A/A Fic: Apartment 303, Chapter 3

[ogwriter]

Title: Apartment 303: Chapter 3
Author: ogwriter
Rating: blanket NC-17
Word Count: approx. 3,400
Disclaimer: I don’t own or profit from Community, just a fan writer.
Description: Troy makes a phone call, Abed is hungover and Annie leaves to visit her mother.
Posted to:  abedxannie community

Apartment 303: Chapter 3
The next morning was a Saturday, and it dawned with a bitter chill. The previous night’s snowfall had seemed to rob the air of its moisture, resulting in the dry kind of cold that crept in through window cracks and under Troy’s skin to make him despise the winter season. The young quarterback stood shivering beside 303’s small kitchen, cell phone clamped against his ear by one hand as he hovered near Abed’s scale model of the boulder scene from Raiders.

The sound of ringing echoed quietly from the phone, and with his free hand Troy wiped sleep from his eyes. His Modern Shooter 6 marathon had run into the wee hours of the morning, even until long after Abed had stumbled home and into the blanket fort to pass out instantly atop his bunk.

“Greendale Theater Box Office-,” A loud voice piped suddenly from the other end of the phone line, and Troy seemed startled at the answer.

“Ahhh-IIiii mean, hello.” He said, hiding his squeak with a greeting before continuing in Business Troy mode. “I’m calling about a pair of tickets…”

The voice soon replied with awkward enthusiasm, nearly cutting Troy off. “Wonderful! Which of our productions would you like to see?”

Troy’s eyes narrowed in suspicion as he recognized the voice. “Garrett?-”

The sound of Annie’s door creaking open sounded from across the apartment, and Troy spun to see the pyjama-clad girl trudge into the room, a hangover cloud seeming to follow her as she braced herself against the wall for a moment. She squinted dazedly against the white light of morning and closed the nearby blinds with a fumbling, half-asleep sort of haste, before plopping down at the apartment’s small table. Annie planted her elbows on the table’s surface and hung her head in her hands, her brunette hair falling in a curtain to hide her face as she made a pained little groan. Troy raised his eyebrows, letting Garrett hang in suspense as he watched the results of last night’s party as it slowly attempted to wave “Good Morning” at him.

“Hallo? This is Garrett.” Garrett echoed oddly.

“Yea, I’m here-,” Troy answered in a hushed tone, turning away towards the bathroom. “Look, Garrett, I have tickets on hold…,”

Annie finger-combed her hair, head cocking in confusion as Troy did not return her wave. She didn’t seem to compute the conversation her roommate was busy having as the room spun slowly with remnant tipsiness. “Where’s Abed?” She yawned to herself, addressing Troy’s turned back and seeming not to notice as his phone call reached sudden new levels of secrecy.

As if in response, Abed emerged from the blanket fort, dressed for the day in jeans and long-sleeved flannel, as well as his hangover Ray-ban sunglasses. He made a beeline for the kitchen, emitting a bothered growl as he raised his fingers to his temple. “All…right,” Abed mumbled, not really speaking to anyone, still drowsy as he opened the cereal cupboard to withdraw a jumbo box of Lucky Charms. “Rise and shine,” He said to himself, almost like a command.

“Good morning, Abed,” Annie said, mustering an iota of cheerfulness.

Abed winced at the sound. “Okay, not so loud.” He said, approaching the small table with complete cereal fixings in tow. “Head hurts.” His voice was gravelly with sleep and his speech unusually fragmented, even for him. Annie nodded sagely, accepting a proffered ceramic bowl as Abed sank into a chair on her left. For a moment, they sat quietly in front of their empty bowls, bracing themselves against nausea and head rushes.

“-so just hold those for me at the front desk-,” Troy was saying across the room, his hand cupped toward his cell phone as he spoke quietly. “-and put those under the name ‘Barnes’-,”

“BURNS?” Came the awkward squawk of Garrett’s answer, and Troy jerked his head away from the receiver.
“Keep it down-,” Troy pleaded, although it was becoming apparent that his roommates were entirely inobservant of his phone call.

Annie let out a quiet sigh as the room finally stopped spinning, though her eyes still seemed to be overreacting to light. Everything was bright, everything was harsh. Even the buzz of the refrigerator seemed deafening. “Abed, am I going to die?” She joked, and found the sound of crinkling plastic to be very loud as he poured Lucky Charms into his bowl.

Abed did not function well through hangovers, and she could see his brow was creased behind his sunglasses. “No.” He stated shortly, trying to think of a reply which made sense. “But you might have to put my affairs in order- Six Feet Under, and I’m the dad.”

Annie didn’t exactly get it, and politely subdued a yawn as Abed shook some of the brightly coloured cereal into her bowl, let her add her own milk. “I think that bartender was definitely over-pouring my Screwdrivers.” She said, poking at her cereal with a dessert spoon before shaking her head at the night’s memory. “And those Jagerbombs…How many?”

Abed chewed thoughtfully on a bite of cereal, offering an absent nod as he tried to think through his head fog. It was proving almost prohibitively difficult, and he was left feeling short-circuited and on autopilot. “I’ll never mix Guinness again.” He deadpanned at length, shaking his head mournfully.

“-so one more time,” Troy was reiterating, exasperated at dealing with God’s spilled person. “That’s two for Cats under the name ‘Barnes’.” The words ‘Cats’ was spoken furtively, but Troy’s hushed tone seemed to sail right over Garrett’s head, who continued to spare no secrecy by speaking shrilly down the line.

“Yes, thank you, MR. BARNES!” To his credit, Garrett was otherwise the picture of customer service, and ended the call with the promise of a free small popcorn.

Back at the table, Abed looked up with sudden curiosity. “Look Annie,” He said concertedly, and his spoon was extended to point straight over her shoulder.

“What?” She responded, whipping her head around-she saw nothing special except the corner of the room. In her second of distraction she heard the clink of metal and ceramic on the table in front of her, a spoonful of cereal being stolen from her bowl. She turned back with mock impunity to see Abed eating it, a comedic innocence barely hidden by his sunglasses.

“That was so obvious.” Annie said, with typical over-compensatory maturity. Even still, her lips wound into a little smile at his childish gag.

“That was a heist.” He replied coolly, affecting a joking tone of seriousness as he scooped up some of his own cereal. “Ocean’s Eleven, and the casino is your cereal.” With his free hand he nudged his Ray-bans down off his nose, laid them down in the middle of the table. Pausing to think of her reply, she observed the dark circles under his eyes that had only been exacerbated by their night of drinking.

“Not so fast…” She began quietly, and he let his wrists rest on the table as she slowly extended her own spoon towards his bowl. “I’m Indiana Jones…” His eyes followed as she took a single rainbow-shaped piece of cereal onto her spoon and lifted it to her lips. “…And this marshmallow is the Holy Grail.” She ate the small sugary piece with a mock vengefulness that was purely entertaining to him. The reference was even kind of accurate.

Abed directed a look of wry curiosity at her. “I hate to have to tell you this, Indy,” he began slowly, motioning toward her with his spoon as he picked it up once more. “...But that Grail isn’t worth the trouble.” His dark eyes watched as Annie licked milk from her lips, still suppressing a playful little smile.

“Good morning, guys!” Troy interrupted suddenly, and Abed found something about his entrance to be extra conspicuous. He was careful not to mention that Troy’s smile seemed nervously wide as he leaned over the table and asked Annie for a bite.

“Why don’t you grab a bowl, Troy?” Annie queried in a sweet voice as she nonetheless airplaned him a spoonful. “If you’re trying not to make dishes, don’t worry about it-,”

“It’s fine, Annie.” He answered, talking with his mouth full. “I had some of that leftover falafel from Thursday, too.”

Abed pointed his finger in Troy’s direction. “Nice.”

The gesture was soon mirrored by the young quarterback, whose waggling eyebrows expressed delight at Abed’s cooking. “Oh, it was nice.”

“Superhero movie marathon?” Abed asked in a total non-sequitor. He supposed that it would be best not to watch anything too cerebral, given his state. “I was thinking Christopher Reeves’ Superman- but I’m willing to entertain some Batman-George-Clooney as well.”

Troy’s nod was immediate as he raised his arms in exasperated excitement. “How do you always know?”

Annie rolled her eyes affectionately at the pair of them. She mused with private sneakiness that this meant she would have the bathroom and all the hot water to herself, causing her to hurry through her last bite of cereal.

“Annie,” Abed said, craning his long neck back towards her. “Take first shower and don’t use all the hot water.” Annie suppressed a pout as she rose from the table-foiled. As always, he employed ‘social grace’ of typical Abed fame. “Batman Begins runs about 130 minutes, but you can’t have anywhere near that long.”

“Yea,” Troy chipped in, unzipping the somewhat small-sized red sweater he wore and gathering it in his arms as he seemed to remember something. “I have laundry to do, and the boiler needs at least an hour.”

“Troy, wait a second-,” Annie began, her brow furrowing as she paused during her exit. “Isn’t that mine?”

Troy held the sweater protectively, and his expression was a flimsy poker face meant to hide his transgression. “It’s unisex.”

Annie frowned. “But… it’s mine.”

“I won’t stretch it-I’ve got skinny arms for a quarterback!” Troy’s tone of voice was beseeching, and affected a noticeable leap in volume-Abed winced once more and put his sunglasses back on.

“Okay, okay,” Annie said, her hand moving to massage her temple as her own hangover suddenly reminded her of its presence. “I guess if you’re washing it. But don’t leave any tissues in the pockets! It’s totally gross!” Annie’s gait was still visibly woozy as she turned to leave, the cuffs to her pyjama pants making a gentle swish as she made off for the bathroom.

Troy’s hand made a fist in celebration of his small victory, and he cracked a smile as he looked to Abed. The lanky filmmaker was regarding him from his seat with a strange scrutiny, his black eyes just visible over the rim of his sunglasses. That look made Troy nervous, as though he were being scanned on a molecular level.

“Who was on the phone?” Abed asked, and his expression gave away nothing.

If Troy’s smiling veneer faltered, it was only for a split second.

“No one.”

FADE IN-

The footage began on a shaky frame, unsteady as the viewfinder swayed upon an unfocused shot of 303’s kitchen. Dim evening light levels and the ambient sounds of fidgeting filled the camera’s tracks as the camera rolled on nothing special, a dark hand soon straying into the frame to adjust the device’s lens. The hand crossed the camera’s overhead light source, becoming a large, unarticulated blob upon the footage as the camera shuffled upon the kitchen counter, facing outward and vibrating as it was handled.

Beat.

The apartment was quiet but for the device’s own beeps and plastic clacking as its settings were manipulated somewhere off-camera. There were no people in the frame, and the camera continued to roll on a shot of the sink, merely picking up voices from the room nearby. The sound of a door opening, and then-

CUT -
TIMECODE: V1 TC1  00;00;03;56

“Have you seen my wallet?”

It was Annie’s voice, expressed in the tinny, improperly-captured audio of recording without proper mics. Lacking a boom or monitors, the sounds were more frayed, having been interpolated by the camera’s onboard sound card to result in the hertz-ridden timbre of cheap A/V equipment. “Wait-,” The feminine voice continued, becoming more terse in a sudden realization. “And where are my keys?”

“Have you checked all your coat pockets?” As he watched the playback, Abed heard an answering voice upon the footage, and absently turned up the volume of the playback to observe the dialogue with his usual filmmaker’s compulsion. Sounding from somewhere near where the fridge would be, the responding voice seemed flat and unvaried-he almost didn’t recognize it.

“Yes,” Annie intoned quickly, her voice suggesting a barely-held stress that had always easily fraught the anxious girl. “I checked my winter coat two times, and my purse, and the sweater I was wearing when Troy and I drove to the drug store-,”

The camera jostled as it was picked up, and the frame swung to face the living room where Annie paced, chewing her lip in worry. Her expression was a complex set of anxieties. Without having been captured on film, they would have been a near inscrutable collection of features he could not understand-but as Abed let the footage play back, watched the sudden zoom upon Annie’s face and the entreating blink with which she awaited an answer, he felt his brow crease.

“Calm down. They’re here somewhere.” Replied the clipped male voice upon the film, and Annie looked less worrisome. She took a breath obediently, strangely receptive of the patronization. “Your parents’ house will still be there, even if you’re a bit late.”

There was a beat as the timecode ticked endlessly on, and Annie’s eyes seemed to look over the lens, coming to rest upon whoever held the camera. In this shot, the blue of her shirt matched her eyes-objectively, the aesthetic was pleasing. She cast her eyeline bashfully to the floor, and sensing the extended moment, the cameraman supplemented the hushed dialogue.

“…They’re going to be happy to see you, even if you’re a bit late.”

When Annie looked up, it was to give herself away. There lay the true source of the anxiety, beyond the pretense of lost keys and being on time-it was the destination that terrified her.

The frame staggered with a jittery zoom, coming to refocus upon Annie’s face. Her weighted expression reflected something curious that the film medium did not seem to simplify for him.

“Thanks, Abed.”

SMASH CUT -
TIMECODE: V1 TC1  00;00;5;01

“WHAAAAT-,” A loud yelp.

It was Troy’s voice. The sound of artificial gunfire sounded upon the playback as the frame swung to capture the young quarterback as he perched on a beanbag chair and mashed buttons on an XBOX 360 controller. “That was so a headshot-,” Said the young man, before looking to where Abed stood holding the camera and doing a typical thumbs-up at being recorded.

“Hey, I thought that one was broken. You got it working?” Troy asked, pointing down the barrel of the camera.

“Yep. Just doing some test shots now.” Abed heard himself reply, but the voice on the footage still sounded monotonous. “Think I’m going to use this one as more of a point-and-shoot field camera.” Troy offered a nod, letting the controller fall limply to the blanket fort’s carpeted floor as he looked to something off camera.

“Okayyy-,” Came the sound of a sing-song interruption, and the frame swung once more to capture Annie as she strode to the Apartment’s front door. She had dressed primly, as if for an interview, or in fact anything more formal than going to visit one’s own parents. Her overnight bag was with her in addition to her purse, and she presently set them down to shrug on her jacket. “I’m all set.”

The camera was static as Troy traipsed into view, the sounds of videogame artillery still rattling off in the background as the console went un-paused. “We’ll miss you, Annie.” He said, and placed his arms around Annie’s torso even as she struggled vainly to shoulder her overfilled bag.

“Agh-Troy-,” Annie chirped, falling off-balance against the nearby wall. She sighed and patted Troy’s back, her other arm clamped to her side awkwardly by the strap of her bag-Troy seemed unaware of the unwieldy situation as he drew back with a successful nod.

“It’s only a 5 day stay.” Annie simpered as she sorted herself out, bending to pull on a pair of ankle boots.

Troy balked, looking at her luggage sceptically. “You wouldn’t think so.” Suddenly, the sounds of videogame gunfire from within the blanket fort ceased, replaced by the mellow hum of loading screen music. “Damn, I’m getting kicked from the server-,” Troy exclaimed, before dashing out of the frame to intercede. The shot didn’t follow him, and rolled patiently on Annie as she stood ready to leave.

“Have everything?” Asked Cameraman-Abed, and Annie mm-hmmed in response. The viewport swayed suddenly, its perspective sagging to capture two pairs of legs as she stepped to give him a similarly off-kilter goodbye hug.

“Drive safe.” He mumbled shortly, the camera jostling as she drew away once more. The frame recomposed itself upon her retreating back as she pulled open the front door and stepped out of the apartment. The change in light levels caused a sudden smoldering in the footage’s colouration, only normalizing as the camera followed her out into the hallway.

“Abed?” Annie queried as the camera continued to follow, the door closing with the whine of a hinge behind them. These new surroundings were cast in a green tint by its old overhead light fixtures, grotty from dust and negligence in Rick’s inadequately maintained little complex.

“I’m just going to try a shot of you walking down here,” Abed heard his own voice say upon the tape, and the camera dipped to capture a low angle shot that made the hallway seem very long in its composition. “Just want to see what I get.”

Annie nodded, always agreeable to taking direction. She spared a glance over her shoulder as she turned down the hall, her bag swaying where she held it at her side. She walked centered between the narrow walls, her heeled boots echoing in dull repetitions as she strode past other front doors belonging to neighbours that they never saw. Her cream pea coat seemed stark now, drenched in the sterile lime tint of the overhead pot lights, and the sudden atmosphere of the shot lent a purposeful narrative to the young girl. In the moment, Annie seemed a guarded character, her pale neck and fine hair bundled tightly in her scarf as she retreated down the hall-a shrouded stranger. Fading away as she approached the far stairwell, the sight of her evoked the sketch of something in Abed’s mind, a character in the frames as he watched them play back.

His thoughts were jarred as the sudden clap of a steel handle sounded upon the tape, coinciding with the spread of video artifacts upon the film. Abed clicked his teeth, watching the playback begin to stutter-he thought he had fixed these video errors. Pixels scattered noisily upon the frame’s lower half, dancing in chords of useless visual information as the creak of metal hinges followed Annie’s exit into the now-blurry stairwell.

The heavy storm door was whining, hauling itself close with a pneumatic sort of sound, catching slightly upon her bag as Annie maneuvered to descend the stairs-She stopped. Pausing in the vestibule, no longer leaving but instead looking back down the hall, Annie stood framed by the slowly closing door.

“There you go.” Abed thought indulgently, watching Annie package the scene through the increasingly pixelated playback. The “mysterious character” primed herself, guiding strands of hair out of her eyes, cast in the backlighting of the stairwell’s scone lights. A sudden dip of the viewport suggested the cameraman’s negligence as he took up watching his subject, and Abed mentally cursed himself for not having steadied the shot, but it was all in vain anyway-the visual noise was now scouring across the picture, rendering only illegible forms as the video capture went bad. Abed readied his finger upon the camera’s “power” button, squinting at the playback as its final few legible frames showed Annie’s careful exit down the stairs.

Ah, she was good at this, though.

Power-off.

TIMECODE: V1 TC1 00;00;08;49
FADE OUT-