Chapter Text
2010.
Left hand: a cold remote. Unyielding.
Right hand: steaming coffee warms her. It’s the alternative to holding a hand.
She glances at the time and turns on the television.
Lights up.
More overwhelming than he’d admit, even for one who thrives (relies?) on the spotlight. After all, who — what? —is Freddie Trumper without an audience? Was it... Shakespeare who said something about the world being a stage? Freddie wouldn’t know. What he does know is he disagrees with the premise: the world isn’t a stage. An audience isn’t free. An audience must be captive, and only those on a stage can capture.
Step one, then, the predecessor to the capturing. For the first time in years, he hobbles onto a stage. But is it? More of an arena, really. It’s nothing like the chess venues he once played at, yet the inevitable tingle tickles down his spine. Isn’t it a weird thing to simultaneously despise and crave attention?
Then Walter throws an arm around him. Music, booming, blares in the background.
They march forward.
For Walter, it’s the energetic step of an experienced host.
For Freddie, it’s the half-hearted limp of someone who relies on a cane but has turned his back to it. After all, it’s a short distance to the hot seat. Surely he can make it, especially with Walter’s physical support. And he does, a testament to his luck rather than his physicality.
As he slides into the contestant’s seat, he wonders just how far luck will carry him. Luck doesn’t (didn’t?) mean shit when it comes (came?) to chess, but it could mean something tonight. He rolls his shoulders back, calling upon the confidence he once strolled with. He calls on his youth and clings.
Everyone had thought overconfidence was Freddie Trumper’s driving force. Only Florence had known that he’d had to grip confidence as tightly as he could to drag it anywhere.
But Walter… now, Walter doesn’t need to call upon anything or anyone. For him, it’s an effortless endeavor.
What an incredible fuckin’ retirement job. He sits at the host’s seat and swivels to the closest camera, his voice easily cutting over the audience’s enthusiastic applause.
“Good evening, folks, and welcome to Global Television’s Who Wants to be a Millionaire? My name is Walter, and I’ll be your host tonight.” As if he isn’t the host every night. Walter is legendary. He flashes an award-winning grin (it doesn’t quite quality as a smile, per Freddie). “You might recognize the name of our contestant tonight — or, at least, viewers my age might. No guarantee for you younger viewers!”
His quip is met with laughter and applause. Freddie doesn’t react. Time flies, he supposes.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you’re in for a treat tonight,” Walter promises. “We’ve got Freddie Trumper joining us. That’s right — a chess star, Freddie Trumper. A chess legend, if I do say so myself. I mean, once an intellectual, always an intellectual, is that right?”
Well, at least Walter didn’t call him a nerd . ‘Intellectual’ might be pushing it. Is definitely pushing it.
“What do we think?” Walter asks the audience, now turning away from the camera and looking around the arena. “Can a chess player answer fifteen questions and win one million dollars? What do we think?”
Repetition seems to work. Just like that, the audience vibrantly claps and cheers, already on Freddie’s side, and he didn’t have to do a thing to earn their support. Walter did the legwork.
All Freddie has to do is maintain the good graces. Can he?
A tall order for someone like him. He musters a smile.
“The audience seems to think I can,” he tells Walter, which is met with another round of applause. Walter chuckles. Freddie has no way of telling how genuine it is. Hell, no one has a way of telling how genuine anything is when it comes to Walter. Sometimes he wonders if Walter himself can tell the difference.
“So they do. But before we start, tell us, Freddie: why are you here?” Behind the screen-proof smile, there’s… nothing. He can’t read Walter’s eyes. He used to know them. “I’ve seen a lot of contestants in my time, and I’ve got to admit I’ve never been as stumped as I am now. I mean…” Walter trails off and turns to the audience, inviting them into the intimacy of the moment, before he leans in. “I mean, come on. Our usual contestants are, you know, the usual suspects. A young professional trying to pay off student loans, someone trying to buy house, even a few cases of family members trying to raise funds for medical treatments — touching, really.”
The scary part? Walter seems to mean every word, his brows crinkling in sympathy.
“And… some others contestants are your average Joes who simply want to be millionaires. But you are far from an average Joe.”
“Well, Walter, maybe I’m an Average Freddie.” Freddie doesn’t expect laughs, but he receives them. Now the question will plague him for the rest of the night: is the audience laughing with him or at him? Pinprick of panic he knows too well laps at him. He pushes it away.
“An average Freddie!” Walter repeats, punctuating every consonant. He savors each letter. “Then, tell us, average Freddie… why are you here?”
Walter leans back, firmly placing the onus of response in Freddie’s lap. He has a way of coaxing conversations from nothing to something. It’s the language of compromise.
After all, Freddie darkly recalls, no negotiation’s impossible for…
But . But.
Freddie volunteered himself for Millionaire . He’s deliberately put himself in the hot seat. And a silent fuck you! to past-Freddie who put him in this situation and a half-hearted grin to… well, to himself now.
Contestants always give a brief blurb about themselves before the questions start; Walter isn’t targeting him specifically. Freddie could have (and didn’t!) planned accordingly. And, hey, the questions might be so dang difficult he could find himself missing the easier questions — that is, the biographical questions.
Are they really easier?
“I’m here to become a millionaire,” he says on stolen confidence, flashing that old smile that used to drive fans to screams. It seems his charm hasn’t all faded. Even now, the audience eats up his answer and attitude, cheering appreciatively.
They used to love him. They still could love him.
“Ha! You and every other contestant!” Light shines in Walter’s dark eyes and reveals more to the average Freddie than to the average viewer. “Well — to be transparent with you all — Freddie and I go way back.”
Walter’s chair swivels sideways, turning him towards the audience. Cameras crane for footage.
“Back when I worked in representation and public relations, Freddie and I were pals.” He looks at Freddie and shrugs. “But twenty years is a long time. Don’t get any ideas that I’ll help you out, Freddie. The producers made me promise, and I like my job!”
The audience laughs.
Two can play at a game.
Freddie grins.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he promises Walter. “You know me, I’ve always had to rely on myself. If I’m going to become a millionaire — I mean, when I answer the million-dollar question — it’ll be because I got myself there.”
Momentary silence. Even Walter pauses.
Then he relaxes.
“And that is the trademark Trumper confidence I want!”
He rubs his hands and winks at a camera.
“One more question before we start. Am I safe, Freddie? Put your days of punching reporters behind you?”
A few people in the audience gasp. Two can play at a game, indeed.
“I don’t know, Walter. Are you a reporter?”
“Well… I am about to ask you questions that you may or may not know the answer to…”
He grimaces in mock worry. Freddie shrugs.
“Then I think you got your answer.”
So he does. So they do.
Their eyes lock. Freddie, desperate, searches in vain for a scrap of anything in Walter’s eyes.
Nothing. The only thing that brings him pleasure is that Walter probably can’t read him, either.
Walter moves on.
“Let’s get started. For any new viewers joining us tonight, let me remind you how Millionaire works. It’s pretty easy to follow. Our contestant — Freddie — has the opportunity to win one million dollars by answering trivia questions. Our first question is worth one hundred dollars and each subsequent question a higher amount. He’ll need to answer fifteen questions for the grand prize.” Walter nods appreciatively. “If our contestant doesn’t know the answer to a question, he can walk away with the amount he’s already won. But if he answers a question incorrectly… he’ll have lost it all. Just like that!”
Just like that.
Just like…
No, this isn’t chess. This is different.
“Throughout the game, our contestants have three ‘lifelines’ to use. Ask the audience, phone-a-friend, and 50-50.” Walter pauses. “But… maybe you won’t need to use any of them, Freddie?”
It’s hard to say. Freddie’s never played trivia in his life. He doesn’t even like game shows. It’s a stupid show, Flaw-rence, turn that shit off , he used to drawl. And when she didn’t, he’d turn it off himself and she’d sit, silent and seething, and… well, that was that. Freddie called the shots.
“I know a lot,” Freddie says. “Seen a lot, y’know. Maybe you’re right.”
Not quite as cocky as his old responses, but it’ll do.
Walter accepts it.
“Freddie Trumper, ladies and gentlemen!” he announces, signaling the beginning of the gameplay, and the audience enthusiastically cheers. Freddie’s heart does things it should not do, but he keeps his breaths steady.
Last thing he needs is to fall apart on national — nah — international television.
Walter settles into his seat and looks down at his screen.
Freddie sees his own screen, which will reflect Walter’s questions.
“First question. Are you ready?”
“Am I ever .”
“Great.” A beat. “The Swedish pop group ABBA released a song in 1981. This song was also released under the Spanish title of No Hay a Quien Culpar . It reached number 29 in Mexico. What was the song?”
Before he hears the possible answers, Freddie looks to the ground. His glasses begin to slide off his nose and he firmly pushes them up.
“A. Mamma Mia . B. Ring Ring . C. The Winner Takes It All . D. When All Is Said and Done .”
You’d have to be stupid to pick A or B, and he isn’t.
He isn't particularly a beacon of knowledge, either.
He thinks back...
He never thought he’d reconnect with his mother.
Why would he? He’d been officially out of the house at eighteen, but he’d really left five years earlier. Time spent at home dwindled until he only slept there. Then he’d found a new place to sleep and then he’d climbed — clawed — his way to success. But who would have imagined he’d be his mother’s emergency contact when she finally cracked? Imagine being that alone. Freddie Trumper had no phone number. He barely had an identity. Yet one committed nurse tracked him down — yes, him , despite his mother’s insistence that her daughter be found — and he found himself staring into the future.
Schizophrenia. His mother was sick.
He visited her, God knows why. Maybe because he'd read schizophrenia was ofter hereditary and he wanted to know what he was getting himself into.
Mental illness was tricky. He knew that well.
So he visited her.
No need to dig into memories. She pointed at him and said that wasn't her daughter.
It was fine. He was fine.
What mattered was that mental illness did strange things to people. For some unknown reason, she wouldn’t stop singing that damn song. In Spanish. She didn't even speak Spanish. He didn’t understand what about it comforted her. It was such a strangely upbeat song for such bizarre lyrics that he eventually looked up in English.
And everything was said and done with his mother, anyway. That was that.
That was that...
“Freddie?”
Freddie.
What he wouldn’t give for his mother to have called him Freddie just once. Once would have been enough.
“D,” Freddie says. “ When All Is Said And Done .”
“Final answer?”
“Final answer.”
Walter smiles.
“I love that song, too. Congratulations, Freddie, you’ve answered the first question correctly.”
$100. Just like that.
Freddie’s stunned. He knew the answer, but it still stuns.
He simply nods, trying to retain confidence, and fiddles with the ring on his finger.