Work Text:
Napoleon is fairly talented at sketching. He picked it up years ago, at the dawn of his criminal career, forgery being a very useful skill to have in an art thief's arsenal. Sometimes it was not enough to be charming and sly and knowledgable. He learned from real artists, from random mentors and classes he sat in on across the world, from his own naked eye and a library of knowledge on the greatest works of all time, learning to adapt his style to whatever was deemed necessary. His abilities in producing art are by no means as impressive as his abilities in, say, stealing it, but he's far from a novice.
And he rather enjoys it sometimes.
He has always delighted in coveting things and making them his own, and capturing the images of people and places provides him a certain amount of ownership over these things. There is something comforting and therapeutic about the strokes of a pencil against thick paper, about replicating figures and shapes but with his own flair, about creating something new rather than stealing something old.
Gaby discovers this unexpected skill of his one late morning at a little outdoor café in Paris. The two of them are playing house this time, much to Kuryakin's chagrin, and are out for a lovely staged brunch while their tall Russian teammate acts the part of a tourist with his surveillance camera across the street.
Gaby is sipping bitter espresso and scanning the area from behind her oversized sunglasses when she catches him at it. She purses her lips, eyes narrowing as they glance at Napoleon's fingers curled around a small stub of charcoal, left behind by some Parisian artist at their small table. It moves, quick and efficient and almost careless, even, across the rough surface of his paper napkin. Her gaze feels hot and contemplative, aimed at the top of his bowed head.
He's sketching the small elderly woman to their left, an obvious Paris native draped in costume jewelry, as well as the two disgruntled poodles lying at her feet. The cartoonish image struck him before they had even sat down. His version is a bit too raw and crudely drawn, and he is a bit too mindless in the quick, flippant movements of his hand, but it's a rather good likeness of the lady.
His fingers are rounding out the edge of her delicate teacup, about to shade the heaviness of her aged brow, when Gaby clears her throat and peers at him over the lowered top of her glasses.
"My," she says, impressed and vaguely amused, "You never said you could draw."
"Hm?" Napoleon pauses his hand, looks at her with a smile in his eyes. "Why, you never asked, darling."
"Where did you learn?" she prods, voice deep and genuine with curiosity, the act dropped.
"Oh, here and there."
He outlines the the yawning jowls of the larger of the two sleepy canines, spares Gaby another quick glance.
"Forgery?" comes her blunt inquiry.
Napoleon drops the dark stub of charcoal and quirks a brow towards his small German teammate.
"Of course," he says, "But I am known to partake in it for pleasure at times."
Gaby leans back in her seat and lifts her small china cup for a demure sip of espresso, expression shadowed by the low brim of her hat.
"Who would've thought," she muses.
-*-
"What is that?"
It is months later, in a safe house in Prague, when Kuryakin sees Napoleon sketching. This time, he is drawing because he is bored, filling out an inaccurate image of a woman he bedded two mission ago, details altered, the source a blurry memory. She was tall, thin and deceptively delicate in appearance. The lighting in the sparse room is dim, casts shadows on the curves of her sketched body and across Illya's inquisitive face where he looks up from his chess set.
"It's a sketch, Peril," Solo replies, mockingly, not looking away from the pencil he moves across the paper.
"I can see that," the Russian responds testily. "You draw art, too? I thought you only stole it."
"I'm flattered that you think of my sketches as art."
If Gaby was here, she would likely toss in a comment at this moment. She likes to cut the tension before it pulls too taught, recognizes the posturing of two men who spent too much time alone on a knife's edge to ever fully comprehend committed companionship. Has been there, is there, herself, in a different way.
But Gaby is across the city from them, awaiting extraction elsewhere thanks to the outcome of the mission, and the two men are left tense and teetering in her absence.
Illya snorts. Napoleon expects something biting and demeaning to leave his mouth, but the other man decides to surprise him as per usual.
"Let me see," he says.
Napoleon quirks an eyebrow. Considers refusing, unhappy with the commanding tone of his companion, but instead sighs mightily and tips the sketchpad towards him. Illya leans away from his chess game (and really, how he doesn't see the metaphor of playing the black and white pieces against himself is beyond Napoleon) and takes the book from his hands, flips through some pages and lands on the most recent one.
There is intense quiet, Illya's stern study taking silent minutes while Napoleon sits back and sips at a small glass of water. He doesn't value the opinions of others much, he likes to think, not past how to best manipulate those opinions in his favor to get something, but he is curious about what is going through his Russian teammate's mind.
"Hm," the man finally says, still flipping through the copious image-filled pages. "You draw many women."
"Well they do recommend drawing what you know and love," Solo responds, automatic.
Kuryakin ignores his implications, looks at him with intense, narrowed eyes.
"You need to work on proportions more," he critiques. "Legs are too long, heads too big. And you make hands look blocky every time. Awkward. Is amateur of you."
Napoleon accepts the sketchbook back from the Russian when he moves to hand it over.
"But," Illya continues, sitting back and crossing his arms, "Is overall good work."
Napoleon gently places the closed portfolio on the small table beside him, bites down on a grin.
"Careful," he says, "That almost sounds like a compliment."
Illya is already looking back down at his game of chess, waves a hand at him like he is a particularly irritating insect.
"Do not get used to it."
-*-
Napoleon hasn't gotten heavily injured much since Rome, and it is in Canada, of all places, that the fates decide to correct this. He receives a close-range gunshot to the shoulder, bloody and painful and a bit too close to his heart. Illya drags him out of the warehouse it happens in, cursing in Russian and shooting down anything that moves. Napoleon’s gun is long gone.
There is naked concern in Gaby's eyes when they spill into the getaway car she pulls up in, harsh determination in the press of her foot on the gas petal. The tires squeal as they pull away, and gunshots ring against the metal.
A lucky hit shatters the back windshield, rains broken glass onto Napoleon where he is bleeding on the bench seat. He presses his hand harder into his shoulder, keeps his head low, and watches Illya lean out the open passenger-side window to shoot back.
"What happened?" Gaby asks, loud over the chaos of the chase.
Kuryakin ducks back into his proper seat, and the vehicle following them stops with a loud, theatric crash, tires blown out from the precise shots of the Russian's gun. The enemy's car flips dramatically, Napoleon thinks, not bothering to look, and the shots raining down on them abruptly cut off.
Illya sniffs.
"Cowboy ran his mouth again."
Solo sighs, ignores the slick hot blood running over him, the horrible pain in his shoulder and chest.
"Guilty as charged," he says unashamedly.
Gaby laughs a little.
-*-
Illya takes care of the gunshot, methods more reminiscent of a butcher than a surgeon, really, and Napoleon tells him so. It makes the Russian pull a little harder on the next stitch, expressionless, and Solo tries not to groan in pain.
"Play nice," Gaby warns, hand over the mouthpiece of the phone she is using to report the mission status to Waverly.
"Always," Napoleon replies, and sucks in another breath as the next stitch goes in.
-*-
Bored again, restricted from his usual recreational activities and sitting alone in a hotel bed, Napoleon uses the next morning to sketch. He lovingly takes out his worn portfolio, lays it gently on the white bedding beside his set of charcoal and pencils.
He considers what to draw, who to draw, comes up blank, mind as empty as the open page he stares at. Flips through several women in his head, real and imagined muses, but nothing sticks. He breathes, quiets his thoughts and the harsh pain still throbbing at his shoulder, picks up a pencil and lets his hand lead him.
The lines on the page trace a face, frame it with thick bangs, add a body clothed in a shift dress, standing on tall, flat boots. There is strength in the legs, in the small arms, strength in the dark eyes that are added, peering above lowered sunglasses.
The figure added beside the first is tall and long, stares out with sternness from beneath a flat capped hat. It’s broad shouldered and restrained, and is laying a gentle, curled hand on the shoulder of the first. Its corners are sharp.
When Napoleon puts his pencil down, his teammates stare back at him from the paper.
He swallows, tongue suddenly numb.
That's interesting, he thinks.
He is startled into movement when the hotel room door is jostled and the lock clicks, when he hears Gaby's twinkling laugh and Illya's fond voice. He smoothly shuts the book, moves it to the side and sits back, mindlessly presses one hand across himself to his shoulder, at the stitched wound a few inches from his heart.
Illya and Gaby walk in, carrying bags, greet him in their own respective ways, a wave and a short nod.
"We brought breakfast," Gaby says, placing bags on the small table across the room. Illya hands his own bags off to her so she can add them to the lot, turns and eyes Napoleon's hand pressed against his bare and bandaged skin.
"How are your stitches?" he asks tonelessly, the closest he will come to checking on his teammate.
Napoleon breathes deep, familiar air and grins.
"Savagely done," he replies, "But holding."
"Good," Kuryakin sniffs, turning to help Gaby once more, "Less paperwork if you are not dead or dying."
Gaby rolls her eyes and starts a new conversation, pulls out bottles of juice and croissants and containers of eggs and meats as she begins to bicker over something with Illya.
Napoleon watches them from across the room, lips pressed together, and allows his hand to wander from where it is spread against his chest.
It lands on the sketchbook, strokes mindlessly over the worn cover. His finger taps on it twice, and his hand falls back to the bed.
Very interesting.
-*-