Work Text
Montreal, Quebec
July 2019
“Scott.”“Mhm.”“Scott. Hey.”“Mhmmm.”“Scott, the dog needs to go.”Three seconds of blissful silence. Scott is still teetering on the edge of sleep, determined to keep his eyes shut and feeling overly confident she’ll leave him alone and go back to sleep if he just doesn’t budge at all.That strategy works for a grand total of three seconds, when her hot breath is suddenly right in his ear.“I said the dog needs to go. I’m not sleeping with this racket the entire night.”“Are you for real, Tess?” He groans and reluctantly turns to his side, partly to escape Tessa’s jabbing fingers but mostly because she isn’t making any sense. The room is
perfectly quiet – duh, it must be
three in the morning
– and the only
person producing any noise at all i—
"GGGGHHHNNNNNN."
Tessa leaps up from the bed so suddenly he doesn’t have time to avoid the duvet when it whacks him in the face
and she springs to her feet,
any chance of Scott or the Border Collie wedged between them getting back to sleep now ruined.The snoring stops abruptly and Oscar pops his head
out of
the folds of the duvet
where he had
buried his snout, giving Tessa his best and most innocent head tilt.“That won’t work on me tonight, buddy.” She clutches the blanket she stripped off the bed to her chest and points a finger at him, which he looks at like he’s wondering if she’s got anything on there he can lick off.“Tess, c’mere, get back in bed.” Scott pats the mattress next to him,
willing his eyes shut again and pulling the duvet up to his chin. “Oz, you be quiet now, ‘kay?”Oscar gives him a look and yawns, digging his paws in the duvet to stretch his legs. Then he gets up, pads to the spot near Scott’s feet and curls himself into a ball.“See?” Scott says, one sleepy eye on the dog and the other on Tessa. “Issall good now.”“To you it is, you sleep like a corpse. You would be dead if there was ever a burglar in the house.”“That’s not true. I would fight him off with my baton like a real man.” He flexes his
biceps – or at least, that’s what he thinks he does when in reality, he’s merely balling his hands into fists – and chuckles softly to himself, even though his words are a little slurred and they don’t sound nearly as heroic as he was aiming for.“Oh, really? What are you using as your baton?” Her feet are tapping on the hardwood floor, the sign of near defeat Scott had been waiting for.He pats the bed again, opening his arms this time with a naughty little grin that’s spreading on his face. This is only the first night they’re sleeping in the same bed together - somehow, they’d never made it to "the morning after" part of
stumbling into
a bedroom and having sex
before (that is, until they had been handed the keys
of their
new place a few hours earlier) -
but his tiredness is making him
exceptionally cheeky. “I’ll show you if you come back here.”The tapping on the floor stops. A moment later, there’s a gush of cold air and weight on the covers, and Tessa presses her face into his neck. “I was nice enough to let you keep him, but he can't sleep here in the room.”“Mhmm?” He rubs his nose against her jawline, stubbornly stretching his toes and not quite ready to give in yet. “Can’t he stay here in the bed with us?”“Mattress,” she corrects him, kissing the corner of his cheek and lingering a little longer when she thinks how good that - he
- they - feels. “We don’t have a bed yet, remember?”“Isss arriving t'morrow mornin'. I called 'em earlier t’day.”“Good, then Ozzy can sleep in his own kingsize bed
tonight. I’m gonna get a glass of water, will you get him settled before I get back?”Her question isn't so much a question as it is a nicely phrased order. He wants to say something but she’s gone before he gets the chance, leaving another gust of cool air in her wake.
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When she returns to the bedroom five minutes later, Oscar is (almost) exactly where she wanted him: on the floor next to the mattress – only Scott is lying on the floor next to him, surrounded by
the dozens of boxes they haven't unpacked yet and the sheets bunched up by his chest where he pulled them off the bed.Scott is fast asleep, but Oscar's head shoots up and his ears turn when he hears her. They share a moment of quiet eye contact in the dark, peaceful room that’s only officially been theirs
for
ten
hours, Tessa squinting and Oscar moving his ears around.I don’t know why, but I have a feeling I’m gonna have my hands full with you, she thinks to herself
when she tiptoes to the mattress and takes Scott’s spot so she can at least reach for him. The last thing she sees before closing her eyes is Oscar putting his head down and tucking his snout under Scott’s chin.If she didn’t know any better, she’d think he’s trying to show her who’s really getting all the love now.
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It takes a year before Tessa gives up on trying to get Oscar to sleep on his own bed or in another room.He just won’t. He’s every bit as stubborn as his owner in that regard, and they share the same puppy eyes she simply can’t resist.Slowly but surely, the snoring becomes part of her nightly routine. Before she even realizes it, but long after Kate has sensed the change in her daughter, she has turned from a cat person into a committed dog owner who will scour the internet for three days
in a row in search of matching Christmas pajamas for Oscar when almost the entire Virtue-Moir clan gathers at their house
for the holidays.Another four years later, when Oscar is no longer the only one sleeping in the bed with them but there’s also a fast asleep little three-year-old lying sideways across the newly added pillow in the middle, Tessa can’t imagine
chasing any of them
out of
her bed anymore. She has an entirely decorated nursery down the hallway she's only ever used to change diapers and rock her baby in the rocking chair when he still cried at night, and she's perfectly okay with that.She slips between the sheets easily, a motion she's used to – she’s the only one out of the four of them who’s not a morning person and therefore usually the last one to go to sleep – and checks to make sure Oscar can breathe before she snuggles up next to Rylee (who’s using Oscar’s head as a pillow for his legs).“Kiddo okay?” Scott mumbles from his side of the bed when she digs her cold toes into his calf. His arm comes up and
fumbles around the covers for a while until he finds her left ear, which he starts rubbing with a smile on his face.“Kiddo okay,” she murmurs, sighing happily despite the hell of a media night she’s had and the hours she had to
suffer on the most uncomfortable heels she’s ever worn. “Rylee okay?”“Rylee okay,” he nods, snuggling up closer to the little boy who's snoring softly inches away from his face and wrapping his leg around hers.“Ozzy okay?” she asks.“Oz okay. Want me to kick him out?"She
smiles despite the yawn building up in her chest, because she knows he only still asks her that question to mock her for the year
she spent stubbornly trying to seduce Oscar with treats and toys, anything that would get him to sleep downstairs. He never fell for any of her tricks."No, he can stay.""Good. Misssed you today, Virtch.
Coaching isssn't the same wizout you.”“I missed you guys too. So terribly much.”There’s a dog and an awkwardly positioned toddler squished between the two of them, but she still manages to lace her fingers through his and simultaneously press a kiss to Rylee’s knee. "Can you promise me we'll do this until Rylee gets sick of us?""What, let him sleep with us?" He sounds more awake now than he did a moment ago, and she sees the
glimmer of his eyes in the dark."Yes. We might need a bigger bed in the future, though.""I'll build you a bigger bed.""Or we'll buy one," she says quickly, remembering the one time he hid in the garage for six hours and showed her a poorly constructed front yard rink when he finally emerged at the end of the day, one they
had never skated on because
the ice was far too bumpy - even
for the most decorated figure skaters in history."Or we'll buy one," he agrees, prodding her calf with his heel.She breathes in deeply, pure happiness bubbling up in her throat. She locks eyes with him over the dark mess of hair between them and smiles. “I love you, you know that?”“The dog, the kiddos or me?” Scott asks, a grin in his voice.“All of you,” she replies. When she sighs again, it contains five of the happiest years of her life; five years of falling asleep in the middle of incoherent midnight conversations with her best friend, four years of having a snoring dog at the end of their feet (or right in their faces, if they let him on rare occasions), three years of co-sleeping with their baby, two years of watching Rylee and Ozzy grow into the best of friends, one year of dreaming about a second baby, and seven months of sharing her body with another little person who's yet to meet all of them.When Scott’s hand finds its way under the covers and onto her round belly, she’s already drifting off to sleep. Long after the room is completely silent again, his last words still hang in the air, there to stay forever.“I love you too. All four of you.”