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After Pyeongchang, after touring, after the press, things start to settle down again. Tessa doubts that they will ever slip back into the anonymity they had before the Games, but it feels good not to see her face plastered all over Canada anymore. It feels good to be able to get a coffee without a fan coming up for a picture, to meet up with friends and not have to answer endless questions about how the Olympics went, to turn on the TV and not see herself or Scott waving back at her.
Tessa’s been trying to take things slow, trying to find the balance between work and skating, to reacclimate to her work not being skating. Her days are mostly filled with sponsorships and collaborations now; she does press every few weeks, and on the weekdays, goes into the office to work on a few pieces she’s releasing soon. Some mornings, Scott will wake her up with the smell of coffee and coax her to the rink, and they skate around in lazy circles, occasionally practicing bits and pieces of their favorite routines: twizzles from Prince, the step sequence from Latch, the infamous lift from Roxanne.
She’d feared that their skating would lose its magic after they stopped competing, but when they step onto ice, she still feels electrified. They’re not putting a show on for anybody anymore, but his hands still roam her body, but she still looks at him with fire in her eyes.
After Sochi, it’d broken her heart a little bit every time they stepped on the ice. She’d grip onto Scott’s hand tightly but refuse to look him in the eye, stuck between needing him to anchor her to Earth and being too scared to see her own hurt reflected in his eyes. Every sequence was a fight to stay in the moment, to push away those long bouts of intense sadness or emptiness.
Now, it’s the easiest thing in the world to take the rink, to put on an occasional performance for the juniors training at Gadbois, or to just put on a song and lead each other across the ice.
After Sochi, Tessa was stuck in the limbo of having and not having Scott. They both avoided talking about what their relationship was going to be like during retirement, so she lived in perpetual fear that their next moment, their next handhold, would be their last. But now, their relationship has matured. They both understand each other better than they ever have, and though unspoken, Tessa feels the mutual agreement between them, the understanding that the other is precious, and that a life without the other isn’t one they want to live.
(And they’re not dating. She’s not lying when she tells all the radio hosts and TV audiences. They’re something, something they weren’t two, three, four, years ago, but it’s not dating. Dating makes it sound like they’re just some couple getting to know each other. Tessa already knows Scott. She knows what makes him tick, how he likes his steak cooked, how his voice sounds at 4 AM, how it feels to have his hands rest solidly on her waist. They’re not dating, but she likes this much better.)
They both still live in the same apartment building, on the same floor, just a hallway separating them, and it starts getting a little inconvenient. Scott keeps losing his jackets and finding them hanging in Tessa’s closet, and she keeps finding her missing socks in his laundry basket. They spend almost every evening together. If Scott’s spending a late evening at the rink, she’ll wait in his apartment with a box of take out, and if she’s putting in longer hours at the office, she knows that she’ll come home to the Hip playing and Scott frying something up in her kitchen. It’s a level of domesticity they’ve never reached before; neither of them have dated since they launched the comeback plan, and Tessa, at least, has no inclination to. She’s perfectly content just the way things are.
(Except, the tiny voice in her mind reminds her, except the way you stare at Scott’s ass when he walks around your kitchen. Except those nights you wake up drenched in sweat, one hand creeping into your panties. Except that.)
Montreal is their home now. It feels weird, to feel at home anywhere that isn’t London or Ilderton.
They spent almost a decade at Canton, but it never felt like this. Canton was a train stop, a necessary evil for them to get to the next destination. In Canton, they went to work and saw Charlie and Meryl get better and better every day. In Canton, they would go home to separate apartments and try to find comfort in a string of significant others. In Canton, Scott and Tessa were always a little unsettled, across the border, alone except for each other, and too hesitant to cross a line in their relationship they weren’t ready for.
In Montreal, they walk to lunch with their arms linked. Scott comes home and rants about the senior teams on Tessa’s couch, his feet in her lap, her head nodding understandingly. Tessa pulls her clothes out of the dryer and puts Scott’s t-shirt into a drawer, for the next time he comes over and needs a change of clothes. Scott buys chocolate ice cream for the days she comes home, frustrated and exhausted, and crashes in his bed.
(Scott sleeps on the couch when she does, until one day she tugs on his arm and tells him to just get in with her. Their bodies find each other instinctively. Scott thinks that he could find her and fit against her with his eyes closed, with every sense stripped away. Tessa is her own kind of sixth sense, and he can feel the way her body takes up space next to him, anywhere and anytime. They curl up next to each other, and when they wake up, it’s not really a big deal.
Scott makes her a cup of coffee, she eats the cereal in his pantry, they go their separate ways, and at the end of the day, he’s curled around her again, this time in her bed.
After that, they start crossing a line they don’t even realize is there.)
Marie is the one that points it out. After maybe the third time Scott says something along the lines of, “Tessa’s waiting at home,” she gives him this look.
“What’s that for?”
“You know, Scott, I do not think friends spend every evening together,” she remarks carefully. Marie always knows when to be gentle with him, and it’s only the way she says it that gives him any pause.
Scott has to think about it for a few seconds, the domestic turn in their relationship, all the little moments of a shared life he’d been unwittingly collecting for the past six months.
He sighs, “You know how it is with us. I don’t think I can explain it any better than you can, Marie.”
He goes home and Tessa is watching 60 Minutes on his couch. Scott notices, like he always does, the curve of her neck, her legs spread out in front of her, the swell of her breasts under her old sweater. He loves her, which isn’t news, but this time he thinks that she might love him too, which would be news, since Scott has spent the better part of his life knowing that Tessa Virtue was too good for him.
He doesn’t say anything, though, because after twenty one years, he knows how Tessa can get. She’s the best friend in the world, but she’s different in her relationships. She’s skittish, shy of commitment, quick to leave, and having Tessa in his life is one thing he refuses to risk.
This time, when she falls asleep, he carries her to bed and spends the night in the couch. When she wakes, up, Tessa notices the bed’s empty but assumes that Scott just got up to make coffee or go on a run. She feels unsettled when she finds him passed out on the couch, his neck bent at an angle that couldn’t have been comfortable. There’s a blanket spread across him haphazardly, and she doesn’t stop herself when she goes, on instinct, to brush the hair away from his forehead.
She doesn’t mention it, because how could she? So why didn’t you come cuddle with me last night in bed?
Scott was right to let Tessa come to her own conclusions, because it takes her nearly a month to realize what Marie and Scott had realized a long while ago.
Ironically, the thing that sparks the realization is an old video she’d found, browsing Youtube late at night, of an interview they’d done after Pyeongchang. The interviewer’s questions are quite standard, but as she listens to her past self reply, Tessa almost scoffs. It’s almost an out of body experience, when she thinks, Might as well have said you’re in love with him.
And it’s not the fact that she’d thought the words “in love,” that makes Tessa gasp, it’s the knowledge that if she’d been in love with Scott then, there was no way in hell she wasn’t now. After living with him, falling asleep next to him, sharing her day with him, there wasn’t a way that Tessa couldn’t have fallen even more in love with him.
Scott Moir, up close, was better than anybody could imagine. Scott Moir, the boy who’d insisted on carrying her luggage when they were teenagers, the boy who’d held her hand when her first real boyfriend had dumped her, the boy who had stood on countless podiums and looked at her like she’d hung the stars, that boy had been too good for Tessa all along.
They’d put up barrier after barrier throughout the years. She dated men who worked in business firms, who watched her performances from a TV screen, who were never surprised when she broke things off to make time for her skating. Scott's had his own string of women, some more serious than others, some who could have been permanent if he’d had any other partner. But there was nothing in the way anymore.
Tessa got Scott in every way. She got him in the mornings, during their lunch breaks, sitting across from her at dinner, curled up together on the couch, and now that she was putting together all those little moments, it felt momentous.
They’d built something, in these twenty one years. Something that felt as natural as breathing, something that explained why coming home to Scott made Montreal feel like London.
She tells him, that evening, as they’re splitting Kung Pao chicken between the two of them, “You know you’re my partner in everything, Scott. Like, my life partner. My forever life partner.”
He nods absentmindedly into his bowl of rice, then raises his head slowly, eyes narrowed. He’s thinking over what she said, trying to decide if the layers he’s hearing actually exist.
Tessa’s hand is already laying on the table, so it’s easy for him to grab her hand, and when he strokes a thumb over the back of her hand, looks her in the eye, and replies, “Yeah, T, I know,” it feels more meaningful than anything they’ve ever said to each other.