hey not to plug but 100% to plug, you can read my new fic here if you feel like it. I think troy should be in it too, but I got inspired based off something I wrote a year ago when I was younger and less wise.
(Authors note: I know not all nonbinary people use they/them pronouns, it is portrayed that way here for convenience and this version of the character eventually does.) 3/24/24: edit for better grammar.
By the time the three of them first start dating after Troy gets back from his trip around the world, he’s come to terms with his own bisexuality.
Abed is Abed, and his masculinity only makes him more enticing to Troy. He couldn’t imagine it any other way; his lean yet muscular body, the way his face moves subtly, so only those who work hard enough will understand it (those who deserve to, in Troy’s opinion), his patience and eagerness to teach/include Troy in his favorite things, his strong bravery to be himself.
With Annie, he doesn’t need to prove his attraction to her to himself as much. She happens to be a woman, and his attraction to women has never been seriously questioned. So he lets himself fall in love with her.
Her undying determination to succeed in her career path, the bubbly excitement, soft skin framed by even softer hair, how quick she is to confront any obstacle in her way, her warmth at every moment of togetherness that they have. While he was aware he was falling in love with Abed while he lived in 303, the realization of his love for Annie slaps him in the face out at sea.
He’s overjoyed when he learns about polyamory from a polycule he meets drinking in London. He doesn’t have to choose. What’s harder is convincing himself to ask his hopeful boyfriend and hopeful girlfriend.
But they say yes! Annie is reluctant at first, scared that they’ll want more than she can give. She doesn’t know how to open up, and doesn’t know if she would even want to. They shouldn’t have to deal with all her messiness, right? Slowly but surely, Troy and Abed get her to trust them with the parts of herself that she’s hidden away, some even from herself.
During this time, Troy starts to think more about his sexuality. Why is it that the only woman he feels really attracted to is Annie? But questioning if he actually likes women feels like disrespecting his wonderful girlfriend and her womanhood, so he doesn’t ask more questions. He loves Annie, and Annie is a woman. End of story.
Abed asks him of course. Troy and Annie and some of their friends are getting ready for a pride parade (Abed doesn’t like the noise and crowds), and Abed sees Troy’s hesitance at the pink, purple and blue paint. He tells him his worries, and Abed tells him that some bi people have gender preferences. More often attracted to one gender over another. It’s relieving. But still feels a little wrong. Annie is like the singular exception to the rule, not the rule itself. He continues to ignore the feeling- he would do anything for her. This doesn’t seem like anything to big, and he definitely doesn’t want to hurt her.
Annie has never completely understood why she’s supposed to like pink, quiet smiling, and princesses. That’s not to say she doesn’t, no, no, she does. She just doesn’t understand why she’s supposed to.
Before she was born, her parents thought they were going to have a baby boy, so they painted the nursery blue and put little car decals on the walls. Annie doesn’t understand this either. They painted it over with pink, but only did one coat.
It came out purple.
Four year old Anne Edison wants to be a knight when she plays pretend. She likes to play floor hockey with her socks. She wants to spell and say her name with an ‘i’. She loves ducks. She refuses to not wear a skirt or dress. She draws hearts on everything she can.
Her parents only like some of these things.
They want her to get into the best preschool in the city. They say that a good life starts with a good education, and a good education starts with getting into a good pre-school. She studies until she just knows her brain will break, but she still doesn’t get in. She gets into their second choice, but they still consider it a failure.
They throw out her knight costume that night, of course. She hides under their bed as they scream at one another, and vows to herself in the dark that she will do her best to be a good daughter. They hadn’t had a fight in months, she’d been the one to tear them apart again! She has to keep being good, and if that means trying harder and giving all the blue things to the baby coming in a few months, she can do that.
She can be pink if that’s what they need.
She stays pink because that’s what everybody likes. But she aches to let herself be purple, or even yellow. She’s older now, more relistic. She doesn’t have the luxury her four year old self did. She knows to make friends in college, she should be strictly pink or blue. She had partially rebeled for a few months, wearing only black and grey, shunning both pink and blue. But she’s been told she needs friends to stay clean and alive, so she makes herself a bright pink. She knows there isn’t a place for anything other than pink and blue, so she stays the same, as much as it hurts.
A few years pass, and she prides herself in how the pink has allowed her to have a family. They love her. Pink works. Then… she meets someone who is openly yellow. Non-binary, they call it.
If Annie was alone in the world like after rehab again, maybe she would let herself be ‘them’. It feels so, so right when they let themself be ‘them’. But it’s ‘her’ who is loved by Troy and Abed and all their friends, so she stuffs the ‘they’ back under the bed with her four-year-old self, the tiny Annie shrieking in joy when they finally see it.
Confusingly, Troy and Abed care and want to know about tiny Annie. They want the messy parts. They want her to stop hiding her legs under the metaphorical bed, and come fully out. She doesn’t believe them at first. They don’t push (or pull?), but they do let her know it’s safe. Slowly, she crawls out, and when the time is right, she sits them on top of the bed and asks if it would be alright if it was ‘they’ instead of ‘she’.
Troy and Abed let their partner know it’s completely okay, great even, and Troy finally understands why Annie was the exception.
