Chapter 1: Experiment

Monica burst into her hotel room, spinning to close the door behind her and shut out the world as fast as possible. Keeping her face turned away, towards the varnished wood, she leaned against it for a moment, wiping at her eyes.

Chandler's words downstairs at the hotel bar had been incredibly supportive and sweet, but they didn't change all of the not-so-veiled hints her mother would leave her, about not getting any younger. It didn't change what that inebriated fop had said to her, in what he must have thought was by way of some kind of compliment.

The arsehole, as they might say across the pond here in London, had mistaken her for Ross's mother.

Ross's. Mother!

She apparently wasn't Ross's nearly-30-year-old, unmarriable sister any longer. Now, she apparently had a 30-year-old son following a mathematically impossible teenage pregnancy. Unless the drunken sod had gotten his own figures wrong and just assumed that she was older than she looked. Oh, God, that was even worse…. No woman wants any man to think she's older than she actually is. 'You don't look a day over [insert age here]….' jokes were supposed to round down, not up.

"I think I'm going to stand up and object."

Hearing the voice at her back, Monica gritted her teeth, now even more perpetually on edge. It was one thing to be mistaken for a woman in at least her 50s (the only way her having a 30-year-old son, apparently, would be mathematically probable). It was another to be forced to babysit her absolutely despondent best friend who was clearly still head over heels in love with her brother – oh, excuse me, 30-year-old son.

"Rache?" Monica spun around and entered the hotel room proper. "If you really loved my brother, you would let him go and be happy for him." Sometimes, her best girlfriend could truly frost a cake. Rachel's relationship with Ross had been so volatile, riding high for one minute, then crashing the next, that it was only the barest comfort to realize that the beautiful blonde had actually had worse luck in love than Monica…. sometimes. Unlike Monica, Rachel knew how to attract dates. She was like the female version of Joey – men would practically pelt her with their phone numbers. Even then, Rachel was very selective. She had dated only a handful of people since she and Ross's relationship had been dashed upon the rocks of miscommunication and infidelity.

Despondent, Monica sank down to a seat on the bedspread. Noticing her bereft look, Rachel finally got outside of her own head long enough to reach out and touch Monica's knee, patting it.

"Hey…. What's the matter?"

Monica chuffed, rolling her eyes a little, and she could feel the sting of tears invading. "I'm apparently the mother of the groom."

"What?..." Rachel giggled. At the fierce warning look Monica sent her way, the other woman cleared her throat. "Go on. What happened?"

"Oh, some drunken old fogey thought that I was Ross's mother. Not his sister – his mother!" Rachel looked like she was trying very hard to stifle a giggle, and she managed it, if only just barely. "His actual mother – our mother – is right…. I'm never going to get married. I'm going to grow up to be an old spinster, who lives with her cats and might occasionally warrant a visit from my nephew."

If Chandler were here, he would be fiercely and lovingly scolding her for not hearing anything he had just said downstairs.

"You'll find someone, Mon," Rachel promised. It was weak-kneed comfort, not like what Chandler had rhetorically asked:

Who wouldn't want you…?

Monica stared at her best friend. Rachel needed to take her mind off of the heartbreak of watching a man she loved marry someone else in the morning. Monica needed to take her mind off the fact that she had been aged 20 years by some cad's slurred comments, hadn't been on a date or even had sex in just about twelve months, and was nowhere closer to having a baby or family of her own.

"Miss Green, would you like to break out the wine from the icebox?" Monica posited in a posh British accent.

Rachel smiled softly. "You read my mind, honey."

Every hotel room came equipped with a mini fridge, with an assortment of wine inside. It cost amenities for every bottle opened and consumed, but seeing as how Monica's parents and the Walthams would ultimately be the ones to pay for it, the girls had at it.

Before long, they were lurching with laughter on the edge of the bed, quickly well past tipsy and on their way to falling down drunk.

"I just need to go back downstairs, grab some random man and have meaningless sex until morning!" Monica crowed, rising to her feet and swaying slightly. The blood rushed to her head. As she staggered into the wall by the closet, her mind cleared just enough to decide: no. Not just any man. It was one thing to have meaningless sex that she strove to purposefully not remember in the morning. It was another to do it with a faceless stranger who she didn't know. If she was going to meaninglessly fuck someone, it would nonetheless have to be someone who she trusted.

…. Chandler? Monica's face grew warm at the thought. He had been so sweet tonight, always knowing the right words to say that would comfort her. … But no. Chandler was her best friend. The thought of using him that way, even in the pursuit of pleasure that he would no doubt enjoy, made Monica recoil. She cared about her best friend too much to take advantage of him like that. Besides, Chandler was fragile – he wouldn't understand that their coming together would have to mean nothing once the morning arrived…

Joey! Joey would understand her motivations. He had meaningless sex all the time – for him, it was practically an art form. Better still, Joey wouldn't ask questions. He would just be happy to finally have that crack at getting her in bed the way he had always hinted at with suggestive, naughty innuendo…. Of course, he did that with all three of the girls at one point or another, but even so!

"Do you know where…. Joey is….?" Monica slurred, trying to feel her way along the wall to the small stretch of hallway leading to the door.

"Why?" Rachel followed, grabbing Monica and steering her back towards the bed. Monica shook her off, but sat down on the bedspread to steady herself.

"I'm going to go jump his bones…." Monica declared in a moment of brutal honesty, aided in no small part due to the drink.

"Oh, don't do that!" Rachel twittered out through a shocked giggle, though her eyes looked concerned. "It will only cause problems the day after! And what about when we get home? No, the last thing you want to do is to encourage Joey – he'd fall for anyone who flashed her assets at him…."

…. Rachel did bring up a good point. The last thing Monica wanted to do was to go for a meaningless round with Joey, only to act a little too talented in bed and have their struggling actor friend do something like fall in love with her. "Joe will understand," Monica tried to cling to her decided course of action. "I just need to kiss someone! I just need to roll around in the sheets with someone and not have it mean anything, so I can forget that no one wants me, that I'm never going to get married, that I'm never going to have my child and that I…."

She was turning her face towards Rachel in the second it happened, such that Monica had no time to react. Suddenly, Rachel had surged forward so that they were practically nose-to-nose, and brushed her lips against Monica's.

Monica's bloodshot, sapphire eyes popped. She was too taken aback to do anything other than hold the kiss. Rachel tasted like whiskey. Monica's eyelids slowly started to soften and droop, in the moment before she and Rachel broke apart with a soft SMACK!

The raven-haired woman blinked rather rapidly. She wasn't plastered enough not to realize what had happened. "What…. what was that for…..?"

"You should be kissed," Rachel rasped, her voice strangely hoarse. The blonde's cheeks were flushed, whether from the alcohol or embarrassment, Monica couldn't tell. "You deserve to have someone make love to you…. You're so pretty, Mon. Anyone would be crazy not to love you….!"

Monica wasn't so sure about that. True, she was aware of how men tended to ogle her, especially in the years since she had lost all her high school weight. Sometimes, even women stared at her. Carol had practically needed surgery from how her jaw had been unhinged much of the night she and Monica had first met. Perhaps that should have been a red flag for Monica to pass along to her brother, but the connection hadn't been made.

Monica could only hear her own rapid breathing. Her own face was flushed red from the wine and her breasts were heaving like a bellows under the bodice of her patterned dress. She trembled as Rachel suddenly lifted a hand and caressed her face, brushing the midnight lock back out of Monica's eyes.

There was a pregnant pause, and then suddenly the two women embraced. Wrapped in each other's arms, they heatedly kissed, the lip-lock quickly deepening.

Monica had never kissed a woman before, not even when she was drunk like this. She had kissed men while drunk – well, in that instance, she had been more buzzed; Chandler had been drunk enough not to know where he was, much less whose throat he had been sticking his tongue down….

Monica shivered as she now felt Rachel's tongue probe her mouth, and Monica parted her lips willingly, granting her entrance. Their tongues came together and grappled in an almost romantic dance.

Rachel's lips now left hers and Monica choked out a strangled gasp just to get air, tilting her head back to grant Rachel access to where the blonde was blazing a trail of kisses down the soft, creamy curve of her neck. "Have…. have you done this before….?"

Rachel's answer surprised her. "Once. Melissa Warburton. She was a sorority sister… in college. We got drunk and….. made out. But we… we never…." She let up on worshipping Monica's neck and drew back, the two women holding each other's gaze. Staring deeply into one another's eyes. The rest of Rachel's sentence hung thick in the air, like the musky scent that lingered after… after….

We never went this far….

…. Did Rachel and Monica dare to go this far now?

Did Monica want to go this far? …. And with Rachel, her best friend….?

…. Why not? Women have been making bad choices, practically since the beginning of time. Maybe Rachel was going to be another one of Monica's bad choices. She had never tried anything with a girl before. Plus, it would definitely be understood that something started here, tonight, wouldn't mean anything tomorrow. Not the way it would be if she even tried to leap into bed with Joey, the perpetual bachelor.

Taking Rachel's face in her hands, Monica smashed her lips back against hers, desperately, humming and murmuring into Rachel's insistent mouth as she kissed her back.

"Hmmmm….. Mmmmmmm….. you – you know what's weird?"

"What?" Rachel breathed, almost dazedly.

"This doesn't feel weird!" Monica stared at Rachel in amazement. It should have felt all kinds of weird, considering this was Rachel…. and yet it didn't.

"I know!"

Monica smirked. "Hey…. That's my line…!" The two women collapsed into peals of giggles. She bit her flushed and very kissed lips shyly. "You're, um…. you're a really good kisser, Rache…."

"Want some more….?" Rachel amorously wrapped her arms around Monica. Eyelids drooping heavily, the pair leaned in and kissed yet again.

This time, they kissed more tentatively, the solemnity of what they both knew was about to happen centering them, allowing them to be present in the moment, despite their copious amounts of imbibing. Breathing, sighing heavily, Monica and Rachel's hands roamed, pushing back fabric so that fingers could clasp sweat-slicked skin beneath.

Swooning back onto the bed, Monica opened her legs for Rachel, so that her blonde paramour could settle between them. Rachel's palms glided up Monica's thighs, bunching the hem of her patterned dress up and over her hips. Monica spread her thighs, revealing how she had foregone putting on any underwear – something she now took almost as a sign.

With one hand, Rachel reached up to cup the swell of Monica's now bare breast. With the other, she traced her fingers along Monica's dampness. Rachel slid a finger into the other woman's slit, then two, opening her up.

Feeling Rachel stroke so expertly the apex of her thighs, Monica began to buck her pelvis into her lover's hand. "Erm… Hmmm….. Mmmmm….. God…. Yes, Rache! Don't – don't stop….! I…. I want to make love to you….."

Straddling her, Rachel began to bounce on top of Monica, thrusting with her hips even though she had no cock with which to fuck her. Despite her inexperience making love to the same sex, Monica quickly shoved her thigh in between Rachel's, allowing Rachel to grind against her toned legs and gather friction.

The two women were soon rutting against each other in heat, moaning and grunting as they had sex.

Watching Rachel's breasts jiggle in her face like tempting apples, Monica reared up and sealed her lips around her best friend's pebbled nipples, causing Rachel to groan with lust. The blonde rubbed against her partner faster, at the same time also picking up the pace of how her fingers were diddling Monica's wet folds.

"I…. I want to have children with you…!" Monica cried, kissing the swells of Rachel's breasts. The pleasure that was enveloping her was making her babble, incoherent, saying things that were impossible. She must be drunker than she realized. "I…. love you, Rachel! I…. I want…. – I love…. lo-ahhhhh…. Ahhhhhhhh!... AHHHHHH!... AHHHHHHH!"

Her calf muscles seized and nearly cramped. Her fingers fisted the bedsheets and her toes curled.

With an astonished cry, Monica felt herself cum.

She was pleased with herself to feel Rachel shudder above her as she two was brought to orgasm, collapsing spent on top of her naked lover. Their lips came together in a dazed give-and-take, reveling in the afterglow. Monica felt her arms lovingly encircle her best girlfriend, her digits sinking into Rachel's shoulder blades, pinching the skin there, hard enough to hurt.

Utterly stunned, completely satiated and thoroughly, unexpectedly satisfied, Monica felt her voice lift and sing along with how her heart was singing.

"Ahhhh, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you….!" Rachel grunted into Monica's neck and nibbled at the skin there, leaving an angry hickey. She began to thrust her hips along Monica's again, working through the pulsing aftershocks of her own completion. "Ahhhh, I know at last the secret of it all!..."