Archive of Our Own

“Oi, Dani! Get over here, you’re leaving me wide open.”

“Tartt! He’s on the opposite team, you prick, you’re not meant to be helping him.”

After all his years covering AFC Richmond, getting to watch the team train doesn’t spark quite the same excitement in Trent that it used to. Especially not now that he’s sat out in the stands every day, quiet and utterly un-noticeable now he’s not here with an interview to chase or an angle to prod.

When he came to interview Ted during that first season, it was clear that things were going to be different from Cartrick’s days. At the time he’d chalked it up to Ted’s inexperience: training is training, and there’s only so many ways you can stir up the same set of drills before it stops being interesting and starts being ineffective. But two weeks into his stint at the club and Trent is starting to think he might’ve been wrong.

Because this session is certainly not conventional, and neither of the Americans are running it. They’re both sitting on the sidelines, talking quietly to each other and cheering the players on while Roy Kent referees one of the most ridiculous games of five-a-side that Trent has ever seen.

“Sorry, Coach,” Tartt and Rojas call out in unison, grinning at each other.

It’s just, they seem to be having fun. Is it meant to be fun?

It’s like that everywhere he looks. He goes into the gym, the boys are blasting music and joking around while they spot each other. Every afternoon, Trent sits at his desk and listens to them all leave, chatting about what they’re doing (usually together) that evening. There’s a weekly movie night that the entire team attends, even the kitman, even Roy, and he doesn’t say a word of complaint. Ted brings Rebecca biscuits every morning, and if he’s late with them she comes down to the office to ask what the hold-up is. He and Beard swap sandwiches every Tuesday, but so far Trent has seen them both bring the same sandwich two weeks running.

He's heard teams say they’re like family countless times before, but this is the first time he thinks they might actually mean it. And Trent, with his awkward questions and scrappy notebook, feels like an unwelcome interloper.

“So they’re not giving you anything useful?” his editor asks one evening, when Trent is sitting with his feet on the desk and his phone on speaker in a blessedly empty office because it seems a better choice than going back to his depressingly empty house.

He leans back and runs a hand over his face. “No, they are. I just… feel like I’m not quite part of it, you know? Like maybe I’m missing a trick.”

“You’re not there to be part of it, Crimm, you’re there to write a book about it.”

“Right, sure. I know that.” He’s not sure why he called her, anyway. You can’t exactly complain about your feelings to a person whose only concern is that the book gets done. He should’ve called a friend. Why doesn’t he have any friends to call?

Well, he knows why. You spend two decades tearing people apart and sticking your name in the by-line with a smile, can’t act surprised when they stop returning your calls.

*

He doesn’t necessarily need to watch training every day, but he’s here to follow the team and he can’t exactly do that by staying back in a silent office, so every day he finds himself sitting near the back of the stands and tries his best to capture this picture of what a team can look like. Of what Ted Lasso can make a team look like.

Normally, Trent heads back inside once the players start doing their cool-downs. It gives him a moment’s peace before they all come bustling into the locker room, before the coaches start enthusiastically discussing strategy and weak spots and ‘was Jamie looking a little slower today?’ (he was). Days like this, though, when he’s not got his daughter to rush home for… after his first few weeks he finds it’s getting harder and harder to leave.

They’d been doing footwork drills this afternoon, and there are balls strewn all over the pitch which the kitman won’t get to for at least another hour. Trent looks at them, and he looks at the players slowly filtering back inside, and he looks at the clean white converse he’s wearing and for the first time in over thirty years he wants –

He just wants.  

He waits until everyone has gone inside, and then he waits some more, and when he’s completely sure he’s alone he runs down the steps and hops the fence separating the stands from the training pitch.

Trent Crimm, shoes already caked in mud, kicks a football up onto his knee, and he huffs out a laugh despite himself.

*

“Oh hey, Trent! We thought you’d called it a day.”

Trent holds up the mug of coffee that he’d grabbed as an alibi just before returning to the office, and he returns Ted’s smile (why is the man always bloody smiling?) “And miss the thrill of watching you all do paperwork? Never.”

As much as Trent’s head is spinning, life, as always, must go on. He sits down and opens up his laptop, shoving his hair back into a ponytail with the hairband he keeps around his wrist. With the whole club buzzing with excitement over Zava’s imminent arrival, Trent is trying to get through his long list of background reading on the man before he actually gets here and starts eating up everyone’s time.

He manages twenty minutes of solid focus before Roy Kent appears in the doorway, holding a tablet out to Ted. “Posters for Zava,” he explains, as Ted hops up from his desk to take it off him. “Rebecca wants your sign-off on them by tonight.”

“Yes sir-ee,” Ted says with a thumbs up, apparently not noticing how very fucking weird it is that the entire time, Roy doesn’t even glance at him.

What’s weirder is that he’s not looking at Ted because he’s been staring straight at Trent since he walked through the door.

Trent slides his glasses off and shrugs in a way that he hopes seems nonchalant and not panicky, and he holds Roy’s gaze until he gives up and turns away to his desk.

This could be the end of it, but of course once Roy is seated he spins his chair around to face the room, and this time he is looking at Ted. “Do you know,” he says, glancing at the window that looks out into the weights room, “me and Jamie are the only academy kids on this team.”

Trent did know that, of course, but Roy isn’t asking him. He’s asking Ted, who blinks, puts on a passive smile that says ‘I have no idea what’s going on’, and turns to Beard.

When Beard just pulls a face, Ted turns back to Roy, still smiling, and shakes his head. “Yeah, I don’t know what that means.”

“When I was a little kid,” Roy starts instead of answering. “Sometimes the coaches would let us go watch the older kids’ matches. As a treat, like.”

“Ooh, fun,” Ted cuts in, that blank expression still on his face. He shuts up when Roy glares at him, waves for him to continue.

“And this one time, I don’t remember what team they were playing, but there was this kid. Skinny, black hair, didn’t stop scowling the entire game. One of my mates said he reminded him of me.” He smirks, glances so quickly at Trent that it’s almost unnoticeable. “Didn’t see it, personally, but who cares. But the reason I remember that kid is that he was fast. Really fucking fast, it made up for how shit he was at everything else and then some.”

Southampton. The team that Roy doesn’t remember was Southampton.

Nice view of the pitch, from Rebecca’s office. Trent feels like an idiot.

“Well,” Trent says, tapping his glasses against his chin, “he can’t have been that bad, to have been on an academy team.”

Roy turns to him and glares. “No, he was definitely shit. I was ten and I could see that he was shit.” He doesn’t turn back to Ted this time, just stays looking at Trent. “The other team came back, next season, but I never saw that kid again.”

After a few moments leaving that to hang in silence, Roy looks back at Ted. “Point is, there’s a lot of expectations put on those kids. A lot of pressure. Not everyone has the guts to make it.”

Trent raises an eyebrow at that. “Or the will,” he adds, which earns him another glare.

“What teenage boy doesn’t want to be a footballer?”

“Have you asked every single one of them?”

Roy just keeps glaring, his breath heavy, and Trent wants to look away but he’s scared of what he’ll see in the other coaches’ faces.

Ted clears his throat like he’s about to say something, so to stop him Trent blurts out “Roy, can I have a word in private?”

*

The boot room door slams shut behind them and Roy turns on Trent, backing him into the corner. It feels almost like a follow-up to their talk a couple of weeks ago, like maybe Roy didn’t finish the job last time and like this time he actually will punch Trent in the face.

“Why’d you quit, Crimm, you were good,” he growls, stepping even closer into Trent’s space.

He doesn’t feel as scared, this time. “Thought you said I was shit,” he says with a smirk.

“Fuck off, you still could’ve made it –” you’re not wrong, thinks Trent, “—So why’d you quit?”

“Maybe I didn’t have the guts.”

Roy grabs the lapels of his jacket, and Trent braces himself for god knows what, for a headbutt or a fist to his jaw or a kick in the shin, but nothing comes. Instead, he feels chapped lips crash against his own, feels stubble scratching against his skin.

Sure, why not. This day is weird e-fucking-nough already. Trent loops one arm around Roy’s solid waist to pull him closer, and snakes the other one up over his shoulders to grip his hair. There’s a low moan, which is not a sound that Trent ever expected to hear out of Roy Kent, and he finds himself being backed further into the shelves until he stumbles back onto the bench, Roy a steady weight on top of him.

They continue like that for a few minutes, or maybe a few years, until a boot clatters to the ground and bursts their bubble.

They spring apart, both glancing rapidly around the room as if they’re actually looking for something and not just stood there flushed and panting and half hard, and then Roy points at Will the kit man and the door behind him and yells “OUT” so fiercely that it makes him flinch, drop the other boot, and scurry out the room.

When the door shuts, Roy looks back at Trent like he wants to eat him alive, but instead he just shakes his head with a smile and says “fuck, Crimm.”

Trent flops back onto the bench and runs a hand over his face. “Quite.”

Roy sits down carefully beside him. “I’m not gay, or bi, or whatever you’re thinking right now. Not that there’s anything –”

“—wrong with it, right.” He hadn’t been thinking anything, actually, not beyond ‘there is an objectively very attractive footballer kissing me right now’, and ‘he’s really fucking good at this’, and ‘fuck, I hadn’t realised what a long time it’s been’. “I am gay, though. Just – for the record.”

Roy bumps a shoulder against Trent’s. “That why you quit?”

He thinks of coaches screaming at him, of six-hour long days training with boys who refused to say a word to him, of coming home each night and having to hold back exhausted tears in front of his father, of university acceptance letters that he was too embarrassed to show anybody. He looks at Roy and shrugs. “Part of it, I suppose.”

“Might’ve been more fun to hate you from the opposite end of a pitch than the other side of an article, Crimm.”

“Well, I never hated you. So.”

Roy smiles again, stays pressed against Trent’s side. “Oh fuck off, you prick.”

Trent glances down at his watch and grimaces. “I actually should,” he says, getting up and adjusting his trousers. “But Roy? Could you – not tell anyone, maybe.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“No, I mean – about me. Before. I’d prefer not to have that particular failure hanging over me here.”

Roy rolls his eyes, but he nods. Trent nods in reply, then sticks his hands in his pockets and walks to the door.

“And Crimm—” Roy says, just as Trent’s about to pull the door open, “Come home with me tonight.”

It’s not a question, and even if it was Trent’s not sure he would say no. But it’s not a question, so Trent doesn’t need to answer, he just smiles and slips out the door.

*

Weirdly, not much changes.

They become friends, maybe. Tell jokes, bring each other coffee. Sometimes, when training is done for the day, Roy chucks a football up to Trent and they spend twenty minutes kicking it about like they’re not both too old for that now. And now, when Trent’s daughter is with his ex, he doesn’t have to go home alone.

Of course, Zava’s arrival turns everything on its head. It was always going to.

It starts before he even gets there. Some of the players are stood around rhapsodizing about Zava like any footballer would, when suddenly through the wall Trent hears McAdoo laugh and say “sounds a bit gay,” and he can’t stop himself from flinching.

Beard and Ted are stood talking at their whiteboard and don’t seem to have heard, but Trent hears a growl from behind him. Roy stands up and gives Trent a gentle punch on the arm, leaning over him to mutter “I’ll handle it,” and next thing he knows he’s hearing Roy shout “OI” from the next room.

(Later, when Roy’s got him pinned to the mattress, Trent thanks him. He sees the flicker of a smile before Roy buries his face in his neck, and growls “I’m still not fucking gay.”)

The next day, Trent arrives to an office that’s empty but for Ted Lasso leaning against his desk holding a small pink box that smells heavenly.

“Cookies for Crimm,” Ted greets with a tired smile, pressing the box into Trent’s hands.

Trent raises an eyebrow. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m gonna be honest, Trent, these are apology cookies.” He sighs, runs a hand over his perpetually neat hair. “What happened yesterday shouldn’t’ve gone on under my watch, and I’m sorry I didn’t put a stop to it.”

“Have you been up all night worrying about one silly little comment? Roy handled it, and even that…” Trent huffs a laugh, shaking his head. “It wasn’t directed at me, Ted, and I’ve taken much worse to my face.”

“I’m not sure that makes it okay. I mean hell, Trent, ‘til yesterday I didn’t even know you were – but I look at those guys out there, and I mean statistically – well, you know. I just hate to think one of them might be sufferin’ in silence ‘cause I didn’t clock it quick enough to shut it down.”

Christ, this man cares far too much for his own good. Trent’s always wondered how he’s managed to get so far without the world chewing him up and spitting him out.

“It’s not on you.” Trent smiles, reaches forward to give Ted an awkward pat on the arm. “But thank you.”

Ted gives him a smile in return, but the tension still hasn’t left his shoulders. His eyes flit nervously around the room, at Beard and Roy’s still empty desks.

“Ooh boy,” he says, staring hard up at one of the ceiling tiles and decidedly not at Trent. “Now that that’s outta the way, me and Coach wanted to check in on this whole –” he waves between Trent’s desk and Roy’s “—situation.”

Ah.

Well, that didn’t last long. If Beard is somewhere right now talking to Roy, then he can metaphorically kiss the whole situation goodbye. Shame, really. He’d quite enjoyed having a hobby.

Ted still isn’t looking at him.

“Look, Trent, we’re all grown-ups here, and if you’re both happy then I am over the moon,” Funny, Trent thinks, he doesn’t sound it. He sounds like he can barely stomach the thought. But, and there’s always a but – “—but I need your word that there’s nothing, well, nothing transactional going on.”

Trent’s blood runs cold. He stares straight at Ted, silently willing him to meet his eyes, but it’s no use because when he does all that’s there is the same exhaustion as before.

Trent had been officially married for eight years, but he’d spent the past fifteen with a ring on his finger because, honestly, it had just seemed easier. Fewer questions about what a fag like him was doing in sports journalism, fewer come-ons hoping to get a story killed or a better review written, fewer accusations of sleeping with sources to get them to talk. He knew that losing his marriage meant losing his safety net, but he’d thought – he’d hoped – that Ted was different.

So much for seeing the best in people.

He wants to shout, he wants to grab Ted and shake him, wants to throw those stupid biscuits right across the room. But that’s not who he is, and this stupid fucking book feels important to him, so he can’t give up now.

“It’s not like that,” he says, quietly, and then he turns on his heel and strides out the room.

*

“It’s all fucked, now that it’s like, a thing,” grunts Roy, later. “They don’t even know what they’re fucking – fuck, Crimm – talking about.”

Trent, more focused on the task at hand than on Roy’s venting, figures it’s best to just go along with it. “Right.”

“’Cause it’s not a thing, it’s just – a thing.”

“Sure.”

“’Cause I’m still in love with Keeley.”

“Right.”

“And you’re in love with Ted.”

“Right.”

*

Wait, what?

*

There’s more biscuits on his desk the next morning. Trent throws them in the bin.

*

But then there’s more the day after, and the next, and after a week Trent gives in and just eats the damn biscuits. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ted beaming in his direction.

He also sees Roy roll his eyes before tossing a crumpled up post-it at his head, and he manages to catch it and toss it back before it gets caught in his hair. And he sees the smile drop off Ted’s face, his head snap back to his laptop screen.

Trent’s too distracted by that to catch the next post-it that Roy throws at him.

Things go pretty much back to normal after that. Zava arrives, Trent doesn’t see the fuss, and the team starts winning. And they just. Keep winning.

But it’s not the team that’s winning, is it, it’s Zava. Hell of a book that’ll make, he can see it now: ‘And then Zava scored again. And again. And again.’ On the other hand, the win streak has got Roy in a fantastic mood, so Trent can’t really complain.

And then on a rainy night he walks out of Sam’s new restaurant and everything goes to shit again.

When Trent was in his twenties, a reliable source gave him enough information to out a retired star player from one of the top premier league teams. There’s no question as to why the source came to him: only a few years into his career, and Trent had already gained a reputation for being honest to the point of cruelty. He’d spent two days barely sleeping while he agonised over what to do, wrote and deleted countless article drafts, and in the end he just dropped the information onto his editors desk and said he could do whatever he wanted with it, so long as it wasn’t Trent who had to write it.

He’s always wondered what might have happened if he hadn’t said a word. Or if he’d used the opportunity to write something a bit kinder.

The second his eyes land on Colin in that alley, the journalist in his head starts spinning up headlines, starts drafting an email to his former editor at The Independent. It’s screaming at him that this is not a scoop that can wait a year to be published with the book, it needs to be printed now, before someone else, someone less sympathetic, gets there first.

But then, he’d thought that after speaking to Nate Shelley, too.

Trent gets out his phone, opens his email app, curses himself, and shuts it again. Instead, thumb hovering over a contact name, he makes sure Colin’s out of earshot and presses call.

As soon as the call gets picked up, he bites out “I’m heading to your flat, meet me there ASAP.”

There’s several seconds of static, and Trent hears someone shuffling through a crowd and the swinging of a door. “Well, hey, Trent Crimm. You sure you got the right number?”

“Quite sure, Ted. I’ll see you in ten,” he says, and hangs up.

It’s twenty minutes before a flustered Ted shows up, hair falling in front of his wide eyes. He shakes his head at Trent, waiting for an explanation. Trent just nods at the door. “Inside.”

He finds himself standing in the middle of Ted’s bare living room, arms crossed as he watches the man pace back and forth in front of him. He can see Ted’s hands shaking through his pockets, and cringes internally that he’s probably the cause of that.

“Look, Trent, I appreciate ya,” Ted starts, his words rushed, “but this better be important, ‘cause I actually had plans.”

Ah. Rebecca’s friend, the one who’d shown up and almost immediately made a beeline for Ted. Trent raises an eyebrow. “So did I.”

That stops Ted in his tracks, makes him blink at Trent while his face slowly flushes pink. “Right. Right, uh –” he scratches his head and stares at a spot on the floor, still blinking far too much. “Shoot, is everything okay with Roy?”

Trent thinks of the text that’s been sitting unread on his phone since he left the party. “Roy’s fine.” Roy could be better than fine, right now, if Trent hadn’t suddenly decided to develop a fucking – moral compass, or something. “Sit down, Ted, I need to talk about one of your players.”

“Huh?”

“It seems you were right. About statistics.”

He waits a moment for that one to tick over in Ted’s (probably slightly drunk) head. When it does, he sees Ted’s jaw tighten, sees his eyes search to meet Trent’s.

“Colin?”

Trent just nods.

“Is he – is he okay?”

Ted Lasso is a good man, Trent knows this. He cares about people, he cares about his team. Right now, Trent kind of hates him for it.

He takes a slow breath in. “He was careless. And he’s lucky it was only me who saw.”

“Would’ve been luckier if it wasn’t a reporter,” Ted mutters, and Trent feels like he’s been hit.

“What exactly is your problem with me, Coach Lasso?” He squats down so that he’s level with Ted, right up in his face so that the man has no choice but to look at him. “Because I used to think we were friends.”

Ted, unsurprisingly, just blinks again. And again. And the two of them just keep sitting there in silence, staring at each other.

“I’ve not been fair to you,” he replies eventually, “Have I?”

Trent shakes his head.

“It’s just, shit, Trent, it’s just been a lot, havin’ you at the club full time. And then your thing with Roy just totally blindsided me, and I know that’s not fair to either of ya ‘cause y’all are quite free to love whoever you want –” Trent wants to cut in with a protest, because for fuck’s sake it’s not like that, but Ted is on a roll “—and then I find out my wife – my ex-wife’s datin’ our old marriage counsellor, and now there’s Colin…” He sighs, runs his hands through his already mussed-up hair. “It’s just a lot, okay? It’s been a lot.”

It's hard not to read anything into the fact that three of those four things are Trent’s fault. But he can’t abandon the book, not now, and he’s not gonna let Ted’s icky feelings about him and Roy dictate who he can and cannot fuck. But Colin…

“I can talk to Colin. Remind him to be more discreet,” he offers quietly. “Might be easier coming from someone that doesn’t work for the club.”

“He’s just a kid, I don’t wanna tell him to hide if he doesn’t want to. Lord knows my twenties would’ve been a lot easier if someone’d just told me it’s okay to be me.”

Trent can’t imagine anyone being able to stop Ted from being exactly who he is, but he knows he’s right. “Mine too.” He sighs. “So I’ll just talk to him. See what he wants to do, and make a plan. Remind him that everyone’s still in his corner.”

*

“I can’t just – I can’t just come right out and ask him, though, he’d lie.”

“Anyone ever told you you think too much?” Trent is sitting on the end of his bed trying very hard not to think too much, but he can’t help it. It’s just who he is. Roy is glaring up at him from between his legs, though, so he tries to re-focus on not thinking.

“Every day of my life. But I’m serious – I need him to know I’m safe to talk to, without – Roy, listen to me – without making it obvious. ”

“You actually want me to stop?” So maybe this wasn’t the best opportunity to talk. Roy pulls away and rests his head back on Trent’s thigh. “I don’t fucking know, Crimm, I don’t get why you can’t just tell him you’re gay too.”

“Because then he’ll know that I know something, and he won’t trust me.”

“You want him to think he’s finding out by accident.”

“Exactly.”

“So just kiss a man in front of him, it’s not that deep.”

Trent nudges Roy’s hip with his foot. “You offering?”

“Absolutely fucking not.”

“I’m not sure I know anyone else.”

“You’re still on good terms with your ex, right?”

“Oh, fuck you,” Trent says, grabbing Roy’s shirt and tugging him onto the bed with him.

Roy grins. “That’s more fucking like it.”

*

“So you’re really not going to tell me why I’m helping you.”

It’s a couple of days after the party, and Trent is leaning back against his ex, Russell’s, big ugly SUV. Russell is towering over him, one hand placed beside his head on the car, close enough that if Trent was still twenty-four years old he’d be tempted to lean his head against that strong arm. He’s got a light hold on the bottom of Russell’s suit jacket, and he’s been in this exact position a million times before and it all just feels far too easy.

“Nope,” he replies with a smirk. “You owe me.”

Russell rolls his eyes. “You know eventually you are going to run out of favours to call in, and then who will you call when you want to make that gaffer you’re obsessed with jealous?”

“Nice try, but that’s not it.” And he’s not obsessed with Ted, what? “And you, my friend, will owe me for life.”

“Not sure the vows said ‘in sickness, health, and divorce’.”

“And yet here you are,” he says with a smile.

“Here I am.”

Trent spies an orange lamborghini struggling to make its way into the car park, so he hisses “now” and tugs on Russell’s suit jacket to bring him closer.

And still, it’s too easy, Christ. Trent’s missed this. Russell steps into his space, close enough that their bodies are almost flush, and he moves his free hand to tightly grip Trent’s waist. He still smells of the same aftershave that Trent started buying him when he was thirty, and he still tastes like toothpaste and chocolate and earl grey tea, and Trent can’t help but smile into the kiss.

They kiss lazily for a while, until Trent feels the car shift slightly and looks up to see that the lamborghini has bumped into the front.

He pulls back and smiles up at Russell, giving him a pat on the chest. “Thanks, darling. I’ll see you Monday.”

“Trent, my car –”

Trent has already turned and started ambling towards the club. “Love you, bye!” he calls back with a wave, and he can feel the eyeroll behind his back.

“Yeah, yeah. Love you too.”

*

Roy puts Trent’s morning cup of coffee down on his desk with slightly more force than usual.

“That was really fucking weird,” he grunts.

Trent leans back in his chair and smirks. “Were you spying on me? You cad.”

“I was expecting him to be a prick, but he was –“

“Nice?” Trent suggests, “practically perfect in every way? Everyone loves Russell, I wouldn’t’ve been his best friend for twenty years if he was a prick.”

Roy squints. “So why’d you split?”

It’s a lot easier to feel blasé about the end of his marriage now that he’s three years out of it. Had Roy asked him even just a year and a half ago, Trent would probably have struggled not to cry. Now, though, he feels nothing at all, so he just shrugs like it’s the most boring story in the world.

“Why’d you and Keeley split?”

“That’s none of your fucking business.”

Trent slides his glasses on. “Precisely,” he answers, and turns back to his desk.

Nothing happens the whole day, but Trent still spends it feeling tense with anticipation. Every now and then he sees Colin glance at him awkwardly, but he’s always surrounded by his teammates and never once attempts to talk. So Trent tries to act like everything is normal. He hovers in the coaches’ office, scribbles notes in shorthand while they talk. He wanders round the club, looking for any files or records or photos he could use for the book that he might have missed. He watches Ted, watches how quickly his forced smile drops when he thinks no one is looking. Wonders why nobody else seems to have noticed how tired he looks.

(“Yeah, sure, he’s acting weird. Now can we ban fucking Ted talk while I’m fucking you, Crimm.”)

The next morning, he arrives at the club early and Colin is stood outside the door waiting for him, a reusable coffee cup in hand.

“Um, I didn’t know how you liked your coffee,” he says in lieu of a greeting, “so I brought you tea, ‘cause I figure everyone likes tea. Can we talk?”

Trent does not like tea. He smiles politely anyway and accepts the cup. “’Course we can,” he replies. “In the office?”

“The press room, maybe? It’s… quieter.”

It is quieter, which shouldn’t feel like a surprise. Trent hasn’t been back in there since last season, and he’s never been in there when it’s not packed with journalists. He makes sure that the door is firmly shut and then pulls a chair round to face the one Colin’s sat in.

What now? He wishes there were a guidebook for this.

“So, Colin.” He rests his hands on his knees and starts drumming a random pattern. Better that than let them start shaking. “How can I help?”

Colin stays quiet a moment, eyes darting round the room, then asks: “who was that guy you were with, yesterday?”

Trent has been trying, since he came up with this plan, to work out what the best answer would be. What story he should spin, to make the kid comfortable. He’s far too old to have a boyfriend, and a made up ‘partner’ or ‘husband’ would require a lot more upkeep than something that sounded less… committed. He’s always cringed at the word ‘lover’, but then he’s left with a whole lot of nothing.

He decides to go with the truth.

“My ex-husband,” he says, and when Colin opens his mouth to ask more, he just shakes his head with a smile. “It’s complicated.”

“So you’re gay, like.”

Trent nods.

“Oh.”

Again, he’s not quite sure what he’s meant to do or say next. He takes a sip of the tea and tries to hide his grimace at the taste, and he leans back and watches Colin carefully.

“I, uh, I am too.”

“I see.”

Colin lets out a huff of laughter. “Never said that out loud before. I’m gay.” He starts laughing properly, chest heaving with it, until the laughs almost start to sound like sobs. He looks at Trent with a desperate sort of smile. “What the fuck do I do now?”

*

It’s still early by the time he’s done talking to Colin, so Trent isn’t surprised to see the office lights are still off. He is surprised to see Ted sitting there alone in the dark, staring blankly at the wall. Ted and Beard walk to the club together pretty much every morning, so it’s almost jarring to see one there without the other.

Ted doesn’t seem to notice him come in, so he goes up to the divide between the two offices and knocks on the door frame.

“Morning, Coach Lasso,” he greets, keeping his voice soft.

Ted turns to look up at him, and puts on a half-hearted attempt at a smile. “Oh, hey, Trent. Didn’t see ya there.”

Trent pulls his chair up beside Ted’s desk and sits. “I spoke to Colin. Think the situation’s handled, now.”

“Thanks,” Ted says, with an even weaker smile. “I’m gonna be honest, Trent, I don’t really give two hoots about the Colin situation –”

Trent flinches, but he reckons he manages to pass it off as just an awkward blink.

“—I just never understood who a person loves has to be anyone’s business but their own, y’know.”

Oh. That’s actually almost… sweet?

“I agree,” Trent replies, crossing a leg over and leaning forwards on it. “But the tabloid press might beg to differ.”

“Then I sure am glad I had my best guy on the job.”

Ted looks like he wants to say more, but he just keeps staring at a point somewhere beyond Trent’s shoulder. They both sit there long enough that Trent starts wondering if he ought to go back to his desk, start writing the email to Keeley that he’s been drafting in his head since talking to Colin. He’s just about decided to get up when Ted takes a slow breath in.

“Y’know, people always used to say me and Michelle were like a fairy tale. She was the first girl I ever fell in love with, and I married her as soon as I could.”

In his last year at university, Trent was sitting at the bar in a student pub, reading, when a group of muddy rugby lads came jostling in to buy pints after a win. He used to sometimes cover sports for the student paper, so he knew enough about the team to know that the tall blond boy with the loud laugh was the team captain, though anyone could’ve guessed that from the way the other lads were orbiting around him. After they’d got their drinks, they all retreated to a large table at the back of the pub, and he remembers being relieved to be able to turn back to his book. When he got up to leave later that night, he remembers glancing over at that table and seeing the blond boy looking straight at him like he was the most fascinating thing in the world.

Point is, Trent spent the next twenty years trying to keep that look on the boy’s face. So he understands where Ted’s coming from.

Trent gives him a sympathetic smile. “Shame it’s rarely so simple.”

“It wasn’t even that simple back then,” Ted says, scrubbing a hand over his face. “’Cause I loved Michelle like crazy, but she wasn’t – she wasn’t the first person I ever fell in love with, if you catch my drift.”

No.

No.

Surely Trent would’ve – would’ve known, if –

Well, shit.

Trent must manage to keep his expression fairly neutral, because Ted doesn’t seem to notice that he’s on the verge of entering full on crisis mode. Filing for divorce kind of crisis – blowing up your career kind of crisis, and why? Just because it turns out he misjudged someone?

Ted jerks his head toward the desk opposite his, and oh. That almost makes sense, in a weird kind of way. “Me ‘n coach were best friends the moment we met. I thought we could be more,” he says, fondly, “but he never saw me that way. I’m tellin’ ya, Trent, it took a hell of a long time to get over that one.”

“And yet he followed you halfway round the world when your own wife didn’t.”

“Best friend a guy could ask for,” Ted shrugs. “And I’m grateful we never let anything get in the way of that. But I’ve been thinking, lately. I don’t know. I think it started off a bad habit of always wantin’ what I know I can’t have.”

And what do you want now, Coach Lasso?, Trent wants to ask, but he can’t. He knows he can’t. He is, after all, still a journalist, and he’s still writing a book about the team, and he’s still not really Ted’s friend.

He’s saved from trying to find something else to say by the overhead lights being flicked on. Ted starts, springs back in his seat and puts on a wide smile.

“Mornin’ Roy!” he greets.

“Hm,” Roy says in reply, and comes over to where they’re sitting to press a coffee cup into Trent’s hand. Ted quickly glances away.

*

They’re in Birmingham for an away game, and Trent is lying on one side of a giant hotel room bed staring at the ceiling when he hears Roy grumble sleepily from his side that “I dunno if this is helping either of us anymore.”

It’s the night after the match and the whole team had gone out to a bar to celebrate their draw. Keeley had left early with a man Trent hadn’t recognised, and before he knew it Roy was practically dragging him back to his hotel room. Not that Trent had complained.

Now, he turns his head on the pillow to look at Roy. “I hate to say it, Roy, but you’re the one who broke up with her. I’m not sure you have the right to be upset that she’s moving on.”

“Yeah, but knowing I shouldn’t be upset isn’t the same as not being upset, is it?”

“And you’ve realised it’s hypocritical to be mad that Keeley’s sleeping with other people when you are too, so – what? You want to stop so that you feel more justified in being hurt?”

“Fuck off, Crimm, you’re not a therapist.”

“I can leave any time you want, you just have to say.”

Roy says nothing.

“Yeah, I thought so.”

Roy turns on his side, shuffles up to rest his head on his hand. “It’s not like it’s helping you, either. Ted thinks you’re not available.”

“And like I keep telling you, I don’t care if Ted thinks I’m available or not. And nor does he.” Trent sighs. “Why does it have to be helpful, anyway? Can’t it just be fun?”

“He’s in love with you.”

Trent laughs at that one. Actually, properly, laughs. “I’m quite certain that he’s not.” People don’t fall in love with me. And I don’t fall in love with them.

Roy doesn’t smile. He just watches Trent quietly. “I won’t stop being your friend if you stop fucking me, Crimm. I mean, you’re still a prick, but I do actually –” he pauses, growls, before biting out “—Like you. As a person.”

In a few weeks, the season will be over, Trent’s book will be finished, and he’ll probably never have reason to see Roy again. He’s well aware that this friendship has an expiration date, so why not just play it out to the end?

He sits up, swings a leg over Roy’s hips to straddle him. “I can leave any time you want,” he repeats.

Roy pulls him down into a rough kiss.

*

The season goes on.

Colin comes out, and it sends waves through not just the world of football but the whole world of men’s sport. Trent hopes this means change for the better.

Ted keeps bringing him biscuits every morning. The dark circles under his eyes stay the same.

Roy keeps bringing him coffee. Trent keeps going home with him.

His daughter turns five and Trent absolutely does not cry over how fast she’s growing up.  

AFC Richmond does not, in fact, win the whole damn thing. Trent retreats from the club and all social obligations in favour of locking himself in his study while he finishes writing up a final draft of the book.

Turns out, writing a whole book is a lot harder than writing dozens of unrelated articles. It’s not like he doesn’t know what the thread holding everything together is: that he’s known from the start. That he’s known since he left a dimly lit Indian restaurant two seasons ago with more questions than answers.

What he can’t see is what the point of all of it is. Ted Lasso is a brilliant coach. A genius, even. Trent can write it on every line of every page and it still won’t change the fact that Richmond didn’t win. Who’s gonna care about Ted Lasso’s coaching style when Ted Lasso’s team fell right at the last hurdle?

Ted Lasso took a group of bitter self-obsessed twenty-somethings and turned them into a team. Ted Lasso gave his team space to stand up for what they believe in. Ted Lasso found a bloody kitman and, right or wrong, gave him a chance when no one else would. Ted Lasso made an angry old journalist turn his whole world upside down.

Okay, so maybe he’ll leave that last part out.

Ted Lasso does not concern himself with wins and losses, Trent writes, and neither should you.

*

His editor approves the final draft. Keeley Jones approves the final draft. The book is given cover art and a release date and it all starts to feel slightly terrifying. Most people at the club are sent pre-release copies towards the end of the off-season and he gets a smattering of compliments in response. Ted spends the whole three months of the off-season in Kansas and Trent doesn’t hear a single peep from him. Nobody does.

With the book out of his hands, Trent is left with a whole lot of nothing to do. He’ll probably get another book deal out of this, he should start coming up with pitches. But the thought of spending a full season following a different team around makes him feel queasy, and he cringes at the thought of writing anything more personal.

Instead, he uses the first prolonged break he’s had since finishing university to do absolutely nothing. He goes on a lot of walks. He eats a lot of ice cream. He takes his daughter to the zoo.

Trent is sitting by the river one glorious late July afternoon, lazily watching the boats go by, when he feels someone else sit down on his bench. He scowls, because he can see at least two empty benches from where he’s sitting, so why’d they have to come sit here, but then he turns to complain and it’s Ted Lasso smiling back at him.

“Roy wanted me to tell you, uh, what was it again,” Ted greets, patting his trouser pockets until he successfully locates a bright pink post-it. “He says that, uh, he meant what he said so stop being a – ahem – a prick, and come kick a flippin’ football with him.”

Trent raises an eyebrow. “He didn’t say flipping, did he.”

“No sir.” Ted puts the post-it away and smiles. “Hi Trent.”

“Hello, Coach Lasso.”

“Y’know, my friends call me Ted.”

Are we friends? “Did you read the book?”

Ted nods, then turns away from Trent to look out at the river. “You were much kinder to me in there than I deserve. So I wanna thank you for that.”

Trent can’t remember the last time he’d been told that his writing was kind. Or the last time he’d been told he was kind, full stop. The word fits uncomfortably in his mind, makes him want to mock Ted for his naivety, to pull up a hundred articles where he was anything but kind and shout look at who I am. “I don’t write fluff,” he replies instead.

Ted shrugs like he still doesn’t really believe him. “Can I tell you somethin’ fucked up, Trent? After you wrote that article about my panic attacks I liked you more.”

“Funny,” Trent says, dully. “I liked me a lot less.” Hated himself, actually. Still does. Sometimes it feels like everything he’s done since then has been to try make up for it, and it’s never fucking enough.

“That day we got promoted I saw you in the parking lot and I thought, well, there’s no way someone like you’s ever gonna want someone like me. But maybe we could finally be friends. And then you were actually at the club and I screwed it all up.”

He looks at Ted now, in the harsh afternoon light, and he wonders what the fuck he’s talking about. Because Trent is an awkward middle-aged divorcee who spent the last twenty years being mean to people for a living, and Ted – well, Ted just glows. Even when he was walking around last season tired and angry and careless it was hard to hate him, because anyone can see how desperately he still tries to be good. He makes Trent want to try to be good too. And –

“Fuck, I can’t believe Roy was right,” he mutters.

“What’s that?”

Trent has written far crueller articles than the last one he ever wrote, and not one of them caused a crisis of conscience. And he had never entertained the thought of leaving journalism, not when his husband asked him, not when it was the one thing that might’ve stopped his whole life from crumbling apart. It took Ted Lasso stumbling into his life for him to realise he didn’t like the person he’d become.

Trent is an awkward middle-aged divorcee who spent the last twenty years being mean to people for a living, and for the past three years he’s been running himself in circles trying to work out how to get Ted Lasso’s attention and keep it.

“Come home with me?” he asks, feeling desperate and pathetic and so so out of his depth.

Ted smiles, and he doesn’t say no.