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Chess Porn
(5 people’s thoughts on Charles & Erik’s chess tête-à-tête + 1)
(5 people’s thoughts on Charles & Erik’s chess tête-à-tête + 1)
AKA Musings of and about a chessboard
1
Charlie missed their games. He missed sitting by the fireplace; placing it on the table and then setting up the board, piece by piece, on their correct squares, under the other’s piercing gaze.
He missed playing.
Calling dibs on white, making his opening, just to give him a few precious seconds to elaborate his strategy. A small courtesy before they went again — the same old ritual.
Smiling eyes as they battled black on white. Purposeful. Free. Their own little world.
They were right to call it more than a game, his students, even if Charles resented the “porn chess” label. The sassiness!
The label was a misnomer.
It went beyond physical connection, even if their fingers brushed during a bold move that got Charles’ pawn captured or their shoes slipped and made contact beneath the table, a spasm startled by the fate of Erik’s rook. Eyes locked with each other, unblinking. It was a mental connection, deeper than Charles’ telepathy, as they communicated soundlessly. Eye blinks and facial tics took over the words. Their very own language of micro-expressions. A raised eyebrow as the professor saw through his friend’s maneuver, anticipating his next move; a slight upturn of lips as Erik did the same. Or the narrowed eyes when their hunch turned out to be false, and their eyes creased in response to being played, smoothing out as amusement won, and they applaud, “Touché,” inviting to the next play. Like their private casino and their very own roulette, right there in the heart of Westchester, miles away from the City of Sin. Their sinful pleasure.
Trust.
Trust that Charles wouldn’t read his thoughts (wouldn’t break their dance of predicting each other’s thoughts, without a care to be right — Charles cared, he was competitive, he just reveled in the intimacy of playing and being played by his old friend too much to burst it all with a brash mental probe).
A trust that dissipates in ashes as his old friend slides the helmet over his head.
A trust that is reborn the moment he takes it off, and they meet again at the chessboard. Until he leaves, helmet back on. Until the cycle begins anew. Again, and again, and again.
A trust he desperately misses when Erik crosses the door.
The children were right. It was never just chess.
2
Scott could see. Despite preferring to close his eyes whenever he lost his glasses (lest he cause untold damage), he was never blind. He recognized heartbreak when he saw it.
Even before Jean, he’d been familiar with the feeling. It chased him throughout his childhood, his teenage years, and finally adulthood. It was in the way his parents stayed together, trapped in a decade-long marriage, even as their devotion and their will had long since died. For the sake of the children, their eyes lied. There in the roadway, as he realized he would never be welcome at his algebra crush’s house. Not as long as his genes were quirky, and made his eyes funny (Never.) As he found out Alex had the same quirky biology, the same cursed genes. In the weight in his chest as he left the only life he’d known for the tall gates and the menacing shadows of the manor (even if they turned out to be not so eldritchly end-of-the-world as he thought).
He was well-versed in heartbreak. And he found it in the Professor’s eyes as he caressed the black half of the board; always set.
As he touched the contours and the curves of the distinguished shapes — a knight, a rook, a bishop — with the same devotion a blind man would touch someone’s face: eyes, nose, cheeks, a mouth… An absent smile as his eyes got lost in the horizon, brightless (lifeless) as equally absent wetness pooled in a heartbeat; restrained only by sheer stubborn will, and when that failed, they ran free. Waterfalls reaching cheeks and chin, unimpeded; hands and thoughts elsewhere.
Scott’s chest tightened, and it felt literal every time as his heart went out to the Professor’s suffering. Even if the recipient of so much heartbreak was an egotistical asshole.
The Professor had a bad taste in men, but who has he to judge?
3
Logan had a keen nose.
He could smell a variety of secrets in a single breath, a myriad of things people wanted hidden — the stinky condoms the students barely (badly) discarded or the ugly underbellies they rapidly swept under masks when he passed, almost like prey sensing the predator in him.
He smelt many things at the Mansion, but the most pungent—
It was always Chuck’s clusterfuck garbage (a mess, really) of feelings around that damned chessboard.
He could always tell the citrus scent of longing mixed with the burnt camomile of loneliness from the sharp but syrupy whiff of disorder. The smokelike accents of guilt from the honey hints of denial. Or the whiskey-like (addictive) one of anger. A study in grief.
(no sniff of acceptance yet)
It fascinated him with the same fervor it drove him mad, and the beast known as Wolverine itched to sink its metal claws into Magneto’s metal-clad skull; poetic justice, he was sure.
4
Raven was a relic of the past. One of the original X-Men. One of the few to remember.
Raven was the only one who understood how deep it went. Who had the full context to judge them for what they were. Those boring games weighed next to Charles’ suave bar-flirting days. The loaded glances that never saw them stripped, yet still bared to the eye. The even-spaced walks or jogs around the Manor’s grounds that never crossed the boundaries of implicit.
She was a silent spectator of a past that almost was and a future that never was. The survivor of days of a future past.
Raven was a fragment of their past; she was a keeper of memories neither would acknowledge too soon.
5
Erik missed their games, too.
Even if he would never admit it.
He missed the scarce-in-between when he would remove his helmet and extend a hand to his old friend. “Black or white?” Palms up, chess pieces on display, open, never closed fists.
He missed the ease of Charles’s presence, no need to say words when their eyes did half of the talking. Missed the company of the Englishman who chased the solitude of the current days.
He missed the light-hearted arguments over wine, as they deliberately challenged each other on the board, Erik’s rook capturing Charles’ bishop, smirking. How Charles, ever too competitive, never responded in anything but gracefully strategic moves, no sloppiness in sight, demanding none in kind. Always demanding the best of him — and he always got it. On the board.
Most of all, Erik just missed Charles.
(Plain. Simple. Unreachable)
+1
It was interesting what thirty-two pieces across sixty-four mismatched squares could see (could make).
The history they would witness unfold through repetitive matches.
The question marks, the full stops, the Oxford commas — moves unmade (untaken), moves aborted, moves hesitated, then diverged.
Looks that went too long but never further, hands that brushed but never lingered, bashful. Torsos leaned halfway and then retracted (too soon!) back to the cushion after they played. Movements always countered in symmetry.
It was ironic that the greatest love story that chess set had ever seen was exactly that — unconsummated. Almost Shakespearean.
Maybe more than anything, that was what made it so strong — the intermittent feeding, match after match, pouring just a little more to keep the spark burning.
More than empty three-worded promises or ephemeral discharges of dopamine from lovemaking.
Repetitive, cyclic — good old tender loving care.
A choice, however brief. Constant choice. (The one they always went back to)
A love symbiosis. One that only a game board with checkered squares could truly understand.
And if the old chessboard was partial to one party — that’s neither here nor there — that’s because it felt a sense of loyalty (kinship) with its owner, always there; even if it too longed for the missing lover.
For another game to start. Another story to recount. Another chapter to be told.