LENNON 'LENNIE' LASSO HAD ALWAYS BEEN TOLD SHE WAS THE SPITTING IMAGE OF HER FATHER, not just in certain lights, but in every way it was possible for the girl to resemble him. Even before Lennon met the man, her mother would remark upon the way her eyes gleamed the way his did and her grandmother would recall how he shared her same chipper sunny disposition the first time she met him.

Her father had been nothing more than a man in a photograph until she was sixteen years old, and yet she was in many ways his carbon copy, as though her mother's genes hadn't bothered to show up to the party, well that was true of her mother in many ways.

You might expect that a sixteen year old left in the care of the father she'd never met before would grow into an angst fuelled young woman with dozens of unanswered questions, and while that period of her life did exist, it was short lived. Because despite the one hundred and twenty eight miles that had stood between them in the first sixteen years of her life, she was and would always be his daughter.

By eighteen years old she was a beacon of unwavering positivity, by nineteen she'd taken her father's surname and by twenty one she was reeling off rhyming salutations just like her dad. The family therapist might've scribbled 'toxic positivity' across her notepad with a red biro in their first session but all that Ted Lasso wanted was for his daughter to be happy.

Her heart was as heavy as it was big, and it took the right pair of hands to keep a heart like hers safe, to know how to treasure it. And as far as Ted was aware, a happy heart made for a happy mind.

Kansas had been home as long as there'd been air in her lungs, but Lennon had never been entirely sure what made it home. The house she'd grown up in didn't feel much like a home, she wasn't sure Ted and Michelle's house was any closer to a home. The night that house became home, her stepmother's home office became her bedroom as Ted rushed to prepare it while his brand new sixteen year old daughter sat on the couch nervously as his wife and brand new baby son waited for him to collect them from the hospital. 

But what if home was more than the place she was born and raised? What if home could be found in the form of a small London town, 4,438 miles from Kansas? The sort of place that exists inside its own bubble while being a stone's throw from the country's capital city. And what if home was more than that too? What if home could be found in the company of the unyielding and merciless Premier League legend that happened to grace the very same town? What if a heart as big as hers could see that his heart was vulnerable and tender too?

LENNON LASSO
DAISY EDGAR JONES

ROY KENT
BRETT GOLDSTEIN

LUKE KITMAN
CALAM LYNCH

EMILIA FARAH
NAOMI SCOTT

ASHLEY MILLER
REBECCA FERGUSON

& the rest of the cast as their respective characters

SOUNDTRACK
YESTERDAY - THE BEATLES
PRETTY BOY - THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
LITTLE FREAK - HARRY STYLES
LONDON BOY - TAYLOR SWIFT
NO COMPLAINTS - NOAH KAHAN
ACID EYES - PAULO NUTINI
BUZZCUT SEASON - LORDE
AFTERGLOW - TAYLOR SWIFT
ALL I EVER ASKED - RACHEL CHINOURIRI
ABOUT YOU - THE 1975
LONG WAY HOME - 5SOS
LONDON IS LONELY - HOLLY HUMBERSTONE

*trigger warnings: angst, mental health issues, complex family dynamics, death, probable daddy issues

author's note: surprise! a roy kent x ted's daughter fic!
sometimes babygirl is a 38 year old footballer and sometimes he needs me to write a fic about him
this idea has been floating around in the back of my mind for a while and now it's finally happening!
we're about to be heavy on the grumpy x sunshine/black cat x golden retriever - but of course being ted's daughter, that sunny disposition might just be a mask for something else...

I owe this fic to bridalshowers who encouraged me to write this fic and helped me spitball ideas and just inspires me with everything they write. lady goth you're a bloody legend!