(fic) Impact part 3 - AC2 Shaun/Desmond

[squirrellysemantics]

Title: Impact
chapter 3
More R this chapter than anything else.
Pairing: Shaun/Desmond
I do not own anything related to AC2 aside from the disc from my PS3. 

Previous Chapters  One and Two


---------

Shaun slipped his glasses from his nose,   rubbing at one of the few spots on his body that currently wasn’t a painful, throbbing mess.   The harsh light from his computer screen did little to improve the pounding in his skull.  He tried showering but it hadn’t helped.  Hell, he ached down to the roots of his hair, bad enough he hadn’t been able to put in his usual dollop of hair gel.

Under normal circumstances, Shaun would have preferred to spend another day in bed- doped up on some fabulous cocktail from the pharmacy that was Lucy’s medicine cabinet.  What he needed was lots of rest.  That and a handful of Percocet.  But here he was, sorting through data sets in the middle of the night while everyone was tucked safely in their beds.

It was all Miles’s fault.   Or at least the dream-Miles.  There was no way he would let himself fall back asleep if that imaginary incubus was just going to pop round for a quick hand job again.  The flush crawled up his neck just thinking about it.

And oddly enough- checking emails from a bunch of assassins trying to save the world from a cult of megalomaniacs did little to help with insomnia.   

The clue -his clue, the one that he was supposed to be working on before he’d gotten his face mashed in by a demented bartender- had been the focus of much speculation amongst the Order.  A carving in stone of a woman holding a snake looked innocuous enough.  Ancient civilizations were so jam packed with snake loving goddess of this or witch of that you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting one, anthropologically speaking. 

That the carving had been taken after a particularly bloody fire fight, pried from the hands of a forcibly deceased Abstergo employee in the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, might have had something to do with why it stood out from the rest.

There had been what looked like text etched on the back, but it was worn down and difficult to decipher.   That was supposed to have been Shaun’s work, but the Order had passed it along to another researcher after he wound up being… incapacitated.   Instead it had gone to that moron in Frankfurt, the one who couldn’t distinguish Aramaic from Arabic and a donkey’s arse.  That cheeky kraut had submitted his final analysis, deliberately cc’ing one pissed off Shaun Hastings. 

He couldn’t not look at the thing.  Fucking grade school level piece of shit, coming to the conclusion that the text was undecipherable and that the carving was a depiction of Amunet.  Or possibly the Minoan snake goddess.  Not particularly helpful, since the snake goddess predated Amunet by about two thousand years.

 Ignorant twat waffle. 

The Assassins had gone ahead and made decisions, completely unaware of how shoddy the conclusions actually were. They were tantalizingly close to the Piece of Eden that was supposed to be in Giza and they opted to concentrate on the final push and deal with the Alexandrian catacombs later. The fight that had earned them the useless carving had cost them enough lives.  If Abstergo had grunts to spare to dig up minor relics over 200 kilometers away then let them have at it. 

It was wrong though, all wrong.  The tingle at the base of his spine told him so, just like it always did when something was left unsolved.

Now if his fucking brain would stop tap dancing against his sinuses he’d be able to figure out what he was missing.

He shifted in his chair for what felt like the millionth time, desperate to find a position that made it a little bit easier to breath with a broken rib rubbing against his lungs.   Bruised body and bruised pride were not a good combination. 

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Shaun tried not to jump, cursing himself for letting Miles sneak up on him.  “None of your goddamned business,” he snapped back, mostly out of habit.

The bastard was wearing that thin grey t-shirt again, the one that was just a little too short to reach the top of his jeans when he moved.

“You should be resting.”  Desmond crossed the room easily; his hips moving in that feline stride he’d acquired from Ezio that made it a requirement that anything with a pulse needed to stare at his ass when given the opportunity.

“Yeah, well thanks for that, mummy,” Shaun snarled, though with a diluted version of his usual venom. “But some of us still have work to do.”

“It can wait.”

“No it bloody well can’t.”  Turning on Desmond, he was taken aback at how sleep deprived the other man looked.  “Something big is about to happen in Egypt and it won’t be what everyone thinks.”

Desmond tilted his head, watching the other man through eyes half ringed with dark circles. “There’s a Piece of Eden in Giza, right?”

“Yeah, but Abstergo’s after something else and the Order wants the Piece so badly they’re ignoring the big picture.”  Shaun swiveled in his chair to stare back at his screen, trying not to show his surge of embarrassment.  The ability to see patterns, connections that others missed, was something his analytical mind had a hard time explaining to others.  “The mission is set to start in less than 12 hours.  No way am I going to change that without any real proof.  I’ve been trying to work it out, but there’s something I can’t remember and I just…” His cheeks puffed out in frustration.  “I just can’t.” 

Good lord.  Did he have to sound quite so pathetic?

When there was no response, he looked over his shoulder.  No Desmond.  Where the fuck had the sneaky git gone off to now?  There was a twinge of something he preferred to ignore. Hastings, you’re an idiot of the first order.  He returned to his work, trying to lose himself in it like he usually did.

He didn’t realize he had been nodding off until the ‘thump’ of something being set in front of him sent a jolt of adrenaline through him.  A mug of water hot enough to give off wisps of steam sat before him, piss pour excuse for a teabag steeping inside.

The bartender had a mug of his own and the look of disgust he made as he took a sip was priceless.  “How the hell do you drink this stuff?”

“It’s crap but it tastes better than the brew of orangutan’s armpit that Rebecca makes every morning.”

He was surprised to realize he had never heard Desmond laugh before.

“If I ever get the chance, I’ll show you what the good stuff is like,” Shaun said distractedly, watching the tea swirl in his cup.  “Cheers.” He raised his mug in Desmond’s direction and took a swig.   The bartender pursed his lips in amusement and did the same.

Ugh.  Just dreadful. But desperately needed just the same.

A minute, then five stretched out as they sipped in companionable silence until-

“Why do you hate me so much?”’

Normally, people weren’t supposed to inhale their tea but in this case the question resulted in Shaun exploding in a violent fit of coughing.  It fucking hurt to have his cracked rib sliding back and forth, stabbing at his lungs like a knife.

The bartender was hovering over him like a mother hen, instinctually wanting to pound on the coughing man’s back but thankfully refraining from doing so. 

It took a couple of minutes before Shaun could breathe on his own again.  “I don’t hate you,” he finally managed.  He didn’t add that what he hate-hate-HATED was that someone had this magnificent opportunity to walk through history, explore and experience what happened in the past in a way that others could only dream.

His whinging on the topic had come up before but he had stopped just short of explaining how deeply this bothered him. As a child he’d curled up in his bed with a torch long after he was supposed to be asleep just to read every fact, every book he could get his hands on.  Years of schooling, his life spent piecing together the past from partially legible scraps of knowledge.  The Animus should have been an amazing tool for research, not the vehicle for some misbegotten Easter egg hunt.

The fact that his life had devolved into being squirreled away from one hiding spot to the next was merely icing on the cake.  No family. No privacy. No intimacy.  And for what?  He’d been forced to give up everything, just because he had the stones to keep asking questions that others didn’t want answered.

He hated that.   And it left him bitter.  Too bitter sometimes.

Shaun carded his fingers through his hair, feeling a little naked without it standing in its usual spikes.  “I can be a bit of a bastard.”

“A bit?” Desmond asked with a snort, his scar getting caught up in his half smile to take the sting out of his teasing.  “Is there anything I can do to help?  I mean, it’s my fault that you’re hurt.  Maybe you’d of had it figured out by now if I hadn’t wound up trying to kill you.”

The tea started to feel cold in his hands. So was that it?  This attentiveness.  This kindness.  All due to guilt because of the attack? 

The disappointment was too strong to ignore this time.

Desmond took the lack of response the wrong way. “C’mon, there’s gotta be something you can trust me to do.  I won’t fuck anything up.  Promise.”

“There is something.”  Anything to keep this arse out from underfoot. 

Setting Desmond up with his spare laptop, Shaun tasked him with sorting through a catalog of hundreds of pictures, tracking each cultural representation of a woman holding a snake and punching it into a historical timeline.  It was boring and brainless. 

He tried to come up with something sarcastic to add about it being perfect for the man but his heart wasn’t in it. 

The sun was almost up and they were still sitting there, Desmond flipping through image after image and Shaun desperately trying to eke something out of the worn script that had gone dismissed in the carving’s original assessment.  Not much luck though.

Even sitting there, the bastard was driving him to distraction.

He was all too aware of Desmond leaning back, too attuned to the angry creak of his chair as the man reached up over his head to stretch.  A small expanse of skin appeared when the edge of thin grey t-shirt rode up the bartender’s torso as he elongated his body to its full length.  It revealed a line of fine hairs that started at the belly button, becoming fuller as it disappeared under his waist band.

“Holy crap!”  A chair crashed forcefully back to earth and Desmond rose from it in disbelief. 

Shaun startled guiltily at this, praying to any god that was merciful that he had not been caught gawking. 

“Athena?  Wasn’t that another name for Minerva?”           

The tingle at the base of his spine had become very insistent.  “One of her names, yes.”

Desmond carried the laptop to the other man’s desk and set it down with a dazzling smile.  “Then check this shit out!”

It was a detail from a painted vase, an amphora that he’d seen a million times.  The Death of Achilles from 540 B.C.  Men with spears waging war with a female figure off to one side that carried a spear of her own.

She was covered in snakes.

The historian didn’t realize he was reading the caption aloud.  “Athena watching over the Trojan War!  You’re brilliant!”  His aches and pains disappeared under his burgeoning excitement.  “Fucking brilliant!”  Shaun grabbed the other man by the shoulders, and gave him a violent shake. “Miles, I could kiss you!”

Desmond leaned in close.  Very close.  “Good.”

“I mean, this is the link we’ve been looking for! I’m sure of it!”  It took a minute for Shaun’s tongue to catch up with his train of thought.  “And… and… what?”

There was a mouth hovering over his.  How dare he?  Shaun refused to stand down.  How dare this arrogant Yank presume that anyone would actually want to kiss his idiotic- oh.  

The kiss was firm and frustratingly chaste. 

Lips that had just short circuited his brain barely touched his as they moved.  “Was that not okay?

“I don’t know,” Shaun murmured, oddly mesmerized by the ridge of scar as he brushed against it. “I need a bigger statistical sampling size to make a valid assessment.”

With that, he caught that full lower lip, teeth clacking together noisily.   Desmond’s delighted little laugh somehow made this kiss even better. 

The bartender’s arms fluttered at his sides, wanting to wrap himself around the other man but not wanting to cause pain.  Big hands finally settled awkwardly on bony English hips and the kiss went on and on until they were both out of breath.

“So how was that?” A rakish smirk took over the whole of Desmond’s face.

"Two data points?"  The idea was simply scandalous. "How can I extrapolate anything with two lousy fucking data points?"

The smirk disappeared.  "Lousy?"

"You can’t prove a hypothesis unless you can duplicate the data. The experiment has to be repeated multiple times!"

“Will you shut the fuck up?"

Shaun sneered as much as his bruised face would allow, feeling better than he had in weeks.  Months, even.  “Make me.”

Desmond smiled and curved his fingers to capture the line of the man’s jaw in his hand.  “With pleasure.”

The slam of cabinet doors in the kitchen made them both jump back.  A wordless Rebecca-sounding grumble echoed over the crash of pots and pans.  Bleary eyed, only her head emerged, barely able to focus on the two men who were trying not to look the least bit suspicious and failing miserably. “You guys are up early.”  She squinted for a moment and shook her head to dismiss whatever thought might have popped into it.  “Coffee?”

The exclamations of “God no!”  and “No thanks!” overlapped each other perfectly.   The two men let loose a shared sigh of relief as the floating head retracted into the kitchen.