What?
Title: What? Fandom: Assassin's Creed.
Author: write_rewrite
Rating: PG-13.
Pairings: Shaun/Desmond.
Warnings: Fluff? Ranting?
Notes: For themulletbullet. Second in the 'Let's See How Much Abuse I Can Pile Onto Desmond' series.
Summary: Yet another significant occasion, and Desmond is not there.
Shaun didn't often make it to Desmond's bar, which was not as surprising as Rebecca made it out to be. There were quite a multitude of reasons for why Shaun didn't go down there.
First of all, he and Desmond were not surgically attached at the hip, and didn't have to go everywhere together; a concept that the tech wizard had clearly missed the first time around, as she took scandalous shock in every occasion where one of them was missing. Apparently, being in a relationship meant you had to cart the other bloke around like a worn messenger bag.
Second of all, Shaun had work to do - papers to grade, lessons to plan, his teacher voice to practice. Malik filled in for the role of the 'student', and slept whenever he liked, listened to Shaun with rapt attention only if Shaun held a treat in his hands, and faffed about whenever Shaun went on for too long on some historical bent.
Third of all, Shaun abhorred watching other men (And Some Women) check his bloke out. Being in a situation where that, and flirting, was an active part of the situation would make his head explode. This was not an exaggeration. Given the amount of angry blood-cells that rushed into his cheeks at the audacity of Some People (as far as he was concerned, nobody should grab a bloke's arse when he's helping them with their shopping, particularly not women in denim miniskirts who clearly saw them snogging by the trollies earlier) scientific result A was the combustion of his cranium. Scientific result B was some minor stroke or a perpetual blush on his face.
Regardless, the situation was simple: Desmond tended bar at a pub just down the road, and Shaun avoided the pub like it was filled to the brim with plague bearers, religious preachers, door to door salesmen, that prat Steve who taught English at the school and his mum.
Tonight was the one year anniversary of the move to Britain, and Shaun took a Panadol (which was terrible for calming purposes, but would hopefully stave off his head exploding until after they were out) and marched his way down to the pub like a revolutionary towards Versailles. He'd hurried out in the middle of a fascinating lecture series on the French revolution. Love was a-brim within Shaun.
The bar itself looked comically stereotypic. Its red-brick walls had seen entirely too much smoke, soot, exhaust and graffiti, and were a permanent off-gray, with patches of red showing through, and patches of white where the attempts to paint over the unsightly mess had proved impossible. The door would have looked better suited to a cathedral, though the room itself was cramped and small and smothered in fashionably flowerless plants. Shaun was positive, from the first step inside, that this room, and this room only, was the sole cause of global warming. Air had ceased to exist here - the only type of oxygen was smoke-flavoured.
In the midst of it all, Desmond stood behind a G-shaped bar, sleeves rolled to the elbows and one hand, plus rag, thrust into a glass, listening to some man in a pinstripe suit complain. Poor love really was terribly patient, to act as a cheap therapist for the drunken and the lonely and the ones that just plain didn't have anywhere else to go.
Shaun strayed closer, and snatched up a seat in a suitably isolated corner, pulling a book loose from his worn messenger bag.
"--sounds tough, but you're going to be alright. Listen, if I can do anything to help...?" Desmond's voice was warm. Shaun didn't know how the hell he did that, other than perhaps speak right after forcing down a cup of tea.
"Aw, that's nice of you, but I don't think you can help, luv."
Shaun bristled. Visibly. Pigeons all over London grew aware of a disturbance in The Force and scurried off to somewhere that would not soon be decorated in flamboyantly-red man parts.
Some other man was calling his boyfriend luv.
That was just rude.
"Naw, I'd like to; no trouble, really." Desmond set that glass down and picked up another, and from this angle, Shaun could just see the flicker of a smile on his mouth. "I'm kinda new here, so..."
"Oh, do you have a tour guide?"
"Maps, and my roommate's from here, so he helps me out a lot."
Roommate? Shaun was no bleedin' flatmate. This was a gay bar, for Christ's sake, it was perfectly acceptable for Desmond to say 'boyfriend' instead of 'flatmate', and now that he hadn't, that hidden neurotic part of him wanted to know why. Since grabbing Desmond by the neck and choking the answer out of him wasn't an acceptable way of treating bartenders, Shaun cleared his throat softly, to attract his attention, and closed his book.
Cut his throat, the other, less-neurotic, though increasingly violent, side of him suggested, and Shaun pushed that voice entirely out of his mind and tapped his fingers on the bar.
"'scuse me, I think I gotta customer," Desmond shot off another smile - another one! - towards Mister Built Possible Secret Agent Pinstripe Suit Bloke, and turned to look at him.
Shaun glared back 'we have to talk'.
"Hiya," said Desmond, entirely unaware of the secret rules of non-aural communication, that is 'they must be obeyed instantly and without question'. "Forget your key again?"
"No, no, though I think there's something wrong with your car." Shaun hadn't been such a terribly good liar since Wolfgang. He didn't like how flat his voice had gone, either, and the tone made Desmond's shoulders raise a little, like a defense. "Come on, I'll show you."
"Uh, hang on -- hey, George?"
A secondary man, not quite as good-looking as the first, and with a prominent lantern jaw, looked up from a stack of bills, and nodded. Desmond pulled off his apron and walked around the bar, then followed Shaun through a madcap attempt to get to the wide doors without leaving an essential body part behind in the crowd.
London, at night, was not dark. Every lamp-post, window and shop put on the best lights it could, and in some parts of London, the glow really was beautiful - in this part of London, it succeeded in making it look like a still shot from a horrible eighties movie set in New York (and filmed in Los Angeles).
Shaun turned to face Desmond slowly, and stared at him.
Desmond stared back, arms folded, not bothering to glance towards the car - that had been a bad excuse, if Desmond wasn't looking where he wanted him to look, hadn't left himself open for atta--
No. No, no, no, all Desmond had done was use a word instead of another word. Not that bad. Didn't need a horrible punishment. There was no more to be done.
For Experiment C, anyway.
"What's going on, Shaun?" Desmond's voice wasn't warm anymore, and a vicious jab of jealousy brought him back in full-force, whispering in his ear, promising him that it was all for a good cause - and over the background humming of this dry-leaf voice, Shaun heard himself say, shakily, the problem.
"Why didn't you tell that man you had a boyfriend...? Flatmate just means we live together platonically."
Desmond's face softened, and he looked off to the left, where their car was, and then back at him. "Not s'posed to tell. Uh, you know, 'cause people flirt and stuff, and I never flirt back or anything, but it'll hurt my tip if I'm kinda standoffish and all 'I have a boyfriend'."
"Right. We wouldn't want that, would we? Money makes the world go round and all that - incidentally, I wanted to come down and wish you a happy anniversary, but the school doesn't pay me to stand around jabbering." It was a petty jab, but damn it, Desmond had started it.
"I'm not wishing you a happy annivesary until I give you your present," Desmond continued, though his voice was smaller.
"I'll settle for you not treating me like an embarrassing illness."
"I'm not embarrassed of you or anything! And I never, ever, flirt with my customers, and I always tell them I have a boyfriend if they keep asking, 'cause I don't want anyone else."
A car vrooomed past, taking the curve violently, rubber squealing on the road.
Shaun shook his head, and the voice went away for a bit, and let him think.
"I tell them stories about you and everything; go ahead and ask around. I think people figure it out 'fore I tell them, unless it's, uh, normal here to talk about roommates."
"Flatmates," Shaun corrected automatically, though rather tiredly. "Desmond, I just-- I don't know. I don't like you working there. Everyone treats you like you're slab of meat during the Blitz."
Desmond laughed, sudden and startlingly, and then Shaun's ribs were molded in between the gaps of Desmond's, and the bartender clear lifted him off the ground with the embrace.
"You're cute, Shaun. You're cute and a little nuts, and I can't believe I'm starting to understand you."
Shaun smacked the back of his head, and buried his face in his shoulder. "I hate those pretty blokes all hitting on you."
"Hey, I don't respond to flirting unless it's historical flirting. Gotta have standards. Nobody gets a piece of me unless they use an opening like... like...Uh. 'I'll be your Helen of Troy."
"She didn't exi-"
"--and follows it up with a really long lecture rather than a date."
"Only one ti-"
"I love you, Shaun."
"Will you let me finish a bloody sentence!"
Shaun smacked him again, for no reason other than Desmond was being a horrible twat (though, horribly, it was working and that little ball of jealousy and crazy was loosening some, and he could no longer hear That Voice so clearly) and pulled his face up from Desmond's shoulder.
The man's smile was damnably disarming.
"... Just... Could you stop using the word 'flatmate'? Use something a little less..." A wave of the hand was the only adequate way to say what he was feeling.
"How about... best friend? You kinda are, you know. Other than Malik." Desmond set him back down on solid ground, which was something of a relief - after that little show, he fully expected the bartender to throw him into the road.
Shaun snorted, tangling his arms around Desmond's neck, and pulled him just a little bit lower so he could kiss the bartender's forehead. "Don't let him figure that out, I don't want him hiding my socks again. And I'm sorry for acting like a candidate for the Jeremy Kyle show. Forgive me?"
"Only if you'll stay. Come on, it'll be fun. I can flirt with you. You can teach me history. I'll give you drinks."
"So, in other words, just like home?" Shaun smiled, and caught hold of Desmond's arm again before Desmond could drag him through the doors. "Alright, it's on. However... out of a scientific curiosity, what did you get me?"
"Shouldn't it be a surprise?" Desmond asked, playfully.
Equally playfully - though in a scholarly way - Shaun replied: "If Napoleon hadn't been surprised by Bleucher during Waterloo..."
"Alright, alright, keep it for inside." Desmond paused, as though considering the lecture indoors versus lecture outdoors debacle, then shrugged and said, "Ring. Gonna ask you to marry me."
Oh dear.
Shaun felt the colour drain out of his face, his body, the surrouding world, and everywhere else. Desmond shrugged again, entirely colourless and entirely unaware of it, and added, "gonna have to wait until my shift's over, now come on, I'm late. Love you, Shaun."
"I love you too," Shaun answered thoughtlessly (it had been like that for a while, love didn't require thought) and followed him with a definitely happier spring in his step.