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After Trent bursts through the double doors to bleed excitement all over Ted, he refuses to feel badly about it. It’s the natural result of a lifetime of self-containment. An inevitable reckoning, to finally spill over. It could be considered a celebration, honestly, tangible proof that he can still experience joy, if only he hadn’t seen something like judgment swimming briefly to the surface of Ted Lasso’s eyes.
Later, at his desk, when he still can’t stop thinking about it, he tries to write a journalistic retelling to make himself feel better. It’s an old trick that used to usually work.
“Crimm’s excitement for the team’s improvement was palpable and appropriate for the situation, but rendered embarrassing by the fact that he is so visibly in love with the team’s gaffer-” he rips up the paper and throws it in the bin.
He shakes his head. That’s not how emotions work. He knows that now, somewhat. He can’t ball them up when he doesn’t like them. The current edition of Trent expresses himself, sort of. A little. He shares his vulnerabilities, some of them, with people he trusts. Sometimes.
And then he spirals about it for 3-5 business days.
Ted sits in his office, bent over his phone. They’re the only two left aside from the cleaners. “Hey,” Trent says, approaching Ted before an earlier edition of himself can bark “goodnight” and run.
“Sport.” Up close, Ted looks tired. Trent fidgets with it, the urge to mother him. “Heading out?”
“Soon. Ted, I wanted to,” apologize, “mention that I was feeling a bit,” horrified, “weird about my,” meltdown, “excitement earlier, about total football. That’s still a bit new for me, you know. Letting it all hang out.” He frowns at the choice of words but stays resolutely leaning against Ted’s desk, like he belongs there as much as anyone else.
Ted wakes up, marginally. His undereyes are still shadowed but the irises brightens to pre-match hazel. “Looks like we both can’t stop thinking about that moment. You know, you actually made me realize how tired I am. Even the whole total football thing,” he scrubs a hand through his hair, charmingly disheveling it. Awful. “I couldn’t tell you why, I’m not even sure that it’s true, but it feels like a while since I really tried anything new. That rhymed. Been at least one football field sized period of time since I felt as excited as you did. Maybe even two. That was a callback to the true-new couplet.”
“Two football fields of time,” Trent says. “Wow.”
“Wow is right. Watching you get all bright eyed and bushy tailed,” Trent refuses to blush, “made me want to mainline your enthusiasm like an FDA approved drug.”
No. No, no, no- “I could try and give it to you,” he hears himself say, “if you like.” Ted’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline. Trent regrets being born. “That is, show you some new places. Take you to some of my favorite non-Crown and Anchor spots that you might find…exciting.” He bites the insides of his cheeks because it makes him look discerning instead of terrified. “What do you think?”
Ted slaps the desk and stands up. “Gosh dang it, it’s a Friday night, ain’t it? Then come on Miss Mabel, show me the town! Hold on, I’m just gonna change real quick,” he peels off his sweater, heaves on a denim jacket Trent didn’t even know he owned over his thin white undershirt, “gotta dress for the occasion, yeah?” He hikes up his chinos - navy today, less dorky than the khakis, a nightmare - and wiggles his belt like he wants to actually give Trent a heart attack. “To infinity and beyond, here we go now.”
Outside, beyond the stench of the locker room’s Lynx, Ted smells like Old Spice and coffee. He immediately starts to play with the radio as soon as they get in Trent’s car, fiddling with it until he connects with Trent’s phone. I Love You, Always Forever covered by Betty Who is playing. Ted makes his mouth as big as his face, a little boy hamming it up on Christmas morning.
“You know who did the original, don’tcha?”
“Obviously,” Trent scoffs. “Donna Lewis,” they say at the same time, and then Ted is scream-singing, “EXOTIC SWEETNESS! A MAGICAL TIME!”
He’s so bloody handsome, so funny, so stupid. Trent drives faster, trying to get away from the terrible mistake he’s made.
First Trent takes him to his favorite coffee shop, still open at night because the clientele are stay-up-all-night folks, young people and journalists and Beard, often, though not tonight. The place is jarringly well lit for evening; once he had taken a date here, and had that been a…choice. Trent had spent the entire cup of coffee tolerating his date transparently examining a pimple on Trent’s chin and asking him questions about his ex-wife, with not a single drop of alcohol to help him.
No pimples to be had tonight, and no judgment he could find, only delight in Ted’s eyes at his first sip of espresso.
“You know I’ve had these little guys poured into vanilla lattes and caramel macchiatos but I can’t say I’ve ever had one all on its own. Man, this is delicious. With the foam and everything? Tastes like a dream. And what do you do with this precious little cup of water here?”
He would not wipe the espresso foam from Ted’s mustache. He would not. “You drink it.”
“You drink it! Incredible. What a world.” He drinks the cold water and gives a full body shiver, bringing his knees briefly into contact with Trent’s. “I’m already filled with the spirit. Not of Jesus Christ necessarily, more of a Unitarian-feeling spirit, but definitely ready to take on the night either way.”
All Trent can do is watch him, sip his own macchiato (a real one, thank you) and wait for the light in Ted’s eyes to dim to a manageable level again. But that had been the point, hadn’t it? It doesn’t. Ted rambles happily about the first Starbucks in Kansas City, about a board game there where players had to wear a mouthpiece that made it difficult to pronounce words, which the Starbucks had to retire for obvious reasons. Ted mines the way the mouth piece would stretch the player’s mouth out, and Trent puts on his best, you’re being ridiculous face to obscure the I’m unreasonably turned on lurking just underneath. Time passes, they order more coffee, the light in Ted’s eyes never dims.
“You done with that?” Ted asks, interrupting his story about his first major dental procedure and pointing at Trent’s cup.
“Yes…?”
“Come on now,” Ted grabs Trent’s cup and tosses back the dregs. “What else you got for me, baby? We’re on a roll tonight!”
It’s a very specific, platonic use of the word baby that Ted’s employing, Trent firmly tells himself on the way to the next spot.
The next spot: a Swiss restaurant, very good but far too expensive to eat a casual meal, which is why they’re here for one food and one food only.
“Fondue!” Ted shouts, ruffling the waiters. “I haven’t had fondue since I took Henry to Melting Pot for winning a spelling bee. The winning word was gruyère. Nah, just kidding. Wouldn’t that have been cool? It was lettuce.”
“I take it you’ve never been to this restaurant?” Trent orders for them, studiously not enjoying the way Ted mouths ooh la la after he’s pronouncing the cheeses for their pot. “I probably should have checked first, given that the theme of our evening is new experiences…”
“Trent, you and I both know that I have not been to a beautiful Dutch restaurant at the end of a winding fairytale alley with sparkle lights hanging everywhere like fireflies and the most romantic soundtrack I ever heard in my dang life. What is that, a lute?”
“It’s Swiss,” Trent says, not blushing.
Ted gasps. “A Swiss lute?!”
“The restaurant.” He thinks about it, recalling his month at a music conservatory. “A Swiss lute would likely be a halszither.”
Ted looks impressed. “Halszither? I barely know her! Nah, that’s not true,” Ted manages to twinkle at both Trent and the arriving waiter simultaneously, “I’ve known her for three magical years and I like everything I know.”
Trent spears a piece of bread with his fondue fork before the waiter’s done setting it down.
Ted loves the fondue so much that he’s still talking about it on the walk to the sushi restaurant - the velvety consistency, the slight heat, the nutty, creamy flavor, the way the cheese paired with every single one of the breads and fruits and vegetables, the way each combination felt on his tongue in metaphorical football terms - the cornichon with the pumpernickel was a dead ringer for total football. He waxes poetic about Wisconsin cheddar, brushing Trent’s knuckles accidentally as they walk under a fine mist of rain and orange streetlights. Ted looks unfairly pretty in both, moisture and amber highlighting his skin. He laughs hard at something Trent said that certainly wasn’t all that funny and forget sushi, actually. Trent would like some alcohol. Now.
Ted whistles, admiring the inside of the speakeasy. “Quick sip before a sushi snack? I like the way you think, Trent Crimm. Why save a nightcap for the end of the night?” He strokes the back of the luxe bar seat which is either purple or red, the lighting is too low to tell. Trent has a quick question for himself, what the fuck is wrong with him? Why exactly is Trent showing him the most romantic places in the city while Ted is wearing a white t-shirt and tight pants? Does he want his father’s hypertension?
“So tell me,” Ted pokes Trent’s wrist, “what’s the most exciting drink on the menu?”
That’s safe territory, surely. “There’s a drink that genuinely excited me the first time I had it, in a funny sort of way. At first I thought it was odd…”
Ted interrupts him with a nudge.
“Kind of like how you felt when you met me?”
Trent inhales a handful of nuts. “Funny. So then what else do you have in common with a pickle back?”
Ted’s face couldn’t be any more cartoonish if he tried, gasping and throwing a hand to his heart, yet the stupid romantic lighting of the place makes him look unbearably sexy. Trent thinks back to the streetlights. He’s starting to suspect it’s not the lighting’s fault.
“Pickle back! That’s an American drink, ain’t it!”
Trent shrugs. “Couldn’t say, though I wouldn’t be surprised. I first had one in London, and from what I understand our bars do like to pilfer yours for ideas, though don’t tell the bartenders here I said so.”
A familiar looking bartender approaches, looks Trent up and down like he remembers him from his last date here, or possibly, less likely, like he wants to take him home.
Ted looks between the two of them with pinball eyes. “Excuse me,” he says, “my exciting date and I would like two of your finest pickle backs, an idea which you definitely did not steal from America.”
Date , the bartender mouths at Trent, pouring the shots. Trent shakes his head vigorously. Instead of doing the polite thing of looking away or pretending to be interested in the menu, Ted nods dramatically.
“Are we having a bobble head competition because I actually organized and competed in one of those my senior year of college and though I didn’t take home gold, I did receive Miss Congeniality-”
“Your drinks,” the bartender drawls. He nudges a pickle juice and a whiskey toward Ted. “You’re the most attractive man he’s ever brought here by far . Just thought you should know,” and Trent is left with the giggliest, most straight-ally-who’s-overly-comfortable-with-gay-implications version of Ted he’s ever had the misfortune of dealing with.
“He just thought you should know,” Ted chirps, and throws back the shots.
They end up having two more beers each and truffle fries and oysters - not on purpose, not romantically - but the happy hour here is too good to pass up. Ted tells him all about the first time he ate truffle oil at a restaurant in Kansas City, he thought “angels had cried on his macaroni and cheese.” Trent tells him about the time he got roped into actual truffle hunting for a story. Ted is fixated on the truffle pig and what the truffle pig’s name was, and if it might have been Truffle Peppa Pig. It’s all typical fodder for your average conversation with Ted, and Trent is almost allowed to forget his needy, pining soul until Ted turns thoughtful.
“Gotta say, Trent,” he slurps an oyster, “this fancy fella tour of yours was just the ticket. I’m feeling loads better than I was before.”
“Yeah? Good. What was that about, anyway? Missing your family? Understandable, if so.”
“No, I mean, yeah, but would you think I was a terrible person if I said there was another reason?”
You could commit arson right now with this votive candle and I’d admire how the firelight catches the auburn in your hair. “Depends.”
“Yeah. It has to do with a, I don’t think you could quite call it a date. An evening I had recently with a lady friend.”
Trent considers the votive candle, and how fast the bar might catch fire if he turned it over. “Mm. Go on.”
“Well, she told me the morning after… you know, after after- ”
“Got it.”
“-that she wouldn’t go out on a real date with me, because I was a mess. And you wanna know the real kicker? I had to talk myself into asking her out in the first place, had to convince myself that I was excited to go out with her, and then she turned me down. It was like my excitement was already kind of a ghost and then she sucked it straight into a Hoover and I had nothing left inside myself. That sounded very much like a sexual innuendo which I did not intend it to be, however now that I’m thinking on it, she and I did engage in a particular sexual act which that innuendo might fit-”
“Right, so you’re saying you feel a bit depressed about your romantic prospects, and you’re wondering if you’ll ever feel excited by them again.”
“Bingo, ringo. Or if they’ll feel excited by me. You know, sometimes I wonder if I wasn’t exciting enough for Sassy. But exciting can mean a lot of things, can’t it? Exciting can mean being the little spoon when you never get to be. I just heard myself talk and I’m realizing that does sound extremely boring.”
“Ted,” Trent dips a truffle fry in aioli to steady himself, “you’re many things, but I don’t think anyone can accuse you of being boring.”
Ted copies him, sword fighting Trent’s fry in the aioli cup. “And how about a mess?”
“Everyone’s a mess.” Then his brain glitches, it must have, because he smears aioli on his own cheek. “See?”
Ted’s face lights up with surprise and something warmer; it only grows hotter as Ted reaches up and swipes the sauce away. Ted sucks his finger and moans. “Mmm. Trent Crimm aioli, just like mama used to make. As a side note I would have loved to have made some sort of cream-based pun with your name but was unable to think of one quickly enough to use it before the end of this sentence, which is now.”
“You’ve got to slow down, Ted, Jesus. Sucking on your finger, cream-based puns…” He trails off. Now he’s done it, blatantly flirting with a straight Midwestern man. He’s a disaster. Ted would never.
Except then Ted is dragging his wet pointer finger across his lower lip and looking at Trent like he would. He snaps his fingers. “Crimm de Trenthe. It was right there waiting for me this whole time, just had to tease it out a little. You ever get that feeling, Trenthe?”
Trent feels like he’s going insane.
“Yep,” he says stupidly, and waves down the bartender for their tab. Don’t you dare, he tries to say to the bartender with his eyes, don’t you say anything else. He tries to pretend it’s three years ago and he’s got nothing but sharp edges to his heart and face.
“Hey,” the bartender asks Ted as Trent’s signing the bill, “if you were paying, where would you sign, the top or the bottom?”
Ted beams. “What type of pen is it?”
“We’re leaving,” Trent says, and grabs Ted’s arm.
“One last stop! One last stop!” Ted chants like a four year old in the middle of the street, jumping up and down where everyone can see them, and so Trent drags him to his favorite sushi place. It’s getting harder to ignore the way Ted’s body heat seems to flow off him in waves, keeping Trent warm despite the chilly walk.
The restaurant’s not as romantic as the speakeasy, not as platonic as the coffee shop, not as elegant as the Swiss one, but by far the most comfortable. He feels himself relaxing, finally, as he and Ted slide into a booth and Trent orders them his favorites, and a carafe of sake. They’re warm and smiling and talking about the team - safe, familiar - when the nigiri arrives, salmon, chu-toro, unagi, and two pieces of uni.
Ted touches the uni with the tip of a chopstick. “Love that color.”
“Uni is beautiful, isn’t it?” Trent eats a piece, tries not to be overcome with the creaminess, the saltiness, the flood of dopamine that he’s not sure who to thank for, Ted or the food. Between the coffee and the alcohol and the oysters and the uni and the company, Trent feels like he might be drugged.
“The most. Hey Trent,” Ted pops a piece of uni in his mouth. “What’s uni?”
Ted has no anecdotes to associate with uni, but ends up getting the answer he’s looking for - a sea urchin’s reproductive parts, an answer which Ted receives with far too much eyebrow waggling. It occurs to Trent that Ted’s not uncompromised, excusing himself to the bathroom and sitting back down on the same side of the booth as Trent with the excuse that the restaurant is too loud to hear for old ears like his. But he’s slouching into Trent, flushed, smiling dreamily, and the restaurant isn’t that loud.
Ted points at Trent with a chopstick.“Now there’s some titillating territory we haven’t explored yet.”
“Reproductive parts?”
“Well, dating.” Ted takes an innocent sip of sake. “Seems like quite the conversational omission on a night all about excitement.”
He’s going to throw himself in the hibachi fire two tables down. He’s in the fire, he’s dying in the fire. “Do you really find dating exciting? I find it excruciating. Recently, at least.” And if there’s a reason for that, if he’s too distracted comparing all his dates to Ted and then reprimanding himself for doing so, he doesn’t need to say it out loud.
“Come on, now.” Ted does the resting his chin on his hands move. “What’s the most exciting date you’ve ever been on?”
Trent can see the diverging paths in the wood of his mind: one answer, skydiving with an instructor he dated for approximately four days. Second answer, fucking in the kitchens of a restaurant with a famous chef who gave excellent head. But Ted’s intense attention is too overwhelming to say either, to form words at all. He eats the last piece of salmon to stall.
“I’ll go first,” Ted offers. “For me, it’s probably this one,” and then kisses Trent while he’s still chewing.
Ted shoots to standing. “I’m sorry.” He presses two fingers to his mouth. “I’m sorry about that.”
Trent swallows his food, yanks Ted’s arm to make him stumble back to sitting and shoves his lips back on Ted’s. That’s what it feels like, anyway, shoving himself into acting before he can think better of it, pushing his need to the forefront, for fucking once, grabbing Ted’s collar so that he won’t let go.
There doesn’t seem to be much risk of that, though. Ted’s breathing like he’s just run around the pitch.
Trent pulls away first. “Exciting enough for you?” he asks, and there must be something magnetic between them, something Trent can’t override with his better judgment, because he slides his hand up the inside of Ted’s thigh.
Ted hovers his hand above Trent’s like he wants him to go further, press down harder. Trent doesn’t do him the favor of helping him. He wants Ted to figure that out for himself.
“You know, for a journalist, you don’t really pay much attention,” Ted snaps, the closest to irritated with him that Trent’s ever seen him, clearly wanting more than what Trent’s giving. He’s too polite to ask for it, but the idea is possibly the most exciting one Trent’s encountered all year.
“Come on.” He throws what must be far too many bills on the table and pulls Ted up. “I want you to show me how messy you can get.”
He doesn’t know how they make it to Ted’s apartment, only that they do without a single wasted word between them. They’ve moved too fast, must have done, because the next thing Trent knows, they’re both naked in Ted’s bed. Ted’s right knee is slung over his shoulder and his left ball is sucked carefully into his mouth.
“Ted,” he imagines Ted’s cock is a microphone, “you’ve got to tell me if you don’t like something I’m doing. You’ll need to tell me because I’m not,” he tried to take a calming breath, “I’m usually not this, ah.”
“Excited?” Ted pants, smug despite his writhing. “You don’t need to worry about little old me.”
Trent gives him an admonishing lick. “If you’re fishing for a compliment right now I won’t give it,” a light bite, which has Ted arching off the bed. “So you’ll tell me to stop.”
“I will certainly not do that, thank you though.”
“Ted!”
“Ma’am!”
“Say you will.”
“Trent,” he peers down at him, “I’d be hard pressed to think of anything you could do down there that would at all give me the need to tell you to oh my god,” he yelps the second Trent gets a fingertip inside him.
Trent takes back his finger. “I assume that means stop.”
Ted full-body shivers and catapults himself off the bed. “No, it means hold your horses please and thank you,” he runs to the bathroom naked; the water turns on. He comes back holding a washcloth between his legs.
“That really shouldn’t look as sexy as it does.” Trent says, pushing him down. He rips the cloth away. “I should have known you’d be considerate,” he spreads Ted’s legs, “I should have known you’d be absolutely perfect,” and then he’s exactly where he wants to be, using his fingers to take Ted apart.
Ted’s panting and groaning and possibly overstimulated already when Trent presses the tip of his tongue to Ted’s hole.
He peers up to see Ted gasping like a fish, red as he’s ever seen him. “Stop?” Ted adamantly shakes his head no. “You’re sure?” He licks more firmly this time, reaches up a hand to pinch his nipple, and then Ted is coming, spilling over himself with a shout that tells Trent he’s as shocked as Trent is to watch his forty something year old body come untouched.
“Oh, good boy,” Trent croons, cringes instantly at his choice of words but Ted only groans more loudly. He brings a shaky hand to himself, touching the mess there as if he can’t quite believe it.
“I still want you to fuck me,” Ted says, low and gruff and his chest is all blotchy patches of blush and Trent can’t quite bring himself to be a gentleman. He reaches into Ted’s bedside table without asking, smirks as he immediately finds what he’s looking for, and slicks them up. He tries to turn Ted over, make it easier on his body, but Ted refuses.
“Has anyone ever fucked you like this,” Trent asks, already breathless and out of control even though he’s barely got the tip in.
“You-you mean made me come just by being hot? Can’t say that I have.”
Trent feels the inarticulate need to punish Ted a little. He shoves in, hard, and Ted yelps again. “I would say I did a little more than that.” He looks down to see Ted fattening up again. “No way. Did you take something?”
“Listen, I’m as mystified as you are,” Ted says, as close to muttering as he ever gets.
Trent pauses fucking him - he’s a hero, he should win a Nobel prize not for his writing but for this - and carefully drops down to press a kiss against Ted’s neck. He mouths at him softly; Ted’s legs tighten around him.
“You don’t need to be embarrassed.” Ted smiles, closes his eyes like he’s trying to dismiss it, so Trent gives him a sharp thrust. Ted’s face opens up again. “No need to be embarrassed about the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Ted’s eyes are everywhere, Trent’s mouth, his eyes, his hair. “Don’t lie to a fella while he’s,” Trent hikes Ted’s hips up, and the rest of the sentence dies in Ted’s mouth. It’s possibly the most satisfying achievement Trent’s ever accomplished.
“I’m not lying.” He kisses his lower lip. “You’re too beautiful to lie to.”
Ted’s eyebrows crease up, his whole face doing something complicated. He locks his hands around the back of Trent’s neck, pressing their foreheads together. Ted’s more than half hard, wet and twitching, so Trent shoves a hand down between them to jerk him off. It’s the sticky heat of Ted, he thinks, the weight of him solidly grasped Trent’s hand that brings him back to reality. He’s fucking Ted Lasso in Ted Lasso’s bed, and he’s miraculously managed to not come as soon as they touched, and now Ted’s saying his name in a breathy whisper, and Jesus, time’s almost almost up, isn’t it?
In a final, frenzied burst of thought he feels the need to warn Ted, to pull out even though he’s wearing a condom, to apologize, sorry for fantasizing about you from the moment I met you, I yelled at myself afterward every time if that makes it better, sorry for changing, sorry for getting weirder, sorry for being so excited by life when I’m around you, I could love you, I do-
Ted’s eyes are huge, blown out pupils wet and marble-shiny. Trent realizes that he’s said some of it - all of it? - out loud.
“I never,” Ted says, “I never,” and Trent knows he’s made a mistake then, knows that the end of the sentence is felt that way about you. He’s about to pull out, about to retreat back behind the double doors forever when Ted finishes his thought, or partially, slurring out, “never knew I could,” and then he’s coming again in the space between them, so wanton, so messy. Trent falls apart after that. For one blissful moment, there’s no room for shame.
“Listen,” Ted says after.
Trent rolls onto his back. “Please don’t start a sentence with listen right now.”
A hand presses warmly on his chest. “Shouldn’t you hear me out before you get all excited?” He winks. There’s a lassitude to Ted’s body that Trent never imagined was possible. “Just wanted to see if you’d fancy,” he pauses for applause, Trent indulges him with a single clap, “me making us a snack.”
This is how people get in trouble, Trent thinks. This warm, creeping feeling that tells you it’s okay to be whoever you are, whatever you want, to smile too big or laugh too loudly. Trent needs to test the waters.
“Still hungry,” he says meaningfully, “after all that?”
And then Ted’s crowding further into his space, curling into him, burying his face somewhere around Trent’s armpit.
“You know those times when you don’t realize how hungry you are until you start eating?” Ted asks, muffled by Trent’s ribcage.
“Hmm.” He manhandles Ted so that he’s curled around him, making him the little spoon. The sigh Ted gives, well, that’s it. Trent’s done for. “I do,” he murmurs, Ted going impossibly softer in his arms. “And I’ll try whatever you want to make.”