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Chandler wasn’t gay. He knew that. And it wasn’t even like he ‘knew’ it, like some kind of double-think coping mechanism of denial or compartmentalisation. No, he’d opened that particular compartment long ago.
Was he attracted to women? Certainly. Watching Baywatch wasn’t a hobby, it was a willing ritual. He could appreciate that endearing way Monica would gesticulate as she paced around the room, ranting about water marks or basting. He definitely noticed Rachel’s general front area a lot more on cold days. More than usual, anyway. And he’d loved Janice. Loved her so much it terrified him.
Was he attracted to men? Yep. The chiselled jawline of the mechanic who did Phoebe’s Gran’s taxi’s WOF test. The broadness of a subway stranger’s shoulders, a furrowed brow as he perused the morning paper. Were these fleeting people on their way to work? To a meeting? To a day out in the city? Simply travelling for the hell of it?
Whatever. So he was the only internalised out bisexual in the world, who cared. He was okay with himself, and just had to invest a lot of energy into making it seem like he wasn’t. Which—much like watching Baywatch—wasn’t exactly easy.
To cope with which, Chandler had broken down Things He Needed to ‘Not Cope’ With into three categories: actions, miscellaneous, and scenarios.
Actions: Monica might point out that he crossed his legs. His response must be carefully calculated panic, and he would never do it again. Or Ross might very helpfully do an intricate and exaggerated impression of how he put on chapstick like it was lipstick. Okay, cool, action that by just putting up with chapped lips. That was fine.
Miscellaneous: they’d be sitting in the coffee shop and their drinks would be wrong because Rachel brought them over and none of the had them heart to tell her because she was so excited about ‘throwing back’ to her waitressing days. A gay couple might sit at the bar and dare to show affection in public. Chandler, very pointedly un-pointedly, would be busy with the paper, and wouldn’t see them. Or if he did, if Definitely Not Homophobic Ross threw the couple a glare and Chandler couldn’t pretend not to notice, he’d plaster a suitable grimace on his face. He was okay with doing that, too.
Scenarios: the worst, the most common, the most painful, and most with a common denominator named Joseph Tribbiani.
When he sat on Joey’s lap out of spite over a chair. Jump up, make a deal of being shaken, but then think that night about how weirdly hot the difference in your bodies was. His thigh, corded with muscle and firm beneath stiff denim. Chandler might play that scenario over in his mind, with edits: delete the other people. Dim the lights, or maybe use a spotlight instead so it’s just them and the circle of light around the chair. In this isolated and muffled reality, Chandler slid back and let his head fall back too, his neck exposed. Thick-fingered hands, so incongruous with Joey’s occupation and so different to Chandler’s own bony hands—these slide around his waist, pull him further back, make their way under his shirt as teeth bite at his neck.
Or when Joey had moved out, and Chandler definitely hadn’t gone over and over in his mind how many minutes it would take to walk there versus how many minutes it would take him to chicken out of the decision to knock on Joey’s stupidly expensive new door and, when he opened it, to kiss him. Because if he couldn’t just innately sense how much Chandler needed him without having to hear it, then Chandler could show him. Would show him. Would strip off for him and suck him off for him and degrade himself for him and do God knows what else, all to see that particular rare expression cross his face. The one that wasn’t laughter, wasn’t thoughtfulness, but something else entirely. Something honest.
And there were the scenarios in which he’d come close. So close. Or, if he thought it over, maybe further than he’d ever been. Like when Joey had been sitting on the couch next to him, so close, and so cut up about Kate that Chandler had reached an arm around his shoulders and started stroking his hair. And it was so soft under his fingers and he could feel the shape of Joey’s skull which was possibly the weirdest thing he’d ever been aroused by. Perhaps it was the intimacy. The fact that under that demeanour there was another Joey, that only few ever saw.
But anyway, as long as he very visibly Didn’t Cope with people thinking he might be into men, he was in the clear. Which was complicated logic, but hey. It had worked so far. They had domestic bliss. They had a duck together, for goodness sake. They were as good as wed.
And Joey couldn’t see inside Chandler’s mind—a privilege Chandler exercised on the regular. Joey would be cracking some dumb pun, sitting in the coffee shop or at Monica’s table and outside Chandler was saying something witty and cutting but inside his head the spotlight came on. It isolated them again, found them in all that darkness, cut out the others, cut out the room. And Chandler would stand and pull Joey’s chair out—he’d do it roughly, he’d decided—and swing a leg over Joey's to straddle his thighs. Then he’d look into brown eyes and scrape his fingers into his hairline, through his hair, tilt his head back to expose his neck. Bite it, maybe, or lick it. Or kiss him. Inside his mind, Chandler became the craftsman of any depravity he desired. He’d grind against Joey and drive him wild until he could hear him moan. Press his ear against Joey’s perfect neck to listen for it like a wildcat’s purr. And maybe later he’d let Joey lay him back on Monica’s table, wrap his legs around Joey’s waist, and let him show him what made all those girls scream on the other side of the wall.
Yeah, okay, sometimes he listened. And if he did listen, he’d get off to it. Depravity in the dark—that secret kind.
And yes, sometimes he’d wait until they were done and crack his door open. And he’d wait and wait and eventually, sometimes just as the sun was rising, Joey would wander from his bedroom over to the bathroom and cross into Chandler’s eye-line. And then Chandler could watch the strong, compact lines of his body. Like something coiled tightly, all awash in morning gold. He’d watch him pad the familiar route, maybe brushing a hand across his eyes as he walked. Perfect legs, ass, torso. Hair all sticking up and inky brown.
And okay, maybe he’d arrange himself so that Joey might see him as he walked back. An arm cast across his face, some position of sleeping repose. Face artfully propped on a pillow, shown to its best effect.
And perhaps there was that one time the returning footsteps paused. Chandler couldn’t see, of course—his eyes were closed because he was definitely fast asleep and absolutely hadn’t stayed up for hours listening to Joey make some girl moan his name in an erratic tempo.
The footsteps paused and oh God, the door creaked open and and the invisible spectre of Joey knelt down next to the bed and then there was heat on Chandler’s face, heat from a hand hovering only inches above his skin. Only inches away. Jesus Christ, what stupidity was convention? What idiot said he couldn’t just open his eyes and grab Joey’s hand and worship and kiss it and pull him into bed in the gold light of morning?
Then the heat was gone, if it was ever there, and footsteps receded.