Arms slipped around her from behind. Monica smiled widely, grateful for both the warmth and the intimacy. "Nineteen ninety-one," she said somewhat breathlessly.
"In an hour or so anyway." Kip's lips brushed her ear. "Going to stay out here until then?"
"Nah, way too cold for that."
"Well, we could generate some heat, I'm sure."
Monica smiled, turned in his arms, and kissed him. It had been a few weeks and every kiss was still full of energy and passion. This was a new experience for her, and she found that she loved it, utterly.
She did manage to break it off, well aware that everyone could see them from inside. "C'mon," Monica said dreamily, walking towards the window. Kip trailed behind with an exaggerated sigh of disappointment, still clasping her hand.
Monica stepped into the apartment. Ross was grabbing beers from the refrigerator while Phoebe and Chandler sat on the couch. "Do we have to watch this?" Chandler was saying plaintively.
"Of course we do," Monica said. "It's Dick Clark. You always watch Dick Clark on New Year's."
"No, you watch Dick Clark. I go out and try to meet actual living people."
Ross handed Chandler a beer. "I remember our sophomore year-"
"Shut up! All I can say is that after a keg or two, all mannequins begin to look amazingly life-like!"
Monica laughed and sat in the love seat. Kip leaned against the arm of the chair, picking up his beer from the coffee table. "So, Phoebe, is this your first New Year's Eve indoors?"
"No." Phoebe lifted her eyes from the television. "Last year a bunch of us held a party in a subway station. Lots of people joined in, even those who had real homes."
"Sounds fun," Ross said. "We should do that."
"I prefer staying inside," Chandler said. "Too cold and yucky out there."
Monica ignored all that, watching Phoebe. Her roommate had settled in and had slowly put together something that looked like an actual bedroom, complete with bed and dresser which Ross had helped her obtain. Perhaps more importantly, Phoebe had easily fit in with the group. Ross and Chandler had quickly learned to adapt to Phoebe's non sequiturs and seemed to enjoy talking to her. In turn, Phoebe greeted each of them warmly and had readily accepted them as frequent visitors.
The only person Phoebe didn't seem to like was Kip. He alone seemed to be the one person she never smiled at. Like right now, she was just looking steadily at him with a blank face. Monica quailed a bit inside; she wanted everyone to like Kip as much as she did, and wished Phoebe would warm up to him just a little bit.
Chandler, meantime, had launched a spirited discussion of disco dancing versus breakdancing vis-à-vis which was the most stupid-looking. Monica, who had the opinion that both were actually okay, didn't much participate and instead played with Kip's fingers as he argued the merits of Deney Terrio.
"Ten minutes," Ross abruptly announced, pointing towards the television screen.
"All right, we have to decide who kisses whom." Chandler looked around the room. "I'm out because I have yet to actually kiss a woman on New Year's and I don't want to break the streak. Kip, you take Phoebe because you both have the letter 'p' in your names. Ross, that leaves you with Monica, sorry to say."
Monica had just enough reach to slap the back of Chandler's head.
Ross chuckled. "Sorry, but I'm married."
Chandler rubbed his head. "And if you weren't, then your sister would be acceptable?" That earned him another, harder headslap.
"Where is Carol?" Phoebe looked over at Ross. "I was hoping to actually meet her."
"She, she's spending time with her parents. She usually spends Christmas with them and this year she stayed on for New Year's, too." Pain crossed Ross's face briefly. "She'll be back in a couple of days."
Monica studied Ross, wishing she knew what to say. She'd only seen Ross and Carol together a couple of times since the shopping trip, and they had seemed all right. It truly seemed like they were both making a serious attempt to make the marriage work, and appeared to be making progress. Monica wasn't certain if this trip represented a setback for Carol and Ross. She hoped not.
Chandler attempted another joke. "When she comes back, tell her to bring a sister so I can kiss her next New Year's. Ow! You're giving me a concussion, Mon!"
"You've earned one," Monica said crossly. She appreciated the fact that Chandler was attempting to distract Ross but felt he needed to pick different subject material. Still, she couldn't quite keep her face from expressing some of the humor she was feeling.
"Ooh! Ooh, it's time!" Phoebe jumped to her feet. "Fifty-nine! Fifty-eight! Fifty-seven!"
With a smile, Monica joined everyone else in counting down. When the count reached zero, Kip leaned down and they kissed, a long lingering kiss that made Monica want to throw everyone out of the apartment immediately.
Instead, she pushed Kip away after a few seconds and clinked her beer bottle with everyone else's. "So, any resolutions?"
"Kiss everyone's sister!" Chandler said promptly.
"Dude," Ross said.
Chandler actually blushed and looked at Monica and Kip. "I didn't mean... I meant... Kip, hi, my name is Chandler, I'll be best man at your wedding as soon as I've finished having my vocal cords cut."
Kip grinned. "Don't worry about it, man."
"A cat!" Phoebe beamed. "I want to adopt a cat this year."
Monica frowned. "Phoebe, I said no pets."
"Oh? Well, okay, don't ever look in my closet then."
"What's in your closet?"
"I think the question should be, what isn't in my closet?"
"Phoebe!" Monica brought herself short as the corners of Phoebe's mouth twitched. "Ah, okay, ha ha."
Everyone else laughed. Monica, despite herself, laughed as well. And it didn't feel bad; the fact that Phoebe felt comfortable enough to tease Monica had to be a good sign.
Monica stood up. "Okay, well, time for presents."
"Presents?" Ross looked confused. "What presents?"
"Well, Phoebe reminded me a few days ago that we forgot to celebrate Christmas."
"We did? We do? Since, since when do we..." Ross trailed off.
"I'm guessing since we started having friends like Kip and Phoebe and Chandler." Monica looked Ross in the eye and he looked away after a couple of seconds. She nodded in confirmation of her victory. "So this year it'll be Christmas in January, and next year we'll do it right, with a tree and everything."
"A tree!" Phoebe looked wide-eyed at Monica. "You're not going to kill a tree, are you?"
"Not, not personally. Wait here." She rushed into her bedroom before the conversation could go in directions she wasn't sure she wanted to pursue. She grabbed a few bags, then headed back out into the living room. She handed one each to Kip, Chandler, and Ross.
Chandler frowned. "I, uh, didn't get you anything."
"I know, I'd be amazed if you did. Just open it."
"Okay." Chandler reached inside, pulled out a notepad and mechanical pencil. He stared at them curiously.
"Okay, it may look cheap, but that's a seriously good pencil," Monica said somewhat defensively.
Chandler looked up at her. "To inspire me to write?"
Monica nodded, pleased he understood. "Maybe you can just jot stuff down while watching television. Anything to help get you going."
"Uh, thanks." His smile only look slightly forced, which was not as good as she had hoped for but better than she had feared. "Thanks, Monica."
Ross, meantime, was frowning at his gift. "A subway pass?"
"Yeah. So you can come over as often as you want and not have to worry about change. For a month, anyway."
Ross nodded in appreciation. "Thanks, Mon." He put it into his wallet.
Kip had been waiting patiently, but now he opened his bag. "Master the MCAT."
"Yeah." Monica beamed at him. "If you study enough and study the right things, you can get a good score on your MCAT and get into medical school easy. If you want to be a doctor."
Kip looked at Monica and smiled. "Do you want me to be a doctor?"
"I want you to be whatever you want to be." Monica leaned down, kissed him briefly, stood up again. "But if that whatever turns out to be a doctor, I wouldn't mind so much."
Ross and Chandler chuckled. Kip nodded, as if answered, and put the book back into the bag. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." Monica looked around. "Glad you all liked it."
Chandler frowned, which made Monica focus on him. He gestured towards Phoebe in a manner that was probably intended to be subtle but utterly failed to be so.
"Oh! I almost forgot." She glanced at Phoebe, who had been watching the proceedings raptly. Monica walked briskly into the bedroom, grabbed Phoebe's present, walked out and handed it to her. "Here. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year."
Phoebe stared and stared, so much so that Monica was beginning to feel decidedly uncomfortable. After perhaps a minute, Phoebe reached out and took it, holding it close to her body, almost cradling it.
Ross grinned. "All right, you have no more excuses now. You have to play us a song."
Phoebe strummed a chord on the guitar, and it sounded somewhat off-key to Monica. After two more chords, Phoebe looked up at Monica and spoke in a near-whisper. "Thank you Monica. It's the best present ever."
Tremendous relief and satisfaction washed through Monica, leaving her warm. She sat down at Kip's feet. "You're welcome. Can you play something for us?"
"Uh, uh sure." Phoebe strummed the guitar a couple more times, her expression one of utter concentration. Then she looked around, smiled, and began singing.
Christmas Evening in New York,
The snow is falling lightly.
I eat dinner without a fork
Because it gets stolen nightly.
The turkey's from the garbage heap,
The stuffing's of dubious origin;
And yet from joy it makes me weep,
Unlike my mother, I'm not moribund.
Phoebe strummed an ending chord and beamed at everyone. Monica swallowed a feeling of pure horror. Phoebe was not a good singer, and her guitar playing was adequate at best. And for some reason Phoebe smiled as she sang that awful and depressing song. All of Monica's doubts about Phoebe, which had just begun to subside, rose to new heights. Phoebe was mentally ill, that's all there was too it, and Monica wasn't certain she wanted to be around it.
Ross broke the temporary silence. "Was that in the key of C?"
Phoebe looked back at him blankly. "The key of what?"
"The chords. It sounded like C except it seemed to waver a bit in the middle verses."
"Oh, well, I don't use keys or locks in my music, I just play whatever I feel like playing." Phoebe looked down at her guitar, strummed another note. "It helped me... when, when I wasn't sure about... what my life... what was going to happen to me, Armless Ed let me borrow his guitar and I learned it and sang about things that had happened to me, things I had seen, and it made all... I could... I didn't feel so bad about who I was or where I was at." Phoebe played another chord. "For a little while anyway."
Monica looked down, feeling abashed and ashamed at her thoughts of a few seconds ago. If she'd had the kind of life Phoebe had led, she'd be lucky to be in a place where a few off-kilter songs could lift her spirits.
"I know what you mean," Ross said. "Music... music can be such a release."
Monica shuddered at what Ross considered music. But maybe this was serendipitous; Ross was perhaps the one person in the world that could relate to Phoebe about her music.
"Well, bedtime for me." Chandler stood up, drained his beer, and waved his notebook at Monica. "Thanks again. Happy New Year."
Everyone chorused Happy New Years all around. Ross left as well. Phoebe helped Monica clear away the remains of the party before she retired to her own bedroom, guitar in hand.
That left Monica alone with Kip. She smiled, sat on his lap, and spent a few eternities kissing him with abandon. Finally she separated from him, took him by the hand, and led him to her bedroom.
He began taking off his clothes, placing them not-quite-neatly on a chair. Monica frowned as she folded her blouse but decided not to make an issue of it. For now. Getting him to put the clothes on the chair instead of dumping them on the floor had been a significant enough change.
Down to their undergarments, Monica turned off the lights and met Kip at the side of the bed. She began kissing him again. He sat down and she allowed him to pull her onto the bed. They lost lip contact on the way, and he took the opportunity to say with a grin, "Happy New Year. I'm weeping with joy."
He moved in to resume kissing her but Monica drew her head back. "Stop that."
Kip looked confused. "Stop what?"
"Stop making fun of her." Monica sat up and looked at the wall that separated her bedroom from the other one. "She doesn't like it."
"Well, if she'd just stop giving me the cold shoulder." Kip was irritated now. "I mean, she's never liked me, not from day one. I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that."
"She doesn't like you because you won't stop putting her down. You don't stop judging her." Monica turned, slightly surprised by the force of her emotion. "Just, just stop it, okay? No one else has a problem accepting her for who she is."
Kip made a disgusted sound and sat up on the other side of the bed. "They all think she's charming, that her mental disability is endearing somehow. I'm not going to just enable her by pretending there's nothing wrong with her. Seriously, you should ask her to move out. She's going to cause nothing but trouble for you."
Monica bit her lip. Kip's feelings unfortunately echoed hers to some degree. She liked Phoebe, but there was a core to her, a place inside her that was both scared and angry. There hadn't been a repeat of the oven incident, but Phoebe would still occasionally just blank out and start talking to unseen people or to herself, even if just for a second or two. And when she did, Monica would suddenly feel just a tad frightened, uncertain what Phoebe might do, what she was capable of under those circumstances.
But she was also one of the friendliest and nicest people Monica had ever met. Phoebe seemed to be a bottomless well of joy, someone who never failed to cheer Monica up, even if some of her antics got annoying. It was that, her sympathetic and friendly demeanor, that had made Monica realize just how much she'd missed Rachel, and how glad she was to find someone very much like her in Phoebe.
Monica find a brief moment of self-amusement, imagining Rachel dressed in some of Phoebe's more outlandish outfits. Then she heard Kip stir slightly and decided to focus on the moment. "Please, honey. I know it's hard, I know you're concerned for me. But I don't think Phoebe is going to hurt me, and I want you to give her a chance." She turned, crawled over the bed, and rested her chin on Kip's shoulder. "I want us all to get along. Please?"
Kip blew out a breath, then turned, his face tantalizingly close to hers. "All right. For you, I'll try."
Monica smiled. "Thanks." She moved the tiniest fraction forward and their lips touched, and Monica relaxed into the moment, feeling good about the year to come.
(to be continued)
Author's Notes: Let me start with the obligatory "sorry this is so late" apology. I've been struggling with the continuity, because the Friends continuity contradicts itself. For instance, according to TOW the Flashback, Phoebe moved out of Monica's place at the same time Joey moved in with Chandler, while in TOW All the Thanksgivings, Joey is having Thanksgiving with Phoebe and Monica while they are still roommates, and they seem to have known each other for a while.
So I've been attempting to build a coherent timeline of the comings and goings of our favorite sixsome from 1990 to 1993, and have finally settled on a chronology I feel comfortable with, even if by necessity it contradicts the series canon in places. Mostly it means I'm going to ignore TOW the Flashback, because too much happens too quickly at exactly the same time. So the events of TOW the Flashback are going to be stretched out a bit over time and not all happen at once. I may even throw in some P&R, because I really liked their little moment on the pool table. )
Anyway, that's in the future. For now, expect more of K&M.
Oh, and another reason this is so late: Phoebe's song. I am terrible, just terrible, with writing songs and poetry. If anyone can come up with better lyrics for Phoebe's New Year's serenade, I'm all ears.