A/N: So sorry about the long time between updates, I've had horrible writer's block for months and then finally, a few nights ago this just came out! I'm hoping that the next chapter will be out speedily. Thank you to everyone who's read and reviewed, you guys are great :).

In My Blood Like Holy Wine Part IV

Ten miles from town and I just broke down

Spittin' out smoke on the side of the road

I'm out here alone just tryin' to get home

To tell you I was wrong but you already know

Believe me I won't stop at nothin' to see you

so I've started runnin'

-RJRJ-

Five months earlier…

He's long since mastered the overwhelming desire to phone Rachel at every turn, but that doesn't mean that on some nights, when his apartment is empty and dark, he doesn't miss her so much he can't breathe right. Joey picks up the phone, not bothering to check the time, as he dials her familiar number. While the phone rings, he pops two pieces of refrigerator-cold pizza into the microwave, the scent of cheese and pepperoni chasing away the lingering odor of the perfume his date had been wearing. What had her name been? Kimberly? Stephanie? He definitely knew that there was "e" sound at the end…. Oh well, he knows that he wouldn't be seeing her again.

A wide grin appears on his face when Rachel finally answers her phone.

"Hi Rach it's me, what's up?"

"Hey Joe," she replies, "nothing much, just watching a little late night TV."

Joey glances at the clock, shit it was late. "I'm sorry it's so late…."

"Don't worry, I love it when you call… you don't do it very often anymore."

Joey clears his throat awkwardly. She said that almost every time he did call, which admittedly had, over the months gotten further and further apart. The guilt wells up in his throat. "Sorry Rach but I've been super swamped, you know with auditions and… stuff."

"Oh, well, I'm glad you called anyways."

Joey took a bite of his pizza and burned his mouth, but it was a good excuse not to talk; now that he'd called her, heard her voice, did the usual comparison between the woman he'd just had sex with, and the one he really wanted, it'd left him feeling incomplete.

"Oh hey! Guess what I'm watching," Rachel says.

"Hmm… what?"

"Cujo, you know this movie doesn't get any less scary, no matter how many times you see it." Rachel pauses. "I was, uh, just thinking about you actually, I'm really glad you called."

Joey takes his pizza and walks over to the little DVD tower next to the TV, finds his copy of Cujo and pops it in to the player. "Yeah I was just thinking about you too." Before, during, and after. "Where are you at in the movie?"

"Oh, right where Cujo attacks that cop," she answers, and Joey skips to that scene on his TV.

They talk about nothing for a minute or two (but really it's everything), Joey with his pizza and the phone cradled in his shoulder while they watch their movie. He's turned off the lights and with her voice in his ear he can pretend that she's actually in the room with him and not all the way across the country.

He's just starting to get sleepy, eyes heavy lidded (still always on the line with Rachel even though they haven't said anything for at least a minute, but it's comfortable) when the doorbell suddenly rings.

"What was that?" she asks over the phone, sounding surprised.

His pizza plate, now empty, tumbles to the floor as he stands, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs out. "Someone at the door."

"This late at night?"

Joey shrugs, forgetting that Rachel can't actually see him and answers the door, phone still in hand, just the tip of it dangling from his fingerstips. It's his date from less than twenty minutes ago, clothes unchanged, looking just like she had when she'd left his apartment, well fucked.

His mind tries to play catch up. Shit, what WAS her name? He forgets about the phone in his hand and blurts out the possible name that's in the forefront of his mind.

"Brandi, uh, what are you doing back?"

She smiles, sort-of-sexy, and steps into his apartment. "Hmm, baby," she purrs, "I just decided I haven't had enough of you yet." Her hand, capped with long red fingernails, ran tantalizingly down his chest to the belt of his robe. She cups him and smirks. "Well, hello there again, big boy."

Oh Jesus.

Joey swallows and steps back, the phone in his hand burning him like a hot coal. He was hyperaware that Rachel could hear everything. "Um, Brandi, I like you and all, and I think you're very nice but I thought you were going home." Brandi frowns, the sexy-kitten falling off of her face quickly.

"Excuse me?" she asks, all attitude with her hands on her hips.

Joey chuckles nervously. "Ya see, I thought you were going home and – uh – staying there."

Brandi's eyes narrow further. "I see, fine then." She turns, stomps out, and slams the door behind her hard enough to make the walls shake.

After she's gone the heavy silence in the room is suffocating, and when he lifts the phone to his ear, he can't think of anything to say; never before has he been without words. He's never hidden the fact that he likes sex and that he has always been good at getting it, but this feels different and weird... icky. Ever since he'd developed feelings for her, and especially when she moved in the second time with Emma, he's kept it on the low. It isn't until now that he knows why exactly. Without so many women coming and going in the old apartment, it was easier to keep up the daydream, or delusion, that they hadn't failed at his much hoped for relationship.

"I uh," he tries, and then groans in frustration when he can't make anything worthwhile come out of his mouth.

He hears weak, nervous laughter on the other end of the line. "I'd better go now Joey, I'll talk to you later."

"Yeah all right Rach, good night."

But she hangs up the phone before the end of 'night', and he's left, feeling like an idiot, but in New York, Rachel tries to swallow her sudden swell of jealousy.

Present.

He'd never expected Rachel to come after him, to search for him like she apparently was. Joey had missed her so much (missed her to the point of heart break) and their love had gone wrong so many times, that the thought of Rachel actually coming for him, was mind boggling. But, at the same time, he didn't want to see her, he was too scared of what she would say when she actually got there.

"Look Chandler… I just don't know," he says into the phone in his hand.

Joey hears Chandler sigh on the other end. "Joe, I don't know what happened exactly, but I do know that you have to stay where you are."

It feels like his heart is being turned and twisted and pulled in every direction; he can hear his parents in the living room, muttering quietly to each other about him, about the way he's acting (they'd never seen him heartbroken). Then there's Chandler on the phone, begging him to talk to Rachel.

"Joe, talk to me, tell me what happened."

Joey swallows hard, remembering what he and Rachel had done… he couldn't tell Chandler that, he was too ashamed.

"It'll be just between you and me," Chandler urges.

Joey rubs his eyes tiredly and then takes a look behind him at his parents through the doorway to the livingroom from the kitchen. Not wanting his mother to hear he ducks into another room and shuts the door.

"We… well we. Shit Chandler I can't say it."

Chandler's voice lowers. "Did you two have sex?"

"What! No, of course not. But we might as well have. It was just as bad."

Chandler sighs. "Maybe you're blowing it out of proportion."

"No, I'm not."

Joey hears some talking over the line, like Chandler is whispering to someone else over his shoulder. "Chandler who's that?" he asks.

"Ross wants to talk to you, he wants you to come back too."

Joey's heart careens around in his chest. "He knows!"

"Well yeah, I think Rachel told him," Chandler replies as gently as he can.

"Oh God I'm a homewrecker! He hates me doesn't he? I'd hate me." Joey thunks his head against the bathroom wall a few times.

"Joey he doesn't hate you alright. We're all just a little confused, we thought you were over Rachel a long time ago."

Joey squeezes his eyes shut tight, and swallows hard. "I don't think that can be done, I've already tried… A LOT."

There was a rustling noise over the phone and he hears more whispers, but he doesn't bother trying to decipher them. When someone came back on the phone, it wasn't Chandler, but Ross. His voice is soothing, placating almost, like he's talking to a cornered, frightened animal.

"Joey, we're your friends, your family, no one is ever going to hate you, I am never going to hate you." Ross takes a deep breath on the other end. "It wasn't like it was a big shock Joe, I know Rachel and I know you, and I know that it's really only ever been her. There was a time in our lives where you were there for her, in a way that I never was, and I can't change that. I've tried, Joe, I tried to erase all those times that Rachel and I hurt each other, but I can't, and I finally realize that now."

It feels like there's something stuck in his throat and he can't speak, even though he knows that his friend is expecting him to say something.

"You still there?"

"Yeah," Joey croaks, "I'm still here."

Ross chuckles nervously. "Oh good, I was worried that I'd just laid my whole heart out and that there was no one there to hear it."

"No, I heard it."

An awkward silence envelopes them for a long, tense moment.

"Just wait for her there, Joe, just wait for her, please. Stop running."

Stop running. Is that what he's doing, he wonders, running? It hasn't felt like running… escaping maybe, but then he'd never known that someone was chasing after him. Why was it that they were always two steps ahead or behind each other? But if he stayed, that could all change. If he just stayed, could it all suddenly, miraculously work out? Could it really be that simple?

"Ross…."

"Look, we're probably going to talk this thing to death later, but for right now Joe, just follow your heart."

Through the tightness in his throat (he wonders wildly if he isn't coming down with something) he manages a shaky "alright."

Ross lets out a long breath of relief.

After their "goodbyes," Joey hits the end button, the beep that the phone makes sounding strangely loud in the bathroom.

"Joey," his mother calls a few seconds later, her voice uncommonly concerned. "Is everything okay?"

He pushes himself off the wall and runs a hand over his face. "Yeah, Ma I'm fine." He opens the door and comes face to face with his mother. It's impossible to hide anything from her, always has been, and so he doesn't even try. He can see his father out of the corner of his eye, looking at him over the Times, studying him with interest. Confusion swirls through him and his gaze drops; he shuffles his feet awkwardly, hands shoved deep into his jean pockets.

"I'll uh… I'm gonna go for a walk, I'll be back."

He walks around his mother, her lips turned down in a frown as he steps out, closing the door behind him.

"Our boy's got it bad," Joseph Sr. says, a hint of a joke in his voice, but his face perfectly serious.

Gloria sighs. "Yes, and I think it's been that way for a long time."

In the Queens Midtown Tunnel, Rachel's fingers drum anxiously against the steering wheel. Traffic was bad, really bad and she can feel her already thin patience thinning even more. Suddenly someone cuts her off, swerving in front of her as they finally exit the tunnel. She presses hard on the horn.

"Stupid jackass!" she yells, tears suddenly blurring her vision. Jesus it was not the time to breakdown, she tells herself, wiping the tears angrily away.

A minute out of the tunnel, her phone rings.

"Oh thank God!" she cries, reaching for her phone and then fumbling it, nearly causing the car to careen into the divider. She rights the car, heart beating out of her chest, and answers the phone.

"What?"

There was a beat of silence. "Rach you need better phone etiquette," Chandler greets, sounding amused.

Rachel growls in frustration. "Look, I'm trying to not turn this into 'An Affair to Remember,' I about crashed the car and some asshole cut me off." Swearing again she presses the heal of her hand hard into the horn and changes lanes suddenly, swerving in and out traffic.

"Yes, getting yourself killed would certainly suck right now."

"Ya think?" Rachel takes a deep breath. "Chandler, please tell me he's still there."

"Yeah, he's still there, and I think he's going to stay there too, but I tell you, you owe Ross, like, 5000 nice-guy-points, he's really the one that finally convinced Joey to stop running."

Rachel exhales. "Yeah I know."

"Rach, if you hurt him..." Chandler starts and then stops, tension filling the line.

For a moment her mind flashes back to all the times she probably has hurt Joey Tribbiani, and never knowing it. "I'm not going to Chandler I promise, everything is going to work out perfectly."

Chandler sighs. "All this time he's been running. California was never about new acting opportunities, it was always about trying to get you out of his head."

Rachel chokes for a moment, and blinks away tears. "It'll be different this time."

"I know… bring him home Rach, we're not right with him all the way across the country," he murmurs, and Rachel realizes how much Chandler must have missed his best friend, probably as much as she did.

Her breath shudders. "I will."

I'm thinkin' that all that still matters is love ever after

After the life we've been through

'Cause I know there's no life after you

-RJRJ-

TBC