Promises, a man from uncle fanfic

The air was like tinted glass, so translucent and deep that every line of the buildings seemed to be underwater. The stones glowed, giving back the warmth of the day's sun into the evening air. Illya had forgotten how peaceful Cambridge could be on a summer's evening. New York never stopped, but by evening Cambridge softened and mellowed and seemed to enter a gentle slumber. It was so good to be here.

The only thing missing was Napoleon. He ached for Napoleon, not in his mind, but bodily, deep in himself. He had spoken to him two nights ago, a hurried communicator conversation with him in the background of which he could hear muezzins calling and, he thought, the braying of a donkey. Then Napoleon had slipped into the Middle Eastern night, and Illya had dropped his communicator back into his pocket and turned back to his research.

That wasn't the same as actually being with Napoleon. He didn't want to talk to Napoleon. He wanted to fuck him, fuck him with urgency and heat and love. He wanted to end up tangled in the sheets with him, slick with sweat, gasping and exhausted and so satiated that his bones were melting inside him.

'Dr Kuryakin.'

He jerked his head away from the clear light outside the window and saw hands holding two polystyrene cups of coffee, the knuckles like little mountains punctuating thin, long fingers.

'Thanks,' he muttered, taking the cup and swallowing half of the scalding drink before he put it down on the desk.

'Watch the papers,' Stephen said, brushing aside Illya's piles of notes, where jottings in Roman and Greek and Cyrillic characters had been as messily deposited on the papers as the papers were on the desk.

'It's time to knock off,' Stephen added, nodding briefly at the ticking clock. 'You'll only make mistakes.'

'I've worked longer hours before this,' Illya murmured, but he glanced at the light outside again. It was so calm out there, and his neck ached and his shoulders ached and there was that tight knot of need low down in his body.

Stephen's fingers rested for a moment on his shoulder. They clenched momentarily, just touching the outside of that ache, before letting go. For a little moment he missed Napoleon intensely. No doubt he was doing well enough in – where had he moved on to? San Marino, Illya thought. So as long as he was avoiding the traps and bullets he was probably doing fine with the casino hostesses and the rich blonde travellers. Probably doing more than fine.

'There's no need to work through the night for this,' Stephen said. 'The committee aren't expecting you to work through the night for it. It's not U.N.C.L.E.. The world isn't relying on fast results. You've been out of the field for too long. Quantum mechanics is more like unfolding an intricate piece of origami, don't you think, to find the message inside?'

Illya took another mouthful of coffee, and looked up obliquely at the tall, spare young man standing beside him. His hair fell down in an unruly brown fold over his forehead. His nose was bony at the bridge. His eyes were a curious colour. It was hard to decide if they were grey or green.

There was a little arrow of sharper need in him then, and he looked away from Stephen quickly. He had no business having feelings like that when Napoleon was on a mission and he was here, requisitioned by Trinity for two months for this project. He was here to work, and Napoleon was working, and he would just have to wait until they could be back together.

'You practice origami, do you?' he asked in an offhand way, moving one piece of paper so it rustled over another. He had gone through a period of playing about with origami. It had helped to focus his mind.

'Oh, I'm only an outside admirer,' Stephen laughed quickly. 'I took a year off in Japan before I committed myself to the doctorate here. Learning the language, exploring the culture, that kind of thing.'

'That must have been fun,' Illya said rather dryly. He had gone straight from academic institute to academic institute, and those times when he hadn't been studying had been filled with his commitment to the Navy. Then there had been U.N.C.L.E., and the travel was amazing, but not exactly for leisure.

'You've been to Japan?' Stephen asked.

'A couple of times,' Illya nodded.

Sometimes he found a few snatched moments in the middle of commitments to one thing or another. A couple of holidays. There had been that long weekend in Tokyo, the geisha house, the laughter over saki and impromptu Japanese lessons with a porcelain faced beauty...

'Furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto,' Stephen said reflectively, and Illya's head jerked up as the familiar words sparked little memories of pleasure.

'The old pond,
A frog jumps in:
Plop!' he said with a grin. 'I suppose it loses in translation, but English is foreign to me too, and I like the onomatopoeia.'

'Most things lose in translation,' Stephen shrugged. 'Far better to learn the original. Listen, Dr Kuryakin – Illya,' he corrected himself, before Illya could do so himself. 'I have something better than this ghastly coffee back in my digs. I know it's foul, but it's all they have in the kitchen. A travesty to call that alcove a kitchen, really.'

'Honestly, I barely even taste the coffee,' Illya reassured him. 'When I'm really busy I hardly notice anything but the caffeine.'

'Well, I have a good old range of tea in my room. Earl Grey, as well as the stuff you can stand up a spoon in. And a rather lovely blend my uncle brought back from India last time he visited.'

'Do you have sherry?' Illya asked.

'Do I ever,' Stephen replied, and he smiled abruptly, a little relaxation moving through his body so that suddenly he looked far more like an animal creature and less the Cambridge PhD hopeful. The look of him teased at something in Illya's mind. It conjured sense-memories of a lean, lanky body, ribs very close to the skin, and a scent of musk.

'Maybe a glass of sherry, then,' Illya said, returning the smile.

((O))

He should have remembered that he hadn't eaten all day. Subsisting on cheap powdered coffee alone wasn't good for anyone. The sherry slipped down beautifully, and was followed by a fine brandy from a cut glass decanter. The thought half formed in his mind that back home he would have called for take out to soak up some of the alcohol, but then it dispersed away behind all the other thoughts, thoughts of how the lamplight looked like amber through his full glass, and how much he needed a fuck, and how different Stephen was to Napoleon, how easy and receptive he was now he was more relaxed, how the lines of him sent shivers straight down through his chest into a knot centred in his balls.

The kissing was easy and soft and so natural. It was falling into warmth and musky masculine scent, the heat of blood-flushed lips, and the deep taste of a mouth flavoured with coffee and cigarettes and alcohol. It was finding every part of his body coming alive in little ripples after a long dormancy, an undersea current moving through his flesh, electricity flickering through him, bringing parts of him alive while the rest of him succumbed to the soft drag of sensual pleasure. He barely spoke. When his eyes were closed his thoughts drifted wordlessly, and when they were open he let the lines of this lanky, spare Englishman conjure such desire in him that he couldn't hold it back.

This was legal here now. There was a curious spark in that. For the first time in his life he was seducing a man, being seduced, in a place where his actions were allowed by the law. He had no illusions that anyone breaking in on the scene would simply smile indulgently and wish him well, but there was a beautiful power in knowing that someone, somewhere, had recognised that this thing was not wrong.

((O))

He half-woke with a shaft of sunlight blazing right across his right eye, his arm flung across a narrow chest, his body pressed bare against another bare body in a narrow bed. There was no instant of thinking that this was Napoleon. It felt too different. The wool blanket itched slightly at his back, thrown off and pushed aside in the heat of such close contact. He could hear under his ear the steady, slow rhythm of Stephen's heart. Stephen's chest was thinner than Napoleon's, not quite as padded with muscle over the curving ribs. The nipple that he could see was very pink in a very white and hairless chest. The smell wasn't Napoleon's smell. It was a good, live, rich difference, and he lay there with his eyes half closed, just breathing it in.

There was a headache curling at the sides of his skull and the nagging solidity of indigestion in his stomach, a burning in his gullet. The room started to form itself around him, an achingly familiar room, one that could have come from any one of those years when he had been going through his own doctorate here, that could have belonged to any one of his friends or lovers. It was, he had a half thought, a room that he did actually know. Surely someone he'd known had occupied this room? Rupert, perhaps, or Sandy Harthorpe? He recognised the little nick at the end of the mantelpiece on the other side of the room, and that stain on the carpet half-covered by a rug. He couldn't remember whose room it had been...

Those years flooded over him. It was like being back there again, before U.N.C.L.E. in London or Berlin or New York City, before he had spent half his days on airliners and the rest running about dirty back streets or sleeping in strange hotels or hanging from his wrists and waiting for rescue. It had been a simple, complicated, tangled, beautiful time. He had discovered so many things; that English men were so much more alive in bed than English women, even if both had their delights; that cycling through the fens at dawn past sun struck dew and pools of water was the best way to clear his mind and progress with his thesis; that he missed Kyiv and he missed Paris but that he loved this little country and its convoluted language; that loving hurt, even as it healed.

He ached for those days, but he was so glad that he had moved on. It was funny how you could be nostalgic at the same time as being so glad of change.

((O))

At the end of his two months he left Stephen's bed in the thin, early morning. He left him with a kiss on half asleep, mumbling lips, and crept down the narrow stairs, little case in hand, and walked out to the waiting cab. He had hardly slept in his temporary lodgings for the last month. This had been a fleeting summer romance, budded and bloomed and about to fade away. As he leant back into the seat and told the driver to take him to the station, Cambridge already felt as if it were fading into a dream.

Napoleon was heavy in his mind then. He had kept talking to him through his communicator, he in the lab or in Stephen's room, and Napoleon in Haifa, Naples, Havana, Okinawa, Capetown, the wilds of Patagonia. There was a girl in every place; even Patagonia. Patagonian girls were beautiful, Napoleon had told him. They knew their own minds. Napoleon slept his way around the world, wherever they went. It was always physical, never emotional. Never was it emotional. Illya put up with it. Napoleon had an enormously high libido, and anyway, sex was part of the job. He always came back to Illya at the end of the mission, at the end of the day, at the end of everything. He was coming back to Napoleon now. So why did he feel so guilty about Stephen?

((O))

The New York heat was like an oven, pressing down from the sky above him, rising up from the tarmac beneath his feet, cocooning him in air so hot that just walking felt like pushing through something solid. He left the plane in rolled up shirt sleeves, his tie stuffed into his pocket, the heat rising up inside his trouser legs, billowing from under his unbuttoned shirt collar, fingering through his hair. He almost wished the air conditioning in the plane had been a little less effective, because the contrast was terrible. It was too hot to wait around by the conveyor, but he waited, grabbing his case as soon as it came around, and then getting out of the crowds.

Napoleon was standing there in the arrivals area, suave as always, hair perfectly slicked down despite the heat, tie knotted closely in his collar, his jacket over his arm.

'Surely you haven't been wearing that?' Illya asked. They couldn't exchange kisses and it was too hot for hugs, so he fell back on the laconic irreverence they were both so used to.

'It completes the look, you Russian philistine,' Napoleon told him, touching a hand to his arm in a tender gesture at odds with his words.

'You're mixing your nationalities. Did you bring the car?'

'Of course I brought the car. Waverly wants us both in his office in two hours.'

'Of course he does,' Illya said rather tiredly.

'Of course,' Napoleon nodded. 'But with the car, minus travel time, that gives us a little time to go back home and – uh – '

It wasn't much out of their way to swing back past their apartment, and a lot could be done in a very short time.

'There's no point in going back to the apartment,' Illya said. He felt something odd, like an itch between his shoulder blades. He felt a weight of wordless guilt. 'I've hardly got any luggage to drop off and I can grab a shower at headquarters. I need to file some paperwork before we see Waverly.'

'All right,' Napoleon said. There was a little disappointment in his voice, but he didn't say anything else.

It was like leaving one world and entering another to step out of the airport into the East Coast bustle and noise. The long flight helped the transition process, but New York City was so different to Cambridge. Those nights with Stephen belonged to a different place entirely.

Napoleon kissed him as he got into the passenger seat in the car, very quickly, just a touch on the cheek before anyone saw. That was a funny little thing. It made Illya glow with love. He had spent a lot of time kissing Stephen in Cambridge, but never like that. Apart from the sleepy kiss goodbye their kisses had been hungry, fevered, preludes to sex. There had been no tender kisses afterwards or soft wake-up kisses in the morning. No kisses on the cheek like this. Napoleon had kissed him like a husband, like someone who loved him, not someone filled with lust.

'Tired?' Napoleon asked, looking sideways at him as he slid his key into the ignition.

'Glad to be home,' Illya said.

((O))

'What is it, Illya?' Napoleon asked. 'You've been – I don't know – funny since you got back.'

'I'm hardly back, though, am I?' Illya asked.

He had only been on American soil for five hours before he had been back at JFK, boarding a plane for Greece. At least he was going back to a time zone close to the one he had just left; that was a small compensation. Transatlantic commuting got wearing, though, especially when it was a foregone conclusion that there would be little rest at the other end.

'You know what I mean,' Napoleon said, nudging him in the side with his elbow. 'Besides, I was only back from Colombia yesterday. You've just had a comfortable two months in Cambridge. What do you have to complain about?'

Illya rested his head against the seat, and sighed. At least Waverly had been gracious enough to allow them first class seats. Maybe he felt guilty about ricocheting his agents about like pinballs. Or maybe they had been the only seats left at such short notice.

'If I'd wanted to spend my life in the air I would have become an airline pilot. I'm all right, Napoleon. I'm tired. That's all.' He nudged Napoleon's leg, then said, 'Shift. I need the bathroom.'

Napoleon followed him down the aisle like a dog.

'I need the bathroom,' Illya said rather more firmly, one hand on the part-open door.

'You don't usually object to my presence,' Napoleon said, and he slipped into the room before Illya could close the door.

'At home is a little different. When I'm in need of emptying my bladder thirty-five thousand feet up in a cramped aeroplane bathroom I like to be alone. Napoleon,' he said in an exasperated tone. 'Come on. I need the toilet. Will you just let me – '

'When you've told me what's wrong,' Napoleon said.

Illya recognised that tone. He'd heard Napoleon use it on Thrush captives. But how could he tell Napoleon what was wrong when he didn't really know himself? He had felt odd since he had got off the plane, taken over by the creeping feeling that he had done something in Cambridge that was wrong despite the openness of his relationship with Napoleon. There were too many thoughts tumbling around in his head, and Napoleon felt far too close in this cramped space. He could see Napoleon's pores. He was breathing his air. He could see the flutter of his heartbeat in his neck.

'I suppose you had a girl in every port while I was away, didn't you?' he asked, probing.

Napoleon smiled that easy smile of his. 'One or two,' he shrugged.

'For missions?' Illya asked.

'One or two,' Napoleon said again. 'You know what I'm like.'

'Yes,' Illya said. Then he said quickly, 'I had something similar in Cambridge.'

That self assured smile slipped from Napoleon's face. In the tiny space he stepped back a little, so he was standing against the wall.

'Similar?' he asked.

'Similar,' Illya nodded.

'You were only in one place,' Napoleon said.

'There was only one man,' Illya replied.

At that, Napoleon stiffened. All of a sudden Illya could see the problem with amazing clarity. Napoleon went with other women all the time. Sometimes, in the course of a mission, Illya gave himself up to a woman. It was fun, sometimes. Sometimes it was duty, but sometimes it was fun. But in all their time together neither of them had slept with other men.

'A man,' Napoleon said.

'A man,' Illya said, squaring his posture, feeling defensive now. 'Yes, Napoleon. A man.'

'For two months?' Napoleon asked.

'Are we really having this conversation in an aeroplane bathroom?' Illya objected. He would have been happier somewhere he could leave with ease. He would have been far happier had he not been in a metal cigar tube six miles up in the air.

'For two months?' Napoleon asked again.

Illya closed his eyes. He felt hot and cold and wrong and wronged. What had happened with Stephen hadn't been meant to be more than a night or two. It hadn't been two months; more like one. A few nights at first, then a few more, then a whole week, and another. It hadn't felt wrong at the start, because he and Napoleon both sometimes slept with other people, and by the time he might have felt it was wrong it was too comfortable to feel like anything. But –

'How many girls did you bed in that two months?' he asked in a voice like ice, looking right into Napoleon's eyes. 'One a night? Two? Did you remember their names? Did you bring them flowers?'

'Illya, you spent two months in England in another man's bed!' Napoleon exploded. 'When were you going to tell me? Or were you going to wait for me to find the transfer order posted on the noticeboard?'

Illya was wordless. He didn't know how to form a single word, much less sentences, much less how to get any of his thoughts out into the air. He forgot about his need for the toilet and unlocked the door, stumbling into an embarrassed air hostess who was saying, 'Gentlemen – ' with her hands held up. Napoleon had shouted. It came to Illya that his ears were ringing because Napoleon had shouted. Maybe he had been shouting too. He could feel the heat blazing in his face. People were staring. Who argued in aeroplane bathrooms but couples? They had just exposed themselves to an entire cabin of passengers. Both he and Napoleon were usually quick thinking enough for a cover story, but certainly the closest passengers would have been able to hear that last shout, and for once Illya couldn't think of anything to say.

He moved blindly back to his seat and sat down. Napoleon joined him after a moment. They sat in silence.

'You didn't tell me for all that time,' Napoleon said eventually in a very low voice.

'This is not the place,' Illya returned.

He turned his face to the window and watched the dazzling bank of cloud beneath them. Somewhere under there the Atlantic was roiling, grey and sullen and deep. Less than twelve hours ago he had been passing over here in the other direction. He had been so looking forward to seeing Napoleon. How could he have messed everything up so badly?

A flame of anger rose again. What did Napoleon do when they were apart but bed woman after woman? They didn't even have to be apart. Napoleon would flirt with women right in front of him. If it were for a mission he would go as far as was needed, but there didn't have to be a mission for Napoleon to sleep with someone who wasn't his partner. So Napoleon was allowed to stray as far as he liked, while Illya remained faithful?

Maybe it was all right if the unfaithfulness were only a one night stand. Certainly that was better. Napoleon had dropped his regular acquaintances since he and Illya had got together. He hadn't bedded Angelique in more than a year, thank god. He didn't think he could bear to sleep with Napoleon knowing he'd been with her. So that was it, was it? Unfaithfulness was all right if it were for a mission, if it were a one night stand, if it were with a woman, and most of all, if it were Napoleon being unfaithful. That was Napoleon's unspoken decree.

((O))

It was a long, long flight in near silence. Illya could sit without speaking for hours, but it wasn't so easy for Napoleon, and Illya drew a perverse little pleasure from that. He was crackling with anger, but he kept it deep inside, and sat with a dignified calm. He put on his glasses and read his book and barely looked up for the rest of the flight.

Their disembarkation in Kalamata was performed with the minimum of words. Illya picked up the hired car and Napoleon slipped into the passenger seat, and they set off along sun-baked roads, all in silence.

'Illya,' Napoleon said sometime later.

Illya was concentrating on driving harder than he would normally, just to give himself something to focus on other than Napoleon. It was a lovely little Citroën DS convertible, and it was a pleasure to drive, his hands on the warm curve of the steering wheel, his eyes on the twisting road. It would be a pleasure to drive, most times. Right now he would have happily booted Napoleon out into the gutter and driven on alone, driven to anywhere, any place high and distant and far away from people and noise. It would be perfect just to arrive at a little house with a bed and a basic kitchen and a farm a few miles down the road to buy his food.

He couldn't do that. He was on a mission. They both were. They were partners, inextricably bound to U.N.C.L.E. and to each other. Sometimes he hated that.

'Illya, when are we going to talk?' Napoleon asked.

'I don't see what there is to talk about,' Illya said.

He kept his eyes on the road. Napoleon would be looking perfect, of course. He always did. Even the heat and sweat just gave him an athletic, ruffled look. Even when his hair came out of its carefully combed position it just gave him the look of a devil-may-care adventurer. It was fatal, at times like these, to look at Napoleon. Sometimes he hated him as deeply as he loved him.

'Illya, we are en route to a mission, a mission on which we need to be connected and efficient, and we're not talking to each other,' Napoleon said in a very rational, an infuriatingly rational, tone.

'We're talking,' Illya said. 'In case you didn't realise, Napoleon, that's what this current exchange of sounds from our mouths signifies. Us, talking.'

'For god's sake, Illya,' Napoleon snapped then. 'Our lives depend on each other. In five hours time we need to be in sync. You need to set the charges and I need to find the safe and we both need our timings to be exact.'

'I'm quite capable of professionalism,' Illya said.

'Oh, is that what this is?' Napoleon asked rather archly, because Illya had just scuffed the verge with the car tyre as he took a corner without enough clearance. 'If that wall had been an inch closer you would have professionally lost a wing mirror.'

Illya renewed his focus on the road. It would be stupid to get killed in a one-car traffic accident.

'What do you want me to say, Napoleon?' he asked rather wearily. 'Somehow it's all right for you to sleep your way through a rainbow of the world's female population, but I have to stay monogamous? Is that it?'

'Not monogamous,' Napoleon said meaningfully.

Illya huffed. 'Then I could sleep with a hundred women and you wouldn't care, as long as I didn't touch another man? Do you have any idea how that sounds?'

'Women are different,' Napoleon said, sounding exasperated. 'You know that. You know I don't commit emotionally to a single one of them.'

Illya breathed in hard, and tried not to let the strength of his emotions show in his breathing. There were too many emotions there, and he could hardly parse them. How could Napoleon not notice that he hated it every time his partner flirted with a woman in front of him? How could he not notice how Illya reacted when Napoleon took that woman and went to bed with her? How could Napoleon ask him to stay faithful in the face of that kind of treatment?

'Napoleon, you like women far more than I do,' he said. 'You know that you do. You're effectively committing me to monogamy – monoandry, or whatever you want to call it – while you're allowed to sow your oats with all and sundry.'

'Two months, Illya,' Napoleon said then, and Illya kept his eyes on the road, because Napoleon's voice was strained again. 'You didn't even tell me. What would you think if instead of a string of one night stands I'd been involved with the same woman for that long?'

'Then it's the emotional commitment,' Illya nodded. He understood that. He did. That was where the guilt was the heaviest, but he couldn't stop himself from sounding indignant when he spoke. 'It wasn't two months, for a start. It was more like a month. And it wasn't more like a month, because at first it was just a couple of one night stands with the same man. Then some two night stands. Then – '

'You started falling in love,' Napoleon cut across him dully.

The shock was sudden in his chest. 'No,' he said. 'No, I didn't start falling in love. I fell into convenience and familiarity. I fell into a memory of my old life. I spent over seven years at Cambridge. Everything there was familiar. Stephen – '

'Stephen,' Napoleon repeated coldly.

'He has a name, Napoleon. It would be ridiculous not to use it. Stephen Gascoyne, a PhD student in the department. He was assisting me with the research. He was just like the people I knew back then. He's interested in the same things that I'm interested in. He's as young as I was then. He reminded me of how I used to be. I was a long way from home – and you are my home, by the way, Napoleon – and I was – ' He huffed. He didn't want to say that he had been lonely. 'I knew you were sleeping with as many women as you have fingers and toes. I slept with one – man.'

The wind was warm, just brushing over the top of his head where it passed over the windscreen and above the soft-top car. The sun was downright hot. The sky was blue as lapis lazuli and the road was a dusty thread of yellow-brown through parched hills. It was a beautiful day for driving through the Greek countryside. It would be such a beautiful day for so many things, for driving with Napoleon, for kissing him under the sun, for sharing food at a pavement café, for waiting until dark and creeping into a guarded facility and making a firework show that would make the Fourth of July and the Fifth of November combined pale into a fluster of sparks.

'Do I have to apologise, Napoleon?' Illya asked, eyes on the road. 'Do I have to beg forgiveness for fucking one man, because he was a man, and because I fucked him too many times?'

'I just want you to – ' Napoleon began, but he choked off, as if he didn't know how to speak or what to say. 'I want – '

Their communicators beeped in unison. Illya sighed.

'I'll get it,' Napoleon said in a bitten in voice. At the worst times, those communicators always called.

'Well, gentlemen, you may as well turn your car around,' came Waverly's voice, thin behind the sounds of moving air and the engine, and wheels turning on the gravelly road.

'I beg your pardon, sir?' Illya asked, glancing across just long enough to turn his mouth towards Napoleon's communicator, just long enough to see Napoleon, ruffled and sweating as he had predicted; beautiful, as he had predicted.

'I'm afraid the Astynomia Poleon, in their wisdom – '

'That's the Greek urban police force,' Illya murmured in an undertone to Napoleon, and saw his little huff of derision.

' – decided to raid the warehouse an hour ago because of a problem with their permits,' Waverly continued, unconscious of Illya's interruption. 'Any Thrush presence there has been completely dispersed. It'll take months – months – to track them down again. So I need you two back at the airport. I don't have an active mission, I'm afraid, but there's some routine bugging work in Paris that – '

'No, sir,' Napoleon cut crisply over his boss.

'I beg your pardon, Mr Solo?' Waverly replied, at the same time that Illya lost concentration again, letting the wheel bang down into a pothole that he could have avoided. The car bumped and then steadied, and a little puff of dust rose up behind them.

'No, sir,' Napoleon repeated. 'Illya and I will not be going straight back to the airport to do routine bugging work that can be handled easily by the Paris office. Illya and I will be calling in a few days of unused leave. You'll be hearing from us this time next Tuesday.'

'I'm very sorry, Mr Solo,' Waverly said. There was danger in his voice. 'I believed that I was your superior and you were my agent.'

'Yes, sir,' Napoleon said. Illya stayed very quiet. 'Being an agent requires a mind and body at peak fitness. I have been ricocheted around the world for the past two months without backup, and Illya has spent most of the last two days in the air after two months of secondment in Cambridge. I think I'm entitled to a break, and technically Illya needs to train for and pass a fitness test before he can return to active duty, so he shouldn't be on this mission at all. So, no, we will not be heading back to Paris. We will be taking a few days' leave, and you won't be hearing from us until Tuesday next. By then we will be as fresh as two new daisies, and you can send us where you like.'

There was crackling silence through the communicator. Illya waited. He could feel Napoleon waiting, waiting to see if he had just handed in their resignations to one of the most powerful men in the world.

'Of course, Mr Solo,' Waverly said at last. There was a curious tone in his voice. It wasn't the tone of someone about to sack his agents. It was a kind of grudging respect. 'I'll expect you in the office next Tuesday, eight a.m..'

After he closed the communicator Napoleon just exhaled, very long and very slow.

'I'm going to have to spend all my time getting in shape,' Illya said petulantly. He couldn't help himself saying it, and as soon as he had he knew he should have said something else.

'Don't be ridiculous. You're always in shape,' Napoleon snapped. 'Or did you give up running in Cambridge for a different kind of callisthenics?'

Illya sighed. 'No, I didn't,' he said. 'I ran every morning. Used the kiddies' playground halfway as a gym. I'm perfectly in shape.'

'Then you'll have plenty of time to talk,' Napoleon said.

((O))

The heat was just starting to fade as they found a place to stay. It was the place that Illya had fantasised about; a run-down little house a few miles out of a straggling village with a cardboard sign in the window proclaiming it to be a holiday let. The landlady lived in a house half a mile away. Illya handled the negotiations. Greek was one of the languages he wasn't quite fluent in, but he was a lot better than Napoleon, and his comprehension was near-perfect. No, it didn't matter that there was only one bedroom, Illya insisted to the solicitous woman. No, they could share a bed. No, they would walk down to the village later for food. All they needed was the key to the door.

He wondered exactly where he would sleep tonight.

'All right, we're going to talk,' Napoleon said as soon as they were through the door, stalking forward so quickly that Illya had to step back.

The room felt dim and damp after the heat outside. Every movement echoed from the tiled floor and plastered walls. It was a shabby little place, but it was homely.

'Are we?' Illya asked, because he could feel something; testosterone, adrenaline, something pumping through his body. 'Or am I going to knock you out cold for being the biggest hypocrite I have ever set eyes on?'

'Jesus, Illya,' Napoleon spat.

Illya picked up his suitcase and shouldered past Napoleon and walked up the creaking wooden stairs. There wasn't even a door at the top. The stairs led straight into a room with a small double bed near one end, standing sun-struck beneath a square window. A shelf opposite the bed held a dusty vase of dried flowers, and a gilded icon of a saint.

Illya dumped his case on the floor, and turned. Napoleon was right behind him.

'You can have the bed,' Illya said. 'I'll bunk on the floor downstairs.'

'Sometimes I could knock your perfectly formed little block off,' Napoleon said.

How was it that Napoleon could make Illya simultaneously want to slap him and fuck him? How was it that he looked so good standing there in that room, the sunlight shafting across his body, his collar open to reveal a perspiration-dewed patch of chest, and that dark hair all in disarray?

'So who's in the wrong here, Napoleon?' Illya asked sharply. 'Me, for sleeping with another man, or you, for expecting all the faithfulness to be one-sided?'

Something happened then. Something seemed to come apart inside his partner. Napoleon moved around him and stepped backwards until his legs knocked against the bed. He sat down heavily on the sagging mattress.

'I get – so afraid,' he said.

That was such a nebulous statement that it made Illya irrationally angry again. There were so many things in an U.N.C.L.E. agent's life that they could be afraid of, but most agents didn't let themselves feel that fear.

'You're never afraid of a damn thing,' he replied tautly. 'Not heights. Not guns. Not explosions. How many times have you been tortured?'

'Of course I'm afraid, you infuriating Russian idiot,' Napoleon snapped. 'Not of heights or guns or explosions. Of – you,' he finished limply. 'Of losing you.'

'And you think sleeping your way through the female population of every country you set foot in is the way to keep me?' Illya returned. He didn't let himself respond to the poignancy of Napoleon's tone. 'Really? Napoleon Solo, the great lover. I didn't expect you to be so dense.'

Napoleon had his head dipped, hands over his face. He was rubbing his fingers through his hair.

'Afraid of losing you. Afraid of committing to you. I can't lose you if I'm not committed, can I?'

He looked up then, with such a naked expression on his face that something jumped low down in Illya's abdomen.

'I thought you were supposed to be intelligent. One of the geniuses of U.N.C.L.E.,' Illya said, and Napoleon gave a short, barking laugh.

'You're the wunderkind of U.N.C.L.E., Illya. Everyone knows that. That's why Cambridge needed you so much that Waverly let them have you for two months. There aren't many people in the world with a background in both quantum mechanics and radio espionage.'

'You are, at least, supposed to be more intelligent than me in affairs of the emotions,' Illya said, his voice growing more gentle. His anger was softened by Napoleon's vulnerability. 'You'll acknowledge that, won't you? I'm the ice prince, the awkward guy with the reading glasses, the one who doesn't know how to talk to people. Napoleon Solo – he's the charmer with a word for every occasion. Aren't you?'

Napoleon huffed out something like a tired laugh. 'Illya, how much emotional intelligence do you think it takes to sleep with a woman every night? In your world, isn't that – Isn't that a bit like starting a new course of study every morning? No one does that who wants to achieve in their field.'

Illya found himself wanting to laugh too. He wanted to, but he couldn't; not with the wan look on Napoleon's face. His anger had utterly dissipated, but he wanted to laugh. He had been studying Napoleon quite diligently for years now. Perhaps Napoleon thought Stephen had been an evening course in a different subject.

He knelt down on the wooden floor in front of his partner.

'Let me understand this,' he said. He wanted to put his hand on Napoleon's knee, but he wasn't quite ready to touch him. 'You sleep with all and sundry because you're afraid of committing to me and then losing me? You don't want me to sleep with anyone else because you're afraid of losing me? This is all about being afraid of losing me?'

'I've lost people before, Illya,' Napoleon said. He was looking at his knees, as if he were incapable of meeting Illya's eyes.

'I – know about your wife,' Illya said carefully. 'I've read your file.'

It wasn't something they ever spoke about, but he did know. Napoleon had been very young.

Napoleon shook his head. 'That's nothing to do with it,' he murmured. 'I didn't lose her because of – because of anything but damn, blind, evil chance. She didn't choose to leave me. I've lost – other people. One or two, after her.'

Illya cogitated that. After his wife had died, but before he became the butterfly of the New York and worldwide dating scene. Something that had burnt him badly enough to make him so afraid. He wanted to know, but he very much didn't want to know.

'You're not going to lose me,' he said simply. They were such simple words to say. It was a promise he really couldn't make, but he was making it anyway.

Napoleon lifted his head and looked at him then. His eyes were wide and dark and just a little wet. They seemed so deep that Illya could have fallen.

'This – Stephen – ' Napoleon said.

'I don't love him, Napoleon,' Illya told him firmly. 'He's ten years younger than me, he's naive – he seems naive in all the ways civilians always do seem naive to people who have seen and done what we've seen and done. He leaves dental floss on the side of the washbasin when the bin is just a foot away. He talks too much when I'm trying to concentrate. He brings me bad coffee and tries to make up for it with too much tea. He's going very badly wrong with one thread of his PhD and if I loved him I probably would have said something, but instead I just dropped a note to his supervisor and let him handle it.'

'Two months,' Napoleon said. He couldn't let that go.

'One month,' Illya corrected him yet again. 'Have you got any idea how much I missed you? Did you not know how much I missed you? I spoke to you every other night.'

Napoleon huffed. 'You talked about the weather, and about what you could of the project, and what you had for dinner. You talked a lot about the changes in quantum mechanics since you left Cambridge. You told me that Australia were beating England in the Ashes, because of – I don't know; I never could quite work it out. You never said you missed me.'

'Oh,' Illya said.

He thought back to those conversations. Surely somewhere in all of that he had told Napoleon how much he missed him? Napoleon had said as much to him. I wish you were here, Illya. I wish you could see the sunset on the river, Illya. I miss your beautiful body, Illya. I wish I could sit down and talk to you face to face, Illya. I miss your eyes, your wrists, your hands, your smile… He had missed Napoleon so, so much in return. He had missed him so hard it was like having his insides scooped out. Had he never said that out loud to Napoleon?

He put his hands on Napoleon's, then lifted Napoleon's hands up and kissed their backs, then the fingers, the fingertips, the soft palms.

'I missed you all the time,' he said. 'I missed you every day and every night. I – I'm not as good as you at saying these things. I'm sorry. But believe that I missed you more than I would have missed a part of myself. Stephen was – ' He shook his head. 'He was an animal diversion. I'm not like you, Napoleon. I'm not easy enough with people that I can just go with someone new every night. I need regularity and familiarity. He was – '

He stopped. It wasn't going to help Napoleon to tell him that Stephen had such a pleasing body, that he fucked so well, that he reminded him of the past, of someone he had loved in the past. He wanted to tell him all of those things, but it wouldn't help, so he stopped himself.

'He wasn't you,' he said. 'He helped me not go half-crazy with missing you. I spent every day between eight and five, and usually longer, focussing so hard on the work that when I came out of it it was like waking up from a dream. He stopped me going crazy in my off-hours. You know?'

Napoleon smiled. It was just a little smile, just lifting the edges of his mouth.

'I know,' he said. 'I know. I was doing exactly the same.'

Illya rested his cheek against the back of Napoleon's hand, knowing that he needed to shave, knowing that Napoleon liked that rasping touch against his skin. He let his gaze rest obliquely on the stained wood of the bedside table and the pitted plaster on the wall behind it, and the squashed edge of the mattress under Napoleon's thigh.

'Where are we going to go from here?' he asked.

Napoleon sighed. Illya felt him bend, felt his lips touching the hair of his head. Napoleon's mouth stayed there, touching his hair, for a few long seconds. Then he straightened up again and said, 'I guess I'm supposed to say that I forego all women, and you say that you forego all women – '

'And men,' Illya put in.

'And men,' Napoleon nodded. 'Both of us, utterly faithful to one another until death us do part.'

Illya smiled very softly at that. The thought of wedding vows being recited over them felt simultaneously ridiculous and beautiful.

'I suppose we could exchange rings,' he said.

'We both already have rings,' Napoleon pointed out, holding up his little finger with the gold ring set with a blue stone. 'In fact, you have a wedding ring, even if you do refuse to tell anyone why, so where would you put one that I gave you?'

Illya smiled. 'Well, we could change the meaning of our rings. We could say that this ring symbolises my commitment to you,' he said, rubbing a fingertip over the old wedding ring that he had worn since his late teens. 'And this one symbolises your commitment to me,' he said, lifting Napoleon's hand and kissing the ring. 'We could exchange rings, but I'm not giving up this one and I know you're not giving up yours.'

Napoleon laughed. 'Maybe we can take both off and have a ceremony,' he said. 'Bless the rings and put them back just as they used to be – but different.'

Illya couldn't quite work out if Napoleon were joking or not.

'But you're never going to forego all women,' he said. He tried to keep fatalism out of his tone but he didn't think he quite succeeded.

'I could,' Napoleon said, and Illya looked up in amazement. 'Both of us need to use our bodies sometimes, in the course of a mission,' his partner continued, 'but we use our bodies for a lot of things in the course of a mission.'

They did, Illya knew. They both used sex as a weapon; Napoleon more than Illya because he was just so damn good at it. But they both used it to sway women to their cause, and men, too. They used it to distract and befuddle and betray. They used any means they could to achieve success.

'But outside of missions?' Illya asked.

He couldn't quite believe that he was kneeling here, in the attitude of begging or of proposing, kneeling at Napoleon's feet and asking this thing of him. He wasn't sure any more of who was in the right and who in the wrong, of who had been betrayed and who was the betrayer. Perhaps they were both as guilty as each other.

'Outside of missions,' Napoleon said. He held Illya's gaze for a long time. There was something turning in his mind, and Illya couldn't read it. After the silence had stretched out for too long Napoleon asked, 'Illya, do you believe in God?'

Illya huffed. 'You know me better than that, Napoleon. Of course I don't. And you don't either.'

'Well, you're a cold, godless Communist,' Napoleon admitted. There was a shadow of almost instinctive regret in his eyes, but then that cleared, and he laughed. 'No, I don't either. You're right. But I am an extremely lapsed Catholic, from both the Italian and the Irish sides. There's something of that in me. Maybe it's genetic. I don't know. But it's there.'

'Are you saying you do believe in god?' Illya asked.

Napoleon shook his head. 'Not quite that. But I believe in something. Maybe I believe in the power of ritual and the sanctity of churches.'

'Churches say that what we do together is wrong,' Illya said.

'So did Stalin,' Napoleon reminded him. 'That's not churches. That's not God. It's men. Mouthpieces for their own causes, using religion to justify fear. I'm talking about the feeling you get when you walk into a church. That feeling as if there's something there.'

'Then you believe in that,' Illya said.

He knew what Napoleon meant but he wasn't sure that he believed in that. He had walked into churches at home, churches turned into museums and galleries, but he had always felt that his sensation of awe was due to the beauty and the knowledge there, not the presence of a supernatural deity somehow focussed into a stone building. He felt the same awe in the cathedrals and churches of Paris and London and Cambridge, but of course there was awe to be drawn from the monumental work of thousands of forgotten mediaeval souls.

'I believe in something,' Napoleon said. 'I believe in the sanctity of certain spaces, and the importance of promises.'

'What are you getting at, Napoleon?' Illya asked. He far preferred directness to this kind of skirting around, referring to belief and imaginary gods.

'I'm not sure,' Napoleon said. He smiled. He held Illya's hands and smiled at him, then leant forward to kiss him softly on the forehead. 'I'm just asking you to be patient, and trust in me. Can you do that?'

'Of course,' Illya said. The patience wasn't so easy, but the trust had come flooding back.

Relief seemed to wash through Napoleon's body. His shoulders relaxed. He squeezed Illya's hands and smiled and said, 'Thank you.'

He looked about the room then as if he had just woken up.

'Are you happy to sleep in the same bed as me?' he asked.

'Better that than the floor,' Illya said.

He looked around too, wondering if they needed to worry about bedbugs in the tired looking bed, wondering if Napoleon would mind if he turned that icon to face the wall while they slept. There were a couple of books lying on the table by the bed, and a jar of cold cream, maybe left by the last guest. His and Napoleon's eyes both fell on the cold cream at the same time. They looked at each other, and something passed, a little spark. He almost had the urge to laugh. Then Napoleon said, 'I don't think we're quite there, yet, are we?'

Illya gave a regretful smile.

'Maybe not quite yet.'

Napoleon patted his hand in a curiously platonic gesture that made Illya feel a little sad. It would have been nice to push Napoleon back onto the mattress and make use of that jar of cream. He had missed Napoleon's lovemaking so much.

'Will you trust me, love?' Napoleon asked. 'Listen, will you stay here for a while, while I go out for provisions? It'll be evening soon. I don't want a hungry Russian on my hands.'

'All right,' Illya said. He could read Napoleon well enough to know that there was something else in his mind, but there were times to just go along with his decisions, and this felt like one of those times.

((O))

The night was so dark and warm it was like velvet around them. Illya walked with his hand in Napoleon's, partly because it helped to stabilise both of them on the uneven road surface, and partly because it was just nice. The feeling of Napoleon's hand in his was a good thing.

'Are you going to tell me where we're going?' he asked. Even if he had wanted to speak loudly he wouldn't have been able to; not in the depth of the darkness and silence that surrounded them.

'I am not,' Napoleon said, and his voice sounded a little smug, as well as soft.

'Well, is it far?' Illya tried again, 'because I'm hungry.'

'I thought I fed you well enough at dinnertime,' Napoleon grumbled. 'Don't worry, love. I have a tapas waiting for us when we get back.'

'You mean a mezze,' Illya corrected him.

'I mean a selection of salty and meaty treats designed to satisfy even you,' Napoleon rejoined, and Illya tried to work out if there were innuendo behind his words. There probably was. This was Napoleon, after all.

'Well, where are we going?' Illya asked.

'Uh-uh,' Napoleon replied. 'You tried that once already.' He flashed his torch on briefly and angled the beam across the road ahead. 'Left here. We need to go down this path.'

'Where are we?' Illya asked, although it was obvious that they were on the outskirts of the local village, because there were walls rising up as thicker blocks of darkness in the dark night, and some of them showed soft light through the veil of curtains, that made the night seem blacker still.

'Here,' Napoleon said as a wall loomed very close. He tapped his finger very lightly on what sounded like wood. Illya could see by the pale reflection of light that the wall was whitewashed and the door was a dark rectangle of nothing in it. He could make out nothing more.

'A moment, my love,' Napoleon said, and Illya heard the little metallic jangle that signified his partner pulling out a selection of picks. There was the scrape of the pick entering the hole, then Napoleon muttered, 'It's an old lock. Heavy.'

Illya rummaged in the pocket of his black jeans.

'Listen, I have a little explosive,' he said. 'I could burn the lock out much more quickly.'

'You're not burning the lock out,' Napoleon said firmly.

'It'll only take a second,' Illya shrugged. 'Look, why don't you move over and – '

'Illya, it's a church,' Napoleon hissed, making his body firm against Illya's attempt to nudge him aside.

'I'm sure the good Lord can afford a new lock,' Illya murmured. 'Why are we breaking into a church, anyway?'

'You are not exploding the lock on this door,' Napoleon told him. There was a dragging, heavy clunk. 'There. I've got it, anyway.'

'What are we doing here?' Illya asked.

It was hard to make his impatience sit down and leave him alone. He looked up and down the narrow little street, over both shoulders, out of instinct more than anything else. There was no one there, he was sure.

'We're getting married,' Napoleon said in a matter of fact tone. Then, a little more uncertainly, 'If you'll have me.'

Illya was stunned into silence. He couldn't think of a single thing to say. He stepped into the body of the church with Napoleon, and was enveloped by the sudden chill and the scent of damp. Even in a country like this the heat never quite penetrated a stone building with walls that were so thick. It was like entering a cave.

'Napoleon, I – ' he said.

The door clicked shut behind them, and Napoleon turned on his torch, but kept it angled towards the ground. The floor was made of dusty, eroded stone flags, and the light glinted from the age-polished softness of dark wooden benches.

'Married?' Illya asked.

'We're in a church,' Napoleon said, as if the rest were self explanatory. When he angled the torch up a little Illya could see the glinting reflection from gilt somewhere near the altar.

'Napoleon, we're – It's – ' He still didn't know what to say. He wanted to blurt out something like, We can't, or, This is ridiculous, but he just managed to keep a lid on that impulse.

Napoleon's hand slipped into his. It felt like the only warm thing in this chilly place.

'Come on,' he said. 'Come with me.'

Illya followed him, stumbling on the uneven floor, taking in the ends of pews that just caught the torchlight as they passed.

'This is crazy,' he said.

Napoleon's hand squeezed on his.

'What's marriage, Illya?' he asked.

'What's – ?' He caught around in his mind for a response. 'Marriage – is the union of a man and woman. It's for the propagation of children.'

'You're more intelligent than that,' Napoleon chided him. 'What about childless marriages? What part of marriage helps with the propagation of children? That can come about easily enough without marriage, can't it?'

'Well, in a religious context,' Illya protested. 'It's a way of making sure that the children have parents who will protect them, to make sure that men don't scatter illegitimate kids about the world.'

Napoleon's hand squeezed again then.

'Then it tries to impose a certain amount of faithfulness, yes?'

'It's a promise,' Illya said. Then he added, 'It doesn't always work.'

'Well, that's down to the individual.'

'Napoleon, I don't need the imaginary presence of a god to make a promise,' Illya protested.

'What if I do?' Napoleon asked him softly. Then he said, 'I don't mean I'm incapable of keeping a promise, Illya. You know I can keep my promises. But isn't there something in the pomp and ceremony of a wedding? Isn't there something about doing it in a more formal setting than sitting on your sofa in front of the television?'

'As formal as a church we've broken into in the dead of night?' Illya asked ironically.

'What's more solemn than the dead of night? What's more solemn than that feeling when you're in a place where you don't have leave to go?'

They were at the altar. The torch showed up primitive, solemn paintings; saints, with dark eyes and pensive mouths, against gold leaf backgrounds. There were candles in front of them, dead, weeping with trails of cold wax.

Napoleon knelt, and Illya instinctively echoed his motion. The cool of the floor rose up through his knees.

'You're crazy,' he murmured, but he leant in and kissed the shell of Napoleon's ear. 'That's one of the reasons why I love you.'

'Ah, love,' Napoleon said, and there was a world of enigmatic feeling in his voice. 'Well, then, my love. How should it go? We're gathered here today? Yes. We're gathered here today, you and I, Illyusha, my love, in the sight of God – No, don't baulk. In the sight of God, to – to speak our vows to each other. To pledge our troth.'

'No poetry,' Illya said quickly. 'If you start reciting poetry I'll feel like one of your women.'

'No poetry,' Napoleon promised. 'All right. We're here together, in the sight of God, and of each other, to promise to have and to hold from this day forward, for better and for worse, for – '

'For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health,' Illya reminded him, as Napoleon faltered. As he spoke the words they felt far more solemn than he had expected them to.

'For richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health,' Napoleon echoed. 'To love – to love, Illya, and to cherish, till death us do part.'

Illya didn't want to think of death. He thought of the feeling of Napoleon's warm hand holding his. He was so alive. They came close to death far too often, but right now they were both so alive.

'In faithfulness,' Illya said, since that was what had started this whole thing.

'In faithfulness,' Napoleon repeated. 'No other women, or men.'

'Except for missions,' Illya said, and he heard Napoleon's little laugh in the darkness.

'In faithfulness, no other women or men, except for missions,' Napoleon said. 'I promise, Illya, that I will do all these things.'

Illya smiled. No doubt Napoleon couldn't see his smile because the torch wasn't angled towards his face.

'I promise too,' he said. 'I promise I will do all these things.'

He couldn't see Napoleon's face either, but he was sure that Napoleon was smiling.

'Now, give me your ring,' Napoleon said.

Illya started to ease the ring from his finger. In the little light from the torch he saw Napoleon getting a bottle out of his pocket. It looked like a bottle of cough syrup. Napoleon had taken his own ring off, and he put it with Illya's together in a dimple in one of the stone flags.

'What is that?' Illya asked curiously.

Napoleon unscrewed the lid from the bottle. 'Holy water,' he said.

Illya fought to hold back a snort of laughter.

'Holy water?'

'From our kindly neighbourhood Orthodox priest. You don't know how persuasive I can be.'

'Oh, I think I do,' Illya chuckled. 'I bet you didn't tell him what you wanted it for.'

'I didn't lie, and that's the important thing.'

Napoleon tipped up the bottle and poured a trickle of the water over the rings. Illya wondered what that was supposed to accomplish, but he didn't say anything. Perhaps there was something symbolic in washing the rings clean of their old meanings. God didn't have to be involved in that.

'With this ring I you wed,' Napoleon said, and he lifted Illya's ring, dripping with cold water, and slipped it onto his finger.

Despite himself, a shiver ran through Illya's core.

'Go on,' Napoleon murmured, so Illya picked up Napoleon's little ring with the blue stone, turning it momentarily in the torchlight and watching fire glint. He took Napoleon's hand and slipped it on. It settled back in its smoothed, untanned place, and Illya kissed the hand.

'With this ring I you wed,' he said, and there was that shiver again.

Napoleon kissed him, or he kissed Napoleon. He was never sure who had initiated the kiss, but they were kissing, long and deep and with the perfect knowledge that no one else was there.

The church was utterly silent. They were both still on their knees. The light from the torch was flickering and dimming a little. The battery must be running low. Napoleon stroked a strand of hair from Illya's forehead, and smiled.

'Hello, husband,' he said.

It felt so strange. There were no laws of God or man that would recognise this union, but Illya recognised it in Napoleon and Napoleon recognised it in him. Nothing had changed, but everything had changed.

'Hello,' Illya said, touching a hand to Napoleon's cheek. He didn't know what to say. The silence was so deep and solemn, the dark so soft and enveloping, that words seemed unnecessary.

'Shall we walk home?' Napoleon asked.