Work Text:
When Jeff graduates from Greendale, he does everything right. He’s graduating early, for one, taking quiet pride in the fact he’d been able to hunker down long enough to get a real degree, even if it is from a community college. He wears his best suit, aware it’s far too fancy by Greendale standards, but it makes all his friends clap and cheer and fawn in a way that’s probably only half sincere, so it’s worth it. He stands at the ridiculous altar they’ve built him and shakes the dean’s hand for a perfectly professional three and a half seconds, and lets him fling his arms around his shoulders and sob bodily against his neatly pressed lapel for about thirty more. When he finally leaves, buzzed from the high-quality champagne (which he bought, so you’re welcome everyone, he thinks) he does so with his head held high and, for the first time in a long time, a dream for the future he feels as if he can actually fulfil. No more lies. No more cheating. He’s going to make something of himself this time, and he’s going to do it good and honest.
And at the start, things seem like they might work out. He starts renting a new place, and he even finds a decently sized office to call home base. He’s not kicking it like he was before, but he’s less corrupt now, and that has to matter for something. Morality in law comes with a price, and that price sometimes happens to be one humidifier instead of three or four, which Jeff supposes he can survive.
He keeps in contact with everyone as best he can, even though getting his feet on the ground after graduation isn’t easy. He asks Abed to make his advertisement and in the meantime he drops by campus every now and again, just an hour or so for lunch. It makes his schedule tight, but it’s worth it.
Greendale doesn’t change much; one time he stops by and finds out that the dean accidentally ordered an entire semester’s worth of textbook in ancient Greek (somehow), so the college is now divided into two factions – those pushing for the exams to be postponed until the issue is fixed, and those desperate to graduate without delays, who have therefore starting learning ancient Greek out of spite. The factions aren’t even split the way he’d expect – he’d been wondering why Britta had been cursing him out in another language when he bumped into her at the door, and the explanation that she’s just too stubborn to take her mandatory credit classes a few months longer both makes perfect sense and no sense at all. Apparently Pierce already knows ancient Greek, but he’s refusing to teach it to anyone unless they pay him. Annie has stepped up as an alternate teacher, except she seems to have a natural disinclination for foreign languages – the next time Jeff visits, the others have to explain to him while Annie hung her head in shame that she’d accidentally announced she was a cannibal from France as she read out a textbook passage incorrectly.
But a month passes, then two, and he has to stop his philanthropic attempt to not be written out of the inane Greendale story arc for a while. His firm requires some attention if it's ever going to get off the ground, so for now, no more lunches. He deals with it by promising himself that when he’s made it big, he’ll invite them all to a five-star restaurant. He’ll even make sure they serve the gross vegan rabbit food Britta likes, and then everything will be fine.
They’re about to go into their third month when Abed finishes the ad, except it’s nothing like what Jeff asked for but he’s so caught up in the several cases he’s losing that he doesn’t even say anything about it to him. He forgets to pay him, and then is too stubborn to admit he forgot because what kind of a friend does that to someone about to enter their final semester, who probably needs the money and the reassurance that his film degree isn’t going to be being wasted? The same kind of person who fails to make it as a lawyer even when his new working model is protect the little guy who needs it, he’d guess. His solution to this is just not to bring it up, and to conveniently lose track of his phone for a few hours when anyone else does.
He doesn’t talk to any of them as much anymore, in part because his floundering business sucks up so much of his time and in part because he doesn’t want them to find out that he’s failing at this. Because if they found out, he’s sure they’d help him, and what was the point of going back to school and getting his new degree forged in the fires of self-improvement and friendship and paintball if he screws it up this time as well? He was meant to be good enough to do this on his own now, not rely on his ragtag team of misfits to brush him up into a better person. They’ve done enough, and a part of Jeff wants to believe that he doesn’t need them anymore. That’s not to say he doesn’t like them, doesn’t miss them, but he’s always intended to be a self-made and independent man. And sure, his friends need him too, but in the meantime, they still have each other. He figures they’ll do fine without him. Hell, maybe his dad was right, maybe they could learn a thing or two from being left to their own devices. He tries not to think about the part of him that wants to keep it a secret because he’s afraid they’ll look down on him after all.
And then they all graduate, and Jeff doesn’t realise until an hour before the ceremony.
They’d been talking about it for weeks in group chats he wasn’t active in, they’d left him messages and voicemails and he’d just… Forgotten . Because his business now has one foot in the grave and he’s been trying desperately to yank it out and prove that he isn’t the same person that walked into Greendale when he walked out of it. He’s no longer the conniving asshole who will bend the rules to make life easy, but of course that means that life has become hard. Harder than he anticipated. So he makes some rushed phone calls, buys some flowers he hopes won’t break his bank, puts on a nice suit, and pushes the speed limit until he’s there, very nearly fashionably late.
Somehow, everyone looks different and yet exactly the same. Annie’s hair is maybe an inch longer, not that he can actually tell. They all look bright and nostalgic, like an old photograph that hasn’t changed a bit, and that’s kind of exactly why they stand out. A small part of him wishes he’d stayed to graduate alongside them, because he’s starting to realise with growing regret how he hasn’t helped them by leaving them alone all these months any more than his own father did by leaving him, but it feels too late to realise that now.
The official graduation is bigger, whole classes are going at once and that calls for a little more of a celebration, not that his own was by any means small. Jeff is sat in the front row on the field in the warm August air even though he wasn’t the first to get here, because of course they’ve saved a seat for him. Their unwavering faith that he’d come makes the fact he almost forgot to twist inside his stomach. He smiles at them through the whole ceremony, grins bright and convincing the way his job has taught him while they all get handed their diplomas, but the entire time he’s waiting for the moment he can stand up and drown the twisting in his gut with the alcohol he’s spotted by the refreshments table.
He hides over there for as long as he can before the others finally find him.
“Jeff! I haven’t seen you in forever!” Annie chirps as she throws herself into him, and he wraps his arms around her and wonders if she can tell he feels awkward.
“Oh my God, guess what!” She goes on, and he crosses his arms and suppresses a grin.
“What?”
“I made valedictorian! Ah– Shirley too, of course,” She gestures to Shirley, who looks so pleased with herself and with Annie that she can no longer find the energy to be mad about being second mention.
“That’s great, I never doubted you,” Jeff says, because he never really did, even if it is fun to tease her.
“How is it being a big shot lawyer again?” Troy asks, equally as excited.
“Yes, you must be so busy these days!” Shirley chimes in. It’s then that Jeff realises it with a sinking feeling – they think the reason he’s been so distant is because he’s so busy, so successful. He feels his shoulders tighten but doesn’t think they notice. Any vague intention he had of telling them that he’s sorry, that things have been hard, that they haven’t gone to plan, that maybe he wasn’t ready to be the person he wanted to be yet, they all disappear with the next mouthful of champagne, and an easy lie takes their place instead.
“It’s okay,” He says it like it’s more than that. Fake humility is part of the game, after all. “We should be even bigger in a few months. Right now we’re still trying to get everything in order, but you know what they say – don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. It’s hectic though, I'll tell you that.”
“Well, we’re all very proud of you,” Annie grins, playing coy, her cheeks a happy pink. He’s proud of them too, but now it feels unfair to say it.
“Where’s Britta?” He doesn’t even realise he’s the one who’s asked the question until it’s too far out his mouth to take back. Abed spins and points to where she’s talking to the dean up on stage.
“She had some improvements for the psychology course she wanted to propose to him,” Abed says. “Want me to go get her?”
Jeff waves him off. “Nah, I’ve gotta go soon anyway.”
“Aww,” Annie, Shirley, and Troy all whine in unison, and all he can offer them is a commiserating half-smile and a shrug, as if to say business, am I right?
He leaves the party soon after, and he thinks as he’s on his way out that he might hear Britta asking after him, might almost catch her eye, but he makes a beeline back towards his car before she catches him, and it occurs to him on his way there that not once did Abed even think to ask about the money he still hasn’t paid him.
****
Another three months pass, and the business is all but underwater. It hits him fully, though he's been trying to stave it off, one night while running numbers. He realises his oncoming doom from amidst the scaled-down office he’s all but living out of. Since he’s sold off most of his belongings in his actual apartment, it barely feels like a home back there, but he can hardly afford the rent so maybe he won’t have it much longer anyhow.
He really thought Greendale had changed him, he thought he’d come so far from the asshole he was so long ago, but maybe the truth was that he was still an asshole, just with some glitz and glamour and false niceness spread on top, and maybe that just made him all the more insincere. Except maybe if he were insincere, if he were truly selfish and cunning like he used to be, he’d be able to win a court case or two. Maybe what this actually is is punishment, punishment for getting his act together a decade too late, a belated fuck you from everyone he ever wronged, his own friends included, designed to crush his dreams of finally being better. Maybe all you are, he thought, is whatever you are now. Maybe that’s it.
He hasn’t spoken to any of the others since they graduated. He has half an idea what some of them are doing, but not much. He notices they don’t contact him as much either, whether that’s because they’re too busy actually turning their lives around or because they’ve given up on him, he doesn’t know. They were nice enough to overlook his shortcomings for a while, they’d all looked so happy to see him, but that just makes him want to get even further away from them somehow. He spends a lot of his time alone or in the company of other lawyers, which degrades his faith in humanity even further, and of the ten or so women he sleeps with he remembers half of their names only vaguely. He’s trying hard not to think about his age amidst all of this, about how he doesn’t have time to restart his career a third time and still have any leeway over to settle down with someone and build a family like he wants. He ends the night lost in a jumbled sea of numbers that spell out doom any way you look at them, and an empty bottle of scotch that isn’t doing its job.
So he takes to the streets, looking for a place to get even drunker.
He enters into a bar he might have been to once or twice before, he doesn't remember. It's late, but not so late that the place isn't decently populated. He heads to the bar, the best place to drink alone without being so secluded that nobody even sees that you're there. If he wanted to suffer in complete isolation, he’d have stopped by a drugstore or something instead.
“Scotch, neat,” Is what he orders, without looking up. He thinks he recognises the voice that replies–
“Anything else with that? A cigar befitting a depressing noir film protagonist, maybe?”
He freezes slightly, closing his eyes to compose himself and send up a prayer that maybe, maybe he's wrong. He doesn't really believe it as he lifts his head, but when he sees Britta, bar rag over her shoulder, bottle of scotch in hand as she pours his drink, he has to face facts.
“Well, fancy seeing you here. You come here often?” He asks. Maybe it's not the funniest joke, especially after months of no contact, but he's already definitely not sober and he wasn't prepared to run into Britta when she's one of the things he's trying not to think about tonight. She looks almost the same as she did four months ago at graduation, although he thinks she might look a little more tired now, her roots are a little bit dark, like she's been forgetting to dye them, but he thinks it looks nice. It suits her.
“Almost every night,” She replies with a grin. “In fact, I happen to work here.”
“Psychology not working out?” He asks and takes a sip of the scotch. He thinks it's the good kind she's given him, but that might just be something she does to get people to pay more.
“Lawyering not going much better?”
He wants to tease her for calling it lawyering, because he's drunk and even he knows that sounds stupid. But he doesn't, because joking around with her as if nothing has happened and nothing has changed is a dick move. So he shrugs and looks into his drink, at the red wood of the bar, everywhere but her.
“Well, y’know.” is the only answer he gives.
He expects her to ask why he hasn’t called, but she doesn’t. She just quietly wipes down the bar and occasionally glances over his shoulder towards the small TV playing in the corner.
“Did you hear that city college got fined for lying about one of their teacher’s tenure?” She asks. “The dean’ll be throwing a celebration dance as we speak.”
“Hah, yeah,” He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know if he should apologise or mock her or just get up and leave and go to the drugstore after all. He almost does, but then she presses on.
“And speaking of teachers, look what my boss showed me how to do last week.”
She steps back from the bar and starts pouring various ingredients into a cocktail shaker before she slams on the lid. He watches her swirl it around, tossing it from hand to hand in a way that would be impressive if she didn’t have the exact same aura as a teenage boy showing you a skateboard trick he just learned. She catches the shaker in one hand and pours it into an angular glass, grinning at him.
“Pretty cool, huh?”
He gives in, because no, it’s not cool, it’s adorable, and for as much as he regrets everything that has and happened over the past seven months, he realises that he’s glad to see her. She starts talking about the other things she’s learned since being a bartender, like how many olives you can steal from the jar behind the counter over the course of your shift without being noticed. When he was cut off from her completely he felt like seeing her again would be the worst thing that could ever happen, like he’d somehow find a way to make things even worse between them, but now that he’s here, he doesn't want to leave. And he doesn’t. He stays even as customers drift out one by one, recounting his own stories back to her about safe topics that have nothing to do with them or with Greendale, like the time he was called in as an attorney to someone who wanted legal rights to marry his stamp collection, until all the other patrons are eventually gone.
“Sorry, I ought to head out,” He says. He goes to stand up and feels the weight of the alcohol hit him more fully. All his senses feel hot and fuzzy, but it’s not unpleasant. Maybe it has something to do with the fancy alcohol she’s given him. Britta motions at him to sit down.
“It’s fine, I’m the only one working tonight anyways.”
She comes back around the bar after flipping the sign on the door to closed and pours them each a drink.
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”
They keep talking, though the conversation slows now that it’s just them and the silence of the otherwise empty bar. The jukebox is playing quietly too, but the sound is too distant and booze-blurred to really hear.
“So, I guess I shouldn’t ask why you never called.”
Here it is, he thinks, the elephant in the room come to crush him flat. But his glass has just been filled up and his escape strategy that involved blending into the crowd in order to disappear like he did at graduation is no longer feasible. He sighs, recognising that he’s trapped.
“Look, I’m sorry,” He says. “I don’t know why I did that, I just… Things haven’t been great for me lately and I didn’t wanna make that everyone else’s problem.”
“That’s bullshit,” Britta grins sardonically. “You love causing problems.”
“Besides, it wasn’t the same after you left,” She goes on, stirring her drink. It’s pink on the bottom and cyan on the top, and she’s put about four olives in it, which is insane. “Everyone missed you. We knew you’d be busy, but I didn’t expect you to up and leave entirely. It was so weird. Like, I thought it was fine if we left on a bad foot cause we’d just see each other again, but–”
“Woah woah, hang on. You think we left on a bad foot?” He asks. And it feels stupid to ask, because why wouldn’t she? She had a laundry list of things to point to and say this is why I can’t stand Jeff Winger, but hearing her say it out loud makes his pride feel like it’s been aggressively stepped on.
“You didn’t even say hi to me at graduation,” She replies. “I mean, I didn’t expect you to whisk me off into the sunset or anything, but… I didn’t think it’d just…” She trails off. “You know, you were always such a pain in the ass when we were at Greendale, you treated everything I said like it was dumb or preachy–”
“Because it is,” He nods quietly.
“But then without that, I dunno… It felt weird . Like I didn’t know why I was doing any of the stuff I was doing anymore. Maybe I just got a kick out of annoying you, but I kinda thought that as long as I was pissing you off, I was saying the right thing. But then you left and the others didn’t give me as much of a response, so...” She shrugs lightly.
They sit in silence for a moment before he says–
“What happened to psychology?” Is that somehow my fault too? Because for all that I said, I kinda believed in you for a bit back there.
“Hah, well, let's just say the therapy field isn’t really in a position where it takes Greendale qualifications as a top priority,” She snarks, then chews on an olive. “I think deep down I knew I wasn’t cut out for it.”
“Well that makes two of us,” He clinks his glass to hers. He’d like to say, in classic inspirational Jeff Winger fashion, that you can be anyone you want to be, that you can work on yourself until you change into someone else, but he’s learned now that that’s not true. If Britta feels too immature to do more than serve poison to cynics, he’s not sure he can actually refute her now.
“Since leaving, it sorta just feels… Hollow,” Jeff finally says. “Like all that upwards momentum I had before I graduated got me nowhere. Or maybe it got me the only place I could ever go.”
“I get that,” Britta replies. “I steal olives when my boss’s back is turned cause it’s cheaper than buying them myself.”
“Well maybe if you stopped putting fifty of them in your drink–”
“Stop exaggerating,” She swats his hand away when he goes to pluck an olive from her glass, and they laugh quietly. It’s not as bad as he thought, talking to her about this. He starts to wonder why he kept away.
“Will you stop by again tomorrow? I’ve got the late shift. I could invite the others, or not,” She says. Oh, that’s why.
“I dunno,” He says, because he doesn’t. The good thing about his relationship with Britta is that he’s always been able to take a large step back and put distance in between them whenever it suits him, which is a selfish thing to do, but she lets him because he knows that deep down, she’s the same kind of person. Yet there is a reason they keep finding themselves beside each other again, and if he were drunker or dumber than he is, he’d say it’s because they’re in love or some sappy bullshit like that. And maybe, in a perfect world, that’s what they would be. In the easy quiet of the bar, he can tell that they’re like pieces of the same puzzle. Their crooked outlines have pieces chipped off and some have been glued back on, but not all of them. Some of the parts they’ve managed to reattach are aligned wrong, and now even though he thinks that in a better world where nothing had ever happened to change their shapes, they would have fit perfectly together, they just can’t anymore. Their outlines no longer match, but simultaneously the closest they can get to another person is each other. He remembers her talking about some psychology thing once, he was only half listening, about how hedgehogs have to huddle for warmth, but they can only get so close because of their quills. He feels more and more like life is a balancing act of trying to get close enough to her to feel fulfilled while keeping enough distance to keep himself appropriately guarded.
“Come on, four months of nothing, and now you’re just gonna leave?” Britta breathes, and he’s dragged back into the conversation he’d rather escape from.
“I didn’t say I was leaving,” Jeff replies. “I could stay. For the rest of the night, anyway,” It comes off a little more suggestive than he meant it, but at least if he goes home with her he can escape in the morning and not think about tomorrow at all before that.
Britta steps back and plucks the final olive from her drink. “Sometimes I wonder what I would have been like if I never met you,” She says lightly. “Y’know, just out of curiosity and stuff. Or what it would have been like if you didn’t run out on me back then. Y’know, when I told you I loved you.”
Jeff has wondered that too, about a timeline where they’re married with two kids and a row of white picket fences, bound together till death did us part. Or about a timeline where they never crossed paths at all, where he never went to Greendale. Some days he feels like he wants the former, like he’ll die if he can’t see her right away, and on other days he thinks he could never see her again and be fine. He wants the absolute best for her and he wants her to blink out of existence when he can’t tolerate her anymore. But he never feels just one way, and that’s the problem.
“Well, what’s done is done,” He says, because he can’t come up with a better answer for her. She props her elbows up on the bar and looks at him. She’s soft-edged and hazy in the bar’s dim lighting, and he wishes he could think of something else to say, something that would bring her in closer, without the risk of either of them pulling away. He knows that any day could be their last. He could leave tonight or in the morning and not come back tomorrow. But any day after they could crash into each other again, pulled by a relentless and violent gravity. It would definitely be easier if they were different people, people who married strangers or people who married each other or something else clean and simple. They’re in the hardest and worst timeline. But they stay there anyway. He thinks vaguely that Abed must’ve rubbed off on him even if he hasn’t spoken to him in months. Maybe they did change him, in some small way, after all.
“Well for now, I need some air,” Britta says, and then she’s rounding the bar with a packet of cigarettes in hand. “We can catch a cab together – I’m guessing you walked here?”
He stands to follow her, and he knows nothing is certain beyond the fact they’ll probably catch a cab and probably make out in the back of it. He doesn’t know yet that in two weeks he’ll be back at Greendale and for maybe six months, he’ll feel like his problems have been solved when in reality, they’ve just been delayed. He’ll get scared of losing her and do something stupid and impulsive like propose to her apropos of nothing, and then they’ll act like it never happened as soon as the fear has passed. They’ll keep trying to find that perfect distance between them that’s not too close, and not too far. God knows if they’ll ever find it.