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The best part of Trent’s day takes place at precisely 7:56 a.m., when he meets Ted at the stairs that lead to the upper management offices. Trent still hasn’t grown used to seeing his name on his office door – certainly not with the words “press director” printed in bold letters underneath – but he has grown used to his daily trade with Ted: one small pink box of shortbread biscuits in exchange for a cup of cream spiked with a dollop of coffee.
The biscuits are heavenly, but they could taste like the rotting bones of Satan for all Trent cares. The important part is the way that Ted’s fingers linger on his for a second longer than necessary. Sometimes – especially since they’ve at last agreed to a date – his thumb slips beneath the cuff of Trent’s button down, caressing the pulse point of his wrist.
Today – the day of their first official date – Ted’s touch feels alive with electric heat. He savors the warmth for a moment, pushing away the embarrassment it evokes. Yes, this is how teenagers are meant to feel. Trent hadn’t gotten that experience; he alone among his classmates had admitted to being gay. There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying it now, or so his therapist says. Trent hasn’t quite gotten around to believing her.
“We still on for tonight?” Ted’s honeyed Southern drawl brushes against Trent’s skin like a favorite t-shirt, worn soft by many wearings.
“Of course,” he says automatically, but he halts his progression up the stairs. Something is wrong, something he can’t quite place.
Ted stops too, a few steps ahead of him. From this vantage point, Ted’s legs look almost impossibly long, and Trent nearly loses his train of thought. Almost.
“Out with it,” he says. “What’s wrong?”
Ted whistles appreciatively. “Bringing the heat before eight o’clock in the morning. That’s just cruel.”
Trent narrows his eyes, never one to let a question go unanswered. “You haven’t rhymed all morning. Something’s wrong.”
Exhaustion flickers across Ted’s face, quickly hidden behind a smile. “We still on for tonight, Dwight? That better?” Ted spins on his heel, resuming his climb up the stairs.
Trent’s hand shoots out, catching Ted by the wrist. Now the heat is unmistakable. This is no teenage fantasy. It’s a fever, plain and simple.
“We most certainly are not on for tonight,” he says, adopting the same do-not-argue-with-me tone he uses with his daughter. “You’re going home and getting some rest.”
Ted turns around again, shaking his head. “Trent Crimm, I told you I would take you out tonight, and I wouldn’t cancel for the world.”
Trent feels his own shoulders sag. They’d had to wait two weeks for the team’s schedule to align with a night when Trent’s father could keep Emilia. But he presses a hand against Ted’s forehead and shakes his head.
“Sleep, Ted,” he says, and he doesn’t miss the way Ted’s eyes flutter shut at his cool touch. “The team can’t have you ill before the quarter final.”
***
Trent doesn’t need to watch training to know that Ted will hide this illness for the sake of the team. Still, he finds excuses to come into Rebecca's office nearly every hour, just so he can look down on the pitch from her wide picture windows.
“Forgotten your pen again?” she asks the third time he steps inside. Or is it the fourth?
“If you’d given me an office with windows, I wouldn’t have to come up here so often.”
“Perhaps I like to keep you where I can see you.”
Rebecca’s tone is bland, but it’s a reminder that she hasn’t forgiven him for the article about Ted’s panic attacks. So he really had been given the intern’s office in the press suite as punishment.
Trent decides not to press the conversation further. Words will do no good here, and he’s much more interested in watching Ted, who appears to be performing dance moves from a certain boy band video released in approximately 2001. Not that Trent will own up to knowing anything about that subject, at least, not out loud.
“He’s going to kill himself,” Trent mutters as Ted leaps to an improbable height, beaming radiantly.
“He always lands on his feet,” Rebecca murmurs back, and Trent realizes she’s come to stand next to him.
“He’s been doing that all morning?”
“It’s some sort of wager with the team. Beard does the backup vocals.”
Trent clucks his tongue, remembering Ted’s flushed skin beneath his hand. At least thirty-nine degrees, he’d guess. On the pitch below, Ted drops to the ground and does the splits. He really is going to kill himself.
***
Ted bursts into Trent’s office at precisely 12:00 p.m.
“Now what’s this about a scandal? About Jamie and a goat? Because between you and me, I’d rather not get involved.”
Trent pushes Ted gently toward the couch wedged into a corner of his tiny office. Honestly, it’s more of a glorified double-wide armchair and Ted’s legs are going to hang off the edge, but it will have to do.
“There is no goat. I’ve called you here for a nap.”
“Come on now, Trent, I'm a grown man and I do not need a babysitter.”
Irritation flickers across Ted’s face, and Trent feels a surge of satisfaction. He knew Ted couldn’t be a perfectly pleasant person at every moment of every day. A hint of negativity – no matter how fleeting – is a treasure. Not everyone is allowed to see it.
“Not a baby-sitter,” Trent says softly, still pushing Ted toward the couch. “Someone who’s on your team.”
This time, Ted yields to the pressure and falls back against the couch, and Trent feels another surge of satisfaction: a sport-related metaphor was the correct choice.
“You ever feel hot and cold all at once?” Ted asks, and Trent notices his warm up jacket is zipped over his usual jumper and polo.
“That happens when you’re sick,” Trent murmurs.
“I suppose a little lunchtime nap couldn’t hurt.” Ted capitulates at last, leaning his head against one of the sofa’s armrests, and letting his legs dangle over the other. “Long as you promise we’re still going out tonight.”
“We have a date,” Trent confirms. This is not quite an agreement, but Ted doesn’t fixate on exact verbiage the way Trent does, so he doesn’t ask for a follow-up.
Trent reaches for one of the locker room towels that he’d chilled in the break room freezer, but Ted shakes his head and seizes Trent’s wrist instead.
“Better,” he says when he presses Trent’s palm against his burning forehead.
Somehow, Trent spends his entire lunch hour leaning over Ted, carefully switching his hands when one of them grows too hot.
***
Trent watches training wind down, counts the players as they saunter out of the locker room in noisy twos and threes. Beard leaves last, catching Trent’s eye as he leaves.
“Make him go home,” he says, cutting his head toward Ted’s office. Up close, his stare is surprisingly fierce.
Trent nods, biting back a retort. He doesn’t need to be told to take care of Ted, though Beard has no reason to trust that. Yet.
At last the locker room is empty and dark, the light from Ted’s window the only illumination. Trent sees the moment Ted sags into his chair. His eyes flutter shut and snap open the second Trent steps across the threshold, never mind that he was walking softly.
Ted’s out of his chair a second later, offering Trent a wide grin that doesn’t quite reach his tired eyes.
“I made a reservation at a sushi place,” he says. “Now, I personally don’t hold with eating raw fish, but I know you do, and you know what they say, when in Rome –”
“Ted.”
Ted’s smile barely flickers. “Alright, alright, that metaphor doesn’t really apply here, but –”
“Ted,” Trent says again. He takes Ted’s hand, and the skin is clammy beneath his fingers. “We’re not going out tonight.”
Ted shrugs out of Trent’s grip. “Trent Crimm, I told you I was taking you out, and I am a man of my word.”
“You are, and you will. But not tonight.” Trent jingles his keys. “If I’m not mistaken, I’m the only one of us with a car, and I’m taking you home.”
“You fight dirty,” Ted says. This time his smile really does reach his eyes.
“Get used to it,” Trent shoots back, boldly assuming that this will be the first of many dates.
“The thing is, I figured you were a man of your word, and I do think I recall you telling me at lunch that we had a date.”
“So I did. But now it’s in your flat, and I’m cooking.”
Ted pauses for just a second, letting his exhaustion show for the first time. His smile’s softer when he says, “Come to think of it, I wouldn’t say no to some chicken soup.”
“That’s fortunate, since that’s all I can cook.” He shrugs. “Well, that and chicken nuggets shaped like stars.”
“Wouldn’t say no to those either,” Ted says, and now it’s Trent’s turn to grin.
“Somehow I’m not surprised.” He tugs Ted through the door with him. “We’ll pick some up on the way home.”
***
Ted is remarkably compliant during their grocery run, agreeing to nap in the car while Trent wanders through the aisles of Tesco, collecting ingredients for soup, chicken nuggets, and a homemade ranch dressing he had googled earlier this afternoon. He gathered it was what Americans ate with their chicken nuggets.
He probably should have known Ted was merely gathering strength for another offensive.
Ted jogs up the stairs ahead of him, which Trent allows because he’s the one with the keys. He opens the door to the flat, and promptly attempts to close it in Trent’s face.
“Now you just give me a minute to tidy up –”
“I will do no such thing.” Trent shoves his foot in the door and thinks a second later that this sort of behavior is exactly why he’s still single. “Dammit, Ted, let me in. I’m taking care of you tonight and you are bloody well going to let me.”
Yes, this is definitely why he’s still single. Another man could probably have resolved this situation without giving commands.
But Ted steps back from the door, looking vaguely pleased. Trent tucks this fact away: Ted Lasso is not actually a man who wants everything to be perfectly pleasant.
“Well, at least let a man put away his unmentionables.”
They’ve both stepped into the flat now, and Ted’s attempting to block a pile of laundry overflowing from an armchair. Trent thinks he can see Captain America underpants on top of the mountain.
“If you must,” Trent says. “So long as you know my flat is covered with glitter and my carpet is at least fifty percent goldfish crumbs, so there’s no judgment here.”
“I think you’re just trying to get a free look at my underpants.”
“Oh no, I intend to earn that.” Ted’s face flushes red, and Trent adds sharply, “Later. When you’re well.”
Ted scoops up the laundry, and Trent spins him gently toward what he assumes is the bedroom door.
“Don’t come out until dinner’s ready.”
Ted spins back around, some indignant remark no doubt on the tip of his tongue. Trent gentles his voice. “Take a nap, Ted. I meant it when I said I’m taking care of you.”
“Long as you promise to let me return the favor.”
Trent nods once, short and sharp. Maybe this is what he and Ted really have in common: they’ve both forgotten what it’s like to be taken care of.
***
Trent might have gone overboard at Tesco. Yes, he’d cheated and bought a rotisserie chicken, but he’d supplemented it with a ridiculous artisanal loaf of bread, an expensive pack of microgreens for the salad, and a little cluster of tealights. Usually he plays it safe, hides his feelings beneath layers of intellect and sarcasm. Not with Ted. He wants Ted to know all of his feelings right away.
Ted ambles out of the bedroom before Trent’s finished lighting the candles. Trent shoots him a sharp look, but Ted holds up a hand.
“Are you roasting garlic? Because it’s just not fair to ask a man to sleep through that.”
Up close, Trent can see creases from the pillow on Ted’s cheek. His normally perfect hair is rumpled on one side, and he’s wearing striped pajama bottoms beneath his AFC Richmond jumper. Trent decides he likes the view, even if he’d been half-hoping Ted would own some sort of ridiculous house slippers.
“I suppose an appetizer wouldn’t hurt,” he allows, turning reluctantly from Ted to retrieve the foil-wrapped packet of garlic from the oven. Nigella’s website had suggested it, and though Trent had been skeptical, he’d gone ahead when he’d seen a forlorn-looking head of garlic lying on the worktop. Judging from the eager look on Ted’s face, he’d made the right decision.
The bread’s burnt. He’d thrown it into the oven with the garlic, thinking the outside would get deliciously crisp – and it might have, if he’d watched it instead of getting preoccupied sauteeing the onions for the soup. Ted hardly seems to mind though. He’s sat at the table, picking off the burnt bits and gleefully slathering the remains with soft roasted garlic.
Trent lights the last two candles and settles in the chair beside Ted. The writer in him takes in the scene: candlelight bringing out shades of auburn in Ted’s mussed hair, the pot of soup bubbling amiably on the stove behind them, ankles and knees bumping together beneath the table.
Ted’s quieter than Trent’s ever seen him. His eyes wander across the candles on the table, the ingredients strewn across the countertop, and the remnants of the bread on the table. At length, he says, “I meant what I said earlier. You gotta let me return the favor.”
Trent crosses his ankles over Ted’s. The warmth he feels is more than a fever.
“It’s not a debt, Ted,” he says softly. “You don’t have to repay me.”
Ted looks like he wants to say more, but the timer goes off, and Trent leaps up to ladle the soup before Ted tries to serve them himself.
“Chicken soup with burnt bread and a side of microwave chicken nuggets,” Trent says with a little flourish he doesn’t really feel. It is, at best, an odd meal, and the discomfort flickering on Ted’s face doesn’t make him feel any better.
But then Ted smiles. It’s not his usual high wattage grin, but a smaller, softer one that makes Trent feel gratified to have seen it.
“You know, I wasn’t sure what dating was gonna be like after twenty years of marriage, but I gotta say, as first dates go, I think this is the best I ever had.” He glances at the food with rather more appreciation than Trent thinks it merits, but perhaps it’s the thought that counts. “Trent, I am a lucky man.”
Trent feels his cheeks flush pink. “That makes two of us,” he says.
***
Trent spent the night. Nothing happened, at least nothing sexual. They shared the bed and the warmth of their bodies, which Trent thought counted for rather a lot. Much to his embarrassment, he overslept and awakened to find Ted wrist-deep in biscuit batter at the kitchen island.
“I just want to be clear this is not what y’all call biscuits,” he said. “These are real biscuits. My grandmother’s recipe, although I did add some cheese. I don’t think she’d mind.”
Trent’s flabbergasted. He’d taken his eyes off Ted for a few hours of sleep, and already the man is bustling around making what appears to be an extremely elaborate breakfast.
“This is unnecessary,” he says firmly. “You’re ill. We can order something in.”
Ted beams. “Oh no, I woke up fit as a fiddle. You can check.”
He presents his forehead for inspection, and Trent is shocked to find it quite cool. Or rather, back to Ted’s normal level, which is still just shy of a furnace. Ted would be the sort to rebound from a deathly illness in a single evening, Trent supposes.
He wishes Ted didn’t feel the need to repay him like this, but a first date is hardly the time to negotiate that particular issue. For now, he’ll just help with the washing up.
“Trent Crimm, put that sponge down and step away from the sink.”
Ted’s voice is shockingly commanding. Trent’s eyebrows shoot up almost to his hairline. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me right the first time.” Ted’s not backing down. “You made me dinner, you cleaned it up. Now I’m taking care of breakfast. Fair’s fair.”
Trent slinks toward the armchair in the living room, trying to gather a few stray napkins as he goes. Perhaps he can wipe down the worktop while Ted’s back is turned.
It’s a stupid thought. Ted’s extraordinarily observant.
“You know, Trent, you kinda dodged what I said last night, about letting me return the favor.” He raises his eyebrows. “You have a problem letting people take care of you?”
Trent holds Ted’s gaze. He’s been independent to a fault since the day of his birth. Even more so since the end of his last relationship. He can see why Ted, whose wife stated quite clearly and decisively that she no longer needed him, might insist on reciprocity.
“Emilia’s not my biological daughter,” he says slowly.
The relevance to the conversation is not immediately clear, but Ted doesn’t seem concerned by that. The corner of his mouth lifts. “I kinda figured that,” he says. “You being gay and all.”
Trent swallows. Not many people know the whole story. “My sister is her birth mother. She couldn’t take care of herself, much less a child.”
Trent’s felt the weight of Ted’s full attention before. The first time was more than two years ago, when he’d somehow told a certain interview subject that he had an almost three-year-old daughter, he’d wanted to be a war reporter, and he came out of the closet when he was sixteen. He’d forgotten what it felt like, or maybe he’d tried not to remember, in the vain hope that he might retain his objectivity and therefore keep his job. Now Ted’s attention is back, and it feels like a fuzzy blanket or an old jumper: comforting, familiar, warm without smothering.
He doesn’t say a thing, just looks at Trent with wide open eyes and invites him to go on.
“My partner had never wanted children,” Trent says. “But I told him that I didn’t think I could do it on my own, that I needed help…” He clears his throat and smiles ruefully, giving his voice a second to steady. “Well, you can guess how that turned out.”
“What I hear you saying, Trent, is that it's a little hard to ask somebody else for help after that. But I need you to know two things: one, it was his loss. And two, I’m a man of my word. I don’t make promises I don’t keep.”
The kitchen timer beeps. Apparently, there’s already a batch of these mysterious American biscuits in the oven. Trent tries to retrieve them, but Ted pushes him toward the dining table with a surprisingly firm hand.
“Come on now, let me do this one thing.”
He brings Trent some fluffy bread concoction on a chipped blue plate that looks like it belongs in some French grandmother’s kitchen. Then he slides back into his own seat, close enough that their knees can’t help but knock together.
“I don’t expect you to believe me yet. Just try me out, and I’ll deliver.”
***
Three weeks and four days after their first date, Emilia’s crying. She’s been crying for days. It’s not strep and it isn’t the flu, so there’s nothing the doctor can do except send him home with an extremely unhappy child.
The press release for AFC Richmond’s latest victory is half-completed on his computer screen. He hasn’t been in the office in days. The fridge is empty, the cupboard is bare, and he thinks the laundry pile may be sentient and breeding.
His current wishlist includes any of them following: three extra arms, a house elf, or to magically become Mary Poppins.
None of those will happen any time soon.
There may be another option. He twirls his phone in his hand and thinks about candlelight in Ted’s kitchen, I need this to go both ways, and try me out, I’ll deliver.
He picks up the phone and says, “I need help.”