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i.
When Machiavelli was sixteen, he met La Volpe for the first time. It was his first real Assassins meeting, his father having brought him along because he was too bright to waste. During the meeting, Niccolò said almost nothing—uncharacteristic—and just listened. At the end, he left with his father, thoughtful.
“I will find you at home when we are done,” said his father, and vanished into the city streets, going to the job that Paola had passed on to him from the Auditore, and he left Niccolò alone. In the dark, he stood for a long moment, fingering the knife up his sleeve, and almost jumped when someone laughed, quietly.
Spinning around, Machiavelli had his knife drawn before he’d turned completely, but instead of an attacker, he found one of the men from the meeting waiting for him. Watching him.
La Volpe. The thief, king of Firenze. He smiled, his purple eyes bright under his hood, and watched Machiavelli carefully before he relaxed from the crouch he held on the rooftop, swung his legs down, and pillowed his chin on his fist.
“Your father speaks very highly of you,” the man said, and with his face in deep shadow from his hood, Machiavelli couldn’t find his expression. He did, however, put his knife away. “He says you have a bright mind, although tonight, you said nothing.”
“It is best to watch before making assumptions about what to say,” the young man replied. “It’s rude to give incorrect information, especially when my fallacy could prove the death of my father and allies.” La Volpe made a quiet noise, still watching him, carefully.
“You did not speak once.”
“Neither did you,” Niccolò narrowed his eyes. “You, in fact, arrived late.”
“I am old,” the thief shrugged, his cape rustling slightly, casting a shadow over Machiavelli on the ground. “At my age, you can lose your sense of time.”
“At your age, stalking a man through the night with ill intent across rooftops is usually seen as impossible.” Niccolò grinned with teeth for a moment, and then added, “Be careful, or your knees shall fail, and you shall fall.”
“I never fall,” La Volpe said, and then slipped down from the rooftops. By the time Machiavelli reached where he landed, the thief was gone—vanished, into the darkness.
ii.
After that meeting, Niccolò watched La Volpe even more carefully. For two years, while he trained and apprenticed, he watched the man. At first, he was only able to tell a few things—La Volpe was not over-tall, but was exceedingly lean, his muscles wiry and built for sprinting. He was restless: he rarely sat still, always bouncing on the balls of his feet, his hands so quick at pickpocketing that occasionally Machiavelli realised all-too-late that he’d been stolen from.
As the years went on, he noticed more. The fact that, despite wearing clothes so bright they blinded the eyes, La Volpe could blend into a crowd so well that he was lost in moments. His face, which he never fully revealed, was narrow and slender, with thin lips and fine lines around his eyes and mouth.
His eyes were, truly, purple.
When Machiavelli was eighteen, he finally went to the thief for training, and found La Volpe relaxed in his false-fronted tavern, feet up on a stool, nimble hands folded on his lap.
“It’s about time,” the thief drawled, not breaking eye contact with Niccolò. “If you are as quick with your hands as you are with your mouth, I’ll be curious to see how you do.” Machiavelli kept his face gentle, took a few deep breaths.
“What will I do?” Paola walked with him, his father fought with him, would La Volpe steal with him?
“Go to the Piazza della Signoria tomorrow, and sit. Watch, all day. Do not speak to anyone. At sunset,” La Volpe smiled, and Niccolò could see a hint of teeth between his thin, expressive lips, “Find me.”
So simple, it seemed.
“What am I looking for?”
“You must tell me.”
“This seems counter-intuitive to stealing,” Machiavelli replied at last, eyes narrowed. “What is the point of this?” La Volpe laughed, shaking his head.
“For your quick tongue, you are yet so young.” He scratched his chin. “You must think of that for yourself, boy, or do you want to lose your reputation for your sharp mind?”
Niccolò snapped his jaw shut so fast and hard that his teeth clicked, and he smiled, his mouth a rictus, and left the tavern in a rage so cold he shook all the way home. He did not sleep that night, wired and on-edge, and the next morning went out before dawn to find a place to sit in front of the Palazzo. He debated the rooftops, but that would probably be considered outside the bounds of the instruction the thief had given him. Instead, Machiavelli picked a bench in the shade of a wall and pulled up the hood of his cloak, hiding his face and identity, and sat. The morning passed achingly slowly, and he watched. At first, he began to nod off, bored, but then he began to notice.
He noticed...clothes. He noticed the way people walked. As he picked single people to stare at, he would notice their hands, how they checked their coinpurses, how they checked the hidden pockets where they kept their greatest valuables, and then, he began to look more closely. He noticed how men would stare at women, he noticed how men would stare at men, even more hidden. He noticed nimble-fingered children, and as the sun inched across the skyline, he began to see, perhaps, what La Volpe had intended him to.
Eventually, the sun began to set, and Niccolò looked around, his sharp eyes trying to pick out where La Volpe might be hiding. He saw many men and women who looked like they might be the thief, but soon enough, he paused, and looked to the side on the bench.
There was an older man sitting there, his auburn hair going to grey here and there, his lean face haggard less with exhaustion and more with age. He was part-unshaven, and when Niccolò narrowed his eyes, the stranger looked at him and smiled.
His eyes were violet.
“Slow on the uptake, perhaps, but you found me.”
“How did you...” the young man began, and the thief shrugged, offering no more answers than stretching his long legs out into the street.
“Tell me what you saw today, Machia.” Niccolò bristled slightly at the nickname, but paused before he answered.
“Body language. People let you know just where they keep their most hidden valuables, with their hands or their eyes. I noticed how thieves slip through the crowd—you never go against the grain, always with. Wait until people are jostling. Never go for a man walking alone.”
“Very good,” La Volpe murmured, nodding. “You do have quite the skill.” If Machiavelli had been a pigeon, he would have preened. “Tomorrow, come here again. This time, I want you to pick a single person to tail, someone about whom you know nothing, who has no obvious sins. You will follow them, for three days, and meet me here again at dusk on the third day, and tell me everything you have learned.”
“How will you know I’m not lying?” Machiavelli asked, a mix of genuinely curious and, also, petulant.
“I am a great deal better at following than you are,” La Volpe replied, his slim face crossed with a smirk, and then he stood up, turned around, and clambered up the near-sheer side of the building.
Once he was gone, Machiavelli closed his eyes for a moment, the pleased, teasing smirk burned onto the front of his brain, making an odd feeling in his throat.
He had never seen La Volpe without a hood before.
Three days later, Machiavelli looked up as La Volpe walked up to him where he sat on the bench. The thief was back in his usual yellow tunic and hose, his hood up over his face, hiding all but his shadowed violet eyes.
“What did you learn?” Said La Volpe, hands braced on his hips.
“Bartolomeo’s wife has been carrying on an affair with their serving maid, and he knows—there is a peephole he has cut into the cupboard where they carry on, and he watches. Their daughter plans to run away from home and join a condotierre group, their son has fallen madly in love with the miller’s wife. Bartolomeo himself has been stealing fruit from his friend’s stand, and does not intend the man to ever find out. He is also the one that drowned the family dog, which he believes was a mercy killing.” Machiavelli’s lip curled—that last one had horrified him.
“And where do they keep their valuables?” Trust a thief to have a one-track mind.
“There is a safe beneath the flower garden, Bartolomeo carries his purse in a hidden pouch inside his codpiece, and his wife keeps her love notes within the pantry, under the meat seasoning.”
“Oh,” La Volpe said, his low voice smooth like butter, his face a thin smile, “Very good.” Machiavelli sat for a moment—there was more here than the man was letting be known. “You have one final test,” La Volpe said, at last. “You have one week. In that time, you will learn everything about me. At sunset on the seventh day, we will meet here. We will see then if you are ready to become an Assassino.”
“Yes, La Volpe,” Machiavelli said, and the man smiled.
Seven days was not so much. And yet, it was more than he had possessed previously.
At the end of those seven days, Machiavelli sat, defeated, on his bench. What had he learned, really? He, Machia, who was so smart, had only managed a little. When La Volpe landed, crouched beside him on the bench, he looked over at the older man.
“Prove to me the look on your face is wrong,” said the thief. “What did you learn?”
“That very little about you is true,” Machiavelli replied, and La Volpe laughed.
“You are not wrong. It is not what about me is true, but what about me is true and why. Tell me what you learned, Machia.”
“You are at least fifty.” La Volpe shrugged; it was not a lie. “But you look no older than a man of forty, and people speculate you are even younger, or perhaps, even older. You cannot read or write, you one robbed Il Magnifico out from under his own nose, and you have never lost a race.”
“Where do I keep my valuables?”
“All you treasure is your tavern, the rest is the Creed.” The thief raised his eyebrows—this close, Machiavelli could see them. There was a look of surprised pleasure on his face; so Machiavelli had at least lived up to that much.
“Very good, Machia. And what is my real name?”
“Nobody knows.” La Volpe smiled, his purple eyes twinkling.
“As I wish it. You have done very well, Machia. I am very pleased with your progress.” He hopped off of the bench, stretching his legs, and then, after a moment, looked back at Machiavelli, who was biting his lower lip, unsure. “What is the last thing you learned?”
“You are...”
“Nothing is true,” La Volpe prompted, one hand on his hip. Machiavelli took a deep breath. “Everything is permitted.”
“You are a sodomite.” La Volpe grinned, and then, leaned down and kissed Machiavelli full on the mouth, his hood pressing against the younger man’s forehead. Stunned, Niccolò didn’t move, blinking, until the thief pulled back, tapped him gently on the lips with one finger.
“You are good indeed. A rival to our prodigal Auditore, I think.”
Niccolò, without quite even knowing why, flushed.
iii.
When Machiavelli was nineteen, he met Ezio Auditore—who, at ten years his senior, was an inconvenient, annoying hunk of muscle without a shred of Machiavelli’s head for tactics and politics, although he had charisma in spades, something Niccolò had always been lacking. After they rescued him, and the Apple, from Rodrigo Borgia (scum that he was), Niccolò found himself dragged unwillingly into the celebrations in Teodora’s brothel.
It was perhaps halfway into the evening, long after many of the other older Assassins had vanished off with a girl, or off to bed, that Niccolò found him roused from watching the revelries by La Volpe folding his lanky body into the chair beside him, the older thief thoughtful.
“You’re the youngest of us here,” the thief pointed out, beginning the conversation on a note that Machiavelli already didn’t like, “Surely, you should be celebrating the most, no?” His smile so rarely reached his eyes, now as ever, but the words rolled off his tongue slow and rough, all his syllables pulled to the greatest degree.
“One of us, at least, must be in possession of his full senses,” Machiavelli countered, tapping his fingers on the hilt of his sword. “I daresay I am the one person here who hasn’t drunk anything tonight.”
La Volpe smiled, and this time it reached his eyes.
“How do you know I have not drunk? Do I seem any less infuriating than usual?”
Machiavelli narrowed his eyes, because the older man was playing at something—he practically stank of it, and while Niccolò might be only nineteen, he had known the thief long enough to hear the playful tone in his voice.
“What are you getting at,” he said at last, eyes still narrowed. “Do you have some point?”
“Yes,” La Volpe leaned closer, slid across the table—and once again, now that they were close enough, Machiavelli could see his face clearly under his hood, the handsome lines of his thin cheeks, the greying auburn hair that fell in around his jaw. “I want you to find out if I’ve drunk.”
“You don’t smell like it.”
“A good assassin uses more than just his sense of smell.” Oh, and the man was goading him, clearly goading him, trying to get a rise. It was working, too, damn him, and when La Volpe grinned, showing straight white teeth, Niccolò snarled something extremely rude under his breath and leaned forward the last inches between them and kissed the older man full on the mouth.
The year before, their kiss had been chaste, closed-mouth, and (against his will) Machiavelli had thought of it often since. There was something about La Volpe—perhaps it was that he knew almost nothing about the old wily thief, perhaps it was the fact that he was simply older, or his prodigious talent and skill. He was now the oldest Assassin in the Italian order bar Mario Auditore, and he wore that title like a cloak of power and reputation, famous—infamous—and he had clearly liked Machiavelli from the start. That was why, curious, Niccolò opened his mouth, grabbed La Volpe by the front of his tunic, and dragged him closer, tongue pressing roughly up against the back of the older man’s teeth, who made a noise of pleased surprise into his mouth.
He, indeed, did not taste like wine, as Machiavelli had expected. Instead, he tasted vaguely of the earlier dinner, and something all entirely his own, wet and heavy, yet biting. After a moment, Niccolò pulled back, slightly out of breath, and stared into the older man’s bright violet eyes. This close, he could see they were even brighter in the centre—almost lavender, near-glowing.
“Tesoro,” La Volpe said, quietly, “You are ever full of surprises.” His voice was thick and deep, and Machiavelli felt something up his spine, his hair standing on end. He bit his lower lip for a moment, still not letting go of La Volpe’s tunic, and looked around, furtive.
They were practically alone, only Teodora left, the nun relaxed by the fire, embroidering and humming. She clearly had not noticed, and assuaged, Machiavelli stood up and dragged La Volpe with him, the thief following with a curious noise of assent until they were in an alcove, one of the many specifically designed for a quick tryst.
There were, he supposed, a great many good things about having an assignation in a brothel.
“This,” La Volpe said, as Machiavelli put his back to the wall of the alcove, letting the older man box him in, “Was not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Oh, to chase you for a few years, eventually win you to my bed, perhaps, and call that a success.” Niccolò found himself smiling.
“Then you underestimate me.” Oh, yes. He may have only been inducted a year (longer than Ezio, which had given him more than one bright flush of pride), but he had learned much in that time. Less of the love between men, but more of what it could be.
His childhood days of horror at the church doctrine were long gone.
Rather than banter any more, Niccolò grabbed La Volpe again and pulled him back for another kiss, the older man leaning his hands on either side of his waist, hood falling back after Niccolò got a hand into his hair, dragging his head closer. Their bodies slid up against each other, pressing hot through tunics, and Machiavelli muffled a moan into the thief’s mouth as he wrapped one arm around the younger man’s waist, dragged him closer, pressing their hips flush together.
“Oh,” he said, breathless, before La Volpe kissed him again, tongue pressing up against the roof of his mouth, and before he even knew what was happening Niccolò had both his hands tangled in the older man’s hair, pulling him closer, spreading his legs for one lean, wiry thigh to press up against the hard ache between them.
“Tesoro, you could drive a man to madness,” La Volpe whispered against his kiss-swollen lips, and Niccolò closed his eyes, pressing a muffled moan against the older man’s shoulder.
“W-Why?” His voice came out choked and unexpectedly tight, and La Volpe laughed, an uninhibited wild thing, and kissed him again, biting at his lower lip.
“Young men are so damn responsive.”
“Oh,” Niccolò understood, at last, and dug his fingers into the back of the older man’s neck, biting down on his lower lip until it bed to muffle the sound that threatened to come out when La Volpe pressed the meat of his palm down against one of his nipples, grinding hard into the soreness on his chest. It was over all too soon, Machiavelli biting back noise and kissing the thief desperately as he rode the older man’s thigh to completion, gasping into his mouth when he came, only to pull La Volpe’s hips flush to his own and let the older man grind his heat fast and hard and panting against the arch of one of Niccolò’s hipbones.
Afterward, boneless and wild-eyed, La Volpe kissed him again, once more, and then squeezed his cheek, eyes surprisingly fond.
“You had best get some rest.” La Volpe’s voice was rough and utterly wrecked, and Niccolò blinked, still stunned. “We must leave for Firenze in the morning.”
“Ah,” he blinked. Again. “Yes.” The thief vanished moments later, leaving Niccolò flushed and damp in the alcove, shaking slightly, staring after him. His first taste had been fleeting, his second a desperate gulp. There was something about the man, the arrogant way he sauntered, his jeering taunts, his sharp teeth and sharper tongue, that made the Assassin want to drink in full.
iv.
Firenze was burning, inside and out, and the physical pain and grief it caused Machiavelli was worse than the material loss. His city, his beloved city, was falling apart in all of their hands, shredding like old vellum. It seemed like every single time they had an inroad, Savonarola made five more.
The exhaustion of it was tearing him apart.
Ezio had taken on the role of the assassin, taking down lieutenant after lieutenant, a never-ending tide of bodies willingly throwing themselves onto hidden blades for their beliefs. Paola was hard-pressed to protect what she had been able to save—lives and possessions—as she corrupted from within, and fought to save her girls. Even Mario Auditore had come down out of his villa, near-spitting with fury, to crash against the gates as a great wave. La Volpe was more myth than man now, a desperate thief stealing from the rich to give to the poor, saving great works of art and irreplaceable books before he vanished into the night, seen in so many places at once that it would be impossible to find him in only one.
Machiavelli was trapped, ensconced in the government, where he watched it all fall apart around his head. The worst part of it was, he had to bite his tongue and listen to either side lose what little footing they had, often on the same day.
And, somehow, even worse, it always came back to La Volpe. He would hear from Firenze about the thief, yes, the myths and legends, his immortality, his multiple appearances, his never being caught, and then he would hear from Savonarola’s government the depravity and indecency of the thief, stealing not money but the precious works of art and writing that the mad monk sought to destroy, for good. And then, Machiavelli would return to the Brotherhood once again and see La Volpe’s outcomes, and feel...
He wasn’t sure what he felt, any more.
Niccolò sat, in the corner of one of the many safehouses around the city where they were storing Volpe’s pilfered objects before they could be spirited out of the walls, and hardly looked up when he heard the soft touch of feet on the floor.
“Are you being loud intentionally?” He asked, after a moment, fingers still working over the binding of a book beside his knee, and La Volpe made a quiet noise, Machiavelli looking up at the older man.
He looked...tired. Even with his hood up, the lines of his body were tight with exhaustion, and he moved more slowly than usual. His restless, boundless energy was gone—he didn’t shift, sidle, or fidget. Instead he just leaned against the wall, his haggard face more lined than ever.
“No,” Volpe replied, and after a moment, slid down the wall, looping his arms around his knees, staring off into space. “I am too tired, too old, for this.” He had never shared how old he actually was, and somehow, Niccolò doubted he ever would. The thief was at least as old as Mario Auditore, even if he rarely acted like it.
La Volpe closed his eyes, and the amount of trust that was made something soften inside of Machiavelli, just a half an inch, perhaps. The older man sighed, sliding his legs out flat.
“Is it worth it?” Machiavelli asked, at last, still touching the book in thought. So much had changed between them, in ten years. He had begun to learn that Volpe’s cover was more cover than truth, and beneath it lurked this man—tired, learning that he could not go on as he had. “Most of this will be lost to history anyway. The Templars will repress it, or it will simply be forgotten by the centuries. Our names, certainly, will not survive.” La Volpe shifted, cracking one violet eye and glancing at him, as Machiavelli clenched a fist. “You are killing yourself—we all are. Is it worth it?”
“Do you love Firenze?” La Volpe replied, and Machiavelli nodded, grim-faced, his jaw tight. The older man closed his eyes again. “Then it is worth it. It is worth it to see knowledge survive, even just one more day. The creed is not about what is right or wrong, Machia. It is not about who lives or dies or what history chooses to remember. It is about what we make true to ourselves, what truth we live our lives by.”
“If everything is permitted, then surely Savonarola is too. Surely these books, these paintings, should be destroyed.” La Volpe held up a single finger, and Machiavelli cut off, staring at him.
“Think of it this way,” the older man said at last. “Assume you are right, and we are both forgotten, and none of this matters. That we lose this war, and history rolls over us like a cart over a collapsed horse.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Does what was true for us matter? No, for we will be forgotten. However, what will matter is the truth we are able to pass down. If nothing is true and everything is permitted, then we must assume that everything, even the wrong truths, are permitted as well.”
Machiavelli sat there for a long time in the ensuing silence, mulling over it, chewing on the thought like a cow on cud, before he finally ventured,
“Then, both Savonarola, and what he seeks to destroy, must survive. It all must survive.”
“And that is the Creed.” After a moment, La Volpe stood with a groan, and Machiavelli scrambled up after him, following the old thief to the window, where he froze, his thin face in shadow.
“You begin to outwit this old fox. It’s about time, too.” La Volpe said at last, and pressed their bodies together in a brief, chaste farewell before he climbed over the windowsill and clambered up the building, onto the rooftop, and out of sight, leaving Machiavelli alone. He stayed for some time, looking out over the city and trying to reconcile the thoughts that had settled in his mind, before he gathered up his things and shrugged into his Assassin whites to go meet Ezio for their evening update, crawling across the rooftops and keeping low in the line of sight of guards.
Unlike some thieves he knew, Machiavelli was not convinced of his immortality.
He arrived early and crouched down by the pigeon coop near the Palazzo Signoria where he regularly met with Ezio, and it was near to ten minutes later when the older man arrived, clambering up over the roofs and falling to rest next to Machia, his hand clasped to his left shoulder, which bled sluggishly from a cut.
“Who caught you?” Machiavelli asked, immediately moving over as Ezio grunted, lifting his hand to allow him to get a closer look, stripping away his whites to reveal the shallow sword gash.
“Guard with a broadsword. Sometimes, I forget I’m getting almost too old for this.” He laughed weakly as Machiavelli pulled out needle and thread and sat down beside him, stitching the gash shut.
“If you’re getting too old, then we all are.” Machiavelli himself turned thirty sooner rather than later, and it seemed that they were forever watching time slip away from between their fingers. Ezio quietly grunted, his handsome face paling as Machiavelli finished stitching his arm shut. “You should see a doctor.”
“I will, after this.”
Shifting to sit back down, the two men sat and watched Firenze burn for a few minutes, gathering their thoughts.
“Two more are dead,” Ezio began at last. “They’re getting smarter, learning how I work. There’s only so much longer we have, I think.”
“Do you want me to take over?” Machiavelli looked to the other man, who shook his head, chin on his fist as he watched the smoke curl up over the rooftops.
“No, grazie, amico mio. You are too well known.” He smiled. “Best you remain as you are, and I remain as I am. We are, after all, nearly done.” Niccolò had to give him that. Savonarola’s grip was failing. He had only a few months left, at most. “I should be going,” Ezio stood, after a moment. “Do you have anything to pass on?”
“Keep an eye on Volpe. He’s faltering.” Machiavelli hesitated, and amended, “He’s exhausted. Force the man to take a break, if you can. Gesù Cristo knows he won’t listen to me.” Ezio nodded, and then left, hopping over cracks between the buildings, to wherever it was he hid in the city.
Machiavelli stayed, watched the smoke, and thought.
v.
Afterward, after Savonarola had burned, he found himself back at the tavern that served as a front for La Volpe’s many thieves, a sombre celebration going on between the Assassins after the mad monk’s defeat. Ezio had vanished into a back room with Leonardo some time before, his jaw tight, and without the man there to lend his charisma, most of them were just eating, drinking, sleeping, or thinking.
Roma, and the Borgia, could be put off no longer. Niccolò had been thinking about that most all night. He was now at a point where he must act—lately, he had felt age begin to slip away from him, and before too long, the problem would have escalated to dangerous levels.
However, as he stared down at the map he had been scribbling on desperately for the past hour, he felt a warm body press up behind him.
“Take a break,” La Volpe said, voice heavy and full of promise, and for a moment Niccolò continued to stare down at the parchment. Debated saying no, when there was yet so much to be done, and he was taking the reigns sooner than he ever planned to.
And then he got up. Followed the thief, followed him until they were in a room—alone, thank God, alone—and he groaned in relief when the older man backed him against the nearest door, hands already shoving down his hood, fingers tight in his grey-streaked, fine hair. When La Volpe reached between his legs, ground his palm against Niccolò’s hard, aching length, he muffled a cry against the older man’s shoulder, and heard La Volpe swear quite colourfully.
“You are going to likely be the death of me,” he admitted, and Machiavelli laughed, glad that he had shed his outer tunic earlier and was now just in a shirt and breeches, because he made short work of shrugging out of his shirt, leaving La Volpe plenty of room to press his nimble hands onto his chest.
“More like you are to be the death of us all, drawing me away from the plans we need to get into Roma.”
“You were getting nowhere,” Volpe pointed out, mouth hot against the side of Machiavelli’s neck while he worked off the older man’s cloak.
“Beside the point.”
“They say sex is good for the mind. Clears the head; stops headaches.”
“That’s bullshit.” Volpe looked up from Machiavelli’s neck, slim eyebrows raised in surprise, and they both froze. “What?” Niccolò snapped, annoyed that the man had stopped leaving a wet, hot mark on the top of his shoulder to stare at him like he’d just grown wings out of his head.
“Ten years,” the man said in wonder, “And I’ve never heard you curse before.” Volpe admitted after a moment, his voice slightly choked.
“Sounds to me like you just weren’t listening,” Machiavelli replied, and Volpe made an incredulous face, snorted, and pinched one nipple, rolling it between the knuckles of his fingers until the younger man gave a most undignified moan.
“Certainly not,” he said, voice sultry and full of promise, and that was enough of that out of him, Machiavelli practically tearing his doublet and shirt off until they were both clumsily stumbling out of breeches and boots and ended up on La Volpe’s thin bed, hidden behind a screen. Machiavelli had been there enough times that he took up his accustomed place against the headboard, pulled the older man over him. Time got away from him then, lost in brutal kisses and open-mouthed gasps, until they pulled apart wetly.
Before now, Niccolò had always thought of there being another day. He was still not yet thirty, it felt like he was just coming into his own as an Assassin, in politics, but that was no longer true. They were all losing time: that much had become obvious when he had watched Ezio put a knife through Girolamo Savonarola’s head.
There was no longer time to let things come as they may; to not ask the questions that burned at his insides like hot lead. La Volpe would not live forever, and neither would he.
“Your name,” Machiavelli gasped at last, when the older man slid between his thighs. He looked up at La Volpe, his greying hair gone much worse since the fall of the Medici, now more grey than auburn, and pressed his hands to his lover’s waist. An old fox indeed. The candle in the corner illuminated his slim, wiry body, covered in old scars—and a few new ones, from their recent skirmishes. After a moment, Niccolò widened his legs to let Volpe settle and bit back a choked-off groan when their cocks, desperately hot, pressed together. No matter how many times he fell into bed with the other man, it was still just as fresh, like he was nineteen and desperate. “I still don’t know it. You’ve never told me.”
“Why now?” Volpe asked, out of breath as their cocks bumped together, Machiavelli choking off a noise at the back of his teeth. “You’ve never asked before.”
“Because if we both die tomorrow, if we fail to stop the Borgia when the time comes, I don’t want to die never having known.”
Mortality, that pesky dark thing, reared its head between them.
“Gilberto,” Volpe replied, after a long moment, not looking away from Niccolò as he braced himself above Machiavelli, the powerful muscles in his arms and shoulders standing out against his pale skin. “It’s Gilberto.”
“Gilberto,” Niccolò replied, testing it against his lips, and it made the older man gasp, his thick hair hanging around his face, already touched with sweat at his brow. “Gilberto,” he tried again, and it started the thief rolling his hips, his face twisting as he gasped out a pained noise, making Machiavelli laugh breathlessly, pull him closer.
“Fuck, Machia,” he gasped, grinding his cock hard up against Niccolò’s, making the younger man swear again, the heads pressing hard against each other, white behind his eyes, “I can’t remember,“ he wet his lips, panting for breath, pressing their foreheads together, “The last time someone called me that. It’s been...” he didn’t finish, and Niccolò didn’t press him—a name was enough of a revelation for the night. He’d get the man’s age out of him someday. The fact that the old, cagey thief trusted Machiavelli enough to give him his name at all in the first place made him clench his fingers on the back of his neck, pull him down until they were kissing desperately, Niccolò’s fingernails leaving marks on Volpe’s skin and Gilberto desperately fucking their cocks together, the both of them sliding hard and damp between their stomachs.
“Fuck,” Niccolò echoed this time, arching up against the older man, eyes half-shut as he muffled a louder noise into Gilberto’s shoulder. He was achingly hard, desperate, and the friction wasn’t quite enough. Panting, he found himself clinging to the other man, whispering, “Gilberto, abbi pietà,” and the thief was sliding away, downward, settling between his thighs, the stubble of months at war scraping rough over the base of his stomach. Before Machiavelli could sit up, he pressed a hand to the younger man’s chest, pushed him back down.
“Relax, idiota,” Gilberto sounded fond, and anything Niccolò might have said in response to that particular endearment died on his lips when Gilberto wrapped fingers around both his nipples and twisted, a strangled cry choking off against the back of his teeth as he pressed his face into the side of the pillow, gasping wetly. Gilberto did it again, and Niccolò was too pressed to keep from shouting that he noticed almost too late the nose nudging at his hardness.
“Gilberto,” Niccolò began, and then the older man had swallowed his cock halfway, and the rest of the sentence died in a punched-out breath that turned into a moan, his fingers tangling in the other man’s hair, his thighs quivering. The thief sucked, fingers pinching, and Niccolò couldn’t keep his eyes open, shaking. “Gilberto,” he pleaded, desperate, breathing in hitching gasps. “Oh, merda, Gilberto, please, please, have mercy, per favore,” and the thief was swallowing him down, throat tight and hot, his chest arching off the bed and into nimble fingers. It was moments of pressure and hours of blessed agony before Machiavelli came with a desperate, strangled cry, biting down on his own wrist to try and muffle it—and failing—as he finished down the thief’s throat, sobbing for a moment at the white-hot heat of it, until Gilberto pulled back.
He looked desperate, in a way he never had before, pale eyes wild, his hair absolutely wrecked by Niccolò’s fingers, his lips red and glistening, cheeks flushed nearly as red as his damn hair. “Tesoro,” he whispered, voice hoarse and wet, “You’re going to kill me, you are.” Machiavelli dragged him back up to kiss his own bitter taste off of the man’s lips, and then wrapped his fingers around his cock, stroking quickly from base to tip. Gilberto dropped his head with a groan and pressed his forehead against the younger man’s shoulder, fingers clenched white-knuckled in the sheets, his hips jerking and twitching, his body spring-tight under Machiavelli’s hands.
“Niccolò,” Gilberto gasped, thrusting his hips further to press his cock into the younger man’s fist, moaning an absolutely filthy string of words when Niccolò thumbed the slit of his head and then down around the tip, perhaps a little harder than necessary, his lover shaking hard. “Niccolò, dio dannato.”
“Yes,” Niccolò replied, shifting, bending his legs together, and Gilberto practically sobbed as they reintegrated, Machiavelli half-turned on the bed as the older man slid his hot, hard cock between his thighs, the noise of desperation in the older man’s throat dying against the underside of his lover’s tongue when Niccolò kissed him.
Reaching between his thighs as the other man set the pace, his own cock getting hard again, Machiavelli took himself in hand and Gilberto every time he thrust through, grinding his palm just-this-side of too hard until all either one of them could manage was desperate, hoarse cries, Gilberto degenerating into rough, inarticulate cursing into their kisses, and when he slid through one last time Niccolò took them both in hand and squeezed, Gilberto’s sharp teeth and tongue on his mouth pulling him over the edge a second time just as much as his own fingers did for the other man. The thief came, shaking and desperate, cry muffled in his lover’s mouth and his spend all over the assassin’s thighs and cock, joining the mess Niccolò had already made of himself, before Gilberto pressed his face against Machiavelli’s shoulder and shook in the aftermath, trembling and murmuring under his breath. They slumped down to the bed together, exhausted and quiet, breathing roughly in time.
Niccolò closed his eyes, exhausted, and ran his clean hand’s clumsy fingers through the older man’s hair, fixing the long, fine strands before they knotted. Gilberto was heavy, but certainly not uncomfortable, given he was leaner significantly than Machiavelli himself was. After a long moment he began stroking his other hand over Volpe’s back, who made a quiet pleased noise not entirely unlike a purring cat, despite the trailing mess Machiavelli left.
“If they find out, will anyone care?” Niccolò asked, after a long time, still hesitant. Outside of the assassin order, the both of them would have been burned at the stake, not unlike Savonarola. Pesky mortality, there again. He’d not been able to think of aught else, not recently. There was a difference between being an Assassin and watching the hell that Firenze had become, and the latter had changed Niccolò from the sharp-tongued, arrogant child he had come to the order as into the brutal, cynical adult he was now.
Volpe laughed quietly, the reassuring noise muffled against Machiavelli’s sweat-slick skin, and he trailed one hand slowly across the younger man’s stomach, fingers getting sticky with the mess the both of them had left.
“Ezio and Leonardo have been fucking since before I even met him.” Niccolò made a choked off noise and bent his head awkwardly to look down at the older man, who was watching him with one visible violet eye, the lines on his forehead and around his mouth softened in relaxation post-orgasm.
He was smiling, genuinely happy, thin lips so wide that it had to be hurting his face, and the utter, inexplicable fondness in his eyes left Machiavelli’s chest tight, even as the thief’s smug words left him wanting to crack Gilberto over the skull.
“What?”
“I think you were probably the only person who didn’t know, tesoro. Somehow, you managed to miss it completely.” Letting out a pained laugh at last, Machiavelli slumped back to the bed and closed his eyes, pressing his clean hand over his face and muffling an exhausted groan in his fingers.
“Pota de Cristo.”
Gilberto laughed aloud at that, genuinely pleased.
vi.
“You’re leaving?” Gilberto asked, only a scant year later, as Machiavelli wiped himself down with the water basin by his bed in the Auditore villa. Niccolò nodded, jaw tense, not sure he trusted himself to speak of why.
He was still too angry.
Behind him on the bed, Gilberto sighed and leaned against his back, the man’s long hair tickling the tops of his shoulderblades. His face was warm and his stubble rough, and Machiavelli closed his eyes for a moment, his heavy shoulders relaxing as La Volpe wrapped wiry arms around his middle.
“We will all have to go to Roma after this, you know.” The Assassin didn’t trust himself to respond, so didn’t, letting the older man do all the talking. “You may as well wait.”
“No.” Niccolò sighed. “No, I can’t.” He clenched one fist, closed his eyes. “I understand why Ezio didn’t kill Rodrigo, but the damage he might do unchecked...I cannot stomach it. I know everyone will arrive in time, but if I sit here with my thumb up my ass I’ll go mad.” Gilberto laughed, his breath warm on the nape of the younger man’s neck, shook his head slightly.
“That’s my Machia,” Gilberto said, and something inside Niccolò softened. “Impatient as ever.” He drew one nimble hand over the younger man’s flank, fingers warm and soft on his skin. “Even I may come.” That however, was enough to knock Machiavelli out of his thoughts, and he turned around slightly to look at the older man, who had still hardly changed since the exhaustion that Savonarola had wrought on him.
“You’re leaving Firenze?”
“I can’t very well leave all you young idiots out in the cold while you try and destroy the snake that chokes us at every breath. You’re all too young,” he smiled wryly. “You need an old fox like me to keep you in line.” Machiavelli snorted through his nose at the other man. “Besides, I’ve been in Firenze a long time. At this point, I’ve seen too much death there.” His mouth was a thin line, although he said no more about it. “I need greener pastures.”
“Roma?”
“I’m not letting you go alone, tesoro.”
They sat quietly together, Niccolò leaning back into the older man’s arms, his eyes shut as he just. Thought, and tried to gather what he had to do. After a long silence, Gilberto kissed his temple, and then Machiavelli turned to kiss the older man’s in return, fingers tangling in his hair, the thief making a noise into his mouth. They tangled together on the bed, Gilberto pulling the younger man over so that Machiavelli could straddle his lap, thighs pressed around his waist and hips, fingers intentionally mussing the older man’s hair, tangling the strands around his knuckles.
Before long, Machiavelli found himself panting, achingly hard between his legs. “Young men,” La Volpe said, half-laughing, drawing Niccolò’s arms around his shoulders, nimble hands sliding between his lover’s thighs. “So quick.”
“Not so young any more,” Machiavelli reminded him, because thirty wasn’t, but Gilberto shrugged one shoulder.
“Comparatively.” His smile was wicked and Machiavelli kissed it off his lips, kissed him until the fingers on his cock wrung him achingly dry, spilling over both their laps, his thighs and arms shaking as he pressed his face into Gilberto’s hair, breath rough and desperate when he slumped down into the older man’s lap, Gilberto’s nose digging into the underside of his collarbone.
For a long time, neither of them said anything, they just sat in silence, until finally Machiavelli sighed, smoothed down the older man’s now-wrecked hair.
“Sometimes I wonder quite when you got away from me,” La Volpe said, voice quiet. “When you stopped following in my shadow, and started running so far ahead that by the time I’ve caught up, you’re already another city away.”
Niccolò said nothing, because he didn’t know quite what to say.
vii.
Monteriggioni burned, Mario Auditore died, Ezio nearly followed him, and Niccolò Machiavelli found himself with a handful of ashes and a choked throat full of bile and the Assassin order, fragmented, shattered, and broken.
“You should have been there,” Gilberto said, quietly, two days later in the thief’s hideout. The thief clenched his fist, while Machiavelli scrubbed Ezio’s blood off his hands. “If there had been one more of us—“
“Mario still would have died, Volpe,” Niccolò snapped back. “Mario would have died, and the city would have burned, and we would have lost Caterina, and Ezio would still be unconscious in Romagna.” The older man slammed his fist against the table beside him and spat a few choice words that said essentially what he thought about that.
“We needed you, Machiavelli, and you weren’t there!”
“No!” Machiavelli looked at the older man, his lips a thin line. “What we needed was to kill the Borgia while we still could! What we needed was not for Ezio to find his conscience when we were this close to seeing the end of this farce.” His voice was raising, unintentionally. “What we needed was to deal with the problem when we could. The Borgia are snakes, Volpe. If we don’t snap their necks, they’ll bite again.”
From under his hood, Machiavelli could see the tightness of the older man’s jaw, the thin line of his mouth, the anguish in his eyes.
“Compassion is never wrong, Niccolò.”
There was too much sitting heavy with its claws in his chest.
Machiavelli left.
viii.
“Machiavelli,” Ezio’s footsteps had come into the Tiber office, and stopped halfway in the door. In the middle of debating stabbing his quill literally through his parchment, or alternatively, through his own eye, Machiavelli looked up at the older man.
“What,” he snapped, and Ezio raised both his eyebrows under his hood.
“No need to bite my head off. Listen, I wanted to talk to you.” Ezio came over, leaning against Machiavelli’s desk, and then hesitated. “It’s about...” he trailed off, and took a deep breath, gestured rather aimlessly with one hand. “You know...”
“No,” Machiavelli snarled, already seeing where this conversation was going, “I don’t know, Ezio. Share, why don’t you.” The other man looked at him with an unreadable expression, and neither of them said anything for a long moment, ready to crash headlong into one another.
“You need to talk to La Volpe, before you two kill each other. What even happened—you two always seemed, so, well—”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” Machiavelli clenched his fist so hard the body of his quill began to snap. “I cannot believe you are talking to me about this.”
“I’m just tired of having to act as a go-between, that’s all!” Ezio was backpedalling already. “You just seemed so close, it’s almost—“
The quill snapped directly in half, ink spraying the parchment, and both men went dead silent.
“I’ll just be, ah, going, then. Just think about what I said.” Ezio hesitated and then clapped Machiavelli on the shoulder and practically sprinted out of the room, and Niccolò swore himself blue in the fucking face, a potent mix of furious and desperately lonely because his pride was so invested now that he couldn’t bring himself to speak to Gilberto, even if he wanted to.
ix.
As soon as they were alone, Machiavelli’s façade dropped and he turned on La Volpe, grabbing the older man by the front of the shirt and shoving him against the back of a building. “Did you really think,” he snarled, half-ready to just kill the thief, “That I wouldn’t notice? Notice that you were practically screaming I was a traitor? There is nothing subtle about running toward a man with his back turned with a knife drawn.”
“I wanted you to know, vaffanculo,” Gilberto snarled back, the both of them nothing but teeth and knives now. “I wanted you to own up before I had to put a blade between your shoulders.”
“You never were subtle,” and they stared at each other a while longer before, purely out of spite, Machiavelli punched the thief in the stomach and Gilberto doubled over, coughing. “I hate you,” he whispered, and left, shaking.
x.
That night, for the first time since he had come to Roma, Machiavelli put on his Assassin whites and strapped his hidden blades on over his sleeves. His jaw was tight, and when he emerged onto the roof to join Ezio, the older man crouched and looking into the wind, they both sat there silently.
“You’re both so alike,” Ezio said at last. “He insisted on doing it himself, too.”
“La Volpe is nothing if not fastidious,” Machiavelli replied, tugging his hood up over his face. “We may as well get this over with.”
“Are you sure you don’t want a hand?” Ezio looked tired enough without having to break into Il Vaticano and steal the Pope blind, and Niccolò shook his head.
“I have a desk job, Ezio, I didn’t retire.” The older Assassin grunted, but after a moment Machiavelli softened, set his arm on the other man’s shoulder. “No. You need to rest. You cannot do everything yourself, amico mio. I can handle this.” Ezio snorted.
“Sì, you’re right. Go, before the guards change shifts.” Not needing to be told twice, Machiavelli set off over the rooftops, long strides allowing him to cross Roma, and then he snuck in across the Tiber, throwing a rope to haul himself into the Vatican. He crouched for a time in some hay, drying out so he didn’t leave a wet trail, and then snuck on into the clergy offices.
He might not have been blessed as Ezio was with a second sight, but he was a quick reader, and although it took him nearly the whole night, by the time that Machiavelli set back off over the rooftops in a lull during guard change, he had stolen almost all of the correspondence that the Borgia had managed to gain from their spy. His heart was cold and leaden, despite the victory of winning the intelligence back.
How had they missed this single man for so many months? How had La Volpe, who was so fastidious with his thieves, how had Machiavelli, who considered himself a quick and expert study of character? For that matter how had Ezio, who could tell at first glance if a man wanted to slit his throat? The question was a moot point, though. They hadn’t caught the traitor, Monteriggioni had burned, and Machiavelli had almost died.
Nobody was infallible. No Assassin had ever been, none ever would be. It was a sobering reminder of that.
Pesky mortality.
After he had crossed back over the Tiber, Machiavelli went out to Romagna and burned the papers he had stolen in a small fire, reducing them all to cinders and ash before he threw them to the wind, watched them whip away. As he stood there, the wind blowing ash away from his face, Niccolò closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, scented with smoke.
He had failed in this. He had failed to protect the Brotherhood; he had failed to protect himself. His mistakes, his damnably foolish pride, had nearly torn them all asunder, all because he had refused to bend rather than break over Ezio’s too-gentle hand with Rodrigo, over his bad blood with La Volpe.
It made his mouth taste like metal and rust, and the guilt was a near-physical thing.
It was high time that Ezio was Mentor, in word as well as in deed. No more of this power struggle, no more of Niccolò stumbling when he ought to run, and snapping when he ought to move.
He was old enough to accept defeat when it was delivered to him on a gilded platter.
xi.
Two days later, he returned to his rooms above the Tiber hideout to find La Volpe sitting on the edge of his bed, clothes all spattered with blood, hood down to reveal his face. He looked exhausted—hardly like the man Machiavelli remembered from a few scant years before, his auburn hair now almost entirely grey, the lines by his mouth deepening ever more.
“Why are you here,” the Assassin said after a moment, closing the door behind him, leaning his weight against it, hand fingering the edge of his sword’s handle. La Volpe looked up at him after a moment, his jaw tight, and then stared back at his hands.
“Thirty-four men and women,” he whispered, voice dead. “Thirty-four. Right under my nose, and I never noticed. I was too caught up in assuming it was you to notice them killing my thieves under my watch.” There was something broken about his voice, and Machiavelli realised what it was moments before Gilberto took in a great, shaking breath and began to cry, pressing his face into his bloodstained hands.
“Did you—“ Machiavelli began, and the thief nodded, mutely.
Of course he did it himself. He had taken responsibility for what he had wrought, and now their blood was on his hands.
“You may have been right, Machia.” La Volpe’s voice cracked. “It might have been better if none of us had ever grown a conscience.”
“No,” Machiavelli said, moving away from the door, because there was something truly awful about watching Gilberto break down. As long as he could remember, the older man had never faltered—had always been utterly himself—sure, if sometimes cruel. He hesitated, a few feet from the other man. “You gave me mine. Don’t lose yours.” La Volpe gave a wet laugh and wiped his face on the side of his cloak, not as badly stained as his hands and forearms.
“Where did we ever go wrong?” The thief asked, his voice quiet, and after another silent moment Niccolò sat down beside him, their thighs almost touching.
“I grew up.”
“I stopped knowing you.” Gilberto replied, and they were quiet, before the other man let out a slow breath. “Just tell me. If you knew, if you knew that turning traitor, working for the Borgia, would further the Creed—if you knew that you could destroy them from the inside, would you do it?” Violet eyes watched Niccolò, who didn’t open his mouth. “Look me in the eye, Machia, and tell me you wouldn’t kill us all if you knew the Borgia would topple for good.”
Machiavelli opened his mouth, and the words choked against the top of his throat, and he shook his head when he couldn’t push it out, shame hot in the bottom of his stomach.
“I would.” His voice came out quiet, his hands shaking. “If I had to, I would.”
Gilberto’s breath shook, and Niccolò looked up when the other man set his hands on either of his cheeks, stared into his eyes.
“You scare me,” he whispered, voice cracking. “Gesù Cristo, you scare me half to death.” His sure pickpocket’s fingers were trembling against Niccolò’s cheeks, and Machiavelli leaned forward, pressed their foreheads together, their breath mingling. He could feel blood smeared on his cheeks from the other man’s stained hands.
“If I did, what would you do?” Volpe was watching him, eyes bright in the dim room. “If I turned to the Borgia to stop them once and for all, if I had been the traitor, what would you do, Gilberto?”
“I would plant the knife in your back myself, before you went too far.” He smiled, cold and hurt. “I always clean up my messes.”
“I love you,” Niccolò whispered, and Gilberto let out a slow, shaking breath.
“I know,” Gilberto laughed, brittle. “I’ve known since you were sixteen, and thought I could pull gold out my ass.”
“In all fairness, you probably could if you tried hard enough,” Niccolò pointed out, and slid one hand behind the older man’s neck, dragged him closer until they were kissing. Gilberto had a bit of blood on his lip, and his skin was still wet from when he had cried, but after three years it felt like something had just wrenched free inside of his chest, a thorn that had buried itself there when Machiavelli hadn’t been looking, and he made a quiet noise in the back of his throat, the last of his walls cracking, crumbling, tearing down, until they broke apart and he pulled the older man close, face buried into his hair, Gilberto’s nimble fingers stilled on his sides, holding him tight.
Niccolò couldn’t bring himself to move, too loathe to let go of the other man, not after everything that had passed between them. For the first time he could remember, he felt right, down to his bones, like the poison that had filled his veins recently had finally washed free. Reluctantly pulling back, Machiavelli kissed Gilberto again, who slid his slim fingers into the short hairs at the nape of his neck, pulled him closer.
“I’ve missed you,” Gilberto murmured, his voice tight, and rather than trust himself to speak for fear of what he might say, Niccolò just kissed him again, not caring at the moment how incredibly filthy they would be when all was said and done. “Niccolò,” and they were practically toppling into each other, desperate hands stripping away bloodstained clothes until Machiavelli was pressing the older man into his sheets, Gilberto hissing into his mouth.
Three years had hardly changed the other man at all aside from the grey in his hair and a loosening of fat around his waist, but he had also hardly changed in twenty, either. If anyone had changed, it was Niccolò himself, but Gilberto didn’t seem to care and suddenly they were both naked, skin to skin, desperately relearning one another. Gilberto’s slim fingers were mapping his back and Machiavelli found himself finding new scars, new marks that had arrived when he had been gone, and before long the older man was panting into his mouth, wiry frame tight and desperate underneath him.
When they pulled apart to breathe, La Volpe’s face was blotchily flushed, his purple eyes wide and bright, thin lips swollen, and he slid one fond thumb over the younger man’s cheekbone.
“In my cloak,” Gilberto said, his low voice hoarse, “There’s oil, for my hands. Can you get it?” For a moment Machiavelli hesitated, and then nodded, scrambling back off of his bed to find the oil and coming back seconds later with it in his hand, and Gilberto pulled it from his fingers, shifted on the bed, his heels pressing into the ruined sheets, legs planted as he spread his thighs.
“Twenty years and this?” Machiavelli’s laugh bubbled out of him without him meaning it to, almost hysterical. “Now, Gilberto?”
“I almost killed you,” the older man whispered, “And I would have, if Ezio hadn’t practically ripped the blade from my hand. Fuck, Niccolò, if there was ever a time for you to put your cock in me, it would be now.”
Wordless at that response, Machiavelli fumbled for the oil again and struggled to get it on his fingers. He knew the motions he needed to follow, what he was supposed to do, but he never had before. Gilberto, his hands still stained with blood, certainly couldn’t do it to himself, and the younger man was shaking by the time he’d managed to coat his fingers and press one up inside of the thief.
The noise that Gilberto made when he got his first finger in up to the knuckle was a desperate whine, his hands clenching white-knuckled in the sheets, teeth grit. “Slower,” he hissed, voice cracking, breathing harsh.
“Sorry,” Niccolò stumbled, out of his element—an unusual feeling for him. He felt startlingly young again, but soon enough he had the rhythm and was fucking into the older man with his fingers, Gilberto pressing his head back into the pillows and breathing hard, sharp gasps between his teeth, legs falling further apart, his cock hard against the base of his stomach.
By the time he had three fingers deep in the other man, Machiavelli was practically shaking, and Gilberto reached down, stilled his wrist. “Stop,” the thief whispered, his voice incredibly rough, thick with something at the back of his throat. When the older man opened his eyes they glowed, violet and pale as the dawn, and he panted, throat bobbing. “Use the rest on yourself.”
Niccolò slicked himself, trembling, and then slid between the older man’s thighs, Gilberto’s knees hooking over his elbows, and carefully pressed into La Volpe’s body, a noise somewhere between a sob and a moan bubbling out of the other man’s throat and petering off into a whine when Machiavelli settled home, the two of them as close as they could possibly be, the both of them shaking.
“Fuck,” Niccolò whispered, and Gilberto laughed—a ragged, desperate thing, hands grasping first the younger man’s elbows, then his shoulders. Machiavelli’s short hair was soaked and flat against his scalp, and Volpe’s, near-silver in the moonlight through the open window, was spread around his face. The both of them kept shifting, trying to find the right spot until Machiavelli had control over his twitching limbs and started moving slow and steady, hands clenched in the sheets, panting.
Soon enough, the both of them were going at it, getting faster and harder, Gilberto’s fingers digging into the back of his neck and Niccolò desperately rutting into the warm heat of the other man, choked-off breaths sobbing in the back of his throat, everything narrowed down to the point between them, the older man’s rough, gasping breaths, and his own impending release. “Gilberto,” he murmured, and the older man kissed him, sloppy and wet, pulled him closer and swore rough and heady into his ear until Machiavelli came, shaking helplessly, eyes burning, his numb fingers finding the older man’s hardness and stroking him after until he finished as well in a wet spatter between them.
They lay there boneless afterward, Niccolò collapsed exhausted on the thief’s chest, Gilberto’s fingers stroking the nape of his neck. Neither of them said anything for a long time, just listening to each other breathe, listening to their heartbeats. There was no need to ask if trust was restored—the poison was, at last, gone.
Finally, into the quiet, Gilberto sighed and whispered, “What a pair we are.” Machiavelli’s laugh was punched out of his chest, burning, and he closed his eyes, pressed his cheek over the older man’s heart, listened to it come down from its racing high.
The bad blood between them had finally petered out, leeched not by a doctor but instead by airing old wounds, and revealing old, lost trust.
“You were right, you know.” Gilberto began, his voice hoarse and rough, but unspeakably fond. “About Ezio. He should not have stayed his hand, although I do not now know if it would have done anything. Cesare would likely have arrived to plague us anyway.”
“We can’t undo any of it now,” Niccolò replied at last, and the comfortable silence that fell between them ended that last anguish, finally put to rest.
xii.
Niccolò Machiavelli came back from Spain with a bullet hole in his shoulder and a thundercloud on his face, only to reach the Tiber Island and find out that not only was La Volpe not there, he was bedridden.
Which led to this.
“I leave for six months, and you fall off of a roof.” The old thief was stuck in bed with a broken leg, and he didn’t even have the shame to look contrite. “You told me once you never fall.”
“I was a great deal younger then, tesoro. Old age catches all of us, or had you not noticed that you left for six months and came back with a bullet in your shoulder?” Machiavelli ground his teeth so hard he could hear his jaw creak. After a moment, though, he felt the anger leave him, and he sat down gingerly on the edge of the thief’s bed, taking care not to bump Gilberto’s broken leg or nudge his own injured arm.
“I cannot believe you. A grown man, tumbling off of a building.” Gilberto didn’t dignify that with a response, and instead tapped his chin, and they looked at each other for a long time.
“And what will you do now, with Ezio left to dispose of the last Borgia? What do you have left to turn that sharp mind to now, Machia?”
“I leave for Firenze as soon as my shoulder is healed.” The thief sighed, hair shifting across his face.
“Firenze, Firenze. Always Firenze with you. You love that city more than the Creed.” Niccolò didn’t bother to correct him, because it was true. “Nothing for it, then. I suppose I must return as well.”
“Greener pastures, you said.”
“At my age, Machia, a man looks less for excitement and more for a comfortable retirement.”
“Ah, but how much older will you be, a man of your age.” Machiavelli narrowed his eyes at the old fox, who made a noncommittal noise. “You have been a man of your age for fifty years.”
“And, I think, perhaps another fifty years, and that will be the most I can take.” Gilberto reached out, squeezed Machiavelli’s uninjured hand. “Long enough to see that you don’t get yourself shot again. I have to kick my thieves back into shape, or there’ll be no hope for them.”
They were quiet, and finally Machiavelli said,
“To Firenze, then.”
“Firenze.”
xiii.
Ezio Auditore left Firenze for what would likely be the last time, and Machiavelli watched his back as he rode off, Altaïr’s old armour road-dusted on his shoulders. He leaned on the walls of Firenze as the Mentor vanished back over the hills, to Monteriggioni, and then to the sea.
“I wasn’t a good Mentor the first time around,” Niccolò said, when he felt a presence beside him, and he turned to see La Volpe standing there, his hood shading his bright eyes from the sun, his sharp nose cast in profile. “I’d best live up to his reputation this time around.”
“You’re a fine Mentor,” Gilberto replied, not looking over at him, still watching Ezio’s dust, slim fingers tapping against his elbow. “Just in a different way. Ezio is the general you want on the battlements, crying out for blood and vengeance and honour.” He looked over at the younger man, eyes piercing. “You’re the Mentor for peacetime, with a full hand of cards, and extras up your sleeves. You’re the man in the back room, with all the chess moves memorised.”
“What does that make you, then?” Machiavelli asked, smiling, and for a moment he saw La Volpe’s lips twitch upward, the fine lines beside his eyes crinkling.
“I’m the one who used to own the chessboard, but long since ceded victory to the clearly superior opponent.” Gilberto’s eyes softened for a moment and he shrugged in defeat. “I know when I am beaten, maestro.”
Niccolò laughed, bright in the morning sun, and kissed Gilberto plain as day atop the walls, too high for anyone else to see, bold and brash and young, even for all the years that had passed on into the unknown.