Work Text:
Ted, what the fuck are you doing????
Ted peers at his phone, rubbing sleep from his eyes and reads the message again.
He scrolls down and sees he has twelve more texts and three missed calls all from Keeley Jones. He turns off his nighttime notifications with a few exceptions for emergency contacts, so it’s not surprising he slept through the messages.
He scratches at the stubble along his cheek and checks his clock. It’s seven o’clock here in Kansas, so it must be . . . early afternoon in London. He thinks through the last day, but he can’t remember anything interesting enough to have Keeley on the case.
Henry came over to his extended-stay hotel, they went to an American football game, got a late dinner in downtown Wichita, and watched a movie before bed.
They did make it on the Jumbotron for the Lasso-off, the team’s half-time dance contest, but his moves weren’t especially embarrassing. At least not in his opinion. Unless one of the moves was actually an insult to the English in which case, oh jeeze, he needs to get on this quick.
The call barely connects before Keeley’s voice echoes in his ear.
“Oi! Ted!”
“Keeley, I am so sorry for whatever I did to offend the great people of the United Kingdom. I am ready to make a statement and an apology tour as soon as you tell me which dance move I need to retire immediately.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I need you to log out of the AFC Richmond Instagram account. Like, now.”
That stops Ted in his tracks.
Does he even have access to that? He remembers a post-it note of accounts and passwords from Beard on their first day with Richmond.
There was an account run by the previous manager, but Keeley had taken it over long ago, converting it to the official team account. She had also made Ted a personal Instagram for his own use and brand development, but he never posted publicly.
He puts her on speaker phone and opens the Instagram app. She’s right. He’s logged into the team account with all 25 million followers. Well, shoot.
There are about a dozen stories posted from last night. All of Ted and Henry’s day together. There’s puns (“having a cow” at dinner with an image of Henry holding up a beef rib and screaming his head off), Ted and Henry singing at a dueling piano bar, the two brushing their teeth together in the bathroom mirror.
“No offense, but I think this may delay the Tom Ford deal you asked me about.”
“Yeah. I get that.”
“It’s just, you know, dads aren’t quite their brand. Or our brand. I mean we’re not anti-dorky dad, but you know with the whole comeback narrative during the season hiatus . . .”
“No I get it. You’ve put a lot of work into rebranding this team and I just undermined that.”
She sighs, but it’s fond.
“Sorry, Ted. It’s not like what you posted was bad, it’s rather sweet actually. It’s just a little different from the posts I had scheduled.”
Ted nodded. It wasn’t the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to him, but he felt bad for making Keeley’s job harder than it needed to be.
“No, I’m sorry Keeley. I swear, it won’t happen again.”
****
“Can you believe what Ted did last night? I’ve never seen someone so bad at social media.”
Rebecca has no idea what Keeley is talking about when she walks into her office. She flops onto the couch, feet splayed on the coffee table, clearly exhausted by whatever Ted has done from 4,438 miles away.
“So many puns. Which, don't get me wrong, I love word play more than most people. But I don’t think it’s right for the team right now.”
Rebecca shuts her laptop.
“You’re right about puns not being part of the team plan, but what’s this about Ted? What did he do, exactly?”
Ted hasn’t posted anything in at least 24 hours. Not that Rebecca is keeping track.
“Oh he managed to switch to the team account on Instagram and posted about his entire evening out with Henry. It was quite sweet, actually. The ones that made sense,” but then she pulled a face.”He’s like, really, really bad at social media.”
Oof. Well that isn’t great, but Rebecca doesn’t think there’s anything particularly terrible about Ted’s social media use normally.
“But everything seems under control? No big PR actions needed.”
“It’s fine. I had him log out and wrote a post about Coach Lasso’s surprise social media takeover from America.”
Rebecca nods. Okay, so it was all sorted. Keeley has things totally under control.
But she reaches for her phone anyway. She opens Instagram, taps through the AFC Richmond stories, and snorts at the image of Henry with the rib as big as his head.
“Are people at least being kind?” Rebecca hopes Ted logged out without seeing any messages about Henry. Not that she could see any reason for it, but people were shitheads on the internet.
“Well, wanker is still the most common response. But many of them are wanker with a little heart at the end, so I think it’s fine. We actually got a lot of responses, proper engagement and all that,” she looks up at the ceiling, considering it for a moment before rolling her head to look back at Rebecca.
“If we weren’t trying to present the team as a badass phoenix rising from the ashes, I’d say a Ted takeover isn’t a bad idea. He just needs some supervision. Maybe a phone with a better camera.”
Rebecca is only half listening as she taps to the next story.
“Aw, they went to dueling piano night. That must have been fun for Henry.”
She’s smiling at her phone when Keeley asks, “Dueling piano night?”
“Yeah, you know at Jim Bob’s Bar.”
Keeley is looking at her blankly.
“Fine. I know it’s not really Jim Bob’s bar. It’s probably not even a bar if Henry’s there. But I can’t remember the real name off the top of my head.”
She’d looked it up once, after Ted first posted about the dueling pianos. For some reason she started calling it Jim Bob’s. Ted didn’t seem bothered and had even started calling it that himself.
When she looks up again, Keeley is staring at her, eyes narrowed.
“What are you talking about?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you know so much about some bar in Kansas?”
That gives Rebecca pause. She isn’t sure what Keeley means by the line of questioning.
“It’s not some totally random bar. Ted posts about it whenever he goes for dueling pianos.”
If he gets to the bar early or she has a particularly late evening, Rebecca catches the story before going to bed. When she does, she always asks him to put in $5 for Wannabee by the Spice Girls. She owes him a small fortune by now, but it’s worth it to see the bar explode with cheers and jeers.
Some nights she misses the story, but he puts money in anyways and she wakes up to a shaky video of, Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want.
Rebecca thinks this is a good enough explanation, but Keeley is still staring at her.
“I’ve literally no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Keeley, you know social media is not my thing. All I know is that sometimes Ted posts about this bar on his tiny friends list thing,” she waves her hand around, trying her best to describe it. “The one with the green ring around it.”
Keeley leaps to her feet, eyes wide.
“Am I not on Ted’s Close Friends list??”
Before Rebecca can say a word, Keeley is halfway out the door, texting furiously.
“Roy, better not be on there, if I’m not on there. Ted knows how I feel about being left out!” she shouts over her shoulder. “Sorry Rebecca, I need to do some investigating, asap.”
Oof. She may have just created a problem. It’s probably best to give Ted a heads up before Keeley gets through interrogating Roy.
She drafts a text once, twice, then deletes it and presses call instead.
“Hey Boss, let me guess. Keeley got a hold of you?”
It’s been a while since they’ve chatted, what with the time difference. It’s bizarre how familiar his American accent has become.
“She just left my office, yes.”
There’s a loud crack in the background and a metal clang.
“Where are you?”
“Oh, just the batting cages with Henry,” he says, cheering loudly. “Hey, do you guys have a sport called baseball that has nothing to do with American baseball? You know, like football and football?”
She chuckles, “I don’t believe we do. However there is always cricket.”
He hums, considering it.
“Now Ted, I think there’s something you should know.”
“Lay it on me Boss. I know I caused a headache this morning, what’s the damage? What do you need me to do? I am at your disposal or I’ll lay really, really low as long as you need me to.”
“It’s not that Ted. It’s Keeley.”
“Keeley?”
“Yes, she’s on a bit of a mission at the moment. It seems you left her off your Close Friends list? I think that’s right. On Instagram?”
“Huh. How did that come up?”
“I was telling her about Jim Bob’s. Apparently she had never heard of it and realized you had a whole social media life she was unaware of.”
“Right . . .”
“So do what you will with that.”
“You haven’t talked to anyone else about this yet, have you?”
Rebecca is confused by this new direction.
“No. Why? Ted, is something wrong?”
It takes a long moment for Ted to respond.
“What can I say, I’m just really bad at this social media stuff.”
It's a non-response and an overly folksy one at that. But Rebecca can’t be fooled by the aw shucks routine—not anymore. She tries again.
“Ted. Who is on your close friends list?”
“Uh. Not a lot of people.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“What can I say?” He huffs, a little frustrated. She would feel bad for prying, but she can't help herself. “The list of people I want to share silly life things with is small.”
“How small?” she wonders.
“Very small.”
The line goes silent and Rebecca swears she lost him. But then she hears him take a deep breath.
“It’s you. You’re the list.”
Rebecca feels flush. That’s not where she was expecting this conversation to go.
“I know that might be a lot. You don’t have to say anything. I just, that’s the honest truth and I’d like to get ahead of it before Keeley harangues the entire team.”
It’s a lot to take in, but it makes sense. Sometimes when she’s watching his posts, she wonders about his audience. Who else cares about his biscuit recipe improvements or Broadway Sundays (a recent development that’s turned into a shared movie night.)
“Rebecca?”
She realizes she’s been quiet for a while. The moment feels tenuous and she worries about saying the wrong thing, sending him running faster than Keeley during a social media snafu.
Finally she settles on, “You know, you’re welcome to text me silly life things. It wouldn’t be a bother.”
She brushes invisible crumbs from her desk, listening carefully to his breathing on the other end of the line.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Maybe I can send some, too?”
Rebecca can hear his smile from across the Atlantic.
“Well, alright then.”
****
That night, Ted’s phone pings and he rolls over to see a text message from Rebecca. It’s a picture of the sun rising over her garden wall.
Something silly to start the day.
But it doesn’t feel silly. Not at all.