A/N: I should mention, for the purpose of this story, Troy is no longer living in the apartment. Also, this fic is now M rated, so yeah. Just to warn. I didn't plan originally for it to happen, but when adult situations call, you can't ignore them.
OOOOOO
In countless movies, there is an elevator scene. Even in Mad Men there has been several scenes using the narrative device of an elevator. An elevator represents many things. An intimacy between its passengers. The isolation yet collective monotony we feel amongst strangers so close, all going in the same direction. Being trapped. The journey to something new. Or something familiar. An event that has been foreshadowed. An anticipation of two characters in an isolated closed environment and what will transpire. What they will reveal in such a setting. This is a form of symbolic anticipation since the sum of all of the different elements creates a feeling of tension.
In Drive, the elevator scene is especially worth studying for any student of film. It symbolizes the finality of a love that couldn't be. One that was torn apart from the outside in. One that left a character sacrificing everything for the sake of the other.
So there's a tension inherent in the location. Of an elevator.
Even sometimes, maybe, it can show the tension in one character, one that as the elevator climbs up, the events that are to follow are getting closer and maybe there's some doubt that creeps in. Or anxiety building up. Excitement throttled by a million ways something could go wrong.
The different elements that create tension.
Annie turns to him after the elevator door closes and says more than asks, "You're sure you're okay with this."
I mean, you know.
Yeah, he knows. And yeah. He's okay with it. For sure. Totally.
It's not like this will be a major change in how they see each other forever or anything. Not like this could ruin everything and make her hate him. Make her realize she wants to leave. And he'd never see her again. No pressure here.
Only a million ways something could go wrong.
But that's why Don is there because Don doesn't care about that feely feelings, boner killing, panic inducing crap.
Don is a woman consuming, ass pounding pleasure machine.
Concentrate on looking down, take advantage of being way taller than her. And thank God for low cut things. Thank God for big boobs in and pushing out of low cut things. Extreme close up shot. Tight focus. Look at her lips and skin. The smell of her hair. And then, yeah. Let's do this.
Abed's existential crisis can come after he does.
Taking her hand in his, he places a soft kiss on the back of her hand. Turns her hand over and kisses the delicate inner wrist. He says, "Of course. Are you?"
She nods her head. "I really am."
He moves against her making her take a step backwards. Pressing her against the faux blond wood paneled side of the elevator, he leans in against her. He brushes the back of his fingers down her cheek. And standing here in the elevator being lifted up, he kisses her, and the feeling of déjà vu creeps through him from the first time they kissed.
The feeling of everything about to change.
Just breathe in, and out.
OOOOOO
So how it started was, the thing is, is that Annie has a very specific way of doing dishes. First, you have to get the water to a temperature that's very hot. But not hot enough to burn you. But almost. Once you feel if it goes any hotter you won't be able to bear it, you're there. You must use Dawn, the hand moisturizing kind, in quarter size dollops on each dish after rinsing them thoroughly. Then you use the long handled brush and scrub them until you can't see anything and the plate is smooth. You don't ever use the plastic mesh scrubby, that's for cleaning the sink. If you use the scrubby, start over. Then you rinse again and place the dish in the drying rack.
You dry with a clean dish towel. But not the ones that hang on the oven door. Those are decorative. If you don't get it dry enough or you let the dish completely air dry, then you need to rinse it again to get the spots off. The plates go in the top left cabinet in order: dinner plates on the bottom, followed by salad plates and finally saucers.
It got to the point where he's not even allowed to do them, because he won't get it right. But that doesn't stop her from getting upset if he dumps a bunch of dishes in the sink.
He's also no longer allowed to vacuum, put groceries away or fold towels. He doesn't iron them. The towels. And as for sheets, well, you probably can imagine. The bathroom has little classy packaged French soap bars kept in the boxes and oils and diffusers he's not supposed to touch. His olive bowl is gone. That's not allowed anymore. The pot holders hanging on the fridge aren't for using. A thousand other things she's slowly squirreled in over the last year or so that are sequestered, forbidden, for looking not touching. Girly things.
Flowers. Centerpieces. Egyptian cotton bedding. Actually, those are nice. Toile contact paper. Sheers. Not called curtains, she said. Sheers. You know, functionless see through things. Slowly his apartment is turning into something from HGTV.
It's not so much a home but an open house on an endless market.
She got brazenly bold one day and brought a bird home. As a surprise. One of those little blue ones in a pretty rounded wire cage to hang by a window. A subsequent meltdown ensued. Bird was taken back to the store. The cage stayed, though. He's still not sure if she did that on purpose and she's really a brilliant troll.
The cups are where he drew the line. Putting the coffee mugs behind the short glasses makes no logical sense. Their handles make it unsymmetrical and use up too much of the space to square footage ratio. The larger plastic cups go in back, followed by the tall glass glasses, short glasses and then coffee mugs. That's how it always was before her and that's how it will always be. Starting now.
Catching him emptying the cabinet for a third time in a week, she says, "Why do you keep doing this? The coffee mugs are taller than the short glasses, so how does the proper size order work if they're taller?"
Their handles, he says. Stop moving them.
"No, you stop messing up my cabinet." She pushes him out of the way and starts putting them back up, but he grabs her arm and shoves her aside. Gasping in righteous indignation she says, "I'm the one who washes them; I should be able to put them away how I see fit."
He dramatically mimics her gasp a few times because he knows that just pisses her off. One by one he starts putting the cups back. The right way.
She tries to wedge by him but he slams his hand down on the counter blocking her with his arm. "What the hell is your problem, Abed?"
He leans his head forward looking down at her and says, "You took on the dish washing all on your own. You don't get to use that as a power play here. This is my house too, not yours."
Treading onto dangerous ground, he tells her she needs to stop disrupting his things.
"Your things?"
Yes.
"The glasses are your things."
Technically, yes.
"Oh okay," she says, her arms flailing, "what about you putting my sweaters in the washer on the hot cycle last month and ruining them when you know I don't want you touching my laundry? Or leaving the toilet seat up? Or using all the hot water to make a recreation of the USS Dallas jumping out of the ocean in the bath tub when I had an appointment I wanted to shower before? But I can't disrupt," curling her fingers into quotations she says, "your things."
He says, "It's called an emergency blow, and I believe the water bill is paid by me."
She makes a derisive snort. "You mean your dad pays it, don't you? How would you know? Your dad and I handle all the finances for you. And what then, that makes me banned from having hot water? What do you want then, Abed? To install a coin operated slot to the faucets? Sure! Let's do that."
Another thing about Annie, is she has a very specific habit of using obnoxious gestures when she's pissed. And at this point, pissed would probably be an understatement. Putting her hands out wide like she's presenting something, the entire apartment, she shouts, "I guess we'll just have everything the Abed way, shrunken munchkin clothes, cold showers, me falling in the toilet and a completely jacked up glass cabinet!"
"I apologized for that but you keep bringing it up when you're mad," he says. "And don't yell at me."
"Of course I'm mad, my ass fell into a toilet!" Shaking her hand and leaning her head back in that 'oh no you didn't' way, she says, "And if you can blow up at me over a pot of noodles, I have every right to yell at you for risking my health and safety. I could have broken my pelvis or caught some disease you know."
Tightening his jaw he says, "You threw those out when you were fully aware I wasn't done and you know it."
"Are you serious," she says, "Really? You want to go down this road again? You left it cold on the stove and you were gone for an hour."
He says, "So what do you want from me, Annie. I've had to adjust my entire life for you but it's never enough."
Redecorating.
Rearranging.
Disruption.
Troy was easier to live with. But then again, Troy would tend to go along with whatever Abed wanted so he wouldn't get upset nor have his routines interfered with. Troy was the perfect complement to a control freak such as himself. Troy did not require much change. Troy was more passive. Annie, though. Annie is not Troy.
She throws her hands up. "Well, I'm so freaking sorry I've inconvenienced your entire life, because as usual, it's all about you. Enjoy your idiotic system of placing glasses." She shoves into him with her shoulder as she walks on by him. Turning around she shouts, "And you're the one who asked me to live with you in the first place!"
Putting the cups back and not looking at her, he says, "Maybe I shouldn't have."
"Yeah, maybe you shouldn't have." Storming down the hall she goes into her room and slams the door. From behind it, he hears her scream, "YOU ASS!"
Well, that went well.
Perhaps Sheldon said it best when he asked the quandary, "Women: delightfully mysterious or batcrap crazy?" But you know what, it was his place before she was there. She has no right to take over everything. To tell him what he can or cannot do. What he can touch or not. She has her own room. He can live on buttered noodles the rest of his natural life. He has no need for her in the kitchen cooking or cleaning or touching anything of his. One pot, one bowl, one fork. That's all he needs. And if a man wants to leave something on the stove, he should be able to. If a man wants to recreate a classic movie scene in his own bathtub, who is she to say no? And if a man needs his glasses in a specific order ―
Alright, well, maybe he is an ass.
He didn't mean to make her to cry. And he did leave the toilet seat up that one night. And a few more after that. And he may have gone over the line there at the end. He's not even sure why he said that. Actually he knows, but like all men, he doesn't like admitting he would say something he didn't really mean, even if it feels true in the blinding rage of the moment, specifically to be a hurtful bitch. Filter, filter.
Walking to her door he takes a deep breath and knocks lightly on it. "Annie."
"Go. Away."
"Annie. I'm really sorry."
From behind the door, her voice cracked from crying, she says, "Go away, Abed. Leave me alone."
And he says, "Okay. But I'm glad I asked you to live here. I'll leave you alone now."
He walks back to the kitchen and stares at the cabinet. One by one, he takes the glasses out and puts them back up the Annie way. It may be wrong, but he can live with it. Maybe. He'll try.
According to Dr. Phil, there are two choices, "do you want to be happy or do you want to be right?" Both would be ideal, but apparently when it comes to women, this is a false dichotomy. Maybe it was good Annie made him watch it that one day. As insufferable as her TV choices are, some can be enlightening and teach him things. Like ways to navigate the confusion and difficulty of this empathy thing. And so he watched it every day after that, took notes, tracked patterns; watched couple after couple hate each other, say terrible things and tear their families apart over petty power struggles and uncontrolled anger. It reminded him of some things he'd rather not think about. But it doesn't have to be that way. According to Dr. Phil.
And right now, it's reminding him of what just went on. And the other passive aggressive power competitions that have crept up. Although, this one wasn't quite so passive. But more so than the pot on the stove incident.
He doesn't have a monopoly on being a control freak. But neither does she. So, maybe, probably they both should work on that more, but he has to work on himself first. He knows he can be difficult to live with and Annie has a ton more patience and understanding than most people have with him. And he shouldn't take that for granted. He's had to adjust, but maybe her more so. Stepping out of himself and projecting what he feels, filtering it through a reverse point of view, he can sort of understand that now. Although it's a hit and miss system, he's still working on it. But he shouldn't have said what he said to her.
Control and order is soothing, but too much is a bad thing, it makes you get angry and say and do hurtful things. And her being happy makes him happy. That's more important than him being right and her being sad. Otherwise it might turn into a white line down the middle of the apartment situation. Or worse, her leaving.
He finishes organizing the cabinet and sits down to watch TV. After two episodes of Family Guy and an episode of Breaking Bad, Annie still hasn't come out of her room. Getting up to make something to eat, he takes out a pot and fills it with water and puts it on the stove. He hesitates for a moment but walks over to Annie's door and lightly knocks. He asks her if she wants something to eat. She doesn't answer, so he goes back to the kitchen and watches his pot. Although they say a watched pot never boils, it actually does. And then you can watch it bubble. It's kind of cool.
He hears a floorboard creak behind him and turning around, he sees Annie standing in the kitchen entrance leaning against the wall. Her hair is pulled up in a ponytail and she's changed into her long cotton nightgown, the one with little duckies on a blue background. She says, "Hey."
And he says, "Hey."
She walks into the kitchen slowly and stands next to him. Neither one says anything for awhile, both of them staring at the simmering pot until she touches his arm and says, "I'm sorry, too."
It's cool, he tells her. He fixed the cabinet.
"That isn't important."
"But you wanted it fixed."
"No," she says. "I mean, I did, but maybe I was being a bit too overbearing. Even if it is the right way," she says, "it shouldn't matter if it's making you feel like it's not your place too."
So it wasn't the cabinet. Apparently his system still needs more tuning. Of course, he's still not sure how the cabinet lead to asses in the toilet, noodles and how these things always end up thirty stages detached. Raising his eyebrows and pulling the corner of his mouth he says, "I guess we haven't been doing very well in the control freak department."
"No, I guess not." She lays her head on his arm and reaches around him, her hand rubbing circles over his back. "But we'll get there, right?"
He says, "Together."
And she says, "Together."
"Hey Abed."
Looking down at her he says, "What."
And reaching a hand to his face, she in her duckie jammies, she hops up on her tippy toes and kisses him on his lips.
So that's how it started.
OOOOOO
She points down to the right and tells him her room is that way. Down pink wallpapered walls, past a countless number of small doorways only found in old buildings, there's a long black sideboard with a wide squatty bronze vase that has sprays of flora and sprigs of green spilling out of it. Above it is a large mirror in a carved faux-gold frame hanging on the wall.
According to Applications of Cinematic Architecture, an empty hallway is a perfect setting to get a dynamic composition. The long symmetrical lines are perfect for framing shots. With a mirror in your shot, there can be an analogy of the character being watched, their actions, emotions reflected back at them. In a hallway, you have the juxtaposition of an enclosed pathway with an endless view of your life or self reflected before you or behind you. You can only take one direction.
A mirror can represent characters' double lives, their hidden selves, their fractured identities. Mirrors can represent the limit of the characters' understanding, the idea of being lost in illusions and projections. For the viewer, they offer up a possibility of something else, like two characters afraid to confront what's staring them in the face.
Point is, mirrors can pretty much mean everything you need them to.
Cut to a long shot of the hallway, Ms. Elena von Annie is already shoved up on the sideboard, her hand grasping her little sateen bag as she tries to hold on to his back. Her little legs dangling off the edge as he lifts her all the way up. His lips glide over hers as he runs his hands up her side and across her chest palming what he can through her dress. Reaching up and entwining his fingers in her hair, he pulls her head back and keeps it there as he runs his mouth down her neck. Her shoulder blades are knocking the mirror against the wall every time he presses against her but she seems to not notice or care and hey, it looks sturdy, so he doesn't stop.
His other hand reaches down and bends her leg high up onto his hip. There's so much puffiness to the skirting of her dress, it takes forever for his hand bunch up and through the layers to find skin. He slides his hand up her thigh from behind her knee, over her stockings and garter clips and under the edge of her panties. Her other leg wraps around his other hip to balance and he pulls it up onto his other hip. He presses his fingers down further between her open legs and this is quickly developing into a Jason Statham and Amy Smart situation.
"Abed," she gasps grabbing his arm and trying to pull his hand away. "Abed, not out here."
For sure, he could have done it right then and there regardless, but she was probably right. Those kinds of scenes tend to have a sassy maid come walking down the hall out of nowhere yelling to take it into your room or throwing their hands up and shouting some kind of incomprehensible Spanish. Slipping his hand out from under her skirt, he helps her hop down off the sideboard and grabs his hat that fell on the floor while she slips her foot into a shoe that got knocked off. "Come on," she says and like a drunk on wobbly legs she makes her way down the hall to her room. When she gets to the door she opens her purse and drops it and then picks it up again, fumbling for her key before wiggling it into the lock of a little gold doorknob.
Pushing the door open she stumbles a bit inside and he flips the light on and closes the door shut behind him. It's a rather tiny room with more pink on the walls. This place really was made for Annie. There's a double size bed covered with a puffy apple red comforter and a small TV anchored to the wall. This will work.
She's not even got her purse on the table when he grabs and nearly slams her against the wall and kisses her. His mouth moving over her neck and shoulders, she pushes his jacket down his back and he shakes it off his arms letting it fall to the floor.
"Wait, wait," she says out of breath, his hands back under skirt. "Do you have ― you know?"
Have what?
She sighs. "Pro― tection."
She goes, "If not, I have some in my overnight bag. I picked up three different kinds there were so many choices ―"
"No, no." He lets her go and points his finger with the international symbol for 'wait a sec' and reaches into his crumpled jacket on the floor. An ambitiously long strip of condoms rolls out as he holds it up in front of her. Being a sex magnet like Don Draper, you can never be too safe.
He tosses them on the nightstand and turning back to her he runs his hands up her back looking for a zipper or buttons or something and finding nothing but the stiff boning of her bodice. He asks, "How does this thing come off?"
And she says, "You pull a zipper down."
She lifts her arm and points. "On the side."
It takes about five minutes to work the zipper down. It feels more like five hours. "Oh God, don't rip anything," she keeps saying every time the zipper hitches and he's trying his hardest not to rip the goddamn thing, but the fluffy fabric keeps getting caught and the zipper is about a thousand years old and he's about to force it down when finally it gives way down to her hip.
He helps her navigate out of the halter top and pulls down her crinoline while she holds up the skirting of the dress but it keeps getting caught on her garter belt. He yanks it down and it comes free, then she carefully squeezes her ass out of the top of the bodice being sure not to snag anything on her stockings or belts. It never took this long on TV, but then they always cut to black for this part. Or they just don't bother to get undressed which he's wondering why they didn't just do that since it's incredibly hot anyway. Nothing is quite as cock blocking as the logistics of women's clothing.
"Are you sure you didn't rip anything?" He shakes his head. He probably didn't. Maybe.
He unbuckles his belt and in two seconds he's undone the most complicated part of his outfit.
After the struggle of man against dress, he watches her as she stands there and it could be something out of a Men's Health photo shoot. Black half corset bra, matching frilly panties over her black garter belt with poinct conté lace, non-elastic stockings clipped to her mid-thigh. He's not sure if he's feeling love for her spectacular body framed so perfectly or for her complete commitment to period correct wardrobe.
Yes, let's do this.
Funny thing about Annie, she can be so bold and desperate to be included in the weirdness, and for sure, all of this has to be classified as weird. But here in the room, her dress pulled down to her feet, her hair coming undone and spilling onto her shoulders, she starts crawling under the sheet still in bra and stockings and garter, pulling it up around her. Nothing but her little head sticking out from under the tent of stiff white hotel sheet.
He points out, "Elena wouldn't do that."
And she says, "How do you know?"
Looking confused, he goes, "Did I do something wrong?"
"No," she says. She curls up and looks away and says, "I'm not ready for you to see me. It's embarrassing, okay?"
So she changed her mind. Or maybe not. But nothing is more complicated than trying to read women when it comes to sex and you wouldn't believe how insanely that can explode in your face. Now, through deductive reasoning, if he didn't want someone seeing him naked, and you generally need to be naked in at least on the bottom half to have sex, that would mean therefore she doesn't want to. And he already saw her almost naked, he made a full touchdown in the hallway, and she still dived for cover. So. Projection filtered through, and he's probably somewhere in the ballpark of none shall pass. Probably.
But when it comes to her, it's better to be safe than sorry. Maybe he wasn't the only one worried.
There are only a million things that could go wrong.
That's a wrap.
"Okay," he says. "Cool."
He picks up his hat and jacket, then her dress off the floor and lays it across the back of a nearby chair. He looks back to her and says, "This is the coolest thing anyone has done for me." And he turns to the door.
"Abed," she nearly shouts, "where are you going? You are not leaving me like this."
"Scene's over," he says. "So, I better go."
"Don't you," she makes a face that is lost on him and hesitates for a second, "You know, I thought we were ― don't you want to have… sex?"
And from someone who can't say 'penis', that must have been damn near impossible to actually say out loud.
His face and neck still smeared with her lipstick, he says, "I do like sex." He points to her and says, "But, I like you more and you said you weren't ready." He raises an eyebrow and he says, "Plus, girls sometimes get upset after the fact when they notice I'm not what they want."
Placing his hat on and buckling his belt, he says, "I'd much rather be Ryan Gosling getting nothing than Oscar Isaac destroying everything."
He says, "You're very important to me."
Her shoulders slump and she makes a sighing sound. Patting the bed she says, "Oh, sit down already."
"I don't think ―," he starts but she cuts him off and yells at him to sit the hell down, slapping the bed. He quickly sits on the edge of the bed and leans forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. He takes his hat back off and says, "Alrighty."
"You're important to me too, Abed. I mean, do you know how much trouble it was to pull this all together? I'm sorry I confused you. I just ― it's hard for me. I've only done this once before, and that was a nightmare. Also, it was in the dark." She pauses a moment and fidgeting under the sheet she says, "I wouldn't have done all this, and brought you up here if it wasn't what I wanted."
He entwines his fingers leaning over and says, "I thought about that. And I realized that it's one thing having drinks, maybe making out a bit, thinking about it." He looks back at her and then back to the floor and says, "But it's another when you're naked. It means things will change forever."
"I know," she says. "But it's a change I wanted. And I thought you did too."
He never had a relationship before. Not like a relationship-relationship. A few intangible wisps of intimacy here and there, an infatuation or two, but nothing he could ever say was real.
The truth is, the last girl he loved was his mother.
Living with Annie has been the closest he's ever been to a woman and this is all getting very real very quickly.
"I did," he says. Turning his head he looks at her over his shoulder and he says, "I mean, I still do. I just don't want to hurt you. To screw up what was working."
He says, "Things will change for us."
"I just wanted this to be perfect, and I still managed to screw it up." Her lips start trembling and her red smeared mouth goes into a frown as she sobs, "I'm so, so drunk."
He raises his eyebrows and he leans his head back down. He rubs his temple with his thumb and forefinger of one hand, and says, "Me too."
Before he left to meet her, after he had gotten dressed and been transformed, he went into Annie's room and sat on the edge of her bed. Looking up at the walls, all her awards and perfectly symmetrical frames of pictures and pink hearts and girly frills, he wondered if he should go.
A sitcom couple is doomed the minute the unresolved sexual tension becomes resolved. Especially if it happens too early in the overall storyline. Once the will they or won't they is answered, more or less, things unravel quickly. The audience generally loses interest in them, because everything follows a known pattern after that. Characters start acting in ways you feel are off or wrong. A spark is lost.
Because nothing is as good as you can imagine it.
If House and Cuddy didn't get together, maybe the show wouldn't have gone to crap like a tire on fire rolling down a hill. House was never a character that could have a steady or conventional relationship. But they got together and tried to make it work. But Cuddy left. She loved him but she had to leave him. She couldn't accept him for who he was, but who she wanted him to be. When you really don't understand or accept someone as they come, it will all fall apart.
Sometimes love just isn't enough.
OOOOOO
Twenty years ago or so, picture this little kid. This little lanky scrawny bird of a kid. Standing in the school counselor's office. This pitiful kid in his green Scooby Doo t-shirt and yellow hooded jacket that was a little too big for him, tear stained dirty face, waiting for one of his parents to pick him up. Again.
It was always the Mama who came to pick up the kid.
This little weirdo kid no one wanted.
The teacher would tell Mama that she needed to do something about the weirdo. That she couldn't teach her class and she was getting fed up with him. The school couldn't deal with kids who have behavioral problems because of improper parenting, they would say.
So the Mama took the weirdo to doctor after doctor, because nothing she did worked and no one could help. No one could fix her broken child who was slipping through her fingers.
"There's still something wrong with him," Mama would say to the doctor. "Can't you do anything?"
And every time the doctor would say, "We'll run some more tests."
"We'll try a treatment," they would say.
Up on the paper covered table they'd try to put him on. Mama would try to pick him up and sit him on her lap. Sometimes it was in a dim room with a really low table next to a big machine that looked like a space ship. Sometimes it was in a really bright room with a table shaped like a cross. Mama would grab and force him up but he'd scream and claw and try to get down. She would beg and plead and tell him to be good. Just this once, be good for Mama. Just sit with me. Mama would try to pin him up there and a nurse would help while he kicked and screamed and they would slam him down when he'd kick and scratch them. She would look at the doctors and say, "You see what I mean? Even something this simple."
They would take over for Mama, one on each arm and leg and one across his shoulders and chest. One more would stick him with something sharp in his arm that hurt. He'd hear Mama say from the background through his shrieks in Polish, It'll be okay. It's okay, baby. A cold wetness would creep up his arm and then he couldn't hear anything and then there was nothing.
Four or five times they did this. He can't quite remember how many times now.
But the treatments didn't fix the broken kid.
Each time there was a new thing that could possibly wrong. Something that suggested another abnormality. Nothing that would could be known for sure, but the symptoms presenting ended with a diagnosis of a host of things that were wrong and Not Otherwise Specified.
Everyone so desperate to label and categorize the abnormal weirdo. The DSM has specific criteria to put you into certain slots. If you have delusions and hallucinations for a month or more, you might be put in the schizoaffective disorder slot. But only if you have delusions or hallucinations that are present for a minimum of two weeks, without major mood symptoms during an episode. So if it's only a week and you had a mood swing, you get bumped into another slot. And then another. You're a day and symptom short of something else, you might get thrown into a different subsection altogether.
Everyone, the entire culture is Obsessive Compulsive. Fixated on labeling, categorizing and micromanaging and dissecting. Defining and deciding what's normal, what isn't. Weeding out God's rejects.
But despite the labels, it still never fixed the flawed, damaged, weirdo kid.
So Mama kept taking him back and she would say, "There's still something wrong with him."
She'd say, "I don't know what to do with him."
Mama would cry, "Can't you help?"
And right in front of this weirdo, like he's not even there, like he was too stupid to understand, they would say, "He's probably going to have this the rest of his life. You should prepare for the large burden it will become as he gets older."
One nurse patted Mama on the back as they were leaving and said, "It's okay. Have you and your husband considered a psychiatric facility?"
And Mama put him in the back seat and sat in the car and cried more.
At home, Mama would yell and Daddy would yell while the weirdo freak sat in his room and banged his head against the wall. The yelling never stopped.
Each time they went after the tests and treatments didn't work, Mama was given pills to give to the defective kid to try to make him normal. He was taken to people in doctor coats or with badges hanging from their necks at least two times a week who would try to talk to him, analyze him, watch him and then he'd have a new thing wrong with him and they'd give Mama more pills.
Mama would try to get him to swallow the pills but she and Daddy would have to hold him down and give it to him like you'd give it to a cat. This was stopped when he bit Daddy's hand so hard it needed a stitch and soon she started sneaking it in his food.
Week after week, the weirdo got weirder, or was so tired he could barely move, or everything hurt.
But he never was fixed.
Then one day, they just never went back. There were no more pills, no more doctors and no more pain. The Mama didn't know what to do anymore. The Daddy was always working. And the weirdo was still the kid no one wanted.
And one day, Mama came into the weirdo's room and sat down on the floor and brought a book about a squirrel whose baby squirrel was sick. Something was wrong with the baby. The squirrel calls Tree Wizards to try to help the baby, but there's nothing that could be done.
And even though he wouldn't sit next to her or look like he paid any attention, he listened to the story Mama read.
Her voice cracked as she read about how the squirrel loved her baby so much and was angry nothing could be done. Because she loved it so much. This wasn't what the squirrel had planned for her life with the baby. Winter was coming and she would be separated from her precious baby and it hurt her more than anything. But the squirrel had no choice but to leave the baby behind.
And when he looked up this book when he was bigger, it turned out the book was actually about the baby dying. It was a book to help children with the death of a sibling. Only Mama had changed it a bit. In the room, reading to him, she was reading him a book about death. And it wasn't until he was a lot bigger and the Mama had sent him another story on a card at Christmas that he understood.
Mama closed the book, kissed this reject of God's head and told him goodnight.
Because sometimes love isn't enough.
Sometimes, there is no justification, it just is.
And the next day, there was no more Mama.
OOOOOO
Sitting on the bed, sniffling and dabbing under her eyes with the sheet, trying to keep her thick black lashes from smearing off, Annie says, "Wait, what girls?"
"Two," he says. It was really three, but he heard somewhere oral doesn't count. "It's not that hard to hook up at a kegger, Annie. Even for me. "
"Oh," she tilts her head and looks across the room, "Okay." It's a look of disappointment and maybe a bit of jealousy, but he'd never be able to tell. "And that's not what I meant."
And one girl at his dad's falafel shop, he says. Which you wouldn't think would happen, but she was a part time summer employee and took a liking to him and there was a lot of downtime in the late afternoons. She was older than him, and she stops him right there.
"Abed," she sighs. "I really don't need details."
"Sorry."
Anyway, she points out, what they did in the hallway before that was way more than making out. And although that was true, that doesn't necessarily mean he expects her to give him anything more. Not that he doesn't want it, but not if she doesn't. It's pretty simple really, but logic is lost on most others.
Sticking to canon, Don Draper would have ripped off the sheet and taken her in a moment without a second thought. But that's because he never really cared about anyone but himself. He didn't love those women. They were just toys, a conquest, sexual objects, a way to self medicate. A hook up at a kegger. He didn't have anything to lose. Because it was only sex.
The first time he kissed her, not as Hans, but as himself, as awkward Abed, standing in the same old kitchen just watching the same old pot boil with her, everything had changed. And maybe it did for her too. Nothing is static. Nothing will never not change. Not even Abed.
And they slowly found themselves on a new path. Together.
And either he moves towards Annie, or it's away from her.
The future keeps coming at you. Whether you're ready for it or not. Nothing is stable. Nothing will self-sustain.
So he had to choose, sitting on her bed, surrounded by pink and purple and unicorns. He had to choose whether it was worth risking taking this step. He thought of what he would feel if she left without him ever even trying. He thought that perhaps he wasn't trusting in Annie when he really had no reason not to. All he was doing was prophetically dreaming a future based in a past long detached. A self-fulfilling prophecy. So maybe, whatever this all was, wasn't a progression to an escapable end but continuing what they had started. To something good. Something that could be great, even. Away from the mirror down that long hallway.
You can only choose one direction.
Sometimes you have to trust in those you love, even when you feel it's impossible, and believe that it will be okay. That they love you for you and you alone. No matter what. And will never leave.
Because sometimes love is enough.
She moves to the edge of the bed and sits next to him. Dangles her short legs and stretches her toes from her feet in and out. Annie looks at him and says, "So, I've been thinking, it's like a vehicle."
He wonders how he missed the conversational shift to cars and asks what she means.
Sitting straight up and putting on her typical smiling, bouncy school girl I-know-everything-face, only incredibly contrasted with her being half naked and holding a sheet to cover her breasts she says, "Ok, a vehicle is a medium through which something is transmitted, expressed, or accomplished."
She puts her hand around his forearm that's resting on his thigh and says, "So how you use TV and movies and personas, they're your vehicle," she keeps putting emphasis on the word for some reason, and squeezing his arm she says, "To connect. It's your way of expressing what you're feeling in a way you can understand."
She shrugs and runs her hand over his back. "So if those girls didn't accept or understand that, then so what?"
In the end, it comes down to: Don Draper is an archetype. His actions, his mannerisms, his entire life follows a specific set of rules and narrative. In Don Draper's world, everyone within it makes sense; everyone speaks the same language as Don does.
In Don Draper, or Hans Solo, or Gregory, or Inspector Spacetime; he understands what to do. How to step outside. How to express. How to connect.
Being more than an observer.
And maybe it's not completely accessible to her. But she understands.
She always has.
Putting his hand over hers he says, "You're a good friend, Annie."
"I wouldn't tell you that if I didn't mean it," she nudges him. "Are you sure you want to do this? It's okay if you don't."
So here is his out. The moment of no return or the moment of retreat. He looks at her. And yeah, the truth was, aside from his mother, the only girl he's loved is Annie. And he realizes that not returning to what was, to face change instead of trying to control and resist it, maybe it won't be so hard. As long as it's with her, together.
Breathe in, then out.
He pauses a minute and says, yeah. He really does.
OOOOOO
It was one afternoon watching TV, him shoveling Lucky Charms into his mouth while Annie was off busy bodying in the kitchen. This was months ago, when just the concept of going past second base was still strictly a nighttime or in the shower thought. Walking towards him drying her hands on a towel she asked him what he's watching.
Batman. Starting with Michael Keaton. Skipping over the George Clooney and Val Kilmer ones for obvious reasons. Need to do a complete recap before the new one comes out.
She nodded and said, "Cool, cool."
"Hey Abed." She said, "I've been thinking."
He took a bite of cereal and said, "About what."
His birthday. If he wants to do something special.
He shrugged and goes, "Cake would be cool."
Carrot cake. With cream cheese frosting. Or maybe cream cheese frosting on another kind of cake. Apple? No, that would probably be gross. So, carrot cake.
Cocking her head and smiling, she said, "No, I was thinking like, maybe we should do something together."
Like what.
Sitting on the arm of his chair she started nervously tapping her fingers on the back of it. "Well, maybe going to a nice hotel," she said.
Other than making a series of connected room blanket forts, he couldn't really think of why that would be a good venue. "I'm not sure what we could all do there."
"No," she said. "Just you and me."
In a hotel.
"Yes."
Turning his head away from the TV looking up towards her, he said, "Just to clarify, you're implying sex here, right?"
Her head looking like it was going to pop from embarrassment, sighing she said, "Yes Abed, that's what I'm implying."
She jumps off his chair and sits into the one next to him, she put her hand out and squeezed his forearm and said, "But only if you want to, it's okay if you don't. I just thought it would be ― nice."
Hitting the pause button he thought for a moment. He spun his chair to face her and said, "No, I want to. I really want to. And it is the next step." He just wasn't expecting it while watching Batman. Or eating Lucky Charms. Actually, he didn't know how he expected it. Either way, he learned what having a heart attack and a boner simultaneously felt like.
A big smile across her face, she squeezed his arm again and said, "Really?"
He grinned and put his hand over hers. "Yeah. Really."
She hopped up out of her chair and stepped behind his. She leaned down and hugged him over the back of the chair and said, "Just leave everything to me." She kissed him on the crown of his head before running off to no doubt obsessively plan every detail for the next three months.
Okay.
So, sex with Annie.
Cool.
Cool cool cool.
OOOOO
A/N: Yes, I'm a terrible tease.
Update 9/9/12 : I'm incredibly sorry this update is taking so long, I really am. I feel terrible about letting you guys down. I have definitely not abandoned this story, though. Without going into detail, I'll just say this has been one of the worse years of my life, so it's impacted a lot of things, this fic included. I want to make sure it's done as well as possible too, so I don't want to blow through just to finish it and it most likely sucking.
I'll try to make it up to you all with some PWP or something when I'm done.
I can't tell you how much your reviews have meant to me, and really, those are what kept my mind on this and the encouragement to go forward with it every time I see one pop up in my inbox. They're just so flattering and I feel so undeserving. Thank you so much, I would reply to you all if I could. And again, I'm very sorry.