Work Text:
October 1978
A running list of things in Freddie’s life that are going wrong:
1. Anatoly Karpov is staring at him.
2. The fucking lunatic in the back row is staring at him. Nineteen games in, Freddie still isn’t sure which is worse.
3. Freddie’s hands are shaking. This is because he hasn’t eaten in two days (the Russians have poisoned everything in a 5-mile radius), save for a bag of chips Florence brought him from the other side of town just before the start of the game.
4. The cameras are zeroed in on him. He’s insulted the reporters one too many times, and now they’re waiting for him to fail. Freddie clutches his hands under the table when he isn’t moving a piece, trying to hide the way they tremble.
He reaches up, moves his pawn up one square, and taps Karpov’s clock. Karpov’s eyes flick down to the board—another moment of relief from one pair of eyes. Only one of hundreds.
5. It’s 5-5, because Freddie missed the previous game, because when he stepped out of the elevator the so-called doctor and a couple of KGB agents were at the other end of the hall staring at him. He was winning, before then.
6. No one will take his complaints seriously, that they’re looking for a way to kill him. The Arbiter has been looking at him differently ever since, and banishing the hypnotist to the back row isn’t enough.
Karpov moves his one remaining rook, taps the clock, and stands, strolling across the stage and to his relief area, out of sight of the audience but not of Freddie. He watches Karpov take a glass of water from a little table and drink. One of his cronies is over there—so is one of the Arbiter’s people, but what does that mean? What if they’ve paid her off, to look the other way while they talk while Karpov’s back is turned?
Freddie glances over at the Arbiter. His gaze flickers up from the board to Freddie, which is kind of creepy, considering he can’t see Freddie’s eyes behind his sunglasses. Freddie tries to focus.
7. He broke up with Ian last week, by calling him at 3AM, Baguio time, when Freddie knew he would be at work, and leaving a message on his voicemail. Ian has called the hotel twice since then, in spite of the insane long-distance charges, so Freddie had to unplug the phone. He’ll probably have to move when he gets home. He’ll have to hire someone to do it—win or lose, he’ll have the money for it. What a luxury!
8. There’s no way forward without him losing a pawn. This late in the game, it chafes.
9. Someone on the left side of the crowd is coughing. The sound grates on Freddie’s already dangerously thin nerves.
10. Karpov is coming back.
Freddie moves his knight, resigned to his lost pawn, and taps the clock just as Karpov sits down. Freddie’s gaze drifts to the chess board on the wall as the representation of his knight is moved. He cranes his neck back to look at Florence, standing just out of sight of the crowd.
Her arms are crossed close to her chest, her mouth turned pointedly downward, her brows furrowed.
11. Florence also doesn’t believe him.
He’s tried to explain it to her, over and over again. She just doesn’t get it—she won’t or she can’t, he doesn’t know which. She thinks he’s crazy and there’s nothing he can do about it.
They’ve been having a lot of arguments. Freddie isn’t winning them so much as he is refusing to lose. It makes it a little hard to focus on chess.
12. There’s a way for him to win here, he knows it—he just can’t wrap his head around it. Karpov moves, he moves, and he still can’t grasp the right strategy, only the echoes. Every time he starts to pull at what seems like the right thread, that person in the audience has a coughing fit, and he clenches his jaw so hard he imagines it’s going to shatter.
13. He’d actually really liked Ian. He’s not really sure why he did that, except that it felt absolutely necessary at the time, and he can’t back out of it now.
14. He’s so hungry. The bottled water doesn’t make his hands shake any less.
15. Karpov gets up again, and a reporter in the front row snaps a picture of him as he walks across the stage. Freddie recognizes that reporter—he’d seen him talking to the Russian delegation four days ago. A couple days before that, he’d taken a picture of Freddie up close and with the flash on, leaving spots in his vision for several minutes, and who could say what Freddie had missed while he was blinking them away? Florence swore nothing had happened, but she didn’t get it. She wouldn’t know what to look for.
The reporter fiddles with his camera after, and the sound of it clicking, and Karpov’s footsteps, and someone scooting their chair, and that fucking doctor back there clearing his throat—they’re all deafening.
16. Freddie reaches for his bishop, then stops—he gets a flash of something, and then the coughing starts up again. It takes everything in him not to bang his fist on the table.
17. He wants this more than anything else in the world. More than he’s ever wanted anything. Wanting has gotten him a very long way, but now—
18. Karpov is back. He looks at the move Freddie has played, and smirks at the board. Freddie wants to jump over the table and strangle him.
It’s probably an intimidation tactic. Freddie is better than Karpov, if he’d made a mistake he would have seen it already.
19. He wants to get up so badly. He wants to pace, he likes being able to move his body when he’s playing tense games like this. But if he does that, everyone will watch him—the game is being broadcast everywhere, Walter told him. The cameras will follow him. People will be watching him. They might see him shaking.
20. It’s not that the person isn’t coughing when it’s Karpov’s move. But they’re definitely doing it more when it’s Freddie’s. Florence would say it’s a coincidence, and maybe it is! She’s looking at him like if she moves wrong, she’s going to spook him, which is ridiculous, because she’s 15 feet away. Does she see what he’s missing? If she were sitting here instead of him, could she turn this into a win? Probably.
Maybe he should just go for a draw. But the thought of it makes him so angry, because he knows he can fix this—could fix it, if everyone would just shut up and stop looking at him—and he would rather die than come back here tomorrow and do this all over again. And maybe he will. He’d just be giving the Soviets an extra day to come up with a way to make sure Freddie never plays again, and that’s what they’ve wanted all along, isn’t it?
He’s not going to look at Florence anymore.
21. Karpov starts his clock. Freddie reaches for a pawn. The person starts to cough.
Freddie stands up suddenly, his chair tipping over and crashing onto the floor behind him. He turns toward the audience, toward the culprit.
“Stop it!” he shouts. He doesn’t feel the way his hands tremble. He doesn’t feel like he’s getting enough air to breathe. “You came to the fucking world chess championship just to cough? Shut up!”
For one blissful second, everything is silent. Everyone is staring at him, but at least they’re quiet.
22. It only lasts a second, because the cameras go wild after that.
23. Freddie turns away from the audience. Karpov is looking at him with actual surprise, which is a nice change from the smug look he usually wears. Florence is covering her mouth with her hands—he isn’t looking at her, he remembers.
The Arbiter’s expression hasn’t changed at all. He motions for Freddie to follow him.
24. He takes Freddie behind stage, past Florence, and it just reinforces that Freddie’s decision not to pace was a good one. He doesn’t feel good. Once they’re out of sight of the audience, but not of Karpov, he turns and looks at Freddie.
“Frederick,” he says.
“Are you gonna disqualify me?” Freddie asks. He doesn’t even recognize the sound of his own voice.
“Are you going to do that again?” the Arbiter asks.
Freddie doesn’t know. He hadn’t planned to do it the first time. “They’re making too much noise,” Freddie says instead. “They’re doing it deliberately, they’re trying to throw me off—”
“Frederick,” the Arbiter says, firmly but not unkindly. “You’re a better player than this.”
The thing is, he’s right. Freddie is a better player than Karpov. He’s the best chess player in the world. “They want to kill me,” Freddie whispers.
“No one will harm you while I’m watching,” the Arbiter says. “Focus on the game.”
The game is what matters. The Soviets are trying to beat him off the board because they know they can’t win on it. Freddie takes a deep, shaky breath. “Can I have a minute?”
“Your clock is running,” the Arbiter says, and leaves him to it.
25. He doesn’t look at Florence—he can’t take it right now. He walks up to the curtain on the stage and peeks around it. The sound of murmurs wash through the auditorium, but there isn’t any coughing. He turns around and can see the reproduction of the game on the wall. Every second he takes to study it, an alarm is going off in his head. His clock is running. He needs to move.
Finally, he finds the right thread, and tugs.
26. When Karpov extends his hand to resign, he looks pale—maybe even afraid. The euphoria Freddie feels when he shakes his hand is unlike anything he’s ever experienced before. Karpov is up and walking away within moments, and Freddie rips his sunglasses off to give a great big grin to the audience, to let the reporters have the pictures they want. He accidentally makes eye contact with the doctor in the back row.
Something snaps in Freddie’s head, a shiver passing through him. He turns to look at the Soviet delegation, and they’re all glaring at him. The game is what matters, and the game is over.
Freddie runs.
27. Florence runs after him, grabbing him before he can leave the auditorium. “What’s going on?” she asks, her brows knit with worry and confusion. “You won!”
Yeah. They did it, Freddie won—he’s world chess champion now. On top of the world! He got everything he ever wanted.
“I have to get out of here, they’re—” he can’t even finish his sentence, he’s tripping over his words so much.
“No one is going to hurt you,” she says, and it sounds like a promise, but she never understood.
28. He rips his shirtsleeve out of her hand and runs the whole way back to his hotel room. He takes the stairs, he can’t risk the elevator. He gets away before the reporters can catch up to him. People in the hotel look at him weird the whole way, but he can’t slow down, because any of them could be in on it.
By the time he’s back in his hotel room, the door locked and bolted behind him and the desk pushed up in front of it, he thinks maybe he’s having a heart attack. His heart is hammering, it’s physically painful, and he thinks he’s going to throw up. Did they poison him somehow? Was it the chips? Florence had promised—
29. Hours later, he isn’t dead yet. The sun sets. His legs are numb from sitting on the hard floor. He doesn’t remember sitting down.
A few times, Florence has come by, knocking gently at the door and calling out to him. He doesn’t respond.
30. His hands still shaking, Freddie reaches up for the remote to the TV. A news reporter appears, speaking in Tagalog. A moment later, Freddie’s own face appears on the television. He watches from the third person as he flees the stage right after his own victory. He sees the way the rest of the world is seeing him right now—the new world chess champion.
Everything he ever wanted.