A/N: Originally written as a gift for someone who was a fan of Friends.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters or ideas created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman. I only borrowed them for the entertainment and amusement of my audience.
SUMMARY: When Jenn moves into her apartment building, she meets a group of six friends who hang out next door. Meanwhile, not everything is as it should be in her own apartment.
GENRE: Comedy
RATING: PG
DEDICATION: To Jenn, for being a totally awesome individual.
DATE COMPLETED: December 24, 2009
::~*~::
Two hours after getting the key to her very first New York apartment, Jenn was completely moved in. It would have been quite the miracle had she accomplished it all by herself, but after two trips up and down the stairs, she had bumped into some of her new neighbors who were coming back from a local coffee shop. After the quick introductions (Monica, Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Joey and Phoebe), they had all offered to help her move in. Seven pairs of hands instead of just one made quick work of it and now Jenn was left to unpack the stacks of boxes littering her living room. Especially as she had a dinner engagement at Monica's apartment right next door later that evening.
::~*~::
After another few hours of hard labor, Jenn stumbled to the A/C controls with sweat dripping down into her eyes. As she turned the dial to the coolest she dared set it (and keep her bill within reason), relief flooded through her as she felt the first wisp of cool air blow across her face. After the unit got fully up and working, she started to hear a soft clunking noise in it. She turned it off and the noise went away. Turning it back on again, the noise eventually came back. Staring determinedly at the A/C unit, she turned around and rifled through a couple of boxes. Finding what she was looking for, she set a small toolbox on the floor in front of the unit. Pulling out a screwdriver, she undid the screws and pried the cover off. Inside she found a small, black cylindrical object connected to a cord that disappeared back into the depths of the unit. Pulling the small object up, she peered closely at it. She was astonished to see, what looked like, a tiny lens set into it. The object fell from her limp fingers.
Someone's watching me! They're spying on me! she thought. Don't be silly, Jenn. The previous owner was probably paranoid and installed this. Just pull it out and dispose of it. So thinking, she ripped the camera out of the vent and tossed it into her growing pile of garbage. Looking dismally at the pile, she realized that she was going to have to take the garbage down soon or risk it overtaking her apartment.
::~*~::
Jenn stood out on her balcony, breathing heavily. It had taken multiple trips up and down the stairs to get all the trash out of her apartment. Around the third trip, she had fleetingly entertained the idea of asking her new neighbors to possibly help her, but she had banished the idea fairly quickly. She wouldn't be on good terms with them if she asked too much, too soon.
On that third trip down, she started feeling someone watching her. Looking around her as she went down, she couldn't see anyone and dismissed the feeling as just a slight case of paranoia due to the camera she had found. But, on subsequent trips, she couldn't shake the feeling.
Finally, she had finished up and was enjoying the outdoor weather on her balcony during her brief respite. Voices from the next balcony floated across to her and she moved closer to the railing to hear who they were, knowing that it was Monica's apartment. There were two distinct voices.
"I can't believe that you did that for Monica and me. That means a lot."
"Come on, you're my friends. Besides, I read somewhere that women secretly find ministers very appealing. Can you imagine all the girls I'd get with this ordination?" There was a pause. "What's that look for?"
"Hang on. I'm still wrapping my head around the fact that you actually read something. Are you feeling alright?"
"Hey! I can read! I just don't like to. It's all that puppy's fault."
"Puppy? What puppy?"
"The puppy that got lost when he tried to find his way home. He made lots of friends along the way but he was always sad because he couldn't find home. It was so sad that I couldn't finish it." There was some sniffling.
"Do you mean Pokey's Great Adventure? A children's book made you cry? I read that book as a kid. It had a happy ending. Pokey got home in the end. I can't believe that a book you read as a kid tainted you to the joy of reading."
"Umm, well, I wasn't exactly a kid when I read it..."
"Really. When did you read it?"
Jenn was finding the conversation enlightening to her neighbors' personalities, so, despite the fact that she was eavesdropping, she couldn't pull herself away from the railing. There was a quiet response that Jenn couldn't quite make out.
"Last month?! That's...that's great, Joey." Jenn smiled as she sat herself on her balcony ledge to see over the wall that separated the two balconies.
"Hey, guys. I came out here on the balcony and I heard you two talking, so I thought I'd say hi." She recognized both Chandler and Joey from earlier. They turned around at her greeting and moved closer to the wall to chat with her. Both were holding beer bottles as they stood around.
"How's the unpacking coming?" Chandler asked.
"Oh, it's very tiring. I just got done with running up and down the stairs multiple times taking trash out. Now I'm just taking a breather before jumping back into it."
"You should have asked for help with that," Chandler replied. "I'm sure Joey would have loved to help you out." They both looked at Joey who was staring at Jenn until Chandler elbowed him in the side.
"Yeah, yeah! I would have totally helped you out." Jenn laughed with the others as she discreetly sized Joey up. He was cute, but based on the conversation she had overheard, he definitely sounded like a player. Hmmm...not totally what I'm in to, but hey, every once in a while, a girl just needs some company for a night.
They had just started talking about their different lines of work, when a door slamming in Monica's apartment jolted the conversation to a stop. There was a frustrated scream of annoyance and the sound of something being slung across the living room.
"It sounds like Rachel didn't have a good afternoon," Chandler said, turning back to face Jenn. Joey pursed his lips in an O-shape as he turned back to Jenn, too. They stayed in a somewhat uncomfortable silence as Rachel stormed around the apartment for a few more minutes before Monica kicked her out onto the balcony with the guys.
"How can guys be so stupid?" she shrieked. "Ooh! I just want to wring their filthy, scrawny, no-good necks!"
"Hey now! Not all guys are that bad," Joey protested.
Rachel gave him a look of pure venom. "Don't you start with me or I will add you to my hit list of insanely, incompetent scumbags."
"Well, I can't have that, now can I? It would ruin my reputation. Come here, let's have some Joey bonding time."
Rachel looked like she was about ready to punch Joey, but one look at his adorably innocent expression and she had to smile. "Alright, one hug...but I doubt it will help."
Joey and Rachel embraced in a hug worthy of a Hallmark commercial...until Rachel spoke. "Back, Joey! Put your hands on my BACK! Not down there!" There was some good-natured chuckling between them all and Rachel's spirits soon began to improve with witty conversation flowing.
Pretty soon, Jenn looked down at her watch and noticed that time had flown by. She now had two hours before the dinner party and the boxes crowding her living room looked like barely a dent had been made. Excusing herself with assurances to meet up in a couple of hours, she hopped off the ledge and went back into her apartment.
::~*~::
The next morning dawned bright and humid. Jenn had no desire to leave her bed, but the penetrating sunlight would give her no rest. Heaving herself out of the bed, she stumbled to her closet to pull on some clean, but old clothes. She was going to spend the majority of the day cleaning, so she saw no point in showering just yet, especially as she had quickly showered the night before, prior to going to dinner.
Last night had been amazing. She had had a blast hanging out with her neighbors and they definitely included her as if she had been a member of the gang all along and not just for less than a day. Many a time she had sat back and watched them interact with each other and she absolutely loved how close their small group was. After the elaborate dinner that Monica had spent "day and night slaving over," they had just hung out chatting for a time before breaking out a deck of cards and playing an impromptu game of poker. Joey had enthusiastically been all for a rousing game of strip poker but everyone else voted him down. Except for Jenn, who was too embarrassed to say a word. She had left well after midnight and had finally calmed down enough to fall into a dream filled sleep around two in the morning.
She hadn't been working for twenty minutes before she had to yield to the extremely hot day and finally put on the A/C. She turned back to unpack some more boxes when she heard the familiar faint clunking noise from the vent again. Vaulting over boxes, she grabbed the cover and tried to pry it off. In her blind rage, she forgot about the screws holding it in place and finally had to grab the screwdriver to work the screws loose. Yanking the cover off, she peered into the gloom of the vent. Sitting right where it had been the day before was the miniature camera. Grabbing it in her hands she yanked it out of the vent again. Okay, stay calm, Jenn. Clearly you only imagined pulling it out yesterday and throwing it away. No, you didn't. You did pull it out. You did throw it away. Someone snuck in and installed this one. In a frenzy, Jenn started running throughout the apartment, pulling the vent covers off of the vents in her apartment. Every one of them contained a mini camera.
Panicking, she rushed out of the apartment. Her phone service hadn't been hooked up yet and she had forgotten to charge her cell phone while she slept, but she knew she needed to call the authorities. Having nowhere else to really turn, she knocked forcefully on Monica's door. It took a couple of agonizing minutes, but the door was finally answered. By Rachel.
"It is way too early for this," she said. She had obviously been in the middle of a sound sleep.
"Is Monica in by chance," Jenn asked. She kept throwing worried glances at her apartment door. Rachel noticed this and immediately asked, "Is everything alright?"
Jenn hesitated only a second before laying out her concerns to Rachel. Rachel invited her in and started the coffee maker while she tried to help figure out why there were cameras in Jenn's apartment. She had just served up two cups of coffee, when the front door burst open and Joey appeared wearing nothing more than boxers and holding a baseball bat up in front of him.
"What's going on?"
Rachel's jaw dropped at his unexpected entrance. "Joey! You scared the crap out of us. What is the matter with you?" She punched him in the shoulder.
"What are you talking about? I heard pounding and came over to make sure everything was alright and you weren't in any kind of trouble." He straightened up a bit when he spied Jenn sitting in the corner at the table. He even went so far as to flex his biceps a little, which elicited a small smile from Jenn.
"Everything is fine for the moment, but Jenn's run into a problem. Someone installed hidden cameras in her apartment."
Joey lowered the bat as he straightened up. With concern in his voice, he asked, "What? That's terrible."
"Yeah, Joey," Rachel said. Turning to Jenn, she asked, "Any idea who may have done it?"
Jenn took a sip of her coffee. "I have no clue. I ripped one out of the A/C vent yesterday and there was another one in there this morning that wasn't there yesterday. It must have been someone who had a key."
"I have an idea," Joey said enthusiastically. Rachel and Jenn looked at him expectantly. "I will offer to sleep on your floor tonight and catch the person doing this."
"Joey!" Rachel retorted. "She is not going to sleep with you, so drop it."
Joey affected a look of utter astonishment at the mere thought of such an idea floating through his head. Jenn, meanwhile, was staring off into space. "You know," she said, distractedly, "that just might help." She looked back at them to see Rachel staring at her, jaw dropped in shock, and Joey staring at her, pleased. "I mean, not the whole sleeping together thing, but maybe having someone else in the apartment would double the chance of catching whoever is doing this. It couldn't hurt."
Rachel looked as though she was going to argue the point, but instead took another sip of her coffee as she thought it over. "I suppose it might help." She seemed unable to come up with a better solution.
"Great! It's settled," Joey said happily.
"Hold on there, cowboy," Rachel said, pulling him back into the room, as he was about ready to march out of the apartment. "No putting the moves on Jenn, no eating her out of house and home, and no sleeping in the buff." Joey's face fell in disappointment, but it didn't last long and soon he had escaped Rachel's clutches.
"Does he really sleep in the nude?" Jenn asked.
"Yep."
::~*~::
When Jenn had returned from her morning trip to Monica's apartment, she had moved throughout the apartment, ripping out hidden cameras as she went. She searched every place she could think of and had even found three more; one put inside the smoke detector, one hidden inside of a statuette she had already unpacked onto her bookshelf and the last was situated in a cleverly concealed hole in the corner of her bathroom. That last one scared her the most.
Pretty soon, it was nighttime again and the gang forewent a big gathering in the evening, so that Jenn's apartment wouldn't be left unattended. Joey and Jenn settled down in her apartment. She had fixed up the couch for him to sleep on and, as they were too on edge to do much talking, they went their separate ways. Joey flopped onto the makeshift bed, arms wrapped around his baseball bat, and Jenn retreated to her bedroom. Silence reigned throughout the apartment.
It was about three in the morning, when Jenn heard the sound of a key scraping in the lock. She hadn't been able to really fall asleep, worry keeping her awake most of the night, so when the sound echoed thru the apartment, she was instantly alert. Creeping out of her bed, she moved into the living room where Joey was snoring softly on the couch. Thankfully, he was wearing a pair of boxers. Gently shaking his shoulder, she almost had a heart attack when he jumped up and almost started shouting. Clamping a hand over his mouth to stifle his shouts, she put a finger to her lips and motioned to the door. Joey nodded and grabbed the bat that had fallen to the floor. Standing behind the door, he waited for the intruder to enter. Realizing that their plot would be exposed prematurely if the door opened and she was seen standing there, she retreated deep into the shadows of the living room, to the other side of a bookshelf.
The door opened and Joey acted. Swinging the bat around, he missed the intruder and ended up slamming the bat into the door, a loud crack thundering across the entire floor. He lost his grip on the bat and without even the slightest hesitation, he leapt on the back of the intruder. The intruder stumbled around trying to dislodge Joey from his back, but he only succeeded in knocking his head hard against the wall, which, in turn, knocked him out.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway and both Joey and Jenn braced for another intruder, but were incredibly relieved when Chandler, Monica and Rachel burst through the door next.
"What on earth happened in here?"
Joey, really proud of himself for taking the stalking intruder out, fairly beamed when he said that they had caught him. "It was so cool! I never knew I had it in me. He was like- and I was like- and we went like- and it was like- Whoa!" Joey was practically reliving the whole thing for the benefit of the group as he bounced around in place punching the air in front of him. "It really got the...the...the thing pumping."
"Adrenaline?" Chandler replied, his tone giving the impression he was talking to a small child.
"Yeah, yeah! That's it!"
"Has anybody actually looked at his face yet?" Rachel asked, bending over to peer into the darkness of the hood draped over his face. The apartment itself was still dark, so she didn't have much luck.
"Nope, not yet," Jenn said, strolling over to the light switch to flip it on. The second the light came on, there was a collective gasp from all but Jenn.
"No!"
"It can't be!"
"You know, I always knew there was something off about him."
"Now I can't help but wonder whether our own apartment is bugged."
"What?" Jenn asked, confused. "Who is this?"
"It's Carl," Monica replied. "He's the building super." She shivered involuntarily as she looked down at him. "That is so creepy. I totally feel sorry for you." She put her arm around Jenn's shoulders and gave her a squeeze.
"We need to call the police," Rachel stated.
"Yeah," Jenn agreed, "but my phone isn't hooked up yet."
"You guys go call the police and Joey and I can stay here and make sure he doesn't go anywhere," Chandler said. Joey proudly thumped his chest as he agreed with Chandler's plan.
::~*~::
An hour later, the group had made their statements to the police and Carl was safely in custody. The blow to his head knocked him out enough to the point where he was still unconscious when the police arrived. After he was frisked, the police said it was a good thing he remained knocked out for the duration of the time as he was actually found to be carrying a concealed weapon. When asked, Carl refused to say why he targeted Jenn and her apartment, or if there were even other bugged apartments. He just kept repeating the same request about wanting to speak to a lawyer.
The police had also mentioned something about securing the services of a specialty team with equipment used to detect bugging devices and just having them run through all of the apartments to make sure there weren't other hidden cameras. Jenn, Chandler, Joey, Rachel and Monica stood on the curb, notably still dressed in various items of sleepwear, and watched the flashing lights of the police vehicles disappear into the night.