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Illya is unexpectedly good at pretending to like art.
They’re tracking a mark in a gallery, some man who likes bad art and dead fascists, and it’s starting to become a problem. Gaby is supposed to make contact, Illya and Napoleon standing around for support, except that Illya is being very distracting.
Napoleon is used to covering for him, used to lying his way through events and galleries. He is used to ignoring Illya until the moment he is about to blow, then stepping in and saving the day and getting Illya to hit him, instead.
He is not used to watching Illya stare wistfully at paintings. He’s not used to following him, as far as he can, to look for whatever it is that Illya sees in the art.
Every man has his limits, and Napoleon hits his after Illya has been looking at the same painting for nearly ten minutes. Napoleon looked at it before and decided it looked like nothing more than tree bark resembling a shattered mirror. He saw nothing in it and is obsessing over what Illya could possibly be thinking about.
Illya wants to start a fight, maybe. That would make sense, if he were standing in place trying to calm himself down before he made a scene.
It hits fifteen minutes and Napoleon can’t stand it anymore. “Cubism?” Napoleon says as he slides up to Illya. He knows he shouldn’t, but that has never stopped him before. “Never been my style. Some people enjoy it, but it feels incredibly childish and simple.”
“I like it.” Illya says, which absolutely cannot be true. He is likely fuming, on the brink, even though his tone is calm and his hands are relaxed at his sides.
Napoleon decides to push because it’s better if Illya loses it at him and not the guests. Certainly not because he enjoys it. “Autorretrato cubista, and it looks nothing like him. Doesn’t even look like a person.”
“Of course you care only for appearances.” Illya chides, but something wistful in his tone catches Napoleon terribly off-guard. He turns back to the painting. “It shows who he is. Not a person. A collection of pieces.”
Napoleon’s not quite sure how to handle the softness in Illya’s eyes and the way it makes his fingers itch, so he does the only thing he’s ever been completely sure of.
He steals the painting.
***
On days with nowhere urgent to be, it usually happened like this: Illya would be up before the crack of dawn to check their security and do his morning run. Gaby would wake next, check their security, and crawl back into bed until Napoleon, who was a hedonist despite the best efforts of the army and CIA, pulled himself from bed to make breakfast. They had it well timed. Usually, Napoleon was dressed and ready when Illya came back, sweaty and breathing hard, and Gaby emerged, sleepy and warm.
Today, he’s made sure to rise early. Gaby comes out just as he’s placing the finishing touches on breakfast. She reaches greedily for the mug of coffee Napoleon has ready and warm from her and drinks deeply from it.
He waits until she has set the mug down to place a plate in front of her. She won’t thank him, never does, the same way he does not thank her for stealing cars and fixing ovens. He starts to tell her a story about learning to make eggs benedict from a chef in Paris that is partially untrue. She doesn’t respond, except to point out where his lies are too obvious for belief. He doesn’t mind and prepares another plate.
It’s ready when Illya comes in through the front door. He takes two pieces of toast off of it before disappearing into the next room. He’ll be back for the rest, trusts Gaby and Napoleon enough to believe that there will be food to come back to, so Napoleon sets it on the counter next to Gaby.
Napoleon’s not really sure when the rhythm of it became normal. He’s not sure what it means.
“Solo.” Illya says from the living room of their safe house. “What is this?”
Napoleon knows what he is talking about but walks to the edge of the kitchen to look anyway. He wipes his hands idly on a towel while he looks. “Looks like Dali’s Autorretrato Cubista. Oil and collage on wood. 1926, I believe.”
Illya seems unamused. There is one piece of toast left in his hand. “What’s it doing here?”
“Well,” Napoleon steps closer. “I thought it would look nice framed by the woodwork, and it doesn’t match the color scheme in the bedroom.” Illya says nothing, only scowls, so he continues. “Aren’t you the one who says art should be admired? Now it’s with someone who will appreciate it properly.”
“It belongs in a museum.”
“No one else was even looking at it.”
“That doesn’t make it yours.”
“It’s not mine.” Napoleon gestures vaguely toward Illya. “It’s yours.”
Ilya pauses. “It is not.”
Napoleon smiles. The pause has given him away, and they both know it. Napoleon raises his hands in a feigned surrender. “Fine, if you’re so insistent, I’ll put it back.”
“No,” Illya flinches at the suddenness of his reaction. He tries to play it off as a shrug. “You went through all this trouble.”
***
The mark’s house is easy enough to break into. It’s ornate and drafty and full of artifacts, things old and beautiful organized to make their owner look important.
The illusion is thin; the desk drawers are all but empty, so Napoleon and Gaby sift through scraps of paper for names and notes. It’s a waste of time, really, and Napoleon could have guessed that after their time in the gallery.
They take what they can. Napoleon busies himself with tidying up the main room. Their plan had been to make this look like a robbery, but without anything to take it’s a little useless. When he finishes clearing the room and their presence in it, he goes to meet Gaby.
He finds her in the dining room. She’s looking up at a painting. It’s large, abstract blue horses against a yellow background. He watches her reach out and stroke the frame gently.
“It’s a Franz Marc,” She says softly. “My father loved his work.”
“Expressionism,” Napoleon says. He’s never liked it, but it’s easy to see why someone might. More importantly, he doesn’t want to see Gaby close herself off. “He had good taste.”
“The Nazis… They tried to have it all destroyed.” Her voice breaks a little as she speaks, the edge of tears pulling at Napoleon in a way he’d rather not name. “He does not deserve this.”
He wants so badly to reach for her, to pull her close and feel her cry. He feels it in his bones.
Instead, he waits until she leaves the room and removes the painting carefully from the frame.
***
They’re two countries away by the time they’re in a safe house with walls big enough to fit Tower of Blue Horses. Gaby and Illya are posing as a married couple in order to infiltrate a right-wing terror group emerging in Italy. They’re anti-American, and Napoleon’s Italian accent isn’t good enough to pass muster.
It works just fine for him, because it takes several hours to get the six-foot frame from the craftsman’s shop, into the apartment, and on the wall.
It’s worth it for the way the gilded frame reflects the blues and yellows of the painting. It’s even more worth it when Gaby returns.
She and Illya are wrapped in each other, which they’ve been doing more and more recently. It twists sharp and hot in Napoleon’s gut to see it every time but he can never seem to look away. He can’t find it in him to hold it against them, either.
Napoleon catches the moment Gaby notices the painting. Her eyes go wide and her hand tightens on Illya’s arm. She looks at it, eyes darting frantically, like she’s not sure what she’s seeing. “Solo,” She says, breathless and reverent. “Is this…”
He nods. “The real thing.”
When Gaby throws her arms around him, Napoleon stumbles a little. She presses a kiss to his cheek, on her tiptoes with her entire body pressed against him, and he thinks his knees might give out. Then she is gone and back staring at the painting.
Napoleon can’t decide if he's glad she let go or not.
She strokes the frame lightly. It’s nice to see art being adored the way it ought to, Napoleon thinks, and that is the only reason his breath is sticking in his throat. Gaby grabs the record player from the next room and barely leaves sight of the painting until they have to leave again.
Illya doesn’t even scold him for it.
***
The dinner is supposed to be his treat. They’re in Paris, with some of the best food in the world, and Gaby and Illya insist that the fried potatoes served in a newspaper cone from a street vendor is better than the internationally-acclaimed restaurant he took them to. They insult his very-expensive wines and give him shots of the cheapest vodka they can find.
Neither of his companions have developed a taste for the finer things. He’s working on it.
When they get back to the room they’re sharing, Gaby’s arm through his and Illya on her other side, they’re all tipsy enough that he’s forgotten there was something else he meant to do.
“I’m getting the music started,” Gaby says. She walks over to the radio.
“Heathens,” Napoleon says. “If you’re going to drink this much, it might as well be worth the hangover.”
“Who says it isn’t?” Illya says. Napoleon looks up and realizes that Illya has inched into the space Gaby had occupied. “Maybe we worry more about the company than the decorations, Cowboy.”
They’re on the edge of… something, almost, when Gaby yells from the next room. “Oh, look. The snow!”
Which is odd, seeing as it’s Paris in August.
It takes a moment for him to catch up, because Illya is very close to him and he can still feel the ghost of Gaby’s warmth at his side. And then he remembers the other thing; the painting he’d seen at an exhibition of impressionist art from across Europe.
Illya’s expression changes from something close and dangerous to a familiar flat stare. Napoleon feels like he has his feet under him again when he follows Illya to where Gaby is staring at the painting he’d hung over the radio.
“Which one of us is this one for?” Gaby asks Illya
Illya stares at it for a moment. “It is for me. It’s Moskvoretsky Bridge.”
The painting is of a city from the view of the bridge. There is a streetcar following a carriage and the sidewalks are packed with people. It made him think of Illya, and not just because St. Basil’s cathedral rises in the background. He’s been paying attention recently; Gaby loves the bold colors of the avant-garde, and Illya prefers softly lit paintings of ordinary people.
“It’s a Korovin, from 1914,” Napoleon says. “I thought you might like it.”
Illya’s expression is still flat and unreadable, but that same something from the gallery sparkles in his eyes. Napoleon feels a little thrill at being right on the mark.
Napoleon knows he needs to say something but he can’t quite figure out what. “You both need to trust my taste.”
It breaks the tension, at least, even if it does so by making Gaby laugh loudly and turn up the radio. As she pulls both of them into a dance, he can’t find it in him to complain.
***
Illya has taken to bringing flowers back from his morning runs. When Gaby is awake he presents them to her with a flourish. She holds them up to her face and breathes them in before she begs Napoleon to get her a vase to put them in.
(When Gaby is not awake, he will exchange them for the plate in Napoleon’s hands. Napoleon tries to think nothing of it.)
Illya is out meeting a contact, someone he apparently knows from the Russian side. Napoleon is sifting through a coded transmission Gaby intercepted that has something to do with a plot to destabilize Berlin. Gaby is sitting at the table, staring at a vase of carnations that are starting to curl and bleach at the edges. Illya will be back with something new in a few days, most likely. He never lets the table be empty for long, not if he can help it.
“They always wilt,” Gaby says sadly. “I wish I had flowers that could stay forever.”
That sticks with Napoleon enough that while he’s taking a tour of a house he’s supposed to be casing, his eyes catch on a flash of vibrant red. He looks up and there it is - a painting of flowers in a vase, the colors stark against the black background so that they almost seem to glow.
“You have a good eye,” his tour guide says. Napoleon takes a moment to remember that he’s supposed to be flirting with this woman and another to remember that she’s planning to poison most of West Berlin.
“I like beautiful things,” he says, and almost manages to make it sound normal.
“It’s Dutch. Seventeenth century.” She leans in close and Napoleon can smell her perfume. It should be nice, light and floral, but he keeps thinking that she smells nothing like coffee and engine grease, nothing like gunpowder and leather. “It cost me a lot of money.”
When Napoleon leaves in the morning, she kisses him deeply and messily while he thinks of the way Gaby’s face will light up at the painting tucked in his bag next to the data he’s taken from her desk.
***
In Florence, Gaby spends a long time staring up at the Statue of David. There’s artistic admiration and curiosity to her gaze, of course, and she traces the smooth lines and veins and perfect proportions of the giant statue. But Napoleon has never known her to be such a strong admirer of art.
His suspicions are confirmed when she looks at him from the other side of the pedestal, a small smile on her face and one eyebrow raised. They are not supposed to acknowledge each other at this point in the mission. Napoleon shoots her a smug smile anyway before looking back up at the statue.
With a few more people, and maybe a helicopter…
No. Illya wouldn’t like him calling that much attention to them. Waverly wouldn’t either.
He settles for snatching a small replica from the museum’s gift shop. He leaves it on Gaby’s nightstand. He catches her smiling at it and ignores the feeling that burns in his chest.
***
“You need to stop,” Illya says one day when the three of them enter a dusty house in Brussels and find a painting of flowers, blown large in yellow and pink.
“What?” Napoleon says, suave as ever. “Not a fan?”
“This is getting ridiculous. You see that, no?”
“Illya,” Gaby scolds, smacking him lightly on the shoulder. “He stole me an O’Keefe.”
“You are using him.”
“He likes it.”
Napoleon, suddenly finding himself wrongfooted, sputters his way into the conversation. “Sorry, using me?”
“Yes,” Illya says. “She likes art, so you steal it for her.”
“He does it for you, too,” Gaby chides.
“I’m not trying to trick him into doing it.”
“Trick me?” Napoleon protests. “No one is tricking me.”
Illya ignores him. “And I! I am trying to be the adult here, and have a conversation, and you say ‘no, no, he’ll figure it out on his own' - which he is clearly incapable of doing - and then you use him to surround yourself with fancy things.”
“Sorry, hold on.” Finally, the two of them stop bickering with each other and turn to look at him. “What am I supposed to be figuring out?”
Gaby’s face turns into a coy smile, like she knows something he doesn’t. Illya stares at him blankly, like he ought to have figured it out already. “This is your attempt to impress us.” Illya says slowly. “You are gifting all these shiny things as courtship. You are like magpie.”
Gaby tuts at him half-heartedly. “Oh, Illya, you’ll ruin all the fun.”
“It is not fun. It is annoying. It is a danger to himself, a danger to the mission, and I would like to get to the part where we are kissing.”
“Wait—“ Napoleon’s mind snags on that one. Kissing? How long had that been on the table? More importantly, how long had Napoleon wanted it to be on the table? “We could be kissing?”
Illya throws his hands up and turns toward the second bedroom. “Not right now, I am mad at you.”
As he opens the door, Gaby turns to Napoleon. “Give him a moment, he’ll come around.”
“Not if he goes in there.” Napoleon says, because he was in there earlier and—
“What is this!” Illya shouts.
Napoleon takes a few steps to stand in the doorway. There is a painting hanging on the wall between two windows. It’s a watercolor - the paper is yellowed in a way Napoleon finds lazy - of a sort of elaborately abstract windmill, all done in neat, thin, perfectly curved lines. There’s a small triangle boat with circle-headed figures at the bottom. Kandinsky’s technical skill is obvious, even if Napoleon thinks the whole display is childish.
Illya is standing in front of it, hands clenched, fuming.
“Curved tips, it’s a-“
“I know what it is.” Illya rounds on him. Suddenly they are face to face, inches from each other. “Magpie.” He spits. The way he says it sounds like a curse, like the worst kind of insult, but then Illya’s hands are on Napoleon’s shoulders, dragging him in, and —
Right. Kissing. Why hadn’t he thought of that?
***
Napoleon wakes up early. They’re in London on a mandatory rest. Technically, they all have their own rooms in various buildings across the city.
Waverly won’t say anything if two of the apartments are entirely untouched. Eventually, Napoleon guesses, he’ll stop handing them three different keys.
Napoleon crawls out of bed. It’s hard, because it’s warm and neither of his partners have woken up and it’s against his nature to be awake this early, but he has work to do. There’s a painting he carried back with them from their last mission in Spain. He’d custom ordered the ornate white frame to fit the eight-foot long painting.
Once it’s up, Napoleon finds himself glad that they usually stay here, in the apartment Gaby claims as her own. The painting is beautiful. It’s a Roman wedding, the bride veiled in white as women celebrate behind her. The ground is covered in flowers and the air is full of white smoke. Napoleon had gotten caught up in the romance of it when he’d first seen it hidden away in their mark’s house and had to see what it looked like in the light of Gaby’s living room.
He doesn’t stop looking at it as the door opens. Illya and Gaby pad toward him together.
Gaby starts laughing when she sees it. “You’re ridiculous.”
Illya wraps his arms around Napoleon’s waist from behind and speaks into Napoleon’s neck. “This was supposed to stop you.”
Gaby’s still laughing when she comes up to Napoleon’s front, kissing his jaw and burying herself in his chest. “Don’t you see, Illya? This one's for him.”
