A/N: This is a pretty cliché premise for a story, but I wanted to write this anyway, just for fun and because Chandler and Monica are so insanely adorable. There's so many cute things to take from "TOA the Beach" and "TOW the Jellyfish," so I felt that was the necessary setting for this. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Some dialogue and plot points are taken from "TOA the Beach" and "TOW the Jellyfish." I, quite obviously, don't own Friends.
It was getting late on the gang's second night in Montauk, but Monica was still downstairs as Chandler tried to show her that he wasn't such a terrible option if she wanted a boyfriend.
"Hi there," Chandler said in a deep voice as Monica opened the door, pretending that this was the first time she was meeting him.
Monica rolled her eyes. "That's that weird voice again!"
"Okay, okay, let me try it again," Chandler responded hurriedly, pointing. "You're gonna want to date this next guy, I swear!" Chandler began jumping up and down in preparation, as Monica humored him and closed the door again.
Monica opened the door as Chandler knocked, but found Chandler completely silent, clearly trying to figure something out.
"I can only do it with the voice now," Chandler said, slightly confused.
Monica sighed, torn between annoyance and amusement.
"Okay, okay, come on, close the door!" Chandler insisted again, resuming his bouncing.
Monica shook her head, closed the door, and opened it as Chandler knocked a few seconds later.
Chandler was standing on his knees. "Hi, I'm Dorf, your date for the evening!"
Monica stared at him, exasperated, and rolled her eyes at the reference as she walked away.
"Oh, come on! Dorf on dating!" Chandler shouted at her retreating back. "That's good stuff!"
Monica headed into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. She could hear Chandler behind her get up and close the door.
Chandler shook his head when he reached her in the kitchen. "I really need to work on that."
Monica laughed lightly, nodding. "Yeah, you do."
Then Monica heard a knock on the door, much like one of Chandler's knocks from a few moments before. She looked at her friend, who frowned slightly, shrugging.
"Maybe Pheebs is back," he suggested.
Monica thought for a moment. "But she would never knock."
Chandler shrugged again and walked across the sand covered living room to the door, Monica following a few feet behind him.
He opened the door cautiously. "Hello?"
In front of Chandler, Monica could see the dark outlines of two people, a man and a woman who were both standing in shadow a few feet from the open door.
Together, the pair outside stepped into the light that was shining through the doorframe.
Monica and Chandler gasped, and Chandler took a step back. The man and woman from outside were themselves.
But it can't be, Monica thought to herself, her jaw slack. They can't be us… Can they?
Monica stared at the woman, finding it difficult to breathe, completely confused by the situation. She was staring at herself. Not a mirror, but a physical version of herself. She quickly noticed, however, that this other Monica wasn't exactly the same as she was. The other her's hair was longer, and she definitely looked older, though not too much older. There was something else different too, but Monica couldn't quite put her finger on it.
The man outside smiled widely, clearly entertained by the effect his presence was having on the pair in front of him. Monica found that this Chandler was different from her Chandler, just like the other Monica was different from herself. His hair was a bit shorter, and he looked older somehow too, more mature, as if this new Chandler had responsibilities that her Chandler didn't have. But it was more than just hair and how old he was. There was something deeper that set the pair outside apart from the pair inside.
Suddenly she realized what it was. Those two people standing in front of her, this Chandler and Monica that had just knocked on their door, were far happier than the Chandler and Monica inside the beach house. Everything about these impossible second versions of themselves practically screamed that things were going well for them. Their faces were brighter, their eyes clearer. The outside Chandler's smile was bigger than any smile she had ever seen from her Chandler, and she somehow got the impression that a smile that big was a regular occurrence for him. Outside Monica was smiling too, and she seemed to be almost floating, radiant, as she looked from Monica to Chandler inside, with a glance here and there at the Chandler beside her who always met her eyes, his smile growing, if possible, wider.
Chandler next to her appeared to be trying to form words, but he was having little success.
"WHAT?" he finally burst out, his face a mask of confusion and shock.
"May we come in?" the Monica outside asked, politely, still smiling.
Inside Monica nodded hesitantly, while Chandler, out of the corner of her eye, continued to look incredulous.
The pair stepped in through the doorway, Monica going first. She turned to her companion. "I can't believe it actually worked! I know David did all those tests with it, but I still didn't completely trust him."
"I know!" the Chandler behind her responded, excitedly. "This is crazy! We're back at the beach again right in the middle of your whole 'I'm not boyfriend material' thing." He gave his Monica a look of annoyance, which Monica saw was clearly fake.
His Monica rolled her eyes at him, but quickly changed the subject. "If this is the night of that argument, then that makes tomorrow…" She trailed off, her face growing pale, as though she was thinking about something she would much rather forget.
At his Monica's words, Chandler's face fell into the same expression. Both shuddered simultaneously.
"Let's not think about that," Chandler said, still trying to shake away what Monica assumed must have been a horrible memory.
"Okay, seriously," the Chandler next to Monica asked again, "what is actually going on here?"
The other Monica spoke, smiling again. "We're you guys, from the future!"
Monica and Chandler stared at them blankly.
"The future?" Monica said, her eyebrows raised.
The other Monica grinned back, affirming. "The future."
That Monica's Chandler cut in. "Remember that scientist guy, David, that Phoebe was dating I guess about two, two and a half, years ago for you guys?"
Monica and Chandler nodded slowly, bemused.
"Well," the other Chandler continued, "he's back in the city now, and apparently while he was in Minsk, even though whatever science thing he was actually supposed to be researching didn't work out, he ended up building basically a time machine."
"A time machine." Chandler repeated after his counterpart. "A time machine. A machine in which to travel in time. Are you sure it wasn't some hallucinogenic tranquilizer that makes you think you can travel in time? Or really, I'm clearly dreaming this, so why don't you all just wander back into the night and let me forget about how weird this is."
The other Monica laughed. "It's not a dream, Chandler. This is real. David's been testing his machine on himself and Phoebe, and then he asked us. We figured this might be a good spot to go back and see. Apparently you guys won't remember this tomorrow, so it's safe."
"Okay, weird dream hallucinations, I believe you," Chandler said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
Monica just shook her head. "I'm sorry, this is just kind of crazy."
"Kind of? KIND OF!" Chandler flailed his arms out for emphasis. "This is completely crazy! Completely! Crazy!"
The other Chandler laughed at him. "Believe whatever you want, um me, but this is real."
Monica furrowed her brow. "So, if you guys are from the future – "
Chandler made a disbelieving noise from beside her.
"If you are," Monica said again, "then, um, when, I guess, are you from?"
The potentially future Monica smiled in reply. "About six years from when you are now."
Present Monica nodded at the number. These maybe future versions of themselves did look like what her and Chandler would probably look like in six years.
"So do you 'future' people have any 'future' stuff to tell us?" Chandler asked, a total lack of belief evident in his voice as he added air quotes around "future."
"Well, a lot's happened," the other Monica began, slowly, as she looked at her companion from the "future."
Monica watched her counterpart curiously. That look she was giving Chandler was unlike any look she had ever given anyone. It was almost as though her eyes were smiling, they were shinning so brightly, and her face was practically glowing.
"Yeah, it has," future Chandler replied softly, returning the look he was receiving from his Monica almost exactly.
"Um," Chandler beside her seemed somehow more confused than he already had been.
"Right," future Monica began again, turning toward them after another quick smile at her Chandler. "Well, let's see. The gang's all still together, of course. Since we already told you about David, I guess I'll start with Phoebe. She and David are together now, but she was dating this guy Mike for a while and they almost moved in together, but she found out that he doesn't ever want to get married. She's definitely still getting over him, so I'm not sure if her and David are really going to work out. Oh, and maybe a year and a half from now, your time, she has her brother's triplets."
Chandler stared at her, looking as though he wanted to say something sarcastic, but the sheer weirdness of future Monica's statement prevented him from speaking.
"Um, what?" Monica asked, finally, as future Monica and Chandler had paused their account to watch her and Chandler's reactions.
The couple from the future started laughing.
"Frank and Alice needed a surrogate, so they asked Phoebe," future Monica explained. "They named one of the babies Chandler," she added grinning at present Chandler.
Chandler's expression softened a little bit. "They named a baby after me?"
Future Chandler sighed, his smile dimming. "Well sort of," he said, dejectedly, "Chandler ended up being a girl."
Both Monicas started laughing at the plight of the Chandlers.
Present Chandler threw his hands up in the air. "Of course Chandler ended up being a girl!"
Future Monica smiled at him sympathetically as she stopped laughing. "It's the thought that counts, you know."
Chandler made a mocking sound in her direction as he stared at the floor.
"Moving on," future Chandler said, clearly wanting to shift the subject away from the painful memory. "Joey got his job back on Days of Our Lives, and he's doing pretty well. He's dating a paleontologist named Charlie right now, but we're not sure if that's going to last. She's a paleontologist, and he's, well, Joey."
Present Monica and Chandler both nodded understandingly.
"Ross," future Chandler began, but was interrupted by his Monica.
"I want to tell Ross's!" she said, overly enthusiastically.
Her Chandler laughed softly and offered her a smile before dramatically sighing. "Fine, you can tell Ross's."
"Yay!" Monica replied, practically dancing. "Ross got married and then got divorced – again! And then, a year later, he got married in Vegas and then got divorced – a third time!"
Monica and Chandler both started laughing.
"He did not," Monica said putting her head in her hands. "Oh my God, Ross. Come on!"
"I know!" future Monica replied, her voice growing louder as she got more excited. "And guess who the girl was that he married in Vegas!"
"It was Rachel!" future Chandler answered immediately, laughing.
"Wow," present Chandler said, shaking his head. "Three divorces. I'm going to assume you made fun of him a lot for that," he added directed at his counterpart.
Future Chandler nodded reassuringly. "Like I would miss that opportunity."
"Wait," Monica said, after thinking for a moment, "if Ross and Rachel get married and then divorced in Vegas then what does that mean for them?"
Chandler shook his head, rolling his eyes. "There's lots of will they, won't they, and then one of them is in love with the other, but it doesn't work out, blah blah blah, oh and they have a baby together; that's a fun story. Her name is Emma, and she's wonderful, but at least from when we are, neither one of them wants to be with the other. But this is Ross and Rachel, I'm sure that'll change in the next month or two."
Future Monica sighed, clearly exasperated with her brother and her best friend, before continuing with more information. "We're heading to this paleontology conference in Barbados that Ross is speaking at later this week."
"Obviously we're going primarily because it's Barbados," Chandler added, seemingly wanting to make sure that the past versions of himself and Monica wouldn't think that the gang had developed an actual interest in dinosaurs in the next six years.
Present Monica nodded, smiling slightly and then asked the question that she had been wanting to ask ever since she had even semi-understood that there were future versions of herself and Chandler with her in the beach house. "And what about you guys, or us, I guess? What happens to us?"
Future Chandler smiled to himself as he began to answer. "Well, Monica's the head chef at Javu." He rested his arm around her lightly.
"JAVU?" present Monica nearly yelled. "I get to be the head chef at JAVU?"
"YES!" future Monica responded, just as enthusiastically. "Isn't that great?"
"Yeah it is!" Monica replied, practically jumping up and down as her Chandler put his hand on her shoulder to try to calm her down.
"Mon, people are sleeping upstairs," Chandler pointed out, "and I really don't want to have to explain to Joey why there are two of each of us in the living room."
"I thought you said we were a dream," future Chandler said, raising his eyebrows.
"Well, I'm just taking precautions on the off chance that this is somehow not a dream," Chandler said, trying to defend himself.
"Right," future Chandler responded, sarcastically.
"Anyway," future Monica picked up from where her Chandler had left off, "Chandler's a junior copywriter at an advertising firm."
It was Chandler's turn to get excited. "You mean I quit my job? I quit my horrible job that I hated and only worked at for the money? That job? I quit that job?"
"You quit that job," future Monica replied, looking at her Chandler proudly.
He smiled back at her. "Well, when they make you move to Tulsa and leave everyone you love behind, it kind of doesn't make you want to hang around." He ran his hand through his hair, and Monica noticed something she hadn't seen before.
"You have a WEDDING RING! Chandler Bing, you got married?" Monica's eyes widened as she stared at him, shocked. "And, wait a second." She scanned future Monica's left hand and found that she, too, was wearing a wedding ring. "I get married, too!" she shouted, ecstatically.
Future Monica laughed. "Right around four years from now actually. It was absolutely perfect."
"And what about me?" Chandler asked. The fact that in six years time he would be married seeming to take him completely by surprise. "I thought I was supposed to grow old and die alone like Mr. Heckles!" His arms began to flail around again.
"Well," said future Chandler, "you found the right girl, so getting married wasn't too scary. I mean I ran off and hid the day before the wedding because I got so freaked out, but it ended up being the easiest thing in the world."
Future Chandler looked down at his Monica, their radiant smiles from before returning to their faces.
Monica's jaw dropped as she finally understood the looks between the future versions of herself and Chandler. "No. Are you kidding me? I marry Chandler?"
Next to her, Monica saw Chandler's eyes grow huge in comprehension as his mouth fell open. "I marry Monica?" His eyes were wild as he looked from future Monica to future Chandler asking for an explanation.
Future Monica wrapped her arms around Chandler as he did the same to her.
"Yeah," future Chandler said softly, more to his Monica than to the past versions of the pair. "I marry Monica."
His Monica looked back up at him. "And I marry Chandler."
Present Chandler clapped his hands together and turned toward Monica, his face positively gleeful. "You said I wasn't boyfriend material, but look at this!" He gestured toward the couple in front of them and started dancing in place smugly.
Future Chandler nodded as he laughed at his past self's dancing, while future Monica smiled even as she rolled her eyes.
"You know, honey," future Monica said to her Chandler, "I'm really glad you don't do the dance anymore."
"Hey!" future Chandler said, offended. "The dance is cool!"
Monica shook her head, waving her hands, trying to make sense of what was going on. "Seriously. I marry Chandler. Commitment-phobe Chandler? My annoying friend Chandler?"
Future Monica nodded, her smile never leaving her face. "You date Chandler. You fall in love with Chandler. You marry Chandler. And it's great. It is really really great."
"When?" Monica replied, unable to form sentences longer than one word. "How?"
"It happens in London," future Chandler explained, still smiling. "We're there for Ross's second wedding, which ends really badly, by the way. He says Rachel's name at the alter during the vows instead of his actual bride, Emily's."
Both Monicas winced at the mention of Ross's mistake.
Chandler continued. "You were upset, I was trying to make you feel better, and then it kind of just happened. And it somehow made so much sense." Chandler stopped to smile down at his Monica. "That's about year from now for you two."
Monica stared at him. "Ross marries some girl he hasn't met yet a year from now?"
Future Chandler nodded, shaking his head. "Kind of rushed into things. Obviously, it didn't end too well."
"Anyway," future Monica continued where Chandler had left off, "we snuck around for months with some help from Joey, since he figured it out pretty quickly, but everyone found out eventually. We moved in together a bit over a year after we got together, and then got engaged almost a year after that. That was a fun day." The way future Monica said "fun day" led present Monica to believe that their engagement day had been anything but fun.
Future Chandler hugged his Monica and kissed her temple. "It may not have started out too fun, but it ended pretty well, I think." He smiled softly at her.
"Yeah, it did," she replied, staring into his eyes.
Chandler took over the story. "We got married a year after we got engaged, and everything's been really great since. Well I guess not everything," he amended his statement after thinking for a moment. "I had to move to Tulsa for a while last year until I quit, and Mon couldn't come with me because she had just gotten the job at Javu, so that was months of me being in Oklahoma four days a week. And, um, we got some pretty bad news recently, but I think that's going to be okay, too. Right, Monica?"
"It's going to be okay," she affirmed, smiling sadly. "We'll figure this out." Then she leaned in and kissed him.
"Well, this is all a lot to process," present Chandler said, interrupting the couple, with a side-glance at Monica.
"Yeah," Monica agreed, nodding slowly, not sure how she felt about seeing her future self kissing Chandler of all people.
Future Chandler turned away from his wife and laughed at the pair in front of him. "We just wanted to come back and try to freak you guys out, which obviously worked." He and future Monica high-fived. "But I guess we should be going now."
"You two won't remember any of this in the morning," future Monica added, "so don't worry. But seriously, you guys are going to be so happy." She turned to Monica. "I'm almost a little jealous that you get to fall in love with him all over again. It's great. It's, um, it's better than great actually."
Future Chandler turned to his present day counterpart. "You don't have the easiest year coming up, but you get Monica at the end of it, so it's okay. And then you get to spend the rest of your lives together, and there's really nothing better than that."
Present Chandler nodded skeptically, more to say that he understood the words his future self was saying than to actually agree with them.
"So, see you, um, never? Or would it be always?" Future Chandler tilted his head to the side, thinking, as he half joked his goodbye.
"It was so great to see you guys again… or see ourselves again?" Future Monica's expression changed to match the confusion of her husband. "This time travel stuff is weird. Anyway, bye you guys!"
The pair from the future walked out the door, leaving Chandler and Monica to watch them from the doorway. Soon the pair disappeared from view, and Monica and Chandler turned to each other.
"So, that was weird," Chandler said, breaking the silence.
"Yeah, it was," Monica responded, looking away, trying to figure out if this was just some really weird dream she was having.
"You know," her friend said slowly and carefully, "they seemed really happy."
Monica turned back to him. "They really did, didn't they? It was like they were, I don't know, glowing or something. Like they totally made sense together."
Chandler nodded in agreement. "Yeah… And to think I'm supposedly not boyfriend material."
"Don't you dare do that dance again." Monica glared at him, wiping all traces of smugness from his face.
Chandler held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. I won't."
"Okay then, good." Monica nodded at him. "I guess we should head up, get some sleep."
"Yeah I guess," Chandler replied, the air between them growing awkward.
As Monica started to walk up the stairs, Chandler grabbed her arm.
"What?" she asked, turning to face him.
"Do you think that all that stuff is really going to happen with us?" he asked, clearly unsure of himself.
Monica smiled slightly. "Do you want all that stuff to happen with us?"
Chandler shrugged noncommittally as he looked down at his feet. "It just sounded kind of, um, good, I guess."
"It sounded kind of good to me too." Monica walked back down a step and pulled her friend into a hug. "We'll see."
She turned and walked up to her room.
The next morning Monica woke up with the feeling that something important had happened the night before, but she soon found that she couldn't remember what it was. She remembered Phoebe leaving to sneak into her mom's friend's house. She knew that something had happened with Ross and Rachel, though she wasn't sure what. She remembered Chandler knocking on the door over and over trying to prove that she might actually have considered dating him if they weren't already friends. That was all though. Nothing huge and life altering, at least for her anyway.
Monica found that she didn't have time to dwell on her weird feeling much at all for the rest of the day, as the gang found out about Phoebe's birth mom, Ross and Rachel got back together and then broke up almost immediately, and Monica got stung by a jellyfish, an incident that she, Chandler, and Joey ended up informing the rest of the gang about despite the fact that they had vowed never to speak of again.
The next day Chandler and Monica were playing cards at the kitchen table in her apartment when Chandler, once again, turned the conversation around to the two of them dating.
"Okay, alright," Monica said, finally. "I think you're great. I think you're sweet, and you're smart. And I love you."
Chandler smiled at his friend and took her hands in his.
"But you will always be the guy who peed on me."
Chandler nodded hurriedly, removing his hands from Monica's as he picked up the cards and began to shuffle them, clearly wanting to never again speak of the disastrous jellyfish incident.
But at that moment, Monica, seemingly out of nowhere, thought to herself that maybe that wasn't completely true. Maybe he wasn't just Chandler, the guy who peed on her. Maybe all those good things that she thought about Chandler were enough to outweigh the jellyfish incident.
Somewhere deep down she felt that maybe, just maybe, there was going to be more to their story than that.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed it! Reviews are absolutely lovely and are so so appreciated.