Archive of Our Own

Ted’s haunted by visions.

Or maybe haunted’s not the right word. That makes it sound all scary, which it doesn’t have to be. It’s more like he’s visited by visions, maybe, in the same way you can be visited by a ghost, even if it’s more of a Casper situation than a poltergeist rattling chains and going bump in the night. He supposes that makes it a kind of haunting. And maybe he is a little haunted too, by everything he left behind, everyone that left him behind before that, not to mention the thought of everything and everyone he still has yet to lose. 

Only, the visions are not about loss, not even a hypothetical one. If anything, they're about connection. All he’s got to do is close his eyes and he sees them before him: bright lines in a sea of color reaching out from somewhere within his body, drawn on a map that travels until they reach their destination 4,438 miles away. Two lines in particular seem to burn the brightest, somehow still illuminated even when he’s awake, forming what he knows deep down must be a triangle, albeit one that’s stretched so thin it’s almost a single line from where he’s standing. Two lines so close together that it’s as if they transform into an infinitely sharp spear that runs right into him with full force. But there’s a strange gentleness to the act. Whatever the shapes are, they assure him that nothing was truly lost by leaving and all the while compel him to return.

In whatever plane of existence or parallel universe the visions originated, time and space work differently. Sometimes it feels like time has rewound itself, and geography along with it, making Ted feel like he’s back in London just like he was last May, before he ever said a single goodbye. 

On this plane of existence—the most familiar one, the one he’s come to think of as “reality” for lack of a better word—Ted knows that he’s in Kansas because he can smell it in the air, and he knows it’s been nearly a year since he was anywhere else because he’s watched as summer turned to fall turned to winter turned to spring. But in the other space layered on top of this one—nothing quite as foreign as a parallel dimension, nothing quite as deceitful as an unreality of any kind—Ted sometimes wonders if he’s moved at all, even though every shape he can perceive around him seems to be in constant flux. Maybe it’s because time’s all haywire there that it took him this long to figure out what the other two points of the triangle are, but he knows now, deep in his heart, that no matter what, if he ever wants to find Beard and Rebecca, all he’s ever got to do is follow each line until he reaches the two other corners. 

Rebecca took her own advice and drank, slept, fucked the uneasiness out of her system, but getting her fill has only gotten her so far. It was nice at first, being in a proper relationship with someone who genuinely cared for her, but as the months passed, all the joyous possibility of her holiday romance slowly ebbed away like so many romances before it. What she had with Matthijs was special, but it wasn’t special enough to hold on to. By the end of the year, she’s single all over again, starting over without having moved much at all.

After she and Matthijs decide to break it off, she’s left with an eerie sense that they never truly had a chance in the first place. Just a few months ago, she would have sworn that their connection ran deeper than that, but now that it’s over, she can’t help but wonder if she ever truly felt that he could be the one. It makes it difficult to process the break-up on its own merits. She isn’t sure if she’s so upset by it because she’s lost someone who was important to her, or because she’s once again left with a nagging feeling at the pit of her stomach, making her wonder if perhaps she wasn’t always meant to end up alone.

But no matter how much she misses what she and Matthijs had and no matter how much the feeling eats away at her, she’s also determined not to view this break-up as the end of the world. She knows it isn’t.  

She keeps herself busy. With work, of which there is plenty, but with friends too. She has dinners with Keeley, with Roy, with Nate and Jade. She even manages to pry Beard away from his new bride on occasion, never bothering to extend the invitation to Jane. Rebecca wonders if she knows who her husband is having dinner with, if she views Rebecca as a threat, or if Rebecca has somehow been categorised as “safe” in her mind. Beard never alludes to anything one way or the other, and she has a strong suspicion that it would be best not to ask.

The first few times Rebecca takes Beard out to eat, he never brings up Ted. It’s a relief at first to spend a few hours not facing the fact that he’s left at all, but with time, it becomes a source of worry. Ted has mentioned Beard fairly often on their twice-weekly video calls, so Rebecca knows their communication hasn’t ceased altogether, but it still unnerves her that Beard isn’t as willing to share. She tells Beard as much one evening at the restaurant they always go to—a quaint Italian place with mediocre pizza and some of the best pasta she’s ever tasted in her life situated more or less at the halfway point between their respective homes—and halfway through a bottle of wine, the truth spills out of him. He’s missed Ted terribly. He still misses him. Every text and phone call is precious and painful in equal amounts, reminding him of the strength of his and Ted’s connection. He’s not sure he could have described it to her even if he was better at letting people in on his innermost thoughts. Rebecca asks him to describe it anyway, and even though he struggles to put it all into words, she understands him perfectly; she feels the exact same way. 

A week later, at that same spot—she didn’t think much of it when they first went there, but it’s quickly become her favourite restaurant—they sit down at their usual table, and the waiter hasn’t even brought the wine over yet when Beard opens up about the split. She’s as surprised to learn of Beard and Jane’s divorce as she was to receive the invitation to their wedding in the first place, which is to say that it's completely out of the blue and a little baffling, but when all is said and done not exactly entirely shocking. 

Beard tells her that he’s most of all worried about what the break will mean for his son, who’s more important to him than he’d ever thought a living creature could be. He’s intent on not repeating the mistakes his own parents made by letting their child bear witness to the worst of their mutual destruction all the while refusing to separate. Like most glimpses she’s gotten into his past, the mention of his parents is casual enough, but Rebecca knows by now that that doesn’t have to mean that it was easy for him to share it. She nods, taking it in, not wanting to interrupt now that he’s finally got going. She merely watches as Beard finishes his glass of wine and stares down at his empty plate. He would have probably stayed, he admits then, if he’d been the only one getting hurt. And Jane will try to be as good a mum to Eli as she can be, he insists, and he’ll let her; they may have parted on bad terms, but he seems determined to not blow things even more out of proportion with a drawn-out custody battle. 

Rebecca takes him out for drinks after dinner, not to drown his worries, but to wallow in them for a time, to sit with the pain as he processes the enormity of leaving the person he left Ted for. Not that he ever uses those words, but he doesn’t have to. She understands that part too well—far better than she’s ready to admit.

She insists on paying for the drinks, and Beard tells her that she’s going out of her way, that there’s no reason to give him special treatment just because he’s getting divorced. But she tells him to hush and reminds him that just last week she went out to dinner with Nate and Jade, and the week before, Roy joined her and Keeley for their cocktail night. It’s only fair that she takes her coaches out for a treat once in a while in equal measure, and as lovely as their occasional dinners have been, she has some catching up to do, so she expects to see him at their usual spot next Tuesday. Beard nods, and then, secret gossip hound that he is, asks about Roy and Keeley. Rebecca simply smiles and shrugs, saying that all there is to tell is that she’d found an excuse to politely leave the bar a little early, leaving the two of them to some much-needed time alone together to decide for themselves where they might be headed next. 

At some point each night, the lines go still as each of the triangle’s three vertices rests for a few precious hours. If Rebecca knew where to look for them, she’d see the lines, even in her sleep, but she’s none the wiser to the revelatory shapes dancing all around her. 

Rebecca sits in her office one morning with a cup of tea and the sports section of The Independent. She’s found a good routine of starting her mornings with the physical edition. It staves off the impulse to switch to the websites of less reputable rags in search of whichever horrid half-truths and full-on lies the tabloids are spewing about the people closest to her. A few paragraphs into what she’s starting to think must be a rather well-researched piece by Marcus Adebayo, something suddenly jolts her as if an invisible line has tightened, pulling quickly but lightly at her chest. She lets out a breath of faint shock and feels for a moment as if her body isn’t where it ought to be—as if she’s just awoken from a dream where she was falling, only to realise that she’s perfectly still. She looks around her, but she can’t find a source to explain what startled her. 

That’s when the phone rings. 

“Ted? Is everything all right?” 

Ted can’t help but smile, even though Rebecca sounds worried. It’s nice to hear her voice. “Yeah, bo- Rebecca. Everything’s fine.” 

“What time is it?” she asks.

“I won’t insult your ability to do the math, so I’ll admit it’s a bit on the late side of things. Just couldn’t sleep is all. Or I could. I did. Just woke up for some reason. Like my body was telling me it was morning, which I suppose it technically is, although, come to think of it, I guess the cut-off point between early morning and late at night is more of a social construct. But that’s all to say that I didn’t wake up because of anything bad. Nothing nightmarish going on at this end, promise. It’s just like my body’s telling me it’s about time I go ahead and wake up y’know? Been like that for a while. Thought it was jet lag at first, but…”

“When was the last time you were on a plane?”

“When I left. So that’s what, a year ago? Guess I’ve got an anniversary coming up. So maybe jetlag’s an unlikely culprit, yeah. That thought did occur to me, I gotta say.”

“But you’re okay?”

He nods, and then remembers she isn’t there to see him. It’s odd how he keeps forgetting. “I’m alright, yeah. It’s just sleep that’s been a bit of an issue, I guess. I tried counting sheep, but it seems no amount of ovine addition’s gonna help me wiggle out of this particular pickle.” He hears her soft hint of a laugh on the other end and misses catching her microexpressions close-up like he used to every morning for over two years. He conjures up the soft smile he imagines must be on her face right now. “It’s been good, being back, but it’s strange... I had some great years, working for you, some of the best of my life, but even when things were at their best, I had this ache in my chest. It wasn’t anything all that disruptive—only had to push it down a little to pretend it wasn’t there—but it never really went away. I guess it was just something I had to learn to live with. But now that I’m finally back, now that I’ve been back for so long, I just feel like maybe I’ll always be doomed to feel a little homesick. Or not doomed. It don’t gotta be a bad thing. I just need to figure out how to carry it.”

“Do you regret it? Leaving, I mean.”

Ted doesn’t answer her. He wants to be honest, but he’s not sure he even knows what the answer is.

“Right. No, of course not,” Rebecca says in response to his pause. “You’re back home with Henry now. It’s where you always wanted to be. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, it’s alright. You can ask, I get it. I wouldn’t have stayed so long if I didn’t want to be there. And I wouldn’t have deliberated so long about coming back here if I didn’t know that part of me would always want to stay. But my mind was made up before I even told you. You couldn’t have done anything to change it. I’m not sure if that’s much of a comfort but—”

“Thank you, Ted. No, I think that does help in a way. And I understand, I do. Sometimes I’ve even thought… I mean, London is my home, because of the club and the people in it, but—” she sighs. “I suppose I’ve been feeling a bit homesick myself.”

Ted nods again, aware she can’t see him this time. He allows the admission to hang in the air for a while, until it dissipates, a what-if turning into mist. “I uh, I really appreciate you saying all that, Boss. You know, it’s sort of funny how you can be so sure of the shape of things, and then wake up one day and realize that everything looks sort of… different. Sorry, I know I’m probably not making a ton of sense. I’m sure you’re busy, and I’m just yapping along. I'd better let you get back to whatever it was you were up to. Work, I s’pose?”

“Yes. Or rather, I’m at work, but I was just catching up on the news. You didn’t interrupt much. Keeley will be here soon. It’s become a tradition, meetings on Wednesday mornings.”

“Oh! That’s great. Well, uh, say hi from me! Or not, if that’s weird? I don’t want her to worry.”

“I’ll leave out the bit about you being up in the middle of the night if you promise to get some rest.”

“I will. Cross my heart.” 

“And Ted… London will always be here, waiting for you. Even if you never move back, you’ll always have a home here. You take as long as you need, but we expect you to visit.”

“Thanks, Rebecca. You can count on it. I’ll let you get back to it.”

“Goodnight, Ted.” He can practically hear the smile on her face. 

After Ted hangs up, Rebecca stares down at her tea. She doesn’t have to take a sip to know that it must have gone cold by now, so she stands up to bring it to the tray where she keeps the used dishes to be dealt with at the end of the day. She’s oddly transfixed by the tea as she walks across the room, of the way the light brown surface ripples in her shaky hands. She tries to understand what exactly it is that disturbed her. Perhaps it’s merely the fact of Ted calling outside their regularly scheduled FaceTime calls, of knowing he hasn’t been sleeping alright. It feels strangely intimate knowing his sleeping schedule from an ocean away, although she supposes she would have caught on to it much sooner back when she still saw him each morning. 

Or perhaps it’s more that he seemed a little distant, more so than the ocean’s worth of geographic divide has made him in this past year. It’s not that she suspects him of pulling away from her. He wouldn’t have called if he were. It’s more that there was something in his tone as he spoke that gave her the impression that his mind was somewhere else altogether. 

Keeley bursts through the door not long after with strangely forceful elegance, jolting Rebecca out of her trance. She’s exactly on time for their recurring appointment, which is sacredly booked in every Wednesday morning on their respective calendars, but Rebecca still takes a beat longer than usual to greet her. As Keeley hugs her, she tries her best to shake off the rattled feeling, which is easy enough to do—Keeley is an excellent hugger. 

They’re ostensibly meeting to go over everything KBPR is overseeing for the club, which, all things considered, is rather a lot. AFC Richmond has a complex social media campaign, several high-profile sponsorships, and a delicate public image to consider as the only club with an openly gay player in the league. There’s also the endless workload of getting everything in order before the club publicly announces the plans for the women’s team, which is finally starting to feel like it’ll become a reality after months and months of preparation. But while they’ve been busy enough to warrant the meetings for most of the year, they seem to have hit a pleasant calm before the storm that is the end of the season, and there honestly isn’t a whole lot for them to discuss. Rebecca knew that this meeting could have been a five-minute phone call, but wasn’t about to suggest as much, and luckily, Keeley seems of a similar mindset. They’ve both been so busy this past year that there haven’t been nearly as many dinners or Friday night cocktails or lounging around together at Rebecca’s house on lazy Sunday afternoons as either of them would have liked, so while this meeting is supposed to be all business, they go directly for the couch rather than the desk, expecting the conversation to turn to personal matters sooner rather than later.

Keeley’s the first to let go of the veneer of professionalism, bringing up something that certainly sounds like it's about something personal. “Do you ever think about second chances?”

“I suppose. I’ve certainly been given them more than once, although I’m not sure you have much control over who gives them to you. I could have grovelled at Sassy’s feet for years, begging for forgiveness, and she might never have been able to. Leslie certainly had every right to quit. You as well. When you’re standing at the other end of it, I suppose you have more control. I never seriously considered giving Rupert a second chance, but I also knew deep down that he’d never deserve one. With friends, it’s perhaps easier to forgive their slights. When Beard was still married, he’d sometimes flake out on our dinners, but I just decided to accept that about him and rescheduled. Now he always shows up on time. Earlier even.” Rebecca doesn’t realise that she’s heading down a bit of a tangent until she looks down and sees Keeley chewing at her lower lip in that way she sometimes does when she’s feeling unsure of herself. 

“I guess I didn’t mean it like that.” 

Of course. Rebecca feels like an idiot. “Is this about Roy?” Keeley never told her what happened after they’d met up for cocktails a few weeks ago. It seemed unlike Keeley to not disclose the details, whether there was much to disclose or not, but Rebecca had hoped Keeley would let her in on it in her own time. 

Keeley nods and then looks away. “It is. We talked after you left that night, and it was good, but… it might also be about Jamie? A bit? I’m not sure.” 

Rebecca can’t quite help her raised brow. “I didn’t realise that was on the table.”

“It’s not, I don’t think,” Keeley says, which she must know isn’t a thoroughly convincing denial. “But sometimes I feel like I’m mad to not consider it. He’s done so much work, over and over again, proving himself to me. And he didn’t even do it for me or anything like that. He just wanted to be a better man and he became one. Meanwhile, if I get back with Roy, there’s no guarantee he won’t just give up on us all over again the moment he realises he can’t handle it.” 

“And I suppose that’s what you’re looking for in a relationship?” Rebecca asks. She can’t help the sarcasm in her voice, but she hopes she isn’t coming across as cruel. “A guarantee?”

Keeley cringes slightly. “You make it sound ridiculous.”

“It is a bit.” Rebecca shrugs. “But I don’t blame you for thinking it. It’s scary, not knowing what’s ahead. And you’re right. Jamie’s not the same man he was when you broke it off. I understand wanting to give him a second chance. But please don’t date him just because you think he deserves it more than he did last time. You’re more than a prize for good behaviour.”

Keeley groans, leaning back on the couch. “I told them right away when they tried to make me choose that I wasn’t having it. I’m supposed to be this independent boss-ass cool chick who doesn’t need a man, but… I wonder if I’d just gone along with their stupid proposition and picked one of them, I would have saved myself a lot of misery.” 

“Well that’s nonsense, isn’t it? What’s the point of girl power, if women are just going to use it as an excuse to make themselves miserable for wanting to be loved?” 

“I suppose,” Keeley sighs with an only slightly exaggerated frown. “They really were such dicks about it though.” 

“And they apologised,” Rebecca counters. “I was talking to Beard last night about why he married Jane in the first place. I supposed I’d thought it was for the baby’s sake, or just something spontaneous to do to fight off the humdrum before it could get to them, but he said that he’d decided to marry her at the start of last summer, before he even knew she was pregnant. It had been easier to jump all the way in once he no longer felt like he was choosing between being Ted’s friend and being Jane’s partner. Ted never asked him to choose of course, but I gather Jane made herself more or less explicit on the matter when Ted still lived here. Only, the trouble was that he’d split himself apart in the process. And even if Ted wasn’t there anymore, he wasn’t really gone, so Beard was stuck, doing his best to cut himself open in order to please her. And once their son was born, it all just clicked. Sometimes you shouldn’t have to make a choice, and sometimes you couldn’t even if you wanted to. Especially when it comes to who you love. It’s far more expansive than that.”

Keeley tilts her head just a tiny bit, considering Rebecca with new interest. “Beard said all that?”

“He can be quite loquacious when he feels up for it,” Rebecca says with a soft smile. She had felt honoured that he chose to open up to her about the divorce, knowing how long he’d struggled with it. “Shit, I probably shouldn’t have said all that. It’s a private matter, even if he never asked me to keep it secret. I just brought it up to say that I agree. Choosing between the people you love isn’t always possible. Which isn’t to say that you have to get back together with either of them, or that you shouldn’t, or that the fact that they ever asked you to make that choice means it all has to go down the drain. It’s just that it seems as if you love them both, in whatever way you’ve come to love them, and you shouldn’t try to bottle that up because you think you’re not supposed to feel what you feel or because you think one of them deserves it more.” 

“But I feel as if all I’ve been doing this past year is not choosing,” Keeley says. “Eventually I’ll have to make some sort of decision.”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever make a choice, just that you shouldn’t limit yourself. If you want to be with Roy, you should tell him that it will take time for you to trust him again after how he ended things last time. But try to trust him anyway. Or at least trust that whatever you decide to do, who you decide to be with, he and Jamie will still respect you. I know they have a tendency to act like children, but they’re both more than capable of displaying maturity.”

“Thanks,” Keeley says with a hesitant smile, taking all that in, and then leans in to hug her. Rebecca sighs fondly. Keeley really does give excellent hugs. After a few moments, however, she leans back just far enough from Rebecca’s bosom that she can look her in the eyes, and Rebecca’s a little surprised to see that her expression is oddly serious. “When was this?”

“What?”

“Beard,” Keeley clarifies. There’s still a crease at her brow. Rebecca has the strangest feeling she’s being studied. “You had dinner with him?”

“Yes,” Rebecca answers, not sure what all this is about. “Yesterday. We have dinner every Tuesday. I told you that. Didn’t I?” 

Keeley’s eyes widen. “You said it had become a regular thing after the divorce, but I thought you meant once in a while, not weekly. Besides, I assumed that was just a post-divorce thing. A show of support while he got back on his feet. You’ve been going to dinner together once a week for months?”

“We used to have dinner before then on occasion, but yes, the increased frequency was certainly goaded on by the divorce.” Well, that and Rebecca specifically requesting it, but she’s suddenly hesitant to share that part. 

“But you’re so busy that I hardly see you these days. Keeping to a weekly dinner appointment just seems so committed. I’m surprised I didn’t know.” 

“I never meant for it to be a secret,” Rebecca says, although she wonders now if some part of her had. “And as far as being busy goes, Beard and I have mercifully similar schedules. So far, we’ve made it work even when we’ve had a lot of other things on our plates. Two weeks ago, before the match against Leeds, we didn’t have time to go to our usual spot so we had sushi in my office instead.”

“Beard was up here?” Keeley asks, a little baffled.

“What? Is that so strange?” Rebecca asks. But yes, of course it is. It’s the sort of thing she would have told Keeley about before, back when Beard was just… Well, either way. It’s not that it’s secret, exactly, but it’s been nice, she thinks, having something that felt so private, something she got to have to herself. 

“It’s just that he never was before.”

“No, he wasn’t.” Not before Ted left. She supposes that thought ought to make her sad, but instead, she feels a soft smile pulling at the corner of her lip. “Which is a shame, really. He fits right in.”

“What about the baby? I thought new parents never had time for anything fun.”

“Well, Eli’s usually with his mum on Tuesday evenings, but when he isn’t, we just bring him along. He’s rather quiet as babies go. Just sits and mutely observes unless you’re speaking directly to him. I suppose that’s something he’s gotten from his father. His hand-eye coordination still leaves something to be desired, but he had this dinosaur-shaped toy with him that was probably half his size that he kept reaching out for. And he just has the most perfect little fingers too.” She smiles at the memory. “I’m not explaining it right, but I promise you that it really was unimaginably adorable. Do you want to see pictures? He’s gotten so big already.”

Keeley looks at her, mouth slightly agape.

“What?” Rebecca asks.

“I just… I hadn’t considered it before. I guess I never really thought about him in that way. But that’s great. Wonderful even. Beard is such a good guy. And of course, I want to see baby pictures!” Keeley gives her that kind and encouraging smile that always used to make Rebecca feel like she could do anything, but which is currently making her stomach turn into knots. 

“What?” Rebecca repeats, even though she understands perfectly well now, her voice raised to an awkward pitch.

“I guess he hasn’t been single much since he came to London, so I hadn’t thought about it, but I’m sure there’s a list of good reasons for why the two of you make a good match, including but not limited to him not being shy. All I know is that he makes you smile like that, which I honestly haven’t seen a lot of since Ted left. Not that you and Ted were ever— oh. You’re looking a bit pale.”

“I’m not…” Rebecca starts because she isn’t. A minute ago, the fact that she’d been sharing weekly meals with a perfectly eligible divorcé didn’t seem the least bit odd to her. It doesn’t have to be. It’s what plenty of single people do, making regular appointments with friends to pass the time. It’s what she’s been doing with most of her friends to some extent, Keeley included. There doesn’t have to be anything remotely romantic about it. It’s just that she likes his company. Every week she sits down at her favourite restaurant, which isn’t even a restaurant she would have ever set foot in a few years ago, but being there with Beard has made it her favourite. She used to think he wasn’t much of a talker, but he can keep his end of a conversation better than most, always offering insights and perspectives she hadn’t considered before. And when they get caught up in whatever topic they’ve happened to latch onto, the hours just cascade away until they’re the only people left in the restaurant, and they have no other choice but to part ways. Except they’ve had a choice, haven’t they? Any one of those nights where they parted earlier than she would have liked, she could have asked if he’d like to see her more often. Hell, she could have asked him to come home with her. All she would have to do is ask. Why hasn’t she asked? “It isn’t like that.” 

“Oh. I’m sorry. Shit. I don’t know why I— Sorry.” Keeley cringes. “I just thought… Guess I got so caught up in the idea of making sure you were happy that I’m making up imaginary boyfriends for you. Talk about not being a very good feminist.” 

“Don’t apologise. It’s just that…” Beard is clever, witty, and kind. He has the deepest brown eyes she’s ever seen, and whenever she sees him hold his son in his arms, something in her just completely melts, making her feel overcome with an intense combination of emotions she knows the word for but doesn’t dare name, even in her head. And he’s Ted’s best friend, which wouldn’t matter in the slightest if only she were a tiny bit better at lying to herself. “It isn’t like that,” she repeats. 

“Alright,” Keeley says, although Rebecca can tell from her expression that her protestations haven’t been entirely convincing. She’d explain if she could, about how she isn’t dating Beard and has no intention of ever doing so, but she suddenly isn’t quite sure how to say it, if it’s even still true. 

When they part ways half an hour later, her mind is still reeling. She thinks of her phone call with Ted once more. She thinks about homesickness.

The Greyhounds will be playing Ajax in the Champions League a few days later, and it only takes Rebecca a brief talk with Higgins and an even shorter chat with Roy to get out of it. She has a strong suspicion that she’s chosen the coward’s option, but they don’t have to know that. That’s one of the perks of being the boss: they wouldn’t have much room to object to her not going to Amsterdam with the team if they wanted to. 

I’m sorry, she texts Beard the morning of his flight. She’s sure he’s been informed by now that she’s not coming, but she still feels as if she ought to have come along for the sake of team morale if nothing else. No one has asked her why she’s chosen to stay in the UK, and she prefers it that way. Lies by omission are easier to maintain. 

Beard was a little surprised when he heard Rebecca wasn’t coming. From the way she talks about it, he’d think she’s been more or less over that Matthijs guy for a while, but if she’d rather not go back to the place she fell for him, he’s not going to pretend like he doesn’t get it. 

Not ready yet? he writes back.

I suppose you could say that. The response strikes him as oddly cryptic for what he assumed was a pretty straightforward question, but he’d rather not pry over text. 

At the airport bargain bin, Beard buys an Edward Frenkel book on mathematics, largely because he’s feeling touristy enough to be compelled by the Van Gogh cover art. Maybe he’ll actually try out being a tourist this time. Not the lose-your-mind-on-a-healthy-mixture-of-hallucinogens kind of tourism, but the kind he’s never actually attempted in this city despite numerous visits through the years; walking along the canals, seeing famous bridges and buildings and filming locations, visiting museums and monuments. It’s not until the plane lands that he realizes how much he wishes Ted and Rebecca were here to experience it all with him. 

Ted gets a text from Beard just a few hours before the Greyhounds have their match in Amsterdam. It’s a selfie of all three coaches, standing by a river somewhere Ted doesn’t recognize, a pink line painted on the ground bending at an acute angle visible behind them. For reasons beyond Ted’s comprehension, he knows it must be a triangle. It may well not be, logically speaking. For all he knows, parts of Amsterdam could be chock-full of various angled lines painted on the ground for no dang reason at all. But still, he knows it. He knows that what his mind has been cooking up is more than a mere daydream. He knew it that night, well over a year ago when the city bestowed its triangular wisdom on him in a hazy frenzy of mathematical visions.

Hey, Coach, Ted texts back. Say hi to Nate and Roy for me. And then, because he’s itching to know, What’s that pink line in the background?

That’s the Homomonument, Beard replies. We were just at the Anne Frank house but figured it wasn’t much of a selfie spot. Guess this isn’t either.

That makes sense, Ted supposes. He remembers the first time he learned about the significance of the pink triangle in history class—an afterthought thrown out by a teacher who hadn’t put much weight to it as he attempted to get the kids through the curriculum without anyone being sidetracked by the atrocities of war. Ted remembers how much it had affected him to learn of all the various injustices of history, long before he ever came to think of that symbol as something that had anything to do with him. He still feels awkward laying any sort of claim to it.  

And he remembers Amsterdam all too well too, knows that everywhere you go in that city, try as you might, you can’t help but walk all over history. Maybe every city’s like that in its own way, if you take a second once in a while to stop and think about where you are. 

He doesn’t tell Beard any of that. Instead, he texts back Those Dutch sure get right to the point when it comes to naming things, huh?

Beard’s response is immediate. Sometimes it’s good to call things what they are.

Sometimes, Ted writes back. 

They don’t talk again until Beard’s back in London. 

Like all their FaceTime calls, it’s unannounced. When Ted first moved back, he suggested they pick a day of the week—it’s how he managed with Henry in London, and it’s how he catches up with Rebecca every Sunday and Wednesday, Nate every Thursday. But Beard was never one for sticking to a schedule anyway, so they’ve managed without one since, although it seems Ted catches Beard a little off-guard tonight.

“I was thinking about Amsterdam again.”

“Ted? What time is it there? Are you okay?” He leaves no pauses between the questions, so Ted’s not sure if he’s supposed to reply, which is just as well because he’s pretty sure the first two are rhetorical and he wouldn’t even know how to begin to answer the third. 

Beard’s sitting with his morning hair sticking out every which way at the little table in his kitchen, sipping on a cup of coffee—or maybe it’s tea. Beard drinks tea sometimes now, Ted reminds himself. Ted almost asks if Eli is awake, but figures that will only derail his racing thoughts further from what he needs to say. 

Ted realizes that he wasn’t sure if Beard would even be up yet himself—Beard’s always had a tendency to be up all night and having a baby hasn’t exactly done a lot to change that about him—but Ted also didn’t bother to do the time zone math in his head, and he supposes it’s later in Kansas than he’d realized, which means it’s later in London too. 

“Because of that ussie you sent,” Ted says, deciding to evade the questions entirely to save them both some time. “And how I came up with Total Football.”

“You said you had a barbecue-related hallucination, right?” Beard asks. “Never really got the full context there.” 

Beard, bless him, somehow didn’t have any follow-up questions to Ted’s initial account of what he experienced in Amsterdam. At the time, Ted kept it as condensed as he could manage, but he’s had enough time to marinate on it now that it doesn’t feel quite as raw, even if he’s still got a bit of a nervous rumbling in his stomach as he begins to speak. 

“Yeah,” Ted finally says. “But it was the tea that triggered it, I think. Or part of it, at least.”

“The tea was a dud, Ted,” Beard says, not forcefully but insistent all the same—he doesn’t seem to consider it up for discussion. 

“I know, I know, but I think the reason I drank it was because I was feeling adrift. Lonely maybe. Not because you were gone, but sort of in general, I guess. You weren’t there, but you’d tried to give me this wonderful experience. I felt bad about letting you down like that, and I didn’t like that you were out having fun or getting hurt while I sat inside feeling down in the dumps. So yeah, I wanted to have a good time. Or maybe just to shake things up a bit. And I thought I hated tea, but when I finally drank it, even though it tasted pretty much as terrible as I thought it would, it wasn’t so bad because that disgusting brown water reminded me of London, and all throughout the rest of the night, all I kept thinking about was home.”

“Home?” Beard asks, maybe because the connection’s a little shoddy, or because he’s still not fully awake or maybe because he feels the same confusion surrounding the term as Ted does.

“All of the homes I had out there. Have, I mean. London and Kansas, Mom and Henry, and you. Rebecca too. The tea reminded me of her, and the first day we met her. And it reminded me of you, of the gift you’d tried to give me.” 

“So me making you a disappointingly non-psychedelic cup of tea while we were in Amsterdam is what made you decide to switch out our entire strategy with one you thought you’d invented from scratch, but which in fact already existed?” 

“No, no, it was threefold.” The memory’s so clear to Ted that it’s almost odd that Beard can’t see it too—a recursive layering of images, both ternary and infinite, somehow more vivid now than it was when he first experienced it. “All of it was threefold.”

Beard doesn’t say anything to that, but it seems like he’s listening now, really listening. Or at least Ted hopes he is. Ted needs him to understand.   

“I went to the Van Gogh museum that night. I’m not really sure what compelled me. Maybe it was just to get out, or to get some culture, or because I always wanted to go. All the museums were open late, so there wasn’t anything stopping me. It’s a real nice place with all these wonderful, colorful paintings gathered in one place. And even though they were all so expressive with the paint layered on thick, just standing there brought this calm over me. The self-portraits reminded me of myself—something behind the eyes I guess—and then of you, because I missed you even though I’d just seen you an hour earlier, and because he looked a bit sad or maybe just because of those flecks of ginger in his beard. But then I saw this one painting that just reminded me of home.” 

“The sunflowers?” Beard asks, and Ted lets out a short little sigh of relief. There’s something almost soothing about knowing that Beard could guess, even if it wouldn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to connect the dots.

“Yeah. Remember when we first got to London, you took me to The National Gallery that very first week? Just to get me out of the house or to cheer me up or to give me an adventure. Only, I got stuck in the impressionist wing, getting all maudlin looking at the sunflowers, because I was missing home and missing Henry and missing Michelle. And here, right in the heart of the city, were sunflowers painted with so much care, but also so frail-looking like they might wither and come apart at any moment.” 

“I remember.”

“Well, these sunflowers were sort of like that. The same, but different.”

“Metaphor,” Beard mutters. 

“Yeah, well. Anyway, I guess these sunflowers reminded me of that too. Of standing there in London with you, missing home, and of the home I was missing. But in Amsterdam, I think I missed all three of those homes at once—my home in Kansas with Henry, the London home that was maybe always more about Rebecca and the club than the place itself, and then you, the home that seemed like it would follow me anywhere.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t go with you, Coach,” Beard says, not for the first time. No matter how many times Ted tells him he’s forgiven, Beard can’t seem to stop apologizing for leaving him on that plane. 

“That ain’t what I meant, Coach. You know I don’t blame you. I’m just saying that I was thinking of you is all. And not just you,” Ted continues. He’s not sure he could stop if he wanted to. “I was thinking of Henry and Michelle, but it wasn’t just them in my head when I thought back to the Kansas I’d left behind. I was thinking about my mom too. She always had sunflowers out in the garden. Even when things were tough and she barely got around to cleaning the house because she was so caught up with work or with raising a handful of a kid. Later on, even though she had all this grief she was carrying around that she never seemed to be able to put down anywhere, she always made sure there were sunflowers in the bit of garden we had out front every summer and that they were well taken care of, each of them tied up with a bit of string to keep them from toppling over. She said they were her way of showing a bit of Kansas pride. She’s always been a proud woman. I don’t think I fully understood what that meant until recently. I’ve been thinking a lot about pride lately... 

“But anyway, I was standing there, listening to this fella from the museum tell me all about Van Gogh’s humble roots, and how he was a preacher’s son too, and the search for beauty that can lead to inspiration if you’ve got enough determination in you. And the whole time, while he was talking about moving on, my mind was stuck on all these different homes, but mostly my mom, I think. How she raised me, did all these nice things, nurtured those sunflowers out in the garden, baked sunflower seed bread to keep me fed. And then all that anger I’d been holding on to, ready to take aim in her direction but never firing off, maybe because I knew she was nursing the same exact anger too, but then I’d always just get stuck trying to keep things civil, even when all I pretty much wanted to do was yell. 

“But then I thought of the future too, and suddenly it didn’t feel like much of a burden anymore. Or it did, but it felt like a privilege too, because someday in the future, she won’t be around anymore, and no matter how much I’ve wanted to scream in her face, I’d like that day to be as far away as it can possibly get. I don’t like thinking about being old and gray if she’s not around anymore. I’ve gotta treasure what I’ve got while it’s still here. And of course that got me thinking about Henry too, and I bet you I could’ve stayed there all night, just looking at that painting, letting all of those thoughts spin, but before I knew it, that same fella from before was handing me a notebook—the one with the sunflowers on it that I used to scribble everything down in, remember?—and telling me my time was up. But I wasn’t ready to leave yet, so I went to the only place that made any sense to me. The closest approximation of home I could find.”

“Not the Burger Barn?” Beard grimaces, the disapproval obvious on his face.

“Of course I went to the gosh darn Burger Barn. I just wanted a taste of home. And it probably did deserve that two-star rating, I ain’t gonna lie. Their presentation of the theme was a smidge lacking in authenticity but the service was quick, and I got a table right away. They were playing an old basketball game on this monitor they had hanging up that looked like it had been there since the nineties. To add to the ambience, I suppose. It was the 1991 NBA finals, Lakers versus Bulls. Did you ever watch that?”

Beard shakes his head just a little, the movement barely visible on the screen. “I’ve seen highlights. We didn’t have a TV that summer.” 

“Oh. Well, I remembered watching the game with my dad like it was yesterday. We made sure to tape it so we could watch it all over again together. We never did get around to it… Anyway, that’s all to say that it was the strangest thing, seeing that game on that TV as if I was right back in the old house we lived in when I was a kid, and I was sixteen again, sitting there with my dad, eyes glued to the screen, watching Michael Jordan’s every move with our jaws hanging so low they were practically touching the floor.” 

“Sixteen?” Beard asks, even though Ted just told him what year it was. Ted doesn’t talk about it much, not even after the therapy’s helped him say it out loud when he needs to, but he knows Beard’s retained enough details over the years to be able to do the math.  

“He shot himself a few months after that, yeah,” Ted says. It feels easier to say it himself than to watch Beard struggle to come up with some euphemistic phrasing to talk around it. But still, it’s never really easy.

“I’m sorry, Ted.”

“Yeah. Me too. I guess it was nice to have that memory, anyway. For a long time, I was so busy being angry with him that I didn’t really know how to appreciate all the good stuff. But I’ve gotten better at looking back and seeing everything a little more clearly, thinking about how he was a good dad too.”

Beard smiles softly at him or maybe just to himself. These screens make it so hard to tell sometimes. “So it was the basketball game that opened your third eye and made you scribble football strategies? I can see that. There are some similarities between the triangle defense and the way t—”

“Well, no, that part of the epiphany was threefold too. It was the Bulls game, and it was the way everything felt in that whole restaurant with the not-quite-American patriotism all around me and Chance the Rapper in his number three baseball cap—”

“Chance the Rapper was there?” Beard’s obviously trying to keep up, but Ted doesn’t exactly blame him for struggling.

“Just on the wall. I was in the Chicago section,” Ted clarifies. “Hence the Bulls game.”

“Alright. Carry on, Roxie Hart.”

“Aw, that’s nice that you’d think I’d be Roxie. I would’ve thought you’d want that honor for yourself.” 

“I’m Amos,” Beard says, a little too quickly for Ted’s taste. 

“Don’t sell yourself short. Nothing cellophanous about you.”

Beard doesn’t reply to that. 

“Okay, fine. Well, anyway,” Ted continues. “I was in the Chicago section, and I was watching the Bulls and I was thinking about how everything about that restaurant reminded me of home without feeling anything at all like home, and I was thinking about my dad, sitting right next to me on the couch, how excited it made me to see that look of pure joy on his face—looking back on it now, I must’ve sensed that he’d been smiling less that whole spring. And then the Yankee Doodle waitress came along with my fries—again, I must stress the excellent service—and a barbecue sauce she’d picked out just for me, and guess what?”

“It was a bottle of Arthur Bryant?”

“Arthur Bryant! You got it! You're a smart cookie, Coach. So I’m sitting there, looking at the bottle in disbelief that I’ve spent all night searching for a bit of home without ever really getting there. And I thought about Arthur Bryant’s barbecue and their flagship restaurant in Kansas City, and that summer we first tried it together, and the bottle of Arthur Bryant’s barbecue sauce Henry sent me in his very first care package to London, and the picture of Arthur Bryant’s that’s been my screen saver ever since I moved as a reminder of home. How in a way, that sauce has been lurking right there in the background every time I’ve Facetimed Henry and Michelle, wishing in my heart of hearts that I could be there with them, and then I started feeling sort of woozy, and then Nate was there, and—” 

“Wait, hold up. They had a picture of Nate on the wall next to Chance the Rapper?”

“No. Nate was there, in the restaurant, dressed as a waiter. Or a cowboy. A cowboy waiter.”

“You mean, you hallucinated Nate being there,” Beard clarifies. He doesn’t phrase it like a question. 

“I suppose,” Ted says, although it hadn’t felt like that at the time; still doesn’t. “I know it wasn’t actually Nate, but it sure seemed like him. A version of him anyway. He talked to me and everything.”

“What did he say?”

“Howdy,” Ted recalls with a smile. It’s a nicer memory in retrospect, now that he and Nate have patched things up. 

“So, you’re telling me that Nate was a waiter at the Yankee Doodle Burger Barn and he told you howdy?” 

Ted frowns. “You sound concerned.”

“I am concerned.”

“Well, that’s all he said before he was gone again, and then I tasted the barbecue sauce and thought of the triangle offense and the Pyramid of Success and after that, it was all triangles. Spent the rest of the night scribbling it all down in that notebook.”

“Okay,” Beard says, not dragging out the word, but carefully all the same, like he’s talking Ted through a delusion. He never talks about it much, but Beard must have seen quite a few people out of touch with reality back when most of the people he surrounded himself with were doing their darndest to fry their brains to bits. But Ted wasn’t on drugs, at least not any that were working, and whatever it is he’s seeing is more real than anything. Whatever it was, there must have been some other reason for it. Whatever it was, it’s still happening. 

“What do you think it means?” Ted asks. “Divine intervention?” 

“Bad shrimp?” Beard suggests. “Or maybe it wasn’t such a dud batch after all.”

“Come on, now, Coach. Have a sense of wonder. Doesn’t it sound to you like maybe something out there in the universe wanted me to know all those things? And if it had just been the tea, then why am I still seeing it this clearly? That has to mean something.”

Beard’s eyes widen at that. “You still see it?”

Ted nods. “All the time. Drugs don’t exactly explain that, do they? So I guess it must’ve been something else.” 

“And these… images. They’re the same?”

“The same but different,” Ted replies. 

Beard’s quiet for a moment that drags out long enough for Ted to start worrying if maybe he shouldn’t have said anything after all, but then Beard lets out a sigh. “I think football got under your skin like England did.” There’s something serious in his voice, almost grave. “Like Rebecca did.”

“Like you did,” Ted adds, trying to lighten his voice a bit so that Beard’s reminded of how much he's part of everything Ted misses about his home on the other side of the Atlantic. 

Beard sighs again. “Coach, let’s not…”

“What?”

“I feel guilty enough as it is, leaving you on that plane.”

“But that’s what I’m saying,” Ted insists, all the lightness gone out of his tone. “You didn’t really leave me. You’re still right here with me whenever I close my eyes. I see a line reaching out from my body, connecting me to you. You can call it hallucinations all you want, but… I feel it now, deep in my bones. I see it too, all the time. There’s something in the universe that wants me to know that distance won’t ever keep us apart in any way that matters. You and me? We’re stronger than that. I thought you might be able to see it, but maybe it doesn’t work that way. Maybe Rebecca will.”

“Rebecca?” Beard asks. “She’s part of it?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Coach. We all are. It’s all connected.” 

Ted feels like maybe he should be doing more to make himself understood, to explain everything to Beard about the lines, the triangles, him and Rebecca, all three of them. But Beard seems on the fence enough as it is for that whole can of worms, so instead he just says his goodbye, apologetic for having taken up so much of their precious communication time blabbering on, but only slightly. Beard might not fully get it yet, but this is important. It’s the most important thing there is.

After Ted hangs up, Beard does what he can to untangle the encounter in his head. A seed has been planted in his brain, and he can feel it growing, slowly unfurling soft, pale green leaves. He can almost picture it when he closes his eyes, but what's going to become of it remains uncertain. Maybe he should have done more to dissuade Ted of whatever’s overcome him, nipping it in the bud before it had a chance to bloom. Ted’s always been spiritual in his own way, but it’s unlike him to let something this close to the occult get the better of him. 

Beard knows it makes him a hypocrite, but he’s always been more protective of Ted than he’s ever been of himself, and whatever’s affecting Ted, it’s intense enough to be a cause for concern. Beard will always be the first to encourage him to be a little bit more adventurous, but Ted’s more trusting than most. There’s no telling what he might decide all this means. And Beard chose to leave him on the plane, so Ted’s all alone now. If whatever’s going on with him turns out to be dangerous, Beard’s got no measure by which to protect him when it all comes apart. Only, Ted doesn’t seem concerned. 

The only thing Beard knows for sure is that something has shifted. Some force has come into Beard’s life and pulled at him, and now he’s not sure what’s going on at all. All he knows is what Ted told him and all he has left to do is trust that it’s a good thing. But trust was never easy for him. At least not in the way it's easy for Ted.

“Has Ted said anything… odd to you?” Beard asks about an hour later, more or less as soon as Roy gets into work. Nate almost always gets in to work exactly on the hour, and none of the players have shown up for training yet, so the two of them have their office to themselves for at least the next few minutes.

“Most work days and the occasional holiday for the past three years,” Roy replies without missing a beat. 

“No, I meant… Has he mentioned anything about hallucinations? Visions?”

“Visions?” Roy asks. He maybe seems amused—apprehensive for sure—like how he got when Beard brought up that spiritual retreat with the soul-cleansing ritual he went to with Jane up in the Scottish Highlands last summer. 

“He just… he mentioned seeing things. I’m not sure what exactly. Maybe lots of things, people, triangles. I’m not sure why, but there was just something about the way he was talking… Guess I got worried that something more was going on with him.” Ideally, Beard should be able to trust that Ted would’ve mentioned if something worrisome was going on, but they’ve been friends long enough for Beard to know that Ted has trouble with being forthcoming about the nature of the demons he’s battling. He doesn’t like that Ted’s not here. He doesn’t like that he has no way of being sure. 

“Oh. He did say something,” Roy says. “Just the other day. Something about a Sir Pinsky? Didn’t know what the fuck he was on about.”

“Sierpiński,” Beard corrects, instinctively, even though that doesn’t track as something Ted would ever be talking about given that he very nearly flunked math entirely and hasn’t been known to open a whole lot of books on the subject since. 

“Yeah, that was it. He showed me a drawing he’d done of that triangle thing. Said that he’d had it in his head ever since Amsterdam, and he’d finally figured out what it was. Something about how if he had a sharp enough pencil, he could’ve drawn even smaller triangles inside all the little triangles endlessly. He was excited about it. I couldn’t see what the fuss was about.”

“It’s how he came up with Total Football,” Beard says. He thinks he’s starting to get it, whatever’s going on with Ted. Or at least he’s starting to understand what it was Ted was describing, what it is he thought he saw. 

“Triangles within triangles is how he decided to completely abandon our entire strategy mid-season and implement Total Football?” 

“Not just that. It’s how he came up with it. From scratch. All on his own.”

Roy’s signature scowl turns even more exaggerated. “What the fuck are you on about?”

“Didn’t you listen when I told you he’d had a barbecue-related hallucination?”

“I gave up on bothering with clarifying questions when the two of you say weird shit a long time ago.”

“Well, to clarify then. He saw it in a vision.”

“And you’re sure he didn’t just accidentally inhale a bit too much Amsterdam air and space out while reading up on football tactics?”

“First, of all, it’s Ted. Of course he didn’t read up on tactics. Second of all, he wasn’t on drugs. We’d taken some psilocybin, but it was a dud batch.”

“You gave Ted shrooms?” Roy’s eyes are wide. The idea seems almost scandalous to him, and Beard can’t quite tell if it’s Roy’s idea of Ted or Roy himself that’s more innocent than he’d previously assumed. 

“I told you, it was a dud batch.”

“I can’t imagine that brain of his would have any sort of fun on drugs.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Beard shrugs. “He’s pretty fun to hang out with when he smokes weed.”

Roy’s eyes widen even further and then narrow entirely. “Are you taking the piss?” 

Beard shrugs again. “He hasn’t indulged with me since college, but back then, he was usually game. We’d listen to some Nirvana, light up a bong, watch something appropriately out there. It was fun.”

Roy considers that, taking in this new version of Ted Lasso that Beard has uncovered for him. “Sounds like it.”

Beard remembers a particularly fun night their junior year of college, both sitting on Beard’s entirely too-tiny bed, watching a VHS of Fantasia. Ted complaining that it hadn’t seemed quite as racist when he’d been a kid, and Beard smiling out of fondness and because he was pretty fucking stoned, instinctively replying with some overly intellectual comment about colonialism that really hadn’t been meant as flirtatious. But maybe it wasn’t so much the comment itself as the moment, the looseness of their inebriated limbs, the nostalgia of old cartoons and the maturity of rejecting the ways of the past, but whatever it was, Ted’s hand was on his side and then his neck, and his lips were on Beard’s own and his tongue was in his mouth and his hand was on his thigh and it seemed like time stood completely still or stretched out infinitely or both. And it felt like everything was about to change, and nothing would ever be the same. And in a way, nothing was. But then, things never did change as much as Beard had hoped for.

He shakes off the memory. There’s no use in letting himself get carried away thinking about all the ways he had let himself dream things might go. 

But of course, Beard gets carried away anyway. It’s all he’s ever known how to do. Try as he might to stay focused during training, his head’s somewhere else entirely, stuck in the past future tense, in all the thoughts he allowed himself to have about what may come to pass. 

Nate eyes him but doesn’t call him out on it, while Roy just catches on to the fact that Beard’s not feeling up for much and takes the initiative to make sure the players are all too occupied to bother him. 

When Dani gets tackled by Jan, Beard is reminded of the last time Dani got tackled, during a match, that embarrassing draw against Leeds a few weeks back, after Beard had sushi with Rebecca. It was her suggestion, moving their dinner plans on-site to make sure they were both on time, and he had no qualms about it, but once he was there, in her office, he started to think of all those mornings Ted had been up there alone with her. How many hours in total must Beard have spent reading in the coaches’ office each morning after he and Ted walked to work, while Ted went up to see the boss? He never really questioned it. It was just routine. Ted headed upstairs to give Rebecca her biscuits, and Beard stayed put. The biscuits were an excuse in a way, Beard knows that, but they were an essential one. They kept the ritual going. The sushi he and Rebecca got was just take-out, not even from anywhere particularly fancy, but it wasn’t about the food anyway. It kept their streak of Tuesday dinners going. It gave them both an excuse. 

So he thinks about Rebecca, on that night a few weeks ago, and of that dress she wore last night to dinner, and her smile, and he thinks about Ted too, a little guiltily now for reasons that are difficult to put into words, not because it’s all that complicated to explain, but because the thought of the admission itself is too much to process.

“You alright, mate?” Nate finally asks him, and he realizes how long he must have spaced out as he notices the players finishing up the last of their exercises.

“Yeah,” he says, but then thinks about it and shakes his head. “I need to go talk to the boss.” He doesn’t know what he needs to talk to her about, but the moment he lets out the words, he knows it’s true. “Can you wrap things up without me?”

“Of course,” Nate says with a nod. Roy’s out on the pitch, rounding the players up, but it won’t be a problem. He’ll understand too.

As Beard starts walking, the certainty in his stomach spreads. He needs to talk to Rebecca. 

Rebecca’s gotten used to seeing Beard in her office more frequently this season, but it’s still a relatively rare occurrence, and it’s just the tiniest bit jarring when he appears at her door, sitting down in the chair on the other side of her desk. 

“Ted’s been weird, right?” Beard asks. 

“Uh, hi,” Rebecca says. She really ought to stop thinking of it as Ted’s chair, but as he gets comfortable and gives her an expectant look that makes it clear he’s not planning on moving before she indulges the heart-to-heart he just instigated, it’s not exactly an easy thought to let go of. She’s not sure if it’s the American accent, the kindness in his expression or the fact of him being her coach. Perhaps it’s none of it and all of it. Perhaps Beard and Ted will just always be connected in her head. Not that Beard is all that similar to Ted when it comes down to it. He’s a whole other person of his very own for whom she’s come to care very deeply. It makes the déjà vu all the more disorienting. 

“A bit, yes,” she answers after a moment. “But, I’m sure he’s just been feeling… off? Perhaps it’s taken him longer to adjust to being back than expected, and it’s only now that he’s starting to try to put some of what he’s been experiencing into words.”

Beard makes a huffing sound that she’s fairly certain could be succinctly translated to bullshit.

“You think there’s more to it?” Rebecca tries to look at him like she would have a week ago, before she spoke to Keeley, before she started to realise that there’s something that ought to be addressed. She wonders if she looks different, if he can tell. 

“I think there’s something to it,” Beard replies. “Did he tell you about the vision he had at the Burger Barn?”

“Vision?” Rebecca asks, even though she’s sure that’s what he said, and then, slightly less sure she heard him right, “burger barn? ” 

“That’s what he calls it at least. Visions, I mean. The Burger Barn is what the Burger Barn calls itself. He had a vision and apparently, it’s still happening, at least partially. He mentioned something about pyramids and triangles, things that come in threes. But I’m not sure whether it’s all connected or if he just wants it to be. Maybe it was more of a religious experience. Again, the visions, not the Burger Barn. Or maybe the shrooms I gave him kicked in. Either way, I think it affected him more than I’d caught on to.”

“You gave Ted shrooms?” 

“Why is everyone so judgy about that?”

Rebecca almost answers that, but then shakes her head. There’s no point in getting into it. Besides, Keeley was probably right all along about that. She can be a bit judgy. “When was this?”

“Amsterdam. A dining establishment known as the Yankee Doodle Burger Barn to be exact. That friendly we had. The same one where you showed up late with canal sludge on your shoes, singing Bob Marley.”

“So that’s why he looked different.”

“Who?”

“Ted. On the bus. You noticed it too, I could tell. He looked so calm, sitting there, scribbling to himself.” 

“I did,” Beard says. “You both were. That was when you met Matthijs, right? That’s why you didn’t come with us for the Ajax match?”

Rebecca smiles. “You’re the only person I know who could ever pronounce his name correctly. But no, not exactly. I’ve just been… trying to process some things.”  

Rebecca thinks about that morning in Amsterdam. The kiss with Matthijs, who was still a stranger to her, the mellow, perfect feeling as she sat down next to Ted the morning after, the look she exchanged with Beard across the little table at the back of the bus as he turned her quiet humming into a duet before it became a sing-along. Even though things with Matthijis didn’t work out in the end, the magic of that morning still lingers. 

She’d felt such a deep connection with them then—the entire team, sure, but Ted and Beard in particular. Looking over at the man in the David Bowie outfit and pig’s snout, it seemed as if she and Beard understood Ted in a way no one else did. And perhaps Ted and Beard understood her too. At the very least, they were the only two people who seemed to notice the transformation she’d undergone in a single night on a houseboat. Thinking back on it now, she recalls having the thought that Ted must have undergone some transformation of his own, even if neither she nor Beard knew the extent of it yet. She still doesn’t understand, but she wants to. She feels a bond with Ted that goes miles beyond all the strange feelings of affection she had to fight to suppress when they first met. It may not have started in Amsterdam, but that’s when it all changed. She’s sure of it now, but her assuredness only breeds uncertainty about what to do next. 

“You said you weren’t ready,” Beard says, and she wonders how long she was lost in thought, what he assumes she was thinking about. “But it wasn’t about Matthijs.” It’s only almost a question. 

“It wasn’t. And I wasn’t,” Rebecca tells him. “But I think I will be, soon enough.” 

That same night, after she knows Ted must be back from work, she calls him, just to chat about everything and nothing—work, Henry and Nora, the newest season of Hacks. It feels strangely normal, like nothing has changed since they last spoke, as they catch each other up on all the mundanities of their lives. That’s when she decides. 

“Explain it to me.” She realises too late that he has no context for what’s been going through her brain for hours now. It’s late in London, but evening’s finally starting to settle in Kansas too, and Ted’s partially cast in shadow on the screen in front of her, the lighting in his living room too dim for her to see him clearly.

“Explain what?” 

“Whatever happened to you at the Burger Barn. Beard told me you saw something, and he made it sound as if… Was it a religious experience?” Rebecca asks.  

Ted chews on his bottom lip for a moment before answering. “Maybe. God was there for a little bit. She sounded a lot like you.”

Rebecca smiles at that, even if it doesn’t quite make sense to her. “And it’s… it’s still happening?”

“Ever read The Dharma Bums?” Ted replies in lieu of answering. 

“Can’t say that I have,” she says, letting him go on with whatever tangent he’s about to embark on. She doesn’t see much point in stopping him, and truth be told, she’s missed his tangents. 

“I read it back in college, and I guess it made a bigger impression than I thought. Hadn’t really given it a whole lot of thought in years, but then when I first went to London—the whole thing happened so fast, I barely had time to pack—I realized I was going to need something to read on the plane so I just grabbed it off the shelf. But then I read the entire thing pretty much all in one go. Finished it long before we hit the ground.”

“Ted what does this—”

“It’s about a guy who’s definitely not Jack Kerouac, but also he is, and he goes around meeting all these poet types searching for enlightenment, including this one guy who becomes his mentor. And he decides that he needs to go on this spiritual journey or something to a mountain. It’s a tad bit Eat, Pray, Love, but with less self-help-type fun stuff and more people who want to sound smart sitting around saying whatever’s on their mind. Anyway, at the end of the book, he leaves the mountain behind, and he hasn’t quite found enlightenment, but he’s found something. Some strange, indescribable thing there, and he communicates with the mountain in his own made-up language that just belongs to himself and the mountain.”

“What, he just makes something up?”

“Yeah. His exact phrasing is ‘blah,’ I think.” 

“Right. Okay,” Rebecca says, not entirely following. It doesn’t seem like Ted’s having her on, but if there’s any sort of logic to be grasped here, it’s lost on her. 

“And the mountain doesn’t respond or anything, but he’s just got this feeling in his gut like it probably understands what he was trying to say, and then he heads on back to the world he came from.”

“Kind of like you did?” she asks, still not sure she gets it, but understanding now at least that whatever story Ted is trying to tell must be related to his own journey. 

“See, that’s the thing. I thought Nelson Road was my mountain, but my mountain’s not a physical place at all. It’s a shape.”

“A triangle?” she asks. 

He lights up at that, his eyes beaming so much that she wonders if she accidentally turned up the brightness on her phone screen. “Or a pyramid. So I guess it sort of is like a mountain too, at least if the mountain’s got a particular angular look and you squint a bit. But really it’s more geometric than that. At least at first. I think of it sort of like a fractal—an endless recursion of triangles within triangles within triangles, all layered on each other until you can hardly make any sense of it at all and it’s closer to some sort of weird, blob-like manifolded polygon situation.” 

“What are you saying, Ted?”

“I guess I’m saying that I thought my journey was over when I came back. It’s maybe not much of a hero's journey, but I still figured I’d somehow be done if I just ended up back to the start. I was Dorothy in Oz or Bilbo in whatever that mountain’s called with all the gold and the CGI Benedict Cumberbatch or Alice in Wonderland or definitely-not-Jack Kerouac going on a hiking trip. Except, I’m supposed to have already gone home. The story got tied up with a neat bow. I said my goodbyes. But the visions have only gotten more intense.”

“You keep calling them that.”

“What?”

“Visions.”

“I don’t know what else to call them.”

“Ted, I… I’ve been burned by people peddling false promises before. It’s dangerous to believe too hard in magic.” Rebecca sighs. “Last year, I went to see my mother’s psychic.”

“You went to see Tish?”

That takes her out of the moment for a bit. “How do you know my mum’s psychic’s name?”

“Maybe I’m a little bit psychic too,” Ted tells her with a coy smile. “Or y’know, Deborah’s talked about her at length pretty much every time we’ve ever exchanged pleasantries.”

“Right. Of course she has. Well, she told me some things, and some of them came true, so I let myself think that that meant that some of the other things might come true as well.”

“Like what?”

“She told me that I– that I was going to be a mother.”

“Oh.” 

“And then when I realised that this man I’d fallen for also had a daughter, and when he reemerged in my life just as I’d lost you, I thought that perhaps this would be my chance to be a mum. I wanted it so badly. And I’m still something to her. I care for her a great deal, even if things didn’t work out between her father and I, but… I suppose it just wasn’t meant to be.”

“Maybe that’s not so bad. From what you’ve told me, Jelka seems like a great kid. She’s probably better off for having met an adult who cares about her so much and only wanted what was best for her.”

“But it doesn’t seem fair that I tried so hard to be a mother to someone who already has a mother of her own, that I went into her life before I was sure Matthijs and I had something that could work long-term.”

“So that was it? It just didn’t work out long-term?” Ted asks, and it occurs to her just how little she’s divulged to him about a relationship that lasted nearly six months, even while she and Ted were keeping up with each other multiple times a week. Their chats were always about everything else in their lives. Their memories, their friends, football. She wonders what kept her from bringing it up, what kept Ted from asking, but she tries not to dwell too much on it; she knows why, but that’s not a truth she’s ready to accept yet. 

“I suppose. Did I ever tell you about it? How I met him, I mean?”

“No. Just that it was in Amsterdam and then you ran into him at the airport.” He doesn’t mention that the reason she was at the airport in the first place was to say goodbye to him. 

She’d thought of it as a bit of a miracle at the time—just Ted Lasso sprinkling some of his last magical fairy dust on her before carrying on his way—but looking back, she wonders if part of her hadn’t jumped so fast into her relationship with Matthijs because she was trying to fill the sudden void she felt in her soul. “Well, I was talking to Sassy because she was concerned about me.”

“Why? What was wrong?” Ted asks, genuinely worried, and she can’t help the fondness bubbling up in her at his concern. 

“Nothing! Well, not nothing. Just… I was thinking about what that psychic said. How she’d tapped into something I really wanted for myself. Love, commitment, a family. Everything I’d spent my youth rejecting because I didn’t want to be like my parents and all the things I tried to seek out with Rupert only to realize it had all been a mirage. And I was distracted by all that. Sassy calling only ended up acting as even more of a distraction, and before I knew it, a bike had run me right into the canal. And Matthjis jumped in to save me.”

“Aw, that’s nice, getting fished out by a handsome stranger like that. Even if it didn’t work out in the end for you, I’m glad you got to be with someone who could help you out. Make you feel safe.”

“I was, I suppose. Safe, I mean.”

“Hope you still are.”

“Don’t you worry about me, Ted.”

“I’m not. You may not believe in magic, but I can tell you one thing for certain.”

“What?”

“Every little thing’s gonna be alright.”

There’s a part of her that suspects he changed the subject on her for a reason, but she doesn’t consciously process that it happened. She’s too distracted by that earworm, thinking about that morning on the bus all over again, humming along softly as she recalls every detail with crystal clarity. 

On the other side of the Atlantic, Ted hums the same tune, thinking about that morning, and what finally made him put down his pencil and think of something other than football for the first time in hours and hours, as Beard and Rebecca urged him to join in. 

Ted tries to process what Rebecca has just told him. It somehow hadn’t occurred to him until this very moment that she might want to be a mother, that it was something in her life she’d been missing out on involuntarily. She’d be pretty great at it, come to think of it, and from that thought a strange feeling comes over him, even stronger than the feeling he just had that it’s all going to work out. It doesn’t so much seem to be a feeling as much as it seems like just plain ol’ knowledge. Like information bestowed on him from on high, a sort of cosmic truth.  

“You’ll be a great mom one day,” Ted says because he sees it now so clearly in his mind’s eye without even having to blink. The vision of Rebecca as a mother more real to him than the Rebecca on the screen right in front of him. He wants to tell her all about it, about every single vision he’s had of what’s to come. All he wants is for her to understand just a fraction of its beauty. 

Except Rebecca—the real Rebecca, he tries to remind himself—looks hurt. “Ted, please. I can’t…”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” he starts, but what can he say? He knows in his heart that it’s true, but to her, it’s simply another false promise she’d be a fool to trust. “I wish I could take it back because I know what I just said hurt you, and that’s the last thing I want to do, but I’m not gonna pretend it’s a lie. Because I know it’s true. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain. There are things I’m certain of now that I couldn’t ever know before. I see these visions everywhere and every time I feel like they’re pointing me in the same direction. The same two directions. Sometimes it’s so intense, I can’t fathom how you can’t see it too.” 

Rebecca is silent for a long moment, and Ted worries that he’s gone too far, that she was too hurt by what he said to listen. He’s almost about to take it all back, apologizing for telling her something she doesn’t want to hear when she says, “I can’t see it but… I think I can feel it. I think I understand.”

He’d explain to her what it looks like, but maybe, he decides, what she needs right now is more than words. So instead, he asks. “Would you maybe want to check up on Beard for me?” 

“Why? Has he said anything worrisome?” 

“No. Not exactly,” Ted says. He’d explain to her that he’s certain Beard would benefit from a visit in the exact same way he’s certain about her future as a mother, but he doesn’t want to bring her any more pain. “Call it a hunch.”

“Is this about his divorce?”

Ted shakes his head softly, and for a moment it feels like she’s right there in front of him this time. “I just think he could probably use a friend right now. Someone who could offer him some comfort.”

“You think he’s lonely?” 

“I think you’re a very comforting presence, Boss.” 

“Okay,” she says. “Bye, Ted.”

“Talk to you soon, Rebecca.”

There's so much that Ted’s been starting to realize lately, but he’s done realizing. He just knows. Whatever this is, goes deeper than connection. And he’s not sure how to say it, but he knows too that once he’s found the words, saying it won’t be so bad. 

Ted calls Beard right away. “Why did you tell her?” Ted asks and then gets a hold of himself. “Sorry. Manners. Hey, Coach.”

“Hey, Coach,” Beard says. “Did Rebecca talk to you? I know I should have asked before telling her about what’s been going on, but—”

“I don’t mind,” Ted interjects. “I’m glad you did. I just don’t understand why. Or maybe I do, but I need you to say it.”

“She’s the only one who understands.”

“Me or you?” Ted asks because he needs Beard to say it to be sure.

“I thought you knew. It took me a while to piece it together, but that’s what this has all been about, right?”

“I do,” Ted says. “It has. I must’ve known for a while now. Or maybe I’ve just been hoping for a while, and I only just realized this second. I’m not sure what to do about it.” Something shifted within him when he spoke to Rebecca, and now all the certainty has overpowered the last remnants of his doubt. If Beard understands as well, then something tells him, it won’t be long now until everything falls into place. He can feel it now, in the pit of his stomach, the slow bubbling of anticipation. 

“Talking’s a good place to start sometimes,” Beard says. 

“Sometimes,” Ted says, and then, fighting the practiced habit of leaving it at that, he continues. “Sometimes, I wish my body wasn’t physical at all. Or I guess I like having a body, but it’s just that sometimes I wish that I could just split it up into an infinite amount of tiny little pieces of Ted and spread out all the little bits of me on the world, nice and even like mayo on toast. Or more like sprinkles on a sundae, I guess. Just a tiny bit here and there wherever I’m needed, so no one would ever feel like they’d have to go without it.”

“It?”

“Me.” 

“Whenever I think about you here, I think of you in one piece. Wouldn’t have much use for a sprinkle of Ted. I want all of you, Coach.”

“I miss you, Coach,” Ted says. It doesn’t even begin to cover the longing he feels, for Beard, for the home that isn’t with him anymore, but which is with him in every way he needs it to be. 

“I miss you too,” Beard says, and Ted can’t help but smile. That’s all he really needed to hear. 

“But Rebecca’s right there. Don’t hold out too long waiting for me to get back. I will, I promise, but you don’t need me for this.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I always need you.”

“And you’ll have me, both of you. I mean, if that’s… I want that.”

“I want that too,” Beard answers simply, and then his doorbell rings. 

“You better get that,” Ted says. 

Ted feels butterflies flapping their wings in his stomach and knows they’re brewing up a storm on the other side of the world. He hangs up on Beard, and a moment later, Beard answers his door to find Rebecca, standing before him. 

Lightning strikes. 

“Rebecca?” Beard asks, even though she’s right there in front of him. There’s something different about her that he’s not sure how to explain. Maybe, it’s that she’s changed sometime in the past few hours, or maybe he has. Maybe all he really needed in order to see what was right in front of him, was knowing Ted would be okay with it. She’s a vision in her own right if he ever saw one. 

“Beard. Good. Hi,” Rebecca says with a slightly nervous smile. “Can I come in? I’d like to speak with you. I’d like to know you’re okay.”

“Of course,” he says, and then. “Okay? I mean, yes, I’m okay. I’m good. Things are good.” 

“I’m so sorry for just showing up,” she says. “I considered calling you to ask first, but it suddenly felt very urgent that I get here right away. I just hate that I only know your address because of your employee files. It feels too invasive using it like that when you haven’t handed it over yourself.” She’s suddenly so nervous, never quite looking him in the eyes as she takes off her coat, handing it over to him when he offers to hang it up for her. 

“Is that why you never call me Willis?” he asks. 

“You’ve never used it before. I wasn’t sure if you had any reasons to resent the name.”

He chuckles softly. “Oh, plenty. It was my dad’s name. But you can call me Willis if you want.”

She smiles appreciatively at that but shakes her head. “I like calling you Beard.” 

He smiles back. He has such a nice smile. 

“Is Eli here?” she asks. It doesn’t seem like Jane’s been doing much parenting the past month, but Rebecca tries not to assume. 

“He’s asleep.” 

“Can I see?”

Beard smiles again, or maybe he never really stopped, and nods, leading her to the bedroom to show her where Eli is sleeping in his crib. He’s such a peaceful sleeper. It unnerved her at first, the near-perfect stillness of him, but now she's soothed by it, knows how to look for the ever so slightly dilating nostrils, the faint movement of his tiny belly. And she feels that thing she’s been too afraid to name again, overwhelming her senses.

“He’s just about the most precious thing in the world, isn’t he?” she says because he is. 

“I like to think so,” Beard says, huffing warmly as he looks at his son. 

"I talked to Ted," Rebecca says, still looking at Eli. She can’t seem to take her eyes off him. Or maybe she’s too afraid to look in Beard’s direction.

"I know,” Beard says. “You always talk on Wednesdays.” 

"I mean, I got him to tell me about them. The visions.”

She notices him nodding at her periphery. “What do you make of it?”

“I don’t think they should scare you. I know I’ve got all sorts of hang-ups about people trying to prey on me through quackery myself. But you love quackery. You’re all for reckless mind expansion and unexplained phenomena. You’re the one who drugged him in the first place.”

“It was a dud batch. And he chose to drink the tea. Not like I poured it down his throat.”

“You got Ted to drink tea?” That’s somehow harder for her to wrap her head around than the fact that it was brewed on shrooms. 

“I just told you. He did it of his own volition. Said it reminded him of you.” 

“Me?”

“And me. And home. And everything. Henry, his mom, all his ghosts. I just wanted him to get out of his own head, but I don’t think that’s why he agreed to try it. He can get stuck in these thought spirals, and no one seems to notice because he keeps pouring himself out onto the world, but he doesn’t always know how to let people in, and I just hated to think about him going through something like that without me even noticing. If there was nothing scary about it, then why did he wait so long to tell me? To tell anyone?”

“You’re right,” Rebecca says. “I think something about it scared him, even if he only let us in on the good parts. But I don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of. He seems to think it’s real, whatever it is.”

“I’m sure it is,” Beard says.

She turns to look at him then, to make sure he’s not fucking with her. “You seemed so worried he was making it up.”

“I was.”

“And now?” 

“I wish I was there to guide him through it. I wish he was here with us.”

“He’s not alone.”

“I know. He’s got Henry and his mom, and he’s always been good at making new friends. Maybe he’ll even start talking to some of the old ones. He always liked his neighbors.”

Rebecca shakes her head at that. “That isn’t what I meant. He has us.”

“Not like before.”

“More like before than I used to think,” Rebecca says. “Or maybe nothing like before. Maybe that can be a good thing. I think that’s what they mean.”

“What?”

“The visions. The triangles. They’re about you and me. And him. The three of us. I think that’s why he’s still seeing them.”

“Like an omen?” Beard asks.

“Nothing that dramatic. A sign. You know how Ted feels about signs.”

“He’s been known to be a fan. Except for the M. Night Shyamalan movie. I think he was pretty lukewarm on that one.”

“I’m in love with him,” Rebecca blurts out then, and she’s looking at Eli again now, mostly so she doesn’t have to face Beard as she says it.

“Huh,” is all Beard says in response. She waits a little while, but he doesn’t ask any follow-up questions.

“And with you, I think. That part’s new, and honestly very confusing. Not that you’re a confusing person to love. It’s just that I’ve never loved more than one person at once before. I think I was resentful about having to choose and resentful about not having a choice in the matter, but maybe this whole choosing business is overrated, and I’m not sure how to proceed or what to expect, but I think I need to just be honest, say what needs to be said and hope that you can both handle it.” Somewhere in the middle of her rambling, she does manage to bring herself to lift her head and look at Beard as she says it, but she’s so busy making sure the words get past her lips that she barely even registers the look on his face. 

“Rebecca,” Beard starts, and she can tell now that he must be slightly taken aback by her candour. She doesn’t blame him. It’s a lot to spring on someone. “That’s…”

“Confusing. I know. Sorry.” 

“No,” Beard says, and then gestures for the door to indicate that they should probably continue this conversation away from the sleeping baby. “Not confusing. It’s nice to hear. But I should warn you. I just got divorced, and even before that... I’m a mess.” 

“I know,” she says, following him, closing the door behind her. She can’t help but smile remembering that she was standing in a doorway the last time she said these words. “That’s why we get along.”

“Do you think Ted could really—” Beard starts. 

“Yes,” she says immediately. It all seems so clear now. 

“I think you’re right.” 

“Beard.”

“Yes?”

“A beautiful woman just confessed to being in love with you, and you haven’t said anything back. Makes a girl self-conscious.”

“A beautiful woman also just told me that my best friend’s in love with me. And that she’s in love with him.”

“You love him too, don’t you? I think that’s what attracted me to you in the beginning. The fact that you were the only person who understood what it was like to miss him the way I missed him.”

“So it’s about Ted for you,” he says like it’s a statement, which she finds a tiny bit infuriating. 

“No. It might have started like that but… no. It’s about the both of you. And I think it’s been about the two of us all along for Ted. Which begs the question.”

“What question?” 

“It’s a simple enough equation if everyone cares about everyone…”

“It is,” Beard says, standing still, watching Rebecca as she mirrors him, not quite ready to move yet, both of them waiting for... something. And then Rebecca finally decides to act, picking up her phone to type out I’m with Beard. We miss you. We wish you were here before she has a chance to overthink it. She holds up the phone screen to show Beard before she hits send. 

“Are you sure?” he asks, meeting her gaze. 

As she nods, Rebecca feels certainty rush through her. “I want to be honest with him. And with you. I want us all to stop ignoring what we can see right in front of us. Everything we can see from an ocean away. I want us to stop pretending it’s anything to be afraid of. Now are you going to give me a tour of your flat or what?” 

Beard’s well aware of what she’s asking. She’s seen the hallway, the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom with the crib. Only the guest bedroom remains. He opens the door, leading the way, and she feels a strange thrill pass through her as she passes him in the doorway, her arm brushing up against his shirt sleeve. Like every other room in Beard’s flat, the space is filled with stuff. Floating shelves with sports memorabilia leaned against stacks of books, and framed posters for movies she hasn’t seen lining the walls. She’s kept her own living space neat and tidy ever since she was young, but she wonders if she could fit in here too. If there’s a future for her with framed photos of loved ones on her desk and kids’ drawings on the fridge. She looks at the box of assorted toys for the baby placed unceremoniously on the floor in a corner with a strange longing. There’s a bed too, of course. It’s a little smaller than the one in the master bedroom and has been pushed up against a wall to make room for a desk in the other corner of the room, but it will do just fine.   

“So?” she asks, raising a brow at him. “Are you going to say it?”

“Of course I have feelings for you. I’m not sure how I couldn’t. Of course I have feelings for him. I never really stopped.” He wants to tell her all about that single night he shared with Ted well over two decades ago, and of everything they’ve been to each other since, and he will, in time, but this moment isn’t about the past. So he stays in the moment with her, taking note of her gaze lingering on the bed before it turns back to him and then down at her phone again. 

Rebecca watches the three dots appear on her phone for a few seconds before she gets her reply. I wish I was there too. And you’re going to think I’m crazy, but I feel like I am, in a way. Like I barely miss you at all because you’re right here with me every second of every day. It’s like I can feel you. I wish you could feel it too. 

She feels something stir inside her at the thought of what Ted might do if he was here to feel her, and then Ted writes, Sorry if that came out wrong.

She shows Beard, who nods, and then looks up at her, a question in his eyes. And she isn’t sure what he’s asking, but she knows the answer is an emphatic yes, so much so that she feels a stab of disappointment when he doesn’t just reach out for her and kiss her. Instead, he reaches for his phone and calls Ted. 

“Speaker, please,” Rebecca begs when she sees what he’s doing, just before he presses down to call, and Beard hitches a breath as Rebecca leans in, and puts her arms around him, leaning in just to feel his body against her own.

“Coach?” Ted asks. 

“Yes,” Rebecca confirms for him. “And me.” 

“Just wanted to clear up some things,” Beard begins. “About what you can feel.”

“I just meant that I felt butterflies earlier, fluttering around in my stomach. I’m all nervous. Not sure what I’m nervous about.” And then Rebecca leans into Beard, kissing lightly at his throat, and Beard grunts, and Rebecca hums and Ted lets out something that might be a shock or a thrill or a nervous yelp, it’s hard to tell and Ted’s not even sure himself. 

“I wish you could feel this,” Beard says. “We want to feel it with you.” 

“Sorry that we’re not waiting until you can be here in person,” Rebecca says. It’s more than an invitation—they’re beyond that now.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Ted says. “I bet you look beautiful together.”

“We could try setting up the camera?” Beard asks, not too worried from the way Rebecca’s acting about her having any objections to losing momentum if it would make Ted feel included. If either of them could rip apart time and space to make Ted be here right now they would. 

“No. No, that’s alright,” Ted says, because everything is exactly as alright as he’s felt it would be. But at the same time, it’s so much more than that, so infinitely thrilling that he hardly feels like any of his endless imaginings have prepared him at all. “Just leave the phone on. I want to hear you.” 

Beard nods, even though Ted can’t see him. Ted doesn’t need to see him to hear him loud and clear. All this worry about what it might mean that Ted was seeing something that might hurt him, and it never once occurred to Beard that it was simply this, the thing he’s always felt deep down himself. Beard has no time to feel embarrassment or guilt about that thought because Rebecca is directing him towards the bed, and his throat goes dry as she grabs hold of his belt buckle, determined now, eyes locked on his. He’s acutely aware of the phone in his hand, of Ted on the other end of the line. Somehow he manages to find a calm within himself even though his body is shaking with greedy anticipation, adrenaline and desire. He wants Ted to feel every second of this experience with them. “Don’t worry,” he finally tells Ted. “I’ll make sure she’s loud.”

Rebecca grins at that, desperately pleased that she finally gets to touch, that Beard’s hands are finally on her, that Ted is finally there with them, if only through the phone. It feels that way—finally—like she’s been wanting little else for years and years, even though a few days ago she wouldn’t have been able to say it out loud. 

She manages to grab hold of Beard’s shirt then, pulling it over his head in a single, frantic, inelegant movement, somehow managing to pull off the t-shirt he had on underneath along with it, which is only lovely, because the skin on his belly is exposed now, and his body is warm, and she wants to feel his body close against her own. So she finds the zipper at the back of her dress, beginning to slide out of it, and Beard lets out a deliciously needy noise she didn’t know he had in him, that she hopes to god Ted can hear as well. 

Beard’s clutching the phone as tightly as he possibly can, can’t stop thinking about if Ted were here, wondering what he would look like if he were, wondering what it would feel like to grab hold of his skin, feel the heat of his body, see that perfect blush that creeps across every inch of him when he gets going.

“He’ll hear us better if you let go,” Rebecca tells him, and Beard does let go then. Not of Ted, who’s still with him in every way but one, but of the phone in his hand, allowing her to take it and place it on the nightstand by the bed, and then of every last remaining bit of tension in his body as he’s taken over by a wave of something that feels more like pleasure than pleasure. 

There’s so much he wants to tell her, tell both of them, about everything he’s felt and pushed down leading up to this moment. But this moment isn’t about what came before or even about what comes next, so instead he focuses on helping Rebecca ease entirely out of the dress she just unzipped, watching with his mouth slightly agape as she unhooks her bra. He’s quick to get with the program then himself, making sure he’s out of his jeans before they finally, finally, get on the bed, and she holds onto him, kissing him, so grateful for the taste of his lips. As Beard wonders what Ted’s mouth would feel like on his neck right now, Rebecca imagines what it would look like. Where would Ted’s hands travel now as Rebecca straddles Beard, pushing him down on the bed, and then guiding his hard cock inside her? Would he look anything like Beard does now, staring up at her with pure desire as she arches back to find the right spot? They both let out a moan at the exact same time, and their voices bleed into each other, and they’re both listening too, sensing the way each of their bodies relaxes when they hear Ted on the other end of the line let out a needy sound of his own. And all the while, Beard can’t keep his eyes off Rebecca; she truly is a vision.

“Ted,” Rebecca says, moving back, voice already so heavy, struggling to get out each word. “I need you to touch yourself. Can you do that for me?”

“Yeah, I uh, I’m right there with you,” and he is, they feel him there with them, as Beard thrusts in a way Rebecca hadn’t expected from this position, and she feels her body shaking. She wants to savour this, for all of them, but she’s already so far gone, knows it won’t be long now, as she picks up the pace herself, chasing all the pleasure she’s been too afraid to seek for too long.

When Beard comes inside her, Rebecca shudders out her orgasm along with him, and it feels like this is what it was all leading to, a true culmination, but when he pulls out of her, and moves down her body, muttering something she can hardly make out in her dazed state about how he can’t wait to find out what she tastes like after Ted has been inside her, there’s no doubt that this is only the beginning. 

Ted’s known all along, or at least for a very long time, that they’re connected, and ever since he left, he’s been sensing that line between Beard and Rebecca from an ocean away. Before he started to see things more clearly, the idea of the two of them together might have filled him with a sort of dread, a thought that Rebecca and Beard being together would leave him out in the cold, but he knows it doesn’t work like that. They only love him more by loving each other, and they love him, he knows that too now. And he loves them. 

Beard makes good on his promise, or maybe Rebecca is the one making a bit of a show of it, but either way, she’s loud, a couple of times even, and Ted’s not sure how all of it could happen so quickly, and he’s not sure what took them so long, but he knows there’s no going back now. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

When Ted wakes up, it’s morning in London, just like it’s been most nights as he’s woken up since he left a year ago. Back when he first started waking up as if he was still living six hours in the future as far as the time zones were concerned, he wondered if his body would ever revert back to the way things used to be before he ever left Kansas in the first place, disconnecting his internal clock from the place where everything changed. He knew he’d never forget, but he thought there was a chance that in time, things would change enough for him to rest, even knowing he was away from them. Lately, though, he’s been feeling certain that he’s simply destined to always lie awake when morning comes around in London, even though it’s the middle of the night in Kansas. He’s almost certain that’s the case, but he’s come to accept that that doesn’t have to be so bad. Especially not now, because for the first time in a year, he’s slept the whole night through for a full week, and the sun is peeking through the curtains of Rebecca’s bedroom window, and his face is resting against the nook at the back of her neck, her hair in his face, and Beard’s arm is wrapped tightly around his waist from the back, clutching at Ted in his sleep as if Ted has any reason to want to escape. Ted’s pretty darn sure he could wake up in this exact position for the rest of his life and never tire of it once. 

Beard makes that grunt he does when he’s starting to stir, and Rebecca’s already awake—he can tell from her breathing—so Ted offers a tentative “‘morning,” his voice still gruff with sleep.

“Good morning, darling,” Rebecca says, not moving to face him, probably feeling just as comfy as he’s feeling himself, just as happy to luxuriate in this perfectly lazy morning. 

Behind him, Ted hears Beard let out another grunt. 

“It usually takes him a while to wake up for real,” Ted whispers in her ear. “You gotta wait him out a bit.”

“I know,” she whispers back, not bothering to turn to face him. 

They’ve only been together for three weeks and Ted’s been in London for one of them, but sometimes it feels like they’ve known each other for a lifetime, like they’ve already picked up on every little detail about each other they didn’t already know, from how long it takes Beard to wake up in the morning to Ted’s tendency to state the obvious before he’s had his morning coffee. And yet it feels like they’ve barely had any time together at all; the three weeks pale in comparison to the lifetime still ahead. Every second is a revelation and they have billions of seconds more to go. 

“We should probably get out of bed and get coffee or something at some point, right?” Rebecca asks eventually.

Ted nods. She can’t see him from this position, but he knows she can feel the movement. “Sounds good, yeah.”

She doesn’t move to get out of bed, and neither does he. He honestly doesn’t know how she’s ever managed to get up every morning without fail when she’s got a bed this comfy. 

“Could we give it a minute?” Rebecca finally asks, seemingly close to falling back asleep. 

Ted lets out a chuckle. “Heck, we could give it two.”

Ted feels Beard’s arm around him tighten slightly as Beard finally begins to stir behind him. “Are you getting up?” he asks groggily.

“In a couple of minutes,” Ted replies.

“Make it ten,” Rebecca says.

Ted chuckles again, warmly and adjusts his head, maneuvering under the layer of blonde waves until he reaches her neck. “We don’t need to get out of bed at all.” They will, eventually. They’re all leaving for Kansas tomorrow to spend the off-season together and Beard always gets weird about packing, but that can wait for now. 

“I like the sound of that,” Beard murmurs, releasing his firm grasp around Ted’s stomach so that his hand can travel further down, and Ted lets out a slightly undignified noise that is half-muffled as he kisses Rebecca's neck, and she laughs, joyously, like she really means it, like she’s never been this delighted in her life, and Ted can’t help but smile himself, his own hands traveling to find purchase. He can’t wait for a lifetime of this feeling, of these kisses, these moans—a lifetime of feeling everything his body and his heart have been craving for too long and can’t seem to ever get enough of. Rebecca moves to face him, and Beard does that thing with his wrist that he knows Ted likes and it doesn’t take long before he’s almost desperate for it, but he tries not to hurry things. They have all the time in the world. 

Ted still sees them sometimes. The lines dance around him in kaleidoscopic patterns all night, so many interwoven symbols appearing at once that he can hardly make them out, all of them spinning around, spelling out their cryptic messages for him in the only language they seem to know, symbol after symbol merging into something he can’t always quite make out. But he doesn’t need to interpret the signs anymore.

He already has everything he dreamed of.