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“Stronzo!” Leonardo hisses, voice uncommonly angry and sharp. Ezio smirks from his perch on Leonardo’s bedroom window sill, framed by golden sunset light. He is almost angelic; arms out and hands clasping opposite sides of the window frame, robes all-white with a splotch of red low on his right side, dark maroon spilling out into soft vermillion edges.
“Watch your tongue, amico,” Ezio gasps, his smile cracking around a wince.
“Get inside, quickly!” With a sigh, Ezio collapses forward into Leonardo’s arms. Leonardo yanks the window shut and lays Ezio out across his bed, nimbly tugging open buckles and sliding apart knots in Ezio’s cumbersome and needlessly intricate armor. There was a time when doing so took Leonardo long, messy minutes, where Ezio would laugh and cover Leonardo’s smaller, finer hands with his own and show him how. Now, having undressed Ezio so many times, he could do it with his eyes shut.
“What happened?” he asks, as if it is something strange and different for Ezio to be wounded in his line of work. He pushes the leather spaulders from Ezio’s shoulders and begins undoing the buttons keeping his tunic tight across his chest. The blood has leaked to the button-line near the middle, and Leonardo’s hands begin to shake. From sight alone it looks like everything vital was missed, but he expects the worst as he pulls back the sticky, warm cloth.
“The usual,” Ezio dismisses; but you should see the other guy hangs unsaid in the air, punctuated by Ezio raising one brow over his dark eyes. Absently, Leonardo realizes that Ezio’s thumb is pushing lazy circles across the bend of his knee. He smiles and delicately twists Ezio’s body more into the fading sunlight, a spear of gold finally casting over the wound. With a sigh of relief, Leonardo finds the cut to be mostly superficial.
“You will live, ringrazi a dio,” he breathes, pushing off of his bed and scrounging about for spare cloth to use as a bandage. “Torno subito. I have to get water, from downstairs. Stay put.”
“It has never been a hardship to keep me in your bed, amore,” Ezio calls after him. Leonardo chuckles weakly, hoping Ezio cannot see how he leans on the bannister as he rushes downstairs to fetch water and bandages. It was one thing to know that Ezio has fought and killed - the killing alone - but it never seems more real than when he catches sight of a fresh wound on the assassin's. Of course he is happy to provide safety for Ezio; he never spares a thought of how it could mean being arrested (or worse), because if Ezio can make this choice over revenge, then Leonardo can do it for love. Still, he sometimes wishes that Ezio could find refuge with Rosa or Antonio or Teodora, just to give his nerves a rest.
He races back up the stairs as fast as he dares while trying to not spill the bowl of water he has clasped in both hands. Ezio is laid out across the bed, staring at the ceiling, right leg bent at the knee and left sprawled away. Leonardo makes himself at home in the space between both legs, settling the bowl up by Ezio’s head and dabbing a cool, damp scrap of cloth across the dried and crusted blood. As is typical, Ezio makes no noise - “Why make a fuss after the wound has been made? I may cry at being cut, but I will not bemoan the pain it causes me afterward,” - but Leonardo makes enough for the both of them, tutting angrily to hide the uneasy nausea he feels welling up in his stomach.
“Before this is all over, I shall be nothing but a bloody stump,” Ezio jokes, unable to stop a hitch in his breath as Leonardo begins to tie a bandage around the waist. He lifts his hips to allow Leonardo access, and Leonardo can’t help his face heating when their groins touch, however chaste.
“Do not speak so.” Leonardo admonishes, glancing up from his bandaging. Ezio’s eyes crinkle with a smile and Leonardo wants to hit him. “Your life is worth something, Ezio,” he whispers, bandaging finished. He moves the bowl of water from the bed and looks down at the crisp white bandage tight over Ezio's dark skin. His hands lay against the curve and swell of Ezio’s abdominal muscles, feeling his breath rise and fall. The silence that envelops them is comfortable, but still loaded with what Leonardo knows he does a horrible job of keeping hidden.
“Amore.” Ezio breathes, and Leonardo feels about to break.
“I know,” he assures, waving a hand. “We have discussed this. I am not stupid - I understand perfettamente. But, I - ti amo, tesoro, and you flaunt your -- your mortality so carelessly, and how am I--” Leonardo stops, clears his throat. “I am happy for what you give, Ezio. I would not ask you to stop your work, but you cannot expect me -- it is bad enough that I hear from you only when both of our schedules allow. You must know that every time I hear a guard shout..." Leonardo peters off and smiles half-heartedly. "I have not your bravery.”
“Leonardo,” Ezio hushes, bringing his hands up to cradle Leonardo’s face. How stupid, Leonardo admonishes himself, for a wounded man to be giving succor to his caregiver. “Leonardo, il mio cuore. If ever there was a reason to wish that this was not my destiny, you are it.”
“Hah,” Leonardo laughs, rolling from between Ezio’s legs and pressing their foreheads together, careful to keep their torsos from touching. “The silver-tongued assassin.”
Outside, pigeons fly past, the sharp crack of their wings echoing about in Leonardo’s courtyard. People pass beneath the window, chatting amiably in Italian and laughing. A minstrel sings a forlorn tune, and farther off a blacksmith calls out for business. For a while they lie together, the artista and the assassino, Leonardo with his nose against Ezio’s skin, able to feel the cooled sweat and smell death and musk emanating from his very skin.
“Ti amo, tanto.” Leonardo kisses the words into Ezio’s brow. Ezio’s fingers dance along Leonardo’s ribs and settle at the small of his back.
“Vi adoro,” Ezio whispers, and captures Leonardo’s mouth in a kiss.