Chapter Text
Trent can't help himself. He sees Rebecca pass the hall, impeccable in powder blue, from the direction of the coaching offices. When he steps back through to his office, he sees Ted, deep in thought, staring at his phone. His brows are furrowed a bit like he's a baby monkey who's just had an orange dropped into his hand for the first time. He very nearly smacks the side of the thing when he looks up and startles right out of his skin.
"Shit. Sorry, Ted. I should have kicked the floor or cleared my throat." Trent is being a bother, he can tell. He knows all Ted sees is the tosser riding a fair line between nosy journo and curious bystander. Trent would give anything to be anything but, however, it is what it is. The bed is made. He should absolutely turn around and collect his things to leave for the day, but he can feel Ted's fraught mood draw him in.
Ted waves him off and puts a hand to his chest, taking a slow breath out. "No, no. You're fine. I'm just. I'm. Well, I'm a work in progmess, if you will."
Trent cannot stop his heart from fracturing a little in every direction. His eyebrows surely read as full of curiosity and pity, but he hopes his growing smile conveys good humor and doesn't betray the fact that he cannot hide his tender spot for Ted's bumpkin. "Aren't we all. What's this about then?"
There is a very long pause where Trent is acutely aware he is facing intense scrutiny.
The hesitation from Ted to answer is understandable, if a bit more pointed than Trent would like. But Ted knows no more than Trent has ever offered on that matter, and surely facing the big match with West Ham, it feels bubbled to the surface. So all bets are off between them. In a display of quick thought and immediate response, Trent takes his notebook and pen from his pocket and tosses them back to his desk. The pen makes it where he intends, but the notebook clears the desk entirely and lands in the trash bin at the far side of the room.
"Hot dog! Did you mean to do that or was that accidental?"
Trent turns back to Ted and shrugs. "It was not intentional. It sailed past intentional by a few clicks. I do still very much need that steno for work, but work is done for the day. I've officially clocked out. These are friendly hours."
Ted laughs then, shrinking under his desk until Trent notices Coach Beard's chair push out from under the desk. "Friendly hours," Ted muses. "Okay Friendt Crimm. Pop a squat and let me tell you the tale of an incurable romantic and a very, very pretty brick wall. Her name is Sassy."
Trent hesitantly steps over to Coach Beard's seat, pulls it out and lowers himself. The rolling chair is loose, lower than he expects when he finally drops into it, and wobbly, but he makes due. Slowly registering what Ted's said, Trent cannot help how his brows draw together, "A romantic? That sounds like Coach Lasso. But incurable? That sounds like someone who doesn't understand the meaning of consent, Ted."
When Trent is sure of the seat under him, he looks up to meet Ted's eyes and he is immediately met with the fear he's fucked it.
After a wild-eyed moment with his shoulders up around his ears, Ted blows out a breath and admits, "Well dang. I may have gone about all this the wrong way. I suppose that wraps everything up in a big, red bow.'
Not wanting to end their back and forth before it's even begun, Trent holds out a hand to still Ted. "I don't mean to be so blunt, but I'm only thinking about what I'd told young Jules in the primary school car park when he inquired after why my Honey wouldn't be his girlfriend. Naturally, I used smaller words and a five-year-old's human experience is much less nuanced. But I am still curious about why you might say to me that you're a mess? Especially when you've sat front row to mine."
"Oh!" Ted's brows rise in engagement before diving again. "Oh. Well. It's a. It's just that. I'm just. Hm. When you put it that way, we're quite the pair, aren't we?"
"Before I begin to feel insulted, I think you're going to have to be a bit more specific about your side of this dynamic duo."
"Yeah. That's my bad. Okay. Well, let's see. I haven't been divorced a year and I asked a friends with benefits situation for the chance to become a romantic entanglement or perhaps a relationship."
Trent leans forward. Places his hands on the desk in front of him as if to reach out in concern. "Oh dear. Oh no. Ehm. I believe it was Wu Tang, was it not?"
"Huh?" Ted cocks his head to the side with alarm in his eyes.
"A friends with benefits situation ain't nothin' ta fuck with."
"Y'know, I think you're right." Ted skips straight past a grin and smiles ear-to-ear and Trent can feel his chest constrict with pride at purposefully bringing a little humor into a dark situation. "And I admittedly wasn't my most eloquent. I asked her half-awake while she was trying to sneak out with the sun."
It is brief, but Trent's mind slips to the picture of a disheveled, sleepy Ted, curled up in a fluffy duvet, bedroom eyes caked with sleep in the corners, and shakes it free when he remembers that isn't for him.
"But to her point, she told me she wasn't interested in starting anything because I was a mess. That she'd been where I'd been three years ago and I needed time to heal or recover or learn whatever newly divorced people do, and that I was in no place to start dating and that she'd rather remain noncommittal."
"Well, that sounds rather like a word salad thrown at a situation instead of a simple, 'No, thank you.' Which–I do not know this Sassy, nor do I want to speak ill of her. But I think the accusation of you being a mess was possibly a step too far?"
"She wasn't wrong though. And Rebecca didn't exactly refute it either."
Trent tries desperately to keep the reaction off his face and out of his voice, but cannot stop himself from, "Oh. They're friends?"
"Makes for real fuzzy boundaries sometimes." Trent can feel his gut burble with disbelief and discomfort, but continues to play it close to the vest.
"I'm going to ask you an extremely personal question and you can tell me to sod off if I've gone too far, but how well do you and Sassy know one another? Is this an actual friends with benefits situation or is it more of a situational acquaintances with benefits so now we call one another 'friends' situation?"
"When you put it like that, I may very well have been trying to make her a friend so I didn't feel so bad about it being the second option."
This time it's Trent's head that tips to the side. He truly is sitting face to face with a gorgeous relic of time. "Thank you for letting me ask that without repercussions, and I appreciate your candor, but I have to admit your answer has opened my bigger brain and now I have exactly one hundred questions for you."
"Do you have Honey this week? I'd hate to keep you if you have anywhere to be."
Ah. The bid to sod off. Yes. Makes sense. Trent looks down at his hands and, "Ehm. I don't, but if you need me to leave."
"Oh hey, no. No one's asking you to go. Henry's got plans with friends after school, so I don't have to make it home in time to make a call. But if you're up for a game of twenty questions, I've got a bottle of something that might help keep me honest I'm willing to share with the class. Maybe it'll help you take off your press room face and react to me like we are friends."
Trent's jaw hits the floor.
"Yeah. More like that."
Shock and awe should not come so easily, he knows. To his knowledge and experience, Ted is a good and gracious man, and smarter than anyone gives him credit for. But to be called out for his purposeful ambivalence and to be invited to experience Ted outside of either of their circles of responsibility? Trent cannot help the bashful smile that betrays him. Trent nods, and Ted reaches into his desk and pulls out an unopened bottle of Balvenie.
"You got something you could drink this from? Perhaps that lil' Peanut you've got on your desk?" Ted's twang is astonishing in the way it presents heavier in moments that might require levity. In this moment, his twang is registering off the charts, his disarming smile on full display. Trent is instantly wary.
"Little Peanut?"
"Snoopy? I could say blazing rainbow mug, but I think maybe the point of that is that the Pride is implied."
Trent makes quick work to cross the offices to his desk. Rolls the empty mug around in his hands, his heart picking up the pace. A flicker of worry crosses his face, but he's got his back to Ted. "So you have picked up on that."
"I'd say Mr. Magoo would have picked up on that, but there's an entire room of fellas who I'm almost certain are none the wiser, so who am I to say. But we're cool. Joe Cool. You've got an ally here, Trent. You in?"
Turning on his heel, Trent gives Ted a discerning squint. Ted wobbles the bottle toward him, expectant golden retriever energy fanning across the room with every daring waggle of his brows. Trent reaches out his mug as Ted uncaps the bottle. Dropping a healthy glug into Trent's mug and into his, Trent makes the first move, "To becoming friends?"
"To being friends, Trent. To becoming more." Ted taps his glass to Trent's mug, taps the glass to his desk, and takes a sip, letting the burn escape one side of his mouth in a too big, pained display. Before he can be caught being charmed, Trent takes a sip and feels the smoky sweet liquor burn right through to his stomach.
"Well that'll do." Placing his mug on the desk, Trent takes his chances with Beard's chair once again and makes a show to lean back before ultimately deciding it would send him careening backward and sitting forward instead. "Twenty questions then."
"I did suggest that, didn't I?"
"You did do this to yourself."
"Touche. Well, then. Ask away, Michael Bay."
"Did you mean to enter into relations with someone so intimately acquainted with your employer?"
"It started innocent enough. I was trying to fax my signed divorce papers back to Michelle, and Sassy was standing behind me at the hotel desk. Called me the Marlboro Man when she saw." Ted points to his mustache and Trent automatically despises this Sassy. Be it the fact that their instinct was the same has absolutely no bearing on the fact, surely. Ted must never know this is how the editorial staff back at The Independent used to refer to him. "Still does. I didn't know she was Rebecca's friend until a bit later in the evening. Then, after karaoke and a panic attack, she knocked on my door. But that's as far as I am willing to share. I do not kiss and tell.
"That said, Rebecca knowing wasn't a consequence that remotely crossed my mind."
"Well, be comforted in the fact that I have no desire to ask any technical questions, having at least experienced the act enough to bring Honey into the world. But would you mind if I asked a question about your emotional state at that moment?"
"Oh. Not good. I was still a bit tipsy. Heartbroken. Hurt. I was angry. Lonely. Probably more lonely than I could admit." Ted stops to take a long, slow sip. "Probably still am." Another, shorter sip. "But I tried my best to be in good spirits because it wasn't like I couldn't anymore. And I must have played the part well enough because that was not a one and done situation. Like I didn't quite say earlier."
"Situational acquaintances with benefits."
"Indeed-o bandito."
"What about your situation makes you think you'd like to be friends? Or possibly romantically entangled?"
"Have you ever met someone who matches your wit, beat for beat? Surprises you sometimes with just how sharp they are?"
Trent pauses, shot through the heart. And because he knows he's wearing it on his face now, he chooses to be honest, if in a non-confrontational way. "Well Ted, you are the epitome of that description to me."
Ted's thoughts must clear that hurdle with alacrity because there is no hesitation in his asking, "Yeah, but have I also let you see me naked?"
And Trent guesses that must clear things up. Ted is his friend now. The worst kind of friend, for certain. But it is some consolation in comparison to being the adversary.
"Oh goodness, Trent. I'm sorry. That was real crass of me. We did sure have a heckuva time in that Press Room."
"I like to think we do in these offices, too. But no. To answer your last question. No. I suppose that would be a boundary that neither of us have crossed. And certainly a draw if she keeps seeking you out."
"I just think it might be nice. To take it outside and circle the block with it. Y'know?"
"Next question." Trent takes a long sip of the lukewarm scotch. Feels it evaporate on his tongue before it makes it down his throat. But he does feel himself coming loose at the elbows.
"Hit me."
The night does pass in earnest companionship. Two dudes being guys. Two lads being mates. Trent not shying away from pulling Ted out of his shell. Not shying away from betraying his own vulnerabilities. And the more he learns about the man Ted Lasso, the more he realizes just how in over his head he has been these last two years.
Pulling his bag over his shoulder, he stops just shy of the door before turning.
"I'd never suggest that you should keep pressing the issue, Ted. But if it's something you really think you'd like to try. With Sassy specifically. I might start with casually mentioning anything you've told me about her to her. Wait until you're sober again. Let her know you respect her boundaries. Also. At random, you might just mention you were thinking about how clever she is, how witty or sharp she is. Or how 'very, very pretty' she is. Without pressure and without crossing her boundaries. See her. She might come around. She might not. Probably not, as she knows her own mind. But I'll say this. It certainly worked on me."
Ted's ruddy, dimpled, thoughtful smile breaks into soft surprise. Trent gives a shy little wave and makes a sure-footed turn to step out into the night. It isn't until he is home, breathing through alcohol-induced vertigo in bed, that he unleashes the chasm of loneliness to reflect from his chest to the ceiling of his bedroom. That it looks an awful lot like a friend must be a coincidence.