Illya Kuryakin stared out the window at the pelting rain. It suited his mood, dark, cold and miserable. It had only been a week since he'd walked out on his lover. He smiled slightly; it felt like forever; it felt like yesterday.
He'd walked in after a long day at headquarter, a day when everything that could have possibly gone wrong had and in the worse possible way imaginable. The only thing that had kept him going throughout the day was the knowledge he'd soon be home with Napoleon. His partner had been released from Medical, but still wasn't had been cleared for active duty. So Illya was pulling a double load of his own work and Napoleon's. It was okay, though, for at least there would be no lasting damage from Napoleon's most recent stay with THRUSH. A few more days and he'd be back to work. Perhaps then the fights would stop; perhaps then Illya could breathe again.
He'd heaved a great sigh of relief as he walked through their front door and froze as he saw Napoleon with a woman, doing things with her Illya had thought were now his alone to enjoy. He locked eyes with his lover for a long moment, turned, and disappeared.
Within a few hours, he'd cleaned out his bank account and was on a bus. The next morning, when they pulled into Duluth, he had dropped his gun, his ID badge and his communicator into an envelope and mailed it back to New York. He kept moving until he simply ran out of country.
San Francisco, it was a good place for a man like him to disappear. Thankfully he'd had enough in his savings that surviving wasn't an immediate challenge; no the challenge would be finding a reason to live. All his life he'd done one thing. He'd been carefully crafted and molded, but that was over now. He couldn't be an agent; not anymore. But his options were limited. There was teaching, but he was sure UNCLE would track him down, just as it would if he went to work in a lab.
He looked out again and that's when the billboard caught his eye – 'Love to cook? Sign up for Chef School!'
He laughed, a short hard bark, a shadow of anything he might have expressed earlier. Chef's school. Why not? Why the hell not?