Quiz
Title: Quiz Fandom: Assassin's Creed.
Author: write_rewrite
Rating: G.
Pairings: Shaun/Desmond.
Warnings: Pure fluffiness and perhaps some skewed timeline-ness and American bashing.
Notes: For themulletbullet, who draws one fab Creeper!Desmond.
Summary: Shaun is still sick and he is drowing his sorrows with television.
Shaun figured that there were three things that could happen over the course of this illness:
1. He would strangle Rebecca and eat her liver, perhaps sautéed in a nice red wine, to gain her ridiculous imperviousness to The Flu.
2. Desmond’s strangulation would follow shortly after that, as the boyfriend was getting on his tits. His fussing put him in mind of his mother. On a scale of one to Norman Bates, his relationship with his mother was somewhere around subzero.
3. Desmond would live, Rebecca would live, and he would perish from this bloody bug, like the Martians in Th- Oh, God. He was turning into Desmond.
4. He would turn into Desmond and spend the rest of his life as a lab rat, shuttled about from Animus to Animus.
Until these four things happened, Shaun was going to enjoy a steaming hot cup of lemon tea, with a piece of lemon wedged against the rim, a tartan blanket left out in the sun to warm and one of America’s infamous quiz shows. So far, the tea was delicious, the blanket was warm, and the quiz show was doing his nut in.
“It’s Mozart! Mozart, oh for Christ’s sake, you people shouldn’t be allowed to vote,” Shaun hissed, jabbing a trembly finger at the screen like he could zap the offending contestant right out of his place. “New laws need to be made for this country, and it should read as follows: anyone who cannot figure out that underwear needs to be contained within trousers, not on display like the bleedin’ Mona Lisa, should not be able to drive, vote or otherwise own any power whatsoever. They can be sent back to school to learn the intricacies of the belt.”
Desmond’s warm chuckle didn’t dim his ire whatsoever; the problem with having an American boyfriend, Shaun realized, was that pissing him off tended to revolve around - well, that was beside the point. It wasn’t so much Americans, that, anyway, as it was Desmond being a squishy hybrid of panda and man.
Shaun set the mug of tea down, and lowered his fingertip.
He patted the seat next to him, a seat currently taken up by a thick and crumbling copy of ‘Meat and Salt’ and a lumpy pillow and the three-pawed kitten that Desmond had rescued from some pit of evil - otherwise known as Outside Monteriggione - and some Great Loutish Dark Lord - otherwise known as Alfredo, the guy that owned the take-away shop and really, really, really big collection of knives, and then said, in an oddly dipping voice, “sit. I could use the company. Just don’t say a word, or I’ll pour my tea somewhere uncomfortable.”
“You shouldn’t be saying words,” Desmond retorted, with an A for concern and a C for wittiness, “you’re gonna lose your voice.”
“This show just pisses around with knowledge, luv. It’s an outrage. It’s an-” Shaun smothered a tissue against his face, barely pausing as he sneezed, “-it’s an abyss of entertainment. There is nothing else on. Someone thought the Mona Lisa was by Michelangelo! By Mich. El. An. Ge. Lo.”
“There, there.” Stepping over Shaun’s extended legs, Desmond cleared the side of the mattress not taken up by Shaun and his army of tissue boxes and sat down. The cat - artfully named Oliver, for reasons that Shaun had tried to explain, and failed completely in, and also called Malik, for reasons everyone understood - curled up in Desmond’s lap in a small, purry ball, content.
“I was going to rest there,” Shaun grumbled, slanting the cat a sidelong glance. “Selfish.”
Obligingly, Desmond nudged the cat off, where it promptly turned its ass in his direction, and went back to sleep. Shaun sighed, lowering his cheek to Desmond’s thigh, watching half the television set, which was probably better - for medical reasons, of course. Nothing got the blood pressure up like an idiot contestant debasing history, literature, music, arts, basic common sense...
The pattern of the next hour was clockwork.
There was a question.
Before Desmond reached the end of the question, Shaun was already ready with an answer, and mumbling it underneath his breath.
The contestant usually failed to understand that getting the question right was absolutely critical as Shaun was taking time out of his being sick to give them the answers.
Shaun swore when the contestant gave the wrong answer, and Desmond learned two or three new British swear words that Shaun preferred to use in place of ‘fuck’.
By midnight, this tried and tested pattern faltered at the first minute.
Shaun turned his head and grabbed Desmond’s chin, thereby missing the question’s debut, and drew his head down for a light kiss. Desmond’s fingers curled around the framework of his glasses, pulling them off; the light kiss turned out to be deeper than Shaun had planned for, and then there was tongue and teeth and lips and a shortage of breath that, fair enough, made his throat ache.
Pulling back, Shaun ran his nails over Desmond’s cheek, and smiled. “If I get you ill, I’m not nannying you about,” he warned the Assassin, “and I am hiding until after you are better, because the girls will have an issue or two with that, and will natter my ear off for it.”
Desmond laughed, thumbed Shaun’s lower lip. “Gotcha. Won’t get ill, then. Get some sleep, Shaun.”
“Close my eyes for a minute,” Shaun decided, “justa minute.”
He was asleep before the minute had passed.