It was still twilight when Jeff was jolted awake by Annie, who was shaking his arm just below his shoulder.

"Jeff," she hissed.

He jolted up into a sitting position, looking around frantically for a sign of… danger? Something wrong? Because either something bad was happening or Annie was waking him up for no reason at the crack of dawn, and he wanted to believe she wouldn't do that.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It's 6:30," Annie told him, as though this was supposed to mean something.

Jeff really wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt here, but that meant his alarm wouldn't be going off until 6:45 and he would have gladly taken that time. "That explains nothing."

She rolled her eyes. "In fifteen minutes, Britta's alarm is going off. I figured you should probably be out of here before that happens."

"It's early, Annie, I'm still going to need more."

"Do you want her to spend the next week calling you a lecherous old man just because I made you sleep in here and you didn't say no?"

This thought hit Jeff hard, and he found himself newly alert. As he scrambled to crawl out of bed, he said, "Right, okay, good point." He paused briefly with his hand on the doorknob and turned back to look at her. "Hey, um… thanks for this. It was much better than the floor."

Annie smiled gently. "Thanks for not being the lech Britta thinks you are."

Jeff almost threw back a friendly retort—something about how he was a lech, perhaps—but Annie was still sleepy and her eyes so kind that all he could do was smile back at her. How did she always get him to warm to her so easily?

He closed her bedroom door slowly behind him, attempting to move quietly enough that it wouldn't wake Britta in her corner. His suitcase was still in Abed's room, and he had that in mind as his next stop until he turned around and saw that he was not alone.

Abed sat at the dining table, eating cereal and watching Jeff with a neutral expression.

"Um," Jeff said.

Perhaps he should have seen this coming, but he'd forgotten, in his early-morning haze, that Britta and Annie even had another roommate, let alone that that roommate was the reason he'd ended up in Annie's room in the first place.

"Morning, Jeff," Abed said, matter-of-fact enough that anyone else might have thought that Jeff emerged from Annie's bedroom every morning.

"Abed," Jeff said carefully. He forgot about getting changed, forgot about Britta, and gingerly sat down in the chair across from his friend.

Silence for a few moments, then: "You slept in Annie's room because of me, didn't you?"

"No, that wasn't… I just…" Jeff hesitated as he realized that by lying, he might provoke more uncomfortable questions than the one Abed was already asking—why else would he have spent the night with Annie? why was he trying to sneak out of her room before the others were awake?—and maybe he and Abed could do the adult thing and talk about it. "Okay, I sorta did, you're right."

"If I was bothering you, why didn't you just tell me?"

"You were generous enough to invite me here, but you have your own routine. I wasn't going to disrupt that."

Abed considered Jeff for a fraction of a second. "Don't worry about it. I'll be quiet from now on. I didn't invite you to stay with us just to make you uncomfortable."

"Speaking of that, Abed…" Jeff glanced down at his phone to gauge how much time alone they had left. 9 minutes until Britta's alarm went off, and he was going to assume that Annie wouldn't be out for at least another few minutes, either. "Why did you invite me? Hell, why did you tell the group that I needed somewhere to stay in the first place?"

"Do you remember our first year at Greendale, when we found out you were living out of your car?"

Jeff remembered it vividly, although he didn't much like being reminded. "What of it?"

"Back then, you didn't want to tell us because you were still convinced you were going to be a lawyer again, and you wanted us to see you that way. You thought you were better than us."

God, Jeff wished he could argue. "Okay."

"This time, though… I think you didn't tell us because you think we're better than you."

"What?" Jeff exclaimed, hating the defensiveness that he heard in his own voice. "That's not—"

"Neither of those things are true." He said this definitively, looking at Jeff with a stern look that conveyed that the matter was closed. "You're one of us. And you weren't going to ask for our help, so I just made sure to give it to you anyway."

Jeff sat dumbfounded, feeling the gravity of Abed's words in his gut.

"Don't worry," Abed murmured, "You don't have to say thank you."

From anyone else, that would be sarcastic, but as it was, it just gave Jeff the permission he needed to sit with Abed in silence until Britta and Annie's alarms began to blare.

Annie's door creaked open and she flitted across the living room, into the kitchen. Jeff considered her as she happily relayed the details of her forensics homework to Abed; considered Abed as he happily listened; even considered Britta, who groaned as she clamored to her feet and rubbed her eyes on the way to the kitchen.

Did he think his friends were better than him?

Sure. Not that he'd ever say it.

"I didn't know Jeff even owned pajamas," Britta said to nobody as she sat down at the table.

Abed and Annie glanced at him for the briefest of moments, looking him over—his non-descript tee-shirt and pajama bottoms left them totally unmoved.

"Why shouldn't he?" Annie asked.

"I used to say they were tacky." Jeff hoped that Britta would drop the matter now, because he remembered with sudden clarity that he once said something else to Britta about pajamas which, given last night's sleeping arrangements, he'd prefer she not relay.

"Meaning he wasn't able to show off his body while wearing them," Britta muttered. "He used to say that no woman would ever see him in pajamas unless they were an old married couple. But the joke was that he didn't ever plan to wear pajamas to bed with a woman."

Jeff knew that Annie and Abed were probably looking at him, but he was too nervous to see how seriously they were taking Britta's words, so he kept his eyes trained on Britta.

"If you're done commenting on my clothes, I'm going to take a shower."

"Shit, I hadn't even processed that—you haven't showered yet!" Britta exclaimed, staring at him as he rose to his feet. For the first time since Jeff accepted the offer to stay in their apartment, she did not seem antagonistic toward him. "You're…"

He waited for her to finish her thought, but she faltered and seemed at a loss, so he retreated into Abed's room to grab his towel and a change of clothes.

As he traced his way back through the apartment to get to the shower, though, he heard a chair scrape the floor behind him, and Britta stopped him before he could close the bathroom door.

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry."

Whatever Jeff was expecting, it wasn't that. He blinked down at her, at a loss for words.

She wasn't done, though. "You're not the guy you were when we were sleeping together. And I know that, I do, but I guess it didn't occur to me that you might actually be a… pretty tolerable roommate now."

"That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me," Jeff mused.

Britta rolled her eyes. "Whatever. I'm still prepared to say 'I told you so' if you pull any shit. I'm just going to give you the benefit of the doubt for now."

"Sounds fair," he agreed.

With nothing left to say, Britta gestured toward the shower, inviting him to claim the bathroom, and she retreated to finish her breakfast.

That evening marked Apartment 303's weekly movie night, which Jeff agreed to participate in with minimal duress from Annie. It was their choice of movie, rather than movie night itself, to which Jeff was resistant—they were working their way through Nicolas Cage's filmography, and Jeff felt he had already gotten all out of National Treasure that he was going to get.

Annie sat Jeff down on the couch beside her and Abed shoved a bowl of popcorn into his hands and all three of his friends quoted along with the movie and Jeff… enjoyed it.

He glanced over at Annie as she hummed along with the music during the revelation of the treasure room, and she smiled at him. He enjoyed that, too.

Now that Britta had tentatively embraced Jeff's presence in their apartment, things between the four of them were… nice. They lingered around the television long after the movie was over, chatting about classes, committee business, family…

They went to bed late, all exhausted from the day.

Abed promised not to eat or watch Netflix in his bed, which left Jeff certain that he would fall asleep almost as soon as his head hit his pillow.

Perhaps twenty minutes later, however, as he found himself wide awake with Abed snoring above him, he couldn't help wondering what the problem was.

His phone buzzed next to his head, and he briefly questioned whether he should look at it—at Britta's urging, he'd skimmed the summary of some Huff Post article that said looking at screens right before bed could disrupt your sleep—but he figured he had nothing to lose when he was already wide awake.

It was a text from Annie.

Are you still awake?

Jeff frowned at his phone, surprised that Annie was still awake when she, too, seemed exhausted when she retreated into her bedroom.

Rather than saying this, though, he retorted, What if I hadn't been awake and your text had woken me up?

Did it wake you up?

No.

Then I guess we're fine. She followed this with a winking emoji, and Jeff had to stifle a laugh.

He was trying to figure out the best way to ask why she was texting him, but she made things easy when, about thirty seconds, another message came through. Seriously tho, you can't sleep either?

Jeff blinked up at the slats that supported the top bunk as he considered his response. I'm sleeping right now.

Pause at first, then: Jeff.

No, I can't.

Can you promise not to laugh at me?

He thought of Annie, curled up in the dark and biting her lip as she fretted over… something. What could she have to say that would make him laugh? You know I'd never promise something like that.

Jeff, she replied again.

I promise.

More than a minute passed in silence, this time, before his phone lit up again. What if you slept in my room again tonight?

And Jeff was not laughing, he was not laughing at all. Because he would never have asked, would never have dreamed of it, but now that she said it, he was willing to acknowledge to himself that that was exactly what he wanted, that that was what he'd been lying awake wishing for.

So he typed, Okay, almost immediately. He was on his feet and out of Abed's room in what felt like an instant, and Annie opened her door for him just as he was reaching for the doorknob.

They were silent until her door was closed, but they didn't move back to her bed at first—they just stood a few feet apart, both a little nervous.

"I slept better last night than I have in months," Jeff admitted first. Because she told him to come join her, so he figured it was his turn to propel them forward.

"Me too," Annie breathed. "Having you here was… it was just really nice. I don't know what Britta's talking about."

Jeff swallowed hard. "Speaking of Britta… That thing she said this morning, about my pajamas…" About only getting into bed in pajamas with the woman he married.

"Don't worry about it, Jeff. You're just different than you used to be. Unlike Britta, I'm not interested in reading into what clothes you're wearing or not wearing."

"Right. Cool. Okay."

As they crawled into bed, Jeff hesitated before turning onto his side. He always slept that way when he was alone, but he'd felt weird about it the night before, not wanting to make Annie feel as though he was looking at her, so he'd stayed on his back all night instead.

This time, though, he curled up, and when some minutes had passed, when her breathing had slowed, he peeked at her.

She looked soft, comfortable, wonderful.

Jeff brushed a strand of hair from her face before drifting off himself.