Disclaimer: Don't own. Not the characters, quite definitely not the countries. Though that would probably be a sweet part of world domination..
A/N: If you don't know, "Chicken" is basically a teen game where a bunch of drunk teenagers hoard into two separate cars or trucks or whatever. Those two vehicles start racing at each other as fast as possible and the first one to swerve out of the way of the collision course loses. If they don't swerve out of the way.. yeah. They keep going on a collision course. And crash, and die. And yes, it really is as freakin' stupid as it sounds.
Please, for the love of God, don't ever play it.
Chicken
The cigarette smoke was choking him, but Alfred F. Jones said nothing, breathed in and felt it cling poisonously to the back of his mouth. He grinned venomously. He didn't turn and tell that nameless guy to snuff out his cigarette or toss it out the window, didn't say a word and couldn't even hear one word the girl by his side was screaming into his ear.
You want me to stop now? ..Sorry. Too late. Should have known what to expect in a game of Chicken.
He pressed down on the gas so hard that he could feel the only thing separating his mismatched-sock and foot from the floor was the harsh pedal Alfred could feel his young heart ramming away at a million beats per second to the tempo of the whirring engine and the incoherent bass beat of the rap song on the radio.
Though usually the guys who play it aren't stubborn bastards like me and him.
They'd just switched the radio song from a tragic break-up song, changing from crooning cries to the harsh and persistent beat of a rapper, and he hadn't been listening to one second of the it. Between bats of heavy eyelids, adrenaline-rushed spinning vision and air that smelled of cigarettes, alcohol and teenager sweat, Alfred could just barely recognize that song on the radio. His world was swinging and speeding and utterly out of control now.
Should he have cared?
Maybe.
Did he have the chance to care?
No.
Alfred wasn't the best-educated boy in the world but even he could tell what he was doing was stupid. But, unfortunately, there wasn't any time for worries now- his pride was beating as heavy as his heart in his chest and he could see the pair of headlights growing gradually larger, blinding among the otherwise dark surroundings of the night. He could see the white stripes of the road zip beneath them.
This was called a collision course, wasn't it?
He cursed and desperately pressed at the already-crushed gas, and tried to imagine the driver of the fast-approaching other van. His fastfood-themed car décor clinked and spun in his face as he hesitantly jerked the steering wheel, bringing the whole car to a momentum-defying jolt back on path- back facing those two glaring headlights head-on. No inching into hesitation. No slipping off the path.
He thought about the driver. Ivan didn't play his pride out in the face of others like he did, but anyone could see it burning in his eyes. It had happened fairly simply.
It had been just another night at the hangout on another weekend, and nothing was unusual about the fact their rivalry was cold and cruel enough to freeze the ocean shore. Fireworks ironically spun out of control in the sky and the heavy bass beat of the radio was pointedly ignored by him.
Throngs of sweaty youths crowded on the beaches, degrading into a blur of masses with Alfred's fifth can of beer. But Ivan, oh, he could see Ivan clearly- always, the Russian man could silence the crowd with the wave of the hand and a chilly ghost of a smile.
Hawk-dove was the stupidest game either of them could have played, and yet they had smiled, grinned even, and shakily shook hands. The air between them stank of obstinate pride. Their breath had smelled like alcohol; vodka on Ivan's part and beer on his own. The drunk teenagers around them all grinned and took their sides. Alfred had sidled his car cheerfully into his side of the end of the bridge and waited for the phone call. The call meant "get your engine ready", the brief discussion over the rules was "I'm not backing out", the final taunt indicated "get your crew in" and the hang-up meant
"GO."
Go. Go! GO!
Alfred winced in spite of himself, seeing the first supporting cast iron frame whizz past him. The windshield protected him from the blasting wind that was hitting his secondhand pickup truck. He was going fast. Too fast, but this was his only way to show Ivan now that he was not hesitating.
He was not a dove.
The girl next to him was screaming past her vocal limit and the cigarette boy had thrown out his cigarette anyway. Alfred's earshot was crammed with the sound of teenagers hollering in both approval and discouragement. He didn't listen. His sight was deadened by the glare of fast-approaching headlights and he knew Ivan's crew was probably screaming at him right now, too. He didn't see.
He was not a dove. He was a hawk. He was going to win this.
Alfred didn't want to hear Ivan say "Chicken"; didn't want to subject himself to the contempt of Ivan's crew; didn't want to see his car on the other side of the white line. He would not.
Swerve, you. Goddamn. Russian. Bastard. Swerve, already!
It was a countdown from here and the destruction was imminent. Some drunk in the back of Alfred's truck was wailing out indiscriminate numbers, somehow louder than every other shrieking teenager. Alfred was determined, though. He had forgotten everything, and his mind was cold- cold in spite of the blood rushing to it and the adrenalin that pulsed through his veins, as intoxicating as alcohol or any kind of drug shot.
He wasn't backing down. This was supposed to settle everything. Chicken.
Chicken.
Ivan's truck was getting too close. The drunkard was screaming "any time now!" and the girl by his side was trying to seize the steering wheel out of Alfred's sweaty, determined grasp.
Chicken.
The girl was crying. Alfred was frozen, lips slightly parted, eyes freakishly wide and sweat running down his unusually pallid face. Oh God, he was going to die.
Ivan must have been thinking, too, in the few seconds before collision, if this was really right. Was Ivan succumbing to his basic human instinct now, like he was? Was he finally beginning to hear the throng of screams within himself telling him that he had to live?
"I think it's understood that neither of us are going to stop until we've both broken our skulls and spines over the glass and gravel, da?"
…
Ivan's truck couldn't have been any further than twenty meters.
The girl's sobbing filled his ears and between his incoherent, instinctual gaggle of thought processes Alfred could only hear, thrashing away in the deep, painful crevasse of the back of his head
CHICKEN!
No. No!
He screamed. Screamed, and had little time to do anything else as he was knocked forward, and then to his side, and screamed some more as his arms pulled on the steering wheel with all his might. His sheer will to live had won.
The whole world seemed to shriek with him as his body and sight began spiraling, weak and erupting shrieks convulsing in and out of his hearing from around himself from both his tires and the half-drunk teenagers jam-packed around him. The screeching of car tires on pavement could have deafened him.
Spinning.
And a deafening, heart-stopping crash and the spinning stopped.
Everything stopped.
Alfred's breath shuddered and he knew he'd broken something by the warm trickling that raced down his legs from his numb waist. In the sudden dark he could only barely see the girl spun over his form, hair entangled in his bloodstained seatbelt.
A glance at the shattered glass side window revealed, to his morbid satisfaction, that the side of Ivan's truck was rammed into the side of his. They'd both veered off. At the same time. Alfred didn't know whether he should be flattered or offended that it'd occurred to both of them to back out at the exact same moment. Blood dribbling from his lips, he gave a harsh cough and attempted to clear the broken glass off his lap.
God. He'd played Chicken with a seatbelt on.
A callous, feeble laugh splintered into the air like a thorn. He wasn't sure if it was Ivan's typical laughter playing like a record in his mind, or his own.
Fin
A/N: And the moral of the story is, play Chicken with a seatbelt on! -brick'd- Srs, I only heard about this game recently thanks to.. uh, sources. So, uh, yeah. "Chicken": Cold War in a nutshell much? Additionally, please don't let me be responsible for any morons trying to play this game, either. Please. No matter how thrilling it sounds, it's an amazingly bad, bad idea.
Reviews are muchly greatly appreciated.