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“Thanks, Britta,” is the first thing Clone Troy hears when he emerges from the regeneration pod. “We couldn’t have done this without you.”
He blinks his eyes open slowly, vision adjusting to the dim light of the basement. Britta and Clone Abed are standing just to the side of him, pulling back from a hug. Britta’s eyes are glistening, but she hastily wipes them before any tears can spill.
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize, Abed,” she says quietly. “About the lava being real. I wouldn’t have been so patronizing.”
Clone Abed tilts his head, looking at her consideringly.
“It’s okay,” he shrugs. “You were right. Original Abed was trying to avoid his feelings when they manifested in a really dramatic way. You know how his brain fucked with him sometimes.”
Britta looks uncertain, but nods. Then her gaze flickers over to him.
“Oh, hey!” Her expression brightens as she nudges Clone Abed to turn around. “Clone Troy’s awake.”
Clone Abed stares down at him for a moment with an indiscernible expression before his face lights up, too.
“Welcome back, buddy,” he reaches his hand down towards him and Clone Troy grasps it, allowing himself to be hauled up. “How do you feel?”
Clone Troy grins as he bats some of the dirt off his sleeves. “Great,” he says. “Ready to take on the seas.”
He realizes he actually means it; he feels much more ready than he did just a minute ago. Clone Troy must be a lot braver than Original Troy.
Clone Abed smiles faintly.
“Britta, do you mind giving us a minute?” Clone Abed says kind of abruptly, turning back to her. “I think we have stuff to talk about, clone to clone.”
Britta glances between the two of them and nods.
“Okay,” she breathes, her voice still thick with emotion as she takes a couple steps back. “Sure. The rest of us will be upstairs, whenever you’re ready.”
Clone Abed nods his thanks, and Clone Troy stands by him as they listen to her footsteps ascend.
As soon as they hear the basement door close, Clone Abed sighs heavily and drops his head into his hands, rubbing them over his face a few times before turning back to him. He looks tired all of a sudden.
“Okay,” he says, “We can drop the clone act.”
An uneasy feeling settles in the pit of Clone Troy’s stomach. He looks Clone Abed up and down, trying to piece together what’s going on.
“What act?” He asks. His voice sounds unsteady, even to his own ears. He takes a couple steps back, hoping some distance will make things clearer. “Troy and Abed are gone, remember?”
“Troy,” Clone Abed says.
The weird thing, though, is that he doesn’t sound like Clone Abed.
Clone Abed, according to his own system analysis, is ready to let Troy go. So that means his voice shouldn’t be cracking, his eyes shouldn’t be shining, and he shouldn’t look so desperate, but it is and they are and he does. “You’re the one person here that doesn’t treat me like a child. Please don’t stop now.”
For a moment, Clone Troy just stands there. He wants to make sense of this whole thing, he does, but it’s not coming together. He looks into Abed’s eyes— no, not Abed, he reminds himself harshly, Clone Abed. They’re still brimming with tears and it doesn’t make sense, because Clone Abed isn’t supposed to cry over him.
Clone Abed is supposed to be okay without him.
But he doesn’t look like he will be.
Clone Troy’s brain feels like it’s short-circuiting.
Something is wrong. Maybe Clone Abed was right, maybe Britta’s work was shoddy, maybe that’s why he suddenly feels weak and terrified like Original Troy did before. His face is hot, his skin is prickling uncomfortably, his eyes are swimming. He shakes his head and blinks hard, hoping to reset.
He doesn’t.
He’s in Clone Abed’s arms a moment later.
...No, not Clone Abed, he tells himself defeatedly.
Original Abed.
Real Abed.
Abed, who is very much alive, whose embrace is shaky and warm and tight, almost too tight, if that were possible. With Abed, though, he doesn’t think it is.
“I don’t want to drop the clone act,” he sobs into Abed’s chest. “I don’t want to leave you.”
Abed’s cheek presses against Troy’s temple and it feels damp, like his cheeks are covered in tears too, and that hurts him all over again.
“I know,” Abed whispers. “I don’t want you to leave.”
The obvious emotion and the raw vulnerability are so uncharacteristic. That’s Troy’s fault. Troy is doing this to him, he’s a terrible friend, and he hates himself.
“But you’re going to,” Abed continues, “And I need to tell you something before you do, and I have to say it, not Clone Abed, and I need Troy to hear it, not Clone Troy.”
Troy nods. “Okay,” he breathes.
“Okay,” Abed says weakly. His arms tighten around Troy again as he tucks his face into the side of his neck. “I love you.”
It takes a little bit for those words to sink in. For a moment they’re just bouncing numbly off the edges of his brain, but as he slowly starts to process them, what takes over his body isn’t shock or fear or panic.
No. What takes over his body is just:
...Oh.
It’s just all the feelings he’s had over the last 4 years making sense, it’s just everything clicking together in ways he couldn’t quite get it to before. It’s just all the different, formerly disjointed pieces sliding into place at once, and suddenly the picture of him and Abed is so much clearer. Just three words were the only little nudge he needed for it to come together.
And then the devastation hits him.
“Fuck, Abed,” he says brokenly, hands fisting into the back of his shirt and clinging to the soft, familiar flannel like his life depends on it. Letting go doesn’t feel like an option now. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Abed sighs. “I was afraid of losing you if you didn’t love me back,” he mumbles. “But now I’m losing you either way, and if I let you go without telling you, I think I’d hate myself forever.”
Troy frowns and pulls back.
“You’re not losing me,” he whispers. His eyes search Abed’s insistently, because he needs him to know that he means it. He is coming back. He was always going to come back, love confession or not. “I’m coming back, Abed.”
Abed blinks at him a couple times. “You are?”
Tears gather in Troy's eyes as he thinks about the implication of the question. “You thought I wasn’t.”
Abed glances away from him. “People usually don’t, in my experience.”
Troy steps forward again, tucking his chin over Abed’s shoulder. Abed’s arms slide around his waist again to hug him just as tight as before.
“I’m not like everyone else, though,” Troy says. “You always told me that.”
He feels Abed nod slightly.
“Yeah,” Abed agrees. “You’re not like everyone else, you’re better. That’s why you get to spin off. You’re better than Greendale, and you’re better than me. That’s the one thing Pierce was ever right about.”
Troy shakes his head in disbelief—slowly at first and then faster until he’s pulling back again, this time clutching the front of Abed’s shirt in his hands.
“Abed,” he breathes. His heart beats in his throat when he sees how Abed looks back at him like he’s the only thing in the world, like he’s all that matters. It’s almost too much, but Troy keeps looking. He has to. “Before we met, I sucked. I was a stuck-up, shallow jock who didn’t care about anyone but himself. I thought I didn’t owe the world a fucking thing. I thought I was gonna skate through the rest of my life on being popular in high school. I was clueless, okay? You changed that for me.”
Abed only tilts his head in response, so Troy keeps going. “You were the one who showed me that it’s not lame to care about stuff, or have feelings, or… or any of that other crap I spent my whole life running away from. You make me better, Abed.”
He can tell from the expression on Abed’s face that he’s racing to process everything Troy’s throwing his way. His eyes are apprehensive, forehead drawn in concentration, and Troy can either back off or he can take a leap of faith, and finally settle this for both of them.
He chooses the latter, arms draping around Abed’s shoulders as he moves in closer. Their noses brush, Abed’s breath ghosts shakily over his lips, and Troy is totally, one hundred percent sure that what he’s about to say is the absolute truth.
“I’m better because I love you, Abed.”
A second later, Abed’s mouth is on his, something akin to a whimper stifled in between them and Troy doesn’t know which one of them it comes from; he only knows that Abed’s kissing him and his heart is racing and he can hardly breathe, like he’s had the wind knocked out of him by the sweetest possible gut-punch, and all he feels where his chest is pressed to Abed’s is a searing-hot magnetic pull that he’s never felt before. The thought of moving away from that, of losing that feeling, is so soul-crushing that the next whimper definitely comes from him as he parts his lips and tips his head back for Abed to kiss him harder and deeper, which he immediately does.
Troy has never wanted so much in his life. Kissing Abed is everything he never knew he needed; it’s his whole world bursting into technicolor after living all his life in black and white, never knowing there was anything beyond varying shades of gray. It’s so bright and beautiful that he almost can’t stand it.
“Troy,” Abed whispers, and it’s only then that he realizes they’re not kissing anymore, that his shoulders are shaking and his cheeks are wet with tears and Abed’s lips are pressing lightly against his forehead. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to make you cry.”
Troy shakes his head a little bit.
“They’re not all bad, I don’t think,” he says as he steps back, sniffling and wiping his cheeks with the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “I think they’re mostly good, actually. I love you.”
Abed’s eyes glisten in the dim, red-orange lighting of the basement. He looks shaken, but still very much alive, still lucid and grounded enough to know that what’s happening between them right now is real. He pulls the sleeves of his flannel down over his wrists and nods.
“I love you, too,” he says.
Troy reaches for Abed’s hands, and Abed lets him take them.
“I don’t think I can leave,” Troy whispers. “I can’t, I love you, I can’t just leave now and—”
Abed’s lips cut him off, catching his own with a sort of quiet assertiveness as his hands delicately cup Troy’s face. Troy makes a soft noise of surprise and reaches his own hands up to cover Abed’s, tangling their fingers as much as he can without making him pull away. Abed’s forehead rests against his when the kiss breaks.
“You have to go,” he says. “As much as I’m terrified of living without you, you have to go. You’ll regret it if you don’t. Should I do the Casablanca speech?”
Troy laughs tearfully and shakes his head. “That’s okay. I know the gist.” He glances up into Abed’s eyes. “Besides, this isn’t an ending, right?”
Abed’s thumbs stroke over his cheekbones, where a couple more tears have landed. “I hope not,” he agrees. He pauses for a moment to think and Troy waits patiently.
“I’ll wait for you,” Abed says after some time. “Even though you’re spinning off, you’re still my endgame. You always will be.”
Troy’s chest already aches with longing, but he smiles anyway. Then it’s his turn to think.
“Can you promise me something?” He says, finally pulling Abed’s hands away from his cheeks so he can hold them properly. Abed nods as he watches him lace their fingers together in between them, then gives Troy a curious look.
“Don’t wait for me here,” Troy says, with as much confidence as he can muster. “Your future isn’t at Greendale. Go to New York or LA, do what you’ve always dreamed of doing. You deserve a spinoff, too.”
Abed blinks at him in surprise.
“But… when you come home—”
“I’ll be coming to you,” Troy finishes for him. “Wherever you are, that’s home for me.” He stands on his toes, pressing his lips to Abed’s forehead, nose, and cheek before landing a kiss square on the mouth. “You’re my endgame, too.”
Abed’s eyes flutter shut for a brief moment, and when they open again they’re full of fear and uncertainty and love and all the same stuff Troy’s feeling, too much at once, but it’s okay.
They’re okay. Or at least, they will be.
“I guess we should get you upstairs,” Abed says after another long stretch of quiet kisses and whispered devotions and I love you’s, so many I love you’s. “You have a spinoff to pilot.”
Troy nods and squeezes both of Abed’s hands. “You too,” he reminds him. “And when I come back…”
“We spin off together,” Abed finishes for him.
Troy smiles into one last kiss before Abed leads him over towards the stairs. Towards the finale of his current series, the start of his spinoff, the transitional interlude that's going to carry him out and away and then back again, to his home and his love and his endgame.
And he really, truly cannot wait.