[Joey x Chandler] COMPILATION OF SHORT STORIES FROM AO3

Climb Into The Map

"joey" 

No answer.

"Joey."

No answer. Just a determined shuffle on the spot at the intersection. When they left the subway, Chandler was pretty sure they'd started walking in the exact opposite direction they were supposed to but his grasp of Brooklyn had always been shaky, and all the more since he'd moved to Westchester County.

"Joey, for the love of--" Chandler put his hand out and grabbed Joey by the shoulder. "Do you know where we're going?"

"Sure I do," said Joey. With age, his endearing certainty in the face of crushingly negative odds has become less convincing.

"Do you know where we are?"

"New York."

"Good one, Joe. Got any specifics?"

Joey shakes his phone, like somehow everything will align and he'll recover his sense of direction, which has always been vestigial at best, and his equilibrium.

"No, no, you're supposed to do it in a figure-eight. Let me." Chandler makes a grab for the phone but Joey clings to it.

"I swear, it's around here somewhere. The kids at the audition said it was in Williamsburg."

"Uh-huh. Did the kids at the audition know that there's life outside Williamsburg?"

(Someone hissed they walked past. Surely a coincidence.)

Chandler continued to walk alongside Joey, whose assured gait had slowed considerably.

"Maybe," said Joey.

"Maybe?"

Joey looked down at his phone again.

"No, Joe, you can't climb into a smartphone map. My god, man, you're forty-three years old. Have you learned nothing?"

"We could buy a map?"

"No. Hipsters don't believe in maps. They say it's like selling their souls." Chandler sighed. So, they were two gentlemen in their mid-forties and, somehow, they couldn't find the best sandwich place in New York (and therefore the world).

"How about we ask those guys?" Joey pointed towards a group of guys in McCarren Park, who were clustered around, stretching and jogging on the spot and being precisely as active as Chandler hated to be. They also looked as though they lived on protein shakes and anabolic steroids and Chandler was just too old to deal with being made to feel physically inadequate. That was why he had an ex-wife and a long-term life partner of the exact same age; precisely to avoid such incursions into his fragile ego.

"It's just. I don't think we're in Williamsburg anymore, Chandler."

"Oh my god, man. We're off the edge of the map."

"I just wanted a sandwich," said Joey, a little pathetically. "I just wanted the best sandwich in New York, that's all."

"It was an admirable ambition, man, but maybe we should... turn back?"

"How about we ask those guys?"

"Joey, we're not asking the dudes dressed in neon headbands and hotpants in -- shit, they've seen us."

"No, no, those guys." Joey nudged him and pointed at two police officers, standing on the next corner.

"Oh, totally. We can ask those guys."

They made their way towards the police officers.

"Uh, excuse me, gentlemen," Chandler started.

Both turned to look at them and, after all of two milliseconds, the taller one asked, "Are you guys lost?"

"My god, yes," said Chandler. "That obvious?"

"Where do you guys live?"

"Westchester," said Chandler. He felt a little judged. He and Monica had moved up there with the twins before she decided that she wanted to see a lot more of the west coast and a lot less of him.

"Hell, you are lost."

Joey waved his phone at the cops. "We're looking for the Sandwich Place with No Name."

"Best sandwiches," said the shorter cop, with the exact right amount of reverence befitting a major food group. "But how the hell did you guys end up in Greenpoint?"

"I don't know, man," admitted Chandler. "Would you believe, we used to be cool?"

The taller cop snorted. "Then you'll fit right in, 'round these parts."