Disclaimer: Friends does not belong to me, so any infringement of the material is not intentional.
Pairing: Monica x Chandler
Warnings: OOC, angst, slight humor, hetero.
First Friends drabble thing-y. Probably takes place around Seasons 1-6 or 8. I don't particularly care, but whatever. Bit hesitant about posting this thing, so some feedback would greatly help.
The scenes are not in order. And most of them sort of switch POVs. Sometimes it's Chandler's and sometimes its Monica's. Just deal with it.
Equilibrium
Monica used to hate the color yellow. Perhaps it was supposed to be a joyful color, signifying happiness and pleasure. To be cheerful and jumpy, and just plain happy with what you already had, that was what yellow was. It was the color of the sun beating down on her, creating a sunny day with warm spirit.
Monica used to hate the color yellow. It stained too easily.
Well, perhaps it didn't really stain so easily. Depending on the material on the type of cloth, yellow was a rather easy color it.
When Monica color codes her papers or anything else she wants to organize, she always spends extra time on the orange code before going onto the yellow one. And even then, it's a quick check before she sticks the yellow one on. It's one of the things she's not very organized about.
Monica hates yellow until she sees Chandler wearing it, and after that she despises it.
"You're doing it all wrong. You're supposed to wash the dishes forwards, not backwards." She shows her brother how to do it, taking it forcefully out of his aggravated hands and rubbing it in his face that she'll always be the perfect one.
Ross has deep lines scrunched into his forehead and eyebrows, showing that he is frowning deeply at her. She's past the point of caring though, and raises her own eyebrow.
"Does it really matter which direction I scrub the dishes? Either way, they're being washed Mon." His eyes and way of speaking dare to challenge her, and a small smile threatens to come out of the corner of her mouth at the ludicrousness of it all.
"Just do what I say Ross. You know I can still sit on you."
Her brother sighs and her smile happens.
"Yes Monica."
Victory is won.
Fourteen is the age when she first picks her children's names. Technically, it is the age when she first settles on her children's names. Monica's been going through the names since she was five, the age when she plans her wedding. After she's settled on her perfect wedding, she goes onto the children names.
Fourteen is the age when she first picks her children's names. Technically, it is the age when she first on her children's names. Monica's been going through the names since she was five, the age when she plans her wedding. After she's settled on her perfect wedding, she goes onto the children names.
Monica writes down all the girl names on one piece of paper. She writes all the boys names on another. And she lists them all down alphabetically. Of course. It all starts with the letter A.
Girl Names That Begin With A
Abigail
Allison
Anna
Annabelle
Annie
Ashleigh
Boy Names That Begin With A
Aaron
Adrian
Avery
Always, always, Monica rips out each page with all the names she can think of and throws it in the trash bin, where it belongs. She grows through all that time and effort, to plan and imagine how a face would look beside the name, and how beautiful it would seem, to just throw it in the trash.
It's because no matter the effort and the neatness, at the end of the day, she is still not happy.
Things change when Monica is fourteen though. At fourteen, she's reached the Vs (with Vivian in the trash) and the feeling of desperation is something that the girl is very familiar with. Monica isn't very fat yet, just more-than-slightly chubby. She doesn't care.
At fourteen, she hears her mom talk on the phone to her perfect brother Ross. Her mom makes her voice purposely loud, because she knows it gets on her daughter's nerves when Monica works on her homework.
"You seem to be having SUCH a great time in school Ross! And such wonderful grades, your mother could NOT be more proud! Have you made any new friends? Oh, you have? Besides Will I mean? Oh, who is he? His name is Chandler (1)? Why, what an… original name!"
It's at age fourteen, when Monica goes back to her room, looks through her cluster in the trash, takes a look at two of her earliest pages, and writes down two names that she'll never cross out.
Jack
Emma
They sound beautiful.
Chandler walks through the door with a defeated expression on his face and a crushed spirit in his heart. When he closes the door behind him, it doesn't stay shut.
"Well, she wasn't sleeping with him. She is now." When he tells his friends about the story of a sinning woman and a love gone wrong, his voice never changes; it's still holding that sarcastic tinge. He likes to think of it as a good thing.
After his world is shattered, it's only right that his friends try to put back the pieces. It's a little hard though, as there are over a million shards.
First, there's good old Ross, who'd do anything to make his old buddies see the light. "Kathy was never good for you pal," his voice comes out all calm and sage. Chandler can't help but silently curse his best friend for being so smart.
They share a stifled and manly hug. Chandler's the first to pull apart.
"Thanks man."
Rachel's always seemed like the "baby" of the group, the one that they all like to look after, so it just seems very wrong when she's the one that's hugging him while whispering comforts in his ear. It seems wrong, but it really, it fits.
"Things will get better for you Chandler," she says, her voice sounding surprisingly motherly. "There are other fish in the sea."
He would like to believe that."Thank you mommy."
Phoebe's always been the weird and kinky one of the group, so it really is no surprise to Chandler that she's the one who hands him a cigar in the coffee house, even when the blonde's always been the one who's hated it the most.
"It's your poison Chandler. Sometimes, poison helps. Just don't get too attached." They both share a smile and a dream.
"Thanks Phoebs."
When Joey wants to cheer a friend up, he lets them watch pay-per-porn with him. When Joey wants to cheer Chandler up, he lets him take a bite out of his baloney sandwich.
"Just one bite. That's it man. Cause, as sorry as I am for you and Kathy, no way is this sandwich gonna be contaminated."
Chandler smiles and takes a bite out of the baloney sandwich, messing the whole thing up by spilling crumbs up everywhere. Joey doesn't notice, and simply takes a bite from the other end.
"Delicious."
"I know." Its one of the few things Joey does.
Monica's methods have always been a bit unorthodox, despite the fact that the girl is always trying to become the most straight laced girl out there. Chandler isn't sure whether he does or doesn't want her to become one.
However, what Monica does is different from the others. It's practical. It's so much like her that it isn't straight laced at all. Because what Monica does is help polish Chandler's shoes.
"What you wanna do is keep moving the cloth in circular motions at a consistent speed. If you move it too slow or too fast, the polish can get ruined," she tells him after she's finished polishing the first pair.
Chandler crooks an eyebrow. There is no other way to describe it. "What did you first notice about me Mon?"
Monica looks uncomfortable. "I noticed that your socks were mismatched."
It's an answer that could come from only her, and Chandler knows that he wants her to remain a straight lace with hidden curls underneath.
"I have here," Joey exclaims proudly, "a photo that I'm sure you'll be pretty interested in." He holds it out.
When Chandler takes the picture from his best friend he makes a rather feminine squeaky noise as he examines it.
"Wha…where did YOU GET THIS!"
Joey ignores his question, choosing to smile wide and cheerful and evil. "So what do you guys say? Can I tell everyone about your relationship now?"
"It's pretty interesting how you managed to use watercolor for us having sex," Monica says thoughtfully, closely examining it from all angles. "What paints did you use?"
Joey says, "…."
Chandler doesn't understand football. He doesn't get how people can manage to turn a rowdy and wild "sport" where people would run around and chase some stupid ball into an organized game with rules. He doesn't really get those sorts of things. He doesn't really want to.
With Chandler, Math is different. Math is numbers, and numbers already have organization. They have numbers and rules and they make sense. Chandler knows how numbers work; he knows what algebra means and how to graph inequalities and how to find the square root of 1356, because numbers make sense and numbers are Math and Chandler is good at Math.
Chandler may not have been able to play quarterback, but he was the highest in his high school Calculus class. Something that those other nerds didn't appreciate (well screw those bastards).
But what Chandler doesn't really or truly understand about Math, is geometry. He doesn't understand shapes, and how they are able to fit together like that. Nor does he get the point of degrees; they've always looked like temperature to him. And what Chandler really doesn't understand about geometry, is symmetry.
Oh, he knows what symmetry is (exact correspondence of form and constituent configuration on opposite sides of a dividing line or plane or about a center or an axis), he just doesn't understand it.
Monica understands symmetry. And she makes him try to understand it everyday.
"Chandler, can you stack these dishes in order?"
He never gets what she means by order, but he stacks the dishes anyway. In one big pile, with some dishes green and others blue. After he's done with stacking, she redoes it and gives him a lecture. Chandler's not exactly surprised.
"No! You've got to put it in TWO separate piles, and don't mix up the colors. Put the green in one pile and the blue in the other. Or if you're going to mix them up, at least do it RIGHT. Make each pile into a pattern, so its blue-green-blue. Don't be a lazy…person."
After she redoes his dishes, with prefect alignment and both of them in two piles with patterns, she does a small turn around and gives him a Look. It makes him realize what symmetry is really about. Her.
"There. Isn't that all better?" she smiles at him, places her hand in his (he notices the shape fits perfectly), and takes him to her room where numbers are but a distant memory and football is the haven of nirvana.
At the end though, he always realizes he's just one degree from falling for her. Sooner or later, that one degree is going to turn into zero. He'll be there when that happens. And most definitely, so will she.
It's at the end of the day, when she's finished stacking the dishes, and vacuuming the floor, and putting the music CDs in order that she allows herself to sit herself on the couch, where her husband has draped himself on it, flipping channels with a bored expression.
But when she sits right next to him (so that their knees touch together), he turns his head so that she can see his blueblueblue eyes sparkle with warmth that she's never quite seen in anything else, and his whole face lights up.
Monica's pretty sure her face is too.
Then, she notices the plate of Japanese take-out in his hand, and she wrinkles her nose. "Are you really gonna eat that here? You do know those things can easily spill right?"
"C'mon Monica, its okay to be a little messy."
She gives him a Look and tries to make him realize that he really doesn't know her all that well.
He doesn't.
Chandler wraps his arm around her shoulder in a full hearted effort, and leans his head with the messy hair against her straight sort of shoulder. When he breathes, it beats against the junction of her shoulder and neck. But when he whispers his words of love, they glide right over to her heart.
"You don't have to be perfect." His eyes have gone from blueblueblue to the kind of blue that doesn't have any words for the color. Those are her favorite kind. Chandler only has those kinds of eyes when he's angry. When he's sad. When he's about to kiss her.
Alright. So he might know her even more than she knows herself. But both of them already knew that.
So Monica says, "Kiss me please."
And Chandler says okay.
What he hates most about mornings is not that it means waking up to a world where poverty is in every corner, where children get abused and suffer, where depression makes its way around the universe, and where hate is the soul food that everyone eats. That's not what matters to him.
"Good morning Chandler."
"Good morning Monica."
In the afternoon when Chandler heads to a stuffy office and his bosses actually care about how well he's working on their hours, there's smoke filling the air. It's not caused by a nearby fire. It's not even caused by a person. It's caused by cigarettes. At the end of the day when Chandler walks out of his office, the smoke is gone and everything smells fresh.
"Good afternoon Chandler."
"Good afternoon Monica."
If they ever go on a dinner date, just the two of them, it's Monica who decides on the restaurant. It's Monica, who chooses the food and the wine and the time and the setting and the table. But it's Chandler who holds her hand and abides by her suggestions and is pretty much whipped thanks to her, so he figures he does most of the work in the relationship.
When the waiter looks at him as if to say, "You really are whipped," Chandler just sits and looks pretty.
"Good night Chandler."
"Good night Mon."
Monica's favorite place to kiss her husband is not precisely on the lips, but more like the crook of his mouth, where most of his muscles work. It's one of the points at where his mouth makes a smile or a smirk, or even a grin. It's also where he used to stick his cigarettes in. Monica kisses him there because she can't taste any ash.
After Monica kisses him goodnight, he smiles because he knows that he isn't the one who smokes in his office anymore.
What Chandler hates most about mornings is that it means waking up to a world where surplus is the epitome, where parents are actually caring towards their kids, and where all his friends love him just because they want to.
Because it is not his darkness that scares him. It is his light.
"Hey Monica," calls Chandler, "come over here."
"I'm a little busy here." And she is. She's been scrubbing the dishes that are dirty, dirty, dirty. She needs to wash them so they look clean, clean, clean. Or else they won't be-
"Just come over here."
Monica sighs exasperatedly and turns to face her husband. "Look Chandler I'm kind of busy-"
Her face is just an inch away from Chandler.
It seems stupid to object when he closes the distance, and she is pulled into the most perfect kiss. It's only perfect though, because-
Because it's him.
On Friday, she lets the dishes wash themselves.
Or at least, she makes him do them.
She isn't perfect.
When Chandler came out wearing a yellow tie that totally clashed with his outfit and everything, Monica couldn't help but smile as he accidentally spilled milk all over it.
"Whoops. Sorry."
Monica told him it was okay.
End
(1): I had to mix up and screw with the ages and timeline for this one. Sorry. I really would have thought of something else, but I didn't want to.
I'm supposed to be studying. Oh well.
I'm not perfect. Which is why you need to review. Please.