Little Cava1st/Alaude drabble at a friend's request. More focus on CavaPri and his memory, though? I like the name Niccolo, and since Cavallone Primo doesn't have a canon name, I ran with it. Shh.

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Cavallone Primo, Niccolo Cavallone, loved Alaude. He loved everything about him. From the silk of his hair, the cut of his jaw, the tenor of his voice, to the very way he carried himself. Alaude would probably kill him if he knew how much Niccolo observed him when he wasn't paying attention, but then again, he'd probably just huff and turn away, embarrassed.

Niccolo even loved Alaude's scars. Terrible, vicious, cruel blemishes on ivory skin that spoke of a time of immense pain and cruelty. The raven Cavallone told Alaude once that he loved them, too. He got an irritated, incredulous look in response. Niccolo just smiled blithely and shrugged. He answered the look with a simple statement: "How could I possibly love you, Alaude, if I didn't love all of you?"

He received another odd and irate look, accompanied with a harrumph and an embarrassed turn of the head.

Seeing Alaude without his shirt on was a rarity. A rare treat that received few and far between. The man wouldn't even sleep shirtless. Niccolo guessed it had something to do with the scars, but he just didn't understand. Sure, they were marring otherwise beautiful skin, and sure, they were horrid reminds of past cruelty, but… Niccolo really couldn't care less about that. Alaude, in his eyes, was beautiful, scarred or not. Angered or not. It didn't matter what Alaude was, Niccolo would love him regardless.

The night Alaude deigned to show Niccolo his scars – some sort of odd insistence on reciprocating the fact that Niccolo shared one of his own scars (the result of a stupid teenage decision, though the Cavallone founder really didn't care who saw it or knew about it). Niccolo had rolled his eyes, thinking that Alaude was being silly, insisting upon a scar for a scar. Silly only because Alaude had looked like he really didn't want to show him.

Alaude really could be an idiot sometimes. He even told him as much. Most of the time it earned him an elbow to the gut. Other times it resulted in a harrumph and the offended party just lazily resting his forehead on Niccolo's collarbone. Niccolo preferred those times.

But when Alaude decided to show Niccolo his scars, marks on his back that looked suspiciously like what having wings torn off might look like, Niccolo was, for once, rendered speechless. He'd often given the blonde massages and back rubs, but he'd never once thought that these tortures were the reason why Alaude would experience random intervals of back pain.

That night, though, was the first time Alaude had allowed him to see those scars, to touch them with no fabric between scars and hands. Niccolo had traced the scars with his fingers, brow furrowed in distaste. It bothered him, someone restraining this proud bird of his and inflicting such damage. It upset him that he hadn't been around to help – not that Alaude ever liked to accept help.

Niccolo had sighed, leaned down, and pressed his lips to old wounds. He trailed butterfly-light kisses over age-old blemishes, before he had started on the actual massage. Niccolo had not asked where the scars had come from. He'd had no need to. It was obvious. These were intentional marks, inflicted slowly and with the intent to gain information. They were intended to cause lasting damage, a constant reminder that pride came before the fall and that Alaude was just as human as the rest.

Niccolo had given Alaude his massage, the back ache had eased, and the Cavallone founder's job was done – for now. Before he had moved away, he had threaded fingers through platinum silk and had been pleasantly surprised that he hadn't received punishment.

He had leaned down, placed a few last kisses to scars, and draped a blanket over the usually proud skylark.

"Merci." Alaude had said, defaulting to French.

"Di niente." Niccolo had said, showing that he had understood, but his French was too choppy to merit a response in Alaude's mother tongue.

Niccolo Cavallone relished the memory of that night. He would take that memory to his grave, and cherish it ever after.