"Now, how to play Yahtzee…" Troy started reading the instructions at the back of the box with a fake smile plastered across his face.

"Is there nothing from our youth they won't repackage for a buck?" Pierce mumbled, "Call it Yahtzee all you want, everyone knows it's Puerto Rican chess." He finished his rambling as he rolled his eyes.

The buzzer buzzed all of a sudden and created a somewhat sudden noise that Annie became extremely startled and gasped rather loudly, scaring everyone else.

"Annie, it's just the buzzer" Jeff tried to smile, raising both his eyebrows.

"It's the pizza. We can't buzz him up, someone has to go down." Abed informed all of them.

The whole group followed Abed's hidden cue by instinctively putting their fingers on their noses at the same time.

"Uh, okay" Jeff rolled his eyes, "starting on my left with 1, your number comes up, you go."

"Just so you know Jeff, you are now creating six different timelines." Abed noted.

"Of course I am, Abed." Jeff regarded him with a fake smile.

Jeff rolled the die as everyone silently hoped they didn't have to get the pizza as Abed with a frown on his face was counting the number of people on the table and looking at the cubical die skeptically. Before he could deduce anything, the die landed on the table, the number showing up being 5.

"Five." Jeff finally said, "one, two, three, four, five- Abed."

"I'm on it." he said quickly, resolving to be as quick as possible so he wouldn't miss out on much.

"You know who else was on it and do you know what it is?" Pierce smiled, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Everybody give me money." Abed said.

"Wow, that ascot really softens your personality…" Jeff commented as he reached for his wallet.

Pierce's smile faded as he realized no one really heard what he was saying, "I banged Eartha Kitt!" his smile returned.

Everyone rolled their eyes including Shirley who got up and headed towards the kitchen and Abed who headed on down to get the pizza

Britta hummed along to a song playing on the radio and chimed in as Sting hit the opening note, "Roxaaaaa-"

"No" Jeff stopped her from giving him and the rest of the group what could be an ear-soring experience.

"Bathroom?" she asked Troy, clearly annoyed at Jeff.

"Down the hall…" Troy provided, regarding her posterior, smiling at himself, as she walked off in a huff.

"Need to get a drink" Jeff mumbled as he got up from the chair. His head automatically hit the fan on the ceiling as he yelled out in pain which apparently Troy and Pierce found funny.

"Oh my god, are you okay?" Annie frowned, concerned.

Jeff winced, "barely felt it."

"Well, let me look at it in the bathroom" Annie supplied.

Troy interrupted them as he remembered who was where, "Britta's in the bathroom."

"Oh, um," Annie looked around, finally finding the kitchen which also had a sink where she could tend to Jeff. She pointed towards the kitchen as Jeff painfully nodded.

Kitchen

"Oh no, what happened? " Shirley said when she noticed Jeff and Annie come in.

"Minor head wound" Annie confided, smiling awkwardly.

Meanwhile in the distance, Jeff, Annie and Shirley could make out Britta's distinct voice, "Oh my god, what smells amazing?"

"Oh! Someone wants pie!" Shirley shrieked, following the direction of Britta's voice, leaving Annie alone to take care of Jeff's wound.

"You make a good nurse." Jeff smiled at her fondly.

"Thanks…" Annie blushed, her cheeks flushed, "I was just applying a tourniquet the other day. Guy got stabbed outside my building."

"Annie, you have to move out of there." Jeff said lightly with an air of concern in his voice.

"You don't have to treat me like a kid anymore. Remember?" Annie reminded him lightly.

"Well, adults still need to be protected." Jeff rolled his eyes, "I can't help but worry about you, Annie" Jeff added gently, his gaze dropping downward towards her lips. "You're very important to me" he said more softly as Annie found herself gazing intently at him. Before either of them could think, Jeff started leaning in as the same time as Annie whose eyes were slowly fluttering shut. Their lips met in a soft kiss. Nothing seemed to matter to each of them anymore as they continued. Annie lightly smiling and Jeff finding his way down to her hips. Unfortunately for them, their respiratory tracts had other plans which led them to pull away for catching some breath.

Jeff's eyes closed again as he started to lean in. Oh this could easily turn into something more. Before he could, though, Annie seemed to have remembered something.

"I'm sorry, I just had this weird déjà vu." She smiled uncertainly. "What you said about worrying about me? Something my dad always said." Annie chuckled

Jeff's smile slowly faded.

"Shouldn't have brought it up." she chuckled, blushing. "Just reminded me of my dad. Anyway-" she leaned in.

"Uh, just a little Make Out 101. Less dad talk and you could ease off on the bubblegum lip gloss." he said, annoyed now.

"Hmm." Annie said, looking a little hurt. Eventually, a frown developed on her face as she actually considered why she mentioned her dad at such an inappropriate time in such an inappropriate context.

Eventually both came out of the kitchen, Annie frowning and Jeff shuddering

Outside the bathroom

After smoking a little pot, Britta was satisfied and decided to come back out before anyone got suspicious. She observed an amazing smell of something fresh baked and amazing so she said loudly than she anticipated, "Oh my god, what smells amazing?"

She heard Shirley's distinct voice as she came towards her, "ooh, someone wants pie!". Shirley offered Britta a mini pie which she gladly took.

"Oh, my god. They taste just like regular sized pies!" Britta exclaimed, smacking her lips and giggling giddily.

"Oh, yay!" Shirley smiled as if her day had just been made but slowly her smile started to fade. "Sometimes I feel like baking desserts is the only thing I'm good for in the group." she mumbled sadly.

Britta started frowning, trying to remember something, something which was along the same lines as what Shirley had just confided in her…"Oh, crap! I was not supposed to eat your stuff! We all made an agreement." she said.

Shirley looked at her with disbelief and disappointment in her eyes. Oblivious, Britta proceeded to remember yet another detail.

"Crap, I was not supposed to say that out loud." Britta said, freaking out. "Crap, cards on the table, I'm really high right now." Britta confided.

"Oh!" Shirley shrieked, not knowing what to do with such feedback, her eyes shone with disapproval and anger mixed with a pinch of sadness. She decided to let her anger and disapproval show. "I can't believe I'm feeding my pies to a drug addict!"

"Drug addict" Britta yelled, her tiny face scrunched up in a frown, "You're a pie pusher!" she accused, "you push pies to get love!"

Shirley gasped in disbelief. She snatched the pie from Britta's hands. "Give me this! You godless hippie skank!" she yelled. Britta gasped, very much taking offense at Shirley's words.

As they both saw Abed come in, they angrily joined the rest of the group in the dining table where Troy angrily glared at Pierce and Jeff and Annie couldn't even bear to look at each other.

In the dining room

"Happy housewarming!" Pierce said to Troy as he produced a package from under the table. Troy smiled at Pierce, clearly happy at having received a present.

"Oh, cool. Thanks, Pierce!" he smiled. "Hey, while we're alone, I just wanted to say thanks for letting me live with you. But now it's time for me to make it on my own, just like you did." he said, a grateful expression residing in his face as he finally started to believe that maybe Pierce could be a good person despite the whole LeVar Burton thing. Maybe, Pierce had changed.

Pierce smiled, clearly flattered by Troy's little thank-you but quickly realized what he was about to give Troy and the actual intentions behind it. After Troy had been such a good lad, giving him that would just make Pierce a bigger dick. Since summer, Pierce had been trying to come across as a good person but Troy moving out and into Ay-bed's place sparked a sense of jealousy. Why did the weird Arab guy get a best friend and not him? Now what Troy said and the way he said it genuinely provoked Pierce's microscopic conscience. Troy could not get that gift.

"Don't open this." he lightly chuckled.

"No- what?" Troy chuckled. This was not going to be easy.

"Let me give you something else" Pierce offered. " A waterpik, a speedboat…" Pierce looked for more compelling things, "uh, two waterpiks!"

It didn't work.

"Give it Pierce!" Troy said forcefully, a slight amount of anger and a major sense of annoyance is his tone. "It feels fun!".

"Stop it!" Pierce attempted to snatch the box but Troy was stronger. "You're bad at gift-giving!" he yelled, almost completely successful. "I demand to be housewarmed!" Troy yelled again, applying yet more force. "No, I reall-"

The box eventually toppled upwards and its content flew off, right to their computer.

It was the troll doll. The terrifying troll doll that used to terrorize Troy in his dreams, the one that used to stare at him with those evil eyes while he was trying to sleep. He knew there was something freaky with that doll and seeing it in his house, what if it infested his house with itself? Troy glared at the doll, unable to say anything. Unable to express how disappointed he was in Pierce or how scared he was of that horrifying thing without Jeff making fun of him for being scared. He had no words.

Pierce looked back at Troy, apologetically with regret. This was a clear mistake. Now Troy would eventually say this to everyone and lo and behold, the exclusion will start again. They'd start going on gayer trampolines and playing Dungeons and Dragons with fatter kids while he'd be at home, with his miserable fortune, just feeling kind of empty inside.

"You're a sick, sad old man and I hope you die alone." Troy muttered.

And just then Abed walked in. As Britta huffed at Shirley and Annie frowned looking at the very opposite direction from Jeff's, he, oblivious, grabbed a slice of pizza and started to enjoy.

"I wonder what happened in those other timelines." he said after taking a bite. "I hope this is the real one since I found a nickel in the hallway."

Abed

It didn't take Abed too long to find out the fact that something was really off. He frankly wasn't interested in going down to get the pizza. After realizing that Jeff, that conniving son of a bitch, ensured that he never had to get the pizza, he really felt like calling him out but now that the die had been rolled and everybody was looking at him expectantly, he couldn't. He was striving to be a perfect host this evening and he didn't want anything to tamper that. After reading the section on that 40s manual on how to be a good host, he was getting some grip on reading the room. He decided to bring Jeff's little plan up while they were indulging in a light-hearted game of Yahtzee as Troy and he had planned and they could punish him in some fun way like forcing him to wear something funny and tweet out a picture of it. He smiled at that thought.

The pizza delivery guy seemed weird but that's what he'd noticed in most pizza guys. His facial hair seemed to bother Abed's insides. Almost as much as how much it seemed to bother him when Annie characteristically made googly eyes at Jeff. Well, that didn't bother him, per se. He just wasn't able to figure out how Annie couldn't move on from the time when Jeff kissed her in the Transfer Formal after two years but seemed to be completely over Abed in no time. Regardless, he didn't care, it would be too out of character.

Their kiss was the heat of the moment and if it did lead to something, it would shift the whole paradigm of how the group functioned. Being the quiet observationalist of the group and the comic relief of the show (he was well aware that it wasn't a show, TV talk just made it easier for him to form analogies) there was nothing bound to happen between Annie and him. It'd be different and even if something happened, that "something" would be a distraction, just a way for her to realize that Abed was an obstacle for her on her way to finding love with Jeff. It was too obvious.

She was only into him, Abed, when he wasn't being him, Abed. Abed wasn't Han Solo, he wasn't a hero, he knew Jeff was going to instinctively slouch into that role so he snatched it. Flirting with Annie who automatically became Leia was something he may or may not have seen coming. Abed wasn't Don Draper either, he had absolutely no regard for being an infidel, sure Draper was "cool" but Abed wasn't aspiring to be Don Draper under any circumstances. He wasn't going to change his whole persona to fluster Annie but the more he'd being saying that to himself, the less preposterous it felt. Annie would eventually get with Jeff which would be the ideal scenario, the sensible scenario. The scenario that legitimately seemed to make some sense.

As he reached his floor, he saw something glint in the hallway right outside his apartment. Ooh, a nickel! That seemed intriguing. He was no Ted Mosby but he did have to admit that this discovery made him happy considering he hadn't ever seen a nickel in his life before.

He made that introspective inner monologue skid to a halt as he entered his apartment. Good hosts always paid the utmost attention to the events they were hosting.

When he entered, he was too absorbed in his thoughts and the nickel to notice anything different. It took him a few minutes to notice everything wrong. The troll doll on that wooden desk was the first thing he noticed. He'd heard a lot about that troll doll from Troy. Troy recounted many tails of being mortified of that artifact, Troy even thought it had something to do with the supernatural. He noticed a package that the troll doll must've been in residing in Pierce's arm. Aha, Pierce gave Troy that as a mean spirited present out of jealousy, a surge of anger went through his body but he didn't characterize it, because before he could, his sight shifted to Britta and Shirley who were frowning at each other too.

It took him slightly longer to figure this one out. The mini pie in Shirley's hands was half eaten and after squinting towards Britta while she wasn't looking, he found pie crumbs. So Britta broke the agreement by having the pie and she must've disclosed it by mistake. She basically britta'd the whole thing when she could've just stayed quiet and swallowed it or said that she was having a stomach ache of sorts after a bite. Abed was still feeling that something was fishy, though, Britta was never this clumsy. Perhaps she was indulging in alcohol or marijuana. He nodded. That also seemed to explain the part where she called his model from Raiders, "super sexy cool" while Annie said that she was overselling something.

Then his eyes found their way to where Jeff and Annie were. They weren't exactly fuming at each other. The both of them seemed to not even be able to meet each other's eyes as if something awkward had happened between them. He couldn't fin- oh there it was. Jeff's lips were shining of a slightly pink lip gloss which they weren't earlier which he could distinctly notice on Annie's lips too. So, they shared a romantic moment and even kissed. But then why were they mad at each other.

After somewhat solving those mysteries, his pride over his analytical prowess gave way to anger. Something more than Annie yelling at him when he waited for 26 hours for a psych experiment that never happened. They seemed to have no respect for his and Troy's big night. All they could do was have petty rows over tiny things and use a housewarming party to be the perfect night to start a relationship that didn't even seem like it was going to happen from the looks of Jeff and Annie and the way they were regarding each other. Sure, that was perfectly in character to how the group worked but on his housewarming party? He sensed something totally unfair in this and that's one of the very few things Abed hated. After striving hard to be a perfect host and trying to read the room and whatnot, the study group (excluding Troy) just couldn't get rid of their sense of disharmony for one night. Annoyed, he broke the silence…

"Thanks. This has been a pleasure." he saw Annie look at him raising an eyebrow, "oh, that was me being sarcastic since I actually have little to no idea how to react to this situation" he continued, "I meant to say, thanks for being yourselves tonight. Thanks for giving my best friend the thing he's mortified of," he said eyeing Pierce, "thanks for just messing the easiest things up by not resisting the urge to get high" he regarded Britta, "and for the last, thanks for choosing this night that I thought was about Troy and I and making it about yourselves," he pointed towards Jeff and Annie. "Sarcasm aside, I just wanted you guys to let today be amazing and it seemed like it was going well but today's not some puppy parade day. Today is a day that marks something important in my life and Troy's life. Something I thought was so important, I made up a fake postcard so that Jeff wouldn't characteristically blow it off, but as it turns out, it wasn't worth it." Abed finished his long monologue which he was somewhat proud of.