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“Illya move!”
Illya spins, struggling to keep his balance on the spine of the roof to see Napoleon- sprinting light footed across the shingles heels chased by gunfire. His suit jacket is gone, waistcoat buttons popped. A crooked gash traces in a bloody zigzag across his temple- bisecting his eyebrow.
“Gaby-“
“Safe!” Napoleon seizes his arm and drags him along after him- and Illya stumbles, nearly loosing his balance. “She’s on her way to the extraction point!”
Illya runs faster then, heart thundering like a racehorse. He thinks he can taste blood in the cavern of his throat. Napoleon’s fingernails are cutting little crescents into his wrist but he doesn’t want the American to let go.
His mind flashes back to his talk with Gaby. How he had tried to explain to her how he loved her, yes, more than he could say, but that he also felt the same for Napoleon. How he wanted to hold them both close and keep them safe. How he craves their warmth... their love...
Gaby had smiled, eyes warm, and said, “I know, leibling. It’s okay.”
Maybe he should work up the courage to tell Napoleon...
Now, however they have a greater problem.
“Solo!” shouts Illya, trying to slow down, feeling as though the friction might tease sparks from his heels. “Solo, we are running out of roof!”
Napoleon makes no move to stop- if anything, he speeds up, boots pounding on the terracotta tiles.
“Solo!” yells Illya, “ Ostanavlivat’sya !” But it turns into a scream as the American hauls Illya forwards and flings him clean off the roof.
Illya flips over as he falls, limbs flailing in a rare moment of panic, air rushing into his ears- deafening him. “SOLO!”
Napoleon takes a last step and leaps into the air. For a brief second, he is framed by the glow of the moon behind him, curls floating around his pale face as he hangs, weightless, and Illya cannot help but think just how beautiful he is...
And then two immense, gleaming wings burst from his back like razor-blades, and he dives.
Illya can hear the wind whistle along the edges of the steel as Napoleon arrows for him, see the cruel glint of the edges flash in the sky.
He looks like an avenging angel.
How had Illya managed to miss those?
How had Napoleon managed to hide them?
Bozhe, u nego nachinayutsya gallyutsinatsii?...
Before his thoughts can spiral off too far, Napoleon has caught up. He’s falling with Illya now, his hands steady on the russian’s wrists. They spin, cold wind lashing their faces.
“Hold on to me!” he shouts. “And for god’s sake, keep your limbs tucked in as tight as you can!”
“Pochemu?” yells Illya, and Napoleon gives him a look full of something he is not sure he wants to read into. It has too many sharp edge, too much old pain.
“I don’t want to slice anything off!”
Illya obeys, curling in as tight as he can while he is still falling, and Napoleon pulls out of his dive with the shriek of steel and the roar of the vengeful wind in his ears. His wings arch in a powerful downstroke that sends them shooting into the air, before they unfurl as Napoleon settles into a smooth glide over the city.
He’s carrying Illya bridal style.
He’s flying.
Bozhe, how is he flying?
“Experimental?” rasps Napoleon, startled into submission for a brief moment. The grip on his arms is a firebrand, the pressure is making his fingers numb. It seems like just this morning that he had finally dared to relax, not knowing then that this was going to happen.
In hindsight... he should have seen it coming.
“Yes, Solo.” Sanders sits back in his chair, his face cool save for the barest hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth. “Experimental.”
Napoleon can’t get enough air into his lungs- his knees feel weak. His mouth dries as he takes in the photo that Sanders slides across the desk. His eyes glance off the shine of steel, the gleam of bladed edges, and all he can see is the blood.
The blood and the agony etched into the subject’s face. The pallor of the grey-tinged skin.
“No,” he says, and his voice comes out weak and shaking. “No, fuck. Sir, you can’t be serious!”
“I’m deadly serious, Solo.”
There is something hot stinging behind Napoleon’s eyes. A sharp lump in his throat. He’s so close. So, so fucking close to done. He’s behaved. Bitten his lip and followed orders. And now this...
He can’t find the strength to struggle as Sanders rises from his chair, takes Napoleon’s chin into one hand and says,
“You still owe me three years.”
“If you do this to me and I survive it,” chokes Napoleon in cold realisation, “That’s not going to matter, is it? You’ll never let me go.”
Because who would let such a feet of engineering walk? Who would relinquish a hold on an asset of this scale?
This... this is the final turn of the key in the lock on his freedom. The shackles he will have to bear for the rest of his life. Bile hits sour and dizzying in the back of his throat.
It’s over.
The realisation leaves him cold. Empty.
Sanders says nothing, only gives Napoleon a small, self-satisfied smile.
They fold up flat against his back, two narrow panes of steel running parallel down either side of his spine.
That’s the first thing Illya notices when Napoleon sets him down before settling his own feet on the ground. The backs of his waistcoat and shirt are torn, hanging to reveal the silver shining alongside the American’s pale skin.
Illya blinks, swallows. Rasps, “...how?”
Napoleon rolls his shoulders in what looks almost like a shrug. He says nothing, merely mounting the steps to the safe-house. Illya stands a moment, frozen, trying to kick-start his thought processes.
Napoleon Solo, his partner of two years, can fly .
And has never thought to mention this.
“You coming?”
Illya looks up to see the man in question holding the door. His ocean blue eyes are calculated, careful.
“Da,” says Illya, not without a little difficulty, and follows the American inside.
Napoleon turns on light as they enter the kitchen, flooding the room with a warm, golden glow, completely at odds with the cold shine of steel on his back. It reflects the garish wallpaper as Napoleon gets a trio of glasses out of the cupboard.
“Do I get explanation?” asks Illya carefully, taking the glass of scotch that his partner passes to him.
Napoleon downs his in one swallow, pulls a face, and proceeds to strip out of his tattered shirt and waistcoat. “God, I forgot how annoying this was...”
“What?”
“Usually I have these tailored around my... hm...”
“Wings?” supplies Illya, a note of accusation entering his tone. “Cowboy, why do you have wings?”
Napoleon turns to face him and Illya cannot help but stare at the thin scars that lie in pale snowdrifts all over his chest. Delicate, small little things, almost out of place on the American’s muscled form. Then Napoleon smiles, and it is crooked in all the wrong ways- sharp and ugly and bitterly amused.
“Sanders needed a guinea pig, Peril.”
This takes a moment to set in, and when it does, a blaze of rage flames to life in Illya’s chest. “You were experiment?”
“Mm,” hums Napoleon, tossing back another shot before blowing out a long breath. He leans on the counter, wincing.
Illya wants to ask him what the matter is, but then those silver wings unfurl with a cautious care and he cannot seem to get the words out.
The steel shimmers, almost iridescent and Napoleon grimaces as he flexes his shoulders, the blades of the wings rattling like vicious wind-chimes as he settles them against his back.
“Does Waverly know?” demands Illya, reaching out a hand. They looks so cold...
Napoleon catches it in his before he can touch them. Illya gets ready to apologise but the American merely laces their fingers together, almost absently. It makes Illya’s heart ache.
“I’m not sure,” says Napoleon. “Sanders might have told him...”
“Why you?” Illya brings his other hand up to cup Napoleon’s handsome face, fingers tugging at those inky curls. Cowboy leans into it, a soft sigh tugging from his lips. His eyes flutter closed for a moment, and then he says, in a voice that cracks in all the wrong places,
“Because I was expendable.”
Napoleon wakes on the twelfth day, groggy and swimming in a molotov cocktail of drugs and sedatives.
His mouth tastes like sand, his eyes ache when he squints at the too-bright room, and when the woman in the lab coat tries to speak to him it feels as though she is screwing into his ear with a drill.
She lowers her voice and gently advises him on avoiding sleeping on his back, at least for now, and taking it easy with fluids.
She says the surgery went off without a hitch, and Napoleon thinks he might have thrown up in his mouth.
His back feels numb. Maybe it’s due to all the drugs, but there is a faint pain hiding under there. Like an itchy bone that you can’t quite reach.
His chest is bare, bound about in pale bandages, what feels like pads of gauze pinioned to his back on either side of hi spine.
He’s not restrained.
But somehow he knows that the door to his room won’t open if he were to try.
Later, when the woman is gone, Napoleon lets his tears fall. They burn all the way out, his sobbing a broken, wrenching noise like some kind of wounded beast.
One who got far too drunk on the lure of freedom.
——
He doesn’t see Sanders for three months.
It’s just the team of surgeons and scientists who are far from the worst people he’s ever met...
They ease him through healing. And help him regain his balance. His health.
The woman, Kate, is the first to help him extend and flap his new wings. He nearly cuts her arm off but she laughs and shrugs, saying,
“Growing pains, Solo. It’s all just growing pains.”
He likes her.
It’s hard not to.
She and one of the scientists, Reice, finally manage to get him airborne two months after his operation.
He would be lying if he said that it hadn’t felt exhilarating to have the wind tousle his curls- to feel the power coiling in his muscles. Even if the outdoor area was enclose by a steel mesh like that if an aviary. It would hardly do if he could run away after all... but, It had not been a bad afternoon.
It was simply that Sanders had shown up to sour it.
The satisfaction in the man’s eyes had been enough for Napoleon to debate swooping and shredding him to bloody ribbons.
He hadn’t, of course.
He lands, wings folding to disappear into two silver plates parallel on either side of his spine, and crosses his arms.
“Sir.” His voice is flat. Cold.
Sanders gives him a once over, then smirks. “You’ll do.”
“But that is against law,” says Illya, not sure if he wants to be sick or angry. “Experimentation without consent?”
“You’re forgetting I’m a convicted criminal, Peril, love,” says Napoleon softly, and he squeezes Illya’s hand in his. “We... we don’t really get a say.”
Love... Illya’s breath catches. The American’s face is so close to his... he smells warm, like almonds and smoke, and Illya cannot take the look of old sadness in his beautiful eyes any more. He frees his hand, takes Napoleon’s face into his calloused palms and kisses him.
It is soft and sweet and so, so much better than Illya has pictured. And Napoleon lets out a soft sound that might be a moan before he is kissing back, fierce and desperate, hands finding Illya’s waist. Illya bites at Cowboy’s lip and then Napoleon’s lips part and it is hot and silky and bozhe, If Illya dies now he will die happy.
Then Napoleon pulls away, voice hoarse. “Gaby,” he says.
Illya smiles softly. “She knows.”
“And she doesn’t mind?”
“Nyet.” Illya pulls him closer and kisses him again, and to his amusement, Napoleon’s wings rattle and give a small flap as he arches his spine, trying to get even closer to the Russian. Napoleon lets out a breath and Illya feels it on his cheek.
Bozhe, He can get drunk on this- kissing Napoleon.
But of course the universe disagrees, because then the front door is swinging open and Gaby is trudging in, looking ruffled but otherwise unharmed.
She locks it behind her, smirks at the two of them, eyebrows raised in an expression of ‘I knew it,’ then she stops.
Her dark eyes go wide and Illya realises why at the exact same moment that she rocks on her heels, brows raising skyward.
“Solo,” says Gaby, polite but with an undertone that sounds a lot along the lines of, you better be about to tell me or I will murder you myself. “Why the fuck do you have wings?”