Ted left the restaurant almost immediately after Monica told him about Chandler. As he shrugged on his jacket and headed to the door, he told her not to worry about what had happened between them. He wouldn't tell anyone at work, and he wouldn't hold it against her. He wasn't happy with the way things had turned out; the way Ted saw it, she had lied to him, had led him on. But glancing at Monica, who was leaning heavily against the sink, her pale face pulled in a tight frown, he saw that she clearly would be having the harder time dealing with the repercussions of their near-kiss. She didn't even look up as he walked out the door.
Ted had gone home a full 15 minutes before Monica smelled the tart burning in the oven. She snatched it from the heat and set it outside before the smoke detectors could go off. She had been sitting alone in the kitchen, the conversation with Ted replaying in her mind.
She felt terrible, as though she had cheated on Chandler. And even if she hadn't technically cheated on him, she certainly had betrayed him. She kept imagining if Chandler had done something like this to her. She didn't know if she'd be able to get over it. Forgive him, yes. But forget about it? Forget that he'd come that close to kissing another woman? That'd he'd been practically lying about his relationship for two weeks? What would this do to him?
It was just after midnight when Monica got home. She stepped very quietly into the apartment, half hoping that he would be asleep already, so she could avoid facing him for at least another day. She'd already decided she would tell him everything. If she insisted on total honesty from him, she had to give him the same.
When she got to their bedroom, her stomach dropped when she saw that the bed was empty. The covers weren't even pulled back. He wasn't home at all. She had a moment of panic as she wondered whether he could have already found out about her actions, and was now camped out at Ross's or Joey's, refusing to see her.
But Monica forced herself to think logically, and assumed that he was probably just hanging out with their friends, maybe waiting for her to come home. She stepped across the hall to Joey's apartment and knocked softly on the door before opening it.
Joey was sitting in an armchair, watching what looked like "Cops" with the sound turned so low she could only hear a dull hum coming from the TV. He looked up when she entered, and immediately put a finger to his lips to shush her before she could speak. Monica walked over to him, and he tilted his head toward the recliner.
Chandler was asleep in the chair, which was reclined halfway back. He was wearing a dress shirt that was unbuttoned at the neck, his tie slung over the table next to him. He was still in his suit pants, his feet, stuck in mismatched socks, resting on the foot of the recliner. He was hunkered low in the chair, his head tilted so low to the right it was almost resting on his shoulder. A blanket was wrapped loosely around him, and his cheeks were flushed.
Monica gave Joey a quizzical look, and he gestured for her to join him in the kitchen.
"He's sick," Joey whispered. "He had some big report due at work today, or else he would have stayed home. Can you believe it? The one time he actually has a good reason for avoiding work."
"He's sick?" Monica asked, concern wrinkling her forehead. "I didn't know."
"Yeah, he was feeling terrible all day yesterday. Fever and headaches and cough. Dude, you should've seen the crap he coughed up last night. Looked like something from my refrigerator."
"He was sick last night?" Monica asked. How could she have not known? She had slept in the same bed with him last night. Joey didn't notice the distress Monica was in and kept talking.
"Yeah, but today was really awful," Joey said. "I should've just put him to bed, but, well, he didn't seem to want to be alone, so I let him hang out here tonight. He crashed like 10 minutes into the Simpsons. Can you believe that? Sleeping through the Simpsons?"
Monica had never felt so guilty before. It was like someone had just thrown a basketball into her stomach, and all she wanted to do was curl up on the floor and pretend this wasn't happening. She had been making some strange man think she was in love with him. She had even made Chandler think he was the one betraying her trust. And here he was now, curled up in a chair in Joey's apartment, sick. This was all so unforgivable.
"Hey, you OK?" Joey asked when Monica hadn't spoken for a minute. She was jolted out of her thoughts, and quickly nodded.
"Yes. I'm fine. I just, I didn't know he was sick," she said. "I should get him home. You think it's OK to wake him up?"
"Yeah, he's been asleep most of the night anyway," Joey said, and moved over to the chair. He nudged Chandler's shoulder. Chandler just mumbled softly and sunk deeper into the chair, so Joey pushed harder at his shoulder.
"Here, let me," Monica said. She crouched at his side and touched his face, surprised at how warm he felt. "Did you take his temperature?"
"Hey, maybe I've played a doctor on TV, but I leave that fancy medical stuff to the real doctors," Joey said, throwing his hands up. Monica just looked annoyed.
"He's really warm," she said, and then tried to wake him. "Chandler," she said, rubbing his shoulders with both hands. "C'mon, time to go to bed."
"Not now, Mon," Chandler said sleepily. "You know it won't work when I'm tired."
Monica glanced sharply at Joey, daring him to comment, and he had the good sense to look away. But he couldn't help muttering under his breath, "A disgrace to us all."
Monica ignored him. "Sweetie? You just have to get up and walk across the hall, OK? Then we'll get you into some pajamas and you can sleep all you want." Hell, for that matter, she hoped he'd sleep for several days _ anything to delay the conversation she was dreading.
"Monica?" Chandler said, blinking several times and finally looking up at her. "What time is it?"
"Um, 12:30," she said. "Feel like getting up for a minute?"
"Sure," he said, and smiled up at her, opening his mouth to speak again. But whatever he was going to say was interrupted by a flurry of coughs that made his eyes water and left him gasping for breath. Joey grabbed the glass of water sitting on the coffee table and handed it to Monica, who waited until Chandler's coughs had slowed down before letting him sip from the cup.
"OK, let's try that again," Monica said, and grabbed Chandler's arms so she could help him stand, Joey pushing the back of the chair into the upright position. Chandler wobbled a bit once he was on his feet, but seemed to regain his equilibrium, and Monica led him back to the apartment, leaving his shoes and tie behind.
+++++
Monica slept maybe four hours that night. After getting Chandler to their bedroom, she sat him against the headboard, pillows stuffed behind his back, and then looked for the thermometer. She'd been right to worry about his fever _ his temperature had spiked to 103 degrees. She quickly stripped him down to his boxers, leaving on his socks, and after forcing him to swallow two aspirin, let him lie down on top of their covers, with only a light blanket covering him. She spent the next hour keeping him cool with wet washcloths, and by 3 a.m., his fever was down to a more acceptable 101.5 degrees.
Chandler slept uneasily, though, breaking into fits of coughing that kept waking him and tossing under the blanket, the fever combined with the chills from the washcloth and the cool night air making him uncomfortable and cranky. He kept complaining about being too hot, and then begging Monica for more blankets.
It was 4:30 a.m. before they both truly fell asleep, Monica curled up close at his side, her hand clutching his shoulder. She woke up again just three hours later to Chandler coughing. He stopped before waking himself.
Monica couldn't fall back asleep, so she got up and made some coffee and started cleaning the apartment, a task that always relaxed her. At 9, she called Chandler's office and her restaurant. There was no way she was leaving Chandler's side today.
He slept through most of the morning, fully waking at about 11. He was still tired and weak, but insisted on taking a shower. The hours of fever had left him covered in a sticky sweat, and he'd been too exhausted to shower at all the day before. He went straight back to bed after the shower, and didn't wake up again until 2, when Monica slid next to him on the bed to see if he was interested in some chicken noodle soup. He just looked baffled.
"Soup. Do you want any soup?" Monica asked, assuming he was so groggy from sleeping that he hadn't understood her question the first time. He stared up at her from the bed.
"Why are you here?" he asked, confused.
"What?"
"It's Thursday, right?" Monica nodded. "Aren't you supposed to be at work?"
"Chandler, you're sick," she said. "I told them I couldn't come in."
"Really?" he asked. "Wow, that's all it took to get you to stay home with me? A little cold? Why didn't I do this weeks ago?"
"A little cold?" Monica asked in disbelief. "Sweetie, you had a 103-degree temperature last night. That's not really a little cold. I can't believe you went to work yesterday. I can't believe you didn't tell me you were sick."
"I didn't think it was a big deal," Chandler said, pushing up on his elbows and looking dazedly around the room until his eyes fell back on her. "Anyway, I'm just glad you're here now."
"Do you feel up to some soup?" she asked again.
"Not really," he said. "Nothing really sounds good."
"But you should eat something," Monica said. "How about you get out of bed, we settle you in front of the TV, and then you can try eating some toast or something?"
Chandler felt tired and weak, but agreed that getting out of the rumpled bed and the stale room sounded tempting. He let Monica help him up, pulled his pajama bottoms on over his boxer shorts and slung a T-shirt over his head, and then tromped in his socks to the living room, where he slumped into his recliner. He picked up the remote and flipped quickly through the channels, feeling too sick and foggy-headed to take an interest in anything that was on TV. When Monica brought him a tray with a cup of soup, some crackers and water on it, he turned off the television.
He managed to finish half the soup and all of the crackers, his head clearing as he ate. Monica sat near him on the end of the couch the whole time, absently playing with the fringe of a blanket. She didn't eat anything and they didn't talk. When she heard the clink from Chandler letting the spoon fall into the soup cup, she asked if he was done. At his nod, she got up and carried the dishes back into the kitchen.
She stopped at the kitchen sink a moment, gripping the edge of the counter and taking deep breaths. It was time to tell him. She walked back to his chair and stood beside it, rubbing her hands in front of her.
"Chandler, we've got to talk."
The words hit him hard. They never preceded good news. It was never, "Chandler, we've got to talk, what would you think about a threesome?" or, "We've got to talk, look at this fancy new jacket I bought you." It was always bad. Chandler felt suddenly nervous, the soup heavy in his stomach.
"No we don't," he said, the sentence coming out as one word.
"Yes, we do."
"No, we don't."
Monica sighed. "Fine," she said. "I have to talk."
Chandler opened his mouth to speak, but Monica lifted her hand, motioning for him to stop. When he closed his mouth and sat back in the chair again, a resigned frown creasing his forehead, she put her hand down and wiped both sweaty palms on her pants.
She had been going over the words in her head for several hours _ all night, in fact _ but now that she was facing him, Monica wasn't sure what to say. He was searching her face for some clue of what was troubling her, trying to catch her eyes, but she kept looking away. When he finally leaned forward and tried to hold her hands in his own, she backed up and began pacing in front of the TV.
"I almost kissed another man last night," she blurted out, and now that she had started, she wouldn't stop. "We were in the kitchen, at the restaurant, and he said I was flirting. I didn't know I was, I didn't know I was flirting, I didn't mean to, but he said, he said he thought I was interested, that I liked him. And I didn't, I didn't, I don't like him, because I love you. But he didn't know that, because I didn't tell him. God, I didn't tell him. I was flirting with another man and I didn't tell him about you and he thought I liked him and he tried to kiss me."
She stopped. She pulled her hands through her hair then crossed them over her chest. She looked at Chandler. He was very still, staring at some point on the coffee table.
"I'm so sorry," Monica said, kneeling in front of him. "Please, say something."
"Did you kiss him?" Chandler asked.
Monica shook her head before she could find her voice, her eyes filling with tears. "No," she whispered, her voice shaking. And then, stronger, "No."
Chandler glanced at her then looked away. He ran a hand over his face and through his hair, finally resting his forehead in his palm.
His body felt heavy, like he didn't have the strength to so much as lift his head or cross his legs. He felt detached from this whole scene, as though the words he'd just heard, the woman kneeling at his side, even the sirens wailing on the street below, were all coming from a movie he was just watching.
She hadn't kissed him. That was something. It crossed his mind that this wasn't a break-up worthy transgression. But still, it was bad. There had been some kind of shift in their relationship _ clearly there was more to this situation than Monica had spat out just now. But before they talked it over, before he could say a word to her, he had to know where he stood, because he had never seen anything like this coming.
It sounded odd, he knew, but one of the things he liked about his relationship with Monica was their fights. Like any long-term, well-established couple, they had their fair share of them. But, for the most part, they weren't damaging fights. They weren't necessarily productive _ in hindsight, their last big fight, over the fate of the spare bedroom, had been petty and pointless. But in the end, no one got hurt.
He suspected it was because they usually made a habit of avoiding each other when they were angry. When they fought, one or both of them would walk away before the yelling could turn nasty. Chandler remembered the long, drawn-out battles between his parents, when they would sometimes hurl insults at each other for hours on end. But with Monica, one of them would just walk away, and a few hours later they would be tripping over each other to apologize. And they were very good at the make-up sex.
Chandler wasn't so naïve to believe that this situation would be resolved so easily. For starters, he certainly had nothing to apologize for. And the way he was feeling, there wasn't going to be make-up sex any time soon. But he knew it could be resolved. If only he could get some space. With Monica kneeling in front of him still, he felt trapped. There was no way he was talking to her right now. And if she stayed put, he was going to say things he'd later regret.
Damn but his head was throbbing.
He slowly rubbed at his temples, and then drew his hand over his face, the stubble from a day without shaving scratching his palm. He picked both hands up and rubbed at his eyes until he could see stars bursting under his eyelids. The headache that had receded to a dull pressure at the base of his head was now back in force, building behind his eyes, pushing at his temples. He felt himself grimace at the pain as he dropped his hands away from his face and balled them into fists on his thighs.
"Are you OK?" Monica asked softly, sounding shy and concerned. He saw her reach a shaky hand out to him, and then pull back.
"I'm fine," he said, his voice harsh and short.
"What do you want me to do?"
He sighed. "I don't know. Nothing." He leaned back in the chair and put his face in his hands again. "Look, I just, I need to think about this. I need to get out of-"
"You can't," Monica said, cutting him off. "You can't go anywhere. You're sick."
"I know," he said, giving her a meaningful look then turning away. "But I can't, I can't talk to you now. I can't be around you now."
Monica stared up at him for a moment, but he wouldn't meet her gaze. She looked away and leaned back on her heels, pulling a hand through her hair.
"OK. Um, I'll leave. Do you want me to leave?" Chandler just frowned and barely nodded. Monica stood up and grabbed her jacket as she walked out the door.