Chapter Text
When you meet Frederick Trumper for the first time your name is not yet Florence Vassy. You have known for quite some time now that the one you were born with is not a good fit, but to pick out something new would feel too much like admitting something to yourself that you aren't quite ready to yet. So you tell him the name that settles over you in the wrong way, and try to ignore the crawling sensation in your stomach that goes along with it. He introduces himself proudly—in a way that you will understand better later when you start introducing yourself as Florence—and asks to play chess with you. The rest, as it goes, is history.
On the whole, you are rather evenly matched. You play the same circuits, rising up the ranks but still considered newcomers, and take it in turns to beat the other. Chess is a salvation for both of you, you can see it in how he plays. At times, when he stays up late replaying matches over and over to spot the cracks in them, you want to ask. You want to tell him about your father, and how your life has always felt slightly off centre, but the chess helps. You want to tell him all of this, and ask him what his own reason is. In hindsight, you wish you had. It would have made things a lot easier for the pair of you if you had understood both him and yourself earlier, but you know you wouldn't have been ready to hear it. So you roll over in his bed, that you know you should not be in, and let him get back to playing out the previous day's match.
Your body has always been a source of discomfort for you, in a way that you know is alien to other people. You can’t stand to take your shirt off, and you screw your eyes tightly shut in the shower like you would if you’d managed to get shampoo in them. Over the years, you have convinced yourself that this is normal, and it is only once you start to see these behaviours reflected in Freddie that you realise how obviously uncomfortable you are.
You are playing chess in Seville, and the heat is starting to get to you. Freddie has been complaining to you all day about why they decide to host these things in hot countries at the height of summer, and you have been playing your role of dutifully shutting him down, something the pair of you have fallen into. Not that you disagree with him. You do both look a little strange however, as you sit by the side of the hotel pool fully clothed. Everyone else is swimming, and the most you do is tug the sleeves of your top up to your elbows. You want to ask Freddie why he is doing the same, when he doesn’t have the issues that you have with everything, but asking would draw attention to yourself. That is the first moment when you start to wonder if there is more you share than an affinity for chess and a bickering friendship.
It is almost a whole year later, when you admit it to yourself for the first time. You are in Freddie’s flat in New York, and he is asleep in bed. Halfway through the night you had been rudely awoken by him stealing the covers, and now you sit in the kitchen, watching the sun bloom into the sky in those early hours of the summer morning. There is not a particular moment of revelation really. It is something you have known, though not admitted to yourself, for years at this point. Still, you sit in the first light of the day, sleep deprived and a little hungry, and that is the first time that you admit to yourself that you are a woman.
Foolishly, the first thought that rushes through your mind is that you should wake Freddie and tell him. You don’t know where this idea comes from, though you have started letting yourself be vulnerable around him a little more, opening up still terrifies you, and besides you know that this is not something you can tell anyone. This has to be something that you know about yourself, but can never say aloud. For now at least, admitting it to yourself is terrifying and freeing. There is nothing else that can be done, but at least you have an answer. At least you know.
It brushes up against your friendship in strange ways, this new discovery, and you quickly learn that you cannot ever talk about it to Freddie. There have been a few times when you had tried to broach the topic, joking that your mother said she would have named you Florence if you were born a girl—you don’t start calling yourself that yet, even in your head, you feel like you do not have permission for such a thing—and you ask if he knows what his parents would have called him. You don’t know what it is that you said there, but all the walls go up instantly in a way that they have not since the earlier days of your friendship. There is some line that you have crossed, one that you cannot even see, and you hastily backtrack the conversation to safer waters.
You point out a skirt in a shop window to him one time, and his eyes go wide like you have uncovered something you are not meant to and he goes to mock you in a manner you know is a defence more than anything else. He asks if you want to wear it, in a sneering tone, and you decide then and there to never mention it again. You are not sure if he is like you, as you had thought before, and finds your comments hit a little close to home, or if he just hates the idea of any of it. Either way, you resolve to keep this to yourself.
Though the conversation itself had not ended well, the thought of Florence weighs on your mind as the pair of you fly off to Paris for yet another tournament. You need a name you can call yourself, though you know no-one else will say it, you need something to mentally replace the one that fits like a winter coat you outgrew several seasons ago, and Florence is as good as any you suppose. You aren’t sure if it was your mother or your father who had come up with it, but you like to think it was your dad. There is so little you have left of him these days, the childhood memories grow fainter by the day, and it would feel nice to have something from him to hold with you. He would never call you Florence, even if he was alive you wouldn’t tell him, but you can think of it as a gift from him regardless. One he had not known that you would need.
You win the tournament, beating out Freddie for the top spot, and when they announce your name as the victor, you pretend that they are calling out Florence Vassy instead. When you see it in the local papers the following morning, you take a pen to it, writing Florence again and again. Florence Vassy wins in Paris. Florence Vassy played well, beating US player Freddie Trumper. It has a nice ring to it, you think. If only it was real.
You press the paper into a ball before Freddie gets back to the room and bury it at the bottom of your bag. When you get back to London, you can’t bring yourself to throw it out, or burn it. Instead you pretend you don’t see it, and shove it back down towards the bottom where it stays for quite some time, along with Florence. One day, you think, one day you will hang this on your walls. But for now it stays there, crumpled and not quite forgotten about.