Corners and Angles

Prompt: A belated fill for innie_darling's (Livejournal) prompt: Individual: Britta and her dad and/or Britta and her mom.

Warnings: Mentions of child sexual assault / angst.

Author's Note: While Britta's possible-sexual-assault-as-a-child has not been made officially canon, it has been mentioned on the Greendale Community website and illicitly referred to in the finale of season 1 Community. This fic refers to the 'man dressed up in a dinosaur costume' incident.

She gets an email from her Dad.

Hi Britta,

It's been a while. Was just wondering how you were going?

Take care,
Dad.

It's informal, but it's the first contact she's had with him in years and she walks away from the computer screen and picks up her youngest rescue cat, Cokebaby, and manipulates him into a prolonged cuddle. She takes a few deep breaths, and then puts him down and sits back at the computer again.

Dad,

We do better when we're estranged. Don't email me again.

Britta.

She saves the email but doesn't send it, and then she closes her computer screen and decides not to go to class that day.

Shirley texts her to ask if she's okay, about six hours later, and Britta is too pre-occupied to realise that her 'I'm fine,' text is likely to make the group worry until after she's sent it. She curses herself and realises that she'll need to go into class tomorrow and fake being fine. Or she'll need to fake being sick, something she hasn't really needed to do since highschool sports and not really like the honest, authentic person she really wants to be.

The vodka in her freezer gets a good seeing to that evening. And then, while humming tunelessly to herself at three in the morning, and listening to The Bends, and almost-but-not-quite-sobbing to Fake Plastic Trees, she presses 'send' on the email.

She hopes her Dad feels it like the blow it's intended to be.

She drags herself to class, she's hungover but it doesn't really matter, because there is already a more pressing conspiracy about whether Senor Chang is flirting with 'the hot lacrosse teacher' or not and Britta is not the centre of attention, which she kinda digs.

She joins in, puts ten dollars on 'not flirting' even though she knows that Chang totally is, and everyone laughs and calls her a killjoy and Abed says, 'totally in character, Britta,' and Britta thinks that she ticked all her boxes today, and no one knows that anything is up.

It's awesome.

Later that night, as she stares into the empty vodka bottle, she wonders if it's sad that she thinks it's awesome that nobody knows anything is wrong.

She gets a few good days to put her mind in order, to tell herself that she wasn't really shaken up by her Dad reaching out to her, and that she hasn't been putting herself through the ringer asking herself what it means. She manages not to think about 'the incident' as it's come to be known in her head, and she has convinced the crew that nothing has changed, which makes her feel satisfied. Because as much as she hates her reputation as the dour, funless one, she'd hate it even more if they knew about her history. About what was going on.

Stigma, she tells herself, there's only so much of it she can take, basically.

The thing is, she wants to be an authentic person, really, but there are consequences to authenticity and most of them suck.

This is what she tells herself when she buys some more vodka, and this is what she tells herself to justify lying to her friends, and this is what she tells herself when she's trying to fall asleep at night and do those stupid thought-stopping exercises because she wants to stop hating herself.

And she wants to stop hating her Dad, really, she does.

Forgiveness is important, she thinks.

Britta,

Come on, don't be like that. Are you going to hold something that happened decades ago against me? I'm your father, Britta, and I love you. Doesn't that count for something? I'm not giving up this time, I'm not going to let you just walk away from me for another ten years.

Love,
Dad.

'Ooh, I rate a 'love' this time, way to go, Dad.' She says, and then deletes the email because she can't bear looking at it and it abrades at her skin, like sandpaper.

She goes to class that day and they're sitting as a group before they have Spanish together. Jeff is sipping his complicated-sounding-coffee, Troy is picking the remnants of sugar from a finished donut up off his plate, Annie is studying, Shirley is texting someone, Pierce is staring off into space and Britta thinks maybe old people need naps or something during the day. It sounds like something Pierce could benefit from.

Abed is staring right at her, though, and it's disconcerting.

'What?' She says, breaking the silence, and trying to laugh through her awkwardness.

Abed tilts his head in a considering way.

'You've been withdrawn, lately. If this were a character study, and one were to look at your pattern of behaviour over the past few days-'

'Can it, Abed.' Britta says, because she can't even play along. She can't. And oh shit, now she's gotten everyone's attention. And by everyone's, just Jeff and Annie's. Pierce is off in la-la land, Troy is absorbed in his sugar, and whoever Shirley is texting, it's more important than whatever is going on in the cafeteria.

'Even your unwillingness to talk about it suggests that the writers are trotting out some kind of backstory trope to broaden your character. You know the kind. Death in the family. Abuse. Parental issues.'

'I said drop it.' Britta says, and her voice is harsher than she wanted it to be, and that shocks her more than anything Abed is saying. So she grabs her bag and gets up and walks away and knows, she knows that this is not playing along and staying in character and she knows there will be consequences but she doesn't care. She doesn't want to hear Abed's assessment or deduction of what she's been through, dammit.

'See you later,' she manages to say over her shoulder.

'In Spanish?' Annie calls, and Britta tells herself that it's not worry she hears in Annie's voice.

'No, not Spanish. I've got something on.'

No one runs after her, and she tells herself she's not disappointed. She's not disappointed that no one's run after her to see if she's okay. Because she's an adult, and if she wanted to talk to someone, she could just talk to someone. She knows this from therapy. That it's passive aggressive to expect people to be mind readers, and that it's unfair if she doesn't let them know what her expectations are.

Maybe she's just in an unfair mood.

Dad,

Are you serious? Leave me alone, or I'll block your email.

Britta.

She doesn't know if she will block his email, though she wants to and thinks it would be wise, and she doesn't send this email either, because it's harsh even by her standards. What she actually wants to say to him would fill page after page of vitriol. And the thing is, she's said it to him in the past, she's done it, she's yelled and started sentences with things like 'my therapist said that you...' and in the end it left her with no sense of catharsis and the anger was there, the brittleness, the caustic, acid-etched thoughts that raced through her head and made her the stand-up person she was today.

She doesn't get to the vodka in time, and she's leaning against the kitchen bench with Cokebaby and her older kitty Arpeggi thinking it's dinner time and meowing around her feet, and she's actually crying.

She wishes that she was crying in sadness, or grief, or something other than the frustrated, bitter anger that is reminding her, again, 'no, you're not over it. Yes, it's been a really fucking long time, and you're still not over it. How sad is that?'

'Fuck,' she says, into the crook of her elbow. 'Fuck.'

And she pulls it together. She pulls her shit together and she feeds her cats and she wonders if it's worth deferring the semester. She could do it. She could defer.

Would she miss the group?

And she knows she would. She's a better person because of them. Just barely. She can't defer. But she can't tell them what's going on either.

Stigma, she reminds herself, it's just not worth it.

She gets a call on her cell, and she excuses herself from the group to answer it. They all know something is wrong. Jeff is giving her that douchey-sympathy look that she knows will disappear as soon as he knows what's going on. Annie actually patted her shoulder. They're all fucking acting like they actually know what's wrong, and they're all treating her, already, like she's got some kind of disease.

Upon exiting the cafeteria, she cuts off her ring-tone and presses the phone to her ear.

'Mom? What's up?'

'Britta.'

Britta's swears the temperature drops everywhere, she shivers, and she hangs up the phone. She hangs it up because godammit, he has someone gotten her Mom involved in this stupid reconciliation and the sneaky fucker is using her Mom's phone to ring her.

She stalks angrily towards her car and then pauses in a quiet corner between a park bench and a large tree and takes in a few, deep breaths through her nose. There's no one else around, really, and it's probably a good thing.

Fuck my life, she thinks. Fuck being a better person.

She calls her Mom's phone, and her Dad picks up again after two rings. He says her name in relief, because he has no idea, he just has no idea.

'You know what, Dad? I'm not fucking over it. I don't want to see you. I don't want to speak to you. I don't want to exchange emails like it didn't happen, because you know what? It did happen, Dad. You were there when it happened. And once more, because you're so fucking dense that you still don't get it; you didn't believe me when I told you what happened. You didn't believe your child had been sexually assaulted and you took his side over mine and you know what? You should be the one dealing with the fallout from that. Not me. And Mom can go fuck herself too if you both want to pretend this didn't happen.'

Her Dad actually splutters, but what he manages to say is;

'Britta, don't talk about your mother that way.'

'Because standing on social etiquette is so much more important than be being abused, isn't it, Dad? Than some guy in a fucking dinosaur costume feeling me up and telling me that it's okay, it's okay, I don't have to tell anyone, shhh, right? If you ever, ever think that there will be a time that you will be able to talk to me without me bringing this up, you're so mistaken. Okay? It looks like I'm gonna be holding onto this one forever, so get with the making of new children already, because I'm not your daughter.'

She hangs up the phone triumphantly. She wishes it would make a loud noise, like BANG, or like slamming a door, but it just makes a mild beep. A mild beep and it's done.

Her hands are already swiping at her eyes before she realises that she's been crying.

She sits down on the bench, and squeezes the phone really hard in her hand until her palm becomes even hotter, even sweatier. She runs a hand through her hair, smirks to herself, because even though she's kind of shattered, and even though she's maybe even screwed up for life, it never stops feeling good to tell her Dad where to stick it.

When someone slides next to her on the park bench she starts to say; 'do you mind?' And then realises that it's Jeff.

He looks pale, like that time he got food poisoning.

'I probably should've let Shirley come out and find you, because she wanted to, and she would've been better at this.' He said, and Britta is grinding her teeth together.

'At eavesdropping on my phone call?'

'Yeah, well, you know Shirley.' Jeff manages a weak half-smile, and Britta can't help it, despite the pit of gaping horror that has opened up inside of her, she laughs under her breath.

'She could be eavesdropping right now and we wouldn't know.' Britta said, and she wonders, has she been sounding that tired lately? Or is that just how she sounds now that the last person she wanted to know about this stuff, knows about this stuff?

'So could Pierce, you know, with his ear-goggle-things.'

'Oh don't,' Britta laughs properly then, at the idea of Pierce listening to a conversation like that, and wearing those stupid ear-things, and you know, Pierce.

A silence stretches between them, and Jeff clearly has no idea what to say, and Britta thinks she could take the pressure off him but she's tired of always being the one to have to make it okay with other people, so instead she watches him squirm. Watches him try to come to terms with something she still can't come to terms with herself.

'Normally,' Jeff says finally, 'I'd offer what I thought the other person would want to hear. You know. That sort of fake listening that I do really well.' Britta nods when he looks at her, because yes, he did fake listening really well. 'But I don't want to do that. And also, I don't know what you want to hear. Is there anything I can actually do, instead of flail around here like an idiot?'

'Don't tell the others.' Britta said quickly. 'It doesn't have to be our little secret or anything, just...don't tell them. Annie will make Disney Princess face. And I'm sure Abed will talk about how abuse is such a tired trope because you know, in TV, you either resolve it after the one big magical cry, the big magical 'sex heals all' scene, or you don't resolve it and you're left with a damaged character.'

'I don't know, Abed is forgetting Alan Ball. He traumatises his characters and they stay pretty functional. Or they get pretty functional eventually.'

'I suppose.' Britta says, because all the times she had ever imagined having this conversation with someone, it had never gone quite like this.

'You know, it explains a lot.' Jeff says, quickly, like he thinks it'll offend her. Britta wants to be offended by it, but she knows that in some ways, he's right. She's tired of pretending that it doesn't affect who she is, and that it's not a part of her life, and she's so tired of it being a part of her life, that she just wants to rip it out of her and shove it down her Dad's throat, because that wouldn't be a violent sexual metaphor at all.

'Yeah.' She says.

'Anything else I can do?' He says.

'Don't be a dick about it. If that's even possible,' she drawls, 'but seriously just...I'm still the same old Britta as always.' She says, and thinks, please don't stop having fun with me, please can we still have our conspiracy theories and our games.

'I know that.' He laughed. 'You're being the same old Britta even now.'

'Am I?'

'You just told your Dad to essentially get bent, so yeah, I think you're playing standard Britta right now.'

He leaned back against the bench and stared up at the tree canopy.

'Did it feel good? Telling your Dad to fuck off?'

'I've done it before. It always feels good in the moment. Never lasts.'

'Ah, like a runner's high.' Jeff says, and Britta smiles.

'Yeah, like a runner's high.'

They spend the next hour talking like they have always talked, except this time, the conversation occasionally touches on her parents, her history. And she senses, with Jeff, that there is stigma, he does have a problem with it, but it's not like she thought it would be. He doesn't treat her like she's diseased, or toxic, or poisoned, or different.

He treats her like 'same old Britta,' and it is a balm to her fractured, bitter spirit.

That night, she still drinks some vodka, and she still blocks her father's email address, and she still sings tuneless songs to her cats because that's just what she does when she's had her fifth shot of vodka. Some people get horny. Some people get sleepy. And Britta sings songs (usually Radiohead) to her cats.

The next day, she meets the group in the cafeteria and sits down and says hi to everyone. Jeff joins them all a moment later, and after giving her a glance as though making sure the day before actually happened, he starts talking about the merits of real cream vs. canned cream. Pierce says something about how canned cream is easier to squirt on someone's back for the purposes of foreplay and everyone groans.

Except Abed, who looks curious.

During the rest of the conversation, Britta settles back into her chair and participates occasionally, preferring to watch the dynamic play itself out. She still feels like her brain bathes in acid instead of water, but she's reminding herself that things went about as well as they could have gone.

Which surprises her, because for the most part, her life has just never worked that way.

Britta steals a chip off Troy's plate and hopes that she's turning a corner in her life.