A Vast Variety of Good and Ill (John Sheppard/Radek Zelenka, R)
Gah, I hope it's still Valentine's Day somewhere in the world /o\ Apologies for the lateness!
ETA: Crossposted to the SGA Love collection on AO3. link!
Title: A Vast Variety of Good and Ill
Author: busaikko
Pairing: John Sheppard/Radek Zelenka
Rating: R
Summary: Radek teaches Sheppard to play chess.
[Peter] held up the solitary red pawn, smiling; and then scrambled hurriedly to his feet.
"My dear girl, don't cry about it. What the hell does it matter?"
"I loved them," said Harriet, "and you gave them to me."
He shook his head. "It's a pity it's that way round. ‘You gave them to me, and I loved them' is all right, but ‘I loved them and you gave them to me' is irreparable. Fifty thousand rocs' eggs won't supply their place.
Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night
John Sheppard was very bad at chess. Radek was surprised when he found this out. He'd heard good things about Sheppard's intelligence from McKay - at least, McKay grudgingly admitted that Sheppard wasn't as thick as he'd expected.
But Sheppard showed up one day at a chess club meeting, bringing the sticky fruit squares that the cooks euphemistically called 'brownies'. He put the plate on the snacks table and leaned against the wall to watch Radek play. When the game was finished and Radek had won, Sheppard shot him a questioning look, eyebrows raised.
Radek waved expansively to the empty chair across from him. When Sheppard sat, Radek asked, "What are we playing for?"
Sheppard looked startled; Radek patted the table, next to his new ballpoint pen and a USB stick with what Sheng had claimed was hot porn with real lesbians.
"If I win," Sheppard said, carefully, fingers light on the edge of the rough handmade board, "I want to talk to you."
Now it was Radek's turn to communicate with his eyebrows. "You can talk to me anyway." Sheppard shrugged. "If I win..." Shamefully, the first thing that came to his mind was the opportunity to shame the man, to gloat like McKay over his own superiority. More shameful was the way Sheppard's expression didn't change, but his eyes glinted, like he was reading Radek's mind and judging him. Radek wondered suddenly if Major Ford had made some complaint against him, if perhaps Sheppard's visit was meant to be intimidating.
He squinted at Sheppard and his uncombed hair, five'o'clock shadow, and military jacket -- he was so out of place here among Radek and his people. McKay often spoke scathingly about Major Sheppard's good looks, but the man across from him just looked tired, and oddly lonely.
Radek understood, then, and wondered when he'd let the situation devolve into this.
"If I win," he said, and gave Sheppard a smile, "you will join the chess club and bring us three new members." Sheppard's shoulders sagged as if in relief; Radek hadn't realized he'd been so tense under his casual facade. "Of course, offerings of porn or stationery are also welcome."
Sheppard smirked and pulled a pad of PostIt notes out of an inside pocket, setting it down next to the board.
Sheppard lost that game. He showed up the next week with three combat engineers and the ground ordnance weapons chief. Sheppard played against Kavanagh, and lost. The four Marines teased Sheppard mercilessly, and Radek realized that he didn't know who else on the expedition was in the Air Force.
He asked Sheppard a few weeks later while cleaning up after a meeting. Sheppard told him, and then asked hesitantly about the long-range scanners and whether there were blind spots.
This necessitated going to the lab for a laptop and white board. Sheppard followed the explanation better than Radek expected.
"What did you study?" Radek asked, rubbing at the red-ink stain that had leaked over his fingers again. They had a trading partner for ink, but it was an imperfect refill for their pens.
Sheppard made a face. "Applied mathematics," he admitted, looking embarrassed. "Don't tell McKay, okay?" Radek's distaste must have shown on his face, because Sheppard sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I've heard him talk about his sister a couple of times. He's not forgiving of people who quote-unquote let their brains rot." Sheppard shrugged and rubbed a hand over his face, like he was tired. "He'd think less of me."
Radek understood that, but... "And I do not?"
That earned him a boyish grin, possibly the same flirtatious look that McKay blamed for off-world diplomatic incidents. "You've seen me play chess."
"You're a very bad player." Radek spread his hands. "I'm sorry, but it's true." Sheppard nodded, like that was his point. "I can teach you," Radek offered. "I would like to. It would please me very much if one day you could beat McKay." He was the focus now of an oddly intense, speculative gaze, and he looked back down at his red fingers. "He has won from me several things which he refuses to allow me to win back."
"Deal," Sheppard said, and gave Radek a thumbs-up.
Radek gave him homework.
He found over the following weeks that the Sheppard project made a rewarding distraction from the terror of impending attack. Radek had been taught chess by his uncle Antonín, playing on a folding cardboard board in the evenings in front of the fire. He was grateful to his parents for letting him learn to play before he understood politics, or what purges or Communism truly were. He had entered school with the ability to predict moves far ahead in the game, and that enabled him to see manipulations and lies - and to know when to keep quiet and be a liar himself.
Chess was honest and beautiful in the ways mathematics and physics were, and Radek challenged himself to find ways to make Sheppard understand that.
The Wraith tried to destroy Atlantis; they did not. They killed good people, but Radek and Sheppard survived, despite everything. Life did not become easier.
Sheppard first beat McKay while he was recovering from an unexpected mutation into an insect-monster. Sheppard glowed smugly with victory; Radek secretly thought the glow was due to the remaining iridescent scales, and the victory was McKay being distracted by either pity or horror. But he thanked Sheppard gravely while accepting back the travel alarm clock his mother had given him when he left home for university.
He put it on the small table next to his bed, and on the evenings when Sheppard came over for a lesson, he sometimes caught him looking pensively at the clock. Radek supposed that it was rare: it was analog and needed to be wound every evening. It was nothing like the Prague astronomical clock, but in its own way it reminded him of home and family, and of the need to avoid placing bets he did not wish to pay.
He was never sure when he became friends with Sheppard. What had started as a way to bridge the divide between the military and the civilians had grown into respect for each other, and into trust. Sheppard told him things Radek was certain no one else knew. He himself did not have secrets, but the science labs could be an enraging nest of egos colliding, and Sheppard was good at listening. Radek had to deal to McKay day in and day out; he found he greatly enjoyed talking with someone who didn't interrupt his every sentence.
After being rescued from the time-dilation field Sheppard was angry . Radek didn't blame him; he had done the calculations and knew exactly how long Sheppard had been gone. He knew Sheppard was equally aware of how hard everyone on Atlantis had worked to save him. There wasn't anywhere for Sheppard's anger to go.
Radek thought that, as a friend, he could help, in some small way, with his chess board and a bottle of local wine that he'd won from Simmons.
He knocked at Sheppard's door and was let in, and set the board up on the usual table while Sheppard ransacked his room for two cups.
"I don't know where things are any more," Sheppard said, sounding annoyed, as if that was the fault of the things for being unfindable. Sheppard had shaved off his beard on his first day back, so he looked no different than he had the day before.
But there was half a year of separation between them now, and Radek would have to be careful not to forget that.
"We can drink from the bottle," Radek suggested offhand. "Charming in its own way."
Sheppard huffed in irritation, but sat down. Radek opened the bottle, wiped the mouth with the corner of his shirt, and handed it over. He watched as Sheppard drank, wincing a little at the taste but not deterred.
"I haven't had a drink in ages," Sheppard said as he handed the bottle back. "I'm going to be a cheap drunk. And I haven't played. At all. The people I was with weren't really into games, or fun of any kind. So..." He gestured around his room. "Pick out whatever you want. Curtains, comics. Skateboard."
"That would be unsporting," Radek said primly. "I do not take advantage of the drunk."
Sheppard laughed, and then looked surprised that he could. "You always do."
Radek held up a finger. "This is how the scam works. I attest to my good moral character, you relax your guard, and then I make a modest proposal. Thus, I use your trust to achieve my own twisted ends. This is a talent of mine."
Sheppard was perverse in this way: reassured of Radek's ulterior motives, he slouched and some of the edge to his smile vanished. "What do you want?"
Radek rolled his hand. "Perhaps one article of clothing removed for each piece taken." Sheppard's eyebrows shot up. "I am a shallow person, and you have obviously been exercising." Saying it was a gamble; there was a chance that he'd been reading Sheppard wrong. But Radek hoped that he was right.
Sheppard's eyes narrowed, performing the simple calculation. "You're wearing more than me." He pointed across the table. "Lose the socks and shoes and you're on."
They were fairly drunk and both shirtless when Sheppard said, "I missed this."
Radek blinked. "I am sorry that I did not miss you more. And that I did not save you. I tried, and failed." He reached out and gently, apologetically took Sheppard's rook.
Sheppard snorted and rose to his feet, drunk enough to move fluidly, loose-limbed. Radek was drunk enough to describe those movements poetically in his mind: feline, predatory, graceful, sensual. Though that might just have been his lust taking control of his vocabulary.
Sheppard undid his belt with that same hypnotic languidity, fingers certain. Radek saw him consider for a moment whether to remove only the belt, but then he met Radek's eyes and undid the buttons one by one until his trousers slid over his hips and down to the floor. Sheppard stepped out of them almost absently, and reached for the bottle.
Radek did not hand it over. He picked it up, weighed it with a hand, and then set it down gently.
"Come here," Radek said. "This is a seduction, by the way, in case you hadn't realized."
Sheppard's eyes were dark. "I guessed." But he still held back. "How long have you been planning this?"
That was a dangerous question. Radek was certain now that Sheppard would sleep with him no matter how he replied, but... "Since we became friends. Since we learned to respect each other. Since you shamelessly manipulated McKay into returning the clock my mother gave me and I lost through my own hubris. I wanted to give you something back, you know, but I learned that there is no thing that you truly desire. I decided that friendship must be enough. Is it?"
Sheppard had been moving forward, and now he put one hand to the side of Radek's face as he leaned in to kiss him silent. It was a very soft kiss -- just a brush of Sheppard's lips and a hint of breath, just enough to make Radek want so much more.
"You're a very talkative drunk," Sheppard said conversationally, pulling back, lowering his hand and offering it, palm up. Radek took hold and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.
He felt light-headed and invulnerable, and he took hold of Sheppard and kissed him hard until they were both breathless.
"We should move to the bed," Radek told Sheppard. "Unless you wish me to shove you against the wall and have my way with you. Either way."
"The game's not finished," Sheppard said, reaching out to nudge the base of a captured pawn.
Radek shrugged. "Does it need to be?" He gave Sheppard a smile. "We can finish in the morning, if you wish."
"I was winning," Sheppard said as if that explained everything, ducking his head to place a chain of kisses down Radek's neck.
It was a ridiculous statement, but Radek didn't have the heart to point that out. He guided Sheppard over to the bed, their remaining clothes discarded on the floor. He set his glasses on the table in front of his clock; Sheppard put his watch there as well, almost casually.
Perhaps they had both been winning, Radek conceded, as Sheppard entwined with him. Or perhaps their games had been about more than chess all along.
"The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess then, we may learn: 1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action… 2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action: - the relation of the several Pieces, and their situations… 3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily…" Benjamin Franklin, The Morals of Chess (1750)
ETA: Crossposted to the SGA Love collection on AO3. link!
Title: A Vast Variety of Good and Ill
Author: busaikko
Pairing: John Sheppard/Radek Zelenka
Rating: R
Summary: Radek teaches Sheppard to play chess.
[Peter] held up the solitary red pawn, smiling; and then scrambled hurriedly to his feet.
"My dear girl, don't cry about it. What the hell does it matter?"
"I loved them," said Harriet, "and you gave them to me."
He shook his head. "It's a pity it's that way round. ‘You gave them to me, and I loved them' is all right, but ‘I loved them and you gave them to me' is irreparable. Fifty thousand rocs' eggs won't supply their place.
Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night
John Sheppard was very bad at chess. Radek was surprised when he found this out. He'd heard good things about Sheppard's intelligence from McKay - at least, McKay grudgingly admitted that Sheppard wasn't as thick as he'd expected.
But Sheppard showed up one day at a chess club meeting, bringing the sticky fruit squares that the cooks euphemistically called 'brownies'. He put the plate on the snacks table and leaned against the wall to watch Radek play. When the game was finished and Radek had won, Sheppard shot him a questioning look, eyebrows raised.
Radek waved expansively to the empty chair across from him. When Sheppard sat, Radek asked, "What are we playing for?"
Sheppard looked startled; Radek patted the table, next to his new ballpoint pen and a USB stick with what Sheng had claimed was hot porn with real lesbians.
"If I win," Sheppard said, carefully, fingers light on the edge of the rough handmade board, "I want to talk to you."
Now it was Radek's turn to communicate with his eyebrows. "You can talk to me anyway." Sheppard shrugged. "If I win..." Shamefully, the first thing that came to his mind was the opportunity to shame the man, to gloat like McKay over his own superiority. More shameful was the way Sheppard's expression didn't change, but his eyes glinted, like he was reading Radek's mind and judging him. Radek wondered suddenly if Major Ford had made some complaint against him, if perhaps Sheppard's visit was meant to be intimidating.
He squinted at Sheppard and his uncombed hair, five'o'clock shadow, and military jacket -- he was so out of place here among Radek and his people. McKay often spoke scathingly about Major Sheppard's good looks, but the man across from him just looked tired, and oddly lonely.
Radek understood, then, and wondered when he'd let the situation devolve into this.
"If I win," he said, and gave Sheppard a smile, "you will join the chess club and bring us three new members." Sheppard's shoulders sagged as if in relief; Radek hadn't realized he'd been so tense under his casual facade. "Of course, offerings of porn or stationery are also welcome."
Sheppard smirked and pulled a pad of PostIt notes out of an inside pocket, setting it down next to the board.
Sheppard lost that game. He showed up the next week with three combat engineers and the ground ordnance weapons chief. Sheppard played against Kavanagh, and lost. The four Marines teased Sheppard mercilessly, and Radek realized that he didn't know who else on the expedition was in the Air Force.
He asked Sheppard a few weeks later while cleaning up after a meeting. Sheppard told him, and then asked hesitantly about the long-range scanners and whether there were blind spots.
This necessitated going to the lab for a laptop and white board. Sheppard followed the explanation better than Radek expected.
"What did you study?" Radek asked, rubbing at the red-ink stain that had leaked over his fingers again. They had a trading partner for ink, but it was an imperfect refill for their pens.
Sheppard made a face. "Applied mathematics," he admitted, looking embarrassed. "Don't tell McKay, okay?" Radek's distaste must have shown on his face, because Sheppard sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I've heard him talk about his sister a couple of times. He's not forgiving of people who quote-unquote let their brains rot." Sheppard shrugged and rubbed a hand over his face, like he was tired. "He'd think less of me."
Radek understood that, but... "And I do not?"
That earned him a boyish grin, possibly the same flirtatious look that McKay blamed for off-world diplomatic incidents. "You've seen me play chess."
"You're a very bad player." Radek spread his hands. "I'm sorry, but it's true." Sheppard nodded, like that was his point. "I can teach you," Radek offered. "I would like to. It would please me very much if one day you could beat McKay." He was the focus now of an oddly intense, speculative gaze, and he looked back down at his red fingers. "He has won from me several things which he refuses to allow me to win back."
"Deal," Sheppard said, and gave Radek a thumbs-up.
Radek gave him homework.
He found over the following weeks that the Sheppard project made a rewarding distraction from the terror of impending attack. Radek had been taught chess by his uncle Antonín, playing on a folding cardboard board in the evenings in front of the fire. He was grateful to his parents for letting him learn to play before he understood politics, or what purges or Communism truly were. He had entered school with the ability to predict moves far ahead in the game, and that enabled him to see manipulations and lies - and to know when to keep quiet and be a liar himself.
Chess was honest and beautiful in the ways mathematics and physics were, and Radek challenged himself to find ways to make Sheppard understand that.
The Wraith tried to destroy Atlantis; they did not. They killed good people, but Radek and Sheppard survived, despite everything. Life did not become easier.
Sheppard first beat McKay while he was recovering from an unexpected mutation into an insect-monster. Sheppard glowed smugly with victory; Radek secretly thought the glow was due to the remaining iridescent scales, and the victory was McKay being distracted by either pity or horror. But he thanked Sheppard gravely while accepting back the travel alarm clock his mother had given him when he left home for university.
He put it on the small table next to his bed, and on the evenings when Sheppard came over for a lesson, he sometimes caught him looking pensively at the clock. Radek supposed that it was rare: it was analog and needed to be wound every evening. It was nothing like the Prague astronomical clock, but in its own way it reminded him of home and family, and of the need to avoid placing bets he did not wish to pay.
He was never sure when he became friends with Sheppard. What had started as a way to bridge the divide between the military and the civilians had grown into respect for each other, and into trust. Sheppard told him things Radek was certain no one else knew. He himself did not have secrets, but the science labs could be an enraging nest of egos colliding, and Sheppard was good at listening. Radek had to deal to McKay day in and day out; he found he greatly enjoyed talking with someone who didn't interrupt his every sentence.
After being rescued from the time-dilation field Sheppard was angry . Radek didn't blame him; he had done the calculations and knew exactly how long Sheppard had been gone. He knew Sheppard was equally aware of how hard everyone on Atlantis had worked to save him. There wasn't anywhere for Sheppard's anger to go.
Radek thought that, as a friend, he could help, in some small way, with his chess board and a bottle of local wine that he'd won from Simmons.
He knocked at Sheppard's door and was let in, and set the board up on the usual table while Sheppard ransacked his room for two cups.
"I don't know where things are any more," Sheppard said, sounding annoyed, as if that was the fault of the things for being unfindable. Sheppard had shaved off his beard on his first day back, so he looked no different than he had the day before.
But there was half a year of separation between them now, and Radek would have to be careful not to forget that.
"We can drink from the bottle," Radek suggested offhand. "Charming in its own way."
Sheppard huffed in irritation, but sat down. Radek opened the bottle, wiped the mouth with the corner of his shirt, and handed it over. He watched as Sheppard drank, wincing a little at the taste but not deterred.
"I haven't had a drink in ages," Sheppard said as he handed the bottle back. "I'm going to be a cheap drunk. And I haven't played. At all. The people I was with weren't really into games, or fun of any kind. So..." He gestured around his room. "Pick out whatever you want. Curtains, comics. Skateboard."
"That would be unsporting," Radek said primly. "I do not take advantage of the drunk."
Sheppard laughed, and then looked surprised that he could. "You always do."
Radek held up a finger. "This is how the scam works. I attest to my good moral character, you relax your guard, and then I make a modest proposal. Thus, I use your trust to achieve my own twisted ends. This is a talent of mine."
Sheppard was perverse in this way: reassured of Radek's ulterior motives, he slouched and some of the edge to his smile vanished. "What do you want?"
Radek rolled his hand. "Perhaps one article of clothing removed for each piece taken." Sheppard's eyebrows shot up. "I am a shallow person, and you have obviously been exercising." Saying it was a gamble; there was a chance that he'd been reading Sheppard wrong. But Radek hoped that he was right.
Sheppard's eyes narrowed, performing the simple calculation. "You're wearing more than me." He pointed across the table. "Lose the socks and shoes and you're on."
They were fairly drunk and both shirtless when Sheppard said, "I missed this."
Radek blinked. "I am sorry that I did not miss you more. And that I did not save you. I tried, and failed." He reached out and gently, apologetically took Sheppard's rook.
Sheppard snorted and rose to his feet, drunk enough to move fluidly, loose-limbed. Radek was drunk enough to describe those movements poetically in his mind: feline, predatory, graceful, sensual. Though that might just have been his lust taking control of his vocabulary.
Sheppard undid his belt with that same hypnotic languidity, fingers certain. Radek saw him consider for a moment whether to remove only the belt, but then he met Radek's eyes and undid the buttons one by one until his trousers slid over his hips and down to the floor. Sheppard stepped out of them almost absently, and reached for the bottle.
Radek did not hand it over. He picked it up, weighed it with a hand, and then set it down gently.
"Come here," Radek said. "This is a seduction, by the way, in case you hadn't realized."
Sheppard's eyes were dark. "I guessed." But he still held back. "How long have you been planning this?"
That was a dangerous question. Radek was certain now that Sheppard would sleep with him no matter how he replied, but... "Since we became friends. Since we learned to respect each other. Since you shamelessly manipulated McKay into returning the clock my mother gave me and I lost through my own hubris. I wanted to give you something back, you know, but I learned that there is no thing that you truly desire. I decided that friendship must be enough. Is it?"
Sheppard had been moving forward, and now he put one hand to the side of Radek's face as he leaned in to kiss him silent. It was a very soft kiss -- just a brush of Sheppard's lips and a hint of breath, just enough to make Radek want so much more.
"You're a very talkative drunk," Sheppard said conversationally, pulling back, lowering his hand and offering it, palm up. Radek took hold and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.
He felt light-headed and invulnerable, and he took hold of Sheppard and kissed him hard until they were both breathless.
"We should move to the bed," Radek told Sheppard. "Unless you wish me to shove you against the wall and have my way with you. Either way."
"The game's not finished," Sheppard said, reaching out to nudge the base of a captured pawn.
Radek shrugged. "Does it need to be?" He gave Sheppard a smile. "We can finish in the morning, if you wish."
"I was winning," Sheppard said as if that explained everything, ducking his head to place a chain of kisses down Radek's neck.
It was a ridiculous statement, but Radek didn't have the heart to point that out. He guided Sheppard over to the bed, their remaining clothes discarded on the floor. He set his glasses on the table in front of his clock; Sheppard put his watch there as well, almost casually.
Perhaps they had both been winning, Radek conceded, as Sheppard entwined with him. Or perhaps their games had been about more than chess all along.
"The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess then, we may learn: 1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action… 2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action: - the relation of the several Pieces, and their situations… 3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily…" Benjamin Franklin, The Morals of Chess (1750)