Archive of Our Own

Abed feels like this would have been a better start for the episode; it’s a lot like earlier, but now he is visibly injured. Not badly. Mostly he’s a bit pinker. Annie offered ice but he shook her off.

The energy is different, too, but only kind of. Before, everyone was awkwardly silent. Now, everyone is awkwardly chattering and throwing him and Jeff nervous glances.

Abed is looking straight at Jeff. Jeff is laughing with the Dean right now, but Abed is starting to see the cracks in the way he had missed earlier. Now that he’s solved his own flashback conundrum, it’s become very obvious to him that Jeff is unwell. His slight tremors, his covered wince when anyone gets a bit too loud, the sheen of sweat on his face all harken back to a time before with the two of them drowning in frisbees, the sound of plastic rattling around almost drowning out Abed’s laptop and his outcries–

Enough. This episode is not a flashback episode.

It was a rookie mistake on Abed’s part. He let himself get blinded by the superficial elements of the setting and missed the real essence of the events unfolding. This roadtrip was never going to be a roadtrip episode, it was always actually a bottle episode with a roadtrip setting. Stupid.

Frankly, Abed had the self-awareness to know he had probably ignored the signs on purpose due to his distaste with the trope. Another rookie mistake. Obviously, ignoring the truth in front of you did not eliminate it.

With more open eyes, Abed can see the different interpersonal tensions that he’d been so blind to. Well, not really see them like most people would characterize it, but he can tell now that they exist.

Jeff looks over to him and flashes a tight smile, which Abed returns, but Jeff’s gaze then skates off him quickly onto the floor. He feels guilty, Abed thinks. He tries to think out his emotional observations in sentences to work that muscle. He has trained it most on Jeff, probably, since his emotions are both less immediately obvious than someone like Troy’s, and much more potentially damaging than, well, really anyone else he’s known since he was being bullied in grade school.

Abed doesn’t know how to feel about Jeff’s guilt. For one, it might lead to another outburst, and Abed did not have the emotional bandwidth to handle that many in one trip.

For another, Abed really can’t blame him for earlier.

You try to get him to do something normal without abusing him! Abed rolls the sentence around in his head and tongues at the inside of his mouth where he bit his cheek on accident when Jeff hit him. It tastes of blood in the strange way that wounds always do inside the mouth, even when they’ve stopped bleeding. He lightly gnaws at it in the hopes of getting it to reopen.

Abed knows, in some way, that what Jeff did to him wasn’t good or justified. Mostly he knows it by the way Annie held his hand in the moments after, how Britta keeps glaring at Jeff and scoffing, how Frankie pulled Jeff to the back for a stern talking-to they all pretended not to hear about his alcoholism, emotional dysregulation and constant low blood sugar, how Elroy keeps muttering to himself – though, he may still be mad at all of them, in fairness.

But Abed doesn’t really feel any of that. He knows his friends disapprove (most of his friends, the friends who didn’t do it), but it’s not like anyone else ever has. Sure, kids got scolded if they were caught when he was younger, but no one really put effort into stopping anything long-term. The teachers gave up on him and mostly placed him apart from everyone else. His mother left.

There is something deeply wrong with Abed, and someone needs to see it.

Jeff looks at Abed again, furtive. He does a double-take. Abed tilts his head in confusion, but Jeff has gotten up and sequestered himself in the “bedroom” before Abed can figure anything out.

“Abed, are you…hurting, again?” Annie whispers.

“Hm?” Abed asks, turning away from Jeff for the first time since they started driving again.

“It’s just, you’re…” Annie trails off and gestures at her own cheek. Abed feels his cheek, searching for some new heat or tenderness, before realizing she’s talking about his incessant fiddling with the sore in his mouth.

“Oh. I’m fine.” Abed smiles.

Annie’s eyebrows furrow, but she doesn’t say anything more. Abed turns back to the curtain Jeff’s hiding behind and waits.

- - -

Jeff all but melts into his office chair when he has his first whiskey of the day.

He hadn’t even bothered with ice or sitting down first, though he did make sure that his door was closed and his blind drawn.

Stupid! He should have known to bring something along or prepared beforehand. Of course an hours-long roadtrip with his favorite cast of insane, loud, eccentric, codependent idiots was going to be taxing to the point of being unbearable. He hadn’t predicted that Abed would be more Abed-y than he had been since fucking third year (and that hardly counted, since they all had some shit going on after their expulsion), but he should have prepared for something like that.

The Dean hadn’t helped either, obviously, but he had been at the top of the RV and anyway was at least still connected to reality in some way, even if it was his own myopic, self-pitying reality. A slap would have just made him burst into tears. Abed could actually be corralled, at times.

Jeff poured another finger or four and downed it as quick as the first, and then poured a reasonable amount to nurse. As the lightning in his veins started to yield to a soft, warm thrumming, he sighed.

Okay. Fine. He shouldn’t have hit Abed. In fact, he should have sooner thrown himself off the nearest cliff face. Abed is crazy and unstable and sometimes impossible, true, but it’s not like Jeff himself never is, and Abed’s never – well, he did go kind of evil during the chicken fingers incident, but he never really hurt any of them.

More importantly, Abed had been the one to be there for him in many of his own darker or crazier moments, like also the chicken fingers incident. He was there to help him when he was homeless and with the drunk voicemail, and he’d spent a whole dinner trying to act normal just to get Jeff to hang out with him more. And here Jeff had gone saying, basically, that he was only tolerable if you were hitting him.

Jeff pours out the last drops from his fifth of scotch and realizes he doesn’t know how that happened. He’s supposed to drive home, but it won’t be the first time he’s had to sober up in his office for a couple hours first.

He used to go back to Abed’s after school dances in the early years. He would wake up hanging off the bottom bunk with the school-distributed trash can at his head and a glass of water next to him, though he rarely ever got that messy in front of all his classmates. It was a nice gesture. Even if once it also came with him waking up to Abed inches from his face with a camera for his latest documentary.

God, what was he thinking? Jeff let his head drop to his disk with a resounding thunk.

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing for years,” a very familiar voice piped up from the office’s other desk.

Jeff warily (and unsteadily) lifted his head to find himself facing Evil Jeff, swiveling in his chair and propping his feet up on the desk, holding his own glass of whiskey but dignified, with ice and restraint and suaveness.

Jeff dropped his head again.

“If you ask me-”

“I didn’t and I wouldn’t.”

“That slap was the first sane thing you’ve done for years.”

“Isn’t Evil Abed, like, your leader? Or something?” Jeff asks, not really believing his indulging this mental break at all.

“Please,” Evil Jeff scoffs. “He can start us down the whole goatee path, but he’s never gonna be the real leader of anything, except maybe a group of actors or cameramen even crazier than he is.”

“He’s a good kid,” Jeff mumbles.

“Sure. And you’re a good lawyer,” Evil Jeff says sarcastically.

“I am a good lawyer.”

“Newsflash, loser: you’re not a lawyer of any kind anymore. You’re a teacher. And you know what they say about teachers.”

Jeff reluctantly pushes himself up in his seat so he can make eye contact with the figment of his imagination. “I do not want to be like you.”

“Oh, keep telling yourself that.” Evil Jeff laughs. “You get to grow older and uglier and lamer in the bottom of a bottle while everyone you love slowly drifts away. Meanwhile, my Annie is head over heels for me, my friends all still live right here with me, and I make millions a year. I mean, look, I never tried to kill myself.”

The whiskey in his body doesn’t stop the cold chill that runs through Jeff.

Evil Jeff smirks at him. “Ah, figured that one would get to you.”

“I didn’t try to kill myself,” Jeff says through gritted teeth. “It was a stupid mistake. Maybe I was too old to make a mistake like that, but it’s not like I tried to slit my wrists!”

“You’re trying to lie to yourself right now, Lame Jeff, and while I know you do that plenty, we both know it never really convinces you.”

“You know what-” Jeff starts, stalking toward Evil Jeff, before he hears a knock on the door. Before he can even answer, the door opens to reveal Frankie looking as composed as ever. Jeff feels himself swaying on his feet with a rush of shame.

Frankie sighs. “I was hoping not to find you here,” she says.

“Gee, thanks,” Jeff says thickly.

“We should get you home,” she continues, undeterred.

“It’s fine, I don’t-”

“I’m not asking, Jeff.”

Jeff ducks his head and grabs his coat. Out in the hall, Britta leans against the wall. She scowls at Jeff, but still positions herself at his side to help support his unsteady weight.

“Don’t think you’re all forgiven just because you’re a mess,” Britta says harshly.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Jeff answers, then tilts away and pukes into a trash can. Some professor he is.

- - -

Abed has not left the Dreamatorium for a few hours. He knows it is only proving the point that he cannot be normal, but he doesn’t want to face anyone. Annie had been giving him these sad looks ever since they got back, and he doesn’t want to see her because he feels obligated to comfort her, but then she tells him it’s not his fault and he doesn’t have to, but if it’s not his fault then why is it him she’s acting weird around?

Right now, he’s back in the locker. He’s resting. Before that, he’d been trying to find a way to make things right. If he had noticed Jeff was upset earlier, maybe he could have stopped himself from tipping him over the edge. His simulations hadn’t shown him a world where that was possible yet, but he would keep trying.

The problem was, without the flashbacks, he couldn’t find out how to get the Dean to calm down. He wasn’t good at things like that. And if he couldn’t get the Dean to come down, he freaked out. Cue: slap.

With the flashbacks, though, he was just being crazy again. He couldn’t actually change the past. He wasn’t sure he believed he could have at any point. He’d tried it with Troy. There just wasn’t anything he could do to make the past more correct so the present could make more sense. He just wanted it to be possible, so sometimes he got lost acting like it was.

Again, not normal.

Britta had come home with them at first, too. She’d been more outspoken, probably because of their prior therapeutic relationship that did, admittedly, mean she knew a few things about him. Namely, that he’d be blaming himself.

Abed knew they were just being guided by their emotions. If they followed the logic, they’d see what he sees; a person who gets hurt by most of the people they’d ever known deserved to be hurt. People around you deem what you deserve. It was the democratic answer.

Abed chews the inside of his cheek more. He’s trying to open it up all the way, like Fight Club. He knows his situation isn’t cool enough for that, but he thinks a big hole in the side of his face would provide the visual symbolism he needs right now.

He needs this to mean something. He needs it to change him. He’s supposed to be better now, more personable, more normal. He’s even been trying out emoting lately.

“Abed,” Annie’s cautious voice calls. “Abed, you’ve been in there for a long time! And you’re really quiet. I made buttered noodles! Why don’t you just come on out?”

Abed sighs, but stands. He practices his smile a couple times, but without seeing it, he can’t guarantee that it looks normal. He doesn’t feel ready to leave yet, but he needs to if he’s going to give this whole being normal thing a try. He knows he can do it – he and Troy did a great job before, and now he had no Troy to want to pull him back out of it. He’s sure, at this point, that if he gets normal everyone will be glad to see him stay that way.

Abed opens the door. Annie looks up at him, doe-eyed, and her face immediately changes. She pulls him into a hug. “Oh, Abed,” she coos, and Abed cringes internally. He guesses his smile wasn’t convincing enough.

- - -

Jeff wakes up with a pounding head, a dry mouth, and a voice saying “Welcome back, Lame Jeff. Still alive despite your best efforts.”

Jeff groans and turns around. He’s never felt this bad hungover, but he’s also probably never cried that much while drunk before.

“Yeah. Super embarassing.”

Jeff covers his head with his pillow.

“You’re trying to block out something inside your head with a pillow.”

Jeff finally, reluctantly, sat up and faced Evil Jeff. “What do you want?”

“Well, for you not to puke again, for one thing,” said a sarcastic voice from a corner of the room, and Jeff nearly jumped out of the bed. He looked up sharply and saw Britta standing in his doorway with a glass of water in her hand.

“How long have you been standing there? Were you just waiting for me to wake up?”

“Pretty much,” Britta says with a shrug. “I slept on your couch last night. I sent Frankie home, but believe me, she’ll be back. I think she’s printing out alcohol abuse assessments for you.”

Jeff groaned and flopped back onto his bed, regretting the move when his head surged with pain again.

“You’re a hot mess, Jeff.”

“I’m aware,” Jeff said.

“You slapped Abed,” she pushes on.

“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed that,” Jeff grumbles.

“This isn’t a time for joking, Winger.” Britta’s voice turns cold. “It was fucked up.”

Jeff sighs. “I know.”

“Do you? Or do you think he needed it? Because I’m telling you, that kid has been through enough in his life and he does not need ‘tough love’ or whatever-”

“I know, Britta,” Jeff cuts her off. “I shouldn’t have done it, Abed was innocent, and I was just being a dick.”

Britta deflates. “I know you know. But do you know why you were being such a dick?”

Jeff doesn’t want to answer, even though he does, and he’s sure that Britta knows, too. In hindsight, he was so obvious. There’s a reason she and Frankie knew to find him in his office at the end of the day; he’d stood there trembling and sweating, asking about alcohol in the RV. It was obvious what his problem was, and everyone knew he had scotch scored in a crevice of every room he spent more than ten minutes a day in.

Britta seems to read all of this on his face. “I’m here with you because you need help. You were wrong, yeah, but you’re my friend and you have serious psychological problems that I can help with.”

“Highly debatable,” Jeff snips.

“I’ll take this water and Tylenol with me.”

“Britta, have I ever told you what a great therapist I think you’ll make someday?”

Britta smirked slightly, then schooled her face back into a more serious scowl. Still, she carried his water over.

“Letting the ‘moral center’ scold you? You get lamer by the second,” Evil Jeff said. Jeff was hoping the guy was just going to stay disappeared.

“No such luck, loser. You need me. I can keep you from being the out of control failure you are right now.”

Jeff tore his eyes away from Evil Jeff leaning against his wall to Britta standing in front of him, her brows furrowed. She can definitely tell something weird is going on with him.

“Jeff, this is getting serious,” Britta says, and Jeff can’t help but agree.

- - -

Abed practices his faces in the mirror. He is not looking for a good smile this time. He needs to look serious and at least a little sad. He furrows his brows, but he’s not sure if it looks more angry than sad and concerned. He pulls the corners of his lips down. That looks like the cartoons, but he’s not sure he’s ever seen anyone in real life frown like this.

He’s been wracking his brain to find a movie that reminds him of this situation. He thinks maybe a therapist is the right move. He can nod along sagely with slight sympathy like Donnie Darko, or he can be disarmingly honest like Good Will Hunting. Neither of those feel right, though. In this situation, he’s supposed to be the victim, but he’s never seen a movie victim like him, or a movie perpetrator like Jeff.

A knock sounds on the bathroom door. “Abed?” Frankie calls.

Abed opens the door with his sad/concerned face on. “Yes,” he tries to say as a prompting question, but it still comes out flat.

“Abed, are you okay? You ran away as soon as Annie opened the door for me,” Frankie said.

“Yes. Fine.”

“Okay, sure,” Frankie says. “Well, I wanted to talk to you about Jeff.”

“I know. You don’t usually come over,” Abed points out. They both know there’s no other reason for Frankie to come here except for the obvious, glaring problem in their group.

“I wanted to give you the opportunity to follow a report against him,” Frankie says slowly.

Abed’s mind blanks out at this. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Well, Jeff is a teacher at Greendale, and you are a student, and he behaved incredibly inappropriately toward you on a matter of official school business.”

“Driving an enormous hand across the desert is official school business?” Annie asks with a scoff from where she stands further down the hall. Frankie turns to glare at her. “Sorry, right,” Annie says sheepishly.

Abed knows these emotions. He can read Annie, sometimes, with her dramatic sighs and eye rolls. She doesn’t try to hide anything. Jeff tries to hide. Jeff needs a lot of work to read because he’s so scared of anyone doing it.

“Abed?” Frankie prompts.

Abed shakes his head, both to get out of his thoughts and to express them. “No, I don’t want to report him.”

“Are you sure?” Frankie asks. “I know he’s friends with all of your friends, but I promise, none of us would be angry at you.”

“He’s my friend, too,” Abed points out.

“Of course he is, Abed,” Frankie says, and Abed can tell she’s getting slightly patronizing. “But he’s not allowed to hurt you just because of that.”

Abed shrugs. “I don’t want to report him. He won’t hit anyone else.”

“What makes you so sure of that?” Frankie asks.

Abed doesn’t want to answer. He knows a leading question when he hears it. He’s done the therapy circuit against his will.

“Abed, this was really serious. You know how I feel about Jeff,” Annie says, running her hand through her hair with a huff and making Abed wonder how exactly she does feel about Jeff at this moment, “but you’re my friend, too, and he was completely in the wrong here.”

“I know,” Abed lies. “But I still don’t want him to lose his job.”

Frankie and Annie share a glance, then Frankie sighs. “We’re not going to pursue anything you don’t want us to. The offer is always open, but if you believe this is a one-time thing, I won’t push you.”

Abed doesn’t correct her. It already isn’t a one-time thing, but he does believe it that Jeff wouldn’t hit anyone else. Even if another kid as messed-up as him comes to Greendale, that kid probably won’t push themself into Jeff’s life and constantly irk him like Abed has. Abed knows Jeff can just ignore people who irritate him; he’s watched Jeff spend an entire ten-minute “conversation” with Starburns staring out into space. Abed is just more annoying than anyone else.

“Is there anything you do want?” Annie asks.

Abed nods. “I want to talk to him.”

- - -

Jeff paces his living room. Britta has taken away all of his liquor, which seems like a bad idea to him, seeing as that’s what got them in this situation in the first place.

“That’s funny. You think your issue isn’t the alcoholism, but the not being able to indulge in it?” Evil Jeff laughs.

Jeff glares at the couch where Evil Jeff sits, suave as ever with a glass of scotch. “Like you’re not an alcoholic.”

“No, I’m not,” Evil Jeff says. “I’m something people call cool, which means I drink like a champ but don’t get messy or weepy like someone else in this room.”

“I don’t usually get weepy!” Jeff snaps.

“Huh?” Britta calls from Jeff’s bedroom, where she’s scouring under his bed and in his bathroom safe for any other hidden stashes, which is just embarrassing. He’s not seventeen years old, he doesn’t have to hide away his liquor so his parents don’t ground him.

“Nothing!” Jeff calls. “Just, uh, stubbed my toe!”

“Real convincing,” Evil Jeff says.

“Shut up,” Jeff hisses.

“So what’s your plan here? Apologize to the kid? Beg for his forgiveness? Start sobbing again?”

Jeff flops down on the couch next to Evil Jeff but doesn’t look at or acknowledge him.

“I know what I’d do. I’d give him a sincere apology, crack a joke, and – what would he say? ‘A Winger speech to take us home?’ They’d all be putty in the palm of my hand. Everyone would believe me a changed man.” Evil Jeff takes a sip and laughs. “Of course, that would only be if I was fucked up enough to ever get in this position, and I wouldn’t be.”

“Winger, I’m using some of your secret anti-aging serum! I know it’s the patriarchy that makes women fear aging, but I’ve been noticing some crow’s feet that I am not a fan of,” Britta calls from the bathroom.

Evil Jeff laughs. “I’m supposed to be here to make your timeline darker, but I don’t think I can! You slapped Abed, you care about that, you’re an increasingly non-functional alcoholic, you’re a teacher at Greendale who will never get anywhere else with your life, and top of all that, you’re using anti-aging serums?”

“We’ve both been using them for years,” Jeff protested.

“I’ve stopped needing them.”

Jeff throws his arms in the air.

“Face it, Lame Jeff, you’re in the real darkest timeline, and you haven’t even gotten sexily dark and tortured about it.”

“At least I have the goatee,” Jeff retorts, and regrets it immediately as one of his worst comebacks ever.

Luckily, his door knocks right at that moment. Unluckily, he knows that it’s Abed and Frankie on the other side of that door.

- - -

Abed is relieved to be at Jeff’s, inexplicable as that may seem. The ride over with Frankie had been nearly intolerable, despite the fact that she and Abed can usually get along pretty well. The silence between them is usually comfortable, but Frankie couldn’t stop sighing or starting to say things like “You know, Abed” or “Jeff is, well” before cutting herself off.

His relief evaporates when Britta answers. He can see Jeff behind her looking more disheveled than Abed has ever seen him, and he saw him high on monkey tranquilizers.

More concerning than his eye bags, flat, not deliberately messed up hair, and flannel pajama pants is the fact that he didn’t answer the door himself, but is hanging back biting his thumbnail while Britta handles it for him. He looks almost scared of Abed.

Abed knows he’s unusual, and that had certainly scared people before, but he’d never seemed to scare Jeff.

“Hi, Abed,” Britta says softly and pulls him into a hug. Abed halfway returns it with an awkward pat on her shoulders. She pulls back and tries to catch his eye, but he looks down and just to the left of her face. “You doing okay?”

Abed nods. Britta smiles at him. Based on Abed’s experience, it’s her “you’re so strong” smile. He’s seen her give it to Troy during the theater class incident and at every homeless person she’s ever passed.

“Hi Jeff,” Abed says as he walks in the room.

“Hi Abed,” Jeff responds quietly.

Abed looks at Britta and Frankie. “Can you two leave us for a bit?”

“I don’t know that that’s such a good idea, Abed,” Britta says.

“Me either,” Frankie says.

Even Jeff looks more nervous than before, but Abed doesn’t waver. He just stares at Britta and Frankie until they sigh and walk out of the apartment into the hall.

“Are you sure about this, Abed?” Jeff asks.

“We don’t need them here. We can just pretend we had some deep heart-to-heart and then get them in a couple minutes,” Abed says. He wants everything back to normal as soon as possible, and that can never happen with everyone babysitting him and Jeff and treating Abed like a sad victim.

“Oh,” Jeff says.

“Oh?” Abed asks.

“You don’t want to talk?” Jeff asks.

“Well, now that you mention it, I was hoping that we could go see the new Mad Max together sometime soon,” Abed says. He likes seeing movies with Jeff; it’s fun and Jeff always pays.

“What?” Jeff asks, and he sounds surprised, Abed thinks.

“We could see the new Avengers instead, but those movies really fell flat after the first wave.”

Jeff shakes his head. “No, Abed, I’m not against the specific movie, I’m confused as to why you would want to go see one with me at all!”

Abed tilts his head. “We always see movies together.”

“Abed, I hit you!” Jeff shouts.

“Oh. Well, yeah,” Abed says. “No hard feelings, though.” He bites the sore some more. He’s okay. He needs this. No hard feelings.

“There should be!” Jeff shouts.

“But you were right,” Abed says. “I can’t act normal.”

“No, Abed, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have hurt you. I was acting crazy, I was going through withdrawal and I was more irritated than usual with anyone. You were just being yourself, and you happened to be the unlucky person in front of me when I snapped.” Jeff sighed and flopped down on the couch, seeming to have lost steam.

Abed, on the other hand, has been shaking his head furiously and getting more agitated. “No. No, that’s not right. I was making everything worse by trying to make real life like TV. Again.”

“Sure, that’s concerning and sometimes frustrating, but no, Abed, it’s not why I hit you. Not really.”

Abed shakes his head more and feels himself start whining, then whines even more. This is not supposed to happen. He’s supposed to be normal right now. He’s supposed to have it together. But none of this is making any sense. He is the problem. He knows Jeff has his own problems, of course, a whole lot of them, in fact, but Abed isn’t tolerable to even the sanest and kindest individuals.

“-bed. Abed!” Abed comes back to himself when he feels a warm hand grab his head and pull it into an also warm chest. He realizes suddenly he might be cold, and also feels all of his general discomfort and unhappiness hit him again.

“Are you hugging me?” Abed asks.

“Yes? I don’t know, is that okay?” Jeff responds, high-pitched (panicked, Abed figures). Abed nods.

“Better than slapping you, huh?” Jeff tries to joke. Abed can feel him full-bodied wince. “Sorry, that was too soon. I don’t know why I said that.”

“It’s okay,” Abed says.

“It’s really not, though,” Jeff counters.

Abed shrugs. “You’re not the first person to get sick of me.”

“I am not sick of you, Abed. If I’m sick of anyone, it’s me.” Jeff pulls away and runs a hand down his face. “I am a hot mess. Any of your issues are nothing in comparison.”

Suddenly, Jeff stiffens and winces again. Abed watches as his head twitches slightly towards the couch, then back to face Abed with a small smile. But as Abed watches him closely, he sees Jeff’s eyes continue to dart to the couch and back.

“Are you . . . talking to someone else right now?” Abed asks, a suspicion forming.

“Pfft, what? No,” Jeff says unconvincingly. “We’re the only two in the room.”

“You are,” Abed says certainly. “You’re talking to Evil Jeff.”

Jeff looks at Abed properly again with a definite and easily identified look of shock on his face.

“I’ve been there,” Abed says simply. “I infected you with it.”

“No, you didn’t.” Jeff laughs this time. “Believe me, I’ve had a self-hating voice like that in my head for as long as I’ve been alive.”

Abed finds it hard to doubt Jeff this once. And if Jeff is telling the truth, then he’s always been just as crazy as Abed is, so Abed has no reason to doubt that Jeff really could have tolerated his own craziness. Still. . .

“That doesn’t change the fact that I’m not normal and that many people dislike me. Historically.”

“No.” Jeff shrugs. “It doesn’t. Do you want to be? I thought you had ‘self esteem falling out your butt?’”

“That was season one, Jeff. And I was exaggerating,” Abed answers. He pauses for a moment. “I don’t know what I want to be, aside from a director. It wouldn’t hurt to be normal.”

“It would hurt me if you were.” Jeff shakes his head. “Abed, do not let a sad, insecure old man make you doubt yourself.”

“You’re really not that old,” Abed says.

“You don’t need to flatter me,” Jeff interrupts. “I mean it, though. I’m sorry that I hit you the other day. And for strangling you a few weeks before that.”

Abed goes to shrug again, but Jeff grabs his shoulders and pushes them down. Abed smiles. “It’s okay, Jeff.”

“It’s not.”

“It is. Now, it is.” Abed clarifies. “Thank you.”

“I’m gonna get back in therapy.”

“I don’t know what made you think you should stop,” Abed says flatly.

“And I’m gonna drink less,” Jeff says like he hadn’t heard Abed.

“That’s a good idea.” Abed says. They stand quietly for a moment.

“Do you think there’s a showing of Mad Max soon?” Abed asks.