i am choked by the weight of my obessessions.

find my sins on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikaris

[iveseenthatlovebefore]

So I figured—in case any of ya'll are curious—I'd do a short STATUS UPDATE on fics. This is essentially my writing and unhinged fantasy blog, so maybe the people who are here are interested in this, haha—just so you know where things are at and that I'm still alive.

4/20/26 Updated

ACTIVE:

Last Safe Refuge -

The Isu built humans in their image—flawed, emotional, stubborn. So, perhaps it was inevitable that everything else created by their hands also picked up those same imperfections. The Eye was no exception to that. In which, the Eye has an existential crisis and Desmond tries to survive medieval Italy, which would have been easier to do if it weren’t for the goddamn wings. (Aka the time travel fix it/wingfic that no one asked for)

We hired two new people at work!! That mans... I can WRITE MORE AGAIN????? ヾ(＠＾▽＾＠)ﾉ

Currently editing! Halfway done but uh, problem is I'm getting distracted by other ideas haha. HOPING to maybe get chapter 16 out this month mostly because I really want to write Ezio haha.

More fuel for the fire -

In which, William Miles, bereft, broken, and guilt ridden from the death of his son, gets a second chance to make it right. This time, he would do better. This time, he would be better. He just needed to figure out how to do that while stranded in 15th-century Italy, with nothing but the clothes on his back and his unconscious son in his arms. Oh, and the ever-present, guilt-fueled hallucination of said son, who was proving to be alarmingly chatty for a figment of his imagination. Or as Desmond would put it, ‘That one time my dad tried to atone for his A+ parenting by (accidentally??) becoming a 15th-century mercenary warlord in my honor.’

My vacation fic. Chapter 3 is drafted but like, I'm unsure how unhinged I want William to be lmao. I've been drifting to working on this WIP when I hit a wall with LSR. No clear date on when I'll have this out.

Welcome to Abstergo Entertainment -

Everything was going fine for Desmond—until he got fired. So when an internship opportunity pops up in his inbox, he takes it. Sure, the NDA is shady, and the company seems a little intense, but whatever. It's a job. He just wants the paycheck—and something to pad his resume. He doesn’t realize it’s a Templar front. He also doesn’t realize he's accidentally radicalized his fellow interns into baby Assassins in the heart of Templar HQ through sheer charisma, spite, and casual corporate rebellion.  Abstergo doesn’t notice that. They notice something worse: Daniel Cross is stable. He’s suddenly calm. Functional. Focused. And it all started with the new accounting intern: Francisco Randez (aka Desmond Miles).  He’s promising, they think. Templar material, even. In which Desmond gets booted from the Bad Weather bar one year before the solar flare, accidentally becomes a Templar, and Daniel decides that Desmond is his intern now—and that unsanctioned murder is perfectly reasonable so long as no one touches him.

Second vacation fic lmao. Updated as I get further unto my onboarding of my new job and if I'm feeling chaotic enough.

I am currently 8ish months into my new job and omg I hate it so much lmao.

EHHHHH:

Too damn sober for this -

Death, as it turns out, is eerily quiet—and feels lot like face planting onto a stone floor. It also comes with dragons. A whole lot of dragons. In which the Eye brings Desmond to a world where magic is a thing, there are way weirder beings than the First Civ out there, and the alcohol sucks.

Haven't even started chapter 5 I'm sorry fam lmao. I downloaded Skyrim VR though so I'm thinking after LSR is done and I get all those mods working in Skyrim I'll be deep into the lore enough to go rabid on this just out of nostalgia.

Keep the home fires burning -

At this point, Desmond knew he shouldn't be surprised anymore. Sure, not waking up at the Great Bar of the Afterlife was a bummer, but then again, he should be used to the Ones Who Came Before (And Who Would Not Stop Meddling) throwing him a curveball. He just…didn’t think that included him to wake up 20 years in the past. (Well, he was here anyways. Might as well make the best of it.)

Unironically did start drafting 20 some pages of chapter 6 but haven't touched it since LSR lmao. Sorry for anyone waiting on this one, it's uh, gonna be a while mostly because I wrote this YEARS ago and I actually don't even remember where I was going with this. I considered doing a re-write of this but IDK.

A bird in the hand -

…is worth two in the bush. Or, that one time Aiden's sister ran over an Assassin with her car.

...I have like 10 pages of chapter 3 but god, this was SO LONG AGO JESUS. I don't even know if anyone is still INTERESTED in watch dogs lol. I did get a comment a few days ago that someone was thinking about this fic and immediately remembered the draft, haha. Not actively working on this but oh god, I want to replay Watch Dogs for the nostalgia, so just like the skyrim one, when I get back into the game, I'd prolly spiral.

A monk on temple steps -

Clay isn't the most religious person in the world. He doesn't do that sort of loyalty or devotion. But then a bartender just has to comes along and muck everything up. The continuation of what happens when Desmond meets Clay far earlier than expected, takes Clay's fate as a result, and Clay's attempt at fixing that.

I saw someone post a comment on this recently and COMMENTER PLS DON'T TEMPT ME I HAVE SO MANY WIPS AHHHHHHHHH.

I'll update this post as I go (unless I forget) but figured its great to have in case any of my readers happen to visit this blog, haha.

[iveseenthatlovebefore]

OK GUYS QUICK POLL BECAUSE I NEED EXTERNAL SUPERVISION

So.

I need The Council's opinion because I accidentally wrote a short and smutty little Ezio/Desmond thing.

(And I truly do mean ACCIDENTALLY because I wrote it PG-13 at first... then found out that Tumblr actually allowed straight up written smut instead of, ya know, vague fade to black/insinuation bullshit, and promptly lost all moral restraint.)

Worse—this is also my first time sharing smut lmao so now I'm at war with my own posting instincts.

Tumblr option: I slap it on here, clearly marked for skipping (for those who want more fun story than smut hehe,) and remain spiritually free and unburdened by ao3 perfectionism. If I later write a longer version—because apparently I cannot do anything without world-building—then that can go on AO3.

Or AO3 option: I save it—and immediately start acting like I'm crafting a sacred manuscript instead of just straight up writing EziDes filth. And again, if I later want to write a longer, plot heavier, smuttier version, I can post it as like, Chapter 2: EXTENDED VERSION maybe.

What should I do?

Post first smut on Tumblr now and preserve my freedom

Save first smut for ao3 and make it a two-chapter horny event

Obey the intrusive thoughts and do both (⊙‿⊙✿)

Voting ended onMay 29

Please advise in my hour of need.

[iveseenthatlovebefore]

Do you have any playlists or songs that give major Desmond, Ezio, Ezides, or Last Safe Refuge vibes? Just out of curiosity. For me I like "Take a Picture" by Filter for Desmond in general.

HELLO ANON SORRY FOR THE LATENESS OF MY REPLY—BUT YES. YES I DO.

You have, in fact, caused me to reach into the secret depths of my Tumblr drafts where I had actually been hoarding a little stash of songs for LSR in general because at one point, I had the vague intention of one day making a post like:

"hey btw you should listen to these while reading certain chapters if you want the full emotional damage experience." 

However, that idea kinda DID die in a hole because I then realized my playlist was not, in fact, a grand sweeping masterpiece and was just evidence of a deeply specific brain problem. By THAT, I mean like—I find ONE song that grabs me by the throat, assign it to a character or dynamic with frightening emotional intensity, and then proceed to listen to it on loop for a week straight until I emerge from the fog like a prisoner crawling out of Plato's cave. 

So I only just have a handful of songs to share that I have mentally stapled onto LSR and our boy. Here's what I have so far: 

Cosmic Love by Florence + The Machine (Aka: The Eye, pining like an eldritch idiot)

Right now I literally only have one song for the Eye, and it's this one. I heard "Cosmic Love" and immediately went, "OH. OMG, that's the Eye" because other than the song name being an ABSOLUTE MOOD, but just LISTEN RIGHT—

The opening is literally about a falling star dropping out of [your] heart and tearing straight through [my] eyes, leaving [me] blind. I am paraphrasing to protect myself from the copyright gods, but you get the gist, right???  

Like DUDE. DUDE. That's Desmond crashing straight through the Eye's perfect calculations and wrecking its perception FOREVER. Like, this is '"I met you and now nothing in the universe makes sense the way it used to." It's LOVE as a cosmic injury. Love as some horrible, beautiful thing punching a hole through an ancient cosmic machine and leaving it staring at the world all wrong afterwards. 

And god, don't get me started on the fact that the song has this whole unrequited love vibe, which is basically the Eye's entire deal since Chapter 7. It's this vast, ancient, terrifying thing that's like: 

"I have observed all probable timelines, mapped the stars, quantified fate itself… and somehow this one human disaster has become my entire sky." 

BUT OH THATS NOT ALL, BECAUSE THEN IT GETS WORSE because the whole chorus is about the stars and the moon being snuffed out and [I] am left in the dark with no dawn and no day, stuck in perpetual twilight in the shadow of [your] heart.

LIKE THIS?! HELLO?? This is the YEARNING—the PINING. This is "I exist in your orbit, always around but never in the center" and the gnawing "please need me" energy that the Eye is at by Chapter 15—where it's loving Desmond from this impossible, awful angle where he's become the axis of its everything and yet the Eye is STUCK in the shadow of his heart, left wanting and wanting and WANTING. 

And the bridge just fully kill me:

"Then I heard your heart beating you were in the darkness too  So I stayed in the darkness with you"

Because THAT—THAT is literally Chapter 7, isn't it?? Do you remember???? When the Eye realized Desmond was breaking, it pulled him somewhere soft enough to survive it. Like, the Eye KNEW it couldn't save him, so it made him a refuge. It made him somewhere safe for him to fall. That's what that specific set of lyrics made me think. Not of the Eye going:  

"I can fix this." 

But—

"Sleep, then. Rest. I'll guard you."

—which is SO EYE. 

You're Gonna Go Far by Noah Kahan (From Maria and Lucia, with love)

This is my only Maria and Lucia song. It's not a perfect 1:1 lyrically, but the feeling of it is there because just LISTEN TO THE LYRICS RIGHT—

The opening is all about sending someone off with a hand on their heart, telling them to say whatever they feel and be wherever they are, and you know it's all sweet and dandy UNTIL—

"We ain't angry at you, love you're the greatest thing we've lost."

Like, AGH. That part feels SO THEM TO ME because it hits that exact Maria-and-Lucia-shaped tenderness of grief without blame. Because YOU KNOW what happened in Chapter 6. You know Desmond blames himself and you know he would carry that guilt forever like a wound he'd never stop pressing on or apologizing for. 

But I can't imagine either of them looking at him with anything but love. There'd never be any anger or blame. Just that unbearable softness of this was never something we wanted you to suffer for. 

And that's what makes it hurt so bad because they're gone now… and yet the greatest thing they lost wasn't their lives, but Desmond.

And oh… then the song shifts into this whole image of the world just… continuing on without you. The birds are still singing, folks still fighting, boards still creaking, leaves still dying, but— 

"We'll all be here forever"

That is the part that OBLITERATES ME—because it's Maria and Lucia essentially going: 

"We're not angry. We're not holding you here. Life will go on but if it ever gets too much out there, you can always come back."

And I can see it too, ya know?? Like, I can see Lucia there, fierce and stubborn and loving him so hard it hurts, but still saying:

"We'll still be here for you, so GO!" >:u

And Maria at the doorway of that little house, flour on her hands, looking at Desmond with all that love and all that grief and telling him, in the gentlest way possible, that the world is going to be cruel and unfair and too big for him sometimes—but he's still meant to go. He's still meant to live and be more than a scared boy hiding in her kitchen—but if the real world gets too heavy, too sharp, too lonely or cruel… then home is still home. They'll be waiting for him with open arms. 

AND THAT'S WHY THIS SONG MAKES ME WANT TO LAY FACE DOWN ON THE FLOOR EVERY TIME I LISTEN TO IT. It's because it feels like Maria and Lucia looking at Desmond and loving him so gently that even now—even after everything—they're still home to him. He will always have somewhere to return to. 

They're his safe place, not his cage. 

i was only temporary by my head is empty (Chapter 6/the house is burning down/their last words) 

Okay, serious one. This song isn't really tied to a specific character so much as it is to Chapter 6 as a whole. There are no lyrics to it—just this slow, hollow, atmospheric grief that feels exactly like that part of the story. The part where everything falls apart and there's no putting it back together.

I basically wrote the entirety of Chapter 6 with this on repeat with tears running down my face. It has that whole feeling of standing alone in the middle of something already lost. Like, where the world is still technically moving—where life goes on—but for you, it's over. The title itself—“i was only temporary"—is also the perfect summary of Maria, Lucia, the house, and the fairytale peace of chapters 2-5. Something about this song makes me think of a life that was never meant to last colliding with someone who wanted to believe it could.

So this track is the chapter's whole mood for me—smoke, burnt feathers, and the quiet, awful softness of goodbye.

OKAY. OKAY ENOUGH OF THAT NOW, TIME FOR UNRELATED LSR SONGS AKA—OUR BOY:

Magnetic by Fenech-Soler (Desmond - Animus Era/Bleeding Effect chaos)

Okay, so like, this song is pretty much just Desmond getting psychologically wrecked by the Animus lmao.

The first time I heard it, I had that very specific moment of going, "oh NO this is him" because there's so much in it that feels weirdly, aggressively Desmond-coded. Like, the whole early part of the song mentions "standing on a fault line" and being caught between two minds, and synchronizing (FUCKING SYNCING, COME ON) so hard that you start losing the border between yourself and everybody else who's living in your skull rent free.

Like, the song JUST GIVES late-night runs through the city—rooftops blurring by, late-night air in your lungs, reality and memory overlapping until you can't tell where one ends and the other starts. 

And I love that it doesn't just sound frantic—it just sounds… unstable. Dislocated. Maybe a little glitchy, ya know? Like the ground under him keeps shifting and Desmond has to keep moving because if he stops for too long, the whole thing will catch up with him.

Then the chorus hits and it really has this aching vibe of escapism UP UNTIL the end of it when the song asks "can you feel me too?" Like, it feels like desperate reaching that makes the chorus then feel less like—

"I want to escape"

—and more like—

"I am losing my grip on what's real, so can someone PLEASE meet me here?"

—which is SO Desmond it's stupid, especially when he's Bleeding and caught between selves and timelines and inherited memories and his own brain is basically turning into a haunted house. It feels like him reaching out through all of that static and asking whether there's still something real enough to answer back.

But underneath all that chaos, there's also this weirdly hopeful ache in the song—this sense of wanting something beyond all of it when the song goes "there's a world outside we've never seen." Beyond the Assassins, the Templars, the Farm, the destiny bullshit, and the whole horrible inherited mess. Like, it feels like even when Desmond's drowning in it, some part of him still wants out.

Still wants something real. Something untouched. Something that belongs to him and not his ancestors.

And just like the song title, the whole magnetic pull of the song feels exactly like the way Desmond keeps getting dragged back into danger over and over—pulled along by fate and bloodlines and other people's expectations, but still trying to pull someone else (us) toward freedom with him. This whole song just gives this dissociative, rooftop-running, Bleeding Effect Desmond energy all over and I do, in fact, listen to this song on repeat on late night drives home haha. 

How Long, How Low? By Change Pena, Hayd (Desmond/late AC3/also fuck you ubisoft)

I found this one totally by accident on some random YouTube autoplay and my brain immediately went, "oh. OH that's DESMOND" because it's so painfully tired in exactly his way. 

There's this recurring feeling in the song of "how much longer do I have to do this" and "how much more can I bend before something in me gives out", and that just feels like Desmond to me. Tired, hanging on by pure spite and obligation, carrying a bloodline and duty and history  and just… trying to see how long he can keep standing.

And like, this isn't just regular tiredness, either. This is Desmond tired—bone-deep, soul-deep, identity-deep. The kind of exhaustion that comes from living in a world where too many people are deciding what he's for and not nearly enough of them care what any of that is doing to him. 

(And UBISOFT didn't fucking help either because they apparently LOOKED at that and went, "hmm yes, make it worse. ;)")

For me, this song gives late-AC3 Desmond vibes where Des is emotionally cooked, spiritually run over, and absolutely done with everyone's bullshit—and yet STILL putting one foot in front of the other because stopping was never really allowed to be an option for him. The whole "all I know is I can't carry this no more" hits extra hard especially when you know he DOES keep carrying it anyway, only for canon to reward him WITH THAT BULLSHIT ENDING, which I will, in fact, DIE MAD about. 

So yeah—this song doesn't feel heroic to me. It feels like Desmond going:

"I want out, I want rest, I want anything else… but I'm going to finish this because no one else can." 

That's the Desmond flavor here. No triumph. No victory lap. Just a tired, sad little pigeon man staggering towards the finish line anyway.

Burn out Brighter (Northern Lights) by Anberlin (Desmond, the Savior) 

Okay, to me, this is THE 'Desmond right before he chooses to save the world' anthem song—and it's ALL BECAUSE OF THE CHORUS—

"Live, I wanna live inspired Die, I wanna die for something…"

The chorus is basically about wanting your life to mean something and if death comes, wanting it to mean something bigger than yourself and like, hello???? That whole part??? That's LITERALLY Desmond standing in front of the Eye going: 

"Alright, if I'm going out, it's not gonna be for nothing."

And then there's this later part of the song about regret—the part about not wanting to "leave this world knowing you barely tried" hit me as Desmond finally… meeting himself halfway. Like, yeah, he ran. Yeah, he just wanted to bartend and live his life and stay the hell away from Assassin/Templar bullshit because from his point of view? It WAS bullshit. He didn't understand how deep it went until he was already being dragged under by it. But... when it came down to it at the end of AC3—when it really mattered—he didn't fold. He chose it. 

And here's the gimmick that makes me go a little insane—because the chorus keeps repeating, right? And every single time, it ends on the same line: 

"The more I live, I see this life's not about me."

Over and over. That part doesn't change. That's the constant.

And dude COME ON, that's LITERALLY Desmond's whole life. He was engineered for this. The Farm raised him to be a weapon, his bloodline made him a vessel, the Animus carved other people's memories into his skull until he could barely tell where his ancestors ended and Desmond began. Every single thing in his life was orchestrated to deliver him to the Eye. To that exact moment. 

So yeah, that line? No SHIT. He's known that forever. That line is the background hum of his entire existence, repeating and repeating like a truth he can't escape.

BUT. 

BUT BUT BUT. 

THEN, at the end—at the very end—the last repetition of the chorus…changes. Just slightly—and instead of wanting to die for something, the lyrics change to wanting to burn out brighter—brighter than the northern lights—and that tiny shift changes the WHOLE emotional payload because when you think about it, the structure of that verse is literally Desmond's arc. 

The fact that his life (and hell, I'll even throw in even the whole AC main games) had "not [been] about me" has been there the whole time—it's his whole life, his whole engineered existence, the trap he was born into. But the burn out brighter? That's the ONE thing he gets to add. The ONE piece of the whole machine that wasn't decided for him.

So now it feels like Desmond stepping toward the Eye with this very specific mindset of:

"Fine. My life was never mine. I get that. I've always known that—but this last thing? The way I go out? That part I'm choosing—and I'm choosing to burn so bright you'll see me from goddamn space."

This is the version of Desmond's sacrifice that actually feels BRIGHT and not tragic or passive or like he was cornered into it. It makes it feel like, in the middle of all that fear and exhaustion and bullshit, he still reached for something bigger than the machinery that was trying to use him. Like he looked straight at the end and refused to let the end of his own story belong only to everyone else.

Desmond didn't just die. 

He chose to burn out brighter instead of quietly disappearing and I WILL NEVER EVER BE NORMAL ABOUT THAT.

…

Okay.

SO. 

We have now reached the part of the program where I would theoretically hand over my Ezio/Des playlist… except I can't actually do that yet.

Like, I DO have Ezio/Des songs. (A good handful of them, actually. Heehee.) However, I genuinely feel like the second I drop them, some of you are going to hear the first verse or chorus and lock directly in on the VIBES and go, "OH. OH, NIKARIS, I SEE WHAT UR COOKING" and unfortunately I am not ready to be perceived on that level yet LMAO.

So for now, consider this Part 1: LSR & Desmond Emotional Damage Hours.

Once we get past December 1476 in the fic, that's when I'll feel safe(ish) in unleashing Part 2: The Ezio/Des Feelings Hour (assuming people are actually still interested, haha) because right now those songs are not a playlist so much as a spoiler-shaped raccoon rattling around in my psyche.

But for now, this is all you get from me: an Eye song, Maria/Lucia grief, several Desmond exhaustion anthems, and a… concerning amount of emotional rambling that I had NOT intended on writing when I was trying to answer this ask lmao. Like, somewhere along the line, this stopped being "sure, anon, here are some songs (◠‿◠✿)" and turned into me standing in the ruins of my own drafts going "well, since we're already here…" 

Anyway, thank you for asking, anon! Sorry for the delay! (◍•ᴗ•◍)❤ 

(FYI - I also THINK I know who you are based on the timing of ANOTHER ask of the same subject so THEREFORE, I will only answer this one to respect ur privacy if the annony-ness was the original intention. I HAVE listened to that song you said reminded you of LSR though and LMAOO YES it's so on the nose haha. Like, "Everyone's grabbing for the apple, thinking if they have it they'll be God's new fav" Come now. CMON NOW, haha.) 

[staringintodarkhole]

not couple

[iveseenthatlovebefore]

Ok I have a confession to make

For the last few weeks—actually, no, I take that back. I'm lowballing. It's been WAY more than a few weeks. It's been like… a month. Maybe two. Possibly since the dawn of time. I have absolutely lost the ability to measure it because I've been so thoroughly consumed by this specific, deranged, haunting flavor of EziDes that my brain has simply stopped keeping track of anything that isn't THIS. 

(This is why LSR is SUFFERING. This is why chapter 16 is sitting at 30k words, unedited on my hard drive like a cursed lasagna of feelings and bird trauma—because THIS TOMFOOLERY has taken over every functioning neuron I have left.)

And I am really only sharing this NOW because I have just crawled out of a MONTH AND A HALF of absolute nonsense at work—like genuine capital B Bullshit™ where two of my coworkers left and I have been volunTOLD to cover the gap while my manager stands in the distance doing what I can only assume is ASTRAL PROJECTION—and this idea has been building inside me like a demonic pressure cooker that if not released RIGHT NOW, I am going to explode and take everyone in a five-mile radius with me. 

(ALSO it has been a while since I've flashbanged ya'll with my lunacy and I think that's a PROBLEM. THEREFORE I AM NOT SORRY IN THE SLIGHTEST. (⊙‿⊙✿)

SO—)

Ya know how in AC1, Desmond gets kidnapped by Abstergo??? Like, one second he's (likely) taking out the trash behind the Bad Weather and the next, he's blindfolded, shoved in a van, and yeeted across the Atlantic to become a reluctant Animus-riding guinea pig.

BUT HEAR ME OUT OKAY BECAUSE WHAT IF—

What if before that… like, in the months leading up to the kidnapping and events of AC1, Desmond was in a… situationship.

AND WHAT I MEAN BY THAT IS—okay, look. I've mentioned this before (maybe in another post I think—can't quite remember which) but in my headcanon, Desmond can't afford relationships. He can't afford to get close to people. He just CAN'T. He's been on the run since he was sixteen. He's been hiding. Laying low. Living under fake names—Francisco Randez being the longest standing one—and making JUST enough on a bartender's salary to survive. He's out here keeping his head down and sleeping with one eye open due to paranoia and trauma.

Relationships, however, mean trust. They mean transparency. They mean letting someone see you—really see you—and Desmond Miles CANNOT. RISK. THAT.

Because what happens when someone gets close? 

They ask questions.

Where are you from? What's your family like? Why did you scope out the exits, the security camera, and that guy's stance in under three seconds? Why do you sleep like someone's going to kick the door in?

And when you can't answer those questions without EXPLAINING that your family is a secret cult of stabby parkour history nerds—well, you just… don't let things get that far.

But Desmond's only human, okay?? So he has flings—a lot of them. One-night stands. Casual hookups. Y'know, the stuff where bodies connect but feelings don't.

And that works for him. It's fine. He considers himself an okay-looking dude. A solid 6—maybe even a strong 7 on a chill night when the lighting's good and the alcohol hits just right—and the Bad Weather's a relatively upscale-ish bar, so he's seen his fair share of 9s and 10s wander through. Desmond gets it. He knows where he stands. He's realistic with himself.

(He's also WRONG, btw. This man is an 8-MINIMUM, but Desmond Miles would rather DIE than look in a mirror and think "Actually, I may be hot" and underestimating himself is a character flaw that I am dying on a hill for.)

BUT ANYWAYS.

Flings. Casual. No strings. That's been the deal for years.

UNTIL—

Enter one 'Enzo Constantini.'

And let me tell you something about this man.

He's older—late 40s to early 50s maybe—with silver at his temples. He has the kind of face that looks like it was carved by someone who understood bone structure on a spiritual level and dresses like every thread was chosen by a divine council of European tailoring gods. 

He wears his sleeves rolled up sometimes and has hands that look like they've done carpentry and a little violence. The sort of man who says very little and somehow still gives the impression that if he did speak more than two sentences, it would rearrange your furniture. His vibes scream CALM and REFINED and SILVER FOX and like, his whole aura?? It's unironically hot. 

ANYWAYS, he comes into the Bad Weather semi-regularly and sits at the end of the bar. Orders wine—red, specifically—with the quiet confidence of a man who has opinions about grapes. He tips well. Never makes a scene. Never overstays. Never acts entitled.

But now, here's the thing right—

The Bad Weather is a BAR.

A good bar! A respectable bar! A place of vibes and alcohol and poor choices!

It is not, however, a WINE bar.

The menu has SOME wine like the house red, house white, a rose, and something with a screw cap that cost like, nine dollars at Costco and tastes like a wet apology. 

And Desmond, who has been the main bartender going on nine years in this place, watches this clearly refined, clearly EXPENSIVE, well-dressed man take one sip of the cabernet, pause for half a second like his soul just took damage, and then continue drinking it without complaint.

No face. No sneer. No "send this back" or weird power play.

And Desmond—who has an entire bingo card of "Reasons Why We've Had to Kick Out People" at the ready at all times—watches this man and is like:

Oh.

Oh I respect you sexually.

Because that level of self-control? That level of silent endurance in the face of genuinely mediocre wine?

That is character.

So now Desmond is looking.

And because Desmond is, again, tragically only human—he looks at this man and goes:

"Huh."

And then, later:

"...Huh."

(Because LOOK.

I AM NOT SAYING Desmond has daddy issues—BUT I AM saying Desmond has a TYPE.

And that type is older, steady, vaguely dangerous in a way he cannot fully articulate, emotionally contained but not cold, physically competent, and secretly capable of being very gentle.

And if ALL THAT overlaps with some unresolved paternal emotional void, then that is between Desmond and whatever god is watching, okay? OKAY? We're not unpacking it (yet hehe). We're just acknowledging it and moving on.)

So ANYWAYS, Desmond notices Enzo. Enzo notices Desmond and they just… start hooking up.

Casually.

Very casually.

And this is where the tragedy begins, because when I say "casually" what I mean is:

In Desmond's mind, this is a recurring hookup. A reliable arrangement. A low-stakes fuckbuddy situation with the occasional food.

Like, to Desmond, they're just Netflix and chillin' except Enzo wears nice coats and sometimes takes him to dinner first.

That is what Desmond THINKS is happening.

BUT HERE'S THE PROBLEM.

'Enzo Constantini'...

...is a fake name.

An alias for when 'Enzo' needs to be incognito.

BECAUSE 'ENZO CONSTANTINI' IS ACTUALLY EZIO AUDITORE.

DON'T ASK ME HOW OKAY IT DOESN'T MATTER RIGHT NOW. Reincarnation? Long-lost twin? God playing an elaborate joke?? SHHHH. DON'T THINK TOO DEEP ABOUT IT. ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW is that this Ezio Auditore is just a man who was born with sharp instincts, sharper cheekbones, and the kind of quiet authority that makes rooms go silent when he enters—

—and who leveraged all of that into becoming the Don of the Florentine Syndicate, currently in New York on business.

YES THATS RIGHT. 

He's a mafia don.

He runs a criminal empire.

He has probably ordered at least one murder this month (so far.)

And Desmond—beautiful, suspicious, catastrophically avoidant Desmond—thinks this man IS AN ACCOUNTANT.

I am not kidding.

Desmond saw the suits, the composure, the weird hours, the expensive watch, the controlled demeanor, the occasional cryptic phone call in Italian, and went:

Ah yes.

Finance.

Because here's the thing right—Ezio uses a fake name for the same reason Desmond does: protection. He doesn't want his relationship (RELATIONSHIP. HE THINKS IT'S A RELATIONSHIP. WE'LL GET TO THAT IN A SEC.) muddled by his bloody, complicated, definitely-illegal professional life. So he tells Desmond he's into 'business consulting' and 'asset management' and uses some very specific terminology that makes Desmond's brain—which has never filed a tax return in his LIFE because he has an arrangement with the bar's owner and gets paid in cash under the table—just go:

"Oh. He's like a CPA or something."

A CPA.

A CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANT.

THIS MAN HAS PEOPLE KILLED AND DESMOND THINKS HE WORKS WITH SPREADSHEETS.

And the BEST part? Ezio leans into it. He COMMITS to the bit. Not because he's trying to be deceptive—he genuinely wants to protect Desmond from that world—but the result is that every time he takes a work call within earshot of Desmond, it sounds like the most boring, mundane white-collar nonsense imaginable. 

LIKE I'M TALKING:

"We need to close that account." (Translation: Kill him.) "There's been a discrepancy in the books." (Translation: Someone stole from me and they have forty-eight hours to live.) "I'm restructuring some assets in the northeast division." (Translation: Hostile territorial takeover.) "The client has been liquidated." (Translation: THE CLIENT HAS BEEN LIQUIDATED.)

And Desmond just hears all of this and goes:

"Wow, sounds stressful. You want another pour?"

And Ezio, IN THE MIDDLE OF ORDERING A HIT, just softens and goes:

"...Yes. Thank you, Francisco."

I AM ON THE FLOOR YOU GUYS.

But okay—okay okay okay—here's where it gets UNHINGED BECAUSE REMEMBER WHEN I SAID EZIO WANTS TO PROTECT HIS RELATIONSHIP??? 

WELL.

Desmond thinks this is a fling.

Ezio does NOT think this is a fling.

Like, what is ACTUALLY happening is that Ezio Auditore is OUT HERE behaving like a man in the middle of a tasteful, deeply intentional, old-world courtship.

Desmond thinks:  We have sex sometimes and then get pasta. Ezio thinks: I have selected a restaurant with quiet lighting because he looked tired last week. Desmond thinks: This older guy I'm sleeping with on the regular keeps buying me dinner for some reason. Ezio thinks: He prefers the white sauce over the red only when he's had a long shift. Desmond thinks: It's casual. Ezio thinks: We are getting to know each other slowly and with dignity. Desmond thinks: We are literally friends with benefits. Ezio, internally: This is a delicate and meaningful prelude to devotion.

LIKE I NEED EVERYONE TO UNDERSTAND THAT DESMOND IS OPERATING UNDER MODERN SITUATIONSHIP RULES WHILE EZIO IS OUT HERE ACTING LIKE A RENNAISANCE WIDOWER WHO FOUND LOVE AGAIN AT LAST. 

They are not speaking the same language.

They are not playing the same sport.

Desmond thinks repeated proximity + sex + meals = "Oh cool, a regular thing."

Ezio thinks repeated proximity + sex + meals + remembering how 'Francisco' likes to take his coffee = "We are, naturally, in the process of courting."

THIS MAN IS IN LOVE WITH HIM.

DESMOND THINKS HE DOES TAXES.

Like, Ezio is fully, catastrophically, irreversibly gone for this bartender and BECAUSE he thinks this is an actual relationship, he has been expressing that love in the only way a man who runs a criminal empire knows how: by quietly and systematically, and without Desmond's knowledge… making sure every inconvenience in Desmond's life disappears.

For example—

Desmond's apartment has a leaky faucet? Landlord's been putting it off for weeks? Well, Desmond mentions it ONCE offhandedly, half-asleep—barely even complaining—and the next day? 

Fixed.

Not just fixed—there's a note on the door saying the leak, the pipes under the sink, and several other maintenance issues Desmond didn't even know about have already been taken care of.

Desmond: "Huh. Guess the building super finally got his shit together."

(THE BUILDING SUPERINTENDENT DID NOT GET HIS SHIT TOGETHER. 

The building super got a visit from two very large men in very nice suits who explained, calmly and with impeccable manners, that Francisco's apartment was to be maintained to a certain standard going forward. 

The super has not slept well since.)

Desmond's got a late shift at the bar? Bad neighborhood, rough crowd, walks home alone at 3am? He doesn't think twice about it because he's been handling himself since he was sixteen, but when he walks home that night, the streets are… weirdly quiet. 

Like, suspiciously safe. 

No drunks. No creeps. No drama. Just empty sidewalks and the faint sound of a car idling two blocks back.

Desmond: "Wow, nice night."

(It IS a nice night. 

Because Ezio has two cars doing a discreet perimeter sweep of the six-block radius around Desmond's apartment every night he works late. This has been happening for MONTHS. Desmond has not been mugged ONCE and he thinks it's because the neighborhood improved. 

THE NEIGHBORHOOD DID NOT IMPROVE.  THE NEIGHBORHOOD WAS IMPROVED.  BY FORCE.)

They go to concerts, too.

Desmond's like: 

"Sweet, Enzo got us tickets. :D" 

And then they get there and it's not just normal tickets—it's VIP. It's a private box WITH LEATHER SEATS. Someone brings them drinks on the house and Desmond's just sitting there with his legs kicked up eating nachos like:

"Damn, Enzo's got connections."

(CONNECTIONS. EZIO IS THE CONNECTION.  HE PROBABLY OWNS THE VENUE. OR HAS THE VENUE OWNER'S FIRSTBORN CHILD AS COLLATERAL.

AND DESMOND IS LEGIT JUST SITTING THERE LIKE:

"This is a pretty sweet fuck-buddy situation ngl.")

And oh—THE DRINKS. I need to talk about the drinks because the drinks are their own deranged little subplot in this love story.

So remember how Ezio first walked into the Bad Weather and politely drank the house wine like a man swallowing his own death? Yeah, so Desmond noticed. 

Not because he's a wine connoisseur or anything like that. Desmond's wine knowledge begins and ends at "red or white?"—but he's a BARTENDER and reading people's reactions to what you serve them is LITERALLY his job. Therefore, he's seen, very early on, that every time 'Enzo' ordered wine, he drank it without complaint, but he also never looked… happy about it.

And that gets under Desmond's skin, ya know? Not because he's IN LOVE OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT (heehee (⊙‿⊙✿)) but more in that deeply stupid way where he's been getting absolutely shlonked on a semi-regular basis and decides, well, yeah, that kind of performance deserves perks. Like, that's just being a good fuck buddy. So, one night after Enzo leaves, he finds himself standing behind the bar and asking himself: 

"...What kind of wine DOES he like?"

And then—and I need you to understand the gravity of this—Desmond Miles, a man who has never Googled anything that wasn't survival-related, fake-ID related or conspiracy-adjacent, pulls out his phone at 2am and searches: 'good Italian red wine from Italy'—and falls down a RABBIT HOLE.

He's up until 4am reading about Tuscan wine regions. He learns what Chianti Classico is. He learns the difference between a Riserva and a Gran Selezione. He learns that Sangiovese is a grape and not, as he previously assumed, a type of pasta. 

He's reading wine blogs. 

WINE. BLOGS. 

Like Desmond is researching wine with the same intensity other people reserve for tax fraud or escaping the country. 

And then—THEN—he goes to his boss and says:

"Hey, we should stock some better reds. I've been getting requests."

(He has NOT been getting requests. He has been getting ONE quiet Italian man who drinks bad wine without complaining because he's too polite to say anything and Desmond has decided to fix this problem with the force of a man on a MISSION.)

So the bar gets a couple Florentine wines. Nothing too crazy—they're still a bar, not a wine cellar—but a decent Chianti Classico Gran Selezione and a Brunello that Desmond picked based on approximately forty-seven browser tabs and a review that said they had "a pleasing aroma of black cherry and leathery notes" which sounded like something Enzo would like even though Desmond has no idea why he thinks that or what it even means.

ANYWAYS, the next time Enzo comes in, Desmond doesn't even ask. He just pours him a glass of the Chianti Classico and slides it across the bar, with a casual, "Hey, we got some new stuff in. Tell me what you think."

And Ezio, surprised but intrigued, takes a sip and then… something in his face shifts—just slightly. The lines around his eyes ease. The corner of his mouth pulls, faint and warm, like he's trying very hard not to let too much show all at once and he says, quietly, almost to himself—

"This is from Florence."

"Yeah." Desmond says, already wiping down the bar and deliberately not making eye contact because if he makes eye contact he'll have to acknowledge that he spent three hours researching Tuscan wine regions for a man he's supposedly just casually sleeping with. "Figured we could use some variety."

Ezio looks at him for a long moment. Then, takes another sip.

"It's perfect, Francisco."

And Desmond—behind the bar, rag in hand, absolutely NOT blushing—says, "Cool. Yeah. Whatever."

(He is blushing. He is blushing SO HARD. He turns around to reorganize the bottles and lets the stupidest little smile happen where no one can see it.)

BUT WAIT—IT GETS BETTER.

Because Desmond doesn't stop at wine. See, Desmond also knows his spirits and he's been quietly into Japanese whiskey for a while. It's good stuff—smooth, complex, the kind of thing most people overlook because they go straight for Scotch. And Desmond has this thought, right—this small, traitorous, absolutely-not-a-boyfriend thought—which is:

"I bet Enzo would like Suntory Toki."

Now THIS is different from the wine because the wine was Desmond trying to fix a problem. Like, the wine was him noticing Ezio liked wine, didn't like the Bad Weather's offerings, and making it better.

The whiskey, though?

The whiskey is Desmond offering up one of his own favorites. It's him, lowkey saying without actually saying: "Here, try this thing I like."

(Which is, unfortunately, so much more intimate LMAO.)

So he convinces his boss to stock it by pitching it as a trendy upsell. Very professional. Very business-minded. Not at ALL because he wants to see a specific man's reaction to a specific drink that Desmond really enjoys.

So, the next time Enzo comes in, Desmond pours him a shot without asking and goes: 

"New addition. Japanese whiskey. You strike me as a guy who'd appreciate it."

Ezio glances at the glass. The liquid's amber. Clean. 

And more importantly, not his usual.

Because ya see, in Italy, Ezio primarily drinks wine. Red, mostly, as you'd expect. Maybe grappa when he's feeling particularly old-world or even amaro after dinner.

But when in the US on business like he is now, he usually drinks bourbon. Good bourbon. It's easy to order. Easy to trust. The kind of drink that fits neatly into expensive rooms full of dangerous men pretending they're discussing import logistics instead of crime.

So this?

This is different. 

But Ezio lifts the glass and takes a sip, anyways. He doesn't say anything right away. Just lets it rest on his tongue for a second before swallowing and his face goes still in that quiet, attentive way people do when something catches them slightly off guard.

"Not bourbon." He says at last.

Desmond's lip twitches. "Nope."

Ezio takes another sip, slower this time—more certain. The corner of his mouth shifts almost imperceptibly before he gives the faintest nod, like he's arrived at some private conclusion.

"Better." Ezio admits.

And Desmond—who has been holding his breath for approximately four seconds—smiles. 

And OH, it's not one of his normal bartender grins or the customer-service smile. No, no, no, it's the REAL ONE—quick and cocky and bright—the kind that flashes across his face before he can catch it. The kind that makes his eyes do something stupid and warm.

"Yeah." He says, a little too smug. "Thought so."

BUT HERE'S THE THING RIGHT.

DESMOND ASSUMES EZIO MEANT THE WHISKEY.

HE DOES NOT NOTICE THE TONE. 

HE DOES NOT NOTICE THAT EZIO HAD BEEN LOOKING DIRECTLY AT HIM WHEN HE SAID IT.

HE DOES NOT NOTICE ANYTHING.

Desmond—god bless him—just hears "better" and immediately files it under SUCCESS :) HE LIKED THE WHISKEY :) I, FRANCISCO RANDEZ (AKA DESMOND MILES), HAVE ONCE AGAIN OPTIMIZED A CUSTOMER'S BEVERAGE EXPERIENCE :)

And Ezio sees that smile—that real, unguarded, cocky little smile—and thinks, very calmly, very clearly to himself:

I am in trouble.

(While also making a mental note-to-self to have Japanese whiskey stocked in all his cars. 

And in the villa. 

And in his office. 

Possibly even acquire a financial stake/interest in Suntory itself.)

Meanwhile, Desmond is over there reorganizing the whiskey shelf with the energy of a man who just won the Super Bowl and is pretending he doesn't care. 

(He cares. He cares SO MUCH. He built this man a personalized beverage arc and he still thinks they're just fuck buddies. 

DESMOND. 

DESMOND, C'MON. OMG.)

And THEN there's the restaurant. 

(Oh god, THE RESTAURANT.) 

This is the one I think about OFTEN BECAUSE GET THIS RIGHT—

So one night, Ezio decides he wants to take Desmond out to dinner. Not just any dinner—an important one because he wants to take 'Francisco' somewhere that tastes like home. Like, his actual ancestral Florentine-blood, olive oil encrusted home. 

So he picks this place—this gorgeous, intimate, aggressively expensive Florentine-cuisine restaurant. The kind of place that doesn't have prices on the menu and where the maitre d' greets you by name and the tablecloths are actual linen and the olive oil was pressed, harvested, and imported from some specific grove in Tuscany that the chef personally visits every spring.

We're talkin' four dollar signs on Google Maps. FOUR. The MAXIMUM amount of dollar signs.

And Ezio mentions the name to Desmond—frugal, practical, bartender-salaried Desmond—who goes:

"Oh, is that like an Olive Garden?"

AND YOU CAN HEAR A DAMN PIN DROP BECAUSE SOMEWHERE in the shadows of the Bad Weather, two of Ezio's men—who are always there, always hidden, always pretending to be regular patrons while discreetly surveilling the perimeter—go absolutely RIGID. 

One of them chokes on his beer. 

The other one is having an existential crisis. 

They are both SWEATING. 

They are having a simultaneous cardiac event because this beautiful, beautiful man—the man their boss is in love with—just compared a five-star Florentine establishment to OLIVE GARDEN.

But Ezio?

Ezio just... tilts his head. A little amused, a little charmed because here's the thing, right—Ezio has never eaten at an Olive Garden. He DOES NOT KNOW it's the culinary equivalent of a war crime against Italian cuisine. He just hears it as another Italian restaurant and thinks, 'Well, perhaps they're similar? They serve Italian food, yes?' 

So he says:

"...Something like that."

And Desmond—sweet, oblivious, middle-income Desmond who eats at two-dollar-sign restaurants MAX and who does not go to expensive restaurants unless someone else is footing the bill (and even then, he feels weird about it)—gets visibly EXCITED. Like, GENUINELY excited and goes:

"Oh sick, I hope they have breadsticks. I LOVE breadsticks."

And ya'll need to understand something about WHO Desmond Miles in my head. 

This man is a BIRD.

He is a CARB CREATURE.

He loves bread the way other people love oxygen. 

Breadsticks? Free, unlimited, warm-from-the-oven Olive Garden breadsticks? 

That is Desmond's love language. That is his religion. That is the one uncomplicated joy in his deeply complicated disaster life.

The problem?

This stunning, award-winning, linen-tablecloth, reservation required, Florentine restaurant does not serve free breadsticks as an appetizer.

Because it is not an Olive Garden.

Because it is a REAL ITALIAN restaurant.

And okay, while Ezio doesn't know exactly what an Olive Garden is, he knows it is some kind of American chain. 

He knows, from Desmond's tone, that it is casual.

He knows—from long and painful experience—that no real Italian restaurant worth its salt is putting unlimited free breadsticks on the table as a standard part of the meal service.

So when Desmond mentions bread sticks, Ezio understands exactly three things:

1) The restaurant will absolutely not have any breadsticks, 2) Desmond is emotionally invested in breadsticks, and 3) Ezio cannot bear to disappoint him.

Therefore, reality must be altered.

So Ezio smiles—small, calm, already making decisions—and says:

"I'm sure that can be arranged."

AND HIS BOYS KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. 

And sure enough, before the reservation that night, one of them quietly steps outside and makes a call.

A very polite, very brief, deeply sinister call.

The message is brief:

Breadsticks on the table before Mr. Constantini and his guest are seated.

Warm.

Plentiful.

Complimentary.

No, this is not optional.

Yes, we understand this is not standard.

It is standard now.

And somewhere in the kitchen, the head chef, who has spent THIRTY YEARS building a reputation on authenticity and excellence has to stand there in stunned silence while realizing he is about to be extorted into recreating OLIVE GARDEN.

Not for money.

But for romance.

And so when Desmond walks into this restaurant—this absurdly beautiful, candlelit, four dollar sign Michelin-star establishment where the wine list is longer than his lease agreement—the FIRST thing he sees on the table is a basket of fresh, warm breadsticks and he just PERKS UP like a New York pigeon seeing a breadcrumb on the sidewalk. 

Desmond: "Oh HELL yeah. Just like Olive Garden's! :D"

And I need you to understand that somewhere in the building, at least three restaurant staff have to look away while Ezio sits down like this is all perfectly normal and Desmond immediately grabs for the breadsticks with the kind of joy usually reserved for religious experiences.

Ezio watches him eat four of them before the first course arrives and thinks, with devastating sincerity: 

I would buy every bakery in this city for you.

AND THAT BECOMES A THING. That's how Ezio learns that Desmond loves bread. Not from a conversation. Not from some deep heart-to-heart. No, no, no—it's from the way this man's entire face transformed over FREE CARBS like he'd been handed the secret to eternal happiness.

So from that night forward, EVERY time they go to that restaurant (and of course it becomes THEIR restaurant because Desmond falls in love with the pasta and the breadsticks and the corner booth and does not realize he is being slowly, meticulously, mafia-style courted) there's breadsticks on the table before they even sit down.

And Desmond thinks this is completely normal—which, to be fair, in HIS mind, it is. This restaurant is literally just… fancy Olive Garden. It's just what this place does.

(IT DOES NOT DO THAT. 

EZIO DID THAT. 

Desmond does not know that the breadsticks are there because Ezio made them part of the dinner service.

He does not know there is probably a note in the reservation book somewhere that effectively says:

MR. CONSTANTINI. CORNER BOOTH. CANDLES. BREADSTICKS FOR THE AMERICAN.

Desmond has NO IDEA that he's being wined and dined with the full force of a man who would burn a city for him. 

But the restaurant staff knows.  The maitre d' knows.  The CHEF knows. 

Everyone in the damn building knows they're witnessing a mafia don court a bartender with breadsticks and they are all too terrified (and frankly, too emotionally invested) to say a word.)

Oh, and when they're NOT going out to dinner, Des insists on Ezio coming over to his place instead. Like, they have a system—Desmond handles the food and Ezio brings the wine. 

That's their thing. 

However, when Ezio brings wine, it's the good shit. Like, SUSPICIOUSLY good—and NOT ONCE does Desmond question it because he thinks that Enzo knows a guy.

(HE DOES KNOW A GUY.  THE GUY IS HIM.  HE OWNS THE VINEYARD.  OR THE REGION.  OR POSSIBLY THE ENTIRE ITALIAN PENINSULA'S EXPORT OPERATION. 

AND DESMOND IS JUST LIKE:

"Wow this goes great with the lasagna lol" 

And EZIO, who has absolutely eaten better food in much nicer places, just sits there across from Desmond sharing microwave lasagna and Safeway garlic bread with expensive wine like this is the best meal of his life BECAUSE HE IS IN LOVE AND LOVE IS A DISEASE WITH NO CURE.)

SO TO RECAP THE SITUATION: 

Ezio and Desmond are two men, both using fake names, both hiding who they really are, both sitting across from each other thinking they're the only ones at the table with a secret.

Desmond thinks he has a fuck buddy who has a deeper wallet and is good at finding deals.

Ezio thinks he has a boyfriend who he would commit genuine atrocities for.

NOBODY IS ON THE SAME PAGE. 

THEY'RE NOT EVEN IN THE SAME BOOK.

AND IT'S BEAUTIFUL.

But okay—I hear you asking, "OP, how did this even happen? What was the MOMENT? When did Ezio go from "I just like this bar" to "who is this bartender"???

OH HO HO.

WELL.

I'M SO GLAD YOU ASKED. 

Because realistically, right—at first, Ezio is just a regular that keeps to himself. He comes in. He drinks. He leaves. He likes the Bad Weather because it's tucked out of the way, not super glamorous, and more importantly, not full of people who matter—or anyone actively checking Interpol's most wanted. For a man who spends his life being watched, that kind of anonymity is worth more than gold.

He honestly doesn't even notice the bartender at first, either. 'Francisco Randez'—according to the name tag—is just… there. Part of the scenery. 

He's nice. He doesn't force small talk unless Ezio initiates it. He pours beers on tap with minimal foam, doesn't overdo the cocktails, and understands the sacred and increasingly endangered art of minding his own business.

Until one night.

It's a busy evening—packed bar, loud music, the kind of night where everyone's two drinks past their limit and the whole place has gone a little sloppy around the edges. Desmond's working the bar solo—pouring drinks, running tabs, doing the whole customer-service smile thing he's been perfecting since he started here (ya know—the one that says, "I am your best friend tonight" while his eyes say "please tip me so I can afford ramen this week. c:")

And that's when Ezio, sitting at the end of the bar with a glass of mediocre house cab in hand, watching everything because that's what men like him do, sees it—

There's a guy at a table near the back. Mid-thirties, expensive watch, lounging about with the kind of smile that doesn't reach his eyes. He's sitting with a girl who's maybe two drinks in, laughing a little too hard at his jokes, and clearly at that stage in the night where she thinks she's just having fun.

But then… the guy reaches into his pocket. 

Subtly. Casually. With the kind of motion you'd miss if you weren't looking and nobody's looking. 

Nobody except the bartender.

Desmond is halfway through pouring a whiskey sour when his eyes flick to that table for just the barest of a second. His hands don't stop moving and his expression doesn't change. Nothing about him gives away to anyone that he's noticed anything out of the ordinary—

—but Ezio isn't just anyone. 

And he sees the exact moment the bartender's eyes track that hand from pocket to glass and honestly? Ezio expects a few things to happen after that—a shout, a confrontation, maybe for the bartender to storm over and throw the guy out. He's seen his fair share of these things happen, after all. He expects loud. He expects obvious. He expects a normal reaction.

But instead, Desmond does something beautiful.

He picks up a tray of drinks—other customers' orders—and heads over toward a nearby table with the easy, practiced stride of a bartender doing his rounds and just as he passes the creep's table… his hip catches the edge.

The roofied drink tips and spills across the table, flooding the scratched tabletop and soaking the guy's sleeve. 

"Oh shit—I am SO sorry, man." Desmond says immediately, already grabbing for napkins and radiating genuine mortification so convincing it deserves an award. "That's completely on me. Here—next round's on the house, yeah? Both of you."

The guy's pissed, obviously, but what's he gonna do? The bartender's apologizing. The girl's laughing it off. A fresh drink appears a minute later, poured by Desmond himself, handed directly to her with a warm little smile and a "Sorry about that—have a good night." The guy gets another pint of whatever he'd been drinking.

And just like that, the moment is over.

Nobody in that bar knows what really happened.

Nobody except Ezio.

And Ezio sets his wine down and thinks, 'Well, that's interesting.' 

Because that wasn't the bartender being a klutz. That was a controlled demolition disguised as customer service. The angle had been perfect and the timing? Cleaner than most of the men Ezio employs. Even the apology had been weaponized.

It was neat.

It was elegant.

And most importantly, it was deniable.

But here's the thing, right—that's not what gets him. That was just the hook. That was just the thing that gets Ezio to pay attention. 

What REALLY gets him is what happens NEXT.

Because Desmond doesn't stop there. Oh no, no, no, because ya see, Desmond is a customer service worker and customer service workers are not allowed to do the things they deserve to do.

They are not allowed to punch people. 

They are not allowed to vault the bar and beat someone with a muddler.

They definitely are not allowed to announce to the world, "hey, everybody, this asshole just tried to roofie a woman" without it becoming A Whole Thing that gets lawyers, social media, management, and a target on his back. 

And Desmond CANNOT afford a target on his back.

So he gets creative.

Like, the guy's still at his table, still annoyed about his drink but settling in because hey, free round. And Desmond—beautiful, devious, customer-service-smile Desmond—just… waits. 

Eventually, the guy drifts up to the bar—and that's his second mistake. 

Because Desmond is a VERY good talker.

He HAS to be, honestly. It comes with the territory because bartending isn't just about pouring drinks—it's ALSO about knowing how to work conversations. It's about reading people in five seconds and figuring out what they want to hear before giving it to them in exactly the right tone so they tip well and come back and tell their friends. It's a performance at the end of the day and Desmond, who has been performing a fake identity since he was sixteen, is EXCEPTIONAL at it.

So he butters this guy up. He leans on the bar and starts easy.

"Hey, dude—sorry again about that drink. That was on me." "What do you do, man?"  "Oh, no way—that's sick."  "You drive a what? Damn, nice."

And just like that, the guy starts bragging because of course he does. Guys like this LOVE an audience. They love talking about themselves and thinking someone's impressed. 

So while the guy is busy peacocking, Desmond is busy doing what he was born to do—extracting information with a smile on his face.

The car.  The neighborhood.  The firm he works at.  The vague but useful details of his life.

It's all dropped casually in conversation by a man too stupid and too smug to realize he's being worked.

Eventually, the guy closes out, hands over his credit card, and Desmond runs it. He gives a friendly smile before handing it back with a, "Have a good night, man."

The guy leaves. Desmond waits exactly thirty seconds. Then, he goes into the back for his break, pulls out his phone, and makes two calls.

The first call is to a buddy. 

Someone he knows from—well, ok, Desmond's been living on the down low in New York City for years, okay? When you've been laying low that long, you tend to… pick up contacts, y'know? Build a network. Everyone knows someone who knows someone and Desmond knows a guy at the DMV.

So he reads off the guy's name from the credit card receipt and gets the plate number, the make, the model—and… oh, a special bit of info that makes the corners of Desmond's mouth twitch. Then, he ends the call with a promise that drinks are on him the next time his buddy drops by the Bad Weather. 

The second call is to a towing company.

Then, he hangs up, tosses the receipt into the dumpster, washes his hands, and walks back onto the floor. By the time he's behind the bar again, he's salting rims and mixing drinks like nothing happened.

AND THE WHOLE THING TOOK LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES.

Now—HERE'S WHERE EZIO COMES IN because Ezio watched ALL of that. Not the phone calls, obviously, since Desmond took them in the back—but he watched the setup. 

He watched the schmoozing. 

He watched how Desmond's entire demeanor shifted the SECOND the guy left—the customer-service warmth dropping like a mask, replaced by something sharp and focused and eerily quiet. 

He watched Desmond disappear into the back and come out four minutes later looking... satisfied, hand halfway to his back pocket as he slides his phone away.

And now, Ezio is deeply, professionally curious.

So he motions for one of his men seated three stools down, and murmurs: 

"The bartender made a call. Find out who and why."

Twenty minutes later, the man comes back with the answer and leans in to murmur into Ezio's ear.

And Ezio just… goes still for a second. He blinks once and there's this brief, perfect beat where you can actually SEE the information register. The corner of his mouth jerks.

And then—THEN—THAT is when Ezio fucking loses it.

He laughs. 

Not politely. Not one of those controlled, dignified, mafia-don chuckles. It's a real laugh—short, surprised, and punched out of him before he can stop it. The kind of laugh that escapes straight from the chest and he has to lower his head and put a hand over his mouth because for one completely undignified moment, he is in actual danger of grinning in public.

And his men, who have seen their don order hits before breakfast without blinking, just stare at him like they've just witnessed a solar eclipse.

Because the report is this: 

The bartender had the guy's BMW towed.

Not vandalized. Not stolen. Not smashed.

TOWED.

And the best part? The car hadn't even been parked illegally. It hadn't been blocking any driveway or hydrant. The spot wasn't the problem. 

The CAR was. 

Because apparently, once the bartender had the plate ran, it turned out that Mr. Roofie had exactly the kind of unresolved registration/ticket/whatever paperwork issue that didn't matter right up until the exact moment someone with a grudge and the right phone number decided it mattered VERY much right now.

And on a Friday night, tow companies are basically sharks. So, all the bartender had to do was drop blood in the water.

Meaning, the guy who swaggered out into the night right now thinking he'd had a great evening was going to find an empty curb, no car, and a number for the city impound lot.

Which, naturally, was closed until Monday.

The bartender hadn't just punished him.

He sentenced him to bureaucracy.

He condemned a predator to paperwork, fees, municipal confusion, and three full days of impotent rage.

ALL without raising his voice.

ALL without breaking cover.

ALL without ever once dropping that pleasant bartender smile.

And Ezio just sits there—still smiling helplessly into his wine, still a little breathless from a laugh he didn't authorize—and looks at this bartender with entirely new eyes. 

Because there he is, already back to pouring drinks. He's making a MARGARITA. He's got SALT on his hands. He's the picture of innocence.

But just a half hour ago, he'd just quietly dismantled a man's weekend with a DMV contact, some pre-existing piece of bureaucratic paperwork bullshit, and the kind of cold patience that would make half of Ezio's capos emotional.

And THAT is what gets Ezio. 

Because Desmond did not choose violence.

He chose SYSTEMS.

He chose INFRASTRUCTURE.

He chose to weaponize municipal procedure and then go back to mixing drinks like nothing happened.

Which is, unfortunately, hot.

Ezio finishes his wine and leaves a tip so obscene it's basically flirting and comes back the next night.

And the night after that.

And the night after that.

And if the towtruck incident was the thing that got Ezio's attention, then this is the thing that actually ruined him—

Because somewhere around week three, Ezio comes in late.

Still immaculate. Still composed. Still wearing that expensive coat and that careful, unreadable face of his—but there's a new tension in him that night. Something pulled too tight around the mouth, a stillness that feels less like calm and more like restraint.

Nobody else notices.

But Desmond does.

So before Ezio even says a word, Desmond sets a glass down in front of him.

Not the usual.

Better.

And beside it, a small bowl of the good olives from the back that they don't normally put out unless someone asks.

Ezio looks at the drink. Then at him.

Desmond just shrugs, wiping down the bar like it's nothing.

"Thought you might want the good stuff tonight."

And THAT is the moment Ezio is fucked.

Because there's no performance in it. No prying. No demand for an explanation. Just one quiet adjustment, made with the kind of easy care that suggests Desmond noticed he was having a bad night and decided, without asking permission, to make it slightly less terrible.

And Ezio—Ezio, who had come in fully intending to drink alone for an hour and then disappear back into the night like the world's most emotionally constipated specter, just… sits there for a while.

He eats one of the olives, finishes the bourbon—and somewhere in the middle of all that, he realizes two things:

The first is that he's hungrier than he thought. 

The second… is that he doesn't particularly want to leave.

Which is... new.

Because he'd had an ugly night—the kind that usually leaves him wanting silence, solitude, and a locked door between himself and the rest of humanity.

And yet here he is.

Sitting at the end of a nearly empty bar on a dead Tuesday, glass drained, olive dish half gone, with 'Francisco' behind the counter, giving him space so naturally it doesn't even feel deliberate.

No questions. No hovering. No pressure.

Just one good drink, a small bowl of olives, and a bartender quietly making the night easier to survive.

So Ezio looks up and says, very casually:

"When are you off?"

And Desmond, startled, blinks at him because okay.

That could mean dinner.

That could mean sex.

That could mean dinner AND sex.

And frankly, Desmond is not opposed to any of those options—so he tells him.

Ezio nods once, like this is normal—like he has not just made a decision that is going to alter the trajectory of his entire stupid life—and when Desmond's shift ends, they go get food.

And then, because they are both idiots with functioning libidos and deeply compromised decision-making skills, they start sleeping together.

Casually.

Well—

"Casually."

Because as you will recall—to Desmond, this is a fuck-buddy situation.

To Ezio, meanwhile, this is apparently the beginning of a sincere and emotionally devastating romantic attachment.

AND HE'S COOKED. 

EZIO AUDITORE IS SO FUCKING COOKED. 

This man went from "I just like the bar" to "I would restructure my entire criminal empire around letting this bartender ruin my life in increasingly domestic ways" in what feels like five minutes and a bourbon, and the worst part about this?? He didn't even feel it HAPPENING because Ezio Auditore, in EVERY life, falls in love the same way—

Completely.

Catastrophically.

And without a single goddamn exit strategy.

AND DESMOND DOESN'T KNOW.

Desmond—sweet, emotionally-illiterate, "I'm a solid 6" Desmond—doesn't know that when 'Enzo' looks at him across the bar, it's not casual. He doesn't know that the dinners aren't just dinners. He doesn't know that every fixed pipe, every quiet street, every suspiciously good seat at a concert is a love letter written in a language he's never been taught to read.

Because no one's ever loved him like this without asking for something back. There's always been a condition or a caveat or a training regimen attached.

And that's what makes this all so damn romantic because Desmond ISN'T oblivious to all this because he's stupid. 

He's oblivious because he LITERALLY has no frame of reference for being cherished.

He doesn't recognize it. He just CAN'T.

He just thinks getting dinner sometimes and hooking up is just what people do.

He doesn't know it can be more than that.

He doesn't know it ALREADY IS THAT.

(I'M FINE. I AM SO FINE. THERE IS NOT A SINGLE TEAR ANYWHERE NEAR MY FACE.)

SO ANYWAYS—

Then Abstergo kidnaps him.

(HAHA, THAT'S RIGHT. THOUGHT I WENT ON A TANGENT AND FORGOT ALL ABOUT THAT, DIDN'T YA????)

And here's the thing right—the worst part about it is that it happens on a night like any other. Desmond shows up for his shift, texts Ezio on his breaks with those short, half-distracted messages that somehow still manages to be cute against all odds, and the whole day passes with a kind of normality that makes you feel like everything is safe.

And because Ezio is, at this point, a man with a full-blown emotional condition in the shape of one 'Francisco Randez', he does in fact have one of his men keeping an eye on the Bad Weather during Desmond's late shifts. Not like, obviously or close enough that would make Desmond suspicious, of course. Just… someone nearby, watching the street and keeping an eye out the front and the flow of people coming in and out because that's where trouble usually comes from.

But that—unfortunately—is the problem. 

Because the man is watching the FRONT and near closing, Desmond does what he normally does every night: take out the trash. 

Out back. 

It's routine. It's ordinary. It's the kind of boring, invisible task that no one thinks twice about until much later when it's far too late. 

(And it is too late.)

So nothing feels wrong at first.

Around the time Desmond would normally be heading out, Ezio sends a text and gets no answer—which is annoying but not alarming, since well, Desmond is closing. He gets busy and is exactly the kind of bartender who will ignore his phone if the end of the night turns into a cleanup disaster. Also, unless the building is actively on fire, he's not gonna stop mopping to text back.

So, when Ezio calls a few minutes later and gets no answer, he doesn't panic. He tells himself that Desmond is just finishing up—flipping chairs, cleaning the draft drip trays, maybe dealing with some idiot who ordered mojitos right before close and deserves prison.

But then, more time passes and Ezio still gets... nothing. 

No text back. No missed call. No half-assed "busy rn."

And that is when the first real splinter of wrongness works its way under his skin and that quiet, predatory little instinct that had kept him alive for years begins to stir. 

Because Ezio has learned that Desmond is a lot of things—distracted sometimes, overworked usually, stubbornly casual about his own safety in the oddest ways—but he is also a creature of habit and this whole thing is slipping out of pattern in a way that Ezio doesn't like.

So he calls again and listens to it ring.

And ring.

And ring.

And when his phone finally DOES light up a moment later, there is one sharp, stupid, almost humiliating, flicker of relief—because finally, finally—before it dies the instant he sees that it ISN'T Desmond calling him back.

It's the man outside—

—who reports, with rising confusion that curdles into panic in almost real time, that nothing happened at the front, nobody suspicious came through or left, and yet FRANCISCO IS NOT IN THE BUILDING. 

And that's when the temperature fucking drops.

Because here's the thing about Ezio, right—he doesn't panic loudly. 

He doesn't yell. 

He doesn't pace. 

He doesn't slam his fist into the desk and start barking orders like some hotheaded idiot with money and a gun.

He goes quiet. 

And ya know, when a man like that who runs an empire—a man whose moods affect markets and move bodies and clear out entire neighborhoods—goes quiet, the empire goes quiet too. People stop talking. Phones stop ringing. Soldiers who were laughing a second ago straighten up and look at the floor. The air itself goes still because something has shifted and every single person in that room can feel it.

Ezio sits in his office, puts his phone down very carefully, folds his hands, and says, in a voice so calm it is infinitely worse than if he had screamed:

"Find him."

AND THEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE.

Because this isn't a man who lost a hookup. This isn't a man who got ghosted by a fling. This is a man whose HEART just vanished overnight without a word and he has the money, the reach, the connections, and the entire terrifying infrastructure of a criminal organization to tear a city apart looking for answers.

OH HO HO AND NOW THAT WE'RE HERE, GET THIS FUN WRINKLE—

Don Ezio Auditore… knows about the Assassins and the Templars.

BUT only like, in the broad, practical sense. He doesn't know the finer details, he's not personally involved in their war, and he truly doesn't give a shit. It's more like a surface-level awareness—the way a shark knows about other predators in the water. 

He knows they exist. 

They have THEIR territory.

And he has HIS. 

There's a mutual, unspoken understanding: you don't fuck with mine, I don't fuck with yours, and we all pretend the other doesn't exist at cocktail parties.

So when Desmond disappears, Ezio doesn't connect it to the Assassin-Templar drama. He doesn't KNOW that 'Francisco Randez' is 'Desmond Miles' and is the Brotherhood's Mentor's son and basically Assassin royalty with an absurdly OP bloodline. As far as Ezio is concerned, this is not related to politics, prophecy, or ancient prophecy/Isu bullshit. He has no reason to think this is anything other than a missing person—his missing person—and so, the investigation begins accordingly.

Which means ABSTERGO has a problem. (⊙‿⊙✿)

Because yes, they expect the Assassins to come after Desmond. Desmond is William Miles' son, after all. Brotherhood interference was always on the table. Rescue attempts, sabotage, stealthy bullshit in the dark, coded messages, hidden blades—all of that was expected.

ABSTERGO ACCOUNTED FOR THE ASSASSINS. 

ABSTERGO DID NOT ACCOUNT FOR THE BOYFRIEND.

ABSTERGO DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THE BOYFRIEND.

So when the first few reports start trickling in, no one REALLY GETS what they are at first because they don't LOOK dramatic. Nobody is kicking down doors screaming, "WHERE IS MY BARTENDER???" 

(Not yet, anyways lmao. Give it time.)

No, they look more like… pressure—or like a very pointed poke. Like every single link around Desmond's disappearance is suddenly getting pressed on by someone with too much money, too much influence, and a deeply concerning amount of free time.

A security subcontractor gets questioned about a camera outage on a route he thought nobody would care about. Some logistics asshole who has spent his entire life believing he is too minor to matter finds out—very abruptly—that that is not true. One accountant has the worst Wednesday of her life. 

Drivers, warehouse guys, niche specialists, asset acquisition and shell company weirdos… All these faceless people who make ugly operations possible behind the scenes are suddenly reevaluating their life choices because little by little, these people who all had a part in Desmond's kidnapping start coming to the same horrifying realization—that somebody rich, organized, and emotionally unwell is following the trail backwards.

Like:

"Sir, there's been another inquiry about Subject Seventeen." "Assassins?"  "No."  A pause.  "Then, from whom?" "We're… not entirely sure yet, sir—but the inquiries are getting… closer." "How close?" "...Italian, sir."

LMAOOOOO.

And the funniest part? Ezio would've NEVER have intersected with the Assassin-Templar war otherwise. He was perfectly content to run his empire, drink his Chianti, and love his bartender in peace.

But Abstergo touched Desmond.

And now it IS his fight—not because of ideology or destiny or ancestral calling. No, no, no—it's because a man in a very nice suit loves a man who pours very good drinks and someone made the catastrophic mistake of taking him away.

AND LIKE IMAGINE RIGHT—

The Templars are these ancient, sprawling, shadow-government freakshow weirdos—and the thing that finally comes along to fuck up their week ISN'T the Assassins.

It's a jealous Italian.

...

OKAY. 

OKAY. I AM STOPPING RIGHT HERE BEFORE THIS POST BECOMES A HOSTAGE SITUATION. 

This has gotten waaaay too long and while I could LITERALLY talk about this FOREVER, I have things to do. I have responsibilities. I have a Spettro AU, LSR Chapter 16, and like, three (oh god, it's turned into FOUR now) cursed Tumblr scenelets spawned by the art of a VERY SPECIFIC ARTIST as well as Asks that I need to answer and post, respectively that have ALSO been screaming at me from the recesses of my mind. 

I ONLY HAVE TWO HANDS AND YET MY BRAIN SAID "what if Desmond had a mafia boyfriend who thought they were soulmates while Desmond thought they were fuck buddies uwu" AND NOW I JUST LIVE LIKE THIS. 

Good god, and I haven't even gotten to what happens AFTER AC1 yet. 

Like what happens when Ezio finds out 'Francisco's' real name is actually Desmond Miles???

What happens when Ezio realizes the bartender he was halfway to proposing to is basically Assassin royalty with the most DERANGED FAMILY TREE IMAGINABLE???

What happens when Desmond finds out his casual fling responded to his disappearance by trying to dismantle a shadow organization with the full logistical force of organized crime?????

What happens when Shaun, Rebecca, and Lucy all think the people on their trail are Templar-hired mercs, while the reality is that they're ACTUALLY being stalked across the map by the private recovery team of one deeply unwell Italian man who just wants his bartender back???

What happens when Shaun and Rebecca and William—OH GOD, WILLIAM—realize that the people sniffing around their contacts, safehouses, and dead drops are not Templars at all, but the hired hands of some random man who is simply terminally, catastrophically, and inconveniently in love???

What happens when Shaun, Rebecca, Lucy, and William THEN have to process the absolutely diseased reality that Ezio Auditore is a real 15th-century Italian man from Desmond's ancestral memories… AND THAT SAID TERMINALLY, CATASTROPHICALLY, AND INCONVENIENTLY IN LOVE MAN IN QUESTION is ALSO Ezio Auditore—ALSO Italian, ALSO alarming, and ALSO a mafia don who has been semi-regularly railing Desmond this whole time???

(LIKE IMAGINE THIS WITH ME FOR A SECOND.

At some point, probably during some tiny pocket of downtime, somebody asks Desmond if he'd ever had anything serious before, and Desmond just gets a little hesitant and goes:

"Uh, kinda? His name was Enzo. Older guy. We were seeing each other, I guess."

And everyone files that away under as a weirdly normal detail in an otherwise cursed life.

ONLY FOR IT TO COME BACK LATER LIKE A STEEL CHAIR TO THE BACK OF THE HEAD.

Because the second the truth comes out, everyone else is having a CATACLYSMIC spiritual event because:

DESMOND WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU WERE CASUALLY FUCKING A MODERN DAY EZIO AUDITORE???????

BUT MEANWHILE Desmond himself is stuck on the much more immediate and personally offensive revelation of:

WAIT.

YOUR NAME ISN'T EVEN ENZO???

(Which is, admittedly, rich coming from 'Francisco' but that's not the point right now. Lmao.)

And Ezio—THIS MAN—has the audacity to look at Desmond with those horribly besotted mafia husband eyes and go:

"It was to protect you, amore."

WHICH IS NOT A DEFENSE.

THAT IS JUST ANOTHER PROBLEM.

(LMAO but guys THINK OF SHAUN'S REACTION THOUGH because this man would need to be SEDATED. Like, at this point, Rebecca and Lucy would still be trying to process the logistics of it and William would be standing there having some kind of silent paternal aneurysm—but Shaun???

Shaun would stare at Desmond for one long, terrible second and go:

Shaun: "I'm sorry. Let me make sure I've understood this correctly. You've spent months being casually dicked down by a modern Italian mafia don named Ezio Auditore and neglected to mention it because you thought his name was ENZO?" Desmond: "Well when you say it like that—" Shaun: "There is LITERALLY no better way to say it, Desmond.")

AND THAT'S STILL NOT EVEN THE PART THAT KILLS ME MOST.

Because okay, yes, all of that is already enough to send me into cardiac arrest, but unfortunately my EziDes disease has progressed FURTHER because I have now unlocked an even worse category of problem, which is:

What the FUCK does this do to canon???

What does Lucy (still in undercover Templar mode) do when she realizes this is no longer an operational problem but a ROMANTIC one??? 

What happens to LUCY PERIOD if Mafia!Ezio shows up before AC:Revelations even starts? 

Does she still get got???

DOES ANYBODY still get got???

How the hell does AC3 happen now???

What does Minerva and Juno do with THIS???

And don't even get me STARTED on what happens when Mafia!Ezio learns about Renaissance!Assassin!Ezio.

Like, what happens when he realizes he is not just sharing a name, but apparently the face, the VIBES, and the entire stupid emotional profile of one of Desmond's most important ancestors???

Is he normal about it??? Does he get jealous??? DOES HE GET WEIRD??? 

Hell, does AC canon survive this???

NO.

Does the timeline survive this???

ALSO NO.

Does Desmond survive this???

MAYBE???

DO I SURVIVE THIS???

CLEARLY NOT. 

And yes, I am acknowledging that I have, yet again, gone on multiple more tangents.

Therefore, I am TRULY cutting myself off here because this post has already become the transcript of a prolonged psychological event. (◕‿◕✿)

This was not written in one sitting. This was written over the course of the last month and a half, with me jotting down increasingly deranged fragments of this AU while getting spiritually waterboarded by corporate America and clinging to the last remaining scraps of my sanity.

This is not a post anymore.

This is a cry for help wrapped in Italian tailoring, breadsticks, and Assassin's Creed lore.

If you've made it all the way to the end, thank you for your time, your patience, and your absolute willingness to witness me in this state for the past… 9.8K words. 

I need to go do something normal now before I invent three more goddamn branches of this AU. 

This will not happen (the normal part, I mean) but I need to try.

[sneaky-eel]

Better luck next year, fellas.

[sneaky-eel]

[iveseenthatlovebefore]

There was a man amongst the flowers.

His head had come to rest in a bed of white lilies and the red spill of poppies. Nearby, forget-me-nots gathered in soft blues bruises while behind him, gladioluses rose like drawn blades standing sentinel. For one impossible moment, he looked less like an intruder and more like an offering—something dead and laid down with more tenderness than the world had ever given him while living.

The lilies made it look like a burial. They caught too neatly at the ruined white of his strange clothes, the blind pallor of his eyes, and the terrible stillness of him. Nestled into their curved white throats, he didn't look like he'd merely fallen there. He looked claimed. Like the garden had taken one more already broken thing and made it lovely. 

The poppies ruined any simpler mercy. They burned around him too vividly for peace—too red, too harsh, too reminiscent of blood and sleep and all the blurred spaces in between. They made him look remembered—mourned, but also kept in that dangerous, belated way the world reserved for ruined things only once it was too late to save them.

The forget-me-nots made it unforgivable. Lingering just beyond the lilies and poppies by his elbow, they should have felt gentle. Yet, they gave the sight of him a sweetness that felt almost obscene. The lilies could have passed for a final peace and the poppies for sacrifice—but those tiny blue petals looked like shards of a fallen sky, drawing the eye back to him again and again. As if the flowers themselves refused to let him vanish quietly. As is forgetting him now would be its own second violence.

And behind them all, the gladioluses stood tall in the background like witnesses—their stalks too martial, too upright, too alive with the old language of endurance and the bitter kind of victory that only suffering could purchase. Under their watch, he looked... like someone who had not fallen easily. As though the flowers nearest his body spoke for what had been done to him while those watching over him remembered what it had cost to win at all.

He might have been sleeping. He might have been dead.

The garden kept its silence.

[iveseenthatlovebefore]

weird thing to say, but i just need to get it off my chest. Whenever i read your name on AO3, and even whenever you pop up on my dash, i read it like how the characters in GOT and HOTD say "drakarys", just with a "ni-" instead of a "dra-".

I especially tend to read it in a screaming tone, for some reason? (example)

heehee not weird at all! (◠‿◠✿)

This is, in fact, some of the best possible information you could have placed into my hands because my AO3 username is actually pronounced "ni-car-is", so the way you're hearing it is really not that far off LMAO.

But the idea of my name showing up in your mind as something that gets internally screamed instead of just casually read is making me giggle. Like, it's not "oh, nikaris updated" but more like "this should be yelled like a command by someone on the verge of either arson or canon divergence—or BOTH" which, to be fair, is very on brand. ≖‿≖

[iveseenthatlovebefore]

This isnt really a question or anything. Its more of an expression of my appreciation for your posts.

I've been having an absolutely horrible week, like mortifying and self esteem destroying, and I've been rereading all your gen-Z slang Desmond posts and your Desmondino Macdanello post and the fluffy chapters of Last Safe Refuge (which by now I have those chapter numbers memorized) to make me feel better. They're always an istant mood lifter for me.

I just wanted to let you know that your fics and your posts all mean a lot to me and are making me feel better after everything thats happened this week. I love your work and reread them often. I hope you never lose your passion for creating in this way <3

(PS. I hope you're doing really well! Like I hope you're feeling good and living your best life right now and that writers block is nowhere to be found. Wishing you the best!!! <33

Also, sorry if there's any of this that's spelled wrong or doesnt make sense, it's late where I am and im very sleepy)

Oh goodness, first of all—I AM SO SORRY your week has been absolute ass. (◕︿◕✿) We're so close to the weekend, so I hope that treats you much, much better than what you went through.

Second—the fact that your comfort rotation is a combination of unhinged Gen Z/Gen Alpha Creed Desmond posts, fucking contadino Desmondino Macdanello of all things (honestly, I look back at it now and am like, WTF was I on when i wrote that lmao,) and fluffy LSR chapters has me feeling HONORED, DEVASTATED, AND SOMEWHAT OBLITERATED, EVEN. Like, my current brand is I AM DOWN TO CLOWN, so my writing and all those little unhinged posts are literally just my last two brain cells bouncing around with zero supervision. Therefore, if my clownery can drag your mood up even one notch, then EXCELLENT—my work here is done. 

(Lowkey, you actually reminded me I had another part of the SPETTRO AU sitting in my vault at like, 40% complete. I am hard at work editing chapter 16 of LSR but maybe… maybe (probably for Desmond's birthday???) I can… revisit. Heeheehee.)

Lmao, my passion isn't going anywhere for a long while! I have terminal Desmond Miles brainrot. This is a chronic condition with no known cure. I will simply continue to vibrate between feral crack and devastating emotional birdboy prose until the sun goes out. Therefore, you don't have to worry about that part~ (Writer's block is a whole other beast though, lol.) Thank you for your kind words~!

Really though, I hope things get better on your side and that your weekend and dayz stay sunny (heehee), kinder, and less cursed. Take care of yourself!!!  (◍•ᴗ•◍)❤

[wovi]

[krispycl0uds]

This one resonated with me

[iveseenthatlovebefore]

I lost my goddamn mind over an instagram ad and i think im okay with that

OK LISTEN—

This happened a bit ago but I only JUST NOW got time to sit down and stitch together my unhinged ramblings so please forgive the coming chaos because I have been HOLDING THIS BACK LIKE A CURSED PROPHECY AND NOW YOU MUST WITNESS IT.

(Consider this a warning to all ye who scroll forth. What follows is deeply cracky, mildly cringe, and entirely sincere. I have looked into my soul, accepted that I am a little freak about Desmond Miles, and chosen peace. If you keep reading, you are no longer a bystander to this spiral—you are an accomplice. You are boarding this clown car willingly. (⊙‿⊙✿))

SO ANYWAYS, a few weeks back, I did something truly out of character: I opened Instagram. 

That's not a flex. That's not even a vibe. That's just raw context because I don't even use Instagram all that much (except to connect with IRL friends now and again) but I was computerless, bored, raw-dogging boredom at midnight, and that's already a recipe for disaster.

So I opened the cursed app and was just trying to scroll in peace—trying not to accidentally leak my fandom brainrot to my Normal Real Life Friends™—when suddenly, the algorithm threw hands. It SPAT in my face. It said, "You there. Girl with the attention span of a small fish. Watch this."

And I, a fool, did.

I watched what I thought was some shitpost-tier YouTube skit. Like, I'm talking meme-quality acting, chaotic dialogue, outfits that looked like they were borrowed from someone's Renn Faire closet.

Spoiler: it was not a shitpost.

It was a fucking AD. A 20 some minute ad.

An ad for what, you ask?

For a MOVIE(???)—a real, episodic, low-budget fantasy epic so chaotic, so beautifully atrocious, that I stared into the abyss and the abyss said "you're watching a tax write-off with passion, btw."

And its name—Its divine name—was:

MY FARMER DAD IS SECRETLY AN ARCHMAGE

(Yes, that's the title. Yes, I screamed. Yes, it has the energy of a British translation of a manhwa that was already a fever dream to begin with.)

And let me be clear, alright—

It was TRASH. Like, certified compost-grade cinema.

The acting? So bad it looped back around and became Shakespearean.

The special effects? Like someone got very creative with Windows Movie Maker.

The dramatic music stings? Gave me psychic damage AND whiplash.

But the dad??? The main character farmer dad???? 

HE ATE. HE SLAYED. HE WAS WHIMSY INCARNATE.

And I watched it—all of it.

I sifted through every blurry, 360p, half-mirrored reupload on YouTube like I was searching for holy relics. I buried under my blanket and consumed that shit like it was the last tape left on Earth—absolutely engrossed—until 3:30am like a feral beast high on expired fantasy tropes. 

And you know what? I loved it.

It was giving "British webcomic manga with a long ass title powered entirely by ONE MISUNDERSTANDING stretched across 2.5 hours." 

It was giving "BBC Merlin if everyone was fully aware they were in a shitpost and committed 1000% to it."

It was giving "low budget? nay, HIGH ART" spiritual realism. 

And somehow, against all odds—against all reason—it unlocked something in me.

Something cracked. Something theatrical. Something deeply Assassins Creed-coded.

(And okay, for those who follow me, it would be unexpected if that WASN'T THE CASE.) 

So inevitably, when I finally emerged from my blanket cocoon like some sort of unhinged butterfly, I whispered:

"This? This is what Desmond Miles deserves."

Because yes, YES. Somehow, this cursed, glorious mess burrowed straight into the Desmond Miles center of my brain like a fucking Piece of Eden and now I need an Assassin's Creed AU.

But not just any AU.

Oh no no no, because imagine right. IMAGINE—

Desmond "I Died in a Glowy Alien Temple" Miles…

…crash-lands in 1500s Tuscany. He's too late. The Auditore executions have already happened DECADES AGO. This is not a time-travel fix-it story. This is a Desmond-insert story. This is an emotionally sautéed man dropped into an AC sandbox story and told, "GOOD LUCK, KING." He's just straight up stuck in the past with zero plan, zero backup, zero exit strategy. 

And this is POST-AC3, so Desmond knows E V E R Y T H I N G. 

BUT he ALSO KNOWS the butterfly effect is real because it JUST SO HAPPENED that he and Shaun LITERALLY had a conveniently timed conversation just the night before (complete with a chart, red string, and increasingly deranged hand gestures) about how time travel is a landmine for causality and if anyone ever went back, they'd best keep their head down or risk accidentally unbirthing themselves.

And Desmond, naturally, takes that personally.

So what does he do?

He becomes a fucking farmer.

YES, THAT'S RIGHT. This is a Farmer Desmond AU, BABY.

How, you may ask? Does he just pick up a hoe (lmao) and say, "This is my life now?" No, no, of course not. 

It's actually because he's found face-down in a field by a half-blind, lonely old farmer who takes one look at this weird, apocalypse-flavored man and goes, "Ah! My son! Returned to me at last! :D" 

And Desmond—whose bar for paternal affection is six feet underground and covered in salt—goes: 

"Yeah. OK. Sure. Hey Dad." 

Because why not? The man makes some damn good soup, the bed is soft, and he keeps calling him 'figlio mio' instead of 'get in the Animus, Desmond.' And ya know, statistically speaking, this is the most nurturing situation Desmond's ever been in.

Thus begins Desmond's softboi farming era.

He learns to till the soil. He fixes the roof. He hides his glowing Isu-marked, Eye-blessed apocalypse arm under tunic sleeves and fingerless gloves like a reformed anime villain.

He names cows. He pets chickens. He helps old ladies at the village market.

(He is also, incidentally, dodging Templar scouts by assassinating them in conveniently placed farmer-authorized haystacks.)

Regardless, Desmond is vibing. He doesn't know how the fuck he's going to get back to his time (or if he even wants to, honestly) so he's just taking it one day at a time and you know what—he's kinda fine with that. The animals are nice. The people are nice. Hell, even Farmer Dad is great.

At this point, he's kinda treating this as free therapy. 

Desmond is at peace. (◡‿◡✿)

BUT THEN— (⊙‿⊙✿)

Enter: Ezio Fucking Auditore da Firenze

…who is bleeding out post-Monteriggioni Siege. He's passed out on the road to Rome, vengeance-soaked, and looking like a corpse-in-progress. 

Desmond finds him while on his way to pick up some seeds (because of course he does) and IMMEDIATELY dives into a bush.

Because listen, alright—canon says Ezio wakes up in Rome, treated by some woman right after this (before getting emotionally damaged by that dottore calling him old lmao).

Now, he doesn't know exactly WHO EXACTLY picks Ezio up (since the guy was unconscious at the time) but Desmond DOES REMEMBER that Ezio was supposed to get rescued sometime after dropping from his horse. 

So Desmond's like: 

"Someone's gonna show up. Right? Right. It'll happen. Definitely. Not my problem." 

And he waits because, well, he's also kinda curious who the hell was responsible for yoinking Ezio off the road in the first place. 

So, minutes pass and he's thinking, 'alright, any moment now' EXCEPT…

Nothing happens. Nobody comes. And then wolves show up.

So Desmond, sighing like a man already aware this is going to ruin his own life, mutters:

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

And throws Ezio over his shoulder like a sack of gorgeous, half-dead renaissance daddy issues before he becomes dog kibble.

(He does not think about how warm Ezio is, pressed flush against his back.

He does not think about the way stubble scrapes against his collarbone when Ezio shifts.

He especially does not think about the fact that this man is forty, bleeding, and still hotter than sin—or the way Ezio's breath grazes his neck when he adjusts his grip.

He is fine. It's fine. Everything is fine.)

(Because yes, YES, I WOULD ALSO NOT BE ME IF I DIDN'T TURN THIS INTO AN EZI/DES AS WELL, HEEHEEHEE.) 

ANYWAYS, Desmond carries Ezio home. Patches him up. Regrets everything.

And that's when it happens:

Farmer Dad beams from the doorway like Desmond just brought home a prize-winning hog.

Farmer Dad: "MY BOY! YOU BROUGHT HOME A MAN!" Desmond: //sweating// "I—HE WAS BLEEDING OUT." Farmer Dad: //already pouring wine// "AND YOU SAVED HIM. THAT'S LOVE!" Desmond: "I WAS PREVENTING WOLF-RELATED MANSLAUGHTER." Farmer Dad: "ROMANTIC MANSLAUGHTER."

So, Ezio recovers at old Macdanello & Son's farm—because of course, of course Farmer Dad's surname is Macdanello (ol' Macdanello had a farm, E-I-E-I-LMAO)—and when Ezio's good enough to walk again, he limps off into the sunrise like a man legally obligated to be dramatic about it.

Desmond watches him go and breathes out like he just defused a bomb.

Farmer Dad, though, is devastated. He's standing behind him with a tray of fresh bread, cheese, fruit, and two little cups of coffee radiating unmistakable 'I made this for my boy and the nice man he brought home' breakfast date energy.

Farmer Dad: "He didn't even say goodbye…" :c Desmond: //pats shoulder// "He had somewhere to be. Canon waits for no one."

But inside he's SO RELIEVED because the timeline is safe. He can go back to existing in his farmer era zen, hoeing soil, and pretending he's not repressing 80% of his feelings into compost.

Except. 

EXCEPT. 

Ezio comes back.

Three days later. 

Like, the back of Desmond's neck tingles and when he turns around mid-hoe, the man he sent back to canon is LITERALLY standing there again, looking like the plotline itself.

Ezio: //grateful// "I have returned because I owe you my thanks."

And Desmond JUST STARES AT HIM because Ezio already verbally gave his thanks before gallivanting off into the horizon like a Tuscan thirst trap.

That was supposed to be it. That was supposed to be the end of their interaction. 

But now he's standing here. Again.

Looking suspiciously cleaned up, suspiciously composed, and suspiciously NOT IN ROME.

Ezio stays for an hour. Then a little longer.

Then he starts dropping by more often.

Because here's the thing, right—Ezio did leave at first just like he was supposed to—but something kept nagging at the back of his mind and made him look back. 

And that something?

The farmer glowed gold in Eagle Vision.

Not white. Not blue. GOLD. Like a divine glitch in the matrix.

And Ezio, whose instincts are never off when something's weird and hot at the same time, is convinced something's up.

But he won't say that, of course. Oh no no, that would be rude AND sus—so instead he invents a never-ending list of excuses to visit.

"I'm repaying a debt." "I brought more bandages—in case your supplies were low." "The roads are dangerous nowadays—I thought I'd check on your safety." "I heard your father caught an illness. I thought this might help." "You taught me how to plant basil. I have questions."

And Desmond? He's polite at first, giving that same dead-eyed customer service smile he's perfected after working nearly a decade behind the bar at the Bad Weather, hoping to god Ezio will just GO AWAY but—

Ezio just. 

Keeps. 

COMING. 

BACK. 

And frankly? Desmond is losing his goddamn mind.

Because Ezio is CLEARLY SUSPICIOUS of him (which is never a good sign) and he had ONE PLAN. 

Don't touch the canon. 

Don't fuck the timeline.

Don't make eye contact with Ezio Auditore unless you're ready to die.

And yet, Ezio is here every week like some kind of handsome doom snail, standing next to Desmond's fence and pretending to be interested in crop rotation while visibly vibrating with suspicion.

Farmer Dad misunderstands, of course. He starts leaving out two wine cups at dinner and starts saying things like:

"Your friend looks good with a shovel." 

and

"We should give him the guest room. Or your room. They're the same now."

Desmond just laughs nervously but inside, HE IS SPIRALING because HE STILL CANNOT GET RID OF EZIO.

And it doesn't help that well, EZIO KEEPS ASKING QUESTIONS that Desmond can't HELP but answer because here's the thing—

Desmond KNOWS he shouldn't be helping Ezio. He knows the timeline. He knows Ezio's canon arc is currently hanging on by a thread and he's not supposed to tug on it. He's not supposed to interfere. If he starts lore-dropping or emotionally stabilizing Ezio too soon, he might ruin everything—delay Brotherhood formation, destabilize the Assassin network, butterfly-effect himself out of existence, etc.

And yet.

And YET.

He's so weak for his ancestors. 

He always has been—and ESPECIALLY for Ezio.

So when Ezio asks a question, Desmond answers every single time.

Because what else is he supposed to do?? Not respond?? That would just make the guy even MORE SUSPICIOUS of him.

And it's not so bad at first. The questions start out innocent—harmless, even. You know, like questions about crop types, soil, best practices in growing goddamn basil. And honestly? Desmond thinks Ezio is just being polite… before he realizes the guy is doing reconnaissance via polite agricultural inquiry.

And Desmond, who just wants to be SEEN AS A SIMPLE FARMER decides to double down and respond with FARMING METAPHORS. 

And it works. 

Because maybe after a month of this, Ezio finally gives one of those thoughtful little nods—the kind that says "Alright, makes sense"—before thanking Desmond for the advice, and just… leaving. 

Like a man who's decided, "Yes, this is just a farmer. No need to investigate further."

And Desmond nearly drops to his knees in the dirt from sheer relief because thank god—THANK GOD—maybe that means it's finally over.

Maybe Ezio's finally convinced. Maybe he'll stop coming around.

Maybe he'll go back to Rome and forget all about the weird little farmer with a fucked up arm and no backstory.

Crisis averted. Canon preserved. 

The bean harvest can continue uninterrupted.

UNTIL EZIO SHOWS UP UNINVITED YET AGAIN.

Because, UNBEKNOWNST TO DESMOND, all of his panicked, soil-based bullshit analogies, words of farming wisdom, and metaphors???? They've actually been EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD TACTICAL ADVICE.

Like, too good.

SO GOOD, that Ezio had started making ACTUAL LIFE AND DEATH ASSASSIN BROTHERHOOD DECISIONS based on them.

FOR EXAMPLE—

One afternoon, Desmond—deranged, dehydrated, and knee deep in a strawberry patch—saw Ezio frowning at a patch of ruined squash and explained: 

"Oh those? They're called trap crops. Sometimes you just gotta let the bugs eat one crop so they don't destroy the more expensive ones." 

What Desmond meant: You have to plant and sacrifice a lesser crop to attract pests away from your main crops.

What Ezio hears: Let a minor mission fail to distract guards from the more important objective.

Application: Ezio intentionally lets a low-risk assassin mission fail in order to pull attention away from an undercover mission in Constantinople. It works. The Brotherhood gains a foothold in the area. Desmond just wanted to talk about caterpillars.

OR LIKE: 

Another time, Desmond—overheated, sweaty, and cursing the weather while carefully watering a basil plant at the roots—told Ezio:

"Ya see this? Don't overwater your crops. Sometimes that'll kill them just as fast as a drought." 

What Desmond meant: Balance is key. Too much love will kill a plant. 

What Ezio hears: Oh god. I need to stop sending five recruits to do one job. I'm smothering them.

Application: Ezio stops stacking recruits on missions that only need one or two, realizing the others weren't learning anything. 

And the truly deranged part?

Ezio doesn't even question it.

Ezio Auditore da Firenze, Master Assassin, Il Mentore of the Italian Assassins is unironically using VEGETABLE LOGIC from a peasant who refuses to admit he knows what a hidden blade is… to rebuild the Brotherhood from the ground up.

Like at this point, Ezio 100% thinks Desmond is some kind of mystical farm sage and not, in fact, a time traveling former bartender with impulse control problems and a thing for older, sword-wielding men with beards. 

(Also if you're wondering—no, Desmond obviously doesn't tell Ezio his real name because the second Ezio hears "Desmond" he will literally shatter into existential spaghetti and the canon will snap in half.

BUT I am also a CRUEL GOD, so naturally—

It happens on like, visit #4.

And to be fair, Desmond hadn't really expected Ezio to ask him his name just because Ezio doesn't NORMALLY talk to NPCs all that much—not unless they're Assassin-affiliated or involved with Brotherhood missions. He figured that maybe—maybe—he could just never be asked. Like, maybe he could just be "hey you" or "crazy ol' Macdanello's son" or "that farmer" forever. 

Until of course, Ezio casually—like this is a normal conversation and not a live grenade—asks:

"Apologies, amico—but I never got your name?"

And Desmond—who is distracted, bent over a crate of cabbages, mentally calculating how much hay they have left and how to discreetly dispose of the mysterious pile of Templar corpses behind the barn without Farmer Dad noticing—just answers on autopilot:

"It's Desmon—"

And THAT is when his brain HOLDS THE FUCK UP and he stops mid-way because OH GOD, he almost broke canon live on air and the moment Ezio hears his name, the Vault memory is going activate like a CURSED DLC and CANON WILL IMPLODE—

So what does he do?

He PANICS because he can't unsay the syllables. He can't rewind time. All he can do is COMMIT TO THE LIE and therefore, with the force of a thousand Animus suns, blurts out: 

"—dino. Desmondino. That's… that's me. NICE TO MEET YOU." 

And Ezio—god bless him—just… nods. Like it's normal. Like "Desmondino" is a perfectly legitimate farmer name and NOT just Desmond putting the linguistic equivalent of a mustache over his soul.

Anyways, now Desmond has to live with the fact he's just christened himself Desmondino. He's the contadino Desmondino Macdanello now. Forever. 

Sage of soil. Oracle of olives.

He has locked himself into a fake farmer identity with a name that sounds like a Pokemon evolution and absolutely no way to take it back.)

ANYWAYS.

Despite this identity crisis, the plan works. 

Ezio keeps visiting, but he no longer treats Desmond like a threat. It's almost more like… a non-combat ally. A gentle, cabbage-scented field consultant. He still asks farming questions but Desmond figures maybe the guy's just taken up planting as a hobby.

(And honestly, Desmond's fine with that. Against his better judgment, he actually starts to enjoy Ezio's visits. Ezio's kind, curious, AND stupidly easy to talk to, and like—look. Desmond knows he's got a soft spot for Ezio. He also knows that Ezio, even at forty, is still a charmer. This is not news—he's literally watched the man seduce half of Italy in HD.

But it hits DIFFERENT when that charm is RIGHT THERE in 4K peasant vision with Ezio, leaning on his fence, smiling at him over the basil—and Desmond, who thought he was done being weird about Ezio, realizes he very much is not.

So, Desmond figures that's Future Desmond's problem and tells himself it's fine, because they're just talking about basil. Nothing dangerous ever started with basil. Right?)

Still, canon-wise? It seems harmless. Ezio's not grilling him about Isu shit or dragging him into plots—he's just showing up, venting about Rome, and asking about beets. So in Desmond's head, that makes him less 'timeline threat' and more 'emotionally supportive side quest NPC.' He's probably just a little pit stop in Ezio's Brotherhood arc or like, flavor text. Not like any sort of branching path.

Point is—all is well. The canon is safe.

Hell, Desmond even thinks they're friends now.

Until… the questions start to change.

They stop being about plants. They start sounding a little more like people. They start sounding a little too much like Machiavelli.

And oh god that's how Desmond realizes he can tell where they are in the canon now based on the questions alone.

Like, the moment Ezio walks in asking:

"What would you do if someone you trust starts acting strange?"

Desmond nearly drops a pail of water because, oh fuck, we're in the Volpe thinks Machiavelli betrayed the Brotherhood arc.

Like, he starts tracking the storyline based on Ezio's emotional distress levels.

Week by week. Question by question.

When the questions are about beans, everything is safe.

When they shift to trust and betrayal? Someone's about to get stabbed.

And now Desmond's terrified because if he says the WRONG THING, he might nudge Ezio into siding with Volpe too hard and then Machiavelli gets murked and the whole timeline goes to shit. 

So when it happens—when Ezio is just standing there in his yard one afternoon, CLEARLY WAITING for Desmond to give him moral clarity via fucking zucchini metaphors—Desmond hears himself saying:

"Even a good crop can get blight if you're not watching close enough."

But then—upon realizing that's too Team Volpe—immediately backpedals with:

"But uh, not all spots mean disease! Sometimes it's just sunburn! Plants are weird."

Then he throws in something about onions and LAYERS and PRAYS that Ezio stops Volpe's hit on his closest political ally.

Desmond is LITERALLY balancing the timeline with one hand on a hoe and the other over his mouth to stop himself from accidentally blurting spoilers. 

Anyways, this is just an ONGOING THING during AC:B until…

Final boss: Ezio finds out

But not because Desmond tells him. Oh no—

It's because one day, Borgia men finally show up at the farm—armed, hostile, and loudly announcing that they are on official Templar orders to capture the Assassin's beloved.

And Desmond—frazzled and grumpy with his hands full trying to wrangle a goddamn billy goat named 'William' back into its pen—just blinks and goes:

"I'm sorry. The Assassin's WHAT now?"

Because ONCE AGAIN, UNBEKNOWNST TO DESMOND… Ezio Auditore da Firenze has managed to somehow develop extremely fond feelings for the quiet, sun-warmed farmer with the calloused hands, unreadable eyes, and tragic little smiles. SO FOND IN FACT, that he's been making executive decisions about Desmond's involvement in Brotherhood affairs without telling him.

Case in point:

The Recruits.

Because get this right—while Ezio is off doing plot shit like rescuing Caterina, crashing that play in the Colosseum, or acting as mediator between La Volpe and Machiavelli, there is LITERALLY no one at the Tiber base qualified to actually guide the new Assassin recruits.

Like… ya'll have noticed that right? The recruits? They're baby birds, all fluff and murder potential but there AREN'T any actual mentors or teachers around to guide them (at least until they level up and can mentor their juniors.) It's literally just Ezio… and an increasingly overwhelmed pigeon coop.

So naturally—obviously—Ezio starts sending them TO THE FARM.

They show up one morning while Desmond sorting through some herbs for market. He's just minding his own business, content, when he gets that goddamn prickly 'someone's staring at me' feeling, and the moment he turns around—

—there are three strangers in Brotherhood leathers just STANDING IN HIS YARD. SMILING. CHIPPER.

LIKE MURDER DUCKLINGS WAITING TO IMPRINT.

"Ser Desmondino! Il Mentore said you'd teach us." "He said you're the one he trusts most! "He said we'd learn more from you in a week than from anyone else in a year." :D 

And Desmond nearly drops the rosemary because what. WHAT. 

And from then on, the recruits keep showing up. Three at first. Then four. Then SEVEN. One of them brings a hawk. Another asks if they can dig a pond for ritualized initiations. Someone starts building an obstacle course in the fig trees. 

Desmond tries to protest, but it's too late—the Brotherhood has declared the Farm™ sacred ground and now he wakes up every few mornings or so to find increasingly unhinged recruits loitering around his yard. 

And the thing is—Desmond can't just NOT help them because they're EZIO'S after all. 

Ezio's crew. Ezio's dumb little ducklings. Ezio's not-so-subtle, 'Hey I trust you with them more than anyone else in Rome so please make sure they don't die while I'm off doing canon content' stab-happy apprentices. 

So begins the great and accidental Training Arc at the Farm™. 

Every lesson is disguised (because Desmond is just trying to be a simple farmer goddammit.)

He teaches them stealth by having them chase escaped chickens without spooking them. He teaches silent takedowns via surprise hay bale tackling contests. Teamwork? Milk the goat. Together. Without dying.

And Desmond tells himself it's for the good of the canon.

Because Ezio is busy. Ezio is important. Ezio is single-handedly doing parkour off the backs of canon events while Desmond is over here knee-deep in compost.

So someone has to make sure his baby recruits don't rekt themselves trying to somersault over a fence and if Desmond maybe grows a little fond of them just a LITTLE BIT—like, if he starts packing them lunches, makes sure their weapons are all sharpened, and medicine pouches are full—

Well. That's no one's business.

(Except Farmer Dad's.

Farmer Dad steps outside and sees seven armed young men and women yelling over each other in the yard—only for them to instantly shut up when Desmond claps his hands once and tells them to line up so he can check their gear before they head back to Rome.

They obey immediately without a word and Farmer is just gripping his hoe, eyes shining. 

"Grandchildren?" He whispers, like he's been blessed.

"Not now, Dad." Desmond hisses, shoving a chicken into his arms.

But the point stands.)

And when Ezio comes by one afternoon and sees Desmond coordinating seven recruits, two chickens, and a goat—without yelling once—it does something to him.

Like. Deeply.

And listen—Ezio is trying SO hard to be respectful about it.

Like, he has no idea if the farmer is into men. Or into him.Or even into anyone who has punched a pope. 

He just knows that every time Desmond smiles at him—gentle, a little crooked—his stomach does something weird and he feels the unhinged desire to pull on his metaphorical pigtails and maybe die about it. 

But Desmond? DESMOND DOES NOT KNOW.

Desmond thinks he's helping a mission-critical canonical figure through Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: Farm Edition™ with the power of cabbages and plausible deniability.

He doesn't know Ezio has been having feelings. He doesn't know Ezio described him—to a contact in the Brotherhood—as "a dear friend of mine in the countryside." He doesn't know that when the Borgia called him the Assassin's beloved, they were being FACTUALLY CORRECT. 

And now there are TEMPLARS on his lawn, a GOAT chewing on his pant leg, and Ezio is RUSHING from ROME on HORSEBACK hoping to get to HIS FARMER before the Borgia do.

So Desmond—who had sworn he was DONE, who was supposed to be RETIRED, who was just here to water beans and dissociate—proceeds to dive off the barn roof and assassinate three Templars in midair while dual wielding garden trowels. He hits the ground in a parkour roll and pops up brandishing his rake like its the goddamn Staff of Eden.

Ezio, freshly arrived, and visibly having a religious experience:

"You're not a farmer."

And Desmond—panting, holding a bloodied rake in one hand and existential despair in the other while surrounded by creatively murdered Templars:

"I was TRYING TO BE."

Also yes the irony is not lost on me that Desmond—Assassin chosen one, escaped cult survivor, traumatized veteran of the OG Farm™, who spent the majority of his life being raised like a weapon by a man named William…

...gets adopted by an unhinged farmer named Giuseppe Macdanello.

Who lives on an actual farm. Who makes him soup. Who tells him he did a good job watering the beans…

…and also unironically owns a BILLY GOAT named WILLIAM.

Because of course he does. Because the universe has jokes and all of them are funny.

AND THE GOAT IS JUST. SO. MEAN.

Like, Desmond's out here trying to till the soil, rediscover peace, and this FUCKING GOAT keeps:

headbutting him out of nowhere

glaring at him with ancient disapproval

standing on rooftops just to assert dominance

screaming every time Desmond so much as breathes near him

Desmond: "Why is your goat like this?" Farmer Dad: //misty eyed with love// "That's William! He's the goodest boy on the farm!" Desmond: "…Of course his name is William."

AND THE BEST PART???

Desmond starts having full-blown arguments with this goat that represents every unresolved daddy issue he has ever known.

Like mid-harvest, he'll mutter under his breath:

"Oh I can't rest? I need to keep working? Sound familiar, you horned bastard? Did I ask for your opinion? No. But here we are again, huh? Just like old times."

Eventually Desmond just starts calling him Bill.

And the symbolism writes itself:

Desmond rejecting the goat's authority = catharsis Desmond taming the goat = healing Desmond teaching the goat tricks = forgiveness arc

IN CONCLUSION 

This AU has:

One unhinged goat

Farmer Dad who is more loving in 5 minutes than William Miles was in 25 years.

Desmond accidentally becoming den mother to baby assassins

Ezio falling in love through farming metaphors

Basil as therapy

Templars dying in mysteriously compostable ways

Desmond Miles being Desmond Fucking Miles™ dressed like a background farmer NPC and moving like a final boss

I want to say I've never been so unwell in my life—but let's be honest. This is just how bad it's gotten so far.

[whatagrump]

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.

[thewritinggrindstone]

And!

“If you’re breaking dialogue up with an action tag”—she waves her hands back and forth—”the dashes go outside the quotation marks.”

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

Reblog to save a writer’s life.

Thank you

Oh my god thank you. No wonder grammarly keeps complaining about my punctuation when I boot my writing up into word counter

[iveseenthatlovebefore]

[honeymoon4cecile]

【AltE】【AltairxEzio】

“Ezio, why do they call you Olive？”

AE向，这只猫猫是刺客信条：影里面的彩蛋，萌萌的

[anatheriaart]

I heard you... so, old Ezio

[anatheriaart]

Ezio Auditore: Young & Mature

[itsvergilsparda]

[anatheriaart]

Young Ezio Auditore, a sketch from last summer