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Troy is sitting in the passenger seat today. Abed had primly insisted, earlier, when his face was brighter and significantly less droopy than it is now, that it was imperative that he drive. Troy can’t focus on remembering the reasoning Abed provided – timing the traffic lights, the optimal parking spot, etcetera.
Instead he focuses on the visuals. The sky is an angry gray, or maybe just a displeased one. It rumbles with unease. Troy is grateful, for once, that the weather leaves teardrops cascading down the windshield and a hazy blur over the headlights and traffic lights – it just about matches how he feels.
In all honesty, he hopes they don’t reach home. He hopes they get lost in a loop of winding roads or that the red lights hold them up or that they don’t go the right way and there’s no use in coming back. He would rather get t-boned and end up in the hospital with needles in his arms than go home and face the inevitable. At least he can explain being hit by someone attempting a risky left turn. He doesn’t have any reasoning behind the way he acted at InspectiCon and he’s sure Abed knows that.
He does have reasoning. It’s just reasoning he keeps really, really quiet. Reasoning that he and Abed have mutually, silently agreed is better left unreasoned-through. He writes bad poetry about his stupid reasoning because he’s stupid. It helps, sometimes.
All the stupid poetry starts with something possessive and guilt-inducing like “you and I” or “our relationship” or “our love” because Troy can’t think of a better way to describe them.
Our love doesn’t have a big emblazoned metaphor that fills the hole at the center of it. I can’t compare it to the wick on a candle or a watercolor sunset or a pie whose scent wafts from the window to the house next door.
I don’t know much about love, but I do know some things. I know that it takes two people to do it. I know that if one person pulls back, the other reaches too far and tumbles into the deep end. I know that it’s the same thing with other stuff we do. It takes two to do most things: to put the fitted sheets on our mattresses, to wash and dry the dishes, to make both popcorn and special drink, to film a new Punchkicker installment.
It takes one person to let their cologne linger on our favorite quilt and it takes the other to bury their nose into it and imagine drowning in that scent. It takes one person to make a playlist about the other and forget to hide it one day and it takes the other to ignore the CD that says “For Abed” on the kitchen table. It takes one person to constantly write in a yellow notebook and it takes the other to wonder if that pencil could possibly be writing “Troy”. It takes one person to date a girl to see what the other might do, and it takes the other to seem entirely unaffected.
“Thank you for saving me earlier today,” Abed tells him curtly, his voice piercing through the silence.
Troy winces. “I’m– I mean, it was really no big deal. I just made a fist and then–” he mimics a stick figure running away, though he knows Abed is supposed to be focused on the road.
It takes one person to be an idiot, and it takes another to deal with them.
“Did you have a good time?”
“Good time?” Troy asks, nerves creeping into his voice. He doesn’t know if Abed will notice his tone, but he prays he doesn’t. “Yeah. Great time. I had one. A great time, I had, I mean.”
Abed glances over at him as he pulls into the apartment lot, eyes raking over Troy’s stiff arms and the teeth marks on his bottom lip. He’s a shit liar. He doesn’t really lie to Abed, aside from white lies and little ones to ease both of their souls, but when he does, he sucks at it. He sucks so bad. And Abed can see right through him.
It takes one person to keep a promise not to lie for four whole years, and it takes the other to carelessly break it every other week.
“I’m glad you did,” Abed says after a while. “I did, too, despite a minor mishap.”
Troy bites his lip, his teeth settling into the familiar indentations. He can’t even tell if Abed’s referring to Toby or Troy’s outburst. “That’s good.”
He gets out of the car and slams the door, and the sky rumbles even angrier. They find shelter under the awning while Abed absently fiddles the lock open.
Troy registers little details about him when he does just about anything. Even if Abed was completely still, Troy would still find the most minute details to notice– the way his eyes flicker open and shut, the way he presses the toe of his sneakers into the ground when he sits. And now, Troy sees the tension in Abed’s jaw, the curve of his slender fingers, the way his knees are locked as he pushes open the door and holds it open just long enough for Troy to go through.
Up the stairs the first time, Abed’s footfalls are distinctly heavier than usual, like there’s something weighing on him. He doesn’t hold the door for Troy like he’s been known to, and he makes a beeline for their apartment once he’s on floor three.
“Abed,” Troy shouts, in some sort of twisted last-ditch effort to clear the air.
They’ve been down this road before. A year-ish ago. Troy’s learned that letting anger and worry fester only makes it rot and reek and hurt worse when everything blows up.
It takes one person to agree to knock down their pillow fort for the other, it takes the other to get mad enough to start a war when he changes his mind.
“Yeah, Troy?”
“Can we not leave it like this?” Troy asks, half-begging, stepping onto the carpet of their hallway at last.
“I don’t follow.”
“You’re mad at me,” Troy says, planting his feet despite his legs wanting to give out. He doesn't ever speak this harshly to Abed, let alone to anyone, but he knows it to be true. Abed will hole up and never say a word if this continues.
“I’m– not,” Abed replies, sounding unsure. He steps away from the doorway, one step closer to Troy. His key is still in there.
“That’s a lie. We’re even.”
“What?”
“I lied about having a good time, you lied about being mad at me. We’re even.” Troy steps forward again. He might be four steps from Abed. Maybe less.
Abed steps forward again. “You were upset with me today.”
Troy steps again, too, following this weird, cinematic pattern. “Toby sucks.”
“Agreed.” Another step. “That’s not the reason.”
A tension comes up in Troy’s chest. Abed says those words so smugly, like he surely knows every tactic Troy’s used to make him jealous, like he’s dangling himself in front of Troy just to see him embarrass himself trying to catch him.
It takes one person to covertly drop hints about their stupid crush, and it takes another to have been aware the whole fucking time .
That’s stupid, Troy reminds himself, because Abed wouldn’t do that because Abed doesn’t like him and therefore doesn’t give a fuck what he thinks or does.
He takes one last step forward. He has to look up to see Abed’s face now. He can feel Abed’s breath all over him and he can hear the mechanics of his body working, his heartbeat, the way his lungs inflate, the brushing of his clothes against his limbs. That feels so intimate that Troy’s breath catches in his throat and he wonders if Abed hears that too, if Abed’s thinking the same things he is. “What is, then?” he finally asks, feeling lightheaded.
Abed’s making more eye contact with Troy than he’s ever made with anyone in his whole life and Troy feels dizzy at the sight of his eyes. His face is steeled and doesn’t move, but Troy can delusionally imagine a little bit of need in Abed’s face, too, like he hopes he’s right, or that he hopes his suspicions about Troy’s actually-quite-obvious crush might be true.
“You were jealous.”
It takes one platonic guy-best-friend to email an ugly, conniving, cherubic British Pied Piper-looking-dude and become new best friends with him, and it takes the other platonic guy-best-friend to feel himself being ripped at the seams by it. It takes one person to throw a tantrum in the middle of an Inspector Spacetime panel, and it takes the other to find the humanity in it instead of being bothered.
Abed doesn’t look like he’s gonna bully Troy or be upset. In fact, he seems like he’s waiting with bated breath.
It takes one person to lie in wait, it takes the other to jump to the extremes instantly– kiss me, I’m in love, let’s get married, I’ll have your kids.
All at once, Troy can’t help it. He leans up, hands tugging insistently on Abed’s fuzzy Inspector robe, and kisses him full-on the mouth. It feels so wrong for just an instant, because it kinda is wrong to kiss a dude who’s your best buddy when you’re dating a really pretty older girl, but then he relaxes into Abed’s mouth on his.
Abed doesn’t pull back instantly. Instead, his hands come to hold Troy’s waist and still him there, licking into his mouth a little, mapping out Troy’s teeth and tongue and the entirety of his mouth like he wants to know it forever. The feeling is intoxicating, and Troy can’t help opening up and letting Abed turn him into putty.
And then Abed pulls back. Troy remembers everything in an instant. Abed’s his best friend. He has a girlfriend. Abed’s mad at him. Abed’s mad at him.
It takes one person to be justifiably mad and it takes another to kiss them instead of talking about it.
“Reggie,” Abed whispers gently, cupping Troy’s face and instantly quelling his worries. Troy leans into the touch even further, nuzzling his cheek into the hand. “You’re going to have to tell Minerva if you want to kiss me.”
Troy nods, the reality of this whole fucking thing setting in. He loosens his grip on Abed’s robe and nods again, feeling as though all the complications are washing over him right now. He will have to tell Britta. He’s not even sure Abed actually likes him. Maybe this was just another bit. He feels lightheaded for a moment.
It takes one person to kiss the other, and it takes the latter to be ultimately less affected than the former.
Abed pats his cheek again and swivels to finish turning the key in the door, likely to make buttered noodles or turn on an episode they haven’t watched in a while.
“Abed,” Troy calls when he regains his composure. Abed turns to face him again, eyebrows arched. “Do you– would you– in a world with just Reggie and the Inspector, would you–”
“The Inspector would like to have Reggie in any universe,” Abed hums lightly, a tiny smile appearing on his face. Troy feels his heart lurch suddenly, and it takes everything in him to come in for dinner instead of melting to a puddle on the ground right there.
It takes one person to yearn and need and imagine and dream and it takes another to be– maybe– just as desperate on the other side.