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blue and yellow flowers stained with blood appeared in his hand.
it started at the reading of pierce’s will.. after troy said he was gonna go on his trip, abed shut down. him and troy had their lava game and he turned into clone abed but as soon as troy was out of his sight, he ran back to apartment 303 and shut himself in the bathroom.
abed cried, for a long, long time. he didn’t know if he would ever see troy again.
he vividly remembers feeling stabbing pains in his chest, coughing up a small petal that was slightly tinged with blood. he didn’t know why they were there, but he assumed it had something to do with troy. he grabs his phone and clicks open the search bar, typing in what was happening to him.
oh.
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now, fully formed flowers find their way up abed’s throat everytime he thinks of troy. they scratch his throat, invisible scratches forming as he coughs them out, some dripping blood.
out there, he’s clone abed. everyone thinks he’s normal, cause he’s abed, the somewhere-on-the-spectrum nerdy person who makes obscure film references and only speaks in one tone of voice.
but it’s gotten even worse.
all he does is hide in his room now. he doesn’t want to see anyone. he’s allowed to be Real Abed in here.
they don’t know how many hours he’s spent, curled up in troy’s bed, wishing for him to come back. they don’t know how he stares at their pictures together, missing how he hasn’t seen troy’s smile in ages. they don’t know about the flowers growing in his chest, taking over his lungs until he can’t breathe anymore.
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“abed? shirley’s here.” annie says, in a gentle tone of voice.
“honey? we’re all worried about you,” shirley says, sounding like his mother.
god. his mom. when was the last time he saw her?
“abed? i know you don’t want to see me, but why don’t you let shirley in? she baked you some brownies-”
“no.”
he’s surprised at how scratchy his voice is. he hasn’t talked in a week, but it shouldn’t be this bad, right? but, there are literal fucking flowers growing in his chest, spreading across his body, threatening to kill him.
abed’s about to cough, but he holds it until he hears footsteps leading towards the main door. when he hears the door close shut he sobs, and coughs for what seems like eternity. by the end of it, theres dozens of pale blue flowers strewn across the floor, stained with blood.
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abed feels kind of good today.
he has a shower, and cleans up the messiest of the blue and yellow flowers. he changes his clothes and brushes his teeth.
he unlocks his door for the first time in forever and goes to sleep. he’s secretly hoping someone will come in.
he wakes up, and hears a sniffle behind him. abed turns around and sees jeff winger sitting on a makeshift chair made of pillows.
“the door was open,” he says.
“i left it open.” he thinks, but remembers jeff can’t hear his thoughts. so he sits up, wrapping himself in a blanket that smells overwhelmingly like troy. he nods, and looks at jeff.
“i didn’t let annie come in, if that’s what you’re wondering about. didn’t want her getting more worried.” jeff mentions casually, as if abed was just under the weather instead of dying.
jeff picks up a flower and twists it around with his fingers, saying “abed, where did these flowers come from?” he looks at abed expectantly, hoping for an answer. abed just shrugs his shoulders and looks back at jeff.
“ok, you’re not gonna talk. that’s alright. i’ll talk for the both of us. see, all of us, we’ve all been worried about you abed. we want you to get better. what’s happening abed? is it about troy-”
abed cut’s off jeff sentence with a cough. he covers his hand with his mouth, eyes wide open. he tries to hold it in, he really does, but he can’t. he keeps coughing, jeff watching him with a shocked expression on his face. abed coughs until he thinks it’s all gone, and timidly shows jeff his hands.
immediately, jeff knows. “shit,” he mutters. “abed, i’m- i’m so sorry.” he gets up from the lump of pillows and sits next to abed. “how long has it been?”
abed hastily wipes his hands on his pants and holds up 8 fingers and then makes a 'W' with his hands.
“eight fucking weeks? abed, you could’ve told us…”
but one look at abed and jeff knows that if abed could speak or do anything, he would’ve. jeff clears his throat and puts a hand on abed’s shoulder. “i- i don’t want you to suffer alone abed.” jeff says, choking back a sob. “is it- is it because of him?”
they both know who the ‘him’ is. abed nods, and coughs up a small flower. it would’ve been perfect in a garden, despite the fact it was splattered with blood.
jeff doesn’t know what to say, so he hugs abed and whispers into his ear. “i love you abed. please, don’t-” jeff takes a deep breath and pulls away, looking at him. “you know what i mean.”
abed does know what jeff means, and he watches as jeff walks to the door and closes it behind him.
abed knows what he has to do. he pulls up the email tab on his phone and starts writing a message to troy.
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he hits send on the email and hopes troy knows that it wasn’t his fault at all. it was abed’s, for falling in love with someone who could never love him back.
he messages jeff. he tells him how to open the lock on his door and window, he tells him what to do with his film equipment, and how there’s a cluster of letters for everyone in a photo of him and troy at the inspector spacetime convention. he doesn’t say there’s a letter for troy.
abed shuts his phone off before it can start exploding with messages from everyone he cares about, because it would hurt so much more if they were there with him. abed crawls into troy’s bed. it still smells like him.
his last thoughts are of troy. his smile, the way his hands felt against his, how he’d fall asleep with his head against abed’s shoulder, and how he treated him so fucking well.
he’s ready.
abed takes one last breath and closes his eyes, thinking of a boy with bright eyes and a sweet voice.
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“levar! i got service!” troy happily exclaimed. he waved his phone around, willing for another extra bar. troy’s phone suddenly started exploding with messages, texts from jeff and annie and britta and literally everyone at greendale.
he’s confused. why are there so many? usually there’s maybe four or five texts, considering he goes to ports a lot. but he hasn’t really stopped anywhere for a couple months, so maybe that could be why?
“damn, you got that many messages? i just got 3 from my wife…” levar sighed and tried to sneak a peek at troy’s phone.
troy snatched it away. “no way, they’re MY messages.”
“alright then son, take your time. we’ll be heading back to the US soon enough anyways.”
troy opened up the most recent message from annie, scanning its contents.
an audible crack could be heard as the phone dropped onto the ground. a message was slightly visible, parts of it glitched out.
“troy, i’m so sorry. abed’s gone.”