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“Illya, for God’s sake, you can’t do this every time—” Gaby exhales, throws her hands as hard as she can reach, red riding jacket borrowed from the most generous-spirited toff daughter at Ascot tight around her shoulders and constraining her ability to wave her arms around, or punch, which she’d really like to get to doing right now. “You can’t just throw the nearest Cambridge grad onto the racetrack. You startled the horses, you could have gotten him trampled, and you spoiled Waverly’s bet. And my mark.”
An easy day’s work, she suspects designed deliberately so to get the team working smoothly on Waverly’s home ground. First month in England half-for-keeps and the work’s been simple, top-down and half-idle. Waverly testing his new engines on home terrain. She’d be offended at him giving them the easy work except that Illya’s gone and proven the need for it. She says, again, “For God’s sake.” The day’s borrowed British accent lingers, primly Anglicanizing her cursing. Gott in Himmel, she thinks behind it.
“They deserved it,” he says, stubborn, and she wishes this toff costume had come with a riding crop. Honestly—she wants to throw herself at him, to make the impact sting. The worst thing about Illya is that he’s untouchable. Skin-deep, at least.
The second worst thing is that she knows better than to believe his invulnerability goes any deeper.
“No.”
The racetrack smells of leather and money, both borrowed, still hold strong in the room. Today she was meant to ingratiate herself with the British heiresses at the fore of fashion and the front of the rack for passing inventors and young-money to date, particularly those ostentatious Iron Curtain adjacent fools who fancy Western trophies on their arm. Again, easy, but meant a few glasses of Pimms, companion riding attire, and smiling at the lads that smiled at them. While he and Solo rubbed elbows with said lads and saw what dropped. In this case, dropped like an anchor on hard land: a young heir, best friend of codebreakers and Cambridge’s finest, full of Pimm’s and good will who’d had the misfortune of trying to steal a kiss for his good-luck bet. And, all right, a grope for good measure, but for the love of the mission, she’d’ve been contented with twisting his wrist when he wasn’t looking. She’s got quick hands, not Solo-quick but more than adequate to twisting stubborn gears and smug gadabouts until they do what she says.
She says, “Listen.” Sighs, sits down opposite him at the table, starts to shrug off her jacket. It peels off like grapeskin; she feels disheveled and sweaty and half-wrung without it. There’s no central air in the room, not even a fan—these English are so thoughtless, the rich ones even more so. The rain weighs on the air, cool but sticky, sticking her hair to her forehead, her lips. She pushes sloppily at fallen tendrils with the backs of her wrists as she kicks her boots off, handless. He watches her efforts, no comment, silence loud and waiting as ever. “You made a hash of my day, but it’s not just that. It’s as though you don’t trust me to give as good as I get. Good grief, Illya, I’ve been in MI5 longer than you.” Not spying, he’s got half a lifetime on her on that count, he and Solo both, but certainly here. She’s got the country. This is her ground—not just England, Europe. Curtain ground on both sides.
The key to good spywork is comfort on your ground. You learn to be comfortable anywhere, or the itch under your skin will attract bullets. The key to good teamwork is trust, of course, but—she swats at her thoughts—she doesn’t doubt his trust in her. And yes, yes: he likes his women strong. There, the problem on the field: he has to think of her as spy first, woman second. Has got to stop setting tests of strength.
For her and Solo alike. Though they are put to different tests.
Now Illya sits, hunch-shouldered, looking less contrite and more contemplative as he stares at his tremendous hands. Solo’s down drinking at the bar and keeping whatever company will keep him. So long as he doesn’t bring it back to the room. Oh, yes, there’s no returning to any of the lovely estates with their lovely half-legal art collections and lovely postwar-negligent company, not tonight. It was on them to find an emergency suitable hotel room; therefore: two beds, three bodies, and we’re adults, she’d murmured in their quickly-considering-it company, her eyes harder on Napoleon than Illya at the time, but now she wonders. Relying on either Solo or Kuryakin’s maturity, particularly in mixed company, has always been more wishful thinking than not.
They’re worth it. Of course, she’s not disputing that. They earn their keep. More than. But they make things difficult, and she can’t have them making her business more difficult than need be.
Meaning, no bodies, for God’s sake, on the racetrack. Waverly hadn’t wanted to speak to either of them; she hadn’t blamed him a bit. Though that made her the work-mouthpiece, again.
“He did deserve it,” Illya says carefully. “I am glad he did not die. I will not cry because one rude little boy cracked a wrist.”
“Illya,” she says, sighing again, “there’s always going to be someone who deserves it. That’s not the point.”
He nods. Understands. Bows his head again. “I—” He considers, weighs his words. She sees him push the favored piece forward on the chessboard, the complicated machinery of his silence. “I was unprofessional. I do owe you, Gaby. For the day.”
“I don’t want your debt, Illya.” The sigh morphs into something nearer a laugh. They’re all well past counting debts. They got out of Vinciguerra Island through collected effort, collected concern for collected lives. There’s no point in keeping score any more: on a team this close, a single life is all of theirs. And given what they do, every detail of the work is life and death. “You simply need to—to calm down.”
“But I don’t—” A mislead. He bites off the sentence, unsatisfied. True enough, her telling him to be calm is ineffectual, vague. She knows a few more direct, better-success-rated approaches: a hand on his. Her fingers curling in his hair. At times, she’s succeeded with a soft word of purpose.
He pauses, retreats, turns his thoughts smoothly forward. “Tell me what to do, and I will do it. Or rather, tell me what not to do, and I will not.”
She meets his eyes, sees a glint of buried-deep humor. “Agent Kuryakin,” she says slowly, “you just want me to tell you things you already know.”
“I don’t know them.” He shakes his head, the glint not going away. He’s got plenty of severity to bury it under. “No one ever called me unprofessional in KGB.”
“No.” What’s changed: she doesn’t have to ask, can catch her own reflection when she looks down at the polished glass of the table between them. The lowered lashes, the high color of her cheeks, half anger and half anything but. “I bet not.”
He’s learning. With her. For good and ill. It was on assignment with her, he tried his hand for the first time—she supposes for the first time in his life—at taking a hit, rather than giving one. She can still recall the echo of the man’s hand cracking against Illya’s cheek, the spark of rage in Illya’s eyes, the shake in his hands. On one hand, the fellow got what he deserved, no better. On the other—she thinks back to that night. To speaking him into control, her words soft in his ear. Spinning restraint like a sugar shell around him, hot-cold and ready to crack.
“It’s about control,” she says aloud, and she finds her cheeks are flushed.
The door bangs open. Napoleon carries a bottle of scotch and three glasses. His scotch palate is resilient despite him having been drugged with it; she suspects he likes it all the better now that every sip smacks of tempting fate. If she tried to keep count of all the things her fellow agents do out of belligerence and spite, she’d never have the time to get any of her real work done. “So glad we’ve got rid of that bad mood from earlier.” He raises an eyebrow, knocks the door shut with his heel. “Or not. So glad we’re about to get rid of that bad mood from earlier.”
He hands her a highball glass and she makes room for him at the table, mood lightening if somewhat unwillingly. “How did you get a whole bottle? Didn’t you leave your wallet in the room?” There are one of two answers. He turns his face, reveals a lipstick mark on his cheek. The other, then. At least his hands are clean for the night.
He hands Illya a glass. “Stop sulking, Peril.”
“Don’t tell him to stop,” she says. “He deserves what he gets.”
Napoleon raises a brow. “In your schoolmarm mood, chop-shop?” The nickname’s Illya’s but Napoleon light-handed it off his tongue the first he heard it, of course. He sits between them, shrugs easily out of his jacket. “We’ll have to call you Miss Chop-Shop. Is Waverly still being missish?”
“He’s not angry without reason. You know,” she says with a slight smile, “he lost his own money on the tracks today.”
“He’ll make it back. He’s got,” Napoleon says with an air of self-congratulation, “resources. Here.” He crooks a finger toward her glass, offers the scotch-bottle for the pouring. Pours her three fingers—broad fingers measured by the hands in the room. “What’re we toasting to?” Silence. Scotch glugs into Illya’s glass. Her own is empty by the time his is poured. Napoleon gives her a look as he fills hers back up. “Say good behavior and drink it away. Cheers.”
She sips, heating her mouth.
“I walked into it,” he says, still pleased with himself, “didn’t I. Chop-shop’s flushed. We need to work on your tan,” he says to her, tipping his glass to her before to himself. “All this English rain is making you pale.” It’s been a lovely green week but Napoleon Solo never minded resorting to national clichés for party lines and poetry: that’s the American in him.
“She wants me,” Illya says abruptly, “to lesson myself once more in—” he meets Napoleon’s eyes, borrows what he can of his inflections through the Russian—“taking it like a pussy.”
Napoleon’s eyebrows skyrocket. “Does she have advice? I’d love to watch you practice.”
“You’d like to show me, cowboy? You’re better accustomed,” Illya says, voice shaping the syllables heavily, “to the position.”
“Chop-shop,” he says, turning to her—and he’s talking to her but he’s talking to Illya, everything Napoleon does is for show and Illya is as ever his favored audience—“do tell me what I can do to help. I offer my assistance in full.”
“I know you do,” she mutters under her breath, half into the glass. Her words fog the glass. She presses her nose into the dense edge, licks through the fog on her way to the next sip. When she raises her head, both men are looking at her with the same expression.
Strip back the layers and they’re so damnably alike.
She feels at once as though she has been appointed teacher for the evening. Schoolmarm indeed. Time to justify it: she has a lesson to give, righteous and necessary, though perhaps warmed by the scotch and her residual frustration as well. “Chop-shop’s face is a floodlight,” Napoleon comments, swirling his glass. “You must have twisted her knickers right off.”
Agent Solo, she thinks, could stand to enjoy himself on MI5 ground a bit less. Knickers in a twist in-bloody-deed. “Be quiet for a moment, Solo. Illya—”
He turns and she reaches across the table. After a moment, he takes her hands, both of them in one of his, sealed by the other like a box. He is listening.
“You do need to be taught to take it a little easier. Will you?”
“If you tell me.”
“I will,” she says. “If Solo offers a hand.”
Napoleon laughs out loud, knocks the remaining scotch in his glass all the way back. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”
She looks at him, calm and level. “And why not?” Sometimes she and Illya are alone, sometimes he and Napoleon. The time he spends with each of them shares equal weight, equal peculiar electricity. She hasn’t asked after them when she’s not around, but she can guess. She doesn’t have to follow them into private rooms to understand them: she’s seen them fight. Has listened to them talk. Really, far too much.
But—save her from Solo and Kuryakin in a room together, save them all from themselves—it’s a kind of love. A love that keeps them from killing each other and keeps them close to it all at the same time.
Again, teamwork.
She stands, hands slipping out of Illya’s for a moment. Rounds the table and kisses his forehead lightly. Him sitting, her standing, his face is just below hers. She only has to lean in a little, and she does lean. Rests into the proximity for a moment and feels him exhaling, lightly, waiting. The warmth of his breath, reaching through the sweaty silk collar of her blouse, warming her skin. It comforts her enough to worry her a bit.
They’ve got to be able to withstand anything. All of them.
She says, “Strip.”
He doesn’t protest. Stands, peels off his sweater, a rite that takes about a year given how much torso there is to uncover. She watches him. Sweater, folded, left on the chair. Undershirt. He tilts his head, hands resting on his belt. She nods. Watches him remove it, then shoes, socks, then trousers. All folded, one after the other, all put aside. He looks at her, in boxer briefs only, hands lightly cupped but not working to hide much. For one, she’s seen it. For another, he’s got nothing to hide. He’s been scrutinized by more prying eyes than theirs.
The room is warm; she tugs at her collar. Unties the mock scarf at the neck, undoes the first button. It’s Napoleon who watches her with a sliding smile. He doesn’t have to make the joke for her to hear it. She holds up a finger. Turns back to Illya.
“Kneel,” she says. The command, harsh, softens on her lips. If he trusts her tonight, she doesn’t have to say please. He botched the day; he owes her the night.
He does kneel, slowly, visibly half-hard, the soft gold carpet bowing like wheat beneath his knees. She feels the breath go slowly out of her as he goes down. “And Solo,” she says, voice steady with effort, “pour me another first.”
As he does, she circles Illya, barefoot and toes sinking into the plushness underfoot. She still wants to slug him, knows how at once impossible and rewarding it is to fight with a man that car-sturdy. But that’s not the point. What she wants isn’t the point right now. Though she wouldn’t pass this up, Illya on his knees, the rise and fall of his breath. She kneels behind him, knees resting on his calves, slides a hand through his hair and pulls herself up to whisper in his ear.
“You’ve got to take it softly,” she says. “This is something you have to practice. All right?”
She presses her lips to his ear, feels him swallow, feels the tension slide from jaw to throat. Her fingers trail from his hair down to the back of his throat.
“Tell me,” she says.
“Yes.” He pauses. Doesn’t turn his head, but tilts it, presses his skull to hers. One syllable, easy Morse code: “Da.”
“It’s ja in German, Peril,” Napoleon says, and she glares up. That one was for her benefit. Which he knows.
“No reason we can’t do several lessons in one. Bring it over.”
She stands, one knee between Illya’s shoulder blades, as Napoleon hands her the refilled scotch-glass, the rim still limned with lipstick one shade lighter than her own skin. Her first sip kisses her back, and her free hand slides back into Illya’s hair. Tips it back, only just enough to bare the line of his throat.
“Solo does what I say,” she says, and he nods. To Napoleon, she says, “Solo, you do what I say.” And he does, too.
She says, “Hit him.”
A pause.
Her thumbnail scratches at the back of Illya’s neck, and he nods again. Napoleon presses his hands together—if she didn’t know better, she’d think he was anxious. He’s the only option: he’s got the hands for it. Is the hands, to Illya’s ticking mind and her steady eye. A collective crack shot they are, when they work in tandem. But they’ve got to work in tandem. To push their will deep, deep, deep under the skin—outside the hotel rooms, at least.
“Well, cowboy?” Illya says. “What’s taking you so—”
Napoleon backhands him mid-word. It doesn’t quite land. But he hasn’t taken his rings off—class rings put on for the day from Hanover, Cambridge, one from Eton he must have lifted mid-handshake by the track—and Illya hisses, bites at his lip. His teeth rake over the scrape, and Napoleon shakes at his hand. “Sorry, Peril.” Cracks his knuckles with one hand. “Not my best.”
“Your timing’s,” she begins, and he open-hands Illya across the face with a crack that makes her start back and grab a fistful of Illya’s hair. “Off,” she finishes, breathing hard. Illya’s own breath echoes through her, up her arm, into her bones.
“Element of surprise. I thought we were practicing fieldwork.”
“The day I fail to anticipate a hit from the likes of you, cowboy,” Illya says, tonguing at the scratch on his lip, “is the day I retire from the field.”
Napoleon crooks an eyebrow. At her. She kneels again, behind Illya, wraps her arms around him, sliding her hands up over the broad expanse of his chest. Impulsively, she kisses him in the same place behind the ear, where the skin’s thin and the pulse ticks. There are so few soft spots on Illya Kuryakin’s body. She wants to take advantage of the ones she can find. She presses her nose into it, feels his heartbeat echoing through her. Twinning her own, loud down to her bones. Her eyes flick down, see the ridge in his underwear. She doesn’t move her hands. Not yet.
“It’s about endurance,” she says, “not surprise.” She leans back. “Again,” she says.
This time, there’s plenty of advance warning. The rise of Solo’s hand, the roughening of Illya’s breath. Napoleon twists his rings to the side but doesn’t take them off. This time, Illya doesn’t move at all. Not toward and not away: just takes the blows, one coming and one going.
He only shakes his head, only moves at all, once Napoleon’s hand has shaken out the backhand and rests firmly cupped in his other, his thumb running almost compulsive over his knuckles. “Tell you what, Peril,” he says idly, rolling up his sleeves, “all your flaws are in your character. None made their way,” he says, shaking out his hand and wincing theatrically enough that she supposed he must have actually hurt his hand, “into your flesh. I can respect that.”
“Shut up, Napoleon,” she says, and he starts at his name in her mouth. Illya does look at her then, his pupils wide and dark and swallowing the pale Siberian blue of his eyes. “This isn’t for you. Stick to your task. You do as I say right now. For him.”
You’re not you when you’re in the field, she means. That’s the point. That’s what’s got Illya here, stripped-down, straining, taking bruises. For the team. And that’s what got her behind him, voice steady, spine steel. That it feels good is, well, it’s secondary. Has been since Illya slipped a ring on her finger, slipped his big hand up her thigh—taught her that work isn’t always just work. But it has to be work first. Even this. Even the pattern her nail digs into the cool sweat on his chest. For the mission, for the long term.
Gaby’s got an eye for the long game. Even Illya, who can trounce them both at chess even when they’re playing together, hasn’t her patience. Even he stands to learn.
“Yes, fräulein,” Napoleon says, arch but shutting up. the amusement not gone but tucked away. Into the file.
“Illya,” she whispers into the same heartbeat soft spot, “you’re doing so well,” and he exhales, sudden and shocking. She flicks her lashes down, looks low to where his cock strains the seam of his underwear, the head near pushing out. He moves to adjust himself, and she shakes her head against the crook of his neck. He stills.
“Don’t move,” she says, her breath skating over his skin, and he shivers. And then—irresponsibly—she nips at the soft spot, teeth behind his ear, securing the secret.
Illya groans, a sound that comes up from the floor and steals all the air from the room. For a moment Napoleon’s hands, fiddling with ostentatious grace with his sleeves, go still.
“Give me your hands,” she says to Illya, watching Napoleon’s, and he does. She stands, slowly, silk peeling off him like a second skin between them. His big hands in hers, the heavy weight of his arms like a gift. “Let’s see. One more.” Short words, breath catching on the tip of her tongue. She bites, and Napoleon hits him one last time.
Illya’s eyes close, slowly, as the blow descends. She watches the flutter of his lashes, the part of his lips, from her sideline view. Feels his fists clench in the palms of her hands. There. There’s the flaw. She feels, through the heat on her face and the fog of her heartbeat, the sharp satisfaction that makes work not-just-work. She’s a fixer, of cars and now of countries: she sees what’s wrong, makes adjustment, makes it right.
“Illya,” she says softly, pulling back on his arms far enough that his shoulders tense, his muscles strain, his back arches a little—he could pull back from her any time, but he’s giving her this, giving. “This is no good. Tells, see?” She kneels and presses a kiss to each fist. One after another. Feels him clench then soften. “You’re still angry. Where we can see.”
She drops his hands and he takes them back quickly, flexing out the soreness. Napoleon’s eyes are so intent on him—she wants to see his face; she walks around to the front. There’s a hard red flush on his right cheek and around his mouth, brighter than it gets when she kisses him. He doesn’t touch his face, nor his cock. Only looks up at Napoleon and cracks his knuckles, slowly.
This isn’t the first time Napoleon’s hit him—that, she knows—nor the first time Napoleon’s seen him stripped down and straining. That, she’s betting. And she doesn’t like betting. She hasn’t asked, doesn’t want to ask. Wants, rather, to understand. Observation gives a better vantage than confession.
The way the hit lands isn’t the problem. That’s not what he minds. It’s why.
She picks her glass back up, swallows what’s left in one whole and burning gulp.
“How’re you doing, chop-shop?” Napoleon asks, the grin creeping back, and she replies sharply, “Ask him.”
“How’s she doing, Peril?”
Not what she meant, she begins to protest, but Illya meets her eyes quickly before he looks to Napoleon. “She’s pleased,” he says, “but not satisfied.” Her face blazes. Illya’s thumb goes to the cut on his lip, over the swelling surface and the blood caught beneath the edge. “I can smell it,” he says, and it’s the filthiest thing she’s ever heard him say. She can’t bite back her gasp, but she sees it land at Napoleon’s feet too. The hit lands as it was meant.
Napoleon’s sense of performance is contagious. Always has been. The Russians pretend their PR addiction doesn’t equal the Americans’, but—Illya’s thumb swipes hard through the blood and she swallows, hard, angry and aroused and thinking less and less of work. Her clothes are sticking with the cool English humidity, at once unbearable. “Don’t move,” she says, can hardly speak. “Help me. Not you. Solo.”
They can still be surprised. By her, with alarming frequency. If they’d get a bit less caught up in each other, they’d hone their reflexes that much better.
Demonstration works better than instruction.
Solo’s fingers are brisk and steady over the buttons of her blouse, knowing their business. They skim lightly over the bare skin below her brassiere, her stomach. Half taunting, half itemizing. She doesn’t blame him: he’s trained to the point where it’d be more difficult for him not to seduce. Not that he tries particularly hard.
She peels off the blouse, leaves it discarded on the floor, hears Illya give a soft tch from the floor—the clothes are practically more his than hers, given he’s the one who picked them out. She’s still living out of MI5’s fresh closet, hasn’t bought her own yet. She doesn’t trust them, doesn’t fully live in the luxury of silk and satin on her skin. Too long in orlon overalls on the wrong side of the Curtain.
Solo draws a light line over the band of her Cardin jodhpurs, from beneath her navel to the hollow dip of her hipbone. Predictable gooseprickles follow his fingertip. “Still need help?”
She sits, sliding them off her hips. “Here,” she says, foot out, and with his brow back up he kneels and pulls them off her legs. In nothing but white satin, panties and brassiere, she meets Illya’s steady gaze. He picked those out too.
She knocks into Napoleon’s shoulder with her foot, stands. “Give me your rings,” she says, eyes still on Illya. Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees him twist them off; she offers her hands and he, slowly, not quite hesitantly, slides them on. The Eton ring knocks loosely around her false engagement ring, more authentically made and far less sincere. She inhales, clenches and unclenches her fists. “Sit.”
Napoleon does. She perches herself on the arm of the chair.
She sees Illya swallow.
“Put your hand between my legs,” she says, low in her throat.
His Adam’s apple jumps. She can’t see his hands. “Solo,” she says, precise as she can, “fucks on-mission all the time. You’re going to see me with men, Illya. And you’ve got to let—”
Go, she swallows, distracted and forgetting her directive: Napoleon’s hand slides up her thigh like he knows the path already, which he does. Though not on her. Which is the point, of course. This is Napoleon, this is what he does. These are the tools they have to work with.
He doesn’t take her panties off. Only pushes the edge aside with two fingers and circles her clit, half-idly. She wants to ask, this is what works? only, yes, yes it does, that knowledge in his hands, that irrefutable cleverness and confidence. And she is wet, has been so, so wet—has been blocking it out like radio static, ignoring the haze of desire creeping in around the edges bright enough to bleach out film, the way it latched onto her anger. The way the heat’s been in her ever since Illya threw the young heir-to-whomever in front of a horse. Irresponsible desire, making irresponsible needs, a whole day’s worth—but that’s what Napoleon’s good at too, isn’t it. Finding desire, making it his. Rewriting it in his capable, yes-capable, quick hands. All the better learned because she doesn’t belong to him. In that moment, she’s his area of expertise.
All she can hear is the sound of her own breath in the room, loud in her own ears. Her eyelids, weighted down with the sudden crushing nerviness in her body, blink and flicker and through them she can see Illya gripping hard at his thighs. Palms open, knuckles white.
“Better,” she says. “Better.”
She slips, grabs at his shoulder with a trembling, fumbling hand, and at once Illya’s coiled spring-tight, feet underneath him as Napoleon slides a hand around her waist and pulls her into his lap. Solid ground again. She shifts on his knee as Illya balances taut on the balls of his feet, palms still clenched hard enough to hurt. Visibly. She braces an elbow around Napoleon’s neck, hisses stay as Napoleon slides into her two knuckles deep, as she cants her hips up under him. Wraps a hand around his, and hears him make a small, near-offended sound against the back of her neck—yes, she knows his professionalism, respects his skill. But this is about swiftness. And she doesn’t need much work, she was prepared, wasn't she, stop showing off, Solo.
Stop showing off for him, she thinks, spreading her legs and meeting Illya’s eyes, biting the inside of her cheek to keep her focused. She doesn’t take her gaze from Illya’s as she comes. Brief as a camera flash, but no less bright.
When she comes back to, she feels Napoleon, hard, against her thigh. For whose benefit—it doesn’t matter. For his own. His breath as serrated as hers, toying clumsily with her loose hair.
She swallows, stands, turns her face for a moment—gathering. “Solo,” she says, and for a moment she’s trembling too hard to look, aftershocks weakening her down to her knees. Still so very wet and resenting it. “Put your hand in his mouth.”
Beneath her lashes, through the mascara she feels smudging around her eyes, she flashes a look to Illya again. Whose eyes are wide. Angry, aroused, gratifyingly so like what she feels. Hard and exposed, and he’s done nothing to fix it.
Hasn’t been told to.
Her legs are weaker at that than at any of Napoleon’s ministrations. She watches Napoleon stand, now, fix himself for walking, though his steps are unsteady all the same. Then slide his hand—the clean one—over Illya’s head, stroking his hair for a brief second, then shove his fingers between Illya’s parted, bloodied lips. His thumb strokes the bruised lower lid, just like Illya did himself. Wet with her. Just as deep, in Illya’s mouth.
She sits down heavily, stares. Wants to clutch at the scotch, at herself, at something, but no.
Illya’s eyes are half-closed, ice-pale, staring up at Napoleon with a war’s worth of rage. But no killing behind it. He sees Napoleon. His anger’s for him, twisted up with something like love. He’s seeing clearly. And his lips part around Napoleon’s fingers, she sees his tongue behind the flash of his teeth, and a whimper tears itself out of her as he sucks the taste of her off Napoleon’s hand. And then he’s seeing her.
There is a bruise high on his cheek. It will fade by the morning. They all heal clean. As though they’ve taught their bodies.
Every day, they have to teach their bodies. To do what they tell them, to listen. To the work.
“Now that’s,” Napoleon says easily, “what satisfaction tastes like,” and she sits bolt upright. Shivers of pleasure still running through her body, weakening her, but not her voice.
“Not on your life,” she snaps, and he looks back at her, blinks: half surprise at her, recollection that she’s there, half waiting for what comes next. Quite right—listen up—
“You’re a tool, Solo,” she says, low in her throat. “And so am I. And so are you, Illya. You’ve got to save it.” She stares at him. “For—” for me, for us, “for here. And Illya, you have.”
“Solo,” she says, “he can do whatever he wants to you—yes?”
He watches her, guarded under that veil of self-pleasure, then nods. Spreads his arms in an elaborate shrug, zip of his trousers dragging over the visible ridge of his cock. “Cowboy,” he says like it’s his own idea, “you can do whatever you want to me.”
“Illya,” she says, “do what you want.”
And only then does he move, and he moves quick. Has Napoleon by the balls, through his trousers, before Napoleon can make a sound. Says, voice thick, arousal-thick, Russian-thick: “I could kill you if I wanted, cowboy.”
Napoleon swallows a high sound, startled right out of masculinity—high, startled, halfway to glad. Gaby braces herself against the table, listens with every inch of her skin. “Say it,” Illya growls, and Napoleon lifts his face.
“You could kill me right now,” he says, words trapped in the back of his throat, mouth an inch from Illya’s own.
She knows better than to worry; she watches.
Illya bites at the edge of Napoleon’s mouth, quick as his fists, too sudden and angry to be classified as a kiss. His mouth smears over Napoleon’s, marking territory—with her mark, oh, she bites at her hand as his hand clenches into Napoleon’s shirt. Violence to his clothes over the body. But then, these men and clothes. She can’t help tracing a line over her bare thigh, watching. It’s a Hermès. He clips a button, sends it flying with a flick of his thumb.
And drops him, tousled and gasping. Napoleon goes down like a tonne of bricks, doesn’t help himself, theatrics she thinks distantly. But even after that, Illya looks at her, half-shy. And she nods. “Anything you want,” she says, “at last, yes, Illya, yes,” and he’s got her by the waist, then up. She’s smiling, can’t help it, smiling, stupid, scotch-mouthed, spectacularly inappropriate and at last, herself, part of the spectacle, as he lifts her up and kisses her, light as a stroke against the fist-quickness of what he’d delivered to Napoleon. She tastes herself, and his blood. Presses her mouth, slow and soft and savoring, against the scratch on his lip. He groans into her gentleness, into the light pressure of her tongue and, then, her teeth along the swelling. Perhaps everything is equal parts violence, and equal parts love. Once the bullets started flying they were indissociable—long before any of them met each other, before they were in the field. The best they can do is take the hurt back. She tongues the scratch, swallows the sounds he makes, feels them echo low in her. The best they can do is make it theirs.
His wrist slides against her bare waist, scratching at her. She looks down at the knob of his watch digging into her skin. Naked, nearly, near as she is—but for the underwear and the watch on his wrist.
The best all of them can do.
“You’ve done so well,” she whispers, one hand on his watch-wrapped wrist, one sliding against his waistband before dipping lower. The praise skates over his skin before sinking in; she watches a shiver of pleasure travel up and up him, feels him thick in her hand. “Illya, you’re doing so good. You’ve done so good. Keep going.”
“As far as you like,” she says as he slides a hand around her thigh. Though no further. “I trust you,” she says, and feels him shudder again. Wraps his arms around her and leans in against her ear.
He murmurs, “You will say yes to what pleases you?”
She nods. “Da,” she says, smile half crooking her mouth. And to its corollary: nyet to what does not.
“Then stay, comrade,” he says, turning back to Napoleon, offering the word as much like a handshake as a bared knifeblade. “Sit down and stay put. I will show you satisfaction.”
Spectacle and demonstration. Performance and proof. Napoleon, with a smile like taking the knife between his teeth, nods.
Gaby’s fingers fasten around Illya’s wrist, fingernails scratching delicately at the soft skin hidden beneath the watchband. He places her down on the edge of the table, offers the chair to Napoleon with a mocking hand.
She meets Napoleon’s eyes as he sits, as he looks, doesn’t touch.
“Don’t move,” Illya says to Napoleon, into her mouth, and kisses her again.
Yes, she thinks, wrapping her legs around his thigh and leaning up into him, feeling Napoleon’s gaze stroking down the curve of her neck like a second set of hands. They work best together.
Eyes, hands, mission.
“Undo the clasp of my brassiere,” she says to Napoleon, into Illya’s mouth. “Then take your hands and put them on the table. Until I tell you not to.”
Illya laughs, seals the laugh into a kiss along her lower lip. “Do as she says, cowboy.”
She smiles. “If you’re good,” she says, Illya nodding as he drops to kiss her neck, “I’ll let you touch again.
“If you’re good,” she says, as Illya’s broad thumbs hook over the edges of her panties, as she cants her hips up and lets him drag them down, to knees and ankles and to the floor, at last not bothering to fold them.
“If you stay very still,” she says as he kneels, hands on her thighs, head between her legs.
“If—” and she gasps, shudders, as Illya’s lips land, as Napoleon slowly sucks his lower lip into his mouth as though he’s tasting the echo of where Illya’s heading, as though he’s borrowed Illya’s wound for the time being, as though they’re one body and one desire and, she thinks, thighs clenching around Illya’s head and bringing him home, maybe they are. All of them. Living on the same redeemed time, with the same itch under their skin: maybe they have been one the whole time.
She bites her tongue as Illya slides his against her, her fingers scrabbling for purchase against the glass. Napoleon’s wrists strain, but he doesn’t offer his help.
Good boy, she doesn’t say. Not without specifying which.
“As long,” she says at last, “as you keep your hands where I can see them.”