Chapter Text
Any given Saturday, August, 1994
The walk from Eck Stadium to the President's Residence is a solid eighteen minutes on foot. A mostly straight shot between an untold forest of mismatched great halls of education and much smaller matchbox hovels mudded into the center of the beginnings of new construction. The only thing that would indicate that summer is over is that everything is once again walkable, the concrete grown firm underfoot in spite of the liquid air that occupies the skies of Kansas in August.
Ted Lasso is in middling spirits. The Shockers have lost their first football game, an early afternoon affair, but barely. It had been a nail biter the entire game, and that's better than not being competitive in the least. Particularly considering the Shockers having been projected dead last for the fifth season in a row and playing the projected number one team in their conference. Moving Coach Shelley appears to be the right move until Ted can find someone else he trusts to be a real resource to Coach Beard. Besides that, the women have won their Volleyball match heartily, and both Soccer programs ended their games in a draw, which is a significant improvement from last season already. Ted will find out about the Cross Country meet in the morning, though he has no real stake in whether or not the grouping of them will do well. He's done their morning runs with them for the last week. They'll all do fine, the lot of them. There isn't a Flo-Jo among them, but why would there be?
The shower at Eck had done him wonders. Entirely too close to fretting about the single win among Wichita's programs, Ted stepped into the only showers on campus strong enough to wash a man's skin suit clean off and transform him into a new man. Or, into the same man with a new attitude. That is, until he steps outside to make the trek across campus and the air is roughly the same kind of humid as it is inside the showers.
Luckily, Ted's remembered to put his walkman in his backpack. Tuning into the University's radio station, KSHK, 101.2 FM, the sweet strains of some British kind of electronic pop greet him. The bounce of it feels like a good omen for the pilgrimage he's making. The yearly faculty mixer was booted out of their tenured spot at the Plumber's Union for an in-house wedding. So Mrs. Mannion–no–Ms. Welton's gathered a bit of the kitchen staff to feed the crowd of them at the President's Residence. He'd walked past the line of picnic tables gathered in the yard beside the ancient stick house with its newly glossy layer of paint and drooping wrap-around porch.
The walk is quiet. The music and the summer evening sky are bouncing the same colors of pink, blue, orange and yellow. It's still too early for sunset, but no doubt it will come in as red as the night before. The heat isn't scheduled to let up anytime soon. The stadium parking lot will be absent any cars that haven't been permanently stranded all summer, and the frat houses remain on the Northwest side of campus, where no one will be bothered if they skulk a little noisly.
Making a turn into the galley between the Wilkins and the Media Center, Ted takes a quick peek into the radio station to see the one of the young fellas that has been following him from game to game for the last three years. Surely he's due to graduate any day now. Richard spots him first and looks to tap on someone's shoulder. Roughly the size of a giraffe, Jan stands a full head above Richard and they wave with a skewering sort of glare.
The bouncy electronic pop quickly fades to a background sound as Jan's voice drops in with the station's call sign. From there, he doesn't miss a beat. "Is this a f–"
"Jan Maas!" There isn't a single person on campus that calls Jan by his first or last name alone. It is always 'Jan Maas' though sometimes folks will hit that 'J' real hard.
"Is this a joke, Coach Lasso?" His arm span is as long as he is tall. It is quite the sight to see. If only Ted could convince him to play basketball, but all Jan Maas's extra time off the soccer field seems to be occupied by addressing Ted's many faults as Dean of Sports.
"Jan Maas, you don't know if he's listening to us on those headphones."
"I know he can read lips though. Otherwise I wouldn't have run all those laps after being kicked in the thigh at practice."
"He does seem to have an eye for recognizing…unflattering talk." Richard consents.
Ted considers for a moment whether he might step up to the window and engage them. Step into the Media Center and have the much needed conversation to turn their attitudes around about the coming season. Instead, he looks at the negative Nancies in their fortress of glass and makes a big show to remove his headphones and power off his walkman.
Jan steps up like a fly trying to escape the plate glass and starts pounding and yelling, "Oh yeah?! Oh yeah??!!!! Ted Lasso, You must answer for your crimes! Will we ever win a game again."
There is no use in being later than he already is. The fried chicken is probably soggy by now. If he keeps stalling, the potato salad and deviled eggs will likely become an atomic gut bomb. "The women's teams seem to have no problem winning. I'll go ahead and forget about this one, fellas. See y'all at practice Monday!" Giving them a smile and a salute, Ted wipes his sweating hands on his thighs. Slips them in his pockets and keeps walking–in spite of the pounding he can hear echoing well into Gardner's Plaza.
The last two years in particular have been rebuilding years. '92 had cost him three quarters of the Shockers. Those seniors didn't make the best team, but they certainly had been competent enough to keep them competitive in their Division. The last two years have tested their spot in the Big Twelve. Ted has thought this up and down, left and right, and though he had moved beyond it, things lately have brought it screaming back. Aside from the obvious beginning of the new seasons.
In the near decade he's been working as the Dean of Sports, this is the first time he isn't stepping out of his car hand-in-hand with Michelle. The quiet campus. The sneering and jeering from Thing 1 and Thing 2. The slow churning of his gummier thoughts all gather as an acute pain in his chest. It's the capital "D" Depression, Doctor Jacob had assessed in their couple's sessions. The closer he comes to Ulrich, as he passes Jardina and McKinley Halls, he can feel the stitch gathering sharpness just inside his lungs. Ted's inner turmoil begins to hang as heavy as the humidity surrounding him. Slowly the layers of his clothes and the backpack and the wet hair begin to feel as oppressive as the heat.
She will be there. Perhaps sitting with the English Department. Maybe sitting with Doctor Jacob. Jake. But she'll be there very obviously without him. Michelle has already shucked their rings. Ted doesn't even have his boxes unpacked in the apartment he built on the second story of his mother's house. He had built it to keep a student continually around as a watchdog, and if being back in his old room in a new configuration isn't insult enough. She could be sitting with Jake. Doctor Jacob. Ted is more than aware of what they've been getting up to under his nose. Better than he knows his own mustache. They would all three of them be there.
Ted makes a brief stop to give his attention to Urich's entrance. The local native art stands with its bright, primary colors newly painted onto the brick facade of the building. It is fresh. Might still be wet. Might very well be tacky, making any attempt to dry in all this humidity. Ted doesn't feel one way about it just yet. Only that it is a nice change up from the dark brick, absorbing the color of the evening light. It doesn't still Ted's churning guts, but it does redirect his attention a moment. Gives him pause until he can continue the last leg of his walk.
The stick house has the last street light on campus. The street is not paved, or dirt, or gravel. Heck, Ted doesn't know what to call it, but it is important enough to have a street light. Ted notices it is lit though the sun hasn't gone down just yet. There is a line of aging cottonwoods between him and the front of the Residence. Ted wonders if he thunked his head hard enough against each of them–if it might make the fizz blooming in the tips of his fingers move to his brain so he'd find himself distracted enough to get through the night without drowning in the humiliation of being newly divorced from the woman at the opposite end of the line of picnic tables. Sure, it would scream to his peers that he had lost his dignity in the war on love, but it would be a sign he'd once had any.
For each tree he passes, his pace slows. And then, as if God herself grants direct miracles to her lowly creation, a single cloud blots out a line from the merciless sun. Ted watches its path trace across the street and onto the last tree. The light must bend because it is directly overhead. And as quick as it has moved over the stick house, there is instant relief, the sky breaking into a sunshower. Ted can hear the squealing and shouting at the end of the road as the party moves quickly inside.
Lolling his head back to feel the water break across his cheeks, Ted lets his backpack fall to the ground. The stitch is still there. The heaviness. None of it is bound to leave him outright. But at least there is distraction. Then there is the sound of a car door cracking like thunder. And another. Wild shouting and cars starting. Someone curses their open window and jumps in anyway. Ted considers leaving his pack on the ground and watching the chaos in person, but his entire life occupies that canvas pack, so he tosses it back on and looks directly into every passing car.
The sunshower is short lived, as sunshowers often are. Dried up as he steps to the stick house. He can hear a record scratch through an open window as Paul Simon's 'Graceland' tickles the speakers. Hear the drumming of a busy level of chatter. And then Ted takes a sharp turn around the last of the cottonwoods.
The stick house is tall and butter yellow-shingled with white trim. Appropriate. University President Rebecca Welton made architecture. There is a new roof. Ted knows this because his mother…he doesn't live much further off and they were busy at work at the crack of dawn his first days of summer break. The wrap around porch needs to be propped up on the west facing side, but he doubts that is anything that needs mending immediately. And Ms. Welton has more than enough influence and means to make it happen. It is an attractive residence. Wichita might be small, but it does not skimp if they can help it.
Ms. Welton is still new to the role of President. Her ex-husband had occupied the job previously, but had been caught indiscriminately philandering with the student population. Ted didn't know someone could win the Presidency of a University in a divorce, but she'd been much more qualified than her ex. Somehow it had all shaken out. Their relationship had been touch and go for the first few years, but Ted had no allegiance to Mr. Mannion, so she eventually gave up making him a rival. Ted can see her in the living room window talking to Professor Jones and–
"A penny for your thoughts, Coach Lasso."
Observant in all things but what is right in front of him, Ted finally sees the strange man. Not. Not that Ted would know if the man is strange. It is that the man is a stranger.
"Sorry?"
He's a beautiful man. Maybe like if a hippie and a biker had a beautiful rockstar baby? Ted has met all kinds of people in the world. Continues regularly to meet new kinds of people every day. But he has not seen this kind. Fawn haired with silver streaked through. Eyes darker than a Kansas night in winter.
"It took you ten minutes to travel roughly two hundred meters."
Ted looks behind himself at the cottonwood trees and frowns. Meters? Of course, he's so entirely discombobulated from his day to this moment that the only logical response seems to be, "Oh. I'm divorced."
The stranger makes a handsome, angular smirk, and so Ted feigns a half smile, though mostly he feels like mud. "That almost explains it."
Ted doesn't exactly understand why he can never seem to leave well enough alone, and so his guts continue like they're being piped out of a pastry bag. "She's inside with the marriage counselor she left me for."
"Ah. You're both faculty?"
"All three parties, actually."
The stranger covers his mouth with long, tan fingers, as if he's genuinely surprised about the misfortune of some random person he's just meeting. "Oh dear."
He's sitting, seesawing a cigarette between the knuckles of his other hand and holding the bridge of a pair of silver wired glasses between those same fingertips. He's wearing a black tank with some kind of screaming eagle, a flag in its clutches, showing off sunburnt, flaky shoulders. And Ted doesn't have any idea where one might find salmon colored bootleg pants, but the man is wearing salmon colored bootleg pants, his legs stretched so far apart, Ted might suspect he is straddling the sky. But it makes it so Ted can see the large silver buckle with some turquoise landscape pattern on his belt and the fella's beat up, dusty, ostrich skin shit kickers. The fella moves his free hand from his mouth to adjust the dusty blue handkerchief tied around his neck.
Ted has never been one to buck or follow trends. Never been swayed much by pretty ladies or fine fellas. But this guy might as well be Burt Reynolds on a bear skin rug. Dustin Hoffman anytime before or during All the President's Men. Paul Newman in a stetson hat without a single give a damn. All cool and no drool.
Except.
"Y'know, they say smoking's bad for you."
Honest to god, the man tosses his long, fancy curls like that's something normal a fella might do and Ted cannot help himself but to gawk like a school child.
"They do. They are. And I'm not. I managed to quit in Los Angeles, but everywhere I go in this town smells like the sticky insides of Churchill's lungs. So I bought a pack to light. Not to smoke. I don't need to smoke. Not when everyone else will do it for me. This is simply to feed the ritual."
Squinting, Ted remarks, "You're an interesting fella."
"Takes one to know one, I hear."
On top of all that cool, all that beauty, there's the accent. The very cut and dry Monty Python of it tickles Ted right down to his giblets. He sounds just like the Sheriff of Nottingham, but warmer and clearer by degrees.
"Say. You're a long way from home."
"No further than you."
There is no more confusing Ted because at this point, he's lost touch with reality, he's pretty certain. Having imagined this handsome fella from nothing. He's almost sure of it. "Excuse me?"
"I live behind you. Our bedroom looks directly into your shower. I drove in early this morning and opened my bedroom door just in time to watch you have a wank to start the day. I suppose it's stronger than a cup of tea first thing."
This must be a new kind of fantasy or daydream Ted has tripped into. Unsure of the genre, Ted allows it. "I'm sorry, you what?"
"Our bedroom looks directly into your shower. Don't worry. Zelda slept through it and I didn't see anything. You have that charming little cafe curtain. The shoulders though. The shoulders tell a hundred tales. But I digress. I suppose you meant Southampton."
And then Ted understands he's blacked out entirely. "I beg your pardon?"
"In London. England. Though before this I was at the University of Arizona, and before that UCLA, and NYU. My wife and I have run the gamut, but for whatever reason, she's seemed to settle here, so I've agreed to some sort of interim. I'm still not certain what. I should like to find out. Probably sooner than later."
Taking one step up, and then two, Ted sits down next to this stranger and puts his backpack between his knees. They sit in silence for a long moment while Ted attempts to absorb every single thing this man has just said to him. It turns out to be near impossible. The man is very warm and Ted is aware of him on a cellular level he has never quite experienced before.
Brushing through his mustache, Ted lets a brief chip of laughter huff out. It must be meant for them to meet like this, because Ted doesn't feel the need to shake it off. Isn't ashamed. And he isn't numb, though usually when he gets like this, he is entirely numb. The stitch is still there. The heaviness is still there. But this stranger feels just right. Goldilocks, but road worn. Maybe an alien. Friend shaped at least.
"Buddy, I don't buy for a second you're from this planet."
The man smiles and it looks a bit sad on him. "Perhaps not. Conscripted by beings greater than even us. Would explain some things."
God, he even talks well. "Like why you might play peeping Tom on a new neighbor and then tell him about it?"
Placing a brief hand high on Ted's thigh and immediately touching the knot of his handkerchief again, "What? I didn't see anything. And you don't seem all that offended."
Ted smiles at that. "I. Well, I don't know how I am. The depression kinda supersedes all of that."
The stranger puts the long butt of the cigarette out on the step beside him. Clasping his hands in front of him, he rests his chin on them and quirks his head, looking at Ted sideways, "Depression? Hm. Is that a bit like hysteria?"
Ted doesn't mean to let it slip, but he is curious. "You gay?"
"Conscr–"
Finishing the man's thought, Ted continues down his little rabbit trail. "--scripted by beings greater than even us. I don't think that's an answer."
The man sighs and something tightens in Ted's chest. "Does it matter whether I am or not?"
"Do you diddle children?"
The man furrows his brows, though his voice remains gentle, calm. "How crude. No, I've never been interested in the younger forms of anything. Which only made being a father exhausting. Are you gay? Do you diddle children?"
Ted's entire guts twist at the thought. "I? No. And I'm sorry for asking. That was crude."
Sitting in silence for a long stretch, the sky before them grows streaked across with that color red that no computer will ever find. No artist will ever build. That color of red that only a midwestern summer will produce at sunrise or sunset before it reduces the crops to their most potent forms. It is nothing and it is everything. And if Ted pauses from watching it to look at the strangely beautiful fella sitting next to him a moment, well, he can always look back at the sky. It doesn't have to mean anything.
"I like you. I won't protest if you feel the need to retaliate."
Ted's open gaze snaps back to the sunset, confusion etched in his brow. "Retaliate?"
The stranger's voice drops into something sweet like honey. "Don't play coy, Coach. You're light and warmth and all the good things people say. I can see it in those warm, brown eyes. And it appears you are also dark and delightfully game."
He doesn't like that people have been talking behind his back. Even talking well of him. He's even a bit sick that he said anything about Michelle and Doctor Jacob without ever saying their names. Though, Ted turns to look this stranger in the eyes. He seems intrigued. He's sure intriguing. "Game? For what?"
Without warning, the front door of the Residence swings open and bats at the house with a thud. The sound of conversation and African beats grow louder as Rebecca Welton fills the doorway. Her arm span is as long as she is tall. It is quite the sight to see. If only Ted could convince her to play basketball. She is, as is her house, dressed in butter yellow with her platinum hair and sparkling smile larger than life. "There you are, Ted! Come in, come in. Save me from Keeley. I've had just about enough Didion quoted to me for one night! Wichita battle of the sexes 1994: Tell me, who's winning?" Rebecca tucks her head back into the house without waiting for a response.
Nudging his salmon draped knee into Ted's, the stranger says, "Good night, Ted. I'm sure I'll see you around."
Frozen, eyes locked, Ted feels the tightness in his chest loosen the longer the man lets his knee linger. "I."
Rebecca's voice grows insistent. "Ted, getcher ass in here and give me the rundown."
Standing to his feet, Ted stretches his aching hips before reaching down for his backpack. He is quiet when he says to the man,"We're not finished here."
The man smiles with what looks to be a certain amount of anticipation and answers, "No, I don't imagine we are."
The sky is alight with stars when Ted finally sneaks up the steps to his apartment. It's been a long night of aimless conversations that never actually end with people he has various attachments to. Rain washed snacks. Wonky, mood altering soundtracks. Beard and Jane's newlywed energy sticking around long past what's necessary to the point of making everyone uncomfortable. Thankfully, Michelle and Jake were two of those cracking car doors, so Ted did not run into them or have to answer for their various states of togetherness. Not even from Keeley, who might be his fiercest protector. Or who might just genuinely believe Ted is too stupid to care for himself.
Placing his backpack gingerly on the floor so as not to wake his mother downstairs, and stepping out of his shoes, Ted gets ready for bed. Toes off his socks. Changes into the softest, lightest sweats he has, and shrugs into a Hanes tee-shirt so worn he can practically see through it. Steps into the bathroom to perform his nightly ablutions. Only. Before he flips the switch, he can see the light on across the back yard. Curious, he makes the decision to forgo his own light to step closer and duck beneath the length of curtain. Peeking around the fabric, it is clear as day. Ted can see the lamp lit in the corner of the bedroom. The bottom half of their window is cracked open. And Ted's heart goes racing when he watches his stranger crawl onto the bed, shirtless, between two creamy skinned calves, their small feet running the length of the man's sides as he shakes the salmon colored trousers from his feet.
Taking one ankle into his hands, the man brings the long, soft swath of skin and presses kisses, nips, noses, up and down and down and down further past the knee and her thigh and Ted can see everything so small but so clearly. As the man grows hard, and he does grow to the point of his cock making a cool escape of his briefs, Ted lowers himself into the bathtub. He should look away. He should shut up the curtain, leave his bathroom, pray to God for her forgiveness, but there is a certain shock to his system that plants him where he is. He is not going to do that.
Instead, Ted reaches up to unlatch the window lock. Watches with wonder as the man removes his briefs in a tripping motion, laughing it off. Ted bites his lips together as he attempts to quietly lift his window open a crack. He just knows. Knows that there is something to be heard. Something he needs to hear. Something he wants to hear. And it works. As the window silently slides open, the sweet trill of laughter comes in a set of two voices. Only the window doesn't stay open.
Ted tears his attention away and looks for anything that might hold the window open a crack. A bath brush? No. A bar of soap? He doesn't really like touching it when it's wet. Touching it while it's goopy is a no. Shampoo bottle? It'll open the window too obviously. On its side? Even that seems too obvious. Luckily, Ted's tin of pomade is sitting at the corner of the tub, just within his reach. Ted wedges it between the sill and the ledge and the laughter has gone quiet.
No. Instead there is a sharp huffing triplet of breaths before a sweepingly feminine moan. Ted folds the curtain a smidge and the stranger has his nose in the cleft of his wife's legs, sweeping back and forth with his eyes dreamily closed. Her fond hands brush the silver and fawn colored curls away from his face, giving Ted a clear picture of Trent's deeply expressive brows. The heavy breath that escapes Ted's mouth is a surprise.
This is insanity. Watching a neighbor enjoy the more intimate company of his wife. And it does look like this stranger is standing center gate of Saint Peter's post. And if that's not what it looks like, then the moan that escapes their window only betrays him, because the deep, velvet moan is clearly that man's honeyed voice. Ted's eyes snap back to attention as he watches the flat of the man's tongue wag with the tracing of her mound. "Oh fuck. Trent. Hnyeah!"
Trent. His name is Trent.
Reaching over her thigh, Trent removes his mouth from his wife's pussy and smiles, clearly adoring her before leaning in to press one kiss into her stomach after another, trailing up to take the satin curve of one of her breasts into his mouth. When he flicks his tongue skillfully across one swollen nipple and then the other, Ted begins to feel his heartbeat between his ears, which can only mean one thing. His suspicions are confirmed when Ted reaches between his legs. When Trent nips with his teeth, his wife giggles and she reaches to curl her hand gently around his cheek. Fold his hair behind his ear. Trent's eyes close so sweetly, his mouth releasing her skin, following the brush of her hand.
Ted knows exactly what that feels like. He doesn't mean to, but Ted finds himself groaning inwardly. Quietly. To himself. He isn't entirely sure if it's jealousy of him, of her, or for himself, but the gentle intimacy of their touch registers in an uncomfortable stretching of his abdomen. Ted wants so badly to be touched like this. And other ways. Maybe to touch himself. But it feels too far a step, even though he is so far past any lines he may just circle back around to the start at any moment.
Watching her other hand trace a line from Trent's shoulder across the flat planes of his chest, down the lamp lit skin of his torso, to cup and guide his cock closer, Trent smiles and takes her hand from him, kissing her knuckles. He says something too quiet and muffled for Ted to hear from this far, but Trent stands briefly on his knees, staring out the window as his wife shuffles off the bed. Trent makes one. Two. And another intentional pull the length of his cock with one hand and places the other on the window, scratching a one-fingered wave across the way. Already wide eyed, Ted feels the pleasure of panic as it stretches across his chest and takes his lungs captive. And then Trent turns to lay flat on his back across the bed. Ted is powerless to look away. Ted watches as the man's wife straddles him. Ted doesn't see anything about her but the long dark hair that Trent gathers and holds like a tether in one hand. Trent's cock is obscured as she moves up and down the length of him, though Ted doesn't miss that Trent's free hand looks just as busy with her pussy as she does riding him.
Their moans slowly syncing into one voice as they drift into the crack in his window serve as a metronome until Ted cannot, cannot, cannot hold himself back. First, one stroke on cotton brings frustration. And then another brings relief. And another quiets all the heavy. And another is fire. And another is fire. And another breaches the elastic of his sweats. And then Ted is using the slick at the head of his dick to jerk himself without restraint until he is coming with his stranger and his wife, wide eyed and longing somehow.
After climbing off the stranger and their bed, the man's wife dresses in a silk robe and steps out of the room. Ted holds his breath as he feels his boxers growing wet with the cum soaking into them. Trent sits up in his bed and leans his head back on the window, scattering his curls across the glass. He turns his head, puts three fingers in his mouth and draws the length of them down his tongue. Ted can't see what he does with them next, but he doesn't miss the low call of it, so forcefully straight, no trace of an accent.
"Howdy neighbor."
Ted falls into the tub and slowly pulls the tin of pomade from the window. Folds the curtain back into place. Clutches his chest as he cannot stop his erratic heartbeat, his erratic breathing, his entire body shaking as he comes down from the flood of something he isn't certain he ever remembers feeling before.
It is entirely possible if the depression doesn't kill him–if it's not the humiliation or the self-destruction of his entire life–the forbidden pleasure might? The spike of desire maybe.