Apologies for taking so long between the previous chapter and this one. Sometimes things are just out of your control. I promise that I'll try to be quicker next time.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I love writing it.

"Ezio! Come out here! We have to talk about this!"

"Go away. I don't have to talk about anything…"

"Please Ezio, I don't like standing here shouting at you like this!"

"Well then you know how to stop, don't you?"

"Please, just come down. I just want to talk to you."

Leonardo's voice had quietened on the last few words with a soft ring of sadness. Ezio could see himself in the mirror. He looked ridiculous; sitting by a window-ledge in the semi-darkness, on the floor with a self-pitying grimace stuck on his face. Perhaps he didn't look as silly as he thought, but he certainly felt it. The one time he tried to be really honest and open with someone…

"Ezio, come on! I'm not going away!"

He sighed. Leonardo hadn't actually done anything wrong, and yet Ezio still felt like he wanted to punish him, to make him feel as bad as he did. When this thought came into his head he felt a twinge of guilt. He didn't want to make Leonardo feel bad, not really.

"Ezio, why is Leonardo standing out there shouting up at you?"

It was mother.

"It's nothing mama, it's just a misunderstanding. About money. That's all."

She was looking down at him from the doorway with a sceptical frown. "Well could you at least go down there? It must be important in he wants to talk to you that badly. If it's not important to you, then it must at least be for him. Just be polite and give him some of your oh-so precious time won't you?"

He fixed her a defiant stare, but he couldn't win against her. After all, it wasn't his father that he had inherited his steely nerve from.

"Okay mama, for you." He got up from the floor and without saying any more went downstairs and out the door. Leonardo was sitting on a bench in the Auditore courtyard. To Ezio's eye he didn't look dishevelled or overtly upset. The only thing that could be giving away any kind of inner torment was the way he was slightly slumped over, his elbows resting on his thighs and his gaze directed downwards. He didn't even look up as Ezio closed the door behind him. No doubt Maria Auditore had been practising her investigative skills on him too.

Ezio didn't sit down beside him; instead he remained standing about a metre away. But even now all he wanted to do was hold him in his arms as Leonardo rested his head on his shoulder.

"So, you said you wanted to talk."

Leonardo looked first up at the window, and then at Ezio in one quick motion. It was a sign that he may not have actually expected him to come down from his hiding place. He stood up and faced towards Ezio, but didn't look at him.

"Yes, I think we should talk, I really do. But could we maybe go back to my workshop? It's just more private there. I want to be able to speak openly with you without worrying about people listening for petty gossip, and I want you to feel the same way."

"I'm not sure if I would feel happy about being open anywhere." He heard the steel in his own voice as he said these words; Leonardo looked down at the ground now. It was a sorry sight, and as cold as Ezio tried to seem, he was torn inside between the anguish of rejection and the longing for closeness. "But if it will make you feel better, then okay."

"Thank you. I just think…" Ezio started walking without letting him finish and Leonardo followed closely behind, never walking ahead, never beside. They walked in silence the whole way and the whole time Ezio couldn't suppress the feeling that he was being cruel in some way, and yet he wouldn't allow himself to act in any way more genial. Stubbornness was a bad trait to have in these situations.

They reached the building and Leonardo opened the door, standing aside to let Ezio enter first. He didn't go very far into the room and didn't take a seat. To do so could make him appear more sympathetic to what Leonardo might say than he wanted to seem.

"Would you like a drink?"
"No."

"Something to eat maybe?"

"No."

"You can sit down if you like." Leonardo was already sitting at a table with one stool on either side of it. He motioned to the opposite stool."

"I'd rather stand."

"Okay, if you're sure…"

There was a minute of awkward quiet. Both of them had something to say, one of them had to go first. Ezio was not going to do so regardless of how much longer the silence stretched on for.

"Right, well I suppose I should start. After all I was the one that came to your house and shouted up at you. The trouble is I don't know how to start to say what needs to be said." He babbled on for a few more minutes about the awkwardness of the situation as a whole and his inability to put into words what he wanted to put across. But finally he started to try and make a point. "You have to understand, Ezio. It's nothing against you. It's just that I am romantically committed to someone else. It is true that he and I barely see each other and only really talk through letter, but that doesn't change the fact that we consider ourselves to be together. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Ezio didn't look at him. He didn't want to hear anything about this other person. As far as he was concerned they were just a nameless, faceless adversary taunting him from afar.

"And anyway, I mean you and I, we barely know each other. It's not like we have been close for a long time with this suddenly coming out of the blue. Surely you can't be so… enamoured? That you can be this upset?" There was a kind of pleading in Leonardo's voice, as if he wanted this to be true. But Ezio responded by keeping his gaze fixed at a point on the wall behind his seated desire. Now he knew he was being cruel, but Leonardo's desperation for him not to be feeling what he was feeling made it seem somehow justified. "Ezio, please say something?"

"You have no idea how I feel. I don't know why I came here. I am going now." He turned to leave; Leonardo made a start from his seat.

"No, please don't! I want to hear what you have to say! If I don't know how you feel, then why can't you tell me?"

Ezio felt his hand on his shoulder, firmly beseeching for him to stay. He stopped moving and reached up to hold him there for just a few seconds. But then he remembered what was happening. He turned round and pushed Leonardo against the wall, placing his hands on either side. A mixture of pain and anger was surging in him. He wasn't sure what to say, he wasn't even sure why he had cornered him like this. Leonardo looked scared, as if to him Ezio was an animal waiting to tear him apart. There was vulnerability in his dark eyes. Ezio didn't soften his stare even for a second. When he spoke his voice was raised, a combination of distress and aggression emanating from it.

"If it had been me. If you had not met this man, whoever he is. If it was just me. What would you have said?"

"I…I don't… I can't know…"

"TELL ME." He hadn't meant to shout, but he had no control. "Tell me the truth. Would you have rejected me then too? Or could there have been something."

He needed to know. He needed to know if this man, his first crush, his first love, could have ever been his. He needed to know whether this pain was for nothing or if there was something that might have been to justify it all. Leonardo appeared to understand why he was so wounded now. And for that reason he told the truth.

"I don't know you very well at all, Ezio. We've met only a few times and barely spoken even on those occasions. But I think, if this was another time, then I could have been very happy with you." He reached up and put his hand around Ezio's wrist as a sign of comfort. "I think this is something that could have been more than perhaps what my dreams are made of."

Ezio's body softened, his muscles unclenched. Now that he had heard this, he wasn't sure what to do. And through all the confusion inside himself at this moment, for yet another time in such a short space, he broke down and cried. He fell to the ground, curled up and cried then and there, not caring that the object of his affections was standing right there. And in response Leonardo knelt down on the floor with him and stroked his hands through his hair slowly. This action soothed him, and the tears slowly died away after a long while. They sat in silence together until it became dark outside. Ezio wrapped in Leonardo's arms for consolation. After it became apparent that he should leave, they both got up and embraced before Ezio let himself out and went on his way home. The workshop's inhabitant stood in the doorway and watched him as he walked along the deserted street.

Leonardo felt like he had made a mistake letting him go.