Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the apartment, just the DVDs. There's no profit except writing practice being made here.
"You know Phoebe's brother?" Chandler's voice broke through the silence of the moonlit room.
They were exhausted after the day they'd had, being awake for thirty-six hours straight tended to do that to a person. And that was solely the physical exhaustion, pair that with the emotional rollercoaster that was her mother ignoring her, her best friend having a baby, his best friend proposing, and deciding they were ready to have a child, plus all the tiredness leftover from the satisfaction they'd found in the janitor's closet. The two of them were ready for sleep.
Monica lay naked beside her husband, her head on Chandler's chest, her right leg caught between his, her right arm stretched across his torso to hold the ribs on the far side of Chandler's body.
Monica swirled the pads of her fingers over her husband's hot skin, catching his peaked punk nipple beneath her rings and sliding it between her middle and fourth fingers. She relished in the way his heartbeat slowed under her touch, relaxing as he quietly fell asleep beside her.
Mostly asleep herself, Monica hummed, her chest vibrating with the deep, throaty sound.
"He was an idiot but he wasn't stupid."
His thumbnail brushed against the soft skin of her arm and Monica shivered. His thigh was warm between her legs, his breath hot against her hair, his palm steady against her waist but it was the scratch of his thumb that made electricity shoot through her veins. There was something about the subtlety of his touch that had always perplexed and excited Monica, or perhaps it perplexed her how Chandler could barely touch her and excitement would ripple through her. No other man managed to incite lust in her so consistently, or so easily. And Chandler Bing did it with the simplest toughest that he used to calm and relax her simultaneously.
"Frank never had a proper family so he made his own."
Monica bit her lips together and lifted her head to look at Chandler. "What do you think we have been doing all these years?"
He squinted at her, pulling the expression she had copied, with his lips pulling into a curious frown but bitten together like he was holding back an opinion.
"Joey and Rachel and Phoebe. The two of us have been picking up strays and raising them for as long as we've been friends."
Monica manoeuvred so that she rolled completely over her husband, leveraging her weight on her right leg and slipping her left between his legs with the other. She pressed her entire body against his and folded her arms beneath her chin so that she could look at him. His arms followed her, remaining wrapped around her, his palm spanning her lower pack and pressing her to him. His other hand came up to cup her shoulder, stroking the side of her neck lazily.
"The two of us have been building our family for years," she told him.
He looked up at the ceiling, the long line of his thick neck and the bulge of his throat leading to the underside of his chin all Monica could see of him, she watched him gulp as he realised the truth of her words, making her have to fight back her own tears. Chandler had grown up without a childhood; his father abandoned him but not before placing Chandler at the centre of a tug-of-war in the divorce from his mother and allowing him to witness unspeakably graphic acts. His mother had shipped him off to boarding school the second he was eligible. Abandoned again, and teased mercilessly by the other boys for his mother's work and his father's passions, Chandler somehow found it in himself to tolerate his parents overtly narcissistic and empty gestures at custody payments, but not custody, by spending summers in a burlesque troupe and writing his mother every chance he got, until he decided he didn't need to accept their neglect anymore. In all that time, Chandler never found a place where he was comfortable enough to be his true self until he'd found himself in Apartment 19. Not many people noticed nor carer, but Monica watched as Chandler cultivated a space where his friends could feel safe and valued the way he never was, and prompt and prod them with gentle sarcasm or a curious glance.
He let out a puff of air. "Huh? We have been taking care of them for years."
Monica chuckled at how surprised Chandler sounded, as though he didn't know how important his role was in Joey's maturation and Phoebe's socialisation, Rachel's integration into the working class and Ross' shedding of his intelligent elitism. Hell, he even had a huge part in her transformation from domineering and callously stubborn, to a softer, more tolerant woman, a little less serious and strict and a little more spontaneous.
"What made you decide you were ready?"
Monica moved her hands so that the backs of her hand touched the tops of her breasts and she let her lips drop to her husband's sternum.
"Nothing."
She pressed up on her forearms, her back arching, searching for a better angle to see his expression. She didn't find one and Monica cocked her head and waited for Chandler's eyes to return to hers. It took him a beat but his chin dropped and his head lolled slightly sideways and his smile was lopsided.
"I don't have baby fever or anything," he explained. "I just realised we don't have to be as ready to be parents as I thought we did."
"What do you mean?" She shifted slightly, returning her hand to his sternum and rested the point of her chin just beneath her wrist. He'd deny it profusely, but chandler was almost as organised as her, he always had been. In a different way, of course. Chandler budgeted and saved his money, and wore discount shirts he found priced three for one or seventy per cent off. Rachel hated him for it, with his tendency to wear last decades styles and clothes that were slightly too big because he could tuck a shirt in and roll its sleeves and it would fit properly, but he couldn't get back the fifty dollars if he forked it over for one that was the right size and not in the bargain bin. That wasn't to say he was miserly or stingy, Chandler simply never spent his money on himself, paying for accent lessons or new guitar strings or those nonstick pans he'd gotten her for Christmas. Chandler was all about practicality and sensibility.
"I mean, financially we can manage it. We're ready. And the two of us?" His fingers stopped stroking her upper arm to cup the back of her head, his thumb caressing the soft skin beneath her cheekbone. "We're good. We can handle anything that comes our way. We don't need to be ready to have a baby."
She squinted at him in the darkness, warmth flooding her lower belly as his thumb smoothed over her cheek one last time before his hand ghosted down her neck to return to her shoulders, his fingers twirling in the ends of her hair.
"Ross wasn't ready for Ben when he found out Carol was having him and he's doing a pretty good job, all three of them are. Hell, Rachel wasn't ready yesterday. And she'll probably be overwhelmed and unsure tomorrow," his hand fell to her shoulders and he stroked her skin from the top of her neck down to her waist and back up. "But today, when she was holding Emma, none of that mattered."
Monica grinned. Her husband was something else, observant and sensitive. She'd never known a person so attuned to the nuances of other people's behaviour but he'd hit the nail on the head with Rachel. She'd been terrified and unsure, never expressing any interest in children, not knowing how she was going to handle having a baby of her own all the way through her pregnancy, but she had known just how to hold Emma the moment the newborn was placed in her arms and had never appeared so comfortable with a child in her life.
"I'm sorry it took me so long to realise that even if I'm not ready now, I've got a year to figure it out before our little one gets here."
"No," Monica shook her head, letting the fingers of her left hand trace across his jaw. She needed him to know she was happy with the way they had paced themselves. "I'm glad we waited."
"You are?"
She hummed. "I always thought I wanted a wedding and a baby straight after," that had always been her dream, same as the name Emma and the big white wedding and a foreign romance. Dreams made by a naive teenager with no consideration to the added influence of the man she was married to. Reality meant other people were involved in decisions and a healthy relationship meant compromise and communication, and what she had with Chandler was a life where the both of them got to live their dreams. "But I don't. I want this, quiet nights in with you, just the two of us. You really want to try for a baby? Already?"
"Yes," he said it so easily. "Besides, if you're going to have four of my children and we don't want to have them all under the age of five at the same time, we need to start trying now."
Monica kissed his chest. She adored him. That his plans weren't some vague idea he had but that he went for them. He didn't just want a big family, he was planning on going after it with her.
"You calling me old?" She laughed.
"Never," his grin shone in the moonlight. "I'm saying, my back hurts most of the time now. In ten years and I'm trying to pick up toys from the yard and chase around twins and a toddler, I might collapse and die on you."
"I thought we agreed we were only going to have three."
"We were," his fingers thrummed against her spine. "But the twins were a wonderful surprise."
Monica giggled at how sincere he sounded. She was still giddy by the whole idea that they could have a baby in a years time, that they were actively pursuing their dream of having a family, and not just their friends that they took care of who sort of didn't need them anymore. "I can't believe we're trying."
"I knew I shouldn't have bought that pack of condoms," he lamented.
Monica snorted at how woeful he sounded and she knew how to perk her husband up.
"Give them to Joey."
"I do like that."
She hummed happily. "Me too."
They'd been making their family for as long as they'd known each other, gathering people around them to love and nurture in ways they weren't nurtured themselves, to teach and care for and fix their fractured perceptions of family by creating a new one. And now they were going to have a real child, to use all those skills they'd been garnering for years and become the best parents they could possibly be. Monica kissed her husband's chest and lay her head against his skin. falling asleep to dreams of Chandler Bing holding a swaddled baby, running his warm hand over her swollen belly, sharing a kiss while they were barefoot on a luscious lawn with a little boy running in circles at their legs.