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Jeff isn’t nearly as ashamed as he should be that the first thing he does, when they get home from the RV road trip fiasco, is down a shot of whiskey in one swallow.
It was supposed to be just a few hours. Drive up together, deliver the giant hand to whatever weirdo had agreed to buy it off them, turn around and head back right away. He’d be home by mid-afternoon and it’d all be fine.
But then the gas runs out, and the secondary battery is drained, and the fucking Armed Forces Day parade ties up all the tow trucks from here to Denver. And Jeff’s headache has already started by the time they’re an hour and a half up the road, but by then it’s pounding so hard he can barely see straight. It’s half stress and half something else—the crash that comes after too long sober, like a hangover but worse. It’s not his body feeling like shit after too hard a night. It’s his body needing a drink, craving it. A hangover is something he can sleep or grumble his way through.
This is so much worse.
He can feel himself getting progressively more irritable the longer he’s trapped in the RV with the study group. It’s a bone-deep emotional reaction, one that he doesn’t feel like he can control. Frustration turns to annoyance, and then to anger—until the Dean locks himself in the RV and Abed is spiraling into some nonsense about flashbacks, and Jeff can’t take it anymore. He slaps Abed; it shuts him up, and in the moment the relief of that is enough.
It’s not until they’re back in the van that the wave of all-consuming guilt floods through him.
The tow truck finally arrives and ferries them to the nearest gas station, where they can fuel up. Jeff tries to convince them to get dinner from the bar and grille across the expressway, but it’s getting late and no one else is in the mood for a sit-down dinner, so instead they pull into a fast food drive-thru for cheap burgers and milkshakes. No one is surprised when Jeff barely orders anything; they assume he’s too diet-obsessed to eat something so greasy and unhealthy.
And they’re not wrong—but right now, Jeff is more concerned with the fact that he isn’t sure he’d be able to keep anything down. He’d chosen the other restaurant because it was the only place he’d be able to get a drink. His head is pounding, and his stomach feels awful. The smell of everyone’s meals is making his head spin. The only reason he doesn’t let himself disappear into the cramped RV bathroom and vomit is because he knows the walls are flimsy even there; he doesn’t want the rest of them to hear him throwing up, to know that he’s ill, even if he could maybe play it off as travel sickness or something else.
The one advantage to choosing the fast-food option is that it gets them back on the road quicker; they’re headed south towards Greendale in the space of ten minutes. He doesn’t use his phone on the way home, and he thinks that probably is conspicuous, but his hands are shaking so hard that he knows it would draw more attention than him not using the phone. So he curls himself into a seat and shoves his hands between his knees and wills all of this to just stop, hopes that if he closes his eyes and blocks everything else out, when he opens them they’ll be home.
And in a way, they are. The motion of the bus is sickening at first, but eventually he turns off his brain and he thinks he might have drifted off for a little while. All of a sudden the bus slows to a final stop and the voices of his friends rise in intensity, and he realizes: they’re done. The shitshow is finally over. He blinks his eyes open, dreading the moment he has to interact with everyone again. They’re already starting to turn to him—but then Abed steps in, begins ushering everyone out, and they’re all so wired and exhausted that they just follow his cues and shuffle away. Jeff feels relief rush through him; it gives him a chance to slowly pull himself upright, take several breaths against the pain and nausea coursing through him, and get himself together before he has to step off the bus.
He makes his way to his car and drives the few miles home in a blur. Every process—parking, unlocking his door—happens on autopilot. He feels like he doesn’t fully sense anything until he’s standing in his kitchen, an empty shot glass in his hand and burning liquid coating his throat.
And then there’s a knock on his door.
He thinks he’s imagined it at first. Maybe he misheard a noise out in the hall that was closer than expected, or maybe his brain is just that checked out. Maybe the pounding in his own head manifested itself in a sound that he convinced himself he heard for real.
But then it happens again. Five gentle knocks, and a familiar voice. “Jeff?”
Abed.
There’s a moment of intense silence, a dual stalemate. Jeff’s feet feel leaden; he fervently doesn’t want to answer the door. Abed doesn’t knock again, but Jeff doesn’t believe for a second that he’s left. When he can stand it no longer, he sets down the shot glass with shaking fingers, and takes the fifteen steps from the kitchen counter to the doorway.
Abed looks up at the sound of the door opening. He’s got his messenger bag slung diagonally over his shoulders, and his eyes look tired. “Did you follow me home?” Jeff asks.
Abed stares intensely at him. “It seemed like the right thing to do,” he answers after a moment. Jeff shifts to the side slightly; it’s not meant as an invitation to come in, but Abed interprets it as one, taking a series of rapid steps into the entryway, and Jeff doesn’t have the fortitude to stop him. “We had a lot of unresolved tension back there. And I was worried about you.”
Jeff closes the door in defeat, since Abed’s clearly not going anywhere. “You didn’t have to worry,” he sighs. “I’m just gonna go to bed. It’s been a long day, and I’m stressed the fuck out. Sorry you came all the way over here just for that.”
Just then, Abed’s phone vibrates with a text. “Annie wants to know if you ate dinner yet,” he states offhandedly. “She wrote ‘don’t let him go to bed on an empty stomach.’”
Jeff squeezes his eyes shut and rubs a hand over his face. Of course Abed didn’t try to hide where he was going. “I’m really not hungry,” he says, but because Abed is looking at him, he reaches into the pantry cupboard for some trail mix, picks out a small handful and eats it a few pieces at a time.
Abed pokes at his phone for a few seconds longer, not looking at Jeff. Jeff feels himself getting more and more aggravated with each second that passes in silence. He goes to sit on the couch, hoping that the movement will quell his restlessness. Now that his nervous system is settling, he realizes he is actually hungry, but that’s not something he wants to deal with right now. It won’t be the first time he’s gone to bed without a meal; right now, he feels so miserable that the prospect of satiating his appetite is more of a burden than the physiological sensation of hunger itself.
“Abed,” he says. “What are you really doing here?”
Abed freezes; then, slowly, he looks up. “You know how sometimes I have issues because my senses are too strong?” he says. His tone is abrupt, but there’s a sensitivity in his expression. “Today was okay, but I was worried because riding buses can be rough for me. I get nervous in enclosed spaces, and I get motion sickness sometimes, and the smell of the gasoline makes me want to gag.”
Jeff grits his teeth. “Where are you going with this, Abed,” he bites out.
“You don’t have sensory issues like I do,” Abed observes bluntly. “And you’re not sick. Or you weren’t earlier today. But you looked like I feel when all the smells and movements around me are too overwhelming. Which means something is wrong, and I’m just wondering why you don’t want me to know what it is.”
“And if I tell you to leave it alone?”
“Then I will,” Abed agrees easily. “Even though I don’t think I should.”
Jeff sighs, and steels himself, and opens his mouth to say the words—but nothing comes out. His head is swimming even though the discomfort has faded to a dull ache, and he feels stretched too thin, edgy and worn out, like there’s a brick wall between him and this conversation. He wants to be alone, wants Abed to leave and stop asking about this so he can pass out. And yet… And yet, he doesn’t want Abed to leave. He feels like he’ll fall apart if Abed does that, if he leaves him alone with this.
“Jeff?” Abed asks carefully. He comes to sit down next to Jeff, not touching him, but close enough to reach out. His voice is quiet, tentative.
“I was sick,” Jeff manages to say, “because I hadn’t had a drink. Because I needed a drink.” He feels vaguely sick now, more from the anxiety of this situation than anything else. “I know how that makes me sound, like I’m an al—” The word won’t leave his mouth; he chokes on it, presses his hand to his mouth and another to his eyes, buries his face away against the shame of it. Tears are springing to his eyes; he desperately doesn’t want Abed to see them.
His breath is shuddering so hard he almost doesn’t hear Abed’s voice. “Can I touch you?” the other man asks quietly. Jeff doesn’t quite manage to bite back a sob. He hides his head in his hands further and barely manages a nod. He’s half-expecting Abed to hug him, but instead, after a moment Abed’s left hand scratches light lines with his fingertips up and down his back. It’s such a soothing gesture, this barely-there sensation. Jeff feels himself shiver; a few tears leak out onto his cheeks and he makes an embarrassing whining sound that he immediately regrets.
“It’s okay,” Abed’s voice says quietly. Jeff can’t see Abed with his eyes covered, but he can imagine him there: still, stoic, his face impassive but his eyes soft. Jeff feels pretty far from okay at the moment, but he knows that’s not what Abed is saying. He’s telling Jeff it’s okay to break down, to make the noises he’s making and have the reactions he’s having. Abed doesn’t mind.
“It’s not,” Jeff says in a shaking voice. “I’m not.” The minute he says the words, they feel more real, and panic courses through his veins like fire.
Abed’s hand shifts so now it’s his palm rubbing up and down his back in slow, sure strokes. Jeff knows he’s trembling, knows that Abed must be able to feel it in the quiver of his muscles. The taste of the whiskey is sickening in his mouth; it tastes like guilt, all of a sudden.
“You were going through withdrawal.” Abed says the words Jeff can’t bring himself to say. “It’s okay, Jeff.”
Jeff doesn’t know how to tell Abed all the ways he disagrees with that statement. He feels split open and vulnerable in a way that is deeply uncomfortable, and ashamed of his weakness, angry at himself and at the way that this—his primary coping mechanism for so long, no matter how unhealthy—has backfired on him. Betrayed him.
“It’s stupid,” he blurts out instead, heedless of how those words cut through him. “I’m a grown man, Abed. I’m over forty. I should have better control over myself than this. I shouldn’t have let it get this bad.”
“Hey,” Abed says, and that does stop Jeff from his guilt spiral, because there’s an edge to Abed’s voice that he doesn’t often hear. He sounds distressed.
Jeff blinks at him. “Abed?”
“I don’t like the way you’re talking about yourself,” Abed says. “I don’t—like when people talk about themselves like that.” For about a minute, a tense silence falls over them. Jeff feels like he should apologize, but somehow he thinks that would make matters worse. Abed’s voice is a little more controlled when he speaks again, and he chooses his words deliberately. “You have a problem, Jeff. But not because you let it happen. That’s not how this works. And making yourself feel like a bad person about it won’t make it any better.”
“That’s easy to say from your end,” Jeff argues, but Abed doesn’t give any ground.
“It’s not.” The statement is sympathetic but firm. “I know how hard it is to stop thinking these things. That doesn’t mean they’re true.” He grimaces; on his face it’s a small variation in expression, but Jeff recognizes it. “You think I’ve never spent any time feeling like I was doing something wrong as a person, because I couldn’t stop being what I was?”
It isn’t meant to wound Jeff, but the truth of it cuts through him all the same, leaving a sting of remorse behind. “Fuck, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Abed says automatically. “So you’ve got this problem. What do you think will help?”
“Besides more alcohol?” Jeff says, so aware of how defeated his voice sounds.
Abed winces. “Let’s call that a last resort.”
Jeff breathes out tightly. “My body doesn’t feel right,” he tells Abed after a second. “Not sick, not exactly, just—”
“Wrong,” Abed finishes. “Maybe I understand more than you think.” He looks around the room quickly. “The best thing to help is a weighted blanket, but I’m guessing you don’t have one of those.” Jeff shakes his head, and Abed reaches over to grab Jeff’s one cozy blanket from where he’s thrown it off himself onto the floor. He nudges Jeff forward a little and wraps it around his shoulders, then pulls it tight—tighter than Jeff would ordinarily wrap it. The constriction is a strange sensation, but not a bad one. He thinks it’s probably similar to what a swaddled baby feels like, hemmed in tight on all sides.
The tremors are starting in his hands again, just enough to be noticeable to someone sitting as close as Abed is. Jeff desperately wants to sit on his hands, or sandwich them between his knees, or to be wearing a longer sweatshirt so he can ball his fists up in the sleeves—anything to hide his hands so no one can see this shameful sign of his weakness. He flattens his palm to the couch cushion, hoping that will be enough to stop it. But it isn’t; he can feel his muscles jolting as his fingers refuse to keep still.
Abed doesn’t ask for permission this time, doesn’t give Jeff a chance to refuse. He grabs Jeff’s hand suddenly off the couch between them and presses it between both of his own palms. It stills the trembling, at least for a moment. Jeff sighs in utter relief. They stay that way for what feels like a long time. Then Abed half-whispers, “I’m going to get you some water, is that okay?” and Jeff nods, swallowing and realizing now that his breaths have evened out, his throat is absolutely parched.
Abed stays in the kitchen for longer than necessary. Jeff can tell from his profile that he’s doing something on his phone again, and a rush of fear floods through him that he might be texting somebody, telling somebody about the state he’s in. But when he brings in the water Jeff catches a glimpse of the screen before it darkens, and he sees the how to treat alcohol withdrawal search bar in Abed’s history. For a brief moment, Jeff feels tears rush to his eyes and just barely manages to blink them away.
He takes the water and sips it, and as his panic eases, so too does the shaking in his hands. Abed, usually eager to fill any silence with overly analytical monologue, sits beside him silently. His body is angled toward Jeff, but he’s deliberately looking off to the side of him, not scrutinizing him directly. Jeff can feel all his muscles starting to ache, from exhaustion and tension and the way his body is still reeling from his withdrawal symptoms.
“I think I need to go to bed,” he says. He can feel the edge of panic creeping up on him again, mingled with the absolute fatigue weighing him down, and he palpably does not want to be awake anymore. It’s making him feel clammy and hypersensitive. He wants a shower badly, but doesn’t think he has the energy to even sit down under the spray.
Abed nods, and takes a step away, letting Jeff stand up on his unsteady legs unassisted. Jeff wonders if he’s going to take this opportunity to make his excuses and leave, now that Jeff has hinted that he’s going to bed. But Abed doesn’t seem the least bit inclined to go. He puts Jeff’s empty water glass in the sink, then trails behind him through the doorway into the bedroom.
Once there, Jeff flops down on his bed face-first without any preamble. He stares at the headboard, drained, and listens to Abed moving around nearby. Finally the mattress dips next to him, and he hears the soft sound of Abed’s head hitting the other pillow. Abed sighs quietly. Then there’s silence, both of them lost in their own worlds.
“I’m sorry,” Jeff says into his pillow, suddenly overcome with remorse.
Abed turns his head to face him. “What for?”
Jeff blinks at him, stunned, for a moment. “Um, because I spent all day being a dick?” he stammers. “Literally, I went out of my way to be the biggest asshole I could be. I was a real jerk today. And I’m sorry, because I was really mean to you. You didn’t deserve it.”
“I know,” Abed says. “Both of those things. I know you were being mean, and I know I didn’t deserve it.” He shrugs. “A lot of people aren’t very nice to me, for a lot of reasons. At least with you I know it’s not really that personal. You’re wrong, Jeff; you weren’t just being an asshole for no reason. You were feeling awful, and it made you upset. We all do bad things when we’re upset.”
“So, what? You’re not mad at me?”
“Do you want me to be mad at you?” Abed asks it like it’s a completely neutral question. Jeff sputters a little, not sure how to answer, and then just looks at Abed helplessly and hopes he understands. Abed seems to. “I’m not happy about it,” he tells Jeff. “But I forgive you. And if you get some help, it’ll make it not hurt as much for me.”
“Why will it hurt less for you if I—”
“Because I won’t have to watch you feeling miserable all the time,” Abed answers his question before he can finish it. “And because you’ll be less likely to make the same mistake again if you get help for it now.”
That stops Jeff in his tracks. Abed is usually right about most things, but Jeff can see with startling clarity that he is very right about this. Left to his own devices, Jeff will keep using alcohol as a comfort and a reinforcement and a basic necessity to get through his day. He’ll try and fail over and over to give it up, never making it much further than he has now. And because of it, he’ll lash out again—to punish himself for his own perceived sense of weakness, and to push away anyone who tries to help him (or who even mildly annoys him, on a bad day).
He could lose Abed’s friendship, if he does that.
“I don’t know if I can,” Jeff admits. He’s been doing this—all of it, all his self-destructive habits—for so long that he has no idea how he could possibly give them up. His entire mechanism for coping with life could come crashing down if he removes those pieces.
Abed nods. “I think that’s okay,” he says. “As long as you start. As long as you try.”
He makes it sound so simple. And Jeff wants it to be simple, so badly he can’t stand it. He doesn’t want this to be laced with so much danger: the risk of losing his ability to deal with his life if he quits drinking, the risk of losing the only other things that make it worth living if he doesn’t. He’s too small of a person to be responsible for all this, but everything rides on it, and he doesn’t know what to do with that.
“But what if I fail?” he says, his voice raw.
Abed looks at him for a long time without answering. And when he finally does, it’s not the response Jeff is expecting. He tugs at the edge of the duvet cover and says, “Can you—I mean, can we get in?” Jeff blinks at him, perplexed, for a second, and then shrugs and lifts his body so Abed can pull the covers down. Abed waits for him to shimmy under them, then tucks them in around his body; after a moment, he walks over to the closet and comes back with another heavy blanket, drapes it overtop of the bedding, and tucks it in tight around Jeff. “It’s sort of what a weighted blanket does. What I used to do before I had one,” Abed says by way of explanation. Sure enough, once the solid pressure of the blankets is on top of him, Jeff can feel his nerves start to ease, grounding seeping back into his body.
Abed gets under the covers too, snuggles in like he’s chilly (and maybe he is—Jeff keeps the apartment pretty cool year-round, and it’s already a cold night, although less so once they’re not freezing in the back of a defunct RV). “I can’t tell you what to do,” Abed says finally. “But probability-wise, I think it’s more likely that you’ll try and succeed than it is that you’ll do nothing and eventually it’ll go away.”
To his own surprise, a laugh stumbles its way out of Jeff’s mouth. “Damn,” he says, the relief of this truth settling over him like a blanket. “I want to argue with that, but I actually can’t.” The optimism emboldens him, and he agrees, “Okay. I’ll take that chance.”
“Good,” Abed says, very quietly. He looks drained, eyes drooping half-closed, but a look of relief crosses his face as well that makes Jeff’s heart ache. If he’d ever doubted that Abed cared about whether he got better or not—and he rarely doubts the sincerity of Abed’s emotional reactions—that expression would have shown him the truth.
“Hey, you can stay the night if you want,” Jeff offers, since that’s where the evening seems to be leading anyway. He isn’t sure how he’ll feel between now and the morning, and the prospect of being observed while he’s suffering through withdrawal symptoms makes him squirm with discomfort. But Abed doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere, and Jeff is suddenly aware of how uncomfortable it must be for him, lying in bed in his stiff jeans. “There’s sweatpants in the middle drawer if you want something to sleep in.”
“A sleepover,” Abed says, his eyes shining with renewed interest. “Cool cool cool.”
Jeff lets himself drift while Abed shuffles around, presumably shedding his clothes and putting on more comfortable things. When he returns to bed he’s got Jeff’s too-big sweatpants slung loose on his narrow hips, the same t-shirt still on but the flannel off. Jeff hands him a sweatshirt from near the bed, and Abed shrugs it on, fingers curling in the edges of the sleeves. Then he gets into bed, and Jeff closes his eyes and lies there, listening to the sound of another person breathing next to him for the first time in a long while.
He’s just starting to fall asleep when a thought occurs to him. “Hey, Abed?”
Abed mumbles slightly, and then sleepily murmurs, “Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
Abed is quiet for a long while. “I don’t know,” he admits finally. “I think I lost touch with reality for a while there. It was…” He clears his throat. “I don’t know what it was.”
Jeff reaches over and wraps his hand around Abed’s bicep—his arms are narrow, thin, but beneath Jeff’s fingers his muscles are strong. He tugs Abed closer until they’re almost flush against each other, then gathers him in tight and buries his face in the join of Abed’s neck and shoulder. Abed’s breath shudders out of him; his hands come to the small of Jeff’s back, returning the embrace. “You’re safe now,” Jeff mumbles, his brain foggy but his heart meaning every word. “You’re home. You’re gonna be okay.”
“It’s not the first time.” Abed’s voice is weak. “Christmas that one year. The lava the night Troy left. Sometimes I…I forget what’s real.”
“I’m not sure you do,” Jeff replies. Abed makes a sound of protest, but Jeff plows on before he can continue. “The stop motion, the lava, the flashbacks—they don’t really exist, but they come from real things that you feel. Don’t they? So the important parts inside of you are all still there. Your mind just comes up with stuff that makes it easier to deal with what you’re feeling.”
Abed falls silent again. “That’s the nicest way anyone has ever talked about that to me,” he says after a while. His tone is slightly awed, like he’s never considered it this way before.
On impulse, Jeff strokes a hand through Abed’s hair. “Who’s got some internalized stigma now?” he says with a teasing edge, and smiles despite himself when Abed mutters shut up into his shoulder, entirely without bite.
“Why were you so obsessed with flashing back to three weeks ago?” Jeff asks. He doesn’t know if it’s productive to interrogate Abed’s semi-delusion like this, but he can’t deny that he’s curious about why this specific aspect took on such importance.
Abed squirms a little, but he doesn’t seem to be trying to get away, so Jeff keeps holding him. His face ends up smushed further into Jeff’s solid chest, so he has to angle his head to the side to respond.
“Narrative consistency, mostly,” Abed says. “But also…I don’t like conflict. I don’t like when situations are unpredictable and so many things could go wrong. So I tried to go back to the moment all of this could have been prevented. The last moment this whole situation made sense.” He frowns. “I got wrapped up in the gimmick. It got too important to me. That’s why it helped when Frankie played along.”
Jeff quietly realizes this was, in some way, what Troy did for Abed too: provided structure and focus for his make-believe fantasies, integrating them into the world he inhabited rather than merely giving him a reason to escape. “Well, I’m glad Space Elder Abed could come back and save us,” he murmurs fondly. “Or regular Abed, really.”
“It was a bad choice,” Abed mumbles back. He looks halfway asleep, but also tense, pressing his fingers into the palm of his hand like he’s trying to ground himself. “Not the saving-the-day part, the time jumping. I got myself mixed up. Like I still don’t know what timeline I’m in right now.”
Jeff presses his palms a little harder into Abed’s frame, remembering what he’d said about it helping to anchor him. “What if we just try to go to sleep now?” he asks gently. “Then in the morning we can see…if things feel more real. More like they’re supposed to. For both of us.”
Abed whines a little in the back of his throat, mutters something incoherent and anxious, but his body relaxes at the same time. Jeff holds him close, hoping that he doesn’t smell too gross. He still feels sick and uncomfortable, but exhaustion is quickly overtaking those symptoms and washing them out with the white noise of fatigue. After a few minutes, he realizes Abed hasn’t moved around in a while; his eyes crack open just enough to confirm that the other man is asleep. It’s the last thing Jeff’s mind registers before he passes out too.
_________________________________________
Jeff wakes up at 4:00 in the morning with a start, somehow regaining consciousness both sluggishly and suddenly at once. His brain feels scrambled, and there’s a vaguely sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. It’s the kind of generalized unwellness that presages misery later, and he has just geared up to get lost in that feeling when he notices something else:
Abed is sleeping pressed up against him, his head nestled against Jeff’s chest. Jeff’s hand is curled around the back of his head, like he’s holding Abed there. Abed’s soft breaths drift across the solid plane of his front; he doesn’t stir at all even when Jeff shifts to distribute his weight more comfortably, clearly knocked out with exhaustion. He looks so peaceful it’s almost painful.
Jeff stares and stares at him. He feels like he’s been knocked sideways. It’s not often he gets to just let himself look at Abed like this—but the emotion he gets while doing it is the same as it always is, a strange tug of longing deep in his chest. He strokes his thumb against the soft, thin hairs at the edge of Abed’s scalp.
And then Abed stirs. His eyes blink half open. He’s sleep-slow and disoriented, but after a few seconds his vision clears. Jeff gets to watch him react to the realization of being in a strange bed: he wiggles around a little, seemingly cataloguing the feel of the sheets on his skin, the sounds of the room, the way the light from the hallway lamp they forgot to turn off spills in through the open door. Finally his gaze focuses fully on Jeff. They’re lying so close, but Abed doesn’t move away in the slightest. He holds eye contact with Jeff—a rarity in and of itself—and the moment instantly feels charged with electricity, flickering through them like a shared static shock. Jeff is suddenly, profoundly aware of the way he’s holding Abed. How natural it feels to hold him like this. How much he wants, desperately, to increase the contact and do more.
“Abed,” he whispers, “can I kiss y—”
Abed’s lips are on his before he can even finish the sentence.
They pull apart a moment later, and Abed—blinking rapidly, his expression overwhelmed—says, “I was afraid if I didn’t kiss you right away, you’d have second thoughts. And I’ve been wanting to do that for—” He exhales heavily. “—For a long time.”
Jeff threads fingers through Abed’s hair again. After last night, feeling how soft it is, he’s slightly addicted to having his hands in it. “How long?”
“How long have I had feelings for you, or how long have I wanted to kiss you?” Jeff just stares at him, helpless, his expression saying both and is there a difference. “I think I liked you from the beginning, but it took me a long time to figure out it was different from liking you as a friend. I don’t usually have strong feelings for people, so I’m not experienced at telling the difference. And my friendship with Troy was pretty intense.”
“And the kissing?”
Abed hesitates, then admits, “I think it was when you were in the hospital last year.” Jeff visibly winces, and Abed looks apologetic.
“You got a thing for older men in distress, huh?” Jeff says, unable to resist the impulse to be self-deprecating.
He’s rewarded by Abed’s hand coming up to cover his mouth, and a scowl settling onto his face. He gets the sense Abed isn’t actually angry at him, but the frown is serious, disapproving. “Don’t cheapen this with your Winger self-pity,” Abed gently reprimands. When Jeff smiles and strokes reassuring fingers across the skin of his wrist, he removes the hand from his mouth again. “We’re more alike than people think,” Abed continues then. “But in the hospital that night, you told me about the dream you were having. The adventure where we were all action figure characters.” Jeff nods slowly; he remembers, still gets strange impressionistic flashes of it sometimes, dulled by time and alertness but oddly familiar. “I don’t think I’d ever realized how much you were like me until then. I understood your feelings more when you told me about that dream than I did when you explained to everyone why you were in the hospital.”
Jeff caresses the tuft of hair above Abed’s ear with his thumb. “I was scared that night,” he admits. “I didn’t want to be old, and I didn’t want to be crazy, and I didn’t—” he almost can’t say the last one, but makes himself finish, “I didn’t want to be alone.”
Abed looks at him seriously. “You weren’t,” he says, and Jeff can tell he means it. He gathers Abed in, lips brushing against his forehead, and Abed sighs and curls his long fingers around Jeff’s ribcage beneath his shirt, anchoring them together tight.
“Abed,” Jeff says quietly. “I…don’t know if I’m ready to have someone else here while I do this. What we talked about last night.” The fact that he still can’t say the words out loud doesn’t seem to bode well for his chances of success, but he plows on. “I’ve tried before, and it’s not pretty. It’ll make me angry, and unhappy, and I’ll resist it every step of the way. And I don’t—” he takes a deep breath. “I don’t want that to ruin what’s happening between us right now.”
Abed gropes around until he finds Jeff’s hand. “Do you not want me here, or do you not know if you want me here?”
Jeff thinks hard, and comes up empty. “I don’t know.” Abed squeezes his hand a little harder. “Maybe…could you stay the morning? And then we’ll see how it goes?”
In response, Abed pulls himself up so he can take Jeff’s face in his hands and kiss him fiercely. Their first kiss was quick; this one, he loses himself in. The hot press of Abed’s mouth against his sets off every overtaxed nerve ending, and for a minute or two, the spectre of his growing physical discomfort is erased by much more pleasurable sensory input. Jeff grabs on and responds wholeheartedly to the slide of their lips against each other, the way Abed teases in with his tongue when he senses Jeff needs more, the way his entire body thrums with the heady excitement of it. When they finally pull apart again, his head is buzzing—but in the nicest possible way.
“I really want to stay in bed with you and do—” Jeff feels himself grow warm at the prospect of all the things they could do in this bed, and then pushes it down and finishes, “whatever you want to do. But I am truly disgusting right now.” He can tell he needs a good clean-up badly; his face feels oily and dirty, he still smells like the stale RV air, and he definitely needs to brush his teeth.
Abed kisses him one more time for good measure. “Go take a shower,” he says. “I’ll be here.”
And that, Jeff thinks, might not be such a bad thing after all.