I would love Rebecca & Ted kissing in the rain! Or her buying flowers for Ted.
A bit of both! Absolute cheese. I'm so sorry. I hope you like it, regardless!
Rain pelts the window and the skies are dark and it’s fitting, he thinks, for his mood. He’s been trying not to think about it—think about her—but he can’t think about anything else.
How perfectly they seemed to fit together, how every smile and every touch of his hand made him so sure this was it, what he needed and wanted and been searching for.
And she’d seemed to feel the same. Seemed to need and want him just as much and he still doesn’t understand what happened. Why, exactly two weeks ago, they were buried under the covers in his bed, laughing, talking about the future like it was theirs and now he’s here, alone on his sofa with a glass of whisky he can’t even drink because his stomach is so knotted, and Rebecca is somewhere, “thinking.”
That’s what she’d told him she needed—time to think, to figure things out, and it’s been four days and she hasn’t said a word and he feels like everything is falling apart. Everything they’d built, worked so hard for, and he doesn’t know what he did or didn’t do and she’d looked so pained when she’d asked for space, like it wasn’t what she wanted but was doing it anyway and he’d had to respect that, but there’s a part of him that thinks he should have tried harder. Should have pushed back. Shouldn’t have looked at her like some kind of kicked puppy and just… agreed.
He knows they need to talk, but every time he reaches for his phone he sees her tear-stained cheeks and hears the cracked tone of her voice, all but begging him to step back, “for a little while,” she’d said, but he doesn’t know how long that will be or what she’s hoping for and he just feels so heavy. So tired.
His apartment is quiet, just the slash of rain, the TV on mute, but his thoughts are so loud he can’t shut them out.
What he should have said. Should have done.
He’s so caught up it takes him a long time to register the hum. Something outside his flat, at first, just white noise. It takes him a minute for the sound to seep in, for it to become strange.
Ted frowns, and sits up. Tries to listen, and after a moment he recognizes the tune—an old Peter Gabriel song—but it doesn’t sound like a radio. Doesn’t sound like a recording, it sounds close by, but muffled; sounds like a woman, singing.
He wonders if Mrs Shipley has a better voice than he gave her credit for, and then the voice gets louder, just a touch clearer—
I reach out from the inside—
Would know it in his sleep, and Ted rockets off the sofa, closes the distance to the window and yanks it open and doesn’t quite believe what he’s seeing, squinting through the rain.
But he blinks and blinks again and she’s still there—Rebecca, in the downpour, singing clearly up at his window and there’s no one else around and no one to see or hear but him and her name is strangled, barely audible.
“What are you doing?” he shouts over the rain, anxiety coursing through him that she’ll get sick out here, bewilderment that she’s there in the first place, and the faint, horrible stirring of hope in his chest.
“I don’t have a boombox!” she shouts back, and no, of course she doesn’t, why would she—
Singing to him from a window.
The scene snaps into his head and he stares at her out the window and he can barely make out her expression through the rain but she’s there and she’s soaked and he’s still standing at the window like an idiot.
He slams it shut, turns and snatched his keys and his coat, runs down the stairs and out of his flat, down the alley and he doesn’t see her at first; she isn’t where she was and his heart crawls into his throat and then he spots her through the downpour a few yards away, her head hung and she’s about to turn, to walk away.
She whirls around, and he jogs the last little distance, until he’s close enough that he can see her shivering, her coat soaked through, a bouquet of limp flowers in her hand. Her hair is plastered to her neck and her makeup is barely holding on and he’s out of his jacket in a moment, wrapping it around her frame. It won’t do any good, he knows, but he has to do something, and Rebecca shudders.
“I’m sorry,” she says, barely audible over the rain. “I’m sorry I pushed you away. I didn’t—it was stupid and selfish I was just—”
His heart pounds so hard in his chest he can feel it.
Ted flinches. It isn’t what he wants, what he wants to hear, but Rebecca reaches out and curls her fingers into his sodden sweater, flowers pressed against his chest. He looks at her, her bright eyes, and asks,
Rebecca shakes her head. “No. Me.”
He frowns, and Rebecca looks almost frantic, letting go to gesture with one hand,
“I fuck things up, Ted. I always have. I’m not—I don’t know what to do with good things and you—” She swallows. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and if I lose you—”
Her voice cracks, and it makes sense, suddenly—the distance she’s put between them. Not because she doesn’t want, but because she wants so much. He thinks of Rupert, the team, their own winding journey and how much they’re on the same page, even now.
“You’re not gonna lose me.”
“You can’t promise me that.”
“Yeah, I can,” he says, stepping closer. “You wanna know how?”
He can tell, even through the rain, that she’s crying.
He smiles, and cups her cheeks in his palms and kisses her. Kisses her like it’s their first. Their last. The only one he’ll ever get. Pours every ounce of love he has for her into the slide of his lips against hers and it’s wet and strange and her skin is so cold and all he wants to do is warm her up, keep her warm forever.
Rebecca melts against him, one hand winding around his back, the other in his hair and she opens her mouth to him and he can feel it, all her devotion, laid at his feet.
When he finally pulls back, they’re both breathless, and Ted rests his forehead against hers, moves his thumb over her cheek.
“I’d rather spend the rest of my life fighting with you than make love to anyone else.”
Rebecca frowns slightly, and Ted bites back a grin.
“Our love is like the wind. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there.”
Rebecca blinks at him, and for a moment says nothing; and then she smiles, and laughs, a bright sound that breaks through the rain and Ted grins and Rebecca slaps his shoulder, but lets him pull her closer, his arms around her waist, lips near hers.
“I’m just a boy, standing in front of a girl—”
“Oh, shut up,” she laughs. “I know you used that line on Roy, too.”
“Guilty,” he says, and she smiles. “Didn’t use this one, though.”
“Oh?” she asks. “Which one is that?”
Brushing his lips against hers, Ted smiles. “I love you. All of you, Rebecca. And that ain’t ever gonna change. So far as long as you want me, you got me. Okay?”
Rebecca softens, a shaky hand coming up to brush a strand of wet hair from his face.
“What’s that from?” she asks, her voice trembling.
“Nothin’,” he promises. “It’s just us.”
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