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It was just a bit of fun, is the thing, something that made them happy.
One time, when it was late at night and Trent didn’t have to go home to his daughter and Colin didn’t want to go home to his big house with the big glass door that is there because he has nothing to hide, one time, when it was such a night and Colin was swivelling back and forth in Roy’s chair and letting Trent read a bit of the book to him to see if he thought the flow worked, one time, when Colin hadn’t been listening for the last three sentences, he’d asked Trent if he’d gone on any good dates lately.
Colin rarely ever dated, but he’d got the impression that Trent did.
There was a bit of hemming and hawing until Trent admitted that, no, between his daughter and the book and being oddly more public and more attached to a team than he’d ever been as a journo, there hadn’t been any time. No, he’d said, surprising even himself, he hadn’t even gotten properly snogged in well over a year.
So Colin had done what any good queer friend would do, had slapped his hands down on his knees and hopped up to wander over to a suspicious Trent, balanced on the edge of his desk, and he’d kissed him. He’d taken the tablet out of his hands to put it safely aside, curled his hands around the lapels of Trent’s blazer and pulled him into a kiss that barely required either of them to move their lips.
“That was nice,” Trent had said, when Colin leaned back again, and Colin’d let out a sharp bark of a laugh.
“I’ll show you nice,” he’d said, and done it again.
It was just a bit of fun. It’s just that there was love there, and if there’s love there, why shouldn’t you act on it.
-
“Colin!” A veritable wall of press shouts at him, which is odd, because it isn’t a game day and also, it’s the car park, and also, it’s just him. Little old Colin. “Colin, who tops?”
The league? Man United, but they really shouldn’t need his help with that one.
“Colin,” yells another one - are they even allowed here, on a normal day, “is Trent Crimm blackmailing you into sleeping with him?”
Colin’s brain stutters, stops, starts again. He should deny it, he knows, he should laugh it off, ask if the Sun has found another more than questionable “Source”, but he can’t. He knows his mouth is set in a grim unfriendly line, his face pale, his entire body drawing in as the press starts to surround him and they’re not even right, they’re not even getting it, but it’s so close to the truth that he doesn’t know how to lie about it.
A car horn makes him jump. He looks back to see Isaac’s ride rolling towards the group, slow and menacing. Isaac flashes the fog lights and Colin uses the hiss of general ocular discomfort to half-climb the hood, rip open the passenger door, and jump inside.
“Please drive,” he whispers and Isaac drives.
“Saw it on Twitter,” Isaac says after a few minutes of Colin quietly shaking apart on his passenger seat.
Saw what?, Colin forgoes asking and releases the death grip he has on his car keys and phone to check on the latter. It’s silenced, but the alerts are rolling in one after another and it only takes a few taps to lead him to a series of pictures of him and Trent.
Trent is dropping Colin off at home after another late night and in one picture they’re smiling at each other, like friends do, and in another they’re hugging each other, like friends do, and in the third and last and most damning, they’re kissing each other. Like friends do. Like the type of friends that Colin and Trent are do, like more people would do if this shitting world didn’t suck so much.
What the pictures don’t show is Colin cautiously checking up and down the street before darting in for a cheeky little snog, or Trent laughing even as he berates him about being more careful.
“Fucking bullshit, bruv.”
He registers Isaac’s voice through the high-pitched ringing in his ears after the man has clearly already let out a long and inventive string of curses. Isaac nods down at Colin’s phone in his hand and Colin intrinsically understands that it isn’t so much the what as the how that Isaac is objecting to. Some back part of his brain dimly registers that this is the first conversation - if you can call it that - that he’s had with Isaac where Isaac sees him, fully, knows Colin for who he is, a gay man. He shelves the thought for later.
Colin’s phone rings in his hand. Isaac grimly advises him not to answer it, but there’s only a handful of people Colin’s programmed in to be allowed to disturb him even when his phone’s on silent, so he accepts the call with a swipe.
“Roy?” He asks, clears his throat.
“Colin, babe,” Keeley answers instead, “where are you right now?”
He peers out the window. He’s lived in London for years now, but Isaac isn’t driving to either of their places and Colin has no idea where they are. “Car.”
“You’re driving?”
“No, no,” he shakes his head. A glance to his right reveals a momentarily quiet Isaac, brows furrowed impressively low even for him. All that righteous fury, just for him. “Isaac is.”
“Right,” she says, clearly in work mode. “Do not let him take you to your home or to the club. I’m sending you an address, have Isaac drive round back, someone will come meet you.”
“Right,” he says back. Tries not to feel too much like he’s in a political assassination thriller. “Okay. Thank you.”
-
A quiet older woman ushers him up a set of stairs, into a freight elevator, up another couple sets of stairs, and into a cushy hotel room that holds no one but-
"Trent," Colin breathes out.
"Colin," Trent replies, tries and fails for a smile.
Colin wants to go over there and hug him, wants to be hugged by him, but hesitates for only a second, and the damage is done. Trent notices, of course, and draws himself in, crosses his arms as tight as Colin has ever seen a man do.
It's this sudden and immediate shift in their relationship, the realisation of a loss Colin could never have known to prepare for, that finally does him in.
His chest caves in, he can't breathe and has to sink down onto the carpeted floor before he falls down, tucking himself into a tight and hyperventilating ball of sheer misery. He feels more than sees Trent join him, a warm body by his side and a large hand on his neck, the quiet murmur of meaningless comfort words.
It takes a while before Colin can tune back in enough to recognize it as a string of 'it's them, it's them, it's them', which is confusing only until he realises that it's an answer to his own litany of 'i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry'.
He doesn't know what else to say to him.
-
Trent eventually beckons Colin into the bathroom, where he manages to talk him into a shower. He delicately hangs Colin's panic-damp shirt over a towel bar as Colin tilts his head into the water and listens to Trent knock about the place, laying out a towel and some of Trent's own clothes for him.
Apparently Trent had had enough advance warning to gather some things and tell his ex and daughter to barricade themselves in somewhere inconspicuous before the press could come and run their door down to ask about Trent ruining a perfectly happy family life to shag an overrated football player.
"Overrated?" Colin glares out from under the towel he's using to dry his hair.
"I'm paraphrasing, of course," Trent says, hands raised, smirk dry.
Right as Colin is slipping into the shirt - the one with the funny skeletons on it, which is apparently a band shirt from someone he's never heard of - there's a knock at the door of their hotel room.
They exchange a glance.
"Did Keeley-"
"Should we-"
The door lock beeps and in steps Rebecca Welton, closely followed by an entourage of Keeley Jones, Leslie Higgins, and Ted Lasso himself.
Admittedly, between the shirt and them exiting the bathroom together, it’s not a great look. Adding the supposedly incriminating pictures, it shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise when the first one to break the awkward silence is Ted, who delivers a heartfelt message of congratulations.
“Can’t say I saw this one coming, but I’m truly happy for the both of ya, grody journalistic situations aside, mind you. Er, no offence, Trent.”
“I wouldn’t call it journalism,” Trent murmurs and Colin leans into him with a small huff.
They’ve arranged themselves shoulder to shoulder sitting on the large bed dominating the room, facing the fearsome foursome head on. When he can make himself look up at them, they’re not as fearsome as he might have thought, though. Rebecca is certainly giving Trent a bit of an eye, but everyone seems largely sympathetic.
“We’re just friends, though,” Colin adds, and the looks turn to pity.
“Colin…,” Keeley starts and he rushes to interrupt.
“No, no, I mean,” he takes a deep breath, heart pounding. “I am gay.” Trent’s shoulder brushes against Colin’s own. “I am. Like, all the way. But we’re not together. Right? We’re not.”
“We are not,” Trent confirms.
“Yes, so no, not together, but yes, gay. I am gay. Sorry, I’ve never really come out to this many people at once before, it’s a bit of a rush if I’m honest. I’m gay.”
There’s a moment of silence as Colin works through the adrenaline before four pairs of eyes wander over towards Trent.
“Oh,” Trent says, crossing his legs, “yes, quite.”
Keeley gives them two thumbs up.
Colin laughs, because he has to.
-
There is no easy answer.
Colin doesn’t want to deny it, but he also doesn’t want to have a big coming out. It’s his gayness, after all. He should be allowed to do whatever he wants with it.
Trent, as Colin knew he would be, is on his side. When they spend the night together in the hotel room Rebecca is paying for, knobbly knees pressed together under the sheets, Trent quietly admits what they both know - he’s the smaller news. He’s not a public figure. He makes for a bit of controversy, because he’s a smidge older and they technically work together, but not in any way that’s really all that interesting if you’re out hunting for blood. Or a story. Same thing, really.
If he wasn’t a guy the press would have just as likely put a lovely twist on it rather than tear them to pieces - love blooms in press rooms. Star-crossed writer. Will the dashing celebrity athlete win Lady Trenton’s heart?
(Trent almost bites him for that last one.)
Colin does suddenly find himself with a support network that is much larger than he expected and infinitely more ready for shenanigans. Isaac outraces the press to drop him at Bumbercatch’s who loads him on the back of his bike and drives him over to Jan Maas’ flat to spend the night while Richard has donned a hat and sunglasses to enter Colin's home as "Colin".
Colin thinks this is cool up until he learns that Trent has apparently been coming and going via a secret underground tunnel. Then he’s just jealous.
What’s worse is that he receives this information second-hand, because Trent and Colin don’t talk anymore. They don’t know how.
It was theirs, their little not-relationship to be secretive about and find comfort in and now it’s not that anymore, and Colin doesn’t know how to get it back. Even at the club, supportive as everyone has been, he feels eyes on him whenever he so much as looks in Trent’s direction, as if they’re all just waiting on them to admit they are actually in love and the press was right all along and then they can be proper supportive, for the happy couple that fits into a neatly predefined box.
Isaac’s been subtly getting people off his back when it all becomes a bit much, and it’s great, and he loves him for it, but he just wants his Trent back. He wants it to be like it was before the press got their stink all over it and made it something that it had never been, something dirty that he had to be ashamed of.
“He misses you, too, you know.”
“Not a couple,” Colin says on autopilot. He’s gazing - wistfully and shit, probably - at Trent’s head, bent over a notebook, through the series of windows leading from the locker room to the smaller coach’s office.
“Oh, I know, you’ve made that plenty clear,” Ted replies and shoots him a friendly wink when Colin turns to look. “Very much noted, sir.”
“Well,” Colin flounders, “thanks.”
Ted nods his head up and down a couple times, then nods it over in Trent’s direction. “So you gonna talk to him?”
Colin shrugs, looking back towards a still-unaware Trent. “I want to.”
“Can’t help but feel like there’s a but at the end of that sentence.”
“It’s all different now. They’ve mucked it all up,” he sniffs, “and I don’t know how to make it go back. And I especially don’t know how to do it without proving them right. Or wrong.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ted nods along like he understands, “that’s a tricky little conundrum you’ve got yourself there.” He pulls a hand out of the pockets of his khakis to lay it on Colin’s shoulder, warm and grounding. “But sometimes things change without our say-so and all we can do is stick it out and adjust accordingly. And maybe, along the way, we’ll find that it was a good change all along.”
Colin makes sure to blink the dampness out of his eyes before turning to face Ted again. “And if it wasn’t?”
“Then at least you’ll know.” He gives Colin’s shoulder one last squeeze before letting his hand drop back down. “But don’t let them ruin a good thing based on what if’s.”
Colin nods dutifully.
“And Colin?” Ted hefts his backpack higher, zips his jacket up under his chin. “You’ve got nothing to prove to anyone.”
“Thanks, coach,” Colin manages with a real smile as Ted bids him goodnight and wanders out into the corridor.
Seconds later, Isaac sticks his head in, eyebrows raised and car keys dangling from his fingers in an obvious question. It’s been a few weeks. The press is relentless, but they haven’t gotten a peep out of anyone from the club and it’s late and cold enough that Colin can surely outrun anyone who might still be hanging around. He runs for a living, after all.
“Not tonight, boyo.”
“Alright,” Isaac accepts easily. “You got keys to my place, yeah, use them if you need to.”
Colin nods. Isaac hesitates.
“I’ll text you when I’m home safe,” Colin says, and Isaac deflates, grateful he didn’t have to ask.
“Yeah, alright. Cool. See you.”
Colin is waving still when Isaac’s steps peter off down the hallway. He continues waving as he turns back towards the coach’s office and meets Trent’s eyes, which have been on him for who knows how long.
He waves at Trent instead of overthinking it and Trent cautiously waves back, sliding open the door in as clear an invitation as he can manage.
Colin breathes, smiles, and walks on over.
-
(They talk a couple of sentences, then they make out a little, then they talk a lot longer. Then they make out again, because the first one wasn’t long enough and they’ve missed each other.)
-
One: He makes himself hang out with Trent at the club during the day, forcing his nerves down. Fuck it, they’re friends. If he kisses Trent on the cheek or Trent kisses him on the forehead or he kisses Trent on the mouth where other people can see, also fuck it. They’re friends.
Two: He posts a selfie on his Insta in front of a half-painted wall, because Trent’s daughter is going through a phase right now where she’s decided she can only sleep in her room if the walls are bright neon green, and Colin is nothing if not eager to upset Trent’s sense of style. He’s made an agreement with his daughter that the room has to stay like this for at least a year, but Colin suspects he’ll cave immediately once she gets bored of it. The picture does not include Trent’s daughter, because privacy, but it very clearly includes Trent trying to get green paint out of his hair in the background.
Three: Trent, less than eager to receive fan abuse from above or barrages of questions in the press box, sits in the box with Rebecca, Keeley, and Higgins. The owner’s box. The box where wives and girlfriends sit, on occasion. He doesn’t wear a Hughes jersey, but he wears a shirt with the Welsh dragon on it, which is possibly even more telling. Colin grins so wide during the line-up that he ruins any pictures taken of the otherwise stoic team and proceeds to play an absolutely fantastic game.
Four: The football press learns to ignore them, the sensationalist press learns to hate them. They’re a mystery. They're Schrödinger’s couple.
Five: They’re happy.