Behind Ross & Rachel

The one with the morning after (3x16)

AN: this is the single, most painful thing I ever wrote. Took me ages to bring myself to it... saying "enjoy" would be plain cruel. But, it had to be done...

Jen was all over the place. She was sad and she was scared, and for the first time in 3 years, she dreaded the thought of going to work this day.

After spending the whole last year with David on the show as a couple (who was she kidding, it was not Ross and Rachel , it all became way too real for that), today marked the day on the show when this would come to an end, at least for now. She still was sure that Ross and Rachel would be endgame, and that they would end up together in the end. But when the hell was that going to be? And how was she even going to survive until then?

Somehow, this felt more like a real breakup than some she had endured with her ex boyfriends. It was heartbreaking when you wanted to be with a person forever, but they decided they did not want the same. But what made this even was the worse, that neither of them wanted this to end.

They had to tackle some scenes first, where it looked like the relationship between Ross and Rachel MAYBE could be fixed (blending out the fact that the copy shop girl was hiding behind the apartment door), but the scene where Rachel sat in the coffee shop unable to process what had happened when Ross came in, hurt like hell.

She was not even able to look at David when they waited outside the apartment set, knowing what was going to happen, and since she could not feel his gaze on her, burning through her skin like it normally would, she was pretty sure he did not have it in him, either. Still, she felt his hand reach for hers, squeezing it quickly and she heard him take a breath as if he was trying to say something, but then huffing the air out, obviously at a lack of words, too.

On their signal, she opened the apartment door and stormed in and tried to keep him out by closing the door .

"Come on Rachel, please, talk to me", he pleaded as he followed her inside.

"I can't even look at you right now!", she replied in a furious tone.

"Rachel..."

"Just get away from me!"

She shrugged his arm off as he reached out to her.

"It was a mistake, I made a mistake, Okay?"

"A mistake? What where you trying to put it in? Her purse?!?!"

She knew that this was the closest thing to a joke she would have in this episode, that seemed to be the saddest sitcom episode ever, at least from her point of view.

When she tried to throw him out, he refused to leave, saying that he wanted to talk about it. From that, another argument unspun with Rachel inquiring details on Ross' one night stand, and him saying all the wrong things to make it worse, even admitting the girl had still been at his apartment when they had reconciled in the morning. And after that, they went discussing the technincal differences between "a break" and "a break-up" and the fact that he wanted to hide it all from Rachel and comparing the situation to Rachel cheating with Mark.

Jen herself felt like she was operating on autopilot, somehow saying the right lines, even though her heart kept screaming that this was wrong and to just stop. But she knew she had no other choice. Because what could she do? Refuse this storyline? Explain to everyone that they are essentially ripping away the closest thing to a relationship she had with the man she loved?

After the most awkward shared pizza in television history, it came to the scene that Jen still was unsure she would be able to survive. The ultimate end of Ross and Rachel. She sat on the couch, holding onto it. David sat on a chair, facing her while she was physically unable to even look at him. Then he spoke: