Author's Note: Hey! So I watched the finale, loved it - especially the little taste of Jandy we got near the end. I hope the writers decide to go that route with them next season; and in with regards to Vic and Dean (who I would love to see together) we know that Krista Vernoff loves the friends-to lovers route (Jo and Link anyone? That's an obvious set up for them next season).
Anyways, so here I am hoping against hope that it does happen for both Jandy and...Mughes? LOL idk. :P Until then, because I feel like we are going to have to wait a long time for next season, I've started this fic to get by. It's what I would like to happen in canon going forward into season 5 with a obvious Jandy slant and Vic/Dean because I cannot help it with them. I'm a sucker for friends to lovers. Every time I watch that scene where Dean is so excited to tell her and then he sees her kissing Theo it breaks me. I wanted a completely different outcome for them. So, as a fic writer, I write one. :)
This fic starts off in 4x16 and will move forward in timeline throughout season 5 as what I imagine it to be like (how I want it to be like). With that said, if you guys have anything you would like to see, send it my way along with your thoughts on this chapter and if it's worth continuing. Thank you so much! xx :)
Andy was watching everything happen from the sidelines now, and it all felt like it was happening around her in slow motion. She was just waiting for that other shoe to drop. Waiting. And it was torture.
She watched as everybody danced; Maya and Carina still in the embrace they'd been in during their first dance, even as this next song was a little faster now (she had this feeling that they didn't care about looking like idiots tonight, it was their wedding they were allowed to enjoy each other as they saw fit); Travis and Emmett were on the dance floor too, together, beside each other but not touching, and Miranda and Ben were getting down, too, all smiles and laughs. They were adorable together, something that all of them here strived for.
From just outside of this picture, she caught Vic and Dean coming back inside the restaurant, closer together than normal, his hand brushing her fingertips. Hm. Vic grinned at him, a slight flush to her cheeks and Dean smiled back at her, looking happier than she'd ever seen him, as she started to dance and he followed her lead, both of them shimmying a little before settling into that close proximity again, having a little fun as the faster song petered out and a slower one took its place.
She turned away then, grabbing onto the neck of another bottle of sparkling water and twisting the cap off. She took a swig, nearly choking on the carbonation, wishing, just for a second, that it was an ice cold beer. She could really use one of those right about now.
She zoned out for a few minutes, staring off into space, somewhere beyond here, where they all were in this moment together, outside one of the restaurant windows. She had to get away for a bit. Escape. She was happy for her best friend, she was beyond it, really, but the day, the occasion, it had been tainted ever since she'd found out exactly what her husband had done. Her own husband.
Andy felt someone jostle her and she tipped a little in her heels. She turned to see Jack looking over at something with a cheesy grin on his face. She hadn't seen that smile in a long time, and she almost forgot how much she liked it on him.
Then, she realized what it was that he was looking at so intently, what everyone had been looking at so intently; the whole place had almost fallen silent safe for the slow dance song still playing in the background – seriously, where had she been?
The lyrics of the song were sweet because she couldn't help but notice them in the silence – we don't have to hurry you can take as long as you want I'm holding steady and my heart's at home. With my hand behind you I will catch you if you fall, I'm just gonna love you like the woman I love – but the moment happening within them, the moment they've all become witness to, was even sweeter.
Dean was holding Vic around her waist and Vic had her hands perched carefully on her shoulders, but then she looped them around his neck as their kiss grew deeper, and she stood on her tiptoes and pressed herself into him.
"He finally told her. He did it." Jack murmured reverently. "They're pretty cute together, huh?"
He turned to look at her now, and she felt his hand touch hers, but then pull back. He whistled and then so did Travis, and then Maya, and Carina started to clap her hands, and then she couldn't help it, Andy cheered too, jumping on the balls of her feet. So that's what all that was, earlier. No wonder things looked like they'd changed between the two of them. It's because they had.
She began to cheer even louder, took two fingers in between her lips, and whistled. She wasn't drunk, she'd only had one glass of champagne this entire night, sticking to sparkling water for the rest of it, but with all of the happiness going on, all of the good feeling bursting at the seams tonight, she felt a little bit tipsy.
The two of them pulled apart and Vic waved her hand at them. "Oh, come on you guys, you're all acting like you haven't seen two people kiss before."
"We haven't!" Travis replied for them. "Not the two of you – Miller and Hughes!? Are you kidding me!?"
Vic stared at Travis for a beat with a soft, moony sort of look and Andy knew that Montgomery would just get it. Where Vic was concerned, that man got everything about her. Miller though…that was new. Maybe not for them, but it was new for her, for all the rest of Nineteen.
She watched as Vic turned to look at Dean again, into his eyes, an expression that Andy hasn't seen on that woman's face since Ripley, and in that moment, she chose to be happy for Hughes, irrevocably happy, even as her own relationship was on the outs, she felt better about everything knowing that another couple got their happy ending tonight.
"I love you, Dean Miller." Vic said to him softly, but of course, in the silence, their every word was picked up by everyone in this room. It didn't seem like they cared, too wrapped up in each other to notice much of anything else but themselves. "I love you a lot."
Dean put his forehead against hers, took her face in his hands so gently that Andy felt herself getting emotional. "I love you too, Victoria Hughes. I love you more."
"Okay, are we serious here?" Maya laughed, hugging Carina to her by the waist. "Vic, Dean, I love you both, and I'm incredibly happy that you two have found your way to each other because if I'm being honest, we've all been waiting awhile – "
"What!?" Vic exclaimed, her eyes moving from Maya to Travis to Jack, around to Andy, and then back to Dean. "Where was I!?"
Dean chuckled, stroking her cheek with his thumb. "Completely oblivious to my feelings."
Vic's face fell for a second. "Oh."
Dean swooped her back into his arms and kissed that pout off of her face like he meant business. Andy's eyes diverted from them and landed on Jack, standing beside her still in his suit and tie and his hair slicked back and that woodsy cologne. It reminded her of how a certain someone used to kiss her, back in the day, and the combination of that memory, this night, and everyone looking so good, it was suddenly making her head spin.
"As I was saying – we're so happy for you guys, but I think we're forgetting who's wedding this is, hm?" Maya said, gesturing between herself and Carina with raised eyebrows and a smile.
"Sorry, Bishop. That's my fault, my bad," Dean said to her, to all of them, as Vic laughed and hugged him tight.
He raised his glass with one hand as he wrapped an arm around Vic with the other. She was his girl now. Victoria Hughes and Dean Miller. Together. A couple. It would take some getting used to, but Andy was so here for it. She held up her own glass in solidarity as everyone else did the same.
"To Marina – may they be happy together forever as wife and wife."
"To Marina!" Everybody echoed his sentiment and took a drink, laughing and cheering as Maya dipped Carina to the floor and kissed her, all hot and heavy.
Later on, the evening was beginning to wind down. Carina and Maya were speaking to Maya's mom at their table, sipping still on their glasses of wine, and Maya was smiling; Andy was so happy to see her smiling. Travis and Emmett had left awhile ago now, together, no doubt going to finish something they started here tonight, and Vic and Dean were talking in hushed tones at another table, their hands clasped together in plain view as they ate some leftover wedding cake.
Robert had called it a night before her, without so much as a kiss goodbye, he wouldn't dare try, not tonight, and she never promised him that she would be home. She couldn't. She couldn't be there with him, tonight, not even on the couch and in another room. It was still the same apartment, and it was too much for her, knowing what she knows now.
Except that she clearly can't go stay at Maya's tonight, or any other night for the next few months (she wouldn't be safe to stay there for awhile, she cringed now at the memory of earlier today).
She couldn't stay with Vic, either, because lived with Travis, who had taken Emmett back home with him, and she figured now that Vic would be staying with Dean tonight at the houseboat anyways. Dean and Pru. Dean, Pru, and Vic. A little happy family. Her heart lit up at that. He deserved it. They both did, after everything.
Someone touched her shoulder and sunk down in a seat beside her at what had been a table for one for the better part of ten minutes.
He smiled at her softly, sympathetically, ugh, she hated that, as he offered her an ear. "Hey, you okay?"
This was her only option. He was her only option. Things were finally starting to get better between them, comfortable, and she didn't want to mess it up. Couldn't afford to. He seemed to be the only one truly in her corner these days, the only one who truly knew how she was feeling, right now.
"Inara – are you staying with her and Marcus tonight?"
Jack coughed into his fist, seemed to be taken off guard. "Uh – no. No, I'm not. We broke up actually. She's moving to California to be with her sister. I'm not going with her."
"Oh."
Andy wouldn't lie, she was relieved that he wasn't going anywhere; she needed him here, with her, and obviously the rest of Nineteen needed him too because he's a vital part of this team. They – they're lucky to have him.
"Yeah. Oh."
She sighed, reached her hand across the table to touch his. It was out of comfort, nothing else, and he looked down at her hand on his, his expression unchanging. He looked sad. Defeated, but maybe there was a little relief there, too? She could be misreading things. Jack and Inara seemed happy, on the road to being a cute little family, like the one he'd always wanted, the one he'd missed out on when he was a kid. She felt for him.
"I'm sorry, Jack. It sucks. It's like…I thought I really knew Sullivan, I thought that I could trust him, and so I fell in love with him. At least…I thought I did. It was so fast, I blinked, and we were married, and it had been great for awhile, I never wanted to stop touching him, kissing him, we were so good, together. Physically. I had thought we were emotionally, too, but how can you love someone that as it turns out, you don't really know as well as you thought you did?"
In response to all of that, Jack sucked in a breath of air between his teeth. She had spoken so freely, so vulnerably, without barring any holds and she could only assume it came so unexpected to him, because really they haven't had any sort of real conversation in almost a year and that hurts her more than she would like it to. It really does. It feels like it hurts him, too.
"Oh, damn, Andy. I'm sorry. I didn't know…"
"Of course you didn't," she interjected. "I wasn't public about it."
Jack sighed. "Are you okay?"
She clicked her tongue. Nothing had been holding her back the day she married Robert, and now, not long into their marriage, or their relationship for that matter, something was.
"Yes. Yes and no. I can't go back to our place tonight, with him there. Something happened and I – "
"You can stay with me," he told her softly, tightening his grip on her hand; it had been a nonexistent grip before, but she felt it now.
It was all she could feel, aside from the blood still pumping in her ears. His eyes were on her. Level, serious. Genuine. "Whenever you need. You can always stay with me."
She sighed too, smiled at him. "Thanks, Jack. You're a really good friend."
He smiled at her too, his grin a little cockier than hers had been. He might even be blushing. It was cute. "Yeah, well, I try to be."
Author's Note: And that's the first chapter! I'm thinking I'll write in multiple characters' perspective so not only Andy and Jack's but Vic and Dean's and Maya and Carina's and Travis's too (where he'd come in handy is with the Vic/Dean romance development). I want to give all the characters a chance for some subplots too because I adore Marina as well. :) What do you guys think? xx