Hey lovelies!
This was a prompt on Twitter from my lovely friend Ella( covrteneycoxx). She made a wonderful AU video and I was inspired. I retweeted the video, so go check it out! This will be full of angst, so if that's your thing, you'll like this one. It's quite a contrast from FWB, although that one will also have a angsty moment or two. :)
This is set in season 9, but won't be exact with the show. Some stuff will look familiar, but probably out of order, not the same dialogue, etc.
I have no idea how long this will be. I anticipate ABOUT ten chapters or so, but not WATC long, LOL.
Enough of my rambling, thanks again to Ella's wonderfulness andddd I hope you enjoy!
"Honey, we're leaving tomorrow, and you've still got a lot of packing to do," Chandler said, leaning out of their bedroom to look at his wife, who was in the living room.
"You're right," she said, but he detected a tone.
He furrowed his eyebrows together at the pensive look on her face and tapped his fingers against the doorframe, "What's wrong?"
She gripped the cordless phone in her hands tight as she looked up at him, "Maybe I shouldn't go."
Chandler turned his head, then walked all the way out of the bedroom toward her, "What?"
She'd gone into an explanation about how this restaurant headhunter woman, Nancy, told her about a great job in Manhattan at a restaurant called Javu.
He put his hands on his hips as he studied her as she spoke, his eyes narrowed just slightly. He'd played what she said yesterday repeatedly when Rachel asked her if she had to go with him to Tulsa, "Well, I kind of have to don't I? Because of this stupid thing." She'd held up her left hand to show them her wedding ring on her ring finger, proving to them all her reason for being forced to go with Chandler.
He'd be embarrassed if she knew how often those words echoed in his head since she said them.
But then she told him that she wasn't going to be without him for four days out of the week, so he felt a little better about asking her to pick up her life and move to a different state.
Until the phone call, apparently.
He knew the look on her face, that passionate, wanting look that told him she was really, really, excited about this new job opportunity. He sighed, half of him hating the idea of not getting to see her every day, the other half not wanting to make her do something she clearly didn't want to do. She continued with telling him that they technically would only be apart for one day, and if they couldn't make it one day, they had problems.
"Take the job," he said softly, nodding at her a little.
"What?" She asked, stepping toward him.
He sighed and moved closer to her, "I think you should take the job."
"Really?" She replied, and a look of excitement and relief crossed her face.
He nodded and sat down on the arm of the oversized chair. He looked up at her as she stepped up to him and placed her hands on his shoulders. He stared into her eyes, those beautiful breath-taking blue eyes that he often got lost in, "I know it's important to you, and you deserve it."
She squeezed his shoulders, "It's only temporary," she said, "and we'll talk on the phone all the time, and it'll be over before we know it."
He smiled just a little, "I want you happy, and it sounds like this job will make you happy," he said softly, the nagging feeling in his gut reminding him that it may not be as temporary as she thought it would be. He placed his hands on her waist and looked up at her again, "Javu will be lucky to have you."
"I love you," she replied, then leaned down and planted a kiss on his lips. After she kissed him for a moment, she pulled back and ran her hands down his chest suggestively, "and now that I don't have to pack, we have time for some other things."
He lifted his eyebrows and moved his hands up to her ribs, "Oh yeah?"
She grinned and nodded, then gently pushed on his shoulders and made him fall into the chair. She climbed onto his lap and placed light kisses all over his face, "Oh, yeah," she answered, then leaned to his ear to whisper in it, "let's make it count."
Hours later, Chandler sat down in his seat on the plane that was heading to Oklahoma without his wife beside him.
They'd made love into the night the previous night and spent the whole day together before his flight, and she gave him a kiss goodbye that he was sure he'd remember all week long. Still, he wondered if he'd regret telling her she could stay in New York.
He knew that making her do something she absolutely didn't want to do would just cause tension between them, and he didn't want that, but he wasn't sure if he could get over the sting of missing her.
The flight attendant began to talk to the passengers over the speaker, asking them to turn their cell phones off for departure. Chandler buckled his seatbelt and pulled the device from his pocket, flipping it open. He stared at the blue eyes that were staring back at him through the screen. It was a picture of Monica holding a puppy, beaming at him.
He smiled at the memory. It was their visit to the pet adoption drive she insisted on stopping by while they were out shopping together a few Saturdays ago. The conversation that followed had him promising they'd have a dog when they moved out of the city, hopefully with their first child.
He powered off the phone and returned it to his pocket, then sat back and let his head fall onto the seat.
He didn't really want to move to Tulsa, even though it's what his career asked of him right now. He'd been there for so long, made a substantial amount of money, and now would be promoted to the President of Operations.
The location wasn't ideal, but, to him, the benefits of the move outweighed the drawbacks to quit, then find another job and stay in New York.
The major drawback was the fact that his wife didn't want to go.
He ran a hand over his face, glanced over at the stranger in the seat next to him. He acknowledged him with a nod and shut his eyes, mentally preparing for this time apart from his wife.
Damn it.
"Are you okay?"
Monica looked up at her friend as the two of them sat at a table, Emma cooing softly in Rachel's arms. She nodded slightly, "Yeah, it feels weird telling my husband goodbye for a few days," she admitted, rubbing her arm a little.
"Do you really think you guys can do this?" Rachel asked, adjusting Emma's blanket that was bunching up a little around her tiny face.
"What do you mean?"
Rachel furrowed her eyebrows at her longtime friend, because she didn't think the question needed to be explained, "Do you think you can do a long-distance relationship?"
Monica snapped her eyes toward Rachel, a shocked expression on her face. She didn't even consider that things wouldn't work out with her and Chandler.
Their marriage was strong, and she loved him more than anything else in the world, but this new job opportunity was too perfect to let slip away. And she couldn't, in good conscious, ask him to get a different job that would have him stay in New York with her when he worked so hard and for so many years to get to where he was.
"Of course we can," she responded softly, "why wouldn't we be able to?"
Rachel looked up from the little girl in her arms, "Well, long distance relationships are hard, Mon," she said, shrugging her shoulders a little.
"I know, but we're not some puppy love couple that just started dating, Rach," she sighed, "he's my husband."
Rachel nodded slowly, then looked back down at Emma when she cooed, "I know he is, but that doesn't make it any less difficult. He's going to be away from you for days, weeks at the time."
"We'll be fine," Monica insisted, "he'll be home on the weekends, and I know I'll miss him, but it is only temporary…" she trailed off because she really didn't know how temporary it was.
"Really?" Rachel pondered, "Well how long will this last?"
Monica swallowed hard and looked down at the table beneath her hands. She heard Chandler tell everyone it could be up to a year before he was done with work in Tulsa and back in the New York office.
A year?
That equaled several days of not seeing him, of her not in his arms at night, of not watching him smile when she told a joke, feeling his fingertips brush through her hair when he kissed her.
She shivered and shook her head, trying to get how much she was going to miss him out of her mind, "I don't know."
Rachel tilted her head at her friend and reached over with her free hand and touched Monica's hand on the table, "Maybe it won't be too long."
Monica sighed as Rachel moved her hand when Emma began to cry, "Yeah," she said quietly to herself, "maybe."
"Hello?"
Chandler smiled as he put his suitcase up on the hotel room bed, then sat down next to it, "Hey," he said, cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder.
"Hey honey," she replied, then shut the magazine she was thumbing through. It had been quiet all night long. Joey and Phoebe had dates, Rachel and Ross had a baby to take care of, and her husband was far away from her.
"I'm at the hotel," he said, a sigh following the words, "checked into my room."
She stayed silent for a few seconds, swallowed hard and shut her eyes, "I'm glad you made it safe."
He nodded and pinched the bridge of his nose, "Yeah."
"You okay?" She asked, because she could tell when he wasn't.
He licked his lips, "Yeah, I'm fine babe," he responded dryly, "just…tired, I guess."
She lifted and dropped her eyebrows, "I'm sure you are."
He pressed his lips together and smiled, "I could really use one of your best worst massages," he chuckled before he finished saying the words, and he could picture her rolling her beautiful blue eyes at him.
"Shut up," she said, then giggled a little too.
Silence fell over them for a few more seconds, both unsure how to do this.
There was never a time in all their friendship, then relationship, that they weren't more than 100 feet away from each other for a significant amount of time. If she wanted to talk to him, she could walk across the hall or into the next room and talk to him.
Honestly, they didn't know how to do this simple task of talk on the phone.
"This is hard," he whispered softly.
Monica nodded and stared at the coffee table in front of her, "Yeah," she agreed, "it is." She reached down and began to play with the corner of the pillow on the couch as she fought tears, "I miss you already."
He ran a hand through his hair, then let it rest on his neck as he looked up at the ceiling, "I miss you already too," he replied. It fell silent again and he took in a shaky breath, "We can do this, Mon," he said, but the break in his voice made her wonder if that's how he really felt.
"You think so?"
He shut his eyes for a second and nodded again, "I know we can."
She moved the pillow from the couch to her lap so she could squeeze it, "Just a few days until I see you, right?"
"Right," he whispered, "four days away."
"We can do this," she confirmed, more to herself than to him.
"I love you," he said, then sighed, "I love you so much."
She smiled a little and wiped a tear from her face, "I love you too."
"Get some sleep," he played with the wheel on his suitcase, "call me tomorrow, I want to hear all about your fancy new job, okay?"
She wiped another tear away and chuckled softly, "Of course I will."
"Okay," he said, "sweet dreams, baby."
She could almost feel a phantom kiss on her cheek, just as he did every night when he said those exact words to her, "Sweet dreams to you too," she whispered.
"Goodnight," he said, and after she replied the same, he pulled the phone from his ear and hung it back on the receiver.
He fell backward on the bed, his arms spread open as his gaze returned to the ceiling, "Four days," he said to himself, almost in disbelief.