Chapter Text
The screech of tires comes first. A loud crash follows, the sickening scrape of metal on metal, and then a horn blows. It's continuous, a steady, monotonous tone.
The sound of the collision sends a jolt through Ted’s body, his heart immediately ricocheting into his throat. He’s not sure what spurs on this particular reaction, but he vaults off the couch with impressive urgency, toes into his sneakers, and races down the stairs. When his front door swings open he’s hit with a chilly mist of rain, the downpour blown sideways by the wind.
It’s aggressive, the storm.
The rain slams against the brick of nearby buildings, indenting shop awnings. They dip, overfilled like a child’s shirt stuffed with Easter eggs during a hunt; he thinks it’ll only be a matter of time before they splatter all over the sidewalk, exploding like a popped water balloon.
His attention is drawn by sudden, loud clanking. Rain clatters atop the hoods of cars with such an intensity he thinks it might be hail, leaving tiny divots with each thunk, thunk, thunk.
Squinting through the onslaught, Ted catches the barest sight of lights in the distance, just across the other side of Richmond Green. They look to be headlights, given the height from the ground, but it’s too bright to be from a single car. Between the grinding sounds he heard and the way all of the light seems to concentrate in one spot...
That does not bode well.
Storm clouds swallow the sky, molten and menacing in a way that twists at his gut, a memory of his childhood bedroom and uneven breaths and shaky hands fisted in an E.T. blanket. Strikes of lightning blitz above, brightening the landscape for a brief moment before the roll of thunder follows, a low, nearby rumble that Ted feels in his chest.
It’s too dark to see much of anything with any detail from where he stands; at best he gets just a far away glimpse of something going on, those hazy headlights.
All of a sudden, in eerie synchronicity with another ominous clap of thunder, a thought that has fear trickling down the length of his spine crawls unbidden from the shadowy recesses of his mind.
Any other day, remembering that he lives across the green from Rebecca would bring a smile to his face; the simple fact lightens him, serves as a bright spot in what might otherwise be a lackluster day. They don’t visit each other with any regularity that would easily explain this joy, but it’s comforting to know she’s only a hop, skip, and a jump away.
Right now, staring out toward the commotion that’s far too close in proximity to Rebecca’s house, that same simple fact fills him with something he registers belatedly as dread.
The odds are in his favor—there are, of course, many houses on her street—but his heart stutters with it regardless and suddenly he’s running in earnest, the soles of his shoes nearly sliding along the slippery pavement. As he crosses the green, heart lodged securely in his throat, each footfall kicks mud up onto his calves, canvassing his white sneakers a splotchy brown.
He’s heaving a little when he arrives, choking on the inhalation of rain. There’s a small crowd surrounding what he correctly deduced as a crash site, two cars slammed head-on into one another; probably 8-10 people stand around, unmoving, staring at the damage without doing much of anything. Why aren’t they doing anything?
His eyes trail from the bystanders toward the scene itself and, in one horrifying moment as time seems to still, the sounds around him begin to muffle; the rain and hushed voices move farther away, the thunder rolls deeper in the distance.
Ted stops breathing all together as he stands frozen, blinking at what used to be a familiar Rolls-Royce. It’s now almost largely unidentifiable, the front-end concave and bearing a terrifying resemblance to an accordion.
Breaking free of his stupor, Ted sprints forward, and the next however many minutes flash by in a blur.
Ted hears a voice he only belatedly registers as his own screaming for someone to call 911. When a man tells him it’s not 911 in England he shouts obscenities that would make Roy Kent blush and doesn’t feel the least bit guilty about it because “you know damn well what I mean!”
He struggles against her driver’s side door, yanking and pulling and using every ounce of his body weight as leverage. It doesn’t budge, the hinges crushed, but then someone’s beside him, tugging in tandem, and the two of them somehow manage to pry it open.
He’s not prepared for the image of Rebecca slumped over in her seat and he chokes out her name, a splintered sound. Hauling her out of the car goes surprisingly well; a little too quickly, too easily, he thinks, and it’s then that he realizes she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Come on, Rebecca.
The unknown second man tries to help but he’s too rough; he pulls too hard and his hands are too forceful on her and Ted shoves him away with an aggressiveness he might remember to feel bad about later. Right now, though, blessedly left alone, he’s terribly gentle with Rebecca as he lowers her to the pavement, still careful in his haste to avoid settling her onto any shattered shards of glass. He falls to his knees beside her, rain pattering roughly against his back as he cradles her head in one palm to keep it off of the ground.
Ted blinks and, for one terrifying moment, it’s not Rebecca before him at all. It’s his father’s head in his hands, his father’s body slack, lifeless. The image shifts between the two—one second he's hovering in the street, staring at Rebecca, the next he's in his childhood home and it's his father staring back at him.
The images continue to shutter back and forth, one right after the other, until he has to squeeze his eyes against them. His breathing quickens; it’s unsteady, choppy, as if he can’t seem to get enough air into his lungs.
Not right now. He can’t right now.
When he opens his eyes again, vision blurry and heart clamoring for release, it's Rebecca. It's only Rebecca.
It’s Rebecca, all slack lips and dark eyelashes. It’s Rebecca with angry gashes that sit along her temples, above her brow bone, at the bridge of her nose from where he can only imagine, a little nauseatingly, that she’d collided with her steering wheel. The red against her pale skin makes his stomach clench and he’s suddenly grateful for the rain, rivulets trickling down and washing away at least the most surface-level stains.
Gently, almost reverently, he brushes his hand against her cheek. She’s warm. Her skin is warm.
Warmwarmwarm. He repeats it like a mantra as he checks for a pulse, praying she’s just knocked out, unconscious.
With each passing second he waits for her to come to, to take a dramatic gasp for air, to open her eyes, to tell him that she’s fine, just like every other time. Rebecca’s good at that—being fine, even when she’s not. Especially when she’s not.
But there's nothing. No pulse, not even the faint murmur of one, and Rebecca does not miraculously lift herself from the pavement.
Rain continues to fall.
Ted chokes on a sob and swallows it down. He unbuttons her coat (the brown trench she loves so much, now marred with a brush of red he tries and fails to ignore) and shoves it to either side. Placing his hands exactly where they’re meant to be, he thanks all of the gods he can think of that he remembers the important parts of his CPR training.
30 compressions, 2 breaths.
“Come on, boss.”
30 compressions, 2 breaths.
“Rebecca,” he hiccups, her name like a prayer on his lips. He’s not that religious, or religious at all for that matter, but he’ll pray, he swears he’ll pray every single night without fail if God just gives him this one thing first. “Rebecca, please.”
30 compressions, 2 breaths.
He doesn’t hear the commotion of their surroundings, or the clamber of heavy footsteps behind him, or the barked orders coming from somewhere close by. The noises are all garbled, as if he's underwater and someone’s speaking just above the surface.
Ted hears nothing except the little voice in his brain alternating between RebeccaRebeccaRebecca and 30 compressions, 2 breaths. There's no space in between for anything else.
A hand on his shoulder shakes him. It makes him lose his count and he wants to scream.
“Sir.”
Excuse me?
“Sir, we can take it from here,” he’s told, and no, he can’t stop. He has to keep going, has to—“Sir.”
He finally looks up, damp strands of hair falling into his eyes and tickling at his forehead. “What?” he nearly shouts, brows drawn in frustration.
The paramedic gives him a sympathetic look, one hand on Ted's shoulder and the other gesturing toward Rebecca. “Please, let us do our job.”
Ted shuffles away and settles back onto his haunches as paramedics rush around him, circling until he can no longer see her. It makes him panic, losing sight of her, and the hands no longer occupied with reviving Rebecca begin to shake.
He leans forward, presses his palms into the road until the tiny pebbles of gravel dig into the skin. The sting gives him something else to focus on.
Suddenly, all too quickly, they’re no longer working on her. A few paramedics disperse, creating a space in their blockade for him to peer through; his eyes zero in on the bright spot of her hair, a stark contrast against the dampened pavement. When he trails his gaze toward the remaining paramedics there are soft murmurs and shaking heads and the wiping of brows. There's no CPR being done, no field monitors attached to her body, nothing.
One of the young women notices him and offers a quiet, “I’m sorry,” that he barely hears over the rain.
Ted’s entire body shuts down at once. He stares, unseeing, disbelieving. “No.” His voice is so quiet he's not even sure he’s said anything at all. The harsh burn of his throat is the only clue that he has. “No.”
He scrambles to his feet and rushes back through the small crowd of paramedics, pushing them to the side in his haste to reach her. She's soaked and he lifts an unsteady hand to brush a few pieces of hair from where they stick to her face, tucking them behind her ear.
It’s the delicate motion that breaks him.
Sobbing now, his shoulders shaking with it, he pulls Rebecca’s body into his chest and burrows his face into her neck. She still smells of her perfume, the scent invading his senses, so distinctly Rebecca that it sets him on fire. He wills her to wake up. To get up. To move, to breathe, to look at him. To come back.
Please, please, please.
“Rebecca,” he croaks, the shaky sound foreign to his own ears.
He presses a chaste kiss to her cheek, then to her forehead, and he tries not to think about how this is the first time he’s kissed her. His fingers grip at the back of her head, gathering in her hair.
He doesn’t know how long he stays in this position. He doesn’t know how long it's been when a paramedic finally uncurls him from her body, peeling him off the pavement like a child, or when they ask if there’s someone they can call for him. He shakes his head but says nothing.
He doesn’t know when they put her onto the gurney and wheel her away, or when the paramedics’ muddled “I'm sorry for your loss” sentiments float through the roar of the rain, though he supposes he has to be grateful that he blacks out long enough to miss the part where they cover her with a white sheet. He doesn’t think he’d have been able to handle that.
Ted doesn’t remember walking away from the scene of the accident or back across the green or up to his front stoop. He doesn’t remember finding his key in his pocket or slotting it into the lock or shutting the door behind him.
He must do all of these things, though, because here he is.
His feet feel like lead blocks, each lift of his foot up the stairs heavy and weighted. Once upstairs, he moves on autopilot.
Kicks off his sneakers like they’ve burned him, one landing somewhere near the couch and the other rolling under the coffee table, each of them transferring mud onto the carpet; tugs off his jacket, tears welling in his eyes when the zipper gets caught at the bottom and he yanks on it so roughly it snaps off and clinks somewhere off to his right; shrugs his shoulders from the confines of the hoodie, the fabric getting tangled on his arm until he whips it off, his body nearly spinning around with the effort as he tosses it away with one rough flick of the wrist.
Ted paces quickly into the bathroom, body vibrating and fingers trembling as he twists on the faucet and shoves his hands under the spray. He scrubs until his skin feels raw and tries not to throw up when the water runs red. Even when it’s clear again, when his hands look to the untrained eye to be clean, Ted can see it. Phantom blood swirling down the drain. He can feel it on his skin, clinging between his fingers, sticky and unsettling.
He’s not sure how it happens, but he ends up in the kitchen. Within minutes his countertop is filled with ingredients—unsalted butter, salt, sugar, vanilla, flour.
Ted bakes.
He works his wobbly fingers into the dough, swiping beneath his eyes every so often when tears threaten to add a little extra salt into the mixture. The routine is calming, though he is not calm. It’s keeping his hands busy if nothing else, keeping them from tingling and balling into fists he has to shove into his pockets.
Ted over-kneads the dough; it’s tough and tight beneath his reddened knuckles. It’s nearly the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back—his chest rises and falls with the quickening of his breaths, eyes filling with fresh tears until his vision clouds.
He swallows it back, unsteadily tossing the rock of dough to the side to make room to start over.
He concentrates so intensely on this batch of dough that he can think of nothing else. It’s blissful, an automatic motion of his hands and fingers as if it’s just another Sunday evening bulk biscuit batch bake.
When the biscuits go into the oven, Ted busies his hands elsewhere. He cleans the kitchen, meticulously putting away every ingredient and then wiping down the counter until there’s no indication it’s even been used. He scrubs at the surface until the muscle in his arm twitches.
The boxes give him pause, knocking the wind out of him.
They sit on the counter, a delicate pile of soft pink. Biscuit Box Pink, as he’s come to think of it. Other times, Rebecca Pink. They’re synonymous at this point.
He touches them as if they’re fine glass, fingers brushing the edges so carefully one might think they’d shatter. He can’t do it—can’t use one, can’t cut these biscuits into a dozen little rectangles and stack them just so, can't close the box and tap on it for good luck, a smile on his face as he imagines the look on hers when he waltzes into her office with them.
He straightens the pile until there’s not a box out of place and forces himself to step away.
While the biscuits bake, Ted paces. His socked feet slide on the hardwood, swoosh swoosh swoosh, and he focuses on the sound. He doesn’t think he’s ever been able to hear it before. He shuffles his feet again. He swooshes a little too hard and slips, catches himself on the edge of the couch with his heart beating out of his chest.
He lets himself slide to the floor, staring vacantly at the different shades of brown in the wood. Light, medium, dark. A shiny varnish to top it off. He thinks of shiny, thinks of Rebecca’s nails, thinks of Rebecca painting his nails that one time to figure out what color polish she’d wanted. He thinks of Rebecca—
In the space between his kitchen and living room, Ted cries. He hiccups with it, gasping breaths getting caught somewhere in his chest before they reach his lungs. The sobs become so aggressive he nearly dry heaves, a hand coming to clutch at his chest as if the pressure will alleviate the pain.
When the timer for the oven goes off Ted’s still on the floor, pressed up against the back of the couch with his legs outstretched in front of him. It takes a few moments for the sound to register, to reach the part of his brain that alerts him to the need to stand. He pushes off the ground, treads into the kitchen, and moves to pull the biscuits out with his bare hands.
The burn startles him back with a hissed shit, and then there’s running water and a press of a towel against his reddened skin. Flashes of Rebecca, reddened skin, scratches and cuts and trickles of blood and—
Ted does dry heave then, bracing himself against the sink. Tossing the towel away, he rummages quickly for an oven mitt to properly pull out the pan. It collides with a loud bang onto the countertop and skids to a stop. Sliding the pan next to the pink biscuit boxes, Ted leaves them there. To cool, to sit, to go bad, it doesn’t matter. He won’t eat them. Rebecca won’t eat them.
It’s symbolic, he supposes. One last biscuit bake.
He feels sick.
Ted doesn’t remember how he makes it into his bed but he’s sandwiched between the mattress and a too-heavy blanket and his pillow is wet with tears he doesn’t remember crying.
He doesn’t want to sleep, can’t bear the possibility of dreaming about Rebecca, but the emotional toll of the day creeps up and wraps its spindly fingers around his throat. Darkness beckons him, singing him a sweet lullaby.
It sounds like her.
Ted wakes with a start, chest heaving as he gasps for air. He’s drenched in sweat, shirt clinging to his damp skin. His hands are gripped tightly in the comforter and he slowly unfurls them, his fingers stiff.
The room is near-black, the only glow shining in through his curtains coming from a faraway streetlight. It’s late, or perhaps just really early. Maybe they’re the same thing. When he squints over at his alarm clock, the red, blocky numbers read 4:27. Blinking in the darkness, he exhales a long breath before swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.
Vague remnants of a dream plague him, but he can’t quite place them.
As he tugs his moistened t-shirt off, he fumbles blindly in his second drawer for another one. He stops abruptly, one arm free from its sweaty confines, the memory nearly bowling him over.
Rebecca.
Ted braces himself against the open drawer but his legs fail him; he slides clumsily down to the floor, back against the dresser, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He rips the shirt the rest of the way off, tosses it onto the floor with a sharp twist of his wrist. He liked it better when he was asleep, restless but blissfully unaware.
It’s 4:33 in the morning and Rebecca is still dead.
He's not sure how long he sits there, immobile, half-dressed and unable to rid his mind of her. The flicker of her limp body, her red-stained clothing, the way her hair fanned out behind her like a halo. The front half of her car all but caved in, pieces of debris and glass scattered across the pavement. The sound of metal colliding with metal, clashing and scraping and hissing.
His throat is dry, scratchy with each inhale, and he pushes off the floor long enough to drag himself into the kitchen for a glass of water. He makes quick work of swallowing it down so he can get back to sleep, back to a dreamless world where Rebecca’s alive.
There’s no light in his kitchen beyond what comes from his open refrigerator. He intends to close it, but his hip bumps into the door and causes it to swing all the way open instead. Sighing, Ted grips onto the edge and begins to pull it closed, but he stops halfway. With the door open wider, the light travels just that bit farther and illuminates more of his countertop.
It’s then that he sees it.
Pink. Biscuit box pink.
Rebecca’s biscuit boxes.
Rebecca.
His chest is tight, lungs twisting and squeezing like balloon animals between a clown’s nimble fingers. Refrigerator door forgotten, Ted moves slowly toward the boxes that sit stacked beside his coffee maker. His fingers brush over them, delicate, and his breath stutters painfully on its way up.
They’re messy and uneven, boxes in the middle sticking out of the pile. Odd.
He thinks little of it, though, as he numbly picks up the top box and holds it in his hands. He stares at it, thinking of all the times he’s ordered these boxes in bulk, the exact color he needs not available in-store. He thinks of every late night spent unfolding and re-forming these flattened cardboards into the perfect little biscuit vestibules.
His eyes shift to the left, expecting the pan of freshly baked biscuits from last night to be waiting beside the pile of boxes, but the space is empty. Brows drawn, Ted squints. His hand brushes along the countertop, thinking maybe he just can’t see it; the other side of the kitchen is still bathed in darkness, not quite in the line of the refrigerator’s light.
But there’s nothing. No pan, no biscuits.
He forces himself not to panic, not to equate the missing biscuits to the fact that Rebecca is now also gone.
Shaking his head, he inhales through his nose and exhales deeply out his mouth. Beard must’ve heard the news and come in at some point while he was asleep to check on him. Maybe he thought the biscuits were for tomorrow—today?—and figured they’d be too painful for him to wake up to, knowing there would be no Biscuits with the Boss. He’s thoughtful like that.
This isn’t a sign of anything. It's not.
But if it was, at least it'd mean the biscuits are with her. Wherever she is out there. He likes the thought of Rebecca getting a dash of that love even after she's gone. Because that's what they've been all this time, a little bit of his love for her wrapped delicately in between the sugar and butter. Every day he brought her a box of biscuits just to see a smile on her face. Those obscene little noises she'd make really were just the icing on the shortbread.
Ted’s fingers trace over the center of the little box in his palm before he holds it to his chest, as if pressing Rebecca’s biscuit box against his heart will bring him closer to her.
The longer he stands here the less composed he feels; his eyes water and his throat burns and he swears his chest is about to cave in, the weight of it all too hefty for his sternum to withstand. He loses the fight a few moments later, the emotions too overwhelming to combat, and an inelegant sob claws its way out of his throat. His palm lifts to cover his mouth, suppressing the echo it causes in the dead of night.
Though, he thinks Ms. Shipley would give him a pass for the inconvenience just this once.
Taking a shuddering breath, Ted places the box back onto its pile. He forces himself away from the rest of the biscuit boxes, thinking a bit ridiculously that he’s walking away from her, too, which punctures another hole in his already cracked heart.
He drags himself back into the bedroom, a chill hitting his bare skin that reminds him of his initial task. He doesn’t bother turning on a light as he rummages around in his drawer once more. Pulling out one of the first clean shirts his fingers touch, he tries to pull it over his head but it won’t budge, the neck hole far too small.
He sits on the edge of his bed and peers at the fabric, but his unfocused eyes won’t settle. It doesn’t matter, though, because the tiniest hint of a breeze from his open window sets his senses on fire. He smells it now, all encompassing.
It’s Rebecca’s shirt, and he knows immediately which one it is. It’s black, short sleeves, unassuming. She’d worn it over to his place one evening a few months ago. She was dropping off some last-minute contracts that needed his signature, despite his insistence that he was more than willing to come to her, or come to the club earlier the following morning to save her the trip. She’d waved him off, promised it wasn’t a problem; it would be nice to see the state of his flat now, anyway, as she hadn’t visited since before he’d moved in.
He obviously wasn’t going to say no to havin’ Rebecca come over, and so she had.
She’d worn sneakers, jeans, and this black top. Casual Rebecca is one of his favorite Rebeccas, though he’s partial to all of ‘em. It reminded him of their Christmas not-date date, Rebecca in jeans and sneakers as they delivered bags of presents to children around London.
It took him all of five minutes to sign what needed to be signed, and then she’d just… stayed. They talked, watched a movie (Head Over Heels, an underrated rom com classic if you ask him) curled together on his couch, Rebecca’s legs tucked neatly beneath her body. She’d spilled a glass of wine (or maybe he'd made her laugh and the couch shook and the wine was a simple casualty), the front of her black shirt completely soaked.
She’d waved it off (“it’s not as if I have anywhere to go but home, Ted”) but he had insisted (“sittin’ in wet clothing is uncomfortable as all get out”) and had given her one of his old Wichita t-shirts to change into. He actively forces away the memory of just how good she looked in it.
Her shirt was folded and placed on the edge of his couch, only to be forgotten when Rebecca left later that night.
He still has it. Obviously.
He washed it and kept it folded and eventually put it into his own dresser so as to get it out of his living room. He’d always meant to bring it to the club with him, but somethin’ felt funny about bringing her an article of clothing at work. Silly, because there was nothing scandalous about it and they both knew why she left it at his apartment, but it just… didn’t come up again.
She never asked for it back, and he liked havin’ a piece of her here at all times. Despite having gone through the wash it still smells faintly of her perfume, the one she'd wear most days. A subtle floral note, not too overpowering, just right.
He holds the shirt close, breathing in her scent until it’s burning in his nose, until he can close his eyes and imagine that she’s in the room with him.
His fingers have a vice grip on it now, his mouth open on a silent cry as he hugs Rebecca’s shirt to his chest. Curling back onto his bed, he lies against his pillow, clutching onto the cotton and the memories it holds.
An anguished noise breaks free, the exhale sounding suspiciously like her name.
Ted doesn’t go in to work, not yet ready to go back down to Nelson Road knowing Rebecca won’t be there. He knows Beard will understand his absence, knows the team will get why he can't be in that building.
He wonders idly who’s going to take over the club. Higgins, he has to assume. Bile rises in his throat at the thought that Rupert might—no, he can’t. He won’t. Ted’s not quite sure how, but he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen.
For Rebecca. For everyone.
His phone rings but he doesn’t check the caller ID and doesn’t answer any of the calls. It’ll be more of the same, more “I’m sorry for your loss” and “how are you doing” and “we’re all here for you” and he can’t take it, can’t stand to hear another person solidify the fact that Rebecca is gone.
He doesn’t know what time it is, hasn’t left his bed all day except to go to the bathroom and to refill his glass of water every few hours so he doesn’t dehydrate and shrivel up.
If Rebecca was here he's sure she’d have somethin’ to say about his state. You look like hell, he can hear her. It makes him smile, her voice in his head. He wonders, horrified, if a time will come when he can no longer hear it.
He grips her shirt tighter to his bare chest.
His phone goes off a few more times throughout the day, an incessant buzzing against the hardwood of his bedside table, and after the sixth unanswered call he turns it off.
He can't decide if the silence is peaceful or unsettling.
All at once it's dark again, and Ted doesn’t know if he’s fallen asleep or if he’s been staring at his ceiling for so long that time has simply passed him by. Craning his neck, he sees that it’s just past 8:30.
His blankets are warm on his skin but he can’t bring himself to move, unsure if his legs could handle supporting the weight of his body right now. He feels too heavy, his limbs a burden. A brick settles in his chest where his heart should be, the strain of it tugging him down at the same time grief weaves its way around his ribs. It sticks to the bones, burrows in, its seeds calcifying in the marrow until sorrow is all that’s left.
He’s turning onto his side and shoving one arm under his pillow when he hears footsteps. They sound almost as if they’re on his own stairs, but he assumes it’s one of the neighbors. Probably Ms. Shipley returning home from… wherever it is Ms. Shipley might go on her evenings.
His eyes close only to spring open a moment later when Beard’s voice suddenly echoes across his apartment. It takes all of 5 seconds for the man’s shadow to block what minuscule light was shining in from his hallway, Beard now standing in the doorway to his bedroom.
“Ted?” Beard comes closer, rounds the bed. “You didn’t show up today.”
He hums something noncommittal but doesn’t respond.
Beard’s eyes narrow. Although he knows the answer to the question, he asks anyway: “Everything okay?”
Ted can feel his throat closing up at the thought of talking to someone right now, but he tries. “‘m fine, Coach,” he says, the break in his voice betraying him.
Beard steps forward until he’s in Ted’s eye-line, brows drawn in concern. “You don’t look very fine.”
He lets out a watery, humorless laugh. “Yeah. Feelin’ very far from fine, actually,” he manages, staring at a spot just below Beard’s knee.
The man crouches down so Ted has no choice but to look him in the eye. Well, he supposes he could close his own eyes but that feels silly.
The cap is low on Beard’s forehead but Ted can still make out his expression; pensive, considerate.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says then, softly. “We’re all here for you, Ted, you know that. Rebecca w—”
The sound of her name shatters the last of his resolve and he hiccups on his next breath, the sob scraping its way out into the open. At least it halts the rest of Beard’s sentence, which is really for the best. It’d probably be something along the lines of Rebecca wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself and he doesn’t think he’s ready to hear it.
She might not want him to mourn like this, but he doesn’t know how else to deal with the weight of losing her. Since the moment she walked into his life, sharp and imposing and the best damn thing that’s happened to him since Henry, not once did he imagine a day without her in it.
It doesn’t compute, the prospect of a world without Rebecca Welton.
He’d meant it that day he told her she livens up the place, but he wasn’t just talking about his office. He meant… everything. Rebecca livens up the office, sure, but the club too. The whole team. Her friendships.
His life.
She has a lightness about her that she likes to pretend doesn’t exist, a kindness and a heart that not everyone’s privileged enough to see. But he sees it; he’s seen it since that first day, the warmth she radiated even when she was trying so desperately to use him to run the club into the ground.
She’s so fundamentally good, this bright spot of a human being that the world is so much worse off without. That he is so much worse off without.
Rebecca’s become such an intrinsic part of his life, settled comfortably into his routine and into a delicate patch of his heart so snugly he thinks it must’ve been fitted specifically for her. He’s better for having known her, happier simply by virtue of being in her presence, by having been given the gift of her friendship.
The thought of trying to figure out who he is without her has him reeling, grief slipping between the space of his ribs and expanding until he’s full of it.
“It’s—it’s not, nothing about this is okay.”
Beard stands from his squatted position and sits on the edge of the bed. “It’s an unfortunate situation, but it’ll blow over. It will be okay.”
“An unfortunate—how could you... how could you say that?” Ted asks, twisting to look up at him. “Heck, it might never be okay again, Beard-o. I never told her, I didn’t—I was too scared an' uncertain and a 'lil bit of a coward, if I'm bein' honest with myself, ‘cause I didn't think there was any way she—and now I’ll never…”
“Her?”
He sniffles, biting at the inside of his cheek to compose himself. “Thank you, by the way. For uh, taking those biscuits.”
“Biscuits?”
His vision is blurry.
“Last night. You—they were gone. I assumed you came in to check on me sometime after I’d fallen asleep and took them, ‘cause… ‘cause they’d be too painful.”
Beard blinks. “Too painful?” he asks, then backtracks. “I didn’t come over. Why would I be checkin’ up on you?”
“Because of Rebecca,” Ted breathes, his voice cracking around her name.
“Did something happen with Rebecca?” Beard asks, placing a palm on Ted’s blanket-clad knee. “Between the two of you?”
Ted’s dizzy. Beard looks down to where the corner of the blanket has lifted off of his lower-half, raises a brow. He leans forward, grabbing, and the fabric is dangling from his friend’s fingers before he can do anything about it.
“Is this her shirt?”
Ted snatches it back a little aggressively and ignores the question.
He feels sick now, a renewed nausea at the fact that, somehow, Beard doesn’t seem to know what happened. He was certain it’d have made the news almost immediately. Ted’s stomach drops a beat later. Does this mean the rest of the team doesn’t know either? Oh god, Keeley?
“How’s Keeley?”
Beard squints. “Keeley? I’m sure she’s fine. What does she have to do with you and Rebecca?”
“There is no me and—" He shakes his head. "Does she know?”
“Know what?”
“That she's gone.”
“If Keeley was gone wouldn't Keeley be the first to know?”
“No. I mean, yes, in that scenario Keeley would probably be the first to know.”
Beard takes a deep breath. “Ted. What’s this about?”
“Rebecca.”
“I feel like I'm goin' a little bit insane here,” Beard mutters quietly, then, at a normal level: “Let's backtrack. Does who know who's gone?”
“Keeley,” Ted grinds out, begging his hands to still. “Does Keeley know Rebecca is gone?”
He continues to stare. “Where’d Rebecca go?”
“I’m not an expert on the afterlife, Coach,” he mutters. “Guess she could be anywhere, dependin’ on what you believe.”
Beard’s mouth drops open in an uncharacteristic display of shock, eyes widening just so.
“I’m sorry, that was—that was an insensitive way for me to tell you.” He swallows, voice thick.
“Ted, I just saw her—”
“I know,” he sighs, wobbly. “It’s hard to accept.”
Beard blinks at him, and Ted watches his friend's face morph from confusion to thoughtfulness to realization and, finally, to understanding, all in one very bewildering moment.
“Are you all right, Beard-o? I know you and Rebecca were gettin’ closer, too.”
“Stay here.”
“I’ll be fine,” he says, the lie slipping out easily. He’s not sure he’ll ever be fine again, not really, not without Rebecca around. But he can try. And, at the very least, he can lie. “Really. You don’t need to worry about me—you can go home.”
Beard points at him. “Stay here.”
It’s the only thing Beard says before he gets up and walks out of the bedroom. He hears the front door close, just loud enough, and flops himself back down onto the pillow. Well, it’s not like he planned on goin’ anywhere anyway.
He finds Rebecca’s shirt where he tucked it quickly near his hip at the edge of the bed, pulls it free, and hugs it back against his chest.
When he hears the sound of his front door closing—a minute later or ten or maybe thirty, who knows—his heart skips in his chest. It calms a beat later when he realizes what’s happening.
“Beard, I told ya you don’t need to keep checkin’ up on me,” he calls out. His voice is like sandpaper, abrasive as it scrapes along his throat. “I’m drinkin’ enough water and takin’ the occasional stroll around the apartment so I don’t become a permanent fixture of my mattress, okay?”
“Ted?”
His breath catches.
“Are you in here?”
It’s her voice again, but it’s impossible.
It’s impossible—until she’s there, standing in the open doorway to his bedroom. He’s hallucinating now, too. God, man, get it together.
“Ted?” the hallucination asks, concerned.
He thinks his heart stops beating all together. Heck, is he dead, too? He slaps a little deliriously against his comforter-clad thighs to test, not quite sure what that’d do, if anything, but nothing changes.
She’s still standing there and his eyes are wide as he stares at her, tears flooding his vision until she disappears completely. It's for the best, he decides; he’s only dreaming anyway, a cruel, beautiful dream.
And then her footsteps—hers, because he's been able to pick out her footfall from a mile away since the second week of working at the club—come closer, and there’s a dip in his mattress, and there are hands on his knee.
Her hands. Even beneath two layers, his skin tingles at her touch.
“Ted,” she says again, so soft, so close, so real. “What happened?”
Blinking away fresh tears, he’s able to see her. A stunning focal point in the haze. His voice betrays him with a waver around her name. “Rebecca?”
He sits up more fully now, his left leg bent, his right leg hanging off the edge of the bed.
She studies him with those eyes of hers, so expressive, so bright, so alive, and he lunges forward, encasing her in a hug so tight she gasps with it. His hands grip at her back for a moment before one finds purchase at the base of her neck, the other sliding into her hair.
Rebecca pulls away after a minute or two and he panics, afraid to let go, afraid if he doesn't have a grounding touch on her she’ll vanish.
But then she’s still here; still sitting on his bed, still regarding him with such worry that he laughs. He laughs, a little hysterical, before a wide smile blooms on his tear-soaked face. His eyes are puffy as he looks at her, the tears now of hesitant relief.
Ted pulls her back in and she comes willingly despite the fact that they don’t do this. He’s grateful.
“You’re here. You're alive,” he breathes, so quietly into her neck.
She tenses as soon as the words slip past his lips, hanging in the air between them.
“What? Ted, look at me.”
It takes a second but he allows himself to be pried away. He looks at her then, everywhere. Her eyes, assessing him so carefully, unease clouding those green irises; her lips, pulled into a soft line; her chest, covered in a blazer and simple blue blouse, very much blood-free; her hands, one still poised on his shoulders, the other resting again on his knee.
“It’s nothin’, I’m sorry, it’s silly.”
He feels a bit uncomfortable now, the reality of the situation slowly registering in his addled brain, though he's unable to keep the awe from his voice as he takes her in.
“If it’s making you feel like this it’s not silly.” She squeezes his shoulder, the pad of her thumb brushing in a gentle back and forth motion. “Please?”
Ted swallows around the lump in his throat, averting his gaze. It's still difficult to process, if he's bein' honest, the knowledge that it was all in his head. He knows this now, the living, breathing evidence of the fact right in front of his face, but it all felt so… real.
Absently, he thinks all of those little things—the missing biscuits, the uneven biscuit boxes, Beard’s comment about it all blowing over, which he realizes now with startling clarity was likely referring to the very real, very recent tabloid leak of his panic attack—make a lot more sense now.
“It was just a nightmare. Really, I’m fine, boss.”
He can still feel the gut-wrenching sadness of his nightmare-self, can still feel her blood sticky on his fingers. Glancing down at the digits in question, he forces himself to remember it was never there.
“It was about me.”
It’s not a question. Ted nods but remains silent, still looking down at the hands he wrings in his lap.
“I don’t particularly have any desire to use your ex-wife’s word, but I would like for you to tell me the truth,” Rebecca murmurs quietly.
“There was a car accident,” he says finally, running a hand down his tired face. “I, uh, I heard it outside. Across the green. I ran over, outta instinct, I don’t know, and it was—it was your car. Head-on collision with another car. It was dark and rainin’ real bad, one of those terrible storms. Your car was... it was completely crushed, Rebecca, and there was—you were—”
Her eyes soften, lips downturned in a frown. “Oh, Ted.” The hand on his knee squeezes in support. “You can tell me more about it, if you want.”
Part of him wants to.
A larger, more irrational part of him doesn't, afraid that speaking it into existence will somehow make it real. It's an insane thought, even by his own standards, but the images are so fresh in his mind, so much more like actual memories than a simple figment of his imagination.
“It’s stupid,” he mutters on a self-conscious exhale. “I’m sorry you had to come over here.”
“Don’t do that.” Her voice is quiet but firm. She releases his shoulder in favor of tugging on his hand, curling her fingers around his. “I didn't have to do anything. I'm here because my friend is obviously having a tough time and I want to help.”
Her words warm his chest and Ted nods, jerky. “I just... I feel bad draggin’ you out of bed for this.”
“Do I look like I’ve just rolled out of bed?” Rebecca holds up a finger before he can speak. “Think carefully about your response, please.”
Rebecca, in her blue blouse, blazer, and trousers, looks beautiful. She could be wearing a paper bag and she’d be the most stunning thing he’s ever laid his eyes on simply because she’s alive.
“You always look great, boss, so quite frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if this is how you roll out of bed.”
“That’s entirely false but very sweet of you. I’ll accept it, thank you,” she smirks.
He smiles and then twists his lips. “In that case, I feel bad for draggin’ you away from work. If you were there this late there musta been important things for you to be workin' on.”
Rebecca shakes her head, pulling on his hand until she’s able to tuck him back into her embrace. The sharp jolt of her palm against the bare skin of his back sends chills down his spine and he hopes she can’t feel the goosebumps her touch leaves in its wake.
“There was nothing that couldn't wait until tomorrow, and you didn’t drag me away. Coach Beard did.”
“Beard?”
“Called thirty minutes ago and asked if I’d spoken to you today. He suggested I come by, said it might do you some good to see me.” She pauses, thoughtful, her chin resting on his shoulder. “Come to think of it, he did seem rather relieved when I picked up.”
“Ah. I might’ve told him you were dead. Not in so many words, but I think saying somethin’ about the afterlife kinda gave it away.”
Rebecca hums. “Do you think I’d be allowed to take my biscuits with me to the afterlife?”
It surprises him and he laughs, a loud and unexpected sound, and when he pulls back she’s grinning at him.
Oh, he loves her; he knows it so confidently in this moment, her cheek cradled in his palm, the way she leans gently into the touch. He knows it right now, just as he’s known it for a long while.
Ted wants to say it out loud. He wants to tell her how much he loves her; how badly her imagined loss wrecked him and how a real loss would shatter him; how if he had his way he'd live in her embrace, their arms wrapped tightly around each other and hearts syncing until they beat to the same rhythm; how he wants nothing more than to grow old with her, the two of them bickering in rocking chairs. She'll always win the non-argument and he'll smile as she does. He wants to lean down and press a soft kiss to her lips, to breathe his love into them until she understands just how much having her in his life means to him.
But now isn’t the time.
He refuses to leave any room for doubt, to allow for the possibility that she'll believe he's only saying it as a knee-jerk reaction to thinking he lost her.
They’re quiet for a long moment, and then: “You should get some sleep.”
Ted doesn’t have the slightest clue what time it is anymore, doesn’t know how long it’s been since she walked into his room. Exhaustion weighs on his body, a bone-deep kind of weariness covering him like a cloak, but he’s not sure he wants to chance sleep.
“Not sure I’m ready for that yet. I can’t… I won't go through that again.”
“You still need rest." Her eyes trace the lines of his face. “You look like hell.”
“Ouch, boss. You sure know how to make a man feel good.”
Rebecca rolls her eyes and stands from the bed. She reaches over to grab at the corner of his comforter, and then she holds it up like a tent. “Get in.”
“Are you tucking me in right now?”
“Yes. Now swing your legs back onto the bed and get in.”
The edges of his mouth lifting ever-so-slightly, he does as he’s told. When he’s comfortable she pulls the blanket up to his shoulders, doing everything short of tucking the sides to burrito him into the bed.
She stands back, admiring her handiwork, when her eyes clock something peeking out from the blanket. Leaning down, she pulls on the fabric and for the second time this evening terror fills him when he remembers what it is. His mouth opens to explain it away but no words come; instead, he silently watches as she holds her black shirt between her fingers.
“Is this my shirt?”
Ted clears his throat. “Yes, it is. You left it here, remember, that night you came over and it got all covered in wine so you had to change? That's why it's here, and I can—I can explain why it's here,” he gestures to his person. “This mornin'—”
“Ted,” she interrupts, the hand she places on his thigh effectively shutting him up. “I understand. It's okay.”
Her expression softens, the gentleness of her eyes as she looks at him telling him just how much she does understand, how much she appreciates that her shirt would've brought him some level of comfort. He just nods, thankful that she gets it.
Ted assumes she’s going to leave now. He wants to ask her to stay, at least until he falls asleep or maybe to keep him company so he doesn’t have to sleep at all, but he can't bring himself to ask.
Rebecca surprises him, though, by shimmying out of her blazer and draping it carefully across the chair in the corner of the room along with the black shirt. He watches as she hesitates for a few seconds and then, mind seemingly made up, she walks along the foot of the bed, rounds it, lifts the other side of the comforter, and crawls in.
He doesn’t know when she kicked off her heels, but he just stares at her, mouth open, when she levels him with a soft smile.
“I thought it might help.” She speaks quietly, almost self-conscious. “If I’m here, I mean. If you have the nightmare again, I’ll be here to show you it’s not real.”
He could cry; he wants to, overtaken with gratitude and love for her over the simple gesture, but he doesn't think there are any tears left.
“You’re probably exhausted,” is what he settles for. “I can’t ask you to stay here because I might wake up in the middle of the night thinkin’ you’re dead.”
“You’re not asking, I’m offering.” Rebecca pauses. “Insisting, actually. I won’t take no for an answer.”
Ted continues to stare, and she must misconstrue his silence for discomfort because she continues:
“Unless this is making you uncomfortable—”
She starts to roll back over, out of the bed, but Ted reaches out and grabs onto her wrist to stop her. “No,” he rushes out. “You’re not—you could never make me uncomfortable, Rebecca. I… appreciate you bein’ here.”
He thinks he sees her face smooth out with the reassurance and she allows herself to lower back onto the mattress. He gently releases her wrist and she scrambles further into the blanket, laying on her back with the edge pulled to her chest.
Rebecca beside him right now, fully in her work outfit sans jacket, is not at all how he expected her first time in his bed to go. ‘Cause of course he’s thought about it. On more than one occasion. He’s only human.
They lay there, side by side: Rebecca staring at the ceiling with her arms crossed behind her head, Ted on his back at first but eventually turning onto his side to face her.
“What are you thinking about?”
Rolling toward him, she absentmindedly licks at her lips. “Why didn’t you answer your phone all day?” she asks. “Beard tried, I tried. Even Roy tried. More than once. We were worried. I was worried.”
“I uh, well—I thought it was more people callin’ to tell me they were sorry for my loss. I’d heard it enough, or at least I was under the impression that I had. Nightmare-Ted got a lot of condolences, I guess. I couldn’t take any more.”
She nods, thoughtful, if not a bit sad. “You’d have realized it was all a nightmare if you came to work.”
“I thought you were dead, Rebecca. I couldn’t even think about walkin' into that building knowing you weren’t there. I’d imagine walkin’ up to your office, biscuits in hand and finding it empty, knowing you’d never walk through that door. I just… I couldn’t do it.”
She looks at him like he’s just said something groundbreaking and he doesn’t quite understand it; does she think he’d have no reaction to her death? That he'd be able to walk back into work the next day like nothing had happened? Certainly not.
Quiet, Rebecca reaches over and grabs his right hand, gently pulling him forward. “Come here.”
He goes where she rolls him, but she doesn’t let go when he assumes she will. She scoots back, swiveling onto her left side and tugging until she’s able to drape his arm over her torso. Rebecca’s back is flush to his chest now and he instinctively holds his breath, scared to break the spell. She presses his hand to the spot above her heart and his eyes fall closed at the contact.
“Rebecca...”
“I’m right here."
His heart races, rabbiting roughly against his ribs; he's overwhelmed by the closeness, the intimacy of it all. She’s warm in his arms, alivealivealive, her hand soothing where it covers his own. Her heart beat is steady and strong, fluttering like a bird against his palm.
The thought of drifting off to sleep isn’t so daunting with Rebecca here, chest rising and falling, the gentle cadence of her breaths a tranquil lullaby.
She hums, and then her mouth brushes against the back of his hand and he doesn’t know if it’s intentional or a miscalculation with placement but her lips are soft against his skin.
“Ted?”
“Yeah?”
“Sleep.”
Smiling to himself, he leans up. He’s emboldened and he hesitates only a moment before he risks the press of a kiss to her shoulder. He hovers, waiting for a reaction before lowering himself back down; she shivers but doesn’t move away.
He adjusts the arm covering her torso, making sure the weight isn’t too much or pressing against anywhere inappropriate, and then he shifts into a more comfortable position to rest his head.
“Rebecca?”
“Doesn't sound like you're sleeping back there.”
“I just—you'll still be here in the morning, right?”
Her voice is a note above a whisper. “Yeah, I'll be here.”
Releasing a breath, he feels himself settle. Content.
“I'll make ya some pancakes. The American kind, ‘cause I’m sorry but I don’t think what y’all call pancakes are really pancakes.”
She snorts. “Ted?”
He hums in response, already drifting.
“Extra fluffy.”
“Hm?”
“The pancakes.”
“Extra fluffy. Pancakes. Can do.”
“And Ted?”
“Hm.”
“Go to sleep.”
He shimmies so his nose is pressed to the base of her neck. She doesn't tense, just lets out a steady exhale, and after a short while he feels the space between her breaths even out. The sound of her soft breathing lulls him to sleep as his awareness wanes, his last thoughts of cooking a sleepy-eyed Rebecca fresh pancakes (Extra Fluffy) in the morning.
Ted wakes sometime in the middle of the night, flashes of a wreck and Rebecca’s limp body in the middle of the street and red beneath his fingernails. His chest aches with it, heart racing as his thoughts churn, but any panic is dispelled a moment later by a quiet hum, the rumble of a voice beside him.
“Ted?”
He registers the soft weight beneath his arm, the steady rise and fall of her stomach against his palm. His body calming already, no longer taught with the stress of the lingering nightmare, he tightens his hold just enough. His fingers bunch in the fabric of her blouse and then release.
“Rebecca?”
She gently lifts his hand and he goes to pull it back, to murmur an apology for making her uncomfortable, but she doesn’t remove it. Rebecca holds it in the air as she rolls over to face him, then places it back down, palm splayed over her hip now.
It takes a few moments for his vision to adjust to the dark. When it clears, he finds her already looking up at him from beneath long lashes. It’s a bit surreal seeing her like this, so close, so open. He tries not to, but he thinks he could get used to this.
“I’m right here,” she whispers. “Are you all right?”
Ted nods, lips pulled thin. “I am now. Go on back to sleep, I’m—”
“If you apologize again, so help me, Ted.”
Her eyes are already closed again and he can’t help but chuckle.
“Thank you,” he says instead.
Rebecca doesn’t open her eyes but a soft smile does curl at her lips, her left hand coming to cover where his rests on her hip. She lifts it gently to her lips, pressing another delicate, sleepy kiss to his knuckles that sends his heart directly into his throat before lowering it back down. She squeezes his fingers and then releases, but doesn’t take her own hand back.
After the shock of wondering whether that’s just happened (that one was definitely intentional, not a miscalculation) or not—or if she even knows she’s done it—dies down, a smile tugs at his mouth and he’s soothed back to sleep by the steady exhales of her breaths, soft puffs of air blown into the space between them.
Ted does not dream.
The next time he wakes the sun is streaming through his bedroom window and birds are chittering, a cacophony of sing-song chirps. His eyes peel open slowly, fluttering a few times, still heavy with sleep. His attempt to stretch his legs into the mattress is thwarted by a weight on his calves; when he focuses, he realizes one of Rebecca’s legs is draped across his shins.
As the rest of his senses return to him, he notices other things in quick succession. One of her hands is tucked beneath his pillow somehow, the other pressed firm against his bare chest. With the realization comes the erratic beating of his heart, the one just below the tips of her fingers. He hopes she’s truly asleep, hopes she can’t feel it thumping against her palm; he wills it to slow before she wakes, working at evening out his breaths and sending little thoughts of don’t be weird from his head down to his heart.
In the light of day, embarrassment rears its ugly head.
His thoughts are loud, abrasive, a running list of all of the reasons he should be panicking right now cycling through. Rebecca’s going to think there’s something wrong with him; she’s going to realize she spent the night in his bed, tangled up in him no less, and regret it; things are going to become awkward and it’ll be his fault and the delicate house of cards their friendship relies on is going to come crashing down around them like dominoes in a line.
Deep down he knows none of this has even a semblance of truth to it. Rebecca will be nothing but understanding and gracious about it, all soft eyes and gentle reassurances that he knows will be genuine. His brain, however, is working in overdrive to convince him otherwise.
Ted sighs, wondering how to best extricate himself from Rebecca’s bubble without waking her. He thinks maybe if he can just get out of bed and away from her before she wakes, he’ll have a better chance of sorting through all of the conflicting thoughts pulling at him from every direction. Then, when she does wake, he’ll have figured out exactly what to say and how to say it and there’ll be less of a chance that he’ll go and mess the whole thing up.
Even if getting away from Rebecca is the absolute last thing he wants to do; he wants to curl in closer, wants to drape his arm over her body with a palm flat between her shoulder blades to pull her into his embrace.
Even if his body’s immediate reaction to the thought is unequivocal dislike, his stomach flipping and his chest constricting and his throat burning at the mere thought of pushing her away.
His body wins out and the brain’s dream is dashed when the pattern of Rebecca’s breathing changes, a breathy little sigh exhaling from between her lips. The sound alone sets a spark alight at the base of his spine, the fizzle traveling up until it hits his chest.
Ted freezes, torn between pretending to be asleep and immediately opening with an apology. He watches as her eyelashes flitter, slowly at first and then all at once, until he’s greeted with her sleepy gaze. He wasn't thinkin' fast enough, didn't feign sleep, so now he stares at her with something he’s fairly certain reads like fear in his eyes.
Hers are soft, though, not a single trace of regret or disdain or anything else his brain was expecting shining back at him, and the knots in his chest begin to unfurl with the gentle smile that blooms on her lips.
Rebecca hums. “Good morning,” she sighs, eyes falling closed for one more moment before they open fully. She lifts her leg off of his with ease, settling them back onto the mattress as she twists.
“Mornin’,” he manages, throat rough.
“Are you okay?”
“Never better.”
His voice cracks a little without his consent and she arches an inquiring brow. She doesn’t look as… uncomfortable as he’d expected, waking up next to him. He knows she made the choice to stay, to maneuver herself beneath the blankets with him, but everything’s always different under the cover of darkness. It’s not as easy to hide in the daylight.
But she doesn’t seem to be hiding, which is… a thought.
Shaking himself out of it, he softens. “Really. After the hiccup of that first nightmare I slept like a baby. Best sleep I’ve had in a long while, if I’m bein’ honest with ya.”
“Good,” she says. “Mine too, I must admit.”
“If that’s true I think we gotta have a little talk about your sleep habits, Rebecca.”
The intimacy of calling her Rebecca in bed under the delicate glow of morning is not lost on him. His skin burns.
She just rolls her eyes in response though, the smile still in place as she pushes off of his chest (he’d forgotten her palm was still there, a solid weight, and he misses the warmth immediately) to roll onto her back. The groan that crawls from her throat and the arch of her back as she stretches, toes curled into the mattress and arms lifted above her head, short-circuits Ted’s brain. It rivals the biscuit-eating moan in such a way he never thought possible and he now has no thoughts except that sound on loop.
The smirk on her face when she turns to look at him tells him he’s been caught. The apology is on the tip of his tongue but she simply laughs, and he swears there’s a flush of pink coloring the apples of her cheeks.
He’s only half-joking when he says, “If you want to report that very ungentlemanly-like leer to HR, I understand and you have my full support.”
“I don’t think you’ve leered at a woman a day in your fucking life,” she huffs. “Would you like to know what I do want?”
He’s not sure if her voice is actually deeper right now or if he’s still thinking about that groan and it’s clouding his ears but he swallows regardless, skin tingling.
“What?”
“Well, I do believe I was promised pancakes,” she muses, one corner of her mouth quirked as she peers side-eyed at him.
Ted laughs in a rush, loud and rich. “Yup, that you were,” he nods, pulling himself into a sitting position, “and I make it a habit of keepin’ all my promises. To the best of my ability, ‘course, but this is one I have no problem deliverin’ on, so pancakes you will get.”
Turning away from her, Ted swings his legs over the edge of the bed and wriggles his toes against the chill of the hardwood. He glances over his shoulder and finds her already looking up at him.
“I’m gonna go brush my teeth,” he says, pointing toward the bathroom situated just outside of his bedroom door. “Then it’s all yours to do whatever it is you gotta do.”
Rebecca gives him an amused look. “Take your time, Ted.”
He salutes a bit dumbly and shuffles into the bathroom, closing the door gently behind him. Looking in the mirror, he appraises his appearance. He doesn’t look great, not after nearly a full day living under the weight of the grief that came with believing Rebecca was dead, but he looks as well-rested as he thinks he possibly can.
Hyper aware of the fact that Rebecca is still waiting in his bedroom, he makes quick work of brushing his teeth and splashing cold water onto his face.
By the time he emerges, looking at least a bit more bright-eyed, Rebecca’s sitting up against the headboard with the blanket bunched up around her waist and her hands crossed on top. Fully awake now, he takes her in. Hair askew, makeup a little smudged around the eyes, her blouse rumpled and shifted to expose her collarbone.
God, it looks like she’s had a… vigorous night.
Ted blinks away the image even as it burns into his corneas and gestures toward the bathroom. “All yours,” he says, perhaps too cheerily. “I’m gonna go get started on your pancakes.”
He’s just crossed the threshold of his bedroom door when Rebecca’s voice reaches him. “Ted?”
He turns back around, focus immediately pulled by the way she’s got her hand crossed over her chest and tucked into the back of her shirt, rubbing at her shoulder blade. “Yeah?”
“Extra fluffy, please.”
“Huh?”
She smirks around a barely-concealed laugh. “The pancakes?”
Ted pinks. Of course, the pancakes. The pancakes he is going to focus on cooking her instead of… literally anything else.
“Right! Comin’ right up!”
Ted’s plopping a third pancake onto the plate to his left when a gentle shuffle catches his attention. He twists to look behind him, careful not to leave the pancakes unsupervised for too long lest they turn into a charcoal mess, and finds Rebecca leaning against the kitchen table. She braces herself on the tabletop with her fingers as she arches forward, smiling softly at the stack next to him.
“I hope the fluffiness is up to standard,” he teases as he slides the stack of three toward her.
She makes an impressive show of lifting the food into her eye-line; turning the plate to the left, to the right, she hums as she “inspects” the pancakes before her. It makes him smile, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening in time with his dimples.
Rebecca lowers herself into the seat and sets the pancakes down in front of her. “They’re looking sufficiently fluffed up, I must say.”
He places a fork and knife beside her. “Can I get ya some syrup, butter… or are you a pancake purist?” he asks with a wrinkle of his nose, the disgust evident on his face.
Rebecca lifts an amused brow. “And if I were to be a… pancake purist?”
“Well, I don’t much like judgin’ people and their food preferences, but if ya eat that pancake dry I do think I’ll have to judge a little bit.”
She bites at the inside of her cheek to tamper the smile. “Ted?”
“Uh huh.”
“I’ll take some syrup and butter, please.”
He grins as if she’s just handed him the most precious gift and she offers an affectionate roll of her eyes, the grin no longer hidden. Ted slides the items over to her one by one, then stares a little, tapping the handle of the spatula against his wrist in thought.
“What is it?” she asks, the syrup bottle halted mid-lift.
“How d’ya feel about toppings?”
“These are toppings.”
“No no, those are not toppings.”
“They go on top of the pancakes. Ergo, they are toppings.”
“No, see, those are the glue for the real toppings to stick,” he says, nodding along. “I’m talkin’ about your bananas, strawberries, blueberries, whipped cream, powdered sugar, chocolate—oh! I got some chocolate chips in here somewhere, I can add some to the batter—”
Rebecca stalls him with a raised hand and a laugh. “Ted. These are perfectly fine, I promise.”
To prove her point, she cuts off a corner of the pancake and pops it into her mouth.
Her eyes widen, rolling in her head. “Oh, fuck me, are you joking?” she murmurs, staring down at the pancake in awe before looking up at him, chest warming at the goofy grin on his face. “How did you make fucking pancakes taste like this?”
His heart leaps at her praise, more heat traveling south at her all-too-familiar exclamation. If he’s honest, he judges all of his baking endeavors and how well he’s done by her reactions. The “fuck me” is currently the highest score a baked item can receive and he’s greeted with a swell of pride each time he gets it outta her.
“The secret ingredient, ‘course.”
She leans deeper into her propped elbows. Narrowing her eyes, Rebecca points her fork at him. “If you tell me the secret ingredient is love, Theodore Lasso, I swear to god…”
“Full government name and all, ouch,” Ted laughs, flipping another pancake. “It’s actually sour cream and a hint of nutmeg, but don’tchu go questionin’ the power of a little love, boss. Buncha that in there, too.”
“Love tastes like sour cream and nutmeg. Noted.”
Rebecca doesn’t make him talk about it. She doesn’t even bring it up.
They settle at the kitchen table and eat their pancakes, Ted topping off her dwindling stack with one more despite her half-hearted assertions that she’s fine.
“You came over here straight from the office last night which means, if I know ya at all, you didn’t eat dinner,” he says, glancing at her with a raised brow and a you really need to stop doing that look in his eyes.
She shrugs a little I know and accepts the next pancake with a soft “thank you” before loading it up with the same amount of butter and syrup as the previous ones.
After they’ve finished their breakfast and Ted’s cleared their plates, refusing to allow Rebecca to wash them, they both hover near the living room.
“I should get going,” she says. “Perhaps I’ll be able to squeeze in a quick shower before I head in to the club.”
The offer of his own shower is on the tip of his tongue but he bites it down; she doesn’t have any work appropriate clothing here—aside from that one shirt—and it wouldn’t make much sense, even if the thought of Rebecca smelling of his shower products and dressed in a pair of his sweatpants doesn’t do somethin’ to his insides.
“Yeah, of course,” he says with a nod. “I—thank you, Rebecca. Not just for last night. I mean, ‘specially for last night, but for… everything else, too.”
She smiles, eyes softening around the edges in that way he loves so much, and reaches down to grab his hand in hers. “Any time, Ted.”
With a quick squeeze of his fingers she releases him and pads over to where her heels sit near his closet. They’d started off in his bedroom, but after nearly tripping over them during a mid-night trip to the bathroom, he’d carried them out here.
Blazer draped over her arm instead of around her shoulders, Rebecca takes a step toward the door. But just as she’s about to make her way down the first step she pauses, turning back to him with a pensive look on her face.
“If you ever have another nightmare like that, please call me. I mean it when I say that I don’t care what time it is. And I know you’re going to say something chivalrous about not wanting to bother me, but you are never a bother. Do you understand?”
His lips pull into a thin line, emotion welling in his throat. “Yeah. ‘Preciate you, boss.”
She smiles once more, nodding, and then makes her way down.
Before she has a chance to pull on the doorknob, he calls out her name. “Do ya—would me givin’ you some of my clothes to wear outta here be better or worse than walkin’ out of my apartment in rumpled clothes and last night’s makeup?”
She barks a laugh. “Decidedly worse, but I appreciate the thought.”
“You want me to check the coast for paparazzi before ya go out there?”
Rebecca looks at him with an overflowing amount of affection. “That’s very kind of you to consider, but I’ll be just fine. I’ve been photographed in more compromising positions.” Ted’s brows disappear into his hairline and she sighs. With a dismissive wave of her hand, as if the words spilling out of her mouth explain a normal, everyday hazard, she says, “Topless paparazzi photos on a yacht in Mallorca.”
He nods his understanding and then pauses. “Has Keeley seen ‘em? Not your, uh—the topless…” Ted frowns. “Huh. Suppose those’re the same thing.”
She takes pity. “She has.” Squinting, she tilts her head. “Why?”
“Oh. Nothin’. She just, um—she was goin’ on one day, murmurin’ as she walked down the hall about…”
“About my breasts,” Rebecca finishes, incredulous.
“Yes, ma’am. ‘Damn Rebecca’s big beautiful breasts’ was the exact phrasing she kept mutterin’ under her breath, I think,” Ted says, nodding sympathetically even as a flush of pink blooms along his neck with the words. “I just kinda figured that was Keeley bein’ Keeley, but this makes a lotta sense.”
Rebecca laughs, head tipped back with an amused smile. “That girl.”
“She’s a keeper.”
“That she is,” Rebecca agrees, soft. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Feelin’ mighty fine this morning, promise. I appreciate that ya care, though.”
“Yes, well, I care about you, Ted. That means I also care greatly about your well-being.” She says it so casually, so matter-of-fact it knocks the wind out of him. He’s known that she cares about him, of course, but hearin’ her say it outright like that, it… well, it makes him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. “What? Surely that’s not a shock?”
Ted shakes his head. “No, ‘course not. Just nice to hear,” he says quietly. “And in case it’s not already abundantly clear, I care very much about you and your well-being, too.”
“Coupon for life, I’m told. Whatever the hell that means,” she confirms. Ted opens his mouth to explain again, but the tenderness in her eyes and the elegant curl of her lips tells him that she knows.
“You got that right, little lady,” he beams, shooting finger guns in her direction that leave her huffing a laugh. “Now, last chance to have me play lookout and make sure there'll be no chance of any stories runnin’ tomorrow about your torrid affair with the coach.”
“I can think of worse things they could write about me,” she says, already pulling his front door open. She tosses a smug look over her shoulder, visibly pleased with his wide eyes and parted lips. “See you and your biscuits in a few hours, Coach.”
He’s still standing in place, staring at the now-closed front door, long after she’s gone.
Huh.