[community] Personal Health and Wellness
Title: Personal Health and Wellness
Fandom: Community (Jeff-Britta friendship; PG-13)
Word Count: 4700
Summary: Jeff and Britta go shopping together and learn they're not so different at after all. The first few times it's an accident, though, totally.
Author's Notes: Britta and Jeff spells BFF. That is all.
He quite literally runs into Britta in the Cherry Creek Shopping Center's only Sephora, almost toppling over and sending his Hope in a Jar Oil Free moisturizer and Jack Black lip balm skidding across the tile floor. It is unexpected, startling, and stuns him speechless-and knocks him to the ground, but that's surprisingly less important.
Britta doesn't really know what to say either, when she picks herself out from the accidental tangle they got into on the floor. "Omigod, I'm so sorry, I didn't-uh."
"Yeah," Jeff says awkwardly, standing up and brushing the dust off his sweater. "Hi Britta."
Britta blinks. "I feel like I shouldn't be surprised," she says, "but I am. This your lip balm in… Vanilla and Lavender?"
Jeff glares at her while she tries to hold back a smirk. "Britta, what are you doing here?"
She holds up a tiny black box with NARS on the front in slim white lettering. "Out of Orgasm," she says. "Don't."
"Too easy," Jeff says. "It's beneath me."
"I'll bet."
"And you tell me not to crack a joke." Now he's the one who's smirking. "Look at you, Britta, buying makeup like a cute little girly girl."
"This cute little girly girl's gonna stomp you with my cute little girly heels in a minute."
"I'm shaking," Jeff says with a wolfish kind of grin.
"Whatever," Britta says, tossing her hair behind her. "I buy makeup sometimes, it's not a big deal. It's not like I'm doing it because I feel the need to conform to some impossible standard of beauty society imposes on young girls-"
"Then what are you doing it for?"
Britta scowls at him, because he's kind of being a jerk, but pushing Britta's buttons is an irresistible opportunity and he doesn't really mean it, anyway. "Because," she hedges, and then switches tactics and says, "and anyway, what are you doing skulking around a Sephora?"
"I'm not skulking," Jeff says.
"Tomato, potahto."
"That's not-" Jeff briefly shakes his head. "I'm out of Hope in a Jar," he says.
Britta's brow crinkles in confusion.
"It's a moisturizer," he adds.
"Uh huh," Britta says.
"Which you're supposed to use if you don't want to look like a handbag in your forties."
"And you're accusing me of vanity," Britta says with a casual smile.
"Okay, look, truce?" Jeff says. "We'll call this one a draw, so can we both go flounce off in our respective directions and never do this again?"
"Consider me flounced," Britta says, and gives him a big bright grin, and she indeed flounces off, and Jeff doesn't think this is the end of it, personally. It never works out like that.
--
"We've really got to stop meeting like this. People might talk."
The look on Britta's face, the bug eyes and the shocked O-shape of her mouth, is really too priceless for words. Unfortunately, it distills into a frown. "What are you doing here?"
"New running sneakers," he says simply, and holds up a matte black shoebox. "Yourself?"
"Not that it's any of your business, but I need a new pair of boots," Britta says.
"All that ball-busting must be hell on your heels."
"Hard-knock life," Britta says, but a smile sneaks onto her face. Jeff finds himself hard-pressed not to return it.
"So you're looking for boots…" Jeff picks up a random Steve Madden bootie, dangling it by the sharp black stiletto in front of her face, "in the genuine leather section?"
"Yeah?"
"You hate real leather," Jeff says. "Or did you finally change your position on that one?"
"They sell pleather sometimes," Britta says defensively. She crosses her arms. "I've gotten lucky before."
"Have you."
Britta glances quickly around and after a few hurried seconds, snaps up a truly hideous, mud-brown thing with a chunky heel, metal studs on the back, and a pointed toe straight from the eighties-or the Great Pyramids, by the looks of it. "Just did," she says triumphantly. "See? One hundred percent pure pleather."
Jeff stares at the shoe, half-disgusted but half-morbidly fascinated. "You'd wear that."
"Of course," Britta says, with a too-tight, plasticky smile.
"Seriously."
She holds the smile for a second longer before it cracks into a grimace. "Okay, maybe not."
"Really not your style anyway," Jeff says consolingly.
--
The third time they run into each other shopping is not charming at all. The third time is about as uncharming and slightly embarrassing as you can get, and in Jeff's experience you can get very, painfully far.
"This is kind of awkward," Britta says, grinning sheepishly, when they finally stumble and slow-walk and hesitantly step within conversation distance. "Didn't expect to see you here."
"Yeah, you too," Jeff says. He rubs a hand behind his neck. "I mean, this is really more Annie's kind of store than yours."
"I could say the same to you," Britta says. Point to Ms. Perry.
Britta scuffs her shoes and Jeff bites the inside of his cheek and neither of them say anything, until-
"So what brings you to Forever 21?" Word-for-word and entirely too creepy and Jeff actually feels his brain screech to a halt.
He hesitates, then holds up a pair of artfully-distressed jeans. "For the price they're really not that bad."
"Whatever happened to three hundred dollar jeans imported straight from Italy?"
"They're arriving in two weeks, I need something to hold me over."
"You need a new pair of jeans? To hold you over. You're kidding."
Jeff gives her his very best shit-eating grin.
"And you picked a Forever 21 because…?"
His grin wavers, and starts to crack from the force of holding it. Dammit. "Guilty pleasure," he forces out.
Britta nods like she totally understands. She hesitates, and then she says, "If you want, there'a a place selling True Religion downstairs, you could always check them out."
"Actually, I was thinking of trying out the place that sells Diesel," Jeff says, "it's like right next to-"
"Right next to the Abercrombie and Fitch, yeah."
"Yeah, but I can't stand the way that place smells, it's overpowering-"
"Oh God, me neither! It literally assaults your senses-"
"Exactly! It's so-"
They stop like a train colliding with a brick wall of realization.
"We shop at the same stores," Britta says.
"Yeah," Jeff adds, intelligently.
"Is that…" Britta's brow creases. "Is that creepy of us? We're like… secret twins?"
"Secret shopping twins," Jeff says. "Oh God."
Britta's mouth works a bit like a fish before she says, "That's… well. That's fine."
"Perfectly normal," Jeff agrees hastily. "We just have similar styles-"
"Similar styles, I was gonna say."
"Which isn't weird or anything-"
"No, no, totally not weird-"
They suffer through an awkward silence.
"You should definitely get the blue-and-white striped sweater," Jeff finally says, pointing to the long-sleeved V-neck Britta's forgotten in her hand. "It's, uh… it's nice."
"You think?" Britta scrunches her nose up and holds it up. It is really nice. "I was actually stuck between this and this kinda cute rose cardigan, that's not me-me but like, cute-me, I guess? But I wasn't sure if it would work on me, you know?"
"It wouldn't," Jeff says, shaking his head shortly. "You're too pale and you're blonde, rose would just wash you out. I'd go with the sweater if I were you."
Britta shrugs so smoothly and so casually Jeff's almost jealous for a moment, "Eh, whatever," she says, and bites her thumbnail for a moment. "You should definitely get those jeans," she says.
"Yeah?"
Britta nods firmly. "They're like, I'm cool, I'm hip, but I'm not a total hipster about it, you know what I mean? And they're not too casual that you can't dress them up with a suit jacket, but they're not super-dressy either-"
"So I can just wear them with whatever."
"Exactly," Britta says, and smiles, and Jeff finds himself smiling back like some sort of big dorky fashionable goon. He laughs awkwardly and Britta looks like she's holding back one of her own.
"I, uh," Jeff starts, "I kinda had a thing, at two…"
"Me too," Britta says. Her eyes bug. "Not two, I mean, I'm just-I gotta go too."
"Right," Jeff says. He grins. He's still not quite at the point where he can process the fact that he and his best friend have the exact same taste in fashion outlets, and how very weirdly cool (or very coolly weird) that could turn out to be. "So. See you tomorrow."
"Yeah," Britta says, while a little smile plays on her mouth. "See you."
Ten minutes later, when Jeff's done ringing up his jeans upstairs and Britta's finished paying for her sweater downstairs, he purposefully runs into her-or maybe she finds him, it happens simultaneously. "You're not gonna tell other people, are you?"
Britta's face breaks over with relief. "'Course not, are you?"
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"Great," Britta says happily, and with a quick wave she blends into the throng of mallrats rushing by, like she was never there in the first place.
Which, if you ask Jeff, she wasn't. And neither was he.
--
"I need a new wallet," Britta grumps.
It's pointless, kill-the-silence grumping that no one really takes notice of, not with a semi-major test in less than two hours. Britta flops her raggedy wallet onto the table and scowls at it.
"It's the Velveteen Rabbit," Jeff remarks. "How long have you had it?"
"Since I was fifteen," Britta says. "It's been with me ever since."
"Clearly." Jeff considers the poor dear, once-black but now faded to a drab, sullen gray, and with a giant, badly-repaired rip in the back. "There's a place twenty minutes from here that sells pretty decent wallets."
"That sounds-" Britta stops, her eyebrows rising smoothly, and on her face is a rare aha! moment. "That sounds interesting, Jeff," she says, very carefully. "Whereabouts?"
"Corner of Fifth and Water," Jeff says, also very carefully.
"Maybe I'll go there later today," she says. "After this test."
"Which we're all trying very hard to study for," Annie says, never glancing up from her book, "so if you wouldn't mind…?"
Britta leans back in her chair with the confident smile of a woman with a plan. It's a nice look on her, and Jeff's got nothing else to do today.
Not that either of them planned it or anything, oh no. Happy coincidences and all that.
--
"How about this one?"
Jeff wrinkles his nose. "Too John Travolta in Grease," he says. "Unless, you want to look like you're nostalgic for the fifties."
"Nah," Britta says. She shrugs off the pleather jacket she was trying on and considers, carefully, three other jackets Jeff has been so kind to hold for her. "Gimme the brown."
"So polite," Jeff says.
"Gimme the brown, dorkface."
"Thought I was pointy-face."
"You can be both," Britta says sweetly. She slips into the brown jacket and glances into the full-length mirror, turning this way and that, then frowns in disappointment. "Ew, it makes my arms look fat."
"Your arms," Jeff says flatly. "Yours. You have chopsticks for arms."
Britta glances at said spindly appendages, covered in poofy fake brown leather. "Not in this I don't."
Jeff gives her one of the grandest eye-rolls he's ever produced. "So try on another one."
Britta studies herself in the mirror, while the frown on her mouth sags and deepens. "Stupid fat puffy arms," she tells the mirror. "You're making me look bad."
"Britta, relax, you couldn't look bad in a leather jacket if you tried," Jeff says. "Puffy arms or no."
Jeff pulls out his Blackberry, then, and goes to update his Twitter, so he totally misses the small, self-confident smile that Britta finds goes entirely too well with any jacket she tries.
--
"How many suits do guys even need?"
Britta's perched on a polished wooden bench inside a store that practically smells like they use hundred dollar bills for toilet paper. Jeff tries valiantly to ignore her.
He has been trying for the past twenty minutes.
"I mean, you need a suit for a wedding and a funeral, I get that, and okay, maybe one for random fancy social functions, but I don't see why you can't just triple up and save like half the cost."
"Britta," Jeff says, in short tones. "I think you're disrupting our gentleman friend."
"No no, the lady's fine," the tailor says, flitting about, the light bouncing off his shiny head.
"Lady? What lady? I don't see a lady." Britta throws a pen at him. "We done?"
"Almost," the tailor says. He straightens up, grins crookedly. "Last question, we save it for last, usually our customers like to ease it right in at the end and, oh, um… which way do we dress, now, sir?"
"Left!" Britta calls out before he can answer, swinging her legs like a gleeful and evil little child, and the tailor gives Jeff one of those looks, and Jeff vows to smother Britta with a pillow, after he's done being so violently mortified.
He nods tightly, and the tailor's eyebrows almost fly off his face. Maybe he'll smother her with a rock instead.
The tailor leaves, and Britta pretends to check her nails. "What, you do dress left," she says.
"You didn't have to yell."
"Nope," Britta agrees.
But Jeff gets her back, oh yes he does, when alterations on his suit are complete and he tries it on later. Wool-linen blend, all crisp lines, a beautiful jet-black, and paired with a pressed white shirt, black shoes, and a black skinny tie, it fits him like he's made for it-and let's not deny the truth.
"Don't you ever get tired of staring at yourself?"
"Who could get tired of looking at this," he says; in the mirror's reflection, Britta rolls her eyes. "Hey, hey-this suits me. Get it?"
"I think I felt that in my spleen," Britta says. "Ow."
He turns around slowly, admiring the suit from every angle. "Well?"
Britta blinks at him just a second too long to be innocent and he knows he's got her; he corrects his posture and smoothly saunters up to her and offers Britta the crook of his elbow and his most rakish, mischievous grin. "Shaken or stirred? You, I mean, not a martini."
"You're so full of yourself, I don't know how you're not constipated." But she's trying not to laugh, her lips pressed together, her eyes all lit up.
She takes his arm so gracefully.
--
It should be disturbing how familiar one can eventually get with the inside of a shopping mall, up to and including discovering the hidden bathroom only VIP shoppers are invited to, but Jeff doesn't feel worried about it. Since it's not like they're planning their lives around shopping together, it'd be stupid to worry, and he has way worse to worry about.
If he worried, but that's another thing.
It's nice. It's nice to have a like-minded person out there with you, another pair of eyes and a sense of style that doesn't altogether suck.
It's nice to spend time doing quality fuck-all with your best friend, too, but he's mostly in it for the fashion benefits.
Really.
--
The day starts out so nicely, too. A barista at Starbucks draws a coffee heart in the foam of his non-fat chai latte, he hits all green lights on his way to Greendale, he finds twenty bucks in a bathroom stall, and he and Britta make casual arrangements to casually meet at a casual place in the mall, casually.
It would have been wonderful, but they walked into a shoe store.
"You're joking, right," he says flatly. "This is the third time this week we've been shoe shopping together."
"Yeah? And?"
Jeff stops her gently with a hand on her upper arm, as she's trying to wind her way through the narrow, crowded aisles littered with the carnage of a thousand shoppers before them. "I think you may have an addiction," he says lowly. "We're all very worried."
Britta scowls and wriggles her arm away.
"There's a wonderful rehab group on campus that's very welcoming to atheists as well as theists-"
"Not addicted, Jeff!" she calls over her shoulder, shrinking away from him into the horizon. He trails her through the sensible flats and the espadrilles and finds her browsing thigh-high boots and pointedly ignoring him.
"But don't you ever get bored?" he asks; Britta huffs but otherwise continues to refuse acknowledgement. "Your shoes have less variety than a box of Cheerios."
Jeff wonders if maybe he shouldn't have said that while she was running a finger lovingly over the heel of a stiletto boot; when she turns to face him he swears his blood chills. "Beg pardon?"
He senses he's walking into a hornet's nest here, yet he still gestures to first the stiletto, then the aisle they're in, then to Britta herself. "What is that."
"A boot."
"And how many pairs of boots do you already have?"
Britta scowls. "Uh, excuse you, you've got no right to judge," she says.
"No, but I do have the right to marvel at how many times a woman can buy the exact same kind of shoe without feeling redundant," Jeff says.
"They're not the same!" Britta says, and holds the shoe in question up. "This one has a buckle."
"The difference is so striking."
"I'm not obsessed," Britta says again, glowering. "And anyway, if we wanna talk obsessed, I could bring up your weird love of skinny ties. You wanna go there, cowboy?"
Jeff bristles. "What are you talking about, squirrel?"
"You have an obsession with hipster douche skinny ties!"
"I do not!"
She points at his chest. "Then what's that?"
"A skinny tie, Britta," Jeff says. "One tie doesn't prove an obsession-"
"I've never seen you wear a regular tie."
"That doesn't mean I don't have any."
"Then if you have regular ties why don't you wear them?"
"Why," Jeff finally shouts, and inadvertently grabs the attention of everyone in the store, "are we even arguing this? It's stupid!"
"You said I had an obsession with boots!" Britta shouts back. Her face is screwed up, well and truly pissed now. "And it's not just skinny ties, Jeff, oh no; it's everything."
Jeff was about to launch into a speech denouncing Britta's lame attempts to get back at him for bringing up an obvious truth she wasn't able to handle. But that stops him cold. "Beg pardon?"
"You heard me," Britta says, and there's a thread of wobbly determination in her voice that can't mean good news. "It's not just the skinny ties, or the expensive facial moisturizer, or the four thousand-dollar suits."
"Six thousand."
"It's the whole package." She sneers; genuinely, that's the worst part. "You know, maybe I do have an obsession with boots. And hey, that's fine. But you know what you have?"
Jeff stays silent.
"You have the overwhelming need to come off as such a cool ass that you'll obsess over every little detail just to make it work," she says, coldly. "Like everybody has to believe you're hipster jeans and a skinny tie and fake bedhead and a giant forehead, or they'll see the real, ugly you inside. And that guy? Sucks."
Britta crosses her arms and stares him down. Jeff gives it a moment. "Wow," he then says, faking sincerity. "I didn't know you could get this defensive over your shoes."
Imagine a window breaking, in a skyscraper penthouse, above a busy urban jungle. Imagine a man, about six-foot-four in height, and with devilishly good looks, being hurled out that window to the unforgiving concrete below. Imagine the following scene it would create: blood, guts, gore, headline news. The works.
None of that happens. Britta leaves him standing in the middle of a shoe emporium, straight-up turns and walks out of the store like he doesn't even exist, and never did to begin with. None of that happens, but it would've hurt a lot less.
He would’ve at least died on impact.
--
After Britta leaves, Jeff is shamed out of the boutique with nothing to show for it but a troubled conscience and one very pissed-off and currently AWOL bestie.
If she’s still even that. It’s a long shot.
It’s a very strange, alienating feeling, walking around in a mall alone, and it has something to do with how his day has been kicked off its axis and now everything tilts the wrong way. Jeff tries to carry on as usual but something doesn’t sit right with him now.
Something that has nothing to do with what Britta said. Or the cold sharp look she shot him before she turned and left.
Mildly annoyed-because Jeff is only frustrated on special occasions, or when Chang is nearby-Jeff stalks over to an Orange Julius, sits down forcefully, and glares at the offending metal mesh table.
"Hey, asshole, my bag was here fir-oh."
Every muscle in his body locks and he wants nothing greater than to crawl underground and disappear forever, like a mole person with bad marks in friendship.
"I'll just leave," Britta mutters, snapping her bag up. The burgundy suede one Jeff helped her decide on three weeks ago, he thinks, and it leaves a vague aftertaste like bitter medicine on the back of his throat.
Without looking up, Jeff gestures loosely to the table, an aimless move. Britta pauses, her hand still clutched around her bag's strap.
"We should probably talk," Jeff says in a low, sort of hollow voice.
"No shit," Britta says. "But you know, I just don't feel like-"
"And I should probably apologize."
That catches her. After a moment, all she says is, "All right," and she stays standing.
"All right," Jeff repeats dully, and blows out a long, long breath. His hands smooth out over the table, tense and then relax. "I shouldn't have made fun of your… penchant for boots."
Britta looks down and her mouth twists at the edge, then she sets her bag down quite deliberately on the table and sits. "It's a start," she allows.
Jeff nods; he didn't figure it'd be so quick. "And I had no right to insult you after you called me out like that. So I apologize."
"No, you totally had the right," Britta mutters, sliding forward and then pressing her forehead against the table. "I was being a dick."
"No you weren't," Jeff says. He pats her arm gently; Britta grunts and Jeff pulls away.
"I was." Her head picks up; there's a light pink mesh mark checking her entire forehead, and in a better time and place Jeff would've broken out in laughter. "I looked like a total ass back in there."
"You were provoked," Jeff says.
"You don't have to defend me."
Jeff shrugs. "Kinda in my nature."
This doesn't help at all.
"And…" He sighs, but Britta looks so exasperated, guilty eyes and perpetual self-deprecating frown… "You did bring up a few… good… points."
She blinks. "I did?"
"Well… yeah, sorta," Jeff says.
"Like what?"
He twists his mouth, thinking. "I do really like skinny ties," he says.
"Oh, that's helpful."
"And you're right, you're totally right, I do have to be this totally cool guy. You got me."
Britta picks her head up from where it's collapsed onto her forearms. Then she glares, her eyes like slits. "Are you mocking me?"
"I'm not mocking you," Jeff says.
"You're mocking me. Great." Her head recollapses with a soft flumping sound.
Can you blame him? "This is kind of ridiculous," he says agreeably, and Britta kinda mumbles something, and Jeff glances at the people standing in line and says, "Can you believe they still have these things around?"
"Yeah, amazing." Britta turns her head, now resting her cheek where her forehead once was. "Ra ra nostalgia."
They watch the people order and shuffle away, in silence.
"Hipster jeans, huh," Jeff says in amusement.
Britta snorts. "I didn't say anything untrue," she says. "I just-"
"Said it loudly, and in public?"
She's sheepish. "More or less."
Jeff cracks a grin. The tension eases a little, ebbs out of their companionable bubble. He fiddles with a straw wrapper someone wove between the mesh squares. "Did you mean it?"
"Mean what."
"The hipster thing. Something you've always wanted to say or was it just the heat of the moment?"
Half-shrug of one shoulder. "Little of both?"
"Ah."
She nods, and sets her mouth in a line. "It's just… I don't know. I feel like you're always trying to be so cool and perfect, and it gets a little weird sometimes. Like you have to pretend to be awesome even around your friends. You don't have to."
Jeff doesn't say anything.
"Anyway, I get it," Britta says, tossing her hair behind her. "It just kinda sucks that you can't trust us."
"I trust you guys."
Her eyebrows rise.
"It's other people I don't trust," he then explains. "If I didn't act the way I do, believe me, I'd have only half as much respect as I do now."
"And that bugs you?"
Jeff opens his mouth, retort on his tongue, but his throat sticks and he can't quite work it out in time.
"You don't have to care about what others think of you," Britta says.
There are many, many things Jeff can respond with. He can call Britta out for hypocrisy, or lying, or deny the whole accusation, make a big scene until the original message is lost forever and ever, amen.
Nothing in him truly wants to. Because he thinks deep down, somewhere, there's a point to that.
He ends up looking her in the eyes, then away somewhere. "You care about it too, though," he mutters. "The jackets and the boots and the whole pretentious attitude. If I have to suck, you have to suck just as hard."
He kind of expects her to snap back at him with something for that, but what he gets when he finally dares a glance is Britta, is much more gentle and understanding than he even thinks he deserves. "We suck as people," she says.
"We're awful human beings," Jeff agrees. "Greendale should be so proud."
"Yeah," Britta says, not unkindly, "but hey." And she stands up and extends a hand to Jeff, and she's smiling-not mischievously, not pitying. Warm and reassuring and on the strange, awesome side of hopeful. "Misery loves company, right?"
"Definitely," Jeff says, and grins back, and he takes her hand and lets her pull him up.
--
In a nutshell they're crazy and probably very insecure. Jeff knows he acts like an arrogant ass so people give him a wide, respectful berth, and he'd bet Monopoly money Britta hides herself in her boots and her leather jackets and her self-important attitude.
At least they're level. And they get that about each other. They strike a pretty nice balance, when they really want to.
It's kind of nice.
"What are you thinking about?" Britta asks idly, trying not to giggle-her feet are ticklish, and Jeff remembers she could never hold still when she shanghaied him into painting her toenails for her. She still can't, even when the pedicure's done by a professional. It makes him smile.
"How totally messed up we are inside," Jeff says dryly. Speaking of dry, his manicure could still use a few more minutes. But it's not like they're in a rush. The salon's more or less empty, the mani-and-pedicurists are sweet old ladies with blue hair and loads of dirty laundry, and Carly Simon is on the radio. He finds himself lip-syncing the words, absentminded, not really concentrating.
They don't have to talk about it to understand, it simply happens. Empathy and all that jazz.
"Sure you were, Winger."
"Bite me, Perry."
That's just how they like it.
--
--
Fandom: Community (Jeff-Britta friendship; PG-13)
Word Count: 4700
Summary: Jeff and Britta go shopping together and learn they're not so different at after all. The first few times it's an accident, though, totally.
Author's Notes: Britta and Jeff spells BFF. That is all.
He quite literally runs into Britta in the Cherry Creek Shopping Center's only Sephora, almost toppling over and sending his Hope in a Jar Oil Free moisturizer and Jack Black lip balm skidding across the tile floor. It is unexpected, startling, and stuns him speechless-and knocks him to the ground, but that's surprisingly less important.
Britta doesn't really know what to say either, when she picks herself out from the accidental tangle they got into on the floor. "Omigod, I'm so sorry, I didn't-uh."
"Yeah," Jeff says awkwardly, standing up and brushing the dust off his sweater. "Hi Britta."
Britta blinks. "I feel like I shouldn't be surprised," she says, "but I am. This your lip balm in… Vanilla and Lavender?"
Jeff glares at her while she tries to hold back a smirk. "Britta, what are you doing here?"
She holds up a tiny black box with NARS on the front in slim white lettering. "Out of Orgasm," she says. "Don't."
"Too easy," Jeff says. "It's beneath me."
"I'll bet."
"And you tell me not to crack a joke." Now he's the one who's smirking. "Look at you, Britta, buying makeup like a cute little girly girl."
"This cute little girly girl's gonna stomp you with my cute little girly heels in a minute."
"I'm shaking," Jeff says with a wolfish kind of grin.
"Whatever," Britta says, tossing her hair behind her. "I buy makeup sometimes, it's not a big deal. It's not like I'm doing it because I feel the need to conform to some impossible standard of beauty society imposes on young girls-"
"Then what are you doing it for?"
Britta scowls at him, because he's kind of being a jerk, but pushing Britta's buttons is an irresistible opportunity and he doesn't really mean it, anyway. "Because," she hedges, and then switches tactics and says, "and anyway, what are you doing skulking around a Sephora?"
"I'm not skulking," Jeff says.
"Tomato, potahto."
"That's not-" Jeff briefly shakes his head. "I'm out of Hope in a Jar," he says.
Britta's brow crinkles in confusion.
"It's a moisturizer," he adds.
"Uh huh," Britta says.
"Which you're supposed to use if you don't want to look like a handbag in your forties."
"And you're accusing me of vanity," Britta says with a casual smile.
"Okay, look, truce?" Jeff says. "We'll call this one a draw, so can we both go flounce off in our respective directions and never do this again?"
"Consider me flounced," Britta says, and gives him a big bright grin, and she indeed flounces off, and Jeff doesn't think this is the end of it, personally. It never works out like that.
--
"We've really got to stop meeting like this. People might talk."
The look on Britta's face, the bug eyes and the shocked O-shape of her mouth, is really too priceless for words. Unfortunately, it distills into a frown. "What are you doing here?"
"New running sneakers," he says simply, and holds up a matte black shoebox. "Yourself?"
"Not that it's any of your business, but I need a new pair of boots," Britta says.
"All that ball-busting must be hell on your heels."
"Hard-knock life," Britta says, but a smile sneaks onto her face. Jeff finds himself hard-pressed not to return it.
"So you're looking for boots…" Jeff picks up a random Steve Madden bootie, dangling it by the sharp black stiletto in front of her face, "in the genuine leather section?"
"Yeah?"
"You hate real leather," Jeff says. "Or did you finally change your position on that one?"
"They sell pleather sometimes," Britta says defensively. She crosses her arms. "I've gotten lucky before."
"Have you."
Britta glances quickly around and after a few hurried seconds, snaps up a truly hideous, mud-brown thing with a chunky heel, metal studs on the back, and a pointed toe straight from the eighties-or the Great Pyramids, by the looks of it. "Just did," she says triumphantly. "See? One hundred percent pure pleather."
Jeff stares at the shoe, half-disgusted but half-morbidly fascinated. "You'd wear that."
"Of course," Britta says, with a too-tight, plasticky smile.
"Seriously."
She holds the smile for a second longer before it cracks into a grimace. "Okay, maybe not."
"Really not your style anyway," Jeff says consolingly.
--
The third time they run into each other shopping is not charming at all. The third time is about as uncharming and slightly embarrassing as you can get, and in Jeff's experience you can get very, painfully far.
"This is kind of awkward," Britta says, grinning sheepishly, when they finally stumble and slow-walk and hesitantly step within conversation distance. "Didn't expect to see you here."
"Yeah, you too," Jeff says. He rubs a hand behind his neck. "I mean, this is really more Annie's kind of store than yours."
"I could say the same to you," Britta says. Point to Ms. Perry.
Britta scuffs her shoes and Jeff bites the inside of his cheek and neither of them say anything, until-
"So what brings you to Forever 21?" Word-for-word and entirely too creepy and Jeff actually feels his brain screech to a halt.
He hesitates, then holds up a pair of artfully-distressed jeans. "For the price they're really not that bad."
"Whatever happened to three hundred dollar jeans imported straight from Italy?"
"They're arriving in two weeks, I need something to hold me over."
"You need a new pair of jeans? To hold you over. You're kidding."
Jeff gives her his very best shit-eating grin.
"And you picked a Forever 21 because…?"
His grin wavers, and starts to crack from the force of holding it. Dammit. "Guilty pleasure," he forces out.
Britta nods like she totally understands. She hesitates, and then she says, "If you want, there'a a place selling True Religion downstairs, you could always check them out."
"Actually, I was thinking of trying out the place that sells Diesel," Jeff says, "it's like right next to-"
"Right next to the Abercrombie and Fitch, yeah."
"Yeah, but I can't stand the way that place smells, it's overpowering-"
"Oh God, me neither! It literally assaults your senses-"
"Exactly! It's so-"
They stop like a train colliding with a brick wall of realization.
"We shop at the same stores," Britta says.
"Yeah," Jeff adds, intelligently.
"Is that…" Britta's brow creases. "Is that creepy of us? We're like… secret twins?"
"Secret shopping twins," Jeff says. "Oh God."
Britta's mouth works a bit like a fish before she says, "That's… well. That's fine."
"Perfectly normal," Jeff agrees hastily. "We just have similar styles-"
"Similar styles, I was gonna say."
"Which isn't weird or anything-"
"No, no, totally not weird-"
They suffer through an awkward silence.
"You should definitely get the blue-and-white striped sweater," Jeff finally says, pointing to the long-sleeved V-neck Britta's forgotten in her hand. "It's, uh… it's nice."
"You think?" Britta scrunches her nose up and holds it up. It is really nice. "I was actually stuck between this and this kinda cute rose cardigan, that's not me-me but like, cute-me, I guess? But I wasn't sure if it would work on me, you know?"
"It wouldn't," Jeff says, shaking his head shortly. "You're too pale and you're blonde, rose would just wash you out. I'd go with the sweater if I were you."
Britta shrugs so smoothly and so casually Jeff's almost jealous for a moment, "Eh, whatever," she says, and bites her thumbnail for a moment. "You should definitely get those jeans," she says.
"Yeah?"
Britta nods firmly. "They're like, I'm cool, I'm hip, but I'm not a total hipster about it, you know what I mean? And they're not too casual that you can't dress them up with a suit jacket, but they're not super-dressy either-"
"So I can just wear them with whatever."
"Exactly," Britta says, and smiles, and Jeff finds himself smiling back like some sort of big dorky fashionable goon. He laughs awkwardly and Britta looks like she's holding back one of her own.
"I, uh," Jeff starts, "I kinda had a thing, at two…"
"Me too," Britta says. Her eyes bug. "Not two, I mean, I'm just-I gotta go too."
"Right," Jeff says. He grins. He's still not quite at the point where he can process the fact that he and his best friend have the exact same taste in fashion outlets, and how very weirdly cool (or very coolly weird) that could turn out to be. "So. See you tomorrow."
"Yeah," Britta says, while a little smile plays on her mouth. "See you."
Ten minutes later, when Jeff's done ringing up his jeans upstairs and Britta's finished paying for her sweater downstairs, he purposefully runs into her-or maybe she finds him, it happens simultaneously. "You're not gonna tell other people, are you?"
Britta's face breaks over with relief. "'Course not, are you?"
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"Great," Britta says happily, and with a quick wave she blends into the throng of mallrats rushing by, like she was never there in the first place.
Which, if you ask Jeff, she wasn't. And neither was he.
--
"I need a new wallet," Britta grumps.
It's pointless, kill-the-silence grumping that no one really takes notice of, not with a semi-major test in less than two hours. Britta flops her raggedy wallet onto the table and scowls at it.
"It's the Velveteen Rabbit," Jeff remarks. "How long have you had it?"
"Since I was fifteen," Britta says. "It's been with me ever since."
"Clearly." Jeff considers the poor dear, once-black but now faded to a drab, sullen gray, and with a giant, badly-repaired rip in the back. "There's a place twenty minutes from here that sells pretty decent wallets."
"That sounds-" Britta stops, her eyebrows rising smoothly, and on her face is a rare aha! moment. "That sounds interesting, Jeff," she says, very carefully. "Whereabouts?"
"Corner of Fifth and Water," Jeff says, also very carefully.
"Maybe I'll go there later today," she says. "After this test."
"Which we're all trying very hard to study for," Annie says, never glancing up from her book, "so if you wouldn't mind…?"
Britta leans back in her chair with the confident smile of a woman with a plan. It's a nice look on her, and Jeff's got nothing else to do today.
Not that either of them planned it or anything, oh no. Happy coincidences and all that.
--
"How about this one?"
Jeff wrinkles his nose. "Too John Travolta in Grease," he says. "Unless, you want to look like you're nostalgic for the fifties."
"Nah," Britta says. She shrugs off the pleather jacket she was trying on and considers, carefully, three other jackets Jeff has been so kind to hold for her. "Gimme the brown."
"So polite," Jeff says.
"Gimme the brown, dorkface."
"Thought I was pointy-face."
"You can be both," Britta says sweetly. She slips into the brown jacket and glances into the full-length mirror, turning this way and that, then frowns in disappointment. "Ew, it makes my arms look fat."
"Your arms," Jeff says flatly. "Yours. You have chopsticks for arms."
Britta glances at said spindly appendages, covered in poofy fake brown leather. "Not in this I don't."
Jeff gives her one of the grandest eye-rolls he's ever produced. "So try on another one."
Britta studies herself in the mirror, while the frown on her mouth sags and deepens. "Stupid fat puffy arms," she tells the mirror. "You're making me look bad."
"Britta, relax, you couldn't look bad in a leather jacket if you tried," Jeff says. "Puffy arms or no."
Jeff pulls out his Blackberry, then, and goes to update his Twitter, so he totally misses the small, self-confident smile that Britta finds goes entirely too well with any jacket she tries.
--
"How many suits do guys even need?"
Britta's perched on a polished wooden bench inside a store that practically smells like they use hundred dollar bills for toilet paper. Jeff tries valiantly to ignore her.
He has been trying for the past twenty minutes.
"I mean, you need a suit for a wedding and a funeral, I get that, and okay, maybe one for random fancy social functions, but I don't see why you can't just triple up and save like half the cost."
"Britta," Jeff says, in short tones. "I think you're disrupting our gentleman friend."
"No no, the lady's fine," the tailor says, flitting about, the light bouncing off his shiny head.
"Lady? What lady? I don't see a lady." Britta throws a pen at him. "We done?"
"Almost," the tailor says. He straightens up, grins crookedly. "Last question, we save it for last, usually our customers like to ease it right in at the end and, oh, um… which way do we dress, now, sir?"
"Left!" Britta calls out before he can answer, swinging her legs like a gleeful and evil little child, and the tailor gives Jeff one of those looks, and Jeff vows to smother Britta with a pillow, after he's done being so violently mortified.
He nods tightly, and the tailor's eyebrows almost fly off his face. Maybe he'll smother her with a rock instead.
The tailor leaves, and Britta pretends to check her nails. "What, you do dress left," she says.
"You didn't have to yell."
"Nope," Britta agrees.
But Jeff gets her back, oh yes he does, when alterations on his suit are complete and he tries it on later. Wool-linen blend, all crisp lines, a beautiful jet-black, and paired with a pressed white shirt, black shoes, and a black skinny tie, it fits him like he's made for it-and let's not deny the truth.
"Don't you ever get tired of staring at yourself?"
"Who could get tired of looking at this," he says; in the mirror's reflection, Britta rolls her eyes. "Hey, hey-this suits me. Get it?"
"I think I felt that in my spleen," Britta says. "Ow."
He turns around slowly, admiring the suit from every angle. "Well?"
Britta blinks at him just a second too long to be innocent and he knows he's got her; he corrects his posture and smoothly saunters up to her and offers Britta the crook of his elbow and his most rakish, mischievous grin. "Shaken or stirred? You, I mean, not a martini."
"You're so full of yourself, I don't know how you're not constipated." But she's trying not to laugh, her lips pressed together, her eyes all lit up.
She takes his arm so gracefully.
--
It should be disturbing how familiar one can eventually get with the inside of a shopping mall, up to and including discovering the hidden bathroom only VIP shoppers are invited to, but Jeff doesn't feel worried about it. Since it's not like they're planning their lives around shopping together, it'd be stupid to worry, and he has way worse to worry about.
If he worried, but that's another thing.
It's nice. It's nice to have a like-minded person out there with you, another pair of eyes and a sense of style that doesn't altogether suck.
It's nice to spend time doing quality fuck-all with your best friend, too, but he's mostly in it for the fashion benefits.
Really.
--
The day starts out so nicely, too. A barista at Starbucks draws a coffee heart in the foam of his non-fat chai latte, he hits all green lights on his way to Greendale, he finds twenty bucks in a bathroom stall, and he and Britta make casual arrangements to casually meet at a casual place in the mall, casually.
It would have been wonderful, but they walked into a shoe store.
"You're joking, right," he says flatly. "This is the third time this week we've been shoe shopping together."
"Yeah? And?"
Jeff stops her gently with a hand on her upper arm, as she's trying to wind her way through the narrow, crowded aisles littered with the carnage of a thousand shoppers before them. "I think you may have an addiction," he says lowly. "We're all very worried."
Britta scowls and wriggles her arm away.
"There's a wonderful rehab group on campus that's very welcoming to atheists as well as theists-"
"Not addicted, Jeff!" she calls over her shoulder, shrinking away from him into the horizon. He trails her through the sensible flats and the espadrilles and finds her browsing thigh-high boots and pointedly ignoring him.
"But don't you ever get bored?" he asks; Britta huffs but otherwise continues to refuse acknowledgement. "Your shoes have less variety than a box of Cheerios."
Jeff wonders if maybe he shouldn't have said that while she was running a finger lovingly over the heel of a stiletto boot; when she turns to face him he swears his blood chills. "Beg pardon?"
He senses he's walking into a hornet's nest here, yet he still gestures to first the stiletto, then the aisle they're in, then to Britta herself. "What is that."
"A boot."
"And how many pairs of boots do you already have?"
Britta scowls. "Uh, excuse you, you've got no right to judge," she says.
"No, but I do have the right to marvel at how many times a woman can buy the exact same kind of shoe without feeling redundant," Jeff says.
"They're not the same!" Britta says, and holds the shoe in question up. "This one has a buckle."
"The difference is so striking."
"I'm not obsessed," Britta says again, glowering. "And anyway, if we wanna talk obsessed, I could bring up your weird love of skinny ties. You wanna go there, cowboy?"
Jeff bristles. "What are you talking about, squirrel?"
"You have an obsession with hipster douche skinny ties!"
"I do not!"
She points at his chest. "Then what's that?"
"A skinny tie, Britta," Jeff says. "One tie doesn't prove an obsession-"
"I've never seen you wear a regular tie."
"That doesn't mean I don't have any."
"Then if you have regular ties why don't you wear them?"
"Why," Jeff finally shouts, and inadvertently grabs the attention of everyone in the store, "are we even arguing this? It's stupid!"
"You said I had an obsession with boots!" Britta shouts back. Her face is screwed up, well and truly pissed now. "And it's not just skinny ties, Jeff, oh no; it's everything."
Jeff was about to launch into a speech denouncing Britta's lame attempts to get back at him for bringing up an obvious truth she wasn't able to handle. But that stops him cold. "Beg pardon?"
"You heard me," Britta says, and there's a thread of wobbly determination in her voice that can't mean good news. "It's not just the skinny ties, or the expensive facial moisturizer, or the four thousand-dollar suits."
"Six thousand."
"It's the whole package." She sneers; genuinely, that's the worst part. "You know, maybe I do have an obsession with boots. And hey, that's fine. But you know what you have?"
Jeff stays silent.
"You have the overwhelming need to come off as such a cool ass that you'll obsess over every little detail just to make it work," she says, coldly. "Like everybody has to believe you're hipster jeans and a skinny tie and fake bedhead and a giant forehead, or they'll see the real, ugly you inside. And that guy? Sucks."
Britta crosses her arms and stares him down. Jeff gives it a moment. "Wow," he then says, faking sincerity. "I didn't know you could get this defensive over your shoes."
Imagine a window breaking, in a skyscraper penthouse, above a busy urban jungle. Imagine a man, about six-foot-four in height, and with devilishly good looks, being hurled out that window to the unforgiving concrete below. Imagine the following scene it would create: blood, guts, gore, headline news. The works.
None of that happens. Britta leaves him standing in the middle of a shoe emporium, straight-up turns and walks out of the store like he doesn't even exist, and never did to begin with. None of that happens, but it would've hurt a lot less.
He would’ve at least died on impact.
--
After Britta leaves, Jeff is shamed out of the boutique with nothing to show for it but a troubled conscience and one very pissed-off and currently AWOL bestie.
If she’s still even that. It’s a long shot.
It’s a very strange, alienating feeling, walking around in a mall alone, and it has something to do with how his day has been kicked off its axis and now everything tilts the wrong way. Jeff tries to carry on as usual but something doesn’t sit right with him now.
Something that has nothing to do with what Britta said. Or the cold sharp look she shot him before she turned and left.
Mildly annoyed-because Jeff is only frustrated on special occasions, or when Chang is nearby-Jeff stalks over to an Orange Julius, sits down forcefully, and glares at the offending metal mesh table.
"Hey, asshole, my bag was here fir-oh."
Every muscle in his body locks and he wants nothing greater than to crawl underground and disappear forever, like a mole person with bad marks in friendship.
"I'll just leave," Britta mutters, snapping her bag up. The burgundy suede one Jeff helped her decide on three weeks ago, he thinks, and it leaves a vague aftertaste like bitter medicine on the back of his throat.
Without looking up, Jeff gestures loosely to the table, an aimless move. Britta pauses, her hand still clutched around her bag's strap.
"We should probably talk," Jeff says in a low, sort of hollow voice.
"No shit," Britta says. "But you know, I just don't feel like-"
"And I should probably apologize."
That catches her. After a moment, all she says is, "All right," and she stays standing.
"All right," Jeff repeats dully, and blows out a long, long breath. His hands smooth out over the table, tense and then relax. "I shouldn't have made fun of your… penchant for boots."
Britta looks down and her mouth twists at the edge, then she sets her bag down quite deliberately on the table and sits. "It's a start," she allows.
Jeff nods; he didn't figure it'd be so quick. "And I had no right to insult you after you called me out like that. So I apologize."
"No, you totally had the right," Britta mutters, sliding forward and then pressing her forehead against the table. "I was being a dick."
"No you weren't," Jeff says. He pats her arm gently; Britta grunts and Jeff pulls away.
"I was." Her head picks up; there's a light pink mesh mark checking her entire forehead, and in a better time and place Jeff would've broken out in laughter. "I looked like a total ass back in there."
"You were provoked," Jeff says.
"You don't have to defend me."
Jeff shrugs. "Kinda in my nature."
This doesn't help at all.
"And…" He sighs, but Britta looks so exasperated, guilty eyes and perpetual self-deprecating frown… "You did bring up a few… good… points."
She blinks. "I did?"
"Well… yeah, sorta," Jeff says.
"Like what?"
He twists his mouth, thinking. "I do really like skinny ties," he says.
"Oh, that's helpful."
"And you're right, you're totally right, I do have to be this totally cool guy. You got me."
Britta picks her head up from where it's collapsed onto her forearms. Then she glares, her eyes like slits. "Are you mocking me?"
"I'm not mocking you," Jeff says.
"You're mocking me. Great." Her head recollapses with a soft flumping sound.
Can you blame him? "This is kind of ridiculous," he says agreeably, and Britta kinda mumbles something, and Jeff glances at the people standing in line and says, "Can you believe they still have these things around?"
"Yeah, amazing." Britta turns her head, now resting her cheek where her forehead once was. "Ra ra nostalgia."
They watch the people order and shuffle away, in silence.
"Hipster jeans, huh," Jeff says in amusement.
Britta snorts. "I didn't say anything untrue," she says. "I just-"
"Said it loudly, and in public?"
She's sheepish. "More or less."
Jeff cracks a grin. The tension eases a little, ebbs out of their companionable bubble. He fiddles with a straw wrapper someone wove between the mesh squares. "Did you mean it?"
"Mean what."
"The hipster thing. Something you've always wanted to say or was it just the heat of the moment?"
Half-shrug of one shoulder. "Little of both?"
"Ah."
She nods, and sets her mouth in a line. "It's just… I don't know. I feel like you're always trying to be so cool and perfect, and it gets a little weird sometimes. Like you have to pretend to be awesome even around your friends. You don't have to."
Jeff doesn't say anything.
"Anyway, I get it," Britta says, tossing her hair behind her. "It just kinda sucks that you can't trust us."
"I trust you guys."
Her eyebrows rise.
"It's other people I don't trust," he then explains. "If I didn't act the way I do, believe me, I'd have only half as much respect as I do now."
"And that bugs you?"
Jeff opens his mouth, retort on his tongue, but his throat sticks and he can't quite work it out in time.
"You don't have to care about what others think of you," Britta says.
There are many, many things Jeff can respond with. He can call Britta out for hypocrisy, or lying, or deny the whole accusation, make a big scene until the original message is lost forever and ever, amen.
Nothing in him truly wants to. Because he thinks deep down, somewhere, there's a point to that.
He ends up looking her in the eyes, then away somewhere. "You care about it too, though," he mutters. "The jackets and the boots and the whole pretentious attitude. If I have to suck, you have to suck just as hard."
He kind of expects her to snap back at him with something for that, but what he gets when he finally dares a glance is Britta, is much more gentle and understanding than he even thinks he deserves. "We suck as people," she says.
"We're awful human beings," Jeff agrees. "Greendale should be so proud."
"Yeah," Britta says, not unkindly, "but hey." And she stands up and extends a hand to Jeff, and she's smiling-not mischievously, not pitying. Warm and reassuring and on the strange, awesome side of hopeful. "Misery loves company, right?"
"Definitely," Jeff says, and grins back, and he takes her hand and lets her pull him up.
--
In a nutshell they're crazy and probably very insecure. Jeff knows he acts like an arrogant ass so people give him a wide, respectful berth, and he'd bet Monopoly money Britta hides herself in her boots and her leather jackets and her self-important attitude.
At least they're level. And they get that about each other. They strike a pretty nice balance, when they really want to.
It's kind of nice.
"What are you thinking about?" Britta asks idly, trying not to giggle-her feet are ticklish, and Jeff remembers she could never hold still when she shanghaied him into painting her toenails for her. She still can't, even when the pedicure's done by a professional. It makes him smile.
"How totally messed up we are inside," Jeff says dryly. Speaking of dry, his manicure could still use a few more minutes. But it's not like they're in a rush. The salon's more or less empty, the mani-and-pedicurists are sweet old ladies with blue hair and loads of dirty laundry, and Carly Simon is on the radio. He finds himself lip-syncing the words, absentminded, not really concentrating.
They don't have to talk about it to understand, it simply happens. Empathy and all that jazz.
"Sure you were, Winger."
"Bite me, Perry."
That's just how they like it.
--
--