Title: you like to think that you're immune to the stuff (or four times Britta didn't say I love you)
Pairing: Jeff/Britta
Fandom: Community
Words: 1430
Rating: pg13
Spoilers: Through "Paradigms of Human Memory"
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own these two.
A/N: This is my first fic for "Community." I just got into the show after marathoning it for about a week and a half. I really really adore Jeff and Britta, and it's a shame (and perplexing) that shippers are few and far between. But for those who love them, enjoy! I've never fic'd for a comedic couple before, so hopefully I got the tone down alright, and hopefully I'll get better with practice
(minus) one
No one ever told her that I love yous have consequences — in retrospect she understands that she should have been more wary (it takes little these days for her ego to be knocked down a peg or two, or maybe three).
So maybe it was two parts jealousy and two parts competition and only one part sincerity at the start, but the thing is that words like that latch on — the declaration takes hold and grows like a weed.
Reminder: weeds, they're unwanted. Undeterrable.
Britta tells Jeff Winger she loves him and she won't let herself believe that she means it.
Three months later and an I never loved you. No take-backs. Denial is a fickle bitch.
one.
The first time, (well the second time really, but the first time it never happened, remember?), the first time they are both drunk as fuck. Just as all healthy relationships begin.
She is nursing her second whiskey sour of the night in a dive bar as far from the center of Greendale as possible that she can feel exotic and still have enough cab fare to get home.
"You know it's a Wednesday, right?" Jeff slides onto the stool next to her, seemingly unfazed to find her so far from her normal stomping grounds.
"What are you doing here?" she slurs slightly, more shocked by his presence in such a grimy bar than his presence on the edge of town.
"Family dinner." He notes her expression. "Yes, I'm married with children. Did I forget to mention that?" An eye roll. "I was having the long overdue by-the-way-I-faked-my-law-degree-and-oh-yeah-did-I-mention-I'm-a-community-college-student-now conversation with my mother. She wasn't exactly thrilled."
Jeff is obviously already inching up on the legal limit, but he signals to the bartender. "Double scotch."
Britta doesn't push him on the mom stuff (family crap she's never been good at), and when he doesn't ask, she offers "my cat died."
"Maybe you'll learn how to interact properly with us humans now," he says. "Though I guess you and Atticus were well-matched. Deceptively callous and obnoxiously judgmental. Not to mention dangerously good-looking."
She laughs, lets the complisult and regular old insults roll off not because she doesn't care but because she fears that she cares too much. Besides, this is comfortable. Normal. Them.
"She also berated me for not having found a wife yet," he says after a brief silence.
Britta's momentarily confused. "Oh. Your mom."
"I guess I could have kept up the joke of our faux-marriage, but she wants me to have tall grandchildren so telling her I was marrying a midget would probably give her a heart attack."
"I'm 5'3" jack wad. You're the freak towering over me at 6'4. Besides, I don't believe in marriage."
"What, you couldn't imagine us in a picturesque little farmhouse with a golden retriever and two kids named Dick and Jane with blinding blonde hair and freakishly upturned noses?"
Britta laughs and then her stomach does a quiet little flip. Ugh, fuck this. She downs the rest of her glass.
Three drinks later and his hand is on her knee. He's also just insulted her again.
"Fuck you," she mutters and he kisses her.
Two.
Abed's room has the kind of familiar stale smell unique to college dorms and a hostel she stayed in for three weeks in Berlin, once. His blankets are itchy, his pillows flat and Britta can feel the bedsprings digging painfully into her lower back.
(See when you're Greendale parents and Troy is eager for rafting on March 17th, you could hang back on the grounds of needing mom and dad time. But that speaks of a commitment neither will accept. Instead, Britta had feigned the flu and Jeff had feigned indifference towards water and boats and racing of any kind.)
They begin bickering the second it's over, Jeff rolling off of her and pulling the sheet with him. You're too slow, she starts. You're too loud, he bites back with a smirk. Britta sighs and turns her head.
"This is pretty gross, you know. Abed sleeps here."
Jeff shrugs. "He uses the bottom bunk."
Britta wants to call him out on his lie, but that would force her to admit that she can tell by a flickering of his eyelids when he's fibbing. Or bluffing; he does that on the regular. I know you she could say in the same intonation as another three words, could crawl over him once more and kiss down his collarbone, but they don't do knowing and they don't do serious.
"We should get dressed," she says instead.
Three.
"Get the fuck out of my apartment."
"You're sick."
"Your face is sick."
"Thank you?"
"You're not welcome."
"Okay, well I'm gonna' give you a pass on the bad comebacks just this once because you're clearly delirious and incapacitated."
"Your face is — "
"I'll tell you what — how about I bring you a paper and pencil and you can just write down all these excellent insults and read them to me all at once to save us both time."
"…"
"Look, I know you're pissed. I just wanted to bring you some soup."
"Did you bring me a new stomach?"
"They were sold out…hey hey! A face! I thought your pillow had swallowed it permanently. I guess my wit gets me somewhere."
"Don't flatter yourself. I was getting snot all over it."
"Sexy."
"Speaking of, if you're expecting to get gratitude sex out of your pathetic offering of cold chicken noodle I wouldn't get your hopes up."
"Now it's time for you to not flatter yourself. No offense, but I'm not exactly turned on by dry-heaving and the smell of vomit. That's a weird fetish."
"Says the man into nipple play."
"I thought we agreed not to talk about that?"
"That was before your transgression."
"Which, might I point out, grew out of one of your kinks."
"I asked to be handcuffed. I did not asked to be handcuffed and left in a janitors closet for half a day."
"I said I was sorry! How was I supposed to know that Abed was gonna' have a mental breakdown about The Cape being cancelled? I had to sit with him and hold his hand in Duncan's office for four hours as he rambled on and on about 'the cruel nature of nielson ratings.'"
"Oh, poor you. Did I mention Dean Pelton walked in at one point looking for his Cher costume? THIS ISN'T FUNNY."
"Then why are you laughing? Ouch! Don't throw your snot pillow at me."
"Just give me the soup and get out."
"I'm gonna' interpret 'get out' as 'go into the kitchen and make me some tea.'"
"Chamomile. Please."
four.
There's a beat where they both consider it, she's sure of that much. But then, pressure to define and all of that. When they were sneaking around and it was all covert it was easier to pretend nothing was serious and everything was meaningless because officially nothing was happened. You know, on the record. Jeff and Britta were not sleeping together (neither sexually nor literally because she certainly did not run out of excuses for going home afterwards around April and he certainly did not get that expression like maybe he actually wanted her to stay they absolutely did not wake up spooning three – okay, nine – times in the last month of their 'fling.')
So, instead.
"You wanna' stop doing this? Yeah."
See, Annie got a romantic montage and longing glances and stolen looks and all of that vomit-inducing ambiguous crap (but if she's sure of one thing these days, it's that relationships are built on vagueties. We are less evolved then we think.) and Britta got…well, Britta got exactly what she signed up for.
She will not make the mistakes of last year and run full-speed towards him just as she feels he's slipping away. And she understands that Annie's naïveté runs deep (naïve, yes, but she also knows that the teenager is far from delusional) and that chemistry, compatibility, love and attraction are all far from directly correlated. Nothing seems causal or consequential to her anymore (this might be nostalgia for her anarchist days, just maybe), and somewhere along the line she grew hardened and jaded, because he takes one step back and she takes two.
(Britta also remembers drunken phone calls and leveling the playing field, and if she's keeping score she's already made one three-word declaration, and he's made zero. She won't let him beat her by two.
Instead – "it's you."
She walks away.)