Act Two: The One With The Medicinal Purposes

Scene One: The Morning After

The sunlight that had found its way into the room probed gently at Rachel's eyelids. She kept them resolutely closed. The dull throb in her head made her less than keen to move it. And she was comfortable. The pillow was wonderfully soft, the sheets were soft, even the mattress somehow felt softer, floppier; her body seemed to have found a natural hollow in it and it cocooned her. Rachel buried her face deeper into her pillow, continued to ignore the complaints from her head, and sighed slightly.

And slowly - more slowly than she should, perhaps - she became aware of the sound of breathing. She held her breath. She could still hear it. She could feel it faintly against the back of her neck.

She peeled her eyes open, wincing against the incursion of sunlight.

That was her window, these were her walls. This was not her bed and her wonderfully soft pillow was clothed in a blue striped case that was not hers. Carefully, in sections, she rolled over and stared at the face squashed into the neighbouring pillow.

'Oh my God!'

She scrambled away from him. One blue eye popped open. Chandler jerked up, his hair standing in every direction at once.

'Whoa! You are all kinds of naked!'

'So are you!'

Rachel averted her eyes while he rearranged the sheet. Her old room, she thought with mild desperation, was virtually unrecognisable when filled with Chandler's things. She slid her eyes back to him cautiously. He smiled weakly.

'Well, uh-'

'How?' she demanded. 'How-how-how and-and what? What did we do? And what am I sitting on?' She scrabbled at the mattress and the hard, round objects digging into her. They rested in the palm of her hand - a collection of small buttons.

'Uh, I think they came off this,' Chandler said, holding up a sorry item that had once been a shirt; and-

He pulled her top up, over her head, dropped it to the floor; she reclaimed his lips fiercely, resenting any halt to the feeling of his mouth against hers. They stumbled across the floor, laughing slightly, breath still mingled. His hands traced patterns along her back, twisted up into her hair. His nails raked her scalp and she hummed, husky, deep in her throat.

Her fingers worked the buttons on his shirt and failed. They felt too clumsy, were trembling too much, but she couldn't separate herself from him long enough to see what she was doing. And she needed to feel his skin against hers so badly she ached with it. In frustration she took hold of the edges, pulled at it, felt the fabric give under her fingers, buttons ripping off and-

'Oh...' Rachel sank back into her hollow. Fragments of the evening played themselves hazily in her mind: the bar, the game of pool, the walk back, him carrying her, the floor and all the kissing and- She closed her eyes again. Her head hurt less that way. A few moments and she felt the bed dip beside her.

'Well, this is new,' he said.

'Yeah. But... But we don't do this.'

'Apparently we do. Well, we did.'

'Oh, my God...' She put her hands over her face. 'Oh, this is bad.'

There was silence for a moment, a few long moments, then he spoke again. 'Yeah, I can imagine for you it's a disaster.'

Rachel turned her head sharply and regretted it, regretted even more the closed-off look she could see, even in profile, and the unfamiliar bitterness that had laced his words.

'I didn't mean- It's not- Chandler. Chandler, look at me.'

His head turned, blue eyes hard and flat. She sighed.

'You're one of my best friends. I don't want to ruin that - you're too important to me.'

There was a softening. 'Yeah, I- You're kinda important to me, too.'

She smiled. 'And I don't really express things very well when my head hurts this much.'

'We pretty much drank the whole bar, didn't we?'

'Yeah, and it was fun! And the last part was-was...' Her body flushed at the memories. 'Well, it was pretty amazing, actually.'

He grinned. 'It was.'

Unshaven, his eyes blackened from lack of sleep, his face creased, but his smile still changed everything, still seemed brighter than anything she had ever seen. Too easy to give in to.

'Do you, uh, have any aspirin?'

'Yeah, sure, uh...' He rolled away, opening the drawer in the bedside table and returning with a box of aspirin and a half-full bottle of water.

'Thanks.' She swallowed them, coughing against the tablet that stuck in her throat. She brushed one finger against the small scar to the side of his chest. 'What happened there?'

He glanced down. 'The nubbinectomy.'

'Oh.' Her face creased in disappointment. 'I never got to see that.'

'Yeah, total loss on your part.'

'But it's not like it's something you get to see every day,' she said, idly running her fingers over the pale shiny line. He squirmed under the touch. 'Are you ticklish?'

'N-no,' he said, gasping slightly.

She grinned, delighted. 'I think you are...'

'No, no I'm not...'

She found the hollow spaces beneath his ribs, the patches of skin across his stomach; her hands darted, fast, and he laughed helplessly under her attack, begging for mercy. And just as quickly as it had started, it stopped, her wrists caught and pinned either side of her head and his weight held her down. The laughter in his face changed to something else.

'Head still hurt?'

She nodded wordlessly.

'You know what they say is the best hangover cure in the world?'

'You mean...'

He smiled again, something slow, something that warmed in a way wholly different to his other smiles. 'Yeah.' He let go of her wrists.

'So-' Rachel moistened her lips, swallowed hard against the thickness in her throat. 'So, it would just be like it's for medicinal purposes?'

'Yeah, something like that.'

'I-' She caught her breath sharply when his fingernails scraped against her thigh. So much easier not to think, especially when his lips were already fluttering against the line of her neck, down into the hollow at the base of her throat. And his fingers continued tracing patterns along the curve of her inner thigh, languid figures-of-eight that moved fractionally higher each time.

The throb in her head matched its rhythm to his breath against her skin, the dull pain slowly being muffled by pleasure as nerve-endings responded to his touch. When he took her breast in his mouth her back arched and she bit down on her lip, smothering the faint cry. She felt him smile in response and remembered the feeling of his lips against hers, their softness and their steadiness. She pulled his head back up to hers, kissed him, pulled his breath into her mouth.

She dragged her fingers over his skin, across his chest, his stomach, following the hard contours of his ribs until she smoothed her hands down the length of his back. When she opened for him he slid into her, slow, an endless moment where he filled her completely.

Her eyes, wide and darkened, stayed on his face, watching the expression, something like reverence, that played across his features.

His rhythm pulsed through her, and she met it, her body pressing harder against his, like a slow-dance they both already knew the steps to. Their fingers laced together. His lips brushed against her face: her cheeks, her forehead, her fluttering eyelids. She twined her legs around his, grazed her teeth against the pulse in his throat, felt its wild throb.

Pressure mounting brought an increase in tempo; her body shook with it, muscles tightening in anticipation of release. She still watched his face, saw the flare behind his eyes, whimpered helplessly as their bodies slid together, faster, his voice hoarse murmuring her name, and she broke. Eyes closing under the force, seeing white light, hearing the blood roaring through her head, feeling his chest shake against hers. She bit her lip again, smothering the scream that the whole damn street would hear if she let it out.

His shuddering breath against the side of her neck and his weight collapsed against her.

When he started to move she wrapped herself around him, keeping him there, his head cradled in her arms.

They didn't do this, she reminded herself, they did not do this; but for now, for these moments, they did.