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“It’ll be fun, man, c’mon.”
“I don’t know.”
Britta scoffs over the line, and he can practically hear her rolling her eyes.
“What is this? Why are you being like this?” she says it teasingly, but there’s a twinge of annoyance creeping into her tone. “Are you scared you’re gonna be bad or something?”
“No,” Troy says, perfectly aware how unconvincing it sounds.
“Seriously, Troy. It’s bowling. No high-school quarterback reputation to keep up with.”
“I have to go,” Troy bristles. “I’m at work.”
He hangs up before she can answer, and his phone buzzes with an incoming text a moment later.
Britta :/ (11:12pm): dont hang up o nme dick
Britta :/ (11:13pm): dude itll be funnnnnn !!! theres a buncg of ppl comin, so u can just keep 2 urself if u wasnna. its gonna be chill
Britta :/ (11:13pm): obvs i cant froce u but plsss come !! pls pls pls
Britta :/ (11:16pm): troyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Britta :/ (11:16pm): my best buddy in the whole world
Britta :/ (11:17pm): platonic godfahter of my beautful cats need i mention. what kind of example r u seting for them
Me (11:18pm): ok fine ill come
Britta :/ (11:18pm): YESSSS
Britta :/ (11:19pm): [GIF]
Britta :/ (11:19pm): [GIF]
Britta :/ (11:19pm): [GIF]
Britta :/ (11:19pm): [GIF]
Britta is kind of Troy’s only friend.
Well, not kind of. Britta is Troy's only friend.
She keeps trying to integrate him into her friend group, except every time she does, it’s a slightly different group. This isn’t completely Britta’s fault, because it isn’t exactly a case of people constantly having falling-outs with Britta specifically. But Britta tends to befriend very volatile people, who fall-out with each other (and/or Britta) at the drop of a hat, prompting a new group to form. One of the only consistencies is Jeff, who Troy considers to be Britta’s boyfriend, even though they would both lose their shit if they heard Troy say that. Which is exactly why they’re so perfect for each other- they’re both completely weird.
It’s a medium sized group, at the bowling alley. Most of Britta’s friends usually come from Greendale, from various classes or clubs, so Troy never struggles too much to talk to them. He sticks with Jeff, though, because it’s just easier to be friends with the only person he can (mostly) guarantee will be around next time Britta drags him out.
Even Jeff is letting him down, though, on the weirdness scale, because he’s currently deep in an argument with the attendant at the shoe counter.
“Sir, I don’t understand why you think this is my rule-”
“I don’t think that, I think that you have a misguided sense of loyalty to that rule, created by someone who you’ve probably never met, and-”
“Never met!?” the attendant sputters, “I don’t know what kind of corporate enterprise you think this is, but you are mistaken.”
Troy leans forward, resting his head on the counter. The attendant is his age, maybe a year or two younger. Britta is a few years older than him, and Jeff is several years older than her. He doesn’t know exactly what the math is, there, but he knows that it all adds up to EMBARASSING, in big, flashing letters.
“Oh, what makes you say that? Is there a poster in the back room of the CEO petting a golden retriever so that you think he’s a human too?”
“For your misogynistic information, the only thing in the back room is the owner herself. I’m sure she would love to have a nice long chat about why the rules shouldn’t apply to you.”
Her nametag reads Annie :), and of course Jeff would pick the one minimum wage employee of this bowling alley who wouldn’t respond with a blank whatever to Jeff's declaration that he isn’t letting them hold on to his own shoes as security for the blue-and-red bowling ones.
“Great!”
“Great!”
Troy looks up as Annie turns on her heel with a triumphant hmph, long brown ponytail swinging behind her as she marches toward what is presumably the back room/owner’s office. Jeff turns to Troy with gritted teeth.
“Yeah, I took a gamble there and lost. Shit.”
“What’s the problem, anyways? I’m pretty sure you could just get a pair of those on Ebay for like, 30 bucks.”
Jeff frowns in disgust, like Troy just suggested he drop to his knees and lick the space-patterned carpet. “Troy, I don’t give a shit about the bowling shoes,” He holds up one foot, wiggling it slightly, and Troy frowns at his boring, solid black shoes. Troy distantly thinks that they’re sort of a dressy choice for going bowling with his girlfriend and her friends, but he stopped wasting his energy questioning both Jeff and Britta’s life choices a long time ago.“These are Shell Cordovan. I don’t need them getting palmed by some sticky fingered attendant working for minimum wage and one hotdog coupon per shift.”
“My employees get as many hotdogs per shift as they want, thank you very much. Plus a side of fries with their first one.”
The manager, as indicated by a nametag-less blouse in place of Annie’s red polo, emerges from the back office. Annie follows close behind, arms folded over her chest, and the woman holds out a hand over the counter to shake Jeff’s hand.
“Shirley Bennett. I hear we have a problem?”
Jeff squares his jaw, and Troy can tell from the way that he’s eyeing her that he’s decided she’s a worthy opponent- which means he’s going to be here for a long time, if not the entire night.
“I’m getting a beer,” Troy announces, to the acknowledgement of no-one, save for a passing glance from Annie.
He looks over to the booth in front of lanes three and four, where Britta is furrowed deep in thought as she nods along to something a short man in an oversized coral button-down is saying to her. Troy can tell by her body language that she’s already gearing up an argument to whatever it is the guy is talking about, and he rolls his eyes as he continues to the bar.
The bar boasts a simple menu, mostly consisting of food in the brown & fried category, and a basic list of their drinks. Troy sits as far away from the only other patron as he can, though the man doesn’t seem like he would be particularly interested in conversation anyways, given that he’s slumped over the bar and most likely unconscious. Troy eyes him warily, wondering if someone should do something.
“What can I get you?”
Troy turns, and immediately feels the air leave his chest. The bartender, tall and thin, looks at Troy with wide, brown eyes, as his slender fingers dry a pint glass. His posture is rigidly straight, his voice is flat, and his face is nearly expressionless, yet the way he looks at Troy is more intense than anything Troy has ever experienced in his life.
Troy already didn’t really know what he wanted, other than to get away from Jeff, but any coherent thoughts he may have previously had are now gone. He opens his mouth, and then snaps it shut when he realizes no sound is coming out.
The bartender raises one dark eyebrow, and Troy is going to pass out.
“Is he okay?” Troy asks, instead.
The bartender glances to where Troy is looking, at the man down the bar.
“Duncan? He’s fine.”
Troy wholeheartedly disagrees, but just shrugs.
“Do you want anything?” the bartender asks. “Technically I'm supposed to tell you that you can’t sit here unless you order, but I'm mad at Shirley right now, so we can just say that you’re thinking.”
Troy frowns. “That’s the manager, right? Why are you mad at her?”
The bartender shakes his head, pursing his lips with an air of grave seriousness. “It’s a betrayal that I don't want to dignify by retelling.”
“Oh,” Troy says. He looks across the room to the shoe counter, where he can see Jeff getting increasingly heated. “If it makes you feel better, my friend is arguing with her right now. He’s a huge asshole, so he’s definitely being super annoying.”
The bartender follows Troy’s gaze, and watches the shoe counter for a moment.
“That does make me feel better. Why is your friend arguing with her?”
“He doesn’t want to put his expensive shoes behind the counter, partly because he thinks they might get stolen, but really because he thinks they aren’t going to handle them carefully enough and they’re gonna get scratched.”
“Wow,” says the bartender, considering this. He looks back at Troy, meeting his eyes. “He is an asshole.”
Troy laughs, and the bartender doesn’t, head cocked in a way that makes it clear he has no idea why his matter-of-fact statement was funny in the first place.
“I’m Troy.”
“Abed. I’m supposed to wear a nametag, but-”
“You’re mad at Shirley right now.”
Abed makes a pew noise, and shoots a finger gun at him. Troy swoons.
“Do you drink?” Abed asks.
“Sometimes.”
“Do you want to try something I've been working on?”
Troy nods. Abed grins, and immediately gets to work, clearly pushing the capacities of this bowling alley bar to its absolute limit. Troy watches as he pours, shakes, and eventually slides him an icy glass of pink liquid.
Troy takes a sip, tentative at first, but immediately grins up at Abed.
“Holy shit, that’s…” He takes another sip. “It tastes exactly like-”
“A red skittle?”
“Yes! Dude, exactly. How did you do that?”
“A magician never reveals his secrets,” Abed says, with a waggle of his finger. Troy laughs, and a small smile lingers on Abed’s face as he continues cleaning the back of the bar.
“Troy!”
Troy whips his head towards the source of the noise, which is, of course, Britta, leaning over the tall back of the booth at their lane, waving to him.
“Troy! Your turn!”
He turns to Abed, who is decidedly focused on his cleaning.
“I should, um-”
Abed says nothing. The man at the end of the bar raises his head just enough to grumble something that Abed clearly understands as a request for another beer, and he’s gone. Troy taps the counter, once, and leaves to join Britta.
Troy comes in dead last out of Britta’s merry band of misfits, probably due to the fact that he spends most of the night either sitting at the bar, or sitting on the edge of their booth and staring across the room at the bar. Regardless, Britta finds him in the library sometime the next week.
“What are you doing on Friday?" She asks, as she slumps into the armchair across from him. Troy had tried to book a room, but came in to find some sort of study group had already staked their territory, and didn’t care to argue with them.
He looks up at her, one eyebrow raised. He knows better than to agree to anything Britta says without all the details. “Why?”
“Because we’re thinking of going bowling again, and I thought you might wanna come along and get a chance to talk to that bartender you’re obviously in love with.”
Troy feels his cheeks get hot, and keeps his face as neutral as it has ever been in his entire life. He turns back to his book with his mouth pressed into a thin line, and shrugs.
“What time?” he asks, and his voice does not shake at all.
Britta snorts. “We’ll pick you up at 5:00, freak.”
Jeff comes with them, again, already in the front seat when Britta picks Troy up in her dented blue Subaru. Troy ran into him in the library that morning, printing several pages of documents concerning property law and human rights and all kinds of ridiculous things, which he’s now attacking with a yellow highlighter while Britta sings along to Fleetwood Mac.
They get inside, and before Britta even spots the rest of her friends, Jeff is beelining for the shoe rental area. Annie is working again, of course, and her eyes narrow in recognition as soon as she turns around to see him leaning on the counter with his best megawatt lawyer smile, file folder laid between them like an active bomb.
“What are you gonna do if they kick him out?” Troy asks, and Britta snorts as she spares an over-it glance in Jeff’s direction.
“Let him wait on the curb?” She says, and Troy laughs.
“Over there,” Britta says, pointing to the far end of the Bowling alley. “Lane seven. I’m gonna drop my stuff off before I get my shoes, you coming?”
Troy, who has realized that Abed is also once again working tonight, realizes a second too late that he has processed none of what she said to him. He turns to her with a blank look.
“Huh?”
She snorts again, and rolls her eyes.
“Nevermind. Just go.”
Troy gives her a sheepish grin, and heads across the brightly carpeted floor to the bar.
“You’re back,” Abed says, when he sees him. His voice is monotone, but his eyebrows shoot up in a way that Troy hasn’t seen before, and it already seems significant that he remembers who Troy is in the first place.
“I am.”
“Can I get you something?”
Troy, who has once again not thought this far, grimaces as he looks up at the barren menu behind Abed's head.
“Can you make that drink you made before?” Troy asks. “The pink one- does it have a name?”
“I’ve been calling it Abed’s mouth surprise,” Abed says, “but that’s because I watch too much Parks and Rec.”
“Oh,” Troy says, heart fluttering in the most humiliating way possible at any mention of Abed’s life and interests on the other side of this bar. “Well, can I have one of those?”
“You could,” Abed says. “But, at the risk of sounding overly forward, I’m going to guess that you didn’t come over here before even changing your shoes just for a drink. Partly because people who are that desperate for a drink usually have one in mind before they get here.”
Troy’s palms start to sweat, but he clings to a shred of hope that Abed isn’t bringing this up in the bluntest way possible because he’s mad that Troy is accosting him at his place of work.
“Well,” he says, a little dumbly, “if that was the case- hypothetically speaking -what would you say?”
“Hypothetically,” Abed says, “I would tell you that it’s 6:58, and my shift tonight ends at 7:00. So paying eight dollars for a cocktail just to talk to me would sort of be a waste of your money.”
“Oh,” Troy says, more than a little put-out. At least Abed didn’t flat-out reject him, but it’s really hitting him how little he wants to spend the next several hours bowling with Britta and her friends. The only thing he wants less is to call his mom and ask her to come pick him up, but he can’t really spare the cash for a cab right now. He couldn’t really spare the cab for that cocktail though either, so there’s one upside, at least.
“So, hypothetically, if you came here just to talk to me, you should wait eight minutes for me to finish my shift, say goodbye to Annie and Shirley, punch out, and get my coat. Then, hypothetically, we can go to the diner across the street, and have a conversation that my manager isn’t going to get annoyed at me for.”
“I’m going to be honest,” Troy says. “I lost the thread of this whole hypothetically thing pretty much immediately. But if you’re asking me out-”
“I am,” Abed repeats, with the same flat affect as always. Troy is totally fucked.
“-then the answer is yes.”
“It’s a date,” Abed says, and Troy is hopeless to stop the grin that spreads across his face.