Author's Note: Hi! :) I'm back with another request - "Jack and Andy realize they are meant to be together and leave Inara and Robert." I jumped right on this because I soooo wish this would actually happen on the show! I hope you guys like it! Keep those requests coming - and as always let me know what you think. Reviews - I thrive off of them, I love them.

What if We Were Supposed to be Together


He looked good. He looked so good. She thought that he'd always looked good, but something about that extra facial hair, and the tan of his skin, both things brought out the chisel of his jaw, and she almost stopped breathing. He shouldn't have this effect on her still. It wasn't fair. Not this time. Not now.

Now, she's married, and he's with this sweet woman, a mom to a little boy, as soft spoken as her deaf son, but still, sweet. Inara, she remembers the woman's name, one she hasn't heard before, but it's not a bad name. It actually sounds kind of nice. Pretty, even. Like her. Of course she's pretty. Of course she is.

Andy's with Robert, who's attractive and lovely and everything she fell head over heels in love with three months later, but still, he's not the one person that keeps her up at night. Robert is not him. With the facial hair and the tanned skin and the extra casualness to his personality at this moment because what does he have to worry about, he's just come back from a two-week trip to Maui with his girlfriend and her son – who was very slowly becoming his own, or so it seemed, and she missed him.

She missed him like crazy, so much that it kind of hurt, and she admits that now in confidence, to the walls of this bar, to the inside of her glass, because he can't know. Jack cannot know that she missed him when he was gone, and not in any sort of way that reflected friendship, or that she still has a picture of the two of them somewhere in her wallet, like an idiot; the only picture they ever took together, selfie-style, he's kissing her cheek and she's smiling, it's normal, everyday, and keeping it around would be fine, cute, even, if it was a picture she had taken with her husband.

It's not, and she feels guilty about that, she feels guilty about a lot of things, missing Jack, and thinking about him, now, only the start of it. The image in her head was painting him in such a light so that she's barely holding off the urge to hook up with him in that damn storage room, because they've done it before, they could do it again, and if fucking her into submission makes her feel something other than angry, perhaps love for another man who is not her husband, than it's done its job, hasn't it (or was that only acceptable before, before everything).

The point here is, she feels guilty, and she hates it, but the thing that she doesn't hate so much, is being in love, being in love with him, because it's happened before, it can happen again, and it has. She can't and won't deny a thing.

She's tired of denial. She's tired of ignoring, she's tired of so many things, tired like she is guilty, but finally she's going to live in her truth; her real, honest, truth.

She just…hasn't figured out a way to do that yet, without all of the confusion and hurt being added to the process, though she's figuring that's inevitable, like many endings to stories that aren't necessarily the outline of a perfect fairy-tale.

When Andy saw Inara's smiling face and the way she hugged Jack to him like she very well owned him, it was disconcerting, but she would rather die then let her own smile slip off her face. Andrea Herrera without her dignity was nobody, nothing, and this – the two of them, together, would not be the thing that broke her. It would not.

"So, you're back," she said to him, her words casual, her tone even more so.

"Yeah," he said, with a smile in her direction that spoke a million words in silence. Well, maybe just four. I missed you too. "I'm back."

"How was it? And the beach? Was it beautiful?"

"Yeah." There was that smile again. I'll take you with me next time. We'll have sex when the tide runs in, our naked bodies will be coated in salt from the water, and I'll inhale the smell of your hair, just like I used to do, when we were together. I'll do everything I used to do, to you, except, we'll be in Hawaii and it will all be so, much, better. "It was. We got some great pictures."

Inara's smile still hadn't left her face. It was annoying. Endearing too, which made it even more annoying. "Did you want to see them?"

She'd rather stab out her eyeballs with a fork than see Inara draped over him like squid in a striped bikini, but what was she supposed to say. She didn't want to be rude. She owed him that much. Inara, she owed nothing, but Jack, she owed Jack the world. He didn't deserve how she'd treated him in the past, and, really, he didn't deserve to know her feelings towards him, now, but only because it would put him in an awkward position to hurt one of them, and bad.

Inara, whom, she has gathered, he cares about quite a bit, but she hoped it was in a way that Vic cares about Travis, but she knows, deep down, that it's not; or he hurts her, and she still doesn't know his take on her, yet.

She found it hard to believe he could go from I-can't-live-without-you to we're-just-strictly-friends-who-have-to-watch-themselves-when-alone, but she could be wrong. She has been before; she wasn't too prideful to admit that. Not yet. Give her a few more years. Let her make Captain (and that was a joke, partly).

Now, Inara was shoving her phone in her face, and there was that picture, the picture she was afraid to see – Inara, wind in her hair, a polka dot bikini (of course it was, how did she not see that Inara was clearly a polka dot girl) and Jack, shirtless, his own hair tousled and sexy and stupid, and they were both smiling, and it hurt her so much only because his smile, she swore it reached his eyes.

At least her son had been with them. Marcus, if she remembered his name correctly, but of course she had, because when Jack talks, she listens, and he talks so much (more than she personally enjoys hearing) about Inara and her son, Marcus. Except, now he's lost the 'her son' bit and it's just Marcus, and that worries her – it worries her, but she would never, ever say that to Jack. Not a chance. She loved him too much for that. To crush his dreams of creating and having the instant family he lost out on as a child, and that – she was realizing, slowly and surely with every passing glance between them now, was the long and short of it. She loved him.

The point here is, they had Marcus with them, so it wasn't like they could be having any of that hot, tropical, Hawaiian sex anyhow, right? Except that Marcus is deaf, and unfortunately for Andy, that now opened up so many more avenues for the two of them.

She wasn't sure about Inara, and couldn't speak for her, but Jack was a push-the-envelope kind of guy, where sex was concerned, bold, brash, hot, oh, so, hot, and she was a bit of an over-the-line girl herself, so there would be no telling what the two of them would do in that situation, but still, Andy couldn't get a good enough impression of Inara in that way – could she? Would she?

If the answer was yes, she didn't want to know, but if the answer was yes, she also wanted to know. Ugh.

Andy nodded her head politely. She was now going to do one of three things. One, drink. Drink a lot. They were in a bar after all. Which, in itself was kind of odd – why did Jack arrange for this to happen at Joe's – and only with her (well, she was the only one that could make it, but still, why not reschedule. She thought she knew why, and that was kind of a lot to take at once, so, the solution, when in a bar – drink, drink a lot).

Two, she was going to leave. Right now, and in a cab, because she's already had a couple beers in the time they've been sitting here, doing, whatever the hell this was; she was going to go home to Robert, to her husband, and try to wipe the memory of Inara in that cutesy polka dotted bikini cozied up to Jack clean from her brain, and then proceed to drink some more beer. Or eat an entire pint of Cherry Garcia. She hadn't decided yet.

Or, three – she was going to take that cab home to her (still very hot) husband and have very hot sex with him, just to prove that she could still do it. Have hot sex. Have hot sex, with someone other than him. It was always about him. Fuck him.

Except, she couldn't. She couldn't do that because there was Robert. There was Robert, and she wasn't a whore. And Jack, he wasn't, he wasn't a lowly excuse for a man. He was the complete opposite. The best. He was the best man. Andy sighed heavily but hoped that neither of them heard it over the midday din of the bar. Fuck me.


There was something there. There would always be something there. So, he was kind of angry at her for showing up tonight in tight ass jeans, a tight ass, white, t-shirt, that perfectly complimented her olive skin, and a leather jacket. A fucking leather jacket. What gave her the right. What gave her the god damn right to look this hot. Not a fucking thing. That's what.

Fuck, he was so angry, and frustrated, so, sexually, frustrated and it's not that Inara wasn't satisfying those needs, because she was, it's just that every time he's around her, even at a respectable, friendly, distance, those needs they just…get bigger. Become more, and they're specific, very specific, to her, to her and the things that she does, that she used to do, to him.

Her hair was curled, in those loose, free, sort of waves that he likes best on her, finds them incredibly sexy, and it was in that moment, when she walked through the doors to Joe's bar, and he laid his eyes on her for the first time since a few hours ago.

A few hours ago when she was a hot, sweaty sort of mess with a smoke smell clinging to her and her hair pulled back, but please, don't get him wrong, he likes her that way too, finds it to be a huge turn on (you know, when they otherwise aren't in a life-and-death situation) There was just something about the way she cleans up…and not to be a disaster of a cliché, but she cleans up good.

It's because she cleans up so good that he gets angry again. Angry. Great. A perfectly appropriate emotion to have towards some stupid, probably displaced, feelings that he cannot fucking shake. It's her, and it's always been her, and he figures that it will probably continue to be her, because Jack has some pretty fucked up attachment issues and the thing is – the thing is, is it's not only that.

He can't blame the fact that he is still so in love with this woman on his thoroughly fucked view of attachment. No. It would be too easy. It would be way too easy, and Jack Gibson does not do easy. Never has, never will.

So what, that she's married. Married to a guy that wasn't him. So what that he's currently hooking up and going on lavish vacations with a girl that isn't her, and kind of, maybe, helping raise her (admittedly adorable) son. It hasn't gone too far. He could still back out. Could she, though? She had a husband, and a husband was different. So different. Too different. Right?

With every drink, as he stares into the bottom of each glass, he thinks that it's not. That he might actually be wrong. He could change. She could change. They could change, together.

He's laughing, she's laughing, but it's not because she's privy to his thoughts, his damn stupid sense of hope that he needs to let go of, and fast, before he hurts himself like he hurt that little boy who lost everything he ever knew in one hot, orange, flame.

They're laughing at something Vic said, or more accurately, at something Vic had done. Without their permission. Robert decided to work a double – work his way up from Probie status by way of the suck-up track (something he knew Andy was thinking, and also something he knew that she disproved of), and Inara was at home with Marcus, but she'd never come to these things anyways.

Life at the station, outside of the station, was never her speed, and he knew that it was never going to be, with each excuse she gave to miss yet another night out, one after another. It didn't matter.

He smiled. Looked at the back of Andy's head, at the curve of her ears, the base of her neck, the least sexy things he could think of, which were somehow still unbearably sexy, as she talked to Maya. He liked to keep this between them, anyways. It was special.

He almost said it. I love you.

"Jack?" She turned her head to look at him. A smile dancing on the corners of her mouth, teasing him. I love you.

He cleared his throat. "Yeah? You wanna do it?"

She bit her lip. She had to stop doing that. For his sanity. Immediately.

I love you.

"Hughes," Andy chuckled good naturedly. "I can't believe you signed us up, you bitch. We haven't done this since – "

She'd had a bit to drink too, it was obvious – the flush of her cheeks, the slight combativeness to her demeanor, but then again so had all of them, and tonight was meant to be fun. Travis's birthday. A celebration.

"Oh come on Herrera," Vic goaded her. Them. "You and Gibson used to crush the duet category. Do it for me. Do it for us." Vic gestured around the table at the rest of Nineteen, and Jack noticed, again, minus Sullivan.

Andy rolled her eyes, but her mouth went up at the corners just a little more. She was coming around. Just one final push. Besides, how bad could it be. He shrugged.

That was it.

"Fine," Andy said to them, grabbed his hand in a way that said she thought absolutely nothing about it, or maybe he was wrong and inside that head of hers she was thinking everything.

Like he was.

They stood together on that stage and waited for the introduction of whatever song it – oh. Oh, no.

The somewhat familiar soft notes of Mercy by Brett Young filled the space around them (he was a bit of a shameless country fan), and if he were close enough to her, he would be able to feel her take an extra, sharp, breath. She hadn't been expecting it either. He hadn't even known it could be sung as a duet, but, he guessed, nowadays, anything could, with the right spin on it. This song had meant nothing to them, before, but now, it felt a little too personal.

Mercy, why you gotta show up looking so good just to hurt me? Why do you wanna stop the whole damn world from turning?

They couldn't do anything else but start to sing, and he stared off into the watchful bar-goers below them and tried very hard not to faint at the sound of her voice, singing to him. He could swear it, she was singing to him. He wasn't going crazy. He locked eyes with her, would feel awkward if he didn't, but just as awkward when he did.

"Why you hanging on so tight if this ain't working?"

He shook it off because in front of him she was the perfect picture of composed, and he wondered if her emotion now was genuine, what she was sharing with him, in those lyrics, was real, or just the plain fabrication of a lyrical genius – he wouldn't lie, Taylor Swift really had a way with words. They were beautiful. She was beautiful. Not Taylor, though she did have a certain something, but Andy, holy hell, was she ever gorgeous in this tacky lighting.

She was still singing to him, and throughout all of this, somewhere, he was singing to her.

"Why you wanna stop this flame if it's still burning…"

He harmonized without missing a beat, picking up then on the next line. It was almost over, and he found himself not wanting it to end. How was it that this was so natural for them, still, after everything?

"Still burning…"

He knew what he had to do. It would please the crowd, and to him, it just felt right, so he took a breath, didn't stop to question it, and sang that last line, in time with the beating of his heart as he grabbed onto her hand, and held it.

"And if you're gonna take your shot, baby, just take it…"

She smiled at his subtle change in the lyrics, gasped a little, but kept going. She had to finish it off. Andy Herrera was nothing but forever composed in situations where nobody really expected her to be.

"Just take it…."

"If you made up your mind just make it…"

"If you ever loved me…"

"Mm…if you ever loved me…have mercy…"

The both of them were breathing heavily by that point, exhalations caught in the mics, and Jack didn't want to break their moment, here, on this stage. Andy's eyes were twinkling with adrenaline and genuine surprise, no doubt, and for his part, all he could manage to do was smile.

He couldn't look anywhere but at her, not yet, and he might be crazy, but it seems like she's feeling the exact same way, as she makes no move to break their eye contact. The karaoke guy had to forcibly tell them to get off the stage and make room for the next singers.

Which happened to be Travis and Emmett singing Copacabana. Oh, he did not want to miss one second of that train wreck. But he also didn't want to miss one second of this.

He felt Andy's hand on his shoulder, her gaze further away, somewhere in the distance, but the energy was there, like something needed to be said. Taken care of. Ended, or started, once and for all.

He swore he could hear Vic mumbling something a little louder than she'd likely intended about how "playing cupid is all in a hard day's work," but for now, he shook it off.

Jack thought of Inara, at home with Marcus, and shook the thought of crushing that little boy's heart and breaking his mom's out of his mind. He was ready. He needed to know, one way or the other, now.

He was tired of being like this. So tired. Of being jealous. Of being jealous if there was nothing there to be jealous about if he's going to get nothing out of it. He needs to know. He just needs to know.

"We need to talk," she said to him, but quietly, out of ear shot of the others. "I'm ready to talk about whatever the hell has been going on with us. Are you?"

He nodded and she was relieved that he agreed, and whatever was going on, that was honestly now effecting the dynamic at the station (and not quite far from how her dad had feared it would, back then), was not just in her head.

"Yeah."

He breathed out, taking her by the hand and if she didn't know any better, she would think he might be dragging her away from a night out with her friends to have a quick hookup, but this, it wasn't that. It was the furthest from that. "I'm ready."

There they were again in that storage closet and it was bringing back memories for her, here, now.

His hands in her hair, her hands holding his cheeks, and there was kissing, so much kissing, and tongue, so much tongue; she remembered how he'd shoved her up against those boxes, with no hesitation, and so hard that the cardboard caved in when it collided with her body. She only knew this, because that same box was still there, with that same dent, made larger after that with every thrust, the way he tore her jeans off that night, it made her breath stop, and right now, at the thought of it, she felt weightless.

His eyes were glassy, he was staring at the cardboard box by her waist. The one with the dent. She could see the lust in them, at this point, was conditioned to know when he had sex on the brain, and she was surprised to learn that sense hadn't left her, not yet; not completely. She wondered what that meant. If it was a good thing, or a bad thing. If she had any conscience at all, it would be a bad thing. A very bad thing.

What was scaring her, was that she wasn't sure she had one. Not one that was real. If it were, she would feel at least a little bit bad that she was having this kind of conversation with her ex-boyfriend, ex-fiancé, in a bar, and in the shadiest spot possible, after having basically poured her heart out in song only five minutes before, after he did the same thing, to her. She knew that he had. The song – it was too close – to close to them, for it not to mean something.

"Jack…"

She's said is name like this, in this tone, whispery, warningly, seductive, and with no intention to break his heart, but with every word knew that she would. She's grown to hate it, the sound of her voice, his name, the sound of her voice and his name, together, but she can't get away from it. No matter how hard she tries. Tonight was just proof of that.

"Andy…"

It was the same. She had this feeling that maybe he hated the sound of his own voice, and her name, because together, when it leaves from in between his lips, they cause pain, an unnecessary amount of pain. It's knowing that she's the cause of it, and not doing anything to stop him, to stop it from happening more often then it should, especially now, has her thinking about the existence of her conscience again.

"Say it, Jack. Just…say what you want to say, because I think it's what I want. To say. I mean. So one of us… has to say it."

She felt scared, like she was balancing on some sort of precipice, but on the other hand, she felt sickeningly relieved, and it was like the damn skyscraper fire all over again.

"I.. I can't, Andy. Not again. Not until I know that this, this for you, is real."

When in a blinding moment of emotion, tears making it hard to see his face, when she thought this is where I've lost him, this is where he leaves me, for good, she told him that she loved him, but in mere minutes, when that oxygen masked was pressed to his face, held in place by her hand, she corrected herself and said it wasn't in that way. Except it's different now because she realizes that she had lied. It was in that way; it was very much in that way.

"It is. Jack, it is. I love you. I love you like…like I don't love anybody else. Not Maya, Ryan, my Dad, Robert…"

"Robert?"

"Yes, Jack. I – I don't – I don't love him like I thought I loved him. It's hard to explain but you're right. I jumped into it way too quickly, and I – I wasn't healed, you know, emotionally from…from the accident, and losing Ryan and…then my Dad…I just – wasn't ready. He wasn't the right person. But you…"

Andy took his hands, looked up at him. "You…it's you."

Jack smiled at her, laughed a little. Squeezed her hands in his. "It has always been you. It was always you, Andy Herrera. Don't stand here and tell me you didn't know that."

She smiled too. "I might have. And Jack, I'm sorry. For everything I've put you through. Us through. I hate that I'm not like you, so sure of my feelings all of the time, not afraid to be all in, and I admire you for that. I love you for that. I just wish…I wish that I were as good as you."

He kissed her chastely, and she fell into his arms, nearly weeping because it felt so good to be kissed by him, to be touched by him, again. She'd missed it so much and hadn't even realized it's impact. His impact. On her.

"How do we tell them?"

If this were a movie, Inara and Robert would be gracious and lovely, likely get angry and commiserate in secret, and run off with each other in the end; but this wasn't a movie. It was far, far, from it. This was real life, and sometimes real life, with real life situations and real life problems, really sucked.

They would figure it out. She's been though worse, in the grand scheme of things, they both have. And both Inara and Robert seemed like strong, tough, people. They would both see past it, eventually.

"I don't know."

Inara would be appreciative that he didn't let it go on for longer with her kid to think about, and Robert, well, if his feelings for her were true, and she never questioned them for a minute – it was her own that she'd been questioning, this would hurt him; it would hurt him deeply.

The only thing is, the only thing that made what she had to do somewhat better, and less shitty, is that if she were to let this go on for the rest of their lives, and they built a family together, one day, none of it would work in the long run.

They'd both be riddled with unhappiness and would bring it into their home, to their children, and she knew, as a decent man, a decent human being, Robert would not want that. Not for him, but especially not for his children.

"We'll figure it out," she said to him, leaning in for another kiss.

"We always do," he said back, reciprocating.

She sighed into their kiss, and he did too, and as he wiped at the tears on her face with his thumbs, she did the same to him, and it was cheesy that they were both crying, but in all fairness, it was overwhelming. All of it.

They deserved the tears. They deserved to cry all the tears in the world because finally, here they were. Finally, it happened. Just…finally.


Author's Note: Sorry for any of the typos! :) I would kill to have this happen on the show and does that song not fit them so well!? Brett Young is an icon. :) Ready for more prompt requests :) Jandy babies? Fluff? Angst? You name it (but also...Andy being a mom would be literally everythinggggg).