"Ludo?"
His dark hair son looked up at him and gave him a tight smile. "Papa."
Machiavelli eased down next to him, looking around. He recognized their surroundings as Sant-Andrea. "I'm so happy to see you," he told the twenty year old.
"Are you really happy to see me?" Ludovico seemed subdued and with a jolt, Machiavelli realized that this whole conversation had already taken place, had happened hundreds of years now and his son was long dead. Still, the boy was here, only in my mind, Machiavelli realized. I remember how this conversation ended back when it actually happened, too…
"I really am," he said, tears filling in his eyes; he would give anything for this not to be a dream. He grabbed his son's hand, giving the fingers a firm squeeze. "I understand now why you stopped writing back to me."
Ludo looked over at him, a flash of fear in his eyes- that stopped the Italian magician's heart for a moment. "Papa, I can explain…"
Is the old conversation going to play out the way it did, no matter how I've changed? Machiavelli wondered desperately. Of course, these are my memories… this isn't really happening… "I don't want any explanations," he said, then cursed. That was what he'd said last time too. He hastened to explain, himself. "I've missed you so much, Pippolo. You did such a good job doing everything I wasn't around to do."
"You're not mad?"
The Italian immortal shook his head. "No. I'm so sorry for what I said last time. I regret every mean thing I've ever said or done to you and your brothers and sisters. I wish I could take them all back now."
"It's okay. Really," he assured him, interpreting the look on his father's face. "I love you, we all love you. Will you go see Guido? He's been asking when you'd come…"
~MB~
"Mmm," Machiavelli sighed. Something had woken him up- a car honking on the street below perhaps. Without opening his eyes, he stretched out to his full six feet, rotating his hip so that it popped softly. He rotated his head in a similar fashion, relishing the small pleasures of the early morning.
"Having fun?"
The Italian jolted fully awake. "Scatty?" he cried out, propping himself up.
She saluted him, a little smile on her face. "Hi." She was crouched on his bed, sitting very nonchalantly. "I was wondering when you were going to wake up."
"How long have you been here?"
"Maybe ten minutes," she decided, looking at her watch.
He pulled the blankets up even farther. "I'm not wearing anything!" he protested.
"Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Why didn't you put pajamas on? You seem kind of cold…"
He sputtered. "You're enjoying this too much," he protested at last, slinking low in the bed.
She grinned. "Yeah, a bit…" She shrugged. "Call me a cretin. You're really not wearing anything? Like, nothing?"
"I was… tired after yesterday," he explained defensively.
She got up off the bed and opened the top drawer to the dresser. Successfully locating his undergarments, she tossed one to him. He pulled it on under the covers and sat up at last. "What's the hour?"
"It's eleven." She cast a dark look at the photo album on his side table. "Why are you keeping that with you?"
"Good reminder not to get my hopes up," he said quietly. He rubbed his chest self-consciously; he was still not very used to being so exposed in front of anyone. It had been one thing for Billy to see him in various stages of undress- Billy had taken care of him all summer and had seen much worse. Now, he felt a little odd, being stripped down to his skivvies in front of the Shadow. Still, he had to get up at some point; might as well be now. He stood up.
She looked at him. "I think you should get your hopes up," she told him, but didn't pursue the conversation further. "You look older, Niccolo."
"I think I am a year old," he agreed. "Yesterday was the one week mark again since the last time." He stepped around her and peered into the closet. He carefully extracted a pair of dress pants and a button down shirt.
"Billy's missed two of your birthdays now, then," she said softly.
"He didn't remember. He didn't call," Machiavelli said, trying to sound nonchalant. "That's okay. Birthdays get old when you have them once a week." He smiled at her.
"How old are you now?"
Machiavelli pulled a face. He stopped getting dressed to think about it; he sat at the bottom of the bed in his socks and garters and thought it over. "My body is twenty, twenty one maybe. I'd have to ask Billy. I think he was keeping track of it in his notebook."
"In another week or two, you'll be the same age as our Kid," she reminded him.
He grinned. "Yeah, that will be a trip." He pulled up his pants and tucked his shirt in; the Italian immortal looked in the mirror on the closet door. "I think I'm finally back to my full height," he decided, feeling very happy about that particular fact. "Everything else is how long… everything else has grown in," he mumbled, realizing at the last minute what he was saying. He glanced at her and ducked his face away.
"Billy will be happy to hear it," she said drily.
He doubted it. "What would you like to do today?" he asked her, straightening his tie in his reflection.
"I had an idea I thought you might enjoy."
"Oh, yeah?" He raised an eyebrow.
~MB~
Machiavelli had doubted that they would find actually good quality suit shops in Philadelphia, but Scatty had decried his doubts as the opining of a snob. "Besides, now that you're your regular height, don't you want to wear the clothes that you normally would wear?"
"Sure," he agreed. "But I'm used to wearing top quality," he reminded her.
"Well, we might not be able to get the suit woven with actual gold- seriously, you had clothes like that?- but I'm also not suggesting we drop you off at a Men's Warehouse either."
Tilting his head, he'd agreed to let Scatty take him where she would. And that was how they'd found themselves in not one, not two, but three different shops.
The first shop was a strange mix of sedate and indecorous. True, you could buy a three piece, pinstriped suit. But you could also get-
"I want you to try this one on," she cajoled, holding up one dress shirt.
He took it hesitantly. "You and Billy are always trying to get me in strange colors."
"It's violet, boo. That's not a strange color." He made a slight face. She picked up another shirt. "How about iris?"
"That's a little better," he agreed, compromising. He matched a light blue tie with a diamond pattern to the shirt and set in in the pile. "I'll need a light gray suit," he mused, looking among the classic fit suits.
"I can't believe how much you like to shop," she laughed.
"I enjoy being well dressed," he said, holding one suit up to his body, then putting it aside in favor of another. He looked at his reflection in the full length mirror before glancing over at her. "I can't believe you enjoy shopping…"
"I'm having fun dressing you up. It's like having a life size Ken doll," she huffed, leaning against him. She made a goofy face at the mirror, making him laugh.
"Never pictured you to be the type that likes dolls…"
She held up a hand and rocked it back and forth. "Eh. My father never approved of the sort of thing so I wouldn't really know, but… this is fun."
The second location they found was not so much a suit shop as the apartment of a grumpy Italian tailor that Machiavelli, of course, took an instant liking to. Not two minutes into their interaction had passed before both men were chatting in rapid fire Italian, the immortal's usually accent free way of speaking now completely muddled by a pronounced accento fiorentino.
Scatty sat behind a table, watching with dubious interest as the two men, her tall thin companion and the portly mustachioed tailor, looked over suit fabrics, different cuts and styles of suits, and pictures of what she could only guess was the man's hometown.
She was pretty sure that at one point Machiavelli introduced the man but his name got mixed up among all the other Italian phrases being thrown around. Niccolo noted with some amusement that she took to calling the man Benvolio, something he found charmingly ludicrous.
Scatty watched with some amazement as the little tailor took twenty one different measurements of her companion, from the natural waistline to the scye depth. Machiavelli himself didn't mind the somewhat intrusive nature of taking measurements; he'd been fitted by far too many tailors to care who was measuring where. He wiggled his eyebrows at her, making her smile.
And after all that the tailor still had to make the suits commissioned to him by the Italian immortal. Machiavelli and him held a very spirited conversation over the particular fabric for each suit, arguing with each other in a familial sense of camaraderie. Despite banging the table at one point, causing the Shadow to startle, the two men still embraced at the end of the whole affair, acting like long lost brothers.
"I'm sorry, it was very rude of me to switch languages on you," he apologized as they made their way from the back of the apartment with the intention of going home and dropping off all their parcels.
"Io parlo italiano," Scatty said almost absently.
Machiavelli dropped his boxes where he was standing. Hastily gathering them up again, he looked at her in surprise. "Parli italiano? All this time?"
She nodded. "Naturally. I speak several languages, didn't I ever tell you that?"
"You didn't."
"Oh, I thought I did. Oh well."
He followed behind her throwing all the packages on the couch, distracted by this new information. "I miss having someone to speak Italian with," he said earnestly.
"I got that fact- I thought you two were going to be singing the Italian national anthem soon."
He gave her a lopsided grin. "Perhaps if we'd been there ten more minutes," he decided. "I do not have the chance to speak Italian with a native speaker very often, especially these days. I enjoyed today."
"You were surprisingly restrained," she observed, looking over his choices.
"Are you being serious?"
"I was actually. I'm not saying this won't come to an insane amount of money; I'm just saying knowing what a diva you are, I expected more."
Having finally extracted him from the tailor's humble abode, Scatty took one set of the boxes they'd bought and carried it in her left hand. "Have all the suits you could ever want now?"
He nodded. "For now," he agreed happily. "I love a good Italian suit."
"You don't say," Scatty said drily, but quietly. "Wait, Mac, where'd you go?" The Italian had stopped walking, meaning that she'd left him temporarily behind. As she doubled back to where he was, he glanced at her. "This better not be another suit shop," she said somewhat grumpily, coming to his side.
"It's not," he promised. "You are going to hate me though…" She raised an eyebrow. "Can we go in? For just a second?"
"Sure," she agreed, following him into the dusty bakery he'd noticed when they'd first passed, earlier that afternoon. After some serious discussion, they bought an entire chocolate Mogador cake.
"It feels like we've been in more than three shops today," she told him conversationally, the two immortals eating their way through opposite sides of the cake.
"That might just be the sugar crash," he told her, tapping his fork against him nose before realizing what he was doing. "Mm, I think we needed this."
"We definitely needed this." She yawned. "Next time I suggest we go shopping together, you'll remind me of this feeling, won't you?"
"Did you not have fun?" he asked her, somewhat anxiously.
"I did enjoy myself, really I did, Mac," she assured him. He looked unconvinced. "I probably should have realized how serious you would take this, is all. But it was fun dressing you up."
He smiled at her. "Want to find a dress now? I'll pay for it."
She huffed. "No, dressing me up is no fun. Besides, when would I ever wear a dress?" she pointed out. They packed up the rest of their cake and began to gather Machiavelli's packages.
"If you get a dress, I'll bring you out dancing," he enticed, exiting out onto the street again. "I think I'm all done buying clothes for a little while," he added thoughtfully. They strolled down the road, cutting down side streets to find their way home. He continued to coax her, feeling immeasurably happy.
Snagging his keys from his pocket, she bounced up the steps to open the door. "Fine, Mac, someday you can buy me a dress. But not right this moment. I'm tired of shopping. And no dancing tonight, either," she declared. "We've been walking around all day with all of these packages," she swept her hand in a wide circle to indicate the various articles of clothing around them.
"It was a superb suggestion," he said, his face glowing with enjoyment. "I greatly enjoyed our shopping trip. You're very patient."
