Chapter Text
She hates chess.
Hades had taught her early in their marriage, how to play. Problem is, she can’t win worth a damn - especially against him. That strategic brain that plots every move out like a battle plan and swiftly catches her at checkmate before she’s even made a dent in his pawns. It’s infuriating, and she puts up her best fights - and it is still not enough. Hades enjoys it though, she knows. And it’s an excuse that gets him away from being a damn workaholic. He works too hard, and she’s known that since the beginning of time. She carries those burdens too, as queen, but he still pushes himself too far. Don’t think she ain’t noticed the fine silver hair beginning to show at his temples. She’s had to get creative in her efforts to make him take breaks. Surprise lunches, careful distractions, plus the one or two or three afternoons they’d spent learning just how sturdy that desk and those shelves of his were.
So she has to think fast, unless she wants to be tormented by chess from here to eternity.
All the games she knows are ones played by running through fields or finding little nooks between the trees to hide away in. Poker is alright, but Hermes is better at it than she is and that ain’t nearly as much strategy much as luck (unless you’re actually playing with Hermes, then it’s a game of catching her damned brother cheating). Except, she thinks, one game.
She has to rummage in the boxes in her momma’s house that summer, skin slicked with mid-day heat. She unearths a pouch of worn tiles that ain’t seen the light of day in a good century - her ma won’t miss them. She tucks them in her bag when she goes back down home in the fall, and drops it on Hades’ desk two weeks later when she decides he needs a break. His brow arches all curious like, and Persephone smiles.
“Figured I’d teach ya somethin’ in return for learnin’ me chess.”
He looks like he might argue, go back to his reports, but he doesn’t. His shoulders ease and he reaches out to find out what’s in the cloth pouch bag. Persephone sets about trying to find a good place to play; their table in his office is all taken up with the chess set that ain’t got a proper home and if she shoves his papers on his desk outta his way he’s likely to have a conniption fit. Real picky, her husband. So she settles on the table on the balcony of his office, usually reserved for their drinks after a long day or whatever book she’s been reading, whatever else. That balcony is their little safe space to look over their realm, enjoy it’s beauty. She feels like a damned queen on a parapet out there most of the time. Hades usually just reads his paper.
“It’s real good, I promise.” He’s tried for a while to find more things she likes that he can learn, that they can do together or something that ain’t tied to the underworld. This, she reckons, is the solution. To his credit, he follows her out to the balcony and plants himself in a seat, even removing his jacket. Least she’ll have his attention for a while she notes, sitting across from him. She dumps the little cloth sack out onto the surface of the table and the porcelain tiles with their neatly carved dots spill out with a clatter.
She hears him catch his breath in the back of his throat and her head snaps up, worried something’s wrong or -
“Hades?”
“—dominoes.” He rumbles in that gravel tone that could shake the depths of the damn earth. She smiles.
“You know it?”
“Not - I don’t know how.” He replies quietly. Not at all like him. “—I used to watch Deme and Hestia play together. Long time ago.” Sees him swallow. Sentimental, her man. Even if he tries to keep it secret. She knows it. Persephone’s expression softens.
“Well, ‘bout time you learned then.”
- - -
For all of Hades’ brilliance in chess, he shows none of it in dominoes.
To her, it’s a simple game. Easy rules, easy way to keep score. But he keeps trying to turn the tiles when he ain’t supposed to and is adding them all wrong. Persephone wonders if it might be an act at first, but after she teaches him and they play a few practice games, she’s decided he just can’t fathom how to play.
Is it an excuse to spend more time with her? Maybe. Probably. She doesn’t ask. He doesn’t tell.
She tries not to get frustrated - he didn’t lose his temper with her learning chess, so she tries to return the favor. At some point, one of them grabs a decanter from his desk and two glasses and things go downhill from there.
Persephone wins, seven games out of ten. The other two were draws because he’d hopelessly confused her scoring that she’d lost track and they’d both given up.
Somehow, it becomes their thing.
They stop playing chess all together, they play dominoes instead. Always out on the balcony. She hopes he’ll get better - he doesn’t. It becomes a strategic game when things start growing tense between them, when the winters ain’t what they should be. Each win she gets feels like a hollow victory; they barely make it through a game or two before he’s grown frustrated and gets up and leaves. Or turns back to his newspaper and ignores her the rest of the evening.
He always comes back to the game though. Eventually. Those tiles become their arguments, told through the way they’re slammed down or tossed carelessly. Not once does he win. And it angers him, she knows. She tries not to look too pleased when he storms off after some games, nearly scattering the tiles in his haste.
They don’t play at all the winter that Eurydice comes, that Orpheus comes. That Orpheus leaves. The tiles are untouched, blank backsides worn from use and colored off-white rather than the once pristine porcelain. Persephone wants to throw them at Hades that winter, launch every single damned tile at his face until he listens. She doesn’t.
They’re there, blank and waiting when she returns the winter after. Six months to the day. Somehow they end up there on that balcony after she comes off the train, her fingers jittery from withdrawal and him silent as his shades. They sit. Persephone tries to focus on the realm spread out beneath them. Something’s changed this time, she thinks.
There’s a clink and when she looks down, Hades has flipped one of his tiles over and placed it at the center - the first move of the game. Waiting. An offering, she thinks as she looks from the tile to his face. Those dark eyes that say so much and nothing at all.
She is quiet, then reaches down to move one of her tiles into place against his. An answer.
The game starts anew. Things have changed. Tiles are not war, they are peace offerings. Tile by tile as they build the board like they should have built their kingdom. Like they want to rebuild themselves, their marriage. He isn’t as terrible as she remembers, she notes. Gets points pretty well, just as well as her.
By the end of it, Hades wins by six points.
Thing’s should be alright, she thinks as she helps him flip the tiles back over to their blank sides for another round. Their hands brush, he catches her fingers in his and brings them to his lips to brush a kiss against them.
She doesn’t remember the scores after that.