Notes

“Bandmates?” Tessa says to him, low, after their Gold Medal Plates speech is over. They’ve relocated to a corner high-top and everyone is distracted listening to Johnny and Miku perform, but she still glances around before repeating herself. “Really, bandmates?”

Scott rolls his eyes, nudges her knee with his, but says nothing.

It doesn’t come up again until later that evening, when they’re sprawled across her bed during a late-night work session for the Thank You Canada Tour.

“We’re gonna have to do better than bandmates during tour press,” she says, running down the list of proposed media stops that Russell’s sent them. She glances up when he doesn’t respond, startled to find his jaw set and a hard glint in his eyes.

“Always happy to find a less complicated label, T,” he says, unexpectedly sharp.

It’s one of their more recent arguments, but it’s gotten so much play in the past few months that she feels like she knows it by heart -- forward, backward, transposed to a different key. Scott is stuck on the idea that they can’t just call themselves best friends, because that would be lying, but every other transparent metaphor he’s come up with to describe their connection makes her roll her eyes (because business partners and bandmates isn’t lying, somehow).

They even brought the argument to JF after Korea, spending one of their precious afternoons before Stars on Ice in his office, bickering in carefully controlled tones. He eventually told them they needed to resolve the issue of their relationship together, but to agree to disagree and take turns addressing the issue in public until they did. It’s more or less what they ended up doing, but privately, Tessa thought it was the therapy version of giving up.

Here’s the thing: They sleep in the same bed more often than they don’t. They have sex. Neither of them have dated anyone else for almost two years. But they’re not in a relationship, mostly because that would require them to have talked about it. To some degree, their disagreement over what to label their bond publicly is a proxy for another disagreement entirely.

Scott’s patience with their word game is wearing thin, she knows. It wasn’t an issue during training, when they weren’t constantly being asked about it, but neither of them could have anticipated the wave of public interest after Pyeongchang. They always meant to have a real discussion, but between travel and tours and all the logistics, it just hasn’t happened. Plus, it’s not like it’s her job to initiate it -- at this point, she’s kind of over his resentment.

“I don’t know, is ‘fuck buddies’ too close to ‘friends’ for you?” she says, unnecessarily harsh.

He sighs, long and slow. “You don’t mean that,” he says, almost to himself. There’s no pleading in his voice, just resignation.

“No,” she admits, and goes back to her emails.

There are practical reasons to lie to the public that have nothing to do with how she feels about whatever they’re doing. It’s just… easier to keep things quiet in case it goes south, so they aren’t stuck answering nosy questions for the rest of their lives. In case they need to bail out their professional partnership before the whole thing goes down in flames. In case he leaves her again, like he did before Sochi. In case he decides he wants someone else, like he did after Sochi.

She trusts that it’s not just skating that keeps them together, now. But it’s still easier to convince herself that she won’t fall apart if there’s nothing to fall apart about.

(“I was with Jess for five years!” he said plaintively, the first and only time they had discussed it. When she had gotten out of his bed over two years ago, the word mistake on her lips. “I hadn’t even dated anyone else! Of course I wasn’t ready to be with you then, I was a fucking idiot --”

“At least we agree on that,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.)

They finish up their work after midnight, a little muted, and Scott starts packing up like he’s going to leave.

“Are you going back to your room?” she asks, surprised.

He shrugs. “Didn’t think you wanted me around tonight.” The tension is radiating off of him.

She closes her eyes, reminds herself to meet him halfway, that he can’t read your mind, you need to tell him what you’re thinking, and all the other well-worn phrases from their years of therapy. She still has to actively reach for them in moments like this and feels guilty for it, like she should have absorbed their lessons by now.

“I do want you around,” she says, and the cautious expression on his face makes her feel even worse. She gets up off the bed and reaches for him, buries herself in his arms and the crook of his neck, breathes in his familiar smell.

He hesitates at first, then folds her body against him, quiet. “Sure?” he asks, into her hair.

She nods, kissing his neck, his jaw, until he finally starts to relax. “I always want you around,” she says into his ear, instead of an apology. She thinks maybe he heard it anyway, the way he turns to capture her lips in his, his tongue soothing. She ups the ante, tugging at his bottom lip with her teeth, pressing her hips into his. He’s half hard when they break apart.

He has that heavy-lidded, dazed look that she loves on him. “You know you make me a little crazy, right?” He tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear, cradling her cheek. “And not in like, a fun way.”

“I know,” she says, repentant. She reaches up for his hand, tangling her fingers with his. “You don’t have to stay.”

He huffs a laugh, but kisses her again, so she knows she’s forgiven.

(“I’m not blaming you that I’m like, your go-to rebound,” she said. Even though she was, a little. “I’m just saying that both of us should probably make better decisions.”

“You’re not a -- you know,” he said, hurt. It was almost funny, how he couldn’t say it. “I can’t believe you could ever think that.”

She shrugged. “It’s been what, two months since Kaitlyn? What do you call it, then?”)

They get ready for bed more or less silently. Her nighttime routine is more complex than his, and she finds him shirtless and thumbing through her copy of Exit West by the time she slides under the covers next to him.

“Hi,” he says, glancing down curiously at her, his eyes flicking back to the novel.

“Hi.”

There’s a pause. “Want the light off?”

She shakes her head.

He sets the book down on her bedside table, careful not to disturb her bookmark. “Anything you wanna talk about?”

She considers this. “Maybe later.”

Another, longer pause. “Anything you don’t want to talk about?”

“Oh, you know.” She shrugs, keeping up the faux-innocent act even as she reaches into his boxers and wraps her hand around his cock. He doesn’t say anything, just inhales sharply and pushes the duvet off of them. She rewards him by yanking down his boxers, settling herself between his thighs, and taking him into her mouth.

They’re terrible at talking, but when it comes to this -- they understand each other perfectly.

He groans and fists his hands in her hair the way she likes and she grins. It’s hard to make eye contact at this angle but she manages anyway; the stutter in his hips and his “oh, fuck, Tess,” is completely worth the jolt of pain in her neck. She takes him even deeper then, choking him down her throat once, twice, three times before he pushes her off him, letting her get her breath back before tugging her up for a kiss.

“How are you even real,” he croaks, when they break apart. She doesn’t say anything in response, just runs her palm down his chest, his twitching abs, utterly satisfied by how wrecked she’s made him.

She expects things to move quickly after that, but he seems strangely determined to take it slow; he coaxes her to settle onto his thighs and they stay kissing for a long, long time. He takes off her shirt and underwear deliberately, biting at her lips and touching her so gently she can barely stand it. By the time she sinks onto him, she’s keyed-up and a little bit desperate, shifting her hips and sighing at the thick feel of him inside of her.

“Okay?” He asks after few beats, and she nods, starting to move. He grasps her hips, squeezes her ass, murmuring encouragement while letting her set the pace. Something about his expression as he watches her is hard to look at; she leans forward to kiss it away.

It’s good. It always is, with Scott, and it doesn’t take long before she’s close. But for some reason she’s stuck on a plateau, can’t quite get there -- she’s riding him fast and hard; he’s moving his thumb against her, thrusting up into her, but it’s not enough. She’s stubborn to a fault, keeps trying for far too long, until every muscle in her body is pulled taut and tears of frustration are clogging her throat.

“Scott,” she says, and it comes out as a whimper; one look at him and she can tell he’s been waiting for her to ask. He pulls her down to kiss her reassuringly and slides her off of him, withdrawing so he can begin kissing his way down her body.

She starts shaking her head, pulls him back up. “I want to feel you,” she says, tightly, and he nods, settling between her thighs. She wraps herself around him, feeling half-frantic. Presses her forehead against his, trying to absorb the calm in his eyes.

“I’m here,” he breathes. Fits himself against her, pushes into her slow and deep. “Relax, T.”

She closes her eyes, inhaling him. Tries to lose herself in the slide of his chest against hers, his hands wrapped around her shoulders, the way he fucks into her with hard, steady strokes. She curls her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, feeling its length and how it marks him as different. There’s no mistaking him for a younger, more careless version of himself, she thinks. They’ve both changed and grown in the last five years. The evidence is right there.

The change in position is working, and he’s picking up the pace as she lifts her hips to meet his. She can tell he’s close by the way his breathing changes, the way his thrusts get more erratic. He reaches down to brush his thumb against her clit, shifting his weight slightly to allow better access; the change in angle hits something inside of her that makes her mouth drop open.

“Scott,” she moans, involuntary, suddenly on the verge of being pulled under all at once.

“Come for me, T,” he says roughly, like he’s coaching her through it. She can do anything in his arms. He finds the angle again, drives into her with the same precise focus he uses during training, applying pressure and friction ruthlessly, over and over and over again, until she has no choice, until her body moves for him exactly the way he wants --

She comes so hard she can barely breathe. Her orgasm rolls through her, powerful and inevitable as the tide, breaking like the waves. She feels like she’s drowning. Distantly, she recognizes that he’s coming too, trembling above her, panting her name, and she clings to him as tightly as she can. When she emerges from its depths, gasping, tears leaking out of her eyes and the taste of him in her mouth, he’s right there.

He’s gazing at her with that expression again, the one that makes her feel like it’s too much and not enough, all at once, even when he’s still inside of her. She used to want him to look at her like this more than any gold medal.

She closes her eyes, takes a few steadying breaths. Thinks of the walking tour they went on yesterday, the sacking of Antwerp. How the guide said the city was never the same again, even though it had five hundred years to recover.

(“I’ll wait,” he said, so gentle it made her want to cry. “I’ll wait as long as you need.”)

His weight is pressing down on her, anchoring. “I love you,” she says, against his skin. They’ve said it to each other innumerable times before, but the words come out like she’s giving in to the undertow after a long, exhausting struggle. It feels like defeat, like an admission: Take what you want.

“Tess, look at me,” Scott says quietly, and she does. There’s no triumph in his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, and kisses her until she thinks she might believe it.