Chapter Text
“Okay,” says Ted with an air of finality, flopping down beside her on the couch with a giant bowl of popcorn. “Dishwasher’s going, kitchen’s clean, and I don’t know about you, but I am ready for some drag.”
“So ready,” says Alexis, plucking a few pieces of popcorn from the bowl. She eats one of them herself and holds the other two to Ted’s lips. He grins and accepts them, and he presses a gentle kiss to the side of her head before grabbing the remote.
“You look so cute right now,” he says, and Alexis makes a face because she’s fresh out of the shower, her hair in two thick farmgirl braids so she’ll have waves tomorrow, and she has a thick cream mask slathered on her face (to be removed no later than the first commercial break). The only thing she feels cute in right now are her pajamas, which are a very charming combo of one of Ted’s cozy weekend flannels and a tiny pair of shorts in a complementary shade of gray.
“I mean it!” he says, seeing her expression. “And I love that you probably would never let anyone who doesn’t share your motel room see you like this.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “Okay, well, don’t tell anyone about this look, and I won’t tell anyone about that paw print shirt you wear to bed sometimes.”
Ted’s eyes light up. “Oh, those were for an adoption event a few years ago! Everyone’s already seen it. Ronnie has one, too.” He grins conspiratorially. “You’d never believe it, but she is surprisingly gentle with baby animals.”
“Mmm, weird,” Alexis agrees, tucking herself closer to him and running a hand over the soft, faded shoulder of his University of Toronto sweatshirt. He tugs one of her braids playfully before putting his arm around her.
It’s a Friday night, and in her old life, Alexis couldn’t have imagined spending it watching Drag Race on the couch with a bowl of fake-buttered microwave popcorn and no alcohol — or enjoying it . But it’s been a long week of working on the motel’s PR projects; explaining said projects to the motley crew of Stevie, her dad, and Roland; deescalating her mom’s increasing crises about what to pack for Bosnia; and running interference on the many, many people who have emailed her in the three months since Singles Week, either wanting guidance on planning their own events, blaming her for the disintegration of their connections, or demanding relationship advice from her. She’s doing her best, okay? She deserves to cuddle with her boyfriend in front of the TV.
Ted flicks the lamp on the side table off, and they settle into the comfortable half-dark and the bright, raucous colors of Drag Race . He offers her some popcorn, and she takes a little more. She likes the show fine, no complaints, it’s just that David talked about it, like, incessantly a few years ago because he and Acid Betty had their bar mitzvahs at the same temple, like, ten years apart.
So it’s not exactly entertainment she’s super invested in, but also? She loves watching Ted watch Drag Race . He’s genuinely delighted by the costumes and the humor, and he makes a careful process of choosing a favorite and rooting for her throughout the challenges. He got so invested in Trixie Mattel last season that he’s started playing her music in the car and while he works out. When Ted goes in, he goes all in, and Alexis is continuously surprised by how much she loves that about him.
At the first commercial break, she goes to wash off her mask and do the next four steps of her skincare routine, then settles back in next to Ted, freshly moisturized and gently wild-rose-scented. “I’m rooting for Kim Chi,” he tells her, stuffing a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “I’m really digging her aesthetic. Plus, I can’t not root for the only person who went for a pun this season.”
He passes her the popcorn bowl and pulls his sweatshirt over his head, and Alexis watches appreciatively, cradling the bowl in her lap. But the white t-shirt he’s wearing underneath his sweatshirt pulls up, too, and where Ted has always been flat and toned, there’s now a soft little pile of belly.
Alexis blinks, confused. Has Ted — Ted hasn’t always had that, has he? She would know. She would know, right? Like, she would have felt it?
She squints at the bulge, innocent and sweet under the white cotton of his t-shirt. It’s not a lot, and she does see Ted all the time, so maybe it just crept on too gradually for her to notice.
She waits, a little apprehensively, for the mean little voice in her head to say something. That voice has been conditioned by years of modeling and sample-size designer clothes and professional airbrushing, and it sounds a lot like Klair.
Years ago now, she’d met up with Klair and a gaggle of their other friends for mimosas at this adorable little place in SoHo that had been, like, their place. Klair had gotten bored during the first round of drinks, and she’d whipped out a copy of Us Weekly to flip through while Alexis and the others compared notes on Malta versus the Maldives. Then, in the middle of their second round, Klair had turned a page of the magazine and exclaimed, Oh my god, what happened to him?!
Alexis and the others had crowded in for a look, and Klair had held up the page like Adelina used to when she read Alexis and David picture books as kids, turning it so they all could see. And there, front and center, was a pap shot of Ryan Gosling, looking all round and soft, and Alexis’s stomach had wrenched itself into a shibari-grade knot as the group of them dissolved into a flurry of giggles and oh, ew! s.
Oh, my god, said Klair again, her lip curling in disgust. He really let himself go, ew.
Alexis sat, hands curled tight in her lap, uncomfortably aware that if she didn’t laugh, too, Klair would notice, and she’d have to explain that Ryan had showed up at her bungalow in Malta two weeks earlier after getting fired from some movie, puppy-dog-eyed and sixty pounds heavier. And, like, yes, she’d felt sorry for him about the movie stuff, but also, he’d looked really cute all soft and chubby, so she’d invited him in even though he had, like, fully ghosted her for literally a year. At the time, she honestly hadn’t thought much of it. He was good in bed and soft against her, and they’d spent a few nights together before she’d had to jet back to the States, and that was that.
She’d waited for Klair to turn the page, for the shame to shift onto someone else’s unflattering photo, for the knot in her stomach to recede. But they’d kept laughing and sniping about it, and finally Alexis had forced herself to laugh, too.
After that, she’d been choosier about the people she hooked up with, even though she told herself over and over, it didn’t matter . She’d slept with lots of people, lots of genders, and, like, a ton of abs. Why did it matter if there’d been a few people who looked different from that? Why did it matter if she thought they were cute, too? She thinks a lot of people are cute.
And first and foremost, she thinks Ted is cute, sitting here with his little belly mounded under his T-shirt.
She waits. The mean thought doesn’t come, and she fights to let herself stay in that feeling, unburdened by anyone’s opinions but her own. But the memory of that cafe in SoHo creeps in, her old friends’ laughter echoing, distorted, around her, and she looks at him uncertainly.
She tries to let herself just feel out her feelings without judging them: there are a lot of reasons she doesn’t talk to those friends anymore, so logically, she shouldn’t give their opinions any mental airtime. And plus, it suits Ted, she thinks carefully. It’s like the perfect physical encapsulation of how soft and sweet and adorable he is.
She sits with it, precarious, in her head as the show carries on in front of them, and she finds herself trying to untwist it, the same way David can’t just take a bite of those mall pretzels he likes. He always unwinds it until it’s, like, one long gross pretzel rope, and then he tears off inch by inch to make it last longer. It’s super weird, but she’s doing the same thing now, just, like figuratively, so maybe she can’t really judge him for it.
She reaches for the popcorn bowl and absently feeds Ted another few pieces, then another few, then another, her mind racing faster than the Japanese cruise train her parents booked for her sweet sixteen party. Like, if Stavros had stopped working out a few months into their relationship, she would have worried that he was losing interest. That she wasn’t doing enough to keep him engaged, or that he didn’t care enough about her to stay in shape. And, like, okay, true, Ted has been going to the gym less recently, but — he’s been doing it to spend time with her . When they’d gotten back together, he was working out almost every day, Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Saturday and running with her in the mornings. Then he’d stopped working out on weekend mornings because he wanted to teach her how to make pancakes, and lately he’s been shaving down his post-work workouts so they can spend more time together in the evenings, and when she was like, Babe, it’s fine, you can work out if you want to , he’d been like, Nah, I’d rather hang out with you.
Which is, like, really sweet, when she thinks about it. Maybe for some people, letting go is, like, an expression of happiness or comfort, and not … a sign that they don’t care anymore. Maybe it means they care more , just … about people, rather than about working out.
Ted shifts beside her, and she idly — well, idly is a strong word, because she’s very aware that she’s doing it, but she wants it to seem idle — spider-walks her fingers along Ted’s hip and up toward his belly, though she can’t bring herself to touch that little bulge right out. That feels like a lot, like she’s admitting to something she hasn’t even identified yet. It’s just so cute , and so soft-looking, and so grabbable, and she — she likes it, and that’s new.
She snuggles up against him, free to rest her head on his shoulder now that she’s rinsed off her mask, and pokes his side, trying to figure out if he feels different there, too. The thing about Ted is that he’s just so soft , not just this new little belly but his everything , and it bolsters her a little to think that while her old friends would have laughed at that, too, she loves that about Ted. She loves that he’s soft and kind and gentle, that he earnestly wears t-shirts from vet events that say PAWS TO CONSIDER ADOPTION , that he clears entire weekends for things like a horse emergency on one of the nearby farms or a surprise box of puppies left on the clinic doorstep. That when she’s spiraling about something, he holds her hands and helps her talk through it, and that sometimes he knows that she’s upset before she does. That softness is precious, and maybe — maybe it’s actually fine that she feels the same way about the softness over his abs. It doesn’t have to be this big huge deal! Plenty of people probably feel this way without making a whole production out of it.
“Hey, babe?” she murmurs, and Ted turns to look at her, his eyes fond.
“Yeah?”
“You look really cute right now,” she says, booping his nose, and even though it feels huge and bold and daring, she rests her other hand on his stomach.
It’s so soft. She’s so fucked.