[A/N: ugggh with work and commissions I really have so little time. XD;; Still meant to give Second World a thorough edit… a kind reviewer pointed out a few more errors with the Italian.]

The Sword of Damocles

Chapter 13

I

The Assassin's Bureau in Latakia was stiflingly hot, and smelled pervasively of fish. A scribe's shop, albeit with the more traditional lattice roof entry, with a pretty, rectangular sandstone garden complete with a set of cushions and a miniature waterfall.

Altaïr and Malik had abandoned Ezio and Leonardo in the Bureau on the pretext that their skin color, features and eyes would be too noticeable even in the port town, and were out on Assassin business, and even the rafiq had retired to the shop front proper, where he carried out his cover business as a scribe, translating letters and writing others for illiterate sailors. They were alone.

Heartily bored, Ezio tried sleeping. It was too hot to do his exercises, hot enough that he had already stripped to his breeches and boots and sprawled facedown over the cushions. Leonardo had kept an undershirt, and seemed to be reading books on philosophy provided by the scribe rafiq, cross-legged on a cushion, so absorbed that he was oblivious to the world.

"Why is the ship late?"

"That is the sixth time you have asked, Ezio," Leonardo said absently, turning a page. "Your questions will not make it arrive any faster."

"Will night come faster if I complain?"

A quick, indulgent grin. "No."

"I think this is punishment," Ezio moaned, "From that bastardo ibn La-Ahad. He has been giving me the evil eye since that Maestri meeting where Malik said he would be coming. It is too hot to do anything and I am dying of boredom."

"There are one or two books here that are in Italian."

"I do not feel like reading. This world's Ezio spent a lot of time with you, that is what my sister said. Surely he was just as easily bored. How did you keep him entertained?"

"Do you really want to know, Ezio?" Leonardo said dryly, and Ezio's heat-sodden brain grudgingly kicked up a few less-than-comfortable memories involving Leonardo's weight against him, his wrists caught under his friend's iron fingers, Leonardo's lips pressed against his neck.

Turning facedown onto the pillows to hide his flush, Ezio muttered, "Uh… no."

Chuckling, Leonardo relented. "What did… your Leonardo do with you? Or did you not visit him?"

"I did! Often. Though it was usually about Codex pages. Or medical aid."

"Codex pages…?"

"Ah, I suppose, well, since this world's Altaïr does not have the Apple, they won't exist here. They were encrypted pages, Altaïr's journal. You were the only one able to read them so easily."

"But other than that, nothing?"

"No, we talk, sometimes, but we are… were… both very busy." Ezio said defensively. "Sometimes we play chess. Or rather, we play chess in the sense that you trounce me at chess."

"And you enjoy that?"

"I like challenge."

"I played chess with you in this world… twice, I think," Leonardo said quietly, turning another page. "There was never so much time."

The wistfulness in Leonardo's tone pushed Ezio to his feet, and he padded over towards the Bureau counter. He had seen a familiar sliver of wooden checks under a slender box and an urn, when Malik had all but shoved them into the Bureau's backroom and ordered them to sit and stay. Rooting it out and checking the box above it, he was pleased to see that it was a set, one that he had seen also in Masyaf, where 'black' was indicated by wood that was merely stained a shade darker.

Leonardo frowned as Ezio placed the cracked board before him and began to put the pieces into their place. "Ezio?"

"Entertain me. Do you want white or black?"

"Either is fine. I am rusty," Leonardo, however, closed the book, which Ezio took to be a good sign. "Very rusty."

"Good, then maybe I have a chance." Ezio finished setting the pieces, with Leonardo as white. He had always liked to see how Leonardo opened.

The fourth white pawn from Ezio's right skipped forward two spaces. "How often did you play?"

"When we are both free… which is not very often. Perhaps once or twice a month, before Lorenzo was killed, if I was in Venezia. More, afterwards. It was a quieter time, waiting to see if we would continue to pledge allegiance to the Medici." Ezio moved the pawn before his king forwards one space.

Leonardo picked up the knight on his right. "I did not know you enjoyed chess. Here, you never told me." His friend's tone was brittle, as though the discovery of another aspect to Ezio that Leonardo had not known about pained him: reminded him starkly of what he had lost, and what he would lose again, perhaps.

Ezio moved the third pawn from his right forward two spaces. "I used to play against Federico. He was not as good as you, so we were fairly even. Playing chess reminded me of him. Here, this world's Ezio did not need to be reminded."

"I suppose you are right." Leonardo murmured, as though to himself, taking the pawn before his king forward a space to defend his queen's pawn. "Then playing is not painful for you?"

"No. They were good memories. Also, playing against you tended to be entertaining. You kept becoming distracted, walking off during my turns to sketch or make endless adjustments to your contraptions. And yet, all your moves would be so brilliant." Ezio mirrored Leonardo's knight with his own.

"Entertaining, or frustrating?" Leonardo scratched at his unshaven chin, staring hard at the board.

"Both. It is not an uncommon emotion around you." Ezio watched Leonardo's fingers as they pushed up to press against his pursed lips, then walking themselves over delicate cheekbones to push back a lick of dusty bronze hair behind an ear. With an air of concentration, Leonardo moved the bishop on his right up, under his foremost pawn.

Ezio skipped the pawn before the knight on his right forward a step, into defense, and Leonardo abruptly laughed. "Have you played this set up against me before?"

"Maybe." Ezio smirked, caught in the act.

"Your choices are so quick." Leonardo mused, "A great many games we have played, I think."

"Yes."

"Yet a great chess player thinks in a multiplicity of moves in advance, who can plan and yet react with insight and creativity. Somehow, this does not seem to translate to your chosen vocation."

"I can react with insight and creativity," Ezio retorted, stifling the urge to pout. "I have enough lectures from everyone else under the sun about my weapon skills. Please, not you as well."

Leonardo castled. "So, how many times have you won?"

"Did I not say you used to trounce me?"

"You have never won?"

"Well, there was once, but you were drunk," Ezio admitted, "Drunk enough not to notice when I pocketed one of the pieces."

"So you won when you cheated."

"You were the one who insisted on playing chess while drunk." Ezio moved the bishop on his right. "I was drunk too, so we are even."

"An odd logic, Ezio." Leonardo moved his other knight under his bishop and scratching again at his chin when Ezio instantly took his first pawn in response. "Ah… could you at least put on a shirt?"

"Why?"

"It is getting a little harder to think more than ten moves ahead."

"You are usually not concentrating anyway and you still beat me." Ezio said, unrepentant, watching as Leonardo took his pawn in response, and moved up his second bishop. He had never been self-conscious of his body. "It is too hot, so I refuse. Think of it as a handicap."

Leonardo drew the castle on his right out to the open space, and Ezio immediately castled. His friend chuckled again. "Then you are doubly cheating, Ezio. You know this game, and you know the effect you have on me."

"Why, do you think this will work back in my time? I should try it," Ezio said, teasingly, and smirking as Leonardo's brow furrowed instantly. It was quite amusing how his friend continued to be uncomfortable… even jealous of the thought that Ezio would be returning to his time and to 'another' Leonardo. "Want to wager?"

"A wager?" Leonardo slid the second pawn on his left forward a space and leant back as Ezio pushed forward the pawn before his queen.

"If I win, I am going out. Help me think of something if the others come back early or if the rafiq checks on us."

"And if I win?" Leonardo edged his queen up a diagonal, pursing his lips again as Ezio moved the castle on his left in response. A knight retreated between the white king and castle, and Ezio took his black knight before his black queen.

"One kiss," Ezio suggested playfully.

Leonardo sighed loudly, placing his knights together. "Ezio."

Ezio moved back his bishop, and then held up both his hands. "Genuine offer. Not in the interests of cheating. Much."

"Do you not remember that conversation on the road?"

"Si, I do," Ezio said soberly. "I thought about it. I am… curious what it might be like, in circumstances that do not force either of our hands, but-"

"But you want a suitably immature reason that your conscience can accept?" Leonardo asked dryly.

"If you want to put it that way, you can bet on something else."

"Ezio, Ezio." Leonardo looked down at the board, his long fingers hovering over a knight, and then he smiled, slowly, and when he glanced up again, his eyes were dark with an unnerving, unreadable intensity. "Deal."

As the white bishop moved instead of the knight that Ezio had expected, slipping aggressively up the diagonal to threaten his knight, Ezio wondered if he should have foreseen this.

The game swiftly became new and ruthless, culminating in a set of forced moves on Ezio's part, and in the thrill of the game he forgot the wager, defending the best he could and trying to predict Leonardo's next move, his mouth cupped in his hands, his elbows on his knees. Leonardo, on the other hand, seemed to relax as Ezio slowed, even chuckling as Ezio was forced to use his king to take his castle.

When, perhaps inevitably, he lost in the face of a checkmate both brilliant and beautiful in its elegance, Ezio slouched back on the cushions, massaging the cramp on his shoulder that he had just noticed. "Queen sacrifice, epaulette mate. I thought you said you were rusty."

"Someone gave me a good incentive to concentrate." Leonardo said, a little hesitantly, evidently thinking that Ezio might go back on his word.

Ezio continued to stare up at the lattice ceiling, thinking. "You said that it was possible that the only reason I did not want to try was because it was different."

"Not in so many words. I did say also," Leonardo murmured, as he reset the pieces conscientiously, "That I had made my peace. I will gladly trade my part of the wager for your continued good behavior, Ezio. If either of the Maestri catch you wandering around Latakia, they will be most displeased."

"It is not as if I am unused to their displeasure," Ezio pointed out, though he made his decision, rolling up onto his knees and slinking over to Leonardo's side, slipping an arm around Leonardo's waist as the engineer froze in place.

"Ez-" Ezio curled his other hand into Leonardo's hair and pressed their lips together, tentatively, then purring and licking into Leonardo's mouth as the engineer shuddered and pressed against him, beautiful long fingers curling hesitantly over Ezio's shoulders, and then sweeping back to wrap into the assassin's tresses as Ezio used his weight to push them down over the cushions.

This felt… good, Ezio decided, with Leonardo moaning so prettily between their shared breaths and twisting so distractingly against him; Leonardo was hard, pressed against the jut of Ezio's hip and arching with a whine as Ezio moved to straddle him, their bodies grinding urgently together, instinct and reaction, and Ezio thrust his tongue down Leonardo's throat, swallowing his wounded cries.

They were suspended in time, in place, his cares temporarily beneath him as Leonardo began to stroke his back, tentative at first, his fingers shaking, then boldly, rubbing his thumbs over clearly memorized scars, making Ezio twitch and gasp wetly between them. Skilled hands, with Leonardo's obsession with detail, turned Ezio's purrs into hungry growls, all but wrenching off Leonardo's shirt, one of the assassin's hands curled tight over a shoulder, the other blindly fumbling for Leonardo's breeches.

To his surprise, Leonardo caught his wrist quickly. "Leo… Leonardo?"

The engineer was panting, his shirt soaked in sweat and plastered to his lithe frame, flushed and clearly, painfully aroused, squirming on the cushions, and Ezio wanted nothing more than to kiss him again, light headed with want and gladly drowning in the rush of easy lust. "Not… not like this."

"Like what?" Ezio growled, liquid with want, and Leonardo's fingers tightened over his wrist even as he took in a deep, unsteady breath.

"So sudden… I need to know," Leonardo said harshly, "This is too… you are too important to me, I cannot just… I will not… not like that time…"

"Leonardo, calm down." Ezio sighed, rolling onto his side and pulling Leonardo up against him, petting his naked back, soothing. "Think, and then explain. With understandable words, per favore."

Leonardo shook against him, his breath heaving, and for a moment, Ezio was afraid that the engineer was crying. He could never handle that. Before he could string together the words to ask circumspectly, however, Leonardo whispered, "If… if you tell me, that this is 'just this once, never again', I cannot-"

"What made you think I was going to say that?" Ezio muttered, tilting up Leonardo's chin and staring into dark eyes glazed with tears. Disconcerted, Ezio asked, warily, "You mean, previously, I said that?"

"It is like a cycle," Leonardo jerked his chin out of his grip, pushing his face against Ezio's shoulder. "Again, it all happens again, and it is so late. It is too late, and you will be leaving."

"Not for a while yet," Ezio said automatically, and kicked himself for saying it as Leonardo trembled; but even as Ezio dug tried and tested words of comfort from his mind, the hands against his back curled tightly into fists, and Leonardo leant up, his parted lips begging for a kiss that Ezio found himself all too happy to give.

II

"I take it Leonardo is yours again," Malik observed, as they circled in the stone garden.

This early in the morning, at least the air was crisp and chill. Leonardo was still asleep, in their tiny, borrowed rooms, but outside in the port town, the sounds of waking commerce as fishermen came ashore with their catches were enough to drown the sounds of their blades crossing. Behind Ezio, Altaïr slouched against the Bureau counter, watching silently.

"Leonardo does not belong to anyone," Ezio corrected, taking care to study Malik's footwork as his uncle had suggested. Ego aside, he was always happy to improve.

The two Maestri, thankfully not including the rafiq, had happened upon Ezio and Leonardo sleeping, half naked and the rest of their clothing in dishabille, while curled around each other on the cushions, a half-finished chess game beside them, and had instantly drawn their conclusions. Remarkably inaccurate conclusions, Ezio had to add, despite his protests. Admittedly, Leonardo's blushing and stammering had not been particularly helpful either in painting an innocent picture.

"Stubborn. Just like Altaïr is stubborn." Malik jerked his head briefly in Altaïr's direction. "Come at me again. This time, with a little more forethought. If you can play chess against Leonardo I think you should be capable of forethought, si?"

"What do you mean, forethought?"

"In chess you try to predict moves ahead of your opponent," Malik explained patiently, even as Altaïr muttered something darkly under his breath in Arabic. "This should be the same. It is not all about reacting. It is about trying to find the most economical checkmate. With enough practice, it should be subconscious."

Ezio recalled Malik and Altaïr during the sparring match, where Malik had unerringly known where Altaïr would be. "Does Maestro ibn La-Ahad fight like this?"

"Of course he does. It is the way we are trained in Masyaf. And speaking of Masyaf, we are far away from the fortress, Ezio. So remember what we said about names." Malik said, dodging Ezio's lunge and darting around him, raising his blade to deflect a slash, then parrying a second and slapping the flat of his blade smartly against Ezio's hip. "All of you Italians – even your father and uncle – can be so stubborn about formality. For months I have tried, and it is still Maestro this, Maestri that."

Ezio did not add that it felt strange to be on a first name basis with someone who had effectively been his idol since his uncle had first introduced him to the underground passage in Monteriggioni. "Uh… I suppose so."

"Try remembering, then." Their blades met again, in a slither of steel, crossing between their faces, "Watch your footing. Brace yourself."

"What was yesterday's mission about?" Ezio used his greater strength to force Malik's blade back and off-balance, and as the Maestro took a step back, he smacked Malik's across the face and brought down his blade, keeping a wary eye on Altaïr as the Maestro tensed. Malik's blade intercepted his, an inch before his shoulder, parrying neatly.

"Latakia is a good place for information. What we sought was not related to Roma, but to the void left in this region now that Al Mualim is gone. Altair and I needed to send instructions to Masyaf. That is partly why we did not invite you along with us," Malik shrugged. "That was good. But had I both of my arms, it would not have worked."

"I know," Ezio admitted, with a grin of mischief. "You have a little trouble balancing. That is why your footwork is so beautiful. You try to compensate."

" 'Beautiful'?" Malik repeated, amused, again darting around Ezio as he lunged. Ezio managed to avoid the first slice, but not the second, the flat of Malik's blade smacking lightly over his lower back. "What a strange word to use. You Italians."

"Malik," Altaïr pushed away from the counter. "Let me take over."

"He will not learn anything from you," Malik circled again at a lunge, kicking at the back of Ezio's knee. As it gave, Ezio rolled instantly and up onto his feet, only to freeze as he felt Altaïr's hidden blade against his throat, from behind him. Malik lowered his blade, though his smile was one of fond exasperation. "You have never bothered to teach. You just crush those who are foolhardy enough to ask you to spar."

"He is not listening to you either." The blade withdrew, and Ezio flinched and growled as a four-fingered hand patted his rump briefly, almost proprietarily. "He is just treating this like play. If it was a little more dangerous perhaps he would pay attention."

"I do not want Ezio cut to ribbons without the mission having even truly started," Malik said dryly, though he sheathed his blade and moved around to the Bureau counter.

"Fine. I will not use a blade." Altair walked past into the garden proper, beckoning. "Try to scratch me, Ezio."

"Is he trying to insult me?" Ezio asked Malik, a little irritable at the presumption. Surely he was not this lacking.

"Try to bleed him first, friend Ezio," Malik suggested, with a secretive smile that Ezio decided that he did not like in the least.

True enough, an all too short time later, Ezio was pressed to the sandstone floor, his right arm twisted around him and Altair seated on his back, the blade a couple of metres out of reach.

"Again," Altair decided.

"I do not think I learned anything, Maestro," Ezio said breathlessly. His elbow ached painfully where Altair had slammed the edge of his palm, and the older assassin's knee was digging sharply against his ribs.

"Use my name, Ezio. And so, again, until you learn something."

Several painful attempts later, Ezio remarked, flat on his back and aching in entirely novel locations, "I think I like Malik more."

"Then it looks as though we have something in common." Altair nudged his leg with the heel of his boot. "Get up."

-tbc. Chess game is "Hoi Ploy", Hoi v Gulko. I know how to play chess but I'm not a serious player by any means (I prefer Chinese chess), so, uh, chess fanatics… sorry, lol.-