Fic: It's Always Open Season On Princesses Part 7
Title: It's Always Open Season On Princesses Part 7
Spoilers: Through S2
Word Count: 2297
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Dan Harmon owns all of it.
AN: Thanks so much for reading guys! Seriously, best fandom ever! Now, onto Jeff's POV in the aftermath of What He's Done.
“Ha!” Britta yelped as she hit her target. “Take that, you computer-animated…duck.”
Jeff glowered at her out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, you really showed him who was boss.”
“Crap, what time is it?” she asked a minute later. “There’s something on C-SPAN at three that I want to watch.”
He gave her a look of disgust. “Britta, people don’t actually watch C-SPAN, you know.” He took the plastic gun from her grasp. “It’s just one of those channels that the cable company can list to make it seem like they’re giving people a lot of options.” He pointed the gun at the screen and began to shoot. “Like the Home Shopping Network or that channel that always has bass fishing on.”
“It’s our government, you douche.” She elbowed him hard in the ribs, causing him to misfire. He shot her a glare.
“Knock it off,” he said in a dark tone.
They continued to play, acknowledging good shots on a game that was made for ten year-olds. “Hey,” she said several minutes later. “I need to ask you a lawyer question.”
He turned surprised eyes on her. “Okay, what’s up?”
“How feasible is it to put my cats in my will?” she asked with no sense of irony before taking out two ducks in rapid succession. Jeff stared at her blankly before clamping his mouth shut in an attempt to keep from outright laughing at her. “What?” Britta asked when she finally noticed his face turning red in the dim light of her apartment.
“Britta, how many cats have you outlived?” he asked.
She shrugged. “There’s no telling when any one of us is going to go you know, Jeff.” She shot him a significant glance that he frowned at.
“Oh…kay?” he replied unsurely. “The point is that this is nuts. And I think I tend to indulge your insanity, for the most part.” She rolled her eyes at him. “But you can’t leave your possessions to a couple cats.”
“My cats are my life,” she defended aggressively.
“I can smell that,” Jeff shot back with a grimace. She glared at him. “You do realize that this seems completely crazy, right?”
“Why?” she demanded. “They’re my family.”
“Britta, do you remember that lady who owned the hotel?” He raised his eyebrows. “The one who died and left like ten million dollars to her dog? Do you remember how people thought she’d lost her mind?” She frowned at him. “And you don’t even have any money to secure their well-being. Seriously, what do you have that you can offer these cats?”
“You‘re the worst,” Britta said sourly.
“I’m speaking as your lawyer now,” Jeff stated, turning toward her more fully on the battered couch. He laid a hand on her thigh, which she batted away immediately. “You have to have things before you can start leaving things to your cats.”
“Seriously, why are you acting like this?” she groused.
“Like what?” Jeff asked without caring.
“Like a tool.”
“Am I?” he asked, giving his face a practiced look of disinterest. He let the plastic gun be pulled from his hand as she took her turn. He stared at the television screen, but wasn’t really seeing it. He had hoped that his worse-than-normal attitude had gone unnoticed by her. It was true, he had been a tool lately, he’d known it, Chang definitely knew it. Even the poor woman at Starbucks the previous morning had known it. She had probably spit in his non-fat latte, actually.
He knew he was right. It wasn’t that. He had definitely made a good decision. He just wished he could have explained it to Annie instead of having things happen the way they did. He’d tried so hard to stay away, to keep himself at arm’s length from her. He couldn’t remember ever having even encouraged the attention from her in the first place. Well, except for the times when he’d kissed her like he was trying to taste her organs. Or that moment they’d had in Abed’s giant blanket fort. Or the way he knew he’d looked at her in the supply closet after she’d embarrassed him in front of the entire student body with his ‘Real World‘ audition tape. He had no consulting work to do for the time being, which meant that all Jeff had had to do for the last two days was think about it. Which was exhausting. Because it all ended the same way it began. Sure, he felt bad.
But it was the right thing to do.
“So,” Britta started slowly as before cursing at a duck that she missed. He glanced over at her blankly. “Italy.”
He closed his eyes, stilling. Maybe if he tried hard enough, he could teleport out of her apartment. She shifted next to him on her garage sale sofa. Nope, he was still there. “Where did you hear that?”
Britta paused. “Abed told Troy and Troy told me.” His eyes opened and he turned to face her, ready for a fight. However, she was simply watching him, her expression open.
He narrowed his eyes, waiting for her to say something. She just stared though. He clenched his jaw to the point of dull pain in the back of his mouth. “What?” he finally asked in a brittle tone.
Britta shrugged. “Nothing,” she answered.
He rolled his eyes. “Then why did you bring it up?”
“I just got the impression that you might want to talk about it?” she explained. She turned her attention back to the television set. She stood and flipped the Nintendo power off before picking up the remote and switching the channel to C-SPAN. Jeff watched her suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. She didn’t seem to have a hidden agenda. Britta didn’t really have agendas, and even when she did, nothing ever turned out in her favor. He leaned forward and pulled his beer bottle off of the scarred coffee table before glancing at the label and then back at the blonde next to him.
“Who are you seeing?” he asked, watching her face carefully.
Britta didn’t take her eyes off the television. “What makes you think I’m seeing someone?” she asked.
“You don’t drink beer,” Jeff pointed out, gesturing toward her with his bottle. “And there is a package of hot dogs in your fridge.” He took another sip. “Lawyer,” he continued with a smirk.
“Hardly,” Britta shot back and Jeff’s self-satisfied smile slid off of his face.
“So, do I know him?” he asked, ignoring her bait.
Britta glared toward him for a moment. “None of your business,” she replied.
“That means yes,” Jeff guessed with a grin. “Is it Starburns?” he asked.
“I’m not talking to you about this,” Britta stated, jerking her head upward in a haughty gesture. Jeff snickered at her. After a moment, Britta glanced over at him with a tiny empathetic smile. It caused a slight twist in Jeff’s gut. They stared at each other, playing a silent game of chicken for a full minute.
Jeff sighed finally. “You don’t understand,” he defended quietly. “She wanted me to come as her…lover.” His voice stuck on the word, running his tongue over it as if it was a word he’d never uttered before. Britta nodded understandingly. “I mean, it was a terrible idea.” He frowned as he picked at his sweaty beer label.
“I know,” she agreed. “That’s what I told her.”
Jeff swallowed over the sudden lump in his throat. “Um…” He pushed his face into an expression that he hoped said ‘casual’. “What? When did you talk to her?”
Her eyes moved back to the screen as she switched the channel over to ‘Hoarders’. “She called me.”
“What?” Jeff asked with a furrowed brow. “When?” Britta had talked to Annie and was only mentioning it now?
“She called me from the airport,” she answered distractedly.
He told himself to breathe. “What did she say?”
“She was freaking out about not knowing the time difference,” Britta replied. She looked over at him pointedly. “Oh, and the thing about going to a strange country where she didn’t know anyone by herself.” Jeff was dutifully ignoring the uncomfortable sensation in his stomach now, which if he it catalogued would probably fit under the heading of ‘guilt’. Britta’s eyes changed, softening toward him. “I think you made the right call.”
Then why did it feel wrong?
“Really,” Jeff said flatly, aiming for apathy.
“Sure,” Britta answered. “Free trip to Italy? Those come along all the time.”
His eyes widened. “You seriously think it would have been a good idea for me to go with her?”
“I’m going to tell you the same thing I told her the other day,” Britta replied. “I think she can do way better than you.”
“It was a terrible idea,” he continued to make his case. “We would have ruined the friendship.”
She chuckled. “We were sleeping together for how many months? It didn’t ruin our friendship.”
“Yeah.“ Jeff could feel a headache forming at the front of his brain. “In case you hadn’t already noticed Britta, you and Annie are not wired the same.”
She fully turned to face him, her knee resting against his hip. “Do you have feelings for her?”
“No,” he answered quickly. Too quickly. Her eyes narrowed. “It’s not that simple.”
“Were you…were you leading her on all year while hooking up with me?” Britta persisted and Jeff winced at her accusatory tone. “Dude.”
“This isn’t any of your business,” Jeff pointed out with a frown. She just stared at him. “Okay, I may have embellished when I said that she was reading into things.”
“Really,” she replied in a monotone.
“But we cleared that up,” he continued.
Britta nodded. “And then she asked you to go to Europe.”
“Yes,” Jeff agreed.
“Do you like Annie?”
He shot her an incredulous look. “Of course I do. Everyone likes Annie.”
She raised one eyebrow. “Are you attracted to her?”
Jeff rolled his eyes. “Everyone is attracted to Annie.” He rolled the slowly warming bottle between his palms. It was true, he couldn’t imagine anyone finding her unattractive. It wasn’t a matter of opinion when it came to Annie. She was beautiful, it was as easy as that.
“That’s a yes.,” she echoed him gleefully.
He threw his head back against her couch, staring up at the textured ceiling. He didn’t get it. Why were they talking about this in the first place? “What the hell, Britta?” he spit out. He put his empty bottle back on the coffee table and rose from the couch and turned to face her, a glare on his face. “Annie and I would not be able to…” Jeff crossed his arms over his chest. “Ugh.” He moved toward her door. “I’m going.”
“Hey,” Britta said as she rose to follow him. “I’m not trying to piss you off.”
“Really,” he turned, advancing on her heatedly. “Then why did you bring this up in the first place?”
“You want to know why I think you‘re angry?” Britta shot him a challenging look. “I think you wanted to go and now you’re trying to convince yourself that you made the right decision by staying to make yourself feel better for your own crippling insecurity.”
“Stop giving me a psych evaluation!” he shouted in her face. He balled his hands into fists at his sides before turning and stalking out of her apartment, slamming the door behind himself. She was so infuriating. Why did she have to be like that? He stomped to his car, feeling the massive headache wrap itself completely around his brain.
What was he supposed to have done? Gone to Italy with the hot twenty year-old? Had crazy sex with her in any number of foreign locales? On paper, that was the best idea anyone had ever had. But when you add in the fact that Annie was one of his best friends and had already told him that she loved him, that made things way messier, didn’t it? Why were Abed and Britta making it seem like he was a jerk for not taking advantage of Annie?
He climbed into his Lexus and threw it into drive, speeding down the street without really knowing where he was going. He wanted to just…drive. He wanted to get away from everyone, from himself. He needed a vacation from his own subconscious. Did he wish he’d gone? He…
Jeff moved into third gear and shot forward even faster. There was an anger growing inside of him, an anger that he’d been ignoring for a long time. He squinted into the sun as he flipped a u-turn and drove down the street in the direction from which he’d just come. He had two options. He could either swallow it down, beat it back into submission, or he could actually act on it. He was choosing option number two.
And he knew exactly who was going to get the brunt of it.
The rational part of his brain, blinded by rage and anxiety and pain, rolled over and played dead as he pulled to the curb and got back out of his car. He stomped to the door, sure he looked like Frankenstein’s monster to the small boy who rode by on his bike.
Jeff didn’t care. It was the healthiest he’d felt in a long time and for once, he wasn’t going to let appearances make him a pussy. He raised his fist to the door and gave a loud knock, waiting impatiently for it to open. He glared back down the street at the kid who was still watching him.
The door finally opened.
He moved forward, his chest tight.
“We need to talk.”