Ezio

It is a rare thing to experience love at first sight, and it is a precious thing as well, for you feel like trusting that person completely and it might be hard to hold back.
The worst things imaginable are if the person you fall for don't love you back, or simply pretends to and betrays you at a later point.

No matter the outcome, there is nothing you can do about it but try to accept it.

If you're really lucky, the person loves you back.

That is what happened to Ezio Auditore. He had fallen hard and fast for Leonardo da Vinci when they met mere days before Ezio discovered his heritage and had the extreme fortune of Leonardo feeling the same.
It had taken them some time to admit their feelings to one another, so they had sadly lost some precious time.

And now, as he followed the leader of the assassins in Konstantiniyye, he found himself experiencing it for the second time in his life.

It came as a shock to him, for he never expected to love another person as much as - or more than - his dear Leo.
But here he was, in company of the man that was the clear contradiction to that belief.

He only grew to care more and more for Yusuf, who treated him like a close friend, and their friendship was an easy, teasing one.
Well… Yusuf stood for most of the teasing anyways, but Ezio didn't mind; he found his behaviour endearing.

The days were filled with missions, so they saw little of one another, but they worked closely on the training of their new recruits.

Other times they would spar with one another; testing the others skills and learning new tricks.
Ezio enjoyed having Yusuf teach him the workings and tricks of the hookblade and bomb-crafting; especially since working with Yusuf was quite funny and Ezio felt younger because of the other man.

When he started working with Sofia, he found he quite enjoyed her company, but no matter how fond he was of her and the way her behaviour reminded him of Leonardo, he found his thoughts straying to Yusuf.

The nights were the worst, for he found himself dreaming of the other man, yearning for what he was certain would never come to be.
Sometimes Leonardo appeared in his dreams, but he was understanding; never condemning or mad at him.

They had agreed -though Ezio was very reluctant - when Ezio departed that they would stay friends - nothing more.
Leonardo could feel his age, and Ezio wasn't that young himself and seeing as Leonardo might be dead before Ezio returned or that Ezio might never return alive, it was "probably for the best," as Leo had put it when he was at the docs seeing Ezio of.

It hadn't stopped Ezio's heart from breaking. When he left, it felt as if his heart left his body, trying to stay with Leo, and Ezio knew then and there he would never see his lover again in life.

Hadn't it been for the purpose of this trip, he would have succumbed to his grief. He had lost so many in the course of his life, but leaving Leo was one of the worst things. Each loss added to his already long list only made it harder to bear, but this was a cause much larger than him, so he had to fulfil it.

It got worse and worse by each dream. What had started out by confessions, made its way to kissing, touching, thrusting and love-making – all taking place in dark alleys, in secret hideouts outside of the city only the two of them knew about, on top of the Galata tower, or the walled-in garden belonging to Sofia's bookshop when she was out on errands.

Ezio began dreading sleep, and would often stay up late reading the books in the library in the hideout, those he bought from the various bookstores and those he collected on various missions. He still got enough sleep, but he kept trying to exhaust his mind enough to be able to sleep without being haunted by these hellish dreams.

He might have grown to enjoy them – at least to a certain point – if it hadn't been for the fact that he would actually have to face Yusuf most days, and the more vivid the dreams got, the harder it was for Ezio to pretend everything was normal. So instead, he spent more and more time away from the places he knew Yusuf would most likely spend his time, and focused on training the recruits, staying with Sofia as well as collecting and reading even more books when he wasn't working on any missions.

But even so, the Eagle's mind would stray to the joker whenever he stopped reading, stopped talking or listening or simply in every single moment he let his mind wander from what he was doing.

Falling for Yusuf, so hard and fast scared him, for even though he had experienced it before, there was no guarantee it would end the same way this time around.
Sometimes he briefly thought about confessing, just to be able to escape the anxiety and doubt from gnawing at his mind all the time.
But he had decided he wouldn't do it, for he would rather suffer in silence than lose his closest friend.

At night his mind was filled with possible outcomes of their lives together if Yusuf felt even a small part for him of the way he did for Yusuf.
During the day, when he spent time with the joker, he would find himself spacing out, not focusing on what the other man was saying, and instead focusing on his body.
He focused on the way his eyes sparkled when he was excited about something, on the way his hands moved when he explained and showed, on the way his lips moved and pronounced each word, the tongue wetting his lips, the sway of his hips when he moved, the muscles rippling when he climbed, fought and sparred and the look on his face when he laughed at his own jokes and tricks.

But always, at the back of his mind, lay the same question he had previously asked himself when it came to Leonardo; 'What if he only knew?'