Work Text:
“This is the show!” Britta said as the group raised their glasses. Jeff looked around the table at his gathered friends and smiled faintly.
Craig, Chang, Frankie, and Britta. They were the Greendale Five now. In a way, Jeff had been treating the last two years like an epilogue to his time as a student at Greendale, but sitting at the Vatican that night, he truly felt as if those years were in the past. He made eye contact with Britta for a moment and she gave him a sympathetic smile, her eyes a little sad.
“And she says, ‘Sir this is a Taco Bell’!” Jeff snapped out of his reverie to hear just the tail end of one of Chang’s stories. From Craig and Frankie’s faces he guessed he was probably better off having missed the set up. Ben glanced over at Jeff now.
“Hey Winger, what’s up with you tonight?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Ben, maybe its that he just said goodbye to two close friends?” Frankie offered sarcastically.
“Pssh we gotta snap you out of that funk, man! Lets hit the town!” Chang said.
Jeff chuckled.
“I think this is the extent of the town-hitting I’ll be doing tonight. We’ve got to prep for summer classes tomorrow, right?”
“Come on, Jeffrey the night’s still young.” Craig pleaded, making eyes at Jeff.
“It is so depressing that Jeff Winger is the one advocating for responsible behaviour tonight.” Frankie sighed, sipping her drink.
“Hey, I’m the king of responsibility!” Jeff retorted in mock offence.
Britta laughed.
“Yeah you’ve always been the mature one.” she gestured toward the bar, “Can you give me a hand with something? I need to get ready for closing time and I’ve been slacking off all night.”
Jeff nodded and followed Britta into the back room. She shut the door quietly.
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
Jeff scratched the back of his head, not making eye contact.
“What are you talking about?”
“Shut up we are not dancing around this all night. Your cool routine stopped being effective the fifteenth time I saw you cry.”
“Which time was that?”
“2011. Horsebot 3000.”
Jeff gasped.
“Yeah!” Britta prodded his chest, “So spit it out! How are you doing?”
“I’m like a 4 out of 10 maybe. But its late. I’ll be a 7 by morning.” Jeff responded, finally looking her in the eye.
“Things always feel way worse at night. Why don’t we go back to my place for a bit?” Britta asked.
Jeff raised an eyebrow.
“Not like that, you douchebag!” Britta hissed, smacking him on the arm, “Lets take the gang back to the apartment for a while for a low key party. Chang and Craig clearly don’t want to go home yet and I don’t think you should be alone tonight.”
“And?” Jeff asked, seeing a little spark in Britta’s eyes.
“And I don’t want to be alone up there, okay? Is that what you want? The apartment’s always been so busy, its going to be weird with just me living there.” she admitted.
Jeff nodded.
“Yeah okay, sounds good.”
Britta patted his shoulder and walked out to talk to the others. Jeff leaned against the door and slouched, staring at the dirty floor while the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
Jeff tapped his fingers on his steering wheel as he wound through the streets, headed toward Britta’s apartment. Britta’s apartment. That’s all it was now. He snipped off the thought at the bud.
“How are you going to make rent now?” he asked. Britta looked over from the passenger seat.
“Deb and George I guess.” she sighed.
Jeff shot her a look of surprise.
“You’re cool with that?”
“I mean its been going on without my permission forever anyway. I might as well take advantage right?”
“It saves the rest of us the effort of being middlemen, I guess.” Jeff responded.
Britta looked back out of the window, gently bobbing her head to the Smashing Pumpkins song playing on the radio.
“I can’t keep leeching off them forever though. I’ll have to find a new roommate and maybe get a better job.”
Jeff laughed.
“Your job would be fine if you didn’t blow your whole paycheck.”
Britta smiled and pressed her forehead against the window, feeling the car’s gentle vibrations flow through her slightly tipsy brain.
“I need a job that pays enough that I can be a little stupid and still make rent.” she said.
Jeff flipped on his turn signal as they approached the chain-link fence surrounding Britta’s building’s parking lot.
“Hey you’re the last one of us still here that doesn’t work at Greendale. Normally I’d never recommend that anyone condemn themselves to that purgatory, but seeing as its you, maybe my idea about shooting for a guidance counsellor job isn’t a terrible idea.” he suggested.
They pulled into a space and Craig and Frankie’s cars pulled up next to them. Chang stumbled out of Craig’s car, shouting something about homophobia and disrespect. Britta laughed.
“Yeah maybe.”
Jeff made an excuse about needing to make a phone call and stayed in the car for a moment while the others headed up. He hadn’t had a moment alone since the drive back from the airport. He stared past the fence at the building across the street. In lit windows, shadows moved back and forth. People cooking and running on treadmills and getting ready for bed. Their stories just carrying on. He felt some bleak thoughts gathering at the edge of his mind and decided it was probably time to go get hammered.
Jeff fumbled in the dark for the switch to release his seatbelt and brushed something on the console. He wrapped his fingers around it and brought it up to his face. A small black bobby pin. The only stray object in his car’s spartan interior.
Jeff noted with frustration that his heartbeat was running faster than before.
Definitely time to go get hammered.
“So when I was in high school I was usually a straight A student, but I was failing PE in junior year because the teacher really had it out for me, right? So I get all riled up and spray paint ‘asshole’ across the gym floor after school one day. Turns out the whole football team was in the locker room and they all walked out and saw me doing it. I wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who was super popular with the football team... well except one of them but that’s another story... so I’m thinking I’m absolutely screwed. They’re going to tell the coach and he’s going to ruin my perfect record for sure. But then the next day there’s an assembly and the principal is pacing on these six foot letters spelling out ‘asshole’ and he’s shouting that there’s going to be hell to pay if somebody doesn’t come forward and nobody says a word. It was amazing. They all covered for me. It really taught me a lesson.” Craig trailed off, lost in thought.
Britta raised an eyebrow.
“What lesson? Class solidarity?” she asked.
“Don’t hire asshole PE teachers.” Craig responded before downing a shot of vodka.
Jeff laughed and Craig gave him a look.
“What was high school like for you Jeffrey? I bet you were pretty magnificent in your prime.”
“I’m still in my prime!” Jeff responded, his pride a little bruised, “Nah I did alright. Got tall early, which is a decent shortcut to popularity. Junior high kind of sucked, but high school was pretty good.”
“You better not have had a secret previous group of cool teen best friends before us.” Chang sulked.
“I can absolutely assure you I’ve never had a group of friends like you guys.” Jeff chuckled.
“I hated high school.” Frankie declared, staring into the middle distance wistfully.
“You should have dropped out.” Britta offered.
Frankie gave Britta a tired, but genuine smile.
“I’m happy with how things turned out.” she said.
Chang grinned.
“Yeah it seems like no matter how bad things get, everything always turns out okay in the end. I mean I almost killed some of you guys a couple of times and look at us now!” he said cheerfully.
Britta patted him on the shoulder.
“Ben remember what we said about bringing up the time you went crazy with monkey fever, kidnapped Craig, and tried to kill us all? And the time you helped trap us in an underground laboratory? It makes it reaaally hard to be forgiving.”
“You were the one who let the monkey out.” Chang pouted.
A little after midnight everyone started drifting out of the apartment or out of consciousness. Frankie agreed to drive Craig home and bid the group goodbye as she lugged him out into the hallway. Chang crashed on the couch and was snoring within seconds. Jeff stayed at the table with Britta for a moment longer.
“Decent first night without the roomies, huh?” he asked.
Britta nodded and smiled.
“Yeah its been okay. You going to stick around?”
“I’m pretty drunk and I don’t think I can ethically leave you alone here with Chang, so I guess so.”
“Chang’s got my usual spot so I’m going to sleep in Abed’s old room. Used to sleep in there with Troy so it won’t have that weird unfamiliar ceiling feeling y’know?” Britta gestured at the door in the back of the apartment where Troy and Abed’s dreamatorium had once been. Another little relic of the past that had faded away.
“Are you going to be okay?” Britta asked softly.
Jeff shrugged.
“I’ll be fine. I’m always fine. You know me.”
Britta stared at him quietly.
“Yeah I know you. Good night, Jeff.” Britta stood up and gently kissed the top of his head before walking off to the other room. She was being uncharacteristically kind tonight and Jeff didn’t care for it. Or wanted not to care for it. He didn’t want to believe there was any reason he might require extra care.
Jeff looked around the apartment, now silent except for the patter of a light rain on the windows and Chang’s breathing. He wondered where he should crash for the night and considered trying to sleep in one of the chairs by the TV, quickly dismissing the thought when he imagined what his back would feel like the next morning.
He sat listening to the rain for a second, took a long, deep breath, and turned to look at the door behind him.
“Its nothing.” he whispered to himself.
Jeff flipped the light on and froze. The room wasn’t as empty as he had expected. Most of her things were still here. Trinkets and photos on the desk. Stuffed animals on the bed.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. She had only taken the necessities, but some part of him had thought he would walk into the room and find all traces of her erased, faded like a memory. He’d been here before, but her absence and the things left behind made him feel like he was trespassing.
Jeff shut the door, twisting the knob so the latch would connect quietly, turned the light back off and sat down on the end of the bed. Fingers a little unsure from alcohol and fatigue, he clumsily removed his shoes and fell back, staring up at the white ceiling.
A finger of rot extended out from the wall above the head of the bed. Jeff traced it with his eyes as light from a passing car briefly illuminated the ceiling, the light scattered by the intensifying rain. He imagined her frowning up at the imperfection night after night, complaining to the landlord, looking up tenant’s rights, and smiled sadly. There was a strange intimacy to the situation.
He thought back to the conversation earlier in the night. Back to his high school friends. Memories of the faces of a bunch of teenagers in grungy 90s fashions streamed through his mind. Jason. Kallie. Todd. Marcus. Sophie. Old friends he hadn’t seen in years. People came and went. Life was like that. The memories were a sort of faint comfort, like listening to an old song. Maybe some day these times would be memories like that too.
Jeff closed his eyes and let his head sink into the pillow.
“Maybe.”