Chapter Text
Scott squints at the striped wall, watching as the long rectangles seem to flicker slightly. He focuses harder and notices that the sunlight reflecting off his watch has created a stripe illusion on the wall. A slight shiver breaks his staring contest and he glances at the clock.
“Scott,” the therapist calmly interrupts.
Scott sighs and shakes his head to still his daydreams. “Yeah.”
“Listen to me Scott, I really want to help you, but the more time you spend staring at the wall the less we can actually accomplish in a session and--”
“The harder it’ll be to feel better. I get it, I really do but it’s just...all mixed up in my head,” he murmurs, avoiding eye contact.
“I know. We’ve been getting somewhere; I don’t want you to think that we’re not. But the list is only the first part of it.”
Scott rubs his palms with his fingertips before clenching them tightly together. They had made a list when they first started - a list that named all the things that made Scott feel overwhelmed. Things that keep him up at night and distract him during the day.
He did not understand how she so easily could scribble down all the things in her notebook and tuck it away before he had even written the date. For Scott, it didn’t seem so clear cut. The reasons and explanations all seemed to blend together like his morning smoothie when it turned green from the spinach--when the berries and banana and almond milk were absorbed into this thick substance and it was impossible to tell anything apart.
So, unlike his partner, who had written the graduate thesis of lists, he had taken the full week to write it like his therapist suggested. He had found himself thinking about it constantly. He thought about it in the shower, in the car, out in his backyard sitting on the fence, in his bed at night (because sleeping still wasn’t easy), while he brewed his coffee in the morning.
Eventually he managed to come up with this sort of half-assed “list.” The first bullet point he’d managed to scribble down was expectation. The world had expectations for Scott Moir, his parents had expectations, his brothers had expectations, his aunts, uncles, cousin, nephews, nieces, buddies, Kaitlyn, Tessa… but loudest of all of them was his own goddamn expectations for himself. What if he really amounted to nothing post-Olympics?
(Was he anything without Tessa?)
His eyes flit back to the run in the wallpaper just over his therapist’s shoulder.
“Can I see the list?”
“It’s not really done yet.” He lies as he feels the crumpled-up paper burning a hole in his pocket.
“Scott, it’s been four sessions already. I really think it’s time we talked about what you wrote. That way we can begin to tackle some of your fears.”
“It’s nothing you can fix.”
“I’m not here to fix anything. I’m just here to help make things a little easier for you.”
Scott shifts uncomfortably on the black leather couch. He thinks about the second thing on the list. Guilt. He carries a sort of guilt he can’t explain. He feels like he’s taken so much from so many different people, but he in turn hasn’t given back to them. All he has to show for it is a drawer full of medals. How do you go about repaying these people? As if there was a way to get back the memories he’d missed. How does he slide back into the lives of his nieces and nephews after being absent? Take his seat at the table when he isn’t the same person he was the last time he sat there? After all, how can he explain the guilt he feels to his parents? They can’t possibly understand, not when he himself doesn’t.
The therapist clicks her pen closed. “Alright Scott, you have to give me something. You’re paying me to help you. Now, you can come here every week and we can sit in silence for an hour, or we can actually start to unpack your troubles and take away some of your pain. It’s up to you.”
If it had been up to him things wouldn’t have gotten this bad in the first place. “I don’t know what to tell you. My life is a fucking mess right now. That’s no one’s fault but my own.”
Anger. Anger is the third thing on his list. There are minutes, hours, sometimes days where he feels unexplainable anger towards the world. Anger that flares up and gets directed at people he doesn’t mean to hurt. Anger that ripped through his best friend of 17 years like a forest fire.
And the feeling of not meeting expectations fuels the guilt and then it’s an endless cycle that his life is cemented into.
Another click means the pen has resumed its position on the legal pad. “Ok, and why is it your fault?”
Great, now he has no way out of this. He glances at his watch, silently cheering when he sees only twenty minutes remain. “Because I went and screwed everything up. Like I always did.” He takes another moment before practically spilling the next part. “Like I always do to be perfectly honest with you.”
“Can you give me some examples that we can unpack?”
Oh, he could give her examples. He could take the next ten sessions telling her about all the people and things he’d damaged or hurt.
“I ruined my relationship with my best friend.”
His therapist glances at him over her glasses. “Tessa?”
Yes of course Tessa. Who else could it be?
“No, Charlie. Charlie White.”
If she’s confused, she hides it well. “Ok, how did you ruin that?”
“After Vancouver-- I don’t know, things just started to fall apart. Tessa had her second surgery and I was angry. I said some things to them before Worlds--”
Why was it getting harder to speak? Since when did his broken bromance with the American make him emotional?
This feeling of being stuck in a cycle sneaks up on him sometimes and turns into full blown anxiety attacks. He doesn’t really tell anyone they happen (Tessa knows). He can hide them (but not from her). He hides it so well (she can see through everything) that no one noticed when he was falling apart at the dinner table because his cousin was talking about her wedding. They couldn’t tell his entire body was strangling him from the inside when his youngest nephew refused to go to him. So he had walked away from the situation to deal with it on his own. Because that’s the best way to avoid collateral damage. If you shut everyone out...there’s no one left to hurt.
Hurt. The fourth thing on the list.
Scott takes a deep breath. “And by the time we got to Sochi-- everything was a mess for Tessa and I. We, um-- ok not we, I made some offhanded comments and of course it got around.”
The therapist nods. “So things didn’t end too well I take it… with Charlie.” She scribbles a few more notes on the paper like she’s beginning to understand his twisted life.
As if she could even begin to understand. This is only the pinpoint tip of the iceberg, threatening to drown him as he floats aimlessly along with no direction.
“We haven’t spoken-- and I mean actually held a legitimate conversation-- since before the Games.”
“Do you think this is affecting other aspects of your life?”
He doesn’t want to tell people (see: his therapist) how much he actually hurts inside. How much it hurts to not enjoy going out with his friends, so instead he’d drowns himself in alcohol because the burn feels better than pain. He hurts physically somedays too. His body ached as he got out of bed at 12pm last Tuesday. How can he hurt when he isn’t training?
It hurts him to watch his Mother look at him like a sad story and to have his Father to pat him on the back and say ‘it’ll get better.’ It hurts that he is sort of in a relationship that doesn’t make him happy. And his friendships that do make him happy he’s slowly ruining to make himself feel worse.
He wants to tell her that Charlie is the least of his worries. “Sure. I guess.” His gruff response follows.
“So we have one thing you might have screwed up, what else?”
He covers his eyes. When he refuses to add to his first confession she pushes a new topic.
“Scott, what made you want to come to therapy? What made you realize ‘I need help here’?”
Through the backs of his eyelids he can see his broken face reflected in Tessa’s eyes in the cold wind of that dark Scotland night. He can feel her hand threaded through the hair on the back of his neck, coaxing him to open up, supporting him-- he had felt for just a moment, the first moment in the last six months, that it was going to be okay again. That life wasn’t going to be a chore, constantly treading through murky water. That it was possible to feel light and limitless. It was that fleeting feeling that made him believe and he had held onto it like a prayer.
“A promise.”
“Promise?” she asks.
Scott opens his eyes wide at her. Had he said that out loud?
“We made a promise to get better together.”
“You and Tessa?”
Scott averts eye contact. He sits the last two minutes in silence, his therapist watching him intently.
“Okay Scott, that’s all the time we have for today. I’d really like to see that list.”
Scott stands up and walks over to her chair. “Can I use this?” He snatched the pen from her hand before she responds. Removing the crumpled sheet of paper he’s had in his pocket for the last three sessions, he crouches down before smoothing it over the coffee table. He re-writes what he’s erased from the last line of the list fourteen times.
Tessa.
He puts her pen flat on the paper. “List,” he gestures with a nod. He wastes no time striding out of the room, closing the door behind himself and walking through the lobby past the check-in girl Becky with the too blonde hair.
Expectations. Guilt. Anger. Hurt. Tessa.
___________________________________________
“Rough session?” Scott’s shoulders relax as she speaks. Tessa hopes he didn’t spend his whole session so tense.
“It...was...good.” He lies. She knows. They move on.
She lets her eyes flit through the cafe, filled with customers looking for their afternoon pick me up. She stirs her coffee to occupy herself through the awkward moment. “How’s the family?”
“They’re fine. Rink’s still running. Kids are still growing.”
Safe topics, she reminds herself, biting her lip. When did this get hard? She guesses it was somewhere between I love you and I’m sorry . She single handedly took ruining their relationship into her own hands by being selfish. Great work, Tessa. She rolls her shoulders, feeling stiff. Therapy seemed to be making things better, but the self-deprecating thoughts haven’t suddenly disappeared like she had hoped they would.
She used to be her own cheerleader, yet lately it seems like the only things she cheers are her own shortcomings.
In her sessions, they talk a lot...or Tessa talks a lot. Maybe she should talk less . She talks throughout the whole session about everything and nothing. Her therapist had actually asked her to slow down a couple of times. To pace her thoughts. But that’s how things are in her head--fast. Everything seems fast and emotions hit her like a bus. Knock her over and she can’t control them. Her emotions own her. In sessions, she’d cried over things she thought she was over, like her parents separation or her grade in that one class last semester.
Then she wrote her list. Her therapist took one look at her miniscule writing and asked her how long she took to write it. Tessa mumbled something like fifteen minutes and the therapist shook her head. She gave her back her list and told her that by her last session her goal was to narrow it down. So Tessa had to pair down the list down from 57 items to a list she could count on her fingers. To date she has crossed off one: closet organization.
“I made a playlist for Lindt on Ice.”
“Clean beats,” Scott jokes, playing with the label on his cup.
Tessa forces herself into a more polite laugh instead of her usual large guffaw.
Neither of them ever have plans on Thursdays beside therapy so she can’t even pretend like she has to go to cut this short. Not that she’d want to cut this short. She can’t explain why she still craves this time with him. This horrible awkward conversation isn’t enjoyable but just being in his presence is a fixture in her life she can’t fathom giving up.
Hearing Tessa laugh again, even if forced, makes Scott’s cold exterior melt just a little more than it had last Thursday. He can’t help the small smile that tugs at the corner of his lips. “You’re way ahead of things T-- Tessa. I have to admit I haven’t even thought about it yet.”
Could he even use nicknames with her yet?
“You could just drop it by later.” Too much Scott, backtrack a little bit. “Or just email it. I’m starting to learn how to use that now so I might as well practice.” Good. A little joking around could throw her off from your dumb mistakes. Somehow, even when things are already cracked beyond repair, he manages to break everything further. Words spill out of his mouth with her, unlike his therapy sessions, and by the time they’re out there, it’s too late for him to take them back. Joking used to fix over some of the issues but now-- now he doesn’t even know if she can stand that.
Tessa swallows hard when Scott corrects her nickname. She hates that she’s made him feel like he can’t use them. Because he can call her anything and she’ll listen. Tessa presses her fingers to her temples and massages them gently.
“Do you think this is helping?” she asks sharply.
Scott’s head jerks up at her tone, much different than the one she used minutes ago. He blinks, searching her face for clarification.
“I’m sorry Tess--”
“Therapy. Like why can’t we… why isn’t this…” she trails off for a moment. “Forget it. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.” They stare at each other in a peculiar silence, their eyes locking for a longer period than they have in the recent weeks. Her body forces her to hold his gaze. He reaches out tentatively and places his hand on hers that rests on the table.
Her heart beats fast against her rib cage. She flips her hand over and his slots into place.
“I really am, you know, sorry that is.”
Despite her mind panicking from the touch, his hand has always (and would always) fit just so into hers.
He shouldn’t apologize for this. He shouldn’t apologize for the mistakes that she made and he shouldn’t apologize for acting prematurely that night and assuming his relationship with Kaitlyn was over.
Perhaps, she should apologize to herself for being so naive to believe it. “I’m sorry too,” she adds, bouncing her eyes around the room to look anywhere but back at him. He squeezes her hand to seal the apology.
They are still so emotionally distant. If therapy can’t fix this, if apologies can’t fix this, if time can’t fix this… what can? Has she truly broken them for good? She wonders what would’ve happened to their skating if she had let the words tumble out while they were still competing. She’s pretty certain it would have ruined their whole season. She lets her thoughts drift to where they’d be if they were training. In the thick of summer, probably still able talk to each other because Scotland would never have happened.
Maybe a lot of things wouldn’t have happened. Their skating bubble seems so much safer than having the big wide world out at their fingertips. (An ironic thought considering the damage skating had done to them.)
Scott clears his throat, hoping to direct the conversation away from the emotion bubbling up in his stomach. “How’s the Virtue clan doing?” He fiddles with the paper on his cup, tearing off the sleeve into small pieces. This is what happens when he gets emotional. He destroys things. Yet another side effect no one told him about when he took the ice all those years ago.
The look on her face (how did he get her smile to disappear so fast?) makes him swallow hard. “I didn’t mean--”
“No no, it’s fine. My mom’s great. She’s thinking about buying a cottage.” Her easy transition into a normal discussion lets some of his anxiety dissipate. “On Huron.”
“Virtue girls take the lake. I like it. I can only imagine the pictures that will come out of that.”
Smooth Scott. That definitely sounded way more suggestive out loud than it did in your head.
“Lots of you know-- swimming and um --- barbecuing. Stuff like that.” His hands gesture wildly, pieces of cup falling to the ground as he knocks them off the table in an attempt to convince her of his well intended question.
She smirks in response. Typical Scott, walking himself into a corner and then trying to back out smoothly. It was cute really.
“It’ll be different with her being so far but...she needs a change of scene.” Tessa picks at her nails. “I mean who knows where we’ll be next year.”
Scott smiles at the fact that she still refers to life plans as ‘we’.
“Well I mean I don’t know what plans you have or whatever.” She corrects quickly, realizing her always ‘we’ pronoun might not be welcomed anymore. She rambles on, “How’s the house plans?”
“We’re getting somewhere,” he whispers like it’s the best kept secret he’s ever told.
She gives him a small grin, a silent “tell me more please.”
He clasps his hands together. “We started putting in the hardwood and it just gives it this glow. Like I can see it coming together now, looking revitalized.”
“It’s good to see you enjoying this.” Tessa speaks tentatively, like she’s afraid he’ll close up shop.
Scott tilts his head slightly, his lips parting. His eyes flicker down to the pieces of paper on the table and up to Tessa’s eyes. “It’s true...I am enjoying it really,” the corners of his lips tilt up just so and his eyebrows raise in subtle delight. He continues to talk about paint swatches and varnish finishes; things Tessa doesn’t really understand but she can’t get enough of seeing the way his eyes light up at something again. So she lets him talk and talk, content to just watch.
“What?” he asks her, tilting his forehead downward.
Tessa shakes her head slightly and pulls her lips together in a firm pleasant line, “Nothing.”
“So how’s the jewellery stuff? What’s the next steps?”
“It’s coming along. A little harder than I thought it was going to be but Rachel and her team have been really helpful. And England gave me a little extra inspiration.”
“A regular Neil Lane here.” Scott nudges her foot under the table, hoping it isn’t too much. “Rubbing shoulders with the jewellery bosses of the world.”
Tessa rolls her eyes. “I wish. It’s small and local but-- I love it.”
“It’ll be amazing Tessa, I know it.”
A small blush blossoms over her cheeks. She tries desperately to hide it, rubbing her neck to get the blood from coloring it scarlet. “Thanks. It’s going to be awhile before the set is actually done-- a lot of planning and stuff.”
“You’re gonna have to give me a sneak preview.” He lets the tension melt even further.
“Well now, that would be cheating. No one gets to see until after it gets approved.”
“Here’s the deal T,” he leans forward and sticks out his pinky like they were seven and nine again. “I’ll give you a sneak peak of the house, if you show me the line.”
“Oooh tough sell Moir.” It feels nice to say that again. “But I guess that’s a fair deal.”
“Maybe you could get me some pieces. I heard Hillberg and Berk jewellery is loved by the ladies. I could use help when it comes to that kind of stuff.”
It is things like this that bring her back. Back to the reality of what will never be. Because he doesn’t love her, not in the way she loves him. So she has to learn to live without his love, or--on the contrary, she’ll continue to live like an addict, holding onto these small doses whenever she can get them because living without them is not even a possibility.
Scott had always thought things were better when Tessa was one part of his life and his significant other was another. He could keep them on either sides of the road and opposite sides of his head. Then things in his head didn’t get so muddled. Perhaps it’s time to call it a day, his latest comment leaving them in an awkward silence. Any time things get too comfortable they clam up and start to bail.
With their drinks long polished off, there is no excuse to keep sitting around one another, explicitly avoiding the elephant taking up the space of the small cafe. At least they had managed to have a real conversation without things getting too weird. A large accomplishment compared to the recent weeks.
They don’t talk as they gather their garbage off the table. Tessa opens her paper bag to accept Scott’s cup pieces while Scott wipes the crumbs off the table from Tessa’s long ago eaten cookie.
Halfway to their cars, Scott turns to her, hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets. “Um-- my car is in the shop so--
“Oh, do you want a ride?”
Scott stares at the pavement. “Well-- um... Kaitlyn is coming to pick me up.”
Tessa feels stupid. Of course Kaitlyn is coming to pick him up. She’s still his girlfriend Tessa, come on. She takes a deep breath, mindful of the breathing techniques her therapist has taught her. “Right-- well I guess I’ll see you next week then?”
There was a time in the past when “see you” would be tomorrow, or even in a few hours. Now their visiting time is relegated to a questionable hour at a local Starbucks with stilted conversation.
“We should um-- practice before then. I’m pretty sure my mom would give us some ice time. If you’re free of course. I know you’re super busy and everything so you can just send me the playlist and we can text some ideas between us.” Scott kicks a small pebble into the road, eyes still downcast.
“Would be nice to lace up… let me know. I’ll make time.” Tessa thinks of her planner, too bare for her liking. Anytime she could fill it, she would with pleasure.
“Okay then.” He opens his arms to hug her, his arms squeezing tighter than in the past weeks but still nowhere near what it had been. Now Tessa walks into hugs with him more like handshake than a real hug. She doesn’t let herself give into it.
When his hand sneaks up to rub her back, she feels herself relax a fraction more. Progress.
Scott spins away first, barely giving her a second glance before walking down the road. Tessa hesitates, slipping into her car a moment later. As she turns the corner, she spots Scott sitting on the bench.
Her mind wanders to what he’s really told Kaitlyn about their meetings. Yeah I’m going to be gone from 2pm till I’m done wasting time with Tessa. The small voice in her head scoffs, immediately rejecting the ridiculousness of the statement.
Whatever he did tell her, she hopes it was close enough to the truth so not to drag them down.