Chapter Text
Abed is the one who brings up the idea of moving in together.
He knows Troy will never broach the subject again, because he tried once before and Abed shot him down, worried about jumping the shark. Abed isn’t worried about that anymore; their relationship has evolved, and with it, their narrative. His dad wants him to move out of the dorms, and Abed feels okay about that, and there’s no one he’d rather live with than Troy.
Luckily, Troy agrees immediately. He’s obviously more than ready to get out of Pierce’s house, which Abed completely understands. He tries not to have much to do with Pierce if he can help it, and he feels a little bad that Troy ended up moving in with him when Abed said no. He hopes this will make up for it, even just a little bit. He likes it when Troy is happy.
They start making plans. They find an apartment and sign a lease. They set a moving date. And that’s when it starts to become real to Abed, when he starts getting everything ready -- that’s when he realizes that he is going to be living with another person, and he starts to think about everything that entails.
Because the only people he’s lived with until this point are his parents, one of whom he is pretty sure left specifically because of what it was like to live with Abed. And his dad never left, but he never seemed thrilled, either, when forced to deal with what Abed likes to think of as his quirks, but are actually more like behaviors, and he knows some of them aren’t pretty, they’re annoying and embarrassing and frustrating and Bad.
In fact, he’d really enjoyed living on his own in the dorms, because for once he didn’t find himself caught in constant arguments about things he couldn’t explain, and he didn’t have to keep trying to justify his actions with little to no success. He didn’t have to navigate the difficult path of being aware that he’s making another person’s life difficult while also knowing there’s nothing he can really do about it.
All of these things start to pop into his mind at once as he’s packing up his dishes and realizing Troy is going to notice that he only owns bowls, no plates, and he has a couple of forks but almost a dozen spoons. And then it occurs to him that they’re going to buy groceries together, and Troy doesn’t even know about all of Abed’s weird food things yet.
He steps away from the dishes and grabs his weighted blanket and a shoebox from beside the bed. He turns out the light in his room, then wraps himself up in the blanket and sits down on the couch. From the box he takes a necklace with a silicone pendant hanging from it. He drapes the cord around his neck and puts the pendant in his mouth and starts to chew on it. He turns on the TV, finds a channel showing reruns of Step By Step, and tries to calm down.
Three episodes in, there’s a knock on the door. Abed slowly exits the cocoon of his blanket, hides his chew necklace, and shuffles to the door, and he’s surprised to find Jeff standing there. Abed hasn’t seen Jeff since the end of last semester, and hadn’t really expected to see him again until school starts up again in a couple more weeks. He’s conflicted, because he’s glad to see his friend -- he missed him a lot, actually -- but he’s also still kind of frazzled and shaky and exhausted.
He lets Jeff in, though, and gestures for him to sit down on the couch. Abed doesn’t want to seem weird, but he also feels floaty and disconnected, so he wraps himself back up in the blanket and sits down, his head resting against the wall, before he turns to face Jeff.
“Hi,” Abed finally says.
“Hey,” Jeff replies. “I was starting to think you lost your voice.”
Abed shakes his head. “Sorry, you just...caught me at a weird time, I guess.”
“Everything okay?” Jeff asks, frowning slightly, and Abed can see him taking a closer look at his face.
“Yeah,” Abed says, trying to look confident. “So, what’s up?”
“I just had to take care of some paperwork with the administration office,” Jeff explains. “And since I was here, I thought I’d stop by and say hi. I didn’t mean to interrupt or anything, though. I can leave if you need me to.”
“No, it’s fine,” Abed says, and maybe it’s the panic about moving, or maybe it’s the residual loneliness from spending the summer alone in his dorm, but Abed finds himself unable to stop talking. “I was kind of freaking out and trying to calm down when you knocked on the door,” he admits. “If I’m being weird, that’s probably why.”
“Not weird,” Jeff says. “You just seem a little out of it, maybe. Your face is super pale. Are you okay? Do you, uh, want to talk about it?”
Abed hesitates. Actually, he does want to talk about it. He’s just not quite sure he knows how. He doesn’t say anything for a while as he mulls it around in his head. Finally, he decides that if Jeff was willing to stay friends with him after the stop-motion Christmas disaster, he can probably trust him with this.
“I’m moving into an apartment with Troy pretty soon,” he says. “Please don’t tell the group. We want to announce it on our first day back.”
“That’s great, Abed,” Jeff says sincerely. “I bet Troy will be glad to get out of Pierce’s place.”
“Yeah,” Abed says. “I’m just nervous about living with him, I guess.”
“How come?” Jeff asks. “You guys are best friends.”
“I’ve just never…” Abed pauses and tries to think how to phrase what he wants to say. “I don’t want to drive Troy away.”
“Why do you think you’d drive Troy away?”
Abed pulls his stocking feet up onto the couch and then adjusts his blanket so that it covers all of him except his head.
“You know how I’m crazy?” he asks, staring over Jeff’s shoulder at nothing.
“Abed!”
“Sometimes ‘crazy’ is easier for me to say,” Abed clarifies, and shrugs under the blanket.
“Easier than…” Jeff trails off, waiting.
Abed gives him a look.
“Is this your way of telling me you actually do have some kind of...neurodivergence or mental health issue, and I should feel like a dick for what I said to you in front of everyone at our first study group?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” Abed says with a small smile. “But come on, Jeff. You’ve known that since Christmas, at least.”
“Okay, point taken,” Jeff says, rolling his eyes. “I am sorry about that. For real. Now, tell me what you’re worried about with Troy.”
“I know you guys have all gotten used to some of the weird stuff I do,” Abed says. “But there’s kind of a lot more to it than that. The kinds of things that I generally deal with on my own, usually in the privacy of this room. And that’s going to change when I’m living with Troy. He’s gonna realize how weird and...and scary I can be.” He stares down at his lap.
“First of all, you might be weird, but you’re not scary,” Jeff says.
“You don’t know that,” Abed retorts. He takes one arm out of the blanket and pulls it out of its sleeve. Then he thrusts his bare arm at Jeff.
“Shit, what happened?” Jeff hisses, gently taking Abed’s arm and pulling it closer to inspect.
“These are where I bit myself,” Abed says bitterly, pointing to two red marks. Then he slides a finger over a few purple-blue patches and continues, “Those bruises are from pinching. And that one,” he adds, tracing over a brownish scar, “was from scratching.”
“Abed…”
“I told you I was scary,” Abed says, and tucks his arm back into the sleeve of his cardigan, then back under the blanket.
“That makes me scared for you, Abed. Not of you. There’s a difference.”
“I don’t want Troy to be scared for me, either.”
“Just tell him about it,” Jeff suggests. “Don’t wait for something to happen that forces him to find out. Tell him soon, before you even move in. Maybe you could write down the things you want him to know, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting anything.”
“Those,” Abed says after a short pause, “are actually excellent ideas. Thanks, Jeff.”
“Anytime,” Jeff says, and grins. “You know I’m always here, if you ever need to talk about anything. Don’t feel like you have to hide things from me, even if they’re weird. I was a lawyer. I’m familiar with weird.”
“Thanks,” Abed says. “I appreciate that a lot.”
“I should get going. It was good to see you. I, uh, missed hanging out this summer.” Jeff smiles and stands up.
“Me, too,” Abed replies. He gets up and walks Jeff to the door. “Bye, Jeff.”
“Bye, Abed.”
After he closes the door, Abed sits back down on the couch, wrapping his blanket around him. He grabs a blank notebook and a pen from the table and begins to write.