Work Text:
October 2015
“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?” Marie-France asks him, handing him a plate from the dishwasher, apropos of nothing.
He sighs, her face echoing his thoughts. The confirmatory dinner today was electric, an excitement that was palpable on each of their faces. But now, after returning to the quiet of their home, it makes room for other thoughts. Doubts. Questions.
They of all people, know what it’s like to work so singularly for one thing, only to have it whisked away at the last second. It’s been 9 years since the 2006 Olympics, and Patrice still has flashbacks to his wife on the ice, a lift gone horribly wrong, their dreams melting on the ground.
Is it fair then, to aid and abide in something similar for two kids they both love dearly? A team that has already experienced their share of disappointment. To hold their hand and lead them into the lion’s den, and disrupt the writing on the wall of a French victory? To let history repeat itself? To set such a singular goal of an Olympic medal two years from now, despite the possibility of anything and everything getting in the way?
He pictures it then, Tessa and Scott at PyeongChang, atop the podium. The Canadian flag behind them, hearing their anthem. A win not only for them, but him and Marie-France as well. It’s dangerous, but the sparks of excitement and competition roar again, high and loud enough to dampen whatever doubts he has. He wants this, he wants this for Tessa and Scott, and for Marie and him.
It’s easy when he looks at her, sure of his answer. “Yes.”
---
February 2016
It’s different this time around. They make sure of it. Tessa and Scott will always be their babies, but they’re also adults with a strong conviction of how they want the two years to pan out. Its exhilarating and refreshing, working so collaboratively with a team. It’s a completely new side of coaching and training, one that the Gadbois coaching team didn’t even know existed. Neither did Tess and Scott.
He knows what they have is unique. This set up is unparalleled to anything out there. He finds a new joy in coaching and going to competitions. He gets swallowed up in the excitement, feels it seeping into his life outside the rink.
“Billie-Rose,” Patrice walks into the kitchen, his daughter and wife doing homework at the island. “Want to get some skating in at the rink tomorrow?”
“Yes!” she looks up, her eyes sparkling.
“On a Sunday?” Marie-France asks softly.
He averts his gaze. “Yeah,” he goes for nonchalance, filling a glass of water at the sink.
“Who else is going to be there?” Billie-Rose asks, oblivious to the silent conversation her parents are sharing.
Patrice coughs around a sip, “Tess and Scott.”
His daughter claps her hands happily. “Good, they’re my favourite!”
“Patch,” Marie-France says lowly, a warning note.
“They just need to try a new lift,” he defends. It sounds weak, even to his ears. He meets his wife’s eyes, holds her gaze, and sighs as the fight leaves them.
“I’ll come with,” she says. Simple, easy.
Tessa and Scott aren’t just their daughter’s favourite. And it’s a dangerous, dangerous, thing.
---
September 2016
“How did you know?” Scott takes a drag of his beer.
The bar is quiet on a Wednesday night, an older crowd and soft jazz. Guillaume and Zach had seen him and Scott out for beers one night and it had been awkward to say the least. They’d relegated to somewhere farther away from the rink. More inconspicuous, a lot more sleazy.
“Know what?” Patrice bats back.
Scott is tracing the ring of condensation on the table, his finger coming away with black smudge. It’s a good thing the girls aren’t here with them.
“You and Marie,” Scott stills. He pauses for a long moment, enough for Patrice’s pity and amusement to fight it out. The amusement wins as Scott tries again. “Weren’t you scared?”
Terrified more like it. But being with her, taking that step forward was the best decision he’s ever made in his life. He has a daughter as proof.
“It’s different,” he says instead. Because it is. He and Marie didn’t have twenty years of history. He wants to pry, ask a thousand questions, and then run off and spill it all to his wife.
“Right, of course,” and then Scott clams up.
It’s later, when they’re paying the tab and heading home that Patrice finally speaks up. “It doesn’t have to change anything on the ice. In fact, it could make it better.”
Scott stops mid-step, look at Patrice all tense, and then like a balloon letting its air out, his shoulders sag.
---
March 2017
He doesn’t know if anything changes between them. They’re skating better than ever, their blades cutting the ice with more power than he thought possible. They’re more in tune than they’ve ever been, and it translates into their holds, the synchronicity on ice, the story they tell through their programs.
They’re so good, that even with Scott’s fall during the free, they easily capture the gold at Worlds. He knows Gabi and Guillaume are unhappy, that the French Skating Organization are fuming, and the ISU will be ensuring a different outcome for the next cycle.
He hears the murmurs and whispers, knows that Marie-France has heard them, that obviously, so have Tessa and Scott.
The first thing that anyone says at the next B2ten meeting when they sit to plan the 2017-2018 cycle is, “How do we prevent another Sochi?”
He looks at his wife and remembers her words from so many moons ago. Do you think we’re doing the right thing? And he thinks of the opportunity of continuing to work with the best ice dance team in history, who somehow, keep finding ways to improve and push the envelope.
He finds his answer hasn’t changed.
May 2017
Tessa’s sister is visiting. She’s watching them skate from the boards, is mostly keeping to herself while the rest of the team is out on the ice. He stands beside her, letting them hash out choreography. He’s more of the technical guy, Sam and Marie take care of the artistic side of things.
“Again,” Sam yells, carefully stroking to the boards. Jordan stifles a laugh at how awkward he is on skates. Patrice bites his lip, knowing how tetchy Sam gets when anyone mocks his lack of skating skills.
The 70s rock music blares out over the speakers. Bless those two for being daring and different in their musical choices this year. They run through the no touch step sequence, Tessa fumbling over a step. Marie pauses the music to work through the move and they start again.
Its another typical day of training and Patrice glances over to Jordan who has her phone out. He wonders why she’s here, what she could possibly be getting out of this.
“What?” Jordan catches him looking.
“Don’t you get bored watching them train?”
She glances up, a smirk slowly taking over her face. “Not when I get moments like that.”
Patrice follows her gaze and quickly looks away, his face suddenly hot. Yes, he knows that the programs this year are decidedly more… sexual. He knows that ever since Worlds things have been… different between Tessa and Scott. He doesn’t think they’ve necessarily changed anything in their relationship, sure that Scott would have told him something. But he knows that they’re getting closer to falling off the precipice, particularly with how frequent occurrences like that are.
Jordan catcalls loudly beside him, causing him to jump. Out in the centre of the rink, Tessa and Scott break apart, from where his face was buried in her neck, her back pressed to his front. Patrice is sure he and Marie were in a similar position, moments before they conceived Billie-Rose.
He clears his throat and rushes off to do some actual work, face still burning, leaving behind a cackling Jordan. The difference between him and Tessa’s sister is that he’s their coach. And, he still sees them, to borrow his wife’s phrase, like their ‘little babies.’
---
September 2017
It’s a late Saturday night, and Patrice just wants to get home. He can’t though because Tessa and Scott are still in the change rooms after a long and gruelling practice. Normally, he wouldn’t hesitate to bang on the doors and tell them to hurry up, but it was a tough day, with Tessa’s shins acting up and a near fall during a lift.
He waits it out another fifteen minutes and sighs. “Go home,” he tells Romain.
“You sure?” the other coach asks, already on his feet.
“Yes. It’s my turn to lock up anyways.” He waits another five minutes after Romain leaves before he gives up and goes in search of the two. He’s about to turn the corner of the change room when he pauses.
That’s Tessa crying. He makes to round the final few steps, to make sure she’s alright, when he hears a voice
“T.” Thank God, Scott’s with her. “Let me take you home. We can continue this there. Patrice and Romain need to go.”
Patrice frowns. He’s not sure what the first half hour consisted off, but Scott needs a lesson in what constitutes proper comfort.
“No! It’s all his fault anyways. He can wait.”
Who’s fault?
“Come on, T. I told you already. It was one conversation a year ago. It’s not like Patch forced me into-“
“He told you it would make things better. We were such a mess out there today!”
What the fuck is going on? Why are they blaming him? Patrice has half a mind to barge in there and demand an explanation. He stays rooted in his spot instead, any qualms of eavesdropping all forgotten.
Scott sighs. “Everybody has bad days.”
“Not us,” Tessa argues, a rare petulant tone to her voice.
Scott groans. Then Patrice hears a bag shuffling and footsteps getting closer. He panics, turning around when Tessa makes both him and Scott stop.
“Why haven’t you done it again?”
It takes Scott a year to answer. “What?”
“You just – last night. And you haven’t said anything since.”
“I was waiting for you to say something.” There’s pure disbelief in Scott’s voice and not even a gold medal could make Patrice leave right now. Scott’s next words are so soft, that Patrice has to strain to hear them. “I’m still waiting.”
He doesn’t hear Tessa’s answer. He does hear a thud and a gasp and then –
He sticks his head around the corner, and – oh. Yeah. That’s definitely Tessa and Scott making out against the lockers.
Patrice rushes out of the locker room and the rink. It can do without being locked for a night. Besides, he has so much to share with his wife.
---
December 2017
“You would think,” Marie-France says to him as they watch Tessa and Scott do a final run through before they fly off to the Grand Prix Finale, “that they would tone it down a little now that they’re finally together.”
Patrice snorts into his coffee. When they’re sharing the rink with the other skaters, they’re the ultimate professionals. So much so, that most of the other teams don’t know that Tessa and Scott are officially together. But when it’s just them…
They’ve just finished a run through of the free and have pulled out of the final pose. Scott’s whispering something into Tessa’s neck and it looks innocent. Except, Patrice can see the steadily growing redness in Tessa’s cheeks and the way she angles her head so Scott has better access. They remind him of when he and Marie first got together and he’s torn, once again, between pride for them finally giving into their feelings, and the strong desire to never have to see his babies doing… that. He can still picture them as teenagers.
“That does not look like skating,” Patrice calls out.
Scott pulls away, and flips him off.
They didn’t do that as teenagers either.
---
“You were right,” Scott says to him when they’re at the airport. The blessed thing about the Grand Prix Finale is that everyone goes off to their own homes for the holidays right after. It leaves just him and Tessa and Scott. Well, just him and Scott. Tessa’s in the bathroom.
Patrice just raises his eyebrows. The past week was exhausting, the fix so blatant, the loss heartbreaking. Marie’s words from two years ago a constant loop in his head. He isn’t so sure if he was right.
“Thing are better now that we’re together.”
And - oh. Scott’s not talking about the singular goal of a gold Olympic medal. He’s talking about being with Tessa.
“What’s better?” Tessa returns, slipping easily under Scott’s arms.
“Everything,” Scott replies, letting his head rest on hers.
It’s not though. There’s still the whole matter of winning the gold medal at PyeongChang which seems much harder than ever. Tessa draws back to look at Scott. Despite sharing so much of the past two years with them, Patrice feels like an outsider then, intruding on a private moment.
“He’s right,” Tessa says, looking back at Patrice. He’s still torn up about the second place that he misses the small smirk on her face. “We’ve discovered a better way to lick our wounds.”
It takes him a moment to fully understand what she’s saying. His mouth falls open. “I’ve known you since you were children.”
They burst into laughter while he stares at them in shock. Later, when they’re waiting in line to board, they flank him on either side.
“Cheer up, Patch,” Scott grins. “Just need to rework some things. There’s still time till February.”
He has a long flight to think, to reflect on what they’ve accomplished the past two years. What they still have left to do. The loss is just as poignant when he steps into his home and into Marie’s arms, but their contagious fire and determination is even stronger. He answers Marie’s question before she even asks it.
“This will always have been the right thing.”
---
February 2018
When they had to withdraw from the 2006 Olympics, after they cried for weeks, Patrice finally came to terms that his Olympic dream was over.
Twelve years later, he realises it was a bit premature.
They might not be out on the ice with Tessa and Scott, but Marie-France and he have been with them every step of the way. This journey has been theirs, together. He watches them through the team event, coaches them in between, and then feels his heart in his throat during the individual skates. He finally makes it to the Kiss and Cry, an agreement amongst the coaches that he and Marie would only sit with Tessa and Scott.
It’s only years of practice that allow him to sit still beside Tessa. The crowd is deafening, nearly managing to drown out the sound of his heart in his ears. He feels nauseas from the nerves. He knows that they’ve laid down an amazing skate, indubitably a gold medal worthy skate, but he saw the absurdly high score from two skates ago, and nothing can be certain.
Until.
Until, it is.
He watches them embrace, sees their twenty years encompassed in that hug, and thinks of how things are definitely better now. He catches his wife’s eye and he can no longer keep his composure, feels himself shake with jubilation and laughter. No fantasy could compare to the reality of now, this moment, and he sinks into a hug with all of them.
Fuck, yes, he thinks, clasping Marie’s hand in his own, as they belt out the national anthem in French. They did the right thing.