Archive of Our Own ^beta

Troy opened the door of his apartment, Abed at his side, to a tsunami of immediate high-pitched greetings.

“Heyyyy, everybody all at once,” he said. “What’s up?”

“We decided to all meet at the airport so we could surprise you,” Britta beamed.

“Although this is the time you told us to be here for your party, so hopefully you are expecting us,” Frankie added.

“It’s so good to see you guys!” Annie gushed, leaping forward for a hug. “It’s been so long since we all came out and visited you in California!”

“But I swear to God, there had better be a good reason for this party. If it’s another surprise Bloodlines of Conquest Mid-Season Watch Party—” Abed wordlessly held up a bottle of scotch. Jeff snatched it from his hand and walked into the apartment. “—then I will happily raise a toast to Queen Whoever and the House of Nobody Cares.”

The group followed him—the girls, Shirley, Elroy, Chang, and the Dean—and quickly made themselves at home in the apartment. Shirley had smuggled a platter of brownies on the plane, somehow, and set them on the kitchen island, while Annie tried to do some covert dusting. Their apartment was modest in terms of size, but a lot nicer than the one in Colorado—the walls and appliances were all white and grey instead of that nasty mustard color, which looked cool but meant that it seemed to get dirtier much faster.

After a few minutes, people had settled on the couch, the armchairs, and the little round table that they called the dining room table even though they didn’t have a dining room, just a large space between the kitchen and the living room.

“So what is the occasion?” Annie asked from where she was perched on the arm of the couch. “Bloodlines of Conquest isn’t coming back for another month and a half.”

Troy glanced at Abed. He was feeling kind of giddy, and he was pretty sure he had a stupid grin on his face—he had had a stupid grin on his face for a couple days now, but he was proud of himself for not ruining this moment. They had planned it so carefully. Abed gave a subtle nod. 

They had been keeping their left hands behind their backs, but suddenly they whipped them out to show off the ring pops.

“Troy and Abed are enGAAAAGED!”

There was screaming. A lot of screaming. Like, that moment in the horror movie when the bad guy bursts through the door screaming, except with more hugging and with Chang shouting “gay!” in the background.

“Thanks, guys,” Troy said, voice muffled against the shoulder of whoever he was hugging. “We’re super excited.”

“You’re a little more excited than I expected,” Abed said—it was easier for him to talk, because he was taller. “Shirley, I thought you didn’t approve of gay marriage.”

“I don’t,” she said sweetly. “But you know I want you boys to be happy, and on the scale of sexual deviance, I think a phony secular marriage brings you closer to God than premarital relations.”

“Aw, thanks,” Troy said.

“You’re seriously awwing that?” Jeff muttered.

Shirley bustled off to the kitchen to distribute the brownies. Troy had dipped into his Rich People Money to buy a giant, expensive bottle of champagne, which he needed Britta’s help to pour. They passed the drinks out and Troy sat beside Abed at the dining room table, lacing their fingers together.

“How did it happen?” Annie asked. “I love a good proposal story.”

“It started when we were watching Dragonnami, the Japanese version of Sharknado where a tsunami sweeps a bunch of komodo dragons across Tokyo,” Abed said, spreading out his hands to set the scene. “We were about halfway through, right after a komodo dragon bites the hand off a Yakuza boss, inadvertently firing his gun to kill the rest of the gang, and Troy said ‘you know what would make this night even more awesome?’ and I said ‘ring pops’ and he said ‘what if we got married?’ and I said ‘what?’ and he said ‘ring pops.’ So then we went out to a bodega to get ring pops. On the way back, I was thinking about what he said and while we were waiting for a crosswalk I got down on one knee and had a mild mental breakdown.”

“Abed—”

“No, no, it’s cool, I mean that in a good way.”

“Yeah, he was just kind of smiling at me all dopey,” Troy said with a fond smile. “I could tell he was pitching stuff in his head. So I said yes. Then we swapped rings and finished Dragonnami and texted you guys to get down here.”

There was a chorus of delightful sounds, except for Jeff, who asked, “How long have you been sucking on those ring pops?”

“We bought a 10-lb bag,” Abed shrugged. “Hopefully that will last until the wedding. We don’t want a long engagement.

“Well, I’m happy for you guys,” Britta declared. “Normally, you know, I think weddings are just a tool to keep us working as the cog in the sexism machine, but you’re totally flipping the script!”

Everybody groaned.

“Have you picked a date yet? And are you going to have the wedding here in Los Angeles or are you coming home?” Shirley asked, fluttering her eyelashes in a way that totally would have made Troy feel guilty if they hadn’t already decided to do what she wanted. 

“Uh, no, have you seen weddings in this city?” Troy snorted. “They get crazy. We’ll come back to Colorado. Honestly, we might just come up one weekend to elope and avoid all the… what?” he trailed off as Abed slowly turned and gave him the evil eye, the ‘you just said a complimentary thing about the Star Wars prequel and now you’re dead to me’ look.

“How dare you,” he whispered.

“What? What did I do?”

“This is the culmination of our years-long will-they-won’t-they romantic subplot, Troy. Regardless of whether or not the marriage manages to retain anyone’s interest, our wedding is going to be the day with the highest ratings and the greatest approval. It’s cheap emotion; we don’t even have to work for it. And you’re going to deprive me of a wedding episode? How dare you? ”

“Abed—” Troy spluttered.

Abruptly, Abed stood and stormed to their bedroom, slamming the door behind him. There was a heavy silence in the living room.

“Wow,” Chang said. “Shortest engagement ever.”

“Troy, sweetie,” Shirley said softly, but Troy shook his head with a laugh.

“Oh, duh. Don’t worry, guys, I know what this is.”

He jogged the length of the apartment twice, and all their friends stared.

“Troy. Explain yourself,” Jeff ordered.

“Well, it’s not raining, so what else am I supposed to do?” Troy asked. After another pass, he decided that he was breathing hard enough and he stopped outside the door. He pounded on it with a fist.

“Abed! I’m sorry, okay! I didn’t mean it.” He slumped with his back against the door. “Listen, I don’t care what our wedding is like. I would have it in the middle of a hurricane, wearing a tutu, with a guest list full of blorgons if that was what made you happy. All I care about is being married to you!”

There was a pause. Troy sighed and stood straight, just in time for the door to fling open. He turned around and paused for suspense. Then Abed flung his arms around him in a hug. There was a smattering of applause, and they returned to their seats holding hands.

“Was that your first ever stupid misunderstanding used solely to perpetuate the plot?” Annie cooed.

“Yeah, I really want to get the full experience,” Abed nodded. “Oh, speaking of which, do you guys want to help us plan the wedding?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Freddie said. She was carrying something that looked more like a briefcase than a purse, and she pulled out a black binder, which she handed to Abed, and then a label maker, with which she printed out a sticker reading Barnes + Nadir Wedding to slap on the cover. “How many highlighters do you already have?” she asked. “I’ve got some here—”

“Yeah, we’ll get to that.” Abed tossed the binder on the table behind them and spread his hands in pitch mode. “First, think of every sitcom wedding episode you’ve ever seen. What do they all have in common?”

“I still don’t have a TV, sweetie.”

“Straight people,” Britta declared, looking smugly around the group. She held up a fist bump to the Dean—Craig—Troy was still getting used to this whole “yes, the Dean and Chang are actually for real in the group” thing—who rolled his eyes.

“No,” Abed said, pointing. “It’s things going wrong. Unplanned pregnancies are revealed, bad weather sabotages the ceremony, ties and dresses get ruined, ex-lovers crash the party, everything gets delivered to the wrong location, an ordained friend loses his notes, the couple sneaks out for a smaller ceremony with better mood lighting, zombies and aliens and pirates attack. That’s where all the emotional payoff comes from: overcoming the chaos.”

“Also, it’s a gay Muslim-Jehovah’s-Witness-ex-Jehovah’s-Witness-secular Arab-black-Polish wedding full of Greendale people,” Troy said with a shrug. “So we’re kind of already expecting chaos, and at this point we’re just leaning into it.”

“Okay, let’s get this show on the road.” Abed flipped the binder open—it was pre-filled with college-lined paper. “We need a charismatic friend to conduct the ceremony. Jeff?”

“If I say no, is the real officiant going to back out last minute, forcing me to step in anyway?”

“Cool, I’ll mark you down.”

“Hang on now, what about me?” Elroy said. “I’m great at weddings—y’all can ask Garrett. I bring some of that folksy, Morgan Freeman charm to the proceedings.”

“What’s my last name?” Troy asked, raising his eyebrows. He was still getting used to these new people in the group, too. They had met a couple of times in person, and every few weeks according to Annie’s precise phone tree schedule, but it wasn’t the same. Elroy paused.

“Andabed?” Troy cocked his head. “All right, point taken.”

“You can do the encouragement thing you did at Garrett’s wedding, assuming you can find enough white people,” Abed suggested.

“Speaking of the officiant,” Shirley began, and Troy could already tell she was ramping up to peak Mom Guilt voice. “No offense to Jeffrey, but are you sure you want an agnostic conducting the most important religious ceremony of your lives? I’m sure some of the more indulgent members of my church would be happy to—”

“Shirley, we are walking a very fine line here,” Troy interrupted. “An agnostic white dude is going to piss off both our families in equal amount, and that’s the balance we’re going with.”

“All right, if that’s what you want to do… well then, you know I’ve been thinking about expanding Shirley’s Sandwiches into a catering company ever since that nice, troubled Southern detective gave me a little nest egg. I’d be happy to do the catering—I’ve been practicing my cupcake towers.”

“You can make a tower out of cupcakes?” he gasped. “Awesome! Done!”

Shirley clapped.

“Okay, Shirley, Jeff, and Elroy are covered,” Abed said, scanning his list. “Annie, I’m giving you the hardass wedding coordinator role, aka the Monica—Frankie, don’t be offended, it’s just we’re going to give everybody plus-ones and you bringing your surprisingly perky girlfriend is going to be the B-plot.”

“My—” She flushed red.

“You really thought I would spend this much time around Quantico without meeting her?” Annie scoffed. “She hacked my phone and found your number within two hours of orientation. We got scones together.”

“I knew you had met,” Frankie said, crossing her arms. “I also thought you had a little something called discretion. The FBI’s pretty big on that, you know.”

Annie stared at the ceiling and pretended she hadn’t heard.

“Hey, Dean, you want to wear something inappropriate?” Troy suggested.

“Aw, thank you, Troy. But I’m actually pretty proud of the strides I’ve made in wearing the appropriate outfits at the appropriate times. Very sweet offer.”

“There’s no bride, so fancy white gowns are up for grabs,” Abed pointed out.

“Well, if it’s for the good of the wedding—”

“So that just leaves Britta and Chang, and no offense, but I think we can trust you guys to improv it,” Abed said, closing the binder. “Wedding planning is easy.”

He and Troy did their handshake. Jeff stood and lifted his glass.

“All right, all right. There will be time for planning shenanigans later. For now, let’s all raise a toast to Abed and Troy, the most absurdly compatible couple in the history of coupling. May your wedding be as much of a catastrophe as you want—no more and no less.”

“Hear hear!”

“Cheers!”

Troy looked around the living room and felt his heart grow a couple sizes, like the old-school Grinch movie. It was good to be with their friends again. Sure, he and Abed had made a few friends in LA, but it was different. A friend here and there wasn’t the same as a group of friends, a collection of people who could get together with absolutely no awkwardness or insecurity, who knew each other so well that they could fall back into their old routine after months of not seeing each other.

He glanced at Abed and knew that his boyfriend—fiancé—was thinking the same thing. They tapped their glasses together in silent agreement.

—

Most of the Nipple Study Group, as Abed had taken to calling it, stayed the weekend. It was cool. Troy and Abed got to take them around their favorite places in LA, like the Hollywood sign and the Del Taco where they always saw the fattest seagulls, and they only got lost twice. Annie and Britta talked a lot about color schemes and shades (which were colors except more complicated) and hors d'oeuvres (which they insisted were different than appetizers even though they couldn’t explain how), and getting jealous over Abed’s friendship with his writing partner Marisol, who was just like Annie because she was smart and brunette and just like Britta because she could mix a killer cocktail and like neither because she was Puerto Rican and lived in LA, which made her just a little bit cooler than both of them. Abed called it the perfect storm of insecurity.

Eventually the weekend had to end, though. Elroy drove back up to Silicon Valley by himself, and Troy and Abed offered to give the rest rides to the airport. Troy ended up driving the rental car, and somehow the Dean got shotgun.

“So Troy, not to push, but have you thought about where you and Abed might like to have the wedding? Because Greendale is thinking of getting into the high-end event hosting business.”

“How’s that going?” Shirley asked in a voice heavy with skepticism.

“It has its challenges,” Frankie said from the back-middle seat, which she had actually volunteered to take—that was a level of maturity Troy didn’t think he was ever going to achieve. “To make real money, it helps to have beautiful botanical gardens or a library with cathedral ceilings, but we’re banking on the fact that Greendale students have an unusual amount of nostalgia.”

“And who’s more nostalgic than you guys, huh? Abed’s nostalgic for movies he was barely alive for.”

“I don’t know,” Troy said slowly. “I don’t think we want to invite a million people, and if we have it at Greendale, you know everyone will try and crash. Todd doesn’t exactly make our guest list.”

Privately, he was thinking he wanted their wedding to look like Mike and Phoebe’s from Friends, which was one of his favorites of the many, many, many wedding episodes he and Abed had watched in the last few days. A small group of good friends, roses, maybe a dog, and snow. Snow always looked super romantic—the problem with Colorado was that romantic snow gave way to survival movie more often than not.

“We could do it in August, before classes start,” Frankie suggested.

“Really?” The idea of being married to Abed sooner rather than later did have its appeal. “Don’t weddings take, like, forever to plan? August is only six months from now.”

“Annie and Britta planned my second wedding to Andre in less than twenty-four hours,” Shirley pointed out. “Granted, that marriage was doomed from the very beginning, but I’m sure they won’t curse your wedding. And you have so many friends who can visit local vendors that it will be quicker than if you were trying to do everything yourselves from California.”

“Plus, think of how romantic it would be!” Annie said, and Troy didn’t have to glance in the mirror to know her eyes were doing the Disney princess thing. “Greendale is where you first met, first rapped together, watched your first movie together, first hugged, first held hands…”

“Technically we first met in Chang’s Spanish room. Would we have to get married there?”

“Of course not.”

“And not the study room, either. Abed would think that’s too derivative of Shirley’s wedding. And Jeff and Britta’s almost-wedding. And Jeff and Pierce’s wedding graduation. Damn, we really did milk that room for all it was worth.”

“We could do the ceremony on the quad and the reception in the cafeteria,” the Dean suggested. “After all, what is a wedding reception if not a big fancy dance?”

Troy grinned to himself as he stared out at the highway.

“Man, how is it Abed and I went to a million dances in that cafeteria and he was never my date?” he said, more to himself than anyone else, even though it made Shirley and Annie give the highest-pitch aw he had ever heard. “I’m not saying yes yet,” he warned them, glancing in the rearview mirror. “But we’ll think about it.”

—

The next day, Troy and Abed got up early so they could have breakfast together before taking the time to call their parents. Troy retreated to their bedroom, because he was pretty sure that out of their four combined parents, his dad was going to be the weirdest. He flopped down on their bed the wrong way, so his head dangled upside-down over the edge, and called his mom first.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mom.”

“Well well well well well. Troy Barnes is calling me. To what do I owe the honor?”

“Mom, I call you all the time.”

“Once every two weeks, or when you run out of money, or when you start thinking about Tarzan and get emotional. Now, you just called last Friday and you haven’t been broke since that crazy old white man gave you all his money. You been listening to Phil Collins, baby?”

“No! I’m just calling because I’ve got some news. Abed and I are engaged.”

“Is this one of those times when I ask what you did this weekend and you say ‘Abed and I went to the bottom of the ocean’ and you mean you made a submarine out of the box your couch came in?”

Troy rolled his eyes at the wall, because he could get away with it.

“No, it’s one of those times when I tell you I’m for real getting married, at the end of this summer, and you need to come and buy us a gift and cry at the ceremony.”

“Oh, Troy, that’s wonderful. Congratulations, baby, that’s great news—and so soon! Gosh, you’ve only been dating a year!”

“A year and a half,” Troy corrected. The blood was starting to rush to his head, so he sat up and blinked away white stars. “You knew Dad for how long before you guys got married?”

“Exactly,” she said darkly. “Not that I’m making a comparison, because Abed’s a very sweet boy. I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing.”

“We do, Mom. I know technically we’ve only been dating for a year and a half, but we’ve known each other for a lot longer than that. And honestly, our relationship hasn’t changed all that much from when we were best friends, so I don’t think going from boyfriends to husbands is going to make it any harder.”

“Well, I hope you’re right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so happy, baby.” There was a pause, and Troy smiled to himself. “Is your father coming to the wedding?”

He swung upside down again.

“I don’t know yet. I called you first.”

“Is he going to bring one of his girlfriends?” she asked with a sniff.

“Mom! I haven’t talked to him yet, but either way you guys can’t fight at my wedding! Okay?”

“I don’t fight,” she protested.

“Please. You’ve turned passive-aggressiveness into a martial art.”

That was the one thing Shirley and his mom actually had in common. His mom didn’t go to church anymore, and she burned everything she baked, but she could reduce a grown man to tears with one well-timed humph.

“I’m not judging your father for the fact that he seems to think it’s his God-given right to date 20 year old women who wear deep v-necks and no pantyhose to church. I’m just observing.”

“If I don’t give either of you a plus-one, will you promise to just ignore him?”

“...All right.”

“Okay, good. I’ve got to go, Mom. I love you.”

Troy hung up the phone, then rolled over and yelled into a pillow. It didn’t make him feel any better, but a minute later he got a text from Abed—smiley face, spinning hearts, happy alien, gay couple holding hands—and that did make him smile. He took a deep breath and dialed his dad’s number.

“Troy!”

“Hi, Dad.”

“Hey, son. What’s going on?”

“I got engaged.”

“No kidding! To who?”

Troy sighed.

“To Abed. You know, the guy I’ve been dating for eighteen and a half months. I asked him to marry me and he said yes.”

That wasn’t technically accurate, but he figured it was best to keep things simple and direct, or else things could get misinterpreted, like how he had been forced to say ‘Abed is a man and I am in a sexual relationship with him’ when he came out the third time for it to really stick. Even this seemed to be pushing it; his dad was quiet for a good thirty seconds.

“Oh,” he said finally. “Okay.”

“Congratulations…?” Troy prompted.

“Congratulations.” His dad paused. “Hey, did you know that it’s possible to have feelings for a man and still end up marrying a woman? It’s called bisexual.”

“Dad! Are you serious? I’m not marrying a random dude just because I like dudes, I’m marrying Abed because I like Abed. Are you going to be happy for me or are you going to be weird?”

“Of course I’m happy for you, Troy,” his dad said gruffly. “If this is really what you want—”

“Good. It is. So you’re coming to the wedding?”

“Well, I’ve never been to a gay wedding before…” he hedged.

“Mom’s coming,” Troy threatened.

“There won’t be any gogo boys, will there?”

“What? No!”

“Do I have to learn a flash mob?”

“No.”

“Is anyone else from church going to be there?”

“Okay, I’m going to take that as a yes, you’re coming,” Troy said, running his temples. “That’s part of the reason I’m calling. Abed and I are trying to make a guest list, and we want to know how many relatives are going to immediately throw away their invitation so we don’t bother sending any. Did you know invitations cost money?”

“It’s a wedding, son, everything costs money. Abed’s family is coming?”

“Some of them, yeah. And we’re going to tell ’em that if anyone says anything racist, they can just pretend not to speak English, so be cool.”

“Hey! What if they say something racist to me?”

“Forest Whitaker eye and walk away,” Troy said, face softening in a grin. “You know how it is. We’re going for as low-conflict a wedding as possible.”

“All right, I’ll leave Nana at home.”

They talked for another few minutes, and Troy hung up the phone with a list of people he might want to invite and middling confidence that his dad wouldn’t say something embarrassing at the wedding itself. To his credit, his dad had always been pretty nice to Abed (albeit an Abed wearing his Meet the Parents persona) when they met in person. It was just… they had never talked about any of this stuff until after Troy moved to LA, so it was still theoretical and strange to his father. When they saw each other face-to-face again, and his dad had some time to get used to it, the Barnes Charm(™) would take over. Hopefully.

He slipped his phone in his pocket and walked from the bedroom out to the living room. Abed had already finished his calls, and was poring over a new script for 8bit, the TV show he was working on, along with a battered composition book. Abed had always been one of the better studiers in their group, but even his film classes had nothing on an actual show that he was actually working on. There was a slowly-filling box in the hall closet with other composition notebooks crammed full of show notes, character analyses, set notes, plot ideas, contact information for anyone who had ever been vaguely connected to the show, reminders about coworkers’/bosses’ likes and dislikes, and probably a million more things Troy couldn’t even think of.

“How’d your calls go?” he asked as Troy flopped on the couch. He didn’t look up from the script—the fact that he had noticed Troy was in the room was unusual.

“Fine. Ish. Good. Yours?”

“Good. Abra’s coming,” he said with a smile. “She has an on-campus job that wants to keep her through the summer, so she’ll already be in the United States. She’s really excited.”

“That’s awesome! Your uncle doesn’t mind? I know you said there was no chance he would come.”

“Yeah, but that’s mostly because he says he’ll never leave Gaza in case someone tries to move into his house while he’s gone. I don’t think he really gets what gay means? The last time we talked, I think he thought that I was with you because I couldn’t find a wife, and he thought that was good because better I live with a male friend than date loose women. So, he’s supportive. Not for the right reasons, but I’ll take it. The Detroit cousins are coming, too.”

“Cool. Now we just need to figure out the rest of the guest list… and figure out where they’re all going to sit without killing each other. Love planning a wedding with two sets of divorced parents.”

“Yeah.” Abed paused. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Y or I?”

Troy hesitated.

“Is there like… something in the middle? Like, not just ‘I’m fine’ or ‘I’m not fine,’ but more like ‘I’ll be fine in a little bit I just don’t want to talk about it’?”

“Yi,” Abed suggested.

“Yeah. Yi.”

“Okay.” He held up the new script. “You want 8bit spoilers?”

“Always,” Troy said, relieved, and Abed joined him on the couch so they could pour over the episode together.

—

SETTING: Olsen & Sons Suit Co. A dim showroom with lots of mahogany and rows and rows of identical jackets. A salesman stands at a counter, wearing half-rim glasses and a tie pin.

SALESMAN 1: Can I help you gentlemen?

TROY: Yeah, hi, we’re trying to buy suits for our wedding, and we kind of want to match but also don’t, and we need other people’s help to pull it off because if we see each other before the wedding it’s bad luck. Can you help us with that?

SALESMAN 1: (sighing) I suppose.

Beat.

TROY: Are you being homophobic right now? Or racist? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

SALESMAN 1: Neither. This is LA. Interracial gay weddings are practically the only thing we do now, so I have made my peace with it. Though one does miss the style of a simpler time. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in pinstriped power suits?

ABED: No. But we are interested in your selection of superhero bow ties.

SALESMAN 1: We don’t have any.

Abed and Troy exchange a look. CUT TO:

SETTING: Over the Rainbow, a modern shop overflowing with feathers, glitter, leather, mesh, and rainbows. A salesman leans against the counter, wearing a cut-off t-shirt.

SALESMAN 2: How can I help you boys?

ABED: We’re getting married and we’re looking for the right outfits. We want to look matching enough that people know we’re a couple but also unique enough so that it’s clear we’re the main characters.

SALESMAN 2: Aw, you guys are adorable.

ABED: Yes.

TROY: Also, we want to have a theme.

SALESMAN: Is your theme Vegas, sex dungeon, or rainbows?

Troy: (disappointed) No.

SALESMAN: Then I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ll be able to help. But wait, before you go, do you want to take a look at our collection of cake toppers?

Quick PAN to a shelf of gay wedding cake toppers: couple in suits, couple in Chippendale’s suits, Bert and Ernie, cowboys, giant rainbow, lions, unicorns, dinosaurs in top hats.

Abed: (awed) We’re gonna need a bigger cupcake tower.

CUT TO:

SETTING: Party City. Teenage cashier in a black uniform t-shirt stands by a register.

TEENAGE CASHIER: Welcome to Party City, let me know if you need help finding anything.

TROY: We’re looking for suits for our wedding.

TEENAGE CASHIER: We sell costumes.

ABED: You were hoping you had some kind of classy cosplay line. Batman tuxedo? Spider-Man blazer? Anything?

TEENAGE CASHIER: This is a Party City.

TROY: Thank you for your time.

CUT TO:

SETTING: An In-n-Out. Troy and Abed sit in a red booth, eating hamburgers and fries.

TROY: That was a pretty cool montage, but I think we can just go to any old store and get matching suits. We’re both really hot but in different ways, so you know we’re going to look good no matter what. We just won’t look at each other while we’re shopping.

ABED: Yeah, that’s fair. Also, when you were in the bathroom I looked up Batman bow ties and bought one. It took me 30 seconds.

TROY: Did they have a Spider-Man one too?

ABED: Yeah.

TROY: Awesome! Send me the link?

ABED: You know it.

They do their handshake. END SCENE.

—

As the filming schedule for 8Bit ramped up, Abed started to work longer and longer hours, which sucked because Troy had been banned from the set after he visited and accidentally broke some of the props—how was he supposed to know they were using real computers? But they made it work. Abed usually called him during one of the meal breaks so they could sort of eat together, and Troy could still text him and send him funny pictures whenever he wanted. Abed couldn’t always check right away, but when he did, he made sure to send at least an emoji response to every single text.

Then, one night, the producer who had banned Troy had to leave early, so Troy showed up for dinner with a smorgasbord of tacos that made Abed say “cool.” He wondered if he would ever not get that feeling in his chest when Abed got excited over something he had done—like a sparkler was crackling inside of him, but with less pain. He hoped not.

Most of the cast and crew had gone back to the cafeteria or their trailers, so Troy and Abed got to sit in some of those cool folding chairs that actors always sat in, which still made Troy feel a little geeky even though Abed was used to it by now.

“By the way, I made a list of all the ways things are going to change when we get married,” Abed said nonchalantly after they had talked about the day’s shooting for a while. “We should go over it and come up with a plan. I’m a lot better with change than I used to be, but it’s easier if I have a script.”

“What do you mean, change?” Troy said, jumping so badly that he spilled half a taco in his lap. “Who’s going to change? Not us!”

“If we weren’t going to change, we wouldn’t be getting married.” Abed tilted his head. “Why is your voice getting so high?”

“It’s not! I mean—” He deepened his voice and cupped his chin, striving to look casual. “It’s not. What—what do you mean, we wouldn’t be getting married if we weren’t going to change?”

“Well, if everything was staying the same, we wouldn’t have to get married at all. I guess you could argue that marriage is just about making a promise not to break up, but if that was all, we could have just said ‘let’s promise to never break up,’ or had a Dreamatorium ceremony or something. But if you want to get married-married, it must mean that you want to do something different.”

“Like what?”

“Glad you asked.” Abed set his taco down and pulled the wedding binder out of the backpack at his feet. He flipped through the pages and began to read off one, tracing each line with his finger.

1. Taxes. Potential problem: none, unless our accountant only knows how to do single people’s taxes, but that’s unlikely. 
2. Shared finances. Potential problem: you’re a millionaire, that’s a lot of money, and our first fight was about you not trusting me with money, also what happens if we don’t have any anymore, also what happens when I do start making lots of money.
3. Buying property together. Potential problem: see number two, also where do we want to live and do we like apartments or houses and does that mean we need more furniture, because IKEA trips produce additional problems. 
4. Emergency contacts. Potential problem: we should go over what we want if we’re ever brain dead, or whether we feel strongly about having all of our own organs, and what happens if we stumble into some kind of weird medical situation like 50 First Dates . 
5. Sex life becomes more routine, which is good because it takes away the uncertainty, but might also get boring.
6. Kids.

There was a pause. Abed’s finger moved to the bottom of the page.

“Also, this isn’t so much a guaranteed-will-change, but if one of us gets murdered, the other becomes the prime suspect, so we should really work extra hard to not get murdered, because let’s face it, neither of us would do well in that scenario.”

Suddenly, Troy wasn’t hungry.

“Abed, that all sounds like boring stuff,” he said in a weird voice that didn’t even sound like  him—it was way too loud and too cheerful, and Abed’s eyes narrowed. “And we don’t need to worry about it because we’re never going to get boring. I mean…” Troy hesitated. “Okay, maybe you’re right, maybe I do want some things to change. But it’s not about wanting us to be different, it was about wanting people to treat us different. You know? I don’t want my family to be able to ‘forget’ we’re dating every other week. I want to get mail addressed to both of us. When you win an Oscar I want to be the first one you thank in your acceptance speech.”

“You’re always going to be the first one in my acceptance speech. Also, you’re not boring.”

For a moment, Troy felt like a deer in headlights. He had always wondered why deer were so stupid, but now, pinned down by Abed’s keen eyes, he got it. He froze, then scoffed.

“Of course we’re not boring. We’re Troy and Abed, we have wacky adventures all the time, how could anyone think—”

“You’re not boring,” Abed repeated, tilting his head to give Troy a loving, intense version of a Kubrick stare, which was only a reference Troy knew because Abed had explained it to him, and he wasn’t sure if he was using it right but he couldn’t ask because there was a lump in his throat. “You’re not the sidekick I drag along on my wacky adventures, and I’m not going to find a new sidekick just because we have to figure out how mortgages work.”

“Right. Yeah. Okay.” He hesitated. “It’s just, I’m worried because—”

“You and Britta got boring because your relationship was a mid-series experiment based largely on unresolved sexual tension,” Abed said, waving his hand dismissively. “There was a bit of a mystery because the dynamic between you had previously been largely unexplored, but for the most part, once the sexual tension became resolved, there was nothing left. You were never endgame. We’re endgame. Now come on, I’ve got to get back to shooting in 27 minutes and some of these are complicated.”

“Okay,” Troy repeated with a relieved laugh. “Can we start with the easiest?”

“Sure.”

“I think we’re good on taxes. If my accountant is confused, I can find another one.”

“Cool. Next easiest is probably—”

“Sex,” they said in unison. A passing crew member gave them a funny look.

“Hi Donovan,” Abed said nonchalantly. “We could up the internal rating of the Dreamatorium to X-rated content.”

“We could do Hector the Well-Endowed and the elf maiden,” Troy said excitedly.

“Annie’s really taken ownership over Hector, but I’m sure we can come up with a parallel—Trevor the Well-Hung?”

“Dope. You know, I’ve always thought Director Abed was pretty hot—would you ever want to do a sex tape?”

“Well, there’s never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever been a show where a sex tape plot didn’t backfire, but we could do a Troy-and-Abed-in-the-morning setup, so I’ll write that down anyway. In general, how would you feel about costumes?”

“Good. Um.” Troy felt his cheeks get hot and he sunk down a little in his chair. “Do you still have that… Jesus costume? With the wig and the pants and the… shirt?”

“Yes.” Abed cocked his head. “That does something for you?”

“Uh-huh,” Troy squeaked, and Abed’s mouth turned up in a tiny grin.

“Writing it down,” he muttered. “What about handcuffs? Although again, we would potentially open us up to some dangerous tropes.”

“I think I’d risk it.”

“Cool. Cool cool cool. Food?”

“Awesome!”

“Other people?”

“Ooh… is it selfish of me to say I wouldn’t mind being in a threesome as long as the other person didn’t touch you?”

“No, that’s a thing. There’s also the concern about frequency and scheduling, which I don’t get, because if you schedule sex to happen shouldn’t that give you something to like forward to? But apparently some people value spontaneity.”

“If we ever need a schedule, I’d be okay with that.”

“Great. Let’s move on to bank accounts. I think this has real potential for danger, given the whole impressionist debacle. That was kind of an unresolved plot.”

“Yeah… but it wasn’t really about money.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

Troy squirmed in his chair and shoved an entire taco in his mouth to stall.

“If you had just spent a bunch of money, I wouldn’t have cared,” he said when he had finally swallowed. “What you did was spend a lot of money you didn’t have, to the point where that guy was seriously going to hurt you. And then when I tried to talk to you about how hard it had been to help, you said ‘but you wanted to help’ and that wasn’t really true. I didn’t want to do those things. I wanted you to be okay, so I did whatever needed to be done to make you not get hurt. But it was really stressful, because I wasn’t sure if it would work, and you weren’t taking it seriously which made it that much harder for me to make it work. You dig?”

“Okay.” Abed considered this for a moment. “So that’s why you were mad at me, because you didn’t like working the bar mitzvah?”

“A little bit. I was more mad when I came back to the apartment and you were doing the same thing again. It felt like you didn’t care about everything I’d done for you.”

“I did care. I was grateful.”

“I know, but I would rather you show that you were grateful than say it. Look Abed, if you’re in trouble, I’m going to save you. Always. Every time. Until I’m broke and homeless and getting beaten up by a hundred ninjas. But it’s still painful and scary for me to fight 99 ninjas, even if I win, and the question is, are you okay with me being hurt and scared if it means you get to watch a really cool fight scene?”

Abed looked down in that slow way he did when he was thinking. There was one fish taco left, and he held it in his lap and stared at it, but didn’t eat it.

“Do you really think you could fight off 99 ninjas?” he asked lowly.

“I don’t know. Maybe? If I had a giant robot suit. And knew they were coming. And if you were there with me.”

“Nice. So… it’s okay if I spend money doing stuff, but not to the point where it puts me in physical danger. And being broke and homeless counts as physical danger. And back then you said that sometimes I need to just trust you on things, because my risk-versus-reward calculations aren’t always accurate. Right?”

“Yeah, I think that’s pretty much it.”

“Okay. Do you want me to ask you before I spend money?”

“No,” Troy said quickly. “No, that would be totally uncool.  Listen, I’ve got a budget. I put it together when I got Pierce’s money, with Annie’s help, and Gilbert’s, and LeVar Burton’s, because they all said if I actually live like a millionaire, I’m going to blow through it all by the time I’m 40. Hopefully by that time you’ll be a millionaire, too, but in the meantime, I think we should both try to stick to my budget. We can add a little money to some categories based on your income—Annie added a special ‘Troy and Abed Adventures and Homages’ category, so it should be good. As long as we don’t spend over budget in any category, and no one’s threatening to break our legs, I say no questions asked. If either one of us goes over, then we sit down and talk about it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

There was a pause. An awkward pause. There had been very, very few awkward pauses in their relationship, and that alone was making Troy’s blood pressure go up again, until Abed leaned forward for a quick peck on the lips, and he knew they were okay. He grinned stupidly at Abed, who grinned back.

“I want to buy a house in Colorado,” he said. “Eventually. When I get to a point in my career where we can pay for two places at once, and where we can split our time without people forgetting I exist and moving on to the next big thing.”

“That sounds great. And I think we should look for houses no bigger than Pierce’s mansion, because at some point you just start to look like a dick, you know?”

“Absolutely. Our quirky Peter Pan-ishness is easy to maintain when we’re young and broke, but we’re already a little out of touch with reality and at a certain wealth threshold we become prime targets for the Purge.”

They discussed Purge tactics for a few minutes, but then Abed checked his watch and said they needed to move on to medical decisions. Troy wrinkled his nose.

“Like, if we’re ever brain dead or something? I don’t know.... You know, medical stuff is actually why my parents ended up getting divorced. Kind of.”

“Really? You never told me that.”

“Yeah. My Uncle Carl was put on dialysis, and he said if there was a chance he was going to die, he wasn’t going to waste his life, and if he was trying so hard to stay alive then why would he refuse any treatment that might help even if the church didn’t approve. My dad said we weren’t allowed to see him anymore because he wasn’t a good Jehovah’s Witness, and my mom said she would rather be a good sister than a good Jehovah’s Witness.”

“So you’re okay with any life-saving medical procedures, even if they get really weird?”

“I don’t know. Some of what my dad said makes sense to me. Like, in sci-fi movies it’s totally normal for people to get robot parts and put their brains in computers and put weird stuff in their blood, but in real life… your body is your body and your brain is your brain, and maybe if you die you just die. You know?”

Abed made a high-pitched sound in the back of his throat and shook his head.

“Nope. Nope. You’re not going to die. You’re just not. Let’s move on.”

“Okay, okay. What’s the next one?”

“Kids,” Abed said promptly. “Yes or no, then how, how many, by what method, which gender assuming we get to choose, which race, which religion, named what, and how to raise.”

“Uh,” Troy squeaked. He wracked his brain for a response and found nothing except static, like a TV channel that wasn’t coming through. “Hey, did I tell you we got a package from Shirley?” he blurted out, diving for the box in a plastic bag next to his chair. “She sent us different cupcakes for the wedding to taste-test. There’s chocolate, chocolate peanut butter, snickerdoodle, strawberry, red velvet, and s’mores. You want to try?”

Abed gave him a Look, but Troy picked up the snickerdoodle cupcake—only slightly squashed from its time in the hands of the postal service—and held it up to his face, and he relented.

“Sure.”

—

Subject: Wedding Update #12

Hi guys!

As you know, we are officially FIFTEEN WEEKS away from the wedding. I was able to check in on things in person over spring break, and the wedding planning is progressing at an appropriate pace. Frankie, Shirley, and Britta are working hard, even though Britta is pretending not to; Jeff is useless; Craig is working hard but Frankie knows how to manage him; and so far we’ve managed to keep Chang distracted. He’s started making lots of tiny wedding outfits for The Monkey Who Must Not Be Named, which might be a problem on the day of, but we’ll invest in some monkey security.

Here’s what’s been done since the last update:

• Digital save-the-dates have been emailed to everyone on the guest list
• Britta and the florist worked up samples of the centerpieces (see attached photo IMG_01). Please give feedback—it was unclear to all of us what “Kickpuncher themed flowers” meant
• The DJ has been booked and we gave him your please-play and do-not-play lists. (He was surprised at the ABBA ban, but I totally agree—they give me a really creepy vibe for some reason??)
• Shirley has confirmed that the menu is set, per the email you sent her last week. She said you agreed to let her add Parmesan and truffle oil to the buttered noodles—so classy, Abed! Proud of you!!
• I bought my maid of honor dress! I know technically you guys haven’t gotten around to asking me to be your maid of honor yet, but I added that to the checklist and took care of it for you. What do you think? (See attached photo IMG_02).
• We went ahead and designed some preliminary decorations for the reception. See attached photos IMG_03, IMG_04, and IMG_05. Ignore the people in the background—there was a teensy weensy riot going on in the cafeteria but Frankie and Shirley took care of it.
• The candles for the wedding favors came in! I wrote up an explanation of what an X7 Dimensionizer is to include with them—I know you said that anyone who didn’t recognize a Dimensionizer-shaped candle wasn’t allowed to attend the wedding at all, but really guys, that’s not fair.
• I talked with the film students doing videography, and they say they have all the equipment they need. Also, there was one student who seemed to have a very weird hero worship-y crush on Abed and I think was planning to sabotage the wedding, so I just kind of fired her? Seemed like the safest move.

That’s all for now. Please reply to confirm receipt of this email and give feedback on the attached photos. Also, gentle reminder that the following things are solely your responsibility: seating chart, grooms’ clothing, wedding rings, marriage contract, marriage license, invitations, vows.

Love,

Annie

P.S. As soon as I got back to my apartment in Virginia I started digging through some of my stuff, and guess what? I still have my Geneva dress! I may have put it on and rewatched a couple episodes… not the same without you guys, though. <3

—

When Troy had first got back from his trip and collected his inheritance, he had thought that he would live a real rich person life, without a job. Only it turned out that having nothing to do all day when all your friends were working was pretty boring, so eventually he started picking up plumbing and air conditioner-repairing gigs for a way to pass the time. He didn't need the money, so he was free to turn down jobs that seemed boring and had plenty of spare time—except for the early summer, when it first started getting hot and the entire Greater Los Angeles area freaked out that the average daily temperature was rising above the customary 75 degrees. Then he got flooded with pleas for help from other air conditioning repairmen, and he accepted most offers just because he felt bad for the guys.

On the first really hot day in June, he drove out to Riverside, where the temperature had jumped up a few degrees higher, and came home with a tub of gelato.

“Hey, Abed,” he called as he entered the apartment, brushing sweat off his forehead. “I’ve got fancy rich people ice cream—oh, hey Marisol, what’s up?”

“Shhh, I’m editing,” she said, focusing intently on her laptop screen.

Marisol had been Abed’s roommate when he first moved to LA. She was also working for a TV show—a soulless laugh-track monstrosity she was too good for, according to Abed—and Abed has asked her to collaborate on the second draft of Police Justice and give it a bit more heart. Troy liked her. She was tough and no-nonsense when it came to writing, but she spoke Abed.

“Hey,” Abed said as he came out of the kitchen, greeting Troy with a kiss on the cheek.

“What are you guys working on? Police Justice again?”

“No, I think we’re in a good place with that. Marisol was looking over an outline for me, and then my wedding vows, and now she’s working on invitations.”

“I didn’t know she did graphic stuff.”

“All about that hustle, baby,” Marisol said from the kitchen table. “And don’t give me any credit for those vows because he didn’t take any of my advice. There’s still too much TV, man.”

“Eh, that’s Abed-love. I’m okay with it. Can I see the invites?”

“Can I have some rich people ice cream?”

Troy scooped out two bowls of gelato and they joined her at the table. Marisol held up one finger and made them wait until she had finished a few more clicks, then pushed back with a satisfied smirk and crossed arms.

The invitations were two-sided. In the top lefthand corner of the front was a photo of Troy in a pink t-shirt, leaning against a brick wall; opposite was a photo of Abed in a trench coat with his fist in the air. In between the two it said “Troy and Abed…” in big letters, and then the bottom half of the card was taken up by a larger photo of the two of them sitting on a table with a small fake wedding cake between them. Abed was being Molly Ringwald that time. The back was just the boring details stuff, event, time, location, but Marisol had jazzed it up with some abstract shapes and a drawing of a cool neon mixtape.

“That’s awesome! ” Troy said gleefully. “Holy crap!”

“Cool. Cool cool cool. Cool cool.”

“I am pretty amazing,” Marisol grinned. “And the good thing is, I checked out the website your friend Annie set up, and it has an RSVP link and the menu and directions to the location and the dress code—

“We have a dress code?” Troy asked, glancing at Abed, who looked similarly confused.

“—so the invitation is the only thing you need to print out, and my printer owes me a favor. You’re going to save like 500 bucks and I don’t need to get you a gift.”

“Sweet, win-win.”

“Speaking of which, I took a look at the registry,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Do you guys really think someone’s going to buy you a king-size bed shaped like DeLorean? And follow up question, did you add that to the list because you thought it might be a functional time machine? Because that’s stupid on both counts. Just so you know.”

“Don’t crush our dreams!” Troy said, indignant.

“Yeah,” Abed said, putting an arm around his shoulder. “We’re not stupid. Just optimistic.”

—

On the night the season finale of Bloodlines of Conquest aired, Abed invited just about everyone he knew in LA to a viewing party in their apartment. Only about a quarter of them had accepted, but that was still a lot of people, and they had bought a ton of soda and beer and made a big batch of special drink and ingredients for homemade pizza, and planned kickass matching dragon-and-Queen-Stevarious costumes. Abed was hanging a garland of paper severed heads and happily speculating about end-of-season plot twists when his phone rang.

“It’s my mom,” he said, perking up. Abed called his mom about once a month, and saw her every year on December 9th—although she claimed his half-brother was still too young for her to visit, so they had only restarted this tradition once Troy got back to the US with fourteen million dollars for plane tickets. “I bet she got her invitation.” He answered the phone on speaker and set it on the table between them. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, Abed.”

“Troy’s here, too.”

“Hi, Mrs. Reyes.”

“Hello, Troy.”

“Did you get the invitation?”

“Yes—”

“Did you get all the references? It was Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and The Breakfast Club. I was worried it was leaning into the 80’s thing a bit too hard, because we didn’t want to limit ourselves with a one-theme wedding, but Troy thought it would be okay and ultimately we should go for something with broad appeal anyway—”

“Yes, Abed, I got it. Sweetie, do you mind if we talk alone for a minute?”

“No worries,” Troy said. “I was just going to start the pizzas, anyway. Have a good night, Mrs. Reyes!”

“Okay, thanks,” Abed said.

Troy went through to the kitchen and started pulling out pizza ingredients, as Abed drew up his knees and balanced the phone in his lap. He didn’t bother to take it off speakerphone; he had preferred to take calls handsfree ever since he had once gestured too enthusiastically without thinking and flung his phone at the living room wall. Troy thought it was cute. The soundtrack to the apartment was Abed’s clear, animated voice talking over a tinny speakerphone conversation, with the faint hum of LA traffic and the A/C in the background. Good sounds. Troy tried to let it fade into the background, but he could still catch the gist of the conversation.

“I was surprised you’re still planning on getting married,” Mrs. Reyes said.

“Why?”

“Because—because it’s not a good idea and I thought you would figure that out.”

Without even thinking about it, Troy’s movements slowed, becoming more careful and quieter. There was a pause, so small that someone who didn’t know Abed might not notice.

“What do you mean? What’s not a good idea?”

“You getting married. I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

“But I thought you liked Troy.”

“I do, but… marriage is hard work, Abed. It means having to talk about your feelings and understand your partners’ feelings and compromise, and—well, you’re not very good at those things. I’m not sure you realize what you’re getting into.”

“It’s okay, though, because we already talked about it. We made a list of things that might go wrong and how we’re going to fix them.”

“Marriages usually don’t go according to plan.”

“But.” There was a little hitch in Abed’s voice, a hint of uncertainty that would be accompanied by a furrowed brow as he hunched his shoulders a little and cradled his phone in his hands, closer to his mouth. Troy stopped even pretending to assemble the pizzas. He leaned both hands on the countertop, breathing through his nose. “But we’re best friends. We’ve always been best friends, and we love each other.”

“I know, sweetie, but that only matters so much. Being an adult is more complicated than that, and eventually he’s going to run out of patience. I just don’t want you to get hurt when he leaves.”

That was it. Troy pushed himself off the counter and stormed back to the dining room. He found Abed just like he’d expected, curled in on himself like a weirdly lanky turtle, and took the phone from his hand. He pressed ‘end call.’

“We weren’t finished talking,” Abed said dully.

“Well, I was done listening. Abed, she’s only met me twice. She’s wrong.”

“Yeah, but she’s been married and we haven’t, so she knows more about marriage. And… she knows me.”

“No, she doesn’t! Besides—”

The phone began to buzz again. Troy answered wordlessly.

“You see, Abed? Hanging up without saying anything, that’s exactly the kind of immaturity I’m talking about.”

“Abed didn’t hang up on you, Mrs. Reyes. I did.”

There was a pause.

“Troy? You were listening to our private conversation?”

“Not on purpose, I just happened to overhear you talking for me and trying to make Abed feel bad over something that’s not even true, and I didn’t think he should have to listen to that. You owe him an apology.”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business!”

“It is when you act like you’re saying what I’m thinking! And by the way, Abed is great at feelings stuff with me. We talk about it all the time.”

“Great?” Abed repeated skeptically, but Troy waved him away.

“I highly doubt that,” Mrs. Reyes scoffed. “I know my son.”

“Yeah, well, Abed’s been here for me two years longer than you were there for him, so maybe I know him better.”

He hung up again and set the phone down. The room felt really, really quiet, as if silence could have an echo. The phone began to buzz again. Abed reached out and declined the call.

“That was mean.”

“I know. I’m… sorry if it makes things awkward.”

“I don’t understand. Why did you do that?”

Troy looked down at his sneakers. There was a smudge of dirt on the toe, and he scuffed it against the floor.

“I don’t like the way your mom talks to you sometimes,” he mumbled. “It bugs me.”

“She just wants me to be happy.”

“Does she?”

“Of course. She’s a good mom. Maybe she doesn’t get me perfectly, but most people don’t. I’m used to it.”

“Okay.”

Troy returned to the kitchen. Abed followed him this time, and hopped up on the counter as he began tossing the pizza dough. It had taken a lot of practice to learn this, and he had lost a lot of dough to the ceiling fan/floor, but Abed had wanted to do a fun cooking montage for their first anniversary, and Troy had wanted to make Abed happy, always.

He finished shaping the first pizza and started to work on the second, watching it spin in the air, feeling Abed watch him.

“I don’t think good moms give up on their kids after six years just because they’re different, except for not-Christmas and their birthday, then give up on birthdays because they got a new boyfriend, then give up on not-Christmas with a card at the last minute because they got a new kid,” he blurted out.

“Well, that was just because I’m me. She didn’t do that to Luis.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think good moms play favorites, either.”

“You’re mad at her.”

“I guess.” He let the dough fall. It was a bit lopsided, but he didn’t think anyone would complain.

“Why are you telling me this?” Abed said, an edge of frustration in his voice.

“What do you mean?”

“Why do you want me to think my mom is a bad mom? Do you want me to be mad at her?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to take her off the guests list?”

“No!”

“Then why are you trying to make me think she’s a bad person?”

“I’m not! I’m just—I don’t want you to think she’s right! She said she didn’t want you to be hurt when I leave you. When. Not even if! It’s like she thinks that she knows you or loves you better than anyone else because she’s your mom, and if even she could leave you then of course everyone else will, and that’s so wrong. You know it’s wrong and I don’t want you to ever forget that it’s wrong, or think that that’s all you deserve because I think you deserve all the good things all the time, and—”

Sometimes Troy thought Abed really was some kind of superhero, because all of a sudden he was moving faster and smoother than any real person could. In this case, in one fluid motion he hopped off the counter and shoved Troy against the pantry, one hand splayed across his jaw to tilt his head up for a kiss. It was a kiss like the take-off of a hot air balloon, except without the sudden terror of realizing the balloon guide was still on the ground, just a pleasant swooping feeling in his stomach. He relaxed back against the pantry and just let Abed kiss him, all hot and hard and awesome. They hadn’t changed into their costumes yet, and after a minute he was conscious enough to grope Abed’s ass through his skinny jeans. He hoped skinny jeans never went out of fashion, or that by the time they did, he and Abed would be so old that they didn’t understand fashion.

“That was really nice,” Abed said when he pulled away.

“Yeah,” Troy said. He was kind of dizzy.

“It’s hard. For me. Sometimes—” Abed paused and his mouth formed several different squiggly lines. “Sometimes I don’t understand how the real world works. And TV can be helpful because it tells you how things are supposed to work. But there aren’t a lot of people like me on TV. And growing up, there weren’t a lot of families like my family. So sometimes it didn’t help and I was just kind of left with the real world—not the show—and it’s only how it is, not how it should be, and that’s confusing—”

“Babe? Babe, you’re looping.”

“I know.” He rested both hands on Troy’s chest and pawed at him in an affectionate way, not a gropey way. “You make sense. And you help other things make sense. I’m not… I don’t think I’m ready to talk about this yet, but I still appreciate it. Also, I love you.”

“Yeah, well. I love you for all time.”

“I love you for all space,” Abed said, smiling to himself. This felt like the point where they would separate and finish the pizzas, but Abed was toying with the collar of Troy’s t-shirt. “And—I want to talk about that thing we haven’t been talking about.”

“Is this about what I said about Riz Ahmad being really really hot in Rogue One? Because—”

“No, I don’t find that threatening. I was talking about our list of problems.”

“Oh yeah. That.”

“I want kids. I know that you’re my family already, and that we have a found family, but I still want to have a family with you.”

“Me, too,” Troy said with a relieved grin. “Except thinking about it scares the hell out of me.”

“Me, too.” Abed ran his hands down and up Troy’s chest.

“So… all those follow-up questions you had, maybe we figure out the answers after the wedding, when it’s a little less terrifying?”

“Okay.”

“Oh, maybe we should settle on a number, though. Like… fewer than you and Hilda, right?”

“Definitely. Maximum three.” He paused. “Two and a half.”

“Cool.” He realized he had never removed his hands from Abed’s ass, and that he had in fact been just kind of massaging it. It was a great ass. “Hey, people aren’t going to show up for like another half hour, and the pizza doesn’t take that long to cook. Do you want to have sex first?”

“Yes. Race you?”

“Yes.”

They dashed towards the bedroom. Troy lost, but he really didn’t mind.

—

July 3rd was their anniversary, five and a half weeks before their wedding. It was kind of weird to be celebrating their relationship when there was a much bigger celebration on the horizon, but not all that different from celebrating a private holiday the day before the Fourth of July. Troy didn’t mind. The city always did fireworks for a few days leading up to the holiday, and it was really cool to have fireworks on your anniversary. And as for it being so close to their wedding, Abed managed to turn that to his advantage by presenting Troy with the best anniversary present ever: a movie trailer about their relationship narrated by THE ACTUAL MOVIE TRAILER GUY.

Troy wasn’t sure if he could top that, but he was still going to do his best. He refused to tell Abed what he was planning. They couldn’t spend the day together, because Abed didn’t get off shooting until almost 8:30, and as the day drew to a close, Troy sent a single cryptic text: meet me at the dock. Then he leaned against the rail of the Childish Tycoon and waited. It was a warm night, with a pleasant breeze, and he couldn’t help but grin as he thought about the first time they had been on the dock together.

He had been terrified. He had sent postcards, and every once in a while they could text, but Abed’s messages had always been short and casual. I’ve revised my ideal comic book movie viewing order, or I’m shooting a movie with Jeff, Britta, and Annie and they are causing me physical pain. Not great for answering all the questions in Troy’s head, like did Clone Abed’s lack of wild emotionality mean that he didn’t care about Clone Troy as much as Real Abed cared about Real Troy? Was there space in his new LA life for an old friend from community college? How would he react to this… huge, hungry, impossible-to-ignore secret that Troy had been wrestling with for the last year and a half—assuming Troy even managed to get the words out?

Then the boat began to pull into the harbor, and Troy spotted a small crowd on the dock, fronted by a figure wearing dark skinny jeans and a turquoise flannel over his t-shirt even in Los Angeles in July. His chest swelled with happiness and he felt like he was going to lift up into the air like a character in an old-fashioned cartoon. He stood on his tiptoes and waved, only for his phone to beep the notes of the Inspector Spacetime ringtone. He glanced at Abed’s name on the screen, puzzled, and looked up at the figure on the dock. From this far away, it was impossible to read Abed’s expression.

“Hey, LeVar, cut the sails for a minute.”

“What? We’re almost there.”

“I know, just—give me a minute.”

The boat didn’t stop completely, but it bobbed along listlessly as Troy stepped away from the steering and sat down, staring at the text.

Hi Troy. I know we’re going to meet in person soon but I have something to say first and I’d rather not do it in front of people. While you were gone, I spent a lot of time with our friends, and I made new friends, and I had a girlfriend for a while, but I still thought about you all the time. I realized that the reason you were more important to me than anyone else is that I’m in love with you. If you’re not in love with me back, that’s okay, but I needed to tell you because not telling you would feel like lying, and friends don’t lie to each other. No matter what happens, I still want to be friends. If you just want to be friends, you don’t have to say anything and we can go back to the way things were. If you want to be boyfriends, I was thinking it’d be pretty cool if you could run down the dock in slow-mo and then we could kiss and spin around in circles so it looks like how it does in movies, but no pressure.

In the end, Troy hadn’t had the patience to do a slow-mo. He had just crashed into Abed, and he was pretty sure they had spun around in circles but the whole thing was kind of a blur.

“Hey.”

Troy jumped back a foot and blinked at Abed, who was just suddenly there at the top of the gangplank.

“Hey!”

“Flashbacking?”

“Yeah,” Troy said with a chuckle. “How was work?”

Abed was examining his outfit critically and didn’t answer.

“Lando,” he pronounced, then he looked up with wide eyes. “Are we doing Return of the Jedi?”

“We can't have a bonfire on the boat,” Troy said apologetically. “But I’ve got the soundtrack queued up and I brought your Han gear.”

“Cool. Cool, cool, cool,” Abed said as Troy tossed him a plastic bag with his outfit. “Be right back.”

He scrambled downstairs, and Troy went up to the bow to fuss over the picnic he had set up. He had remembered all of Annie’s advice about romantic picnics from all those years ago—he had a blanket and a basket and flowers and everything.

“Well, look at this,” Abed drawled as he returned to the top deck. “What have we here?”

“Nothing for a janky pirate to complain about,” Troy grinned. He stood up and yanked Abed down by his lapels for a kiss. Kissing Abed was always intense, but Han Abed was a special kind of lazy, sloppy intensity that Troy was very fond of.

“So we’re going full-on fanfiction, huh?” Abed murmured, and Troy hummed his agreement as he looped his arms around his neck.

“C’mon,” Troy said, out of breath, when they finally pulled apart for real. “Let’s eat.”

“You can’t think of anything better to do?” Abed asked, stroking his forearm.

“Come on, you no-good rascal,” Troy laughed. “Food’s getting cold.”

They sat down and Troy began to unpack the basket. Abed’s Han act slipped when he saw the main dish.

“Falafel,” he said, surprised and puzzled. He picked up a piece and took a bite, and his eyes widened. “Good falafel.” He finished the first piece, cocked his head, and ate a second in one bite. “I haven’t had anything this good since I moved to LA—it’s almost as good as my dad’s.”

“Well, it’s your dad’s recipe,” Troy admitted sheepishly. “I’ve been practicing all week. It’s really good?”

“You made this? My dad told you how to make this?”

“Yeah.”

Abed was quiet, looking down at the spread—vegetables, hummus, tahini, and pita that Troy had actually bought from a Middle Eastern grocery store nearby because every time he tried to knead bread dough he turned into some kind of shaggy, dough-handed swamp monster and it freaked him out. The silence ticked on for a minute, and a tickle of unease went up Troy’s neck. Maybe he had overstepped.

“Food is to my dad as movies are to me,” Abed said finally. “And he doesn’t give out recipes. This is a big deal.”

“He said it was a family recipe, and I was almost family, so… did I do something wrong?”

“No, you didn’t do anything wrong. Wait—let me try the hummus first.”

Abed tried the hummus and declared that Troy hadn’t done anything wrong. He couldn’t seem to settle back into the Han Solo role, though—he sat with his legs straight in front of him and kept tapping his toes together, which didn’t seem like a Solo-y thing to do.

“Do you want to be Barnes-Nadir or Nadir-Barnes?” Abed asked suddenly. “Or just Barnes and Nadir. Or Barnadir? Or something else?”

“Oh, dope, I didn’t even think of that! Are we allowed to just pick a whole new last name?”

“Sure. Friends, How I Met Your Mother. It never actually worked out, but it’s on the table.”

They got caught up in suggestions for a while, until the first firework went off. Troy scrambled to hit play on the boombox and the Return of the Jedi soundtrack echoed over the water. He cuddled up against Abed’s side and rested his head on his shoulder. The vest didn’t have that nasty Starburns smell anymore—it smelled like leather and paint and the laundry detergent they used. It was weird to have a favorite laundry detergent, Troy thought, but he had gotten used to this one.

“I think I want my name to be Nadir-Barnes,” he mused. “That way you can keep your own so you get famous faster, and it still sounds like we’re related.”

Abed was quiet.

“You’d really do that?” he asked as the music began to fade.

“Yeah, why not? It’s not like air conditioning repairmen are going to forget I’m their messiah just because my name changes a little.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For agreeing to marry me.”

“Ditto.”

They were quiet for a while, watching the fireworks, until finally the last burst of white and red faded away. It didn’t get really dark in LA, not the way it did in Colorado, but it got close enough, and Troy was suddenly hyper-aware of Abed’s breathing and the warmth of his skin. He tilted his head and his nose brushed Abed’s neck.

“I haven’t been on a ship like this for a while,” Abed murmured in a voice a shade too deep to be natural. “Not familiar with the specs.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What kind of sleep pods you got on this thing?”

He tilted his head a little more and his lips touched Abed’s neck instead—although he was grinning too much for it to be a real kiss.

“Well, I had to scavenge for parts to put it together, so there aren’t any sleep pods. Just old-fashioned beds.”

“That should be okay. I wasn’t really planning on sleeping,” Abed drawled. His lips captured Troy’s in a kiss that started off slow and easy, and then took a turn when Abed yanked his hips closer and sucked hard on his bottom lip. Troy groaned and slipped his hands beneath the vest.

“By the way,” he said breathlessly. “I don’t know if you saw, but belowdeck there’s also cake and rose petals and a portable DVD player with Return of the Jedi in it.”

“Best. Fiancé. Ever.”

Troy wasn’t sure if it was Abed or Han talking, but it didn’t really matter. Whoever it was cupped his face and kissed him tenderly on the forehead.

—

A week before the wedding, Troy woke up and thought he might be dying. His head felt like it was stuffed full of sandpaper, and even shifting on the mattress made his stomach roll in a very threatening way. He grunted, and heard an answering grunt from somewhere above him. He reached out and felt around until he touched some very soft hair.

“Abed?” he mumbled.

“Yeah,” Abed croaked.

Troy opened his eyes and squinted around the room. It was totally unfamiliar. He took a deep breath and sat up—without puking!—to get a better view. It was a hotel room. A very nice, tricked-out hotel room, with all of their friends deposited on the furniture and the floor. He looked at Abed, who had opened his eyes but was still lying down.

“Do you remember anything about last night?” Troy asked.

“No. You?”

“No.”

“Perfect bachelor party.” Abed dragged himself into a sitting position and they did a slow, wincing version of their handshake before he collapsed again.

“Says you,” Jeff grumbled from Abed’s other side. “Lesson learned: I am never doing a joint bachelor party again. There is a reason the couple is supposed to be separated.”

“Why, what happened?”

Annie answered from where she, Britta, and Shirley were slouched together on the couch.

“You guys couldn’t walk ten feet without stopping to make out,” she complained sleepily. “It was cute at first, but two bars later it got annoying.”

“That doesn’t sound like us,” Abed frowned.

“When we asked you to move a little faster, you said you wouldn’t answer to ‘Abed’ because you were James Bond,” Britta said with surprising coherence. “And then you said you didn’t have to listen to us because we were Abed’s friends, not James Bond’s.”

“That sounds more like us.”

“Was I a Bond girl?” Troy frowned.

“You made us guess which one you were,” the Dean said. He had fallen asleep in the weirdest position Troy had ever seen—he looked like he was doing some kind of yoga pose, with his face pressed in the carpet. “You called us racist for guessing the Halle Berry one and any of the not-Halley Berry ones.”

“It was awesome, dude,” Chang chuckled.

“You made Craig cry,” Jeff reproached them.

“Sorry, Dean.”

The door opened and there was an insufferably bright female voice.

“Good morrr—not good. What are you all doing?” Frankie chided. She was carrying two trays of drinks, which she set down on the dresser in order to put her hands on her hips. “Our flight leaves in six hours!”

“So?” Troy asked with a yawn. He felt a hand flapping against his back and laid down—Abed didn’t get hungover very often, but when he did, he was always super snuggly.

“So we have to get dressed, and pack and check in and there might be delays or a line, and—is Elroy alive?”

They all looked at the desk chair, where Elroy was… sleeping, hopefully. There was a frightening pause, and then he snored like something out of Jurassic Park. Everyone heaved a relieved sigh. Shirley floated up into a sitting position.

“Coffee?” she asked in a lilting voice. Frankie handed her a cup, and she took a sip. Her eyes shot open. “ Oh! Are you trying to kill me? I know you’re still threatened because I came back to reclaim my place in the group, but there’s no need to poison me! We can settle this like civilized human beings!”

“I’m not threatened by you,” Frankie spluttered. “It’s just black coffee. I couldn’t say, never having been hungover myself, but I’ve heard black coffee is supposed to help.”

She handed a cup to Annie, who took a sip and perked up.

“Ooh, is this Deseo de Muerte Double Caffeinated?”

“Triple.”

“I didn’t know they made a triple!”

“It hasn’t been released yet, I have a friend—”

“Can everyone just shut up for a little bit?” Jeff suggested.

“Look, I just don’t want a repeat of Garrett’s wedding, okay?”

“Right, because us being late was the real problem at that wedding,” Britta snorted.

“Why is she like this?” Abed mumbled. “Why are they all like this?”

“I don’t know, babe,” Troy said, petting his hair. “I don’t know.”

—

Troy straightened his bow tie and stared at his reflection in the mirror. He looked nervous—and too stiff, like a kid on his first day of school at a boarding school that was strict enough to require jackets but lenient enough to allow Spider-Man bow ties. He unstraightened his tie and flashed a confident grin at the mirror. Now he looked like an arrogant dick. One of the A/V students slowly started to walk around to capture his expression. Don’t look at the camera, Abed’s voice said sternly in his head, but between the camera and the mirror he had no idea where to look. He sighed and closed his eyes and tried to think of absolutely nothing. It didn’t work; Troy had a very easily distractible brain. But he was able to clear it enough so that the first thing that popped in his head were music notes instead of anxious yelling. He hummed to himself for a minute, then started shimmying his shoulders, which morphed into a little two-step.

“Kept up with the dance classes, huh?” Britta asked. Troy spun around and gave her finger guns.

“Yeah. It’s good to have something to do during the day when air conditioning repair gets boring. It gets boring pretty fast.”

Britta straightened his bow tie and smoothed his lapels.

“I’m so happy for you guys, you know that?” she said, and Troy felt a twinge of guilt.

“Really? Even though…”

“Even though. Honestly, I think it makes me feel better about our relationship. Because it’s like, oh, if us staying together would have meant that someday you would have had to choose between me and Abed, then I’m sooooo glad we broke up. This way at least I get to keep my dignity.”

Troy laughed. He was getting ready in one of the study rooms in the library—not the study room, because he and Abed had both agreed it would be unfair for only one of them to get it—and the door opened to reveal Shirley and Annie, already dressed in their bridesmaid dresses. They were going for a tasteful 80s look, with Annie in bright purple, Britta in green, Shirley in yellow, and Frankie in dark pink. The groomsmen were in powder blue, which had been worth it just to see Jeff’s face when they told him, and Troy and Abed were in white jackets and black trousers. Abed didn’t love the gay grooms in white tuxes trope, but it had been pretty hard to find a suit that matched both blue-and-red and black-and-yellow bow ties.

“Oh, Troy,” Shirley said, waving her hands at her face. “I said I wasn’t going to cry.”

“She cried at Abed, too,” Annie whispered.

“How’s he doing?” Troy asked over Shirley’s head as he hugged her. She barely touched him, to keep from wrinkling the suit.

“I think he’s nervous,” Annie grinned. “Jeff gave him a shot of scotch and he actually drank it. But he said to tell you ‘Constable, man the navigation system! The Dimensionizer is heading out to parts unknown!’”

“Awww. Your British accent is so bad.”

“Thanks, Troy,” she said, rolling her eyes. She was wearing a headset, which beeped, and she paused to listen to it. “That’s Frankie—the other group is all dressed, and Abed’s parents just got there. So far, everything’s running on time!”

“Cool. Did you guys figure out who you’re walking with?”

“Ugh!” Britta threw herself on the couch, crossing her arms and pursing her lips.

“She got Chang,” Annie said in a loud whisper.

“So not fair.”

“I’m sorry, Britta, but you know I’ve had a policy against touching Chang ever since a certain incident that we don’t discuss,” Shirley said delicately.

“And as the maid of honor and best man, Jeff and I have to walk together,” Annie said, fluttering her eyelashes.

“Yeah, because this wedding is all about tradition,” Britta snarked. Troy grinned to himself; he had missed the bickering.

“Besides, it’s not as if I got my first pick, either. I don’t see why I couldn’t be escorted by Elroy. It might be slightly tokenizing, but at least he’s a gentleman.”

“Because then there’d be an odd number of men and women,” Annie pointed out.

“Yeah, Frankie was excited about playing the steel drums for the ceremony for some reason? I told her she didn’t have to and she just kept saying ‘no, realy, I want to do this for you.’ It was weird,” Troy shrugged.

“Wow, that really did pay off,” Britta muttered.

“Anyway, as soon as Elroy heard she was doing a Natalie is Freezing song, he said he wanted to sing,” Troy said, turning back to the mirror and smoothing his hair. “They’re pretty good. And hey, be thankful you don’t have to walk with both of your divorced parents who like to compete over who can be the most dramatic and embarra—heyyyy, Mom!”

“Look at you!” His mom crossed the room and hugged him. “Don’t think I didn’t hear that,” she whispered in his ear. She drew back. “But I forgive you,” she said in a sugary voice. “Because you look so handsome and you’re getting married.”

She cupped his cheeks and wiggled his face, and Troy winced with a sheepish grin.

“Thanks, Mom. You look nice, too.”

“I know. Ladies,” she said, greeting them with a nod. The girls waved—they had all met at the rehearsal the day before. “Looks like we’re all here. Time to get this show on the road?”

“Mom…” Troy sighed, and there was a booming voice from behind him.

“Well, well, well. Look at this handsome devil.” He turned to see his dad in his best church suit with the worst tie he had ever seen—clearly a product of the real 80s. His dad grabbed his hand and gave it a manly shake, clapping him on the shoulder at the same time. “Ready to break some hearts, son?”

“Ready to break my hand, Dad?”

His father patted him on the back, and then cooled at the sight of Troy’s mom, who was staring pointedly at the ceiling.

“Helen,” he said gruffly.

“Alexander,” she said to the fluorescent light. Troy sighed, and his dad put both hands on his shoulders.

“Now remember, Troy,” he said in a low voice. “You only have to do this if it’s really what you want to do. If you change your mind—”

“Annie,” Troy called.

“Oh, would you look at the time!” Annie said brightly, hustling over and grabbing his arm. “It’s time to go line up!”

“That’s a very lovely dress,” Shirley cooed at his mother.

“I see where Troy gets his charming smile, huh?” Britta said, elbowing his dad in the ribs, and Troy thought, yet again, about how he had the best friends in the world.

“Thank you,” he muttered to Annie. She squeezed his arm.

“Any time. Literally.” They were passing the study room on the way to the front entrance of the library, and both stared at it wistfully until it was out of sight. “It feels like just yesterday that we met. Remember when I was moving into the apartment, and you guys had made that shadow puppet play for me?”

“Remember when you first became a recurring guest character on Troy and Abed in the Morning?”

“Remember when you moved out, and Abed wanted to replace you with his love interest at the time and I wanted to replace you with my brother?” She paused. “Well, no, I guess you don’t remember that. But in retrospect, the whole thing was weirdly on the nose.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I love you guys. Don’t be nervous—you’re going to be great. I’ll go get the others.”

They had reached the exit. She flitted away, which was good because it meant Troy could choke back tears without anyone seeing.

Annie reappeared after a moment with the other half of the wedding party. Mrs. Reyes pretended not to see Troy—they had had a very awkward, mutually non-apologetic apology call a few weeks ago—but Mr. Nadir gave him a look that was more approving than threatening. He thought. He was pretty sure.

Meanwhile, the groomsmen and bridesmaids began to assemble. Britta stood next to Chang, who was wearing sunglasses and had a suspicious lump of fabric in his pocket; from what Troy could see, it was shiny and monkey-sized.

“El Tigre,” he said with a nod.

“Disco Spider,” Chang nodded back.

“Troy,” the Dean said with a curtsy.

“Hey Dean,” Troy said. “That’s a nice… dress? Very ruffly.”

“That was the idea,” he beamed, swishing his skirts. From the top up, it looked like a tuxedo—like, a really, really bad tuxedo, with the baby blue jacket they had requested but a bow tie and a white ruffled shirt that Jeff would have killed them for suggesting. But then the ruffles just kept going until they turned into the ugliest dress Troy had ever seen. Shirley glanced towards the heavens.

Then, over the Dean’s shoulder, Troy saw Jeff go in for a hug and caught a glimpse of an arm in a white jacket. He spun around hastily, in case it was still bad luck to see Abed—he wasn’t sure when that stopped being a thing. He looked out the glass doors and took a deep breath.

“Hey.”

“I’m not turning around,” he told the doors. “Bad luck.”

He could almost hear Jeff rolling his eyes.

“Okay.” Jeff stepped around to the front. “I’m saving the good stuff for the speech. I just wanted to say… do you remember when you left? You said you hoped you would make me proud.”

“And you said I was cooler than you,” Troy grinned. “I remember.”

“Yeah. Well, I wanted to tell you that—I am proud of you. And again, what you’re doing right now, committing to another person, forever … it’s never been something I was able to do. I’m proud of you, and I admire you. And good luck.”

Jeff’s face was soft, and almost… a little sad. Troy huffed out a laugh, shaking his head.

“Man, what are you even talking about right now? Just because you’re not married doesn’t mean you can’t commit to people. You committed to us. All of us.” He gestured at the pastel crowd of people behind them. “None of us would be here if it wasn’t for you. Abed and I might not even be together if you hadn’t made those sarcastic friendship hats. But we are, and you did, because you love us, and we love you back. So. Thank you.”

For a moment, Jeff just stared at him. Then he swooped down like a giant seagull that had spotted half a Del Taco burrito on the ground and yanked Troy into a hug that was almost definitely wrinkling their suits. But Troy hugged him back. After a minute, they heard Annie clearing her throat.

“Guys? We’re now officially late by 14 seconds and counting.”

“Really committed to that Monica bit, huh?” Troy said as he pulled away.

“It’s an homage,” she said primly. Jeff proffered his arm.

“Milady?”

“Milord,” she said with a fond smile as she tucked her hand in his elbow. Troy raised his eyebrows at her. Annie wrinkled her nose and gave a brief shake of the head.

Troy felt someone touch his own arm and turned to find his mom at his side, with his dad hovering behind her.

“Ready, baby?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. His voice sounded faint, so he swallowed and tried again. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

“Troy…” His parents exchanged a Look—without shouting, which was new. “Your mother and I are both very happy for you.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“And so is LeVar Burton. I ran into him on my way back from the john.”

“Cool.” He closed his eyes and hummed the first few notes of Daybreak again, doing his little two-step and shaking out his arms. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

“Go,” Annie said into her headset.

There was the distant sound of steel drums, and then they left the library and stepped out into the sunshine. Rows of chairs were set up in the courtyard, with an altar and a small table at the edge of the quad. Troy’s heart was racing a mile a minute, but he couldn’t help but beam when he saw everybody looking at him. He even waved at a few of them, which he definitely wasn’t supposed to do—if Abed had been behind the camera, he would have scolded him for not sticking to genre. There was LeVar, Gilbert, Mr. Stone, Luis Guzman, Jerry and some of the more sane A/C repair guys… Professors Whitman and Duncan… Madame LeClair, who had fittingly found a seat among half his dance class from LA… Leonard, Neil, Vicki, Pavel, Garrett and Stacy and Garrett Jr… Marisol, Abra, and the Detroit cousins… his own cousins… Magnitude, who gave him a silent “pop pop” as he passed, and Frankie and Elroy, who were performing a song that really sounded like it was about heroin, but the steel drums were soothing enough that it somehow worked.

By the time he reached the altar, he had almost forgotten why he was nervous. He reached his mark and turned to face the crowd. There had been a bit of a break between him and the attendants, so they could space it out, but there weren’t very many of them, and Abed was tall. As soon as Jeff let go of Annie’s arm and took his spot behind Troy, Troy caught sight of his best friend—boyfriend—fiancé—almost-husband.

Damn, he thought. Why do I always forget how hot he is? He really ought to know by now, but it seemed like three times a day he looked at Abed and remembered that he was hot. He looked really good in white, too, which Troy didn’t usually have a chance to appreciate because Abed liked bright colors so much.

There were still several people between them, but after an amount of time (there was really no way to tell how long it was, because Troy’s best guess was somewhere between three hours and a half a second) they were standing in front of each other. Now what? Troy thought, because according to Annie’s schedule they were just supposed to turn and start listening to Jeff, but it felt like something was missing.

Abed winked and clicked his tongue, and Troy burst out laughing.

“Yeah,” he said, grinning broadly. “That’s just what I was going to say.”

He took Abed’s hand in his, and Abed took the last few steps to the altar. The music ended with a steel drum roll, then Elroy and Frankie took their places, and Annie nodded at Jeff.

“Hi everybody, and welcome to the wedding ceremony of Troy Barnes and Abed Nadir. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Jeff Winger. I’m a professor here at Greendale, and a long, long time ago I was also a member of a Spanish study group.”

There was a pause. Jeff cleared his throat.

“The truth is, I’m not a big believer in marriage. Or monogamy. Or true love, really. But I am a big believer in Troy and Abed. I’ve known them for as long as they’ve known each other, and in that time, I’ve seen them do a lot of things that don’t quite make sense to me. Many, many times they have found the wonder in things that the rest of us have quote-unquote grown out of—which really just means we’ve learned to be ashamed of the things that bring us joy, and they haven’t. On the other hand, those of you who are Greendale students may remember the great and terrible pillow fight of 2011. Troy and Abed mutually agreed that, when the war ended, so would their friendship… and then mutually refused to let it end, because it was better to work through their anger together than their loneliness apart.”

Troy smiled sheepishly. Abed was staring at him with those insanely gentle Bambi eyes, and Troy’s heart felt like it was going to burst. He looked down and tapped the side of Abed’s hand with his thumb. Abed tapped him back.

“That’s what marriage is. It’s choosing each other, again and again and again. They have survived the highs and the lows together, and yet they’ve also shown that they are capable of making great journeys as individuals—either by sailing a two-man boat around the entire world or, even more terrifying, moving to the city of Los Angeles and trying to make it in show business. But just because they could do those things on their own, doesn’t mean that they were alone. None us can really grow unless we know who we are, and we learn who we are with the help of those we love. That’s true for this couple probably more than anyone else. Troy and Abed have done a million homages, played out a million stories, and now they’re ready to start a new one. And I, for one, can’t wait to see what comes next.”

There was a content pause. Someone in the crowd was already sniffling.

“Top 10 Winger speeches, definitely,” Abed muttered, barely moving his lips. Jeff smiled, and then looked at Troy and gave a single, encouraging nod.

“In true TV wedding fashion, they’ve written their own vows. Troy?”

Troy looked back at Abed and had to close his eyes for a second. He had memorized his vows, but it was hard to think of anything with Abed looking at him like that—it was like basketball all over again.

“Abed, when we met… I didn’t really know who I was,” he said. He opened his eyes. “I spent all my time pretending to be cool and smart and tough because I thought that was what other people wanted, while you were only being Abed. Except when you were just messing around as somebody else, but let’s face it, you were a lot better at Don Draper than I was at Fake Cool Guy Troy. Anyway.” He squeezed his hands. “You inspire me. You make me braver. You make me a better friend and a better man. I promise to always be myself with you, but the best version of myself. I promise to always accept you, no matter what crazy new version of yourself you might come up with. And I promise to always be there for the next adventure. I love you for all time.”

There was an audible ‘aw’ from the usual suspects. Abed took a deep breath that came out all shaky when he exhaled, and dropped Troy’s hand to take a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. He opened his mouth, then hesitated. He swallowed.

“There are like 20 Friends references in here,” he said with a wobbly laugh. “Because that show always has the best wedding episodes, especially—”

“Phoebe and Mike’s,” Troy said in unison.

(“That’s why there’s a steel drummer,” he heard his mom say in an undertone.)

“Yeah.” Abed shoved his vows back in his pocket. “But forget it. It’s stupid. Being with you is better than any movie anyone’s ever written, and no one’s ever going to top it, and it’s never going to end. I love you for all space.”

Troy’s smile was so wide it hurt his face, but also his eyes hurt like he was going to cry, and he probably would have tried to kiss Abed right then if Jeff hadn’t asked “Do you have the rings? Real rings, that are not made of plastic and candy?”

Annie passed Troy the box, and they slipped the rings on each other’s fingers.

“Having exchanged rings, they will now sign this… traditional Muslim marriage contract, which I have forgotten the name of.”

“Nikah.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

Annie passed them a fancy pen next, and Abed leaned down to sign the contract. The whole thing was written in elaborate calligraphy, and Abed signed his name in Arabic, too—Troy’s squiggly cursive looked pretty lackluster by comparison. Abed’s dad and uncle, seated in the front row, stood and signed the contract as witnesses.

“Now Abed and Troy will each accept the marriage offer in Arabic.”

“Qabul, qabul, qabul,” Troy said, wincing slightly at his own pronunciation. Abed beamed.

“Qabul. Qabul, qabul, qabul.”

“And that means we’re… done.” Jeff raised his eyebrows at Abed. Abed nodded. “Yes! The happy couple, ladies and gentlemen!”

They reached for each other in the same instant, Troy burying his hands in Abed’s hair as Abed’s cupped his jaw, and somehow it was even better than their first kiss and all the ones that had come after. It felt like they were spinning, and like fireworks were going off—oh yeah, that really was applause in the background. There should always be applause when they were kissing, because they were pretty fucking fantastic at it.

“What’s next?” Abed asked breathlessly when they finally broke apart.

“Now… we party.”

“Sweet.”

They lifted their arms to do their very first handshake as a married couple.

—

“And now, it is my very great pleasure, as their close personal friend and Dean of Greendale Community College, to introduce Troy and Abed Nadir-Barnes! How about some applause, huh?”

There was a burst of sound as Troy entered the room, which faded into a confused mumble when they saw he was alone. He looked around the cafeteria and spotted Abed standing unobtrusively in the corner near the kitchen, with a camera waiting nearby. He had a hard time fighting his grin as he stalked over.

“Nobody puts Abed in the corner!” he declared. He took Abed by the hand and dragged him up on the stage—Annie had asked a million times why they needed to put a stage in if there was no band, but they had successfully evaded her. “Hit it,” Troy said, nodding at the DJ. He tossed his suit jacket aside and slipped his bow tie in his pocket, and joined Abed in the middle of the stage just as the opening notes of “I’ve Had The Time of My Life” began.

“By the way,” Abed murmured, touching their foreheads together. “Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Ditto, babe.”

They drew back to begin the fancy footwork of the dance. It wasn’t quite the same as the movie without the swirly dress, but they had been practicing for weeks and they had the steps down pat. Abed was staring straight ahead, lips moving as he counted.

“One, two, three, four,” he whispered. “Two, two, three, four, head back, loosen up—”

Troy couldn’t help but shake his head with a fond grin as they spun around the stage. They hit the low lift perfectly, and then Abed totally broke their rhythm by reaching up to pop open two more buttons on Troy’s shirt.

“Are you serious?”

“That’s how Patrick Swayze does it,” Abed said with a mischievous light in his eyes.

Troy shook his head and leaped off the stage—a few seconds out of time, but there was a gratifying, high-pitched shriek from some of the women in the crowd and the Dean. He boogied by himself for a minute and then turned to face the stage. Apparently no one on the guest list was as familiar with Dirty Dancing as Abed, because nobody stepped up to join them, and he had to awkwardly hop down off the stage instead of being gracefully set down

And now this was it: the big lift. There was a pivotal moment when their eyes locked, shining with sheer determination, and Troy knew they were both flashing back to the million and a half times they had practiced this. Abed had been confident, before they started practicing, that the lift was 99.9% a symbol of trust, and because they trusted each other right off the bat, it was fine. Troy had suggested that maybe, possibly, doing a full-body lift of someone who was four and a half inches taller than him might require a little bit more than trust.

But Abed nodded, and Troy nodded back, and then Abed was running and leaping and Troy was catching him and everyone in the cafeteria was having an absolute meltdown. Troy was laughing when he lowered Abed to the ground, and their dance dissolved into a simple, hand-on-the-waist sway as other couples joined them on the dance floor. Abed beamed at him.

“That was the coolest thing we’ve ever done.”

“You got married like twenty minutes ago,” Jeff pointed out as he and Britta danced past them.

“Yeah, which is 5 million cool points, but that was only one thing,” Troy said. “That lift was like a million cool points by itself, then we get 5 million additional cool points for doing it while married . Duh-doy.”

“Duh-doy,” Britta agreed, while Abed nodded his agreement.

“Duh-doy,” Jeff relented.

“Oh, look, Chang’s dancing with Annie’s Boobs,” Britta pointed. “Guess that monkey security didn’t work out.”

“Oliver, get a shot of that,” Abed said, and one of the videographers rushed over to where Chang was dancing with a monkey in a metallic gold suit hitting him with its tiny fists. “Nice. And there’s Frankie’s surprisingly perky girlfriend talking to Annie.”

“Wow,” Troy said. He had never seen a perkier person—she was blonde, with her hair pulled up with what looked like an entire garden’s worth of fake flowers, and pink platform shoes that matched her glasses. Annie and Frankie looked positively subdued next to her, even in their bridesmaid dresses. “That’s… hang on. Do you guys see that?”

“See what?”

“Annie’s  twirling her hair. She’s talking to Frankie’s girlfriend and twirling her hair and doing the sexy looking down and then up thing!”

They all stared, jaws dropped.

“...Did we have a pool for that?” Britta asked.

“Nope,” Jeff said. His eyebrows were very high up on his very high forehead.

“Okay, Britta, that just leaves you,” Abed declared. “What’s your thing gonna be?”

“My thing?”

“Come on, don’t get pretend-offended. We told you months ago, we want everyone to do at least one thing. What’ve you got?”

“My thing is laying low,” she said, sticking her nose in the air. “Laying low and being chill, that’s my thing.”

Jeff sighed.

“Britta.”

“What?”

“It’s their wedding day. If they want a thing…”

They had a little wordless conversation, and Troy glanced at Abed, who looked just as confused as he felt. Britta sighed, too.

“Fine.”

She pointed down. Troy looked down but didn’t see anything.

“New shoes? Ooh, did you bring a little dog?!”

“No! Troy…”

She pointed again, on more of a diagonal, towards her stomach. Abed stopped swaying and his eyes went wide. Troy frowned at him.

“I don’t get it.”

“Troy…” Jeff said significantly, with a pointed cough.

“I don’t… WOAH!”

“There it is,” Jeff said, as sarcastic as ever but with a little hint of happiness underneath it.

“Are you serious?” Troy hissed.

“Secret sex, the throwback,” Abed muttered. “I never saw it coming. Troy, quick, grab one of the Kickpuncher centerpieces, we need to do a bouquet toss.”

“Oh, there’s no need,” Britta said smugly. “We’re not getting married. Let’s face it, we almost tied the knot three times—if it hasn’t happened by now, it’s never going to happen. Plus, co-parenting by choice with my ex-lover automatically makes me cooler than the basic housewife who haunts my waking nightmares.”

“And you can’t get divorced and abandon your kid if you never get married,” Jeff added. “Loophole!”

They high-fived. Abed tilted his head.

“I’m not sure about this. You still get all the standard childcare and family sitcom tropes that won’t appeal to edgier types, yet the progressive sexual mores risk alienating the values-driven audience of a typical family sitcom, a.k.a. Shirley. But who am I kidding, I’d watch the hell out of it. Congratulations.”

“Thanks, Abed.”

“When you have the baby, can we borrow it?” Troy asked seriously. They both gave him a weird look.

“We’re going to go dance over there now,” Britta said, and they swayed away.

The song changed to something slower, and Troy rested his head on Abed’s shoulder.

“Our spin-off is still better, right?”

“No competition.”

“Six seasons and a movie?” he grinned. Abed scoffed.

“Really, Constable, I’m disappointed in your lack of imagination,” he said in his Inspector voice. “Fifty-five seasons and a crappy Christmas special, at least.”

Troy chuckled and tilted his head for a kiss.

“At least.”