Work Text:
He can lift her with one hand.
She finds out in the midst of danger – par for the course for them, really. One moment they’re pretending to sight-see, the next moment there’s an ugly man on a motorini barreling towards her with alarming deliberation, and then Gaby finds herself on top of a low wall, one of Illya’s hands still hooked under her armpit while the other palms his gun. God knows where Napoleon is. Nothing but excitement with these two, really.
Gaby doesn’t need any encouragement to stay right where she is on the wall; fisticuffs are their milieu, not hers. Illya doesn’t even need to shoot. He catches the agent across the temple with the butt of his pistol. The man’s path brought him straight to Illya’s hand. He’s either not a very good agent, or merely a hired thug. It makes little difference when he’s unconscious on the ground.
“Are you alright?” Illya doesn’t even look at her when he says it, his eyes fixed instead on the man crumpled unconscious at his feet. Something fluttery brushes against her ribs from the inside. She thinks it wouldn’t have if he’d been looking at her when he asked, though why she thinks that, she doesn’t know. He can probably feel her pulse pounding under his palm where it’s still tucked beneath her arm, holding her at arm’s length on the wall.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Just enjoying my sudden view of this lovely garden back here.” She can just barely see the corner of his lips twitch into an unwilling smile. It feels rather like a personal accomplishment.
*
“Why don’t you drink?”
No one ever told her how much downtime there would be as a secret agent. No one ever mentioned the long hours spent in hotels, waiting for something to happen. Drinking’s about the best way to pass the time, as far as she’s concerned.
Illya doesn’t look up from his book. “I drink.” Gaby rolls her eyes.
“No, you have a drink, maybe, sometimes, but you don’t drink. If you did, you’d join me from time to time when we’re oh so busy doing absolutely nothing.”
Illya makes a soft sound, like a horse blowing out its lips. “I have problem enough with my temper. Alcohol would probably only make it worse.”
“Or maybe it would make it better,” she counters. It’s sound logic, she feels, not at all related to the bottle of vodka she’s almost emptied by herself. “At any rate, I’m not afraid of you.” She means it to sound teasing, or maybe reassuring. Nothing serious. But the look Illya gives her is too serious by half. It makes her want to hide in the bathroom. Or maybe climb into his lap and kiss him until nothing at all is serious, or everything is.
“I am,” he says. For a moment, Gaby doesn’t say anything. This is unfamiliar territory.
“Which? You’re afraid of me, or you’re afraid of yourself?”
“Both.” It costs him something to say it, and Gaby’s heart cracks open like an egg. Setting the bottle aside carefully, she moves to stand before him, his slacks-covered knees brushing her bare ones, her naked toes lapped over the tip of his boots, which he never takes off until he’s actually climbing into bed. His hair is unbearably soft when she lifts her hand to twine through the short bristle at his nape.
“I’ll be gentle,” she whispers. He looks up at her, looking younger than she’s ever seen him. She doesn’t think he knows his hand has settled on the back of her knee, but she feels it there like a brand.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he says.
There’s a string of incomplete kisses between them so Gaby kisses him fast, before either of them can think twice, before the phone can ring or a knock can sound at the door. His lips are dry and soft under hers, just barely parted to emit a sound of surprise. He always underestimates her. It’s strangely endearing. She slips her tongue between those parted lips and what sounds like need leavens the surprise that still vibrates in his throat.
He tastes good. Somehow she hadn’t expected it.
“Gabyusha,” he says, soft and low. He raises his hands to touch her face; they’re so big around her head that it’s practically engulfed. “Golubushka.” She doesn’t know what it means, but she shivers to hear it all the same. He kisses her again. It tastes even better this time.
If she isn’t the first for him, she’s close enough. Not that he lacks ability, but there’s an endearing boyishness to him, a gratifying sense of appreciative awe that tells her he’s no Napoleon to go about seducing women and disporting himself for reasons both professional and personal. Illya’s hands shake when he touches her. His breath hitches when she finds his tongue with her own again. When she unbuttons her night shirt – the same one from that first hotel with him in Rome, one she stole from him – he looks like he might nearly weep at the sight of her, and the sound that he makes when Gaby takes his hand and molds it over her breast, his fingertips stretching nearly to her collarbone, vibrates through her down to her toes.
“Shall I be gentle with you as well?” he manages, though his voice breaks in the middle and his eyes drift closed as if he’s in pain.
“I’d rather you weren’t,” she says honestly, and that just wrenches another noise out of him.
He isn’t gentle, thankfully – Gaby isn’t sure a man as big and strong as he is ever truly could be – but he’s tender and thorough. Oh, he’s so very thorough. There’s not an inch of her he doesn’t examine, touch, taste. She feels encompassed by him, consumed. Her small stature has been an irritation most of her life, an aggravation with high beds and high shelves, an annoyance with patronizing men who treated her like a child. She doesn’t feel like a child now. Merely small and treasured and overwhelmed in the best sort of way.
He comes too fast, but she doesn’t mind. She has a feeling this is only one time of many.
“What did you call me?” she asks, after he’s kissed her and touched her some more, after she’s guided his hands between her legs and stiffened against him in pleasure. Her cheek is stuck to his chest with sweat, but she’s not ready to move yet. “Before. You said something in Russian.”
“Golubushka,” he says, sounding sheepish. “It means…”
“It means…?” she asks, prodding him with an impatient finger.
“Doveling. Little dove.” That prompts her to pull her cheek from his chest so she can look at him. His face is red, his mouth twisted into an embarrassed knot. Gaby grins.
“Are we at the pet names part of our relationship already?” Illya shrugs helplessly. Laughter bubbles up in Gaby’s chest. It’s the lightest she’s felt in years. “What should I call you? Big Ox? Russian Bear?”
His lips twitch, fighting a smile. Another accomplishment. “You could call me Illyusha. If you want.”
“Illyusha,” Gaby says experimentally. It feels lush and soft on her tongue, a name fit to call one’s lover. Illya seems to take it that way. His eyes go soft and his hand begins to drift over her bare back, settling in the hollow of her spine and stroking so slowly that it makes her skin break out in gooseflesh. “I like that.”
“The name or what I’m doing with my hand?” he asks, teasing, joking with her. She wasn’t sure he could joke.
“Both,” she decides. “But I still want to know how to call you Big Ox. I’m sure you’ll give me lots of reason to.”
He laughs fully at that, rolling her beneath him, settling into the cradle of her hips with breathtaking familiarity. “You’ll never get me to talk,” he vows. She twines her arms around his neck and pushes up against him, her gasp mingling with his groan.
“We’ll just see about that,” she says.