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God exists, Jeff thinks, and He is laughing at me. Never mind the fact that he's agnostic on his best days, the sight in front of him is so absurd, so specifically tailored to push all of his buttons, it had to be divine intervention. Shirley would call it divine punishment and say it was entirely deserved. Of course, Britta would say if anything it was further proof that God couldn't exist, because why would He have such a cruel and unusual sense of humor? Then Jeff slaps himself (mentally), because thinking about Britta is part of what got him into this mess in the first place. Specifically her right now, hair twisted loosely in a bun, hair already slipping out and curling around the nape of her neck, squatting down in her last pair of clean jeans and his fucking Ralph Lauren sweatshirt, inspecting a bag of apples.
"Hm. There's a fair-trade symbol but apparently that doesn't even mean anything anymore, I mean ever since the Peruvian bloodbath thing nobody can ever tell, and you should never trust a corporation anyway, blood-sucking pigs, and-"
It is a sign of how far Jeff has fallen that he finds this rambling endearing, and to his horror he even finds himself reaching out to brush the hair from her neck. To recover some sense of dignity, he finds himself snapping back:
"Britta, I'm sure the fair people of the Greendale Co-op don't need any lecturing about Peruvian bloodbaths, now could you please just pick a damn set of apples so maybe we can get out of here before midnight."
She rolls her eyes at him, but stands up and throws the apples into the basket. He knows they're more for him than for her, and he knows she knows, and that thought, more than anything, is terrifying to him. This process should be long, filled with plenty of suffering and inane bickering, not quick and effortless. She shouldn't know what brand of oats he likes for breakfast, remember to pick the light greek yoghurt, not full fat. He shouldn't instinctively reach for the plant butter or the bread (brown, not seeded, because she wants to feel "healthy, but not like a bird." He shouldn't even remember her saying that, or how hard he laughed.) Because it started as it always did, two lonely people trying to be less lonely. A political activist (who hasn't touched a protest sign in months) and a sleazy lawyer (disbarred two years ago), both in their thirties, both trying to fill the empty days where better things should've gone. They made the same, empty assurances they always did (no strings attached, clearly casual, dating you would be a major feminist setback etc etc) yet somewhere, somehow, Britta stopped leaving. The bed stopped being cold when he woke up. The New Yorker joined the issues of GQ that littered the counter, a second toothbrush lined up next to his on the sink, a shitty crochet blanket thrown over his IKEA sofa. And before he knew it, Britta had elbowed her way into his life and started talking about "I need to go shopping with you sometime Winger, the lack of junk food is killing me."
How could he say no?
And now here they were, at the godforsaken Greendale Co-op, way too close for Jeff's comfort despite the fact Britta was in the next aisle over inspecting various IPAs because Jeff knew she hated his lagers but was trying to stay off the vodka.
God, they sounded like an actual couple.
But that's where they stopped at - seeming. A political activist and a sleazy lawyer, both as superficial as the other, both hating the other, but not as much as themselves. They were the same deep down, him and Britta, and that's why both of them were here, in the same grocery store, putting milk and eggs and cereal in the same basket, both too scared to call it what it was. A political activist and a sleazy lawyer- both cowards.
"Jeff?"
He yelps.
"Jeez, Britta warn a guy next time you're going to jump hi- no that isn't-"
She makes no attempt to stifle her giggles.
"Okay, you know what, that was not a yelp, that was a manly expression of surprise, and anyway I'm not going to apologise for it because when someone randomly sneaks up on you-"
"Awwww, Jeffy-baby got scared, and now he's submitting to the pressures of the patriarchy to conform to traditional powerful men stereotypes, aww."
"Okay, you know what, I don't have to put up with this. I'm leaving."
And he does. He turns around, away from the apples and started walking towards the entrance. He considers walking out the double doors, going into his car and driving all the way back to his flat, back to Macallans and plain boiled rice and oblivion - if only to prove he could.
"Oh whilst you're there can you pick up some toilet paper? We're all out."
He turns back around.
***
His therapist had once brought up, gently, the idea that maybe his relationship with food (and by extension, his appearance) was not exactly the healthiest. Issues with control, she brought up, maybe self-esteem. Maybe his lack of a father, which it always seemed to fucking come down to, one way or another. He doesn't remember much else, the words greyed out and censored in his mind, but he remembers clamming up for the rest of the session, and for the subsequent three ones after that. She dropped the subject, and food was never mentioned again.
Of course, his budding psychologist of a not-girlfriend has none of that tact or grace. On his better days, it's one of his favorite things about her; the way she consistently sees through his bullshit and stands for none of it. He needs that fire, he thinks, it's what keeps him grounded.
"So why do you not have any junk food in here?"
Today was not one of his better days.
They were at his (their) kitchen counter, unpacking the grocery shopping from earlier. Or rather, Jeff was unpacking and Britta was sat on the counter, scratching Chloe absentmindedly behind the ears; Jeff had long since lost the battle about animals on countertops. She'd already put the ready meals in the microwave (sweet potato curry for her, salmon and rice bowl for him, she hadn't even needed to ask,) and was now swinging her feet in tune to its whirrs.
"No, I'm serious. Why is it all lettuce and why is plain rice the only carb allowed to enter this hallowed ground? Would it kill you to have some pasta, or twinkies for that matter? Is this some failed macho ego stroking thing because I promise you your masculinity is not defined by a fucking cupcake."
He grinds his teeth. She doesn't know.
"I mean it's almost concerning at a certain point because how much plain chicken can I watch you eat before I legally have to report you to the local mental ward, like I get that most spices are unethically sourced by undocumented slaves in Nicaragua but I'm sure there's some organic shop-" she continues, but Jeff stops listening over the buzzing in his ears.
She looked at him gravely. "Listen Jeff, this is unproductive so I'll drop it, but you do know that if your eating issues worsen, I'll report it, right? I don't want it to get to the point of a mental ward- but I'll do it if I have to. Consider it a warning."
"I think I've eaten more apples in these six months than I have in my entire lifetime. Tell me Jeff, is it an ego thing? Cos we were doing eating disorders in psych today and you fit like, so many of the criteria. Is it an obsessing-over-your-appearance thing, are you insecure? Oh, maybe I could get Duncan to give me extra credit- hold on let me grab a pen." She shuffles off the counter and runs into their bedroom.
"Is that all you're having for lunch, Jeff? That apple?" Freckles, ginger plaits, couldn't be more than 5th grade. Helena? Harriett?
"Of course, how else do you think I stay this fit?" He flexed a bicep and she giggled, smiled. Twirled a finger round a plait. All was well.
He pulls out a chocolate bar, Britta must have gotten it when he wasn't looking, milk, all the nutritional values a blinding red. He flips it over on autopilot, compulsively scans the list of ingredients, lets the numbers stab at his brain. The microwave beeps- it is a death knell- and all of a sudden the salmon-and-rice bowl sounds disgusting, a boiling plate of grease and fats and oils that he can already feel pooling around his hips. Normally he'd just eat an apple and be done with it- but Britta's in the next room, rifling for something in their bedroom, and this apartment is just too damn small.
When Britta returns, pen clutched in hand triumphantly, Jeff is nowhere to be found. The chocolate bar lays discarded on the table. An apple is missing.
***
On his better days, Jeff is slowly starting to overcome the idea that he has been irrevocably tainted with his dad's shitty brush, genetically, irreversibly incapable of change and long term commitments. He thinks fondly of his study group, thinks of the chess matches between him and Annie, thinks of every DVD Abed lends him, each one reverently placed on a shelf next to his TV. It makes him feel something warm and fuzzy a sappier person would call love.
However, as he has already established, this is not a good fucking day.
Duncan clearly agrees, as he stares blearily at him across the table.
"Jesus man, do you know what time it is?" He'd yawned when he opened the door to a slightly maniacal Jeff.
"What? Dude it's 2PM."
"Exactly, I should still be asleep."
Still, he didn't turn him down, and two minutes later him and Jeff were sat at his kitchen table, Jack Daniels on the rocks and Macallan neat in hand respectively. Duncan kept nodding off into his palm, and Jeff noticed his tartan dressing robe was stained, but also he had just run halfway across town because he could feel the toast he'd had for breakfast rolling in his stomach, so maybe he shouldn't judge.
"Who does she think she is, waltzing into my life, I had a routine, things were going great for me-" he pointedly ignores Duncan's wince- "and anyway I can't have an eating disorder, because would someone who had one drink scotch? No, they'd say there were too many carbs and alcohol makes you bloated, but I'm here aren't I, and Macallan is my favorite thing in the whole wide world so," he swirls his glass triumphantly and takes a sip, "if anything this is proof that I'm completely fine, actually, and Britta can take her stupid psychology textbook and shove it up her ass!"
Duncan, if possible, looks even less impressed.
"Oh no, Britta wants to help you, that's so sad, Jeff," he sits up straighter, "look at me! I am a 41 year old alcoholic professor and I've got to go to the board of governors in two hours, and instead I'm sat here, hungover, in this godawful dressing robe, listening to this guy complain about how his girlfriend cares about him, oh piss off!"
"She's not my girlfriend." Jeff manages to grind out.
"What?"
"I said she's not my girlfriend."
"Oh, I'm sorry, let me get this straight, you two just live together, buy groceries together, have sex all the time I'm assuming," Jeff cocks his head incredulously, "not that I've thought about that, obviously. Basically you've got everything you could ever fucking want, but you guys are refusing to call it what it is, I'm assuming based on some childhood trauma, and instead you come to me to complain! It's like a man dying of thirst watching another man drown, I actually can't believe it." Duncan knocks back the rest of his drink.
"Listen here you two-bit psychologist, if I wanted to have my past shittily summarized I would've gone to the actual therapist I already pay for. It's not that simple, there's...it's a whole process, and I was doing just fine by myself, and I don't want to give that up, okay? The second you 'call it what it is' or whatever, you're changing something. Something that works."
Jeff hunches in on himself, he feels too big. Something that takes up too much space, a bumbling, ungainly beast in a fine china shop, who can't control his flailing arms and leaves corpses in his wake. Duncan looks at him, really looks at him, and Jeff squirms uncomfortably. He always forgets that Duncan used to be, well, good, before the siren song of alcohol. He pushes his half-empty glass away; it doesn't seem so appealing anymore.
"Do you have issues with control, Jeffrey?"
"Excuse me?" There's a dull buzzing in the base of his skull.
"I assume that's what you mean by things changing. You'd have to give up control."
"Okay, listen here dipshit," Jeff sits up in his chair, spine straight, the fuzz of the alcohol gone now, "there were three things I'd learnt by fifth grade: lie confidently, girls like muscles, and everybody leaves. It doesn't matter how good you look or how charming you are or however many empty promises they make: promises can and will always be broken, and people will walk straight past you like they'd never even seen you before, like they weren't supposed to love you-"
Courtroom, mahogany: expensive. His mother sobbing, a lawyer, cool and confident and with a tailored suit, consoling her. His father, pinched bloodless lips and shifty eyes, walking down the steps. He reaches a hand out, it brushes against cheap polyester, his dad doesn't even look back.
Jeff slumps back into his seat, defeated. Duncan looks at him with a strange mix of triumph and pity, and it's a testament to their fragile friendship that he doesn't even gloat. Instead, he gets up and hands Jeff a glass of water, takes one for himself. An understanding of sorts. Jeff is once again struck by how Greendale changed him, forced open his heart with a crowbar until he was sitting at disgraced professor Ian Duncan's kitchen table as his friend, not his lawyer, and was shocked to find he didn't hate it. He takes the glass of water thankfully and sips it. Pauses, takes a breath. Duncan waits patiently.
"If Britta leaves, I can't stop her."
"Yes Jeff, ever since this nifty little development called, erm, 'women's rights', it is generally frowned upon to hold a woman against her will."
Jeff ignores him, and addresses Duncan's dusty beige carpet instead.
"I...I don't want her to leave. But what if she does? What would I do?"
"Jeff, my handsome, muscular, idiotic friend. Do you not think Britta's thinking the exact same thing?"
Jeff paused, startled. For all his waxing lyrical about how him and Britta were two sides of the same coin, the idea that she might have been going through something similar hadn't even crossed his mind.
"Because I'm willing to bet she is," Duncan continued, "but she opened herself up anyway. Because that's what happens when two people are in love, they give up control. Love is letting go, Jeff, and that's terrifying, but you've got to let go of the old to embrace the new. This is the start of something with the potential to be bigger and better than anything you could ever be on your own, and you're not going to grab it with both hands, because you're too busy clinging to the past. That's stupid, and you're not a stupid man, Jeff. Now go," he smiled, slightly bitterly, "go get your girl."
Jeff looked up, slightly shocked. Duncan wasn't looking at him, instead inspecting a rusting gold band on his finger, a resigned look on his face, swilling his glass of water like it was liquor.
"Thank you, Duncan." Jeff says, and Duncan looks up, meets his eyes. An understanding, of sorts. Duncan shakes his head towards the door, and that's all Jeff needs to race out of the apartment, towards something terrifying, something new, something better.
***
By the time he reaches his apartment, Jeff is regretting earlier him's decision to go on a health kick as he straggles, huffing and panting and generally gross looking, to his car park. He smells Britta before he sees her, or rather smells the distinctive sting of weed and knows she isn't far behind. She only smokes when she's stressed, he thinks, and then slaps himself (mentally) because yeah, running out of the house without leaving an explanation to somebody who's always got one foot out of the door maybe wasn't the best idea.
He spots her sitting on the curb, staring into the middle distance, joint in hand. The bun had almost completely collapsed at this point and her hair was plastered, loose and sweaty, to her neck. Her jeans were stained and his beloved Ralph Lauren sweatshirt had streaks of dirt and ash, but he couldn't find it in him to care. He pulls out his phone, spots the 17 missed calls and 44 unread messages, and guiltily puts it back in his pocket. He slumps down next to her, and she doesn't even bother to acknowledge him.
"When I was younger," he begins, voice low and gravelly, none of that patented Winger charm, "I thought that if I looked good enough, people would make me feel wanted, make me feel loved. Love me enough to stay. Of course, they never did."
Britta shifts, takes a drag of the joint.
"But along the way, it started to feel good." He continued. "That gnawing pain in my stomach, a direct consequence of what I did, something I had the power to change. I couldn't change what happened with my dad, I couldn't win anyone back, but I could eat, or I could not, and if I've got to suffer, I might as well do it on my own terms."
She looks at him, and her blue doe eyes are shining with tears he knows she won't spill. He feels a wave of loathing wash over him, then snaps out of it because Britta deserves better than that.
"So, yeah, guess it doesn't take a psych major to figure out I've got issues with control. I'm sorry."
"If the chocolate was so damn important to you," Britta responds, voice taut with anger, "you could have just said so. You didn't have to run off, but I forgot that you're a Winger. That's just what you do."
Jeff winces, but takes the hit. It was deserved, after all.
"It wasn't about the chocolate-" he begins, but Britta interrupts, exploding:
"Oh, so what the fuck was it about then, if not the fucking chocolate? Did you wake up and realise you didn't want to do this anymore, and you were just too much of a coward to call it off, huh? Did you get fucking tired of me, was I not the perfect little sex doll you wanted, did you want the sex but not for me to actually be a part of your life?" The tears begin to spill, "I thought you'd finally changed, Winger. Guess the fucking joke is on me, again."
She gets up, but Jeff grabs onto her sweatshirt. Because he can't stop her leaving, but he'll be damned if he won't try.
"No, no that's not it, I- I got scared-" Britta scoffs, "No, I got scared because I'm not used to being in love!"
That gets her attention, and she stops trying to wriggle out of his grip. She looks at him with fear in her eyes.
"Don't fucking do this to me, Winger-"
"No, no" he carries on, because he has to make her understand, "because it's terrifying. I look at you, and my heart goes all...mushy, I was in the store the other day and I was going to pick out a cat toy for Chloe, I haven't eaten steak in months because I know you hate the smell, and I've always thought that familiarity leads to pain, okay so if I could just pretend that wasn't happening then nothing could end, because there was nothing to end. Which is, fucking ridiculous I know, but I didn't eat white eggs for a year because I thought they would make me fat and I had a panic attack after reading the sugar contents in a fucking smoothie, so maybe I am ridiculous, I don't know!
The fear had melted to pity, and maybe something like understanding. God what a bunch of messes they were.
"All I know is that old Jeff would have never admitted any of this, and that old Jeff was a miserable bitch so maybe he doesn't know shit. Someone once told me love is letting go, so I am letting go of old Jeff and his assholishness that never got him anywhere, and I am opening myself up to the possibility you will tell me to fuck off and be completely in your right to do so, because if there is a chance, however small, that you'll forgive me and take me for all my fucked up problems, I want to take it."
She sat down again, and was he high or was that fondness in her eyes.
"Love is change. Love is shedding a big ugly cocoon in a kind of gross process because the butterfly that comes out is bigger and better than a million cocoons, love is terrifying and I am a coward but I'll face it for you Britta, because I love you."
She laughs, the snorting, ugly kind he finds adorable.
"6/10, you're losing the Winger speeches and you really need to work on your synonyms." Her face shifts to something more serious. "But you have to understand how scary it was. I did all that changing and opening myself up stuff and in return you fucking run away? I was terrified, I thought you'd left like everyone else. I only waited because I wanted some kind of closure, if you were ending things. Which, I guess you aren't?"
"On the contrary," he grins," I'm making it official."
She scoffs, decks him in the arm. "You're such a fucking idiot." Jeff rubs his head sheepishly, messes up his perfect bed head. "But I should apologize as well, there were more tactful ways to bring up the fact your boyfriend has an eating disorder than fucking drilling him on it like it's CSI: Miami."
Boyfriend. The word made colorful butterflies somersault in his stomach rather than dark pits of despair, and wasn't that a change?
"Okay then," he says, "I'm sorry for abandoning the person with abandonment issues. Even?" He holds out his hand. Britta smiles and takes it, palms calloused and rough against his. "Even. Now do you want to watch the new film Abed brought over, 12 things I dislike about you or whatever?"
He laughs, because some things never change. "I'd love to, Britta," and they walk off hand in hand up the same old shitty apartment stairs, to a new beginning.
***
"You don't have to, if you don't want to," Britta says, voice serious for once. Jeff recognizes the out, briefly considers taking it. Stares at the small milk chocolate square Britta's holding in her hands, remembers the burning reds and running numbers. Thinks about how easy it would be to just say no.
They're curled around each other on his couch, shitty crochet blanket thrown over the both of them, 10 Things I Hate About You playing on his TV. Britta's snuggled into his shoulder, all her harsh edges and sharp angles melting away and she looks up at him with the most tenderness and compassion she has ever shown him, eyes big and blue and understanding. He almost says it, words on the tip of his tongue, but then he remembers Duncan, and a rusted gold ring. Remembers he's still got to beat Annie in chess, and he's supposed to play the new COD with Troy after this, and read Shirley's latest gossip she's no doubt emailed him. 10 Things I Hate About You is still running, and whilst Abed would probably disapprove of chocolate as a movie snack, preferring buttered noodles or the more conventional popcorn, he's sure he'd allow it, just this once. Says it would be narratively fulfilling, or something.
He takes the damn square and puts it in his mouth. It tastes sweet, too sweet, and maybe if he spends an extra ten minutes in the gym he can burn it off, but then Britta's looking at him, and her eyes are filled with pride, and she kisses him.
Damn the chocolate, he thinks, and kisses her back. It tastes like love.