A/N: Here's my second story dealing with Monica and Chandler trying to have a baby ("Someday Could Be Today" was the first, but they're completely independent of one another). Thank you to a wonderful guest reviewer from "Winning and Losing" for the suggestion for this missing moment. If you have other missing moment ideas you'd like to see, please let me know! Thanks to everyone who has reviewed and favorited any of my fics; it seriously means the world to me. Please enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Friends, but some dialogue is taken from "TOW Phoebe's Birthday Dinner."
Chandler took a deep breath and forced his face into the closest thing to smile he could manage as he saw Phoebe and the rest of their friends sitting at a small table in the corner of the restaurant. He noticed Monica, slightly in front of him, doing the same. Neither one had spoken to the other on their short cab ride from the apartment to the restaurant for Phoebe's birthday dinner, and Chandler had been completely fine with that. He was outraged at what Monica had done to him.
He knew his wife had every right to be mad at him for smoking, but pretending to forgive him just so he would have sex with her since she was ovulating? Chandler was not going to take this lightly. She had lied to him and hadn't even considered apologizing. Yeah, he had tried to lie to her too, but Chandler was still upset.
"Happy Birthday!" Monica said beside him, the cheerfulness in her greeting not even close to genuine as they reached their friends.
"Son of a bitch!" Chandler heard Joey exclaim in front of them.
Phoebe looked up at them, clearly having just as bad a time as he and Monica were. "Where– where have you been?"
"Well," Monica answered, her smile dropping as she turned to Chandler, but reappearing when she faced the group again, "we had a little fight."
Chandler dropped any pretense of pleasantness that he had had, staring hard at Monica even as she looked down at the rest of the gang. "I would never lie to get someone into bed," he said seriously.
Monica looked at him exasperatedly. "You used to tell girls you were a Kennedy!"
As Monica turned away, Chandler had to laugh slightly to himself at the memory.
Two waiters brought over chairs for him and Monica to pull up to the tiny table.
"Wow! It's a little tight, isn't it?" Monica said. "Why didn't you get a bigger table?"
Phoebe and Joey glared at her.
"You– you had a big table, but they made you move," Monica answered her own question quietly. "Shut up, Monica"
She began to look through her menu as she spoke out loud. "Well, I suppose that Chandler will have the smoked duck."
"And I suppose that Monica will have the manipulative shrew," Chandler fired back at his wife, just as angry as he had been when they entered the restaurant, if not more so.
Joey looked over to Chandler's menu curiously. "How did I miss that?"
Chandler closed the menu and rolled his eyes at his friend.
"I'll give you another minute," the waiter said walking away.
"He said she wanted the shrew!" Chandler head Joey call, upset, as he got up and followed the waiter.
Ross began to berate Rachel for being an obsessive mother, as Rachel attempted to make fun of him in return. Finally, Joey returned to the table, and Phoebe suggested Chandler and Monica order.
"No, no, it's okay," Joey explained. "I already told the waiter what they want."
"Why would you do that?" Monica asked, evidently appalled.
Joey looked from Monica to Chandler. "Chandler, control your woman."
Chandler wasn't quite sure what to do with that command.
Rachel decided to propose a toast to Phoebe, but almost immediately began worrying about Emma again, as the baby had dropped her sock. Chandler and Monica discovered that Emma was actually over at the restaurant's bar with Judy Geller, much to Monica's dismay as she had tried to have lunch with her mother that day, only to have her mother tell her that she was out of town.
Chandler could tell that Phoebe was growing more and more upset with the turn of events. She finally cracked, standing up and yelling "Pick up the sock! PICK UP THE SOCK! PICK UP THE SOCK!" at Judy across the restaurant.
Then Phoebe turned back to the gang. "I'm sorry, was that rude? Did my little outburst blunt the hideousness that is this evening? Look, I know you all have a lot going on, but all I wanted to do was have dinner with my friends on my birthday. And you are all so late, and you didn't even have the courtesy to call!" Her phone began to ring as if on cue. "Well, it's too late now!" she said to the group sitting at the table with her.
"Pheebs, I don't think that's us," Ross intoned.
"Oh, well," Phoebe picked the phone up from the table. "This is– this is– this is not over!" she finished dramatically before moving away from the table to answer the call.
Ross and Rachel, after a slight threat on Rachel's part, came to the collective decision that they should have been stronger and left Emma at home.
Then Joey turned to Chandler and Monica. "And what is going on with you two?"
"Well, you see, I'm ovulating," Monica began.
"Oh yeah, that's what she says," Chandler interrupted, "but maybe you're not ovulating at all! Maybe this is all a clever ruse to get me into bed!"
"Yes, monkey, that's what it was," Monica responded sarcastically. "I just can't get enough!"
"You're not gonna believe this," Chandler explained, turning to Joey. "She lied. She tricked me into having sex with her!"
Joey looked at him for a moment as though waiting for some other information. "So?" he said finally. "You got to have sex right?"
Chandler looked blankly into the air for a moment. "What's the matter with me? Why am I such a girl?"
Joey patted his arm sympathetically.
Chandler turned to Monica. He was still upset about what had happened, but, when it came down to it, if this ended up being the time that Monica got pregnant, he would be so incredibly happy that it wouldn't matter. It's not like he was completely innocent in this, anyway. They just needed to talk it out, and it would be okay.
Chandler moved his hand to Monica's back, as she looked at him, clearly much less upset than she had been all night.
"Are we good?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Chandler smiled slightly and gave her the ghost of a nod. "We'll figure it out."
Phoebe came back to the table, and Rachel told her that they were all sorry and that they were completely there for her. Phoebe seemed in much better spirits, thanking them, but then deciding to go off and meet up with Mike instead.
After Phoebe left, Ross and Rachel decided to head out too, worrying about Judy's alcohol consumption at the bar as she watched Emma.
"I guess it's just us," Joey said, switching seats to be across from Monica and Chandler.
Chandler looked down slightly awkwardly. He really just wanted to be with Monica so they could talk things out and make the most of the little time they had together before he had to go back to Tulsa.
"So, um, I'm probably still ovulating," Monica said casually, turning to him and offering a small smile. "Do you want to give it another try?"
"Alright," Chandler replied, smiling back at her. "So you've never had sex with a Kennedy, have you?" he said, using his line from the couple of times he tried to pick up girls by pretending to be a Kennedy.
"Oh, actually, Richard was a Kennedy on his mother's side," Monica replied as she smiled at him.
Chandler hated Richard. "Why did you break up with that guy?" he asked, almost scandalized.
Monica gave him a weird look for a moment and then reached down to grab her purse.
"You- you're gonna go do it now?" Joey asked, confused.
"We don't have much time," Monica explained. "Once the egg descends into the fallopian tube–"
Joey made several disgusted noises, closing his eyes and putting his hands up to stop her. "Get out of here!"
Chandler smiled slightly as he pulled his chair out of the way so Monica could walk in front of him.
The pair made it out of the restaurant before Chandler spoke. "I do think we should talk about this first, though."
Monica turned back to him, a small smile still on her face as she nodded. "Yeah, we should. Can I go first?"
"Go ahead," Chandler replied, taking her hand, as the pair started walking the couple blocks to the nearest subway station, instead of taking a cab.
"I'm sorry I came down so hard on you about the smoking thing," Monica began. "I know it's really tough for you, but I just get so worried about what could happen to you if you start again. Smoking is so bad for you." She looked up at him, her eyes clearly worried.
Chandler was struck by how much he loved his wife as he stopped walking, causing Monica to stop too. "You had every right to get mad at me for smoking, Mon," Chandler replied, moving his free hand to Monica's upper arm. "I know it's terrible for me, and we're trying to have a baby now, so it's not just my life it would affect. I love you way too much to let something this stupid get in the way of anything. You're so much more important to me than cigarettes." Chandler paused for a moment, thinking, before adding "or anything else really." He smiled down at his wife, rubbing her arm lightly. "I'm sorry. You know I can't promise I won't ever smoke again; I'm sure I'll cave sometime – no willpower, as you pointed out earlier – but I'll promise to try even harder not to: for me, for you, and for hopefully a little baby boy or girl sometime soon."
Monica smiled brightly back at him, her head tilted slightly to the side. "That's good enough for me." She leaned in and kissed him quickly. "I love you."
"I love you, too," Chandler said, as they began walking again.
Monica spoke again after a few moments. "But, um, about trying to have a baby. I'm sorry about lying to you earlier, too. That wasn't fair to you, and that's not how I want our baby to be conceived. You didn't deserve any of that, and I was wrong to do that to you."
"It's okay," Chandler replied, his anger at the situation rapidly dissipating. "I want a baby just as badly as you do, and, honestly, if you got pregnant from that, I would just be so happy to be having a baby with you that it wouldn't even matter." Chandler smiled at his wife, but then clarified, "I mean, please don't do it again because I really hated that, but–"
"Chandler!" Monica stopped him, laughing, before he could keep rambling. "Of course I'll never do that again. Don't worry." She squeezed his hand lightly, and he pressed hers back as the made their way down into the subway station.
The two were silent during the short trip home, but Chandler's hand never left Monica's.
As they exited the train and made their way up onto the sidewalk and back to their building, all Chandler could think about was how much he loved Monica and how much he wanted them to have a baby together. As upset as the idea had made him earlier, Chandler almost hoped that Monica had gotten pregnant during their fight; it would be less of a wait before they finally had a baby of their own.
When they finally made it back to the apartment, Chandler started heading for the bedroom, but Monica stopped him. "Can we agree on one thing?"
Chandler looked at his wife curiously.
She continued. "You're here so little as it is; can we try our hardest not to fight about stupid stuff with what time we do get to spend together?"
Chandler smiled hugely at her as he brought his hands together around her waist. "Of course we can. Fighting's such a waste of time anyway."
Monica nodded in reply, laughing slightly as she moved her hands around his neck. "So, I'm ovulating?"
"Well then we have to make the most of that, don't we?" Chandler replied, leaning in and kissing his wife. It would take more than a silly fight over lying and smoking to mess with what he and Monica had. Though, of course, hopefully what they would have soon would be a baby. But even if they had to wait a few more months before she got pregnant, Chandler at least had Monica, and that was more than enough.
A/N: Thanks for reading, and reviews are actually the best.