“Checkmate.”
The monk bristled. Only the stiff line of his bare shoulders and the subtle twitch at the end of the smoldering Marlboro that hung from his thin lips gave it away. He sat cross legged on the floor with his hands on his knees and his robes bunched neatly around his hips. His drooping violet eyes watched the chess board before him with a solemn menace, like a cat eyeing a bird it knows it can never catch.
“You slick fuck,” the priest muttered around his cigarette, a plume of smoke curling over his lips with all the haste of ethereal molasses. His eyes watched the board as though searching for a loophole he knew was hidden among the pawns. A badly carved king piece the color of bleached bone stood boldly on the checkered field of ebony opponents, like a drop of milk in an oil spill.
The priest's opponent smiled. “I believe that's three of three in my favor, Sanzo.” The gleam of a monocle, hidden by neatly tousled bangs paired with a benevolent green gaze to stare at the monk with an expression of patient amusement. “Another game?”
The monk said nothing, but set about replacing the pieces for a fresh round wordlessly. His darkly violet eyes matched the sky outside the dusty windowpane–turbulent and surly. In the air hung the sound of the rain like background noise on an ill-tuned radio, constant and inescapable. The room flickered with broken moonlight as they began again.
Only the dull click of chess pieces against the wooden board rose above the sound of the rain, and only the smoldering glow from the end of the monk's cigarette defied the moonlight.
Sanzo saw it coming two moves before it happened, and like fate, he was powerless to stop it.
“Checkmate.”
He bit through the filter, and fancied he could see his opponent's grin muscles at war with each other as the green-eyed brunette tactfully ignored the waves of irritation drifting like smoke through the room. “Four for four.”
“Where the hell did you learn to play like that?” The monk asked, refusing to let his irritation color his tone.
A smile, as contrived as the grin of a riddling sphinx. “You could say I'm just a `Jack of all trades' kind of person,” the brunette said coolly, as he cleared the pieces once more from the board.
“`Master of none,' is that it?” He shoved the cigarette in the ashtray with the rest of his collection and eyed his opponent critically.
“Oh… master of some. Another game?” He began to set up the pieces.
A gloved hand with nicotine-stained nails closed around his wrist as he moved to lay down a black queen. For the first time all night violet eyes met verdant.
“Let's leave it at four,” the priest said, hoping that his effort to sound casual and not cowardly carried over in his tone.
The brunette said nothing, but smiled when the monk's hand tightened around his wrist and pulled him across the low table. The pieces cascaded to the floor, but neither spared a fraction of his attention to the spilt game. Somewhere amid pawns and rooks, a monocle tumbled away from its owner.
A familiar touch pressed him to the floor and cold hands brushed over the exposed scar on his abdomen. He shivered despite himself, as his heart sped and rough smoky breath filled his ear.
With the victorious air of one who has lost the battle but won the war, softly, possessively the monk's lips spilt the claim. “Checkmate.”
