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She does not have to pee. She does not have to pee. Lying flat with her eyes screwed tight against the threat of waking up, Britta tries to focus on the light snoring of her cats, on their combined weight beside her. Too loud. Too heavy. Something’s off. That, or she really does need to pee.
As she opens her eyes reluctantly into the dark of her apartment, Britta is hit by a wave of uncanny familiarity. She knows that ceiling, sure, but it definitely isn’t hers. It almost looks like—
Crap. It looks like Jeff’s. She must’ve spent the night.
Tilting her head cautiously to the right confirms that the too loud, too heavy presence beside her is, in fact, Jeff Winger himself. He’s lying on his side, turned away from her, sheets pooling at his hips. The lightest hint of day is peeking through his blinds.
It was, she thinks ruefully, probably at least a little bit inevitable. Not that they hooked up; no, they’d been doing that in secret since the middle of September. It wasn’t on purpose. She had been out with some old girlfriends at a bar when they’d bumped into each other. Seeing him then, outside of the context of Greendale and of their friends, was jarring. He knew her well enough by then not to bother offering to buy her a drink. She, both drunk and out of cash, took instant offense to this oversight. An hour later, they were in the backseat of his Lexus. They didn’t bother talking about it; they’d pretend it had never happened until, predictably, it happened again. And again.
It wasn’t as if they were dating, or even seeing each other. Still, they’d settled into something like they’d both known it would be there waiting for them. One night, after a week of ignoring their first (technically, second) mortifying fumble, he texted. She'd been on her way home alone from somewhere, and his place was as good a pit-stop as any. After, the smug look on his face pissed her off enough to leave with her nose in the air. Which, of course, didn't stop her from calling him a few days later. It wasn't exactly exclusive, nor was the sex actually all that great, but still — why not?
Last night, she'd just shown up, impulsive and slightly peeved that her friend had gone home with someone and she hadn't. Not, of course, that it mattered. She didn't exactly define her worth around male attention. Still, though. Jeff was across town, always an option. Later, she'd been checking her mascara in his comically-large bedroom mirror when he slouched back into the room, two beers in his hand rather than one. That, like this, had been new.
She catches herself contemplating the breadth of his back and returns to the problem at hand — peeing, and getting the fuck out. Preferably, without him waking up.
***
"Y'know, when you flee someone's apartment at the crack of dawn, it's not exactly polite to leave their door unlocked." It's the following afternoon, in the library; Jeff must have snuck up on her. Britta's not sure she likes the shiver that crawls up her spine at the sound of his voice. So she elbows him, possibly a little too hard, right under his ribs.
"Shh! Shirley's right there." She's actually well out of earshot, on the far side of the study room hanging crepe paper for the school's Halloween dance, but, Britta thinks, Shirley isn't blind, and she'd rather drink the can of paint in her hands than let any of their friends see Jeff with his that low on her hips. And she needs that paint — Annie wants bats on all the windows.
"Yeesh." Jeff takes the hint and backs up, to a distance still not entirely respectable, but far enough. "Woke up in the wrong bed this morning? Oh, wait, that's not possible—"
He's cut off by a dash of blue-black paint, splattering across his nose and mouth courtesy of Britta's brush. She grins, triumphant, while he screws his face up in disgust. Oh, yeah, she definitely got some in his mouth. Take that, Winger.
And Britta can't help but laugh, really, because by all logic Jeff should be furiously checking his clothes for stains, but he's not, he's gagging and spluttering and trying desperately to maintain some semblance of cool while doing it, and his face looks so funny she could — (don't think kiss it) — well, she is already laughing. So, that, she supposes.
He leaves not long after: unamused, unwilling to help, and no one humoring him. Shirley asks Britta what she's been up to, what she's got planned this weekend. Britta knows all Shirley really cares about is who she might be sleeping with, and she can't tell her that, so the conversation peters out after a few rough attempts. And that's fine, Britta thinks. But she kind of misses sharing all that with her friend.
***
She thinks he must have been planning how to get her alone all night because, as soon as she shuffles towards the restrooms in her unwieldy green dinosaur suit, he’s somehow already there, waiting.
"Need some help in there?" Jeff's hand is on the bathroom door, a courtesy and a hindrance all rolled into the same gesture. Because, she can't help but think, he's somehow managed to make it up to him if she goes in or not.
Britta tips her head back to look up at him, her spiky hood threatening to topple backwards. She doesn't exactly smile, but she doesn't not smile, either. He'd spent so much of the party holding her drink so that she didn't have to struggle with it, after all.
(And, she realizes later, it hadn't even occurred to her that he might, I dunno, spike it or something. Not that he would, but — see? That right there. Not that he would.)
"Well, I can't use my hands in this costume, so..." He just smirks. It's positively wicked.
(He drives her home that night, but doesn't ask to come up. Britta refuses to be disappointed at that — you can't sneak out of your own house, after all. There's nowhere else to go.)
***
He's in the habit of bringing her a beer, now. With one arm stretched across his headboard, his fingertips not quite reaching for her shoulder, Jeff tips his head back to drain his bottle, then asks Britta if she wants a second. She keeps her eyes glued to the blue light of his laptop, quietly playing last night's SNL. Neither of them like it much — but they argue, a lot, over who the best cast had been. Britta has a soft spot for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's run on Weekend Update; Jeff rolls his eyes and casts his vote, decisively, for Norm Macdonald. She sticks her tongue out rather than admit she'd forgotten he'd hosted that same segment. And it hits her, for the first time, that Jeff's actually more than a little bit older than her.
She's not going to have another beer, by the way. She's not going to put her head on his shoulder. She's not going to fall asleep.
(But he does. And this time, when she sneaks out, she remembers to lock the door.)
***
It's a crisp Wednesday morning early in November when Jeff asks her what she's doing on Friday. And then: "we could go out."
If Britta were someone else, she'd probably close her eyes and savor the sound. As it is, there are firecrackers blasting somewhere in the back of her brain. She's not sure if it's in triumph or in warning.
"We could." Here's what she's dead sure of: she's not gonna give him a fucking inch.
Because at some point, over the last year and change, she'd lost track of what it was exactly that Jeff wanted from her. A few weeks into knowing him, Britta had made the private decision that, if he behaved nicely enough around the others, she'd give him a chance — because he was handsome, and funny, and he seemed to really want her. But she couldn't exactly tell him that she was leaving that particular door open. So, when he'd offered her first right of refusal before he asked out that bitch of a statistics professor, Britta really had no choice but to let him let his eyes wander.
She really hadn't expected them to start dating or anything. In some ways, Jeff really did wear his shallow heart on his overpriced sleeve. Seeing him with Slater, clumsy and overeager, it was painfully obvious there wasn't exactly some tragic backstory about the first girl who'd ever broken his heart waiting to be unlocked. He had, very simply, never given anyone the chance.
Shirley was adamant that Slater had snatched Jeff out from under Britta's nose — that Britta had spent months sweetening him up, only for this woman to come out of nowhere and reap the rewards of Britta's hard, hard work. Britta had scoffed. The Jeff Winger she knew would never be real boyfriend material; no flowers, no dates, no family dinners, no holding hands.
Then of course he'd had to go be awful and hold Slater's stupid hand all through Britta's dance recital, and he'd had the additional audacity to bring Britta flowers at the end, and say he owed this relationship to her and her friendship. That he finally had a girl for a friend; what was stopping him from committing to a girlfriend?
So maybe somewhere along the way, she had bought into the rom-com Shirley had been so determined to eek out of Britta's relationship with Jeff. Maybe that's why she'd drunk-dialed him two weeks after she found out he and Slater were in a relationship; maybe on some level, she really did believe that it should've been her.
Because he wanted her, right? That, above all else, tinged the way that Britta interpreted almost everything that Jeff did. Not just the way he used to hit on her relentlessly, but more than that, the way he'd started... stepping up, always when she least expected it, but she still kind of hoped, nonetheless. Apologizing after everything with Vaughn (without any digs at the hippie’s poetry); getting plastered and calling her back when she'd gotten weird over the (fine, yes, okay) booty-call; giving Shirley the prize Britta had basically handed to him during paintball (no, not that prize, ew) – everything and more that Jeff had done either for or because of her.
And this is why she avoids thinking about it — because she isn't actually sure that she wants to be anyone's carrot-on-a-stick, the thing that makes them behave. His reward, at the end of the day, for pretending that he gives a shit.
Besides: there is another Jeff in there, even if he doesn’t come out to play much. He’s the one who kicks ass at debate because the opposing team made fun of his partner; who gets into his first ever fist-fight on behalf of their spindliest friend; who, instead of taking himself off someone's emergency contact sheet, adds Britta's name as well, because everyone needs at least one person who’ll answer the phone, and, moreover, she does worry about Pierce. And that's the Jeff she likes best, anyway.
(Jeff asks if she likes Thai food, which reminds her just a little bit too much of the start of last year for comfort. She does, but he should probably know that by now, so she says no instead. They settle on Greek.)
***
When Friday rolls around, Britta's decided she's allowed one cautious drop of hope. She packs a strip of condoms and, rolled up tiny and hidden in her bag's most secret compartment, a spare pair of underwear — because, if Jeff brings her back to his place and offers her a beer, this time, she probably owes it to him to stay.
She reminds herself of this little promise all through the group's afternoon study session, casting glances at Jeff next to her and drawing slight, stupid reassurance from the basic facts: that he was in the room, that they'd actually sat down and made plans, that he'd picked out a restaurant and everything.
And then Annie realizes that she's lost her pen.
***
Later, when it's all over and the group is officially saved by the power of willfully lying to themselves, Britta's the first one out of the building. Jeff is not.
He's not the last, really, but he is occupied. He's got Annie of all people beside him, looking up at him in the way that she sometimes does, like she's charting the stars in the night sky. It makes Britta bite her tongue.
Because it's not just Annie. There really is something in his eyes, as he looks back down at her. Britta isn't quite sure what it is. Only that it unnerves her — even more so that, when he turns his head to look at Britta, that something fades. Whatever part of Jeff it was that had apparently come out of hiding disappears as he faces her. And, sure, it's replaced by appreciation, the kind that only comes with knowing what someone's naked body looks like, but that's not the same, is it?
Everyone else is dispersing. Troy and Abed are in a rush to see if they can catch the last of the puppy parade, and Annie's bouncing on the soles of her feet, every inch the school-girl waiting to be excused. Jeff gives her a tiny smile like some sort of a gift, plucked from up above. Visibly pleased, Annie turns and scampers — literally scampers! Hands clutching her backpack straps and everything — off after the two boys. Jeff doesn't bother to watch her go (thank god).
Drawing close to Britta now, he asks a very quiet, "well?"
Britta thinks, he'd called her a catch, in front of everyone. He'd called it a date. And she'd thought it was a cat-and-mouse thing, a secret tossed between them made all the more fun by how it goes straight over everyone else's head. But her jabs hadn't actually felt all that good-natured to make, and, on hearing them, Jeff had just seemed tired.
And she needs to him to say — something. That he wants to be doing this, with her. So Britta does the only thing she knows how to do, and offers him a way out. "We could just skip the dinner thing. Head back to mine." It tastes like metal.
His eyebrow quirks very slightly, and she's pretty certain that's the beginning of a smile at the corner of mouth. "I definitely like the sound of that."
Breathe. He might try again later.
(But he doesn't. In fact, he never brings it up again.)
***
It's probably for the best, really, because as the semester winds down, they both find themselves spending so much more time with their other friends. Shirley's seeing Andre again, and she needs her girlfriend, even if Britta's been annoyingly tight-lipped about her own love life. Jeff gets caught up in one of Annie's many bizarre little dramas, or maybe it's the other way around. Whatever it is, they seem like they’re having fun chasing each other in circles. Pierce's legs are still broken, and he keeps asking Troy and Abed to carry his stuff, which feels borderline racist. And then there's Troy's birthday, and the aftermath, and Britta's so nervous that their secret's out that she rebuffs Jeff for nearly a week.
So when Jeff asks if she's got plans for after they fix whatever's wrong with Abed, Britta already half-anticipates that the day will end with all seven of them curled up on the same couch. Well, six, what with Pierce being Pierce, and in a wheelchair to boot.
It's understandable, really, that she doesn't bother giving him a firm answer.
(Nevermind Jeff's refusal to commit to actually helping Abed, how insistent he is that he's expecting to get laid later and doesn't have time for this crap. She genuinely doesn't know if he's referring to her, or if he's called up someone else in the interim.)
***
Britta goes to Seattle for the first two weeks of winter break, just for the hell of it. She spends her first night there dancing with some guy at a Ty Segall show. He's got brown eyes and an unflinching gaze. During a smoke break between sets, she grabs his hand and tugs him towards an alleyway.
They spend a week in his studio loft downtown. A graduate student at UW, it’s his vacation too. He's got a guitar (and she wishes she didn't still find that hot, but she's 30, not dead inside) and a little ginger cat who, unlike her own cats, excuses himself from the room whenever the bed starts to shake.
And, seriously, this guy. It's not like Britta thinks they're going to keep in touch, but, come on. The posters on his walls are framed, and the shelves between them filled. He asks her multi-sentence questions, as if he's hoping for multi-paragraph answers. She thinks he might want to know her, and she's pretty sure that's not some sort of trap. His brown eyes are freckled. His hands are large, dark, and deft — curled up against him, she admires how confidently they play with her own. He’s more than happy to introduce her to the city, but in the evenings, they cook together rather than ordering takeout. He scores some acid from an undergrad bumming around campus and they spend an entire day lost in the woods.
He kisses her stomach before going down on her, and rubs her back after. Once, pressing her up against his kitchen counter, he cups her jaw and tells her to look at him while he fucks her. And Britta thinks she could get used to that, but there isn’t enough time.
She spends her second week in Seattle catching up with an old friend from her Radiohead groupie days, a woman ten years older who's since gotten married and popped out a kid. Britta stays in the basement. The husband grills portobello mushrooms in lieu of steaks and touches his wife gently every time she's within arm's reach. They play LCD Soundsystem quietly on their hi-fi setup after the kid's gone to bed, the man smiling softly while Britta and her friend compete to reveal the most embarrassing story about the other. Britta wins.
***
She goes back to Greendale for New Year’s. She convinces herself that she's not hoping to run into Jeff while bar-hopping downtown, though she can't exactly pretend she hasn't plotted out precise exit strategies for every room she enters, just in case. She doesn't text him.
Her older brother invites her to spend the following week in Chicago for his gallery opening. Annie is thrilled to cat-sit for her again. Britta doesn't consciously leave a pair of Jeff's briefs on top of her laundry — they just somehow floated up from the bottom while she was searching for her favorite sweatpants.
(He'd spent the night exactly once, in early December. She'd spilled lukewarm coffee on his lap by accident. She'd offered to do laundry the next day. He had to run — literally, he needed to get to the gym before it was swarmed — so he'd left the briefs behind, along with very clear instructions on how to wash them, which he very much expected her to follow. She'd been too busy trying not to watch him pull his jeans on over bare skin to listen.)
***
As the semester starts, the whirlwind of Shirley's pregnancy pushes any questions about the status of her and Jeff's relationship to the far back corner of Britta's mind. That's perfectly fine — she's got no idea how she'd even go about asking, anyway.
Plus, Jeff seems pretty focused on some weird one-sided stand-off with that guy Rich. Whatever keeps him busy.
***
It's not until the following weekend that she gets something like an answer. Shirley and Pierce are missing, but the rest of the group's there, watching a double feature in Abed's dorm room; Chasing Amy and (500) Days of Summer (Abed was very insistent in these choices, for some reason). Troy had procured kettle corn from somewhere, and Annie had made muffins. Jeff accepts one, to Britta's surprise. She's less surprised that he doesn't actually eat it, instead opting to hold the treat gingerly by the tips of his fingers. He's nice about it at least, sniffing it theatrically like one would a glass of wine and questioning Annie very seriously on the exact blend of spices she'd used. Britta catches his eye above the beaming girl's head and there's something dark to his irises. So, naturally, she follows him to the bathroom during an intermission.
Britta half-expects him to slam her against the sink or something, she's really not sure, the moment she slips through the door, but he's too busy washing his hands to even notice that she'd entered.
"You know people can't absorb calories through their skin, right?" Her tone is dry, papering over something unspoken that's slightly more raw.
Jeff doesn't seem to find her joke all too funny, if she's to judge by the way his jaw tenses — he just dries his hands carefully. But he also kisses her, quick and rough, before heading back to Abed's room, so it's probably fine that he doesn't say anything at all.
***
He invites her back to his place after and they fuck on his pristinely made bed. The first time Jeff rolls his hips, she can't suppress a groan. He glances down at her with mild amusement on his face, pauses, and says, "welcome home." When Britta goes to knee him for that, he slips an arm around her waist and flips her onto her stomach, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. One careful adjustment later, and he picks up where he'd left off. And for the first time, she's grateful that Jeff has such a preference for positions that make eye-contact impractical — she's too busy trying to find a precise word to describe the tone in his voice to bother maintaining her guard, anyway. A few minutes later, he comes with a familiar grunt, before flopping onto his back. Britta does neither of those things. Instead, she stays still, face-down in his pillow, for a few minutes longer.
(She leaves maybe twenty minutes after that, missing the warmth of her cats.)
***
What she wants is for him to turn onto his side and massage the skin between her shoulder blades. What she wants is for him to ask how she's been, how she's feeling, if she’s okay. What she wants is for him to listen if she says, no, not really.
Back in her own room, Britta thinks (absurdly) of It’s A Wonderful Life, and of Jimmy Stewart, offering to lasso the moon.
***
A week later, Britta is sprawled across Jeff's bed while he's cleaning off in the bathroom. It used to irk her how quickly he'd bolt up after, as if her bodily fluids might make him break out or something. And besides, he's downright neurotic about protection, so it's not like there's much mess to begin with. A gentleman would probably give her first dibs, in all honesty, what with a woman's risk of UTIs and all.
Staring at the dimples in his ceiling, she indulges in a brief daydream: the Seattle skyline, dark hands tickling her and then muffling her laughter, a living room constellated with children's toys. Britta flirts with the idea of replacing the guy with Jeff, before deciding against it. She's already referred to her trip as a "love affair" to Shirley, and she doesn’t really think those words work in any proximity to her and Jeff.
She's startled back to the state of Colorado when he returns. He's pausing at the doorway, bending down to fetch her discarded shirt before tossing it at her.
"Satisfied?" Britta hates it when he asks this, like he's never been told no before. There's never going to be a version of Jeff who isn't at least somewhat of an arrogant bastard, she thinks. And she wonders if maybe he needs reminding of her comment the other day, during that game with Neil.
She stretches a bit before sitting up, taking the moment to consider her next move. Britta could be offended that he'd rather focus on rifling through his drawers for a clean pair of briefs than admire the view she'd left on offer, but at this point, she's pretty used to it. Jeff is not — has probably never been — one for much post-coital intimacy.
Fuck it. "Eh."
He starts — genuinely, like someone had performed a hard reset on his nerve-endings. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me." Her voice is muffled as she wrestles her shirt on over her head, but she's fairly sure he hears it all the same. When her face pops back out, Jeff's giving her a look of absolute perplexity and, funny as that is, it's a bit too intense for her comfort. She scootches over to the edge of his bed so that she can busy herself in fishing for her underwear.
Jeff's silent for a few minutes as she rummages around the side of his mattress, then onto the floor. Let him stew.
"Elaborate." And, there it is. Her fingers find the scrap of cotton. Seriously, how had they landed that far under the bed? Britta's very sure nothing they did today was frantic enough to have earned that.
"Uh, I don't know." She stands up, tugs her underwear on, and, facing his bedroom mirror, fluffs her hair with her fingertips.
"Try."
"Okay." Britta draws it out, like he's boring her. "I guess, I'd say you were operating at, like, a six? Maybe a seven, towards the end? Which is... fine, sometimes. But you picked up tempo when I was looking for speed." She shrugs, and chances a glance in his direction. Jeff's brow is furrowed, but he's listening. Then:
"So, what? You wanted an eight?" And she wonders if she should've tried something like this ages ago. Because there's a mirth in his eyes now, one that she hasn't seen directed at her in longer than she wants to admit. Jeff's still standing by his dresser, hands on his hips, head slightly cocked as he regards her. He feigns a further thoughtfulness for one moment before nodding solemnly. "Alright. Noted. I'll keep that in mind for next time."
"Whoa, hold on, there. Who knows what I’ll want next time."
"Oh?" And she thinks he might be trying not to laugh, now. Part of her wishes his poker-face were less solid; the rest of her is just glad she can sometimes still tell that he's wearing it.
"I might be feeling a five to start and a nine to finish. Might."
"Well, at least we have a scale now." He punctuates this by rolling his eyes — and, Britta realizes, that might be the closest thing they've ever really had to a term of endearment.
***
Things are easier after that, between the two of them. Most importantly, Britta has finally stopped tensing every time someone refers to them as 'friends.' Because, even if that's probably not entirely right, it still suits them better than anything else.
***
It’s her idea to try roleplaying.
"Hi, hey. Hi, I'm Jeff's dad." Jeff stares at her, incredulous.
"Hi?"
"Hi!" Britta goes in for a hug, awkward and heartfelt.
"Hi, Jeff's dad." He hugs her back. "I'm Britta's dad."
"What? Why?!"
Less than a minute later, he’s marching off, leaving Britta alone. So maybe she’d taken the wrong approach to the whole ‘Jeff’s deadbeat, possibly abusive father, whom he hasn’t seen since he was eight, might seriously be en-route to their current location’ thing. In her defense, it’s been a really fucking long day of waiting around, in a hospital no less, and they still don’t have any idea what’s actually going on with Pierce.
Britta had been the first and only person Jeff called when he got the news — Pierce, found that morning unconscious, had overdosed on a park bench a few miles from the Greendale campus. It had been early enough that she'd done an actual double-take when she saw his name flashing on her screen. The date on the calendar (February 15th – no thanks!) would normally have been enough to convince Britta not to answer, but then again, it was 7:30 in the morning. She’d figured, if Jeff was still drunk enough to be calling with declarations of love, it would probably be her job to go over there and slap some sobriety into him.
(Her night had turned out kind of great, thanks for asking. Inspired by the alarmingly ooey-gooey text Jeff had sent to his friends, Annie and Abed had decided that obviously the group were supposed to be each other's Valentines, and that meant those who'd attended the dance had to go get 10pm pancakes. Shirley had refused, saying her only Valentine was Andre and that she really needed to be headed home to him, where he'd promised her a lavish dinner after putting the boys to bed himself. When they couldn't find Pierce, they'd all shared half-guilty, half-relieved shrugs and left without him. Troy did say his housemate tended to wander off a lot, so it was probably fine.)
Jeff's voice had been hard and mechanical through the phone, as he recited the very few facts he’d been given by the hospital. He didn't say it out loud, but his conviction that Pierce was pulling some sort of stunt was virtually audible. He asked Britta — ordered, really, which was fine, because in many ways he was and always would be their leader, the first person they turn to no matter the crisis — to call everyone else and tell them to meet him at St. Luke's Hospital. He was already on his way. Britta had almost asked him to pick her up, but she didn't get the chance: Jeff had hung up before she could even say ‘okay.’ She’d driven with Abed instead, who, either not understanding or understanding perfectly the potential severity of the situation, dragged along with him Pavel, Garrett, and half of Greendale's AV equipment.
But Jeff has to be wrong about Pierce, Britta thinks. The staff are fussing way too much for this whole thing to just be an old man’s ploy for attention. Then again, as she’s beginning to realize (clutching the check Pierce had written for her), if you dangle enough money in front of someone, they’ll dance for it. Shit, he's even gotten Levar Burton — Kunta Kinte! — out to the middle of Colorado. Digging up Jeff's dad and convincing him to pay his son a visit doesn’t seem all that crazy in comparison.
Jeff's dumb, gay dad, as she’d blurted out so gracefully at the end of this failed attempt to help orient her favorite, most difficult friend to the possible reality that the shithead actually might show up. Britta honestly doesn’t know where the gay part came from. Maybe she should take a psychology class or something – she bets it would come in handy, given the people she’s friends with.
She checks the clock on the wall. She’d allotted herself exactly ten minutes to pout in the waiting room. Now, resetting her determination (because he’s been waiting for this his entire life, whether he’ll admit that to her or not), Britta goes after Jeff. She finds him all the way on the opposite end of the hospital, in that room with all the vending machines. His back is straight but his head is low, as if he's sincerely contemplating the options laid out in front of him. Maybe he is. Either way, he doesn’t look up – doesn’t even seem to hear her.
But she can see it from here – a peculiar hollowness to his eyes, like all cognitive parts of him have vacated the premises. It's not anything Britta hasn't seen before, but she never quite knows how to read it, all the same. And, for once, she thinks it might be better to leave Jeff alone.
***
Jeff bounces back. Britta's even there to see it, sitting in his passenger seat as he speeds over to his apartment for a suit before the stupid presidential debate that she's not allowed to participate in because the sheeple of Greendale would rather listen to a washed up former lawyer squabble with a starry-eyed teenager than, oh, she doesn't know, reason? (Anarchy can be a form of reason, Jeff, shut up.)
She won't admit it, but she almost admires him for dropping out at the last minute, even though she's pretty sure it's more motivated by embarrassment than any supposed friendship-solidarity thing with Annie. Still, it's sweet of him to help her in her futile quest to clean up the east stairwell. See? There's the Jeff that Britta likes — the one who keeps up the hard work after the performance of caring is over.
He asks her if they can maybe organize a surprise party for Abed’s birthday in a few weeks; the diner she'd started working at last month is camera-perfect for a Pulp Fiction-themed night. Britta’s cast as Mia Wallace (but, Jeff sternly added, absolutely no coke anywhere near the party. Britta rolled her eyes. Coke was for yuppies, and he’s the scummy lawyer-man type, not her). They’ll have to wait a few days to get started, though, since Annie is planning a thing for Shirley and Andre in the study room, and she somehow coerced him into helping with that, too.
***
So it goes.
They see each other roughly twice a week; it's not exclusive on her end, and while she still doesn't know about his, it doesn't really bother her either way. Jeff doesn't corner her on campus anymore, or shoot her wicked glances in the backs of classrooms. Britta rarely drops by uninvited, but she knows she can — like after the Lukka disaster, when she'd hopped in her car and driven straight to Jeff’s so that she could dissect the psychological weirdness of nearly fucking a war criminal to someone who might half-listen, even if (as he reminds her repeatedly) he didn't ask. (If his attention wanders too much, she can always drop the bomb that Abed’s got cameras up and active all over his dorm.)
He's visibly more comfortable after sex, too, now that he doesn't waste time with perfunctory check-ins. Instead of draping himself artfully across his bed, Jeff slouches into the living room and tells her to join him when she's done in the bathroom, so that they can watch television on his flatscreen. Most of the time, Britta curls into the opposite end of the sofa and makes fun of his sterile apartment during commercial breaks. ("You seriously use that?" She gestures to the hanging sit-up bar anchored in his bedroom doorway. "Yeah. Wanna see?" "Absolutely not.") Occasionally, she sits on the floor and pokes through his unpacked boxes, filled with DVDs and records, most of which she'd never even heard him mention in passing before. Their taste isn't close enough to be something shared — it remains, as ever, an open battle ground, should they feel like sparring.
After fighting it for months, Jeff finally caves and lets her smoke on his fire escape. He absolutely refuses to join her, but that's okay. Britta's pretty sure he uses the time to do his skincare routine.
And they talk more, too. Not about themselves, or this, or really anything serious. It's teasing, stupid and companionable. Or, sometimes, it's just chatter. Britta tells him something ridiculous she saw on campus; Jeff raises his eyebrows like he'd never deign to notice a thing like that, but, since she's so kindly brought it to his attention, he could allow himself to snort at it. She comes to recognize the certain warmth his voice develops after three beers, even as she always stops at two. After all, she still has to drive home when they finally call it a night.
They don't really go to her place anymore. Jeff claims he's allergic to her cats, but she suspects he's just uncomfortable with how much they like him, with how close they try to get when he'd prefer they stay at least an arm's length away. And it's fair of him to steer clear, because Britta would never want her rescues to find themselves too attached to a guy who likes their company, sure, but he wouldn't exactly climb up into the sky and steal the stars for them, or anything.
***
"So... I guess we don't have to keep sneaking around anymore."
"Yeah, I guess not."
Then, in near-perfect unison: "You wanna stop doing this?"
And there are a million reasons why, but neither of them is particularly eager to hash that out. The past couple of months have been nice. Britta has finally stopped mapping escape routes out of his apartment — and, no, not only because she's already learned them all by heart. Jeff has also stopped leaving metaphorical doors ajar, daring her to walk through and just date him, or at least spend the night — whatever makes her feel more at home, if that's what she’s looking for.
And that probably is what she's looking for, really. But she never found a home with him. She thinks, maybe, she might have found a best friend instead.
Because, when she's being honest with herself, Britta looks forward to the part of the night where she hijacks Jeff's turntable more than she does the bit where she stumbles into his bed. And while their St. Patrick's day hookup had been surprisingly good — something about spending an afternoon doing it in Abed's dorm room while the others were off battling inflatable rafts in a lake had really worked for them – she’d liked their debate as to whether or not Abed had actually bought that leprechauns had stolen their clothes even better.
Jeff tries to tell Britta it's not her, and that's ridiculous, because of course it is. But it's also him. And she plays that like a winning hand. For once, he doesn’t call her bluff.
On their way out of the library, Jeff lingers under the facade. The look on his face is curious as he takes in the sprawl of the quad. "You can still come over tonight, if you want. I haven't opened that new Antlers album yet."
"Yeah, I'll pass on the weirdly masculine chamber-pop, thanks." She doesn't bother fighting back a giddy little smile, because, fuck it, he's offering her the only part of this that she's been scared to lose. "But The Vampire Diaries is on at 8. And I still haven't fixed my TV."
Jeff rolls his eyes. "You're bringing beer, then."
"Dude, I don't even have the money to replace a chewed-up cable—"
"Ugh. Fine, whatever. I'll pick something up."
Their cars are on opposite ends of campus, per usual, and there's not really much more to say. Jeff has already started to stalk off, tossing his last response over his shoulder without glancing back.
Britta sticks her tongue out at his retreating figure, if only because she can. She's just happy that they're finally on the same page.