"I don't, actually," Mikey admitted. It wasn't very commonplace in his time. He knew the general rules of the game from his general knowledge of the past, but he had never had a chance to learn.
Lindsey smiled. "Can I teach you then?" she asked.
"Sure," Mikey agreed. He supposed now was a good time as any to learn how to play. It would probably benefit his logic and reasoning. Plus, it could pass the time better than rereading A Tale Of Two Cities.
Lindsey ran off into the living room, gesturing for Mikey to follow her. He did as she told him, smiling at her playfulness. Once he caught up to her, she was already pulling out a box and opening it to reveal a board and the black and off-white pieces. She set the board onto a game table in the corner, then sat down at one end. Mikey followed her lead, sitting at the other. She began setting up the board, piece by piece, talking about the different roles each piece had.
"The front line is made up of pawns. There's eight of them, so they're not all that significant. They can move one space at a time, and forwards only, with the exception of their first move, which can be two spaces. They capture the other pieces by going diagonally..."
-
In the end, Lindsey ended up beating Mikey by a landslide. He kept forgetting how to capture the different pieces and what each one of them did. She reassured him that he would get better with time, and he told her that it wasn't all that big of a deal that he lost.
That being said, though, he challenged her to a game every day until he could beat her at it. She agreed, and after she left the room, Mikey rearranged the pieces to see how he could have prevented his loss. He was determined to learning how to play chess as best as he could.
He had always loved learning new skills, ones he had been wondering about how they were done for long amounts of time. He loved knowing the mechanics of things he was passionate about, which he assumed was why Gerard loved makeup so much. It was like his painting, but there was no consequence if he ruined the piece by trying something new that didn't work out. It was art, but it wasn't a job like painting was.
Mikey wondered if anyone he knew from his own time could play chess. Were they any good? If he had to guess one person he knew could do it, who would it be? Probably Pete. Pete had all sorts of hidden talents that were never brought up until they were useful. He was working on a project with him when it came up that he could pick a lock in under thirty seconds while blindfolded. Something he'd picked up while pining for a girl in high school who told him she'd go out with him if he guessed her locker combination. Mikey almost didn't believe him, but Pete was Pete, and there was no doubt in Mikey's mind that Pete would do something like that.
Was Pete any good at chess, or did he just know the rules? Mikey thought while inspecting the placement of his bishop and trying desperately to remember how he had used it. Was there an interesting backstory like the one for his lock-picking competency or was it just that someone taught him what they thought was a valuable skill?
Realizing he couldn't possibly figure out where the bishop was before, he picked the piece up and threw it to the floor in annoyance. He wanted to be good at this, dammit. That, and he was coming to realize how much he needed Pete with him when he Travelled.
The thing about Pete was that you never knew enough about him. He was, for lack of a better word, a mystery. A puzzle with infinite pieces. He was a bunch of random facts and ideas and questions that didn't seem to make any sense to anybody but him. You had to listen to Pete, you had to experience him and take him seriously in order to get any kind of meaning from his words. He and Mikey, they were so different, but Mikey felt like he understood him. They had things in common, despite the obvious spontaneous/logical dichotomy. They both had ideas that were different from anything a normal person would think of. And their ideas were both disrespected and ignored. Mikey had always been put on a pedestal but no one had really cared about his deeper emotions. He understood how Pete felt, despite the fact that Mikey got attention and he didn't. The attention was never genuine. Nobody actually cared about Mikey, at least none of his teachers and definitely not his mom.
Mikey missed him. If Pete were with him, he wouldn't be stuck trying to learn how to play chess because that was all that could keep him entertained. Pete knew how to have fun. Pete would make him laugh. Mikey hadn't heard something he found genuinely funny since he left.
He looked back at the chess table. It was then that he recognized what he was trying to do: he was rebuilding himself in a way. He was trying to fill in the holes Pete and Gerard's absence left in his personality. How was a game supposed to replace his brother and his best friend? Tears stung in his eyes. He didn't want to cry, especially since he had cried too many times in the past few days. But he was filled with such heavy mourning, when the first tear spilled down his cheek he was still telling himself that he wouldn't cry, that he wasn't crying, repeating those words to himself in his head as he threw it back and choked out sobs escaped his mouth.
-
"How have you been?" Another refugee, Jason, asked him. They were both getting dressed in the bedroom. Mikey had to take time to get comfortable with changing in front of other people, but it was nearly just routine for him now. Mikey pulled his shirt over his head before answering.
"Pretty good. I'm getting better at chess." It was true, he was starting to be able to beat Lindsey if she played with some sort of handicap, like without anything but pawns, or only pawns and bishops, along with her king.
"That sounds good. I would love to spend my days doing something other than selling meat," Jason chuckled. "But it pays well," he added. Mikey knew from talking to Jason occasionally that he worked as a butcher's assistant. Mikey never talked much to any of the others, but Jason was fairly chatty and Mikey didn't mind entertaining him. If he was any older than Mikey, it wasn't by much, although people from the past always seemed to be younger than they actually were, as Mikey had observed. It probably did him good to be talking to somebody other than Lindsey, too. "Why don't you have a job, if you don't mind me asking?"
Mikey did mind him asking, although he had a response ready for if anybody asked him. "In my country, I was too young to work. I was supposed to work for my father once he passed away and for that to be my only job. I must stay faithful to my promise to him," he recited. Jason raised an eyebrow, but nodded like he understood. Nobody seemed to doubt anything people said in this time. Maybe because there was less reason to lie, or since so many of the untrustworthy people were out fighting in the war or something.
"Well, I wish you the best with your chess," Jason told him before opening the door and leaving the room.
"And to you as well!" Mikey called down the hallway so that he would hear. He finished getting dressed, then walked into the study and setting up the chess board. He stared at the pieces, trying to get his mind to work, make himself get better at playing the game. It was always hard to start practicing, the weirdness of playing alone was always nagging him. He looked up at the bookshelf, scanning the spines as a sort of distraction, when his eyes came across a chess manual. Of course, why wouldn't they have a book about chess in their massive collection? Lindsey was good at it, too, so she probably learned from the book. Reading it probably wouldn't help Mikey beat her, but he would become a better player if he were to be playing against somebody who didn't know any of the tricks in the book.
He stood up on his tiptoes in order to reach it. The shelf was high even for someone as tall as Mikey. His fingertips brushed the edge and he pulled it down to where he could reach it. His reflexes weren't fast enough. The book tumbled to the ground and Mikey flinched back in order to ensure that it didn't land on his toes. It opened itself on the floor, onto a random page. Mikey grinned at it and at the prospects it held. He would learn so much from it, he could feel it. He reached down and picked it up, flipping to the back to see how many pages it had. The last numbered page before the index was 509. How long would it last him? At least a month, probably, maybe more if he tried to gain all the information he could. He loved knowing that he would know so much more by the time he finished the book. He loved knowing he could expect to impress Lindsey in the coming weeks.
Later that day, when they were playing chess, Lindsey asked him if she should play with a handicap, and Mikey felt the anxiety and excitement welling upside of him as he said no. Lindsey raised her eyebrows but didn't question him.
It became obvious to her once he did a two knights attack that he hadn't just developed these skills by playing game after game by himself. "So I see you've found the book," she said as he put her in a check. Mikey grinned and nodded. Lindsey moved her king out of the way of danger, but Mikey noticed that she left her queen vulnerable and moved his bishop in direct line of attack. "The thing about that book," she started as she moved her queen to take his bishop the same way he would have taken her queen. He muttered a curse under his breath. "Is that I've also read it. I know all the tricks. And I have more experience than you."
Mikey broke his eye contact with her to look down at the board and plan his next move. He smirked. In taking his bishop, she left her queen open to be taken by his knight. He moved, knocking over her queen in victory.
"Dammit!" She exclaimed playfully. "That was stupid of me."
"It was," he teased. She rested her forehead in her hands, eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Mikey felt pride at the fact that he could finally stump her. She moved her rook to the left with a huff and an offhanded "check". It took Mikey a second to realize why she seemed to be upset about it; she had just put him in check, hadn't she? But it dawned on him that he could easily move out of it diagonally and she wouldn't be able to get him again from there. It said something like that in the book, that putting your opponent in check isn't your goal and can actually be counter-intuitive, since it let them know where you are and then they would move out of it.
He moved his king, unintentionally putting hers in check from another side. "Check," he said once he realized. She grunted in frustration.
"Michael Way, you are learning way too fast," she complained, moving out of her position. He quickly moved his rook to surround her along with his knight and pawn. She scoffed, moving away again, but Mikey met her with another pawn of his and putting her in checkmate.
"Yes! Checkmate!" He exclaimed, pumping his fist in the air. Lindsey watched him, mouth open wide in shock.
"I can't believe you, Michael," she laughed. "Wow. You beat me."
Mikey felt like he was on top of the world, finally doing well in this time he had been thrown into. With this speed of progress, he could possibly be entering chess competitions - did they have chess competitions around here? Mikey could find out, and if they did, that would be a way he could get some money around here, and he wouldn't feel so indebted to Lindsey and her father for their hospitality. He could travel, too, he could see new places, if he really worked hard at this. He could make this work, he could do stuff with this. He didn't have to lose everything because he didn't have documentation or his brother or Pete. This could be his new life, at least until he was found.
"You should be proud of yourself," Lindsey said, as incredulous as Mikey felt. He was proud of himself. Gerard would be, too, and he forced himself not to get sad reminding himself of his brother because he was in such a good mood and never wanted to interrupt this high.
"I am," he told her, smiling. She stood up, patting him on the back and making her way out of the room.
"But you only won because I wasn't expecting you to be so good. Next time will not be as easy," she warned him tactfully, with one eyebrow raised. He nodded, laughing silently. She stepped out of the room and Mikey exhaled.
He could do this.
-
"So," Jason started the next day when they ate breakfast together.
"So?" Mikey inquired, unsure what he was getting at.
"So you and Ballato's daughter. You're - not sleeping together, not yet, but there's something there, am I correct?" He asked, taking a bite of oatmeal at the end and raising his eyebrow. Mikey furrowed his.
"No," he said. Lindsey was nice and he liked her, but he would never think of her in that way.
"No?" Jason said, surprised. "Why not?"
"I don't know. She's not my type of woman," Mikey explained. He supposed that maybe they had a flirty manner of interacting with each other, but it wasn't like that. He couldn't ever force himself to think of her that way. The feeling just wasn't there.
"I thought for sure that was why you were allowed to stay without getting a job," he admitted. He piped up again as Mikey was about to tell him it just wasn't the way he thought of her. "But the way you two were acting around each other when I got home - surely you must be somewhat attracted to her? I mean, she's a fine woman, nice breasts..."
"I just don't feel that way about her," Mikey blurted out before it got too weird. Jason shrugged, standing up to put his bowl in the sink and washing it.
"If you don't take her, someone else will," he told him from over his shoulder. Mikey felt weird talking about her like this - she was a human being, and here they were treating her like an object, but he supposed this was just how men talked about women in this time. It wasn't unlike what the barber had said to him at the barbershop.
"I'm not interested," Mikey told him for the millionth time. Jason shrugged and left his bowl and spoon in the drying rack. Son of a bitch, Mikey would probably have to dry it and put it away for him.
Why wouldn't he be attracted to Lindsey, though? She was pretty and sweet and nice, and Mikey was pretty sure he was attracted to all of those things, but something felt like he had to hold himself back. It could be that he felt he couldn't experience attraction in this time because he didn't belong there, but he didn't think he felt that way.
Mikey knew he was attracted to women. His entire life he had crushes on them, as well as people of other genders. Guys, too, he reckoned, even if he couldn't name a particular man that he liked. In another situation, would he find Lindsey attractive? Probably, he thought, but what was it about their current situation that made it so that he didn't like her that way?
Maybe this was all just rhetorical, what did it matter that he didn't find Lindsey attractive? He still enjoyed her company and liked her as a friend, so why should he have to force himself to figure out why she wasn't attractive to him? It wasn't like he had to do this for all of his other friends, like Pete, he just knew that he wasn't attracted to them and that was it.
But there was a difference between how he felt for Lindsey and for Pete - maybe because he knew Pete for longer and didn't see him anymore. Pete was really nice, and charming, like Lindsey, but he had something else for him. His smile made Mikey feel like he was on top of the world. Gerard liked him. God, he missed hanging out with them. Thinking about Pete made him feel so happy yet mournful, whereas he was simply grateful for Lindsey's company and attention.
He looked down at his cereal. It had gotten soggy from him not eating it quick enough. He groaned as he stood up and poured it down the drain. So much for self-reflection.
-
Within the next week, Lindsey had brought home five new people to live in the house. The bedroom was starting to get crowded, and there weren't enough chairs to seat all of them at the dinner table. Lindsey had to skip their daily chess games, apologizing profusely every time. Mikey wasn't all that bothered by it. He had five new people to get to know now. Three of them were all one family; a mother, father and their four year old son. The other two were single men, without work because of their wounds from the war. One of them fought in the First World War and was paralyzed from the waist down, and the other was a veteran from the current war, who had lost a hand and was no longer able to fight. Mikey mostly hung out with the couple's son, Ryan. He was trying to teach him how to play chess, which wasn't going very well, as the kid didn't understand all of the different rules.
It was getting colder outside. On days where the jackets hadn't all been taken as people went to work, Mikey would go out on walks through the city. One of their neighbours would greet him every time, and they would have a small chat. Mikey felt bad for never remembering her name, but he wasn't sure if she had ever told him what it was, either.
As the days went on, Mikey noticed that Lindsey was getting considerably more stressed out, and he saw the mayor way less than he originally did, but when he did, he seemed worried. Probably because of the new influx of refugees. It couldn't be easy, managing two dozen people living under one roof. He was unsure if he should ask Lindsey what he could do to help, since he likely couldn't do much. Still, he wanted her to know she could rely on him, even if he couldn't offer much more than moral support.
He was sitting at his new favourite lounge chair when she walked in.
"Hey," she said, startling him. He looked up at her from his book.
"Hey," he repeated her. They hadn't played a game in three days.
"Do you mind if we just talk? I'm completely overwhelmed with everything," she requested, sitting down opposite him.
"No problem," Mikey said, tucking in his bookmark and setting aside the book. "I'm all ears," he said, and she gave a weak smile.
"Okay, so, where do I start?"
"I don't know, you're the one who wanted to talk to me," he said, giggling playfully.
"I guess I just- it's too many people, you know? And my father's all concerned that we won't be able to let them all stay here, especially if people keep showing up, and we're not really equipped to deal with this many people, in terms of food and space available. Plus, what we're doing isn't really legal, or at least not for this amount of people, so we would have to set something else up in order for my dad not to lose his position. We're both so stressed out, and while I can handle it, he's the mayor, he can't afford to let this keep nagging at him," she explained, eyebrows furrowed. Mikey nodded, listening.
"Do you think anyone's close to moving out or anything?" he asked.
"No, not for a while. I don't blame them, though. We're all trying to get by. It can be tough to get started to live on your own." Mikey bit his lip. He didn't really have any experience in this at all. Sure, he was keeping Gerard with him, but he didn't have to worry about anything other than making sure Gerard was healthy.
"I think you should let yourself not worry about it. It seems to me that there's no immediate problem, and nothing you could do immediately to change anything. I think you should let things play out the way they do, and solve any problems you run into when they happen," Mikey advised. Lindsey nodded.
"Yeah, I think that's what's best. It's just hard to make myself think that way. Thanks for the advice anyway, though," she said, smiling and sitting up. "I think I have time to play a game, if you're up for it." Mikey's eyes lit up.
"You're on."
wow things are starting to go the way i want them to
i still have no clue how long this fic will be tbh. i'm probably looking at like 30 chapters in total, but who knows? not me bitch!! the main plot i wanted to do is only starting now. writing isn't easy.
anyways have a good day the new paramore song is lit you should listen to it if you want