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Ted didn’t make a habit of checking social media, especially in the wake of AFC Richmond’s relegation - he didn’t need to see what the internet thought of him to know that it wasn’t necessarily friendly. And if he opened up Pandora’s box, he wouldn’t be able to close it again.
But when he had nothing else to do, when Henry was still asleep in his undecorated bedroom in Ted’s new apartment in Kansas, inevitably, he found himself scrolling through Instagram, the only social media that Keeley could convince him to get. His profile was private, with only his friends and family on it - the public Coach Lasso Instagram was managed by Keeley herself.
He scrolled aimlessly through the same pictures he’d already seen, liking the few photos that hadn’t already earned a little heart. But his family and friends didn’t post very often, except for some of the players and Keeley, so the feed of photos ran dry quickly.
He hovered his thumb over the Explore page, considering. The last time he looked, he found a few new recipes that he enjoyed. He clicked on it, his eyes scanning over the grid of photos before he stumbled, his eyes landing on a picture of Rebecca, her hair blowing in the wind, obviously taken by paparazzi.
He pressed his finger to the picture, curiosity getting the better of him. She was walking out of a building, her bag hanging on her arm, in a breezy looking green skirt that pulled against her body by the wind.
Insider confirms: AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton EXPECTING!
He blinked, his eyes running over the headline once, twice, and a third time before the words registered. Something in his chest felt heavy, like disappointment, but that wasn’t right - it didn’t feel right. Maybe it was because the picture had been taken against her will, that she’d told him how much she hated being hounded for pictures.
She wouldn’t have wanted this picture out there, he knew that.
And really, were they even telling the truth? The paparazzi were notorious for caring little about the truth - he knew that magazines constantly speculated that a woman was pregnant over a wrong angle, over a particularly billowy shirt. What if they were doing that to her, too?
He exited out of the photo, pulling up Rebecca’s number, considering it for a moment before he pressed it.
He was sure it was going to go to voicemail when she finally picked up. “Ted?” she asked. “How’s Kansas?”
He knew, based on that statement alone, that she had no idea the picture even existed. “It’s - it’s fine,” he said absently. “Um, I have to tell you somethin’ that might be kinda…weird.”
“Okay,” she said cautiously. “What is it?”
He hesitated, pulling the phone away from his ear to find the photo again, pressing the little arrow to send it to her. “I’m sendin’ you something,” he said. “I know that paparazzi are…I know they’re a special kinda vulture, so I’m not even gonna ask if it’s true or somethin’, I just thought you should know…” he waited, hoping she’d interrupt him. “Rebecca?”
She was still silent on the other side. The longer she went without speaking, the more worried he felt.
“You know what, it was probably just nonsense, nothin’ you need to worry yourself with -”
“How did they get this picture?” she asked quietly. “Jesus this was just…this was yesterday -”
“I knew it would be nonsense -”
“Ted,” she interrupted, firmly enough that he stopped immediately. “It’s true.”
He went quiet, trying to find the right words. “C-congratulations,” he stammered. “I mean…I hope that’s - that you -”
“It wasn’t planned, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said, a little briskly. He could tell she was uncomfortable talking about it, he could hear it in the lofty way her voice shifted, creating distance between them. “And it is early. But I am…optimistic.”
There was something in that word - optimistic - he could almost hear a smile in it, something so soft and tender he smiled, too, past the heaviness in his chest. There was no reason for him to feel that heaviness anyway - he wanted it to go away, wanted it to stop lingering so he could stop thinking about it.
“That’s good, Rebecca, I’m glad,” he murmured earnestly. “Who is - when do I get to meet the dad to be?”
He didn’t know how else to ask, or even if he should, but they were close enough, friendly enough, that she would tell him if she’d been dating anyone, wouldn’t she?
She scoffed lightly on the other line. “You won’t,” she said. “He’s not around.”
He straightened up in his seat. “Why?” he asked, a little more belligerently than he intended. It wasn’t his place to worry, but worry he always did anyway. What had the man done to earn her scoff of derision? Why was it already such a finished subject? What had he done? “What’s - why?”
She huffed, and he knew it was one of those exasperated eye rolls she was doing on the other end. “Because he’s not…he’s not involved. He won’t be involved.”
He swallowed past something that felt paralyzingly like anger in his throat. “If he’s actin’ like a jerk, I’d be more than happy to -”
“Break his legs?” she asked wryly. “Throw him in the Thames?”
“Sure,” he answered.
“Ted, I don’t really want him involved,” she said reassuringly. “It’s not…realistic. And frankly, I don’t even know how to contact him, much less break him the news. It’s just…I’m handling it.”
“Handling it,” he repeated cautiously.
“I’m keeping the baby, Ted,” she said, a little defensively.
“I didn’t, that’s not what -”
“Right, of course,” she interrupted apologetically. “It’s just…it’s been an adjustment. A surprise.”
He nodded. He remembered how terrified he’d been when he found out Michelle was pregnant. And he’d stayed terrified for most of the experience, even with his mother and his wife at his side, even knowing that what he had to endure was less than a fraction of what Michelle was experiencing.
“I hope Keeley is goin’ with you to appointments and things like that,” he said. “Makin’ sure you’re takin’ all those vitamins they give you.”
She sniffed. “No one knows yet,” she said. “Just you, now.” She paused, sighing. “And, well, the world, because of some fucker with a camera -”
“I’m sorry,” he said, another wave of anger rising like the tide. “Do you want me to call the paper? Get it taken down?”
“You couldn’t make them -”
“I probably could,” he said back.
She sighed, the sound quiet, almost forlorn. “I should start making calls,” she said. “Make sure I get to some people before that picture does.”
“I’m gonna be in Kansas for a bit,” he said, before he could lose his nerve. “But the next time you have an appointment and want some company, I’m up at all hours. Just give me a call.”
“I - that’s very kind of you, Ted -”
“It’s not kindness,” he insisted. “I’m serious. Call me, I’d love to go, keep you company.”
Her voice, right before she hung up, was so soft he knew he was going to be thinking about it forever. “I’ll remember that.”
***
He didn’t think she’d take him up on his offer to accompany her on an appointment. He thought that she’d remain as steadfastly independent as she always had been, keeping their friendship at a healthy distance. Offering alone had been a breach of those boundaries.
So when a FaceTime call came through a week later, he answered it without thinking.
“Howdy, Boss,” he said brightly. “How are we feelin’?”
“Like vomit warmed over, thanks for asking,” she said dryly. He surveyed her on the screen, smiling slightly when she ran her free hand through her hair, as if to fix it for him.
“Well, you’re glowin’,” he said. “What’s on the agenda for today?”
She hesitated a little. “Going to the doctor, actually.”
He perked up, lifting the phone as he straightened up. “Oh?” he asked. “Am I comin’ with ya?”
She shrugged. “If you want.”
He really did want to, which almost surprised him. He imagined that he’d feel a little out of sorts, that he’d feel that same heaviness in his chest that he felt when she told him that she was pregnant, but instead, he felt excitement, like there was something he could hold onto, something he could focus on.
“Let’s do it,” he said, smiling when she gave him a shy grin at the sound of his voice. “Are we learnin’ anything cool today?”
She lifted her shoulders in a shrug, and he realized for the first time that her background was an exam room, that she was already at the doctor’s office, waiting. He wondered if she’d sat in the waiting room alone, determined to do it by herself, before she caved and called him. He hoped she hadn’t, but he knew her well enough to know she probably had.
She only asked for help when she really needed it.
“It’s gotta be cool though,” he said reassuringly, softening his voice, “seein’ the baby on that screen, right?”
She looked away, something pinching in her brow before it smoothed out. He had the sense that she was trying not to cry - he’d seen that same look on her face before, when she admitted to him that she’d lied to him, when she told him about Rupert.
“Hey,” he said softly, meeting her eyes again. “You okay?”
She nodded, like it was obvious, but she tilted the phone away so he couldn’t see her face for a few moments. Not for the first time, he wondered what kind of a toll this was taking on her, what she was thinking that she wasn’t sharing. He wished he could tell her that she could say it to him, even if it didn’t make sense, even if she didn’t want him to say anything back. She couldn’t keep holding it in, could she?
He went quiet for a while, listening to the sound of the nurse and Rebecca talking, his viewpoint nothing but the ceiling. They were standard questions that he heard, Rebecca’s answers easy, open, candid, like she’d forgotten he could hear, like she didn’t mind.
“Alright, let’s take a look at the baby.”
The camera shifted, and Ted watched the screen change, Rebecca holding the phone so he could see both her and the screen at the same time. He watched her move, her free hand coming up to cover her mouth when the heartbeat came over the speaker, her whole body answering the sound instinctively.
He wished he was there, holding her hand. The thought wasn’t a surprise - he’d thought it a thousand times before. It was the weight of it, the way he knew it would linger after the call was done, the way it would haunt him - there was a revelation there, lingering at the edge of his consciousness, but he pushed it away to stay focused on the task at hand.
“I’m going to take some measurements so we can determine a possible due date,” the nurse said, and Rebecca glanced back at him, and he actually moved his hand closer to the phone, as if that would close the chasm of distance between them. Her eyes dropped a little, and he wondered if she saw it, the movement.
They were quiet for a little while, Ted watching Rebecca while Rebecca watched the nurse. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen this look on her face before, the wavering look of wonder. How badly had she wanted a child, he thought when she wiped at her cheek, pushing away a stray tear like an afterthought. How much had she wanted this experience?
He had a suspicion, looking at her, that she wanted it very much - and if that were true, then what Rupert did, cheating on her and then getting Bex pregnant, flaunting it in front of her, it was even worse than what it looked like, on the surface.
He kept looking at her, so intently and for so long he nearly missed the nurse announcing that New Year’s Eve was her possible due date, and Rebecca rolled her eyes affectionately at her unborn child, her hand landing on her stomach, and he ached for her, he wanted to get on a plane immediately and be in the room with her.
She looked over at him, studying him, and he thought maybe, for a half-second, she could read his mind.
***
They fell into a pattern, here and there, while he was in Kansas. She would FaceTime him every couple of days, though the time was unpredictable, with some little insight about pregnancy that she deemed important enough to pass on to him.
His personal favorite was that pregnancy dreams were more vivid than drug-induced dreams, which she steadfastly refused to elaborate on. She’d simply giggled behind her hand, shoving all of the bottles of vitamins in front of the camera to show him all of the ones she had to take, holding them up individually so he could commiserate with her about how big the pills were.
He got so used to it that when he got back to England, he almost expected the FaceTiming to continue. Until one day she was there, at his door, holding a couple of coffees and a bag from the bakery at the end of his street. Her hair was longer - he hadn’t noticed that part over the phone, her smile wide and genuine.
When she threw her arms around his shoulders for a hug, he could feel her bump. He held her for longer than he needed to, relishing in her open affection - he wondered how he’d earned it, if she had been holding it back throughout their FaceTime conversations, unable to really give it a voice.
She let him usher her to his couch, unpacking the croissants she brought and putting them on plates, passing her one of the coffees, content to let his eyes find her over and over again for only seconds at a time. He thought maybe it would get back to normal, how it felt when he looked at her now, but every time he chanced a glance over, he felt that same little spike of lightning, something that drew his eye like there was something new to learn.
“What?” she asked when he finally settled, letting his eyes linger without cutting them away. “Big change?”
He shook his head. “Nah, no, you just…you look…”
Her hand settled over her belly self-consciously, and that burned like a physical wound. “I look like what?”
“Motherhood looks good on you,” he said softly, hoping that she could hear his earnestness. She kept her eyes on him, he suspected looking for a lie or for some kind of obfuscation. When she smiled, he wondered if that was how spring announced itself to the world - quiet, beautiful, affirming.
***
She asked him to go with him to find out the gender of the baby at the end of a workday, when everyone else had already left the club. She was wearing almost exclusively maternity clothes now, but fancy designer ones that he suspected were created to be more flattering than the maternity clothes normal people wore.
That or she’d been thinking for a long time about what kind of clothes she wanted to wear while she was pregnant. That thought stuck with him for longer than he wanted to admit, and he didn’t have a reason for it to linger, but linger it did, so long that he was starting to suspect that it was true.
He agreed immediately, and she ducked her head at his enthusiasm, her hand falling to the swell of her stomach. There was something deep in him that reacted every time she did that, something he never bothered to think on long enough to name, but every time, it washed over him like a wave, crested and dipped and evened out again, and he was always left with a smile, one he didn’t know how to explain.
“They told me that I could find out a while ago, but it didn’t feel right,” she said. “You know, doing it alone.”
He frowned. “I could have - you could have called, I would have -”
“Oh, I know,” she said reassuringly. “I know, Ted. I just…”
“Ahh,” he said, understanding instantly. “In person, you mean. Well, let’s get on with it, I’m sure you’re itchin’ to know, and there’s all kindsa things that need to be done after -”
“Yeah? Like what?” she asked as he got up, packing his backpack in record time to follow her out of the office, through the locker room, and out of the club entirely, into her waiting car.
“Like the nursery, your baby registry, hell, even names,” he listed. “Which, if you are plannin’ on painting a room for a nursery, may I gently discourage yellow? Apparently, it makes you hungry, and that might be -”
“I am not going to paint the nursery yellow,” Rebecca said, so confidently he chuckled. “I don’t need the walls to mimic the color of the baby’s puke -”
“Oh, come on now,” he teased, opening the door for her. “That baby will puke all colors. A veritable rainbow of delight.”
“You sure know how to charm a woman,” she said dryly, but she was stifling a laugh all the same. He settled in beside her, close enough that her shoulder brushed his when she buckled the seat belt.
“What color was Henry’s nursery?”
“Mauve,” he said. “Michelle’s mother painted it before we found out he was a boy, but it was such a peaceful color, it didn’t seem like somethin’ that needed to be changed. Henry’s favorite color is still purple.”
“I thought maybe green for the nursery,” she said. “Light green.”
He turned his eyes away from the buildings drifting by to look at her. “Like your eyes?”
She blinked, as if she’d forgotten the color of her own eyes, and dropped her gaze to her lap. “I hadn’t thought about it -”
“It’s a very pretty color,” he said reassuringly. “For a nursery. For eyes. For anything really.”
She looked out the window, her mouth tight like she was trying to rearrange her expression. The shine of the sun blinded him to her for a long few moments, and when she looked back, he wondered if she’d been successful after all. “What’s your favorite color?” she asked.
“Green.”
***
She didn’t take his hand until the doctor put the wand on her belly, her eyes trained on the screen. His fingers met hers without resistance - he’d been waiting for that moment, hoping she’d reach for him if she needed to. She held, squeezing once before her fingers curled around his and waited, a little clammy.
She was nervous.
“Baby looks good, heartbeat is strong,” the doctor said crisply. “On target for weight and size, just as we expected.”
Rebecca’s hand tightened around his.
“Right, Ms. Welton, would you like to know the sex?”
She was quiet for so long Ted thought maybe she was going to say no - he glanced over at her, at her bottom lip in her teeth, her brow furrowed, before she cut her eyes over to him and then back to the doctor. She nodded.
“Alright,” the doctor said, turning toward the screen again. “It looks like, pause for dramatic effect -” Ted chuckled quietly, “your baby is a girl.”
“A girl?” Rebecca asked.
“Rebecca Junior,” Ted said softly, Rebecca’s laugh cut with the wavering rhythm of a sob, and she pulled her hand out of his to wipe at the tears on her cheek, as sudden to him as they must have been to her, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. He nearly leaned over to wipe them away for her, almost let his fingers touch her face to soothe her.
“God, I’m sorry,” she muttered. “These hormones are a fucking nightmare -”
“Nothing to apologize for, ma’am,” the doctor said, leaning back to reach for a box of Kleenex, passing the box over to her. “Completely normal.”
She left them alone to get the ultrasound pictures, Rebecca’s hand finding Ted’s again as she leaned back against the exam table, her eyes darting over the entirety of the room before they found him again. There was that wave again, something much more substantial when she had tears in her eyes, when the tears were coupled with a smile so incandescent he thought he’d never seen anything so raw and painful and beautiful.
The knowledge that he loved her came so simply it hardly felt like a revelation at all. It felt like yet another reminder, an alarm on his phone he had set to go off every single day. Don’t forget, you love Rebecca!
“A little girl,” she murmured, reverent. He stood up from his seat, reaching for the paper towels at the edge of the counter in the corner of the room. He tore one off, holding it in his hand momentarily before he reached over to wipe the goop off her belly, chuckling when she wrinkled her nose.
“The luckiest little girl,” he said as he carefully cleaned her up, his hand lingering before he took it back. “With a whole team of big brothers to protect her.”
“I always wanted a little girl,” she confessed, tilting her head a little. “When I - when I dreamed about becoming a mum, I always had a little girl.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said, pulling his chair a little closer. She tugged her shirt down, over her stomach, her hand rubbing over it before it settled.
“Oh yeah,” she said, wistfully enough that he imagined he could hear the undercurrent of pain in it. “Dreamed about it all the time. A little girl with dark hair for some reason, never blonde. Crooked pigtails, shrill little voice, that shrieky laugh -” she sighed, her eyes searching his face. “Thank you for coming with me.”
“Thank you for letting me.”
***
Sometime, near the beginning of her third trimester, Rebecca started having nightmares. Ted had gotten used to getting texts from her at all hours as the baby started moving more, keeping her up. He had insomnia already, it didn’t bother him at all to have her texts to go along with what was usually the loneliest part of the day.
In her second trimester, her cravings became his top priority - he was always going to the supermarket for the oddest combinations of foods, tracking down her favorite chippy, her favorite restaurant, the street food she had one time that she remembered suddenly in the middle of a movie.
Keeley helped him with that sometimes, Beard and Roy, too, but Keeley was traveling for work a lot, and when Ted was out hunting food at all hours, Beard and Roy typically took that opportunity to pick up his slack at work.
So when the nightmares started, he was the one she called.
The first time, she called at nearly two in the morning. He was in bed but not asleep, his notebook open on his bent knee, his pen scribbling out a name that he intended to send to Rebecca in the morning - Margot.
He didn’t know why he wrote little girls' names down in the notebook anymore, he never had the courage to suggest them to her. Surely she had a name picked out already, or she had one in mind, and he wasn’t the baby’s father, he was just her friend - he was a support system, not close enough to be the one who gave her a name for her baby.
He picked up the moment he saw her name on the display, sitting up straight, the notebook falling away. “Rebecca,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“What?” she asked, bewildered, out of breath, and he pushed himself to the edge of the bed, standing up. “Oh, yes, yes, it’s not - it’s not an emergency -”
He collapsed back onto the bed gracelessly, blowing out a relieved sigh. “Goodness, that was a bit of a heart rate nightmare -”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have -”
“Yes, you should have,” he interrupted immediately. “What’s goin’ on? How can I help?”
She hesitated, long enough that he managed to get back into bed, tucking his legs back under the covers. “I just…I had a bad dream, that’s all.”
He hummed. “That’s not too out of the ordinary,” he said gently. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
“No,” she said quietly.
The urge to hold her nearly overwhelmed him. He found himself unable to break the silence that followed for a long time, listening to the sound of her breathing, his eyes closing like that would bring her closer to him, like she would materialize beside him. He wanted it so badly he thought his heart broke when he opened his eyes and she wasn’t there.
“Okay,” he said finally, his eyes falling on his discarded notebook. “Do you want to hear some names I thought of?”
“Baby names?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I just thought, you know, if you were having trouble pickin’ one, I could have a whole arsenal of them waitin’ for you, just in case -”
“I don’t have a name picked,” she said, and he heard a rustling over the line, like she was getting comfortable. “I hadn’t gotten to bounce them off you yet.”
“Did you wanna go first?” he asked. “Give me your list?”
“No, no, Ted, you go,” she said, the nervous edge to her voice softening to something cottony, sweet. “I want to hear what you have.”
“Alright,” he said, suddenly nervous, looking down at the list of names he’d written down, some scratched out, some rewritten when he reconsidered them. What if she hated all of them? What if she laughed at him for writing them down at all?
His eyes rose to his alarm clock, by the bed. 2:13 a.m.
This was about making her feel better, about bringing her peace. Who cared if she laughed?
“Well, I started with some of those royal names, thinkin’, you know, that you’re a real classy woman and your daughter will be one, too,” he said, smiling a little at her amused huff, just as he expected. “Victoria, Elizabeth -”
“Victoria is my middle name,” she murmured.
“Of course it is,” he said, and she breathed another laugh. “I also have Anne, Catherine, Jane -”
“Saw Six, did you?” she asked shrewdly.
“You were there,” he reminded her, the memory of her sitting beside him at the show, enthusiastically mouthing the words, wiping at a tear she hoped he’d missed when Catherine Howard sang her song. He’d taken her out for chips afterward, both of them arguing heatedly over which Queen had to suffer the most, which one should have won the contest.
“I was, wasn’t I?” she asked, a little dreamily. “Okay, so we have royal names. What else?”
“Well, the list isn’t that organized,” he said. “I just wrote them down when I thought about them. Uhh, let’s see…Annabelle, Poppy, Diana, Rose, Cordelia -”
“Oh, there’s some Shakespeare in there,” she interrupted. “You don’t strike me as a Shakespeare man.”
“And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything,” he recited faithfully. “Don’t ask me which one that’s from -”
“It is very much the Shakespeare version of Believe, isn’t it?” she asked.
“I suppose it is.”
“What other names are on there?” she asked. “You haven’t given me a terrible name yet.”
“Oh, darn,” he joked. “I was hopin’ for at least one we could scratch off the list completely.”
She chuckled, and he took a moment to listen to it, searching for any lingering distress from her bad dream, something she might be trying to pull back from him.
“Well, there’s Grace,” he said thoughtfully. “Sophia, Emma, and here I think I was just thinkin’ of Jane Austen because I have Kitty, Marianne, Elinor -”
“If you say Fanny, I will hang up on you,” she interrupted.
He paused. “I can add it to the list if you -”
“Ted Lasso!”
“Okay, okay, no Fanny, got it,” he said, putting the phone near the paper to pretend to scratch the name out, her laughter spiking at the sound of it. “I think that’s about it.”
“That’s quite a list,” she murmured, her laughter drifting away. “I really like Emma, Cordelia, Annabelle. Maybe Rose. Those are sweet.”
He put little stars beside them, smiling proudly down at his list. “How do you feel now?”
She hummed quietly. “Better. Thank you, Ted,” she said. “I think I’ll…I think I’ll let you get some sleep.”
“Only if you’re sure you’re alright,” he said.
She paused. “I am now,” she answered. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
I love you.
***
Rebecca’s baby shower slipped by in a few slow drips - Ted took it upon himself to plan almost the entire thing with Keeley’s help, and when the house filled with women and gifts wrapped in pink paper, he found himself often banished to the kitchen, where he made the cake himself, along with a metric ton of shortbread.
He didn’t mind listening to the chatter from a distance - he didn’t want Rebecca to feel monopolized, like she could only spend time with him. Let her bask in the attention of Sassy, of Keeley, of Deborah and Julie and Ruth and everyone else. This was something she would have thought about when she wished for a daughter, wasn’t it?
He had her baby shower gifts under his Christmas tree at his apartment, waiting with another pile of gifts for her. The section for her and the baby took up most of the space under the tree, Henry’s pile already shipped off and leaving the other section under the tree bare for him to fill with gifts for everyone else.
Still, every time he left the house with the intention to buy something for Beard, or Roy, or even Higgins, he always came back with that gift plus another one for Rebecca, another one for the baby.
The kitchen door swung open, depositing Beard on the other side with him, a glass of non-alcoholic pink champagne in his hand. He raised his eyebrows at him as a shriek of laughter came through the door, a familiar pitch.
“Sassy,” they said together, Beard setting the glass of champagne on the table beside the cake.
He surveyed it with a half-smile. “Some of your best work,” he said, nodding at the pink icing flowers, the piping around the edge, the strawberries decorating the border and the top. “Rebecca is going to love it.”
“She made that flower, there,” Ted said, pointing at the lone white one, a little lopsided. “She wanted to help, and her kitchen is bigger, so -”
“Right,” Beard said, his smile widening for only a moment before he got it under control. “So when are you going to tell her?”
Ted turned toward the fridge to take out his beer, hidden away from the rest of the party, passing one to Beard. “Tell her what?”
“That you love her, that you want to be the father of her baby, that you stay up half the night just in case she needs you, that you nearly got hit by a car trying to get her those fries she likes, take your pick.”
Ted frowned, setting his beer down, unopened. “I don’t suppose I could start with Merry Christmas or somethin’, could I?”
“I suppose,” Beard said thoughtfully, his eyes staying on him, watching for his reaction. “As long as you get to the rest eventually.”
He sighed, reaching for the beer again, a nervous reach, abandon, reach, abandon, before he finally took it in his hand. “It’s not the right time,” he said seriously, Beard’s eyes on him softening. “She has a lot -”
“And she will only get more to handle,” Beard reminded him. “And it’s…you want to be a part of it, more than you already are. I think…” he stopped, glancing behind him when the door swung again before it settled. “I think it would bring her great comfort to know that you love her.”
He nodded. “And if it doesn’t? Bring her comfort?”
Beard tilted his head at him in exasperation, opening his mouth to answer, his words silenced by Keeley barrelling through the kitchen door, looking at the both of them with wide eyes.
“What are you lot doing in here?” she asked impatiently. “Ted, it’s time for the cake, let’s go.”
He didn’t get a moment alone with Rebecca until the entire party was done, until everyone was out the door, including Keeley, who promised to be back the next day to help with thank you notes and unpacking the nursery. He closed the front door at last, flipping the lock, lingering there for only a second before he went back into the sitting room, where Rebecca had her head tipped back on the couch, her eyes closed.
She managed to convince Keeley not to dress her in pink, and was instead in green, the same light sage color that he’d painted the nursery, after insisting that it wouldn’t be right to hire someone or to have her do it herself. He leaned against the doorway to look, just for a moment, grateful to have the opportunity where she didn’t know he was there.
Her hair was so long now it reached between her shoulder blades, wavy in a way that he knew irritated her but reminded him of a princess from a fairy tale. Her green dress matched her eyes perfectly - he’d noticed the moment he arrived, his words dying in his throat while he took it in, the dress itself still form-fitting, even though she lamented, when he came through the front door, that she looked like a whale.
“You absolutely do not,” he’d insisted, nudging the door closed. “You look radiant.”
She’d kicked off her shoes sometime, the two of them falling over each other at her feet, her hands resting on top of her belly.
“Well if it isn’t Sleeping Beauty,” he murmured, smiling when she grimaced, her eyes still closed. “Almost Sleeping Beauty,” he amended.
“Sleeping beached whale,” she said.
“Now, now,” he said, coming farther into the room, taking in the rest of the mess, the bags of wrapping paper she’d insisted they leave behind for the cleaning woman, the piles of gifts near her Christmas tree. “The baby can hear you.”
She hummed, cracking one eye as he sat beside her. “People won’t leave me alone about the name,” she said, tilting her head toward him. “They all want to be the ones who gave me the name, they all want me to name her after them, it’s exhausting.”
“Theodora is a good name,” he joked, chuckling when she smiled immediately, like an exhale. “Just a suggestion.”
“It’s not a bad name,” she mused. “Call her Theo.”
“Imagine the uproar,” he said, matching her almost dreamy tone. “We’d be the talk of the town.”
“If I named my daughter after you?” she asked. “I imagine we would be.” She opened both eyes, looking around before she sighed. “I don’t want to get up,” she murmured.
He shrugged. “Then don’t. I can bring your favorite pillow down here, set you up where you’re comfortable.”
“Then I’ll really feel like a beached whale,” she said, moving like she was going to get up, Ted immediately jumping up to offer her his hand. She wavered a little on her feet before she stopped, her hand still in his. “Help me up to bed and I’ll tell you what name I really picked.”
“Oh, now that is incentive,” he joked, walking with her to the stairs. “Did you have a nice party?”
She hummed a little. “Would've been more fun with you,” she said.
“I was here,” he protested.
She shrugged. “Yeah, but you weren’t with me, you know?”
He let his eyes find her profile, a step below her as she continued up the stairs. He wanted to press her, to have her explain explicitly what she meant by that, so there was nothing left to haunt him later.
“I worry sometimes that I’ve come to rely on you too much,” she said finally. “You didn’t sign up for this -“
“Coupon for life means coupon for life,” he insisted. “Yours and hers,” he nodded down at her belly, her hand falling to it again, almost possessively. She continued up the stairs, looking down at him surreptitiously out of the corner of her eye, like there was something else she wanted to say. He wished that she’d say it, wished it so fervently that he almost said it out loud.
But he didn’t - he followed her into her room, her pink pregnancy pillow tossed haphazardly across her unmade bed, realizing that she’d taken a nap up there, probably while he was downstairs setting up something in the kitchen, in his own little world. Something about that image made him feel oddly at peace - him puttering around while she slept, coexisting in the same place with no trouble.
She left him in the room to go into her bathroom, leaving the door open while she got changed. He’d been there to help her out of maternity clothes with poorly placed zippers before, helped her untie her shoes when she realized that slipping them off wasn’t going to help - this was just another part of their routine.
She came back into the room in a pink nightgown, her makeup gone, and he was struck breathless yet again by the timeless beauty of her - she was beautiful before, he’d thought it a thousand times, but she was intimidatingly beautiful. She was stunning, she was gorgeous, and she was still all of those things, but pregnancy had softened her - there was something ethereal in her visage now that there hadn’t been before, wonder, perhaps, that she’d finally been given this gift that she always wanted.
If he thought about it too long, it made him feel too much to process.
“Sit with me,” she said, patting the empty side of the bed as she pulled the pink pillow close. He obeyed, his back against the headboard. She settled farther down, looking up at him through her eyelashes.
He nearly reached out to touch the side of her face.
“I was thinking…” she said, the sentence drifting away from her when she looked away.
He waited her out, watching how her hands fidgeted with the pillow.
“Would you…would you be in the room with me?” she asked. “I know that’s…it’s not exactly glamorous -”
“Wait, in the room?” he asked. “Like the…the delivery room?”
She pursed her lips. “No, Ted, the other one. Yes, that one.”
“Not - not Keeley or your mother -”
“Keeley would faint on the spot and my mum would be making a plan for me to lose the baby weight while I was in the middle of a contraction,” she said, her hand sliding up the pillow to nearly find his, her index finger against his pinkie. “No, I need someone I can trust, someone strong.”
He smiled. “I’m your man.”
She sighed, her head falling to her pillow, blonde hair fanning out around it. “What do you think of Rose, for a name?”
He scooted down a little bit, so they were eye-to-eye. “Rose Welton,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s pretty. And classy, like her mama.”
She didn’t say anything for a long time, her eyes fixed on him, roaming over his face like she was unafraid of being noticed. He let her look - it was nice, to be observed, to know that whatever she was seeing was the truth. That was all Rebecca saw when she looked at him, he knew.
The truth.
“Theodora is growing on me, though,” she murmured, letting her eyes slip closed.
He chuckled quietly, letting his hand finally find the side of her face, brushing through her hair, gentle and slow, her soft hum an encouragement. He didn’t stop until he was sure she was asleep, her breathing deep and even. Still, after that he stayed there, leaning against the headboard, listening to the sound of silence, punctuated only by her breath.
Pulling himself away was nearly impossible, but in the end, he turned off all the lights, left her plug-in light in the bathroom on, and went downstairs to finish wiping down the surfaces in the kitchen, letting himself out with the spare key when he was done.
***
On the night of Christmas Eve, Ted found it nearly impossible to sleep. He wasn’t sure what the reason was - Rebecca was asleep in her house, his last text gone unanswered, which meant she’d dozed off while typing out her response, which was getting to be their routine as she got closer to her due date. The only thing that helped her sleep now was him - he either had to comfort her to sleep or bore her to sleep - every night, he tried to figure out which one had done it.
He sat down on the couch sideways, his eyes on the lights on his Christmas tree. He decorated his flat, a little lost in the act of it now that he wasn’t decorating his home back in Kansas. Little Christmas trees adorned every surface, nutcrackers crowded his mantle, guarding the pictures of Henry and the team. He had a tray of covered cookies in the kitchen, meticulously iced.
He looked down at his phone - nearly three in the morning. Technically, it was Christmas.
For a moment, when he looked around again, he felt terribly lonely.
The quiet knock at his front door startled him so terribly he felt almost angry in the aftermath, the prickling fear in his senses slowly fading as he went to the door. It had to be Beard on the other side - no one else would come over this late without calling first -
“Sorry,” Rebecca said the moment he opened the door, her hair haphazard, her coat undone. She was still in pajamas and slippers. “I couldn’t stay in my house anymore.”
“Why?” he asked, stepping aside immediately, taking her coat and jogging over to the living room to grab a blanket to put around her instead. “What’s goin’ on?”
She sat down on the couch, in the same spot he’d been in only a moment before, turning her head toward the Christmas tree without answering. The lights reflected over her, red and green and blue, shifting the color of her hair. She sighed quietly, looking back at him.
“I’m afraid,” she said, her mouth tight like she was trying to keep her expression steady, impassive.
He moved to sit beside her, tucking the blanket more completely over her. “Afraid?” he repeated. “Afraid enough to leave your house in the middle of the night?”
“Nightmares,” she said softly, her eyes pulling away from him. “I didn’t want to be there anymore -”
“Okay,” he said immediately, settling down beside her, pulling her legs over his lap, giving her more room to get comfortable. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“If something happens to me,” she said, her eyes trained on the window, close to him but somehow terribly far away. “Will you take care of her?”
He frowned. “Rebecca -”
“It is a possibility, Ted,” she pressed, looking over. “I’m healthy for my age, but I’m not young -”
The thought made him feel sick. “You’re gonna be just fine,” he said reassuringly. “You have the best doctor in London, you’re very healthy, Rose is healthy. Nothing is gonna happen to you. It’s gonna be scary, and it’s gonna be hard, but you’re the strongest person I know, and you’ve wanted this for -”
“Forever,” she finished for him.
He nodded, his suspicion confirmed. “I don’t think hell or high water is gonna be able to take this experience from you,” he said soothingly.
“I keep dreaming that someone takes her away,” she said, a little unevenly. “That I’m just lying there, and I can see but I can’t move, and they just wrap her up and hand her off. Sometimes they hand her off to her dad, whatever the fuck his name was, and sometimes they hand her off to Rupert -”
“Like hell,” he muttered, moving a little closer. She hummed her agreement, her eyes going back to the window.
“I’ve wanted to be a mum for as long as I can remember,” she said, her hand rubbing soothingly over her stomach, gentle and loving. “I begged Rupert, I begged him for years, and he always said no. He always said I would be a terrible mother, that I wasn’t suited to it -”
“Wrong,” he interjected quietly.
“That was one of the things he took from me that I could never forgive,” she said, and he watched a tear slip down her cheek. “I stayed with him too long, I was too weak -”
“Wrong again,” he said, softer.
“By the time I got away, it was too late for me. At least, that’s what I thought,” she said, and he gently laid his hand over hers on her belly. “And sometimes, I lie in bed and I wonder how I got so lucky, how I got this miracle, this gift. Because I don’t get nice things, Ted. Not…not for long.”
He nodded, his chest tight.
“Every day, I woke up terrified, like today will be the day I lose my baby,” she said. “I took pregnancy tests every day while you were gone, I did all of the research, I was scared to death.”
“Rebecca,” he breathed, her eyes moving over to his.
“I thought maybe if I was going to finally get my chance to be a mum, then the catch was that I was going to do it alone. That was my penance, I suppose. I get one thing I want, but not the other thing.”
“The other thing?” he asked.
“Someone to really love me,” she answered, like it was simple. “But if Rose is all that I get, then I can be happy with that.”
He tightened his hand around hers, trying to gather his courage - she deserved all of the things she wanted, didn’t she? Even if he wasn’t the best man out there for her, even if he wasn’t exactly what she wanted, didn’t she deserve to know she was loved?
“Rebecca, I -”
“But I have you,” she interrupted, breaking out of her reverie. “My best friend.”
He nodded, tearing his eyes away, loosening his hand so it was just laying flat over her belly, waiting for the little wave of movement he always felt when he left his hand in one place for too long. The little jolt of movement under his hand always made him smile, like Rose was trying to get his attention, trying to make sure he was paying attention.
“You’ll always have me,” he said finally. “So will Rose.”
When he tore his eyes away from his hand to look at Rebecca, she was staring at him, something curious in her gaze that he couldn’t rationalize. He wished he could really allow himself to enjoy how beautiful she was under the Christmas lights, how softly she looked at him sometimes, the way her eyes spoke to him in a language he wasn’t sure she intended.
“Since you’re here,” he said, breaking the silence. “Do you wanna open some of your presents?”
“Some?” she repeated.
He shrugged, standing up, taking his hand back. “Well, gotta save some of them for the normal Christmas hours,” he rationalized. “And I have a bunch for Rose, too -”
“Ted -”
“Babies can never have enough stuff,” he demurred, picking up a couple of the wrapped boxes, depositing them in his spot on the couch. “Go ahead.”
She kept her eyes on him for a long few seconds before she reached for the first box. He relaxed a little, watching her tear open the packaging, her pensive look melting into a laugh when she turned the box toward him, as if he’d forgotten that he bought an entire child sized tea set.
“There’s two of them under the tree,” he confided. “One for here and one for yours, so she can have tea wherever she wants.”
She stared down at the box, her laugh slowly turning into a smile, lost in some kind of memory. He sat down beside her, waiting for her to relive whatever she was thinking about, content in the silence. She sniffed a little, setting the box aside.
“Here,” Ted said, passing her a little box, wrapped in silvery blue paper. “This one’s for you.”
She tore open the paper carefully, warily. He wondered if she was doing it because the box was conspicuously shaped like a jewelry box, like she wasn’t sure what to expect of it. She cracked open the little box slowly, her pensive look settling when she saw what was inside.
“I thought it was a nice little coincidence, that Rose’s initials will be the same as yours,” he said as she took the necklace out of the box, the little RW dangling from the delicate chain. “There’s um…there’s another one somewhere under the tree for Rose, when she gets older.”
He caught the first little quiver in her chin before she started crying, the necklace resting gently in her palm. He moved the box and the paper out of the way before he reached for the necklace, laying it carefully on top of the box so he could lean over, thumb wiping at one of the tears on her cheek.
“Stupid hormones,” she muttered. “I swear I’ll cry at fucking everything -”
“‘s alright,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t have to justify it to me.”
She wiped messily at her face with both hands, pushing the tears back, into her hair, as if that would make them disappear. “It should’ve been you,” she said, her voice a little cracked still.
“What should have?” he asked.
She sighed, leaning her head back on the back of the couch before she took a deep breath, like she was gathering courage. “Rose’s dad. It should’ve been you.”
He didn’t say anything - he felt like his heart had stopped beating in his chest, like everything had stopped - the world was holding its breath.
“When we were there, in Liverpool,” she said, tearing her eyes away from him when he didn’t speak. “After I let you walk back to the hotel alone, after your panic attack. I never should have done that -”
“I wouldn’t have let you help,” he interjected.
“I - I felt awful about it, so I went back to the hotel, and Sassy was trying to get me to take this waiter back up to my room at dinner. It was…God, it was humiliating and embarrassing, but he was nice enough, and I couldn’t bring myself to go bother you after…after all of that, but I wanted to, I wanted to go make sure you were okay, but I was lying to you then, and I didn’t like how you made me feel -”
“I remember,” he said.
“I was waiting for him to finish his shift,” she said carefully. “And you sent me that text. Thank you for being so kind. And I nearly - I almost got up and left - and that’s not to say that we would have - not while I was - while I was lying to you -”
“But you don’t regret Rose, do you?”
“No, no, of course not,” she said hurriedly. “I could never -”
“Rebecca, if you want me to be Rose’s dad,” he said gently. “Then I can be. It’s that simple.”
She didn’t say anything for a long time - she just looked at him, her eyes swimming with tears. He reached for her hand, still on her belly, laying the palm of his hand over the top of hers, their fingers threaded together.
Finally, she took a deep, shuddering breath and a tear slipped down her cheek. “Really?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said easily. “Yes, really.”
She sighed, the sound full of relief, and he felt like she was breathing the sigh into him, like their lungs were the same. He felt like the Christmas lights were shining on her a little differently now, like everything about her had shifted, just enough for him to take notice.
“It certainly makes the amount of gifts I bought her more appropriate,” he joked, smiling when she laughed, moving off the couch to hug her when her laughter melted into more tears, cathartic sobs that he couldn’t find the words to soothe. Instead, he kneeled on the floor beside her and held her, his forehead resting on her temple.
He curled up behind her in his bed later, when her tears had subsided, his hand on her belly while she slept, sleep evading him even while the sun rose in the window. He didn’t want to sleep, not while he could look at her, closer than he’d ever had her before, asking him to tie himself to her forever.
That was what becoming Rose’s father would be, in the end. Tying himself to her and to that little girl for the rest of his life.
The thought didn’t frighten him in the slightest.
***
Rebecca went into labor the day before her due date - December 30. Ted was on the pitch, watching the boys run their drills, when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out, stepping away from Beard, Roy, and Nate to answer it.
“Keeley -”
“It’s time, Ted, let’s go!”
“Shit,” he said, hanging up immediately. “Beardo, time to go -”
“Right,” Beard said immediately, Roy stepping forward onto the pitch.
“Whistle! Get your arses into the locker room, get changed, training’s finished.” He turned to Ted, who was watching everything happen. “Get going, gaffer, Nate and I will handle all of this here, meet you there in an hour. I’ve got the spare key, the boys cooked some food for her - we’re gonna fill her fridge and then I’ll send them home and I’ll meet you at hospital.”
“Let’s go,” Beard said soothingly, his hand finding Ted’s back, between his shoulder blades, directing him toward the locker room. He let Beard grab his backpack, giving him the opportunity to take the lead as the fear started to settle in completely.
“She’s going to be fine,” Beard said when he pushed him into the car. “She’s going to be just fine, you’re going to be with her.”
“She was scared,” he said when they got onto the road. “She told me she was scared -”
“Yeah,” Beard said simply. “It’s scary. But she’s brave, and we’ve seen Rebecca do plenty of things she was afraid of before, haven’t we?”
He nodded, tapping his fingers absently on the door. “You’re right, you’re right, as usual.”
Beard glanced over at him. “It’s okay to admit that you’re scared too,” he said gently.
“Worried,” Ted corrected. “Nervous.”
“Scared,” Beard finished.
Ted huffed. “Can’t this car go any faster?” he asked impatiently, catching Beard’s eye when he glanced over. “Right, sorry, no American driver’s seat drivin’, I know the rules -”
“We’re almost there,” Beard reassured him.
***
Rebecca was in labor for fourteen hours - most of that time, Ted stayed at her side, trying to keep her distracted from the pain, keeping up a steady stream of jokes, stories, anecdotes. He fed her ice chips, pushed her hair out of her face, held her hand when a contraction wracked her body with a new aftershock of pain.
He stayed as close as he dared, Keeley, Beard, Roy, and Deborah cycling in to replace him every now and then, realizing every time he left the room that he wanted to be closer, that where he was, even when he was right beside her, wasn’t enough.
He didn’t know what to say when Beard asked him if he was okay. He was and he wasn’t. He was happy and he was terrified, he was nauseous with anxiety and somehow confident that everything was going to go perfectly. He couldn’t figure out what he felt in the space between seconds, couldn’t figure out where he was going, what he was doing.
He didn’t calm even remotely until he was called back into the room, when Rebecca’s contractions were getting closer together. She sighed in relief when he came back in, her mother banished back outside, holding her hand out for him to take, her other hand occupied with the tube of gas the nurses left her.
“Thank God you’re back,” she said, holding tightly to his hand. “This is fucking awful -”
He chuckled. “That’s what I hear,” he said. “The gas helpin’?”
“Should have gotten the epidural,” she muttered, but he could see, from the way her mouth twitched, that she wasn’t entirely serious. “It fucking hurts -”
“I know, honey, but you’re doin’ great,” he said, leaning over to kiss the side of her head. “You’re doin’ so well.” He watched the doctors and nurses move around them, moons orbiting planets, his hand still anchored tightly in Rebecca’s. Her grip hadn’t abated since he arrived - he wondered if her contraction hadn’t leveled out yet, if they were much closer together than he thought.
“Alright, Ms. Welton, when you feel the next contraction, it’s time to push,” the doctor said, Rebecca’s head turning to find Ted suddenly, her eyes wide with fear.
“It’s okay,” he said, squeezing her hand back. “It’s okay, baby, I’ve got you -”
Her ragged groan of pain cut him off, her hand tightening around him so hard he winced, trying to give some of the pressure back, leaning over so his nose was pressed to the side of her hair, his nonsensical encouragement a steady stream in her ear.
When she collapsed back onto the pillows, trying to catch her breath, he went with her, kissing her temple before he moved back, his other hand pushing some of her hair back. She looked over at him, her other hand finding her own chest, fiddling with the gold chain around her neck, the RW necklace he’d given her for Christmas.
“You’re magnificent,” he said reassuringly, wiping away a tear on her cheek. “You’re amazing, I love you so much -”
“Oh, now is the time?” she asked, her head falling back against the pillow, her expression paling as another wave of pain came over her. “Now? You tell me you love me now?”
“Push, Rebecca,” the doctor said sternly, Rebecca’s hand tightening in his he had to bring his other hand around both of theirs to support it, his eyes staying on her. “Good, good, one more should do it -”
“I love you too, you daft idiot,” she said, out of breath, sweat sticking the blonde tendrils of hair to her forehead. “You silly, silly man - fuck this fucking hurts -”
“Maybe we should finish this later,” he said, groaning a little when her grip tightened again. He held onto her hand even after she collapsed back against the pillows, the moment of silence snapping at the sound of a baby’s cry.
“Dad, would you like to cut the cord?”
He didn’t realize, for a long few seconds, that the doctor was talking to him. Rebecca tugged on his hand, jutting her chin toward the baby. “Go on,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Cut the cord.”
He let his hand slide out of hers, letting his hands do the same familiar movement he’d done when Henry was born - he got a long look at a screaming, flushed face, dark hair on her head, little hands lifted up, and then they were moving away, another orbit, the doctors still hovering by Rebecca, nurses cleaning up the baby -
He went back to her side, her hand still extended, unmoved since he released it, and took it again, kissing her knuckles lightly.
“Dark hair, just like you pictured,” he said softly into her ear, and she sobbed, hard enough that he pulled back to look at her, alarmed, before she shook her head, pulling him back again. “She’s perfect. You’re perfect.”
“Where is she?” she asked, a little hazy, the doctor moving away from her, snapping off bloody gloves. Ted’s eyes followed them warily.
“Cleanin’ her up,” he promised as the doctor approached.
He let himself get a little lost in the shuffle while the doctors and the nurses did their jobs, content to stick by Rebecca, keeping close eye on the color in her face, on her expression as the exhaustion started to set in. Her eyes flickered between him and where he knew Rose was, softness and curiosity and everything in between.
He watched her face crumble when the doctor brought the baby over, laying her gently on Rebecca’s chest, the slope of her nose identical to Rebecca’s, her eyes closed, hiccuping once when Rebecca’s hand settled on her back before she stopped, breathing peacefully.
“I’m gonna go tell everyone that you’re alright,” he said softly. “Let you and the little one get acquainted.”
“Ted,” she said when he straightened up to leave. “I do love you, you know.”
His chest tightened. “I love you, too.”
***
“Ted,” Rebecca’s voice pulled him almost immediately out of his light sleep. He sat up, so quickly his eyes weren’t even open yet, nearly headbutting her in the process. “Whoa, slow down there, cowboy, where’s the fire?”
He settled back against the bed, looking around her darkened room - their room. Rose was asleep in her bassinet, swaddled tightly in a pale purple blanket, her dark hair covered with a white hat with two little fluffy ears. Rebecca sat on the edge of the bed, her hair pulled out of her face, in one of his sweatshirts and a pair of shorts.
“Sorry, I thought - thought maybe you needed me,” he murmured, reaching one hand out for her.
Instead of taking his hand, Rebecca passed a piece of paper to him instead, dropping her hand to his leg. He’d gotten increasingly comfortable in her bed since they’d gotten home from the hospital, both of them taking turns sleeping when they could, sometimes together, mostly separate.
“What is this?” he asked, peering down at it as she clicked on the lamp, Rose still slumbering peacefully. The light made the words easier to read. “Oh - the birth certificate,” he said. “Finally picked a middle name, then?”
“I did,” she said.
He squinted down at it, trying to read the script. “Rose…”
“Rose Theo Welton-Lasso,” she said carefully.
He stared at it uncomprehendingly, his eyes dropping to the names below Rose’s. The names of her parents. Rebecca Victoria Welton and Theodore James Lasso.
“I called your mother for your middle name,” she said. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Is that okay?” he asked incredulously. “This is -” he stopped, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “You didn’t have to - to put me on the birth certificate. You didn’t have to give her my name.”
“Yes, I did,” she said simply. “You’re her father.”
He set the birth certificate aside on the table, moving over, opening his arms for her. She settled into them like they’d done this a thousand times before, but in fact, this was only the second time. The first time was on Christmas Eve, when he was inches away from telling her that he loved her, when he told her he’d be Rose’s father.
He put his hands carefully on her body, holding loosely, letting her scoot back into his embrace, turning slightly so she could look up at him.
“We did this backwards, didn’t we?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t mind,” he admitted. “Backwards, forwards, upside down, it’s all fine as long as it’s you.”
He paused, looking up as Rose made a quiet whimper.
“And her.”
“Do you think Henry will have an issue with being a big brother?” Rebecca asked, one of her hands settling on the side of his face, dragging gently through the stubble on his cheek.
“I might have -” he chuckled. “I might have talked about Rose so much that he’s basically already accepted her as his little sister. He’s been talking about giving her some of his old toys since you were…gosh, five months pregnant?”
She hummed. “I wonder if this is it,” she murmured.
He dipped his head, the bridge of his nose brushing over her cheekbone. “What is?”
“If I finally got all I ever wanted,” she said, looking over at Rose. “The baby and the love.”
He let her move away so she could turn over gingerly, her body still sore, relaxing more into his arms when she could look at him, her eyes deep, rich jade green. He let her look without moving, relishing in how good it felt to know that when she looked and saw the truth, the truth brought her comfort now.
He loved her. She loved him.
When he imagined kissing Rebecca, he’d never imagined that the first time would happen with their child in the same room - the thought brought him a strange sort of amusement - the inevitability of it, the complete entanglement of their lives that occurred even before their lips ever touched.
And she kissed so softly, a delicate press of her lips that he knew was supposed to be a comfort, something sweet like cotton candy. He hummed against her lips, letting her gently coax his mouth open, letting her deepen the kiss into something that had a push and pull, like the tide.
Still, it felt like a bride and groom’s kiss, a promise of a lifetime of more, and he was content to do it forever, sweet tastes of her lips, her soft little exhalation against his mouth - until Rose whimpered again, this time the sound graduating to a cry.
Rebecca broke away, sitting up immediately to pick the baby up, bringing her between them.
“What’s wrong, my little teddy bear?” Ted asked, smiling when Rebecca chuckled, lying down.
Rose stared up at him, eyes wide, her cries slowly diminishing until she was quiet again, looking intently at them both.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Rebecca murmured softly. “She just wanted to be with her parents.”
***
Moving into Rebecca’s house went so seamlessly Ted nearly forgot that he hadn’t always lived there - she hired a company to pack up all of his things and move them in, the perfectly labeled boxes left in their corresponding rooms when he got home that evening, Rose strapped to his chest, half-asleep.
“How’s my baby girl?” Rebecca asked from the kitchen, takeaway containers on the kitchen counter. “Did she do okay?”
“She’s the team’s new mascot,” Ted said warmly, stopping at her side to give her a kiss on the lips. “Ooh, spicy -”
“Ollie’s restaurant has a new dish he wanted you to try,” Rebecca explained. “I might have taste-tested -”
“Dangerous,” he said as she scooped up some onto a spoon and offered it to him. Rose’s eyes followed the spoon, her eyes a little more alert. “And delicious, as usual.”
“If you put some of this on the table, I’ll give the princess her dinner,” Rebecca said, holding out her hands for the baby. “Three months old today, isn’t that right, angel?” Ted let her carefully unbuckle her, scooping her into her arms easily, Rose squealing happily at the movement. “Come on, darling, dinner time.”
He puttered around the kitchen, spooning out food onto plates and leaving them on the table, filling the dishwasher while Rose ate, waiting patiently for Rebecca so they could eat together. She’d gone to the doctor that afternoon, while he had Rose, for a postpartum checkup, the doctor intent on double and triple checking that she was recovering as completely as she should.
They’d been incredibly lucky so far - neither Rebecca nor Rose had any sort of complications or lingering effects, Rebecca had struggled only briefly in the week after Rose was born, frustrated that her body needed more rest than she wanted to give it, annoyed that she was still in pain. She wanted everything back to normal immediately - no matter how often the doctor reminded her that it would take time.
She didn’t come to the table until almost half an hour later, without Rose.
“She’s sleeping,” she said quietly, slipping into her usual seat beside him.
“Atta girl,” he murmured, waiting until she took her first bite to take his own. They ate in relative silence before he dared ask. “How - how was your checkup today?”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Anxious to know, are you?” she asked.
He nodded easily. “I wanna make sure you’re alright,” he reasoned.
She smiled. “I’m fine,” she said. “It was really a formality. Bouncing back fine, nothing to worry about. And that means -”
“That means she said we can -”
“Have sex, yes,” she said primly, but he could see the blush climbing up her neck to her cheeks. He smiled, reaching his hand out to cradle hers.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“Aren’t you?”
He lifted her hand to kiss her knuckles. “Sure,” he admitted. “But I figure if we don’t get it right the first time, we can try again. And again, and again, and -”
She cut him off with her joyous laughter, her face bright with it. “You are incorrigible,” she said, but the blush in her face was banished, her hand in his a little looser, more relaxed.
“Mmm, but you love me,” he reminded her.
“I do,” she agreed.
He spent another half hour with her just talking, enjoying the easy conversation, taking great care to put her at ease, to make the night feel like all the other ones, like all the ones that would follow. He took their dishes to the sink to add them to the dishwasher, letting her wrap her arms around his waist from behind while he worked, laying her head between his shoulder blades, content to just stand there with him, to be close to him.
He loved that about her, the easy way she welcomed him, the way she didn’t push him away when he did the same thing to her.
It was natural, almost a habitual, to lead her upstairs when the dishwasher was running, pausing by the nursery to make sure Rose was still asleep, both of Rebecca’s hands in his.
He didn’t kiss her until they were in their bedroom, the lamp casting the only light in the room, baby monitor on the table, the door closed over. She loved being kissed by him, she never tired of telling him so, the way he cradled her face between his hands - he could always feel her smile when he did it, so he turned it into something he did nearly every day.
It made her feel loved. Safe.
He pushed her carefully back toward the bed, letting one hand slip down her side, to the dip in her waist, down to her hips, easing her down onto the bed, following after her. He let her break away to crawl up toward the pillows, catching her eye and holding it.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, watching her duck her head. “I’m just gonna keep sayin’ it,” he promised, crawling up after her, letting her frame his hips with her knees. She tugged him down for another kiss, her hands tight in his shirt until he carefully undid them, soothing them, pushing them down into the bed.
He let her hand reach up for the lamp switch, let her bathe the room in darkness, her hands settling at his waist, tugging up his shirt so she could touch his skin, sighing into his mouth so softly he thought it might fill him up and carry him away.
He let her pull his shirt up over his head, let her hands trace over his chest, her nails scratching lightly over his shoulders, down over his sternum, down to his stomach, stopping at the belt of his pants, lingering there for only a second before she moved back up, pulling him back down over her. He slipped his hands up her shirt, trying to find her eyes in the darkness - he knew when he caught her eye, he could feel it.
“Can I take this off?” he asked, letting his fingertips skate over her skin while he waited for her answer.
“Yeah,” she said softly, so softly he hesitated still, giving himself a few more seconds to touch. “Yeah, you can.”
He tugged her up to take the shirt off, tossing it away with his own discarded shirt, leaning down to pepper kisses down her jaw, to her neck, his hands just barely skimming over her breasts down to her waist again.
“You didn’t have to turn the lamp off,” he reassured her, following the column of her throat back up to her jaw again. “You’re gorgeous.”
She hummed, the sound a little breathless - he lingered there, at the tender spot under her ear, nipping lightly at her skin, her gasp in his ear soft, encouraging. Her hands found his chest again, slipping through his chest hair to his slide around his back, nails digging into his skin. He hissed softly against her skin, smiling when she chuckled.
“I can’t wait to learn about all of those little spots,” she murmured. “Use them all against you when I want to get what I want -”
“Not that I’ll ever discourage that,” he answered, kissing down to her collarbone. “But I’ll pretty much give ya anything you want whenever you want it with no encouragin’ necessary.”
“That’s funny,” she said, gasping a little when he moved down her body, pressing a kiss in the valley of her breasts before he moved on to her ribs, her stomach, down to her hips. “Because I feel the same way about you.”
He hummed, settling between her thighs, lingering at her hips, his fingers tracing over her stomach, where he knew she had stretch marks, where she was self-conscious. He let the pad of his fingers drag over them, gentle, sweet, listening to the way her breath hitched when he did it.
“One night, I’m going to turn that lamp on,” he murmured against her skin. “And I’m gonna show you all of my favorite places on your body, Rebecca. And we’re gonna have to - to clear our schedules, because it’s gonna take us all day.”
“Ted -”
“Mmm, yes, sweetheart?”
“Take my pants off, please,” she said.
“Oh yes, sure, I can do that,” he said, sitting up to obey. She sat up with him, scooting closer, so close she was practically on his lap, her hand sliding around the back of his neck to kiss him again, this time hungrily, deeper, like she wanted to devour him - he groaned, his hand slipping down, between her legs, just a drag of his fingers over her shorts, the wounded noise she made against his lips so enticing he did it again, with just a little more pressure, her hips chasing the friction.
He moaned, pushing her shorts and her panties aside to tease her gently with one finger, Rebecca falling back onto the bed to shift her hips, to welcome him into her body. He pressed two fingers into her, pumping them into her slowly, so slowly she whined, her hand falling to his wrist.
“God, Ted -”
“Sorry, I was supposed to take these off -”
“No, no, no, don’t stop,” she panted, her hips moving with the rhythm of his fingers, the shadow of the movement in the dark so delicious he thought he’d stopped breathing. “Feels so good -”
He let the movement of her hips speed up his fingers, let her hand tighten on his wrist, his other hand falling to her hips to feel her skin, to feel how she moved. She breathed his name, a prayer, her legs shaking around him.
“Fuck, Ted,” she whispered, her hand releasing his wrist to slip down the front of her shorts, her nails just barely brushing over his hand so she could press her fingers into her clit, clenching around his fingers immediately. He couldn’t breathe, he felt like his skin was on fire - he could hear that he was saying her name, that he was begging her to come, and she clenched around his fingers one more time before she finally tipped over the edge, her gasp melting into a strangled moan, her hips jerking against his hand, her head falling back to the pillow again.
He could just barely see her silhouette in the darkness, the curve of her breast, the line of her hip - he drank it in, gently tugging down the shorts she’d asked him to take off, lifting one of her legs to kiss lightly at her thighs, chuckling when her legs shook against him.
“Are you laughing at me?” Rebecca asked, still breathless, her foot pressing against his shoulder.
He nodded. “Lovingly,” he said, leaning back to pepper kisses down her calf to her ankle. “Can I do it again?”
“Can you do what again, darling?” she asked.
“Make you come.”
She paused, her foot still pressed against his shoulder. “I - yeah - do you - do you want to?”
“Rebecca,” he said, exasperated. “I would like nothing more, truly.” He could feel her eyes on him, even in the darkness. “One is not enough.”
She chuckled a little. “Well, alright then, Coach Lasso. Put me through my paces.”
He groaned, dropping his forehead to her knee. “Now that is…that is somethin’ we should revisit,” he muttered, kissing her thighs, settling between her legs again. Her laughter melted into a breathy sigh as his stubble scraped against her inner thigh, her knees hooking over his shoulders.
She tightened her thighs around his head at the first touch of his tongue, her hand threading into his hair immediately. He huffed a laugh, careful to dip his tongue into her, slow, gentle, tasting her, learning her. He pressed the flat of his tongue to her, her moan shaky, desperate, and set a tantalizingly slow pace with it, relishing in the way she tugged on his hair, the way her legs would relax before they tightened again, like their own rhythm.
She was still sensitive from before, her hips lifting off the bed every time he lingered on her clit for too long, so he settled for lapping languidly at her, content to make her feel good without necessarily pushing her to orgasm yet. She let her hips match the smooth rhythm of his tongue, murmuring a litany of praise that kept him painfully hard against the mattress, her voice deep, rich with texture.
When he flicked his tongue over her clit and she moaned, the sound wanton, answering the singing in his blood like a siren song, he let his hands find the tops of her thighs, tugging her a little closer, huffing a quiet laugh when she made a sound at the movement, breathless, mindless. He closed his eyes and listened to her body, her hand in his hair tightening when he lingered at her clit, sucking lightly at it before he pulled away, letting her catch her breath before he did it again.
“Fucking hell, Ted,” she breathed, and he opened his eyes, gifted with the silhouette of her, chest heaving, her eyes closed, head thrown back. He could barely see her and he knew she was gorgeous, sublime, the best thing he’d ever seen.
She sobbed his name when she came again, her hand finally releasing his hair, petting down the pieces she’d yanked on clumsily when he sat up, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Need a break?” he asked, even though he was impossibly hard, desperate for her, his heart beating so fast he thought he could only hear the sound of it and nothing else. She shook her head, the movement of her hair the only thing he could see, and then she was tugging him down on top of her, her hands fumbling with his belt, tugging it off, shoving his pants down as far as she could before she ran out of room.
He had to pull away, had to stand up to take his pants off completely, her hand finding him immediately, tenderly stroking him, her fingers dancing over him, exploring, testing. He let her do it, trying to focus on breathing deeply, trying not to think too hard about the fact that she was touching him, that it was Rebecca, finally, the only woman he’d ever wanted so badly he couldn’t ever escape her -
“Come back to me,” she said softly in the darkness, and he obeyed immediately, crawling between her legs again, letting her pull him closer with her knees, her heels pressing into the small of his back, closer, closer, until there was nowhere else to go.
“Tell me to stop if it hurts,” he said, his hand flat on her stomach. “Promise me.”
“I promise,” she said, her voice drifting away when he pressed the tip of him to her entrance, waiting for her to catch her breath before he pushed inside. She let out a shaky breath, her hand falling to his forearm, nails scratching his skin when he went a little deeper.
He waited for her to squeeze his hand before he moved, a slow, rolling thrust that made her gasp, her exhale a greedy sound that made him smile. He leaned forward, one hand on the mattress, the other finding the side of her face, and shifted again, deeper, feeling her tighten around him.
“Come here,” he muttered, more to himself than to her, gathering her up into his arms to hold her, pressed against his body, leaning back on his knees to thrust into her again, deep, slow enough that he was sure he wasn’t hurting her.
It would have been easier to let her go, to leave her on the bed, but now that he had her that close, he didn’t want to let her go - he widened his knees and kept her steady, giving her the leverage to control the depth, the speed, the rhythm. She breathed a laugh in his ear and set a faster pace, grinding her hips down on him, so smooth and so steady he could barely catch his breath, could barely keep his head.
“Jesus Christ, Rebecca,” he said in her ear, her rhythm stuttering a little. “Fuck -”
She moaned her response, tipping her head back, giving him the entire expanse of her neck to kiss, slowing the movement of her hips with the presses of his lips, his arms loosening around her to let her lean back.
He slipped his hand between them, holding her up with the other, so he could press his thumb to her clit, her hips jerking against it.
“That’s it,” he murmured. “Come one more time for me, then it’s my turn.”
“Ted -”
“One more time, you can,” he promised, her rhythm faltering, her thighs quivering. He could feel her clenching around him, her breathing getting shorter, his name a quiet little mindless chant while she let him work her toward her peak again, careful, meticulous -
He had to wrap both arms around her when she came a third time, holding her up, leaning down to lay her out on the bed to drive into her a little harder, a little faster, relishing in her noises, in the gasp she let out when he hit just the right spot and did it again and again, her hands finding his arms, braced on either side of her head, holding on -
He lost himself when he finally came, drifting along aimlessly for a while until he managed to catch his breath, realizing as he did that he was on his side, that she was still clinging to him, even though he could feel how sweaty they were, even though they were burning hot, so hot it was almost suffocating.
He moved away from her long enough to make sure he wasn’t crushing her arm or her leg, settling in beside her immediately after.
“I love you,” she said softly, her hand landing on top of his chest. He breathed a deep sigh, tugging her even closer, kissing the top of her head.
“Mmm, I love you,” he said back, going still when the baby monitor on the side table crackled, Rose whimpering before she wailed. “I’ll go,” he said when she moved to sit up. “She just needs a quick rock back to sleep, I’ll be back.”
“Dad of the year,” Rebecca murmured, already halfway to sleep, as he got up, groping in the dark for his boxers. “The best dad.”
When he came back, Rose sleeping peacefully again only a few minutes later, Rebecca was sound asleep, her hand extended out where he usually took up space, waiting for him. He smiled, settling into his spot, pulling her back against his chest, content to hold her until one of them had to get up again.