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(The thing is, Troy has gone around not really planning much in his life. School to football to school to, well, whatever would happen to him after school.
So he didn’t plan this, and he knows Abed probably didn’t plan it.
Except -- wait. Maybe Abed did plan it. That would be sneaky, and Abed is definitely a better planner than Troy is himself.)
-
“That can’t be right,” Abed says, setting down his clipboard on the table.
Troy peers over the edge of the tank, the heat lamp settled on the edge throwing uncomfortable dry heat against his face. “What can’t?” he asks.
“Superman and Batman,” Abed says, leaning over with Troy, their shoulders pressed together and heads bent close. “It’s the fourth day in a row they’ve built a wall on their side of the tank to keep out Cat Woman and Supergirl.”
Troy shrugs, the material of his shirt catching on Abed’s sleeve. “Maybe the girl hermit crabs are just PMSing, and the guys built the wall to get them away,” he says. Abed hums, once, under his breath, leaning away to pick up his clipboard again.
“I wish we could build a wall when the girls are PMSing,” Troy adds, still leaning over the tank.
Abed is silent, for a minute, writing something down. He looks up afterwards, eyes narrowed like he’s doing a calculation in his head. “We still have roughly nine days before that,” he says. “We could make plans. Jeff could help.”
Troy shrugs -- he doesn’t exactly see how a wall to keep Annie, Britta, and Shirley away while they are at their worst will help, even though it does sound like it could hold lots of potential awesomeness. Also, probably lots of potential pain once the girls figured it out. Hermit crabs are decidedly less intelligent than PMSing women.
Troy catches Abed’s look over his clipboard and they grin at the same time. “Nah,” Troy says.
“Disastrous,” Abed nods, “I agree.”
After a few minutes, they decide not knock down the stone wall separating the two groups of hermit crabs this time, and instead decide to see what progress has been made the next day.
“Maybe they’ll build a mote,” Troy offers. He’s pretty much forgotten why they decided to study the behavioral habits of hermit crabs -- it might be because Abed is taking biology this semester, during one of the few blocks of classes Troy couldn’t manage to match up.
(Not that he had to match up, just, it was easier to be in classes with Abed, and not just because Abed took really good notes, or because it was fun to have all-night study parties with chips and dip, comfy pajamas, and marathons of Abed’s favorite TV shows or current obsession. Troy just liked when he knew his day was in line with Abed’s.)
“Maybe they’ll build a castle,” Abed says, and then he’s grinning again, quick and sharp over his clipboard.
“That,” Troy says, “would be awesome. I bet we’d win some sort of science award.”
-
Superman and Batman haven’t built a moat or a castle the next day, although the paint on Batman’s shell is a little scratched up.
“Maybe Superman just really likes Batman more than the girls,” Abed says, noting more things on his clipboard.
Troy peers over into the tank again, considering, and reaches to tap lightly at Superman’s shell. “I like Batman a lot,” Troy says, because it feels like he should point it out, in case it’s scientifically helpful or something.
“The crab or the man himself?” Abed asks, scribbling.
Troy looks up, expecting Abed to be looking at him. Instead, though, he’s focusing with narrowed-eyes down at his paper. “Uh, both,” Troy responds. He’s completely secure enough to admit he maybe has a crush on Batman. Plus, Batman is fictional, and no one needs to know.
Abed makes a humming sound and sets down his clipboard, leaning against Troy to look into the tank. The wall is built up a little more, surrounded by sands and a sort of dug-out trench that Troy thinks could be the beginning of a mote.
They are totally going to win some sort of science award.
“I was Batman, once,” Abed says, not in his usual voice, and Troy stares at the side of his face.
“Yeah,” Troy agrees, watching the roll of Abed’s jaw. “That was awesome.”
Abed doesn’t look up for a minute -- enough time for Troy to start thinking about how maybe what Abed just said was super important somehow. Sometimes he misses those things, but usually only with ladies, where they are talking about one thing but mean something else entirely. Annie is particularly good at that.
When Abed finally looks up, he grins, but turns back towards his clipboard quickly. “It was pretty cool,” he says, muffled, and Troy shrugs, turning back to the crabs.
He nudges Superman with his finger and then picks him up, setting him on the other side of the wall.
“Troy,” Abed says, somewhat urgent, “you’ll mess up the data if you do that.”
“I just wanna see what happens,” Troy says, stepping back just a little to give the crabs some space. Superman scuttles towards Supergirl, their brightly painted shells matching for a second before Superman backs up almost as quickly as he’d gone over, stopping at the built up wall and walking into it a few times before reaching out his big claw to anchor himself and crawl back over, right into the corner where Batman is settled into the sand.
“Huh,” Troy says.
“I should write this down,” Abed says, picking up his pen again. He scratches it on the clipboard for a few seconds before setting it back down again. “Darn,” he says, “out of ink.”
Troy follows him over to the desk in the corner, leaning up over it shoulder to watch Abed write with his new pen.
“We should try that again tomorrow,” Abed says. “You may be on to something.”
Troy grins, pleased.
-
They check on the crabs again the next day, right after they leave the group in the library. It’s Friday, which means it’s movie and junk food night at Abed’s, and Troy has his favorite comfy PJs in his backpack along with seven Slim Jims. (Six for him, one for Abed. Which they’ve decided was fair, somehow, Troy forgets exactly how, but it’s possible there was a bet involving the plastic basketball hoop attached to Abed’s door and the squishy basketball pillow on the bed. Also maybe Jack Daniels.)
They try moving Batman to the other side of the crab-built rock fence, and he goes crawling over it faster than Superman had, crawling up on top of the rock Superman is settled on, almost making them both fall off and into the sand.
“I can’t tell if their intelligence is above average for hermit crabs of sub-standard,” Abed says, watching with his clipboard propped up against the tank. “The data is conflicting.”
Troy shrugs. He really has no input, and he really wants to go eat junk food for dinner and sit on Abed’s mattress where it dips in the center and makes everything hot where Abed presses into his side. (Since the air conditioning is usually not working, of course.)
“We’ll have to figure out some more experiments for Monday,” Abed says.
“We can decide over pizza tonight,” Troy says, already turning towards the door, “and popcorn and chips and chocolate covered everything and --” he stops, visualizing it all, the funny way Abed dips chips into chocolate and then licks his fingers after, awkward and weird. Who dips their chips, anyway?
“Bye, crabs,” Abed says, halfway out the door with Troy.
“Sleep tight!” Troy calls to them, wondering briefly if Superman and Batman fall asleep next to each other and wake up overheated and tangled the next morning.
-
After the pizza, which was extra delicious, Troy leaves and tugs on his pajamas, soft and worn Superman ones he’s had forever that are maybe a little too small, but he hasn’t been able to find another pair that feel as comfy, so he doesn’t mind. Abed never makes fun of them, anyway, so he usually brings them.
Abed is in his pajamas, too, when Troy comes back out, wearing his favorite soft-flannel Batman ones, with the long-sleeved button-up shirt. Troy likes when he wears those, because when they sit on the bed to watch movies together, tilted into each other where the mattress dips in the center, the soft flannel of Abed’s shirtsleeve feels really soft against Troy’s arm, like a baby’s cheek or something. Nice.
“Hey, Superman,” Abed says in greeting, patting the bed next to him where he’s sitting cross-legged, “movie’s ready.”
“Hey, Batman,” Troy says back, and he takes a steadying step back so he can run and leap up on the bed, knowing Abed’s expression will be priceless when Troy drives down.
Except, in the second it takes for him to cross the room, he realizes, oh, Superman and Batman, like the
crabs
, but also like them, like the crabs, because --
Troy completely misjudges his jumping distance, and lands right on top of Abed instead of beside him, rolling them both off the bed and onto the floor, right into the bowl of popcorn.
“Um,” he says, looking down at Abed under him on the floor, bits of popcorn stuck in his head. “You’re Batman.”
“Well,” Abed starts, barely getting the word out before Troy shakes his head.
“No, you’re -- we’re hermit crabs!” Troy says.
“I thought you just said I was Batman,” Abed says. Troy waits for him to try and shift Troy off of him, or roll away, or at least reach up to get the popcorn out of his hair, except he doesn’t.
Troy sucks in a breath. Abed has a bit of popcorn on his face, too, a kernel stuck low on his cheek. This is weird and yet -- huh.
Troy leans down and takes the piece of popcorn off Abed’s cheek with his mouth, because he’s still hungry, and also because he wants to, and he’s always been a little bit in love with Batman, anyway.
“Huh,” Abed says.
“Huh, yeah,” Troy says back.
And then they are kissing, which is weird and sort of smushed and then really kind of awesome, and someone is making noises -- oh, shit, that’s Troy -- and then they are on the bed and then --
Troy is definitely not thinking about hermit crabs or science awards.
-
(“Hey,” Troy says, after, sitting up enough against the fall behind Abed’s bed so he can find the basketball-shaped pillow at the end of the mattress, grabbing for it with his feet and bouncing it up towards them.
“Hey what?” Abed asks, turning towards Troy just in time for the plush basketball to hit him in the face.
Troy laughs for a minute, nearly forgetting what he wanted to say in the first place because Abed’s face is priceless, shocked and amused.
“Did you plan this?” Troy asks, when he’s reasonably sure his words won’t come out as a breathless and very unmanly bunch of laughter-induced squeaks. (It’s happened before, he doesn’t want to relive the mocking dolphin-noises Britta and Jeff had followed him around with for days.)
“Plan what?” Abed asks back, stretching into a more comfortable position, his legs tangled between Troy’s own under the batman sheets.
“This -- us,” Troy says.
Abed looks at him for a moment, considering and serious. “I knew when we first met it was one of the ways our friendship could end up,” he says, shrugging into the sheets. “It’s a classic scenario.”
Troy knows a television reference is coming, and as much fun as he has whenever Abed decides to read random pages off that website he likes about television things, he’s not in the mood at the moment. At the moment, actually, he’d much rather focus on the dip between Abed’s collarbones, visible where his button-up flannel sleep shirt is still half un-buttoned, folded out over his chest.
“Okay,” Troy says.
“Would it have mattered?” Abed asks, into the silence where Troy tries to figure out how best to roll over on top of Abed without rolling them both off the bed entirely. (He’s learned a lot from Physics 101 this semester.)
Troy thinks about it for a moment. “You’re a much better planner than I am,” Troy says. “No. I guess it wouldn’t have. I just would have been mad you didn’t put your planning skills to use to get us super hot girls, after they’d worked on me.”
Abed bites into his bottom lip and Troy barely, barely resists letting his eyes roll into the back of his head. “Would you rather be with super hot girls?” Abed asks.
Troy doesn’t have to think about this question. “No,” he says, easy and maybe a little edged, “I’m pretty cool with this.”
Abed nods, once, and then grins quick. “Cool,” he agrees, and Troy shifts to roll on top of him so they can make out again.)