To say that consequences eluded Jeff would be an understatement. In the gray and muddied areas of local law, Jeff Winger was considered a lower level god, or at least a trickster kind in a higher pantheon. His swift words and slinky ways kept him thriving. Toting moral compasses only weighed his pockets down, and he needed that room for fine imported leather wallets and valet ticket stubs, not ambiguous emotional obligations. The view from a high horse was always nice.
At least that was the case before his career at Greendale.
Jeff was three years into his sentence and already familiar with guilt of the compounding kind. His emotional ties to his friends, and sometimes Pierce, recently sent him into a spiral and crisis with a recovery too short for him to process anything. Jeff sighed. He supposed where he was at made sense.
Troy sat across from Jeff at Señor Kevin's with a tight and irritated face. His arms were across his chest and his stare was unbroken. He obviously was waiting for an apology or something.
"Look," Jeff started, "Troy, I know you're waiting for an apology or something."
Troy just stared.
"And it's not completely out of bounds to say that I owe you one for what I did to Abed," Jeff continued, "But you have to know that I think it was for the best, and that I…" Jeff hesitated for a moment, but it could only be for a moment. If he waited any longer, he might express something true, "I truly believe I got through to him - "
"Jeff," Troy cut him off but his face never relaxed, "When Abed came home he was not Abed. He was nega-Abed. He was the exact opposite of Abed. He was a Stepford Wife disguise of Abed except it was worse because it was real."
"I know - ," Jeff started but he was cut off.
Troy continued with, "No you don't." Jeff deflated a bit.
"Okay," He conceded, "I don't know. What I do know is I went too far - "
"I'll say," Troy grumbled.
"You're making this a lot harder for me than it already is," Jeff frowned.
"Good!" Troy's expression finally changed to a scowl, "Maybe it should be hard for you. You sure make things harder for everyone else sometimes. Especially Abed. All he's trying to do is look out for you, but you just treat him the way everyone else does. You act like he's hard to understand even though sometimes he makes more sense than anyone else."
"The only reason you feel that way is because you spend all of your time enabling him," Jeff leaned forward to hiss at Troy as yelling would be unbecoming (even in this establishment), "You took the time to understand his weirdo language and play blanket forts all day with him. I actually have to be an adult in the adult world suffering adult consequences for my adult actions. I don't get to play dress up and magic anymore. And I haven't since my dad left because I had to take care of my mother once he was gone!"
Troy was quiet at the confession. It didn't seem to deter his attitude because his brows stayed as furrowed as ever.
"Britta was right," Troy mumbled.
"I must be in Hell or something," Jeff mumbled to himself.
Neither man left the table they were at. If anyone asked it was because they were waiting for their food and not for an apology from the other. They certainly weren't waiting at the table for fear of losing the other as a friend. That idea was ridiculous and vulnerable.
A few tables away, Britta sat with Pierce, who was eating a 7-bean nacho platter with Shirley. She ate with the group but had her own plate on her own bill. She sat on Britta's side and watched Jeff and Troy have their conversation. When the obvious disagreement happened, Shirley gasped.
"Oh no!" She looked over at Britta, "Do you think Jeffrey said something to Troy? Poor Sugar Bear looks so upset."
"I know Jeff's an ass but there's no way he'd let this opportunity go over his head," Britta responded, "We went through all that trouble of getting Troy here."
"My pastor said he'd pray, but…" Shirley touched the cross on her neck as she watched her boys, "Sometimes the devil's grip is too strong even for the Lord's hands."
"My penis is too strong for their hands too!" Pierce folded a notecard and set it aside on the table before digging back into his nachos.
Britta and Shirley looked at each other, grossed out and indifferent all at once. Beside the notecard on the table, Britta's phone buzzed. She reached for it and flicked it open to read a message from Annie about Abed's progress at home.
Abed had reportedly become catatonic after trying to dismantle the Dreamatorium, then promptly dropped into the fetal position on the floor and had yet to move from inside of the room since. Troy had suggested that the destruction of the simulator destroyed or disabled some part of Abed's psyche, but Annie said that was stupid nonsense and demanded he go talk to Jeff. It wasn't until the rest of the group offered to accompany him that Troy agreed to go. Annie agreed to stay behind to watch Abed. She spent most of her time cleaning up all of the wads of tape that had been removed from the walls and floors of the room, which also gave her a chance to clean up the cobwebs and dust around the floorboards. She tried not to judge the space being misused. At least she got the bigger of the two rooms.
Once the room was clean, Annie decided to update her progress on clean-up to Britta with a broom emoji, a thumbs up, a sad face, and a robot. She had intended for that to be the whole message, but followed it up with words explaining her update. Just in case.
"Oh my god!" Britta gasped, once she checked her phone on the table.
"What happened!?" Shirley gasped too, "Is Abed okay!?"
"Oh," Britta flushed, "Yeah. He's fine. Have Troy and Jeff spoken to each other yet?"
"What is there to talk about?" Pierce said through a mouth of cheese and chips, "Men don't talk; They fight! You think Clint Eastwood ever solved an argument with his mouth?"
Britta and Shirley giggled.
"No!" Pierce continued, "And I detest the idea that you two, of all people, are laughing at the situation!"
"Pierce," Britta stopped her giggles, "Do you know what you just said?"
"What?" He squawked, "No! I mean, yes! Why? Was it funny?"
"Not anymore," Britta admitted, "But you do have a point. Maybe Troy and Jeff need to do this Clint Eastwood style."
"What!?" It was Shirley's turn to squawk.
"Not like that!" Britta huffed.
"Well, they're not going to swordfight!" Shirley looked flustered. Pierce started wheezing between his nacho munches.
"That's a good one!" He laughed. Shirley kneaded her lips, keeping the words she wanted to say between her and the Lord.
"Can we get back to Troy and Jeff please?" Britta said. Beside her, her phone buzzed again with more news about Abed. Just as last time, Annie sent emojis instead of words to communicate his progress. In a row, they lined up: sad face, robot, special icon of a question mark, ninja, bat, ninja, ninja, bed, sleeping face emoji, tropical island emoji.
As Britta read, Jeff leaned towards Troy again.
"Look, Troy," His tone was impatient, and he was met with a matching stare, "I don't know how this got out of hand."
"Don't you?" Troy blinked at him.
"Will you just shut up and listen!" Jeff thought he had whispered, but the stares of other people in the restaurant exposed him. He had let the emotions win. He let the children get under his skin. Without fear of consequences, Jeff continued: "I never wanted things to end this way. You think I liked railing into Abed? I said those things to him because I thought it would get through to him. Was it a little harsh? Sure. But when are my truths ever easy? One of the reasons that you and Abed, and the others, listen to me is because I have the right experience to guide you all in the right direction. At least one of the fish in the school has to be the leader, and that just so happens to be me. Just like being Abed's best friend just so happens to be you. I'm not asking you to forgive me. I know that's asking for too much right now. I am, however, asking you to listen to me when I say that we need to stop babying Abed and teach him how to be an adult. If we don't help him, who's to say what would happen to him? What would the me's who don't have the luxury of having a you to teach me about Abed do? Because I know what I would do if I didn't. Can you say the same?"
Troy's brows furrowed in confusion and his head began to lower as he thought. As Jeff watched his friend's reaction, he stamped on his urge to smirk. He'd won Troy over again. The kid knew when to defer to a real man's experience and opinion, and that was something that Jeff admired about Troy. Jeff, basking in his win, heaved a large sigh, the weight of the conversation slipping off of his shoulders. He leaned forward, ready to begin a real conversation with Troy when the kid looked at Jeff with a finality that made the pits in Jeff's stomach sink further. A heaviness anchored him down in his seat as he prepared to hear Troy's ruling.
But Troy didn't say anything. He got up. He walked over to Britta, and Pierce, and Shirley. Jeff watched from his seat as his friends gestured to one another, and Jeff. They always kept gesturing back at Jeff, and every time they did, he got shorter, and smaller, until he was a little boy sitting alone in Senor Kevin's, watching Troy leave the restaurant without another word.
The type of devastation that began to root in Jeff was familiar, but so was the muscle that flung any of these compromising feelings. With a hardened face, Jeff turned back to his remaining friends. Shirley scooted off out of the booth and shook her head at him in sadness and disappointment. He knew what she couldn't because of the way that she pursed her lips together. His shoulders slowly dropped as he watched her touch her cross on the way out. When he looked over at Britta and Pierce, they were approaching with sad faces.
Britta wanted to say something to Jeff. It was plain on her face that she felt responsible in some way for what happened. He almost wanted to laugh at her for taking on the burden. Like her skinny arms could carry anything his trained body could handle. Instead of saying anything, she sat down in Troy's open seat.
Pierce, however, stood with his hands in his pockets. He stared at the two before giving a pity smile to Britta. She tensed, expecting him to say something rash or racist. Instead, he took an extra glance at Jeff and made an assessment. Britta couldn't tell what it was, but she watched him leave quietly to the front and pay the bill before leaving. Surprisingly kind, but Britta was a little pissed Pierce ditched her to deal with Jeff alone. She knew he wouldn't make things better, but having anyone around would have been a nice buffer to Jeff's deserved misery. Lucky for her, he couldn't stand being uncomfortable and started a conversation. It wasn't about Troy or Abed. It was simply about how the waiter hadn't been around in a while.
"I ordered a fajita platter with extra peppers," He offered without offering, "I don't think I'll be having the beans because of the gastrointestinal damage. Besides, I can't imagine Senor Kevin's refried beans have any leftover nutrition from being fried."
"Twice," Britta gave him a small smile, "They're refried, but I supposed twice-fried doesn't have as much of a nice ring to it."
"At that point it's all about marketing," He shrugged as the waiter approached with his food.
"Marketing? It's language," She leaned on the table to snatch up the drink menu, "You can't market language."
"Absolutely disagree," Jeff said, shoving his extra peppers aside so he could dump the beans on there, "Halitosis was a trademarked word created specifically to market mouthwash to insecure women."
Offended, Britta snapped back at him about diamonds and gullible men. They started to bicker over dinner. Neither of them spoke on Abed, but Britta understood the importance of a friendly distraction, and she didn't have too much of a problem being that distraction right now. She empathized with Jeff and his friend's rejection. He was trying, and she could see that.
So they got drunk and slept together while their friends dealt with the emotions. She and Jeff would deal with it after the hangover passed.
Hey. Thanks for reading.