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leethetThis is a Christmas-themed fic.
Slash, about 6,000 words, graphic - ish.
The Angel of Mercy Affair
“You sure you’re gonna be all right? You still look pretty …”
Napoleon Solo nodded and scooted across the tape-patched vinyl seat, slide-stick-slide, clambering stiffly down from the truck; he realized at that moment that he’d been wrong in his assessment of two hours past – the cab of the semi was, in fact, slightly warmer than the outside air.
He thumped down into about six inches of snow, glanced around the gas station to see that it was deserted but for himself and the truck, and turned back to call out, “Thanks for the lift,” with a smile that took some heavy lifting on the part of his facial muscles.
He slammed the bent door with effort and watched, blinking away snowflakes, as the truck lumbered back out onto the highway, leaving him very alone. The gas station – closed – was on the edge of Denver. He could see the lights of the city through the falling snow. It looked very far away.
Every part of him, every muscle and bone and organ, was exhausted; only the biting mountain air kept him from feeling the beating he’d taken less than six hours ago. But he was free, he was safe, he had the only extant sample of the poison gas, and he was in a city where he could at least call UNCLE L.A. and get someone to pick up him.
The ground – oily concrete, no doubt, under the snow – offered little purchase for his battered dress shoes, and he walked carefully to the lighted phone booth set against one wall of the gas station. The glass was filthy, the door semi-functional, but the phone within was his lifeline, and he felt his knotted tension ease a trifle as he slipped inside.
Searching his mental black book for the area code and number of the L.A. office, he fished around in the pockets of his ruined jacket with numbed fingers, finding nothing but – eventually – a gaping rip at the bottom of the pocket where he’d shoved the cash he’d taken from the last THRUSH he’d cold-cocked before escaping from the mountain lab where he’d spent the last three days as a very unwilling guest.
He stared at the useless receiver in his hand and had to smile, cold and hungry and tired and aching as he was; UNCLE’s top agent, lethal, brilliant, resourceful – all those words the people who sat behind desks liked to use once he’d succeeded on a mission – and he didn’t have a god-damned dime to make a phone call.
He touched his breast pocket as he’d done perhaps a thousand times since scrambling over the chain-link fence around the labs and staggering, bruised and bleeding, down the mountain – double-checking that the tiny canister of deadly experimental gas still rested there. Then he leaned on the dirty glass of the phone booth and stared a moment, blankly, up the street, the black night and the white snow, the streetlamps feebly illuminating the thickly falling flakes. Beautiful if one wasn’t bone tired, bone sore, bone chilled and hungry as a wolf.
What he wouldn’t give – what he wouldn’t admit to – to see Illya appear, a surly sarcastic angel, with money or a car or a hotel room or a hot meal … or the simple stanchion of his presence.
Napoleon took in a deep breath, pulled his jacket around him, pressed his arms to his sides as tightly as his bruised (possibly broken, but since he didn’t know, why not assume the best?) ribs permitted – and plunged out into the snow.
~*~*~
Illya Kuryakin sat hunched in the car seat, all his focus on the faint crackling voices coming from his earpiece.
“ … far on foot. The trucker dropped him off at the edge of town.”
Another voice, probably from the THRUSH labs, too static-laden for Illya to make out.
“I know, but he didn’t have a gun, a communicator, he had no money – how’s he gonna get in touch with UNCLE?”
More static.
“Don’t worry; we can check.”
One last brief burst, followed by barely concealed anger:
“We will. Out.” A click, then Illya was listening to the two men who were following Napoleon.
One, harsh-voiced, snarled, “I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch. I’m gonna kill him twice over.”
The man who’d been on the radio snorted. “Fuckin’ pussy. You just wanted to stick your dick in ’im – and he fought you off. He was tied up and he still kicked your ass.”
“Shut up. Let’s go. We need to find him.”
“It shouldn’t be that hard on a night like this – where can a guy with no money go?”
“Hell,” harsh-voice snapped. “He can go t’hell – and I’m gonna be his fucking travel agent. Move.”
The sound of a car starting was following by a beep as the tracer began to move.
Illya unclenched his knotted fingers from the steering wheel, glanced at the homing device and started the car.
~*~*~
If there existed a more uninviting invitation than a hand-painted sign in a dirty window reading “Angel’s Mercy Soup Kitchen – All Welcome,” Napoleon couldn’t think of it. But it was the only place a man without coat or coin could get immediate help, and immediate was the kind he needed. After twenty minutes of mechanically placing one foot in front of the other, he could no longer feel his hands, his face, or his legs below about mid-shin, and though he was still shivering – a sign that he hadn’t passed the point of no return – he knew he wouldn’t last the night without shelter.
For the hundredth time he wiped the accumulated snowflakes from his lashes and stumbled toward the rectangular windowfront, poorly outlined with a string of drooping Christmas lights.
A blast of heat and a sickly smell mixed of onions and bleach hit him as he pushed through the door. Half a dozen men in what seemed identical garb – worn, frayed winter clothing, all of it shades of grey – looked up when he entered, abandoning their soup and coffee for a few moments of blank-eyed staring. He scanned the room – no threat more heinous than the scent hinted at, and the ugliest thing in the room (oddly, considering the clientele) was the aluminum Christmas tree, bent and crazily decorated with various cheap, tattered ornaments, like an old whore with a back ailment.
The wet floor offered less purchase to his sodden shoes than the sidewalk outside; he skidded a little as he crossed the entry and went to a long counter that fronted a kitchen, along one side of the room, where a plump girl with big eyes behind bigger glasses was stirring a vat of soup. The long counter held bowls, cups, a coffee urn, a plastic Santa that lit up from the inside and a big mason jar with “donations” taped on it, a lower-case plea rather than a capitalized expectation. Napoleon’s elbows joined the sad collection on the warped formica.
The girl looked up. Blinked at him. “Wh— are you all right?”
Napoleon blinked right back at the girl as she stared, one hand holding a bowl the color of putty, the other frozen in the act of spooning some kind of vegetable soup into it. He realized he must look pretty bad if he caused comment in a place like this. Then again he’d hardly had a place, or the chance, to clean up. It was anyone’s guess what he looked like after the fight that had preceded his escape.
“Just cold and hungry,” he said, hoping the words would remind her of her duty. Nothing she could do about the rest of it anyway. “And … do you have a phone I can use?”
“Pay phone on the corner,” she said apologetically, filling a bowl and coffee mug.
It took a real effort – evidence of his depleted state – for Napoleon not to say If I had any damned money do you think I’d be at a shelter in the first place? Instead he took the proffered soup and a chipped, stained mug of coffee that, from its smell, deserved no better vessel and found himself a seat at a corner table where he could survey the room. Already the warmth had made him feel a little better, but in thawing his body had also started to ache more decisively. He sipped the coffee and tried to breathe slowly, cataloguing the pains and trying to damp them one body part at a time.
~*~*~
The tracer bug changed from its steady beeping to a continuous low hum, the sign that the car had stopped. Glancing at the screen Illya saw that it was about 12 miles north-northwest of his position. He peered through the curtain of fat snowflakes at street signs, seeking the quickest route to their location.
“There he is.”
The three triumphant words through the earphones jolted him; he hit the gas and the car slewed a little in the uncleared but mercifully empty street. He passed an intersection and cursed as a glance at the tracer showed he was heading too far east. At the next available left turn he swung the wheel, skidded around the corner, and pressed the gas with laser focus – not too hard, just enough to get there more quickly than was humanly possible.
~*~*~
“Hate t’see the other guy.”
The gruff voice preceded the heavy thud of a man’s behind in the chair across from him. Napoleon gave his new table-mate, a bearded man who looked a bit like a dissolute Santa, a wan smile.
“Kind of you to assume I won,” he said, not interrupting the steady transfer of soup from bowl to mouth. He had won – or he’d be dead – and it had been three guys, not one, but he felt no pressing need to inform his new companion of that.
Santa chuckled and dug into his own bowl of soup; his hands were pudgy, unusually rough, with callused knuckles, as from a lifetime of heavy work.
“Ain’t no winners here,” he said after a slurp of soup. Then, surprisingly, he added, “Or, look at it another way, we all winners or we’d be dead by now.” He laughed, a moist, tubercular sound, and continued eating.
“Do they have beds for the night here?” Napoleon asked, glancing hopefully toward the dark corridor behind him. Santa shook his head.
“Just the soup.” He lowered his voice. “But they won’t kick you out.”
Napoleon took in another fortifying breath. He needed a phone, or enough money to use a pay phone. He wasn’t likely to find either here, but he needed a place to spend the night out of this blizzard – even if he had to do it sitting up in a hard chair.
The bell over the door jangled – perfect Christmas music for this sad and dirty place – and when everyone looked up, Napoleon did the same. It would have been funny but for the identity of the two brown-coated men he saw.
Santa must’ve seen him stiffen; he glanced over his shoulder, muttered, “Back room. Get up when I do,” and rose ponderously to his feet, arms spread on the table as if to give Napoleon maximum cover.
Napoleon slid out of the chair, gritting his teeth against the nearly crippling throb from thighs gone stiff and uncooperative, and ducked into the short corridor behind his table. He spotted two doors: one said “Storage,” the other “Restroom.” He chose the former as likely to have the least traffic.
Within, he slithered his way around mops and brooms until he was in a corner, ducking slightly to avoid a shelf and feeling around for anything he could use as a weapon. Broom – he had to chuckle silently at the idea of breaking the handle in two in his current condition – mop, bucket … he felt around as quietly as he could, listening with his entire body for sounds outside the flimsy door. His hands felt too big, half-numb and clumsy as he groped, finally settling on a metal rod … heavy, and he couldn’t guess what sort of cleaning implement it might be, but it would dent a man’s skull, and that was the only kind of cleanup Napoleon was interested in. He clutched it and waited.
A tap on the door snapped his heart into clumsy double-time. Then Santa’s voice called out, loud and clear.
“You in here? They’re gone.”
He considered the real possibility they were holding a gun on the old guy, but really, if they knew he was in here, what was he going to do, disguise himself as a mop? Slither out the vent? He opened the door and poked his head out, seeing only the old fellow. “Where are your elves?”
“On their way back to the North Pole, I hope,” Santa said. “I told ’em you left, and they bought it.”
Further cautious egress from the closet supported this theory. He breathed out a calamitous sigh, put the iron rod back in the closet with a shrug – it was just an iron rod, rebar, he thought, the sort one found inside the walls of old structures, not a cleaning implement at all – and sat back down in front of his cold soup, considering it a blessing that his appetite was now gone.
“Thanks for the help, Santa.” Then he realized what he’d called his benefactor.
But Santa grinned. “Well, I think you been a good little boy this year.”
Napoleon smiled, scooted his chair deeper into the corner and leaned carefully back, pulling his coat tighter and trying to find the least acutely uncomfortable position to doze in. It occurred to him he might be safer doing this in the closet. That was the last thing that occurred to him as his eyes and his mind drifted shut.
~*~*~
“This is a far cry from your usual level of society.”
Illya’s voice – Illya! – jolted him awake. A warm hug, a hot meal, a ride home – Christmas Day to an 8-year-old – those deep, sarcastic tones brought all those to his mind and heart in an instant. Napoleon sat up, fighting down his grin as he looked up at his partner, hands shoved into the pockets of the coat Napoleon had given him for Christmas last year, a festive red scarf coiled ill at ease around his neck and his blond hair damp with melting snow.
“Are you ready to stop playing around and come home?”
God. For an instant, all bad things drained away from Napoleon’s mind and body. I could kiss you.
~*~*~
Whether it was relief at finding him alive and well after three days of almost certainty that he was dead, or surprise at his appearance, he found himself staring at Napoleon – the mussed hair, pale face, and beard made him seem both vulnerable and alluring, stirring a warm, startling flurry of feelings in Illya’s chest. And when Napoleon smiled up at him, clearly relieved and fighting not to show how much, Illya had to swallow down the strongest urge to grab him and …
Then Napoleon sighed, his body slumping as he visibly let his guard down, and Illya succumbed. He reached out and grasped his partner’s shoulders, pulling him to his feet, holding on when he felt how unsteady Napoleon was.
“Are you all right?” he said, keeping his voice low. Napoleon nodded, snorting a very soft laugh.
“Battered but unbowed,” he said, then met Illya’s eyes for an honest second. “Well, a little bowed, maybe.”
“Come on,” Illya said brusquely, sliding a supporting arm around Napoleon’s shoulders. “Let’s go slip into someplace more comfortable.” He felt Napoleon laugh, though he didn’t hear it, as he guided him around the other tables toward the door.
Napoleon stopped. “Wait a second.” He glanced back into the room, then looked at Illya. “Do you have any cash on you?”
Puzzled at first, Illya remembered where they were and could have kicked himself for not having already thought of it. “Hang on.” He let go of his partner and dug out his wallet, mentally calculating what he’d need for the next day versus what he had. He pulled out a couple of twenties and went back to the counter to drop them in the collection jar. The soup girl blinked at the clearly visible denominations, then stared wide-eyed at Illya.
“Merry Christmas. Thank you for helping my friend,” he said with a smile, then rejoined his partner.
“Phony,” Napoleon muttered. He waved farewell to his battered benefactor while Illya slipped off his coat and wrapped it around him, leading him unprotesting out into a now-driving snowstorm. Illya quickly bundled Napoleon into his rented car and drove with careful expertise through the storm to a hotel.
Slumped in the passenger seat, Napoleon abruptly raised his hand and fumbled in his breast pocket for a moment before fishing out a tiny metal canister, like a CO2 cartridge. He held it out to Illya. “Just in case I develop another inconvenient hole in my pockets.”
Illya took it and slid it into his front jeans pocket. “Mr Waverly will be glad to see it.”
“Nice to know how you rate,” Napoleon muttered, but that was too old a plaint for either of them to pay it much attention.
Illya maneuvered around a corner with minimal sliding. “How badly are you injured.” It was not a question, but a demand for itemization of a bill that would assuredly be paid.
“General cuts and bruises, mostly,” Napoleon said. “Dehydrated and hungry enough that I actually ate the soup you no doubt smelled coming in –”
“Bozhe moi.”
“—and incipient frost bite.”
Illya said nothing. Napoleon breathed in and breathed out the truest truth. “I’m very tired, Illya.”
“Five minutes,” Illya said; his voice was calm, but Napoleon had seen his fingers tightening on the steering wheel. It was a fine line – you needed to be able to lean on those dearest to you, but they felt the weight keenly.
They parked next to the nondescript hotel and Illya guided Napoleon the short distance along the sidewalk and into the lobby as if he were blind rather than weak. Napoleon smiled in spite of himself.
Inside they made for the elevator and went up to their third-floor room. Napoleon glanced around – clean, comfortable, two double beds, nothing fancy but no nylon sheets, thank whoever the god of spies was. Illya’s suitcase already rested on the stand at the foot of the bed nearest a window that showed a thick snowfall backlit by city streetlamps.
Illya shut and locked the door, then collected a shaving kit from his suitcase and handed it to his partner.
“Hot bath,” he ordered, gently shoving Napoleon in that direction. “I’m going across the street to get something edible.”
Napoleon was already stripping off his unsalvageable clothes with one hand as he staggered toward the bathroom. Despite the gruff tone and verbal dismissal, Napoleon wouldn’t have been surprised, had he turned, to see that Illya was attentively watching him all the way across the room, prepared for any sudden collapse.
Naked, he sat on the toilet and turned on the bath taps, breathing deeply, trying to release the fear and tension that had knotted his body for days. He leaned down, forehead in his hands, as steam filled the room, and when his eyes filled as well, he just sighed. One of the more humbling things he’d learned about what he did, and what it cost, was that you had to let it out, however it needed to get out, or it would kill you. Or, worse, cripple you as an operative.
When the tub was full he sat up, drained but unknotted, and dumped some hotel-issue bath soap into the steaming water before sliding his battered body carefully into it.
“Ahh …” The heat, excruciating for a second, metamorphosed into nirvana. “Good, good …” He sank down to his chin, abdicating thought.
~*~*~
“Are you asleep in there, or drowned?” Illya’s voice, carrying clearly from the other side of the bathroom door (prudently left ajar), woke him.
He flailed a little in startlement, answered, “Drowned,” and smiled.
“Fine,” came the immediate reply. “That just means more steak and potatoes for me.”
Napoleon rinsed off and climbed carefully – then even more carefully, as pain clenched his left side – out of the tub. He glanced in the mirror as he dried himself off; the cut along one cheekbone and the bruise on his jaw were probably the least of it. His gaze traveled down his body. Definitely the least; the worst was the vast inky bruising around his left side; he looked … well, pretty much like a man who’d been tied up and hammered with the butt of a rifle.
He shaved, poorly and with exacting care, then wrapped a towel around his hips and went into the comfortably warm (warmer than Illya usually liked it, so it was for his benefit) room. Illya was arranging styrofoam containers on the small table.
“Dinner, such as it is, is served. Pyjamas for tonight and clothes for tomorrow – including a spare argument – in the suitcase.” He turned. “We can—”
This was a mirror Napoleon didn’t particularly want to look into. The lighting in the room was brutally honest; he saw Illya’s eyes go murder-flat, just for an instant, before his partner covered it, shaking his head and tsking.
He went to the suitcase and came out with some gauze. “I can wrap those ribs, at least. Do you know if they’re broken?”
Napoleon shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe cracked, though …”
“That counts,” Illya snapped, stretching out a length of gauze. “Move your arms.”
Napoleon lifted his arms. The gargantuan effort it required was, evidently, visible.
“Rest them on me.” Illya reached around him and Napoleon laid his arms across the broad shoulders inches away. “Breathe in – I don’t want to make this too tight.”
Napoleon inhaled and held it, eyes pinched shut against the pain, but he couldn’t help a faint sound when Illya was done and he could breathe out again.
“Oh, Napoleon.” The words, soft, censure and empathy, might not have done it. But when Illya’s hand came up to caress his jaw, featherlight, he dropped his forehead onto Illya’s shoulder and pulled his partner in, holding him as tightly as the pain allowed, almost more a collapse than a hug. Illya’s arms went about his torso, carefully bringing them closer.
“I’m always glad to see you,” he said into Illya’s hair, “but if I’ve ever been more glad, I can’t remember when.”
He felt Illya’s laugh. Felt Illya’s face, soft skin, soft whiskers (how long has he been looking for me, not eating, not shaving, not sleeping?) against his neck, and felt what seemed the brush of lips, a shadow of sensation that made him shiver.
Illya eased away, still steadying him by his shoulders, and said, face turned aside, “Come and eat before you pass out.”
“I prefer that order myself.” He went to the table.
Illya stopped at his suitcase; when he sat across from Napoleon he slid a triangular yellow pill across the table.
“Have I told you lately that I love you?” Napoleon picked it up. One of UNCLE’s best proprietary pain relievers.
Illya rolled his eyes, control back in place. “Get something in your stomach first; the last thing you need on top of everything else is to be sick.”
~*~*~
His first hint that he’d dozed off was when he reflexively jerked his head back into an upright position.
“Ow.” He squinted at his plate, half empty, and released the knife and fork he’d still been holding; a man could lose an eye that way.
Illya, across from him, got up and picked up his coat and scarf as if he’d been waiting for this cue.
“Sleep. I’ll be back.”
Napoleon watched him leave, listened to the click of the lock, and swallowed down the instinctive urge to follow. Not today; he didn’t have it in him, and that was a worse discomfort than his ribs.
You pulled it off. Escaped, got the formula, did your duty. Enjoy the rest – you earned it. Somehow, this particular inner voice always sounded ironical. Napoleon snorted and dropped his towel, crawled into the nearest bed, tugged the blankets close around his body and let himself sink into sleep.
~*~*~
He woke to the click of the lock and saw the silhouette of his partner slip into the room, half lit by the street light coming gauzy through thin curtains and thick snowfall. He rolled over and hit the light; the clock told him he’d slept about five hours, and his body told him thank you. The UNCLE painkiller had reduced his discomfort to the sort of aches he had an all too well-honed ability to ignore.
Illya hesitated at the light, then continued into the room, locking the door behind him, doffing his coat and going to the suitcase at the foot of his bed. Napoleon smelled gunpowder and cold fury, and wondered if it was his imagination. Not that he had any doubts what Illya’d gone to do, or that he’d done it.
Illya went into the bathroom and Napoleon used the time to ease himself into an upright position and set his bare feet to the floor. Illya came out a few minutes later in his baby-blue pyjamas, and Napoleon bit through the middle of a bloodthirsty, ironic laugh. When his partner sat on his bed and reached for the light, though, Napoleon stopped his hand.
“Leave it on.”
Illya looked at him gravely, his hand drifting down to his thigh. Napoleon met that stare, guessing his own demons were in his eyes, and forced out words that shouldn’t have been so hard. “If I ask you to sleep with me tonight …”
Uncannily – or perhaps not; this was a fear all agents shared – Illya clearly heard the silent words … will you think I’m afraid, that I’ve been broken? He smiled his tiny smile, and his words were low and sultry.
“That depends on what else happens.”
Napoleon smiled, back in familiar territory. “I’ll let you be the judge, then.” Because it was absolutely necessary – not to his pride, but to express the message he wanted to deliver – he got to his feet, blessing both the nap and the pain killer. Scowling, Illya echoed the motion.
“Are you sure ..?” He looked Napoleon up and down, quickly, a hint of pink rising in his face, possibly in response to Napoleon’s already swelling erection.
… you’re up for it? Napoleon could hear it. “No, but I’m sure I want to try.”
Still scowling, Illya raised one hand, tentative, and brushed rough-tipped fingers across Napoleon’s freshly shaved cheek, making him shiver. Illya’s quick smile echoed his own, and his fingers rested along Napoleon’s jaw as he asked:
“Is this about ... needing to feel alive?”
It was clearly a question, not a delaying tactic; Napoleon shook his head. “The opposite, in a way. It’s about death. Our deaths. It’s about the real risk of dying, and …” He took a breath, as deep as his ribs allowed, and covered his partner’s hand with his own. “And the tragic, wasteful stupidity of dying with this unsaid, unshared.”
“Even if—”
“Especially if.”
Illya shook his head, a centimeter or two of irritation. “You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“Does it matter?”
Illya looked surprised for a moment – long enough to mentally catalogue all that might happen to them, which was anything and everything, and to realize that all of those things were reasons to go forward, not stop.
Then he opened his arms, easily – who else would he do this for, easily? – and Napoleon moved into them, whole-hearted, and between them they gently drove out every molecule that divided them; Illya’s body was warm against his, strong, so strong, supporting him, making up for every lack in his own, as he always did. There could be no space between them. One would fill it if the other could not; together they were always a whole.
Napoleon brushed his cheek alongside Illya’s, savoring the stubble, the heady, heavy male scent, the certainty of the strength and will and brilliance that were his to command – that could command him. He shivered in delight and pressed his lips to Illya’s neck, feeling his partner lean into the contact.
“Illya.” The word was trust, surrender, check and mate. Illya grabbed his head, bringing their mouths into alignment.
“No games,” he said, low, ruthless. “You have to decide.”
“I’ve decided,” Napoleon whispered against his lips, and they opened to the slow, savoring kiss that followed.
Illya’s tongue filled his mouth, insistent, world-upending – dizzying to let someone else take command, to bend, to yield to strong hands easing him down to the bed – fuck, he’d never been so hard, so alight – so alive as Illya’s hands, strong and calloused, gently shaped his shoulders, his back, passed lightly over the tight gauze, fingers spreading between his ribs.
The Illya paused, easing away from him. He opened his eyes, unaware ’til then that he’d closed them; Illya’s hand stroking the great bruise along his side, tender as a kindly thought, matched the gentle concern in his eyes, and Napoleon felt his throat tighten.
“Hey.” He could hardly speak. “I’m okay, partner.” He swallowed down the emotion, grinned. “Get naked so I can prove it.”
Illya chuckled, caught between amusement and, doubtless, embarrassment at being caught out in such a vulnerable moment. He got to his feet and stripped, making no show of it, but to watch that body unveiled for him fueled Napoleon’s heartrate and hard-on. When Illya bent to pick up his PJ bottoms and tossed them on his bed, revealing himself naked and hard to Napoleon’s sight, he whistled in heartfelt appreciation.
“There’s something you don’t see every day.”
Pink again, Illya nevertheless smirked. “Yes I do.”
Napoleon chuckled. “Well, I don’t.” He was still enjoying the view as Illya stalked to the bed and spread himself like a blanket across Napoleon’s torso, not resting his full weight but enough to let Napoleon know he wasn’t going to treat him like he’d break. Illya seized his head and pulled him up into a hard, domineering kiss, his mouth and body pressing Napoleon into surrender, startling his body into a crazy fire.
When Illya let him up to breathe, he exhaled some heartfelt and uncomprehended expletive, and twined his fingers in that flaxen hair, pulling Illya’s face clumsily against his. Brushing his face and lips against Illya’s, he reveled in the feel of skin to skin, the tickle of lips along lips, the touch of a teasing tongue. Every few seconds he had to draw back and just look, just see that this was Illya; Illya’s golden body against his, vibrant eyes as close as thought, Illya’s rock-hard thigh sliding hot between his own, Illya’s low chuckle as he hissed at that relentless pressure against his balls.
And Illya’s hand sliding across his stomach to stroke his aching cock. Napoleon craned his head up, teeth gritted, for a moment, to see Illya looking up at him, cat-eyes and cat-smile, as he wrapped his hand – his gun hand, Napoleon thought in a flash, and gasped as his whole body throbbed – around Napoleon’s erection.
Illya stroked him, the bastard, and Napoleon groaned, seizing his partner’s arm with a clutching hand.
“Don’t tease,” he breathed, knowing he was asking for it. “Anyway, I’m immune to all forms of tor—”
Illya’s kiss swallowed his lie, and the cry that burst out of him as Illya’s hand suddenly tightened, squeezed, and worked him, hard, fast – then slow and slick – and hard and fast again, until he shuddered and came, so quick, so hard he almost shouted into Illya’s mouth at the force of it jolting his body. He clutched at his partner, panting, and Illya stayed close, one arm wrapped around him, his other hand easing to gentle strokes as they rode out Napoleon’s orgasm.
Breath caught, body still buzzing, Napoleon pressed his teeth into Illya’s neck, sucking until Illya gasped. Napoleon smiled against the heated skin and rolled them both over, missing falling off the bed by inches.
He caught his balance and raised himself on hands and knees over Illya; his body and brain felt heavy, sated, almost drunk, but he had enough energy and focus to know what he wanted to do, and to do it.
He said nothing in answer to Illya’s glittering, questioning eyes. Instead, he started at Illya’s adam’s apple and meandering downward, feeling Illya’s breath speed up as his lips, teeth and tongue together made a random and leisurely pleasure trip along his partner’s body.
“Napoleon ...” Illya slid a hand into his hair, not pressing or guiding, but caressing him in rhythm with his own caresses.
When his chin met the damp tip of an erect cock, he raised his head, wearing a grin that hinted at every moment of sexual experience in his repertoire.
Flushed, Illya eyed him with affected alarm. “C-careful, Napoleon.” His voice was both amused and breathless; his hands gripped the thin blanket. “Remember you’re an invalid.”
Napoleon’s grin broadened. “I’ll remember tomorrow.”
~*~*~
Gauzy cold light penetrated Napoleon’s eyelids and his brain, and he blinked himself awake. The room was cold, though he was warm under the blankets; Illya stood, dressed, at the window, the open curtains showing a calm, snow-blanketed city.
“Good morning,” Napoleon ground out – a safe opening gambit.
“It’s Christmas eve,” Illya said, which wasn’t news, and Napoleon sat up, breathing deeply, taking his body’s measure and deciding he’d live.
Unless Illya was having any lethal second thoughts.
“Are we going home today?”
Illya nodded. He wouldn’t bring it up, Napoleon knew – not even indirectly.
“The flight leaves in two hours,” Illya said instead, a hint that it was time for Napoleon to get up. Any inclination toward taking time to discuss the night before became irrelevant as Napoleon realized how stiff and sore he was. Levering himself out of the bed was brutal; he re-focused on what needed to be done to get them out the door in time, to get them home – to get them where there’d be no distractions or escape routes for either of them.
~*~*~
Once they were settled in their airplane seats, Napoleon looked at his partner – currently gazing out the window at the snowy runway – until, feeling his stare, Illya turned to face him.
“What are you doing for Christmas?”
A flicker of a smile. “I had no plans.”
“Spend it with me.”
Another flicker. “And if I’d had plans?”
“Cancel them.” Napoleon said it seriously, though in truth he’d’ve backed down for sufficient cause. On the Christmas plans, that is – not on his greater plan. He needed Illya to know he meant this. “Spend it with me.”
This time Illya had to actively fight the smile. “Will there be presents?”
“And pasts and futures.” Napoleon shaped his tone with care, leaving space for negotiation, but not for doubts. “Especially futures.”
The jet's engines roared to life and Napoleon watched Illya settle back into his seat and check his belt, unnecessarily. He watched the corners of Illya’s eyes crinkle; watched his mouth twitch and purse, struggling in its protracted battle of containment.
“Okay?” he prodded – and the smile made its escape.
“Okay.”
The End
Slash, about 6,000 words, graphic - ish.
“You sure you’re gonna be all right? You still look pretty …”
Napoleon Solo nodded and scooted across the tape-patched vinyl seat, slide-stick-slide, clambering stiffly down from the truck; he realized at that moment that he’d been wrong in his assessment of two hours past – the cab of the semi was, in fact, slightly warmer than the outside air.
He thumped down into about six inches of snow, glanced around the gas station to see that it was deserted but for himself and the truck, and turned back to call out, “Thanks for the lift,” with a smile that took some heavy lifting on the part of his facial muscles.
He slammed the bent door with effort and watched, blinking away snowflakes, as the truck lumbered back out onto the highway, leaving him very alone. The gas station – closed – was on the edge of Denver. He could see the lights of the city through the falling snow. It looked very far away.
Every part of him, every muscle and bone and organ, was exhausted; only the biting mountain air kept him from feeling the beating he’d taken less than six hours ago. But he was free, he was safe, he had the only extant sample of the poison gas, and he was in a city where he could at least call UNCLE L.A. and get someone to pick up him.
The ground – oily concrete, no doubt, under the snow – offered little purchase for his battered dress shoes, and he walked carefully to the lighted phone booth set against one wall of the gas station. The glass was filthy, the door semi-functional, but the phone within was his lifeline, and he felt his knotted tension ease a trifle as he slipped inside.
Searching his mental black book for the area code and number of the L.A. office, he fished around in the pockets of his ruined jacket with numbed fingers, finding nothing but – eventually – a gaping rip at the bottom of the pocket where he’d shoved the cash he’d taken from the last THRUSH he’d cold-cocked before escaping from the mountain lab where he’d spent the last three days as a very unwilling guest.
He stared at the useless receiver in his hand and had to smile, cold and hungry and tired and aching as he was; UNCLE’s top agent, lethal, brilliant, resourceful – all those words the people who sat behind desks liked to use once he’d succeeded on a mission – and he didn’t have a god-damned dime to make a phone call.
He touched his breast pocket as he’d done perhaps a thousand times since scrambling over the chain-link fence around the labs and staggering, bruised and bleeding, down the mountain – double-checking that the tiny canister of deadly experimental gas still rested there. Then he leaned on the dirty glass of the phone booth and stared a moment, blankly, up the street, the black night and the white snow, the streetlamps feebly illuminating the thickly falling flakes. Beautiful if one wasn’t bone tired, bone sore, bone chilled and hungry as a wolf.
What he wouldn’t give – what he wouldn’t admit to – to see Illya appear, a surly sarcastic angel, with money or a car or a hotel room or a hot meal … or the simple stanchion of his presence.
Napoleon took in a deep breath, pulled his jacket around him, pressed his arms to his sides as tightly as his bruised (possibly broken, but since he didn’t know, why not assume the best?) ribs permitted – and plunged out into the snow.
Illya Kuryakin sat hunched in the car seat, all his focus on the faint crackling voices coming from his earpiece.
“ … far on foot. The trucker dropped him off at the edge of town.”
Another voice, probably from the THRUSH labs, too static-laden for Illya to make out.
“I know, but he didn’t have a gun, a communicator, he had no money – how’s he gonna get in touch with UNCLE?”
More static.
“Don’t worry; we can check.”
One last brief burst, followed by barely concealed anger:
“We will. Out.” A click, then Illya was listening to the two men who were following Napoleon.
One, harsh-voiced, snarled, “I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch. I’m gonna kill him twice over.”
The man who’d been on the radio snorted. “Fuckin’ pussy. You just wanted to stick your dick in ’im – and he fought you off. He was tied up and he still kicked your ass.”
“Shut up. Let’s go. We need to find him.”
“It shouldn’t be that hard on a night like this – where can a guy with no money go?”
“Hell,” harsh-voice snapped. “He can go t’hell – and I’m gonna be his fucking travel agent. Move.”
The sound of a car starting was following by a beep as the tracer began to move.
Illya unclenched his knotted fingers from the steering wheel, glanced at the homing device and started the car.
If there existed a more uninviting invitation than a hand-painted sign in a dirty window reading “Angel’s Mercy Soup Kitchen – All Welcome,” Napoleon couldn’t think of it. But it was the only place a man without coat or coin could get immediate help, and immediate was the kind he needed. After twenty minutes of mechanically placing one foot in front of the other, he could no longer feel his hands, his face, or his legs below about mid-shin, and though he was still shivering – a sign that he hadn’t passed the point of no return – he knew he wouldn’t last the night without shelter.
For the hundredth time he wiped the accumulated snowflakes from his lashes and stumbled toward the rectangular windowfront, poorly outlined with a string of drooping Christmas lights.
A blast of heat and a sickly smell mixed of onions and bleach hit him as he pushed through the door. Half a dozen men in what seemed identical garb – worn, frayed winter clothing, all of it shades of grey – looked up when he entered, abandoning their soup and coffee for a few moments of blank-eyed staring. He scanned the room – no threat more heinous than the scent hinted at, and the ugliest thing in the room (oddly, considering the clientele) was the aluminum Christmas tree, bent and crazily decorated with various cheap, tattered ornaments, like an old whore with a back ailment.
The wet floor offered less purchase to his sodden shoes than the sidewalk outside; he skidded a little as he crossed the entry and went to a long counter that fronted a kitchen, along one side of the room, where a plump girl with big eyes behind bigger glasses was stirring a vat of soup. The long counter held bowls, cups, a coffee urn, a plastic Santa that lit up from the inside and a big mason jar with “donations” taped on it, a lower-case plea rather than a capitalized expectation. Napoleon’s elbows joined the sad collection on the warped formica.
The girl looked up. Blinked at him. “Wh— are you all right?”
Napoleon blinked right back at the girl as she stared, one hand holding a bowl the color of putty, the other frozen in the act of spooning some kind of vegetable soup into it. He realized he must look pretty bad if he caused comment in a place like this. Then again he’d hardly had a place, or the chance, to clean up. It was anyone’s guess what he looked like after the fight that had preceded his escape.
“Just cold and hungry,” he said, hoping the words would remind her of her duty. Nothing she could do about the rest of it anyway. “And … do you have a phone I can use?”
“Pay phone on the corner,” she said apologetically, filling a bowl and coffee mug.
It took a real effort – evidence of his depleted state – for Napoleon not to say If I had any damned money do you think I’d be at a shelter in the first place? Instead he took the proffered soup and a chipped, stained mug of coffee that, from its smell, deserved no better vessel and found himself a seat at a corner table where he could survey the room. Already the warmth had made him feel a little better, but in thawing his body had also started to ache more decisively. He sipped the coffee and tried to breathe slowly, cataloguing the pains and trying to damp them one body part at a time.
The tracer bug changed from its steady beeping to a continuous low hum, the sign that the car had stopped. Glancing at the screen Illya saw that it was about 12 miles north-northwest of his position. He peered through the curtain of fat snowflakes at street signs, seeking the quickest route to their location.
“There he is.”
The three triumphant words through the earphones jolted him; he hit the gas and the car slewed a little in the uncleared but mercifully empty street. He passed an intersection and cursed as a glance at the tracer showed he was heading too far east. At the next available left turn he swung the wheel, skidded around the corner, and pressed the gas with laser focus – not too hard, just enough to get there more quickly than was humanly possible.
“Hate t’see the other guy.”
The gruff voice preceded the heavy thud of a man’s behind in the chair across from him. Napoleon gave his new table-mate, a bearded man who looked a bit like a dissolute Santa, a wan smile.
“Kind of you to assume I won,” he said, not interrupting the steady transfer of soup from bowl to mouth. He had won – or he’d be dead – and it had been three guys, not one, but he felt no pressing need to inform his new companion of that.
Santa chuckled and dug into his own bowl of soup; his hands were pudgy, unusually rough, with callused knuckles, as from a lifetime of heavy work.
“Ain’t no winners here,” he said after a slurp of soup. Then, surprisingly, he added, “Or, look at it another way, we all winners or we’d be dead by now.” He laughed, a moist, tubercular sound, and continued eating.
“Do they have beds for the night here?” Napoleon asked, glancing hopefully toward the dark corridor behind him. Santa shook his head.
“Just the soup.” He lowered his voice. “But they won’t kick you out.”
Napoleon took in another fortifying breath. He needed a phone, or enough money to use a pay phone. He wasn’t likely to find either here, but he needed a place to spend the night out of this blizzard – even if he had to do it sitting up in a hard chair.
The bell over the door jangled – perfect Christmas music for this sad and dirty place – and when everyone looked up, Napoleon did the same. It would have been funny but for the identity of the two brown-coated men he saw.
Santa must’ve seen him stiffen; he glanced over his shoulder, muttered, “Back room. Get up when I do,” and rose ponderously to his feet, arms spread on the table as if to give Napoleon maximum cover.
Napoleon slid out of the chair, gritting his teeth against the nearly crippling throb from thighs gone stiff and uncooperative, and ducked into the short corridor behind his table. He spotted two doors: one said “Storage,” the other “Restroom.” He chose the former as likely to have the least traffic.
Within, he slithered his way around mops and brooms until he was in a corner, ducking slightly to avoid a shelf and feeling around for anything he could use as a weapon. Broom – he had to chuckle silently at the idea of breaking the handle in two in his current condition – mop, bucket … he felt around as quietly as he could, listening with his entire body for sounds outside the flimsy door. His hands felt too big, half-numb and clumsy as he groped, finally settling on a metal rod … heavy, and he couldn’t guess what sort of cleaning implement it might be, but it would dent a man’s skull, and that was the only kind of cleanup Napoleon was interested in. He clutched it and waited.
A tap on the door snapped his heart into clumsy double-time. Then Santa’s voice called out, loud and clear.
“You in here? They’re gone.”
He considered the real possibility they were holding a gun on the old guy, but really, if they knew he was in here, what was he going to do, disguise himself as a mop? Slither out the vent? He opened the door and poked his head out, seeing only the old fellow. “Where are your elves?”
“On their way back to the North Pole, I hope,” Santa said. “I told ’em you left, and they bought it.”
Further cautious egress from the closet supported this theory. He breathed out a calamitous sigh, put the iron rod back in the closet with a shrug – it was just an iron rod, rebar, he thought, the sort one found inside the walls of old structures, not a cleaning implement at all – and sat back down in front of his cold soup, considering it a blessing that his appetite was now gone.
“Thanks for the help, Santa.” Then he realized what he’d called his benefactor.
But Santa grinned. “Well, I think you been a good little boy this year.”
Napoleon smiled, scooted his chair deeper into the corner and leaned carefully back, pulling his coat tighter and trying to find the least acutely uncomfortable position to doze in. It occurred to him he might be safer doing this in the closet. That was the last thing that occurred to him as his eyes and his mind drifted shut.
“This is a far cry from your usual level of society.”
Illya’s voice – Illya! – jolted him awake. A warm hug, a hot meal, a ride home – Christmas Day to an 8-year-old – those deep, sarcastic tones brought all those to his mind and heart in an instant. Napoleon sat up, fighting down his grin as he looked up at his partner, hands shoved into the pockets of the coat Napoleon had given him for Christmas last year, a festive red scarf coiled ill at ease around his neck and his blond hair damp with melting snow.
“Are you ready to stop playing around and come home?”
God. For an instant, all bad things drained away from Napoleon’s mind and body. I could kiss you.
Whether it was relief at finding him alive and well after three days of almost certainty that he was dead, or surprise at his appearance, he found himself staring at Napoleon – the mussed hair, pale face, and beard made him seem both vulnerable and alluring, stirring a warm, startling flurry of feelings in Illya’s chest. And when Napoleon smiled up at him, clearly relieved and fighting not to show how much, Illya had to swallow down the strongest urge to grab him and …
Then Napoleon sighed, his body slumping as he visibly let his guard down, and Illya succumbed. He reached out and grasped his partner’s shoulders, pulling him to his feet, holding on when he felt how unsteady Napoleon was.
“Are you all right?” he said, keeping his voice low. Napoleon nodded, snorting a very soft laugh.
“Battered but unbowed,” he said, then met Illya’s eyes for an honest second. “Well, a little bowed, maybe.”
“Come on,” Illya said brusquely, sliding a supporting arm around Napoleon’s shoulders. “Let’s go slip into someplace more comfortable.” He felt Napoleon laugh, though he didn’t hear it, as he guided him around the other tables toward the door.
Napoleon stopped. “Wait a second.” He glanced back into the room, then looked at Illya. “Do you have any cash on you?”
Puzzled at first, Illya remembered where they were and could have kicked himself for not having already thought of it. “Hang on.” He let go of his partner and dug out his wallet, mentally calculating what he’d need for the next day versus what he had. He pulled out a couple of twenties and went back to the counter to drop them in the collection jar. The soup girl blinked at the clearly visible denominations, then stared wide-eyed at Illya.
“Merry Christmas. Thank you for helping my friend,” he said with a smile, then rejoined his partner.
“Phony,” Napoleon muttered. He waved farewell to his battered benefactor while Illya slipped off his coat and wrapped it around him, leading him unprotesting out into a now-driving snowstorm. Illya quickly bundled Napoleon into his rented car and drove with careful expertise through the storm to a hotel.
Slumped in the passenger seat, Napoleon abruptly raised his hand and fumbled in his breast pocket for a moment before fishing out a tiny metal canister, like a CO2 cartridge. He held it out to Illya. “Just in case I develop another inconvenient hole in my pockets.”
Illya took it and slid it into his front jeans pocket. “Mr Waverly will be glad to see it.”
“Nice to know how you rate,” Napoleon muttered, but that was too old a plaint for either of them to pay it much attention.
Illya maneuvered around a corner with minimal sliding. “How badly are you injured.” It was not a question, but a demand for itemization of a bill that would assuredly be paid.
“General cuts and bruises, mostly,” Napoleon said. “Dehydrated and hungry enough that I actually ate the soup you no doubt smelled coming in –”
“Bozhe moi.”
“—and incipient frost bite.”
Illya said nothing. Napoleon breathed in and breathed out the truest truth. “I’m very tired, Illya.”
“Five minutes,” Illya said; his voice was calm, but Napoleon had seen his fingers tightening on the steering wheel. It was a fine line – you needed to be able to lean on those dearest to you, but they felt the weight keenly.
They parked next to the nondescript hotel and Illya guided Napoleon the short distance along the sidewalk and into the lobby as if he were blind rather than weak. Napoleon smiled in spite of himself.
Inside they made for the elevator and went up to their third-floor room. Napoleon glanced around – clean, comfortable, two double beds, nothing fancy but no nylon sheets, thank whoever the god of spies was. Illya’s suitcase already rested on the stand at the foot of the bed nearest a window that showed a thick snowfall backlit by city streetlamps.
Illya shut and locked the door, then collected a shaving kit from his suitcase and handed it to his partner.
“Hot bath,” he ordered, gently shoving Napoleon in that direction. “I’m going across the street to get something edible.”
Napoleon was already stripping off his unsalvageable clothes with one hand as he staggered toward the bathroom. Despite the gruff tone and verbal dismissal, Napoleon wouldn’t have been surprised, had he turned, to see that Illya was attentively watching him all the way across the room, prepared for any sudden collapse.
Naked, he sat on the toilet and turned on the bath taps, breathing deeply, trying to release the fear and tension that had knotted his body for days. He leaned down, forehead in his hands, as steam filled the room, and when his eyes filled as well, he just sighed. One of the more humbling things he’d learned about what he did, and what it cost, was that you had to let it out, however it needed to get out, or it would kill you. Or, worse, cripple you as an operative.
When the tub was full he sat up, drained but unknotted, and dumped some hotel-issue bath soap into the steaming water before sliding his battered body carefully into it.
“Ahh …” The heat, excruciating for a second, metamorphosed into nirvana. “Good, good …” He sank down to his chin, abdicating thought.
“Are you asleep in there, or drowned?” Illya’s voice, carrying clearly from the other side of the bathroom door (prudently left ajar), woke him.
He flailed a little in startlement, answered, “Drowned,” and smiled.
“Fine,” came the immediate reply. “That just means more steak and potatoes for me.”
Napoleon rinsed off and climbed carefully – then even more carefully, as pain clenched his left side – out of the tub. He glanced in the mirror as he dried himself off; the cut along one cheekbone and the bruise on his jaw were probably the least of it. His gaze traveled down his body. Definitely the least; the worst was the vast inky bruising around his left side; he looked … well, pretty much like a man who’d been tied up and hammered with the butt of a rifle.
He shaved, poorly and with exacting care, then wrapped a towel around his hips and went into the comfortably warm (warmer than Illya usually liked it, so it was for his benefit) room. Illya was arranging styrofoam containers on the small table.
“Dinner, such as it is, is served. Pyjamas for tonight and clothes for tomorrow – including a spare argument – in the suitcase.” He turned. “We can—”
This was a mirror Napoleon didn’t particularly want to look into. The lighting in the room was brutally honest; he saw Illya’s eyes go murder-flat, just for an instant, before his partner covered it, shaking his head and tsking.
He went to the suitcase and came out with some gauze. “I can wrap those ribs, at least. Do you know if they’re broken?”
Napoleon shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe cracked, though …”
“That counts,” Illya snapped, stretching out a length of gauze. “Move your arms.”
Napoleon lifted his arms. The gargantuan effort it required was, evidently, visible.
“Rest them on me.” Illya reached around him and Napoleon laid his arms across the broad shoulders inches away. “Breathe in – I don’t want to make this too tight.”
Napoleon inhaled and held it, eyes pinched shut against the pain, but he couldn’t help a faint sound when Illya was done and he could breathe out again.
“Oh, Napoleon.” The words, soft, censure and empathy, might not have done it. But when Illya’s hand came up to caress his jaw, featherlight, he dropped his forehead onto Illya’s shoulder and pulled his partner in, holding him as tightly as the pain allowed, almost more a collapse than a hug. Illya’s arms went about his torso, carefully bringing them closer.
“I’m always glad to see you,” he said into Illya’s hair, “but if I’ve ever been more glad, I can’t remember when.”
He felt Illya’s laugh. Felt Illya’s face, soft skin, soft whiskers (how long has he been looking for me, not eating, not shaving, not sleeping?) against his neck, and felt what seemed the brush of lips, a shadow of sensation that made him shiver.
Illya eased away, still steadying him by his shoulders, and said, face turned aside, “Come and eat before you pass out.”
“I prefer that order myself.” He went to the table.
Illya stopped at his suitcase; when he sat across from Napoleon he slid a triangular yellow pill across the table.
“Have I told you lately that I love you?” Napoleon picked it up. One of UNCLE’s best proprietary pain relievers.
Illya rolled his eyes, control back in place. “Get something in your stomach first; the last thing you need on top of everything else is to be sick.”
His first hint that he’d dozed off was when he reflexively jerked his head back into an upright position.
“Ow.” He squinted at his plate, half empty, and released the knife and fork he’d still been holding; a man could lose an eye that way.
Illya, across from him, got up and picked up his coat and scarf as if he’d been waiting for this cue.
“Sleep. I’ll be back.”
Napoleon watched him leave, listened to the click of the lock, and swallowed down the instinctive urge to follow. Not today; he didn’t have it in him, and that was a worse discomfort than his ribs.
You pulled it off. Escaped, got the formula, did your duty. Enjoy the rest – you earned it. Somehow, this particular inner voice always sounded ironical. Napoleon snorted and dropped his towel, crawled into the nearest bed, tugged the blankets close around his body and let himself sink into sleep.
He woke to the click of the lock and saw the silhouette of his partner slip into the room, half lit by the street light coming gauzy through thin curtains and thick snowfall. He rolled over and hit the light; the clock told him he’d slept about five hours, and his body told him thank you. The UNCLE painkiller had reduced his discomfort to the sort of aches he had an all too well-honed ability to ignore.
Illya hesitated at the light, then continued into the room, locking the door behind him, doffing his coat and going to the suitcase at the foot of his bed. Napoleon smelled gunpowder and cold fury, and wondered if it was his imagination. Not that he had any doubts what Illya’d gone to do, or that he’d done it.
Illya went into the bathroom and Napoleon used the time to ease himself into an upright position and set his bare feet to the floor. Illya came out a few minutes later in his baby-blue pyjamas, and Napoleon bit through the middle of a bloodthirsty, ironic laugh. When his partner sat on his bed and reached for the light, though, Napoleon stopped his hand.
“Leave it on.”
Illya looked at him gravely, his hand drifting down to his thigh. Napoleon met that stare, guessing his own demons were in his eyes, and forced out words that shouldn’t have been so hard. “If I ask you to sleep with me tonight …”
Uncannily – or perhaps not; this was a fear all agents shared – Illya clearly heard the silent words … will you think I’m afraid, that I’ve been broken? He smiled his tiny smile, and his words were low and sultry.
“That depends on what else happens.”
Napoleon smiled, back in familiar territory. “I’ll let you be the judge, then.” Because it was absolutely necessary – not to his pride, but to express the message he wanted to deliver – he got to his feet, blessing both the nap and the pain killer. Scowling, Illya echoed the motion.
“Are you sure ..?” He looked Napoleon up and down, quickly, a hint of pink rising in his face, possibly in response to Napoleon’s already swelling erection.
… you’re up for it? Napoleon could hear it. “No, but I’m sure I want to try.”
Still scowling, Illya raised one hand, tentative, and brushed rough-tipped fingers across Napoleon’s freshly shaved cheek, making him shiver. Illya’s quick smile echoed his own, and his fingers rested along Napoleon’s jaw as he asked:
“Is this about ... needing to feel alive?”
It was clearly a question, not a delaying tactic; Napoleon shook his head. “The opposite, in a way. It’s about death. Our deaths. It’s about the real risk of dying, and …” He took a breath, as deep as his ribs allowed, and covered his partner’s hand with his own. “And the tragic, wasteful stupidity of dying with this unsaid, unshared.”
“Even if—”
“Especially if.”
Illya shook his head, a centimeter or two of irritation. “You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“Does it matter?”
Illya looked surprised for a moment – long enough to mentally catalogue all that might happen to them, which was anything and everything, and to realize that all of those things were reasons to go forward, not stop.
Then he opened his arms, easily – who else would he do this for, easily? – and Napoleon moved into them, whole-hearted, and between them they gently drove out every molecule that divided them; Illya’s body was warm against his, strong, so strong, supporting him, making up for every lack in his own, as he always did. There could be no space between them. One would fill it if the other could not; together they were always a whole.
Napoleon brushed his cheek alongside Illya’s, savoring the stubble, the heady, heavy male scent, the certainty of the strength and will and brilliance that were his to command – that could command him. He shivered in delight and pressed his lips to Illya’s neck, feeling his partner lean into the contact.
“Illya.” The word was trust, surrender, check and mate. Illya grabbed his head, bringing their mouths into alignment.
“No games,” he said, low, ruthless. “You have to decide.”
“I’ve decided,” Napoleon whispered against his lips, and they opened to the slow, savoring kiss that followed.
Illya’s tongue filled his mouth, insistent, world-upending – dizzying to let someone else take command, to bend, to yield to strong hands easing him down to the bed – fuck, he’d never been so hard, so alight – so alive as Illya’s hands, strong and calloused, gently shaped his shoulders, his back, passed lightly over the tight gauze, fingers spreading between his ribs.
The Illya paused, easing away from him. He opened his eyes, unaware ’til then that he’d closed them; Illya’s hand stroking the great bruise along his side, tender as a kindly thought, matched the gentle concern in his eyes, and Napoleon felt his throat tighten.
“Hey.” He could hardly speak. “I’m okay, partner.” He swallowed down the emotion, grinned. “Get naked so I can prove it.”
Illya chuckled, caught between amusement and, doubtless, embarrassment at being caught out in such a vulnerable moment. He got to his feet and stripped, making no show of it, but to watch that body unveiled for him fueled Napoleon’s heartrate and hard-on. When Illya bent to pick up his PJ bottoms and tossed them on his bed, revealing himself naked and hard to Napoleon’s sight, he whistled in heartfelt appreciation.
“There’s something you don’t see every day.”
Pink again, Illya nevertheless smirked. “Yes I do.”
Napoleon chuckled. “Well, I don’t.” He was still enjoying the view as Illya stalked to the bed and spread himself like a blanket across Napoleon’s torso, not resting his full weight but enough to let Napoleon know he wasn’t going to treat him like he’d break. Illya seized his head and pulled him up into a hard, domineering kiss, his mouth and body pressing Napoleon into surrender, startling his body into a crazy fire.
When Illya let him up to breathe, he exhaled some heartfelt and uncomprehended expletive, and twined his fingers in that flaxen hair, pulling Illya’s face clumsily against his. Brushing his face and lips against Illya’s, he reveled in the feel of skin to skin, the tickle of lips along lips, the touch of a teasing tongue. Every few seconds he had to draw back and just look, just see that this was Illya; Illya’s golden body against his, vibrant eyes as close as thought, Illya’s rock-hard thigh sliding hot between his own, Illya’s low chuckle as he hissed at that relentless pressure against his balls.
And Illya’s hand sliding across his stomach to stroke his aching cock. Napoleon craned his head up, teeth gritted, for a moment, to see Illya looking up at him, cat-eyes and cat-smile, as he wrapped his hand – his gun hand, Napoleon thought in a flash, and gasped as his whole body throbbed – around Napoleon’s erection.
Illya stroked him, the bastard, and Napoleon groaned, seizing his partner’s arm with a clutching hand.
“Don’t tease,” he breathed, knowing he was asking for it. “Anyway, I’m immune to all forms of tor—”
Illya’s kiss swallowed his lie, and the cry that burst out of him as Illya’s hand suddenly tightened, squeezed, and worked him, hard, fast – then slow and slick – and hard and fast again, until he shuddered and came, so quick, so hard he almost shouted into Illya’s mouth at the force of it jolting his body. He clutched at his partner, panting, and Illya stayed close, one arm wrapped around him, his other hand easing to gentle strokes as they rode out Napoleon’s orgasm.
Breath caught, body still buzzing, Napoleon pressed his teeth into Illya’s neck, sucking until Illya gasped. Napoleon smiled against the heated skin and rolled them both over, missing falling off the bed by inches.
He caught his balance and raised himself on hands and knees over Illya; his body and brain felt heavy, sated, almost drunk, but he had enough energy and focus to know what he wanted to do, and to do it.
He said nothing in answer to Illya’s glittering, questioning eyes. Instead, he started at Illya’s adam’s apple and meandering downward, feeling Illya’s breath speed up as his lips, teeth and tongue together made a random and leisurely pleasure trip along his partner’s body.
“Napoleon ...” Illya slid a hand into his hair, not pressing or guiding, but caressing him in rhythm with his own caresses.
When his chin met the damp tip of an erect cock, he raised his head, wearing a grin that hinted at every moment of sexual experience in his repertoire.
Flushed, Illya eyed him with affected alarm. “C-careful, Napoleon.” His voice was both amused and breathless; his hands gripped the thin blanket. “Remember you’re an invalid.”
Napoleon’s grin broadened. “I’ll remember tomorrow.”
Gauzy cold light penetrated Napoleon’s eyelids and his brain, and he blinked himself awake. The room was cold, though he was warm under the blankets; Illya stood, dressed, at the window, the open curtains showing a calm, snow-blanketed city.
“Good morning,” Napoleon ground out – a safe opening gambit.
“It’s Christmas eve,” Illya said, which wasn’t news, and Napoleon sat up, breathing deeply, taking his body’s measure and deciding he’d live.
Unless Illya was having any lethal second thoughts.
“Are we going home today?”
Illya nodded. He wouldn’t bring it up, Napoleon knew – not even indirectly.
“The flight leaves in two hours,” Illya said instead, a hint that it was time for Napoleon to get up. Any inclination toward taking time to discuss the night before became irrelevant as Napoleon realized how stiff and sore he was. Levering himself out of the bed was brutal; he re-focused on what needed to be done to get them out the door in time, to get them home – to get them where there’d be no distractions or escape routes for either of them.
Once they were settled in their airplane seats, Napoleon looked at his partner – currently gazing out the window at the snowy runway – until, feeling his stare, Illya turned to face him.
“What are you doing for Christmas?”
A flicker of a smile. “I had no plans.”
“Spend it with me.”
Another flicker. “And if I’d had plans?”
“Cancel them.” Napoleon said it seriously, though in truth he’d’ve backed down for sufficient cause. On the Christmas plans, that is – not on his greater plan. He needed Illya to know he meant this. “Spend it with me.”
This time Illya had to actively fight the smile. “Will there be presents?”
“And pasts and futures.” Napoleon shaped his tone with care, leaving space for negotiation, but not for doubts. “Especially futures.”
The jet's engines roared to life and Napoleon watched Illya settle back into his seat and check his belt, unnecessarily. He watched the corners of Illya’s eyes crinkle; watched his mouth twitch and purse, struggling in its protracted battle of containment.
“Okay?” he prodded – and the smile made its escape.
“Okay.”
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Date: 2 January 2011 04:18 am (UTC)May I friend you?
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Date: 2 January 2011 07:00 am (UTC)