FOLDING OVER HER LINOLEUM SMILE
AN: It's different and I like it. Possibly the saddest thing I've ever written.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. The first line is based on a Fall Out Boy song: "Calm Before the Storm" ('What meant the world imploded faded and demoted. All my oxygen to product gas and suffocated my last chance') and the line 'You always fold up before you're found out' is also a lyric from a song by Fall Out Boy, I forget which one. Monica was showing Phoebe how to fold napkins in TOW The Rumor. The "barn dance" line was from that episode.
- the world had imploded and taken away the last bit of oxygen, leaving him to suffocate in the buzzing silence and messiness that Monica would never stand for.
For some reason, all that came to mind when he thought of her was the way she folded napkins (which was distinctly unfair, if God was listening). Her blue eyes still burned a laser-hot etching into his skull, and her bright sun-burnt smile could always hover just at the edge of his vision, taunting him with it's elusiveness when he didn't think not to turn around.
But it wasn't her.
This faux smile reminded of him of the cold, cracked linoleum Monica had obsessed over, pale hands trembling as she scrubbed furiously.
"I just want everything to look nice," she had reassured him.
('You just want something to be right')
And he'd stumbled on that same crack that she'd given up on trying to cover, as her face flickered to death in his peripheral vision.
He hadn't thought not to turn around.
And the only true, real, Monica thing he could remember was how she'd folded over napkins. The faint but firm creases Monica would smooth with the edge of her thumbnail. He remembered the look of pure horror on Phoebe's face as Monica showed her how to fold them into the shape of swans, and the returning expression of concentration set in her features as she attempted a horse.
"We're not at a barn dance," she had told Phoebe once.
('Honey, you've never been very good at origami')
He had stopped fighting against the comparisons:
Her hands; tan and freckled and smooth and a contrast against the white linen; strong and sure and nimble fingers running distractedly over the fabric as he planted kisses at her temple.
('You never seemed to mind')
Her hands: paler; trembling with something other than desire, seeming almost too frail to smooth out the crinkles in the fabric with her fingers, yet alone attempt to handle the iron.
('You would always fold up before you were found out')
The napkins sat at the bottom of the linen closet, and Chandler felt it would be appropriate for them to be yellow at the edges; like an old love letter, but they were as clean and white as if Monica had laid them there yesterday; just a little bit more crumpled.
Her hands; almost yellow with something he desperately wished was age, forming new wrinkles by frequently clenching the napkins in her hands, as though to ward off invisible demons.
"In ancient times, people blamed everything on demons. Demons or the Gods."
(Sometimes Chandler wished he wouldn't remember so much from college. Even more, he wished he could blame one of the two. Another thing to add to his list of why technology sucks).
Her hands; still for the first time since he had met her, folded peacefully across her chest; a stark white against deep black (lint-less black- only the cleanest for Monica.)
('You always wanted everything to look nice.')