The One With The Fake Dating

Unwanted Revelations

Joey's POV

"Y'know, technically this isn't even the first time you an' I have kissed, Chandler, remember?"

"Oh yeah, at Monica's New Years eve party at midnight, how could I forget?" 

"You know, I just realized something. Both times we've kissed we had an audience, and I was the one who initiated the kiss," Shit, why did he just say that? Why did he even think that?

"What, are you saying you're secretly in love with me or something?" Chandler asked with a laugh. Joey tried to respond with a laugh, but it trailed off in his throat. For some reason Chandler's joke caused his thoughts to start trailing off down a path he'd tried to block many times in the past. Joey hoped Chandler would keep talking to help distract him, but of course this was the one time Chandler decided he didn't want to use jokes to get out of an uncomfortable situation. 

The car drifted into an awkward silence, something Joey had been hoping was over between him and Chandler, but apparently not. Why did he have to kiss Chandler? There had to have been another option, maybe if he had waited a couple more seconds Chandler would have come up with something better that didn't require this level of commitment to the part. 

But Joey had let himself panic, and he acted without thinking, as usual. He just followed his first impulse, and once again, his first impulse in a moment of stress seemed to be to kiss Chandler. 

Well, to be fair Joey's first impulse in most situations involving himself and someone attractive  is to kiss them. 

Oh my god. What the fuck. Now Joey was finding Chandler attractive? His thoughts really were going all over the place, the chaos and overlapping thoughts that always filled his head felt even louder and more prominent than usual. He debated trying to start up the conversation in the car again, maybe ask Chandler about work or something mundane to try and distract himself from the thoughts he was forcing back. But Joey knew that wouldn't work, and with the amount of repressed stuff running through his head dying to get out, he couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't say something even worse than what he'd already blurted out. 

He tried distracting himself - it's not like it was usually hard for him to change what he was thinking about. His mind was normally fairly loud and chaotic, with a whole list of topics and thoughts it would randomly switch to whether he wanted to focus on something or not. 

But the one time his easily distractible brain would actually come in handy, the only thing he could think of was the person sitting next to him in the car. One specific thought kept circling his head - one that he was trying desperately to ignore. But he couldn't push it back any longer, and, to Joey's dismay, the thought finally surfaced. 

That was one of the best kisses Joey had ever experienced. 

And he really,

really wanted to experience a kiss like that again. 

Which technically meant that Joey... wanted to kiss Chandler again? Shit, no, that couldn't be true, could it? Joey was straight, he was completely straight, he was definitely still attracted to women, so why would he want to kiss a man? 

Unless the whole "bisexual" thing Phoebe had mentioned a while ago was actually true? At first he thought that there was no way that could apply to him, but the more he thought about it, the more it started to cause a lot of events from his past make a bit more sense. The boys in his classes who he couldn't stop looking at and trying to impress in high school, the way he never really cared and actually felt kind of proud when people accused him of dating Chan- other men, the gay characters he had really enjoyed playing before, and a lot more he didn't feel like thinking about right now.