Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the apartment, just the DVDs. There's no profit except writing practice being made here. Nor do I own the film You've Got Mail.

Return to Form: To go back to a better, original state.

"Hi," Monica grinned as Chandler walked into the restaurant.

They really should have organised to meet outside, but the plan had been that the first person to arrive would walk in and find a table big enough for six. That typically meant Monica, Ross or Chandler would end up sitting alone for five or so minutes if they arrived exactly on time. Rachel was always smart enough to wait outside for a second member of the party before taking a table, that way she never looked like she was eating alone. But Monica was always early. At least ROss and Chandler were punctual, striving to arrive to places on time or a little early, so she wouldn't be left alone staring off into space for too long.

For a horrible moment, Monica had a flashback of the day prior, sitting alone at a big circular table - the size and shape of which was really the only difference in the whole experience. There were more seats that were going to be either filled or abandoned. But Monica trusted the five people that were going to join her would actually show up. She knew they would. Or they would call the establishment and let her know they'd be late - that's what Chandler and Rachel would do if their meetings ran late. The only reason Ross would be held back would be because a class ran late, Phoebe with an extra client and Joey might have a last minute callback, but they would all try to get a message to one of the others.

"We have to stop meeting like this," Monica laughed when Chandler approached her table.

Chandler's laugh didn't meet his eyes when his lips quirked upwards. The tight-lipped smile fairly standard for Chandler, but there was a genuine bitterness behind it that was completely foreign to his face. Monica's stomach churned.

He took off his jacket and draped it over the back of the chair to her left. When Chandler sat down beside her, he was careful not to look at her. He didn't even say anything. It was a good thing that the pair of them were so consistently punctual. It gave Monica a chance to ask Chandler what was going on. He probably wouldn't talk to the others, or in the public forum of the round table, but to her he'd divulge whatever was stressing him out. That was the way their friendship operated. It always had.

"How are you?" Chandler asked curtly. It was a weird question. No one in their group ever asked it, they spent too much time together for simple niceties. Those sorts of questions were useless.

His jaw was clenched tightly, so tight that the dimple in his cheek and the line of his cheekbone prominent although they were usually hidden by the apple of his cheeks. His lips were almost white with the strain and just looking at him gave Monica a headache at the thought of how tight his teeth must be bitten together to make his soft eyes look hard like that. At least there wasn't a silence to accompany his expression. Chandler was often quiet. But his quiet was always a lull or a hushed moment - where conversation died and he was thinking up a joke to fill it, or he needed to concentrate on the paper or his laptop screen. There were comfortable stillness and comforting placidity. And it was always shared between them.

It was never a silence. The two of them were rarely ever subjected to a silence with a weird tension like the sort that was rippling off Chandler. Monica could't quite place what it was; not anger or disappointment, but a weird hostility.

Monica found herself comforted by the fact that despite whatever was going on with him, Chandler's elbow was touching hers.

"Still job hunting?' he asked, turning his attention to the bread in the centre of the table.

Monica hummed her response, waiting for Chandler to meet her eyes.

He tore at a crust of bread instead. He was clearly waiting for her to start off the discussion. Monica tried to flatten out her furrowed forehead, trying to shake off the feeling that something was wrong between herself and Chandler. She bumped his elbow with hers. "You'll like this."

He was staring intently out the window opposite, looking at the entrance of the restaurant as though he was willing someone to join them. Monica rolled her tongue along the inside of her bottom lip.

"Mum offered to pay me to cater her next party," Monica told him excitedly.

"Take Phoebe with you," Chandler suggested. "She's the only one of us who isn't afraid of your parents. She'll speak up if they take you for granted."

Monica grinned. That's what she'd been thinking. Not to mention that she'd been thinking along those lines because of something Chandler himself had said to her a while back, reinforced by a couple of other people in her life. "Thanks, I will."

There was another silence. The pause in conversation like an drop of molasses, pooling on the bottom of a wooden spoon and waiting, building, gathering momentum and mass, almost falling from the spoon into the bowl but it just needing a little push. It was agony to wait for the liquid to drip of its own accord and Monica, ever impatient, snapped.

Just as the bulb of molasses collected enough to spill from its stagnant spot and use gravity to fall satisfyingly.

"I have no idea-"

"Do you know-?"

The two of them spoke over the top of each other. Monica blinked repeatedly in the silence that ensued where they both waited for the other to continue. Neither did.

Monica held her breath while she waited for Chandler's reaction. He was in a mood Monica didn't recognise and she figured it would be best to let him lead the conversation. It was odd that they both paused when they spoke over each other. They were used to interrupting each other, their sentences running in to each other, bowling over the other's words and finishing announcements excitedly. So often, whether it was from the years of friendship, or the constant proximity to each other that they caught on to their mannerisms, Chandler and Monica conversed together without overlapping phrases. And even if they did that, there would be a moment of Oh, you thought that too before one of them continued speaking. There was none of that now.

Instead, they fell into that silence again.

But it was only for a beat.

Chandler leant forward, his forearms leaning against the edge of the table. He ducked his head between his arms and looked at her sidelong. Finally, finally Chandler cracked a smile at her. There was a lightness to his face that hadn't been there earlier. His blue eyes matched his tie perfectly. Even though the silk was too light to be anywhere close to matching his orange oxford, it suited him. It was strange. On anyone else, a shirt that bright (although it was more a burnt orange than the colour of the fruit) would be gaudy, the light blue tie an eyesore. But her best friend made it work somehow.

Chandler chuckled and Monica caught on, laughing softly.

Whatever Chandler was thinking, he hid it. He reached for another piece of bread, a stick with sesame seeds this time. As he pushed back into his chair, Chandler rolled his shoulders, cracking his back. His hands hovered over the plate in front of him, picking the seeds of his breadstick.

"When's the party?" he asked.

Monica responded with the date as though she was reading from a teleprompter. This man was going to give her a permanent twitch in her left eye, or premature grey hair or something, Monica figured.

Monica was accustomed to Chandler being stubborn, he was as competitive as she was. Worse sometimes. He didn't take things too far like she did, but he could hold his own in a battle of wits and mulishness against her. Normally he was on her team, a force for the others to reckon with. Chandler's competitive streak was one of the reasons they got along so well. He could butt heads with her, but he also understood when to stop and laugh instead of tease. Monica wished she had that sort of willpower. The restraint Chandler was famous in their circle was one of the things Monica respected most about him. That he could draw a line and adhere to it, staying stagnantly on one side and never crossing the line.

A few times over the years, Monica had wondered if one of the lines he'd drawn was between them. Once, it seemed, he'd drawn the line that they were mutual friends of Ross. Of course, that was very much in response to how Monica kept pushing him away, still embarrassed from a year prior and hurt from a year before that. He was her neighbour and friend and that was that.

But then they'd hug when she was practically naked and he wouldn't comment and didn't need to, the heat in his eyes and his breath communicating a tension they left unsaid or he'd kiss her cheek when she got a promotion, when Chandler would veer frustratingly off course. Monica wasn't even sure what she wanted her friend to say or do in those moments, except that she found herself wishing he'd done something more. She couldn't really put her finger on it, given that he was her friend, her best friend, but Monica never understood how stoically he could look at her and not feel anything. Not consider anything. It had to be willpower that he was exerting, stubbornness, because if it even when Chandler pulled away from her in those moments, Monica always felt his pride, or respect for her. She always felt beautiful and smart and important without needing to change or prove herself in any way. Those moments came as swiftly as they went, blown away on the wind with a quick word or an entrance from one of their friends.

Except for those moments, Monica loved Chandler's heels digging in, the righteous and comedic frustration, the arrogance he'd never otherwise show. They'd sit reading the paper on a Sunday morning, competing with kicking legs and slapping hands for the corner seat until one of them won prime position with their legs in the other's lap. He'd milk that for hours if he won, refusing to move at all unless one of them had an appointment or something equally drastic. The entire reason Monica even read the paper was for those scant few minutes competing with Chandler.

Except, Monica had no idea what they were competing for this time.

But she definitely didn't like not being on the same side.

"Do you have a plan for your menu?" Anyone else and that would have been a nice segue, a good conversation starter, a normal thing to ask. But Chandler knew all of Monica's signature dishes and that she'd absolutely have a plan. He knew her too well to ask that polite question.

Monica frowned again. Even if her eye didn't start twitching from how often she'd been squinting at Chandler today, she was definitely going to have to smooth out her forehead and lip line with creams and clinique concoctions just to prevent them from setting. Usually he made her worry about laugh lines.

Monica made a conscious effort not to be snippy when she responded, but she couldn't help the sarcastic drawl beneath her little chuckle. She'd learnt that little trick from him. "Chandler," dripped from her lips. "I only got the job a few hours ago."

"So you've got a rough draft of three courses and a back up plan." He was smiling. She could hear it. But he was intrigued by the bread in his hands and only looking at her with quick flicks of his eyes and jolts of his head every couple of words that made his fluffy hair bounce.

Monica laughed genuinely. "If you know, why'd you ask?"

"Jeez, Mon," he mustn't've heard her laugh for what it was. Or maybe whatever was going on with him was rearing its ugly head in odd, moody ways. "I was just making conversation."

She felt like she was shrinking in her seat, her shoulders folding in on themselves, her voice growing small. Since when had the two of them 'just made conversation?' They'd quickly bypassed the small talk stage of friendship - cutting off a man's toe tended to give a couple a reason to talk, sitting in a hospital room, one of them trying to apologise, the other too giddy on painkillers to be too mad.

"That's exactly where I'm up to," Monica said. Then she pursed her lips decisively. If he was going to backtrack their friendship all the way back to those early days when they didn't know each other and just made conversation so that the dinner table wasn't so quiet while they waited for Ross, then Monica was going to talk. Just like she did back then, always desperate for everyone's approval. She was going to talk until the sullen boy who hated Thanksgiving and kept tight-lipped about almost everything perked up and responded. That was how she'd won him over in the first place. She could do it again.

Monica squared her shoulders. Besides, Chandler had proven time and time again that he liked hearing about her menus.

"But I haven't decided if I want to do a sit down meal, which is always lovely and was my first thought. Or finger foods like mini quiches, which would show off my skills better and then could be used as like an advertisement for whoever's at the party that's throwing the next one."

"Is it a party or a dinner?" Chandler asked.

There is was! Monica grinned internally, a glimpse of normal Chandler Bing behaviour, a teasing smile playing on his lips as he spoke with her, a little bit of that sarcastic banter she loved. "A party."

"Then go with the finger food," was all he said. Chandler picked at the crust of his bread, pressing it together between his fingers until it was merely flakes of dust on his plate.

Monica wondered if he wanted to say more, but he was interrupted by Joey and Phoebe joining them at the table with a little bit of a commotion as Joey apologised for being late and Phoebe swatted his arm.

"What are you apologising for," the blonde in the orange coat and floral skirt took a seat next to Monica. "They're the ones who were early. We weren't late at all."

"Fine then," Joey responded with a bit of a scowl but clearly good-natured. "I'm not sorry. Happy?"

Then Joey turned his attention to the man beside Monica. He quirked a dark eyebrow, eyes wide like he was asking a question.

Through the corner of her eye, Monica saw Chandler's lips purse together and his head shake slightly. She could hear his hot exhale through his nose, like a sigh but angrier, or discomfited.

Chandler clenched his hand at his chest, the knuckles bent but his hand otherwise flat. His hand shook with tension as it pulled from his body toward the table. Monica couldn't decipher the gesture. She wasn't sure she wanted to but she was certain there was something going on with Chandler.

And Joey knew what it was.