Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Time's Up, Mon
Monica didn't remember going to bed last night.
Then again, it had been quite the rave the previous evening. Honestly, was a woman who had just turned 40 not twenty-four hours prior supposed to have remembered everything that happened at her birthday party?
Even through the pounding hangover she now sported, Monica remembered being drunk fairly clearly. Thank goodness that she had woken up this morning to not find some man on the other side of her bed – clearly, she hadn't been drunk enough for someone to try and take advantage.
Not that Chandler would have allowed anyone to attempt such a thing, anyway – the last thing Monica remembered was being lifted and carried off to her room in big, strong arms, bathed in a scent wholly familiar and which could only belong to her best friend of more than twenty years.
Trudging into the living area of her apartment, Monica cringed in anticipation of a mess, blinking her eyes as her cleanliness instinct roared to life. She prepared to dust, sweep and scrub.
To her amazement, her bleary vision cleared only to find that the place was absolutely spotless. Anyone would be hard pressed to argue that a celebration of drunken debauchery had occurred in here not twelve hours before.
Gawking, Monica zeroed in on the gentleman in the kitchenette, standing over by the stove, his back to her. He was ladeling something on the skillet, currently sizzling, clearly having not heard her come in.
For just a moment, Monica indulged herself in a bit of blatant appraisal, checking out the man who was fixing her breakfast (at least, she presumed he was fixing her breakfast). She would know that backside anywhere (toned) as well as the back of his head (hair spiky in a manner that wasn't quite coiffed, yet nonetheless adorably cute). Leaning against the doorframe, Monica smiled and shook her head.
A chuckle must have also escaped her, for how the man at the skillet suddenly turned and beamed that dopey grin at her.
"Good, you're awake."
Pushing off the doorjamb, Monica ambled over to Chandler Bing, her best friend, leaning into the side hug he offered. "Let yourself in?" She had given him her spare key years before, when her brother had married and his bride, her roommate Rachel, moved out.
Chandler shrugged. "Actually, I never left. Slept on the couch. The last of the guests left at, oh…. about 1-ish?" He frowned, poking at the omelets with the spatula. "I am sorry to report that our nephew and godson was among them."
The lad was really her nephew, by blood, but Chandler had known Ross's son, Ben, since the day he was born. He and Monica were, however, godparents together of the boy. Monica wrinkled her nose.
"You didn't let him drink, did you?"
Chandler snorted. "I didn't, but Joey almost did. Course, the big teddy bear wasn't entirely in his right head himself."
Despite knowing well Joey's taste for beer, Monica still gawked in outrage. "Chandler! Ben's 14! He's not even old enough to drive, much less drink!" She began to roll up her sleeves. "I'm going across the hall to give that bastard Joey a piece of my mind…"
"Calm down: I headed Joey off and helped him to bed; he probably has a worse hangover than you, so boxing him round the ears wouldn't be advisable. As for Ben, Ross drove him back, and your brother was stone-cold sober!"
Monica deflated at this, a little. She started to turn back to the table; noticing, Chandler briefly abandoned his post at the skillet to gentlemanly pull out her chair for her. She smiled at him brightly, and he quirked his lips in that adorable, boyish grin.
"Happy birthday, Mon…."
She blushed, for some reason. "You didn't have to make me breakfast…"
"Of course I did! You make me breakfast every other day of the year! Just let me take care of you, for once." He slid the omelet off the skillet and onto a plate before passing it to her. He kissed her temple; Monica leaned into his touch. "For you, madame."
"Thanks," Monica mumbled shyly, beaming up at him beatifically.
To any outside observer watching the exchange, the word 'husband and wife' would probably be a common guess to describe this morning interaction. Those observers would be stunned to learn that Monica and Chandler were not married. They had never even so much as dated, despite what the intimate gestures that came so naturally to them would suggest. But they had been friends – best friends – for more than two decades. Neighbors across the hall, nearly as long.
Chandler, pleased that his efforts were appreciated, pulled out a chair and simply sat, basking in the sight of Monica tasting his creation. She pursed her lips in approval and pride.
"I taught you well."
Chandler flushed and scratched self-deprecatingly at the back of his neck. "I like to think I'm a decent enough learner."
"You know your way around a kitchen. That's what's important," Monica chirped prissily. "I can't have you at middle age and still only eating what can be microwaved!"
Chandler chuckled. For a time, the pair sat in companionable, easy silence. Taking sly glances at him between mouthfuls, Monica could tell Chandler had something on his mind, perhaps even his conscience. She hoped his guilt wasn't about the food – it was truly delicious! Even commendable, for a beginning novice. She watched her best friend fidget a little in his seat, finding the hardwood of the table quite interesting, until at last, she trapped him with a pointed look.
"Chandler, what is it?"
It took a moment for him to finally lift his head and look her in the eye. Monica was struck by how his baby blues now held a solemnity that oddly thrilled her. There was that boyish, bashful smile again.
"Monica?"
"Yeah?"
"…. I love you."
She smirked and rolled her eyes at him. "I know. I love you too, dork." For them, telling each other they were loved was as easy as breathing. It wasn't so casual that it was perfunctory and devoid of all its meaning, yet there was simultaneously never an expectation of deeper weight suggesting a more-than-platonic connection behind the words.
"So where are we, then?"
Monica almost sucked a bit of egg into her windpipe and squirmed, swallowing hard. "Where are we on what?" she blinked, bemused.
Chandler didn't answer her for a moment. "Well, I would sing the question, but I can't really do Rachel's rendition last night justice: …. Monica, how old are you now?"
Monica groaned and rolled her eyes. "40. As if you needed to remind me, so thank you so much…."
"Well, I'm not so much reminding you of that as I am alerting you that time's officially up."
Monica shook her head. "Time is up for what?"
"For our pact," Chandler gazed at her, square in the eye. "To marry me once we were both 40 and if we were still single."
Silence. Monica gaped at her best friend. He had to be making a joke, even as her comprehension was now clear. All at once, she flashed back to a moment close to fifteen years earlier, when her now-nearly grown nephew had still been hours away from entering the world and she and Chandler had been waiting anxiously in a hospital lobby.
"What? That silly thing we said the night Ben was born?"
Chandler nodded. "We've both officially run out the clock, Mon. I gave you this last year as a grace period because technically, you were still in your thirties."
"You're one year older; I get it," Monica laughed, rising with her cleared plate and ruffling his hair. "You're also too adorable for your own damn good when you're joking…."
"I wasn't making a joke."
Monica was nearly at the counter when his voice made her stop dead. She barely had enough self-control to gingerly lower her plate into the sink, rather than drop it so it shattered. She turned back to Chandler by slow degrees in shock, her heart tightening through an odd and wary spasm, as it slowly began to dawn on her.
"Oh. My. God….. You're actually serious…."
Chandler nodded, rising from his chair. "As a heart attack."
She gazed at him for a moment, bewildered. "But…. but that wasn't a pact…." She latched onto the first argument she could express. "I never agreed to it, did I?"
"You didn't have to. And that was only because you were too busy acting offended while wondering why you wouldn't be married by the time you were 40," Chandler pointed out.
Monica flashed back to that conversation she and the man had had, when they were both still young and in their twenties – practically babies themselves! She recalled getting annoyed with him, holding his feet to the fire and demanding to know why he thought she wouldn't be legally wed by the time they had left their thirties, let alone their twenties. In his typical style, Chandler had found a sarcastic joke of a distraction to weasel his way out of answering her question, aided by the bustle of their nephew and godson arriving into the world.
Monica searched Chandler's eyes, waiting for his flat affect to break; she was disconcerted when it did not. Chandler just smiled softly at her, and she unconsciously felt butterflies in her stomach.
"You know…. I didn't finish giving you all your presents last night…."
At this, Monica's eyes bulged, and they were not having this conversation, they weren't – "Chandler….? If this is your way of…. making fun of me…" She weakly danced away from him, around the waist-high bookcase, surprisingly nimble even as she suddenly felt as though her knees were about to give out from under her. She shivered when he followed her, the pair backing into the door.
"I would never make fun of you, Mon. You know that." His voice was soft, yet earnest.
Monica's eyes flitted down to his chest. The top of his polo shirt – the same one he had worn to her birthday bash the night before – was unbuttoned, revealing a tantalizing bit of chest hair. She swallowed hard, breathless. "Why…. why are you doing this?" she whispered.
"Because I want to make you happy, and you make me happy too. Happier than I ever thought I could be," Chandler replied; his tone was nakedly sincere in a way that was starting to frighten Monica, a little. If this was indeed a joke, it had long since bypassed the point of being in poor taste.
"So…. so this is your extra present to me, then? A spontaneous…. proposal?" she spluttered. She found she needed to work far too hard to muster any kind of outrage.
Chandler wagged a finger at her. "A proposal is never complete without…" And then, out of nowhere, he was pulling a ring box from his pocket and falling to one knee before her. Monica drew an astonished hand to her mouth to hold in a gasp. Oh, my God….. he had a ring….
"Chandler, what are you doing?" she breathed.
"Well, I went to the jewelry store last night and I bought you this ring."
"A ring?! What are you talking about?"
"I want to marry you." He was either being dead serious, or playing it so straight that he was a better actor than Joey Tribbiani could ever, ever hope to be.
"Marry me?" Monica sucked in a breath. "Stop this, Chandler – it's not funny…." Her voice was quavering.
"I'll stop asking only if I hear a No in there, and if it sounds like you mean it," Chandler promised.
The rational side of her – the side that was 40 years old and practical – was fighting to claw that No from her throat. Yet something was holding her back. In the meantime, she was leaving the man hanging, almost in agony.
A light bulb went off in her head, as she now recalled with even more startling clarity what Chandler had said when he had floated his little pact, all those years ago:
I'll tell you what: when we're 40, if neither of us are married…. what do you say you and I get together and have one?
'Have one' meaning have a baby, for her lack of one had been what she was bemoaning at the time. Setting aside those parts of the terms, lest she go into heart palpitations that were not entirely out of revulsion at the thought, Monica focused on the marriage portion: Chandler had said if neither of them was married. He had neglected to say anything about if either of them were currently involved or dating.
"You didn't say anything about dating, that night!" she leapt on triumphantly, almost crowing. "What if I'm dating someone now?"
"You're not," Chandler stated. He sounded so sure. "You would have told me if you were. And if you were, I would have taken that as a signal that the pact might not need to be honored and I would have held off."
…. Drat. He had her there. Back when they were younger, she had been pretty open about bringing around the men she was seeing for her friends' (and especially Chandler's) approval.
Wait….
"Wh-What do you mean you would have held off?"
Chandler shrugged. "To see if the relationship lasted or led to an engagement. Said differently, I would have waited to see if you were with a Richard or with a Pete."
…. Well said. Monica hadn't had cause to think about either of her more serious exes in years. She had tried again with the former one more time, nearly a decade ago now, before recognizing that his views on parenthood had not evolved and called it quits for good. Her father's old friend had remarried, last she had heard. As for Pete…. Well, the most he had done for her was give her a more discerning eye in the kinds of men she dated. Set higher standards for herself. She hadn't seen the millionaire since they had broken up at that godforsaken tournament in the late nineties.
Far more revealing to her, however, was the realization that Chandler cared enough about her that, had he known she was involved with someone, he would have waited to pounce and, if beaten to the punch, graciously ceded the field and let her go.
…. Monica was terrified to find that she was rapidly running out of excuses for why she shouldn't just grab that admittedly beautiful ring and slam it onto her own finger.
There was still one more card she could play.
"Chandler…" she chided him gently. "We…. we can't get married! We haven't even dated!"
"Hmm, really? OK, riddle me this: what would you call the last, oh, say ten years then, at a minimum? I have a key to your place. I spend well over half my time over here. Hell, one of my toothbrushes is currently collecting dust on your bathroom sink! I've practically moved in here without either one of us even noticing! And it's not as though you ever objected!"
Monica blanched slightly as she realized that, holy fuck, he was right….
She started to stagger back towards the fridge, only for Chandler, still on his knees before her, to follow her. She was reminded of that one weekend in Montauk, also more than a decade ago, when he had facetiously (or so she had thought) pretended to ask her out on a date at the door of that beach house. The scene before her now would have been almost funny if it wasn't so solemn and she wasn't trembling.
"We cuddle on the couch. You put my feet up in my lap without a second thought when we do crosswords. We touch each other as if we've been dating for years! If anyone other than our closest friends had walked in on how we were interacting with each other at the table five minutes ago, they would have asked what anniversary we were celebrating!"
Nothing. Monica was grasping at straws at this point and rapidly coming up with nothing. Her bewilderment now finally gave away to a shred of anger.
"And I suppose I should now just become….. weak in the knees and…. fall into your arms…. and…. live…. happily ever after while pretending that this changes nothing when in fact, it would change everything….!"
"Yes. Yes, yes, yes and yes," Chandler was rumbling, having now risen off his knees and drawn quite close to where she was now trapped against the refrigerator, with nowhere to run. Holy God, when had his voice started to sound so sexy….? He was a hair's breadth away from her, and Monica felt her gaze dart to his lips, while unconsciously wetting her own with her tongue. She shakily peered up into his eyes, entranced and yet terrified all at once. Terrified that if they tried this, or hell, skipped the dating and went right to the chapel, then their friendship would be ruined. That she would lose him.
…. Monica loved Chandler too much to risk that.
Hold it: loved….?
"Monica…." Chandler whispered, and he held up the ring box. "Will you marry me?"