Chapter Text
“Oh my god, how is she so cute? I want to eat her,” Troy coos. He swipes across the screen of his phone, revealing yet another unbearably adorable photo of Julia Perry-Winger.
“She looks just like Britta here,” Abed points out, his head bent close to Troy’s so they can both easily see the screen. They’ve just spent a nice couple of hours catching up on Killing Eve and stuffing themselves with Thai, and now they’re finishing a bottle of wine and looking at the frankly absurd number of new baby pictures Jeff has sent them. It feels comfortable and domestic, so much so that Troy almost forgets that this isn’t Apartment 303 and that he’ll have to get up soon and head back to his own house.
His phone buzzes in his hand, a text notification appearing at the top of the screen. At first Troy thinks it’s Jeff sending another batch of pictures (the man has a problem), but it’s not him.
Margot Coy: troy, you still owe me your bf’s meal choices, let me know asap or…
“Fuck,” Troy curses under his breath. The preview disappears, but it has already popped the happy bubble of domesticity, reminding him of the mess he’s made for himself.
“You didn’t tell me you have a new boyfriend,” Abed says next to him, his voice flat.
Troy groans, briefly closing his eyes. “That’s because I don’t, I’m just an idiot.”
“Why would not having a boyfriend make you an idiot? And why does Margot think you have one if you don’t?”
“Because that’s what I told her,” Troy sighs. “She kept trying to set me up with people, and she’s getting married and I knew that if I showed up alone she’d throw at least five different guys at me, so I told her I’d bring my boyfriend.”
He throws his phone on the coffee table and leans back against the sofa cushions, letting his head fall back as he groans in frustration that he has only himself to blame for. Margot is a basketball coach at the community youth center where Troy teaches dance classes, and he knows she meant well with the matchmaking attempts – she was happy and in love and wanted everyone else to be happy and in love too. He just found it a little too much.
“I thought I’d find someone by then, but…”
“But you haven’t,” Abed supplies helpfully.
“No.”
And to be honest, he hasn’t really… tried. He just kind of pushed the wedding out of his mind. He’s only been on a couple of half-hearted first dates since he broke up with Luke, his only serious boyfriend so far, several months ago. He isn’t particularly interested in dating, and the reason for that, which he’s also tried to push out of his mind with little success, is right here in the room with him, looking at him thoughtfully.
“So what are you going to do?” Abed asks.
“I don’t know,” Troy says with a mirthless laugh. “Hire an actor? Do you know someone who might want to make a few extra bucks pretending to be my boyfriend?”
He says it as a joke, but now that he thinks about it, it might not be such a bad idea. Los Angeles is full of down-on-their-luck actors looking for any gig at all, and Abed is an up-and-coming director, he knows people…
He opens his mouth to say that, but Abed speaks first.
“I could do it.”
Troy sits up straighter. “What?”
For the briefest moment, Abed looks taken aback too, like he didn’t know he was going to say that before the words were out of his mouth. It’s gone in a flash, though, and when he speaks again he sounds completely calm and normal. “I can go with you to the wedding, if you want.”
Troy’s heart does a somersault that should be physically impossible. A medical miracle, probably.
“I… I can’t ask you to do that,” he mumbles, while his mind is already well down the rabbit hole of imagining him and Abed showing up at the wedding in different but coordinated suits, holding hands, him introducing Abed to people and saying things like this is my boyfriend, Abed Nadir, yes, the Abed Nadir…
“Why not?” Abed shrugs, mercifully interrupting Troy’s train of thought. “It’s a common trope. Fake dating.”
“Oh, yeah.” Right. It’s a trope. Troy hates the twinge of disappointment in his chest. What is there to be disappointed about? Of course Abed just wants to enact a trope and not actually be Troy’s date. That’s not a surprise. Abed doesn’t like him that way. Troy has long come to terms with it. One of these days he’ll finally force his stupid fucking heart to give it up too. (If it didn’t happen over almost three years at sea, it’s unlikely to ever happen, but Troy tries not to think about that.)
“If you’re sure you don’t want to go alone,” Abed continues. “Weddings can be good places to meet people, plenty of romances start that way.” He thinks for a moment, then adds, “I think Pierce met one of his wives at his own wedding.”
“Ew,” Troy grimaces. “And no, thank you. I’d rather go with you.”
“So you’re not looking to meet anyone?” Abed asks softly, searching Troy’s face. “It’s been a while since Luke.”
Troy drops his gaze. He doesn’t point out that it’s been even longer since Sophia, the costume designer Abed had been in a serious relationship with for almost a year by the time Troy finally made it back from his trip around the world, and the main reason why Troy got together with Luke in the first place. Luke was great, objectively, he made Troy laugh and he liked to dance and he could do incredible things with his tongue, and there were days where Troy could almost convince himself that it was enough. But when Abed and Sophia broke up about a year ago, the sudden hope that flared in Troy’s chest made it clear that he wasn’t nearly as over Abed as he tried to convince himself he was, and it wouldn’t be fair to keep stringing Luke along when Troy couldn’t commit.
So now he and Abed are both single, and Troy… likes it that way. It’s not what he wants, and he knows that Abed hasn’t actually been celibate all this time, but it’s good enough. They have each other. They might not be as close as they used to be, back before Troy left, but they’re still best friends. They’re still Troy and Abed. It’s enough.
“Yeah, I’m… not really feeling it at the moment,” he mutters indistinctly. He and Abed don’t talk about relationships, and this isn’t a good time to start. “You’re sure you want to do it, then?” He asks, to get away from what feels like a dangerous topic.
Abed nods.
“Cool. Thanks, buddy,” Troy murmurs, feeling like his stomach has disappeared somewhere. He digs out the wedding invitation so Abed can have a look at the meal options, and then he lets Margot know his boyfriend will have the honey glazed chicken.
*
The time remaining before the wedding goes by in a flash, and next thing Troy knows, it’s the Thursday of the week of and he and Abed are having lunch at Troy’s favorite taco place. That’s what they do now – they arrange times to have lunch together, because apparently that’s what it’s like to be friends with someone as an adult. You have to schedule it.
“We should set some ground rules and coordinate our backstories,” Abed says matter-of-factly once they’ve finished eating and opens one of the notebooks he takes with him everywhere in case inspiration strikes. “So we don’t end up telling people different stories about how we met.”
Troy hasn’t even thought about that. “Can’t we just use our real backstories?” He doesn’t think he’d want to fake-date a fake version of Abed.
Abed nods seriously. “Sticking as close to the truth as possible is always best. So we were friends at college. Did we date then?”
Troy swallows uncomfortably. “Well, I was miles deep in the closet, so I don’t think so.”
Abed scribbles something in his notebook. “And I had feelings for you but thought you were straight.”
Troy’s stomach twists, because that sounds like something that could actually be true, something he’s thought about before. When he was on the boat and finally figured out why he missed Abed so much more than anybody else, looking back at his friendship with Abed, he felt like maybe there had been something. Like maybe Abed had felt something too, and if Troy had been brave enough to recognize his own feelings sooner, something more could have happened between them. But he was too late, and by the time he came back, Abed was happy with Sophia and the intensity of their friendship was gone, lost to the sea. It’s tragically ironic, because Troy understands now that he needed the trip to truly get to know himself and accept that he was in love with Abed, but it was also what had cost him any chance he might have had to actually be with Abed.
Or maybe not. Abed probably wouldn’t have said it so lightly if it had been true. Everything Troy thought he might have seen between them at Greendale was probably just wishful thinking of a lonely sailor.
But either way, he can change it now, if only for a day. He can create a different timeline, one where everything had worked out the way he wanted.
“And then I left for my trip, and I missed you so much and finally realized I was in love with you,” he says in a rush of breath, finally admitting the truth, even if Abed won’t understand it as such. He can’t look at him. “I thought I’d lost you, but…”
“But I never stopped waiting for you,” Abed quietly finishes Troy’s sentence. “When you came back, I was waiting for you at the docks…”
“And we ran towards each other in slow motion and kissed,” Troy says. It’s a scenario he imagined many times during sleepless nights on the boat. Reality was nothing like that.
There’s a beat of silence. Troy examines a bit of lettuce left on his plate.
“Cinematic,” Abed says after a moment. “But it won’t work.”
“Why not?” Troy almost whines. Can’t he at least have a fake happy ending if he can’t have a real one?
“Because you said Margot tried to set you up with people a couple of times. She knew you were single.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Maybe… I was mad at you for leaving,” Abed says softly. His eyes are fixed on his notebook. “It took me a while to trust you again.”
The shift in atmosphere is immediate. Troy forgets about the restaurant, all he can see is the crease between Abed’s eyebrows, his pen digging forcefully into the page, his knuckles white around it. This is another thing they never talk about.
“Abed…”
“But no one would expect us to tell them details like that,” Abed interrupts him abruptly. “We can just say we reconnected after you came back and leave it at that.”
Troy hesitates for a moment, wondering if he should press the issue. They have never really talked about the trip. Troy told his friends everything about it, naturally, right after he docked in LA (which hadn’t been a random choice), where the entire study group had gathered to welcome him home. But he and Abed have never talked about what the trip meant for Abed, and for their friendship. Troy has no doubt that what Abed just said isn’t something he made up from scratch for their fictional relationship. He has kind of known all along, really. Abed had always been terrified of people abandoning him, and Troy was supposed to be the one person who would never leave. But he did. Of course that broke Abed’s trust in him. Of course Abed was angry with him.
But Troy has worked really hard these past two years – they both have – to rebuild their friendship, and he doesn’t want to risk it now by bringing up the past, so he just says, “Sounds good. I don’t think we have to worry about this kind of thing too much. We know each other really well, and it’s not like there’s a checklist we have to learn to trick an immigration officer.”
Abed quirks his lips into a smile, appreciating the reference.
“Okay. We still have to set physical boundaries.”
“What?” Troy blurts out. “No, we don’t.”
Abed cocks his head to the side. “Yes, we do. Consent is important, even if you’re just acting.”
“No, I mean we don’t actually have to do anything we wouldn’t normally do.” Whatever fantasies he may have had about holding Abed’s hand or wrapping his arm around his waist, he knows he shouldn’t let them happen. “Plenty of couples aren’t big on PDA, it won’t be weird.”
“It would be out of character for you, though. You’re a tactile person. You and Luke were almost always touching in some way, at least from what I could observe.”
“W-we were?” Troy stutters, but he shouldn’t be surprised – the sad truth is that he just needed to keep reminding himself who his actual boyfriend was whenever Abed was around.
“Unless you were concerned about the environment you were in, yes. And since this is a lesbian wedding, that’s unlikely to be a factor there. You and I would probably be slightly less demonstrative; I don’t always like being touched and you’ve always been respectful of that. But we’d still touch more than we do now.”
Well, Abed was right about that. If they were together, Troy would touch Abed every chance he got. He’d want everyone to know. And the thing is, it wouldn’t be new, because that’s more or less how they were Before. They held hands. They hugged. They cuddled. But now, they barely touch at all. And Troy misses it so much, even though he knows it would probably make it so much harder to keep his feelings in check.
But now that he thinks about it, this could actually be a good testing ground. Safe. If it made Abed uncomfortable, or if Troy felt it brought his feelings too close to the surface, they’d never have to do it again. But if it worked, maybe Troy could try bringing a little bit of their former closeness back into their friendship. Maybe Abed misses it too.
“I guess we should hold hands?” he suggests tentatively, feeling his cheeks heat. “Or, like, put an arm around each other or something?”
“You’d be comfortable with that?” Abed asks.
“Yeah.” The problem will be not getting too comfortable with it. “You?”
Abed meets his eyes. “Sure.”
If only Troy knew what Abed really thinks about all this. He was the one to suggest it, so he clearly doesn’t mind, but is that all? All in the name of a trope, nothing more? Or is there a chance this could mean something more to him? While Abed has never been an open book, Troy used to be able to read him much better. He used to be able to pick up on Abed’s microexpressions even when other people thought his face was completely blank. Now, he can’t tell if the thoughtful look in his eyes means anything, or if Abed is just mentally going through his list of essential fake dating elements.
Troy wipes his hand on his jeans and puts it on the table between them, palm up.
“Should we practice?” he offers. If it’s awkward, it’s probably better to find out now.
Abed’s gaze drops to Troy’s hand, and he spends what feels like an age just looking at it, saying nothing, before finally covering it with his own. His hand is warm and dry and fits perfectly in Troy’s, just like he remembers. Troy’s breath catches, and for a terrifying moment he thinks he might start crying. Thankfully, Abed keeps looking and their joined hands, and Troy is able to swallow down the emotion before Abed notices anything.
And then Abed squeezes his hand lightly, and if it hadn’t been clear to Troy before it’s definitely obvious now that he’s well and truly fucked. And the worst thing is that he doesn’t care. So what if it ends up hurting even worse afterwards? If he gets to hold Abed’s hand for a day, it will be worth it.
He’s just getting comfortable with the hand-holding when Abed lifts his head from staring at their hands and says, “What if we’re required to kiss?”
“Why would we be required to kiss?” Troy yelps, almost yanking his hand out of Abed’s grip.
“It’s a common feature of the fake relationship trope,” Abed explains. “Like if we’ve just announced our engagement to your whole family and they’re all chanting ‘kiss him’--”
“But we--”
“-- or if your ex is there and you want to prove you’re over him, or if we’re undercover and kissing is the only way to avoid suspicion, or--”
“Abed, none of these things are going to happen!” Troy says firmly, because they can’t. “We’re not going undercover and it’s somebody else’s wedding, they’re the only ones who’ll be expected to kiss.”
Abed shrugs. “I’m just saying it’s a common feature. Best to be prepared.”
Troy can feel his hand in Abed’s starting to sweat. There’s no way he’s practice-kissing Abed. He wouldn’t survive. Hand-holding and cuddling can maybe be passed off as platonic, as something very close friends might do, but kissing? No way. Out of the question.
But if he’s too vehemently against it, Abed will find that suspicious.
“All right, well, I guess we can kiss if it’s necessary for some unlikely reason,” he says quickly, pulling his hand out of Abed’s grasp because it’s becoming too much.
“Cool,” Abed nods. “If the situation calls for it. Cool cool cool.”
If the situation calls for it, Troy will die.
…
He really, really wants the situation to call for it.
*