It’s been a long minute since he was last in a fight, much less one for a fight’s sake, and he moves into it with a cool head. He barely bothers to take a fighting stance until the chair is skittering his way, and he catches it by the back and twists it aside him.
But here he comes.
Ezio shifts to brace his weight on his back foot and lifts his other hand rising to catch, to redirect Kovacs’s blow off-center and let his own force carry him beyond.
It’ll be hard, against a man that big, but nothing he hasn’t handled before.
Motherfuck, this guy is strong. Just as suspected, it's like being slapped by a brick wall. A brick wall who doesn't think you're shit, nothing personal. The urge rises to go for that fucking nose, but it's anger talking. This is their first fight (he doesn't consider for a second it'll be their last), he needs to show... something.
What?
That he's serious.
So Kovacs is off center in his ridiculous gaijin body, but he still has the momentum. If he's fast-- and he always tries to be-- he can catch one of Ezio's stout legs with one of Ryker's gangly ones, trying to pull them both off course.
Ezio feels his lip curl as they connect, some cheerful mix of thrill and pride. His sixth sense comes to life with a barrage of information, too fast to process mid-fight, but snatches of it come to him: a surprising clumsiness, a flare of anger, a resilience.
He's opening his mouth to bait Kovacs again when his leg gets swept, forcing him to take a hard move forward to stay upright, but it throws him off balance. He seizes upon Kovacs' arm, redoubling his grip; if they go down, they'll go down together.
This won't be the first time Kovacs wrestles without intent to kill. It's almost charming in its familiarity. Envoy instincts have him cushioning his own fall before he's even aware of it, and then he has his hands at Ezio's waist, pulling at his trousers, kicking for leverage.
Something no one ever expects is a dangerous move: Ryker's giant forehead crashing into Ezio's face. There's the nose.
It hurts like a bitch. It always does, and somehow it never hurts less with experience, but at least Kovacs isn't wearing a helmet. Blood pours from his nose and pain blossoms through his face, but damage to his face is what prompts him to move onto the offensive.
He braces himself between Kovacs and the floor, surging forward at the waist, and locks his grip around Kovacs' torso to force them to roll so Ezio is on top.
Envoy training also says, if it happens, put them off guard.
(Quell's voice is, for once, more memory than hallucination. Men are weak, she says. No, not between the legs. Between the ears. Never forget that, especially if more than one man is present. They have an ego. Use it.)
Ezio lands on top of Kovacs. Blood drips on his face. He grins. "Shit, bocchan, this your first time? I'll try'n be gentle."
Which is when he tries to reach up and pull at that long hair.
Kovacs, currently pinned under another man, asks, "is it ladies we're worried about?"
And he moves in, quick to- Ezio may get the sensation that Kovacs is, for a brief moment, sniffing his neck, before slumping back down. He would be forgiven for thinking the night had taken a turn, before- "Fuck it, fine. I can't get it up for ripping out your throat tonight, so you can have this one."
"Do you want me to kill you?" He lies there, wiggling the fingers on his free hand. It's a bit awkward. His voice lowers a register from where it was; his eyes slip away. "'Cause that's how this ends."
Ezio laughs; there's not really any other reaction to be had to that.
"You could beat me until my bones caved, or pull some knife from your trousers and gut me," he agrees, breezily, and he looks down at Kovacs in a way that veers appraising. Measuring him for the ways he isn't Larry, measures him for the things they never got to pick at together. Terrible, this place. Ezio eases off, just enough to let Kovacs get up if he tries. "Perhaps next time. For now... dinner is still salvageable."
"CTAC training," he says, sitting up, taking up every inch he's given, "is about destroying innate nonviolent urges found in humans. I'm being fucking magnanimous; you're welcome."
(Men have egoes- yeah, yeah, he knows, Quell.)
Murmuring again, in that less confident, indirect cadence: "What the fuck was that food anyway..."
Ezio sits back, an elbow rested on his knee. He absently brushes at his nose, then tests the bridge of it with his fingertips. Not irreparably smashed, at least, but it'll swell for sure.
"Crespelle alla Fiorentina," he replies. "Spinach and ricotta wrapped in a crespelle, and a white sauce –– salsa colla. Do you think CTAC was successful?"
He doesn't imagine so, if there's any magnanimity to be had.
He's vaguely aware spinach is a plant. No clue what ricotta is, but something on that plate looked like mashed osetinsky, so probably cheese. Vegetables and cheese, he can live with that.
Absent-mindedly, he shrugs at Ezio's question. "For a while. Most of my life. Exciting stuff. Where'd you learn to fight, rose tribe?"
“My brother taught me brawling and some swordplay when I was a boy,” he replies. “My uncle and his mercenaries sharpened those skills. I lived in a brothel for many years as bodyguard, and with a thieves’ guild before that. Thirty or so years of trying new things add up to a great deal of skill… you must have started young too.”
"As a bodyguard, a consultant, a financier or a teacher?" Kovacs counts them off on his fingers. The answer to 'what do you do' had been vague, but being that Kovacs himself has seen his share of professions and odd jobs, he hadn't been terribly bothered. He'd just absorbed the information, like any Envoy would.
And then the guy had to fight like a beast, and Kovacs isn't sure if he's exactly enthralled, but he's certainly intrigued.
His uncle had a big house. Gave it to the poor. Soldier of fortune. Trained from a young age. Angry about civilian death. Fights like a terror.
Kovacs stops where he is, and smacks one foot down on the marble floor. The sound reverberates like flock of birds shattering off a tree. Gotta be real quiet to not get noticed in a house like this. He wonders how much of it's a trap.
"Some kind of dissident," Kovacs says, "family tradition."
Fitting, he thinks: his profession is only recognized by those with training of their own. It isn't quite Assassin hissed through one's teeth, but it's the closest he's heard in many months.
He watches Kovacs, still sat on the floor, weight leant back on one hand. Relaxed despite the gravity in voice.
"When your associate said you were a follower of someone who led an uprising, I was intrigued."
His face doesn't quite fall, but it does go carefully blank. So he's been talking to Kristin-- ever since they fought, he can only think of her as Kristin. It's annoying, but not a total breach of his personal fucking privacy, so he'll let that slip for now.
"You wouldn't know any Falconer," he says. "Her books are on this thing."
He's not sure why that's important. Maybe because it's just more satisfying than asking if she called him a terrorist. At the moment, he'd rather not know if his hunch is correct.
"I am looking forward to learning more about her," Ezio replies, with a curl of intrigue: a woman. Her uprising cannot be given any particular weight with how little he knows, but it's a thread to tug on later. "My thought, Kovacs, is that very particular kinds of people become followers of individual men or women... and you do not strike me as someone looking for comfort in dogma."
"The me you're talking to didn't join the Uprising."
It's an odd way to phrase it. I'm older now. But he rarely feels like himself, these days. Letting this weirdo know that, though... let him figure it out.
He pauses, scrutinizes the lines of Kovacs' face, the way he tries to mask any reaction. He thinks of Francesco, of Enu, of Tessa. How young they'd seemed, even into their twenties, and how empty Tiber Island's courtyards had felt when they'd set out into the world. The men and women who had come back.
"I spend much of my time with apprentices," he remarks. "Young people who abhor injustice but have no means to do something about it. They are seldom the same people, years later."
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But here he comes.
Ezio shifts to brace his weight on his back foot and lifts his other hand rising to catch, to redirect Kovacs’s blow off-center and let his own force carry him beyond.
It’ll be hard, against a man that big, but nothing he hasn’t handled before.
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What?
That he's serious.
So Kovacs is off center in his ridiculous gaijin body, but he still has the momentum. If he's fast-- and he always tries to be-- he can catch one of Ezio's stout legs with one of Ryker's gangly ones, trying to pull them both off course.
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He's opening his mouth to bait Kovacs again when his leg gets swept, forcing him to take a hard move forward to stay upright, but it throws him off balance. He seizes upon Kovacs' arm, redoubling his grip; if they go down, they'll go down together.
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This won't be the first time Kovacs wrestles without intent to kill. It's almost charming in its familiarity. Envoy instincts have him cushioning his own fall before he's even aware of it, and then he has his hands at Ezio's waist, pulling at his trousers, kicking for leverage.
Something no one ever expects is a dangerous move: Ryker's giant forehead crashing into Ezio's face. There's the nose.
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He braces himself between Kovacs and the floor, surging forward at the waist, and locks his grip around Kovacs' torso to force them to roll so Ezio is on top.
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Envoy training also says, if it happens, put them off guard.
(Quell's voice is, for once, more memory than hallucination. Men are weak, she says. No, not between the legs. Between the ears. Never forget that, especially if more than one man is present. They have an ego. Use it.)
Ezio lands on top of Kovacs. Blood drips on his face. He grins. "Shit, bocchan, this your first time? I'll try'n be gentle."
Which is when he tries to reach up and pull at that long hair.
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He jerks his head back, just out of reach, and grabs at Kovacs' wrist to snare it and pin it above his head.
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And he moves in, quick to- Ezio may get the sensation that Kovacs is, for a brief moment, sniffing his neck, before slumping back down. He would be forgiven for thinking the night had taken a turn, before- "Fuck it, fine. I can't get it up for ripping out your throat tonight, so you can have this one."
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"You tire quickly," he remarks. "I thought you would have more in you than that, the way you carried on."
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"You could beat me until my bones caved, or pull some knife from your trousers and gut me," he agrees, breezily, and he looks down at Kovacs in a way that veers appraising. Measuring him for the ways he isn't Larry, measures him for the things they never got to pick at together. Terrible, this place. Ezio eases off, just enough to let Kovacs get up if he tries. "Perhaps next time. For now... dinner is still salvageable."
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(Men have egoes- yeah, yeah, he knows, Quell.)
Murmuring again, in that less confident, indirect cadence: "What the fuck was that food anyway..."
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"Crespelle alla Fiorentina," he replies. "Spinach and ricotta wrapped in a crespelle, and a white sauce –– salsa colla. Do you think CTAC was successful?"
He doesn't imagine so, if there's any magnanimity to be had.
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Absent-mindedly, he shrugs at Ezio's question. "For a while. Most of my life. Exciting stuff. Where'd you learn to fight, rose tribe?"
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He knows it did. He's just being petulant (and wondering how long it's been since he's fought with a sword. Too fucking long).
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And then the guy had to fight like a beast, and Kovacs isn't sure if he's exactly enthralled, but he's certainly intrigued.
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"I cannot imagine you as a financier," he replies, wryly. "What do you think I do?"
Impress me, his tone says.
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Kovacs stops where he is, and smacks one foot down on the marble floor. The sound reverberates like flock of birds shattering off a tree. Gotta be real quiet to not get noticed in a house like this. He wonders how much of it's a trap.
"Some kind of dissident," Kovacs says, "family tradition."
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Fitting, he thinks: his profession is only recognized by those with training of their own. It isn't quite Assassin hissed through one's teeth, but it's the closest he's heard in many months.
He watches Kovacs, still sat on the floor, weight leant back on one hand. Relaxed despite the gravity in voice.
"When your associate said you were a follower of someone who led an uprising, I was intrigued."
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"You wouldn't know any Falconer," he says. "Her books are on this thing."
He's not sure why that's important. Maybe because it's just more satisfying than asking if she called him a terrorist. At the moment, he'd rather not know if his hunch is correct.
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It's an odd way to phrase it. I'm older now. But he rarely feels like himself, these days. Letting this weirdo know that, though... let him figure it out.
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"I spend much of my time with apprentices," he remarks. "Young people who abhor injustice but have no means to do something about it. They are seldom the same people, years later."
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