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Leonardo seemed startled when Ezio helped himself back into his studio, as he stumbled over his words and he welcomed him back.
“A-Ah! You are back very soon. I have not finished deciphering the codex you gave me yet…”
Ezio looked at him suspiciously as he scrambled away from whatever he was working on back to the ancient paper scroll. It had been several hours since he had left Leonardo to work, hoping he could find something more fun to do on a free night in Venice, but his efforts were plainly unsuccessful by his return. “I thought you said that it was a simple cypher? What is the problem? I cannot go back to the villa until you are done.”
“Ah, well—yes, it is just the same as one of the other pages, a simple translation of letters based on the number of characters in the previous word… not terribly tricky but a bit tedious to write out…”
“Bene , you must almost be done then,” said Ezio, approaching the table, only to see the same mess of letters and symbols sitting there as he had when he left. He looked up at Leonardo with his mouth pursed into a tight frown.
“N-Now, let me explain—”
“You haven’t even started? What have you been doing this whole time?”
Leonardo had both hands raised defensively, as if afraid he was going to be attacked. “Well, y-you see, I was going to get it done right away, as soon as you left, but when you arrived I was in the middle of making some changes to the prototype designs I had here, but then I remembered that I had a portrait commissioned weeks ago by madonna—”
“Basta, basta,” Ezio shook a hand at him, waving away the excuses. “Can you just finish it now? I would like to leave sooner rather than later.”
“Of course, of course,” Leonardo bowed apologetically, pulling up a stool and quill next to the page. “I’ll be done in an hour, I promise. You could come back later if you have other things to do. I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
Ezio shook his head, trudging his way over to a lounge chair half-covered in scraps of paper covered in scribbles and notes. He swept them onto the ground to join the rest of their forgotten brothers, plopping down onto the cushion with a sigh. He leaned back into the seat, staring up blankly at the ceiling rafters. “Venezia has nothing for me, it seems.”
He could hear Leonardo give a half stifled laugh, and once again glared at him with another frown.
“What’s so funny, pigrone ?”
Leonardo waved his quill at him, but he still had a smirk on his face. “Nothing. You were just so confident when you left here, I never expected to see you until morning.”
“And I would have come back here to see that you still not finished with the page. At least now I can keep an eye on you to make sure you keep working.”
“I just get distracted, is all. Once the puzzle is solved, this becomes more like dictation work than anything actually enjoyable.” Leonardo’s quill bobbed as he counted letters, making tallies on a scrap next to the transcription. “Really, I should get an assistant to do this for me, then I could get back to fixing the fulcrum on the arm of the bridge. I know it just needs to be able to rotate freely after the latch unlocks…”
“Hey, hey,” Ezio snapped his fingers, pointing back at the neglected paper after getting Leonardo’s attention. “Focus on keeping your arm to that page, genio. The fewer eyes who see the contents of these codex, the better. You never know how far the influence of the Templars go.”
Leonardo paused, lips moving silently as he counted letters again. “I still don’t know what mess this is you’ve dragged me into. I just hope I’m on the right side of it.”
“I am happy you are on our side. We’d be lost without your help deciphering these.”
“I would be a lot faster helping you if you let me work on my own…” Leonardo gave a half smile as he looked up from his work.
“No chance,” replied Ezio, standing up. “I’m making sure you finish this before I leave. No more delays.”
“Please Ezio, give me until tomorrow, I really want to work on that—”
“No.”
“Have you seen the Chiesa d’Oro at night yet? Under the stars it—”
Ezio waved away the suggestion. “I’ve seen more than enough of it already. I’m sick of this city. I miss Firenze.”
“You should give her a second chance, I’ve grown rather fond of her myself. There are new views and art pieces here you don’t see in Firenze. Is the city not amazing, how the buildings and roads finds their ways through the canals?"
“And the stench of the canals finds its way even to here." Ezio wrinkled his nose. "I’d rather break my legs on the ground than have to swim in those waters again. I can still taste that disgusting merda . I bet the women here taste like it too.”
Leonardo smirked at him, keen to poke fun at him some more. “Never got to try for yourself, hm?”
“Something is wrong with the women here, Leonardo. None of them seem to have any sense of passione —”
“Just because all the girls rejected you doesn’t mean that something is wrong with them.”
Ezio threw his hands up in the air. “Then what is it? The girls in Firenze were so much more playful. They enjoyed a little teasing. Here they just give me this… this look, and ignore me.”
“Have you considered that your outfit might be a little intimidating to them?” said Leonardo, gesturing with the feather of the quill at the assassin robes.
“Cosa intendi? I think that it looks very distinguished.” Ezio posed proudly for a moment, crossing his arms across his chest and raising his chin to look down at Leonardo. “Besides, I cannot exactly wear armor in my normal clothing.”
“Most men don’t wear armour around the streets,” Leonardo pointed out. Ezio hadn’t yet noticed he had long stopped deciphering the codex page. “At least tell me you took your hood down.”
Ezio stopped his pacing, but didn’t say anything.
“Ezio, you didn’t go up to those ladies with your face covered by your hood, right? Please tell me you didn’t.”
“I, uh, might have forgotten about that.”
Leonardo jumped up, clapping his hands. “Well, there is your problem amico mio ! You need to show those ladies that beautiful face of yours. You’ll have a women in your bed before midnight.” He wrapped an arm around Ezio’s shoulders, walking him to the door.
“Hey, wait now—” Ezio protested, not letting himself be dragged away without a fight. “What if one of the guards sees my face?”
“That robe gives you away more than your face or name, Ezio Auditore. Besides, work quickly enough, and you won’t have to worry about la guardia for long. Now come, let the ladies see your face!”
Leonardo pulled back the hood for him at the door’s archway, smiling proudly. Ezio frowned back at him.
“Andiamo! The city awaits! Arrivederci , Ezio!”
“No.” Ezio pulled the hood back up.
“What is the matter?” Leonardo was laughing as he asked, but the smile slipped from his face as he saw the sadness in Ezio’s eyes as he turned away. “…Ezio?”
He didn’t reply, shrugging off Leonardo’s hand as he walked to the window by the door.
“Come now, Ezio, you can’t be shy like this! They say love comes in at the eyes—well, passione , same thing right?”
At first it seemed as if Ezio was looking out the window, but Leonardo realized he was looking at his reflection when he raised a hand to his lips, drawing his thumb across the scar there.
“Is that what this about?” Leonardo sighed. “Come now Ezio, it is such a tiny little thing. I’m sure none of them notice it.”
“Did you notice it when we first met?”
“I—er, well, yes but—”
Ezio scoffed. “See? It looks like someone tried to carve me like a pig. And it just came from that Pazzi stronzo throwing a rock at me…”
Leonardo chuckled softly as he walked up to Ezio, patting him on the back. “I bet you left him looking much worse. I did not know that you got it from a rock! You see, it makes for good conversation too.”
“Oh, yes, very good.” Ezio laughed derisively. He pulled down his hood and bowed at Leonardo mockingly, as if introducing himself. “ ‘ Ciao, signoria . Do you want to hear about the time I got hit in the face with a rock? It was quite the dignified ordeal, I was spitting up blood all over myself. Oh here, you can even see the tooth I lost…’ “
“You lost a tooth?”
Ezio dropped the fake smile. “No. But I might as well have. No girl wants to kiss these lips.”
Try as he might, Leonardo couldn’t help but laugh again. “Do you not think you’re being a little dramatic, Ezio? You are still a very handsome man.”
“How would you know?” asked Ezio. Leonardo hesitated, opening his mouth as if to say something, but he decided against it. Ezio walked past him when he was denied a response, looking at the portrait he had displayed on an easel. “See? Look at your paintings. Each one I have seen has been like this. A perfect face... no scars, no missing teeth. That’s what beauty is. That’s what girls want. I used to look like that.”
Leonardo shook his head. “Ezio, a portrait is meant to capture the essence of its subject, not to be a mirror of them. I cannot exactly paint Madonna covered in stable mud and birthing blood, can I? The church would have my head.”
“This is not Madonna, though. This is just one your patrons , no?”
“Yes, and I can assure you that she looks very different from that if you were to meet her in the streets. They do not pay me to immortalize them on the canvas with the large noses and crooked teeth they were born with. Nobody looks like that.”
“Certainly not me.”
Leonardo drew a deep breath, growing impatient with the topic. He approached Ezio firmly by both shoulders to look him in the eyes. “No, Ezio. You do not look like a Saint or some rich patron I have painted twenty years younger. You look like Ezio Auditore, and I like Ezio better than any saint or rich man. Do you know why?”
Ezio’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. He shook his head.
“Because of this.” Leonardo held his scar gently in between his left thumb and forefinger. Ezio looked away, clearly somewhat irritated by the bold action, but he did not remove the hand. “This proves that you are a human, Ezio. A human who bleeds when he is cut-- or when someone throws a rock at him. A man who fights those who would hurt him. Someone who fights for his people despite the danger it puts him in.”
Leonardo saw the way Ezio’s expression softened, transitioning from irritation to something else-- something more pensive and bittersweet.
“I paint the saints to be idolized and without flaw. But when they reached sainthood, they lose what it was to be human. To have flaws, to overcome challenges and difficulties – it is what makes us who we are. You can idolize a saint, but you can only love a human. This scar is what allows me to love you.”
A poor slip of the tongue, but Leonardo could not take back the words once he said them. To his surprise, Ezio barely reacted to the confession, still silent in his thoughts. Perhaps it was the talk of Saints and idols that changed the connotation of love to something less drastic—but regardless, Leonardo let his hand fall away, clearing his throat.
“I say any girl who thinks poorly of your scar is not worth your time. I like your scar.”
Ezio finally gave a small smile, grabbing Leonardo’s fallen hand and pressing it to his chest. “Thank you, amico mio. Your words mean much to me. My brother once joked of my scar, saying that I would not look handsome anymore, after we went to see the dottore . I know he meant it only in jest, but think I was worried that he was right all this time.”
There was a wave of sadness that passed over Ezio’s face, his mouth twitching with the smile he struggled to hold. Almost a decade past, and the thoughts of his family still left him vulnerable. Leonardo only wished he could shoulder some of the pain for him.
“My workshop is always open to you, Ezio. A little slice of Firenze for you, even if it is not quite home.”
He leaned in to give Ezio a small hug, hoping to give him some comfort instead of pain. He was surprised to find it returned tenfold as Ezio drew him into a sudden and close embrace, resting their foreheads together. Ezio's eyes fell closed with a deep sigh, so he could not see how Leonardo’s cheeks flushed with colour, or how Leonardo’s gaze dropped to the scarred lips in front of his own. He told himself closing his eyes would help, to just enjoy the hug, but it was only a few seconds later that he felt Ezio’s breath against his face, lips brushing against his own, tantalizingly close. He hadn’t leaned closer, had he? He was trying to control himself- he didn’t want to lose Ezio as a friend, not after all this time...
His breath faltered as he felt a hand to his face, cupping his cheek gently, leaning into the kiss. A wave of relief loosened his shoulders, steadying his racing heart, telling him it was okay, he could do the same. His palm brushed against Ezio’s cheek as he held his face in return, feeling the tiny stubble of hairs that hadn’t yet been shaved away. He was still timid in his movements, fearful of asking for too much or spoiling the moment with a mistake. He didn’t exactly have a lot of experience with such actions.
Thankfully, the same could not be said for Ezio. He had no hesitation as he pulled himself closer, his free hand wrapping around Leonardo’s waist to close what gap remained between them. He pulled away from the kiss slowly, a dainty chuckle on his lips, barely louder than a whisper. Leonardo used the moment to trace his thumb across Ezio’s scar, realizing he liked it even more now than he did a minute ago.
He received a pat on the shoulder for his action. He looked up to find Ezio smiling at him with a gentle expression he had never seen before.
“You have until first light to finish the codex. Va bene? ”
It took Leonardo several seconds to remember what the hell a codex was, and even more to realize that Ezio had begun to walk away, back to the exit. “You… you are leaving?”
“ Si. You have given me new confidence. I shall not give up my pursuit so easily. Venezia will bear her fruits to me.” Ezio moved to open the door, raising his hood above his head out of habit. “…ah, but yes. This time, no hood.” He pulled it back down, turning back to Leonardo with a smirk.
This bastardo knows exactly what he has done. Leonardo was at a loss for words. Was he supposed to beg him to stay now, after trying to get him to leave so adamantly?
“Is something the matter, Leonardo?”
“I- uh, no. Nothing. Thank you. Best of luck, amico mio. ”
“I have already got my good luck right here,” Ezio brushed a finger across his lips, still smiling. “ A presto, Leonardo! Keep up the good work!”
The door closed behind him before Leonardo could even say goodbye, still standing dumbstruck where Ezio had left him. He looked around his workshop blankly, trying to remember what it was he was supposed to be doing. Instead, he was stuck wondering-- did Ezio mean the scar, or the kiss?