Hi again :)

Another AC2 fic; separate from the others, again. Might be slow on the updating, for which I'm very sorry... but my hockey season's starting....

Still new style. It's fun :)

Enjoy!

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Sunlight splashes through the window and the air is clean and light, spring turning halfway through the season into something of beauty and clarity, shedding the brisk winds of the first half season, but Leonardo notices nothing. The canvas before him is blank, the workshop around him does not exist. The canvas is blank as it usually never is, completely empty, and he sees nothing within its emptiness, just the vast nothingness, void of ideas and imagination.

"Buon giorno, Signor!" Antonio's voice cuts through the silence, the door of the workshop creaking open. Leonardo doesn't move, gaze resting somewhere past the canvas, never hearing his customer's voice. "My wife loved your painting, and her friend requests that you might make one for her as well."

"Her friend?" Leonardo looks over his shoulder, examines the man in the doorway, "who is this?"

"Carmilla-"

"A woman," Leonardo says stonily, and the man nods as if waiting for the rest of the sentence, "No."

"No?" Antonio blinks, "you are sure?"

"Si. No."

Antonio manages a bewildered goodbye and shuffles out of the workshop, perplexity crossing his face. Leonardo turns back to his canvas, frowning.

"Leonardo, amico mio!" Ezio's voice breaks the silence anew, and in the next instant, he has crossed the room to put a hand on Leonardo's shoulder. "I do not usually see customers leaving your workshop looking as if they have seen flying pigs. What did you tell Antonio?"

"Nothing." Leonardo rubs a hand over his face, smudges a smear of blue paint on his jaw, "he wanted a painting for a customer I will not deal with."

"I see." Ezio looks at the empty canvas, then back at Leonardo, who is staring at the ground, teeth clenched. "Leonardo, what is troubling you?" He squeezes Leonardo's shoulder and Leonardo steps away, making as if fetching more paint. Ezio watches him poke through a cabinet, drawing out the answer.

"Women," Leonardo finally says darkly, and Ezio bites back a laugh, guiltily.

"Really," he manages, fighting back a swell of amusement he knows he should not feel.

"Yes. I despise them." Leonardo's furious tone breaks down any amusement Ezio had been feeling, and Ezio is struck speechless. Before he can construct any sort of response, before even deciding whether he should inquire further or offer assistance, Leonardo shuts the cabinet door and looks at him again. "Did you need help with a Codex page?"

"Uh-" Ezio stammers at the uncharacteristic bluntness from the usually cheerfully rambling Leonardo, "I- no, I did not-" Leonardo just nods and turns back to the shelves, and Ezio becomes painfully aware that Leonardo has just bid him an unobtrusive goodbye. It's hard to recognize a refusal from Leonardo, as he has never denied Ezio attention. "I will be back when I find one," Ezio edges towards the door reluctantly, eyes still on Leonardo, beseechingly. "I'm sorry to leave you so soon," Ezio tosses out, purely for his own benefit as Leonardo has no response, "but I promised Catalina I would see her." This is only half fictional; Catalina hangs on his promises, but he has, at the moment, made none.

"Goodbye, then." Leonardo turns back to the canvas, and Ezio stands in the doorway for a while, staring in speechless confusion before dragging himself away from the workshop.

Women. Ezio continues to puzzle over Leonardo's answer as he pulls himself up the wall of the church, gloved hand nearly slipping over the ledge in a lapse of concentration. Women? He hauls himself up to sit on the uppermost ledge, stares down at the trailing ribbons of people, winding between buildings below. Leonardo is troubled by women? Ezio props his chin in his hand and chews his lip, even as something nags at him from the back of his conscious to stop putting so much thought into this, but it's impossible to stop. Leonardo hates nothing, is angered by nothing, is perfectly content to observe anything, always on an even-keel and calm even to a maddening degree. Ezio drops his head into his hands, sighing out a breath. Leonardo is troubled by women. No matter how many times he repeats the thought, it refuses to sound right, too startling, too shattering. Nothing has happened; Leonardo isn't happy, merely infuriated, surely nothing has been lost and nothing gained, but all the same, Ezio can't shake the unsettled feeling. Seeing Leonardo furious feels wholly and absolutely wrong, like the world has tilted a shade too far, into a degree never meant to be seen.

Ezio gives up. He climbs back down from the roof, flings himself into a headlong dash across the streets until he gets to the building he'd just left, throws open the door to Leonardo's workshop. Again, Leonardo ignores this, still staring at the same empty canvas, not like he sees something there, but like, for once, he sees the same nothingness Ezio sees.

"Leonardo-" Ezio begins, before realizing he doesn't know what he's going to say. Leonardo tosses him half a look, arches an eyebrow.

"A codex page already?" The question makes Ezio redden, feel absurdly ridiculous for standing in the middle of the workshop, still short of breath from careening across the street, chest rising and falling, energy coiled like the springs in the blades at each wrist, watched by Leonardo's expressionless eyes.

"Not exactly," he says hesitantly, slowly approaching Leonardo. Leonardo abruptly turns back to the canvas, frowning again. "You sounded troubled." He winces inwardly at how repetitive this sounds, the same words from before, but Leonardo doesn't react.

"I'm fine, Ezio," Leonardo says, dismissive like Ezio is saying this from some farfetched sense of obligation, like it means nothing. Ezio's shoulders slump, but he refuses to admit anything aloud. He studies Leonardo for a moment, feels as if he is trying to shoulder his way through a brick wall. Absently, he reaches out and wipes away the streak of paint on Leonardo's jaw, transferring the grey-blue pigment from Leonardo's skin to his own hand.

"If you ever want to talk..." he offers softly, doesn't finish, I always listen, even when you don't say anything, even though it's true, even though he wants to. Ezio has been accused of following his every whim, an accusation that follows him every time he turns around, but there is nothing more untrue. Ezio never follows through with what he truly wants; he is forever tempted, but he knows.

It would destroy him.

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Shaun never tells Desmond anything. He talks, of course. He lectures Desmond frequently, dispenses information, chastises him and corrects him, but never tells him anything. Desmond hangs on his every word for a while, convinced that maybe Shaun will say some tiny gem of something and if he's not listening carefully he'll miss it, but Shaun never tells him anything.

After a while, Desmond stops listening, because Shaun's never going to share anything with him, not anything, not ever, and Desmond doesn't want to keep waiting anymore.

It's a rainy Thursday afternoon, following a dull morning of repairs and maintenance. Rebecca is gone on errands and Lucy is working in another room, and normally, Desmond would be using this time to throw out insignificant facts about himself, hoping to lure Shaun into saying something back. He's thrown out as much as he can in as many aspects conceivable- he hates the rain, he doesn't mind snow, once he played baseball in the rain, he's never much liked football, he saw a really good movie a week ago, next week is his half birthday, when he turned sixteen he didn't get a car, he didn't tell his parents about his first car accident, he's only been pulled over once and only got a warning - and Shaun has never responded with anything about himself.

Desmond knows next to nothing about him.

As rain hounds the building, Desmond stares up at the ceiling and tries to pick out the sound of typing amidst the broken glass of the splitting raindrops. Shaun is working at his computer, and Desmond doesn't even know why Shaun's so interested in history anyways, and Shaun isn't ever going to tell him. Desmond isn't ever going to know anything about him.

Shaun curses under his breath and shoves his chair away from the desk in a huff, and stalks over to the bulletin board on the wall. It makes Desmond cringe inwardly, that he can interpret this sequence so completely; when Shaun is frustrated, he leaves the computer and goes back to the wall of pictures and text to search it for something he missed, and when he is furious, he stalks out of the room and slams the door behind him, and if he goes to his room, he won't come back, and if he goes to the kitchen, he'll return for another round with the computer. The temptation is terrible, whenever this happens. Particularly when Shaun retreats to his room to presumably sulk and review the technical problems over and over again. Desmond wants to follow him, to pull him down onto the bed and tell him that he can solve it, he can solve anything, and even if he doesn't, it doesn't matter, he doesn't have to do anything to be incredible. Desmond thinks nothing of hurtling across rooftops and jamming blades through throats, but has never been able to so much as approach Shaun. Doing so would mean too much.

Desmond looks over the back of the couch, to see Shaun, arms crossed, studying the array of pictures and words like he can glean some meaning from them that he'd overlooked before.

"Why don't you just call it a night?" Desmond calls over.

"It's three in the afternoon. Your work ethic is despicable."

"I used to work nights, not afternoons," Desmond retorts, as if this redeems him in any way. This wasn't an ideal working situation; he doesn't miss returning late, late at night and having the energy to do no more than collapse in bed and sleep until the afternoon. Maybe it's because working at a bar led him to see the beginnings of innumerable one-night-stands, maybe it's because he's never had anything more meaningful, but there's some small part of him, a part he hates more than anything, that wonders what it would have been like, to wake up with someone. He hates that part of himself more than anything, because it tells him that sharp-tongued Shaun would be warm and soft in the morning, because it's convinced him that's what he wants, more than anything. "I became a bartender because it was the first place that called for an interview," Desmond says, "I coulda been a bank teller, too."

"Really." Shaun takes down a picture from the wall, studies it, pins it back up again, all in silence.

"My first few weeks, I broke a lot of cups."

"Do tell."

"I owed them more than they paid me." Desmond slumps back down on the couch, stares up at the ceiling and decides to give up. "Have you seen Lucy?"

"Why would I have seen her?"

"I'm just asking…" Desmond stands, frowns at Shaun's back. "God, you're defensive." He leaves the room and doesn't look back, doesn't have to, because his thoughts stay with Shaun anyways, just like always. Desmond's fairly certain that hating part of himself so vehemently can't be good for him, but giving in, he knows, that would be worse than anything self-hatred could strike him with.

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Hope everyone liked that!

Please review, I love knowing what you think!

Love ya,

Sunshine