Chapter 2- Who Doesn't Love Back Story? a.k.a Sign Language For Dummies
AN: For those of you who don't know the exact timeline, it's around the middle of December, so Ross is living with Chandler and Joey (he's on sabbatical from work because he yelled at his boss for eating his sandwich.)
Disclaimer: Yea, I don't own Friends. I don't own Chandler or Monica or Joey or Ross or Phoebe or Rachel or even The Chick and The Duck! I don't even own Chandler's inner voice, because if I don't own Chandler, I can't own something that is all in his head!
"Oooh, I know! He should get her that to-die-for cashmere sweater we saw at Bloomingdale's the other day! You know the one-it's cranberry colored and it has that cute-"
"Rach, sweetie, he's not getting a present for you," Phoebe said, a little patronizingly. She was perched on one of Ross' numerous boxes, her feet propped up on the coffee table, while Rachel painted her toenails a brilliant shade of red.
Chandler slouched on the lemon yellow couch, feeling extremely out of place in his own apartment and hoping that they grew bored of the conversation before Rachel decided to try to give him a pedicure…again.
She, after informing him that he was in love with Monica, had proceeded to list the reasons why Monica "should have taken the hint" long ago (or at least why he should have.):
"You offered to be her boyfriend in Montauk, and even before that you offered to get her knocked up when she was forty if she wasn't already married."
Chandler hadn't thought that was a particularly good list: it was neither long nor very incriminating; but Phoebe, entering in time to catch the tail end of that line of reasoning, had added Chandler giving Kip a black eye when he'd first broken up with Monica, and the fact that "they practically grope each other all the time; they're always cuddling, even when Monica's like, wearing a towel."
Thankfully, they had gotten past that section of the conversation without Ross overhearing and offering to kick Chandler's ass. Chandler was having enough trouble with the new living arrangements; he didn't need the tension that would surely be added if Ross tried to murder him with a mattock.
The thought of Ross hearing was enough to convince Chandler that he never should have told anyone about his Christmas present idea. It wasn't like it would really work, anyway. She saw him as the guy who peed on her, and a good gift wouldn't change that.
'But it'll make her happy,' Chandler's inner voice pointed out in a sing-song voice. Chandler was too exhausted to worry about the implications of The Voice coming back. He wasn't sure now why he had made such a big deal out of this, and Chandler again bereted himself for thinking for even a millisecond that bringing anyone into it would help.
All it had got him was Phoebe and Rachel hanging out in his apartment when it was already overcrowded, Joey yelling loudly for him to "go for it" and the general increase in chance that Ross (or worse, Monica) would find out. Chandler was quite sure he would face rejection, but giving her a great present at least had him going down in style.
Chandler groaned out load. How had this even happened anyway? Not the telling people about this: it had already been established that the reason for that and pretty much everything else that went wrong with his life was that he was a world-class idiot.
No, the question was: how had he managed to fall in love with Monica?
'Um,' The Voice pointed out (and Chandler could practically hear it smirking), 'you said love again.'
'Did not,' Chandler thought defensively.
'Hoo, boy, you did,' The Voice said gleefully. Chandler scowled.
'Well, it's not like it means anything. Saying or even thinking "I have romantic feelings for Monica," or "I like her as more than a friend," is much more, y'know, tedious than just saying "I'm in love with Monica," even if that doesn't pinpoint my exact feeling towards her.'
'Yeah, okay,' The Voice scoffed.
'No. Really! Now…shut up, I'm trying to think.'
'About when you fell in loooooove with her.'
"Shut up!" Chandler snarled in frustration, not realizing that he had spoken out loud until he saw Phoebe, Rachel and Joey (Joey? When had he gotten here?) staring at him.
"Geez, we were just tryin' to help you out," Joey mumbled, obviously hurt.
"Yeah, Chandler! And if you don't like that, then we won't help you. So…Fromage Chapeau!"
Chandler, Rachel, and Joey stared blankly at Phoebe. "What?"
"I told you to go eat a hat…so…GO EAT A HAT!" Phoebe exclaimed, obviously still pissed off. Chandler smiled despite himself.
"No…you said 'cheese hat.' That doesn't even make sense!"
Phoebe glowered at him. "Well, I could be talking about a hat made of cheese, and….since when do you even speak French?"
"I don't. I know some words, including 'cheese' and 'hat.'"
"Well, that's nothing! I know Italian and sign language!"
"Where'd you learn that, Pheebs?" Rachel asked, hoping to lower the volume on Phoebe's voice. Phoebe rolled her eyes.
"Well, Italian I learned from this guy I lived with in Prague, and sign language Albino Bob taught me when I first came to New York. You know, after my mom killed herself-"
"Yes, sweetie, we know," Rachel interrupted quickly. Chandler raised his eyebrows, deciding it was best not to ask about the 'Prague' comment.
"Do you really know sign language?" Joey asked with some interest. Phoebe frowned at him.
"I just said I did. Would I lie to you, Joseph Francis? No. But if you want proof, here's, 'Chandler loves Monica.'" Phoebe gestured towards Chandler, drew a heart in the air, and mouthed the word 'Monica' while pointing at Apartment 20. Chandler stared at her incredulously.
"Pheebs, you do know that's not real sign language," he pointed out. Rachel motioned for him to let it go. Joey, however, was nodding furiously.
"Yea, of course it's sign language! I understood what she was trying to tell me perfectly and she didn't say anything out loud!" Chandler saw Rachel roll her eyes as Joey continued. "Now how would you say, 'Can I have a sandwich?'"
Phoebe started a series of quick, meaningless gestures that were completely incomprehensible to Chandler, but was thankfully interrupted by Joey.
"Ooooh! I've got a better one; what's, 'How you doin'?'" Chandler and Rachel stared at him in exasperation. Chandler wondered idly how he hadn't seen that one coming.
Phoebe sighed. "Really, Joey. You can't ask me to translate every time you need to sign something."
"Oh come on!" Joey pleaded. "I need this- deaf chicks are just as hot as the ones that can hear me! Please, just one more."
"Yea, one more!" Chandler exclaimed sarcastically. "How do you say, 'You have impregnated my hamster, now you must pay the ultimate price!' in sign language?"
Phoebe stared at the ceiling for a moment, apparently missing the sarcasm and actually trying to figure out how to sign that sentence. "Now I know this one. This was the first full sentence Albino Bob taught me!"
Chandler and Rachel exchanged glances. Chandler was still trying to refrain from making another sarcastic comment (she hadn't gotten the last one) when Ross came in, glum face barely visible from above a large cardboard box he was holding. Rachel, Phoebe, and Joey quickly headed for the door, realizing that Miserable!Ross meant he was sure to go into a rant about the unfairness of his sabbatical at any moment.
"So Chandler, we'll talk to you about that…work problem you have later, okay?" Rachel called before the door closed behind them. Ross seemed too preoccupied to ask what problem Chandler might have.
('How rude,' the Voice sniffed.)
"So, what's with the box?" Chandler asked warily. Unless the box was full of ads for apartments Ross could move into, Chandler didn't even want to know. Ross' boxes had already begun to spill into Joey and Chandler's bedrooms, mostly Chandler's, since Joey's was already the smaller of the two and was housing the foosball table.
"Just some of my stuff from the museum," Ross relied with a failed attempt at casualness. He dumped the box on one of the Barcaloungers (causing Chandler to wince) and plopped down on the other one. "Donald called earlier, and I thought, you know, that they might want me to come back, but it turns out that I had just never cleaned out my cubby. I just went straight from the work therapist to the coffeehouse…well, I stopped at the Russian Tea Room and to get cotton candy from that guy by the subway stop…."
"Oh…sorry, man," Chandler said sympathetically, deciding not to touch the "cubby" reference. Now was not the time. "But, hey! You'll be back on your feet soon, and you can move into a nice apartment and you'll get your job back-"
"I DIDN'T LOSE MY JOB!" Ross yelled, and Chandler threw up his hands in defense, raising his eyebrows to let Ross know how irrational he was behaving. "I'm on sabbatical!"
"Okay, okay, you're on sabbatical. Got it," Chandler muttered, and then stood there awkwardly for a moment, wondering if Ross would consider it "abandonment in his time of need" if he fled to his room. "Need help sorting that stuff out?" he asked finally, gesturing toward the box sitting unsteadily on 'Rosita'.
Ross shook his head. "No, it's cool. I mean, the sabbatical will end soon, and I really hate packing."
"I can see that," Chandler muttered, glancing around at the boxes lying in piles everywhere. Thank God Ross had gotten rid of the furniture at Emily's request. Not only would Ross have insisted on bringing it all to the apartment rather than pay for a storage room, but most of it was the cheap plastic stuff he'd bought after his divorce from Carol. (Although Chandler couldn't help but hope that large dragonfly sculpture that had hung on the wall of Ross' apartment was packed into one of those boxes. He had grown fond of that thing.)
"Okay," Chandler said over-brightly, feeling as though he should try and cheer Ross up, but at the same time knowing that nothing could snap him out of the funk he was in. "I'll just go…" Seeing that Ross wasn't listening to him, anyway, he hurried to his bedroom, collapsing on his unmade bed with a groan.
'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?' Great. He was now addressing the voice inside of his own head not only as if it were an actual person, but as if they had both been transported into that cartoon Pinky and the Brain.
'What? That Ross has been using the word 'sabbatical' so much that it doesn't feel like an actual word?'
'…no. That Ross is gonna kill me if he ever finds out about my feelings for Monica, especially in the state he's in right now. He practically bit my head off because of a bad choice of words.'
'Oh, nooo. You're not putting this off. There's going to be plenty of things that can go horribly wrong whenever you tell her, and Christmas is the perfect time.'
Since when had it been decided that he was "telling Monica" at Christmas, anyway?
His original plan was just to give Monica a nice present. It wouldn't technically be rejection, because she would never have to know (although he could predict that he'd be feeling cowardly for months afterwards). How had that plan somehow evolved to his giving a present and telling her about his feelings? Meddling, that's what. Of course, it had been his fault. He knew that Phoebe considered herself the puppet-master of the group. So really, he had meddled in his own life by inviting them to meddle in it. And since you couldn't meddle in your own life, there was technically no meddling going on.
It made sense if you really thought about it.
'Of course it makes sense,' The Voice said soothingly.
'It also makes since to just let it go. I'm fine with being Monica's friend if telling her will ruin our friendship.'
'You are most certainly not fine!' The Voice was starting to sound disturbingly like Monica. He had heard her say those exact words in that exact tone when he had a bad cold just a minute ago. If he heard The Voice say "I'm getting you into bed right now…"'
'And you remember the image that popped into your head when she said that!' The Voice jeered. 'That alone just proves that you can't let it go. You just having feelings for her has almost ruined your friendship. you're always awkward and quiet around her and you two haven't talked properly in soooo long….'
'Stop referring to me in second person! You're me!' Chandler argued, trying to ignore the fact that The Voice was right.
He couldn't just let it go; he'd liked Monica for a long time; long before Ross' second wedding. He's liked her since the second time he met her, although back then it was pure physical attraction; not even enough to be considered a crush. When he'd answered Kip's roommate ad and moved in with him (coincidentally, right across the hall from Monica) she'd hated him for some reason, although she hadn't been able to shake the feeling of guilt for accidentally cutting off his toe. He'd been too busy trying to keep up with his job and living mainly on his own for the first time to worry about anything more than to gain her friendship. Besides, she'd already been dating Kip.
His crush on her had come back with a vengeance around when Joey moved in (what did anyone expect; with Joey raving about how hot she was, as well as nice and smart and a great cook?) and sitting in the coffeehouse for the first time (it had just been renovated from a bar) and trying to get over her was actually why he'd agreed to go out with Janice. (The fact that it was the first time a woman had asked him out was another reason.)
It wasn't as pathetic as it sounded; the crush hadn't spanned five years non-stop- it had come and gone. Despite Rachel's claim, he actually hadn't liked her romantically either when he suggested they be each other's backup (when they were both forty they'd get together and have a baby if they were both single) or when he said that he'd be her boyfriend if she wanted at the beach, although he couldn't deny feeling jealous when he'd thought that Pete might propose to Monica. (The reason he'd made such a big deal out of it was simply the memory of his crush- that and it had wounded his already fragile pride.)
He'd been heartbroken over Kathy, and when he was just getting over her when he found one of Monica's bras under his bead when they switched the apartments back. So from getting cheated on to an unrequited crush. Lovely, as well as depressingly typical.
It had been torture sitting next to her on the plane ride to London, and he'd almost told her of his feelings several times at the rehearsal dinner (how could anyone, no matter how drunk, think she was Ross' mother?) and then-- then she'd come over drunk and kissed him. And more.
It had been useless to even try and get over her after that night. At the wedding the next day, he'd pretty much put his heart on the line, asking if he could come over that night as well. He'd pretty much stopped breathing when she hesitated, and couldn't stop grinning when she answered, 'Yes, of course.'
Well, he'd stopped smiling when Ross had said Rachel's name, especially considering Ross' slip of tongue resulted in no more sex. They'd agreed on a 'Not-in-New-York' rule, and Chandler was presently considering taking everyone on a trip somewhere out-of-state. He could say that it was Phoebe had never gotten her trip with everyone because of the babies.
Speaking of which, when Phoebe'd had the triplets- that was when he was finally able to admit to himself that it was more than a crush. She'd been staring at the places where all the babies were, and for a split second, when he'd glanced at the particular one she was looking at, he could actually imagine that they were looking that their baby. A baby that they would take home with them in a couple of days. It didn't help that the baby had blue eyes (Of course, he'd read somewhere that all newborns had gray-blue eyes, but it didn't stop his heart from beating double-time at the sight.)
That and the fact that she'd gone out with that nurse-man. It had only been one date, but it had still hurt. A lot more than it did when she was going out with Richard, or Young Ethan, or anyone else she was dating when he'd liked her.
And the worst part- the absolute worst part was, while things seemed horribly awkward and strange to him after that, everything seemed fine to Monica. She had no trouble talking to him after that last awkward conversation in her apartment when they'd gotten home. And he could barely even look at her anymore.
'That just proves it. If she was feeling anything at all towards me, she wouldn't be able to talk to me in the same way she always has.'
'Well, she hasn't been talking to you in the exact same way. You talk to each other like you talk to Rachel; friends, but not nearly as close as you were before. And anyway, who has she dated besides that "nurse-man" and that blind date Rachel made her go on. Two first dates, and it's been 5 months! What does that tell you?'
Chandler sighed and stood up. It didn't tell him anything; only gave him more questions. He left his bedroom quietly, sighing in relief when a quick scan of the room told him that Ross wasn't there. Maybe he should just go over there; have a real conversation with Mon. Not about relationships or anything; just about work and family. She'd complain about her biased mom; he'd whine about his dad. Like they always used to do; it was repetitive but therapeutic, and they always managed to make each other feel better.
He exited the apartment and crossed the hall, stopping in his tracks when he heard Monica shriek from inside Apartment 20, "WHAT AM I SUPOSSED TO DO!"
There was a vague murmuring from what sounded like Phoebe, but Chandler wasn't sure. This was an apartment building; weren't the walls supposed to be thinner? Thank God Monica was loud, anyway.
"THAT'S NOT HELPFUL!" Monica's voice abruptly softened, and Chandler had to lean with his ear pressed against the door to make out what she said. "Come on, guys, if you can't help me I'll ask Chandler; he's been through this, hasn't he?" Chandler had no time to ponder what he'd been through that she needed advice with; as a large outburst of No!'s came from Monica and Rachel's. Rachel, Joey, and Phoebe's voices.
"What is it?" Monica asked, confused, and there was a long pause.
"Well," Phoebe said in what Chandler recognized as her 'lying' voice (much too stilted and loud) "it's just that he's gone through that only with Janice, and even though he loved her at one time, he never really wanted to get back together with her. He pretended to move to Yemen! And with Richard, he-you- he never annoyed you like Janice did Chandler, and…the question is, do you want to get back together with him?"
Chandler pushed off the door, feeling dizzy. It was obvious what had happened. Richard had gotten in touch with Monica; told her that he wanted to get back together with her. And Monica, well, she hadn't said yes yet, but of course she would. This was Richard, the love of her life!
'At least you'll save money for an expensive Christmas present,' The Voice said, although it sounded shaky.
My first cliffhanger! Yay! If you want to find out what Monica will do about Richard, if Chandler will still get Monica a special Christmas present (and if so, what will he get her?), please review!
Oh, and the reference to Pinky and the Brain was made because it was on in the 90's and it sounds like something Chandler and Joey might watch. If you want to know how the reference fits, Brain always asks Pinky, 'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?' when he's got a new plan to take over the world. Pinky always replies with something extremely random. I was like 8 when I last watched that show- how do I remember this? Who knows? Who cares?