The wedding was tiny. Which wasn't terribly surprising considering the parents of both the bride and groom were dead, coinciding with the fact that they had both spent the last several years working out in the field, it's not like they had a lot in the way of friends either.
Nevertheless, the few they had picked up along the way were there, and the festivities were in full swing, but Napoleon had managed to slink into the darkest corner of the room, staking out a spot from which to watch them dance. Illya was mechanical and awkward in spite of the fact that Gaby had sent him to several lessons over the past few weeks, but Gaby seemed to make up for it with her natural rhythm and grace. And the two of them together had this odd way of catching all the light in the room: Illya's tiny smile and Gaby's gracious one. Napoleon was so enraptured he almost missed Waverly sliding up to him.
"Whiskey?" Waverly offered and Napoleon couldn't turn that down. Took it from the older man with a smile and a thanks.
Waverly turned his attention to the happy couple - Gaby was wrangling Illya back onto the beat and he seemed to be having a good time in spite of how obviously uncomfortable he was. There was a reason Illya made a great spy - he hated being the center of attention.
"You know, I'd been trying to figure out for a while now why your team is the agency's most effective," Waverly said, unprompted.
Napoleon gave a tiny hum to indicate he was listening but his eyes never left the dance floor.
"I was a bit surprised when Gaby announced her engagement to Kuryakin. Seemed like she had nothing but negative things to say about him at first. I realized I wasn't paying close enough attention when her complaints stopped coming. Not to say she compliments him, but I've come to realize not complaining about someone is how Gaby express approval. That, and she's never stopped complaining about you," he said with a chuckle.
Napoleon threw a sidelong glance at him and Waverly composed himself.
"Still, two agents in love didn't explain why the trio worked so well. You and Kuryakin could barely stand each other to begin with. Gaby was exasperated with you more often than not. But, still, you close more missions more cleanly than other team I have out in the field. Odd, that."
Napoleon said nothing, waited for Waverly to make his point.
"Then the engagement was announced and all three of you requested time off. Not unusual, I suppose, what with you being the best man and all, and the one to walk Gaby down the aisle. Admittedly, I'm a little insulted she didn't ask me, but," Waverly gave a tiny shrug. "I see why now."
Napoleon looked at him then. "You do?" he asked levelly.
"I suppose any groom deserves to walk down the aisle on his wedding day, even if most people don't realize he is a groom," Waverly said nonchalantly.
He took a sip of his own drink before continuing. "You see, I get why you would request time off during their honeymoon: don't want to be confined to a desk - I don't blame you - and you don't want to work the field with anyone else, naturally. But why you would book flight out to Italy at the same time as them and book a room in the same hotel where they will be staying? That seems to suggest that, perhaps, your relationship extends beyond the purely professional or purely platonic."
Napoleon looked down into his glass.
"Wish all my agents were as effective as you three but I suppose what the three of you have is inherently difficult to recreate. Can never promise they'll all fall in love with each other."
Napoleon gave a tiny wince but Waverly just smiled, laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "Congratulations Napoleon," he said, voice low but warm.
"You're not going to hand me back over to the CIA for being a—?" Napoleon started and than cleared his throat.
"Heaven's no. The CIA was wasting your talent. And, besides, you don't break a functional thing just because it's unorthodox," he said. "But, do you mind me asking," he redirected their attention back to Illya and Gaby - the song finally ending and Illya looking ridiculously relieved for it. "For you, is it both of them? Or just Kuryakin?"
Napoleon took another slow drink, looked at the way Gaby had her hand clasped in Illya's as she leaned over to talk to her lone bridesmaid - a young, Canadian woman who acted as their handler sometimes and who had grown close to Gaby over the past few missions. Illya's eyes briefly meet Napoleon's before he let Gaby drag him off to say hello to someone else.
"Gaby is unforgettable in and of herself," Napoleon said. "The kind of friend you would never abandon, would never abandon you. But Illya…," he shook his head. He'd never put it into words before. "Lets just say, I've never known relief like the one that filled me when Gaby admitted that she'd be willing to… share. And that he… felt the same way." Napoleon cleared his throat, felt the back of his neck go hot.
He'd never said it out loud before, never mentioned it to anyone outside of the three of them. It made him uncharacteristically self-conscious.
Sometimes, he envied them for the fact that they got to be open about their relationship, that they were going to gain the legal protection of marriage, that they would be able to introduce each other as husband and wife from then on.
But, sometimes he liked that it was private, that it was secret. It felt like having something no one could touch, no one could take away, no one could hold it up to the light an examine it for cracks for their own amusement. They had a private world together and it was beautiful.
"Well, thank you for explaining this little mystery to me," Waverly said. "Congratulations again, Napoleon. I'm going in search of another drink." With that, he vanished into the crowd.
Gaby came over and asked what that was about it and Napoleon just shrugged. She gave him a look that meant he wasn't off the hook and than pulled him out on the floor to dance with her.
Later, after cake and more dancing and toasts with champagne, after a garter toss in which Illya turned bright red and Gaby looked smug, after a bouquet throw that ended in a fist fight, Napoleon knocked on the door to a lavish suite in the posh hotel the reception was in. Gaby answered almost immediately and smiled at him. "What took you so long?" she asked, dragging Napoleon into the suite.
Napoleon started to loosen his tie but Gaby - still in her wedding dress - batted his hands away and re-tightened it.
"I didn't want it to be obvious," Napoleon said.
Gaby scoffed a little, still fidgeting with his tie. "No one suspects a thing," she promised.
"Waverly has us figured out."
She dropped her hands and looked at him expectantly. "He does?"
"He congratulated me."
"Well," Gaby said with a shrug. "That sounds like rather good news, and since it is, I'm not going to focus on that right now."
"I'd be a bit disappointed if you did. Where is he?" Napoleon asked.
"Eager?" Gaby retorted.
"It's my wedding day too," Napoleon insisted, unable to hold back his grin.
"Oh, I know, come on," Gaby said and pulled him by the hand into the living room of the suite.
Illya - well, Illya was a miraculous sight. Still done up in his tuxedo (that Napoleon had helped him pick out) and standing facing the window, the bright lights of London out before him. He was a clichéd sight for sore eyes, brilliant and unforgettable and Napoleon had to pause and just take him in for a moment.
Gaby stood and let him for a second and than cleared her throat. Illya turned a bit sharply, barely repressing being startled in a rather uncharacteristic move, than he smiled like the fucking sun and time stopped again.
Gaby let them have the moment and than said, "Are you two ready for this or not?"
Napoleon gave a single nod and said, "Yes, I am, are you, Peril? There is always time to back out."
"Nonsense, Cowboy," Illya said, crossing over to Napoleon. "I always keep my word." Then he took Napoleon's hand and, without breaking eye contact, kissed it.
"Come, now," Gaby said, hiking up her dress to climb up on the coffee table. "Face each other," she ordered and the two men turned to each other.
Illya was a lovely shade of light pink - like a blush wine - and he hesitated a moment before taking both of Napoleon's hands in his, the way he had with Gaby just hours earlier.
"Are you ready?" she asked again.
Napoleon managed to drag his gaze away from Illya's face long enough to look at her and nod while Illya growled, "Get on with it, Chop Shop Girl."
She swatted him. "I'm pretty sure it's Missus Chop Shop Girl now, if you don't mind."
Illya just beamed and Gaby composed herself, rocking a bit on her heels. "Dearly beloved," she started and Napoleon groaned.
"No?" she asked, feigning innocence.
"Just skip ahead to important part," Illya said.
Gaby shrugged and then, in her best mock-priest voice, started again.
She had them exchange rings first. Well, ring. Illya had picked out Gaby's while Napoleon tagged along as best-man duty (white gold, dainty and willowy and paired nicely with a diamond engagement ring); Gaby and Napoleon spent the better part of two months visiting every jewelry store they could find and bickering over what best suited Illya before finally settling on something (yellow gold with a tiny grove on either side of it); but neither Napoleon nor Gaby had seen the ring Illya produced just than. A thick, slightly tarnished plain silver ring, engraved on the inside not with the wedding date, but the date that they met - the night Illya chased Napoleon and Gaby through the streets of Berlin. It was beautiful, in spite or maybe even because of it's simplicity and Napoleon felt strangely tight in his chest and a bit moist in his eyes when Illya slid it on, infinitely tender in the way he touches his lovers.
Gaby then made them vow to love each other, cherish each other, take care of each other (sickness and health and all that). When she got to the part about death, she reached out and laid her hand on top of theirs and turned very solemnly to Napoleon.
"If anything should happen to me, you take care of him, you understand me?"
Napoleon swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat - the first acknowledgement all day that their lives are constantly on the line - "Of course. I would never let anything happen to him."
Gaby gave him a brief, tight smile and looked at Illya. "The same goes for you. You watch out for each other if I'm not there. And—," her gaze shifted between the two of them. "The same goes for me. If anything were to happen to one of you, I promise to look after the other."
"You are a saint, Mrs. Kuryakin," Napoleon said, kissing her gently on the cheek.
"Yes, I am," she agreed, brushing a lose hair out of her face. "But now isn't about me."
She leads them through the rest of the vow. Makes them each say "I Do" - Napoleon looking suave as ever and Illya still a blush-wine shade of pink. She gives them permission to kiss before calling them "Husband and husband. Maybe, not in the eyes of the world but here, between us, that's all that matters."
Napoleon couldn't agree more.
Gaby hopped off the table and let the boys share a private moment, going into the kitchenette of the suite to open a bottle of champagne.
After a moment, she joined them again, three glasses in her hand, poured them each a drink and then held her own aloft.
"To the happy couple," she said.
"Trio," Napoleon corrected.
"Happy trio." Gaby flashed him a grin, bright white and delighted and changed her toast. "To the happy trio."
Napoleon couldn't stop admiring the ring on his hand. Simple and to the point, marking him as taken, as claimed. Now, he knew he wouldn't be able to wear it all the time - not on missions when he was needed to seduce someone, and he'd have to be careful around members of the CIA and UNCLE alike - all who knew Napoleon was an infamous bachelor - but, he liked knowing that strangers on the street would know he was taken. And he liked the weight of the ring on his finger to remind himself how lucky he was - that someone loved him, cared if he survived his missions, wanted him to come home at night. That, in and of itself, was more than he'd had in years.
And he was lucky for Gaby too - he loved her, in a different way than he loved Peril, but loved her nonetheless. She was the one who'd shrugged and said, "Love is an infinite resource, give and take it when you can. There's so much cruelty in the world, why deny yourself a piece of something good?" and given them her blessing to be what they were, who they were. And Illya, who seemed starved for affection, for trust, for love, and even for good sex. It seemed right that they would both love him with indescribable adoration, with a depth Napoleon didn't know he possessed. He liked to think, quietly and only to himself, that after the darkness Illya grew up in, it was the universe's way to make up to him the shitty hand he'd been dealt by giving him two souls who wanted him beyond measure. There were days when Napoleon could tell that Illya could barely believe that one of them wanted him, yet alone both of them. (On those days, both Gaby and Napoleon curl around him in bed and make it known that there was nowhere else they would rather be.)
Two glasses in and it wasn't enough for anyone to be drunk but a decent mellow had set in, just as Gaby put a record on to a slow, sweet song, announced it was time for the couple's first dance and then moved to the back of the room so as to be unobtrusive.
And this? This was much more Illya's style. He wasn't good in crowds - as seen earlier - but here, in the privacy of their hotel room, with no one but Gaby looking on, he took Napoleon's hand and pulled him into the center of the room, into the space between the coffee table and the couch, deliberately cleared for this act. He folded Napoleon into him - the shorter man wordlessly taking the typically female role of the dance, his hand coming up to Illya's shoulder as Illya's other hand moved to Napoleon's waist. It took Illya a moment, but then he found the beat and maybe it wasn't the most elegant dancing, not the most skillful, but still, something tender and loving and beautiful to behold. The way Illya held Napoleon close to his body, their height difference emphasized by the close proximity. Gaby couldn't take her eyes off them, like all of the light in the room was attracted to them, the pair rocking back and forth, moving in a slow circle and Illya looking like he might just break with gratitude for the moment.
When the song ended, they didn't let go. Illya tipped his head down to rest his forehead against Napoleon's and the two stood silent and still for several long heartbeats. Then Illya dipped in kiss him, murmuring endearments in Russian.
Eventually, they did break away though and Gaby stood up from where she'd been sitting quietly in the corner, watching them.
"It's late," she said, taking Illya by the hand and pulling him towards the bedroom, leaning in to kiss him, nipping at his bottom lip as she did (the back of his neck turned bright red), adding, "And the night's not over."
Napoleon stayed in the center of the room, absentmindedly running his fingers over the wedding band on his left hand, watching them go.
Gaby practically flung Illya into the room before turning to Napoleon.
"Don't worry," he said. "I'll have my way with him in the morning."
He turned to make himself comfortable on the couch but Gaby was having none of that. She shook her head and glared at him, "Don't be a fool. Get in here."
That was the sort of offer that didn't have to be made twice. Napoleon slowly crossed to the bedroom, taking off his tie as he went.
Gaby closed the door behind him.