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1.
At the beginning of their fourth year — Annie wanted to call it “Senior Year” but Jeff told her that was stupid — their apartment decided to start having home-cooked Sunday dinners.
Fine, “their apartment” didn't decide. Annie decided. They were on the verge of graduation and Troy and Abed barely knew how to make anything beyond buttered noodles and gross processed-food casseroles. As the responsible one, it was her duty to impart some semblance of life skills to her roommates before they were released into the wild.
She didn't realize exactly how dire the situation was until their first try. Pasta with veggies and tomato sauce. Easy, she thought. Barely an upgrade from the buttered noodles. What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, you know, not much. Except Troy could slice his finger and start screaming that high-pitched scream of his. And then Abed's eyes could go wide as he dodged into their blanket fort “bedroom,” whining shrilly. And then she could discover that her carefully hidden First-Aid kit had apparently been found a few weeks ago and all the band-aids wasted on — well, she wasn't really sure, because when Troy tried to explain it came out like “Blor – OWWWW.”
Those things could happen, so of course they did. Because nothing ever went smoothly for her. Not ever.
So here she was, wrapping paper towel tightly to Troy's finger with bandaging tape, which the terrible twosome had mercifully left intact in their raid on her private, safety-related possessions (oh, they were definitely in for a lecture on roommate etiquette and basic common sense later).
“It's not really that bad,” she reassured Troy as she pressed the paper towel on the wound. “You just nicked it. Everyone's done it at some point.”
Abed's head poked out of the fort, all signs of panic mysteriously evaporated. “I haven't.”
“That's because you never cook,” Annie protested.
“Yes I do. My dad taught me.”
Oh, right. The falafel business. Then why did he only make —
You know what? Never mind. She sighed and focused her attention back on Troy's finger. It really was okay; the bleeding had already stopped. She secured her makeshift bandage in place. When she glanced up, Troy met her eyes with a grateful smile.
“You're good at this.” Awe tinged his voice, the same tone he had whenever she got an A on a test. Or made a detailed diorama. Or vacuumed.
“Thank you.” She could feel herself blushing, an involuntary reaction left over from high school days she'd rather forget. It was frustrating that she still couldn't quite shake that stupid crush, not 100 percent.
Nope. Bad place for her mind to go. Better to ignore it.
“You know what?” she declared. “We're going to finish making this dinner. Abed, since you're such an expert, you can teach Troy how to slice an onion properly.”
Abed frowned like he was ready to protest, but she fixed him with her best don't-cross-me glare and he nodded. Satisfied, she headed back to the kitchen.
She would drag them into adulthood, whether they liked it or not.
2.
The problem with the blanket fort — more accurately, one of the many problems with the blanket fort — was that it didn't hide sound very well. Or practically at all. Troy's hiccuped sobs filled the apartment. They'd been filling the apartment for five hours. (Seriously, he was like the Energizer Bunny of crying.)
Annie rapidly slammed her knife into the cutting board, trying to block out the noise with the beat of metal on wood. Her carrots were diced to the point of uselessness.
“This is your fault,” Abed told her as he watched, refusing to help out of protest. “I told you Troy dating Britta wouldn't work. There's a reason Friends didn't throw Joey and Phoebe together — not all spares should pair up. It was a bad idea.”
Annie moved to taking her frustration out on a zucchini. “No. It. Wasn't.”
Abed glanced at the fort meaningfully as Troy's wailing somehow got louder.
“Just because a relationship ends doesn't mean it was a bad idea.” How to put this so he'd understand? “Everyone gets their heart broken at some point. You should know that from TV.”
“On TV, it serves a purpose," he protested. "Normally it's to get high ratings during sweeps, or to set up an arc where the heartbroken person moves on with someone else. This is just – ” he stopped and blinked, waiting for her to fill in the blank where an emotion should go.
“Upsetting?” Annie swept her finely diced vegetables into a large salad bowl. It wasn't much of a meal, but if rehab had taught her anything it was that when times got tough, little bits of normalcy helped. They were having their dinner. “Sure, this sucks now. But how do you know it won't lead to something good for him in the long run?”
“Because life isn't TV.”
No, it wasn't. But she refused to feel guilty, even if she was the one who pushed Troy and Britta towards each other, concocting excuse after excuse to leave them alone together. Okay, maybe she felt a little guilty (a lot guilty). But if you can't control everything — and she couldn't, she kept reminding herself — that means you have to accept things as they happen.
“Well either way, they dated and now they've broken up and we just have to make Troy feel better.” She sprinkled a final dash of dressing over the salad.
“Fine,” Abed agreed. “I have an idea. But you're going to have to commit.”
Troy protested that he wasn't in the mood to have a picnic in an imaginary field, but Annie forced him out of the blanket fort and into the Dreamatorium with the combined powers of her guilt-inducing Disney princess eyes, her best soothing tone, and just plain dragging him by the arm.
He was ambivalent about salads at the best of times, so Annie wasn't surprised to see him picking at his serving listlessly, forlornly munching on a carrot here and there. Despite the lack of enthusiasm she let him stew, plucking at the wilting lettuce, until — just as the silence was starting to get unbearable — she caught Abed's eye and nodded.
“Blew blew!” Abed screeched out, voice miraculously transformed into lasers. “Blam blam!”
Troy looked up, glancing from Abed to Annie with a spark of interest. A small spark of interest. A miniscule one. But it was there.
“Blimey!” Annie gasped in her best impression of an astonished and worried Brit. “It's the Blorgons!”
“Never fear, Geneva! We've defeated them before!”
“You guys, not now." Despite the protest, Troy's eyes started to dart, following the imaginary movement as Annie and Abed waved finger guns at invisible enemies.
“Inspector, there are too many!” A vision of a hundred metal trashcans (listen, she'd admit the show had its odd little charm, but no one could tell her the Blorgons weren't silly looking) swam into the back of her mind. She was getting really good at the whole imagination thing.
One of her enemies raised its dumb little arm and yelled, “ERADICATE!”
Annie screamed and fell to her knees.
“I'm hit!” she gasped and Troy snapped around, panicked. Ha! “We need help!”
“If only I knew where my trusty Constable Reggie was,” Abed lamented, visually wincing at the lame line, which had been her idea. Whatever. Annie was willing to sacrifice a little artistic integrity if it did the trick.
And it did the trick.
Troy leapt to his feet, imaginary blaster blasting. “I'm here, Inspector! I'll save you!”
Even with his help, it was an unwinnable battle.
Annie — sorry, Geneva — struggled on despite her injured shoulder, and the boys put up a noble fight, but in the end they had to escape through an air duct Troy — Reggie — found using his special air-conditioning skills (non-canonical, but Abed allowed it because Annie gave him a death glare when he started to protest). They scrambled in circles on hands and knees until Annie spotted an escape pod.
(By “spotted an escape pod” she meant “Troy is smiling now, and also my knees hurt.”)
And so they ended the adventure scrunched side-by-side, floating through space. Troy, wedged between Annie and Abed, was laughing so hard he couldn't breathe.
“Thanks guys,” he finally got out, before bursting into giggles again.
Over his head, Abed caught Annie's eye. “Good work, Geneva.”
“You too, Inspector.”
She started laughing, too.
3.
Annie wasn't sure when she admitted to herself that maybe her feelings for Troy were more than a high school crush, or that the spark she'd felt kissing Abed during the paintball war had never gone away. She certainly wasn't clear on when she got the insane idea that these two realizations maybe didn't have to be in conflict. That perhaps Troy and Abed's bond was, you know, like that whether they realized it or not. That possibly there was room for her, too.
All she knew was that by second semester the image was stuck in her head, and no amount of self-admonishment would make it go away. She didn't plan to act on it, of course. That would be preposterous.
But then Britta went on her rant about porn.
It was just a typical Britta speech, inspired by a stray comment from Pierce. It started with the degradation of porn stars, went on a detour past Hollywood and the paparazzi, and ended like this: “And why is it that when it's two girls on one guy, it's all about the guy, but when it's two guys on one girl, it's still all about the guys? Because I can tell you from experience that a mutual, respectful three-way relationship can be just as good for the girl – ”
The rest of her commentary was drowned out by “ewws” and groans and a stray ball of paper, but for just a moment Annie swore Britta looked right at her, as if the whole monologue was a carefully disguised piece of advice. Which a) probably wasn't true, because when was Britta ever that subtle? And b) really shouldn't have meant anything, because it was Britta, and as much as Annie liked her she wasn't exactly a role model.
And yet here she was, carefully icing Will you be my Valentines? in loopy pink letters on the chocolate cake she had created after kicking the boys out of the kitchen for the first time since instituting Sunday dinner.
Wait. What was she doing? What if she ended up Britta-ing her life?
“Annie, come ooooon.” Troy's complaint floated in from the other room. “That cake smells really good and we're hungry!”
Well, she'd known the TV couldn't distract them forever. She glared down at the cake, a thousand ways this could go wrong suddenly blasting through her mind in hi-def. (Damn imagination.) She couldn't deny baking it, and she couldn't hide what she'd written. Unless she dropped it…
… No. It was February 10th and she'd already decided this. She was doing it. At least she'd have a whole delicious cake to console her if they ran away screaming.
She picked up her troubling masterpiece with a sigh, barely breathing and heart thumping as she crept into the living room. She half hoped she'd trip and destroy the message. That she could take as a sign from the universes that listening to Britta was never a good idea. Troy and Abed sprang up eagerly from the couch and practically sprinted over, smiles wide. She held out the cake, aware that she was wincing as she waited for them to register what she had written.
In fact, she was so distracted that it took her a moment to realize that they were holding something out too. A large card they opened together. In it, scrawled in pink and red marker:
Will you be our Valentine?
4.
They decided to host a dinner for the group their last Sunday before graduation, and Annie wasn't helping cook.
She told Troy and Abed it was so they could display their new culinary talents. She reassured herself it was so she could show the group how she'd whipped her boys into something resembling adult-like shape. She added to herself that she'd also have extra time to clean the apartment. And decorate. And set the table. And reset the table with different plates. And reset it again with the original plates.
And okay, fine, maybe she didn't want to go into the kitchen because this was their last dinner before graduation. Graduation, after which the group would all have to get jobs. Jobs in other places. Jobs that would make them drift apart. Jeff would get sucked back into his lawyer world, and Britta would float off to South America with some hippy farmers, and Shirley would be busy with her business, and Troy and Abed —
No. The other plates were better. She'd have to reset the table again.
“Annie.” Abed was staring at her from the kitchen, dark eyes blinking rapidly. “That's the fourth time you've set the table.”
Troy glanced up from chopping, and shot Annie a worried look. “Is that true?”
“I just want to make sure it's perfect.” She straightened a napkin to make her point.
“No you don't. You're worried,” Abed declared. There wasn't room for argument when he thought he was right. He turned his gaze to Troy. “I told you she's worried.”
Troy shrugged and nodded. “I thought she was smarter than that.”
Abed shook his head. And then suddenly their faces were working their Troy-and-Abed magic, eyebrows dancing with some internal language that she never could understand, but didn't mind because really, that's what she signed up for.
“Annie,” Abed demanded. “We need you to put down that plate and come to the Dreamatorium.”
“Um,” she said.
“No arguing!” Troy ran into the dining room and linked his arm in hers. Abed did the same on the other side and together they marched her forward, ignoring her indigent gasps of protest that were really just for show, anyway. She wanted to see where this was going. She always did.
(She'd miss it when it was gone.)
(No. Bad thought.)
The Dreamatorium was still the Dreamatorium: black walls and tape grids, or a door to infinite adventures, depending on her mood. Right now she just saw tape, and she wasn't sure if inspecting spacetime or kickpunching terrorists would make it better. They stood in silence, Troy and Abed pressed warmly against each side. She tightened her arms, pulling them just that little bit closer. She resisted the urge to make a snarky comment about the food burning; even standing in an empty room in silence with them was nice.
“Okay.” It was Troy who started, which was a surprise. The Dreamatorium was normally Abed's domain. “We're in a house.”
“Is it on another planet?”
“No,” Abed replied. “It's in LA. Because I'm a director.”
“Yeah,” Troy agreed. “And there are palm trees outside. And a pool with a water slide! And — ”
“It's two bedrooms, but we've turned one of them into a multimedia super-center.” Abed waved his free hand in front of them, and for a moment Annie could see it: giant TV, speakers towering along the walls, video game controllers littering the ground. “There's a pull-out couch for when someone from the group comes to visit.”
“Yeah! And there's an extra bathroom because you always get annoyed when I take bubble baths — ”
“You don't need to spend an hour in the bath.” But she was giggling, heart racing. She could see what they were trying to say, though they were saying it weirdly.
No. Not weirdly. Their way. Her way, too. Our way.
She unlinked arms and turned, clutching their hands. She glanced from one to the other; Troy's earnest, huge smile, Abed's unfocused gaze only half seeing her, still caught up in his imagination.
“And there's a kitchen,” Troy added. “A big one.”
Suddenly Abed's focused snapped straight to her, startling and intense. “And we always cook Sunday dinner. Unless I'm busy accepting an Oscar.”
Her heart wasn't just racing, it had practicality won the Olympic gold. “Promise?” she whispered.
“Promise,” they replied in unison.