Chapter Text
Monica peered at her cards in the dim light of the cottage. The late morning sunlight barely touched the kitchen where she and Ross sat, and after a few hours the musty cabin smell was starting to erase the aroma of bread dough.
“Gin,” said Monica, setting down her cards–her fifth consecutive win this morning.
“Ugh, I’m so bored of Gin Rummy,” Ross groaned. “Can’t we join the others at the lake?”
“You can,” Monica told him. “I’ve had enough swimming for the year.”
“Oh, come on,” said Ross encouragingly. “There are no jellyfish in the lake! It’s fresh water!”
“I know,” grumbled Monica. “It just brings back too many memories, okay?”
Monica, Ross, and their friends had only returned from the beach two weeks prior, and Monica was not eager to get back in the water. Ross had been kind enough to keep her company at the cabin while Jack, Judy, and Ben joined all the rest of the family at the dock.
Of course she knew, logically, that she wouldn’t get stung again. But the feel of the sun, the water, the sand between her toes would bring all of it rushing back. The stinging, the relentless pain, the urine … No, she’d skip out on swimming this year.
When they left last year, Monica was so sure that this year would be even better, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. The jellyfish trauma wasn’t even the worst of it. The gaping hole where Richard and Rachel had been was all-consuming for both Geller siblings.
Her breakup with Richard was, beyond a doubt, the worst that she had ever gone through. It took her months to finally feel vaguely okay again after they called things off. Ross, on the other hand, had somehow managed to be dumped by Rachel not once, but twice, and the second wound was still fresh.
Everything they did reminded her of last year’s broken promises. She’d never teach Richard how to make bread dough. Rachel would never again get that chicken club at Seller’s Sandwiches that she had talked about for weeks after getting home. She and Richard would never take that moonlit kayak adventure they had planned.
A year ago, she thought they both had things figured out. They were both with the people they were meant to be with.
Now they seemed to be back at square one.
Ross sighed. “I know things are bad when you won’t even get in the water for Rag Tag.”
Monica began pulling the deck of cards back together, shuffling them back into a neat stack without offering a response.
“What if we don’t swim?” he bargained. “We could just go visit with the others. All of the rest of the family is down there.”
“Not… not all of them,” Monica argued feebly. “I bet Uncle Roger isn’t there yet.”
“Alright, so we’ll visit with everyone except Uncle Roger,” said Ross with some amusement. Jack’s cousin Roger was infamous in the family for getting lost. He was probably still trying to find his way out of the hotel.
“I don’t want to walk on the sand,” Monica muttered as she started to deal out the cards for another round.
“We can’t stay sitting in the cabin any longer,” Ross insisted, standing up and walking over to the window. “I can’t stand it. We need a change of scenery.”
“I don’t want to go to the lake,” Monica repeated.
“Actually,” said Ross, “I had something else in mind.”
The Otto Hotel was built in 1952; it was the one building in Bearstooth Lake that wasn’t present when Jack Geller was a child. It wasn’t a small detail either–it was a huge, sprawling estate with white towers stretching across the shore.
While Jack preferred to rent the cottage he had visited as a child each year, the rest of the Geller clan rented rooms at the Otto. Monica and Ross had stayed there occasionally as children on the rare year that their cottage wasn’t available, and it held nostalgic memories for them just as much as anywhere else in the town, but they didn’t often visit the hotel just for fun.
“Now can you tell me what we’re doing here?” Monica asked as they walked through the grand entry doors. Ross had refused to tell her his plan, saying it would be a fun surprise.
“Do you remember what we used to do here as kids?” Ross asked conspiratorially.
Monica shrugged as she scanned the building–the front desk, the gift shop, the bar. “We did a lot of things.”
“Well,” said Ross, “since you don’t want to play Rag Tag, I thought maybe you’d want to bring back a different childhood game.”
Monica raised her eyebrows. “You mean–?”
“Hotel Hide and Seek!” Ross finished for her, bouncing like a child.
For the first time that morning, Monica felt a jolt of excitement. “Can we do that?” she asked.
“Why not?” asked Ross. “Who’s going to question two adults walking the halls? They’ll just assume we have a room.”
“Yeah,” said Monica with a smirk, “but they might notice an adult hiding behind a couch in the common area.”
“Not if you hide well!”
Monica narrowed her eyes. “Is that a challenge, Geller?”
Ross smirked triumphantly. “You bet it is, Geller.”
“Oh, you are so going down!” Monica exclaimed–a little too loudly. More than one head turned to look at her. “We’ll just have to be discreet,” she added in a whisper.
Ross nodded. “I’ll seek first,” he said. “I’ll give you 100 Mississippis.”
“I only need fifty!” Monica called over her shoulder as she took off down the hall. She slowed as she turned a few more heads. Running through a hotel, she supposed, wasn’t becoming of an adult.
Hotel Hide and Seek was unique in that she didn’t actually have to hide anywhere if she didn’t want to. The Otto was so big that Ross could search the building all day and never find her if she kept moving. Maybe she’d hide anyway; it was too much fun to stake out in one place and watch Ross amble cluelessly past her.
The possibilities were endless. As she walked through the hall, she passed a business room, an indoor pool, and an arcade. She even thought she saw Uncle Roger wandering the gardens, looking lost.
Ross would be done counting soon. She threw decorum to the wind and raced through the endless halls of the familiar hotel, thoughts of Richard far from her mind.
Monica was so screwed.
Ross tried to focus on that as he stared up at the ceiling of one of the towers. Up until now, he hadn’t even known that the towers were accessible to guests. But he’d seen Monica looking for him, stumbled into a random elevator in a panic, and had gone straight to the top of the estate.
The problem was, waiting for Monica to find him was so boring, and his mind kept drifting back to Rachel.
Being back at Bearstooth, he couldn’t help but keep remembering all the good times between them and chiding himself for letting it go wrong. Why couldn’t he have just accepted that stupid letter? Sure, it had been unfairly mean and willfully misconstrued exactly why he’d ended up with the girl from the copy shop that awful night… but the end result would have been Rachel. If he’d just kept his damn mouth shut, he might be having a romantic lunch with her right now instead of laying behind a couch that hadn’t seen use in decades, covered in dust.
He pushed the thought out of his mind and tried again to focus on how Monica’s confidence must be waning at every passing second. He tried to imagine how this would play out: Would she eventually find him? Would she keep searching past dark? How long would it take his over-competitive sister to realize that she was cooked?
To keep himself from falling into an endless pit of despair, Ross recalled endless beratements he’d heard from Monica after failing to adequately hide in this very hotel.
You think no one’s ever hidden under a table before, dork?
Am I supposed to be impressed that you moved the vending machine, Superman? Anyone can do that, trust me.
Well, this time he would be calling her names.
It was actually rather frightening how long a twenty-nine year old man could spend thinking of zingers to use on his sister when he won hide-and-seek.
Ross didn’t know how long passed like that, him laying on the dirty floor behind the couch and fantasizing about finally being recognized as the Geller family’s cleverest hider. It might have been hours.
Eventually, though, Ross heard it: the elevator, unmistakable. He held his breath as Monica stalked the room. If he was extraordinarily lucky, she would somehow overlook the couch or assume that Ross couldn’t have found his way into the tower and get sloppy.
Ross had never been lucky.
“HA.” Ross grimaced as Monica’s face appeared above him, reveling in her long-awaited victory.
Ross struggled to his feet. “What are you laughing at? That took hours.” Monica’s countenance soured, which Ross took as an indication that he had been hiding for a long time, and it didn’t just feel like he’d been there for an eternity.
“It wasn’t that long.”
“Uh-huh. How long was it, exactly?”
Monica shrugged, playing dumb.
“Come on, I know you keep track.”
“It took an hour and a half.”
Ross guffawed. That made him the definitive Hotel Hide-and-Seek champion. “Oh, it feels good,” he gloated.
Monica was not amused, brooding as Ross strutted confidently back to the elevator and pressed the button to send them back down to earth.
The button didn’t light up. He pressed it again, still using an exaggerated flourish to show Monica exactly how excited he was about beating her.
Again, it didn’t light up.
“Key required,” Monica said. Her voice had a new gravity to it, an urgency that went beyond even the unthinkable devastation of her losing.
Ross stared at the panel next to the buttons. It did indeed read KEY REQUIRED.
“Well,” Ross said quietly, deflating and unable to comprehend such a conundrum after the high of his victory. “What… what does that mean?”
“I think it means a key is required!”
“Huh.” Ross tried to remain calm. “So I guess you’re not supposed to come up here after all.”
It became clear incredibly quickly: The elevator was the only way out.
“How is that not a fire hazard?” Ross asked for approximately the fortieth time since they’d realized their predicament. He was laying on the couch, hands folded on his lap, staring up at the ceiling once again.
“How about this: If I come up with an answer, I’ll let you know,” Monica snapped. “Otherwise, assume I still don’t know.”
She turned back to dusting the grimy window sills.
Ross sat up. “Would you sit down? You’re making me nervous.”
The single door in the tower had led them into a dead end: a broom closet, which Monica had raided of supplies. She was now restless, bustling around the tiny tower, dusting and vacuuming.
She could not stop cleaning. If she stopped cleaning, there would be nothing left to do but sit and contemplate their situation: they were two full-grown adults, both going on thirty, who were trapped in a hotel tower because they were playing hide-and-seek.
It wasn’t their greatest moment.
Right now, their family was having fun in the lake, enjoying the sunshine. When Monica imagined this trip all year, she thought she would be with them, spending time with Richard and splashing around in the shallows with Ben, Ross, and Rachel.
But where was she now? Single–again. She had almost remedied that with Pete, but he turned out to be crazy (and her mother would never let her hear the end of that). Her friendship with Rachel was somewhat strained as she tried to keep the peace between her and Ross. She still hadn’t found a real chef job after having been fired from her position at Iridium over a stupid mistake. She couldn’t even walk on wet sand without remembering intense pain and Chandler peeing on her.
And, in a more literal sense, she was stuck in a tower.
But she couldn’t say all this to Ross. It was too much.
“I just think if we’re going to be stuck here for a few hours, we could make it a little cozier,” is what she said finally, but she couldn’t stop her voice from breaking on the last word.
Ross, ever the protective older brother, was off the couch and by her side instantly. He carefully took the dust rag from her hands and set it aside.
“Hey, I’m sure someone is going to find us soon,” he assured her. “Mom and Dad will notice when we don’t show up for our dinner reservation.”
“They’ll notice you’re missing!” Monica moaned, falling back onto the couch with Ross. “They’d only notice me missing so they can berate me for being late.”
“That’s not true!” Ross said, although not very confidently. “Mom and Dad love you.”
“This year was supposed to be the greatest ever,” Monica said miserably, “but it sucks. I’ve spent the whole time inside, alone–”
“You’re not alone!” said Ross. “I’m here!”
“I know,” Monica murmured. “And it was so sweet of you to hang out with me instead of going to the lake, but… man, I really miss Richard.”
“Oh,” said Ross with a frown. “ That kind of alone. Yeah, I know what you mean. I miss Rachel, too.”
“I miss Rachel, too,” said Monica with a sad smile. “It’s just… everything we do reminds me of the things I wanted to do this year with them. Like last year, I told Richard I’d show him how to make bread dough, but this morning I made it all alone. I couldn’t stop wishing he was there.”
“I thought of Rachel when we went mini golfing,” said Ross wistfully. “She always took mini golf so seriously.”
Monica chuckled. Rachel had been golfing– real golfing–with her father since she was very small, and she always treated a round of mini golf like a game of full golf.
“I think she would have brought a whole set of clubs to the course if that weren’t frowned upon,” she laughed.
“Yeah,” said Ross. “But you know, I stopped thinking about that when I saw Ben with that little baby putter of his. I couldn’t stop thinking about how this was just the beginning of his memories at Bearstooth. And then I thought about you making your first hole-in-one when we were kids, and how excited you were. And the time I won by a single point and you were so mad you hit me with your putter–”
“It was an accident!” Monica insisted. “I had a muscle spasm!”
“My point is,” Ross continued on, “this place was ours before it was theirs. Wherever there are memories of them, there are even more memories of us, and more memories that we’re going to make in the future. Focus on that.”
Monica considered this. Yes, she felt her heart breaking all over again when she fried the bread dough alone this morning, but she would never forget the look on Ben’s face when she gave him his very first taste of the sugary treat. There were so many more good memories associated with it than sad ones, and Ross was right–there were so many more on the way.
She grinned. “Remember that time you scarfed bread dough down so fast that you almost choked and Mom called the paramedics?”
“Hey, I was only eating that fast so that I could get a little bit before you ate it all!” Ross said defensively, though he was laughing too. “Remember when we went fishing and you fell in the lake?”
“At least I caught a fish, which is more than you can say!”
“It doesn’t count if you catch it with your hands!”
Monica didn’t know how long they were there, laughing and trading memories, but it was dark out when they heard the elevator ding.
The doors slid open to reveal Uncle Roger.
“This doesn’t look like the restaurant,” he grumbled, scratching his head.
“Uncle Roger!” Monica and Ross exclaimed, rushing into the elevator and hugging him, this time out of sincerity and gratitude rather than their usual sense of obligation.
“We’re saved!” said Ross.
“Monica? Ross?” said Uncle Roger. “Where’s the rest of the family? Is this the restaurant? It doesn’t look very big.”
“No, this isn’t the restaurant,” Monica said, grinning at Ross. This story would be going down in history for sure. “Come on. We’ll walk you there.”