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The trouble is: even though he knew that he shouldn’t have even tried to sleep, he didn’t have much of a choice, not with the way his head was throbbing and he was nauseous with exhaustion.
He has been—hanging in there, for the most part. He has been getting some occasional, mostly troubled sleep, enough to function and not accidentally shoot himself in the foot – it’s at times like this that he is reminded of the many advantages of having a team: he doesn’t necessarily need to be one who does the shooting all the time, for starters –, with the notable of exception of the flight to Zurich, when Illya was surprisingly amenable to being used as a pillow and Napoleon miraculously slept like a rock the whole time. It was probably a result of cumulated exhaustion and his deep desire to avoid reading through the sack of files that Waverly gave them – and yes, the company definitely helped, but he is not thinking about that, thank you very much.
Regardless, tonight he knew, he was sure that he didn’t stand a chance, exhausted or not: oddly enough, watching three agents get blown up doesn’t exactly inspire calm and peace of mind. He didn’t even know them, but he’s spent the whole trip back to London and the entire debriefing with his stomach in knots.
The most reasonable course of action would have been to just avoid sleeping, for the time being. Or at least, follow Gaby’s example and drink enough alcohol to scare the insomnia away.
The thing is he was too nauseous to contemplate drinking, and he’s too exhausted to stay upright and do something. He attempted reading, but the words kept swimming right in front of his eyes and, even when he did manage to focus on a line or two, the meaning hardly registered.
Eventually, he felt like he had little choice but closing his eyes and hoping for the best.
The first time he wakes up his heart is hammering in his throat and, as he begins to push himself up in automatic, somewhere in his brain still thinking that he has to move, that Illya is lying half-dead somewhere around him and he needs to get to him, the room swims around him, pulling him back down at once.
He closes his eyes, and though it does nothing to stop the world from spinning at least he begins to realize that it’s alright, he’s back home, nothing is wrong, it was just a dream.
His heartbeat is still too frantic and he can feel himself shaking, but he’s tired and everything hurts and if he knows that it’s a dream it can’t hurt him anymore, right?
Wrong: it’s waiting right there behind his eyelids, as soon as he dares relaxing enough to drift back into an exhausted sleep.
There’s smoke and the air is thick with heat, and as he drags himself forward he almost stumbles on an half-empty bottle of wine. He panics, and when he tries to call out for Illya he finds that he has no voice.
He startles awake for a second, thinks It’s just a dream, drifts back just as quickly as he formulated that thought.
He slips and rolls down a hill, breathing dirt and chocking and finding nothing to stop himself from falling, and when the world finally stills he’s pinned, a pile of bodies he can’t recognize keeping him where he is, crushing him with as much strength as he tries to put in breaking free. It’s fine, he desperately thinks, he doesn’t know them, he just needs to move.
He tries to scream and everything spins, he hears the sickening sound of ribs cracking but none of the pain that he expects comes. He blinks, looks up, and his breath catches when he recognizes Illya staring at him with open, unblinking eyes. He still can’t move.
He knows somewhere in his gut that he can save him still, he just needs to fucking move—he sinks a little farther every time he tries, grows a little more desperate with every scream that doesn’t come out, and then he’s coughing and choking and still not moving—
He wakes up kicking nothing, his bed a mess of tangled sheets and sweat, but at least he yanked himself out, at least he’s staring at the ceiling and seeing it. His head is throbbing and his heart is testing the boundaries of his ribcage, but at least he is awake.
He keeps lying there for as long as it takes him to stop shaking, and by the end of it he’s one small step away from crying out of frustration. Every muscle in his body is sore, his eyes burn, his head hurts and he’d literally sell his soul for some decent sleep, he just needs to sleep. Is that too much to ask for?
Apparently it is. He wonders if prison would have given him less nightmares, because right now he’s beginning to regret his life choices.
He pushes himself up, eager to get rid of his damp shirt first and foremost, and he tries not to pay much attention to how dizzy he feels when he first gets on his feet. It’s fine, he’s just exhausted. No big deal.
Having dried off and wearing something clean, he is only left with a lot of pent-up frustration, left-over terror still chocking him, because of course it won’t go away, and the realization that he does not want to lie back down, at all, keeps him very far away from the bed.
He steps out of his room, leaving the door ajar to let some light in the corridor, and he can’t help throwing a wistful look at Illya’s door, which of course is firmly closed.
He just—he doesn’t want to be alone right now. It’s stupid and childish, but he thinks that he would feel a lot better if he could even just take a peek inside, get some tangible reminder that everything is fine, everyone is alive, he is not alone in an empty apartment.
But, of course, even if Illya were in the habit of leaving his door open, he would realize that Napoleon is spying on him, wake up and shoot him between the eyes before he could so much as protest. Not that Napoleon would have too much against such a treatment, at the moment: his head is hurting enough that a bullet to the brain would probably not make much of a difference, and hey, at least he wouldn’t be awake anymore.
For a brief, insane second, he almost considers knocking. Almost.
Instead, he resolves to pace up and down the corridor, trying to work off some steam and cursing at Illya for not even having the decency of snoring.
He isn’t sure how much time has passed when the door is suddenly yanked open and a slightly dishevelled Illya appears to plant his narrowed eyes on him. Napoleon stares at him, gaping and a little out of breath from the startle, though the relief is already washing through him in waves.
“What are you doing?” Illya demands, clearly unhappy with him.
Napoleon mustn’t look too smart, blinking at him and hesitating too long before uttering a frankly embarrassing: “Uh, what?”
Illya doesn’t look impressed. “You have been pacing. For thirty-five minutes at least.”
Oh, great, so the bastard had been eavesdropping instead of showing his face and putting him out of his misery.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he says, pretty much snaps, really.
Illya considers him for a moment, humming. “Bad dreams?” he asks, his tone carefully neutral. Napoleon feels a little attacked anyway, and he barely resists the urge to back away a step or two.
Not having an excuse ready nor the brains necessary to come up with one, though, he can only shrug in response.
Illya attempts to drill a hole in his skull – not that Napoleon would know the difference if he were to succeed; god, he really does need to sleep, he had no idea heads could hurt that much for so long –, until he abruptly steps back, pulling the door with him and leaving it wide open. “Come,” he only says, gesturing towards the inside.
Napoleon stares. He’s probably being slow because he’s tired. He’s missing some contextual clue that would completely change the meaning of what he thinks he’s being offered here, because there is no way that—
“Cowboy?” Illya prompts, raising his eyebrows at him. “You do want company, yes?”
“I—I mean, yeah—” he mutters, before he can think any better of it, trailing off when he realizes that he doesn’t know what he’s trying to say. The problem is most likely the giant question mark that has currently taken residence in the sphere of his brain that would normally process things.
“Good,” Illya says, curtly. “Come in then.”
Ah, what the hell.
As soon as Napoleon has taken a few tentative steps inside, Illya moves past him, going to turn off the light in Napoleon’s room, which, right, he should have done that. They are left in the darkness, and having grown used to the light he can’t see much of anything when Illya steps back in, closes the door and grabs his sleeve to urge him to follow as he moves towards the bed.
Napoleon isn’t sure how to process what is going on here, but doing as he’s told is easy enough, for once: the bed is too inviting to resist and he doesn’t have enough will left to question whether this is a good idea or not.
He ends up flat on his back, a pained noise leaving his throat when he can finally relax his legs and he realizes how sore they are. Walking around aimlessly for so long might have not been the smartest idea he’s ever had. His feet feel like they are about to burst.
It's an accident, he swears, when he rolls over and he finds himself a little too close, his breath catching in his throat because a little farther and he would have bumped right against Illya’s chest. He only meant to get more comfortable, to shift around to ease himself into sleep, really.
He’s just about to backtrack in a panic, when Illya apparently loses his mind, scooting closer, reaching out so that his hand is resting on Napoleon’s arm and giving him a squeeze.
“Okay?” he asks, quietly, and Napoleon can’t quite look at him in the eye but screw this, he will blame sleep deprivation in the morning.
He nods, curling on himself until he’s pressing his forehead at the base of Illya’s neck, and with a part of him still waiting to be pushed away he doesn’t really know what to think of Illya sliding his arm under his neck and pulling him closer, wrapping him into a proper hug.
He swallows, something pressing behind his eyes and adding to his stupid headache, but the knots in his stomach begin to untangle and he can feel the tension in his shoulders melting at the rhythm of Illya’s hands moving up and down his back, and, really, he’s so fucking tired, can’t he have this for five minutes? Even if it doesn’t mean what he wants it to mean, even if there will be hell to pay in the morning?
He doesn’t waste time weighting the answer, shaking his head a few times just to feel Illya’s shirt rubbing against his forehead and breathing in and out until he feels a little less shaky.
It’s surprisingly easy to begin drifting, his arms tucked between the two of them and a constant reassurance that he isn’t alone surrounding him.
The last thing that he remembers doing, as the world around him began to swim, is grabbing a fistful of Illya’s shirt and stubbornly thinking that he isn’t going to let it go for anything in the world.