Short Community Fics, Part 4b

[prologuize]

All originally written anonymously for comm-ficathon.

Immobile Rocks
Prompt: Jeff/Britta, maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you

It's after Jeff moves to Chicago that it happens. He gets a call from his mother, who got a call from his brother, who got a call from the hospital. The edges of Jeff's vision go blurry, just a little, and it takes a good five minutes trying to find a flight to Denver that he realizes he's looking at flights to Dubai.

In the cab on the way to the airport he thumbs through his contacts, circling around three times before he finally stops on Britta's name. He calls her, but it goes to voicemail. She texts him back a minute later: in a mtg cant talk. whats up?

Please call ASAP. He can't tell her over text message; it seems too impersonal, although he's not sure if his voice is going to crack when he says the words.

"Are you okay?" she asks when he answers the phone and she's speaking quietly--it's probably half and half, half because she's at work and half because she's scared of whatever news he has for her.

"My dad died."

There's silence and then: "Fuck. What do you need?"

"You."

She's waiting for him at baggage claim; he checked a garment bag because the woman behind the counter asked if he wanted to and he nodded dumbly, not grasping what she was saying until she reached out to take it from him. She stares up at him with sad eyes, like she wants to reach out for him but she's not sure if she should.

"Can you take me to your place?" he asks in the car, the only words he's spoken since they exchanged hellos.

"You don't want to go to your mom's? Your brother's?"

"Not really. Not yet."

"Okay."

When they get inside she fills him a glass of water and when she hands it to him he places it on the counter without taking a sip. "I need--"

She frowns and nods before standing on her tip-toes and pressing her mouth to his. He kisses her almost desperately, tugging at her hair, and he pulls her down to the kitchen floor. He tries to unbutton her shirt but his hands are shaking too badly.

"Shhh," she soothes and undresses him slowly before taking off her own clothes. She guides him into her and works her hips against his, kisses him much gentler, much softer. He's always surprised by this, by how soft she is, because once upon a time he thought she was as hard and as tough as granite, as marble, as diamonds.

She brushes his hair off his forehead afterward and smiles with tears in her eyes. "Missed you," she whispers. "It'll all be okay."

"Do you promise?" he asks like a child.

"No," she says, "but I'll try."

Relapse
Prompt: Jeff/Britta, detox just to retox

Britta doesn't ask why Jeff had a flask full of gin in his car, just slides her glass of Diet Coke forward and watches as he tips in a generous amount. Annie eyes them warily for a second, but Jeff raises his eyebrow and smirks, and she passes him her orange juice. ("Orange juice," Troy had quipped when she ordered, "funny because we're covered in orange paint.") Britta takes a gulp; it tastes more like gin than soda.

She feels jittery with sleep deprivation and carb overload--two and a half orders of all-you-can-eat pancakes will do that to you. Shirley went home hours ago, so it's just the five of them, squished into a booth in a dark corner of Denny's, drawing attention from diners and waitresses and busboys alike. Britta can feel her hair falling out of one of its pigtails. Annie's hair is still plastered to her head in a way that looks gross and sticky. Only Jeff looks like he just stepped out of a western--or, not a real western, but maybe a pop music video with a western motif--three days from shower and sleep but with only a single green paint stain to betray him.

Troy and Abed are recounting, for the twelfth time by Britta's estimate, their successful siege of the library. It gets more and more dramatic each time, and Annie pipes in every once in a while to add to their story. Her eyes grow droopier and droopier from each sip of juice. Britta isn't sure how any of them are still awake.

"--and there were, what, fifty storm troopers?" Troy turns to Abed who nods.

"At least."

Troy continues but Britta spaces out a little bit, pushing a chunk of now-cold pancake through a puddle of syrup. Somehow, she got stuck sitting between Jeff and Abed. Defying all odds, Jeff still smells like cologne--expensive, douchey, took two washes to get out of her sheets--with only the tiniest hint of sweat. Their thighs are touching, hip to hip, and Britta tries very hard to concentrate on the pattern she's making in the syrup instead of how she knows his bare thighs feel beneath her hands. She shifts in her seat.

With a clunk and a yelp, Annie falls asleep at the table, her chin propped up on her hand. Her elbow slips off the table and she wakes with a start. It's adorable, Britta thinks bitterly.

"Okay," Jeff says, "I think it's time to go home." He looks around for their waitress, who is nowhere to be found. "I'll go get the check." As Abed and Britta slide out of the booth to let him free, his fingers brush purposefully against Britta's side. She gives him a look, but he's already pushing past them.

Abed motions for Britta to sit back down, but she turns to Jeff's retreating form. "I have to pee," she says. "Be right back."

She passes the counter on her way to the bathrooms; Jeff isn't there. She takes a deep breath outside the door to the women's room ("Ladies' rooms are always cleaner, Britta, surely I don't have to tell you that," he told her once, a long time ago.) because this is probably a bad idea. It's been three weeks since they called it off.

He's leaning against the counter, phone in one hand. He looks up when the door closes behind her with a snick. "Hey."

"Hey." She toes the floor with her boot. They're wearing almost matching outfits. "So, you--"

He takes a step forward and tugs her by her beltloops. "No talking." He leans down to kiss her, quick and frantic, and turns to back her into the counter. Jeans come down partway and her shirt gets unbuttoned. She digs the heels of her boots into him as her legs wrap around his waist. She's missed this, she's hesitant to admit to herself, because after three weeks she shouldn't. It was nothing, they agreed to stop, it never meant anything.

"We should get back," he says as he buttons her shirt back up gently.

"Yeah," she nods. "They're waiting."

He smiles, just for a few seconds, a hesitant and genuine smile. She returns it before she hops off the counter. He leaves first and she watches as he goes back to the table to collect five and ones from Troy and Abed. Annie is asleep again, slumped on Troy's shoulder. Britta fixes her pigtail, now mussed from war and Jeff's hand, and joins her friends.

To Be Lonely is a Habit
Prompt: An AU where Britta is a sleazy lawyer and Jeff is an ex-anarchist trying to figure out the direction of his life.

The way Britta sees it, you have two options in life when faced with challenges or trauma or creeps who should be on a neighborhood watch list: you can cry and go soft and maybe run away to try and save the world, or you can turn to stone and get through any way you can. Britta became a lawyer not to help people, but because the only thing she did better than wearing pencil skirts and polished heels was bullshitting people-into thinking she was whole, into thinking she didn't care, into thinking that the guiltiest, sleaziest people were nothing more than loving parents and spouses. She did it well, too, her name became revered for her ability to morph into whatever the situation called for. She could be cut-throat and ruthless while digging into a plaintiff's well-hidden alcohol problem, but she could also smile sweetly at a jury and make them laugh.

Britta knew she wanted to be a lawyer the day she told everyone what happened and no one believed her. She would make people believe her, she would twist their words and their emotions until they had no choice. It was a perfect plan that was only unhinged by her complete lack of interest in undergrad. Sure, she was interested in the flowing beer and the guys who wanted to sleep with her, but living in a cramped dorm room four feet from another person? Eating ramen for dinner every night? No, thank you. So she skipped it, spent four years sleeping her way through the local state school's Hot Guy List, staining her tongue red with cherry Jell-o shots, and perfecting her poker face as she altered transcripts.

And it worked, for a few glorious years, because she made it through law school not at the top of her class, but pretty damn up there, and she was this close to being partner before the time she turned thirty. But when you make a lot of enemies, both in the courtroom and out, those enemies can Google, too. "Get yourself a bachelor's degree," her boss told her, "and then we can talk."

She wears sunglasses the day of registration, head down to avoid the gaze of fresh-out-of-high-school slackers and middle-aged parents whose children have gone to school, finally. It'll be a quick four years, she tells herself, maybe three if she works during summer breaks. Her first class is Introductory Spanish, and as she slides into her seat, she looks around the room to see who she can cheat off. Her eyes land on a guy a few seats over: tall, handsome, dressed well enough. She pulls up a game of Bejeweled on her phone as the professor hands out the syllabus. Mr. Tall flips through the pages absently and Britta thinks that if she's going to be stuck here for a while, she might as well get laid in the process.

She fakes a study group. If she can have sex and get someone to do her homework for her, why not, right?

Jeff, it turns out, is more than the dumb, jock-like guys she dated in her wasted undergraduate years, or even the smooth-talking lawyers she goes home with after nights at the bar down the street from her firm (ex-firm, she reminds herself). He thinks he can change the world just by caring, he thinks about things like endangered whales and affordable housing, and he calls Britta out on her shit more than she'd like. He's like-he's the version of her that made a different choice all those years ago, the version that became angry instead of cold, emotional instead of cunning. He has more daddy issues than she does, he spent his younger years floating around the country trying to fuel that anger into something useful (Although, anarchy? The most useless of the useless.) instead of something profitable, and he has this guard about him that she's just dying to crack.

She could sleep with him, sure. It would be easy to press him up against the wall of a deserted classroom and find out exactly what's hiding beneath those wrinkled button-ups. But there's something about Jeff Winger, maybe something she sees in the deepest parts of herself, that makes her want to try. He's a challenge, a puzzle, and in order to get the prize, she needs to solve him.

Britta gets evicted because when you're not a lawyer anymore, you don't get a lawyer paycheck and you can't pay for your lawyer condo. The group finds out, because of course the group finds out, and offers her solutions and pity. Shirley has kids-boys with sticky, dirty hands and loud, violent video games and toothpaste all over the bathroom counter-so her house is out of the question before it's even a question. Annie lives in what Britta is surprised to find out is probably the worst neighborhood in the county; Britta isn't afraid of walking down dark streets at night (when the worst has already happened to you, says that voice in the back of her head she loves to ignore, you tend to lose fear of things you should probably have at least some trepidation over) but when Annie proudly adds, "It's a studio," Britta smiles and politely declines. Britta loves Annie, but not enough to share a twelve-by-twelve cell with her. Britta doesn't love anyone that much.

In the end, Britta ends up renting a gross motel room with rough towels that irritate her skin and sheets she's pretty sure haven't been washed since the Soviet Union was a thing. It's slightly less humiliating than asking her friends for help and it's a place to stay while she spreads her finances-unopened bills and bank statements splashed with red-over the cheap desk and tries to make sense of them.

One afternoon she's doing calculations with a bottle of wine in front of her when there's a knock on the door. She turns off the news, which had been on low for background noise, and looks through the peephole. Jeff's standing there with a pizza box in his hands. She opens the door and leans against the frame, cocking her head to the side. "Are you stalking me?"

"A Lexus in the parking lot of a motel where I'm pretty sure you can pay by the hour?" he quips with a smirk. "Could only mean Britta Perry."

"You brought pizza," she says.

"I did. Thought you might want something that wasn't prepared on a hot plate."

"You should've brought me a home-cooked meal then," she says as she opens the door wider and gestures for him to come inside. "Welcome to my humble abode. Want some wine? It's the good stuff."

"Sure." She pours and he sits on the bed, obviously uncomfortable.

The thing is, she likes him. She likes that he can return her sarcastic comments with one of his own in record speed. She likes that he brings printed-out news articles to study group and tries to get everyone to care about them. She likes that he looks lost and overwhelmed when he thinks no one is watching. He's searching for something, something he might not even know he's searching for, and Britta doesn't believe in fate or destiny or true love, but she does wonder sometimes.

She sets his glass of wine on the nightstand and when he looks up, confused, she leans down to kiss him. It takes a second, but he places his hands on her waist and pulls her closer.

"So, I know I live in a place where married men bring their prostitutes," she says when they pull away, "and I know you think I'm a douchey lawyer who lies and cheats her way through everything. You're sort of right-don't tell anyone I said that-but..."

She trails off and he watches her with this look and Jeff's scarily good at reading people, even her, even when she has her thickest armor on. "Am I the prostitute in this scenario?" he asks finally. "Because I gotta tell you, that's not a good way to get a guy into bed."

Britta laughs and leans down to kiss him again, settling in his lap.

"I think this will be good for you," he says. "Knock you down a couple of pegs. Show you there's more to life than expensive face creams and bidets."

"I have great skin, though."

"True, but you don't need to destroy a rainforest in order to get it. Maybe now you'll understand what I was saying about affordable housing and you can one day use your super lawyer powers for good."

"Mmm, probably not. Now will you stop talking about housing while I'm trying to seduce you?"

"This is you seducing me? Jeez, Perry, you need some serious work-"

She cuts him off with her mouth. By the time they get to the pizza, it's cold.

Soft Spots
Prompt: Jeff/Britta, It’s so easy to laugh It’s so easy to hate It takes guts to be gentle and kind

“Wig on or off?” Britta asks with a smirk as she unlocks the front door to her apartment.

This is what Jeff should do: tell her to keep the wig on, because Britta in that black bob is doing things to him; tug her by the bottom of her shirt into the bedroom; fuck her until he forgets all about failed birthday parties and phone sex lines and little Indian girl costumes. This is what Jeff wants to do:

Nothing.

He went home with her because she had gotten a ride to the diner with Shirley and she politely declined Shirley’s offer for a way home. He’s not angry at her for assuming, it would be the correct assumption any other time, but tonight, he feels so emotionally drained his bones are aching a little. He feels raw, like he took a too-hot shower and didn’t exfoliate afterwards. He feels tired and heavy and old.

But he can’t tell Britta because that’s not what this is. This is good sex and cold Chinese food. This is waking up to her mouth wrapped around his cock and going down on her in the shower. This is that noise she makes when his mouth moves over that spot, that one behind her ear. And for the first time, he needs something more, someone to rest his weight on. Britta could be that person, he knows, but there are rules and lines and a perfectly balanced scale and to maintain. The opposite of balance, in this case, is chaos.

“I’m kinda tired,” he says lamely, although he shrugs his jacket off and loosens his tie. He doesn’t want to be alone, not tonight, but he’s not up to pretending that everything is fine.

“Oh.” She looks dejected, rejected, and then watches curiously as he toes off his shoes. “So…”

He exhales and plops down on the couch. They’ve never hung out at each other’s home without having sex. By sitting on her couch with his shirt untucked, he’s making a statement. He knows this, but her couch is worn in (he goes back and forth between bought for five bucks at Goodwill and picked up off the side of the road) and warm and to get up, put his shoes back on, get in his car, and drive back to his empty apartment seems exhausting.

“Your bed is closer than mine,” he says.

“Ah. Look, I know you used to live in a motel, but this isn’t one. You don’t get to just crash here whenever you feel like it,” she says, tone even. She sits next to him, curling her legs beneath her. She’s still wearing the wig.

“Britta,” he warns lowly. He leans his head back and closes his eyes.

“Something happened tonight,” she says. “But you were fine at the party. So what was it?”

He shrugs. It was easier, with everyone around, with smiles and laughs and milkshakes, to pretend that it was okay. It’s when no one’s around, when it’s just him and a girl he can’t stop sleeping with to save his life that it starts to be not okay.

She lets out a strangled laugh. “Of course. Of course I don’t get to know why you’re still here or what upset you or anything at all. Does it ever get old, holding everyone at arm’s length?”

“You’re one to talk. Arm’s length doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

“Okay, okay, we’re both fucked up, blah blah blah. Same fight, different day.”

He doesn’t answer, just sits there with his eyes still closed, and he feels her shift next to him.

“Jeff?” she begins after a few minutes.

“What?”

“We’re… we’re friends, right?”

He opens his eyes and sits up a little. “Huh? Of course we’re friends. That’s a stupid question.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah,” he lies. It’s not, really, it’s not a stupid question for any of his friends to ask him, because he does keep them at arm’s length and he is upset about things he’s not going to tell them about. He leans over and pulls the wig off Britta’s head; her hair is tucked under a flesh-colored wig cap and she runs her hand over it sheepishly.

“If something happened,” she says quietly, with trepidation, her voice shaking with the struggle to be gentle, “you can tell me about it. I’ll listen.”

He nods but doesn’t say anything. She nods in return and stands up and begins to walk away. “Where are you going?”

“To change. You want sweats?”

“Could we just… go to bed?”

She watches him for a minute, like she has a sarcastic comment, but she swallows it. “Sure. Gonna brush my teeth, I’ll meet you there.”

In her bedroom, he strips down to his boxers and crawls underneath her blankets. Her sheets smell like laundry detergent and that vanilla lotion she puts on in the mornings and--he realizes with a jolt--him. He’s there in the fabric with her, clinging to fibers and threads, and the thought is both comforting and terrifying all at once.

She slides into bed next to him wearing nothing but a t-shirt. He wants to kiss her: roughly, angrily, like he’s mad at her for being here, a witness to his pitiful existence. He wants to kiss her: slowly, gently, like he wants to show her that they really are friends and that there are some things he can only talk about while being manipulated. He wants to kiss her: so he does.

It’s a mix between the two, but her hands slide up to his hair and her fingers are soft against his scalp. Very few things about her are ever soft but she somehow always seems to know what he needs. It scares him, and he pulls away and her face is soft, too, bare from makeup and maybe bare from defenses. It’s not a look he sees often--just her, whatever that means.

“Goodnight,” she says, also soft.

His limbs feel heavy and hard against the mattress, so ready for sleep and for forgetting. “Goodnight.” He sleeps with an arm slung over her middle, anchoring her to him, and when he wakes his arms and legs are lighter.

There are Photos of Us Holding Hands Outside of the Frame
Prompt: Jeff/Britta, We move like cagey tigers. We couldn't get closer than this

The women's locker rooms at Greendale are all kind of gross--questionable smell, bad water pressure, tattered shower curtains--but Britta is covered head-to-toe in fake oil and she took the bus to campus today, so there's really not much of a choice. She bought a pair of cheap sweatpants and a t-shirt from the campus store to change into; the entire outfit is baggy and looks ridiculous, but most people have left Greendale for the day and the people who ride her bus route don't really have room to judge.

She gathers her wet hair into a pile on the top of her head and rounds out of the locker room, peering down hallways to make sure she doesn't run into anyone she knows. Annie, always prepared Annie, had a wealth of old towels in the trunk of her car that she laid down carefully over her driver's seat. She offered Britta a ride home, but Britta politely declined, saying she had some things to do on campus before the day was over. Britta isn't still angry with Annie, but she feels bit... prickly; the first few weeks of the semester have been trying and awkward and Britta feels off her game all the time. She feels exposed, naked, raw, like she needs to build her armor back up.

There's someone else waiting at the bus stop, Britta sees from across the parking lot, which is just her luck. But as she gets closer and closer, she realizes that it isn't someone: it's Jeff, leaning against the sign post, phone in one hand. She pauses, takes a deep breath, and continues walking toward him. He looks up when she's a hundred or so feet away and smirks.

Here's the thing: if Britta feels prickly around Annie, she's downright thorny around Jeff. He not only saw her at the most vulnerable she's been in years and years, but he walked away from that, he turned it into a stupid game, he was the one who told her she was too guarded in the first place. She's mad, but more than that, she's hurt. It's not a good feeling.

"Annie told me you were still here. I know you took the bus this morning, so I thought maybe you'd want a ride home?"

The next bus comes in fifteen minutes and it'll take her half an hour to get home, even though she only lives a ten minute drive from school. There's a cut on her leg where she landed on a rock, and she's positive a bruise is forming on her back. She could be home in ten minutes, chest-deep in a hot bath in thirteen. She nods.

She carefully angles herself into the passenger seat of his car; the leather seats are unnecessarily soft, but it's comforting on her aching bones. He doesn't say anything, just watches her shift until she's in a good position and then starts the ignition.

The ride is silent because they haven't really figured out how to talk to each other yet. It's the first time they've been alone together since almost getting married (Oh god, Britta will think sometimes, married to Jeff Winger) and it's weird and uncomfortable to think that just a few weeks ago she was kissing him hello when he walked into rooms and sitting on his lap in the cafeteria. The car smells like him, like his cologne and his soap and something else, something she remembers from paintball, something that's entirely him. She wonders, vaguely, if the too-big Greendale t-shirt she's wearing will smell like him, too, when she takes it off later.

"Thanks for the ride," she says when he pulls up to the curb in front of her apartment. She opens the door and slowly gets up.

"Here," he says. He turns the car off and gets out. "Let me help you upstairs."

"I'm fine." She shrugs off the hand he places on her back.

"Britta," he says, sounding exasperated already, "I watched you limp across the parking lot. You live on the third floor. Stop being so stubborn."

She takes a breath to argue, but her sweatpants are dragging on the ground, and she has a horrible image of tripping over them on the stairs and the creepy guy who lives on the second floor finding her there. So she takes his offered arm and tries not to lean in too close, think too much about how it feels to be next to him.

"I'm sorry," he says as they start up the last flight of stairs.

"Me, too," she replies.

"No. I owe you a little more. I'm sorry."

"Okay."

"I just don't want it to be weird between us. The group, you know."

She fishes her keys out of her bag and unlocks the door. "Yeah. The group. Well, thanks for helping me. I can take it from here."

He doesn't move, though, just leans against the door frame. "Britta, I'm trying to apologize."

"And I forgive you. See you tomorrow." She steps inside and tries to close the door but he holds his hand out.

"Wait. Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine." She inhales, resigned. "Want to come in for a minute?"

"Sure." He follows her in and she tries not to think about what her (messy) living room looks like through his eyes. He knows where she lives because he gave her rides home a few times last year, but he's never been inside.

"You want something to drink? I only have water and vodka. Oh, and maybe some soy milk." She points toward the couch. "Help yourself or have a seat or whatever. I'm just going to start the bath."

She takes time in the bathroom to breathe and steel herself and remind her reflection that this is nothing, that she can get through the five minutes he'll stay before he gets bored and leaves. She leans down to fiddle with the water temperature, moving the faucets just so. The water masks the sound Jeff's footsteps make on the floor because when she turns around, he's in the doorway.

"I have an idea," he says.

Her bathroom is small to begin with, but he makes it even tinier. He looks massive under her low ceilings and garish under her high-efficiency light bulbs.

"I can't be awkward around you. It's not going to work. So we need to do something because last year we let all this tension build up until it exploded and this year it's worse because of... you know. I can't do that again, Britta."

"So what are you thinking?" She wants to whisper, or at least speak lower, because this doesn't seem like the kind of conversation you have over bath water echoing off the tiles.

"We--" he makes a weird gesture with his hands but she gets it. She takes a minute to think about it, about having a secret, about taking control, about getting to have him without having to have him.

"Okay," she says.

He looks relieved and takes a hesitant step forward. "How's your leg?"

"I cut it. Annie is a lot stronger than she looks." She pushes her sweatpants down slightly to show him the gash, shiny and still a little bloody. "Do you want to join me?"

"Yeah." He toes off his shoes and reaches for his shirt.

"Wait." There's only a few steps between her and Jeff but she crosses them and gently moves his hands away. "Let me do it." She tugs on the hem of his sweater and stands up on tiptoes to pull it over his head. As she moves on to the button of his jeans, he leans down to kiss her, and she fumbles with his belt. He undresses her, slowly, carefully, and helps her into the tub. It takes some maneuvering, but she settles into his lap.

"You okay?" he asks between kisses. He has one hand in her hair and one on her breast.

"Just watch my back, will you? I think it's bruised."

He moves his hand from her breast to run his fingertips gently down her spine. She shivers beneath the steam coming off the water and sits up on her knees. He leans his head back onto the tile as she guides him into her and his eyes close and she fucks him slowly.

It's not an ideal position and there isn't enough extra room in the tub to get much of a rhythm going, not to mention she's still moving too gingerly to move the way she wants to move. Water splashes over the sides of the tub and onto her clothes, curled haphazardly on the floor. She needs something else, a different angle she can't get to, and as if he read her mind, his hand snakes down between them where he makes circles on her clit with his thumb. She comes with a strangled noise in the back of her throat and slumps against his chest, muscles sore but humming in a way she will probably always attribute to him.

They dry each other off--Jeff mindful of her back and the cut on her leg, which he bandages up with a liberal amount of Neosporin, his tongue stuck out in concentration--and he leaves with a long kiss and a "see you tomorrow." Britta cleans up the spilled water and takes three aspirin and lays in bed until dark. The next day, she doesn't feel so prickly.

Tautology
Prompt: Jeff/Britta, We are hard on each other and call it honesty, choosing our jagged truths with care and aiming them across the neutral table. [..]A truth should exist, it should not be used like this. If I love you is that a fact or a weapon?

Britta's fingers ghost over Jeff's skin as she cleans out his wound. It isn't bleeding anymore--it doesn't even hurt anymore--but her movements are still feather-light, as if she's afraid to make full contact. The library buzzes with the silence; she hasn't said much aside from asking if she's hurting him. There's a protein bar in the first aid kit that somehow hasn't expired yet and she carefully breaks it in half and offers him the bigger piece.

"Thank you," he says softly and he chews as she turns to open the bandage.

The ripping of the package echos a little and they both freeze and look toward the door, as if the noise somehow attracted enemies. She glances back to him with a sheepish smile that quickly fades. She looks like she wants to say something; her eyebrows furrow a bit and she frowns as though whatever she wants to say is confusing or troubling.

There are a lot of things Jeff wants to say. This is the most alone they've ever been and even the sound of her breathing is too much. "Did you hear something?" he asks after he swallows the mouthful of protein bar (chocolate and some sort of dried berry).

"No," she shakes her head. She smiles again, but it doesn't reach her eyes.

In December he gets snowed in at her apartment for three days. It's winter break still, the week after New Year's, and he watches from her living room window as the snow piles up. He's wearing wool socks and three shirts and she has on one of his sweaters and a hat that she knitted herself pulled over her ears.

"What are you doing? You're going to freeze out there."

"Yeah, because your apartment is colder than the snowstorm." He joins her on the couch, burrowing beneath the cocoon of blankets.

"Are you paying for the heat?" she asks grumpily, pressing her fingers over her nose.

He reaches out and cups his hand across her nose; she's drowning beneath his sweater and her hat and the four or five blankets she has draped over her. "I'm not going to be able to dig my car out until at least tomorrow. Is that okay?"

"Of course." Her voice is distorted, nasally and an octave higher. "You want some hot chocolate? There's peppermint schnapps to put in it, although if we're going to be stuck here for a while we should probably ration our alcohol."

"You know," he begins as he takes his hand back and moves a bit closer, "I can think of better ways to keep warm."

"You're so cheesy." She rolls her eyes but leans in for a kiss anyway.

After six scotches (seven? Jeff's lost track) he calls her and barks into the phone: "You owe me."

There's a sigh and then, "Hang on." She says something to someone, muffled, and Jeff counts to thirty before she comes back on the line. "What?"

"You owe me. You know things now. Things. I need to know all of your stupid things so I can lord them all over your head for the rest of eternity."

"What does that even mean?" Britta asks. "Is this about Thanksgiving? Because I'm not going to say anything to anyone, god, Jeff."

"It's the principle."

"Friendship isn't a competition. Look, where are you? Are you home or do you need me to come pick you up?"

"I'm home, where are you?"

"Uh, in the hallway of Troy's apartment building."

"It's Abed and Annie's apartment building, too."

"Good job," she says dryly and even through the alcohol haze he can hear her sarcasm. "When you want to know things about me because you want to know, and not because you need blackmail material, call me."

She hangs up and Jeff wishes he was on a landline so he could slam down the receiver.

"You have another gray," Britta says, brushing her fingertips along Jeff's temple. "That's what? Five now?"

"I love you," he says because he does.

She narrows her eyes; she's laying on her side so one eye is half-closed. "Are you being mean?"

He snorts. "Seriously? I know you pride yourself on being too cool for school, but the usual response is "I love you, too"."

"Oh." Her finger slides from his temple to trace the lines around his mouth. "How long have we known each other?"

He shrugs. "Nine, ten years?"

"Yeah," she says with a smile. "A long time."

"You gotta say it, you know."

"You're such a pain in my ass. But I love you anyway."

There's another gray hair near his forehead. He smiles and waits for her to find it.

with your just audience, i'm the applause
Prompt: Jeff/Britta, The first time, the last time, all the times I would've liked there to have been

iii.

There are twenty-seven days between Thanksgiving and Christmas that year. They see each other twice in that span, hunched in Shirley's dining room, fussing over their respective kids and pointedly not making eye contact with each other. See, it had been somewhat of a mutual decision to break things off all those years ago (I know you still have feelings for Troy, I know you never got over Annie (and not that there were really ever things to break off except for the standing appointment they had in each other's beds every night)) but it's still a little awkward; Britta finds herself unsure of what to say to him, of how to feel around him.

Lucas spits up all over himself and Britta takes him into Shirley's bedroom to change his clothes. She's just reaching into the diaper bag for a clean shirt when there's a high-pitched shout and the door slams open. Annabeth, Jeff and Annie's older daughter, bursts into the room with a giggle.

"Annabeth! What did I tell you about--" As soon as Jeff crosses the doorway, Annabeth runs between his legs and back down the hall, her shrieking laughter echoing in her wake.

(Britta loves her son and Troy and her life, for the most part. But sometimes, usually around the holidays, Britta watches Annabeth run around with boundless energy and big, blue eyes, and she imagines what it would be like if her hair was a little blonder, her nose a little sharper.)

Jeff smiles sheepishly and Britta returns it before she goes back to changing Lucas's shirt. They haven't been alone in a room together in years and years. It's palpable, the tension, maybe in the same way it used to be, but there's a ring on his finger that she didn't put there and her son is the spitting image of his father.

"He's getting big," Jeff says. He shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks up on the balls of his feet a little.

"Two months on Saturday," she answers. All changed, she gathers him up in her arms and gestures toward the door. "Should we go--"

"Can I hold him?" Jeff interrupts.

"Sure," Britta says softly.

She hands Lucas over and Jeff--a father of two, one on the way--looks so comfortable and natural holding him that it tugs on something in Britta's belly. She looks away, to the hallway, where she can hear Annie chiding Troy and Abed for giving Annabeth too much sugar, Annabeth singing a song about her baby sister, Shirley and Pierce and Andre talking about one thing or another. She leaves the room, heads toward the kitchen, and doesn't look back at Jeff with her son in his arms.

ii.

"Okay, get out." Britta smacks Jeff on the arm and shoves him toward the edge of the bed.

"Wait, what?"

She sits up, holding the sheet to her chest. "I'm serious. You're not even supposed to be here right now. We're not supposed to be doing this anymore."

"Fine." He slides out of bed and fishes his underwear out of the mountain of clothes on the floor. "You know, it's pretty rude to just kick a guy out like this. 'Making me feel cheap."

She rolls her eyes. "Whatever."

"I'm just saying," he continues, separating the clothes into His and Hers piles, "we've already had sex three times today, if you count this morning. So we might as well wait until tomorrow to start stopping."

With a sigh, she falls back against the pillows. "At least order a pizza or something."

He leaves for the kitchen to find the take-out menu and Britta looks over at the clock. It's almost ten, which means they have just over two hours to not have secret sex anymore before they really can't have secret sex anymore. But he'll probably stay the night because it's raining and he's not going to want to drive after midnight in the rain.

"Twenty minutes," he says as he crawls back into bed.

"None of this counts, right?" she asks. "Totally clean slate in the morning?"

"Sure."

"Okay." She reaches out and laces her fingers with his, lays her head on his chest. They don't move until the buzzer goes off and he gets up again to answer the door.

i.

Britta manages to keep her eyes on her notebook while Jeff pulls his chair out, sits down, and props his chin on his elbow to stare at her. "Can I help you?" she asks without looking up.

"You kissed me."

"Yes," she says, underlining a sentence in her Spanish notes, "because I owed you. Now we can both go about our lives."

"I think you may have enjoyed it. At least a little bit."

Slowly, she puts down her pen and raises her head to meet his eyes. "Your lips are a little chapped. I recommend Blistex because it works quickly and it's relatively cheap, but you seem like the kind of guy who spends more money just because, so Burt's Bees. They do have really great hand cream, too. I noticed your skin is a bit dry. It happens, in the fall."

He opens and closes his mouth a few times and she smirks before turning back to her notes .

After a few minutes he takes out his own notebook and opens it. "Don't worry. I know how you really feel. Maybe we can celebrate my A in Accounting over dinner Friday night?"

"Nice try, Winger," she says as the study room door opens and Troy, Abed, and Shirley walk in.

iv.

It's when they're packing up the house that the pair of dice topples out of an old cookie tin. Most of their things are going into storage, including the kids' old bedrooms; now that they're all moved out and settled enough not to come back, Jeff and Britta don't need the big four bedroom house or the things they didn't love enough to take with them.

"Huh," Jeff says as he picks up the dice. "Do you remember these?"

Britta looks over the top of her glasses. "Am I supposed to? Are they special?"

"Well, probably not. But you remember when Abed was obsessed with timelines and each time I rolled the die I was creating a different one?"

"Oh, yeah, I do remember that." She reaches out and takes the dice from him, shakes them in her hand a little. "So, you think there's five other Jeff and Brittas out there?"

"Maybe. Roll, let's see if we can make another."

She drops the dice: a seven. "Okay, seven timelines. Seven Jeffs and seven Brittas. Hey, do you think we're together in every timeline?"

Charlotte's bedroom faces the backyard and it's mid-afternoon so the sun is bright through the windows. Jeff can see all the lines on Britta's face, the ones she pretends not to try and hide with makeup. She has a tiny scar on her chin from where she tripped over one of the kids' tricycles. There's no ring on her finger but she does wear a key pendant around her neck he gave her when they first moved in together.

"Yeah. I think we are."

Untitled #7
Prompt: Jeff/Britta, pre-season 5, meeting for drinks

The first time Britta invites Jeff to hang out at the bar while she’s working, she doesn’t really expect him to show up. He’s been sort of elusive, shrugging off offers for movie nights and group dinners, claiming to be too busy with his new successful career to “goof off” with them anymore. This strikes Britta as very suspicious because the rest of them have jobs and lives (and children, in Shirley’s case) but still manage to get together at least once a month. Also, Troy and Abed hacked Jeff’s Facebook so that it posts all his Candy Crush scores and either Jeff hasn’t noticed or he doesn’t know how to turn it off; he’s gained about two hundred levels in the last month.

So when she’s in the middle of taking an order from a girl (vodka-cran, Stella, rum and Diet Coke) and sees Jeff come in out of the corner of her peripheral vision, she raises an eyebrow at him for a second before turning to make the girl’s drinks. The girl tips pretty generously and Britta tucks the bills into her pocket and waits until the girl is back at the table with her friends before she gives Jeff her attention.

“Ah, the rare Jeffrey Winger, out in the wild,” she says with a smirk as he settles on a barstool.

“Not all of us get to be surrounded by bottles of booze at work everyday, you know.”

“Please,” she rolls her eyes as she grabs a glass from beneath the counter, “you’re telling me there’s not a bottle of scotch in your bottom desk drawer?”

He tsks and waves his hand dismissively but doesn’t respond. She pours him a Macallan and slides it across the bar.

“I’d ask how work was going, but I’m going to assume it’s great since you never have time for us anymore. Putting a ton of filth back out onto the streets?”

He shrugs one shoulder and runs his finger along the rim of his glass. “Don’t really deal with filth anymore. I help people now.”

Britta watches him for a moment, quiet. She knows he’s lying, she knows his fabulous new career is anything but, and she knows he’s trying to convince himself that it’s not all that bad and that he is helping people. So she lets it slide. For now.

"Hey. Have a drink with me." He slaps a credit card on the counter.

"I'm working," she reminds him.

"Just one? We haven't seen each other in like two months."

She feels herself soften and nods, taking the card and running it through the cash register. She charges him for her vodka as well, and pours under his watchful eye.

"You like this job?" he asks. It's not rude, it's curious.

"It's not too bad," she says, dropping a handful of olives into her glass. "I got rejected from grad school, so. It's not ideal but it'll do for now."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

She snorts. "Why, so you could laugh at me? No, thank you. You're lucky I even told you I was working here."

He shakes his head somewhat sadly and she narrows her eyes. "Okay, what's up with you? You've been avoiding us and you're acting super weird tonight."

"Am not," he protests half-heartedly.

"Whatever." He gets like this sometimes, distant and almost cold, because he's terrible at communicating and saying when something's bothering him. She's gotten used to it by now, and knows it's better to let him decide when to talk. And then, by the end of the night, she'll just drag it out of him.

“So are you--” she begins.

“It’s not,” he interrupts.

“It’s not what?”

He sighs dramatically and takes a sip of scotch. “It’s not going so well.” His eyes are set firmly on his hands as he twirls a coaster between his fingers. “Work, I mean. Trying to be a lawyer again.”

“Oh.” A guy at the other end of the bar waves in her direction and she taps Jeff’s hand. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

While she pours a round of beers she runs through a mental list of all the things she can say, ways to cheer him up, nice words he might want to hear. But then she remembers the rejection letters from the three master’s programs and she remembers filling out the applications in secret so no one would know.

“Okay, here’s the thing,” she says when she gets back to him, “it’s not always going to be really easy. You don’t get to defraud the state bar and then magically become Colorado’s Next Top Lawyer two days after getting your degree. But you don’t get to be all Moody Winger and not talk to us because you’re embarrassed or sad or too busy clearing all the jelly to tell us what’s going on. We’re your friends, okay? And we love you and we will love you even if you end up being a hobo. So, cut it out. Or else I’m going to double charge you for every scotch.”

The left corner of his mouth tugs upward a little bit and he snorts. “Is that how you’re going to talk to your patients, Dr. Perry?”

“If they’re as annoying as you are,” she says through a smile. “Just… it’s okay to fail, you know? You can join the big fat failures club.”

“Let me guess. You’re in the club, too?”

She gestures to the bar behind her with a sardonic smile. “Look like a doctor’s office to you?”

“Looks like a pit stop. You know you’re going to get there eventually, right?”

“So will you.”

He shrugs but grins.

“I get off in like an hour, do you want to get something to eat?”

“Yeah. I’ll wait.”

Britta nods and moves to grab a towel and wipe up a spill.

“Britta.”

When she spins to face him, he has that smile on again, that small and secret smile. “I missed you.”

“Me, too.”