Work Text:
When you bump into Jeff again, you’re thirty, you’re in heels and a business suit, you're furiously typing an email on your phone with your thumb, and you’re hauling ass through the Baltimore airport. You haven’t set foot in Colorado in five years, but you've been to Los Angeles and Chicago and London and Beijing. And Baltimore, but it didn't impress you enough to make the list.
It’s a literal bumping, you crash into him, and you think whatthehellgiganticpersongrumble and then you look up and it's Jeff, and you’re eighteen, you have no idea what to do with your breasts, and your heart flutters so much that you feel sick. It feels like getting called to the principal’s office, like missing a step in a staircase, like Adderall, like paintball.
He’s a little greyer, not actually any taller (are you taller? are you just standing differently?), and he catches you when you start to hit the floor because he can be a gentleman if you catch him off-guard, you’ve always known this, always. If he'd just had the tiniest little push, he could have been everything.
“Annie-” he says, and his eyes widen and his mouth stays open, and you did that, you did, and you remember that you can do that to anyone if you can do it to him. Jeff could have had anyone, but he didn't have you.
“I’m sorry, I have to make this flight,” you blurt, and you’re off, your bag’s squeaky wheel screeching as it follows behind you, and Jeff Winger doesn't as he's left in your wake.