: x :

And now, to hear Desmond's side of the story! Which will be less
grammatically correct. Tagged on to the end of this one, because
spring cleaning deletions. /derps

epilogue

Yeah, okay, so I'm an asshole.

You could see it plain as day, man, the way he looked at me when nobody else was in the room, arms crossed protectively over his cardigan as if reminding himself to keep up the angry nerd act. So, I picked on him, so what? We had a pretty good setup, filling my days with genetic time travel adventure and my nights with, well, worrying mostly. It took my mind off shit, picking fights. Rebecca was no good in a debate, all absurdity and wise-cracking. Lucy got too invested in what we were doing, which I understand, but that didn't make her any less of a downer.

So then there was Shaun, and Shaun was... ugh, man, I don't know. British? Temperamental? Something. Shaun was something. We even got along for a little while, when things were good, when it looked like we were winning in this our most epic struggle against the forces of – of –

Well, not evil. Megalomania, definitely, but I don't think either side was exactly in the right once it was made obvious we were all just being played by some higher power (story of my life). The whole situation was well fucked, but that's about as detailed as I'm classified to get. The point I'm trying to make, however, was that when shit got tough again, when the clock looked like it was starting its final countdown, was when everybody around me seemed to curl back up into their own defenses.

Lucy got... Lucier. Becca disappeared behind her headphones and hardly spoke. Shaun went back to despising the very sound of my voice, hell, the very sound of anyone's voice. Right when I needed my dreamteam the most, they all dried up, picked fights with each other and sent me back to the animus. I didn't complain; I knew what was on the line.

But you get sick of it, after a while. I got sick of it.

I didn't want to be invisible.

So I reached out and smacked Shaun on my last lap around the dias; because he was there, because of the way he had been looking at me before – all wide eyes behind the glare of his glasses. Like a man in the desert, determined to remind himself that the ocean was not on the horizon, that it was just a trick of the heat. Determined to ignore what was right in front of him.

I got his attention.

I got his attention and I wanted to scream in his smug fucking face to wake the fuck up already, to stop ignoring us for what was on a computer screen, to come back out of the past and maybe look around at what the present was offering. So I bullied him. Because I'm an asshole, and I'd rather annoy my friends than... than nothing. I got him in a headlock and felt the heat of his skin as his face reddened, a dark flicker of enjoyment at the fact that I could actually do this, that we could fight like this and maybe blow off a little steam, that maybe things would get better for all of us if Shaun would just snap already and get it over with.

He didn't snap. Have I mentioned that I'm an asshole yet? Because I'm also a hypocrite, in case you were beginning to form some sort of positive impression. 'Oh sure, Desmond's not so bad; he was just trying to help!' … something like that? Well, I was really only trying to help myself, because I didn't want to go through this shit alone; because I didn't want to wake up from the animus every night to empty stares and grim silence. And the hypocritical thing was that I couldn't see the ocean from the sand, either.

Shaun wasn't my friend. He never lied about that, and if there was one thing he was good at it was keeping people at a distance (if I can sound a little talk-show touchy feely for a minute here). Lucy was never my friend either; she was a guardian, maybe. Becca was everybody's friend the way a potted plant is everybody's friend. I was starting to realize that, and it scared me.

What was going to happen after we found the apple? Where would these people disappear to; was I even allowed to leave after that point? Would Becca still e-mail me physics jokes; would Lucy send flirty dry-humored texts? Would Shaun, haha, would Shaun ever actually answer his phone? If even just to tell me to stop calling? I was an indispensable component, valued only by the circumstance of genetics.

That's kinda heavy, isn't it? Sorry. Can't keep smiling all the time, not even when I've got Shaun in a small storage room, the card table shrinking between us as he stands with a clatter. When I know he's got no choice but to listen to me, and is too easily provoked into answering questions he'd rather not. I did the research. I knew about his dead boyfriend, about Abstergo; I just wanted him to say it out loud for fuck's sake. To stop picking at the open wound inside of himself.

I wanted Shaun to do something about it, but I guess he already was, here, with the animus project. Maybe I just wanted him to do something about me. Anything. Give me a platform to build off of, not just sit there all the time carefully ignoring the sound of my voice.

Every time he said my name was like, I dunno, validation? That he knew I had a name, that I wasn't just a subject number? Is that kinda pathetic? It is, isn't it? I was kinda in a pathetic place at the time, so, y'know. I honestly don't know what would have happened, if I hadn't had that full mental meltdown right there in the middle of everyone. Suddenly I was Ezio, and the scene I walked out into wasn't the rainy Tuscany night, but a sunny Toscano morning. I was just taking a stroll – thank fuck that's all I was doing – trying to find a bread vendor. I woke up to cold and dark and rain, bargaining with a wall over the price of a spiced roll. I could feel the warmth of the fragrant bread fading from my palm even as I mistook Lucy's silhouette on a rooftop for that of an enemy.

Things got really weird really quick after that, and I'm not just talking about the physical displacement that comes part and parcel with extended animus use. I mean Shaun. Shaun fucking Hastings. Abusing the guy never failed to cheer me up, even if our sniping drew blood, but holy shit. This guy...

This fucking wise-ass guy...

And his, an' his what, his fucking livid sarcasm and.

And he shows up, out of nowhere, with a gun, hahaha, and –

So I was thinking that I'd have to kill someone, that's real blood on my hands, yo, not cool, but then everything's fine and damn near back to normal and I'm so fucking relieved and, and it's raining and we both look like drowned hobos and this guy is, I dunno, I don't even KNOW what the hell he thinks he's doing, but I know he's finally looking at me.

So then there we are sucking face, like ah, like that's what counts as normal now?

And maybe that was it, maybe Shaun just needed to get laid. Maybe I did. Hell, maybe the girls needed a little alone time too; not with each other, probably, but you know. No better way to wind down, to take things back from critical, and so.

So we're back at home-base and, this guy, right? Cool as James Bond about the whole thing, like he just says it out loud that he wants ta suck me off and this is a far, far cry from 'go away, Desmond'.

I mean, I'm only human.

It's like... it's like this, okay? So we fuck around. We fuck around a lot. There is really nothing else to occupy our time outside of the animus, unless Shaun goes on one of his research binges and it doesn't take a genius to figure out how to keep him from disappearing into his work like that. I ain't subtle.

Shaun? Shaun is subtle. Shaun could stare at me over the top of his glasses across the breakfast table and I'd get hard. That's how subtle the dude could be. And man, if I weren't such a selfish asshole I could have probably KNOWN the guy had, like, this crush on me, and that was why he was such a prickly bastard all the time, and y'know, it was a bad idea. The whole thing was just asking for disaster.

So, later, I mean, like maybe a week later and it's Shaun's birthday somehow (well, I mean I KNOW how birthdays work, just), so I've got him against the corridor wall at some point, right? And this is the turning point, this is the extra stair you think you have to step from that ain't even there and you get this sinking feeling in your gut and like, so I've got his dick in my hand and he makes this noise like holy shit you know this guy wants it and

there's like

this twinge inside of me, see? So I go down on both knees and take him in my mouth and I've never done this shit sober, swear, so it's like he … I mean, he says my name like I'm... what. I don't know. I suck him off, and I do that, and I'm hard, so I can't really stand up, and he does this ridiculous fireman's drag the few feet (I couldn't wait for earlier) across the stone floor to our room and there are

condoms

and I feel drunk (I'm not) and confused in this hazy kinda lust and it's kinda hard to believe that once we get the door kicked shut that he's got my pants undone and isn't even shying from the kiss for once. I get to fuck him several different ways from Tuesday, shedding our clothes with my dick already wrapped up and in him; he gets this look in his eye whenever I'm shirtless that he doesn't try to hold back this time around, and it's almost like he's worshiping me, I mean that isn't vanity it's just what he's doing.

I thought he'd give some sort of fight, some sort of, I dunno, protest and I don't even know why - but the guy is like putty in my hands. Really clingy putty who isn't too proud to beg, which would disturb me later but right then was everything I needed to hear from the person into which my cock was going.

So, it's intense, to say the least. I don't make it a habit to fuck people as like a power play, but I found myself pulling out just because I wanted to see the need in Shaun's face, to feel his legs wrap tighter around me, to hear the whiny protest come tumbling out of his mouth.

So.

The next time we fuck, some half a week later, Shaun is the one who - um. Pitches. He isn't nice about it, and he doesn't linger or tease the orgasm along like I had. It was like, maybe... maybe he was trying to make up for that night. To remind himself that it could still be quick and dirty between us, and that I was still nice-guy-Desmond and he was still the cold bastard who was just trying to get off. It was a really sad, transparent retaliation and suddenly, it's like, I know that he likes me, like maybe not exactly as a friend because we weren't set up to be functional as friends; but. Shaun was very obviously terrified of whatever it was that we had between us and was, by all accounts, determined to squash it.

By my guess, I mean. It's not like I could get the guy to talk to me, or anything. Not like I even tried.

Me? I just wanted my friends back. Or else I wanted that illusion of friendship back. Sure I liked fucking Shaun, who wouldn't? The man kept things interesting, to say the least. I... I had even hated him at first, maybe. Hated how easily he had taken to dismissing me; hated how I was always going to be the one to care more.

Because Rebecca was more than a potted plant to me, and Lucy was more than a guardian, and Shaun was more than a pair of livid hazel eyes glued to a computer screen. He was more, more than the pale bone of his wrists flashing at the keyboard's edge, the length of his fingers as they curled down my ass and more than the wet heat of his mouth that one time he finally got around to demonstrating just how good at giving head he really was.

I loved these people, and maybe that was why I'd have made such a terrible assassin. I kept this light in me, see, and I knew the minute my family wanted me to put this light out and live in the dark. But I didn't want that. I wanted to serve drinks and make people laugh, hear their stories, live some stories of my own. I wanted to fuck Shaun Hastings and not get kicked out of the bed seconds later.

I wanted to wake up at noon and order a goddamn pizza and watch some fucking cartoons and have a beer and maybe a pet dog and someone, anyone, to be in my bed when I came home at three in the morning.

So if we found this apple, right? If we found this apple and Shaun was still fucking around with me, then maybe, maybe we could keep in touch and maybe, something? I mean sure, I didn't really see that working out for either of us. Shaun was still in the Brotherhood and I would forever be too chickenshit to have the very necessary discussions about that. There are some roads that are too dark to travel down, like maybe they don't really have a way back once you've crossed the invisible line. Is that too vague? It is, isn't it.

Okay, so, I guess it was more like, I was scared Shaun would shut me out (was... was shutting me out, present tense). Forgive me if I sound like a total girl when I say that, but it's the true hazard of loving people whose careers hold some higher worldly purpose - you are always going to come second to the job. I hated the fact that I hated that fact. Because what the fuck, of course saving the world mattered more than whether or not Shaun was coming to bed on schedule.

So I grinned like nothing had changed between us - after and during all the fucking, I mean. I continued to annoy Shaun at his desk and rallied the ladies into the usual fight. Get Shaun to eat something. Get Shaun to get some sleep already. Get Shaun to say my name.

Get Shaun to look at me.