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Solo makes excellent cookies. Holed up in his – or so he’s told – bedroom, he chews on the last one and files the information away alongside all the other bits of knowledge that he has been collecting since when he woke up in a hospital bed with nothing but fragmented memories of his childhood and early adolescence.
Solo makes excellent cookies, he was patient enough to sit at his bedside and explain the entire situation to him, he calls him Peril for some reason, he has filled half Illya’s wardrobe with his own clothes, because apparently Illya doesn’t own much to begin with – he’s checked, and sure enough it seems that the entirety of his clothes can comfortably reside in half the space his bedroom affords –, and he knows him well enough to pick up on when he needs to be left alone for a while.
He let Illya decompress in his bedroom – he may not remember it, but it does feel comfortable enough, or maybe it’s just that he can recognize a chessboard, some books that he used to like, things that tell him that maybe he isn’t a complete stranger to himself after all – and he only reappeared to give him a bunch of homemade cookies. He informed him that he has a sweet tooth, and Illya thinks that might be right, if only because he does remember how much he loved candy as a child.
Although, to be fair, most children love sweets anyway.
He thinks of his mother reprimanding him for stealing a bunch of sweets to eat before dinner, he remembers his father winking at him as he brought home some candy for him at the end of the day, and his stomach churns.
Solo has told him how many years have passed, yet his parents don’t feel as far away as they should, because the only memories he has, hazed and fragmented as they may be, are with at least one of them.
He doesn’t have parents anymore now, and he’s far away from home. He’s in London, where he communicates in English without remembering when he learned, where he shares an apartment with his partners.
At first, when Solo referred to himself and Gaby as such, he was confused. As he continued talking, though, and explained that they live together and don’t worry, Peril, this should only last a couple of weeks at most, we’ll take good care of you until you feel better, understanding slowly dawned on him. Partners certainly explained why he woke up to Gaby clutching his hand, only for her to look at him in horror followed closely by anger and bolt out of the room when he had to admit to having no idea who she even was. Of course she was mad, if she loves him and he doesn’t remember her. He would be mad too.
Partners also explained the way they both kept staring at him, a little awed and awfully relieved, and the way they spend most of their time hovering so close to him.
Illya doesn’t mind, they are—nice, he supposes. They give him a sense of direction without him needing to ask, so he can spend his time mulling over everything he doesn’t know instead of figuring out where he should sleep or whom he should be talking to—he got a few visits, during his hospital stay. From the office, Solo informed him. They all work at a security firm, and some colleagues, plus their boss, came to visit. Solo picked up on his uneasiness in front of everybody’s questions and did him the kindness of cutting the visits short.
It’s a little unsettling, how well they both seem to know him when he couldn’t even list his occupation unassisted.
As for partners—it’s weird and confusing, but not much more than everything else. Not much more than having all his memories be in Russia and waking up in a strange country surrounded by a family he doesn’t remember.
As far as he knows, this is not how romantic relationships are supposed to work, but—it’s been so many years, who knows how much has changed. They could tell him that they discovered aliens on Earth and he would have no choice but to accept it. Also—he remembers two old friends, two kids that he was close with as a young child. He remembers the three of them decided they would get married one day, because girls were gross and of course they weren’t going to just exclude one of them.
Perhaps they had the right idea back then, after all.
He could ask Solo. He has been more than amenable to answering questions, mostly providing information without him even asking, but—it feels insensitive, to poke that particular bear, to remind him that he has no idea who they are and he’s questioning what exactly they are even doing, the three of them together. He hasn’t forgotten the way Gaby looked at him when she first realized, even if since then she has been trying not to let the extent of her reaction show too much – he isn’t sure how it is, that he doesn’t know her yet he can still read the strain in her smile; maybe she’s just a bad actress.
It’s probably best to just roll with it—Solo did say it would only be temporary anyway. That hope is probably why he keeps sitting around with a sense of expectation constricting his chest, just waiting to blink and finally understand the life he has found himself living.
Someday soon, hopefully.
Solo is cleaning up the kitchen, slowly and carefully, humming under his breath without a care in the world. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think that this just a normal day, that nothing is amiss—of course, a lot is amiss, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at him.
It’s infuriating.
He must sense her murderous eyes planted on his back, because eventually he lets out a deep, extremely dramatic sigh, sets down the cloth he was cleaning the counter with and turns around to face her, hands on his hips.
“So?” he prompts.
“So what,” she counters, flatly.
His eyebrows shoot up. “So what is it that you are so upset about? It might be best to work through it before Peril decides that he is done moping in his room.”
Even if his borderline exasperated and actually quite condescending tone hadn’t been enough, mentioning him can only summon her rage in full force. “What am I upset about?” she echoes, scoffing. “I have a better question, why aren’t you upset?”
Solo is staring at her, eyebrows raised, face unreadable, and at this point she knows him well enough to be aware that that is what he does when he is biding his time, when he’s trying to get her to show her hand some more before he rules on how to intervene. Normally she might care enough to try and avoid falling for it, but now she’s almost grateful for the space to rant.
“I mean, Illya doesn’t know who we are, he doesn’t even know who he is, and we are the assholes that are lying to him about it—we are lying to him about the biggest part of his life! And you don’t seem to give a shit, you are actually way too good at this, what, do you enjoy lying to him?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, of course I don’t,” he says, but he sounds so calm, and it does nothing to make her think that he’s taking the situation as seriously as he should. “It’s a necessary evil, Gaby.”
Yes, she knows. The doctor advised them against upsetting him too much, he said things should get better on their own in a couple of weeks, and in the meantime to take him home, let him remember things naturally, and while they were encouraged to answer his questions it was agreed that it wouldn’t be smart to tell him that he wasn’t in an accident and that the people that put him in an hospital are actually still out there and that he’s constantly involved in firefights—she gets it, it might stress him out and make him paranoid.
Still, of that conversation she remembers above all the nausea in the pit of her stomach, a feeling that hasn’t really left her since.
They are lying to him and he doesn’t remember them—she can barely even understand why he has agreed to stay with them in the first place, when they are just strangers, but she supposes he doesn’t have much of a choice, does he? And the fact that he is currently holed up in his room might have less to do with Illya’s normal need for some solitude and a lot to do with the fact that he doesn’t want to be there in the first place.
“You don’t have to be so fucking okay with it, though, Solo,” she says, tightly, crossing her arms and throwing her best glare at him.
Now he seems a little annoyed. Good.
“I said I’m not. But what am I supposed to do? We agreed—”
“Yes, yes, no stressing him out unnecessarily. Sure. I’m just saying you don’t look very broken up about it and it’s getting on my nerves.”
“Frankly, I don’t think it would help anyone if I did look broken up about it. He needs at least one of us to not constantly look like they’re on the verge on punching him in the face, don’t you agree?”
Oh, fuck him.
“I think,” she says through gritted teeth. “That what he needs is at least one of us who is not enjoying the chance to manipulate him into thinking that they are a saint.”
He looks a little taken aback at that. In spite of how angry and cornered she feels, she can draw a little bit of personal satisfaction out of having gotten such a reaction from him.
Of course, it doesn’t last long, and in a blink his face turns carefully blank, the little placid smile twisting his lips not really adding any warmth to the picture. “Gaby,” he says, with fake kindness. “If you are so worried about him not liking you anymore, I would suggest that you stop acting so grumpy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going out, there are things that I need to buy.”
He mockingly gives her a quick bow, the bastard, and then he leaves her there, seething with rage and somehow all too shaken by embarrassment to utter even a word.
When he slowly opens the door to his bedroom, the apartment is quiet. That strikes him as a little odd: although he doesn’t remember much of life in their home, what memories he has recently formed about it are all full of sounds, be it Gaby’s radio or Solo humming or whistling as he does chores, the cluttering sounds coming from the kitchen, Gaby’s curses when she unscrewed the door to her bedroom looking for the reason why it wouldn’t close properly—now, there are no sounds.
It makes him frown, hands itching with the need to react and his steps growing more careful as he attentively looks around the hallway for anything amiss. He can feel the tension running through him, his muscles ready to jump any second, much as he might try to tell himself that he’s being ridiculous and that everything is fine.
He still makes his way to the kitchen, hyperaware of every sound he makes and holding tighter onto the empty plate, ready to throw it as an improvised weapon if necessary.
He finds Gaby alone, sitting on the couch while smoking a cigarette. “This is fucking stupid,” she mutters, dropping – or rather, tossing – the pen she was holding on the coffee table and falling back against the couch. She huffs and takes a long drag as she leans back.
She looks—kind of upset. He isn’t sure he is the best person to deal with this at the moment, but Solo doesn’t seem to be around, so— “Gaby?” he calls, slowly stepping closer like he’s approaching a wild animal.
She turns to him, and he isn’t sure that she’s happy to see him, but she acknowledges him with a dry ‘Illya’ and nothing else, so he supposes that not being told to get lost is a pretty decent sign.
He sets his plate on the coffee table, where he notices that she has abandoned a book of crosswords that he’s pretty sure belongs to Solo, and takes a seat on the couch at a respectful distance from her, eyeing her even as she stares ahead. “Are you okay?” he dares to ask, unsure of how she will respond to it.
She snorts. “Asks the guy who got his head whacked so hard he forgot all his life.”
Uh. That’s probably a fair point, and also not a very promising sign, when it comes to his chances of talking her out of whatever is upsetting her. “Well, not all. Just—most,” he can only answer, an uncomfortable feeling crawling under his skin at the reminder of how much he’s missing.
“Oh, that’s great then, congratulations!” she says, the irony heavy in her voice, and he opts to shut his mouth, unsure of what to do.
Maybe he shouldn’t have approached her in the first place. He doesn’t know her, he doesn’t know if it’s best to leave her some space when she’s upset or to offer her a shoulder—maybe Solo isn’t there because she should be left alone when she gets upset. After all, he seems patient and understanding enough that it would make sense for him to talk with Gaby about whatever is bothering her, if it were useful.
Maybe he should have taken the fact that he isn’t talking to her about it as his clue to leave her to it. Is it too late to back off?
When he hears Gaby draw a heavy sigh, he automatically turns to her, finding her with her forehead leaning against her closed fist. “Sorry,” she says, and she sounds tired. “You don’t remember this, but I’m an asshole.”
“You seem pretty nice to me,” he counters with a shrug, not really needing to think it over. She raises her head to give him a very dubious look. “You were holding my hand when I woke up,” he adds, as some sort of explanation.
She snorts, shaking her head and turning away from him but at least looking somewhat amused as a small smile lingers on her face. “Yeah. I have my moments,” she concedes.
The silence that falls then doesn’t feel particularly uncomfortable, and Illya decides to take a risk and ask: “So—do you want to talk about it?” After all, the worst that can happen is that she will snap at him again, right?
“It’s nothing,” she says, quickly, but the following silence doesn’t last long. “I just had a fight with Solo—we like to get on each other’s nerves,” she adds then, sounding somewhat bitter, but still tired above all else.
It’s—kinda surprising. “Oh… really?” is the best that he can come up with, because they seemed to get along, at least from where he was standing, and Solo seems unreasonably patient. It’s hard to imagine him fighting with someone, let alone Gaby.
She snorts. “Yeah, really.” If anything, it seems that at least his confusion is amusing to her. “Don’t be fooled by the angelic smile, I may be an asshole, but he’s a shit,” she says, but her tone is teasing and the smile on her face fond, so hopefully it isn’t a crisis of epic proportions.
Unfortunately for him, it’s also an unwelcome reminder of how much of a stranger to all of this he is: he thought they got along really well, but apparently a fight that would leave Gaby pretty visibly upset is not outside of the norm. He found her brooding on her own, and he had no idea how to approach her. He’s so horribly out of place in that home that isn’t his own, with no idea of where he is even supposed to stand with the two of them—does Gaby fight often with him too? Would he usually try and approach her when she is upset? Does he often fight with Solo? Does he fight against both of them at once, a united front during a screaming match?
He has no idea, and it’s suffocating.
“Illya?” Gaby calls, frowning in obvious concern. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” he’s quick to answer, clearing his throat and taking a breath. “Just—a headache.” It isn’t really a lie: there’s a pounding ache in the back of his head, but he had been successfully ignoring it.
She huffs, shaking her head in annoyance before pushing herself up. “Of course you didn’t say anything. Wait here, I’ll get you something for it.”
Alright.
Apparently, he wouldn’t normally complain about a headache and Gaby thinks it’s very annoying.
That’s—something, another thing that he learned about himself, and it does serve as a bit of a consolation.
He did, admittedly, take longer than necessary to run his errands.
Although he’s aware that he took it a little too far, that Gaby was just lashing out and he shouldn’t have gone for the throat like that when hers were just the uncoordinated punches of someone trying to work through their own issues, he still wasn’t feeling too keen on seeing her again, not for a while. And, if he’s being honest, he doesn’t want to see Illya either.
She was wrong, when she said that he’s trying to manipulate him and enjoying it, but—maybe not completely. It’s not—he isn’t being malicious, he doesn’t want to hurt him, of course not, but maybe it’s true that he isn’t being very—authentic. Gaby, for all her grumpiness that would put off pretty much anybody, at least isn’t trying to present a front. Napoleon, on the other hand—
The fact is, his friendship with Illya was half a miracle to begin with. They are on opposite sides of a war, they tried to kill each other the first two times they met, they got on each other’s nerves from the get-go, always too good at pushing each other’s buttons, always too unlikely a couple to work smoothly in their everyday life, as much as they somehow make excellent partners in the field.
When Illya woke up not remembering him, or Gaby, or much of anything else, it was a little terrifying, to think that Illya might meet him again and make a different choice. That he might look at him with fresh eyes and decide that actually, he has no idea what he saw before that was worthy of his friendship.
So yes, maybe he was a little grateful for the doctor’s suggestion to keep their profession quiet for a while, as that takes away the sharpest edges from their relationship, and maybe he has been a lot kinder than normal, showing patience and understanding where there would normally be a lot more teasing and attempts at getting a rise out of him.
He can argue that it makes sense, to not push, to leave him be when the situation is already stressful enough without adding to it, but he can’t deny that sometimes it feels a bit too much like he’s working a target, like he’s measuring his words and movements too carefully, in a way that he hasn’t felt the need to do in a while, not around his partners at least.
He isn’t sure he can will himself to stop, because the idea of rejection is—way more disturbing than he’s willing to sit with. He has made his peace with never getting the kind of relationship that he wants with him, but to think that he might be left with nothing—he can’t even contemplate it.
So instead he’s going to go home, hand Gaby her favourite kind of snacks, hoping that that will be apology enough, and keep being nice to Illya until he will remember and start be annoying with him first.
He finds them together, sitting in the living room, Illya playing chess against himself, because apparently that was a very old habit, and Gaby flipping through a magazine. It’s such a familiar scene that it draws a smile out of him, allowing him to forget their situation for a few moments, at least.
He greets them, getting a hum of acknowledgement from Gaby and a quick glance and head tilt from Illya, because they are apparently engrossed in their activities and she is possibly holding a grudge, then he takes a deep breath and quickly walks in the direction of the couch.
“For you,” he says, holding out the paper bag in his hand.
She takes it, taking a quick look inside before grinning. “Well, this is a good bribe. Effective.”
He smiles in return, relieved that she seems to have accepted his apology. He is about to head to the kitchen to set everything in place, but she speaks before he can.
“I fixed your lamp,” she says, with a quick head gesture to his room. “The one that flickered.”
His lamp had been flickering, but it didn’t bother him too much so he left it alone, only mentioned it once in passing he’s pretty sure, then the whole mess with Illya happened and it just slipped his mind. But she remembered, apparently, and she fixed it.
“Oh. Thank you, then,” he says, softly.
Her smile seems gentler now, and it’s relieving to know that nothing was truly damaged between them.
-
Sometimes, Gaby sleeps in Illya’s room.
It isn’t all that often, but he has noticed it happening more than once. The first time he saw her come out of there in the morning, actually, he kind of assumed that the two of them had finally worked out whatever they have got going on between them, but he was quickly disillusioned of that notion: nothing between Illya and Gaby really changed, not that he could see at least, and the next night she went back to her own room.
Still, it occasionally happens, and Napoleon has just come to accept it as a normal part of their little ecosystem.
It stands to reason that now, Illya’s situation being what it is, Gaby wouldn’t feel entitled to keep invading his personal space. What he isn’t sure of is how that reasonable exercise in human compassion resulted in Gaby marching into Napoleon’s room, dropping on his bed without even asking for permission and slipping under the covers.
He stares at her, a little bewildered. “To what do I owe the honour?” he asks, lightly, trying to take a look at her even though she decided to lie down on her stomach, face turned away from him.
“Shut up,” she grumbles, perhaps rather predictably.
“Rude.”
Ah, well, he can only suppose that if she’s there it’s out of desperation. They have had to share beds before, on mission, always out of the necessity, and though usually it’s either the three of them or him and Illya together, occasionally Illya and Gaby, it isn’t often that he is the one to share with her. That’s for one simple, unavoidable reason: they make terrible bedpartners.
They discovered pretty quickly that his tendency to expand on any available surface and snuggle, to hell with respecting personal space, doesn’t mix well with their beloved, generally cuddling-averse Gaby, and at the same time her habit of kicking in her sleep means that he’ll wake up in the middle of the night and then complain all day. Illya, on the other hand, doesn’t mind Napoleon’s clinginess and apparently doesn’t wake up or complain when Gaby kicks him, and he stays perfectly still in his sleep, so—
But, as established, she can’t really sneak in Illya’s bed now, when they are little more than strangers to him. It would probably freak him out.
He can feel curiosity rising from his stomach, along with the excitement over the potential to discover what is going on in this little corner of his partners’ life that he wasn’t privy to before, because Gaby isn’t one for much physical contact, and clearly she doesn’t go to Illya because she wants him specifically, though that’s for sure her preference, so most likely it has something to do with the trouble that she often has falling asleep—he smothers the temptation to pry, because the last thing that he wants is pushing her away. If she came seeking comfort, the last thing he wants is making things hard on her by forcing her to explain herself.
And, if he’s being honest, he doesn’t really mind, not being alone for the night. Even if they make for terrible bedpartners.
“If I wake up with bruises, you make coffee in the morning,” is what he eventually says, getting better settled in his side of the bed – for now, at least – and closing his eyes.
The silence that follows is a little heavy, which makes him guess that he probably won’t be getting a retort along the same lines. “Deal,” she eventually answers, thickly.
He leaves it alone.
He dreams of blood and gunfire, fear clogging his throat as he runs, runs, runs and never quite manages to remember which way he already tried, where he is supposed to go, where his partners are—in the middle of it, he realizes he has forgotten his gun, that he should go back, but he knows there’s no time, and he doesn’t know the way. He can hear Solo and Gaby calling for him, saying things in a language he doesn’t understand, and he wakes up to the feeling of time running out and still no idea which way he was supposed to go.
His memory of the dream curls into a jumbled mess as soon as he wakes up, the pieces quickly scattering and fading when he gets distracted by a piercing headache and the slow recognition that falls on him as he looks at his surroundings: he’s in his bedroom, in the apartment he shares with his partners. He has forgotten most of his life, but he managed not to lose anything new in his sleep, so that’s something.
The panic still lingers, clogging his chest and throat and pushing him to sit up, take deep breaths in an attempt at steading himself and reasoning that everything is fine, that it was just a nightmare. They were watching action movies before going to bed, so of course his head would be filled with explosions. Next time, he’ll try to push for something quieter.
At first, he was grateful that his partners didn’t seem to expect him to share a bedroom with them, because as much as he may like them it’s all a bit—overwhelming. He enjoys their company, he feels a deep fondness for them that his lacking memories can’t fully explain, but he also feels the weight of the distance separating them, of the expectations that they have of him and that he doesn’t know how to fulfil, since he can’t exactly snap his fingers and remember everything they are hoping will come back to him any day now.
It also helps that they weren’t really singling him out, because he has seen Solo and Gaby coming out of different bedrooms in the morning, so it seems that they all enjoy having their own space, even under normal circumstances. It’s good, that this isn’t one of the ways that he is failing to live up to the person he doesn’t remember becoming.
Still, at the moment, shaky and uneasy in his empty bedroom, he kind of regrets not having been pushed into sharing. They do have three rooms, but the beds are all so big it isn’t hard to imagine they might keep each other company, when they feel like it.
Alone in his own bed, he feels overwhelmingly lonely.
When he stands up, it’s with the intention to stretch his legs and grab a glass of water, hoping to calm himself down and go back to sleep.
Navigating the apartment in the dark makes him a little nervous, because it’s an unfamiliar place, where he fears he will bump into something and wake everyone up, so he’s mindful of every step he takes, which at least does serve as a distraction. His eyes land on the door to Solo’s bedroom, and he narrowly avoids bumping into a piece of furniture, out of instinct more than anything else.
The door has been left ajar, and he knows that he should probably keep going, get to the kitchen, but—it’s tempting, to get out of his own head, to see for himself that he isn’t alone, that everything is alright. He doesn’t even have to open the door.
He’ll linger for a second, he tells himself as he slowly peeks into the room. It’s just for a second.
There are two shapes, sleeping on Solo’s bed, and the sight quickly unclenches something in Illya’s chest, letting him draw a breath of relief. For all his attempts at reassuring himself that everything was alright, it’s only the visual reminder that manages to do the trick.
He lingers for a little too long, because Solo begins to shift, and before Illya has had time to flee he pulls himself up in a sitting position. “Peril?” he asks, quietly, leaning forward a little as if to see better.
“Sorry,” he’s quick to say, trying to ignore the blood rushing to his face. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“It’s fine,” he’s quick to dismiss him. “Are you alright?”
“Yes. I just—couldn’t sleep.”
He can feel his shoulders sag and his lingering fear melting away, just from exchanging a few words with him. If there’s so much comfort to be drawn from his partners, he thinks he very much understands why the future version of him grew attached enough to live with them.
He wishes there were more to say, so that he could stretch the moment a little longer.
Solo hums. There are a few seconds of hesitant silence, then he casually says: “Well, you could join if you want.”
Illya’s stomach takes a leap, and he fails to answer immediately.
“Though fair warning, she kicks and I expand,” Solo is quick to add, his tone light and teasing. Illya isn’t sure if he’s trying to offer him an out or just to fill the silence. “I’ve been known to wake up on top of you in the morning, I’m not sure how you didn’t suffocate in your sleep.”
That makes him smile, both because the mental image of Solo drooling on his shoulder and using him as a mattress is objectively adorable, and because it’s at least confirmation that he was part of the shared sleeping arrangements, that it wasn’t just a them thing. It still makes him a little uneasy, because he isn’t that Illya, not really, and maybe they feel weird, about him being there when he doesn’t really know them. He can’t exclude that Solo is just being nice.
“I—don’t want to intrude,” he ends up saying, shuffling his feet and ignoring the needy feeling twisting his stomach, because he does want to sleep with them, it’s just—complicated.
Solo snorts. “No no, please, do come here and save me from her kicks, I will be forever grateful. And she will too, I promise you she doesn’t like waking up squished underneath me.”
“You two,” Gaby intervenes, voice gruff and a little muffled because she didn’t bother raising her head from the pillow. “Less talking, more sleeping.”
“Well, you heard the lady,” Solo grins, scooting over to the side and patting the empty spot between them. “Come on.”
Illya takes a breath, the relief leaving him a little shaky, and with a nod he quickly climbs between them. As he settles, there’s a note of awkwardness, because in a way these are half strangers that he’s just gotten in bed with, but at the same time—Gaby keeps her back on him, though she positions herself so that she’s in contact with his arm. She wishes them a goodnight and curls a little more on herself, yet it doesn’t feel like she’s trying to keep a distance. Solo, on the other hand, yawns and turns on his stomach, one arm under the pillow and the other flat against his side, so his fingers brush against Illya’s, and he keeps his face turned against him.
He falls asleep to the sound of their breathing, and it’s comfortable in a way he can’t quite put his finger on.
-
It starts small.
Solo walks into the kitchen early in the morning, shuffling his feet and yawning. “’Morning, Peril,” he says, on his way to grabbing his coffee, and Illya barely raises his head from the newspaper to give him a nod of acknowledgement.
“Cowboy,” he says as a greeting, eyes already focused on what he was reading.
It takes a while for him to feel observed, to notice the wide-eyed look on Solo’s face and to realize what he just said.
Once, when the three of them are all out together, they walk past a shop that emanates an overwhelming smell of lavender. Illya suddenly remembers that time when Napoleon sprayed his entire room with lavender perfume to piss him off, and the smell refused to leave for more than a week.
He can still smell it when they are long past the shop.
Another time, they start watching a movie together, and half-way through he remembers how it ended, remembers watching it before like the memory never left.
Eventually, comes the bigger stuff.
A car backfires, and the sound brings back memories of firefights and bombs. Those kind of memories have been a persistent feature in his nightmares, but as they start creeping more insistently in his waking life too he has to wonder if there isn’t something he’s missing, because—it doesn’t feel right.
He has been told that they all work at a security firm, and though he has no memory of that as of yet and he figures that it isn’t the smoothest job in the world—it’s a bit of an exaggeration, isn’t it? The way he pictures their job, it’s supposed to be mostly standing around, it shouldn’t be quite as adventurous as some of the things that he keeps remembering.
He thinks maybe he’s being a little paranoid.
Except then he finds pictures of Gaby and Solo, tucked away in the back of one of his drawers, and he remembers Solo’s face in a mugshot, a man’s voice calling him the CIA’s best, and he thinks maybe he should have trusted his instincts sooner.
When he goes to find Solo and Gaby, he asks. “What did you say our job was?”
The look that they share all but confirms that he is onto something. “Uh, why?” Solo asks, and the casualness in his tone feels a little forced – it’s a little gratifying, that he’s starting to be able to catch this sort of thing.
“I’m remembering things,” he explains, seeing no point in lying. “It’s weird. I don’t know.”
They share another brief look, and they must find themselves in agreement, because it isn’t long before Solo starts talking again: “Yeah, we—kinda lied to you about that. Sorry.”
Illya’s first gut reaction is relief, because there’s something comforting in knowing that he can trust his own head, even if his memory is so faulty at the moment, that if he started noticing something being amiss it’s because there is.
“The doctor said we shouldn’t stress you out and to let you remember this on your own, so—we said security firm because it was close enough, but the three of us are actually, uhm, spies.”
After the initial relief, an uncomfortable feeling starts creeping in, because they lied to him. He has had little choice but to rely on them to fill the gaps for him, and they lied. They had a good reason, it sounds reasonable enough, but—how many more good reasons do they have to mislead him?
He hums. “Have you lied to me about anything else?” he asks, because he can’t not ask, even if there is really no way to be sure of the truthfulness of their answer.
“No, nothing,” Gaby is quick to answer, looking at him with big, worried eyes that plead him to believe her.
“We swear,” Solo adds, and though his expression is way more closed off, Illya is pretty sure he can still catch sight of some vulnerability there, only confirmed by the way he’s fidgeting with his sleeve, mirroring the way Gaby’s hands are fidgeting in her lap.
He thinks he should be more upset about this.
But they did come clean as soon as he asked, and there has been nothing else not adding up since when he woke up surrounded by strangers, so—he kind of believes them.
Occasionally, they all slip in bed together. In Solo’s bed, to be precise. Illya isn’t sure if that’s where they normally do this, but it seems to be the natural choice that they all gravitate towards, maybe because that’s where they all came together the first time—or at least, the first one that Illya currently remembers.
One night, Gaby kicks him in the shin and he remembers another time when she did that, when he was lying on his back and Solo’s head was resting on his shoulder. Gaby kicked him, muttered something under her breath and then snuggled against his side.
Similar memories come up in a chain reaction, Gaby slipping in his bed, Solo napping against his shoulder on an airplane, the three of them squeezing on a single couch…
He just keeps lying there, smiling to himself.
One morning, hunched over a bowl of cereals, Illya frowns and looks up at Solo. “Did you drop me in a minefield?” he asks, without warning.
Solo bursts out laughing.
One quiet night, when they are in the middle of a game of chess and Gaby is busy taking a shower, Solo presses his lips together the way he does when he’s trying to work his way up to say something he isn’t quite sure how to voice.
Illya waits, discretely glancing at him as they keep playing.
“So,” Solo eventually says, eyes on the chessboard and tone artificially casual. “Do you still like me now that you mostly remember what an annoying American spy I am?”
Illya raises his eyebrows at him. “Yes,” he answers with no real hesitation. “But I am still not sparing you. Checkmate.”
Another night, when Illya is staring at the ceiling waiting for sleep to finally come for him, he sees Gaby’s silhouette at his door.
By now, he remembers other times when this happened, her whispered confession, one night, that she just needed not to be alone.
He smiles, asks: “Do you need company, Chop-Shop?”
She nods and slides into his bed, lying on her side with her face to him and his arm held tight against her chest.
-
Things are starting, finally, to go back to normal.
Although Illya hasn’t woken up one day with all the memories that he had forgotten, he does seem more and more like himself every day, and things are slowly sliding back into place.
For one, they are bickering again. Napoleon had been so hesitant to poke fun at him while he was so lost and confused, but it’s a welcome relief when they start getting on each other’s nerves again, when he finds himself taking cheap shots at Illya without being afraid of shattering anything between them. It fits like an old, comfortable shoe.
He even noticed Gaby coming out of Illya’s room in the morning, one time, which—honestly, he had almost forgotten, that he wasn’t a part of that before. Used as he got to Gaby coming to him these days and to Illya joining in, the three of them curled up in his bed like they just fell asleep after watching a movie, he had managed to set aside the fact that, before, his room was just his own, at least outside of missions.
That—that he perhaps could have done without, because for all that he never really dared to hope for anything, when those two are clearly smitten with each other and he has no place outside of the sidelines, this new arrangement has been good, and he accidentally allowed himself to get comfortable.
It’s hard not to feel disappointed now that he was reminded that he was only ever a placeholder for them, but he supposes that’s on him, for apparently allowing himself to hope against all reason.
Still, it’s good, that things are actually getting better. The doctor had used a lot of shoulds, after all, and Napoleon knew better than to be too optimistic.
But, well, looking at Illya complaining because Napoleon decided to steal his socks, again, you wouldn’t know that anything was really amiss.
(He should have known to be sceptical of things resolving so simply.)
It starts innocently enough, like another bit of normalcy that they have managed to get back.
Illya often hangs in the kitchen while Napoleon is cooking, officially to ‘help’, or ‘for no reason’, in reality just so he can try and steal some food from underneath his nose. It would be exasperating if it weren’t kind of cute.
All in all, Napoleon really doesn’t mind, and these days any shred of normalcy is pretty welcome, it’s a reassurance that things really have been fixing themselves in spite of his concerns.
It’s normal, for Illya to appear at his back and take a peek over his shoulder to see what he’s doing. Napoleon merely rolls his eyes and, with an ease that comes from practice and an enviable amount of self-control, ignores the hand that brushes against his hip.
When Illya tries to actually taste his food before it’s anywhere near ready, Napoleon turns around and waves his spoon threateningly, hand on his hip in a pose that Gaby has lovingly defined ‘housewife Solo out for your blood’.
It is, unfortunately, also normal for his stomach to take a deep dive down to his knees when Illya grins in the face of his threats, looking massively fond and way prettier than it should honestly be legal to be in somebody else’s presence. Alas, he’ll bear this cross in exchange for spending time with his partner.
It is all, again, very normal.
Except then Illya steps a little closer, for no real reason that Napoleon can see and drawing a confused frown out of him as he reflexively lowers his improvised weapon. He looks up at him, about to ask what he’s doing and why his hand is unmistakeably resting on his hip, half wondering if he’s about to get head-butted because his partner is, apparently, that hungry.
Instead, Illya straight up kisses him.
It was going to have to happen, at some point, right?
Illya is aware that they have been doing their best to be respectful, apparently even going as far as not exchanging so much as a peck on the lips between the two of them in his presence, and he greatly appreciates it—truth be told, when they first brought him home he was way too overwhelmed to react favourably to either of them getting their hands all over him.
But now—he may not remember everything, still full of hazy spots and sometimes a little confused about what he remembers and what he’s been told or he picked up on and ended up imagining, but he knows enough. At this point, when he’s with them he feels none of the reservations that he had when he first woke up after getting injured, and the very last thing that he wants is keeping them at arm’s length.
Perhaps talking to them would have been a better idea, but he wasn’t sure how to fit that conversation into their comfortable routine, still a little afraid of shattering the balance that they managed to find in spite of everything, and—in the end, it just kind of happened.
Solo was smiling at him, waving his spoon like a weapon, a little curl loose on his forehead, and Illya felt such an overwhelming wave of fondness for him that there was little to do but stepping forward and kissing him.
The first move towards that bit of normalcy was his to make anyway, right?
At first, Solo relaxes against him, leaning into the kiss and bringing his arms up to circle his back, but then—
In a blink, Illya finds himself being pushed back, Solo staring at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. “What—” he utters, giving him a quick glance up and down like he’s looking for something weird. “What the hell was that, Peril?!”
He blinks at him, his heart still thundering in his ears even as an uncomfortable feeling starts sliding underneath his skin. “Aren’t we partners?” he asks, a little hesitantly, because that had been one of the very few things that he has been holding onto as a certainty this whole time, and he isn’t sure what to do with—this.
“Not—not that kind of partners,” Solo splutters, way more flustered than Illya has ever seen him, old memories and all.
His words take a few moments to sink in.
“Oh.”
He’s pretty sure that the heat rising to his face could power their entire apartment. At least the embarrassment provides a decent distraction from the bitter disappointment burning in his stomach.
Solo doesn’t stay astonished for long, quickly regaining his composure and giving him an apologetic look. “Shit, I’m sorry, I probably should have been—clearer.”
“It’s fine,” Illya is quick to say, because it is. “Sorry about—that.” After all, everything up until now has been normal for Gaby and Napoleon, right? And he’s loved it. So—no need to be greedy. He just needs to survive the embarrassment and move on.
Clearly he isn’t doing a very good job at that, because Solo looks downright uncomfortable, a tentative smile eventually making its way on his face. “If it helps any, uh, you and Gaby—you kind of have a thing?” he offers. “I couldn’t tell you if anything actually happened in the end, but I’m pretty sure you’ve been wanting to try this with her for a while.”
“We have a thing,” he echoes, slowly. “Without you?”
That—doesn’t sound right. In his head, they are a unit, they’ve been doing nothing but being together, the three of them, to have a thing with Gaby and shut Solo out—it seems weird. He couldn’t imagine favouring one of them over the other.
Solo laughs, though it doesn’t really sound amused. “Yeah, yeah, most definitely without me.” It doesn’t take more than a glance for Illya to assess that the grin on his face is way too polished and fake.
“Okay,” he still relents, because he has nothing to counter with, does he? Nothing except the way this conversation has left him so unsettled and his own wants, which he’s beginning to suspect are quite different from his partners’.
That’s fine. He can deal.
When he slowly turns around and leaves, Solo lets him.
He doesn’t say anything to Gaby. It doesn’t seem right, and he doesn’t want a rehashing of his conversation with Solo.
If anything, it would probably be beneficial if he could get himself another head injury and start the process all over again, hopefully with better results. That way, he would at least get rid of this uncomfortable feeling underneath his skin, of the fear of what may happen if he tried to talk to Gaby, of the guilty way his stomach churns when he ends up a little too close to her and he catches Solo staring.
Absurdly, the whole thing made a lot more sense before he was told the truth about their partnership.
-
Their first mission back, after Waverly has deemed them all functional enough to go back to work, is a dreadfully long affair that spans out two weeks and has Gaby seriously consider throttling her partners on more than one occasion. It also ends with Illya performing an improbable last minute rescue, only to then kneel over and pass out from blood loss and exhaustion.
It would be funny if it hadn’t given both her and Solo a fucking heart attack.
“This is all your fault,” she grumbles, crossing her arms and leaning back against her chair. Illya is fine. Mostly. But she’s damn tired of bedside vigils and she’s very tired of her partners acting like children. “We were sloppy because of whatever happened between you two that you haven’t told me about.”
Solo raises his eyebrows at her. “Seriously? Peril probably barely even remembers how to do his job and you are blaming me for this?”
“I was blaming both of you,” she clarifies. “But it’s interesting how you just admitted that you are the one who caused whatever your problem is.”
He huffs, his eyes lingering on Illya for a few moments. She wishes his face were easier to read, because there’s nothing but mild annoyance there. “We don’t have a problem,” he lies, like they don’t spend pretty much every minute of every day together.
“Sure you don’t.” She makes sure to really lay into the sarcasm, because she knows it will irritate him, if only a bit. “You think I haven’t noticed how weird you two have been?”
“And you didn’t say anything?” he asks, feigning shock. “How uncharacteristically nice of you.”
Asshole.
Yeah, she didn’t say anything, and definitely not out of kindness: they have had their plates a little full, all of them, and she figured whatever it was could wait, that they could figure it out for themselves. Especially since she isn’t sure what to do with her own reaction to her partners’ weirdness, with the way her stomach fell when Illya flat-out refused to share the only bedroom with her or Solo and instead relegated himself to the couch, when usually she’d be the one alone, with the understanding that she likes it that way and that she may always join them, if she feels like it.
She thinks she hadn’t realized how close they had all gotten after Illya lost his memories, at least not until those two did whatever they did to fuck it up.
It’s infuriating, that the little family that she thought she had has crumbled under her feet when she wasn’t looking and now she’s paying the price without even realizing what exactly happened. She didn’t ask to be left behind in the middle of their little squabble, and yet—there’s something wrong with the way Illya looks at her, with the way he seems hesitant to so much as touch her, and there’s also something very wrong with the way Solo keeps quietly leaving the room whenever the three of them are together, how he doesn’t take part to the conversation unless it’s functional to the mission or he’s invited.
Whatever the reason, the result is that she’s alone. Illya is distant, Solo is slippery, and she’s pissed off.
“I want to know what it is that happened and that has you both acting like you can’t wait to be rid both of me and of each other,” she says through gritted teeth, ignoring the way her eyes are burning. “I’m not asking.”
He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, taken aback. “Gaby,” he begins, not unkindly. “That’s not what’s going on.”
“What is going on then?”
He sighs. “Look, it’s not important—”
“Oh, it isn’t?” she snorts, with no real humour to it. “I promise you, if next time I end up dead because the two of you still haven’t gotten your shit together, I’m haunting you forever.”
“No one is going to die,” he says, a little too forcefully. There’s a little crack in his voice, and a little too much going on with that brief moment when his eyes dart in Illya’s direction, and unfortunately for him she notices both.
“Really,” she deadpans. “From where I’m standing, it was close enough.”
Keep pressing where it hurts.
She learned from the best, after all.
He looks a little defeated, a little too tired, and he ends up rubbing his face with both hands, elbows resting on his knees. “Alright, alright,” he says, quietly. “I’ll talk to him, okay?”
“What happened?” she insists, because they are ruining everything without even consulting her, if they want this whole thing to implode she won’t be a spectator, she’d rather throw some fucking grenades herself at the very least.
“Gaby—” Catching the look on her face, which apparently conveys well enough that she won’t leave it alone, he falters. “Okay,” he eventually says, quietly. “Okay, fine, he—I didn’t say anything because it’s stupid and it doesn’t really mean anything, alright, but he, uh—he kind of kissed me. The day before Waverly sent us here.”
She blinks at him. And keeps blinking.
“What,” is the best that she can get out, because frankly she isn’t even sure what she’s feeling right now.
Solo grimaces. “Apparently, when I said we were partners, he—misunderstood.” He takes a look at her, and he probably doesn’t like what he sees, because he’s quick to add: “Don’t worry, I told him we aren’t together and that if anything he has a thing going on with you. You’re welcome.”
Well, if anything else, Solo being his usual, infuriating self manages to snap her out of whatever trance she was in, because that information is enough for her brain to kick back into gear.
“You what?!” she bursts out. “I don’t remember asking you to fill your mouth with bullshit about me, Solo!”
His shoulders drop, and he’s quick to straighten his back, eyebrows raised and a sceptical look on his face. “Please, are you telling me you two haven’t been dancing around each other since Rome?”
They have and they haven’t. Nothing has happened since then, neither of them has tried anything beyond entirely platonic, literal sleeping together, she assumed out of silent agreement that it would be too complicated, too much of a mess.
If, in the privacy of her head, she was a little too relieved for the out, for the chance to not make herself vulnerable to him, at least not in that way, that’s of secondary importance.
They weren’t dancing around each other, fuck him.
“If you ask me, you are the ones with enough sexual tension to shame horny teenagers,” she counters, because there were times when they seemed—odd. When she thought she could catch a glimpse of something, between the two of them, yet she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She supposes she has her answer now. “And apparently you did kiss, which is more than Illya and I ever did.”
“That’s just because he’s confused and amnesiac, Gaby.”
Illya picks that exact moment to butt in, making a disgruntled noise that catches their attention immediately. He doesn’t seem happy.
“Not confused,” he protests, though he sounds so groggy that it’s hard to believe, especially when he also seems to be having a hard time keeping his eyes open. It seems the painkillers are doing their job, at least.
“Peril,” Solo says, gently, the smile on his face betraying his relief. “You are way too drugged to be arguing now.”
The softness of his tone, the way he leans forward and his fingers brush against Illya’s arm—nothing about it is new, much less weird, and she has to wonder why the implications weren’t more obvious before.
“No,” Illya insists, firmly enough, all things considered. “Not confused. You’re pretty.” He turns towards Gaby, his head falling heavily to the side as he gives her a loopy smile. “Both,” he clarifies.
It’s embarrassing, how relieved she feels.
“Well, can’t argue with that…” Solo offers, lightly. He’s clearly trying to turn it into a joke, and Illya doesn’t seem to appreciate it.
“No,” he repeats, frowning as he turns back towards him. “Seriously. I’m greedy. Love you both.”
Solo chokes. She freezes. Illya, on the other hand, is not done.
“I have big arms,” he says, nodding to himself and seemingly pleased. “Bet I can carry both of you too.”
She looks at Solo, instinctively searching for something to hold onto so she doesn’t lose her sanity, but he seems to be way too busy staring at Illya like he just grew a second head. Not very helpful.
“’s okay if you don’t love me,” Illya keeps going, somehow managing to look even more sleepy. “But couch’s lonely. Don’t like it. Miss you.”
Yeah, alright, no, she needs to stop him. Solo clearly is too overwhelmed to be of any help, and she needs to stop this before she has enough time to process it and freak out about it.
“Hey, Illya, you really should sleep some more,” she says, trying to be gentle and not quite managing. “We’ll talk later, alright?”
Love you both.
Illya blinks at her sluggishly, seemingly confused for a few moments. Then, finally, he hums. “’kay. Sleep’s nice. Don’t go though.”
Miss you.
“We are staying,” she assures, without thinking, because she needs him to stop talking.
Illya gives her an happy little smile that does funny things to her insides, closes his eyes and goes right back to sleep.
The silence that follows is deafening, and when she eventually adverts her eyes from Illya to look at Solo she finds him still staring at their partner, seemingly frozen in place and most likely in the middle of a crisis.
“Are you alright?” she asks, tentatively, like she doesn’t have everything that just happened still rattling in her brain.
“He was high,” Solo says, quietly, almost to himself. Except then he raises his eyes on her, looking uncharacteristically vulnerable as he asks: “Right?”
“Very,” she has to concede. Yet— “But he was sober when he kissed you, I assume?”
Solo doesn’t answer. He’s staring at Illya’s hand, because apparently somewhere during the whole thing he managed to grab a solid hold of two of Solo’s fingers.
“Do you love him?” she asks.
“Not the point,” he says, quietly, yet won’t stop staring at their hands.
She looks down, to Illya’s arm stretched out in her direction, hesitating before reaching out to brush his fingers. He’s impressively quick to close his hand around hers, squeezing tight enough that it’s pretty evident he has no intention of letting go.
She knows it’s most likely just a reflex, but it’s reassuring in a way that warms her down to her bones, echoes of love you both, miss you, don’t go, bouncing around her head.
When she looks up, Solo is staring. He looks a little lost, a mirror of her own fear and reluctance to just let go easy enough to read on his face. She knows it’s a privilege, to be able to see it. She understands that he, too, isn’t good at trusting, at loving openly and expecting it to end well. In spite of that, underneath it all, she still doesn’t fully trust him not to leave.
Perhaps that’s okay, though. Perhaps she can let him, let them both, prove her wrong.
She swallows, slowly raising her hand to reach out to him too, carefully breathing through the bounding anxiety at the thought that he might reject her outright.
He stares at her for a dreadfully long moment, and it’s half a miracle that his hesitation doesn’t send her running.
Eventually, he takes her hand.