Chapter Text
Ted reaches for his phone as soon as it starts ringing, smile already tugging at his lips until he realizes it’s not the contact flashing on his phone that he’s expecting to see. Brow furrowed, he considers the unknown number, and then lets it ring through to voicemail.
No doubt some scam caller or something.
Except it rings again, the same number. A prickle of unease unfurls in his belly and he wonders how it’s possible that in the last three hours one of the team has already landed themselves in trouble.
“Hello?”
“Ted?” Even though the number is unfamiliar, the voice saying his name almost hesitantly is most definitely not unfamiliar.
He blinks. “Rebecca?”
“Oh, thank God. Listen, I’ve had a bit of an accident—”
That prickle of unease morphs into a full blown tsunami of panic and he’s on his feet before he’s even registered. “Are you okay? What happened? Are you hurt? What do you need me to do? Oh my God, Rebecca, where are you? Where are you calling from?”
“I’m okay, Ted,” she tells him firmly, and the familiar take-no-shit tone of her voice calms him in a way not much else probably would have. “Take a breath. I’m fine. I promise.”
“Okay,” he says, fighting to stay calm. “I’m breathing.”
“Good. Now, don't panic, but I fell into a canal and—”
He panics again. “You fell into a what now?”
“A canal, Ted,” she says patiently, as though the whole concept isn’t something surreal and completely unexpected for Rebecca Welton. “You know, the waterways the boats travel on.”
“I know what a canal is, Rebecca,” he tells her. “Why’d you fall into one?”
“It’s not like I thought ‘Oh, that looks like a good spot for a swim’, Ted.”
“No, that’s fair. Sorry. You keep going. I’m gonna keep my mouth shut now and start listening.”
“You do that,” she says easily. “Anyway. My bag and my phone are lost somewhere in the bottom of the canal, and I’m currently on a really nice man’s house boat—”
“Who’s boat?” Ted inserts, because really, his anxiety is threatening to carry him away again.
“Uh, I don’t actually know his name,” Rebecca confesses quietly, her voice a little muffled as though she’s cupping her hand around her mouth to keep her words secret.
“Are you safe? Has he hurt you?” Ted demands.
“Ted, calm down,” she says again, and he can hear her rolling her eyes through the phone. “He’s perfectly lovely. He let me use his shower and he’s leant me a dry gown and his phone so I could call you.”
“Oh,” Ted says quietly, taking a slow breath. “That’s good. I’m glad.”
There’s silence then, and he imagines he can hear Rebecca smiling at him, her breath only just audible through the phone.
“I’m so sorry to impose on you,” Rebecca says when the silence lingers almost too long. “I was hoping you’d be able to bring me some dry things to wear.”
“Of course!” Ted says eagerly. “Anything you need.”
“Well, a whole change of clothes really,” she hedges.
“Absolutely.”
“Thanks, Ted. I’ll… I’ll get the man to send you the address, if that’s okay?”
“Sure thing, Boss,” Ted says easily. “I’ll see you in two shakes of a lamb's tail. That means—”
“I know what that means, Ted,” she says, and he can hear the laughter in her voice, almost see the amused exasperation in her eyes and the way she shakes her head ever so slightly. “See you then, Ted.”
“In a while, crocodile.”
There’s another huff and silent eyeroll, and the line goes blank.
It’s only then that Ted realizes he doesn’t know which room is Rebecca’s in the hotel, and even if he did, he doesn’t have a keycard to get in anyway. And Keeley, he realizes with a sinking feeling in his chest, is probably at the North Pole already.
So he’s about to take Rebecca Welton some clean, dry clothes, except he doesn’t have any clean dry clothes that belong to Rebecca Welton handy.
It’s about two seconds after she hangs up from the call to Ted that she realises the flaw in her great plan—asking Ted to bring her dry clothes is all well and good, but the keycard to her hotel room is in the bag at the bottom of the canal, and there’s no way the front desk will just hand a spare key over to Ted without Rebecca there in person to authorise it. Which means there’s no way he can get hold of her clothes.
A funny twist wriggles through her belly at the thought of Ted rifling through her wardrobe and packing a change of underwear for her, cheeks turning slightly pink and heart tripping a little in her chest.
“Oh,” she murmurs, watching as the man sends Ted a text with his address.
“Everything okay?” he asks, raising his eyebrows at her.
“Oh. Yes. Fine,” she smiles, hoping she’s convincing.
Perhaps it’s for the best that Ted doesn’t have a key to her room after all. Maybe he’ll just go out and buy her a few things? But then her traitorous heart trips in her chest again at the thought of what exactly Ted Lasso might purchase for her if he were doing things such as buying her clothes. She swallows, desperately trying to turn her attention back to the man who’s studying her with a hint of concern in his eyes, but then shrugs when she seems to come back to herself.
“I made you a cup of tea,” the man says, nodding behind her.
“Oh, thank you,” Rebecca says appreciatively, because even though she’s washed the awful canal water off her and spent far too long in the warm shower, she still feels chilled to the bone, and the wooden boards underneath her feet seem to be sucking whatever residual warmth she may have clawed back right out of her.
It should feel uncomfortable sitting in the small living room with an unfamiliar man, wearing nothing but his dressing gown, her face devoid of makeup and her hair a damp, tangled mess on top of her head, but her companion is unflappable and pragmatic, and she feels surprisingly safe while she waits for Ted to come and rescue her. She feels, perhaps, a little more anxious about the prospect of exactly what Ted will have interpreted her request to mean, and she hopes against hope that he thought to bring her some shoes—the trainers she’d been wearing are completely waterlogged and likely ruined, just like her coat and the cashmere scarf she was quite partial to.
The tea in her cup isn’t even half drunk before there’s an agitated tapping (more like banging) from where she remembers the small door to the deck being. She’s got no watch (she threw it in the rubbish after the hands ground to a halt following her impromptu swim), but she feels like it can’t have been more than fifteen minutes since she spoke with Ted.
“I think it’s your husband,” he says, a smile of amusement tugging at his lips.
“It’s not like that,” Rebecca feels the need to clarify, lifting the cup to take a fairly large mouthful of the now luke-warm tea.
She sees the way he shrugs carelessly even though he quirks an eyebrow, and seconds later Ted bursts into the small room, as she’s rising carefully up to her feet.
He barrels to a stop barely a step in front of her, brown eyes anxiously surveying her as though he didn’t quite believe her assurances on the phone that she was fine. And then he simply steps forward and wraps her tightly in his arms, pulling her body flush against his and burying his face in the crook of her neck, fingers pressing tightly into her back.
“Becca,” he breathes against her, the word a warm kiss of air against the chilled skin of her neck, and her heart twists in her chest again at the familiarity of the nickname even though she’s never heard him call her that before; no one ever calls her that.
Her arms encircle him tightly, holding his solid warmth against her, letting it seep into her; for the first time since the world turned upside down, cold wet and icy, Rebecca feels warm again.
He pulls back eventually, not letting her go, but enough that he can look down at her, studying her face intently (when she’s barefoot she’s a hair shorter than he is, and she feels strangely vulnerable looking up at him). “You okay?” he murmurs, fingers still firmly holding her through the worn cotton of the borrowed gown.
“I’m fine, Ted,” she tells him. “I’m more annoyed about losing my phone and my bag than I’m injured.”
“Are you injured?” he asks intently.
“A little banged up maybe, possibly a sprained wrist, but nothing serious,” she affirms. “I promise. Now, did you bring me clothes?”
"Oh. Yes. Well, I’m not sure you’d call them clothes cos they’re not really up to your standards, but they are definitely clothes, and they're clean and dry and—”
She knows he waffles when he’s nervous, and that makes her a little nervous about what he’s brought for her, but she raises her eyebrows and he falls silent, recognising the look she’s shooting at him. “Could I have them?”
“Oh. Of course. Here.”
He leans over to pick up the backpack he's dropped on the floor, finally letting go of her, and she feels instantly bereft of his warmth. The backpack he holds out to her is as familiar as he is, and she reaches for it thankfully, only to drop it a second later with a gasp as pain flares through her right wrist.
“Boss?” he asks, grabbing her hand immediately and gently pulling it towards himself. It throbs uncomfortably, the dull pain she’d been aware of earlier now declaring itself loudly after she’d tried to take the relatively light weight of the bag.
“I’m sure it’s just a sprain,” she says, wriggling her fingers and biting back a grimace of pain.
“We should go get that checked,” Ted says, stilling her fingers with his, brow furrowed with concern as he runs his own fingers carefully over the bones and tendons of her wrist. It makes her feel strangely breathless, and her traitorous heart skips yet a few more beats at the gentleness of his exploration.
“It’ll be fine, Ted,” she tells him. “Nothing some paracetamol and ibuprofen won’t fix.”
“I don’t know,” Ted hedges. “If it hurts to move your fingers it could be a fracture.”
“Since when are you a doctor?” she rolls her eyes.
“Sports medicine units were a part of my degree,” he points out. “We’re better off gettin’ this checked. It’s your dominant hand, Rebecca, you don’t wanna mess with that.”
She longs to lift her injured, dominant hand and wipe away the concerned furrow on his brow, but that’s not the type of thing she does for her gaffer, so she smiles and gently tugs her wrist back to herself. “How about I get changed first, and then we can argue about my wrist.”
“Oh. Yeah. Of course,” Ted says. He grabs the backpack from the ground again, passing it to her left hand this time. “Are you gonna be okay, or do you need a hand?”
At the raise of her eyebrows his cheeks turn bright red, even the tips of his ears, and Rebecca can’t help but laugh at him. “I’ve still got one that works,” she says dryly, and then it’s her turn to blush when she realises just how suggestive that sounds.
“Right. Okay. I’m just gonna wait here then while you go off wherever and get yourself sorted. Changed. Dressed. Whatever.”
It’s the unexpected masculine snort of laughter that has both of them jolting back, remembering they’re not on their own, and that they are, in fact, on a stranger’s houseboat. And the stranger is looking at them both with barely concealed amusement on his face.
“Oh. Don’t mind me,” he says in his accented voice, smiling broadly. “I just live here.”
Rebecca rolls her eyes at him. “Is it okay if I use your loo again?”
“Of course,” he says, still looking far too amused. “Take your time.”
Her cheeks still far too warm, Rebecca clutches Ted’s backpack to her stomach and beats a hasty retreat. The small bathroom is poky and still warm from her earlier shower. The mirror is only just starting to defog, but her reflection is still blurred and unclear. She hesitates a brief moment before steeling herself and tugging at the zip to see what it is that Ted’s brought for her.
A stripy Richmond sweatshirt, colours ever so slightly faded, sits in the top of the bag, then a t-shirt with ‘Arthur Bryant’ in faded text. A pair of grey joggers is stuffed under that. Her cheeks flush a little with heat as she pulls out a soft cotton pair of plain black boxers, and a clean pair of sports socks.
No shoes.
No bra.
Fuck she hopes Ted’s joggers fit over her hips.
The robe falls easily from her shoulders and she hangs it carelessly on the hook on the back of the door before grabbing the t-shirt and pulling it on. It takes a few more seconds of contemplation before she shrugs and pulls the boxers on, breathing a sigh of relief that they fit. The joggers go on next, and while her hips fill them out a bit more than she suspects they’re designed for, it’s not too bad.
It’s only when she grabs the sweatshirt that she notices the back of it. The great big LASSO printed across the shoulders.
Oh.
She hesitates, because in some ways it feels even more intimate than putting on his boxers.
His name printed across her back for the world to see feels far more exposed. Makes her feel far more vulnerable than it should. She traces the slightly cracked and faded letters slowly.
It’s not an unwelcome feeling, she acknowledges.
In fact, it’s probably that it’s too welcome. Too close to home. Maybe, just maybe, it aches because it doesn’t mean what it could mean.
It doesn’t mean anything, she tells herself sternly. It’s Ted rescuing her with whatever clothes he had available, and given they’ve only got one out of two nights left in Amsterdam, she doesn’t imagine he had a whole lot of alternative options in the clean clothes department to bring her (Ted, she suspects, doesn’t pack nearly as many clothes as she usually would for two nights away).
With a sigh, she lifts the sweatshirt up and pulls it on.
It smells like him, she thinks, her belly and stomach doing that funny little twist again, and she closes her eyes briefly, burying face against the soft fabric over her clavicles. She studies herself in the mirror for a moment, the image still blurred and unclear, and wonders if she’d recognise herself even if she could see her reflection clearly.
Ted sticks his hands in the pockets of his Richmond jacket and rocks anxiously on his heels in the tiny little living room of the houseboat he’s currently babbling away madly in.
Unlike Ted, Matthijs is a man of relatively few words, and Ted finds the need to fill the silence because silence rarely sits comfortably with him. Particularly when he’s worried about someone and anxiety pricks like needles under his skin.
“She really is okay,” Matthijs interrupts, cutting Ted off mid-sentence. “I saw it all. She didn’t lose consciousness, didn’t choke, came straight back up and was more annoyed about losing her phone and the bike lane apparently not being clearly signed.”
“But it is signed,” Ted says in confusion.
The Dutchman pulls a face in agreement. “I know. But she is fine. I brought her straight in to let her dry off and warm up before she called you. Plenty of people fall in canals every year. She didn’t drown, so she’ll be fine.”
Something eases in Ted’s chest, the needles in his fingers not stinging quite so badly, and he takes a deep, slow breath in.
“Here, I’ll get her wet things for you.”
He watches as Matthijs goes behind the small kitchen island; the background humming of what must be a dryer stops, and several moments later the Dutchman is stuffing her things into a large plastic bag. “Her shoes are up on the deck.”
Ted winces a little; he didn’t pack her shoes, didn’t really think that far ahead in his dash to find something semi-appropriate before racing out of his room. And then that reminds him that he’s trying not to think about the fact that Rebecca is wearing his clothes and the fact that the thought does something to him.
Except, he’s trying hard not to think those thoughts and feel those feelings because it’s Rebecca, and as much as he’s always acknowledged the fact that she’s one attractive woman, he’s tried very hard to remind himself regularly that he’s most definitely not attracted to her.
When she steps back into the small living room, he realizes once again just how terrible he is at lying to himself.
There aren’t many times in his life where Ted has been rendered speechless, but this is definitely one of those times. Her long, shapely legs do something to his gray joggers that makes his throat close over and all the blood rush south. Something primal and slightly primitive that surges into existence because he knows his name is emblazoned across her shoulders as though he’s claiming her as his.
Not that he believes in women belonging to men, but at the base of him, Ted is still a man, and despite his best efforts there are some biological imperatives that just override all common sense.
That baser, primitive part of him also stirs quite interestedly at the thought of her wearing his boxers under those joggers. Or maybe she’s not. He’s not sure which thought is more of a problem.
Mostly though, it’s her face that does something to his solar plexus: pale, eyes wide, devoid of any makeup or the usual armor she wears. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her so clearly before.
“There she is,” he says, an unintentional tenderness creeping into his voice; he wonders if she hears it.
She pauses at his tone, looking up at him almost shyly, cheeks turning slightly pink under his gaze.
“Is it okay?” he asks hopefully.
“Yes, it’s perfect,” she says quietly. “Thank you, Ted.”
He smiles at her, clenching his fingers and stuffing his hands in his pockets to try and stop himself from reaching for her.
“How’s your wrist?”
“It’s fine,” she says.
“Oklahoma.”
She rolls her eyes. “Nothing paracetamol and—”
He frowns. “Rebecca.”
He can see the glint of irritation on her face, but it’s tempered with an exasperated sort of fondness which eases some of the sting that she’d continue to downplay it despite his use of Oklahoma.
“It’s uncomfortable,” she concedes. “But I really don’t think it merits getting checked.”
For a moment he’s tempted to give in to her. But he can see the stiff way she’s holding her arm to her front, and he notices the paleness of her face again, the tension she’s trying so hard to hide around her eyes and lips.
“Humor me,” he says instead. “Please?”
He knows she’s going to say yes, even before the word crosses her lips, because something in her eyes softens; something that makes his heart lurch a little in his chest and his lips curl into a smile. “Okay. But when they tell you it’s a sprain you’re going to owe me.”
“I already owe you,” he tells her gravely, pulling his phone out of his pocket to order an Uber for them.
He carts the large plastic bag of Rebecca’s wet clothing up to the main deck of the boat and locates her sodden shoes propped up against the decking. The alert from his phone sounds to tell him their driver is less than a minute away, so he steps across from the boat onto dry land and dumps her gear on the sidewalk.
Rebecca’s standing in her socked feet on the deck still, talking to Matthijs with a smile on her face.
“Thank you again,” she says, as Ted steps back onto the boat. “Really. I’m very thankful for your assistance.”
“We both are,” Ted agrees, reaching over to shake the man’s hand.
The man grins, accepting Ted’s handshake, before turning back to Rebecca. “I know you said it’s not like that, but it probably should be.”
He’s intrigued and curious to see her cheeks flush even as she presses her lips together. Curiously, her eyes flick over to him before she looks back at Matthijs and raises her eyebrows. Ted’s seen that look fell lesser men before, and finds it interesting that Matthijs doesn’t seem fazed; instead the permanent look of amusement he seems to wear spills into a large smile so that it looks like he’s almost laughing at Rebecca.
“Yes. Well. Thank you again.”
“Keep safe,” Matthijs says as the Uber pulls onto the pavement beside Rebecca’s soggy belongings.
Ted waves at the driver who waves back, and then turns to look at Rebecca.
“How you want to do this, Boss?” he asks, looking pointedly down at her socked feet.
“Oh. Well.” She looks doubtfully over to the Uber, and pulls a face of distaste.
“You have any objections to a bit of princess treatment?” Ted asks.
“Princess treatment?”
“White knighting? Sweeping you off your feet? A ride?” he tells her, trying not to grin.
Rebecca Welton has to be the last person he can imagine who’d be pleased about being scooped up and carried somewhere like a damsel in distress.
“Are you suggesting you carry me?” she asks, and yup, that’s exactly the look of disdainful disgust that he imagined she’d pull at his suggestion.
“Well, the way I see it, you have three options. Socks on, socks off, or an assist.”
She looks doubtfully back up at the car again. “Ted, I don’t think—”
“Right, assist it is,” Ted cuts her off when the Uber driver hits the horn. “Let’s go, Princess.”
Ted tries pretty hard to keep in shape. He’s not overly vain, but he’s very conscious of the fact that he’s surrounded by young men in their prime on a daily basis, and part of him feels the need to at least put in a good effort. Rebecca’s not a particularly small person, but he has a moment of feeling pretty smug about it when he manages to scoop her up and haul her into his arms with only the smallest of grunts escaping.
“Ted!” she shrieks, arms grabbing at him and leg’s flailing. “What are you doing?”
“Sayid is waiting,” Ted manages, trying to sound like he’s not working too hard; it’s worth it when her arms wrap around his neck and she holds him close.
He wobbles for a moment when he has to step from the deck down onto the pavement, thankful for Matthijs’ steadying hand bracing him.
“Thanks!” he calls over his shoulder.
“You’re welcome!” Matthijs calls back. “Avoid bike lanes!”
Rebecca snorts out a laugh. “This is ridiculous, you ridiculous man!” she tells Ted, burying her face in the crook of his neck.
“Well, that’s what you get for falling into a canal. I mean, what were you even thinking, Boss.”
She slaps at him half-heartedly with her left hand. “Clearly I wasn’t. Blame Sassy. She was distracting me.”
Given that Ted knows well how distracting Sassy can be when she tries, he’s not particularly surprised by that revelation.
“Hey, Sayid, get the door will ya?” he yells, relieved when the Uber driver peering irritably out the car window at them seems to understand their dilemma and clambers out of the car to open the door for Ted.
It takes a bit of maneuvering to get Rebecca into the car, and he’s pretty sure his back is going to punish him for it later, but her feet are still clean and dry and there’s a smile on her face (even if it is a little bewildered).
The trip to the local ER isn’t long, and Sayid graciously waits while Ted rushes inside to get a wheelchair (Honestly, I can walk, Ted!) to help Rebecca avoid having to walk outside with her socks.
Inside, it’s absolutely packed to the brim. He parks Rebecca in the corner of the waiting room before taking the chair back and then lining up at the triage desk to register her. It takes forever—she’s got no ID on her or papers—but eventually they accept Ted’s documents and insurance cards as a sort of collateral and put her on the waiting list.
“This is insane,” Rebecca says at one point. “Let’s just go. It’ll be quicker and easier to just wait until we’re home and get my usual doctor to look at it the day after tomorrow.”
Ted’s stomach is growling now, and he feels as exhausted as Rebecca looks. But despite the paracetamol and ibuprofen the triage nurse gave her hours ago, he can see the dark circles under her eyes and the way she cradles her right wrist in her left hand, so he shakes his head and makes them wait.
It’s well after midnight before she’s finally seen; he’s a bit surprised and also a little pleased that she shakes her head when the doctor asks her if he wants Ted to leave the small cubicle she’s being seen in. “No, this way he doesn’t have to badger me for questions afterwards,” she tells him, rolling her eyes at Ted. She even lets him stay when the doctor examines her back after she confesses it hurts a little (he can see a long shallow graze and a purpling bruise already appearing over her ribs, and he tries mighty hard to only focus on the injury and not let his eyes track the smooth curve of her hips and seemingly endless expanse of her skin).
She winces as the doctor prods and pokes at her wrist, twisting it this way and that before ordering an X-ray that is another long, drawn out process. By the time the doctor returns with the news that he doesn’t think it’s broken (but there might be a hairline crack, just have to wait for the official report in the next twenty four hours, and yes, they’ll text that to the phone number provided—except that phone happens to be lying in the bottom of a canal somewhere) but it’s definitely a bad sprain.
They wait even longer for a physio to arrive with a brace and shows them how to strap it on (Ted could have bought one of these at the pharmacy and whacked it on hours ago, he thinks in annoyance), and then are finally discharged after 3am with a small box of stronger painkillers that have made Rebecca’s eyes a little glazed and her words slightly slurry.
“Ready to go?” he asks.
“I was hours ago,” she points out irritably.
He’s thankful she holds off telling him ‘I told you so’ while they wait for the Uber; she’s standing outside on the pavement in a double layer of dreadfully garish bright red hospital socks they gave her when Ted made a remark about having to carry her again.
He’s not surprised when she falls asleep in the back of the Uber, head lolling against the back of the seat, wrist cradled protectively in her lap.