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Everyone moved on while Troy was gone.
He probably should have expected that. He should have known that time wouldn’t stand still in Greendale just because he wasn’t there. But for some reason he hadn’t. He had imagined that he could come back, more mature and self-confident and 14 million richer, slide back into his seat at the table in study room F and get involved in the latest Greendale hijinks (except in a mature, self-confident and rich way), like no time had passed.
But then Shirley moved to Atlanta, where she started working for a washed-up detective. Allegedly as a cook, but Troy knew that was just smokescreen, that in reality she helped him solve seemingly unsolvable cases by contradicting everything he said, which was how they got results. Like Partner and Houlihan, except less cool, because no one could ever be as cool as Partner and Houlihan.
Then Britta moved in with Abed and Annie, which made Troy worry that there would no longer be room for him in the apartment by the time he came back. He tried not to think about it too much. Chances were Britta would somehow britta being a roommate and it would become a non-issue in a few months. And anyway, Troy would be rich, so he could live anywhere he wanted. It just wouldn’t be as fun as living with Abed and Annie. Still, he wondered sometimes to what extent Britta had taken over his role in the apartment. Was it now her job to make sure they had enough Doritos and chocolate milk? Was it her who fixed the fridge door when it inevitably broke again? Did she comfort Abed when he was upset? (Had she replaced him not just as a roommate, but also as a friend? And if she hadn’t, would someone else replace him eventually?)
Then Annie got a job in D.C., in the actual FBI. How cool was that? She said in her emails that most of what she did was run-of-the-mill admin work, but Troy wasn’t stupid. He knew how these things worked, he knew she couldn’t tell him what she really did because it was all top secret and classified and the fate of the nation was at stake. He liked imagining her saving the president and preventing terrorist threats and approving space missions (did the FBI do that? Probably not, but whatever, Annie could do it anyway), so he didn’t mind that she couldn’t tell him the truth.
And Abed. Abed, who had spliced Troy’s DNA with homing pigeon genes so Troy would come back, had gone to LA to work on an actual TV show. And Troy was - so happy for him. Of course he was. Working in TV had always been Abed’s dream and there was no reason why he should put it on hold. The show was sitcom set in a video game studio called Walkthrough, and based on the bits Troy had managed to watch despite rarely having internet connection and despite stupid geo-blocked websites, it was pretty awesome. He took a screenshot of Abed’s name in the end credits of the first episode, printed it out in an internet cafe in Darwin and pasted the printout above his bunk, right next to their gluon photo. Abed was making it in the big world, and Troy had no right to be upset that Abed hadn’t waited for him, even if it made his chest hurt in ways he didn’t fully understand. (Except that was a lie - he did understand now, why thinking of Abed sometimes made his heart squeeze. He understood completely, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.)
The only members of their study group who hadn’t left Greendale were Jeff and Britta. Except there was no study group anymore, not even a Save Greendale Committee, because apparently Greendale was done being saved, as improbable as that was. Troy couldn’t go back and take his old place because his place simply didn’t exist anymore. And with both his former roommates gone, did he even have a home? The thought was so terrifying that for a while he thought he would just keep circling the world forever and never come back at all.
But he didn’t do that, because that wouldn’t help with the fact that he missed everyone so much. He and LeVar Burton returned to the US two years and five months after first setting sail. Abed, Annie and Shirley weren’t able to be there to welcome Troy home, either when they docked in Louisiana or when he finally got back to Colorado, to have the big reunion Troy had been dreaming of pretty much since the moment he left, which involved a tearful group hug followed by a passionate kiss. (A regular kiss, not a group kiss. That would be weird. How would that even work? Imagining the logistics wrinkled his brain. Anyway, the kiss he wanted was just from one person. A very specific person.) Troy understood, of course. Shirley couldn’t leave her sick father, Annie’s job was super important and Abed was still just starting his career, he couldn’t afford to be unavailable just when an amazing opportunity might come his way. It was fine. He would see them later. Soon.
He returned to Greendale, completing the mission Pierce had set him. He had to work through some formalities with Pierce’s lawyers and he spent some time with both his parents, in their separate homes, neither of which was his home. It became clear to him then that this, the supposed end of his journey, was really just a stopover on his way to… somewhere else. And ultimately, there was only one place where he could go next.
Seeing Britta and Jeff again was amazing enough to almost make him forget how out of place he felt, even if they were just two instead of the five he’d been hoping for. Jeff had a full-on beard now and his muscle mass seemed to have doubled since Troy had last seen him, in a way that Troy was now able to admit to himself was kinda hot, even if his own tastes tended more towards lean and lithe.
And Britta was... Britta was very visibly pregnant.
Troy’s first thought when he saw her was holy shit, Britta’s pregnant. Then he thought, wait, was it possible that he had incredibly slow sperm and the baby was his? Wouldn’t be the only thing that was incredibly slow about him. But no, that was insane, the last time he and Britta had sex had been like tree years ago, that would be impossible. Phew. But still, holy shit, Britta, his ex-girlfriend, was pregnant.
Out loud he said, “Wow.”
“Yeah, I know,” Britta said with a vaguely embarrassed smile. “But it doesn’t bite, you can still hug me.”
So he did, pulling her close, careful not to squish her stomach. Her hair still smelled of the same shampoo she had used when they were dating, but that seemed to be the only thing that had stayed the same. The world hadn’t waited for him. His friends’ lives had got on just fine without him. Britta was having a baby and he hadn’t even known she was seeing someone--
He froze when another terrifying thought occurred to him.
“Britta,” he said as he pulled away, “it’s not Pierce’s baby, is it?”
“What? Ew, Troy, no! Why would you say that? Ew!”
“I don’t know, sorry! He did give you his sperm and now you’re pregnant, so…”
“I poured that down the toilet while wearing full protective gear like a sane person, and I got pregnant the usual way people get pregnant, thank you very much.” She looked at Jeff. “It’s, um…”
Troy looked at Jeff too, wondering what he had to do with Britta’s pregnancy, and then he realized there was only one thing he could have to do with Britta’s pregnancy.
“Oh. Oh!”
Jeff gave him a lopsided smile, half proud, half apologetic, and shrugged.
“Congratulations, man!” Troy said and hugged Jeff too. “That’s awesome!”
“Yeah,” Jeff huffed, clapping him on the back. “Terrifying, mainly, but pretty awesome too.”
So that was that. Even Jeff and Britta, who had stayed in Greendale, had moved on. Got together (again), started a family (by accident, from what Troy gathered), even if, out of their group, they were perhaps the unlikliest candidates for that. (Troy didn’t ask if marriage was on the cards, he didn’t think things had changed that much.)
Troy wasn’t jealous, but he also kind of was? Or maybe jealous wasn’t the right word. Maybe he was just freaking out that his first serious girlfriend, the only girl he’d ever dated and actually liked, was having a baby. And okay, she was nine years older than him, but still. Everyone had lives now, and he had… a bunch of money he didn’t know what to do with.
He hung out with Jeff and Britta every day of his brief stopover in Greendale while he planned what to do next. Sometimes it was just the three of them, sometimes they were joined by the rest of Jeff and Britta’s current friend group, which was now apparently composed of the Dean, Chang, and a woman called Frankie who was like an older, more straight-laced, less fun version of Annie and had a weird obsession with steel drums that she was compelled share with Troy from the moment they first met. They talked about the places Troy had visited and his high sea adventures and everything that had gone on at Greendale in his absence (which was a lot, unsurprisingly) and what everyone else was doing, and Troy tried to pretend that his heart didn’t leap in his chest and then fall down with a thud every time Abed’s name was mentioned. He wasn’t sure he fooled anyone.
The only time he let himself really talk about Abed was the day before he planned to go to Los Angeles to see him, when Abed was so much on his mind that thinking about anything else was almost impossible.
“Anyway,” Britta said as they shared a pizza in her and Jeff’s new apartment (that was apparently owned by Britta’s parents, but Troy learned the hard way not to ask for details about that). “You still haven’t told us how many broken hearts you left behind, scattered all over the globe.”
Troy laughed and hoped it didn’t sound as awkward as it felt. “Zero, I’m pretty sure.”
Britta raised an eyebrow. “Really? I kinda doubt that.”
“Yeah, don’t tell me you traveled the world without sampling local flavors,” Jeff prompted.
Troy looked at his hands and thought about what he wanted to say. “There were… a few people,” he said finally, because there had been. Mainly to help him sort through feelings like No way, I like girls, I’ve always liked girls, and Maybe it’s just Abed, and It’s probably definitely not just Abed.
“That’s my man,” Jeff clapped him on the shoulder. “So which country has the hottest girls?”
“Ugh, don’t be gross, Jeff,” Britta elbowed him, thus saving Troy the trouble of trying to figure out how to answer without giving away that he didn’t really know about the girls. “So no one special?” she asked Troy instead.
He wanted to tell them. He did. He hadn’t sailed around the world to come back and start ignoring the epiphanies he’d had along the way. He wasn’t going to hide who he was, and definitely not from his friends. He was going to tell them, just not yet. He couldn’t tell them before telling Abed.
He opted for a partial truth.
“There is someone special, actually,” he said because there was no way he could deny that. “But, um. I’m not ready to talk about it yet, so.”
“Oh, okay,” said Britta, a little taken aback. Troy wasn’t looking at either of them, but he could almost physically feel them silently communicating something to each other.
Jeff cleared his throat. “On an unrelated note, I assume you’ve heard about Annie,” he said, his voice doing something weird on Annie’s name. Troy looked up at him.
“What about Annie?” he asked eagerly. Was he finally going to hear about one of Annie’s awesome secret adventures? He hoped it had something to do with an undercover mission.
“Her new, um, personal life developments?” said Britta .
“Oh, that,” Troy said, a little disappointed it wasn’t about an undercover mission after all. “Yeah, she told me a few months ago. She seemed really happy.”
She had also seemed incredibly nervous about telling Troy that she had a girlfriend. It had broken Troy’s heart a little bit, once he got what Annie was telling him, that he couldn’t come out with his own truth, tell her that he understood better than she thought. But like with Jeff and Britta, he just couldn’t, not before telling Abed. First of all, Abed was his best friend, he deserved to be the first to learn important things about Troy. And second of all, he just knew how it would go. Once he said he was gay, everyone would immediately start wondering about him and Abed. And he didn’t want that, he couldn’t deal with questions about the two of them before he knew how Abed felt. (He was pretty sure he knew it already, but he couldn’t help holding out some hope.)
“She and June are so cute together,” Britta gushed, which seemed a bit out of character for her. “We got to meet her a couple of months ago. And everyone’s really supportive, even Shirley. I mean, it took her a little while, but she came around eventually. I’ve of course been a proud LGBT+ ally since before it was mainstream.”
Jeff scoffed. “Yeah, we remember. I seem to recall your allyship mainly consisted of kissing straight girls, or am I getting that confused with the set-up of every other porn movie ever made?”
“Ha ha. Only you could think you could make a valid point by admitting to the gross, misogynistic, exploitative porn you watch.”
“Like you’ve never watched gay porn in your life.”
“There’s a huge difference between gay porn made for gay men and fake lesbian porn made for straight men, surely even you can see that?”
Troy watched them bicker for a moment.
“It’s good to see some things haven’t changed,” he smirked after a while. “Remember that time you spent the whole evening arguing which bar was better and then it turned out it was the same bar all along?”
Britta and Jeff looked at him with the same horrified expression, then at each other.
“Oh God,” Jeff groaned. “That was like five years ago!”
“Almost six.”
“Can you believe we haven’t evolved since then?” Britta asked. “We’re the worst.”
“Oh, come on,” Troy said, “you’re evolving a whole new person!”
“That makes it worse!” said Jeff . “Poor kid’s gonna be traumatized.”
“Nah,” Troy waved his hand. “You two are the best, actually, and your kid’s gonna be just fine. I bet every new parent feels the way you do. If I’ve learned anything on this trip, it’s that no one, anywhere in the world, knows what they’re doing unless they’ve done it a million times before. Everyone’s just… muddling through, faking it till they make it. You’ll mess up sometimes, that’s okay, everyone does. What matters is you try to do your best, and I know you two are gonna do that because you’re both stubborn as hell. You’re going to love this child no matter who they grow up to be, and that’s the most any child can ask for.”
Britta and Jeff stared at him.
“Wow, Troy,” Jeff said after a moment. “Look at you, all wise and mature. Maybe I’ll have to leave the inspirational speeches to you from now on.”
“Ha, no, thanks,” Troy said, his cheeks heating up. “And anyway, there isn’t really anyone left to give speeches to, is there? You two having a kid, and everyone else somewhere out there having careers…I feel like I came back to a different place,” he admitted.
“Aw, Troy, it’s not like that,” Britta said gently, patting his hand. “We’re all still friends, we stay in touch. And we hope everyone will come visit once the baby’s born, like a big reunion.”
Troy nodded, but the truth was it didn’t make him feel any better.
“What are your plans, anyway?” Jeff asked. “Now that you are a traveled man of means? I keep waiting for you to tell us where you’re going to build your mansion with a swimming pool full of gold coins.”
Troy scoffed. He knew very well that that could only work with cartoon coins; in real life you’d have to use bills to be able to swim in them, coins would be too heavy. He wasn’t going to rise to the bait and take the easy way out, though. Instead, he decided to answer the real question. “I’m going to visit Abed in LA. After that… I don’t know.”
“You’re not going to stay there?” Britta asked. She bit her lip when Troy looked at her. “I thought you’d want to be wherever Abed is.”
“I don’t know. I’d like that, but… I don’t know. To be honest, I’m not sure he wants to see me,” he said, finally voicing the worry that had been weighing him down for the last few months. They had kept in touch, of course. Skype, email, texts. But the open ocean wasn’t exactly the best place for internet connection and phone reception, so their contact had been more sporadic than Troy would have liked, and as time went on it had dwindled even more. Troy would never have guessed he could have trouble coming up with things to say to Abed, but with hundreds of miles between them and limited opportunities to get in touch, it had somehow become difficult to choose what was worth sharing, and Abed hadn’t been exactly overflowing with detail either. They used to know each other’s every thought, but now Troy knew next to nothing about Abed’s day to day life, and whether there was still room for him in it. When Troy texted to say he was coming, Abed replied with nothing but ‘cool’. A single ‘cool’ and nothing else, no indication that he was looking forward to seeing Troy after all this time, no plans for things they could do together, no invitation for Troy to stay at his place. Troy had booked a hotel.
“What?” said Britta. “Of course he wants to see you. He’s the last person on earth who wouldn’t want to see you.”
Troy shrugged again. “He didn’t seem all that excited when I told him I was coming. And I get it. He has a whole new life now, and I… I was gone for too long. I missed so much. New Star Wars came out and I could even go see it with him. Can you imagine how amazing it would be to watch Abed watch a brand new Star Wars movie for the first time?”
“I prefer not to,” Jeff muttered.
“I missed that! Someone else got to see that instead of me!” Abed had sent him a four-page email about the movie, but that just wasn’t the same.
“Troy…”
“Remember what you told me once?” he interrupted Britta. “That you have to let people go and if they don’t come back, they were never yours to begin with?”
“You thought it was stupid advice.”
“Yeah, but what if you let someone go, and they come back because they were yours to begin with, but you’re not there anymore? What then?”
Britta frowned in confusion. “Uh… sorry, what? Why are you not there anymore?”
“He means Abed. Abed’s not here anymore,” Jeff clarified, his gaze fixed on Troy. “But you understand that he had to keep living his life, don’t you?”
“I know!” Troy said hastily. “I know that, and I’m so proud of him for what he’s doing, I want him to have everything he wants, I just…” he trailed off, unable to find the words for what he was feeling.
“Listen to me,” Jeff said. “When you do this thing, let someone go, you do it with the full knowledge that they may never come back. You hope they will, and that hope kind of helps you keep going for a while, but after a while you have to let go of that too, otherwise it’s going to keep you stuck in place. You have to make your peace with the fact that they’re gone and move on. Abed had to do that. It doesn’t mean he stopped caring about you.”
“But it can mean that he’s got a new best friend now and doesn’t need me anymore.” The words felt cold and heavy in his mouth.
“Yes, it can mean that.”
“Jeff!” Britta jumped in, clearly appalled that he would say something like that to Troy.
“What? It’s true, Britta, it can mean that. People move on and get over people, that’s life. But frankly,” Jeff turned back to Troy, softening a little, “I don’t think you need to worry about that too much. You’re the most compatible pair of friends I’ve ever seen, I'm pretty sure that kind of thing only happens once in a lifetime. Just go see him, I’m sure you’ll be back to playing space detectives in dreamland in no time.”
“It’s called Dreamatorium, not ‘dreamland’,” Troy corrected him, a little offended by his ignorance, but man, he hadn’t thought about the Dreamatorium in so long. Did Abed have one in LA? Would he let Troy in if he did? Could they still have that? Could they, after all this time apart, still find the level of intimacy that made this sort of thing possible?
Troy didn’t know, but there wasn’t a lot he would be unwilling to do to make sure they could.
The next day, Jeff drove him to the airport.
“The thing you said yesterday, about letting go,” Troy said as they approached the terminal, “that was from experience, wasn’t it?” It hadn’t occurred to Troy in the moment, absorbed as he was in his own feelings, but later, as he went through Jeff’s words in his head, it had become rather obvious.
Jeff shot him a look, then focused on the road again.
“Maybe,” he said after a long moment. “We’re not talking about that.”
“Okay,” said Troy, shrugging one shoulder. If Jeff didn’t want to talk about it, he wouldn’t press. Because another thing he’d realized about the previous day’s conversation was that it probably hadn’t been a coincidence Jeff had brought up Annie’s sexual orientation and Britta had been so insistent about expressing her support, right after Troy had told them there was someone special in his life. But they hadn’t pressured him to talk about it. Troy figured he owed Jeff the same courtesy. “Thanks for telling me, though.”
Jeff drove in silence for a moment, then, as they pulled into a parking space, he said, “I never thought I’d say this, but I guess Pierce wasn’t completely insane to send you on that trip.”
“Hm?”
“You really did become a man, somewhere along the way.”
“I don’t know about that. I don’t feel any different. And I still don’t know what I want to do with my life.”
Jeff raised an eyebrow at him. “Don’t you? Really?” He didn’t wait for a reply, just squeezed Troy’s shoulder and unbuckled his seatbelt. “Come on, you don’t want to miss your flight.”
Troy climbed out of the car, picked up his back from the trunk and looked Jeff in the eye. Time to say goodbye again, and this time, even though he was going just a few states over and there were no millions at stake, the trip seemed much more momentous.
“Thanks for everything, Jeff. I can’t wait to meet Baby Winger.”
“Don’t let Britta hear you say that. I’ve been forced to agree it’s going to be Baby Perry. ‘Her uterus, her name’, apparently.”
Troy grinned. “That sounds fair.”
“Should’ve known you’d take her side,” Jeff huffed, then smiled and pulled Troy into a hug. “Take care, buddy. And say hi to Abed from all of us. It’s pretty boring here without him.”
“I can imagine.” Troy had traveled around the world and he had yet to find a place that wouldn’t be more fun with Abed in it.
They said their goodbyes and Troy made his way inside the terminal. He bought a Toblerone because that’s what you do at airports, and as he nibbled on it while waiting for his flight to begin boarding, he thought that Jeff was right. He did know what he wanted from his life, he had for years, only he had assumed that the answer wasn’t good enough.
He remembered that time when Vice-Dean Laybourne tried to make him choose between air-conditioning repair and plumbing, and all Troy had been able to tell him was that he wanted to watch TV with Abed because that was what made him happiest. And now, five years and a trip around the world later, that was still true. Only it wasn’t just about watching TV. He wanted to support Abed while he made TV. Just… be there for him and watch him be brilliant. Make him buttered noodles and stroke his hair when he got overwhelmed and tie his shoelaces for him and make sure he didn’t get lost in his head and have him explain confusing things to Troy. And yes, watch TV with him and listen to his opinions and reenact famous tropes. Why shouldn’t that be good enough?
He remembered thinking, before he left for his trip, that it was his chance to become his own person, that what he needed to achieve in his life was to become independent of Abed. But in hindsight, the only reason why he had felt that way was because he had been scared of the things Abed made him feel. He was no longer scared of that. He was his own person, and the person he was loved Abed.
The only thing worth being scared of now was that there was a chance Abed didn’t want to be friends anymore. That Troy had broken their friendship by leaving. (The thought made his stomach roll; he probably shouldn’t have chosen the largest Toblerone they had.) But if that was the case, he would fix it. He would do everything in his power to fix it. Surely he wasn’t the Truest Repairman for nothing.
Troy had never been to Los Angeles, but even so, as the plane lifted off the tarmac, he had that feeling he had missed when he first glimpsed American shores on the horizon, or when the truck pulling his boat entered the Greater Greendale Area.
He was finally going home.