Work Text:
North, north. The mountains were rising up, jagged rock sides so bright with snow they were a white dazzle in the eyes. The sky a blue dazzle, the sun piercing down like an eye. It was just a case of getting north, up through the Alps, all the way north through France so they could catch their scheduled flight at Orly. That had been the plan. A few days in Rome, a few in Turin, then Lyon, the drive up through the heart of France, a night in Paris, then to their plane, and back to JFK, to life, to reality.
Reality always came crashing in. Somehow it scented them, followed them like a hungry dog. Even on holiday in Rome, searching for a veal parmigiana they could have got without going more than a few blocks from New York HQ, life caught up with them. This time reality had meant gipsies, had meant despotic regimes. Had meant Clara.
Illya could feel Napoleon’s pain and he didn't know what to do with it. Where did you unpack something like that? She had moved on, he had moved on. They could have never seen one another again. Inside, hidden, Illya felt resentment for the woman who had tracked them down, rounded them up, and used Napoleon's softness for her own ends, to save that worthless husband of hers. He felt resentment for the wound he had never known Napoleon had, that had been opened up so cruelly.
He still felt raw from the boat ride, from being deposited on the Italian coast to make their own way back for luggage and hire car in Rome. Raw, exhausted. This had hardly been a holiday. And Napoleon – It was as if he had been stabbed. He sat in the passenger seat touching his fingers to his wrist where that cuff had joined him to her, like a parody of marriage. His head was tilted back, eyes closed, but his fingers were moving just a little over that red mark on his wrist.
Illya dropped a gear as the hill steepened, took the bend smoothly. The snow-covered mountains flashed in the sun. The top was down but it was warm enough.
‘You'll get over her,’ he said eventually. It had been silent in the car for too long.
Napoleon grunted. ‘I did once before,’ he replied, after a lagging few moments.
‘You will again.’
Napoleon grunted again. Illya drove. He couldn't know what was in Napoleon’s mind, what those two had shared in the past, how hard it had been the first time. He didn't even know when the first time had been, how long it had been for, where it had happened. He just knew that Napoleon hurt.
‘I'd forgotten about slivovitz,’ he said after a while. ‘Forgotten how the liquor and sausages and bread get better as you go east.’
Napoleon moved his head a little, turned it a little towards Illya, but his eyes stayed closed. He didn't speak, but Illya could read the question.
‘No, I hadn't forgotten it existed,’ he said. ‘Of course I hadn't. But the taste of it, of a proper bottle produced by some old man with a still in his cellar, sausages made up by a woman in her farm kitchen with meat from something they killed in the yard outside. It was like going home.’
A silence again, but after a little while, as if he were working on a transatlantic delay, Napoleon said, ‘You grew up in a city.’
‘There were still stills in the cellars. Stills in the kitchens. And there was the dacha,’ Illya said, eyes on the road. ‘Summertime. Out in the country air. We always ate better then.’
‘Hmm,’ Napoleon grunted. His eyes were still closed. Then, after another long moment, he said, ‘You seemed alive.’
Illya turned his head briefly to look at him, then back at the road, which kept turning and twisting them higher into the mountains.
‘I have a healthy habit of being alive,’ he said.
Napoleon’s eyes opened for a moment. He looked at Illya, then at the dazzling snow and sheer mountains, then closed them again as if the world were too bright.
‘No, I mean alive,’ he said. ‘Not just living. Alive. Like you'd come back to your natural habitat.’
Illya smiled. ‘Like a creature escaped from the zoo? Is New York a zoo?’
‘Isn't it all a zoo?’ Napoleon murmured. ‘Aren't we all performing animals?’
‘No,’ Illya said, then more firmly, ‘No. I am a man. You're a man. We have free will. Not because your god said so. Because we say so.’
Napoleon grunted again, and Illya read palimpsest depths in that sound. Free will to go back and find Clara, to make her leave her husband, to urge her to better things? To walk away from the job, the missions, the responsibilities? But Clara had free will too, and hers directed her along a different path.
‘It's the past, Napoleon,’ Illya said gently. ‘The woman you loved is in the past. The man she loved is too. A river is never the same flowing through the plains as it was when it left the mountains. It's changed again when it reaches the sea.’
‘You're majoring in philosophy today,’ Napoleon muttered.
‘That's your department. I deal in facts. The fact is, everyone changes. Lost loves are lost. They stay lost.’
‘Everyone,’ Napoleon echoed. ‘Do you change? Do I?’
‘Yes,’ Illya said. Then he softened it. ‘Maybe we change together. We’re following the same path.’
He drove on for a while. Napoleon sat in the passenger seat, eyes still closed, hands loose on his lap. Illya felt almost as tired, but the driving gave him focus. The road moved under him, he moved the wheel, followed the curves, let it pull them both upward. There was snow piled up at the sides of the road now, dirty with salt and spray. The air felt like fresh water with every breath.
‘Do you know, Napoleon,’ he said after a while, ‘it was as if I'd disappeared the moment she pulled us into that building in Rome? We were on holiday together. Together. Then she appeared, and I was gone. It took you five minutes before you even remembered I was there. All you could see was her.’
Napoleon’s eyes stayed closed, his breathing steady. His hands were resting on their backs, his palms like little cups waiting for something to fill them. He was asleep.
‘So I followed you,’ Illya said. ‘I always do. All the way to Terbuf. Put my life on the line again. You put your life on the line for her. I did it for you. And I know you knew I was there. I know you appreciated it. But your eyes were always on her. Like a compass towards north.’ He gave a soft little snort of laughter. ‘It must have looked ridiculous. Her seeing only her husband, you seeing only her, me seeing only you. No one behind me, of course. That was where the line ended.’
He drove on. The road crested a rise then dipped down again. The valley was long and narrow, the sides heavy with the weight of geology, millions of years of rock pressing down. The peaks glittered with snow, but the little village near the river was in shadow. The water running down the centre was a pale turquoise blue, an impossible colour. The road slipped down into the valley bottom like a ribbon, lost itself through the houses, then emerged on the other side, heading towards the pass. He was glad of the snow chains in the boot.
It would be easier land for driving when Napoleon took over. That had been the plan. Illya chose the mountain driving. Napoleon could sleep, and then they’d switch over once they crossed the border, and Illya could rest. It wasn’t that Napoleon couldn’t drive in the mountains, it was just that Illya loved the challenge. Driving was a way to focus down all the thoughts, to condense them into one thread of concentration. Just the car and the road.
‘I suppose I thought this time it would be different,’ Illya said. The road was slipping past a meadow of startlingly green grass and grazing cows. The snow at the roadside had melted away with the little drop in elevation. ‘A holiday together. I know you never said so. I know you never offered me anything, but I thought it would be different. I thought at first you only had eyes for me. You weren’t even ogling the waitresses in the restaurants. Hotels with double beds. Ten days with no demands. No danger.’ He huffed a laugh. ‘I thought the biggest danger was getting lost. I don’t know how you manage to get lost so well, in your job. Our job.’
The road was narrowing as it entered the village proper. Buildings built of dark wood with balconies ringing them, straggling geraniums in window boxes. For a little distance the road surface changed to setts, and the car juddered over the slightly uneven stones. Napoleon’s eyes were still closed, though, hands still loose. He always looked like a child when he slept. It always made something melt in Illya’s chest. He wanted to brush the little dark fall of hair away from his eyes. He wanted to be close enough to those lips to feel the warm breath of sleep. He felt something stir low down, a little quickening. Despite everything, he wanted to pull over and find a hotel, somewhere with a wide double bed and a good lock on the door, and see if he could make this holiday become what he had hoped. But he carried on driving, through the village, along by the river for a little while, then peeling away to climb again. It was beautiful.
‘I didn’t expect it to be so – platonic,’ he said as he drew the car around a wide, curving bend. He huffed a little sigh. ‘I know you didn’t say anything. But god, Napoleon, all the places you booked were doubles not twins. All the views were romantic. On that first night when you ordered spaghetti, the way you looked at me when you sucked it into your mouth… God…’
There was a layby at the side of the road, wide, grey with gravel and patched with little bits of dirty snow. He drew the car over smoothly and let it come to a stop. There was a low barrier, some kind of nod to safety, and a drop that would make most people’s heads spin.
He got out of the car quietly, closed the door so softly the car didn’t even shake. He stepped across to that barrier and swung his legs over it, sat on the crumbling concrete, rested his elbows on his knees. The land wasn’t quite a sheer drop. It was a tumble of shale and boulder, picked out between with tufts of grass and green-leafed plants, a few little flowers struggling out of bud. It was the kind of drop that made his stomach flip, that made him want to jump, to dare himself to leap into the air like a bird and see if his arms worked as wings.
He drew in a deep, deep breath of alpine air. It was like drinking glacier water. A great heaviness swelled in him, like the coming of freezing rain, but this was inside him, filling him, a sweet, piercing feeling like the need to cry. He felt too young for all of this, too helpless, too tired to carry everything he carried on his shoulders all the time. Sometimes it felt as if it never let up. Even on this holiday, this supposed break from the rigour and danger of an agent’s life, it had followed him. He felt young, raw, a thing of flesh and blood, a beating heart, a mind that was tired of holding so many things.
His hands were hanging between his parted knees. The backs looked so soft, like they had when he was a child. Just the beginnings of aging starting there, perhaps. But his hands, his fingers, looked so young, as if they weren’t capable of holding so much. He pressed those hands over his eyes for a moment, pressed away the hanging drop, the milky thread of the river deep in the valley, the tumbled grey rocks, the straggling plants and buds. Everything went black, red, black, a deep and private aloneness inside his own head. His ears could hear that far away rush of the river, the hiss of the wind. Somewhere the cry of a bird, curling in the air. He could feel that precipitous drop before him, and he rocked towards it, away, towards, away again. He didn’t want to fall. He just wanted to feel that threat of falling. That promise.
A hand on his back, between his shoulder blades. He didn’t startle. He was well practised, even when the touch was startling, to think before he reacted. That was one of the lessons of his life.
‘Illya,’ Napoleon said.
He hadn’t heard him get out of the car. Hadn’t heard the creak of him stirring in his seat, the clunk of the door. He must have been far, far away. Illya opened his eyes but the press of his hands had left flashes and blotches in his vision. For a moment that terrible drop was a mess of neon and blur.
Napoleon’s hand stayed there even as he moved his own legs over the low concrete barrier and settled himself beside Illya, just a little closer than a colleague, closer even than a friend. The soft swell of their sitting hips were touching, Napoleon’s arm still against his back, elbow and hand pressed lightly along his spine. It was a warmth against the chill of altitude.
‘I’ve been selfish,’ Napoleon said, speaking into the void. ‘So tangled up in myself – in her – these last few days. I was looking through you. I’m sorry.’
Illya didn’t reply. The valley was reforming itself in his vision. He could see the river again, the drop. He saw the flash and shadow of a bird flying below them, its wings spread wide. He wished he could fly like that, in the empty and freezing air.
‘You don’t deserve to have anyone look through you,’ Napoleon continued. ‘I didn’t mean our vacation to be like this. I meant it to be about us.’
‘Well, you made it about her,’ Illya murmured eventually. As soon as he spoke, it felt petty. But true.
‘Yes,’ Napoleon said in his warm, steady voice. ‘I did.’ He took in a breath. ‘Illya, all those missions, all those nights in hotels, in little double beds. All those times watching each other’s backs, saving each other’s lives. I – feel like it was for something. For more than just being partners. More than just being friends.’
‘Yes,’ Illya said gently. His voice still felt small, distant, too, too powerless to reach anything. But Napoleon heard it.
‘I was afraid maybe it wasn’t like that with you,’ Napoleon said, a low murmur so close to Illya he almost felt it more than heard it. ‘I kept thinking – being sure I was right – then being afraid I was wrong.’
‘I feel like I’m fifteen years old,’ Illya said. He didn’t know how to explain what he meant, even to himself.
‘Butterflies in your stomach. Blushes in your cheeks,’ Napoleon said.
Illya hadn’t meant that, not exactly. He had meant he felt too young, too raw, to be an adult in this hard world he had found himself in. He had meant he needed something with him, around him, something that would hold him when he kiltered sideways. Someone to turn to and hold him when the world felt too big.
‘I – need – ’ he began. He didn’t know how to finish.
He looked at his hands. They weren’t a child’s hands. Too big, the hair too thickened where it reached along his wrists. But they felt like a child’s hands. He clenched them slowly, released them again, saw the marks of his fingernails in his palms, watched the blood flushing back into his skin. Napoleon’s hand came down over his, covering it entirely, clasping around it so their skins grew warm together. It felt like an anchor, like something holding him safe against that void without, that void within.
‘Illya,’ Napoleon said.
He turned his head, and so did Illya. The valley was gone. Napoleon’s face was so close to his he could see every pore. He could see the dark beauty of his irides, the soft colour of his lips. His breath was warm against the cold air. Their lips touched. He didn’t even feel himself moving, didn’t even see Napoleon moving, but their lips were touching, and it was all melting away. He could feel Napoleon’s hand on his back, his other hand curled about Illya’s fingers. There was no drop, no cold air. Nothing.
They drew apart. Napoleon’s finger traced a strand of hair away from Illya’s forehead. He was breathing fast. They were both breathing fast. It felt as though they were on a steady island in the middle of a whirling stream.
‘It’s cold,’ Napoleon said. ‘Let’s get back in the car. I’ll take the wheel for a while. Maybe you can sleep while I drive.’