I held a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: " 'Twill keep."
I woke and chid my honest fingers, --
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.
-Emily Dickenson
---
An Amethyst Remembrance
by Richard Lawson
---
Joey Tribbiani re-read the lines another time, then sighed and let the pages fall closed. No real need to spend any more time with them. He only had three lines in one scene.
Instead, he looked around the apartment. So much emptier without Rachel's things. So many gaps and spaces where her stuff used to be. Two weeks it had been, and he still didn't have the courage to try and replace them. It felt sacrilegious somehow.
It wasn't like she was far away. The move to Paris had turned into a move across the street into Ross's apartment. He'd run into her a couple of times at the coffee house already. But it felt different, they were no longer everyday buddies, just good friends that saw each other occasionally. And that was not something he really wanted to accept.
With an even heavier sigh, he got up and forced himself to clean out Chick Jr. and Duck Jr.'s box. They were both growing very quickly. He wondered how big they would get before Monica and Chandler saw them again.
When that was done, he looked around one more time. With an annoyed grunt, he decided he needed to get out. Some new scenery would make a world of difference.
Grabbing his jacket - summer hadn't quite taken hold yet - he stormed out the door. As he opened the door, his eyes fell on the numbered door opposite his. As always, his stomach lurched. That door had barely been a barrier before, just a momentary delay before going inside to the company of people he knew so well. Now some other couple, in their early fifties by the look of them, had taken over the apartment. They had smiled when he'd introduced himself to them but had quickly ended the conversation. They seemed to want to be left alone. Their apartment was now and forever off-limits to him.
It was too much. All these changes, all of them bad. Great, but bad. Everyone was growing up and growing apart. Everyone had kids now. Everyone.
The hundred steps took him to the coffee house. He looked around, but no Rachel, no Ross. Chandler promised to stop by during lunch once he returned to work, but that wouldn't be for another month. Stupid paternity leaves.
To his great surprise, though, he saw very familiar long blonde hair spilling down the head of someone sitting at the couch. A smile split his face, and he walked around the end of the couch to sit in a chair facing it. "Hey Pheebs."
"Hey!" Phoebe Buffay-Hannigan grinned at him. In all his years of knowing her, Joey found himself enjoying each and every wide, tooth-filled smile she gave. Watching her smile had become one of his favorite pastimes.
"So watcha doing?" Joey looked over at the bar, to see one of the servers looking at him questioningly. He nodded and she began making his usual blend.
"Oh, kinda of just hanging out. I don't have any appointments until three, and I thought, why not come here?" Her smile dimmed slightly as she looked around. "Of course, there was a reason not to come here. All the positive energy is gone."
Joey frowned, took a large cup from the server, and looked around. The customers around him didn't look unusually unhappy. "You're saying none of these people is, y'know, feeling good?"
"Oh, they are pretty much... except for him and him." She pointed at two men sitting near the window. "But... it's not fulfilling. It's not directed at me anymore. It's like the building is saying, go away, you don't belong here any more, I prefer younger perkier people."
A kind of cold feeling settled around Joey. He was over thirty but not yet forty, and other than that he didn't like to be too specific. Phoebe was a couple of years older than he was, and although she was still hot, he could see lines beginning to form around her eyes and her neck was no longer the perfectly smooth elegant thing it used to be. The familiar resentment began to grow inside him. Why did people have to grow old? It made no sense.
"Well, you should have called me," he managed to say. "I could have come and filled it up with all sorts of energy. I'd grab the building by the arm and tell it, you better like my friend Phoebe or there's gonna be trouble!"
Phoebe's diminishing smile was revived temporarily. "That's sweet, but you can't tell buildings things like that. They have a way of ignoring what you want and doing their own thing."
A bit of despair welled up. "Well, you still should have called me. No need to sit here all by yourself."
"Well, I did want to think." Phoebe picked up her own cup and held it in front of her face, not drinking from it. "And I wanted to think in a warm, happy place. But I can't go to the apartment because it's not our place to go to any more, and I can't go to your place because it's too close, the other apartment misses us too much and I'd hear it crying. So I thought this would be the nice place, but it's not anymore. I don't have any happy places any more."
"Ah, c'mon Pheebs." Joey cast about desperately. "What about your place? That's happy, isn't it?"
"Yes." Phoebe looked down at her cup, then put it on the table. "But it's too full of Mike, and I needed to think in a place that isn't screaming Mike all the time."
"Why? What's wrong? You guys aren't having problems are you?" Joey tried to recall the last time he'd seen Phoebe and Mike. Just before Chandler and Monica had moved. They had seemed really happy, still in that post-wedding haze.
"Problems?" Phoebe looked at Joey, her eyes slowly focusing on his. "No, no problems. But you see, I'm pregnant, and I'm not certain we're really ready for that."
Joey's eyes widened. "Pregnant?"
"Yeah." She picked up her cup, tipped it slightly so he could look inside. "Herbal tea, see? No more coffee."
Blankly, Joey stared at it. "But, but I thought you guys wanted kids! You told him you wanted a whole bunch!"
"Well, not right away!" Phoebe set the cup on the table a little forcibly. "I don't even have the musical score ready and the Germans haven't declared war yet!"
Joey blinked again. Phoebe's thought processes could be flaky but they usually followed some internal logic. This particular chain he couldn't quite follow. "Pheebs?" he tried prompting.
"It's too soon!" She paused. "It doesn't... feel right."
"Er, why not?"
"I don't know." Phoebe clasped her hands in her lap and looked down at them. "I don't know that... we've... connected enough for this. We're still too separate, he's still a stranger."
"Oh, c'mon." Joey couldn't keep the irritation from his face. "He knows us! He's played a game with Monica, heard Chandler tell a badly-timed joke, had hours of conversation alone with Ross, and he still loves you. There aren't many guys in the world like that... hold on to him!"
Phoebe's smile was genuine but still a bit restrained. "You're sweet, you always were."
"Were? Still am!" Joey thumped his chest proudly.
"Of course." She stood up and bent down to kiss him on the cheek. "Thanks. Now, I think I have to go tell him."
"Right now?"
Phoebe hesitated. "Maybe not... right now. Maybe in a day or two. Or three." She whirled abruptly and left.
Morosely, Joey sipped at his coffee. It was all falling apart, everywhere. Phoebe, how could Phoebe be worried? He hadn't realized how much he'd been looking forward to being put in a good mood because of her. Now he was only slipping deeper into a funk.
Sipping his coffee, Joey did something he tried to avoid as much as possible: he thought deeply about the future.
---
Ross Geller stared at his computer, unable to believe what he was reading. Where did these students come up with such stuff? Viciously he began adding his inline comments to the document. Learn your Permian Gastropoda, fella.
The apartment door opened. A woman strode in, carrying an unbelievable number of shopping bags even for her. "Oh my God, what a day."
Ross couldn't help eyeing the packages. "I thought you got all your clothes back from France."
"But they're not right." Rachel Green dropped the bags, which fell all over the floor, and randomly began pulling stuff out of them. "I have to where a whole new wardrobe for this job, which means a whole new set of accessories, which means new jewelry, new makeup, everything. Do you like this scarf?"
"It's great." His eyes were drawn towards Emma, who was already reaching into one of the bags. With a delighted squeal she pulled out a shoe and began shaking it.
"Not the Stuart Weitzman!" Rachel carefully stepped through the bags and gently took the shoe. As Emma said, "Hey!", Rachel began haphazardly pushing various bags aside. She finally found what she was looking for and extracted a plushie alligator. She handed it to Emma, who took it uncertainly. Gently, Rachel turned Emma around and guided her away from the bags. "Isn't that silly? It looks like the stuff Daddy's always digging up, doesn't it?"
Ross bit back an urge to comment that he didn't dig anything up and that alligators were not part of his field of study. The distraction was working as Emma began to shake the alligator while giggling at it.
Rachel turned back to the bags and grabbed a few of them by the handles. "I had soooo much to shop for, it's not even funny."
"No, it's not. Is that why you missed dinner?"
"Oh, please, Ross." She spun and left the room.
Thinning his lips, Ross turned back to the computer. He typed a few more choice comments, paused, erased them, then closed the document. Now was not the time.
Rachel strode back in, grabbed a few more. "So are you going to help or what?"
Ross worked his jaw a bit but stood up. He grabbed a few of the bags and followed Rachel back into the bedroom. Already she had a pile of empty bags to one side and assorted clothes on the bed. Rachel dropped the bags she was carrying on the bed, began pulling out their contents and placing them in certain areas on the bed.
Ross simply stood there. While he didn't have Rachel's experience with shopping, he knew enough to know this wasn't cheap. "So exactly how much money did you spend?"
"Oh, I charged all of it. I'd made some room on my credit cards for what I'd need to buy in Paris but when that didn't happen, I could use it all for this." Rachel spun a skirt around in her hands, examining it closely for no reason Ross could fathom.
"Y'know, just because you have room on your credit cards, that doesn't mean you should use it."
"I told you I need to!" Rachel spared him a cross glance. "I'm going to be a seller, which means I have to wear a whole different set of clothes and make a entirely different statement with them. It's important for what I'm going to need to do." She threw the skirt back into the bag it had come from and tossed the bag back towards the door.
"Rachel." Ross carefully tried to control his tone. "We have to be careful about spending money. We will need to spend a lot on Emma, and we need to have a reserve for emergencies. We can't just spend it all on frivolities."
"These are not frivolities!" Rachel spun on him. "They're what I need to do my job. And when they start paying me, then I'll have enough money for Emma and your precious reserve."
"Can you really say that all this stuff..." Ross waved his hands around, "...is absolutely necessary for your job?"
"Yes, it absolutely is! Except for that skirt." Rachel turned her head to the side, looked down on the bed. "And maybe this scarf. And the diamond earrings."
"Diamond earrings!" Ross felt his eyes go wide.
"All right, all right, I'll return them." Rachel brushed past him towards the living room. "And a couple of the other things."
Ross followed her. "And you won't buy anything else?"
"Oh be quiet." Rachel was now carefully selecting a few bags. "I know we don't have all the money in the world, but I really do need some of this stuff, so leave me alone."
Ross glanced at Emma, who was currently testing the limits of how far she could open the alligator's mouth. "Please don't yell in front of the baby."
"I'd stop yelling if you'd stop criticizing." Rachel straightened, shot him a glare, and stalked back into the bedroom with a double handful of bags.
Ross retained just enough sense to know that to follow her would be to just allow the arguing to continue. Instead, he sat cross-legged by Emma. He started asking Emma to point out the alligator's eyes, ears, and nose. She responded enthusiastically, and Ross smiled and allowed his worries to dissipate as he spent time with his daughter.
---
Chandler Bing was always tired.
Through eyes that desperately wanted to close, he watched Jack slowly begin to stir. The stirring would soon lead to crying. Then Chandler would have to Jack out of the crib and feed him. Again.
From the other side of the room, Monica called out gently but firmly. "You may as well get him out of there now and start him on the bottle. No sense waiting for him to start screaming first."
"If he's anything like me, he'll appreciate the extra few seconds of sleep." Nevertheless, Chandler lifted the baby out of the crib. Jack began to fuss more and more as Chandler carried him across the room. Sitting next to his wife, Chandler took the remaining bottle from a nearby table and pressed the nipple against Jack's mouth. Jack immediately began suckling on it, to Chandler's relief. No screaming after all.
"Good job, Bing." Monica shifted slightly, elevating Erica a little bit as she fed from her own bottle, and yawned mightily.
Chandler smiled. "Just be glad we don't have to use your breasts for this. That would keep you up."
"Be quiet or we start using your nipples," Monica snapped in a good-natured manner. She looked up at Chandler. "Although... I kinda wish I could, y'know?"
"Yeah." Chandler inwardly began berating himself. This was not a subject he should have broached. Their infertility was still a source of pain for Monica, which even their newly-adopted children couldn't quite salve. "Maybe it'll happen eventually."
"You just want an excuse to keep me all sexed up." Monica lifted a corner of her mouth and looked back down at Erica. "And maybe it will. But this is enough for now."
For now. Words with a slightly ominous tone to them. Chandler, through long practice, decided to ignore that for now. They'd deal with the problem if and when it came up. "So when do they actually sleep through the night?"
"Not for a while, I'm afraid." Monica seemed just as eager for a subject change. "So get used to being tired. It's the price of living with babies."
"Hah. I'm not worried about this. This is the least of my worries. I'm worried that Jack will end with a tattoo that says 'I Hate Dad' and whether or not Erica will be wearing a helmet when she stands up on the back of her boyfriend's motorcyle."
Monica chuckled. "You're just a few years ahead of yourself."
"I know. I'll have plenty of things that will give me a nervous breakdown long before then."
Monica's smile dimmed slightly. "Afraid?"
Chandler look up, met her eyes. "A little."
"A little?"
"Okay, a lot." He bit his lip. "I know moving out here was necessary, I know it was a positive step in our life, I know all the blah-blah-blah about why we needed to do this, but... well, I feel like we're doing a jig on a tightrope without a safety net." Chandler sighed. "They're all in the city and we're here."
"I know." Monica seemed to be struggling with something, then finally looked away. "I'm scared too. Did you have to make me say that?"
Chandler smiled affectionately. "Sorry. I just... need to know if I'm overreacting or not. To know that you feel the same things I do... that helps me a lot."
Monica looked back, a pleased expression on her face. "Good. Validation, that's a good concept. We should do more of that."
"God, I hope not." Chandler looked back down at Jack. "If I wasn't suffering from at least three or four irrational fears I don't know what I'd do with myself."
Monica laughed. Chandler kept the smile on his face and realized that he felt a lot better. No matter what happened, he and Monica would get through it, he was more certain of that than ever.
He just hoped the same would prove true for everyone else they'd left behind.
---
(to be continued)
---
Author's Notes: I anticipate this to be a four-part series at present, perhaps five. We'll see. Any comments you have about this story would be greatly appreciated.
And went to sleep
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: " 'Twill keep."
I woke and chid my honest fingers, --
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.
-Emily Dickenson
---
An Amethyst Remembrance
by Richard Lawson
---
Joey Tribbiani re-read the lines another time, then sighed and let the pages fall closed. No real need to spend any more time with them. He only had three lines in one scene.
Instead, he looked around the apartment. So much emptier without Rachel's things. So many gaps and spaces where her stuff used to be. Two weeks it had been, and he still didn't have the courage to try and replace them. It felt sacrilegious somehow.
It wasn't like she was far away. The move to Paris had turned into a move across the street into Ross's apartment. He'd run into her a couple of times at the coffee house already. But it felt different, they were no longer everyday buddies, just good friends that saw each other occasionally. And that was not something he really wanted to accept.
With an even heavier sigh, he got up and forced himself to clean out Chick Jr. and Duck Jr.'s box. They were both growing very quickly. He wondered how big they would get before Monica and Chandler saw them again.
When that was done, he looked around one more time. With an annoyed grunt, he decided he needed to get out. Some new scenery would make a world of difference.
Grabbing his jacket - summer hadn't quite taken hold yet - he stormed out the door. As he opened the door, his eyes fell on the numbered door opposite his. As always, his stomach lurched. That door had barely been a barrier before, just a momentary delay before going inside to the company of people he knew so well. Now some other couple, in their early fifties by the look of them, had taken over the apartment. They had smiled when he'd introduced himself to them but had quickly ended the conversation. They seemed to want to be left alone. Their apartment was now and forever off-limits to him.
It was too much. All these changes, all of them bad. Great, but bad. Everyone was growing up and growing apart. Everyone had kids now. Everyone.
The hundred steps took him to the coffee house. He looked around, but no Rachel, no Ross. Chandler promised to stop by during lunch once he returned to work, but that wouldn't be for another month. Stupid paternity leaves.
To his great surprise, though, he saw very familiar long blonde hair spilling down the head of someone sitting at the couch. A smile split his face, and he walked around the end of the couch to sit in a chair facing it. "Hey Pheebs."
"Hey!" Phoebe Buffay-Hannigan grinned at him. In all his years of knowing her, Joey found himself enjoying each and every wide, tooth-filled smile she gave. Watching her smile had become one of his favorite pastimes.
"So watcha doing?" Joey looked over at the bar, to see one of the servers looking at him questioningly. He nodded and she began making his usual blend.
"Oh, kinda of just hanging out. I don't have any appointments until three, and I thought, why not come here?" Her smile dimmed slightly as she looked around. "Of course, there was a reason not to come here. All the positive energy is gone."
Joey frowned, took a large cup from the server, and looked around. The customers around him didn't look unusually unhappy. "You're saying none of these people is, y'know, feeling good?"
"Oh, they are pretty much... except for him and him." She pointed at two men sitting near the window. "But... it's not fulfilling. It's not directed at me anymore. It's like the building is saying, go away, you don't belong here any more, I prefer younger perkier people."
A kind of cold feeling settled around Joey. He was over thirty but not yet forty, and other than that he didn't like to be too specific. Phoebe was a couple of years older than he was, and although she was still hot, he could see lines beginning to form around her eyes and her neck was no longer the perfectly smooth elegant thing it used to be. The familiar resentment began to grow inside him. Why did people have to grow old? It made no sense.
"Well, you should have called me," he managed to say. "I could have come and filled it up with all sorts of energy. I'd grab the building by the arm and tell it, you better like my friend Phoebe or there's gonna be trouble!"
Phoebe's diminishing smile was revived temporarily. "That's sweet, but you can't tell buildings things like that. They have a way of ignoring what you want and doing their own thing."
A bit of despair welled up. "Well, you still should have called me. No need to sit here all by yourself."
"Well, I did want to think." Phoebe picked up her own cup and held it in front of her face, not drinking from it. "And I wanted to think in a warm, happy place. But I can't go to the apartment because it's not our place to go to any more, and I can't go to your place because it's too close, the other apartment misses us too much and I'd hear it crying. So I thought this would be the nice place, but it's not anymore. I don't have any happy places any more."
"Ah, c'mon Pheebs." Joey cast about desperately. "What about your place? That's happy, isn't it?"
"Yes." Phoebe looked down at her cup, then put it on the table. "But it's too full of Mike, and I needed to think in a place that isn't screaming Mike all the time."
"Why? What's wrong? You guys aren't having problems are you?" Joey tried to recall the last time he'd seen Phoebe and Mike. Just before Chandler and Monica had moved. They had seemed really happy, still in that post-wedding haze.
"Problems?" Phoebe looked at Joey, her eyes slowly focusing on his. "No, no problems. But you see, I'm pregnant, and I'm not certain we're really ready for that."
Joey's eyes widened. "Pregnant?"
"Yeah." She picked up her cup, tipped it slightly so he could look inside. "Herbal tea, see? No more coffee."
Blankly, Joey stared at it. "But, but I thought you guys wanted kids! You told him you wanted a whole bunch!"
"Well, not right away!" Phoebe set the cup on the table a little forcibly. "I don't even have the musical score ready and the Germans haven't declared war yet!"
Joey blinked again. Phoebe's thought processes could be flaky but they usually followed some internal logic. This particular chain he couldn't quite follow. "Pheebs?" he tried prompting.
"It's too soon!" She paused. "It doesn't... feel right."
"Er, why not?"
"I don't know." Phoebe clasped her hands in her lap and looked down at them. "I don't know that... we've... connected enough for this. We're still too separate, he's still a stranger."
"Oh, c'mon." Joey couldn't keep the irritation from his face. "He knows us! He's played a game with Monica, heard Chandler tell a badly-timed joke, had hours of conversation alone with Ross, and he still loves you. There aren't many guys in the world like that... hold on to him!"
Phoebe's smile was genuine but still a bit restrained. "You're sweet, you always were."
"Were? Still am!" Joey thumped his chest proudly.
"Of course." She stood up and bent down to kiss him on the cheek. "Thanks. Now, I think I have to go tell him."
"Right now?"
Phoebe hesitated. "Maybe not... right now. Maybe in a day or two. Or three." She whirled abruptly and left.
Morosely, Joey sipped at his coffee. It was all falling apart, everywhere. Phoebe, how could Phoebe be worried? He hadn't realized how much he'd been looking forward to being put in a good mood because of her. Now he was only slipping deeper into a funk.
Sipping his coffee, Joey did something he tried to avoid as much as possible: he thought deeply about the future.
---
Ross Geller stared at his computer, unable to believe what he was reading. Where did these students come up with such stuff? Viciously he began adding his inline comments to the document. Learn your Permian Gastropoda, fella.
The apartment door opened. A woman strode in, carrying an unbelievable number of shopping bags even for her. "Oh my God, what a day."
Ross couldn't help eyeing the packages. "I thought you got all your clothes back from France."
"But they're not right." Rachel Green dropped the bags, which fell all over the floor, and randomly began pulling stuff out of them. "I have to where a whole new wardrobe for this job, which means a whole new set of accessories, which means new jewelry, new makeup, everything. Do you like this scarf?"
"It's great." His eyes were drawn towards Emma, who was already reaching into one of the bags. With a delighted squeal she pulled out a shoe and began shaking it.
"Not the Stuart Weitzman!" Rachel carefully stepped through the bags and gently took the shoe. As Emma said, "Hey!", Rachel began haphazardly pushing various bags aside. She finally found what she was looking for and extracted a plushie alligator. She handed it to Emma, who took it uncertainly. Gently, Rachel turned Emma around and guided her away from the bags. "Isn't that silly? It looks like the stuff Daddy's always digging up, doesn't it?"
Ross bit back an urge to comment that he didn't dig anything up and that alligators were not part of his field of study. The distraction was working as Emma began to shake the alligator while giggling at it.
Rachel turned back to the bags and grabbed a few of them by the handles. "I had soooo much to shop for, it's not even funny."
"No, it's not. Is that why you missed dinner?"
"Oh, please, Ross." She spun and left the room.
Thinning his lips, Ross turned back to the computer. He typed a few more choice comments, paused, erased them, then closed the document. Now was not the time.
Rachel strode back in, grabbed a few more. "So are you going to help or what?"
Ross worked his jaw a bit but stood up. He grabbed a few of the bags and followed Rachel back into the bedroom. Already she had a pile of empty bags to one side and assorted clothes on the bed. Rachel dropped the bags she was carrying on the bed, began pulling out their contents and placing them in certain areas on the bed.
Ross simply stood there. While he didn't have Rachel's experience with shopping, he knew enough to know this wasn't cheap. "So exactly how much money did you spend?"
"Oh, I charged all of it. I'd made some room on my credit cards for what I'd need to buy in Paris but when that didn't happen, I could use it all for this." Rachel spun a skirt around in her hands, examining it closely for no reason Ross could fathom.
"Y'know, just because you have room on your credit cards, that doesn't mean you should use it."
"I told you I need to!" Rachel spared him a cross glance. "I'm going to be a seller, which means I have to wear a whole different set of clothes and make a entirely different statement with them. It's important for what I'm going to need to do." She threw the skirt back into the bag it had come from and tossed the bag back towards the door.
"Rachel." Ross carefully tried to control his tone. "We have to be careful about spending money. We will need to spend a lot on Emma, and we need to have a reserve for emergencies. We can't just spend it all on frivolities."
"These are not frivolities!" Rachel spun on him. "They're what I need to do my job. And when they start paying me, then I'll have enough money for Emma and your precious reserve."
"Can you really say that all this stuff..." Ross waved his hands around, "...is absolutely necessary for your job?"
"Yes, it absolutely is! Except for that skirt." Rachel turned her head to the side, looked down on the bed. "And maybe this scarf. And the diamond earrings."
"Diamond earrings!" Ross felt his eyes go wide.
"All right, all right, I'll return them." Rachel brushed past him towards the living room. "And a couple of the other things."
Ross followed her. "And you won't buy anything else?"
"Oh be quiet." Rachel was now carefully selecting a few bags. "I know we don't have all the money in the world, but I really do need some of this stuff, so leave me alone."
Ross glanced at Emma, who was currently testing the limits of how far she could open the alligator's mouth. "Please don't yell in front of the baby."
"I'd stop yelling if you'd stop criticizing." Rachel straightened, shot him a glare, and stalked back into the bedroom with a double handful of bags.
Ross retained just enough sense to know that to follow her would be to just allow the arguing to continue. Instead, he sat cross-legged by Emma. He started asking Emma to point out the alligator's eyes, ears, and nose. She responded enthusiastically, and Ross smiled and allowed his worries to dissipate as he spent time with his daughter.
---
Chandler Bing was always tired.
Through eyes that desperately wanted to close, he watched Jack slowly begin to stir. The stirring would soon lead to crying. Then Chandler would have to Jack out of the crib and feed him. Again.
From the other side of the room, Monica called out gently but firmly. "You may as well get him out of there now and start him on the bottle. No sense waiting for him to start screaming first."
"If he's anything like me, he'll appreciate the extra few seconds of sleep." Nevertheless, Chandler lifted the baby out of the crib. Jack began to fuss more and more as Chandler carried him across the room. Sitting next to his wife, Chandler took the remaining bottle from a nearby table and pressed the nipple against Jack's mouth. Jack immediately began suckling on it, to Chandler's relief. No screaming after all.
"Good job, Bing." Monica shifted slightly, elevating Erica a little bit as she fed from her own bottle, and yawned mightily.
Chandler smiled. "Just be glad we don't have to use your breasts for this. That would keep you up."
"Be quiet or we start using your nipples," Monica snapped in a good-natured manner. She looked up at Chandler. "Although... I kinda wish I could, y'know?"
"Yeah." Chandler inwardly began berating himself. This was not a subject he should have broached. Their infertility was still a source of pain for Monica, which even their newly-adopted children couldn't quite salve. "Maybe it'll happen eventually."
"You just want an excuse to keep me all sexed up." Monica lifted a corner of her mouth and looked back down at Erica. "And maybe it will. But this is enough for now."
For now. Words with a slightly ominous tone to them. Chandler, through long practice, decided to ignore that for now. They'd deal with the problem if and when it came up. "So when do they actually sleep through the night?"
"Not for a while, I'm afraid." Monica seemed just as eager for a subject change. "So get used to being tired. It's the price of living with babies."
"Hah. I'm not worried about this. This is the least of my worries. I'm worried that Jack will end with a tattoo that says 'I Hate Dad' and whether or not Erica will be wearing a helmet when she stands up on the back of her boyfriend's motorcyle."
Monica chuckled. "You're just a few years ahead of yourself."
"I know. I'll have plenty of things that will give me a nervous breakdown long before then."
Monica's smile dimmed slightly. "Afraid?"
Chandler look up, met her eyes. "A little."
"A little?"
"Okay, a lot." He bit his lip. "I know moving out here was necessary, I know it was a positive step in our life, I know all the blah-blah-blah about why we needed to do this, but... well, I feel like we're doing a jig on a tightrope without a safety net." Chandler sighed. "They're all in the city and we're here."
"I know." Monica seemed to be struggling with something, then finally looked away. "I'm scared too. Did you have to make me say that?"
Chandler smiled affectionately. "Sorry. I just... need to know if I'm overreacting or not. To know that you feel the same things I do... that helps me a lot."
Monica looked back, a pleased expression on her face. "Good. Validation, that's a good concept. We should do more of that."
"God, I hope not." Chandler looked back down at Jack. "If I wasn't suffering from at least three or four irrational fears I don't know what I'd do with myself."
Monica laughed. Chandler kept the smile on his face and realized that he felt a lot better. No matter what happened, he and Monica would get through it, he was more certain of that than ever.
He just hoped the same would prove true for everyone else they'd left behind.
---
(to be continued)
---
Author's Notes: I anticipate this to be a four-part series at present, perhaps five. We'll see. Any comments you have about this story would be greatly appreciated.