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I.
It was a warm night, the kind meant for walking in the moonlight with a lover. Unfortunately for April Dancer and Mark Slate, THEY were on a flat rooftop, that flat surface quickly releasing the built-up heat of the day, and they were hot, sticky, thirsty, hungry and all round miserable. By this time, they didn't care if their subject made that contact they were waiting for, did the hula in his shorts, or hung naked from the ceiling like a bat. Anything, just for something different than laying on the gritty shingles waiting for some sign from that apartment window to release them from their misery.Since that didn't seem like it was going to happen, they turned to their most available diversion, conversation. Unlike some partners who seemed never to have anything to say to each other other than business, they seemed to be able to talk about anything and everything, and though they didn't always agree, there was never animosity. As a result, each felt free to introduce subjects they perhaps would never introduce with anyone else, things too bizarre to admit you were even thinking, things far too personal to consider asking anyone else.For example, that article in a magazine that week, about a grand new casino opening in Las Vegas. Mark caught that sudden gasp, then utter stillness on April's part, and glanced over her shoulder at the page, at the picture of the dapper, darkly handsome man with the charming and ever so confident smile. He'd cast a curious glance at his partner, saw the look of shock, of recognition, perhaps much more."Someone you know, luv?" he'd asked. The picture looked oddly familiar, then he remembered, but too late to take back the question.She'd cleared her throat awkwardly, and gave a amazingly fake smile. "Someone I once knew," shrugging it off."Daniel Richardson," he read from the caption. "Well, that's his name now, it would seem. When I knew him, it was something different.""Ah," Mark had said, and let it lay.Now, watching their subject read a newspaper, eat a sandwich (which was torture seeing how long it had been since they'd had that opportunity, even more so when the cruel bloke left half of it just sitting there uneaten!), he brought up the subject. Well, he might not have, but his partner had seemed just a little off since that day, perhaps a little sad, a little apprehensive as if waiting for a second shoe to drop."Did you love him, the one who isn't really Daniel Richardson?" He wasn't sure he really expected an answer. There was a long silence."Joey. His name was Joey Celeste, as you know quite well. And, I can't answer that, Mark.""I see. Sorry," flushing in the darkness, thinking he'd stepped over a line he hadn't known was there.She seemed to realize, and shook her head briskly. No, her partner didn't deserve that."No, I mean I really CAN'T answer that, not that I won't. I'm not sure, you see. I think, perhaps, almost. I almost made a major misstep because of him, one Mr. Waverly would never have forgiven. But love him? I think I COULD have, under the right circumstances. He seemed to like me for who I really am, though who knows how long the novelty of that would have lasted. He was very much a traditionalist in a lot of ways, his occupation notwitstanding. I think the appeal of a non-traditional woman would have lost its allure sooner rather than later. He didn't say anything, you know, not beyond some mild flirtation. He didn't ask me to go with him into the safe seclusion Mr. Waverly arranged for him. I told myself it was because he knew how much being an agent meant to me, that he didn't want to destroy my dreams. Or perhaps that he thought my remaining close to him would put me in more danger if the Syndicate should find him."April gave a very half-hearted little laugh. "Little John Doe told Joey I was a good woman, that Joey was lucky to have found me and should take care of me, because good women were very rare. Do you know just how odd it feels to have a career assassin give you a reference like that, Mark? Very odd indeed." "Anyway, if there was anything there, I don't know. Perhaps that was just an illusion, like all the rest. Perhaps I was just more vulnerable than I should have been. I'm sure I never TRIED to let my guard down. There was just something about Joey. Perhaps it was more that I could have loved who he MIGHT have been, perhaps that he could have loved who I might have been. Perhaps if we'd wanted more of the same things. But we didn't."Her voice got more pensive, sadness deepening. "Perhaps he's found what he wanted with the casino complex; I hope so. He deserves it, if he has; it's what he wanted, what he worked for. It's what he's trading the safety UNCLE promised him for. It's probably what he's trading his life for. He cost too many people far too much for them to let him survive out in the open for long."{"Ah, that 'other shoe' she's waiting for,"} Mark realized."Seems a little complicated, luv, all of it," he offered in a non-committal sort of way, wanting to reach out and touch her, just to remind her she wasn't alone, but deciding against it. Maybe if he'd ever had a male partner he'd been as close to as he was to April, he'd know whether that was something a partner would do when the conversation turned this personal. Well, he hadn't, so he didn't; he just wasn't sure."Complicated. Yes, maybe. Life does seem to be that way," April agreed.There was a long silence, then . . . "Did YOU love HER?"Mark frowned, reared back his head, looking at her in the darkness, wondering just who she was talking about."Her? Which 'her', April?" God knows there had been plenty of 'hers' in his past, a few 'hims' as well. Never for very long, of course, for either, not even at university; he'd simply been too busy. And after, well, there was something about this job that seemed to make it seem better that way. Three dates, three at most, that was what seemed to work best. Hardly time enough to lead to anything you might call 'love'. Often not enough time to lead even to something more basic, less ethereal than anything called love. Well, he'd be the first to admit he was no Napoleon Solo. Mark preferred at least knowing SOMETHING about who he was bedding! No Thrush moles, and no Angeliques for him, thank you kindly, and in this business that was far too easily imagined. No one who would get hurt if he disappeared on a job sometime. And, for some strange reason, he required some sort of a connection, whether it was physical or intellectual, before he made a move. Again, obviously, he was no Napoleon Solo."The Baroness de Chasseur. Bibi." She'd been given a brief rundown of that assignment during one of the time she'd been partnered with Illya Kuryakin. Odd, that. She'd never understood his motivation for telling her that story. He was usually so aloof, not particularly forthcoming, but still, she'd heard the story of Rosy and Bibi and Mark and Illya and a long, wildly improbable assignment. And how it ended.If she was expecting a quick denial, it didn't come, just a drawn-out pause.Finally, "there was something there, at least I thought so. Stupid of me, of course. As soon as Napoleon looked at her, she walked away and never looked back."April felt a flush of annoyance at their fellow agent, more at the Baroness. Still, if the woman had let herself be tempted by another man that easily, perhaps it was for the best. It still had to have hurt, perhaps quite a bit, his ego if not his heart. She had the feeling, though, that the 'something there' had been significant on Mark's part."She was a fool, darling. She didn't deserve you." She purposefully kept her words a little light; melancholia was not something either of them needed to indulge in, not in the middle of an assignment anyway.His voice was not really bitter, just lightly tinged with something that might have been called rueful resignation."Just my luck. Surrounded by lovely ladies, none of them deserving of me. Oh what fate awaits . . ." and his voice broke off, changing to taut excitement."Well about time! Looks like our friend's ready to make a move! Ready, April?" II.This was perhaps the worst part of the job, sitting in Medical waiting for your partner to regain consciousness. Especially when you were the reason your partner was in Medical in the first place. Oh, the doctors, the nurses had urged him to leave, but that wasn't what you did. Wasn't something he COULD do, not til he knew Illya was going to be alright.He'd be getting the lecture again, and he knew Illya had a right to be angry with him. Letting Angelique distract him like that, spending those hours in her bed instead of watching Illya's back; his partner had paid the price for that, and Napoleon regretted that. Well, he always did, whenever it happened, and he'd admit it happened more often than it should, especially when Angelique beckoned. Illya called her a poisonous spider (among a few other choice terms), and he was more right than not.That light from the hall was too bright for his tired and aching eyes, and he got up to push the door closed. Now the only light was what came from the equipment surrounding his partner's bed and what little crept in under the door.Why was Angelique able to do that, draw him in that way? No, that wasn't the question. Angelique was an expert at her techniques, but he knew that, knew what to expect, knew all the angles. He could see the trap long before it was sprung.The question was, why did he knowingly walk into her web, again and again, knowing what she offered was a sham?WHY? Maybe because that's all he deserves. After all, HE uses women all the time, for sexual gratification, for ego gratification, for obtaining information and favors, for achieving whatever goal he (or UNCLE) has in mind. Well, that was what Angelique did as well, usually with men, though perhaps she didn't limit herself when the opportunity or situation called, any more than Napoleon did.). When you looked at it objectively, having sex with Angelique was a lot like having sex with himself, only with the added flexibility of another separate warm body. They were much alike, both dangerous professionals. He knew what to expect, knew there would be physical pleasure, knew there would be no emotions involved, no commitments that could interfere with his freedom to do his job, live his life as he wished. Plus there was that extra fillip of risk that provided an extra thrill.The fair Innocents? Oh, he flirted, but he didn't go any farther than that. That was too dangerous, to the Innocents, to him, to the job. Now, the ones in between, that was more of a toss-up. He'd been known to make a few errors in judgement with those in-betweeners, errors he corrected as soon as he realized his mistake.But the knowing ones? Ah, those were fair game. And if he could win a few points over any opponents, any rivals in the winning of those, all the better. That just made the game a little more interesting, the winning a little sweeter. Sometimes he thought that really WAS the game, the winning out over another man, the mano-a-mano challenge, the women and the sex just being side benefits.He remembered Illya looking at him with chill disapproval over the Baroness de Chasseur, Bibi. Bibi hadn't been one of the Innocents, not one of the in-betweens, either. Not a villainess, no, perhaps not, but still, a calculating, self-serving woman. Well, yes, that had been rather a low blow, perhaps, snatching her out of Mark Slate's hands like that, but in his mind, he'd been doing the young man a favor. At least that's what he'd told himself afterwards, remembering that flash of emotion in the Englishman's eyes, emotion quickly hidden away again. But if all it took was a charming smile to pull her away, that didn't say much for her or any affection she might have for Mark, did it? It would be a shame for the promising young agent to get too involved with someone like that. He'd tried to explain that to Illya, even including some comparison to a mature male lion keeping a youngster in his proper place in the pack, but somehow he didn't think the Russian agreed with any of it. Perhaps it was all those times when he'd issued one of those smiles to a woman Illya had his eye on, all the times that smile had drawn THAT woman away from the Russian's side and into Napoleon's arms. Although it hadn't always turned out that way, and that had given him some respect for the women involved, that they hadn't let him tempt them. Of course, that didn't mean he intended for any of them to get between him and his partner. They had too good a working relationship to let that happen.Too good . . . His eyes went back to the still figure in that hospital bed. His partner. The best partner he'd ever had, the only one who could read him without words, the only one who was willing to put up with his charming (and less than charming) ways. The only one he could verbally spar with and enjoy it, win or lose. The partner he was going to, once again, have to apologize to. Once again, promise (at least to himself) this wouldn't happen again. HE might deserve Angelique, cold, beautiful and deadly Angelique, spider to spider, so to speak. But Illya didn't deserve to be the one paying the price for their coupling. Sometimes he thought Angelique did it on purpose, pulling him away with the promises, even when it wasn't necessary for the job, just because it was Illya she was drawing him away from. Last night, she'd been especially tempting, had hinted at things that drew his attention even more than usual. Now, considering what had happened, he had to wonder if she'd intended this outcome, or maybe something more permanent. Angelique and Illya - there had been a mutual antipathy there, from their first meeting, even before his partner realized Napoleon was occasionally sleeping with the enemy. They were so alike in some ways, perhaps it was natural. Cool, even icy when they wanted to be, highly professional, deadly, each quite beautiful in their own way . Even their hair was of a similar shade. Still, those little comments from Angelique were a little disconcerting, even more than the ones from Illya. Well, from Illya he expected it; Angelique WAS a Thrush agent after all, and while all the comparisons to spiders, vipers, vampire bats, and other like creatures were impolite, Napoleon could see where Illya was coming from. The Russian HAD been on the wrong end of her poison more than once.But from Angelique? The slightly snappish, "I seem to have lost your attention, Napoleon. You do remember who you are kissing, don't you? I don't really care to see someone else reflected in your eyes when we are this close, especially another blond." Or the purring remark, "oh, your partner really should be here, to see you this way, Napoleon, watch me put you through your paces. Bondage really does become you. Tell me, does it become him equally as well? At what point does HE cry out for something more 'intense'? Come, tell me, I won't tell another soul!" Or that totally incomprehensible pout of "no, I want you to meet ME first, not your annoying partner! I have expectations, Napoleon, and I've never enjoyed left-overs!" Sometimes Napoleon thought the Thrush agent had come to a totally erroneous, totally outlandish idea about the relationship he had with his partner!A slight sound, a rustle as Illya moved just a bit, and Napoleon was on his feet and beside the bed between one breath and the next. "Illya," he whispered, leaning down to brush the blond hair from his partner's forehead."No, not Illya. I have decided I am changing my name to Fred," came the surly, disgruntled response.Napoleon shook his head, wondering where that came from. The question, when he cautiously asked, actually got a sensible response, if a somewhat malicious one."Fred Orkin. It might take the entire contents of the company warehouse, but sooner or later, Napoleon, I WILL get that spider! I've made up my mind to it! And if you are not very careful, my friend, after that I will consider changing my name to Arthur."Well, Napoleon might have gotten the first part, but that? Arthur? Then the penny dropped and a grin came to his face. "Ah, Arthur Wellesley, I presume?""Exactly!"Napoleon was still chuckling about that reference to the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon Bonaparte's downfall, when Mr. Waverly called and ordered Napoleon to go home and get some sleep."Yes, sir, as soon as I tell Illya I'm leaving," he said, dropping his communicator back in his pocket.He bent down over the now drowsing figure, brushed that errant lock of hair back again, leaned down to whisper, "I'll be back in a few hours. And, as a favor to me, stick with Illya. It suits you better."Illya slowly turned his head in Napoleon's direction, and if Napoleon's lips lightly skimmed that forehead for just a second, that was surely an accident. Still, that slight smile on each of their faces seemed remarkably similar, oddly content considering the night they'd just gone through.