They’ve been getting better, Ted realizes one day while waiting for his coffee at Beanie’s, leaning against one of the walls and looking over the other office workers there, in their little stupid suits and pristine skirts, dragged there by Paul who “just likes the coffee there more.” (“Yeah, whatever you say you noodle.” “Ted, I swear to God, if you don’t shut up—”)
Two months, even one month ago, the latest developments could only appear in his dreams.
And despite how everyone and their dog thinks, he’s happy to have a stable crush–whatever–situationship. He hates that word, had hated since Pete’s little friends introduced him to it when Pete was busy scrapping smoke and grime from their awful disaster of Christmas charity fair cookies. It makes him feel like he’s young again, and like he’s about to start kicking his feet and jumping around the room, and that’s not how he wants to be seen.
Being young is being vulnerable, and Ted Spankoffski is anything but vulnerable.
Maybe that’s what he wants, the still–tender bottom of his heart says. (surprise to half of Hatchetfield — he actually does have one!) He manages to get it to shut up at least until the clock strikes five and he can leave the office, and then he can silently scream in his car.
Actually, it’s not only their relationship that has been getting better. It's Ted and Bill themselves. They finally don’t react like rabid dogs scenting prey while the other is mentioned in a meeting, but actually going on with their day, despite the confused stares from their coworkers. The office is actually peaceful, a battlefield no more, and an interaction between them in the kitchen doesn’t warrant Paul dragging Bill away from a fist fight, and Charlotte disarming a microwave from Ted.
All in all, if Ted’s words were important, he’d say he’s even glad about this. That he doesn’t have to fight against his better consciousness all day every day, to break the cabinets in the break room — “Dude, I swear it was an accident this time, I swear!” — and he can still finish half of the reports he was supposed to do. Bill doesn’t chastise him for leaving the toilet seat up anymore — at least, not as often as he used to, just looks at him while walking back from the toilet and sighs. Charlotte looks at him, at Ted, at them both with eyes wide and surprised for the first few times she sees them talk without the passive aggression underneath their tones. But she has moved on from their brief romance stint quicker than Ted thought she would. Probably back to her marriage counselor or something.
It’s good. Nice. Stuff that doesn’t usually happen to Ted, so he keeps quiet about it and enjoys the peace between him and Bill, for as long as it lasts. He hopes he won’t get attached enough to claw and bite when Bill starts pulling away.
(Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows he already has.)
The autumn passes to give room to early winter, and before Ted notices it, it’s cold enough for him to have to scrape the windows of his car before starting it. He switches his jackets to actual winter coats, and huddles right into the building after smoke breaks instead of spending a few more moments away from his desk.
It also means a whole lot more visits to the Beanie’s and Starbucks, because while the management hasn’t cut on heating in their building like they did last year, fuck these guys, Ted’s body has the wonderful inability to regulate its temperature, and the only way he can warm up is pouring boiling hot tea right into himself or spending the entire day under a blanket.
It’s not really possible to do the second one in his office, so his saviors are the paper cups and shitty Beanie’s coffee. Occasionally, when Paul isn’t at work, Ted switches to Starbucks and drinks something that is actually coffee.
Fast forward to a mundane early December day — Mariah Carey’s voice blasting from the speakers in the hallway, the heaters working full force, decades–old pipes rumbling like cats, and Ted going into early stages of hypothermia over yearly earnings reports.
He hates December only because of this. He likes Christmas, hell, all the stuff that Pete hates, like shopping and cooking all of the dishes and Christmas songs, he’ll fucking go to the church once a year, but what will defeat his holiday spirit is Microsoft Excel. So it’s not really his fault for becoming distracted about ten minutes into the task, okay?
Bill strolls by his desk as Ted is attempting to balance on the back two legs of his shitty chair — he’s seen chairs in better condition at conferences, the one he’s forced to sit in for eight hours five days a week is a mockery of his back — and chew a mint gum at the same time, and it takes Ted embarrassingly long to notice the other man standing in front of his desk.
When Ted’s eyes finally consciously land on him, Bill smiles, and the corners of Ted’s mouth raise up on their own. They do that an awful lot — especially when Bill is near, as if his own body is trying to betray him. Bill's eyes always crinkle when he smiles, and Ted's heart attempts to leap out of his chest.
“I’m going to Beanie’s with Paul. Do you want something?”
Ted’s brain refuses to cooperate for a few good moments, trying to process the words while simultaneously trying to force his eyes away from how good Bill's face looks. Then, his joke sensors activate immediately, rising like an evil villain’s base, up from the ground, spinning like animated cogs and blaring red lights.
“To drink something or to hold his hand while he talks to the barista?” Bill rolls his eyes with a small smile, hands in the pockets of his puffy coat, and Ted coughs awkwardly, trying to not force the other man away with his badly–timed jokes. “Vienna coffee, if you can.”
Bill nods, half–turns, and then his lips pop open. (Ted definitely hasn’t been paying more attention to them. Not more than ever. He's the same as he ever was. Paying actual attention to people is not Ted Spankoffski.)
“It’s two sugars, right?” He says, casually and calmly, half turned away.
Ted has to force a choke down his throat, because he remembers — of all people Ted has been in the talking stage with, it’s Bill who remembers. And it’s Bill who cares, and it can’t not be Bill. And Ted has been dumb for so many years, being with all those people who wouldn’t even remember his usual cafe order, and Bill is so kind and willing to do this. For him. Only for him, Ted hopes, but knows that it's probably not true. That Bill knows other people's coffee orders too.
He might break down if Bill keeps being so nice. Nothing nice ever lasted for so long for Ted. He learned how to take and take until the nice dries up from an early age, but with Bill something deep inside of him wants to take it slowly. Bill wants to take it slow, his mind suggests, and Ted would jump off a bridge if Bill told him to.
And it's scary.
“Yeah.” His voice cracks a bit, but he quickly covers it up with a cough before Bill can put two and two together. “Two sugars, yeah.”
The other man sends him a smile before the door clicks shut.
Ted can finally lay his horrifically trembling hands back on the keyboard of his shitty work laptop, and pretend that his heart isn’t about to burst open, and that he doesn’t want to run out and chase after Bill like the main couples in stupid Christmas romance movies do.
He just has to move on. Like he always did with his real crushes.