Chapter Text
Chosen is lying on the couch in the living room, enjoying a novel they stole picked up at the local corner store a few days ago, when Dark interrupts them by walking in and smacking something down on the coffee table.
Chosen raises an eyebrow at the checkered piece of cardboard that now adorns the surface, and watches as Dark starts covering it in little figurines.
“What’s this?”
Dark looks up at them, from where he’s sitting on the floor as he arranges the figures, and says proudly, “A solution!”
Chosen knows they and Dark have a few problems that come up now and again, but they're not quite sure what problem this solves. “Uh huh? And that is…?”
“Chess!”
“Ok yeah, I’m not an idiot, I know what Chess is.” Chosen scowls, “What problem are you trying to solve with Chess? Boredom?”
Dark gives Chosen an unimpressed look, hand frozen on one of the pieces, before arranging the last few on the board in silence, before announcing, “The destruction problem, my dim-witted friend.”
Chosen rolls their eyes at the insult, but snorts in laughter, “What? You gonna flip the table when you lose?” They give Dark a challenging grin.
Dark smacks both hands on the table and gasps in offense, knocking some of the pieces over, “Oh you are asking for it!”
He plants his hands on his hips and begins to rant, “Here I am trying to find a nice solution to the ‘Destroy The Chosen One’ problem that doesn’t involve beating you to a pulp,--”
”beating you to a pulp.” Chosen mutters under their breath, and goes ignored.
“--and now you’re practically asking for me to give you a knuckle sandwich. Really? What do you really want here? Tell me.” Dark opens his arms wide in askance.
Chosen can’t help themselves, their teasing smile grows further on their face, “Peace and quiet to finish my book?”
Dark shoots to his feet and throws his hand up in the air, “There is no satisfying you!” and stomps out of the room in dramatic fashion.
Less than a minute later he’s back and ripping Chosen’s book out of their hands (“Hey!”), shoving a spoon in it to mark their place, and slamming it down on the floor behind him when he sits down, out of Chosen’s immediate reach. Chosen glares at him as he then points at them and declares war with;
“I am going to destroy you!”
Chosen crosses their arms lets out a put upon sigh and relents, looking at the board as Dark ensures everything is where it should be. “Alright, let’s get this over with. Who goes first?”
“Who go-Who goes first!?” Dark lets out an incredulous and delighted laugh, “’I’m-not-an-idiot-and-knows-what-Chess-is’ Chosen, doesn’t know who goes first!? Hah!”
Chosen lets out another heavy sigh at the taunting, glares at them, and moves a pawn forward one square to see if he would protest.
Dark smirks at them, "Luck guess?" he asks settling down, observing their move, and raises an eyebrow with a smile still on. “You know you can move the pawn two spaces forwards on its first turn, right?”
Chosen crosses their arms and looks away, “I know.”
“Uh-huh.” Dark says, unconvinced, making his own move on the board. “This is gonna be a walk in the park.”
Chosen follows up trying to move one of their knights into the space the pawn vacated on their last turn. One space forward, and one space to the left.
“No, no, you can’t-“ Dark sighs, and looks at Chosen, “Do you know how this is actually played? How all the pieces move?”
Chosen tsks, and points out each piece and what they think they know it does. “The castles can only go straight, the horses go in an ‘L’ shape-“
“Yeah! An ‘L’! Not this wimpy corner thing,” Dark points out the move Chosen tried to play, “It’s two spaces, and then one to the side. Longer on one side than the other like an 'L', yeah?” He picks up the piece and shows Chosen the possible moves they could play with it.
“And it’s a knight, not a horse.” Dark adds placing it back in its starting spot.
Chosen is full on glaring at Dark for the interruption and moving their piece.
“Sorry, continue.” Dark raises a hand in defense.
Chosen inhales deeply and points out the next piece, “This is the bishop, it goes diagonally.” They stop and look at Dark for a moment and when he refrains from commenting, they continue. “This is the Queen, she can do everything anything else can do. Th-“
“Ah-Not quite.” Dark interrupts again. Chosen slams a hand on the table, and then crosses their arms and leans back on the couch with a scowl.
“Ok, ok. So, you know some stuff.” Dark raises his hands up and tries to placate them, knowing they’re just one or two annoyances away from them getting up and leaving, or launching themselves over the coffee table to deck him. It’s all a matter of whether Dark is purposeful about his annoyances or not, and he’s not sure how many unintended annoyances he may cause when it seems they may not actually know how to play the game. He’s treading a bit of a mine field here.
“Did you never get the chance to play in your free time on the PC?” Dark asks curious, because they clearly know some things about Chess, as he said, but not nearly enough to really get how to play properly.
This… seems to be the wrong question as Chosen now draws their legs up to their chin, wrapping their arms around them, and glares harder.
Ah, Dark's not entirely sure where he went wrong there, but Chosen choosing to shut down is now on his list of things to avoid. Oh boy, this is not at all going the way he thought it would.
Dark looks back down at the board and chooses to go over the rest of the pieces himself, “Right, so the Queen can do almost anything except move like the knight. That would just make her too OP, you know?”
He looks up briefly just to make sure Chosen is following, also hoping to lighten the mood, and hasn’t spaced out. The OP comment seems to go ignored, but the black stick is watching intently, so Dark continues, showing the movement of each piece as he goes.
“The King can only move once space in all directions. The pawns on their first turn can move two spaces forwards and then all turns after that, only one. Now, they can only capture a piece one square diagonal to them, so if there is another piece in front of them, they can’t move. The fun thing with pawns is that if you get them to the opposite end of the board you can promote them to queen, knight, bishop, or rook.”
“Rook?”
Dark looks back up, glad to see Chosen has uncurled a bit as they inquire about the piece.
“Ah, you called it a castle,” Dark says, then hastily adds, “Which is fine. It goes by both names.”
“But the horse doesn’t.” Chosen says disappointingly pointing at their knight.
“Nope.” Dark confirms with an apologetic smile.
Chosen mutters something under their breath, and then moves their knight two spaces forward and then one to the opposite side they had before, as the pawn they moved in their first turn was occupying the space.
“Alright! Let continue on!” Dark wiggles his fingers over his pieces before moving.
They play on for awhile, (Chosen refuses to give up when they haven’t won once yet.) and Dark, having won every round so far in short time (thoroughly satisfying his code as predicted.), is happy to continue.
Until the next upset arises that is.
“Hey! You can’t move two pieces in one turn!” Chosen protests loudly, grabbing Dark’s hand holding his king, to stop him, knocking the previously just moved rook off the board in the process.
“Just hold on a second!” Dark pulls his hand and piece out of Chosen’s grip, “It’s called castling, watch.”
He swats Chosen away from the board, re-sets the rook on the corner, and talks them through the move.
“So, if the king and rook haven’t moved yet,” He taps the two pieces he intends to move. King. Rook.
“And the spaces between them are clear,” He slides a finger across the board between the two pieces.
“Then you can-“ He moves the rook on to the empty square next to the king and then flips the king to the rooks opposite side, “-castle the king!”
He looks up at Chosen with a smile to see a furious glare on their face.
“That’s cheating! You’re making it up!” Chosen accuses Dark pointing in disgust at the move he just made. “Just because I’m starting to get better at the game, and you’re feeling threatened by my bishop!”
Chosen has three pieces on the board, the bishop mentioned (threatening Dark’s queen, but in just as much danger itself), a rook of their own, and, of course, their king. All to combat Darks remaining… 14 pieces, just 2 short of the full set.
“Yeah, no.” Dark’s not even going to give Chosen the illusion of their imagined improvement, “Look, I could have taken that bishop if I wanted to, with my queen, my knight, this pawn in two turns time… Look! You haven’t even bothered to protect it with your rook!”
He points out how if Chosen’s bishop was taken, there would be nothing threatening the space the bishop was in, for defense or vengeance.
Chosen shoots up to their feet and points dramatically at Dark, ignoring his argument (and another imminent loss they can expect), fully set on disproving the legality of Dark's move. “You called it ‘Castling’ and you call that piece a rook!” They jab at the piece, “You made the move up and are trying to convince me it’s a real thing by using my name for the piece to convince me! Don’t think I’ll fall for your manipulations!” Chosen crosses their arms and looks down on the red stick, “I bet you don’t even have a rule book to prove it.”
Dark blinks. What an accusation. It’s totally something Dark would do under normal circumstances, but in this case it’s just… ugh his nature playing against him. Dark isn’t making the move up though, and Chosen’s right, he doesn’t have a rule book to prove that he’s right, and it’s a legal move, but he knows it is. Argh. So annoying.
“Fine! If you’re so against the move, I’ll take it back.” Dark sniffs, “Not like I needed to do it to beat you anyways.” He moves the pieces back, “But when I get my hands on a rule book…” He threatens.
Then moves his queen to take their bishop instead.
“Hey!”
The game devolves shortly there after and is scattered across the floor, forgotten until the next morning when a piece is stepped on.
“Hey scribbles!” Dark calls from the front door, kicking his shoes off. Chosen looks at him with an unimpressed face from where they’re sitting on the couch ten feet away. Reading as usual.
“Got you a book.” Dark smirks pulling the item from the shopping bags in his hands, tossing it to the black stick.
“Really?” Chosen says, catching it, surprised and curious at what book Dark might have gotten them, before reading the cover. “Really?” They glare at Dark as he passes by with the rest of his shopping. He’d given them a Chess book for beginners.
“Page 28!” Dark calls from the stairs, already on the way up to his room to grab the Chess set.
Chosen groans in annoyance and their impending defeat.