Chapter Text
The door to Leonardo’s workshop was nearly silent if one applied upward pressure on it while opening and closing it, a trick which Ezio had picked up during his many quick escapes from the guards in the streets of Venice. A startled clattering noise from across the room countered any subtlety Ezio managed to gain from his trick, though.
“Ezio!” cried Leonardo in delight as he made his way quickly to the door, discarding his tools haphazardly on the desk in favor of focusing his attention on his guest. “You could have sent word you were coming, you know. I’d have cleaned up a bit.”
“Would you really have?” Ezio asked, lips quirking in an amused smile.
“Ah, well, I would have tried,” came the reply. When the assassin stepped from the shadowy doorway and into the light (and, conveniently, directly into the other man’s path) Leonardo paused, standing firmly not two feet from Ezio with a nearly unreadable expression. “Hm.”
“Dare I ask ‘what’?” Ezio asked with a raised brow. Leonardo extended a hand towards him, holding his jaw and running his thumb back and forth across it.
“This is new.”
“The beard? To be completely honest, I’ve just had little opportunity to shave it off. Do you not like it?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, keeping his hold on Ezio’s jaw and using it to turn his face from side to side as he appraised it. Then, with minimal warning (meaning that there was no warning, but Ezio was trained to predict a person’s next move and so the amount he received was dubbed “minimal” as opposed to “nonexistent”), Leonardo leaned forward and kissed him. His other hand went to the back of Ezio’s hood to keep him close – not that the man in question planned to go anywhere.
“Well? Your verdict?” Ezio asked quietly after a few long moments.
“I can’t be sure,” Leonardo decided with a coy smile as he moved his hands to Ezio’s cheeks properly. “I’ll require more experimentation.”
Ezio leaned in again with a grin and placed his hands on the other man’s waist as their lips met once again. Leonardo’s thumbs continued to run along his jawline in a half-hearted attempt to act as though his attention was on the beard at all; there was something far better to focus on now.
Before long Ezio began to back him against the table in the center of the room and Leonardo followed his lead without hesitation. His hands traveled down the assassin’s front, fingertips following the seams from his coat collar down his chest and finally to his abdomen, where he flattened his hands and held his sides with the faintest bit of pressure.
The wince and soft grunt were unmistakable, as was the feeling of a raised line in the fabric where it had been recently torn and restitched.
“Ezio?” he asked, pulling back immediately but remaining close.
“I’m fine,” he replied, which was mostly true.
“You’re injured!” Leonardo accused.
“Barely,” Ezio replied quickly in an attempt to ease the other man’s panic. “I have already been to a doctor, I just need a little time to--”
“How did this happen?!” Leonardo interrupted. “No, wait, don’t answer that. You can stay here while you recover. There is a doctor not far from here--”
“It was nothing, Leonardo, just a little stab wound--”
“You were stabbed?!”
“I was-- sliced, with force,” he lied poorly. “It’s already been two weeks, I--”
“Two weeks?! And you did not even bother to send a letter?!”
“Well I was unconscious for much of--”
Leonardo turned Ezio to face the light before inspecting his coat where the fabric had been torn in an attempt to assess how bad the wound may have been. “OH! Oh, you were unconscious now?!” he asked, voice growing louder.
“No, I-- well yes but--”
“And you’re already falling off of buildings again, I see,” he pointed out, plucking a piece of hay from Ezio’s coat.
“Not falling, leaping is more--”
“Ezio!”
“What do you want from me, Leonardo?” he asked in exasperation, but put up no fight as the artist started shifting his shirt up to get a look at the wound. “I cannot simply ask the world to stop spinning while I recover.”
“I want you to be more careful with yourself, amore mio,” Leonardo sighed as he glanced over the freshly stitched wound before dropping the fabric again and holding Ezio’s cheeks. “If you push yourself too hard, there could be no coming back from it. I don’t want to risk you not coming back to me.”
Ezio softened and wrapped his hands around Leonardo’s wrists, leaning his forehead against the other man’s. “I will always come back to you,” he promised. “Next time I’ll have word sent.”
Leonardo’s glare was reminiscent of daggers. “Next time?!”
“I am only joking, amore mio,” he said with a small laugh. “It was a poor joke, I apologize.”
“Will you at least stay a while and recover?” the artist asked with a sigh, giving a valiant effort to mask his distress.
“I am fine, Leonardo,” he promised. “I do not need any more rest.”
“Fine then,” said Leonardo as he pulled himself away to really drive home that he was Mad and that Ezio’s recklessness was Unacceptable. “Just so you know, I am still uncertain as to whether I like the beard.”
“You seemed to like it just fine not five minutes ago,” Ezio pointed out, amused.
“Well I have yet to decide definitively,” he insisted, and then added more softly, “Stay until I do?”
Ezio rolled his eyes but smiled, and Leonardo pulled him closer by the front of his coat. “That, perhaps, can be arranged.”