#but now I'm just there for Trent

[fazcinatingblog]

Successful day: Cody six goals, Trent's team won, I saw Trent, and I didn't think about whatsherface once during the game. Footy is great.

[hansoeii]

Trent Crimm!

[after-the-end-times]

omg I love this by @steddieas-shegoes, but for some reason that scene from Ted Lasso immediately popped into my head when I was reading it? Thus, this:

It's not long after Steve and Eddie finally slept together for the first time that Eddie walks into the house to Steve holding a baby, a baby with curls and big amber eyes.

And he doesn't want to assume, but it is dressed in a pink onesie, so he's gonna go ahead and say she's a girl baby. And Eddie definitely knows there's normal things to ask about a surprise baby, like what's her name or who's is she or, even, where'd she come from, but nope.

"Is- Is she mine?" he says, eyes widening and a hand drifting up to his chest.

Steve just looks at him, a bemused smile spreading across his face,

"Eddie, we had sex, like, a week ago."

"Riiiight right right, sorry, yeah bad math" Eddie says, huffing out a laugh. 'Cause yeah, it's the math that's the issue.

Steve turns to head back into the kitchen, blithely adding as he goes,

"And if memory serves, you finished on my-"

"Woooah nonono!. Steve! You can't- That's not-" Eddie says rushing after him, stopping in front of Steve and the baby.

The baby who looks up at him with giant eyes and fingers in her mouth and looks so much like SteveandEddie that Eddie's brain is still trying to work out some sort of science or magic that would explain this situation because he suddenly wants it to be-

And Steve's just looking at him with the most gentle half smile and crinkly eyes, but Eddie just shakes his head to clear his thoughts, gently covers the baby's ears, and says in the most scandalized tone he didn't even know he had in him,

"There's no reason to get into the science of it all in front of the baby, Steve!"

Steve smiles wide at that and he heads to the sink, patting Eddie on the shoulder as he goes,

"Well, why don't we get her a bottle and then we can discuss the science of it all while she naps, hm?"

[octodrawn]

A collection of images.......

original memes under the cut

[bebraveaboutit]

2x12 || 3x06

[ughhhdavid]

Was thinking about this conversation:

So if we have to let space for Number 4 to walk into the room, and Number 4 is not God, who is it?

Who is seen walking into the room to talk to Ted 3 times this episode?

2 out of those times him being the fourth person in that room?

[bearfeathers]

"Surely Trent won't do something stupid," I say to myself as if I hadn't just watched yet another hour of the Men Doing Something Stupid Football Show.

[bookwyrminspiration]

I don't know where my post going "i have got to stop reading books with no/dead/inactive fandoms" is, but I need it again. Lady Trent memoir readers I am politely inquiring after your whereabouts

[aeoris4lovers]

Angstpril 2023 Day One: Liar

There were very few things in life that Eadwulf insisted upon without any chance of compromise. Choosing battles was a matter of survival under the tutelage of Master Ikithon; incurring punishment was easy enough to do even without the added risk that stubbornness presented. To resist bending only made it inevitable that one would eventually have to break, and as far as Eadwulf was concerned, the world offered little of great enough importance to justify tempting that fate.

It was not an oath made lightly, then, when he promised that he would return every day that he was able to one particular cell in the depths of Vergesson Sanatorium.

Astrid refused to speak to him for weeks after the incident, after what he did that night to save her from a fate far worse than a scar. So, with no one there to swear it to, he made his promise to the gods themselves.

He knelt on the floor of his bedroom, hands clasped together in his lap. Outside the small window above his bed, the cool light of the nearly-full moon fanned out across the skies, setting the shadowed room aglow with the night’s ghostly haze. His gaze settled on the nearest mountain peaks; ancient and immense and unmoving, he thought they must be the closest things to gods he would ever lay his eyes on. When thoughts of his past, of his people, of his own actions that night threatened to creep to the front of his mind, he pressed them back into the darkness of memory. They were gone now; there was nothing more to be done for them. Instead, he turned his thoughts again to Bren, to bright red hair and wild eyes and roaring flames and the crack of rock against bone. 

“If I condemned him to this fate,” he whispered, so quiet it was more thought than speech, “let me be the one to see him through it.”

Only a moment later, the soft moonlight was eclipsed by the silhouettes of two ravens coming to rest on the windowsill, and he knew somewhere deep within him that his oath had been sealed.

The next morning, he rose earlier than usual and ate his breakfast as quickly as he could manage to hold it down. The sun still hadn’t even begun to show itself in the young day’s sky when he slipped past the guards at the sanatorium, giving each of them a look which told them not to stand in his way if they valued their lives. They had no way of knowing that, in truth, he wasn’t sure if he would have the courage to make good on that threat; they only saw the determination in his eyes and stepped aside. 

As he pushed through hall after hall, he wasted no time looking at anything other than the faces in each cell, searching for blue eyes and red hair. Any strange looks that may have been aimed his way were lost in the blur of stone and bars and wrong faces. 

When he finally turned a corner and saw a short-cropped burst of orange in the nearest cell, he was just in time to stop the guard who was preparing to enter with whatever sad excuse for a breakfast they had prepared for the day. He caught the guard by the arm, stooping down to look her in the eye, and pressed a few coins into her hand.

All he said was, “Let me.”

She stared at him for a long few seconds, head tilted to one side, before shrugging.

“If you insist.”

Handing him the tray of oatmeal and water, she unlocked the door of Bren’s cell and started off toward the next one down, leaving Eadwulf there alone. He slipped through the door, closed it behind him, and crouched down next to Bren, truly taking in his current state for the first time. 

Perhaps the most noticeable thing should have been how beat up he was – the dark bruises, the blood that no one had bothered to wash from his skin. But instead, all Eadwulf could see was how empty he looked. There was always such a fire behind his eyes, a kind of passion and life there, like his mind was working so feverishly to puzzle the world together that you could watch it happening from the outside, and now? That fire had been all but doused. His eyes were glazed over, wandering helplessly around the space, looking through it all and not truly seeing any of it. There was a slight strain on his face, a clench to his brow that Eadwulf knew his resting face didn’t possess, which betrayed some process of thought, no doubt an unpleasant one. It was distant, though, and passive, as though the thoughts had taken on a life of their own within his mind and he, in this clouded state, was helpless to resist or engage them at all. When his gaze finally fell on Eadwulf, there was a soft spark of recognition that sent Eadwulf’s heart into his throat.

Eadwulf returned every morning after that, and again every night, so long as he wasn’t off on a mission or locked away for the sake of some punishment. Each morning, he fed Bren whatever breakfast the guards had prepared, careful to make it a far more gentle process than the other meals likely involved. As Bren’s hair grew longer with time, Eadwulf took to brushing it, and trimming it when the ends began to fray. A few times, he considered cutting it short again; surely, it would be more comfortable for Bren to have less of it. But there was no ignoring how his eyes fluttered closed at the feeling of it being brushed, or how he hummed in a way that almost seemed to approach contentment — better to keep it long, Eadwulf always ultimately decided. 

At night, Eadwulf would clean him — easy enough to do with a simple spell, but most nights Eadwulf wiped his face and hands the mundane way first, probably more for his own sake than for Bren’s — and tended to whatever wounds may have been sustained since the last visit. Then, he would take out whatever books he had been able to find that day, sit by Bren’s side, and read. Bren’s favorite of the books, judging by the way his eyes brightened ever so slightly at the sight of its cover, was an old children's story about a young boy and a cat prince, so they always started and finished with that one. In between, they cycled through as many of the other books as Eadwulf thought they safely had time for, and by the time he closed the fairytale for the final time, Bren was almost always slumped against his side, asleep. 

Eventually, once the rifts between them had been repaired, Astrid joined him for some of his visits, though she was quickly given more responsibilities than him and often found it more difficult to get away. On those days, Astrid would braid Bren’s hair once he had brushed it in the mornings, and alternated reading with him at night.

And after every nighttime visit, he would sit in his bed and write a few lines in a journal: how the day’s visits had gone, what had gone on in the outside world that day or over the past few days, what he and Astrid were doing in their own lives. Someday, he told himself, Bren would have his mind back. Someday, he would hand over the journal, a meticulous record of the days Bren was locked away. Someday, Bren would be able to read it, and it would be as if he hadn’t missed a thing at all.

In all that time spent in Bren’s cell, Eadwulf never feared being discovered by Master Ikithon — not out of carelessness or apathy toward the consequences he would inevitably incur, but because he knew it was foolish to assume he hadn’t already been discovered at the very start. The archmage’s gaze took immense care to avoid, and nowhere was it more omnipresent than in the halls of the sanatorium. The chances that he had gone unnoticed were laughably slim — it was better to assume Master Ikithon was well aware, that a confrontation would come soon enough.

And come it did.

One morning, nearly two years into his visits, Eadwulf arrived at Bren’s cell to see his teacher standing there, calmly watching him approach. Inside the cell, he could see Bren’s eyes wide and his face held more tensely than usual. He was shifting slightly where he sat, as though his own body were the walls of a prison preventing him from running away.

All at once, Eadwulf was overcome with the urge to run forward, to lunge at Ikithon, to scream, because how dare he come here and strike that kind of fear into someone so helpless, hasn’t Bren been through enough? But he pushed the urge down and kept calm as he walked in spite of it. It was him that the archmage was angry with, it was him who would face the consequences of his actions; Bren had no reason to be afraid.

As it turned out, neither did he. Master Ikithon wasn’t angry, not at Eadwulf nor Bren; he never said or even suggested that Eadwulf would be punished, and the calm smile never fell from his face. He seemed entirely unfazed — pleased, even — by Eadwulf’s actions. 

“You are welcome to visit our dear Bren whenever you wish, Eadwulf,” he said in a tone that could almost be mistaken for good-natured, “as is Miss Becke. In fact, I think it’s wonderful that you three have grown to care so much for each other, even after all this time. By all means, do continue to come visit him if it pleases you.” Moving closer, he added in a lower tone, “I would only urge you to remember that it is for you, yes? As much as it pains me to say this, Bren is — how shall I put this? — absent, by all accounts. You are a smart boy, I have no doubt you’ve noticed. Each time you leave this place, it is to him as if you were never here at all; he won’t remember. The sharp young man we knew is, I’m afraid, no longer with us.”

And every night since then, as silence fell over the sanatorium’s halls, Eadwulf would look down at Bren, tucked against his side the same way they had once grown used to laying in their beds, and ask himself: how could that possibly be true?

How, when he still squirmed at the mere sight of his old teacher standing nearby, when his eyes still sparked at the sight of his favorite fairytale’s cover, when he still remembered how to fall asleep next to Eadwulf like it was as simple as breathing, could Bren be gone? How could it be possible that such a sharp mind, so full of passion and of life, simply slipped away? Even if he remembered none of it, even if each day felt to him like the first time, Bren seemed in his own way to welcome their company far more than any other’s, to relax in some small way at their presence; did that not count for something?

It would take him many more years to truly make sense of it, to fully understand the weight of what it meant, but the simple fact remained: that Bren was gone was the first of Trent Ikithon’s lies that Eadwulf ever saw through.

[softichill]

Wait wait okay why are we suddenly blaming Gwen for this?

[coachbeards]

beard not having family or a place to go so ted really went. ok! <3 and then gave him his family, the wichita state shockers, afc richmond, himself...........

[after-the-end-times]

Continued from here

Trent finally sits back from his laptop, stretching his hands out in front of him. He'd been writing and editing for hours, using the quiet time while the team and coaches were out training on the pitch.

He spins idly in his chair.

Ted's chair his brain helpfully reminds him. He thinks he should get up and check out what fruit they have stocked in the other room before the team comes back in.

It's only been a couple days since his gaffer- the gaffer left to go back to his family and Trent's been feeling off ever since. Maybe he's just hungry. He gets up to go in search of a snack, hopefully that'll quell the squirrely feeling in his belly.

Ten minutes later he walks back to the coach's office, tossing the two clementines he successfully found back and forth in the air pretending to juggle. He was doing pretty good, if he did think so himself, until he entered the office and dropped them both.

"Ted"

Ted, who's standing there by his their? desk, like he'd never left and looking at all of Trent's things scattered everywhere.

Trent had tried to limit his footprint on the desk, not wanting to look like he was moving in too fast. But now Trent sees what Ted sees and a blush spreads across cheeks.

His laptop sitting center stage with notebooks piled up to the side, white printed pages with too much red ink scattered and balled up, his bracelets, rainbow mug, and so many pens. And the single photo of his daughter he allowed himself to bring to work.

It looks like it's his desk. And now Ted's back. And will probably want his desk back.

With his blush deepening he rushes forward to start packing up his things. He just wishes Ted would move out of the way so this wasn't so awkward.

"What're you doing?" Ted asks with a quizzical smile. not moving away.

"Oh! I'll get this all moved. I wasn't- This isn't- Beard said I should sit here for the moment until- There wasn't enough- With Nate back-" He doesn't know what's wrong with him.

Part of his job for 20 years was to be able to eloquently put sentences together into thoughtful paragraphs and now here he is not able to finish a single thought.

All Trent knows is that he innocently went to get a clementine and now he's panicking because feels like he betrayed Ted...for the second time, his brain again helpfully adds

Ted is still standing in front of him, arms crossed, hip resting against the desk, not letting him snatch up all his stuff and run.

Trent finally looks at Ted, instead of looking everywhere but him.

Oh. He doesn't look mad, Trent realizes. He kinda looks- Great, now he can't even finish thoughts in his own head. He mentally gives himself a baleful side eye.

"I wanted it to be you", Ted says. He has a slow smile spreading across his face as he looks at Trent.

"And here I heard you preferred Sleepless in Seattle" Trent responds with a small smile, proud of himself for finally successfully bantering back.

"And while that is true, and I am still correct that it is the far superior Nora Ephron film," Ted glances over at Beard's desk as if continuing a on ongoing silent argument, before looking back and holding Trent's gaze, "Miss Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox have the right scene for the job here"

Trent's breath catches in his chest, "Oh?" He can't seem to pull his eyes away from Ted's, heart on display for anyone looking.

Trent stands frozen as Ted reaches up, cups his cheek, and swipes his thumb under his eye as if dabbing away a tear that might be there if this were a movie.

"You're the only one I want to share a desk with", Ted's smile turns a little rueful, his hand slipping into Trent's hair, pushing it back from his face before pulling away. He pushes his hands into his pockets and sways toward Trent.

Trent's sure his eyes couldn't get any wider and he's horrified to realize they really do feel teary, "So you're staying? But what about-"

Ted sways back a bit, "Yeah, so I went home. Thought that was were the story was always leading me to. Turns out not so much. The moment I got off the flight in Kansas, ready to start my life over there, I-," He cuts himself off looking out to the locker room, collecting himself, "God, Trent I just about started bawling I missed you all so much."

He turns a crooked, slightly sad smile back to Trent. "Michelle and I are gonna work something new out. Not sure exactly what yet, but she agreed this wasn't working, that it wasn't fair to me or to Henry," He takes a deep breath. shoulders relaxing as his smile turns sweeter, less sad, "So yeah, I stayed a few days to catch up with some friends, family, and then got the next flight out."

"To come back for the team?"

Trent's trying really hard not to read too hard into all of this. He couldn't handle it if all of this, the quote, the thumb brush, the hair tuck, if it was all for the bit by a man so wholly obsessed with rom-com moments. He'd heard about Ted's Notting Hill moment with Roy.

Ted looks at him with a look that says he knows what he's doing.

"Sure, the team, Beard, Rebecca, heck, my whole street that sometimes feels like walking out into Cheers." Ted takes a half step forward, bringing him inches from Trent so he now has to look up slightly to meet Ted's eyes.

Ted's so very gentle as he slowly brings his hand back up to cup Trent's cheek again, his fingers tangling in his hair.

"And I came back for you. You have to know, Trent," he leans in those last few inches, lips almost meeting, "I came back to you."

And finally, finally Ted kisses him.

~Fin~

[edelweiss-buttons]

I would like to convey how truly insane the last few months have been for me on a queer/pop culture/adhd hyperfixation level (it's a long list):

april/may ish: ted lasso s3. trent crimm, fav character since s1 is confirmed to be queer - something that I had quietly headcanoned but didn't think would actually happen in the series

july: wwdits s5. (I learned how to pirate tv shows for this one.)

also july: good omens s2. (it was fun and gentle and romantic until I discovered that ofmd s1 prepared me for the emotional destruction of that last episode)

also in july: grandson concert!

end of august. ofmd s2 trailer.

september: taskmaster s16 starts! very fun and very homosexual

the stressful hour in september that was getting noah kahan concert tickets

then came october. three shows all started within the same two days (all are massive hyperfixations)

oct 5: our flag means death s2

also oct 5: loki s2 (literally didn't know about this one until the day of lol)

oct 6: bbc ghosts s5

also october: the magnus protocol trailer

I think the loki s2 finale should get it's own point on the list due to how much mental space it occupied.

writers and actors strikes end! the amount of ofmd s2 bts content was and still is absolutely wild

november: the ballad of songbirds and snakes movie!

and now I just found out that amulet book 9 is being released in february 2024. somehow I missed that announcement from a month ago

in the upcoming months, so far its looking like:

bbc ghosts s5 christmas special

the magnus protocol

the final amulet book

noah kahan concert

[glaswen]

Though in this re-write i did for him, I want to keep Baaierd as sort of a mystery but

it is important that the main connecting factor for the three pactmakers is that they have a history of dark magic and rituals involving demons. Even Trent, though he obviously doesn't remember it.

And one day I'll get into that eventually, there's a reason why James tolerates him so much when he really shouldn't

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

i still think the sapphic vibes are alive with keeley and mary from ghosts barbara

[bredforloyalty]

YOU CAN HEAR TRENT REZNOR AND ATTICUS ROSS ON THIS WHOLE ALBUM