Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationship:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Collections:
Trick or Treat Exchange 2021
Stats:
Published:
2021-10-31
Words:
1,617
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
24
Kudos:
159
Bookmarks:
12
Hits:
1,299

Blame Game

Summary:

Is this what has had him so talkative, so attentive, so all things to all people? Ted can't be blaming himself for this.

Notes:

Thanks to my beta, G!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

As she rounds the bend, the headlamps on Rebecca's car illuminate a figure leaning against the wall, so close to the corner that she almost clips them. She lets out a startled, "Holy shit!" and she swerves to a stop, panting. "Who—? And what the hell—?"

Before she can catch her breath to even look at who and what the hell, the figure runs up to the passenger side window. "Rebecca! Oh my gosh, are you okay?"

Rebecca frowns. Ted? What is he doing back at the club? Didn't he go home hours ago? Of course, so did she, but she'd forgotten her laptop on her desk and—

"Rebecca?" Ted asks again, jogging around to the drivers' side of the car. "I'm so sorry, did I scare you? I probably popped up at you like the scarecrow at the haunted hayride."

Her heart still beating out of her chest, she presses the lever to lower the window. "You scared the shit out of me, Ted, to be perfectly honest. Why are you here so—?"

She doesn't get a chance to finish. "Am I glad to hear that, boss. I wouldn't want to be responsible for knocking metaphorical haybales off your tractor trailer, like I did literally when sweet Teri and I rode that aforementioned haunted hayride." He says it with a light chuckle, but she sees the tightness around his eyes.

"Ted."

He cuts his eyes away from her searching ones and opens the door to slide in. "Why are you back here?" he asks, turning the question she's been trying to ask back at him. "Did you forget something?"

Her mouth opens and closes a couple of times, as it often does during one of his preemptive verbal assaults. "As a matter of fact, yes. My laptop." She sets her jaw. "But have you even been ho—?"

"Woo, I hate when I do that. Means I can't chat with Henry when he gets home from school, or before school either—well, I can on my phone and all, but sometimes you just want the bigger screen, am I right?"

She closes the window and shuts off the engine. "Ted."

"And I bet you need to be able to check on the latest news and maybe the stock market—you're probably into that, right? Not the kind of gal that would leave everything up to a financial advisor, no ma'am. I—"

"Ted." This time she lays her palm over the top of his. It's trembling a little so she presses down, firmly.

He looks down at where her hand rests on his for a long beat. Then he swallows.

"Rebecca," he says.

"Have you been home?" She keeps her voice soft.

His eyes don't raise from where their hands are touching. "I was just on my way."

"Ted, it's past midnight."

"Yeah." There's a long pause. "Easier to go to sleep then if I'm all tuckered out."

She thinks about this for a moment. Ted had been a whirlwind the last few weeks, ever since training for the new season had begun. Somehow he'd found time to chat with her several times a day, attend training, meet with his staff both early and late, huddle up with almost every player on the team on a semi-weekly basis. Every time she caught him somewhere in the complex, he was talking with someone, never alone. Ted had been a dust-devil of energy when she'd first met him, but he was approaching maelstrom levels now.

She asks him outright. "Are you trying to tire yourself out?"

He lets out a huff. A laugh, frustration, she's not sure. "On purpose? No. At least I don't think so. It's just—"

She doesn't try to finish the sentence for him. She waits, content to give him the space he needs.

"It's just—after my dad, I promised myself I never would again..." He finally finishes after several long moments, "I missed it."

She blinks. "Missed what?"

"With Nate. I missed it. I mean, Beard saw it, other people saw it, but I missed it. Me." His head begins to slowly shake back and forth. "He was a pot boiling over, like Kansas City chili at the county fair, about to spew pulled pork all over the judges, and I missed it, Rebecca." His eyes are wet now and his voice breaks with emotion. "I missed it."

Is this what has had him so talkative, so attentive, so all things to all people? Ted can't be blaming himself for this— it was Nate's choice to blow up, to leave the club, fueled by a bit of Rupert's venom in his ear. But as she studies his face, she knows. He's taken the whole weight of it upon himself.

"I missed it, too," she tells him quietly, squeezing his hand.

His eyes cut to hers. "No, Rebecca, you—"

"Yes, I did," she says, cutting him off before he can continue to castigate himself, "and I don't mean with Nate, though I certainly dropped the ball there as well—" Great, now she's the one running her mouth. "But yes, I missed it. With Rupert."

His eyebrows draw down, but he doesn't interrupt.

"It was all there, the late nights, the female fans, the attention he liked just a little too much. It was so obvious to everyone else but me." She swallows. She's mostly over the hurt and pain now, but the memory still has the power to knock her sideways when she least expects it. "But I was too wrapped up in my own insecurities, my own issues, to really notice."

A small puff of air escapes his nose, like he knows what she's getting at, and he's not going to argue with her.

"You remember what I texted you, when that article came out?"

"Yes, ma'am." His voice is quiet, but it's steady.

"And what was that?"

The corner of his mouth turns up. "Fuck the haters."

She likes that he quotes her back directly, instead of using the euphemisms he so often falls back on. The words sound good in his mouth. Intimate, almost.

The corner of her mouth crinkling up to mirror his, she says, "I've got another message for you. Fuck that traitor."

Ted rears back a little in shock, his eyes going wide, and his hand slips out of hers. "Now, Rebecca, no. He got a great offer and he took it, just because Rupert—"

"No," she tells him firmly. "It has fuck all to do with Rupert. Keeley got a great offer, and she had the balls to talk to me about it first." She knows Nate never said a word to Ted, not to any of them, just left in the middle of the game celebration on the field. Rupert had even sent one of his lackeys to clean out Nate's desk. She fishes Ted's hands back out of his lap, holding both of them this time. "Don't you dare blame yourself for anything Nathan Shelley has ever said or done. He's made his bed with Rupert; let him lie in it."

He's silent again, seeming to take that in.

"And don't think I forgot that he called me a 'shrew.'"

"That did always strike me the wrong way." He gives her the barest of watery smiles, and squeezes her hands back. They're warm and no longer trembling. "You always know how to steady me, boss. You sure you're in the right field?"

"Instead of filthy rich club owner? I'm not looking for a career change at the moment, thanks." But something about 'boss' feels wrong, here in the car in the middle of the night, just the two of them. She pulls him toward her, to wrap her arms around him in a hug. "Boss is for the club," she tells him softly, his hair tickling her cheek. "We're more than that to each other now, I'd hope."

"Yes, Rebecca, we are," he answers into her hair, and suddenly this hug feels like more than the ones they'd shared before, despite the armrest digging into her waist.

She pulls back a little to look into his eyes, trying to gauge the emotion she sees there, here in the dim light. His face is only inches from hers, his gaze boring directly into hers. She finds herself holding her breath, waiting to see what will come next.

He blinks rapidly a few times, breaking the spell, and pulls back. But damn it, she doesn't want the spell to break, doesn't want him to move away from her again. They've had enough of this circling around each other like a maypole, being each other's island in the storm, each other's shoulder to cry on—or whatever aphorism you like (god, Ted is really rubbing off on her). So she pulls him back, tilting her head to capture his lips in a firm kiss. A real leaving-it-all-on-the-table kiss.

He's still for a moment, and she's sure for nearly half of that moment that she's fucked it all up. She lifts away. "Ted, I'm—"

He pulls her back this time, hard enough for the armrest to knock the wind out of her with an oof, but she doesn't let him apologise or escape. She flips the armrest up and shifts toward him, the urgency of her need to kiss him silly overriding everything else. And then she's lost in the sensation of him, of everything she can touch and grasp.

Which is not enough, not nearly. "Can I," she asks between kisses, "take you home?"

"What about," he replies between a few more, "your laptop?"

She shifts back into her seat, restarting the engine. "Doubt I'll have time to look anyway."

Notes:

Thanks to Tumblr tags by queenrikki for the "shrew" exchange.