#60n

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Something glints in the skyscraper opposite theirs, and Napoleon is out of his seat before he fully realizes what that means. He sees Gaby tackle Mr. Seng to the ground and hears the glass window break as his legs stretch into a jump, bruised ribs screaming in protest when he throws his arm forward and forces them to follow along. He catches a glimpse of Illya’s face, frozen in a wordless protest as he twists to put the width of himself between the window and his partner. He floats through the air, millimeters at a time, an eternity between each of his heartbeats as he realizes he’s never going to make it. Illya is about to die here, shot down by a sniper sent after a Russian mafia boss, and Napoleon can’t do anything but watch as he misses his mark and fails to push him out of harm’s way. He tries to catch Illya’s eyes again, but a flower of blood blooms on his bicep, petals unfurling with the grace of feathers, and Napoleon stares in horror as it shoves his arm into Illya’s nose.

Then, gravity and time catch up with him at last, and his head hits the floor with a loud thud and a painful bounce. He twists back around, unable to swallow his heart down, and crawls his way back to Illya even as he jumps into a crouch, catches the man’s shoulder and shouts at him to stay down. They stumble out of the conference room on unsteady feet and scramble the double door closed. Time skips again, and Illya’s face is in Napoleon’s hands, bloodied where his nose broke but otherwise intact. Napoleon’s hands burn when he lets go.

“Damn,” he says after a beat, eyebrows carefully furrowed toward the sleeve of his jacket, “that suit was Balenciaga.”

The shiver is out of his voice by the end of the sentence, out of his fingers by the time he rises to his feet. Something cold and sharp clamps around his spine, but it doesn’t prevent him from walking up to Gaby and a rather shaken but otherwise unharmed Cambodian expat. His arm stays silent through the usual round of ‘what happened’s and ‘what do we do’s. It whispers at Napoleon while they drive to a private clinic in Manhattan, and works up to a low hum by the time he’s handed off to the doctors in charge. To his left, Illya manages to convey a wordless glare even while looking out the window for the entirety of the ride. Napoleon’s palms burn, and burn, and burn.

***

They stay at the clinic long enough for Napoleon’s arm to wake up. He loses himself in the song of it as soon as he can, catalogues the way it mixes with the heavy baritone of his pulse, and dances around the searching ache of Illya’s eyes. Later, a nurse passes them by a little too fast, instruments held at the wrong angle, and Napoleon has to grip the door frame next to him before he does something stupid like put himself in her way. Behind him Illya, who is more than capable of dodging a hospital chariot, glares again. Napoleon nicks three watches, a wallet and a pair of cheap plastic earrings on his way out, but Illya still watches and his hands still burn.

***

They make their way back to the safe house, peeling covers at the door like drenched raincoats. Gaby eases out of a prude, colorless business woman and the room comes alive around her, until she steps in the bathroom and takes some of the light with her. Napoleon sheds the last of his Texas nouveau riche on the porch, knees clicking when he steps out of a proficientrider’s walk. Illya, who played a silent, intense Russian mob-boss-in-training and therefore something remarkably close to himself, merely removes his red tie.

The bullet wound in Napoleon’s arm is coming out of its medical slumber, and he should do something about that. At the very least, he should consider a shower and a solid nap, just to take the edge off. What he does instead is make a beeline for the kitchen and start rummaging through the cupboards before Illya says:

“You can’t cook one handed.”

“One of these days, Peril, you lack of faith is going to offend me.”

He manages to make the words light. A little more sarcastic than he meant to, perhaps, but sarcastic is better than snappish. He grips the cupboards’ door harder, though, well aware that the watches in his pockets are just about the only thing keeping him out of the storm just now. Illya’s insisting presence, at his side, doesn’t help.

“Even you can’t cook an entire meal one handed.”

Napoleon can, and he has, thank you very much. He doesn’t have it in him to make it sound more arrogant than petty, though. He stays silent, teeth clenched around words he has no room for, and keeps exploring until Illya speaks again:

“What you did today.”

Napoleon doesn’t pause, exactly. There is a beat in the way he moves, he knows, but it isn’t so much stillness as the significant second it takes to launch oneself from a desperate run into a leap for the next rooftop over, wind hurling in your ears as you pray your fingers will be strong enough to keep you from death at the end of it. Napoleon has made that jump more than once in each of his lives, and never learned to fear it more than he craves it. He lets go of the rice he unearthed from the depth of the cupboards and turns around, reveling in the weightlessness. Illya, fingers squeezed tight at his side, glares, but seems to find the words he needed, because he starts again:

“What you did today. That was stupid.”

It was. Napoleon won’t admit it out loud, of course. I wouldn’t do to give Illya a heart attack three weeks before their first anniversary as a team. Still, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t do it again. Clearly though, he must have let the thought spill on his face, because between one second and the next he’s crashing against the wall, an angry piece of Russian landmass trying to set him on fire with his eyes.

“It was stupid,” Illya hisses again. “Don’t do it again.”

“Can’t promise that, Peril,” Napoleon says, gunshot wound quieting in the chaos. “You know I’m not good at impulse control.”

He reaches for Illya’s watch as he speaks, fingers the clasp openin a practiced second, and grins just shy of obnoxious, soaring through the gesture like a bird on a breeze. Even Illya’s right hand pressing against his chest, at the very edge of his throat, isn’t enough to pull him back to land. He floats through the adrenaline, gulps it with unabashed greed, and finds himself relaxing when it turns out to be an efficient way to get his heart out of his throat and back down in his chest.

“Dying,” Illya says, warning heavy in his consonants, “is not acceptable impulse.”

Napoleon’s mouth flirts with a smirk, ready for nonchalant dismissal, but Illya’s hand comes up to rest on his neck, thumb rubbing the words out of Napoleon’s cheek, and what comes out instead is:

“Making sure you live is.”

Illya takes a step forward, and the heat in Napoleon’s hand flaresback to life, spreads up his arms and into his chest, his cheeks, his ears. Napoleon stills, betrayed by his own flesh, and wonders if maybe, after all these years of leaping around, this is the time he doesn’t manage to catch the next roof. Maybe it is. Until then, though, he flies, the wild rush of wind in his ears just enough to quiet the excess of life inside of him. Illya glares, still, but this time he makes sure to keep their eyes locked together.

“You do not die for me,” he murmurs.

Napoleon feels the words trickle down on his lips, running down his throat and into his chest with a velocity that verges on hurtful. It rushes through Napoleon’s lungs, into his ribs and spine, coils the very core of him into one tense line of anticipation. He’s not surprised, when he tries, that he can’t quite draw a proper breath.

“Why?” He manages on the inhale.

Illya’s face twists and twitches, a dozen things flickering over him too fast for Napoleon to name, but his remain steady when he leans forward and Napoleon…Napoleon, for the very first time in any of his lives, pauses before he jumps.

“If you kiss me now,” he breathes out, right hand covering Illya’s mouth, “I’m afraid I’ll feel compelled to keep you trapped here all night, and condemn you to discovery.”

Illya’s eyes don’t leave his. For the briefest moment, it is almost as if he hasn’t heard what Napoleon told him. Then, with slow but inexorable determination, Illya crosses the last few inches between them, until the back of Napoleon’s hand presses against his mouth. There is a feather light brush of lips at the center of his palm. A whisper.

Illya vanishes with a click of the bathroom door.