Chapter Ten: Fun With Dick And Jane

The morning sun crawled across the floor, spreading patches of brilliance against the pale carpet and the padded silk walls. It found its way to Rachel's eyes and she squinted against it. It was heaven, she decided, this insulated cocoon. She watched his face, scrunched into his pillow, and how open and vulnerable it looked. One lock of hair fell across his forehead; she moved it back, her fingers lingering against his skin. He stirred slightly and one blue eye opened, fixing on her.

'You're pretty in the mornings.'

'I look like hell.'

'Nah.' His hand found hers, fingers linking. 'You look beautiful.'

'Mornings are not my best time.'

'Me neither.' He yawned widely. 'See? Made for each other.'

She squeezed his hand. 'Yeah, tell me that when you're fully awake.'

Both eyes were open now, both watching her. They had that lazy, hazy, early-morning look. 'I'm awake now. Trust me.'

'Oh?'

He smiled. 'Come here - I'll prove it.'

ooOoo

Rachel looked at the clock and groaned. 'Damn. I have to get to work.'

'Yeah, me too.'

'This sucks.'

'I think that's why they call it work.'

She smiled. 'You think?'

She really was beautiful in the mornings, he thought, with her hair messy and her face free of make-up. The sheet was half-wrapped around her, offering him tantalising glimpses each time she moved. He had developed a fascination with the plane of skin running from her collarbone to the swell of her breast; his fingers danced lightly across it and she lay still, taking in a deep breath and releasing it slowly. She watched him from under heavy-lidded eyes, cat-like.

'Seems like such a waste.'

'What?'

'Check-out's not 'til twelve. That's like four whole hours of naked we won't get to use.'

'That really is a shame.'

He drew a series of tiny spirals across her skin. 'It really is.'

'Why don't we play hooky?'

His fingers stopped. 'What?'

'I'm serious.' She sat up, the sheet slipping away; she was unashamed and glorious in the early-morning light. 'Why don't we phone in, say we can't make work and just-just spend the day in the city? Or we can call each other's work, 'cos, y'know, we're too sick. We can take turns choosing stuff we've never done before.'

'I refuse to shoplift.'

'I-' Her eyes brightened. 'You know Breakfast at Tiffany's?'

'Are you kidding me? I love that film.'

'Me too!'

His smile softened; he ran his hand along her cheek. 'It even has a happy ending.'

Rachel turned her head, pressing her lips into the palm of his hand. 'I love happy endings.'

ooOoo

'Did you have to call my work as Janice?'

'It makes it more authentic. Hey, the receptionist actually thought I was Janice.'

'Score,' he said sourly.

'Just how many times did she call you when you were going out?'

'You know, this was not how I pictured breakfast going.'

Rachel grinned. 'Okay, no more Janice talk, I promise.'

'Thank you.'

Back in their matching robes, they sat opposite each other at the small table laden with their breakfast. Rachel held a pastry in one hand, drank some of her coffee, took a bite, sighed happily through a mouthful of crumbs, 'God, I am starving.'

Chandler smirked in response; she rolled her eyes. But she still introduced her foot to his, pressing her toes against his ankle. She saw the corner of his mouth quirk.

'More coffee?'

'Please.' She held out her cup; he caught her eye and smiled again.

'Hey, you know what?'

'What?'

'We look like a real couple.'

'I hate to tell you this,' she said, 'but I think we are a real couple.'

The coffee sloshed in the cup.

'R-really?'

Rachel placed her over-full cup carefully in her saucer. Opposite her, Chandler sat gripping the coffee-pot, eyes fixed on her. 'Yes. Did you think we weren't?'

'I-' He took a breath. 'I don't know. Honestly, I've been trying not to think about it too much just in case, y'know, I got all Chandler and messed it up.'

Rachel slid out of her chair, rounded the table, curled up on his lap, her arms around his neck.

'You're not messing anything up. And neither am I.'

'Hey, and we thought we were pathetic losers!'

'Looks like we were wrong.'

'Yeah, but, y'know...'

'What?'

He shrugged awkwardly, linking his hands at her waist. 'If I'm not being a loser it's only because of you.'

It was so unexpected, the times when he could leave her breathless. She traced the contours of his lips with her fingers then kissed him sweetly.

ooOoo

The city air was still unseasonably chilly, scarves and coats in abundance on the streets. Rachel hooked her arm through his, absorbing warmth.

'Okay, so, where do we start?'

'Uh... I don't know, what do you want to do?'

Chandler veered them around a street-vendor. 'This was your idea.'

'Umm...' She screwed up her face, brow wrinkling. Manhattan. What did she want to do in Manhattan that she had never done before? She tilted her head back, frowning at the crisp blue sky and the silvered fingers of skyscrapers soaring upwards. 'Ooh! I've never been to the top of the Empire State.'

His eyebrows rose. 'Really?'

'Yeah, I mean all the time I've lived here I've walked past it, but-'

'No, I mean that's really what you want to do?'

Her eyes narrowed. 'Why? Or did you think that because it's me I'd want to do something stupid?'

'No-no, I-' Chandler blew out a breath. 'I didn't think anything; I mean, I don't think you're stupid, I never ever thought you were stupid, I just-' He stopped himself, panic visible across his face. 'Okay, let me start again. You: beautiful, glamorous, definitely smart. Me: idiot. I guess I- I guess I always think of you as glamorous and sort of ... up there.' He gestured with his hands, drawing a pedestal in the air. 'I sort of forget sometimes how cool and, y'know, normal you are. And smart. Did I mention smart?'

Sweat, there was actual sweat standing out on his forehead. He could feel it, the beads starting their slow slide. A familiar feeling. It had been inevitable, he reflected sadly, that sooner or later he would end up being just him and once that happened everything would just stop. He hadn't thought of it all ending on a crowded sidewalk being jostled by passers-by but then he couldn't really think of anywhere being a good place to end it.

Rachel slipped her arm back through his, rested her head against his shoulder for a moment. 'I'm sorry.'

He blinked, eyes stinging against the air. He told himself. 'Why are you sorry?'

'I just...' She murmured into his coat, tossed her hair back and looked up at him. 'I've never been academic and I know that, and I'm fine with that, I was never all that interested in studying; y'know, not like-' she forced the name past her lips '-not like Ross. And he'd never say it, not to my face, but he- I- I always felt like he thought I was sort of beneath him - intellectually. Like he was the clever one and I was...' She gestured helplessly with one hand. 'I don't know, like I was Eliza Doolittle and he could play professor, like he could turn me into someone else. And I'd feel stupid when I was with him sometimes.'

Rachel stopped talking, biting her lip and staring ahead as they made their slow progress through the snaking lines of human traffic. Chandler placed his hand over hers that lay in the crook of his arm. He remembered the four years of college and the patronising smile that would play across his erstwhile room-mate's face sometimes, the condescension and the over-enunciated smugness. And he tried hard, very hard, to remember that Ross was a good guy; he was a really great, really good guy. He did not deserve to have the back of his head beaten in with a baseball bat; so why did Chandler feel the need to do just that for each time he had hurt Rachel?

'If I made you feel that way-'

'You didn't.' Rachel smiled up at him. 'I guess I'd just sort of got used to it: Barry would be the same way and then Ross and ... and I never used to really mind 'cos I think I thought of myself in the same way but I've realised I'm more than that. It took me a long time to realise that.'

'Yeah, you never really needed that beauty scholarship.'

She frowned. 'What-' Her eyes widened, hand going over her mouth. 'Oh my God! I had totally forgotten about that!'

'Nice to know I leave an impression.' He couldn't help but laugh at the flash of guilt across her face. 'Rach, I'm kidding. You were pretty wasted.'

'Yeah...' Her gaze was fixed in the middle-distance. 'Beauty scholarship. That line.'

'It sucked, I know.'

Her head tilted; her eyes glittered beneath her lashes and her smile was slow. 'Actually, it sort of worked.'

'I knew it!' He pumped the air, coming perilously close to punching an already irate tourist in the nose. 'Sorry, sir, uh ... ma'am.'

'Chandler!' Rachel plucked at his arm, barrelling them through the crowds towards Fifth Avenue.

ooOoo

If they were going to do it, Chandler had told her, they would do it properly. She wanted the top and the top was what she would get. Up on the one-hundred-and-second floor, Rachel gazed through the windows and shivered slightly as the whole of New York was laid out below. Its sprawl was unending, far greater than the boundaries of the Village and Midtown, the only parts she ever really went to. Fragile, somehow, despite its great size, an incongruity caused by their present height.

She turned, located Chandler peering through one of the viewers. 'Trying to see if you can see your apartment?'

He straightened up. 'Joey's doing naked cooking.'

'You can't really see him?'

Chandler's eyes creased; he shook his head. 'You are so easy.'

ooOoo

'Rach, no.'

'Oh, come on.' She was using her best wheedling tone.

'I thought that the idea was we each choose something we've never done that we want to do - not we choose stuff for each other.'

'You just said salsa dancing looks fun and you'd never done it before.'

'Yes, but I didn't mean...' His eyes strayed to the whirling figures on the other side of the glass. Only in this city, he was certain, would they have salsa lessons in a bar in the middle of the day. 'Okay, okay. And I am sorry for standing on your toes.'

'You haven't stood on my toes.'

He took hold of her elbow. 'Yet.'

ooOoo

They were not the most graceful couple on the floor. They were probably the least graceful. Most definitely. Even when Chandler stopped clowning they still tripped over one another's feet and Rachel trod on his toes just as much as he did on hers.

They laughed a lot. They gave up on the steps they were supposed to be learning and made up their own, a pattern they repeated that made no sense to anyone, not even them, but it was theirs and they didn't care. The instructor had, after all, told everyone that it was supposed to be fun.

That same instructor smiled with some indulgence when, after everyone else had gone, that clumsy couple kept their arms around each other and shuffled across the floor to a slow number.

ooOoo

Rachel pressed her lips together and shook her head. 'You know what, I'm not even hungry.'

'Liar.'

She held her eyes wide. 'I am not!'

'Liar, liar! Less then one minute ago you said, "Oh, Chandler, I'm so hungry".'

'Did I say it in that creepy voice?'

He steered her towards the cart. 'It's getting late, you didn't have any lunch and you get cranky when you haven't eaten.'

'I do not.'

'Do too.'

'Do not!'

'Hi!' Chandler smiled brightly at the hot-dog vendor. 'She'll have one with everything.'

'What about you?'

'Me?' Chandler shrugged. 'I'm not hungry.'

'Hey!' Her eyes flashed, stormy blue. It was the eyes that pulled you in, he thought, always her eyes; the humour in them that belied her prim rich-girl exterior and then the depths behind that, all the thoughtfulness and sensitivity and vulnerability and Rachel-ness of them. 'If I'm doing it, you're doing it.'

He made himself grin at her and made himself look away from her eyes. 'That'll be two with everything, my good man.'

The vendor blew out a heavy breath, loaded two hot-dogs with the requisite everything and handed them across. Chandler marched determinedly towards a low stretch of wall, Rachel grumbling along behind him. Mustard was dribbling onto her hands. Some stuff she couldn't identify was also dribbling. If it went onto her coat she was going to kill him.

'Sit down and eat.'

She glared at him, still mutinous, but sat beside him and stared in a sort of horrified fascination as he bit into his hot-dog.

'That looks so gross,' she murmured, oblivious to the dollop of sauerkraut that slid gracelessly from her own portable meal and landed close to her foot.

Chandler swallowed. 'Will you just eat it?'

He watched with amusement as the expression on her face changed: apprehension, resignation, surprise and then a sort of delight. 'It's good!'

'I don't get to say "I told you so" very often, so - I told you so!'

Her eyes crinkled. They sat side-by-side and Chandler took his pleasure vicariously, watching her enjoyment.

'If I get addicted to those things,' she said in the end, 'it's all your fault. What?'

'You may be pretty, but you're a messy eater.'

'Huh?'

'You have mustard on your cheek.'

He watched her scrub at it, took pity on her, took the tissue from her hands and wiped away the smear of yellow. 'Can't take you anywhere.'

'I do a lot better with plates and cutlery.'

'Yeah, but that's just too easy.'

They abandoned their wall, circling down into the Channel Gardens and along until they reached the Lower Plaza of Rockefeller Centre.

'Look! The ice rink is still open!' Rachel turned bright eyes on him. 'Ever been ice-skating?'

'Actually, yes. I almost made it onto the figur- Ice hockey. Ice hockey team.'

Her eyes narrowed. You were going to say figure-skating, weren't you?'

'No.'

'Chandler.'

'No.'

'Chandler...'

'Yes.'

Her gaze strayed back to the figures skimming across the white surface. 'Guess that's out then.'

He took hold of her arm. 'But I have never been skating here and not with someone who doesn't know how.'

He could see her thinking it over, seizing on his rationale to allow her to choose the thing that was more for her than it was for him. He didn't mind that. He liked that. Everything was becoming about her: every thought found its way back to her; every moment of his day was coloured by her, by the remembrance of things they had shared and the anticipation of the things still to come.

He didn't mind that, either.

Rachel matched her stride to his, hanging on his arm and looked up at him, amusement dancing across her face. 'Did you make it onto the team?'

'No.'

'Aw. I think you would have looked cute in spandex and spangles.'

ooOoo

Somewhere around the edge of the rink, Rachel decided that this hadn't been such a good idea. She would have cast envious eyes at the girls merrily zipping around - backwards, some of them - but she was too busy trying to stay upright. She braced herself against Chandler's arm and let him drag her a few feet. It was ridiculous, she thought: she could ski, that was harder. Or maybe it wasn't. It was like learning to walk all over again. And if that had been as difficult as this, it was a wonder she had mastered the knack.

'Just relax, you're doing fine.'

Easy for him to say. Chandler moved with ease, with grace. If he didn't have her clumping along beside him he'd probably be zooming around with the pretty skater girls and doing tricks for them and making them laugh. And it would have worked, they would have been entranced by the charming clown in their midst.

She looked at him and the way the exercise had whipped more colour into his face, the way his blue eyes blazed, the way his face was full of laughter. True laughter. For all the jokes he made she had rarely seen him when he looked genuinely and completely happy. He did now. He did when he looked down at her. It wasn't the rich-molasses-melting feeling that seeped through her then and weakened her legs and blurred her brain. This was scalding, tearing at her, taking her apart and remaking her with parts of him etched into her.

'Hey, you're doing it!'

'What?'

'You're totally doing it.'

Too wrapped up in him, Rachel had lost all sense of her own physicality and found that when she hadn't been thinking about it, her body had obediently aligned itself with his. She matched his strokes across the ice - not as graceful, still ragged at the edges, but keeping up.

'Want me to spin you?'

She caught her breath. 'I-'

'Trust me.'

So simple. She nodded.

He took her hand between both of his, leaning back slightly against her weight, spun her around: a satellite in a blur of cold night air and ice bitten by her blades. And she was aware of the strength of his grasp, the solidity holding her steady. When he pulled her towards him her body crashed against his, momentum sending them both towards the barriers. She slithered helplessly and he held her up, still, pressing her against the barrier and brushing her hair away from her face. She could feel his breath against her lips, almost taste him. He studied her, his eyes taking in her face as though he were trying to memorise her.

'Afraid you'll forget what I look like?'

'Nah, I know you. I just want never to forget this moment.'