Chapter Text
I. Wyndham’s Theatre, London. Another Ted, another Rebecca.
He runs his fingers once, twice, over the gold letters stencilled into her door. Rebecca Welton. A little ritual of his own in the complex web of customs, habits and patterns that make up the backstage story of their show.
“You decent, Boss?” he calls as he raps his knuckles sharply against the wood.
“Come on in, Ted,” she calls back.
Letting himself in, he returns the smile she flashes at him through her dressing-room mirror.
It’s an occupational hazard that he finds himself automatically scanning her room and ticking items off a mental checklist. Hair pinned into tight curls hugging her scalp – check. Little steamer chugging away in a corner – check. Costume for her first scene hanging on the rack, pressed and pristine – check.
Right on schedule, just like clockwork.
“Your biscuits, Ma’am.” He flips open the little pink box in his hands and places it in front of her with a flourish.
“Oh, thank fuck, Ted,” she groans dramatically, dropping her make-up brush to reach for a buttery biscuit. “I was just thinking that I had to inject coffee into my veins to get through the matinee. This – ” she takes a blissful bite, and continues with her mouth full, “is preferable in every way.”
“Can you imagine if we had to announce that you can’t go on today for reasons of sugar deficiency?” he teases her, as he sets her kettle to boil again. “Your fans would be out for my blood. And y’know I very much like my blood to stay right where it is – inside of my body.”
She chuckles as she continues brushing a warm, rosy color across her cheekbones.
For all of her good cheer today, he knows how much the brutal performance schedule over this holiday week has taken out of her. They’ve all been running on pure adrenaline, tumbling from show to show to show, but – as one of the world’s most celebrated coloratura sopranos – she’s the one singing, dancing and acting up a storm eight shows a week.
It doesn’t help that they last performed the show with a full live orchestra weeks ago.
Claiming that the theatre’s ancient orchestra pit had to undergo critical renovations for the health and safety of cast and crew, Rupert Mannion – the West End’s most feared, reviled and successful producer, and not so coincidentally Rebecca’s vindictive ex-husband – had unceremoniously placed all the musicians on furlough.
One week had turned into two, then three, and the whole cast has been forced to sing to pre-recorded tracks for over a month now.
Ted can tell how much Rebecca hates it.
She is always brighter, fiercer, more alive at places, when she can finally tune out the day’s anxieties and tune into the sounds that make her heart sing – the insistent thrum of the audience on the other side of the curtain, and the soft hum of the orchestra warming up.
These days, however, she has to walk on stage without the assurance that Thierry will be there – ready to watch her every move, to match her every breath, to play and support her through every beat, every pause she takes. Without their conductor and his musicians, she can’t live and breathe and tell stories with her voice in the same way.
She is trapped, as Rupert intends her to be. A songbird in a cage. A canary in a coal mine.
“Welton and Kent to Radio City, please.” Isaac’s voice crackles over the speakers. “Welton and Kent to Radio City.”
“If I don’t see you again before places, break legs, Boss,” he says as he helps pull her chair back. “And don’t forget – you’re not going anywhere after today’s show without me!”
“I wish you would tell me where we’re going!” she huffs, affectionately, before grabbing his hand and squeezing it, hard. “See you soon, Ted!”
As she sweeps out in her dressing gown, his eyes are drawn to the sign tacked above her door – just one word, ‘BELIEVE’, printed in bold, blue letters on a lemon-yellow background.
It serves as a stark reminder of his first tumultuous months as the director of Rupert Mannion’s hugely anticipated revival of Kiss Me, Kate in the West End. One day, right after he’d put his community theatre in Kansas on the map with a rapturously received production of Oklahoma!, he’d received a totally bewildering call from Rebecca herself.
All honey and charm, she’d told him that she was exercising the final approval rights in her contract (signed well before the divorce) to offer him the opportunity of a lifetime.
In what universe could he have turned down the chance to direct Rebecca Welton in one of the West End’s hottest new shows? Especially when his marriage was falling apart, slowly and surely, despite his best efforts.
So he packed up his life and moved to London.
He joined the production to a confusingly frosty reception from the show’s leading lady. Still reeling from her acrimonious divorce and the never-ending waves of tabloid stories about Rupert’s infidelity, Rebecca had dedicated her considerable will and energy to pitting herself against… well, everyone, especially Ted.
She had gone into full diva mode – making outrageous demands, throwing fits and missing call times, flirting with young men and women in the ensemble before unceremoniously crushing their hearts.
On their first morning in the theatre, he had gone from room to room, putting up BELIEVE signs above all the doors.
He began to realize that Rebecca was not entirely rooting for him to succeed when, on a quick sweep of the theatre after tech that day, he’d found the sign torn in two and dropped into her trash can.
It took months for her to stop actively sabotaging the show – months in which she did everything she could to hurt everyone around her, because she was hurting so much herself. Months in which he did everything he could to get to know her, to break through that wall of stone and ice and fire she had built so carefully, so painstakingly around herself and her heart.
Even so, amidst all her schemes and diva tantrums, he found that he could always see her, clear as day. The heart and truth of her. And he can’t be sure if he realized it over time or in the instant they first met, but she is kinder and better and stronger than anyone knows, than even she herself knows.
He still remembers with bone-chilling clarity the way his fingers seized up and he lost the ability to breathe, ten minutes into Act Two on opening night. He still has no idea how, or why, but she had found him, curled tightly into himself in a dark, quiet corner backstage.
“Ms. Welton, you're due back on stage in five minutes,” squeaked Colin, an assistant stage manager who had clearly been dispatched to find her on pain of death.
“I’ll be right there, Colin,” she replied, firmly, calmly. “Two ticks. Thank you for letting me know.”
Through the bright, awful haze pressing in on him, he could hear the swell of the orchestra, sense the show moving swiftly towards her next entrance, just as well as she could.
“R’becca, I’m sorry, I can’t – you have to – ” he choked out around the tightness in his throat. “You have to go.”
But, for another minute that felt like five, ten, she stayed right with him, her hand gentle, warm, solid, on his face – an anchor for him to hold on to as all his broken pieces settled back into place.
“Ted, it’s okay. You’re okay. Everything’s okay.”
And he believed her.
As his heartbeat slowed and settled back into itself, she pressed her hand to his face once more, before sweeping on stage – a shining, spectacular force of life and light, with no one in the audience any the wiser that she had just brought the world back to him.
The next day, the sign had reappeared above her door.
He watches her now, from the wings. Every time he sees her perform feels like the first time. She is a whirlwind on stage, somehow otherworldly and heartbreakingly human in the same breath. He’s never been able to take his eyes off her.
Even when forced to sing to tracks, as she is now, she still loves being on stage, loves it with a passion and power so pure that he knows how much it must have hurt her to try to burn their show down to the ground.
Rupert has stolen so much from her. Twelve years of her life. Her trust in herself, and in others. Her dignity. And now, her voice – her music.
Not tonight. Not if Ted has anything to say about it.
When she comes off stage, she spots him and runs right into his arms. She’s still high on adrenaline and applause, and he just holds her as she brings herself back down to earth, to this reality.
“Now go get changed, Boss,” he orders. “Proper winter coat and sensible shoes, please!”
“I swear to god, Ted, if you’re bringing me on a class trip to the zoo…” She scrunches her nose at him, adorably, and disappears up the stairs to her dressing room.
While he waits, he makes final arrangements – getting the car ready, texting Thierry and the event organizers to let them know Rebecca is on her way.
When she finally reappears in her street clothes, he offers his arm. “Ready?”
“Considering I have no idea where you’re taking me, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
They exit from the front of the theatre, which opens onto the traffic and bustle of Charing Cross Road. She stops to sign a few autographs and pose for a selfie or two on the way to the waiting car.
When Charlie drops them off just inside Regent’s Park, as far as the car can go, her brow furrows.
“Is there a show at the theatre tonight?” she asks, confused. “I didn’t even realise it was open this winter!”
“It’s an evening of Christmas carols,” he informs her. “For charity.”
She looks around them in wonder as they fall into step with the laughing, chattering crowds, dozens of people all moving deeper into the park as one.
When they finally arrive at their destination, dusk has already fallen, and the gardens around the theatre sparkle with strings of fairy lights. It’s a clear, bitingly cold winter’s day, but there’s an electric charge of warmth in the air – from the excitement of the crowds, as well as the large heating lamps dotted throughout the space.
People are filing into the open-air amphitheatre, filling the rows of stone bleachers ringed around the stage. Some are wearing Santa hats, others have draped tinsel around their necks in lieu of scarves. A few people are cradling fat, white candles in their hands, which wash their faces in a warm, orange glow.
“Thierry and his little band are ready to accompany you,” he informs her, as he leads her backstage. “Live.”
She’s sung with them so often, at cabarets and concerts and the Royal Albert Hall, that he knows they’re good to go – she could sing any song, even a song the musicians have never played before, and they’d still make beautiful music together.
“Think you have a song left in you today, Boss?” he asks.
“For you, Ted, always.”
He wraps her in a quick hug, before releasing her to Thierry – they promptly greet each other with rapturous screams of joy – and heads out to find the seat that’s been reserved for him in the audience.
Even before Rebecca comes on, the concert is a triumph. The setlist is beautifully curated, the singers all absolutely remarkable, and the setting – he could listen to Christmas carols on a bright, starry Christmas Eve night in London forever.
Finally, the host makes the announcement he’s been waiting for all night.
“Ladies and gentlemen, direct from the West End, please welcome Ms. Rebecca Welton!”
She walks on stage to whoops and shrieks from the audience, and she’s practically bouncing on her feet – vibrating with joy and nerves and excitement.
When the crowd finally quietens, she starts singing into the night – Have yourself a merry little Christmas – and, at first, it’s just her, without music, the microphone in her hand down by her side.
A reverent hush falls over the entire theatre. He can sense everyone around him, every member of the audience, leaning in, wanting to get closer to the stage, to the quiet, magnificent power of her voice.
When she finally points to Thierry and he strikes up the band, Ted’s own heart soars with her voice – up, and up, into the sky. She is fiercely, dazzlingly alive in this moment, making music and magic the way she was always meant to do. And he knows this is his gift to her, but really, it’s her gift to him, to the world.
Her freedom. Her joy. Her voice that reminds him of hot chocolate and honey and home, and which makes him think of angels and miracles.
As the last strains of music fade away, she hops off the stage and makes her way to where he’s seated in the front row.
She is glowing from the inside out, starlight and moonshine and her heart in her eyes. He wants to spend the rest of his life making sure she looks and feels the way she does in this moment.
“Oh Ted, how did you know this was just what I needed?” She tucks her arm tightly through his and snuggles into him, as much for warmth as out of affection. “Thank you,” she whispers into his ear.
“Shame I don’t have any mistletoe on me, Boss,” he whispers back. “Because I’d really like to kiss you right now.”
“You’re always asking us to believe, Ted,” she scoffs. “Well, I think you can figure out how to make-believe, just this once.”
When she tilts her face up towards his, he smiles, and kisses her.
For her, he’ll make-believe any day.