Chapter Text
The first thing Scott’s hit with as he rouses slowly into consciousness is an ache in his head, one that evolves pretty quickly from a dull throb to an intense pounding. The second is the sudden blinding awareness of the sun; his eyes are screwed shut, but the brightness behind them tells him that it is, in fact, morning and he is facing the window. Remaining still lessens the pounding of his head but does nothing to stop the daylight from paining his sensitive eyes, and so he chances angering the already full-blown headache in order to thwart the beginnings of another one.
With the sun now beating down on his back, he gives himself one, two, three minutes and then he forces his eyes open. Blinking is a challenge but he gets through it, and then he stretches his stiffened legs into the mattress.
God, this is rough. Last night’s Scott, the bastard, did nothing to help this morning’s Scott.
Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he swipes roughly at his eyes and lets out a low groan. There’s a travel sized tube of ibuprofen and a bottle of water on the bedside table and he fights the urge to fist pump in celebration, if only because the jerky motion will rattle his brain. He exhales his appreciation instead, popping two of them into his mouth.
Today’s going to be painful, but it’s not all bad.
They just won the Olympics. Again. After executing a two year comeback plan, long hours, and blood, sweat and tears (quite literally), they actually won. A wide smile curls at his mouth and he covers his face with his hands.
He wants to say he can’t believe it but that’s a lie. He can believe it because they worked their asses off for this moment, sacrificed their social and personal lives for this moment, and they damn sure deserve it. Vancouver was a dream come true for the both of them, Sochi was nothing short of an odd kind of learning experience pre-packaged as a nightmare, and Pyeongchang is… everything and more. As much as they trained for this gold, as badly as they wanted it, they skated solely for themselves out on that ice and it made all the difference.
Pyeongchang is everything; the perfect book-end.
Tessa’s face during the medal ceremony, the smile she couldn’t seem to contain and the elated tears that welled in her eyes, spilled onto her cheeks, and god that laugh-cry noise she makes that’s pure music to his ears… everything he’s done to get to this moment was worth it.
Seeing Tessa that happy just—
It’s then that he’s hit with a startling third realization of the morning: he’s alone. His bed is empty, save for himself and his Canada jacket that’s crumpled near the wall. There are no signs of anything being out of place. This is good, except there’s also no sign of Tessa which, his gut tells him—for reasons he’s still trying to work through—is bad.
Applying pressure to the bridge of his nose, Scott wanders into the bathroom to brush his teeth (he breathes into his cupped palms and the combination of morning breath and lingering booze is not pleasant), all the while wracking his brain, willing it to work through the throbbing.
They win the Olympics, Scott wakes up alone with a feeling that he shouldn’t have, and now here he is, trying to fill in the missing pieces.
Things he knows for certain: the group of them, Team Canada, celebrated after the medal ceremony. Chiddy was the first one to buy him a drink, which he remembers because he’d made a teasing quip about taking him out to dinner first.
Glancing at the clock, he sighs. It’s a little after 8:00, which means it’s highly likely that the rest of the team is already at breakfast. Or, of course, sleeping off a hangover much like the one he’s sporting this lovely morning.
It’s a toss-up; he's just glad he's more prone to headaches than vomiting.
As he’s throwing on a pair of jeans and one of his many Canada-themed shirts to represent, things start flooding back in short bursts. The team celebration, Scott handing Tessa a drink and her appreciative smile, followed immediately by the thrumming of his heart at the sight of it. That’s right; Scott switched from beer to liquor (a rookie move, of which he knows better, but they had the good Whiskey and he knew he couldn’t resist, knew he was ruined for the rest of the night right then), but Tessa stuck to vodka sodas.
Were there shots? He thinks there were shots, which would also account for why his skull feels abnormally shitty right now. Yes, there were definitely shots.
Scott can party with the best of them; he’s had many years of practice, he can hold his alcohol extremely well, and he’s generally the one to outlast everyone else. But sometimes, he’ll admit, he can go a bit overboard (and he’d say winning gold qualifies as a pretty justifiable reason to go a little harder than usual) and then this happens—dizzying blanks in his memory.
The whole thing strikes him as odd, really, because it’s never due to the fact that he’s blackout drunk. No, in the moment he’s always pleasantly buzzed and high off of the adrenaline, completely in control of his faculties (again, he's been building up his tolerance for years), even if he is a little louder and a lot more boisterous. You know, like when you're totally aware that you're laughing louder than anyone else but you've got such a rush that you don't care enough to tone it down? It's like that. Everything’s there, memories and complete awareness tucked safely where they should be—until he goes to sleep, and then it’s as if it’s just wiped retroactively, the excess alcohol pouring in like rain and washing spots away.
In the past, though, he hasn’t felt this... strange. The blanks have always consisted of his own embarrassing actions—which he learns through secondhand stories from his friends later—and the loss of those particular memories never weigh quite so heavily. This feels different, like there’s more.
A flash of Tessa’s hand on his bicep, her voice echoing sentiments like yes, he deserves to let loose but yes, he should probably also slow down. He doesn’t think she had any shots, but he doesn’t remember.
8:17am.
He’ll lay in bed for ten minutes, on top of the blankets so he doesn’t get too comfortable, and then he’ll find the others. That’s reasonable; at least he’s dressed.
It only takes a few seconds after he settles back, head on the pillows and eyes closed, for more images to rush in. Except these aren’t from the celebration, no, they’re from afterwards, and he immediately shoots right back into a sitting position.
Fuck.
Tessa’s laughter ringing in his ears, her hand clasped in his own as they traipse through the hallway. He vaguely remembers asking her, back at the party, if she wanted to get out of there; winning is thrilling but the intensity of the aftermath and the crowds of well-wishers can be overwhelming for the both of them.
They were in her room.
That's where the holes are then, the memories hazier. It’s like they were cut and edited, slapped together out of order and made into jagged puzzle pieces that don’t fit quite right.
“Oh, no. No, no, no,” he groans to himself, digging the heel of his palm into his eyes.
No. Right?
There’s the two of them kissing, his hands on her waist, her delicate fingers caressing his face. Those eyes of hers, big and beautiful and so green—have they always been that bright?—staring right back at him, so close. He’s on the edge of bed and she’s in front of him, pulling at the fabric of his shirt? Pulling him closer? He can't tell.
Scott slams his eyes closed as tightly as he can, tries to… rearrange or replay or something, anything that’ll fill him in on what happened last night before he loses his mind.
It’s what he would do when he was a kid and he wanted to switch the images in his dreams or try to get back into one after waking up; just blink and concentrate. He’s pretty sure Tessa’s the one who told him about that—one of the first things she willingly said to him after they were partnered up, her voice so quiet and small that he almost misheard her. Not wanting to make her feel embarrassed for sharing something (as odd as it sounded at the time), he told her that yes he did the same thing. It was a lie, he never did, but that night he tried it. He doesn’t remember if it actually worked or not.
It’s not working now, though, which is frustrating and does nothing to help the increasing race of his heart. Because everything he can remember, foggy and incomplete as it is, points to sleeping with Tessa. But he couldn’t have slept with Tessa because he’d remember that, right? Choppy memories be damned, if he’d had sex with Tessa he’d remember.
Yeah, he’d remember.
But what if he did and he doesn’t. He absolutely does not want to be that guy, and he wants nothing less than being that guy with Tess. Because if they slept together he knows damn sure that he knew exactly what he was doing last night, and she'd know that, wouldn't go along otherwise; his nonchalance now would make it seem like he's just brushing her, and what they did, off. It'd make him seem like an asshole, and the thought alone makes him nauseous.
Right now it's looking very much like something felt off when he woke up alone because he wasn’t alone when he went to bed. Tessa being nowhere in sight left a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach because she spent the night with him and is now gone. The thought of her leaving in the middle of the night is almost worse than not remembering anything at all.
Unless his brain is making all of this up, completely tricking him in his alcohol-induced stupor to believe something that’s false. Untrue. A fabrication of his own mind.
Okay, Scotty, think.
It’d be much easier if he could just text her, settle this maybe-situation quickly, but that’s a whole other undertaking he doesn’t even want to think about. Hey, T, by any chance did we have sex last night? No, yeah, absolutely not.
Things pointing towards sex with Tessa: (1) these memories, though their reliability is questionable; (2) the pills and water on his bedside table—that’s 100% a Tessa thing because he never thinks ahead to take care of his hungover self, which means that at some point she was in this room; (3) … there doesn’t seem to be a three, but one and two are pretty compelling on their own.
Twisting his head, he looks at the clock again. 8:31am. Shit. He hadn’t meant to spend this long trying to figure out... all of this. Reaching over, he grabs his phone from where it’s charging (did he plug that in last night?) and squints at the too-bright screen.
There’s a text from Tessa, sent about an hour and a half ago.
Thought sleeping in a little would do you some good. We’re at breakfast when you wake up. There’s a smiley emoji at the end and the name of the little café down the street that they’ve been meaning to stop into but haven’t yet had a chance to.
Things pointing towards no sex with Tessa: (1) nothing seems amiss with her texts. She doesn’t generally use emojis when she’s upset with him—actually, she pointedly doesn’t use them when she’s mad because that’s her (adorable, if he’s honest) way of alerting him to her displeasure. Her little "I’m not ready to talk about it yet but I want you to know that I’m upset so you’re not caught off guard when I am"; (2) he vividly remembers it being her room they went to after leaving the others and now he’s woken up here, in his room; and (3) he was totally dressed upon waking up. This one's a weaker point, because of course he could've gotten dressed after, but it's something.
The most telling, though: surely, if they did sleep together and then something caused her to sneak out in the middle of the night (he doesn’t want to entertain any of the possibilities, any and all of the things that could have gone through her mind and resulted in Tessa deciding that she didn’t want to be here when he woke up), she wouldn’t be sending him a smiley face emoji.
Right?
Scott laughs a little; Tess would be so impressed with his mental lists right now. She's always trying to get him to write things down, to make lists to work through stuff, and he's finally (kind of) taking her advice.
Shaking his head, he does his damndest to put it all to the side and focus on… literally anything else. The flashes of Tessa’s face so close to his and the feel of her lips sliding across his own will just have to wait. They won’t go away—now that they’re here he thinks, a bit regretfully because he doesn’t know what they mean, they’ll stick around.
But he’s practically a master at putting all of his feelings for her on the back-burner, kept in hidden, far away sections of his mind. He’s been doing it for years now; he can do it for a few more hours, or however long it takes to figure it all out.
I’m on my way.
Tessa doesn’t say a thing.
Actually, no, that’s a lie; she says many things. She asks him how he’s feeling and if there’s anything she can get him (after ordering for him, eggs and bacon and toast); she beams just as brightly as she did last night about how overwhelmed she is, how in awe she is of how much support they’ve gotten thus far, how they really did it, didn’t they?; she talks to him about all of the interviews they’ll have to do and potential brand deals and there’s just so much to think about, Scott.
She greets him with a wide smile and a squeeze of the hand when he sidles up beside her in the booth, but she doesn’t say a damn thing about last night.
He tries to subtly feel for details.
“Don’t take this as an admission of defeat or anything, but I think I had one too many last night,” he says with an exaggerated groan. Chiddy and the others echo the sentiment and though it’s not the response he’s looking for, he’s grateful he’s not the only one feeling the effects. Truthfully, he looks in better shape than the others and he wonders idly how much longer they went on after he and Tess left the group. “Why’d you let me do that, T?”
Tessa laughs. “I told you to slow down,” she points out with a perfectly arched brow and a smirk, and yes, he knows. That he remembers; it’s everything else that’s screwing him up. She gestures to his plate before her hand lands on his kneecap. “Eat your eggs, it’ll help.”
Save for just flat out asking if she was in his room last night, which he can’t do right now at a table with half of Team Canada within earshot, he’s got nothing else.
Tessa’s attention turns back to what’s got to be her second or third coffee and he picks his fork back up, finishes off his eggs.
(She’s right—it helps.)
By the time they return to Canada, Scott’s nearly convinced everything he’s remembered about that night was just a fever dream, an alcohol-clouded illusion. The memories (if he can even call them that at this point), the pills and water bottle—they mean nothing because Tessa hasn’t brought any of it up.
And so he lets it go.
Tessa hasn’t been acting strangely, there’s been minimal to no change in their interactions (which he attributes mostly to his confused and slightly awkward contributions to conversation because he’s still a little thrown off), and she hasn’t alluded to there being any ill-feelings or an elephant in the room.
Scott’s not going to be the one to bring it up. If he did, there are only two ways it could go: his brain did, in fact, manufacture everything about the two of them spending the night together. He’ll bring it up to Tessa and she’ll look at him like he’s certifiably insane and the floor won’t be able to open up and swallow him fast enough.
Perhaps it isn’t a fabrication, they did have sex, and Tessa’s silence is her way of choosing to ignore it. He’ll bring it up and she’ll have to tell him (in her sweet, considerate Tessa way) that it was great (because he can’t imagine it being anything less than spectacular) but they should just carry on as they are now. Or even worse, she hasn’t said a thing because she regrets it. He’d choose being rejected a million times over if it meant that Tessa never has to be in that position.
It’s settled then.
Based on fairly inconclusive evidence, and for the sake of his own sanity, Scott remains steadfastly in the camp of I Did Not Have Sex With Tessa Virtue.