Jedao plays...elliptically. He doesn't know the classic plays, the ways centuries of grandmasters have sorted near-infinite possibilities into useful strings that can be named. Almost all of his games have been against Nico, with his ruthless deep-ply mathematical mind, and Jedao's strategies are consequently strange, highly unorthodox, full of well-baited traps for an opponent running longsighted cost-benefit calculations that seem to twist, swivel, and wriggle into set-ups that leave Jedao not with one perfect move for a mathematician to catch in advance, but flexibly advantageous positions.
Jedao plays chess as if, by sheer eccentric and uncooperative brilliance, he could force the game to be more like cards, a game of chance as well as strategy, impossible to plan for at any real distance or intricacy, full of unexpected upsets to be capitalized on. Jedao appears to have no consistent strategy or even coherent mood the more he watches Quentin play, and the more his own strategy coalesces. His apparent recklessness is a lure for Quentin's focused aggression; a few moves later, his apparent caution is a lure again.
If Quentin takes his eyes off the board itself even for a moment, to seek confirmation of any suspicions in Jedao's face, all he gets is blithely escalating flirtation, slow slick motions of lips and tongue, ripples of his eyebrows. Come and eat me Jedao says to Quentin's viciousness, with his fingers lingering on the pieces, with the sparkle of his eyes, even as he slips again and again out of Quentin's grasp. The poison pill is his oldest game.
Says Quentin, at a certain point, looking incredibly startled, from the board up to Jedao, with one of those realizations that you just have to sit with for a moment.
"Want to know something weird? Like, really weird?"
But that makes him look a little gleeful, as he slides his rook forwards.
"So there are the laws of the universe. Mathematics, which can be understood intuitively by many people with the right kind of mind, and which have always been very accessible to me. And there are the rules of a chess game, which are well studied, famous, classical strings just as predictable for the most part as the arc of a thrown ball."
And, fingertips drawing.
"Then there's magic, which is insane, sprawling, messy, full of strange eddies and waterfalls and reversals and twists and turns. Spells that won't work for women between the age of thirty and thirty two. Spells that you cast dead backwards if it's a Tuesday. I brute force memorized maybe a hundred exceptions per week when I was in school, and then drilled them into my bones. Magically gagged, in a cell, for months and months. The net effect was that in the end, I was capable of intuiting the impossible shapes that magic makes. I once knew, without ever having cast the spell, in my bones, that I had to switch a short chant from major to minor because I had eaten the flesh of a lamb when I took my last meal."
And;
"You play chess like that. I can feel myself accessing the part of my thinking that I use to do magic, like you're- breaking the world with some kind of eldritch bloody-mindedness. I mean. We knew that, but I swear I can mentally practically touch it right now."
Jedao doesn't - entirely - know what to do with that, or how to feel. There are parts of him that have simply refused entire to think about Quentin's magic in the same sentence as himself, because Shuos don't bother with exotic abilities, don't need them and aren't dependent - because he's spent too many lifetimes faced with the rancid irony of his dyscalculia in the world of calendrical warfare. Jedao has enough weight on his chest without that carrying bitterness.
It doesn't matter how good Jedao is at languages, or at drilling. It doesn't need to matter, and he loves Quentin, and Fives, and his son. It's not to do with him, and it doesn't have to be. He has all the weapons he needs. He knows how to get more.
He's not ready to admit he's pleased that some part of him could - reach Quentin there. He's not ready to admit that he ever wanted to.
"Nico's mind would make a fabulous physics engine," he murmurs, because praising his children comes easy. He lifts one shoulder in a warm shrug. "So that's the only way I could figure to win."
And that's what he does, whatever field anyone puts him on. That's what he always does; that's the only option.
"Once we get it out of our system, I want to try both of us versus him as a bughouse team. There's only so much I can do to keep it interesting for him on my own."
Jedao snorts and curls in on himself, trying to muffle a burst of laughter, reaching over almost without thought to grip the back of Fives' neck when he shivers restlessly at the nose; he settles again.
"In your defense, he does try very hard not to make an impression."
"Well. All you'd told me about Mikodez was he was stalking you, and all I knew about Nico was that he was spookily silent and watched you like a hawk. I figured."
He answers, leaning into the edge of the bed.
"I knew Shuos wouldn't necessarily appear threatening off the bat. I didn't know yet that I'd never in a million years be able to catch Mikodez watching. But it made it quite a shock when he bounced up to me and introduced himself all those months later. I was literally completely sure I knew who he was already. Fuck, I think I even glared at him once or twice in the cafeteria, poor kid."
He contemplates the board and exactly how he wants to phrase his next comment at the same time, slicing his bishop across the board to threaten two different pieces at once.
"He'll be far more comfortable with chess than with talking. Which I mean as a briefing, not to dissuade you." He thinks Quentin's odd mix of gentleness and logic, awkwardness and idealism, might be quite good for Nico, albeit terribly perplexing. Nico thinks he doesn't get along with "good" people, but there's a difference between a hero like Steve with shrapnel in his wake, and Quentin's quiet, dreamy presence, his faith and wonder neither dimmed nor weaponized by the evil he's encountered or the regrets he carries.
"Yes," Jedao says, in a tone that is kissing cousins to the way he talked about the future under the calendar. He can't see the whole route there, but he knows it will happen because it has to happen, because he will make it happen.
"I think he...needs this." To go through being unable to repress his feelings, before he can allow himself to have them, before he can feel like a person who is allowed.
"He did look tired, and ashamed of it. Like he didn't know that everyone rests sometimes. Or like he comes from a world where when you're inevitably weak for just a minute, it kills you."
"You, obviously. Even worse. You can't even acknowledge that you might potentially in some universe or other have had something like a vulnerable spot."
He breathes out, and smiles at him;
"I mean, sometimes you do, but it's like watching someone see how long they can hold their fingers in a candleflame on a dare."
"I don't have to be ashamed of weaknesses to prefer not exposing them," Jedao says softly. Even if some of them he is.
"You - well. It feels like watching someone from a different world." Which, obviously, it is. "Sometimes it feels...comforting isn't quite the word. Nor is safe. Nor reassuring, when it isn't re anything. Sheltered, maybe - like you've brought a piece of your world with you and I could...take risks, under that gradient, that I wouldn't normally."
He smiles, the slant of it matching his shoulders.
"Mostly it just makes me feel protective. Even though I know you don't need it really."
"I do and I don't. I can count on my hands the number of people who've ever felt protective of me, before I came here. Minus a teacher or two when I was a really little kid."
He reminds him, with a small smile.
"But you be careful, Mister Fox. Of the five of them, two resented me for it for a very long time. Don't you let me gradient be something that makes you compromise yourself."
"Yeah, but I'd be a liar if I didn't tell you that it costs sometimes."
He says, with a tiny little shrug, leaning into the bed a little more, arms draping over it, cheek resting against them, regarding Jedao from his sideways sprawl.
"You know the real difference between me and Fives? It's that I remember a time when I hadn't yet learned to live like that."
He doesn't swallow, doesn't look away, doesn't think about how he feels about children. But if he were less well trained, he would have.
"I don't want to have to live like that for the rest of my life. I don't want to raise my millions of clone kids to be that way. I don't want to always be a hypocrite when I tell Fives he's allowed to be hurt. And I'm pretty fucking sure it's something I need to deal with to graduate anyway. You aren't making me, Quentin. You're...making something easier."
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Jedao plays chess as if, by sheer eccentric and uncooperative brilliance, he could force the game to be more like cards, a game of chance as well as strategy, impossible to plan for at any real distance or intricacy, full of unexpected upsets to be capitalized on. Jedao appears to have no consistent strategy or even coherent mood the more he watches Quentin play, and the more his own strategy coalesces. His apparent recklessness is a lure for Quentin's focused aggression; a few moves later, his apparent caution is a lure again.
If Quentin takes his eyes off the board itself even for a moment, to seek confirmation of any suspicions in Jedao's face, all he gets is blithely escalating flirtation, slow slick motions of lips and tongue, ripples of his eyebrows. Come and eat me Jedao says to Quentin's viciousness, with his fingers lingering on the pieces, with the sparkle of his eyes, even as he slips again and again out of Quentin's grasp. The poison pill is his oldest game.
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Says Quentin, at a certain point, looking incredibly startled, from the board up to Jedao, with one of those realizations that you just have to sit with for a moment.
"Want to know something weird? Like, really weird?"
But that makes him look a little gleeful, as he slides his rook forwards.
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"Absolutely. Dazzle me."
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And, fingertips drawing.
"Then there's magic, which is insane, sprawling, messy, full of strange eddies and waterfalls and reversals and twists and turns. Spells that won't work for women between the age of thirty and thirty two. Spells that you cast dead backwards if it's a Tuesday. I brute force memorized maybe a hundred exceptions per week when I was in school, and then drilled them into my bones. Magically gagged, in a cell, for months and months. The net effect was that in the end, I was capable of intuiting the impossible shapes that magic makes. I once knew, without ever having cast the spell, in my bones, that I had to switch a short chant from major to minor because I had eaten the flesh of a lamb when I took my last meal."
And;
"You play chess like that. I can feel myself accessing the part of my thinking that I use to do magic, like you're- breaking the world with some kind of eldritch bloody-mindedness. I mean. We knew that, but I swear I can mentally practically touch it right now."
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It doesn't matter how good Jedao is at languages, or at drilling. It doesn't need to matter, and he loves Quentin, and Fives, and his son. It's not to do with him, and it doesn't have to be. He has all the weapons he needs. He knows how to get more.
He's not ready to admit he's pleased that some part of him could - reach Quentin there. He's not ready to admit that he ever wanted to.
"Nico's mind would make a fabulous physics engine," he murmurs, because praising his children comes easy. He lifts one shoulder in a warm shrug. "So that's the only way I could figure to win."
And that's what he does, whatever field anyone puts him on. That's what he always does; that's the only option.
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He promises, meeting his eyes, a tiny smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.
"But not here. I don't know how it'll go."
Read; he'll want to feel free to jump his bones.
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"Once we get it out of our system, I want to try both of us versus him as a bughouse team. There's only so much I can do to keep it interesting for him on my own."
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He says, with a rueful sigh.
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"In your defense, he does try very hard not to make an impression."
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He answers, leaning into the edge of the bed.
"I knew Shuos wouldn't necessarily appear threatening off the bat. I didn't know yet that I'd never in a million years be able to catch Mikodez watching. But it made it quite a shock when he bounced up to me and introduced himself all those months later. I was literally completely sure I knew who he was already. Fuck, I think I even glared at him once or twice in the cafeteria, poor kid."
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Jedao shakes his head, but he's still smiling.
"He'll forgive you. And Mikodez and I are actually...working things out might be an overstatement. Co-existing more tolerably."
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Quentin promises, and smiles back.
"Is he feeling better too?"
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"As well as he ever is."
He contemplates the board and exactly how he wants to phrase his next comment at the same time, slicing his bishop across the board to threaten two different pieces at once.
"He'll be far more comfortable with chess than with talking. Which I mean as a briefing, not to dissuade you." He thinks Quentin's odd mix of gentleness and logic, awkwardness and idealism, might be quite good for Nico, albeit terribly perplexing. Nico thinks he doesn't get along with "good" people, but there's a difference between a hero like Steve with shrapnel in his wake, and Quentin's quiet, dreamy presence, his faith and wonder neither dimmed nor weaponized by the evil he's encountered or the regrets he carries.
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He asks, breathlessly, looking past him and up at his sleeping form.
"I saw him right before he- uh. This all. We visited the library, I picked him out a book. He super doesn't get fiction yet."
But he's working on it.
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"I think he...needs this." To go through being unable to repress his feelings, before he can allow himself to have them, before he can feel like a person who is allowed.
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Resting his temple against the edge of the bed.
"There's a case of that going around."
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"You're better at people than you think you are, sometimes," he says, by way of only slightly circuitous confirmation. "Who else?"
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He breathes out, and smiles at him;
"I mean, sometimes you do, but it's like watching someone see how long they can hold their fingers in a candleflame on a dare."
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"You should have seen me the other night, putting tiger stripes all up my forearms with smoke streaks."
Quentin knows him too well.
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He wonders, looking at him shyly.
"I hope I don't make you uncomfortable. Or scornful."
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"You - well. It feels like watching someone from a different world." Which, obviously, it is. "Sometimes it feels...comforting isn't quite the word. Nor is safe. Nor reassuring, when it isn't re anything. Sheltered, maybe - like you've brought a piece of your world with you and I could...take risks, under that gradient, that I wouldn't normally."
He smiles, the slant of it matching his shoulders.
"Mostly it just makes me feel protective. Even though I know you don't need it really."
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He reminds him, with a small smile.
"But you be careful, Mister Fox. Of the five of them, two resented me for it for a very long time. Don't you let me gradient be something that makes you compromise yourself."
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"Aren't you supposed to be the one arguing that it's healthy not to feel like a moment's weakness will definitely kill me?"
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He says, with a tiny little shrug, leaning into the bed a little more, arms draping over it, cheek resting against them, regarding Jedao from his sideways sprawl.
"Worth it, but not simple."
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He doesn't swallow, doesn't look away, doesn't think about how he feels about children. But if he were less well trained, he would have.
"I don't want to have to live like that for the rest of my life. I don't want to raise my millions of clone kids to be that way. I don't want to always be a hypocrite when I tell Fives he's allowed to be hurt. And I'm pretty fucking sure it's something I need to deal with to graduate anyway. You aren't making me, Quentin. You're...making something easier."
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