Jeff is awakened from his sleep to the sound of measured knocking on his apartment door, and he almost shouts that he doesn't want to buy any Girl Scout cookies and he isn't interested in being converted to a new religion, before he realizes that it's still dark outside. Based on this realization, he decides that whoever is knocking is either in crisis, or going to be when he opens the door, and he rolls out of bed and throws on a satin robe before stumbling to the door.
The light from the hallway floods in as soon as the door opens, and the figure on the other side, obscured except for its silhouette. The figure slips in without any kind of discernible greeting and it briefly occurs to Jeff that this might be the most passive aggressive robbery ever, before he recognizes the shape of the guest, now only obscured by the years of absence.
"Abed!"
"Hey, Jeff. Can I sit down?"
"Uh, sure, sure. Come in."
"Cool. Cool cool cool."
It's two AM and Abed is perched on Jeff's couch-perched because he hasn't been here in years, perched because it's a different couch and he doesn't trust it yet-and for some reason Jeff is looking through his bachelor pad kitchen for a way to make buttered noodles, in spite of the fact that he doesn't believe in butter or noodles. He wonders why Abed didn't go to someone else: Troy, or Britta, or Annie or Shirley. Someone who knows how to get over the fact that it's an ungodly hour, that Abed hasn't responded to emails consistently in over a year, and that he looks like hell, and just take care of whatever's wrong. Then again, if he knows Abed, he doesn't want it taken care of so much as he wants to storyboard it out for a test audience and figure out how to apply it to his next film. Jeff is probably the harshest test audience he's going to find.
"Abed, not that I'm not thrilled to see you-" Abed isn't going to be able to tell whether or not this is sarcasm, and Jeff isn't sure, either, "-But why are you here? I thought you were living in California, or something?"
"I was," Abed says, conversationally, almost pleasantly. His voice flattens out as he adds, "but I left."
"Why?" The last Jeff heard, Abed was working on the kind of projects that went to artsy film festivals and got limited releases in any city with a dominant hipster population. His movies are The Emperor's New Clothes of movie-making: in order to to bash them you have to acknowledge that they are terrible, and no audience wants to acknowledge that they don't understand Abed, in case he turns out to be a misunderstood genius in twenty years.
Abed shrugs. "It didn't work out," he says simply. "I'm-" he sounds recitative, "-a perfectionist, impossible to please, off-putting and neurotic, unfocused and incapable of communicating with my actors in an effective manner."
The description is either spot on or way off the mark, but it's two AM, and Jeff can't determine which. Instead he runs a hand tiredly down his face and makes a mental note to trim up his carefully cultivated stubble in the morning. The version of the morning with sunlight. "So you left," he parrots helplessly, as his brain tries to process what this means, because it's probably important.
"Yep," Abed says, nodding up at him, studying him with the same kind of immensity he always has, "Jeff, you're a lawyer again, right?"
"Right," his brain is starting to clear, and he strides over and sinks to the couch, trying to force Abed to make eye contact with him. "Do you need legal representation?" At this point it doesn't seem like a wild question.
"And the people you work with, you hate all of them because they're bad people, but you respect them because they're good lawyers, right?" Abed's way of looking at it isn't exactly nuanced, but it's far from incorrect.
"That's the succinct way of putting it, yes," Jeff responds, with whatever shred of diplomacy he can find at the moment.
Abed cocks his head to one side and nods to himself, acclimating to this information as if it has just confirmed an important theory. "You see, I always thought that some day I would be good enough at what I did to make people people put up with me," he confides.
Jeff realizes that if he had wanted to avoid this conversation he shouldn't have opened the front door in the first place, so he steels himself with a deep breath and offers a non-committal "yeah?" and hopes for the best. Abed shrugs, and if you didn't know Abed-and maybe if you did-it wouldn't occur to you that he was the least bit upset.
"I wasn't good enough. You don't get to be an eccentric genius without a certain amount of talent."
When Abed says it, it sounds like an unwritten rule of the universe. Maybe it is. It's the thought process that kept Jeff living through his community college years as if the world was his oyster. If you are talented enough, people need you too much to ignore you. It always worked for him.
"So I came back," Abed says, as if it's that simple. Of course, it's not. Abed is sitting on his couch with an entire broken dream behind him, and he can't just text the rest of the old study group and plan an emergency meeting in the library to patch up his future. Nobody does that. They all exchange emails about how much they miss each other and should get together around Christmas. That's how it works.
For the moment, Jeff decides to ignore them messy emotional implications churning through his mind, and attacks the practical questions. "Do you have somewhere to stay?"
"Someone's renting my old apartment," Abed says, as if that is the be all and end all answer. Convincing Abed to find a new apartment is not a conversation Jeff wants to have at this hour, so he just nods.
He also doesn't want to ask if Abed has enough money for an apartment, because his wardrobe and general appearance look less like plane ride chic, and more like he's been living out of a duffle bag for a while.
And possibly on less meals than might be considered strictly recommendable.
"What are you planning on doing now?" He continues. He wants to know if Abed knows. The younger man offers half of a smile as a response.
"Falafel is a fallback," he says, taking the time to perfectly mimic his father's tone and accent. Jeff knows that if Abed had been sold on falafel, even sold on being back here, he would have shown up at his father's door, not here.
"Uh, okay," Jeff says, and stores away the information. "I'll tell you what, Abed," he sounds like he's making a plea, because that's how he's most comfortable, "you can stay here for tonight, or what's left of it. Tomorrow we'll start sorting this out, and see what we can do for you, okay?" He almost says "get you," instead, like he's trying to get Abed sentenced with a minimum of damage.
I sentence you to a lifetime of being Abed Nadir. Odd, misunderstood, and a genius in all the wrong ways.
"Cool," Abed agrees. Jeff goes and finds a pile of extra blankets and dumps them on the couch for his use.
"Try to get some sleep, okay?" Jeff says. He goes to make himself a cup of expensive tea that he doesn't even like to calm his nerves, and by the time it's done brewing it's almost 4 AM, and Abed is fast asleep. He sleeps like a rock for the rest of the night.
Jeff doesn't.