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She flipped through the channels, bored. She had flipped them through what, ten, fifteen times. Occasionally she paused at the Woody Allen marathon, her enthusiasm fluctuating to a high with a glance at Diane Keaton's smile, and then to a sporadic bitter low at the fact that she was too distracted to watch a movie.

It was almost time, and delays considered, he should already be in a cab home right now. She checked the watch – it was 4:30 a.m in the morning, and she had been drifting in and out of sleep...

"You awake at this hour?"

She jumped and looked over the couch. Chandler had opened the door and was halfway through the living room, dragging in a trolley suitcase. Monica bit her lip and smiled. Either he would make an amazingly sneaky criminal or she was just too sleepy to think straight.

"So, how was Yemen?"

He gave her a glare, "Very funny. I lost four thousand dollars on an airport tour, had to stay crumpled up with a bag at a corner for ten hours, and would have to live in fear ever after that I don't bump into her on the New York streets. I think I need a shower."

He shoved his baggage aside and darted towards the bathroom. Monica slumped back on the couch, hands behind her head, mentally went through a tiny list of things that happened during his absence she wanted to tell him about... there wasn't much apart from the questionable road trip, and the fact Joey looked like he had indulged into a hissy fit with a drunk Kathy when he returned the next morning.

She startled awake again, this time finding Chandler beside her, crankily staring ahead and changing channels. His wet hair stood up as if electrocuted, he exuded this musky scent that somewhat made a knot at the pit of her stomach. God, Satan's hormones at work again. And this time they have a nice-smelling soap on their side.

"Aren't you gonna sleep?" she mumbled.

"I'm a little jet-lagged, but I've been sleeping for the last twenty four hours," he told her, "So..."

"Oh," she blinked confusedly, and then shut her eyes tight. Nothing, no sleep. They were dry as a desert. On top of it, the scent was very distracting. "Is that a new soap you're using?"

He looked as if he were a little bewildered at her choice of topic. "Yes, apparently it's this new big thing in the market... wait a minute, it sucks, doesn't it?"

"No, no. It's umm... very attractive."

He did a double take. "Attractive?"

"I mean, umm, I don't mind the scent. It has a very, uh, very... new and sen...sual quality to it."

"Maybe it's just me," he quipped.

Monica guffawed aloud, almost in an attempt to phase out the knotting of her insides. "You wish."

For the next minute, nobody talked; they just gazed blankly into the TV screen – it took her a while to notice the Woody Allen thing was still going on. As soon as the minute of awkwardness passed, Chandler began, "So, how's little Yasmine?"

"She's becoming a loud rooster."

"Not that one," he said, with an affectionate touch on her belly, "this one."

"Oh. She's kicking."

"Yeah? That's great," he rubbed it lightly, even as Monica bit her lip, "Are you okay?"

"Yes, yes. I'm a little – horny-hormoney."

"Oh," his hand sprang away from her as if deflected by a magnet, "Sorry."

She buried her face into her palms, wanting to pull out all her hair, "These hormones are driving me crazy. They are moody and – unpredictable – it's like a meta thing happening in there! The other day, Phoebe took me to this club – great men, but I felt nothing. Nada."

"You – you went on a date?"

"Wasn't exactly a date..." she continued to rant, "it was awful. The loud music got my head all throbbing, I practically shooed away a guy because I had nothing better to do... I'm at rock bottom. I'm too damaged to have a relationship again, and I'm too – uncertain – about having sex with a complete stranger."

"Hey," he squeezed her hand, "It's just a phase."

"But it's so tiresome! It's like, all the day I'm internally asking, hey, you wanna do it with me?"

"Sure."

She turned sharply. "What?"

"What?"

"What did you say?"

Chandler pursed his lips and scratched the back of his head, "I said, sure. Like, sure, Bobbie, it's gonna rain today. Sure, sure."

"...Okay."

Monica lifted her feet up the table to ease herself; she had to wrap her arms around her to control the bursting adrenaline. A bigger, stretched moment of awkwardness came that just didn't seem to pass. She watched Chandler fidgeting with the remote control. "You know I thought..."

"...Yeah, but no – no." He chuckled nervously.

"Yeah. We're friends."

"Yeah. That – my friend – is very important."

She nodded ostensibly. "Yes, yes. Very important. Now suppose it happens in the spur of the moment –"

"Suppose," he stressed.

"Now, suppose it happens – we ought to make sure that nothing, nothing changes the equation."

"Yes, nothing. It'll be like one friend helping out another friend."

"Exactly," she patted on his shoulder, "Others don't need to know."

"Absolutely. Nobody's allowed to judge."

"So?"

She looked earnestly at him. He was nervous; more than nervous, he was scared. She seemed to be oscillating between two voices – one that screamed how this was a goddamn ridiculous mistake – a mistake that was luring her to ruin their friendship for some jumpy useless hormones – and the other that egged on with a 'screw it, we'll see what happens later'. She shifted closer to him, the heat on her neck searing through her collar already. He caressed her cheek. It tingled.

He breathed. "So, I guess...?"

She stared deep into his blue eyes. "Screw it, we'll see what happens later."

She was relieved the very blunt statement didn't freak him out; instead, she was welcomed by his trademark smirk. She took it as a gesture of permission and threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him. Didn't smother his face like last time, but touched his lips tenderly, almost like a peck.

He tucked his hands behind her ears, digging them into her hair, pulling her closer. She felt the bubble burst inside her – the tender became passionate, spreading like a wildfire, inching out to the extremities of her finger tips. She broke apart; any further and she'd surely fall.

Chandler frowned. "What's wrong?"

"You know what's weird? This doesn't feel weird," she dropped in a much needed moment of amusement. He grinned. Monica sighed subtly; it was one of the rules – in any case, she must not fall.

"And you're a really good kisser," she added.

"Well, I've kissed over four women."

"Four?"

"Four hot women," his warm breath tickled her neck.

"Okay," she giggled. She wasn't complaining.

"Uh," Chandler glanced down at their entangled fingers, then up again at her forehead touching his, so close she could feel his breath was shallow and rapid; her hand traced down his belt and began to unbuckle it, "So, uh, should we move this into the bedroom?"

He woke up next to her, terrified.

Before he considered the credibility of what happened, he wondered if it really happened – it must've had, there couldn't be any other comprehensible reason why he was in bed with her naked under the sheets. The sunlight smacked him in the face and sent him in a tizzy and searching for his clothes. He found most of them scattered about in the room, except his sweatshirt; he glanced at the clock – it was almost 10:30 a.m and people might be there in the living room already.

Right then, coming bare-chested out of Monica's room to a group of people breakfasting, looking for a sweatshirt probably flopped somewhere around the couch didn't really put up a nice picture – although that should be the least of his worries.

His reality meter was pretty broken (battered? bruised?) by now, as he affectionately looked at the sleeping Monica. She seemed so in peace, the sunlight bouncing back her hair that fell against her bare shoulder. No, no. He looked away. They had promised each other it'd be nothing more than an act of pure animalistic lust, and right then, he couldn't do gooey dreamy eyes at her, not even at her sleeping, unconscious state.

It wouldn't be fair on her.

He readied to go out of the door. He decided if he encountered people outside, he'd behave as if there was nothing weird about topless prancing around the apartment. Maybe he could blame it on the radiator.

It was just Phoebe. He froze under the split-second of a suspicious glance she threw him, but then she broke into a laugh of mock-seduction, "Hello, man-nipples."

"Have you seen my sweatshirt?" He tried to distract her.

"I found one near the table, but I threw it in the laundry dump."

"Oh, okay," he left for his room to pick out a fresh one.

She called after him, "Where've you been last day?"

"Just a little bit of a tour," he smirked, as he remerged, pulling the shirt over, "Have you seen Joey?"

"He might be sleeping," she said, as she dug a spoon into her cereal, grinning on her own.

"What are you laughing at?"

"Oh, it's just the voices in my head."

Chandler somehow suppressed his sarcastic instinct and what came out instead was an incoherent guttural noise while he walked to the next door, shaking his head. Honestly though, he was a little relieved; it was almost effortless convincing the zany Phoebe.

Joey was awake. In fact, he didn't look all too happy to see Chandler.

"Nice to see you too, Joe," Chandler deadpanned. Joey glared.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded.

"Well, my going to Yemen was kind of an impulse decision."

"Not that," he waved off casually, "about the Kathy thing."

Chandler's mind was a little too preoccupied to even jog his memory. What was Joey even talking about? He gazed back confusedly. "Huh?"

"Why didn't you tell me that Kathy cheated on you?"

He looked away. "How did you know?"

"How long have you been hidin' it?"

"Not too long, trust me."

"What d'ya mean?"

Chandler took a long, deep breath. He would've been pleasured if the air had some nicotine in it; he had expected he would never have to reiterate this particular story. "Joey, there's no use digging this now."

"Tell me," Joey growled.

"Okay," he raised his hands in surrender, "The day I went to tell her it's over. She gets a little upset and tells me she slept with Nick almost a year ago to get back at me, you know, that time we fought, the play thing – with the chemistry on-stage and off-stage... you get the gist of it."

"And she hid it from you all this time?"

"She says she loves me."

"Cheeky little bitch."

"Joey," Chandler chastised him, "It's not her fault. I literally threw her at the guy's man-nipples."

"Ugh," Joey clutched his head in dramatic exasperation, "You don't start again. How's it not her fault? And you're thinkin' of gettin' back with her."

Chandler thought he heard him wrong. "What?"

"Monica told me. She said you guys made up in some toy shop."

The idea of it smacked Chandler in the face so hard he almost laughed. "What are you even talking about? That's not what it was."

"It wasn't?"

"No, no," he grinned, not even sure what he was grinning about, "in fact, I told her I was in love with Monica. I guess - not even a guess, I'm pretty sure – that chapter is closed."

Joey's expression turned to ecstatic so abruptly one would wonder if he was performing mime. He leaped in the air and threw himself onto Chandler (Chandler assumed Joey wanted to hug him), his arms wide and inviting, "Now that's the reason you're my best bud!"

"Count in the bracelets and now there're three," he smirked sassily.

Joey patted him on the back, "Dude, you're smiling as if you got laid."

"You'd think, huh?"

It wasn't that hard of a secret to keep. And if they didn't think about it too often and too deep, it wasn't a hard thing to keep doing either.

The hormones got worse towards the latter half of her pregnancy, and they did it quite a few times more. There was a certain ease about it, and given Monica's situation, even the tiniest misplacement of a magnet could depress her, so he was happy that something was keeping her happy.

He remained a little curious, though. He looked for little signs of whether anything had changed, whether there was a different twinkle in her eyes when she smiled at him, whether there was a different thrill when they kissed, whether there was love.

It was hard to know. He couldn't ask her. Or could he?

By then she had swollen round, could hardly move, her moods swiftly shifted between jubilations and extreme misery, so much so that Chandler had to hide away all the photo albums, her tragic wedding dress and every other item that he thought could be remotely shady. For the last few days the idea had been hovering around his head like a flock of noisy birds; her delivery date was near, he could ask her out – and even if she shot him down – he could assure nothing would ever change their equation.

It was better than the constant wondering that ate him inside.

It was late evening and Chandler had a day off. He returned to Apartment 20 after a game of foosball by himself, for Joey had had an unannounced audition and two dates back to back and was out of sight since long. Finding nothing better to do, he settled on the couch beside Monica, who had dozed off with a magazine on her face.

She stirred and blinked, and he hastily turned away, busy with the remote, his heart giving a nasty throb. Pretended to be too into the TV, and quipped, "You missed a goal."

"I was watching soccer?" she raised a sleepy, bewildered eyebrow.

A wasted evening and a soccer match that no one cared about. Would this be a good time to ask?

"Hey," there was a slight knock on the door, as he glanced over his shoulder and watched Ross walk in, "Are you guys free?"

"Since 1776."

Ross halted at his spot, closed his eyes for a split-second as if he were meditating to absorb Chandler's nonsensical answer, before he got to the point. "I think I've got news."

"What news?" asked Monica.

He sat on the centre-table facing them, pursing his lips in barely-controlled excitement. "Okay, the thing is, Emily and I may be getting married."

Chandler's first reaction was a slow gasp; he wasn't sure if Ross noticed, and he hoped he didn't. Sure the Emily thing had been on for what, the last four-five months but he was sure nobody knew it had become this serious. Not to mention Chandler's heart broke a little thinking about how Rachel would be receiving the news.

"Wow," Monica muttered slowly, as if along the same lines of thought, "That's... that's great, Ross. Congratulations."

"I know it's a little hasty," Ross spoke dreamily, "but it just feels right. Plus, Emily knows this beautiful place her parents got married, and it's gonna be broken down soon – although that has nothing to do with the fact we might be going so fast –"

"Yeah, no, it's great," Chandler assured him, "Congrats, man."

"I just wanted to make sure you guys are okay with it, before we make it official."

"Why won't we be okay with it?"

Ross looked uncomfortable under their gaze. "No, I mean, after what happened – it's almost a year now – with the two weddings and all. I mean, I won't want to hurt you guys by any means –"

"Ross," Monica laughed, although Chandler could very well hear it cracking with emotion, "You kidding? We can't be any happier. Just keep it away from my due date."

"Your due date's this week, Mon."

"I know," she giggled sheepishly, "any excuse to mention that. Now, excuse me gentlemen, I've got to pee."

They watched Monica's slow-trotting figure disappear into the bathroom. Ross got off the hard central-table and found a place on the sofa. He blew out a long sigh. Chandler could tell something was on his mind. Maybe Ross was just nervous, too many emotions constricting him what with his own wedding and his sister's baby coming.

"Long day, huh?" Chandler still tried to start a conversation.

"Yeah," he said, pensive, "More like a long year. So much happening – everything was so messed up." He turned to Chandler; he sounded heavy and intense, and if Chandler wasn't mistaken he saw Ross's eyes glistening, "I gotta tell you, though. What you did for my baby sister –"

"Hey, c'mon now," he did a little laugh, "Don't fret over it."

"No, really. I should. I really should. You were there when even I couldn't. I mean, she looks so happy now – after all that happened I'd honestly thought it would take a long time to get back to normal – seriously, Chandler, and I mean it – you're the best friend any guy can ask for."

"Hey, come here," he reached out to squeeze Ross's shoulder, held back the lump in his own throat even as he watched Ross breaking down, "Listen, it was never me. It was your sister all this time. She saved me. And I thought I could do this little bit to repay her."

Ross wiped his eyes on his coat sleeve, tried to be subtle about the crying, quite unsuccessfully. "I just – I hope she understands how much she means to me," he stuttered, "I feel like sometimes I don't show it enough – or do enough – I don't know, with mom behaving like that... I don't know if she blames me –"

"She doesn't blame you," Chandler insisted, "And you've always been a great big brother. Get that in your head, okay?" Ross shook his head, dug his face in his palms. He kept breaking, and it hurt. Chandler blinked back tears and persisted with an unexpected firmness, "Ross, I mean it."

"Yeah, yeah I know. Thanks, Chan."

"You need a tissue?"

Ross chuckled through his tears. "I'm good. I got a dino snot rag."

He beamed at Ross. "Now c'mere and give me a manly hug."

That little chat with Ross kind of complicated it. All the nice things Ross had said about him, sent him into a wild tizzy inside.

Was it a little selfish now? If Chandler asked her out, would it mean all this time he had an intention behind all that sweet assistance?

He didn't know. When they had begun living together, he had nothing in his head apart from the sole idea to protect her from falling apart. He was disgusted at her mother, sure the lady might've meant it for some good under the surface, but there certainly were other ways to put it – or better still to just keep it to herself. Monica had been alone, and she needed help.

So? What to do? Shut up and take it to the grave? Be completely honest with her? The more he thought about it, the urge to tell everything grew tenfold.

"I can't be resting all day," Monica moaned from the couch, long after Ross was gone and she was done flipping the magazine a dozen of times, unaware of the emotional mess he and Ross went through while she had been in the bathroom, "Sitting around is so tiring!"

"Mon," he began, slouching beside, "How d'you think Rachel will take the news?"

"I know," she exhaled, "It's gonna hurt."

"You think she should've told him about her feelings?"

"I don't know. Maybe," she said, "If she had to, she should've come clean long ago. The less the complications, the better it is. It's too late now."

"Yeah."

"But I see where she's coming from. What Ross did was a big blow. That got to take some time."

How big of a blow would it be if he told her that his feelings for her had begun a chain reaction that somehow led to Richard's accident? His breathing went shallower in the face of it, while he nodded along, "Yeah, yeah."

"Wasn't too long ago when we thought they're gonna end up together, didn't we?"

"Yeah. It's a shame they broke apart."

"I really thought they'd be back together again. In some ways, they so belong together," she trailed into deep thought, "It's so late now."

"What must it be like to have a friend coming out of the blue telling them they love them though."

Monica smiled at that. "You know what, it's everybody's fantasy."

Chandler groaned internally and stared at the skies for help. She was messing with him, right? Unknowingly toying with his emotions and pulling the strings like some kind of a puppet-master? He drew his knees to his chest and tugged at his hair.

"What's up with you?"

"Nothing," he mumbled, "I'm just stretching." His limits.

He had to do it. It was a good time. There was nobody to interrupt; if all went well, they could go to sleep together – if it didn't – they could just go to their own rooms and drift away trying not to think about it. In any case, he had to do it. He would've had to do it sooner or later.

"Mon," he gently took her hand, "I gotta tell you something."

She looked a little surprised, maybe with a pinch of curious. "Yeah?"

Before he could begin, she flinched, her hand pulled out of his grasp, as if in shock. His insides gave the nastiest possible churn – did she read his mind again? Did he just throw everything he had down the drain? Hysteria bubbling up in his chest, he bit his lip and tried to focus.

"What is it?"

"I think – I think my water just broke."

Hey guys, sorry I left such a weird note at the end of the last chapter... It's just I got a little ill and the chapter wasn't supposed to end there, and I didn't want to disappoint you guys so I felt I compromised with whatever quality I usually present with. Whatever it is, you people are awesome! Life's pretty dull for me, so the feedback at the end of the day cheers me up!