Hi everyone!

I'll update the other stuff soon. Just a little oneshot for you all.

Enjoy!

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Desmond always figured it was due to some kind of strange karma that things happened the way they did. He always scoffed at people whose relationships were effortless, like falling into place. With him and Shaun, it was like falling into place after a tornado ravaged everything, ripped through the world, made the sky the ground, something to fall through forever. That was definitely what it felt like, like losing control and somewhere between exhilarating and terrifying. Shaun was always impossible to pin down with a single description.

"You have the most cynical sense of humour in the damn world," Desmond muttered, and he could already hear Shaun snickering.

"And yet-

"And yet, I freakin' love it. That just means there's something wrong with me. And you, if you're using me to judge normality."

(I used you to define everything and it feels right, so right, so what happens when you can't define anything, what happens to the whole entire world)

When everything felt like fighting, there was winning, and that was enough for Desmond. Losing doesn't seem possible, not when he had Shaun.

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Racing through the city as Ezio becomes easier, more effortless, as Desmond learns the streets that don't seem to have names, the places where the corner took a twist, and a wall rose up like an afterthought, he remembers more every time. There are sections, however, that Desmond knows by heart. Desmond knows this section of Firenze well. He weaves through the marketplace, ducks down an alleyway, and ends up at the Ponte Vecchio, the bridge spanning over the pale water below. Here, the bridge brings up an audio file, Shaun's voice.

"…creepy teenagers chaining locks to the bridge's railing and throwing the keys into the river in a bid for eternal love, not realizing that the locks will be cut off later that day by disgruntled polizia. Everlasting, indeed."

Desmond can always imagine the amused smirk on Shaun's face when he hears it. Shaun, for all his impatience with things like superstition and signs, seems to hunt them down through history, fascinated at how out of place they seemed.

(lots of things are out of place, it doesn't make them wrong, sometimes it makes them beautiful, and sometimes things happen that shouldn't and that's when the world should just break into a million pieces so no one feels it anymore)

Desmond's always loved things like this; to him, it's a small instance of untouchable beauty, to give all the senses the gift of the intangible.

Shaun's right about the polizia cutting off the locks and shaking their heads as they toss them into a bag and mutter about stupid children, but he's wrong in thinking that nothing is everlasting.

When Desmond looks, it's still there, the one lock no one can touch, locked to the bridge far out of anyone's reach.

Everlasting, he thinks, and he always wanted to take Shaun to Florence one day, to see if it's still there, outlasting even time and the impossible.

0o0o0o0o00o0o

Desmond wanted to lock up the memory of the first time Shaun kissed him, hide it away and keep it for himself, so no one would ever know what it did to him. It didn't take long for him to realize that it wouldn't take a descendant reliving his memories, that it would take merely a glance from anyone around them for it to become common knowledge that Shaun changed everything Desmond knew when he kissed him for the first time.

They'd been together two days, two whirlwind days of working until midnight, Desmond spending more time in Italy than in the warehouse and Shaun caught up in age-old knowledge. It wasn't until the early morning on the third day that anything happened. The warehouse was wrapped up by the wind, rain hammering on the windows on all sides, like the world was pushing in against them from all sides, trying to push them into another dimension.

Desmond wandered into the kitchen at six, woken by the rain and the heater's refusal to work in his room, to find Shaun working on his laptop at the table. Desmond had always liked their kitchen; the bench seat against the wall was right next to the window, the sort of cozy kitchen he'd expect to see in a cottage.

"You always wake up this early?" Desmond tried to see past the rain sliding down the

windowpanes, couldn't make out more than blurry outlines, "because it makes me feel unproductive."

"Well, although I wouldn't say you wouldn't benefit from some actual work ethic," Shaun said, looking up from his laptop, "it's not like I'm working or anything."

"Secret novelist or something?"

"Not quite. Just reading the news. Quite boring, I'm afraid," he said, and Desmond just grinned over at him.

"See, I always knew you were a liar. Making us all think you're nothing but a boring, sarcastic historian." He crossed the room to slide onto the bench next to Shaun, nuzzling against his neck and making Shaun hunch his shoulder and smirk.

(some things should be kept in memory forever, but they'll fade, just about everything will fade, and it's horrible that trying to focus on it makes it slip farther away)

"Just trying to keep us all from goin' head over heels for you? Goddamn liar. I should have known."

"Not good enough to trick you, apparently."

"Hey, maybe I like boring people," Desmond protested, although he was unable to get through the sentence without smiling. "Or maybe my definition of boring is different than everyone else's."

"I always knew you had trouble understanding the dictionary."

"So maybe I mixed up a few words. Boring looks a hell of a lot like amazing when you squint."

"You read the dictionary drunk or something?"

"I think that'd explain a lot."

Before Desmond could really follow it, Shaun had turned and kissed him, and it was like finding out that he'd never really known how to breathe, finding out that he was designed for Shaun. It was being devoured and losing all control, falling against him and being caught, and it was nothing like Desmond remembered kissing was at all. It was being breathed in and recreated, wholly himself and wholly owned, like being taken back.

Shaun wrecked Desmond's whole world with that kiss, and then he rebuilt it, created something breathtaking and impossible, the kind of world no one can build for themselves.

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Desmond continues through Florence, towards the one building he can find no matter where he is. Finding Leonardo seemed to be an instinct for Ezio, like finding his way home.

For as much as it surprised Ezio, Desmond wasn't blindsided at all when it turned out that Ezio was in love with Leonardo. Some things seem fated to fall into place, like it just makes sense that the world would turn out this way.

(he's seen it go so wrong, seen perfectly fitted things fall to pieces, but he doesn't think about that, he just won't won't won't because it wasn't supposed to happen it just wasn't)

It seemed obvious the moment Ezio walked into meeting Leonardo, the sort of meeting that seemed to make perfect logical sense, but afterward, there was no real reason at all it happened except to ensure that they met. Ezio was always going to be the one who made Leonardo smile that way. Leonardo was just the exact sort of person who would make Ezio stop, who would steal every single scrap of his attention like nothing else ever could.

The way Ezio's mind works, every route leads to Leonardo's workshop. Desmond stops across the courtyard and lets the audio file run through again, even though he knows all the words now, once by heart and now as if they have become part of him.

"…despite this epic list of accomplishments, Leonardo was hounded by his patrons for his chronic procrastination. Pieces frequently took years longer than he anticipated and many were never finished at all." And then, Shaun paused and went on, and it was made just for Desmond, like Shaun had crafted something meant just for him, "Forgive a moment of sappy romanticism, but he loved Ezio the way I love you, Desmond."

For someone who was more interested in facts than the way they're presented, Shaun made Desmond feel like poetry was a living, breathing thing of beauty that lived in words, alive and ever changing and more beautiful than any human was capable of. Some things created themselves, and Desmond always thought that these sudden moments of breathlessness came from somewhere so beautiful, they could only ever see it in pieces.

Desmond never stopped trying to find a way to tell Shaun exactly how he felt. Just like Ezio, he never was able to find the right words, but Shaun was like Leonardo in that he could read everything anyone ever wanted to say, regardless of whether the right words existed at all.

0o0o0o0o

Calculus never was Desmond's strong point, but he was always fascinated by how there were terms for everything. Inflection point was a term that had always stuck with him, it was the point where everything suddenly changed, the slope took a different turn, and it was like the angle of the very earth had shifted. Just like that, Desmond remembered the exact moment he realized that he was going to marry Shaun. There was a moment when he realized that living without Shaun would be more like dying, that he loved Shaun in a way that made everything before the day they met seem like it was just leading up to finding Shaun, like he'd been designed just for this. It was realizing that what he'd known all along, that he loved Shaun, it wasn't just the line of the story of his life, it was the story.

The late afternoon sun was spilling across their bedroom, soaking up all the lingering darkness of night. All Desmond could hear was Shaun's even breathing beside him and the metered turning of pages, their combined rhythm practically as familiar as his own heartbeat.

"Hey," Desmond murmured, nestling in against Shaun's back, kissing his neck, "what're you reading?"

"One of those unspeakably awful science fiction novels of yours. Honestly, it's like a conspiracy theory with a few characters thrown in to pass it off as a book."

"And yet… you read it anyways? Despite this horribleness?"

"I like it," Shaun said, and Desmond could feel the way his ears went warm, like he was about to blush.

"Really. How come?"

"I like it because it's your favourite kind of book," Shaun said, like he was bordering on embarrassed, "I mean, the storytelling is just awful, but I like it because you like it, and you just- everything you are, it's sort of- it's perfect."

It was hard to find anything to say, as Shaun turned to look at him, brown eyes almost like a honeyed amber. Desmond was never good at piecing together his feelings and coming up with words creative enough to explain every perfect nuance, but there were some that he knew would show everything, everything he ever wanted to say.

(not everything, there was so much more, there was supposed to be more and more and they were never supposed to end, because everything was so beautiful, but maybe the world can't handle something unearthly)

"I love you," he murmured, kissing Shaun like a promise, like finally coming together with his other half, "marry me?" And Shaun had smiled like there had never been anything he'd ever wanted to hear more.

Shaun is Desmond's everything. In a world of darkness, he's the only beautiful moment left.

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Desmond replays the memories over and over, but he can never escape the reality, because living in a world with stars crafted only from memory can never be anything but living in a world of endless dark.

(maybe if he had never been here-)

He's never regretted a single moment, because everything before Shaun was there only to bring them together, and every moment together was to see perfection at its impossible, unmatchable best. What Desmond hates is that there isn't only a time before Shaun and a time with Shaun. He hates that there is an after.

Shaun has been dead for three years.

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Hope everyone liked that!

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Love ya,

Sunshine