*A/N - Hello boys, girls and everyone in between. It feels like forever since I last posted. I am so thrilled to finally have this one finished. Completing this has seemed impossible for the past 5+ months. So many distractions: new fandoms (and subsequent OTPs), the holidays, and of course, my shameful infidelity with other fics (which I will be posting in the near future). This will be my last Milady/Milord fic for a little while as my other OTPs are screaming in my ear for a little attention. Although I love writing Jeff and Annie, I think if I don't give myself a breather, all these stories will start to run together. This fic became a lot longer than I planned at a hefty 9 chapters. I originally wanted a brief 30 or so pages and somehow ended up with 70. I will be posting a new chapter every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I hope you enjoy it. As always, sorry for the long rant and please R&R, it is ridiculously appreciated. Thank you. - Nikki
CHAPTER 1: COMING HOME?
"Do you ever wonder why we never did it?" Jeff slumped, taking a sip of his scotch, clasping his hands together stretching them beyond the width of the bar. It was a surprisingly slow Saturday night at The Vatican. The microwaved August air was stagnant enough to inspire discomfort in a man of Jeff's age, though he remembered a younger time, when the low simmering heat felt welcomed.
"Did what?" Britta gulped her drink beside him.
"Tied the knot."
She choked. "Ugh, Dick. That burns, you know." She wiped at the alcohol in her nose. He wasn't looking at her and seemed unsurprised by her shock. She sighed. "Which time?"
He shrugged, still not looking at her. "Most recent, I guess."
"Hmm." She nodded and answered. "No, I don't wonder."
"Why not? I mean, it almost makes sense. You and I are fixed points in each other's lives, we're friends and we have been able to juggle a physical relationship." Britta scoffed. "It seems like it could possibly make some semblance of sense."
She knew what this was about. The summer was practically over; the semester had just ended and the start of the 3 week break stretched in front of him. Any distraction he relied on before was officially gone. They hadn't heard from Annie in weeks. Neither one of them was sure she was coming back. "Maybe because we don't love each other."
Jeff scoffed. "Love seems like a gamble to wait out for, don't you think?"
Britta spoke quietly. "No, it's real." She had experienced it, once or twice. It was nothing like what she could expect from Winger. It was worth the gamble.
He looked at her and nodded. "Okay, so say love is real; maybe it's just a chemical reaction we have for people that we know we can't." He sighed.
Britta allowed herself a small nod. This was definitely about Annie. She might not have been there for whatever had been said in the study room that night, but she knew something had been acknowledged. "Maybe we only fall in love when we don't shy away from the obstacles and sacrifices. That's how we know it's real, because it's worth all the bullshit."
Jeff nodded, unable to admit that she was almost profound; which seemed conditional to being about 4 drinks deep. "Love aside, why not just settle down with someone you're comfortable with?"
She patted his back. "Because it would be safe, boring and the wrong kind of miserable."
He laughed sourly. "Is there a right kind of miserable?"
She exhaled, exasperated. "Duh doy." Turning her body, she sat on top of one of her crossed ankles, straightening her back and speaking animatedly. "For instance, you and I are the wrong kind. We purposefully bug the shit out of each other, but don't care enough to actually argue about the things that matter. We would hypothetically be content if we stayed together, because we don't challenge each other, so we'd never really get in each other's way. We would literally be settling, because it would be too easy to stay. It doesn't matter to us, so we don't get invested. Right?"
He nodded, trying to keep up with her drunken, yet somehow still intelligible logic. "Boring, safe and the wrong kind of miserable." She cleared her throat, changing her tone ever-so-slightly. "Say we pair you off with someone else, some random woman neither of us knows." Their eyes met, but Britta quickly continued. "Say things were vastly different. More chemistry, connection and differing ideals; maybe you're also good friends – I don't know, who's to say in this purely hypothetical scenario." Jeff shook his head, astounded by the notion that in all the time he had known her, she had not come to grasp even a hint of subtlety. "You both argue a lot, because you feel too much for things to be lukewarm. She believes in you, encourages and even scolds you. You teach her to grow, live in the moment and let the small things go. You help each other mature and try to become better people. You both care genuinely when you disagree, so some fights may come down to shouting matches, but you can never leave it unsettled too long for that exact reason, you care and it really matters. So you're either on cloud nine or you're miserable, but the right kind of miserable, temporary and indicative of how deep the feeling goes and how sometimes opposites really do attract."
She smiled. "You and I could never work because we can be just about anything to each other and our dynamic would never change. It's supposed to change. You don't marry someone as a consolation prize."
"You are aware that you possess absolutely no subtlety, right?" He tried to shrug off the main topic, not sure that he could talk openly about his obvious and yet somehow simultaneously unspoken feelings for Annie. Teasing Britta in the moment was one of the few comforts he easily clung to.
She shrugged her shoulders loosely with belligerent grandeur, as if the liquor had profusely oiled her joints. "Eh, subtlety is only a tool for the secretive or the clever. I, being neither, have no use for it."
Jeff smiled and gave a half-chuckle at the self-imposed compliment masquerading as self-deprecation. Britta thought far too highly of herself to imply anything she deemed disparaging. "Speaking of deflective segues…" She offered and he felt himself shrink at the start of a topic he wanted desperately to inwardly dwell on and outwardly avoid. She cleared her throat after sipping her drink.
"You know Annie is the only number in your phone with a specialized ringtone."
"Come again?"
"I noticed it a couple of months ago. At first, I thought it was something she made you do, but then I realized that you did it on your own out of convenience so you would know it was her the second it rang."
It was a completely ludicrous, half-assed observation that left him feeling exposed and embarrassed. "That's ridiculous." He tried to counter nonchalantly.
"Has your phone ever gone to voicemail for Annie?" There was a pause. "It went to voicemail for me, Abed, Shirley, but never for Annie."
"And?"
"That matters, Jeff. I have seen you immediately stop talking to an attractive waitress and answer your phone by the second ring when Annie called." She shook her head with a soft smile. "Anyone with 2 eyes and half a brain can see the difference."
Jeff pondered in silence, gulping his scotch down and suddenly feeling like a pre-teen boy mortified that his friends could tell he had a crush on somebody. He reached across the bar refilling his glass. "Put it on my tab."
"I'll let Willy know." Britta nodded in the direction of the bathroom where her co-worker had gone.
"I thought we had this unspoken rule where we didn't talk about this." He muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his index finger.
"Yeah, it was fun, wasn't it?" She said with no trace of the feeling, leaving Jeff's stomach to clench. "But Summer is almost over and I don't know about you, but my 'specialized' ringtone has been pretty quiet. You?" The silence was all the reply she needed. "Soon you're going to have to figure out what you're going to do about it."
The grainy and static quiet prodded at him for a second before he loudly declared. "I am not drunk enough for this conversation. This…" he gestured to his chest. "Is a level of clearance, you have not been permitted to."
"What's it gonna take?"
"One word: Blackout."
Britta shook her head and looked at the approaching Willy. She gestured for more. "So help me, I'm going to therapize you, you son of a bitch. Even if it kills me." At least she didn't have work tomorrow.
"That seems a healthy and ethical attitude." Jeff gulped down his glass as if it were nothing.
Britta followed suit, a little for solidarity, but mostly because she liked having a drinking buddy who could keep her pace. "Shut up."
Jeff woke up alone; with an ache all over … well, everywhere. He begrudgingly opened one eye a crack and was momentarily thrown from any sense of equilibrium. It took him a second to realize that he was somewhere vaguely familiar; a room he had seen once or twice tucked away in an apartment that had become a second home to him. He groaned. "Over 40 is too old for a blackout." It honestly felt more like 'lights out', as if a few more of these would be enough to bury him 6 feet under.
He lifted his head very slowly, not exactly seeing the light as it flowed in, but feeling lilac stained streams of sunlight pouring on his face and sealed eyelids; a sensation that sounded pleasant enough, but felt like the seventh circle of hell in that particular moment. He gave a shallow breath, involving as little of his body as humanly possible.
His eyes finally opened and he remembered where he was; Annie's abandoned room, surrounded by trapped muted tones of her personality, lacking all of her presence. "What the hell?" He moaned, grasping at his bearings.
He heard a similar groan outside the door and looked to see Britta dragging her feet from her room down the hall in pursuit of the kitchen. "Stop yelling, Dick!"
"Ugh, why am I here?"
"Because wishes do come true." She said snidely and stretched her arms above her head, immediately regretting the movement as her stomach lurched to her throat.
"No, I mean how did I make it this far? I can't believe I didn't drop on the floor beside the front door."
"I can assure you, I offered no assistance." She continued inching her way to her destination.
Jeff stood very slowly and followed, wishing he could evaporate out of his own skin. He didn't allow himself another look around the room that was the shell of its resident. "I figured."
Britta entered the kitchen and began brewing some coffee. Jeff sat on a stool and leaned onto the countertop separating the kitchen from the living room, keeping one palm to his forehead; sure that the pressure he applied kept its contents in one piece. "Did I do anything crazy last night, like get a tattoo?" Everything during the booze binge, except for the Uber ride home, was fuzzy. He noticed his phone beside him and unplugged it from his charger, thankful to see his wallet and keys beside it.
Britta had her head resting in the one clean side of the sink, letting her face be soothed by the cold metal; when it proved to be lacking in relief, she turned a small, frigid stream of water on her face. "How the hell would I know? I was drowning in alcohol, same as you." She turned off the water and stood motionless. "You know what pisses me off?"
"Fiscal responsibility?"
"Shut up." She muttered. "Douche. I could've completely healed you last night and I wouldn't remember."
"I know." Jeff gave a half-grin, feeling self-satisfied. "Why do you think I bet you couldn't take those shots of tequila?"
Britta hung her head, suddenly defeated. The whole reason she had forced the night was to get him to open up, using the psychology she'd been heavily studying. Somehow the night had turned on her; she had lost to an amateur, albeit a professional asshole who used reverse psychology on her. Scoffing, she wondered if this qualified as irony. "Fine. Enjoy being emotionally constipated. I hope you get hemorrhoids."
His brow scrunched. "Emotional hemorrhoids?"
"Those too." She nodded.
He laughed breathily, unable to exert any extra energy from his dwindling supply. He sipped some coffee. "There is nothing to heal. Don't be so nosy, Parker Posie."
"Really dating yourself with that one." Britta murmured.
"Shut up." He scowled. "I miss our friends, that is it. You don't need to make a big production for something perfectly normal."
"Mmm hmm." She nodded, the arch of her brow proving how unconvinced she was.
"Just stop reading into things."
Her eyes narrowed. "I like drunk you better."
"The feeling is mutual." His left thumb and index finger cradled the bridge of his nose. "By the way, you might want to redecorate a little." He just barely nudged his head in the direction of Annie's old room.
"Why?"
"Troy's going to be back in a week. This is still technically his apartment."
Britta shrugged. "And he's about to become a millionaire. I doubt he'll stay, but if he does, I'm sure he can learn to stomach some purple drapes and a few decorative flower pillows; because 'technically' that is still Annie's room until she says otherwise. Summer isn't over just yet." She said as if it was the simplest thing in the world.
"That should be interesting." He deflected Britta's hopeless hopefulness.
"What?"
"You and Troy living together, as exes."
She smirked at the sad attempt for a subject change. "Oh, please. Troy and I are barely exes. Even if we are, we're friends first; we always have been. Our relationship was short, calm and ended amicably. I think we would be great roommates." Her tone became patronizing. "Sometimes people view others as more than just a conquest or a notch in their bedpost."
Jeff glared at her. "I'm not like that." Usually he would've laughed off the accusation, but things had felt vastly different and he had become more defensive since the night he had really said goodbye to Annie.
"You're right, my bad. I'm mistaking you for some other shallow, narcissistic and selfish man-whore named Jeff Winger."
"Hey, I have grown. I'm not that same guy anymore."
"What changed?" She pushed.
There was a heavy silence for a moment, before Jeff shrugged, deciding to play nonchalant. "I have the least glamorous job, I've eased up on the time-consuming self-grooming and I don't sleep around anymore." He shook his head and then quickly groaned as the aftershocks of the movement birthed a concentrated queasiness.
"So you're claiming to be a better man, because circumstances have forced you to grow up?" There was a sour humor in her voice, disbelieving he could take credit for the things out of his control.
"Not a better man." Not yet. "Just a different man."
She watched him for an eerily charged minute. "Maybe." Her voice sounded foreign and surprisingly mature to him.
"Ugh. Are you going to try and diagnose me?"
She laughed. "How much time do you have?"
"Okay, I'm leaving." He grabbed his phone, wallet and keys. "Thanks for the blackout."
"Don't forget that I let you stay here!" She called to his retreating back.
He opened the door and turned to look at her. "Don't forget who paid for the Uber!" He grinned and shut the door behind him. It wasn't the issue of diagnosis that prompted his departure, but his desire to stop talking about Annie. It had been weeks since she had last called them. He didn't want to have to pretend that he knew she was coming back. The silence almost felt like confirmation to him, whether he wanted to interpret it that way or not.
Annie Edison walked out into the airport terminal, her bag rolling directly behind her as her eyes swept across the building, seeing nothing and everything, fully observing and wholly unfocused. Countless people walked by, some saying goodbye, others reuniting and despite the silence greeting her specifically, she sighed with relief, thankful for her decision to keep her return quiet. There were many reasons for her choice, ranging from saving herself from the pressure to deal with a welcome enthusiastically while facing jetlag to saving her friends from the pressure of needing to welcome her enthusiastically, but the main reason for her not making such a big deal of coming home is because she knew it wasn't and even more so, she knew it was temporary.