The Feel-Good Movie Of The Summer (2/2)
Title: The Feel-Good Movie Of The Summer (2/2); Complete
Rating: PG-13, for a little language.
Pairing: Abed/Troy
Spoilers: Up through 1.09 (Debate), but I wouldn't consider it necessarily spoilery for the show. But it does spoil both 'Pretty In Pink' and 'Some Kind Of Wonderful' - two John Hughes movies.
Author's Note: I'm kind of a semi-retired fic writer, but I got badgered into this by a couple of friends. Slight angst, fairly fluffy.
*****
Jeff slammed his way into study hall and dropped his bag onto the table with just enough dramatic force.
“Hey, Jeff,” Abed said.
“So the asshole wins?” Jeff asked.
“Oh, you watched the movie.” Abed hadn’t been surprised; Jeff liked Tuesday nights for grooming. “And he’s not an asshole.”
“What movie?” Annie skipped in, her pleated skirt fluttering.
Sometimes she reminded him of a butterfly. Abed ducked his head, back to his open workbook. “No movie. We weren’t talking about a-”
“Ohh, no, really, what movie?” Annie had an open, really expressively needy face. “Who’s an-an asshole?”
He would’ve liked to have filmed her, but he was afraid she might take direction too personally. “We weren’t-”
“Abed made me watch Carnosaur 2,” Jeff said. He slid into the seat next to Annie.
“C-carnosaur?” Annie made a face.
“It’s a triumph of modern cinema,” Jeff said. “See, there’s this Carnosaur hunter, and she’s in love with a-Carnosaur conservationist. Nevermind that her best friend who’s been in love with her for ages and who is also a Carnosaur hunter is right there the whole time. At the end, he just gets kicked to the curb so she can go date the hot guy-”
“But that’s what would happen,” Abed broke in.
“Kinda sucks for him, though, doesn’t it?”
“That’s the point,” Abed said. “It doesn’t have a fairytale ending; it’s tempered by realism.”
Annie frowned. “Carnosaur 2 is tempered by realism?”
“And it all works out for him in the end. He gets invited to go out and dance with another-beautiful Carnosaur hunter,” Abed said. “So yes, even though things don’t work out the way he’d hoped, they still end on an upbeat note.”
“No.” Jeff’s stare bored holes in him. “No, that movie is an argument for settling for some kind of inevitable truth that the hot girl will always go with the hot guy. And I’m telling you: I know that’s wrong. For a fact. Look at me. I’m incredibly hot-hey, Britta.” Jeff paused to slouch and cock his head rakishly to one side as she entered.
She ignored him. “Hi, guys. Annie, Abed, did you work on the speech last night?”
“See?” Jeff pointed. “Totally ignored me. Yes, clearly she is fighting her deep animalistic attraction to me, and mark my words she will come around one day, but when that happens it will not be because I step aside gracefully after one clumsy declaration. When you want something, you go for it. When you get knocked down, you get back up again.”
Shirley and Pierece entered behind Jeff as he spoke.
Britta opened her bookbag. “Did you just give Abed advice from a Chumbawama song?”
“I think it’s from Carnosaur 2,” Annie put in.
“Ah, Carnosaur 2.” Pierce took his seat and stared dreamily up at the ceiling tiles. “Far superior and undeservedly much less critically acclaimed than the original Carnosaur.”
Abed looked at him. “You’ve seen both Carnosaur movies?”
“Wasn’t it a trilogy?”
“My point is!” Jeff cut in. “Life is not like a movie. And you can’t just take all your lessons from John Hughes.”
“John Hughes directed Carnosaur?” Pierce asked.
“I love that little one he did with the boy who got left at his house by himself, you know the one where he goes all-ahhh!” Shirley put both palms flat against her cheeks and made a mock-terror noise. “That one is so cute. What’s it called?”
“Home Alone,” Abed said.
“Yeah, he was by himself, I don’t remember the name, but the villain was with that little man from Who Framed Roger Rabbit-”
“That’s Bob Hoskins. Joe Pesci was in Home Alone.”
Shirley looked doubtful. “No, I don’t think that’s it at all.”
Jeff stood. “And you know what? Thank god we’re not in a John Hughes movie. Because then life would be nothing but teenage angst and misery. And because no one in this room-except maybe me-could pull off that shade of pink.”
“You can’t pull off pink,” Britta said.
“Yeah, well you’re no Andrew McCarthy!” Jeff snapped.
“Jeff honey, are you crying?” Shirley asked gently.
“I have something in my eye!” Jeff said. He knocked over his chair, and whirled before he reached the door. “And by the way, Abed? Grand gestures? They’re very Say Anything. And we both know that ending would never work in real life.”
Jeff’s shoulder glanced off Troy’s as he walked out.
“What’s wrong with him?” Troy asked.
“He got upset over Carnosaur 2,” Annie whispered.
“But he left his stuff, so he’ll be back. Want to try and get some studying in before he storms in again?” Britta asked. “Or does anyone else have something ridiculous they’d like to share?”
Pierce raised his hand. “Abed, I hear you’re secretly dating a lesbian. What’s that about?”
*****
Jeff had a point. Even if it was based on a Cameron Crowe movie. A grand, dramatic gesture in real life could just add up to massive embarrassment. And possibly a restraining order.
And at no time had Jeff thought that maybe Abed was Molly Ringwald, or Andrew McCarthy. He'd known, just like Abed did. “Some of us are just Jon Cryer types.” And that was okay. Nothing about that was bad, necessarily. Abed thought that what made him a decent filmmaker was that he’d always felt like an outsider. Being at Greendale, having friends for the first time, finally getting to work on his own films-maybe it had just gone to his head.
Lots of people didn’t even get a subplot. Lots of them didn’t even get to be in films. Because there always needed to be an audience. Maybe that’s what Abed was. Part of the audience.
And really, Annie should be with Troy. They were both beautiful. They were both nice. They were both his friends.
Maybe he should write them a piece together. Maybe Abed’s movie didn’t need to star Abed. If he was the one controlling it, it would almost be like being in it. Wouldn’t it?
Abed finished brushing his teeth. He spat in the sink. In the mirror, his face looked tired.
He walked back down the long hall and let himself into his dorm room. He wondered if this was how Ron Howard had felt after he stepped behind the camera for good.
There was a ‘plink!’ at the window.
For a minute he thought he’d just heard the sound of the building settling, or a noise from next door. But the ‘plink!’ came again, this time harder.
He went to the window and opened it.
Yards away, in a yellow pool of light thrown from the nearby security lights, Troy picked through a bed of gravel.
Abed looked at him. “Troy?”
He straightened up, dropped the handful of gravel, and wiped his palm on his jeans. He looked around, then made a strange gesture, first pointing to himself and then pointing toward the building.
Abed shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean,” he called. “You better come here.”
Troy jogged to the ground floor window. “Hey,” he said, a little breathless.
“Why were you throwing rocks?”
He shrugged. His hands shoved deep in the pockets of his letter jacket. “Didn’t want to look like I was trying to break in or something.”
“Why didn’t you come in the front door and call?”
“I don’t know-you left kind of fast this afternoon and I didn’t really think that far ahead-look, can I come in?”
“Sure.” Abed stepped back. He offered a hand to help Troy through the window.
Troy’s hand clasped his. Just for a few seconds, but it was enough to send a shiver through Abed’s body, all the way from his neck to his toes. He wasn’t sure if it was Troy, or if he just needed to touch more people. He didn’t do it very often. Touching could be even more of a minefield than talking to people, it was so easy to misinterpret-
“See, I knew you weren’t fine.” Troy took off his jacket and slung it on the back of the chair. “You haven’t been fine for like, days.”
“Make yourself at home,” Abed said, sitting on the edge of his bed.
And before he knew what was happening, Troy had joined him. He’d sat right next to him. He even gave the mattress a little bounce. “These are pretty nice.”
“Yeah.” Abed’s throat felt dry. “I have two even though there’s only one of me. There was supposed to be someone in here sharing but a lot of people don’t seem to get along with me.”
“People are jerks. I’d room with you.”
Abed’s forehead creased. “You want to move in with me?”
“That's not what-what’s with the different stuff lately?” Troy nudged him with his elbow.
He felt very close. If Abed concentrated, it was like he could feel Troy’s body heat radiating out from him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Pierce and Shirley say you’ve got some thing going with a lesbian? And we haven’t been talking as much lately. Did I do something wrong?”
In the smallness of the dorm room, Troy’s voice was very quiet. And when he turned to look at Abed, his lips were very close.
A normal person would’ve reached across the divide. Abed knew it. He also knew he wasn’t a normal person. The quirky best friend never got to be-
“Wait,” Abed said. He leapt up from the bed and went to his movie collection. He rifled through the titles, and finally, finally he found the one he hadn’t considered. “John Hughes wrote and directed Pretty In Pink in 1986. But he wrote another movie that came out a year later.” Abed held his battered copy of Some Kind Of Wonderful in trembling hands. He’d totally missed it. John Hughes had completely contradicted his message, and Abed hadn’t even thought about it. The quirky best friend could get the boy. Well, maybe. It depended entirely on their movie. But Abed didn't know what kind of movie that was, exactly. And there was no way to tell without playing it out.
“I hate to say it, but I’m not really following you,” Troy admitted.
Abed put the tape down. Without guidance, he felt at sea. It was time. He had to take a risk. “I don’t have a thing going with anybody.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not really into girls. I mean I think they’re beautiful and sometimes I feel like I might be more like one of them than ‘one of the guys’ but I know when I say it it makes everyone uncomfortable so I usually try not to go there as much. Honestly I’m not really attracted to most people. I know when people are attractive on film, but it’s not like I want to be part of the scene, or…” Abed paused. “I guess I’m saying that I like you? As in a more-than-a-friend way? And I’m not sure whether I’m Jon Cryer or Mary Stuart Masterson, or whether you’re Eric Stolz or Molly Ringwald, or whether any of this is going to work out. But if you’d be interested in-I don’t know, dating, or kissing, or any of that stuff-” Abed was sure that every bit of his visible skin was flushed. He couldn’t quite look in Troy’s direction to see if his possibly former best friend was weirded out or not. “Or anything else, then… then I’d like that. With you,” he clarified, just in case.
The room was quiet.
“Abed, you are so crazy.”
And at that point Abed would’ve thought he’d die of shame, but the way Troy said it wasn’t angry or frightened or disgusted, or-
He started laughing. Troy laughed so hard he fell back onto the bed, and when he finally stopped he had a smile on his face and he looked really way too comfortable. “So our first date was three and a half weeks ago. To the movie thing they had here.”
“What?” Abed thought back. They’d gone to the free Greendale college movie night to catch a screening of Iron Man, even though both of them had already seen it a few times.
“I said, ‘Do you want to go out with me?’ And you said yes. I even bought you popcorn.”
Abed shook his head. “I thought that was just-we were hanging out. Being friends.”
“Friends don’t go for long moonlit drives and park in secluded areas with little police presence and stay up talking ‘til two in the morning. Friends do not sniff each other.”
Abed felt the need to defend himself. “That was one time, and between the nacho cheese and the aftershave, it was a strange smell.” He turned over all of this new knowledge. But he wasn’t sure he believed it. Troy was his best friend; he wouldn’t deliberately try to hurt Abed. Yes, they’d tried to mess with each other-“Are you messing with me?”
“No,” Troy said simply. “We stopped that.”
“Well, then-why hasn’t there been any of the-the things that go along with dating someone? If we’re dating.”
Troy found the top bunk suddenly interesting. “I don’t know. I figured take things slow, maybe you’d come around eventually-“
Abed’s mouth dropped open. “You were dating me without telling me! You knew I didn’t know. You’ve been stealth-dating me!”
Troy sat up. “Well, I wanted you to give it a chance before you just dismissed it. And, you know, I could…” His voice got quiet. “Decide if I liked it like I thought I would. I never dated anyone like--like you, before."
“And do you like it?” Abed asked bluntly.
“Yes I do, okay? I like dating you! It’s awesome.”
“Oh.” And the shiver Abed felt all over had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Yeah.”
“So?”
“So? So what?”
"So what do we do now?"
Troy shrugged. “I don’t know. We keep going out.”
“What about the others? What about Annie?”
“Let them think whatever they want. Annie wants to date the quarterback and be popular and successful. I kinda want to hang out with someone and just… you know. Relax. Be me.”
“But you can do that without dating.”
“But I’d rather do it with dating. And if you don’t want to, just say it. I’ll get it. But I want to.”
“I want to, too,” Abed said. He found himself smiling.
And despite the fact that he sounded a little annoyed, Troy was smiling too. “Okay, then. What are you doing right now? Do you want to hang out?”
Abed shook his head. “Wait, are we hanging out or is this a date?”
“It’s a date.”
“Oh. Okay.” He hadn’t expected everything to be moving so quickly. It was a good quickly, but quick nonetheless.
“Want to watch a movie?” Troy asked.
“Here? Now?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.” What movie? What would be a good date movie? What would…?
The copy of Some Kind Of Wonderful was still out. Abed picked it up, put it in, and started it.
At some point, Troy had kicked off his shoes. “Want to grab the lights?”
Abed flicked the lights off. And by the time he’d felt his way back to the bed and the FBI copyright warning screen had faded, Troy had padded the wall with pillows and a blanket, and he maneuvered Abed to sit with him so their sides were pressed together. It was amazingly warm.
"We good?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we're good."
Music swelled, titles came up, and Troy’s hand rested on his knee.
“Hey,” Abed said, his voice huskier than he’d expected.
Troy turned his head.
And Abed carefully leaned forward and pressed their lips together.
THE END
Rating: PG-13, for a little language.
Pairing: Abed/Troy
Spoilers: Up through 1.09 (Debate), but I wouldn't consider it necessarily spoilery for the show. But it does spoil both 'Pretty In Pink' and 'Some Kind Of Wonderful' - two John Hughes movies.
Author's Note: I'm kind of a semi-retired fic writer, but I got badgered into this by a couple of friends. Slight angst, fairly fluffy.
*****
Jeff slammed his way into study hall and dropped his bag onto the table with just enough dramatic force.
“Hey, Jeff,” Abed said.
“So the asshole wins?” Jeff asked.
“Oh, you watched the movie.” Abed hadn’t been surprised; Jeff liked Tuesday nights for grooming. “And he’s not an asshole.”
“What movie?” Annie skipped in, her pleated skirt fluttering.
Sometimes she reminded him of a butterfly. Abed ducked his head, back to his open workbook. “No movie. We weren’t talking about a-”
“Ohh, no, really, what movie?” Annie had an open, really expressively needy face. “Who’s an-an asshole?”
He would’ve liked to have filmed her, but he was afraid she might take direction too personally. “We weren’t-”
“Abed made me watch Carnosaur 2,” Jeff said. He slid into the seat next to Annie.
“C-carnosaur?” Annie made a face.
“It’s a triumph of modern cinema,” Jeff said. “See, there’s this Carnosaur hunter, and she’s in love with a-Carnosaur conservationist. Nevermind that her best friend who’s been in love with her for ages and who is also a Carnosaur hunter is right there the whole time. At the end, he just gets kicked to the curb so she can go date the hot guy-”
“But that’s what would happen,” Abed broke in.
“Kinda sucks for him, though, doesn’t it?”
“That’s the point,” Abed said. “It doesn’t have a fairytale ending; it’s tempered by realism.”
Annie frowned. “Carnosaur 2 is tempered by realism?”
“And it all works out for him in the end. He gets invited to go out and dance with another-beautiful Carnosaur hunter,” Abed said. “So yes, even though things don’t work out the way he’d hoped, they still end on an upbeat note.”
“No.” Jeff’s stare bored holes in him. “No, that movie is an argument for settling for some kind of inevitable truth that the hot girl will always go with the hot guy. And I’m telling you: I know that’s wrong. For a fact. Look at me. I’m incredibly hot-hey, Britta.” Jeff paused to slouch and cock his head rakishly to one side as she entered.
She ignored him. “Hi, guys. Annie, Abed, did you work on the speech last night?”
“See?” Jeff pointed. “Totally ignored me. Yes, clearly she is fighting her deep animalistic attraction to me, and mark my words she will come around one day, but when that happens it will not be because I step aside gracefully after one clumsy declaration. When you want something, you go for it. When you get knocked down, you get back up again.”
Shirley and Pierece entered behind Jeff as he spoke.
Britta opened her bookbag. “Did you just give Abed advice from a Chumbawama song?”
“I think it’s from Carnosaur 2,” Annie put in.
“Ah, Carnosaur 2.” Pierce took his seat and stared dreamily up at the ceiling tiles. “Far superior and undeservedly much less critically acclaimed than the original Carnosaur.”
Abed looked at him. “You’ve seen both Carnosaur movies?”
“Wasn’t it a trilogy?”
“My point is!” Jeff cut in. “Life is not like a movie. And you can’t just take all your lessons from John Hughes.”
“John Hughes directed Carnosaur?” Pierce asked.
“I love that little one he did with the boy who got left at his house by himself, you know the one where he goes all-ahhh!” Shirley put both palms flat against her cheeks and made a mock-terror noise. “That one is so cute. What’s it called?”
“Home Alone,” Abed said.
“Yeah, he was by himself, I don’t remember the name, but the villain was with that little man from Who Framed Roger Rabbit-”
“That’s Bob Hoskins. Joe Pesci was in Home Alone.”
Shirley looked doubtful. “No, I don’t think that’s it at all.”
Jeff stood. “And you know what? Thank god we’re not in a John Hughes movie. Because then life would be nothing but teenage angst and misery. And because no one in this room-except maybe me-could pull off that shade of pink.”
“You can’t pull off pink,” Britta said.
“Yeah, well you’re no Andrew McCarthy!” Jeff snapped.
“Jeff honey, are you crying?” Shirley asked gently.
“I have something in my eye!” Jeff said. He knocked over his chair, and whirled before he reached the door. “And by the way, Abed? Grand gestures? They’re very Say Anything. And we both know that ending would never work in real life.”
Jeff’s shoulder glanced off Troy’s as he walked out.
“What’s wrong with him?” Troy asked.
“He got upset over Carnosaur 2,” Annie whispered.
“But he left his stuff, so he’ll be back. Want to try and get some studying in before he storms in again?” Britta asked. “Or does anyone else have something ridiculous they’d like to share?”
Pierce raised his hand. “Abed, I hear you’re secretly dating a lesbian. What’s that about?”
*****
Jeff had a point. Even if it was based on a Cameron Crowe movie. A grand, dramatic gesture in real life could just add up to massive embarrassment. And possibly a restraining order.
And at no time had Jeff thought that maybe Abed was Molly Ringwald, or Andrew McCarthy. He'd known, just like Abed did. “Some of us are just Jon Cryer types.” And that was okay. Nothing about that was bad, necessarily. Abed thought that what made him a decent filmmaker was that he’d always felt like an outsider. Being at Greendale, having friends for the first time, finally getting to work on his own films-maybe it had just gone to his head.
Lots of people didn’t even get a subplot. Lots of them didn’t even get to be in films. Because there always needed to be an audience. Maybe that’s what Abed was. Part of the audience.
And really, Annie should be with Troy. They were both beautiful. They were both nice. They were both his friends.
Maybe he should write them a piece together. Maybe Abed’s movie didn’t need to star Abed. If he was the one controlling it, it would almost be like being in it. Wouldn’t it?
Abed finished brushing his teeth. He spat in the sink. In the mirror, his face looked tired.
He walked back down the long hall and let himself into his dorm room. He wondered if this was how Ron Howard had felt after he stepped behind the camera for good.
There was a ‘plink!’ at the window.
For a minute he thought he’d just heard the sound of the building settling, or a noise from next door. But the ‘plink!’ came again, this time harder.
He went to the window and opened it.
Yards away, in a yellow pool of light thrown from the nearby security lights, Troy picked through a bed of gravel.
Abed looked at him. “Troy?”
He straightened up, dropped the handful of gravel, and wiped his palm on his jeans. He looked around, then made a strange gesture, first pointing to himself and then pointing toward the building.
Abed shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean,” he called. “You better come here.”
Troy jogged to the ground floor window. “Hey,” he said, a little breathless.
“Why were you throwing rocks?”
He shrugged. His hands shoved deep in the pockets of his letter jacket. “Didn’t want to look like I was trying to break in or something.”
“Why didn’t you come in the front door and call?”
“I don’t know-you left kind of fast this afternoon and I didn’t really think that far ahead-look, can I come in?”
“Sure.” Abed stepped back. He offered a hand to help Troy through the window.
Troy’s hand clasped his. Just for a few seconds, but it was enough to send a shiver through Abed’s body, all the way from his neck to his toes. He wasn’t sure if it was Troy, or if he just needed to touch more people. He didn’t do it very often. Touching could be even more of a minefield than talking to people, it was so easy to misinterpret-
“See, I knew you weren’t fine.” Troy took off his jacket and slung it on the back of the chair. “You haven’t been fine for like, days.”
“Make yourself at home,” Abed said, sitting on the edge of his bed.
And before he knew what was happening, Troy had joined him. He’d sat right next to him. He even gave the mattress a little bounce. “These are pretty nice.”
“Yeah.” Abed’s throat felt dry. “I have two even though there’s only one of me. There was supposed to be someone in here sharing but a lot of people don’t seem to get along with me.”
“People are jerks. I’d room with you.”
Abed’s forehead creased. “You want to move in with me?”
“That's not what-what’s with the different stuff lately?” Troy nudged him with his elbow.
He felt very close. If Abed concentrated, it was like he could feel Troy’s body heat radiating out from him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Pierce and Shirley say you’ve got some thing going with a lesbian? And we haven’t been talking as much lately. Did I do something wrong?”
In the smallness of the dorm room, Troy’s voice was very quiet. And when he turned to look at Abed, his lips were very close.
A normal person would’ve reached across the divide. Abed knew it. He also knew he wasn’t a normal person. The quirky best friend never got to be-
“Wait,” Abed said. He leapt up from the bed and went to his movie collection. He rifled through the titles, and finally, finally he found the one he hadn’t considered. “John Hughes wrote and directed Pretty In Pink in 1986. But he wrote another movie that came out a year later.” Abed held his battered copy of Some Kind Of Wonderful in trembling hands. He’d totally missed it. John Hughes had completely contradicted his message, and Abed hadn’t even thought about it. The quirky best friend could get the boy. Well, maybe. It depended entirely on their movie. But Abed didn't know what kind of movie that was, exactly. And there was no way to tell without playing it out.
“I hate to say it, but I’m not really following you,” Troy admitted.
Abed put the tape down. Without guidance, he felt at sea. It was time. He had to take a risk. “I don’t have a thing going with anybody.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not really into girls. I mean I think they’re beautiful and sometimes I feel like I might be more like one of them than ‘one of the guys’ but I know when I say it it makes everyone uncomfortable so I usually try not to go there as much. Honestly I’m not really attracted to most people. I know when people are attractive on film, but it’s not like I want to be part of the scene, or…” Abed paused. “I guess I’m saying that I like you? As in a more-than-a-friend way? And I’m not sure whether I’m Jon Cryer or Mary Stuart Masterson, or whether you’re Eric Stolz or Molly Ringwald, or whether any of this is going to work out. But if you’d be interested in-I don’t know, dating, or kissing, or any of that stuff-” Abed was sure that every bit of his visible skin was flushed. He couldn’t quite look in Troy’s direction to see if his possibly former best friend was weirded out or not. “Or anything else, then… then I’d like that. With you,” he clarified, just in case.
The room was quiet.
“Abed, you are so crazy.”
And at that point Abed would’ve thought he’d die of shame, but the way Troy said it wasn’t angry or frightened or disgusted, or-
He started laughing. Troy laughed so hard he fell back onto the bed, and when he finally stopped he had a smile on his face and he looked really way too comfortable. “So our first date was three and a half weeks ago. To the movie thing they had here.”
“What?” Abed thought back. They’d gone to the free Greendale college movie night to catch a screening of Iron Man, even though both of them had already seen it a few times.
“I said, ‘Do you want to go out with me?’ And you said yes. I even bought you popcorn.”
Abed shook his head. “I thought that was just-we were hanging out. Being friends.”
“Friends don’t go for long moonlit drives and park in secluded areas with little police presence and stay up talking ‘til two in the morning. Friends do not sniff each other.”
Abed felt the need to defend himself. “That was one time, and between the nacho cheese and the aftershave, it was a strange smell.” He turned over all of this new knowledge. But he wasn’t sure he believed it. Troy was his best friend; he wouldn’t deliberately try to hurt Abed. Yes, they’d tried to mess with each other-“Are you messing with me?”
“No,” Troy said simply. “We stopped that.”
“Well, then-why hasn’t there been any of the-the things that go along with dating someone? If we’re dating.”
Troy found the top bunk suddenly interesting. “I don’t know. I figured take things slow, maybe you’d come around eventually-“
Abed’s mouth dropped open. “You were dating me without telling me! You knew I didn’t know. You’ve been stealth-dating me!”
Troy sat up. “Well, I wanted you to give it a chance before you just dismissed it. And, you know, I could…” His voice got quiet. “Decide if I liked it like I thought I would. I never dated anyone like--like you, before."
“And do you like it?” Abed asked bluntly.
“Yes I do, okay? I like dating you! It’s awesome.”
“Oh.” And the shiver Abed felt all over had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Yeah.”
“So?”
“So? So what?”
"So what do we do now?"
Troy shrugged. “I don’t know. We keep going out.”
“What about the others? What about Annie?”
“Let them think whatever they want. Annie wants to date the quarterback and be popular and successful. I kinda want to hang out with someone and just… you know. Relax. Be me.”
“But you can do that without dating.”
“But I’d rather do it with dating. And if you don’t want to, just say it. I’ll get it. But I want to.”
“I want to, too,” Abed said. He found himself smiling.
And despite the fact that he sounded a little annoyed, Troy was smiling too. “Okay, then. What are you doing right now? Do you want to hang out?”
Abed shook his head. “Wait, are we hanging out or is this a date?”
“It’s a date.”
“Oh. Okay.” He hadn’t expected everything to be moving so quickly. It was a good quickly, but quick nonetheless.
“Want to watch a movie?” Troy asked.
“Here? Now?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.” What movie? What would be a good date movie? What would…?
The copy of Some Kind Of Wonderful was still out. Abed picked it up, put it in, and started it.
At some point, Troy had kicked off his shoes. “Want to grab the lights?”
Abed flicked the lights off. And by the time he’d felt his way back to the bed and the FBI copyright warning screen had faded, Troy had padded the wall with pillows and a blanket, and he maneuvered Abed to sit with him so their sides were pressed together. It was amazingly warm.
"We good?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we're good."
Music swelled, titles came up, and Troy’s hand rested on his knee.
“Hey,” Abed said, his voice huskier than he’d expected.
Troy turned his head.
And Abed carefully leaned forward and pressed their lips together.
THE END