Napoleon's mouth tasted like brandy, and beneath that, like Napoleon, and Illya melted into the kiss. While he never drank brandy, except on rare occasion as a restorative, he tended to have a couple different things on hand for Napoloeon that he wouldn't otherwise keep. One of those things was his partner's preferred alcohols.

Another, as he had recently discovered, was hand lotion.

"How long 'til dinner's ready?" Napoleon mumbled, his mouth just far enough away from Illya's to speak, their lips brushing as he did so.

"Fine time for you to be thinking about food. I thought you were the ardent lover and I was the starving waif."

"Just wondering how much time I have to make love to you." He pulled back a little farther to flash his partner a devastating grin.

"As long as we don't get too involved. I need to be able to hear if the pot starts to boil over."

"So that's a 'not as much as you'd like'?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

"Not enough time to really have my wicked way with you?" He pressed, giving his best puppy-dog eyes.

"No, but plenty of time for necking and petting." Illya encouraged, guiding one of Napoleon's hands back to his hip, the other around his waist. "Now bring those lips back here. I'm not finished with them,"

"Never finish, Illyushka... I want to keep you coming back for more."

"Mm, always... kiss me."

Napoleon did, his tongue coming out slowly to tease Illya's lower lip with quick, short swipes. Illya captured the tentative intruder, sucking it into his mouth, replacing it with his own. A questing hand came up to hold Napoleon to their kiss, its twin working under the American's starched white shirt.

The kiss ebbed and flowed, moving between deep, heated passion and slow, lazy intimacy in a steady back-and-forth dance that both men had easily regrown accustomed to. Finally, it came to a reluctant end.

Illya took a couple of deep breaths, waiting for his heart rate to sink back to its normal level. Napoleon's hand continued to stroke his upper arm sensuously.

"I have to go check on dinner, Napasha... but you will doubtless remember where we were for later?"

"Doubtless." Napoleon grinned, releasing his partner.

---/-/---

Leamas' head whipped around to regard Williams steadily.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You envy him, don't you? Waverly's the king of UNCLE New York, and you're a displaced little man without the following he deserves."

"If you think you can get me into that office, you're crazier than I thought."

Williams laughed. "Probably. But you want it, don't you? You always have. You were jealous of him twenty years ago, too."

Leamas crossed the room, brooding silently over this new complication. Holden Williams was offering him the New York office-- a thing he couldn't possibly give-- and all he wanted was what? Help killing a woman he already had chained to his wall? There was more to it than that, then. There had to be.

"You should have that position, you know. I saw your potential years ago. You've got something Waverly doesn't." Williams egged.

"Alex always used to be the one man I'd choose to run the world, if that choice was mine." Leamas shrugged. "But that was then,"

"And this is now. Why shouldn't you be the one running the world?"

"Now I'm not so sure. Holden, you should've seen the sort of thing he allowed to go on there! His CEA, for crying out loud, was a homosexual! Can you imagine the consequences if someone in THRUSH got a hold of that knowledge? Compromising the CEA is just a step down from compromising the head man himself!"

Lydana Charles snorted. "Imagine the consequences? You're not exactly furthering UNCLE secrecy yourself, are you? Or have you boys forgotten I was here?"

"Solo no longer poses that threat. Furthermore, I never talk in front of THRUSH operatives unless I'm sure they're not going to talk later. And you won't. Now, Holden, what do you want from me?"

"You're a means to an end, John. You always have been. I want you to compromise just enough of that precious security, lull our little friends into a false sense of security, get Waverly out of the big chair, and then--"

"You want me to let a THRUSH presence into UNCLE? Listen here, I--"

"A few moles, possibly an assassin. You're going to cross so many people, you'll lose count. UNCLE is going to think you're on their side, THRUSH is going to think you're on theirs--"

"And whose side do *you* think I'm on?" He interrupted harshly.

"UNCLE, of course, but ultimately, your own. And mine. Once THRUSH has taken Waverly our, and you assume the throne, you will know exactly who to take... executive actions... against. No more THRUSH in your new domain. And you can hand-pick your own CEA, if you like."

"And your interest in this is...?"

"You will owe me. If I have any... problems, with the government, here or anywhere, you will smooth things out."

"I'm not a power-hungry lunatic, Holden." Leamas shook his head. I spent the better part of my life working for UNCLE's ideals."

"And?"

"And I've seen those ideals compromised, and I'll do it, not for you, to fix things, make it the way it should have been... Count me in."

To punctuate his statement, he pulled the concealed gun he'd been carrying, and shot Lydana Charles through the heart.

---/-/---

"April!" Ginger stood. "You nearly gave me a coronary!"

"Sorry." She shook her head, entering the room cautiously. "I had a friend in security cut the feed from this room, so we can talk. Listen, I just heard an argument while I was down in medical, and I didn't know who else to go to..."

"Me?"

"You're the only other person who knows what I know. Mark's going to be out for another couple of days."

"Hang on, what?"

"Well, that's what I was doing down in medical. Sitting up with Mark. Oh, don't worry, he's going to be okay, but-- well, he's pretty heavily doped up at the moment, and I need to talk to you about this now!"

James got up, stepping between the two girls. "Woah, woah, woah. You can't take her out of the poker game! She's the only girl we've got. If you pull her away, I might break down and cry."

Ginger bit back a smile.

"Besides," James continued. "She's from archives. If you're looking to replace a section two agent, if this thing is something dangerous--"

"I need Gin purely on an information exchange basis. I don't know if there is any real danger, but-- Look, I can't say anything in front of you, this is top secret stuff."

Ginger shook her head. "Actually, April, he knows. And Danny and Rob, too."

Donahue waved at the mention of his name. "Yeah."

"What do we know?" Danny asked, setting down his cards and joining the knot of people between table and door.

"About Napoleon and Illya?" April asked.

"And what Leamas did to them." Ginger nodded, swallowing the bile that rose in her throat.

"Is it true? Did he-- I mean, he couldn't have!"

Donahue stood, the last to move over to the standing group. "It's true. I was on duty. I had to... take them in."

"Dr. Conrad was arguing with someone, in the room next to Mark's." April crossed her arms against a slight chill in the room, real or perceived no one could say. "Over whether or not it was right, what they did."

"I can't believe they're not a them anymore." Ginger sighed. "I know it's not a conventional relationship, but when we found out, it just-- it seemed so right for them to be together."

"I know. This goes way beyond being deprived of the simple voyeuristic pleasure of intercepting their mail... what Leamas did was seriously wrong."

James held up a hand. "You knew about them before?"

"Well, yes. When we were watching DeLeon, April, Mark, and I found out about them. But we never told a soul! How could Leamas find out?"

"Maybe he found one of their letters, too."

"I hope he didn't find the love notes." Ginger shuddered. "He'd burn them if he did, and then they would never see the letters again, and they'd never know."

"I'm going to find out what kind of agenda he has."

"Leamas?" James shook his head. "But he's leaving."

"No, he's staying in New York." April gritted her teeth. "Another little tidbit I picked up. He's sticking around to 'straighten some things out'."

"He hasn't done enough 'straightening'?" Ginger wrinkled her nose. "Bloody fascist pig bastard."

"But Mr. Waverly's back!" Donahue shouted. "Man! I'm going to spend the rest of my life working graveyard shift..."

"Yeah, with Waverly back, Leamas shouldn't have to stay."

"Well, it looks like he's staying anyway."

"The man has got to be stopped." Ginger said decisively. "But you can't do it alone, and with Mark still out of commission for a while longer, and I'm not section two, and there aren't that many people you can trust with this... I'd say no one outside this room."

James sat down heavily. "You know who you need,"

Danny and Donahue followed suit.

"Yeah." Danny held his head. "This is never going to work..."

"It will." Donahue said firmly. "Look, I'll do anything you need me to do."

James shrugged. "If I can help, I will, but I think we all know who you need, and it's not us."

"Napoleon and Illya." Ginger whispered. "The two-man army. The force with which to be reckoned."

"Only if they don't remember, then--" April chewed her lip, running down a mental list of names. None jumped out as someone she could implicitly trust on something like this.

"They will." Ginger smacked her fist into her palm. "They've just got to. April, Rob... you're trying to find out what Leamas is up to, right? Then Danny, you can find out all the places he's gone, can't you?"

April nodded to Ginger and Danny. "That's the plan, if you can do it. And I'd be happy to have any help I can get, seeing as how you're on our side." She smiled over to Donahue.

James narrowed his eyes at Ginger. "What about you? Don't do anything stupid."

"Hey! I'm crazy, I'm not stupid."

"Don't do anything crazy, then. You're not--"

"I know what I'm not." She sighed angrily. "But Napoleon's been letting me take care of his cat-- I can't have one at my apartment, and I've never lived without one before, so he took a little pity on me. I can use the access to his office to--"

"You're going to snoop around Solo's office?" James hissed. "What did I just say about not doing anything crazy?"

"I'm going to find the letter." She said, determined. "I'm going to make sure he reads it."

April smiled. "That just might work. He couldn't read it without remembering something about him and Illya."

"And thus revenge will be sworn." Ginger nodded finally. "And you'll have the big guns you need to finish this puppy off."

---

This page is an unofficial site that exists only for the fun of it. All characters and situations from the television show "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." are property of Norman Felton and Warner Bros. Nothing ill is intended by this use of any television characters in these amateur efforts. Any fiction linked to these pages is the intellectual property of the amateur author who created it and is not presented here for profit.