Chapter Text
i.
He pours two fingers of the Hennessy cognac and swallows it neat. The alcohol burns a path through the lump in his throat, but he can't taste its nuances—only coppery blood and overworked spit. A waste, he thinks.
Gaby takes the immodest decanter and his glass from him, canary yellow fingernails clicking against crystal. She pours indiscriminately, the gold glugging out. "Why can't they leave it in a bottle," she says. When she tosses the drink back, he watches her bite the rim of the glass, the stretch of her jaw working.
Napoleon hopes the cognac does more for her than it had for him. He rubs his face and feels every minute of his exceedingly long day crush in from all sides. "We have to be on the extraction team," he says.
"You know why we can't be on the extraction team," says Gaby. She sinks down on the hotel sofa, and most men would name her unreadable, but Napoleon sees beneath the surface, sees those waters churning and clawing. "We're too close to the objective."
"That is precisely why we have to be on the extraction team."
"We don't get to make those choices."
"You have leverage," Napoleon says. "I don't know what you were saving it for, and I have no right to ask you to use it now. But if you were keeping it for a rainy day, the skies won't get much darker."
She doesn't argue with him. She doesn't replenish her drink, either, staring at the gaudy stuffed ottoman between them. Maybe she is thinking about putting her feet up. Maybe she is thinking about how Illya moves bulky spare furniture against the walls when they stay in hotels, because she likes to get drunk and dance to the radio, because Napoleon hates to leave his belongings strewn or on the floor. Illya does this thing without being asked. He prefers if they pretend not to notice.
They notice. They are delighted.
They tease him, if they feel mean.
Napoleon shudders, spine to the quicksilver veins netting his heart. He does not feel mean at this moment. He feels small and terrible. He feels like the jack beneath a child's foot, an empty gift box, the pinch that finds blood. It was my fault, he wants to say. I left him in there and I left him to wake up to their questions and instruments, like I did, once. I thought he was dead. I came home limping, when I ought to have been chasing what wasn't a body.
Gaby must know—she's read it in his mouth, his eyelashes swept low. He wears his shame like a damp suit. What she plans to do about it, Napoleon can't guess. She's looking at her hand now, fingers splayed out. She doesn't wear the fake engagement ring—in fact, Napoleon hasn't seen it since their final days in Italy—but the soft lines at the base of her knuckle tell stories enough.
"He's going to be very angry we came for him," she says, finally.
Napoleon toasts her with an invisible glass. He doesn't say, Those men will leave us nothing but his teeth.
ii.
What they have is newborn, from a complicated birthing. They haven't even given it a name.
In Istanbul, the baths are cloying hot and fragrant, and Illya is furtive about his nakedness. He has more scars than a cutting board. The markets burst with color and exotic trade, offering up acquisitions that Napoleon finds curiously satisfying despite the lack of skill in taking them. He purchases an antique dish and comb, a painting of another painting, juicy plump sarma, and spices that—as Gaby says, lightly mocking—smell better than the old feet and are far less expensive. She comes to life in Istanbul: a small dark-eyed junco tasting something beyond millet seed for the first in her life. In her element, in complete custody of her future, she thrives and leads them both to water.
It is on the water's edge that Napoleon catches his arms around Gaby and laughs, reveling in the simple nature of good company. He marvels that he's lasted so long without.
Illya, too, seems to enjoy the water when it's only the three of them. His shoulders unwind and his thumb traces the circumference of his father's watch, circling to a slow song only he can hear. He watches them. Napoleon, thoughtful, thinks, When did I join this fiasco in the making?
Catching him by surprise, Gaby lightly smacks his cheek. "You're a million miles away," she says. "Tell me you brought something to drink."
Napoleon looks down at her mouth, categorizes the shade of her lipstick. "Believe me," he says, "I wouldn't want to miss this."
Between them, they polish off a bottle of Scotch. Gaby puts her bare feet on Illya's lap, perhaps curious as to what he will do. He doesn't drink. He rubs her ankle and pushes his knuckles into the sole of her foot, and Napoleon watches her inhale fast, watches her slow-burn pleasure, and yes, he watches Illya—who obviously has no idea how to touch a woman, but is learning, is quietly content to do something that no one has ordered him to do.
Napoleon decides it wouldn't be any fun if it were too easy for Peril. He crooks a grin at Gaby and they share a silent communion; they are owed this, of course, after their narrow escape over the wall. Let him work for it. Let him sulk and stumble and find his way.
(It's only supposed to be a little fling of sweetness, some fun. Four missions later, Napoleon panics because he would die for them. Without question, without regret, he would burn the marrow out of his body so long as they would walk. Of all the priceless antiquities he has held in his hands, this is the most terrifying, because it's the only thing he can't afford to lose.)
iii.
"These men are biochemists," Waverly tells them. "They've holed up on a small island not far from where Kuryakin was taken in Sicily. A rather odd breed of megalomaniac, I have found. I can't imagine they want any information from Kuryakin; however, they are in sore need of another of his stock."
"Test subjects," says Gaby. Her face betrays nothing.
Waverly looks between them. Gently, he says, "Are you very sure that you want to do this? You may be needed—after."
"We may," Gaby agrees, "and we may be needed—during."
Napoleon nods to her, briefly. It is less support than it is acknowledgement of her unspoken order to speak his first words to Illya with care. Unnecessary though it may be, he dredges up enough energy to be charmed. She, too, is learning, is dismantling them both like engines in her chop shop in Berlin.
"I suppose it worked the last time we had an extraction," says Waverly. "I do like seeing this kind of commitment. It speaks well of the three of you." He glances at Napoleon, and god save them, he seems to mean it.
iv.
Two months ago: London, beneath a sweep of fog rivering the city. Rain batters a sea of umbrellas. Taking shelter beneath a grocer's overhang, Napoleon breathes in the damp and oil-slick smell of the cabs.
Illya is studying the window, which is set up as the baker's display. He frowns at the confections.
"Thinking of bringing something back for Miss Teller?" Napoleon asks.
"I would not know what to bring," Illya says, stiffly.
The display features sweet breads and pasties and scones, thumbprint cookies and fairy cakes. Napoleon closes his eyes and indulges in the memory of flavors—though he appreciates wine and truffles, any food is a food worth savoring. "Fairy cakes," he says. "It's not something she would indulge in herself. But she would like fairy cakes."
"What are they," says Illya.
Napoleon thinks about Illya's face when he first bites into a fairy cake. He thinks that yes, that is something he would like to see.
"After you," he says, gesturing to the door.
v.
When they find Illya, he is strapped down to a chair and his cheek is bruised so dark, it appears smudged with soot. His head wobbles back and forth as if he's trying to stay awake. His eyes are cloudy. He's staring up at the biochemist asking him questions with guarded confusion. He's alive, which is the sort of painful shock that Napoleon could get used to.
The look on his face when he sees Napoleon step in through the door, though. That look—it's the same one. It's the damn same one as London, and it hits Napoleon like a freight train in the chest. Napoleon forces a smile and presses his finger against his lips.
"I think we're ready for another round of questions," says the biochemist.
Illya straightens in the chair, as if he is a school boy about to recite. "I think not," he announces. "Cowboy and chop-shop girl are here to rescue me."
Napoleon is going to murder him—right after he saves his life.
vi.
There is very little blood. A few track marks on his forearm—a crust of maroon around his ear. All things considered, Napoleon has given Illya more marks than these mad men, and he's beginning to feel good again as he's cutting the restraints. The biochemist is unconscious and truly, it hadn't been a struggle, even forewarned. The strange, deepening dread that knocked him off balance starts to recede.
"Ready to get out of here?" he asks. "Miss Teller is anxious to see you."
Illya says, "I am very glad to see you." Then he adds, "I will be very glad to see her. I am glad she did not come into the room, though."
Napoleon pauses, sliding the last strap from around Illya's chest. He takes Illya's chin in hand and turns his face this way, that way, back again.
"Your pupils are dilated," he says. "Did they give you something?"
"Yes," Illya says, his accent thick and mangling. "Three needles while I was conscious. This last needle—it was different. Had stronger effect."
"Having seen you after two glasses of wine, I'm not surprised. You're a lightweight, Peril."
Illya laughs.
He laughs, full-body and loud, and Napoleon has never heard Illya offer more than a sardonic chuckle or smug hah. The sound sets all of Napoleon's alarms off, even as something newly hardwired into his body floods him with dopamine, the sheer and unfettered pleasure of hearing Illya's fill the space around them. He plies Illya out of the chair and takes on more of his weight than he's prepared to, but it's all in some kind of automatic drive, the motions of their escape.
"I make poor decisions with alcohol," Illya says, sounding very satisfied to have said it. "Very poor decisions."
"That," Napoleon says, "is very good to know."
"Don't think you can trick me," Illya tells him. He pushes his mouth against Napoleon's hair, and that is far too odd, something is very wrong, something fantastic or—not.
Napoleon grips him around the waist and decides to drop this in Gaby's lap. She has a better moral compass than Napoleon, and she probably loves Illya, in the same way that Napoleon does but nicer.
vii.
He's acting drunk, Gaby mouths at him.
"I know," says Napoleon. "He says they've injected him with drugs. He said it's having a strong effect."
Wrapped in a wool blanket on the bench of the boat, Illya looks up at them both. His appearance hasn't changed from that of a man on the brink of falling asleep, but he's stayed with them, following their volley of words. "Are we going home now?" he asks.
Gaby presses his shoulder. She hasn't stopped touching him since Napoleon half-carried him through the entrance of the facility. "We're going back to London," she assures him. "The plane should be waiting for us."
"I don't want to go to my apartment," says Illya. "I like the hotels better."
"Er," says Napoleon.
"Because we are together," Illya adds.
Gaby opens her mouth, then closes it. She looks at Napoleon.
Napoleon shrugs.
Bending down to him, Gaby cups his uninjured cheek. "Illya," she says, not tender but kind, "we can be together at your apartment, too. If you want us to stay with you?"
"Yes," says Illya, and his countenance is spellbound, distractingly naked. There is more heart caught and flayed open in his eyes than Napoleon is entirely comfortable with seeing.
Whatever they were working on at the facility, Napoleon thinks, it had better burn with the rest of its walls. What it is giving them—this gift—he'd wanted them to earn it, this time.
It is supposed to be Peril working for it, but Napoleon has gotten it so wrong. He has completely misunderstood his own intentions. He's never had to go the hard way, to put in the time, and now even that has been taken from them; but they will be careful, and grateful, and good to him. They have the capacity.
Gaby, as if she reads his mind, kisses Illya on the bridge of his nose. "I think instead," she says, "we ought to go to mine."
"Yes," says Illya, trying to keep his eyes from crossing. He blinks at her rapidly. "That is better."
When Gaby smiles and steps back, Napoleon leans in and kisses the exact same patch of skin. He's rewarded with a muted cowboy, and at least some things he has gotten right.
viii.
The boat trip back to mainland is punctuated with sudden bursts of vocalization from Illya's bench: he complains the waves are too choppy, that he can drive the boat better, that the moon is too bright. He also recites poetry in Russian as he stares down at the light skipping across the water. He tells Gaby she is beautiful and strong and modern, and he doesn't want to ever ruin that.
"Have you tried not talking?" Gaby asks.
Illya hesitates. "Do you not want me to talk?" he asks, and quiets.
Gaby covers her mouth and looks away, so that only Napoleon can tell that she's gutted. She recovers and squeezes Illya's hand. "Have you really never learned to dance?"
"My mother used to dance with me," he says, eyes hooded with sleep. "When I was a child. Dancing is for children."
"Your mother obviously didn't think so," Gaby says, even though Napoleon wishes he could stop her. He tucks in close to Illya's other side, for damage control. The last time he brought up the woman, breakfast had ended up on the floor.
"You remind me of my mother," Illya says, tracing the fall of her hair.
Gaby frowns at him.
"Not sure that's what she wants to hear, Peril," says Napoleon, feigning lightheartedness. "It's not the most romantic line. It's not even a romantic line."
"She did what she had to," Illya continues, like he hasn't heard a word they've said. His head knocks gently against Napoleon's when the boat turns, and he seems a thousand miles left behind them. "She was very—beautiful. And good. She was a good mother. They say things about her. I had to look at those men and say nothing. But she was good, and she kept me safe."
Napoleon squeezes his knees tightly. He understands all at once, and he wishes he didn't.
"She always kissed my forehead three times," says Illya. "To bring us good fortune." He touches his own forehead, as if searching for the luck.
"I'm sorry," says Napoleon, and it's inadequate and it covers so little of what it needs to. He's sorry about what he said before. He's sorry about what he understands now. He's sorry that she's lost to them.
Illya turns to him. His eyes are so blue, even in the night. He buries his face in Napoleon's shoulder and inhales, and he stays there for the rest of the ride.
ix.
The plane is not waiting. The plane is grounded due to mechanical error and not even a truly decent German mechanic, who has dabbled in more than a few automobiles, can do much to speed the repairs. Gaby taps her fingers impatiently as she listens to Waverly over the telephone, glancing at Napoleon and Illya as if she expects them to disappear. "Understood," she says, and hangs up.
"Looks like you get your hotel room after all," she tells Illya. "We won't fly out until tomorrow. Do you need a doctor?"
Illya scoffs. It's so much like himself that Napoleon could punch him in relief.
"Tongue's a little loose," he says. "Do you have a wrench, chop-shop girl?"
Gaby wags her finger at him. "Tempting, tempting."
Illya smiles at her. The novelty is still new enough that Napoleon shifts, feeling it curl hot and full in his belly. He wants to bite that smile. He wants to taste it.
"I'll call for a cab," he says, clearing his throat.
(He doesn't entirely hide the huskiness, though. He can hear Illya behind him as he takes the phone from Gaby, saying, "I like his voice very much. You do, too, yes?" And she's laughing, laughing, laughing, and it is going to be okay.)
x.
Napoleon buys out a suite on U.N.C.L.E.'s dime: lavish, robin egg blue curtains and suede sofas with brass buttons, a mirror-backed mini-bar, ornate lamps speckled with veins of silver, a bed that can fit two people with ease, three with some intimacy. What Waverly had said before—his mild emphasis on commitment—the way he'd eyed Napoleon—he must know, and Napoleon gets a sulky twist of satisfaction from making him pay for it. As if Napoleon has any intention of going anywhere. As if Napoleon could leave, even if he wanted to.
He closes the door behind them and watches Gaby lead Illya to the sofa, drop him down, peel the blanket from his shoulders. What tethers Napoleon is intangible and grounding. It is a very short leash held by a very tall man and a woman with pistons clacking behind her teeth.
"Napoleon, get him some water," Gaby says. Her tone brooks no argument and he wouldn't dream of disappointing.
Illya presses into her hands, his eyes closed and lashes lit thin with gold against the lamplight. He takes a steadying breath, as if he's bracing himself for the second she lets go. She doesn't.
Napoleon goes and gets the water.
He chucks his tie in the bathroom and hangs it with the robe. Rolls up his shirt sleeves, unbuttons the top to give himself some air. Gaby glances up at him when he re-enters the main suite room and raises an eyebrow. Napoleon lifts the glass: see how I've been a good boy.
Illya says, "I am so thirsty." It sounds like gravel, like unfinished gems in the palm of Napoleon's hand.
He swallows, harder than he means to. "Wet your whistle, Peril," he says, handing over the glass, taking that extra heartbeat to ensure Illya doesn't drop the cargo. "Are you hungry? I've had service here before, maybe four years past. They had a peppercorn marbled ribeye good enough to make a grown man cry."
Illya drinks deeply, wetness gathering at the corner of his mouth. He drains the glass in one go, throat working. He gasps when it's gone; it's a nice gasp. The kind that goes to Napoleon's cock, despite himself.
"I think I would not want to eat alone while you watch me," Illya says. "That would be embarrassing to me."
Napoleon rubs his face and looks at Gaby. From the dark well of her eyes, she's imagining it, too, and putting it aside. Another day—a safer time, to sit back and indulge in watching him eat at their pleasure.
"More water?" he offers instead.
Illya hesitates, studying them both. He holds out the glass to Napoleon but doesn't let go. Their fingers are warm and pressed together, smudging the glass. "I am perhaps making a mistake," Illya says, halting. "This is best weathered—alone?"
Gaby sits next to him and takes his free hand, holding him by the wrist. "You aren't going to be left alone," she says, kissing his pulse point. She keeps her eyes open and on him. "And Napoleon will get you more water."
"All the water you want," Napoleon agrees, feeling his ears burn because this is not how he seduces. This isn't his suave, slick dance number, the coin-operated lies that always do their job. He's out of his element like this. But he goes to get the damned water.
When he's back, Gaby is stroking Illya's hair at the base of his neck. Illya, for his part, looks terrified and disturbed and happy.
"Go easy on him," Napoleon chides her, settling down into the cushion on his other side. He gives Illya the glass.
Gaby lifts her chin. "Don't you mean us?" she asks.
"I wouldn't be opposed," says Napoleon.
"Nothing about either of you is easy," Illya tells them. He drinks, slower than before, savoring each swallow. He taps the glass and the water ripples, and Napoleon realizes he does this on purpose just to see how it will move. "But compared to before?" Illya shakes his head.
"Nice to know we're preferable to the KGB," says Napoleon. "Tell me, how do we rank next to Stalin?"
He is ignored. "I don't understand you and you make me very angry," Illya says, staring at the coral pink carpet. "I think you do these things on purpose. But it does not preclude that I love you."
The world goes swimmy. Napoleon blinks a few times at the coffee table done in blue lacquer and silver trim. He wipes his mouth. He fidgets with his hands in his lap.
Gaby says, softly, "Those are big words, Illya."
"I know," he says. "Do not worry. I don't think I will say them again."
xi.
He thinks he is being kind to them.
He thinks he's giving them a way out.
There is an extraordinary emptiness in Napoleon, as if someone has scooped out the tacky tangle of his emotional intimacy and thrown it away, an internal sphere where he has perfect control. The strange calm is what deceives him—he's so rarely been truly angry—he barely feels his hands curl into fists, his jaw set, his teeth grit. He shouldn't be angry. Why? Why, when Illya has given them exactly what he believes they want to hear?
(Because it isn't—because no one should say they love Napoleon as if it were an obituary, a black-and-white printed mistake.)
xii.
Gaby's lips are pursed. She looks as ill-tempered as Napoleon feels, and twice as likely to do something about it. It would be easy to let her call the shots and lead the show. But she's been doing that, and it's led them to here, and Napoleon has to step into the game at some point and lay out his cards.
"Peril," he says, breezy and false, "I don't think that's something we can unhear."
Illya makes a face, like he wants to scowl at him but can't. "No, is easy. I do this for most of what you—when you say—I do this thing—" He stops. It is a sobering reminder and confirmation of what the drug has done to him, because Illya had been trying to make a joke, or something like one, and he can't. Not when it's untrue.
And now, Illya seems to realize, as well. He shrinks into the sofa, which is comical given his size.
The wariness waylays some of Napoleon's temper. He exhales heavy. Rubs his face. "Illya," he says, the name a rarity on his tongue, "if you can be honest with us, we can be honest with you."
"Maybe that's the ticket," says Gaby. "Maybe this would be better if we were on even level." She runs her fingers through Illya's hair, traces the curve of his ear. She's thinking quickly on her feet, assessing and putting them back together in different ways. That expression—he's come to adore it. "What do you think, Illya? Should we each get a question that we must answer truthfully? I get to ask a question of you. Napoleon gets to ask a question of you. And you," she kisses his cheek, "ask a question of us."
Illya shakes his head. "I don't like games."
"It's not a game, Peril, unless only one of us stands to win." Napoleon presses their thighs together and curls his hand over Illya's knee into the heat of him. Immediately Illya tenses up, but he can't hold it, not for long. Instead, he makes an unidentifiable noise and relaxes between them.
"It's more like chess," Napoleon says. "Playing for a greater intellectual understanding and achievement. Finding new choices to make."
"Even in chess, only one color wins," says Illya.
"Then why do you play against yourself?" Gaby asks, unbuttoning his collar for him. Illya catches her hand, but when she stares him down, he doesn't stop her. Her fingers dip into his collarbone and map a thread-spun scar.
"One question," says Illya, hoarse.
"Just one," she confirms.
"Please ask me first," he says, and his hands are shaking. "Yours will be hardest."
Someone with a cart rolls down the hallway and they all tense, waiting. The wheels bump over the carpet. The cart takes its time, and then is gone. At this moment, Napoleon realizes Illya's hands are trembling more violently and he takes them, without thinking, without cause. He squeezes them between his own and digs Illya's watch into his wrist as a reminder to stay in the moment.
xiii.
In the hotel room, the computer disc a grotesque weight between them, Napoleon had almost shot the man.
He had almost shot him, and instead he'd thrown him the watch and seen Illya's eyes thaw from winter. In a single act, the rage was derailed, the intention drained like spoiled milk down the sink. Illya, when he looked back up from his wrist, had been ready to listen. He had been ready to trust. The threat of the Gulag remained on his back, but he stopped, and he gave over, and he had given Napoleon the lead.
It's only a watch, Napoleon had wanted to say. That kind of weakness will get you killed, Peril.
In hindsight, Napoleon's instincts are spot on. When he imprints the watch in Illya's wrist bones, he sees the quiet descend on him, the way manic energy dissipates like cigarette smoke swept away by a passing train. He wonders if the sour-faced handler from the KGB knew about this trick.
The sick-blooded fury that leaks into his arteries at the idea means he must never, ever ask.
xiv.
Illya is not wrong. Somehow Napoleon had expected Gaby's question to be glib, to fall from her like a curse, much in the way his own initial instinct demands. Or maybe, Napoleon is still waiting for them to fall back into their teasing.
But Gaby unbuttons Illya's shirt with the same quiet content that Illya had once rubbed her feet: she knows the weight and worth of what's given to her. She places her palm against Illya's sternum, twitches her fingers in a way that Napoleon recognizes—trying to find his heartbeat—shaping his breaths into her fist. "Illya, you don't have to answer a question if you don't want to." She pauses. "Or can't."
"I understand," says Illya.
"Very well." Gaby draws the words into her on a whistle and lifts her chin. "Illya, how can we make you happy?"
Napoleon immediately understands why Illya asked Gaby to go first. It is the worst of all questions. It's not even one Illya would know to ask, to prepare for, and what does it say that Napoleon would have to admit to the same? He reaches for Gaby, unable to help himself, and his thumb strokes the scratchy pantyhose over her kneecap. Now that he is allowing himself to touch, he cannot stop. He wants to be on the carpet, learning the dimples in her legs.
We almost left you alone in Berlin, he thinks. The enormity of the idea is staggering.
Between them, Illya is as still as dead things are. It's a good thing Gaby has her hands on him—she pinches his throat lightly. "Breathe," she says.
Illya stutters, and does.
"I don't know if I can answer that," he says, the English almost mangled to the point of incomprehension.
Napoleon smiles suggestively. "Too many possible answers?" When Illya looks pained, he softens, apologetic. "You heard her, Peril. If you can't answer, if that's not something you're able to articulate, it's no disservice to us. She's asking because you're not the easiest read in the room. And we do want to make you happy," he adds, because why the hell not, in for a penny.
Illya looks at Napoleon. He says nothing. Convulsively, he squeezes the black leather band around his wrist, milking the color out of his veins.
"Look at us, being so truthful," says Napoleon. "What do you know? I could get on board with this. How's this one for size—I, personally, would steal anything you wanted to have for yourself. I would even put it back where it belonged if you were angry as a hornet afterward."
"Is that so?" asks Gaby, speculative.
"Are you getting some ideas?" Napoleon asks her, pleased.
Illya looks between them and the exasperation is welcome, familiar, and transformative. He says, "No one is letting Solo steal anything. That is unprofessional and we are now law enforcement."
"Tell me then," says Napoleon. He lean in, suddenly serious. "Tell me what we can do for you."
Gaby glances at him with unmistakable approval. That must have been well-done, then.
Maybe because it's been rephrased as an order—maybe because he's afraid Napoleon actually will go out thieving into the night if he can't answer—Illya makes a pensive sound and considers it. He covers Gaby's hand, still on his chest, with his own. He makes a few aborted attempts at speaking, then shakes his head.
"Back in Istanbul," he says. "I was happy then. The first time we took a room together. You didn't ask me, and I would have said no. But I was also glad." He closes his eyes, as if that makes it easier. "Watching the boats sail in. You were both drinking. I had nothing to worry about except that, and how you looked at me."
He says, and it's like a torrent, the clean relief of rain, "I was happy the first night when you were dancing and you wanted a partner. I did not think I could be that partner. You took my hands. I was happy in London, when we went to dinner and told stories about our handlers. Cowboy almost tricked us into not paying the bill. I was so angry—and I was happy."
Napoleon is going to steal him something, anyway. This is unbearable.
"I was happy we worked so well together," says Illya. His shoulders gradually go lax, his tension eroding, crumbling at their heels. He can look at them now. "I was happy when you came for me tonight. I am..."
"With just that?" Gaby asks, a fissure as fine as a needle in her voice.
"Just that?" Illya asks. "My handler in the KGB tasked me with keeping you trapped behind the wall. He tasked me with killing Cowboy if I couldn't retrieve the disc from him." He locks his fingers between Gaby's, as if he needs the anchor, as if he's aching for it. "But for now, I am able to keep you. For now, I can wake up some mornings and know what it is to see the knots you've made of the sheets. This is..."
"I think what Miss Teller is trying to say," Napoleon tells him, "is that you can have more."
"So you tell me," says Illya. "But you asked what you could do to make me happy."
It's more than he's ever heard Illya say in one stretch, but Napoleon is hungry for more. Words may not be enough. It may not even be enough to lay him down and draw all of his words out with tongue and teeth. Napoleon may need to learn additional languages—stretch time out across the years they yet have—keep a written ledger that breaks down the meaning between syllables, decodes the apparent simplicity.
"Is it okay?" Illya asks Gaby.
"Is it okay," repeats Gaby, leaning in to kiss him long and deep. She pushes him back into the sofa upholstery with her weight and urgency. Even for Illya, it is answer enough.
xv.
There are at least four expensive, historically significant chess sets that Napoleon has come across in his career of acquisition. He remembers exactly where he sold each of them. He knows how to reacquire at least two, with minimal fuss.
He also knows some books—not his usual trade, but Napoleon has seen the way Illya breathes in the scent of old tome—the reverent care he uses to turn pages, how cautious he is of creasing spines—books would be easy to get and have several hours worth of payoff, and Illya may not even become suspicious because paper, how much could it truly have cost them?
The first time Napoleon pauses in front of a painting in a gallery in London and thinks, He would hang this in the bedroom, is perhaps the moment he realizes he's far surpassed the point of no return. She would love it, he thinks, imagining Gaby curling her hair around a fingertip and smiling up at the acrylics. The thickness on his tongue surprises him. The sharp, addictive desire to take and build the daydream out of what materials he has access to is brutal, a need he had thought was growing dormant and staid.
From then on, every necklace is one that Gaby may wear. Every priceless lamp could brighten the apartment they do not even own or share. Napoleon keeps his sticky fingers to himself.
(But he continues to collect in his mind, and they always laugh at him in those daydreams. They laugh and they roll him into bed and Napoleon learns what it is to hoard.)
xvi.
By the time Gaby lets him up for air, Illya's cheeks are crabapple red and his mouth is bitten to match. He rakes his hair back, unsteady. He's trying to appear disgruntled, but he's not hiding the wobble of his smile very well. It changes the shape of him. "You're always leading me," he says. "Chop-shop girl."
Gaby faux-bites his nose. "You don't know what you're doing. If I don't teach you the steps, you'll bruise my toes."
"You are not going to slap me again," says Illya, squinting at her in suspicion. "I will not allow it."
"Now that is very unfair," says Napoleon, wetting his own lips. "I've gotten lost in this conversation."
"I did slap him," Gaby admits, wiggling her shoulders in a way that proclaims she would like out of her dress. Napoleon deliberates between what he would enjoy more—hearing the story behind Illya's wariness or shimmying that zipper down Gaby's spine—but he hasn't forgotten the answer he's owed or the way his gut had corkscrewed when Gaby got her nails into Illya's cheek and held him in place. The faint imprint of crescent moons rapidly deteriorates, at home with the scar nesting next to Illya's eye.
Illya looks at him. He reaches up and touches his cheek, like he knows exactly what Napoleon is hungering after. When he raises an eyebrow at Napoleon, it speaks volumes.
"Don't look at me like that. I'm waiting my turn," says Napoleon. "Ladies first. That's one of the golden rules."
"You don't listen to rules," Illya says.
Gaby plucks the empty water glass from the table and leans back into the sofa arm, pressing the cool surface to her temple. She smiles at them. "He does when he makes them. Now you had a question for Illya, didn't you, Solo?" The emphasis on his last name is teasing and low, a deeper register. "I think you've had a question since the moment you met him."
In fact, Napoleon has an entire rolodex of questions he'd like to ask, given that Illya is at their mercy and beck and call: loaded dice for which he'll pay, feathers to add to his cap, the earnest desire to find something gleaming and beautiful that can remain all his own, a piece of Illya to pocket. None of these questions are safe. They are wasteful or draw tight at the throat. He doesn't want to take from Illya those things he can ill-afford to give. He doesn't want to cheat.
It isn't that Napoleon believes he's a bad man, per se. It's only—being with them, he is aware on the periphery that he could be a better one.
"Well, let's see now. Let me take a gander at you," he says in all seriousness. He cups the side of Illya's neck and guides him, and this is how he discovers the seashell smooth patch of skin behind Illya's ear, the bristle of shadow at his jaw, how a man can be two different faces at once. Illya tracks his gaze, frowning as if he's worried about what judgments Napoleon might make.
Oh, Napoleon knows better than to make assumptions (or maybe he doesn't). But if he pays enough attention, someday he can decipher Illya Kuryakin.
Today, he only needs to ask the question to do so.
Temptation wars but slinks into insidious underbrush. Napoleon gives Illya a tender, punctuated kiss to chase its heels. It's the kind of kiss he doesn't often bother with in bed, so he's out of practice, but Illya stiffens and then sags, falls into Napoleon with the same errant clumsiness he uses to pick locks. If he doesn't know what to do with a woman, he's completely off in dark waters with a man. But he tastes like Gaby's lipstick and tepid water and the metallic of another human's iron—and Napoleon will teach him, anyway—he'll lick into his mouth and show him where those hands can go—the world is their oyster and tonight the first of many, if Napoleon takes the house.
He kisses Illya again: matter-of-fact benedictions on his chin, his jaw, his forehead. He nearly kisses him three times there. Pauses on the second, presses their heads together, breathes in his air.
"I think I've got my question," says Napoleon. "Want to take a guess first?"
"No," says Illya, the word a blotted ache against him.
"No? You're all work and no fun, Peril."
"No," says Illya, "I want you to kiss me again. And again." He chokes on it, but he says it.
Napoleon's stomach swoops and he wants. With something unholy, he wants.
"We have plenty of time for that," says Gaby, pragmatic. Her knee bumps into Illya's side. From the flush high in her ears, she's not untouched by his need, but Napoleon finds this is a secret of women: they bask in the wanting and spend slow, an unraveling sun that does not know how to die. In burning out, they are reborn.
Napoleon leans back to give Illya some space. She's not wrong; if he gets wound up now, it won't be long until he's got them both sunk in the pillows. He raises one finger: a moment please.
They give him a moment. They do not even tease him about it.
He exhales, hyperaware of the scent of his own sweat, the salt of sea on the both of them. "That's a promise I'll hold you to, Miss Teller," he says. "I don't know if you appreciate the strength of will I'm exerting right now."
Gaby hooks her lip between her teeth, spearing her smile. "You might be surprised," she tells him, knees sliding together. Her hips shift against the cushion.
He can concede that.
Caught on the line between them, Illya taps his fingertips on his thighs, slow and precise, perhaps keeping time to the flinches of his pulse, perhaps to that same music only he can hear. It's getting so that Napoleon can tell the difference in that nervous tic; for the time being, it is bringing him some measure of comfort.
"My question," Napoleon says, "is a little more practical."
xvii.
His father's nature is to be thrifty from the cradle to his grave. He is a man who patches the holes in his shoes and darns his work clothes until the fabric frays, splitting under the needle. For lunch, he only ever eats the same sandwich. For breakfast, he won't give so much as a penny for coffee if he can produce something of a similar composition using hot water and old beans. They are not poor, of course, and Napoleon lives well and happily and fat in his cheeks, but it is easy to forget.
What he tells Napoleon is this: be a little wise, and a lot careful. The careful is so that even when you aren't wise, you sure seem it.
He's not talking about money. He's talking about Napoleon's mother, or what was once Napoleon's mother. She is gone from them like a cut-out paper doll, leaving nothing but space in which to imagine. Maybe she's with another man now. Maybe she's living it up in the Big Apple and eating more than tomatoes on bread. Maybe she has another shiny sweet boy that she'll send off to war, and maybe Napoleon palms a cigarette off of his corpse, and maybe he has her eyes but he can't remember.
But Napoleon's old man has always done right by him. So Napoleon stays in the gray threadbare stage of Europe after the war turns, and he is a little wise, but mostly he is a lot careful. Every girl that gets in with Napoleon Solo knows—it's one hell of a night, yessir, one hell of a night. One hell of a night and the best taste in shoes, but that's because he's a walker. He'll kiss and he'll tell and he'll walk out the window as if he were never there at all.
(But then Gaby dumps a cup of Scotch-laced water over his head on the beach. She flourishes it, triumphant. She kicks sand at his belly and he has no feet under him at all, only waves yanking at his ankles, only eroding land sinking low.)
xviii.
And Illya—when does Napoleon know?
Is it the lonely, besotted way he watches Gaby when she pulls Napoleon into the surf? Or does it go further back, seeding in the moment Napoleon breaks the surface of the water with Illya's stuttered heartbeat under his palm, or worse, the ghostly lines of light crosshatching the bleak ocean and illuminating Illya against its backdrop? In Mombasa, Illya calls them both my problems and it sends a charge down Napoleon's lumbar.
In Egypt, Illya insists on cleaning all of Napoleon's guns, as if he's not any good at it himself. "Watch and learn, Cowboy," he says, wearing his hat despite the curdling hot sun. Sweat makes his hair damp, his broad shoulders pink.
Napoleon sits back and watches and thinks about fairy cakes. His drink sits in his lap, untouched, a sign of the end of days.