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It was pitch black and noisy. Not one particle of light made its way into that room. Illya rocked back and forth a little from his position on the floor to figure out where he was. It seemed he was lying on a concrete floor, and his feet kicked something that had a hard surface but gave a little. His hands were tied in front with rope, and he thought his feet were the same. There was nothing over his eyes; it was just that dark. Rolling a little more, he sat up, and started scooting his way over to find out what he had kicked. It seemed to be a pipe, quite possibly an insulated steam pipe with sheet metal wrapped around the insulation.
As his head got clearer, he thought that he had perhaps been darted or gassed and then thrown in here for storage. It only took a moment to find something sharp sticking off the pipe and cut his hands loose. Throwing a spy into a room with lots of hiding places and barely even tied up seemed pretty unprofessional; was it THRUSH who had caught him? Hands free, he now untied his feet, and tucked all the ropes into his pockets--more like large garden twine than rope!
Guarding his head and face as much as he could, Illya started to work his way around the room by feel. He couldn't find a light switch--which seemed odd--or something like matches, or a welding torch. After working his way around the room and touching all the walls he could reach without burning himself, he was pretty sure he was in a boiler room on land. There was a concrete floor that didn't rock at all. It smelled really oily, there were all kind of hot pipes sticking out everywhere, there was a whooshing sort of noise as the oil was sprayed and ignited. It was humid from the boiling and combustion. An air compressor kicked on now and then. The room was quite loud, but he didn't think he'd be permanently deafened. Or not more so than he had been from doing other activities, like the firing range.
Now Illya turned his search to the middle of the room. There seemed to be two boilers and their associated fuel lines and air lines and water lines. Not the most spacious boiler room he'd ever been in, but far, far easier to move through than a submarine. Some of the pipes, however, ran across the room at chest height. Illya thought he might find more tools or something he could make a light with tucked in between the boilers, out of the main walkway. He ducked down under the chest-high pipe, walking bent over, with one hand almost down to the ground, and the other guarding his face. Almost immediately, he kicked something that gave. A bale of rags? It moved, and was a person. Illya, with a sneaking suspicion, felt along until he found the face, definite cleft to the chin, brushed along, mole on the left side of the jaw. In return, the person--who had to have been Napoleon--patted around with a careful fist, put his hand in Illya's hair, and then patted the front of his chest. That was a little insulting, lots of men had hair this length. Illya reached out and found Napoleon's arm (free of ropes), lay down on the floor next to him, and set to tapping Morse code onto him. "Are you all right?"
Napoleon responded by tapping on top of Illya's own hand. "Head hurts."
That was a little concerning. Napoleon wasn't one to complain about headaches.
"Concussion?" Illya tapped back.
"Not sure." Then a pause. "Queasy." Another pause. "Sore all over."
It had to be some drug. Usually Illya was the one feeling worse for wear when they were drugged, but he didn't feel terrible this time.
There was a horrible screechy noise, loud even over the rest of the boiler room noises. Then a whumping pumping noise started up, sounded like an air compressor. The screechy noise must be a soot blower.
Illya felt movement next to him. He oriented himself. Apparently he had fallen asleep. It couldn't have been that long since they were captured; he must still have been groggy from the drugs. It was still pitch black and noisy and warm. But what had woken him up had also woken Napoleon next to him. While sleeping, Illya had apparently burrowed his face under the corner of Napoleon's right shoulder. Illya's arm still rested on Napoleon's chest where he had been tapping out Morse code, and now Napoleon was clutching Illya's right hand in his own right hand, and pressing it to his chest.
Napoleon now rolled up onto his side towards Illya, still holding his hand, and as Illya rolled away onto his back, Napoleon reached across and stroked the far side of Illya's face with his knuckles. What, me? What was Napoleon doing? Napoleon must've thought he woke up next to some girl or other.
Napoleon continued stroking Illya's cheek, and Illya felt him in the dark lean closer and take a breath. Then Napoleon took another, much deeper breath and went completely still. There was only the dark and the thumping of the air compressor, and the dull roar of the boilers.
Napoleon started moving again, in the opposite direction, clapped Illya on the shoulder in a well-done-old-man sort of way, and rolled back to his original position on the floor. He tapped out Morse code, "You need a shave."
What does one even say to that? Respond to the first intent? The second intent? Illya tapped out the shave-and-a-haircut rhythm.
Napoleon tapped back "two-bits."
Illya was taken aback, and wasn't sure what to do. Napoleon must've thought he was one of his women, despite patting down his chest earlier, and finding it flat. He just woke up. He must've been confused; he had said his head hurt.
Then Illya had a slightly-more-awake thought. Napoleon didn't take his hand away when he felt Illya's five o'clock shadow. He didn't back off until he presumably identified Illya as an individual by smell, as opposed to any other man whose five o'clock-shadowed cheek he might be petting?
It appeared it wasn't only ladies that Napoleon Solo had an interest in. Then there's a pair of us. Don't tell; they'd banish us, you know.
Glazing over this incident for the moment, Illya and Napoleon returned to the more urgent subject of escape. Where the boiler room door wouldn't yield to one man attempting to free himself, it would yield to a team effort. Going out, Illya observed the light switch was in the hall outside the boiler room.
As they moved throught the building, it became apparent that this facility was less focused on security than many other THRUSH bases. It seemed to be some type of Research and Development lab, or a university of sorts. The exit closest to the boiler room fronted on a very wide lawn, which it seemed foolhardy to cross in front of so many windows, so they crept around the edge of the building into the glass-doored entryway.
The entryway was free of guards, and both sides were lined with glass museum cases. Looking in, the cases displayed U.N.C.L.E. captured weapons and spy devices with descriptive cards next to them. Illya and Napoleon both scanned the cases quickly as they passed through, seeing what the enemy knew about them. There was a strange mixture of old and new, useful and useless. I haven't seen one of those since survival school.
It was a rather labyrinthine place, not terribly busy. Perhaps they were out for summer holidays. As Illya and Napoleon walked down a corridor, trying to find a back way out, they heard, and then saw a computer room, with cold air blowing out of it, disguising their sneaking noises.
In the room, facing away from them, with his black boots up on the Formica counter, sat a THRUSH goon in a blue-gray uniform, sorting through a tray of punchcards for the computer. Illya and Napoleon froze, as another THRUSH goon in the room crept up behind the man in the chair. What was this? Another U.N.C.L.E. agent? Another agency entirely? Then the sneaking man yelled "Boo!", and the man with the punchcards jerked, flinging the punchcards up in the air, and they fell to the ground, all mixed up.
Illya and Napoleon shared a brief glance, Napoleon rubbing his hand back and forth across his mouth, almost like he was going to laugh.
"You goddamned son of a bitch!" the man who had the punchcards yelled. As they were clearly distracted, Illya and Napoleon continued on down the hall. Exiting down this hallway, they were much closer to the woods, and were able to sneak away unseen.
The sun came up above the tops of the trees and lit up the top story of the building, just as they disappeared into the forest.
Illya swept the brush lightly backwards across the area he had just painted, then dipped more paint, wiped the drips off the end of the brush back into the can, and dragged the brush thoroughly back and forth across a yet-unpainted part of the board. Brush backwards to feather it in, dip, wipe, paint, brush backwards. This was such a meditative task; he could picture himself as a painter, just to relax, as long as he could make someone else do the sanding and scraping.
As he looked back across the boards he had already painted to make sure there were no empty spots or drips forming, he saw that Napoleon was down on the sidewalk, on the corner nearest him. Napoleon looked at his watch, and looked about, obviously telegraphing that he was looking for someone, squinting, his mouth a little bit open. Illya would get down in a minute, when he finished this bucket of paint. There was no reason to break cover at this point in time. He could hand off his notes on the comings and goings of the building next door very casually, and go back to work at painting.
As Illya painted a little further along the second story of the house, he felt eyes on him. He suspected they were Napoleon's, but it was always better to check, of course. After his paint can ran dry the next time, Illya leaned down to the white canvas bag he had brought with him up onto the scaffolding. He pulled a little mirror out of the bag just far enough to get a view of what was going on behind, around, and below him. Yes. The only person he could see anywhere looking at him was Napoleon. Illya tilted the mirror back again. Napoleon had rather a strange look on his face. He was staring straight at Illya, which Illya thought he would prefer to avoid for secrecy's sake. Napoleon tilted his head to the side, the intent look still on his face, and licked his lips.
What? Illya stood up and turned in his direction, and Napoleon turned away, acting like he hadn't been looking. That was a little strange. He had already seen Illya; why didn't he say something to him?
Illya climbed down to the ground with his empty bucket and brush, and headed towards his paint and thinner. He stirred the paint in the big bucket, digging down to get all the solids up out of the bottom and mixed in. As he knelt on the dropcloth, he could see Napoleon walk up, out of the corner of his eye. Napoleon kept his nice shiny shoes off the white, paint-spotted cloth, though.
Illya poured some of his paint supply into the small bucket. He could feel Napoleon's eyes on him as he worked. It was still nice and sunny, but the wind was picking up a little, so Illya mixed in a little more thinner than before, and some Japan drier.
"My, you're very precise," Napoleon said, glancing up towards the area Illya had just painted, and then back down towards Illya. "Do you do...interiors?"
That was a slightly odd comment. It wasn't the recognition signal. Wait, did Napoleon not recognize him? Granted, the costume department had made great strides in imitation red hair in the last few years, and the freckles looked quite realistic, but still... If Napoleon knew he was supposed to meet Illya here, surely he would expect to see him? Was he really fooled? Illya would check.
"Well, stranger, suppose I do, what then?"
"If you're free, you could come over and give me an estimate for painting my apartment."
"I'll be there like a thousand of brick."
Napoleon pondered that a minute, and seemed to decide that that phrase meant 'yes'. He nodded, and pursed his lips a little. "Your wife must have a job, washing all those white clothes."
"Well, I ain't found a real right down useful gal this side of the pond or the other." Why was Illya even saying this? What was coming out of his mouth?
"Oh, ah, me neither." Honestly, Napoleon. Where are you going with this?
"None yet led you to the hymenial halter?" Exactly how absurd could he get before Napoleon would get suspicious?
Napoleon looked at him another moment and then the penny dropped. It was a little amusing to see Napoleon's face go from his purse-lipped thinking look to a slack-faced caught out look. Napoleon finally gave the recognition signal. "I have heard of your paintings, too, well enough."
"God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another," Illya said, tipping his hat. He stood up, reached to shake Napoleon's hand, and palmed off the notes he had taken.
The line from Hamlet was about makeup, but you'd think the mention of paint would've made it obvious to Napoleon that his contact would be the painter, even if he hadn't expected Illya.
Illya climbed back up the scaffolding with his new bucket of paint, and as he looked down again, Napoleon was looking around, rather unsure, and biting his lip before he crossed the street.
After a few more hours, Illya was beginning to consider a lunch break. As he cut in to paint around the window trim, out of the corner of his eye, he saw two men standing on the front steps of the house he was watching. They appeared to be furtively whispering, and then they both looked up at him at once. He kept facing the house, kept painting along. The man in the brown suit walked down the stairs, trying to look casual, but Illya knew something was about to start happening.
The man in the blue suit stayed on the front steps, apparently searching his pockets for, and very slowly lighting up a cigarette. Illya brushed his hand along the top of the pocket where he had his communicator. It would take just a few seconds to turn the emergency beacon on. Illya felt a vibration through the scaffolding. It seemed the other THRUSH man was climbing the scaffolding, or perhaps sabotaging it. Illya turned so that the man on the steps couldn't see his hands, and set the emergency beacon. At that moment, the man in the brown suit came up onto the section of the scaffolding Illya was on. Illya whipped his paint bucket at the man's head, and ran around the other side of the scaffolding, between his building and the THRUSH building. There were no windows down that whole side of the building on the second floor, so if he was lucky, he might escape and there might not be anyone on the roof looking down, or on the ground or the ground floor looking up.
Just as Illya came even with the back of the buildings, he heard a ricochet off the building right near him. The brown suited man or one of his accomplices now had a straight shot at Illya. As he got out onto the part of the scaffolding that was affixed to the backyard side of the building, he saw that there were now two uniformed THRUSH men in the backyard of the house he had been watching, rifles pointed up towards him. The best choice was to keep running.
Illya sped up, and leaped off the end of the scaffolding, clearing the fence into the yard of the house behind. He very nearly landed right, but he felt something in his right wrist go. He bounced up and kept running, through their side yard, and out onto the street in the next block. He flung his white painter's cap between some cars, leaving the wig on his head, and struggled to unbutton the white shirt he had on. He flung that in between some parked cars, too, and walked as casually as he could, his topmost layer now a dark orange knit shirt. If THRUSH didn't look too hard, he'd be fine.
Illya jaywalked with a large crowd of people crossing the street. He came even with the U.N.C.L.E. vehicle that was waiting for him as backup the next block over, and casually slipped inside.
Dr Choudhury had x-rayed him all over, and squeezed back and forth all over his body, checking to see if he could make any broken bones grate against each other.
"I don't see why I have to have all these x-rays. It was just one story. The only thing that hurts is my wrist."
"Just because you don't feel it right now doesn't mean you're not injured. I once had a patient who tore his thumb most of the way off in a skiing accident, and it turned out he had broken his neck, too. Didn't notice it for a whole week afterwards."
Illya grimaced.
"I am a little surprised you didn't do anything to your feet or legs. Do they really feel all right?"
"You've x-rayed everything. I'm fine."
"Well, all right, but I don't completely trust you to say if you're hurt, and it could really be something. I suppose you could just be lucky. Check your fingers on the hand with the cast throughout the day, and if they go cold or numb, come right back. And I want to look you over again tomorrow before you go home. I suppose you could have escaped that fall with just an ulnar fracture."
Illya stopped off at the men's room on the way back to his office, and then he turned around and went directly back to Medical. Dr Choudhury was still standing at the counter in the exam room, writing in Illya's file. He looked up as Illya came in, and his mildly perplexed look changed to suspicion.
"I have blood in my urine."
The doctor turned around and shut the exam room door. He shuffled through the supplies laid out, and took another vial of blood from Illya's arm. "And not to treat you like an idiot, but you didn't eat beets right before this?"
"No, not for a few days."
"I only ask because it's pretty common for people to be mistaken about that, and not just fools, either." The doctor had him stand up and measured his waist with a tape measure, and wrote the measurement in his file.
Dr Choudhury crossed his arms, and looked at Illya, considering. "It's probably only bruising to your kidneys. There's no evidence of a fracture of the ribs or vertebrae, although something could have separated because of the impact with the ground. It could have been weakened by all the other times you jumped off of things.
"I want you to be careful with this. No smoking, no drinking, no jogging or running, nothing that involves jumping up and down, no saunas, don't get dehydrated.
"Come in early tomorrow morning so I can look you over again. You might get a huge bruise from the blood pooling. And make a note of which side you sleep on tonight. If it starts hurting anywhere between your knees and armpits, if you get a burning feeling, if there's more blood, if you start vomiting, come back here.
"If you go into shock, obviously, or if you stop urinating, come back immediately, even if it's the middle of the night. And I'll expect you to produce a urine sample when you come in in the morning." The doctor let him leave again.
Illya finally got back to the office. "You were gone a little while," Napoleon said.
"Yes, apparently it was not just my wrist. I also did something to my kidneys."
Napoleon looked a little concerned at that statement. "But they let you out?"
"I'm allowed to leave, but I am prohibited from drinking and from jumping up and down."
Napoleon snorted. "And here I was hoping we could play hopscotch after work."
They went on back to Napoleon's apartment, since Illya could use a can opener with his hand in a cast like that, but it would be both painful and slow.
Napoleon secured the apartment door behind them, got his jacket off and assisted Illya with his, and then headed into the kitchen.
"I'll just have to drink for both of us," Napoleon called back out to Illya.
"Thanks," Illya said as he headed for the living room.
Illya sorted through Napoleon's records. That, at least, he could do one-handed. There were some of Illya's over here, so he put on Robert Johnson's "Stones in My Passway". He didn't suppose Napoleon would get the joke.
Napoleon got a glass of water for Illya, and then got two glasses for himself off the bar cart, and staring right at Illya, poured himself two separate drinks. He picked up one in each hand, said, "Cheers," and tapped them together. He took a swig from one glass, swallowed it, and took a swig from the other right after.
"Kind of a strange boilermaker," Illya said.
"Whiskey, with a whiskey chaser. There are worse ideas." Napoleon was apparently going to keep on with the joke, as he wandered back to the kitchen carrying both glasses, sorted through the takeout menu drawer, and then returned to the phone end of the couch with both glasses and the menu. "Fortunate Dr Choudhury didn't say anything about salt," Napoleon said, picking up the phone and dialing.
It was a warm night, so they just sat there casually, listening to the old blues record. At the sound of the downstairs buzzer, Napoleon said, "No, no. You stay there, don't jump up and down, remember?" and retrieved the food.
Napoleon set out all the food in the usual order on the coffee table, moving both of his drinks over from the end table with the phone. He kept at his joke of drinking out of both glasses equally and keeping up with himself. It would've probably been funnier if Illya was drinking, too.
After working their way through the chop suey and chow mein, not to mention the spare ribs and won tons, Napoleon leaned back on the couch. He was still working his way steadily through both glasses of liquor, refilling them as he went, and it certainly seemed to be kicking in, despite all the fatty food he had just eaten. Napoleon blinked sort of a long blink, and a little unevenly, and stretched his right arm out--drink still in his hand--over towards Illya.
Poking Illya in the shoulder, Napoleon said, "You know, you're not holding your liquor as well as you usually do. You shouldn't drive home like this."
Illya thought that was a little funny, at least. Napoleon kept looking at him, his right index finger still poked into Illya's shoulder. "Alright, but that's the last drink I'm having tonight," Illya said.
Napoleon smiled. "Good, good." He looked away from Illya and took a drink out of the glass in his left hand.
It seemed that Napoleon was getting more tactile the drunker he got. Now that Illya thought about it for a moment, he seemed to recall this happening before when Napoleon was drunk. Illya just hadn't completely considered it, since he had been drinking a bit, too. But now he was stone-cold sober.
Napoleon had turned back from his glass of whiskey and looked at Illya for a moment. "Do you want me to wash your hair for you before you got to bed?" he asked.
It was a little unusual of an offer, but he wouldn't mind being cleaner. "You know, that would make my life easier."
Illya manhandled the chair over to the kitchen sink as best he could with the cast while Napoleon got the shampoo and a couple towels. Illya stood in the kitchen, unbuttoning his dress shirt. The cast definitely was slowing him down, but it certainly hurt less than taking off his shirt in the street with the wrist broken and unsplinted.
Illya kneeled up on the chair with a towel over the edge of the sink to rest his chest on, so he could get his head down into the sink. Napoleon turned on the sink and checked the temperature with his hand. As Illya leaned forward, he remarked to himself that this was the only man in the world Illya would let hold his head under water, and even then, vague inclinations to flee popped in and out of his mind.
The warm water sluiced over Illya's head, his hair falling forward in a wet curtain, and making it even darker behind his closed eyelids. He could only hear the water fizzing as it came out of the faucet, and the noise as it hit the stainless steel basin. The back of his neck was a little cold from the evaporation. The stream of water moved and there was a squeak as Napoleon knocked his hand against the faucet and jerked backwards, but he continued right along to opening the shampoo bottle.
Illya relaxed as Napoleon rubbed the shampoo into his hair. He tried to hold his head steady, but the circular motion wasn't easy to brace against, and really, there was no reason to. Illya heard the soap bubbles crackling against the edge of his ears as the shampoo foamed up.
In another moment, Napoleon switched over to rinsing. He combed his fingers through Illya's hair, so that the water could get in to rinse, and he managed to do it without getting water into Illya's ears. The sink turned off, and Napoleon squeezed the extra water out of Illya's hair a couple of times, and then got the towel over his head. "Here, keep leaning over the sink."
Not too much water dripped down the back of Illya's undershirt, and now his hair was clean and mostly dry. Napoleon reached out and rubbed the towel back and forth across Illya's head for a minute or two, and then removed it, tucking it under his arm. He regarded Illya for a moment. "Well, I don't know about you, but I could hit the hay."
Illya followed Napoleon as he went around the apartment, checking all the doors and windows one last time. Napoleon moved the curtains to check the latch, and Illya saw that Napoleon had a bruisy red partial ring on the back of his hand where he had knocked it against the sink.
Illya laid down in the guest room bed, his hair damp but clean. He could hear Napoleon movng a little less smoothly about the main bedroom, and soon he heard him flop over into bed and almost immediately start snoring.
They didn't have any problem touching each other. Sometimes you just had to hold your partner's blood in, or boost him over a fence, or alert him to something without other people hearing. Surely that was all it was.
Illya and Napoleon walked along the morning sidewalk to Del Floria's. It appeared a woman in a white dress had stopped her baby carriage right next to the area railing, and was bending down and looking into the front of the baby carriage. Illya evaluated the situation; there appeared to be a real baby in there, the woman did not appear to be armed, and she didn't appear to have an unnatural stance or unnatural stresses in her posture. She may well have been an innocent woman tending to her baby. He continued cautiously down the stairs into Del Floria's, keeping an eye on her.
Napoleon had paused longer, up on the sidewalk, when Illya checked back on his location. He, however, appeared to be admiring the woman's behind.
Illya continued on down into the shop, with Napoleon catching up and joining him in the changing room before the door opened on the secret entrance to headquarters. As they stopped at the security desk, and Napoleon leaned forward to let the woman at the front desk pin his badge to his suit jacket, Illya noticed a similarity between Napoleon's posture and that of the woman outside.
Wait. Some puzzle pieces clicked together in Illya's brain. That time he was dressed as a painter up on the scaffolding, and Napoleon was looking at him funny, he had been staring at Illya's rear end! He rechecked his results for accuracy. Yes, that was what had happened.
Did Napoleon only look him over when he thought he wasn't him? There had also been that time when Napoleon had seemed about to kiss him when they were trapped in the boiler room. Illya was going to have to do some investigating. He would let his mind think about it on the back burner while he got some work done. Illya was a little bit distracted, and almost accidentally walked to the office, instead of to his Medical appointment.
After a couple of hours of getting paperwork out of the way at their neighboring desks, Illya thought this investigation of his might make an enlightening change of pace before he got a cup of tea. Napoleon was at his desk, legs stretched out, staring off into space, and tapping a pencil against his mouth. He just sat there tapping, not looking at his paperwork.
Illya shuffled through his own papers, pulled out a large bound bundle, and walked up next to to Napoleon's desk without Napoleon registering his presence. Illya let the bundled papers go from high above the desk, so they slammed onto the desk loudly. Napoleon startled, and reached towards the inside of his jacket until he registered that the noise wasn't a gunshot. Illya started speaking. "Napoleon, I want you to take a look at this." Illya positioned himself much closer than he usually would, leaning onto Napoleon's desk with both hands.
When Illya had dropped the bundle of papers, Napoleon had automatically looked down at it, and now he looked back up, into Illya's face. For two blinks, he stared up into Illya's eyes, the pencil stopped against his lips, his lips a little parted. In the well-lit room, Illya could clearly see Napoleon's pupils open up wider as he looked up into Illya's eyes. Those well-known brown eyes, caught looking up at him. And then Napoleon looked down, and towards the papers, and set the pencil next to him, and said, "What do you want me to look at?"
But Illya had caught him. The predatory triumph mingled strangely with the knowledge that Napoleon was interested in him, personally, even when realizing it was Illya. But what does the dog chasing the car do when he catches it?
There really had been something Illya wanted to confirm on the documents, so he chatted about it almost on autopilot for a few moments.
Having cleared that up, Illya said, "Well, let's go for a coffee break."
Illya followed Napoleon out into the hall. Napoleon strolled as casually as possible, his hands in his pockets rucking up his suit jacket. He was trying very hard to look like he hadn't a care in the world. So Napoleon had seen that Illya had seen. As Napoleon got a little ahead, Illya looked him up and down. Illya had spent so much time thinking about the chase, he hadn't considered if he even wanted to catch Napoleon. Did he?
Clearly, Napoleon wasn't bad looking; everyone agreed on that. Illya sipped his tea, as they sat at the cafeteria table. What would his life be like if he was with Napoleon? Would it be better than his current life? There were definitely points against such a relationship. Everyone at U.N.C.L.E. was supposed to be interchangeably disposable, and a romantic relationship might make one of the parties hesitate at the wrong time. But wasn't Illya already irretrievably attached to his partner? Was he any less likely to condemn him to death if they were a romantic pair?
How likely was he to be blackmailed over something like this? Illya was always looking over his shoulder anyway. And people were genuinely spying on him; he knew it. This was no paranoia. He bit into a piece of shortbread.
But most of all, Napoleon seemed flighty in his affections. He rarely even went out with the same girl twice. Illya didn't consider himself an easy-come, easy-go kind of person. Jealousy was a foolish emotion, best avoided, but the thought of Napoleon sweeping him off his feet, and then suavely ushering him out the door the next morning didn't sit well.
Illya really should have observed this attraction on Napoleon's part sooner. Did this just start recently? Whenever Jones, in the labs, was between girlfriends, he was inclined to tell all sorts of raunchy sex jokes, but as far as Illya could recall, Napoleon didn't have any tells as obvious as that.
Walking back to the office, Illya considered what he should do.
Later that day, Illya and Napoleon got called into Mr Waverly's office. Their assignment for the next day was to sail up and down off of Manhattan taking radiation readings. There was a strong possibility THRUSH had a quantity of synthetic plutonium somewhere in New York City.
As Napoleon drove Illya home, he said, "It's the perfect mission for you even with the cast, since you're pretty unlikely to have to fight anyone. No feats of derring-do required. Just sit there and steer the boat back and forth."
Napoleon had claimed that a sailboat without using the motor would be much less likely to make Illya seasick than a boat with a motor, especially something as round-bottomed as a submarine. "Those things are shaped like bathtubs underneath; of course they wallow." Illya was a little suspicious about this claim, and wasn't particularly looking forward to his duties the next day.
Napoleon got dinner together for Illya, and promised to come pick him up early, so Illya wouldn't have to struggle with breakfast on his own.
Illya's broken wrist wasn't bothering him all that much, but he certainly had a difficult time dropping off to sleep that night.
Napoleon showed up to Illya's apartment the next morning in sailing clothes. He was wearing a light blue polo shirt with a white pullover sweater, khakis, and some tennis shoes with no socks. His ankles were certainly tan. It was a mystery how someone who worked indoors, in a near-windowless building could get so much sun. He looked like something out of a magazine ad.
After Illya was fed, and "suitable" clothes picked out for him, they picked up a sailboat from the U.N.C.L.E. dock, a little North of the General Assembly Building.
"How does this compare to your boat?" Illya asked.
"She's not as pretty as my boat, but nothing is. Being mine is what makes her the prettiest." Napoleon smiled.
Was Napoleon implying something by that statement? Now Illya really was getting paranoid. Sunlight glinted off the windows of the surrounding buildings, reflecting onto the water. All those windows out there in the skyscrapers of New York City--THRUSH could be looking at them right now, or even a random person could. Illya had seen pictures in magazines of rich peoples' apartments that showed a spyglass placed decoratively in front of a large window. Surely some people really had those.
After the flurry of activity to get away from the dock, there was plenty of time to sit and think, out on the water of the East River. Certainly, Illya had to pay attention to the other boats, but the visibility was excellent. And he had to steer the boat so it maintained the appropriate angle to the wind.
Napoleon was back-and-forth between the cabin and the deck, taking readings on the radiation detecting machine, and coming up to take compass bearings off points on the shore to plot the location of the readings on a chart below.
After awhile out on the water, Illya thought he might agree with Napoleon. The sailboat's constant angle of movement was rather different from the back-and-forth and side-to-side compound motion of a motor vessel. Maybe he wouldn't vomit today.
Illya watched a newspaper float past in the water, and considered whether this was a man he could put his trust in. Illya didn't need sex or a relationship; he could live without them. Anyone could. But he'd be lying if he said he had never wanted someone to settle down with. But then again, he might die tomorrow, and he wouldn't have to worry about it any more.
Now that Illya was alert to the possibility of Napoleon staring at him, he was almost completely sure that Napoleon had been looking at him behind his sunglasses, and then looking away when Illya looked back. Napoleon had come up from below after checking the monitoring system again, and stood so the top half of him was out of the hatch, his head to one side of the boom. Napoleon had his head turned like he was looking away from Illya, but there are all kinds of muscles around the human eye that move when one looks around. Napoleon casually reached towards one of the ropes hanging off the bottom of the boom. His hand dropped through the air, missing the rope entirely. Napoleon definitely had been looking towards Illya and pretending not to.
Illya nearly laughed out loud, but he managed not to react. He was a spy, after all.
Illya took this opportunity to put his own sunglasses on as he sat at the tiller, concentrating on keeping the boat pointed upwind with his casted hand braced crossways against the gracefully curved piece of wood. It seemed to him that quite a few of the physicists he had met were fond of sailboats and airplanes. The thought of being able to sail upwind was a strange thought, and the vectors looked so neat and simple on paper.
Napoleon stood in the companionway, facing more or less towards Illya, and pretending not to look at him.
Illya looked at him for a moment, and then spoke. "So, what are you going to do about it, then?" Illya wondered if his voice shook; it felt like it shook.
"About what?"
"Haven't you been looking at me?"
Napoleon, the man who always had something suave to say back, looked pale under his tan. "Yes....yes." He kept standing there, apparently unable to think of anything else to add.
Illya slapped his left hand down twice on the boat seat next to him. Napoleon stared for a moment, and then came over, and gingerly sat down, bracing his feet on the seat across from him. He was looking at Illya very intently, like he was wondering exactly how hard he was going to be hit.
Illya looked at Napoleon for a moment. Would this be the most foolish thing Illya could do?
It was like pushing through solidifying plaster, but Illya slid his hand along the seat, so the sides of their hands butted together, and overlapped his ring and pinky fingers just over Napoleon's. Napoleon's fingers were warm against the neutral temperature of the seat. Napoleon barked a laugh as he looked down at their hands, and then tilted his face up into the sun, and smiled, and sighed.