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They’re the last ones of AFC Richmond left at the Crown and Anchor. Keeley and Roy had already made their exit earlier in the evening. After Coach Beard puts down the team card to pay the tab, he vanishes into the night.
Ted leads them out of the pub and into the twinkling golden glow of Richmond, lamps lit and string lights dotting the trees.
Fairies, as Violet would say. Trent smiles.
Something unsaid colors the air between them and Trent’s fingers still buzz from where Ted had touched them earlier in the evening. They’d sat like that awhile. Even when Beard returned to the table with another round of pints, they were slow to part. Perhaps he’d seen. He’d definitely seen. Perhaps that was why he’d chosen to take such a silent exit. Slip away and leave them to it. At any rate, Trent is thankful for the discretion.
He touches the tips of his fingers to Ted’s arm, just above his elbow. “Ah. Could I walk with you?”
“Oh sure, of course,” Ted says with a flush on his cheeks, then turns swiftly away to toy with the zip of his jacket that’s already zipped. Always zipped. Trent hears the nervous snick of it going up and down a few times. He grins to himself.
When Ted turns back to face him, he’s smiling. A soft, pleasant thing, with his eyes wide and sparkling in the lamp post lights.
Trent smiles back. But…
“It’s alright if you’d rather hold off…” he starts, in earnest, but Ted interrupts.
“No, I’d like it,” Ted says, “I really would. I’m this way.” He points, puts his hands into his pockets, and starts walking.
Trent walks beside him, hands in the pockets of his own trousers, as usual, all angles in his easy, slouchy way his mother still scolds him for to this day.
“Is there anything that we… should… talk about then?” Trent says after a moment. “Anything you’d like to discuss in particular?”
“How do you mean?” Ted looks up at him.
“In the pub… you mentioned that our communication up until now has been rather… roundabout.”
“Always looking for the scoop, aren’t you?” Ted teases. “Always holding feet to the fire til you get it too.”
Trent shrugs, not sheepish in the slightest. He rather likes when things are direct, is all.
“Well. Boy I’ve got a list of things…” Ted shakes his head.
They turn right at the green, walking along the main road that’s mostly quiet by now.
“Well first off,” Ted starts. “I just wanted to make it clear that… that I’ve been noticing you noticing me, as they say… And I've been noticing you for just as long, I was just a little preoccupied with, you know… moving across the ocean and catching up on coaching a sport I know nothing about all cuz I was going through the Big D and don’t mean Dallas… and there was lots of other stuff all up in between there, so it took me a little time to get this to the top of the list.”
Trent smirks. “How dare we take care of one thing at a time like grown men with mature issues and not dive into some quick and done dalliance.”
“Oh you would’ve settled for a dalliance? Well shoot, what’re we working so hard for then?”
Trent’s surprised, his English sensibilities slightly disrupted, when a laugh rumbles from him, louder than it normally would. It’s the way things go with Ted Lasso. One can always expect to be disarmed by southern charm and a few good pints.
“You've just watched me implode my own career. Apart from that drama, I’ve got my own share of romantic blunders, I assure you,” he says.
“Hmm,” Ted muses. “Wanna elaborate?”
This conversation feels remarkably… light, for what it is. For what it could be between any other two parties. Trent’s never talked about Michael with such… ease. Not in awhile, anyway.
Still, he sighs and lets his shoulders fall forward, if only for the odiousness this story still makes him feel.
“The disaffected journalism major was wooed by the classics major who read Vonnegut and listened to Siouxsie and the Banshees. The classics major fell arse over teakettle for a ready ear to his poems and theories and someone who was a worthy opponent in a debate.”
At this, Trent hears Ted’s soft little breath of a laugh.
“It was all very romantic and lovely until all at once the debates became arguments and the arguments grew more frequent and veered away from a lover’s spat on philosophy to ‘who was that bloke you were talking to’ and ‘my mum hates your smoking.’ But there was always something… inherently common between them. They married when the law passed, perhaps caught up in the parade of it all. But things didn’t improve really, and so they thought perhaps a good idea to mediate things might be to adopt a child. As it happens, children are far too precious to be put in that position. It wasn’t at all fair.”
“Mm. Can’t say I’m too big a fan of that story. Sorry to hear it all went down like that but happy that you’re on the other side of it, and all the better for it. And hopefully done with the smoking.”
“We aren’t necessarily amiable but we both love Violet. That’s the best outcome that could’ve been, really. And the smoking happens every once in awhile, I confess. When things are particularly stressful.”
They stop at a door, inconspicuous and tucked away as is common here. Ted fishes a set of keys from his pocket, taking long enough for Trent to look around and realize…
That was The Crown and Anchor, just there at the corner, and so…
He turns back to Ted.
“Did you just take me round the block?”
Ted grins brightly, shrugs a shoulder. “Can’t get too deep into a conversation when you live right next door, can you? Wanna come up? I have tea, though I will not be partaking should you choose that. Whiskey. Guinness. Big cereal. No pressure. Fresh out of pressure, in fact. No expectations of anybody to do anything they don’t want to do, either. Just… love our chats is all.”
And well, how can Trent refuse something as lovely as all that?
Ted’s flat is quite nice, though Trent is not surprised. The salary and the team’s owner practically require such standards. It is none too shabby for someone whose tenure was temporary and—at least at one point in time—uncertain.
Ted shakes out of his jacket and lays it across the sofa, then moves to the narrow kitchen to pluck two glasses from the cabinet. He holds up a bottle, questioning. Trent holds his hands wide and shrugs.
He moves about the kitchen, spying a child’s drawing of a robot on the refrigerator, with creases that indicate it’s been mailed.
There’s dishes in the sink and pots on the stove, indicative of a bachelor, but Trent knows better than to assume that’s the reason.
The flat feels somehow void. Perhaps a little lonely and not so lived in, but rather moved through. It makes Trent ache a little.
He raises a brow at the toy figure of the Queen herself sat beside the fruit bowl on the table. He stares down at it. It smiles back it’s unmoving, plastic smile.
“Excuse me, coming through Mr. Roomba.”
Ted steps up close beside him, offering a glass with a decent pour.
Trent takes it, letting their fingers brush on purpose. “It’s a habit,” he says, smiling up at him, coy.
“Habit or instinct?”
Trent laughs under his breath and clinks their glasses when Ted offers the gesture.
“Well I can’t let you do all the sharing tonight. That’d be rude,” Ted says, sliding into one of the chairs around the dining table.
Trent follows suit. “It’s alright, Ted. Doesn’t have to be a mutual exchange.”
“Well there isn’t much to say about it except…” Ted pauses and twists his glass around on the tabletop, seemingly summoning the right words. “It’s a funny thing to look back and think… I really loved that person. I really did. And I loved her in the way she deserved. But then loving her became letting her go. That phrase you hear about ‘making it work ’… that’s not what you want, now is it?”
Ted’s eyes shine when he looks up, so bright it sends a pang through Trent’s chest.
He gives Ted a smile, soft and understanding.
“No, no, it’s a sad topic.” Trent takes a sip of his whiskey. “It’s… good to have someone to relate with on that level. I haven’t been terribly open about it. To anyone. The only adults I see outside of work are my parents and the sitter.”
Ted chuckles a bit, following Trent out of the woods of heavy topics. “For the picture you cut in the press room, sure is fun to imagine the behind-the-scenes of your life orchestrated by a five-year-old.”
“What’s this about the picture I cut?” Trent draws his glass close and takes a saucy little sip.
Ted laughs, really laughs, jolly and pure and Trent quite likes the sound of it. The way it warms up the room.
“Trent Crimm, I did not take you for a vain one.”
Trent quirks an incredulous brow. “The first thing you ever said to me was a compliment to my eyewear.”
Ted’s grinning, sly as a fox. His moustache hovers over the edge of his glass.
“Got me there.”
Suddenly, they’re too far apart. The table between them is an obstacle. A nuisance. Suddenly, all Trent wants to do is shag this man fucking senseless.
“I should go,” he says, voice low with intention.
Ted catches it. Of course he does.
“Oh, sure, sure. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Probably got lots of plans with your munchkin and all that.”
They stand and make their way to the door, taking their time even so.
“Munchkin? More like menace. She’ll be at her grandparents until I can coax myself out of bed. Since someone’s kept me out all night, prying me with drinks.”
“Aw come on, you don’t get hungover do ya?”
“We’re both past forty, Ted. If you’re telling me you don’t, I’m going to call your bluff.”
“Just don’t call me late for dinner,” Ted says, and it’s the perfect encapsulation of flirting from Ted Lasso; a failed joke wrapped in southern idiom that gives Trent a thrill and secondhand embarrassment all at once.
His eyebrows tick up and he hums, dark and low, backing up to the wall alongside the door, leaning there. All of the sudden, there’s the image of him in this very pose, outside the clubhouse, foot kicked up against the brick. Waiting for a catch. Only here he doesn’t prop his foot against the wall because he isn’t a pest.
Ted is standing near, smiling, as always, before it falls to something more intense. His eyes don’t lose that bright wonder they always have, wide and clear as day, beautiful in the dim of the room.
He leans closer, tilting his chin with curious intent. Then he steps in to take up the space Trent has made.
His lips are warm and whiskey sweet. His moustache is soft against Trent’s cheek, not wiry, not ticklish. His hand cards into Trent’s hair like he’s been dying for it. He curls his fingers into it. Trent fights not to smile against him. Instead, he gets a hand between them, at the veed collar of Ted’s jumper, grasping at it just a bit when he feels it’s just as soft as he’d thought.
He’s got a buttoned shirt underneath, Richmond blue, the collar of it still folded neat and tidy even at this hour. So Trent yanks at it decidedly.
Ted doesn’t miss a beat. He presses in closer, tilting Trent’s head where he wants it, parting his lips, tasting like the vanilla and malt of the whiskey. Trent nips with his teeth then kisses the spot.
The moment slows, with just a string of gentle little pecks before Ted is panting against his cheek.
“Whew,” he breathes. “Kinda like the first time I had Plowboy’s Barbecue back home. Better than I imagined.”
Trent breathes a laugh. “Plowboys?” he rumbles.
If it weren’t so dark in here, where they’re pressed into the corner and Ted is backlit by the sitting room light, the blush on Ted’s smiling face would be unmistakable.
He steps away and pushes the fallen swoop of his hair back and rights his sweater. Trent watches with interest as the hair falls forwards again, untamed.
“You gonna take off? Leave me singing ‘Something Good’ like I’m Julie Andrews?”
”Now that’d be a sight,” Trent says, running a hand through his own hair.
Ted hums. “You gotta walk all the way back to the clubhouse for your car?”
“I’ll be alright.”
“Okay, okay,” Ted mumbles, shuffling, hands in his pockets.
“Ted,” Trent says, catching his gaze.
He truly is wonderful, Trent thinks, standing there winded and wound up. He’d stay if Ted asked, and Trent can tell he wants to ask. Perhaps for no other reason than… chatting. There’s so much still to say. So much still to know. But they have time. It’s right to take advantage of that time, Trent thinks. Make this one right. Things have built for two seasons now. The start of things should be handled properly.
He takes a step forward and touches a hand to Ted’s shoulder, bringing himself close to kiss him once more.
Ted’s smile afterwards holds hope and promise.
“See you on Monday,” Trent says.
“Yeah, okay, Monday,” Ted echoes, and then sees him out the door.
The walk back is quiet and perhaps a little long with the hour, lonely without the company he’s had all evening, but eventually he makes it to his car, the only one left in the lot.
By luck, he has not forgotten his keys this time and sits a minute in the driver’s seat, looking over the practice pitch.
Football. Soccer. Whatever the term one saw fit to use, it was a funny thing.