Chapter Text
Trent is deft and works in silence, tickling the tips of his many ringed fingers across the opening of a slim, flat, lacquered box with a strap and a buckle hanging free. It is striped red and white with a solid mustardy yellow lid. Taking care to tilt the lid back with gentle fingers, a thicket of paper sleeves are revealed. Trent browses them with deft eyes, the corner of one brow ticking in careful consideration.
Reaching with one hand, he places the cans back over his ears and points to another set, indicating for Ted to don them. Ted is slow to step further into the room and sit in the low blond wood and tired leather chair opposite Trent. When he sits, Ted is practically swallowed whole. Startled, Ted looks around and adjusts accordingly. His sturdy frame is frequently not a problem for any chair, so finding himself lost in leather, the worn, wood arms practically holding him up like a small child, is disquieting. It takes a considerable effort to sit forward enough to grab the cans. When he does, every room sound is muffled.
Trent moves to fiddle with a number of nobs and buttons, the sounds of the room, the station, Trent's breathing growing clearer bit by bit until Trent asks quite abruptly, "Can you hear everything clearly?" Ted's hands reach up absently to touch the cool metal and foam headphones.
"If you were any clearer, I might have to call you Clear Lake, Iowa. Where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper all met their fated ends."
Looking up then through half-lidded, bemused eyes, Ted can feel Trent talk straight through him. "Ominous."
Perfectly able to help himself in most situations, here is different. Trent as his audience leaves him a live wire, finds Ted's mind a fount of nervous energy. "Yes. I'm sorry. That one didn't quite land."
Trent's face falls into something simultaneously aghast and offended as much is thoroughly delighted. "Should I box your ears in or make you pay?" The flutter it ignites in Ted's belly only serves to further Ted's anarchy.
Pointing to the door, Ted adds, "I could just take off now."
The growing curl at the corner of Trent's mouth feels like triumph. Feels like pulling a stubborn sword from some large stone in the center of town. Feels like the potential of surrender.
Clearing his throat with a gutteral, glottal sound, Trent pulls the cigarette dangling from his lip and draws his face dark, serious with some half-hearted intention, "I am trying to be professional."
Ted tips his head sideways as he smirks, clearly getting away with something so thoroughly dark, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to crash your–"
Eyes scalding suddenly hot, trailing flames over Ted's skin as Trent gives him a flirtatious little wink. The interruption is abrupt as Trent butts in, "Welcome back KShock listeners." With a quiet gasp, Ted brings a knuckle to hold between his teeth to keep himself in check. Trent's eyes flicker to the clock behind him and to something else Ted does not see. "It is officially the eight o'clock hour, a breezy 97° in your abominable Fahrenheit. In order, you've just heard Creep by Radiohead, Ain't Too Proud to Beg from The Rolling Stones, Common People from Pulp, and now I'm here with an entirely unexpected guest."
"Unexpected? C'mon now." Ted doesn't mean it to sound so sarcastic. Surely this was inevitable from the moment Trent shoved his hand between Ted and his belt buckle.
"Uninvited then." Color flushes across the handsome man's features even as Ted recognizes Trent is struggling to play the straight man.
It's hard not to let his voice intone some kind of purr, but Ted is pretty certain he fails miserably, especially when he knows it's written across his face how precious it is that Trent would try to play off their undeniable chemistry. "I don't know about that. We all clearly heard you beg me to come in."
"Did I?" Pulling his microphone across the desk to bend over the turntables, Trent looks to the ceiling, trying to disguise the free smile that falls across his features.
Pointing his thumbs to the door, Ted's voice only grows sweeter, "I could go."
Something bubbles up in Trent's chest. It might be a chuckle. It might tingle a trail in Ted from his head to his toes. "Not if you cannot escape the clutches of that chair."
Attempting to shift into a position more comfortable, Ted fails miserably, "I do feel like I'm being slowly digested by a Venus Fly Trap."
Scraping his teeth over his bottom lip, Trent finally turns to look at Ted with something ornery in his eyes. Ted does not mind this one bit. "The leather is rather buttery. I'd be surprised if I left you there and you weren't still sitting in that chair when I came back for my next scheduled show."
"Shedjeweled?"
Even as he repeats it, he can see Trent wince before recovering, "Tell me then, Coach. What has you out so late on a Thursday evening?"
"Well, Professor, I was gearing up for tomorrow's swimming and diving trials."
The back and forth of their formal use of Coach and Professor feels like some kind of daring do. Like at any moment the lines might light up with someone calling to tell them to cool it. Like their formal familiarity, their uncasual dueling might get them caught. It is just the right amount of illicit that Ted's blood rushes underneath his skin, heart racing, ears drumming, becoming more reckless while still tightening the reigns on his own behavior.
"That explains why you're sopping."
"Setting up extra lanes. Making sure the boards were tight. Filling clipboards with working pens."
"So kind of you."
"And everyone knows the speakers at the pool are real buzzy."
"They do?"
Surely the ease with which they speak over and under one another will betray them. What is friendly? Mere friendship? What do lovers sound like if they don't stop and start, stuttering the entire way. Can the world hear what Ted hears from Trent's mouth and from his own, magnified in these enormous headphones? If Michelle tuned in, would she recognize just how different this is from how they were? Would Beard? Would his very best friend in the world know something is changing in him? Would Henry?
There is no stopping them.
"So I thought when I was done I might stop by and see if I couldn't get a little better reception for myself."
"And so far?"
"Well, I'll give you you're less buzzy."
"Oh come on, Coach. What better reception is there than to entice you into becoming dinner for my carnivorous arm chair?"
As much as Ted can hear it tickle his ear from the tiny hairs inside to the outer skin of his lobe, he can see the dangerous little grin on Trent's face as he delicately takes a record off one turntable to slip it into a plastic sleeve. It is when Ted can hear himself take a heavy breath that he clears his throat and fails again to sit up straighter in the infernal chair.
"Did you say I could pick a song?"
Pausing, Trent's face falls into a series of grim lines of speculation. "I did."
"Well, if I can find my way out of this chair, I should look for one, shouldn't I?"
At that, Trent slips around the desk, bringing the microphone with him. When he reaches out a hand for Ted to take, Ted gingerly slides his fingertips across Trent's palm. Reaches further up across the delicate skin of Trent's wrist, covered in small colored friendship bracelets. Tucking one finger under them. And another. Letting himself find Trent's racing pulse. Blushing when he realizes he isn't alone in this dangerous little game they're playing in public.
When Trent grabs solidly onto his wrist and leverages his weight to pull Ted up, Trent's voice grows mildly strained in the headphones. "I'll give you some time. We'll use whatever you like to close out the show."
"I appreciate that."
"Certainly."
Their smiles are unguarded then. The tension in the air between them crackling and alive. And then Trent remembers there is an audience and takes his hand back to touch his headphones. Ted responds to them directly, "I have been excavated from the chair." Turning away from the microphone to stare at the wall of records, he cranes his neck back to ask Trent, who is now half sat on the desk, pulling his bandana free to drape across the heavy walnut surface. "So, what do I choose?"
"What do you want to hear?"
It is a rare occasion that Ted finds himself in this office. Usually, if he is, he's attending to a predetermined agenda. Speaking with authority into the microphone without the time to sit. He has never been free to simply peruse his surroundings, allow himself to sound so far away while standing mere feet from where he had been, his hand still ringing from their lingering touch.
The mammoth shelves here echo the walnut of the desk. Barely strained under the weight of a rainbow of records organized by genre and alphabet and a truly absurd number of potted plants, each craning out of their cubbies toward wherever the sun might find them. Ted reaches out to move a length of something dangling to the floor and shakes his head at the first offering. Nothing here is in a language he recognizes.
"I like a lot of things. I hear something new I like every day. Should I choose something new?"
Moving closer to the center of the shelves, he can see a single section dedicated to hip hop. The collection feels unexpectedly small.
"You could. End us on an experimental note. I could keep my finger on the censor and hope for the best."
Reaching out to touch along another shelf, he offers, "Or I could choose something I've always loved."
"That is also a way to go."
When Ted turns around, Trent is still sitting on the desk, his arms crossed, his eyes dark and penetrating, like perhaps he is trying to read the unwholesome thoughts brewing in Ted's middle. Or perhaps like he might be trying to draw something specific from Ted. And then Trent's eyes slowly trail lower to Ted's naked calves.
Narrowly choking, Ted asks in turn, "Why do I feel like I will be judged harshly if I get it wrong?"
"Well, you will be. Though not harshly. Not from me. I'm very particular, but I will listen to anything twice." Pointing upward, Ted follows Trent's movement, "The tower reaches quite a few more ears than mine, all with their voices and opinions. It can be quite the pressing responsibility at times." Not to put too fine a point on it, Trent's brows tip up quickly as he smiles and his voice sings something silly and ominous, "Good lu-uck."
There are approximately twenty thousand sets of ears enrolled at the University of Wichita. That isn't counting that depending on how far out you drive, there is everyone else in the city. The considerable amount of ears possible banks in Ted's chest like buckshot. Swallowing hard then, he shakes his head. It must be a monumental task, choosing what to play on a radio show. Even without sounding as casually scholarly as Trent's show has managed to sound. "How do you choose what to play, Professor?"
Looking back up, Trent lets his head fall to his shoulder, making a deep, thinking sound from his core as he shifts to lean back with his hands on the heavy desk. The movement opens Trent up so thoroughly that Ted thinks for the briefest moment he would tackle the man if they weren't live to the entire city. Daunting task aside, it is Ted's turn to lean back, his shoulders touching across a higher shelf, languorously reveling in the sight of Trent, deep in thought before catching himself growing excited. He turns then, on his toes, and moves his focus to breathing, thankful the microphone cannot hear it from here.
"I suppose it is a combination of what I want to hear. What is sentimental. What is meaningful. What is familiar. Or what is new. What is experimental. What is tried and true. What fits in the time crunch. What allows me to spare a minute for a bite to eat. What speaks to my audience. What is subliminal. What is subversive. What is abrasive without being likely to have anyone crashing their car or calling Madame President."
As he speaks, Ted listens intently, his eyes hardly registering anything he reads on the paper bindings. This strange, strange man with his beautiful hair and his grizzled voice, this man might as well be a siren. Might very well lure Ted to his grave. But oh, how willing Ted finds himself. Realizes he might be learning himself in this very moment.
"What makes me want to dance–"
That tickles his ear and Ted wrenches the upper half of his body around to ask, "Ooh. What makes you want to dance, PC?"
Trent blinks out of his revelry and stands up straight, furrowing his brow, "PC?"
"Professor Crimm. Maybe TC?"
Trent shakes his head no.
"Trent?"
Again, Trent shakes his head no.
"Too informal for our listeners. I am not on a first name basis with just anyone."
"Maybe we just stick with 'Professor' and 'Coach.'"
Trent's brows relax then, his easy smile returning. "Yes. I think yes. Here."
There is just the briefest thought that crosses Ted's mind. Here? Between them? Here? This office? Here? When they are formal? Or here as in something much, much more interesting? Since he cannot ask, he tucks the idea away for another, more appropriate time.
Leaning into the most lascivious intonation, Ted tucks back a strand of wet hair from his forehead. "Well okay then, Professor. What makes you wanna dance?"
Giving an unserious little look of trying to understand, Trent asks, "Can you be more specific?"
Unable to help himself, Ted makes a little spin while asking, sways Carleton-style while asking, "Well, what gets you movin' and a'groovin? Hippie shaking? What is it that gets you to twist and shout, as it were? Makes it so you can't not get up with the get down?"
Taking the microphone gently in his hand and moving back around the turntables, Trent's hands are quick to get back to work. "For those of you following, Coach Lasso has just done a little twirl and a two step. I'd tell you he's also done the splits, but as we are all aware, he is the Director of Sport, not the Godfather of Soul, though I was tempted." To Ted he says directly, "I did have a number of songs set up, but maybe I'll move one up and choose a few more that fit the bill."
That get's Ted's blood pumping, "Ooo! A dance party?"
"Proper."
Ted claps where he stands and it echos sharply in his headphones to the point he startles. He'll have to remember not to do that again. "Alright, then. What have you got first?"
There is no intro. A voice as deep and lush as Trent's own, doubled, tripled, quadrupled. Sings ominously, "Reach out and touch faith." The song is one clear blue electric hook until it is a booming ode to sex, whether that is the song's intention or not. Ted can feel it down to his giblets.
Stepping out from behind the desk to stand uncomfortably close to Ted, Trent makes quick work of selecting three records to take back to the turn tables. Ted can only smile watching Trent's mind at work. Struggles to remember he is supposed to be looking for something to play as well. And then he is bending over to follow the names and titles of albums. Muses, "A song about Jesus?"
Trent removes the can from one ear and makes a motion for Ted to do the same. Gives a devilish little smirk, "I'll have you know the only reason I would kick Dave Gahan out of bed is to fuck him on the floor." The sheer surprise of the statement has Ted on his toes in a flash. Stunned. It must be the right response as Trent begins to dance away from him. Something inviting, sensual. Like something he's seen in a Rolling Stones music video or an Elvis Presley movie. All hips and wiggles and attitude, racing the blood high to Ted's cheeks.
"Well. Then I suppose the argument is, does this song make you want to dance, or to, y'know..." He cannot finish the sentence. Not in this fishbowl. Not with the chance that at any second Trent could press the wrong button and they'll be live again. Though the very public nature of it doesn't look to bother the man dancing backward to the turntables, his choices under an arm.
"What's the difference?"
Trent's wink narrowly turns Ted sideways. "Oh."
The next song doesn't fair any better to Ted's attention. Trent has picked a theme and that theme is to boil Ted alive until steam is billowing from his ears.
Your moves are so raw / I've got to let you know / You're one of my kind.
It has been so long since Ted has found himself so long suffering. He lets himself begin to loosen up in the hips, dancing as he turns back to the stacks, but his hands are itching to touch, to explore. He would give anything to step up and curl Trent's body into his and to move with him.
Trying to shake himself back into focus, Ted starts silently reading each cover, giving some focus on how each album he recognizes makes him feel, focus on what memories each record brings to recall. It feels almost impossible. Impossible that nothing has come to mind. That hearing one thing in the headphones somehow stops his ability to hear anything else play in his head. Impossible that his gut seems to have failed him entirely. Until he sees something familiar. Pulls the cover and finds himself moving to his knees. It is half in panic and half because he's already so close to the ground, he might as well go all the way down.
The record is sunshine and forest. A man with thick, dark facial hair standing wide and cross armed behind a claw foot tub out in an open field. There is a swan swimming in the tub. Ted cannot remember the album's contents, but he can feel it sharp like a knife in his guts. Remembers his father with this very record in his hands with startling clarity.
When Dottie was picking up the pieces of the wreckage of their lives, he remembers their record collection disappearing one day, a set of headphones and a small personal radio thrown on his bed. Ted hadn't said a word. Understood implicitly that this was one way his mother had needed to do to cope. Ted's father had been deeply tied to his record collection when he'd come back from Vietnam. Spent copious hours spinning records with a pair of very large headphones that felt like they were squeezing Ted's head with intent to make his eyes burst out of his skull when he'd try them on. He'd never asked what happened to it. Never questioned the empty walls where the shelves of records used to be. Simply taken his comfortable new headphones and plugged them into his radio and moved on.
Billy Swan. I Can Help. The record in his hands. Scrawled in the top right corner, "Property of Henry Lasso." The blood in his ears runs cold as do the tips of his fingers.
He must be sitting there a while when Trent steps up beside him and holds a hand out, speaking gently. "Is this your choice?"
Feeling moisture gathered in the corners of his eyes, Ted clears his throat and quickly swipes them away before looking up to Trent, whose face goes from something divinely mischievous to something sweet and curious. "Uh, ah. Yeah." Ted turns the record over and quickly peruses the track list. He cannot remember a single song. A single sound. Not one bell or whistle. But he does see Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel." The original is a dance tune. It should work. Ted doesn't think he can chance touching another record. Chancing that he's come across his father's old record collection.
Instead he clears his throat and grabs Trent's hand, standing to his feet. Points to the correct track listing and watches Trent squint and turn as if to question Ted's choice. Ted nods and watches as Trent takes the record from him. Feels the jerk reaction to swipe the record back, but quickly digs his hands into his pockets, his fingers prickling. Watches as Trent turns the sleeve over and over, touching over the tiny scrawl. Meets Trent's eyes briefly, turning away before letting Trent ask without asking.
Two more songs pass without Ted registering anything but a loud ringing in his head. He reaches for the waxy leaf of one plant and touches his thumb along its plane. Thinks he could squeeze the chlorophyll right from it and trace it over the line of tears at the side of his nose to cover up for the fact that he is clearly distraught. Make something strange or funny of his pain. But instead swipes the trail of it away with the cheek of his hand and tries so hard to catch his breath.
And then the loud ringing turns into the familiar rising drone of an organ. There is a drumbeat that is decidedly not danceable. Certainly not the way Trent has interpreted it with the last few songs.
You know I can be found / At least on the telephone.
The song is painfully slow. Ted clenches his eyes closed, entirely defeated. Until he feels the unmistakable heat of Trent rising over the full length of his back. Feels Trent's lips soft on the base of his neck. Feels Trent slip his arms around Ted's waist, step into Ted's space, closing their bodies together. Feels Trent's fingers tuck into his belly, tuck his nose into Ted's slowly drying hair. Feels one knee brush briefly against the back of his. Feels all the noise and all the pain slowly begin to quiet. Feels himself begin to relax.
At first Trent's swaying is undetectable, and then Ted finds himself moving with the slow rhythm of Trent's lead. They stand swaying in front of the massive shelves to the quiet, spatial song.
Don't want no other love / Baby it's just you I'm thinkin of.
And then comes the loud slam of one glass door in the distance. Ted reaches for one of the cans and removes it from an ear. Quickly dewrinkles his shirt. Doesn't have a moment to mourn the absence of Trent who is somehow already back behind the turntables.
The familiar voice doubles in one naked ear and in the covered ear. They are live again. "I'd be interested to know what you'd play to DJ a party, but then again, I would not likely find myself at a party you were DJing, Coach."
Jan Maas never fails to bring the utter charm of a wet blanket.
"It's sexy." Trent responds, his eyes cutting a laser line right through the young man standing in the open doorway. "Something you'll learn with time." Looking back and forth between them, Ted would be devastated if Trent ever leveled such a look his way. "Or you won't."
"Every party needs a slow dance, Jan Maas. A good slow dance keeps the world spinning. Keeps the party going. Keeps the population from taking a sharp dip."
The young blond fella makes a sour face before crossing the room to unload his bags. "Coach. Gross."
"Are you good to go, Jan? I'm ready to hand over the room." Trent is slipping the remaining records into their sleeves and dividing them between what goes in his small, striped box and what is to be returned to the shelves. Ted does not mistake the Billy Swan album being sorted directly into Trent's personal collection.
Slipping the cans from Trent's head onto his own, the young fella smiles, "I'm good to go. Hello KSHK listeners, it is your young, blond, Norse god, Jan Maas."
Ted purposefully turns his entire brain on autopilot and removes the headphones from his head, slipping them back onto the hook above the desk. He pulls his backpack on just in time to hear his stomach protest. Jan Maas frowns at him. Ted can only guess it was loud enough that the live mics have picked it up.
Passing a crate of records from Trent's hands into the booth beside him, they sit in complete silence for long moments before Mae steps up to the table. In spite of the sour scent of decades of tobacco smoke dried to the yellowed, peeling wallpaper, layered over a thin base of spoiled bacon grease, Ted does order an ungodly amount of food. Placing the same cigarette to his lip, Trent orders a stack of pancakes and a tipple of something boozy in his coffee.
"I gotta say, as long as I've been coming to Mae's, I've never known that was an option."
"Well, hon," Mae drawls, "You were too young for so long. And then you were too preoccupied. And now I only like this young buck and his fancy accent enough to offer it. I suppose I could be persuaded if you really wanted to, but I know you're a busy man with a lot to do in the morning."
"I have fuck all in the morning and a very extensive collection of sunnies." Trent is so handsome with his bright smile and the unlit cigarette bobbing as he speaks that Ted is tempted to play footsie. There would be no hiding it, his legs being completely bare for all the world to see, but maybe it wouldn't matter, the diner is so full of bodies that maybe no one would be able to.
"I know you do, dear. Does Bailey's work?"
"Do you have anything stronger?"
"You know I do, hon."
"Both then."
The briefest thought that maybe Trent flirts with anyone and everyone and Ted might not be special after all crosses his mind, but then Ted remembers the feel of Trent's hand wrapped around him in the dark. Remembers the plaintive whispers to be quiet, the whispers to let go. Remembers the feel of Trent's fingertips tucked into his tummy mere moments ago. Surely this is merely a pleasant exchange. There's no way he's giving Mae the business in the off hours. Which sets off an entirely different line of panicked thinking. Ted takes a long sip of his water, the plastic tasting faintly of smoke and undried sanitizer.
"You got it. I'll get yer order in and be right back. Whipped cream?"
"Absolutely. On everything if you'd be so kind. And you know how I like my syrup."
"Nuclear hot, dear?"
"Are you sure you aren't ready for exclusivity? C'mon, Mae. Be mine. All mine."
Okay, to Ted, this sounds more like the interplay between two people who adore one another so platonically, either or both of them might be sexless. But make it funny. Ted beams at their exchange and Mae raises a curious brow at him before answering with gusto.
"I was married for a real long time, buster. I've tasted freedom and I ain't goin' back."
The ink is hardly dried on Mae's pad when Trent's eyes grow from good humored to something gentle and concerned, though surely Trent's voice is controlled when he asks cooly, "Do you want to tell me what that was all about?"
Swallowing, Ted tries to quickly decide to what level he might be able to answer Trent's question without shutting down again. The crowd around the counter is thankfully drunk and boisterous, drowning out any silence, only serving to comfort Ted that no one is likely listening in on their conversation.
He cannot look up when he says it, instead grabbing the salt and pepper shakers and turning them around and around, pinched between his fingers in a self-soothing action. "I panicked."
"The song would have worked itself out no matter what you picked. I didn't mean for you to take that pressure personally. I assumed you understood I was playing with you. Laying it on thick."
Continuing to turn the shakers, Ted ventures on. "No. And I got that. I just. Uh. It was a surprise. That was my dad's record. I hadn't seen it in a real long time. I actually forgot about it. It just made me real sad is all."
Trent's hand is large over the open mouths of the shakers with their tiny holes pointed skyward like tiny birds, begging. Removing the shakers from Ted's occupation, Trent moves a small list of "Daily Specials" to hide the contact as Trent slips his fingers where the shakers had been, taking Ted's fingers between his, lightly massaging the tips of Ted's fingers until Ted's eyes slip briefly shut.
Opening them again, Ted is surprised to see Mae is unflinching when she places the mug of coffee between them. Winks with a cheeky smile before turning around and grabbing a giant carafe of water to place beside the small menu.