In Case You Need to Know
Summary:
Ted Lasso didn’t leave Richmond with a bang; he left with a quiet slip of the door and a flight back to Kansas. But in his wake, the silence in the Greyhounds' locker room feels less like peace and more like a heavy, suffocating fog. For Roy Kent, that silence is a physical weight. He’s the manager now, wearing the whistle Ted left behind, yet he’s haunted by the ghost of the conversations they never quite finished.
Then, a box arrives for Roy.
Thirteen recordings. Thirteen quiet confessions.
These aren't apologies and they aren't goodbyes. They are the words Ted didn't have the heart to say to Roy's face—and the answers to every question Roy was too proud to ask. Now, Roy has to listen to the man who left, or spend the rest of his life wondering if silence was ever really enough.
Pairing: Roy Kent/Ted Lasso
Chapter 1/?
Tags (At the moment): Inspired by 13 Reasons Why, Post-Canon, Post Series Finale, Confessions, Tapes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Arguably Whump-y but I dunno
Graphics are done by me. This is one of my most recent works. I came up with it because I couldn't sleep. And yes, this can be found on ao3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/80380481/chapters/211064026
The day Ted left felt like the day Roy lost a part of himself he didn’t know existed.
He didn’t think he would notice it. Not really. He’d lived forty years without Ted Lasso. He could survive forty more. That was the sort of thing Roy Kent believed about himself. That he endured things. That was his talent. Endurance. Teeth gritted, chest tight, moving forward because stopping wasn’t an option.
But the moment Ted walked out of the building for the last time, something in the air shifted. Not dramatically. Not loudly. Just… wrong. Like a song playing a half-step off key.
The office was still full. People still talked. Papers still shuffled. Rebecca still commanded the room. Beard had left too, but Beard was still in London. Beard was reachable. Beard was… orbiting.
Ted wasn’t orbiting anything Roy could touch.
And the silence he left behind didn’t feel like quiet. It felt like absence. It was the sound of a heartbeat stopping in a room where you’d grown used to the rhythm.
Roy told himself it was routine. Change happened. Coaches left. People moved on. That was football. That was life. Roy tried to drown it out. He arrived earlier. He stayed later. He barked at Jamie until his throat was raw. He repeated it so often it became a rhythm in his head.
It didn’t make the chair across from his desk look less empty.
He and Ted had spent hours in that office — long nights after everyone else had gone home, takeaway cartons spread across the desk, food going cold while conversations wandered. They talked about everything except football. Ted talked about Kansas and barbecue and terrible puns. Roy talked about things he’d never said out loud to anyone else.
Not when he was a player. Not when he was younger. Not even when he thought he loved someone before.
It was Ted made it easy so damn easy. Roy didn’t trust it at first. No pressure. No expectation. Just listening. Just warmth. Just this ridiculous, relentless kindness that Roy had never known what to do with.
Roy told him about books. About the ones he pretended he didn’t cry over. He spoke about the "second spine" of anger he’d carried since he was nine years old. About the fear that one day he would wake up and discover he had already peaked, already mattered most in a past version of himself that no longer existed.
Ted never flinched. Never mocked. Never tried to fix him.
He just stayed.
And Roy — who had built an entire life on never needing anyone — found himself lingering in doorways just to walk out with him. Found himself speaking softer. Found himself wanting to be seen.
That was the part that scared him most. Because Roy loved Ted. Not in the simple way people love friends. Not in the loud way people declare. It was quieter than that. More dangerous. A slow, steady gravity that pulled him closer even when he resisted it. Ted made him better. Made him try. Made him believe he could still grow, even after everything Roy thought had hardened for good.
And Roy never said a word.
He told himself it wasn’t his place. Told himself Ted didn’t need that from him. Told himself he would ruin something clean and good by touching it.
The truth was simpler.
He was afraid that if he reached out, Ted might not reach back.
So he let him go with a handshake and a hug that lasted just a second too long. He watched him walk away. And when the door closed, Roy felt something inside him close with it.
He had never wanted anything to stay before.
He wished, with a kind of quiet desperation that made him angry at himself, that he had given Ted a reason to.
___________________________________
The doorbell rang late on a Saturday night.
Roy opened it expecting nothing. A kid playing a prank. Jamie Tartt being insufferable. A delivery he didn’t remember ordering.
Instead, there was a box.
Plain cardboard. Cheap tape. No address. No label. No explanation.
“What the fuck,” he muttered, his voice sounding thin in the empty hallway.
He checked the street. Empty. No footsteps. No car pulling away. Just the hum of London and the faint rustle of wind.
He brought it inside and set it on the dining table. He stared at it for ten minutes. He went to the kitchen, poured a whiskey, and stared at it for ten more. He felt a strange, irrational dread, as if opening the box would officially sign the death certificate of the last three years.
He fetched a knife, sliced the tape, and hesitated. His chest tightened with a strange, irrational dread. As if opening it would confirm something he wasn’t ready to face.
The flaps fell open.
Inside were cassette tapes. A pair of headphones. A silver Walkman, scratched and dated. Obsolete. Ridiculous. Painfully familiar in a way Roy couldn’t immediately name.
He picked up one tape. Handwritten label. Side A. Covered in doodles — crooked stars, tiny footballs, and hearts that looked like they were smiling.
His jaw tightened.
He grabbed the note folded neatly beneath them.
“Don’t throw these away,” Roy read aloud, voice rough. “Give them a good listen. Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
He scoffed and tossed the tapes into the corner like they burned his hands.
Stupid. Sentimental bullshit. He wasn’t doing this.
But the house felt too quiet that night. Too still. The silence pressed against his ears until it felt louder than any crowd he’d ever played for.
After dinner, he found himself staring at the corner where the box sat. He didn’t remember deciding to stand. Didn’t remember walking over. But suddenly the tape was in his shaky hand again.
He studied the doodles again. Careful. Intentional. Personal.
He turned it over.
Side A.
He slid the tape into the Walkman. The plastic clicked into place with a definitive, mechanical snap. He pulled the headphones over his ears, feeling the cheap foam press against his skin. He hit Play.
Static crackled.
Then Ted’s voice — warm, unmistakable, impossibly far away.
“If you’re listening to this, I’m already home.”
Roy closed his eyes and threw the headphones off his ears, his breath hitching in the dark. For the first time since the airport, the air in the room felt like it was moving again.
