Chapter Text
Together.
That’s the one they use most often. Every time they let go of each other before their twizzles or a step sequence that has them dance beside one another rather than interlocked or connected with whatever handy body part. It reminds them to keep close, to keep their bodies aligned, the axis of their spines just parallel and their feet hitting the ice just right, just together, like so. In the best of cases, that ‘Together’ is followed by twin whooshes of blades or a perfectly in sync halt on a spin.
Off ice, together means work, mostly. It means packed schedules and smiling for cameras, it means getting up at five in the morning to go to the gym, then skate, then stretch, then physiotherapy, then coaching, then dancing and to eat only what’s approved by their dietician and to go sleep when it says they should on their time sheets. It’s structure and stamina. ‘Together’ is work.
Even their togetherness is work–and it has been, for about twenty years now. There have been therapy sessions (they don’t call them that, they call them 'mental prep’, but therapy is really what they are) in their long partnership where they would talk over each other and argue and argue until both their voices were hoarse. There had been those where they wouldn’t say a word directly to each other, only passive-aggressively talk about the other in third-person at the psychologist opposite them. Those had always been the worst. Still, there had never truly been a moment where they had left even one of those gruelling sessions questioning the work, questioning wether or not striving for togetherness was worth it, if the effort to align their vastly different characters enough to keep them functioning partners, was justified.
Cynical people would maybe say they kept working on it because together, they had achieved a level of success that would not be possible without the other (although he doubts that very much, thinking that she would make even the last sorry motherfucker shine out on the ice if only she would let him hold her hand). And sometimes, on particularly daunting days spent walking firmly on each other’s nerves, either one of them, in the privacy of their rooms, would wonder if that was it, too. But before long, they’d both come to the same conclusion, without fail. (They wouldn’t tell each other this until much later, though).
Scott would always circle back around to Tessa, to the sacrifices she had made for him along the way to keep dragging his ass across the dingy and not-so dingy rinks of this world. Starting with her spot at the ballet school, which she passed up on (twice) because she had already committed herself to their partnership (at nine or ten years old, no less) to getting hail-mary surgeries on both her legs for the blind hope of maintaining their career, to every party she beckoned him home from for the sake of an early morning training session that was almost always completely necessary, at time acting more like a mother than anything else. So whenever he doubted ‘Together’, it all came down to Tessa and he knew as long as she was still on board, he would be too. And he would be damned if he was the one to get her off that board.
Because the truth is he loves skating, loves dancing (even if that had taken some time) and he loves their career (even the prying cameras and the ceaseless publicity events they had to attend on a weekly basis)–but as much as he does, it would all loose it’s appeal if Tess would walk away. And that’s what it had always been like. Ice dancing was not right when it wasn’t with her, not all the way. Even if he loves the sport so much he could cry sometimes, he doesn’t want to imagine doing it with anybody else. For some of the shows, when they paired him up with another dancer for this or that lift, it never felt right, even tangible. It felt like he was a cog in a machine that didn’t belong where it was put and he was only working properly, when she came back to his arms. So he had spent the better part of his life off ice making ‘Together’ work with her because on ice, ‘Together' was all that ever really mattered. In the end, everything he did, he did for her, so if his life was to be spend working hard enough at himself so that she could stand him, he’d do it. Any day.
Tessa, in turn, never questioned skating with him at all, she just sometimes questioned going on altogether. Mostly in those moments when she could barely stand or think from the pain in her legs and he was too young and carefree to fully comprehend what that had meat for her at the time, how terrible she felt, how alone and how in pain she’d been. The two months in recovery after the first surgery where they wouldn’t talk to each other (the real, less obvious reasons for this they only acknowledge in dead nights after lots of wine) had been the darkest time in their long twenty years together. A part of her heart still tightens up, even after all these years, when she thinks of it now, or when someone brings it up or asks about it (which happens too often for her taste). One night after another frustratingly futile attempt of getting through their Free Dance for Worlds, he had asked her point blank: “Do you wanna quit, Tessa?”
And she had looked around instinctively for their psychologist for help, because usually they would only have those tough kind of talks with a professional present. Not this time, though. This time, he had walked her to her apartment and had talked her into carrying her gym bag all the way into her bedroom (which had been silly, even in how much pain she was in, she could damn well still carry her own bag, but tell that to Scott Moir, who to this day still pushes her suitcase along with his when they walk anywhere). This time, she had been alone with him. With him and that question and a moment of hesitation on her part which broke his heart and face open in front of her. So at odds with her delicate throw pillows and the new, pristine light-grey comforter she had bought.
“Well, do you?” He had repeated and she could tell by the way his eyebrows knotted together that he had heard his own voice break and hated them both for it.
“No, of course not.” She had said then and until that happened, she hadn’t been sure of that in the slightest.
Still, in the face of the suddenly very real possibility of never skating again, never skating with him again (and by extension probably removing him from her life to a significant degree), the only answer could ever, ever be ‘No’. And so they had kept going and dragged each other out of their tiff by the hair. They had learned their togetherness like the steps to a dance. Listen to each other, acknowledge the pain, understand the process, the strategies, learn to read between the lines of what he says and the lines on his face when he doesn’t say anything. They had had that once, she remembers keenly. When they were children together, always half in love but completely oblivious to it, just enough to want to understand each other. In their formative years, that will to understand had often made way for stubbornness, for wanting things from the other they couldn’t give. Always at different times, never together in that.
And the one night they were, when both of them wanted the same thing, it took less than a day, after, to send them on completely different trajectories. Her onto a surgeons table yet again and him into a string of relationships with people who where startlingly like her. But not back into her bed again, not for a very long time. She had decided it had been a mistake, that she needed to focus on getting better first and being professional second and he did not forgive her for that for years.
Even long after they’d made up, she knew he was still working through that whole thing. She felt it in every press of his lips on her skin that wasn’t exactly choreographed. Always in practice, rarely ever when it counted but still, he did that. He kept doing that. She tried her best to ignore it. Keeping her feelings for him, whatever they might have been, close to her chest, close enough so that even she wasn’t all the way sure what they were.
And one would think with the whole world constantly speculating and prying and pushing and asking about what exactly they felt for each other and what exact label they wanted to slap on their relationship, they would have some idea about it. “It’s unique,” Scott would always say, a talking point given to him inadvertently in one of their therapy sessions when emotions had started running high for off-ice reasons between them when Tessa was barely thirteen. “It’s not like a marriage, it’s not like brother and sister.” He would continue and leave everyone (including themselves) wondering, what exactly were they then?
“Business partners,” she had finally declared and postulated, henceforth.
A part of her still resents that term because it sounds cold and impersonal, like they would turn at their heels at the end of a day in the rink and be done with each other. Like they will thank each other politely for a successful career at their retirement and then disappear from each others lives. But it was the one term harsh and unsexy enough to get people off their case for a while. She really had never liked humouring the world as it tried to figure out what they were to each other when they always had had such a hard time figuring it out themselves.
“Business partners,” Scott had snickered once, a couple of years ago in some non-descript hotel on tour. “That’s such a gross understatement, I dunno how to keep a straight face saying that.”
Scott is passionate, that is his thing. It’s what makes him a good athlete and a good person (mostly). It’s definitely a big part of the reason why periodically the sports circuits and message boards of the world go insane about Tess and him. They can’t fathom how they can skate like they do and not give them the satisfactory answer, the confirmation of the logical conclusion; that they love each other deeply, explicitly sexually, and are planning a wedding and expecting twins. Sometimes, neither can he. But before…before things shifted around somewhat after moving to Montreal, Tessa’s damn ‘business partners’ brand had been somehow the most fitting term, even if it covered maybe only the tip of the iceberg there. But that was at least comprehendible. As opposed to: “I think I loved her without knowing it since I was ten but my whole life is built around the necessity of us being together on the ice and no one can promise us we’ll keep that if we go there and mess it up. So we decided not to. Well, she decided and I agreed. Eventually.”
Now, the media would probably eat that up today as it would have back then but it’s not something he’s willing to share. So he sticks to words like “unique” and “special” and “fortunate” to describe what they share between them. He hopes every time that he doesn’t say something stupid whenever he has a mic shoved in his face to give himself away. With varying degrees of success. Whenever he slips up, he can feel Tess’ eyes shoot to him, reprimanding softly. Back in the messier days, it had been an exasperated call to discipline and privacy on her part. Now, in Korea for their third Olympic games representing Canada, it’s a little different but not by much. Nowadays, he hears her whisper “Not yet” in his head, every time she draws in a sharp breath when he says yet another stupid thing about how he still likes doing it (meaning the skating, the skating!) with her or how they fell back in love with each other or how she is restless before falling asleep and stumblingly covers it up in the aftermath.
“Are you very mad?” He asks her once in a taxi on the streets of Seoul on their second extra training day after the team ice skating event in Pyeungchang.
“No,” she says, smiling that Tessa-smile which makes her look sixteen, “I mean, you should watch yourself but at least your loose lips keep us on our toes. I swear I’ll fall asleep standing up the next time I have to talk about being present and really enjoying every moment of these games.”
Somewhere there, she has switched into interview-voice and he cackles lightly.
“Don’t forget our team who have prepared us so well,” he exclaims and laughs. “But it’s all still true,” he says.
“Yeah, it’s true but I feel like a broken record,” Tessa muses. “How many times and in how many ways can you describe how it feels to do a good skate at the Olympics? Can’t they, like, ask about our favourite dinosaurs for a change?”
Scott laughs, loud enough for the taxi driver to turn his head to them with a start.
“Well, Miss Tessa Virtue, what is your favourite dino?” He asks with a mock-reporter voice after shooting a quick apologetic glance at the driver.
“Brachiosaurus,” she replies like a shot and he has a hard time not to laugh even louder than before.
“Wow, you really thought about this, eh?”
She just shrugs. “What’s yours?” He crinkles his forehead in thought. “No wait, I know.”
“Really? ‘Cause I have no idea,” he says.
“Stegosaurus.” She proclaims and then holds a finger up for him to wait until she has goggled it and is holding out the pictures to him.
“Yeah, okay, you’re right,” he says, reaching to pull the phone closer and trapping her lithe fingers under his in the process, unable to resist the temptation of squeezing them just a bit. “That is my favourite dinosaur.”
“See,” she says. “Told you you should come to the museum with me some time.”
“No, but seriously,” Scott asks her after a moment. “Do you want to just tell them all to go fuck themselves and stop asking us about what we are?”
“Good luck with that,” Tessa says with composed resignation. “Everything we say now will pull the focus off our work. I can deal with the dodging all day, though. You just have to say a little fewer sweet things about me, I think.”
That doesn’t work too well after they win the fourth Olympian gold of their lives. Of course the first question after “How did you feel when the music ended?” is “So what’s the deal with you two now?” and they’re both tired to death of it. Still, the world has a way of rattling even the greatest resolve to keep what’s so terribly and truthfully private, private.
“That fucking video, man,” Scott says, exasperatedly in a brief moment alone the day after the win, sometime between one and the next interview. After the TV people had sprung that montage video of their twenty years together on them and he had started crying halfway through watching it like an idiot.
“Bad enough for ‘business relationship’, apparently,” Tessa smirks and he hates her a little bit for never getting (or at least appearing not to get) rattled about these things.
In the interview, he had said the annoying thing again, the business partner thing, but he refused to give up any more or address the same question over and over again with the same answer that was never, ever an answer. And he was not going to tell the truth, because who would understand that? Who would, when even Tessa and him weren’t sure.
So instead, when they are asked about their relationship status(es) yet again what feels like a heartbeat later, he says “It’s none of your business”. From the corner of his eyes he can see Tessa’s plastered interview-smile and knows that she is probably zoning out until he is finished rambling and so he does finish. He isn’t really sure what he is trying to say as he goes on. If it comes across that he means possibly retiring in order to open their life up to romantic possibilities separate from each other or if it seems like he is talking about them, about retiring so that they can give whatever it is between them a shot and “see where it goes”. He likes that his words come out vague enough for once to mean both. Which is wonderful, because he does not like to lie.
After six more times of answering that horrid question and finally, finally getting to spend some real time with their families, they eventually end up back in Tessa’s room when it’s already way past bed time and lie together on her bed, staring at the ceiling.
“How do you feel about today?” She asks, echoing one of their usual mental-coaching session’s get-in questions.
“Exhausted,” he says honestly. “The entire thing is a minefield.”
“I know,” she agrees. “I guess that’s the price to pay though, maybe. People are invested in us…so they want to know.”
“Yeah, well, I’d like to know too,” he groans. “I wish we could just suss it out by ourselves for a second. I mean…do you have any idea what we’re doing really?”
“No,” she admits and a soft, warm hand closes around his tenderly only to the wander off to feel up and down his arm (it’s a little distracting).
“But, like, you know, we get back in the bubble,” Tessa tells him quietly. “Figure this out on our own time. Nobody needs to know anything. It’s just us.”
“I’m scared,” he says and he doesn’t need to explain what he is scared of. He is scared of really taking that step with her, of the risk of losing what they have together over the pitfalls of romantic relationships, of not being together anymore because they decided to be together. She knows it already and he is pretty darn sure she feels the exact same way.
“Me too,” she says and then scoots a little closer to him, rolling to her side to look at him. “But we have time now. All this attention will fade eventually and then we can take all the time in the world to figure this out. See how it goes, no pressure.”
“I’m just terrified of losing you, of losing this,” he confesses and doesn’t manage to look at her.
“You won’t, we’re not gonna lose each other,” she promises and keeps running her hand over his arm at his side. “No matter what, I love you. No matter what, we’re together. That won’t change.”
“Together?” He asks again, finally finding her beautiful green eyes like soft pools of emerald calm. She is always so poised and so sure about everything, it’s second nature to feel safer once she looks at him like that, like she has seen the future and it’s nothing to worry about.
“Together,” she echos and presses a kiss, soft like a feather on his cheek.
No more than that, no more until they’re home and have the chance to wrap their heads around just how together they could be.