Jeff-Annie shippers will probably hate this chapter.

Single Malt

A Month Later...

Nate sat at the dense, perfectly coated mahogany bar at the Warwick, a single, quarter-full glass of Glengyle in front of him, being gently spun with his fingertips, making the dark liquid in the glass rise and fall slowly. Gentle Jazz rhythms bounced through the room and the dim light hid the faces of the patrons partly from view. He was here meeting up with Jeff for a drink, and had managed to get Britta and Annie to spend the night watching the girls.

It was alright; Mishelle and Sabrina were very well-behaved and had taken quite nicely to Annie and Britta, especially after Britta brought them unlimited throws at the Human Being dunk tank and Annie introduced them to the rest of her friends. The girls liked them, and they would both make $40 each (plus the $20 he left for a pizza), win win.

The petite blonde bartender ambled slowly in front of Nate, "How's that Scotch doing, sweetie?" She asked with a smile and a distinct sparkle in her eyes, placing her hand in her chin. Nate had been on the receiving of that look many times.

"Fine, thank you." Nate answered stoically, "When my friend gets here he'll want a Mccallan with no ice."

"Okay. You let me know if you need anything." She blushed and walked away.

As Jeff and Nate had become friends, the drinks were merely a social gathering, a contract between them; Nate liked the male company (since he was pretty much constantly surrounded by women; his girls, his mother, his aunts and a bevy of female orbiters) and he and Jeff talked about all sorts of things; law, politics, dating, music, sports...it was cool.

But tonight, Nate wanted to learn something about Jeff. It was clear that both Britta and Annie had feelings for him, and Jeff, unlike himself, was a man without the kind of constraints that prevented him from acting on them...but why? Jeff had never really touched on this before.

"Professor!" Jeff said with a nod as he walked into the door, clad in a very nice bespoke grey suit with a thin blue tie. Nate raised his glass to him and signaled the bartender with the raise of a finger, to which she smiled and nodded in response. Jeff sat down on the stool to his right and they shook hands.

"Sharp suit." Jeff commented, looking at Nate's dark Ralph Lauren Black Label two-button in navy black with red pinstripes, "Very Gangster."

"Probably my favorite, How you been?" Nate asked.

"Great, I was working on a few cases today and one got settled...for $2 million."

"Nice, how much of that gets to you?"

"Twenty-k, plus my $85 hourly rate...all in all not bad." Jeff boasted, "I might not even have to go back to being a lawyer, I can just consult."

"Sweet, sweet..."

"What about you? How are the girls?" Jeff switched tracks.

"They're well, and currently under the watchful eyes of one Britta Perry and one Annie Edison." Nate answered, downing a gulp of smoky scotch until there was just a mouthful left.

"It's nice that they're doing that for you." Jeff replied as the bartender lay a tumbler half-full of scotch on a napkin in front of Jeff, which he grabbed and sniffed. She flashed a coy look at Nate as she walked away.

"Yeah, yeah..." Nate started, before finishing his last gulp of scotch and ordering another with his eyes, "Actually, I wanted to ask you something about them."

Jeff's eyes grew dark; it doesn't matter if Nate is his friend and he had sort of a 'history' with Annie and Britta, and had actually turned out to be a worthy man of good caliber; Jeff, due to his jealous and competitive nature, wouldn't be happy if either of them started dating Nate...even though he probably should be.

"Okay..."

"Well...what's your deal with them?" Nate asked, his drink just arriving.

"I'm sorry, my deal?" Jeff asked incredulously.

"Yeah...I'm not blind you know." Nate started, "Annie cut off her finger because of you, and when I met the girls earlier at their place she mentioned having to call you later because she had tried six times and couldn't get a hold of you...and Britta seems to drop a 'Jeff Winger' into every second sentence...so, what's up?"

Jeff's mouth was agape; of all the conversations he and Nate had and would have, he never expected this to be one of them...well okay, maybe he sort of did, but in a way he was hoping he was wrong. He took a long, slow sip of his drink, downing nearly half of it and recoiling from the heat.

"Okay first...I know it to be true, but I want to hear you tell it to me; this conversation doesn't leave this bar..."

"Of course not." Nate replied.

"No no, say it..." Jeff said forcefully.

Nate raised his right hand, "This conversation doesn't leave this bar." Jeff looked relieved and looked into his glass.

"Well, I know Annie was calling me because she wanted me to go over the lease on their new place, just to make sure it was all legitimate. I was stuck under a paralegal and I'll probably stop by tomorrow."

"And I can see how you'd be helpful in that department." Jeff took another sip of his drink and a breath before speaking.

"Thing is with Britta, the entire reason I'm friends with her, and Pierce, and Abed and the whole group, is because in the beginning I wanted to hook up with her, that was two years ago, and that's why I formed the study group." Jeff paused, "And even though things moved at a glacial pace, we got closer and closer, and finally...well yeah, we hooked up...and then the group found out and freaked, and after the fallout we still wanted to keep doing it, so we fooled around on the side for almost a year. We stopped, though, a while ago."

"Oh yeah?"

"I don't know if you heard, but that girl, in a room full of people, on the last day of school, after sleeping with me once, told me she loved me."

"Whoa!" Nate was legitimately shocked; that didn't seem even remotely like the Britta he only half-knew.

"I know right? I mean I got skills, but that totally threw me for a loop." Jeff returned, "And all this while still doing nothing to hide her...contempt is the wrong word here, she never hated me...her...disagreement with how I live my life?"

"I can kinda see that."

"We kept things just physical, because really we're the exact same person, but with one subtle difference; I don't pretend to care about stuff because I think it makes me look like a good person, she does. She's just as vain, uncaring and competitive as me, and even though she didn't mean it...I mean SHE TOLD A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE SHE LOVED ME!"

"Girls can do some crazy shit, I know this to be true."

"Yeah." Jeff took another sip, "With Britta, as long as it was just physical it was fine; no strings, just sex. As soon as things moved a bit beyond the physical, we both knew we had to stop. Annie is a whole other different thing."

"I can see that, she seems very fragile."

"She seems fragile, but that's part of the trap; she really isn't. But the relationship is different between me and her compared to me and Britta." Jeff answered, "At least with Britta, we knew enough about each other that we didn't really like, but we could still connect on that physical level, but it can't be that way with Annie, she's so young, and I won't be 'that guy' who does that to her; ruins her opinion of men, takes away her ability to trust, makes her bitter and jaded...In other words, I don't want to be the guy that turns her into Britta."

"She doesn't seem like she could handle a purely physical relationship, she's probably into that whole pure Victorian notion of love and dating, painfully long courtships and no sex before marriage and all that."

"I think she'd waive the no sex before marriage, but that's a fairly apt summary. Really, it's not even that..."

"The age difference?"

Jeff stopped talking for a second to take yet another sip, his glass was almost empty, so he preemptively ordered another, "Honestly, the age isn't what's stopping me."

"When she asked me out she mentioned something about the 'Age Card'."

"And that's what I tell her because she's Annie; 'You're awesome but I won't date you because you're too young', but there's something else about her, and trust me when I say it isn't as cute and pretty as she is. Be honest; could you tell her the ugly truth about why you'd never date her, or would you take the easy way out? I have an easier time lying to the Grand Jury than to that girl." Jeff inquired.

"Hurting her feelings was like clubbing a baby seal with another baby seal. I think it's the eyes."

"That's exactly what it's like!" Jeff said, his drink again arriving, "For me at least, it's never been about the age; I like that Annie's young and inexperienced, that she knows next to nothing about men...she doesn't see through me every time I play the age card, I mean really...thinking that I or any man would have a problem dating a cute, feminine twenty year old! Really, Annie! EVERY older man wants to date a girl like her!"

"She is pretty hot."

"She's very hot!" Jeff said loudly, pausing as the other patrons of the bar glanced at him, "And kind, and sweet, and smart and cheerful and made of rainbows and happy-fun-candy...but there's this one trait she has, just one thing that keeps her in the friend zone, and unfortunately it's a pretty big thing and something that, if it ever changes, won't be until long after her looks have left her."

"It must be a pretty big issue...what is it?" Nate quizzed.

Jeff took a sip of his drink, "...she's incredibly selfish."

"Really?" Nate rubbed his chin in revelation, "She told me she volunteers at a soup kitchen and she seemed caring and kind...the last thing I would imagine her as is selfish."

"Only because you don't know her like I do." Jeff assured him, "She has it hard; living alone in a shithole neighborhood, just scraping by on pennies a day, totally estranged from her family...so it's almost like we - me, Britta, Abed, Troy, Pierce, Chang and Shirley - are her family."

"That sounds kinda cliche."

"Yes it does...Abed. But it seems odd to me...Annie's always saying that we're like her family, admonishing me for my arrogance and vanity, saying that I'm 'faster than some bacteria' and an 'overpriced clump of fabric and hair product', but she doesn't ever seem to turn that eye inwards, because if she did, she'd see that she continually puts herself; her needs, her wants, her goals, ahead of the rest of her supposed 'family'."

"What does that mean?"

"Well in first year she dated Britta's ex, and then kissed me on the last day of school after I told her that Britta and Michelle said they loved me - Michelle was my then-ex girlfriend, a former professor at Greendale -. In one move she severely compromised our chances of passing Spanish and effectively ruined Chang's life because she didn't want us to drift apart." Jeff took a breath, "Then later, she sabotaged Greendale's space simulator so she could transfer to City College, which was funny because a couple of months earlier, she was so concerned that we would 'drift apart' that she was willing to get Chang fired and ensure that we all failed. Later she had a now-legendary freakout over a purple pen, showed everyone a very embarrassing videotape of me just to win a contest, and then, just before that awful paintball game at the end of last year...she did something that I knew would totally rule out her as a relationship prospect, once more with more of her selfishness."

"What did she do? I heard she lost the game?" Nate wondered aloud.

"Well, you've met Pierce, right?"

"Oldwhitemansays...racist, awkward, kinda mean and vindictive...yeah I know him." Nate answered, though really, Pierce had never been anything but super nice to him.

"Last year, Pierce did some evil shit that I won't get into, and before paintball we held a quiet vote on whether or not to invite him back to the group this year; playing cards, black means no, red means yes, it had to be unanimous, you get the idea."

"Yeah..."

"Well...the vote went 5 'No' to 1 'Yes', so the motion failed."

"You and him seem to be getting along."

"Well that may be, but then realize; me, Abed, Troy, Shirley and Britta, we all voted no, and the single yes vote was..."

"Miss Edison." Nate took a deep sip of his scotch.

"Of course...and Pierce didn't even want to rejoin the group anyways." Jeff finished his second drink, "But that's not the point; once more it was Annie doing what she wanted to do, not caring about anything but what she wanted, totally unwilling to budge on her position even though her 'family' was clearly going in the opposite direction, in doing so almost destroyed us...she can only compromise when she benefits from it, which kind of nullifies the point of a compromise to begin with."

"Whoa..."

"I haven't been in many 'relationships' per se, but one thing I know about them is that they involve compromise, on both sides." Jeff spoke resolutely, "You want to know what a relationship between me and Annie would look like? Let me paint you a picture; I'd end up being manipulated with so many tears and guilt-trips that I'd eventually morph into a shadow of the man I am, and is that really worth it? I'd get to have sex with her which would probably be awesome, but even still, the answer is no. If she really loved me like she says she does, she would take me for who I am, not for who she wanted me to be."

"Wow...that's some pretty heavy stuff there..." Nate replied, drinking from his glass and playing with it on the shiny surface of the bar, "I never would have suspected anything..."

"Yeah..." Jeff answered, "But I'm curious...why did you ask?"

"What do you mean?"

"Have you come around on them?" Jeff said with a perfunctory tone, "If you want to date one of them, then it's fine...I would probably go ahead and say that you and Annie have more in common; troubled pasts and lives full of duty and responsibility, hell, you two even sort of look alike. But with Britta, you'd have an easier time; you'd have more to talk about and more common interests, and I know you could level her out."

"That's still an impossibility. I asked because I was curious and you are my good friend; nothing ulterior."

"Well, I hope I gave you the answers you wanted." Jeff said quietly; Jeff knew he could open up to Nate, because aside from the fact that he was nonjudgmental and cool, he was also blazingly smart and could give him perspective on things. Jeff took another long swig of his drink, "I'm not going to permanently shut out the possibility of anything ever happening between me and either of them. If Britta stops lying to herself and everyone else, and Annie can learn to put the the welfare of others ahead of what she wants, then yeah, I would not rule out a relationship with either of them. I know it sounds like I'm talking a lot of shit about them, and maybe I sort of am, but I love them both very much; they're like my family...and when you love someone, you have to take them as they are."

"Truer words have rarely been spoken." Nate said with respect.

"Yeah, that's kinda my thing." Jeff answered. He turned his attention back to his drink and took a slow sip.

The End