Archive of Our Own

Ted’s phone buzzed. He grinned down at Trent’s text.

The Church or the Cult?

You’re trying to goad me into plucking a joke off the low-hanging fruit tree, Ted replied. I will not be led into temptation sir

Starfish or Love, Ted, no fucking around

Ted snorted out a laugh and sank further into his couch. He didn’t have anywhere to be til 10am.

Now I know you ain’t serious

Starfish might be a slow burn but its power builds

It’s all of a piece, one perfect whole

The Cult’s banking the entire Love album, hell their entire reputation as a band, on She Sells Sanctuary and you know it, I know it, every given kid on the street knows it

Ah yes, all the packs of children rocking out to post-punk albums from 30 years before they were born

Why don’t you ask Miss Morgana for confirmation? I’ll wait

Biased sample, Trent said. I’ve already infected her with my funny little turns

Must be why she’s a gotdang laugh riot and my favorite kid this side of the Atlantic, Ted wrote. He hesitated, and then hit the back button until that little bit of too much was gone. Instead, he sent, You say that like it’s not your proudest achievement

In reply, Trent sent a video of Morgana stacking the biscuits Ted made her three days ago like Jenga pieces, dancing in place and tunelessly singing “Pictures of You” to herself. Her hair was a raucous tangle of curls that blasted out in every direction and damn near filled the screen. She was so cute Ted’s metaphorical ovaries twinged. He pressed the message until it let him leave a heart emoji on it.

Of course it’s from Disintegration, he said.

One must start one’s education off on the right foot

My turn, Ted said. He was still riding high from the first incident months ago, when he’d been giving Trent some of his own Roomba treatment by perusing his massive record collection and surprising the heck out of him by exclaiming over Dreams in Celluloid, which he’d never been able to get his hands on in the US.

“You know the Chameleons?” Trent had asked, eyebrows hiked all the way to his hairline.

“I’ve had to buy Strange Times three times now,” Ted said.

Trent threw the record on. Ted had lain out on the floor—“it’s good for my back!”—while Trent sprawled on his sofa, the both of them lightly drunk and only too happy to yammer about the music of their youth. And everyone learned lessons about who listens to the most country music that day, Trent.

Trent’s text arrived with a literal zing.

Hit me

Ted admitted he was smug about this one. He only wished he could see Trent’s face when he dropped the knowledge on him.

Dead Can Dance self titled or Into the Labyrinth?

I’m beginning to think you’re a goth at heart, Ted, Trent said.

Hey, it ain’t Robert Smith who gets called The Man in Black, Ted said.

Dead Can Dance, Trent said. Though I want it noted for the record that I resent being asked to choose

Before Ted could respond, his phone lit up with a Facetime call from Michelle. Ted frowned. It was nearly 9am over here, which made it almost 3am in Kansas. His heart flipped over and skittered around like vermin when the lights turned on. He slid his thumb over the screen to accept the call. Michelle’s frazzled face filled the screen.

“Hey, Michelle, what’s going on?” he said. “Is everyone okay?”

“Shoot,” she said, “I shoulda texted first so you wouldn’t worry. Nothing bad’s happened. Well. Nothing life or death. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

Ted’s breath left him in a ragged shudder.

“Okay, well, life or death or not, I don’t think you ever called me at three in the morning before, so what’s the what, chicken butt?”

She scrubbed her face and dropped her eyes to somewhere on her kitchen table.

“I feel so stupid,” she said. “God, I’m sorry, Ted, I shouldn’t have called like this.”

“Michelle. We can’t get to fixin’ it till you get to sayin’ it.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“I know it’s a jerk move to come to you with this,” she said, “but I’d really appreciate a friendly ear right now.”

“I’m always gonna be your friend, Michelle.”

She tried on a smile. It was weak and watery, but she looked him in the eye when she forced it out, at least for a moment.

“Jake and I were out to dinner tonight and we ran into a patient of his,” she said. “He’s not supposed to act like he knows any of them when he’s in public, but if they approach him first, it’s okay. She said some stuff that made the alarm bells go off in my brain, and then he was acting off the rest of the night, like…condescending, or something? I don’t know how to describe it. Like he’s got his fancy degree and I’m just a lowly peon who couldn’t possibly understand the gravity of his work. He’s done it before, but not often enough for me to make a thing of it. When we got home, I did some snooping.” She set her jaw and looked him full in the face. “You know what I found.”

“What?” Ted said. The truth of it didn’t so much creep up on him as it came out from behind a curtain in his brain, as if waiting for this very moment to reveal itself.

“You know, Ted. So why don’t you go ahead and say it?”

“Not to play armchair Dr. Sharon over here or nothin’, but I think maybe you need to be the one to say it, honey.”

Her mouth trembled downward. She looked about fit to cry, but the thing with Michelle was that look, that specific teary context, wasn’t about sadness, it was about being hoppin’ mad. She was an angry crier, and right now she looked ready to set some fires with her brain.

“He sleeps with his clients,” she said, and drew in a sharp breath. “He makes them feel heard, and special, and like he’s the only one who really understands them, and then he sleeps with them. Once the marriage is broken, he moves onto the next. It’s his thing, he gets off on it. God only knows how many women he’s done it to and he’s still doing it, Ted. I’m just the sucker who moved him into my house and built my whole life around him. He must’ve been laughing his butt off this whole time.” Her eyes were leaking but her jaw was clenched. “Fuck,” she spat between pinched lips. “Fuck, I feel so stupid. I’m the biggest idiot in the world.”

“Hey now,” Ted said. “Sounds like he’s a master manipulator who’s had a long time to perfect his grift. Would you tell any other woman who got caught in his web that she was stupid and shoulda known better?”

“No, but—”

“Ain’t no but about it, just like Beard in a pair’a joggers, bless him.” That got him a little laugh out of Michelle, and that was a win in Ted’s book.

“I knew it wasn’t right, what we did,” Michelle said. “I just—it was so nice to feel those big feelings again, to feel swept away. It was exciting, even, the fact that it wasn’t exactly kosher. I told myself—Gosh, Ted, I told myself that the ethics didn’t matter because we were in love.” She winced and swiped at her eyes. “I really am sorry I’m bringing this to you, Ted. It’s not right, I’m sorry.”

Ted’s heart felt heavy, but it didn’t feel shredded. Their failed marriage was a scar that ached sometimes, not an open wound threatening to bleed out on him. There were things he might want answers for, things he hadn’t yet been able to look in the face that were now unavoidable, but it could wait til it wasn’t 3 am, til Michelle wasn’t fair vibrating with anger, til the whole thing was less raw.

“I hope this phone call means you’ve kicked his heinie to the curb,” he said.

“Yeah, and I paid an arm and a leg to get the locks changed after hours.”

“Good, that’s good. Henry?”

“At a sleepover at Jerome’s house, thank God.” Her mouth hardened. “It’ll be no big loss to Henry. I knew they weren’t getting along and I just…” She shook her head. “Buried my head in the sand. I told myself it was just growing pains, and they’d get used to each other, but he—” Her mouth snapped shut and she swallowed. “It’s so weird, how quick the blinders can come off. Like a switch was flipped and now I see all the ugly stuff I ignored. I’m mad and hurt and all of that but I’m also just. So damn embarrassed.”

“I’m sorry,” Ted said.

“I wouldn’t mind it, you know,” Michelle said. “If you had an ‘I told you so’ for me.”

“I remember very valiantly refraining from saying anything,” Ted said. “But I think you gotta report him, Michelle. He can’t keep doing this to people.”

Michelle’s smile was sad and tired.

“You would have been within your rights to have reported him, back when you found out.”

“I wanted to,” Ted said. “Hoo wee, did I want to. But I couldn’t be the thing that destroyed your happiness. You wouldn’t have thanked me.”

Michelle was nodding, looking grim.

“I wouldn’t have taken it well,” she said. “I know that, and I’m sorry about it.”

“All right, let’s not go apologizing for things that never happened. Are you all right? Do you need anything?”

“Actually, that’s why I called you,” she said. “It wasn’t actually just to boo hoo about my love life to the least appropriate person.”

Least appropriate person. As if they hadn’t been married almost twenty years. As if they were just acquaintances. Ted swallowed down the bitter bile of what they’d become to each other. He was working on being better about that, but he was also acutely aware that now was not the time for his emotions to overtake the conversation. Michelle had just been through a pretty traumatizing breakup, and appropriate or not, she’d come to him.

“Well, lay it on me, Rob Zombie.”

“I feel like if I stay here, I’m gonna explode,” she said. “It’s so small and claustrophobic. I go between the same five places day in and day out. Everyone’s in each other’s business. Pretty soon everyone’s gonna be praying for me, and I don’t think I can take one single ‘bless your heart,’ Ted I really don’t. I feel like I’m suffocating.”

“It’s late,” Ted said. “You need some rest.”

“What I need is to get out of Andover. I was thinking—” She shrugged, tipped her chin up, met his eyes like he was a one-man firing squad. “—I was thinking I should put in for a transfer to the London office and get a place by you. You get more Henry, I get to live in a place where Mrs. Witmeyer and her gang of church ladies don’t cluck at the length of my shorts.”

“And no chance of Dr. Jacob comin’ a’knockin’.”

“There’s no losing side here, as far as I can tell.”

“I’m tryin’ to be a mature adult here and not jump for joy,” Ted said, and Michelle cracked a real smile for him. “But I gotta get a grip because I have the sneakin’ suspicion that things’ll look different once you’ve had a good sleep and the sun’s shinin’.”

“Ted. I know what I want.”

“I’m not sayin’ you don’t. But you’ve had what sounds like one of the worst nights of your life, and it’s three in the morning. Anyone would be wrung out and not thinkin’ clearly.”

Michelle’s eyes flashed and Ted had a split second to realize what he’d said.

“My mind is perfectly clear, Ted. Don’t tell me I’m not feeling what I’m feeling, and don’t tell me I can’t think logically.”

“Michelle—”

“I never wanted to live here and you know it,” Michelle said. “Every time you got a new job, that was us picking up house and following along. How many times over the course of our marriage, Ted? Five? Six? Degree of podunk varying, my mouth shut and smiling the whole time. Now what, you get to be in one of the greatest cities in the world and I’m stuck here? No. No. I’m following you one last time, and you’re gonna be grateful about it, got it?”

“I’m—”

“I’ll call you later,” she said. “In the meantime, why don’t you do me a favor and scout out a good school for Henry and some places to live? Goodnight, Ted.” She shut her laptop and the connection dropped.

Ted went boneless and lolled his head back on the couch cushions as the air rushed out of him. He rubbed his eyes. His watch alarm went off, and that was his cue to get a move on.

Maybe the Diamond Dogs would know what to do.

Trent walked in on a weird vibe in the coaches’ office. Coach Beard was boring holes with his stare, which wasn’t uncommon, per se; what was new was that said holes were being bored into Ted’s head whilst Ted blithely ignored him. Ted lit up when Trent walked in, which made Trent’s innards go wobbly, a reaction he had not been able to get a grip on during his tenure at Nelson Road so far, and thinking about it made him miss whatever pun had made out of Trent’s name in announcement of his arrival.

“Yes, hello, Ted,” he said, utterly unable to contain the soppiness he felt from coloring his tone. He nodded at Coaches Beard and Kent. Beard appeared to be attempting to communicate with Trent telepathically, what about Trent could not begin to imagine, whilst Roy merely grunted. Ted clapped his hands together.

“Gang’s all here then!” he said. He picked up his office phone and jabbed some buttons. When whoever answered the other end came on the line, Ted spoke no words but howled into the receiver. As if on a trigger, Beard let loose a string of barks of his own, and Trent joined in. Roy let loose a tooth-baring growl, but that seemed to do the trick. There was some yowling on the other end, and then Ted hung the phone up.

Roy grunted and glided back into his office on his chair. Trent joined him, unloading his stuff onto his desk. He knew if he tried to glide the same way he’d achieve only an awkward crab-scoot, so he merely sat, swiveled, and effected nonchalance upon facing Roy.

“So,” he said. “Do you know why the Diamond Dogs are mounting this morning?”

“Give it a fucking second and we’ll find out, won’t we?” Roy said without facing him.

“Right.”

Trent swiveled back only for Roy to pipe up again.

“Something about the ex though. He always gets this—” Roy made a vibrating claw gesture around his ear. “—look in his eye.”

“Oh.”

“You met her?”

“No, I’ve not had the pleasure. Why, is she—I mean, I imagine she’s lovely. Ted wouldn’t marry someone who wasn’t.”

Roy grunted again. Trent suppressed a sigh and forcibly engaged his journalistic patience instead of yelling you’re the one who brought it up so say what you want to say for fuck’s sake!

“She’s fine, she’s nice, she’s whatever,” Roy said. “It just seems like she does his head in every time they have a real conversation, so what’s that about?”

Roy was still refusing to turn around. Trent stared at the back of his head. He had good hair, Roy Kent.

“You don’t like her,” Trent said. A million half-formed thoughts and questions popped up like eager little hands in class, but Trent tamped them down in favor of closing in on one fact: Michelle Lasso bothered Roy Kent enough to get him to talk shit to a man he could barely tolerate.

“I don’t know her,” Roy said, quick as whiplash. “I have no opinion.”

“Just like Old Mr. Bunny has no opinion whatever of cats.”

Roy ended the conversation with a combination growl-grunt, which Trent had learned enough to know he’d irritated him into shutting his trap. It was fine—there came a distant rumbling that got louder and louder until Leslie Higgins burst through the door, heaving for breath. Roy glided into Ted’s office still attempting to look uninterested, whilst Trent took the opportunity to lounge in the jamb in what he hoped was a cool and effortless lean.

“I came,” Higgins panted, “as soon as I could.” He bent over, hands on knees. “What’s going on? How can we—” Massive gulp of air. “—help?”

“Ever get presented with your deepest wish on a platter but instead of being excited and making a grab for it, you hesitate because there must be a catch?” Ted asked. “Like when you come home from school and your mom’s made a chocolate pecan pie and is smiling too much?”

“Zava,” Roy grunted.

A chorus of knowing hums rose up around Ted, who nodded emphatically and pointed at Roy.

“Yes, exactly,” he said. “Well I received a Zava-like call this morning before work and I mighta fumbled the ball.”

“Tell us,” Higgins said.

Ted heaved a great sigh and sat back in his chair. He tapped a pen against his desk and chewed ruefully on his bottom lip. He had divested himself of his jumper, so now he wore only a red polo. The position he was in pressed the slight curve of his stomach into the fabric in a way that made Trent want to bury his face in it. He had become preoccupied, of late, by the idea that Ted might be quite covered in lovely fur. He’d had a glimpse of it two weekends ago while the two of them were lying on his sitting room floor listening to records and Ted’s shirt had ridden up to reveal a sliver of belly. The sight of it had broken Trent’s brain.

“Michelle broke up with Dr. Jacob and decided it’s time to move to London,” Ted said.

Trent’s heart flipped like a panicking fish before deflating and falling into his stomach. Fuck, he was stupid. All their texting and their chats and their dinners and late night drinks and listening to records and how bloody wonderful Ted was with Morgana—it was friendship and nothing more. Of course Ted, a kind and friendly straight man, didn’t want Trent romantically. Carnally. Christ, in the light of day the idea was laughable. Trent had known damn well the man wasn’t over his divorce, was lonely and hurting for real connection. He’d found it in Trent, and Trent was the one who was mucking it up wanting more. As if he had some great preponderance of friends such that he could afford to risk this one on a silly, impossible notion like love. He should just be grateful Ted seemed to genuinely like him, despite having every reason not to.

Of course Ted’s deepest wish was for his wife back. His son. His family all in one place.

Trent had missed the cautious murmurings of congratulations, which Ted was now waving away. He could feel Beard’s eyes on him and resolutely did not look in his direction. He made the mistake of glancing at Roy, who was glowering deeply, a glint in his eye that said see? as if Trent was supposed to know what that meant.

“So what’s the problem?” Higgins asked. “This seems like a good thing, doesn’t it?”

“She called me at 3am central time to tell me,” Ted said. “After staying up to hash out the break up and get the locks changed.”

Another round of knowing hums.

“So you’re afraid this is something she’s dangling before you only to snatch it away when she’s thinking more clearly,” Higgins said.

“Got it in one, Olivia Munn,” Ted said, squishing the tip of his nose.

“So you…”

“Told her to sleep on it and call me again when she was calmer.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Roy said.

“And you said this to her,” Beard said, “while she was emotionally decimated at three in the morning.”

Ted winced.

“It may also have come out condescendingly.”

“There’s no way to say that without condescension,” Roy said.

“I just—” Ted held his hands up as if in surrender. “You know what? I got no excuses. I shouldn’t have been that way. I should just have been supportive.”

“Is she supportive of you, Ted?” Trent blurted. The back of his neck heated but he wasn’t about to start quailing in the face of his own curiosity this late in his life.

Ted looked at him, lips parted, but nothing came out of them. Trent held his gaze. Ted looked flayed open, vulnerable. He swallowed.

“Right,” Roy said. Ted startled, breaking out of his trance. “You’re allowed to be a human fucking being with actual emotional needs and shit.”

“They shouldn’t come at her expense,” Ted said. He seemed to be avoiding Trent’s eyes.

“They don’t,” Beard said. “Everything she’s asked of you, you’ve given her.”

“Everything except a functional marriage,” Ted said, lips curling as though it were the grandest of jokes.

“She can handle a moment of you having a shitty tone, is my point,” Beard said.

“And a moment of your displaying caution instead of throwing an instant party,” Higgins added with an apologetic wince.

Beard jabbed a finger in Higgins’s direction, eyes blazing with triumph.

“What should I do though?” Ted asked. “She’s acting like she wants me to have everything ready next time we talk, which will probably be tonight. I gotta handle a new house, a good school for Henry, their visas—”

“You have time, Ted,” Trent said. “Even if she doesn’t change her mind about coming to Richmond, her urgency is emotional, not material.”

“And it’s not like you’re twiddling your thumbs around here, you’re a busy guy,” Beard said.

“Yes, plenty has to happen before a move like this can go forward,” Higgins said. “Talk to her, develop an actual plan, and things will be easier on the other side.”

“And you’ll have help with whatever, obviously,” Roy said.

Ted’s face pinched into a complicated expression that looked like he was trying not to grin, cry, and pinch Roy’s cheeks all at the same time.

“Aw heck, y’all are too good to me,” he said. “All right, Diamond Dogs dismount!”

Half-hearted howls followed Higgins from the office and Roy back through the door and to his desk. For Trent’s part, he sank back into his chair and stared unseeing through his notebook for a while. Eventually, he heard the door snick shut, and then Roy kicked at the wheels of his chair.

“Oi. Crimm.”

Trent lifted his head and swiveled toward him.

“Hm?”

Roy was turned halfway toward him, leaned back, head only vaguely tilted in his direction as if he could evince plausible deniability for a conversation he was initiating.

“What do you think of it?”

“What do I think of Michelle moving to England?”

“No, what do you think of the fact that he isn’t in there bouncing off the walls singing show tunes about it?”

Trent’s attention cut to Ted on the other side of the glass, tapping his pen incessantly as Beard spoke about strategy or some such thing. Trent sighed and dragged a hand through his hair.

“He can’t trust it yet.”

“Think he’ll take her back?”

Trent swiveled back to his desk so Roy couldn’t see his face.

“Of course he will,” he said. “It’s all he’s wanted for years.”

Roy grunted a variation on his thinking grunt, which Trent was now able to discern from his grunt in the affirmative, his grunt in the negative, his grunt of exasperation, his hiding-a-laugh grunt, and his general grumpy grunt.

“You don’t think so?” Trent asked.

“I think he’s smarter than he looks and knows damn well how being a rebound goes. The question is, does he respect himself enough to refuse when it’s on offer?”

“Love has a way of bulldozing everything in its path regardless of logic and reason,” Trent said.

Roy scoffed and glided back to his desk. Trent gave himself one more moment of wallowing, then opened his laptop.

The thing about Ted’s sessions with Dr. Sharon was that they had made her the voice of his better angels. He knew there were things he needed to say to Michelle before they got any balls rolling on a transatlantic move. He knew he couldn’t keep stuffing it down for her comfort when doing it hollowed him out so bad. What he didn’t know was when the optimal time to say his piece was when she was 1.) mad at him and 2.) going through a break up with someone who did her head in real bad. There was a line between Ted’s valid emotions and Ted making her break up about himself, and that’s where he was fuzzy.

“Hello, Ted,” came Dr. Sharon’s voice through his phone, warm like she was smiling. Ted broke out into a grin.

“Hey Doc! What’s shakin’?”

“My arse when I turn the music up,” Dr. Sharon said. Ted howled with laughter. He could hear her smiling when he finally calmed down enough for her to say, “How about you, Ted? I imagine this isn’t a social call.”

“Shoot, you’re gonna make me feel bad.”

“I’m your therapist, Ted,” she said. “You’re not hurting my feelings when you treat me like one.”

“All right, but next time you’re in town we’re doing something fun, like coffee at the cat cafe or oh! A murder mystery dinner, do you like those? I always wanted to do one but you know Beard will figure it out too quick.”

“Ted. What’s going on?”

Ted told her what happened and let the little ball of resentment that had gathered in the pit of his stomach get some air. Dr. Sharon hummed at the appropriate moments and affirmed his feelings and said Dr. Jacob was a real knob head, which Ted appreciated. When he asked how much of this he should express to Michelle and when, Dr. Sharon asked him when he was speaking to her again.

“I suppose I’ll give her a call when we get off the phone here,” Ted said.

“Then that’s when you do it,” Dr. Sharon said. “Own your feelings and don’t be accusatory, but it’s perfectly fair to let her know how this is affecting you. And how it’s affecting you to realize she’d been cheating, at least emotionally.”

“And what if—”

“What if what, Ted?”

“What if I was right and moving was just a crazy notion she ran with for a second in the heat of the moment but everything looks different on the other side of some rest and food and yakkin’ with her version of the Diamond Dogs?”

“You tell me,” Dr. Sharon said.

Ted let out a sigh.

“Why you gotta be like that,” he said.

“What changes, Ted?”

“Nothing, I guess,” Ted said. “Except I still got a sword hanging over my head when for a few hours today I got to think about what my life would be like without it.”

“Perhaps it’s time to tell her that regardless of whether she’s moving, Henry will be.”

“Doc…”

“There are more equitable custody arrangements than the one you’ve got, Ted, and it is possible to get more time even with an ocean between you. I know it’s something you dream of without seriously considering, but what’s stopping you? Honestly, now.”

Ted pitched himself into his couch and laid his head back, closing his eyes.

“I can’t take a boy away from his mother, his school, his friends, his country. It ain’t right, it ain’t fair.”

“Have you asked him?”

“That’s not—”

“Have you asked him, Ted.”

Ted’s breath left him in a whoosh.

“No.”

“He deserves a say, same as you do, same as Michelle does. This is a conversation, a decision to be made as a family, not something one party gets to dictate into perpetuity. And Ted?”

“Hm.”

“You deserve it,” Dr. Sharon said. Ted’s lip trembled. “You deserve to be heard, and you deserve parenting time, and you deserve to have good things.”

Ted swallowed around the humidity that had gathered in his throat.

“Thanks, Doc,” he croaked. He cleared his throat. “That’s—yeah, I need the reminder, sometimes.”

“I know, Ted. How about for after?”

“After what?”

“After your conversation with Michelle tonight,” she said. “It might be nice not to be alone, no matter how it goes.”

“Oh. I didn’t think about it.”

“Perhaps Beard is available.”

“No, he’s—you know, all that hoo-ha with Jane. We’re in the ‘on again’ part of this wash cycle.”

“Perhaps it’s time to tell him some truths, too.”

“Ah, Doc, I learned my lesson about interfering with friends’ relationships a long time ago,” Ted said. “All you can really do is make sure your friend knows they can count on you no matter what, and me and Beard have that on lock.”

“He might need a reminder now and again, too.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“So, who else is there? Roy? Rebecca?”

One name—one face, one voice—popped into Ted’s head, and it wasn’t the boss’s.

“Maybe I’ll give Trent a call,” he said. “He’s usually up for something, even when he’s got the critter at home. Crimmer? Crimture. Crimtid. Criminologist.”

“Ted.”

“It’s a work in progress, I’ll land on a good one one of these days.”

“So you’ll set something up with Trent Crimm.”

“Sounds good, Robin Hood.”

“Do you want to talk about that? I have a bit more time.”

“Do I wanna talk about Trent Crimm?” Ted’s brow furrowed. “I mean he’s got a glorious mane straight out of a shampoo commercial starring Black Beauty, a wit sharper than Manny Jacinto’s cheekbones, and the snappiest dress sense of anyone I know who ain’t named Rebecca Welton, what else do you wanna know?”

“You’re becoming close to him,” Dr. Sharon said.

“Well, sure, I guess I am,” Ted said. “Should I not? You know that whole business with his last article is water under the bridge.”

“For most people, it wouldn’t be, and that would be fair,” she said.

“You think I shouldn’t be friends with him.”

“That’s not what I said. We talked about putting words into my mouth.”

“Sorry, Doc.”

“I’m glad you’re spending time with someone whose company you enjoy,” she said. “You hold yourself too apart, Ted. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was the same way. I imagine you and Trent are good for each other.”

Ted felt himself go warm all over, though he couldn’t say why. He found his mouth blurting something quite without his say-so.

“If I could hang out with Trent every day without him gettin’ tired of me, I would.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” Ted said. “Because I’m not sure I do.”

“I doubt he’s tired of you, Ted,” Dr. Sharon said. “In fact, it sounds like he goes out of his way to make time for you.”

“Oh.”

“Is that surprising to you?”

“Yes. No. I mean, I guess I knew that, or I shoulda known that. It’s just—he’s cool, you know? A real artist, a real intellectual. I guess there’s part of me that wonders why he lets me hang around even though he obviously likes me enough to fall on his sword for me.”

“Friends, lovers, the people who become important to us—they’re precious, Ted, and no less so for being inexplicable sometimes. There’s no reason to be coy when the connections we make are reciprocal. You might ask him if he’s feeling the way you do.”

“What, that I could sprout out of his armpits and still wanna hear all about his day?”

“If that’s the phrasing you want to go with.”

Ted snorted.

“Thanks, Doc. I think I’ll stay with my tried and true method of just insinuating myself into his life ’til he tells me to buzz off.”

A chuckle came down the line.

“All right, Ted. Good luck with Michelle. Remember she’s not the only one who gets to say her piece.”

“Thanks, Doc. I appreciate you.”

“I know you do, Ted.”

“TTFN, talk soon.”

“Goodbye, Ted.”

When he hung up, Ted pulled up his text messages with Trent.

Hey there, supersport! You up for dinner tonight? My treat, Miss Morgana enthusiastically invited!

Three dots popped up. Ted grinned down at the screen. He had the urge to kick his feet and gave in. The dots disappeared. Reappeared. Disappeared. Ted’s mirth faded.

Suddenly Ted felt that if he didn’t see Trent Crimm tonight, he might break into a zillion pieces. He’d been a little off all day at Nelson Road, keyed up and jittery like that leaf water he was always sucking down had a couple shots of espresso in it. Ted had wanted to jostle him, squeeze him, call him a funny nickname just to see what his face would do.

He wouldn’t normally press, in fact he found it almost physically painful to put his needs on someone like this, but Dr. Sharon had been pretty clear.

It would just be real nice to see a friendly face tonight, and yours is one of my favorites

Ted held his breath as he hit send.

The dots popped up and disappeared a few times again. Just as Ted was about to text that it was no big if Trent was busy and he’d catch him on the flip side, Trent’s text buzzed into existence in his hand.

Morgana’s at her other father’s tonight. Takeaway or dine in?

Ted had been thinking dinner out, then drinks and records while he lolled around on Trent’s floor again, but he had the sudden urge to offer his cooking. Steak, asparagus, hassleback potatoes with all the fixins. His place was no fun though—Trent’s place was packed with books and records and art on the walls, a beautiful oriental rug, furniture Michelle might call “heirloom pieces,” everything marked by life with a five-year-old. Trent’s flat seemed to ooze Trent, a kaleidoscope of Crimmian razzle-dazzle that filled Ted with glee, while Ted’s still looked like a sterile hotel room, dust-gathering LEGO sculptures and kid art on the fridge notwithstanding.

Maybe it was time to look for a new place regardless of how it went with Michelle today. Maybe, because his paycheck was wild these days, he didn’t even have to stop at two bedrooms—maybe there could be one for him and one for Henry, one for an office or library, and one for a guest bedroom. Or another kid’s, if Ted ever found someone else to share his life with and that person had a kid. Ted wanted that. He wasn’t doing anything about it beyond his annual single nights with the Sassmaster, but he wanted it. Maybe it was time to get serious about that too, though the prospect of trying to find someone preemptively exhausted him.

In any case, he was putting down roots here. The thought of it settled something inside him in a way that revealed to him just how unsettled he had been—it was right, staying. It made everything feel calmer. He could only hope Michelle would play ball.

Dealer’s choice. My only request is to end the night on your floor with a record playing again.

The dots did their song and dance. Finally, Trent sent back, Let’s play it by ear, see what we’re in the mood for. 7 at mine?

With bells on, Tom Felton!

You lose points when the rhyme is tortured, surely

Yeah yeah. So what’s your favorite meal?

In general?

When I get a new place that’s a little less liminal space chic, I’m having you over for dinner

Hey, maybe I can finally get my dream kitchen, what do you think?

OH I bet you know around here better than anyone, you wanna go house hunting with me?

While Trent’s little gray dots did their thing, Ted pulled up his text stream with Michelle.

I’m free for the next few hours. Give me a ring when you get the chance?

Trent’s text popped up.

Better to discuss in person. See you soon.

Ted beamed down at his phone. He put the thumbs up emoji on the message. He wondered if he should make chocolate chip cookies or something to bring to Trent’s. He got out some butter and eggs to get them down to room temperature.

Michelle Facetimed him a few minutes later.

“Well hey there!” Ted said.

She looked wan but her eyes were clear, and she gave him a tired smile and raised her hand in a wave.

“Hey, Ted. I’m sorry about this morning, I was being a pee pee fingers.”

Ted’s laugh clapped out of him.

“And I was being patronizing, so why don’t we call it even?” Ted said. “How are you?”

“Eh. So freaking mad. Too mad to be sad, but I think that’ll come soon enough.”

“You can do better than him, you know. Much, much better.” The words you’re the best got stuck behind his teeth.

Michelle’s smile filled the screen.

“Thanks Ted. And thanks for letting me lay all that on you last night. I know it was a lot to ask.” She cast her eyes upward and shook her head. “I hate feeling this stupid.”

“You know you’re not,” Ted said.

A weary nod.

“Enough about me,” she said. “I’m sure you wanna talk logistics.”

“So you do actually wanna come?”

Michelle tilted a look at him.

“Yes,” she said. “And yes, I know I was being impulsive last night, but I did mean it. Even if by the light of day I know I can’t just up and leave right this second, as much as I want to.”

“That’s—” Giddiness filled him up like that bubble juice from Willy Wonka. “You don’t know how great it is to hear that. I’m so glad, thank you, Michelle. I mean it, thank you so much.”

“There’s plenty in it for me, Ted. I just wish I’d gotten there sooner. What’s first on the docket?”

“A timeline, I figure,” Ted said. “School lets out in a month and a half or so, no reason to yank Henry out any sooner, and he was coming for the summer anyway. The question is, are you coming with him this time, or do you need to stay back for another little while to tie up whatever loose ends you’re looking at?”

“If you’re willing to help with expenses, then I don’t have to wait for the house to sell,” Michelle said.

“Hey, what are you talking about ‘if,’ of course I would,” Ted said, brow knitting.

“I didn’t wanna presume,” Michelle said, hands raised. “I appreciate your help, you know that.”

Ted pushed back the hair that had flopped over his forehead. He took a deep breath.

“Listen, can I just—I need to get some stuff off my chest. I’d appreciate it if you’d hear me out, and then we can iron out more details.”

There was a grim little set to her mouth and regret in her eyes, like she knew what was coming. Ted didn’t marry no dummy.

“Go ahead, Ted.”

“I got two points, and I wanna make sure I hit both of ’em, so just let me—” He grabbed a notebook and a pen and made two big boxes on a page. Next to the first he wrote “coming to England in the first place” and next to the second he wrote “we were still together.” “—there we go. Okay.” He sucked in a big gulp of air. He swept his hair back again. “I was happy to listen to you about what happened with Dr. Jacob the knob head. I said I’d always be your friend and I meant that. But I think sometimes being your friend has meant I just swallow it when my feelings get hurt because I feel like I owe it to you to take whatever you dish out on account of how bad a husband I was, and I gotta get better at talking things through instead so I don’t implode. Dr. Sharon says that kinda thing is partially why I have the panic attacks, so I need to, you know, be the change I wanna see in the world, as the great Mahatma Gandhi says. Hey, did you know that’s a title? His actual name was Mohandas.”

“Yes, Ted, I saw the movie,” Michelle said. “You don’t have to justify telling me your honest feelings. I can take it. And you weren’t a bad husband, just not the best communicator. Which you’re correcting now, and I appreciate that, so please. Lay it on me.”

“Right. Right.” A deep breath. “When you said I went to London and left you behind like I was gallivanting off to have some great adventure without you, that felt real bad because it was not only untrue, it was mean. You knew I didn’t want to be away from you and Henry. We had discussed it to death, and even though I could see how this whole thing would lift us out of debt so good I could even pay my mama’s mortgage off, I wasn’t ready to pull the trigger. But you were. You dragged me into Dr. Jacob’s office, where the two of you ganged up on me to get me to agree to go. Because you needed ‘space.’ And I’d’a done anything for you, Michelle, even move four thousand miles away so you could get a break from me. I know I’m a lot, all right, I’ve heard it all my life.”

“Ted.”

“Just—let me get this out, Chelle. I love Richmond. I love the people here, my friends. I have a place here, and when you and Henry come, it’ll really be a home, and I feel real lucky about that. It’s not something I expected, and I’m grateful that that’s how the cookie crumbled, but if we’re being honest, and I am fully in Oklahoma right now, it wasn’t what I wanted when I got on that plane for the first time. It’s what you wanted. Me out of the way is what you wanted, and you got it. So when you threw it in my face this morning like I was some kinda deadbeat who had no care for his responsibilities, that burned me bad. And I know I’d just been dismissive of your feelings at the worst possible time so maybe fair’s fair as far as things said in the heat of the moment go, but I just needed to be real clear that it wasn’t me who threw in the towel on us, Michelle. You ripped the towel right off me. And now I’ve gone and been accusatory just like Doc Sharon told me not to be, so I’m sorry about that, and now it’s your turn to talk, please.”

Ted rubbed his forehead and scratched an exuberant check mark into the first box. Michelle inflated and then deflated with an audible sigh. Her face, dear and beautiful as ever but somehow no longer a constriction around his heart, had grown haggard over the course of his little monologue.

“I know that, Ted,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said it that way, and I’m entering Oklahoma myself right now so I’m gonna level with you: knowing I was the one who made you go didn’t stop me building up a good pile of resentment that you were over there while I was stuck in Andover. I was imagining all the amazing stuff you’d be able to do in a major world city and I was jealous. I’ve tried to keep a lid on it because I know it’s irrational, but it just spilled out last night and I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”

“Part of me also knew I could go out there anytime, but I wanted to be with Jake more than I wanted to catch a show in the West End or hit all those museums I’d always dreamt of.” She scoffed out a rueful laugh. “I found a way to have my boyfriend and resent the ex I’d sent packing at the same time. I’m not proud of myself here, Ted.”

“Have your Jake and eat it too? Is this anything?”

Michelle slanted a Capital-L Look at him, but couldn’t suppress a smile. It faded soon enough.

“I feel like we’re dancing around the real issue here, Ted,” she said.

“You already got a lock on point number two?”

“I can guess,” she said. “If I’m wrong, then you can call it point number three.”

“Do you want me to ask or do you just wanna tell me about it?”

“Let me just—I don’t want you to think I’m giving you excuses. I know there aren’t any. I know it was a shit thing to do, okay? I just think maybe we’re finally in a place where I can tell you my thought process and it won’t—” She winced.

“Completely destroy me?”

The pinch of her face held an apology.

“He just made me feel—seen and heard and sexy again,” she said. “Like he understood everything about me, and sympathized with all my issues, and knew how it was when a marriage was falling apart even if there were no bad guys involved. I felt so awful that I had a good man, a kind, loving, devoted man who was an involved and emotionally validating father unlike so many of my friends’ husbands, and I was falling out of love with him for reasons that felt petty when I said them out loud but had become these huge minefields in the actual marriage. Jake made me feel like that was normal and okay, and maybe it is, but he took it a step further and started in on how you were this thoughtless, inconsiderate leech that took everything but offered nothing in return and you weren’t giving me what I deserved.” She shook her head and clenched her teeth. “And then it became about how beautiful and smart and wonderful and everything I was, how much more ‘someone else’ could give me than the guy I’d hitched my wagon to when I was only twenty. Your question, Ted, is if the affair started before we were divorced, and I wish I could say no but I can’t.”

Ted swallowed. He nodded. His insides felt numb even as his eyes heated. He checked off his second box without looking at it. Michelle looked miserable.

“I didn’t sleep with him until the papers were signed, I can promise you that,” she said. “But it had been….inappropriate, for a while. A lot longer than I was willing to admit before now. I’m sorry about that, Ted. You didn’t deserve it.

“It’s. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for telling me the truth, Michelle.”

“It kills me that I fell for his bullshit hook, line, and sinker. The marriage needed ending but I wish it had been—nicer. I wish I had been nicer.”

“Can you um—can you just tell me what it is that I took and didn’t offer? Because I thought I’d given—” Ted cleared his throat when his voice came out rough. “Just. So I know better for next time.”

Michelle sighed and sat back, tucking a hank of hair behind her ear.

“It wasn’t anything like what my girlfriends were dealing with. They had husbands who didn’t clean up after themselves, or let them do all the hardest parts of parenting alone, or thought having a job meant they could come home and sit on their asses while their wives, most of whom also had full time jobs, took care of every aspect of their domestic lives including shit like everyone’s doctor’s appointments, everyone’s meals, everyone’s everything. You know Mark Crawford doesn’t even know his kids’ birthdays? My friends had complaint after complaint like this, and I had—” Michelle gestured at him. “—I had superdad, a great cook, a guy who kept everything clean and tidy without having to be asked or given a list or told what to do in exhausting detail, someone who never hesitated to tell me he loved me. Everyone loved to remind me how lucky I was. So we moved a lot. So you had a weird work schedule. What the heck was I complaining about, you know?”

“I’d love to know, even if you’re a little late on the draw.”

“I just felt alone, Ted,” Michelle said, and Ted’s heart gave a pang. “You put such a happy face on everything it felt like I wasn’t allowed to have a negative emotion. You’d try to cajole me out of them, and then I’d be mad, and you’d be hurt so I’d feel like shit because c’mon, you’re just trying to help! Ultimately I realized you were never really vulnerable with me. You never let me see the parts of you that were wounded, or needed love, or anything that could actually let me feel like we were close. You were separate from me in a way that felt cold even though on the outside everything about you screams warmth. We couldn’t have a conversation about serious emotions because you were so desperate to pretend not looking at the hard stuff meant it wasn’t there. Every time I reached out I met a wall, Ted. It wasn’t that you were selfish or some massive drain on me like Mark freaking Crawford—it was that you withheld yourself from me until we were just two people trying to prop up a marriage by ourselves instead of with each other.”

“I’m sorry, Chelle,” Ted said. “If it makes you feel better, Doc Sharon’s got me working on a lot of that stuff. Too little too late for us, but.” He shrugged.

“No, it’s good,” Michelle said. “I hope it helps you as much as it seems like it is. I could see you hurting even when you wouldn’t let me in. It’s nice to see you not lugging all of that around anymore.”

“Turns out, if the therapist ain’t looking to get jiggy with your wife, they actually have a lot of worthwhile things to say.”

Michelle laughed.

“I wish I could hug you right now,” she said. “You really do give the best hugs.”

“I do pride myself on them, even if pride’s a sin.”

“Oh hey, speaking of sin—I reported Jake to his licensing board.”

“Hot dog!” Ted hopped to his feet and pumped a fist in the air. The phone toppled and when he righted it, Michelle was laughing.

“So,” she said, an impish spark taking up residence in her eye. “‘Next time,’ huh? If you’ve got someone in mind for the next Mrs. Theodore Lasso, I’d love to hear about her.”

Something in Ted wanted to shy away from this line of inquiry, but that seemed unfair considering the meat of this conversation. Besides, he had nothing to report. The urge to hide his heart from view must be old habits refusing to die.

“No, nothing like that,” he said. “Just thinking about getting back on the horse, is all.”

“Oh yeah? Are you gonna join Bantr? I hear it’s all the rage.”

“Ha, no.”

But even as he said it, Ted’s mind flashed to Trent, flicking through his record collection with quick, clever fingers. Trent brushing his hair back behind an ear. Trent all lean and delicate in a series of size small graphic tees. Trent smiling like he couldn’t help himself when he first saw Ted in the office every workday. Trent looking at him from over his glasses, under his lashes. The way Trent’s eyes tracked him; the way Ted noticed because he was tracking Trent.

Trent.

Ted’s heart sloshed around and did double time for a second.

“Why not?” Michelle’s voice cut through Ted’s inconvenient revelations. “I’ve got a couple friends who’ve done really well on the apps. And the whole text-based Bantr thing sounds slightly less unbearable than swiping based on someone’s pictures.”

“I, uh. Might be feeling out something new. I’m hoping I don’t need Bantr’s help here, but we’ll see.”

Michelle squealed and Ted could see her kicking her feet.

“Is it anyone I know?” she said. “Oh my God, is it Rebecca? I’ll die if it’s Rebecca.”

“What? Why would you die if it was Rebecca? Which it isn’t, by the way.”

“Because then you’d really be winning this divorce.”

Ted laughed and shook his head.

“You know what I think about that,” he said.

“It’s not about winning or losing?”

“It’s like you know me or something.”

“Ah, Ted,” Michelle said, undeniably fond. “I’ve never regretted knowing you for a second.”

Ted spent a good couple hours on the phone with Michelle, both making plans and discussing things that had festered between them for too long. In the end, Ted felt like they were finally cobbling together the foundation for a real friendship, and he felt lighter than he had in a long time.

His cookie dough was chilling in the fridge and he had maybe an hour before he was due at Trent’s. He shaved and cleaned up his mustache, then hopped in the shower and did his usual routine extra thoroughly. The thought of Trent was sending a fizz through his chest—had it always been like this? Had he been orbiting Trent since the beginning? It seemed impossible, since he came to this country still very much in love with his wife and had never had a roving eye, but Ted couldn’t deny that there had been a pull since the first interview. There was plenty about Trent Crimm that was striking, unforgettable, from the way he looked like no one else to his keen skill at cutting through bullshit, even if it nicked Ted’s skin along the way. Ted had just thought maybe everyone found Trent just as fascinating.

When Ted came here, he knew right off the bat that he’d have to win Roy over. More, he knew he could. Athletes were easy, even world-class ones. Ted spoke their language. With Trent, he wanted it for no reason but to have the man like him, and he was never sure, until the end of last season, if he was gonna succeed. In betraying Ted, Trent betrayed himself, and though the article had burned him, Ted’s chief feeling when Trent visited him the next day, suddenly unemployed, was a giddy triumph. He had him.

Ted put on an outfit Keeley had once told him made him look “right fuckable.” He turned his oven on to preheat and, unable to contain it any longer, called Beard and set his phone on speaker.

“Yello,” came Beard’s voice.

“Howdy, pardner!” Ted said. “I got a question for ya, if you got a minute for me.”

“Hit me.”

“Do I like men? Have I liked men this whole time?”

Silence.

“Coach?”

“Do you remember Ray Cassidy, freshman year?” Beard asked. “How would you characterize your reaction to him?”

Ted frowned.

“Well he—he had all that long hair.”

“It was 1993, Coach. All the boys had long hair except the wannabe yuppies. I will remind you of a certain mullet you may or may not have been rocking yourself.”

“No, no—it wasn’t like, greasy grunge hair. It was always real clean, like he pampered it how it deserved. Whew, remember how curly and red it was? Like a dang firework. It smelled like strawberries!”

“Uh huh.”

“Did you know I found one of his hairs in the sleeve of an old hoodie of mine like fifteen years after I last saw him?”

“How ’bout that comp lit professor you had who was always talking about Foucault and Fanon—what was his name again?”

Ted groaned.

“Dr. Leung. Alan.”

“And what was it about him that had you visiting his office hours at least once a week?”

“He was real smart, okay? He knew so much and he was so good at saying it in a way that was easy to understand and he had a nice voice. And I’ll have you know he was real happy to have me in class.”

“And how can we forget Darnell Sharpe?”

“Listen, you cannot deny he was poetry in motion on the field. If you say you ever played with a better quarterback, you’re lyin’. Every year I pour one out for his poor broken leg.”

“And?”

Ted closed his eyes, leaned his hands on the counter and rolled his neck.

“And he looked like he was carved by Michelangelo himself, is that what you wanna hear?”

“Aaand?”

“And I swore you to secrecy about that!”

“It’s been thirty years and I’ve never breathed a word of it. I’d like to hear it again, now.”

Ted crossed one arm over his chest and rubbed his eyebrows. He let out a peevish sigh.

“And I got half a chub seeing him in the showers,” he said. “I was eighteen!”

“And soon you’ll be forty-eight,” Beard said. “Isn’t it time to come in from the cold, Coach?”

“Is ‘the cold’ my delusions of heterosexuality?”

“Narrowly defined labels for concepts as complicated and mercurial as desire are the racist patriarchal crypto-fascist tools of cultural division, and you know my stance.”

“I do, Coach, I do.”

The oven beeped. Ted put his cookies in and set the timer for nine minutes.

“Listen, Coach,” Beard said, and Ted’s ears perked to the gravity in his voice. “Life is too long to spend it denying parts of yourself, and it’s too short not to grab at the good things that come your way. But you can’t wait forever, you know?”

“Would you do it?” Ted asked. “Be with a man, real public-like? Weather the absolute shit storm that would stir up in our line of work?”

“If I fell in love?” Beard said. “In a fucking heartbeat, Ted.”

Trent was going to be very brave and strong and tell Ted they shouldn’t be spending so much time together. He was ready to own up to his part in it all: that he’d allowed himself to get caught up in the fantasy that Ted could reciprocate his feelings when he was old enough to know better about sexy handsome straight men, even ones who looked at him the way Ted did and said weird sexual things by accident the way Ted did. Look here, Coach Lasso, he’d say to Ted when the time was right. We can still be friends, but I need a little distance to get my head on straight. So to speak. Congratulations and good luck with Michelle, etc., I’ll call you when I feel less sick with envy about it.

After he offered a good helping of purely platonic emotional support in Ted’s time of need. With his penis.

“Bollocks,” Trent muttered. He was doing a final pass of the sitting room, dining room, and kitchen to clear them of small child detritus. He was not going to set out any glasses of wine. He was not going to pick out a record that made him think expansive romantic thoughts. He was going to suggest a restaurant with malfunctioning fluorescent lighting and staff whose chief means of communication was shouting in a foreign language. He would listen, and make sympathetic sounds, and then he would tell Ted that he needed some space. Foolproof.

He rolled his eyes at himself.

Some twenty minutes before Ted was set to arrive—he was nothing if not freakishly punctual—Trent’s doorbell rang. He frowned and peeked out the peephole only to find Coach Beard on his doorstep with his hands stuffed into the pockets of a trench coat and sunglasses on his face though it was nearly dark out. Trent swung his door open.

“Coach Beard? Do you need something?”

Beard pivoted on his heel to face him. He said nothing for a moment, and though Trent could not see his eyes, he got the distinct impression he was being inspected.

“I fielded an interesting phone call tonight,” Beard said.

“Ah. From the press? How bad is it? Should we get Keeley on the line?”

“Not the press,” Beard said. “Did you know I used to be an exotic dancer at a club called Man City?”

“Man—what? In Manchester?”

“No, in college.”

“I don’t—Would you like to come in?”

“No, I was just happening by.”

Happening did seem to be verb that best encapsulated Beard.

“Coach Beard, forgive me, but I’ve really lost the plot here. Perhaps you could start again.”

“I learned a lot at Man City,” Beard said. “About myself. About life. About cocaine.”

“Right.”

“Some of us take longer to get there.”

“To—Man City?”

“Some paths to Man City are circuitous.”

Trent stared. Beard stared. Trent knew the man wasn’t blinking. Trent couldn’t quite keep the snide joke to himself.

“The M40 is fairly straightforward.”

Beard stepped backwards off of Trent’s stoop and seemed to dissipate like a fog. Trent stood there for a long moment trying to puzzle out what just happened. A breeze fluttered his hair about, and he went back inside, closing the door behind him.

When the doorbell rang again at 7pm on the dot, Trent paused, shook himself out, and took a steadying breath. He opened the door. Ted beamed at him and held up a box of something that smelled divine and a record all wrapped up complete with a bow. He looked unfairly gorgeous in dark-wash denims that hugged his hips and the long line of his legs, and under his peacoat Trent could see he was in a crisp burgundy button-down that complemented his coloring.

Of course he was going to make this harder on Trent than it had to be. All while maddeningly oblivious.

Trent let him in. They did an awkward shuffle of biscuit boxes and gifts and coats until Trent found himself in the sitting room with an armful of baked goods and mystery records.

“What’s all this?” he asked. “You shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.”

“No trouble, Barney Rubble,” Ted said, bouncing onto his toes. “Just had a hankering for some chocolate chip cookies, is all. Y’all are really falling down on the chocolate chip cookie job over here. You ever had a real chocolate chip cookie, Trent? Fresh outta the oven? Hoo-wee, you’re in for a treat!”

“Should we spoil our dinner on them?” Trent asked. Ted turned a curly smile on him, eyes twinkling. Oh it was so deeply unfair.

“Maybe just one, while they’re still warm,” he said. He stepped right into Trent’s space to lifted the biscuit box off him. He was close enough that Trent could smell the fresh shower he took, feel the puff of his breath on his face. Trent’s own breath hitched.

Ted stepped back, and then he was swanning about Trent’s kitchen, finding the tea saucers with unnerving accuracy and setting a single biscuit—cookie, surely—onto one before sliding it into place before Trent. Ted was leaned on his elbows no the other side of the freestanding counter, chin planted in one hand as he looked at Trent far too soppily for a man who called him things like “supersport.” He had a cookie of his own but seemed to be waiting for Trent to eat his first.

Trent held up the wrapped record.

“Cookie or present first?”

“Whatever suits, Imogen Poots.”

“Ted. You really don’t have to buy me presents. Look at that room and tell me I need another record.” Trent waved at his prodigious collection.

“It’s not about needing, sunshine.”

Sunshine? Trent was going to have heart palpitations. He dropped his eyes from Ted’s to the record. He slid his finger under the gift wrap and popped all the bits with sticky tape open without ripping anything. He slid the record out. Images in Vogue: Collection 2.0: Chronology.

“Now I know compilations are cheating,” Ted said. “But turns out some of their best songs only made it onto these collections they released a few years back, so.”

“I don’t know them,” Trent said. He risked looking at Ted, who was watching him anxiously. His heart swelled and he held the record up, eyebrow raised. “Congratulations, Ted, you’ve finally stumped me.”

“Ha, well. They’re Canadian,” Ted said. “I just hope you like them.”

“I think you know my taste well enough by now to choose well. Should I put it on?”

“Sure. Let’s take our cookies in the drawing room like the queen. Is that a drawing room?”

Trent snorted. He crossed the room and put the record on while Ted swept in, tea saucers in hand, and took up residence on the sofa. The sitting room filled with an enveloping new wave synth that comforted Trent despite his lack of familiarity with the track. Ted really did have his taste sussed. Trent sat a cushion’s length apart from Ted and picked up his saucer.

“This really does smell unbelievable,” Trent said. He took a bite. Melted chocolate and warm, moist biscuit burst over his tongue and his eyes rolled back in his head. “Oh fuck,” he said. He may have made an undignified noise. Distantly, he was aware that Ted was laughing at him. When his brain came back online, he opened his eyes to find Ted smiling at him—not the massive grin that made Trent feel like he was basking in sunlight, but a small thing, fond and warm. Jesus.

“I’m glad you like them,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

“Do you think I’d be a bad father if I didn’t save any for Morgana?”

“There’s plenty more where those came from,” Ted said. “You don’t have to worry about the Morgmeister getting her fair share.”

“Ah yes, Coach Ted the biscuit fairy.”

“Ha! I like that.”

“Christ, Ted, you need to hide that box. I’m going to embarrass myself.’

“Well you know what they say about temptation,” Ted said.

“‘The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it’?”

Ted beamed and clapped him on the shoulder.

“I knew I could count on Trent Crimm, first in English literature and journalism.”

Christ, the man was making him quote Wilde. Trent wasn’t going to survive. He needed to stem the bleeding.

“Listen, Ted—”

Ted’s eyebrows knitted his face into a wordless question and he tilted his head. He was bloody adorable. Trent lost his nerve.

“Have you thought about where you’d like to eat?” Trent asked.

“Oh, I’m easy,” Ted said, and Trent sent up another prayer to whichever deity took pity on wretched middle-aged queers destined to pine hopelessly for a straight man into perpetuity. “Whatcha in the mood for?”

“There’s a hole in the wall Szechuan I like not too far from here,” he said. “Or there’s always pizza. Maybe an utter fuckton of garlic’s just the thing tonight.”

He was talking compete bollocks. His mouth was dry. He grabbed the closest mug and suddenly had a mouthful of old cold tea. He choked it down and tried to look normal. Ted was peering at him with some concern.

“Why, do your sinuses hurt? I can make you my Appalachian granny’s special sicky soup—”

“No, no, that’s—I’m fine, really. Just a silly joke with myself.” You’re the joke, Crimm. As usual. “What do you think? Szechuan or pizza?”

“Are we eating out or bringing it back?”

He should say eat out because both restaurants were designed for takeaway and made dining in awkward and uncomfortable on purpose. But he was a weak man and said, “It’ll be easier to talk here. Though I do think you’re a little too chipper for a man whose family isn’t finally coming to stay.”

Ted broke into one of his enormous grins. Trent’s heart sank and swelled at the same time.

“Yeah! We had to hash some stuff out but the upshot is they’ll be landing at Heathrow in about two months, so I’m over the moon right now.”

“I’m glad for you, Ted.”

“It’s gonna be amazing. Hey, I need to pick your brain about some cool stuff to do in this great country of yours. Michelle made me realize I wasn’t taking advantage of all the opportunities I have at my disposal here, so I think during the off season we’ll make some time to do things outside of London now that I have a solid handle on these here two square miles of it.”

Ted’s eyes sparkled devastatingly. Trent turned away to grab the takeaway menus, which he thrust in Ted’s direction with a muttered, “You decide.” He retreated into the kitchen to crack open the 21-year Balvenie he had sworn he’d keep for a special occasion. His breaking heart seemed as special as it was going to get.

He opened his cabinet doors and got out two glasses, which he stared at for some interminable period before cracking the Scotch open and splashing three fingers into each glass. He flicked a couple drops of water into them, took a grounding breath, and went back into the sitting room.

“You all right, Trent?” Ted asked.

Trent forced out a smile and handed him the Scotch.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Did you decide where we’re eating?”

“I gotta admit I saw the braised pork ribs at this Szechuan place and suddenly had a real hankering,” Ted said.

“Lovely,” Trent said. “Anything else?”

“Maybe some chicken fried rice? And wonton soup.”

“Would you have some if I get half a crispy roast duck?”

“Trent Crimm, it would be my genuine honor to share some duck with you.”

“I’ll put in the order,” Trent said, pulling up the app on his phone. He was just about to hit submit when Ted shot to attention beside him and made an insane noise Trent could only describe as “cowboy.” Trent startled and looked over to find Ted blinking eyes as big as the cookies he’d ruined Trent’s life with.

“Yow! That’s a hell of a drink, Trent, great jeezy creezy. I feel like I owe you a couple big nights out on the town now.”

“The pleasure of your company is enough, Ted,” he said.

Trent hit submit and set his phone down. He stuck his nose in his own glass and breathed the Belvanie in. He held his glass out, and Ted clinked it. He took a draw and it was smooth and rich, luxurious. But no matter how posh any bottle of Scotch was, the alcohol always hit his bloodstream the same way: like warm piss in a pool. A balm to all his nerves. He closed his eyes and let himself slouch back. His knee was touching Ted’s. His phone pinged. His order would be ready in forty-five minutes.

Ted nudged his knee.

“So,” he said. “You promised we could talk about your favorite meal when I came over.”

“Did I?”

“Come on, please please please?”

Trent glanced over and found Ted with his chin resting atop his hands as he batted his eyelashes at him. Trent huffed out a laugh.

“What is this information for?” he asked. He squinted an eye at him and sent his eyebrows upward. “Are you writing a book about me?”

Ted threw his head back and laughed. The hollow at the base of his neck, his Adam’s apple, the flirty little peek of hair and collarbone Trent could see at his open collar, were such enticements Trent had to look away even though there was probably nothing better than making the man you were infatuated with laugh.

“If only I had the chops,” Ted said. “But you know what I do have the chops for? Sometimes literally, at least in terms of pork.”

“What is it you have the chops for, Ted?”

“To make you a real nice dinner instead of just the best dang chocolate chip cookies this side of the Atlantic.”

“Ted…”

“Don’t say I don’t have to! I want to, all right? As soon as my new kitchen’s up and running. So—what am I cookin’, good lookin’?”

Trent resisted the urge to slam back the nicest Scotch he was ever likely to taste. Could Ted even hear himself when he said these things?

“Ted, maybe you could—”

Ted made big eyes at him, and Trent lost his nerve again.

“Maybe you could just make me something I can’t get here,” Trent said. “Something so intensely American that I’ll shit stars and stripes for days.”

Ted laughed again, knocked his knee again. Left his thigh pressed up against Trent’s.

“Well now that’s a challenge I’d like to meet,” he said. “You gotta give me some clues though. Likes, dislikes, passionate hatreds, allergies.”

Trent had no allergies and hated any bitter vegetable. He maintained that picking a single favorite meal was impossible, but he did end up talking about the lavish spreads his Gujarati grandmother used to make, dishes he’d never learned the names for before she died. He’d never been able to find exactly what she’d made or anyone else whose food could come close.

“And your mom didn’t know?” Ted asked. “Or your dad?”

“She was my mother’s mother, but my mother died when I was eight months old so I never knew her. Cancer, which they’d found during her pregnancy. She’d put off treatment to keep me safe, and.” Trent shrugged.

“Oh, Trent, I’m so sorry.”

Trent waved him off.

“It’s all right, Ted,” he said. “I never knew any different, of course. And Nani, my grandmother—it was good to have her for the years I did, though my emotionally constipated English father found her presence trying. He’s rather a stone cold bastard, but having Nani stay with us until she died was the best thing he ever did for me. She left India, her whole family, everything she knew, to help raise me.”

“Gosh, what a rock star.”

Christ, now he was maudlin, thinking about a woman who’d been dead for more than thirty-five years.

“I don’t miss my mother, but I miss her,” Trent said as if confessing some great shame.

Ted budged up closer to him, a warm grounding weight.

“She sounds amazing. You got pictures?”

Trent pulled up the albums of scanned family photos he had in his phone. Ted flicked through them and added his particular brand of effusive color commentary to each. There was one photo he seemed to get stuck on: Trent’s frail, exhausted mother, beaming at a six-month-old Trent in her arms, whilst Nani looked on with love radiating from her face and Dad stood there behind them staring at the camera as if it were taking his mugshot. Ted stared at that one for a long time. He zoomed in on each face and inspected it deeply.

“Your family’s really beautiful, Trent,” he said softly. “You look like her. Your nani.”

“Thank you,” Trent said. “Morgana’s middle name is Revathi, after her.”

“I love that.”

Ted handed Trent’s phone back. His fingertips brushed against his palm and sent his nerves jangling. And his very foolish, very optimistic prick twitching. Trent scooted away from Ted.

“You ever been to India?” Ted asked.

“Ah, no. I’ve always wanted to, but.” He shrugged. “I only met my aunts and uncles once, when they came for Nani’s funeral. I don’t know them, I don’t speak Gujarati, and I’ve never been able to hide my being gay. All of it put together makes a visit seem too daunting, and now all those aunts and uncles are old or dead or in Australia, I have a young child and a busy work life. It just never happened.”

“Hm.”

“What?”

“There’s still time, is all,” Ted said. “Don’t count yourself out just yet. It’s wild, how much things can change.”

Ted gestured to himself, face bathed in the warm colored light of Trent’s Tiffany lamps. A midwestern man from a modest background now leading a Premier League football team on an unlikely path to the top of the league. The man whose dogged goodness dared Trent to be better, to extract himself from a career that was carving him into the worst version of himself. Yes, how quickly everything could change.

“I do think I’m unqualified to make Gujarati food,” Ted said. “But maybe we can take a grand tour of all the Gujarati places in London, what do you say?”

“That sounds—yeah, I’d like that,” Trent said, because he was weak, and he was never going to tell Ted his proximity hurt him, because the lack of it hurt him more. He would take this friendship with Ted, blurry accidental flirtations and all, and he would be grateful for it.

The walk to the restaurant would take around fifteen minutes, and it wasn’t so much drizzling out as it was gently misting, and umbrellas were useless. Ted apparently still found this type of precipitation novel and invigorating. He was also oohing and ahhing over the houses in Trent’s neighborhood. The architecture, he exclaimed, had so much more character than the cookie-cutter suburban developments he’d lived in all his adult life. He stopped in front of a narrow semi-detached Victorian with a real estate sign in front of it. He tipped his head back to take it all in.

“How much do you think something like this goes for?”

“A single-family home in an area like this is going to have a rather shocking price tag,” Trent said. “I only lucked into mine because it’s been in the family for a hundred years and there’s no mortgage on it anymore. Dad didn’t want to leave his bungalow in Surrey when Grandad died, so here we are, living the upper middle class twit dream.”

“Ballpark?”

“Ah, I’m not sure. Certainly not less than three million.”

Ted whistled out a falling note and shoved his hands into the pockets of his peacoat. He fell back into step with Trent.

“That’s steep,” he said. “I know I make more money than God these days but my brain still thinks I’m growing up on Hamburger Helper and only buying things when you have a coupon.”

“We can take a look at the listings when we get back,” Trent said. “Get a sense of costs. Do you have any idea which neighborhoods you might like? How many beds, how many baths? I know you Americans like your detached houses but one of those will be further afield than you might care to look.”

“Yeah, I figured that kinda thing wasn’t in the cards, especially since I like walking to work so much. I’d like to keep doing that. And if I could be near the green or the gardens, I’d be chuffed. Am I using that right? I can never keep straight if it means chuffed or chuffed.”

Trent chuckled. He glanced over to find Ted sneaking him a sly side-eye, lips pressed together as though he were trying to not smile.

“I’m onto you, Ted Lasso,” Trent said. Ted winked at him; it was horrid.

Ted straightened up and tightened his peacoat around himself.

“Is four bedrooms nuts?” he asked. “I feel like Mr. Monopoly, throwing money around like leaves just for the ambiance. Woo-wee, if my daddy could see me now.”

“It’s not nuts if there’s a use for them,” Trent said. “I assume you aren’t just going to fill each one with crystal vases and Fabergé eggs.”

“I was thinking one could be a study,” Ted said. “And the other would make a good guest room for when my mom or cousins visit. Or, you know.” He shrugged; Trent made a questioning sound. Ted’s eyes skittered toward him only to cut away again. “Maybe my family will be bigger one day.”

Trent stopped short. Ted turned toward him, looking soft by the glow of the street lamps. A bit of his hair was plastered to his forehead.

“You and Michelle are thinking about having more kids?”

Ted startled, brow furrowing.

“What? No! I mean even if—she’s pushin’ fifty, Trent, and gettin’ Henry was already a trial and a half. That factory’s been closed for a long time. Besides, me and her are divorced? It even made the papers, if you’ll recall.”

Trent ignored the pointed look.

“But I thought—” Trent’s teeth clicked shut. He looked off to the side as he ran through all he could remember about what had been said between this morning and this evening. “Oh.”

“Is this why you been squirrelly all day?”

“Squirrelly?”

“Michelle sent me half a world away, that’s how much she don’t want me,” Ted said. “And here’s the important part, Trent: even if she lost her mind and tried to get back with me, I wouldn’t take her up on it.”

“Oh.”

“We were kids when we got together, you know? And sometimes all the growin’ up you do ends up being apart instead of together, and it’s only on the other side of it that you realize that’s okay. Necessary, even. The process hurt like hell but I can finally say I’m glad me and her are over.”

“That’s—I didn’t know that,” Trent said, feeling faint.

“There was some light…infidelity.’

“Oh, Ted. I’m sorry.”

Ted waved his sympathies away.

“In any case, I got my eye on someone else. Have for a while now.”

Ted held Trent’s gaze. Trent’s heart stopped.

Slowly, as if shy of spooking a nervous horse, Ted stepped into Trent’s space. Toe to toe. Nose to nose. Trent’s heart started back up at double speed. His lips parted to speak, but no words came. Ted’s hand brushed Trent’s. Cold fingers tangled up in his and gave them a squeeze.

“Is this okay?” Ted asked.

Trent swallowed. He could only nod. Ted tucked a lock of hair behind Trent’s ear and lingered there, toying with the ends of Trent’s hair.

“Trent…”

“Can I just—”

Trent rocked forward, cupped Ted’s jaw, and then his mouth was on Ted’s mouth, the mustache was pleasingly bristly, and Ted’s lips parted in a gasp, and he tilted his head and they fit together just right and Ted’s tongue was sweeping inside and electricity was blazing up Trent’s spine and exploding behind his eyelids and it was perfect, perfect, perfect.

Trent was giddy all the way to the restaurant and all the way back. He was giddy through dinner, giddy every time Ted’s socked foot toed teasingly at his, giddy with each Szechuan-flavored kiss they exchanged on the sofa. He was giddy while they were slouched together in the tipsy, overfull aftermath, holding hands and talking about places to visit, Trent’s nani and Ted’s gramps, cuisines they hadn’t tried yet, music they could share, bizarre things their kids had said, growing up as only children surrounded by bigger families, Ted’s mother’s midwestern martyrdom and Trent’s father’s second family in Surrey, the legacy left by dead parents.

Eventually they slid onto their backs on the floor like boneless blobs. Trent finally found a band Ted didn’t know despite being an American of the appropriate age: Concrete Blonde. Naturally, this made him giddy. Because he liked to be contrary, the first album Trent set in the record player was not Bloodletting but Mexican Moon.

“Ooh, I like that,” Ted said. “Dang, what a powerhouse of a voice, what’s her name again?”

“Johnette Napolitano,” Trent said. “One of the greatest female vocalists in rock, and definitely the most underrated.”

“Now how in the heck did I miss this?” Ted said.

Once upon a time, Trent might have said it was because Ted spent too much time listening to stadium rock, but he had been wrong about every single one of his preconceived notions about this man and had duly learned his lesson.

“Must not have made it to midwestern radio,” he said.

“I blame my parents being anti-cable,” Ted said. “No MTV.”

“Or,” Trent said, lolling his head to the side enough to slant Ted a look, “you did hear some, but you forgot.”

“You callin’ me old, Trent Crimm? I’d like to point out that you are a solid six months older than me.”

“I imagine you’ve heard Joey or Tomorrow Wendy but didn’t know who it was,” Trent said.

“Are those on this album?”

“No, but we can listen to all the Concrete Blonde albums I have, if you want.”

“No hurry,” Ted said. “We got time.”

One of his fingers wriggled into Trent’s belt loop and gave him a tug. A thrill bubbled through him and he turned over onto Ted, propping himself up on his hands to gaze down into Ted’s face. Ted looked up at him, eyes avid, lips parted, color high on his cheeks. Surrendered and open. Trent’s cock chubbed up.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” Trent said. “I thought I was being delusional.”

“Sorry to be slow on the uptake,” Ted said. “I think my brain was…waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“For it to be real,” Ted said. “My being here. My staying.”

“And it’s—you’re serious about it.”

“I don’t think I’m built for casual, Trent.”

Trent kissed him. The kiss deepened, heated, ignited a hunger in the pit of his gut. Ted arched up with a groan. Trent pushed a thigh between Ted’s legs and felt the hard knot of Ted’s arousal pressing back. Ted’s hands tightened on Trent’s hips.

“I want this,” Trent panted into Ted’s mouth. “I’ve wanted this, I’ve wanted you, fuck, Ted—”

“Please,” Ted said raggedly. “Please, please.”

Trent settled his weight on Ted and let the kisses overtake him. Ted’s hands wandered down to his arse and clutched at him, held him down so their hips ground together. Trent’s knees were smarting even on the plush rug, and though it physically hurt him to interrupt, he had to say it.

“I’m too old for floor sex.”

Ted laughed. He was flushed and his hair was askew, even his mustache. A perverse sort of pride suffused Trent at the sight. He stood and pulled Ted up, not letting his hand go as he led him up the stairs to his bedroom. He turned on a table lamp and threw the room into a soft glow. He and Ted faced each other, breath heavy, trapped erections straining absurdly toward each other. Finally, Trent reached for the buttons of Ted’s shirt. Ted audibly swallowed as Trent unbuttoned him and pushed the shirt off his shoulders. He pulled up the hem of Ted’s vest; Ted raised his arms to help, and then Ted’s broad, befurred chest was revealed to him, everything he’d imagined and more. Trent’s breath caught. He laid his hands on the soft muscle of Ted’s chest, grabbed hold of all that soft hair. Ted gasped. Trent leaned in and set his nose in Ted’s neck, breathed him deep. His scent was intoxicating. Ted’s breath shuddered out of him, and he wound his arms around Trent’s neck.

“Now you,” he said, and though Trent was loath to let him go, fair was fair. He stepped back to let Ted divest him of his own ancient Siouxsie and the Banshees t-shirt. He pulled Ted in by the waistband of his denims and drew him in for another searching kiss. Ted pressed their chests together, their stomachs, as though he could not get close enough, as though their skins could merge. With a flick of his wrist, Trent loosed Ted from his denims and his pants and revealed the full glory of his prick. It was thick and long, circumcised, gently curved and leaking. It was heavy and hot and so, so hard.

“Jesus fuck, Ted,” he said.

“Sorry,” Ted said, voiced strangled.

“Ha! Imagine apologizing for having the most gorgeous cock in the world. Do shut up, darling.”

Said cock jumped in Trent’s hand. Trent’s eyebrows rose and he flicked his eyes up to meet Ted’s.

“You like that?” Trent asked. “My darling?”

Ted moaned and pulled Trent closer by his hips. He mouthed at Trent’s shoulder, his neck, the hollow behind his ear. His hands slipped under the waistband of Trent’s trousers and squeezed at his bare arse. Trent moaned into his mouth and bodied him into bed. Ted watched, propped up on his elbows, as Trent kicked off his trousers and his socks. The awe in his face gave Trent pause, and he stood there between Ted’s legs, letting him look his fill.

Ted sat up and stroked his hands down Trent’s waist, mouth hanging open.

“You are devastating,” Ted said, voice low and rough. “Every day all I wanna do is look at you.”

“Fuck, Ted.”

Ted pushed his face into the sparse patch of hair in the middle of Trent’s chest and nuzzled into it. Trent buried his hands in Ted’s hair and hugged him close, set his cheek on Ted’s crown and savored this, the scent of him, the feeling of holding and being held. Trent had to tuck his lips behind his teeth before he said something foolish and precipitous.

Ted nosed around to Trent’s nipple and gave it a gentle tug with his teeth. His nipples didn’t do much for him, but Ted’s mouth on him was shocking and unbelievable all the same and his hips bucked forward. Trent tugged gently at his hair and Ted lifted his head up to take Trent’s kiss.

“I need—”

“Tell me,” Ted said.

“I need you,” Trent said. “I need to see you, I need to feel you, I need to know you.”

Trent was not used to words being inadequate, but in this, they were. Ted heard him anyway.

“You got me, Trent. You got me right here.”

“Yes, yes, God yes.”

Trent herded Ted backward until he lay flat in Trent’s bed, and then Trent was mapping out every line and freckle, every hair, every perfect lovely bit of him. He moaned and squirmed and babbled when Trent lavished attention on his nipples. He whimpered and panted when Trent licked into his underarms. He laughed when Trent nosed his ribs. He tried to suck in his gut when Trent made his way downward, but Trent told him he was beautiful, that he wanted him exactly as he was, that he had fantasized about shattering himself against this very body too desperately to be disappointed in the heady reality of it now.

Ted let out a strangled groan when Trent bypassed his cock, but Trent stayed the course, tasted the musk of Ted’s inguinal crease, huffed about his bollocks, traced his tongue down the line of his leg, sucked a kiss behind his knee, swirled his tongue around the knob of his ankle, dragged his teeth across the side of his foot, nibbled at his toes. He had Ted thrashing, squealing, fisting his cock, and he started again on the other side, up up up until he was back at the juncture of those powerful thighs and finally took pity on Ted and took the head of his prick into his mouth.

A bellow clapped out of Ted’s throat and his thighs, his abdomen, flexed helplessly. Slowly, Trent pushed his head down Ted’s cock, opening his throat, pulsing his tongue over Ted’s slit. Ted’s hands landed in Trent’s hair, reverent and careful. Trent moaned around his mouthful and was rewarded with a spurt of precome. He surrendered to the rhythm of sucking and bobbing and pumping.

Ted’s cock was too big to spend too much time sucking it; lockjaw would quite kill the mood. Besides, Trent wasn’t done cataloguing all of Ted’s bodily secrets. He was gentle with Ted’s balls, but he got his shoulders under Ted’s thighs and encouraged him to lift them, to tilt his hips up. The sight of Ted’s hole, dusted with hair and winking, sent a rush of heat through Trent’s body and hardened his cock past the point of comfort. With a groan he gave in, buried his face in Ted’s crease, and licked eagerly over his hole.

Ted gave a shout and a full-body spasm.

“Oh fuck, Trent, oh shit, oh God,” he said, and Trent would feel smug about hearing those words come out of that mouth, except he was too occupied in his task, too drunk off his senses being overwhelmed by it, too in love with the way Ted’s hole twitched and gave and clutched at his tongue.

Ted ran out of words soon enough. He keened and squirmed and held his knees open, pushed into Trent’s face with abandon, jerked himself at a punishing, frantic pace. For his part, Trent ground his cock into the sheets, but he was content to stay where he was, licking and sucking and fucking his tongue inside until Ted bloomed for him completely.

Trent didn’t know how long he was down there before Ted lost patience and started bucking him upwards.

“Trent, I can’t come yet, Trent please, please.”

“What do you need, darling?” Trent murmured into his pubic hair.

“I wanna touch you, I haven’t touched you, please.”

Trent pushed himself to his knees and Ted, without a moment’s hesitation, surged up, took Trent’s face in his hands, and kissed him hot and deep. Ted squeezed a big hand around Trent’s prick and swallowed his resultant moan. His touch was inexpert, unpracticed at the unusual angle, but he was kissing Trent so hungrily, so greedily, Trent felt so moved he was sure he would weep to remember it later.

Ted pressed closer, and then his cock was laid against Trent’s and Ted was pumping both of them, rocking his hips, keening into Trent’s mouth.

“I wanna make you feel good, Trent, show me how to make you feel good, I don’t—I don’t—”

Trent cradled Ted’s head, interrupting his begging with a kiss, and bore him back down onto the mattress. He wanted Ted impaled and coming apart on his cock, he wanted to ride Ted’s into the stratosphere, but urgency demanded he take a quicker route to pleasure this time. He fitted himself behind him and pushed his cock into the space under Ted’s bollocks. He slid easily along the glide of his saliva and shuddered at the heat and pressure.

“Keep your thighs tight,” he said into Ted’s ear, and Ted clenched obediently around him.

He scraped his teeth over the skin between Ted’s shoulder blades and was pleased at the desperate wail that earned him, the press of plush arse cheeks into his pelvis. He swept a hand up Ted’s belly to tweak a nipple and got another whimper and arch in response. He kept sucking along the top of Ted’s spine and Ted kept rocking backward until they were undulating in a swift, slick rhythm that had Trent hurtling toward completion sooner than he would have imagined. Ted was letting out a series of choked off whimpers with each drag of Trent’s cock over his hole and behind his balls, and Trent was saying God only knew what into his ear as he fucked his way toward oblivion.

Trent was close. He batted Ted’s hand away from his cock and took hold of it himself. He gripped it tight and set a merciless rhythm. Ted made a sound like the air had been punched out of him. He reached back and gripped Trent’s hip, slammed himself back onto Trent’s cock and then stilled, a strained gasp the only sound he made before he grunted and spilled over Trent’s hand. He spurted three, four times, and then sank back in Trent’s arms, boneless and twitching. Trent closed his teeth over the skin at the back of Ted’s neck, thrust himself forward with a hard snap of his hips, and came in bright-hot explosions that stole his senses away.

Trent let himself drift, soiled hands tangled in Ted’s, head nestled into his back, knees into knees. He eventually floated back into himself to find Ted clutching his hand to his chest and rubbing his thumb along Trent’s knuckles, cooling semen and all. Trent nuzzled his nose into the hair at the base of Ted’s skull and Ted shivered.

“We should get cleaned up,” Trent said.

“Just a little longer,” Ted said.

Trent hummed into Ted’s skin and closed his eyes.

“I didn’t know it could be like that,” Ted said softly, some indeterminate amount of time later.

“What, gay sex?” Trent asked, tucking his grin into Ted’s neck. He gave him a good squeeze for his troubles.

“No,” Ted said, no trace of humor in his voice. “Sex at all.”

Trent slung a leg over Ted’s and pressed in closer, held him tighter.

“We’ll learn together,” Trent said.

Eventually, they had to get up and shuffle into the shower. They washed each other’s hair and kissed under the spray. Trent found Ted’s ticklish spots and Ted found Trent’s. They joked and flirted and had a good giggle or three.

Trent changed the sheets and bundled Ted into bed while he was still sleepy and floppy and warm. They curled onto their sides facing each other. Ted leaned in until the tip of his nose rested against the tip of Trent’s.

“Trent?”

“Ted.”

“Throwing Muses or Shakespears Sister?”

“This Mortal Coil.”

“Now you’re just being difficult,” Ted said.

“Gillian Welch or Lucinda Williams?” Trent asked.

“Neko Case.”

“I suppose I deserve that.”

“All that and more, sunshine.”

“I love a menace,” Trent said, and froze.

Ted said nothing, but lifted a hand and traced Trent’s cheekbone with his thumb.

“Trent?”

“Mm.”

“I wouldn’t’a done this if I didn’t love you too.”

Trent’s breath left him. He sagged, and his forehead came to rest against Ted’s.

“We’re gonna be all right,” Ted whispered, and Trent believed him.

Trent saw the future spool out before him just like this, only there were rings on their fingers and kids down the hall. No ache in his chest accompanied the daydream.

End