Things have been off-kilter for them since the match in Cleveland.
Freddie had taken gracefully to his new position as Anatoly's second, if only because it gave him an excuse to be with him – and an excuse to wipe him on the chess board, once in a while, which was what made the pairing ideal. The challenge never ended, which suited him just fine.
Two years passed since Bangkok. Anatoly continued to avoid his wife. Florence disappeared off the face of the earth.
Then, at some run-of-the-mill tournament in Ohio, the Russian had gotten up for the break – and promptly collapsed, knocking the pieces from the board.
Of course, it's been nearly a year since that incident, but Freddie can still feel the echoes of that panic in his very bones whenever he looks at his partner, so gaunt and pale, his hair still just growing back in a soft black fuzz after the chemo had killed it. No more curls, and very few crooked smiles to be had, these past few months.
This wasn't what Freddie had signed up for at all.
He can't say he minds the break in their sex life. He'd gone most of his life without sex and it had never bothered him. With Anatoly, he missed the intimacy more than anything. Lying together at night now was restless – Anatoly shivered, shuddered, threw up, occasionally, stumbled – or fell – from bed in the middle of the night.
Stomach cancer, they said, eating him up from the inside. For nearly a year before his collapse, it had been festering, and Freddie hates himself, irrationally, for never seeing it.
Things are strained. No, worse, they're just… quiet. Acceptance is quiet. Freddie will not accept this, though, no matter what asinine reasons Anatoly comes up with for him to just sit back and wait for the end with him.
He was the one who had pushed for treatment. Surgery, anything. Chemo. He regrets that one, a little, when Anatoly starts having trouble remembering what he ate for breakfast, when he gets paler and paler and holds his stomach and stares bleakly at the ceiling like a dying man. Freddie shudders and shakes the image violently from his head.
No. He wasn't dying, wasn't allowed to.
Gastric cancer is, apparently, uncommon in the US. There are few surgeons who know exactly what to do with it, and at minimal risk. Anatoly glances to the phone when they tell him, and from the look in his eyes, Freddie knows he's thinking of his children. Of Svetlana.
They deserve to know.
They don't deserve to worry.
They'd had this argument a dozen times, and every time Anatoly had stormed off, slammed their bedroom door, and left Freddie to worry silently, angrily, for hours until he emerged only to paint the inside of their toilet bowl.
It was a nasty surgery, and Anatoly was far from recovered. As December deepened and darkened, icicles in the windows and daylight dwindling, he would lie on the couch and stare at nothing, a book lax in his hand, the chessboard untouched.
At this rate he'd lose his title – but Freddie somehow doubted that that was his first priority, right now.
Hell, even he'd been able to forget chess for this.
Freddie sometimes wonders what his life would have been like, had he found someone to love like this earlier in his life.
Everything is tests and treatments and bills, bills, for the surgery and for the medication and for the long distance phone bills as Anatoly finally musters up the courage to dial his wife's number and speaks, for hours, in low tones, in Russian, so Freddie can't understand but he hardly needs to. He thinks that the faint sounds of Svetlana's sob from the receiver will haunt him for the rest of his life.
He'd never really liked the woman, per se, but he could empathize.
The aftermath of the surgery – a subtotal gastrectomy, said the surgeons, which sounded nearly as disgusting as it was – was a mess. Anatoly, who had already eaten little, survived on liquids for nearly a month. The New Year was fast approaching and they had weakly joked that he'd have to forego the champagne, this year.
But not next year, Freddie promised him. Anatoly had only given him a tired look.
The tests still hadn't come in, and the question hung in the air. It was aggressive cancer, and if it came back –
Freddie wasn't sure their bank account could take it, and neither could his mind.
He wondered idly as Christmas approached whether it would be appropriate to buy Anatoly a gift this year. He'd probably accept it, but would he be glad? Probably not. He'd silently simmer about it for the next week – that Freddie had wasted time and money on him, him, who was probably dying, would be gone by Valentines Day.
That was a pessimistic way of looking at things, but Anatoly was a pessimistic person. There was no real evidence that he'd be dead anytime soon.
They just had to wait for those damned test results.
Freddie felt as though they'd been balanced, teetering, on needlepoint for the past two months. He was terrible at waiting – for a chessman, his patience was terrible. At least in professional chess there was the timer, a limit to the waiting. Here in the real world he had to at least feign patience, or else he'd probably throw himself from the roof tomorrow.
And Anatoly, the sick fuck, would probably blissfully follow him.
Scowling, Freddie shakes the snow from his hair and digs for his keys as he approaches the door, mail clamped carelessly in one gloved hand. Goddamn Sergievsky, that – that self-sacrificing asshole. Where was his survival instinct? He just wanted to shake him until the man he'd once competed ruthlessly against returned to smack him silly, and maybe fuck him over th-
He coughs, flushing, and shoves the door closed behind him, leaning against it. No use continuing with that thought. Not anytime soon…
As he began to peel away his layers, he opened his mouth to call out that he was home – and froze, staring at the envelope in his hand.
A status report. It must be. Why hadn't they just called?
Freddie feels as though he might have to swallow his heart, it's climbed up so far in his throat. He races into the living room and finds Anatoly squinting at the newspaper in the light of the fireplace, halfhearted and looking exhausted. He doesn't wait for him to greet him, just shoving the envelope into his hands.
"It's for you," he explains hastily at Anatoly's startled, suspicious look. The Russian frowns and looks back down to the envelope, carefully peeling it open with thin, unsteady fingers.
It seems to take him an eternity to read it. Freddie squirms on the spot, struggling not to just try and read it upside down. Don't be rude. Anyways, what if it was bad news?
Anatoly licked his lips. He glanced up at Freddie carefully.
"I'm in remission," he murmurs, and a small smile graced his lips, tired as it was. Freddie had to sharply resist the urge to tackle him back onto the cushions. Instead he gingerly knelt beside him, cupping his neck, grinning.
When he's finished kissing him – and Lord, Anatoly had kissed, fingers in his hair desperate and demanding and life-affirming – he presses their foreheads together and smirks.
"Maybe champagne this year after all?"