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Gaby wakes with a start, as another shattering crash of thunder shakes the hotel. The U.N.C.L.E. team is back in Rome, on a mission to infiltrate Vatican City, as rumors have swirled around the intelligence communities about a potential Papal assassination during the Vatican II Council. Paul VI’s policies on mixed marriages have proven deeply unpopular with fascists and Waverly has been obliged to deploy his team with very little briefing and weak covers. Instead of the ascetic Illya Kuryakin as a priest, they have been forced to use the hedonistic Solo- at least he has some religious background, unlike the good Communist. Gaby is equally useless, and a cover as a nun is out of the question; luckily posing as an art restorer and his fiancée is not.
Solo is off somewhere in the Vatican proper, in the train of Cardinal Somebody, dressed in stark black; “a striking color, even if Vatican tailors leave something to be desired,” and Gaby and Illya are in a small three-room pension just outside the City wall with two tiny beds and ceilings so unusually low that Illya has banged his head twice in the stairwell.
Gaby lies still for a minute from where she is tucked up on the divan, surprised by the viciousness of the sounds outside. The shutters are closed, but the flashes of lightning illuminate the room, accompanied by deep, immediate booms as the thunder replies. She’s surprised that Illya is managing to sleep through this; he’s a light sleeper most times, unless he feels very, very safe. Missions don’t encourage that in him. He checks on her frequently in strange places; she will wake to see him moving restlessly about the room, or feel the blankets being tugged up to her chin as she likes them, and once or twice, his long fingers lightly brushing her hair off her cheeks.
The only place to put Illya this time (and Gaby thanks God that they didn’t have to find a place to put Solo and all his expensive, and expansive, luggage) was to shove the two miniscule beds together and fold a duvet across the join. Illya slept last night diagonally across the mattresses, rising with a crick in his neck and deep cracks in his temper. He may be a good son of Russia, but a decent bed is not viewed with the same abstemious disdain as decorative satin throw pillows.
She sits up on the couch, ready to offer some quip, or a memory about rolling in the hillside of mud during the Vinciguerra affair, but the flashes of light show her Illya isn’t in the bed. She hopes he hasn’t gone out to scout and been caught in the rain; for a man who loves hot showers and baths, he’s as grumpily fastidious as a wet-pawed cat about cold damp.
The lamp doesn’t light when she pulls the chain. The electricity is out, of course, and a particularly sudden bang from outside makes her jump about a foot off the couch and flinch wildly, heart pounding. There are candles in here somewhere, but she’ll never find them in the dark, and since they are terrible spies, no one has brought an electric torch. Feeling carefully with her feet, Gaby skirts the two suitcases trying to kill her and something that is surely one of Illya’s enormous shoes as she fumbles her way incrementally towards the window.
She pulls the curtain aside, which improves the Stygian condition of the room a little; the streetlights are on down the block, just not in their pension. As she turns from the window, her bare foot brushes something living and soft and she shrieks like a tea kettle and kicks out hard.
She’s found Illya, and in spite of her foot sinking into his vulnerable ribs, he doesn’t move. “Illya?” she asks, peering in the direction of the huddled shape below the window. The lightning obligingly flashes, and the glimpse of his face is alarming. Normally Illya’s expressions run the gamut of impassive, alternating between “irritated glare” and “faintly amused” but this is something else entirely. His eyes are wide and staring, his teeth bared in a grimace of stress. He’s sweating, his pajama top soaked, and his whole body is shaking. She can’t see if his fingers are tapping before the light is gone, but something in the posture of his body says that anger isn’t what ails him.
He doesn’t reply to her query, and she repeats herself. “Illya? What is wrong?” At his continued silence, broken only by the sound of his panting breaths, Gaby fumbles her way tenuously to her knees. Her hand grazes his thigh as she kneels, and comes away wet. He’s sweated through his bottoms too, and he’s clammy to her touch. “Are you sick?” She moves her hand to his forehead, then his cheek. Both are cold and sticky. “What are you doing down here?”
When he doesn’t answer, Gaby reaches up and fumbles with the shutter latch. She wants a good look at him and it’s the only potential source of light without setting fire to the upholstery. His hand grabs her wrist as fast as a wolf snapping a rabbit’s neck.
“No. Leave it closed.” His voice is so dull it frightens her. “Please.” The “please” breaks her heart. She’s not used to vulnerable Illya.
Abandoning the attempt to see him more clearly, Gaby brings her hands to his cheeks, wrapping them around his clenched jaw. The familiar stubble scratches her palms slightly as she strokes his face. “Are you ill?”
His head shakes in the negative under her hands; another flash and roar from outside have him recoiling, jolting back hard against the wall and Gaby realizes that he’s afraid. She didn’t think he was afraid of anything, that he could be afraid of anything. He’s an emotionless KGB construct. In the next glimpse of his tortured face, her heart wrings with pity. “Oh, Leibe.”
She reaches to snag the inadequate linens off the bed, and wraps the whole ungainly bundle around him. She can feel his hands rise to prevent her, but swaddles the covers up to his chin and simply crawls into his lap, wrapping her arms tightly around him. Where her face rests against his wet neck, she can feel him swallow hard. She has no idea if this will help or not, but it’s the only thing she can think to do for him, and she needs to do something for this man who has kept her safe through so much, at such expense to himself. No one should be this afraid alone.
He’s still shivering violently, but his cheek drops against her hair, and she can feel the heat of his exhale. Of their own volition, her lips press soft kisses against the clean sweat of his skin, and Illya shudders. In a sudden lurch, he extracts one arm and clamps it around her waist, clinging. The other is still trapped under the bedcovers and her weight, but he’s not struggling to free it.
She’s not sure what to do next, so she settles for crooning lowly into the hollow of his throat and shoulder, nonsense words and shushes and soothing hums. Illya sighs harshly, and his quivering stills a bit, enough that Gaby no longer feels like she’s trying to sit on an earthquake. She’s never seen him like this before. Other thunderstorms have left him unmoved, simply annoyed by the inconvenience.
The night is still chaotic beyond the shutters, and with every crack of lightning, Illya’s body flinches. She holds him hard, repeating over and over that she is here, that he isn’t alone. That he isn’t going to be, that she’s with him always. Later she’s going to wonder if he even heard her through the haze of fear that had him imprisoned in his own head, and wonder even more if she said she loved him.
The storm is letting up after what seems like hours. Illya’s trembling has lessened, and he’s warm under her hands and lips. Abruptly, the light comes on, and he raises a hand to shield his eyes from the glare. She can see salt tracks on his skin, but can’t tell if they were sweat or tears.
Gaby scrambles to her feet and competently begins unsnarling Illya from the wet bed linens. He remains sitting, and wipes his face on a corner of the sheet, tugging it back as she pulls it away. She glares at the duvet. It’s now unpleasantly damp, and Gaby hangs it over the back of the settee to dry. Illya still hasn’t moved, and she wonders if he’s in shock.
When she returns from the shared hallway bathroom with a hot wet facecloth and dry towels, Illya has let his head fall back against the wall and his eyes are closed, unfairly long lashes clumped against his cheeks.
Kneeling next to him, Gaby reaches up and gently begins smoothing the hot cloth over his face and neck, testing the temperature of his skin as she goes, wiping away the salt and the stress. Illya sighs and leans into her a little. He rarely allows this; someone to touch him or care for him. He prefers to be the caretaker, and Gaby and Solo let him. The dance around Illya’s internal equilibrium is a delicate one.
She unbuttons his pajamas and shoves the top off down his arms, stripping him out of the wet fabric like a small child. His body is hot to the touch, but clammy, and Gaby goes to work with the washcloth, lifting his arms to wipe underneath, shoving his shoulder with her hand to move him out from the wall so she can get to his back. He’s all leg, really, more of his height there than in his torso, and she enjoys the glide of the washcloth down the lean muscles there. He has a small brown birthmark splotched against the back of one arm, and it’s endearing. Illya is all too human, no matter how hard he works to make them forget.
The washcloth is soaked through, and she gets up to rinse it, not bothering to go down the hall to the washroom again, instead holding it out the opened window under the overflowing gutter.
Illya grunts when the cold cloth contacts his skin, but makes no protest as Gaby goes over the previously cleaned areas. She takes her time over his chest and the spare flesh at his waist, running her hands gently over the crisp hairs covering his pectorals and massaging down his arms. Illya is not ticklish, but is acutely sensitive about being touched suddenly, so Gaby keeps a hand on him even when she shifts.
“I think we are done here,” she says, getting to her feet. “Will you get to the bed on your own, or do I need to lift you?” A very small smile crosses his lips before he rises, plucking at the wet fabric adhering to his flesh. If it was Solo, she would know he’d done it on purpose, a studied movement to draw the eye and distract. Illya wears his body differently, unaware and uncomfortable with the extent of his own masculine appeal. But she is distracted indeed by the dark shadow visible beneath the pale blue cotton, and Illya catches her looking. He flushes deeply and turns, as always acutely modest in her presence.
“Let me get you a fresh set of pajamas,” she tells him briskly, moving toward the small bureau.
“I do not have another pair,” Illya rumbles, chagrined. She can’t tell if he’s embarrassed by his lack of preparation, or ownership. U.N.C.L.E. provides clothing for most missions, but for personal garments they are on their own. Illya has not shaken off his Soviet parsimony the way she has.
“You can wear mine. At least the bottoms,” she suggests. Hers are always oversized, beginning with the time in Rome that Solo gave her his, probably to annoy Illya.
His tiny smile reappears for a second. “I think they will be a little too small.”
“Short, yes, but they will fit.” Gaby tosses the bottoms at him; the top would be ludicrous, and turns her back to rummage for an undershirt in his drawer. He’s curiously reluctant to be unclothed at any time, possibly from growing up in a cold country and possibly from a fear of literally being caught with his pants down.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, turning from the dresser just in time to catch a glimpse of his taut flank being covered in striped fabric. It’s a tempting sight.
“No.” As usual his flat answer discourages conversation or prying. Gaby shrugs. She’s learned to pick her battles.
Gaby arranges the sheet to dry as well, using the dresser drawers as a clothesline, watching Illya out of the corner of her eye. He’s standing where she left him, undershirt on, hands dangling limply at his sides. He looks lost, unsure of what to do next, rumpled hair boyish and at least twelve inches of leg between the cuffs of her pajama pants and the floor. She wrings the washcloth out the window and hangs it over the cold radiator, drapes the towel over the chair and starts for the settee to settle herself to sleep, but halfway there changes direction, catching Illya’s hand in her own and towing him toward the bed.
With a quick shove, she lands him on the diagonal across the mattress, and stuffs a pillow under his head. He has no covers, since they are drying in various parts of the room, and with a sigh, Gaby grabs her blanket and sheet off the couch. Snapping off the overhead light, she returns to the bed and flips her coverlet over Illya. His feet hang out, and she does the best she can.
“Thank you,” he says softly, and there’s a note in his voice that makes her lean down and press her lips to his temple. As she turns away, his hand catches hers, and she remembers once again that night in Rome. She wonders if he does; it’s part of her forever.
A gentle tug on her hand urges her down, and Gaby sits on the bed, her hip against his chest. Illya rests their joined hands on his waist, running his thumb over her palm. She’s tired, and the motion is soothing. Her eyelashes flutter, and she nods slightly, but doesn’t want to move. Illya solves the difficulty by moving further away across the diagonal of the bed, and Gaby settles into the space he’s left, lying down and stretching her legs.
It’s comfortable, and warm, and cozy, the rain still beating on the roof, and Gaby is drowsing, about to tip into sleep when he speaks. “I have dreams, sometimes. I remember…things. Past things."
She fights awake enough to ask, “What do you mean?”
“I thought you were asleep,” he replies. It’s all the answer she’s going to get, and Gaby gives in to the leaden weights dragging her eyelids closed. She turns on her side, careful to leave her hand where it is, and shoves her face against his shoulder, smelling the spicy scent of his skin. He tucks a corner of his blankets over her, and as she drops off to oblivion, she hears his voice dimly. “Good night, little chop-shop girl.”