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Abed Nadir missed Troy Barnes a lot.
Not in a Twilight way- he wasn’t planning on making a montage of himself sat as the seasons changed around him- that was too external for Abed.
No, he missed Troy in ways that were much too complicated and simple all at the same time for anything as typical as a montage. For once, Abed wasn’t interested in his usual TV tropes, he wasn’t scouring his mental vault of pop culture knowledge for a way out of this one, because he’d already tried that, and it hadn’t worked.
First he’d tried to Kickpunch through it all. He went into the Dreamatorium for days with his costumes and gave it everything he could, but Troy was the best Kickpuncher, and the audience was hating Abed as a substitute. It was un-natural, Troy had got the movements down to an art form, and without his unique performance the storylines just weren’t up to the usual standard.
Bad review after bad review came through the Dreamatorium’s door, and so eventually, Abed made the hard decision to stop the production altogether. It didn’t feel right without the star of the show.
He didn’t leave the Dreamatorium until he’d come up with something good enough to satisfy his audience. He sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor for hours, only disturbed by the booing of the crowd whenever he thought of an idea. At this point, there were no suitable options. He couldn’t do a comedy, because all the fake smiling made his face hurt, and he didn’t trust the audience to laugh on their cue. Abed knew he wasn’t funny, not like Troy was, not side splitting, jaw hurting hilarious like Troy. He was more along the lines of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, only with more autism and less scientific knowledge. He was the one people laughed at because he didn’t understand, just like Pierce is laughed at because he’s old.
He couldn’t do a drama, either, because there are always way too many characters, and he knew he’d never come close to anything worth watching.
He couldn’t do a documentary, because Troy was the only thing Abed was interested in filming at the moment, and he’d left.
He didn’t want the responsibility of dealing with the audience anymore; he didn’t want to have to please them all the time. He could ignore them when Constable Reggie was around, because he had more important things to do, but sat on the floor knowing that the Inspector would be without his sidekick for at least a year, Abed felt the pressure again.
The audience wanted a good show, they always had. They were always hankering him for that perfect story arc, well written character progression and a great season finale with that well needed happy ending. They weren’t happy with the way that the sitcom that was the study group has headed. There was no way Abed could see this turning into a happy ending, and the audience inside his head was getting angry, but he knew he couldn’t do anything about it. So he’d cancelled everything. There will be no more productions in the dreamatorium.
Troy had been the star of every show, and since he left the audience hadn’t liked anything, and Abed didn’t know how to please them. He thought not doing anything at all would make it better, but it just made everything more vocal. There were tears and yelling and it was getting so, so loud. And Abed watched the walls recede into rows of seats- seats filled with fuming, shouting viewers that never usually had faces. It was like a courtroom, only there was no judge to tell anyone to be quiet. He didn’t like this, not one bit. Not one little bit. The noise felt like The Force was pressing down on his head, and his eyes couldn’t focus on one face long enough to figure out whether it was sad or angry.
Without Troy, it didn’t take long, even by his standards, to break. Abed keeled over, right in the middle of the courtroom, pulling his knees into his chest and trying to block out as much noise with his cardigan.
It was still loud though, loud enough at least, for Abed not to hear Annie when she came in. In fact, he wouldn’t have noticed at all if she hadn’t started prising his hands away from his face. She didn’t speak loud enough for him to hear her over the noise, but he understood she probably wouldn’t like this place any more than he did. After at least two tugs, he pulled the soft material of his cardigan out of his eyes and look at his friend.
He’d heard many descriptions of a person’s eyes being like saucers, and if that were the case Annie’s went beyond that. They were huge shiny disco balls.
“Are you crying?!” He yelled, and she jumped back. He wondered maybe he’d got it wrong again. Still with his clothes in his ears, he began to sit up, when Annie shouted back.
“Abed, why are we yelling?” She hadn’t answered his question, which always annoyed him. Maybe she was being sarcastic.
There was a pause, and Abed couldn’t read her expression.
“Are they being too loud again?” She asked, resting a hand by his leg. Now she’d answered a question with a question, but given the situation, he didn’t feel like getting angry. He was just upset, and he wanted everyone to stop shouting, stop demanding things from him that they should know he can't give. He settled with a simple “Yeah.” and left it for her to reply.
She sat there, and Abed became less and less sure whether her eyes were disco balls, because no disco ball he’d ever seen had dripped and leaked before.
“You think maybe they’ll stop if we go?” She croaked after a moment, gesturing to the other side of the room. Abed shook his head. There was no way out, he was sure of it.
“If I'm perfectly honest, I think the door’s gone.” He said flatly. He didn’t want to alarm Annie to the fact they were stuck under the spotlight in the loudest room in the world. He shrugged, because that seemed to be the thing heroes did when they didn’t want it to seem like their world was ending.
Annie was clearly scared, because she sniffed and wiped her eyes sadly. He was sorry he’d gotten her into this mess, he never usually let anyone else see the audience.
Suddenly, she shifted, and grabbed his hand. “Don’t worry, I know a secret way out.” She yelled, pulling him so he had no choice but to get up.
They stayed ducked down, and soon they got to the side of the room. There were people directly above them that should’ve been kept inside Abed’s head, and Annie was blocking his view of the escape route. She moved to the side and pointed to the side of the stand.
“See this little door?” She asked, still having to yell. Abed stared at the black wall, and surely enough, there was a tiny brass handle sticking out from it. How had he not seen that before?
He nodded, and Annie unclenched her grip slightly.
“If we crawl through here, we’ll get out into the apartment.” She lightly swung his hand as she spoke, like she always did when she got worried. She had every right to be worried, what if this passageway wasn’t safe? What if it was full of roaches like in ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’? But what if it they were Alice, and this little door lead to his wonderland. Maybe Troy would be in Wonderland…
Abed nodded again, because he decided that anywhere, including a hole full of beetles, was better than this room.
With his signal, Annie opened the tiny door, and attempted to crawl through it. He grabbed her arm.
“I don’t know what you're doing, you're never going to fit through there. We’ll have to army crawl, it's the only way.” He stated, and watched as Annie became a bit shocked. Maybe she thought she was smaller, Abed had realised that Annie and the other girls in the study group, along with various characters in movies, that women don’t like to be told they are too big.
He quickly added a- “You're not fat though.” on the end, just in case.
The tunnel was long and dark and very narrow, but Abed realised they could at least talk at normal volume here, if they were to talk. Annie hadn’t said anything since they started crawling, and she only ever does that when she's angry or when she’s sad. He didn’t want to intrude, or say something to make whatever he’d done worse, so he kept his mouth shut.
They crawled around three corners, and then the tunnel started to widen. After the last corner, he began to see a literal light at the end. They could probably stand up by the time they got to its source.
“I think we’re near the end now.” Abed whispered to Annie’s rabbit slippers. They’d been on the whole time, but only with the light had he noticed their little pink ears being dragged along. Annie stopped, and the ears wobbled.
“Can you still hear them?” She asked, looking over her shoulder.
Abed thought for a moment. They were still there in the distance, but it was more like normal now. They’d gotten far enough away from the screaming and their faces for it not to overwhelm him.
“Not as much anymore.” He mused, and watched as Annie’s shoulders collapsed slightly with a sigh.
“Good.” She breathed, and then carried on crawling.
Abed had been right, once she got to the end, Annie was able to stand, and Abed saw a regular sized, cream door. He caught up with her after a second and stood up, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck after the confines of the tunnel. Finally they were escaping from the voices. Abed pushed the door and they both fell into the apartment, relieved. Annie slammed it shut behind them immediately and looked at him with an expression he hadn’t ever seen before. He didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t seem pleased, like he was, to be out of there.
“Are you mad or upset cos I'm not getting… this.” He circled her face with his finger, which seemed to fall a little with her reply.
“I'm fine Abed.” She said, in that tone of voice that he could never quite gauge. He sighed.
“Are you being sincere, or are you doing that thing when you say you're fine because it would be easier for everyone that way.”
She looked at him, and then at her shoes, and even then waited a few moments before she said anything.
“The second one, Abed. Troy’s been gone all of a week and this has already happened. I miss him too, but you barely talk to anyone.” She made eye contact for the first time since the conversation had started, and Abed would perceive it to be awkward, if he didn’t completely understand what was going on. It was very rare that he did, especially with things going on in his own life, but this time, he got it.
“This show isn’t gonna be the same without Troy is it.” He looked at her and shuffled his feet.
“No it's not.” She replied, her eyes shining again. She moved in for a hug and he didn’t do anything to stop her. Abed Nadir missed Troy Barnes a lot, and he still does, but he doesn’t have to deal with that alone anymore.