks for calming everyone down but since you're not a Spanish tutor, just a lying creep who purposely upset everyone in an attempt to get with me, I'd appreciate it if you left and stopped wasting all of our time."

Namjoon quickly digested his shock and muttered out, "Fine, and I'm happy to report that one of the benefits of being a lying creep is having all the answers to tomorrow's test," he gestures to the thick manila folder on the table in front of him. "And I'm happy to share them with anyone who's time I've wasted more than they've wasted mine," his eyes glance over to the young brunette beside him, noting the way she is glaring at him with, somehow, adorably flared nostrils.

"Uh, Namjoon. If you have all the answers, why the hell did you start this study group?" Yoongi asks with an appropriate amount of confusion.

"I don't have a study group, I made it up," Namjoon stated frankly.

Jimin's brows knit in dejection, a small but noticeable pout becoming more obvious as his bottom lip starts to tremble just by the slightest, "But... What about your speech?"

"I made it up! That's what I do, I make things up and I got paid a lot of money to do it before I came to this school shaped toilet, I was a lawyer."

Everybody moans and groans at the mention of the fact that Namjoon was a lawyer, eyes rolling and noses scrunching.

"I thought you were Bill Murray in any of his films, but you're more like Michael Douglas in any of his films," Taehyung tells Namjoon with the same monotonous tone he'd been using all day, though this time it seemed to be tinged with a bit of disappointment.

"Oh yeah? Well, you have Asperger's." Namjoon says bluntly before gathering his things in his arms and slamming the study room door behind him. The young brunette girl's gaze falls to the vacant spot at the doorway left by his vacuous presence, horrified at his change in attitude. There wasn't a doubt in her mind that this dude was sketchy, from the moment she laid her eyes on him at the back of Spanish class, sitting uninterestedly in each lesson with his phone in his hand paying attention to nobody, not even the teacher which she considered to be quite the feat since the Spanish teacher was... an inconceivable character, to say the least.

What was scary was that she had also doubted that he was telling the truth about his deal with her earlier. Maybe he really is honest. The real difficulty in this was deciding whether that was a good thing or not.

"Did he just say 'ass burger'?" Jungkook snorted, slapping the table.

"It's a serious disorder," Jimin tells Jungkook, "It really is," Seokjin concurs, becoming upset that Jungkook, and now Yoongi, appear to be making fun of the name.

"If it's so serious, why don't they call it 'professional burger'?" Yoongi wheezes, lightly slapping Jungkook on the arm as they quietly laugh with each other.

Taehyung didn't seem to mind one bit. If he did, he didn't show it which helped to settle the brunette girl's worries by a smidge.

Namjoon stepped outside the library building with a huff, exasperated from being in such a draining situation. In the back of his mind, he couldn't believe that he had done what he did to these strangers. Well, they were his classmates and that made it worse, him realizing that he would have to see these people again in the future. Pushing those thoughts to the very darkest depths of his mind, he inhaled the cold air of the outside, staying under the light of the library veranda so he could actually get a good look at those papers that Hyun had given him. At least one good thing came out of this day, or so he thought.

Opening the seal at the top of the large manila, he proceeded to pull out a thick pile of papers, the first of which appeared to be blank. Namjoon's heart began to race as he flipped through the hundreds of papers in his hands to find that they were all blank on both sides except for the last paper which had the word 'booyah' written in all caps in Sharpie.

"Hyun," Namjoon growled under his breath, shoving the papers back into the manila folder angrily and making his way to the professor's office.

There sat Hyun with his feet crossed on top of his desk, leaning back in his office chair and sipping on a glass of brandy when Namjoon slammed his office door open.

"Okay, now before you say anything, I want you to think about the gift you've been given," Hyun hummed happily, raising his glass to Namjoon leaning against his office doorway.

"An excuse to punch a pathetic professor at a community college?" Namjoon tilts his head with a far too serious expression.

Hyun coughs, "Erm, no, not that. An important lesson, my friend. You see, the tools you acquired to survive out there will not help you here at Greendale. What you have here my friend is a second chance at an honest life."

"Give me my keys," Namjoon demands from him, clearly ignoring his friend's pitiful attempt to teach him a lesson about integrity, honesty or what have you.

"W-what? No, I have to keep your car for the lesson- Okay, don't hit me!" Hyun shrieks and tosses the car keys to Namjoon once he begins to storm over to his friend's desk with rage-filled eyes.

Namjoon walks away quickly, desperate to be anywhere but at that school at the moment. "Are we cool!?" Hyun shouts out the door as soon as he's gone, pausing for a moment to wait for a response. When he gets nothing in return, he just shrugs and sips his brandy, "We cool.".

"I like you, Namjoon," Yoongi says to the younger man as he spots him walking briskly past the entrance to the library, "You remind me of myself when I was your age."

Namjoon pauses and sighs, hanging his head low at the prospect of being similar to this older and, from what he's seen so far, a horribly awkward but entitled individual. "I deserve that."

He walks up the stairs to sit next to the older boy, seating himself one step down on the stairs so they were equal in height. "Y'know, I've been called grandpa nine times now? I mean, there are literal grandpas here on campus but even they don't called grandpa. They get called by their first names, like normal grandpas. Sometimes I think I'm doing something wrong."

Namjoon put his hand on Yoongi's shoulder and said to him, "Maybe it's because of the way you act. You fall asleep everywhere, you always ask the most random questions and you scowl at everyone and you say stuff like 'when I was your age' to people that aren't that much younger than you. You've gotta stop doing that, man."

Yoongi sighed, "I've never looked at it that way..."

"Hey guys," Hoseok spoke up, coming up from behind them.

"Oh, hey," Namjoon said to him. "Aren't you guys supposed to be studying right now?"

Jungkook emerged from around the corner and shrugged, "It kinda got boring after you left," he admitted. Following him out of the entrance of the library was the rest of the group, Seokjin, Taehyung, Jimin and the brunette girl.

"Shouldn't you be rolling around on a bed covered in test answers," the brunette girl smirked down at him, her hands holding the strap of her bag.

"I don't have any of the answers," he said with a tight smile, abandoning the manila folder on to the steps below him, "I'm just gonna fail the test."

"If you just study for like an hour, it's not that hard," Hoseok told him, "Yeah," Jungkook agreed. "You seem pretty smart, you have a sports coat," Jungkook told him, gesturing to Namjoon's jacket.

"Well, the funny thing about being smart is that you can get through most of life without ever having to do any work. So, uh, I'm not really... Sure how to do that," Namjoon confessed with solace, hanging his head low.

Behind him, the group began silently gesturing to each other. Jimin mouthed to the brunette girl, "Please? he's so sad." In return, the brunette girl mimed, pointing at Namjoon and then putting a finger in her mouth and pretend-puking. Seokjin expressed saddened shock, clasping his hands together as if he were begging the brunette girl into agreeing with them.

Taehyung looked at the scene with confusion and he spoke up, "What's going on? Can you guys hear me right now? Am I deaf, can you guys hear me talking? Can you guys hear me talking right now?" the group all said "Yes" in response. "Ah, okay, good," Taehyung said, giving them a thumbs up.

"Y'know what? Namjoon, we actually didn't get that far without you so if you wanna come back inside..." the brunette girl said to him.

"Really?" Namjoon asked with an uncertain tone.

"Well, it is your study group." The brunette girl said with a lopsided grin, turning around and stepping back into the library.

"Come on, let's study," Seokjin said to him sweetly, following the brunette girl back into the building. "Sounds good," Yoongi replied, patting Namjoon on the shoulder and going back inside with Hoseok, Jungkook, and Jimin trailing behind him.

"I'm sorry I called you Michael Douglas and I see your value now," Taehyung said to him, stepping past Namjoon and entering the library.

"Well, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me," Namjoon said to himself, pushing himself off the steps and walking back into the library to join the unlikely group that he had just created, a group that he somehow feels he will be close with. Sure, they had gotten off to a rocky and deceitful start, but he can tell that some of them are already warming up to each other despite having argued for hours both in and out of his absence. That's gotta say something.

Perhaps it's saying that they really are a community now.

[imagine-riverdale]

Yes Part 2- Sweet Pea Imagine

Yes Series Master List is HERE

2/5

It had been around two days since Bethany seen her mother or sister, it now being Monday morning Bethany had showered and gotten dressed before waking Sweet Pea up and the two of them drove her truck to the school. The two met up with Fangs and Toni by their lockers, the four talking about a job FP was trying to set up before Toni noticed something odd.

“Hey Beth, isn’t that Addison?” She pointed down the hall to see her sister leaning against a locker by Chuck Clayton.

“Yeah it is. Excuse me.” Bethany moved away from her friends, Sweet Pea not far behind as she heard Chuck ask Addison out. “Sorry, she isn’t interested.” Bethany stepped next to her sister who was frowning. “Toni.” Bethany said as Toni appeared next to her. “Take Addison to class, I want to have a chat with Chuck here.” Toni pulled Addison away much to her protest. “You’ll do well to stay away from my baby sister Clayton, I find out you, or any of your bulldogs try anything with her and I’ll chop your dick off, are we clear?” She asked as Chuck rolled his eyes.

“She’s new meat and I don’t believe I saw a Serpent tattoo on her,”

“She doesn’t need one, she’s a Serpent by blood, you mess with her, you mess with all of us and let me tell you, I won’t hesitate to hurt you if you mess with my sister. So, stay clear.” Bethany moved away from him and found Addison pouting in the student lounge. “Stay away from Chuck Clayton and all the other bulldogs, they’re no good.” She stated to her sister who scoffed.

“You’re only saying that because you’re a Serpent.” Addison said annoyed. “You can’t tell me who I can see.”

“No but I know them better than you.”

“You can’t decide what is best for me.” Addison crossed her arms.

“You want to date one, fine but don’t come crying to me when something happens.” Bethany turned and left the lounge, Sweet Pea stayed behind and looked at Addison.

“She only wants what is best for you, that’s all she’s ever wanted, you know.” He stated. “Everything she has done, was for you.” He told her softly before walking away to find Bethany.

-

“Babe.” Sweet Pea grabbed Bethany’s arm to stop her from walking into her first class.

“What is it Sweets?” She asked crossing her arms.

“You can’t protect her forever, she’s going to do what she wants.” He stated as Bethany nodded.

“I know, I just, I’ve always been the one to protect her, how can I stand by and watch her get her heart broken?” She asked. “I became a Serpent to protect her, and if I just stand by and let her get hurt, what was the point in me joining the Serpents?” She asked, Sweet Pea was silent a moment. “I grew up being the one to take care of her.”

“I know, but you just have to step back.” He stated, Bethany nodded before the two headed into class.

-

“Hello Bethany.” Beth heard the voice Kevin Keller said sitting across from her in the lounge.

“Hey Kevin.” Bethany looked up from her phone an gave a soft smile. “What’s up?” She asked.

“Not much, wanted to know if you wanted to hang out or something after school.”

“I would love to, but can we maybe do like tomorrow? I’ve got Serpent stuff tonight.” She stated.

“Yeah, sure.” He nodded with a smile. The two of them sat in the lounge for about twenty minutes just talking before Sweet pea walked in and nodded at Kevin before looking to Bethany.

“You ready to go? I’ve got to work.” He stated as Bethany looked at the time and noticed it was already after school, having used up her whole free period.

“Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow Kev.” She smiled at her new-found friend before Sweet Pea and she made her way outside.

“You want to stop at Pops with Toni, Fangs, and Jones before we head to do our runs?” He asked Bethany as she climbed into the passenger seat of the truck.

“Sure, I could use some cheese fries.” The two headed over to Pops where Toni and Fangs were arguing while Jughead just watched.

“Fangs, Toni, Jug.” Bethany smiled as she pulled Sweet Pea behind her and they sat on the same side of the booth while Fangs pulled up a chair. Sweet Pea immediately wrapped an arm over Bethany’s shoulder.

“We need you to solve something for us.” Fangs stated as Bethany caught sight of her sister sitting at a booth not far from them with a bunch of Bulldogs and River Vixens. Reggie Mantels arm around her.

“And what is that?”

“Fangs does not believe me that when we were like ten you pushed SP into Sweetwater River because he kissed you.”

“That never happened.” Fangs and Sweet Pea stated as Bethany turned her head to Sweet Pea with her mouth open.

“Bullshit!” She laughed. “You got dared by Gregory to kiss me and you did then you told me it was a dare, so I got angry and pushed you into the river.” Toni laughed as Sweet Pea rolled his eyes. “Then you tried pulling me in with you.”

“Now that I would pay to see.” Jughead laughed as Bethany smiled, the five of them caught attention from everyone as they were all Serpents laughing. Bethany’s eyes met Addison’s who smiled slightly at her, Bethany immediately looked away as Toni recalled the time when they were fourteen and Bethany’s breast had just started showing and Sweet Pea purposely soaked her with the hose, so he could see through her white shirt.

“He was an ass hole!” Bethany laughed as Sweet Pea shrugged.

“But yet you still agreed to date me.” He said with a smirk and an eye roll.

“Must have been your charm that wowed me.” Bethany teased as Sweet Pea kissed her head. “Or maybe because Toni turned me down.” She winked at Toni.

“I mean I’m available now so whenever you want to leave Sweets, I’m waiting my love.” Toni joked as Fangs choked on his drink.

“This is getting crazy.” He stated as Bethany smiled at him before looking to Sweets.

“Nah, I think I’ll stick with the one I got, he’s alright.” She shrugged with a smirked as Sweet Pea grabbed her face and kissed her.

“Like you have a choice.” Jughead stated. “If you weren’t around I’m sure Sweet Pea would have murdered all the Bulldogs by now.”

“Probably.” Sweet Pea shrugged pulling away from Bethany who leaned into him, her eyes catching her sisters as she watched her pull away from Reggie when he tried to kiss her, he went to pull her back when Bethany heard her say ‘No’ but Reggie kept trying before Bethany heard him say something to her.

“You think you’re better than us? You’re just Southside trash.” Bethany quickly moved out of Sweet Pea’s arms and moved towards her sister, Sweet Pea, Toni, Fangs, and Jughead not far behind. They watched as Bethany stopped in front of Reggie.

“Wanna say that again?” She asked, Reggie laughed with his friends.

“What you come to save some other Southsider? What are you gonna do about the way I talk to her?” He asked as Bethany threw her arm back and punched him in the face before motioning her sister out of the booth. Addison climbed over the back and moved towards Toni before Bethany leaned closer to Reggie who held his broken nose.

“Talk to or about my sister again and you’ll have a lot more than a broken nose, that goes for all of you.” She looked towards the rest before turning and wrapping an arm around her sister’s shoulder, she stopped by Pop on her way out and handed him a fifty. “For all our trouble. Thanks Pop.” She smiled at the man and led her sister to her truck. “You alright?”

“I’m good, thanks.” Addy said softly. “You have a killer right hook.”

“Of course she does.” Sweets wrapped his arm around her as the six of them surrounded Bethany’s truck.

“Oh, shut up, you didn’t teach me to punch, I learned that on my own.” Bethany pushed Sweet Pea away from her with a smile. “Pretty sure the first punch I ever threw was at you babe.” Bethany stated before looking back at her sister. “You sure you’re good?”

“I’m good Beth. Thanks, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.” She stated rubbing her wrist nervously.

“Don’t worry about it, come on we’ll give you a lift home.” She looked to Jughead, Toni, and Fangs. “See you guys at the Quarry tonight?” She had asked, the three nodded before Sweet Pea drove back to Sunnyside Trailer pack and stopped in front of Bethany’s mothers house. “If you need anything, just call, or come by, I’m in between the Fords and the Henderson’s. If we aren’t there, keys under the ceramic duck by the folding chairs.” She told her sister hugging her tightly. “I’ll see you later kiddo.” Addison climbed out and headed inside before Sweet Pea and Bethany went home to change before heading out separately to do their jobs.

-

Bethany arrived at the Quarry not long after the fire was started, surrounding it was a bunch of Serpents who Bethany stopped and had talked to before moving on to where Toni was.

“Hey.” Toni smiled at her best friend before handing her a beer. “I miss nights like these.”

“Me too Toni.” Bethany said taking a drink of her beer and looking around. “I got a question for you.” Bethany said moving closer to Toni so no one heard her ask. “You got any clue what type of job Sweets is doing with FP? He won’t tell me anything.”

“I know he was running jobs for Penny, but you know how that turned out.” Toni stated as Bethany looked at her wide eyed.

“He was what?” She asked. “I asked him about that and he told me he wasn’t running jobs for her, is that what all those nights were when FP got out?” Toni’s eyes widened at the revelation.

“Oh, you didn’t know…” She trailed off. “Well I don’t know what jobs he’s doing now, probably some weed runs.” Toni shrugged. “Why? What jobs does he have you doing?”

“I’ve been running to and from Greendale every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to pick up shipments of fucking bottles for packaging from a warehouse.” She mumbled. “Sweet Pea complained when FP wanted me to work at the Wyrm so this is the shit jobs I’m stuck with, but it pays the bills.” Bethany shrugged before noticing her boyfriend coming through the crowed towards her with Fangs while the two laughed and pushed each other.

“Hey Toni, babe.” He went to kiss Bethany, but she stepped back.

“Hey Bethy, Toni.” Fangs smiled taking a beer from Toni’s cooler.

“You good?” Sweets asked Bethany who chugged the rest of her beer.

“Were you ever planning on telling me that FP made you Peabody’s bitch or were you planning to hide that shit from me?” She asked as Sweet Pea immediately glared at Toni.

“It was nothing, really…” Bethany went to say something but stopped upon seeing Addison stumbling through the young Serpents, a black eye and cuts littering her face and bruises on her arms, ripped clothing, her shirt barely covering her. Bethany pushed past Sweet Pea who went to say something else but stopped at seeing Bethany rushing to her sister.

“Addy, what happened?” Bethany’s arms went around her fifteen-year-old sister and she fell into her.

“Mom.” She choked out a sob gripping onto her sister before breaking out in full on sobbing.

“Sweets, give me your jacket.” She demanded, Sweet Pea immediately shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around Addison. “Come on, we’re going home, she tossed her keys to Toni. “I brought my bike; can I use your jeep?” Toni nodded and switched keys with her. “Meet you guys there?” She asked particularly looking at Sweet Pea who nodded slightly following the two home on his bike.

This is part two of a five part series. Part three will be posted on July 26th, 2019.

REQUESTS ARE OPEN FOR RIVERDALE CHARACTERS.

[wayward-river]

Hoodies and Cheerleaders

Sweet Pea x Plus!Size Reader 

AN: This was requested hope you like it! All mistakes are my own, I do not own the gif. Thanks to @xserpentlife for reading to make sure I didn’t miss anything! 

Warnings: Self doubt, Angst, bullying (slightly) 

You and Sweet Pea had been dating for a few months now. After years of pinning after something you thought you could never have, that tall leather jacket wearing bad boy was all yours. You never thought you stood a chance, you always thought Sweet Peas type was, well thinner. You weren’t a serpent, but never quite felt like a normal northsider. Sweet Pea always made you feel like you were home, the place you belonged. You both had issues his temper and your self doubt about things but that’s normal right? It took him a couple of months to convince you that it wasn’t some sort of sick dare to take you out on a date.

A smile graced your face as you remembered that night.

                      FLASHBACK

Sweet Pea had shown up to the front door of your house holding a few sunflowers in his hand and a nervous smile on his face. He had taken you to Pops. You both shared a milkshake and talked about everything. Your lives, how he was liking Riverdale High briefly that being a sore subject. He told you about being a serpent and you told him your dream of being a River Vixen but Cheryl would never allow it.

After that first date many more followed. He took you out to Sweetwater, places in Greendale, late night rides in his truck one hand on the steering wheel the other resting on your leg. He took you everywhere it seemed but avoided the Southside. You questioned him about it. Telling him you wanted to meet his family, wanted to see what makes him well him. You will never forget the look on his face. The pure happiness of you wanting to know his family. He took you to the Whyte Wyrm the next day. He introduced you to Fangs and Toni and tried to teach you how to play pool, he kissed you for the first time outside standing next to his truck asking you to be his when he pulled away and it’s been the two of you ever since.  

                 END FLASHBACK

You smiled at Toni as you walked over to the table at the Wyrm sitting down across from her as Sweet Pea and Fangs played a round of pool. You smiled as you watched them Sweet Pea looking a little weird being in a hoodie instead of his jacket. Though it wasn’t so different as the angry snake still glared at everyone from the back of it.

Sweet Pea caught you staring giving you that sly smirk of his making your knees go weak. How it was possible when you were sitting down? You’d never know.

The Wyrm always seemed to be cold and with it being winter outside it seemed the cold was seeping in wherever it could. You cursed silently to yourself for leaving your jacket in your car.

You shivered the goosebumps apparent on your arms just as Sweet Pea walked over.

“Hey baby” He bent over placing a chaste kiss against your lips.

You gave a small smile and a soft hi quickly.

“Hey Ton, do they have like coffee or hot chocolate here?”

Sweet Pea gave you a weird look as Toni laughed. “I keep some in the back I’ll go make you a cup”

“Thanks girl” You flashed a wide smile to her as she left the booth.

Your attention turned back to Sweet Pea, his hoodie being pulled over his head. Once completely off he held it out to you. “Here baby, take this to warm up too”

“I’m good Pea” Hopefully he would just drop it.

“Babe, c’mon it’s not a big deal. I’m hot moving around in it anyway.”

“I said I’m good Pea.” You tried again.

“Y/N just take the damn hoodie. It won’t bite you.” He replied his tone filled with annoyance.

You rolled your eyes. “I know it won’t bite me Sweet Pea I just don’t want it.”

Sweet Pea huffed out a breath ready to respond to you again. You were done having this conversation. Sure maybe his other girlfriends could wear his hoodie and look cute in it but you? Let’s be honest you would not look cute. It probably wouldn’t even fit, and it would for sure not come down past your thighs making it look even more cute and giving off certain vibes.

You moved trying to get out of the booth to walk away. Sweet Pea moved to block the exit.

“You aren’t walking away from this Y/N” he paused looking at you. “Just take it please”

“No Pea, you just don’t get it. Let me leave please.” You looked up at him your Y/E/C glossed over.

Sweet Pea let out a deep sigh.

“Baby, just trust me okay?” Sweet Pea looked around. Fangs setting up another game after losing to someone else. Calling Sweet Pea over. “Just a minute man” Sweet Pea hollered over his shoulder before bringing his attention back to you.

He slid into the booth next to you. Making your exit near impossible. Unless you were to just crawl over the table. You probably shouldn’t do that, and Sweet Pea with his damn quick reflexes would have you in his embrace within seconds.

His voice lowered as he looked around again. “I know your issue with this even if you tell me different, I know you. I’m a tall person Y/N.”

You rolled your eyes. “Tall isn’t the same as .. me.”

Sweet Pea placed the hoodie on top of the table his hands coming to rest on your thighs.

“You are beautiful, don’t ever doubt that just can you please just do this for me?” He pleaded his annoyed tone going away as he understood.

You let out an annoyed huff. “Fine, but you have to do that thing with me if I do this.”

Sweet Pea groaned. “Really? You are going to make me do that?”

You giggled softly. “Yup, if I have to put on this hoodie. You have to do that.”

Sweet Pea contemplated it for a moment. You silently prayed he would say no. There was no he would actually do it. “Fine I’ll do that.”

Your mouth dropped open. You were speechless. You thought for sure you had won this round.

“C’mon babe I agreed. Get to putting that hoodie on” Sweet Pea smirked at you grabbing his hoodie and once again handing it to you.

You grumbled out a low protest before grabbing the hoodie out of his hands with a small “fine.”

You pulled the hoodie on over your head. It stopped where it was supposed to, didn’t go past to hide your thighs, the arms hid your hands Sweet Peas arms being longer than yours. You sighed happily at the warmth and smell that embraced you.

Sweet Pea leaned in and kissed your cheek. “I told you baby, you look so good in my clothes too.”

“Mhmmm. Thanks Pea.” You smiled at him glad he had won this round.

“You do have to wear this to that thing you know” Sweet Pea smiled at you.

You gave a small nod not caring just happy that it fit and thankful for the warmth.

Toni came back as Sweet Pea walked back towards Fangs and the pool table and set the mug of hot chocolate in front of you.

“I’m glad he gave up his hoodie for you” She chuckled.

“Yeah me too. We will be supporting you at tomorrow nights football game.” You informed her.

She looked at you disbelief in her eyes. “You got Sweet Pea to go to a bulldogs football game?”

You nodded at her as you continued to sip the hot chocolate.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” She laughed.

                                  -The next night -

“Pea you said you would go! So let’s go we won’t get good spots if we are late!” You stood in the small trailer a pair of faded ripped jeans and Sweet Peas hoodie on waiting to leave.

You could hear the grumbling of your boyfriend as he walked out his Serpent jacket on.

“I can’t believe I agreed to this.”

“You did it to yourself babe” You laughed.

“I know, but I’d do it all over again to see you in my hoodie” Sweet Pea winked at you.

You rolled your eyes. “Sure Pea, lets go”

He grabbed the truck keys and you both headed to Riverdale High.

You got there early enough to be in the first row of the bleachers. Sweet Pea wouldn’t sit in the student section so you settled on to the side of it. He reluctantly agreed. You waved to Toni as you both sat down her smile wide at the sight of you both.

You watched the game, happily cheering for your school as Sweet Pea watched you. When half time came around and the River Vixens performed. He watched the sadness in your eyes, the longing of wanting to be out on the field.

“You happy Y/N/N?” Sweet Pea asked pulling you out of your thoughts.

“Hmmm? Oh yeah, yeah I am” You replied quickly not taking your eyes off the field as halftime ended and the River Vixens came back to the side of the field.

You watched some of them walk away to grab drinks or catch their breaths as the marching band took the field. Toni walked up to the front of your section and you watched Cheryl leave the field.

“Hey babe, I’m going to grab something from the truck. Want anything on my way back, popcorn a drink?” Sweet Pea asked kissing the side of your head.

“No Pea I’m good”  

You watched Sweet Pea walk up the stairs to exit towards the parking lot once out of sight you turned back to Toni.

“I can’t believe you got him to come to a game”

You laughed. “I told you we were coming. Plus he wanted me to wear the damn hoodie so bad last night and I didn’t want to so we made a deal. Plus he can come to one game to support you.”

Toni laughed at that and you fell into a short conversation about some of the classes you had together. Her leaving as the band stopped playing and the River Vixens returned to the side of the field.

It was a few minutes before Sweet Pea returned to your side. You looked to him confused, nothing was in his hands or on him. What did he leave for if he was only going to return with nothing? You wondered.

“What did you need to get?” You questioned him.

“Oh, I realized it wasn’t in the truck no big deal. Let’s finish the game yeah?”

He was being super weird but you ignored it for now as you both watched the rest of the game. In the end the bulldogs won, you both waited in the parking lot for Toni to come out to join you both at the Wyrm.

You tensed as she walked out with Cheryl. Sure Cheryl was her girlfriend and now a serpent but you could never get her laugh and the “are you serious” she spat at you freshman year when you showed up to River Vixen tryouts out of your head every time you looked at her. 

“Hey guys I’m really glad you guys came” Toni stated as her hand was linked with Cheryl's.

“Yeah we are too” You smiled at her.

“Hey Y/N, tryouts are coming up soon and we need to fill a spot .. I was thinking you’d be perfect.”

You went silent at Cheryl's words. This was a sick joke even for her. The tears quickly came to your eyes as you took off towards Sweet Peas truck climbing in and slamming the door.

“I’ll talk to her, we will just meet you guys at the Wyrm” Sweet Pea watched as Toni nodded and he walked to his truck.

You heard the driver door open and felt Sweet Peas hand on your arm. You couldn’t stop the tears even if you wanted to now. Your sniffles being the only sound in the truck until Sweet Pea spoke.

“Baby, its not a joke, she really wants you on the squad.”

You looked up at his words the tears still flowing. Sweet Pea cupped your face using his thumbs to wipe away the tears.

“There is no way that it’s not some cruel joke Pea” Your voice shook.

“I promise it’s not, don’t you trust me?”

“You know I do, I just don’t trust her. You weren’t here when I actually showed up to try outs. She was so mean Pea”

Sweet Pea kissed you softly. “I know baby, I know I wasn’t, but I’m here now and … now don’t get mad .. I talked to her, I didn’t need anything from the truck. I just want to see you happy” He confessed to you.

Your eyes went wide. “Why? I’m okay just being me, just being your girlfriend.”

“I know you are but I also know you’ve wanted this for a long time.”

You nodded as you brought your hands up covering Sweet Peas hands on your cheeks as you closed your eyes. “Okay… I’ll try out, but if it is some sick joke I’ll kick her ass.”

Sweet Pea chuckled. “Alright Y/N/N, ready to get out of here?”

You nodded as he pulled out of the parking lot heading to the Wyrm. You had a serious one on one conversation with Cheryl.

“I am really sorry Y/N, I was mean back then and I do want you on the squad.”

You nodded a small smile on your face. “Okay I’ll tryout but when?”

Cheryl smiled. “It just so happens that a girl has to quit so how about Monday?”

You nodded again at her as Toni and Sweet Pea joined you both at the table all of you talking about the game.

When Monday came around you put on your best brave face and tried out for the River Vixens. Laughing as both Cheryl and Toni smushed you in a hug telling you were on the squad.

That Saturday you nervously fidgeted with the end of your Vixen Skirt. Nervous for your first game, the first time anyone would see you in this uniform besides Toni and Cheryl.

You ran onto the field with the girls taking your stance in front of the student section. Your eyes caught a tall leather clad serpent in the first row of the student section cheering for the girls. You laughed as Sweet Pea sent you a wink and a huge smile, Fangs beside him giving you a thumbs up. He would always be there front and center at any event cheering not for the bulldogs but for you the love of his life.

[thesweetestpea1093]

Dancing in the Dark

Sweet PeaXCooper!Reader

Chapter 1

A/N: Hey guys! First chapter! If you’d like to be added to the tag list pls let me know! Full disclosure, I didn’t exactly proof read. If you have any ideas for future chapters then message me and please let me know what you think in the comments :)

Word Count: 2370

What Mackenzie was wearing this chapter:

If you asked anyone in Riverdale a year and a half ago if even a fraction of the tragedies that had happened in this town would occur, they would have laughed in your face. Riverdale once been the ‘town with pep,’ but now it just seemed lifeless.

With Jason Blossom being murdered by his own father last year and the Blossom’s family business being exposed for what it truly was, the citizens of Riverdale thought that would be enough craziness for years to come. But then Fred Andrews was shot in Pop’s. And then Moose Mason and Midge Klump were shot at in their car.

And with Archie Andrews running around spray painting the Southside, waving a gun around like he owns the place, the tensions between the North and South sides of Riverdale had never been so high. Especially with the fight that had happened the other night that everyone was calling the ‘Riverdale Rumble.’ Dilton Doiley had been stabbed, but according to Veronica he had actually stabbed himself, which sounded exactly like something that Dilton would do.

The town’s dislike for the Southside Serpents never really made sense to me. My own mother was once a Serpent and even she can’t stop harassing them in her newspaper.

My mother and father had been busier than usual at the Register. With all these shootings, someone had to report about them. My sister, Polly, was at some farm upstate, pregnant with her’s and Jason Blossom’s children, who also happens to be our cousin. And Betty had been acting really weird ever since the Black Hood sent her a letter.

I had been so busy with dance lately that I hadn’t been able to really stop and think about the Black Hood. Being a competitive dancer means there’s a lot of time I have to commit to training and being at the dance studio. Sometimes I was training up to 25-30 hours a week.

Polly, Betty, and I all started with ballet around the same time when we were younger. I think it had something to do with our parents wanting for all three of us to be out of the house at the same time. But while Polly and Betty had stopped pretty soon after that, I had begged my mom to let me keep dancing.

Dancing was my favorite thing to do. I was at my dance studio more than I was at home, even when I didn’t have class myself, I was teaching or volunteering or rehearsing on my own. My parents were okay with me dancing while I was in high school, but you could see the disappointment on their faces whenever I mentioned wanting to continue afterwards.

Betty and Polly were the ‘golden children’ of the family. More so Betty now that Polly was pregnant and Betty had actually showed an interest in journalism. Their dream is probably for the three of us to work at the Register for the rest of our lives.

Polly, Betty, and I were all a year apart in age and we were all really close when we were younger, but now that Polly had cut off communication with us and Betty was always off investigating things she probably shouldn’t be. And Betty was acting really weird lately. Just a few days ago she had published an old news report in the Blue & Gold about our mom being arrested when she was a Southside Serpent. I mean, I didn’t always get along with our mom, but I would never do something like that.

At the moment, it was 1:00 pm on a Saturday in November. I had just gotten home from teaching some of the kindergartners at the studio all morning and I was exhausted. Those kids really tired me out, but I loved teaching them. If I couldn’t be on Broadway when I got older or if I didn’t grow another 3 inches to be a Rockette then I wouldn’t mind being a dance teacher.

I walked into the house and I saw Betty sitting at the kitchen counter with her laptop out.

“Hey Betts!” I said cheerfully as I walked into the kitchen to refill my water bottle, but she didn’t even look up from her phone. “Okay then…”

“Who’re you texting?” I asked, peaking over her shoulder.

“None of your business, Kenz,” Betty snapped, pulling her phone away from me and slamming her laptop closed.

“Sorry, jeez Betty,” I mumbled back to her. “Calm down.”

She didn’t respond so I decided to change the subject. She seemed really stressed out these past few days and I was really worried about her.

“So remember that little girl in my class I was telling you about last week? The one that was too scared to do her back handspring without me spotting her?” I spoke quickly, really excited for one of my students. “Well she finally did it on her own! The little smile on her face when she realized she did it by herself was so cute! And-”

“God, Kenzie, I really don’t care about your stupid job!” Betty exclaimed.

“What?” I whispered, sort of confused. Betty always loved to hear about the kids at the studio.

“Your life just revolves around the dance studio, Kenz,” she sighed. “If you’re not actually at the studio, you’re talking about it to anyone that will listen.”

“So what? I love dance and I love my job…”

“Sure it’s your job now, but do you really expect to continue after high school? It’s a really competitive industry and-”

“What’re you saying?” I exclaimed. “That I’m not good enough? What the fuck, Betty? You’ve always been supportive even when mom and dad haven’t been. Don’t you believe in me?”

“Maybe mom and dad are right, Kenzie,” she sighed, not meeting my eyes. “I just think you should focus on your grades right now. I know you failed your last chemistry quiz.”

“Yeah well I don’t care about chemistry, Betty,” I spat at her, a few tears leaking out of my eyes. “And you know how important dance is for me. I love it just as much as you love writing and investigating and just because it’s not considered a ‘normal’ career path doesn’t mean it’s any less valid. I can’t believe you would say something like that.”

As I left the room I thought I saw a bit of regret in her eyes, but I didn’t care. She had always been the one person to stand up for me when I got into arguments with mom and dad. We’d gotten into arguments before, but she had never stooped so low.

I grabbed my backpack and stormed out the front door to my bike. I knew Kevin was out today and all my friends from the dance studio lived over in Greendale so even though he was dating my sister, I biked over to Jughead’s.

Jughead, Betty, and I had been friends since we were kids and I was really happy when they started dating, but now it was hard to complain about Betty to him whenever we had problems. But at this point I didn’t care, I just needed to get away from the house and her, even if it’s just for an hour or two.

I got to Sunnyside Trailer Park within minutes and I was banging on Jug’s trailer door, a few tears dripping down my face.

“Kenzie?” Jughead questioned when he opened the door. “Are you okay?”

“I’m just great,” I remarked sarcastically. “That’s why I came here crying and almost knocking your door down.”

“Okay, enough with the sarcasm, Cooper,” he chuckled, gesturing for me to come into the trailer. “Are you gonna tell me why you’re really here?”

“Because your girlfriend went crazy on me and crushed my hopes and dreams,” I muttered as I walked past him.

“Sounds fun,” he replied, dryly.

“Yup… I don’t mean to intrude, but I really just can’t deal with her or my parents right now. Do you mind if I just chill here for a bit?”

“Sure, I’ve got some things to do, but my dad won’t care if you hang out for a bit,” he told me.

“Aww, Juggie!” I exclaimed in a mocking tone. “Did you make some friends? So proud of you.”

“Shut up,” he groaned before abruptly changing the subject. “Betty’s been stressed lately, Kenzie. I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

“Doesn’t make it hurt any less, Jug,” I muttered.

“I know, I know… but this Black Hood thing has got everyone on edge, that’s all I’m saying. I’ll be back later… it may be awhile, but feel free to stay as long as you want.”

“Thanks, Jughead.”

“No problem. See you later this afternoon… maybe tonight,” he called out to me as he walked out to the front steps of the trailer. Tonight? What was he doing all day?

I had just set my bag down when I heard Jughead outside.

“Archie?” he asked, alarmed.

Archie? What the hell was he doing here?

“We gotta talk, Jug,” Archie responded.

“Uhh, now is really not a good time, okay?” Jug told him as he jogged down the stairs. “You need to leave, kay? You gotta go.”

“What? Why? What’s going on?”

“I’m serious! You’re just gonna have to-” Jug was interrupted then by a deep voice.

“What the hell do we have here?” the voice said as it rounded the corner of the trailer. I peeked my head out the door, curious who it was. I couldn’t help but gasp a little bit when I saw some Southside Serpents coming around the corner of Jughead’s trailer. I wasn’t necessarily scared for myself, but for the confrontation that was sure to happen between them and Archie Andrews.

“He’s just leaving, alright?” Jughead walked forward to meet the tallest one with the Serpent tattoo on his neck and a dark black eye.

“Wait?” Archie interrupted. “You’re friends with these thugs?”

“It’s not what you think,” Jug turned to look at Archie.

“Are you joining the Serpents?” Archie asked him.

“If he survives,” the Serpent said ominously before Jughead could respond. “And go ahead and call us thugs one more time…”

“Jughead!” Archie exclaimed. “These are the guys who attacked me! Who attacked Reggie, and Veronica, and Dilton! Your friends!”

At this point I couldn’t help the snort that came out of my body when I tried to hold in my laughter in regards to Archie’s comment. Everyone turned to look at me at that moment and I turned pink at their attention.

“Kenzie?” Archie asked incredulously. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Getting away from my psycho sister, that’s why… not offense to your girlfriend, of course, Jughead,” I told him matter-of-factly.

“Go home,” Archie said. “You don’t belong here.”

“Neither do you, Andrews!” I exploded at him and his eyes widened in surprise at my outburst. I hadn’t ever stood up to him before, but I was so done with him thinking he was better than everyone else. “You’re acting all high and mighty about the Rumble, but don’t forget that you’re the one who came on the Serpent’s turf and threatened them with a fucking gun, you dumbass!”

“Yeah, but they stabbed Dilton, Kenzie!” he yelled out. “You don’t know anything that happened that night!”

“I know that Dilton Doiley stabbed himself, Archie… everyone knows that. I wouldn’t be surprised if even the police knew that and they were just using it as an excuse to bring in Southsiders as scapegoats. And obviously you did some damage too… I’ll pay you a million dollars right here, right now if you’re not the one that gave Skyscraper over there that nice black eye,” I bit back, pointing over at the Serpent with the neck tattoo.

Archie just huffed and turned back around to face Jughead, figuring he wasn’t going to get anywhere with me. I smirked and flipped him off with both hands when he wasn’t looking and I actually think I got a small smile from some of the Serpents, Skyscraper included.

“Wait,” Jughead started. “Is that why you’re here? To warn me?” “No. I came here to tell you to stay away from Betty. She doesn’t wanna see you anymore,” Archie told him and I rolled my eyes. What was wrong with this girl? Is she trying to piss off all her friends and family?

“Screw you,” Jug responded after a few seconds of silence. “I just saw Betty yesterday… she was fine…”

“No, dude. She’s been wanting to break up with you for weeks… she’s been agonizing over it since you crossed the dark side… she couldn’t bring herself to do it,” Archie kept explaining my sister’s stupid decisions.

“So she sent you?” Jughead was clearly distressed. “Betty would never do that!”

“If you don’t believe me then call her!” Archie started to raise his voice. “And feel free to tell her you’re a Serpent now, I bet she’ll love that. She saw where you were headed, Jughead… we all did. And she knows you can’t be with them and her. And come on, man! You know it too.”

I had never seen Jughead look so defeated in all the years that I’d known him. I was gonna have a long chat with Betty tonight when I got home. All I wanted was to hug him, but it didn’t seem appropriate in front of everyone here. And maybe he wouldn’t want to see me now that him and Betty were broken up.

“... tell Betty I got the message,” Jug responded lowly, glaring at Archie.

“Yeah…” Archie muttered before walking back to his truck.

Jughead turned to look at the Serpents at this point, clearly upset.

“What?” he asked them harshly as Skyscraper crossed his arms over his chest. “Did you enjoy the show?”

“The show hasn’t even started yet,” Skyscraper responded to him.

“Well that sounds ominous,” I joked, grabbing my bag from inside the trailer before walking down the stairs. “I’m gonna head out Jughead. Something is seriously wrong with my sister and I’m gonna go slap some sense into her.”

“See you around, Kenz,” he sighed.

“See you around, Juggie.”

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[catty-words]

suppressed devotion

summary: 5 times Jeff inadvertently and indirectly tells Annie he loves her and the 1 time he does it and means to. (a Jeff/Annie-centric season 5 AU) word count: 5,360 author’s note: Thank you a million times to @bethanyactually for her beta skills (she’s actually more or less responsible for my favorite line in this story), but, more importantly, for her friendship. much like Jeff is grateful and feels lucky to have Annie in his life, I owe the universe a lot for bringing us together. Your graciousness and kindness knows no bounds. Thanks for sending a little my way. i love you a lot, and i’ll forever cherish the fact that fic brought us together. of course the most fitting way to celebrate your birthday was to write you some. i’m sorry it’s so late. that doesn’t mean i love you less!

[ao3]

~~~

It was Britta’s idea, going to her bar to celebrate his first successful week of teaching. While it’d sounded like a good idea at the time—he’s not exactly one to turn down an excuse to drink, especially not lately—shortly after they settle into a sticky booth with pitchers full of beer, Jeff realizes that he’s simply not in the mood.

So he orders a glass of scotch and slips outside as soon as the rest of them start up a game of pool.

He’s almost done with the drink by the time anyone comes looking.

“Hey,” Annie says quietly as she approaches.

He jerks to attention at the sound of her voice, on edge and fuzzy-brained. “What the hell, Annie?”

“You’d been out here for a while. I wanted to make sure you’re okay,” she says, shaking her head and leaning against the brick exterior of the bar. She’s holding a mostly-empty water bottle by the cap, pinching the plastic between her thumb and forefinger, and her arm brushes up against his elbow as she settles next to him.

“Well I’m fine,” he says curtly, trying not to notice the charming way the tops of her ears turn pink at his tone or the lock of hair that’s slipping out of her otherwise immaculate updo. And he especially doesn’t take note of the way his fingertips twitch with the urge to brush the strand back into its place.

“Fine, then.” Her voice is clipped, her tone offended.

“Wait,” he calls when she turns to leave. “I didn’t mean to…it’s been a long week.”

She hesitates before coming to rest against the building next to him again. In the following silence, Jeff feels the weight of her expectancy.

“I’ve been a little stressed,” he admits finally. “About life stuff.”

“I thought you said you might like teaching,” she says, kind but confused.

“It’s not about the teaching—especially now that you’ve dropped my class.”

She tilts her head up toward him and smiles wryly. “I was just being difficult for your own good.”

“And all those other times you were difficult? That was just for the thrill of it?” he teases.

She chuckles, nudging him with her shoulder, and he ducks his head to smile at his shoes.

They both relax for a moment before Annie asks, “What is it about, then?” .

Jeff swallows hard, and knows she must sense his discomfort because she n rests a hand gently on his arm and gives him an out.

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

After tipping back his remaining scotch, he says, “It’s not that I’m trying to brood or anything. I just don’t think I can articulate what’s bothering me.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Annie says, her voice teasing and deliberately light. “Jeff Winger is one eloquent bastard.”

It’s a stupid comment and he doesn’t want to laugh at it, but he can’t seem to help it. “I’ve certainly been called worse.”

They stand in silence for several comfortable moments. Then, apropos of nothing, Annie says, “It’s strange, right? Having the gang back together.”

Jeff’s pulse jumps, but he doesn’t say anything, waits for her to elaborate.

She doesn’t let him down. “I mean, I have this constant pit of guilt in my stomach, being reunited with everyone, because we should have never fallen out of touch in the first place, you know? It feels weird that it doesn’t feel weirder.”

He feels relief swell in his chest and angles his body toward her, the edge of a brick cutting into his shoulder. “I know exactly what you mean.”

Her face softens into a grateful grin and a familiar bright sensation unfurls in his chest.

“I was sorry to hear about your law firm,” she says, her mouth twisting down in a thoughtful little frown. “I was rooting for you.”

He offers her a half-hearted smile and a derisive, “At least that makes one of us.”

The frown grows more pronounced, and the crease between her eyebrows deepens. She says nothing, though.

During the tense silence that follows his joke, Jeff finds himself desperate to do anything to make that look go away. He could blame it on the scotch, but he knows better—when it comes to Annie, he always finds himself more willing to tell her the truth, more willing to make himself vulnerable, than usual.

“At least this doesn’t feel weird.” When she quirks an eyebrow at him, not following, he continues. “Being with you. There’s no weird-that-it’s-not-weirder feeling. It’s just easy. Like always.”

That does the trick. Her eyes soften and she grins, wide and disarming.

“Like always,” she agrees.

~~~

“Did a group of scary people just show up at your door to deliver some blue robes?” Annie asks Jeff when he answers the phone.

“Uh, yeah, actually. I take it you got a similar visit?”

“Yeah, and I feel like a should take a shower or put in some volunteer time at a soup kitchen or something.”

“You really think that’d make you feel better?” he asks, tucking his cell between his shoulder and ear so he can toss the robes in question onto his counter and grab a beer out of the fridge.

“Maybe,” she says, and he can practically hear her shudder. “I don’t know. I just feel like I should be doing something beneficial for the universe to combat the presence of those…creeps.”

“Yeah, because your constant crusade to save Greendale isn’t enough,” he says, settling back on his couch.

Her responding sigh sounds both annoyed and pleased and Jeff grins despite himself.

“That’s different. That’s just as much for me as it is for any other potential Greendale student. I feel like I should do something altruistic.”

“Altruism is a fairy tale, Annie. A myth. It doesn’t exist, not really.”

She huffs. “Of course you think that.”

“I know that. Look no further than your current situation. You think doing something good for other people will somehow assuage your guilt. You’re not just trying to make the universe better for the sake of a better universe. You want to, I don’t know, even a score or balance the scales or something.”

He’s not saying it to be mean. It’s simply something that’s been on his mind a lot the past couple days—making up for the past. But he can tell by her silence that he’s touched a nerve.

“Sorry. Look, I didn’t mean—”

She cuts him off. “You’re right. We should have been more involved, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since we—well. You know.”

Jeff takes a swig of beer and kicks his feet up onto the coffee table. “Pierce.”

“Pierce,” Annie agrees sadly, and Jeff has to admit, the name leaves his throat feeling a little tight. “We should have looked out for him. Been better friends.”

“We were the best friends that man ever had.”

“That doesn’t mean we couldn’t have been better,” she says, her voice quiet and brittle. “I mean, we all knew about his reformed neo-buddhism, and yet we never did anything but joke about how gullible he was.”

“This is a dangerous path, Annie. We were good enough friends, alright? Dwelling on all the things we could have—not necessarily should have—done differently won’t change anything,” he says, sounding more certain than he feels.

“I should have at least called him after we returned to Greendale. Visited. Anything. I just got so swept up in the busy-ness of school… it’d been over a month since our last lunch date.”

Jeff hears the regret thick in her voice, and he has to swallow down his own grief before he can reply. “He knew,” Jeff says, “He knew how much you cared about him. He was an asshole and he always wanted more than he had. But he knew, Annie.”

There’s a sniffle on the other line, and then a shaky indrawn breath. “How could he have? We’re always telling ourselves that we did all we could for him, but is that really the case? Mostly I remember us being mean.”

“Not you, though.” They’re both surprised by the fervor in Jeff’s voice. “You always knew when to draw the line. You made sure he felt welcomed and loved. You have a knack for that, you know.”

There’s silence on the other end and he wonders for a moment if he’s come on too strong, made things weird.

He nearly laughs with relief when she says, “Thanks. I really needed to hear that.”

“I could tell,” he says, but then is quick to add. “That doesn’t mean I was just saying what you needed to hear, though. I really meant it.”

He presses the phone closer to his ear, trying to hang onto the smile in her voice when she says, “I could tell.”

~~~

“Thanks again for letting me and Troy crash here,” Annie says, taking a seat at Jeff’s kitchen table. Her hair is a little wavier than usual and her bright blue eyes look tired—probably from the night spent on the couch—but she’s smiling at him. “Abed doesn’t ask for a lot of alone time with Rachel, so when he does, it’s kind of a big deal.”

Jeff winces as he sets a toasted bagel in front of her. “Can we maybe not talk about Abed’s sex life before I eat? I have to survive a day of evaluations, which essentially means I have to teach with the dean leering at me from the back of the classroom. So I really need these carbs. Please let me enjoy them in peace.”

Annie laughs and spreads some garden veggie schmear, which he was sure to pick up for her when he ran to the bakery earlier that morning, on her bagel. “I never said anything about sex. You only have yourself to blame for any disturbing mental images.”

They both freeze at the thought, Jeff with a bagel halfway to his mouth and Annie with her knife poised over her plate.

When their eyes meet, they break out into laughter.

Troy comes out of the bathroom in a hurry then, letting the door crash against the wall with a jarring bang. “Annie, I need the car.”

She frowns, but she’s already reaching for her backpack. “Why? Is something wrong?”

Jeff cocks an eyebrow, watching Troy bounce on the balls of his feet like an excitable child.

“Abed just texted. Vicki and Starburns are having a cat-car race in the parking lot outside Alternate Science Hall. If I leave now I could probably still catch it.”

Annie stops rooting around for the keys. “Are you serious?”

“I wouldn’t joke about cat-car racing!”

She rolls her eyes, and Troy pouts out his lower lip in response.

With a weary sigh, Annie turns to Jeff and asks, “Would you be able drive me to campus?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She turns back to Troy and points a stern finger at him. “You promise you won’t speed?”

“Uh, there’s no point watching a cat- car race from the middle, Annie,” he says with a chuckle, like he can’t believe she’d even suggest such a thing.

“I’m not giving you the keys until you promise.”

Troy’s full-on squirming now. “Okay, yes! I promise! But I need to leave now.”

He practically sprints out of the apartment after she tosses him the keys.

“You have insurance, right?” Jeff asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Probably not enough,” she says, and takes a huge bite of her bagel.

They hurry through breakfast, Annie anxiously checking her phone every thirty seconds, and then grab their bags before heading for Jeff’s car.

In the elevator, Jeff pulls out his own phone, opening Twitter to get in a minute of mindless scrolling before the day really begins. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Annie shifting her shoulders and smoothing down her blouse—a conservative top with lots of ruffles and a floral pattern in muted colors that strikes him as very un-Annie-like.

She’s so fidgety that by the time they reach the ground floor, Jeff’s openly watching her fix the collar and button the top button, only to undo it a second later.

“Laundry day?” he asks casually, stepping out ahead of her so he can lead them to the car.

“Hmm?”

“You seem uncomfortable.”

“Oh,” she says, glancing down at her outfit. “No, this is…I have a presentation in my Soil Science class. I wanted to look professional.”

Jeff’s glad they reach the Lexus then, because he really doesn’t know what to say to that. Now that he’s got Annie on the topic, though, she doesn’t seem keen to let it drop.

“You don’t like it?” she asks as he backs out of the parking spot.

“I didn’t say that.”

She scoffs. “That is such a weak deflection.”

He keeps his eyes trained on the road. “Since when does it matter whether I like your clothes or not? All that matters is that you like them.”

She harrumphs and turns away from him, looking out the window.

“Do you like that top?” he asks after a second.

“I don’t know. I guess I thought…it makes me look like Leslie Knope a little bit.”

If Jeff had been drinking something, he would’ve definitely done a spittake.

“And that’s something you want?” he asks carefully.

Annie’s quiet for a long time, and when he hits a red light and glances over to make sure she’s still with him, Jeff notices her cheeks are red. She looks up from her lap and catches his gaze, the blush darkening just a little.

“People take her seriously,” she says.

Jeff raises his eyebrows before turning his attention back to the road.

She sighs and continues, “So long as I’m back at Greendale, I want to really commit to making changes. Old Annie gave up on her dreams just because she’d made a commitment to Hospital Administration. She was a child who didn’t know what she wanted and ended up in a crappy job she didn’t like purely because she thought she had to stay the course. I want New Annie to be self-assured, and I want her to stop playing at being an adult. I want to actually be an adult…you know?”

Her voice is so small and unsure that Jeff has to resist the urge to pull over just so he can give her a hug. He’s better off comforting her with words, anyway.

“First of all, very few adults knows what they really want. Sometimes people go out into the world with a degree they worked hard for, and find they hate everything about their chosen field. It happens, and the fact that it happened to you doesn’t make you any less of an adult. Secondly, following through on your commitments isn’t a bad thing. It’s part of what makes you, well, you.”

She hums in response. “I guess.”

“Well, I know,” he says. “And by the way, you’ve been supporting yourself for more than five years now. Of course you’re an actual fucking adult. You’re practically the only adult I know with her shit together.”

She laughs at that. “Come on, that’s not true.”

“Name one of our friends who’s more self-sufficient and mature than you.”

“Well, there’s Shirley.”

“Nope, doesn’t count,” Jeff says, pulling into the faculty parking lot.

“What? Why wouldn’t Shirley count?”

“She has kids,” he says matter-of-factly. “That puts her in a whole different category of responsibility. Just trust me on this, okay?”

He puts the car in park and looks over at her. She’s smiling, tentative but warm.

“Fine, I trust you.”

He nods, satisfied. When she moves to get out of the car, though, he stops her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Annie?”

She turns back to him. “Yeah?”

“Everyone took Ann Perkins seriously, too. And Donna, for that matter. You don’t have to wear boring clothes to be seen as a serious person..”

Annie considers that for a moment, then grins slyly, suddenly cheerful. “You love Parks and Rec!”

Jeff snatches his hand back and groans. “I’m never giving you a pep talk again.”

~~~

Jeff doesn’t know how it happened, exactly, but somehow he ends up hosting a birthday party for Annie at his place.

Sure, he’s the one who suggested they throw it, but he didn’t mean in his apartment. He wonders idly if he could get in trouble for having so many drunk students in his home. He’s pretty sure most of them are over 21….

“Party’s moving to The Vatican!” Britta shouts way louder than necessary considering there are only about thirty people in the room. “Last one there has to buy a round of shots!”

“How much do you want to bet that it ends up being Britta?” Annie asks, coming to stand next to Jeff as everyone else stampedes the door.

“I’d put my Lexus on it,” he says, smiling down at her. “But you shouldn’t give her too much of a head start. That’s tempting fate.”

“Oh, I’m way too beat. My party train stops here. Besides, it looks like you could use some help cleaning up.”

They both glance around the now-deserted apartment, and Jeff resists the urge to burst into tears over the mess.

Still, he says, “Annie, it’s your birthday. You can’t help with the cleanup on your own damn birthday.”

“Watch me,” she says, a challenge in her voice, and moves toward the kitchen where she retrieves a trash bag from under the sink.

Jeff knows he should try to argue, but he’s pretty sure he’d lose no matter what. Shaking his head, he joins her in the kitchen and starts putting away the food.

They work in companionable silence for a while. Annie collects all the discarded paper plates and napkins. Jeff sweeps the floor. She wipes down the counters and the tables. He packages up some leftover pizza and veggies for her to take home.

It only takes them an hour to get everything in decent shape. When Annie returns from taking out the trash and recycling, he has a beer open and ready for her.

She joins him on the couch.

“So how was it?” Jeff asks. “In the hierarchy of birthdays, I mean.”

She contemplates this, taking a sip of the beer. “Somewhere in the middle, probably.”

He gapes at her, mock-offended.

“Oh please,” she says, nudging his shoulder. “Don’t act like you care. You didn’t even want to throw me the party.”

“Hey now, I wanted you to have a party, I just didn’t want to be the one to organize it. Or host it.”

“Yeah, well, it showed. The decorations alone.”

“What’s wrong with my decorations?”

“How about the fact that they’re nonexistent.” She gestures around the living room. “And don’t even get me started on the guest list.”

“Come on! I hung up Christmas lights. And all your friends were here.”

“Plus Chang.”

“You know how hard it is to make plans without him finding out about them and then showing up whether or not you actually invite him. I figured I might as well skip the part where he glared at me for days and issued unsettling threats until I gave in,” he says defensively. “Cut me some slack here.”

She grins. “It was a lovely party. Thank you.”

Jeff tries to hide his pleased smile by taking a swig from his bottle.

“How about this? I’ll agree to host your party next year so long as you do all the actual planning. You get the party you want, I can take credit for how awesome it is, and we both avoid another critique of my hosting abilities.”

“Oh, but I’m having so much fun giving you hell,” she says, her eyes glinting mischievously.

“I’ll throw in a free birthday lunch.”

Annie holds out her hand. “You have yourself a deal.”

They’re both quiet for a minute after shaking on it, and Jeff sneaks a glance at Annie. She looks beautiful in her party dress—a green, velvety wrap with an enticing neckline—and with her hair down, soft curls tumbling over her shoulders. She looks happy, and his breath catches for a second when he realizes how much of an effect that has on his own mood.

Before he can think better of it, he’s saying, “I’m really lucky you’re in my life, you know that? I’m, uh, glad you crashed my fake study group five years ago.”

She looks over at him, a surprised smile on her face, and her eyes sparkle, reflecting the multicolored lights Jeff’s strung up around his apartment.

“I’m glad you guys kept me around.”

He nods and then offers his beer bottle. She taps her own against it with a soft clink and then they both take a drink.

Jeff watches her closely after setting his empty beer aside, tipsy and unabashed. When she catches him looking, she smiles, and he holds her gaze for as long as she’ll let him.

Eventually, her cheeks flush and she ducks her head. He keeps smiling at her, though, thinking of parallel timelines that definitely don’t exist.

But if they did, he’s pretty sure this one would be the brightest.

~~~

“Oh, good, you’re still here!” Annie stops in the doorway to Jeff’s office, a couple of thick binders in her arms. “The night janitor started cleaning the study room, and that was definitely my cue to relocate.”

Jeff caps his red pen and gestures to the chair in front of his desk. “What’s got you here so late?”

She looks at him as if he’s just sprouted a second nose on his forehead. “The school year is coming to an end.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And there’s still so much to be done!” she says, dropping the binders on his desk with a heavy thunk. “We have to finalize the end-of-year-dance’s theme, complete the last twenty tasks on my Save Greendale checklist, and then finals and getting the school ready for summer. Plus, the rumor mill’s been rumbling and there’s a good chance the school board’s ordered an appraisal of Greendale, so we’ll have an official report of how well we’ve done saving the school—”

“Okay, breathe,” Jeff commands, getting more worried the redder her face gets.

She does as she’s told, sucking in a deep breath, and finally sitting down.

“So,” she starts, opening up one of the binders, “what’s keeping you at Greendale after hours?”

“Well, it turns out that if you give students assignments, they’ll eventually want them back. Graded.”

“Who would have guessed?” Annie teases, raising her eyebrows at him.

“Honestly.”

After hesitating, she asks, “But you don’t mind it? Teaching?”

Jeff shrugs. “It’s grown on me.”

They both go back to work, then. As soon as Jeff finds his focus, though, Annie clears her throat.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He looks up from the paper he’s trying to read.

“Do you think this is all gonna pay off someday?”

His brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Annie sighs and fiddles with the rings of her open binder, “Do you think coming back to Greendale is going to be worth it, in the end?”

“I still don’t understand,” he says gently, studying her face.

She nods and then looks up at him. “I guess I’m just worried that all the work I put in here won’t mean anything out there. I’ve always tried to believe that if I apply myself and work hard, that everything I want will just fall into place. But then again…I’m a recovering drug addict who went to a community college, graduated, then went back to the same community college. Am I ever going to rise above that?”

Jeff can only imagine the face he’s making by the time she’s finished.

She winces apologetically. “Sorry, I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.”

“No kidding.”

When he doesn’t say anything else, she frowns. “You’re avoiding the question.”

“What? No, I’m just thinking up ways to humiliate whoever told you that you aren’t good enough to do whatever the hell you want.”

Annie laughs once, but it’s not a happy sound. “Come on, Jeff. No one had to tell me. It’s just…I know better by now than to think all my plans are gonna work just because I want them to.”

“Was it Professor Harrington? That guy’s always given me the creeps, hanging out in the dissection lab twenty-four-seven. We could probably set up some kind of accident in there.”

“Seriously? Could you please stop plotting some imaginary person’s annihilation? No one did this to me.”

“Then where is this coming from? It’s really not like you to doubt yourself.”

She frowns at her lap. “End-of-the-year blues, I guess.”

Jeff gets up from his chair and walks around his desk so he can crouch in front of her.

She tries to avoid his stare but breaks when he puts a gentle hand on her knee.

“Annie, you are the brightest and most determined person I know. Even if nothing goes according to your plan after you graduate, you’ll make a new plan and adjust. Because you don’t give up.”

A tear rolls down her cheek and she wipes it away, staying silent.

“Would it help if I remind you that you wouldn’t have to adjust on your own? The group…me…we’re always gonna be here for you.”

She nods and offers him a weak smile. “You’re right. I, um, thank you.”

He kisses her forehead and stands.

They go back to work after that, but Jeff’s left with a weight in his stomach: the dreadful, nagging feeling that he should be able to offer more, but doesn’t have anything else worth giving her.

~~~

“In theory, a blast of human passion could shock the mainframe into a cold start.”

Jeff feels totally fucking blindsided by how totally fucking blindsided he feels.

No, wait, that’s not quite right…he wouldn’t have volunteered if he hadn’t felt, somewhere deep down, that he had a chance of opening the door.

The memory of Annie’s expression when she’d caught him staring directly at her blooms in his mind, the details standing out in high definition. From her rapid, surprised blinking to the way her cheeks had turned a rosy pink, it’s burned into his brain.

Damn, he’s an idiot for not figuring this out sooner. Truly.

He scans the cafeteria, looking for her in the midst of the celebration. His eyes pass over Troy and Abed doing some kind of weird jig, and Duncan longingly staring at Britta while she chats animatedly with Shirley, before he spots her.

She’s standing in front of a booth, gesturing emphatically. He can’t see her face from where he’s standing, but he can see Chang hunched sullenly over the table. She’s probably berating him for his betrayal.

He grins, feeling a strange kind of warmth in his chest, and walks over to them.

“…completely irresponsible! You could have cost this school everything! Do you ever think about the consequences of your actions before you go and do whatever the hell you want? No, don’t answer that.”

He slides onto the bench across from Chang.

“Hey look, it’s our buddy Jeff,” Chang says as soon as he sees him.

Annie glances over, but she keeps her face carefully neutral.

“Not gonna work, man,” Jeff says, shaking his head at Chang. Then he lowers his voice and turns to Annie. “Whenever you’re finished here, I’d like to talk to you.”

She frowns and glares at Chang for a long minute, clearly torn. Finally, she looks him in the eye. There’s a guarded curiosity there.

“I don’t think I’m getting through anyway, so I’m all yours. Er, I mean….” She fumbles for something else to say, and Jeff tries not to laugh.

“The study room should be free,” he says.

“Yeah, sure.”

They walk there in awkward, charged silence. He can feel Annie sneaking glances at him while he employs all his willpower to keep from openly staring back.

“Quite the day, huh?” she says when the finally reach the room. She slides onto the table and crosses one leg over the other, watching him expectantly.

“Unforgettable,” he agrees, and then starts pacing.

Apparently Annie can’t take the quiet because after a couple strained seconds, she starts rambling. “It’s not like anyone ever expects to find buried treasure, right? Abed is going to be talking about this for years. Duncan’s electrocution, Troy finding the hidden wing of the school with his air conditioning expertise. It was a true adventure. And that’s all before we almost got trapped under Greendale with the school’s founder, who, by the way, looks a bit like a walking corpse, am I right? I mean—”

“It was you,” Jeff blurts out unceremoniously. Nothing smoother is coming to mind and he really needs her to stop babbling, so why not just go with it? “You opened the door. You probably guessed that by now, but I don’t want it to go unspoken, you know?”

When Annie doesn’t say anything, he repeats it: “It was you.”

She swallows hard. “Are you sure? The rest of the group was there, after all. It could have been everyone, right?”

He gives her an unimpressed look, and takes a deep breath, trying to hold off the impending freak-out he suddenly feels closing in on him. “I’m sure, yeah. Just you.”

She opens her mouth as if to speak, but no sound comes out.

Was this a mistake? There’s definitely been something between them in the past, but maybe she’s moved on. He wouldn’t exactly blame her. He’s been jerking her around, trivializing her feelings for a long time, he realizes that now.

“Okay, well,” he says. His voice is ragged and his skin suddenly feels too tight. “I just thought you should know, and now you do so…bye.”

“Jeff, wait!” Annie says as he reaches the door. “I’m not saying…this is just a lot to process, okay?”

He takes a deep breath, then turns back to face her. “Tell me about it.”

She smiles then, shaky but radiant, and Jeff smiles back, the band around his chest easing a little.

“I’m not really sure what this means,” she says. “What you want it to mean.”

He nods, considering. It only takes him a second to make up his mind.

“I don’t think we need to know exactly what it means tonight, but here are some things I do know: you’re my best friend, Annie. I can always tell you what I’m feeling, and I never feel ashamed after I do. This is fucking cheesy, but when you’re happy, it makes me happy; when you’re sad, it makes me sad, and makes me want to make it better for you. Knowing you helps me understand why people write thousands of shitty romance novels and movie after movie about idiots falling in love because, honestly, sometimes being around you feels like I’ve been dropped in the middle of a fucking poem.”

She laughs, and Jeff can see tears glistening in her eyes.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is I love you. I probably should have realized sooner, but I’m here now and I love you. So. Say something, please… before I run screaming from this room.”

Annie rolls her eyes at him and then slides off the table. “Love, huh?”

Jeff nods. “Pretty sure.”

She’s walking toward him impossibly slow. “And you’re not freaking out about it?”

“Oh no, I am,” he assures her. “But it’s the good kind of freaking out.”

She bites her lip and stops right in front of him. “So.”

“Yes?”

She looks up at him from under her lashes, and Jeff swears his heart stops beating for a full five seconds. “You have a Hello Kitty notebook somewhere filled with poems about me, don’t you?”

He doesn’t even dignify that with a response. Instead, he leans down and kisses her.

[abbatoirablaze]

Down The Rabbit Hole, Chapter 15

Word Count: 1.4k

Warnings:  none

“Me and Annie aren’t going to the convention,” Jeff chuckled, as he wrapped his arms around your waist and kissed you, “we’re going skiing, while Troy, Abed, and Britta have their nerd time.  And we didn’t invite Shirley or Pierce on our trip, so it’ll be the three of us.  Be a teacher and throw your responsibilities at your teaching assistant like the other professors used to do to you, and come skiing with us.  I know that you’ve been stressing out lately because you do that way too much!  You need a vacation to relax, Tawney!”

“I don’t have a teaching assistant,” you reminded your boyfriend as you giggled from his grasp, “and I have classes on Friday so I wouldn’t be able to get there until Saturday!  I can’t just abandon my responsibilities because my incredibly sweet, sexy boyfriend requests it.”

“You’re right.  But hey, when you do come up, phones off.  For the both of us.  Then we’ll have the whole weekend together!” he smiled softly, “look, I booked two separate rooms so Annie had her own, and we could have our own.  Live a little…let’s take the vacation as a little couple’s retreat from the world!”

“I shouldn’t!”

“But you should!” he urged, “you deserve it, Tawney.  We’re weeks into your first school year as a professor.  If you need an excuse, don’t look at it like a vacation, look at it like a weekend celebration with your loving boyfriend, who just wants the be proud of your accomplishments.”

“This coming from the guy who laughed when I said I accepted a position as a professor at Greendale in the first place!”

“I mean, it’s no Harvard, but you wanted to start small and build up some credibility.  I get that.  I have no doubt in my mind if you wanted to go to another college as a professor, you could!  And we’re not just talking somewhere small like City College either.”

“You’re too sweet, Jeff Winger,” you giggled once more, “what ever happened to that douche of a lawyer from your first year?  The one who was trying to sleep with girls and attempting to manipulate professors for answers to tests?”

“He fell in love with you, remember?  You helped shape me into what I am, Tawney.  You’ve been there for me the whole time.  And now it’s my turn to be there for you, and to remind you that it’s okay to loosen up a bit,” he reminded you playfully, “now come on.  Pack a bag, and I’ll bring it up with me tomorrow when we go, that way all you have to do is drive down…if we pack tonight, then you could probably make it Friday night instead of Saturday morning.  And by then, you could get some quality time in with me before you pass out and we hit the slopes the following morning.”

“I mean, that does sound nice,” you shrugged, admitting finally that the vacation did seem like a good way to unwind, “Look at you, planning everything ahead of time.”

He smiled as he let go of you, and started towards your closet, “I’m grabbing a bag for you too…non-negotiable.  I’ll go skiing with Annie on Friday, but then Saturday and Sunday I’m all yours.  And we’re celebrating!  I’m talking Champagne and strawberries…sex on a bear skin rug in front of a fireplace-”

“You have all that in a hotel room?”

“Okay, maybe not the bear skin rug…or the fireplace…but definitely the strawberries and champagne.”

“Okay Jeff!”

“Tawney…I really wish you were here…”

“I’ll be there soon enough,” you giggled across the line as you got into your car, “the hotel is only about an hour and a half away…”

“I just-I don’t know what to do…”

You could hear the sadness in his voice.  He didn’t seem playful and flirty like he had earlier, “What’s wrong, Jeff?”

“Something happened.”

You felt your stomach drop as thoughts ran rampant in your mind, “Jeff-“

He could obviously hear the nervousness in your voice, as he was quick to cut you off, “no.  No.  It’s nothing like that.  I just-so the slopes are closed because a group of scouts got trapped…and Annie and I were going to call it a day…I ended up wasting my time in the lobby, where I found out that I share a resemblance to one of the villains on the show that Abed and Troy watches…”

“Thoraxis…” you laughed, knowing just what he was talking about, “they finally told you?”

“Wait, you knew?”

“Jeff…I watch Inspector Spacetime.  You know that.”

“Well yeah…but I didn’t think-I’m getting too off topic,” he sighed, shrugging off his initial thoughts, “anyways, a fan found me on my phone in the lobby when I was texting you earlier…and I got bored.  I pretended to be the actor, because why not.”

“Sure…”

“Well, apparently, Annie was pretending that she was married to me with the hotel staff…”

“What?”

“She had the hotel staff convinced that we were married, and that this fan was some woman I was cheating on her with,” he replied honestly, “they brought her down to me, and she threw drinks in my face.  And then the fan threw drinks in my face…but that-that wasn’t the messed-up part!”

“It gets worse than Annie pretending she was married to you?”

“I-I went to her room, hoping to get her to open the door, but when she wouldn’t, I used the adjoining door…and she-she was doing more than pretending, Tawney,” he said truthfully, “it was kind of scary.  She’d had bathrobes and roses…food for two…two drinks, one with and without lipstick…and a disturbing amount of hair that looked like it was mine on one side of the sinks.”

Suddenly you felt a little more nervous.

You had known that Annie’s crush on Jeff never really left.  And after Christmas when she pulled her stunt with the Glee Club, Jeff had made a promise to you that he would tell you if anything else ever happened, because he was as committed to your relationship as you were, but you really hadn’t expected Annie to go and do something like that.

“Is-is this something I have to be worried about?”

“I was asking myself the same thing,” he admitted, “Annie’s a good kid, Tawney, but she’s been crossing few too many lines lately.  She knows that we’re dating.  She knows that we live together.  I thought I made everything clear when I turned her down during Christmas, and then told her about having two different rooms, but just seeing what she did in hers…maybe I’ve been handling our friendship wrong by not being firmer with her.  Maybe I haven’t been strong enough in saying that we’re together.  Maybe I should have waited to do the ski trip.  You know, maybe I should have come up with you and let her come up with the group.”

“That’s an awful lot of maybes,” you said softly, “Have you talked to her?”

“No…I-after I saw the room, I got out of there as fast as I could…”

“Well…what do you think, Jeff?” you asked, “honestly…”

“Honestly?”

“Yeah.”

“I just wish that you were here, and that I could forget about this whole mess…”

“Who knew Jeff Winger was so emotionally needy?” you teased lightly.

“Seeing her plot out some fake relationship just made me miss the real one I already have!” he answered.

“Well, I’ll be there soon enough,” you reminded him.  There was a comfortable silence as you hummed to yourself.  On the other side of the line, you could lightly hear Jeff’s breathing.  It was calm, but you knew that internally he must have still been worrying about Annie, “Jeff?”

“Yeah…”

“Go find her and talk to her.”

“What?”

“I know it is a little concerning…but I-I don’t think Annie would do it maliciously,” you replied, “I think that maybe…somewhere along the line’s things got misunderstood.  You did book the rooms under your name.  Maybe the staff thought she was your wife…and hotels are known for being a place where people go to hide affairs.”

“That doesn’t explain what I saw in her room…”

“Just…don’t write her off…not until you’ve at least heard her out…”

“Can I just wait for you?” he asked softly, “I-I’d feel a little bit better if you were there with me…”

“I mean…you can, if you want…”

“And then we’ll talk to her together…” he asked slowly, “I just-I’d feel a lot better about it if you were there, and we could talk to her together.”

“Okay, Jeff…”

“I’ll see you soon?” he asked.

You nodded, before realizing that eh couldn’t see it, “yeah.  I’ll be there soon, Jeff.”

“I love you, Tawney.”

“I love you too, Jeff.”

Chapter 16

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