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It’s not like it’s an uncommon idle thought for Ted to have, that he likes Trent Crimm’s voice. Trent’s just got that sort of voice, you know?
It’s not even the ‘posh’ accent—oh, sure, he sounds real fancy when you ain’t accustomed to it all, but that isn’t the appeal. No, it’s just—
His voice is… deep isn’t exactly the right word, even though it’s definitely not high, either. Masculine, but soft. Smooth, warm. Ted imagines it like one of those cologne commercials trying to describe a scent with mixed results: walnut writing desks and whiskey that’s smooth going down, or like, petrichor and wine and cedarwood, or.
Ted shakes off this train of thought. Trying to describe a sound with smell is a bit silly of him, isn’t it?
The point is, Trent’s voice is all—warm and soft and smooth and lilted but not polished, exactly, just. that sort of almost-rough-yet-so-so-smooth like velvet that drags under your fingers when you run your hand along it the wrong way.
He’d make, Ted muses, a heck of an audiobook narrator. Ted would buy that, that’s for sure.
Even when he’d spoken cuttingly, sharp tongue and sharper eyes, he’d had that lovely voice that almost, almost softened the blow. It’s a privilege to hear it now, then, in all sorts of varieties: softer and more hushed, or warm, trembling with amusement. Uncertain and hesitant, or quick and casual and laughing. Slow and warm and playful. Or excited, earnest, rambling quick and clever and without reservation.
Yes, Trent’s voice was very, very nice. Ted could listen to him talk all day.
This is what Ted is thinking, idly—and again, it is something that has crossed Ted’s mind often enough, particularly whenever Trent opened his pretty mouth—now where did that come from—when Trent is telling him about a book he’d read recently. (Ted had asked, and Trent had started out hesitant, but when Ted had only listened, had morphed into a near rant, gesturing with his glasses and all.)
Here is what Ted means to say: “Wow! That sounds real interesting! What was the author’s name again?” Because it does, and Trent sounds so passionate, and Ted’s wondering if he can look up an audiobook later, even if it won’t be as nice as Trent’s voice.
Here is what Ted is thinking: Wow. I could listen to you talk for ages.
Unfortunately, it seems somewhere in the pipeline from his mouth to the ol’ noggin, the two got criss-crossed.
Trent—flushes, a little pink rising to his cheeks in a way that is entirely unfamiliar and also entirely delightful, if Ted wasn’t pretty sure his were matching.
“What?” Trent says (and even that one syllable sounds so nice—not helping, noggin!) and while he sounds incredulous, it’s the sort that’s almost pleased, even shyly so, rather than sharp.
Ted scrambles a little. “Oh, you know,” he says, desperately trying to sound casual, “You got one of them narrator voices, haha,” why is he playing up his accent, oh my god, “probably comes with the cool-cat writer territory, huh?” What!!!! “Guess the English thing helps?” NO!!!!! “Ha. Um. Anyway.” Ted hasn’t failed a paragraph so badly since eighth grade English. “What was that book you were talkin’ about again?”
Trent’s flush has not gone away. “Um?” he says, slightly more high-pitched than usual but still that velvet and lilies and rain and whiskey and whatever the fuck Ted had been thinking earlier voice, sonorous and warm even in his confusion, “Thank you?”
He sounds uncertain. A little flustered, confused. The tiniest part of Ted wants to grab his shoulders and shake him, shouting take the compliment! You have a wonderful voice! A slightly larger part of him wonders what Trent’s singing voice sounds like, and how nice it would be to hear. The rest of him is kicking the crap out of those first two parts shouting SHUT UP!!!!
“I gotta go,” Ted blurts out, only thankfully managing not to add water my dog or something equally ridiculous at the end. He has no idea why he’s panicking this hard (Trent’s voice is sexy lovely, that’s just true, there’s no reason to be weird about it, it’s called having ears) but he’d like it to stop, and he thinks that means he has to also stop looking at Trent’s wide brown eyes and that little flush on his cheeks and the little confused wrinkle over the handsome bridge of his nose.
Time to speed-walk away from his problems: the tried and true method!
“Wait!” Trent calls behind him, still quiet, still—everything, Ted’s really gotta stop thinking about it before he says something else stupid, but he stops anyway, lets Trent catch up, because Trent asked. And he’s not rude.
He turns and Trent—Trent pulls out a book, a worn and well-loved copy with a bookmark inside, and holds it out.
“The book,” he says, a little breathlessly. “You can, um, you can borrow it.”
Ted looks down at the book—well-loved, treasured—and back up at Trent, earnest-eyed and lovely-voiced.
“You sure?” he says, because he knows books are important to Trent, knows it matters.
Trent smiles at him, a little thing, but heartbreakingly sincere, and says, “Of course I am, Ted.”
And then he—he hesitates. Pauses. But after apparently losing a debate with himself, adds quietly, “I know you prefer audiobooks.” Had he noticed that? Or had Ted mentioned it at some point, and he’d remembered? “I don’t have one of those, but…” he braces himself. “I could, ah. Read it to you sometime, if you liked.”
Ted openly stares at him for a moment, caught off-guard again.
Trent looks about as flustered as Ted had felt, a minute ago, still holding out the book.
Ted looks down at it for a moment, just to give himself a second without the distraction that is those big brown eyes staring into his soul, and then back to Trent.
“You know, Trent, I’d like that,” he says, managing to sound like his usual cheerful self instead of a schoolgirl being asked out by her crush.
Trent beams at him, that big crinkly-eyed grin Ted’s started seeing more and more lately, hands doing this happy little wave thing—still holding the book—that makes Ted think that frankly, it should be illegal for a grown adult man to be so adorable. Thankfully, this time, his little “inside thought” remains inside.
“Great,” Trent says, “Um, I’m free tonight. Or whenever. Well, not whenever, but most times.”
“Mm,” Ted agrees, not hiding his grin at all. “Hey, how about I walk you to your car?”
“Great!” Trent says again, enthusiastically, then seems to wince like he’s noticed he repeated himself.
“Great,” Ted echoes warmly, offering him a smile—softer and smaller than his usual grin, but maybe from a deeper sort of place.
Trent’s whole face softens, and he returns it.
Ted Lasso likes my voice, Trent thinks to himself a little dizzily. Ted had said he liked Trent’s voice, and then he’d gotten a bit flustered about it. Ted. As if Ted were the one with the ridiculous schoolgirl crush instead of Trent.
(Trent liked Ted's voice, too, truth be told, but he hadn't had the courage to say that.)
He almost couldn’t believe his own boldness, offering that, offering to read to him, almost like a date even if it wasn’t at all, really, but Ted had accepted and—Trent doesn’t even know what to think, doesn’t know how he’s feeling, only that he’s feeling a lot of it.
Still, though, he keeps circling back to the same thing:
Ted likes the sound of my voice.
He melts a little at the thought.