Chapter Ten:

"STARS AND SATELLITES"

You should come down to New Fluffytown and help Troy and I build our pillow fort. It's your day off, right?

I raised an eyebrow at the text I'd just received from Abed. A pillow fort, eh? Well, it certainly sounded like a comfortable enough way to spend a day off. I took a sip of hot chocolate before sending off a reply.

Yeah, how did you know? And is Craig aware you're building a pillow fort instead of going to class? As long as he's fine with it and I can stay in my pyjamas, I don't mind coming down to help.

My phone buzzed a few seconds later. Damn, but that boy could text quickly.

I noticed on your calendar last time we were over that you usually take Mondays and Tuesdays off. The Dean is cool with the fort, don't worry about it. And everyone else here is in their pajamas, so you'll fit right in. Could you actually bring us some hot chocolate while you're at it?

I laughed out loud at that. What were the chances?

Consider it done.

A few minutes later, I had my coat over my pyjamas and two travel mugs of hot chocolate made with milk set in the cup holders of my car and was off to Greendale Community College.

"Well, nobody can say I didn't do something relatively spontaneous this week," I mused to myself as I drove.

"Mmm. Thanks, Sophie. You make a mean hot chocolate," Troy said.

"Actually I'd say it's quite nice," Abed said, wiggling his eyebrows at him.

I rolled my eyes at the two of them. "Whatever you say, guys. Now...what is the secret to this pillow-stacking?" I asked, somewhat irked as the same stack I had been trying to build up for the last four minutes fell over yet again.

"You have to put the small pillows in the middle. It gives it more stability," Abed pointed out as he sipped at his hot chocolate.

I took his advice and, finally, the stack remained steady even after I'd built it up to the same height as the wall of pillows around it. "Huzzah!" I cried out triumphantly. "Eat that, you noncompliant pillows!" When I looked over at Abed and Troy, Abed was making a 'cuckoo' sign to Troy while Troy nodded. I glared at them. "Hey! Just because I talk to pillows doesn't mean I'm crazy. The pillows were making fun of me!" I huffed indignantly.

"Suuure they were," Troy said, and he and Abed grinned and clinked their mugs together.

I gave them both an unimpressed look. "Drink that hot chocolate while you still can, because if you keep throwing insults in my general direction, it'll be the last hot chocolate I ever give you," I said darkly.

Abed started whistling innocently, avoiding my gaze, and Troy put on his best angelic expression and said, "Burns? What burns? Were you cooking?"

"Har har, Troy. You're reeeal funny," I said, starting another stack of pillows.

"Seriously, though. It's great to have you here. I mean, we end up doing a lot of crazy-slash-awesome things here at the college, but since you don't go to school here, you're hardly ever involved in them, and it's nice to have you here for once. Right, Abed?"

Abed looked anywhere but at me, but responded, "Yeah." He quickly turned his attention to a bundle of pillows and started stacking them like I had been doing.

"Say, you have another day off tomorrow, right? Seeing as tomorrow's Tuesday and all," Troy said in a somewhat sneaky way, as though he were leading up to something. I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously.

"Yeeees... why?" I asked, wariness evident in my voice.

"Oh no reason, we were just thinking we'd stay overnight in New Fluffytown to make sure no one tries to vandalize it or anything. We just think it'd be terrible if we worked so hard on something this big only to go home for the night and come back to find it in ruins."

I raised my eyebrows a bit and nodded. "Yeah, I guess I can understand that. And I'm fine with that, but if we're all going to be staying here overnight, then I'm going to go make a food run," I said, checking my watch. "And no wonder I'm hungry, it's almost six o'clock already. Geez! Time flies, huh? What do you guys want?"

Troy said "Denny's," at the same time Abed said "IHOP."

I grinned. "Well, breakfast for supper it is. Coin flip to decide which place?"

"Sounds fair enough. Make sure you flip the coin, catch it, and then flip it to the opposite side. Just so we don't get in an argument about how the flip should've been performed and have to do it all over again," Abed instructed.

I gave him a two-finger salute. "Aye-aye, cap'n," I replied, pulling a quarter out of my jacket pocket to flip. "Who calls what?"

"Heads," they both called at the same time. They caught each other in a stare-down, not looking away until finally Troy said, sounding somewhat put-out, "Okay, I'll take tails."

"Got it. Abed calls heads, Troy calls tails," I repeated, and they nodded confirmation. I flipped the coin, and lifted an eyebrow when I saw the intense stares Abed and Troy were giving the coin as it flipped end over end to land once again in my palm. I quickly closed my hand and slapped the coin opposite side down on the back of my other hand. Taking my other hand away revealed it to be,

"...Heads! IHOP it is," I said. "Write down a couple of your preferences and I'll see what I can do. Sorry, Troy; better luck next time."

Abed whooped and quickly went to hunt down a piece of paper for them to write down their preferences on. Troy pulled a Darth Vader and yelled, "Noooo!"

I sighed and stood up, patting Troy on the head as I followed Abed, as he'd run off before I could even tell him that I actually had a scrap piece of paper and a pen in my jacket pocket that he could've used.

"Okay, boys, I brought breakfast...er, supper. Brupper? Whatever the heck you wanna call it, I brought it," I said, handing them the take-out containers that I had marked with their respective names. "And if you can't finish it, I will not hesitate to devour any leftovers, so if you want to save them for breakfast or something make sure they are kept somewhere I will never think to look for them," I warned them, with good reason. I loved all things breakfast-related. Especially waffles and pancakes. Carbs had always been my favorite weakness.

"Thanks, Sophie. You're the best," Troy said with a goofy grin on his face as he opened his container full of blueberry syrup-topped waffles. Abed shot him an indecipherable look and also took his, which held an extra large stack of traditional buttermilk pancakes with little containers of the IHOP's pancake syrup and blackberry jam, as per his request, so he could put as much on the pancakes as he wanted. I raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment on the look which I wasn't sure if I had been intended to witness. Unsure, I shrugged slightly to myself and sat down cross-legged on a pillow like Troy and Abed were and opened my own container of Swedish crepes.

"Oh golly, I think I've died and gone to heaven," I said as the aroma of the lingonberry sauce tickled my senses. "Don't pinch me if I'm dreaming. I love food dreams and would be quite happy to live in one forever. Just as long as it doesn't turn into a food nightmare, that is."

"True. Food nightmares are never good. Once I had a nightmare that the ham in our fridge was so far past its due date that the mould it had grown had become self-aware and made the ham into a zombie ham that had a taste for human flesh. And then it ate Pierce," Troy said, a look of vague horror on his face. "The next day I had almost forgotten the dream until I opened the fridge and saw the mouldy ham sitting there...staring at me..." He cleared his throat. "Needless to say, I got Abed to throw it out...the window."

"It landed in some lady's plant pot," Abed remarked casually, as though that sort of thing happened every day. It made me wonder just what exactly the everyday norm was for Abed and Troy in their apartment.

After that, we spent the majority of the meal in silence, with the exception of the random noise of approval which we eventually had a sort of unspoken contest going on for, about who could make the loudest one. The only thing that eventually stopped it was when Jeff passed by the entrance to the pillow fort where we had been sitting and stared at us for a long moment before speaking.

"Would you three stop that already? It sounds like you're having some sort of orgy in here. God!" he said before he started walking away, going back the same way he had come from.

There was a moment of silence before I called out at Jeff's retreating back, "You're just jealous because you weren't invited!" When he gave no response, I turned back to Abed and Troy and said, "He's totally jealous."

"I know I would be if my friends were having brupper without me," Troy said. "By the way, brupper of supfast?"

"Brupper," Abed and I both said straight-faced.

"Darn. I thought maybe supfast would've caught on by now..."

"Sorry, Troy, but I think the term brupper has been around longer. That and personally, I think it's catchier," I said with a grin, setting aside my now-empty take-out container. "So, guys...throw out the trash and then back to work on the fort? How much are we planning to get done by bedtime? Or better yet, when are we even planning on turning in?"

Abed and Troy glanced at each other.

"I dunno. We should probably turn in by no later than midnight due to classes starting at 8:30, so accounting for the people who come to the college early for students' association work or the like, there'll probably start to be some commotion around 7:30 or so in the morning," Abed reasoned. "Also, I think we should be able to get to the end of this hallway and start branching off to either side by the time we call it a night. Then we can watch a couple Inspector Spacetime reruns in the fort to double the epicosity of the fact that we'll be sleeping inside a giant pillow fort," he said, really seeming excited for the prospect. The excitement felt somewhat contagious.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" I asked, eager to watch Inspector Spacetime with them. I actually hadn't heard of it until after I'd met Abed, at which point we'd started discussing the episodes as I watched them, if we weren't watching the episodes together. "Let's build this baby!"

"Blimey, Inspector! Where on earth are we?"

"Don't you mean...when are we, Constable...?"

"Arrrgh! No! That was a terrible place to end off. One more episode!" I said, stretching towards the TV Abed had found wherever the heck he finds awesome things (probably from the AV club, but I liked to think he had cooler-slash-more mysterious sources than that) and snuck into the pillow fort for us to watch Inspector Spacetime on, but not actually moving to press the buttons because I was honestly too lazy to do that. "Ughh. Abed, play the next episodeee," I whined, trying to annoy him into complying.

"Nope. You said that at the end of last episode. We already watched one more than we were going to, and it's past midnight now. We want to be up early enough to beat the early birds tomorrow, remember?" He had a point there.

"I will not concede to remembering any such thing as I am a woman and therefore am perpetually right. Seriously, Abed, has no one ever taught you that?" I grinned cheekily.

"Don't answer, Abed, it's a trick question," Troy said, staring at me warily. "Also, don't look into her eyes. Her hair has gotten to the point where I think she might be a gorgon."

I scoffed in offense. "It has not! ...Has it?" I quickly dug in my bag that was lying beside me for my compact mirror and hairbrush. When I checked it, I sighed in relief before glaring at Troy. "Liar."

Troy whistled innocently.

Abed rolled his eyes. "All jokes aside; Troy, where did we put the sleeping bags? Are they still in the study room?"

"Yup. Tucked under the sofa last I checked."

"'Kay. I'll go grab 'em."

"Oh. Crap. Do you guys have one for me too, by any chance? I kind of forgot to bring a sleeping bag...I have a blanket in my car, but it's not very thick..."

"Oh...no, we only brought the two." Abed frowned. "I guess I should've thought to include that in the text, huh."

"That's okay. Abed would be happy to share his sleeping bag with you, Sophie. Right, Abed?" Troy said.

I looked at Abed, who opened his mouth to say something before looking in Troy's direction, where movement caught my eye, and I turned my head to see Troy quickly put his hands behind his back as he looked everywhere but at me with an all-too-innocent expression on his face. I raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment, because inwardly, I felt a sort of joy at the prospect of getting to share a sleeping bag with Abed.

"Sure," Abed said after a moment of somewhat awkward silence between the three of us. I smiled.

"Thanks a bunch, Abed. You're a lifesaver."

For a second I thought I saw him blush, but he quickly turned and headed off, crawling down the tunnel of the pillow fort that led off towards the study room to grab the sleeping bags for us all.

While he was away, Troy and I busied ourselves by putting together a mass of pillows we had yet to use for extending the fort in order for us to sleep on.

"You don't twitch in your sleep or anything, do you?" Troy asked out of the blue.

"Nope. My sister used to tell me I slept like a log. I wouldn't move even if she tried tickling me with feathers or poking me in the sides," I said, mood dampening at the mention of my sister.

Troy paused in what he was doing for a moment to give me a one-armed hug. "Sorry, Soph. Didn't mean to bring it up," he murmured, but I waved off his apology. I couldn't wallow forever, and I was all too aware of that. Despite the sadness it brought me, I had to learn to cope with not having my sister around anymore, because I knew she would want me to be able to move on. That was the only reason I was trying to in the first place.

"It's okay, Troy. I'll be okay in time. Thank you, though."

Only a moment after Troy released me from the hug, Abed came shuffling around the corner with the two sleeping bags. Troy quickly crawled over to him while I finished fixing the pillow pile. I heard them whispering, but couldn't quite make it out, which piqued my curiosity, but before I could decide whether or not I was nosy enough to shuffle ever-so-slightly closer to them to try and make out what they were saying, they both shuffled back over, Troy setting up his sleeping bag on the far side of the pillow pile and Abed unzipping his all the way so it would work more like a blanket. I was about to shuffle into the middle of the pile, wanting to get the best spot, when Abed crawled in and flopped down on the middle of the pile instead, wordlessly claiming it for himself. I rolled my eyes, but relinquished my hopes for the middle since I wasn't feeling mean enough to try and bribe or bully him out of 'his' spot. Crawling over and lying down beside him on the opposite end of the pillow pile from Troy, I smiled contentedly when Abed pulled the warm sleeping bag over the both of us, finally feeling how tired I was as my eyes started to close of their own accord when Troy clicked off the lamp next to his head, the last source of light that had been left on inside the fort.

"Sophie?" I heard Abed murmur quietly.

"Yeah?" I mumbled sleepily back.

"Can I see your hand for a second?"

Somewhat confused, I complied anyways, bringing my hand up towards where I could make out the outline of Abed's face. I was a bit surprised when his own hand came up to grasp mine, but then I smiled and was very glad it was dark, because I could feel my face burning, which told me I must've been blushing crimson.

"Goodnight, Sophie," Abed said. "Sweet dreams."

I stroked the back of his hand with my thumb. "Sweet dreams, Abed."

A/N: Sorry this chapter is a day late... I completely lost track of what day of the week it was! (Seriously I am not even kidding.) Next week's update should be on time as usual on Monday.

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