A/N: Very short chapter, but I hope it satisfies you. Bashful Ezio is curious. ;) Suggested by DreamerAngel17. What happens next? Review to tell me! Also, I'm raising the rating to Mature, because we're getting into some themes here that some people will definitely not be comfortable with. The only reason I'm even comfortable with it is because I'm incognito. :P

Disclaimer: I do not own Assassin's Creed.

Fever
Wildcat

Ezio was disturbed. He had thought these waves of heat would have passed with the fever, but for every place that Leonardo touched him there was a white streak of flame that coursed across his skin. It went straight to his mouth, which watered, and down his spine, which shook. He was beginning to recognize these feelings, too, and that made it worse. He had felt it sometimes when Cristina touched him a handful of years ago. It wouldn't happen all the time, but some nights she would do something especially enchanting and Ezio would turn into a moaning mass of idiocy in her hands. He was very close to becoming that now with Leonardo and he didn't understand why. The only time Leonardo could even be called enchanting was when he was excited over something scientific or artistic, and that was more cute than anything else.

But now Ezio felt his breath begin to quicken, and it wasn't just because what Leonardo was doing to the wound stung like a bad dog bite. It was because Leonardo was sitting behind him on the bed, with his free hand on Ezio's back to steady himself while he worked. Ezio felt the hand. He felt the cloth and vaguely remembered someone doing something similar to his face. He was acutely aware that he wasn't wearing anything except a pair of Leonardo's pants. He felt like a little girl for how embarrassed he was.

Then Leonardo smiled at him and it took everything he had not to stare and just turn around again. He placed the bowl of broth in his lap and stared at his fingers, which were trembling. The thumb, index, and middle finger of his right hand had just touched those lips that were smiling at him. They'd felt the beard, the coarseness of it. It was like touching something wild, from an old forest, even though Leonardo wasn't far from tame. Ezio had seen the wildness when he had first come wounded to the workshop. He'd seen it in Leonardo's eyes, a momentary primacy at the sight of the arrow. It had its roots in fear, but it was primal nonetheless, and it was something Ezio had never seen in a woman.

He was ready to admit that they could also be wild, but he still found it to be different. He'd been with hellions before, but it was always like they were broken horses from a pasture, and he had let them loose for a night. In the morning, they went back to humility and docility. Even Caterina Sforza, by so loudly denying her societal chains, tangled herself more deeply in them.

Ezio glanced at Leonardo again out of the corner of his eye. He was still dabbing away. He had already soaked the cloth again in alcohol, but the sting was beginning to leave. Ezio saw Leonardo's intention, the fervor contained and released not by society but by himself. Leonardo was an unbound man who bound his own hands. His were the eyes that looked out of an unlocked cage. He was masculine, but his joviality made him slightly feminine, and so Ezio found himself looking in upon a regal wildcat. It was this feeling, largely unprocessed in his mind, that made his eyes want to linger. It was this feeling that had made him reach out upon waking, as if on impulse, to touch those lips and scrape at that beard.

Really, Ezio was relieved Leonardo wasn't dead, like in his dream. He would have to leave before that changed.

"Are you finished yet?" he asked.

"You become more like yourself every minute," Leonardo said. "Let me bandage it again. I have some extra wrappings." He got up and went to get them. Ezio watched him go. When he was gone, his afterimage stayed.

"This is wrong," Ezio whispered to it. It was leaning against the wall with its arms crossed. It was nothing real. Ezio knew this. He was just staring too hard at the wallpaper. "I shouldn't want to touch him so... intimately." He looked down at the sheets and touched his own lips briefly. He sought exploration. Was Leonardo's face rougher, stronger than it appeared? Was his hair coarse, like a lion's mane, or soft, like a pretty dog's? Did he feel like a woman? Ezio had never seen him even partially in the nude and didn't know if he was muscular.

Would Leonardo, if Ezio pressed his nose against his neck, smell like perfume or the landscape he visited for his paintings? Would he smell like winter or summer? What would Leonardo act like if Ezio held him around the waist or tried to kiss him? It would be a disappointment if he acted like a woman then. Ezio wanted to goad the wildcat out of its cage. He wanted to take it into the light and see it in its sleek, feline, androgynous splendor.

He didn't think about it in so many words, but all of the questions were his own. When Leonardo came back into the room, Ezio's mind had gone blank, and there was a faint buzzing in his ears.

"Is something wrong?" Leonardo asked.

Ezio made a noncommittal sound. He wasn't listening much. He'd just snapped himself into a daze, because he'd just entertained mildly sexual thoughts about his best friend.

"Ciao?"

"I'm fine," Ezio said, coming out of it a bit. Leonardo was standing in front of him and to the side, looking down on him with a quizzical face. He wasn't wearing all the things that normally made him look so bulky. He was just in a white shirt and some dark, clean pants. He'd pulled back his hair. Wildcat, indeed. He looked much too sleek to be human.

He sat down next to Ezio and Ezio helped him with the bandages. Leonardo's proximity bothered Ezio because he was having difficulty keeping his hands from touching Leonardo's loose ponytail. It was over soon, though, and Leonardo stood up.

"Sheets now," he said. "Why don't you go into the bathroom and wash? Be careful not to get the bandages wet. I can take care of this."

Ezio went as he was bidden. He filled the tub halfway with water from a small hand pump and took off his pants before the mirror. He turned to look at his shoulder, where flecks of blood already dotted his new bandage, and he looked at his muscles, which contained the archetypal rather than physical masculinity about which he was curious in Leonardo. He thought about dressing again and going back into the room. He thought about drawing Leonardo away from his task, of peeling back the white shirt and finding out what lay beneath. But he turned to the bath instead, because thinking was much safer than doing. Besides, he could much more easily entertain himself with simple thoughts rather than try to entertain himself with someone who might be unwilling to participate.