Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s already 7:00 in the evening when Jeff gets the text from Abed letting him know that he has the apartment to himself tonight, if Jeff wants to come over. He’s on the cusp of saying he can’t make it; Jeff doesn’t particularly love sudden changes to plan, and he’s done none of his personal grooming routine after being inside and alone all day. He really wants to see Abed, though. Briefly he considers quickly doing his hair and maybe even putting on some of his skincare products, but after pacing around a little trying to decide, he finally forces himself to let it go. Abed won’t judge him for looking slightly less put-together, and the prospect of a night to themselves is too appealing to turn down.

Abed has left the door unlocked for him, so when he comes in Jeff finds him already curled up on the couch with his weighted blanket. He cranes his neck up as Jeff leans down to kiss him; their noses nuzzle together before their lips brush, and Jeff feels his lips curl up in a smile. Abed’s hand is wrapped around the back of his neck to anchor his head, his fingers just grazing the fine hairs there.

“Good day?” Jeff asks, as he sags onto the couch. Abed has already left a cozy blanket on the cushion for him, the one he knows Jeff prefers, and he drapes it immediately around his legs.

“Pretty good,” Abed says. He looks at Jeff fondly. “You look relaxed. Did you just wash your hair?”

He sees it in his peripheral vision: Abed’s hand reaching out to feel his hair. Immediately Jeff swerves away from the touch, leaning so that he’s just out of reach. Abed blinks and retracts his hand right away. He doesn’t look hurt, thankfully; Jeff would feel terrible if he did. He just looks confused.

“I’m sorry.” Those words, in retrospect, would have made more sense coming out of Abed’s mouth, but Jeff says them before he can even think about why he’s apologizing.

Abed cocks his head at him, puzzled. “It’s my mistake,” he says, his voice neutral and sounding not at all hurt. “Shirley’s told me before not to touch people’s hair without asking. I should have remembered to check with you first. It’s okay if you don’t like it.”

He moves on without seeming to give it another thought. Jeff, on the other hand, feels slightly at sea for reasons he can’t quite describe. He didn’t expect to have that reaction; the stiffness of his usually gelled-up hair keeps people from putting their hands in it, and he’s pretty good at avoiding unwanted touching in general these days. But there’s something hanging in the air now, some meaning to all this beyond the specific interaction that’s just occurred. Abed doesn’t seem bothered, though, and Jeff thinks it would be weird for him to be if he can’t articulate why. So he takes out his phone and clicks around on it for a while typing random phrases into his drafts. It’s calming to him, for some reason, and it gives him something to occupy himself with while Abed gets them drinks and sets up a movie in the Blu-Ray player.

They’re a third of the way through the movie when the words tumble out of Jeff’s mouth. He didn’t even realize he’d still been thinking about this, turning it over and over in his mind, until he says it out loud: “I don’t know if I like it or not.” Abed turns toward him with a neutral expression on his face, waiting for Jeff to continue—giving him space to articulate what he’s feeling. “Having my hair touched, I mean. I never let anybody do it usually. When I was little kids would always pull on it, and it made me want to scream. So I’ve avoided it as much as I can since then.” The memory is almost as vivid as if it had happened yesterday: the sharp pain of kids tugging on his hair, and the way it made a terrible sound rise in his throat, a shrieking sound he can’t control, one he doesn’t ever hear the other kids make. He knew even then that if he didn’t protect himself—if he didn’t do something to stop them getting to him—they’d trigger that reaction and he wouldn’t be able to stop.

He thinks they were probably doing it on purpose, to make him freak out like that.

Abed nods. “I understand,” he says. “Can I make some assumptions here? Just theoretically speaking.”

“Okay,” Jeff says hesitantly.

“I assume you know that every sensory stimulus has a positive and a negative aspect, right?”

“Yes,” Jeff agrees. He can see where Abed is going with this, but he plays along anyway.

“I also assume you know it’s unlikely I would do something intentionally to hurt you, without your consent?” Abed looks at him directly this time, which is rare for him. “Do you trust me not to do that, Jeff?”

Jeff nods before the verbal response leaves his mouth. “Yes,” he says readily.

Abed swallows. “And thirdly, I assume you know that this is an area I have experience with. That I know what it’s like for touch and sensory input to be—complicated.”

For some reason, knowing that Abed is revealing himself so fully makes Jeff feel even more vulnerable in turn. A lump forms in his throat; he feels like he wants to blink back tears all of a sudden. “Yeah,” he whispers.

Abed reaches over and takes his hand. “Can I tell you exactly what I want to do, before you say yes or no?” he asks, and waits for Jeff to nod again. “I want to ask you to put your head in my lap. Then I’ll touch your hair. I’m not going to pull on it hard like the kids in your class did. It’s gonna feel about the same as it does when I scratch your back or massage your hands. And if it makes you too nervous, I promise you I’ll stop.” He taps out a little rhythm on the back of Jeff’s hand. “Okay, now you can tell me yes or no.”

Jeff takes a moment to think about it, because he knows Abed wants his answer to be as honest as possible. At first his head is all nerves, but then a minute passes and his trust in Abed starts to override the anxiety he associates with being touched like this. “Okay,” he agrees finally, and looks into Abed’s earnest eyes. Abed gives him a reassuring smile and gestures him down so that Jeff can rest his head on Abed’s thighs.

He expects Abed’s hands to go straight to his hair, but instead Abed smoothes his palm up Jeff’s forehead; then both his hands trace a gentle path from his ears all the way up his temples to his hairline, almost like he’s giving him a scalp massage. Jeff can feel his spine immediately start to loosen in response. Abed rubs at the plane of Jeff’s forehead, as though smoothing away the lines that sometimes form there. He lingers for a long time, just massaging and getting Jeff relaxed and comfortable with his touch. His fingers are long and dexterous; Jeff has had them do much less appropriate things to him, but he thinks he’s never loved them more than he does right now.

Then, finally, Abed’s hands edge up into his hair, tracing the sensitive plane of his scalp. “Your hair’s so much softer without product in it,” he murmurs.

“Mm-hmm,” Jeff manages in response. Coherent words feel just out of reach right now.

Abed’s fingers continue to explore. And to Jeff’s disbelief, almost every spot they touch feels shockingly good. They duck behind his ears to run over the closer-cut strands, put gentle pressure on the different areas of his skull, even rub the back of his neck. The last one makes him moan so loud and uncontrolled that it almost sounds sexual. Jeff feels a blush color his cheeks, but Abed just continues touching him.

“Does it feel good?” Abed asks. His fingers have found a particularly nice spot on Jeff’s scalp to focus on. It makes Jeff feel like he’s melting.

He shivers hard, feeling it all the way from his head down to his fingertips. “Almost scary good,” he breathes. Abed’s lips turn up in a little smile, and he scratches around the top of Jeff’s head again. Then he gives a few tufts of Jeff’s hair the tiniest tug, not hard enough to cause pain but enough to create pressure, and Jeff hears a throaty moan leave his lips. “Fuck,” Jeff says. “How does that feel so good?”

Abed does it again, just to hear Jeff make the noise a second time. “It’s just good stimulus instead of bad. Like I said. We’re all wired to experience both; you and I just do it differently than other people. The bad kind feels worse to us because we’re more sensitive. And sometimes we get used to relying on the bad sensory stuff if we can’t get the good, so it takes us a long time to learn to tell the difference.”

“What do you mean?”

There’s a shifting above him, and then Abed rolls up his sleeve and bares his arm to Jeff. Now that it’s exposed, he can see a dark bruise has blossomed on his forearm; around its edges, the obvious mottled circles of fingerprints. “I got this bruise playing basketball last week,” he tells Jeff. “Two days ago I had a bad day, and I couldn’t leave campus to come home. So I did what I always used to do as a kid when I needed to feel pressure on me to calm down. The school psychologist who evaluated me called it sensory-seeking self-injurious behavior.” He affects a slightly-elevated professorial voice for the last few words. “Which is a fancy way of saying that because I couldn’t get the sensory input I needed in a positive way, I found it in a negative way. Pressing down on the bruise and feeling the pain helps. I used to have finger-shaped bruises on my wrists all the time as a kid from squeezing myself too hard.”

Jeff traces his finger against the edge of the bruise, and feels Abed tremble. “What’s the positive way to get it?”

“When I was seventeen I got this,” Abed says, lifting the edge of the weighted blanket he’s got draped across his lap. “It feels heavy against my body and makes me feel grounded. Stress balls help my brain deal with wanting to squeeze things. Or someone hugging me really tight can help, if I don’t mind being touched. Troy does that sometimes.”

“I never got evaluated for anything,” Jeff confesses. “My parents wouldn’t let the school do it. They didn’t want me to be ‘coded with anything’”—his fingers come up in sarcastic quotation marks—“because they thought it meant I’d be labeled with something that would stay with me the whole time I was in school.”

Abed’s fingers resume their gentle scratching; it makes Jeff want to purr. “Even if the label would mean you could get help they couldn’t give you otherwise?”

Jeff sighs. “It’s all about appearances, I guess. Or maybe they just really wanted me to be normal.” There’s a long silence, just the sound of their breathing and Abed’s fingers combing through his hair. Then Jeff blurts out, “I was never normal, though.” Abed hums to show he’s listening. “I couldn’t keep my hands still. I couldn’t stop myself from tapping my fingers if I was excited, or hitting my palm against things—my desk, or my own leg— when I was upset. My parents had a lot of conferences with teachers about that.”

“Did they ever let you fiddle with things, to keep your hands busy?” Abed asks.

“No,” Jeff replies. “They just told me I fidgeted too much. I would get overwhelmed and I’d want to rock back and forth in my chair or get up and walk around the room, but I wasn’t allowed to get up. And then all the noises were too loud and my skin felt way too sensitive, and I would tap my foot until the kids next to me got annoyed with me. So then I was miserable and everyone was mad at me.” Jeff’s brow furrows and he bites his lip to keep it from trembling. “I had a lot of bad days like that.”

“It’s a pity they didn’t let you,” Abed says. His voice is still very mild, and that helps calm Jeff down, the way Abed isn’t getting emotionally affected. “It would have helped.”

“At that age, I wasn’t aware that anything could have helped. I thought I was just—”

“Broken,” Abed finishes softly. “I know.”

This whole conversation is making thoughts swirl around in Jeff’s head, ideas he’s never let himself consider before tonight: what the psychologists would have said if his parents had let them diagnose him; how different his awkward, difficult school years would have been if he’d known why things felt the way they did. What he might have missed out on all this time, the way he’s apparently been missing out on the sweet, affectionate, tender sensation of gentle fingers in his hair.

Over time, Jeff has learned how to be popular. It started when he got out of his gangly, round-faced, shaggy-haired high school stage and learned that, to many people, he was considered attractive. He’d leaned into that: constructed a look and a body type that was designed to be widely appealing. (It didn’t hurt that high levels of exercise satisfied his deep-seated need for movement to calm his overstimulated mind, and micro-managing his food intake helped with the unpredictable, inconsistent aversions he sometimes had to the tastes and smells and textures of foods.) He’d learned to be charming, too. He’d pieced together cockiness and likeability like a script: a formula he could follow to make sure he was accepted. It was easier with one-night stands and the avoidance of close friendships. If he didn’t have to maintain a deep, long-term relationship, he could keep up the act and no one would see the cracks in the hull.

The study group has changed all that. Abed has changed all that. They’ve seen him have meltdowns and go apeshit when things are really frustrating, but they’re all disasters too in their own ways, so his freakouts aren’t any weirder than their own. He’s still repressed his truest self deep enough that he doesn’t think it’ll ever be dug out, but maybe he can trust them a little, show them bits and pieces of what really goes on in his head, and maybe then—

His train of thought is suddenly and completely derailed. Abed has just run his nails in feather-light, gentle scratches all the way from the base of his neck to the top of his head, and the sensation is so good that it washes everything else from his brain. He gasps, shocked by the feeling. Abed repeats the motion again, and again, and again—slowly, and so attentively, now that he’s found something that Jeff clearly likes and responds to the best. Every single time, Jeff’s sounds get more intense: gasps turning into little moans, until Abed does it one more time while adding a little tug at the roots of his hair—and Jeff groans in a way that he usually only does when Abed takes him in his mouth to blow him.

Heat rises to Jeff’s cheeks and he squeezes his eyes shut, turning his face into Abed’s shirt. “Oh my God. That’s so embarrassing. I’m sorry, I swear I’m not getting turned on by this.”

Abed quirks an eyebrow at him. “Well, you are a little.” Jeff props himself up on his elbows to look—and yes, Abed’s right, he’s a little tumescent, the slight swelling visible in the line of his sweatpants. Abed presses one palm against Jeff’s forehead and the other against his shoulder, guiding him back down. “It’s okay,” he says. “Having your hair touched is very intimate. It’s natural for your body to respond.”

He's intensely aware of his low-level arousal now that it’s been pointed out, but eventually it fades back into the overall comfort and pleasure he’s getting from Abed playing with his hair. Abed keeps going until he’s combed his fingers through almost every strand, put nearly equal pressure in every area, and reduced Jeff to a virtual puddle. Then he stops and gets up for a bit, letting Jeff sit up and shake out his limbs. He thinks Abed might be giving him space to reset; he didn’t know he needed it until now, but in this moment he really appreciates it.

Later that night, while the TV plays old black-and-white episodes of The Twilight Zone, Abed picks up Jeff’s hand like he’s going to play with it. But what actually happens surprises Jeff: Abed has a stim toy in his hand, a fidget with varying textures, and he casually runs the tips of Jeff’s fingers across it over and over again. It’s an idle, repetitive movement, but it satisfies something so deep inside Jeff that the relief is palpable. He tries to keep his mind on the twists and turns of the show, but the sensory stimulation feels so good and it just keeps building, and all of a sudden he realizes Abed is teaching him how to stim, and—

He doesn’t realize his eyes are filling with tears until his vision gets so watery he can’t make out the image on the screen anymore.

Abed pauses it the second he notices. “Jeff,” he murmurs, and his voice is kind and soothing. The sob that bursts out of Jeff’s mouth is almost a gasp; Abed turns immediately and gathers him close, tucks Jeff’s head into the crook of his neck and rubs his back while he lets it all out. After a minute he asks, “Are you okay?” and Jeff nods his head, even though he’s still crying. He is okay; it’s just that everything Abed has done for him tonight has felt so good, so necessary.

All of it is new to him. Jeff has never particularly liked being comforted, as odd as it sounds; it’s always felt more like being coddled, and everyone who tried to comfort him as a child was sympathetic in a way that he thinks is nice for other people, but which felt emotionally overwhelming to him. He’s always wanted to be left alone when he’s upset, but his bad moods often came with physical or loud emotional outbursts—and so whenever he was distressed, if he let it out like he wanted to, adults scolded him for being disruptive.

But Abed isn’t doing that. He lets Jeff sob even though he’s being loud, and he says very little and stays calm, and holds him without being too clingy or overbearing. Slowly, Jeff feels his emotional overwhelm begin to settle. He wipes his face on his sleeves, and then looks mildly annoyed by the dampness of the tears on the fabric. Abed’s got him covered, though—he hands Jeff a large sweatshirt, probably way too large on Abed himself, but comfortable and soft and a good fit for Jeff. He pulls it on, and even though the mild wetness is still there on his regular shirt, it doesn’t bother him as much with the addition of this new sensation.

Abed hands him the stim toy to play with and settles back on the couch. He picks up the remote, waiting for Jeff’s wordless nod before rewinding back a few minutes and resuming the episode. After a moment, Jeff lets his shoulders fully relax; he sits back, fiddles with the toy a little bit, feels his mind calm. He’s warm and comfortable in the sweatshirt, and neither the sounds around him nor his thoughts are too loud—and most of all, he feels loved, without having to bottle up everything that feels right to him.

He leans his head against Abed’s shoulder. After a moment, Abed’s hand comes to rest in his hair. Jeff smiles.

Maybe this whole healing thing isn’t so far out of reach after all.