Flights seemed longer now than they ever used to. Even though a little time had been shaved off the long journey between the American east coast and Britain, something had happened to that time, and the hours felt longer. The minutes seemed to tick by with extra seconds inserted between the usual sixty. Maybe that was because he was old, because he was tired. Maybe it was because he was alone.
He had felt that keenly for those long eight hours on the plane. It had been a quiet flight, the seats next to him empty, the seats in the centre row empty. There were people scattered sporadically through the body of the plane as if they'd just been dropped there by chance, but he didn't worry so much about other passengers any more; at least, not about the threat of attack. No one was interested in an eighty four year old ex-agent. It wasn't like he knew anything about the organisation now.
The seats in planes were narrower than they used to be. Everything was more pushed together, the seat in front right in his face, it seemed, and the arm rest pressing into his side. It wasn't just a feeling; it was a fact, proclaimed indignantly by consumers on social media and admitted to by the airlines. Everything was about packing in more paying customers. But only half of the seats had been filled this time, and they could have saved the effort of changing the seats to smaller ones. It would have been nice if they could drop the municipal blue, too. It was such a soulless colour.
The seat next to him was empty, so empty. He kept turning and seeing an absence in the space beside him. It was like sitting next to a ghost. All the way across the wide, empty, aching Atlantic he felt as though he were sitting next to a ghost. Every time he started out of sleep he would turn his head to say something, and find the seat empty. Every time he saw something out of the window and wanted to share it with someone, anyone – no, with someone in particular – he would find the seat empty.
The train was relatively comfortable at least, after he'd negotiated the airport shuttle and got onto the main line. He missed the days of compartments but these seats were more comfortable than they had been back in the fifties. He didn't know about the rest of the passengers; about the rabble in second class, he thought with a mean little twist of which he was immediately ashamed. Maybe they were in narrow seats like the ones on the plane, but the ones in first class were generous and comfortable. He couldn't justify first class on the plane, which was exorbitant, but he could afford it on the train. It was a matter of a couple of hundred pounds.
When he had been standing on the platform at Manchester Piccadilly trying to get to work on his phone and then peering at a board of train times that were printed far too small to find his connection, a delightful young woman had touched his arm and offered to help him. She had walked with him to the right platform and waited with him for the train and taken him to his reserved seat and told him about the power sockets and complimentary drinks. She probably thought he was foreign, and in a way he was. He wasn't sure what he was. Not Ukrainian, really. Not American. Not British. Maybe he was a bit of all of those things; his accent certainly was. What was certain was that she thought he was old; and he was old. He felt old. He prided himself on still being fit, on still walking to most places around Manhattan, on eating healthily and sleeping reasonably well. His waterworks were in order. But he felt old. He had started to feel old all of a sudden. It had begun when Napoleon got ill.
There it was again, that dull ache in his chest. He leant back in the comfortable train seat and closed his eyes and waited for it to pass. It felt like a swelling of the heart. He had been to the doctor about that and the man had listened to his chest with his stethoscope and taken his pulse and blood pressure, and asked him if there were anything troubling him in his emotional life.
'I have recently lost someone,' he said very carefully, and he could feel the unshed tears brimming in his eyes, and willed them not to spill over.
He had found a pair of Napoleon's reading glasses that same morning, just sitting in their case in the bureau drawer. He had opened up the case and held them reverently, like a relic, and he had folded open the arms and lifted them and looked through the lenses, and then he had cried, suddenly and without warning. What a ridiculous little remnant of such a precious person, of a living, loved person. How ridiculous that what was precious disappeared and left behind shoes and glasses and underpants as the lasting memorial to that life.
Then he had really felt like an old man, standing there by the bureau, those glasses in his hand, tears slipping down his face. He had felt old and weak and exhausted.
'There's nothing wrong with your heart, Mr Kuryakin,' the doctor had said later in a gentle tone. 'Your symptoms are more compatible with stress. I think loss would come under that umbrella. Do you think it would benefit you to speak to someone about it? I think your plan will cover – '
'No,' Illya had said. 'No, I don't think so.'
He and Napoleon; it was such a private thing. It had always been a private thing, even as morals and laws had relaxed and the world had become more accepting; even after they had been married in a beautiful, tiny civil ceremony, two old men holding hands and exchanging rings. It wasn't something to talk about with strangers. Even if Napoleon had been a woman he didn't think he would want to talk about it with strangers. He just had to lock it in his heart and hope that time would ease the pain.
He sat on the train and leant into the seat and watched the coastline slipping past, wires coming close and sweeping away again, flat fields flickering by that turned to marsh and then to sea. He looked to his phone on the table and tapped it to wake it up and checked that it was taking charge. It was. That was good. He didn't want to run out of charge. It was madness how reliant he had become on the device. It was madness that one could fit a world into something the size of a cigarette case. Back in the day their communicators had seemed so sophisticated. They were like tin cans and string compared to this.
He plugged in earphones and slipped the buds into his ears and chose Vaughan Williams from the rich selection of music he carried around on that incredible device. He closed his eyes and listened to the pure tones of the orchestra and let the train carry him westward.
((O))
Had everything changed? Maybe it was the time of year. He had last been here in the summer. He had last been here fifty years ago. How on earth could it have been fifty years ago? He hardly understood how anything in his life could be that long ago. How could he have been a functioning adult well on his way through his career fifty years ago? He didn't understand how time could seem to slow to treacle on a transatlantic flight, but fifty years could have passed in the blink of an eye.
But everything had changed. The train curved in along the rails and the platform looked run down and dirty and it was all branded with turquoise signs that were garish and brash in his vision. He wasn't even sure why those signs annoyed him, but they did. There was no restraint to them. No grace.
His case felt heavy. They hadn't had wheeled cases fifty years ago, either, and he supposed there was something to be grateful for in progress. He was grateful that he could trundle his case along the ground, and grateful for the slick smartphone that held his entire life behind its polished screen, and grateful for the recorded announcements on the train that had told him he was nearing his stop and had woken him up from another frustrating little light sleep.
His case stuck as he tried to turn the corner to the door and someone bent to help loosen it and smiled when he thanked him. It was a young man, a handsome man, and he felt a brief little flutter in his abdomen when he looked up into his face. He had no business having feelings like that, but still they came. No one wanted a queer old man who was grieving for the love of his life, least of all a young man like this. He was a hipster, Illya supposed, with that beard and the slick hair and the smart clothes. They seemed to be everywhere, and he didn't complain, because they were good to look at, at least. Eye candy, Napoleon would have said. He had been a firm believer in eye candy.
There was that heavy swelling of his heart again. He thanked the young hipster again and stepped down onto the platform, and his case would have bumped behind him, but the young man took it by the handle and lifted it down as if it were filled with helium, not neatly packed clothes and shoes, spare glasses and a few books, and – and that little box. That strange little box that he hadn't been able to leave behind.
He stopped a few yards from the train door and looked around. Did he recognise that man on the platform? There were a few people there, standing around, but only one who was tall and spare and old. Did he recognise him? God. Philip had sent him a photograph through email but he'd hardly been able to pick out the man that he used to know from the face in that photo. But there he was, standing just under the awning because it was starting to spit, and there was something in the way he held himself, something in his face…
All of a sudden it was Philip. It was Philip. He could see the lines of him, he could see his bones. He stepped forward and he didn't know whether to smile or cry, because he could see him there, in his shirt and his v-necked pullover and a light coat over the top, and beige slacks and brown polished shoes. He would have been wearing almost exactly the same thing sixty years ago.
Philip looked around and saw him and his face changed in an instant from the small worry of searching for someone getting off a train to an unrestrained joy.
'Eel!' Philip said out loud, and he opened his arms.
For a moment the hesitation was thick in him. This was like crossing a void. This was like crossing fifty years and two thousand miles and saying that all of those wounds didn't matter any more. But Illya walked to him, pulling that case behind him, and when he reached him he let go of the case and reached his arms around Philip's body, and leant himself into him.
He seemed so tall. Illya had lost a couple of inches, but Philip didn't seem to have changed at all. Philip's mouth was touching the top of his bent head, and his arms felt strong despite his age, and Illya just leant into the reality of him.
'Good lord, good lord,' Philip murmured, and Illya could feel the movement of his lips against the top of his head. He wondered if he should be kissing him back. People didn't seem to mind that now. When they saw two old guys in love most people uttered words like cute and true love, not shirt-lifter or queer. But it wouldn't be right; not because of morals or because of watching eyes, but because of Napoleon.
'The car's just outside,' Philip told him, squeezing a little harder with his arms and then letting go. 'Come on. Let me take your case. Come on home.'
((O))
'How long has it been since Marian died?' Illya asked.
The sitting room still had the look of a woman's room, with those little touches that he associated with a woman's fussing. There was something along the top of the curtains. He couldn't remember the name for it. It wasn't a valance. It was like a valance for curtains, something silly to hide the curtain rail, as if one were supposed to think that curtains were held up by magic or morals or luck. The room looked as if it had last been decorated in the nineties, which meant it was more cheerful than an eighties room, but lacked the sophistication that he had loved in the sixties. There were pictures clustered on a shelf above the television, perhaps a shelf that had been erected when Philip had moved on from a clunky vacuum tube television to a flatscreen. There were pictures of grown up children, of grandchildren. Pictures of Marian. It was like a little shrine to a perfect family.
'Seventeen years now,' Philip said.
He sounded very tired, and Illya looked at him sharply.
'You loved her,' he said.
Philip glanced over at the cluster of photographs, and smiled.
'Of course I loved her, Eel. I was married to her for – god – over forty years. We were making the plans for our fiftieth when she got ill. A way in advance, I know, but she wanted to really celebrate. She wanted a party, and a holiday, and we were going to save for it. And then she got ill...'
'How did you love her?' Illya asked, and he tried to sound just curious. He didn't want to sound antagonistic or angry. It had all been so long ago.
'For god's sake, Eel, you love the people in your life,' Philip said rather impatiently. 'I love my children and my grandchildren. I loved my parents. I love my friends. When you live with a woman for over forty years if you don't hate her you grow to love her. Especially later on, as desires start to die down. I liked her, you know. I always liked her. I couldn't have married a woman that I absolutely despised. So she was my best friend, my confidant.'
'Did she ever know?' Illya asked. He couldn't imagine almost fifty years of lying like that.
Philip shrugged. There was a curious little smile on his face.
'In the end, yes. I waited until the children were grown up. We gave them the life they needed, a proper family life. And then I told her. I told her about you. I told her about how I felt about women and how I felt about men.'
'And – '
He laughed quietly. 'She was – well, she was extremely angry with me for about a week. She went to stay with her sister, in fact. Didn't even telephone. And then she walked back in through the door on the Tuesday and told me we needed to talk. I thought we'd already talked, but there was a lot more talking after that. I suppose it helped that nothing had changed in our love. I loved her and she loved me. It was a very domestic kind of love. We didn't exactly set the bed on fire with our passion, you know.'
'Well, I wouldn't expect you to,' Illya murmured.
It all felt so odd. He wondered how Philip had managed it. How had he managed to fool her for so long? How had he managed to make children? He wondered briefly, with that little spike of meanness again, if Philip had thought of him when he had been with Marian.
'I was an academic, buried in my work,' Philip said. 'Marian accepted that. She used to call me a cold fish. But we did enough to keep her happy. Women aren't quite like men, you know. They're not – well – ' He laughed and his face suddenly became open and more like the man that Illya remembered, and he said, 'You remember the old days, fucking like bunny rabbits every chance we got. That's what men are like. Women aren't like that.'
'So she came home, and you talked,' Illya said, because it hurt too much to remember those days, those days with Philip and those days with Napoleon. It had all been so different. He hadn't noticed the change as it happened, but the change had come, and they had become old men.
'Yes, she came home and we talked. We came to an agreement. We loved each other and we were as happy a couple as most – more happy than some people who stick it out regardless. We carried on sleeping in the same bed and kissing goodnight and eating breakfast together. Nothing really changed, except – except I wasn't lying any more. I think that actually helped.' He laughed. 'She used to point out good looking men to me. Both of us knew I wouldn't act on it. I was very faithful to her if I couldn't be anything else.'
'Well,' Illya said. He didn't know what to say. He looked down at his hands and tried to think of what to say, and couldn't think of anything.
'I think it was better your way, Eel,' Philip said softly then. 'You weren't living a lie. That's the phrase, isn't it? You weren't living a lie.'
Illya gave a small laugh. Hadn't he been living a lie too? It had taken so long before he could walk down the street with his arm linked in Napoleon's, before he could kiss him in public, before Napoleon could speak his endearments with anything other than a slightly sardonic tone. They had never been able to come out entirely at work. They had always passed as bachelors, living together for convenience, and because they were friends. It had been so beautiful on that day when they had finally been permitted the right to marry, and Napoleon had knelt down and offered him up a ring. Illya had cried. He had been ashamed of his tears, but he had cried and laughed and kissed Napoleon so hard.
But then there had been their lives at home. None of that had been a lie. Whenever they were in private their lives had been like any couple; full of love and joy and arguments and frustrations and quiet happiness and little fears. Philip had never really had that. Even when he had let Marian know it must have been a strange relationship. He felt that ache again, and he wasn't sure if it were for Napoleon, or for Philip.
((O))
Illya was tired, but he was restless from sitting on a plane and sitting on a train and then sitting in an armchair in Philip's living room. He itched with the need to move. He hated to have a day without exercise, so Philip had driven him back to the mainland over the bridge and parked the car, and they had wandered until they came to be standing on the edge of the straits, and as soon as Illya had seen the pier he had wanted to be out over the water. Like an indulgent lover, Philip had taken him there.
Bangor pier was a short little thing, like half a bridge sticking out over the Menai Straits, waiting for its other half to be built. It wasn't like the pier in Llandudno where Illya had walked with Napoleon fifty years ago, but it was strangely the same. Same boards, same railings, even if it were short and low. There was that odd little sense of being in a seaside town where little changed. Philip had told him that so much had changed here. Everything was done for money. There were boards everywhere now in Chinese advertising student accommodation. Buildings kept being knocked down and new ones erected, mostly by the university or by nationwide or worldwide shopping chains. The university had lost some of its glory. Philip didn't always feel safe when he walked the streets at night. But the pier was the same, he said. Some things didn't change.
They walked to the end and stood with their hands resting on the cool railings, looking out at the swiftly sucking waters and the low island of Anglesey just a hundred yards away.
'It's a dangerous place,' Philip said. 'The tide sucks along the channel, and the waters can get fierce. You can't swim here.'
'I wouldn't want to, I think,' Illya said with a little laugh. He remembered swimming in waters not too far from here, swimming at the beach on Anglesey, sitting on a far out rock and looking back to see Napoleon back there on the shore, so distant from him.
He felt as though he were falling. He wondered how long that would carry on for. How often would he get that awful swelling ache? How often would he feel like he had taken a step and missed the ground? There were mornings when he woke knowing that Napoleon wouldn't be there, and mornings when he opened his eyes and saw the empty space in the bed, and it was raw all over again.
'If you loved her, how did you cope with her dying?' Illya asked, eyes on the water, hands gripping over the cool metal of the railings.
'Eel, you're not asking me that, are you?' Philip said softly. 'You're asking me how to cope with him dying?'
Illya sighed. He couldn't say those words. He didn't know how to say it.
'I can't tell you,' Philip said. 'Eel, I've never lost anyone that I felt about like that. When Marian died it was like losing my dearest friend, and it was hard. God, it was hard. I mourned for a long time. I still miss her. But I'm not you and I haven't lost what you've lost. The closest I came to that was fifty years ago, but – ' He smiled and reached out a hand to stroke Illya's cheek ever so softly. His fingertips were cold. 'Eel, you didn't die. You just went away.'
He didn't know what to feel. Did he still have those feelings after all this time? Could he have any place in his heart for Philip after everything? He knew the 'heart' was a completely metaphorical organ in that sense and there was no such thing as room involved. But somehow it did seem physical. Somehow it kept swelling to fill his chest, and somehow it was Napoleon who was taking up all of that precious space.
'I – need to know how long it takes,' he said. 'I need to know how long – It hurts. It hurts so much.'
He was crying. God. The cold coastal wind was catching at his face and making the wetness burn on his cheeks. An old man, standing here on the end of a pier crying like a child. When Philip folded him in his arms he pressed his head against the side of his neck, protecting his skin from the cold, protecting his face from the eyes of other people. He didn't think he could cope with it. He didn't know how to get through this terrible feeling that welled up and surged and took him over. It was like drowning in a wild sea, like being submerged beneath swelling waves and finding no air to breathe, and then bursting up again and finding that all the world above was screaming winds and freezing water and slamming waves. It was like being lost in a vacuum and not knowing where to turn.
He leant in against Philip and felt the solid reality of him. Perhaps they were both old, but they were both here, they were both real. Philip's arms were real around him, and Napoleon's were gone away.
Oh. The grief surged again. Gone away. Gone away. He had been holding his hand at the last, sitting there by his bed, in that awful hospital bed, the place where Napoleon had sworn he would never die. His breathing had been shallow and laboured and his eyes had been closed and there had been so many drugs in him that Illya hadn't thought that he even knew he was there. But then his eyes had opened, had focussed for the first time in days, and he had said Illya's name, and a little flame of hope had flickered. The nurse had put a hand on his shoulder and said it often happened like that at the end. And it was the end. That was the end. He had only taken three more breaths. They had been spread out over a few minutes, agonisingly slow and shallow, but there had only been three more breaths.
Somehow they were walking again, Philip's arm looped in his, walking back up the pier arm in arm like two old lovers with the wind at their backs. Illya found a handkerchief and rubbed it over his face and shoved it back in his pocket.
'I'm sorry,' he said.
He felt embarrassed. Sometimes when he looked at Philip he felt as if nothing had changed, and sometimes he felt that fifty year gap so terribly. It was like being with someone who was intimate and a stranger by turns.
'What a terrible state I'm in. I don't know if I should have come...'
'Of course you should have come,' Philip assured him. 'I am so glad that you came, Eel. It's been such a long time. Such a long time. I want you to stay for as long as you like. As long as you need.'
Illya glanced up at him and wondered if that meant forever. Maybe Philip meant forever. He would need him to spell it out. He would need to think. He would need to see how the days unfolded.
'Why don't we go and get a cup of tea?' Philip said. 'Or a coffee, perhaps. I suppose you drink coffee in New York, don't you?'
He smiled a little through the aching grief. 'I suppose I do,' he said, 'but I drink tea too. Do they make good coffee here?'
'It's not bad,' Philip said. 'At least, it doesn't seem bad to me. It probably isn't like it is at home.'
Illya snorted. 'At home there's a Starbucks on every block and they don't know how to make good coffee either. Not the way I like it, anyway. I'm happy to have a cup of tea.'
Philip put an arm around his shoulders and gave a little squeeze. 'You'll be glad to know they've just turned down a Starbucks drive-through here. But I know somewhere you can get a good cup of tea.'
((O))
It was a little café, almost empty, and the tea came from Twinings boxes kept on the shelf behind the counter. The teapot dribbled when Illya poured, and so did the little metal milk jug, but the tea was strong and dark and good.
'You could write a postcard home,' Philip said, nodding at the little stand of local views to the side of the counter.
'There's no one to write to,' Illya said rather bleakly.
Philip rested his elbows on the table and leant forward and asked, 'Really, Eel? Is there no one?'
Illya sighed. All of his family, such as they were, were in Ukraine. His parents were long dead and all that was left were relatives he had never met. He had been away for so long.
'Napoleon had nephews and nieces, grand-nephews and grand-nieces,' he said. 'We'd visit sometimes. They'd stay with us when they wanted something convenient and central in Manhattan.' He laughed. 'They thought we were very cool. Their ageing uncles who were so in love.'
'And friends?' Philip asked. 'You have friends there?'
Illya thought of the wide penthouse apartment that Napoleon had inherited from Aunt Amy and that he had so recently inherited from Napoleon, of course. That realisation still startled him when he thought about it. The penthouse was his. It had always been Napoleon's pride and joy. Guests had dropped by every now and then, and Napoleon had delighted in cooking for them. He had delighted in entertaining.
Then he had got ill, and the visitors had come in quietly and spoken quietly and the place had taken on that weird, sepulchral air. The nieces and nephews and their various offspring had come to see him with cheerful voices and words that smacked too strongly of leave-taking. Their bedroom had taken on the air of a hospital, until it had been impossible for Napoleon to stay at home any more. He had been in the hospital for less than a week before he died. Then there was the flurry of sympathy cards with drooping blue or white flowers and pastoral scenes, and Illya had ranged them out on the mantlepiece and then swept them into the bin. He hadn't answered the intercom when it buzzed, not unless he had been expecting a delivery. It was easier to stay inside, to shop online, to close himself down. He had gone listlessly through Napoleon's things and sent some to Goodwill, and then he had stopped that too, because it felt so strange, so wrong, to be getting rid of his things, of the smell of him, of the little reminders of his life.
Then the loneliness had swelled into something that seemed to surround him wherever he turned, and he had found himself lying in bed until midday and falling into floods of tears suddenly and without warning. He had unplugged the phone. He had forced himself to go outside once a day and take walks around the block and around the park, because otherwise he was going to slip into a terrible unfitness, but that didn't do anything for the loneliness and it didn't help the grief. Then he had gone online and typed Philip's name into Google, and after a little careful investigation he had found his email address. He had kept it saved on his computer for three days before he had written, but when he did write the reply came back within an hour, and he had sat there staring at Philip's words. Come to Wales, Eel. Come and see me. I'm on my own too.
'Napoleon was more the friendly type,' he told Philip as the steam rose from his cup of tea. 'I don't really make the effort, I suppose.'
Philip smiled fondly. 'No, I suppose you don't. You never did.'
'I suppose Marian did,' Illya said, and immediately regretted it.
'You are comparing apples to oranges, Eel,' Philip said in a tone of conspicuous tolerance.
'And I am the apple, I assume,' Illya murmured.
He remembered reading a book, years ago now. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. He had just read through Christopher Isherwood and he had been intrigued by a book about lesbianism, although of course it wasn't about lesbianism, so much, as just life. It was just a book about life. But he, he supposed, was the apple, the tempting fruit. Actually, he rather liked that image. Wasn't the apple the fruit of knowledge? So he was the apple, dangling just out of reach, tempting Philip with the promise of forbidden things, and Marion had been an orange, just an orange.
((O))
He felt as though he were emerging from a fog. It was like lying under a heavy, warm blanket, so heavy he couldn't move a limb. For a moment the thoughts stirred in his sleep fogged mind. Thrush? Drugs? Then the realisation. Jet lag. Another bed. Napoleon is gone.
The weight felt heavier still. Then he was aware of the creak of a floorboard, the sound of a door opening, and he blinked his eyes, swimming out of the haze, remembering where he was. It was a neat little guest bedroom, but for a moment it felt utterly alien. A different country. A different room. Napoleon is gone.
'Eel,' Philip said in a low voice, creeping into the room.
'I'm awake,' he murmured. It was dim in here. The curtains were thick.
The knock of ceramic on wood, and the scent of coffee. Philip moved across the room, a dim shadow, and the curtains were cracked open by a silhouetted hand. There was rain on the windowpane.
'It's almost noon,' he said. 'I brought you caffeine. I thought you'd rather be awake by now.'
Philip sat on the edge of the bed. He smiled, and reached out a hand as Illya drew his own from under the quilt. He had meant to get his coffee, but he found himself holding Philip's hand instead. He held it, looked at it. His fingernails were so neat and clean, but somehow his hands were old. Somehow these were two old hands closed around one another. There were liver spots on Philip's skin, and his fingers were thicker at the knuckles, and thin between. He still wore his wedding ring.
'What a shambles I am,' Illya murmured.
'No,' Philip said gently. 'You've been on the go for a long time. You had a long flight and then we spent all that time wandering about town. I didn't expect you to wake up early.'
'Time was I could fly halfway around the world and spend the next two days without sleep, take down a whole satrapy, and then fly home,' Illya said.
'Time was,' Philip said. 'Time was I could give two lectures and two seminars in a day and still manage to research a paper and talk to individual students and get home and play with the kids. Time was. It's not that time any more.'
'No,' Illya replied.
No. So much had changed. How much time did he have left? How much did he want, without Napoleon? But he did want it. He realised that. He wanted it so fiercely. All of his career had been a dancing on the razor edge between life and death, and he had always clung to life. But now he was old, and so much had changed.
He rubbed his hand over his eyes and pushed himself up in the bed, and his spine ached. Lots of little bones and muscles ached when he woke up. You couldn't sustain as many breaks and injuries as he had and not feel the scars.
He reached out for his coffee and took a deep mouthful, and felt it go some way to reviving him. He just sat there, holding the cup, his eyes unfocussed on the opposite wall. There was such an emptiness, and it was in him, not anywhere else. It didn't matter where he looked because it was always in him.
'My poor, dear Eel,' Philip said, and he touched his hand to Illya's face. He just held it there, cradling his cheek ever so softly, and Illya closed his eyes and leant into that tender touch. While his eyes were closed he heard Philip lean forward, and there were his lips, leaving a little kiss on his forehead and then moving away.
Something lurched inside him. There were tears in his eyes again. He missed Napoleon's touch so much. He missed it so, so much.
'I don't know if I can,' Illya said without opening his eyes, even though Philip hadn't said a word. He had asked nothing of him, but it was written in every action.
'I know,' Philip said, 'but I'm here anyway. I don't expect anything of you, Eel. I don't want anything except – I want you to stop feeling pain.'
Illya smiled wretchedly. 'I'm not sure that will be possible for a long time,' he said.
'I'm not asking anything of you,' Philip told him gently. 'I'm only offering. You can stay here for as long as you like, or you can go away again. We're both alone. You can make this your room, and you can stay here for as long as you like. For as long as it takes.'
'You'd let me do that?' Illya asked, wondering.
He looked up into Philip's face, into his hazel-green eyes. Even they had changed, but at the centre they were still the same hazel-green, and his pupils were still dark and deep, and for a moment he fell into memory so vivid it could have been yesterday. Waking up with Philip beside him, blinking, seeing his eyes as the first thing on shaking free of sleep, and tilting his head forward and kissing his lips. How he had loved him then. He had loved him with his entire person, with his entire soul, just as he had loved Napoleon. His love for Napoleon had been beautiful, privileged to be allowed to mature and mellow and alter with age. His love for Philip had been so brutally wounded, but he couldn't say it had been cut off. He couldn't say it had ended. It had hurt so much because the love had still been alive.
What would Napoleon think of that? Napoleon had never thought favourably of Philip. He had never been able to entirely forgive him for how he had hurt Illya, even if in hurting Illya he had left him free for Napoleon to have. The thoughts, the guilt, were churning inside him. So he would take Napoleon for all of his life, and as soon as he was gone he would run back to Philip, because Philip was free? What an awful thing. But it wasn't that, was it? He hadn't run back to Philip, not to his bed. He had reached out because he was so sad and so alone, and Philip had answered his call. Was there any point in analysing these things? Relationships weren't equations, or missions to be planned. It was more like standing in a river and seeing what the current brought and to where it washed one. Napoleon would want him to be happy; only to be happy. Philip wasn't going down on one knee and offering him a ring. He was offering him a room to sleep in and a man to talk to, and arms to hold him when he cried.
((O))
The wind was so strong up here that it was hard to stand. Even at the prime of his life he thought it would have been hard to stand in this wind. If he opened his arms and leant backwards, the wind held him. It made him feel alive.
The last time he had stood on this great swell of rock on the edge of the land it had been summer. It had been hot, and the sun had baked down on him and Napoleon, and they had kissed. They had stood on this very spot, and kissed, alone and in the sun, on the last day of their holiday, with gulls wheeling above them and the sea sparkling and the wind soft in the grasses.
Nothing had changed up here but the weather. These rocks that had been here for millions of years thought nothing of a fifty year blip. Somehow that helped. It helped that one little thing hadn't changed at all. When he closed his eyes and let the wind buffet and cradle at the back of him he could let his thoughts race back to all that time ago.
He held the little box in his hands, held it to his chest. It was hard-angled and pressed into his ribs. It wasn't the kind of thing one could hug. It had nothing of Napoleon's softness. It had nothing of Napoleon, nothing at all but the chemical elements of him reduced to powder. In some ways this had no meaning at all. The stuff in the box had no meaning at all. It was like the glasses left behind, the underpants, the shoes. It was no more Napoleon than those strange abandoned artefacts that he touched so reverently, that made him cry.
'Are you going to?' Philip asked him. He had to shout over the wind.
Illya stroked his fingertips over the top of the box. He had never discussed anything like this with Napoleon. They had never really faced death. But one couldn't very well scatter ashes in Manhattan. Manhattan had faced enough ash in its recent past, and besides, it wasn't decent to fill people's air with the dried out particles of a human body. It was so ridiculous, really. It was ridiculous to condense a person down to this and give it meaning, as if this was what Napoleon was.
He had thought of scattering the ashes in Central Park, in a place they had overlooked from the balcony of their beautiful penthouse. But that hadn't seemed right either. To leave Napoleon there, to be trodden into the ground by joggers, to be pissed on by dogs, to have litter scattered on him. No. He couldn't do that. And somehow he hadn't been able to leave him behind when he packed his case, so he had tucked that box in there amongst his clothes, and when the customs officials had asked him about it he had unfolded the death certificate from amongst his documents, and he had tried not to cry. They hadn't had a problem letting him through.
He stood there with the box in his hands, and Philip put an arm over his shoulders, and he leant into the feeling of him there.
'It'll be all right,' Philip told him, softly, his mouth very close to Illya's ear.
It would be. It wasn't Napoleon in there, not really. Not at all. What was he clutching so desperately? Napoleon wasn't in there. He was in his mind. He was in his memories. His love was still there. It coloured almost every memory since his early thirties. It was like a cushion around him. It was like the air that he breathed.
Illya opened the top of the box and held it up to the wind.