Chapter Text
Andy loves Joe.
He’s her best friend, almost a brother at this point. The two of them met at university, during her one semester abroad; Joe had been part of the international student welcoming committee, and immediately felt an unlikely kinship with the sullen, mysterious older girl with a chip on her shoulder and a hard-to-place accent on her tongue loitering at the back of the group. It had taken a while to get through her hard exterior, but his warm and friendly personality eventually won her over. She owed a lot to Joe, with the younger man not only being the one to convince her to open up to people again and enjoy herself, but also the reason she met Quynh. Her wife had been another international student, the only other in their group in the linguistics department. Joe had been the one to introduce the two and encourage her to ask the other woman out.
So yeah, Andy really loves the guy.
His boyfriends, however...
Every man Joe has ever dated had earned a spot on her shit list, even the ones she hadn’t even met; most for insipid reasons, but some for harsher offenses.
There was Isaac, who couldn’t fucking chew with his mouth closed, Michel, who ended almost every sentence in that same pedantic infliction, Andrew, who nitpicked every movie he saw, and Paul, who was just a huge asshole.
So when Joe video called them from a tiny hotel room in a city that definitively wasn’t the one she and her wife sent him to and informed them he had met The One, of course Andy was skeptical.
“Andromache...” Quynh had started immediately after he hanged up.
“What? I didn’t say anything!”
“But you were going to.”
“I just... I worry about him! Remember the last time he found The One? The guy broke up with him a week before Joe was planning to propose.”
“Then I guess he dodged an embarrassing bullet, didn’t he? I’m not asking you to pretend to like this guy, I’m asking you to at least find out more about him first, ok?”
Damn her and her reasonable thinking and convincing words, the big hypocrite, acting like she hadn’t tried and sometimes succeeded in scaring off her fair share of their friend’s shitty partners.
Still, out of the goodness of her heart, Andy decides to give this mystery man a chance. It’s not like she has a choice; the threat of being subjected to Joe’s big sad eyes if she even dares to be mean to his boyfriend is enough incentive to play nice.
It’s still hard, though. Now that he’s home, every time the subject veers towards the trip, Joe will devolve into waxing poetry about the guy (“He has a name, babe” “A stupid one. How can you expect me to trust a grown man who goes by a nickname, huh?” “Your name is literally Andy”), and by the time he finishes she’s sore from all the pinching Quynh does to keep her from making any unwanted comments.
Then one day Joe carries his laptop into their apartment like it’s the holy grail, and Andy knows it’s finally time for a proper introduction.
He plugs it in (has to, really; that brick he calls a computer sucks energy like it’s parched. She knows it because hers is the exact same model; they bought them together, and both refuse to change to a better one) and places it on the coffee table in the middle of their living room, nervous fingers fumbling when booting it up, sweaty palms rubbing against his jeans as he waits for the screen to load.
Andy and Quynh sit beside him on the sofa, one on each side. They spend the few minutes between Joe to clicking on the call button and the boyfriend picking up side-eying each other as discreetly as they can, which isn’t very discreet at all. Not that their friend would ever notice.
Don’t scare him off, Quynh’s eyes beg.
That goes for you too, Andy’s pointed eyebrow raise says.
The call connects.
Hm. Not what she was expecting.
The man on the laptop screen looks nothing like any of Joe’s old flames, and that’s already a point in his favour; broad-shouldered and mousy-haired, there’s something paradoxical about his face that Andy can’t quite describe right now, simultaneously unassuming and statuesque, like he’s someone you could see walking on the street or displayed in a museum. He’s got a big nose, bright eyes, and the type of freckles you’d get by being white in a tropical country scattered sparingly across his cheeks.
Were she in the mood for compliments, Andy would call him handsome.
“Oi, gatinho!” Joe greets, and his friends don’t need to know Portuguese to know he’s butchering it, probably on purpose if the exasperated but fond look his boyfriend sends him is any indication.
“Oi, Joe.” The connection is a bit spotty, yet all three of them there on the other side can hear the slight catch of his accent on the J, and all three of them can see how his entire body sags the moment he sees the man in question.
“Hi, Nicky.” Joe repeats it in English, just for the sake of saying it again.
“Hi, habibi.”
Nicky’s answering smile is small. It’s enough for Joe to melt.
Andy wonders if she and Quynh should do this another time and let the two lovebirds be this sickening by themselves, but before she can catch her wife’s attention, her friend seems to remember the reason for the call.
“Uh, guys,” Clearing his throat, he gestures from the women to the screen. “This is my boyfriend, Nicky. Nicky, this is Andy and Quynh. My best friends.”
“Hallo.” Nicky says, a tremble hanging onto his vowels.
On the other side of Joe, Quynh stifles a laugh, which doesn’t go unnoticed.
“Oh, no, did I say it wrong?”
“No, no!” the woman rushes to reassure him. “It’s just- the Dutch language still gets me sometimes. Your pronunciation is perfect, though!”
On the other side of the world, Nicky blushes. “Thank you. Or, uh, bedankt. I have been learning.”
“And learning quickly!” His boyfriend interrupts. “At this rate, you’ll be speaking fluent Dutch before I get to intermediary Portuguese!”
They share a laugh while Quynh sends her a look behind Joe’s back. She’s doing a very poor job of holding back a smile, dark eyes glinting, cheeks reddening like she’s trying not to breathe, and Andy's heart is so full an actual snort finds its way out through her nose, embarrassingly loud. She doesn’t mind it.
When Joe cuts off mid conversation to look at her in alarm, the older linguist shakes her head and throws an arm around his shoulders, hand outstretched so Quynh can lace their fingers together on the other side.
She turns back to the screen and smiles at Nicky.