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It’s in the smooth way that Ivan’s fingers brush across the top of the queen before he sweeps her across the chessboard and seizes the rook with a practiced grace. It’s the way his eyes stay trained on the board until after his move, and then his eyes stay trained on only Alfred. It’s in the way he sits, patiently, waiting.
“Check,” Ivan says, equally as smooth.
-
The heat is magnificent, suffocating.
Alfred’s fingers work shakily along his cock, his teeth clenched as he chokes back the expletives, working around the friction of his body and his throat, one hand clenched into bed sheets, feeling the deceptive softness beneath him, his palm sweaty against the cotton.
The images pop into his mind, sunspots of images he can’t avoid. His mind flits back to it. Alfred’s trying to imagine what it would feel like for Ivan’s mouth to ghost along his jaw and his shoulder, push the hair from his forehead, tangling his callused fingers into it.
(It’s an illness, this infatuation. It burns in his gut, a constant fever—
He jerks harder.)
He summons the images of pretty girls, a futile attempt. Curving breasts, long elegant legs, long eyelashes.
(They all drift back, all morph and warp into something that poisons his tongue with curses.)
-
Ivan slides his queen into place, elegant and strong. He watches Alfred.
He smiles, low and distant. “Checkmate.”
-
Alfred imagines Ivan’s mouth at the curve of his neck, imagines the steady thrusts of Ivan’s hips, the sharp pads of his fingertips gripping him in every spot that matters, moving smoothly across his body—
Instead, the images all morph—
(Pretty girls with pretty breasts.
Ivan smiling across at him from the other side of the chessboard.)
It’s suffocation.
He imagines Ivan’s heavy hands pressing down against his chest, sliding across his throat (his windpipe), fingers biting into his mouth. One hand fisted around his cock and working it, enveloping it as Ivan suffocates him, pulls him against his body and smothers him. Wraps him up so tightly that Alfred can’t think or see or breathe—
Can’t even breathe—
Heavy. Heavier. Alfred is helpless.
-
Ivan considers Alfred across the chessboard.
-
“You seem distracted,” Ivan says, that smile ever-present.
Alfred doesn’t answer, just seizes Ivan’s knight and wills his hand not to shake. Focus on the game. The terms of engagement.
His eyes flicker to Ivan, and Ivan is watching him.
“I’m not,” Alfred finally manages.
Ivan closes his eyes when he moves to take Alfred’s queen.
-
Ivan regards Alfred. Considers.
Alfred is too loud, even when he is silent. His eyes speak too much, his movements betray him. When he lies, his eyes flicker, his hand touches his face. There’s the distracted moment when his eyes flit to Ivan’s and quickly look away.
Ivan considers this.
Alfred is too loud, too loud to ignore. Vibrant. Violent.
Ivan can’t help himself. He sees. He considers.
Only in brief moments, transitory—they so rarely see eye to eye, so rarely meet face to face—do Alfred’s thoughts change. Ivan sees it. It’s with patience and frustration and years of Alfred’s gaze flickering down away from Ivan’s face, drifting over his body before snapping back to attention—it is with these moments, these excruciating moments, that the lust blooms in Alfred’s eyes. It is not an overnight sensation—
(It takes too much time, Ivan thinks. And it still will take more time, because he sees the denial as quickly as he sees the desire.)
He waits.
He considers.
(Lingers—always lingering.)
-
Alfred is overeager for his next move, and his fingertips brush against Ivan’s knuckles before he can pull away. Their eyes lock.
Alfred looks away and Ivan must be smiling.
“Ah.”
-
(Alfred must overcome the terror.)
-
They are two creatures of habit. They hide away to play their game, the chessboard always set up and waiting. When they cannot meet, they conduct their moves across the phone lines, dictating the spaces to move.
Sometimes it is months. Sometimes it is years. But the dust never gathers long over the chessboard. It is worn, warm. Something welcoming.
At least something is.
-
(The terror of wanting, of needing. Alfred must overcome that fear.)
-
“I hate everything about you,” Alfred says, without preamble.
They set the board for the new game, Ivan with white and Alfred with black (sometimes it is the other way around; Alfred hates to hold the dark stones in his hand. Ivan is not fond of the white, either—reminds him too bitterly of snow and winter.
But they will do anything to hurt each other).
Ivan does not answer straight away. He does not morph his fleeting desires into words, but he considers it.
Considers the morphing—words to actions, actions to—
“You first,” Alfred says.
Ivan finds the game entertaining. Pushing buttons and overstepping the boundaries they’ve set and designed—created merely to be torn down, Ivan likes to think.
He also likes the game of chess, of course.
He smiles. He does not know the art of teasing or flirting, especially not with a hot-blooded idealist who sits before him—Alfred. Just Alfred. (“America.” Idealism.)
Straying too far causes the revulsion to bloom across Alfred’s face—sickness, stretch and tug and desire rough and untoward—
Cruelty, Ivan thinks. Perhaps it is cruelty, the way his eyes flicker to Alfred’s, the way he watches him move.
Ivan moves his pawn.
Alfred contemplates, as if he won’t do the same move he always does—take the pawn to match Ivan’s, face off against one another.
A deadlock.
(Any day now.)
-
Alfred’s hand moves, jerky and uncertain, around his cock.
When it’s drawn out, with no release or relief, it burns and stings.
(He wonders if Ivan would ever leave bruises. Alfred wonders if he wants bruises.)
Images of Ivan spark underneath his eyelids.
Then it hurts.
-
(Any day now.)
-
Effortlessly, quiet fingers sweep away the rooks and bishops and (usually only Alfred’s) queens.
Between turns, Alfred rests his hand against his face, knuckles pressing to his lips. Still. A deception of calmness—if Ivan looks (and he always looks) he can see the slight tremble in Alfred’s frame—
(Self-hushing. Don’t move your fingers away from your mouth, for fear of what will be said.)
Sitting too close to what he desires, but never snapping. If it pulls too tight, perhaps he will break. Perhaps it will be too much.
(How much does it hurt?)
“It’s your move,” Ivan says when Alfred’s eyes linger on him for too long.
Alfred scowls, and looks away, hand dropping from his face.
“You are distracted?” Ivan asks, pleasantly.
Alfred doesn’t answer, but his expression darkens. “No.”
“Thinking?” Ivan presses.
“What do you care?” Alfred mutters.
“Chess is simplified war,” Ivan says, unperturbed by Alfred’s words—he is so used to it now, still counting down until it all ends. “Physical.”
Alfred grunts. It is not agreement or disagreement.
-
Generally, Ivan wins. Alfred used to grow angry over losing, would never lose gracefully. Now, though, he sits still. Ivan accepts his victories with the same smile he accepts his failures. It is as if he predicted the outcome all along.
(Perhaps he did.)
-
Alfred cries out quietly, bites into his pillow as he spills out into his hand.
He does not dare breathe a name, afraid of what he’ll hear—
(Knowing exactly what he’ll hear.)
-
Alfred rarely wins, but he likes the potential to best Ivan.
Ivan presents so unbroken, a solid pillar.
But there is so much more there, and Alfred sees it—sees it when he knows to look. The way Ivan’s eyes flicker. The way Ivan watches him, hands pressed together in his lap . Smiling at him whenever Alfred moves—his smile becoming wider when Ivan sees Alfred will soon win.
Alfred takes in Ivan’s held breath. He imagines how easily Ivan would gnaw at his lower lip—
(And an image of Ivan gnawing on Alfred’s lower lip springs to mind before he can banish it.)
“Russia,” Alfred says, and Ivan looks up at him. He is quiet, unsure what to say.
And then the words come to him:
“Just breathe.”
Ivan obeys him.
-
Ivan breathes in and out.
Instinctive.
-
Ivan feels exposed, for the first time in so long. And the worst part is that Alfred is not aware of it.
He breathes.
Perhaps if their eyes snap together, all their secrets and skeletons and scars will be revealed to each other. Or perhaps Ivan is not that naïve (perhaps he wants to be that naïve). Perhaps, deep down, Alfred already knows every dirty fantasy, the images of splaying out on his back, panting and calling as Ivan works him open with his hands and his tongue. It’s a blessing and a curse that Alfred is so inward when it comes to observation. It’s a blessing and a curse that Alfred can’t see through Ivan the way Ivan sees through him.
There are a few things that Ivan knows for sure, though:
The intensity of Alfred’s eyes, in the heat of battle, in the heat of victory, in the flickering suppression of all the other intensities he keeps locked away inside. He knows the surprising force of Alfred’s handshake. The smell of death. The shape of everything churning inside him.
He knows that Alfred does not stop. He knows that Alfred’s mind is moving, his heart is calling, even when he sleeps. He does not drop away. He keeps moving. And because of it, he is faced with the demons of a past he keeps trying to push back down again. Innocent moments become nightmares. Folding socks can lead to remembrances of war. Moving his knight in front of Ivan’s pawn can lead to moments when they fought side by side. Looking at the sky can lead to the reminder of all the things he’s done to others, and to himself.
Ivan knows that Alfred has the violent streak, has witnessed it firsthand. He knows there is something that craves power, craves the eradication of weakness and vulnerability.
It is in this way that Ivan knows that he is not so dissimilar to Alfred.
-
“You seem distracted,” Ivan says, lifting a hand.
Alfred’s eyes are on Ivan’s fingers, and his face flushes and he looks away, his thoughts heavy with disgust, with distaste, with shame—shame—
He banishes the thoughts that press to the back of his eyes. His hand twitches, imagining the ghost of fingers against his cock.
“I’m not,” he says, the constant refrain.
-
There are a few things that Alfred knows for sure.
Above all else, a long time ago, he’d stopped caring that Ivan always won at chess. He shelters away that vulnerability, squashes it back down to where it belongs. He knows the way his body electrifies whenever Ivan’s fingers brush his across the chessboard, as if it is accident and purposeful at the same time. He knows of his own absurd desire to press up against Ivan, to touch his face—
(These are thoughts he also quickly presses away—there’s no reason to feel it.)
He knows to breathe in and out.
Exhale. Inhale.
He tells himself that hate is all he feels for Ivan. Hatred.
But he also knows, deep down, in the places he dares not acknowledge, that hatred is so easily misinterpreted.
-
“I hate you,” Alfred says.
“Wouldn’t it be easy if that were the case,” Ivan says, not truly a question.
Alfred’s shoulders stiffen up. Ivan smiles.
He moves his rook.
“Checkmate, comrade.” His voice is almost warm.
-
Alfred pushes his hand against the wall, hunches into himself as he cries out, biting down into his lip.
-
Halfway across the world, Ivan’s fingers fold together and his breathing comes harsher as he thinks of one person.
-
(Check.)
-
Ivan’s voice sounds distant over the telephone. Crackling and far away.
“Okay, I moved it,” Alfred says, staring down at the chessboard. His brows furrow. He doesn’t need to school his face when they play over the phone.
“Then it is your turn,” Ivan says, cheerful.
“I know that, shut up,” Alfred snaps back, harsher than he’d intended. He swallows thickly.
“I already know your move, anyway,” Ivan says, and it almost sounds like he’s laughing.
Alfred’s eyes narrow. “Where?”
“You always move your pawn to meet mine, yes? So you will move your king’s pawn forward two spaces.”
Alfred scowls, lifting his hand away from the very pawn he’d already put his hand on.
“No. I’m moving my queen’s pawn forward one space. So there.”
“Very well,” Ivan says.
“So stop acting like you know everything about me. You’re going to lose this time.”
“I forget, sometimes, that I know things about you that you do not know yet,” Ivan says, still sounding deceptively cheerful.
(Oh, the things that Ivan knows. Secret longings. Desires. Needs. The things that bloom across Alfred’s face but he does not dare force into the open. They will evolve, Ivan knows.)
“What the fuck are you even talking about, commie bastard?” Alfred mutters, feeling his face heat up. “You don’t know shit about me.”
“You do not hate me,” Ivan says.
“Fuck you. I do, too,” Alfred snaps. “You hate freedom and you hate capitalism and you’re giving my people a hernia. Of course I hate you.”
“I know that you do not,” Ivan says, and Alfred can hear the smile in his voice.
Alfred’s laugh is shaky. Unsure.
“Yeah, right.”
-
Alfred hangs up on Ivan, but Ivan continues smiling into the receiver.
-
Alfred does not remember to breathe properly for a long while after the phone call.
-
The next time they meet, Alfred does not dare lift his eyes from the chessboard.
-
(Any day now.)
-
“What you feel for me,” Ivan says, suddenly, one day, “is not hatred.”
Alfred whips his head up, and narrows his eyes. “What?”
“What you feel for me,” Ivan says again, smiling, “is not hatred.”
“Fuc—”
“It’s unfortunate, really,” Ivan says, cutting Alfred off, reaching out and moving his bishop. “That you do not realize that I reciprocate.”
There. It is in the open.
(Any day now.)
There’s a startled moment when Alfred just stares at him. Ivan meets his gaze evenly.
And then Alfred is laughing, shaky and nervous.
“Um. What?”
He’s moving closer, though, just the slightest bit. Ivan can see it. The chessboard blocks their movements, a bridge and a block between them.
And then, without warning, the back of Ivan’s hand reaches out and touches Alfred’s jaw, knuckles grazing almost tenderly. Alfred’s eyes widen.
“You—” Alfred begins, chokes, and stops. He pulls his head back, just the tiniest bit. But before Ivan can pull his hand away, Alfred is grabbing it, tightly, violently.
He holds it tight.
Rigid, alert.
“What are you…”
“I’m tired of waiting,” Ivan says with one shrug.
It’s Alfred, then, who moves.
He stands up suddenly and sweeps the chessboard away. Some of the pieces roll innocently away and others clatter to the ground, but Alfred’s knee is on the table and he’s leaning over and slamming his mouth against Ivan’s.
It’s messy and hot.
Their teeth bang and they bite. Alfred’s hands curl into Ivan’s hair and holds tight. Painfully tight, forcing Ivan’s face up and against Alfred’s. Ivan doesn’t move. Alfred dominates him, bites at his mouth and tongue and digs in deeper with his fingers and teeth.
They gasp for air.
-
The air is thick as Alfred pushes Ivan up against the wall.
With all the suspense leading up to this moment, it is now like an explosion. Now that the energy has released, it will not stop.
Alfred’s hands pulse down Ivan’s body, unwrap scarf and unbutton shirts. Fingernails dig. Not enough to break skin, but enough to leave pink trails against Ivan’s skin.
(They can join the rest of his scars. Alfred’s, too.)
It all cannot last, though.
Explosions have their fallout.
-
Something breaks.
Maybe it’s something in the scent of Ivan’s throat. Or the way fingers dig into his back.
His eyes widen. There is a sharp intake of breath.
Everything changes. Everything breaks.
-
(It was inevitable.)
-
It’s suffocation.
“What the fuck have you done to me?” Alfred says, louder than he’d meant to, but still not shouting. His eyes are wide and fearful—a wild animal’s.
“What do you mean?” Ivan asks, calm.
“What the fuck have you done to me?” Alfred repeats, eyes still wide, hands shaking. The distance between himself and Ivan is suddenly immense.
It’s not safe. Not anymore.
Alfred looks around widely.
“What did you do to me to make me do this?” Alfred asks. “You manipulating—”
Ivan tilts his head to the side. Almost innocent.
It’s suffocation.
It’s agony.
-
(Suffocation. Agony.
Alfred shouts something, the words jumbled.)
-
Ivan predicts the hit a half-second before it happens. He doesn’t brace for it when Alfred’s fist connects with his jaw, sideways against his mouth.
His head snaps to the side and hits against the wall.
Ivan feels his lip split.
And he smiles.
“What did you do to me?” Alfred shouts now, desperate, repeating the same question.
“I did nothing,” Ivan says with a smile. “This was your doing, America.”
Alfred’s eyes are still wide and desperate. It’s probably a bad idea to goad him, but Ivan can’t help himself. It’s suffocation. It’s self-preservation even as Alfred lays down another punch.
Ivan wipes blood from his mouth with the back of his knuckles.
Alfred’s hands are shaking. He pulls his fist back to hit him again.
Ivan grins now, grabs the fist, and twists.
Alfred cries out as Ivan shoves him against the wall, pinning him.
He whispers, sweetly, into Alfred’s ear, “I did not make you want this, Alfred.”
Alfred squeezes his eyes shut, teeth gritting together.
“No—”
“Yes.”
“I would never—”
“But you do.”
“I—!”
“How did I manipulate you, then? How did I make you want this, Alfred?” Ivan asks, quietly, voice a sweet whisper against the shell of Alfred’s ear.
Alfred’s eyes are wide.
-
(It’s suffocation.
It’s agony.)
-
“I don’t…” Alfred begins.
Ivan tilts his head to the side, and brushes his lips against the line of Alfred’s jaw. Alfred’s nostrils flare, but then, for half a moment, he relaxes.
Ivan does not ease up his hold on his arm, does not ease up on pressing Alfred hard into the wall.
Alfred clenches his eyes shut.
“Ivan,” he chokes out, desperate.
-
(Checkmate.)