Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Gif credits: Rebecca by loveexpelrevolt, Ted by thelassoway

The scent of the back office at the Y is a heady (if rather off-putting) potpourri of locker room and conference room. Stale sweat—and some far more recently secreted—mingles with the memory of every pot of coffee brewed in this building in the last thirty years. It hits Ted whenever he comes in, although he usually stops noticing it by the time he’s located a free desk and gotten settled in with his laptop.

It’s always heavily air-conditioned in here, to the point that he needs a sweatshirt even in the dead of summer. Nothing says “guess you’re back in America now” like shivering indoors on a sweltering July morning. Today’s sweatshirt is one of the fancy Todd Snyder ones he bought in London—he figured they’d stay in his drawer until October at least, but he almost always grabs one before leaving the house. His USA-sized iced mocha puddles condensation on the desk, and he uses his very soft, plush, high-quality sweatshirt sleeve to mop it up before the water can reach the computer. He’d bought the mocha from a little walk-up coffee window he often passes and had never visited until today; he’d been sweating in the 94-degree heat as he placed his order, forgetting all about how cold he was about to be.

The office is usually busier than this; sometimes it’s crowded enough that Ted appreciates the intensity of the a/c. But this is a field trip day for most of the summer camps so things are quiet. He’s the only person in the back office, in fact, and he really doesn’t need to be here today at all. He’s not officially on the clock. It’s Michelle’s week to pick Henry up from day camp. He could stand to glance at his email and maybe make a little progress on fall sports sign-ups, but that could happen anywhere he’s got an internet connection, and it certainly doesn’t need to happen today.

It’s just that he’s a little nervous about the presser. 3 p.m. over there; 9 a.m. for him. This is the first Richmond anything he’ll be catching on TV since experiencing it all in-person for almost three years, and an empty house didn’t seem like an appealing viewing location. It just didn’t seem right, imagining himself watching Rebecca announce Roy as the new gaffer while he sat around on a day off, all footloose and fancy free. Or something like that. So he’s here amongst his work, which is the work of childs’ play, and is ready to tune in.

He’s giving himself the summer, maybe the summer and fall—summer and fall and winter, max, with spring as a plan B—to figure out exactly what it is he wants to do with his life now that he’s back home in Kansas. After making considerable bank with the Premier League, his usual reasons for wanting to work (living requires money, earning a living in a satisfying manner requires some engagement with a vocation) don’t feel particularly pressing. And it’s kinda funny, when you think about it, that What do you want to do with your life? is a question so often answered via thoughts on a paycheck and how to come by one.

Ted wants to be a father. He wants to be a coach. A friend. A husband, a partner, something approaching that realm. 

Ingredients-wise, he isn’t doing too bad in life, and in fact is excelling in several key areas. He’s got Henry, and even after just a couple months back it’s impossible to quantify how many orders of magnitude better he feels, just being here for his son. He coaches the kids at the Y, and that feels vocation-adjacent, and he’s pretty sure that when he’s ready to get back to a job with a grown-up team he won’t have too difficult a time finding a role that suits. He’s got friends, here, there, and everywhere. An ex-wife who really puts the “former” in his identity as a (former) husband, her identity as a (former) wife. 

And the group chat, which is labeled R K R & Me 👀 in his phone. Which is…something. A lot of something. 

Ted fires off a couple emails. Easy ones, skimmed right off the top of the ol’ inbox. He considers forging ahead and opening up the site they use to collect league sign-ups, but he’s not actually supposed to be working today. None of this stuff is due for days. And he’s distracted. Just a few more minutes now.

Roy called last night, mid-evening for Ted, very late for him. Roy can always sleep, but last night he couldn’t. For a very embarrassing split-second that luckily didn’t get verbalized, Ted had thought Roy was calling in relation to one of the (ahem) more fun activities that’s been occupying some of their phone time lately. But almost immediately, Roy had launched into a bit of a speech that boiled down to figuring that if he was going to have a change of heart and turn down Rebecca’s promotion, he really ought to do it before the press conference, shouldn’t he?

“Roy,” Ted had said, face still burning as he quietly set the bottle of lube back down on his nightstand. “Are you telling me you’re gonna turn it down? Or are you asking me if you can do this job?”

Roy had sighed. “I’m asking you if I can do this job.” 

The lube had come in handy (handy!) eventually. But first, they’d talked for a long time, and in more detail than they’d ever discussed before, the potential Ted saw in Roy’s career. Ted’s own strengths and weaknesses. The most challenging parts of coaching at this level, and the parts that had come naturally to Ted, and the occasionally overlapping but often distinct parts that came naturally to Roy. 

By the time they got off the phone, Roy seemed steady again. And by the time Ted woke up this morning, the group chat had populated with new messages, and the regular stream of dialogue continued until just a little while ago. Ted appreciates that they’ve been keeping up the conversation with him even as something major is happening so far away from where he is, something that has every right to fully occupy their time. He’s heard from Beard and Nate today, too. Higgins. Sort of…everybody.

Today’s announcement is much-anticipated. Everyone—fans, players, staff, redditors—has known for weeks that Roy had been offered the gig and was taking it, was already serving as interim head coach. But Rebecca’s decided to publicly share the news today, with only a month before the first match of the season, because the shares of the club have finally officially distributed to the plethora of new minority owners, and she’s been wanting to tie the new ownership model and new leadership into a single message about Richmond’s future. It’s Rebecca’s second time ushering in a new era at the club, and she’s being very careful to do it right on purpose this time. (They’ve figured out a compromise, the two of them, for how they talk about Rebecca’s first leadership era, the Lasso Et Al era, settling on a place to land that’s somewhere between Ted’s “You are the greatest ever” and Rebecca’s “I could’ve ruined everything and nearly did.” [He still doesn’t think they came quite as close to ruination as Rebecca does; then again, sometimes words mean different things to different people.] Now Rebecca can bear to say without cringing that maybe she did it right by accident. Regardless, today is time for something new.) 

Ted takes a fortifying sip of his mocha (the sugar surges straight into his skull) and sets up his browser to stream the presser, refreshing a couple times to make sure everything’s right. As amped up as he feels, he almost forgets to pay attention to the brief moments of room setup he catches on the stream, nearly glossing over the fact that the internet is bringing him miraculous insight into a place he otherwise could not see. Just off-camera, the room is full of people he loves. He’s always liked press conferences, has always treated them like a cross between info sesh and stand-up and motivational speech, and actually, just last night they’d talked about—

Rebecca. It happens fast, the way she takes over the screen like a vision. She stands in front of the table, as is her way (and gosh, he really had no idea what was in store for him, no idea at all, that first time he sat at that table and she got between him and what felt like the entire British press corps). She’s wearing dark blue, the fabric crisscrossing up her body, and for a few seconds all he can think about are her breasts.

It’s the group chat’s fault.

He went years without an “I love you” (that kind of I love you) and now he’s been back in Kansas two months and from four thousand miles away his screen keeps filling up with dick pics, titty shots (Keeley’s phrase, and “nothing she hasn’t seen before”), tiny love letters, how’s-your-day type questions that expect real answers. He knows when Roy and Keeley start sleeping together again (again), and he knows when Rebecca joins them, and they’ve made it known just how welcome he is. 

He gets a grip. Rebecca is eloquent, enthused, commanding, fun. He loves her. Feels a lot like caffeine. 

He shouldn’t do it, but he lets himself think for just a moment about where he’d be if he was there. What place he’d find for himself in that room full of people who love him. He’s certain Keeley’s standing at the back, smiling as the day she’s helped to set in motion unfolds before her. Maybe he’d stand beside her, her hip just barely bumping against his frame. Wanting to hold her hand. She and Barbara are drafting up plans for a women’s team—it’s one of the few things happening in Keeley’s world that he knows about and Rebecca doesn’t. (The night Keeley told him what they were working on, they’d stayed on the phone for hours, just the two of them, one of those hopes-and-dreams conversations that condenses entire lifetimes into two soft voices taking turns.) It’s a whole new future. Rebecca’s going to want that future, as soon as she knows. He’s certain of that at least. And maybe he—

Maybe. 

For now, he sits at his desk and watches, content to enjoy the goosebumps prickling his skin as Roy takes the mic for his first official press conference as head coach.

Chapter Text

She’s the one who puts a stop to it. It isn’t fair to either of them, if they each want to find a partner in their own timezone, that they keep spending all this time on the phone with each other. It just doesn’t make sense long-term, to prioritize a friendly long-distance arrangement at the expense of casting a wider net and getting serious about settling down. Not when they’ve each made their choices about where that settling down has to occur.

Ted understands, she’s pretty sure. It’s not that they have to stop talking. They’re still friends—that was the whole point this entire time. Right at the start, they promised nothing would interrupt their friendship. So they text some, like always. And five days into friends without benefits, Rebecca calls him at a sensible hour on a Tuesday, just as she’s finishing work (she’s definitely not trying to prove how normal she’s feeling about it all, and she definitely hasn’t internalized his workday lunch schedule in order to ensure the call is convenient and well-timed) and he lets slip that he went out for coffee the afternoon before with the mother of one of Henry’s classmates.

She doesn’t panic. What right would she have? The whole point of stopping…that was so they could have…this. A supportive friendship, the sort in which you cheer the other person on as they take the bull by the horns and ride it down the racetrack of life. Something like that.

(She doesn’t panic, and she doesn’t think about how even from four thousand miles away, sex with Ted is like nothing she’s experienced before. She doesn’t admit to herself that the memory of the whine of his bitten-back moans rushes into her senses at the most inopportune times. She doesn’t dwell on the murmur of his voice as he’d talk her through it. The way he’d sigh happily when he heard her come. The way they’d stay on the line after, talking and laughing until the conversation hit a lazy lull and he’d tell her to get some good sleep and that she should text him in the morning if she had any weird dreams.)

She doesn’t panic. She congratulates him, then changes the subject, and it’s awkward, and when they hang up she doesn’t put her phone away. Her driver picks her up and she spends the whole ride home on the dating app she downloaded five days ago. It’s easy to arrange a date for that very night, easy to drive a few neighborhoods over and pick the perfectly nice chap out of the crowd—about her age, tall and slim, with grey speckling his dark close-shaved beard—and it’s easy to make conversation over dinner, easy to say “why not?” when he invites her to his for a nightcap.

A nightcap turns into a movie, and a movie turns into a kiss, and she keeps saying yes, because she wants this, because she needs this to work, she needs to be normal and open and interested, she needs to date in London.

But there’s a moment on top of his bedcovers like a bucket of ice water drenching her. Her blouse is gone and her bra’s slipping down her shoulders and she’s already wrestled his jeans off and is tugging at the waistband of his briefs and it’s going to be so good, finally having actual literal sex with another human body for the first time since Matthijs, when he pauses the pleasant way he’s been nibbling her neck and mutters “Oh, God, Becca.”

It’s not her name.

It’s not her.

What is she doing here with this stranger whose kisses don’t make her tingle?

She starts to argue with herself, internally—it could be worse. It could’ve been “Angela” or “Susan.” He isn’t confused; he’s simply nicknamed her, landing at a perfectly acceptable approximation of what she’s used to being called. Arousal and desperation could’ve collided the syllables together; it might even be a compliment. It’s fine.

(Don’t you dare settle for fine.)

“Wait,” Rebecca gasps. She pulls away, scrambling backwards until she’s made it to the edge of the bed and can stand up. “Sorry. I—” She’s already pulling her shirt back on, buttoning up her slacks. “I shouldn’t have—I have to go.”

He doesn’t protest. He seems concerned, asks if it was something he did. He doesn’t bother to hide the disappointment on his face. She apologizes again, not entirely in control of the words exiting her mouth, shoves her shoes on her feet, and runs.

By the time she’s closed the front door behind her, she’s dialed. Ted picks up on the first ring. “Hey,” he says, concern in his voice. “You okay?”

“Will you keep me company?” she asks. God, she really doesn’t want to cry. “While I walk back to my car?”

“Gladly, but—” He sounds a little shaky. It must be very late here, late enough that he’d never have expected a call from her, not now that they’ve stopped. “Are you safe, Rebecca? What’s going on?”

“Yes, I’m all right, I just—” The words thicken in her throat. “I couldn’t do it.”

“Couldn’t do what?”

She’s crying now.

“Darlin’,” Ted tries again. “Couldn’t do what?”

“I couldn’t sleep with him. With my…date. And it’s fine, really, he was perfectly decent about it, and I’m practically back to the car, I’m just—I’m clearly not ready to throw myself into the dating scene if I can’t even handle a little getting-to-know-you with a lovely, well-meaning man.” She stops talking to fish her keys from her bag.

“Oh. Yeah. Me either.”

“Hmm?”

“I’m not ready either. I was gonna say, earlier, about my little coffee excursion—but you didn’t seem to want to talk about it—it wasn’t really that fun.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Nah, I mean, she’s a nice woman, and we had things to talk about, and, and, after you and I had that talk last week I figured I at least needed to try, so when she asked me out I said yes. I don’t plan on seeing her again. I mean we might end up bumping into each other at the play next month, or International Fest, and that’s okay, the boys are buddies, and I’m perfectly capable of a cordial hello in a gymnasium over a plate of lukewarm empanadas and potstickers—”

”Ted. You can see her again.”

“I don’t want to. I’m not interested.”

”Oh.”

He must hear her engine rev, because he asks, very gently, if she’s good to drive. She says yes; it’s true, it’s been hours since she had any alcohol, and she only had a couple of drinks. They don’t end the conversation. She connects to Bluetooth, and she doesn’t say much on the drive home, but he doesn’t offer to let her go. She narrates a little, still shaken, and still shaken about being shaken, providing mundane little descriptions of a long red light, a crowd of people leaving a show, the moment she finally turns into her street and pulls into her drive.

She’d call it testing the limits, but there’s nothing to test: it’s very straightforward, his willingness to listen to her drink water and brush her teeth. He tells her a little something about his night while she removes her makeup and sprays toner and rubs moisturizer into her skin.

In bed, it’s not like he’s there with her—his body is thousands of miles away. She’s sure she feels far away to him, too. But when she asks him if he wants to try again, his sharp intake of breath makes her feel like she’s whispered the words directly into his ear, close enough to touch him with her tongue. And as he asks her to stretch out and get comfortable and touch herself, his voice surrounds her like an embrace.

Chapter Text

When Trent’s wedding invitation arrives in the mail, looking only a little worse for wear after an overseas flight, Ted does three things in rapid succession.

One. Sends his affirmative RSVP.

First he gazes with fondness upon the semi-translucent vellum overlay, the minimalist sans-serif small caps entreating him to give Trent and Matthew the pleasure of his company, the gold leaf edging on the rich charcoal-grey cardstock. Seems only fitting that Trent Crimm—and his betrothed, about whom Ted’s heard great things—would have classy taste in stationery. After appreciating the aesthetics, he takes in the words and notices the date of the wedding is just three weeks away. He flips to the back of the envelope to check the postmark and sees that whether it’s the fault of the Royal Mail or USPS, the card has been in transit for a couple months now. He wonders if he missed a Save the Date email; he wouldn’t put it past him. He pulls out his phone and respondez s’il vous plaîts right away, adding a note that he’s sorry for the delay.

Two. Books a flight.

He can swing a long weekend, figuring Friday to Monday will give him a chance to visit some old haunts and see some familiar faces, even if most of Saturday will be taken up with the wedding festivities. It’s been over a year since he moved back to Kansas—well over—but this’ll be his first time returning to London. He’s wanted to make a trip sooner. He just…hasn’t. Something’s stopped him every time he’s considered it.

Three. Texts Rebecca.

As he often does, he takes a moment to scroll through their recent messages before texting Rebecca to say he’s booked a flight for the wedding. His thumb flies over the abundance of words between them, eyes catching at random on the yellow, green, blue, and purple squares from NYT Connections, funny gifs (mostly cats, quokkas, and Star Wars), and personal messages. Rebecca’s hysterical description of a lunch with her mother when Keeley wasn’t available to act as buffer. His play-by-play of Henry’s most recent match. Plans to chat. Plans to Facetime. Article recommendations. Recipes she looked up when he got too much squash in his CSA box. Congratulated wins, consoled losses, cursed-at draws.

When he stops reading and starts typing, Rebecca responds right away. She seems happy he’ll be there for the wedding. They fall into an hours-long text conversation that happens alongside the rest of the events of the day. Sometimes minutes or even an hour pass between messages, but it feels like one long talk fueled by anticipation for the visit, like the sort of conversation he likes best—flirty and enthusiastic and meandering. She’s single again, and he’s single still, and he tells himself this doesn’t matter but it makes him enjoy their interactions more.

He’s wrapping up work and she’s done with a late dinner and in for the night by the time she invites him to stay at her house when he’s there. After he takes her up on the offer, he has to wait a while for the next message. When it arrives, he understands why.

You remember that night you stayed here when there was a gas leak on your street? I sort of thought you were going to stop by my room after I left the kitchen.

For all their words, this is the first time either of them have brought up that final week he spent in London. She’s brave. He’s a coward, and his coward’s reaction is immediate—sweaty palms, heavy heart, the feeling of needing to swallow a bunch of times even though there’s nothing in his throat. He’d arrived the same time as Beard and Jane that night, and they’d all stood around talking for a bit before Beard and Jane made a not-particularly-graceful departure for the bedroom, clearly ready to finish whatever they’d started before the emergency alert came through. He can remember exactly what it felt like to be alone with Rebecca in her beautiful kitchen, to accept the glass of wine, to sit next to her at the counter and converse in hushed tones. They’d spent plenty of evenings in each other’s company—team events, nighttime matches, dinners out. But that unexpected night drew a deeper intimacy from their existing closeness, something that took the years of proximity and mutual appreciation and the tender way they challenged each other and rolled it into the shape of a new possibility, ripe and ready for the taking.

He takes a deep breath. I’m sorry. I wanted to but it felt too complicated

This time, she responds right away. Why didn’t you?

Because he’d been days away from leaving. Because he was afraid. Because Rebecca deserved so much more than what he could offer.

That night in her kitchen, she’d finished her wine—his was already gone—and stood to set their glasses in the sink without saying anything. She drew her red robe more tightly around herself on her way back to the island, but let go with one hand when she was next to him so she could rest her hand on his upper back. The touch was casual but monumental, and he wanted it always, and he could only have it for a few more days, or never again, and it was too much to process all at once. She’d murmured in his ear: “My room’s second on the right upstairs. If you need anything.”

He’d smiled and said “Thanks, Rebecca,” and they’d looked at each other openly. For just that one moment, he’d let himself feel immersed in the possibility of what they could have. She’d grinned at what she saw and turned and left, and a few minutes later he found himself standing outside her bedroom door for long enough that she could probably sense his presence before he kept moving down the hallway to the room where she’d had him set his bag. He barely slept that night, and in the morning they kept things light, or pretended to. The botched opportunity became yet another one of the ways he’d disappointed her, yet another thing she could lump into the category of stuff she wasn’t ready to talk to him about.

I guess it just didn’t seem quite right, he sends.

He waits a long time, long enough to obsess over whether he should clarify that the wrongness was his timing, his fears. The wrongness was him.

So it wasn’t worth it, she replies.

No, he responds. Just the one word, and then a flurry: I mean no, that’s not what I meant at all.

For the first few minutes after sending, he lets himself believe she’s going to ask him to say more, but she doesn’t. He clutches the phone, looking at the disastrous messages like they’ll miraculously course correct if he stares hard enough. There’s a rushing hum filling his ears and he can’t hear himself think.

When he wakes up in the morning and Rebecca’s Connections result is the only new text in their thread, he looks up Trent and Matthew’s wedding website and books himself a room at one of the suggested hotels.

**

Most of the weddings Rebecca has attended have ultimately led to divorce.

Her own, although it took twelve years to end. Beard and Jane’s, which took four months. Sassy and Derren’s. School friends, her old boss at the gallery, her old boss at the bar, the occasional AFC Richmond shareholder who throws an invitation her way…some of the unions have survived, but so many weddings turn out to be an expensive explosion of hope (bravado, really) followed by a miserable freefall into loneliness.

This morning she asked Keeley, while they were getting manicures prior to Trent Crimm’s nuptials, if she thought she’d marry Roy someday. Keeley had laughed a little, then said, “Rebecca, I want to love him forever, not spend months dividing all our assets in a highly contentious divorce.” She’d gone contemplative, though, probably thinking about a walk down the aisle, the sunbeams from Roy’s just-for-Keeley smile enveloping her in light. Her final answer was “I dunno. Maybe someday.”

Trent’s wedding is, admittedly, just as wonderful as whatever Keeley had daydreamed about. He and Matthew have kept it in the AFC Richmond family, renting out Ola’s for the evening. Matthew’s sister is the officiant and Trent’s daughter is the flower girl. The ceremony is short and sweet, Simi and the kitchen staff outdo themselves with the dinner menu, and the reception is so full of exuberance that Rebecca feels a bit swept away despite having been in a slump for the past three weeks. She’d been planning to sneak out early, but she keeps finding excuses to stay.

It’s been fine, seeing Ted today. If it wasn’t, she’d have already vacated to lick her wounds in private, but it’s been really, truly fine.

It’s just that she’d wanted it to feel great.

They’ve been in daily contact for months. He’s one of her best friends—probably even more of a pillar in her life than he was when he lived in Richmond, and she hadn’t even known it would be possible for him to matter more to her than he did back then. She filters the events of her days through what she wants to tell him about, and waits for his updates like they’re a new novel from her favorite author. When he’d told her he’d be here for the wedding she’d felt a flare of ecstasy. She’d let herself believe they were going to figure things out this time, that all the near misses and non-starters and the lovely endless conversation that is their relationship would finally coalesce into something tangible. Something that requires their bodies.

He’s wearing a familiar suit tonight, and she’s chosen a red dress she knows he’s seen her in before. His tie is red. It’s so easy to imagine him having wanted to know the color of her dress in advance so they could coordinate, but they only match by accident. They’ve spent the last three weeks on Connections, not connecting. On pleasantries, not anticipated pleasure. On friendship that’s just a little bit—or a lot—flatter than it was before she finally dared to bring up the night Ted stayed over and ended up completely crushed.

They hugged hello before the ceremony, but almost immediately it was time to choose seats, and she got swept into the row with Roy and Keeley, Sam and Simi, Nate and Jade, while Ted sat a couple of rows back with Beard and the baby. She and Ted have found themselves in the same group conversations a few times during the reception, but they’re standing across the room from each other when utensils start to clink against glasses and Trent rises from his seat to toast the room.

Trent looks happier—lighter—than Rebecca has ever seen him. The crowd quiets as he prepares to speak, and she watches him take just a tiny moment for himself to breathe in, to look around, to feel the love accumulated in the room.

“Trent Crimm, codependent,” he says to an immediate burst of laughter from the group. He glances at his husband as the laughter dies down, scrunching his nose and grinning to show he’s mostly kidding.

(Ted told her once, at the first charity gala she ran post-divorce, to start her speech with a joke, something self-deprecating to disarm the crowd and get them on her side. It was good advice.)

The Trent she first met had a biting wit, a propensity for cutting to the quick. He’s still sharp, but she wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of his message, on today of all days, is softer than what she’s used to hearing from him.

She’s right.

“Falling in love with Matthew wasn’t exactly convenient,” Trent says. “He was a bit too young, and I was a bit too busy. He wasn’t in London much, and I rarely had time to travel. But no matter how sensible I tried to be, he kept popping up, and”—he stifles a sob, emotional—“and I had no choice but to pay attention. They say ‘when you know, you know.’ But I think such platitudes—such clichés—do a real disservice to all the very practical decisions that love requires. It was all well and good that Matthew and I loved each other. Love each other. But it took a great deal of effort to get here, and it took all of you…our friends, our family…to help create the sort of world where we could build a life together and trust that all the little details would work out. Those decisions and details matter, don’t they?”

Yes, Rebecca thinks. They matter. Suddenly, she can’t bear to look directly at that much faith and hope. She scans the crowd and catches sight of Ted taking a moment with his eyes squeezed shut. He opens them almost right away, opens his whole face, and there’s something both wistful and resolute about his smile. She twists the stem of her champagne flute between her fingers and sets it on the bar behind her. Maybe nowhere is safe to look.

“And so, anyway, thank you all for being here, and thank you, Sam and Simi, for opening this beautiful space to us. We’ll have a few toasts later, but for now, please—to borrow a very reasonable cliché—eat, drink, and be merry.”

When Trent sits back down and the party’s focus fractures into celebratory chaos again, Rebecca slips past the crowd and heads outside. It’s a cool night; the air finally feels autumnal. She’d been a bit too warm inside, and the breeze feels good against her arms and chest. She inhales deeply and has barely started to let the air out again when Ted steps up beside her, two glasses of white wine in his hands. He lifts his eyebrows, raising one glass just slightly, and she reaches out to take it.

Ted stands next to her, shoulder to shoulder, both looking forward. He clears his throat. “Believe it or not, I’ve learned a thing or two in therapy,” he says quietly. “I’ve learned that it’s real annoying and unfair when somebody is all ‘I’m the worst’ and ‘I don’t deserve to be happy’ and ‘what would she ever want with little old me’ when they’re, you know. Fine. But that’s what I meant, when I said I wanted to but that it was complicated. I didn’t mean that it wasn’t worth it, or that you weren’t worth it. I meant that you deserved something better than me.”

“Ted—”

“Can I tell you what I was feeling back then, in the days before I left?”

Whatever the truth is, she needs to know. She takes a sip of her wine, and he mirrors the act with his own glass, sighing a little after he gulps. “Of course you can.”

“I felt like a terrible father. And a terrible coach.”

“But you weren’t. You never were.”

“I know,” he says, bobbing his head like yes and no. “But it’s how I felt. And I felt a bunch of other stuff too, I mean, I felt homesick, and jilted, and angry, and tired. And scared of how much I was gonna miss this home. My job. Scared of how much I was gonna miss everybody. Especially you. And the thought of opening up that night and, yeah, sleeping together, and having fun with you, but also letting you see all that stuff that was wrong with me even more clearly than you already had? I just couldn’t do it. Because you deserved better than the person I thought I was, and I couldn’t figure out how to put that into words.”

“You’re right, I did deserve better.” She’s angry now, at the wasted time, but she’s hopeful too, and so full of love for him that the thought of being anything less than honest feels ludicrous. “Not better than you, I mean, there’s no one—” She blushes. “What I mean is, you should’ve given me the chance to decide for myself what I deserved. What I could handle.”

“I do know that,” Ted says. “Now. For what that’s worth.”

She turns to look at him. He turns to look at her.

“You don’t scare me, Ted.”

He nods. “Okay.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

He looks startled by the question, but not all the way to frightened. “Not usually, no.”

“Good,” she says. “I feel better.”

“You do?”

She does. She feels immensely better. “Yes. The things we have to figure out—” She thrusts her thumb in the direction of Ola’s. “it’s like what he said in there, isn’t it?”

Ted’s expression softens into an enormous grin. “‘Til death do us part’?”

Fuck, but he’s good at making her smile. “No,” she says, showily patient, fully aware that he’s aware of what she actually meant. “Decisions. And details.”

“Right, right. And how they matter.”

He lifts his free hand, cupping the back of his own neck in a stretch that’s meant to self-soothe, or buy time as he decides what to do next.

“When I invite you home with me,” she says softly, “what decision do you make next?”

“Second door on the right.”

“What?”

“When I go home with you. Your bedroom is upstairs, the second door on the right.”

**

There is no happier place than a quiet house on a free Sunday morning. Rebecca’s kitchen is full of light, and as they dance around each other fixing coffee and tea, Ted catches himself thinking thoughts like “and so is her smile.”

He can’t help it—he’s learned so much about her since last night, has learned the trembling of her thighs when he touched her between her legs, the sweet sound of her whimper as he entered her. She bit shallow grooves into the skin beneath her lower lip when she came, the marks ephemeral enough that he couldn’t detect the texture with his tongue when he leaned in to taste her. She welcomed his own orgasm with her whole being, treating his pleasure like a gift. He’s learned she gets overheated when she sleeps, but she wanted him close, preferring to sacrifice the duvet so she could handle his body heat. He’s learned how radiant she is when there’s nothing left to hold back.

Last night they kissed on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, the press of their mouths warm and long and intense, and he lost himself to sensation. The rest of the world flickered into darkness. There was only bliss. But not long after they parted their mouths to let each other more fully in, right as he was really starting to respond to the tiny mewls of pleasure Rebecca was pressing against his tongue, she poured cold wine down his back. He gasped, she gasped, they stepped away from each other but kept holding on. Her eyes were saucer-wide.

“Fuck,” she said. “I forgot I was holding that.” They burst into laughter.

The soaked suit jacket did serve as a sort of excuse, propelling them back to Rebecca’s house more quickly than they might’ve departed otherwise. Leaving Ola’s is a bit of a blur—the goodbyes are hazy now, the car ride a blip that might’ve lasted thirty seconds or an eon—but everything after is crystallized in his memory. Everything before, too.

He’s never known whether to regret bypassing her bedroom that night he stayed over, and he still doesn’t. He regrets how it made her feel, and he regrets the foolish attempt at hiding himself—that’s never been possible with her. But here, standing around barely clothed in the bright expanse of morning, he’s more interested in dwelling in the present, in the beauty of an entire day with her.

Rebecca hands him his mug. “We could take these back to bed,” she says, eyes darting to rake appreciatively up and down his body, smirking at the hunger that takes over his face.

This time, when she leaves the room he follows.

Chapter Text

“Anything else I can do for you, Miss Welton?” Mr. Hogarth asks.

This initial financial appointment has lasted nearly an hour; it’s clear Mr. Hogarth is ready to wrap things up. He’s about Rebecca’s age, or perhaps a bit older, with thinning hair, a bushy salt-and-pepper beard, red cheeks, soft hands. Since she arrived at the firm about an hour ago, he’s the only person she’s seen wearing a full suit. She hasn’t worked with him before—or with this firm at all—but it occurred to her a few weeks ago that she’d been letting a few estate planning and account management tasks pile up because she was still using her parents’ financial advisor, the now-ancient fellow she’d gone to since she first she opened her own accounts as a teen. Every time she thought about making an appointment, she’d end up thrust into the memories of the countless hours spent trapped with her mother in a stuffy office, trying and mostly failing to disentangle the webs of her father’s accounts after his thoughtlessly abrupt passing. So she decided to start fresh with a different firm, and selected Hogarth, Hogarth, & Steaves after reading some satisfactory reviews online.

“Right,” Rebecca says. “Just one more thing, I do need to update primary and contingent beneficiaries here…” She scans the portfolio snapshot projected onto the monitor on Mr. Hogarth’s desk, pointing to the correct account.

Mr. Hogarth turns the monitor back around. “Go on,” he says, polite with just the barest edge of impatience, and flutters his hands over the keyboard in an exaggerated gesture of anticipation.

“Primary beneficiary should be Ted Lasso. Erm, Theodore.” She and Ted keep separate accounts for most everything for a thousand different reasons, all of which they discussed at length after they’d been together about six months, hence this being the first moment she’s mentioned Ted’s name to Mr. Hogarth. But last week she and Ted talked through this one important change—the idea of making sure he and Henry were accounted for in her estate planning. Ted hadn’t wanted to talk about it at first, hadn’t wanted to think about the eventuality of her death, the horrible notion that she might go first and leave him behind. Love, she’d said, do you think I like the idea of you leaving me behind any better? Let’s talk about it now, while we’re both healthy and have a zillion years ahead of us. That had gotten him to listen to reason and entertain the discussion. It was a difficult discussion to have long-distance, but she didn’t want to put off the updates until he was here next month. She wanted to settle things as soon as possible so they didn’t have to wade through the mire of it when he was here.

Mr. Hogarth raises his eyebrows; he must know who Ted is, though he’ll act as if he doesn’t. “And what’s a good mobile, mailing address, and email for Mr. Lasso?”

Rebecca recites all three, making sure to emphasize the +1 international code in Ted’s phone number.

“Ah,” Mr. Hogarth says. “An American. Understood. Relation?”

“Partner.”

The slightest smile—patronizing, if she were to be uncharitable—curls at the edge of Mr. Hogarth’s mouth. “Right.” He clears his throat as he puts the finishing touches on the word. “And you mentioned wanting to update your contingent beneficiary while you’re at it? Another gift for Ms. Collins, I presume?”

“I’d like to name two—fifty percent to Ms. Collins, er, Nora Collins, and the other half to Henry Lasso.”

“Let me guess: partner’s son.”

“That’s right,” Rebecca says flatly.

“What a lucky, lucky boy,” Mr. Hogarth marvels.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, it seems to me that he’s sitting in school in America at the moment, learning how many stripes are on the flag or whatever it is they teach them there, and he probably has no idea that as of the time I save this document, he’s sitting rather comfortably on a pile of a couple hundred million pounds.”

The tiniest laugh startles out of Rebecca. “I mean, yes, Jesus Christ, I’m filthy rich, but you do recognize we’re talking about my death in this scenario? And his father’s?”

“Oh, well, I wasn’t trying to be insensitive—”

“If I die first, Ted gets the full value, and he knows that ultimately I want that money split between my goddaughter and his son. He’ll do it. And you know what? If I know him, and I do, he won’t even wait ‘til he’s gone to take care of it.”

“I’m sure he’ll carry out your wishes perfectly.”

“He will,” Rebecca says tersely.

If Ted were here, Mr. Hogarth would be able to see for himself how trustworthy he is. How little the money matters to him. How genuinely he wants Nora to have a life every bit as lovely as Henry’s. She wishes he was here right now, that the paisley upholstered armchair next to hers was occupied with her quote-unquote partner, that he was with her to rattle off a few fun facts about Henry and make a joke about rich people and swear all too earnestly that they were raising the kind of boy who’d give away what he could to try to make other people’s lives better. Because he’d give Rebecca credit for some of the raising. If he was here. He’d probably brag on her a bit too, managing to mention the charities she supports, her work juggling two football clubs. He’d rib at Mr. Hogarth when he inevitably admits he doesn't keep up with women’s football. She misses Ted so much it makes her angry. With great suddenness, a pit opens in her stomach. It feels massive and painful, like it’s been gnawed bigger with every day that passes without seeing him. It’s been ages since missing him made her miserable like this.

Things with Mr. Hogarth escalate.

It’s his fault: he doesn’t leave well enough alone. It’s all terribly modern, these transcontinental families. The wonders of technology. The disregard for the institution of marriage. The rise of the girlboss, a term he just read for the first time in the Telegraph. The miracle that a little boy in the “middle of nowhere” is set for this lifetime and beyond without so much as an evil stepmother mucking up his fun.

It’s her fault: she eggs him on. She’s rude. Her side of the conversation involves some choice words about his preferred periodical. She manages to pull the population of the Kansas City metropolitan area out of her arse. She’s an absolute bitch, frankly. It all goes a bit fuzzy after that, although she’s pretty sure she expresses her surprise at finding a financial advisor who time-traveled from the 1950s, and he insinuates that it isn’t at all surprising that the only man who can stomach being with her has to do it from an entirely different country, and suddenly she’s standing in the doorway, spitting out a “Fuck you” before she turns to leave.

Of course Ted happens to call the moment she’s back to her car.

“Hi, honey,” he says cheerfully. “Just got in the Uber to the airport. Gotham City tonight, ‘n we did decide to give everybody a couple days extra in the city since we’ve got a bye next week. Bunch of ‘em have sponsorship meetings they’ll wanna do in-person anyway.”

“Lovely.”

“Hey, you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Wait, didn’t you have that estate planning thing this afternoon? All that get squared away okay?”

“No,” Rebecca says sullenly. “I mean, it nearly did, but the guy was an arsehole for absolutely no good reason and I handled it like shit and fired him—if swearing and storming out counts as firing—and now all my money is floating in the fucking ether somewhere? So now I’ve got to find a financial planner who isn’t shit. But hey, at least Henry and Nora’ll be loaded when we croak. They can count the massive stacks of cash to stop themselves from crying.”

“Count st—what? What happened at that appointment, Rebecca?”

“I don’t want to talk about it—”

“—kinda seems like you are—”

“—over the phone.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s fine. I’ll get it all sorted. Like always.” Her eyes don’t fill with tears, but she feels something adjacent to crying bubbling up from her chest. She hates, hates, hates when she’s angry enough to cry. She hates Mr. Hogarth for being an idiot. She hates online reviewers for not hating him—they were probably all bribed, anyway. She hates Ted for not being here. And she hates herself full stop. For thinking too highly of other people’s shit opinions. For thinking too highly of her own.

“Honey, I gotta say, I don’t think I’ve got the full story here. Maybe we could FaceTime once I get to the airport, when you’re—”

“Don’t say when I’ve calmed down. You try listening to some fucking arsehole call you a basic American golddigger and imply that Henry’s going to dance on our graves once he gets the cash.” She knows she’s exaggerating for effect. She can’t help it. “But it’s fine. I’m perfectly capable of managing on my own.”

“Do you need to call in a Code Red?”

Right. There are the tears. A Code Red is what they call it when long-distance and planned visits and cohabitation during off-seasons and missing each other constantly gets to be too much. It’s a sacred thing, invoking a Code Red that requires them to drop everything as quickly as reasonably possible and make time for a spontaneous visit. In a year-and-a-half together, they’ve used Code Red only one time each. Mid-September for him. A dark stretch of January for her.

“No,” she says. “Really.” She sniffles. “Text me before your flight?”

“And when we land, and when we get to the stadium, and when the match is over—although I hope you’re asleep for those last two—you’re really all right?”

She breathes in. She misses him. “Genuinely.”

“Love you. And I really do wanna talk about this later.”

“I know. Love you too.”

***

She’s still in a bad mood the next morning. She slept poorly, she stewed, she tossed and turned, ashamed that waking up to a plethora of sweet texts from Ted only made her feel the ache of his absence. She makes tea and espresso, fixing the former in a travel mug because of course she’s running late on top of everything else that’s bothering her.

She opens the door to leave and Ted is standing on the other side, rumpled and bloodshot after a presumably sleepless all-night flight.

“What are you doing here?” she blurts. “I didn’t use my Code Red!” She can’t have used it on something so small; she needs to save it for when she really needs it, when she really can’t go on without him. It isn’t fair.

“I know.” He grins, and they fall into each other’s arms. “I needed to use mine.”

Chapter Text

Do you believe in aliens?

As far as vastly open-ended and deeply existential questions go, Rebecca doesn’t think this one is that weird. Aliens are a common fixation in film and television, literature, the press, government, even scientific circles, and they’ve been in the news a lot lately, and Rebecca is pretty certain the “extraterrestrial bodies” currently undergoing lab testing are a scam, and not even a particularly well-executed one. But all these scam ETs have got her thinking, especially when she looks up at the light-polluted sky on an occasional walk home from the pub: she assumes the real ones must be out there somewhere. There’s got to be more to life than this.

It’s sort of fun, having a new curiosity to occupy her time. She reads news coverage, digs up old stories online, and lurks on a few forums, although she gives up the forums up rather quickly. If she wanted a true break with reality, she’d just ring her mother.

The aliens are a good distraction from work stress and the seemingly endless countdown to Ted’s next visit.

Before long, solitary research doesn’t feel like quite enough. She needs in-person dialogue about aliens. But every conversation she has just makes her feel…weird. Even though she really doesn’t think it should be weird at all.

She starts with Leslie. Sometime last year, she’d bombarded him with “Do you believe in psychics?” and his response was rather good, so she poses the alien existence question at the start of their weekly one-on-one. He looks briefly afraid for her—and she doesn’t know why, because isn’t it perfectly logical to assume the universe has room for a whole plethora of societies?—and tells her about the time he and Julie saw an alien on New Year’s Eve that turned out to be a potentially illegal floating lantern their neighbor had released during a bonfire in his garden. It’s almost as if he’s dodging the actual question.

Sassy isn’t any better. “Stinky. Little green men?” she asks, nose wrinkling. “Can’t say I’ve spent much time pondering it. But at this point I’ve been on so many shitty first dates I’d welcome a little alien abduction to shake up the weekend.”

While Rebecca is still at Sassy’s house, she corners Nora, already gearing up for a far more enlightening chat. But when she knocks on Nora’s bedroom door, she finds her sullen and withdrawn. (She counts it as a compliment that she’s invited in anyway.) Girl trouble. Rebecca ends the weekend overwhelmed with gratitude that Nora feels close enough to her that they can talk about personal things, but her craving for extraterrestrial discourse goes unsatisfied.

In the coaches’ office, she gets all three at once.

“Yeah, of course I believe,” Roy says, but he refuses to elaborate.

Nathan is very interested in the microbes that research shows could survive on Mars. More interested than she is, admittedly, although she appreciates how game he is to discuss.

Beard lunges for his desk, pulling a thick tome out of the bottom drawer and thrusting it into her arms. “Read this,” he says, eyes glittering. “And we’ll talk.”

Rebecca actually does ring her mother. And for the first time in the history of their relationship, Rebecca attempts a conversational journey to the otherworldly while Deborah would rather stay on Earth. She can hardly believe how unfair it is.

Before the match at Arsenal on Saturday, Keeley and Rebecca are off in search of the champagne bar when Rebecca tries and fails to find a clever way to broach the subject.

“Aliens,” Keeley says, seeming to go someplace else for a moment. “Gosh, um, I dunno. What do you think?” She glances to the side. “Actually, you know what, hold that thought, I’m just going to run to the loo and, uh, reapply my lip liner.”

Rebecca opens her mouth and shuts it again. The sigh is involuntary, and so is the smile, fond in spite of the slight disappointment she hopes Keeley can’t detect. She knows there’s an interesting opinion somewhere in there; Keeley has an interesting opinion on everything. She finds the bar, orders two flutes, and when Keeley meets her there she hands over the drink and doesn’t revisit the topic. Maybe she needs to put it to rest.

But when Ted arrives the next day, the question bursts out of her while they’re waiting on their drinks at the Crown & Anchor. “Do you believe in aliens, Ted?”

“Uh,” Ted says, and she swears his eyes dart away from hers, same as Keeley’s did. But then he perks right up. “I believe in Sigourney Weaver,” he says, waggling his eyebrows and parting his lips in a big grin.

Mae sets their drinks on the bar, and Rebecca and Ted head to the corner of the pub, where the coaches, Keeley, and Leslie are all waiting. At least Ted’s staying with her; she’ll get the real answer out of him before the week is through.

Or before the night is through, as it turns out.

Much, much later, on the walk home from the pub, Rebecca doesn’t look up at the sky at all. She’s entirely focused on present company, the known entities that are Keeley and Ted, one on either side of her for the journey to her house, the shed coats, the glasses of water in the kitchen, the slightly sloppy kisses, the giddily blurry journey to the present moment, sitting side by side on the bed, still mostly dressed, giggling at nothing. Or everything.

Rebecca’s in the middle. She turns to her right, to Ted. To her left, to Keeley. “You’re going to think I’ve lost it,” she says, “but I absolutely have to know. Do you believe in aliens? Seriously. It’s driving me mad.”

Keeley shuts her giggles down. “You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

She sounds shy. “I’m afraid I’ll answer wrong—”

“You haven’t been afraid of me in years—“

“No, but I’m afraid I’ll answer wrong and you won’t show us your tits.”

“Well, that’s an absolutely horrible thought,” says Ted. “Thanks a lot, Keeley.”

“I believe there’s intelligent life somewhere out there,” Keeley says softly. “I believe that very much.”

“Me too,” says Ted.

“Oh, thank God.”

“Wait, really?” Keeley’s the one speaking, but her surprise and relief are matched by the look on Ted’s face. “Rebecca. You believe too?”

“Of course I do,” says Rebecca. She gestures at the window. “There’s a shit-ton of space out there.” She smiles, suddenly calm now that she knows her favorite people are down with ET et al. “Thinking about all the strange, lovely ways it might be filled up…I find it calming.”

Ted trails a hand down her back and Rebecca shivers. She kisses him, then Keeley, and holds their hands in hers, and then they talk about aliens for such a long time that an onlooker from a distant society might assume they were in danger of forgetting to have sex. But that would be absurd. And for Rebecca, homo sapien from planet Earth, it’s a night that might seem a little nerve-wracking—her best friends, a first time, a threesome—but the universe is so vast. Whatever they’re here to do together is bound to be exquisite, but it’s very, very small.

Chapter Text

Rebecca is so tired that until she’s said goodbye to her driver and gotten out of the car, she doesn’t notice that Roy is parked at her house. She’s relieved he’s already here. Today was awful for a million tiny, individually inconsequential reasons. They’ve stacked up in her shoulders, tension sinking deep into her tendons, and she feels almost literally up to her neck in problems. No one drains the tension away like Roy does.

The comparisons between her old life and new life happen less often lately, and with less intensity, but this is a moment for one. As she walks up the front walk and fishes her keys from her purse, she thinks about how even in the earliest days of her relationship with Rupert, deviations from their plans—a surprise early arrival, a night turning into a weekend on a whim—made her almost too anxious to enjoy the feeling of being in love. She liked to know exactly how long she had to get ready for their dates, how many outfits to pack in her suitcase, and a general idea of where they were going. But Rupert told her, over and over, that she loved surprises.

She loves this surprise. She knew Roy planned to bring dinner over around 7:30 and stay the night, but it’s only half five and all it means is that she doesn’t have to wait two hours to see him. They didn’t speak to each other all day at work—she was so tied up in meetings that she barely even had a chance to peer out her office window to watch him running training. Now he’s here, and she’ll fling open the door and he’ll be there to fold her into his arms while her grey tabby, Liesl, weaves her way around their ankles, and he’ll squeeze the bad day out of her, and they’ll kiss until it becomes impossible to ignore Liesl yowling for her dinner—

The house is silent. Not even Liesl greets her at the door. She walks into the kitchen and sets her purse and heavy laptop bag down on the island. A still-corked bottle of red sits on the countertop next to a brown paper bag, the sturdy kind with cord for handles. When she peeks inside and finds the bag empty, she opens the refrigerator and there are new contents inside—a large clear container of salad and a couple of white cardboard boxes that she doesn’t bother to open. She tries not to feel anxious about the fact that this is basically the first time in the two months since she adopted Liesl that she hasn’t had her company in the kitchen. She keeps the stack of cat food cans and plastic bin of kibble in the pantry, and although Liesl eats twice per day on a schedule they’ve both diligently internalized, she’s always hopeful, always nosing around for extra. Rebecca empathizes, though she sticks to the schedule.

She checks Liesl’s bowls in the corner. The water is more full than it was this morning, and there are two pieces of dry food in the bottom of the dish even though she’s certain it was empty when she left for work. Roy caved and fed her early, he obviously did, there’s no other explanation—but this is far more surprising than the early arrival, because he’s been mostly indifferent to Liesl since she arrived. When Barkingham Palace started working with a sister agency specializing in cats, Roy refused to go with her to look. The incident became their first and only real fight, a quiet, drawn-out, often stilted exchange of words and silences that had to run its course before they could move on. “But Phoebe has a cat,” Rebecca had said at the start of the conversation. “I thought you liked cats.” She tried another approach: “I’m not saying this has to be your cat”—they were too new, committed to independence but drawn together with an intensity as potent as their autonomies, and it was confusing sometimes—“but it’s important to me that I choose a cat with an affinity for you.” But Roy didn’t budge, and neither did Rebecca. She could have brought a friend with her, but she found Liesl on her own, brought her home on her own, waited for her to feel safe enough to emerge from under the couch for a meal and a nap out in the open. She texted Roy a photo labeled only “Liesl.”

Two days later, Roy showed up at her front door unannounced with a bag of catnip mice in his hands, an apology struggling out of his mouth. Things have been fine ever since. He’ll scritch Liesl behind her ears if she walks across his lap while they’re watching a movie, and if Rebecca asks him to refill her water he’ll do it, and sometimes he complains (just lightly, not enough to insult Rebecca for her choice) about how much he has to lint-roll his black jeans before leaving for work, but mostly he leaves the subject and the cat alone.

Rebecca tries the bedroom next, assuming the utter quiet in the house is an indicator of sleep. The reward is immediate. And surprising. It’s not surprising that Roy is asleep near the center of her bed. The fading light streaming through the blinds illuminates his sleep-slackened face and the softness of his black t-shirt. But she is surprised to see Liesl curled against his side with her head resting on his shoulder. His arm is crooked to accommodate her, and Liesl’s ears perk up when she senses Rebecca’s presence. Roy is similar in this way; he stirs awake, and by the time Rebecca is slipping off her shoes and sliding into bed, he’s awake enough to kiss her, tasting of disorienting late-afternoon sleep and her spearmint mouthwash.

“Catnap?” Rebecca whispers, careful not to make a joke out of the word. She teases Roy about everything, but she won’t make fun of this.

Roy shrugs, wrinkling his nose in defeat-by-wordplay. “Maybe.”

“How was your day?”

“Moderately shit. Yours?”

“Moderately shit.”

Roy pulls her close with his free arm and Rebecca takes full advantage, laying her head against his chest and running her hand down his body like she needs to re-map him after a day apart. As she makes contact with Roy’s bare leg and boxer-clad hip, she immediately wishes she’d taken off some clothes or at least slid her bra out from under everything. She wishes she was more comfortable, but she doesn’t want to jostle the cat.

She slides her hand back up and pets Liesl, who stretches happily before resettling against Roy’s arm. They snuggle in silence for a while, until Roy clears his throat.

“How long do cats live?” he asks, his voice barely louder than the rumble of Liesl’s contented purrs.

“Fifteen or so?”

“And how old’s Liesl?”

“She’s about three.” Rebecca looks at Roy’s furrowed brow, the way he’s tilted away from her to study the ceiling. “And she’s exceptional,” she adds, only barely teasing. “I could see her making it to twenty.”

“Hmm,” Roy says. “Good.”

“Yeah,” Rebecca says. She takes a risk, previously uncalculated but, she thinks, wise. “We’ve got a long time before we need to worry.”

Roy breathes out. “Yeah. Okay.”

Rebecca leans up enough to kiss him. The kiss deepens on its own, it seems, and Rebecca is pressing her tongue into his mouth and waiting for his breathing to change when Roy pulls away. “Liesl is right here,” he says, equal parts amused and shocked.

Rebecca laughs. “I’m too tired to fool around anyway,” she says. “Maybe after some sustenance.” She lays her head back down, and smoothes Roy’s shirt against his stomach. She contemplates again whether she has the energy to sit up enough to shed some layers, but the question is no match for the lull of Roy’s sleep-deepened breaths and Liesl’s purr motor and the perfect cool air and the weight of the duvet. Sleep wins out before she’s aware of making a choice at all.

Chapter Text

Increasingly, talking with Henry feels like conversing with a fellow man. At sixteen, Henry has opinions (sometimes informed ones) about politics, religion, the AFC Richmond starting lineup. But when Ted knocks on Henry’s bedroom door and heeds the quiet, sullen “Come in,” the sight that greets him is all boy.

Henry is seated sideways on his bed in his black suit, back slumped against the wall like he can’t bear to hold himself up, legs hovering midair even though his feet could touch the ground if he sat up a little more. He’s so tall, and has become tall so suddenly, that Ted gets sympathy growing pains just looking at him. His leather dress shoes slump together in the middle of the floor.

“Hey,” Ted says.

“Hey.”

“Needed a break?”

Henry’s been busy since the celebration of life began: refilling dishes of nuts, crisps, and candy, accepting condolences and a few posh cheek kisses from the elderly, explaining who he is to nosy friends who apparently weren’t around Deborah much in the past five years. But a few minutes ago, when Rebecca whispered in Ted’s ear that she was ready to open the floor for guests to share memories, they realized neither of them had seen him for a while.

Henry shrugs. “I guess.”

Ted steps inside the room, closing the door behind him. He isn’t quite sure what to say, and is sure Henry can read the uncertainty on his face. He sits down on the desk chair, glancing at the organized chaos covering the desk’s entire surface area. The notebook he’s pretty sure Henry uses as a writing journal sits on top of his shut laptop—he must have written in it recently, might have even tossed it onto the desk when he heard Ted knocking. “Lotta people out there.”

“Why’d we have to do this at the house? Why couldn’t we just have it at some church and then everybody wouldn’t feel the need to stay here for eight million hours.”

“Yeah, but Rebecca didn’t feel right about having it at the church. After her dad died, her mom never really went there much. I think she liked the idea of a celebration of life in a place where Grams actually used to have a nice time.” If loving a place makes you drop by unannounced, then their house must’ve been Deborah’s paradise. It kept them on their toes, but Ted wishes they could have a few more surprise ambushes.

“So it’s what Grams would’ve wanted?”

Deborah liked to pretend to hate it when Henry called her Grams. No one this ancient could be my grandson, she’d say, squeezing his cheeks. You’re even taller than you were last week. Maybe all grandmothers, no matter how eccentric, were reduced to basic wonder when it came to their grandchildren.

“Yeah,” Ted says, “I think so. I think she’d have liked all this a lot.”

“Well. That’s good.”

All three of them have been looking forward to today being over since before it had even started. Over breakfast, Rebecca admitted she was irrationally anxious that Deborah would find fault with the catering selections, as if she could somehow manage a fit of pique about the customer service at her own wake, and then when the caterer dropped off the food it took three tries to get one of the Sternos lit. (“Hey, Grams,” Henry had whispered when the flame finally caught.) They got through the final house prep, the rooms empty and extra clean, then suddenly filled with people. They got through the first few hours of the unpredictable clash of Deborah’s many social circles. And eventually, they’ll be through with the whole day, the ritual they want to perform and do not want to perform and have to perform, and they’ll clean up the few last cups and napkins and try to convince Roy and Keeley—Deborah always adored Keeley—to stay for a bottle of champagne, the guest room ready to welcome them if, as they hope will happen, they get too tipsy to drive.

Ted lowers his voice. “It’ll clear out before too long. Probably just a couple more hours.”

“I know.”

“Look, Hen—Rebecca’s gonna start the sharing here in a minute. It’s up to you if you wanna come down, and if you share any memories or not, but you might decide you wanna be there.”

Sometime soon—maybe tonight, or in the morning, or in a week—he’ll tell Henry about choosing not to go to his father’s funeral. The fury, the sick relief of avoidance in the moment, the years of regret which started to abate (and have not finished abating) only after he decided there was no should or shouldn’t to the choice he made. There is only what he did and what he wishes he’d done. For now, it’s a memory he’d like to keep separate from today’s far more gentle grief.

Ted walks over to the bed and squeezes Henry’s shoulder. A few nights ago, when he and Henry had been out picking up a takeaway order and they’d gotten the call from Rebecca that Deborah was gone, Henry had hugged him with the unselfconscious intensity of a child. And then they’d gone home and he watched Henry hug Rebecca with the compassion and care of someone far older. The takeaway had gone cold. Hours later they’d tried to salvage the soggy sandwiches in the oven and laughed through tears at how bad they were.

“There’ll probably be some pretty good stories,” Ted adds.

“Pretty crazy stories.” Henry grins in spite of himself.

“Right.”

“Okay. See you.”

“Love ya.”

“Love you too.”

Downstairs, the crowd in the living room is not exactly quiet, but they are more or less focused on Rebecca. She stands in front of the window, in a cleared-out spot so everyone can see her, and so there will be an obvious place for anyone who rises in turn to stand and share. Ted smiles involuntarily and fully at the sight of her, the burnt orange of her blouse catching the light, the tears in her eyes pooling without spilling over. She smiles back as soon as she sees him, giving him a funny little wave that makes him feel cared for. She seems to shift from where do I start to it’s time to begin.

“Thank you all for being here today,” Rebecca says. She pauses, longer than is strictly comfortable. “You know, my mother died doing what she loved.”

This is not, as far as Ted knows, entirely factual. But in the loaded silence, it dawns on him—this is comedy. Paul got Deborah’s favorite song; Deborah is getting a bit.

Rebecca smiles expectantly. She never caves to the lesser demands of a room—not when she has a vision.

If only Ted could think of something funny to say.

“Rock-climbing!” shouts a red-headed woman he doesn’t know. He’d like to thank her later.

“Cake decorating,” says Beard.

“Tarot,” says Kenneth, who drives the team bus but is here because he somehow had his own friendship with Deborah.

“Painting naked?”

Ted doesn’t need to turn to the source of the sound to see that this is Henry’s contribution, but he turns anyway to see Henry hovering just past the doorway. Most people turn. Henry has forgotten to put his shoes back on, his blue striped sock feet emerging from the hems of his smart suit, his face puffy from crying although a grin is spreading across his face.

“I mean,” Henry says, “that sounds like Grams.”

Everyone laughs, and Ted barely knows if he joins in or not, nor does he hear the next few contributions from the crowd. He is thinking about his son, sixteen, who has chosen to be here.

Chapter Text

Rebecca’s eyes have been on him all night. At least, Ted doesn’t think he’s imagining things. He and Rebecca arrived at Roy and Keeley’s housewarming party at about the same time, so they were part of the same group for the house tour, and even now that the full crowd has assembled and everyone’s drinking and snacking and meandering through conversational clusters that span several beautifully and eclectically decorated rooms, Ted keeps looking up from whatever conversation he’s nearest to because he senses her staring.

It’s starting to make him nervous, even though every time they’ve connected it’s been pleasant—the slow dawning of her smile, maybe a slight lift of her eyebrows, a split second of locked eye contact before she turns away again. He wonders if he’s the one actually looking, if he’s been staring without realizing it, and all she’s doing is returning the gesture with a gracefulness he probably doesn’t deserve. He doesn’t think he’s the instigator, but maybe he’s being weird. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Roy’s just wrapped up a brief but vivid anecdote involving Phoebe and a recent school uniform mishap. Now that Henry’s enrolled at the same school, it would be a great time for Ted to follow up with an anecdote of his own, something funny out of the dozens of funny things that have happened during Henry’s first term in London. But he senses Rebecca’s eyes darting in his direction from all the way across the room. It’s far too warm in this crowded house; the early November chill from the walk over is a faint but appealing memory. Ted mumbles his excuses and heads to the guest room where everyone’s tossed their coats and bags on the bed, figuring he’ll grab his jacket, hit the kitchen for a fresh beer, and head out to the garden patio where he can probably join Keeley or one of the other smokers for a cigarette break. Keeley always says cigarette breaks should be for everyone whether a person actually smokes or not.

In the guest room, the bed is piled high with many more coats than were there when he deposited his puffer jacket here a couple hours ago. He suddenly feels very tired, and he realizes he’d like to stay in the hush of this dimly lit space for at least a little while before digging out his jacket and rejoining the fray. He adjusts the placement of a sturdy navy peacoat just enough to make adequate space to sit at the foot of the bed. As soon as he’s still, the nerves he’s been trying to brush aside as run-of-the-mill Rebecca weirdness start to resemble the flickering beginnings of panic. He closes his eyes and breathes, a grounding hand pressed against his chest. Everything is fine. Nothing is wrong. The panic recedes nearly as quickly as it started to spike, now that there’s nothing for it to latch onto.

Ted hears footsteps and turns around to look in the direction of the door.

“Oh,” Rebecca says. “Sorry.”

“Hey, boss. You’re not planning on heading home this early, are you?”

“No, no, I just—needed a minute.”

Ted stands. “Sure thing, I’ll head on outta here so you can—”

Rebecca crosses the room quickly. She sits, planting a hand on Ted’s shoulder as she lowers herself, effectively making him sit back down too. “Stay, please.”

“You sure? Because I just took my minute, and you can totally have yours.”

“Ted, when are you going to start believing me when I tell you I want you to stay?”

But he does know she means it. He’s always known it. It’s easy to tell the difference between her sometimes-strained displays of politeness and the more genuine ways she expresses her perspective. It’s not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of trust—trusting himself, trusting the world to keep spinning even if he leaps out of his comfort zone.

“No,” he starts to say. “I do—”

“I was looking for you,” she admits. “Thought I might find you in here.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm. I thought I might have been making you a bit uncomfortable tonight, but I just—I was hoping we could get a moment to ourselves. I mean, you’re here.” She takes his hand, and holds it against her thigh. “And I think sometimes I keep glancing up just to make sure. There isn’t anything strange about staring at you during one of your press conferences, or when you’re standing at the edge of the pitch during a match. But maybe I’ve picked up a bit of a…habit.”

She looks at him. He looks at her. The path from her face to his feels entirely open.

Someday, they’ll argue over who kissed whom first, but Ted’s heart will never be in the argument. They kiss each other. End of story. And it’s more than a kiss right away. Right away, it escalates, hands gripping shoulders and mouths pressed to necks and fingers pulling hair.

“We both brought them football things,” Rebecca murmurs between kisses. “To warm their house.”

Ted pulls back just enough to raise his eyebrows at her. “Not that crazy, given the professional context.”

“You brought them a print of a photo you took of the practice pitch in the early morning,” she says, sounding deliciously accusatory and appreciative all at the same time. Her dress is tight; he’d like to push the shoulder strap aside and get to just a little bit more of her skin, but the material barely budges. He manages to wedge two fingers between the strap and the skin and pulls her closer. “And I brought them—I brought them—”

“A ticket stub from Roy’s first Sunderland match, and I could see how touched he was, that you went to all that work to track one down, and next to it, uh, a ticket stub from the first Richmond women’s match, all married up together in a frame—” He’s barely able to manage the words as she yanks his shirt untucked and lifts all his layers at once so she can reach bare skin. But of course he’d noticed her gift, of course he has to let her know.

“And everyone else?” She kisses him again, trailing her lips from his mouth to his jaw to the side of his neck, where she lands long enough to nip at his flesh again and again.

“Uh, candles, I think. Or a bottle of wine.”

“Exactly. We went specific. Like always, you’re always so—” She hums at his hand scratching against her still-clothed back. “—specific. And you’re here. You’re driving me insane.”

He’s been here for months. And was here for years, not too terribly long before that, in a different sort of way. But there’s something about the now of being here that seems to affect her, and whatever the reason for it, he does not intend to open a line of questioning at this time. Not when she’s pressed against him, her palm cool against his back, and he keeps pawing ineffectually at her dress like somehow this time the fabric will move enough to count.

They freeze when there’s simultaneously a peal of laughter in the hallway and a text message chime emanating from one of the purses on the bed. They remember the cracked-open door and their current location practically sprawled atop the personal possessions of twenty or thirty people who could enter the room at any time. Rebecca tilts her head in the direction of the ensuite bathroom and they relocate at once.

The small ensuite is tidy—for guests to use, Ted thinks guiltily—and impersonal. But Rebecca opens the drawers to the side of the sink anyway. She finds what she’s looking for, holding up a condom packet with triumph glinting in her eyes.

Time goes all hazy and dreamy, then, like every second that passes is the longest most perfect ache. It doesn’t matter that they’re on the floor, undressed just enough, with the edge of the bathtub pressing against Ted’s back. “You have to be quiet,” Rebecca mutters when they’ve got the condom on and her underwear is off and her dress is pushed up around her hips. Then he touches her between her legs and she’s so wet there’s barely any friction at all and he watches in wonder as she has to bite down on her lip to keep from breaking her own rule.

There’s something magical about doing this in a room neither of them have seen before today, on stolen time. As soon as he’s inside her, they’re both immediately too far gone to worry about someone knocking on the door. With her thighs pressed against his hips and his feet planted on the floor for leverage, their bodies are locked so close together that he’s able to hear sounds he might have missed if they were allowed to make as much noise as they wanted. The tiniest whimpers fall from Rebecca’s throat with every thrust. Head bowed, his breath quivers against her, muffled by the soft black fabric covering her chest. He’s got a hand braced against her hip and the other pressed against her breast, his fingertips teasing her nipple through her dress, and she’s touching her clit and keeping her other hand fisted around as much hair as she can grab from the nape of his neck and she’s whispering “fuck” over and over or else he’s saying it or it’s a concept they’re passing back and forth like orgasmic telepathy.

She looks at him right before she shakes apart. There’s a gush of moisture around his cock, her mouth opens, her spine bends to the wave of pleasure, and the endless pulse of her muscles pulls him into oblivion with her. When the wave stills, they stay frozen in place for a moment, nothing but eye contact, bodies strung taut in the reality of what they’ve done. Then she smiles, brushing her fingers against his jaw, and they slump into a shared relief.

Eventually, they do have to make their muscles figure out how to rewind into a more presentable configuration. With his hand bracing her hip, Rebecca sits up, and he slips out of her, and she seems to want to laugh as he deals with tying off the condom and tossing it in the wastebasket and they hurry to reposition their rumpled clothes. “Do you have to be home at a certain time?” she asks as they stand side by side at the mirror, using their fingers to comb their hair.

“Not tonight. It’s Michelle’s week with Henry.”

“Oh thank God,” she says. “If you said you had to be home by eleven to relieve the babysitter I might have cried.”

He might have too. “What d’you got in mind?” It’s such a small question compared to the magnitude of what they’ve done, but the answer will mean everything.

She shrugs. “We put in a couple more hours at this party, feeling very uncomfortably aware we just fucked in Keeley and Roy’s bathroom—”

“—and feeling very happily aware we just fucked in Keeley and Roy’s bathroom—” he adds hopefully.

She nods, nibbling her bottom lip as she smiles. “And then you…come home with me.” There’s the slightest nervous lilt to her voice.

He turns to face her, and she turns to face him. “Sounds like the perfect plan,” he says, and she looks at him like she knows how much he means it.

Chapter Text

“I’ve never actually baked a cake before,” Keeley admits. “Or…anything.”

It’s perhaps a little late to reveal her status as a novice, considering Henry’s already asleep upstairs and she and Ted are in for the night, standing together at the kitchen island, which is laden with baking supplies. Two of Rebecca’s approximately eighteen ovens are preheating. No way to back out now.

She should’ve known the admission would make Ted’s eyes light up.

“Oh, this is gonna be fun,” he says. “I have a feeling you’ll be a natural, especially since cakes get accessorized at the end. You’ll be running circles around me in no time.”

“We’ll see,” she says lightly, although she’s been most excited about the decoration stage ever since Ted suggested they take care of making Rebecca’s birthday cake together. She doesn’t want to appear too confident when she isn’t confident at all. She’s learned to cook some standbys over the past couple of years, and finally feels comfortable staring down ingredients in the pantry and fridge and trusting herself to come up with a plan. She (usually) knows when to roast and when to sauté, knows that a sprinkling of sea salt unlocks other flavors, knows when to improvise and when to look up a recipe to follow. When Roy bought her a cookbook for her birthday last year, it wasn’t a hint that she ought to learn to cook better—she’d asked him to choose one for her. It was the first time she’d ever felt interested in a gift like that. She’s even managed to recreate a few of the dishes, even if she prefers just thumbing through the pages and daydreaming.

Still, baking seems different. A science, but also an art. And, in this case, a gift for someone else. She doesn’t want to fuck it up.

“Okay,” Ted says. “Nothing to it but to do it.” He already wears a grey apron over his t-shirt and sweats. He hands Keeley a blue checkered one; she’s short enough that the fabric ends at her shins even when she folds some of the excess at waist-level before tying the strings. The material hides her terry cloth shorts and (from the front, anyway) gives the impression that she’s got nothing on underneath. She feels like Dorothy from Kansas, given the pattern and the trip outside her comfort zone.

Ted, usually tantalized by her appearance even when she looks ridiculous, doesn’t seem to notice the fit of the apron. He’s so enthused about baking Rebecca’s birthday cake that he literally claps his hands with glee. In this moment, he’s got eyes only for all-purpose flour.

It’s kind of fun to watch Ted bake. To help Ted bake. He prefers to be alone when he bakes Rebecca’s biscuits, even now, and when he’s baked other things in front of Keeley, Rebecca and Roy have usually been around too, and it’s easy to let herself get caught in the shuffle of companionship and conversation without paying much attention to the details of creation. Baking is like magic; she drinks a glass of wine and chills, and half an hour later Ted’s feeding her a brownie.

But tonight, she’s focused—and not just on the flex of his forearms as he cracks eggs into a bowl and reaches for the softened butter. The harsh November wind outside makes the kitchen feel especially warm by contrast, and the darkness outside makes the whole house feel hushed, and even Ted himself goes quieter than usual. He’s focused on dividing up the tasks and speaks mostly when he feels the need to compliment her performance or suggest a slightly different tactic. She and Ted can—and often do—keep a conversation going from morning until night, but there’s something meditative about having something other than each other to focus on. If she can count it as “meditative” when she’s so new to baking that she has to ask Ted what he means when he requests that she microwave the chocolate in bursts, or when they have a conversation about folding egg whites into batter that she realizes makes her both the Moira Rose and the David Rose of the interaction. Ted is, basically, Julia Child.

Keeley shifts from surviving to thriving when Ted gives her a large sheet of parchment and a pencil and asks her to trace the round cake pans to create liners. “Jeez, babe, look at that surgical precision,” he mutters as she traces with confidence and uses the kitchen scissors to carefully cut out the circles. She doesn't like the feeling of greasing the liners and the sides of the pan with butter, but she feels better again as soon as she’s washed her hands.

It takes less time than she expects for them to get the three layers into the ovens. Ted’s cleaned up a bit as they went, but the hand mixer still hovers over the now-empty bowl, the beaters dripping with rich chocolate batter. Keeley can’t resist using the step stool to hoist herself up to the counter to sit next to the bowl. She wrenches one of the batter-covered beaters out of the hand mixer and licks it, handing Ted the other at the same time. He doesn’t lick his, opting instead to stand between her legs—as much as her apron allows it—and lean up for a deep, chocolate-flavored kiss. She can’t recall ever kissing him while having the height advantage before and she makes the most of it, hooking her calves around his ass to pull him close.

“Um,” he says, a little glazed-over and insensible, some number of minutes later. “Frosting.”

The sooner they make the frosting, the sooner she can lick some off his fingertips, so she graciously releases him from her grip.

When the cake has only ten minutes left to bake, Ted makes Keeley leave the house for a moment so she can walk back in and fully experience the rich chocolatey smell. She’s deliciously cold by the time she reenters, and the warm aroma hits her full-force. “Holy fuck,” she says. “It smells like heaven.”

Even when Ted cracks a window to let some cool air in, it takes longer than Keeley expects for the cake to cool. The chocolate buttercream frosting sets in the fridge, she takes the lead on planning the design for the decorations, and they still have time to resume their makeout (she pulls a guffaw out of him when she asks, faux-innocent, if this is what it means to bake with love).

Finally, it’s time to ice the cake. Even with an offset spatula, Keeley feels frustration, childish and too-warm, bubbling up inside her as she can’t seem to help but catch big ugly crumbs in the layer of frosting.

“Crumb coat,” Ted says gently. “It’s okay. See?”

He dollops more frosting on top of the layer she’s already attempted to spread, and this time it creates a clean layer of swirls.

Next, she gently sets a parchment heart on top of the cake. It’s a stencil, and Ted comes behind with biscuit crumbs to sprinkle on top, covering everything but the negative space of the heart with an even layer of Rebecca’s favorite thing. Keeley’s hand shakes as she starts to write in the heart with the pale pink bag of icing. She accidentally lets the metal tip drop onto the cake a few times, but Ted seems unperturbed. “Keep goin’,” he says when she falters. “It looks good.”

When they step back to look at it, Keeley realizes “We love Rebecca” isn’t particularly birthday-ish, so she impulsively squeezes an “HBD” into the point of the heart. It looks a bit stupid, but Ted beams, and Keeley realizes Rebecca is going to fucking adore this cake.

Ted finds a cake keeper in the cupboard and they store the whole thing in the fridge so the cake can continue to set overnight. Keeley loves cold cake with coffee or milk; by this time tomorrow night, they’ll all be back at the house after going out to dinner, the four adults and Henry and Phoebe, and they’ll already have sung to Rebecca, will already have polished off half the cake. Her very first from-scratch cake.

Suddenly, she’s excited for Rebecca and Roy to get back tonight; they’re due any time now. Keeley won't force it, but she hopes Rebecca will have cause to open the refrigerator. Maybe she’ll be thirsty and will reach for the pitcher of water. She’ll see the cake keeper taking up most of the space on the middle shelf and will feel certain of what’s inside, waiting for her birthday, baked with love.

Chapter Text

Mae Green has seen it all, but she nonetheless experiences genuine surprise when Ted Lasso and Rebecca Welton walk into her pub (which in and of itself isn’t at all unusual), unaccompanied by any of their other friends (somewhat rare, though not necessarily unheard of), sit down at a two-person table near the bar (a bit strange, to close themselves off to spontaneous socializing possibilities), and ask to see a menu (earth-shatteringly weird, as Ted has eaten countless dinners here and Rebecca’s been a patron of the Crown & Anchor since the mid-nineties). 

Ted—Ted, who always sticks to one of his three favorite entrees, and has done since 2020, and in fact Mae is pretty sure that when he returned from his year in Kansas his first meal back was the steak and ale pie because it was up next in his rotation of the pie and the fish and chips and the bangers and mash—Ted is the one who suggests they “might wanna check out a menu.” It’s as if it’s his first time here.

It’s bloody awkward, but Mae dutifully walks to the bar and plucks two only slightly tattered pages from the small stack of menus she keeps around for novices and the indecisive. These particular menus were printed a few weeks ago (nothing’s changed recently, but gravy does spill, doesn’t it), and a quick glance through the offerings causes her to remember that she has added a chopped salad, a tomato basil soup, and a salmon platter within the year, all reasonably popular, particularly the soup, none of which Ted or Rebecca has tried. They might’ve, if they were up-to-date on the menu. Maybe there’s something to be said for reminding even her most ardent regulars that change is possible. 

As she drops the menus off, Mae considers making a quip about farm-to-table. She could pretend she’s updated the menu just this morning in accordance with the seasons and the planets and the stars, and facetiously promise that tomorrow’s selections will be entirely different depending on how tonight’s rain will affect the crops brought to market in the morning, but when she sets the menus down the energy at the table is buzzing, nearly frantic. Ted’s smiling madly, and Rebecca’s smiling maniacally, and Mae feels as if she could reach into the air between their smiles with her forefinger and thumb and pluck it, and it would emit a sound as if from a too-taut guitar string. 

“Here you are, loves,” is all she says, and before she can turn to leave Rebecca requests a bottle of champagne, a crisp mid-shelf brut that Mae herself adores. She’s glad she hadn’t gone on and poured an ale for Ted and a G&T for Rebecca. 

Mae takes her time pulling the bottle out from the small refrigerator beneath the bar, glancing surreptitiously at the table as she does. Ted keeps fiddling with the top button of his polo shirt, fastening and unfastening it again and again, before stopping abruptly to brandish his menu with exaggerated enthusiasm and a wriggle of his eyebrows. Mae expects Rebecca to roll her eyes, but she throws herself into studying her own menu before leaning in to animatedly discuss—presumably—what they’re going to order. 

When they set down their menus they go silent again. It’s absurd, the way they’re acting like they’re on an uncomfortable first date, but, as she’d do for most anyone, Mae comes to the rescue with the bubbles. As soon as she’s uncorked and let Rebecca assent to a sample and poured their glasses, she offers to put their food orders in with the kitchen. 

Rebecca orders the chopped salad, adding salmon to make it a meal. Ted goes for fish and chips, and asks to forego the mushy peas in favor of the tomato basil soup. His pronunciation—“toe-may-toe bay-sul”—makes Rebecca downright giggly. 

Oh. Of course. 

Mae doesn’t have to wait long to prove her hypothesis. Ted and Rebecca guzzle their first glasses of champagne, and although they’re perfectly capable of refilling their own flutes, she approaches the table under the guise of topping them off after Ted’s excused himself to the loo. Rebecca pulled out her phone the moment he left the table, and it’s sitting unlocked on the table as Mae lingers, slowly and carefully pouring more brut into each glass. She’s good at reading upside down, and the font size on Rebecca’s screen is relatively large. She must need readers. Keeley’s name is at the top of the thread, and although Keeley is rapidly filling Rebecca’s screen with a series of animated emoticons that would be more at home at a farmers’ market or a waterpark than a dishy chat with a friend, there’s just enough time to read Rebecca’s message that’s brought all of it on: “WE FINALLY DID IT. THANK THE FUCKING LORD. At pub now. We needed sustenance!!!! I’ll ring you tomorrow!!!! Love you!!” 

With a click of a button, Rebecca makes her phone go dark. She glances up at Mae with a rather sweet smile. She seems calmer now, and no wonder—she’s (finally?!) jumped Ted’s bones, and had a drink to settle her nerves, and now her best friend knows. 

Mae smiles back. “If you need anything else, dear, you just say the word.” 

Chapter Text

The amount that Beard loves her sinks in on the day he does a cartwheel in her office. 

It’s not that Rebecca didn’t know, because she does know, genuinely. He loves her an essentially immeasurable amount. They’ve been together for months, and he shows her his love every day. It’s in the way he trusts her with his son, who is too young to choose for himself whom he spends time with. The way he asks her opinion on everything, and doesn’t bite his tongue instead of expressing his. The way he says “I love you” as if it’s commonplace, like breathing air or eating a sandwich, even though neither of them grew up in homes where that phrase was an everyday utterance.

She knows his love and she knows him, and it’s been one of the great surprises of her life to realize that he’s an absolute clown. She’s understood for years that Beard is the perfect complement to Ted and his gift of gab, but he’s generally subtle enough that it took a while for all his incredibly unsubtle physical comedy to add up into something she recognized as a characteristic trait. She’s watched him hula hoop for charity, and let his face go all stretchy to pull a laugh from his overtired child, and bug out his eyeballs and lift his eyebrows to the sky when someone says something ridiculous. He was asked to leave the pitch during a match once, and upon his dismissal he tossed his cap and tumbled matter-of-factly over the wall. 

It’s one of her favorite things about him, how loud his presence is now that she’s smart enough to tune in and watch. 

But after all these months, all this intimacy—the intimacy of brain-meltingly good sex but also the intimacy of tag-teaming a nappy change in the accessible loo at King’s Cross, the intimacy of “I love you” but also the intimacy of old wounds and the slog of their uneven healing—she’s come to understand that Beard’s physicality, which originates in his very serious brain, is a way of pointing out to the world that maybe things aren’t so serious after all. And she still thinks, sometimes, that he treats her like…a lady, she supposes, or like someone who is serious, someone who would probably say no when asked to play. He lets her see it all, she thinks, so she tries not to let it bother her, the way he slouches and slinks and contorts his way through the world but sits up straight with her. 

He’s a little out of breath when he walks into Rebecca’s office on this ordinary but annoying Tuesday afternoon in October. He’s dressed in the tracksuit he wears for training, which checks out—she’d figured training was just over, otherwise she wouldn’t have messaged him to see if he could come up.

“Got your text,” he says, rushing to join her on the couch. “You okay?”

Rebecca shrugs. She is and she isn’t. “Want some tea?”

“Nah,” he says. “Got a meeting in ten minutes. But thanks.”

Although ten minutes is rapidly turning into only nine, Beard settles more fully into the cushions and stretches an arm along the back of the sofa, a signal that she should lean into him if she wants. She does. 

“Howard”—her least favorite board member—“was an arsehole at lunch,” she says. “And I think he’s been talking to Stuart, and I don’t like it.” She sighs. “And I don’t like that I don’t like it.”

“You don’t like spending that much time thinking about his whole thing?”

“Right, that’s it exactly. And he’s sexist—I think.” They only have so long to get into it, but she unloads what she can, the realization she had at the restaurant that Howard’s disdain for their waitress wasn’t entirely dissimilar to the disdain he seems to feel for her. 

Beard does all the right things: lets her vent, tells her she wasn’t imagining things, gives her a kiss. Before long, he has to go. He stands up, stretching out his back with a barely audible pop. 

“We don’t have anything tonight, do we?” Rebecca asks, looking up at him.

“Other than bringing Duncan back from Jane’s and talking to Ted?”

“Well, of course, those don’t count—”

“Then nope, we’re free as birds.” 

Thank fucking God, then. Free to get takeaway and watch TV and think about literally anything but work for the night. She says as much.

“Right on,” Beard says, then leans down for one last kiss. “All right, gotta head.” 

As he walks away, Rebecca watches as he lifts his arms, bends at the shoulders, then the waist. Suddenly, he’s doing a rather good cartwheel. He’s close to the doorway, and his feet nearly hit the top of the frame—right where Ted banged his head once—but he just clears it. His hat falls off, and he grabs it and affixes it to his head before he's stood back up. When he’s upright again, he doesn’t look back. “Can’t wait for tonight!” he calls, and the smile on her face outlasts the sound of his footsteps on the staircase.

Chapter Text

The car is nearly to her house by the time Rebecca decides she has to text Ted. She knows she’s done something wrong, she just isn’t sure what. They’d been at the Crown & Anchor for the post-match celebration, a whole huge group of them pouring into the already-packed pub, and it had all been rather wonderful right up until the moment Ted wove his way through the crowd to find her. He’d looked a little strange, nearly manic, and as he approached she’d had time to get a little bit lost in thought about it all—to wish she could be casual about her feelings for him, to wish she’d already gotten them out in the open so she’d already know whether it was okay to grab his hand and pull him outside for some fresh air. 

She and Ted have always been good at finding each other when things are dire, and good at keeping things light at all other times, practically as a means of survival. But she wants more than pitch-black darkness and blazing light. She wants all the in-between moments, too: running errands, going out to dinner, sex, slight boredom that warrants finding something to do, slight stress that warrants calming down. A relationship. She’d been thinking about all that as she watched him walk up to her, and she wasn’t prepared for him to lift his hand to his mouth in the universal sign for secrets and whisper something completely unintelligible right into her ear. 

Rebecca can’t remember quite what she said in response—it was “oh that’s all right” or “it’s fine,” she’s pretty sure, something she’d hoped would make sense in the context of whatever he’d said. She figured he’d keep talking and she’d get caught up. She ought to have shouted “What?” and dragged him outside like she’d wanted to do anyway, but the sudden onset of nerves and the humiliation of having a crush made her freeze up. And she’d absolutely said the wrong thing, because Ted’s face had fallen, the bright expression drooping practically all the way to the floor, before he picked himself back up again and gave her a quick salute and a mouthed “No worries” as he rushed away. 

Rebecca thanks her driver and wishes him a good rest of the weekend right as she presses send on the text to Ted: I should probably confess I couldn’t hear what you said in the pub. Mind enlightening me, if it’s not too late?

As she trudges up the walk to her house, she keeps her eyes trained on her phone, praying for three little dots. None appear. But she’s got her key in one hand, ready to unlock the door, when the phone ringing in her other hand startles her so much she nearly pitches it into the shrubbery. 

“Ted,” she says, her own voice quiet to herself against the sound of her own pulse, blood rushing to her head. 

“Hey, boss,” Ted says. She can hear dampened pub sounds behind him. “Just stepping out to the sidewalk…”

“Sorry to drag you away.”

“Don’t be.” Ted chuckles. He’s nervous, if she had to guess, and so is she. At least she can hear him clearly. “I was actually just tryin’ to ask you if you wanted to get a second drink someplace else. Somewhere quieter.”

“And I turned you down without meaning to,” Rebecca says. “Shit.”

“It’s totally fine. It’s getting late anyway, and—”

“Is the offer still on the table?”

Ted sputters a little, flustered like she can’t recall him being in her presence before, not even the first week they met, back when she was a stone-cold bitch and he was a jet-lagged fool. 

She takes pity and doesn’t make him answer. “I just got home, and I don’t really feel like finding a second bar, but—you could join me here?”

“That sounds great, Rebecca.”

“How soon can you get here?”

“Ten minutes?”

Rebecca grins. “See you then.”

They end the call, and she tucks her phone safely inside her purse before unlocking the door and letting herself in. For a brief moment, she panics: she can’t remember if she made her bed nicely this morning, doesn’t even know if he’ll see it, can’t remember what underwear she’s wearing, doesn’t even know if he’ll see them tonight either. But her kitchen is never without wine and cheese and bread, so the house is ready enough, and her heart’s been ready for a while. She leans back against the door for just a brief moment of rest before making the most of the next ten minutes, and the clutter of thought drains away into pure and giddy anticipation.

Chapter Text

Woman at Her Toilette by Berthe Morisot

Jean Alexandre by Amedeo Modigliani

**

Ted finds Rebecca at the Art Institute of Chicago, in a Berthe Morisot painting circa 1875 - 1880. 

The resemblance isn’t uncanny, exactly, although—like Rebecca—the woman of Woman at Her Toilette is blonde and beautiful. Rebecca is present in the painted woman’s posture even more than in her looks. Ted feels her in the contemplation in front of the mirror, the arm lifted to pull her hair more fully off her neck. She’s already dressed for the event but she’s lingering here until she has to leave, enjoying the moment of calm before a long night out. And her sleeve is slipping down, further revealing the strong expanse of her shoulders; she’s content with the solitude of this moment, but perhaps another’s gaze wouldn’t be entirely unwelcome. 

Ted imagines himself 150 years ago, walking into the bedroom and finding Rebecca in this state of mostly-dressed-but-maybe-willing-to-get-all-disheveled-again. He wants to make them late to the party—not so late that they don’t bother going at all and end up annoyed with themselves for having disappointed their friends. Just a little late, and then they’ll rush in, cheeks still rosy from recent exertions. 

He loves how the woman fully belongs in her space, how the brushstrokes of her white dress are comprised of many colors, a magic trick that allows it to flow seamlessly into the brushstrokes that make up the walls. A floral-patterned wallpaper insists upon itself even if the tones are mostly a warm grey. Ted is smart enough to know she doesn’t always feel this way (sometimes she tries very hard to exude a comfort that isn’t there), but Rebecca usually looks at home where she is. 

He hardly realizes tears have come to his eyes when someone approaches and stands next to him, quite close. He doesn’t have to look to know this is Vinny, one of the other parents chaperoning the big sixth-grade trip. 

“Sir, this is a Wendy’s,” says Vinny.

“Sorry, what was that?” Ted asks, hoping to sound light-hearted. 

Vinny has the courtesy to clear his throat and apologize. “Sorry, internet thing. Didn’t translate. You okay?”

“Oh, just fine, thanks.” He smiles, willing away the danger of crying, and gestures at the painting. “Just made me miss my girlfriend, that’s all.”

“Noice,” Vinny says. “But we’ll be home in like two days. You’ll make it.”

“Yeah, but she lives in—” Not worth it. “—yeah.” 

“Hey, uh, we’ve gotta do the next headcount at the benches in 10 minutes, okay?”

“Thanks, man,” says Ted. “I’m on it.”

**

Henry’s teacher expertly steered the group clear of the museum gift shop at the end of the field trip (too expensive, too stratifying, too stressful), but Ted manages to get back before leaving town. The Art Institute is open late on Thursdays, and while the group is at Millennium Park he’s able to sneak away just long enough to hit the gift shop. He’d like to visit the Morisot again, stand there in front of her as long as he wants, especially since it’s statistically unlikely that another person would choose that moment to interrupt with a meme, but he doesn’t have that kind of time. 

Luckily, there’s a large postcard print of Woman at Her Toilette on offer in the shop. It’s easy to find, like she’s been waiting for him. He pays quickly and tucks the paper bag into the inner pocket of his puffer jacket for safekeeping and is back with the group before anyone—even Henry—knows he ran off. As chaperone, he’s coming to realize that as long as you’re in place at the designated check-in times, a lot can happen in-between. 

**

Back in Kansas, Ted flips the camera view while talking to Rebecca and marches into the bathroom. “See?” he exclaims, zeroing in on the postcard, which hangs next to the bathroom mirror just above his latest Believe sign. “It’s like you’re in here gettin’ ready. I think about you nonstop while brushing my teeth.” 

He doesn’t tell her that it took him a week to scrub the mirror of the toothpaste splatter from her most recent visit. 

“I want one of you too!” Rebecca says, the pink in her cheeks telling him she’s flattered. “Maybe not for the bathroom, but—I’ll be on the lookout.” 

**

The following Sunday, Ted’s walking in his favorite city park on his way to meet a friend when he comes across a street artist making on-demand caricatures. He stops on a whim: he knows Rebecca wants to look for her own two-dimensional Ted, but he can’t resist the idea of providing a funny backup. When he inquires about how long the artist typically needs, he wonders if he’s the first customer of the day who’s expressed interest without being asked first. 

“10 minutes max,” the guy says. Ted’s got 20 to kill, so he sits. 

6 minutes later, he’s walking away with a letter-sized rendition of himself in black magic marker. The sketch is about 85 percent mustache, 10 percent artist’s signature, and 5 percent all of Ted’s other features. He can’t help but chuckle at the image as he continues on his way. He’ll have to find something flat and firm to store it in so it doesn’t get crunched up in his backpack for the journey to its ultimate destination.

The next time he’s in London, Ted decides not to unveil the caricature until he’s spending the day at the club with Rebecca. He remembers he’s brought the drawing with him when they’re up in Rebecca’s office doing a fun version of Biscuits with the Boss that involves laughing at the ceremony of Ted handing over the biscuits despite Rebecca having been present for the baking. She hadn’t stolen a single bite at home, explaining as she always does that the biscuits taste best at work, where they’re part of the tradition.

Rebecca cackles when she sees the cartoonish drawing. 

“ Woman at Her Toilette it is not—” Ted starts.

“—but it’s fucking perfect,” Rebecca finishes. She stands, grabbing tape from her desk before making her way across the room. She turns the caricature around and applies little rolls of tape to the back of the paper, one piece at the very edge of each corner, then presses it to the wall with care. He’s nestled—well, his cartoon persona is nestled—just past the coat tree. 

When she’s halfway back to the desk, she turns around to check the placement. “Yes,” she says decisively, punctuating the syllable with her pointer finger. But when she turns back around to face the real Ted, her face has gone soft. “Now it’s like you’re always visiting me in my office.” 

“Even when I’m not.”

“Even when you’re not.” 

**

Two months later, Rebecca finds Ted at the National Portrait Gallery, in an Amedeo Modigliani painting circa 1909. 

Once it’s framed and hanging up in her office, she shows Ted the small print of Jean Alexandre over facetime. She assures him that it isn’t just the prominent mustache that drew her to the image; there’s something in the depth of the gaze, the way the guy sort of looks like he’s relaxing and sort of looks like he’s going through it. The warmth of his skin. 

She says she wants to sit in his lap and loosen his tie. 

“Oh,” Ted says. “Cool.” 

His own skin is warm with the compliment, and the heat only grows when she steps back and lets the camera reveal that she’s left the caricature on the wall, too.

Chapter Text

It feels good for about three seconds, telling Ted Lasso she doesn’t like him. 

Usually, people give Rebecca a wide berth when she visits the club—if she’s alone, waiting for Rupert in his office so they can go out to dinner. When Rupert is present, his employees are charming with her, gregarious, eager to shake her hand. As if they hadn’t passed by fifteen minutes earlier, clocked that she was the person sitting at their boss’s desk, and kept walking without saying a word. 

(She’d never take over Rupert’s chair if the two of them were alone at the club. But she likes to do it when there are a lot of people around. It projects the idea that their marriage has retained a sense of humor.)

Rebecca and Rupert haven’t had many dinner dates lately; this evening is the first time she’s waited in Rupert’s office since before he fired George Cartrick and hired an American football coach named Ted Lasso as his replacement. If Rupert doesn’t come to find her soon, they’ll risk being late for their reservation, but there’s been no sign of him since she got to the club and his admin assistant hurried her into the office. 

She’s startled from her thoughts when Coach Lasso walks past the open door. He turns quizzical at the unexpected sight of her, then brightens; she can spot the precise moment he decides to pay her a visit. 

“Hey, Mrs. Mannion,” Ted says pleasantly, gripping the doorway casually and dipping his head past the threshold. 

“It’s Rebecca. Please.”

“Rebecca. All-righty. Mind if I come in for a sec?”

She forces a smile. “Go right ahead.” 

Ted sighs a little as he sits, but he perks right up when he’s settled. “Thanks for having me,” he says wryly, glancing around at the space. 

“If you expected Rupert, my condolences.”

“No, no, not at all—wasn’t wanderin’ any place in particular. I’m in a bit of a funk, to be honest.” He chuckles. “Pretty sure Les Miserables depicted some better days than the one I’ve had.”

His French is spoken—intentionally, surely—in the thickest American accent she’s ever heard. It grates. 

She ought to ask him what the matter is. Screw up her face into sympathy. Invite him to unload on her. Win some points with the latest man responsible for the success of Rupert’s beloved Greyhounds. But she’s got the authority in this particular scenario, so she takes her time responding. Takes in the sight of him—his starched white polo shirt, pornographic mustache, heavy gold wedding band. They’ve met before, at a party a month or so back, and he’d peppered her with appreciative remarks about how lucky he is that her husband took a chance on him, and isn’t Rupert the greatest guy, and isn’t this club something special. 

She rolls her eyes at Ted now. Takes a risk—but, no, Ted isn’t the sort to tattle to Dad about Mum. “You’ve run into trouble teaching grown men how to play a game? Earning how much? Millions?”

Ted looks chagrined. “Oh, well, that part’s more than all right—it’s just something that’s, uh.” His big open American face closes. He decides, very clearly, not to share. “Never mind.”

“Are you ready for Chelsea on Saturday?”

It’s Thursday. 

“Ready as we’re gonna be,” Ted says. “Except there’s one more practice, so technically speaking, we’ll be as ready as we’re gonna be at about 4:30 p.m. tomorrow.” He sighs again. “So. How’ve you been doing?”

She isn’t prepared for the question, nor for the warmth in his deep brown eyes. He waits. She thinks. He probably voted for Trump, if he even bothered to vote at all. He probably cheats on his wife constantly now that they live an ocean apart. He probably craves her honesty because he wants to dig up some dirt to use as leverage with Rupert. She can’t start liking this arsehole. She can’t start trusting in the latest not-so-greatest upgrade of Rupert’s right-hand man. 

Her smile grows a lazy hunger. She’s a snake anticipating her dinner in the moment before lashing out and clenching the kill. “I don’t like you,” she says slowly, preserving the smile on her face.

The three seconds of stunned silence are satisfying. The chattiest man in the world, rendered incapable of speech.

But then his face falls. “Oh,” he stammers, scrambling to stand up. “Let me get outta your hair, then.” He’s nearly to the door when he turns back. “You know, when we met? I’d been thinking you were one of the first people I’d encountered here who made me really want to be their friend.” 

The satisfaction was already cheap. And now it’s draining away, and he’s leaving before she can string two more words together, and Rupert fills the frame of the doorway, then everything in her vision. 

“Darling,” he’s saying. “Are you ready to go? We’re going to be late.” 

***

Six months later

Rupert hasn’t answered any of her texts (and she tries to limit herself to texting only twice in a row if she hasn’t heard from him, and she’s already broken that rule several times this week). She isn’t sure if their date is still on. But being wrong in one direction is worse than being wrong in the other, so she shows up at the club a half-hour before their dinner reservation and is making her way down the main corridor on the first floor when Coach Lasso nearly runs right smack into her. 

Rebecca’s stomach sinks. She and Ted have avoided any one-on-one conversations with each other rather successfully since…that day, when she lashed out at him. When Rupert’s around, she’s charming with him, gregarious, eager to shake his hand. But they both know the true state of things. 

Today there isn’t time to feel awkward, because Ted is red-faced, seething, bundled in his puffer jacket for a walk outside although it looks like his body temperature is about a million degrees, Celsius or Fahrenheit. 

“Sorry,” Rebecca murmurs as their bodies narrowly avoid impact, and Ted stops, breathing hard. “Are you all right?”

Ted inhales deeply. “You wanna know something, Rebecca? In the seven months since I signed my contract, I haven’t been allowed to hire any of my own coaching staff even though I was promised the opportunity to bring my best assistant coach over from the states.” He holds up his hand to start the count of grievances with his thumb, then continues with his fingers. “I’ve been humiliated in your press. Almost daily. I’ve gotten divorced. I’ve been emotionally abused by your husband. And today I got proof that he hired me to run this place into the ground.”

“But he loves this place—” More than he loves me. “And your record’s been rather good, actually, so I don’t think it’s possible—”

“Well, you’re thinkin’ wrong. He’s got something up his sleeve, Rebecca. Trust me. Please.” He looks crazed, but she knows he’s telling the truth. “And not only is he cheating on you, but he’s bribing his staff to help him hide the truth.” 

She’s plunged, then, into an icy sea. 

And so is he, mouth falling open. 

“You didn’t know,” he says. “Of course, oh my god, okay, I’m so sorry, I—”

Rebecca collects herself. She has practice sweeping up all her pieces, retaining her shape. 

“I owe you an apology,” she says stiffly. There’s a whole room in her chest, a whole mansion, all Rupert. She can deal only with what’s in front of her.

“No,” he says gently, “you don’t need to worry about all that, not when—”

“I’m sorry.” 

In spite of everything, Ted flashes her a grin, rueful but true. “You know, you should really be in charge of this place.” When she scoffs, he presses on. “No, no, you do know that, right? I’ve looked you up, you’ve got football in your blood, and business experience, and—look, I just quit my job, and I’m heading back to Kansas, and—”

“Have a drink with me before you go.” She doesn’t know where the request is coming from. She glances behind her, at the door she just walked through a few minutes ago, as if the retraced route will give her an answer. “Please?”

“Right now?”

She manages a grin of her own. It should be impossible, but it isn’t. “Well, yes, if you’re free. I’ve got a date I’m suddenly very eager to stand up.” 

***

Three months after that

On the day she relocates from her hotel to her new home, Rebecca snaps a picture of the empty living room, carefully ensuring the tidily-stacked but intimidating mountain of moving cartons is outside the frame she captures. It’s a neat effect: the room is aggressively clean and aggressively empty, as clean and empty and fresh and new as it will ever be. 

She texts the photo to Ted. My home.

Three dots, right away. I love it! A fresh start. ❤️

The quick response flutters in her stomach, a little burst of tension and warmth. It’s both welcome and not. They’ve formed something of a friendship in the past several months, mostly via not infrequent text messages, punctuated by a call or two when something important happens. She’s received a tour of his apartment by Facetime—an apartment that appealed to him, he was quick to point out, because the building offered month-to-month leases. He’s home in the states because he’d need a visa to be anywhere else, and because he and his ex are working through a custody arrangement for his son. He’s sitting on what he calls his dirty Rupert cash, content to take a beat before he figures out what’s next. 

She hopes she can be a part of it. Is trying so, so hard to hold it as a possibility. Taking every care to act with discretion, she’s spoken to the boys. The team. Her team—although the ink, as they say, is still wet. No one will know for a few more days. With one exception. 

The players have told her everything she needs to know: Ted cared for them, made them better, was well-organized, ran meaningful training. Relied too much on the captain, Roy Kent, for strategy. (Even Roy Kent said so.) Lacked background knowledge of the sport. Was picking it up quickly, only to leave them. Received only malicious compliance from George’s leftover staff. Was worlds better than George Cartrick, worlds better than the new interim guy who was shit. Brought out the best in them. Cared for them, cared for them, made them better, made them so much better. 

My turn for a facetime tour, she texts. Can I call you later? I’ve got something (something good) that I want to talk to you about. 

He has no idea, she thinks happily and nervously, as they make plans to talk in a few hours, at his two and her eight. No idea that she’s about to ask him to come back. 

Chapter Text

The holograms were Keeley’s idea. They’ve been a headache, if she’s honest: All the research, for starters. Then making room in the budget. Then finding a company that doesn’t store copies of the files for itself—because the last thing she needs is to wake up a year from now to the unexpected drop of The Lady Greys: An (Unauthorized) Cartoon Adventure on YouTube because a sketchy business sold the team’s likenesses to an AI animator. 

Then making sure everybody showed up today, even though there was no training, because they only booked the machine for ten hours.  

But it’s so worth it, Keeley thinks, nine hours in and with all required holograms complete. She loves knowing that all the women on the team (and their coaches) will have access to a trippy, help-me-obi-wan-kenobi-you’re-my-only-hope version of themselves. There are some TV ads planned using the ‘grams, and a holo-hall is going in near the trophy cases at the stadium, but the sky’s really the limit. 

All traces of Keeley’s headache are well and truly gone now that Rebecca’s in the hologram machine. Rebecca had hesitated to take a turn even though it was just the two of them left in the conference room, but Keeley managed to convince her (“It’s just a few minutes, and we’ve got an hour til they pick up the machine…and you’ll be the tallest sexist hologram ever!”). 

Now Keeley sits in the folding chair just outside the machine, the same place she’s been all day. She hasn’t been bored for a second, watching the machine do its thing, but for the first time in nine hours she’s frantically torn between watching the monitor mounted to the outside of the silo-like hologram device, where she can view a video feed of what Rebecca’s doing, or focusing her attention on the laser-illuminated screen that displays the progression of the hologram itself.  She ends up splitting her time, tearing her eyes away from the monitor (Rebecca’s in a one-shoulder dress, bright lemon yellow, and strappy gold sandals, the heels a deadly spike) so she can watch the layers of images collect into Rebecca’s hologram. 

Her gaze returns to the monitor before long. She’ll be able to pull up the hologram whenever she wants, but this moment will only last for a little while. She’s read a little about the technology—it’s not unlike recording sound, this process. Rebecca is being encoded in light. She told Rebecca what she told all the team before her, which is that a repetitive yet dynamic motion makes the best hologram. Rebecca has taken this advice to heart, and is interacting with the football they’ve used all day as a unifying prop. Her body is a looping chorus of movement as she balances on her high heels, kicking the ball from one side to the other and stopping it with her sandal, then back the other direction, again and again. 

It occurs to Keeley nearly too late that she ought to get Ted down here if she can. She’s a benevolent, understanding, unjealous person, and as much as she’s loving this she doesn’t want to keep it from him. She sends a text asking if he’s still here and telling him there are three minutes left on Rebecca’s holographic process. The only reply she receives is the door opening and Ted walking towards the front of the conference room with his backpack on and his hands jammed into his pockets, something ironic but a bit hesitant about the pleasant smile on his face. 

“You don’t think she’d mind?” Ted whispers, grabbing a folding chair to pull next to Keeley’s but keeping his eyes averted from the screen.

“We both watched yours,” Keeley points out. 

But that had been earlier, when everyone had stuck around to watch each other’s holograms get made. People were laughing and saying “that is sick” and “this is so fucking cool” on repeat and hollering enthusiastic instructions loud enough that the person in the tube could hear them. Ted’s hologram is funny; he opted to toss the football from one hand to another, leaning a bit aggressively forward (all in jest) with a big goofy grin on his face. It was very goalkeeper of him, or, honestly, very basketball. 

“Just sit,” she concludes, impatient, more decisive. “Only a minute left now.” 

Ted exhales, slides his backpack off his shoulders, and sits down. 

Keeley steals a glance at him and clocks that his eyes are darting between the monitor and screen, every bit as frantic as she was. Rebecca, on the other hand, has slowed down although she’s dutifully stuck to the same motion; five minutes is a scarily long time to do only one thing, with nothing but your own stamina and your own thoughts to keep you company. She still looks perfect. The dress is slit up the thigh, and Keeley wonders how many more times she’ll see the fabric part to reveal smooth skin as Rebecca prepares to kick the ball…ten more times, then nine, all the way down to the moment ending. 

Keeley risks sacrificing one of the thigh reveals to take another look at Ted. He’s settled on the monitor and is calmer now, his expression beaming so much fondness towards the image of Rebecca that Keeley thinks she must be able to sense it. And maybe she does, because for the first time in nearly five minutes she trips a little, laughing and brushing her hair behind her ears before resuming her pattern with the football. It doesn’t make the hologram glitch—the layers of the design are pretty much fully built up anyway—and after a few more passes from foot to foot, a few more moments of awareness of Ted’s breathing, awareness he can hear the hitch in hers, the timer sounds and the lights go off and Rebecca pulls open the sliding door. 

“Ted!” she exclaims through immediate laughter. “You sneak.”

“I invited him—” Keeley says just as Ted says “I was gonna maybe see if you wanted to get a drink this evening.” They gawk at each other, feeling low-stakes panic about whatever must be happening on Rebecca’s face.

“Keeley too?” Rebecca suggests, and when Keeley makes herself look at her, she’s smiling. 

“Of course,” says Ted. To his credit—or hers—Keeley doesn't think he sounds disappointed.

“I have to wait for them to pick up the machine,” Keeley says ruefully. 

“Oh, well that’s no problem.” 

“We’ll have a drink here,” Rebecca says. “Ted can help me mix them.” Suddenly, she freezes. “Keeley, did you have one made yet?”

Keeley chuckles. “No! They’re for the team.” 

“You’re team,” Rebecca says. She frowns. “Did we pay by the hologram or by the hour?”

“Ten hours, prepaid.” 

“Then will you do it?” Rebecca asks. “Please?”

“Will you make vodka gimlets?” Keeley isn’t above bargaining a little. 

“We’ll make ‘em,” Ted says quickly. 

Keeley wonders if she can learn to spin a football on the tip of her finger right now. Probably not, but she’ll have a hologram of the attempt. She leans in and picks up the football while the door to the machine is still open, then steps inside. From the doorframe, she turns back into the conference room to ask if Ted or Rebecca can push the start button before they head up to Rebecca’s office to play bartender. But Ted is still seated—if anything, he’s more settled in than he was before. Rebecca already stands at the console, ready to press. She’s holding back a grin as she says “I think it’s only fair we watch.”