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English
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Published:
2014-09-05
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1,103
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1/1
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Advanced Artistic Announcements

Summary:

There's a Valentines Day Dance and the group has to make posters. Some misunderstandings ensue.

Work Text:

Jeff, Annie, Britta, and Shirley all stood in a row, blinking slowly at Troy and Abed's contribution to the Valentines' Dance poster collection. 

Troy and Abed stood quietly to the side, waiting anxiously for their friends reactions. The silence held for a grand total of three and a half minutes, at which point Chang walked by and graced their opus with a halfhearted point and "Ha, GAYYYY!" 

Troy and Abed just looked at him. He lowered his accusing finger, looking simultaneously bitter and heartbroken. 

"It's not even fun with you guys anymore..." he muttered, and kicked a chair as he walked away.

The rest of the group seemed to take Chang's departure as their cue to speak. All of them. At once.

"Guys... are you trying to tell us some-"

"Abed, as your therapist, and Troy, as your ex-girlfriend, I feel-"

"Well the Lord says that he loves all his children-"

"Congrats, guys. Really. It says something that your weird little relationship is the healthiest out of any of ours." 

The girls all stopped talking abruptly, and peered at Jeff.

"What? It is! Can't we agree that out of this whole weirdly incestuous group, the only pairing with a shot in hell at making it is those two?"

They seemed to consider his point, and Abed took the break in conversation (if you could call it that) as a chance to put in his two cents. 

"Troy and I aren't dating."

In retrospect, he felt, maybe that was too abrupt... and not explanatory enough. The study group blinked silently at him, looking for all the world like a school of lost fish. Troy took over.

"Guys... look at your posters, now back at ours. Now back to your posters, now back to ours-"

Here, Abed elbowed him gently. There was such a thing as too much Isaiah Mustafa, and Troy was approaching it.

"-the point Troy is making is that y'all got a bunch of straight white people on your straight white paper-" Abed paused to acknowledge Troy's elbow in his ribs and Shirley's narrowing glare in his face- "...except for Shirley and Annie, who've got some straight black people on their straight white paper... and we decided that was boring, basically."

The group looked no less nonplussed. Abed decided to elaborate.

"Because we're not white... and not straight..."

You could have heard a pin drop in Study Room F. Jeff was first to speak.

"Shock of the century, I'm sure. Shirley, Britta, anything to say about our boys' departure from the proverbial closet? Not that it matters much, as they spend half their time in Narnia anyway, but..."

Shirley did nothing but raise a single eyebrow very slowly. Britta stepped forward. 

"I applaud your search for representation in a world refusing to give you any, Abed! I think this is awesome. You know what? I think I'll make my poster a bit more diverse, too!"

Jeff grabbed her wrists as she lunged for the markers with a manic look in her eye. 

"Down, girl. You are not scribbling on the poster I paid the art department good money to design for me."

He looked back at Troy and Abed.

"While this makes... slightly more sense, I'm gonna have to actually tell you it doesn't make any more sense at all. The people on the poster look exactly like you two. They are you. And you claim you're not dating. If you put that poster up, you're essentially announcing over this damn school's horrifically unnecessary PA system that you guys are in a romantic relationship. If you're not... you might want to reconsider the design."

Abed cocked his head. 

"68 percent of the student body thinks we're together anyway. It doesn't really matter to us."

Troy jumped in.

"Yeah, and actually, it might even keep people from hitting on us. Stacy the Econ major took forever to get the hint that I'm not interested... when I told her she wasn't the girl for me she threw a drink in my face and the next day I was getting texts from her mom..."

He shuddered at the memory. Abed gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze.

Annie spoke up for the first time in a while, slowly.

"You... don't want girls to hit on you?"

At the same time, Troy and Abed replied, "Or guys." 

Annie nodded carefully. 

"Right... okay... so you're putting up a poster for the Valentines Day Dance portraying what appears to be you two in a romantic relationship, and you don't care how that looks because you don't want to be in a relationship with anyone else anyway?"

They nodded. 

"Also because these posters were sorely lacking in queer and PoC representation, as I mentioned before," Abed said, somewhat impatiently. 

Jeff tightened his grip on Britta's wrists as Annie continued to speak, getting louder with every word.

"Right, but listen. You spend all your time together, you share a bedroom, you hold hands in the hallways, you have an established weekly movie night, you always do couples costumes even when its not Halloween, and you're putting yourselves on a poster for a Valentines Day event that happens to be covered in hearts!"

The group members were all staring at the flustered Annie at this point. Shirley awkwardly patted her arm. 

"Sweetie," she murmured, "let them find their own way to hell, if they're going. They don't need you to give them any pushes." The statement was punctuated with a mild glare. 

Annie bristled, and held her ground, staring at her housemates accusingly. 

Abed nodded slowly.

"I think I see your point."

He looked at Troy, who was also nodding.

"Boyfriends?"

"Boyfriends."

They smiled and sealed the deal with their special handshake, ignoring Annie's annoyed wail (REALLY GUYS, IS NOW THE TIME FOR YOUR HANDSHAKE?). 

Jeff applauded sarcastically. 

"As we're now all back where we were at the start of this, congratulating our resident man-children on their decision to be romantically involved man-children, I think it's time we move on to other problems. Namely, where do we hang this damn poster?"

Everyone turned back to Troy and Abed's creation, an impressive 12 by 6 foot monstrosity of tape and felt tipped scrawls. The newly announced couple began speaking at the same time.

"I wanted us to be life sized-"

"Size restrictions were not specified-"

"We bought a literal GALLON of glitter-"

"Do you know how many markers we went through-"

Jeff sighed and shut them up with a wave of his hand. 

"Just help us move it to the cafeteria. We'll let Pelton figure it out from there."

And so they did.