Notes

The arena is loud.

Or so he imagines. All he can hear is Tessa’s heavy breathing, all he can feel are her arms hugging tight around his neck. Something between a laugh and a cry sticks in her throat, yanks on something equally as raw deep in his chest—a memory he’d sealed away in his soul, a sound he was sure he’d never hear again.

He squeezes her, realizing only when she yields a strained squeak that her dress is backless and he’s not exactly being gentle. He’s held her for years, hardly remembers what life was like before she lived between his arms, but this time, with his face buried in the dip of her shoulder, something feels different. New.

Her hands slide over his shoulders, down his arms, and his touch lingers on her waist like a raindrop sticks to a pane of glass—and then he releases her. She’s panting and on the verge of tears, but she’s never been more beautiful. Pale skin flushed red, pulse thundering in time with his own, something like awe and relief and triumph making her gorgeous green eyes go glassy.

Perfection isn’t real, but that performance was damn near close.

A fierce, prideful roar tears free of his lungs and he steals a kiss before he can think better of it—just on the temple, but a kiss all the same. He’s been doing that a lot recently. Maybe it’s the Games, maybe it’s the looming truth that this is the end of their competitive career, maybe it’s simply that he’s tired of—

“Representing Canada, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. ”

On cue, he raises their joined hands and turns toward the crowd. It used to annoy him when they were younger, the way announcers would always say her name before his.

What’s so special about girls? he would whine the moment Tessa was out of earshot. His father would laugh and shake his head. Everything, was always the reply.

Harsh stadium lights ricochet off the faux crystals sewn into her costume, and though the jewels shine, their sparkle pales in comparison to Tessa’s innate radiance. She’s… breathtaking. There’s no other word for it.

Victory suits her. Always has.

If it weren’t considered gauche, he’d applaud right along with everyone else. Lord knows Tess deserves the praise. She’s the most disciplined athlete he’s ever known—which is saying something considering the circle they run with. Not much in life is certain, but Scott’s sure they wouldn’t have made it this far were it not for her dedication. He loves the sport and he loves competing, but Tessa has always been the serious one.

If Scott’s legs had turned against him like hers had, he would’ve given up. He doesn’t like to think of himself as a quitter, but he’s pretty sure that would’ve done him in. For all the talent lurking in his bones, he doesn’t have an ounce of the strength his partner possesses. He used to be jealous of her for it, but now he’s content to live in awe.

Her maroon dress is a shock of color on the cold, dead ice. It flares wide as Scott spins her—and he makes the mistake of letting his gaze catch on the soft planes of her face, the brilliance of her smile. He should be looking at the crowd, the judges, their coaches, but all of those things seem insignificant compared to his partner, his Tessa.

He sighs, imagines it sounds just like any other breath, but his heart knows differently.

Scott goes through the motions of bowing—well, more like smiling with cavernous, panging gratitude—but all he can focus on is the feel of Tessa’s palm in his, the subtle tremor she tries to master by squeezing his hand tighter. He squeezes back.

This is it, he realizes. Their final moments on competitive ice.

Of course, he knew this was coming before the music even started, but now it’s somehow more real. And even though he wouldn’t do anything differently—not a single thing—it hurts more than he expected it would.

Twenty years. Twenty years it took to get to this moment.

Would they be here now if Sochi had gone differently? He doesn’t want to think about it, about how they might’ve drifted apart if they’d gotten the gold they so desperately wanted four years ago. Satisfaction is the enemy of excellence, and he’s never been more grateful to have lost a competition. That silver medal is the best thing that’s ever happened to them.

Tessa’s nails dig into his skin through the thin black mesh of his costume, and the jolt of pain brings him back to the present. The Olympics are always a flurry, Scott knows, but this time it seems particularly cruel that this moment, this memory, should be over so quickly.

“Wait.” The word pops out before he realizes he’s said it, and she’s tucked so close to his side that he nearly knocks his skates into hers when he turns them around.

He’d been distracted earlier, by the adrenaline, by the significance of it all, but this is something he wants to remember. Tessa turns with him, and together they take in the arena: the deep cuts their blades made on the ice, the signs bearing their names, the sea of red and white clustered to their right cheering the loudest.

His lungs burn and his legs ache and his heart is so full it might burst. “Drink it in.”

Tessa’s teetering on the edge of unrestrained happiness, the kind with aching cheeks and glistening tears, and Scott’s not inclined to hold her back. He’s not really one for crying, but if she tumbles over that ledge, he vows to fall with her.

Victory is not given, his mother used to say, hand cradling the underside of his chin with a gentle pressure.

Scott did the math once, and he figures he and Tessa have attended something like five thousand practices together. He hopes it’s enough, hopes they’ve done enough.

Victory is not given, his mother used to say, and she would pause until he met her eyes.

Scott finds those eyes amongst the crowd, the same shade of brown as his own. “It is earned,” he whispers, and he can almost hear the echoes of her silvery voice ringing in his ear.

Mother, coach, cheerleader, confidant. He hopes she knows how grateful he is.

Then his eyes settle on his partner, and he’s thrilled to learn that the smile still hasn’t left her face.

Her chest heaves and her fingers tighten around his with a crushing pressure that edges on pain. We did it.

Somewhere along the way they’d learned to communicate without words. A language all their own, born of two decades of partnership, of late nights and early mornings and all the times between, of hours and hours spent, half-awake, skating until their two bodies moved as one.

He presses his lips together and squeezes her hand once more in response.

In such a subjective sport, nothing is guaranteed, and fate, like the judging panels’ interest, is fickle, but it seems to be favoring them of late. Please, he thinks with a longing glance upward. He’s never put much stock in luck—would rather trust the tangible, measurable pain of hard work—but with gold on the line he’ll take whatever he can get.

It’s a crush of screams as they reach the boards—the crowd, their coaches, his soul. Scott throws open the partition, and a beaming Marie-France greets the pair of them as they step off the ice. That one look tells Scott all he needs to know. The judges would have to be mad to give them anything less than gold.

It wasn’t a perfect skate—no skate can be, really—but it still felt magical. And that’s got to count for something.

Marie-France hugs them close and tells them she’s so, so proud, and he believes her. There’s no critique today, no comments about what they can improve next time, no looking ahead to some eventual future. It’s a bittersweet feeling.

Then it hits him—he’s felt like this before, four years ago nearly to the day. He’s known this confidence before, feels it every time after a clean skate. But his gut and the judging panel are two very different entities. Terror lances through him, a blinding pain from a wound that’s never fully healed.

What if it happens again? What if it’s even closer this time?

He loses his breath for a long, disorienting moment.

Be present.

He pushes the thoughts down, down, down and follows after Tessa. Highlights from their free dance play in slow motion on the jumbotron, but Scott can’t bear to watch. Their final walk to the Kiss and Cry is hard enough already. Besides, he’s never liked seeing himself on video.

Scott’s throat goes scratchy, and he’s powerless to stop the two sharp coughs that burst from his lungs. He’s been trying to kick this cold for days, but the stubborn thing just won’t let him be. The B2Ten team has pumped him so full of vitamins he can feel the effects puddling in his joints. It’s a jittery sort of energy that itches with warmth. If he weren’t still coughing, Scott would think he’d become a superhuman.

But even with all the vitamins, he isn’t at his best. As the post-skate high begins to fade, one moment stands in vivid relief: the transition out of their combination spin. Storm churned seas are smoother than the way he let her down from that lift.

Half-speed replays are unforgiving, and the judges will surely notice his carelessness.

It’s only one thing, he assures himself. Only… Only what if it’s not? What if he botched other elements of the program, too? Were they in sync the entire time? Did he get out of step with her mid-routine?

Scott glances sidelong at his partner. She’s breathless and smiling, and if he’s ruined this for her he’ll never forgive himself.

He turns his gaze toward the judges and sends up a silent prayer to whatever god will listen. Please be enough, he thinks.

It’s agony waiting for their scores. Scott’s always been good with numbers, but he has no idea how many points they need to win gold. Knowing would’ve soured his and Tessa’s final skate, so they went in blind.

“One last time,” he’d said, not caring about the outcome. Perhaps it was selfish, but they were doing this for each other, not some ridiculous medal.

The Kiss and Cry has a way of warping reality, though, and with Tessa and Marie-France on either side, he wants it. He wants the gold. He’s never wanted anything more.

Well…

Tessa’s pulse thumps just underneath her skin, a wild rhythm that’s an echo of his own.

“The scores, please.”

For a moment, he’s nine years old again, cooped up in a too-cold rink with a girl he barely knows, eager to get the competition over with so he can claim the chocolate malt his mom promised him and then go hang out with his hockey buddies.

It’s a strange sensation, being caught in the past while the present glides by.

Nostalgia’s not the right word for it. He doesn’t miss the scary newness of their partnership, doesn’t miss the awkward transition from strangers to friends, doesn’t miss his nerves and her shyness, doesn’t miss all the days he took her for granted—or worse, wished his parents would let him give up the stupid ice dancing thing.

How foolish he’d been.

“Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir have earned in the free dance—”

His heart thuds in his chest, and Tessa grabs his hand just as he reaches for hers, and the last thing he remembers clearly is the moment the board displays the final rankings—with their names on top.





Something about the Olympics makes victory sweeter, makes the high last longer.

Scott tilts his head back and breathes deep. Athletes train their entire lives for a chance at the podium, and the two of them have claimed a coveted platform spot three times in a row. It’s the stuff of dreams.

He slips a hand around her waist, and a warm pulse rushes through him when her fingers come to rest atop his. All he wants to do is wrap both arms around her and bury his face in her neck and forget the world and just hold her forever, but he tamps down on the urge and drops a kiss onto her shoulder instead.

Tessa’s breaths are shaky and shallow, and she’s coiled tighter than a steel spring, but she relaxes into him—just a bit, just enough for Scott to know his touch made a difference. And then she turns her head and graces him with a smile.

Eight years it’s been since he last glimpsed that smile, the one Tessa reserves for Olympic gold. She’s always so careful about showing her emotions in public that seeing her this raw makes him want to shield her from view of every camera in PyeongChang.

The media has called her robotic on more than one occasion, and Scott is always taken aback by it. The Tessa he knows—the one who bares her entire soul on the ice, the one who puts every passionate sonnet to shame with how deeply she cares—protects her heart for fear that nosy gawkers will intrude on the precious few moments she can claim as private.

Let the media think what they want. He knows the truth.

Be present, their mental prep coach has told them over and over again, and Scott’s trying, but it’s a struggle to stay centered as an ever-changing kaleidoscope of emotions turns through him. Pride and disbelief and heartache and bliss rolling over each other, all in equal parts.

Tess turns to face him, green eyes rife with ebullient sorrow as a few rogue tears slip down her cheeks.

Scott clenches his jaw as he drags a hand to her shoulder to give her neck a gentle, reassuring squeeze. It’s entirely too intimate, he realizes as his gaze falls to her rouged lips and he’s consumed with the overwhelming urge to kiss her.

Tess inhales sharply, and her eyes dart to the carved up rink.

The characters they portray are desperately in love, so he’s no stranger to such infatuation, but he’s normally better about leaving those feelings on the ice. Clearly his slip shoved Tessa’s nerves into overdrive, and the way her back muscles have tensed up makes Scott want to smack himself.

He stretches his lips into a thin smile and soothingly rubs his hand over her shoulder, down her spine. “Just relax, babe.” Babe? Since when does he call her babe ?

She laughs in the way people do when they’re anxious.

Pull it together, Moir.

It’s a blessing when the Olympic officiant arrives at their spot on the podium to present them both with a goofy black-and-white plush toy. Cotton and polyester and something that feels like velvet—a delicate thing that has no right to feel as heavy as it does in his palm.

Heat prickles at the corners of his eyes. Twenty years.

As he straightens back up and the arena erupts with joyous screams, memories seize him. It’s a mosaic tiled with two decades of early mornings and bruised ankles, of new lifts and scraped palms, of sore muscles and steady hands, of soft touches and barbed comments. It’s a lifetime.

He likes to think there’s something special about their partnership. Uncommon, even. But he has nothing to compare it to. Tessa’s been his only partner. Ever. He can hardly remember his life before her.

Maybe what he feels—admiration, pride, gratitude, respect—is ordinary. There are a number of gifted teams. Surely they share similar bonds.

And then Tessa looks at him.

No, he thinks. This is different.

He’s not sure what other teams have—doesn’t really care. What they have is raw and deep and theirs. What they have is love.





The world is a fresh work of watercolor, blurry and soft, painted equally in hues of exhaustion and adrenaline. At first he thought he’d never stop smiling, but having to pose for hundreds of pictures grates on even the purest of joys, reminds the muscles in his face just how long they’ve been working, just how fake the expression now feels.

Everything bleeds together. Interviews and pictures and handshakes and autographs and a steady stream of generic, if not genuine, congratulations. Tessa’s face is the only piece of his world that manages to stay in focus.

It’s not the first time he’s been grateful to have her by his side as they navigate the politics of this sport they both love so much, but today he’s uniquely appreciative of her poise and grace despite such invasive and personal questions. He wants to scream and scream until his lungs give out and then flop face-first into a bottomless foam pit. Perhaps the reporters wouldn’t follow him if he disappeared into a sea of cubes. Doubtful, but worth a shot.

Desperate times and all that.

Tessa smiles and expertly pivots on yet another question about their relationship. On the ice, the two of them are equally matched, but she’s so much better at this particular dance. Scott’s a bumbling fool when it comes to interviews, and every reporter in PyeongChang knows it.

It’s also probably not helping that, even though he should be basking in the glow of their recent win, all he can think about is the scratchy cotton sheets on his too-hard twin bed back in the Village. What he wouldn’t give for a nap. Nothing has ever sounded more divine.

The reporter abandons the relationship angle and begrudgingly asks what they did to prepare for their final Olympic skate. Tessa smiles coyly, and Scott can tell she’s pleased with herself for taking charge of yet another interview. The question was technically directed at both of them, but he’s perfectly content to stand silently as she crafts an purposely vague response about visualization and intentionality—both of which are true.

That’s the key, Scott’s realized. Expose only enough truth to entice.

Predictably, the interviewer tilts his head and takes her bait, pressing for more detailed information about their pre-skate routines.

Scott bites back a grin. When will these network clowns learn?

The afternoon drags on, each interview and photo-op chipping away at his patience. It seems criminal that the aftermath of winning a competition should feel like a punishment.

It’s the Olympics, he reminds himself, having answered the same question for the fourteenth time. This is an honor, even if it currently feels a bit like he’s enduring an unwanted dental procedure.

He sighs and tugs Tess closer. She tilts her head back onto his shoulder, and he takes a deep breath. Vanilla and strawberries and something uniquely Tessa.

The reporter smiles and thanks them for their time and excuses herself from the room, but, like clockwork, another takes her place and the process begins anew.





Scott’s prayers for rest get answered exactly six hours and forty-eight minutes after he and T step off the ice inside Gangneung. He’s always prided himself on his endurance, but today put him through the ringer. A quick glance at T tells him she’s in the same boat.

It’s been a long afternoon, made longer by the post-medal ceremony interviews off-site, but it’s done. They’re done—which means, finally, mercifully, he gets to relax.

The shuttle is empty save for him and Tessa, and so he stretches out on two seats across the aisle from his partner, a thick gold disk weighing heavily around his neck and a feeling of accomplishment in his bones. Comfort escapes him, but he’s so tired he doesn’t even care.

T sinks into her seat opposite him, equally as spent. Normally she’s wired after a competition, but the media circus has a way of draining her in a way that skating never does. Even her innate nocturnal rhythm is no match for the demands of the Olympics, it seems.

Scott lifts his brows. You okay?

Her Team Canada coat makes a plasticky crumpling noise as she leans her forehead against the gaudy purple upholstery. She releases a contented sigh and offers him a weak smile in reply.

They gave up on words hours ago, reverted to the simpler language of touch until even that was too taxing. Silence between them hasn’t always been easy or comfortable, but tonight, right now, it is. Her presence is enough. This experience is enough.

They are enough.

A few breaths more and her eyes have fluttered shut.

Scott follows her lead and pulls his toque all the way down to his nose. It’s a half-hour ride to the Plaza. Might as well make the most of the time.

There’s the creak and snap of accordion doors closing, and a moment later the bus rumbles to life. Even over the hum of the engine, eyes closed and several feet apart, Scott hears every one of Tessa’s breaths, listens as they grow longer, slower, deeper.

Ignoring the nasty way the window panel digs into his spine, he dangles his feet limply in the middle of the aisle and lets his mind go blank.

(It’s only as his last conscious thought scatters into oblivion that he realizes he’s matched his breathing to hers.)





Scott startles awake as the bus groans to a stop, hydraulics heaving a short, sharp sigh. Something jostles his feet from side to side, and he peels back the brim of his beanie just in time to see Tessa’s fingers release his sneaker. She’s already up and picking her way to the front of the bus before he so much as musters the energy to yawn. Hunched forward in some approximation of a stretch, he releases a long, low groan.

Ultraviolet dots dance across his vision, and he scrubs a hand over his face.

His body is the human-equivalent of barely-set jello, and his mind isn’t faring much better. Maybe it’s because he’s older, or maybe it’s because this is what truly giving your all feels like, but he doesn’t remember feeling this tired after their Sochi skates.

Tessa turns back to him, eyes bright, and waves him forward.

Gracelessly, he stands and makes his way to her side. Through the tinted windows he catches glimpses of bouncing teammates who’ve swarmed the bus. The effect is swift and complete, like a shot of espresso, and the exhaustion that had been clinging to him dissipates entirely. Of all the obligations they’ve had since winning gold, partying the night away with the rest of Team Canada is the only one Scott doesn’t mind fulfilling.

Patrick bangs on the door, a dumb, too-big grin on his face, and the driver looks at them sheepishly. The red and white army of cheer won’t be kept waiting much longer.

Tessa gazes at him through dark lashes. Together? Her lips curl into a soft smile and she offers him her hand.

He fits his palm into hers. Together.

Scott nods at the driver, and braces himself for what awaits them at the foot of the stairs.