My first Community fic. I originally planned for this to be quite short, but it ran away from me and turned into a monster fic, so I will be putting it up in 4 parts. Please leave some feedback, it's very much appreciated!
Disclaimer: Nothing I could write could come close to the genius of Dan Harmon and his writing team. All rights go to Harmon and NBC.
The invitation is in between his GQ subscription and his power bill. It's addressed to Jeffery W. Winger in swirly font that is almost impossible to read. The ivory white envelope is embossed with small flowers and sealed at the back with a gold seal in the shape of a heart. It looks so perfect he almost doesn't want to open it. Well, to be perfectly honest that isn't the only reason. He sighs, dropping the rest of his mail on the shelf in the hallway, his keys in the small bowl he'd been given as a "practical gift". With one hand he loosens his tied and undoes the top two buttons of his nice-but-not-designer shirt (also a gift, but he liked this one more).
He drops himself on the sofa, an expensive designer sofa that is covered with some fair-trade throw made by Lebanese squirrels or something (again, a gift), which is actually kind of useful because said designer sofa is beige. He's just about to turn on the TV to watch some mindless sports channel he doesn't care about when he hears the lock on his door turn and open.
He raises his eyebrows and within a second a familiar figure is standing in front of him, complete with leather jacket and black boots, holding an identical ivory envelope.
"Britta, that key is for emergencies." He says, doing a half-wave in the air as proof that he is not dying, nor dead.
She ignores him, instead holding up the envelope to his face. "How does Annie know my middle name begins with a C? No one knows that!"
He holds back a smirk because he's known her middle name since their third year at Greendale and is waiting for the right time to use it against her. "I think the more pressing matter is that Annie, in all her Disney princess glory, is getting married."
"Ugh, I know." Britta concedes and flops on to the sofa next to him.
He thinks about the situation for a moment and makes a face, "We haven't even met this guy."
"Yes we have. It's that blonde guy with the geeky glasses from her Winter Solstice dinner last year. The one who kept talking about rescuing animals." Britta tosses her envelope onto his coffee table, where it landed right next to his.
That's right, the guy that looked like he had a perm. Britta talked to him for like an hour about PETA. "I don't like him."
Her lips break into a smile as she whacks his shoulder gently. "Yes you do. He complimented your shoes. We're just going to have to accept the fact that she's growing up. " Jeff nods, trying to picture Annie in a wedding dress and failing. Britta breaks the silence with an exasperated sigh, "I don't even have a plus one."
"Neither do I," he responds. He actually hadn't even thought of that.
She throws him a look, "Yeah, but you're Jeff Winger, you'll find someone in the next minute to take. It'll probably be one of your bimbo legal assistants who don't even know how to spell the word law let alone how it affect soc- What?" She makes a face when she finally notices he's staring at her.
"We could go together."
She raises an eyebrow, obviously surprised by his suggestion but trying to hide it. "What, like together together?"
"I didn't know we were 13. But yeah. " He smirks, and it turns into a genuine smile when she nods.
"Ok."
He responds by getting up and getting two beers out of his fridge, pausing to lean against his counter. He looks at her until she looks back.
"What would you have done if I wasn't home yet?" he asks, while picturing her making herself at home at his place, as she has done many times before.
She shrugs, and takes off her jacket. "Wait. Eat your food."
"You ate my food last night; eat some of your own."
"I ran out." She says, biting her lip.
He moves from the counter to the sofa, "So go get some. At a store. Not my apartment." Instead of a reply, he sees her staring at her hands. He sits back down next to her, his tone immediately softening, "Britta, what happened?"
She sighs, takes a beer from his hand and leans back. "My rent, my phone bill, cat food, my Netflix subscription, my power bill, Kavir-"
"Kavir?"
"My sponsor kid." She gives him that look that means he should know what she's talking about, and he remembers. Of course, Britta sponsored Kavir at the same time she bought a goat for a family in Bangladesh in his name. Another gift.
He sips his beer, thinking of a plan. "Look, here's what we'll do. You cancel your Netflix, and you can use mine whenever you want. Even for those boring documentaries. And we'll try and find you a better phone plan."
She nods, but sighs and leans her head back to stare at the ceiling. His insistent offers to help don't even register as weird anymore. He's already paid her rent 3 times in the last two years. "Blogging doesn't exactly make a lot of money. And no one ever clicks on that belly fat ad."
"Well, yeah. It's creepy." He says, then realises what the real problem is. "Look, you have to stop impulsively donating. You have a problem."
"I do n-" she starts defensively before he puts up a hand to stop her.
"How many times have you donated to the Oxfam guy on your street?"
"Four... This week." She says, then slams her head into the back of the sofa, "I do have a problem!"
He chuckles, because somehow her desperate need to prove her generosity is still endearing, and places hand on her knee "It's okay, we'll fix it. Now go pick a movie while I make us some food."
He's getting stuff out of the fridge when he looks over and sees her kneeling in front of his DVD shelf and choosing between that documentary on dolphins he hasn't seen yet (a gift, he would never buy that for himself) and a zombie thriller he knows she hates. She places the zombie movie on the coffee table, and settles back onto the sofa, nursing her beer.
After the movie they change the channel to VH1 and keep it on in the background as they talk. She falls asleep on him, and he wakes her up for long enough to direct her to his bedroom. She sleeps in his bed, he sleeps on the couch because that's how they do things when they're not drunk enough. It's habit now, this being-more-than-friends-but-never-ever-talking-about-it. They know each other too well, are too far into the comfort zone to see the borders.
She wakes up late, because a life of blogging and failed journalism has lead to a screwed up sleep schedule, and finds a cup of coffee next to the bed; he's already left for work. Annie's wedding invitations are still sitting on the coffee table. Before leaving his place she has a shower (there's a full bottle of her conditioner there which is curious because she used it all up last time), eats breakfast, turns on the dishwasher and leaves her jacket on the sofa because it's warm out and she'll probably be back before nightfall.
A couple of hours later she's sipping coffee and chatting to Shirley. After covering the basics: Britta's blog, Shirley's sons, they confront the elephant in the room. "Annie's getting married."
Shirley nods, not looking surprised. To be honest, none of them should be surprised; Annie called a special meeting the day after she got engaged so she could tell them the news. But no one ever really expected the day to actually come. "I know sweetie. I'm bringing Andre as my plus one. He looks so good in a tux." She smiles proudly and Britta's glad they worked out, and feels guilty she doubted them.
"Annie's like 8 years younger than me."
"I thought you don't believe in marriage, Britta." Shirley puts down her coffee and Britta feels like she's being interrogated.
She shrugs. She says she doesn't, she thinks she doesn't. As a kid she never imagined the fluffy dress and roses but... "It's just, she's so young and it makes me feel-"
"Do you really wanna finish that sentence?"
"Lonely. I feel lonely." She admits, and realises she's never said that to anyone before.
Shirley reaches out to cover her hand, her thumb stroking gently. Her fingers reach the bracelet around Britta's wrist, a gift, the one she never takes off even though she's not a bracelet person. "You'll find someone. Or maybe, you already have."
"What?" Her head shoots up, eyes wide.
Shirley smiles innocently and stands up, placing her Mary Poppins-esque bag over her shoulder. "I have pick up the boys from school now. Oh did you know that I got four new orders for my brownies this morning! Here's my half." She leaves a fiver on the table and hugs Britta around the shoulders.
Britta nods in acknowledgement, and waits till Shirley's out of earshot to let out a sigh. Everything seems to be going so well for everyone else. Annie's getting married; Jeff's actually practising law again, at a firm that doesn't suck the souls out of babies; Shirley is somehow managing to sell brownies over the internet, brownies that don't have pot in them. Not wanting to dwell on it, she pulls out her wallet which actually just functions as a coin purse now. Fingers crossed she has enough quarters, she opens it to see a card, silver and shiny and rich-looking. Brows furrowed she takes it out and is shocked but not surprised when she sees Jeff's name on the front. He must have slipped it in this morning. She fingers the card and vows to give it back to him tonight before taking out the necessary amount of coins to pay for her half (she tips slightly less than Shirley, but whatever).
His eyes follow Abed (and his camera) around his office, watching as he shoots the scenery, as it zooms in on his framed degree before finally panning to him. He is leaning back on his very comfortable office chair, playing with a pen as he stares quizzically at his friend.
Abed looks over the camera straight at him, "And... action!"
Jeff leans forward, "Abed, what are you doing?"
"This is my wedding present to Annie. It's a video diary of the study group in the present to show how we've moved forward in our lives but how we still remain a community." Abed voice comes from behind the camera, which is still focused on Jeff.
This is true, he guesses, they have remained close as a group, much more than first-year-at-Greendale-him would have liked. But somewhere, somehow he became very much dependent on this mismatched group of people. Some more than others, mind you. His conversation with Shirley still mostly consists of ill-meaning gossip and he rarely sees Pierce. Troy, Abed and Annie, though he cares for them deeply, are an obscenely large generational gap below him and frankly make him feel old. It's Britta really that he connects with, to be honest, that he always connected with the most -
He shakes his head, pointing his pen at the camera/Abed. "A wedding present is supposed to be something the couple can use or appreciate. You've only met the guy once. He won't care about the group."
His friend's head pops up above the camera again, tilting slightly. "I've met him lots of times. Annie, Troy, Craig and I hang out all the time. We watch a lot of movies. Craig likes foreign films. And Arnold Schwarzenegger."
Jeff thinks for a moment that this is reason alone for Annie to not marry him. Then gets to the important part. "You hang out with him? Why don't I hang out with him?" He waves the camera down from his face and Abed obliges.
"This plays like the classic parents versus daughter's boyfriend storyline. Except the climactic ending usually takes place as someone objects to the wedding. Please don't do that."
Jeff sighs, it hadn't actually occurred to him to try to stop the wedding. But he knows he can't. "I won't. I just think she's young."
Abed shakes his head so vehemently that Jeff is concerned. "No," he says, finally pressingly the off button on the camera and placing it safely on his lap before looking back at Jeff with serious eyes. "You think she's brave. For taking steps you're still too scared to take."
"What?" He wants to scoff, wants to deny, but all his lawyer arguments have somehow vanished. His face is plastered with that awful forced grin that appears when his tongue stops working.
Abed tilts his head again, resembling a puppy. "Troy wants to get them a heart shaped trampoline, should I talk him out of it?"
Britta's already at his place; he can tell because she's playing the Bare Naked Ladies CD someone got him for Secret Santa one year. He still doesn't know who it was; none of them would confess. She's wearing one of his T-shirts instead of her tight singlet top and lying lengthwise on his sofa, a pack of Oreos on her stomach, reading his latest issue of Time.
"Wow, when should I move out?" he deadpans, but he's not really surprised. She turns to look at him and a smile slips over her lips. She rotates herself into a sitting position allowing him to sit next to her.
"Our friends are weird." She muses, offering him an Oreo.
He takes two, mentally adding 5 more minutes to his run time tomorrow morning. "Tell me about it."
"Why have we only met Craig once?"
"Because apparently we're the over-protective parents who are going to try to stop the wedding." He looks at her, a grin creeping over his face because he can't handle the absurdity and he's happy to see she's cracking too.
"Abed?"
He nods, stretching his shoulders so that his arms falls behind her head on the sofa. She leans her head back and rests it on him for silent moment, before pushing herself up and pulling on her boots.
"Okay, I should go home. I've got a blog to finish for tomorrow and I'm revising that piece Vanity Fair said they'd consider."
He smirks up at her; it's not often that she's taller than him. "Wasn't that a letter to the editor?"
Her mouth opens in shock to his low blow. "Shut up!" She reaches down to whack him on the shoulder. Hard.
"Sorry. Ow! Wait, before you go -" he escapes her by getting up and taking a few quick steps to the kitchen. He pulls out a plastic bag from the fridge and hands it to her.
"What is it?" She looks from him to the bag quizzically and he's so tempted to use sarcasm.
"Leftovers from last night. Plus some bread and fruit. That should feed you for another 2 days." He says and watches as her eyes soften. She places one hand on his shoulder to pull herself up and kisses his cheek gently before making her way out the door. He sees his T-shirt cover the butt of her pants and wonders how many of his shirts he has lost this way.
Just before she leaves, he calls out: "Hey, remem-" but the slamming door interrupts him.
Nevertheless 15 minutes later, when he is changed out of his expensive suit and is watching the news with a bottle of water in his hand, his phone buzzes. Safe home. Nite x. He replies quickly, his fingers flying over the final x like the habit it has become.
