The U.N.C.L.E. London infirmary was much like the New York one, although it was sited in an old building and there were windows that actually afforded a view of the street outside. The nurses and doctors had different accents but otherwise they were no different to the ones in New York, and they irritated Illya to an equal level. He had been barely conscious when he had been whisked into this place, but now, after a long surgery to repair the damage and replace the external fixator on his arm, he was far too conscious for his own good.

He had been awake for a few hours, and fussed over by far too many nurses, when Napoleon strode in, looking dapper again in a new suit, with his hair brushed and looking much refreshed.

'You look much better than I feel,' Illya complained. His mouth was dry and filled with a disgusting taste. 'How long was I out? No one's seen fit to tell me what the time is.'

'It's – uh – about ten,' Napoleon smiled, casting a glance at his watch. He looked positively buoyant. 'Long enough for me to have a sleep, a shower, and a shave. And since we're talking about shaving, I think you could do with one too. You're starting to look quite the swarthy little Russian.'

Illya rubbed his left hand over his chin. It was rough, but he hardly thought the ginger-gold hair that grew there could be described as swarthy.

'Well, I haven't exactly had the chance to visit the facilities,' he grumbled. 'Napoleon, could you get me some water?'

Napoleon came over to the bed, poured a cup of water, and slipped his hand under Illya's head to help him raise it enough to drink.

'I am not a total invalid,' Illya murmured, but he felt grateful for the touch and for the drink.

'Not a total invalid, no,' Napoleon conceded, 'but you're my invalid.'

In this place they needed to be careful about showing too much open affection, but it was nothing new that partners in this kind of job tended to grow very close, so Napoleon was able to affectionately brush Illya's fringe back from his forehead and to put his hand over his partner's.

'You're going to be all right,' he said with a warm smile.

'Yes, I know that,' Illya replied. He always felt irritable when he was stuck in a place like this. 'But what about everything else, Napoleon? The Thrush base? Operation Old Masters? No one will tell me a thing.'

'Ah, that's still on the boil.' Napoleon sat back in the visitor's chair and crossed his legs. 'Most of the London headquarters are working on it. We're putting a plan in place to foil the National Gallery raid and agents will simultaneously raid the base outside of London. I managed to pinpoint it on a map after we got back. Their cover was that it's a head office for some kind of geological survey company – the company doesn't exist, of course, but everything in official records suggests that it does.'

'Well, they are cunning little Thrushies, aren't they?' Illya asked with a twisted smile.

He tried to sit up in bed, and Napoleon immediately fussed around him, helping him up and readjusting his pillows. Illya was gratified that at least he wasn't trying to make him stay completely horizontal.

'They were cunning little Thrushies,' Napoleon smiled. 'But it'll be over in a couple of days.'

'Next Friday morning,' Illya mused, looking down at his arm, which was supported by a new frame. 'Hmm, I think our surgeon is better than theirs,' he said approvingly.

'No doubt,' Solo agreed.

'Well, maybe I'll be on my feet in time, then,' Illya grinned. 'It's almost a week, after all.'

Napoleon looked at him sternly. 'Even with your own personal variety of stoic Russian superpower, you can't heal a break like that in a week,' he told Illya firmly.

Illya shrugged that off. 'No, but the rest of it...'

'Beating, starvation – all that rest of it?' Napoleon asked archly.

'All that rest of it,' Illya nodded. He had no intention of being out of the end of this mission.

'Well, maybe you can come along if you promise to stay in the car,' Napoleon grinned.

'And what about Miss Jones?' Illya asked, suddenly remembering the English nurse.

'She's spent a good long time in debriefing,' Napoleon told him. 'You know U.N.C.L.E. London are recruiting. She's actually considering it.'

Illya pursed his lips. 'She's getting a little old for active duty, isn't she? She's not exactly a twenty year old just out of university.'

Napoleon snorted. 'I don't like to think what that says about us. We're only ten years or so behind. But anyway, there are places here in the infirmary, so you never know, come next week she might be the one emptying your bedpan.'

Illya made an expression of disgust. 'I don't aim to provide anyone with bedpans that need emptying,' he said. 'I am quite capable of walking.'

Napoleon grinned. 'I know that. Actually, the doctor says you can leave in the next couple of hours, as long as there's someone at home to look after you.'

'To – look after me?' Illya asked in an icy voice.

'To look after you,' Napoleon nodded firmly. 'You need someone with you while the anaesthetic is wearing off. Come on, Illya, you've done this often enough.'

'Well, I should be grateful that I get to leave, I suppose,' Illya muttered.

'Yes, you should be a very grateful Russian,' Napoleon agreed heartily. He lowered his voice. 'Anyway, are you dismayed at the idea of spending time with me in a rather luxuriously appointed London hotel room?'

Illya's eyes lit up. 'Even the most terribly appointed hotel room tends to have a bed.'

'That it does, tovarisch,' Napoleon grinned. 'That it does.'

'Though it does seem a shame to think of getting you out of those clothes.' The Russian reached out to feel the fabric of Napoleon's jacket. 'Saville Row, of course?'

Napoleon flicked a non-existent speck of dust from his lapel. 'Of course. You wouldn't expect me to not take advantage while I'm here.'

'Of course,' Illya echoed dryly. 'Well, it may be exceedingly bourgeois, but it looks fine.'

Napoleon grinned widely.

((O))

It did not take long for Illya to persuade the doctors that he would be perfectly fine to leave the infirmary, as long as he was left under Napoleon's care. The speed with which the Russian got into his clothes and out of the hospital was very familiar to his American partner, although he was frustrated by the difficulties again of getting clothes on around the frame on his arm. He had to settle for another shirt with a ruined sleeve and a split down the side that was pinned with a safety pin once the shirt was on. At least it was warm enough that he needed no jacket, and Napoleon couldn't say he entirely disapproved of the sight of Illya's muscled and unhurt upper arm, or the flashes of sleek nude torso that he got through the split in the shirt side.

The pair got into a black London taxi which deposited them after a few minutes outside a hotel with an impressive façade. Napoleon gave a jovial salute to the doorman, who looked a little startled at Illya's bruised and battered appearance, and ushered the Russian in through the door.

'Are you putting this one on Mr Waverly's tab?' Illya asked, arching his eyebrows as he looked around the vast lobby with its crystal chandeliers.

Napoleon grinned. 'I promised him I'd pay the excess,' he confessed. 'He would have had me stay in Mrs Miggins' Guest House or somewhere equally horrifying. I've been somewhere else up to now, but I thought we both deserved this after our stay with Mr Fink.'

'Yes, and my stay with his lackeys before that,' Illya muttered darkly.

Together they walked to the elevator and took it up to the third floor, where Napoleon opened the door onto a suite that looked as if it had been decorated for George III. The place was glittering with cut glass and gilt, and rich with damask.

'How does this chime with your Soviet ideals, comrade?' Napoleon asked with a grin.

Illya gave him a withering look, then elbowed past him into the room, looking around with a great show of impassivity.

'Where is the bedroom?' he asked.

'As long as there's a bed and a light bulb in the fitting,' Napoleon sighed in mock hurt. 'I could have just found an attic somewhere and dragged a mattress into it, couldn't I?'

For all of his affected indifference, Illya could not hide the gleam in his eyes as he opened the bedroom door to reveal the massive, lavish bed.

'Oh, Napoleon, it has been too long,' he said with great feeling.

He began to unbutton his shirt with his left hand, fumbling in his impatience. Napoleon came over to him with a grin, reaching his arms around the slim body from behind and slipping the buttons through their holes. As Illya stripped away the shirt and Napoleon helped ease it over the frame on his arm, he let his eyes feast on the body before him with a mixture of delight and pain. Illya's wrists were still scabbed from the rope wounds from being left hanging for a week. His back and chest alike were streaked with healing welts, scabbed lacerations, and burns, and coloured with a storm of fading bruises. He was thinner than he had been when Napoleon had bedded him the night before he left New York. His spine stood out like beads and his collarbones were hard lines. But his body was beautiful, perhaps a little too slim right now, but toned and clean, the light shining from planes of muscles and limbs as if Illya were gilt too. In the time he had been captive his hair had grown a little longer, just a little; perhaps he had been due for a cut just before he was captured. The gold of his hair under the room's lights reminded Napoleon of the colour of the wheat fields of Hertfordshire beneath the setting sun, and he wanted nothing more than to run his fingers through the blond strands. He looked forward to the thought of getting his partner into the bath and massaging shampoo into his scalp. Illya could never resist a scalp massage.

'Napoleon, are you with me?' Illya asked, and he realised he had been standing transfixed.

'Oh, I am more than with you,' he said earnestly. He sat down on the edge of the bed and hiked one ankle up onto his knee.

'Aren't you getting undressed?' Illya asked archly.

'There's world enough, and time.'

Illya harrumphed. 'I see I am nothing but a floor show.'

'But a very good one.'

Napoleon grinned, and sat patiently waiting. After a moment Illya shook his head, stripped off shoes and socks, and proceeded to unbutton and unzip his trousers one handed. Pausing, he looked at Napoleon again.

'You're not going to help?'

'Oh, I think you've got this.'

Illya shook his head in mock disgust, but Napoleon noticed that he positioned himself just right so that as he awkwardly pushed trousers and underpants down together his toned rear was nicely angled towards his lover. Napoleon hissed in breath as Illya bent and he caught a glimpse of the soft swinging sac between his legs.

'Oh, you kill me,' he groaned.

'Then get your damn clothes off and join me!' Illya growled in return.

'You are a hasty, impatient, greedy Russian,' Napoleon grinned, but he didn't tarry in peeling off his own exquisite Saville Row suit and dropping it in a crumpled heap on the floor. He saw the light shine in Illya's eyes as he revealed his own well-conditioned body, but he only had eyes for Illya.

'Lie down,' he said in a husky voice, and miraculously Illya obeyed, spreading himself languidly across the covers on a bed so huge that it made him look small and fragile. The smile on his face had an endearing hint of shyness. Napoleon caught his breath at the sight, at pale skin and rose-coloured nipples, at the trace of darker hair leading across the taut abdomen from the dimpled navel, down to a full blush of gold-brown about the soft cock.

'Oh god, Illya,' he murmured, reaching out a hand. He almost felt hesitant to touch, there were so many bruises on that slim body. Even the muscled legs with their down of golden hair were marked with green-yellow clouds of bruising.

'You won't hurt me,' Illya promised him, fixing sapphire blue eyes on Napoleon's. 'I promise.'

Napoleon bit his lip into his mouth. For all of Illya's promises, he knew he would hurt him, couldn't fail to hurt him.

'Napoleon,' Illya said rather more firmly. 'They gave me some pretty good drugs in the infirmary. It will be all right.' At Napoleon's further hesitation he said in a growl, 'Napoleon, I swear to god, if you don't do something about this I will flip on on the bed and have you my way.'

'About – ' Napoleon's eyes tracked back to his lover's groin and saw that while he had been prevaricating the soft organ had filled with blood, and was now standing proud and yearning up from the Russian's body. 'Oh, god...' he murmured.

He didn't argue with the fact that Illya thought he was capable of flipping his heavier partner despite a broken arm and a host of other injuries. He didn't care. He knelt between the Russian's spread thighs and tracked kisses across his neck and down his torso, taking as much care to set them between the bruises as if he were treading through a minefield. Illya let loose a tiny gasp, writhing a little under his lover's hot lips.

Finally Napoleon bent to the column of flesh as if he were worshipping a god. Taking Illya in his mouth, he was gratified to hear his lover groan aloud. He sucked the hot flesh in as far as he could, until the tip was butting against the back of his throat and Illya was writhing again. He took the tight, soft balls in his hand, stroking fingertips over the ridged skin, feeling it crawl beneath his touch and knowing the reaction was all for him. He withdrew his mouth, exposing the veined, now glistening cock, slipping back the soft foreskin to reveal the silken head beneath. As he tongued the flaring head Illya groaned again, thrusting forwards, and he swallowed him again, sharing the pressure between hand and mouth as he sucked his lover towards crescendo. With one hand on the Russian's abdomen he felt all of his muscles tighten as he neared his blistering climax. As Illya's hot seed exploded into his mouth he swallowed and swallowed again, warmed through with the knowledge that he and he alone had brought the icy Russian to a point of nerveless ecstasy.

'Oh god...' Illya murmured, his eyes closed, his voice almost gone.

Napoleon waited until the organ wilted from his mouth, then moved his head up to lie with his cheek against the Russian's soft abdomen, just looking at him, one hand over Illya's damp and now flaccid genitals, loving the feel of their soft warmth under his palm. Illya's cheeks were flushed and eyes glazed as if he had a fever. His hair was wild on the pillow, his good arm flung behind his head and his injured one thrust out at right angles to his body, resting on the soft counterpane. Napoleon grinned, tracing his fingertips over the uninjured parts of his lover's torso, few that they were.

'That good, huh?'

Illya's smile could light up rooms, and when it was directed at one person alone it felt like a supernova. The smile was answer enough.

'God, I need you,' Napoleon murmured. His own cock was rock hard against the bed, and the counterpane felt unbearably rough compared to what he knew was waiting for him within his lover's body. He positioned himself between Illya's thighs again, lowering his head again, this time concentrating the lapping of his tongue on the broad perineum until Illya fingers laced through his hair and gripped it tight.

'You torment me,' Illya muttered darkly.

Napoleon reached out for the oil on the bedside table and dropped some into his palm. He let it warm there, then gently let it trickle down between the Russian's legs until it found the pucker below. Illya writhed on the bedclothes.

'Impatient,' Napoleon tutted.

'You are a tease,' Illya gritted out.

Napoleon looked up from between his lover's legs. 'Shush. You're an invalid. Just lie still and let me – look after you.'

He trickled more oil onto his hand and slipped one finger through the puckered muscle, deep into the heat of Illya's body. The Russian groaned, impaling himself further as Napoleon stretched the hot cavity, adding a second finger, then a third. Too impatient to wait any longer he withdrew, slicking the oil now over his aching erection, and he positioned himself between the Russian's thighs. Softly he pushed through the ring of muscle, and Illya groaned again as Napoleon filled him, burying himself to the pelvis inside the tightness of Illya's body. Napoleon smiled. It felt so good to be home.

'Napoleon, stop daydreaming and just – fuck me,' Illya gasped out, his need illustrated vividly by the rare use of such a coarse word.

Napoleon's smile became a grin. 'It will be my pleasure, my gorgeous, beautiful, darling Russian,' he promised.

Leaning forward over his lover's body he pressed his lips against Illya's, plunging his tongue into his mouth as he withdrew and plunged his cock back into his body again.

'Oh god, I love you,' he murmured, nipping at Illya's ear, his neck, lapping at him as he continued to thrust over and over into his hot, waiting body. As he glided over the Russian's prostate Illya almost cried out aloud, and then grabbed the pillow to press it over his own face and stop himself from making too much noise. What they were doing was a crime.

Napoleon focussed on the hard nubs of the nipples, on the flung back arms and the dusky swirls of hair in the hollows of his armpits. All the while he kept on with the regular, smooth plunge and withdrawal between the Russian's legs, playing him until he knew Illya was biting down on the pillow to prevent himself from screaming. As he felt himself coming to the edge everything else faded away, and all he was conscious of was the Russian's beautiful, lithe body beneath him, the heat of him around him, and then he was exploding, jerking his seed into Illya's body, biting his mouth against his own arm to stop himself from crying out aloud.

'Jesus, Illya,' he murmured when he could finally speak.

Illya made a muffled noise, and then batted the pillow away from his face, so that it thudded lightly to the floor. Suddenly remembering his lover's many injuries, Napoleon rolled off him and came to lie beside him, his head on the Russian's shoulder, lips against his skin.

'You are beautiful, Illyusha,' he murmured.

Illya's left hand drifted through his sweaty hair. He seemed to be wordless, bereft of all power except to move that one hand. His breath was coming in short, soft gasps.

'Illya, are you okay?' Napoleon asked anxiously.

'Oh, yes,' Illya murmured, turning beautiful blue eyes to his lover. 'Oh, yes… Tired… but okay...'

Napoleon was suddenly riven with guilt.

'Oh god, oh god, your ribs – and you're only just out of surgery,' he muttered, pulling away and getting to all fours on the bed. 'What the hell was I thinking?'

'Napoleon,' Illya said, then repeated a little more firmly, 'Napoleon,' when his partner did not respond. 'I asked you for this. I wanted this. I do not care how tired I am.'

Napoleon met his eyes anxiously, and Illya nodded.

'I promise,' the Russian said.

Napoleon lowered his mouth to leave a gentle kiss on his lover's lips, then said firmly, 'Stay there. I'll be right back.'

He disappeared into the en suite and returned with a warm, damp flannel, which he used to wipe the glistening sweat from his lover's body and carefully wash between his legs. Illya lay still, his eyes drifting open and closed, watching Napoleon lazily as he kissed him again and then went back into the bathroom to wash out the cloth. He returned with an oversized white towel, which he laid gently over Illya's now cooling body, and then came back to snuggle alongside him.

'Is that okay?' he asked. 'Need any painkillers? Are your ribs okay? Your arm?'

'My arm was hardly involved,' Illya assured him with a wry smile, 'but it's best not to ask about my ribs.'

Napoleon stroked a hand down his cheek, but he knew he would only annoy Illya by voicing continued concerns about his health, so he simply rested his head back on Illya's shoulder and grunted in satisfaction about the perfection of his position.

'I may fall asleep,' Illya warned him, bringing his hand up to lightly stroke his lover's hair.

'On a lover's lips I slept, dreaming like a love-adept in the sound his breathing kept...' Napoleon murmured.

'You are misquoting Shelley there,' Illya replied sleepily.

'I don't care,' Napoleon smiled. 'I'm just glad you're here so I can misquote it at you.'