Chapter Text
"Find him," Waverly says, and that is that.
***
Illya is used to spies being volatile. Napoleon's disappearance after the last mission was only to be expected, his lodgings cleanly wiped and belongings gone. All stripped down to the furniture now, oddly hollow. The sight makes leaves him slightly distressed.
It's an odd feeling; having Napoleon gone.
Illya finds it simultaneously hard and easy to remember that he was a thief: he's grown used to his constant presence, grin wide and fingers always skirting. He's also not as annoyed at this newly-assigned mission as he thought he would have been. Gaby isn't surprised, but he prefers to admit defeat when it comes to guessing about what she's thinking.
"I suppose you'd do fine in persuading Napoleon to come back," she says under the car. Her hands are dirty, marked with oil as she repairs it. She's fond of going back to a mechanic when not occupied with whatever assignment Waverly has decided to pin on their heads. Illya likes that. People in their profession need to forget about what is it they do from time to time.
He replies after missing half a beat. "What makes you think so?"
He tosses her a spare part at her command, and she catches it with ease, slotting it nicely into the machine, inclining her head to meet his gaze. Illya straightens, not certain of what she's going to tell him next. "Oh, I don't know," she smiles at him in the usual manner that she does, and he can't help but think about how Napoleon should be beside her in this instant, smirking.
She wipes her fingers as she moves past him towards the table, picking up a blueprint to study as she continues. "You're the best candidate to bring him back, really. All that pining is rotting my teeth."
Illya frowns. "I do not pine. I am just used to having Cowboy around. An annoyance like him is hard to forget about."
"So your recent nervous disposition is brought upon by missing him?" She sends him a sideway glance, and Illya puts on his sternest expression. "You're awfully irritable lately. That's saying something."
It doesn't seem to work.
"Maybe I do. Only a little," he answers her curtly, and listens to her resounding laugh as he walks briskly through the exit.
***
Illya finds out that Napoleon's been laying low in London.
He learns how his back loosens when he flirts with the hotel receptionist; that he always chooses to live in establishments with the most exits. Napoleon likes scotch after he returns from whatever he is doing each night (petty theft); and still walks with that swagger that screams 'easy target' for thieves. His grin is the same, the cocky tilt to the edge of his lips still-grating, even when Illya is always a considerable distance from seeing it up close now.
It's been five months. He's disturbed to know that he hasn't seen any of Napoleon's genuine smiles up close for this long, that he hasn't been able to coax it out of him, the artificial smugness in his eyes lightening away to reveal earnestness; the stretch of his neck when he tips his head back to laugh. He noticed it in Istanbul and he notices it now, an entire street away.
Napoleon is making conversation with a passerby whose wallet he had stolen. Illya has to appreciate his audacity. He'd thought about the way he carries himself, full to the brim of American carelessness, the lavish, bespoke suits that cling to his frame as tightly as his confidence, assuming that it was only an imitation, since he was in the habit of replacing anything of value with immaculately-done forgeries.
He looks like he's doing it now, with his hands expressive and gesturing about the neighbourhood. There are one or two cuts on his fingers, and Illya pushes down the unreasonable surge of protectiveness that wells up in his brain.The Cowboy is more than capable of getting knocked about; he can go and suffocate under a collection of all the people he's slept with for all Illya cares.
The stranger makes his farewells and Napoleon pats him heartily on the back, as though they had known each other for years rather than three minutes. Like Napoleon is more than happy to switch out his current life with this counterfeit persona he had built for himself.
Illya puts down the paper, finishes his coffee, and looks towards every direction but Napoleon's fingers.
***
Illya returns to the hotel in the early evening, and begins to phone Waverly before he changes his mind and calls Gaby instead. She could pass on the message.
"Hello?" She mumbles sleepily into the phone, and Illya doesn't suppress the smile that surfaces on his face. He puts a pawn that's toppled over back to its original position as he tells her the locations of Napoleon's current hotel.
"Cowboy isn't doing anything. All he does is meet up with his contacts and drink alcohol."
He swears he could hear her eyes roll through the telephone. "Don't tell me you're surprised about that."
"I'm not, I just think he is wasting time." Illya thinks of how Napoleon waltzes about London, slipping into the city as he does almost everywhere else, that he must have felt unbelievably carefree, like he could have done anything. When he wasn't part of U.N.C.L.E..
He studies the chessboard in front of him, and doesn't feel its appeal like he usually does. "Have you made contact with him?" Gaby asks, and Illya decides to disassemble the scene.
"No," he confesses. "But I plan to." He hears Gaby pouring a drink. Napoleon's influence is clearly strong in her. In the both of them, really, but the woman is drinking even more alcohol than before. "Well, tell him that we need him back at U.N.C.L.E., but let him take his time. I think Waverly's patient enough. Call it an extended vacation, medical leave, whichever."
Illya bristles. "We can not afford to give him time. Napoleon is too happy with where he is."
"Or what?" He hears the sound of glass knocking onto tables. "It's not like he can escape forever. He knows that, he'll come back."
Illya pauses. "Or he will keep running, and when he comes back he would not mean it."
"What's so wrong with that?" Gaby asks, and Illya has nothing to answer her with. "He knows he will go to prison otherwise. Napoleon will come back; it's not like we have any important missions we need him for. He'll turn up when there is. All we need to do is re-establish communication with him."
Illya sighs, and thinks about how the three of them always works so seamlessly as a team. They're already comfortably familiar with each other, and Illya feels odd not to have someone to bicker with during missions. But if Cowboy truly left, he supposed that he and Gaby could handle it. They would. They definitely would.
"Oh, Illya," Gaby says, and Illya doesn't know why he slammed the phone back onto the receiver as hurriedly as he did.
***
Illya keeps watching Napoleon (it's his current mission, he has an excuse), but there's nothing much occurring. He wanders about London going through pubs and tailors and restaurants. The only thing out of the ordinary is that he's... sketching.
It's not like Illya is in any place to judge. In all honesty, he rather wants to see them--but every person is entitled to their own privacy, and he doesn't particularly want to find out Napoleon's own thoughts, anyway.
(He's a womaniser. The sketches are probably full of women: Illya isn't very interested in them lately.)
He doesn't really do anything else. He walks around and takes out his sketchbook from time to time, lives like a man of luxury, leisurely in every action: Illya thinks he's planning something.
What he doesn't expect is for Napoleon to have plans flirting with every single man he comes across. It's all mildly infuriating, thinking about him that way, despite understanding that conceptually, men have sexual needs and Napoleon is very, very good at fulfilling them.
When he tells this to Gaby sometime during the next week, she laughs so hard, she drops the phone.
"I suppose you haven't approached him yet," she says once she has regained her breath.
Illya brushes one of his fingers onto the strap of his father's watch, and thinks about another pair of hands tossing it to him, a lifetime away. "That is true."
"Napoleon is probably aware that you're following him. There's no need to be incognito." Her voice has a hint of amusement to it, but Illya decides that this is not the time to interrogate Gaby. Between the three of them, he thinks he lacks the sharpness that the other two have, because he has no idea what she is talking about now.
"Why do you think so?"
She sighs.
"The both of you need to pull your acts together. Just trust me on this," and Illya does.
***
When Illya finally decides to get reacquainted with Napoleon, he supposes that Gaby had not meant for him to follow him all the way to an established art museum at two in the morning.
He stands behind him as he stores the painting away, fingers deft as he works, inhumanly quiet. There is a reason for his reputation, Illya reminds himself, and resolutely does not think about them holding a pencil to an angle, or how often they were wrapped around a gun.
Napoleon is shocked when he turns around, but not enough to alert the guards, and raises an eyebrow at him, same as ever, holding up his hands almost theatrically. "Why?"
Illya's gaze flicker downwards. "Why not, Cowboy?" The idiot does not have any eye bags, not now, and his fingers seem to have healed just fine, judging by the way they move under his gloves. "I see that you remembered to deactivate alarm," Illya says, squinting his eyes to see if those were bruises peppered above his turtleneck.
"Why don't we talk about this later," Napoleon says noncommittally, and they fall back into a system that Illya is all too familiar with, their footsteps quick and Napoleon leading them out without any disturbances whatsoever.
He follows him back to his hotel.
They are quiet until they've reached the safety of Napoleon's hotel room. His equipment is in hidden compartments, but everything else is a mess: briefcases on the coffee table, ties on the back of the chair, and a pair of sunglasses on the floor.
"You should be more careful," Illya reminds him. "Maybe they can track you here."
Napoleon shrugs off his jacket as he walks into the bedroom, pulling out his suitcase and coming back out to gather his things. "Which is why I'm leaving. I have an inkling as to why you're here, but we could talk about it in the morning, couldn't we, Peril? It's rather late."
The painting is laid carefully on the writing table, and Illya forces himself to make eye contact.
"You expect me to believe that you will still meet me." Which is a sound conclusion, Illya thinks. It's not like Napoleon isn't well-connected enough to disappear again, and it would only be an unnecessary hassle to track him down one more time. "I think you could disappear. Again."
"Now what's the point of that?" Napoleon is nearly done packing, and Illya drags his gaze away from the sight of his silhouette, bent over to clasp his suitcase. He thinks of the way he had straightened one time to toss him his father's watch, his hands in his pockets and expression compassionate--
"Well, if we had the time, we'd go to a restaurant and have some salad, catch up with old news." His tone is seemingly relaxed, but Illya knows him better than that. "Except we don't. You can find me at this address, at 10 o'clock."
Napoleon turns his hand over to fit a small piece of paper into, and he pockets it, considering.
"I could find you again, Cowboy," Illya says, voice flat.
Napoleon is quiet for a long time, but at least Illya is comforted by the fact that he can read him now, that this isn't some stranger but his own partner.
He looks back up to find himself being studied, the cowboy's face just a short distance away from his own. "So?" Napoleon's eyes glint in the dark. "Are you coming?"