One-Shot: I Know What Love Is

Chandler sat quietly on the couch, watching the Fourth of July fireworks display on TV. He sensed his roommate and best friend, Monica, drift to his side.

"Are you done watching it?" When he shook his head, she nodded. "All right, I'm going to bed..." She bent and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

Watching her drift towards her bedroom closest to the bay windows, Chandler thought back over the course of their friendship:

They had met when they were barely adults, and Monica's brother had brought his new college roommate (Chandler) home for Thanksgiving. After college and when Monica had finished culinary school, Chandler had let her know about apartments going for really great rates in the Villages. The best of friends, they had ultimately moved in together on Bedford Street.

No doubt some of their neighbors had wondered the exact nature of their relationship, but Chandler and Monica's living arrangement had, for close to the last decade, been purely platonic. A stunningly beautiful woman, Monica had dated some men, but those relationships had never lasted. From where he was having even less luck with women, Chandler watched men gravitate towards his best friend and housemate from afar.

Theirs wasn't a lavender marriage, which was how some described two people of the opposite sex living together but not having a sexual relationship. It wasn't a common law marriage, but he and Monica had been living together for almost long enough for their arrangement to be considered so, under the law.

In spite of how he had always struggled with commitment, Chandler didn't want a marriage like that. As he watched the most beautiful woman he had ever known drift towards her bedroom, he suddenly got to his feet.

"... Will you marry me?"

Monica froze just before she got to her door and she turned around to stare at him. Her face was a pretty impressively impassive mask, one that concealed any shock, considering Chandler had just proposed to her. Still, he could tell by the look in her sapphire eyes - he had taken her aback, and he flushed.

"... I'd make a good husband, Monica." Chandler knew well that it was Monica's dream to one day get married and have children.

"... You would, Chandler," she finally admitted in a sigh.

Chandler peered at her. "... But you won't marry me."

Monica shook her head, her gaze sad. "You don't wanna marry me," she assured him, a slight and mirthless chuckle in her voice.

Chandler stood there, disbelieving. Somehow, her explanation of 'It's not you, it's me' hurt even more than if she'd come out and said she didn't want him. Still: "... Why don't you love me, Monica?..."

Pain flickered across Monica's face, but before she could offer up an explanation, Chandler declared:

"I know I'm not the best with commitment... but I know what love is!"

Monica watched Chandler as he headed out through the side window onto the balcony beyond, hands on his hips and staring out into the night, alone with his thoughts. Slipping almost shamefully into her room, Monica leaned her head on the varnished wood of the door, her mind in a fog.

It rained hard that night.

In his own bedroom on the opposite end of Apartment 20, Chandler lay awake, staring at the ceiling. He usually left the door open, just in case he heard Monica stir in the wee hours from a nightmare and he needed to go to her and comfort her.

So he was startled when he happened to turn his head and find her silhouette in his doorway, backlit by the moonlight. She was in her nightdress and gazing at him with an expression that was unreadable. Without a word, she crossed the room in three strides and climbed into bed with him. Then she actually swung one creamy thigh over his hips as she audaciously, boldly, moved to straddle him.

"Monica..." Chandler whimpered.

She dropped a finger to his lips to shush him. "Chandler..." she murmured, unusually vulnerable. "I do love you."

Dipping her head to his, she kissed him sweetly on the lips. The electric jolt when their lips touched nearly made her gasp.

Then, Chandler reared up and captured her lips in another kiss, one that quickly deepened, and she did gasp.

Monica's eyes drifted closed. So did Chandler's. Letting out a sigh, their lips engaged in a lazy, languorous give and take. Lust and deep love for this man stirring her blood, feeling how his embrace encircled her, clutching her close to him by her shoulder-blades, Monica drew back from the kiss only briefly to pull her nightdress over her head. She cast it over the side of the bed so it pulled with a soft rustle upon the floor. Drawing the bedclothes over them both, the best friends became lovers, wriggling against each other as they made love.

Monica was glad when she made him cum, and he did the same to her.

As sunrise neared, Monica turned her head further into where it was resting on Chandler's broad and bare chest. She pressed an earnest kiss into the stub that was his third nipple.

"... Would you marry me, Chandler?"

Chandler turned and glanced down at her, a beaming smile now breaking like the rising dawn across his face.

"OK."

Chandler and Monica married in a simple, quiet and intimate ceremony, standing before a justice of the peace instead of going for the traditional church wedding. Chandler felt disappointed that his bride hadn't gone for the big wedding of her dreams that he'd known she'd always fantasized about - he could have given it to her; his job paid well enough that they could have afforded a big party. But Monica had just smiled and shook her head.

"I don't want a big, fancy wedding... I want a marriage," she had told him.

The bride wore a simple white dress. Chandler still bought a tux - getting wed in the suit he always wore to work hardly felt appropriate.

The justice of the peace blessed their union. Then, in the sight of Monica's parents, her brother and a handful of close friends, Chandler and Monica sealed their marriage with a soft and simple kiss.

As she melted into her wedding kiss, Monica didn't know why she and Chandler hadn't done this, taken this step, years ago. He was her best friend, they had known each other for years and lived together nearly as long. She was only sorry that she had made him wait as long as she did; she kicked herself that she hadn't detected his deeper feelings.

Well, no more. She would have him, in sickness and in health, until death did they part. She loved this man. She loved her husband (she'd always known he'd be a good one)... and was so happy to be married to him.

For Chandler's part, he had the woman he had always wanted as his wife. He had offered her his hand and his name to share, and both Monica had agreed to take.

Hell, half of their loved ones had probably thought of them as being practically married already. So why not make it official?

Breaking apart sultrily, Monica's eyes fluttered open, her lips slightly parted. She looked dazed and stunned that she had finally done it - she was married, at last! And to someone who loved her, and who she loved deeply back.

Turning into her husband, the man she loved, the newlyweds held each other and glanced out at the sunset beyond the little courtroom. The new Mr. and Mrs. Bing could hear their small group of witnesses giving them well wishes, but paid it little mind.

Then Chandler pulled his bride close and kissed her, and if Monica had had any doubts in the moments before she said 'I Do,' she had no more now. There was only Chandler, and the scent of the dying lilies in her bridal bouquet. The bouquet that she absently tossed aside as she eagerly wrapped her arms around her beloved and returned his kiss.

As Chandler and Monica embraced, neither one of them bothered to look and see who caught the flowers.