Work Text:
This is how Britta’s close goes:
Take all the bottles off the bar. Soap and water, wipe dry. Cleaning spray, wipe dry. Put all the bottles back on. Watch him watching her in the mirror. Pretend not to notice. Mop. Bring out the clean glasses. Put them away. Leave out two. Macallan, vodka with four olives. Drink. Talk. Avoid the sexual tension and the what-ifs. Get separate cabs home and convince herself things will change.
She brings out the final tray of glasses, reaches up to stack them and is suddenly hotly aware of the stripe of skin her raised shirt exposes, and the eyes following her. She burns, shivers, hopes the steam of the pot-washed glasses covers her blush.
The final two glasses sit hot and pregnant.
It’s not just one more drink on the cards - that’s the problem. He’s drunk and she’s been sneakily drinking enough between customers, she’s tired enough, that she knows one more will get her there too. And they’re closed, and Marty’s gone home and so has Pot-wash (she’s yet to learn the kid’s name). It’s just the two of them now and there’s some kind of awful poetic irony to that that.
Expectation, too.
And she wonders what would happen if she gave in, just once. What would it matter when she’s only here a couple months longer; her application came back and come January she’ll be back in New York. She supposes she ought to tell him at some point. He’s her best friend, after all. There’s no point in delaying the inevitable, so she pours their drinks, joins Jeff on the other side of the bar.
“I didn’t tell you - I’ve got news.”
He frowns. News from Britta could be her cat needing a claw removed, or it could be that she’d killed a man and needed help hiding the body.
“I’ve been applying to colleges, for social work. Figured I might as well get out of here at some point. And… the other day I got offered a place on an MSW.”
“That’s awesome, Britts.”
She swallows. Chews at her cocktail stick.
“It’s at Columbia. I’m starting in January.” She sees his face cloud a little, his hand trace his phone through his jeans.
“New York, huh.”
“Mmhmm.”
What are you gonna do about it, asshole? Not like you’ve cared since sophomore year.
Instead: “I’m excited. It feels like I have a purpose.”
Jeff smiles weakly. Eyes his glass.
“We’ll miss you.”
This would be a standard, non-committal response, except now we is just him. The others are long gone, missed in their own right. Even Frankie doesn’t visit the Vatican anymore.
“You could come see me,” she blurts, her tongue running away with her. “Or not. I don’t care. You’ll probably be too busy defending the rich assholes of Colorado and making out with your hot clients’ hot wives.”
She’s rambling, she can’t look him in the eye. The idea of not seeing him, not doing all the stupid mundane shit they do together, not closing and drinking with him like this, is sinking in. It’s kind of horrible.
“Maybe I’ll end up in New York, you never know. On some work trip.”
“Maybe.”
She lets herself look up. He’s looking back, moving millimetres closer. She’s clenching her leg so as to stop it from touching his.
He’s close now, close enough to smell the Macallan and the hair gel and the cologne that permeated her sheets all those years ago.
It would be so easy.
She breathes deep, shuddering back into sensible consciousness.
“What about the Annie of it all, hm?”
He cringes and Britta kind of hates herself for that – it’s a low blow – but she’s not being made a fool of again.
“Don’t be fucking dumb, Britta.” He swallows. “It was always you.”
“No it wasn’t. And don’t call me dumb. There was Slater, and –“
“Okay, maybe there were others. but it started with you and -“
It’s going to end with you. This isn’t a stupid rom-com, so instead:
“And you’re still here, after all.”
“Oh, so I’m the last resort? Real nice, Winger.”
“You know that’s not true.”
There’s a look between them that fills Britta with a familiar kind of dread. Sincerity has never really worked out for them - nothing has ever really worked out for them. She sips her vodka, licks it off her lips to feel it burn twice.
“So what is this, huh? You take me home and then what – we fuck, we don’t talk about it, then what? We fall back into old habits? Look where that got us last time. Jeff, this is the epilogue Abed wouldn’t watch. It’s old territory. We finished for a reason.”
She knows she’s being harsh, but she’s right. She’d love to convince herself that in a few years’ time they’d meet again, reach for the same slice of pizza from a cart on the corner of the NYC block that happens to house both her, her cats, and the hotel he’s staying in for some sleazy sexy lawyer convention. They’d lock eyes, laugh, and the next thing they knew they’d be tangled in Britta’s sheets like nothing had ever changed. But she’s not stupid - for one, as if Jeff Winger would ever eat greasy, vegan takeaway pizza. For another, the universe is never so unnecessarily benevolent. She knows that whenever whatever this is ends, that’ll be it.
“Come home with me,” he presses, almost pleading. A sick little part of her wonders if she can get him to beg – she ignores it and thinks about Ubers.
“Jeff, we’ve done this before,” she smiles sadly. “So many times, and what’s actually changed? We’re a bit older, a bit more hopeless. We’re just gonna screw it up again but this time we don’t have the group to bring us back together. If we fuck this up, that’s it.”
His resigned little nod suggests he might be getting the point – but his hand is across her thigh and she knows him well enough by now to know that he’s serious. She’s got maybe one more round of convincing to make it final – to convince herself, too.
“Listen, I’m back in at 10 tomorrow, I should go.”
She shifts her thigh, lets his hand slip.
“That’s illegal, you know.”
“What, it’s against the law now to go home and leave my very drunk asshole friend to his weird masturbatory self-loathing?”
“No, I mean it’s literally illegal for you to close and then open again six hours later. Also – fuck you.”
“I’ll call my lawyer,” she snipes. “Anyway, illegal or not I still have to do it. You’re not getting me fired again.”
She reaches for her bag and it’s then, when her head bumps his shin, that she realises how close they’ve been sitting. Coming back up, she meets his eye and it’s then that she swallows the lump in her throat and thinks fuck it.
She kisses him, hot and quick. And he kisses her back and stands, pulls her up with him, near-enough drags her out the door. The cold air hits but it does nothing to quell whatever this madness is.
“God, you’re tall.”
“Is this news to you?”
She rolls her eyes – to be fair to her, she’s stopped wearing 4-inch heels every day. She’s behind a bar, it’s not like anyone can see her beat up sneakers anyway. Now, though, she’s shuffling from one worn-out sole to the other, toeing holes in the asphalt as she tries to stave off the inevitable. If it happens now, if she lets him tuck her hair behind her ear, cup her cheek and lean down, kiss her against the wall, she won’t make it through the taxi journey home without breaking at least a few public indecency laws. And she doubts a drunk ex-lawyer can do much to help with that one.
With him, she’s never short of things to say, arguments to start. But Britta knows if she speaks then everything will come out, the awful horny come-ons but, worse, the things she’s barely admitted to herself. So she says nothing, and the Uber comes.
And then:
They last about half a mile before making out in the Uber.
And then:
They’re in her apartment, he’s got her pressed against her wardrobe door.
“Hands.”
“Hm?”
He motions, and she presents her hands. Her head pulses for a second as he stares, dark drunk eyes taking her in.
She’s not quite with it, vodka-addled enough that when she holds out her hands, he takes both wrists in one and shoves them up, back onto the wall above her head, and she doesn’t complain.
“Good girl.”
She knows he’s drunk when he calls her that – knows she’s drunk when she likes it.
So no, she doesn’t complain. Instead, she moans into his hair. No point complaining now, really - she gave herself up to him the minute she let him order that last drink. He kisses her jaw, nips at her neck, and when he slides her bra straps down her shoulders, she realises he took her shirt off without her even noticing. Fuck.
She lets herself be manoeuvred, knees against the bed-frame and sinking back onto the mattress. She lets him climb atop her, lets him kiss her neck, lets him take off her underwear with his teeth. He kisses her breasts, whining a little as she shifts her hips up against his. She looks him in the eye – his pupils are blown and he’s drunk but he’s staring so hard it burns. He kisses down her body, mutters fuck against her skin at every juncture. He’s shifting back off the bed, pulling her legs against the edge of the mattress.
He kneels, looks up at her, breathes heavy.
“Marry me.”
There’s an awful moment where she thinks he’s serious – and she doesn’t hate it. God. Then his mouth quirks and her eyes roll and she’s falling back onto the pillows, pulling him with her. She can’t even call it relief, Christ.
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“You love it.”
She does, to be fair. And she thinks she might love him too.
She was right earlier – this is the epilogue that Abed wouldn’t watch. But as she lies there, watching Jeff watching her, considering his first move, she’s kind of fine without an audience.