In the morning Illya stretched and blinked open his eyes and saw the pearly white light of day in the room. He was warm and naked under the covers, and he stretched an arm out, and realised that he was also alone. Then Napoleon came in, bringing with him the scent of coffee and toast, saying, 'You may have done your best to tire me out but I still woke at five, tovarisch. Toast?'

'And coffee,' Illya smiled sleepily, stretching again. 'You are too good to me, Napoleon.'

'I only give as good as I get, mon cher.'

'And then a shower, maybe,' Illya said with a smile. He felt sticky in all sorts of places, and his thighs were still smooth with the oil that Napoleon had used.

'Oh, yes, a shower. Together. Definitely a shower.'

'You are incorrigible,' Illya said. 'How much sex do you need?'

'When I've been away from you and then I'm back with you, Illya, I could fuck like a bunny until kingdom come.'

Napoleon slipped back into bed beside him and leant across to kiss Illya's cheek, and then he passed him his coffee and his plate of toast and grumbled, 'There'll be crumbs in the bed.'

'There's more than that in the bed,' Illya grinned. He loved the scent of their bed after lovemaking, that lingering scent of sweat and oil and come. 'I'll change it after work,' he promised. 'The navy sheets are on top of the pile, aren't they?' He ran his fingers over the sheet on the bed. 'And these ones are white?'

'Uh, yeah, I think the navy ones are on top, and these ones are white.'

Sometimes, in very bright light and at the right angle, he could make out a hint of colour, but, mostly he relied on Napoleon ordering things and telling him how they were ordered. All of his clothes were arranged very carefully, although it helped that most of them were black. His maroon sports jacket was always on the far right of the wardrobe, his grey poloneck was at the bottom of the neatly folded pile of black ones. If in doubt, he stuck to the left of the wardrobe, of the rack of ties, to the top of the piles of t-shirts and polonecks, and he knew he was wearing black.

He sank his teeth into a slice of toast, rich with butter, and his stomach grumbled at that promise of imminent food. He sipped his coffee, and it was hot and rich in his throat. There was nothing better than this, than an early morning in bed with Napoleon after he had just come home.

They showered, and made love under the scattering water, and then shaved and dressed. Illya enjoyed the car ride to headquarters, with the top down despite the cold because he loved the feeling of the wind on his face. Napoleon parked the car, shivering, and said, 'We're right outside the entrance, tovarisch. I'll take the car to the garage today, but there's no need for both of us to be late.'

So Illya got his cane and stepped out onto the kerb, and waited just a beat until Napoleon said, 'A smidge to the left, honey.' Napoleon always guided him in like that, even if he didn't need it. Sometimes the cab drivers took him down to the door, but he really didn't need them to. He just found it made life easier to acquiesce to kindness, because sometimes he really did need it.

He tapped across the sidewalk and found the steps, and then Napoleon drove off. Del Floria greeted him and touched his arm to steer him into the changing booth, and that was another unnecessary bit of help. Illya smiled and thanked him as always, but he reached up for the coat hook before Del Floria could because he wasn't giving up that little pleasure to misguided assistance. He liked to let himself in. There had been an awful time when he had thought he would never be working here again.

'Good morning, Mr Kuryakin,' the receptionist of the day told him, and he accepted his badge and slipped it onto his jacket as someone hurried into the room. He smelt Sarah's perfume before she spoke, and he nodded, 'Morning, Sarah. I trust you have an exciting day lined up for me?'

He took her arm, because it was easier than navigating the busy early morning corridors without help. Yawning and sleepy employees were often careless employees.

'Just the usual, Illya,' she told him, a smile in her voice. 'Barkley needs an updated dossier compiled on Victor Marton's recent activity. Oh, but Mr Waverly has asked to see you and Mr Solo after lunch. He didn't say what it was about.'

Illya's heart jolted. Perhaps it would really happen. Perhaps it was true. His step didn't falter, but he was so distracted by the thought that he missed Sarah's warning about the door and stumbled into the frame.

'In another world this morning?' Sarah asked him teasingly. 'Well, I suppose Mr Solo is home, isn't he? You must have been busy last night.'

Illya grunted, not deigning to give a proper reply. Sarah knew all about him and Napoleon. It was impossible to hide anything from Sarah. She was discreet, though.

'The first set of information is in in-tray one,' she told him as he made for his desk. 'I need to go down to documents to get the rest printed for you. I've put the brailler on the desk because you'll want to do some rough work first, I'm sure. If you do the roughs I can type it all up during your meeting with the old man this afternoon.'

One blessing of Sarah was that she read Braille as easily with her eyes – more easily, perhaps – than Illya did with his fingers. It saved so much time and trouble.

He sat down behind his desk and pulled out the first thick pile of paper. Victor Marton's name was on the front. His memory tried to drift back to that affair when he had been loaded with truth serum, that funeral parlour and the eventual exploding handkerchief that ended Lucia Belmont, but he sternly told himself to focus, and started to read.

Napoleon distracted him a while later with a kiss on the top of his head, saying, 'You're in another world this morning.'

'Have you been talking to Sarah?' Illya asked lightly. 'I'm not in another world. I'm just concentrating. You know, that thing you do when you have work to complete.'

'Tell me about it,' Napoleon grunted. 'I feel half asleep and I've got to draw together everything about the Bonn mission before I can write out the final report.'

'Check your in-tray,' Illya said rather smugly, and Napoleon did.

'Oh, god, Illya, you're incredible,' he said as he found the information that Illya had compiled yesterday. 'You're amazing.'

'I do my job,' Illya shrugged. 'The preliminary info came over the airwaves not on a Boeing. It got here before you even boarded in Bonn.'

'You can try to shuck off the glory, but you're still incredible,' Napoleon told him warmly. 'How long have you been at it? Need some coffee?'

Illya blinked. He thought he had just sat down, but when he thought about it he had gone through the whole of the first pile of documents and written ten Braille sheets of notes. He opened the front of his watch and felt the hands. It was half past ten already.

'Where have you been?' he asked. 'I thought you were just parking the car?'

'Oh, yeah, I bumped in to Sandra Wilcox just past reception and she had a bunch of info about the Cairo affair for me, so I went with her to check it over,' Napoleon said rather guiltily. 'I knew you'd be buried in your work.' He reached around Illya and Illya heard him running his fingers over the paper on the desk. 'I don't know how you read this. I told you you're incredible.'

'Practice,' Illya said rather grimly. 'Hours and hours of practice, Napoleon. You know that. You could read it too if you practised the amount I have.'

Illya got up and reached out towards Napoleon, touching his shoulder and then leaning in to kiss him, trusting that Napoleon would tell him if anyone were watching. There was no scent of perfume on his clothes. It wasn't exactly that he didn't trust Napoleon, but he knew that a lot of the women in U.N.C.L.E. didn't exactly understand that he was off limits at last, especially as he couldn't be open about his relationship. He suspected that a lot of the personnel here knew, and said nothing, but Sandra Wilcox was astonishingly obtuse for an U.N.C.L.E. employee, and ever hopeful.

'Coffee?' Napoleon asked, and before Illya could start looking he said, 'Here's your cane.'

So Illya took it but he didn't use it. He just lightly held Napoleon's arm and followed him down the familiar route to the commissary.

'Is our table free?' he asked, and Napoleon said, 'It's free,' so Illya tapped his way over to the corner table and took a seat.

'Kuryakin, I hear you're hoping for some action, huh?'

Illya rested his cane in the corner and pushed his dark glasses more firmly onto his nose, and sighed. He hadn't liked Paul Doyle before he lost his sight and he still didn't like him. It wasn't that he was unfriendly, exactly, but he was abrasive and confrontational. He didn't like how gossip spread in U.N.C.L.E. like wildfire, either. For a security organisation too many people had very loose lips. How could something that was between only him, Napoleon, and Waverly spread so quickly?

'What action can there possibly be for me, Paul?' he asked acidly. 'I come in, I work in the office, I go home.'

He reached out, found the salt and pepper pots, lined them up more neatly at the edge of the table. Then Napoleon said, 'Morning, Paul. Illya, here's your coffee.'

And Illya heard the ceramic clatter just in front of him, and reached out to the warmth of the cup.

'Well, I'd better get on,' Paul said. 'Flying out to Cancun in a few hours. We've got some nasty little types involved in some diabolical plan – '

'Laundering money through a casino and funding Thrush's latest weapons project,' Illya said laconically to Napoleon as his partner sat down. He had dealt with the intelligence report and chosen Doyle for the mission. It seemed just about within his abilities.

He smiled covertly as Doyle wandered away, and picked up his coffee.

'There's a slice of cake, too,' Napoleon said. 'Chocolate. It looked like the kind of thing you'd covet.'

'You will make me fat,' Illya complained. 'I don't run around like I used to.'

'Nonsense. You work out every other day and we go running on Sundays.'

'When you're here.'

'When I'm here,' Napoleon conceded.

'Where's my cake?' Illya asked.

Napoleon closed his hand warmly around Illya's and guided it to the plate. 'There's a spoon on the right hand side of the plate.'

Napoleon was right. It was the kind of cake he coveted. The scent hit his nostrils even before he took a bite, and his mouth gushed saliva.

'I hope you've got some for yourself,' he commented around a dark mouthful.

'I got myself some cinnamon rolls,' Napoleon said, brushing the side of Illya's mouth with a napkin. 'I should have gotten cake. I don't know why I didn't. Half asleep, I guess.'

Illya cut his cake in half with his spoon. 'Share mine. I'll take a cinnamon roll.'

Napoleon laughed. 'Illya Kuryakin, giving up cake. Now I know you love me,' he said.

((O))

After a few more hours of work and a pleasant lunch Illya picked up his cane and brushed his fingers down the front of his jacket and felt the knot of his tie. Then he asked Napoleon, 'I look like an agent?'

'You always look like an agent. You never stopped.'

'No holster,' Illya said rather ruefully, patting his side where his gun used to sit.

'Perhaps for the best,' Napoleon said honestly.

'I thought if I improved my accuracy with audible targets I might be able to carry for self defence,' Illya said in a hopeful tone. 'Just sleep darts, of course, not bullets.'

'Hmm,' Napoleon said. 'Maybe.'

'Maybe,' Illya echoed, although he was as doubtful as Napoleon sounded. But he felt naked without his gun, and worse than that, he felt terrifically vulnerable. 'Anyway, I've regained my firearms maintenance certificate. I can strip down anything in the armoury and clean it and oil it and put it back together.'

'You're a dark horse, Illya,' Napoleon said. 'When have you been doing all this?'

Illya shrugged. 'I have to occupy myself somehow when you're out of town, don't I?' He felt at his watch. 'Better go. We mustn't keep the old man waiting.'

He took Napoleon's arm all the way up to Waverly's office, but he let go just outside and dropped the tip of the cane to the ground and just walked beside Napoleon, turning his ear a little to orient himself. He wanted to look as capable as possible. The air was thick with pipe smoke and Waverly said, 'Gentlemen, take a seat,' as they entered, and Illya made for the chair that should be directly in front of him. The cane lightly touched the legs and he reached out for the back then slipped his hand down to the seat and sat down. Napoleon took a seat beside him.

'Well, Mr Kuryakin,' Waverly said, and Illya felt a small shiver of discomfort between his shoulder blades. 'Mr Solo here tells me you want to join in on the Cairo affair.'

Illya ducked his head a little. He didn't have to be able to see to know that Mr Waverly's eyes were boring into him. Then he raised his head and tried to project self-confidence, and said, 'Yes, sir. Mr Solo will need someone to monitor the bugs in the hotel room. I can monitor and transcribe and transmit the intelligence to Napoleon in the field.'

He heard Waverly take a long breath. 'Mr Kuryakin, you are quite blind still, are you not?'

Illya fought against the ridiculous impulse to laugh. It must be nerves. 'Yes, sir,' he said, 'but this isn't a task that requires sight. Mr Solo tells me the hotel is extremely secure, and I'm quite able to monitor and record and take notes. I'm better at audio surveillance than I ever was. I've spent a lot of time transcribing tapes and I can pick up details that other people haven't noticed.'

'You haven't been in the field for almost twenty-three months,' Waverly said.

'No, I know, sir,' Illya said quietly.

He hadn't been in the field since that terrible mission that had been aborted, for him at least, so early on, when he had found himself kneeling on the floor of a lab in Stockholm clutching his hands to his face and screaming with pain. That had been a terrible time, scrabbling himself into a corner and huddling there while Napoleon went on with the mission, because Napoleon had to go on with the mission. Then the panicked rush to the hospital afterwards, a hospital full of people speaking a language that he knew but wasn't fluent in, wasn't in the right mind for fighting to understand.

And Napoleon hadn't been there. Napoleon had delivered him through the doors but he had to go and sort out the tail end of the mission, and Illya had lain there in a white panic all alone with doctors around him speaking to him in Swedish and then trying English. They were bending over him, forcing his eyes open, pouring what felt like pints of water over his eyes for so long, talking to him and talking to him, and through the pain and the medication and the panic he just couldn't understand.

And then, thank god, when they heard his name they found a wonderful lady doctor from Lviv who could speak to him in either Russian or Ukrainian. She had held his hand and explained to him gently but with absolute honesty what was happening and that his eyes were very badly damaged and that it was doubtful he would see again. And he had cried, because he was alone and his entire life had come crashing down around him, and because he overheard and understood enough of what the other doctors were saying to know that if he had been able to wash the stuff out of his eyes straight away that he would have been fine. Oh, how he had cried, and that Ukrainian doctor, that wonderful woman who he had never met before, held him like a child in her arms and stroked his hair and sang the gentle Ukrainian songs of his childhood to him and stayed with him for hours, until Napoleon finally came.

When Napoleon came he had tried so hard to keep himself composed, with the bandages around his face and the awful, sickening stinging on his skin and eyes, and the knowledge that everything, everything was over. And that wonderful doctor had explained to Napoleon about everything, and then kissed Illya on the forehead, and then she had left them alone. And he hadn't been able to hold it, he had cried again, and Napoleon, his wonderful, beautiful, completely platonic friend, had held him and stroked him and rocked him and told him it would be all right, he promised it would be all right. But Napoleon hadn't been able to fix his eyes and he hadn't been able to stop the pain.

And then when he had got back to New York after that terrible, terrifying flight in darkness with bandages around his eyes and so lost in the knowledge that he would never see again, Napoleon had moved Illya into his own apartment, everything he owned, everything that was precious to him, and he had never left. It hadn't taken long for them to close that final gap, when one day Napoleon was tracing the tears from Illya's healing cheeks with his fingertips and he had kissed the trails they left, and then kissed Illya's lips, and it had felt as if some kind of small sun were rising in this darkness.

'This wouldn't exactly be in the field, sir,' Napoleon said from beside him, and Illya jumped a little. He had almost forgotten where he was in that long drift of memory. 'As I've told you, the hotel is very secure and the room can be on one of the highest floors. It's just surveillance.'

'Hmm,' Mr Waverly said. 'Knowing you and Mr Kuryakin, I know that simple surveillance is apt to turn to fist fights and shoot outs with alarming alacrity.'

'No. Not this mission, sir,' Napoleon said firmly. 'At least, not for Illya. He doesn't even have to leave the room.'

'If that's the case, Mr Kuryakin, why do you want to go?' Waverly asked perspicaciously.

Illya rolled his cane between his hands. 'Sir, I haven't been out of the New York office in almost two years,' he said. 'I just wanted – ' He broke off. How could he explain? How could he expect Waverly to understand?

But he heard Waverly push his chair back and stand and walk in a curving path around the edge of the table, and then his hand was on Illya's shoulder, squeezing it firmly, and he said, 'I know how it feels to long for the field, son, and when I retired from all that I was a good age, not a vital young man in his thirties. I understand, Mr Kuryakin. Go on this surveillance mission. I trust Mr Solo to take care of you, a good deal better than you'd take care of yourself, I dare say. But I want a full report on your understanding of the possible risks and dangers on my desk by the end of the day.'

Illya breathed out hard, feeling a bright glow of joy in his chest.

'Thank you, sir,' he said.

Waverly's hand squeezed on his shoulder again.

'You were a superlative agent, Mr Kuryakin. It was a great loss when you were taken out of commission. Perhaps if this goes well you might be considered for similar jaunts in the future, hmm?'

'Thank you, sir,' Illya said. It was no good. He couldn't keep the grin from his face any more. 'Thank you.'

'Well, get on with you both,' Waverly said with gruff impatience. 'We've all got work to do, one way or another.'

'Oh, Napoleon,' Illya said as soon as they were through the doors.

'Oh, just kiss him, for god's sake,' Waverly's secretary, Laura Wentworth, said suddenly. 'You know you're a couple and I know you're a couple and Mr Waverly knows you're a couple, so just kiss him.'

And before Illya could do anything Napoleon had him in his arms and was kissing him hard and spinning him around and around, but then Napoleon suddenly came to a stop and asked in perturbation, 'Mr Waverly knows?'

Illya lurched at the sudden halt and reached out blindly, and Napoleon steadied him.

'Sit down, Illya, dear,' Miss Wentworth said kindly, handing him to a chair, and Illya sat gratefully. It was hard to catch your balance without anything to fix your eyes on. 'Yes, Napoleon, of course he knows. He's not as blind as all that. Er – I beg your pardon, Illya.'

Illya held up a hand. He could hardly stop smiling. 'No offence taken.'

'Well,' Napoleon said. He was silent for a few long moments, then he said, 'Well, Laura, Illya and I will be leaving for Cairo in – uh – three days.'

'I'll be sure to sort out the air tickets and the car hire,' she said smoothly. 'Illya, will you be bringing Sarah along?'

'Oh,' Illya said.

He hadn't thought of that. He thought of Sarah's wonderful efficiency and how she made sure he had everything he needed at his fingertips, and how she never patronised him or did too much for him, but just enough. Then he imagined that hotel room thousands of miles away and the North African heat and Napoleon in his bed, and he shook his head.

'No, she's not an agent,' he said. 'I'll be all right. I'm sure she'll sort out anything I'll need while I'm away.' He stood up and held out a hand and said, 'Napoleon? We'd better get down to the office and start working.'