paradisalogs | (no subject)

Who: Ezio Auditore and youuu
What: Running about sadly.
When: Tonighhhttt.
Where: The roof!
Rating: PG idek

He’s been at a loss for days.

So many others make announcements –– so-and-so is gone, such-and-such has left the Castle. Ezio isn’t sure how to do that. He’s seen many people to their deaths and given them some fashion of last rites, but he’s never informed someone of a death personal to him. Not since his father or his brothers, but even then, it’d gone a little unsaid. It had been in a crisis, when he’d been awake for countless hours and been running non-stop and had blood on his hands.

This was a lazy afternoon, and it happened in utter silence.

He wonders what the last thing he said to them was –– surely for Stephanie it was a goodbye of some sort, a kiss on her cheek, a few wisps of blonde hair escaped from her ponytail and tickling his face. He’d surely grinned and teased her about something as he waved and headed off down the hall, back towards his room. Perhaps she’d left shortly after that, stretched out in bed for an afternoon nap after their lunch date.

Cassandra, he knows what he said to her last –– it was a cheery “a presto” and that pet name he’d started using for her, maialina. He’d finally peeled himself from bed after pressing one last kiss to the tip of her nose. She is different from Italian girls, in some ways, from the modest roundness of her nose to her softer cheeks, her larger eyes… everything about her is special, even her nickname. He’d picked one for her that he hadn’t used on any other girl before, too, because he thought the girl he’d committed himself to deserved that.

And now he’s alone again.

-x-

Ezio walks the line of the castle’s ramparts without even looking, as if he weren’t mere inches from tumbling off the edge and falling to his death. The leather soles of his boots are soft, so the occasional veer to the side isn’t any trouble — his toes just curl around the edge for an instant and he keeps going. It’s an unthinking gesture. He shifts his weight, he corrects himself, he walks.

He has to do something to keep himself busy, even if it’s scaling the castle unharnessed, even if it’s pacing the ramparts like some sort of deranged tightrope walker. If he doesn’t, he’ll drink or mourn or sleep, and right now he doesn’t fancy any. It’s been a long week of that, anyway.

So for now, he indulges in a bit of free-running.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Katniss doesn't normally roam the roofs - she still doesn't particularly like heights - but she's missing Mark tonight so she is sitting up where he liked to run his show on the roof. Sitting, in a lazy cross-legged position, she looks up to the stars and wonders, not for the first time, if she should bring the music back.

After talking to Ben, it seems like a better idea all the time.

She jerked with surprise when she heard the scrabbling noise of leather against stone, reaching for her arrow and drawing it, just as Ezio appeared. She cursed, before dropping her shot. "God Damn It, Ezio! I could have killed you!"

Ezio almost laughs –– almost. He's tired and emotionally worn out, but he's still got the same flippant response to nearly getting killed as always.

"A few arrows would not stop me, dolcezza," he says, with his usual Italian flippancy.

He slows to a stop, too, crouching down next to her and leaning his elbows on his knees. No matter now shitty he feels, he puts on a teasing smile for her.

"Besides, if you had tried, I think I might have taken them anyway, just in case they were Cupid's arrows!"

She rolls her eyes at that, as she tucks her arrow away again. "We would have seen if you really believed that, after I shot you through the throat accidentally."

She doesn't lean back, arching an eyebrow at him, with a faint smirk.

"Please, as if we don't know you could have ducked out of the way of those, easily enough."

He hops off the rampart, moving to sit down next to her.

"Ahh!" He smiles, almost blithely. "I have taken a good number of arrows in my days, but have dodged a fair number, too. You know how good I am."

She folded her knees in, giving him the same dry look, but she smiled at the end of it.

"Yes, I do. You're a regular shadow. One day you'll have to teach me your tricks."

He sees that smile, and he reaches over to playfully pinch her cheek, right where that smile is.

"You need only ask, you know," he says.

Well, that gets him a mock-glower, but the smile returns a moment later. Then her grey eyes go quiet, and thoughtful. "...All right, this is me. Asking. How do you do what you do?"

Ezio cups her face in his hand, friendly as always, stroking her cheek with his thumb.

"Do you want me to tell you, or show you?"

She looked up at him, and her smile softened, even with the spark in her grey eyes.

"Well go on, show me."

"You have to see all the little things," Ezio replies, a little fondly. "Enough that you can tell where an enemy is without even looking at them proper, just by the pace of their footfall or the way they carry on. If you get close enough like this, close enough that you can see the blacks of their eyes, you even notice how they breathe."

Katniss's eyebrows rose, impressed, before she tilted her head to the side a little. "And how do you accomplish that? Is it some twitch, in their throat? Their pulses pumping? Maybe just the way their eyes widen?"

"All of those things! Here," he says, taking her hand and moving it to his chest, splaying out her palm so she can feel the thump-thump of his heart. "You feel that? You need to see it. If I am excited –– I have been running –– the body will show it in many ways."

She would have flushed more, with having her hand on his chest, but she was pulled into this touching by interest alone. She listened to his heart beating faster, and murmured. "Your pulse is up. You feel slightly sweaty to the touch, and you are ... so warm."

Grey eyes opened, focusing on him. "Your eyes have that kick of adreneline gleam. Like you've just done dangerous things and want to do more."

He nods, and he spreads his fingers over hers, pinning her hand there.

"See? You're noticing," he says, his heart beating mere inches under her palm. "Do you want to do dangerous things with me?'

She felt the thud of his heart, the movement of his blood through his shirt and through his fingertips, as she considered the offer. After a moment, she nodded her head, a slow smile working over her face.

"Yes ... let's go do dangerous things, Ezio."

"It would be my pleasure," he replies, shifting in just the slightest bit closer. She's a young and pretty thing, a revolutionary, a woman ahead of his curve –– just the kind he likes. He'd like to think she is as lonely as he is, too, seeing as her boyfriend left so many months ago, just as Cassandra has left him now, and Stephanie, too.

He leans in enough to brush the tip of his nose against hers, but then pulls back a bit.

She crooked up one corner of the mouth into a smile, tilting her head at him as he brushed their noses together. Amusement quirked her lips. "So tell me, how exactly is this living dangerously?"

Ezio gives a bit of a snort, and he shifts his free hand to cup her cheek. He's prompted to save face, despite his thoughts, and he leans right back in again.

"You can be so cheeky," he says, and this time he goes in for a proper kiss.

She tipped up that eyebrow again, before giving him the faintest of smirks.

"It's that attitude you like, you know." And then his lips are on hers and it's ...well. It's not bad. Different, in a good way. She breathed out, kissing back lightly.

Ezio shifts, leaning against the rampart and taking his hand from hers to instead snake his arm around her waist. He feels a little hot in the face and there's a bit of guilt swelling in his gut already, but her mouth is surprisingly soft.

"It is," he says, brushing his thumb against her cheek, gently. "I like girls like you."

"I know you do." She tilted her head at him, and her grey eyes loose a touch of icy-grey, to sun-warmed clouds. "So it makes me wonder, who are you thinking about, who is so like me, when you are kissing me?"

She tilted her dark head at him, "Because trust me, I know what goes into a kiss you have to sell, and one you mean."