Fandom: Friends
Fic Title: Teeth in the Grass
Pairing(s): Joey Tribbiani/Phoebe Buffay
Rating: T according to FictionRatings
Warning(s): General spoilers for the show's entire run
Summary: If Ross is Rachel's lobster, then Joey is Phoebe's... deep-sea anglerfish?
AN: I'm new to this fandom. Hiiii.
Teeth in the Grass
Chapter One
Joey's off his game tonight and it's Phoebe's fault. Veronica is thirty years old and a freelance travel agent and gorgeous, with big green eyes and heaps of dark, dark hair and a body that curves and tapers in all the right places, and she's classy and funny and so very into him but he's--- just not feeling it. The lights in the restaurant are low and sullen and the piped-in music is flat and even though Joey listens and laughs at all the right times he feels curiously detached like he's watching his own life unfold from the comfort of his leather chair with a bowl of buttered popcorn. Man, he could really go for some buttered popcorn right now and he wonders if the restaurant serves that alongside their horse devours and filing menus and party the fu grass and maybe he should ask the waiter--- but, nah, a place like this, they probably throw you out for ordering that and anyway back to why it's Phoebe's fault.
When he stepped out of the coffee house to meet Veronica, he spotted Phoebe across the street and he hadn't seen her in a really long time and her arms were laden with shopping bags and her hair shone like a curtain of white gold under the lampposts and Joey felt happier than he'd been in forever. He was about to call her name but then Mike appeared and kissed her and gallantly took her shopping bags and the expression on Phoebe's face was like a private moment, tender and intimate, and so Joey's voice died in his throat and his hand stilled in mid-wave and he watched them walk away, too engrossed in each other to notice him and the rest of the world.
And, well, he's always expected Phoebe to notice him (when the revolution comes she will destroy Monica and Chandler and Ross and Rachel and not Joey, never Joey) but now she's part of something he's not, she's married and living even farther uptown and she and Mike have a kid and Joey misses her. So he sits and smiles at Veronica as she tells him about A Humorous Incident At Work but inside he's seething because damn it, Phoebe, best friends are supposed to at least see you when you're right across the street---
"Your orders, Sir and Madam," the waiter announces, setting the plates on their table.
"That looks really good," Joey tells Veronica as he eyes her dish because he feels like he hasn't said anything in a long time.
"Doesn't it?" Veronica says cheerfully. "I love filet mignon."
Huh. Phoebe would probably have said filing menu, even if it was just to crack him up.
The goodbye kiss is as half-hearted as the evening. Joey can tell that Veronica's disappointed he didn't invite her back to his place but he's just not in the mood and oh, God, it's a sad, sad day when Joey Tribbiani turns down the prospect of sex with an attractive woman. After her cab screeches away he walks back to his apartment and microwaves some popcorn and settles down in front of the TV and it's barely 11 P.M. and he feels like such a loser.
He flips through the channels but he's in a weird kind of mood and so instead of Baywatch reruns or game shows his interest is captured by a National Geographic special. Ghostly eyes and sharp spindly teeth in the deep-sea darkness as the narrator's voice drones on.
"Some anglerfish of the aphotic zone emit light from their esca to attract prey. This bioluminescence is a result of symbiosis with bacteria..."
Yeah, okay, so no matter how weird Joey's mood is, he's still not as weird as Ross, so it doesn't take long for him to get bored and fall asleep.
Therese is from a long time ago, one of the few he called the morning after and who lasted more than a week. He runs into her again at the coffee house and she's more beautiful than he remembers and finally her wavy red hair and porcelain blue eyes and musical laugh prove too much for him to resist, so he asks her out to lunch. They find a quiet little Mediterranean place with cozy red-brick walls and delicious falafel and everything is going so well until Therese drops a bomb.
"I'm kind of surprised, Joey," she admits. "I thought you and Phoebe would have gotten married by now."
He chokes on his falafel and the expression on his face is one of such bug-eyed disbelief that she hastens to correct herself. "Well, maybe not married, but together, you know? You guys were always so close."
"Phoebe is..." Phoebe is Phoebe and Ursula is hot and, God, it's been years since then and so what if Ursula is the pretty sister? Phoebe is Phoebe and Phoebe beats beauty any day. "We're just friends, Therese."
"Yes, I suppose that's better, isn't it?" Therese gives him a long, measuring look. Finally, she sighs. "That's one of the reasons it didn't work out between us, Joey. I was insanely jealous of her. She had a part of your heart that no mere girlfriend could ever reach."
And it's a warm sunlit afternoon at Central Park and Phoebe's walking towards him, holding in one pale hand the bunched-up strings of dozens of balloons. They're round and gleaming and candy-pastel-coloured and they float above her head like haloes and it seems like her feet barely touch the ground. For a moment Joey's back in the snow again, freezing his balls off as Phoebe flutters down the aisle, lovely and radiant in the glow of Christmas lights and he could have sworn Mike's teeth stopped chattering as soon as he saw her (and, to be honest, Joey's did, too).
"Joey!" Phoebe squeals, clasping his hand with her own free one the second she reaches him. "I haven't seen you in forever! I want to hug you, but--- you know." She gives the army of balloons a little tug to emphasize her point.
"Hey, Pheebs," Joey says with a grin. Her white blonde hair is long and loose, falling past her shoulders, and her eyes are sparkling and he wants to say that he missed her but decides on something more casual. "You having a party?"
"Nuh-uh." She shakes her head. The balloons towering over her cast her delicate features in patches of shadow. "See, I ran into this little old man down the street who was selling these balloons and he said he hadn't had any customers all day---"
"And you bought them all?" Joey's incredulous.
"Well, he was so tiny!" Phoebe cries. "I was afraid the wind would blow him away to the land of Oz or something."
"But, Pheebs, what're you gonna do with all of them?"
"See, here's the good part." She leans in closer like she's confiding a secret and Joey catches a whiff of orange blossom. "I'm heading to the Reservoir and I'm going to release them so they can, you know, fulfil their destinies."
Joey doesn't even stop to wonder what possible destiny a balloon could have because he's learned a long time ago that anything can happen in Phoebe's world. He gallantly takes some of the balloons and together they walk in the direction of the Reservoir. The sun is almost about to set, lending a honeyed crimson glow to the sky, and the air smells like damp grass and cotton candy. Over the sounds of kids playing, Phoebe's soft, lilting voice dips and curves, as ethereally languid as smoke. She tells him about her baby daughter Elise ("She's the reincarnation of the Grand Duchess Anastasia,"; "How do you know, Pheebs?"; "I just know.") and he tells her about his latest botched audition ("They said I wasn't a convincing pirate, but I could have been a pirate, huh? Maybe in a past life?"; "You don't have any past lives, Joey, remember? You're brand new.") and she updates him on Ross and Rachel (who live near her and Mike) and he updates her on Chandler and Monica (who he visits every weekend) and they reminisce about the past.
"Oh, hey, I just realized," Joey blurts out, "that the last time all six of us were together was Ross and Rachel's wedding."
"That was two months ago." Phoebe blinks. "Wow. Remember how we saw one another almost every day for ten straight years?"
"I know!" Joey laughs. "We spent all our time in Monica's apartment and the coffee house."
"Yeah, we had absolutely no lives back then."
He passes her a sidelong glance. "Was it really that bad a life, Pheebs?"
She lapses into a thoughtful silence, biting her lower lip, and just when he's mentally cursing himself for making things awkward, she gives him a faint smile. "Of course not." Her eyes have that dreamy soft-lidded faraway haze, as if she's looking back on those years, the chaos, the confusion, the mess, the mix-ups, the jokes, the fights, the happiness and the heartaches. "It was the most fun I ever had."
And when the sun begins to sink, bleeding its vibrant oranges, its golds and pinks and scarlets into a sky strewn with wispy clouds, when the dying daylight scintillates the Reservoir's azure blue surface in diamond pinpricks, when the air is heavy with dusk and cricket-song and a light wind ruffles the cherry blossom trees, Joey and Phoebe let go of the strings and the balloons slowly begin to drift upward.
"Yay! You're all free!" Phoebe claps her hands together in delight. "Isn't this nice?" She turns to him with a brilliant smile and suddenly Joey's looking into her wide blue eyes and he has no idea what to do with himself. "I've missed you, Joey."
And Joey knows all about that scene in movies and TV shows when the girl takes down her ponytail so that her hair falls all around her face or appears at the top of a golden staircase in a pretty dress or suddenly turns so it looks like she's framed by fireworks in the sky and the guy goes, "Why, Miss Insert-Name-Here, you're beautiful." Joey's lived that moment a hundred times--- or maybe more than a hundred, it's hard to keep track--- and that's probably the thing he likes best about women, how you can think they'll never surprise you anymore but then they smile a certain way or look different in the moonlight or say something funny and you realize they're made up of all these layers that you can never completely peel back unlike the clothes that fall away or the lipstick that's rubbed off. And that's why, even though Monica is hot and Rachel is his first love, Phoebe will always be Joey's favourite girl, because there are so many moments when he sees her for the first time all over again and here she is now, looking more beautiful than she did on her wedding day or when she smiled down at the triplets in the delivery room or when he kissed her in the coffee house, awash in soft shadows and red-gold light amidst a backdrop of sky and water and balloons.
"Oh, no," he groans, covering his face with his hands.
To Be Continued