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“That’s so dumb, oh my God,” Oz Vessalius said, standing next to Elliot Nightray as they waited for their buses and watched Oz’s sister and Elliot’s boyfriend have a completely pointless argument about whether feet or fists were better at inflicting blunt-force trauma.
“No, it’s genius,” Elliot said.
“No, it’s stupid, and so are you.”
“If we were friends, you’d think it was smart,” said Elliot, which was mainly a low blow in that Oz had been insisting for several years now that they were best friends and Elliot had for several years been arguing that they weren’t friends at all, despite the fact that Oz spent at least one night a week in Elliot’s room and two in Elliot’s adopted brothers’ apartment, often without Elliot there, and despite the fact that Elliot had brought Oz along to every single vacation he’d had since he was eleven.
“We are friends,” Oz said. “We’re best friends, which is why I know that this is a really dumb idea.”
“Friends don’t call friends dumb, stupid,” Elliot shot back.
Oz, confident as ever in their friendship, rolled his eyes. Elliot shoved him, and got shoved back for his troubles, and the two teenagers were halfway to shoving each others’ faces in the grass on the side of the parking lot before Leo came over and hit them with his math textbook to get them off of each other.
“What is it this time?” he sighed.
Elliot and Oz looked at each other.
“Nothing,” said Elliot.
“Elliot’s being an idiot,” said Oz.
This was an acceptable answer for Leo, who, at five months of dating Elliot, was incredibly used to him being an idiot. He pulled them both up.
“Get it all out of your system today, if you embarrass me at chess club tomorrow I’m breaking up with you.”
“Then I’ll just date Oz instead,” Elliot shot back.
“Oz has better taste than that, he’d date me,” Leo said. “Right, Oz?”
“Oh, I’m not allowed to date until I’m eighteen,” said Oz, smiling. “Also, neither of you like me like that anyway, and I like someone else, besides. Also, Elliot’s definitely going to embarrass you at chess club tomorro—”
“Oz wants to spectate,” said Elliot.
“What?” said Leo.
“At chess club. He wants to watch you play me.”
“I always like to see Elliot get beaten at something he’s bad at,” Oz agreed.
“Fuck you, I’m great at chess,” Elliot snapped.
“No thanks, you have a boyfriend.”
“Not for long, if you’re embarrassing tomorrow,” Leo threatened.
“I won’t be embarrassing, and I’m good at chess,” said Elliot.
Leo and Oz exchanged eye rolls—Elliot was not the best at strategy games or strategy in general, but he was very good at being embarrassing, and there was a reason why most of the student body hated him—and Leo, who knew that Oz was very good at chess, said, “If you come spectate, you’d better make sure Elliot puts on a good show.”
Oz grinned. “Yeah, of course!” he said. “We’re best friends.”
“I don’t even know who you are,” said Elliot.
After Leo left to drive home—he had his own car and apartment, for some reason, which Elliot found cool as hell, and which Leo explained away by saying that his family was deeply weird and he was avoiding them—Oz turned back to Elliot.
“It’s still a dumb idea, and you owe me big time,” he said.
Elliot just smirked at him.
“What’s a dumb idea?” asked Alice, who had come over, as she always did, on the first bus from the middle school, and, now that Leo was no longer available to argue with, had decided to pick a fight with Elliot.
Oz and Elliot met eyes, each with his own shit-eating grin—Elliot’s feral, Oz’s one that, had Leo seen it, would have reminded him rather unfortunately of his Aunt Lacie.
“The evil counsellor gambit,” they chorused.
The next day after school, once Alice was sent on past the high school to “head home” (though everyone knew that she’d end up in the tarot shop Gilbert worked at instead), Elliot, Leo, and Oz went to chess club, a little bit late, and each pretending to be confident in that manner of high schoolers refusing to let their few friends know that they don’t quite feel comfortable in their own skin, and each sure that he was the only one in the world who felt that way. Elliot and Leo were holding hands; Oz was mentally reviewing everything he knew about chess.
Oz was quite good at the game, though he wasn’t a member of the club. Vincent had taught him when he was young, and he often played against Vincent and against Gilbert’s coworker Ada’s Uncle Oscar when he visited the tarot shop. Elliot was well aware of this, which was why he had, the day prior, asked Oz for help making a good impression at the chess club—and for Elliot, making a good impression only meant one thing: winning, and at any cost that didn’t involve bribery or threats.
Elliot was not aware that this competitive streak was among the many reasons his classmates tended to dislike him. He was not, in fact, aware of any of the reasons unrelated to his last name that he was widely disliked, because those were typically the same things that Oz and Leo liked him for. All three of them were deeply weird, and some level of unpopular outside of their little sphere, though Leo was by far the most genuinely liked. Oz could have been more popular, had he wanted to be, but he instead focused most of his attentions on becoming a teacher’s pet due to his rampant and deeply unfortunate daddy issues. This had paid off for him: all of his teachers adored him, though he was especially close to Xerxes Break, despite the fact that, in the single year that Break had been teaching at the high school, he’d personally called CPS on Oz’s family no less than twelve times.
This was alright. Oz had first met Break when the Rainsworths had moved into town about nine years prior and he had immediately attempted to kidnap Oz; when that failed, and he realized that Oz was getting in trouble for the kidnapping attempts, he had switched to nightly CPS calls that were so scarily accurate that, for a while, everyone in the Vessalius family had been convinced he’d somehow gotten cameras into the house. The worst had been five years ago when, in a bid for custody of Oz and Alice, he had ended up approved as an actual foster parent and gotten very close to proving that Oz and Alice’s father owned the entire social services department, but after that had failed, he’d chilled out, gotten a part-time job at the high school, and was now one of Oz’s favorite teachers.
Xerxes Break had also begun helping out with the chess club this year, which Oz found out when he, Elliot, and Leo arrived to see Break heckling the students while eating a lollipop, as the actual club advisor looked as though she was seriously considering taking a swan-dive out the window.
“Why, helloooo there Oz!” Break called. “Elliot, Leo!”
“Hi Break!” Oz said. “Leo invited us.”
“I see, I see, ” said Break. “Well, in order to join the chess club, you need to beat one of our members first—”
The actual club advisor took a long pull from her water bottle, and Oz noted that the liquid inside was suspiciously red.
“—so why don’t you face off against Leo? And Oz, you can play against me~!”
“Oh, no, I’m just here to spectate,” Oz said with a slight laugh. “I’ll watch Elliot and Leo’s game, though!”
Break, who had always seemed to know and care for Oz far better than he should have, smirking knowingly at him and kicked his legs up on the club advisor’s desk; she, in turn, added some more wine to her water bottle and watched him exhaustedly.
In a very short time Leo had gotten the game set up; Oz was standing between them, watching, and every other student was giving the three boys a rather wide berth—after all, you never knew what sorts of mischief they’d get up to, or what the fallout would be.
Today, that mischief started with Oz peering at the chessboard and saying, confidently, “Elliot, you’re going to want to get your king out into the center of the board as fast as possible.”
“Oz, what the fuck,” said Leo.
Elliot sent out one of his pawns.
“Remember that the knight is the only chess piece that can’t jump over other pieces.”
Elliot continued with the pawns; Oz continued giving absolutely horrible advice to both Elliot and Leo, and after about fifteen minutes of the worst game of chess Leo had ever played, both boys were down to their kings and a few other pieces. Oz’s advice had seemingly improved throughout the game—and Elliot had even followed it once or twice—and though Leo was definitely suspicious of him, he thought that Oz was just messing with both of them, because he was bored and an excellent chess player.
“Hey, Leo. Checkmate in three moves,” said Oz.
“What?” said Leo.
“That pawn—you could queen it in two moves, and then there’s a straight shot to Elliot’s king, see?”
Leo looked; Oz was right, though Leo’s pawn was also currently blocking Elliot’s rook from getting to his king. Elliot hadn’t touched the rook in about ten turns, though, so Leo guessed that he’d probably forgotten about it—Elliot never had been a very good chess player—and moved the pawn.
“Elliot, use your knight to—”
“Checkmate,” said Elliot smugly, and claimed Leo’s king with his rook.
“Piss,” said Leo.
Elliot reached into his bag and pulled out a mint condition, signed copy of the very first Holy Knight book and gave it to Oz, who cheered. Leo stared at them for a moment as Oz began gushing over his new book, and then said, “Did you two fucking play me?”
“Evil counsellor gambit,” Elliot said smugly. “I figured you’d play worse if Oz was giving us bad advice the whole time—”
“I didn’t think it would work, honestly,” said Oz, running his fingers down the cover of his new book. “I mean, when Elliot suggested it I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. I said that there was no way you’d fall for it.”
“I hate you both,” said Leo.
“Love you too, babe,” Elliot said smugly, blowing him a kiss.
“And I love my wonderful new book,” said Oz cheerfully. “I’m going to see if I can get Gil to store it for me at his apartment. Bye, guys!”
Oz waved and headed out as Elliot and Leo began to squabble behind him, mind near-entirely on his new book and nothing else. The day was beautiful, he’d had fun with his friends, and he was going to get to see Elliot’s hot older brother soon. Everything that could go right had, and Oz was happy.