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6.
“Okay, Britta’s on her way over,” Annie says, putting her phone back in her pocket. “But I think we should do two trips, one for the stuff you’re keeping and one for the goodwill stuff.”
“I don’t understand why your dad can’t just get rid of the stuff you don’t want on his own,” says Abed.
Troy just shrugs, and they go back to packing.
Troy’s dad had called him a few days earlier to let him know that his childhood bedroom was getting turned into an office and that he needed to come deal with his belongings. So here he is, Annie and Abed helping him sort through everything and pack it all into boxes.
It had turned out that Troy cared about keeping very little of it. Logically, he had been aware of that, considering he had been living for so long with only the things from the two duffle bags he had taken to Pierce’s, but it still surprised him just how much stuff was set to be donated.
“Troy, what about all these clothes?” Annie asks him, opening his closet “Do you wanna sort through them just in case, or should I just donate them?”
“You can just donate all of it. I took everything I would ever actually wear with me when I left.”
Annie nods, and Abed closes the top of the box he’s been packing before he moves over to help her. Troy goes back to emptying the drawers of his desk, and it’s only quiet for a moment before Annie speaks again.
“Hey, Troy, remember this?”
Troy turns to see her holding his letterman’s jacket. She’s grinning, and he just shakes his head.
“God, remember when I wore that in freshman year?”
Annie grimaces slightly.
“Donate, then?”
“Please.”
The doorbell rings downstairs, and Troy's dad calls him a moment later.
“Troy! There’s a woman with a peculiar name that says she’s here for you!”
“That’s probably Britta,” says Annie.
Troy nods, and picks up a couple of nearby boxes before going downstairs. Sure enough, Britta is standing on the front step, making small talk with Troy's father. Troy greets her, and she unlocks his car so he can put the boxes into it.
“Can I keep the jacket as a costume piece?” Abed asks him, once he’s brought Britta upstairs with him “I’ve been trying to find one at a thrift store for ages, but this one is right here, and it’s in perfect condition.”
It takes Troy a moment to realize what he’s talking about, but he notices it clutched in Abed's hand.
“Yeah, totally. It’s just getting donated anyway, right?”
Abed gives him a finger gun, and lays it down on the bed
He and Britta take more stuff out to her car, and when they come back, Abed is wearing the jacket, and Annie is pulling on the blazer Troy recognizes from his prom.
“What are you guys doing?” Britta asks.
“We were going to try to dress as Troy, but there aren’t any of his normal clothes left in here, so we improvised,” Abed tells her.
Troy’s jacket hangs off his shoulders. It’s September, technically, but there’s plenty of heat lingering from the summer and the thick fabric is making him warm enough for Abed’s cheeks to flush. He adjusts the jacket, gives Troy a small grin, and Troy feels his stomach lurch.
Oh shit.
5.
Cold wind blows across Troy’s cheeks as he crawls out the window, taking his usual perch on the fire escape. When he had first moved to the former dreamatorium, he had disregarded it because it looked scary and dangerous, but it’s become his favourite place to sit and think things over (even when it is a little colder than ideal).
And he definitely has some thinking over to do. Specifically in regards to Abed, and to himself, and to how the two relate.
It’s been months since the day at his parent’s house, and the little problem that had come up in the middle of his childhood bedroom has only gotten worse. He needs to figure out how to handle it, and soon, because he’s very close to doing something he’ll regret.
He shivers beneath his hoodie, the only precautions against the weather he had taken coming in the form of a yellow beanie. He distantly considers going back in to grab his coat, but ultimately decides against it.
The rusty platform above him creaks dangerously as a particularly strong gust of wind blows through, and Troy shivers once more, both from the cold and the thought of the flimsy structure breaking. But it doesn’t take long for the wind to subside, and for Troy to be once again left alone with his thoughts.
“Troy?” Abed’s voice calls from the apartment “Are you home?”
Troy sticks his head in through the open window to be better heard, and calls “out here!”
His bedroom door opens a moment later, and Abed sticks his head in through the crack. He looks around the room, spots Troy, and frowns as he opens the door fully and steps inside.
“Why are you out there?”
Troy just shrugs, and Abed seems to accept this.
“Annie just called. She’s on her way home, so there’s a frozen lasagna in the oven. She asked me to make sure you weren’t out.”
It’s probably not the norm, Troy thinks, for casual roommates to make such an effort to eat most meals together. But it’s a familiar habit for Troy and Annie, who grew up doing it all the time, and a welcome comfort for Abed, who didn’t.
Troy nods, and Abed cocks his head, stepping closer to the window.
“Can I come out there, or do you want to be alone?”
Troy had gone outside because he wanted to be alone, but Abed is always a welcome intrusion, so he nods.
“Are you nodding because I can come out, or because you’d like to be alone?”
“You can come out,” says Troy, rather lamely. It feels like his tongue is made of lead.
Abed steps forward and clambers out the window with his ever-surprising grace. Troy stares as his long legs as he folds himself through the window, and pointedly does not think about the things he wants Abed to do with them.
Abed crosses his legs, looking out at Troy’s, which are stretched out in front of him.
“Are you alright?” Abed asks, turning to face him.
Troy nods, slowly, pointedly not meeting his eyes.
“Are you mad at me?”
Troy turns to look at him, taken aback.
“What? No, not at all.”
Abed nods. “I didn’t think so, but most of the time I don’t notice when people are. I thought I’d make sure”
Troy watches him for another moment, but he doesn’t seem upset.
There’s more wind, and Abed shudders. He’s only wearing a thin hoodie unzipped over a slightly faded inspector spacetime t-shirt. Troy pulls the beanie off his head and places it on Abed’s, who smiles as Troy adjusts it.
They’re staring at each other, and the sounds of the wind whistling through the weathered metal and the hum of the street below rush in Troy’s ears. Before he can stop himself, his hands move down to the sides of Abed’s face, and he leans in to kiss him.
It only takes a moment for him to realize with horror what he’s done, and that Abed is completely frozen, and he pulls away like he’s been burned, hands falling limply to his lap.
“Fuck,” he says, as Abed looks at him. “Fuck, I don’t know why i- I’m so fucking- shit, Abed, I swear-”
Abed cuts him off by pressing his mouth firmly into Troy’s, with so much force that Troy nearly falls backwards. But he doesn’t, hands moving up once more to catch Abed's face as they move their lips together with such fervour that Troy distantly wonders if it’s safe to be doing this on a fire escape that almost unquestionably isn’t up to code.
But Abed runs his tongue along Troy’s bottom lip, and then he’s vehemently licking into Troy’s mouth and making Troy let out deeply embarrassing noises that Abed doesn’t seem to mind, and he decides that it’s a later problem.
4.
Troy blinks as sunlight filters through the curtainless window. Spring is starting to turn into summer, and it’s warm on his face as he basks in it for a moment.
He realizes that the bed next to him is empty, Abed’s place carefully fixed as though he was never there. Part of Troy thinks it’s cute, but he also wishes that Abed would leave the bed as is when he wakes up at the ass-crack of dawn, just as a reminder of his former presence. But even the thought of saying anything even remotely that stupid and mushy to Abed makes his cheeks heat up, so he just takes a long drink of water from the cup on his nightstand, grabs a discarded Greendale Human Beings sweatshirt from the floor, and goes into the kitchen.
He finds Abed in a rumpled X-Men t-shirt that’s technically Troy's, and a pair of grey sweatpants. Recently, he traded in his matching pyjamas for nothing but boxers, a sight that Troy appreciates but Annie has no interest in being subjected to every morning, so Abed usually grabs whatever clothes he can find when he gets up. Troy has a not-so-secret fondness for when said clothes end up being his.
He pushes his arms through the sleeves of his sweatshirt and adjusts it over his torso as he walks up behind Abed, who is standing in front of the counter, eating a bowl of off-brand frosted flakes and watching an old episode of inspector spacetime on his laptop.
Troy comes up behind him, wrapping his arms around his waist as he rests his chin in the crook of Abed’s neck. Abed hums in appreciation, lowering the bowl slightly as he turns to press a kiss to whatever part of Troy's face he can reach. It ends up being the top of his cheekbone, which should be awkward, but neither of them mind. Troy moves to catch Abed's lips properly, and Abed fully sets down his bowl so he can turn to face Troy, who pushes his hands under the soft hem of his T-shirt and splays his hands across the warm skin of Abed’s back. There’s no heat to it, really, just tired and lazy and loving.
Annie clears her throat behind them, and they separate, the tips of Abed’s ears tinged pink. They both know she doesn’t actually care , but it’s still slightly embarrassing.
“I, uh, have something to say,” she says, and she somehow looks simultaneously irate and nervous in a very Annie way.
“What’s up?” says Troy, slightly worried.
“I’m, er-” she swallows, hard, then gives her body a little shake like she’s typing herself up “I’m a lesbian.”
Troy doesn’t really know what to say, and Abed doesn’t seem to either, so he just settles on a very enthusiastic “oh!” and pulls her into a hug that Abed soon joins.
When they pull apart, she looks like she might start crying, but she doesn’t. Instead, she just wipes her eyes before nodding a few times and then shifting awkwardly.
“Alright, great. Then that should soften this blow a teensy bit.”
Troy and Abed share a glance.
“What blow?”
Annie makes a pained grimace, before shaking her head.
“Alright, you can come out!” she calls, somewhat nervously, and her bedroom door creeps open to reveal a very sheepish Britta Perry.
3.
Classes are almost over at Greendale. Soon, there’s going to be finals to worry about, Dioramas to be made, and all-nighters to be pulled. Annie will be swallowed by fluorescent post-its as an unspoken agreement is formed to pay close attention for signs of a relapse.
But for now, the dean has organized a student music night on the quad, where any student with any kind of musical talent can showcase their skills. It’s a decent idea on paper, but it’s also Greendale, Meaning Star-Burns is currently on minute seven of his one-man tambourine act with no clear intention of slowing down.
Annie, Britta, Troy, and Abed are on a double date. Pierce and Shirley couldn’t make it, and when they invited Jeff, he told them he “would rather eat a live rat than spend a night playing fifth wheel to their mushy bullshit”. So they put out two blankets next to each other and spent a fair amount of the night playing a very intense game of Uno that Annie brought.
The game is somewhere in Annie’s bag, now, and the four of them are content to bask in Star-Burns’s rhythmic clanging, with the occasional whispered comment or joke to the other three.
Troy is sitting between Abed’s legs, head resting on his chest and Abed’s arms around his torso. It should be a comfortable position, but the warmth of the summer air coupled with Abed’s body heat is starting to make it stiflingly hot.
He leans forward momentarily to pull off the zip-up hoodie that he’s wearing, and goes to set it down next to them on the blanket, but Abed stops him.
“Wait, can I wear that?”
“Of course you can, but aren’t you hot? It’s like a million degrees out here.”
Abed just shrugs, and Troy supposes it doesn’t really matter. He hands Abed the sweater, and scooches slightly forward to let him put it on.
Abed takes a moment to adjust it, and then looks at Troy contentedly when he’s finished.
“Thanks. You can keep lying on me, now, if you’d like,” he says, sitting back on his hands and giving Troy ample room to resume their previous position.
Instead, Troy moves forward to catch Abed in a kiss. Abed melts into it, one hand coming to cup Troy's cheek, and Troy pulls back after a moment with a grin. He turns back around to rest in Abed’s arms once more, while the crowd around them cheers for Star-Burns as he exits the stage.
“Alright! Thank you for that, Star-Burns.” says the dean “next up, we have Greendale's very own new-wave feminist glockenspiel ensemble!”
Troy glances over the blanket next to them to see Annie sitting on her own, giving him a look just as confused as his own.
“Where’s Britta?” he asks her
“She said she was going to the bathroom fifteen minutes ago, I don’t know.”
“You don’t think-”
Troy is cut off by the crowd cheering as a group of probably a dozen women walk on stage, all carrying large black cases. As they all sit down in a circle on the stage to set up their instruments (turns out a glockenspiel is just some sort of xylophone, and Troy would probably be disappointed if it weren’t for what comes next.) the three of them notice a familiar shock of blonde hair. They all speak at once, with varying levels of shock and amusement.
“Is that-”
“Oh my god.”
“Britta?”
She spots them in the crowd, and Troy understands why she wanted them to sit so close to the front. She waves excitedly, and Annie waves back, before turning to Troy and Abed and pointing an accusatory finger at them.
“Minimal mocking, you hear me? She’s been keeping this a secret for weeks, and she’s been going on all these vague rants about finding her passion. I thought she had joined a cult. You hurt her feelings, and I will microwave every DVD in the apartment.”
Troy and Abed both nod, but that doesn’t stop Troy from pulling out his phone and using one hand to record, the other hand intertwined with Abed’s.
“Jeff is gonna be so mad he missed this” Abed leans down to whisper in his ear.
“I’m gonna charge him for this video, use it to cover rent for a year.”
2.
“Where are we meeting the others?” Troy asks.
“The main entrance,” Annie tells him with a sigh.
“Right. Where is that?”
Annie rolls her eyes and opens her mouth to retort, but she stops, looks around, and then turns to him with wide eyes.
“Are you kidding me? You’re supposed to be the organized one!”
“I’m sorry, okay! Look, we’ll figure it out. This is literally just a parking lot, there’s no way we could be that lost.”
When Troy had found out there was a small carnival being held all weekend, it hadn’t taken too much convincing to get everyone to go as a group. Even Jeff had agreed, under the pretense of “someone needs to look after all of you”.
But now, he was standing in the middle of said carnival with Annie, the hot midday August sun beating down on both of them as they tried to find either their fellow study group members or the agreed-upon meeting spot.
“Jesus,” Annie says, “did it not occur to you to check the forecast for heatstroke potential before you invited everyone to this?”
Troy opens his mouth to retort, but he hears a voice calling their names before he can.
“Troy, Annie! Over here!”
They turn around to see Britta and Abed, Britta waving them over. Annie gives a small wave back, and the two of them walk over to the pair. However, it turns out that neither of them knows where the designated meetup spot is either.
“Front entrance, guys. There’s only one.”
Jeff has materialized behind them, Shirley and her boys beside him.
“Then why aren’t you there?” Britta asks. Jeff gives her a look, but Shirley cuts him off before he can respond.
“He got lost too. He called me, I had to go find him.”
Britta snorts, and Jeff rolls his eyes at her as they start bickering (everyone had hoped that the fighting was sexual tension based and that they would stop when Annie and Britta got together, but it turns out that’s genuinely just how they communicate.).
Troy looks up at Abed through his dollar-store sunglasses.
“Hey.”
Abed turns to him.
“Hi.”
“What do you want to do first?”
“I’m not sure. I want to ride the Ferris wheel so we can kiss at the top of it, but we should wait until it gets dark to do that.”
Troy smiles.
“Yeah, alright. You wanna play some games?”
Abed nods. They both share looks with Annie and Shirley as Jeff and Britta continue to argue. Elijah and Jordan run up to Annie from where they had been playing, and start talking at her and Shirley about their game.
The sunglasses are starting to make sweat form on Troy's nose, so he takes them off and hangs them off the front of his shirt. A moment later, Abed reaches down, grabs them, and puts them on his own face. They look at each other, and Abed gives him a wide grin. The way that he’s standing makes the sun form a halo of light around his head, and he’s so gorgeous that Troy feels a little out of breath.
There’s a beat, and Troy's seemingly unbreakable habit of speaking without thinking gets the best of him for the thousandth time as he blurts out “I love you.”
Troy realizes instantly what he’s just said, and his eyes widen as he tries to figure out how to take it back. Abed is completely still, though it seems to be more of an Abed kind of completely still than a concerning type of completely still.
After a moment, he nods very slowly.
“Cool. Cool, cool, cool. I love you too.”
Troy sighs in relief, and he leans up to kiss Abed.
The day passes without much incident, and they even get to do Abed’s Ferris wheel kiss. It’s not until much later, when Troy is almost asleep, that Abed suddenly sits up in the bed, ramrod straight.
It’s too hot for them to sleep tangled up in each other like usual, but Troy still had an arm lazily thrown across Abed’s chest that flops into his lap at the movement. He blinks, looking up at Abed in the dim orange wash of the streetlights outside the window with a groggy “w’s goin’ on?”
“I missed a star wars reference.”
“Huh?”
“When you told me you loved me, I didn’t respond with ‘I know’. I missed my only chance for one of the most well-known star wars references of all time.”
Troy’s still, like, 70% asleep, so it takes him a minute to process.
“Why was that your only chance?”
“The reference makes more sense if it happens the first time. It’s not like I’m ever going to have that moment again.”
“You could have it with someone else.”
“Hypothetically, yes, but it works better in a romantic setting.”
Troy’s awake, now, as he realizes what Abed is implying. He props himself up on his elbow as Abed turns to look at him.
“Are you saying you don’t plan on ever dating anyone else?”
Abed frowns.
“Not actively, though I recognize there’s a good chance you’ll break up with me at some point. However-”
“What? Why am I the one that breaks up with you?”
Abed shrugs. “Statistical probability.”
And Troy's heart shatters into a million pieces. He kind of wants to spend the rest of eternity either kissing Abed or reminding him that he loves him. Probably a mix of both.
He uses the hand that’s not supporting him to find one of Abed’s. He squeezes it as tightly as he can, looking up at Abed in the dim light.
“I’m not going to break up with you, okay?”
“Yes, I know that’s how you feel right now, which I appreciate, but-”
“No. Not but. I love you. I am not going to get tired of you. I am not going to leave you in a clothes dryer or a locker or anything else. Okay?”
Abed is quiet for a moment, but Troy makes out a slow nod.
He sits up and takes Abed by the shoulders to kiss him. Abed leans back, and Troy ends up with legs on either side of Abed's hips and Abed’s arms around his neck as they make out sloppily.
Troy leans back briefly to look at Abed, staring intently into his eyes.
“I love you,” he says, punctuating it with a kiss.
Abed grins
“I know.”
+1.
Abed is pacing their bedroom.
“Look, it’s gonna be fine, alright?” Troy says, in an attempt to calm him down, but Abed just shakes his head.
“You don’t know that. I’ve run this simulation countless times, and the outcome is never the same. On top of the fact that out of all of those outcomes, there’s only a 23% success rate.”
“Hey,” Troy says, taking a step towards him to stop and take his hand. Abed stops and looks down at Troy, who uses his other hand to sandwich the one of Abed's that he's holding between his. “Remember the whole problem with simulating real people? It’s gonna be fine . Your dad loves you, and he definitely at least tolerates me. Besides the fact that he already knows that you’re bi. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had figured the rest out for himself already.”
Abed nods, absently, and Troy can tell he’s processed none of what Troy just said. He removes his hand from Troy's and reaches up to adjust the collar of his shirt like it’s a designer suit and not a faded crew-neck he bought from a sale rack at Walmart. Troy allows him to, partially because he’s doesn’t really mind Abed manhandling him, - takes some comfort in the reminder that they can do that now, touch each other in a non-sexual but still intimate way - and partially because he knows that it makes him feel better to make meaningless adjustments
Once, during the summer before Annie moved in, Mr. Nadir came over in the morning to go out for coffee with Abed. Troy had woken up to an empty apartment and had done the logical thing and eaten his cereal standing in the kitchen in nothing but his boxers. He had heard the key in the lock and set down his bowl to go change, but didn’t move fast enough. He was met with forty-two seconds (Abed had counted and told him afterwards) of silence while the three of them stared at each other, before Mr. Nadir cleared his throat, gave Abed a curt “I'll be on my way, then“ and a firm clap on the shoulder before disappearing down the hall without another word.
Needless to say, Troy thinks that the bar for him offending Mr. Nadir with his appearance is pretty low at this point.
But Abed stops, stares at Troy’s neckline for a moment, and then silently holds up a finger as he takes several long strides over to the dresser they share (neither of them had seen the point in dividing their clothes when Abed had moved to the dreamatorium-turned-Troys-bedroom, they knew what clothes belonged to who, and didn’t care about sharing them with each other). He opens a drawer, digs around a bit, and then pulls out an olive green knit sweater.
“This is mine, technically, but it should fit you. Can you put it on? You don’t have to, but my father is less likely to get angry if you make a good first impression.”
“I’ve met your dad before.”
“Technically, yes, but never as my boyfriend. He’s seeing you in a new light.”
Troy shrugs, shucking the crew-neck and pulling Abed's sweater over his undershirt. It’s mostly just because of the little high that hearing anyone, but especially Abed, say the word “boyfriend” in reference to the two of them still gives him. But Abed smiles a little, and kisses him, and he stops pacing afterward, so Troy counts it as a win.
Abed is still standing in front of Troy, eyes darting around, and Troy places his hands on the sides of his arms, looking up at him.
“It’ll be okay.”
Abed meets his eyes, now, and nods. He seems convinced, but Troy kisses him again for good measure (and because he wants to).
“I’m off!” Annie calls, and they both emerge from the bedroom to see her shrugging on her coat. They had gotten her to go see a movie with Britta for the night so they could have the apartment to themselves for the evening on the condition that they stop deliberately having bagels in the morning when Britta is there so that they can keep asking her what it is that they’re eating.
It’s a big sacrifice to make, especially when they’re giving up something so important while all Annie has to do is go on a date with her girlfriend, but it’s a price they’re willing to pay.
“Good luck, alright? it’s going to go great.”
Abed just nods, and Annie reaches to plant a kiss on both of their cheeks.
“I’ll see you later!” she says, opening the door to reveal Gobi Nadir, hand poised to knock.
“Mr. Nadir!” Annie says, eyes going wide “come in!”
He nods politely to Annie, who shoots the pair of them an encouraging grin and double thumbs-up as she slips out the door, shutting it behind her.
(it goes well. Turns out Mr. Nadir thought that they had been together since before they even moved in together, and that they were just nervous about being physically affectionate around him. Troy watches Abed’s shoulders physically heave with relief at this, and thinks that maybe they’re going to be alright.)