chapter fourteen ~ the one where chandler has no soul
Heather's POV

Now that my job was more stressful than ever before, it meant that when I got the chance to relax with my friends, I jumped at the chance and something that we had started doing was having a lazy afternoon where we would all eat snacks and watch a movie together. Today, we were watching the emotional rollercoaster movie, ET and I was cuddled up on Joey's lap, on the armchair. We had a bowl of popcorn balanced on my stomach as we helped ourselves through most of the movie but now that we were close to the end, it was the emotional part. Monica and Chandler were cuddled on the couch with Phoebe next to them and both girls had tissues on hand for the gut-wrenching scene that we were preparing for.

"This is my favourite part." Monica cries as we all look towards the TV screen and I have to bury my head into Joey's chest so that the others don't see me cry. My husband, being the best person in the world, just ran his hand through my hair to comfort me.

"Yeah, me too." Phoebe nodded, before another thought came into her head. "Oh, you know what's sadder than this? Bambi. I cried for three days with that movie. No, wait, two. Because on the third day, my mother killed herself, so I was partly crying for that."

"Well, see, now, that I can see crying over but Bambi is a cartoon." Chandler said, his arms folded across his chest as he didn't even bat an eyelid to the emotional scene that we were watching because this was what my brother was like.

Joey was the most disgusted and almost flung me off his lap when he noticed how monotone my brother was being. "You didn't cry when Bambi's mother died?"

"Yes, it was very sad when the guy stopped drawing the deer."

Monica rolled her eyes at her boyfriend, knowing that he was just doing this for attention and there was no way that he was just not an emotional person. "Chandler, there's nothing wrong with crying. You don't have to be all macho all the time."

"I'm not macho." Chandler frowned, confused as to why that adjective had just been used to describe him and we all realised how wrong that was.

"Yeah, you're right." Monica agreed, patting his thigh as she shook her head. "I don't know what I was thinking."

"No, I guess I just never really cried, you know? I'm not a crying kind of guy."

One memory stuck out to me when he admitted that, because on our wedding day, I had seen him choke up several times and I knew for a fact that he had cried. The most obvious memory to think of was when he came to see me before the ceremony, when he had seen me in my wedding dress and I had asked him to walk me down the aisle. That was the kind of memory that I wanted to keep for the rest of my life and wasn't one that I was going to just forget about because Chandler didn't want people to know that he cried on that one occasion. Which was why I wasn't shy about telling everyone in the room that it had happened, shrugging at the recollection

"You cried when you saw me in my wedding dress." I admitted, watching as everyone turned to face me, with shocked expressions as Chandler had obviously not told anyone.

He gave me a death stare, his eyes popping out of his head. "And you swore never to tell anyone!"

"Come on, man, there's got to be something that gets you choked up." Joey brought the attention back to the fact that Chandler didn't cry like a normal human being and took the heat off me, because my brother didn't seem very happy with my announcement. "Everyone has something. Like, what if you saw a three-legged puppy?"

He shrugged. "I'd be sad, sure, but I wouldn't cry."

"Okay, what if the puppy said: Help me, Chandler. All the other puppies pick on me."

"Cry? I just found a talking puppy." Chandler smirked at the idea, not seeing the point of the story and I rubbed Joey's arm, knowing what he was trying to get at. "I'm rich."

"I've got it!" Monica said excitedly, standing up and heading straight for the cupboard, where she pulled out a photo album, resting it on Chandler's lap as he flicked through the pages. "Pictures from your childhood. This will get you going good."

"Okay, what's going on there?" Phoebe questioned, pointing at one of the pictures, Joey and I moved so that we could see the pages and I recognised the younger version of Chandler, stood next to an older overweight man with a moustache.

"That's Parents Day, first grade. That's me with the Janitor, Martin."

Monica was shocked and upset for him. "Where are your parents?"

"Oh, they didn't want to come." Chandler admitted, and the others all awed at the revelation but we were used to that reaction.

That was true, even though I had made up with my parents now that we were all adults, they had been pretty useless during our childhood. They hadn't attended any of our school days and hadn't been interested in anything that we did; it was hard for a child to go through that and that was why I wanted to be the opposite of that when I had my own children. When I had my own children, I would be the most annoying kind of parent and would always be there fore them; even when they begged me not to. That was what Joey would be there for, he would be the relaxed parent making sure that I didn't go too overboard but he would also be so proud of them. Plus, if we had a daughter then he would be very protective of her and wouldn't let any boys near her. We complemented each other and that was why this was going to work between us, we were the perfect jigsaw pieces for each other and I couldn't wait to have a baby with him. Of course, we had only just got married and we weren't ready for that next step yet but we knew that we wanted to have one at some point.

"Chandler, you poor thing." Phoebe rubbed his shoulder and was secretly hoping that if she kept talking about how sad it was, that it would get some kind of emotion out of him. "That story doesn't make you cry?"

"No!" Chandler replied, shutting the photo album quickly as it was apparent that he didn't want to look through any old pictures because it wasn't something that was a fun thing to do. "Look, I don't cry. It's not a big deal, okay?"

"No, it's not okay! It's not okay, at all!" Joey yelled, stepping away from me so that he could point at my brother. "You're dead inside!"

My friends turned to face me, obviously wondering what I always wondered, how we were related because I didn't have the same tendencies as he did. "Don't look at me, sometimes I wonder if he was adopted."

a/n: i have a seminar with my horrible tutor who calls us all stupid & i really don't want to go 🥺 -lizzie ⭐️

date published: 19/01/21