[community] Analyzing Vonnegut
Title: Analyzing Vonnegut
Fandom: Community (Troy/Abed; PG-13)
Word Count: 7600
Summary: Troy and Abed star as five of the most famous slash pairings ever--Holmes and Watson, Kirk and Spock, the big granddaddies of gay romance. It's fun, entirely fun--until you realize who you truly want to be with, after all.
Author's Notes: Now on Ao3! And I swear I wrote this before I saw Contemporary Impressionists. It's not entirely similar, but... uh. Yeah. The title's a reference to the story's true inspiration, "Who Am I This Time?" by Kurt Vonnegut. Good story, check it out.
01. holmes & watson
There was a bit of a fuss kicked up about the tobacco pipe.
"I mean, I know it's Greendale, but I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to smoke indoors," Britta said.
"Especially in the library," Annie added with a slight frown. And a pause, and then she said, "Which isn't much. The cafeteria has a smoking section, though."
And Jeff said, "Cool pipe, Colonel Mustard," on his way in, slinging himself into his chair. He nodded his head at Abed and Troy. "What's with the threads?"
"They're 'role-playing,'" Shirley said. Her smile was more benevolent curiosity than bewilderment.
Jeff 's eyebrow lifted. "Uh huh," he said, which could mean a lot of things, though he never expanded on them. "And they're 'role-playing' because…"
"Something to do with them finally hooking up," Britta said succinctly.
It was interesting, observing the reactions that flew around the table. Annie smiled kindly. Shirley smiled, too, but it was a little pinched at the corners. Britta nodded like she'd seen it coming all along. Jeff merely widened his eyes and said, "Ah."
They were at least two weeks into it. It wasn't exactly news.
But it wasn't old enough to squeak by anyone's radar, either.
Abed, his fingertips steepled and his gaze hawkish, observed.
"I think it's pretty cool," Annie said. "I mean, it's not every day you-"
"Sorry I'm late!" Pierce said, as the back door to the study room flew open, the blinds rattling. "Traffic jam on the highway-complete, total tangle. What a mess."
Everyone either blinked, made a congenial noise of understanding, or in Jeff's case examined his manicure. Except Abed, who narrowed his shrewd eyes and said, "Not quite."
"Whoa, Abed," Jeff said in surprise. "Where'd the accent come from?"
"It's like a reverse Christian Bale," Britta agreed, her eyes wide.
Nonplussed, Pierce glanced from the study group to Abed. "What do you mean, 'not quite'?" he asked. "And what's with the accent? I mean, there's a joke about the Queen in there, give me five minutes and-"
"There was no traffic jam," Abed continued, and in an upper-crust British accent, as though Pierce had never spoken. "You were at Rusty's Trusty Dusted Donuts."
Like an electric viper striking through the seats of everyone's chairs, the study group jolted, and turned collectively impressed eyes from Abed to Pierce.
Pierce leered. "Wanna bet, Jeremy Brett?" he said. "Go on."
"Avec pleasure." He pretended to smoke his pipe, and his eyes glittered. "Whilst never having been to your humble lodgings myself, my intimate friend Troy Barnes has prior told me two salient facts important to my final conclusion: that you reside in Cherry Creek, one, and that your journey from your mansion to our school ranges from five to fifteen minutes, traffic- and weather-dependent, two. Today is a nice day."
"And there was traffic," Pierce finished. "Truckloads of it. As in, you would need a truck to drive over everyone's cars to get here on time."
"There wasn't," Abed said decidedly. "You and Leonard live in the same gated community. You take the same route to school. You leave at the same time. Given your age, it's no small leap of logic to assume you drive at the same speed. Leonard arrived fifteen minutes ago."
You could have heard a pin drop. Britta leaned over to Jeff and whispered incredulously, "They live in the same neighborhood?"
Pierce shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "What's your angle, Nancy Drew?"
"None but the truth," Abed returned swiftly. He then stood up, and strode over to Pierce, and pointed deftly elegant fingers at Pierce's collar. "Pink powdered sugar, on his lapel," he announced to the table, grasping the fabric and presenting it to the study group at large. "With green sugar. Indicative of none other than the particular specimen of holiday donut put out by Rusty's Trusty Dusted Donuts around Yuletide. Some must have fallen to your collar."
"How'd you know it's from Rusty's?" Britta asked.
Abed swiped his finger through the powder spatter and licked it, once, efficiently. "Only two local donut shops on Pierce's route put out a holiday donut, and Hole-in-One prefers a festive gingerbread glaze and sprinkles on their donuts over special colored powders."
"So why'd you need to lick the powder if they're distinctly different?" Jeff asked, an eyebrow raised.
Abed looked sheepish-for Abed-as-Holmes, anyway. "Crime-solving makes me hungry," he admitted.
"Which could've been fixed if Pierce brought donuts in for everyone," Britta said, with acid in her voice, and most everyone nodded their heads or murmured assent.
Pierce looked long round the table, mouth twisting. Then he sighed, and bent down, and dug into a messenger bag.
"I was saving these," he muttered, and shoved a small, squished box of donut holes to the center of the table. There was pastry pandemonium, and then a dogged hunt for napkins, and five minutes later no one really cared that Pierce had come late that morning and fudged the truth a little.
"These are pretty good donuts," Troy said a while later, rolling the last donut hole between his fingers. "Uh-I mean. Indubitably good." The rest of the group had filtered out of the room-it was just them, alone, with a sad, empty box of donut holes between them.
Abed's smile was enigmatic, and only used up half of his mouth. "You're rather enjoying yourself, Doctor," he murmured lowly.
"Well yeah, they're donuts!" Then Troy coughed quietly. "Most definitely."
"Indeed." The smile never quite left, but faded in and out of existence, and Troy wondered again if he'd ever figure out the meaning of it. "We'll be late to class if we depart any later." He stood, and with an unusual kind of elegance proffered his arm.
With a usual kind of smile, Troy took it, and chanced something-a quick, blink-and-you'll-miss-it kiss to Abed's cheek. He stood back and waited, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
Abed's eyes crinkled, but he said nothing, and hummed almost cheerfully to himself as they left the study room together, arm-in-arm.
The benefits of living in the twenty-first century, Troy supposed, was you could do all that in public.
--
02. frodo & samwise
In the middle of their questing, Britta stopped them and after a moment, evaulated, "You know, you're really too tall to be hobbits."
Abed smiled charmingly-charmingly, he was being charming, he had Elijah Wood's doe-eyed softness down to an exact science and a flourishing art form-and inclined his head in a near-imperceptible bow. "We made do," he said gently, smiling. Smiling. Gently. Troy wasn't sure if it was disturbingly amazing or amazingly disturbing.
Or both. It was most likely both.
"But if you'll excuse us," Abed said, and actually put his hand on Britta's lower arm-a kindly gesture, and a kindly dismissive one, "we have… a quest."
"A quest." She looked like she was trying not to smirk, and leaned back against a rather convenient wall.
Abed pointed down the stretching, dimly-lit, and pleasantly abandoned hallway that eventually led into the wilder woods of Greendale. "To return the One Ring," he said, and procured it, and held it reverently in the palm of his hand.
It was a plastic ring you would find in a twenty-five cent gumball machine. Which they had, as a matter of fact, and had kept it safe in a plastic Easter egg ever since. Scrounge up two suitable costumes, get your hands on two pairs of clear jelly flip-flops (because Greendale had some standards, and shoes were one of them), and there you have it. Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, and the One Ring to Rule Them All.
At least he didn't need to learn Elvish for the part. Spanish was buggy enough.
Britta raised an eyebrow and nodded very, very politely. "Oh," she said, "and… where are you returning it to?"
A strangled screech, a shrill and ear-piercing noise, high and arcing and bloodcurdlingly well-trained, broke the peace and gentle calm of the hallway. Troy whipped around. It had come from the hallway to their right, and then he heard something that caused his blood to freeze and slow.
"Are those… hoofbeats?" Britta asked.
"Coconuts," Abed replied tonelessly. His brows were drawn together and his mouth was marred by a twitching frown. "The theatre department used them for a production of Monty Python a while back."
"Wait," she said, "the theatre department?"
"Run," Troy breathed, and grabbed Britta and Abed and flew down the hallway. He didn't stop to think. He didn't stop to look back. He careened left, swerved right, and somehow managed to stow the three of them away in an abandoned classroom.
"Guys, I have to get to class," Britta hissed, clutching tight her psych textbook. "I really don't have time to-"
"Britta." Abed didn't hiss it, he didn't hurry it, he merely said her name with the sort of quiet intensity that only comes about when one is desperately afraid of something evil lurking in the shadows, and must at all costs remain calm. An outsider wouldn't be able to tell the difference, even close-up.
But Sam wasn't an outsider. And neither was Troy, so he gently encircled Abed's wrist and squeezed, lightly, once, before letting go.
The three of them packed together in the crawlspace under the professor's desk. There was silence. Then there was a simple quick sound, the creak of an unoiled door hinge swinging, and the soft footsteps of four theatre majors, clad in all black, and scanning the classroom with all the calculated precision of war machines.
Troy found that in times of crisis it was helpful, if not downright soothing, to look to Abed to gain back some sense of personal calm amidst perennial chaos. He glanced at him and almost immediately realized what a horrible decision it was-Abed was pale, sweating, his eyes two round, glistening balls. His breath came in high, tight puffs. This wasn't true Abed, it was Frodo, and Frodo was scared.
A theatre major padded in front of the desk, oily black boots treading with caution, with cold delicacy. Its breath was deep and slow and even. It was waiting, and Abed looked two seconds from cracking.
Troy slipped his hand into Abed's and squeezed again, and this time he didn't let go. Abed blinked, and stirred, and tightened his hold. They waited like rabbits in the warren until the theatre major had stepped away. They barely dared to breathe.
Two coconut halves clacked halfheartedly, and the leader of the pack sniffed and rumbled, "Keep moving," and the door opened and swung shut again. They scrambled out from under the desk seven tense seconds later.
"Are… are they playing along with you guys?" Britta asked.
Troy shook his head.
Britta's jaw twitched, clenching. "Then why can't you just give them the ring?"
Abed blinked.
"It's evil," Troy said simply. "Every time we-"
"It's evil."
"Yeah, I mean-yes, the One Ring is-" Troy started, and Britta thrust out a finger.
"Wait a minute." Her finger pointed from Troy, to Abed. "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I was held up by a bunch of theatre majors, under a desk, because you two couldn't stop playing a made-up game about a stupid ring?"
"It's not a game," Troy protested, "and the ring is evil, whenever we-"
"You guys!" Britta shouted, dropping her psych textbook with a dangerously loud bang. "It's just! A plastic! Ring! There's nothing evil about it-that's the kind of looney-tunes our cult of superstition shoves down your-you probably got it out of a box of Lucky Charms!"
"Gumball machine," Abed said quietly. "Twenty-five cents."
Britta's scream came out strangled and weird, like she was trying to hold it back but it leaked out all over the place anyway. She collected her psych text and stomped off, still muttering furiously to herself, about man-children and wasted time.
Troy stared after her in awe. "Every single person we've told about this ring," he breathed, "they reacted just like that." He eyed the ring that sat innocently in the palm of Abed's hand with a reverent sort of reproach. "Why aren't we affected?"
Abed didn't answer. And then Troy realized, that was his answer, and his heart twisted accordingly.
"Hey," he said gently, and walked up, and placed a hand on Abed's shoulder. "Hey. Whereever you go. I'm here for you, Mr. Frodo."
And he was-whether Abed was a consulting detective, or a hobbit, or whatever he wanted to be tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, into the foreseeable future. Which was never all that reliable, anyway, but where was the fun in predictability?
Abed smiled, and it was kind and simple enough, and he slipped his hand into Troy's and squeezed, and it was nice, really nice, and another side of him, and he kissed Troy gently, and once, and that was another side of him too altogether. There were so many, after all, hidden in one character or another. Sometimes Troy wondered if he'd ever see them all.
And then he wondered if he'd see them all as himself. Just himself. With Abed, just Abed.
That thought glimmered on the horizon for a while.
--
03. kirk & spock
Now this. This, Troy could get used to. The walk. The talk. The swagger. The appreciative eyes, the Vulcan hand salutes, the envious staring at his snazzy outfit.
Captain Troy Tiberius Barnes. Had a nice ring to it.
The battles, on the other hand, the vicious warfare that followed them like a ruthless trail of nerdy destruction. That sucked, and more to the point got on his nerves after a while.
Oh, he tried to ignore it. In theory it shouldn't have been difficult-he and Abed were in their best Starfleet uniforms, Kirk and Spock weren't actually that removed from their personalities to begin with, and on top of that the aura of coolness that blessed James T. Kirk's image should've sealed the deal entirely.
It just… didn't. And it was totally unignorable.
"Listen, I've seen every episode of the original series, and Deep Space Nine, and The Next Generation, there is no way you can tell me with a straight face Picard is any better-"
"I'm sorry, but after extensive study of the series canon, any fan worth their salt would tell you Kirk is a smug douchebag, end of story. Picard had it all going on-"
"Please, Picard sat around drinking earl grey tea while Kirk went out there and kicked some alien ass!"
"All right, all right, Shatner, or Patrick Stewart? Denny Crane, or Professor X?"
"Does everyone forget about Janeway?" Britta asked at one point in frustration, and that spiraled off somewhere else entirely.
"Look at this," Troy breathed. He was standing in a packed hallway, in the middle of the largest gathering of nerds since the advent of Internet forums, every one of them locked in single, sweaty combat over who was the better captain. Phaser at the ready, he picked through the chaos, surveying Greendale's students with an expression very close to wonder.
( "Kobayashi Maru!"
"Shakespeare!" )
"It's astounding." Abed as Spock was eerily similar to Abed as Abed, but with even less expression and pointier ears. His eyes betrayed no emotion. It should've seemed quite usual, but Troy could tell. He could sense it, in a way.
Then the first punch was thrown. By Leonard, so it wasn't much, and to Garrett, so it seemed like much more. But it was like accidentally brushing against one domino, and watching hopelessly, helplessly, as a domino chain of domino people toppled over Dominopolis, and then everybody was fighting and they only jumped out of the way just in time.
"Pon farr," Abed said, very quietly. They were flattened against the wall-a front-row seat.
Troy glanced at him in sudden, dawning horror. "Wait-are they gonna all start-are they all-"
"No." Abed shook his head very quickly. "But if they cannot all reach a satisfying… conclusion, they will have no choice. They will be driven into the arms of madness."
"It doesn't make any sense," Troy breathed, watching, as Shirley hurled her bag like a shotput at a spindly mathlete, and Annie took a flying leap at Jeff's back.
Abed shook his head slowly. "There is nothing logical about the pon farr," he said. "It is a time when instinct and emotion dominate over reason."
And someone tore past them with a trident in hand, so that proved that all right.
--
It was later. Much, much later. The sun slid past the black line of the horizon, and cast soft red light on the tired, heaving, panting bodies that lay strewn around the halls of Greendale.
The blood fever had abated. Enemy helped enemy, foe aided foe, and everyone more or less agreed that Kirk and Picard were both awesome, and fighting about it was kinda lame.
Troy and Abed watched all this, and felt momentarily disoriented.
"It just… ended," Troy said.
"Mm," Abed hummed, and Troy said, "One minute they were fighting and the next… madness."
Abed hummed again, and fidgeted.
"Good thing we weren't aff-mmph-" Troy's eyes widened, then shut slowly, then his hands pressed into Abed's narrow hips. It was seconds later-endless seconds, incredible seconds-before Abed broke away, his eyes shining.
"I'm sorry," he said haltingly, and Troy tried to see behind the Spock, to the real Abed, to see if he wasn't really sorry at all. "I-don't know what came over me."
"Pon farr?" Troy offered helpfully. His lips were still tingling. Abed flushed, and tried to regain control.
"I should not have-we are in public," Abed continued. He kept tearing his eyes away from Troy's mouth, and shifted anxiously, from foot to foot.
Sometimes Troy caught flickers of it. Bare, tiny flickers, scraps of paper on the metaphorical wind-scraps of Abed, the real one, underneath all those layers, Spock and Frodo and Holmes and everyone else he'd ever played, and there were many. It was strange, the real Abed wouldn't be barely and badly restraining himself from giving into the heat of pon farr. The real Abed would just be the friend Troy first knew, then loved. And who knew if they'd make out in an unused classroom that smelled mildly of whiteboard markers.
Probably.
"Abed-" Troy started, and Abed looked up, blinking, perfectly silent. Eerily still. Not Abed, and who knew what Abed would do, right now, if he were here. Troy caught up and cleared his throat. "Spock."
There; back in the game. Spock inclined his head.
Kirk drew in a breath, and said, "Set phasers to stun me," and that's exactly what happened next.
--
04. batman & robin
The moral of this story, in a nutshell, is probably don't piss off the Batman. But the heart of this story, however, is don't attempt to knock the Batman's sidekick to the ground, because that pisses off the Batman, and that is very bad indeed. There's a distinction, believe it or not.
Batman and Robin were the most popular personas, by far. There were several cheers, a few limp Marvel vs. DC debates (most were still tired from all the pon farr), and Britta defied all logic and cranked out the classic Mr. Freeze puns with such scathing irony that they actually worked-but for the most part, that was well and truly it.
Mostly.
They were in the cafeteria, which had adjusted accordingly to hosting the Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder for lunch and treated them both with respect, awe, and the slight high fever of fannishness that Troy and Abed had been attracting more than usual. Annie was trying to talk about one of her classes. She was drowned out by Britta and Pierce arguing about Jonathan Swift, and Jeff and Shirley were watching, and quietly placing bets under the table. It was a nice day, more or less. Troy, sitting on the edge today, offered to get Abed a new container of chocolate milk. And, as he was returning to the table, he ran into a problem.
More specifically, a problem ran into him at full speed.
Chocolate milk in a sweet, cool rush exploded all over his front, and Troy landed with an ungainly thud! on the tile floor.
Four willowy thespians stood over him. Three were laughing-harsh, braying guffaws. One stood smirking, tall and dark, and with a cruel look in his steely eye.
The leader stooped down. "Where's the ring, friend?" he said coolly.
Troy blinked. He smelled like chocolate milk, he felt a little dizzy, and the eyes of the whole cafeteria were pinned to them. "We don't have it anymore," he said truthfully. After all, they didn't. They'd hidden it.
The leader's lip twisted into a snarl. He pushed his nose right up against Troy's and said, in a voice like grating metal, "Where's. The. Ring, buddy?"
"Hey." The leader, the three stooges, Troy, and the rest of the cafeteria looked-at Abed, who had oh-so-casually sidled over, and was now looming imposingly over the leader of the theatre majors. In his dark suit, cowl, and black-as-night cape, he was every bit the Caped Crusader, the hero Greendale didn't deserve, but had somehow earned all the same.
Troy's crusader, though, so he didn't feel the slice of fear that slashed its way across the faces of the theatre majors. Only love, and a wholehearted kind of admiration.
The leader coughed. "We'd like our ring back," he said.
"Not yours," said the goddamn Batman. "Apologize."
The leader dismissed Abed's imperative. "That ring," he said, forcing politeness into every syllable, "is extremely, incredibly, masterfully powerful. It belongs to me, and I'd very much like it returned."
"Oh God, is this about that stupid ring again?" Britta asked loudly. The rest of the table made to shush her into silence, but the leader was quicker, and gave her a small smile of eerie calm.
"Do you know," he began, quietly; seriously, "anything, about this particular ring?"
"It's a plastic ring they found in a gumball machine," Britta said, but she shifted uncomfortably in her dense leather jacket. "It-it is, right?"
The leader smiled, and laughed to himself, and pressed his chin to his chest. "You psych majors," he said.
"Leave it alone," Abed told the leader gravely. "The ring isn't yours."
"I've heard that one before," said the leader. He smiled, though no one human smiled like that. "And I really have to disagree."
"We don't have it anymore," Troy said, noticing with a hint of disappointment that his voice couldn't carry the gravitas of Abed's gravelly timbre. He pressed on bravely, anyway. "It's gone."
The leader of the theatre majors stared at him for a very long, quiet sort of moment. Then he blinked, and then his features shifted, and grew very dark indeed. Carved out of the cliffs of a vast, black mountain-his mouth formed a deep fissure, and his eyes shone very, very brightly.
Understanding doesn't always need words. Abed looked at Troy, and Troy looked back at Abed.
They split. One and then the other. Abed dashed to one exit, Troy scrambled for another. The theatre majors all stood around blinking for a moment, and then with a great roar of fury they took off, and left the rest of the cafeteria in a cloud of dust and confusion.
There were contingency plans in place for this sort of thing. They weren't very detailed, and had in fact been hashed out rather rashly, after the first time they'd thwarted the theatre majors. But as Troy leapt over backpacks, strewn papers, an impromptu game of hopscotch in the hallway, there was really only one thought that hung shimmering and bright in his mind:
Get them before they get you, or they will get you.
So this was attack plan alpha: run, run, run, as fast as you can. No time to panic; no time to stop.
He remembered where they'd hidden it, safely stored somewhere until the art studio's kilns could be repaired. Another left, a hard swing right, and there it was: a simple janitor's closet, its insides dusty and industrially gray. Troy yanked open the door and squirmed inside.
The ring sat sweet and patient in its little plastic Easter egg. The egg had collected no dust, and seemed to glow from within, almost haloed with an eerie, pale light. Troy took it soundlessly, and tucked it into-oh.
"Really should've sewn pockets into this," he muttered, before popping the egg into his mouth.
Ten seconds later, he was sneaking down a hallway in the west wing when he ran into Abed-not literally, though, which was pleasant enough. Running into Batman was probably like hitting a tank.
"Did you get the ring?" Abed asked.
Troy smiled. It was pink and very plasticky.
"Good enough," Abed said, and nodded shortly. "I found another way to destroy it. Follow me."
He did not explain, and Troy didn't ask. There wasn't any time, and anyway, he was Batman. Who could you trust if you couldn't trust Batman?
Even if you were running headlong into the theatre department.
… You had to trust Batman, right?
They reached the costume shop and quickly peered inside, though it was too shadowy to discern potential shapes of threatening thespians. Abed slunk in first, then Troy. Leaving the lights off, they padded softly over to the laundry room.
"In here," Abed whispered, pointing inside, at a room full of bleach, detergent, and dingy white washing machines. "Robin, get me a bucket, and lye, and-"
"And exit Batman, stage left," said a voice from behind. Troy and Abed whirled around. "Or did I skip ahead a few pages?"
Abed straightened, and stood. With the cowl he was as tall as the leader of the theatre majors, but he didn't give off the heavy, menacing air of brutality the leader had, in spades.
"This can be remedially easy, gentlemen," the leader said. "If you'll just give me the ring-"
"No."
The leader sighed. It was dramatic and overwrought, and purposely so. "Are you sure?"
Troy nodded, once.
The leader paused, thoughtfully. And then he charged.
His advantages were: a general knowledge of the costume shop, speed, flexibility. Troy and Abed's advantages were there were two of them, and one of them was the goddamned Batman.
That doesn't really help when you have a man the size of a small, well-defined tree aiming his head squarely into your stomach. There wouldn't be time to dive out of the way. Troy scrunched up his features and steeled himself, as best as he could, and hoped it wouldn't leave a bruise.
So when Abed flew into him from the left, and they hurtled through a rack of old costumes and into a box of hats, he wasn't quite prepared for it.
Abed sat up, blinking, mildly dazed and confused. He blinked again, deliberately, and suddenly started to ruffle through the pile of clothes strewn about them, like a prospector seeking gold. In the near distance Troy could hear the leader heaving, wheezing, bellowing-disentangling himself from a rogue nest of serger's thread.
"Uh, Batman," he said, "any time you wanna have a plan-"
"Got it," Abed said, and threw a leather jacket at Troy. He pulled another on, ripped off cape and cowl, slapped on a fake mustache, and
05. butch cassidy & the sundance kid
said, "Better get ready."
Troy had known Abed for the better part of three years now. He was no stranger to film homages, and to adventure on a whim, and took to it like a baby hippopotamus first takes to water-that is to say, very well, and gleefully to boot.
But he's seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Newman, Redford, scripted by the inimitable William Goldman. He knows how it ends, how they end. And somehow, replacing the lawmen with a gang of actors hellbent on one dramatic final act didn't help in the least.
Abed was already up. He grabbed Troy's arm and they ran out of the costume shop, back into the crazy halls of Greendale.
"Where are we going?" Troy finally yelled, popping the egg out of his mouth (where it had been incubating nicely all this time. If it actually hatched, he would hang up his hat-even he could only take so much in a day). He wasn't even sure if he stayed in character or not, but Abed didn't seem to notice. Abed was in that single-minded zone of focus, anyway. Hard to break him out of it.
"Anywhere that's not in there!" Abed shouted, just as they swung a left and pushed into the gymnasium, their footsteps echoing on the polished wood. They darted underneath a hold in the stage, squeezing themselves up against stacked metal folding chairs, and Troy caught his breath.
It was cramped, and he felt like every last sound they made would echo and give them away. "This really isn't what I had in mind, Ab-Kid," Troy said.
Abed glanced at Troy. "Well it's not exactly a summer home," he said mildly, "but-"
He was cut short by a ringing, round boom that stomped inside and over the polished floors. Three-no, four-six or seven pairs of boots trained in flocking and blocking pattered into the gym, and the boom, again-the leader.
"Someone's not a happy camper," Abed said archly, peering through a thin crack, and if Troy had had the room he may well have smacked him over the head with a folding chair.
Then the leader drew in a deep breath. Bunching like the sinewy muscle of a powerful python, his shoulders coiled and tightened; his feet stood apart; he bellowed, like a wounded bull, "AAAAABEEEEEED!" and the metal chairs under the stage quivered and shook.
Abed did not move. Neither, for that matter, did Troy.
"Abed," the leader heaved, "Troy. I know you're here. I know you're listening. Mark my words. If you do not surrender. I will sniff you out. I will drag you out. I will soundly beat you out here, in front of your little gang, and all your friends, and if you do not surrender." His voice was an earthquake, the low and warning growl before the sonic boom. "I will find you."
Troy mouthed, wide-eyed, "How did he know we were in here?" Abed shrugged, and Troy took a slow, deep breath.
There comes a time in everyone's life when he or she realizes that there are limits, on the lengths one will go for another. It's not a pleasant realization. And like most unpleasant realizations, it is often brought on by unfortunate circumstances, such as being unable to outrun a vicious sleuth of bears and realizing you will be eaten very shortly, or being unable to escape a vicious troupe of actors and realizing you will be beaten very shortly.
There came a time in Troy's life when he wanted to hang up the fantasy and go home, with Abed, for the day. Give it up, go back to being them. And Abed had said, before all this began, that Troy could opt out whenever he had reached his limits. No pressure.
He glanced over at Abed. He was crouched on the dusty floor, arms wrapped around his long legs, perfect eyes alert and ready, unwaveringly ready to follow Troy's call.
And that was always them, wasn't it? Whoever they were. Holmes and Watson, or Kirk and Spock-it was still them, underneath all the layers, the deerstalkers and the blue shirts. No matter what incarnation they took, it was always a Troy and Abed Thing, because they could always choose to be normal, and didn't, and there lay the beauty of the matter entirely.
There came a time in Troy's life when he realized just how much he loved Abed, sometimes. And that had never had a limit imposed on it at all.
He nodded once, and grabbed a folding chair. It clunked and groaned, and kind of smelled like farts. Troy shared one look with Abed, and Abed's brow furrowed, then cleared in understanding.
There was a semicircle of theatre majors close to the stage, dressed in darkest black, with menacing sneers twisted on their faces. The leader himself was expressionless, eerily masked.
And save for the cold fire that flared in his eyes, his face remained perfectly blank as Abed and Troy emerged from under the stage, carrying folding chairs, brave in the set of their shoulders and their steely, fixed gazes.
The theatre majors had prop guns. Prop guns, and blanks, and aim.
--
"Troy? Troy! Troy, can you hear me?"
The lights were on in Heaven, he supposed, and it sucked that Heaven, too, had fluorescent lighting. There was something at his shoulders-an angel? A rude angel, if anything, gripping his shoulders and shaking him hard.
Troy mumbled something, and swatted the stubborn seraph. Someone grunted harshly, drawing back, and then the shaking stopped. Good, Troy thought, let a man get some-
Reality reenters the atmosphere pretty quick. Troy sat up fast. "Abed, what-"
"Whoa," said Britta, of all people, who clasped his shoulders and prevented him from pitching forward. "Slow down, cowboy."
The lights were still flashing bright behind Troy's eyes. Squeezing them shut, he asked, "What happened?"
Annie answered. "You and Abed took a folding chair to the head," she said sadly. She was pressing an ice pack to Abed's forehead, and a tissue to Abed's profusely-bleeding nose.
"After they tried shooting at you," Britta added.
"But the blanks bounced off the folding chairs."
"So they used the chairs instead."
"They took off when we got here," Annie finished. "Jeff and Shirley were discussing how best to hide the bodies."
This was a lot to process. Troy blinked slowly. "Pierce wasn't with them?" he asked, in scratchy, roughened tones.
"He was with us, actually," Britta said, looking around for him, "but he left, just before you woke up."
Troy nodded slowly-his head hurt. Actually, that was an understatement. He felt like he'd taken a chair to the head. Which was entirely accurate, anyway. "Abed-how are-"
"He's all right," Annie said, smiling gently. "Pretty dazed, though. And then you punched him in the nose after he tried to wake you up."
Troy winced. "Sorry," he said, with a lopsided grin. Abed blinked once, and all was forgiven.
After a few more minutes, in which many wits were gathered and the room finally stopped swaying so dangerously to and fro, Troy and Abed were able to stand and walk in a codependent shuffle to the gym's double doors. Annie and Britta went ahead-there was something about Jeff and Shirley, and what exactly qualified as a crime of passion. Troy wasn't listening. Abed hadn't said a word since Troy accidentally bonked him.
"You didn't hesitate," Troy said quietly, staring at the wooden floor. "Not once. You just grabbed a chair and followed me out there, man."
"Of course I did. The Kid always saw Butch as the leader." Abed said it like it were pure, honest fact; the sky was blue, and Abed would always be there to follow Troy.
"You saved my life back there, you know," Troy said-and winced, because hello, hackneyed. "I mean, okay, technically you didn't, but you were right there with me, man. And-"
"Troy." Abed had stopped, and was peering at Troy curiously. "That wasn't me back there."
"No I know, it was the Kid, but-"
"Troy, anything less than what I did wouldn't have been the Kid," Abed said.
It was the weirdest feeling, Troy thought, when Abed turned back around and kept walking like no words had ever been shared. Like living with two different people. There was the Abed who went on all these adventures with him, and there was the Abed who steadfastly refused to break the fourth wall and admit it was him underneath the characters, the mithril armor and cowboy hats.
Troy loved him, he really did, but if he could stop being so Abed-
Well, then he wouldn't be Abed… would he?
And there was a strange thought. Troy shook his head like bees were buzzing around it, and frowned, and trailed after Abed, lost in his own head.
He wasn't sure if Abed noticed. Or, more importantly, understood.
--
06. you & me
"We have Inspector Spacetime and the Constable down well enough for Tuesday, and for Wednesday our JD and Turk is good to go. Leonard agreed to play Dr. Kelso, by the way. What I am worried about is Thursday. Do you think we should play them straight, or subvert the traditional Odd Couple-esque characterizations and play Starsky with hidden sensitive depths, and Hutch as the smart-mouthed, streetwise-"
"Abed?" said Troy, in a low, quiet voice, a voice that Definitely Did Not Want to Be Talking right now. But it was do or die. Not literally, but close enough.
Abed looked up from the ironing board, hot iron in hand.
Troy breathed deeply. "Abed, can we talk?" he asked. It wasn't difficult to say. What was difficult was waiting for the rocks to fall.
Abed must have sensed Troy's attitude, for he turned off the iron and stepped away from the board. Inspector Spacetime's half-wrinkled robe lay draped lifelessly over it.
"Maybe we should sit," Troy said. His hands were shaking. Special drink sounded like a good idea right about now. Special drink spiked with another special drink. Maybe.
They sat on the sofa. Troy held one of Abed's hands, for comfort. Whose, he wasn't sure.
"Are you breaking up with me?" asked Abed matter-of-factly.
"What? No. No!" Troy said, horrified. "Dude!"
"Oh. Just checking," Abed said. "Because I don't have George Costanza's 'it's not you, it's me' rebuttal memorized. Didn't think I'd needed to."
"No, Abed," Troy said, a little softer this time, and he even managed a weak smile. "We're not breaking up. And you don't need to memorize… that," he added, with a trace of lingering horror.
Abed blinked. "Okay," he said. "What's up?"
"I…" This was really hard. Ridiculously hard. Water Temple-hard. "Look, man. We've been friends a long time, right."
"Right."
"And we've been… going out for a while, too."
"Right," Abed repeated.
"And it's all been really, completely awesome, it has. Just." Troy trailed off, glanced away. Squeezed Abed's hand a little tighter. "It's Constable Reggie."
Abed tilted his head down, regally, and stared long and hard at Troy through dark lashes. "Constable Reggie," he said flatly.
Troy nodded enthusiastically. "I just-I don't feel one with the character yet," he said quickly. "I mean, he's really nuanced, and, uh. Complex. And I think I need more time to, you know. Get inside his head." He finished this very lamely, in his opinion, and mentally smacked himself in the forehead.
"Troy." Abed was very patient, and very sympathetic. "This isn't Oscar bait."
"No, I know, I know, but I really want to get this right and method and-"
Abed kissed him. It was very sudden, and very soft, and all Troy's whirling thoughts froze in his head for a sweet, blinding instant. Then it was over, and Abed had focused on him again.
"Troy," he said, hinting at sternness-or concern. Consternness, there it was. And all he had to say was Troy's name, just once, and Troy gave in, because at this point he was only fighting against himself.
Troy sighed, heavily. "It's not Constable Reggie," he said.
"It's not."
"No." His shoulders slumped, and he leaned back into the plump couch cushions. "I think it's us."
"Us," Abed repeated tonelessly.
Troy dropped his head onto the back of the couch. Staring at the boring white ceiling was miles better than staring at Abed and inevitably wondering just where his mind was in the cosmos at that point, and worrying about shifting a planet out of gear.
"I love doing all this with you," Troy said, gesturing vaguely around their apartment. It was littered with dramatic paraphernalia-various costumes of past and future wear, homemade accessories, a meticulous calendar for the rest of the week, and a rough draft for weeks later. Fun and fancy free-until now. "It's-honestly, it's one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life."
Abed slightly inclined his head, as thanks and to show he was listening intently. Troy ignored the sudden, weird stab of guilt that caused.
"But after it's all over," Troy continued, "you go back to being you, like it never even happened."
Abed blinked, and his brows knit together.
"Like that wasn't you, doing everything," Troy clarified, almost wistfully. "Like you've just forgotten, or something."
"I didn't forget-" Abed started, and Troy shook his head violently.
"You did!" He was gripping his knees. "I don't get it, Abed! First you're, you're this guy. You're this amazing, talented character, and when you're them you're all perfect or Batmanny or whatever. But then you aren't-and I just-"
He stopped. He'd run out of steam. And how far could you take a steamroller without flattening entirely the world you loved so much?
"You just what, Troy?" Abed said, very carefully. Troy cringed. Too flat, or close enough.
"It's like you're not Abed," he said finally, at length. "Not when you're playing someone. Like you're not in there underneath it all. And I know you, man. I know you probably better than… a lot. A lot of people don't see you for you, but I do, and." He breathed, in, out. His hands relaxed, and dropped between his knees. "And I want to do this with you. Not with Sherlock Holmes. Not with Frodo. Not with anyone else. Just you, man."
Abed was very quiet when Troy finished speaking. You could hear everything-the birds outside, the Jeopardy! theme from the TV downstairs, the vigorous vocal warm-ups the opera singer upstairs liked to do. It was noisy, and secondary-Troy wasn't listening to anything or anyone save the one, contemplative man seated on his right.
"You want to stop," Abed said. Troy almost pulled a muscle shaking his head in the negative.
"No," he said hastily, "no. I don't wanna stop."
"Then what-"
"I want to go on crazy, awesome adventures with you," Troy said, and this time, when he took Abed's hand, it was more for Abed's reassurance than Troy's. Abed furrowed his brow. "But they have to be with you. You and me until the end."
Abed nodded, very slowly, and Troy could see the early light of understanding glimmering on the horizon.
"Breaking the fourth wall a little won't kill you," Troy said, then, with a gentle punch to Abed's arm.
"You don't know that," Abed said darkly, but he dismissed it soon enough. He hesitated. "So we're still on for tomorrow."
"Definitely," Troy said, grinning brightly.
"But be different," Abed continued. "More like Abed. But I am Abed." His lips parted, a little. Troy couldn't help but stare.
"I don't want to you change," Troy said gently. "Or be… someone you think I want you to be. I just want you to be you."
Abed's brow furrowed. "Troy, I'm not sure you understand what acting is," he said slowly. "How can I be myself and the character at the same time?"
"If anyone can do it, it's you," Troy said, and leaned in, and their lips met and it was wonderful, well and truly. Abed's eyes lit up, and the sun broke over the world.
Abed blinked. "Oh," he said. "I think I get it."
Troy smiled.
"I think," Abed repeated.
"Therefore, you are," Troy said, and Abed really smiled at that one.
--
[tag]
"Your love is like baaad medicine, baaaad medicine is what I-wait, shh, shh, someone's coming."
Troy and Abed quickly composed themselves against the grimy brick wall. Composing themselves meant slouching and looking tough, in this case, and Britta stopped and raised a bemusedly disdainful eyebrow.
She stuck a hand on her hip and grinned. "Have either of you ever even been to New Jersey?" she asked.
"Uh," Troy said. "Yeah. 'Course."
Her brow raised higher.
"Have you?" he demanded quickly.
Britta's face clouded over. A dark, haunted look passed behind her eyes, an inexpressible melancholy, wistful and gloomy. "Once," she said, distantly. "Just once."
Jay and Silent Bob shared a Look. Then Abed nudged Jay, and he had all but a second to nip his goofy smile in the bud before he returned attention to Britta. She'd composed herself by then, and said, "You two better skedaddle. Star-Burns could be here any minute."
"Really?" Troy tried to scoff. It came out half-worried. Star-Burns smelled scary, sometimes.
Britta leaned forward, cupping her hand over her mouth. "They say he lurks in the shadows," she whispered, and pulled away with a knowing nod.
"I'm-I'm not scared of him!" Troy said, puffing out his chest. "I'm from 'Nardo, baby! Bring it!"
"Bring what?"
Pierce rounded the corner with: Star-Burns; a twenty in Star-Burns' hand; and a dinky little ring, fresh from its Easter egg case, in the open palm of Pierce's hand. Pierce had spoken. And then no one was speaking.
Everyone stared at each other. Troy gaped, actually, at the haunted, horrible ring.
And Silent Bob said, "Well. This is awkward."
--
--
Fandom: Community (Troy/Abed; PG-13)
Word Count: 7600
Summary: Troy and Abed star as five of the most famous slash pairings ever--Holmes and Watson, Kirk and Spock, the big granddaddies of gay romance. It's fun, entirely fun--until you realize who you truly want to be with, after all.
Author's Notes: Now on Ao3! And I swear I wrote this before I saw Contemporary Impressionists. It's not entirely similar, but... uh. Yeah. The title's a reference to the story's true inspiration, "Who Am I This Time?" by Kurt Vonnegut. Good story, check it out.
01. holmes & watson
There was a bit of a fuss kicked up about the tobacco pipe.
"I mean, I know it's Greendale, but I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to smoke indoors," Britta said.
"Especially in the library," Annie added with a slight frown. And a pause, and then she said, "Which isn't much. The cafeteria has a smoking section, though."
And Jeff said, "Cool pipe, Colonel Mustard," on his way in, slinging himself into his chair. He nodded his head at Abed and Troy. "What's with the threads?"
"They're 'role-playing,'" Shirley said. Her smile was more benevolent curiosity than bewilderment.
Jeff 's eyebrow lifted. "Uh huh," he said, which could mean a lot of things, though he never expanded on them. "And they're 'role-playing' because…"
"Something to do with them finally hooking up," Britta said succinctly.
It was interesting, observing the reactions that flew around the table. Annie smiled kindly. Shirley smiled, too, but it was a little pinched at the corners. Britta nodded like she'd seen it coming all along. Jeff merely widened his eyes and said, "Ah."
They were at least two weeks into it. It wasn't exactly news.
But it wasn't old enough to squeak by anyone's radar, either.
Abed, his fingertips steepled and his gaze hawkish, observed.
"I think it's pretty cool," Annie said. "I mean, it's not every day you-"
"Sorry I'm late!" Pierce said, as the back door to the study room flew open, the blinds rattling. "Traffic jam on the highway-complete, total tangle. What a mess."
Everyone either blinked, made a congenial noise of understanding, or in Jeff's case examined his manicure. Except Abed, who narrowed his shrewd eyes and said, "Not quite."
"Whoa, Abed," Jeff said in surprise. "Where'd the accent come from?"
"It's like a reverse Christian Bale," Britta agreed, her eyes wide.
Nonplussed, Pierce glanced from the study group to Abed. "What do you mean, 'not quite'?" he asked. "And what's with the accent? I mean, there's a joke about the Queen in there, give me five minutes and-"
"There was no traffic jam," Abed continued, and in an upper-crust British accent, as though Pierce had never spoken. "You were at Rusty's Trusty Dusted Donuts."
Like an electric viper striking through the seats of everyone's chairs, the study group jolted, and turned collectively impressed eyes from Abed to Pierce.
Pierce leered. "Wanna bet, Jeremy Brett?" he said. "Go on."
"Avec pleasure." He pretended to smoke his pipe, and his eyes glittered. "Whilst never having been to your humble lodgings myself, my intimate friend Troy Barnes has prior told me two salient facts important to my final conclusion: that you reside in Cherry Creek, one, and that your journey from your mansion to our school ranges from five to fifteen minutes, traffic- and weather-dependent, two. Today is a nice day."
"And there was traffic," Pierce finished. "Truckloads of it. As in, you would need a truck to drive over everyone's cars to get here on time."
"There wasn't," Abed said decidedly. "You and Leonard live in the same gated community. You take the same route to school. You leave at the same time. Given your age, it's no small leap of logic to assume you drive at the same speed. Leonard arrived fifteen minutes ago."
You could have heard a pin drop. Britta leaned over to Jeff and whispered incredulously, "They live in the same neighborhood?"
Pierce shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "What's your angle, Nancy Drew?"
"None but the truth," Abed returned swiftly. He then stood up, and strode over to Pierce, and pointed deftly elegant fingers at Pierce's collar. "Pink powdered sugar, on his lapel," he announced to the table, grasping the fabric and presenting it to the study group at large. "With green sugar. Indicative of none other than the particular specimen of holiday donut put out by Rusty's Trusty Dusted Donuts around Yuletide. Some must have fallen to your collar."
"How'd you know it's from Rusty's?" Britta asked.
Abed swiped his finger through the powder spatter and licked it, once, efficiently. "Only two local donut shops on Pierce's route put out a holiday donut, and Hole-in-One prefers a festive gingerbread glaze and sprinkles on their donuts over special colored powders."
"So why'd you need to lick the powder if they're distinctly different?" Jeff asked, an eyebrow raised.
Abed looked sheepish-for Abed-as-Holmes, anyway. "Crime-solving makes me hungry," he admitted.
"Which could've been fixed if Pierce brought donuts in for everyone," Britta said, with acid in her voice, and most everyone nodded their heads or murmured assent.
Pierce looked long round the table, mouth twisting. Then he sighed, and bent down, and dug into a messenger bag.
"I was saving these," he muttered, and shoved a small, squished box of donut holes to the center of the table. There was pastry pandemonium, and then a dogged hunt for napkins, and five minutes later no one really cared that Pierce had come late that morning and fudged the truth a little.
"These are pretty good donuts," Troy said a while later, rolling the last donut hole between his fingers. "Uh-I mean. Indubitably good." The rest of the group had filtered out of the room-it was just them, alone, with a sad, empty box of donut holes between them.
Abed's smile was enigmatic, and only used up half of his mouth. "You're rather enjoying yourself, Doctor," he murmured lowly.
"Well yeah, they're donuts!" Then Troy coughed quietly. "Most definitely."
"Indeed." The smile never quite left, but faded in and out of existence, and Troy wondered again if he'd ever figure out the meaning of it. "We'll be late to class if we depart any later." He stood, and with an unusual kind of elegance proffered his arm.
With a usual kind of smile, Troy took it, and chanced something-a quick, blink-and-you'll-miss-it kiss to Abed's cheek. He stood back and waited, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
Abed's eyes crinkled, but he said nothing, and hummed almost cheerfully to himself as they left the study room together, arm-in-arm.
The benefits of living in the twenty-first century, Troy supposed, was you could do all that in public.
--
02. frodo & samwise
In the middle of their questing, Britta stopped them and after a moment, evaulated, "You know, you're really too tall to be hobbits."
Abed smiled charmingly-charmingly, he was being charming, he had Elijah Wood's doe-eyed softness down to an exact science and a flourishing art form-and inclined his head in a near-imperceptible bow. "We made do," he said gently, smiling. Smiling. Gently. Troy wasn't sure if it was disturbingly amazing or amazingly disturbing.
Or both. It was most likely both.
"But if you'll excuse us," Abed said, and actually put his hand on Britta's lower arm-a kindly gesture, and a kindly dismissive one, "we have… a quest."
"A quest." She looked like she was trying not to smirk, and leaned back against a rather convenient wall.
Abed pointed down the stretching, dimly-lit, and pleasantly abandoned hallway that eventually led into the wilder woods of Greendale. "To return the One Ring," he said, and procured it, and held it reverently in the palm of his hand.
It was a plastic ring you would find in a twenty-five cent gumball machine. Which they had, as a matter of fact, and had kept it safe in a plastic Easter egg ever since. Scrounge up two suitable costumes, get your hands on two pairs of clear jelly flip-flops (because Greendale had some standards, and shoes were one of them), and there you have it. Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, and the One Ring to Rule Them All.
At least he didn't need to learn Elvish for the part. Spanish was buggy enough.
Britta raised an eyebrow and nodded very, very politely. "Oh," she said, "and… where are you returning it to?"
A strangled screech, a shrill and ear-piercing noise, high and arcing and bloodcurdlingly well-trained, broke the peace and gentle calm of the hallway. Troy whipped around. It had come from the hallway to their right, and then he heard something that caused his blood to freeze and slow.
"Are those… hoofbeats?" Britta asked.
"Coconuts," Abed replied tonelessly. His brows were drawn together and his mouth was marred by a twitching frown. "The theatre department used them for a production of Monty Python a while back."
"Wait," she said, "the theatre department?"
"Run," Troy breathed, and grabbed Britta and Abed and flew down the hallway. He didn't stop to think. He didn't stop to look back. He careened left, swerved right, and somehow managed to stow the three of them away in an abandoned classroom.
"Guys, I have to get to class," Britta hissed, clutching tight her psych textbook. "I really don't have time to-"
"Britta." Abed didn't hiss it, he didn't hurry it, he merely said her name with the sort of quiet intensity that only comes about when one is desperately afraid of something evil lurking in the shadows, and must at all costs remain calm. An outsider wouldn't be able to tell the difference, even close-up.
But Sam wasn't an outsider. And neither was Troy, so he gently encircled Abed's wrist and squeezed, lightly, once, before letting go.
The three of them packed together in the crawlspace under the professor's desk. There was silence. Then there was a simple quick sound, the creak of an unoiled door hinge swinging, and the soft footsteps of four theatre majors, clad in all black, and scanning the classroom with all the calculated precision of war machines.
Troy found that in times of crisis it was helpful, if not downright soothing, to look to Abed to gain back some sense of personal calm amidst perennial chaos. He glanced at him and almost immediately realized what a horrible decision it was-Abed was pale, sweating, his eyes two round, glistening balls. His breath came in high, tight puffs. This wasn't true Abed, it was Frodo, and Frodo was scared.
A theatre major padded in front of the desk, oily black boots treading with caution, with cold delicacy. Its breath was deep and slow and even. It was waiting, and Abed looked two seconds from cracking.
Troy slipped his hand into Abed's and squeezed again, and this time he didn't let go. Abed blinked, and stirred, and tightened his hold. They waited like rabbits in the warren until the theatre major had stepped away. They barely dared to breathe.
Two coconut halves clacked halfheartedly, and the leader of the pack sniffed and rumbled, "Keep moving," and the door opened and swung shut again. They scrambled out from under the desk seven tense seconds later.
"Are… are they playing along with you guys?" Britta asked.
Troy shook his head.
Britta's jaw twitched, clenching. "Then why can't you just give them the ring?"
Abed blinked.
"It's evil," Troy said simply. "Every time we-"
"It's evil."
"Yeah, I mean-yes, the One Ring is-" Troy started, and Britta thrust out a finger.
"Wait a minute." Her finger pointed from Troy, to Abed. "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I was held up by a bunch of theatre majors, under a desk, because you two couldn't stop playing a made-up game about a stupid ring?"
"It's not a game," Troy protested, "and the ring is evil, whenever we-"
"You guys!" Britta shouted, dropping her psych textbook with a dangerously loud bang. "It's just! A plastic! Ring! There's nothing evil about it-that's the kind of looney-tunes our cult of superstition shoves down your-you probably got it out of a box of Lucky Charms!"
"Gumball machine," Abed said quietly. "Twenty-five cents."
Britta's scream came out strangled and weird, like she was trying to hold it back but it leaked out all over the place anyway. She collected her psych text and stomped off, still muttering furiously to herself, about man-children and wasted time.
Troy stared after her in awe. "Every single person we've told about this ring," he breathed, "they reacted just like that." He eyed the ring that sat innocently in the palm of Abed's hand with a reverent sort of reproach. "Why aren't we affected?"
Abed didn't answer. And then Troy realized, that was his answer, and his heart twisted accordingly.
"Hey," he said gently, and walked up, and placed a hand on Abed's shoulder. "Hey. Whereever you go. I'm here for you, Mr. Frodo."
And he was-whether Abed was a consulting detective, or a hobbit, or whatever he wanted to be tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, into the foreseeable future. Which was never all that reliable, anyway, but where was the fun in predictability?
Abed smiled, and it was kind and simple enough, and he slipped his hand into Troy's and squeezed, and it was nice, really nice, and another side of him, and he kissed Troy gently, and once, and that was another side of him too altogether. There were so many, after all, hidden in one character or another. Sometimes Troy wondered if he'd ever see them all.
And then he wondered if he'd see them all as himself. Just himself. With Abed, just Abed.
That thought glimmered on the horizon for a while.
--
03. kirk & spock
Now this. This, Troy could get used to. The walk. The talk. The swagger. The appreciative eyes, the Vulcan hand salutes, the envious staring at his snazzy outfit.
Captain Troy Tiberius Barnes. Had a nice ring to it.
The battles, on the other hand, the vicious warfare that followed them like a ruthless trail of nerdy destruction. That sucked, and more to the point got on his nerves after a while.
Oh, he tried to ignore it. In theory it shouldn't have been difficult-he and Abed were in their best Starfleet uniforms, Kirk and Spock weren't actually that removed from their personalities to begin with, and on top of that the aura of coolness that blessed James T. Kirk's image should've sealed the deal entirely.
It just… didn't. And it was totally unignorable.
"Listen, I've seen every episode of the original series, and Deep Space Nine, and The Next Generation, there is no way you can tell me with a straight face Picard is any better-"
"I'm sorry, but after extensive study of the series canon, any fan worth their salt would tell you Kirk is a smug douchebag, end of story. Picard had it all going on-"
"Please, Picard sat around drinking earl grey tea while Kirk went out there and kicked some alien ass!"
"All right, all right, Shatner, or Patrick Stewart? Denny Crane, or Professor X?"
"Does everyone forget about Janeway?" Britta asked at one point in frustration, and that spiraled off somewhere else entirely.
"Look at this," Troy breathed. He was standing in a packed hallway, in the middle of the largest gathering of nerds since the advent of Internet forums, every one of them locked in single, sweaty combat over who was the better captain. Phaser at the ready, he picked through the chaos, surveying Greendale's students with an expression very close to wonder.
( "Kobayashi Maru!"
"Shakespeare!" )
"It's astounding." Abed as Spock was eerily similar to Abed as Abed, but with even less expression and pointier ears. His eyes betrayed no emotion. It should've seemed quite usual, but Troy could tell. He could sense it, in a way.
Then the first punch was thrown. By Leonard, so it wasn't much, and to Garrett, so it seemed like much more. But it was like accidentally brushing against one domino, and watching hopelessly, helplessly, as a domino chain of domino people toppled over Dominopolis, and then everybody was fighting and they only jumped out of the way just in time.
"Pon farr," Abed said, very quietly. They were flattened against the wall-a front-row seat.
Troy glanced at him in sudden, dawning horror. "Wait-are they gonna all start-are they all-"
"No." Abed shook his head very quickly. "But if they cannot all reach a satisfying… conclusion, they will have no choice. They will be driven into the arms of madness."
"It doesn't make any sense," Troy breathed, watching, as Shirley hurled her bag like a shotput at a spindly mathlete, and Annie took a flying leap at Jeff's back.
Abed shook his head slowly. "There is nothing logical about the pon farr," he said. "It is a time when instinct and emotion dominate over reason."
And someone tore past them with a trident in hand, so that proved that all right.
--
It was later. Much, much later. The sun slid past the black line of the horizon, and cast soft red light on the tired, heaving, panting bodies that lay strewn around the halls of Greendale.
The blood fever had abated. Enemy helped enemy, foe aided foe, and everyone more or less agreed that Kirk and Picard were both awesome, and fighting about it was kinda lame.
Troy and Abed watched all this, and felt momentarily disoriented.
"It just… ended," Troy said.
"Mm," Abed hummed, and Troy said, "One minute they were fighting and the next… madness."
Abed hummed again, and fidgeted.
"Good thing we weren't aff-mmph-" Troy's eyes widened, then shut slowly, then his hands pressed into Abed's narrow hips. It was seconds later-endless seconds, incredible seconds-before Abed broke away, his eyes shining.
"I'm sorry," he said haltingly, and Troy tried to see behind the Spock, to the real Abed, to see if he wasn't really sorry at all. "I-don't know what came over me."
"Pon farr?" Troy offered helpfully. His lips were still tingling. Abed flushed, and tried to regain control.
"I should not have-we are in public," Abed continued. He kept tearing his eyes away from Troy's mouth, and shifted anxiously, from foot to foot.
Sometimes Troy caught flickers of it. Bare, tiny flickers, scraps of paper on the metaphorical wind-scraps of Abed, the real one, underneath all those layers, Spock and Frodo and Holmes and everyone else he'd ever played, and there were many. It was strange, the real Abed wouldn't be barely and badly restraining himself from giving into the heat of pon farr. The real Abed would just be the friend Troy first knew, then loved. And who knew if they'd make out in an unused classroom that smelled mildly of whiteboard markers.
Probably.
"Abed-" Troy started, and Abed looked up, blinking, perfectly silent. Eerily still. Not Abed, and who knew what Abed would do, right now, if he were here. Troy caught up and cleared his throat. "Spock."
There; back in the game. Spock inclined his head.
Kirk drew in a breath, and said, "Set phasers to stun me," and that's exactly what happened next.
--
04. batman & robin
The moral of this story, in a nutshell, is probably don't piss off the Batman. But the heart of this story, however, is don't attempt to knock the Batman's sidekick to the ground, because that pisses off the Batman, and that is very bad indeed. There's a distinction, believe it or not.
Batman and Robin were the most popular personas, by far. There were several cheers, a few limp Marvel vs. DC debates (most were still tired from all the pon farr), and Britta defied all logic and cranked out the classic Mr. Freeze puns with such scathing irony that they actually worked-but for the most part, that was well and truly it.
Mostly.
They were in the cafeteria, which had adjusted accordingly to hosting the Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder for lunch and treated them both with respect, awe, and the slight high fever of fannishness that Troy and Abed had been attracting more than usual. Annie was trying to talk about one of her classes. She was drowned out by Britta and Pierce arguing about Jonathan Swift, and Jeff and Shirley were watching, and quietly placing bets under the table. It was a nice day, more or less. Troy, sitting on the edge today, offered to get Abed a new container of chocolate milk. And, as he was returning to the table, he ran into a problem.
More specifically, a problem ran into him at full speed.
Chocolate milk in a sweet, cool rush exploded all over his front, and Troy landed with an ungainly thud! on the tile floor.
Four willowy thespians stood over him. Three were laughing-harsh, braying guffaws. One stood smirking, tall and dark, and with a cruel look in his steely eye.
The leader stooped down. "Where's the ring, friend?" he said coolly.
Troy blinked. He smelled like chocolate milk, he felt a little dizzy, and the eyes of the whole cafeteria were pinned to them. "We don't have it anymore," he said truthfully. After all, they didn't. They'd hidden it.
The leader's lip twisted into a snarl. He pushed his nose right up against Troy's and said, in a voice like grating metal, "Where's. The. Ring, buddy?"
"Hey." The leader, the three stooges, Troy, and the rest of the cafeteria looked-at Abed, who had oh-so-casually sidled over, and was now looming imposingly over the leader of the theatre majors. In his dark suit, cowl, and black-as-night cape, he was every bit the Caped Crusader, the hero Greendale didn't deserve, but had somehow earned all the same.
Troy's crusader, though, so he didn't feel the slice of fear that slashed its way across the faces of the theatre majors. Only love, and a wholehearted kind of admiration.
The leader coughed. "We'd like our ring back," he said.
"Not yours," said the goddamn Batman. "Apologize."
The leader dismissed Abed's imperative. "That ring," he said, forcing politeness into every syllable, "is extremely, incredibly, masterfully powerful. It belongs to me, and I'd very much like it returned."
"Oh God, is this about that stupid ring again?" Britta asked loudly. The rest of the table made to shush her into silence, but the leader was quicker, and gave her a small smile of eerie calm.
"Do you know," he began, quietly; seriously, "anything, about this particular ring?"
"It's a plastic ring they found in a gumball machine," Britta said, but she shifted uncomfortably in her dense leather jacket. "It-it is, right?"
The leader smiled, and laughed to himself, and pressed his chin to his chest. "You psych majors," he said.
"Leave it alone," Abed told the leader gravely. "The ring isn't yours."
"I've heard that one before," said the leader. He smiled, though no one human smiled like that. "And I really have to disagree."
"We don't have it anymore," Troy said, noticing with a hint of disappointment that his voice couldn't carry the gravitas of Abed's gravelly timbre. He pressed on bravely, anyway. "It's gone."
The leader of the theatre majors stared at him for a very long, quiet sort of moment. Then he blinked, and then his features shifted, and grew very dark indeed. Carved out of the cliffs of a vast, black mountain-his mouth formed a deep fissure, and his eyes shone very, very brightly.
Understanding doesn't always need words. Abed looked at Troy, and Troy looked back at Abed.
They split. One and then the other. Abed dashed to one exit, Troy scrambled for another. The theatre majors all stood around blinking for a moment, and then with a great roar of fury they took off, and left the rest of the cafeteria in a cloud of dust and confusion.
There were contingency plans in place for this sort of thing. They weren't very detailed, and had in fact been hashed out rather rashly, after the first time they'd thwarted the theatre majors. But as Troy leapt over backpacks, strewn papers, an impromptu game of hopscotch in the hallway, there was really only one thought that hung shimmering and bright in his mind:
Get them before they get you, or they will get you.
So this was attack plan alpha: run, run, run, as fast as you can. No time to panic; no time to stop.
He remembered where they'd hidden it, safely stored somewhere until the art studio's kilns could be repaired. Another left, a hard swing right, and there it was: a simple janitor's closet, its insides dusty and industrially gray. Troy yanked open the door and squirmed inside.
The ring sat sweet and patient in its little plastic Easter egg. The egg had collected no dust, and seemed to glow from within, almost haloed with an eerie, pale light. Troy took it soundlessly, and tucked it into-oh.
"Really should've sewn pockets into this," he muttered, before popping the egg into his mouth.
Ten seconds later, he was sneaking down a hallway in the west wing when he ran into Abed-not literally, though, which was pleasant enough. Running into Batman was probably like hitting a tank.
"Did you get the ring?" Abed asked.
Troy smiled. It was pink and very plasticky.
"Good enough," Abed said, and nodded shortly. "I found another way to destroy it. Follow me."
He did not explain, and Troy didn't ask. There wasn't any time, and anyway, he was Batman. Who could you trust if you couldn't trust Batman?
Even if you were running headlong into the theatre department.
… You had to trust Batman, right?
They reached the costume shop and quickly peered inside, though it was too shadowy to discern potential shapes of threatening thespians. Abed slunk in first, then Troy. Leaving the lights off, they padded softly over to the laundry room.
"In here," Abed whispered, pointing inside, at a room full of bleach, detergent, and dingy white washing machines. "Robin, get me a bucket, and lye, and-"
"And exit Batman, stage left," said a voice from behind. Troy and Abed whirled around. "Or did I skip ahead a few pages?"
Abed straightened, and stood. With the cowl he was as tall as the leader of the theatre majors, but he didn't give off the heavy, menacing air of brutality the leader had, in spades.
"This can be remedially easy, gentlemen," the leader said. "If you'll just give me the ring-"
"No."
The leader sighed. It was dramatic and overwrought, and purposely so. "Are you sure?"
Troy nodded, once.
The leader paused, thoughtfully. And then he charged.
His advantages were: a general knowledge of the costume shop, speed, flexibility. Troy and Abed's advantages were there were two of them, and one of them was the goddamned Batman.
That doesn't really help when you have a man the size of a small, well-defined tree aiming his head squarely into your stomach. There wouldn't be time to dive out of the way. Troy scrunched up his features and steeled himself, as best as he could, and hoped it wouldn't leave a bruise.
So when Abed flew into him from the left, and they hurtled through a rack of old costumes and into a box of hats, he wasn't quite prepared for it.
Abed sat up, blinking, mildly dazed and confused. He blinked again, deliberately, and suddenly started to ruffle through the pile of clothes strewn about them, like a prospector seeking gold. In the near distance Troy could hear the leader heaving, wheezing, bellowing-disentangling himself from a rogue nest of serger's thread.
"Uh, Batman," he said, "any time you wanna have a plan-"
"Got it," Abed said, and threw a leather jacket at Troy. He pulled another on, ripped off cape and cowl, slapped on a fake mustache, and
05. butch cassidy & the sundance kid
said, "Better get ready."
Troy had known Abed for the better part of three years now. He was no stranger to film homages, and to adventure on a whim, and took to it like a baby hippopotamus first takes to water-that is to say, very well, and gleefully to boot.
But he's seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Newman, Redford, scripted by the inimitable William Goldman. He knows how it ends, how they end. And somehow, replacing the lawmen with a gang of actors hellbent on one dramatic final act didn't help in the least.
Abed was already up. He grabbed Troy's arm and they ran out of the costume shop, back into the crazy halls of Greendale.
"Where are we going?" Troy finally yelled, popping the egg out of his mouth (where it had been incubating nicely all this time. If it actually hatched, he would hang up his hat-even he could only take so much in a day). He wasn't even sure if he stayed in character or not, but Abed didn't seem to notice. Abed was in that single-minded zone of focus, anyway. Hard to break him out of it.
"Anywhere that's not in there!" Abed shouted, just as they swung a left and pushed into the gymnasium, their footsteps echoing on the polished wood. They darted underneath a hold in the stage, squeezing themselves up against stacked metal folding chairs, and Troy caught his breath.
It was cramped, and he felt like every last sound they made would echo and give them away. "This really isn't what I had in mind, Ab-Kid," Troy said.
Abed glanced at Troy. "Well it's not exactly a summer home," he said mildly, "but-"
He was cut short by a ringing, round boom that stomped inside and over the polished floors. Three-no, four-six or seven pairs of boots trained in flocking and blocking pattered into the gym, and the boom, again-the leader.
"Someone's not a happy camper," Abed said archly, peering through a thin crack, and if Troy had had the room he may well have smacked him over the head with a folding chair.
Then the leader drew in a deep breath. Bunching like the sinewy muscle of a powerful python, his shoulders coiled and tightened; his feet stood apart; he bellowed, like a wounded bull, "AAAAABEEEEEED!" and the metal chairs under the stage quivered and shook.
Abed did not move. Neither, for that matter, did Troy.
"Abed," the leader heaved, "Troy. I know you're here. I know you're listening. Mark my words. If you do not surrender. I will sniff you out. I will drag you out. I will soundly beat you out here, in front of your little gang, and all your friends, and if you do not surrender." His voice was an earthquake, the low and warning growl before the sonic boom. "I will find you."
Troy mouthed, wide-eyed, "How did he know we were in here?" Abed shrugged, and Troy took a slow, deep breath.
There comes a time in everyone's life when he or she realizes that there are limits, on the lengths one will go for another. It's not a pleasant realization. And like most unpleasant realizations, it is often brought on by unfortunate circumstances, such as being unable to outrun a vicious sleuth of bears and realizing you will be eaten very shortly, or being unable to escape a vicious troupe of actors and realizing you will be beaten very shortly.
There came a time in Troy's life when he wanted to hang up the fantasy and go home, with Abed, for the day. Give it up, go back to being them. And Abed had said, before all this began, that Troy could opt out whenever he had reached his limits. No pressure.
He glanced over at Abed. He was crouched on the dusty floor, arms wrapped around his long legs, perfect eyes alert and ready, unwaveringly ready to follow Troy's call.
And that was always them, wasn't it? Whoever they were. Holmes and Watson, or Kirk and Spock-it was still them, underneath all the layers, the deerstalkers and the blue shirts. No matter what incarnation they took, it was always a Troy and Abed Thing, because they could always choose to be normal, and didn't, and there lay the beauty of the matter entirely.
There came a time in Troy's life when he realized just how much he loved Abed, sometimes. And that had never had a limit imposed on it at all.
He nodded once, and grabbed a folding chair. It clunked and groaned, and kind of smelled like farts. Troy shared one look with Abed, and Abed's brow furrowed, then cleared in understanding.
There was a semicircle of theatre majors close to the stage, dressed in darkest black, with menacing sneers twisted on their faces. The leader himself was expressionless, eerily masked.
And save for the cold fire that flared in his eyes, his face remained perfectly blank as Abed and Troy emerged from under the stage, carrying folding chairs, brave in the set of their shoulders and their steely, fixed gazes.
The theatre majors had prop guns. Prop guns, and blanks, and aim.
--
"Troy? Troy! Troy, can you hear me?"
The lights were on in Heaven, he supposed, and it sucked that Heaven, too, had fluorescent lighting. There was something at his shoulders-an angel? A rude angel, if anything, gripping his shoulders and shaking him hard.
Troy mumbled something, and swatted the stubborn seraph. Someone grunted harshly, drawing back, and then the shaking stopped. Good, Troy thought, let a man get some-
Reality reenters the atmosphere pretty quick. Troy sat up fast. "Abed, what-"
"Whoa," said Britta, of all people, who clasped his shoulders and prevented him from pitching forward. "Slow down, cowboy."
The lights were still flashing bright behind Troy's eyes. Squeezing them shut, he asked, "What happened?"
Annie answered. "You and Abed took a folding chair to the head," she said sadly. She was pressing an ice pack to Abed's forehead, and a tissue to Abed's profusely-bleeding nose.
"After they tried shooting at you," Britta added.
"But the blanks bounced off the folding chairs."
"So they used the chairs instead."
"They took off when we got here," Annie finished. "Jeff and Shirley were discussing how best to hide the bodies."
This was a lot to process. Troy blinked slowly. "Pierce wasn't with them?" he asked, in scratchy, roughened tones.
"He was with us, actually," Britta said, looking around for him, "but he left, just before you woke up."
Troy nodded slowly-his head hurt. Actually, that was an understatement. He felt like he'd taken a chair to the head. Which was entirely accurate, anyway. "Abed-how are-"
"He's all right," Annie said, smiling gently. "Pretty dazed, though. And then you punched him in the nose after he tried to wake you up."
Troy winced. "Sorry," he said, with a lopsided grin. Abed blinked once, and all was forgiven.
After a few more minutes, in which many wits were gathered and the room finally stopped swaying so dangerously to and fro, Troy and Abed were able to stand and walk in a codependent shuffle to the gym's double doors. Annie and Britta went ahead-there was something about Jeff and Shirley, and what exactly qualified as a crime of passion. Troy wasn't listening. Abed hadn't said a word since Troy accidentally bonked him.
"You didn't hesitate," Troy said quietly, staring at the wooden floor. "Not once. You just grabbed a chair and followed me out there, man."
"Of course I did. The Kid always saw Butch as the leader." Abed said it like it were pure, honest fact; the sky was blue, and Abed would always be there to follow Troy.
"You saved my life back there, you know," Troy said-and winced, because hello, hackneyed. "I mean, okay, technically you didn't, but you were right there with me, man. And-"
"Troy." Abed had stopped, and was peering at Troy curiously. "That wasn't me back there."
"No I know, it was the Kid, but-"
"Troy, anything less than what I did wouldn't have been the Kid," Abed said.
It was the weirdest feeling, Troy thought, when Abed turned back around and kept walking like no words had ever been shared. Like living with two different people. There was the Abed who went on all these adventures with him, and there was the Abed who steadfastly refused to break the fourth wall and admit it was him underneath the characters, the mithril armor and cowboy hats.
Troy loved him, he really did, but if he could stop being so Abed-
Well, then he wouldn't be Abed… would he?
And there was a strange thought. Troy shook his head like bees were buzzing around it, and frowned, and trailed after Abed, lost in his own head.
He wasn't sure if Abed noticed. Or, more importantly, understood.
--
06. you & me
"We have Inspector Spacetime and the Constable down well enough for Tuesday, and for Wednesday our JD and Turk is good to go. Leonard agreed to play Dr. Kelso, by the way. What I am worried about is Thursday. Do you think we should play them straight, or subvert the traditional Odd Couple-esque characterizations and play Starsky with hidden sensitive depths, and Hutch as the smart-mouthed, streetwise-"
"Abed?" said Troy, in a low, quiet voice, a voice that Definitely Did Not Want to Be Talking right now. But it was do or die. Not literally, but close enough.
Abed looked up from the ironing board, hot iron in hand.
Troy breathed deeply. "Abed, can we talk?" he asked. It wasn't difficult to say. What was difficult was waiting for the rocks to fall.
Abed must have sensed Troy's attitude, for he turned off the iron and stepped away from the board. Inspector Spacetime's half-wrinkled robe lay draped lifelessly over it.
"Maybe we should sit," Troy said. His hands were shaking. Special drink sounded like a good idea right about now. Special drink spiked with another special drink. Maybe.
They sat on the sofa. Troy held one of Abed's hands, for comfort. Whose, he wasn't sure.
"Are you breaking up with me?" asked Abed matter-of-factly.
"What? No. No!" Troy said, horrified. "Dude!"
"Oh. Just checking," Abed said. "Because I don't have George Costanza's 'it's not you, it's me' rebuttal memorized. Didn't think I'd needed to."
"No, Abed," Troy said, a little softer this time, and he even managed a weak smile. "We're not breaking up. And you don't need to memorize… that," he added, with a trace of lingering horror.
Abed blinked. "Okay," he said. "What's up?"
"I…" This was really hard. Ridiculously hard. Water Temple-hard. "Look, man. We've been friends a long time, right."
"Right."
"And we've been… going out for a while, too."
"Right," Abed repeated.
"And it's all been really, completely awesome, it has. Just." Troy trailed off, glanced away. Squeezed Abed's hand a little tighter. "It's Constable Reggie."
Abed tilted his head down, regally, and stared long and hard at Troy through dark lashes. "Constable Reggie," he said flatly.
Troy nodded enthusiastically. "I just-I don't feel one with the character yet," he said quickly. "I mean, he's really nuanced, and, uh. Complex. And I think I need more time to, you know. Get inside his head." He finished this very lamely, in his opinion, and mentally smacked himself in the forehead.
"Troy." Abed was very patient, and very sympathetic. "This isn't Oscar bait."
"No, I know, I know, but I really want to get this right and method and-"
Abed kissed him. It was very sudden, and very soft, and all Troy's whirling thoughts froze in his head for a sweet, blinding instant. Then it was over, and Abed had focused on him again.
"Troy," he said, hinting at sternness-or concern. Consternness, there it was. And all he had to say was Troy's name, just once, and Troy gave in, because at this point he was only fighting against himself.
Troy sighed, heavily. "It's not Constable Reggie," he said.
"It's not."
"No." His shoulders slumped, and he leaned back into the plump couch cushions. "I think it's us."
"Us," Abed repeated tonelessly.
Troy dropped his head onto the back of the couch. Staring at the boring white ceiling was miles better than staring at Abed and inevitably wondering just where his mind was in the cosmos at that point, and worrying about shifting a planet out of gear.
"I love doing all this with you," Troy said, gesturing vaguely around their apartment. It was littered with dramatic paraphernalia-various costumes of past and future wear, homemade accessories, a meticulous calendar for the rest of the week, and a rough draft for weeks later. Fun and fancy free-until now. "It's-honestly, it's one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life."
Abed slightly inclined his head, as thanks and to show he was listening intently. Troy ignored the sudden, weird stab of guilt that caused.
"But after it's all over," Troy continued, "you go back to being you, like it never even happened."
Abed blinked, and his brows knit together.
"Like that wasn't you, doing everything," Troy clarified, almost wistfully. "Like you've just forgotten, or something."
"I didn't forget-" Abed started, and Troy shook his head violently.
"You did!" He was gripping his knees. "I don't get it, Abed! First you're, you're this guy. You're this amazing, talented character, and when you're them you're all perfect or Batmanny or whatever. But then you aren't-and I just-"
He stopped. He'd run out of steam. And how far could you take a steamroller without flattening entirely the world you loved so much?
"You just what, Troy?" Abed said, very carefully. Troy cringed. Too flat, or close enough.
"It's like you're not Abed," he said finally, at length. "Not when you're playing someone. Like you're not in there underneath it all. And I know you, man. I know you probably better than… a lot. A lot of people don't see you for you, but I do, and." He breathed, in, out. His hands relaxed, and dropped between his knees. "And I want to do this with you. Not with Sherlock Holmes. Not with Frodo. Not with anyone else. Just you, man."
Abed was very quiet when Troy finished speaking. You could hear everything-the birds outside, the Jeopardy! theme from the TV downstairs, the vigorous vocal warm-ups the opera singer upstairs liked to do. It was noisy, and secondary-Troy wasn't listening to anything or anyone save the one, contemplative man seated on his right.
"You want to stop," Abed said. Troy almost pulled a muscle shaking his head in the negative.
"No," he said hastily, "no. I don't wanna stop."
"Then what-"
"I want to go on crazy, awesome adventures with you," Troy said, and this time, when he took Abed's hand, it was more for Abed's reassurance than Troy's. Abed furrowed his brow. "But they have to be with you. You and me until the end."
Abed nodded, very slowly, and Troy could see the early light of understanding glimmering on the horizon.
"Breaking the fourth wall a little won't kill you," Troy said, then, with a gentle punch to Abed's arm.
"You don't know that," Abed said darkly, but he dismissed it soon enough. He hesitated. "So we're still on for tomorrow."
"Definitely," Troy said, grinning brightly.
"But be different," Abed continued. "More like Abed. But I am Abed." His lips parted, a little. Troy couldn't help but stare.
"I don't want to you change," Troy said gently. "Or be… someone you think I want you to be. I just want you to be you."
Abed's brow furrowed. "Troy, I'm not sure you understand what acting is," he said slowly. "How can I be myself and the character at the same time?"
"If anyone can do it, it's you," Troy said, and leaned in, and their lips met and it was wonderful, well and truly. Abed's eyes lit up, and the sun broke over the world.
Abed blinked. "Oh," he said. "I think I get it."
Troy smiled.
"I think," Abed repeated.
"Therefore, you are," Troy said, and Abed really smiled at that one.
--
[tag]
"Your love is like baaad medicine, baaaad medicine is what I-wait, shh, shh, someone's coming."
Troy and Abed quickly composed themselves against the grimy brick wall. Composing themselves meant slouching and looking tough, in this case, and Britta stopped and raised a bemusedly disdainful eyebrow.
She stuck a hand on her hip and grinned. "Have either of you ever even been to New Jersey?" she asked.
"Uh," Troy said. "Yeah. 'Course."
Her brow raised higher.
"Have you?" he demanded quickly.
Britta's face clouded over. A dark, haunted look passed behind her eyes, an inexpressible melancholy, wistful and gloomy. "Once," she said, distantly. "Just once."
Jay and Silent Bob shared a Look. Then Abed nudged Jay, and he had all but a second to nip his goofy smile in the bud before he returned attention to Britta. She'd composed herself by then, and said, "You two better skedaddle. Star-Burns could be here any minute."
"Really?" Troy tried to scoff. It came out half-worried. Star-Burns smelled scary, sometimes.
Britta leaned forward, cupping her hand over her mouth. "They say he lurks in the shadows," she whispered, and pulled away with a knowing nod.
"I'm-I'm not scared of him!" Troy said, puffing out his chest. "I'm from 'Nardo, baby! Bring it!"
"Bring what?"
Pierce rounded the corner with: Star-Burns; a twenty in Star-Burns' hand; and a dinky little ring, fresh from its Easter egg case, in the open palm of Pierce's hand. Pierce had spoken. And then no one was speaking.
Everyone stared at each other. Troy gaped, actually, at the haunted, horrible ring.
And Silent Bob said, "Well. This is awkward."
--
--