A/N: Prompt from a prompt sheet requested by a Tumblr anon.
Mamihlapinatapei: The look between two people in which each loves the other but is too afraid to make the first move.
His eyes trace the curve of his nose, the angle of his cheek, and his heart flutters a beat, throat dry. He could speak, he could say something, anything, to break the silence that buzzes in the air around him, but the words all die before they reach his lips. Oh, how he longs to trace that cheek! To feel those arms around him tight! To lay his head against that chest and feel the beating of the heart inside.
His breaths are short, sharp, barely enough to sustain him and keep him from getting light-headed, but oh how it would sustain him forever if he could reach out and trace that cheek, just once!
But no. It would be wrong of him, wrong, and Rahim would not want that, would throw his hand off and stalk out without a backwards glance, condemning him, abandoning him here alone and he could not love Erik, not the way Erik loves him and it would be too much to risk it, to try—
Erik's fingers twitch and he clenches them tight, wills them to still, his gaze still caught on those jade eyes that could bury him.
It is all Rahim can do not to reach out and put his hand upon the one Erik has clenched on the chessboard. His stomach flutters at the very idea of touching those long, pale fingers with his own, but he keeps his eyes focused on Erik's hazel ones, waiting for any sign of a move.
It crosses his mind, briefly, to lean over and press a kiss to the lips uncovered by Erik's mask. The very thought of it is heady, leaves him lightheaded, but he cannot do that. Erik would not want that, not from him, and he could ask him, might if the words would coalesce in his mind and form themselves into a coherent sentence, but all is blank save for those hazel eyes.
(There are things he would tell him, declare to him, in the silent softness of the night but they weigh ill-balanced on his tongue, as if they would fragment in the air, and he cannot bring himself to break them. They are too delicate, too precious for that.)
A smile creases his lips, half-echoed curving Erik's own as he wraps his finger around his Queen, and moves her into the line of Erik's King.
"Check," he breathes, as if the word, the look in his eyes, can carry all that he wants to, needs to say.
It hovers briefly in the air, a moment captured and held, and Erik breaks the gaze at last, regards the board wearily. There is nowhere safe for his King to go, nowhere where he could not be boxed in and claimed by Rahim's Queen, and he, resignedly, shifts a pawn to concede his move.
"Mate."