Chapter Text
Abed is seventeen when he loses his virginity.
He’s at his high school’s library, finishing his homework at the corner table he always sits at. The library is quiet and nearly empty; it’s almost closing time. Abed closes his books and checks his watch. Hopefully it’s late enough that Josh Peterson and his lackeys won’t be loitering around the school parking lot or anywhere nearby and he’ll be able to get home safe.
He packs up his things, swings his messenger bag over his shoulder and makes his way out of the library without anyone paying any attention to him – or so he thinks. Just as he steps out into the hallway, he hears quick footsteps behind him, and then a girl’s voice quietly calls out his name.
“Abed?”
Abed turns around and finds himself face to face with a senior who’s always holed up in the natural sciences section. The library door closes behind her and she stops in her tracks, like she’s suddenly forgotten what she was doing.
“Hi,” she says after a beat. “I’m Emma.”
“I know.”
Her full name is Emma Davies, although Abed isn’t sure how he knows that; she’s two years ahead of him and he’s never spoken to her before. He knows that she walks the school hallways with her nose constantly buried in a book and she’s in the library whenever Abed is there, but he thinks that unlike him, she’s there because she actually wants to be, rather than to avoid getting shoved into a locker. It surprises him a little that she knows his name too; he forgets sometimes that being an observer doesn’t prevent him from being observed.
He’s definitely being observed now. Emma’s gaze trails up and down his body, like she’s trying to figure out his clothing size.
Then she bites her lower lip, takes a deep breath and says, very evenly,
“Would you like to have sex with me?”
Out of all the things she could possibly have asked him, Abed definitely couldn’t have predicted this one.
“Is this a joke?” he asks when he gets over his surprise enough to speak. That’s the only reason he can think of why she’d ask him something like that. It’s a joke at his expense: make him believe someone is interested in him, then laugh at him for believing it. Emma doesn’t seem like the type to do something like that, but Abed has been wrong about people before.
“No, but I guess it makes sense you’d think that,” Emma replies, a little thoughtfully, as if it hadn’t occurred to her until know how her question might come across. “No, this is a seriously meant offer of no-strings-attached sex. One time thing, purely pragmatic, I’m not trying to date you or anything. I just decided I want to have sex before I go to college, preferably with a human male capable of basic cognitive functions. I thought you might be interested.”
She says all that fast but matter-of-factly, like it doesn’t matter to her that she’s revealing fairly personal things to someone who is only a little better than a complete stranger.
Then again, if she really wants to sleep with, this won’t be the only personal thing she’ll reveal to him
Abed tilts his head to the side, trying to make sense of this. “Why?”
“Because you’re a teenage boy at the very bottom of this school’s pecking order, so I assume your options to relieve your raging hormones are about as limited as mine.”
Abed has absolutely no idea how to react to that, so he just stares at her. Her hair is pulled into pigtail buns on either side of her head and she’s dressed in baggy dungarees and a pastel yellow sweatshirt. She doesn’t wear glasses, which Abed thinks is a bit of a missed opportunity – if she did, she would be a prime candidate for a She’s All That, turns-out-she-was-pretty-all-along reveal.
“Sorry, was that rude?” Emma says when Abed takes too long to reply, cringing a little. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“It’s fine,” Abed shrugs. He doesn’t get offended by facts.
And the fact is that Abed has never even thought about sex as something that might realistically happen to him any time soon, if at all. He knows his character type: he’s a nerd. He’s supposed to be sexually inexperienced, awkward around girls and remain a virgin well past the point when it starts being embarrassing. That’s his role, and he’s always been fine with it.
But… maybe it doesn’t have to be. Maybe he can play a slightly different role.
“So what do you say?” Emma prompts.
Abed only considers it for a second longer before agreeing.
“Okay,” he nods. Just because he’s fine not having sex if it’s not in his character arc doesn’t mean he’s not curious about it. He is a teenage boy, after all. And first sexual experiences are often pivotal elements of coming-of-age stories. Abed would like a coming-of-age story, one where he emerges more confident and comfortable with himself at the end. And Emma’s right, he might not get another opportunity any time soon, or ever.
“Okay?” Emma repeats, her eyes widening, like she didn’t expect him to agree. Then she smiles, showing her teeth. It’s a pretty smile. “Great! How’s Thursday after school for you? My parents won’t be at home.”
“Cool,” Abed says before he can think better of it. “Cool cool cool.”
She asks for his phone number so she can text him the address and tells him to bring condoms. And then she just goes back inside the library, leaving Abed standing in the hallway, trying to wrap his mind around what just happened.
*
Abed shows up at the address Emma gave him at the agreed time, freshly showered and with a box of condoms in the pocket of his jeans.
He doesn’t feel particularly nervous. He has nothing to lose – if he’s bad at sex, it will just confirm the sexually awkward nerd trope. He and Emma have no attachment to each other; they can just go back to ignoring each other as they sit in the library. Even if she made fun of him, or told someone (he doesn’t think she would, but if she did), it wouldn’t really be anything new. Abed is no stranger to mockery.
So if it goes wrong, he’ll be fine. But he’s decided to do everything he can to make sure it goes right. He doesn’t want Emma to regret her decision. Even if she only chose Abed because she couldn’t find anyone better, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to enjoy the time they spend together. It would be nice if she did. People don’t usually like spending time with Abed.
He’s well aware that first times are often awkward and mediocre, unless the characters are each other’s end game, and possibly even more often, they are painful and unsatisfying for the girl. So Abed spent every free moment of the last three days finding out how to avoid that.
Movies and TV are Abed’s traditional point of reference, but they don’t provide much practical advice on how to be good at sex, and Abed had doubts about how reliable they would be anyway. So he scoured online advice forums and blogs and memorized as much as he could. It won’t make up for his lack of practical experience, but surely it will be better than nothing. All he wants is for Emma not to hate it.
Emma is wearing a loose t-shirt and yoga pants when she opens the door for him, clearly not trying to impress him. Abed likes that better than if she had dressed up – people are easier to understand when they aren’t putting on a show. Her hair is loose, a soft cloud of curls around her head, and Abed likes that even better.
She takes him up to her room. It’s the first time Abed has been inside the room of someone his age, other than his cousins, and he looks around eagerly, because bedrooms can be good indicators of character. Emma’s room is neat and tidy, with a large poster of two dolphins above the bed and a fish tank on the other side. There’s a framed print above her desk, showing what looks like various reptile skeleton drawings from an old-timey anatomy textbook. There are books everywhere, and Abed catches titles like Encyclopedia of Marine Biology, Mammalian Mating Systems and Strategies, Essential Ornithology. Animal lover, then, but taking a scientific approach to it. He could see Emma as a scientist, the kind who focuses on her experiments and doesn’t have much patience for the real world, until her quiet scientific existence is interrupted by a character who is the complete opposite of her, bringing chaos and excitement and jokes she doesn’t understand, and together they fight crime –
“Did you get the condoms?” Emma asks, interrupting Abed’s train of thought.
Abed hands her the box and she examines it. Apparently satisfied, she places on the bedside table and looks at Abed.
“Okay, I don’t want to drag this out, so let’s get to it,” Emma says bluntly, and before Abed can finish the thought that this probably doesn’t count as setting the mood, she begins taking off her clothes. Her movements are brisk and efficient, not designed to tease, but Abed still finds himself captivated enough it takes him a moment to start stripping too.
And then they’re both in their underwear, openly staring at each other. Emma’s bra is pale blue with white polka dots and her panties are plain black; they don’t match the way movies have led Abed to believe they would, but he doesn’t mind. He’s fascinated by the way her bra strap crosses her collar bone, the way the lacy trimmings cup the swell of her breasts, a mole on her hip right above the line of her panties. She looks like… a woman. A real person, flesh and blood, living and breathing, right here in the room with him.
She’s chosen Abed to share this with her, this pivotal experience in her coming-of-age story. So what if she only picked Abed because she felt he was her only option? Abed is the one who gets to be here. He gets to have this. He, Abed, gets to share something good (hopefully) with another human being.
He desperately wants it to be good.
“Shouldn’t we kiss first?” he asks. She doesn’t want to drag it out, which is fine, he wants to do this however she wants so that she’ll like it, but all of Abed’s research indicated that foreplay is essential. He tears his gaze away from the dip of her waist, which is when he notices that she’s been looking at him with equal interest, and his face flushes warm.
“Yeah,” Emma nods. She takes a step closer and Abed mirrors her, until they’re close enough he can feel the warmth radiating off her, her breath on his chin. She’s almost as tall as him, so he barely has to bend his head to reach her lips.
It feels clumsy and uncoordinated at first, lips and noses bumping together, but they find their way soon enough, learning, exploring. He cups her jaw, the tips of his fingers tangling in the curls behind her ear, and he’s suddenly glad that she’s unlikely to have an unnecessary makeover – they’d probably straighten her hair, and that would be a shame.
The kiss builds and deepens as their confidence grows. The first touch of her tongue against his is weird and slimy, the second is fine, the third is unexpectedly, overwhelmingly good. Somehow Abed finds himself sitting on the edge of the bed again with Emma straddling his lap, her fingers in his hair, his hands on her hips. She’s warm and real and Abed gets to touch her, kiss her, feel her breathing pick up, hear her sigh, feel her fingers on his skin. He gets to kiss down her neck and along her shoulder, pushing that strap out of the way.
He doesn’t do anything more to take her bra off, in case that’s not what she wants, but she clearly does, reaching behind herself to undo the clasp.
“You can touch them,” she prompts when the garment is out of the way, and so Abed does, cupping the weight of her breast in his palm, tracing a dusky nipple with the pad of his thumb and then, because he’s read it’s supposed to feel good, with his tongue.
She sighs, fingers tightening in his hair.
“Good?” Abed asks, needing to be sure.
“Yeah,” she exhales, her face flushed. “Do it again.”
And that’s the best thing so far: the confirmation that what he’s doing feels good to her. Something hot and heady courses through his veins, settling heavily in his groin. He’s really doing it, sharing something pleasurable and meaningful with another human being. It’s not very difficult to learn to read her reactions. This is straightforward: either it feels good or it doesn’t, there’s no room for sarcasm or mockery or hidden meanings, and Abed can do this.
It’s a little awkward and ungainly as they rearrange their limbs around each other and lie down, losing their underwear in the process, but they get there.
Emma may be inexperienced, but she clearly knows her own body and isn’t afraid to ask for what she likes, which is exactly what Abed hoped for. He’s more than happy to follow her cues, moving is fingers in the slick, wet heat between her legs, hesitant at first, then more confident as he gets the hang of it. Emma isn’t shy about her reactions, sighing and trembling, letting him know when something doesn’t feel right and whispering yeah, just like that, don’t stop, when it does. And Abed doesn’t want to stop, he never wants to stop because this is incredible, her flushed face and parted lips and heaving chest, all because of him.
His focus falters when her hand wraps around him. Her touch is tentative, exploratory and curious rather than stimulating, lighter than how Abed is used to touching himself, but this is also so much more intense than anything he’s ever done on his own and it feels like a gentle breeze in the right direction could get him off. He makes a kind of strangled sound in the back of his throat and jerks his hips away from her hand.
“Sorry, not good?” Emma asks. She wants him to feel good, too, Abed realizes. She doesn’t have to, Abed probably wouldn’t care if she didn’t, but she does. They’re doing this together. Even if this is just once and they don’t really know each other, they’re connected by the mutual pursuit of pleasure.
Connected. Abed’s breath catches in his throat.
“No, it’s… it’s good,” he rasps. “But I’ll come if you keep doing that.”
“Oh. Let’s fuck, then,” Emma says, and reaches for the box of condoms.
This is it, Abed thinks as he pushes inside her, achingly slow to avoid hurting her. This is the closest two human beings can physically be to each other. And it’s not just for normal people, Abed can have it, too. Closeness, connection, intimacy. He can have it, he has it.
He only starts moving when she tells him to. He goes slow and careful, watching Emma’s face for any sign of discomfort, fighting his body’s instinct to rut to completion. And it pays off, because soon his slow, if shaky, rhythm starts earning him those good, shuddery sighs as she relaxes into it, and she asks him to go harder.
Abed’s heartbeat seems to be reverberating through his entire body, faster and faster, as the heat between them rises. He picks up his pace again and the bed starts creaking under them in a tell-tale rhythm, the way it does in movies when the camera discreetly turns to the wall, and there’s the sound of skin against skin and Emma’s quiet moans and Abed’s own panting breaths and it really sounds like they’re fucking, because they are, and that’s enough to push him over the edge.
“Sorry,” he mutters when he pulls out carefully.
“What for?” Emma asks. She’s still breathless, sweat glistening on her forehead. “I thought that was pretty good for two nerdy virgins.”
Abed feels the praise to his bones. He turns away as he ties off the condom, hiding his face.
“But you didn’t finish,” he points out.
“That’s normal. Most women can’t come from penetration alone.”
Abed knew that, but he still feels bad that he didn’t have enough presence of mind to take care of her.
“Can I try with my mouth?” he offers.
An expression flitters across Emma’s face, perhaps surprise.
“Sure,” she murmurs. “If you want.”
Abed does want. The taste and smell of her on his fingers didn’t bother him, which he’d been a little worried about, and more importantly, all his sources indicate it’s supposed to feel really good.
She exhales shakily as he finds his place between her thighs. He kisses the mole on her hip before trailing his lips down to her core, feeling her abdominal muscles tense in anticipation. He ignores his nerves – her remembers everything about fingering her before, all he has to do is repeat the same motions with his tongue.
And while that turns out not to be as straightforward as he hoped, it does work. He laps at her delicately, then less delicately when she asks for more. He listens to her every moan and change in breathing pattern, feels for every twitch in her muscles, every minute shift of her hips. She tells him what she likes, sometimes with words, always with her body. It’s just a matter of paying attention.
Her breathing gets faster, her voice gets higher, and Abed feels almost drunk on it. He slips two fingers back inside her, stroking her the way she taught him before while he redoubles his efforts with his tongue and lips. He can feel it when she comes, her inner walls fluttering around his fingers, thighs trembling, hips jerking against his mouth, and it’s incredible, it’s everything.
He made her come.
He’s the first person to ever make her come. That means he’ll always matter to her, in a way. People don’t forget who they lost their virginity to. If he never means anything to anybody else ever again, he’ll always mean something to her. That’s one person more than he dared to hope for.
He’s not sure what to do now that they’re done, so he just lies there and watches her as her breathing returns to normal and the flush in her cheeks starts receding.
“Did you know fruit bats have oral sex?” she says conversationally after a moment. “I get it now, it’s kind of amazing.”
Abed swallows the lump in his throat. “I didn’t know that.”
(Batman definitely gives oral sex, he muses in the back of his mind. His mask covers only the top half of his face.)
Emma turns her head slightly to look at him. “We can try the other way round some time, if you want.”
It takes Abed a moment to understand what the other way round means because his brain gets caught up on some time.
“I thought this was a no-strings-attached, one-time thing.”
“Well, yeah,” Emma shrugs. “But it could be a no-strings-attached, more-times thing. If you want. No pressure.”
Why would Abed say no to that?
*
It becomes a regular thing they do. They explore each other’s bodies, learn how to make each other feel good. Practice really does make perfect, Abed finds. Like rewatching the same episode over and over helps him notice details he missed the first time, the more he sleeps with Emma, the better he learns to read her body, the better he knows how to pleasure her. There’s something addictive about it, about touching her and knowing she likes it, about covering her body with his and knowing she wants him there. It’s not quite up there with watching The Empire Strikes Back for the first time, but it’s close.
He keeps a notebook where he records his observations about what she likes and what she dislikes, what works and what doesn’t. Prefers penetration after orgasm. Sensitive nipples, sometimes uncomfortably so (related to menstrual cycle? Insufficient data). Likes touching my hair while receiving oral sex. Likes being on top, but doggy style provides more intense internal stimulation. He has pages and pages of notes to help him make each encounter more satisfying than the previous one.
It feels like they’re sharing the same moment, the same experience, speaking the same language. Like Abed belongs.
He thinks they probably don’t count as friends with benefits if the benefits are pretty much all they ever do together, but he’ll take it. He’s never had anyone to hang out with after school before. It’s cool. Sometimes she tells him interesting animal facts, and though she mostly doesn’t understand when Abed makes a TV reference, she never tells him to shut up.
The end of the school year approaches, and with it, Emma’s prom. She brings it up once, as they walk together to her house, and he thinks for a second that maybe— But no. That’s fine, though. Abed makes her come three times in a row that afternoon, which is way better than a school dance could ever be.
They keep seeing each other over the summer. Emma goes on whale watching cruise, Abed and his dad visit family in Detroit like they do every year, but when they’re both at home, between Abed’s shifts at the falafel shop and Emma’s tutoring, they find their way into each other’s beds. Abed has never had anyone to hang out with over the summer, either. He’s never minded much, he’s always been happy enough to watch TV on his own, but it’s nice to switch the TV off occasionally because there’s someone who wants to see him. He likes watching Emma, too – the freckles on the bridge of her nose, her curls spilled over a pillow, her teeth digging into her lower lip when she bites back a moan, the way her eyelashes flutter when something feels good, the line of her throat when she lets her head fall back, her muscles rippling under her skin as she moves against him. He’d watch her on repeat if he could.
*
“They’re showing Matrix at the dollar theater,” he says on a hot day in August as they lie next to each other, sweaty and spent. “I was thinking about going to see it. Do you want to come?”
He doesn’t meet her eyes as he says it. He’s been working up the courage to ask her for a while, and he’s well aware he’s setting himself up for rejection, but he has to try.
Emma is quiet for a long moment, pulling at a loose thread in her bedsheets.
“Okay,” she says eventually, and Abed’s breath catches for no reason. “Why not.”
The thing to do at the theater, Abed knows, would be for him to reach for her hand resting on the armrest between them, and when she doesn’t pull away, thread their fingers together. But whenever Abed remembers to tear his gaze away from the screen, her hands are folded in her lap. So they just watch the movie, and nothing happens. And once it ends, Abed is bursting with opinions and observations to think about taking her hand then.
It’s probably for the best, though.
“Abed,” she interrupts his monologue when they leave the theater, and Abed recognizes that tone of voice from his father – it means she hasn’t been listening to him. She touches his wrist then, but it’s not to hold his hand, just to get his attention, make him stop walking, stop talking.
She looks up at him, freckles even more prominent after weeks in the sun, lip gloss mostly gone from her lips with no help from Abed. Abed doesn’t know what she’s about to say, but he also does.
“Thank you. I’ve had a great time with you these last few months. But I’m leaving soon and I’ve got a million things left to do, so I don’t think I’ll have time to see you again before I go.”
Abed’s social skills leave a lot to be desired, but even he can tell what this really is: he’s being let down gently. He’s not sure why she said yes when he asked her out; maybe she simply didn’t know how to say no, maybe she felt sorry for him. He knew Emma was going away to college at the end of the summer, and it’s not like he thought that if they went out and it turned out they liked each other outside the bedroom, she’d decide to stay, or even just keep some kind of long-distance thing going with him. Except… it seems part of him did. Or hoped, for something. For confirmation that some strings have gotten attached after all. But they haven’t. And now Emma knows Abed failed to keep his side of the bargain, so she prefers not to see him again.
Her face scrunches up a little as he looks at him; Abed doesn’t know what it means. Maybe she’s uncomfortable. Abed doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable, not ever.
“Okay,” he says, suddenly needing this to be over. “Good luck at Stanford.”
“Thanks,” she smiles a little, although it doesn’t look like her usual smile. “Take care.” She leans in and kisses his cheek, and that’s it. The end.
Abed spends the rest of summer break watching Back to the Future Part II over and over again, simply because that’s what’s in his DVD player and he can’t be bothered to take it out.
*