Archive of Our Own

Desmond hummed to himself as he leaned over the sink, scrubbing at the pan he'd set out to soak a few hours prior. In a weird way, he kind of liked doing this. He wouldn't call it fun, but he'd washed plenty of glasses and pitchers in his years behind a bar, enough that he knew how to get into a rhythm with it that made the task almost enjoyable. He wasn't about to start doing the dishes in his free time, but it definitely wasn't the worst chore he could be doing around the safe house.

He heard footsteps approaching from behind him, and turned just enough to see Rebecca poke her head into the kitchen. "Hey Becca," he called over his shoulder.

"Hey, Des." Rebecca stepped the rest of the way into the kitchen and walked over to the sink. "Is there a reason you're washing the dishes at"—she checked the clock on the microwave—"eleven-thirty at night? I mean, you do you, but I thought you said you'd take care of them in the morning."

Desmond shrugged. "I did, but then I thought about how annoyed I'd be when I couldn't find a clean coffee cup tomorrow." He rinsed the last of the soap off the pan he'd been washing and placed it in the drying rack next to the sink. "I'm almost done, anyway."

"Fair enough." Rebecca hopped up onto the counter on the other side of the sink. "You heading to bed soon?"

"Probably, yeah." Desmond glanced over to Rebecca. She was dressed for bed, like she had been the last time he saw her. "What about you? You told me you were going bed at least an hour ago."

Her head fell back with a groan. "Ugh, I was going to, and then I made the mistake of checking my email and realized I had like three people I needed to get back to, and then I had to go back into the workroom and got sidetracked trying to find my toolkit, which took way longer than it should have. I'm actually on my way to bed now, though."

Desmond looked at her carefully. She was looking back at him with a level, expectant expression. If he didn't know her, he wouldn't have thought anything of it. But he did know her, and knew her very well. "You're going to ask me for something."

Rebecca raised her hands defensively. "What, I can't come in here to say good night?" Desmond raised his eyebrows and she dropped her hands. "Okay, fine. It's Shaun. He's still working."

"Shaun?" Desmond frowned. "He told me he was almost done the last time I talked to him, and that was hours ago."

"That's what he told me, too, but I was in there five minutes ago and he was definitely still working. And not in a good mood." Rebecca pulled her left leg up to her chest, socked foot braced against the counter. "I tried to talk him into going to bed and it did not go well."

Desmond put the last dish into the drying rack and turned off the sink. "So you want me to talk to him?"

"Would you?" Rebecca asked, putting on her most imploring look. "He might actually listen to you."

Desmond winced as he toweled off his hands. "If he really is working on something, I don't think I'm going to have much better luck than you. It would have to be pretty important for him to be at it this late."

"I know, but can you at least try? For me?" Rebecca actually batted her eyelashes at him. "Go in there and work your sexy magic or something. He's grumpy enough in the mornings when he's rested, I'm not dealing with him tomorrow when he's sleep deprived."

Desmond shot her an incredulous look. "My sexy magic?"

She waved her hand dismissively. "You know, whatever it is you do that makes him drop what he's doing to go make out with you in a supply closet, or wherever you two go where the security cameras can't see you."

"There's no cameras in our bedrooms," he pointed out. "Or the bathrooms, or—"

"DUDE. Too much information. WAY too much information." Desmond didn't even try to hide his shit-eating grin as Rebecca shook her head, like she was trying to physically erase what he'd said from her memory. "Thanks for that mental image. Jesus." She shuddered. "Anyway. Could you try and talk to him? I'd like to at least be able to say we told him so when he's being a bitch tomorrow."

Desmond shrugged. "I'll give it a shot. But I'm blaming you if he gets mad at me."

Rebecca beamed at him. "Thanks a million, Des." She hopped off the counter and gave him a playful punch to the arm. "See you in the morning?"

"See you in the morning." Desmond smiled at Rebecca as she walked out of the kitchen. He then turned back to the sink and considered the pile of drying dishes. After a moment, he turned away and flicked off the light. He could put them away in the morning. He had more important things to do with his time right now.

He made his way to the workroom. The Lisbon safe house was a big improvement from the warehouses they usually used in that it had a real kitchen and actual bedrooms for all of them, but it wasn't exactly huge, so it didn't take him long to find Shaun, sitting at his desk with his face illuminated by the glow of his monitors. The desk faced towards the door, so it wasn't all that surprising that he noticed Desmond approach. What was a bit more surprising, though, was the glare on his face as he looked up.

"What do you want, Desmond?"

Desmond stepped into the room. "Just wanted to check in. You're still working?"

"Yes, I am still working, as Rebecca no doubt told you." Shaun glowered at him. "And if you don't mind, I have quite a bit to do, and it will go much faster if I'm left alone."

Desmond started to walk towards the desk. "What are you working on? I might be able to give you a hand, and it'll go faster if—"

"You're not getting me to go to bed, Desmond," Shaun snapped. "Rebecca already tried that, so unless you have a truly remarkable argument to present, I'm afraid you'll be leaving disappointed. Now, if you don't mind." He turned back to his computer and resumed his typing. His attention was focused entirely on his monitors, not even glancing away to confirm whether Desmond was still standing there. He was the picture of attentive work, with his eyes glued to his computer and fingers typing diligently at his keyboard. It probably would have been a convincing act to anyone who didn't know him. As it was, Desmond didn't have to wait long for it to drop.

After a little while, one of Shaun's hands came up to his face and rubbed absently at his eye socket. Desmond frowned. "Everything okay?"

Shaun's hand dropped immediately back down to the desk. "I'm fine." He looked over his glasses at Desmond. "Weren't you going to bed?"

Desmond ignored the question and grabbed a chair. "You're sure you're doing okay?" he asked, sitting next to Shaun. "You're not going to get a lot done if you're not feeling well."

Shaun gave him a glare that might have shut him up once, but these days didn't even make him blink. Desmond stared right back, arms crossed and eyebrows raised. Eventually, Shaun looked away, muttering something under his breath.

"If you must know, I've had a splitting headache for the last several hours that has not made things go any faster," he admitted. "Nor has it done much for my patience," he added with a significant look in Desmond's direction.

"Sleep might help," Desmond said pointedly.

"And as previously noted, I have work to do." Shaun glanced at his computer. "And before you ask, I've already turned down the screen brightness as much as I can and drunk about four glasses of water, so spare me your suggestions."

"Have you taken meds?"

Shaun winced. "I have, but they don't seem to be helping much, and I can't take more for another two hours."

Desmond stood and walked towards the supply cabinet in the corner. "Acetaminophen or ibuprofen?"

"Acetaminophen." Shaun watched him as he opened the cabinet. "Why do you ask?"

Desmond pulled out the medical kit and started to rifle through it. "Because you can take them at the same time. They're different chemicals that work in different ways, so they won't interact with each other." He found the bottle he'd been looking for and shook a pair of pills into his hand, then held them out to Shaun. "Here, take these now. You can offset the doses so you're taking something every two hours. I wouldn't do it daily, but if you're in a lot of pain and one kind of medicine isn't working it's fine in the short term."

Shaun eyed him warily, but took the pills. "I wasn't aware they handed out medical licenses in those bars of yours."

Desmond shrugged. "Of all the stuff I got trained in as a kid, first aid was the one thing I never really tried to forget. Even as a teenage dumbass, I figured it was pretty important to know how to take care of myself."

"Seems wise." Shaun reached for a mug of coffee that had to have gone cold hours ago and used it to swallow down the pills. "It's served you well, clearly. And I'd give your teenage self a bit more credit. The Assassins give everyone some amount of medical training, but thinking back on it your knowledge is well above average, at least from what I've seen."

"I've probably forgotten most of it at this point. I'm pretty out of practice." Desmond plopped back down into his chair. "But yeah, it was pretty intense. There was standard stuff like CPR, makeshift splints, concussions. But they also had us practicing stitches and packing wounds."

Shaun gave him one of those looks, the kind that looked casual but meant he was supposed to take this seriously. "That's a lot to put on a teenager."

"I guess." It had been a lot, especially when he'd barely understood why it was so damn important for him to be trained like a combat medic. Out of all the shit he'd gone through, though, it wasn't the worst. "I don't really mind it, honestly. It's good to know that I can help people who need it. I mean, I'm not going to be performing surgery any time soon, but I could probably handle a stab wound or two."

Fuck. Bad choice of words. Desmond really, really didn't like to think of himself and stab wounds in the same sentence. It tended to bring up images of ancient artifacts and glowing plinths. Of his body moving on its own. Of his hands covered in someone else's blood. Of Lucy's lifeless body crumbling to the ground. The kinds of things that still haunted his nightmares and had him waking up screaming in the middle of the night.

He caught Shaun's eye and saw his expression change for just a moment as he registered Desmond's rising panic. A flicker of understanding passed between them, then Shaun's face went back to a neutral expression. He leaned back in his chair, fingers tapping casually on the armrest. "Well then, Doctor Miles. Any other recommendations for me?"

Desmond knew the question was performance, but he seized on it anyway. "Lay off the coffee," he said after a moment's thought, gesturing to the dirty mugs littering the table.

Shaun crossed his arms. "I heard that caffeine is used to treat headaches."

"It's used to treat migraines, which I don't think is what you have. And migraine patients are taking caffeine pills, not drinking multiple cups of coffee throughout the day." Desmond nudged Shaun's foot with his own. "It's not helping your sleep schedule, either."

"Hm. I think there may be a need for further research." Despite that, Shaun did move his mostly-empty cup of coffee to the far end of the desk. "And loathe as I am to admit it, I will concede your point that lack of sleep is not doing me any favors at the moment." He pushed up his glasses as he rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Unfortunately, I really do have things to get done tonight."

Desmond rolled his chair a bit closer. "What are you working on? I can try and help, depending on what it is."

Shaun sighed. "A lot of things, really. But what I'm most concerned with is a request from the Athens team. Here." He moved over to the side so Desmond could get close enough to see his screen. With a few clicks, he brought up a series of images showing what looked like the inside of an ancient ruin. "They finally got to the vault they've been searching for, but it's locked with a puzzle that they can't seem to crack. They'd already been working at it for a day and a half when they contacted me."

Desmond rested his arm on the back of Shaun's chair. "Athens is two hours ahead of us. They're probably all asleep by now."

"They are, which is why I want this done tonight. I'd very much like for them to wake up to a solution, or at least progress." Shaun leaned back and closed his eyes. "If you want to take a look, be my guest. I think the pictures are burned into my corneas by now."

Desmond moved into Shaun's spot in front of the keyboard and started to click through the photos. They looked like they'd been taken underground, in a large, circular room that reminded him a bit of the sanctuary at Monteriggioni. The outer wall of the room was lined with statues of what he assumed were various Greek gods, though he couldn't have said which ones. Set into the stone floor was a ring of tiles, each one carved with a different symbol, surrounding a larger stone circle that he guessed was the door they needed to open. There were more pictures, mostly of carvings and beams further up the walls. In a way, those were easier for him to make sense of—climbing things was really more his speed than Greek mythology. But that seemed less likely to actually be part of the lock, so he ignored it for now.

"Does this rotate?" he asked, pointing to the ring in the floor.

Shaun nodded. "It does. If you look at the statues, you'll also notice that Athena stands a bit farther forward than the others. When she's pushed back, it triggers a mechanism that turns the ring. It can also be turned by hand, but the statue brings it back to the starting position."

"I know some of those symbols, they represent the gods, right? Can they be lined up with the statues?"

"Sort of." Shaun pointed to a picture where both the symbols and some of the statues were visible. "The issue is that they don't match up with the statues present. I thought for a moment that they're meant to be lined up with their spouses, but Athena and Artemis were famously unmarried, and there's statues of both of them. There are a few obvious non-married pairs, but not enough that it could be the solution."

Desmond chewed on his bottom lip. "Do we know anything about the mechanism?"

"Not much, besides that the Athena statue seems to be a reset button." Shaun grimaced. "If I'm honest, I'm short on ideas. I hate to leave them stuck like this, but I'm not sure what else there is to do."

Desmond made a sympathetic noise in the back of his throat. There wasn't anything Shaun hated more than an unanswered question, especially when it was his job to answer it. Desmond gave his knee an affectionate squeeze then turned back to the computer and clicked through the pictures again. He was starting to get why this was keeping Shaun up. He'd dealt with plenty of these kinds of puzzles in Ezio's memories, but those always made sense. This just seemed strange. He stared at the pictures, hoping some solution would reveal itself if he looked long and hard enough. Without thinking about it, he let his eyes unfocus, and the world around him shifted into shades of grey as his senses sharpened.

Shaun tapped him on the shoulder. "You know that won't work."

Desmond blinked, and the world returned to normal. "I know. I still think it's annoying that Eagle Vision doesn't work on computers." He rolled his shoulders a couple of times. "God, this is weird, isn't it? It's almost as bad as some of Clay's puzzles, and I can't even blame this on the person who made it being batshit insane."

"I wouldn't rule it out," Shaun muttered.

Desmond propped his elbows on the edge of the desk and stared at the screens in front of him. "What's going on with these?" he asked, pointing to the carvings on the upper walls. "Do we think they're just decorative?"

"I'm not sure. Those are the last images the team sent me." Shaun started to reach for his coffee mug, then stopped and pulled his hand back. "I think they're planning on climbing up to get a closer look in the morning, but they decided not to risk it while they're all tired."

"Probably smart. I don't think they'll have a problem getting up there, though. There's a pretty clear path with some good handholds." Desmond zoomed in to one of the photos to show Shaun the path. As he started to point out the grips, a thought occured to him and he perked up. "Hang on. I have an idea."

He rearranged the pictures so they were only looking at the top half of the vault. "This place looks like it was built for climbing around, kind of like some of the assassins' tombs in Italy. It's tough to see what's going on with the carvings from the floor, but you could get pretty up close and personal if you climbed." He turned to Shaun. "What if the statues are a decoy? That way you couldn't brute force your way through the puzzle, you'd have to be a true Assassin or whatever to get to the carvings and solve it."

Shaun's eyes flicked across the photos. "That's a strong theory. A very strong theory." He leaned in and started to inspect what they could see of the carvings. "These seem to depict different myths. The images were taken from too far away for me to identify most of them, but I can decipher a couple. This one appears to be Zeus overthrowing the Titans, that's Persephone's abduction…" his voice trailed off as he rolled closer to the desk to examine the pictures more closely. For the first time since Desmond had walked into the room, he looked truly immersed in his work.

Desmond scooted out of the way. "Feeling better?"

"Much." Shaun pushed his glasses up his nose. "You're a bloody genius, Des. I can't solve this without seeing all of the carvings, but I'll let the team know that they should prioritize getting up there. Amalia is far more knowledgable about Greek mythology than me, so I doubt they'll need much of my help identifying anything." He pulled up a chat window and started typing out a message at lightning speed.

Desmond just watched as Shaun drafted what looked like a small novel to send to the Athens team. As much as he teased, he really did like watching Shaun work. Especially in moments like this, when he was making real progress after being stuck on a problem for so long. It was like watching a kid play with a brand new toy, except the toy was a puzzle older than modern English.

At some point, Shaun noticed him staring. "What?"

"Nothing." Desmond reclined in his chair. "You're just cute when you get excited about stuff like this."

Shaun flushed. "I'll remind you that I am a grown man."

"Yeah. A cute one." Shaun started to stutter out a reply, but Desmond leaned in and caught his lips in a kiss before he had the chance to finish. "You're sure I can't get you to come to bed?" he whispered, close enough that he could see his breath tickle through Shaun's hair.

The flush spread up Shaun's cheeks. His eyes tracked along Desmond's lips and he swallowed, considering. "Let me finish this message," he said, finally. "And then I'm all yours."

The corner of Desmond's mouth quirked up into a smile. "All mine?"

Shaun's thumb brushed against Desmond's chin. "All yours."