The Year We Had (MCYT AU)

26: Chess

"George, you picked a fight with the wrong person." Wilbur said dramatically, carefully picking up his queen and sliding it across the board.

George scowled. "Would you stop doing that!"

"I just spent a week in protective custody with nothing but free to air tv and board games." Wilbur said darkly. "I played so much chess that even Techno didn't want anything to do with me."

"That's true." Techno called from across the room where he sat with his laptop, collecting produce on their Minecraft server. They were the only people in the common room, and he was facing away from the door, so he would be able to close his screen quickly if anyone outside of their circle showed up.

"Didn't you also do drugs?" Tubbo asked, his head popping up from one of the couches as his attention was snapped away from the television. He held Tommy's camera in his hands, and pulled it up to his eye, focusing it slightly before taking a picture. He was getting better every time.

"Only mildly." Wilbur supplied with a shrug.

"I'm fuckin' over this!" Tommy shouted, tossing his drawing pad down and laying back on the rest of the sofa with a loud groan.

"It's not that bad Tommy." Karl tried, cringing as he picked up the pad of paper. It was pretty bad.

"Why did you take art anyway?" Sapnap asked, grabbing the pad off of Karl and studying it. "Is this meant to be a giraffe?"

"It's a pencil leaning against a vase." Tommy groaned, throwing one arm over his eyes to block out the world.

Karl and Sapnap shared a look as they put the pad back to where Tommy had tossed it. It didn't look very much like a pencil and a vase. Alex and Niki shared a similar look, but returned to trying to learn a guitar song by ear.

"Just drop art and take PE already." Dream said as he wandered over, leaning over the back of the sofa that Tommy was having a crisis on. "You're actually not bad at lacrosse, when you have a bit of direction. You certainly have the energy for it."

"You want me to do sports? You want me to be a sports guy?" Tommy sounded absolutely disgusted.

"Better than a failed art guy." Techno noted, eyes still fixed firmly on the screen.

"Yeah!" Wilbur cheered, clapping loudly as George let out a groan and scooted away from Wilbur and the chess board. "Get absolutely fucking annihilated, Gogy!"

"That's it, I'm done." George proclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air.

Tommy grumbled something incoherent as he removed his arm from over his eyes, dug around in his pocket, fished out a small wad of cash and tossed it at Techno, who snatched it from the air with ease.

"Alright Wil, I'll take you." Fundy declared, getting up from where he was sitting on the other side of the room and wandering over to the chessboard. Wilbur clasped his hands together happily as he started to set up the board once more.

"For real Tommy, you're not half bad." Dream offered, nudging the boy's shoulder slightly.

"I'm not half bad at art either." Tommy said boldly.

Sapnap cringed slightly. "Yeah, not sure about that one."

"You do like running a lot." Tubbo noted, leaning over the arm of the couch and hovering his face over his friends, his hair dangling down and framing it in a weird way.

Tommy groaned and rolled off the sofa, rubbing at his eyes. "But then I'd have to run for other people, not away from them."

"You'd also get to win at things." Karl pointed out.