Work Text:
MUG ONE
The thing is, Trent starts fairly subtle. He makes bracelets with Isadora—she delights in making a mess and he’s fairly certain he’ll be finding colorful beads and pieces of string everywhere for the next year—and wears one in all rainbow to work.
Then he thinks, no, that’s too subtle. How about something more obvious.
How about a mug?
A mug, after all, is something you hold in your hands, it attracts the eye with movement, and—okay, Trent is overthinking this, just get a mug.
He searches his own mugs for something suitable, and—yes, a rainbow Snoopy one. That will do.
…Nothing happens. Colin doesn’t even seem to have noticed.
Okay, that’s fine. That’s fine. Trent can up his ante.
MUG TWO
This one is explicitly a rainbow pride mug, but it has no words, and could still be construed as an innocent mug that happened to be colorful.
Colin is in the same room as him while he drinks from it, but doesn’t seem to notice.
MUG FOUR
The pun is technically not explicitly homosexual, but then, Trent is now wearing three rainbow bracelets—one courtesy of Isadora and very lopsided—and it’s really not particularly hard to make that leap.
Sam tells him it’s a nice mug. Trent remembers that people other than Colin can see his mugs and has a brief moment of deep mortification that quickly melts into resignation.
He thanks Sam. Sam beams.
MUG FIVE
Colin looks directly at it at one point—Trent makes sure of it—and still no recognition or realization lights his eyes.
Shit.
MUG SIX
Coach Beard is staring knowingly at him. It is uncomfortable.
MUG EIGHT
Ted asks him some gentle and slightly pointed questions. Trent can’t actually tell him why he’s suddenly bringing in increasingly queer mugs, so he has to endure a sweet, earnest, well-meaning, completely excruciating chat about it with Ted.
Trent does not have a crush on Ted Lasso. Trent does not have a crush on Ted Lasso. Trent does not have a crush on Ted Lasso.
MUG NINE
Coach Beard’s stare has increased in intensity somehow.
MUG TEN
This one just says “PRIDE” in huge rainbow letters. Trent has long given up on any form of being subtle. Colin enters the locker room and Trent, leaning against the wall, loudly sips from the mug.
Colin does not turn his head. One of the other players squints at him. Trent sighs.
MUG TWELVE
This one just says “I’M GAY” on it.
MUG THIRTEEN
Trent gives up. He’ll find another way to do this. He’s spent far too much money on novelty mugs.
He comes in with a simple green mug. He doesn’t think anything of it, because apparently almost no one has noticed, until he’s stopped on his way into the office.
“Oh, are you not gay anymore?” Jan Maas says.
Trent blinks. “…Excuse me?”
“Dude,” says one of the other players, smacking him on the shoulder.
“You can’t just ask someone if they’re not gay anymore,” hissed another.
“What?” said Jan Maas. “His mug is green now.”
Several players crane their necks to see. Colin looks deeply confused.
“Oh no,” says Dani, seemingly with genuine dismay.
“Why would a mug determine my sexuality?” said Trent, leaning back and taking a sip, as if his own actions hadn’t caused this.
“Since when was Trent Crimm gay?” says Colin, brows furrowed. Jesus Christ. He really hadn’t noticed, huh?
“I don’t think you can ask that,” someone called, and the room dissolved into chaos and arguing again.
“OI!” shouted Roy, who must have just entered, and the room quieted. “What the fuck are we yelling about?”
“I brought in a green mug,” said Trent dryly. Several people began to protest, because he was making them sound like idiots.
“What?” Roy said immediately, frowning. “Why not a rainbow one?”
“SEE!” someone shouted above the rest, as the players delighted in their vindication.
Trent sighed. Before he could say anything else, the other coaches walked in.
“What’s causin’ all the kerfuffle?” said Ted cheerfully. Behind him, Jamie mouthed kerfuffle? with a baffled look on his face.
“Trent brought in a green mug instead of a rainbow one,” Beard reports.
How did…?
“Ah,” said Ted, and he brought up his own mug to take a sip. His bright purple, pink, and blue mug. Trent blinked.
“Hey,” said Jan Maas.
“Well, that may be heck of a headline,” said Ted, gesturing with one hand as if to accentuate it, “MAN HAS GREEN MUG. But we gotta make like Mulan and get down to business, don’t we?”
At least one person hummed the finishing to deFEAT! the HUNS!
Beard gave a perfunctory nod. “Let’s go!” he shouted.
“Yes, coach!”
And just like that, the room was being drained of football players and Trent was left with his stupid green mug and not much else.
Well. That was one way to get out of an awkward situation.
MUG THIRTEEN AND FOURTEEN THIS TIME
Several hours later, Trent was sitting at his desk, scribbling away at some notes, when Colin awkwardly knocked on the door frame.
Trent jumped, but when he saw it was him, abruptly sat up so fast he knocked his notebook to the floor. Eager to present himself as cool, open, calm, unaffected, ready to listen, etc., Trent swiftly kicked it under the desk and pretended like he hadn’t dropped anything.
Colin, apparently the most unobservant man in the world, somehow still noticed this, eyes tracking the notebook for a second before darting uncertainly back up to Trent.
“…did you just kick your notebook under the desk?”
Trent stared at him for a moment.
“Yes,” he said. No change in expression or tone.
Colin blinked. Fuck. Whatever. Trent could salvage this.
“What can I do for you, Colin?” he said, steady and even. Fuck yeah. Nailed it.
“Um, I just—what the others said,” said Colin.
“Mm,” Trent gently encouraged him to go on, thirteen mugs and four bracelets worth of stress compressed in his brain and ready to be released.
“I just—I wanted to say sorry that they were making assumptions,” Colin said all at once, like he was blurting it out.
Wait. Fuck. No.
“Colin,” Trent began, using every ounce of self-control not to get up, grab him by the shoulders, and say Colin I am very very gay, but Colin interrupted.
“That’s all I wanted to say,” he said hurriedly. “Uh, g’night.”
“Wait,” Trent said, but Colin was already disappearing down the hall.
Trent stared directly ahead for a moment, processing this.
“Fuck,” he said out loud, and then all but slammed his head into his desk.
“Y’alright in there, sport?” came a voice from the doorway, and Trent wanted even more to sink into the floor and disappear.
“Fine,” he said, tiredly, lifting his head. Ted was standing there, eyebrows lifted, looking amused, the bastard, and he still had that goddamn bisexual mug of coffee in his hand which Trent didn’t even want to try to process right now.
(It wasn’t that he assumed Ted was straight—he’d had enough of pre-judging Ted Lasso during their first few meetings, thanks—but the implications that Ted wanted someone to know, specifically, and was stealing Trent’s clearly ineffectual mug plot, was… not something Trent wanted to puzzle out at the moment.)
“You uh, dropped your notebook,” said Ted, nodding to the notebook just barely peeking out from under the desk.
“Yes,” said Trent. “So I did.”
He did not bend to pick it up. Ted did that unfairly attractive thing where he sort of smiled but scrunched his brows together like he was saying come on now or oh really? and then set his mug down on the opposite desk to Trent’s with a clink and crouched to pick it up.
The notebook was still closed, thankfully, even if Ted wouldn’t be able to read his shorthand, and Ted almost gently placed it back on Trent’s desk, actually adjusting it so it was aligned with the corner of the desk instead of lopsided.
“Ah, thank you,” said Trent.
“Mm, anytime,” said Ted. He put his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels.
After a moment of almost awkward silence, he took a breath through his teeth and said, “So it didn’t go so well with Colin, huh?”
Trent, who had finally stopped trying to figure out what to say and instead gone to take a sip of his tea, nearly choked on it, spluttering and hastily setting the mug down again.
“Ope, sorry,” said Ted. “Shoulda waited, that was on me.”
“Excuse me?” said Trent, strained.
“Oh, well I shoulda waited until you w—”
“I know you’re not dense, Ted,” said Trent, realizing belatedly he’d said Ted instead of Coach Lasso. Damn it.
Ted beamed at him. “So I’m not,” he said. “Yeah, I—I think it’s real sweet, what you’ve been up to.”
“What I’ve been up to,” Trent repeated slowly.
“The mugs,” said Ted helpfully.
“I presumed,” said Trent. “No one’s ever accused me of being sweet before.”
“Oh, then they’re blind,” said Ted, waving a hand dismissively with a psshhttt noise. “You, Trent Crimm, are a very sweet fella.”
Trent was not going to blush. Trent still had absolutely no crush on Ted Lasso, or on anyone, in fact. No crushes to be found on this Trent Crimm. Absolutely not.
Trent’s face felt warm. Shit.
Hold up. Wait. Hold up, no, fucking wait.
“Have you known the whole time?” he asked slowly, with increasing incredulity.
“Eh, since about mug…” he makes a show of counting on his fingers, “…three or four?”
That bastard. The whole awkward conversation—Ted did that on purpose.
Well. You did have to respect it. Ted was much more of an asshole than people gave him credit for. Trent kind of liked it, unfortunately.
Trent was trying to formulate how the fuck when Ted picked up his mug—bisexual flag taunting Trent—and took a loud sip from it, making direct eye contact.
There was a moment of silence. Trent idly, hysterically noticed that Ted actually had a few little bracelets on, all in the same three colors.
“Am I being obvious enough yet?” Ted said.
Oh. Oh, shit.
The penny drops.
The larger part of Trent’s brain calmly thought, ah. And then put the rest of that energy into vividly imagining walking into a cave, never to be seen again.
The smaller part of Trent’s brain started hysterically repeating oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck f—
“Ah,” said Trent out loud, setting his mug down. Ted took another uncomfortably loud sip.
Trent resisted the urge to calmly get up, hide in the nearest room with a lock and a light switch, and scream into the wall.
Okay. Okay, so it was a question of was Trent just extremely stupid, and this was—essentially exactly what Trent had been doing with Colin, attempting to communicate you are not alone, I understand, if you need someone to talk to I am here, because even though Trent was hardly the gentlest or kindest person at least he could be someone, anyone, or—
was this. Something… else. Something……………………… ᶠˡᶦʳᵗᵃᵗᶦᵒᵘˢ?
Or was that just wishful thinking.
…So Trent might, slightly, just a little bit, have a crush on Ted Lasso.
“Okay, well, I can see all the gears in that smart brain of yours whirrin’,” said Ted, “So I’m just gonna outright say it.”
He rocked back on his heels and did not outright say it.
Trent raised his eyebrows, rapid thoughts halted.
“Well,” Ted said after a moment. “I can see why you opted for mugs. This is difficult.”
Technically Trent had opted for mugs because approaching Colin directly seemed both like a bad idea in general and a good way to scare the living daylights out of him, but he got the gist.
Ted sighed, set his mug down, again, and then walked over to sort of half lean half sit on Trent’s desk, now quite close. Still not close enough to touch without actually leaning forward and reaching out, but… close.
“Trent Crimm,” said Ted.
“Independent,” Trent completed, and was rewarded with a little grin.
“Independent,” Ted agreed, “I am sayin’ two things: one. I see you, Trent Crimm.”
Trent swallowed. “..ah?” he said, a little weakly.
“And two,” said Ted, “Call me the titular object of a famous Poe short story, because I swing both ways!”
Trent tilted his head for a moment. “…The Pit and the Pendulum?”
Ted snapped his fingers and did finger guns. “Got it in one!”
Trent couldn’t help but laugh. Ted had him thoroughly charmed.
“Okay,” he said, and he wanted to say and…? or is that all? but he couldn’t quite bring himself to.
Ted was still looking at him—like that—and suddenly, like being struck by lightning, Trent could only think all at once oh my god, he DOES like me and fuck, what if he’s just as nervous as I am and maybe it’s my turn to take the leap of faith.
Or, you know, something along those lines; truthfully, it all happened in about 0.00005 seconds and before he was even done processing this train of thought (or rather, multiple trains all colliding with each other and derailing and crashing in plumes of flame) he was abruptly standing up and kissing Ted.
Later, Trent will wince and imagine a million ways this could have gone, ranging from smashing their noses together to Ted pushing him away and trying to be really polite about how shocked and upset he is to somehow both of them having panic attacks and the office bursting into flames.
In what could be considered to be, frankly, a miracle, none of these disasters happen.
Instead, Ted kisses him back.
He is. he is a good kisser.
After a moment they break apart and they’re still leaning in close to one another and Ted looks—
Sort of awed, warm eyes wide, hair askew, a little flushed, which is to say…
beautiful. He looks beautiful.
(Fuck, Trent has it bad.)
“I am really glad you took initiative there,” Ted said, “Because I’m pretty sure I was about to chicken out.”
“Do you want to go for dinner sometime?” Trent blurts out, a little breathless, and Ted laughs, a warm, pleased little thing.
“You mean the chicken?” he says.
“So long as it’s not particularly spicy, I’d take anything,” Trent says. As long as it’s with you.
Trent smiles like he heard the unspoken end of Trent’s sentence, and then he leans in and kisses Trent, one hand cupping his face and drawing him back in, and Trent is—in heaven?? Is this what heaven is?? Trent is pretty sure this is what heaven is.
He’s so busy being distracted by how nice this is, in fact, that his usual sharp observational skills completely fail him, and he does not notice someone walking into the office.
“Uh, Trent, I just wanted t—oh, shit.”
They broke apart again, wide-eyed, and there was Colin, standing in the doorway, staring back at them.
“You’re gay?!” Colin blurted out loudly.