OH! DARLING | joey tribbiani

forty six

Our favourite redheaded photographer had had a hectic day at work. Her boss, who was very pregnant, decided to wait until two weeks before going on maternity leave to assign her work load to someone, that someone being Quinn. Thankfully, Jonathon and Carla, a twenty two year old student at NYU doing her internship with the magazine's photography department, had taken upon themselves to do her less important tasks to avoid her burning out after one day.

So when Quinn walked in Central Perk to join her friends after the day she had at work, she didn't try to mask her grumble at the sight of Ross taking the cinnamon out of Rachel's coffee with his bare hand. The sound did alert every one of her arrival and her sour mood almost completely vanished when she saw Joey smile at her. She heard her friends greet her but didn't pay attention to them, her focus was solely on Joey as she sat sideways on his inviting lap, slouching down against his chest and burying her head in the crook of his neck in search of the comfort her exhausted body craved oh so much.

Joey didn't hesitate to wrap his arms around his girlfriend, hugging her closer to him and soothingly rubbing her arm over the beige Burberry trench coat she didn't bother removing. The rest of the friends went back to whatever they were doing before Quinn got there after noticing the mood she was in, she could be very snippy and no one wanted to be on the receiving end of it.

"Hard day at work?" Joey softly asked after kissing the top of her head, his right hand still running up and down her arm while his left one held her close.

Quinn nodded her head in answer, then pulled away slightly to talk with him. "You remember when I told you my boss Lisa is pregnant?"

"Yeah."

"Well, her maternity leave starts in two weeks and she decided today to let me know I would be in charge of doing her workload while she's away instead of doing that in advance so I'm gonna be rushing around for the next two weeks and I'm already so exhausted, I don't know how I'll survive," she ranted in one shot.

"Damn, I'm sorry darling," Joey said, knowing there wasn't much he could do to help her.

"It's fine, Jonathon and Carla are helping me, I just have to get used to my days being more hectic," she dismissed her fatigue with a wave of her hand but Joey already had a plan brewing in his mind to help her relax.

All conversations between the friend group were interrupted by Frank, Phoebe's brother, who greeted them as he walked through the doors of the café.

"Oh my God! Frank!" Phoebe exclaimed in joyous surprise, rising up from her chair to hug her brother.

"Hi! How are you?" He enthusiastically hugged her back.

"What are you doing here?" Phoebe asked instead while the others turned in their seats to observe the two.

"Well, you know, I would've called but I lost your phone number and then my mom locked me out of the house, so I couldn't find it, and then I tried to find a payphone and the receiver was cut off, so..." He answered.

"What happened?"

"Vandalism."

"But also, what happened between you and your mom?" Phoebe specified.

"Well we got in a fight, 'cause she said that I was too immature to get married."

"You're getting married?" The blonde asked in surprise.