A/N: I know some of the readers live on the US east coast, and hope that all of them and their loved ones are safe and have not been terribly effected by the recent hurricane. I also hope that all of you have had an awesome Halloween.

Thank you to the reviewers, you guys kick ass.

Now, go read.

IX.

There weren't many things to do around camp with so many of the other fighters busy with assignment related to the 2nd Mass's latest ambitious mission. Not when Jimmy's own assignment decided early in that it didn't want to cooperate with him. So Jimmy sought out other things to do, like reorganize the ammunitions truck. He put all the boxes of munitions in order of caliber size first, but that only took an hour and a half, so again he rearranged everything according to which gun type they were useable in, then switched to which were most used, then most abundant, then most damaging to Skitters, and then finally settled on arrangement based on useable gun type and within that caliber size and within that most abundant.

Three hours later, Jimmy felt satisfied and was, once again, without task. He wandered around camp, it was about lunchtime and most of the 2nd Mass were in the mess area, eating lentil soup and a stale assortment of crackers. Jimmy knew that he should probably eat, but he paused and lay a hand over his stomach thoughtfully, considering whether his digestive system was in the mood to hold down anything he put into it. Most of the people remaining in the world that he cared about were out on dangerous missions and wouldn't be back for several more hours, who was he kidding trying to decide if he could eat, hell, he could puke on that empty stomach, attempting to put anything in it was just an obvious recipe for disaster.

That was about when Jimmy found Matt. With both of his older brothers out on mission, Matt was relegated to Dr. Glass's care. Of course, Dr. Glass was busy treating patients and Matt was a little boy that didn't want to spend his entire afternoon in a stuffy van listening to 'okay…now breath deep and…cough', it didn't matter how kind Dr. Glass could be. Nothing better to do, Jimmy volunteered to take the boy for a few hours.

Jimmy sort of hoped that Matt would want to do something semi-fun, like play soccer or catch. One of the benefits of being camped out at a community center, there was plenty of equipment lying around to keep the small children entertained and, in many ways, Jimmy was still a small child himself – if, that is, being a surly, bitter, equivalent of an eighty-year-old trapped in a small child's body counted for anything.

Unfortunately, Matt didn't feel up for any active sports, suggesting chess instead. Together they sat in the main lobby of the community center, several other kids and older teenagers sitting around them playing various different board games. Matt set up the board, and it took him several tens of minutes to explain the rules, mostly because Jimmy kept zoning out and having to ask for things to be repeated. Seriously, why did it have to be chess?

Their first game was quick. Jimmy wasn't entirely sure why he'd lost, he'd only had five turns, and Matt spent nearly three times longer than the game actually lasted trying to explain the loss to Jimmy, before finally deciding, "Let's just play again," and he reset the board.

The second game took a little longer, because Jimmy would only move the short, knobby pieces that held the front line until he couldn't move them anymore, was forced to branch out with other pieces and eventually, Matt announced victory. Jimmy slumped, debating whether he should ask how exactly his defeat had happened this time. Matt explained anyway, and Jimmy simply nodded as though he understood.

"Don't you ever play chess with Ben?" Matt demanded, exasperated, and Jimmy winced. He had kind of hoped he could get through baby-sitting the youngest Mason without mentioning the elder brother, but reflecting back, it was probably a foolhardy hope from the get-go.

"No. Never," Jimmy responded quietly and Matt perked a brow.

"Really? Ben and his friends always played chess before," he said, leaning over the board with his chin in his palm, and studying the pieces in front of him. He made his first move then looked up at Jimmy expectantly.

Jimmy sighed, lazily pushed one of the knobby pieces forward a couple squares, "I guess I'm not like Ben's other friends."

"No, you're not. Not at all," Matt replied, moving another piece and leaning back to peer up at Jimmy curiously, "You talk less. And you use smaller words. Much smaller words."

Jimmy blinked. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to be flattered or insulted. He knew Matt was just making a blunt observation, it was a quirky, oft times annoying, trait that he shared with Ben.

"Ben never kissed his other friends either," Matt pointed out, looking thoughtfully back down at the board and Jimmy flustered, ducking his face to hide the sudden color.

Sometimes Jimmy forgot that Matt had seen him and Ben together in the storage closet a few weeks ago, and while Matt had done a good job thus far of not saying anything about the kiss he saw there to anyone in the 2nd Mass not-in-the-loop, typical of any younger sibling, he still liked to throw it into whatever conversation he could with the two older boys.

"Never…" Jimmy quietly repeated, running his finger along the edge of the chess board, then glancing anxious up at Matt he meekly asked, "What were his other friends like?"

It was sort of a silly question though. Jimmy could take a pretty accurate guess as to what Ben's pre-alien invasion friends were like; it wasn't exactly a secret the kind of person Ben was before. At times, in their conversations together, Jimmy could still see that person, in the things Ben said, the references or jokes he made. He'd been something of a dork, the type that played chess competitively and read for fun, did extra-credit assignments because he was finished with all of his homework, stayed up late to watch documentaries on the science channel. It stood to reason that his former friends were the same type.

"Why do you want to know?" Matt returned. He peered intently at Jimmy, an expression not unlike his father's, distinguished and studious. All the Mason boys wore the look sometimes and something about that fact ached inside of Jimmy, as he dropped his gaze back to the chess board, thinking about his own father and what expressions he wore that were like those of that long-dead man.

"I was just asking," Jimmy murmured, touching one of the chess pieces as though to move it, then pulling back and slumping forward on his knees.

Closing his eyes, Jimmy could almost picture Ben's friends from before. He'd known kids like them at his own school, they used to scoff at Jimmy and his own friends for being slackers, the types of losers that would be lucky to graduate high-school, let alone get into a decent college. As if that were what defined a man from a child, their higher education options. And, of course, Jimmy and his friends would ignore those kids, the way they had ignored everyone. Back then they hadn't cared where they would end up, so long as it was anywhere but where they were presently at.

One of the first things Ben had ever said to Jimmy on their first patrol together was that he thought they could've been friends if they had known one another before the war, but Jimmy wasn't so sure. He felt they wouldn't have even realized the other existed, that if they had, they would've hated each other for their differences, and something about that hurt.

"I didn't think they were very cool," Matt admitted with a shrug, "I like you a lot better. His old friends never talked to me, or played with me, or anything. They usually just ignored me."

Jimmy smiled vaguely at the chess board, letting the younger Mason's praise swell through him, warm and soft.

"Ben didn't have as many friends as Hal," Matt continued and Jimmy peeked curiously up at him once, before continuing his staring contest with the chess board, "Or me. Hal would make fun of him for it, but mom always told him that it didn't mean anything, quality over quantity. She liked to say that a lot, I don't really know what it means, but it never made Ben feel better. He'd just get really mad. He'd go lock himself in his room and mom would get upset and Hal would make fun of him and dad would tell Hal to knock it off."

"I didn't have a lot of friends either. Just a few really good ones," Jimmy murmured, elucidating, "Sometimes you can be surrounded by people and feel like the loneliest person in the room, you know? And sometimes you can be with one person and never need anyone else. I think that's what your mom meant. Does that make sense?"

"Not really," Matt said earnestly and Jimmy smiled softly down at him, "But you know…even when Ben's friends were over, he never seemed very happy. His friends were all kind of mean too. Like…they didn't even seem like friends sometimes, they were always making fun of each other and arguing and everything."

"No, that's just how friends are at that age," Jimmy chuckled, "My friends and I used to…" He trailed off, frowned at the chessboard. He never talked about his friends from before, not with anyone. He tried not to think about them. They were from a different life, friends to a different person, a foul-mouthed pothead that went by James.

Yet, it seemed so natural to just start opening up to Matt. Jimmy ran a hand over his face and sighed, he was starting to let his carefully constructed guard down, and he was fairly certain Ben was to blame.

"Used to what?" Matt prodded.

"Nothing. Just…picked on each other a lot," Jimmy concluded, grimacing, then he frowned and confessed, "Back then, I didn't notice it I guess, but sometimes, a lot of the time, I suppose, I felt lonely when I was with them too, just like Ben with his friends."

"Do you feel lonely with Ben?" Matt wondered.

Jimmy smirked and shook his head, sheepishly answering, "No. Never."

"That's really weird," Matt muttered, scrunching his nose, and Jimmy shrugged.

"Maybe you'll understand one day," he said, thinking it seemed the appropriate thing to say, even though he didn't quite understand it himself. He slid one of his long, skinny chess pieces across the board.

"You can't move that there," Matt chastised.

Jimmy frowned, furrowing his brow heavily, and examining the piece. He tried to remember the instructions Matt had given him and what rule he had broken, but he kept drawing a blank.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"It's a bishop. They only move diagonally," Matt explained, staring up condescendingly at the older boy.

"But I thought…this one moved diagonally," Jimmy complained, tapping the top of a squatter piece, with a jagged top. He only had one of them; which didn't make any sense, he had multiples of all the other pieces, except the king of course, but that's because it was the piece he was guarding, like the flag in Capture the Flag. At least, that's how Matt had explained it, Jimmy wasn't entirely sure he bought the analogy.

Matt rolled his eyes exaggeratedly and said matter-of-fact, "That's your queen. She can move both diagonally and straight." He stopped just short of calling Jimmy an idiot, which in all fairness, it would be his fifth time explaining everything, but Jimmy bristled all the same.

"Why did you want to play this stupid game anyway?" Jimmy asked, folding his arms over his stomach and glaring at the chess board as Matt put his 'bishop' back where it had been originally.

"I have to practice," Matt answered. Jimmy perked a brow.

"Practice? For what?"

"For when I play Ben," Matt leaned back and watched a couple girls nearby playing Yahtzee for a few seconds. Jimmy considered the younger boy.

Of the Mason brothers, Matt was perhaps the worst off. He was too young to serve much of a purpose in the 2nd Mass yet, though Jimmy had seen the younger boy staring longingly at the fighters practicing on the shooting range on a number of occasions. He was forced to sit back and wait while his older brothers went off to war every day, and in that time, probably mulled a great deal over the absence of their father. Not to mention, because he was stuck at camp all day, Matt bore the brunt of their community's misgivings about Ben's status as formerly harnessed and Professor Mason's decision to climb aboard an alien craft.

And it didn't help that none of the Masons seemed predisposed to sitting back and doing nothing. Matt was restless, it was evident in the way his knees bounced, in the way he absently chewed his nails to bleeding and his eyes darted anxiously – no, anticipatorily - at every movement in the room. It was, to a mild extent, that same caged animal look Ben sometimes got when he had to spend more than a couple days at camp.

"Do you guys play often?" Jimmy wondered. He'd seen a few games between the brothers, but not in recent days. It was hard to find time.

"Not anymore," Matt lamented, "He has patrol a lot…and then this new mission."

The small boy slumped and glared at the chessboard, gnawing on his thumbnail.

"And, you know, when he is here, he's always somewhere with you."

The blood drained from Jimmy's face, his stomach folding, his limbs growing cold and heavy at the younger boy's words. Though the statement had carried no malice, no bitterness, Jimmy sensed that there was an underlining challenge beneath them, a removing of the gloves.

"If you and Ben don't play chess, what do you do together?" Matt innocently questioned, staring intently up at Jimmy. The blood rushed back into Jimmy's head, hot and red.

"Uh…what?" he stammered.

Matt shrugged, "What do you guys do all the time? You both go off alone so much, you have to be doing something, right? Otherwise it would be boring and Ben wouldn't want to go. So…do you play another game or…"

"Nothing," Jimmy cried, aghast, "We do nothing."

This was not a conversation he should be having with Ben's younger brother.

Matt perked a brow and folded his arms over his chest.

"Nothing," he repeated, dubiously, then smirking slyly, he wondered, "So…then I could probably hang out with you guys next time, right?"

Jimmy buried his face in his palm and sighed. Oh yeah, that would go over well with everyone.

"Well…no...I don't know…" he stammered, "You see, we don't do nothing…is the thing…we do…stuff…but…"

"Like…kiss?" Matt pressed; his expression the perfect mask of young naivety, clearly disguising the devil inside. Jimmy drew his breath in sharply and leered at Matt through his fingers. This kid might not make it until his brothers got back.

"Maybe…" Jimmy mumbled, he rolled his eyes, dropped his voice low and admitted, "Yes."

"I knew it," Matt grinned, "So…kissing is really fun then, huh?"

"Can we…focus on the game?" Jimmy hissed.

"It must be fun, or Ben would rather be playing chess. But it doesn't look fun, it looks really gross," Matt persisted.

Jimmy furrowed his brow, frowned a little. There weren't a lot of fighters around camp making out, and as far as Jimmy knew, Matt wasn't spying around the First Night. The only ones he would have seen kissing in recent times was Ben and Jimmy, and that sort of miffed Jimmy a little, because he didn't think they looked 'gross' when kissing. Of course, he couldn't actually see, so it was hard to tell, but he was fairly certain they looked alright. It felt like they knew where everything was supposed to go.

"What is with the sudden interest?" Jimmy demanded, glumly moving one of his small, nubby pieces along the chess board, making a loud scraping noise in the effort. At least those ones he could remember the maneuvering capabilities of: forward.

Matt shrugged, said nothing a moment as he looked at the chess board. He moved one of his pieces, the one that resembled a horse but wasn't actually called a horse – who the hell named these pieces anyways – and claimed one of Jimmy's small, nubby pieces, placing it carelessly to the side of the board. Jimmy leaned on his knee, chin propped up in the palm of his hand.

"I lied," Matt suddenly announced and Jimmy straightened abruptly.

"About what?" he demanded, "Did you tell me the wrong rules for this game, because I swear to God, Matt, if I have to remember all new rules…"

"No," Matt interjected, "Ben did kiss one of his friends from before."

Jimmy's mouth slammed shut and he swore his heart momentarily sputtered and died at that statement, little blood cells rushing forward with an artificial defibrillator machine, kick starting it back into action. He felt winded, as though someone had slammed him hard in the chest.

"I forgot about it. It was once. On the couch, in the den," Matt went on, eyes still fixated on the chess board, "I was sitting on the top of the stairs watching them," Jimmy smirked distantly, typical younger sibling, "They were playing a game, and some of them went to get drinks and Ben and Lindsey stayed downstairs."

"Lindsey?" Jimmy interjected, a tiny quiver in his tone.

"Yeah. I remember her name because she was always beating Ben at things, like, they were always trying to outdo each other's test scores…stupid things like that, and he was always yelling about it," Matt explained then sighing, "They were just talking for a little bit and I don't know what about, and then she told him to do it. To kiss her. So he did."

"Oh," Jimmy murmured. He didn't understand why he felt the way he did listening to Matt's story, as though Ben were kissing this Lindsey girl right then, right in front of him. Ben was far from being Jimmy's first kiss; he supposed it was irrational to think that he was Ben's. Yet, somehow, it stung to know that someone else had tasted that bittersweet mouth, and what's more, tasted it before him.

"It was really quick, kind of like…" Matt pursed his lips and pecked the air, then smirked up at Jimmy and conspiratorially whispered, "Didn't look anything like the kiss Ben gave you, like…" Matt imitated what he thought Ben's kiss to look like, mouth dangling open, sloshing back and forth, his tongue hanging out, lapping at the air.

Jimmy groaned, flustered, "Matt, cut that out!"

"That's what it looked like," Matt insisted, clamping his mouth shut and smiling sweetly up at the older boy. Jimmy contemplated smacking him upside the head, but decided against it, he would leave that to the older Mason brothers to handle. He moved another of the nubby pieces and waited for Matt to make a move.

"So…Lindsey was…Ben's girlfriend?" Jimmy tentatively wondered, heart fluttering in his chest. Matt made a face.

"No," he wistfully replied, "She was Marty's girlfriend. Well, that's what they said all the time, anyway. They were always holding hands and hugging each other and stuff. But, my mom said she thought Lindsey had a crush on Ben and was always asking him how she was doing."

"Oh. Okay," Jimmy murmured, not sure why he felt so relieved by the answer.

"My mom always teased Ben about that kind of stuff," Matt said, solemnly, "Dad would tell her not to rush him, that Ben would find a girlfriend in his own time, but mom would say she wanted him to have one 'now', so she could dress him up in nice clothes and drive him around on dates. Ben would get really embarrassed."

"I bet," Jimmy muttered, thinking it was a silly way for a mother to behave.

Jimmy's own mother never pestered him about those kinds of things. He figured it was just because she had her own things to be concerned about, her own life to live. In a peculiar way, he almost envied Ben's life from before, almost wondering if that was maybe how a mother was really meant to be, pushing her son towards dating, and girls, teasing him about it, while the father stood by and attempted to save his son's humility.

"Do you ever miss your parents?" Matt questioned suddenly and Jimmy startled.

Matt had folded his arms on the tabletop where they'd set up their chessboard, and he rest his chin atop. The look Matt wore then, like a crestfallen puppy, reminded Jimmy so much of Ben that he couldn't help smiling faintly at the younger boy, though the inquiry caused his heart to pound viciously against his ribcage. A few seconds ticked by and Matt didn't stir from his resting spot on the tabletop, and it occurred to Jimmy then what the younger boy was really asking.

Jimmy frowned, and returned gently, "Yes. I do."

A small smile flitted across Matt's features. Jimmy moved one of his pieces and Matt frowned.

"You can't move that there," he said.

"What? Why?" Jimmy demanded, "It's one of the little pieces, you said I could move them forward, it's forward!"

"Yeah, but my pawn is blocking yours," Matt replied.

"Can't I take it?" Jimmy persisted, growing increasingly frustrated with the increasingly confusing rules. Matt had already claimed several of Jimmy's pieces the same exact way, by taking those that were blocking the natural paths of his own pieces.

"Pawns don't capture by moving forward. They capture diagonally," Matt answered, strumming his fingers impatiently on the table top. Jimmy scowled.

"That's stupid. So what, I'm just stuck there?" Jimmy cried, and Matt nodded response, "That isn't fair. If I move anything else I'll lose it!"

Matt smirked cruelly, "I know."

"You're getting your ass kicked by a nine-year-old," Ben's voice rang through the room and Jimmy slammed his mouth tightly shut on the slew of curse words he had prepped on his tongue and was aiming Matt's direction, tilting his head round to watch the other boy advance on them. Ben leaned over the table and swept his eyes across the board, a coy smile hiding in the corner of his lip.

"When did you get back?" Jimmy wondered, eying darkly the neat little pile of his pieces Matt had collected on the side of the board, rolling in his palm the one piece he'd managed to capture in all the time they'd been playing. Matt gleefully moved Jimmy's chess piece, the nubby one, back where it started and Jimmy glared daggers at the little boy.

"Just now," Ben answered.

"I already beat Jimmy twice," Matt announced proudly and Jimmy scowled. He knew the younger brother was just trying to impress the elder, and it was endearing and all, but seriously, did he have to be such a jerk about it?

"Did you?" Ben laughed, ruffling his brother's hair, while grinning bemused at Jimmy, who sulked, leaning against the table and eying the chess pieces warily.

It was still Jimmy's turn, but now with Ben standing over them, there was suddenly all this intense pressure to perform. Chess was Ben's favorite game and Jimmy really didn't want to screw up and look like the world's biggest dumbass by moving a piece the wrong way, yet it seemed inevitable, as he reached for the only piece he thought himself capable of moving and slid it along the board. Matt shook his head and slapped a hand to his face. Ben merely smirked, moving the piece back to its original position. Jimmy felt sure he could just curl up and die there, no one pay him any mind…stupid, fucking game.

"Knights can't move to adjacent squares," Ben gently explained, then he thoughtfully picked up a different piece and set it down in a new spot; "Check and…" he ticked his finger back and forth in the air over the board before firmly stating, "Mate in two."

"What?" Matt screamed incredulously, gaping at the chess board in stun.

Jimmy perked a brow, straightening and grinning smugly at the younger boy. He wasn't exactly sure what Ben had just said but from the sounds of it, he was entitled to a satisfying: take that, brat.

"How did today go?" Jimmy asked, turning his attention back to Ben's arrival. Matt ignored them, busily trying to figure out exactly how Ben had him beat.

"Okay," Ben answered quietly, watching Matt with a distant expression. Jimmy furrowed his brow, the other boy was noticeably not looking at him and Jimmy didn't take that as a good indication Ben was being entirely forthright.

"Uh-huh," Jimmy drawled skeptically, inspecting Ben, "If it went so well then why are you covered in foul-smelling goo?"

"I had a run-in with a Skitter," Ben explained, smirking, "It's dead. I'm not. That means things went…" he met Jimmy's scrutinizing glare then, smiling although it didn't quite reach his eyes, he was definitely hiding something, "…okay."

"Hey, Ben, you want to play?" Matt chirped eagerly and Ben glanced at the younger boy quickly before dropping his eyes and fidgeting with his gloves.

"Actually, I was on my way to the showers, saw you two in here, thought I'd say 'hi', but I got to go clean Skitter off then report in with Weaver, and then I got to grab food, I'm starved," Ben mumbled apologetically, "Another time, okay, Matt?"

Matt nodded, mouthing a silent 'okay', as he began lining chess pieces back on the board. Ben ghosted his fingertips across Jimmy's forehead, brushing silken strands of brown to the side and Jimmy raised his eyes up to the meet the other boy's soft gaze.

"Tent later?" Ben asked in a low whisper.

Jimmy nodded stiffly, his eyes darting every so often to Matt, the younger boy stared glumly at the reset chessboard. Without another word, Ben departed; ruffling Matt's hair in passing. Jimmy's eyes lingered on the room exit long after Ben had disappeared through it and faded down the hall.

.

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A/N: Part of what I wanted to explore in this story was how Jimmy and Ben's relationship would put a strain on Ben's relationship with his brothers. It's already hard enough to find time together when in the midst of a war, I'm sure, but throw in a new romance and suddenly family bonding time drops to the very bottom of the priority list for a budding teenage boy.

Also, if you've never played chess before, apologies, it plays heavily in a symbolic sense throughout the story. I'm not very good at chess and don't know all the rules and tactics and what not, but I do know that a good chess player can see defeat coming several moves ahead of time...which is why Ben's always saying 'mate in two' or things along that line.

Lastly, some of you might remember that Jimmy is supposed to be really good at math in this story, and might know that mathematicians tend to like chess (it's all geometrical moves is why...), and probably wonder why Jimmy hates the game isn't better at it. It comes up later...much later in the story again.

Okie, let me know what you guys think please!

Reviewers: Facepalmer123, okie. IcicleLilly, I'm sorry about the disappointment I'm trying my damndest to make sure the story is still interesting. Cookie97, I know, Ben dorkiness is a little irresistible, I can't help writing him that way...I'm glad you're able to understand Hal a little better now and don't hate him quite so much in the story. As for Perks of Being a Wallflower, I will say that the movie did inspire me to want to read the book. The story was very good, it was evident in the movie, but I didn't think the movie handled it well...everything just felt over-rushed. I don't know. You might enjoy it more because you read the book, or you might hate it more because you read the book. JDMlvr1, glad you liked it!

Alright people, I'll see you all on Sunday. NaNoWriMo starts today, you should all be writing!