Checkmate
By Fewthistle

Author's Note: Written for Challenge Four, Prompt Three at the Livejournal Community even_angels_.

For Peanuts, because she asked.

There is nothing left to whisper. No false promises to hold sway. No recriminations to wound. Words have no standing here. I am a soldier without a battlefield, a general without a war. Bereft of shield and armor, sword and dagger, I am left defenseless.

I always use my words well, plot their every cautious move across the chessboard. Court, love, life; they are all games to be won. I learned long ago that she who best wields the power of speech inevitably triumphs.

Subtle and masterful, slithering and malleable, I send words forth to gently trace the softness of a cheek, to slip along the nautilus curve of an ear, to be swallowed whole. And it has always been whispers, weapons of midnights and murky gray mornings, that have been my most indefatigable warriors.

Quietly slaying doubt, fear, even the nascent growth of love; they defeat without a spilled drop of blood, claim victory without an ounce of honor. Checkmate.

But not here. Not with you. All my tricks, all my ploys, all my verbal machinations are met with laughing, knowing blue eyes. You shake your head at me fondly and chuckle.

“Alex,” you say laughingly, tenderly; my name in the softly clipped cadences of your voice has become the sweetest caress I know.

Then, still smiling at my foolishness, you turn back to the television, your queen quite safe. Or so it seems to me, as I plot her capture.

Standing suddenly, you throw wide the curtains, the slanting light of a March afternoon falling across the floor, pale gold floodwaters reaching up to my toes as I lounge on the couch, tickling my skin with the warm hint of Spring.

“How can you stand it so dark in here?” You ask, your head titled to the side as if weighed down with amused curiosity. I wonder if you're referring to the room, or something else.

You fall onto the couch beside me, bare feet coming to rest along the edge of the coffee table, the red of your toenails bright against the dark wood. Your long legs are slender rivers of pale blue denim that my eyes can't help but follow up, over the gentle slope of stomach and curve of breast, until I reach your face.

Your hair is pulled back, and in the winter sunlight, your skin free of makeup, you look so unspoiled, so unsullied by the world, and I can't help but envy you a little. No dead babies and abused children to haunt your dreams. My brilliant, uncorrupted idealist.

Until you smile at me, eyes darker now with resigned amusement and a shadow of sadness and something else that I can't quite name, and I know that that innocence was just a trick of the light.

“So, what do you want to do?” You ask.

I know that you mean brunch or a movie or The Whitney. That you mean today, right now. I least I think that you do. But then the shadow of that something I couldn't name slips back across the clear waters of your iris, and I suspect that, that wasn't what you meant at all. Not entirely.

“Love you,” I answer unexpectedly, a smile ghosting across my lips as I see those blue eyes widen a bit at the casual candor of my reply.

“I meant what do you want to do this afternoon,” you half-chuckle, a slight frown taking hold between your brows.

“I know what you meant. And that's my answer.”

“Love me?”

“You have some objection, Counselor?” I ask, leaning towards you to brush my lips across yours.

“Instead of going to the movies?” You laugh, but I can see the flicker of a light I haven't seen before in your eyes. Happiness. Joy, even. I can't be sure.

“Instead of the movies. Instead of brunch. Instead of a museum or a show or shopping. Instead of waking up alone in a cold bed. Instead of a Lean Cuisine in front of the television. Instead of standing by myself and watching the sun go down over the trees of the park. Instead of making a solitary snow angel. Instead of everything.”

You smile at me then, not with amusement, not with fond indulgence, but with happiness, with joy. I was right; they were what I saw.

The words that I speak are not whispers. No more whispers.

Only you, only this. Everything.