Disclaimer: I only own the list (which is getting interesting to add upon), Thaddeus, and the tiny ficlets with each item. You Higuri owns Cantarella…and Orange-Maple and I will slice her to ribbons if Chiaro ends up with Lucrecia.

Warnings: Slash and language

Fifteen Things

Chapter Three

By Cory

Chiaro's bowed body—immersed fully within the abrasive woolen blankets—shuddered brutally again. His breath puffed past his quivering indigo-tinted lips in trembling wheezes. He once again attempted unsuccessfully to stifle a throat-tearing cough into the blankets, as his whole body jerked convulsively.

Cesare watched wordlessly, impassively, from the other side of the tent. Thick lashes pulled together slowly as he closed his eyes and released a stuttering, pent-up breath. The cold did not affect him, as his demons slunk about. He frowned as one idly trailed past his forearm.

What would be the worst outcome? Cesare wondered. Deciding that shadowing those thoughts would lead to hesitation, crept over to his little assassin and smoothed his hands over his friend's back before threading his arms around his neck backwards.

Chiaro's body immobilized for a moment, as if her were expecting Cesare to choke his from behind. Though, somehow, he was just so warm.

"Cesare?"

"Go to sleep," Cesare ordered portentously, pressing his forehead against Chiaro's back.

11) Cesare likes the feel of Chiaro's body against his. He just wishes it was in a different context.

Michelotto could be distracting even if he was not trying. However, when he did make an effort to catch Cesare's attention, he was downright off-putting.

Such as the third day Chiaro had found himself under Cesare's command. The two boys had an awkward sense around the other; if one could leave the room when the other was present, he would do so immediately. They were wary and shy, always skittering around like hunted deer and babbling about something or other to take their minds off the fact that they were indeed perfect strangers and neither had any idea how to make an amendment on that.

This particular day was a Sunday, and each student of Perugia School solemnly inched through the halls to the chapel in their best clothes. Cesare was the picture of angelic serenity as he calmly took his seat with a practiced air of compliance. Volpe took his place behind him, standing, as one of his retainers. Chiaro held back and sat among the small group of common people occupying the pews in the back of the musty church.

It was a long service, the bishop babbling in a thick, nasal accent about something-or-other. Cesare innocently applied his usual façade of listening, while truly letting his mind wander to far more important matters.

But, of course, once he had centered his mind on the shaky relations of the Orsini family, something very potent distracted him: Chiaro casually yawning and rolling his shoulders.

Cesare blanched, watching as the young, yet slightly muscle-rounded shoulders swayed nonchalantly. His bright, impossibly blue eyes were trained on the bishop (who had slabbered out demands for atonement so much that a trickle of gleaming drool dribbled out of the corner of a withered, lipless mouth) with a distant, retracted glaze. It was a look that Cesare had seen many a time from his fellow scholars in arithmetical theory. His violet eye roved sneakily to the corner to observe his newest addition to his men, his angel of death.

He was good-looking enough, that was certain. With hair that could have been woven from the finest gold wire to eyes of shocking, mesmerizing blue and an almost childish face that seemed far too innocent for a killer so adept, he had an appearance that could have rivaled Cesare's own. He could be bent to Cesare's will, but it disappointed him slightly that a man such as him could not be totally bent to him unquestioningly. As such, his uses seemed limited, if not useless entirely. It will be a pleasure for me to find out what makes you so interesting to me, my little assassin, Cesare thought with the smallest of smirks.

12) Cesare likes (and dislikes) the fact that Chiaro may divert his attention both when he needs it and when his plannings don't.

As Volpe gently smoothed out the red robes, he wondered aloud if his master was well.

"No," Cesare answered honestly. "Where is Chiaro?" he demanded moodily of Pedro, who happened to walk in at that moment with a small basin of water for washing and a small cloth dipping over the rim.

Pedro jolted, nearly upsetting the warm, sudsy water. "I d-don't know, s-sir," he stammered out, his words tripping over each other in a rush to escape to appease Lord Cesare.

"Right here, Cesare," Chiaro murmured from behind the door. He swept in, ever the dramatic.

Cesare glared for a moment. "Well, get over here and help me with these damned laces!" he ordered, shoving back Volpe's hands. He was sweating under the coarse fabric of his blood red robes, and he had sprained his ankle in the hurry to get to his rooms to prepare for Lord of Pesaro's welcoming ceremony. He was on the verge of tearing his hair out of his scalp.

Chiaro clucked his tongue chidingly and stepped behind Cesare before the latter could command him to keep his opinions to himself. He flounced the long, stringy brown hair from the back of his flushed, perspiring neck to quickly and efficiently secure the ties.

"Are you well?" he asked distractedly as he helped tug on the rosary about Cesare.

"Of course," Cesare scoffed.

13) Cesare likes that Chiaro offers some small measure of security to him.

But I

…no! PLEASE!

Cesare twitched awake in bed, breathing heavily through gritted teeth. A taste impossible to mistake for its metallic warmth was seeping into his mouth, and his stumbled groggily out of the mass of sweaty sheets to examine his face in a mirror beside a window, through which gray moonlight dribbled. He curled his lip in distaste when he saw that he had bitten his lip through in the nightmare, with a thick trickle of blood creeping down his chin. It looked almost black in the darkness.

As he washed his face with a waterlogged cloth from the basin at his bedside, two slender and adroit arms laced around his bare torso. "Come back to bed, Lord Cesare," a pleasant, sleepy voice simpered into his ear, making very clear what the woman was intending upon their return to the bed sheets.

Cesare mentally flinched. Every whore called him that—"Lord Cesare". Even as he fucked them into the mattress, it was always "Lord Cesare" that was screamed, "Lord Cesare" that touched them, "Lord Cesare" that made it so they couldn't walk for a solid week if he had anything to say about it.

It was all wrong, simply because it was just replacement. They couldn't be him, though if he concentrated, he could block out the differences, save the fact that he wondered what it would be like if he did to him what he did to these cheap stand-ins.

Chiaro always haunted his timid fractured dreams. Some were actually quite pleasant, like dry, unprepared lips meeting his in a kiss that was all but forgotten. But not all were bearable. Chiaro haunted those timid, fractured dreams in forms that Cesare would have rather gouged his eyes out than see, like him drowning facedown in a puddle of his own blood.

14) Cesare likes that Chiaro is always with him, never more than a call's cry away. But sometimes he can't help but feel that things can't stay like that forever.

Cesare was not a happy man.

It was that damned foreign captain that his father had hired again, Thaddeus, from the northern islands. It was obvious what he want from Cesare when he gave him those rampant lingering looks from his icy blue eyes and a slow grin with wide, white teeth.

He was "far too familiar", as Volpe had mumbled, with a muscle ticking slightly in his cheek, which was the equivalent of throwing a homicidal tantrum from Volpe.

Possessive as well, Cesare thought scathingly as the captain entered his room without even so much as a knock.

"Ah, Cesare," the captain murmured, if a little disappointedly. Cesare's eyes narrowed as he recognized that Thaddeus had been intending to catch Cesare preparing for bed—or, perhaps, already in bed.

"In polite company, it is customary to knock and wait for a response before entering another gentleman's room," Cesare growled, not even bothering to hide his anger behind his typical demure pretense.

Thaddeus laughed aloud, his bronze curls bouncing in time with his chuckles. "I think you'll find that I cannot always be polite all the time." His eyes shot from Cesare to his bed and made a casual step towards him.

Cesare was anything but helpless. He was a cool-headed young man who could have easily made a break for his work desk and yanked the knife out from the top drawer before the other could have taken more than three steps. And while the captain had good years of tactical and physical experience with taking down opponents, Cesare made up for that with the darkness around him that shivered in anticipation of his kill.

"Bit late for sparring, isn't it?"

Thaddeus spun and Cesare glanced at the half-ajar doorway to see Chiaro leaning casually on the wall beside the door, a hand nonchalantly resting on the hilt of his sword.

"Lord Cesare and I were just talking," Thaddeus murmured smoothly.

"And you were just leaving, yes?" Chiaro came beside Cesare to stand next to the shorter man.

Thaddeus hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then, "Yes, of course," he supplied graciously, not even looking at Cesare as he bowed out from the room.

Cesare sighed. "He has his uses, but he is such an ingrate otherwise."

"Then stay away from him," Chiaro advised. He seemed irritated, as if the whole narrow escape was Cesare's doing.

"Maybe I should have killed him," Cesare considered aloud, only half-jokingly.

Chiaro frowned. "Perhaps not," he disagreed, and Cesare somehow found himself agreeing. After all, Cesare loved what he became with Chiaro around.

15) Cesare likes who he becomes when he's with his Light.