Bigger than Herman and the Hermits
For Veronica
Speeding down the potholed road, Napoleon Solo contented himself with silently enumerating the ways in which the UNCLE organization had conspired to ruin his day. One, the Old Man had gotten an emergency missive from Hong Kong and promptly commandeered the UNCLE jet, along with its bevy of stewardesses and its well-stocked wet bar, for an immediate eastward flight, stranding them.
True, they were stranded in a Caribbean paradise, but still, all in all, stranded.
Two, his night with the once future-Mrs. Simon Sparrow had taken a downward turn. Or at least an important part of Napoleon had. It was little Napoleon's first … Waterloo. His own personal field of clover and rye in Belgium. And the lovely Miss Akers had been quite understanding, apparently gold-digging debutantes expected a few false starts in their relationship with more… mature … lovers.
Three, his oblivious partner seemed quite satisfied with himself.
"I have no problem with you sampling the local … delicacies, Illya. I encourage it. But she was practically in diapers."
Illya drew a finger to his pale lips, failing to rise to the bait. Something else that depressingly reminded Napoleon of last night. "She was in leather go-go boots, if I remember correctly."
"Leather go-go boots, yes, it seems I remember those, too."
Napoleon was not sulking. Secret agents did not sulk. He remembered actually being a secret agent once, before they had megalomaniacs pretending to be My Favorite Martian.
Before he had Illya Kuryakin as a partner.
And he was not sulking.
"Puerto Rico is a beautiful country," Napoleon observed, hands tightly gripping the steering wheel of the jeep as he swung it into a parking space. "Pity I have to share it with you."
The blond blinked and refocused his colorless gaze onto him – a look Illya usually reserved for his lab specimens. "I do not understand your sudden hostility, my friend. If you wanted the girl I'm sure you could have used your usual reptilian ways."
"My usual reptilian ways?" Napoleon repeated it just to make sure the Russian had really said what he thought he'd just said. "My usual reptilian ways?"
"Yes, you are, are you not, a 'lounge lizard?'"
"I beg your pardon?"
"It is a popular epithet for you among the Section One secretaries. It is my understanding it refers to your habit of—"
Napoleon cut him off with a grunt. "At least one of us has the habit."
"I did not touch the girl," retorted his partner in sharp Russian-tinged consonants.
"I know that."
The stare of a Russian could be quite chilling -- even in Puerto Rico.
**********
Napoleon took one look at the low-slung pedestrian hotel and one look at the glinting surf and promptly took off his shoes.
Halfway down the beach, never sparing a backwards glance, he stopped to address a lone crab, the only other denizen walking the noonday sand, a conversational partner he felt sure would not violate UNCLE's secrecy agreement.
"I was a secret agent once, you know. A real secret agent. When things were serious. The cold war. The heyday of the Berlin Wall. When a CORONA satellite meant … something. When there was a missile gap. An intelligence gap. And ye olde … lounge lizard… was one of the men counted on to preserve freedom."
His partner in this conversation regarded him from a stalked eye.
"Nikolai Khokhlov carried a gun disguised as a cigarette case. Did you know that?"
The crustacean viewed him with the same level of interest as his partner had shown lately.
For God's sake, there was, in the pocket of the jacket so carelessly slung over his shoulder, a poison-tipped pin. The kind Gary Powers didn't use.
Napoleon was not going to be a Gary Powers.
Napoleon would have used the pin.
Might have to use it yet.
And his partner had the nerve to call him a "lounge lizard."
As if Illya Kuryakin would know a decent martini from bathtub gin.
He had inherited a skinny, bookish, half-assed excuse for a KGB agent. Khrushchev was not going to spare another Oleg Penkovsky. Headquarters knew that. What, if anything at all, Illya Kuryakin knew about the inner workings of the Soviet Union, neither Napoleon nor UNCLE had ever asked.
Partly because of UNCLE's credo.
Mostly because the answer was already patently obvious.
In the spirit of cooperation, the USSR had sent an agent and if that agent was more a reedy scientist than a muscle-bound military operative, it was still more than even UNCLE had thought they'd receive from the xenophobic Soviets.
Five years ago Napoleon had seen them seal the East German border. Three years ago he had received word that Kennedy was assassinated -- while on assignment behind the very wall Kennedy had inveighed against.
Now it was November 30, 1966 and Napoleon was more than halfway to forty.
And he was a … lounge lizard at Waterloo.
UNCLE, as he was sure to be reminded, kept specialists for burnt out middle-aged agents. A distressingly common phenomenon to which he always sworn he'd never fall prey.
It's a job, folks.
A fucking job.
Get up in the morning. Strap on the hardware and go out and save the world. Find a warm, anonymous body to provide a little comfort. Get up in the morning and do it all again.
Say it, Napoleon.
Say "You are a fucking.
Middle-aged.
Lounge lizard."
Leave it to the Russian to tell it to him straight.
***********
Mercurial. Frolov, his mentor -- if such a euphemism could be used for a KGB overseer -- had introduced him to the word. The Americans, he said, wrinkled eyes glinting over his half-glasses, are mercurial. At first Illya thought he meant Mercury in his guise as the god of commerce: a deity well fitted for a nation of capitalists.
But Mercury was also the prince of tricksters, the golden-tongued diplomat of Olympus, the thief at the gate, the bringer of dreams.
The patron of wayfaring Russians.
Choices. The Americans reveled in them. What other country needed twenty kinds of coffee and equally as many kinds of soap? What other country could create a Napoleon Solo?
Illya watched as the miniscule dot that was his partner moved even farther down the beach.
It was just another of his partner's moods. Napoleon had been particularly terse lately but he was rarely this … he believed the American's called it "touchy."
Jumpy. Irritable. Easily upset. Discombobulated. Prickly.
Lounge lizard. He'd rather liked that one, as well. Although apparently his partner hadn't.
If nothing else, knowing Napoleon had been good for his vocabulary.
***********
Napoleon kicked up the sand desultorily.
If it was anyone else but Illya he'd left standing hunched by a rented jeep on the Puerto Rican pavement, he would swear he was walking off a lover's quarrel.
He didn't have many of those.
Lovers – oh yes. At least until Miss Akers turned out to be Wellington in disguise.
Quarrels – no.
To have quarrels you have to care.
***********
The beach bar supplied a mediocre glass of vodka and a panoramic view of blue-green tinged Caribbean waters.
Of all the options Illya had thought open to him, sunning himself on a Puerto Rican beach while wearing the ridiculous printed shirt Napoleon had purchased him was not one of them.
He fingered the tropical-weight cloth.
He had come to the US with two white dress shirts, an ill-fitting, Kiev-made suit and an unforgettably more ill-fitting pair of Armenian loafers.
Napoleon's first act on seeing him was to take him a haberdasher's and buy him a suit designed by someone named Pierre Cardin.
***********
Head down, Napoleon let the warmth of the afternoon sun bathe the back of his neck. Truthfully, he should turn around and trek back to the hotel but he stubbornly slouched his way further down the beach until he was the merest of pinpoints in Illya's gaze.
Although undoubtedly Illya's gaze lingered on some of the bikini-clad beauties he'd noticed (but only obliquely) as he scuffed his way to the tide line. Who knew his partner would so easily turn into a lothario? More importantly, why did he care?
Bigger than Herman and the Hermits. His somber partner – bigger than Herman and the Hermits. Whoever the hell Herman and the Hermits were. He doubted even his partner knew, but he'd recounted the tale with that small, crooked, smug smile of his.
So what? While he'd been seducing Simon Sparrow's fiancée – all for the good of UNCLE, mind you -- Illya had been cavorting with the underage daughter of the man they were supposed to be protecting. It wasn't like he wouldn't have done the same thing if he was in Illya's shoes.
But, dammit, Illya was the one in Illya's shoes and he was acting downright un-Illya-like.
/Can't stand the competition, Solo?/
Now there was an ugly thought. The ugly thought of an over-the-hill, and soon to be deskbound, secret agent.
The next thought was even uglier.
/More that you can't stand the thought of anyone else having designs on your partner./
Fuck.
He scuffed his toes through the sand and stared blankly out over the sun-drenched waters.
Which was how he was completely surprised when the truncheon clocked him in the back of the head and he sprawled forward ungainly into the surf.
***********
"If it is in a book, I, Illya Kuryakin, can learn it."
This was apparently not scintillating conversation for the dark-eyed bartender who had his gaze firmly fixed on a nubile blonde in a beach chair. But, finishing his third vodka, the Russian was undeterred. After all, Napoleon appeared to tune him out with an unprecedented ease.
"I know seven languages; I can recite the periodic table backwards."
The bartender spared him a glance then went back to his leering.
"I, however, know nothing of the human heart."
"Female trouble?" droned the barkeep, rousing himself enough to make that a fourth glass of vodka.
"My partner's heart is a great mystery. All westerners are mysterious." Illya swirled the contents of his glass. "Mercurial. My partner more than most. I think, perhaps, I have left too many things unsaid."
This produced a dismissing wave of the vodka bottle. "Dames always want to talk. Buy her something, she'll forget about it."
"No. I do believe, in this, the other human gender may be right," mused the blond, swallowing another mouthful of the liquor decisively. "The males of the species are too driven to competition rather than conversation. And I believe I have allowed the wrong … conclusion to be drawn from my dalliance with Miss Cool."
"They won't stand another dame in their turf, that's for sure."
"I should—" Illya held up a finger and pointed it in the direction of the tiny dot that was his partner.
"Good luck, brother."
Staggering slightly, Illya gave a half wave and trudged in his black oxfords to the shoreline.
***********
Illya squinted against the rays of the high sun and tried to discern which of the three dots spotting dark against the sand at the very edge of his vision was Napoleon. He broke into a run when one of the three forms, now just faintly visible as human, dropped down into the surf. His hand went automatically for the gun concealed by the gaudily printed shirt and he brought it up, the metal glinting in the brightness.
The duplicitous pair finally looked up at his wild shout (later he'd realized what he yelled was Vali otsyuda!) then took off in a run. Most of the local tourists they rolled probably did not come complete with a half-mad Russian bodyguard.
"Dammit, Napoleon." Illya squelched into the wet sand, and dragged the limp body out of the waxing tide. "That could have been THRUSH, you know."
He made sure Napoleon was still breathing then he ran a hand along the edge of Napoleon's hair line, probing gently at the golf ball sized lump he could feel there. He breathed easier when there was no give in the bone under his fingers.
"Be thankful you have a hard head, my friend."
But no amount of coaxing, no light slap on the slack face brought Napoleon to consciousness. He laid still, his disheveled shirt riding up his waist, revealing the tight, tanned stomach. One arm splayed above his head, its hand slightly curled. The other was gripped in Illya's clenched fist.
"It is time to wake up, Napoleon. I do not want to have to tell Mr. Waverly you survived Simon Sparrow but died from a stroll along the beach."
***********
The clinic smelled strongly of disinfectant and Illya sneezed again.
"Mr. Kuryakin." The clinic's sole physician was an avuncular islander who'd taken his medical degree at Johns Hopkins and promptly escaped back to tropical shores. "I believe your friend will be fine. In blows to the head such as he suffered, it is often several hours before consciousness returns. He is breathing well. He has no fever. His eyes are not dilated. Everything will be quite well by morning, I assure you."
Illya nodded. "I understand, but I would prefer to stay with him."
"As you wish. He will be most comforted to find a familiar face when he awakens."
Or at least any other familiar face than that of his partner, added Illya glumly.
Illya had already placed a call to headquarters. In the sparse confines of the clinic's room he'd decided he actually owed Napoleon's attackers a debt of gratitude. If he had found an upright, conscious Napoleon Solo at the end of his walk on the beach, he very likely would have said things that -- well, even with the Russian's formidable tolerance for vodka -- there was a point at which his tongue loosened. Not enough to reveal any of UNCLE's secrets, but enough to reveal his own to his partner.
Headquarters was sending out Gordon Alden in a spare plane. Perhaps Napoleon would sleep until he arrived. Alden was often Napoleon's chosen partner in his nightly revels. If a friendly face was what Napoleon needed to see, then there would at least be one there for him.
***********
Napoleon moaned and dark eyes cracked open momentarily. Sighing, Illya got up to lean over the hospital bed. Alden was still more than a few hours out.
"Napoleon."
One eye, the right one, opened just a bit more.
"You were hit on the head, Napoleon."
" 'm not a lizard."
"No. You are not a lizard, my friend."
The eyelid sagged closed over the dark eye.
Worried about the lack of lucid response, Illya brushed the dark fringe of Napoleon's hair back from this temple. "Do you know where you are?"
"Shot down by the Russians?" Both eyes popped open again and Illya had to hold the uncoordinated body down on the bed. "--need my jacket."
"It was a bit waterlogged. The nurses are drying it."
"No." Napoleon wrestled away from him. " 'not Gary Powers."
"Calm down, Napoleon."
Illya thumbed the call button while keeping a hand against the weakly bucking torso.
"No, not this way."
With that the dark head settled against the pillow and the hand that had locked around Illya's wrist slackened.
***********
Locating the pulse point, the night nurse Illya had roused stared at her watch, then at the rise and fall of her patient's chest.
When nothing seemed amiss she turned her efficient gaze to the Russian. "Mr. Kuryakin?"
"He did not seem coherent.'
"Very usual in cases like these." She laid Napoleon's hand gently atop his ribs. "He will not be so disoriented next time."
"We can hope," murmured Illya, sitting back down and taking up the cloth and the bowl of tepid water. He soaked and wrung the flannel then patted down Napoleon's drawn face.
***********
Despite the continued reassurance of the clinic staff, much to Illya's dismay, the second time Napoleon woke was worse than the first. He came to consciousness with a jolt and looked at Illya like he'd never seen him before; then he made an attempt at scaling the railings of the bed.
"Napoleon!" Illya cut off his feeble effort with a mere push of his hand. The American slumped back, defeated and panting. "Everything is all right."
Of course, nothing was all right. Everything was, in fact, all wrong – even from Illya's viewpoint. A delirious, frightened partner. An unsecured clinic. No backup for at least another hour. He had yet to see why Napoleon had originally been so excited about coming to the tropics.
"Illya."
The weakly whispered name was the first rational thing his partner had said.
"I'm here Napoleon."
" – leave me."
"I'm not going to leave you." Illya lowered one of the bars and perched one-legged on the thin mattress.
"-- lovers quarrel."
Well, that wasn't so rational.
" -- leave me 'cause I'm a fucking, middle-aged, lounge lizard."
And that wasn't rational at all.
Illya tipped up his partner's head. Napoleon's eyes were glassy.
"Napoleon?"
His partner merely curled on his side, fetal-like, and whimpered.
***********
"This isn't normal."
"It was a rather bad blow to the head." Avuncular, or not, Illya was fast losing patience with the island's relaxed bedside manner. Napoleon winced as the physician probed the swelling, but otherwise remained silent.
"He is not like this," avowed Illya, making his case a second time.
The doctor pulled the covers up, tucking in his withdrawn patient.
"He has been – pensive, lately," Illya admitted under the medic's scrutiny. "Our job is rather … stressful."
"Ah, then he may just be taking the opportunity for a little vacation. I have seen such a thing before. Just give him time."
Illya wove a pale grasp around the unresponsive tanned fingers. "He's not making any sense."
Although there were many times it seemed to Illya that his partner was speaking no version of English he'd ever been exposed to, this was different. Napoleon was afraid. And Napoleon was never afraid.
Foolhardy. Overconfident. These things, yes. But not afraid.
***********
"I understand." Illya closed the link, snapping the pen shut. The weather, like so much else, was not under UNCLE's control. Alden had turned around in the face of a rapidly developing tropical depression and promised he would try again as soon as the storm moved eastward.
The friendly face he had hoped would rouse Napoleon was now downing rum drinks in Key West.
*My friend.*
He had called Napoleon that from almost the very beginning.
But perhaps, like so many other things American, he had misunderstood when the word should be used.
Napoleon had taken him in, taught him, accepted him when so many wouldn't have. He already had more than he'd ever thought. If Napoleon's true affection was not in the bargain, he would accept the fact without complaint.
If Napoleon's terseness was something he must bear, then he would bear it readily. He would not quarrel with the one man to truly show him kindness, even from the start.
Napoleon tossed, worrying with the blanket, the same mangled mutterings being softly repeated.
"—lizard."
Illya frowned. He'd completely forgotten his partner's consternation at the appellation.
The on-going teasing Napoleon subjected him to daily was part and parcel of Napoleon's style. And just as he emulated, secretly if not openly, his partner's apparel, Illya also had found himself aping Napoleon's suave, unconcerned manner.
" -- not Gary Powers."
What the downed U-2 pilot had to do with anything, however, was beyond him.
"Napoleon." Illya tried to sound stern. "You must wake up now."
His partner only curled further into himself. "Illya left me."
"I did not leave you, Napoleon. I am right here."
"-- fucking lounge lizard."
"You are not a lounge lizard. Even if you were, it is merely your natural charm. Did you know even unconscious you've had the night nurse eating out of your hand?"
"—not Illya."
"No, there you are wrong, I, too, eat out of your hand, my friend."
A pair of bleary eyes cracked open once again.
"—think I'm a lounge lizard."
"I was merely repeating the epithet of the Section One secretaries. I apologize for my lack of tact."
Napoleon studied him with a hazy seriousness. He looked like he was starting to say something, then promptly fell asleep.
***********
"Illya!"
The blond startled awake, coming up from the chair at the soft hiss, hand reaching weaponward.
"Well, that wasn't exactly the reception I was expecting," noted Napoleon, drolly.
"You're awake. Lucid."
Blue eyes peered intently into brown.
"As far as I know." Napoleon shrank back a little from the examination. "Is there some reason I shouldn't be?"
"You got knocked out. On the beach. You haven't been too … coherent since."
A fine line creased between Napoleon's brows. "Exposed state secrets? That kind of thing?"
"You kept saying you weren't Gary Powers."
"Well, Illya, that is not untrue," concluded Napoleon, looking somewhat relieved to find that was all that he said. "I am not Gary Powers."
"You also said I would leave you because you were a – and excuse the coarseness of my language but this is a quote – a 'fucking lounge lizard'."
Napoleon leaned back against the pillows with a sigh. "That would be a 'fucking *middle-aged* lounge lizard'."
"You remember?"
Brown eyes flicked down into a studious gaze of Napoleon's manicured nails. "I *remember* what my partner said to me yesterday morning."
"Yes. Well—"
"After I so rudely portrayed said partner's relationship with Miss Coco Cool."
From above, Napoleon's face looked pale beneath his tan.
"You have youth on your side, my friend. And beauty." With a quick, sidelong glance, Napoleon observed the faint blush that crept over his partner's cheekbones. "I must have been jealous."
"Of Miss Cool?" questioned Illya, decidedly not looking at him.
"What? No. I was jealous of you, of course."
Illya heaved a sigh. "You had no interest in Miss Cool, Napoleon. As well you should not, given your undoubted early propensities; she could have easily been your daughter." Illya crossed his arms. "If you were jealous, there can only be one logical answer to the nature of that jealousy."
"I'm getting too old for this." Napoleon covered his face with one hand.
"Good. It is about time you settled down."
"Settled down?"
"Yes. With one partner."
The hand hiding Napoleon's eyes dropped precipitously. "Illya, are you positive I'm the one who got hit in the head?"
"It has been a long night, Napoleon. A *very* long night."
"Well, my head hurts, you're going to have to be clearer than that."
"All night you have been muttering over and over that I will leave you. Irrespective of my inability to do anything but follow my government's mandates, I have no intention of going anywhere." Illya finally sank heavily into the hard bedside chair. "Ever."
"I may argue with you," observed Napoleon, the crease on his forehead deepening, "but I have never had any doubt that my partner wouldn't leave me."
"Not as your partner, Napoleon. At least not as your partner in the service of UNCLE."
"Illya are you *sure* you're not the one who hit your head?" Napoleon leaned over the bed railing and whispered like he thought the room might be bugged. "You do realize what you're saying."
Blue eyes were calm and serious. "I am quite aware of the nature of my disclosure."
"Some would take that as a declaration of love."
"I owe you much, my friend."
"But you don't own me *this*."
"No," the blond head shook, the nearly platinum strands shimmering. "I do not owe you this."
"Although I accept the—" Napoleon, for once, looked charmingly befuddled, "—compliment. I can't image what you could possibly see …"
"In a fucking, middle-aged lounge lizard?"
"Well, I wouldn't have quite used *those* words."
"What I see, my friend, is one of the great works of American art."
The crease between the dark brows deepened. "Art…"
"I have spent many afternoons at MoMA."
"Ah … well, unlike the paintings at MoMa, you do realize this work of art is … interactive."
"Performance art," returned Illya, knowingly.
Napoleon pressed the point. "Performance would have something to do with it."
"I am well aware of that."
"So you really want to … do this."
"Most definitely. I think it would be … bigger … than Herman and the Hermits."
A strange expression twisted Napoleon's face. "Ah, the lovely Miss Cool rears her beautiful head again."
"Her head was always of little interest to me." Illya smiled that small, shy smile. "As was the rest of her. I was merely practicing my Soloisms."
"Your Soloisms," repeated Napoleon skeptically.
"Certainly. What is out of reach can at least be emulated."
"No one has ever considered me 'out of reach'." A tanned hand wove its way through the bars. "In fact some have said I'm all hands."
A pale hand eagerly accepted his own and Napoleon lay still for a minute, not quite sure how he came to be lying in a hospital bed in Puerto Rico having the conversation he was having with his partner. He thought for a moment that THRUSH might be playing with some new hallucinogen but even his fertile imagination wouldn't have come up with this.
"Why do I feel like I just agreed to go steady?"
"Because you have," agreed his partner dryly.
"I have?" Napoleon questioned. "Think of that, a monogamous reptile."
"Tiliqua rugosa."
"I beg your pardon?'
"A monogamous lizard. They are known to guard their mate even in death."
"I'd like to avoid that particular outcome, if we could."
Almost shyly Napoleon tested this newfound largesse by bringing his partner's cool fingers to his lips.
"I have long … pondered being seduced by the great Napoleon Solo."
"Great?" beamed Napoleon.
"I do not think being seduced by the mediocre would have held such fascination."
"No, I suppose not." Napoleon's mood shifted suddenly. "What if I don't turn out to be … great?"
Pale blue eyes sparked and the pale lips pursed into a smile. "I have immense faith in the veracity of your reputation."
"Bigger than Herman's and the Hermit's, huh?"
"There was never a doubt."
And with that Napoleon curled the hand he held into his own.
He could live with being a lizard.
At least … a monogamous one.
~end~