Work Text:
At this point, he’s pretty sure that the bugs are all as functional as they can be. Still, he keeps pocking at them, because otherwise he might just die out of boredom: throwing sideway glances in Illya’s direction is always a good pastime, but he’s gotten used to doing it while working and he isn’t doing anything particularly interesting either.
As they wait for Gaby to be done with her dress, Illya is left without much to do besides pacing around. He’s flexing his fingers every two seconds, frowning like he does when he’s worriedly going over their plan for the mission of the day, and Napoleon can’t suppress a smile at his ridiculousness: it’s going to be fine.
Well, alright, to be fair something can always go wrong, but this is only a first, embarrassingly easy step to their mission: Gaby only needs to walk in under the pretence of cleaning the offices and then slip bugs everywhere while she does it. Easy, practically impossible to get caught.
That is obviously not going to stop Illya from worrying all over the place, especially since he and Napoleon will just have to wait around the building until it’s over. Of course he’s going to worry, sending his beloved Gaby in all by herself.
Because he is a kind and compassionate man, Napoleon opts not to tease him about the hole that he’s digging in the floor, instead pocking at one of the bugs some more. Still working. Dull.
“This thing itches like mad,” Gaby complains, walking out of the bedroom with the scrunched up face of someone who is heading to work on a Monday morning. It’s odd, to see her dressed up as a cleaning lady, but a corner of Napoleon’s brain still takes a second to notice that she’s gorgeous, with strands of hair falling all around her face and walking barefoot on the floor.
Illya immediately turns to her, taking a step forward because he’s like a moth inevitably throwing itself at the nearest flame. It’s kinda adorable, in a weird Illya-way.
Napoleon raises one of the bugs like he wants to inspect it better under the light. It still looks the same. He isn’t sure what he’s trying to accomplish there.
“Is your microphone on?” Illya asks, because of course they weren’t going to let her go in without at least keeping an ear out for any complications, unlikely as they may be.
“Nope,” she says, gleefully. She hands him the aforementioned microphone, because it’s kind of tradition at this point that they make an unnecessarily intense moment out of fixing those up. “Care to help me?” she prompts, and her tone does funny things to Napoleon’s stomach.
He smiles as wide as he can, turning back to his bugs because it’s only polite. “Before you start, I will remind you that there is a bedroom right there,” he says, teasingly. “And that some of us are trying to work.”
Illya’s muttering doesn’t sound as annoyed as it could have, most likely because his mood tends to improve as his proximity to Gaby increases, and when Napoleon risks a glance he sees that he has started fixing the microphone under her collar.
“If you are feeling excluded, you can come join,” Gaby jokes, raising her eyebrows at him. Napoleon loves her, but he also would really like her not to accidentally press certain buttons as often as she does.
Illya doesn’t have any particular reaction to the suggestion, because at this point he’s more than used to him and Gaby jokingly flirting left and right, and that at least is a relief.
He would very much like to quickly turn back to his work, but that would just make it weird, so he only keeps a tight enough grip on his facial expression to seem nothing short of amused and he raises his hands in surrender. “I could never deprive Peril of his favourite part of the job,” he says, lightly.
Gaby hums, giving Illya a thoughtful and evaluating look. “I think that would be the showing off his martial arts skills part.”
“It’s not,” Illya says, deadpan. “It’s enjoying the silence on plane ride back when you are reading and Cowboy is drooling on my shoulder.”
“That—” Napoleon splutters, his face heating up in outrage and not embarrassment, because that is not true, how dare he— “I don’t drool, I have never drooled, much less on you, you absolute—”
Gaby, because she’s an asshole, downright laughs at him. Illya, having fixed the microphone, turns to give him that lopsided smile that tends to follow his absolutely not funny jokes. Watching them, Napoleon’s outrage evaporates so quickly it isn’t even worth making fun of, leaving him with a pleasant feeling of warmth deep in his chest.
(And if Illya still hasn’t stepped out of Gaby’s personal space in spite of the lack of an excuse and her hand has come to rest on his arm in the casual way that means she must barely even realize it, if they look like the perfect little couple suddenly standing way too many feet away from him—it’s fine, he can live with that. Their smiles are his to keep, at least.)
-
At first, in Istanbul, it’s just entertaining.
The plane ride that takes them away from Rome is a bit awkward, Illya and Gaby hardly even looking in each other’s direction like two teenagers with a massive crush and Napoleon sitting between them, trying not to get crushed by the growing tension.
“Well, this is going to be fun,” he says, cheerfully. “I’m sure you two will be happy to spend some more time together.”
It’s definitely easier to make fun of them than to stop and think about what he and Illya just did and how he was convinced they were saying goodbye never to see each other again.
Illya mutters something in Russian and turns towards the window, while Gaby shamelessly ignores him, burying her face in a magazine. Yeah, it’s definitely going to be fun.
Napoleon tries to live it as the closest thing to a vacation that he’s going to get: no Sanders, no CIA, just Waverly being an eccentric boss and two partners that he can actually work efficiently with. He doesn’t let himself think of it as a semi-permanent arrangement: Waverly may have implied a few times that he’d like to keep this going, but he knows better than to think Sanders is going to cut him loose so easily. He is, after all, the best agent he has.
So he enjoys his vacation, pocking fun at Illya, having an occasional drink with Gaby and enjoying the show whenever those two hover around each other.
He isn’t sure if something did happen in Rome, beside the time he walked in on them, but Illya follows her around like a needy puppy, Gaby stares at him a little too much whenever he isn’t looking, and he has never seen two people find so many ridiculous excuses to touch each other before. It’s almost painful, sometimes he comes this close to shouting at them to just hold hands already, before all the tension in the room kills him.
Since he’s nice and all, he decides to try and give them a bit of a push. Maybe, he figures, he can push Illya’s buttons a little, make him jealous enough to push him to finally make a move.
He and Gaby click really well, after all, they are friendly and comfortable around each other, he just needs to be a little friendlier.
It doesn’t work in the least.
As much as he plays around with her, even picking her up and spinning her around one late afternoon at the beach, Illya doesn’t really seem to care. In fact, Napoleon is pretty sure that during the aforementioned beach incident he saw him snap a picture and smile at them.
Ah, well, whatever. He can’t work miracles, and if those two don’t want to get their shit together they won’t. Let them sort it out in what little time they have left.
(Regardless of whether his tactic of playing around with her worked or not, it’s nice to see Gaby smile, so he doesn’t think he will stop.)
-
This is his favourite kind of mission.
It obviously comes with its downsides: it’s the kind that stretches over an infinite time, because it goes slow, and it tends to be dreadfully boring. Neither him nor Gaby can in any way appreciate having to sit around listening to some guy’s conversation, paddling through hours and hours of meaningless talk that has nothing to do with what they are on the look-out for in the first place, and there always comes a time when they both get twitchy and frustrated, which in Gaby’s case means becoming snappy and in his case means becoming annoying. He does hold out better than her though, generally speaking.
Illya probably doesn’t enjoy sitting around doing nothing either, but it doesn’t seem to affect his mood as much—he tends to get a little more antisocial than usual, but not enough to make for a real problem.
Regardless, Napoleon enjoys missions like these, when they get to settle down somewhere for a long stretch of time and play house. If the price to pay is losing his mind over the long hours of eavesdropping, he’ll take it.
He enjoys waking up in the morning to the sound of Illya making himself breakfast, because he’s an early riser and he never manages to be that quiet, or curling up on the couch with Gaby to watch movies until late at night, he enjoys cooking meals for both of them, because he’d much rather not let them burn the house down, and later watching Gaby hum and dance as she washes the dishes—it’s not that they don’t see one other at home, because of course they do.
They don’t get that much downtime between missions, usually, but when they do they often regroup at one of their respective apartments, for lunch or a board game night, but at the end of the day his empty apartment is only his, and it’s nice to get to play house sometimes, to have so much of them with the excuse of only doing their job.
He wonders if Illya and Gaby have already discussed getting married and moving in together, or if he is the only one that has been picturing it, with various degrees of joy and sadness depending on the day.
As of now, they are respecting the rules of propriety, living separated and sleeping in different rooms even on mission, where there would only be Napoleon there to witness, but—someday, they’ll probably tie the knot. And then they’ll get this, just the two of them, every time they touch base.
Napoleon is happy for them, he just hopes they won’t completely kick him out of their lives when the time comes.
He finds them working, Gaby lying sideways on the couch and looking like her soul is about to leave her body, and Illya maintaining an air of professionalism, sitting up straight and ready to take notes if need-be, though he is starting to look annoyed as well.
Well, fortunately for them Napoleon is a good and caring partner and he’s there to help.
“I made sandwiches,” he announces, and both of them immediately look up to him. Gaby’s whole face lights up, and Illya goes from a moment of surprise to one of his affectionate smiles—it’s a bad combo that does funny things to his stomach, but there is no way he’s going to complain.
“Have I mentioned that I love you?” Gaby says, lightly, focused on grabbing a sandwich for herself and not even looking at him. It’s another blow, but it isn’t the first time she has said something like that as a joke, not knowing that he can’t help feeling the full weight of the words anyway, and he’s learned how to take it in stride.
“Once or twice,” he replies, with a grin and his best smug tone, like he’s enjoying the praise and not struggling to reign in the desire for it to be said in earnest.
Illya, at least, is merciful enough to only thank him and get back to work.
Knowing that they’ll soon want to eat more, he sits down on the couch with Gaby, where she automatically retreats her legs to make room for him only to quickly throw them over him, because her partner sitting on half of the couch is definitely not enough to stop her from lying sideways.
He always enjoys the weight of her on his lap, so he doesn’t even dream of complaining, grabbing a sandwich for himself instead. It won’t be his turn to work in a while, so he figures he’ll just—sit there and try not to be obvious about how he’s watching them. He’s never been called out on it before, after all.
-
One time, he tries to make them enjoy a romantic dinner.
Having drawn them in with the excuse of an homemade dinner – and as much as Gaby likes to poke fun at his fancy plates he knows they both love his food –, the plan was to leave them at the already set up table to chat while he retreated in the kitchen to cook. Since they aren’t going to spontaneously go out on a date, might as well trap them in one, right?
Yeah, right.
Except those two assholes refuse to go along with his plan, and instead of having some private conversation while they wait around for their food they keep yelling at him, so that he can take part to the talking all the way from the kitchen. Because clearly it’s fundamental to have his opinion on who’s the best ballet dancer out of the last three picks they’ve narrowed it down to.
They are infuriating.
Here he is, going through all this trouble to set up a nice table, make them dinner and bury himself in the kitchen to allow them some alone time, and they just refuse to forget that he exists. It would be flattering, he supposes, if it weren’t so ridiculously inconvenient.
Maybe he should just adopt a less subtle and more middle-school-appropriate approach and lock them in a closet together. That ought to it, right?
He mentally marks it down as an option for the future, when he will grow more desperate in his attempts, right as Illya and Gaby walk in the kitchen to ask him if he needs any help with the cooking, because ‘it’s taking him a while’.
He snorts. “Yeah, cooking does tend to take a while,” he points out. “And it’s fine, I can handle it on my own, just chew on the appetizers until I’m done,” he adds, with a shrug.
You would think that the reminder that they do have some food to keep them busy would be enough to send them back to the dining room, but no, instead Gaby sits on the only empty space on the table, as if to signal to him that they are there to stay, while Illya keeps hovering around the pots to sniff everything, probably just waiting for Napoleon to get distracted long enough to give him a chance to grab a spoon and taste it.
Annoyed as he is, Napoleon can’t help smiling a little as he mentally accepts defeat and he resigns to the idea of having them hover around him until the food is ready.
He gives Illya some vegetables to chop, so that he doesn’t start eating everything before it’s even done, while Gaby starts going on a tangent about their latest target’s car and how badly kept it was. Napoleon gets a little lost about two minutes in, but that is also about as long as it takes for him to forget to regret how unsuccessful his entire plan was.
He thinks he might try to set up a date for his partners more often. It’s bound to work at some point, right?
And if not—it’s still nice. Win-win.
-
Yeah, so, this is going nowhere.
As the seconds pass, dreadfully slowly as if to mock him, Napoleon grows more and more certain that they simply misread the tone of the conversation they were eavesdropping on, because it’s starting to look a lot like their target just wants to enjoy an evening drinking and attempting to chat random women up. The highlight of the night has been the woman that entertained him for an entire twenty-five minutes, because at least it made Napoleon feel like someone was getting something done around here.
As for him and Illya—they are just staring and hoping for something shady to happen, he supposes.
He throws a look his partner’s way, finding him holding a drink that’s probably there for show and throwing mostly subtle looks at the entrances, scanning the crowd and then looking back at their target. He’s doing a very good job at ignoring Napoleon, which he knows he is supposed to do, but still. Rude.
And, frankly, also useless, because nothing is happening here, and Napoleon would at least like to have some conversation to pass the time. And alright, he did take the time to chat with a couple of people that walked up to him, because shutting everyone down would only draw attention, but still. He’s bored and he wants to go annoy Illya, it’s his favourite pastime.
He makes it a little over another two minutes before he decides that he’s had enough and quickly walks over to Illya. The exasperated look on his face is always priceless.
“I know, I know, we are not supposed to talk,” Napoleon anticipates him, nonchalantly taking the seat next to his. He can feel Illya glaring at him even as he turns to glance back at their target, and he can barely keep his amusement from showing.
“If you know, what are you doing?”
“Nothing is happening,” he says, turning back to him and huffing. “Except my slow descent into madness that is.”
Though still annoyed by his unprofessionalism, Illya is clearly amused at that, and the fact that he quickly shakes his head and looks down to hide his face from him is only further proof of it. Napoleon feels a little too proud of himself.
“Do you think we misunderstood?” he asks, after a few moments of silent contemplation of his success. That would be disappointing: they jumped at the chance of finally getting somewhere with this, he is not looking forward to going back to eavesdropping all day.
“Maybe,” Illya concedes. “Or maybe, he’s just late and you have no patience.”
Napoleon would like to argue that, for the record, he’s very much patient, because it’s not like you learn his lock-picking skills overnight, he just tends not to be a fan of sitting around watching a guy pretend to be charming all night. Especially if he has to do it sober and he can’t even talk to his partner through it.
“I’m not saying we should leave, just wondering,” he says, trailing off as a giant guy with quite the beard walks in. He would be the most obvious arms dealer that he’s encountered in his whole career, but—no, he doesn’t even look at their target, heading for the counter instead. Pity.
They obviously decide to wait around until their target leaves, just in case, but at least they are standing around together, talking through it to pass the time. At first, Illya gives him a familiar look that says ‘Really, Cowboy?’, but when Napoleon shamelessly ignores the reprimand he shakes his head and he lets him talk, probably deciding that he can do his job and converse at the same time.
It takes another forty, interminable minutes before they get somewhere, when a man that by all means looks extremely ordinary and that Napoleon had frankly not noticed walking in comes up to their target to shake his hand. Quickly getting rid of the woman he was talking to, they sit together to talk rather discreetly. Their target looks a little too much like he’s waiting for someone to come arrest him, honestly.
Finally.
“Follow him out?” Napoleon asks, not bothering to mask his excitement. Hopefully, if they get something of substance from this guy they will be done with the whole ‘listening in on Mr Boring At The Office’ matter.
“Yes,” Illya says, reflexively reaching for his pocket as if to check that the keys are still there. “I drive.”
Napoleon is glad enough that they get to do something that he doesn’t even want to argue.
-
Their first Christmas together is kind of a shitshow.
Napoleon had plans for it, as he figured it would be a good time to help igniting the flame between his two stupidly stubborn partners—Illya isn’t really used to celebrating and he doesn’t seem to care, and in East Berlin it isn’t exactly encouraged but it’s still practiced on a smaller scale, so what that leaves him with is Gaby being curious and excited to experience the holidays in a more American fashion and Illya rolling with it because whenever she likes something he gets that besotted look on his face and he can’t say no.
He knew, of course, that there was always a good chance they wouldn’t be home for the holidays, because god forbid their job allows them a proper schedule, but he still planned on getting a tree, putting up decorations, making them a proper Christmas dinner, supplying holiday themed music so Gaby would get Illya to dance to it—as it turns out, they have barely touched base in more than a month, it’s finally Christmas Eve, or what few hours are left of it, and they are stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere because there’s too much snow to proceed. Oh, and Illya is concussed.
So, ultimately, not a very easy situation to salvage.
Gaby keeps pacing around the small confines of their compartment, huffing and occasionally pressing her forehead against the window to attempt to take a look outside, like there’s any chance that the snow might have disappeared somewhere during her annoyed pacing.
Illya is currently sleeping, curled up sideways on the seats and half lying on Napoleon’s lap. There’s dried blood in his hair, but aside from that he looks like he’s enjoying a peaceful nap buried under his coat and faring better than the two of them. At least he isn’t dying of boredom.
(It’s still a tiny bit worrying, but he’s breathing and he’s warm and Napoleon gets to carefully run his fingers through his hair when nobody is watching, because he has to put his hands somewhere anyway.)
(He’ll be fine, he just needs to wake him up again in twenty minutes or so.)
“They should just make us walk all the way back, we would have been there by now,” Gaby complains, grabbing the scarf that she had discarded a while ago and wrapping it back around her neck.
Napoleon is suffering a little less from the cold at least, with Illya curled up next to him like that. He had considered asking Gaby to switch places, citing his need to stretch his legs as an excuse and figuring that making her hold Illya like that would be appropriately romantic, but—well, he’s sleeping, and he looks peaceful, so he should at the very least wait until he wakes him up again. Not to mention, he’s confident Gaby would spontaneously combust if she had to stay put during the whole wait.
So, really, this is probably the best solution.
(And yes, he’s enjoying it a little, sue him.)
“Come on, it could be worse,” he says, lightly, to which Gaby turns to him with her eyebrows raised and probably some homicidal instincts roaming in her head. “At least none of us are actively dying this time around. Not the worst way to end a mission.”
She concedes the point with a brief gesture, then her eyes fall on Illya and her face morphs into something closer to worry. “Shouldn’t we wake him up?”
“In twenty minutes.”
She hums, throwing another glance outside and dropping back on the seat in front of him with a huff. “We are going to die here. On Christmas Eve.” She sounds awfully annoyed, but he thinks he can read the disappointment underneath anyway.
“We’ll celebrate after,” he assures, with his best comforting smile and meaning it entirely. “I have plans and no amount of snow or spying is going to make me renounce them. You’ll see.”
The little smile that that gets out of her makes his heart skip a beat, and it’s definitely worth all the trouble he might have to go through to give her a decent Christmas.
-
During the car ride to follow their potential arms dealer around, Napoleon is in charge of checking their guns, to make sure that they are loaded and ready to get them out of the situation should things escalate.
It’s probably not necessary, since they checked before leaving, but it gives him something to do so he doesn’t just stare at Illya the whole time. He still sneaks in a glance here and there, which is how it doesn’t escape his notice that he looks oddly tense. And not just in an ‘I’m focused on my job’ way.
When he catches him drumming his fingers against the steering wheel a little too long, Napoleon finally sighs. “Alright, what’s wrong?”
Illya keeps his eyes on the road, but the unhappy turn of his mouth confirms his suspicions that that question needed to be asked in the first place. “If things go wrong, Gaby doesn’t even know where we are,” he says, which—isn’t really all that surprising. “I don’t like it.”
Yeah, of course he doesn’t. Napoleon probably shouldn’t have come along in her stead, but—she was all worn out and she probably needed some rest, and it was Illya who suggested that the two of them should go, but—he probably regrets that now that he’s busy worrying about his beloved Gaby not even knowing where they are. He will probably regret it even more when this will turn out to be just a fun outing rather than the disaster that Illya is apparently picturing, since he could have had the alone time with her.
“Come on, it’s not the first time we’ve split up,” Napoleon points out, lightly, trying to pull himself away from his annoyingly self-pitying thoughts.
Illya takes a second to glare at him. “Yes,” he says, slowly. “And I never like it.”
“That’s because you are paranoid.” And a chronic, protective worrier, which Napoleon finds oddly endearing if he’s being honest. “I’m sure that if we don’t come back she’ll know to check in the local hospitals.” That is assuming they don’t get killed and dumped in a hole somewhere.
But, really, they are just going to take a look around, with a bit of luck there will be no need to engage.
“That’s comforting,” Illya huffs, heavily sarcastic and still clearly nervous.
“Come on, it could be worse,” he tries then. “At least it’s just you and me, Gaby isn’t here to get shot at.” It might sting to know that Illya will find that comforting, but he is not above exploiting it to make him feel better.
As a reward for his efforts, Illya shoots him a really unimpressed look and he doesn’t comment.
He thinks that maybe deep down he was hoping he would deny that helped.
-
This was, regrettably, too good an opportunity to waste.
Throwing his head back with a noise of frustration in the back of his throat, his vision wobbling a little as he moves because apparently he is that tired, Napoleon can only hope that enough time has passed for the two of them to have fallen asleep. He really wants to get settled for the night, but if he gets caught doing it they will ask him to make good on their previous plans, and the amount of time he has spent sitting on the couch in a mildly uncomfortable position, trying not to fall asleep even with his whole body protesting, will have been a waste.
It’s been a couple of hours. They are probably asleep.
Except Gaby is an insomniac and there was always a chance this wait would turn out to be a useless torture—he did account for that, but he was kind of hoping she’d be too tired to overthink.
Alright, screw it, if they catch him moving around he’ll just say he needed a glass of water and he isn’t tired yet.
As he pushes himself up, he realizes just how stiff and sore he is, and he can only hope that he will get to lie down in a minute, because it’s been a long day and this is supposed to be their night of rest.
Ah, the things one does for his stupidly in love partners who are too stubborn to figure their shit out on their own.
He approaches the bedroom as quietly as he can, meaning to push the door forward and take a peek inside: it’s been left only a crack open, presumably so that he wouldn’t make too much noise when he’d eventually come in.
The safehouse they were directed to is nice enough, clean, equipped with everything they need—except a couple of beds, apparently. To be fair, the only bed in the only bedroom is big enough for the three of them to fit, which is why they agreed that they would all share, because they are all exhausted and they should be comfortable.
Napoleon accepted that solution, but only outwardly: that would be literally the first time – as far as he’s aware, but they all live in each other’s pockets, so it’s probably an accurate estimate – that Illya and Gaby would share a bed. There was simply no good reason for him to intrude on what could be the occasion that would finally mark a turning point in their relationship.
So he said he’d wait a bit before going to bed, which got him a couple of dubious looks but not many protests, and he planned on getting settled on the couch as soon as his partners had fallen asleep.
Peeking in, he’s satisfied to find them in close proximity, at least: Illya is lying on his back in the middle of the bed, while Gaby is curled up next to him. It makes for an adorable sight, which is almost enough to compensate for the pull he feels towards that empty spot left for him.
He shakes his head, pulling back and quickly walking towards the wardrobe where they found the blankets.
In the morning, he should go take a walk as soon as he’s awake, give them some alone time with the excuse of getting some air. He doesn’t think they’ll hold it against him anyway.
The couch is comfortable enough, once he figures out how to lie down in a way that doesn’t keep his head propped up at an odd angle. His body quickly relaxes, the relief at being finally allowed to rest flooding him, and even with that faint sick feeling twisting his stomach it barely takes any time for him to fall asleep.
He wakes up oddly warm and to the world moving around him. Sluggishly trying to blink the fog away from his eyes, he realizes that he is actually the only one moving. Because he’s being carried. By Illya. For some reason.
Uh.
“What are you doing?” he mutters, suppressing a yawn and grabbing a fistful of Illya’s shirt, for safety, because red perils don’t come with seatbelts.
“Getting you to bed.”
He huffs against Illya’s neck, thinking that that wasn’t supposed to happen because, uh—he was supposed to take the couch, but right now he can’t come up with a proper argument for why, and Illya did go through all the trouble of coming to collect him—whatever, he’s tired. He’ll fix everything in the morning.
He remembers Illya laying him down in the middle of the bed and wishing him a goodnight, but not much else.
The second time he wakes up it’s because Gaby kicked him in the shin. He makes a noise of protest, which is answered by her nonsensical muttering but no more attempts on his life, at least. His mind is clouded and he’s tired, so he only yawns and he curls up on his other side.
The third time he wakes up it’s morning, and he feels awfully hangover. He has his back turned on the window, but he still squints as he puts into focus the light on the wall in front of him. It looks like it’s well into the morning, but he could honestly sleep another week.
It’s as he begins to shift that he realizes that he is neither alone nor maintaining a respectful distance from his partners: somehow, he ended up lying diagonally across the bed, half-crushing Illya with his head and shoulders on his chest and his legs on top of Gaby. His face quickly heats up, probably not because of all the body heat going around.
He retreats his hand, which was hanging from Illya’s side of the mattress, and he throws a look at his face as he tries to shift off him: he seems still asleep, thank fuck. He isn’t sure how he could sleep crushed like that, but still, good for the both of them.
He can’t exactly take a good look at Gaby, but he slowly retreats one leg, hoping to use it as leverage and—
“If you kick me, I will throw you off the bed,” she warns, in a whisper. She sounds amused, which doesn’t really make him feel any less mortified.
“I mean, you would deserve it,” he answers anyway, remembering quite vividly her mean kick. His shin throbs as if to support his point. “You started kicking in the middle of the night,” he explains, once he has successfully rolled off Illya without waking him up and he can turn to look at Gaby instead.
“Oh, yeah, I do that,” she says, rubbing her face with one hand. “Sorry,” she adds, though it gets mostly swallowed by a yawn. She looks adorable, sleepy and with her hair spread all over the pillow.
Which reminds him—he should not be the one making that kind of consideration. He throws a guilty look Illya’s way, because this really could have been a good thing for them, and instead he ended up literally getting in-between them—to be fair, that was Illya’s doing, but he should have at least tried to protest.
Instead, he remembers Illya felt nice, wrapped around him and carrying him around, and he was tired and he didn’t want to be left alone, so he just—kept clinging to him and he didn’t do anything to stick to his plan.
“How many chances are there that you will make coffee for the both of us?” Gaby asks, jolting him out of his thoughts.
As it so happens, the answer to that is a lot, because he needs to get out of that bed. “You owe me,” he says anyway, pushing himself up much more quickly than he’d normally get himself out of bed and trying to sneak off without bouncing around too much.
Illya still stirs, rolling on his side and blinking at the two of them for a few moments. “’Morning,” he mutters then, rubbing his left eye and looking—all sleepy and adorable, with his hair sticking out in odd directions and blinking sleepily at them. This is all very unfair.
“Good morning,” Napoleon says, cheerfully enough. “I was about to go make coffee. Want any?”
Illya hums in affirmative, burying a yawn into his pillow, and Napoleon all but runs out of bed before he can implode.
Sometimes he thinks he really isn’t equipped to handle any of this.
-
Napoleon is not the biggest fan of being wrong. He especially doesn’t appreciate it when being wrong comes with a side of bullets flying his way.
They probably should have left it alone once they found the containers: even without taking a look around and inspecting anything, they could have just said that they saw a person of interest head there right after making some kind of deal with their target and leave it at that. Enough information gathered, everyone just have a good night.
But no, of course they had to look around. Of course they had to be sure.
And of course they had to be right about the whole thing being sketchy, because Napoleon is pretty sure that there are too many armed goons walking around, two almost saw him and—and hidden safely away from prying eyes, he can see one walking right in Illya’s direction.
Illya has, of course, not noticed a thing. Fuck.
In his defence, he doesn’t have much time to think. He just knows that he can’t shoot the guy walking up to Illya without giving away his position, but he also can’t shout a warning without giving away his position and, well—one of them is most likely screwed at this point, might as well make sure that Illya isn’t that one.
He takes down the guy with a clean headshot, which has the benefit of catching Illya’s attention, but also catching literally everybody else’s attention for good measure. Napoleon quickly turns to fire back as he starts running in Illya’s general direction, figuring regrouping is better, but there are two of them and one of him and they have bigger guns, so—the pain in his back comes as a surprise anyway, just as one of them goes down, probably by Illya’s hand.
Not being the only one firing, he figures he can just focus on running, but that strategy only gets him a few feet farther, before his leg gives out and he falls, almost landing on his face. The pain registers a few moments later, and it’s enough to shock him into lying there for a few moments, barely up on his elbows.
“Come on, get up!”
Illya grabs his arm, yanking him up almost like deadweight. There are still bullets flying, but Napoleon is starting to feel a little too lightheaded to care.
He still manages to put one foot in front of the other when Illya leads him away, and though he trips a few times he’s kept on his feet. He realizes he doesn’t have his gun anymore when he thinks that he should probably help but the only thing that his fingers are clutching around is Illya’s jacket.
Fuck.
Gaby will probably have to check the local hospitals indeed.
He hopes Illya isn’t going to say ‘I told you so’.
The noise quiets down, and they apparently have found a decent place to hide because Illya helps him sit, asking how many bullets he took and looking pretty frantic, honestly. It’s not very reassuring.
“Two, I think,” he manages with a bit of delay. Frowning, he gives him a quick onceover. “You?”
“None, let me see.”
He isn’t sure if he should believe that he isn’t bleeding anywhere, but Illya does look alright, while he doesn’t really feel like it at all, so it probably makes sense to let him do his diagnosis.
The leg is a through and through, which means exit and entry wound, which means a whole lot of bleeding. Probably explains why he feels like he’s going to faint any second now. Illya sacrifices a sizeable chunk of his shirt to the cause of making an impromptu bandage, to which Napoleon can’t help grimacing: it’s a good shirt. Illya looks really good in it.
The other one is a literal bullet in his back, though he isn’t chocking on his own blood and isn’t paralyzed so it missed the lungs and spinal cord at least. Yay for him. Illya starts applying pressure with his jacket, and it honestly hurts enough that he can’t even tell where exactly he was shot. His whole back is on fire.
“There will be more coming,” Illya mutters, looking around like he expects someone to jump them any second. Which, to be fair, is probably what is going to happen. He can hear the commotion from all the people that heard the shots.
He also knows that he can’t really walk right now. Hell, he feels like he can hardly think. There are going to be too many to outrun, especially if Illya has to drag or carry him around. It would only be a death sentence for the both of them. Which would be stupid.
What wouldn’t be stupid, though, is creating a diversion. It doesn’t matter if he can’t run far if he only needs to draw enough attention to create an opening for Illya to go, right? Makes sense.
“So,” he says, clearing his throat when his voice doesn’t come out right and blinking a few times to put Illya into focus. “I can’t run.”
“I will help,” he says, dismissively, like that wasn’t a particularly relevant objection.
“We’ll be too slow,” he tries to insist, but once again it doesn’t get much of a reaction.
“We’ll be fine.”
Gotta love how the infamous Russian pessimism goes right out of the window whenever it’s the least convenient for Napoleon. They need to get it over with quickly, because the sooner he gets on his feet the more energy to be a decent distraction he’ll have.
“Peril,” he says, exasperated. “You can run. I will create a distraction, you go.”
“Not happening. Just let me think.”
Illya won’t even look at him, his eyes darting around like he’s waiting for inspiration from god, which is—highly frustrating.
“Gaby will be mad if you don’t come back,” he tries, because she’s always the best card he has to play, so why not now?
Illya glares at him. “She will be mad if you don’t come back too.”
Now he’s just playing dumb. They both know it’s different. “Maybe, but less.”
Illya completely ignores him. It feels like they are quickly running out of time, and if Illya could stop being noble for literally two seconds he would understand that sometimes there are reasonable sacrifices to be made, and that both of them dying there would help no one.
“Listen, it’s not that I like dying, but if you stay we are both screwed, so—at least let’s not leave her alone? You know she would agree that this is a reasonable price to get you home.”
Illya snorts, the asshole. “I will tell her you said that,” he warns. “And you can stop talking, I’m not leaving you here.”
Jesus Christ.
Not that part of him isn’t appreciating the love there, it’s nice that Illya doesn’t want to leave him to die, really, but why does he have to make saving his life so fucking difficult? They are both going to die there because he’s being a stubborn idiot, when Napoleon has a perfectly reasonable solution that—
“Keep pressure on this,” Illya says, twisting Napoleon’s arm so that he’s in an highly uncomfortable position but keeping himself from bleeding out. “I’ll be back.”
Unfortunately, Napoleon is confused and slow enough that he only registers what that means when Illya is already on his feet.
“What—Illya—” he hisses, twitching as if to pull himself up but stilling immediately at the breath-taking stab of pain that follows. Well, that’s great.
He swears, if he ran off to play the distraction somehow thinking that Napoleon will manage to get on his feet and run off on his own he’s just so fucking stupid and he’s going to find him in the next life to kick his ass.
No, alright, that’s really too idiotic. Illya wouldn’t. Probably.
As the seconds stretch and the pain seems to worsen, he tries to focus on breathing and pressing, because there isn’t much else he can do besides keep breathing and trying not to bleed out, hoping that Illya will make it back to him in one piece and get them both out.
Maybe he went on his own. Maybe he found a way to sneak off even without a distraction. He’s quick, he could make it.
Yeah, as if he would. Napoleon would be hurt, but he likes the mental image a lot better than his partner lying dead in a pool of blood because he wouldn’t let him save him. Illya should get to go home to Gaby and they should be happy together. Napoleon wants to be a part of that, in whatever small way they’ll let him, but if he has to die make that happen—well, that sucks, but it’s okay. He just wants them to be alright.
He thinks he blacked out for a few moments, because when there are explosions cutting through the air it jolts him awake like he had been taking a nap.
At first, his fear is a reflex, just his body letting him know that something is wrong, because everything hurts and explosions are rarely a good sign. Then, he realizes that Illya isn’t back yet.
Fuck, fuck, what is he doing?
He shifts, trying to pull himself up before what an horrific idea that is can catch up to him, but he only ends up falling to the side like a puppet, barely suffocating a cry. Trying to swallow gulps of air and twitching at every stab of pain, he still tries to make it off the floor, because something is happening and it can’t be good, he should be helping, not lying there waiting—
Illya appears kneeling next to him between one blink and the next, breathing heavily but looking unharmed. Thank god.
He said something, but Napoleon thinks he was too busy thinking to hear him. “What?” he mutters, a little pained and strangled.
“We have to go,” Illya says. “I will pull you up, okay?”
That is very much not okay, but he doesn’t think they have much of a choice anyway.
He didn’t think it could hurt more than lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood and misery, but it does, and he probably would have screamed if he had had enough breath for it. As it is, he just makes some strangled noises of protest.
“Sorry,” Illya says, wrapping himself around him more tightly. “Let’s go.”
At this point, Napoleon figures he might as well try to put one foot in front of the other.
“What exploded?” he suddenly remembers to ask, because what if they come running after them with bombs? They can’t exactly outrun bombs.
Well, Illya might. Not with him as deadweight though. And apparently he won’t leave him. So.
“Grenades,” Illya says, flatly. “I saw they were smuggling some before. I figured it’s quick way to get rid of many of them, so we can run together.”
Oh. So Illya was the explosions. That’s good.
He isn’t sure how they made it to the car, he just knows they did because he remembers blinking back to something close to consciousness when Illya was trying to buckle him in, cursing under his breath because apparently he was having a hard time. He remembers Illya’s hands cupping his face as he told him to stay awake. And he remembers reprimanding himself when he felt himself drift off anyway.
-
The day that Illya and Gaby finally kiss is of course the one time that Napoleon left them alone without that specific purpose in mind, or at least without thinking of that as a possible outcome.
He just needed to get out of there, take a walk.
Nothing really happened, but—he has been distracted throughout the whole day, not enough to be noticeable, because he’s a good actor with a masters in deflection, but his focus hasn’t exactly been on work.
It’s just—he remembers being on the couch, Illya sitting next to him and going over some files. He remembers being so tired, dozing off a couple of times only to jolt back awake after a few moments, so he can safely assume that he did end up falling asleep on the aforementioned couch. But he has no logical explanation for how he eventually woke up with his head on Illya’s lap and fingers cradling through his hair. None whatsoever.
He remembers lying frozen, his eyes still closed and his partners’ ushered voices above him not really registering. He remembers thinking that he must still be asleep, and realizing much to his confusion that he wasn’t.
It shouldn’t be an upsetting memory. It was nice. In fact, it was more than nice. It’s just—it left him too warm and content, it left him wanting too much for the rest of the day, wanting more of it and wanting it to mean something else to Illya too and—
If he hadn’t been so busy freaking out, he probably would have seen the sniper.
As it is, he didn’t, and it’s only dumb fucking luck that Illya managed to trip just as the shot went off. The bullet ended up only grazing him. No one really got hurt. No one blamed Napoleon, even though he was the one who was supposed to be watching their backs.
Still.
The normalcy of the post-mission domesticity was starting to feel suffocating, and since he figured his partners wouldn’t take kindly to him having a guilty and messy meltdown all over them he went out to take a walk.
It—hasn’t helped all that much. He thinks he isn’t that close to banging his head against the wall until he becomes less of an idiot anymore, at least.
On his way back, he grabs a couple of croissants, like some sort of apology for something that they aren’t even mad at him for, or maybe just to distract them from noticing that he’s been gone a while and he doesn’t look like someone who just came out of a relatively smoothly concluded mission.
As soon as he steps back in their hotel room, he can feel the change in the atmosphere.
They are sitting on the couch, closer than they normally would. Gaby’s hand is clinging to his arm, her foot is between Illya’s ankles and they are both smiling. He is wearing that little besotted smile that is reserved only for her, and she seems in the best mood that he’s ever seen her in since they met.
Napoleon stands there for a few moments, catching their attention a few seconds too late a getting a pair of looks that say ‘we are two teenagers that just got caught making out by our parents’.
Oh.
Oh.
Shit, of course it had to be today of all days—he quickly reigns his face in, not wanting whatever that euphoric and bitter feeling flaring in his chest is to come right out for them to see, and the first thought that flashes through his head is that it probably serves him right, to be shut out after the mess he almost made.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” is what he says, and thank god it sounds light and teasing. “I did not mean to interrupt—I can take another walk if you want some more, uh—” He throws a sly smile their way. “—alone time.”
Illya glares at him, Gaby rolls her eyes, but he can’t help noticing that they are still glued to each other, and—bittersweet as it is, he’s happy for them. He’d been trying to get them to be happy together, right? The fear of being left behind was there the whole time, but it didn’t stop him from wanting to give them a little push in the right direction. Seeing the smiles on their faces just now—yeah, he’s happy they have each other.
As for him, he might never have the space he’d like in their lives, but he hopes they’ll make some room, if only just enough to work together like nothing changed.
“Is that food?” Gaby asks, her eyes wide as she jumps on her feet and stalks closer.
Napoleon can’t help smiling a little as she takes the bag from him. “Croissants,” he says, glancing at Illya, who looks just as besotted as before and apparently not offended at having been abandoned for a bite to eat. “I figured you were probably as hungry as I was.” He isn’t really hungry himself, but still, at least it’s a sound explanation.
By the time she’s agreeing, Gaby already has her mouth full, and she’s quick to bounce back to the couch like a boomerang. She hands the bag to Illya, and as they are both distracted he half-heartedly takes a step back, wondering if he should make his escape now, actually leaving them that alone time after all—
“Cowboy?” Illya calls, holding his own croissant in one hand and holding out the bag with the other.
He should give them an excuse and leave the lovebirds be, at least for a while.
But, well, he doesn’t have an excuse, he’s walked around so much that his legs are trying to turn on him, Illya is staring at him expectantly and that spot on the couch does look inviting.
He joins them, takes back his bag and does his best to ignore the way Gaby slides one arm around Illya’s back in a matter of minutes. He gets the feeling he’ll have to get used to feeling like the odd one out anyway.
-
There are only bits and pieces that he manages to keep from the handful of times that he briefly woke up at the hospital.
Most of all, he remembers being confused, just about every time and in various degrees. He remembers his eyelids feeling too heavy to raise, and his partners’ voices around him. He isn’t sure what they were talking about, nor what direction their voices were coming from, but knowing that they were there offered a bit of a consolation anyway.
He remembers waking up to an empty room, his eyes only open a crack. He couldn’t lift himself up or move much at all, but he managed to roll his head to the side, and as his vision started clouding again he could make out Illya’s shape at the door.
Once, he quickly concluded he must be dying, because he woke up to Illya holding tightly onto his hand, and when he tried to call out for him, to signal that he was awake, his partner jumped on his feet and smiled at him so brightly, reached out to cup his cheek as he greeted him—it was a nice image to fall asleep to.
Another time it was Gaby doing the handholding, her feet up on the edge of the mattress as she sat on the chair next to the bed, reading aloud to him and running her thumb over his knuckles as she did. He didn’t get to spy her for long, but it was sweet enough to make him smile.
When he truly wakes up, sore all over and with the distinct feeling that his brain grew too swollen to fit into his skull, it’s to Illya playing chess against himself. He’s using a second chair to hold the chessboard, and he looks awfully engrossed in his activity. Napoleon would be a little offended that his partner can apparently think of playing chess while he is lying half dead in a hospital, if it weren’t for the fact that he can see the window a few feet away from Illya and it’s clearly dark outside. Which means that he should be home sleeping, not sitting on a chair at his bedside.
He figures he must be on a lot of drugs right now, both because he is not hollering in pain in spite of the fact that he has a vague memory of getting shot pretty badly and because the realization that Illya is there in spite of the hour is making him tear up.
Probably feeling observed and having terrible timing as usual, Illya chooses that moment to break his focus and turn around. His eyes go wide as they meet his, and there are a few moments of silence before Illya fully turns, getting out a fairly delighted ‘Cowboy!’ and rushing at his side.
“Hey,” Napoleon says, hoarsely. Then, because the look on Illya’s face is making him uncomfortable in a way he can’t articulate: “Who’s winning?”
Illya gives him a highly confused look, until Napoleon gestures to the chessboard. He turns around for a second, like he has forgotten what game he was playing, and he flips off the question with a quick hand gesture. “Do you need anything?” he asks instead. He sounds apprehensive, and for a second the memory of the look on his face before he passed out in the getaway car flashes in front of Napoleon’s eyes. “I’ll go get nurse for you.”
“Uh, no, I’m good,” Napoleon mutters, because he feels okay, he thinks. A little confused and numb all over, but he has been worse, he doesn’t feel like being poked and prodded and he doesn’t want Illya to leave.
Illya stares at him for a few moments like he isn’t sure what to do or say, then he nods and drops back on the chair, never taking his eyes off him. He looks a little out of it if you ask Napoleon. It might be that he should be sleeping at this hour.
“Since when do they let people stay overnight?” Napoleon asks, eager to break the silence. It leaves him taking a few breaths like he’s suddenly running low on air, and he figures that his lungs must be feeling as tired and heavy as the rest of him. He feels like he has taken too long a nap and he has no energy to get up, he just wants to roll over and go back to sleep.
Illya huffs, giving him a bit of a smile. “They tried to throw us out. At first,” he says. Napoleon can picture the scene, and it makes him smile as well. “Gaby went to get us spare clothes, she will be back soon.”
He hums, squeezing his eyes as they start to burn and trying to blink the annoying sensation away. “How long has it been?” He hopes he hasn’t been in a coma for months, at least.
“Twelve days.”
Oh, alright, that isn’t too bad. Illya did say it like it was catastrophic news, but—yeah, okay, he can imagine that he was in a worse position than him. Napoleon did sleep the whole time, more or less.
He thinks he spaced out for a few moments, because he finds himself staring at a point over Illya’s shoulder, then he blinks and he finds him staring. Straight into his soul. “What?” he asks, a little taken aback.
“Never do that again,” Illya says, forcefully, and he’d think he was pissed if it weren’t for the fact that he looks ready to start crying any second.
Napoleon can’t really think straight right now, but he remembers giving away his position to keep Illya from getting himself shot, with precisely no trace of regret in his mind, and he figures that’s what he’s talking about.
“Job hazards, Peril,” he only replies, flipping him off with one hand. His arm feels numb. At least it doesn’t hurt.
The look on Illya’s face tells him that he knows he understood what he was talking about, but at least he doesn’t seem to want to insist. Or maybe he just doesn’t get the chance to, because not long after Gaby walks through the door, with a bag thrown over her shoulder and stopping dead on her tracks when she notices him.
“Solo!” she all but yells. “Finally!”
“Hello,” he says, automatically reciprocating her smile as she unceremoniously drops the bag on the ground and rushes to his side.
“You idiot, you scared the shit out of us,” is what she decides to go with, sitting on the edge of the mattress and squeezing his hand between hers. There is precisely nothing that feels offensive about it, not when she’s smiling like that.
“Sorry, I promise I didn’t plan to get shot,” he says, lightly. That might not have been the best answer, because she sees her smile falling a little and her expression clouding. He isn’t sure why exactly he misstepped until she speaks again.
“But you did plan to be left to die there, right?” she prompts, and—yeah, she’s pissed.
It takes him a few moments to piece back together what she’s referring to, but yeah, he—he kinda remembers being in pain and worried about Illya and telling him to just go. He remembers thinking that he’s the expendable one and that if Gaby had to pick, of course she wouldn’t pick him, and it seemed to make sense, to try and get the two of them to stay together at least.
“I mean—there weren’t exactly many options?” he tries, though this is unfair, he thought he would die, nothing he did or said should be held against him, and Illya is an asshole for telling on him. He is about to turn to tell him as much, when Gaby speaks again.
“Bullshit. Listen, if you two want to play hero and try to find out who can sacrifice himself for the other faster that’s your business, you are two idiots but I’ve learned how to live with that—but I would thank you not to get yourself killed because it’s ‘what I would want’.” She pauses, making sure to look at him straight in the eye before she continues. For his part, Napoleon is kinda frozen in place. “I very emphatically want you both to come back after every mission. Clear?”
He should probably agree, apologize, blame the blood loss and leave it at that. But he’s tired and cornered and honestly? It grates against his nerves that she’s acting like he didn’t make any sense when he said that. Of course she wants them both to come back, but if she had to choose? If either one of them had to choose? He knows which way the chips would fall, and they know it too, so he shouldn’t get chewed out just because he said it out loud.
“I mean, I know you care about me too, but that’s not—” He turns to Illya. “You can’t tell me that you’d leave her just to die somewhere with me and just—” He looks back at Gaby, shrugging. “I guess when you two get married and have lots of kids it’s not going to make much of a difference if I’m there or not.”
It’s really depressing when he puts it like that.
He kinda regrets it instantly, because he’s making it sound like he resents them, which he doesn’t, he loves them and he wants them to be happy, it’s just—why can’t they at least let him help them come back home to each other? He shouldn’t get scolded because he tried to do the right thing.
There are few moments of silence, during which Gaby’s eyebrows climb all the way up to her hairline. She snorts, turning to Illya. “Are we planning on getting married, having a lot of kids and ditching our partner? Because I must have missed that conversation.”
Illya seems mostly confused and possibly worried for Napoleon’s sanity. “What makes you think we are going anywhere?” he asks him, frowning. “And yes, of course I was going to stay there with you, I wouldn’t leave you,” he adds, like it’s obvious. Napoleon kinda wants to bang his head against the nearest wall.
“And I would have understood,” Gaby adds, emphatically. “Because I would have done the same, and if what you are trying to imply here is that we love you any less than we love each other you are wrong.”
Napoleon isn’t—really sure what to say to that. It very much sounds like a lie. He appreciates that she’s trying to make him feel better, but—
“But you two are—” he mutters, gesturing vaguely in the hopes of getting his point across.
“That’s besides the point,” she waves him off. Then she pauses, pressing her lips together and throwing a glance in Illya’s direction. “And we are not the exclusive types anyway,” she adds, casually. “Not when it comes to you, at least. If you are interested.”
He is suddenly very aware of the fact that she’s still holding his hand, and he gets the feeling that his eyes must look like saucers at this point. He turns to Illya in a rush of panic, somehow thinking that he will give him some clue as to what exactly is going on, because he needs a better explanation than the one Gaby is giving to him, it makes no sense—Illya shrugs.
“You never asked,” he says, simply.
He never asked?! What—what was he supposed to ask, how—
To throw him out of his internal panic come the annoying beep of the machinery surrounding him, happily documenting his descent into insanity as he tries to grapple with the fact that apparently he is not the third wheel in this relationship, or better he was relegating himself to the role of third wheel because he didn’t think to ask for anything else—
“Cowboy, it’s okay, calm down,” Illya intervenes, his voice gentle as he leans closer, reaches for his shoulder to run a soothing thumb over it.
He would very much like to lie and say that he is very calm about this, but the machines don’t lie and, well—the only thing that he can think about is when in Istanbul he tried to make Illya jealous and he completely failed, and all his frustration when he tried to leave his partners alone and they just would follow him around—he’s a fucking idiot.
“I’m getting the nurse, so maybe she won’t kill us for agitating him,” Gaby says. She gives his hand a squeeze, then she bends over to lay a quick kiss at the corner of his mouth—which definitely doesn’t calm him down, but he can’t say he’s complaining too much. “We’ll revisit this conversation when you are not about to die on us, alright?” she adds, her tone slightly teasing.
He manages a vaguely affirmative hum, which seems to amuse her, and then she’s gone. His hand feels cold.
Illya hasn’t moved away, still trying to soothe him somewhat, and Napoleon figures that he probably shouldn’t turn to look at him if his goal is avoiding an heart attack, but—he’s so close, and he’s giving him that little besotted smile that he thought was only for Gaby.
“Sorry I didn’t notice,” Illya says, after a few moments. “I just thought you would be more obvious about it.”
Napoleon snorts, which is probably just hysterics at this point. He probably should have been more obvious about it. The one time he doesn’t try to get what he wants—
“I guess that makes me the better spy, uh, Peril?”
Surprisingly, Illya doesn’t take the bait. Instead, there’s an amused smile and a little shake of his head. “If you say so,” he says, sounding ridiculously fond as he bends over to give him a quick kiss on the temple.
For a moment, he’s overwhelmed by the somehow distant realization that this is something that he can have, that they have rejected every lonely worst-case scenario he has been coming up with in his darker moments and they have basically announced that they want to keep him, that they never had any intention to do anything else, really.
He gets the feeling that that knowledge will take a while to fully sink in, but he can wait. His partners are, after all, not going anywhere—not without him, at least. Thank god.