Chapter Text
It had been a relatively normal study group session, full of squabbling and very little actual studying, until right at the end. Troy, Britta and Annie had shot off to class, but when Abed tried to leave, Jeff grabbed his arm. Abed flinched away from the touch but stared at Jeff and stayed put. “I don’t like it when people touch me,” he stated, as if Jeff wasn’t supposed to know that already. They’d been friends for two years up until that point, so he should’ve noticed Abed’s aversion to touch a long time ago. The only touch he could deal with was heavy pressure, like someone lying on top of him or squeezing his chest. The casual, soft hand on his arm wasn’t that.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” Jeff replied. It was the kind of character development that Abed admired: in season one, Jeff might not have apologised. He might have laughed at Abed or called him weird. “Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did.”
“What?”
“‘Can I ask you a question’ is already a question.”
Jeff scrunched his face up in what might’ve been dismay before covering it up with a small smile. Abed watched closely as Jeff pulled his phone out of his pocket and fiddled with it, but didn’t turn it on. When his fingers lightly brushed against the screen, it lit up with the default iPhone wallpaper. What felt like hours passed before he blurted out, “Do you have a brother?”
A laugh slipped out of Abed’s mouth with little input from his brain. When Jeff didn’t laugh with him, he cocked his head to the side. Hadn’t Jeff been joking? His face didn’t display the usual signs for joking (he was frowning and his eyebrows were creased), but his words had been so absurd that Abed had just assumed. They’d done a family day back in season one, and the only family that came along was his father and cousin, so Jeff should have known he was an only child. Abed had also always thought Jeff was observant enough to notice he’d never mentioned siblings before. “No? I would’ve told you if I had a brother.”
“You didn’t tell us you hated hospitals until we caught you removing your own tonsils.”
Abed shrugged. “It didn’t feel relevant.” If it didn’t feel vital for moving the story along or for helping him bond with someone, he didn’t deem it necessary enough to mention. He figured it would come up at some point, in an episode where he was hurt or needed medical intervention, and what a surprise– it did.
“I’d argue it was pretty relevant. What if you got into an accident? What if we found you ten minutes later and you’d cut your own tonsils out?”
Abed wasn’t actually going to remove his own tonsils; it was all just to help him bond with the study group in a moment when he was worried they were drifting. He knew they’d find him and stop him before he hurt himself (or at least that was what he told himself). After tapping his finger against his chin for a second, he murmured, “Okay then, no, I don’t have a brother. Why?”
Finally, Jeff switched on his phone. He swiped around for a few seconds before turning it around to face Abed, revealing a news article with an image of a man on top. He looked suspiciously like Abed, but with extra wrinkles and darker bags beneath his eyes. Abed stared at the picture, reaching up to feel where the wrinkles and bags would be on his face, his eyebrows furrowing. “I think you have a doppelgänger, then. He looks exactly like you. It’s… It’s kind of creepy.”
“It’s like looking in a mirror.”
“Are you sure you don’t have a brother?”
“Pretty sure, yes. My dad would have told me. Plus, I really hate the long-lost sibling trope. It’s cheesy and convenient. People look like each other, it happens.”
“I suppose…”
“And, I mean, it’s not like we’re in The Parent Trap, though that is an awesome movie.”
With one last glance at the picture of Abed’s döppleganger, Jeff shook his head. “You wish you were in The Parent Trap.”
“There are worse movies to be in… or better, depending on how you look at it… Anyway, I have class. You better text me if you find any other döpplegangers. I should make sure we haven’t damaged the space-time continuum.”
“Okay, sure, will do. See you later, Abed.”
Abed rushed down the corridor to his film class with a sudden urge to rewatch The Parent Trap. They’d already done an homage to Freaky Friday, and Abed was pretty sure they wouldn’t do another Lindsey Lohan movie, so Abed didn’t have to worry about a long-lost twin, and all Jeff had done was inspire Abed to watch it one more time.
-
Later that day, when Abed got home, he heated up some buttered noodles and settled on the couch. After turning on his TV, he searched for The Parent Trap on one of the many streaming apps he had, but he didn’t click on it. He stared at the two Lindsey Lohans in the image before turning to look at his school bag and chewing his lip. He reached for it, pulling out his laptop and Googling the article Jeff had shown him before he even processed what he was doing. As he clicked into it, he told himself he had sought out the article because he was curious, not because he thought there was a chance he had a long-lost brother.
It was titled, ‘The Man Behind Mythic Quest’s Monetization’ and, upon reading more, Abed discovered that the man’s name was Brad Bakshi, and he was head of monetisation for a video game called Mythic Quest. Abed recognised the name, but, while he had played almost every genre of game, from farming simulators to first-person shooters, he hadn’t played many massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMOs). Troy might’ve mentioned it at some point, but Abed preferred couch co-op or solo games.
Further scrolling revealed more photos of Brad from various angles, and in each, he looked like Abed. For a second, Abed wondered if it was his future self, and if doing the interview was his special way of calling out to his past self so they could work together to stop a major event from occurring. After all, Brad was four letters long, just like Abed was, and he might have been using a fake name so the authorities didn’t put two and two together. The next thought that occurred to Abed was that ‘Brad’ might’ve been Evil-Abed, but he didn’t have a goatee, and he was wearing something other than the colour black, so that got debunked rather quickly. Just as Abed was starting to convince himself that time travel existed, he realised he should probably call his father and ask if he had a long-lost brother.
It was definitely going to be a no, but it was a necessary plot point so that the audience could get their closure and wouldn’t be left wondering. When his dad didn’t pick up, he tried to call him again. He still didn't pick up. By that point, Abed’s head was whirring, and he still hadn’t touched the buttered noodles he’d reheated. He glanced at them before diverting his gaze back at a photo of Brad, staring directly at the camera with a straight face and dark eyes.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Brad, and he was starting to imagine what kind of events he might have to face if Brad were him from the future (a zombie apocalypse? A meteor? A pandemic?). He didn’t have the fighting skills or the body type to stop the apocalypse, and the more he thought about it, the more his stomach hurt, his hands shook, and he began to sweat. As he was getting nervous that his Lucky Charms from that morning were going to make a reappearance, he decided he had to get his answers. He put on his sneakers and raced out of his dorm, leaving his bowl of buttered noodles to go cold on the arm of the couch. Annie would shout at him for making a mess, but all he could think about was every movie set in the future after a generic disaster ever (2012, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Mad Max, you name it).
While sitting on the bus to his dad’s house, Abed did some further investigating. He Googled Brad Bakshi, and it brought up surprisingly few results. The lack of any social media was another terrifying sign that Abed may have been dealing with a future version of himself. He was beginning to hope for an homage to The Parent Trap, because his dad lying to him for years was slightly easier to deal with than having the weight of humanity on his shoulders. Easier, but still not easy, he supposed.
The next twenty minutes were full of other random Google searches in an attempt to find any information at all about his doppelgänger. He tried ‘Mythic Quest’, and ‘Mythic Quest Brad’, and ‘Head of Monetization Mythic Quest’, but Brad had seemingly only ever done the one interview. It was not looking good. Zombies seemed more likely with each search. Troy had made him play the Zombie mode in Call of Duty a few times, and he had taken a few judo classes at Greendale, but nothing could prepare him for fighting the living dead in real life.
When Abed arrived at his dad’s house, and no one answered the door, he walked to his dad’s falafel restaurant. It was a ten-minute walk down the road that he had done a million times before, but it felt like an hour before Abed pushed the door open and stepped inside. The smell of falafel hit him instantly, which should have been comforting, but all he could think about was zombies and disease and space and everyone he had ever known and loved dying because he didn’t know how to throw a punch. Abed weaved through the queue of hungry customers and ducked through the door labelled staff only until he was face-to-face with his father, whose face fell upon seeing Abed.
Abed opened his mouth and blurted out, “The apocalypse is coming.” What he had meant to say was “Do I have any siblings you haven’t told me about?” but his wires had gotten all crossed and confused, and the wrong thing had come out. As one of the other chefs turned around and looked at him with wide eyes, his dad barely flinched. He probably looked insane, considering how much he was trembling, but his dad blinked at him as if it were normal for Abed to announce such absurd things. (Ignoring the time that he’d claimed to have discovered a new disease spread by cats that was going to wipe out half of the population when he was fourteen— he blamed his special interest in the bubonic plague.)
“Abed, I’m at work,” his dad said in an almost bored monotone. Abed rubbed his hands together and rocked, his gaze bouncing around the room as if all the surfaces were made of fire. He wasn’t sure whether he was about to throw up or sob or implode, but either way, he was uncomfortable.
After taking a deep breath, Abed composed himself enough to ask what he had meant to ask. “Do I have any siblings you haven’t told me about?”
“Abed, I’m at work,” his dad repeated with a frown.
“Do I have a brother?”
“I finish in a couple of hours. Can this wait?”
“That’s not a no. It’s supposed to be an easy no,” Abed replied with an awkward laugh. He shook his head. Then he shook it again, quicker and with more force, as he laughed a little louder. His dad’s frown grew deeper, and he eyed up the long queue through the window. It was almost out of the door, and there was a group of teenagers in the middle of it who were all tapping their feet impatiently.
“Abed, we’re really busy. Please go home.”
“Why isn’t it a no, Dad? Do I have a brother?”
Abed’s dad opened his mouth before closing it again and clenching his jaw. He glanced at the other chef before waving his hand and murmuring, “I’ll be back in five minutes. If you need me, I’ll be just outside.” The chef nodded, but didn’t say anything, still staring at Abed as if he were an alien. Just as Abed’s brain was screaming, ‘Oh my God, what if you’re an alien, but you only find out in the future, so your future self is travelling back in time to warn you?’ his dad grabbed his arm with arguably too much force and pulled him outside. Abed pursed his lips to hold back a whine. Once they were leaning up against the dumpsters, Abed finally let the whine escape, as he hunched over and hugged himself. He really hoped he wasn’t an alien, even though it would explain a lot.
“I told you not to interrupt me when I’m working,” Abed’s dad said. Abed hummed and scrunched his face up, squeezing himself tighter.
“I’m an alien,” Abed squeaked. “Please tell me I’m not an alien… unless you’re also an alien… oh my God, we’re both aliens.”
“Do I need to call that therapist you spoke to a few years ago? Are you having another one of your moments?”
Abed cringed at his dad’s wording. Moments. As if he were some crazy person having a mental breakdown. He was perfectly sane, just a little weird. Maybe not perfectly sane, but a pretty average amount of sane, if he could say so himself. Anyone would lose their mind if they found out they were an alien. “Just answer the questions, and I’ll be fine. Tell me I don’t have a brother, and tell me I’m not an alien.”
“Abed.”
A motorbike rushed past them, emitting a loud, low noise that made Abed cover his ears and shake his head. He whined again. When his dad pried his hands away from his ears, he whined louder. His dad hushed him, so he bit on his lip and inhaled deeply.
“You really want to know? Right here, right now?”
“Yes.”
As his dad tilted his head up to look at the sky and huffed, Abed wasn’t sure he liked where the conversation was heading. He rubbed his clammy hands together, holding his breath so that he didn’t whine again. He could feel his stomach twisting and his heart pounding, but it all stopped when his dad announced, “You’re adopted.”
Abed’s mind went blank. His body tensed up. The world went silent– no pipes hummed, no motorbikes screeched, no people chattered. Everything stopped.
That didn’t make sense. There was no way Abed was adopted. He would’ve noticed. There would have been signs. His dad would’ve told him.
Abed liked to consider himself an observant person. He noticed when Britta cut her hair, or Annie got a new binder, or Jeff was hungover, or Troy didn’t get a good night’s sleep, and yet, he hadn’t noticed that he and the man who had been raising him his entire life weren’t related. Even better, people had always told Abed that he had his father’s eyes, his face shape, his nose…and he’d seen it when he looked in the mirror, too.
Abed didn’t realise he was screaming until his dad wrapped his arms around his chest and squeezed. It felt like the touch was miles away, on another planet. It wasn’t tight enough; his head was drifting, and part of him felt like he was floating, and not in a good way. He’d always wanted to be able to fly, but it must have been one of those incidents where the genie messes with the wish because that wasn’t what he meant.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before the world came alive again. The pipes hummed, the motorbikes screeched, the people chattered, but it was much too loud. His feet were back on the ground, but the floor was too hard, and his body was too heavy. He vaguely heard his dad mumble, “This is why I didn’t want to do this here, Abed.”
Putting his hands over his ears, Abed screamed again. He hunched over and screamed, shoving his dad away so he could rock his entire body. His dad reached back out to touch him, but Abed stepped further back.
“Abed, you have to believe that I love you as if you were my own. Of course I do. This doesn’t need to change anything.”
“You’re–“ Abed choked out. He tilted his head back and cleared his throat to suppress another scream. “You’re not supposed to lie to me.” It had been established very early on that lying was wrong, by both his dad when he was a child and by Troy in an earlier season. He’d taken that as gospel and avoided lying, but what was the point when someone he trusted so much had been lying to him the whole time? His entire life was a lie. If lying was wrong, he was wrong. Abed rocked a little harder at the thought.
“I know, but we had to protect you.”
“Protect me?”
Abed’s dad wiped Abed’s cheeks with the back of his hand, his knuckles sharp against his face. He lingered to force eye contact, while Abed’s breath hitched and tears fell. “Yes, Abed, protect you. Your biological family abandoned you when you were only six months old.”
The new information made Abed’s nose twitch and his stomach lurch. Were his biological family bad people? Had they abandoned him because he was a nuisance or because they couldn’t afford to keep him? Was it an accident? Had they spent the past 26 years looking for him? Did they miss him? “W–Why?”
“We don’t know. All we know is that you were found in a dumpster by the hospital. No paperwork, no note, no nothing. They left you to die.”
Glancing at the dumpster they were currently standing next to, Abed couldn’t find it in himself to even appreciate the circular moment. He clenched his hands into fists and closed his eyes, the urge to vomit growing with every second. He could feel his breath becoming more ragged as he tried to process everything his dad was saying.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you before, but they’re bad people. You don’t want to get involved with them.”
“You don’t know that,” Abed didn’t mean to snap. He didn’t want to believe that his biological family were bad because it didn’t make any sense and because badness might’ve been genetic, and he wasn’t a bad person— he’d certainly never abandon a baby in a dumpster. As his hands shook, Abed scrambled for other, less malicious reasons his biological parents might’ve had. “Maybe my mom abandoned me because she couldn’t afford to look after me. Maybe she had to.”
“Abed, you could have died. She left you to die in that dumpster.”
“She wouldn’t…”
“You don’t know her. You don’t need to defend her. Just promise me something.” Abed’s dad blinked away tears, avoiding eye contact by looking up at the sun. He reached out to latch onto Abed’s arm, holding him tight enough that Abed wouldn’t flinch. Abed stared at the contact point, part of him wanting to pull away, part of him wanting to cling to his dad forever. “Promise me you won’t go looking for them.”
“You should go back to work,” Abed deflected, pointing towards the restaurant. “It’s really busy.” The line was now out the front door, and a lot of the customers were frowning and shaking their heads. Abed’s dad didn’t even look at them. He squeezed Abed’s arm and looked at him through wide, teary eyes. Abed rarely saw his dad cry; the last time being in that one episode of season one. It had hurt a little back then, but it hurt a hell of a lot more in the alley behind his dad’s falafel restaurant, after finding out they weren’t even related.
“The restaurant doesn’t matter right now: you do. Tell me you won’t go looking for them. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Abed got obsessed with things easily. Movies, Cougar Town, Inspector Spacetime. Once a thought got into his head, he found it difficult to shrug it off, even if it was a logistical nightmare. That meant he forgot to eat or drink while getting lost in episodes of Inspector Spacetime, and it also meant that, once he found out he had another family out there, all he wanted to do was find them. He had so many questions, and he needed to find the answers to them or he was going to explode. Without looking at his dad, he rocked on his feet and blurted out, “I’m going home.”
“Abed, please–“
Abed turned around, his breath shuddering. He jerked out of his dad’s grip and took off down the street, ignoring his dad’s yells. He didn’t care if he got hurt, because he was already hurt. His dad had already dug the knife in by lying to him for years, and if the wound was already there, why not poke it a little?
-
When Abed got to the bus stop, he pulled out his phone and called Jeff. He held it to his ear, chewing his bottom lip and tapping his foot as he listened to the dial tone. His thoughts were so loud– why did my parents abandon me? What will I find if I look for them? There was still a chance that they were aliens… What if I’m the product of a relationship between an alien and a human, and that’s why they had to abandon me? Are my parents even on Earth anymore? Do I even call them my parents? Do I need to stop calling Dad Dad? How did Brad fit into all this? Is he my brother? Why didn’t he leave Earth with our parents?– that he could barely hear it ringing. After what felt like hours, Jeff answered with a casual, “What’s up?”
Abed barely let him finish before speaking his mind, “So I was looking into that article you showed me earlier, and I did some Googling and, at first, I thought I was gonna have to find a cure for a disease or stop a meteor, but then–“
“Abed,” Jeff interrupted. Abed took a moment to blink and suck in a deep breath. Only then did he realise how much he was hyperventilating. “You’re not making much sense.”
“It makes perfect sense, Jeff. I thought Brad was me from the future, but using a different name so the authorities wouldn’t find out that time travel had been invented, and I thought he came back to find me so I could help him stop the apocalypse or–“
“You’re rambling. Just take a deep breath and get to the point.”
Abed took another breath. There was so much more he wanted to say, but Jeff had told him to get to the point, so he cried, “I’m adopted.”
Jeff coughed. Abed wondered if he had done the sitcom cliche of spitting out a glass of water in shock. He would’ve laughed at the mental image, had his world not been turned on its head twenty minutes ago. He stared directly ahead as the bus pulled up, and Jeff continued to splutter, “You’re– what?”
“I’m adopted.”
“No, no, I heard, I just– what? That’s crazy.”
As he stepped on the bus and scanned his bus pass with a trembling hand, Abed hummed. “So Brad could be my brother.”
“Fucking hell. Are you… okay?”
“No.”
“Right, yeah, of course you’re not.” Abed sank into a seat at the back of the bus, pressing his forehead against the window and watching the world move by outside. He wasn’t sure what to think or what to feel, but his stomach was aching, and each breath took all of his energy. When Abed didn’t say anything else, Jeff sighed. “Do you want to come over?” If Abed were thinking straight, he would’ve thought going to Jeff’s was a good idea. However, he was not. All he could think about was tracking down his family and finding out the truth, so he dodged Jeff’s question.
“How did you find the article?”
“What?”
“How did you find the article?”
“Uh…” The bus braked suddenly, making Abed lurch forward and hit his forehead against the window. He could barely feel it. “One of the guys from my old firm reached out because he’d seen some photos of me and you, and he thought I knew Brad, so he was asking what I thought of it.”
“So would he know where Mythic Quest’s headquarters are?” The only way to stop the thoughts and the anxiety was by hunting Brad down and interrogating him. It wouldn’t be too difficult if he just put on his Inspector Spacetime cap and detached himself from the emotionality of the situation.
“Abed, where are you? I think I should come get you.”
“I’m on the bus. Don’t come get me, just tell me if your friend knows where Mythic Quest’s headquarters are.”
“You need to slow down. It’s been a long day. You are not looking for Brad.”
The bus pulled up to Abed’s stop, so he stood up and headed out of the side door. He only responded to Jeff once he was walking briskly down the street towards his dorm. Even then, he only muttered, “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“You’re not thinking straight.”
Abed rolled his eyes as he turned a corner. He should have known that Jeff wouldn’t understand. He didn’t get along with his own family, so he was probably jealous that Abed had two families. He clenched his jaw and shook his head to himself. “I understand. You don’t want to help me.”
“Abed, I’m just asking you to take a second to think about what you’re doing.”
Abed counted five seconds in his head. “I just thought about it for five seconds, and I haven’t changed my mind.”
“Well, if you’re going, at least let me drive you.”
Unlocking the door to his dorm and stepping inside, Abed threw his wardrobe open and eyed up his endless supply of jackets and sweaters. He hadn’t thought about the travel logistics– unfortunately, he didn’t have an X-7 Dimensionizer like the Inspector, but he supposed Jeff’s car was preferable to the bus. “I’m going, whether you’re coming or not.”
Jeff sighed so loudly that the phone line crackled, and Abed scrunched his face up at the high-pitched noise. “I’ll come to your dorm in twenty, okay? Don’t you dare leave without me.” Abed glanced at the clock, taking a moment to figure out that the time was quarter past six.
“You have twenty minutes. I leave in twenty-one.”
“Okay.”
Abed hung up. He mindlessly threw his phone onto his bed and grabbed the first jacket and shirt he saw, shoving them into his bag. His laptop and charger were already in there, and those were the main things characters took on long journeys, so he sat down on his bed to wait for Jeff. The entire time, his leg bounced up and down, and he rocked his shoulders, adrenaline pumping. His head was still spinning, so he closed his eyes as he moved to avoid getting too dizzy.
Twenty minutes later, a knock rang through Abed’s dorm. He shot up and unlocked the door, freezing when he saw that Jeff was not alone. Troy, Britta and Annie were standing with him, and they all looked equally as concerned. Britta’s eyes were wide and shiny, Annie had her eyebrows furrowed and her arms folded, and Troy’s face was already wet.
Abed blinked at them. “You didn’t tell me you were going to invite the study group,” he muttered.
“He messaged us saying you were going to find your long-lost family,” Annie explained with a shake of her head. “If you’re adamant you want to go, we figured we could make a road trip out of it so we can all keep you safe.”
With a sigh, Abed waved his hand. He didn’t have the time to argue; he wanted to get to the Mythic Quest headquarters as soon as possible before he lost his mind. He wasn’t even sure where exactly the headquarters were yet, but he was hoping he would figure it out on the road. “Whatever. I just want to go. Come or don’t, I don’t care.”
As Abed pushed past them towards Jeff’s car, he just about heard Troy’s mumble of, “This is wrinkling my brain.”