Work Text:
this year i will fall
with no worries at all
- kelly clarkson, “underneath the tree”
-
David says, with his most earnest eyebrows staring at her from the screen of her phone, “We all know you miss him.”
Twyla says, with the clatter of silverware in the background, “I was happy to do it, Alexis. You can change the date on the return ticket, if you want.”
Her mother says, voice simultaneously distant and loud, “We’re invested in your eudaemonia, Alexis!”
Stevie says, teasing across text, don’t worry, I’ll take all your Hanukkah presents, and then, for what it’s worth, if you want to go? I think you should go.
Her coworker-turned-friend, Riley, looks at her with wide eyes and says, “This is like a Hallmark movie. You’ve got to go!”
Her father, in an e-mail, writes, We’re so proud of you, honey. Just remember there are things more important than work.
Patrick texts, Ted will pick you up from the airport, and adds, after Alexis sends him an endless string of question marks, I know what it’s like to miss David. Thought I might get how Ted’s feeling.
-
Alexis says a lot of things. She says, What about Hanukkah in L.A.? What about Christmas in David and Patrick’s cute lil’ cottage? What about spending time together as a family; I thought we were into that now?
She snaps at David to mind his own business. She tells Twyla she can’t accept a plane ticket to Ecuador as a gift. She informs Riley that it’s a long story, and busies herself for the rest of the day.
And yet: by the time Patrick’s texts arrive, her bags are already half-packed.
-
The flight to Quito is lengthy. Alexis wants to sleep through it, but she can’t turn her mind off. In the end, she caves and watches three holiday rom-coms on the in-flight entertainment system. Visions of mistletoe and fireworks and snowfall are dancing before her tired eyes by the time the plane lands.
There’s another, shorter flight in a smaller plane, and then Alexis is stepping onto the tarmac in San Cristobal. The sun is blinding in its brightness, and it’s only once she’s fumbled through her purse, found her sunglasses, and slipped them on, that she sees Ted standing several feet away, the smile on his face every bit as brilliant as the sun, a cardboard sign held above his head that reads, Alexis Rose, Publicist Extraordinaire.
She runs toward him. The sign and her bags end up on the tarmac at their feet as she launches herself into his arms. Ted’s hold on her is warm and sturdy and snug, and Alexis wants to blame the cheesy Christmas movies and the jet lag for the way he feels like the exact place she’s been yearning to land, but she can’t. The burning way she missed him in those first few terrible weeks may have cooled to a simmer, but it’s never gone away. The stubble of his beard brushing against her cheek, the way his arms are wrapped around her waist so tightly that they overlap, the smell of him when she tucks her face into his neck – she thinks I love you so fiercely that she nearly blurts it out loud.
Through a mouthful of her hair, Ted says, quietly, “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” she says. She can’t think of a single reason to let go of him, so she doesn’t. “Me too.”
-
They make it all of ten minutes down the road in Ted’s car. Alexis’ fingers have slipped into the hair at the back of Ted’s neck and he has a hand curled around her upper thigh when he pulls haphazardly off the road.
Alexis’ underwear ends up on the car floor; the steering wheel digs against her back when she straddles Ted’s thighs and slips a hand between them to unbutton and unzip his khaki shorts. He breathes, “Lex… ” with his palm against her jaw, his thumb running along the highest point of her cheek.
“I missed you,” she murmurs against his lips, and she wants to say more, but his other hand is between her legs, fingers stroking and circling, and all she can do is gasp right into his mouth.
Her hand feels shaky as she picks up Ted’s wallet from where it rests in the cupholder, and finds a condom in the same place she used to reliably know there’d be one. He groans, “Fuck, baby,” into her neck, just like he used to, and hearing him call her that again sends a thrill through her whole body, right down to the tips of her toes.
The sex is quick, desperate and impatient. Ted’s groan when she sinks onto him is pressed against the hollow of her throat, and she tugs at his hair. Time and distance and Ted’s hands have worked her up enough that Alexis comes when he does, both of them crashing into their orgasms at about the same moment, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to leave ten faint bruises, Alexis whimpering at the pleasure of the pain and gasping, “Yes, please, yes.”
Their lips brush as they catch their breath, and after a beat, Ted grins and says, “We’ve still got it.”
Alexis grins back at him, and then all at once her vision blurs and her throat tightens and she’s crying, sobs she tries to suppress bursting out despite her best efforts, and Ted’s hands are so soft on her shoulders, so tender in her hair. His eyes shine back at her as he murmurs, “I know,” before he curls a hand gently around the nape of her neck, pulling her closer to him, and kisses her tears off her cheeks.
-
At Ted’s small apartment, they heat a frozen pizza in the oven and eat it with mugs of coffee spiked with rum. Ted washes the dishes with a towel slung across his shoulder. Alexis takes it, wordlessly, and dries each dish he hands her.
“Should we talk about all of it?” he asks, when they’re finished.
She winds her arms around his neck and rests her forehead against his. Ted’s hands, against her waist, are still a little damp. She breathes him in, his solidness, his realness, his familiarity.
“Not yet,” she says. “Tell me about your favourite beach. Tell me how good the pina coladas are.”
“Alexis… ” His eyes are so serious. She tilts her chin up and presses a kiss right between them, against his browbone.
Again, she says, “Not yet.”
-
When Ted shucks off his shirt before bed, she picks it up. It’s a well-loved t-shirt, the fabric soft from a hundred washes.
“Can I wear this?” she asks. It feels like both a statement (I missed you, I miss you, I can’t get enough of you) and a question (do we still belong to each other?) wrapped up together in four words that sound strange coming out of her mouth, funnily-pitched and hesitant.
When he smiles at her it’s like sitting in a café, facing each other head-on, her heart pounding in her chest. It’s like a hand extended, a jump taken together. Her fingers curling into the collar of his scrub shirt – mine. The world still moving around them, music playing loudly, Ted’s hand cradling her cheek – ours.
“’Course you can,” he says, so softly it hurts.
-
A few days after she arrives, Ted shows her around his lab. It’s empty, since the Research Station runs with a skeleton staff over the holidays. His feet find their way through corridors on auto-pilot, all his attention on her, his face lit up with his enthusiasm. Every time he says, “Oh, and in here – ” Alexis’ smile stretches just a little bit wider.
He’s in the midst of giving her a detailed history about the Mangrove Finches on the Islands – not even his area of research, but just something he cares about, because Ted has an endless well of kindness inside of him – when he stops short, registering the look on her face.
“Sorry,” he says. “Was it what I said about the rats? I know. Ew, right?”
The playful way he tries to mimic her inflection is enough to make her melt. “Ted,” she says, and shakes her head. “You were meant to be here.”
He moves away from the whiteboard covered in scribbles and numbers that he’d been showing her, crossing the room to take her hand in his, and laces their fingers together. She can feel the callus at the knuckle of his middle finger from all the note-writing he does. “Thank you, Lex,” he says.
She squeezes his hand. “Let’s keep going, babe. I want the whole tour.”
-
In his bedroom, Ted has a single bed, like he’s a college student, not a grown man saving giant tortoises. They sleep squished together and sweaty at night, but Alexis doesn’t care, not even when Ted accidentally elbows her in the mouth in his sleep.
He wakes her from an afternoon catnap with his mouth on her collarbone, her breasts, her belly. Alexis runs her fingers lazily through his hair, pulled into alertness by the oh-so-slow downward trail of his lips.
It had startled her, the first time, just what his sweet mouth could do. Now, the anticipation of it has her hips canting up, want spun so tightly low in her belly that she cries out from the gentlest touch of his tongue. Ted takes his time with her, like every inch of her skin is important to him, sucks a hickey onto her inner thigh as she rolls her hips against his exploring fingers. He makes her writhe and curse and moan, his sheets gripped in her hands. As she’s riding out the final waves of her orgasm, Ted’s mouth still pressed against her, there’s a pounding on the wall above her head, and someone yells, “Turn down the fucking porn, Mullens!”
Alexis giggles so hard she can’t catch her breath. She props herself up on her elbows to meet Ted’s mouth, wet and slick with her, in a kiss, and moans theatrically, “Oh, Dr. Mullens.” He presses a hand over her mouth, but there’s something wolfish in his grin that makes her stomach flutter, and she kisses the center of his palm.
To be courteous toward his neighbour when she returns the favour, she keeps Ted quiet by occupying his mouth with her panties, pulling them out with her teeth when he’s come and she’s stretched out halfway on top of him, both of them spent.
There was a time, in the early days of the first iteration of their relationship, when Ted looked at her like she’d hung the sun, the moon, and each and every one of the stars. A move like that would’ve awed him, would’ve made his hands reverent against her hips, would’ve made Alexis toss her hair and preen. Now, his kiss is eager, teeth catching on her bottom lip, and his touch is greedy, fingers splayed across her skin, but when they pull apart and she bumps her nose against his, there’s no awe in his dark eyes.
Ted touches her like he knows her, and looks at her like he loves her.
There’s nothing better than that.
-
They eat dinner at a sea-to-table restaurant, the endless stretch of the ocean visible from the patio. Ted wears slacks and a button-down shirt, and Alexis wears the nicest dress she packed. He pulls her chair out for her when they sit down, like it’s their very first date and he’s aiming to impress. Once she’s seated, he drops a soft kiss against the crown of her head, and something about the simple intimacy of that gesture makes her chest ache.
They toast with their margaritas. “To you,” Ted says, “being here.”
“To us,” Alexis corrects, shimmying, “being here.”
His eyes hold onto hers, and she feels them both slip into a memory – empty café, table loaded with food they didn’t eat, her face pressed into his shoulder – and out of it again.
“To us,” Ted agrees, and their glasses clink.
He waits until they’ve finished all the guacamole to say, “So.”
Alexis decides to cut right to the chase. “No.”
His brows crease in confusion. “No…?”
“No, there isn’t anyone, back in New York. There hasn’t been anyone. I mean, not seriously. I downloaded a couple apps, went on a few dates. But I haven’t found anything – anyone – like you.”
“Okay,” he says with a slow nod, absorbing her answer.
She tries not to poke too viciously at her food with her fork. “You?”
Ted shrugs. “Yeah, uh, lots of ladies. Many ladies. Lots of early-morning dates on the beach, and in the breeding center. They keep me turtle-y busy.”
Alexis throws her napkin at his face. He catches it, laughing.
“Ted,” she huffs.
He reaches across the table, taking her hand. “No. I haven’t found anyone either. The dating pool here’s pretty small.” His fingers squeeze hers. “And to be honest, I haven’t exactly been looking.”
She’s happy to hear it, but she bites back her smile, making a show of pouting. “That was a terrible joke.”
Ted nods. “Yeah.” He pauses. “But was it sea-ly?”
-
He shows her the turtle he’s most fond of, the two of them stretched out on their stomachs on the beach, the light of the rising sun just barely breaching the night sky. His shoulder is warm, pressed into hers. She’s wearing one of his sweaters.
He hands her a pair of binoculars and points toward the water. The turtle – tortoise, Alexis reminds herself – moves unhurriedly. There’s something almost regal, something unbreakable, about her slow stride. Alexis finds herself charmed by it, smiling with the binoculars in front of her eyes, her elbows pressed into the sand.
When Ted speaks, he sounds sheepish, but there’s something very sexy about the surety of his fingers as they brush her hair back behind her ear. He says, “I call her Alexis.”
The binoculars drop into the sand as she turns to look at him. “I thought those weird flies were called Alexis?” she asks, in a whisper, hesitant to break the magic of these last moments before night trades places with day.
Ted shrugs. He’s so beautiful like this, mussed-up hair, wrinkled sweater, the blue-grey light of dawn on his face. He tells her, as if it could ever be so simple: “I missed you all over again.”
-
On Christmas Eve, they drink two bottles of wine, and Alexis presses Ted back into his tiny mattress, her hair falling in curtains on either side of their faces. He gathers her hair in his hands, wraps it gently around one fist, tugs just enough to create a breath of space between their mouths.
“I don’t – Lex, I don’t think I give a fuck anymore,” he says, the words coming out in a rush, like he’s been holding them in for a long time.
She frowns slightly, trying to find her bearings in the moment, to place what he’s just said. “What? You don’t – about what?”
Ted releases her hair and starts to sit up beneath her, so Alexis sits up, too. She can sense the change in the mood they’re sharing, so she shifts her position, no longer straddling his thighs on her knees, but twining her legs around him instead. Ted’s hands slide under her shirt and press against her bare back.
“I’ve been… trying to wait for you to be ready to talk about it, but if I don’t say this, babe, I think I’ll go crazy.” A half-smile quirks on his lips. “I’ll talk, you listen?” he offers.
Alexis draws in a deep breath and releases it slowly. She nods. “Okay.”
He takes a breath in, too, steeling himself. She traces his bottom lip with her fingertips and she just – she loves him so much.
“I don’t care that it’s hard. I’ll do it. I know it’s not easy to be in a long-distance relationship, especially one with this much distance, and especially for another two and a half years. I know that, but Lex – I’ll do it. For you, for this, I’ll do all the hard things. I think we wanted to be… strong, for each other, and to make a mature decision. A realistic one. A logical one.” He swallows. “But what’s… the point of that, when all it means is missing each other? I don’t want to lose you; I hated losing you. I love you, Alexis. I…” His hands settle on her waist. “I want to be illogical with you.”
Her chin quivers. “You? Mr. Dr. Science?”
“I love you,” he repeats.
Alexis cups his face in her hands. “I love you, too, Ted.”
“Still?” he double-checks, such delicate hope in his eyes.
“Always,” she says with a helpless little shrug. “I’ll do the hard things with you.”
His smile could power his cramped apartment and then some – probably the whole building. “Alexis – ”
She cuts him off with his kiss, pressing her body as close to his as she possibly can. “Just promise me you’ll come back at the end of this contract.”
“I promise, sweetheart,” he says, and Alexis kisses his smile a thousand times.
-
She jolts out of sleep very early, when the numbers on Ted’s alarm clock read 05:59. Between her wine-deep sleep and the lingering effects of the time change, she’s wide awake.
Ted’s body is tucked firmly against hers, his arm folded across her abdomen, his knees crowded behind her own, his breath whispering through her hair. She rubs his forearm lightly, traces hearts and stars and love you on his skin.
When she turns onto her back, her movement causes his grip to loosen slightly. Her eyes travel over his face lazily, taking advantage of his slumber to take him in, drink him up and store him away. He has a bug bite on his temple. His beard needs to be trimmed. His mouth is the colour of malbec. She feels so much for him she could burst.
Gingerly, she removes his arm from around her and slips out of bed. As quietly as she can, she rifles through her suitcase and pulls out a wrinkled dress: light blue with a white pattern, flowy sleeves, flirty hemline. It’s the dress she was wearing when she told Ted she’d come here with him, that she wanted to do things for him, too. She pulls Ted’s t-shirt off and the dress on, and because the mornings are rudely cold considering they’re on an island, she also steals a discarded pair of Ted’s sweatpants and pulls them on beneath it. It’s not a runway-worthy outfit, but there’s something nostalgic about the buzzing in her blood, and she’s comfortable.
She takes Ted’s keychain off the kitchen table, and tiptoes out of the apartment.
-
She returns an hour later, her hands and bare shoulders chilled. Ted’s sitting at the table in jeans, a sweater, and a Santa hat, a cup of coffee in his hands and another sitting next to him. There’s a worried little wrinkle between his brows when she walks through the door, and he gets to his feet right away.
“Hey,” he says. “I was worried; where did you – ”
Alexis gathers his warm hands in her cold ones and kisses him. “Come with me,” she says.
“Where?” He rubs her hands to warm them.
“Ted,” she says, drawing him toward the door. “Come with me.”
He still looks hesitant, but he does. “You’re cold,” he points out as they step outside. He puts the Santa hat on her head, tries to tug it down over her ears.
It’s got to be the most ridiculous outfit Alexis has ever worn, but the only thing that concerns her is Ted’s hand in her own, their feet treading the same path toward the water.
-
They take off their shoes when they reach the sand. Alexis’ heart vaults up into her throat and gallops there.
Ted stops walking, inhaling sharply, when he sees what she’s done. Her grip on his hand tightens until it must be painful.
“Alexis,” he says, his voice pulled taut, as they look at the shells she’s organized across the sand to spell MERRY ME.
She turns to face him, and holds his hand in both of her own. “I don’t, um… have a ring? But I thought – if you say yes, I mean, I thought we could maybe find something at that cute little market. And we can put the shells back! Or at least spread them out more… naturally. If they’re going to interfere with tortoise Alexis’ life.” She bites her lip. “But anyway, it’s – what you said last night about the hard stuff, I’ll do that with you, too. And the good stuff. All the stuff. The forever stuff.” She lifts his hand, presses it to her heart. “So, will you… marry me?”
“Yes,” Ted says, so fast that it surprises her. “Yes, baby, of course I will, I – ” He looks at the words she’s spelled out, and then reaches down and picks up the shell at the end of the bottom horizontal line on an E. Instead of straightening, he gets down on one knee, a mirror of a pose he took in front of her years ago, when she was impossibly far from ready. It strikes her, as she reaches for him, meaning to pull him back to his feet, that she’s somewhere past ready now. She’s in this, in them, even when she was trying not to be.
Ted looks at her solemnly, shell cradled in the palm of his hand, and tells her, “It’s been shell without you.”
“Ted,” she says, or tries to say. Her voice is wet with unshed tears, rough with emotion. She drops to her knees in front of him, a small cloud of sand bursting up around her, and kisses him so hard that he nearly falls over.
(She takes the shell back to his apartment. Ted writes the date on it in sharpie; she draws a heart. It gets tucked into her suitcase, carried back to New York, and placed on her nightstand.)
-
It’s not warm enough to go swimming.
Clothes and a Santa hat shed on the beach, they do it anyway, teeth chattering into their kisses in a way that makes them laugh.
-
Alexis FaceTimes her family later in the day, her hair still wet from their swim and subsequent shower, no makeup on her face, wearing one of Ted’s hoodies and bundled under a blanket. There are knowing smiles on all their faces, as they pass David’s phone around, that she outwardly ignores but privately tucks into her heart. She notices the fact that Stevie’s smirk appears to be fighting a battle against watery eyes, and that her dad is grinning his most ridiculous grin, even bigger than the one he wore that time he found his missing button.
Ted pokes his head into the frame and says an easy round of hellos and Merry Christmases, his hand finding hers out of the camera’s sight, his thumb stroking over her wristbone, absentmindedly affectionate. Everyone smiles at him just like they’re smiling at her, and her mom even remembers his name.
-
She has a slew of New Year’s Eve commitments for her clients and for Interflix, so they say goodbye at the airport on the twenty-ninth. Alexis is wearing a ring with a turquoise stone on her left hand, tucked innocuously amidst all her silver stacking rings. There’s a seashell in her suitcase, wrapped in a folded shirt with the utmost care. She removes Ted’s sunglasses so she can look right into his eyes when she says, “So. This is the hard stuff.”
He nods, running his hands down her arms. “I’ll see you in April. I’ll be there before you know it.”
She takes a steadying breath. “Take good care of tortoise Alexis. And the finches. And you.”
“You too, babe. Have safe flights. And call me when you land.”
Alexis nods several times, quickly, and curls her fingers around a fistful of his shirt. “I’m really, really happy I came here,” she says, just in case the forlorn look on her face is trying to tell him any differently. “And I love you.”
He tucks a knuckle beneath her chin to draw her into a kiss. He tastes like coffee and toothpaste and her vanilla chai lip balm – morning tastes, promising tastes. He says, “I love you, Lex,” and that’s a promise, too.
-
Alexis has watched hundreds of countries blur out of focus and drift beneath cloud cover out of airplane windows. She’s leaned back in her seat with a sense of relief. She’s watched the lights of cities and the yellow-green of fields fade away with a pang in her chest. But she’s never felt like this before: like she wants, fervently, to go back, but that she wants to even more strongly to find out what comes next, what’s waiting for her, what the future holds.
The forever stuff.