Illya stirred himself from Napoleon's arms, wondering at this sudden and unprecedented change which for this moment seemed even bigger than the shock of finding himself blind. He wasn't sure how long he had stood resting against him, just letting him hold him, but it had been immensely comforting.

'Coffee must be ready,' he murmured.

'Uh – yeah, I guess it must be,' Napoleon agreed. 'You get some cups. I'll bring the pot.'

They settled on the couch, and Illya sat rather nervously, feeling as if he were on a first date with someone that he cared about. He had gone out on a handful of first dates, nothing compared to the legions Napoleon had notched on the bed head, but the conspicuously lacking factor had always been his feelings for the other person. There was a world of difference between light fun with a woman he barely knew, and the deep, trusting relationship that he had with his partner.

'You can relax,' Napoleon said after a while, obviously noticing Illya's nerves. 'I'm not going to jump you.'

Illya swallowed. 'I have never done – this – before.'

'Well, that makes two of us,' Napoleon said softly.

'I thought you said – ' Illya began indignantly.

'I said I had kissed men, and that I had fucked men,' Napoleon corrected him. 'But this – no.'

'Then – what is this?' Illya wondered.

'This is my best friend and my partner,' Napoleon said, ever so softly. 'The closest was the guy I told you about in Korea, but I knew him for six months, and in the seventh month he was blown apart by a tripwire bomb. We'd only been – well, fucking, for want of a more highbrow term – for a month. That doesn't – That doesn't compare to this.'

Illya heard the tightness in his friend's voice, and reached out a hand towards him. Napoleon caught it and began a soft, gentle circle of his fingertips over the back of Illya's hand.

'Illya, I have known and trusted you almost from the moment I met you,' Napoleon began. 'I trusted you even before we were friends – and we became friends as soon as I got through that porcupine exterior.'

Illya smiled a little. It felt easier that he couldn't see Napoleon's face. Maybe it helped Napoleon too.

'I understand that you're in an extremely vulnerable position at the moment,' Napoleon continued, and Illya felt some of those porcupine quills rise. 'No, you are,' the American insisted. 'I'm not talking physically. Emotionally you're in a hole. I don't want to take advantage of that.'

'Napoleon, please do me the favour of trusting me to shepherd my own emotions,' Illya said rather curtly.

'All right. All right. I will assume that you can handle your own feelings, and that I can handle mine,' Napoleon conceded. His fingers kept on doing their slow, stroking dance on the back of Illya's hand. 'But to get back to the point, I am not going to jump on you and have you on this couch.'

'I would hope not,' Illya said wryly. 'It is far too narrow.'

'That's not what I do to people I care about,' Napoleon continued as if Illya hadn't spoken.

'So when do I begin to be nervous?' Illya asked. 'When you are pouring me a glass of red wine and making me your special pasta sauce and telling me there are no cabs to be had out there?'

'At this rate I won't give you any chance to be nervous,' Napoleon said in rather a hurt tone.

Illya held up his free hand. 'All right. My nervousness is making me – prickly, would you call it? Shall we just drink our coffee and let nature take its course?'

Napoleon laughed, and Illya wondered if that had been a poor choice of words. Napoleon as a force of nature was often unstoppable.

'Perhaps we could – could do more of that kissing?' the Russian wondered. 'It was very pleasant.'

Napoleon's hand came to sit snugly at the back of Illya's neck, drawing him forward a little. He closed his eyes and waited until those silk lips touched his again. But this time Napoleon was nowhere near as soft and controlled as he had been. Instead he felt a hunger that had either not been there before, or that Napoleon had kept very well controlled. He responded with his own kind of desperation, putting all of his pent up energy and emotion into the kiss, plunging his tongue into Napoleon's mouth and tasting his sweet saliva. It was easy to forget everything else with no sight to distract him, and he let his hands slip over Napoleon's body, feeling the contours of his muscles through the thin fabric of his shirt, exploring him in a way he never had before. Napoleon was solid as a side of beef, and how he loved the feel of him beneath his hands.

'Now – now, if we carry on like this there will be fucking,' Napoleon cautioned, pulling away at last.

Illya bit his lip into his mouth, remembering he was wearing only a bathrobe, and wondering if Napoleon had noticed the tenting of the material at his groin. Suddenly fucking seemed like a splendid idea, but he realised that while his hands had explored Napoleon's torso fully, Napoleon had been remarkably restrained.

'Are you having second thoughts?' he asked, trying to keep his voice causal, keeping his very real worry out of his tone.

'I'm not having any such thing,' Napoleon promised, 'but I told you, I don't want to fuck you. If – when – it happens I will make love to you, Mr Kuryakin. I will not treat you like a cheap trick I picked up in a bar. Okay?'

'Okay,' Illya nodded, and was rewarded with the touch of Napoleon's lips on his forehead again.

'Now, I will pour the coffee, and we will take things from there.'

It made Illya smile to think of Napoleon being so chaste and gentlemanly with him, but all the same, there was the slowly subsiding hardness beneath the heavy cloth of his bathrobe that wished he could be treated like a cheap trick Napoleon had picked up in a bar. He started to wonder what those men had been like, then very quickly stopped himself. No good would come of that.

'Here's your coffee,' Napoleon said, touching the cup to his fingers. 'And when we've drunk this I will put a record on the player and you will sit back and rest, and I will see about fixing you some of that special pasta sauce you mentioned, with a big plate of spaghetti and a bottle of red wine besides.'

Illya widened his eyes. 'If I'm getting that special sauce then will I be expected to – how do you say it? – put out?'

Napoleon laughed. 'Now, that was your insinuation, not mine. You are a very dirty minded Russian. You might have to get back in that bath.'

Illya groaned comically. 'Oh, no, I will turn into a prune, and you do not want to share dinner with a prune.'

'Not a prune, nor a prude,' Napoleon replied smoothly. 'The only person I want to share dinner with is you.'

((O))

Dinner over, Napoleon insisted on introducing Illya to more swing music and while gritting his teeth and putting up with it Illya was discovering that he actually quite liked it. Enough wine had been drunk that he felt pleasantly relaxed, the wine had been tempered with coffee, and now the sobering effects of the coffee were being subtly eroded by a liberal application of brandy. Without the brandy Illya thought he would have been a bundle of nerves. With it, he merely felt a slight apprehension that was being gradually dulled as his inhibitions softened.

'I would pay for that pasta sauce,' he was saying to Napoleon. 'If you made up a batch I could freeze it in portions. I would pay you. I am being serious.'

Napoleon was close enough that Illya's head was resting on his shoulder and Napoleon's arm was soft around him.

'You don't need to freeze it in portions,' Napoleon told him. 'Not when I'm here to make it for you.'

'But when you're not,' Illya said. 'When you're back on duty and I'm – '

'Hey.' Napoleon's arm tightened and shook him a little. 'When I'm back on duty you'll be back on duty. We're going to find a way to beat this.'

'While I admire your optimism,' Illya began.

'Optimism nothing. It's straight common sense. You don't develop something like that without also developing an antidote.'

'I hope to god you're right.'

Illya was by no means a religious man, but he had found himself praying recently, and hoping against all rationality that there was someone listening at the other end.

'Now, shush,' Napoleon told him. 'Listen. Listen to that. Can you beat Dean Martin's voice?'

Illya thought he could beat it with a number of things, but he stayed silent and listened, relishing the warmth and the quiet and the security of his position. Napoleon's fingers started to gently stroke the hair at the side of his head, and he smiled, enjoying the touch.

'I really never have done this,' Napoleon commented. 'It's nice, you know. It's a world away from Korea, and it's a world away from anything else I've known.'

'Oh, you've done this with women, I'm sure,' Illya commented, then waited rather anxiously for the reply.

'Y-es,' Napoleon said uncertainly, 'but never quite like this. I'm usually thinking about how to palm them off next morning.'

Illya raised his head a little. 'And me?'

'I don't want to palm you off, ever,' Napoleon said softly, gently pressing Illya's head back against his shoulder. 'Sometimes you are a very foolish Russian.'

'I have never had this,' Illya confessed. 'I have never had a friendship turn into something – like this.'

'Like this?' Napoleon asked, stroking his fingers through Illya's over-long hair again. 'Like this?' and he touched his lips to Illya's cheek.

Illya turned his head and caught Napoleon's mouth with his own, and then they were kissing, losing themselves again, and Napoleon was gently unbuttoning the first few buttons of Illya's shirt and slipping his hand to the bath-soft skin beneath. Illya arched his spine under the touch, feeling like a cat basking before a log fire. Napoleon was like a fire, hot, comforting, making him melt. Napoleon was softly teasing back the shirt from his shoulders and then his mouth was there on his chest, hot over his nipple, teasing it into a peak with his tongue and pulling it into his mouth.

'You needn't have bothered to get dressed after all,' Napoleon told him with a laugh in his voice, before moving to the other nipple and giving it just the same attention.

Illya reached out to feel Napoleon's casual v-necked jumper, murmuring, 'I'm at a disadvantage. You have no buttons.'

Napoleon's mouth stilled on him and he pulled back. A rustle of fabric, and something dropped on the floor.

'There. Equals,' he said with a smile in his voice, and Illya felt out and touched his shirt, unbuttoned at the collar. He moved both hands down the front, slipping each button out of its hole, until he could slip Napoleon's shirt off and run his fingers over his warm, solid chest.

'Is this really you?' he asked in wonder, feeling Napoleon's heart beat through its narrow sheath of bone and flesh under his palm.

'Never more so than now,' Napoleon replied in a low voice that was resonant with pleasure.

They were kissing again, hands slipping over backs, stroking necks, ruffling into hair, and Illya found it hard to tell where he stopped and Napoleon began. He stroked his fingertips down Napoleon's chest and found the waistband of his trousers, and left them there in an unspoken question. Napoleon's hands came down to cover his, dislodging the button and moving Illya's fingers to the zip. Illya slipped his hand down over the fabric first and felt a hardness there straining to be released. Napoleon sighed at his touch, so Illya slipped the zip down and helped Napoleon to shuck off the confining fabric. Then, with tentative fingers, he stroked across the flat, warm belly into the thicker hair beneath, almost too nervous to go further, to touch before he could see.

'Please,' Napoleon whispered. 'This is for you, you know.'

He felt out and finally touched that hot, rigid hardness, skimming his finger along the silken skin towards the tip, and Napoleon gasped aloud. His own cock was straining at his clothing now, but he ignored its urging and closed his hand around Napoleon's length to stroke hard, then loosened his grip again and touched lightly, trying to decipher every inch with his fingertips. He moved his fingers lower, feeling the soft, ridged skin of his balls, cool under his fingers. It did not seem real that this was Napoleon that he was touching.

'Let's – er – let's take this into the other room,' Napoleon said breathlessly.

'Huh?' Illya asked, for a moment bewildered as the American's voice broke into his intense exploration.

'The bedroom,' Napoleon urged him. 'Come on.'

Napoleon's hand hooked under his elbow as he stood, and Illya flicked open the button on his own trousers, shoving them down as he walked. By the time they reached his bedroom he was naked, and Napoleon piled him onto the crisp cotton sheets of the single bed, pushing the blankets aside and applying himself to touching Illya's body with hands that seemed to be everywhere at once. They lay together, crowded on the narrow bed, and Illya gasped as the hardness of Napoleon's cock pressed against his own.

'Bohze moi, you feel amazing,' he growled, running his fingers down Napoleon's spine and then cupping the muscular buttocks that seemed to fit perfectly in each hand. Napoleon bucked, grinding his cock against Illya's, his mouth against Illya's mouth and his tongue seeking his tongue. And then Napoleon's hand came around both straining shafts, gripping them together, pressing Illya's heat into his own. He started to move, thrusting, and Illya met his movement, forcing his erection through Napoleon's firm grip until they had set up a steady rhythm. Illya gripped his hand over Napoleon's, helping him stroke, increasing the pressure, until he could feel Napoleon becoming ragged and uncontrolled, jerking harder, grunting a little with each thrust, and the fire of his own imminent orgasm was licking at the corners of his mind and body. And then Napoleon stilled, only his cock jerking as slick fluid erupted between their bellies, and a moment later Illya felt his own explosion, whiting out his consciousness of his surroundings in a glow of pleasure.

Illya lay still, eyes closed, his head against Napoleon's shoulder and one arm about his back. Gradually the world reformed and he grew aware of the stickiness between them, of Napoleon's breathing and the thump of his heartbeat. He grew aware again as he opened his eyes of the dim blur in which he lived, and something broke inside him. He leant his head back against Napoleon's body and tried to hold back the sobs.

'Hey,' Napoleon said as he realised what was happening. 'Hey. I wasn't that bad – was I?'

Illya bit his lip into his mouth and then released it. 'Napoleon, you have an ego the size of the Winter Palace,' he said, fighting to keep his voice steady.

Napoleon's finger traced tears off his face. 'You don't have to hide these from me,' he whispered. 'It's all right. You're going through hell. God knows, sex can act as a catalyst sometimes. Don't I know it?'

He wrapped both arms around the Russian and held him tightly against the length of his body, heedless of their mingled seed that was still sticky between them. Illya pushed his face against Napoleon's chest and let himself cry out his despair, his frustration, his fear for the future.

Later Napoleon uncurled from him long enough to fetch a warm, damp cloth and come back to gently clean the skin of his stomach and chest. Then he climbed back into the bed and wrapped himself around Illya's body until the Russian finally slipped into an exhausted sleep.