Work Text:
I’m not in love, it’s something we do. You know, a Tessa-and-Scott thing.
We have slept in a single bed for most of our lives, from sleepovers, through tours, to sharing an apartment. We share a bed when the times are tough, when one of us can’t get up from bed because of an injury, when it’s a day off and we don’t have the energy for anything else.
He’s made me breakfast for most of the last five years, learning peculiar new recipes from time to time just to make me flinch away from a weird taste, or close my eyes and bless his strangely proficient baking skills.
I’ve prepared his bags when we travel for even longer, sneaking in when we used to live with our parents, to make sure he got everything he needed, things his mother didn’t know he needed – that small plush toy that he ended up giving to me when we were 14, the notebook he needed to scribble in from time to time to capture an odd idea in passing. Later, when we moved in together, it felt almost natural for me to take on that task, putting mine and his clothes, brushes, sneakers and comfort objects in two bags, not divided by ownership but instead – by purpose.
There are just some Tessa-and-Scott things. The same way we know from a look when the other is ready for that complicated lift, or when the other needs more support in order to not slip on the ice, we know. I can tell in a second when Scott is mildly angry, when he’s eager, when he wants to tell me something, even sometimes exactly what he wants to tell me. Scott is the only one who sees through the physical exhaustion and knows when I’m mentally tired and need his support. But he also knows exactly what to do to make me feel better.
One of those Scott-and-Tessa, Tessa-and-Scott things. This is so different from being in love.
I’ve been in love, and I know Scott has been too. We’ve had boyfriends and girlfriends and experiments, and heart trembles. There have been people who’ve captured our attention, and time, and hearts. I’ve been infatuated, gone on someone, can think of nothing else but that person, and skating, and Scott (skating and Scott are non-negotiable, non-erasable artifacts of the Tessa being). I know Scott has been too. So, this is not us being in love, it’s just being us. Being Tessa-and-Scott, a single entity.
True, we haven’t been involved with anyone almost since we started living together, and true, we’ve sometimes ventured almost into romantic territory, giving each other the most outrageously thoughtful and well-prepared presents for birthdays, going out for an ‘ironic’ valentine’s dinner three years in a row, and sure, breathing does become hard when I even imagine him missing for a couple of days. But.
I’d argue that’s something more than love.
I’m not in love, it’s more than that, a Tessa-and-Scott thing, a larger than life thing. It’s missing someone more than sunlight, and that person making you happier by smiling than any Olympic medal could. It’s holding someone’s hand meaning holding the whole damn world – the one that matters, at least.