Title - The Epiphany
Author - Sabrina Cross
Category - Humour, I suppose. Maybe parody, too.
Rating - R. Yeah, R.
Summary - Ford, Decker and Anna Lise converse. Silliness ensues.
Warnings - Absolutely No Redeeming Value Whatsoever! If you're
looking for enlightenment…what the hell are doing in a slash archive,
huh? Go to Tibet! Vague references to slashy occurrences, but nothing
at all explicit. More bad words. Anna Lise has a potty mouth, too.
Notes - I'm not sure what spawned this little fluff of fic. Maybe it
was the amusement, confusion and trauma involved in seeing Decker in
a bathrobe, I'm not sure. Plus, my Anna Lise Muse is asserting
herself. Too damn often, if you ask my Henry and Chandler Muses.

Anna Lise looked up from her crossword puzzle. "Ford. Four- letter word for 'ruler'?"

Ford did not look up from his newspaper. "That's easy. 'King'."

"The New York Times wouldn't use 'king'," his sister griped, but penciled it in anyway. Lightly.

Decker glanced up from his battered, dog-eared copy of M*A*S*H. "Do you think Smythe and McNiel are sleeping together?" he asked the room at large.

Anna Lise smirked. "What, like, right now?" She paused. "What exactly does it mean to unscramble 'how daddy is doing'?"

Now Ford did look up. "That's the Times puzzle, right?"

"Yeah."

"Sing do wah diddy."

"Huh?"

"Sing do wah diddy. Haven't you seen LA Story?"

"Oh," she said, and dutifully wrote "sing do wah diddy" in squares 3- 17 across.

"Is anybody going to answer my question?" Decker asked.

"I thought it was rhetorical," Ford said.

"What was the question?" Anna Lise asked.

"Do you think Smythe and McNiel are sleeping together?"

"I don't know," Anna Lise said. "And what's more - I don't care."

"Oh, come on," Ford said, "we haven't got lives. We may as well gossip about other people's."

"What makes you think Henry and Chandler have lives?" she asked. "And what about Rule Number One?"

Ford's jaw dropped.

"You can't be serious," Decker said, looking honestly flabbergasted. "Ford, I think she's serious."

Anna Lise looked from Decker to her brother and back again. "What?" she asked. "What?"

"My God, you are new, aren't you?" Ford said.

"What are you talking about?" she snapped, and it was Decker who finally deigned to reply.

"Do you mean to tell me that you haven't broken the No-Sex Rule yet?" At Anna Lise's blank expression, he looked to his partner. "Ford, she hasn't broken the No-Sex Rule yet," he said, managing to cram surprise, a strange sort of chastisement, and even a little pity into his tone.

All in all, it was a tone that Anna Lise did not take kindly to. "So I haven't broken the fucking rule - "   This struck Ford as wildly funny, and Anna Lise ignored him.

" - yeah, the Fucking Rule. Yet. I will eventually, I'm sure, because - well, because a person has to, eventually - and I don't think the Times would use 'king'!"

She had stared in moody silence at her crossword puzzle for a few long moments before she noticed it - and she wasn't 100% certain of exactly what it was she noticed, anyway.

Was it the way Ford was shifting in his seat, surreptitiously glancing at Decker? Or was it the way Decker was very deliberately not looking at Ford, a distinctly feline-who-consumed-the-small- yellow-ornithoid smile on his face?

Whatever it was, it penetrated her annoyance-fogged brain all at once.

"Oh, God!" she cried, throwing down her pencil and crossword, and cradling her suddenly aching head in her hands. "If there was ever an image I neither wanted nor needed running around in my head, guys, that was it."

When she looked up again, Ford's expression was defensive. "Well," he said after a moment. "Morlocks to the right of you, morlocks to the left of you - "

"Morlocks in front of you volleyed and thundered," Decker chimed in, and Ford continued,

"Everybody - er - turns to their partner eventually," he said, his tone as defensive as his facial expression.

Anna Lise was finding it increasingly difficult to keep a straight face. "I'm tempted to run out and buy a gay pride flag," she mused aloud.

Her brother gaped at her. "It - I'm - It's not a gay thing," he sputtered resentfully. "It's a - a - "

"When in Rome thing?" Anna Lise offered sweetly. Ford growled.

"An any port in a storm thing," Decker piped up helpfully, and Ford turned his glare on him. "And nobody has answered my question yet."

"We don't know!" Ford and Anna Lise hollered in perfect unison.

Ford, who had apparently decided he'd had quite enough, muttered something about needing a Mars Bar, and wandered off, heading for - presumably - the Big Bank of Vending Machines down the hall.

Decker looked mildly startled. "Well I want to know," he said to Anna Lise.

"I don't." Anna Lise stated emphatically. "I do not want to know." She meant it, too.

"Czar!" she cried after a moment and Decker jumped. "I knew the Times wouldn't use 'king'!"

As she was gleefully erasing 'king' and triumphantly writing 'czar', Henry and Chandler walked in.

They were, as they often were, arguing.

"I had it under control," Chandler whined. Chandler always whined.

"No, you did not." Henry replied. "You were gonna get your ass handed to you, man."

"I was not!"

"Were too."

"Was not!"

"Were too!"

"Stop it! Both of you," Anna Lise said sternly. The authority in her voice so startled her hearers that they obeyed. "You sound like five year-olds. Or an old married couple, I can't decide."

They stared at each other for a moment. Then they stared at her. Chandler sat down at his desk, Henry stood behind him.

Then Henry laughed and touched his partner's hand.

Anna Lise's eyes widened, and her jaw dropped.

There was something about that touch - just Henry's fingers brushing the back of Chandler's hand - that sent a tiny electric shock through her groin.

From there it was easy.

Too damn easy.

Looking at them, seeing the way they looked at each other, the smiles, the total connection of their gazes, she was helplessly - almost involuntarily - imagining them kissing -

(tongues caressing, hands moving over bare skin)

Just watching the way they smiled at each other, she could almost feel the heat of Henry's breath moving over the Chandler's body,

(muscles flexing)

(skin glistening)

feel the rasp of beard shadow, the masculine power, the strength - -

For the first time in her life, the image of two men together was wildly arousing.

Not that she'd ever admit it.

She scowled darkly at Decker once she'd gotten her breath back.

He grinned and stuck out his tongue.

***

Here Endeth The Utter Silliness…