Prologue

Whoever coined the phrase 'Don't believe your lying eyes' had either been a fascist or an idiot.

The eyes are the windows to the soul, after all – or so Chandler had always been told, just from reading any one of his mother's erotic romance novels. And since the soul is thought to be pure (at least in most people, most of the time), that means the eyes don't lie. They can't lie.

Chandler's eyes weren't lying to him now. Nor were the eyes of his sister-in-law, Rachel, when she answered their front door and her gaze immediately snapped to his wife. The softness, the tenderness, the ecstatic elation Chandler saw in Rachel's eyes – emotions all mirrored in his wife Monica's own shining, sapphire orbs – well, no pair of eyes could fake that, or the depth of those feelings either.

Whoever said love looks not with the eyes but with the mind was also an idiot. …. Oh, wait, that was Shakespeare. Eh, still, what a stupid statement, poetic or not.

Chandler didn't feel the ache so acutely in his chest anymore. It was still there, but had been tinged with a sort of…. acceptance. This is what had to happen. This is the way things were supposed to be. He had promised his wife before they were married that he would do whatever it took to make her happy. Chandler felt he had done that…. yet he also knew there were some things that he, as a husband, couldn't provide.

Rachel and Monica, the sisters-in-law by marriage, were chittering and laughing at the dining room table, their eyes only for each other. Their eyes sparkled as they beheld each other. The ache, the yearning, the need to be close to one another almost radiated from their bodies.

When they finally could not stand this pining any longer, they didn't even have to look to their respective spouses. There was no pleading. Sending each other a surreptitious glance, Chandler and Ross nodded and waved them off. Giggling, Rachel took Monica by the hand and the pair of women dashed up the stairs. The door to the bedroom slammed behind them, echoing from all the way up on the second floor.

Chandler smiled softly, with a touch of wistfulness, as he rose to help Ross clear the dishes at the sink. They let the tap run as long as they could without being wasteful, if only to mask what they both knew had to be going on upstairs by now.

Finally, Chandler moseyed through the house to the front porch, and sat down on the steps. Fishing around in his pocket, he procured a cigarette and lit it. His wife never liked it when he smoked, but he figured: she was having her quickie, so why couldn't he?

From one level above him, he could hear the creak of the bedsprings, the plaintive moans, coming all the way from the second-floor bedroom. The stillness of the night made these sounds of lovemaking echo all the louder, and Chandler felt himself grow hard in his pants. He had heard his bride moan for him like that, though with not nearly as much swooning and lust.

He heard the front door creak open behind him and he turned with a grim grin as his brother-in-law ambled over to join him on the stoop.

"Share?"

Bemused, Chandler handed Ross the lit cigarette and watched the paleontologist take a drag. "I thought you didn't smoke."

Clearly, his wife's brother didn't, for how Ross coughed through the inhale. "I don't. I just needed the head rush. A way to….."

"Block it out?" Chandler's eyes shifted up towards the second floor, where cries of pleasure could be heard – their wives were practically shouting with passion. "Kinda hard to do when they make…" His voice trailed off, and he coughed. "Do you and Rache ever get that loud?"

"No," Ross shook his head, glancing down. "Usually I have to take the lead when we're…. randy…." He side-eyed Chandler. "You?"

"When Monica's horny, I know!"

"Dude! That's my sister!"

Chandler shrugged. Drooping his head nearly between his knees, he huffed. "Well…. we tried our best to clean it up, but I fear we still might have made quite a mess of things."

"Not as much of a mess as it would have been otherwise, but… yes, I imagine we did," Ross agreed.

Chandler smiled. "And yet, if we saw two people do what we did, we'd never give them credit for a decent motive."

Ross made a sound that could have either been a snort of a scoff; Chandler couldn't tell. It was followed by a loud and lustful groan, then a sharper, more punctuated grunt, from the second floor window almost immediately above them. The men glanced to the sound, then back out at the upstate New York night.

Chandler sighed. "How did we get here, huh?"

Ross nodded. "Oh, I know exactly how it happened. After all, it's mostly my fault…."