circle7 | Steal a Kiss (or two)

Adamo stared back. His gaze hardened; just as determined as Vico's own.

"I am not willing to," he answered back, though the fact that Vico was willing to, just to save Adamo's dignity, made his frame relax again, made his grin a little more honest, and his stance more like that of an assassin. "Grazie, amico. But I can handle it." He gave the hand around his wrist a well-meaning squeeze with his free hand. "Besides, I am more worried about how you are going to court a woman. Maybe I should give you some tips first."

Growing red in the face, Vico looked as though this particular fuse of his was especially short. He let go, clenching his hand into a fist. "That-!"

And then just as quickly, he fizzled out. What was he going to do? Dio mio. It wasn't that he was clueless with women, or that he was disinterested, but he had really never thought he would ever be doing this with anyone than the lady of his choosing. To do this on a woman who had done the same with Borgia pigs was...

"Do not think of the Borgia," Adamo said, well knowing the look that crossed his face. "Think of the mission. If I can get over it, so can you, si?"

"Of course," Vico said, even if a little sulkily. He supposed it was better than the other way around, with him having to distract the Senator. He should count his blessings, he reminded himself.

Adamo smiled. The sun was beginning to set, the clouds soaked in oranges and reds. A sure sign that they should be on their way.

"Ready, then?"

Adjusting his beret on his head (it made him look younger, like a boy, still), Vico steeled his look. "Like I said, I always am."

(Sometimes he's acted the part, too.) "Molto bene." With one more encouraging pat on the back, they were on their way.

The senator's home was practically a palace, and by nightfall, it looked like a completely different place than when they first inspected it. It was candlelit to a degree of elegance, tables of food strewn about here and there, minstrels and acrobats entertaining guests. It was deceivingly nice, compared to that Banker's party they had heard about. The Templar life had obviously treated Señor Garcia well. His guests were just as elegant. Adamo wondered how many were just as guilty of the very same lifestyle; reaping the benefits of an unjust life.

He masked these thoughts, smiling as he passed through crowds of people to the food buffet before them. All this facading around made him hungry again. (When he looked down, he swore he could almost see his reflection in the tile.)

"Pretty nice huh, Marco?" Adamo asked as he tossed a grape into his mouth.

"Sí, señor," droned Vico, sounding every part the bored assistant at a gaudy party that was way out of his tastes and league. Unlike Adamo, he could not work up an appetite when on a mission, and there was a feeling of unrest churning at the bottom of his stomach. He did not like having to use a woman to do a man's work, and he did not like, at all, leaving his friend to a pig for the sake of their duties either. He almost wished he could just force their answers out of them at blade-point and call it a day. (That much better suited his style of operation.)

Vico glanced back up at Adamo, wondering if the older man would just let his reason win out over his pride and agree to take Vico's offer to go home, but Adamo gave no indication of even the smallest amount of hesitance or discomfort. Then again, out of the two of them, Vico had always been poorer at masking his emotions.

Soon enough, preceded by a loud clearing of the announcer's throat, Senator Garcia and his wife Angelita finally made their entrance at the top of an embellished flight of stairs at the north end of the hall. They waved and slowly made their way down, holding each other's hands in a fragile gesture that was more of a touching of fingertips than any real sign of companionship or co-dependence. It was obvious to the practiced eye that these two had no lost love between them. They faced different directions when they talked, cast roving eyes over different people. It was more like a very odd partnership of equal parts greed and corruption.

While the Maestro had no qualms about causing a riot in the middle of a party, Adamo wanted to play it safe. Their job wasn't over after this, after all - they had some iron shipping to sabotage. If they ended their lives now, it was possible the operations would only be more heavily guarded come tomorrow. Otherwise, he might have done it Vico's way and went home. (Of course, it had nothing to do with the fact that going home meant more seasickness.)

As the Senator and his wife graced down the stairs, they waved, and the Senator said something in Spanish about having fun (and something else Adamo didn't understand), before everyone gave an obligatory applause and went about their business again. After sneaking a piece of bread and cheese and gobbling it down, he turned to Vico.

"Well, let's play our parts. It'll be over before we know it."

Frowning grimly, Vico gave Adamo a pat on the shoulder before pulling away from him, putting himself directly into Angelita Garcia's line of vision. He had faith that the both of them could carry out the mission, but it was more a matter of the lengths to which they would have to go to do so. Vico, for one, had no intention of sacrificing things he was not willing to give, and he could only hope that Adamo had that foresight as well.

In his lifetime, he had only really courted two or three girls, at best (because pulling on girls' hair when you were a child didn't really count). His other romantic affairs had been short-lived, and almost everything in that regard of his life had been put on hold once he had been recruited into the Assassin order. There were just more important things, like Rome and honor and brotherhood and loyalty. Unlike Adamo, romance had never been as much of a physical and emotional need.

As expected, once the Senator and his wife separated, Angelita was certainly no innocent maiden. She was making eyes at half the room, adding a little sway to her swagger as she entertained guests like a true hostess, if not going beyond that call of duty by throwing flirtations left and right. When Vico caught her eyes, he smiled, subdued and shadowed, before slipping behind one of the large marble pillars discreetly. As expected, he only had to count a few seconds before she appeared to the left, hiding half her face behind a feathered fan.

The Madonna Angelita was not an ugly woman, by any means. Her husband had probably had the fortune and the fame to secure her despite the fact that she was clearly younger than him, and though she was not exactly old, she had probably been even more beautiful in youth, before politics and money ruined her natural beauty. "Marco, is it?" she said coyly, looking up at him from under her lashes. Vico was hardly the most handsome man in attendance, and she was probably more attracted by the prospect of crossing classes than anything else. These rich, fanciful ladies got bored with their husbands at play all the time.

Vico bowed low and took her hand, caressing her palm with his fingers. "Madonna."

Considering Vico's opinion of the Borgia and the Templars, Adamo couldn't help but worry as he watched them disappear behind a pillar. He had faith in his skill, naturally, but sometimes his emotions got the best of him. But he would ask about that once they rendezvoused. His mission now was to get the senator to notice he was there.

Adamo took a small twig of grapes, making his way to another column to lean on, deliberately in Senator Garcia's sight. (He wondered if this sort of arrangement was bargained for with the real Marco and Eduardo, given the open way they were examined before.) Adamo's familiarity with this kind of thing was obvious in the way he eyed the senator, head to toe, waiting until his gaze was caught. Señor Garcia eventually turned, seeming to sense the stare in his direction. Adamo nodded at him, biting a grape from the stem carefully. His act was absolutely ridiculous, and Vico would surely have a laugh at him, but it was working. The Senator excused himself from the people he was speaking with to approach him instead. Adamo straightened to lure away suspicion from anyone looking on, but still wore a smirk. It was hard to tell if he would have the foresight to draw away from the situation once he had what he needed.

"Buona sera, Senator," Adamo greeted with a bow.

"Buenas tardes," Garcia responded with a nod, his hair draping forward as he did, almost as long as Adamo's. The senator himself was hardly what one would consider ugly; however he noticeably had a few years on Adamo. Thin wrinkles edged his eyes and mouth when he smiled. "Are you enjoying yourself?"

"Greatly! Your party is magnificent. If only I could stay for the next one." They laughed in unison, and Garcia clapped a hand on Adamo's back, leading him away from the entry hall.

"I am glad to hear that, Señor..?"

"Bianchi. Or Eduardo, if you wish."

Angelita took advantage of their positions to boldly reach out and pluck the guard's beret from his head, and Vico frowned at the floor while she couldn't see it. He had been using it to push down the hair on the left side of his face, hiding the scar that ran deep into his hairline above his ear. Recognizable features were unfortunate in an assassin, but then again, it was only if they got caught. When he straightened again, she was playing with the hat, twirling it around her finger.

"Where is your master, little guard?" she asked, glancing at him above the top of the beret. In good nature, he smiled, reaching for it only to have her pull away, initiating a cat-mouse game. (Who is the cat here, madonna?) Laughing and retreating, the sounds of their play was easily lost in the self-absorbed sounds of the crowd. No one noticed - and if they did, they turned a blind eye.

She led him into a nondescript hallway, away from prying eyes. As mottled as her reputation was, it was her reputation to keep, and Vico was all too glad to be rid of unnecessary witnesses. Reaching out with an assassin's reflex, he caught her wrist, pulling her close and against a wall. She enjoyed it, giving a small sound of surprise before dropping the hat, allowing it to be tread underfoot. Her hands were better used to grab onto Vico's shoulders. I have caught my mouse, she thought, and his eyes widened in surprise as she took a step forward and pressed flush against him.

"Señora!" he said softly in feigned surprise, and she put a finger on his lips.

"Now, now, no one will tell our masters, little Marco. Now, follow me, or I will make sure your official does know," she said, grinning, baring her fangs. The coercion and slyness probably ran through her veins, things she had learned from her husband and her world, no doubt - taking where it wasn't given, taking even if it was. She knew no other way, and after she delivered a deceivingly chaste kiss to his cheek, she turned tail and ran up the stairs.

The guards of the house were mostly stationed in the grand hall itself, and there was no one manning this path. The senator's wife knew her options well, and as Vico paused for a second to give her a head start, he glanced behind him at the closed door leading back to the party. Quickly, he told himself, for Adamo.

Then, checking the knives in his belt, he followed her up.

"Aren't you concerned Madonna Garcia will find out about this?" Adamo asked, but in passing, almost playfully. With the laugh he received in response, the assassin couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. That didn't sound concerned at all. (Vico would hate this man.)

"I was, at first. Until I found out we had much more in common than I suspected." Garcia looked around them, but the hallway was empty, apart from a lone guard at the entrance with his back to them. "Sometimes we... adventure together, if you understand me, Eduardo."

Adamo wanted to feign the look of surprise, but there was nothing false about it. These two... were much more twisted than he initially thought. Not that Adamo wasn't familiar with lust what it did to people, but it was hardly something to flaunt.

"You don't say, señor," he said. The senator didn't seem surprised that Adamo was shocked. After all, it wasn't everyday information, and in the end, he believed he had to power to punish this man before him should he go flapping his mouth about it. He was about to threaten as much, before Adamo added with a laugh, "Well, whatever pleases the lady, si?" Garcia laughed with him, steering them left, to a hall full of portraits and doors.

"Indeed! I am lucky that such things please her, I suppose," he said, stopping at one door and letting himself in. Adamo followed, and despite all his familiarity with this, his stomach knotted up. He still wore his smile, but it was tightened in place.

"I am guessing this privacy is not for talk of business," Adamo said, and it wasn't a question. Garcia grinned, eyes roaming the man's form before him even less shamelessly than before.

"You would be guessing right. It is a party, is it not? Let us have fun, first."

With the hesitance appropriate for his role - a lowly guard about to engage in an affair with an official's esteemed wife, Vico toed open the door of the room, which had been left slightly ajar. It was dark inside, but his eyes adjusted quickly - they had to, because the Madonna had pushed his back to the door almost as soon as he stepped foot inside, slamming it closed. "Madonna," he said, breathlessly and almost chidingly, because she was certainly a very aggressive woman - maybe it was the Spanish blood?

"Shh, shh," she cooed, and it would have been matronly if she was not palming at his trousers. The Italians did not love any less fiercely than the Spanish, but Vico was a little disoriented by the speed at which she seemed to be working. It was probably necessary for the discretion required of one-night trysts, but the assassin had always enjoyed a more leisurely, step-by-step ideal of romance, and his inexperience was showing. She gave him a look. "Are you a virgin?"

"N-no!" Vico protested, coloring in the face and thankful for the darkness. "It is just...I am worried about your husband, madonna. I hear many rumors about his power in the Borgia ranks from my master, because he supplies us with so much of the iron..." As if to convince her of his interest, he put his hands low on her waist, squeezing.

She liked that, judging from her smile. "I would not worry about him. He is probably feeling up some petty whore in the opposite corner of the house," she said, and Vico had to bite on his lip to stifle his laugh at the thought of Adamo being that 'petty whore' she was referring to. "Besides, you Borgia are in no trouble of suffering his ire in the consequence of iron. It is a good trade for both of us, and we do not let our pleasure get in the way of our money. Besides, that is a matter far away from here, mi guardita poca. All that takes place far away in those pesky mines - we never touch an ounce of it. It just gets shipped directly to Italy."

"Italia?"

She tutted him, a condescending edge to her smile. She blamed his obliviousness to his lack of rank, and in the high-handed nature of those sparing two or three florins to the poor when they could afford to spare a hundred, she tapped his jaw with her finger before kissing a trail down from that same spot. "It is a man named Alfeo de Luca, but it is no one you have to worry your pretty little head over. I," she continued, slipping a cold hand under his clothes and against his skin, pleased by the way his abdomen contracted at the sudden touch, "am all you have to worry about now."

The senator and his wife were almost made for each other, if their mannerisms were anything to go by. Señor Garcia was aggressive as well, if a bit more fast-paced - he dove straight in for Adamo's mouth, the impact pushing the assassin back against the door. Garcia's hands slid down his back, stopping low, making his intentions obvious. Adamo might have been familiar with the touching of another man, rare as it was, but he had never been on the receiving end. His reservation became a little too obvious to the senator, even as he returned the kiss forced upon him. Garcia pulled away, looking down at the younger man.

"Have you not done this before?" he asked, palm pressing in, specifying exactly what it was he meant.

"It's not that," Adamo clarified quickly. "I'm just concerned that Marco will come looking for me. He has a short-temper when business is not being taken care of, despite his rank. If he saw us fooling around, not discussing the trading matters..." Garcia laughed.

"A stick in the mud, is he? Don't worry, my wife will fix that, I'm sure," he answered. "She had her eyes on him at the market. I'm sure you noticed. But if it eases you to know, our trading is going smoothly. It is being transported from Manresa as usual. Your master must really have some insecurities, if he must send you all this way to check on the operations."

Adamo laughed with a shrug. "I suppose he does, but a job is a job, and I should not speak of ill of him. Besides, weren't we... discussing something else?" With a grin, Adamo initiated the contact again, roughened hands on Garcia's hips, tugging him forward. He seemed satisfied, with the way he let the topic go for something better at hand - not to mention the way he whirled Adamo around, edging him back towards a plush bed in the center of the room, where candlelight was sparse.

As soon as Adamo's knees hit the edge of the sheets, the senator pushed him over onto it, obviously all business even in his pleasure. Not raising a hand to help Adamo, there came a shuffle in the darkness - the pull of heavy and expensive cloth, the shuffling of fur-trimmed robes, and the jangle of belts and jewelry being stripped off and dropped onto the floor. Though the clamor was easily lost to the ears of outsiders thanks to the party, Senator Garcia was apparently a man that did things loudly and without much finesse, intentions as clear as the hunger on his face.

Then, a sound that didn't quite match with the rest - a loud crash and bang, almost like a clap of thunder, before a heavy weight fell onto Adamo's back, nearly covering the assassin like a particularly heavy and unconscious cape.

"A stick in the mud, am I?"

Adamo grunted as the weight fell on him, and even without being able to turn his head and see what had happened, he knew.

"More like my knight in shining armor," he teased, nudging the Senator off him. He certainly was no gentle man, having left marks down the back of Adamo's neck and across his shoulders. It felt more shameful than bearing a typical wound a from Templar rat. The assassin rubbed them with a frown, as though to wipe them right off his skin, to no avail. He made a point not to look at his companion as he pulled on his shirt, and straightened his pants (focusing away the discomfort that had started there). "Grazie, Vico. Though if you were there that long, you could've helped sooner. Perhaps you were enjoying it too much?" He slanted a grin at him.

Vico glanced over his shoulder at Adamo long enough to scoff, turning back to where he was inspecting the passed-out Senator. "I was waiting until he told you where their dirty iron was coming from," he answered, shoving the man's shoulder a few times to make sure he wouldn't rouse, before rolling him over to his back. Other than a bump on his head, the Senator would not wake up suffering from much.

So he drew back a fist and socked the man right in the nose, hard enough to break it.

"Hey, he told me that long before you-"

Wham. Adamo paused in the middle of sliding on the Borgia bracers, raising an eyebrow at Vico. The senator let out a grunt, but otherwise didn't stir.

"What did you do that for?"

"That broken nose is going to heal back bent," Vico said, looking mighty proud of himself as he shook out his hand. His knuckles stung, but it was nothing compared to the Senator's injury, or the sore spot on the back of Madonna Angelita's neck that she would feel for weeks after waking up, thanks to the blow he had given her to knock her out (a little more forceful than necessary). "Now they will both be perfect for each other, and maybe be more inclined to spend time with each other's spouses than with one-night affairs. I have done them a favor."

It figured. Vico could be incredibly righteous when he wanted, even if through aggressive means. It was something Adamo had grown to know, simply shrugging instead of reprimanding like he used to.

"If you say so, amico mio," Adamo said as he tied on his belt. "But I doubt their ways will change."

"In that case," Vico said, standing. "Then I just wanted to punch him in the face very badly."

Adamo was silent as he finally finished dressing, and he stared at Vico for a good moment. He stepped closer, grinning again.

"If it was for me, then I could've done it myself, you know."

"It was for his puttana of a wife putting her hands down my trousers. I couldn't very well punch a woman."

Rolling his eyes, Vico retrieved his beret from his pocket. It looked rather beaten up - like someone had run over it, and it took a great deal of shaking out for it to regain even a little of its earlier puffiness. Nonetheless, he put it back on, letting it lean more to the left than the right, once again matting his hair against the scar under his eye. "Now," he said, once they were both proper again, "Let's finally be Assassins again and get out."

"Wait, then how did you take care of her? That definitely wasn't enough time for you to finish the deed."

He didn't object to getting out of here, and this time, he opted for the window - a more discreet way to leave, fitting of assassins. Adamo unhinged it, pushing it open, looking below to make sure they were in the clear.

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TIME TO TIMESKIP AFTER THIS

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THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID

JUST COULDN'T RESIST HUH

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