“Your aunt propositioned me.” Illya set down the tea service. One could see the Eiffel Tower perfectly framed in the narrow window, reset with bullet-'proof' glazing.

“Which one?” Napoleon smiled as Illya poured from the very English teapot into the painted glasses, then spooned preserves into each.

“Aunt Amy.” Illya drank from his glass.

Napoleon sat his glass down. His Aunt Amy was the widow of his father’s great-uncle. Despite all expectations, she’d gone from the questionable young bride of a much older man, to a matriarch. “She propositioned you?”

“For one of the girls.”

That did not sound like Aunt Amy. She did play the matchmaker, but so lightly that the couple was never the wiser. He sensed this was Illya’s dramatic streak showing. He waited it out.

“Donor.” Illya selected a nibble and changed the conversation to U.N.C.L.E. They weren’t nearly as out of the game as some, apparently even THRUSH, thought. He had access to women around the world as a couturier. At the prices he charged, they were women of power, either in their own right or through the men of their lives.

He took in Napoleon. They didn’t see each other as much as they had done as agents, but there were advantages to life after fieldwork. “Business doing well?”

Napoleon twisted his mouth into a moue, setting his free hand on his midsection. “I’m working on it.” He raked his eyes over Illya. “Pinning hems at all hours?” His lover was still lean. Illya’s hair was positively long. It worked for him.

Illya was out of his chair and his mouth on Napoleon’s before the movement could be tracked. Napoleon clasped Illya’s head in his hands. He reeled him in, whispering “wing-chair” as he resisted pulling his lover down from his straight legged straddle.

“Steel.” Illya unzipped Napoleon’s fly and started on his buttons.

It was awkward, frustrating and perfect. Any time they got together was. They strew their clothes around the sitting area, Illya twisting this way and that as they stripped and made love.

“Suits you.” Illya’s arms draped over Napoleon’s shoulders and down the chair back.

“Rode hard and wet?” His hands teased over Illya. He wasn’t risking him falling asleep.

“Prosperity.”

Napoleon tickled Illya on the ribs, transferring him to one shoulder as he stood. He chuckled as Illya spanked him hanging head down. He caressed Illya’s left cheek with his right hand while he confirmed his hold. Napoleon carried his prize off to the bedroom, tossing him onto the bed. He dug in the nightstand drawer. He smiled at Illya on the white sheets. “Show me your etchings.”

Illya pulled Napoleon into bed, working them up again face-to-face, then rolling his partner onto his stomach. He readied Napoleon, then slid home. Achingly slow lovemaking had been rare when their communicator pens could sound at any moment. Being together they now stole, but that time once stolen was their own.

He took his time, their time. It wasn’t as if they could see the city’s sights, and Napoleon was the only sight he wanted to see, touch, hear, taste. He supposed Napoleon would have clients or suppliers to see. He would have to show at the atelier.

He wrung Napoleon’s completion from him and achieved his own satisfaction. “Sooner you go, the sooner you’re back.” He pulled out as Napoleon shifted. Illya lay on his side, then sprung up and crossed to the bathroom. He waited until his partner came out before slipping in for his turn.

“You’re sure of yourself.” Illya stood by the bathroom door and swept his eyes over Napoleon, displayed in his bed. It was a joy to see only the change of years instead of new scars of lash and knife. They’d made love bruised and broken so often, wholeness was its own kink. He stalked back to the bed.

“Where do you keep the painting?”

Illya cut off Napoleon by getting back into bed and pushing him onto his back. Illya was unsurprised to find himself on his. He squirmed as Napoleon’s touch wavered across the line between arouse and tickle. It maddened him the way Napoleon read him so well. His partner’s caresses slowed, gentled into comforting. “Going to sleep?”

“Join me?”

Illya wrapped his arms around him and pressed their mouths together.

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“Donor?” Napoleon lobbed it out while he cut another piece of his boeuf.

“Donor.”

“Isn’t that...”

“Which is why, I’m sure, Aunt Amy was taken in as an intermediary.”

Napoleon considered that. He realized he had no way of knowing which of his nieces were ‘planning’ and which might be ‘trying’ and not succeeding. Something he knew Aunt Amy was aware of before taking her particular tack with Illya. Only tempt spies with secrets when there’s no way to dig. “You’ve not decided no.” He thought a moment. “When did you see Aunt Amy?”

Illya rolled his eyes while pushing sauce across his plate with a fork of haricots. “She came in for a fitting.”

Napoleon tried matching up some of Illya’s, or rather House of Vanya’s, creations with his aunt.

“You should wrangle for a luncheon invite.” Napoleon was so predictable and beholden to the media. He hoped Aunt Amy would detail his shock at not being shocked. She was the raconteur.

“You’re considering it.”

“It would obviate overtaxing the small anonymous pool.” Illya could tell his lover was totally at sea with a subject outside his experience or reading.

“Um.” Napoleon couldn’t seem to think of any way to have this conversation that would leave his dignity intact. This was at such cross-purposes to his closest interest with reproduction, years ago.

“Aunt Amy wouldn’t have broached it had she not considered the situation fit. Which is more than the clinics vouchsafe.”

“You’re questioning whether to say ‘yes‘.” Napoleon took another bite. Perhaps if he kept to his knowledge of Illya he’d stay on safe ground.

“It’s not something I’d thought about.” He let his words fall into a comfortable rhythm with his dining. “We’re both aware what the world is like.” Several more bites. He’d been a happy child, unaware of Stalin’s alliance with Hitler, . He remembered the officer that had brought him word of his mother, who had taken off one of his own medals, saying how bravely she’d fallen, her machine gun blazing even in death. He’d pinned it inside Illya’s collar and given him a bun before returning to the war.

He’d wolfed down the bun to just a corner before even thinking of his grandmother. Buried the medal so it couldn’t be stolen from him. So he wouldn’t sell it.

“Illya?” Napoleon lay down his cutlery.

“I’m thinking.” He squeezed Napoleon’s hand, looking speculatively at his plate. Defensively, his lover picked his fork up. He had him well trained. A hostage only to the common fate. Plus that small danger Napoleon posed at family gatherings. There were rules, he’d seen them those few times he’d been dragged to Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July or Apple Blossoming. Rules about not crossing between them and the perimeter.

He missed that. Not the professional paranoia, but Napoleon’s extended family. With Napoleon and himself pretending to be on the outs, he couldn’t visit them. Amy was a bit of an exception, since she came to him as a client.

He’d not expected things to end well that first time. Instead he’d found them gracious hosts, if too ready to take him as a second-generation Russian émigré instead of a Soviet. He smiled as he recalled the conversation he’d had about Russian literature. In flawless French.

Napoleon considered his lover, who was clearly pleased about something. He reflected the smile, wondering at its inspiration. It was fortunate Illya didn’t want the world, because Napoleon would give it to him. Instead, they played a deep game, that kept them apart more than they were together. ““Une paire de pains pour vos pensées?”

Illya looked at Napoleon in fleeting confusion, then answered. “How does your family stand your accent?”

“I don’t speak French with them.” It had been a risk taking his new partner home. It would have been a mistake to do anything else. His prickly junior agent bloomed around his family, demonstrating the Ice Prince was a clever mask. Napoleon looked at Illya, regarding him.
“What?”

Illya shook his head slightly. Napoleon never failed to surprise him in some small way.

“You’ve decided.”

Mostly. Illya finished the last morsels of food on his plate and clasped Napoleon’s hand.

“No dessert?” Napoleon smiled and stood, tossing his napkin towards the table.

Illya looked at Napoleon. Into Napoleon.

Whose lips parted, pinned by blue eyes. He followed Illya.

Slowly they undressed, each other mostly, occasionally themselves. Skin stroked as revealed, fleeting kisses skimming and darting. They slid together into bed, holding back, teasing, inflaming and banking. Give and take, Illya turned around and Napoleon continued working down
his stomach by moving up. They both bypassed the more obvious attractions, for jut of hip, a healed scar, back of knee. An anklebone.

Illya shimmied back up the bed, up Napoleon. Nipped and soothed his inner thigh. He nuzzled Napoleon’s cock, then licked it, and wrapped his lips around just the head.

Napoleon teased, licking Illya’s length. He rolled onto his back, pulling Illya to him by his ass.

Illya resisted for a few moments, letting himself be drawn in, taking Napoleon deeper. He kept their loving as slow as he could, pulling back and applying pressure when Napoleon’s persuasion became too insistent.

Napoleon had Illya just where he wanted him. Illya’s tactic was slowing Napoleon down, but allowing him to rev Illya higher and higher. Once he had Illya balanced on the very point of satisfaction, he rolled them and hummed as he pushed Illya deeper into his throat.

Illya levered himself up, hanging onto Napoleon as he came, pulling out all the stops as he worked his mouthful. That sliver of his mind not yet blown registered the start of Napoleon’s completion.

Napoleon permitted Illya to slip from his lips, dropping kisses on pale thighs. He considered how to pull Illya back right side up. He led with his hips, then guided with his hands on Illya’s ribs. He pulled Illya into his arms, kissing his face, stroking his blond hair. Sleep claimed him.

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Illya adjusted Napoleon’s boutonniere. Now that boutonnieres were rarer, he’d started to mourn their passing. It was something he did each time Napoleon left. He couldn’t go to the airport, couldn’t be seen with Napoleon. He liked that it made Napoleon look more dignified. Youth was ascendant.

“Do I pass muster?” Napoleon wanted to kiss Illya senseless. It was so like Illya in its contrariness, the man that had given up dress shirts fussing with an anachronism. Their meetings couldn’t be long enough.

“You’ll do.” Illya made one last touch to Napoleon’s pocket square.

Napoleon resisted even leaning forward. He picked up his suitcase and pulled open the door. He walked down the hall, hearing the slight click of the door closing.