Abed's All-Time Top 5 Best Moments (1/2)

[lapacifidora]

Title: Abed’s All-Time Top 5 Best Moments (1/2)

Author: lapacifidora

Spoilers: Season 1 and into an AU Season 2

Rating/ Warnings: PG-13; mild spoilers for my fic, series 4 of Doctor Who, and Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You

Word Count: 6,281

Disclaimers: Not mine. Although I think Dan Harmon knows this friend of mine and based Troy on her… I also do not own: Sesame Street, Shakespeare’s comedies, The Shop Around the Corner, Life on Mars, Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell, Evil Dead, Barney, The Jerry Spinger Show, Goldilocks & The Three Bears, or High Fidelity.

Author’s note: This is an epilogue to my fic “There’s Only One Girl In the World For You.” I'd like to dedicate this to solsty, ravenecho, moeexyz, and jheaton, who all consistently gave me feedback and prodded me to keep at this story. I'd also like to thank mrssnape13, n_e_star and webeh, who all gave valuable feedback and encouragement. Thank you to everyone else who read, commented, prodded me for updates and otherwise made the last seven months of writing this less of a chore. And final count is: 
- 58 chapters, plus an interlude & epilogue
- 576 pages total
- Close to 230,000 words all together
- Started 6/12/2010, finished 1/31/2011

  

***

 

“OK, OK, hold on.” Troy fiddled with the camera and tripod, checking the angle, the zoom and the lighting with a hand-held monitor. “OK and…go.”

 

“Here it is: My all-time, top five best moments of our Canada trip.” Abed spoke emphatically as he sauntered down the ground-floor hallway, one hand in his jean pocket, the other gesturing vaguely. He paused and stared straight into the lens. “In chronological order, are as follows-”

 

“Dude, can you really have an all-time, top five best of list when we’ve only been here, like, a month?” Troy asked as he straightened from where he was looking through the camera’s viewfinder and leaned back against the banister.

 

“Can I talk to you over here for a minute?” Abed tilted his head to one side.

 

“Sure.” Troy pushed off from the banister and walked around the camera, joining Abed who walked several feet back down the hall. They spoke to each other quietly for a few minutes before Troy rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged. “OK. It’s your vision.” He turned and walked back to his place behind the camera. “OK: Whenever you’re ready, let’s pick it up from ‘in chronological order.’”

 

Abed shook his shoulder and rolled his neck before nodding and resuming his mark, which they’d noted with a piece of chalk Troy found in his pocket.

 

“In chronological order, are as follows.” He held up a hand and stuck out his thumb. “One.”

***

“It’s not funny, Jeff!” Annie’s arms were crossed over her chest as she came stomping back around the corner. Jeff followed, laughing and trying to talk.

 

“Edison. Edison! C’mon. It’s a life-size muppet. Are you seriously trying to tell me you don’t want to go look for Big Bird?”

 

“No, Jeff, I don’t.” Annie turned on her heel and tapped her shoe against the ground rapidly as her hands went to her hips. “It’s a life-size representation of an animal that’s been extinct for nearly 10,000 years.”

 

“And that’s very sad.” Jeff’s mouth twisted down, though his shoulders still shook with laughter. “But I still want to look for a giant yellow bird.”

 

“Look, I get it, OK?” Annie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I was unreasonably excited to see the life-size wooly mammoth, which bears a striking resemblance to Snuffleupagus.” She opened her eyes and stared up at Jeff. “Except, y’know, not alive and talking. And without the drag queen eyelashes.”

 

“Edison, chill.” Jeff took a deep breath and leaned in toward her. “Big Bird is Snuffy’s best friend. It only makes sense that if one’s here, the other one would be as well.”

 

“Harumph.”

 

“Edison, if you were Snuffy and I was Big Bird, and you were locked up in some museum, I’d hang around until I figured out how to make them let you go.”

 

Annie was staring down at her feet, but glanced up at Jeff and blushed when she saw his soft smile. She snorted a little and looked down again, but kept shooting him looks through her lashes.

 

“That doesn’t even make any sense.” She shook her head and turned to rejoin the group, though she smiled to herself as she went. Jeff followed her, shortening his longer stride to match hers.

 

As the Greendale contingent meandered down a hallway, Abed fell into step with Jeff.

 

“What was that all about?”

 

“What?”

 

“Annie was annoyed with you.” Abed nodded toward the petite brunette, who was walking in between Shirley and Britta. Then he tilted his head toward the taller man. “Then you said something, and she was less annoyed with you.”

 

“Just me being my charming self.”

 

“Uh huh.”

 

“I was.” Jeff looked over and exhaled heavily when he saw Abed’s skeptical look. “OK, when she got really excited about seeing the wooly mammoths at breakfast before we left? I started calling her Snuffleupagus, which she didn’t seem to like.”

 

“Because she took it to mean you thought she was fat? Or because she thought it implied a certain immaturity on her part, and she’s always trying to be treated as an adult?”

 

“Um.” Jeff blinked slowly and scrunched up his face. “All of the above?”

 

“OK.” Abed nodded. “Just trying to put it in the correct context.” He waved one hand in a ‘go on’ gesture. “Proceed.”

 

“Anyways, she didn’t like me calling her Snuffy, so I was apologizing.”

 

“Ah.” Abed nodded again slowly. “And you were apologizing by casting yourself as Big Bird to her Snuffleupagus, in the way the male lead in a romantic comedy might say he was Oberon to her Titania, or Mr. Kralik to her Ms. Novak, or even Sam to her Annie-”

***

“Wait a minute.” Troy stood up from where he was hunched over the camera and gave Abed a skeptical look. “How did you know what they said to each other?”

 

“Jeff told me.”

 

“When?”

 

“Uh.” Abed looked shifty. “Later?”

 

“Were you eavesdropping?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then you have superhuman hearing?”

 

“Uh.” Abed looked up toward the ceiling and tapped a finger against his chin.

 

“Hey!” Jeff stuck his head around the doorframe from the dining room. “You guys want to come in the kitchen? We’re trying to decide what to do for dinner.”

 

“Ooh!” Troy’s face brightened. “Can we get Greek? I want more of that cheese that tastes like pool water!” He jogged down the hall toward the kitchen.

 

“Like pool wa…?” Jeff trailed off as he looked back at Abed, who had walked up to the camera and was moving it and the tripod off to one side.

 

“Feta.” Abed finished unscrewing the camera from the tripod mount and looked over at Jeff. “It’s salty like chlorinated water.” He grimaced slightly as his hand hovered over the camera’s power switch. “I don’t get it, either.” He pressed down on the switch.

 

“OK. I thought maybe it was just m-”

***

“OK. Just plug this in an-” Abed leaned back from plugging in the AC adapter and settled into his desk chair. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging when it caught in a few gelled together strands, and loosened his tie. “I left off at ‘two,’ which is actually good because I didn’t really have a ‘two’ when I did ‘one.’”

 

“Dude.” Troy groaned and half-heartedly lobbed a dirty shirt at Abed’s head as he rolled over and pulled his pillow over his head. “I’m tryin’ to sleep.”

 

“Sorry.” Abed turned to look over his shoulder. “I’ll keep it down.” He waited until Troy grunted and mumbled something before turning back to face the camera. “Hmm. Breaking the fourth wall is more disruptive than I thought.” He shrugged. “Anyways: Two.”

***

Britta stood just outside the gym doors, a red party cup dangling from her fingers as she stared across the darkened quad, absently focusing on two paper bag lanterns on the far side of the paved square. A faint breeze stirred the loose strands of the red wig she was wearing.

 

“You look good as a red head.”

 

Britta started and turned to look over her shoulder: Dean Fred Wentworth stood in the doorframe, backlit by the lights in the gym as the same breeze catching the hem of his long black jacket. She smiled as her eyes went to his temporarily peroxide blond head, and she swallowed hard before replying.

 

“Sorry I can’t say the same for you.” She turned her attention to her cup, swirling the punch around and watching the little globs of ice cream spin around the edges. “The Billy Idol look doesn’t suit you.” She shivered as Fred sidled up next to her and his shoulder brushed against her.

 

“I’m not the rebel yell, drivin-all-night-just-to-collect-a-fare kinda guy?” He smiled wryly.

 

“I believe it’s ‘out all night,’ and no.” Britta took a sip of her punch. “Doesn’t have quite as much gravitas.”

 

“Big words, little lady.”

 

Britta gave him a skeptical look and turned to look back out across the quad.

 

“I sounded a lot more like John Wayne in my head.” Fred chuckled awkwardly, then sighed. “I must say, Miss Perry: I’m a little surprised you chose to dress as Donna Noble.”

 

“Why?” Britta asked as she turned to look at him and blinked in confusion.

 

“It just doesn’t seem like something you’d choose.”

 

“I didn’t choose it – Abed did.” Britta shrugged. “If we were home, I’m not sure what I would’ve dressed up as.” She tapped a finger against the rim of her cup. “Maybe a hedgehog. Or a turtle. Oh!” She bounced on her toes. “A friend of mine works in one of those seasonal Halloween stores that opens up in empty storefronts? And she told me she’d heard dinosaur costumes were going to be big this year. Maybe I’d have been a stegosaurus – or a velociraptor.”

 

“I see.” Fred blinked twice and looked at Britta askance. “I’m sure that would’ve been…interesting.” He shook his head. “I meant more that Donna’s story is tragic in a way: She saves the entire universe – has phenomenal cosmic power – and it almost kills her. Sure, she ends up OK – happily married and she even wins the lottery – but she can never know the greatness she was capable of because of who she was.”

 

“Oh.” Britta blinked rapidly. “Abed didn’t mention that.” She sniffed quietly. “What about everyone else?”

 

“Well, let’s see.” Fred folded his arms and shifted his weight. “Michael – your professor Whitman – he’s supposed to be a big shot Time Lord, yes?”

 

“Rastafarilon?”

 

“Rassilon. Well, first he’s trapped in a time loop, and then he gets sucked into a void.” Fred frowned. “Basically, he’s done in by his unwillingness to admit he made a mistake years ago. And Donna’s grandfather, Wilf, he presumably lives to a ripe old age. Mickey and Martha end up together, though that sort of felt like the writers didn’t know anything better to do with them. Sarah Jane Smith is OK – she gets her own show – but her whole life came out of the Doctor deciding it was time for her to move on.”

 

“What about Rose?”

 

“She ends up in a parallel universe – she couldn’t stay in the world she was born in because she was declared dead. And she ends up with a version of the Doctor, though it’s not the one she fell in love with.”

 

“What?”

 

“The Doctor is basically cloned, and Rose gets the clone.”

 

“That doesn’t seem fair.” Britta frowned and huffed in annoyance. “She should get the version she wants.”

 

“The version she wants can’t tell her he loves her, and the version she gets can. It’s more than Jack gets.”

 

“What happens to Jack?”

 

“Everyone he loves leaves eventually, or dies. He can’t be killed, but he can be badly hurt. And there’s no one who understands him, so even if you count the people who don’t leave or die, Jack is still alone.” Fred shot her a knowing look. “He’s trapped by who he is, even though he’s pretty damn awesome.”

 

“Poor Jack.” Britta’s face crumpled and her cheeks flushed. “Doesn’t anything good happen to him?”

 

“Well, he’s got his friends.” Fred turned to face the open door to the gym. “Or, at least, he’s got the memory of his friends. And, as I said, he’s pretty damn awesome.”

 

“Oh.” Britta sighed quietly. “Pretty damn awesome is good.”

 

“Yes. Yes, it is.” Fred smiled and gestured to the door. “Shall we?”

 

“Sounds good.” Britta smiled and walked through the doorway, laughing lightly when Fred said something about the refreshment table.

 

Abed stepped from the shadows of a tree to one side of the gym doors and dropped the cigarette he was holding to the ground, grinding it out with his shoe. He nodded to himself.

 

“Pretty damn awesome is good.” Abed headed to the door, but hesitated a moment before turning around and walking back to the cigarette, picking it up and dropping it in a nearby trash can.

 

When he walked through the doorway into the gym, he spotted his friends in a cluster on the dance floor, several of them mimicking Britta’s ‘turn it into a snake’ while Awesome Sauce rocked out on stage with a Queen cover.

 

“Abed! Over here!” Britta and Annie were twirling each other around and gesturing for him to join them.

***

“And who am I to tell two lovely ladies ‘no’?” Abed finished, winking and shooting a finger gun at the camera.

 

“Ugh. Dude.” Troy pulled the pillow off his head and leaned up on one arm. “Drop the act, turn off the camera and let me sleep.”

 

“Sorry, Troy.” Abed’s leer disappeared instantly, and he leaned forward to shut off the camera.

***

“C’mon, Troy, just a few more feet.” Abed shifted the arm he had wrapped around his friend’s waist. “Just a few more feet, and you and Squishy McGee Sr. can have a nice long sleep.”

 

“Nu-unh.” Troy dragged his feet and tried to pull away from Abed, reaching one hand out to the hallway wall to brace himself. “Sleep here.”

 

“But then Squishy McGee will be lonely.” Abed shrugged when Jeff shot him a confused look as he walked past the two men, carrying Annie toward their room at the end of the hallway. He turned his attention back to Troy. “It’s not more than 5 feet, Troy. You can make it.”

 

“Grrrr- aaaaaah.” Troy tried to growl but it turned into a yawn that stretched his jaws wide. When his teeth closed with a clack, he sagged against Abed and laid his head on his friend’s shoulder. “Fine. Want Squishy.”

 

“OK.” Abed maneuvered Troy the last several feet to their room and managed to dump Troy on his bed. Troy kicked off his shoes and snuggled under the covers Abed pulled over him, wrapping his arms around the fluffy down pillow resting at the head of the bed.

 

“Mmm. Squishy. My Squishy and I shall call him Squishy McGee.”

 

“Mmm hmmm.” Abed nodded to himself and grabbed his camera from his bag as he headed toward the shared bathroom. He washed his face and brushed his teeth, then put the lid down on the toilet and sat down, turning the camera on, then turning it around and fussing with the view screen until he could see himself. “OK. Three.”

***

“I thought you couldn’t handle vomit.” Annie was standing to one side of Abed, but she was looking the opposite direction as she spoke to Jeff. In the distance, a large screen played an commercial for the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair’s equestrian show in a few days.

“I can’t, usually.” Jeff shuddered as he squeezed more hand sanitizer into his palms, handed the bottle back to Annie and rubbed his hands together brusquely.

 

“In fact, I seem to remember you telling me I couldn’t get sick around you because you would get sick, too.” Annie gave Jeff a skeptical look. Abed leaned forward to look over her shoulder at Jeff and raised a single eyebrow as they both waited for him to answer.

 

“Well, yeah.” Jeff cleared his throat as they both continued to stare at him. “But you were glaring at me.” He pointed to Annie. “And Troy was laughing, Pierce was taking video on his cell phone and you,” he pointed at Abed, “didn’t look like you’d be doing anything to help.”

 

“I don’t like vomit.” Abed replied, his tone even and his expression unchanged.

 

“Who does?” Jeff shrugged when they both continued to stare at him. He exhaled heavily, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, it was gross, but I figured if I ever had to deal with the vomit of someone I lo-oked up to, y’know, someone I thought of as never being sick like that, I needed to start with someone who it wouldn’t bother me to see sick.” He offered Annie a half smile, which turned into a full blown grin when she blinked up at him and slipped her hand into the crook of his arm.

 

“Awww.” Annie wrapped her other arm around Jeff’s, and squeezed it as she looked up at him with a large smile on her lips. “That’s nice.”

 

Abed looked between the two of them, his other eyebrow climbing to match the first. When neither one of them looked over at him, he cleared his throat pointedly. When they still didn’t look away from each other, he shook his head and turned to watch for the rest of the group, who had gone to the restrooms. Catching sight of Britta’s blonde curls coming around the corner, he pushed away from the wall and turned so his body partially blocked Jeff and Annie. “Hey, guys. We’re over here.” He got some strange looks from people passing by as he called out loudly, but he allowed himself a small smile as he heard the two behind him cough and knock into a large trash can as they pulled apart.

***

“Thinking about it, Jeff’s reasoning was pretty sound.” Abed tilted his head to one side. “Having to clean up the vomit of someone you think is attractive would be pretty unsettling, so it makes sense to start with someone you don’t want to kiss.” He nodded to himself speculatively. “It’s probably a good thing they held back Shirley and Britta’s hair.”

 

“ABED!” Pierce’s voice thundered from the hallway, and the door rattled a little as he pounded on it. “You’re not the only one who needs to hit the head, so git yer ass out here and let me use the bathroom!”

 

“OK. Sorry, Pierce.” Abed spoke loudly enough to be heard as he switched off the camera and set it on the counter. Then he pulled his shirt off over his head and made a little bundle with the camera wrapped in it, and exited the bathroom. “It’s all yours.”

***

Comments

[fangirl-101.livejournal.com]

(about the last part) Yeah, it's a good idea Abed hid the video camera. Otherwise, Pierce seeing Abed leave the bathroom holding a camera could only lead to really, really offensive things. LOL :D

[lapacifidora.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It really would have. >_< Pierce opens mouth, inserts foot practically every time.

(Though Abed retreating to the bathroom was more because I didn't find Andrew on Buffy as annoying as a lot of people and because I thought 'Storytellers' was a fun episode. /ramble)