A/N: Okay, so I know I'm pretty late to the party but I have recently joined the Community fandom (just in time for season 6!), and long story short Abed/Annie has taken over my life. Hopefully this little oneshot will help get some of the plot bunnies out of my system—as always, please review and let me know what you think. This is my first foray into anything other than book fanfiction, so all feedback is very welcome!
Plus, anyone who writes fanfic knows what a HUMONGOUS boost that little review alert gives you!
-Rosy
Disclaimer: Alas, I do not own the show. If I did—well, let's just be thankful I don't have power over these characters' lives, okay?
XXX
She hadn't expected it—this distance. Of course, with Troy so conspicuously gone she had known the transition would be a rocky one for both of them, particularly Abed, but she had never imagined this empty and aching silence.
It creeps in at the edges and corners, so gradually that she's slow to notice, pinning it instead on her chronic anxiety and undeniable worrywart tendencies…eventually, though, it is unmistakable: more silences, fewer smiles, and weeks since he'd even mentioned Inspector Spacetime to her.
Annie swallows down the old panic as she remakes her bed for the third time in twenty minutes. She had thought she was done with this, the constant worrying that she'd be left behind just as she was beginning to feel safe. Then, as she irritably snaps the quilt off her blankets, she makes a decision:
No more self-pity and loneliness as she waits for everyone else to fix things—there had been quite enough of that in high school. So, courage metaphorically in hand, she strides into the living room with new determination and a healthy dose of desperation, too. She's tired of losing people and she sure as hell isn't going to lose the best friend she's ever had when he lives six feet away from her.
XXX
She sees him in the kitchen, and she's grateful that he isn't in his room because she's not sure she has the strength to go looking for a confrontation twice.
He turns at her footsteps and glances at her face, eyebrows pulling together as he tries to map out what she's thinking. He speaks slowly, with the air of not wanting to spook a wild animal. "I was looking for the cereal—did you put it in the other cabinet?"
She almost laughs because for the past six weeks it's been her obsessing over how to approach him, how to give him space and time to think but still say the words that have been all pressed together under her ribcage until she wants to cry and cry just to make the ache go away.
Instead she leans against the counter, unconsciously playing with the ends of her hair as she calculates what to say—and how. "Abed—forget cereal for a minute. I want to say something."
Now he does look like a scared woodland creature, all wide eyes and twitchy fingers. She cringes—maybe less directness would have been better but it's too late now and she takes a few deep breaths, ignoring the thought that this was a mistake and she can still leave now and if she doesn't even know what to say how can she expect him to understand what she means—
She looks up, shielded by her hair, expecting to see him running for cover under what he has every reason to expect will be a storm of emotions and hurt feelings he has no wish to deal with—but he hasn't moved. He clearly wants to, that much is obvious from his restless hands and almost imperceptible shifting of his weight between his feet, but he stays where he is.
And it's this—the second time he decides to stay for her—that makes her choice for her.
She goes for a cold open, hoping he will appreciate it and making a conscious effort not to twist her fingers in her nervousness.
"It's been almost two months, Abed. I've tried not to bug you or push you, but Troy's not coming back—definitely not for a long time. I miss him too—we all do! And of course we can't imagine exactly how you are feeling, but...but we have some idea, at least, and I guess what I'm trying to say is that—that we've all lost a friend, and we understand it's hard, and scary, but I for one am not going to lose another from sheer—apathy, okay?"
Her breathing hitches, and she takes in a single gulp of air, lifting her head to see his dark eyes fixed on her, an unreadable expression on his face. It's not exactly encouraging, but she plows ahead.
"You never talk about him, but you seem so unhappy—you're just so quiet all the time and it scares me because I don't know what to do and I don't understand anything except that I want to do something and I can't. The last time we had a real conversation was last month when you said you couldn't find the TV remote—!"
To her eternal shame she actually stamps her foot, and his gaze flicks down to watch before returning to her face. He looks like he is about to say something but she's so far down this road that she might as well say it all.
"And the POINT of all this talking—and I know you hate big confrontation scenes like this, but too bad—is that you are IMPORTANT to me, and I need you, and I'm sick of tiptoeing around and waiting for another friend to bail on me—because, in case you haven't realized, you are my best friend, Abed, and I absolutely will not let one sad thing happening screw that up."
Done. The silence seems to echo slightly, the space between them somehow greater without her anger to fill it. She crosses her arms and stares at him, waiting for some kind of response—anything, at this point, would be a relief. She tries to ignore the fact that she hasn't actually said everything she's thinking, that she's really said as much as she can bear to give and is left to hope he understands the rest.
(She realizes the unfairness, but for the life of her she can't figure out how to articulate this twisted-up, confused pile of emotions that she is terrifyingly close to calling love—)
She sees him struggling to react, casting about for some other identity to make this exchange easier—Don Draper or Batman or who knows what else—and Annie instinctively guesses that if that happens, this little piece of time and space and possibility won't. And God knows she doesn't have the energy to go through this again.
She is across the room in three steps, and before Abed can speak or back away or move at all she is kissing him—and it is impossibly far from their dramatic, passionate kiss under a spray of orange paint all those months and years ago.
It's long and kind and a little hesitant.
To Abed it tastes of surprise and a smile and an edge of fear… there are no characters to stand between them and anything that happens will have a reality he generally avoids.
When she pulls away and looks at him, he can see a hypnotizing mix of defiance and shyness that adds up to expectations, and he figures he should say something.
"I wasn't trying to avoid you."
She watches him intently, and he knows he should explain better but her eyes are clear and blue and razor-sharp, and her chin is still tilted up to his face, and one of her hands is still resting on his cheek, and altogether it's suddenly become very difficult to concentrate.
He clears his throat and goes for take two.
"A better way to put it is that I wasn't sure how to handle our shift in living situation or what it meant for our character arcs—aside from saying good-bye to Troy I didn't know what the normal reaction should be. I suspected I liked you more than a good friend should, but—"
She stops him with an impatient gesture. "So you just stopped talking to me altogether? Abed, I thought—I thought you wanted to kick me out or something. You wouldn't even walk to class with me anymore!"
He studies a linoleum tile near his right foot. "It was only a matter of time before Jeff realized he cared about you—I didn't want to get involved but that didn't mean I wanted to watch," he said matter-of-factly.
Annie wants to cry, or laugh, or some undignified combination of the two. "So I was just supposed to figure that out from all those silences?"
She doesn't even mention Jeff, and for that he is grateful. Annie's eyebrows are doing that thing that normally means she's frustrated, but she's smiling, too.
He shrugs, or as well as he can with Annie still so close to him. "You're supposed to be good at subtext."
Annie makes a choking sound, and then she really is crying, her head on his chest as the tears streak her face and stain his t-shirt. All those weeks of loneliness and uncertainty and the solution is so simple, so impossible yet so truly, gloriously simple.
"You're crying. I'm sorry—did I say something wrong again? I just wanted to explain—"
She lifts her face, and her smile makes him think of watery sunshine after a sudden rainstorm, if the sunshine were 5'4'' of beautiful girl who was also his friend and who inexplicably wanted to kiss him.
"For the record, Abed, I'm not psychic, all right?" She tries to be serious and firm and grown-up, but Abed is smiling one of his genuine smiles that could light up New York City so she stops scolding and stretches onto her toes and gives him a kiss that seems to say second chances—
—and Abed kisses her too even though without Han Solo in his head he really has no idea what he's doing so he just leans forwards and lets his mouth find hers and hopes for the best—
–but when they stop Annie rests her cheek against his chest and wraps her fingers up in his so he thinks he didn't mess up too badly.
XXX