200. darling, i'll be true
Title | darling, i'll be true
Rating | pg-13
Summary | Five times Tessa wasn't ready (and one time she was).
People | Scott Moir + Tessa Virtue
Notes | I tend to be a little fuzzy with timelines and I know very little about any of their respective relationships, so just give me creative license if anything seems implausible.
i. 2004
In the parking lot outside the Aud, it is raining, big, heavy drops against the ground. Tessa is wearing an old hoodie of Scott’s that she adopted when he outgrew it; it covers most of her hair but there are a few stray tendrils that stick to her cheeks and her forehead. Scott is quite certain that Tessa, always-prepared Tessa, has an umbrella somewhere in her backpack, but she hasn’t bothered taking it out.
They’re waiting for his dad to pick them up, to bring them home, to make a road trip like those of their childhoods, early mornings and pillow fights, except not quite the same - it is evening, not morning, and they’re going home for one last sleep in their own beds, and off to America the next day.
Tessa is being very quiet. At first glance, everyone observes that Scott is the goofy chatterbox and Tessa is softspoken and sweet, but he knows way better than that. Tessa might be shy, but she’s been talking his ear off for years now, and the total silence between them strikes Scott as nothing less than totally weird.
“We can wait inside,” he offers, for something to say.
“No, it’s okay,” Tessa says, even as she’s sniffling, but it occurs to Scott that those sniffles might be the result of goodbyes, not of the weather.
“Are you, Tess?” he asks. “Okay?”
She nods, flashing him one of her pretty little smiles, but it slips from her face so quickly that he knows it wasn’t real.
Scott knows that everything is changing. It’s not just geography or coaching teams, either - they are changing, Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue, as individuals, as a pair. They are growing up: he notices the way Tessa’s waist is starting to curve, her blossoming breasts, the maturity sneaking onto her face. Their dances are changing: faces closer, hands lingering longer, more passion, more expression. His mom says they’re evolving, which he guesses it true enough, in terms of their skating, but he feels it more in their partnership, his sudden reactions to Tessa being pressed close to him, the way she seems less like a kid to him, the way she looks at him sometimes with her lashes lowered and the corners of her lips tilted upward.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he says. “You know that, right? It’s gonna be better than okay. It’s going to be really awesome.”
Tessa tucks her chin down into his sweater and nods. “It’ll be different,” she says.
He nods, because he knows Tessa likes her routines, her schedules, her comforts. “Sure, but...not me. I’m the same. I mean - I’m still here. With you.”
Tessa smiles again - Scott can’t see her mouth when half of her face is tucked into that sweater, but he can feel her smile, somehow. “I was talking with my mom the other day,” she says. “About when I was little, just memories and stuff.” She pauses. “I don’t - I don’t really remember anything before you were here. With me. When I think back, Scott Moir’s always there.”
Scott grins. “Mom’s always saying I make a serious impression.”
She shrugs. “You did on me.”
His grin softens into a smile as he looks at her, a skinny little thing in his sweater with freckles sprinkled all over her cheeks. He reaches for her hand instinctively, and she lets him hold it, their fingers wrapped together. It makes him feel a little warm, Tessa’s palm against his. Out here in the rain, just the two of them, it feels different than skating around with her hand in his. It feels like more.
He turns to her and then halts, squinting at the sight of the headlights of his dad’s car as it turns into the parking lot. He pushes whatever thoughts he was having into the back of his mind and says, simply, “He’s here. You ready?”
“No,” Tessa says softly, so they stand there in the rain, sixteen and fourteen and on the verge of all their dreams, until Tessa’s grip on his hand eases and Scott knows they can get in the car.
ii. 2008
Tessa’s got these bright, bright eyes when she shows up on his doorstep; bright, bright eyes and something pained in the corners of her mouth. She doesn’t say anything when he opens the door, no hey, Scotty, no are you gonna make me wait out here all night? She just looks at him with those eyes of hers, distinctly the colours of a stormy sea, and bright enough that they threaten to overflow. Scott steps aside and ushers her in.
She sits on his couch and starts to take off her shoes, her pink Nike sneakers that she unlaces very, very slowly. Scott hovers around her like some kind of concerned mother hen until the silence gets the best of him and he drops down onto one knee and starts to help.
“Don’t,” she says softly, and abandons the task altogether, sitting upright and inhaling sharply.
Scott stays on the floor and watches her, the slow rise and fall of her chest, the barely discernable tremor in her lower lip. He runs through a list of possibilities in his mind - did something happen with her family, did she and Meryl get into some kind of tiff, is this about a boy? Tessa’s face, for the first time in god knows how many years, is not readily supplying him with answers. He cannot read the angry brightness in her eyes, so he gives up momentarily and turns his attention back to her shoes. He unlaces both sneakers with a neat efficiency she’d be proud of under any other circumstances, eases her feet out of them, and then rests his cheek against her thigh. Her pants are very soft, probably those lulu-whatever ones she’s been so obsessed with lately, and thin enough that he can feel the warmth of her skin through them.
“What’s up, Tessie?” he asks. He hasn’t called her that in a good decade, but it’s a moniker his mom still uses regularly.
Tessa chews on her bottom lip and looks at him like she’s measuring him up and then, abruptly, she seems to deflate right in front of him, looking almost as small as the little girl they used to call Tessie in Ilderton. “I lied,” she says softly.
That peaks Scott’s interest, to say the least, and he sits up straight as his brows start to furrow. “What? About what?”
“I didn’t take the morning off to go to the dentist,” she says softly, looking at her sock feet on his floor. “I went to the doctor.”
Scott is confused - confused about Tessa lying to him, which he doesn’t think has ever happened before, confused about why she was at the doctor, confused about the brightness of her eyes and the smallness of her body, but then Tessa looks at him again through her dark, heavy lashes and everything snaps into perfect clarity.
He touches her knee very gently, skims his fingertips all the way down her calf, her muscles alert under his touch. “What is it?”
Tessa does not tell him the official diagnosis or all the specifics or how she’d wished, sitting there listening to endless medical jargon, that she’d brought him along. There will be time enough for that; in the moment, she just says, “It’s surgery. Or retirement.”
Scott has always been firmly on the side of fight in the fight-or-flight dynamic, so his gut instinct is to set his jaw and nod, to say things like alright, surgery, let’s do it or okay, vacation time in a hospital, awesome. He is so ready with his responses that he forgets, momentarily, that it is not his responses that matter. He has become so used to their togetherness, their existence as an entity, that he forgets, in those first moments, that they are not discussing his legs.
They’re Tessa’s legs. It’s her call, what direction she wants to take them in - if she wants to step up or step down.
They’re Tessa’s legs, and it’s her call, and she says, voice broken in a thousand places, “I’m not ready.”
Scott feels every one of the cracks in her voice in his own body, and he aches for her. He slips his hands up into her pant legs, palms against her shins, her skin cool where his is warm. He says, “Okay.”
iii. 2010
Scott finds her just around the corner, her back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of her. Her feet are bare, toes pointed with ballerina grace, skates sitting at her side. She’s all dressed for their OD, hair in its updo, skirt folded neatly around her legs, cheeks a touch pale beneath her makeup. When she looks up at him, he leans against the wall and slides down to sit next to her. They are both quiet.
When the silence lingers a bit too long, he asks, simply, “Okay?”
Tessa nods. “Yeah, I’m - I’m fine.”
Scott takes her hand, fingers wrapping firmly around hers, a wordless expression of I know.
Tessa blows out a breath. “I just cried on national television.”
“Barely,” Scott says. “And understandably.”
She looks at him again, and beneath the costume and the makeup and all the facets of her character, she’s just Tessa. “Thanks for saving me.”
Scott shakes his head a little to indicate that no thanks are necessary. “Always, T.”
He watches her swallow hard, watches her jaw move as she grinds her teeth together, and he hears her voice get high and small and tight when she says, “I kind of want my mom.”
He leans his forehead against her temple and he feels her sigh, though he’s not sure what it means, not sure if it’s intended to hold in tears or if it’s a breath of relief at his touch. “Me too,” he admits, and that makes Tessa smile, briefly, before her eyes start shining with tears again.
“Hey,” Scott says. “Hey, Tess, c’mon - ”
She shakes her head slightly, hands fluttering in the air. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just don’t - ” He kind of hauls her against his side, pulling her into a hug and tucking her face against his shoulder, wanting to run his fingers through her hair but settling for resting his hand against the back of her neck. “Don’t cry.”
His words are not a magic command, of course, and Tessa keeps crying. “I feel so awful for Jo.”
He runs his hand down her back, feeling the vertebrae of her spine; I know. Me too. He tucks his face down against hers, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “You’ve got to breathe,” he says. “Breathe with me.”
He holds onto her and she holds onto him and slowly their breathing syncs, their heartbeats settle. Scott only lets go when Tessa pulls away and starts murmuring about messing up her makeup.
“You look beautiful,” he promises her. “Don’t worry.”
Tessa gives him the softest look, a look full of more feeling than Scott could ever express with words. Swallowing hard, she says, “You should give her a hug.”
Scott blinks.” Huh?”
“Joannie,” she clarifies. “Next time you see her you should give her a hug.”
“Yeah, of course - ”
“Every time,” Tessa says softly, “every single time something’s happened to me, great or good or bad or horrible, you’ve been there, and I don’t - I can’t imagine...being by myself.”
“Back atcha, Tutu,” he says, matching her soft tone.
She smiles at him, just barely, and then rests her head against his shoulder. Simultaneously, they exhale, and Scott imagines her eyes closing at the same time as his.
After several moments, he asks, “Ready to go find Marina?”
Tessa shakes her head minutely against his shoulder, not yet, and he squeezes her hand gently, me neither.
iv. 2014
It’s quiet in the rink, the only sounds Scott can hear are their blades cutting into the ice and the oh-so-soft whisper of Tessa’s breathing whenever she’s close enough. She twirls and twirls, the skirt of her dress flaring out around her. She’s smiling a soft, private smile and it makes Scott crave her big, goofy laugh; he catches her with his hands on her waist so they’re both spinning and Tessa’s smile turns breathless, her arms winding around his neck.
“What’re you up to, Mr. Moir?” she asks as their momentum slows.
“Choreography,” Scott says seriously. “I think we should eliminate all space between us when we skate.”
“That’ll make for some interesting programs,” she says, matching his tone, but her smile is still lurking at the corners of her mouth, still obvious in her eyes.
“Original programs, T,” he says. “Groundbreakingly innovative.”
She shakes her head fondly. “We don’t need to give people anything else to talk about.”
Scott puts his lips so close to hers, nudging her nose with his own. “We don’t?” he asks, as though genuinely confused.
“We don’t,” Tessa confirms, but then she’s kissing him, arms tighter around his neck and her chest pressed against his and her fingertips in his hair, and Scott lifts her right off the ice. He grins after a moment, unable to help himself, and their teeth knock together. It makes Tessa laugh and she drawls, “Smooth,” in that teasing voice of hers, the one Scott loves, like he loves all things about her.
He spins her around. “I don’t know why we can’t just let people talk and talk and talk…”
“Not yet,” she whispers, her face still so close to his, eyes so pretty and lips so pink; Tessa could convince him of anything, but -
“I’m dyin’ to tell someone, Tess,” he admits. It feels to him like it’s been so long. There’d been an unspoken agreement between them not to bring It up until they were home - it’d been much too much of a whirlwind in Russia, Tessa’s soft knock on his bedroom door, his fingers around her wrist when she’d turned to leave, too much vodka, too much stress, too many years between them, too many things they’d never put into words, too much scrambling and too much know-it-all triumph in Patrick’s yelling when he’d walked in on them, too much effort not to kiss her in public, too much exhaustion on the planes of Tessa’s face, too much pressure to have The Conversation About Our Future, too much knowledge in the lift of Meryl’s eyebrow as she’d scrutinized them across the table, too much softness and sweetness in Tessa’s eyes on the airplane for Scott to bring it up, not just then, not when he could just hold her hand instead.
But now they’re back. They’ve done the Toronto interviews and they are really and truly home, barely in London for two hours before they trekked to the rink, which was blissfully empty, and now - now, Scott is ready to tell the whole damn world.
“I know,” she says as he sets her back down on her skates. “I know…”
“I mean, hey - who even knows how long Chiddy can keep a secret? It’s a miracle it hasn’t been leaked to CTV by now.”
Tessa gives him one of those looks that he can so easily read, and then she touches his cheeks with her mittens. “Not yet,” she says.
Scott covers her mittens with his bare hands. “Why not?”
“When we tell people, it won’t...belong to us anymore. It’ll belong to our families and our coaches and Ilderton and - it’ll belong to Canada. And right now I…”
In a rare occurrence, Scott is unable to finish her sentence. “Right now you…?”
Tessa puts her mittened hands on his shoulders, his chest. “Right now I love you,” she says softly. “And I’m not ready to share.”
Scott looks at her, so beautiful, so honest, so Tessa, and there’s nothing to say but, “Okay.”
v. 2015
They’re doing it year by year now, like they did when they were young, sitting down annually to figure out if they want to keep competing, what their next steps are, how they’re feeling. They’re both pretty sure PyeongChang is out of the question, but they’ve never said as much - they’re taking it year by year, after all.
This year, at conversation-time, they’re in Paris, and Scott’s kind of been kicking himself the whole trip, because over the past four days he’s wanted to ask Tessa to marry him about sixty-two times, but he can’t, because he doesn’t have a ring, and she deserves a little better than hey, I just thought of this now, but please promise to marry me and I’ll pick up your great-grandma’s ring from Jim when we’re home again. He’s become aware of how ridiculous it is that, for the first time in their whole lives, he and Tessa are in Paris on an actual skate-free vacation, and it didn’t cross his mind to plan some kind of top-of-the-Eiffel-Tower proposal.
“Scott.” Tessa kicks his shin under the sheets. “You’re not listening to me.”
He blinks and says, quickly, “Yes, I am.”
She rolls her eyes and props herself up on one elbow, messy hair falling against her shoulders, and bats away his hand when he tries to tug down the sheets that are covering her. “What did I just say?”
“You said...that you think it’s time we talk about whether we want to compete next season.”
Tessa half-smiles, running her fingers through his hair, which is probably just about as mussed-up as hers. “Lucky guess.”
“Nah, T, I can just read your mind.”
“Well, I can’t read yours. At least not wherever it’s been the last couple days.”
Scott almost turns red; he feels dangerous warmth in his cheeks. “It’s been here. With you.”
She gives him a look: I don’t believe you.
“I’ve just been thinking...about how much I love you.”
She taps her fingertips on his bare chest. “That sounds like a line, Scott Moir.”
“It’s only the truth, Tessa Virtue,” he says, covering her hand with his, trying to shut off the part of his brain that’s squealing like a schoolgirl over the way Tessa Moir might sound and the even larger part of his brain that thinks he is the world’s biggest idiot for not thinking to get the damn ring from her dad before they left.
Eyes a little sleepy and totally beautiful, as usual, she asks him, “What are you really thinking?”
“I was thinking,” he says slowly, “that if we compete next year, we could do our exhibition to You Make My Dreams Come True.”
Tessa’s eyes light up like that’s the best news she’s ever heard. “Really?”
Scott laughs, rolling on top of her. “Really, you crazy fan.”
“People would love it,” she says.
“I know.”
“I would love it.”
Scott smiles at her. “I know.”
“I love you,” she adds, grinning up at him.
He shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “I like you a little, or whatever.”
Tessa punches his shoulder. “I don’t think...I’m ready to retire.”
Scott is pleased but unsurprised that they’re on the same page, as always, and in the back of his mind he’s thinking of the ice at his hometown rink, of Tessa’s great-grandmother’s ring, of the music of her favourite band, and of that awesome smile of hers, of the sound of yes, and suddenly it’s not the end of the world that he didn’t plan something for this trip.
“Me neither,” he agrees. “Not ready just yet.”
vi. 2018
In the hallway, Scott paces ferociously, dissatisfied with how slowly his feet seem to move when they’re not in skates. He feels like he’s missing a limb, and no one will let him see it.
Danny, who sat down the third time the nurse suggested they do so, is saying things that Scott is only half-hearing, things that begin with bro, things that include a lot of suggestions to calm down, totally logical things like you heard what she said, not to worry and that it’d just be a minute, but Scott is not in a place to calm down or to not worry. He has yet to fully shake the mood swings of his youth and right now he is pissed off because no one seems to understand that he can’t fucking calm down or stop worrying until they let him see her.
It’s at least - at least - a full three minutes before the nurse re-emerges and beckons him to come along, and Scott makes several huffy noises as he follows her, not really listening to Danny, who says, “Want me to come wi - oh, who am I kidding?” and sits back down.
Scott comes to an abrupt stop once the nurse has lifted the curtain to one of the little makeshift ER rooms. Tessa is leaning back against a small mountain of pillows, and she looks fine, totally fine; so fine, in fact, that her eyebrows lift one at a time, an expression that says uh oh, I know that face you’ve got on.
“Hey, Scotty,” she says, extending her hand toward him as she sits up fully.
Scott takes her hand and then just kind of takes all of her, drawing her to him in a fierce hug. He presses his face into her neck, breathes her in, and Tessa’s hands are busy smoothing over his back in a slow, comforting rhythm.
“You fainted,” he says, unable to keep the frown out of his voice and unable to let go of her. “They called your mom, she called me - she’s still your emergency contact, we’ve got to fix that, we - ” He blows out a breath against her skin. “You fainted.”
“Seems that way.”
His frown deepens and he pulls back, not amused by her lighthearted tone. “Tessa - ”
“Scott,” she interrupts. “I’m fine.”
He almost rolls his eyes. “Fine people don’t faint.”
Tessa shifts around a little, still perched on the hospital bed, her legs wrapping around him loosely so that her ankles are against the backs of his knees, her hands resting on his shoulders and then gliding slowly all the way down his arms until she takes his hands, their fingers interlacing. She says, “Pregnant people do, sometimes.”
Scott stares at her for several long seconds. He is so accustomed to being in her head, so used to knowing her words before she says them, that speaking is really a formality. Now, when she’s said something he was so unprepared for, it catches him completely off-guard.
“Scotty?” she asks, two soft syllables that bring him back to earth.
“What?” he says, sort of in shock. “Tessa - ” He pauses, then, “What? Tessa - ” And he’s hugging her again, his body reacting faster than his brain, and she breathes a sweet little laugh by his ear, squeezing him back just as tightly.
He struggles to find the right words when they finally pull apart, desperately making mental leaps, but all he can really do is grin and grin and grin like a total idiot. He looks down at her stomach, puts his hands on her waist, and when he catches her eyes again she’s looking at him in this serious, searching way that makes his grin slip slightly.
Again, he tries to think of the right thing to say, and he ends up with halting words: “Tess - if - if you’re not ready - ”
Tessa puts her hands on his cheeks and it’s like he can feel how much she loves him in her fingertips, like he’s always been able to do so, and she smiles at him, that smile he’s known for years and years, and she doesn’t need to say a damn thing, because he can read it in her eyes -
I’m ready.
.fin.
Rating | pg-13
Summary | Five times Tessa wasn't ready (and one time she was).
People | Scott Moir + Tessa Virtue
Notes | I tend to be a little fuzzy with timelines and I know very little about any of their respective relationships, so just give me creative license if anything seems implausible.
i. 2004
In the parking lot outside the Aud, it is raining, big, heavy drops against the ground. Tessa is wearing an old hoodie of Scott’s that she adopted when he outgrew it; it covers most of her hair but there are a few stray tendrils that stick to her cheeks and her forehead. Scott is quite certain that Tessa, always-prepared Tessa, has an umbrella somewhere in her backpack, but she hasn’t bothered taking it out.
They’re waiting for his dad to pick them up, to bring them home, to make a road trip like those of their childhoods, early mornings and pillow fights, except not quite the same - it is evening, not morning, and they’re going home for one last sleep in their own beds, and off to America the next day.
Tessa is being very quiet. At first glance, everyone observes that Scott is the goofy chatterbox and Tessa is softspoken and sweet, but he knows way better than that. Tessa might be shy, but she’s been talking his ear off for years now, and the total silence between them strikes Scott as nothing less than totally weird.
“We can wait inside,” he offers, for something to say.
“No, it’s okay,” Tessa says, even as she’s sniffling, but it occurs to Scott that those sniffles might be the result of goodbyes, not of the weather.
“Are you, Tess?” he asks. “Okay?”
She nods, flashing him one of her pretty little smiles, but it slips from her face so quickly that he knows it wasn’t real.
Scott knows that everything is changing. It’s not just geography or coaching teams, either - they are changing, Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue, as individuals, as a pair. They are growing up: he notices the way Tessa’s waist is starting to curve, her blossoming breasts, the maturity sneaking onto her face. Their dances are changing: faces closer, hands lingering longer, more passion, more expression. His mom says they’re evolving, which he guesses it true enough, in terms of their skating, but he feels it more in their partnership, his sudden reactions to Tessa being pressed close to him, the way she seems less like a kid to him, the way she looks at him sometimes with her lashes lowered and the corners of her lips tilted upward.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he says. “You know that, right? It’s gonna be better than okay. It’s going to be really awesome.”
Tessa tucks her chin down into his sweater and nods. “It’ll be different,” she says.
He nods, because he knows Tessa likes her routines, her schedules, her comforts. “Sure, but...not me. I’m the same. I mean - I’m still here. With you.”
Tessa smiles again - Scott can’t see her mouth when half of her face is tucked into that sweater, but he can feel her smile, somehow. “I was talking with my mom the other day,” she says. “About when I was little, just memories and stuff.” She pauses. “I don’t - I don’t really remember anything before you were here. With me. When I think back, Scott Moir’s always there.”
Scott grins. “Mom’s always saying I make a serious impression.”
She shrugs. “You did on me.”
His grin softens into a smile as he looks at her, a skinny little thing in his sweater with freckles sprinkled all over her cheeks. He reaches for her hand instinctively, and she lets him hold it, their fingers wrapped together. It makes him feel a little warm, Tessa’s palm against his. Out here in the rain, just the two of them, it feels different than skating around with her hand in his. It feels like more.
He turns to her and then halts, squinting at the sight of the headlights of his dad’s car as it turns into the parking lot. He pushes whatever thoughts he was having into the back of his mind and says, simply, “He’s here. You ready?”
“No,” Tessa says softly, so they stand there in the rain, sixteen and fourteen and on the verge of all their dreams, until Tessa’s grip on his hand eases and Scott knows they can get in the car.
ii. 2008
Tessa’s got these bright, bright eyes when she shows up on his doorstep; bright, bright eyes and something pained in the corners of her mouth. She doesn’t say anything when he opens the door, no hey, Scotty, no are you gonna make me wait out here all night? She just looks at him with those eyes of hers, distinctly the colours of a stormy sea, and bright enough that they threaten to overflow. Scott steps aside and ushers her in.
She sits on his couch and starts to take off her shoes, her pink Nike sneakers that she unlaces very, very slowly. Scott hovers around her like some kind of concerned mother hen until the silence gets the best of him and he drops down onto one knee and starts to help.
“Don’t,” she says softly, and abandons the task altogether, sitting upright and inhaling sharply.
Scott stays on the floor and watches her, the slow rise and fall of her chest, the barely discernable tremor in her lower lip. He runs through a list of possibilities in his mind - did something happen with her family, did she and Meryl get into some kind of tiff, is this about a boy? Tessa’s face, for the first time in god knows how many years, is not readily supplying him with answers. He cannot read the angry brightness in her eyes, so he gives up momentarily and turns his attention back to her shoes. He unlaces both sneakers with a neat efficiency she’d be proud of under any other circumstances, eases her feet out of them, and then rests his cheek against her thigh. Her pants are very soft, probably those lulu-whatever ones she’s been so obsessed with lately, and thin enough that he can feel the warmth of her skin through them.
“What’s up, Tessie?” he asks. He hasn’t called her that in a good decade, but it’s a moniker his mom still uses regularly.
Tessa chews on her bottom lip and looks at him like she’s measuring him up and then, abruptly, she seems to deflate right in front of him, looking almost as small as the little girl they used to call Tessie in Ilderton. “I lied,” she says softly.
That peaks Scott’s interest, to say the least, and he sits up straight as his brows start to furrow. “What? About what?”
“I didn’t take the morning off to go to the dentist,” she says softly, looking at her sock feet on his floor. “I went to the doctor.”
Scott is confused - confused about Tessa lying to him, which he doesn’t think has ever happened before, confused about why she was at the doctor, confused about the brightness of her eyes and the smallness of her body, but then Tessa looks at him again through her dark, heavy lashes and everything snaps into perfect clarity.
He touches her knee very gently, skims his fingertips all the way down her calf, her muscles alert under his touch. “What is it?”
Tessa does not tell him the official diagnosis or all the specifics or how she’d wished, sitting there listening to endless medical jargon, that she’d brought him along. There will be time enough for that; in the moment, she just says, “It’s surgery. Or retirement.”
Scott has always been firmly on the side of fight in the fight-or-flight dynamic, so his gut instinct is to set his jaw and nod, to say things like alright, surgery, let’s do it or okay, vacation time in a hospital, awesome. He is so ready with his responses that he forgets, momentarily, that it is not his responses that matter. He has become so used to their togetherness, their existence as an entity, that he forgets, in those first moments, that they are not discussing his legs.
They’re Tessa’s legs. It’s her call, what direction she wants to take them in - if she wants to step up or step down.
They’re Tessa’s legs, and it’s her call, and she says, voice broken in a thousand places, “I’m not ready.”
Scott feels every one of the cracks in her voice in his own body, and he aches for her. He slips his hands up into her pant legs, palms against her shins, her skin cool where his is warm. He says, “Okay.”
iii. 2010
Scott finds her just around the corner, her back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of her. Her feet are bare, toes pointed with ballerina grace, skates sitting at her side. She’s all dressed for their OD, hair in its updo, skirt folded neatly around her legs, cheeks a touch pale beneath her makeup. When she looks up at him, he leans against the wall and slides down to sit next to her. They are both quiet.
When the silence lingers a bit too long, he asks, simply, “Okay?”
Tessa nods. “Yeah, I’m - I’m fine.”
Scott takes her hand, fingers wrapping firmly around hers, a wordless expression of I know.
Tessa blows out a breath. “I just cried on national television.”
“Barely,” Scott says. “And understandably.”
She looks at him again, and beneath the costume and the makeup and all the facets of her character, she’s just Tessa. “Thanks for saving me.”
Scott shakes his head a little to indicate that no thanks are necessary. “Always, T.”
He watches her swallow hard, watches her jaw move as she grinds her teeth together, and he hears her voice get high and small and tight when she says, “I kind of want my mom.”
He leans his forehead against her temple and he feels her sigh, though he’s not sure what it means, not sure if it’s intended to hold in tears or if it’s a breath of relief at his touch. “Me too,” he admits, and that makes Tessa smile, briefly, before her eyes start shining with tears again.
“Hey,” Scott says. “Hey, Tess, c’mon - ”
She shakes her head slightly, hands fluttering in the air. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just don’t - ” He kind of hauls her against his side, pulling her into a hug and tucking her face against his shoulder, wanting to run his fingers through her hair but settling for resting his hand against the back of her neck. “Don’t cry.”
His words are not a magic command, of course, and Tessa keeps crying. “I feel so awful for Jo.”
He runs his hand down her back, feeling the vertebrae of her spine; I know. Me too. He tucks his face down against hers, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “You’ve got to breathe,” he says. “Breathe with me.”
He holds onto her and she holds onto him and slowly their breathing syncs, their heartbeats settle. Scott only lets go when Tessa pulls away and starts murmuring about messing up her makeup.
“You look beautiful,” he promises her. “Don’t worry.”
Tessa gives him the softest look, a look full of more feeling than Scott could ever express with words. Swallowing hard, she says, “You should give her a hug.”
Scott blinks.” Huh?”
“Joannie,” she clarifies. “Next time you see her you should give her a hug.”
“Yeah, of course - ”
“Every time,” Tessa says softly, “every single time something’s happened to me, great or good or bad or horrible, you’ve been there, and I don’t - I can’t imagine...being by myself.”
“Back atcha, Tutu,” he says, matching her soft tone.
She smiles at him, just barely, and then rests her head against his shoulder. Simultaneously, they exhale, and Scott imagines her eyes closing at the same time as his.
After several moments, he asks, “Ready to go find Marina?”
Tessa shakes her head minutely against his shoulder, not yet, and he squeezes her hand gently, me neither.
iv. 2014
It’s quiet in the rink, the only sounds Scott can hear are their blades cutting into the ice and the oh-so-soft whisper of Tessa’s breathing whenever she’s close enough. She twirls and twirls, the skirt of her dress flaring out around her. She’s smiling a soft, private smile and it makes Scott crave her big, goofy laugh; he catches her with his hands on her waist so they’re both spinning and Tessa’s smile turns breathless, her arms winding around his neck.
“What’re you up to, Mr. Moir?” she asks as their momentum slows.
“Choreography,” Scott says seriously. “I think we should eliminate all space between us when we skate.”
“That’ll make for some interesting programs,” she says, matching his tone, but her smile is still lurking at the corners of her mouth, still obvious in her eyes.
“Original programs, T,” he says. “Groundbreakingly innovative.”
She shakes her head fondly. “We don’t need to give people anything else to talk about.”
Scott puts his lips so close to hers, nudging her nose with his own. “We don’t?” he asks, as though genuinely confused.
“We don’t,” Tessa confirms, but then she’s kissing him, arms tighter around his neck and her chest pressed against his and her fingertips in his hair, and Scott lifts her right off the ice. He grins after a moment, unable to help himself, and their teeth knock together. It makes Tessa laugh and she drawls, “Smooth,” in that teasing voice of hers, the one Scott loves, like he loves all things about her.
He spins her around. “I don’t know why we can’t just let people talk and talk and talk…”
“Not yet,” she whispers, her face still so close to his, eyes so pretty and lips so pink; Tessa could convince him of anything, but -
“I’m dyin’ to tell someone, Tess,” he admits. It feels to him like it’s been so long. There’d been an unspoken agreement between them not to bring It up until they were home - it’d been much too much of a whirlwind in Russia, Tessa’s soft knock on his bedroom door, his fingers around her wrist when she’d turned to leave, too much vodka, too much stress, too many years between them, too many things they’d never put into words, too much scrambling and too much know-it-all triumph in Patrick’s yelling when he’d walked in on them, too much effort not to kiss her in public, too much exhaustion on the planes of Tessa’s face, too much pressure to have The Conversation About Our Future, too much knowledge in the lift of Meryl’s eyebrow as she’d scrutinized them across the table, too much softness and sweetness in Tessa’s eyes on the airplane for Scott to bring it up, not just then, not when he could just hold her hand instead.
But now they’re back. They’ve done the Toronto interviews and they are really and truly home, barely in London for two hours before they trekked to the rink, which was blissfully empty, and now - now, Scott is ready to tell the whole damn world.
“I know,” she says as he sets her back down on her skates. “I know…”
“I mean, hey - who even knows how long Chiddy can keep a secret? It’s a miracle it hasn’t been leaked to CTV by now.”
Tessa gives him one of those looks that he can so easily read, and then she touches his cheeks with her mittens. “Not yet,” she says.
Scott covers her mittens with his bare hands. “Why not?”
“When we tell people, it won’t...belong to us anymore. It’ll belong to our families and our coaches and Ilderton and - it’ll belong to Canada. And right now I…”
In a rare occurrence, Scott is unable to finish her sentence. “Right now you…?”
Tessa puts her mittened hands on his shoulders, his chest. “Right now I love you,” she says softly. “And I’m not ready to share.”
Scott looks at her, so beautiful, so honest, so Tessa, and there’s nothing to say but, “Okay.”
v. 2015
They’re doing it year by year now, like they did when they were young, sitting down annually to figure out if they want to keep competing, what their next steps are, how they’re feeling. They’re both pretty sure PyeongChang is out of the question, but they’ve never said as much - they’re taking it year by year, after all.
This year, at conversation-time, they’re in Paris, and Scott’s kind of been kicking himself the whole trip, because over the past four days he’s wanted to ask Tessa to marry him about sixty-two times, but he can’t, because he doesn’t have a ring, and she deserves a little better than hey, I just thought of this now, but please promise to marry me and I’ll pick up your great-grandma’s ring from Jim when we’re home again. He’s become aware of how ridiculous it is that, for the first time in their whole lives, he and Tessa are in Paris on an actual skate-free vacation, and it didn’t cross his mind to plan some kind of top-of-the-Eiffel-Tower proposal.
“Scott.” Tessa kicks his shin under the sheets. “You’re not listening to me.”
He blinks and says, quickly, “Yes, I am.”
She rolls her eyes and props herself up on one elbow, messy hair falling against her shoulders, and bats away his hand when he tries to tug down the sheets that are covering her. “What did I just say?”
“You said...that you think it’s time we talk about whether we want to compete next season.”
Tessa half-smiles, running her fingers through his hair, which is probably just about as mussed-up as hers. “Lucky guess.”
“Nah, T, I can just read your mind.”
“Well, I can’t read yours. At least not wherever it’s been the last couple days.”
Scott almost turns red; he feels dangerous warmth in his cheeks. “It’s been here. With you.”
She gives him a look: I don’t believe you.
“I’ve just been thinking...about how much I love you.”
She taps her fingertips on his bare chest. “That sounds like a line, Scott Moir.”
“It’s only the truth, Tessa Virtue,” he says, covering her hand with his, trying to shut off the part of his brain that’s squealing like a schoolgirl over the way Tessa Moir might sound and the even larger part of his brain that thinks he is the world’s biggest idiot for not thinking to get the damn ring from her dad before they left.
Eyes a little sleepy and totally beautiful, as usual, she asks him, “What are you really thinking?”
“I was thinking,” he says slowly, “that if we compete next year, we could do our exhibition to You Make My Dreams Come True.”
Tessa’s eyes light up like that’s the best news she’s ever heard. “Really?”
Scott laughs, rolling on top of her. “Really, you crazy fan.”
“People would love it,” she says.
“I know.”
“I would love it.”
Scott smiles at her. “I know.”
“I love you,” she adds, grinning up at him.
He shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “I like you a little, or whatever.”
Tessa punches his shoulder. “I don’t think...I’m ready to retire.”
Scott is pleased but unsurprised that they’re on the same page, as always, and in the back of his mind he’s thinking of the ice at his hometown rink, of Tessa’s great-grandmother’s ring, of the music of her favourite band, and of that awesome smile of hers, of the sound of yes, and suddenly it’s not the end of the world that he didn’t plan something for this trip.
“Me neither,” he agrees. “Not ready just yet.”
vi. 2018
In the hallway, Scott paces ferociously, dissatisfied with how slowly his feet seem to move when they’re not in skates. He feels like he’s missing a limb, and no one will let him see it.
Danny, who sat down the third time the nurse suggested they do so, is saying things that Scott is only half-hearing, things that begin with bro, things that include a lot of suggestions to calm down, totally logical things like you heard what she said, not to worry and that it’d just be a minute, but Scott is not in a place to calm down or to not worry. He has yet to fully shake the mood swings of his youth and right now he is pissed off because no one seems to understand that he can’t fucking calm down or stop worrying until they let him see her.
It’s at least - at least - a full three minutes before the nurse re-emerges and beckons him to come along, and Scott makes several huffy noises as he follows her, not really listening to Danny, who says, “Want me to come wi - oh, who am I kidding?” and sits back down.
Scott comes to an abrupt stop once the nurse has lifted the curtain to one of the little makeshift ER rooms. Tessa is leaning back against a small mountain of pillows, and she looks fine, totally fine; so fine, in fact, that her eyebrows lift one at a time, an expression that says uh oh, I know that face you’ve got on.
“Hey, Scotty,” she says, extending her hand toward him as she sits up fully.
Scott takes her hand and then just kind of takes all of her, drawing her to him in a fierce hug. He presses his face into her neck, breathes her in, and Tessa’s hands are busy smoothing over his back in a slow, comforting rhythm.
“You fainted,” he says, unable to keep the frown out of his voice and unable to let go of her. “They called your mom, she called me - she’s still your emergency contact, we’ve got to fix that, we - ” He blows out a breath against her skin. “You fainted.”
“Seems that way.”
His frown deepens and he pulls back, not amused by her lighthearted tone. “Tessa - ”
“Scott,” she interrupts. “I’m fine.”
He almost rolls his eyes. “Fine people don’t faint.”
Tessa shifts around a little, still perched on the hospital bed, her legs wrapping around him loosely so that her ankles are against the backs of his knees, her hands resting on his shoulders and then gliding slowly all the way down his arms until she takes his hands, their fingers interlacing. She says, “Pregnant people do, sometimes.”
Scott stares at her for several long seconds. He is so accustomed to being in her head, so used to knowing her words before she says them, that speaking is really a formality. Now, when she’s said something he was so unprepared for, it catches him completely off-guard.
“Scotty?” she asks, two soft syllables that bring him back to earth.
“What?” he says, sort of in shock. “Tessa - ” He pauses, then, “What? Tessa - ” And he’s hugging her again, his body reacting faster than his brain, and she breathes a sweet little laugh by his ear, squeezing him back just as tightly.
He struggles to find the right words when they finally pull apart, desperately making mental leaps, but all he can really do is grin and grin and grin like a total idiot. He looks down at her stomach, puts his hands on her waist, and when he catches her eyes again she’s looking at him in this serious, searching way that makes his grin slip slightly.
Again, he tries to think of the right thing to say, and he ends up with halting words: “Tess - if - if you’re not ready - ”
Tessa puts her hands on his cheeks and it’s like he can feel how much she loves him in her fingertips, like he’s always been able to do so, and she smiles at him, that smile he’s known for years and years, and she doesn’t need to say a damn thing, because he can read it in her eyes -
I’m ready.
.fin.