Hurry Not
Title: Hurry Not Fandom: Assassin's Creed.
Author: write_rewrite
Rating: M.
Pairings: Leonardo/Ezio.
Warnings: Boy on boy lovin'.
Notes: Happy birthday, goldeneagle!
Summary: Ezio carries Leonardo's stuff to a hill to paint, and thinks kick off from there.
Florence is half-asleep and misty, and the hour is too early for the birds to be singing (or for the minstrels to be minstrelling or for the flower sellers to be selling flowers, though both of those are happening too) and Ezio is wandering up a steep hill, carrying a heavy crate that is filled to the brim with Leonardo’s Stuff (1).
Leonardo’s rose-red cap bobbed through the wispy white mist, and Ezio can’t quite see him, not with the crate he’s carrying, but he walked ahead with the good faith that Leonardo will stop him from falling face-first into a stream, a hillock, a pothole or a drunkard (2). He followed the sound of Leonardo’s singing, trailing after the rusty sound like he was bound to it, trying to decipher the words - it was a hymn, that much he knew, but Leonardo’s tuneless words were stretched beyond sense, and jumbled, and unsteady, and Ezio didn’t want to mention it, because the artist might stop, then.
“Here, Ezio, just down here,” the artist said, so suddenly close that Ezio nearly toppled over in trying to stop. He shifted the box to one arm, wincing as his aching muscles protested the movement, and watched Leonardo dust his hand over the smooth face of a flat stone, dirtying his bare hand.
Leonardo’s fingers, he knew, were constantly paint-tipped, ink-stained and dusty, when not covered up.
Ezio let the box down gently, patting the scrolled-up top of a large canvas block, absently pushing it to the other side, and then turned to look at the view. Florence was below them, and above them; a rippling wave of orange and white, cut through with the shining glint of cobblestone roads, the blue water in the distance a part of the sky.
Leonardo shuffled behind him, no longer singing.
The air was clean, knife-sharp, and still cold because the sun is not up yet (though it’s coming up, slowly, and making the rooftops glitter) and the grass is wet, but Ezio sat down anyway, and stretched out on his back.
The sky is so light, it’s nearly the colour of the mist.
“You can go home, you know,” Leonardo said, and nudged the Assassin lightly with the tip of his shoe, “I can carry it back down myself. It’s the way up that is difficult.”
“Nonsense, amore,” Ezio dismissed the idea with a word, though he narrowed his eyes at Leonardo (3) and gave his grin a weak parody of anger by curling the corners of his lips. “I would like to stay. I like watching you sketch. If you will have me?”
In response, Leonardo spread the required tools (paintbrush, ink, canvas, wooden block) and sat down on Ezio’s lap. “Put your knees up?”
“Che?” Ezio lifted his head, thought about snatching Leonardo’s cap off his head.
“Your knees.”
Confused, but too lazy to ask for an explanation, Ezio placed his feet flat on the ground, and groaned when he saw Leonardo reach for the wooden block. “You cannot be serious?”
“Plea-“
“Argh, Leonardo.” But Ezio cannot say no to a pretty ‘please’ and they both know it, so he sulked in silence as Leonardo rested the block against his knees, placed the canvas over it, and picked up an ink-tipped paintbrush.
Then, he rested his head back on his folded arms, and closed his eyes.
The paint-brush scratches at the canvas like a burrowing mouse; softly, insistently; he can all but hear the ink cracking dryly on the canvas.
Ezio sat up gingerly, and cleared the artist’s hair off his neck to leave a kiss there, “Leonardo?”
“Mmh.”
Until the painting is close to finished (4), Leonardo will speak in mumbles.
Even with his work, the artist is smiling, one great, big smile, like the love of his life has just fallen into his arms, and Ezio cannot figure out how he can always smile like that, or why nothing seems to bother him, but - like the singing - he will not mention it, because Leonardo might stop.
Ezio has forgotten what he meant to say.
He watched Leonardo’s hand move across the canvas, bringing Florence closer - sloping rooftops, ribboning roads, a cat licking a paw on a sunny roof. There are small blades of grass, and a scrawled-in sky, with scribbled clouds, and Ezio can’t think of anything to say at all.
He nuzzled Leonardo’s neck, reaching up to stroke his knuckles over the man’s rough cheek. “You amaze me, always.”
“Mmh.” Beneath his hand, Leonardo’s cheek grew hot and pink, and Ezio chuckled, and latched his teeth onto an ear-lobe, nibbling playfully - the next ‘mmh’ is on the heels of a choked gasp, and Ezio isn’t entirely sure, but the way Leonardo is gripping his paintbrush indicates that he might stab him in the knee if he doesn’t stop.
Ezio doesn’t stop.
“I cannot resist you, and you are so cruel, sitting like this-” Ezio thrust up, just to remind him, though not roughly enough to jostle the artist’s hand - is he still sketching? - and murmured the rest, “-teasing me... amore mio.”
“E-Ezio, I-” Leonardo swallowed, his throat works against Ezio’s lips; kisses fall where they fall - fabric, skin, stubble. “-I’m, Dio, I’m working. Later, eh?”
“You promise?” Ezio asked, suspiciously, but not seriously.
“Cross my heart,” Leonardo said, and since his hand was full, Ezio reached out and crossed his heart for him - could feel it double, beneath his tracing fingertip.
Then, he sat back and crossed his hands behind his head, and slept.
. . .
The sketch has no sky or grass, but it is finished, and Leonardo set it aside to wait for the ink to dry. Ezio dozed behind him, in a patch of sunlight only as large as half his body, and Leonardo suspected that he must’ve been asleep, truly asleep - he expected the younger man to pounce as soon as his canvas was placed down, and he was not.
Leonardo twisted around to look at him, and grinned, bent his head to brush his lips over the curved frown on his lips. His fingers mold his jaw, feathering across the fine, strong bones, deepening the kiss when Ezio’s lips part just enough to make it possible.
Ezio comes to slowly, from one soft and dreamy world to another.
Leonardo’s mouth is above his, kissing him, and the artist tastes like strawberries and rain and all the soft, cool things that Ezio has ever tasted; Ezio’s fingers tangle in the ends of his flaxen hair, sending the cap tumbling down by them, lifting his hips to grind fabric to fabric, heat to heat. A shaky moan is the only sound, aside from someone’s ragged panting, someone’s throbbing heart.
That’s me, Ezio thinks, dizzily, and it cannot be possible, because this is not passion, this is something else. Passion is quick and over in minutes; and this is slow and devout and divine and more. This is something that burns weakly, but for longer.
His clothes are off, and Leonardo’s skin is moving against him - smooth, but not too smooth, he has scars too, scars from working, scars from fighting, scars from banging into tables and doorways and into the stairs - and Ezio whimpered softly, and buried his fingers in Leonardo’s hair, stretched his neck out to give him more places to kiss - and lower, the kisses go lower, edged playfully with teeth.
Ezio’s breath sobbed as Leonardo scraped his kisses over his ribs, and stopped entirely when they went past stomach, past hips, to the base of his cock.
“L-Leo-” Burbled words (they weren’t burbled in his head, but they come out that way now) patter like rain, and Ezio scrambled to try and get a hold of himself, to get this slow, slow thing over, so they can get to the sex, but the instant he reached for the artist, Leonardo looked up.
“Shh, Ezio, you trust me, si?”
“A-Always, but someone - I need to-ai!” It’s distracting to feel Leonardo’s stubble brushing against his hipbone, to feel his teeth there, to know they were out in the open -beneath God and everyone, where someone could see.
“What’s your hurry?” Leonardo asked, and it’s a sufficiently complex question that Ezio let go of him to think out an answer, and groaned as the artist took advantage of that, and left burning kisses on his thighs and his knees and both ankle bones.
Leonardo squirmed back up, and rooted about in his box, and Ezio trembled on the grass - trembled, like a virgin - and clutched a fistful of daisies when the man turned back towards him.
He says nothing, because Ezio should know by now that Leonardo would never hurt him, which is why he lets him do what he does, which is why Ezio doesn’t kick out when he feels something slim and strong push inside him, why he doesn’t panic.
Leonardo’s eyes are vividly blue, and they are the only piece of sky he sees, so Ezio focused on them, and not on what Leonardo’s hand was doing. The feeling is too odd to be pleasurable, too brief to think upon.
Ezio pushed himself up on his elbows, and let out a breath that had been clogged into his lungs, and smiled through the butterflies.
“Amore mio,” Leonardo murmured, and Ezio believed him, and trusted him, and took the hand that pressed to the side of his face, “si?”
“Sempre.”
The word rang in the air, finite and powerful, and then the world blurred. Leonardo moved slowly, pressed into him, pressed to something that made Ezio’s body jerk uncontrollably, made a spasm of pleasure curl low in his stomach, and pulled back.
Ezio pressed Leonardo’s hand to his chest, so he could feel for himself what his heart was doing, and closed his eyes as Leonardo thrust in again - and it turned into clinging to the artist, babbling prayer and curse into Leonardo’s steady, strong shoulders, scratching love-red lines into Leonardo’s poor back and hips and sides, rising to meet him thrust for thrust.
Leonardo’s face turned into his neck, streaked kisses to sun-warmed skin and irregular pulse, left bite marks on the collar-bone.
The world was made up of Leonardo’s mouth, his body, and that endless blue, and when that world came to an end as well - a slow and torturous end, with pleasure flaring in every fingertip, making his toes convulsively press into the grass, his back draw tight, a wild cry leaving him - there was always Leonardo, soft and warm and pliable above him.
There would always be Leonardo, no matter what.
. . .
“Taking advantage of me!”
“I am not.” Leonardo’s sleepy chuckle raised the hairs on the back of Ezio’s neck. It’s close to his chest, where it should be, and their legs are still tangled.
“You are,” Ezio hissed, and tightened his arms around the artist. “I enjoy it only because I am such a gentleman, eh?”
“Sure, of course; you are kind to put up with me,” Leonardo offered, politely, which makes them both start to laugh.
“This is crazy,” Ezio said, when the laughter is over, and his ribs ache from it, “this is crazy.”
“You leap from rooftops, and this is crazy?” Leonardo wanted to know, and Ezio nodded , and kissed the top of his head (cap-less) and tangled his fingers in the ends of Leonardo’s hair. “I will never understand you.”
“Try not to.”
Leonardo chuckled again, and Ezio can swear that the sound is the only thing making his heart beat like that - quick and slow at the same time, fluttering.
The sun is up and the sky is blue, and Florence is awake - pieces of song float on the wind with the clouds and the birds. Leonardo does not move, and neither does Ezio.
There is no hurry.
(1) He has been ordered not to touch any of Leonardo’s Stuff, in that nice, polite way that Leonardo has, because it always leads to a
(2) It was faith unfounded, as Leonardo had a habit of getting distracted by things and forgetting about him. Ezio was trying not to be jealous, but it was difficult, especially when the object of Leonardo’s attention happened to be one of his damn models.
(3) It is a look that promises vengeance, though Ezio has no reason for vengeance and won’t do anything to the artist.
(4) A status that only Leonardo can tell; most of them look unfinished to Ezio, but he deferred to the artist’s expertise on the topic.