Chuck Versus Thin Ice
By Steampunk . Chuckster
Summary: On the doorstep of the Olympics, top American curler Sarah Walker has lost her mixed doubles partner and her boyfriend in one fell swoop. Her coaches throw newbie Team U.S.A. curler Chuck Bartowski onto her team and thrust them into the Olympics, hanging America's curling hopes on two people who only have a short amount of time to learn to trust one another.
A/N: I'm goin' as fast as I can! Side note: I'm not saying my CHUCK fan fiction about Olympic curling is magical or something, but the U.S. men's curling team has gotten into the gold medal Olympic curling match for the first time since curling was put back into the Olympics, and are ending up with either silver or gold . . . You can infer whatever you'd like . . . (shines knuckles on shirt) (puts sunglasses on)
Disclaimer: I own exactly nada having to do with CHUCK. Which means no dinero is being made from this fic.
Sarah shook her head at how idiotic this all was.
"Pass me a beer already," came the hiss from behind her.
Casey turned and practically growled over his shoulder at the frustrated woman behind him. "Hold your damn horses!"
Anna Wu made a quiet "ugh" sound and Sarah could practically hear her eye-roll to go with it.
He finally pushed the door open with his free hand and held it for everyone else to file in: Tyler, Chuck, Jane, Mark, Anna, and Sarah bringing up the rear.
"Let there be liiiiiight!" Chuck sang, and the lights above the furthest curling sheet on the rink illuminated it. "Be-a-ootiful," he added.
"Where are the rest of 'em?" Anna asked, smoothing her hand down the black skirt she always wore over ripped tights and Doc Martens that looked straight out of The Craft.
"No need to turn all of the lights on. Don't want anyone to wonder who's in the building at one in the morning, do you?" Chuck shrugged. "This way we can play in peace."
"Namaste!" Tyler exclaimed, slapping his hands together and bowing.
"Ugh, that's so inappropriate," Anna said, shoving the side of Tyler's head.
"Wot?!" the British American hobbit-resembling curler asked defensively, laughing as he trotted off to grab the equipment. The rest of them followed behind, picking out their brooms, grabbing the stones and hefting everything over to the sheet of ice Chuck had lit up.
Chuck shut the box where the electrical controls were and slung his curling shoes over his shoulder, coming up to stand next to her. "So…Maybe I'm gonna sound dumb asking this question, but why did Casey swear me to secrecy about this late night drink-curling escapade?" he asked. "He said especially don't tell Jeffster."
"Have you met them?" Sarah asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah. I mean, they're…" He cleared his throat. "They're really weird and sort of…um…"
"Inappropriate?"
"Yep."
She smirked at how quickly he answered. "That's why they're not officially on the team. But they're good curlers so it helps to have them around. Honestly, I don't know what they do with their personal lives outside of when they're at training sessions, and I really don't want to know." She shook her head.
"Oh. Those types of guys, huh? I mean, I'm not surprised."
"I think they live in Jeff's van, but I can't be sure."
Chuck shrugged. "Checks out."
She snorted and led him around the other sheets to where their teammates were setting up and getting their shoes on. She noticed Anna had already finished a beer, crushing the can in her small hand in a way that made Casey look almost unnerved as he watched her.
"We did this once before, prior to you being recruited onto the team. It was a few weeks before a big tournament and we wanted to go all out. Sort of a bonding situation. Jeff and Lester nearly got themselves arrested. I think Jeff had frostbite, actually, once everything was over and done with." She spun to give her an incredibly confused look and she held up a hand. "Don't ask how. I have no freakin' clue how the hell he got frostbite. None of us asked any questions." He shivered and she agreed completely.
"So any time we're doing something that's a little…bad," she bounced her shoulder and gave him an innocent look, "and especially if it involves alcohol, we don't tell them."
"I like that policy. I'd prefer not to get arrested a month and a half before the Olympics."
"Me, too," she chirped.
It was just as they finished the second end, a black trash bag in the corner full of beer cans already, when Sarah heard the door to the rink open. She glanced over her shoulder, mid-laugh at something Tyler had said, to see Coach Diane Beckman's small but fierce outline in the doorway.
"Shit," she breathed. "Guys." Nobody seemed to hear her. "Guys!" She reached out and twisted her fist in the shirt of the person closest to her, which just so happened to be Chuck.
"Wha—Oh no. Oooh boy," he mumbled.
The diminutive woman walked slowly into the room as their teammates realized what was happening one by one. Sarah heard Jane murmur a quiet, "We're screwed."
They were silent, then, watching as she approached.
"Seriously?" Beckman asked, the flattest, drollest look on her face.
"Wanna beer, General?" Tyler asked, breaking the silence with his favorite nickname for their coach. "It's like piss 'cause Casey's got broken taste buds, but beer is beer, as a scholar once said."
"What scholar?" Mark asked from where he stood off to the side, his brush propped on his shoulder.
"Just…a scholar, man, I dunno."
Sarah stayed with her gaze fixed on their coach, an apologetic look on her face as the woman met her eyes. "We're sorry, Coach. It just felt like this last week was really brutal and we needed to unwind. Bonding time, right?"
Nobody responded, and she could feel how everyone was holding their breath.
To the surprise of all of them, though, the stern look on their coach's face broke and she chuckled, shaking her head. "You people are crazy and I don't really know what to do with you, but as long as everyone shows up to the meeting at noon tomorrow, I really can't begrudge you."
Sarah gaped as the coach walked closer still and held out a hand.
"Anna, toss me a beer. If you kids think you had it bad this week, I've had it way worse."
The beer flew threw the air and Beckman caught it in one hand, cracking it open and throwing it back. They all cheered and went back to their game, Beckman joining the team that was one person down as the skipper.
An hour passed, then another, and her teammates were starting to slip a lot more on the ice, eliciting roars of laughter from everyone else. And when the beer ran out, Casey and Anna left to bring back even more.
Eventually Sarah looked up to find her coach sitting in one of the seats in the bleachers pressed into the corner behind the sheet they were playing on. She looked almost like a matriarch, the head of the family, overlooking her wee ones frolicking in front of her, a look of satisfaction on her face.
"I need to sober up before I spend anymore time on this ice or I'll crack my head open," she announced, stepping out and handing her broom off to Mark as she left them behind to join Beckman.
"You don't have to keep me company," the older woman said, waving her off.
"Nah, I just made the teams even."
They sat together for a short time and just watched the game proceed in comfortable silence. Sarah giggled a bit as Tyler slapped Chuck's shoulder while he slid past to sweep a stone Casey had just thrown. Chuck nearly slipped in surprise, but still kept his feet and helped to make Casey's shot pretty much perfect. "HA!" Chuck exclaimed, pointing in the Brit's face. "That's for the colonists! And also India!"
Sarah shook her head and rolled her eyes, covering her face with her hands as Beckman mumbled, "Oh God."
But then a few minutes later, when it was Chuck's team's turn, he pulled Casey and Anna in to strategize the throw he'd be making, and she felt her coach put a hand on her wrist.
"Watch," the woman said. "Look. This is it. This is why."
Sarah furrowed her brow and turned to look at her.
"No, watch!"
She turned back and watched Chuck. He made gestures with his hands, and he got a look on his face. It was almost mischievous, but there was some confidence in it, too. With a tinge of excitement. Casey looked like he was opposed, shaking his head, looking at Chuck like he was crazy. But then eventually he and Anna both shrugged and went back to the house.
"Know why I picked him out of the crowd when I saw him at a bonspiel in Mammoth almost a year ago?" Beckman asked as Chuck used his brush to pull a rock over and dropped down in front of the hack. Sarah shook her head, keeping her eyes on him. "There were hundreds of curlers there. It was a big competition, clubs from all over California getting involved. And his team wasn't big or well-known, clearly a couple of guys who just did it for fun. But out of everyone, Bartowski stood out, even over the players who were professionals or had a lot of experience. It wasn't just that he's stupidly tall."
Sarah snorted. She liked Beckman so much more when she had a few beers in her—not that she disliked her sober.
"But because I saw something in him I didn't see in curlers I've known for years—decades, even. He's crafty. Not in a bad way; I'm not sure that kid's capable of even doing harm to a fly. But you can see his brain working a mile a minute. I got up close so that I could hear what players talked about, the strategizing. And I heard how he was when he talked to his teammates. The things he came up with were," she chuckled and shook her head, "madness. I mean, I remember thinking, 'this kid is crazy'. And I was so surprised by his teammates just going along with it. But then as I watched throughout the day, more often than not, it worked." She widened her eyes. "I figure they must have been used to his off the wall ideas, and it worked enough they figured, 'ya know what? Let's see it' because what'd they have to lose? But it was so interesting, the way he was so attuned to his teammates, but also to other teams. In the hour or so between his matches, his teammates left the arena but he would hang around, watch other teams, listen, study. And you just got the feeling it wasn't that he was being cunning and planning on using it against anyone else."
The younger woman turned to look at Beckman then.
"You know what sets Bartowski apart from any other curler I've ever seen play the game? It isn't just a sport for him, it's more of a, um, a puzzle. He has a math-centric brain." She tapped her temple. "A curling match is an equation to him. And when he solves the equation correctly, he wins. But the thing I appreciate the most about him is that he allows his teammates to solve it with him. If they think they have a better way, he listens. I saw it over and over that day. And, he doesn't know this, but even after I approached him to talk about the game at that tournament, I kept up with where he played and I watched. People attempt circus shots, you know. It's all chance. Sometimes you don't even mean to. Bartowski calculates in his head, though. He does physics or something. I don't know how to describe it. You can almost see the numbers and angles in his eyes. I mean, look."
Sarah switched her gaze back to Chuck as he threw the stone. She could see he was thinking, visualizing. In spite of potentially being buzzed from the beer he'd had.
The rock slid past the hog line, curled around the guard and started to slow as Chuck climbed to his feet. "Hard!" he yelled. "HARRRD!" Anna and Casey both started sweeping in front of the rock once it cleanly cut between the two guards Mark and Greta had placed, and it inched closer and closer to the rock Casey had thrown into the button. "Whoa! Whoa, we're good." They stopped and everyone watched as the rock Chuck threw slowed and snuck right up next to the other rock, freezing against it. He'd buried that brilliantly.
"Oh, shit!" Anna yelled. "What the eff was that, California?!"
"Apparently, we need to get more alcohol into this guy," Jane said, looking up. "Good thing I brought some of Grandma Bentley's whiskey!"
"Why the hell you keep that from us all this time?" Tyler asked as they all filed away from the half-finished game to partake in the whiskey.
"I was waiting for one of you idiots to deserve it," she teased. "Chuck gets first shot."
"Hear, hear!"
Beckman extended a hand out as if to say, See?
Sarah let out a low whistle. "Wow. That delivery was…"
"Almost stupid, wasn't it?"
"I'd say so." She shook her head.
"He comes across as green, I know. And he definitely has a lot to learn. But my God, having a brain like that on the team, and the fact that he has the guts to trust that brain…I had to try. He has the makings of a clinical curler."
Sarah nodded and leaned her chin on her palm. "I understand now. Not that I'd questioned your decision before."
"I also want you to know that's why I pushed to have him put on this mixed doubles team with you. And it's why I pushed for a paid contract with you two as a packaged deal. I wanted it to be Bartowski and Walker. Specifically I wanted him partnering with you."
"Why specifically with me?" she asked, frowning in curiosity.
"He respects the hell out of you, Sarah. More than he respects anybody else here. By far. He trusts your knowledge and your experience, he believes in you and in your talent and skills."
Damn it, Sarah knew she was blushing. The alcohol in her system made it impossible for her to keep it back.
"He'll work with you, Sarah. Not to be cruel and harp on this, when I know it's probably still a very sensitive topic, but Bryce feels he is the best curler we have. That includes you—the actual best curler we have. Had, I should say with Bryce…since he's quit us for good, it sounds like." She sighed. "That pretty boy didn't like deferring to you on decisions. Bartowski's going to listen. He knows you're the best curler; he's seen what you can do in matches. He'll defer to you. Your experience. It goes back to how much he respects you."
Sarah smarted at that and bit back a sour face. "I get it. My boyfriend didn't respect me."
"Now don't take it the wrong way, Sarah. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I just meant he saw you as the inferior curler, the weak link, and it meant communication didn't work between you. It's probably why the team wasn't as successful as it could have been. And no one here has as much respect for your play as that tall gangly idiot currently giving that freaking hobbit a piggyback ride while he takes a shot of whiskey."
She followed Beckman's gaze and, indeed, Chuck was giving Tyler a piggyback ride while Tyler threw back a shot of Jane's grandma's whiskey. She felt a bubble of laughter come up and she let it out, shaking her head. Beckman snorted and shook her both sobered then and Sarah sighed. "Bryce had a way of working against me. And me against him. It felt like…I dunno, like the competition was between us, and not with the other team."
"That makes me sad. It went on for way too long and I let it happen."
Sarah snorted. "You? I was the one in the pointless relationship." Sarah shrugged then. "But it's over now. I have a new partner, one I still haven't played an official match with, by the way, and yet I've already gotten a paycheck for my first two weeks of being a professional curler for the U.S. Curling Federation. You people are crazy.""So sue us for having a bit of faith."
"There's faith and then there's blind faith."
"This is much more viable than anything we've put together so far. You and Chuck." It was rare she heard Beckman use any name other than Bartowski, and she listened a bit closer. "I see something new here. I already see the trust between you two. Only thing that remains to be seen is what you do with it in a few weeks at the bonspiel."
"I won't let you down." She caught herself then. "We won't let you down."
"I know." She put her hand on Sarah's back. "And believe it or not, he said almost the exact same thing. Already on the same page." Sarah smiled at that, ducking her head, trying not to show the shyness she suddenly felt at the thought of Chuck being as determined as she was to make this partnership work. "And that, my dearest pupil, is why I didn't offer this packaged deal to you when you had Bryce as a partner."
It felt much better to know—really know—why Beckman had fought so hard for this, why the federation was going all in on their new team, and doing it so prematurely, before they'd even played an official match together.
She watched Chuck laugh with Mark at the corner of the sheet as they picked up their brooms to continue their game. She still didn't know him. But she was starting to trust him, starting to see why he'd been snatched up by Beckman and brought to their team. And she was ready to do whatever she had to if it meant proving to the federation that their gamble was worth it.
-oooo-
Sarah sat up in bed with a huff. She wasn't nervous. These weren't nerves. She knew what she was about. It was why she'd worked herself into the position she was in. She was the face of American Curling because she was consistent and smart, because she was the best curler in the country.
But she also wasn't so foolish as to think her looks hadn't added to it. She'd been boosted to stardom in this fast-growing sport in the U.S. because she was "modelesque", as one article had described her. Her teammates had teased her about it, passing the article around, and Bryce had belted out a, "Hell yeah she is!" But something she appreciated about her teammates was that while they ribbed her about being the "Disney princess" on the team—which couldn't be further from the truth—she knew it was just teasing, that they respected her as a person and as a player.
The team had become something of a family for her in the last six or seven years. They didn't hold back. No one did. Once you were standing on that sheet, no criticism was off limits. They advised one another, guided, coached, and in the end, they were all better for it.
She was going to the Olympics with some of them in a month. And in two days she and Chuck were headed to Mammoth for a mixed doubles bonspiel—Or "practice", as Beckman had called it.
But she wasn't nervous. Not at all.
Especially not because she was competing with a partner she'd only curled with for a few weeks now, and never in any actual competition besides in the rink with their own teammates.
It was strange, though, how quickly Chuck had settled into his role in their partnership. He listened to her, he learned from her, and he was extremely good at doing what he was asked. But as things became a bit less tentative and more comfortable, he started speaking up, offering alternatives, even thinking outside of the box when strategizing with their coaches. She liked it. It didn't always pan out, and they'd lost against their teammates a few times in scrimmage because he'd missed risky shots instead of doing the safe shot. But when it worked, and it did more often than she'd thought it would, it was so damn hot.
Sarah pushed her hands through her hair and told herself to stop going down that path. It wasn't necessary a sport of athleticism, but of precision and strategy. And she was a student of the game, a lover of the game, so when she saw Chuck deliver rocks like that, and he'd done it enough now for her to know he was capable of really delicious deliveries, it…did something to her.
So sue me.
She glanced over to her nightstand and saw she'd forgotten to grab her usual glass of water that she took to bed with her. Swinging her legs out of bed, she stepped into her slippers and stretched her arms over her head, glancing at the clock. It was almost three in the morning in San Jose. In PyeongChang, it was almost eight in the evening. Maybe her body was already preparing her for the jet lag she knew would come in a few weeks.
Or maybe she was nervous.
This tournament coming up was going to be the ultimate test before the ultimate ultimate test.
Pushing her hair back from her face, she grabbed her sweatshirt from the foot of her bed where she'd thrown it the night before and shrugged it on, yawning so hard it popped her jaw.
She wandered down the dark hallway, pulling her sweatshirt tighter around her and hugging herself tightly to ward off that early morning chill. As she shuffled into the kitchen, she turned on the light and went to the cupboard to grab a glass for water.
When she turned with the glass in hand, she saw someone sitting at the kitchen table. She yelped and bobbled the glass, just barely managing not to drop it.
"Sorry!" Chuck said quickly. "I didn't say anything when you came in because I didn't want to scare you."
"Yeah, how well did that work out?"
He winced, but looked amused in spite of everything.
"What are you doing sitting in the dark, anyway?" she asked, putting her free hand over her heart to try to calm it down. She took a deep, slow breath.
Chuck just shrugged, moving his hands on the mug she finally noticed sitting on the table in front of him. "It was kind of peaceful, with the moonlight coming in and all," he said then, gesturing with a tip of his head towards the window in the living room. "Anyway, I didn't wanna turn on any lights and maybe wake you up or something."
Sarah gave him a long look before going over to the sink and filling her glass with water. She took advantage of the pause to ponder his almost unnecessary thoughtfulness. She'd had a lot of roommates in her twenty-seven years, and most of them weren't great. Clattering pots and pans at five in the morning, bringing guys back and scaring her shitless when she saw random men in their boxers walking down the hallway in the wee hours of the morning. Meanwhile, Chuck Bartowski didn't turn on a light for fear he might wake her up, when her room was all the way at the end of the hallway and she more often than not left her door barely cracked.
She slowly walked over to where he sat at the table, taking a long sip of her water. "You know, you live here, too."
He just blinked up at her, his brow furrowing. She didn't think anything of the fact that she found him kind of cute, all sleepy and rumpled, his curls sticking up everywhere. "I know," he said quietly.
"Mind if I sit?" she asked, gesturing to a chair.
He made a face and pushed it out towards her. "Of course not! This is your table and chairs. You live here."
She merely lifted an eyebrow meaningfully.
Realization swept over his handsome face and he ducked his head and chuckled, shaking his head. "Point taken."
Grinning tiredly, slid into the chair and set her water down on the table. "Really? Because sometimes I feel like you tiptoe around here a little bit, trying not to disturb me or whatever, and it's really nice of you, but, like…don't do that. You're paying half of the rent, half of the utilities, doing half of the grocery shopping. This is your home now, Chuck."
As she put her hand flat on the table, she realized that what she said was true for her, too. This was her home. As different as this situation was, as unorthodox as it was to smash curlers together in nearly every aspect of their lives, the sudden departure of Bryce Larkin—one of the centerpieces of curling Team U.S.A.—had forced their coaches to make big decisions. And so far, it hadn't blown up in their faces. She and Chuck got along well, and their brains were starting to align on the ice, too.
The real test would come in a few days when the Olympic curling competition began and they faced China right off the bat. Then they'd see if this madcap adventure would pay off.
"You're right. This was just such a freakin' sudden…" He huffed, seeming unable to finish the sentence. She understood what he meant, anyway.
"I know. I feel it, too." She sipped her water again. "But I think we're doing okay, don't you?"
"Four weeks in, I'm pretty happy, honestly. This is a lot nicer of an apartment than I've ever had before and I don't have to worry about walking in on my sister and her husband having sex, so that's a major plus."
"Oh, God." Sarah laughed, shaking her head. So he'd lived with Ellie and Devon. That surprised her a little bit, honestly. She knew he'd lived in Los Angeles and came out to Wisconsin when he was recruited for Team U.S.A. not six months earlier. It was a talking point with everyone, and a reason for the guys to rib him about being not just green, but from the golden state. Is there even ice in SoCal? was a popular one. And Chuck took it like a champ.
"Yeah, so thanks for being a couple of steps up from that," he said, chuckling.
"Wasn't that hard. Our schedule's gonna be so freakishly insane, where will I even find the time to have sex?"
It had just slipped out, and she was suddenly aware of the way the room got a little warm, the air a bit tense. She made quick work of changing the subject, though.
"So what are you doing up at this hour?" she asked, acting as though something hadn't just happened, a shift in the air between them.
Chuck let out a long breath and raised his mug to his lips. "Can't sleep, if you can believe it. Thought maybe a little chamomile would help." He lifted his mug again and set it back down, wrapping his hands around it.
"Ah." She paused. "Nervous, huh?"
"Pfffft." He made a face shrugged it off, suddenly switching the look on his face to be very serious. "Yes. Very much so."
His antics made her giggle, something she hadn't done much of before this last month had happened.
"But you've already been to the Olympics, Chuck."
He furrowed his brow, tilting his head. "How'd you know that? I don't think I've told anyone on the team. I mean, not even Becks."
Sarah fought a blush. "I…maybe Googled your sister to see when her event is. And, um, Captain Awesome's, too. It mentioned you in an article. You were in the Olympics for ski jumping, Chuck! That's insane, first of all." He chuckled, looking down at his tea. "And secondly, why don't you tell people that?"
She was a little embarrassed that she hadn't brought it up to him when she first read about it. Now it felt almost weird to admit it. She'd looked into his family, into him. Would he think anything of it? Read into it?
Chuck pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth and sighed. "I don't know. It's not like I really even did all that well. I barely qualified for finals in the very last spot, and even then, I ended up far enough away from the podium. Wasn't really a triumph for American ski jumpers in Sochi." He winced with a hiss through his teeth.
"That's okay. Ski jump isn't really an American…thing."
"Just like curling, hey?" A slow crooked smile grew on his lips and she felt that strange warmth again. "I guess I'm just really into things that Americans aren't supposed to be good at."
"Not a bad thing." Then she shook her head. "But listen, don't…don't let the nerves get to you. I mean, this is our first test, so that's probably why I'm also awake right now. Honestly. I've been trying to tell myself it isn't, because I've been competing in mixed doubles for over three years and should be used to this, but I'm still nervous." She wrinkled her nose and got a smirk out of him.
"Everybody is watching," he said. "Like…everybody. I made the mistake of looking at Twitter."
"Is that why you're awake? Twitter? Oh mannnn. Chuck, come onnn." She giggled at him and shook her head.
He gave her an ashamed look. "I couldn't help it. I wanted to see if anybody was talking about…er, us. I mean our coaches slapping me onto your team this quickly has caused, um, an uproar. That's putting it lightly. The curling fandom wants me to slip on the ice and hit my head."
"What?" She frowned. "People are really saying that?"
"Well, I'm not Bryce. And that's who they were hoping to see. This tournament is streaming like on YouTube, they're all planning to watch it. They're waiting to say 'I told you so' and they suck."
"Yeah. Really. Welcome to my world." She winced and reached out to pat his hand. "Sorry."
"Hey, I'm gettin' paid to do something I enjoy, right?"
"And there's…" She didn't realize it, but her filter was damaged. The walls she usually had up were weak. Maybe it was tiredness. "I have a lot of pressure on me," she admitted. "Which is fine. I kinda like pressure. I feed off of it." She met his warm, amber-colored eyes and she wondered if it was the low lighting or the fact that she was a little groggy that made this the first time she ever noticed how nice his eyes were…
She leaned forward with her chin on her hands, elbows on the tabletop. "The people out there didn't see it but that whole situation was such a mess. Actually, I think the only word that can even come close to describing it is clusterfuck." She huffed. "It was a clusterfuck."
He just nodded, his gaze on her, listening intently to her in a way she felt no one else ever really had before.
"Getting dumped sucks. But having it happen in such a public way…" She took a deep breath. "I think a lot of people who never cared about curling started caring because of me and Bryce. The whole couple curling together part of it drew them in. And having all of those people hanging so much on this relationship they'd romanticized so much in the media, especially leading up to these Olympics…" She groaned, dragging a hand down her face. "When we broke up, the fallout was so insane and I did everything I could to hide from it. So many 'What happened to America's Curling Couple?' hot takes. Hit pieces going after me, the 'Ice Queen', because what could Bryce Larkin, the hottest most charming curler in the country, have done wrong?" She swept her hand trough the air sarcastically and then rolled her eyes. "What's wrong with Sarah Walker? Did the pressure get to be too much for her? Whaaaat a cold hard bitch."
It was silent for a few moments, but it wasn't altogether uncomfortable, she found. And she finally lifted her eyes to his again. He was just sitting there, still listening, a wry look on his face.
She continued.
"I absolutely know what the narrative will be going into these Olympic games, no matter what happens in this bonspiel leading up to it. I know because it's already sort of starting. I'm the face of U.S. curling, yeah?" He nodded. "Everybody thinks Bryce and I had the romance of the century or something. They made it a lot more fascinating and a lot better than it was, though. I mean, it really wasn't that great looking back. It was…It was really just about the sport at the end of the day. The game. But they're all looking for brokenhearted Sarah Walker to step out onto that ice. Because of course being dumped by the hottest curler in America must just be…destroying me right now." She rolled her eyes again.
"You came to the rink to train the day we found out about Bryce ditching the team and breaking up with you," he said. "That very same day."
She nodded. "Yep. Because it sucked, but…" She lowered her chin and gave him a flat look. "I know what I'm about."
He chuckled. "People see what they want to. I'm not excusing it," he said quickly, stretching a hand out. "I think it's sad when people hang their whole lives on a relationship between people they don't even know personally, you know?"
"It's the way the world is, now. Bryce's Twitter shenanigans give them a lot of access to his life, and too much access to our relationship. And hey, Bryce and I grew the sport quite a bit by doing that. But what we didn't do was win. Especially these last two years. And that losing streak ended up having way more of an impact than whatever there was between us." She paused, gathering her thoughts. "There are a lot of people waiting to say 'I told you so' when my Olympic run bombs. I can just hear it: she can't do it without Bryce. So I have a lot to prove."
"To your fans?"
"Mm." She shrugged. "Sarah Walker, the only one left from America's Curling Couple, overcoming the heartbreak of a bad break-up, destroyed love," she pronounced dramatically, getting him to snort. "It's the perfect redemption story." She snorted this time. "No, it's not about them," she said. "It isn't about proving myself to Bryce, either," she added, omitting the fact that she still thought about him sometimes, rarely but…sometimes. She'd been with him for almost three years after all, and that wasn't a small thing. "It's really that…Well, I wonder if it was just the fact that Bryce and I didn't curl well together because we were mismatched. Or if I'm really not as good at this sport as I think and that's why we didn't do well."
"It isn't that."
She looked up at him. "Really? Have anything to base that off of?"
He swallowed and sat back in his chair. "Uh…I've seen you curl, Sarah. Before this. I mean when I've gone to bonspiels with the team. You're really freaking good at this. I'd say the best on Team U.S.A. You know what you have to do and you deliver it. Highest accuracy percentage on our team, for sure. The stats are there. Not to mention what Beckman said about Bryce being a bit…erm, overhyped skills-wise." He winced. She wasn't sure if he just didn't like speaking ill of people because he was a nice guy, or if he didn't want to speak ill of her ex-boyfriend.
Sarah smiled and reached over to squeeze his bicep gratefully. "Thank you, Chuck. But I'm not convinced. I need to prove myself in these games…to me. I need to know that I can succeed without him. I'm have to succeed with you."
Instead of rushing to tell her how great she was, and fill the apartment with empty compliments, her partner and roommate simply nodded and tacked on a sweetly genuine, "I'll do whatever is necessary to help you out with that, partner."
The warmth increased and this time she welcomed it, simply smiling at him, wondering if maybe they might just have what it took to at least win a few matches in that tournament coming up. And if they could just win one in the Olympics, maybe this craziness might be worth it.
-oooo-
"You okay?"
He lifted his head from where he'd let his forehead thump into the cool metal of the railing, attempting a smile as he turned to look at Sarah. She'd been quiet for a while now, deep in thought, and he feared she was internalizing everything. He didn't know her well enough to know that was what she was doing, but he worried anyway.
"I'm good. Fine. I need a drink, though."
She gave him a wry look. "Unfortunately, they don't sell drinks here. But I'm sure at the end of all this, we'll all be at the bar at the top of the slopes, and if things continue like they've been going, drinks won't be on us. So…yay," she drawled.
He huffed. "Then I'll get a soda." As he stood, he nearly forgot his manners, and halted, looking back at her. "Can I get you something?"
"Just a water, if you don't mind."
"Gotcha."
Chuck left her sitting in the bleachers alone. At any other bonspiel, he spent this time studying other teams, figuring out their strategies, unraveling the puzzle of the game they were putting out on the ice. But he was frustrated and upset. He was competitive. He liked to win. But not until the U.S. Curling Federation made him sign a contract and started paying him to be on the mixed doubles team with Sarah Walker did he feel the sting of loss, a real, deep sting that put him in a cold sweat. They'd lost their first two matches today. They had one more in a few hours, and if they lost that, the rest of their matches tomorrow were pointless.
He just couldn't get in the right mindset. And despite agreeing on which shots they'd take every time, their luck was just…screwed. He calculated, they threw how they had to, but the bounces and rolls just weren't working in their favor, and it was insanely demoralizing.
Chuck bought himself a bottle of root beer, enticed by the fact that it was in legitimate, glass bottles, and he grabbed a bottle of water for Sarah. But he took his time getting back to her side.
This was such a massive undertaking with a lot of pressure. It was exactly the type of pressure the team of Sarah Walker and Bryce Larkin could handle. They'd handled pressure before. And even while they started out well and started going downhill over the last few years, they were still seeming to thrive in the sport. They had followers all over the world.
And that first day of training after news broke that Bryce had quit, that he'd broken it off with Sarah, she had shown up to the rink anyway. No one was cruel enough to mention it; everyone acted like nothing was different or wrong. It was like Bryce had taken a sick day or something.
But Chuck hadn't been able to help watching her, admiring her for her steadfast determination and loyalty to her team and to the sport. It hadn't surprised him to see her take it all on the chin and bounce back like a champ. That was Sarah Walker, wasn't it? Bryce was charming and suave. Everyone liked him, including fans—both male and female. The media fawned over him. And Chuck couldn't even be mad about it. He'd been an admirer himself.
But Sarah Walker…
He'd followed Sarah Walker's career for two years now, ever since that bonspiel in Chicago when he'd basically spent an entire day silently fawning over her delivery accuracy. Even from the stands, seeing that hellbent, icy blue determination in her eyes when she delivered the rock had seriously started something inside of him. It inspired him. Even before he'd understood anything about curling.
She was so confident, the most confident curler he'd ever met or played with…or played against. She exuded the confidence she had in her own talents to the point where it unsettled you when she was your opponent. Her unending calm combined with that confidence and laser-sharp focus had meant she'd been labeled "The Ice Queen", he'd quickly discovered once he began traveling in the same circles. Some of the curlers talked about how her icy stare could freeze a stone in place where she wanted it to stop, no matter how much her teammates were or weren't sweeping.
But he'd been resistant to the term.
Especially once he'd heard a team from Quebec during last month's bonspiel call her Ice Queen in reference to Bryce breaking up with her. Because she wasn't emotionally incapacitated? Because it wasn't evident in her playing that she was heartbroken like everyone expected her to be? It had infuriated him, and he'd had to tell them off as politely as he could. If "Hey, hi. Mind your own damn business," could be considered polite. It had given him joy to see their faces when he'd added, "Her team's in the quarters. Where are you lot sitting in the standings? Oh shit, you're not even on the board anymore, are you? Tough break."
Sarah Walker wasn't icy and she wasn't made of steel. She was a freaking human. She was a fierce competitor. He could almost see it in her eyes when her blood turned to fire as she discovered the perfect strategy. She practically vibrated with it. And when the whole of Team U.S.A. curling trained and broke into different teams, it let him know he was royally screwed when he opposed her and he saw that look on her face. He loved that look when they were on the same team.
Her humanity was that much more evident now that they'd been roommates for four weeks. He'd been afraid it would cause them to butt heads, that their living styles wouldn't mesh and they'd be pissed at each other. That he'd tire of some sort of habit she had, or vice versa, and it would affect their teamwork.
That hadn't happened. But he had met early morning Sarah. She wasn't one of those "Don't talk to me 'til I've had my coffee" sort of people, the way Ellie was. But she was definitely a pouter before seven in the morning, even when she was the one that forced them to get up that early to go for runs. When Sarah Walker was tired, she became more frustrated. When she was hungry, she became silent and distracted. She had a habit of turning off the TV but forgetting to turn off the cable box when she got up from the couch to go to bed sometimes. And she pursed her lips and pulled them to the side when she was trying to hide her amusement at his teasing or his bad puns.
Now here he was competing with her, side by side, partners, preparing for the Olympics by getting this bonspiel under their belts. And he was royally flubbing this whole damn thing. By the end of this tournament, he'd be fired, he'd have to go back to fixing computers and contract coding and writing invoices, back to curling for fun. And at the end of the day, there was way less pressure when he competed with friends in Los Angeles. He didn't have to worry about tweets asking "where TF did this guy even come from?" or saying, "Maybe he'll get hit by a bus and Bryce can come back" when he curled for fun.
But then there was no real incentive to win outside of that inner satisfaction he got from solving the puzzle. There was no actual drive. He hadn't felt that competitive adrenaline before Team U.S.A. pulled him into their ranks. Plus, if he went back, there was no Sarah Walker there.
And in spite of losing the first two matches here, he still felt something between them on that ice—their brains keeping pace, the equal amounts of drive he felt himself emanating from her as well, that determination. They were at the same level, on the same page. It just wasn't translating in their play yet.
It sucked.
It was dragging him down.
As Chuck walked past the café tables where bonspiel attendees were eating bratwurst and fries, he heard his name off to the side. He peeked over his shoulder and saw Coaches Graham and Beckman across from one another at a table, hunched over steaming cups of coffee.
Maybe it was wrong, maybe he shouldn't have, but he took advantage of how distracted and engrossed they were in their conversation to casually sneak up close and throw the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, sitting at the table behind Beckman so that he could hear them.
The teenager he'd unceremoniously slid in next to turned to him with a mouth full of bratwurst. "Uh…wh—"
"SH!"
He got a dirty look but the kid shut up, seeming to find Chuck wasn't worth the trouble and going back to his wiener.
"It isn't that easy, Langston. We can't just expect them to magically beat the first team they face in real competition."
"All right. Maybe not the first one. But that second one? The Swedes cleaned four points off of them in one end, Diane. That isn't a good sign.""It isn't a bad sign, either." Chuck heard the man scoff. "It isn't. Did you see that delivery Sarah made to clear three of the opponents' counters to get two points of her own? It was clinical. The audience watching literally gasped and were on their feet cheering. That is why we did this. Do you think Bryce would've ever agreed to a risk like that? Think she'd ever felt free enough to do that?"
Graham huffed, sounding reluctant. "Probably not."
"What do you mean, probably not? Bryce Larkin stifled Sarah Walker. Like taking a sledgehammer to a dancer's legs." Chuck winced at Beckman's choice of metaphor. "She's free now. He didn't mean any harm, I know that. He did his best. I don't begrudge the guy and I wish him the best, but he would have told her to set up a guard and hope it stopped their opponent from getting another rock near the button."
"Anybody would have made that call. It's the smart thing to do. It's safe."
Beckman let out a frustrated sound. "Safe safe safe. Everything has to be safe. I don't want a team that survives this tournament, Langston. I want a team that lives!"
Chuck stifled a laugh by slapping his hands over his mouth. Did she know she'd just hijacked a quote from a Pixar film about an adorable robot to talk about curling, or…?
"This. Is. Crazy. Diane, we can't sell a losing team to the federation. They believe in your vision, but if Bartowski and Walker continue to lose, they won't last long. We've got these two on contracts. We're paying them, and providing benefits."
"They aren't going to keep losing."
"I'm not so sure."
"I am. Just keep trusting me."
Graham sighed. "I will. We've been doing this together for too long for me not to. But please make sure they start to produce. At least a little. The federation will quickly lose the faith they've put in these two. Remember this thing is being streamed and you know they're watching."
Chuck heard them get up behind him and he hunched forward over the drinks he'd bought, shielding himself from being seen by his coaches. Without warning he sprang up from the table, scaring the teenager. "What the hell's wrong with you, dude?"
"Good talk." Chuck thumped him on the shoulder and strode away, hurrying back to the bleachers and taking them in loping strides, two at a time.
He plopped down next to Sarah and passed her the water he'd bought for her.
"Okay, Norway is freaking delivering like mad. They're absolutely leaving this thing on top," she said. "Thanks for the wat…" As she cracked the seal, she glanced over at him. "…water. What's wrong with you?"
He wondered if maybe she saw the wild-eyed look on his face, that he was practically bursting.
"You look like you are about to explode, or maybe you have to pee…? Either one."
Chuck let out a huff of a laugh, shaking his head. "I was just getting our drinks and I stumbled on Graham and Becks having a pretty serious convo in the café area."
Sarah let out a slow breath through pursed lips. "Lemme guess. About us."
"Good guess." She lifted her eyebrows and gave a mirthless, closed-mouth smile. "I eavesdropped." Her eyebrows somehow got higher on her brow. "I know. I'm a bad person. But listen. The federation is watching this thing. It's being streamed. They saw us lose. They're losing faith. Graham said that."
Her face fell, jaw clenched. "We're gonna be fired." She cursed. "It's that stone I delivered in the second game, when I tried to tip that rock on the tee line to move the—"
"No, no. Sarah, you had some throws that missed the mark. I had some throws that missed the mark. Every single one of these people out here have made mistakes. The difference is that we're under a friggin' microscope. I bet you if I—if I checked Twitter right now, it would be nothing but utter shitaki mushrooms."
"Huh?"
"Shit. There're kids around, Sarah, and I'm tryin'a be respectful."
"Oh."
Was she teasing him? He felt like she was maybe teasing him. He didn't have time to ponder on that so he kept gong.
"We're probably being dragged on Twitter. Me, especially. They, like, especially hate me."
"Please don't go on Twitter, Chuck."
"I'm not. I'm not going within thirty-thousand feet of that hell scape. But what I am doing is telling you that other people might be losing faith, but that one rock you delivered…you know which one I mean…" A smile slowly grew on her face. "Oh yeah," he said, a crooked grin stretching across his face, "you know what I'm talkin' 'bout. You lit this place on fire, woman." She grinned, on the verge of a giggle, and he could see in her eyes how proud she was. God, those eyes. "People jumped up from their seats applauding. We lost two matches, but that one throw was worth it. The way that beauty curled? Hot damn…"
"Hot damn, Chuck? Really?"
"Get off my ass, Walker. I'm trying to inspire you. Jesus Christ."
This time she did giggle, her shoulders bouncing cutely. "Sorry. Inspire away."
"The federation might not believe in us, Graham might even be losing a bit of faith, but I trust Becks. And more than anything, as cheesy as it sounds, I believe in us. Deliveries like that one? We've got a whole bag of crap like that in our future if we stick with this. By the end of this tournament, we'll have eight matches under our curling belt. So we lost two of 'em. We've got six left. And if the federation wants to fire me in the middle of this tournament, they're gonna have to fly their crusty asses up this damn mountain and physically drag my lifeless body from this building, because I am doing this. Are you with me? You doin' this? We doin' this?" He was revved up, his heart pounding.
And there was a light in her eyes, one he thought he rarely saw. As well as something else he couldn't quite figure out. She wrapped her arms around her torso and squeezed herself, nodding.
"Yeah."
"I have faith in us. Screw everybody else. And Twitter can—" He searched for words.
"Go fuck itself."
"Sarah, the children!" he whispered teasingly, and she laughed, rocking forward. "Let's go find us a whiteboard. We got sh-stuff to do."
They scrambled up from the bleachers and hurried down them, finding their coaches and grabbing one of the whiteboards, going to town on it. He could feel the energy in Sarah. He didn't know if they would win even one game in this tournament. Maybe they wouldn't. But this felt so good, and he could see how hyped Sarah was, that confidence that had ever so quickly trickled out of her throughout the day back where it rightfully belonged.
No matter what happened, this was gonna be an amazing couple of days.
A/N: I will never get the line "I just had a burrito earlier, and I'm tryin'a be respectful" from vs the Seduction out of my head. Ever. And I will forever hear Zac's priceless delivery of that line. And I couldn't not use at least a bit of it.
Hope you enjoyed! Next chapter coming soon!
-SC