Chapter Text
The fall semester of his junior year would change his life forever. Ted just didn’t know it yet. He wouldn’t know until even after the shift in his timeline looked him straight in the eyes as she stood in the doorway of an underclassman co-ed housing dorm room.
The concern that started it all had come from a girl named Penny Harris, at roughly 11:15pm on the Monday before classes were set to begin. He’d been in bed, half-asleep, when she’d rapped on his door with an unrelenting rhythm, as if he had nothing better to do or nothing bigger to worry about than first-year trials and tribulations. Most of it was unnecessary drama. But his floor partner had been delayed in her move-in, so he was the only one the first-years could go to in their time of need until the next afternoon. On top of that, it had already been a long weekend helping freshmen get moved in and all he wanted to do was sleep.
That was the price he paid for a big cushy dorm room. And a stipend.
He groaned and dragged himself out of bed, uncaring about the way his hair might have looked or about his general appearance, except he did pull his red Chiefs t-shirt over his head on the way to the door, mismatching it with his blue checkered pajama pants. He opened his door to find a short and agitated freshman girl looking up at him.
“Rough night, I presume?”
She rolled her eyes. Tough crowd. He had a theory that the freshmen got meaner with each new batch. Maybe there was something in the water.
“The girl in the room next to me is blasting her music and I’d like it to stop,” she said.
No introductions or anything. Jeez.
“Okay,” he muttered. “Did you tell her that?”
“No,” she said, as if he were stupid. “What if she’s some psycho?”
He controlled his expression, which he’d gotten very good at last semester.
“What’s your room number?”
“D103.”
“Perfect. I’ll go check it out.”
“Cool,” she said before turning to leave.
“Kids these days,” he murmured as he went back into his room to slip on his shoes.
He ran a hand through his hair to tame it a bit before heading into the hall and walking down to the other end of it. He could, in fact, hear the music as he approached. His only hope was that she was a nice freshman.
He knocked on the door two times and waited for it to open, the music coming to a halt from the other side. He hadn’t been expecting the face he saw once she opened the door. Not because he knew her– although there was something familiar in her eyes, like they had met somewhere before. But he knew they hadn’t. He hadn’t even seen her amongst the crowd at the building meeting. He’d have remembered her. Because she was too gorgeous to forget. And when she spoke, her accent and the honey in her voice had his head in the clouds.
“Can I help you?” she said, her eyebrows raised in a delicate arch.
“Um,” he muttered dumbly. He cleared his throat. “I, uh, I’m a resident advisor for Williams Hall and I got a noise complaint about this room, so…um. Well, here I am.”
Somehow he managed to force his way through an explanation. She gave him a look that said “I can see that.”
“Yes, well, I’ll be honest- what’s your name again?”
He’d said it during their initial meeting earlier that evening, she knew, and truth be told, she did remember it, but she wanted to hear as many words in his cute little drawl as she could.
“Oh. I-it’s Ted. Ted Lasso.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Ted. You know, personally and not from afar during a floor meeting.”
“You too, uh…?”
“Rebecca. Rebecca Welton.”
“Rebecca Welton,” he repeated, feeling out the sound of her name on his tongue. “Anyway, like I said, I got a noise complaint and it is my job to kinda check those out.”
“Right, of course. To be honest, Ted, I do it on purpose.”
No use in lying. She’d kept enough secrets to last a lifetime.
“On purpose?”
“Yes, see, I like to turn my music up very loud because my next door neighbor is quite unpleasant.”
He had to buffer for a moment, her candor catching him a bit off guard. Maybe all English people were that way.
“O-okay, unpleasant how?”
“She likes to have noisy sex at night and, you know, I might not mind so much if they didn’t bang against the wall and if they were a bit less vocal-”
“Yeah, yep, okay, I get it. I will be sure to talk to her too.”
“Well, thank you, Ted, that’s very kind.”
“It is my job,” he said plainly, but with a sweet smile.
She couldn’t deny that he was quite cute. She smiled back at him and he swore he felt the warmth of the sun flood through his veins.
“Is that all?” she said after a moment of him just standing there looking at her, not being very subtle.
“Oh. Y-yeah, sorry. Yeah, that’s all.”
“Okay. Goodnight, Ted.”
“G’night, Rebecca.”
She shut her door and he shook his head, silently berating himself for being an idiot. He glanced at the door neighboring Rebecca’s and sighed. He knocked twice and the door swung open, revealing the agitated girl who’d interrupted his sleep schedule.
“Yeah?” she said.
“Hey, um, what was your name?”
“Penny. Harris,” she added, an afterthought.
“Hey, Penny, if you could just be more respectful of the, uh, thin walls in the future, that’d be great.”
Her face flushed a deep pink and suddenly all her attitude seemed to have left her little body. She only nodded and muttered a quick apology, her eyes downcast.
“I’d apologize to your neighbors, Penny,” he said before turning to go back to his room, where he tore off his t-shirt, laid down, and passed out when his head hit the pillow.
The next couple of days were spent with his best buddy Beard who was, in his opinion, an eccentric genius. He looked the part, anyway. His hair never seemed to lay flat on his head and honestly Ted wasn’t sure whether that was a conscious choice or if he just didn’t care enough to run a comb through it in the mornings. His eyes were a little bit wild, but one look at them and anyone could tell he was well-read. He was insanely smart, likely could have gone to any college he wanted, but he’d ended up at Williams, sitting across from a kid from Kansas in the student commons a day before classes started.
Beard was reading a book. Beard was always reading a book, it seemed. Ted was consistently surprised at the amount and range of friends he managed to make when he always had his nose in some novel or academic text.
“So, what’s with you and Michelle?” Beard asked him casually without looking at him.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, at the end of last semester you said you weren’t sure what you two were. It’s been three months since then. So, what’s with you and Michelle?”
“Curious about my love life all of a sudden, Beardo?”
“Might be less curious if you hadn’t called me upwards of five times at the start of the summer specifically to talk about her.”
“I’d say it was five times, tops.”
Beard glanced up at him from his book then and raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, yeah, coulda been more than that,” he admitted. “I already apologized. You know how bad I am about uncertainties.”
“Which is funny, for a guy who’s getting a degree in religion.”
“Yep. Walkin’ contradiction…here…” he trailed off, his eyes caught on the tall blonde as she walked across the room. Rebecca Welton.
She saw him too, smiled and waved at him. He returned her smile and gave a little wave back. She was gone as quickly as she’d appeared. When he brought his gaze back to Beard, his friend was looking at him with narrowed eyes.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Why are you playing dumb today?”
“I don’t play dumb, pal, I am - wait, no. Hm. Anyway, she’s one of my residents.”
“You give all your residents your puppy dog eyes?”
He rolled his eyes.
“Shut up.”
And he did, but it had more to do with the fact that Michelle had arrived and wrapped her arms around his shoulders from behind than it did with him actually wanting to drop the subject. Ted could tell by the look on his face.
“Hey, handsome,” she said, pressing a kiss to his cheek.
“Michelle, hey,” he said, turning his head to place a chaste kiss on her lips. “I thought you were gonna call me when you got back in town.”
“I was, it just slipped my mind. Lucky for me you were here.”
Beard gave Michelle a little salute.
“Hey, Beard. Have a good summer?” she asked as she sat down beside Ted.
“Can’t complain,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, his eyes back on his book.
“Still a man of few words,” she teased.
“You know me. The less words to get the point across, the better.”
She chuckled quietly.
The three of them spent the afternoon together, catching up. Ted and Michelle did most of the talking. She regaled them about her family’s vacation to California. Her dad was the CFO of some company Ted could never remember much about. He should really start keeping better track of those things if he wanted them to work out.
They’d met at the tail end of the previous year over the winter break, the two of them the only ones in the parking lot of the library. They’d hit it off and had developed something of a relationship over the spring semester without ever putting a label on it. That was odd for him. He liked labels, in terms of relationships, but she would never call it what it was and that was frustrating. He’d had only one serious girlfriend in his lifetime and that was back in his sophomore through senior years of high school. Michelle was pretty and nice and smart and he liked her, but he felt that he might have been more into her than she was into him. He had a habit of latching on too quickly. Over the summer, they’d talked a few times and she’d finally thrown him a bone and said that “of course” they were dating and “of course” they were exclusive.
It was a relief at the time, but he also still felt on the fence with her because of the infrequency of their communication after that conversation. Navigating it all was kind of exhausting. Sometimes he wished he could skip to the part of his life where he was happily in love and raising a family with the woman of his dreams. Maybe it would be him and Michelle someday.
He went over to her apartment that evening and he filled the silence with animated conversation and she listened until she covered his mouth with hers, which he’d figured out was her way of telling him to shut up. Not that he minded.
It was nearly midnight by the time he got back to Williams Hall and he knew he’d regret his 8:00am when his alarm went off in the morning. He walked into his hall and was greeted by a friendly face.
“Ted,” she said with a smile.
“Rebecca.”
“Long night?” she asked with a quirked eyebrow as she took in his mussed hair and the red mark peeking out from under his shirt collar.
“Somethin’ like that,” he said, clearing his throat and purposefully shrugging his shoulder to shift his shirt. “What about you? Can’t sleep?”
“Notoriously bad at it, actually.”
He nodded.
“I have a sounds of the rainforest CD if you’re interested,” he offered. “I find the call of a toucan to be very soothing.”
She giggled– she giggled – and he damn near swooned right in front of her.
“It’s alright. I’m sure it’s dear to you, what with the day-to-day of dealing with first year university students.”
“It would be in poor taste to speak ill of my residents to one of my residents, y’know.”
“Of course. Wouldn’t want to break any of your moral codes there, Ted,” she teased, a sparkle in her eyes.
“Yeah, we pretty much sign our souls away when we take this job.”
“Mm. Blood oath and all, is it?”
“Oh, yeah. Whole shebang. They even get a guy to dress up as the Devil, we all wear hooded robes and everything. Very ritualistic. There was a goat last semester.”
She looked at him for a moment before she let her laughter go.
“You’re funny, Ted.”
“Oh. U-um, thank you. I hope.”
“No, it’s good. It’s good, yeah.”
They just looked at each other then and he felt a flutter in his chest. He needed to get out of there.
“Hey, you have a good night, okay?” he said, offering her a polite smile. “If you change your mind about that CD, just let me know.”
“Will do. Goodnight, Ted.”
“Night, Rebecca.”
And they parted ways.
When he woke in the morning, his first thought was that he hoped he’d see her again that day, that they might cross paths again in the hall or maybe that he’d see her elsewhere on campus. That was when he knew he was in trouble.