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The windows are fogged with warmth, and beyond them, the towers and streets of London are blanketed in rain. Napoleon is still gasping with the transition of outside to inside, the cold evening still stuck to his lapels. He shakes his umbrella almost violently. On the chesterfield, Illya studiously does not startle. Instead, he looks up from his familiar game of chess.
“It is still raining?” he asks.
“Yes,” says Napoleon. Of course it’s still raining, and of course Illya notices. Illya notices everything. Illya notices the perfume floating around the collar of Napoleon’s coat, unfamiliar. Illya notices Napoleon’s empty eyes.
“Why,” says Napoleon, “do you ask questions that you already know the answer to?”
“Because I want to hear your answer.” Illya holds his gaze for a moment, then drops his eyes to the chessboard once more. He shifts slightly on the chesterfield, one hand pressed against the wound on his stomach. The other hand, Napoleon notices, the one closest to the arm of the chesterfield. Leaving space for Napoleon.
Napoleon sighs, drops his coat on the ground, and joins Illya. His shoulder, after all, is the perfect rest for Napoleon’s head.
***
Is it so selfish of me? he had once asked, his eyes blazing. Cowboy, I love to be selfish. I love your voice. We are lovers. Is it so selfish of me to want?
Sometimes I like silence better , said Napoleon.
Da, of course , said Illya. He stood up from the bed, leaving Napoleon to stare blankly after the planes of his handsome back, still bare, still scarred. Silence is good. But there cannot always be silence.
What, you want me to start singing?
Illya turned around, then, and his mouth twisted with a pain Napoleon had never seen on his face before. His hair was still askew from Napoleon’s gentle hand. I want you to speak to me, he said. I want you to trust me.
Napoleon closed his eyes and tasted salt.
***
Gaby calls the next morning. Napoleon receives her call from the phone in the kitchen, just through the door from the parlor. He watches Illya’s back, made soft by one of Napoleon’s shirts, as he talks to Gaby.
“How is London?” Her sharp accent is refreshing after so much of the stuffy Queen’s English and Illya’s soft Russian.
Napoleon sighs. “Boring.”
“And how is Illya healing?”
“Well, I think,” says Napoleon, looking over at his lover, playing another round of chess by himself. “He’s walking better, at least. We did the stairs yesterday and he threatened me with death multiple times, so I figure that means his mood is improving.”
Gaby laughs like a pearl dropped into a tin can. “That sounds like our Illyushka. Give him my love.”
“I will.”
Illya looks up from the chesterfield and smiles with only his eyes. “Tell Gaby I love her too.”
“He loves you too,” says Napoleon. “And so do I. We miss you like hell, you know.”
“I miss you too. Waverly says another week, then you’re cleared to be back in the field.”
“Not without — ”
“Not without Illya, I know. Three weeks, then, and he’ll be all better and you can both come back to me.”
Napoleon sighs. “You can come and visit.”
“I’m on assignment.”
“I know,” he says, and then there is silence. Illya looks up from the chessboard.
Gaby’s voice is gentle when she asks, “How are you healing, Napoleon?”
“I’m just fine,” he says, but his voice is shaking and his hands are shaking and his mouth is full of acidic earth and the echo, the echo is rattling along his spine, the echo of the blast. The echo of the eyes and the voice he found in the darkness, this time. It doesn’t make any sense.
“Napoleon,” says Gaby. “Tell me honestly.”
He isn’t injured. He isn’t sick. He’s fine . “I told you honestly.”
On the chesterfield, Illya looks away again.
***
You can’t pick me up, said Napoleon, last June when they were in Indonesia on assignment and the sun was permanent and life felt like endless vacation days.
I can , said Illya, simply. I am strong.
Gaby snickered and swung her legs down from where he had been holding her bridal-style. You are so strong, mister. Pick him up.
You won’t be able to , said Napoleon, but he was laughing, and he was getting up to walk into Illya’s arms and prove him right.
The lady insisted , said Illya. His eyes glittered like the ocean. His mouth curved like the moon. Napoleon put his arms around Illya’s neck and felt his hair slowly growing longer, soft with salt from the sea.
***
Sometimes Illya’s arms feel feverishly warm. Doubly so when Napoleon wakes up shuddering and sudden, his mind burning with chemical fire. The flat is dark and still. Beside him, Illya uncurls like a cat from his own dream. Napoleon breathes with his shoulders heaving and his chest compressing and filling, compressing and filling. The mattress is too soft and it sways with any movement. Goddamnit. Illya places a careful, steady hand on Napoleon’s shoulder. The touch is warm, warm. Napoleon bats his hand away and strikes into the darkness next to him, the darkness where Illya is, and then he hears a hiss of pain and falls back onto the mattress with regret.
“Illya?” he whispers. “Did I hurt you?”
“All good,” Illya grunts, clearly pained. He heaves himself up to lean on his hand above Napoleon, pressing the other hand to the wound in his stomach. “Nightmare?”
Napoleon sighs. It sounds so stupid when Illya says it like that. “No.”
“Liar.”
“What?”
“What was it about?” Illya’s voice is as gentle as snow, and twice as biting.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You want to fall asleep and dream again and wake up and hit me again? Hm?”
Napoleon rolls closer to Illya, pushes his face into Illya’s chest. “No.”
“Then tell me, malysh .”
***
It isn’t easy to talk about.
Napoleon doesn’t want to talk about it. Isn’t it enough that he was there? It should be. No, what should matter most is that he survived.
It wasn’t an easy war.
Of course not. No war is. But this one, the lives lost, the land stripped bare, everything, everything gone — it’s too much.
He enlisted at the age of sixteen, pretending to be older. So many New York boys did, all of them too proud of their country and too desperate for any recognition at all. One of them was Napoleon’s friend and longtime companion, nearly since childhood. Liam. That was his name.
Now, in wartime, it’s important not to make attachments, for the simple reason that it is difficult to hold on to anything when the sky is on fire. Like it was. For there are bullets, sure — and starvation, rot, and suicide, and tuberculosis, and missing-never-found — and then there are bombs.
Napoleon was sixteen years old. Sixteen, and suffocating in the depth of his own lungs, the fever gripping his jaw and forcing it open. No chance of healing now — it was France, or Belgium maybe, and it was the muddy springtime. Napoleon’s entire unit was cut off. They had about a day left until the convoy arrived, and a knot of civilian survivors shivering behind their guns. Napoleon and three others were coughing up blood twenty paces from the rest of the unit — too many soldiers lost already to let them have a moment of rest. The little ville they were occupying was razed already, except for the church. The church.
They want the art , said Liam, but not to have. They want it so no one else can have it.
So? Napoleon’s voice was shot, but Liam smiled like it was a melody.
They’ll bomb the church. They will , he said. Hopefully after we get outta here, huh?
Napoleon tried to say, Hopefully , but instead his lungs seized and he spat blood onto the ground, and when he regained his breath after an agonizing minute the words that came out were What if I die here?
Liam was silent. Then, he reached over and socked Napoleon in the arm, hard, like he always used to. Don’t say that , he said.
I can’t breathe, Liam. I just might.
Well then , said Liam, a small smile playing on his lips. I’ll go home for you. I will.
And tell my mother I love her?
And tell your mother you love her. And mine too. Lord knows you ate enough of her dinners to be considered a son. But don’t you worry. It won’t come to that.
He was sick. He was trembling with fever, too weak to stand, too wired to sleep, too in love to turn his face to the earth and protect himself. His lungs were rotting out. His mind was too frayed to allow him to help, to move closer, to run away, to scream, to help — anything.
He was sick . He couldn’t have done anything. There was nothing he could have done. He was helpless. At the mercy of the world. The world should have had mercy. And yet —
It didn’t. The bombs fell and Liam fell with them. So too did the rest of the unit. The only survivors were those yoked by tuberculosis, denied a swift death, spared by twenty paces of quarantine.
Life isn’t fucking fair.
***
“I feel sick,” says Napoleon. It’s too warm in bed.
Illya rolls onto his back and sighs. “Tell me. Speak. Please.”
“I don’t want to,” says Napoleon.
“You sound like child. You will be sick forever if you do not let the sickness come out. It will rot within you. It will kill you.”
“I don’t care,” says Napoleon. “Maybe I want that. Death.”
“We all do. Life still goes on. You cannot die whenever you want. Work to do.”
“I don’t care ,” says Napoleon.
“Napoleon,” says Illya. His voice is rich and shining with pain. “ I care. I care. Is that so selfish?”
There is nothing but darkness in the room. Napoleon does not answer.
***
One night, Gaby awoke in a roaring panic. There was exhaust flooding in under the door, she cried, and it would suffocate them all. Napoleon was still a soldier then. It was early in their relationship, their partnership, their time with UNCLE, and Napoleon’s first instinct was to cover her mouth and shut her up, or they would be found. Sniper sights. Truck lights. Air strikes.
Illya has always been a stronger man than Napoleon. Literally and emotionally. He shoved Napoleon fully off of the bed, ripped the covers off, and backed off to let Gaby breathe. There, in the dark, on the floor of a hotel somewhere in western Canada, Napoleon lay still as a dying man and listened to Gaby's breath. It fluttered like the sea.
Illya disappeared for a few minutes and returned with a cup of tea for Gaby and a record for the record player in the corner. Napoleon watched her sip the tea in the thin strip of light left by the opened door. Her shoulders relaxed and her head drooped down over the teacup, her bangs falling into her eyes. She straightened up after a while and said, Come back to me, boys. I am alright.
Napoleon went, hesitant, afraid to stifle her once more. Illya wasn’t afraid. He laid his scarred arm across her shoulders and drew her in close.
Comfort. That’s what Illya does best. It’s strange — he seems imposing, threatening, and indeed he presents himself that way. And yet it’s clear, once you know him, that his size is meant for holding, for carrying, and not for harm.
***
The morning is grey. In the little kitchen, Illya sits at the table and continues to pretend that he likes black coffee. Napoleon drinks his own cup of bitter with a smile, nudging the cream across the table towards Illya, who mock-glares and pushes it right back.
“What shall we do today?”
Illya shrugs, a bit lopsided with one hand still pressed against the wound. “Stairs again?”
“Maybe,” says Napoleon. “Or something else. You feeling well enough for some shopping?”
Illya groans and faceplants into the table. “Not with you and your horrible taste.”
“Oh, don’t worry, my dear Peril. Today I’ll try not to be so forward with my clearly correct opinions, just for you.”
Illya can’t suppress a snicker at that, and Napoleon glows with pride. He takes another sip of his coffee and smiles at his reflection in the black.
***
After, after, after. After this past mission, Napoleon had stood in Waverly’s office, watching as an UNCLE doctor fussed over Illya’s wounds. Illya was slumped in one of the ornate wood chairs, eyes grey with misery. Couldn’t even stand on his own. That was three weeks ago. Napoleon had looked at his lover and felt the burning pain of the separation that he thought was to come. At least he would be with Gaby. So he thought.
Waverly handed Gaby a manila folder and a thin cardboard box. Miss Teller , he said. Your next assignment is in Greece.
Just mine? Gaby asked.
Kuryakin has to heal , said Waverly, and in the chair Illya groaned. So does Mr. Solo, here.
What? I’m fine. Not a scratch.
I looked at your psych eval , said Waverly, the bastard, and no, you’re not.
***
Illya sits on a stool and patiently lets the tailor measure his shoulders. The man’s sleeves are rolled to the elbow, a single diamond in his right ear, and on the sewing table sits a handsome bouquet of carnations and ferns. As such, Napoleon feels assured to say, “You look so dashing in grey, Illya.”
“You flatter me,” Illya replies, a dusting of rosy pink across his face. “And you spoil me.”
“Well, the gent is correct,” hisses the tailor around the pins in his mouth. “Grey matches your eyes and enhances that lovely gold in your hair. I recommend accents in copper, brown, and maybe pink if you’re feeling lucky.”
“Brown,” says Illya.
“Of course. It’ll be tailored and ready in a few hours, give or take, gents.”
Napoleon says, “Thank you,” and helps Illya off the stool. “Off to a café with us, dear?”
“ Da ,” says Illya. “Tea and conversation, malysh .”
Napoleon doesn’t like the expectant tone in Illya’s voice, nor does he like the implications of impending conversation. He doesn't want to talk. Still, the leisure to have tea with one of his lovers is a wonderful gift. He keeps his hand steady on the small of Illya’s back until the bell on the shop door chimes behind them.
***
Illya got the wound in his stomach from an ill-timed shot that managed to pierce through his spleen. Aside from the shot, he has no recorded injuries other than the normal wear and tear, scrapes, bruises, hypothermia.
It was in Switzerland. Infiltration gone wrong. Napoleon sent in driving a beautiful Alfa Romeo, snow-white. Two rickety planes wheeled in the air like kestrels, smoking. Napoleon prayed that they would go down before they had a chance to do anything.
Gaby made it to the car on time. Drive, she shouted. East. Now.
Illya was nowhere to be seen. Napoleon roared around to the east side of the buildings, knuckles white on the wheel. He wanted desperately to trade places with Gaby, let the driver drive, but she had a shotgun in hand and a handful of ammunition at her feet and the cars behind them flipped one, two, into the snow, burst tires.
Illya tore out of the building just ahead. He was a speck in the distance, listing sideways with pain, but Napoleon would have recognized his gait and stature anywhere. They were almost there —
Planes in the sky. An artificial scream as something, something rained down —
This time, Napoleon could have done something. Anything. He could have hurled something at Illya, hit the accelerator a little harder, anything. He saw it coming. Instead, he screamed wordlessly, endlessly into the rising smoke, and slammed on the brakes.
Too close. Too similar. Too soon.
***
The tea house is around the corner from the tailor. It’s a charming place, music playing, accented to look Parisian. All conversation is subdued and quiet, peaceful. Napoleon stirs his tea and looks at Illya across the table, Illya pouring sugar into his tea, Illya’s hands shaking.
“Let me love you,” he says, his eyes open in desperation.
Napoleon says, “What?”
“Let me love you,” says Illya, nearly a cry except that it’s so quiet. “Please, Napoleon, I want to. I need to. Am I so selfish?”
“What do you mean?” Although, he knows perfectly well.
Illya knows this, too. “Why do you ask questions you already know the answer to?”
“Because I want to hear your answer.”
“And you deny me same privilege? Napoleon.” Illya’s teeth are bared, his lips twisted with pain. “Tell me.”
“I don’t want to. It’s all suffering, anyways. Goddamn nonsense. I don’t want to.”
“I will take your suffering. I am strong. I can carry it for a while.” His eyes are very, very blue. “I love you, Napoleon. Let me show you how much. Let me.”
Napoleon sighs, puts down his teacup. “If you insist.”
It isn’t easy to talk about. And yet.
***
Here is what Napoleon says to Illya:
Liam died and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
He died and I should’ve died in his place.
He was my last best thing in the world.
I didn’t go home.
I didn’t speak to my mother and I didn’t speak to his, either.
No one knows about the guilt.
I could have done something.
The world should have had mercy.
It didn’t. It didn’t.
And then, you?
I couldn’t lose you, too.
But I didn’t do anything this time, either.
I almost lost you.
I don’t deserve you.
Here is what Illya says in return:
You did not lose me. I am still here.
It was not up to you. I am still here.
Whatever you would have done, I am still here.
I know. I know.
I am here.
***
It’s morning again. The night was sweet.
The sun is rising over London. In the narrow bathroom, Napoleon kneels before Illya, carefully cleaning the wound.
“I love you,” he says.
Illya smiles despite the pain. “I know.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Hurts, but better. Let’s take a walk today.”
“Good idea.” Soapy water down the drain. The wound is done bleeding, now, the skin knitting back together. Illya looks golden, easing himself to stand by the window. Napoleon looks up at him and feels soft. New. He stands and carefully takes Illya in his arms, holding him close, breathing in the warmth of his lover’s neck. The sunlight is a gentle heat, a safe one. He pulls back to kiss Illya, slowly, and then to look at him. Just to look at him.
“And how are you feeling, Cowboy?” Illya’s voice is soft.
“Hurts, but. Getting better. Getting better. Let’s nap after our walk.”
Illya’s eyes are soft, too, like honey. “Lovely.”