#asscreed

“Your sweet tooth grows hungrier every day,” Desmond said, the last word almost gone to a laugh - an amused exhale, really - but he didn’t turn. Instead, he leaned into the heat of the furn, the side of it where it opened into his house, built into the wall as it was, and shuffled a few of the loaves around to make room for the batch of crumbly, sweet, seeded biscuits that he was just about ready to bake off. 

As baker, about half of the loaves present belonged to other villagers, who used his oven to bake off breads and meats, but about half were loaves that he sold in the market or supplied to the castle up the hill.

Altaïr, no-doubt pouting at having been detected despite his silent entry, waited only a moment before responding. “Do not try my patience, baker. You know what I am here for.”

“Do I?” Desmond grinned, then schooled his expression before he turned around. Altaïr wore a lack of affect poorly, only recently having learned to be mindful of things like body language. Where usually he would not care how loudly he broadcast his impatience or his displeasure, he had begun to - well, try. 

Desmond had to admit that it was cute, the small ways that Altaïr had learned to improvise and adapt in his mission to figure Desmond - village baker and informant to the Brotherhood - out. 

“You do,” Altaïr mused, looking over the cut and topped but unbaked breads as if he knew what he was looking at or possessed any skill in appraising baked goods. “And you are late in providing it.”

“The biscuits, you mean?” Desmond crossed over to them, peel in hand, brandishing it with no regard for where Altaïr stood so that he could place them on the wide wooden paddle. He knew that Altaïr would dodge, and he did; orbiting instead behind Desmond, moving closer and closer every day, every week that they danced this dance. “Are you really such a glutton that you can’t wait?”

Desmond didn’t know why he was allowing it. Why he let himself indulge in the private thrill that was Altaïr’s honeyed eyes, shrewd still but interested and less hostile with every visit. Why he hadn’t cut and run when Altaïr had taken over the responsibility of receiving his coded messages to Al Mualim, why he hadn’t disappeared the very first time that Altaïr, having stepped in to save him from bandits outside the village only to discover swiftly that his help hadn’t been needed, had approached him. Asked after him. His name, his background, his place of origin. When he clearly had not bought Desmond’s story the way the Brotherhood and village at large had and began to investigate the way that one would a mark. A target.

“No,” Altaïr said. “I will be back for those.”

“Twice in one day?” Desmond asked. “What a devoted Brother you are, Altaïr, to spend so much of your time watching me bake bread.” He turned and, with a deft motion, used the peel to deposit the dozen or so breads into the empty space he had prepared in the furn. Then he leaned the long-handled peel against the wall next to it and, stepping back, the next quip already on his tongue -

“I do not wish to indulge in your word games,” Altaïr crowded him, which was new, hands landing either side of Desmond’s hips and steering him back. “Give me Al Mualim’s cipher, Vega.”

“You misunderstand me, novice,” Desmond let the words carry just the barest edge. It wasn’t time, not yet, for Altaïr to have all the pieces to the puzzle that Desmond had been laying out for him in the months he had been in Masyaf. “If your hounding has not produced what you want, then why do you expect it to change? Do you think me fickle?”

“Never that,” Altaïr breathed, and he was - so close. The air between them, already warmed by the oven a mere six or so feet away, grew sweltering. Desmond could practically taste the salt that beaded on Altaïr’s forehead and dampened his hair, could smell the oil that buffed his leathers, the oud and rose oil that he wore. His mouth was parted, just barely, and that hot exhale ghosted across Desmond’s skin. “But you do test me.”

“If I were testing you,” he said, feeling shorter of breath and less in possession of himself than he might have expected to be in this situation - if he’d ever let himself indulge in those fantasies as anything more than they should have been, “who is to say you haven’t failed already? It’s been weeks, novice.”

“I have devised a new approach.”

“Oh? And you -” Desmond didn’t get to finish, because there were warm and just barely-chapped lips slotting themselves against his, and oh, but it was just as good as he’d imagined, he’d dreamed -

A groan punched its way out from his sternum. His hands fisted in the fabric of Altaïr robes and pulled, feet moving of their own accord to sweep one of Altaïr’s -

Altaïr noticed, of course he did, but Desmond still turned out from underneath him, pivoting, driving against his shoulder - and hell, the small breath that escaped Altaïr when he fell back against the wall had Desmond feeling wild and simultaneously removed from himself and deliciously present as he pressed flat against the assassin he had between his hands and kissed him back.