fic: a room filled up with mosquitoes (community)
a room filled up with mosquitoes
community. to quote the great prophet lady gaga, you and me could write a bad romance. or something (in spanish, we would say: un romance malo; senor chang would be so proud). britta, jeff/britta, slight jeff/annie. rated r. spoilers through “debate 109.” 5005 words.
notes: um, yeah. so this happened? i really don't have anything to say other than that, heh.
On Troy’s computer the screen fades to black.
Shirley says: “Girl, you gettin’ some tonight!”
Troy is dancing, singing: “I can feel it, comin’ in the air tonight - ”
Pierce mumbles: “…but she’s a lesbian…”
Annie folds her hands and places them in her lap.
Britta looks horrified; Jeff looks pleased - way, way, way too pleased.
“You made us have sex,” she hisses as Abed walks through the door. “On your show. You made us have sex.”
“Hi,” Abed says. “The cold open is over.”
[A COMMERCIAL FOR 30 ROCK GOES HERE. IT’S WON SOME EMMYS AFTER ALL].
-
Later that day, Senor Chang enthusiastically explains to the class the power of the Spanish language and music.
Senor Chang hits the play button, and this is, like, legit happening: Enrique Iglesias is singing about how he can be your hero, baby.
“Oh, I love this song!” Shirley squeals, and Troy does some sort of sway, pop-and-lock combination with his arms and shoulders while seated at his desk; Abed blinks, Pierce snores. And next to Britta, Jeff starts dramatically lip synching.
“This isn’t even in Spanish,” Britta hisses to Jeff, just as he opens into, “…you can take my breath away,” or whatever.
Enrique sings, “Te quiero, mi amor,” and Jeff nods like he just proved a point or something.
Britta scowls and Jeff turns to Annie.
If it’s possible, her scowl deepens that much more.
Wait. What?
-
So. Jeff and Annie. Right. Britta can’t decide what offends her more: the fact that Jeff actually is some creepy cradle robber, or the fact that Shirley told her they kissed with the kind of gravitas one usually reserves for telling someone that, like, a loved one died or something tragic.
So, cornered in the bathroom, Britta says, “ew,” and scrunches her face up, and oh god, Annie is basically a decade younger than her. Britta, like, bought her first training bra when this chick was still learning how to walk.
“I know, baby,” Shirley says and pats Britta on the shoulder before hauling her into a hug. “It’s okay to cry, sweetie. Let them tears out. Does the body good.”
Rather than argue, Britta just takes a deep breath and reads the STD poster behind Shirley’s head. “Condoms are catchy, too!” it says.
Shirley pulls back. “Wanna key his car?”
-
At lunch, Annie peels her orange in the most meticulous fashion Britta has ever seen.
“This will be our third date,” Annie tells her pointedly. “The third date.”
Britta just stares at her blankly. “Okay, Sesame Street. I get it. You can count.”
“Third date, Britta. Third date. There are rules about these things, right?”
“Rules?” Britta can’t decide if this chick is, like, speaking in code or if it’s just too early and her triple macchiato or whatever has yet to hit her bloodstream, but she’s really not getting - oh. Oh. Oh.
Annie wants to bang Jeff. Annie wants to bang Jeff.
“Oh, honey, no, no, no, no,” she says.
“There aren’t rules?”
The next fifteen minutes of conversation Britta earnestly wishes she could black out. We, however, can do that for you.
[INFORMATION WITHHELD FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT. NEXT SCENE].
-
Jeff’s still living in a motel. For anyone else, it’d be kind of sad. Instead, it’s just Jeff.
Britta knocks on his door.
Jeff opens it surprisingly quickly, and okay. He’s got his shirt wide-open like he’s been studying those romance novels with Fabio on the cover, but he also has a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth and a mess of toothpaste-spit-drool in the corner of his mouth.
“To what do I owe the honor?” he mumbles around the toothbrush.
Britta doesn’t answer immediately and instead walks in and shuts the door behind her; she can hear Jeff spitting in the bathroom and water running, and when he comes back out he is buttoning his shirt. He’s practically swaggering and Britta watches him with an expression of you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me.
“Yeah you can’t take Annie out,” she says. Jeff just raises an eyebrow. He sits down, perched on the end of the bed.
“Is this the part of the story where you confess your undying love for me and we go make out in the rain or something?” A thunderclap punctuates the question and Jeff just nods and smiles, like he’s got a pact with Mother Nature or something, and goddamn that bitch.
“No, no, no, a whole world of no.” She swallows. She’s not exactly sure why this is so hard to say, but then again, she takes that back. This is supreme-o awkward and weird and somewhere Annie is, like, planning out a future where she makes babies with Jeff and dinner for Jeff and on no planet is that not creepy and wrong and bad, bad, bad. Jeff opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, probably along the lines of she doth protesteth too mucheth, so Britta cuts him off. She holds up a hand and spits out, “Annie’s a virgin! Or, well. Born-again virgin?” and now Jeff’s mouth is still open and now both his eyebrows are raised and she’s not sure if that’s a look of surprise or horniness (just, ew) or maybe just I don’t know what to do with that. He recovers well though, she’ll give him that. He shuts his mouth and straightens his posture and the smile he flashes her is hardly friendly.
“…and, you have a problem with virgins? Born-again virgins? The vernacular is confusing me. Do they make you feel guilty for all that sex you’ve gotten? You’re a Catholic, aren’t you.”
“No.” Britta frowns. “That’s not the problem here. Annie…well. She wants you, she wants you to…you know,” Britta waves her hands in the air in a sort of circular motion, and Jeff just looks expectantly at her to continue, and ugh, just fuck him, or don’t fuck him, that’s sort of the moral of this whole thing, right? Britta takes a deep breath. “I don’t know, something about addiction and high school and mistakes of the sexual variety, blank slate, you know and, and, and. She wants you to…be her first. Or, technically, redo-first,” she says.
Jeff nods sagely. “And you’re jealous.”
“What? No. Dude, you really need to get past that. There is no secret agenda here. I am just, I’m a good person. That’s what I am. I am a good person, and you are a bad person. And Annie? Annie’s a good person too and good people stick together and they make sure that their fellow good people don’t get sucked in by the bad people where bad things can happen to them, and you? You banging Annie? That would definitely be a bad, bad thing. Like, almost a Roman Polanski thing. If you tried to nail her last year you would have had to flee to Switzerland or some shit. You know why? Because she was still in high school then, Humbert Humbert.”
“I lost you somewhere in that pop culture word search at the end there. That aside, you’re not really a good person. Just, you know, keep that in mind when you start lecturing others on ethical behavior.”
“What-the-fuck-ever. The point still stands: do not, and I repeat do not, get your Hugh Hefner on with Annie. Okay?”
“What do I get in return?”
“What. This isn’t some bazaar in Calcutta, dude. We’re not haggling here.”
Jeff does this whole angry sigh thing and stands up, and, okay. He’s tall. Like, really tall, and if Britta was forced to admit one thing she liked about him (as in: gun to the head we will blow your brains out if you don’t tell us one positive attribute Jeff Winger possesses) it would probably be his height. He’s just so tall. You could, like, climb him.
“Look,” Jeff says. “We’re not even dating.”
“Yeah, Annie seems to have a different picture of that situation.”
“I was just being nice. And trying to be a diligent student.”
“By taking her to dinner?”
“Um, debate prep?”
Britta crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him.
“Did you really think I was going to bone Annie?” Jeff almost looks offended and Britta is almost surprised.
“Let’s just say, I wouldn’t put it past you.”
Jeff takes a step forward and Britta holds her ground.
[IF THIS WAS AMERICAN IDOL, WE’D THROW A COMMERCIAL BREAK IN RIGHT HERE JUST TO KEEP YOU HANGING].
[THIS ISN’T AMERICAN IDOL].
[IN CASE YOU DIDN’T CATCH THAT].
Jeff smiles and it is way too smug for her liking.
“I think you actually like me,” he sort of drawls, and Britta really needs to stop scowling so much. For all she knows, that old adage is true and her face really will freeze like that. Or maybe it already has; that would explain a lot.
“I really, really don’t,” she says, but Jeff takes another step forward and it’s tempting to take a step back, but she doesn’t. She wonders if this is one of his lawyerly tactics, invade a person’s personal space until they cave and tell you what you want to hear. But she’s not going to do that. Nope. Okay, he is seriously all up in her space right now, and she has to kind of crane her neck just to maintain eye contact.
Jeff shrugs, like he thinks she doesn’t mean it (she does, she definitely, totally without a shadow of a doubt - )
And then he’s kissing her.
Britta wants to be angry about it, all, hey you didn’t ask permission to stick your tongue in my mouth, but it’s not like he’s a bad kisser (he’s actually good at it, and of course he is, that’s how the world works, cocky son of a bitch), but instead of getting angry, she kisses him back?
Yeah. She kisses him back. She opens her mouth and Jeff is breathing hard through his nose and Britta makes a small squeak of a sound as Jeff steers them and the back of her knees hit the edge of the bed and she falls back onto it.
He hesitates, and she has the horrifying thought that maybe Jeff talks a big game because he has absolutely no idea what to do with a woman when he actually gets her clothes off. And that would just be sad, that would be awful. If Britta is going to actually do this, like, sacrifice her last shred of dignity and, like, get naked with Jeff and do stuff with him, it better be fucking worth it. He’s just so tall and he smells like a hair salon, but he also smells like a man, and it sort of makes up for the pomade part of it. He definitely doesn’t smell like weed, and that’s awesome, gold star right there, and his mouth is really hot (temperature-wise, his mouth is basically normal; actually, his lips are kind of on the thin side).
The biological part of her is screaming take off your damn pants, girl, but the rational side of her, Smart Britta, is saying, oh hey, you will see this man tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that while you try to learn how to conjugate verbs or whatever and can you even imagine how much smarmier that grin of his will be after he’s been all up in your lady business? It’s a good argument, especially since Jeff’s got his mouth against the crook of her jaw, right where the skin meets the column of her throat, and he’s not really biting, but whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it well, and she’s having a hard time keeping that moany-gaspy noise behind her teeth.
Her internal debate eventually proves a moot point as Jeff starts yanking at her jeans and pulling them off of her, pushing his fingers into her.
“You know,” she starts, then she pauses, sucks in a shaky breath, “this doesn’t mean I like you or anything.” She has to pause to breathe again, and whatever disparaging comment was brewing in her head is gone now, and Jeff, he looks so fucking full of himself (and Freudian fucking slip, right? because she’s the one that’s full of him, and yeah, gross, whatever, but he’s got her pinned down on a motel bedspread, which, ugh, even grosser, and he’s got three fingers inside of her and she’s pretty sure she couldn’t spell her name if you asked her to because holy fucking shit - )
So he twists his fingers, and he smiles, and for the first time since she met him, Britta thinks he might actually look a little dangerous. He twists his fingers again and she’s all but panting underneath him and, shit. He’s going to lord this over her for the rest of her life, until, she, like, hangs herself in the library out of sheer embarrassment. But, he’s breathing heavily too, so that has to mean something, please tell her she’s not reaching here.
“See,” he says, flicks his thumb up, and she really, really, really did not mean to groan that loud, or, well, at all, “I already got what I want. Right between your legs, baby. You not liking me? Really not phasing me at the moment.”
“Ew,” she says, and her breath stutters. “Stop being creepy. And don’t call me baby.”
Jeff smirks, like pissing her off is amusing to him, or maybe he smirks because it takes one and a half more twists of his fingers before she is coming, her bare heels sliding against the bedspread and her fingers curled into the thin skin at the nape of his neck.
Probably the latter.
Jeff rolls away from her as she catches her breath and she can easily see he is hard and there is no way those jeans are comfortable. He takes a deep breath too.
“We never talk about this,” Britta says. “This didn’t happen. This was…an anomaly. An aberration. An abomin-”
Jeff turns to look at her over his shoulder. “Did you swallow the A section of the dictionary this morning or something?” he asks in a strained voice. Britta can feel the scowl that has somehow become reserved for him surface on her face.
“I’m going to go now,” she says primly, or, well, as primly as you can say that when your pants are still around your ankles.
So. Awkward.
-
The next day, like every other day, Jeff sits next to her in the library. Britta stares at her cup of coffee as though she’s expecting it to grow legs or move or something. Jeff’s not saying anything to her either, and it’s kind of weird. Weirder than she expected, and for lack of anything else to do, she rifles through her notes.
“You guys did it. Didn’t you,” Abed says. He shakes his head. “Television producers are always so hesitant to let the leading man and leading lady consummate their relationship. Way to buck the trend.”
“What,” Jeff says.
“Hello, Moonlighting,” Abed says. “Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd’s characters finally did the deed after seasons of sexual tension brewing between them. They had sex. And then the show sucked.”
“You know,” Britta whispers, and she leans in to Jeff. “Annie wasn’t even alive when Moonlighting was on TV. Pretty crazy, right?”
“I thought we already established this,” Jeff hisses. “Annie and I are platonic,” he catches her eye then, and whoa boy. She doesn’t think he’s allowed to look at her like that. “Just like you and me,” he says, and okay, Britta is no genius at reading subtext or whatever, but based on the pointed way he said that, she is ninety percent sure he meant that they aren’t platonic, which, what?
“How old were you when you lost your virginity?” she asks, still in that whisper-tone.
“What? Sixteen. Why?”
“Annie wasn’t even out of the womb yet and you had already popped your cherry, Grandpa.”
“I will murder you and scatter your remains around campus.”
“Yeah, totally did it,” Abed whispers, leaning across the table.
“We did not have sex,” Jeff snaps. Abed frowns. Britta keeps her face blank.
“Something is off here,” Abed says slowly. “I will figure this out. You can’t alter your characterization midway through the season without chalking it up to poor writing. Also, on TV shows? Secret relationships are rarely entertaining - the audience wants to see the action. Or, well. As much action as a primetime slot can afford. And if you’re CSI, that’s a lot.”
“I didn’t actually murder Britta yet,” Jeff says.
“And no one said you did,” Pierce says, and then winks.
“Ugh,” Britta says.
-
A couple weeks pass, and things are as normal as you could ever possibly expect them to be at Greendale Community College (read: not normal at all). But Jeff and Annie have ceased their sort-of-whatever dates and Jeff hasn’t gotten back in her pants since that weirdo night at his motel/home.
So things are normal. Things are status quo. Sure.
Or they were. Because the thing is, Jeff is still really tall and her body apparently has a more persistent and persuasive memory than her mind (that really doesn’t make scientific sense, but roll with it) and sitting next to him while studying in the library has almost become a chore.
And right now? They’re back in the library and she just really, really, really wants him to be quiet. Like, just shut the fuck up for more than five minutes and let her study in peace. That’s all she wants, and you know, that’s really not asking so much.
So she blames his motel and she kind of blames Annie, she really, really blames Jeff, but she also blames herself and her traitorous body and hormones or whatever for what happens next (let it be known, she did not think this through, not even a little bit, which basically explains every mess she’s ever tangled herself in):
“Shut up,” Britta says. “Just, please. Shut the fuck up. Shut your goddamned mouth.” Jeff’s mouth is moving but there’s not any sound coming out and he looks so dumbstruck she could almost laugh. Almost. Jeff is gaping like a fish and Britta is working her hands over his belt (that probably cost about three months of her rent, ugh, fuck him, seriously), and he’s already arching his hips off his chair as her fingers pull the zipper down.
“Wha - ” She silences him by wrapping her hand around his cock and squeezing. Jeff scrubs a hand over his face and Britta bites her lip, because, really? This is easily one of the dumber things she’s done in her life, and needless to say, she’s done a lot of really, really stupid shit. But right now, she’s on her knees (which, PS: her tights are not nearly thick enough and her knees already feel a little raw from the rough carpet) in a library, at a community college, and she’s got this dude’s dick in her hand, and she’s fairly certain she might actually hate him at the moment.
“Do not speak, do not talk to me,” she says, and okay. From this vantage point? Jeff is actually more than a little cute. He’s actually, like, hot. Well, if you erase the look of total bafflement and confusion from his face. But he’s rocking that whole blown-pupils-which-FYI-means-scientifically-I-am-aroused look and his hair is genuinely tousled and messy and his mouth is still open and he’s breathing wetly through it and she kind of sort of wants to kiss him?
She doesn’t kiss him. Instead, she fits her lips around the head of his cock and Jeff says something that sounds like, JesusMaryJosephBrittaholyfuuuuck, which is really kind of flattering.
It doesn’t take him very long.
When she’s done, when he’s done, comes with her name held between gritted teeth, she swallows and stands. She wipes at her mouth, and, just, whoa. As ridiculous as he is and as ridiculous as this whole thing is, she is beyond turned on right now. Like, buzzing with it. And Jeff, Jeff’s sitting there, and for the first time probably in the history of his time, he’s actually speechless. Britta turns back to her chair and the abandoned Spanish-English dictionary, but Jeff grabs her by the wrist and pulls her towards him.
“Once again,” Britta says, and she stumbles into his knees. His pants are still undone and he’s just sitting there, in the fucking library, with his dick all wet and soft and right there in the open. He presses a hand against the small of her back and pushes her into his lap. “We’re even,” she says as she falls, none too gracefully, thanks, against him and straddles him. Britta blushes, because: a) she sounded hardly convincing and more breathy, faux Marilyn Monroe, all come-hither-and-fuck-me when she spoke, and; b) she is pressed right there against him, his bare cock between her thighs and there is no fucking way he is unaware of how hot and wet and ready she is, and goddamn, this is just embarrassing.
Jeff still looks sort of shell-shocked, and while she was…down there, he must have been running his hands through his hair because it’s now standing up at the strangest of angles, and Britta idly wonders how crispy it would feel under her own hands. He really needs to lay off the hair products. She’ll have to tell him that. Later. When she hasn’t, like, mounted him.
“You are legitimately crazy,” Jeff finally says and he looks equal parts surprised and impressed and I-just-came-in-a-public-place-fucking-what?, and she’s just got her hands flat against his chest. Britta is about to accuse him of being ungrateful (among other things), but before she can, Jeff winds a hand into her hair at the nape of her neck and kisses her, hard. And her mouth already tasted like Jeff, and now she’s got his tongue in her mouth, sliding alongside her own, and it’s like Jeff overload or something. So she kisses him back, of course she kisses him back, and maybe her fingers curl into the front of his shirt and maybe he palms her left breast, whatever. And if maybe she bucks her hips against his, well, then that happens - there’s something called biology and there’s also something called physics, and she may not be taking either of these classes this semester, but she’s had enough life experience to know what things are natural and instinctive, so it doesn’t matter that it’s Jeff that has her wriggling in his lap and practically pawing her way under his shirt - it’s science’s fault.
Or it’s Abed’s. Fucking self-fulfilling prophecies and storyboards.
Jeff slips a hand in the tight space between them, and then between her legs. She makes this keening noise, and she is blushing so hard right now, this is humiliating. She tries to shut herself up with his mouth, but as his fingers rub against her, the barrier of her tights still in the way (she hates her wardrobe, she hates the weather, she hates that this morning a pair of knit tights made sense, she needs skin on skin, she needs him right the fuck now, whoa, wait, what?), but the kisses turn too sloppy until she’s basically panting and moving her hips against his hand with her mouth wet and open at the corner of his. Jeff’s holding his breath, like maybe he’s afraid she’ll leave or something, which is stupid, because, yeah, dude already got his.
“What are you wearing?” he finally grumbles against her cheekbone. “A chastity belt?”
“Shut up,” she gasps, because yeah, if he stays right there, if he stays right there, if he stays right fucking there -
She comes with a muffled shriek, her head against his shoulder, and she bites down, just a little. Jeff grunts.
Britta sits up and leans back. She brushes her hair off her face. Jeff just looks up at her, his eyebrows practically at his hairline.
“Well. That was unexpected,” he says, “though hardly unwelcome.”
“I’m going to study now,” she says, her words carefully measured. Britta stands up. She smoothes out her skirt and, ugh. She feels absolutely disgusting. Or maybe debauched is the correct term? Her legs feel all rubbery and her lips are puffy, her jaw aches. Her tights feel clammy against her skin and she knows she must look sweaty beyond all belief. Jeff clears his throat and Britta looks over. He’s half-hard but he zips his pants up anyway.
She really needs to start thinking these things through.
-
Fifteen minutes later:
“What happened to you two?” Troy asks. “You lookin’ nasty.”
“Heated argument,” Jeff deadpans. He kicks his feet up onto the table and takes a long sip of his coffee.
“I won,” Britta says, crosses her legs primly. Jeff splutters and spits his coffee out; “What?” he yelps. “No way, man, I so - ”
“Cool,” Abed says. “A spit take.”
Pierce sniffs the air. “Why does it smell like my honeymoon with my third wife in here?”
“I think they’re going to edit that out. That’s just kind of gross,” Abed says. Pierce shrugs. Jeff and Britta glance at each other with matching looks of disgust.
-
So there is a day when Britta actually sits down and watches these ridiculous episodes Abed has been pumping out.
“Five years from now, I’m going to marry her,” Fake Jeff says, and this is easily more horrifying than the fade-to-black-sex scene. Britta is sure of it.
“Yeah,” Jeff says. “I never said that.”
Clearly, he’s been watching them too.
-
Towards the end of the semester someone throws a house party (just like Belushi, Pierce says), and in the kitchen, someone keeps handing Britta jell-o shots and she keeps downing them.
“You’ve met Jell-O Shot Jenny then?” Abed asks her later. Her mouth tastes like she ate all the sugar crystals at the bottom of a bag of Sour Patch kids.
“What?”
“Your mouth is bright green. You look like an alien. Or like you have gangrene of the mouth. Can you get gangrene of the mouth?”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
Britta holes up in an empty bedroom after that with the better part of a bottle of vodka hocked from the kitchen. She slumps into the old couch and old episodes of The Twilight Zone are on the television.
It takes Jeff roughly fifteen minutes to find her up here. He leans against the doorjamb for a moment and smiles. “Looks like I found the life of the party,” he says and shuts the door behind him. She thinks he might have locked it, and oh. Okay then.
“I’m not good at parties,” she grumbles. She takes a small swig from the bottle and grimaces. “Besides, this is a really good episode. This doll is killing people, all Chucky style.”
“Like I said,” Jeff says and sits down next to her, “life of the party.”
Britta turns to look at him. “What do you want?”
“Why is your mouth green?”
“Because I -” and then she stops. Instead of explaining, Britta places her hands on either side of his face and kisses him. He kisses her too, just as earnest, and she’s not really sure when they became earnest, but apparently they have. Jeff jerks her shirt over her head and Jeff really needs to stop wearing shirts with so many buttons. Britta’s fingers stumble and Jeff’s fingers stumble with her bra and Rod Serling is talking on TV.
Someone outside the door yells, “T-Paaaain,” and Britta fights down a hysterical laugh, because this is so surreal, right? The couch feels ratty and scratches at her bare back, and this is what people do in college, right? Meaningless sex. She repeats that to herself: meaningless sex.
(Which is such a lie, isn’t it. Because if this was meaningless then that would mean she doesn’t care. And the fact of the matter? She really sort of cares. And that really sort of makes her want to hate him even more. Except there’s the rub (she has no idea who actually said that and feels like she should, whatever, she’s in community college for god’s sake): Britta doesn’t hate Jeff. In fact, she actually sort of likes him and she actually sort of cares.
This is that revelation scene, it so is. Goddamnit).
So she decides to vocalize these feelings:
“You’re kind of an asshole,” she says, and Jeff thrusts into her, hard and slow.
“And you’re kind of a bitch,” he says into her collarbone.
Yeah, she thinks, and wraps her arms around Jeff’s neck. This is probably as romantic as they’re ever going to get.
[FADE TO BLACK].
-
And so, like, yeah, maybe they go back to his place, or probably her place since she actually has a place that doesn’t charge by the night, and they do this again, and again after that, and of course it’s awkward and of course they still don’t really like each other, not yet, and yeah, she’ll slap him at least once, and he’ll deserve it at least once, and if maybe in five years they get married, then in five years they get married. Maybe instead of “I do,” Britta will say, “we’re even,” and that will be that -
WHAT, Britta says.
Abed presses the stop button and leans back from the microphone plugged into his computer.
Narration is a popular television technique employed these days, he says. Ask Meredith Grey. Or Carrie Bradshaw. Or that dead lady on Desperate Housewives. Or -
Roll credits.
-
fin.
community. to quote the great prophet lady gaga, you and me could write a bad romance. or something (in spanish, we would say: un romance malo; senor chang would be so proud). britta, jeff/britta, slight jeff/annie. rated r. spoilers through “debate 109.” 5005 words.
notes: um, yeah. so this happened? i really don't have anything to say other than that, heh.
On Troy’s computer the screen fades to black.
Shirley says: “Girl, you gettin’ some tonight!”
Troy is dancing, singing: “I can feel it, comin’ in the air tonight - ”
Pierce mumbles: “…but she’s a lesbian…”
Annie folds her hands and places them in her lap.
Britta looks horrified; Jeff looks pleased - way, way, way too pleased.
“You made us have sex,” she hisses as Abed walks through the door. “On your show. You made us have sex.”
“Hi,” Abed says. “The cold open is over.”
[A COMMERCIAL FOR 30 ROCK GOES HERE. IT’S WON SOME EMMYS AFTER ALL].
-
Later that day, Senor Chang enthusiastically explains to the class the power of the Spanish language and music.
Senor Chang hits the play button, and this is, like, legit happening: Enrique Iglesias is singing about how he can be your hero, baby.
“Oh, I love this song!” Shirley squeals, and Troy does some sort of sway, pop-and-lock combination with his arms and shoulders while seated at his desk; Abed blinks, Pierce snores. And next to Britta, Jeff starts dramatically lip synching.
“This isn’t even in Spanish,” Britta hisses to Jeff, just as he opens into, “…you can take my breath away,” or whatever.
Enrique sings, “Te quiero, mi amor,” and Jeff nods like he just proved a point or something.
Britta scowls and Jeff turns to Annie.
If it’s possible, her scowl deepens that much more.
Wait. What?
-
So. Jeff and Annie. Right. Britta can’t decide what offends her more: the fact that Jeff actually is some creepy cradle robber, or the fact that Shirley told her they kissed with the kind of gravitas one usually reserves for telling someone that, like, a loved one died or something tragic.
So, cornered in the bathroom, Britta says, “ew,” and scrunches her face up, and oh god, Annie is basically a decade younger than her. Britta, like, bought her first training bra when this chick was still learning how to walk.
“I know, baby,” Shirley says and pats Britta on the shoulder before hauling her into a hug. “It’s okay to cry, sweetie. Let them tears out. Does the body good.”
Rather than argue, Britta just takes a deep breath and reads the STD poster behind Shirley’s head. “Condoms are catchy, too!” it says.
Shirley pulls back. “Wanna key his car?”
-
At lunch, Annie peels her orange in the most meticulous fashion Britta has ever seen.
“This will be our third date,” Annie tells her pointedly. “The third date.”
Britta just stares at her blankly. “Okay, Sesame Street. I get it. You can count.”
“Third date, Britta. Third date. There are rules about these things, right?”
“Rules?” Britta can’t decide if this chick is, like, speaking in code or if it’s just too early and her triple macchiato or whatever has yet to hit her bloodstream, but she’s really not getting - oh. Oh. Oh.
Annie wants to bang Jeff. Annie wants to bang Jeff.
“Oh, honey, no, no, no, no,” she says.
“There aren’t rules?”
The next fifteen minutes of conversation Britta earnestly wishes she could black out. We, however, can do that for you.
[INFORMATION WITHHELD FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT. NEXT SCENE].
-
Jeff’s still living in a motel. For anyone else, it’d be kind of sad. Instead, it’s just Jeff.
Britta knocks on his door.
Jeff opens it surprisingly quickly, and okay. He’s got his shirt wide-open like he’s been studying those romance novels with Fabio on the cover, but he also has a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth and a mess of toothpaste-spit-drool in the corner of his mouth.
“To what do I owe the honor?” he mumbles around the toothbrush.
Britta doesn’t answer immediately and instead walks in and shuts the door behind her; she can hear Jeff spitting in the bathroom and water running, and when he comes back out he is buttoning his shirt. He’s practically swaggering and Britta watches him with an expression of you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me.
“Yeah you can’t take Annie out,” she says. Jeff just raises an eyebrow. He sits down, perched on the end of the bed.
“Is this the part of the story where you confess your undying love for me and we go make out in the rain or something?” A thunderclap punctuates the question and Jeff just nods and smiles, like he’s got a pact with Mother Nature or something, and goddamn that bitch.
“No, no, no, a whole world of no.” She swallows. She’s not exactly sure why this is so hard to say, but then again, she takes that back. This is supreme-o awkward and weird and somewhere Annie is, like, planning out a future where she makes babies with Jeff and dinner for Jeff and on no planet is that not creepy and wrong and bad, bad, bad. Jeff opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, probably along the lines of she doth protesteth too mucheth, so Britta cuts him off. She holds up a hand and spits out, “Annie’s a virgin! Or, well. Born-again virgin?” and now Jeff’s mouth is still open and now both his eyebrows are raised and she’s not sure if that’s a look of surprise or horniness (just, ew) or maybe just I don’t know what to do with that. He recovers well though, she’ll give him that. He shuts his mouth and straightens his posture and the smile he flashes her is hardly friendly.
“…and, you have a problem with virgins? Born-again virgins? The vernacular is confusing me. Do they make you feel guilty for all that sex you’ve gotten? You’re a Catholic, aren’t you.”
“No.” Britta frowns. “That’s not the problem here. Annie…well. She wants you, she wants you to…you know,” Britta waves her hands in the air in a sort of circular motion, and Jeff just looks expectantly at her to continue, and ugh, just fuck him, or don’t fuck him, that’s sort of the moral of this whole thing, right? Britta takes a deep breath. “I don’t know, something about addiction and high school and mistakes of the sexual variety, blank slate, you know and, and, and. She wants you to…be her first. Or, technically, redo-first,” she says.
Jeff nods sagely. “And you’re jealous.”
“What? No. Dude, you really need to get past that. There is no secret agenda here. I am just, I’m a good person. That’s what I am. I am a good person, and you are a bad person. And Annie? Annie’s a good person too and good people stick together and they make sure that their fellow good people don’t get sucked in by the bad people where bad things can happen to them, and you? You banging Annie? That would definitely be a bad, bad thing. Like, almost a Roman Polanski thing. If you tried to nail her last year you would have had to flee to Switzerland or some shit. You know why? Because she was still in high school then, Humbert Humbert.”
“I lost you somewhere in that pop culture word search at the end there. That aside, you’re not really a good person. Just, you know, keep that in mind when you start lecturing others on ethical behavior.”
“What-the-fuck-ever. The point still stands: do not, and I repeat do not, get your Hugh Hefner on with Annie. Okay?”
“What do I get in return?”
“What. This isn’t some bazaar in Calcutta, dude. We’re not haggling here.”
Jeff does this whole angry sigh thing and stands up, and, okay. He’s tall. Like, really tall, and if Britta was forced to admit one thing she liked about him (as in: gun to the head we will blow your brains out if you don’t tell us one positive attribute Jeff Winger possesses) it would probably be his height. He’s just so tall. You could, like, climb him.
“Look,” Jeff says. “We’re not even dating.”
“Yeah, Annie seems to have a different picture of that situation.”
“I was just being nice. And trying to be a diligent student.”
“By taking her to dinner?”
“Um, debate prep?”
Britta crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him.
“Did you really think I was going to bone Annie?” Jeff almost looks offended and Britta is almost surprised.
“Let’s just say, I wouldn’t put it past you.”
Jeff takes a step forward and Britta holds her ground.
[IF THIS WAS AMERICAN IDOL, WE’D THROW A COMMERCIAL BREAK IN RIGHT HERE JUST TO KEEP YOU HANGING].
[THIS ISN’T AMERICAN IDOL].
[IN CASE YOU DIDN’T CATCH THAT].
Jeff smiles and it is way too smug for her liking.
“I think you actually like me,” he sort of drawls, and Britta really needs to stop scowling so much. For all she knows, that old adage is true and her face really will freeze like that. Or maybe it already has; that would explain a lot.
“I really, really don’t,” she says, but Jeff takes another step forward and it’s tempting to take a step back, but she doesn’t. She wonders if this is one of his lawyerly tactics, invade a person’s personal space until they cave and tell you what you want to hear. But she’s not going to do that. Nope. Okay, he is seriously all up in her space right now, and she has to kind of crane her neck just to maintain eye contact.
Jeff shrugs, like he thinks she doesn’t mean it (she does, she definitely, totally without a shadow of a doubt - )
And then he’s kissing her.
Britta wants to be angry about it, all, hey you didn’t ask permission to stick your tongue in my mouth, but it’s not like he’s a bad kisser (he’s actually good at it, and of course he is, that’s how the world works, cocky son of a bitch), but instead of getting angry, she kisses him back?
Yeah. She kisses him back. She opens her mouth and Jeff is breathing hard through his nose and Britta makes a small squeak of a sound as Jeff steers them and the back of her knees hit the edge of the bed and she falls back onto it.
He hesitates, and she has the horrifying thought that maybe Jeff talks a big game because he has absolutely no idea what to do with a woman when he actually gets her clothes off. And that would just be sad, that would be awful. If Britta is going to actually do this, like, sacrifice her last shred of dignity and, like, get naked with Jeff and do stuff with him, it better be fucking worth it. He’s just so tall and he smells like a hair salon, but he also smells like a man, and it sort of makes up for the pomade part of it. He definitely doesn’t smell like weed, and that’s awesome, gold star right there, and his mouth is really hot (temperature-wise, his mouth is basically normal; actually, his lips are kind of on the thin side).
The biological part of her is screaming take off your damn pants, girl, but the rational side of her, Smart Britta, is saying, oh hey, you will see this man tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that while you try to learn how to conjugate verbs or whatever and can you even imagine how much smarmier that grin of his will be after he’s been all up in your lady business? It’s a good argument, especially since Jeff’s got his mouth against the crook of her jaw, right where the skin meets the column of her throat, and he’s not really biting, but whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it well, and she’s having a hard time keeping that moany-gaspy noise behind her teeth.
Her internal debate eventually proves a moot point as Jeff starts yanking at her jeans and pulling them off of her, pushing his fingers into her.
“You know,” she starts, then she pauses, sucks in a shaky breath, “this doesn’t mean I like you or anything.” She has to pause to breathe again, and whatever disparaging comment was brewing in her head is gone now, and Jeff, he looks so fucking full of himself (and Freudian fucking slip, right? because she’s the one that’s full of him, and yeah, gross, whatever, but he’s got her pinned down on a motel bedspread, which, ugh, even grosser, and he’s got three fingers inside of her and she’s pretty sure she couldn’t spell her name if you asked her to because holy fucking shit - )
So he twists his fingers, and he smiles, and for the first time since she met him, Britta thinks he might actually look a little dangerous. He twists his fingers again and she’s all but panting underneath him and, shit. He’s going to lord this over her for the rest of her life, until, she, like, hangs herself in the library out of sheer embarrassment. But, he’s breathing heavily too, so that has to mean something, please tell her she’s not reaching here.
“See,” he says, flicks his thumb up, and she really, really, really did not mean to groan that loud, or, well, at all, “I already got what I want. Right between your legs, baby. You not liking me? Really not phasing me at the moment.”
“Ew,” she says, and her breath stutters. “Stop being creepy. And don’t call me baby.”
Jeff smirks, like pissing her off is amusing to him, or maybe he smirks because it takes one and a half more twists of his fingers before she is coming, her bare heels sliding against the bedspread and her fingers curled into the thin skin at the nape of his neck.
Probably the latter.
Jeff rolls away from her as she catches her breath and she can easily see he is hard and there is no way those jeans are comfortable. He takes a deep breath too.
“We never talk about this,” Britta says. “This didn’t happen. This was…an anomaly. An aberration. An abomin-”
Jeff turns to look at her over his shoulder. “Did you swallow the A section of the dictionary this morning or something?” he asks in a strained voice. Britta can feel the scowl that has somehow become reserved for him surface on her face.
“I’m going to go now,” she says primly, or, well, as primly as you can say that when your pants are still around your ankles.
So. Awkward.
-
The next day, like every other day, Jeff sits next to her in the library. Britta stares at her cup of coffee as though she’s expecting it to grow legs or move or something. Jeff’s not saying anything to her either, and it’s kind of weird. Weirder than she expected, and for lack of anything else to do, she rifles through her notes.
“You guys did it. Didn’t you,” Abed says. He shakes his head. “Television producers are always so hesitant to let the leading man and leading lady consummate their relationship. Way to buck the trend.”
“What,” Jeff says.
“Hello, Moonlighting,” Abed says. “Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd’s characters finally did the deed after seasons of sexual tension brewing between them. They had sex. And then the show sucked.”
“You know,” Britta whispers, and she leans in to Jeff. “Annie wasn’t even alive when Moonlighting was on TV. Pretty crazy, right?”
“I thought we already established this,” Jeff hisses. “Annie and I are platonic,” he catches her eye then, and whoa boy. She doesn’t think he’s allowed to look at her like that. “Just like you and me,” he says, and okay, Britta is no genius at reading subtext or whatever, but based on the pointed way he said that, she is ninety percent sure he meant that they aren’t platonic, which, what?
“How old were you when you lost your virginity?” she asks, still in that whisper-tone.
“What? Sixteen. Why?”
“Annie wasn’t even out of the womb yet and you had already popped your cherry, Grandpa.”
“I will murder you and scatter your remains around campus.”
“Yeah, totally did it,” Abed whispers, leaning across the table.
“We did not have sex,” Jeff snaps. Abed frowns. Britta keeps her face blank.
“Something is off here,” Abed says slowly. “I will figure this out. You can’t alter your characterization midway through the season without chalking it up to poor writing. Also, on TV shows? Secret relationships are rarely entertaining - the audience wants to see the action. Or, well. As much action as a primetime slot can afford. And if you’re CSI, that’s a lot.”
“I didn’t actually murder Britta yet,” Jeff says.
“And no one said you did,” Pierce says, and then winks.
“Ugh,” Britta says.
-
A couple weeks pass, and things are as normal as you could ever possibly expect them to be at Greendale Community College (read: not normal at all). But Jeff and Annie have ceased their sort-of-whatever dates and Jeff hasn’t gotten back in her pants since that weirdo night at his motel/home.
So things are normal. Things are status quo. Sure.
Or they were. Because the thing is, Jeff is still really tall and her body apparently has a more persistent and persuasive memory than her mind (that really doesn’t make scientific sense, but roll with it) and sitting next to him while studying in the library has almost become a chore.
And right now? They’re back in the library and she just really, really, really wants him to be quiet. Like, just shut the fuck up for more than five minutes and let her study in peace. That’s all she wants, and you know, that’s really not asking so much.
So she blames his motel and she kind of blames Annie, she really, really blames Jeff, but she also blames herself and her traitorous body and hormones or whatever for what happens next (let it be known, she did not think this through, not even a little bit, which basically explains every mess she’s ever tangled herself in):
“Shut up,” Britta says. “Just, please. Shut the fuck up. Shut your goddamned mouth.” Jeff’s mouth is moving but there’s not any sound coming out and he looks so dumbstruck she could almost laugh. Almost. Jeff is gaping like a fish and Britta is working her hands over his belt (that probably cost about three months of her rent, ugh, fuck him, seriously), and he’s already arching his hips off his chair as her fingers pull the zipper down.
“Wha - ” She silences him by wrapping her hand around his cock and squeezing. Jeff scrubs a hand over his face and Britta bites her lip, because, really? This is easily one of the dumber things she’s done in her life, and needless to say, she’s done a lot of really, really stupid shit. But right now, she’s on her knees (which, PS: her tights are not nearly thick enough and her knees already feel a little raw from the rough carpet) in a library, at a community college, and she’s got this dude’s dick in her hand, and she’s fairly certain she might actually hate him at the moment.
“Do not speak, do not talk to me,” she says, and okay. From this vantage point? Jeff is actually more than a little cute. He’s actually, like, hot. Well, if you erase the look of total bafflement and confusion from his face. But he’s rocking that whole blown-pupils-which-FYI-means-scientifically-I-am-aroused look and his hair is genuinely tousled and messy and his mouth is still open and he’s breathing wetly through it and she kind of sort of wants to kiss him?
She doesn’t kiss him. Instead, she fits her lips around the head of his cock and Jeff says something that sounds like, JesusMaryJosephBrittaholyfuuuuck, which is really kind of flattering.
It doesn’t take him very long.
When she’s done, when he’s done, comes with her name held between gritted teeth, she swallows and stands. She wipes at her mouth, and, just, whoa. As ridiculous as he is and as ridiculous as this whole thing is, she is beyond turned on right now. Like, buzzing with it. And Jeff, Jeff’s sitting there, and for the first time probably in the history of his time, he’s actually speechless. Britta turns back to her chair and the abandoned Spanish-English dictionary, but Jeff grabs her by the wrist and pulls her towards him.
“Once again,” Britta says, and she stumbles into his knees. His pants are still undone and he’s just sitting there, in the fucking library, with his dick all wet and soft and right there in the open. He presses a hand against the small of her back and pushes her into his lap. “We’re even,” she says as she falls, none too gracefully, thanks, against him and straddles him. Britta blushes, because: a) she sounded hardly convincing and more breathy, faux Marilyn Monroe, all come-hither-and-fuck-me when she spoke, and; b) she is pressed right there against him, his bare cock between her thighs and there is no fucking way he is unaware of how hot and wet and ready she is, and goddamn, this is just embarrassing.
Jeff still looks sort of shell-shocked, and while she was…down there, he must have been running his hands through his hair because it’s now standing up at the strangest of angles, and Britta idly wonders how crispy it would feel under her own hands. He really needs to lay off the hair products. She’ll have to tell him that. Later. When she hasn’t, like, mounted him.
“You are legitimately crazy,” Jeff finally says and he looks equal parts surprised and impressed and I-just-came-in-a-public-place-fucking-what?, and she’s just got her hands flat against his chest. Britta is about to accuse him of being ungrateful (among other things), but before she can, Jeff winds a hand into her hair at the nape of her neck and kisses her, hard. And her mouth already tasted like Jeff, and now she’s got his tongue in her mouth, sliding alongside her own, and it’s like Jeff overload or something. So she kisses him back, of course she kisses him back, and maybe her fingers curl into the front of his shirt and maybe he palms her left breast, whatever. And if maybe she bucks her hips against his, well, then that happens - there’s something called biology and there’s also something called physics, and she may not be taking either of these classes this semester, but she’s had enough life experience to know what things are natural and instinctive, so it doesn’t matter that it’s Jeff that has her wriggling in his lap and practically pawing her way under his shirt - it’s science’s fault.
Or it’s Abed’s. Fucking self-fulfilling prophecies and storyboards.
Jeff slips a hand in the tight space between them, and then between her legs. She makes this keening noise, and she is blushing so hard right now, this is humiliating. She tries to shut herself up with his mouth, but as his fingers rub against her, the barrier of her tights still in the way (she hates her wardrobe, she hates the weather, she hates that this morning a pair of knit tights made sense, she needs skin on skin, she needs him right the fuck now, whoa, wait, what?), but the kisses turn too sloppy until she’s basically panting and moving her hips against his hand with her mouth wet and open at the corner of his. Jeff’s holding his breath, like maybe he’s afraid she’ll leave or something, which is stupid, because, yeah, dude already got his.
“What are you wearing?” he finally grumbles against her cheekbone. “A chastity belt?”
“Shut up,” she gasps, because yeah, if he stays right there, if he stays right there, if he stays right fucking there -
She comes with a muffled shriek, her head against his shoulder, and she bites down, just a little. Jeff grunts.
Britta sits up and leans back. She brushes her hair off her face. Jeff just looks up at her, his eyebrows practically at his hairline.
“Well. That was unexpected,” he says, “though hardly unwelcome.”
“I’m going to study now,” she says, her words carefully measured. Britta stands up. She smoothes out her skirt and, ugh. She feels absolutely disgusting. Or maybe debauched is the correct term? Her legs feel all rubbery and her lips are puffy, her jaw aches. Her tights feel clammy against her skin and she knows she must look sweaty beyond all belief. Jeff clears his throat and Britta looks over. He’s half-hard but he zips his pants up anyway.
She really needs to start thinking these things through.
-
Fifteen minutes later:
“What happened to you two?” Troy asks. “You lookin’ nasty.”
“Heated argument,” Jeff deadpans. He kicks his feet up onto the table and takes a long sip of his coffee.
“I won,” Britta says, crosses her legs primly. Jeff splutters and spits his coffee out; “What?” he yelps. “No way, man, I so - ”
“Cool,” Abed says. “A spit take.”
Pierce sniffs the air. “Why does it smell like my honeymoon with my third wife in here?”
“I think they’re going to edit that out. That’s just kind of gross,” Abed says. Pierce shrugs. Jeff and Britta glance at each other with matching looks of disgust.
-
So there is a day when Britta actually sits down and watches these ridiculous episodes Abed has been pumping out.
“Five years from now, I’m going to marry her,” Fake Jeff says, and this is easily more horrifying than the fade-to-black-sex scene. Britta is sure of it.
“Yeah,” Jeff says. “I never said that.”
Clearly, he’s been watching them too.
-
Towards the end of the semester someone throws a house party (just like Belushi, Pierce says), and in the kitchen, someone keeps handing Britta jell-o shots and she keeps downing them.
“You’ve met Jell-O Shot Jenny then?” Abed asks her later. Her mouth tastes like she ate all the sugar crystals at the bottom of a bag of Sour Patch kids.
“What?”
“Your mouth is bright green. You look like an alien. Or like you have gangrene of the mouth. Can you get gangrene of the mouth?”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
Britta holes up in an empty bedroom after that with the better part of a bottle of vodka hocked from the kitchen. She slumps into the old couch and old episodes of The Twilight Zone are on the television.
It takes Jeff roughly fifteen minutes to find her up here. He leans against the doorjamb for a moment and smiles. “Looks like I found the life of the party,” he says and shuts the door behind him. She thinks he might have locked it, and oh. Okay then.
“I’m not good at parties,” she grumbles. She takes a small swig from the bottle and grimaces. “Besides, this is a really good episode. This doll is killing people, all Chucky style.”
“Like I said,” Jeff says and sits down next to her, “life of the party.”
Britta turns to look at him. “What do you want?”
“Why is your mouth green?”
“Because I -” and then she stops. Instead of explaining, Britta places her hands on either side of his face and kisses him. He kisses her too, just as earnest, and she’s not really sure when they became earnest, but apparently they have. Jeff jerks her shirt over her head and Jeff really needs to stop wearing shirts with so many buttons. Britta’s fingers stumble and Jeff’s fingers stumble with her bra and Rod Serling is talking on TV.
Someone outside the door yells, “T-Paaaain,” and Britta fights down a hysterical laugh, because this is so surreal, right? The couch feels ratty and scratches at her bare back, and this is what people do in college, right? Meaningless sex. She repeats that to herself: meaningless sex.
(Which is such a lie, isn’t it. Because if this was meaningless then that would mean she doesn’t care. And the fact of the matter? She really sort of cares. And that really sort of makes her want to hate him even more. Except there’s the rub (she has no idea who actually said that and feels like she should, whatever, she’s in community college for god’s sake): Britta doesn’t hate Jeff. In fact, she actually sort of likes him and she actually sort of cares.
This is that revelation scene, it so is. Goddamnit).
So she decides to vocalize these feelings:
“You’re kind of an asshole,” she says, and Jeff thrusts into her, hard and slow.
“And you’re kind of a bitch,” he says into her collarbone.
Yeah, she thinks, and wraps her arms around Jeff’s neck. This is probably as romantic as they’re ever going to get.
[FADE TO BLACK].
-
And so, like, yeah, maybe they go back to his place, or probably her place since she actually has a place that doesn’t charge by the night, and they do this again, and again after that, and of course it’s awkward and of course they still don’t really like each other, not yet, and yeah, she’ll slap him at least once, and he’ll deserve it at least once, and if maybe in five years they get married, then in five years they get married. Maybe instead of “I do,” Britta will say, “we’re even,” and that will be that -
WHAT, Britta says.
Abed presses the stop button and leans back from the microphone plugged into his computer.
Narration is a popular television technique employed these days, he says. Ask Meredith Grey. Or Carrie Bradshaw. Or that dead lady on Desperate Housewives. Or -
Roll credits.
-
fin.