Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Hey, babe, are you ready to go?” Annie asked, poking her head inside of the Greendale cafeteria’s coat closet.

“Almost. There’s still two unclaimed coats, and I have to move the racks to the back of the closet once they’re claimed. I guess they use this space as a spare classroom during the day,” Rachel replied from where she was perched on a conveniently placed stool.

Annie strode into the room and stopped in front of Rachel, taking her girlfriend’s chin between her thumb and forefinger. Rachel closed the book that she had been reading and looked up to give Annie a warm smile.

“You like being taller than me for once?” she asked with a playful glint in her eye.

Annie scoffed. “That’s a silly question. I love it,” she replied with more of a dark, suggestive tone than Rachel had been expecting. She tightened her grip on her chin ever so slightly and began to pull her face closer, but was interrupted by the sound of someone behind them clearing their throat.

“Hi, I’m here for my coat?”

Annie’s hand quickly flew away from Rachel’s face and she stepped away. Rachel chuckled as she slid off of the stool and set her book down on top of it.

“Of course. Is yours the blue Patagonia or the red North Face?” she asked.

“The red North Face,” the student responded, still glancing at Annie out of the corner of their eye. Rachel walked over to the rack that the jacket currently resided on and took it off of its hanger before holding it out to the student. They mumbled a quiet ‘thank you’, turned, and swiftly scurried out the door.

“Now…where were we?” Annie asked in a low voice, joining Rachel beside the rack and brushing a lock of hair behind her ear.

“Well, I was going to get a head start on putting the coat racks away so that as soon as the owner of the last jacket comes to claim it, we can get out of here and do everything that I’m sure your dirty little mind is currently dreaming up,” Rachel said, accentuating her point with a gentle ‘boop’ to Annie’s nose.

Annie’s face became instantly flushed and she looked down at the ground, embarrassed and unable to maintain eye contact. “Sure. Yeah. That makes sense.”

Rachel loved that she could still make Annie switch from being cool, collected, and confident to flustered in less than a moment. It felt like a superpower, one that only she possessed and could choose to use for good or for evil.

“Great. Now, if you could help me pick these up and move them to the back…”

Without any further prompting, Annie grabbed the closest rack and hoisted it up with ease. “Just against the wall over there?” she asked.

Rachel stared at her in awe for a moment before formulating a response. “Yeah. Yeah, do you want help getting it over there?”

Annie shrugged the best that she could while still holding the metal coat rack up. “I’m fine, it’s not that heavy,” she said in a cheerful voice before shifting back to her cooler tone, “plus, I’m stronger than I look.”

She seemed to constantly be finding new ways to amaze Rachel, whether it was through instantaneous shifts in demeanor or through feats of strength or dirty talk or any number of other things. Rachel wasn’t the only one with superpowers here, and Annie’s always left her breathless.

Rachel grabbed the last coat off of the second rack, extremely distracted by the sight of her girlfriend setting the first one down against the wall. She barely registered another student coming in and collecting their blue Patagonia from her.

“Do you want me to help with the other one?” she asked lamely.

Annie smiled and nodded as she joined Rachel beside it. “Sure. Anything that gets us out of here faster.”

“You know, no one told me that you were gonna be this much trouble,” Rachel said, shaking her head incredulously.

“No one else knows exactly how much trouble I am, babe,” Annie said with a satisfied smirk, slowly strolling over to her girlfriend so that she could take her face between her hands and finally kiss her after what felt like an eternity of interruptions.

Rachel felt slightly disoriented when Annie pulled away, unable to shake the feeling that the room was spinning around her.

“Well, that makes me pretty special then, doesn’t it?”

Annie couldn’t help but grin. “Of course it does, Rach. Of course.”