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“The war brings out the worst in people. Worse yet, Troy's forces intercept an email written by Abed to his commanders, outlining Troy's weaknesses:
Troy will hold on until he is broken emotionally.
Fortunately, this will not be hard.He gets distracted by
loud noises
the color red
smooth jazz
shiny things
food smells
music boxes
bellbottoms
boobs
barking dogs
and anyone saying, ‘Look over there!’He's insecure about his level of intelligence.
His greatest vulnerability of all is his emotional frailty.
It's incredibly easy to make him cry, and he's incredibly ashamed of that fact.-- Abed Nadir”
“Hey, dick. Read your dumb e-mail. Really enjoyed it.
Guess what? You may have been my best friend, but we both know I was your first friend.
And what I know but you don't know because you have mental issues is that you're never going to have another friend.
Because NOBODY ELSE WILL EVER HAVE MY PATIENCE WITH YOU!
Troy Barnes. Four-part text message.”
Abed appreciates Jeff’s scheme with the Magical Friendship Hats, and the fact that it gives them an out, a reason to stop with the pillows. He embraces the solution, and so does Troy, and when it’s all over they go home, and Troy goes into the blanket fort and Abed goes into the Dreamatorium, and they don’t talk about it, they don’t talk about anything. The silence surrounds Abed like a chill, the kind that settles deep into your bones and doesn’t go away for a long, long time.
He tries to run simulations, to figure out what went wrong and how to make it better. There are scenarios where the dean doesn't care about world records, and scenarios where they decide to do something else instead of building a fort, and scenarios where he isn't so stubborn. But he keeps coming back to the same one, and it’s the one that feels like a gut punch, the one where he never sent that email, and Troy never sent that text. He can’t stop running it over and over and over, because he just wants it to be real, he wants to make it real and he can’t.
He falls asleep in the Dreamatorium and when he wakes up just a couple of hours later he is still freezing.
Troy sits down on his bed and shoves a pair of headphones over his ears. He doesn’t pay attention to what he’s listening to, just turns the volume up louder, louder, louder, trying to drown out his thoughts, but fragments keep worming their way into his brain, uninvited phrases like emotional frailty and easy to make him cry and, worst of all, NOBODY ELSE WILL EVER HAVE MY PATIENCE WITH YOU.
He stays like that for hours, until the music stops because the battery is dead. He briefly falls asleep and when he wakes up he feels like he’s on fire, like maybe this is hell.
Abed hears a thump in the living room and goes out to investigate, hoping they aren’t being robbed, because he doesn’t have energy to figure out what to do about it. It’s Troy, though, and he’s rubbing his leg where he banged it on the table in the dark.
“Don’t wake Annie up,” Abed whispers.
“I didn’t mean to make noise,” Troy shoots back.
Abed intends to go back to the Dreamatorium, to close the door and maybe stay there forever, but he finds himself sitting down at the table instead. He folds his hands in his lap, and they’re so cold. Troy looks at him, then away toward the blanket fort, pauses, and with a huff he pulls out a chair and sits down across from Abed, clearly putting a lot of effort into not looking at him.
Abed is silent, waiting, but he’s not sure what he’s waiting for.
After five or ten minutes Troy can’t take it anymore.
“What?” he whispers angrily, and he’s so hot, he wonders for a second if he has a fever. “Why are we sitting here? What is this?”
“I don’t know,” Abed replies, and his voice is quiet and shaky, and that surprises Troy. Abed doesn’t often betray emotion with his voice, and also he figured Abed was still pissed at him, but he sounds kind of...afraid? Sad?
“Look, we did the thing with the hats, it’s over, let’s just forget it ever happened,” Troy says dully.
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Abed replies. “Don’t...don’t you kind of feel like you’re dying?”
“Yeah,” Troy says, eyes wide. “You feel that too?”
Abed nods.
“We have to talk about it,” he says with a sigh.
Abed has his elbows resting on the table, his arms crossed, trying to stay warm. A blanket won’t help; he knows the chill is inside him, and he thinks this is the only way to get rid of it.
“You weren’t supposed to see that email,” he says, and cringes, because that’s not what he wanted to say, that’s just going to make it worse.
“Abed--”
“Wait. I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant to say. What I mean is... you, Troy, weren’t supposed to see that email, because my character wrote it about your character in the context of the battle.”
“I don’t care if you were playing a character, Abed, that doesn’t make it okay. You still said those things. To other people. About me.”
“I know. I got carried away, and I didn’t think of the consequences. I...I didn’t think of you.” Abed rubs his hands together, as if that will warm him up.
“But it’s done, and you can’t take it back now,” Troy cries. “You really think those things about me!”
“Most of those are observations. You think those things about you, too, don’t you? Is any of the stuff I said untrue?” Abed can’t tell if he’s being mean or not, but he figures things probably can’t get too much worse than they already are.
“No, Abed, but that doesn’t mean you get to say it.”
“But friends don’t lie.”
“Right, but…you hurt me.” Troy’s voice is small and sad and Abed’s chill gets deeper.
“I was trying to hurt you,” he tries to explain.
“Abed--”
“I think sometimes we don’t talk about the things that bother us, and it’s as bad as lying, and it makes us try to hurt each other when we don't really want to, and we should stop doing that,” he bursts out, so quickly the words almost run together, and he has to catch his breath afterwards.
Troy stares at Abed for a minute, his brain on fire as he remembers arguments avoided and truths bitten back, and, shit, Abed is right, and this is about so much more than just today, and it shouldn’t have taken this long for them to figure it out.
“Okay,” Troy says, and sighs. “Yeah. You’re right.”
“Also, I’m sorry. Really sorry.” Abed’s eyes are big and glassy.
“I accept your apology. And I’m sorry about the text message. I was trying to hurt you, too.”
Abed just shrugs.
“That’s it?” Troy asks, baffled. “Don’t you want to talk about it?”
“What is there to talk about? It’s not something I like to think about, but it is what it is.” Abed suddenly sounds uncomfortable and defeated.
“What is what what is?”
“I probably won’t have another friend, and probably no one ever will have your patience with me. That’s not a big reveal or anything. It’s just something I try not to think about too much.”
“Abed... fuck. No. Abed--” Troy is panicking now, it feels like flames are licking at his skin, and he can’t believe it never crossed his mind that Abed would be so insecure about this. This is so much worse than he thought.
“It’s fine, Troy. Can we just forget about it now?” Abed is starting to rock back and forth a little bit and Troy has to stop himself from going over to him, steadying him.
“No, Abed, we can’t. Because you’re wrong. I was wrong. Those things aren’t true, they’re just me being spiteful.” He looks at Abed, makes eye contact. “Were you trying to help people understand me as a person when you wrote that email? Or were you trying to break me?”
“Break you.” He says it matter-of-factly.
“That’s what I was trying to do with the text, Abed. I didn’t--” Troy sighs. “I don’t think you have mental issues. I don’t think I’m your only friend. I definitely don’t think I’m the only one with enough patience for you.”
“Okay,” Abed says, and he sounds uncertain.
“Do you believe me?” Troy asks, and he’s pleading.
“I’ll try to,” Abed says, looking down at his hands. “Friends don’t lie?”
“Friends don’t lie,” Troy agrees.
Abed looks up and Troy gives him a hint of a smile, and Abed feels wobbly and watery, like he might spill over. He stands up and takes a step towards Troy, and before he knows it Troy is on his feet and has gathered him into a hug, squeezing tight, putting him back together, and just like that the chill is gone.
The second Troy hugs Abed the fire disappears, and he breathes a sigh of relief. He holds Abed tightly and doesn’t let go until he hears a door open and looks up to see Annie, her pajamas rumpled and hair sticking up in all directions, but alert as though she’s been awake for a while, as though maybe she’s actually been awake this whole time.
“I’m so glad you guys made up,” she says. “But can we please go to sleep now?”