Tales from Apartment 303
Annie opened the door to the apartment and put one armful of groceries on the counter, then doubled back to grab the second armful she'd placed on the ground to be able to unlock the door.
"Troy? Abed? Anybody home?" She called out, pausing for a moment. The only noise she could hear was her own breathing, and after a beat she walked around the counter and started unloading the grocery bags.
She found that as she put the refrigerated items away, she was humming Daybreak. She blinked as she replaced the milk, wondering when she had ever even LEARNED that song. Living with Troy and Abed was like nothing else she'd ever experienced…
So, basically, this is a collection of drabbles, one shots, lists, and other outcomes of the cohabitation Shirley was so terrified of. \
I clearly don't own these characters.
Enjoy!
Jeff Calls it Diabetes
"Fork jousting? Again!?" Annie shrieked, looking at the gash in Troy's side. The boys both nodded, Abed at least having the decency to look mildly repentant that he had ripped a hole in his best friend. "Let me get the Neosporin." She ripped a piece of paper towel off of the stand and pressed it to Troy's side, then made for the bathroom.
"Neo-what now?"Troy asked, his brows furrowed. Annie felt the blood rush to her head and immediately started thinking In, out. In, out. You knew what you were signing up for. You haven't had to clean Spaghetti's urine off of you in weeks.
Thankfully, Abed's extra years, while not affording him any extra common sense, had given him a slightly wider range of experience. "It's an antibiotic ointment." He turned his dark eyes to her, "We don't have any."… Or not.
"Didn't I bring any with me?" She asked, frustrated. Troy lifted his paper towel and started scratching at the now-clotted wound. She smacked his hand away, and after thoroughly scolding him with her glare, she rubbed at the tension forming at her temples.
"We used it up after we got paper-cuts making our paper-mache Death Star," Abed answered, gesturing to the gray orb hanging above their table, the one they both swore up and down was to scale. "It was already half-gone after my infected scrape."
Definitely going to have an awful headache. God, I need coffee.
"I'm going out. I'm getting Neosporin, plain band-aids and caffeine. Call me if there is an emergency." She grabbed her keys and purse, then as an afterthought when she reached the door, turned back and added, "Don't cause any emergencies!"
As she walked to the stairwell, she heard Troy shriek "Did she say PLAIN band-aids?!"
Abed heard the door being unlocked and paused the movie he was watching. He went to open the door, assuming that either Troy was home with donuts or Annie was home with groceries. He opened the door and found that he was right on both counts; Troy was off-balance, holding three boxes of donuts in one arm, while the other was balancing a watermelon and several paper grocery bags. Annie was trying to carry five bags with one arm while unlocking the apartment door with her free hand.
Unfortunately, she had been leaning on the door when Abed opened it and completely lost her balance, falling into the next nearest object in the way, which just so happened to be Abed, who was now at a loss for words with a whole bunch of Annie in his arms. He blinked a few times before relieving her of three of her grocery bags and Troy of his donuts. His two roommates then righted themselves, the decidedly more feminine one with a blush Abed noticed but chose not to comment on.
"Why did you get three dozen donuts?" Abed asked, turning to Troy. His best friend grinned.
"Because if you bought two dozen, you got an entire 'nother dozen for free," Troy answered, "It was too good of a deal to pass up. I got twelve free donuts!"
"Yeah, after buying 24!" Annie snarked. She turned to Abed. He just raised his eyebrows at her, unsure of what she wanted. She sighed then turned to Troy, "Troy, those will go bad before we get the chance to eat all of them." Annie pointed out, looking apprehensive. Troy's grin crumbled, and Abed shot Annie a glare. It was the buttered noodles all over again, but worse! Her expression then also sank, and Abed felt a twinge of guilt. They began to put away the groceries in an awkward silence.
"How about we put the ones we definitely want to eat aside, then take the rest to school and eat them with our class in Biology?" Annie piped up, looking at her roommates, clearly hoping to make Troy feel better. Abed immediately swerved to watch Troy's reaction.
Troy sniffled then his face brightened considerably and he nodded, and Abed grinned. "Donuts in biology. Cool. Cool, cool, cool." Annie smiled at him, and Abed was glad he'd invited her to move in. He and Troy would have just tried to eat them all in a few days.
Which, he decided, could have ended very badly. Something like the Monty Python movie and the fat man after a wafer.
A handshake between the two men sealed the deal.
Within a few hours of taking the donuts to school they had listened to three lectures, though: one from Shirley about not just asking her to make them, one from Jeff about poisoning their bodies, and one from Dean Pelton about feeding Leonard sugar.
All in all, it was a successful day.
The first day Annie moved in, she tried to tackle as many things as possible.
Where does the water go in the iron?
"Ok, see this hole?" Annie asked, pointing to the iron, both of the boys leaning over the iron, bumping heads in the process.
"Yes," they chorused, groaning. She chuckled, but then forced herself to put on a straight face.
"The water goes there. The clear panel on the side of the iron shows you how much water is in it." She finished, smiling. Abed smiled and nodded; Troy picked up the iron and walked to the sink. Before Annie had registered what he was doing, he had turned the faucet on and thoroughly drenched the iron.
"Ok, what next?" Troy asked with a grin.
Annie could do no more than press her hand to her face in exasperation.
What is the iron for?
"Really sorry about that, Annie," Troy said, wincing, "I didn't know you couldn't get the iron wet."
"In hindsight, I suppose it makes sense." Abed quipped, "It IS electronic." Both boys turned their attention to the tiny iron in Annie's hand. Since they'd destroyed the only iron between the two of them, the three would have to share Annie's until one or both of the boys felt the inclination to buy one of their own.
Annie wasn't holding her breath.
"Ok, so we've put the water in the iron with the plastic cup. Now, we heat the iron and lay the article of clothing-" Annie grabbed the pair of her slacks she'd unpacked for demonstration "-out on the ironing board-" Annie paused and looked at the make-shift ironing board in front of her- three bed-sheets over the kitchen table. She held back her groan, "- or whatever. Now, I iron what I want to be flat. If I want a crease," She rested the iron on its butt and folded the pant legs down the middle, "I fold and iron on top of the crease, trying to make as steady a fold as possible." After ironing both pant legs, she held them up for the boys to inspect.
It may have been ridiculous that they were grown men who had until this afternoon not known the purpose of an iron, but still, Annie found the chorus of "ooohs" from her man-child roommates to be incredibly gratifying.
What gets out Kool-Aid stains? (We already know the opposite color Kool-Aid doesn't work.)
The boys led her into the blanket fort, where Abed knelt down and lifted up bean bag chair. Sure enough, there was huge Kool-Aid stain, a veritable Venn-diagram, partially blue and partially red, with the overlapping area a surprising dark purple.
She immediately stood up, walked to the kitchen and grabbed a bowl. She then narrated her actions, "Warm water, vinegar and dish soap. You use a clean cloth, soak for a few seconds, dab the solution all over the stain. Let it sit. In fifteen minutes, we put a towel on it to dry it."
"That's it?" Troy asked, disbelief clear in his voice. It raised to a squeal, "We've been avoiding Kool-Aid for a month and the clean up process takes 30 seconds to mix and 15 minutes of nothing?"
Annie giggled, finishing dabbing the carpet. "Annie?" asked Abed. She stood with the bowl and turned to him, smiling. His wide eyes locked with hers and he tilted his head. "What do you want for dinner? It's my night." She grinned and shrugged.
"Do you guys want to go out? A celebration, the end of an incredible day deserves an incredible ending, right?" She suggested.
"Not necessarily," Abed answered, looking up in thought. "Often, montages of happy at-home dinners signify the resolution of episodes in sit-coms."
"Well, in that case," Annie amended, still touched by the boys' sacrifice to have her in their home, "How about homemade chicken fingers? I know this great recipe, and besides, I have to be worked into the dinner schedule somehow, right?" The boys nodded happily, and she felt her grin grow even wider.
If she was being honest with herself though, she was offering because she wanted some semblance of control for another few hours.
15 minutes later found chicken fingers in the oven, a towel sitting on top of a freshly cleaned carpet, and three young adults curled up in a blanket fort in front of reruns of Teen Titans with the two men arguing the benefits of cybernetics versus all of the abilities of all of the animals on the planet and the woman just smiling as she rested between the two.
Also, Troy scraped me when we were fork-jousting last week and I don't think it's healing right…
"Look, I know we've had a weird past, but Abed is really bad about doctors and I don't know how well rubbing alcohol and Neosporin is going to do at this point." Annie said into the phone, biting at her lower lip. She realized, to her supreme embarrassment, that she still had barbeque on her lip from dinner. She quickly licked it off.
Abed sat in front of her on the table, shirtless and covered in goose bumps. Annie angled her phone away from her mouth and whispered to Abed, "Rich says he wants me to send him a picture and he'll come over if it's really bad." She tilted the phone back towards her mouth and listened as Rich gave her instructions for what to do if he decided it wasn't bad. She agreed then hung up, quickly getting to her phone and snapping a picture of the scrape and sending it to Rich.
"Abed, you can put your shirt back on if you're cold." She said, wincing at the sight of the bumpy flesh across his arms and torso. She tapped her nails against her phone, hoping to get an answer soon.
"I'm alright. Moving too much pulls at the sore skin," Abed answered. His refusal to make eye contact confused Annie, but she ignored it and leaned up against the table, saddling up next to him so he'd have her body heat to warm him. He pressed against her once she did so, and she suddenly felt very odd.
A buzz in her hands alerted her to the received text message. She quickly read it and flooded with relief.
"He said it's definitely infected but that the home treatment will be fine as long as we take care of it soon," Annie told Abed. She grabbed his hand and pulled him to the bathroom, instructing him to stand still.
"Alright, so first, we wash it." She did exactly that, grabbing a clean washcloth and wetting it with warm water and soap. She wrung it loosely and washed his scrape, trying to ignore the fact that it was sitting right on his more-defined-than-she-remembered abdominals. After washing it, she handed him a towel, sure that if she had to dry him down, she'd go crazy, since the water had dripped to the upper hem of his jeans. "Ok, once it's dry we apply iodine…" She had to break into her own first aid kit, since the boys had little more than character band-aids. She spread the iodine on his skin, bewildered by how different the brown solution looked on his skin than it had on her own pale flesh.
Stop getting distracted, Annie. Just apply the damn gauze and be done with it!
She grabbed a few squares of gauze and some Neosporin, spreading the latter on the former before pressing the gauze to Abed's scrape. "Hold that in place," she instructed, grabbing her medical tape. She taped the bandage in place, then stepped back to admire her handiwork.
"Cool!" She said, smiling. She looked up and saw that Abed's head was tilted at her, a small smile on his face. She saw him mouth cool, cool, cool and bit back a grin.
"You make a good nurse," he said, but despite the sense of déjà vu, she still felt flattered. For some strange reason, her instinct was to lean in for a kiss. Abed derailed that, however, when he thanked her and spun on his heel out of the bathroom.
When Annie remembered that it was her father who'd always told her she'd make a good nurse, she was glad she hadn't tried to kiss Abed after all.
Not a week after she moved in, Annie brought home a container of hot chocolate mix from her trip grocery shopping. She had discovered very early on that if she wanted to stay under 200 pounds, she had to be at least partially responsible for shopping. The boys were fine with that as long as she remembered to bring home some sugary items and cereals with food dye in them. This week, she brought home mint chocolate chip ice cream and hot chocolate mix, but purchased a good amount of vegetables as well, hoping to instill some healthy habits into the boys before they were too old for it to matter.
Having heard her enter, the boys came out of the dreamatorium, both of them in regular clothing. She sighed in relief; she wasn't sure what to expect sometimes. In the past five days, she'd seen them in seven different outfits each. Three of those fourteen had been women's costumes.
Four brown eyes zeroed in on the hot chocolate mix, and suddenly Troy was hugging her. "I knew you moving in here was a good idea!" He kissed her forehead and she backed away, very confused. Both of the boys were grinning ear to ear. "Abed, she bought us special drink mix." Her turned to her again, "You can't move out. We need you to live with us forever and buy us special drink mix and never leave us."
At this point, Annie was frightened and confused. She turned to Abed, but his grin had faded back into its usual blank, calculation expression. "Do you know about special drink?" He asked. She timidly shook her head, afraid of giving the wrong answer.
"It's hot chocolate mix in cold milk. It's delicious. We haven't had any in probably two weeks. Troy loves it even more than me, but since neither of us have gone shopping, we never got anymore mix."
"I WAS IN WITHDRAWL." Troy said, hugging the big canister to his chest. Annie tried not to flinch at his casual use of the word, but pushed the feeling down. People used that word casually all the time. It was no big deal.
"No, you weren't," Abed corrected. His body was angled toward Troy but his eyes were on Annie. "You may have wanted it, but you are by no means addicted." Troy looked at him confused, then glanced at Annie and his face dropped.
"Yeah, no, I just really like it. Sorry Annie, didn't mean it like that," he said, face downcast. She felt her heart swell, then kissed Abed on the cheek and then Troy, gently tugging the canister from his arms.
"Why don't you two pick out a movie and I'll bring our drinks over," She suggested. They exchanged grins and complied as she walked around the counter, grabbed three mugs, scooped some mix into each then grabbed the milk out of the refrigerator and poured some into each cup. She put the milk and mix away, then stirred each cup.
"So, special drink?" She asked, wondering at the name and simultaneously getting frustrated at the mix for not dissolving all the way.
"Jeff calls it diabetes. I've been drinking it since I was nine. It's my favorite." Abed answered. Satisfied that they were mixed well enough, Annie topped each mug of special drink with whipped cream and walked them over to the armchairs.
As she did so, she overheard Troy whisper to Abed, "Best idea you ever had."
It was when she heard Abed whisper "I literally cannot agree anymore," that she felt, for the first time in a long time, like she truly had an actual home.
End of the first installment!
Just want to say for clarification, Annie refers to Troy and Abed as "the boys" in her head because they are man-children. Whether the producers and writers at NBC would agree… well, considering I'm on Fanfiction and not getting paid, I'll be taking minor liberties in character development, since a lot of these will probably be told from Annie's perspective.
There WILL be an Annie Abed relationship development, but it will be very slow, mostly just hinted at.
Stay literate, my friends!
2-shadows