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It was nearly midnight when he left the clubhouse; the transfer window—which sounded more to Ted like the thing they stuck your food order through at a drive-through, sheesh—was closing in four days. Richmond was trying for one last score, and a big one, too: Eusebio Contreras, a highly sought after up-and-coming defensive midfielder from Bogotà.
Nate and Beard had spreadsheets on everything the man’d ever done, and popping Contreras into their equations seemed to equal success for the team. Rebecca and Higgins had stretched the budget like taffy—or maybe Opal Fruits, double sheesh—to make the whole thing work. Keeley’d gotten his new kit ready to go and had photographers for the promotional materials on standby.
It’d all been very secretive to date: this man could be the key to Richmond’s promotion hopes, but if the negotiations went south, it’d add insult to injury for the team’s already weary fanbase. So it was very hush-hush until there was a signature on the dotted line.
All they needed to seal the deal, Higgins told him, was for Ted to turn on the Lasso charm in a 1-1 call with Contreras.
Ted’s Spanglish was fractured at best, but if Higgins thought it would help, what could he say but sí?
The conversation had gone well. Eusebio seemed like a fine young man with a decent head on his shoulders. He was a little cagey at first, but once Ted got him talking about his hobby of maintaining elaborate saltwater aquariums, he cracked wide open.
Maybe some other coach would have discussed the game or the club more. But he wasn’t some other coach, and making someone feel seen was always the first step to building a great relationship; whether that meant talking about their tackling skills or their pez tropical didn’t matter a hoot.
By the time they said their goodbyes, Contreras promised his people would have the paperwork to Richmond’s lawyers by morning. Ted was too tired at that point to catch if that meant morning BST or CST, but they’d make the deadline either way, so it was probably all gravy.
As positive as the news was, he had to admit he was feeling—dang, almost caught himself thinking knackered instead of bushwhacked. Infectious stuff, that British slang; he’d have to watch that.
Stifling a yawn as he stepped out into the night air, he zipped his jacket up against the almost chilly weather: it was unseasonably cold for the waning days of August. And truthfully, with all he had on his plate this season, the time would most certainly fly; it really would be autumn before you could say "meet you in the middle of the Cedar Creek corn maze with a bottle of Boone's Farm."
For the second year in a row, Ted found himself giving over to a twinge of longing for hay bales and pumpkin patches, scarecrows and apple pies. Not that you couldn’t get some of that stuff on this side of the pond, but he’d probably have to go a couple hours out to a town called Somethingorothershire (pronounced “Something-sure”) to find ‘em, and who had time for that?
(A person who had someone to go with, that’s who.)
He glanced down at his phone, the crisp white numerals displaying the time reminding him of a serendipitous fact of geography: both Bogotà and Wichita were on Central time, meaning he could probably grab a quick call with Henry before dinner.
His own tired face shone back up at him while the video call app’s chime rang out, trying to make a connection, and he scrubbed a hand over his eyes, vainly attempting to rub the weariness from his expression.
Fortunately, Henry didn’t seem to care about any of that.
“DAD!!!!” he shouted, the camera jiggling as he was clearly tear-assing up the stairs to his room. “Dad, isn’t it late for you?”
Leave it to an eight year old to have timezones down better than he did.
“Sure is, Buddy,” Ted agreed. “Me and Beard and the rest of the crew are workin’ on some secret stuff.”
Henry leaned into the camera, his little face now enormous in the frame.“Can you tell me the secret?”
“Wouldn’t be much of a secret, then, would it?”
“Pleeeeease.”
“‘Fraid not, kiddo.”
They went on, back and forth like that for a while, making the already short walk from Nelson Road feel that much shorter.
They were still chatting away when he hit Richmond Green, for once still and silent, absent of amateur footballers, buskers and picnickers alike. The manicured expanse seemed unusually bright given the time—had the streetlights been turned up a notch?
Henry had given up interest in trying to wheedle information out of Ted and was going on about the fictional mouse and porcupine he was reading about in school—“Poppy’s so nice and Ereth is soooo grumpy but they get along really well”—when Ted felt a shiver go up his spine.
He had the oddest feeling he was being watched.
But when he turned to see what might be trailing him, he saw nothing at all.
He turned back, and nearly ran smack into Mr. Sibbald, wrapped up in his Richmond scarf as usual, doddering his way home.
“Oi, g’night, Wanker,” he nodded at Ted fondly. “Get some rest.”
The man clearly had a more interesting nightlife than Ted.
“Same to you, sir,” Ted told him, quickly adding, “The getting rest part, I mean.”
The elderly fella having gone on his way, Ted was the only one approaching Brewers Lane. The hairs on the back of his neck, however, didn’t see fit to lie down just yet.
The green was just about behind him; he had the oddest feeling, all Washington Irving-like, that if he could just make it across the grass, he’d be safe, even though he couldn’t say how he was in danger in the first place.
The lights of the Crown and Anchor drew him on toward home and refuge and peanut butter; he was catching only the jist of Henry’s commentary on Mr. Sibbald’s greeting—“He’s wrong about calling you that, Dad, you’re not alone with your thoughts, you’re talking to me!”—his wariness refusing to dissipate.
Despite every molecule of his person screaming for him not to—he wasn’t a huge fan of horror films, but he knew the rules, alright—he turned around.
Standing in the middle of the green, bathed in the glow of an unnaturally enormous full moon, was a dog. A huge dog. A huge dog with pricked triangle ears and ruffled black fur and piercing yellow eyes, staring right at him.
Not at a dog at all, actually. A wolf.
“Dad?” Henry’s voice sounded tinny and distant as Ted’s hands curled around the speaker, muffling the sound. “Dad, you okay? You’re covering the camera—”
Slowly, Ted brought the phone up close enough for the mic to catch his lowered voice, never taking his eyes off the massive creature before him.
“I’m, uh, gonna have to call you back, big guy. Love you.”
“Dad, what’s—”
Ted pressed the End Call button and pocketed the phone, then stood stock still.
His door was less than a hundred yards away. A jog less than the length of a pitch, and he could catch his breath and call whatever they called Animal Control over here (the Ministry of Dog Scooper-Uppers, most likely). It’d be fine. Heck, it wasn’t even like the thing was moving.
In the space of time it took Ted to remember one of the other rules of horror movies was not to tempt fate, the wolf began padding slowly in his direction.
Ted’s legs, apparently more attuned to the danger than his brain, seemed to move of their own accord, taking one awkward stumbling step back in the direction of his apartment.
It did not go unnoticed by the wolf, its casual stroll suddenly becoming a trot, its eyes shining brighter than ever.
Ted had seen eyes like that in nature specials, usually right before some small helpless critter got swallowed whole.
That graphic memory seemed to be enough for Ted’s lower and upper halves to coordinate, turning him around and sending him into a full-on run.
The clack of claws on pavement rang out just as he skidded up to the door, the wolf apparently racing beyond the green. So much for the Sleepy Hollow theory.
He just had to get the key in the lock, his hands just had to stop shaking. He couldn’t look up at the thing racing toward him, getting bigger in his peripheral vision every second.
Metal skittered against metal, the key not catching. The thing’s paws pounded like thunder against the ground; its ragged panting seemed to practically be in his ear.
Ted said a silent little goodbye to Henry and Michelle and Beard and everyone, hoping God Herself would see that the message got to his intended recipients—
—just as the key slid home into the keyway.
He practically fell in the door, slamming it shut and locking it behind him.
Between the ringing in his ears and sound of his own gasping breaths as he sat on the hardwood floor of his entryway, he didn’t hear a thing; nearly a minute passed before he rose to his feet to listen at the door.
Satisfied at the prolonged lack of growling and scratching noises, he yanked it back open.
Nothing. Even glancing up and down the street, there was no trace of the creature that had chased him half a block, had scared the living breath out of him.
Ted closed the door again, locking the deadbolt behind him.
“Holy frijole.” He wasn’t typically given to talking to himself, but the silence was just a little too heavy to bear at the moment. “What in the Warren Zevon just happened?”
Predictably, his empty, darkened apartment did not respond (or appreciate his musical reference).
His phone, however, did chirp, vibrating in his pocket.
Hey, you okay? Henry said you dropped off the call suddenly.
Even a few months ago, having to field any sort of text from Michelle in the middle of the night would have been an emotional gut punch of André the Giant-sized proportions. But more and more, she was moving to occupy the space in his head and heart labeled ‘friend’ and ‘coparent’. Which was actually something of a relief: he no longer had to box up or hold back his affection for her the way he felt he ought to during their trial separation. It could just… change shape a little, become something new.
I’m fine. Something came up. appreciate you checking.
Enjoy dinner, talk to you tomorrow.
He got a thumbs up and heart emoji in response, and that was that; Ted imagined them sitting down to mac and cheese with little slices of hot dogs in it, or—Henry was going up fast, after all—maybe something more sophisticated, like chicken fingers.
(Okay, the gut punches weren’t gone completely, but they were more of Westley than Fezzik dimensions, so he’d take the W.)
That bittersweet interlude over, Ted was left alone with his still predominantly wolf-based thoughts.
After a good hour or so lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and trying not to flinch at even the smallest sounds, he closed his eyes…
…only to see huge yellow ones gleaming in his mind, bright as the moon and twice as ominous.
No sir, he was definitely not sleeping tonight.
For ways to pass the time, then, well, drinking was right out. They had a match tomorrow (technically today, he supposed), not to mention that drowning his sorrows usually did him more harm than good.
So baking it was. He tiptoed down the stairs, mentally reviewing the recipe Zoreaux’d just given him for his aunt’s tarte au citron. It mostly seemed like a fancy name for lemon bars, and Ted had had all the ingredients delivered the day before.
The custard was thickening nicely by the time he pried his brain away from thoughts of hungry monsters lurking outside his door, forcing himself to focus on the day ahead of him: the match, the team, and the press room afterward.
Mahira Bryant, junior correspondent from the Independent, had been covering the preseason friendlies, so it was likely she’d be there, and hey, she’d probably like a fancy lemon bar, wouldn’t she?
His heart sank at that, and he immediately scolded himself for it; Mahira was, as far as he could tell, a heckuva smart cookie: a real snickerdoodle of a reporter. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t—to truly take this baking metaphor to the point of crumbling—the salted tahini chocolate-chip treat he’d been hoping to see there.
(It was probably not typical to have thought so much about exactly what sort of baked good people in your social circle were most like, but heck, Ted’d left ‘typical’ on the runway at Eisenhower National Airport the day he took his first flight to Heathrow. Nothing for it now.)
It would be overmuch to say he’d missed Trent Crimm, exactly.
Then again, maybe that was because he’d become accustomed to thinking of ‘missing someone’ as a visceral, constant thing, gut-deep and unmistakable. The way he’d missed Michelle at first, the way he missed Henry, the way he still missed his father.
Maybe missing a person could just be thinking of them at odd moments. Remembering a curious look or turn of phrase, or the sound of their laugh. Wondering what they’d think of a song that comes on the radio while you’re back in Wichita for the month, 4,500 miles away. Seeing a stranger fidget with their glasses, and feeling a smile cross your face before you even realize why.
And if that was an alternate definition for the feeling, then. Well. Maybe Ted had some other things to redefine.
High and piercing, the kitchen timer sounded out, snapping him back to the present moment.
He opened the oven door and peered in at the sunny circle of his lemon tart, jiggling it gently to see if it was set, and thinking wistfully that, wherever Trent was, Ted hoped he was having the start of a real nice day.
Trent Crimm woke up lying on his back in the small half-dead herb garden nestled against the fence of his minuscule front yard, naked, shivering and quietly cursing a blue streak.
Bloody fucking sleep shifting. He’d long assumed that particular vexation was little more than a half-forgotten artifact of his atrocious first puberty, like pink plastic disposable razors, glossy photos ripped from Just Seventeen magazine, and bloody fucking sanitary napkins.
And it had been. He’d had his changes under control for just over three decades, thank you very much.
Until last night, apparently.
Christ. At least Annabelle was with her mums.
A frantic glance up and down the street confirmed it was as vacant as the near silence implied; the universe was apparently in an uncharacteristically charitable mood, at least for the moment. He grabbed the blanket draped over the porch rail and retrieved the spare key hidden under a rock for just such an occasion (his pride in his own consistency and restraint aside, it never hurt to be prepared) and made his way into the flat.
His phone, screen miraculously uncracked, was lying in the middle of the living room floor where it must have fallen when he changed.
Trying to quell the squirming sensation low in his belly, he scrolled through Twitter threads, Instagram stories, and headlines from local papers’ online editions, scouring them all for reports of little old ladies having the fright of their little old lives, or horrified accounts of the deer up at Richmond Park being ripped to ribbons.
But he found nothing of the sort posted at all, let alone trending at the rate he imagined it might.
At least it seemed he’d been careful. He just wished he could remember it, dammit.
When he changed deliberately, the thoughts, the feelings, the intentions were all his own. Instincts rippled below the surface, yes, but he had complete mastery of them. It had taken him a decent portion of his youth to accept it, but his wolf was not a separate entity. It was him, through and through, simply in a different form, and as such, he typically recalled everything he did in that form when he changed back.
For some reason, though, the events of shifts begun while sleeping only came back to him later, like memories from a booze-fueled night out or a period of extreme exhaustion: fuzzy-edged and often with troubling gaps in the record.
Still, he had to try to see what he could dredge up from the night before.
House clothes retrieved and donned, he flopped down on the sofa, finger combing his hair out of his face.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
Green grass under paws. Dirt under that, soft from rain. Insects chirping. Dog barking, not nearby. Wind in the trees. Then quiet. Bright night, brighter than usual, moon bigger and more shiny than human lights.
Then… Familiar smell. Sweat and stale air clinging to cotton, clean skin underneath: fresh soap, cedar, sage. Scent going from snout to brain to belly: comfort and need, both.
Want. Chase.
Gone.
Trent’s eyes snapped open. Sweat pooled under his arms, his stomach churning again.
What the hell was that?
Had he been openly racing through the streets after something—someone? What had he been thinking? What could possibly have made him abandon all caution that way? What could he have wanted so badly to make him act like… well, like such a beast?
He tried again to pick at at the seams of his own memory, hoping for something—anything—to pull loose, but nothing further presented itself.
Heart still skipping the odd beat, he went back to his phone, searching again for some sign that he’d been spotted, even if only to narrow down where he’d been and what he’d been up to. Even random mentions of a black dog might be useful, but there was precious little relevant information; it rankled him on a personal and professional level how poorly his investigation of his own activities was going.
He realized just how long he’d been at it when hints of light began filtering into the front room, peeking around the edges of the drawn shades.
Coffee was probably a prudent next step; he was halfway to filling the kettle when the ding of a text notification caught his ear, followed by the chirrup of his Google alert for Richmond.
Ignoring the alert, he switched to the messages app: Gwen Taberly (The Sun) had sent him a link and a sunglasses-wearing emoji, a cartoony version of the smug grin she often wore herself.
The URL she’d sent was truncated, but the bits he could see (thesun.co.uk/sport/football/1637722/afc-richmond-transfer-...) were enough to send him from rankled to full on irked. Taberly and her minions had somehow scooped him utterly on a massive transfer move from Richmond, yanking the story right out from under his… well, snout, as it were. The Independent’s sibling rivalry with the Sun was about to get much more heated.
Water dumped and the kettle turned off (he could grab a Costa on the way), his thumbs flew across his phone’s keyboard as he jogged up the stairs to get ready for the day.
Fancy some company for Huddersfield at Richmond today?
The little speech bubble on Mahira’s side of the screen immediately lit up with a blinking ellipsis, despite the early hour; good form, that. She’d come into the role a bit green, but she worked as hard as any junior he’d ever been paired with and was shaping up quickly.
Ah, you’re caught up. Was just about to text you. Should have known Gwen would be quicker to gloat. Meet you at the dog track?
One thumbs up emoji, a rapid fire rinsing, toweling off and dressing of his person, and the snap of a hair elastic later, he was out the door. Digging up facts on his wolfish night out would have to wait on a story about a certain team of greyhounds.
—
Trent would have very much liked to say that his day improved significantly after putting on some clean clothes and settling into his working frame of mind. But—his commitment to journalistic integrity being what it was—he didn’t feel comfortable committing such an outright fabrication.
His macchiato (with “Trend” written in marker on the cup—was that even a name?) had taken far too long to come out, and after all that, was glacially cold, as was the eggy sandwich he’d ordered. He thought about binning it all immediately, but his stomach was growling, and besides, the Protocols of Englishness mandated that he suffer through it: ‘waste not want not’ and all that.
By the time he reached Nelson Road, he had to elbow through a crowd in the car park three people deep to get to Mahira.
“Trent, glad you could make it.” She nodded politely if briskly at him, glanced at the clubhouse, then whipped back around, doing a double take. She looked him up and down, the corners of her mouth turning down.
“Rough night?” she asked, somehow sounding both judgemental and pitying as only a bright-eyed twenty-two year old could.
Trent merely craned his head back and raised his eyebrows at her boldness, then shook his head and sighed, making it quite clear that that was all the answer she would get on that subject.
Mahira shrugged, unapologetic. “This guy with wild grey-streaked hair once told me to cut the crap and ask the questions you want right out the gate,” she grinned. “Plus, I can’t imagine why else you’d’ve made such a botch job of this, missing the Contreras scoop—”
“—you know, I hear the Mail is looking for interns; I’d be happy to write you a scathing recommendation letter—”
That only made her grin harder. “Aren’t you friends with Lasso? Surprised he hasn’t given you any exclusives yet this season.”
“We’re… friendly, I suppose,” he corrected her, trying to keep any defensiveness out of his tone. “But it isn’t as though the man’s not overly gracious with everyone on the planet.”
“I don’t recall him making biscuits with little three-toed sloths on them for any other journo’s daughters.”
And, well, that was probably true. Last season, Lasso’d not only remembered a throwaway comment Trent made several matches prior about Annabelle coming to visit him for her third birthday, but that she was mad about three-toes sloths at the moment (before that, it had been capybaras, and before that, pink river dolphins—he was beginning to regret buying her that ‘Strange Animals Around the World’ picture book for Christmas). He was having a devil of a time finding sloth-related content and activities.
Lo-and-behold, the confoundingly upbeat American pulled him aside just prior to the start of play and handed him a small brown cardboard box full of delicious looking biscuits with remarkably neat hand-piped icing sloths on them.
“She still into the sloths?” Ted asked, wide-eyed with genuine curiosity. “I know it’s a little bit of a roller coaster at that age; hard to tell what’s gonna stick. I made a backup batch with sprinkles on ‘em in pretty colors, just in case.”
Trent paused, reigning in exactly how flummoxed he was by the entire interaction. “She… is still very much into the sloths, thank you.”
“Hey, celebratin’ three years with three toes,” Ted beamed. “I like that consistency.”
“I… couldn’t have the spares for myself, could I?” Trent asked, just a hint of cheek coming to the fore. “I quite like sprinkles in pretty colors.”
Ted looked on the point of agreeing when his face fell, as if he’d just remembered something.
“I don’t have ‘em on me, so I’m gonna have to give you a rain check on that,” he said apologetically. “But tell you what, if you tell me your favorite animal and your birthday, I’ll see what I can do. You must be turning, what, twenty-nine?” He winked.
Trent raised an eyebrow as he carefully closed the biscuit box lid. “Flattery won’t get me to throw you softballs, you know.” He was still smiling, however; he couldn’t seem to stop.
“Oh, I know it won’t,” Ted assured him warmly. “That’s what I like about you, The Real Crimm Shady: you’re fair and impartial, from your well-coiffed locks all the way down to your toes. Hey, enjoy the game and give Annabelle my best. See ya later.”
He’d patted Trent on the shoulder, and jogged away, letting out an overly loud ‘WHOOP’ that had set Trent blinking and shaking his head.
Impartial, he reminded himself now, watching Mahira smirk as the recollection clearly played out across his face. Fair and impartial.
“I’m sure that was a one-time thing,” Trent waved the incident away with his best impression of casual dismissal. “Besides, it’s not as though—”
He never got to finish, as the noise of shouted questions and snapping cameras swept through the gaggle of reporters; a white visor with the Richmond crest on it was barely visible at the center of it all, the man attached to it pushing gently through the throng.
Coach Lasso was shaking his head as he approached the clubhouse door, feet from where Trent and Mahira were staked out. “I’m not answering any questions about anything before the match, so you can just—”
Even hidden behind those dreadful aviator sunglasses he was fond of wearing, Trent saw the exact moment Lasso’s eyes lit up.
He was looking right at Trent.
“HEY!” Ted—no, Coach Lasso—shouted, momentarily drowning out the the whole of the London football press, shuffling toward them at an accelerated pace. “TRENT CRIMM, THE INDEPENDENT! Good to see ya!” He smiled wider than Trent thought humanly possible, then nodded quickly at Trent’s colleague, acknowledging her as well. “Hey, Mahira, also The Independent. How are you two?”
Before Trent could respond, Lasso was pulling off his backpack and pushing into Trent’s space. “Hey, I got something for you—”
Which was when he smelled it. Not the lemon bars—though the scent of citrus sour-sweetness and freshly made crust also coiled in his nostrils.
What really ignited his heightened senses was the unmistakeable smell of the thing—no, the person—he’d chased the night before.
It was Ted Lasso.
Immediately memories rushed forth, as if a floodgate had been opened: he’d lifted his snout to the air, catching that hint of close locker room smell, laundry detergent, body wash and light, fresh cologne.
Walking through Richmond Green, happy chatter dying on his lips as soon as he saw the wolf stalking him, Ted had run for his door—oh Christ, the terror on his face, Trent barely kept himself from wincing at the mere thought of it—and Trent had given chase.
He’d probably scared Ted half to death, all because of what was becoming—he had to admit it for what it was—an increasingly problematic crush.
Ted had retrieved the bake goods Trent smelled minutes before, nattering on about the recipe belonging to one of his keeper’s relations. Mahira was staring at the box they were in, fingers wiggling in anticipation, while the other reporters in their immediate vicinity had fallen silent, gobsmacked by the scene playing out before them. Ernie Lounds had screwed up his mouth in dismay, staring so suspiciously at Trent that he was concerned he might have started shifting back to his wolf form.
“—and at some point while I was squeezin’ over a dozen lemons by hand, I forgot what I was doin’ and rubbed my eye, and boy-howdy, that sure was—hey, Earth to Planet Trent.” Ted’s brow furrowed in concern. “You okay over there?”
“Fine,” Trent snapped out, rather harsher than he intended. “I mean,” he tried again, “It’s good to see you as well.” And, dammit, he was smiling again.
He cleared his throat, held his notebook up a little higher. “When can we expect the contract with Eusebio Contreras to be—”
“Ah-ah-ah,” Ted scolded softly. “Focus on your present," he advised, finally handing the box of lemon bars to Mahira, who looked like she was about to devour them whole. "And leave the future in the future. We’ll get to all that at the press conference after.”
Ted smiled and leaned in closer, providing Trent another whiff of clean warm skin and artificial forest, and god, that scent was going to haunt his dreams—if he managed to keep himself in bed, at any rate.
“It really is good to have you back,” Ted said softly, and snuck inside the clubhouse before Trent could press him further on Richmond’s transfer plans, or anything at all.
Surrounded by at least fifteen other journalists shouting questions at Ted’s back, Trent stood stock still while Mahira leaned in. “‘Friendly’,” she whispered, nodding sagely. “Yes, I can see that now.”
God. He was well and truly fucked, wasn’t he?
He pursed his lips together and clicked his pen closed.
“Oh, shut up and eat your tart already.”