published this originally under my other AO3 account ( ratherbefree) but decided to cross-post it here also.
the line "lover/boyfriend/guy she sometimes makes out with?" is originally meant to be typed in strike-through (with a line crossed through it) but apparently doesn't have that type option.
It's only when she's actually on the plane, like physically thousands of feet in the air, travelling at God-knows-what speed to a state halfway across the country, that it fully hits her, everything that happened with Jeff - it was possibly the last time any of that will ever happen. The secret kisses, stolen glances, quiet resentment, they're all just. Over.
(And of course there's everyone else, too. Britta and even Frankie, and the quick hug and goodbye to Abed before she had to rush to board - they're all still fresh on her mind, too. She isn't some lovestruck Juliet, thinking only of her lover/boyfriend/guy she sometimes makes out with?
Thinking of Jeff.)
But there was some resigned finality to their last kiss, alone in the study room. She'd asked him to do it, mostly for himself, though not exactly out of pity. She had grown enough since Man Is Evil and Tranny Dance and Inspecti-con to understand that expecting romanticism over reality was always going to end badly, and so…
Well, she thought she could handle it. Better than he could, at least. And it's true what she said - she's in her twenties, she has her whole life ahead her, and their wants aren't compatible.
But.
After everything that's happened, she doesn't think her feelings for him can ever be strictly platonic. And there is still a small part of her, the smitten 19-year-old who waited 3 months for a call she never received, who found it unreasonably hard to pull away and plaster on a smile and choke out a goodbye.
(Okay, maybe a slightly bigger part of her. Maybe it wasn't only her suppressed 19-year-old-self who struggled to let go. Maybe.)
And, maybe she'll text him when she lands. Just to let him know she's there safe.
title of fic + chapter titles are all taken from the song "Romeo and Juliet" by Dire Straits/The Killers.