Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

• “Be good, okay?” Tessa says to all her daughters, hugging and kissing each of them on the head. “I’ll be back soon.” They’re outside the front door on the steps; Scott is loading her luggages at the back of their car.
• Anna whines, “Can’t we go with you?” She hugs Tessa tightly, refusing to let go. Tessa rubs her back, “No, Annie, I’m sorry. It’s just boring work anyway.”
• “Going to New York Fashion Week is not work,” Maddie grumbles. “And you’ll be gone for more than a week!” Tessa lets Anna go to cuddle her middle child, “That’s why you need to be extra good.”
• She turns to Sophie, who’s been unusually quiet throughout all of this, gently touching her chin and lifting her face up, forcing her eldest to look at her. “Take care of them, alright?” Tessa forms the command as a question. When she doesn’t reply, Tessa tilts her head, “Sophia?”
• Sophie quickly nods her head and buries her face on her mother’s chest, before she can see the tears pooling in her eyes, “I’ll miss you.” 
• Tessa gestures her two younger children to go back inside the house. They blow kisses to her and slither back inside. She returns her attention back to Sophie, who’s holding her even tighter. Despite her daughter’s cold exterior, Tessa knows she harbors all her feelings inside until it explodes. Truly her mother’s daughter. 
• Tessa lets the hug go on for a little longer, until she hears Scott honking from the car. She kisses Sophie on her forehead before looking at her, “I have to go. I’ll miss you too,” Tessa gives her one last quick hug. “I love you.”
• “I love you too, mama,” Sophie quietly says. Tessa gives a quick wave from the car as it drives away. She doesn’t see Sophie wiping her tears with her sleeve before heading inside. 
• Scott carries her million luggages and accompanies her to the check-in counter. He walks her (in their signature handhold) until she has to go through the airport security line. Scott immediately grabs her close to give her a fierce kiss, his hands bunching on her sweater.
• Tessa pulls away, “Promise me you’ll be good?” Scott scoffs at her, “Did you just ask me the same question you asked to the kids?” She giggles, “To be honest, I’m more worried about you than I am of them.” He frowns, “T, I’m hurt.”
• Tessa gives him a quick kiss, “Don’t let them run all over you, okay? I know how adorable and fun they can be.” “I promise the house will still be standing when you come back,” Scott says, taking her hand and kissing it. “And you’ll be good too, right?”
• “I always am,” she replies, winking at him. 
• He waits until she goes through security, waving at her like a lovesick teenager whose girlfriend is off for the summer, rather than a longtime married father of three. 
• Scott comes back to the house to his daughters watching tv on the couch. “Alright, girls,” he attempts to shoo them away. “Bedtime. You have school tomorrow.”
• Anna pouts at him, “5 more minutes, dad? We’re just finishing a show.” Scott looks at her for a second and sighs, “Okay. 5 minutes.” He leaves for his bedroom. 
• Maddie watches him until he’s out of sight, before patting her two sisters on their knees, “We’re gonna have so much fun this week, aren’t we ladies?”

• It starts with the little things.
• Breakfast food during dinnertime.
• Late-night movies.
• Trips to the candy store.
• Scott quickly gets caught up in the fun; it escalates. 
• Go-kart racing at the track.
• Letting them stick their heads out and yell from the sunroof of their minivan.
• Teaching them how to play poker.
• It implodes when Maddie asks him permission to purchase an item from Amazon. “I don’t know, Mads,” Scott wavers, looking up from his notebook to review his students’ routines. “Please, dad, we don’t have one, and it’ll be a nice addition to the backyard,” she pleads with her eyes. Scott can’t help on how much she looks like her mother, and he could never say no to her either.
• “Fine,” he relents. 
• The package lands on their doorstep the next day; the four of them have to drag the entire thing together to the backyard. 
• Scott then watches his kids from the comfort of their kitchen as they jump on their new giant trampoline, after helping them assemble it. 
• He chuckles in contentment until he calls out to them, “Girls!” All three turn their heads. “I have a better idea.”
• In 30 minutes, Scott, Maddie, and Anna, are in their swimsuits, jumping off the trampoline and into the pool. Scott had pushed it to the side of the pool and is now teaching his daughters flip tricks. Well, two of his daughters.
• “Sophie!” Scott yells at his first-born, who’s reading a book on the garden chair. “You’re disappointing your father!”
• “At least I’m not disappointing mom!” she yells back. Scott can’t help but laugh at the clever retort.
• It all ends when Scott jumps from the edge of the trampoline, and unknowingly to everyone, it had moved inches closer to the edge of the pool every time someone jumped off. It flips over, splashing into the pool and bringing Scott with it.
• His kids all double down in laughter as Scott emerge from the water confused. 
• They try to get it out of the water, but it won’t budge. “Sophia!” Scott turns to her, motioning for her help. She gives a loud sigh, puts her book down, and walks over to the pool’s edge. He takes the opportunity to grab her arm and bring her down to the water, ignoring her shrieks of surprise.
• “Da- Dad!” she tries to squirm away from his embrace. He only hugs her tighter. 
• “You’re not too cool for your dad, right?” Scott interrogates her, tickling her and splashing water on her face. “And you’re still my number one kiddo, right?”
• (He used to call his favorite girl in the entire world “kiddo”; now he has three.)
• “Yes!” Sophie responds in laughter, “Yes! Yes! Dad, I can’t bre-breathe!” 
• Scott is satisfied and lets her go, but not before kissing her on the cheek, “I love you, kiddo.”
• “I love you too, dad.”
• After they’ve finished toweling off, Scott looks at the still submerged-trampoline in the water. “Alrighty, then,” he looks at his three mini-mes. “I’ll try to get Uncle Danny here tomorrow to help me out. Now go wash up for dinner!”
• A chorus of “yes, dad” and pitter patter of footsteps follow suit. 

• “Should we throw all of this away?” Anna asks her older sisters, carrying all the bubble wrap that came with the trampoline. 
• “No! You never throw away bubble wrap!” Maddie takes some from her hand and starts popping the bubbles. Sophie can’t help herself and joins in as well. 
• “You know,” she casually quips, two pairs of green eyes looking back at her. “We could find a better use for this at the rink.”
• As his last students file out, Scott  begins to pack up when he hears the chatter of his daughters coming through the door. He’s not only surprised to see them, but also the suspicious and insane amount of bubble wrap in their hands.
• “Um,” Scott stops in front of them. “What are you up to?”
• “Visiting you,” Anna smiles sweetly, too sweetly. “Grandma and grandpa dropped us off here after dinner. So we can skate for a while!”
• He squints his eyes towards his slap-happy children, “Okay, but what’s the bubble wrap for?”
• “I told you, skating!” she replies. Their smiles are all too telling now; it’s almost abnormal. 
• He turns to Sophie, “5 minutes while I go pack up. You’re gonna make sure they behave right? No funny business.”
• Sophie puts a shit-eating grin, “Of course.”
• 10 minutes later Scott emerges from his office, pushes through the double doors, and sees the most egregious sight on the rink.
• His youngest daughter, all cheeks and curly hair, is completely swaddled in bubble wrap, held tightly together by duct tape. Only her head and legs are free. Her only protection is her hockey helmet; she’s not even wearing skates - just a pair of sneakers. 
• Her two sisters are holding her hand, leading her to the edge of the rink. 
• “Okay, ready?” Maddie asks her; she nods eagerly. 
• Before Scott can stop them, the two of them skate as fast as they could, bringing Anna along with them. Then, they suddenly let her go, so she could bellyflop and slide across the ice, hitting the hockey goal and tangling herself in the net.
• “GOOALL!!” screams Sophie and Maddie, high-fiving each other, all the while Anna is giggling and squirming around.
• “HEY!” Scott suddenly yells at them, watching from the side. The girls stop, dead silent, waiting for an earful from their father. He surprises them by producing two hockey sticks, “Let’s play a proper game, eh?”
• Within 5 minutes, Scott is hustling with his two older children over the most messed-up hockey game in the world, trying to slide Anna, still having the time of her life in bubble wrap, into the goal and keeping score. They’re not hitting her with the sticks; it’s more like aggressively pushing her until she slides across the ice. 
• Sophie and Maddie are winning until Scott drops his hockey stick and just lunges over Anna, squishing her in the process.
• “No fair, dad! That’s cheating!” cries Maddie. They begin poking him with the other end of their sticks. 
• Scott wraps his arms around Anna even more, “I’ll never let her go!!!” She’s just laughing till she gets the hiccups. 
• The soft assault goes on until he hears the shrill alert of his phone ringing. He pats Anna (more of the bubble wrap, really) one last time before skating away, picking up his phone that’s currently resting on the board. 
• It’s Tessa.
• “Hi, T!” he tries to steady his voice as much as possible. “What’s up?”
• “I’m just checking in, Scott,” the voice at the other end replies. “How are the kids? What are they doing?”
• (Maddie punches Anna on the wrap, “Does that hurt?” Anna giggles, “No.”)
• “Um. They’re doing fine.”
• “What are they doing?”
• (Sophie kicks her. Anna rolls once but just giggles more.)
• “You know, just…”
• (Maddie starts hitting her little sister with her hockey stick.)
• “Scott? You there?”
• (Anna yells, “Harder!”)
• “Yes! Hello!”
• “What’s that noise? Are you at the rink? Are the girls there with you?? It’s so late for them to be out!”
• (Wham!)
• “Yea, they’re with me. Don’t worry, I’m taking them home soon.”
• “What are they doing there, Scott??”
• (Wham!)
• “Just, you know, playing around.”
• “You mean, skating around.”
• (WHAM! “Ow!”)
• “Yes, yes, I meant that, skating around. I- I gotta go, T. We’ll facetime when we get back, okay? Love you!”
• Scott hangs up on his wife (and internally cringes), before quickly skating to his kids to stop them from abusing his youngest one. 
• (Whenever he tells people he has three daughters, they laugh and ask, “Didn’t you want a boy?” He always chuckles back, “No, actually, not really.”)
• (He’s never more sure of that statement now.)

• “Dad, dad, look,” Anna pulls at his sleeve the next afternoon. She’s all smiles and completely free of injuries (except for the hour-long hiccups she got). Now she’s distracting Scott from doing his paperwork by showing him an internet video. 
• It’s a video of a father playing the trumpet and his son banging the oven door to the beat. 
• This time, Scott doesn’t hesitate. He turns around to find Sophie and Maddie already prepared with her phone, looking at him with such hope and expectations. How could he let them down?
• In a blink of an eye, he’s wearing a pair of sunglasses, sitting on a stool, with his guitar in hand. The other three are donning shades as well. Sophie is holding a blender; Maddie is grasping the oven door; Anna is clasping two spatulas over an upside down pot. 
• “What’s the setlist today, kids?” Scott inquires, strumming a few chords while he waits. Sophie lets her dad down easy on their song choice, “We decided on Hall and Oa-“ Scott cuts her off with a loud groan, “Such a mommy’s girl.”
• “You don’t even know which song!” Anna counters. He responds by strumming to the chorus of “You Make My Dreams”, looking extremely smug when they all boo at him. 
• Sophie opens the camera app and starts recording, after making sure they all fit into the screen. They go on a few runs before playing it back; Scott isn’t satisfied.
• “Oh, come on, you guys,” he humorously complains. “You gotta give it your all. I’m playing an 80’s song for you, for God’s sake!” He starts to play the chords of a country song. He gets booed again. 
• When Sophie presses record the next time, each of them go at their “instruments” with more finesse. They start laughing at each other, and Scott is filled with a pure sense of happiness. Watching his daughters have the best time with him, if only his wife were here too-
• Tessa.
• He thinks about her. Going to bed alone feels really unusual now. He’s used to falling asleep to her arm casually draped across his chest, the sound of her breathing lulling him to a dream.
• (You make my dreams-)
• And this is her favorite song too.
• (come-)
• I miss her.
• (true!)
• Scott is abruptly interrupted from his daydream by the jarring sound of glass shattering - he turns around to see the window of the oven door completely disappear, shards of broken glass littering the ground beneath it instead.
• Maddie had banged the door a little too hard on the last note, and now she’s staring at the gaping see-through window (now, hole) of the oven. None of the shards have managed to touch her skin.
• The others are also staring at the damage.
• Then they stare at their dad.
• A passing beat.
• “Oh, fu- uck,” Scott stutters. “Your mom is going to kill me.”
• After sweeping up the mess, he tells Sophie to fetch him the blue duct tape from his office. She hands it to him with a raised eyebrow. 
• Scott begins to tape the entire door with duct tape, replacing the pre-existing glass pane, as if it’s going to magically hide the damage from his wife. 
• “There,” he breaths out. “Good as new.”
• His kids look at one another, before sarcastically clapping their praises.
• “Amazing.”
• “Good job, dad.”
• “10 out of 10.”
• Scott suddenly dives towards the three of them, catching Anna in the process and twirling her around. The other two shriek, running away. “You three are little shits, aren’t you?” he bursts out, while attacking his little one with kisses. 

• That night, they’re all lazily lounging around the living room, a sense of calmness surrounding them. Sophie is on her laptop that’s resting on her lap, sitting on a beanbag. Anna is reading a comprehensive guide about gemstones, trying to learn about their particular colors (it’s her obsession of the month), laying on her stomach on the floor. Maddie is fiddling with her phone, her head on Scott’s lap, relishing the way he’s combing her hair.
• She puts her phone down to look at her father, “Are you mad at me?”
• He chuckles, “For the oven?” She nods. “No, of course not. It was an accident.” He continues combing her hair, “I’m just glad you’re not hurt. That’s all that matters.”
• Maddie hums her grateful response. Then she smiles, all teeth and a scrunched up nose. And Scott’s heart flutters in response. Taking in how much his second child looks so much like his wife. A splitting image. From the color of her hair to the glittering green of her eyes.
• Tessa.
• As if she’s able to read his thoughts, Maddie shuffles to her side. “I miss mom,” she murmurs. Her sisters quietly whine in agreement.
• Scott looks to each of his daughters, taking note of their downcast expressions. 
• “You know what,” he says, voice clear and steady. They all turn to him. “Pack your bags. We’re going on a trip.”

• Within 24 hours, 4 out of 5 of the Virtue-Moir family land in JFK International airport, all with grins plastered on their faces. Scott carries his duffel bag while his daughters push small, matching luggages across the airport. He finds out the hotel she’s been staying from Tessa’s personal assistant, and he miraculously manages to book a room on the same floor. 
• He hails a cab then assists the driver loading all their luggages in the trunk, while Sophie helps her little sisters get into their seats. Scott gets into the passenger seat, looks behind him to give a thumbs up (he receives three thumbs ups in return), then tells the cabbie the hotel address.
• The sun sets as they depart from the airport, and the girls stare at the golden sky against the visible Manhattan skyline. 
• “Their mother not coming with?” the cabbie casually asks, noting on the missing presence in the group. “We’re going to see her actually - surprise her. She doesn’t know we’re coming,” Scott replies, also staring at the gorgeous evening sky. 
• The cabbie laughs, “Eh, surprises usually go one way or another.” 
• The kids are dazzled with the lights of Midtown Manhattan, and they squeal when they realize their hotel is so close to Times Square. Scott pays the cabbie the fare and leads his children to the lobby for check-in. They’re a little tired from the flight and car ride, but he knows meeting their mom would change that all around. 
• When the elevator opens to their floor, he quickly shuffles them to their room, just three doors down and across the hall from Tessa’s, in case they run into her. After settling down, placing their luggages, and arguing who gets to sleep alone in one of the double queen beds (Sophie does, first-born privilege), they quietly tiptoe outside to the hallway.
• Scott is grateful to have been greeted by a cheerful front desk manager, a figure skating fan who immediately recognizes him. He hands him a copy of Tessa’s key card, winking at him as he does so. 
• They linger outside her door. Scott places his head near the wooden panel, and he can hear someone shuffling around the carpet. Muffled voices. One of them is a man.
• “Maybe I got the wrong room number?” he thinks. He gets his answer when the other voice speaks up.
• Tessa.
• His heart is racing at a million miles per hour. 
• More shuffling. More voices. Then silence.
• Millions of scenarios. He tries not to think of that one.
• Overthinking.
• His stomach lurches.
• But then, Scott looks behind him, meeting the faces of his- their- children. They’re giving him the go-ahead to open the door, with their bright faces. The three people whom they love most. That gives him the assurance to push the keycard into the slot.
• But I’m not afraid.
• He turns the handle.
• I know who I married.
• He pushes the door. 
• They all yell “SURPRI-“, but the word gets caught up in their throats by what they see inside.

• Tessa standing in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips, menacingly tall with her black high heels, glaring at the four people who just burst in. Her green eyes blazing with anger as her dark hair spills all over the tight, white blouse she’s wearing. Jaw clenched, accentuating her cheekbones. Her movements don’t flinch; she knew they were coming.
• She throws her cellphone to the couch, “I’ve just been contacted by our banker, who called to confirm a payment of $1,000 for FOUR last-minute plane tickets to New York.” She doesn’t hesitate. “Care to explain?”
• Scott opens his mouth.
• Tessa bends to the side to look at her children, “You three. OUT.” 
• Her kids scramble out in record time, slamming the door behind them. A few seconds later, she hears thundering footsteps and another door closing at a distance. Her attention is now completely on her husband. 
• Death in high heels. 
• Scott fiddles with his hands, “Tess, I’m- I’m sorry-“ She cuts him off by quickly striding towards him, placing her face an inch away from his. She roughly bunches the hoodie he’s wearing and forces Scott to his knees. 
• “Beg,” Tessa commands, in an unwavering tone.
• His fear quickly disappears as he looks up at his wife, his hands already beginning to crawl up her legs, “What?”
• “Beg for my forgiveness.” Scott doesn’t need to be told twice.
• Three hours later, Scott is still kissing Tessa’s neck as she comes down from her high. His hand starts wandering around again until she has to push his face away, giggling. 
• “Are you still mad?” Scott asks, giving her the biggest doe eyes he possibly could. Tessa rolls her eyes, “Am I still mad you took our kids out of a school day and spent a thousand dollars to take a trip you didn’t tell me about? A little, Scott!”
• He whimpers, and Tessa sighs as she combs his sweaty, slick hair with her hands, “But I did miss you all.” She lays her head on his chest. “So much it hurts.”
• She doesn’t need to see the smirk he has on his face, “Really? I couldn’t tell.”
• “Shut up. I was incredibly furious and horny as fuck. Killing two birds with one stone,” Tessa replies as she hits Scott’s chest lightly, then starts running her hand across his abs, appreciating how her husband still manages to keep in shape. “I should wash up and say hi to my babies.”
• “They can see you in the morning,” Scott says, pulling the sheets up to their waists. “They’re most probably asleep already.”
• Tessa murmurs in agreement as she nestles herself closer to Scott. The distant noise from the busy streets below serve as soothing background noise as they both slowly fall into slumber.
• The mood is broken when Tessa looks up at him and innocently asks, “So what did you guys do all week?”
• Scott quickly slides his hand underneath the sheets and kisses her hard, completely distracting her from expecting an answer.
• (She finds out eventually from staring at the duct-tape oven and the half-submerged trampoline in the pool.)