Napoleon paused, chopsticks halfway to the last piece of sushi. Opposite him, Illya was immediately watchful, his hand slipping inside his jacket to rest on the butt of his ever-present UNCLE Special. "What's wrong?" Illya asked. Napoleon shook his head, replacing his chopsticks carefully on the plate in front of him. They'd chosen the booth because of its vantage points, covering both the front and kitchen entrances. The other reason they'd chosen to sit there, leaned against the wall where Illya sat - it was hardly practical to sit at the bar when you were reliant on a walking stick, after all. Heaven forbid his partner should ask for help, not that Napoleon would have been much better if their roles had been reversed. "Don't you think it's time we faced the facts, my friend?" This time it was Illya who paused mid-action, a slightly guilty expression flitting across his face - how had Napoleon once thought him hard to read? - as he was the one caught with the last nigirizushi. "Is there something wrong with the fish?" Illya asked, bringing the piece of salmon in question up to eye level so he could examine it more closely. "Of course, I have a stronger constitution than you..." "Decadent imperialists. Yes, I know." Illya's smile was barely more fleeting than the guilt Napoleon had spotted before, but much more welcome. "Have you ever thought we're getting too old for all this spy business?" "Speak for yourself, Napoleon," Illya said, taking a healthy bite of rice and salmon as if to end the discussion. "I have yet to reach mandatory retirement age." Napoleon glanced down at the walking stick; Illya's eyes followed the direction of his gaze despite his best efforts to look unconvinced by his former partner's argument. "And will you be in one piece to see it?" Illya's love of explosions was well known, a quirk Napoleon had tolerated or even encouraged when they'd been partners, but this time had been a little too close a call for either of them to be unaffected. The stick was the only remaining evidence, the cuts and scrapes Illya had received when buried in a Thrush satrap building that proved more shoddily built than previously anticipate otherwise long healed. Those first nights had been longer than Napoleon wanted to recall. First when news of the explosion filtered through to UNCLE's New York office, then when Illya's name was top of those missing, not to mention the endless hours beside his partner's bed when he was finally pulled from the rubble. Enough was enough, though it had to be Illya's decision, not his. Not this time. "I am fine, Napoleon." Illya ate the last of the sashimi, then put down his own lacquered chopsticks precisely on the plate before picking up his teacup. "See?" He raised the cup in a small salute. "Steady as a rock." He regarded Napoleon over the rim of his teacup as he drank and Napoleon tried not to look away. They knew each other so well, after all these years, that it was difficult to dissemble - an outright lie could never go unremarked. "What is this all about, Napoleon?" Illya filled his teacup again, then Napoleon's without asking, the small gesture reinforcing just what Napoleon had been thinking. "Life behind a desk getting you down?" At first, when they had both been young agents and equally wet behind the ears - even if Illya would doubtless say he had never been either as young or naive as Napoleon - the age difference between the two of them had been something taken in their stride. The odds of them both surviving to mandatory retirement age, given the nature of their line of work, were not great so why worry about something that might never happen? That was a philosophy which had served them both well until two years earlier, when Napoleon's time was up and Illya had found himself with a succession of agents all willing, but definitely unable, to fill his former partner's shoes. And he had made no secret of his opinion of the fact, let alone his disinterest in taking over as Number One of Section Two. "I have three years left till my own retirement," Illya had argued, "so why set UNCLE up for change once more when someone younger and more masochistic could happily take my place?" In the end, the argument hadn't even been worth the breath it would have taken - he had accepted the list of suitable alternatives Illya removed from his pocket before Napoleon could change his mind. "It's not the same, Illya," Napoleon said. "I don't know what I expected, when I took over from Waverly, but it wasn't this." He stared down into the teacup, the one Illya refilled for him without needing to know if he wanted it, knowing him better than he knew himself, in this at least. No answers there, wreathed in the steam that drifted across its surface, no magic solution to the challenge Napoleon once more found himself facing: how to persuade Illya Kuryakin to do something he didn't want to do. "What do you want, Napoleon?" Illya's voice was quiet, barely audible above the the clink of teacups and quiet conversation from adjoining booths. "I'm tired of guessing games." Looking up, Napoleon caught another expression, fleeting as the first but equally unmistakeable - fear. But fear of what? His stoic partner had stared down death a hundred times, so what was left to make him react this way? "Come work with me." Those four small words encompassed a universe, full of the things it had taken him years to discover about his partner, his friend, then these past two years to miss. And about himself, in turn. "You only had to ask," Illya replied, as if he had been waiting all along. ~ fin ~ Disclaimer: Not mine. This story is written for entertainment purposes only - no money whatsoever has changed hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations and storyline are the property of the author - not to be archived elsewhere without permission.