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“McHenry! My office!” her boss calls out, his voice carrying easily across the desks that fill this corner of the Federal Building’s 14th floor.
Robin sighs and grabs her glasses from where she’d thrown them amongst the files littering her desk in a fit of pique. The summons could feasibly be about anything, but she has no doubt that Wilston wants an update on the Case From Hell. Good thing she has absolutely nothing new to report. If this goes on too much longer he’ll pull it from her, and then she’ll have to endure idiotic comments from the Andys about how it was too much for her to handle and maybe she’d like to return to the secretarial pool. Never mind that she has a PhD and didn’t come out of the secretarial pool to begin with.
Right. Just get this over with, and she can go back to pouring through shipping manifests for clues that don’t exist.
Wilston waves at her to close the door when she gets into his office, which isn’t a good sign. Then again he’s perfectly happy to chew people out at maximum volume with it open, so it’s hard to guess what might happen.
“About the Caraglio case,” he starts, predictably.
“I have a good feeling about this batch of manifests, sir,” Robin jumps in, trying to come up with a way to make a whole lot of nothing sound exciting. “There’s a company—”
“This is a lot bigger than White Collar Division,” Wilston continues, as if he hadn’t heard her at all. “I just got off the phone with UNCLE.”
“Sorry, uncle who?”
“Not a who,” he grunts. “United Network Command for Law Enforcement. Don’t worry,” he adds, with something that she’d think was humor if she didn’t know better, “I’d never heard of them until ten minutes ago. They’re a multinational intelligence agency.”
Robin blinks at him, utterly confused. “What, like Interpol?”
“To be honest with you, I was not read in to the details,” Wilston says, sounding unmistakably disgruntled about that fact. “But yes and no. They’re made up of agents with official designations from their home intelligence orgs, all working together. Apparently the most recent print that showed up has ties to a case they’ve been working.”
“So they’re taking my case? Can they do that?” Robin asks as a heavy, cold weight settles in her gut.
“No,” he answers firmly. “They want to collaborate. You’re going to be working with two of their best agents, I’m told. Agent Illya Kuryakin, KGB,”—Robin’s brain stutters to a halt at this, but her shock is somehow quickly outdone as Wilston continues—“and Agent Napoleon Solo, CIA.”
For a long moment, Robin just gapes at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop, or for Wilston to explain that it’s all a joke. Which is absurd, given her boss’s aforementioned lack of a sense of humor. “Let me get this straight: you’re trying to tell me that I’m supposed to work with an actual KGB agent and one of the most prolific art thieves in the past twenty years?”
Most people, even in White Collar Division, might not have recognized the name, but Robin is well aware of who Napoleon Solo is. How could she not, when he was the one who’d stolen the print she’d been studying in Florence, while she was in the middle of studying it? She had her own suspicions that he’s still active, even, though on a much smaller scale. She hadn’t brought it to Wilston or anyone else because she wasn’t sure yet, but she was working up to it. And now, this.
“He’s on some kind of work release with the CIA. Has been for ten years,” Wilston says dismissively, ignoring the whole KGB thing entirely.
“Last I heard we’re still in a cold war. Does Counter Intelligence know about this?”
“No. No one except you, me, and the Director. And it stays that way, is that clear? No one else can know anything about this operation. If anyone asks, you’re no longer working the case.”
“But sir—”
“Is that clear, McHenry?” he repeats forcefully.
Robin swallows hard and nods.
They find their new FBI contact chain smoking under a bridge, staring out at the Hudson.
“I think she might smoke the whole pack if we do not go soon, Cowboy,” Illya remarks, his voice pitched low.
They’ve been watching her for the last five minutes. Not because they’re worried about the meet, or intentionally trying to psych her out, but because you learn a lot watching someone who’s waiting for you. Like how Agent Robin McHenry was apparently a woman. Napoleon’s pretty sure there aren’t very many of them in the FBI’s White Collar Division, and wonders how she managed to get looped onto this case. She doesn’t look particularly young or particularly old, but it’s a little hard to tell at this distance. As they watch, she shakes another cigarette out of the pack and uses the smoldering remnants of her previous one to light it before she flicks the butt off into the river.
“Think she’s nervous?” Napoleon guesses.
Illya hums uncertainly. “Maybe. How much did they tell her about us?”
“Dunno. One way to find out, though.”
She clocks them pretty quickly as they approach, by the way her shoulders tense, though she doesn’t turn to look at them until they’re standing right next to her. Up close, her brown hair is shot through with the occasional streak of grey, but the lack of lines on her face suggests that they’re premature, and also that she doesn’t care about her appearance enough to dye it. She’s wearing a sensible, if poorly tailored, grey pants suit, which is pretty much what Napoleon would expect from a Fed.
“Agent McHenry?” he says mildly, extending a hand toward her.
McHenry stares down at it for a minute with an expression that borders on disdain, then takes another drag on her cigarette. “It’s doctor.”
“What?”
“It’s Dr. McHenry,” she says. “The ‘Doctor’ supersedes ‘Agent’.”
Napoleon blinks at her. She still hasn’t taken his hand, so he drops it and tucks it into his pocket. “Ok,” he replies gamely. “Well, Dr. McHenry, this is Agent Kuryakin, and I’m Agent—”
“I know who you are,” she interrupts. “Quite familiar with your mug shot.”
“Ah,” Napoleon says, his smile going tight.
“You stole a Marcantonio print I was studying.”
“Sorry?”
“In Florence. 1953,” she explains. She briefly stares at the shrinking butt of her cigarette as if trying to decide whether to light another. “I was analyzing it for my research, and overnight it disappeared. That theft was attributed to you. You stole it.”
Napoleon remembers that job. It had been a pretty easy one; the archive’s security had been next to nonexistent. He’d stolen some other stuff too, made a tidy sum, then had thoroughly enjoyed himself on the Amalfi coast for a month. He clears his throat and carefully replies, “Allegedly. That was never proven. But if I had stolen it, and that disrupted your studies, then I would be sorry about that. Hypothetically, that is.”
McHenry snorts in what almost seems to be amusement, then turns her piercing gaze on Illya, who’s been watching the whole exchange. Napoleon can see that he’s certainly amused, and will no doubt be giving Napoleon endless shit about it later, though to anyone else his face looks as stony as ever.
“You’re actually a KGB agent,” McHenry prompts, not quite a question, as she squints up at him.
Illya quirks an eyebrow at her. “Last time I checked.”
“How do I know this isn’t part of some elaborate plot to infiltrate the FBI?”
“If I wanted to infiltrate FBI, I would not start with White Collar,” Illya returns coolly, which is probably not the best tack to take. Napoleon watches as McHenry’s lips narrow into a hard line.
“What Peril here means to say is that we’ve no interest in the FBI, specifically. We may officially be KGB and CIA, but our mandate and orders come from UNCLE, which has no interest in governments squabbling with each other,” Napoleon tells her. “We’ve been partners for the past two years. Surely that must mean something.”
“This, coming from a convicted art thief,” she says, clearly unconvinced, but now eyeing them with some other evaluating look that he can’t quite interpret.
Not for the first time, Napoleon wishes Gaby was around for this one. Something tells him that their third partner would have a better chance of gaining the trust of the FBI agent, but she’d gone off to London following a tenuous but time-sensitive lead on a different case, so they’d have to get by without her.
“Look, you’re obviously a deeply mistrustful person, and I respect that,” Napoleon sighs. “But can we please move past this and get to the saving the world part? Those missile plans aren’t going to find themselves.”
That, at least, breaks through the defensive exterior; McHenry’s eyes go wide and her mouth falls open for a moment before she tries to collect herself. “What do you mean, missile plans?”
Solo and Kuryakin aren’t anything like she expected.
On the surface, the two of them seem like they’d never work as partners, beyond the obvious problem that they’re supposed to be on different sides of the Cold War. Solo talks, a lot, all smooth charm and winning smiles. She can see why it took the authorities so long to nail him down, because the man can probably talk his way out of nearly anything. Kuryakin, though, is the icy, silent type, at least at first. Not that he ever really relaxes fully, but after a couple of days his constant guard lowers a bit. Still, she’s not sure she’d have ever come around to trusting him if she hadn’t seen him when he’s around Solo.
Two days after their first contact by the river, Robin is supposed to meet them at a diner in Hoboken. Why here, she has no idea, and she doesn’t ask. She’s quickly learned that, although they’re pretty open when it comes to the case itself, any other questions about UNCLE or their histories is shut down quickly. When she arrives, she’s surprised to see Kuryakin sitting alone in a booth and no sign of Solo anywhere nearby. He looks up as she slides in opposite him and offers a nod of acknowledgement, but nothing else.
“Where’s Solo?” she asks, grabbing the menu just for something to do. She doesn’t assume they’re actually eating.
“Late,” Kuryakin grunts, somehow encapsulating fondness and exasperation in the single syllable. It’s a tone she’s become familiar with over the past two days.
A waitress stops by, and Kuryakin surprises her again by ordering the almost painfully American combination of a cheeseburger, fries, and a strawberry milkshake. She hasn’t actually looked at the menu, but she stammers out an order for a tuna melt and a coke, and wonders what the hell is actually going on today.
Solo, it turns out, is very late, but Kuryakin gives her an update on their progress; they’d checked out several of the shipping companies she’d suspected of being the transport for the forged—and apparently secretly encoded—Caraglio prints, though without much success. The CIA agent still hasn’t arrived by the time their food does, and after hesitating a moment Robin digs in, because she’s actually pretty hungry. For his part, Kuryakin eats a few fries and drinks the milkshake, but the burger remains untouched.
The answer to that puzzle comes a few minutes later, when Solo finally slides into the booth next to him. Kuryakin wordlessly pushes the plate of food over to him, and Solo grabs the burger with no shortage of enthusiasm.
“You know me so well, Peril,” Solo says to him before taking a huge bite. He briefly looks, somewhat bizarrely, like a chipmunk.
“I know you are somehow always hungry,” Kuryakin returns. “And you get as excited about greasy diner food as gourmet restaurant.”
Solo swallows and grins broadly. “Sometimes there’s nothing better than greasy diner food. If I’m gonna have to go to Jersey for this mission, I might as well indulge. Gimme some of your milkshake, would you?”
Kuryakin lets out a put-upon sigh, but his mouth is unmistakably tugging up at the corners as he slides the half empty glass over toward his partner.
Robin chews slowly as she watches them continue to banter about the food as if she wasn’t there at all. Kuryakin stretches an arm out along the back of the booth behind Solo’s shoulders, and when Solo finally polishes off the burger he settles back against it, almost but not quite tucked against Kuryakin’s side, looking immensely satisfied.
“So did Peril bring you up to speed?” Solo asks her eventually, his eyebrows arcing upward with the question. It had taken her a bit to get used to the cutesy nicknames, but by now she can actually keep a straight face when Kuryakin calls him ‘Cowboy.’
“Yeah,” she answers with a bob of her head. “Sounds like not much has panned out, though?”
“That’s not entirely true anymore,” Solo says with a sly grin.
Kuryakin frowns. “What have you done, Cowboy?”
“I met up with an old contact of mine. That’s why I was late. Skittish guy. But if someone was going to know where the counterfeit Caraglios were coming in from, it would be him.”
“You went to a meeting without telling anyone?” Kuryakin hisses, his frown somehow getting even deeper.
“I was fine,” Solo insists. “I didn’t say anything because I knew you’d just overreact. Like you’re doing now. You worry too much, Peril.”
“I do not—”
“You got something from him, though?” Robin jumps in, before they can get any farther. “A lead?”
“I did,” Solo confirms, sitting forward again.
He quickly runs through what he’d learned, his words rapid with excitement at the—admittedly substantial—lead, and even Kuryakin eventually gets over his disgruntlement as they start talking about the next steps. For the first time in weeks, Robin feels like this case actually getting somewhere, which she has to reluctantly admit is down in large part to the fact that she’s working with an art thief. Her PhD advisor would have a heart attack if he knew, but they wouldn’t have gotten that lead without Solo’s contact.
The conversation falls into a lull as the waitress stops by with coffee, which Solo gratefully accepts before pointing back at Kuryakin and adding, “Oh, and he’ll have a slice of apple pie.”
“Cowboy—” he starts to protest.
“A la mode,” Solo finishes with a grin, ignoring him.
“You did not have to do that,” Kuryakin grumbles as she walks away.
Solo just grabs his cup of coffee and settles back against Kuryakin’s arm again, and this time Kuryakin’s hand slides onto his shoulder. It’s not that unusual a sight, really; she’s noticed that Kuryakin is fairly handsy around him. Nothing too overt, but here and there a hand pressed to Solo’s lower back, or resting on his knee. The kind of casual affection that makes her want to warn them to be more careful, which is stupid. Obviously they know better than anyone the danger of what they have. How could they not?
“But Peril,” Napoleon is saying, a teasing lilt to his words, “I consider it my solemn duty to make sure you’re hopelessly addicted to this disgustingly extravagant American lifestyle, so that you’d never dream of leaving us. Ordering you delicious pie is a burden, to be sure, but one I will happily bear.”
Robin can’t help but think, based on the impossibly soft way that Kuryakin is currently looking at him, that Solo doesn’t really need to try that hard.
Like these things so often do, once they have a substantial lead, the rest falls together pretty quickly. The tip from his contact had paid off, and if everything went well they’d soon be taking possession of the last of the forged Caraglio prints. The shipment isn’t due to arrive for another hour, but they still need to be watching in case something changes. The waiting around part of this job, Napoleon thinks, never gets any more fun.
They’ve already been there for several hours—Napoleon and Robin in a nondescript sedan while Illya is perched in a sniper’s nest on the top floor of a nearby building—so they’re starting to run out of conversational topics. It had been surprisingly easy to talk to Robin; once she’d gotten over the whole art thief thing, they had a decent amount in common. Napoleon’s pretty sure he’s never been able to have that in-depth of a discussion of early Italian Renaissance printmaking techniques with anyone, though that shouldn’t really be a surprise given her background. It was funny to think about how he’d very nearly run into her in Florence, all those years before, and how their paths had brought them here. He’d even ended up telling her about getting caught, and how he ended up working for the CIA.
“God, I’d love to convince you to switch to the FBI,” she sighs. “Someone with your expertise would be invaluable in White Collar Division.”
Napoleon laughs softly at that. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I think it’d be a cold day in Hell before art crimes would consider making a full agent of an art thief. Besides,” he adds as his gaze sweeps out the window to the building where he knows Illya sits, “I’m pretty happy where I am.”
He can feel Robin watching him, but he can’t quite pull his eyes away. Illya is probably up there in that weird meditative state he gets into, where he can just sit for hours and do nothing and not go insane out of boredom.
“How long have you been together?” she asks after a stretch of silence.
“Oh, like I said, UNCLE’s been around for about two years now…” he starts, not really paying attention.
“No, I mean, like, the two of you. Together. Since the beginning?”
Napoleon’s face snaps toward her, then, and he can feel his jaw fall open but he can’t really seem to close it. “We’re not— that is— we’re not,” he manages eventually. “We’re just partners. Work partners. Best friends, now, I guess.”
“You guess?” Robin echoes, her brow creasing in confusion.
“Yeah, yeah. Yes,” Napoleon confirms, perhaps a little too vehemently. “He’s my best friend. That’s all.”
“Oh.”
“‘Oh’?” he repeats. “What, ‘oh’? What does that mean?”
“Nothing, nothing,” she says, putting up a hand. “I misread things.”
“Right, well, I can be pretty affectionate with my friends, is all,” Napoleon blurts, and Christ why does he not shut up? Clearly she was going to let the matter go, but now he’s thinking about it—that deep well of feelings that he works so hard to ignore—and if she’d seen it on his face in knowing him less than a week, then… then that could be a problem.
Except then she shrugs and says, “Not just you.”
“What?” he croaks, his voice just barely above a whisper.
But she doesn’t say anything more, not immediately, just stares out the windshield with a frown on her face until finally she rounds on him. “Do you know, I actually wanted to warn you?” she says, nonsensically. “That day in the diner. I thought, ‘man, they should really be more careful.’ But I decided that saying something would be stupid, because you must know what you’re doing. You’d have to be idiots not to, and you clearly aren’t idiots.”
“Thanks?” he manages, more than a little flabbergasted.
“I’m revising that assessment,” she returns dryly. “Seriously, no one you work with has said anything to you about this?”
Napoleon doesn’t entirely know how to answer that, so he shrugs. “They’re used to it, I guess. It’s just how we are.”
“Jesus,” she swears under her breath.
“Look, as you yourself pointed out, relationships like that are dangerous, especially in our jobs, so—”
“The thing is,” she interrupts, “that dangerous part is already out there. The part where you look at each other like the other one hung the fucking moon? Like you’re very deeply in love? I hate to break it to you, but that one’s already escaped from Pandora’s Box. So if you’re holding yourselves back from being together because you’re worried about the danger, let me be the first to tell you that that ship has sailed. I see it, your enemies are gonna see it, and I guarantee you that your colleagues see it too, they’re just too polite to say anything.”
“You haven’t met our friend Gaby,” Napoleon counters, and that thought is oddly comforting. They’ve been working together for two years now, and there’s no way Gaby would have resisted giving them shit about it if there was anything actually to tease them about. “I guess I can appreciate the concern,” he continues, “but I can also guarantee you that whatever you think you’re seeing isn’t really there. Yes, we’re close. Which is why I’m certain that there’s absolutely no way that Illya feels that way about me.”
He realizes too late what he just implicitly confessed in using Illya’s lack of feelings as an excuse instead of his own, and clenches his jaw as he very resolutely does not meet Robin’s eyes. Fine, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter if she knows, because this case is almost over and it’s unlikely that they’ll have reason to work with the FBI again.
“Or you could kiss him and find out for sure,” Robin murmurs next to him, and when Napoleon gives in and looks over at her she’s staring out the windshield with a smirk on her face. Then she shrugs. “Just a suggestion. Oh, I think our shipment’s here.”
Napoleon thinks he’s never been happier to walk headfirst into potentially life-threatening situation, so long as it gets him out of this conversation.
The final bust goes off without a hitch. They seize the fake prints—and the last of the missile plans encoded therein—before the men at the handoff hardly know what is happening. Taking the shadowy organization ultimately behind the whole setup is a much, much larger, ongoing operation, but for now, UNCLE is happy that no one’s getting next-gen weapons plans, and the FBI White Collar Division is happy that very high quality forgeries are off the market. It’s a win all around.
Napoleon is also able to completely, blissfully forget about the conversation in the sedan for nearly a full day, what with all the wrapping up loose ends and paperwork to keep him busy. It’s not until the next evening, when Illya automatically shows up at his place for dinner even though neither of them mentioned such a thing at any point, that Robin’s words come slamming back into his head.
Having let himself into Napoleon’s apartment with the key he’s had ever since Napoleon complained about him always picking the lock—so, less than a month into their partnership—Illya finds him in the kitchen chopping up vegetables. He’s already discarded his jacket and brought a tumbler with him along with the decanter of Scotch from the bar in the other room, and he tops up Napoleon’s own dwindling glass before pouring his own. It’s not a surprise that he then steps close, his body only inches from Napoleon’s as he peers idly down at what Napoleon is doing, nor that the hand that’s not holding his drink ends up resting almost possessively on Napoleon’s hip. It’s not unusual, which should say something right there, but for the first time Napoleon lets himself consider all of it and what it might mean.
Illya is talking about something to do with a mission—Napoleon hadn’t really been listening, honestly—when Napoleon sets his knife down and turns slightly to better face him. Illya’s hand falls away from his hip as he moves, which he immediately regrets before he reminds himself that he really, really shouldn’t.
“Peril, what are we doing?”
Illya frowns, his brow furrowing as he stares down at him. “Having… dinner?” he ventures.
“I mean what is this?” Napoleon says, making a small gesture between them. Not that he has much room to do so, because Illya is still standing so damned close.
“I am not following, Cowboy. How much have you had to drink?” Illya asks, a teasing smirk playing on his lips.
Napoleon huffs. “Not nearly enough for this conversation,” he mutters under his breath before looking back up at Illya. “It’s just something Robin said. She thought we were… together. A couple.”
Illya freezes, an expression on his face like he just got caught, which is… really something. Napoleon’s heart is pretty much thundering in his chest right now, and he feels stretched to a breaking point, torn between his considerable ability to read people and what he was so sure he knew about his partner.
“That is…” Illya starts. Napoleon waits for him to say something like ridiculous. Absurd. The most idiotic idea he’s ever heard. Instead, Illya forces a tight smile and doesn’t finish the sentence. “Did— did she say why?”
“Something about the way we look at each other,” Napoleon answers. For some reason, the more flustered Illya gets, the more clear-headed he feels. He carefully slips a hand onto Illya’s waist, waiting for Illya to flinch or pull away, but it doesn’t come. “I told her she was seeing things, but now I’m not so sure. So I thought I’d get your perspective on the matter.”
The tips of Illya’s ears are red, and there is a steady flush climbing up his neck. “Cowboy, I—”
Napoleon decides he’s heard enough. He closes the narrow gap between them, reaching up to press their mouths together, and Illya immediately surges against him. What starts out as a gentle movement of lips rapidly deepens into something involving tongues and teeth when Illya’s other hand comes up to cup his jaw, tipping his head to better fit their mouths together. Napoleon feels consumed by it, on fire, like everything that had built between them over the past two years was so much tinder that someone had casually tossed a lit match into. The hand is back on his hip, gripping tightly as Illya tries to tug him even closer, and Napoleon’s fingers dig into the softness of Illya’s waist in response, dragging a low moan from his partner’s throat.
“I think she’s onto something,” Napoleon gasps when they finally part, unable to keep himself from grinning like an idiot. “Or did you have something else you wanted to add?”
“Shut up, Cowboy,” Illya growls, then captures his mouth in another kiss.
They don’t get around to dinner until much, much later.
Robin has to admit that after all of the excitement in the past week, the day-to-day at White Collar leaves something to be desired. At least with the Caraglio case she always had something big to work on, but now that it’s closed she’s stuck with check fraud and some idiot who tried to forge a shitload of buffalo nickels as if that would actually net him a profit.
Then, one day she comes in and there’s large, flat folio sitting on her desk. She looks around, but everyone is apparently absorbed in their work for once. It’s possible that it’s related to some kind of new case, but that seems highly unlikely. Evidence doesn’t just get deposited in their laps.
“Cartwright,” she calls, drawing the attention of the idiot at the next desk. “What is this?”
“Fuck if I know,” Cartwright grunts. “It was there when I came in. You get a secret admirer in all that time off, McHenry?”
Robin narrowly resists telling him to fuck off. Not being able to tell anyone that she helped avert an international crisis sucks. She looks back down at the folio, taking in the high quality leather and the fine stitching. It’s nice. Much nicer than what she usually sees around the division. As she turns it over, she notices a card tucked into a small pocket and fishes it out, turning it over to find a short handwritten note on one side.
R,
Took your suggestion. Thought you might appreciate this small token of my gratitude. If you ever get tired of catching art thieves and decide you want to work with one instead, UNCLE is always recruiting.
NS
She frowns down at the note for a minute. She doesn’t even remember what she might have suggested to Napoleon Solo, or why he’d be grateful for it. But honestly, it’s the second part of the note that has her baffled. Her, work for UNCLE? Honestly, it’s not the worst idea she’s heard, not by a long shot. It’s more surprising that they’d be interested in her; they’re all spies, and she’s just an art historian with a badge.
Her thoughts are still on the note as she tugs at the ties holding the folio closed, so it takes her a moment to realize what she’s looking at.
She blinks. Takes off her glasses to rub her eyes. Puts them back on and blinks again.
“Holy shit,” she blurts.
Within the leather folio, carefully wrapped in delicate paper, is the very Marcantonio print that disappeared during her studies, all those years ago.