AN: Wow. It's been a looooongg time since I've updated. And, in my humble opinion, this chapter is absolute crap. Well, maybe I'm being a bit harsh- it's my least favorite chapter, anyway. But I have excuses (for both the lateness and badness of this chapter):
1) Camp. Two weeks. No time for writing.
2) Computer. Meltdown. Had to get new one (we're all very lucky I was going to get a new one soon anyway, or else this chapter probably wouldn't be up until the end of September).
3) Writers block. 'Nuff said. Plus, I can't work very well on paper, which I had to do because of said computer meltdown.
4) Sleep deprivation (this being a reason for badness, not lateness of chapter). Self explanatory. Also explains the lack of full sentences in this AN.
Right. Thank you everybody for all the reviews; I'm much too tired now to thank all of you individually like I usually do, so that'll be in the next chapter (which, I promise will be much better than this one).
Disclaimer: Not mine. I know how shocked all of you must be to hear this, but it's true. :-)
Dedication: To Matthew Perry's middle name, Langford, simply for being there. Seriously: does it not rock? (Also, a late shout-out to his 36th birthday- August 19!)
Oh, and I'm probably not going to update All the Angst until I've finished this.
Out in the living room, Joey's new "crazy chicken" clock clucked four times. Four am. It was four am and Chandler hadn't gotten more than fifteen minutes of sleep, instead wincing through 33 clucks altogether since climbing into bed.
Coming to terms with the fact that his own particular branch of headache relief (sticking his head under his pillow) wasn't working, Chandler rolled over to stare at a crack in the wall by his nightstand. It looked a bit like Lincoln, top hat and all, and had helped him with his insomnia in the past. But now, the crack just looked like a memoir from the Hammer Dart playoffs of 1997- which was what it was, of course. Chandler smiled in remembrance- the playoffs had been held in his room because of the lectures Monica kept giving him and Joey about the amount of wall by the front door that was now spackle.
And that brought him back to Monica.
'All roads lead to Monica,' The Voice chimed in.
And that was exactly the problem. The more tired Chandler actually grew, the more thoughts whizzed at break-neck speed through him head, none of them sleep-inducing, and all of them somehow Monica-related.
For example, most of them had him confessing his love for her in a horribly public scene, and Monica rejecting him in varying degrees of evilness. (Most of them also somehow involved Richard and Monica's wedding.) Some just had Ross strangling him when he found out what was going on.
After a last fruitless attempt at counting sheep, Chandler got up, throwing his pillow to the ground for good measure. He turned off both his alarm clocks (he generally needed at least two to get up in the morning) and shuffled out into the living room, carefully tiptoeing around the boxes (were they breeding? Because he wasn't joking about their seeming multiplication.) so as not to wake Ross, who was snoring on the hide-a-bed.
There was nothing in the refrigerator.
Well, that wasn't true; Ross had kept himself busy by organizing all of the contents into sections: fruits, vegetables, and expired goods. So his choices for a late night snack were: a lemon, some carrot sticks, and a whole truckload of crap that Chandler could smell from his bedroom.
He sighed again, glanced at his watch, and set over to Monica's. Chandler slipped (somewhat) noiselessly through her front door, turned to carefully close it, and let out a strangled scream when he turned back around. Monica was standing in the doorway to her lit bedroom, regarding him with raised eyebrows.
"Chandler, what are you doing?"
"I was hungry," Chandler said with dignity, which was hard since he was wearing cowboy pajamas.
'Hey,' The voice pointed out, always eager to make things worse, 'Those were the pajamas you were wearing that night in London!'
He looked sidelong at Monica, trying to gauge whether or not she had noticed this, and felt his mouth drop partway open. Something he somehow hadn't taken in at first glance: She was wearing nothing but an over-sized T-shirt and cotton shorts with a Tweety Bird print. Needless to say, it showed off her long legs very well, and her hair was mussed from sleep (which naturally reminded him of other ways it could get in that state). Also…her mouth was moving. Which meant she was probably taking to him. Chandler tuned her back in with an effort.
"…don't feel like cooking anything. So just go…rummage around in the fridge."
"That's what I was planning on," Chandler said obviously (or did Monica honestly think he would go wake her up in the middle of the night and demand she fix him something to eat?) and proceeded to do so. One bad thing about Monica's excellent cooking skills was that there was never any leftover takeout around. He eventually pulled out a container of lasagna, and dug around in the cutlery drawer for a fork. He turned around, fork in hand, and jumped backwards, whacking his tailbone on the edge of the counter. Monica was standing way too close for comfort.
"He-hey! So what are you doing up…right at this late hour?" he said loudly, over- compensating wildly for his strange reaction. Monica stared at him, and Chandler suddenly wished he hadn't asked. Visions of Richard appearing from the bedroom to wrap his arms protectively around Monica danced in his head like sugar plums (he'd always hated those) and Chandler couldn't prevent himself from leaning part-way around Monica to check that the bedroom was empty.
"Um, I couldn't sleep?" Monica phrased it as a question, obviously thrown off by his odd behavior, then turned partway to see why he was now staring so intently at her (indeed empty) bedroom. Unfortunately, in doing so, her face came very close to Chandler's.
Time stopped.
Finding that he couldn't pull away, Chandler waited for her to do so. She didn't. Trying to unfocus his eyes didn't help suppress the urge to kiss Monica at all. Why the hell wasn't she pulling away?
Settling himself in for the long haul, he managed to keep himself from leaning in to kiss her by concentrating on dissecting exactly how far apart from each other their faces were. One inch? Two? One and a half, he decided.
She still hadn't pulled away.
How much was that in centimeters? The metric system, not surprisingly, had flown out of his head, seemingly replaced by a whole batch of horribly haiku's about the exact shade of Monica's eyes. What was the formula again? 5 syllables, 7, syllables, 5 syllables?
Monica took a shaky step backward.
"Um…you left your bedroom light on," Chandler said weakly. He would have liked to gesture for effect, but his limbs seemed to be frozen in place. In fact, he was still in that odd, leaning position he'd been in when they'd almost kissed.
…at least, he'd interpreted it as an almost kiss. She probably hadn't moved for so long for a more mundane reason. Like falling into a short coma as a result of his morning breath.
"Right," Monica said, voice loud and sharp and sudden in the broken peace. "I was just reading in there when you came in and then you came in and I thought you might be a burglar or something so I went to see without turning the light off in there and then I saw it was you and thenIforgotitwasonsothat'swhyit'sstillon."
She turned abruptly and marched back into her bedroom, while Chandler marveled over how she could babble out such a run-on sentence without pausing once for breath.
"Okay," he called after her retreating back. "So I'll just eat this in my own apartment?"
"Sure," she responded without turning around. "I'm going to try and get some more sleep."
Chandler squinted, bleary-eyed, at his cereal, the snap, krackle, and pops that issued forth suddenly very grating. The combination of lack of sleep, worrying about the encounter, and Phoebe and Joey's knowing smirks (he wasn't sure he wanted to know what that was all about) had caused his headache to escalate into a full-out migraine.
"So I went to my psychic yesterday," Phoebe chirped, "And she started talking about my past lives." Joey and Phoebe exchanged looks of suppressed glee. Oh God. That was their "Plan Look." Soon they would start using walkie-talkies and wearing camouflage helmets with plastic leaves pasted to them. (Chandler wasn't sure how that would help, but camouflage helmets was Joey's solution to anything that required discretion.) "But I had already heard about my days as a nurse in the French Revolution, so I asked to hear about all of my friends' past lives."
"Really, Pheebs? What did she have to say to that?" Joey boomed in a loud, fake voice that Chandler recognized from Joey's short-lived career on Days of Our Lives. He was beginning to desperately wish Ross was here, to clear his throat impatiently and proclaim that he didn't believe in past lives.
The feeling intensified as Phoebe dove into a long-winded anecdote in which one of Chandler's past selves (named Oswald, simply to keep up the tradition of names that, according to spell check, were spelled wrong in every one of Chandler's lives, even the ones before computers were invented) courted a young milkmaid named Claire. "Claire" was obsessed with cleaning, and loved to work at the bakery, even if it was just to sweep up, because cooking was her greatest passion. Chandler wasn't surprised when Phoebe revealed Claire to be Monica in a past life. Joey gasped in obviously put upon surprise, but Monica nearly swallowed her spoon (had she really not seen it coming?).
"What about Chandler's other past lives?" Joey asked in that same faux voice. "Any of them also entwined with Monica's?"
Okay, now Chandler knew they had to be following some sort of script. When Joey used words like entwined…it must have been a written script, though, with no rehearsals, because Joey pronounced it with a long e- "entweened." Either way, the urge to hit Joey was great, and Monica looked as though she shared his sentiments. Chandler wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or hurt by that.
Phoebe, however, didn't seem to be following the script, instead choosing to regale them with her own version of Chandler's various past lives. At least, that was how Chandler interpreted the at once confused and horror-stricken look on Joey's face.
"Well," she started thoughtfully. "Chandler's usually gay in his past lives- that, I think, explains the gay quality he has in this one…."
Chandler looked discreetly around for someone to rescue him (Rachel was preferable, Ross would do in a pinch- and this was a pinch- even Gunther was better than nothing, although Chandler had no idea why he would come into Monica and Rachel's apartment) but no one seemed forthcoming.
Why wasn't Rachel here, though? Ross often slept late now that he was on sabbatical, but there was no reason for Rachel not to come to breakfast. Or had she been in on it?
'Most likely,' The Voice said, sounding grim. 'Think about it: The only reason Rachel is absent is that, although Phoebe and Joey can get away with talking about past lives seriously, Rachel participating in such a discussion would make Monica suspicious.'
"And in a couple of other past lives," Phoebe continued blithely, "Chandler and Rachel got together. Or, I should say Granville and Jane, Julien and Laura, Owen and Kathleen, and Breton and Sarah." Phoebe stared at Phoebe in astonishment, and Chandler could see Joey pin-wheeling his arms frantically and mouthing 'Noooooo!' at her from behind Monica's back.
'Okay, so I'll admit this would be extremely amusing if I didn't have to listen to your thoughts about this for the next millennium, but as it is…enough it enough.'
'You're me!' Chandler thought the customary tag-line (he couldn't break tradition for such a silly thing like mortal embarrassment at the hands of your two ex- best friends) before clapping his hands together loudly to get the attention of all the room's occupants. It had the desired effect of everyone falling abruptly silent and turning to stare at him. Joey paused mid-pinwheel.
"Our past selves are very different from who we are now, right?" he asked, enunciating carefully. "So none of this really matters."
'I am giving you a way out,' he added furiously for the benefit of anyone that might be listening to his thoughts other than The Voice (with Phoebe, it was a toss-up). 'Please take it.'
Joey, unwilling to give up without a fight, chose instead to slowly lower his arms, smile faintly, and plow ahead in pure train wreck fashion. "From what Phoebe said, Oswald and Claire sound exactly like Chandler and Monica. That just goes to show you…." He trailed off, unsure of how to finish his sentence, but confident that he had made his point. He had.
"It's like Sunny and Cher!" Phoebe added brightly. "Sunny and Cher, Oswald and Claire…"
"Sunny and Cher broke up," Chandler said, burying his head in his hands. He didn't dare to look over at Monica. Thinking of which….
"I'd better get to work," she mumbled, getting quickly to her feet. As she reached for her purse, Chandler noticed that her hands were trembling. He waited an appropriate amount of time after the door had closed behind her (20 Mississippi's) before exploding.
"What the hell were you two doing?"
"Trying to make Monica see what a good guy you are," Joey replied, unconcerned.
"By telling her that I was gay in many of my past lives?" Chandler shouted, shoving his chair back and standing abruptly. Joey shrunk away from him, protesting weakly around the whole English muffin he'd just shoved in his mouth.
"Iffn wager Pheeehfs guagh," he blustered unintelligibly, pointing at Phoebe. Once he's swallowed, he tried again. "Don't yell at me! Pheebs is the one that didn't follow the plan!" He rounded on her. "What was that whole Chandler-Rachel thing, anyway?"
"Well, it's true!" Phoebe said defensively. "And I thought it might make Monica jealous, because Chandler and Rachel are also good friends."
"Bu-but it's ridiculous!" Chandler spluttered, beginning to pace around the room. This was why he hadn't wanted to tell them in the first place. Their pure lack of subtlety would cause Monica to figure out everything, assume that he had recruited them to try and make him look good, and never speak to him again.
…it was possible.
"Oh, no it's not ridiculous!" Phoebe said earnestly. "You and Rachel really did get together in a few past lives- more than just the ones I mentioned. And you almost got together a few times in this one as well."
"What?" Joey and Chandler yelled at the same time.
"Oh come on! Chandler gets all the hot girls!" Joey shrieked. "First Monica, and now Rachel?"
"And what about me, Joseph Tribbiani?" Phoebe asked sharply. Joey retreated immediately.
"Well, you are the hottest. It's just…two out of three of my best friends!" he whined.
"Well, I haven't got Ross, either," Chandler said to lighten the mood. He was ignored.
"He didn't actually get Rachel. And he hasn't got Monica yet. Remember, that's why we developed the plan-"
"But at least he's got a London! I haven't got a London with any one of you!"
"What do you mean 'he's got a London?'" Phoebe asked dangerously.
Chandler froze. Only Joey (and Monica) knew about their one-night stand the night after Ross' rehearsal dinner, and he'd personally like to keep it that way, at least until things got a little less insane.
"That's Joey's new nickname for crush, because I first started to have a crush on Monica while we were in London," he covered quickly, not realizing until after the words had left his mouth that the explanation didn't make sense.
Luckily, Phoebe didn't seem pick up on it, saying only, "Oh, please! You had a crush on her long before that!"
Chandler was too tired to argue with her about something everyone present knew she was right about. He knew how to pick his battles.
"When did Rachel and Chandler almost get together in this life?"
Joey apparently didn't.
"Well…first, they kissed at his and Ross' college party," Phoebe began, slowly warming to the subject. Chandler absently pounded Joey on the back when he began to choke.
"You kissed Rachel Green?" he gasped when his air passage was no longer blocked. Phoebe overrode him.
"And then you two could have gotten together that night right before Joey moved in, at the coffeehouse when it was a bar…."
Joey interrupted her again. "Whoa, man!" he hissed to Chandler. "Wouldn't it be weird if you and Rachel had gotten together before I got to know either one of you?" He shook his head, grinning. "It would totally change my perception of you as someone who could never get any girls."
Chandler scowled. It wasn't as though Joey had gotten together with Rachel or Monica in any of his past lives. Right?
When he thought to ask Phoebe, she just giggled. "Oh, this is Joey's first life as an animate object."
'Well, that certainly explains a lot,' The Voice sniggered.
Chandler moved toward the door, only half-listening to Phoebe's description of Ross and Rachel getting together in a past life ("Now that's more like it!" Joey exclaimed). Apparently Ross was Dilbert, and Rachel was Gretchen.
Suddenly, a new thought occurred to him. How could Phoebe have known about either of his encounters with Rachel? Maybe Rachel told Phoebe about their kiss at the party, but Chandler had thought she'd be too drunk to remember. And that time at the bar- Rachel had completely ignored his pathetic attempts at flirting. He'd thought she hadn't even known that's what he was doing. Was Phoebe really psychic, after all?
"Bing!" a familiar voice exclaimed directly in his ear, and Chandler jerked awake, nearly falling off of his swivel chair as he bounced automatically to a sitting position. He had fallen asleep at his desk, on his keyboard, to be exact, causing rows of gibberish to appear on the screen. Fju(Y6g7tfhyg 6bu o9t6d598c9lkbnfk9-jspaIEopvrsawJ filled his eyes.
"Bing, I'm disappointed in you," Doug growled in his ear (he could hear him, for God's sake; couldn't Doug straighten up and talk like a normal person?). "Hell, I like you, and I don't expect you to be an office drone. But I do expect some work to be getting done, and you have reached your quota of sick days and vacation days (and well past!) and haven't even bothered to call in half the time! And now falling asleep at your job! I understand the holiday spirit is getting to you, but this is just disgraceful!"
Chandler felt a flush crawl up his neck; so they had been keeping track, after all.
"I'm sorry, sir," he muttered, feeling more and more like an office drone by the moment. "It's just- I didn't get much sleep last night and-"
Doug cut him off. "You're a good asset to this company, Bing. That is, when you're present. And conscious," he added with a chuckle. Chandler scowled. And though Doug didn't come to work hung-over half the time, and he knew for a fact that he spent the majority of the day snoring under his desk (Doug's personal secretary bummed cigarettes off of him in exchange for dirt). "And we've been pretty lax here," he continued, oblivious to Chandler's mutinous inner monologue. "So I'm not going to fire you. I am going to have to ask you to work overtime. The 25th through the 29th, to begin to make up for the days you've missed. You begin tomorrow," he finished, as though Chandler was incapable of matching dates to days of the week.
"But tomorrow's Christmas," Chandler pointed out (maybe he could match dates to days of the week, but he hadn't promised anything about national holidays). He felt like Bob Craven in The Christmas Carol. Doug laid what he probably fancied was a supporting hand on his shoulder.
"Buck up, you've still got the 30th, New Year's off."
'Oh, goody.' Chandler clenched his jaw to keep himself from uttering a sarcastic comment out loud and set about deleting the numbers he had "typed" in his sleep: JwasrvpoEIapsj-9kfnbkl9c895d6t9o ub6 gyhft7g6Y)ujF.
Chandler rolled his shoulders and moved his head around, trying to loosen the crick in his neck. It was after seven o' clock, and he's just gotten home. Even though it was a half day. Doug hadn't said anything about overtime including today, but Chandler had been too scared that he'd lose his job to go home until Doug did, at 4:30. It wasn't until he was in the process of sliding his MetroCard through the turnstile that he remembered Wic n' Sticks. And after he'd bought the candles for Phoebe, he'd realized that he didn't really have anything good for anybody (including Monica, but he'd mope over that later). And now, even though he wanted to do nothing more than order a pizza and watch cartoons, he had to wrap the gifts.
After a half-hour delay spent on a scavenger hunt for wrapping paper, scissors, tape, and ribbon (after the display at breakfast, Chandler really didn't feel like asking for Monica for wrapping materials) he assembled the gifts in little piles for each person. He would have liked to wrap each gift differently in accord with who the gift was for (without dwelling on how Monica-esque he was behaving, thank you very much) but the only wrapping paper he was able to find had orange and purple cartoonish dinosaurs on it. (There had been some debate between The Voice and Chandler over who it belonged to; as the Voice said, Ross was the Dino Freak, but the cartoons suggested it was probably Joey's; Ross freaked over the improbability factor in The Flinstones.)
And then the Scotch tape ran out when he was halfway through wrapping Joey's gift (a signed Patrick Ewing basketball). Chandler stopped and stared at the only remaining gift left to wrap- Monica's. He'd gotten her two tickets to the next Foo Fighters concert (they were going on tour in January), but that hadn't been The Plan. Not the whole plan, anyway. That plan involved those two tickets, and then Chandler would give Monica the second part of her present- some sort of jewelry piece that he could have engraved. Inscribed on it would be a poem- or a phrase- just a few words that would tell her he cared, and exactly how much.
But he'd chickened out. So, although Monica loved the Foo Fighters and she'd be thrilled with the tickets, there'd be no unknown second part. So she'd be listening to Hey, Johnny Park, an enchanted look on his face, and he'd be kicking himself for being such a coward. Besides, she'd probably want to take Richard, anyway. And she should, he supposed. But if they named Everlong as "their song" he was going to…well, do what he'd been doing for the past seven months, really: nothing.
And it wasn't as if he hadn't tried to write something to have inscribed. But telling someone that you loved them was hard enough; pinning the words down; solidifying them in a way that could never be taken back was downright terrifying. And everything he'd tried to write had been crap. All of his attempts lay at a crumpled heap at the bottom of the wastebasket.
Chandler picked up the remaining wrapping paper and chucked it in the general direction of said wastebasket ('Joey's wrapping paper,' he added viciously to The Voice). It bounced harmlessly off of the rim and fell to the rug beside it.
AN: Leave a review, please! Constructive criticism is everyone's friend!