Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the apartment, just the DVDs. There's no profit except writing practice being made here.

Joey held her elbow as they looked out the window into the cold city. Rachel and Phoebe were marvelling at the first snow of the season but Monica didn't share the sentiment. She felt the cold winter chill prickle at her skin, burying deep inside her chest, but her mind was too preoccupied, her heart already wrestling with so many other icy emotions. Joey's hand didn't warm her, but it was nice to know he was there, probably feeling a similar creeping gloom that she did as night closed in. Ross stood behind her, just to the side, his hand on her back, steady but unhelpful. Monica took great comfort in the fact that the boys were trying to comfort her while Chandler was away. They didn't understand, not by any stretch of the imagination, what it was like to have her husband away. But they did feel the loss of Chandler. Almost as keenly as she did. And they were trying to lessen the hurt.

Monica leant into Ross' embrace. He didn't whisper comforting words or silly little jokes, and there was no way he was going to kiss the back of her head or run his fingers through her hair. Her brother couldn't diminish her anxiety the way her husband could, but Ross certainly tried. He'd lost his best friend at the same time that she'd lost hers, and the pair of them rallied together to try and fight off the loneliness of being without the one person they didn't need to elaborate with.

But Monica had a second issue, one that was weighing at the forefront of her mind.

The guilt.

It wasn't so bad in the middle of the week when she was busy with work and Chandler would be home in a day or two. But Monica had gone seven straight days without her husband's arms around her and she was off work over Christmas and planning to prepare a meal on Christmas Day for everyone she loved but not him. She'd never cooked a meal for their group but not included Chandler, not even back when they were only friends, not even on Thanksgiving. She'd always make an alternative for him, even if he never asked. It was weird, and she didn't like that he wasn't going to be around for the holiday playing footsie with her under the table, studying her face as she opened her present, groaning at Joey for waking them up early but grinning as though he'd asked his friend to do just that.

Monica wasn't really worried that Chandler would grow tired of her or find companionship in Wendy, the woman he'd mentioned's, company. Monica knew he wouldn't, But that was the easiest, simplest way she could convey what she was feeling to the others. She could have gone with him those few months ago, but Monica had insisted they could handle the long-distance between New York City and Tulsa.

Except she couldn't. And it sort of, sometimes, seemed like Chandler wasn't struggling like she was. Chandler was making the most of things, running himself ragged in a job he hated but never complained, always smiling and optimistic, counting down until his stint in Tulsa was over like he was happy in the dint they'd made in his contract despite it seeming so cruelly slight. Monica knew it was a front. She saw him in the dead of night, wide awake and jetlagged, or keeping himself awake to catch another moment with her and their friends. She also spoke to him on the phone at all hours, helping him combat his loneliness. He wasn't happy in Tulsa, Monica knew that. And he never held it against her that she wasn't with him. But part of her worried - only ever while he was out of state and never when he was around to kiss her fears out of her mind - Monica worried that Chandler was learning that he could be without her. When she did voice her concerns, Chandler looked her dead in the eyes, blue on blue, looking so deep into her soul he didn't actually need to say anything, although he normally did. Plus his eyes were so open that she could see his intentions and desires and herself - in every corner of his psyche - and she knew he wasn't going anywhere. Even with Chandler's own promises and platitudes, his sincere eyes and his genuine actions, he was so ingrained in her, that without him present in her life, Monica felt empty.

She never said anything to the others, this was between her and Chandler, but Monica got the feeling her brother understood, on some level. Chandler had asked him to look out for her while he was away, something Monica hadn't been aware of until Ross had told her. Her brother had been charmed by life turning full circle from back when he had asked Chandler to look out for her when he first moved across the hall from her.

Ross rubbed her back as Monica based some ridiculous question aloud, hoping for one of her friends to employ some sarcasm or make a remark, even an insulting one, about how dorky her adoring husband was and that he would never.

No one did.

Monica should have expected as much. They didn't do that. None of them were Chandler, with his de-escalating comments and his constant, watchful gaze on her. Instead, they sighed that her dismal mood was bringing them down.

Joey squeezed her arm. He, of course, understood how empty her life had become without Chandler, too. They were close before, Joey and Monica, but had really bonded while they tried to fill the Chandler-shaped hole in their lives with jokes he would have liked and reminiscences.

Monica stared out into the city, shivering at the chill in the air. New York was somehow dark and gloomy despite winter being her favourite season. Snowflakes glittered in the streetlights, there was a rainbow of colour and a symphony of commuters, honking, revving and braking, and it was all muted and dull.

Then she heard it. The door closing, the deep, joyous grumble of a voice that was more familiar than her own.

"Hey!"

Monica turned around.

There he was.

Standing in the dining room, his hair still as short as she remembered it being. He was dressed in his khaki suit, wearing the most drab shades Monica could think of, but it was as though colour had returned to the apartment.

Ross and Joey uttered something beside her but blood was roaring in her ears and Monica couldn't hear them.

There was a faux arrogance about Chandler, the same one he always adopted when he wasn't expecting any fanfare so he made some for himself. He normally did it when he doubted himself. His movements weren't big or boisterous as he pumped his arms in typical Chandler Bing fashion, that silly dance he always did when he was excited. Monica felt her heart thud in her chest. Hard and insisted against her ribcage, the vital organ let her know it was there, back in its rightful place in her chest.

She clutched her chest to try and mute the wild beating and stop it from pumping out of her body completely. She felt faint.

Joey must have felt her knees buckle. Joey, who she expected to be the first to run to Chandler, held her arm as tight as a vice while everyone else rushed to greet their friend and helped her down the step.

Monica's vision tunnelled to the spotlight of the kitchen. There was no subtlety or sensibility to her thinking. The world outside was black with the cold wintery night, all apartment lights were all off but the one in the kitchen, but it was Chandler who brought a warm light to the world.

With Joey's help, she stepped off the landing, her knees locking at the bottom of the step and a jolt of feeling shot through her, pins and needles tickling pleasantly through her limbs. With her legs working normally, Monica wanted to rush over to him and have Chandler catch her against his chest. She wanted to throw her legs around him and open his lips with the force of hers.

But they were surrounded by people and while locking his hips between her thighs would get rid of their audience fairly quickly, Monica recognised that the four of them, particularly the boys, deserved to greet Chandler too.

They crowded around him but let Monica be the first to embrace him.

She didn't.

If she kissed him, let her mouth taste him, her hands press against his sold chest to double-check he was really there, Monica would yank him over her by the lapels and shove her tongue in his mouth, kissing his neck when he needed air.

Her voice cracked wetly when she spoke, awestruck that he was standing in front of her. "What are you doing here?"

Chandler reached for her hands, his warm palms were wide and engulfed her fingertips and his thumbs circled her hands to hold them steady, making her feel tiny and treasured. And that was before he spoke.

Chandler explained himself so simply, as though there really wasn't any question as to why he returned, as though there was only the pair of them in the room. Monica blushed.

Joey came between them, sticking his head into their private little bubble. Monica smiled, wondering if she should let go of Chandler's hands and let him greet the other's properly. But Chandler didn't drop her hands or bat an eye, squeezing her fingers instead and turning his attention back to her to deliver another compliment to her.

"But I thought if you left, you'd get fired," Monica reminded him of the phone conversation they'd had earlier in the week when he'd told her he wished he could make it home for Christmas but he couldn't just up and leave.

He shrugged as though he'd reconsidered the whole argument, as though the point about the job being a stable income for their growing family that the both of them had agreed on didn't matter anymore. "They can't fire me. I quit."

Her heart fluttered and behind her, Ross cheered. No one knew better than the two of them how Chandler had gotten stuck in that job. Reacting to his fear of becoming his parents, he'd denied his creative side in favour of a mathematics-based degree. Afraid of never finding a career he liked, he'd accepted the first offer he got and then Chandler had never trusted himself to land on his feet if he leapt, never quite convincing himself he could do better than the job that was far too easy and thus not stimulating enough, with all its monotony, for him.

Rachel asked about his future plans and Monica watched all that self-doubt return, making his mouth wrinkle instead of dimple as he freaked out, "I have not thought this through."

Monica squeezed his hands. She wasn't going to let him go back on this decision. He deserved better than the constant fatigue of the Tulsa branch and needed to break free of the confines of rigid structure that was data analysis to embrace the dreams he didn't know he had. Monica had always thought that Chandler should be working in a place that made him come home with a spring in his step, not with the weight of the weekly numbers pushing his shoulders down, a place that excited him instead of making him think of new excuses so he could call in sick in the morning.

She was so proud of him for reaching that conclusion himself, flattered that he picked her over money, charmed that he worried about providing for her. None of those emotions escaped her lips and instead, Monica gaped at her husband. "I think it's great!

Chandler blushed.

Phoebe spoke after Joey agreed Chandler quitting was great. Monica held her breath when her ex-roommate opened her mouth. Phoebe had always been a bit of a loose cannon, but she'd been particularly cranky recently. She and Chandler had always been close, and Monica had had a front-row seat to that when Phoebe had lived with them a few years back, but lately, she seemed disdainful and distant from him. Monica knew it was because Phoebe felt like she was being abandoned by the one friend who never left, she'd asked her about it once, how they could be so close and yet so mean. In a moment of uncommon candidness, Phoebe had told her she worried about Chandler, they were family, two lost souls tired of being abandoned by the people that were meant to love them. She didn't mean to be mean, according to Phoebe, but she was protecting herself and unfairly mad at him for leaving her too. Still, Monica should have realised that Chandler was standing in front of them, swearing he was back for good, and that would have been more than enough for Phoebe to believe that he was staying.

"It'll be good to have you back. You balance the group out." Monica shouldn't have worried, Phoebe made a nice little speech about how Chandler was far more important to their little group than they realised and that it would be good to have him back making jokes with them. About halfway through, when Monica was certain there wasn't a negative undertone to the blonde's words that she'd have to defend, she stopped paying attention.

She was just looking at her husband, breathing him in.

He was home.

She was giddy.

Chandler passed around an envelope to each of the group and it diffused their circle fairly quickly, everyone returning to the couch, except Phoebe, who hovered at the window. Chandler sounded annoyed and affronted as he defended himself but chuckled as the group dispersed. Monica wondered how serious he was about the gifts, it would be so typical of him to come back with a present in fear that someone would be mad at him for returning because he hadn't been able to fill an obligation, or if he'd handed out the donations in order to have a moment alone with her.

"Hi," he took her hand up again and stepped so close his chest was flush against hers.

He smelt clinical, like disinfectant at an airport, and there was salt and peanut on his breath. Monica felt the pull of his body like a magnet attracting her own. Chandler's lips were soft against hers, measured, as he kept his hands held in hers and leant back to look at her.

Monica grinned, interpreting that as him holding himself in check too.

"Hi."

He didn't say anything, simply held her fingers, stroking the bumps of her knuckles.

"Did you really quit?" Ross asked, his voice shattering the silence between the pair.

Chandler squeezed her fingers and grinned at her, nodding. Warmth flooded through her veins. Then, he released one of her hands and pulled her behind him so they joined the others in the living room.

"After all those years? You quit?" Ross' disbelief mirrored everybody else's.

"Someone..." Chandler started.

Monica recalled that he'd sent everybody home so there was no question who the 'someone' was. Some part of her seethed with the leftover jealousy that had brimmed within her that she would need to discuss with him at some point but then Monica heard what Chandler was saying and all her pent up rage aimed at an event that never even happened, all her doubts and fears that she was the reason Chandler wasn't planning on being home for the holidays, dissipated. She was being irrational, and they'd have to talk about what made her jump to the conclusions she had, how they could regroup and comfort each other so it wouldn't happen again.

"... asked why I wasn't spending the holidays with Mon and I could not think of one good reason why. Instead, it was like that job, that company, was the obstacle in the way of having everything I ever wanted." He pat the back of her hand, looking at Monica gravely. "So I got rid of it."

Monica blushed and bumped her shoulder against his. How did he so thoroughly beatify her, exalt her, laud her, send warm shivers through her body, without ever actually complimenting her?

She squeezed his fingers, happy to take a back seat as Chandler talked animatedly with his friends. She could watch him for hours; gesturing wildly with his empty hand, smiling happily, leaning in to listen to Rachel talk about Emma.

Monica watched her husband smooth the knot of his tie. His hands were something else. A square palm, thick knuckles and long digits that ended in blunt fingertips that were calloused but not rough. His smile was small but bright.

Not only did he fill the room with light and warmth, but the room of people seemed to fill him with a lightness he'd been missing for a little while.

Rachel pulled him into a tight side-hug, announcing that it was good he was finally home and that she needed to relieve the babysitter. Everyone left in quick succession after that, with holiday-themed salutes as they exited.

"Night Chandler, merry Christmas."

"It's good to have you back, buddy."

Everyone except Joey, who told her he needed to use the bathroom.

Monica sighed, frustrated, as the wait for her reunion with her husband was prolonged. She watched Chandler pick up a newspaper and similarly busied herself with chores but not moving out of eye contact range.