After probably two years of watching (binging a season and then completely forgetting about the show), I finally finished watching Community. And I was SAD. And I was disappointed! Season Six didn't fully do it for me but the one thing that especially disappointed me was the fact that Troy didn't come back. And I understand, Donald Glover has done awesome things since the show and it was his time to leave it, but I still wished we could have had a bit more of Troy and Abed.
So I wrote this to showcase my headcanons for what happened after the show, namely Troy joining Abed in LA after the end of his trip (after escaping from pirates, because apparently, that's something that's implied to have happened if you pay attention to background details.) and getting married, because obviously those two were soulmates.
"Working on a script?" Abed had been bent over his laptop for about an hour now, staring at a word document and not typing a single thing.
"Uh, no. I'm trying to email Jeff."
"Trying to? Email? Jeff?" Troy place a hand on Abed's shoulder and tried to make sense of those words in that order. The email part made sense, but why it was an hour-long struggle was a mystery.
"Yeah." Abed seemed a little frustrated like he'd hit writer's block for something as simple as an email to an old friend.
"Okay, talk me through it, set the scene."
"I never told him I was going to stay in LA."
"I think he figured that out when you didn't come back."
"I haven't emailed him in months."
"I'm sure Jeff would forgive you," Troy said encouragingly.
"I'm sure Jeff forgot about me," Abed muttered.
Troy had a choice, reassure Abed or see where he was going with this one.
"Why are you emailing Jeff if you think he's forgotten about you?"
"Good point." Abed closed his laptop, and then he just sat there, clearly still troubled by the matter at hand.
"But if Jeff hadn't forgotten you and you were going to email him, what would you say?" Troy asked after a minute of silence.
"I would ask him how the others are, or at least if he kept in touch with the others. I would tell him that you moved to LA after your trip and that we became roommates again. I would tell him my career is going well. I would tell him I broke up with Rachel."
"Anything else?" Troy noticed something glaringly obvious missing from that list.
"Oh, I'll ask him if he ever hooked up with Frankie. Or Dean. I don't really care about Jeff's sex life but Jeff cares about people caring about his sex life. He wants people thinking he can get it."
"Gross. Anything else? Something you might be forgetting, something kind of important in our lives?"
"I don't think he'd care about the rats."
Troy gave him a look and held up his left hand.
"I don't think he would care that we wear jewelry now, either, but I'll include it in the hypothetical email if you want me to."
"Abed these aren't accessories they're wedding rings. I know you know that and you're downplaying it because Jeff -who hasn't forgotten you, by the way- doesn't know that you're gay."
"You're gay. I'm just married to you."
Troy rolled his eyes, "You're bisexual."
"I'm biromantic, I could be any kind of sexual. I could be straight. I could be a straight trans woman. I don't know. I haven't gotten that far with my arc yet."
"Are you a straight trans woman?" Troy asked.
"Would you divorce me if I was?"
"You're dodging the question, Abed. Does Jeff know that you're queer?"
"Oooh, good use of an umbrella term, I can't deflect that."
"Thank you. Wait! You're still deflecting."
"No, Jeff doesn't know anything about my sexual or romantic orientation or that you moved to LA after your trip and the whole pirate thing because you wanted to be with me and I wanted to be with you."
"So he doesn't know we're soulmates?"
"People would have to be stupid or socially inept to not know that we're soulmates."
"That's fair. So, why can't you tell Jeff that we took the soulmate thing an extra step?"
"Hm. How do I put this in a way you'd understand?"
"I'll always understand you, Abed."
"Do you ever think it was a good thing that Pierce died when he did?"
"You mean because of the trip around the world and the millions of dollars I got as compensation for the trip?"
"The money is good too, but no, I meant because we never had to come out to him."
"We didn't have to come out to him because every man he was threatened by or who was weird to him was gay in his eyes," Troy pointed out.
"Besides, Pierce was insane. Jeff isn't insane," he added, reaching over and grabbing his husband's laptop.
"You didn't see him in Season Six. It got pretty touch and go." Abed took the laptop back.
"One of us is going to write the email. Do you want me to do it?"
"I should do it."
"Are you going to?" Abed was currently just sitting there, hugging his laptop.
"Oh, no. I'm not."
"Why not? Jeff wouldn't be mad at you for marrying your best friend."
"Maybe. Jeff gets weird about weddings. He might get even weirder about gay weddings he wasn't invited to."
"Abed, I might be crazy but I have this strange feeling that whatever's going on is less about you not wanting to come out to Jeff and more about something else."
"I already disappointed him," Abed said suddenly.
"What? What do you mean?"
"When I left, when I got my own show, literally and metaphorically, I left him there. I left him at Greendale and I got out. I left him there with our shared delusion that if it was a show we could stay together. If it was a show we wouldn't have to lose each other But I lost you despite the delusions so I couldn't stay, so I left. And I got lucky and you came back but I didn't come back. I didn't come back and I haven't emailed him, not to say I'm okay and definitely not to come out. Why would he forgive me for leaving when I gave up on him when he needed me most?"
"Gave up how, Abed? You weren't going to stay at Greendale forever, no one expected you to."
"Jeff expected me to. He needed me to. We changed him, Troy. He came into our study group an unfeeling, intelligent asshole and we broke him until he was one of us."
"Abed, that group made all of us better. We didn't break him, you didn't infect him with your delusions or whatever it is that you think. Jeff was an unfeeling asshole and now he isn't. Now he's our friend. And I know you didn't give up on him and he didn't give up on you. He probably just wants to hear from you again."
"So I should write that email?"
"Yes. He's going to understand, I promise."
"He's not gonna be mad that I got a spin-off and he didn't?"
"I'm sure he's doing just fine," Troy promised, kissing Abed's cheek and opening the laptop, "Let's write that email and find out."