There was a basic rule to every game under the sun, one foundation of practice that should never be broken, never be misjudged. In chess it was simple. Know the count of the board. Know the value of each piece, each position, each line of equation. If you knew the count, you could control the game.

Jared started counting later than most, almost half a year later than his brother and sister had, but once the game had begun, it had never really stopped. Someone once said that life was a game of chess, and that chess was a battlefield.

They were right. And if there was one thing Jared was good at, it was chess.



The Pin
{force your enemy into a place where he cannot move without exposing his weakness. don't hold back. go for the throat}

"So Black goes first, right?" Jared ran his fingers over the smooth mane of his Knight. The set was small, carved of wood and chipped from use. He'd found it in the rec room, behind Happy Families and a box of Lego.

Sarah smacked his hand away and turned the board around, until the mottled white pieces had their backs to him, lined up neat. Standing at attention. Ready to march into battle. "No Jay-red." He said, sounding exasperated as only eight year old girls could. Her honey blond hair was braided down her back, long enough to sit on. Jared had once dunked the end in a pot of blue paint and she'd cried for hours. He felt so bad he'd used his milk money to buy her a pink hair slide with a butterfly on it. Then she'd kissed him on the cheek, and he wished he hadn't bothered. "White goes first. Like this, see?" See moved one of his pawns forward two places. Pawn to C4. "I'll let you go first, since you've never played. My dad taught me how last summer."

Jared smiled and blushed, let her move her own pawn to D7, then finished the game in seven moves.

The next time she spoke was fifteen years later. She was still living in their home town, two kids, twins. Jared bought her a new set, made of marble and pewter, and when she kissed his cheek again, he laughed and paid the bill for their lunch.



The Skewer
{attack both sides, cover all defenses}

"You ain't still playing that damn game are you?" Billy was nearly a foot shorter than Jared, had been since grade school, and his sandy blond hair turned copper in the summer. Jared ignored him, legs crossed, eased back into the chair, waiting.

Toby played chess better than Sally did. He was prettier, too. Nice eyes the color of bird's eggs and a dimpled smile. He was smart. Smarter than Billy. His skin tasted of honeysuckle and hay, and he never minded that Jared always won.

"Knight to B6." Jared moved his piece, pinned Toby's Rook and his King. "Check."

Billy didn't let it go. "We have to be at the City Hall in an hour, Jay, or have you forgotten that we're supposed to be in the State Forensics Final?"

"I'll be there." Jared promised, smiling to himself when Toby moved his King out of Check.

"You had better be." Billy stormed off, and when Jared finished the game off in two moves, he let Toby blow him under the table instead of forking over the twenty buck bet.



The zwischenzug
{with a plan of attack in mind, force delay. confusion equals chaos}

"Honey, now you know I will support you whatever you decide to do…" Jared sat his soda down on the table. When his momma started a sentence like that, he usually needed all of his attention focused in once direction. "But don't you think it is time to maybe settle down? I know you love what you are doing baby, but-"

"But you think I should be doing something more meaningful with my life." He finished for her.

"I know you are having fun-"

"But I need to start thinking about a stable job." He agreed. His momma was sweet that way. She worried. Jeff wanted Jennifer Aniston's phone number, and Megan wanted to marry Chad - over his dead body- but his momma did nothing but worry. He patted her hand and remembered a time when his hand been smaller. "You're right momma. I'mma finish up these shoots, then look in to enrolling at UTSA. Just a few more months, okay?"

She smiled at him, bright eyes, and he helped her bake fresh bread for dinner. When he cut the salad, the lettuce was in perfectly even strips, and the juice was 64% orange, 34% grapefruit, 2% sugar. He'd measured it himself.



Undermining
{attack directly. remove defenses. a vulnerable opponent makes the first mistake}

Jensen didn't play chess. Didn't have the patience for it, or so he said. He liked to take things apart, put them back together again, and within a week of meeting, they had plans to buy their own car, Mustang maybe, and build her up from scratch. Then they were picked up, and Jensen fell in love with the Impala, and they churned out a Dodge, a Camaro and two Chevy's in three years. Jensen joked that if the acting thing failed them, they could always go into repairs.

Jensen's smarts lay in his emotions, and that was cool. Sandy was his female self, bright, bouncy and brilliant, and it was fitting that the third part of their triangle had his brains in another art form. Jensen could do with his smile what Jared could do with numbers, and four months were spent cataloging an equation for each one. He knew the value of a frown as well as he knew the worth of a smirk.

He knew how vulnerable that knowledge made Jensen, and swore never to abuse it.

"Don't think I don't know what you are about." Jensen said, drunk one evening on a successful shoot and nine fingers of Jack.

Jared was not quite so gone, still on the path, and not at the destination. A prop for his co-star, who had to be the clingiest drunk under the sun.

"Don't think you don't know what?" He asked, smiling a little as Jensen frowned, trying to keep up.

Jensen finally made sense of things and flicked him on the forehead. "That puppy face of yours." He said, smug and drunk and giggling like a child. "You think I can't see those cogs turning?"

Jared said nothing. He held Jensen whilst he threw up in Tommy's roses, and carried him all the way home.



Overloading
{force your enemy to fight a battle on two fronts, one will inevitably fall short}

Sleeping with Jensen was nothing like sleeping with Sandy. Sandy made sweet little noises as he drove into her, small hands and small body pressed against him, soft and fragile, beautiful and delicate. Jensen fought and bit and clawed and snarled, his own strength against Jared's, never too much, but enough, and it left them panting and bruised. Jensen looked nothing like Sandy when he wore Jared's shirt, but his eyes screwed up just the same when Jared fucked him against a mirror, hands spread on either side of his face.

"Beautiful." Jared growled, lost in skin and warmth.

Jensen's eyes were big and wet, his cheek rough with stubble, but he growled and gasped, "bastard." He said, and they both came.

Sometimes Jensen wouldn't look at him, and others he saw right to Jared's soul. When he wore Dean's armor, he practically screamed, but when Sandy came to visit he was smiles and laughter, warm eyes and warmer hands and Jared felt himself looking across to a Latvian Gambit, just waiting for the chaos to roll in.

Sandy said nothing when she saw the broken mirror in Jensen's trailer, but Jared slept on the couch that night.



The Desperado
{sometimes you can't stop a piece from sacrificing itself. sometimes you don't want to}

Sandy left on a Monday. Jensen let Jared fuck him six times before he left too.

"You don't get it." Jensen had screamed, fists curled up tight. Jared could fit every part of Jensen in his hands - fist included. "How can someone so smart be so fucking clueless?"

"You can't leave." Jared heard himself saying. "Jen you can't, I love you."

Jensen broke another mirror on his way out, and Jared added fourteen to his count.

His momma always said he was too smart for his own good. Always trying to rationalize what he couldn't and play life like a game he could control.

He'd been the master for so long that he hadn't even known his challenger until he had been left gapping in the wake of his defeat.



Interference
{a sacrifice of a lower value holds more significance than an attack by a higher}

When they fought, when they fucked, and when they tried to out goof each other on set, the outcome was the same. Sam and Dean were Sam and Dean, mirrors of masks that had cracked the very first day they had been worn.

Jensen still strummed his guitar and Jared still slaughtered everyone over a board, and life continued as it should.

They talked about their boys on the way back from set, Sadie asleep on Jensen's lap, drooling on his jeans, and Jared stopped himself from fucking Jensen over the hood of the car, or worse, kissing him goodnight.

They broke for hiatus, and went their own ways, Jensen to LA and Christian fucking Kane, and Jared back home, back to his brother and his sister, his pop, and his momma, who looked at him and just knew.

Kane called at three am one morning, growled and said, "You broke his heart. Fix it, or I'll break you."

Jared let the phone sound on a dead line for an hour, and wondered what he had missed.



End Game
{it's over now. make a stand to be proud of}

"I was wrong." Jared said, first day of season three shoots, before Katie got there, when it was just them and the crew, a car and a hundred thousand miles between them. "I figured you wanted what I wanted."

"What did you want, Jay?" Jensen asked, hiding again as if they had never crossed the line in the first place.

"I didn't know." Jared admitted. Sandy had been right for him. Right where Jensen was all wrong. Sandy fit, Jensen made him fight. Sandy was sweet, Jensen made him fight. Sandy melted in his arms, Jensen seeped right to his heart. "I've never felt like this before." He admitted.

Jensen looked up, curious, Dean's clothes and Dean's face. Jensen's eyes. "Like what?"

"Like I am out of control. It scares me."

Jensen smiled then, bright. Worth more than every piece combined. "And they say you are the smart one. Moron." He teased, light as a feather. "Don't worry, IQ, I'll keep an eye on you."

"Promise?" He stepped back, let Jensen take control, and when he opened to Jensen kiss he sighed.

Then stopped counting.