Chapter Text
He knows it is the wrong thing to say before he even finishes saying it. It is rash and it is unkind and it is not even fully true.
But the words had been pushing and clawing and begging to be unleashed and there is this aching and irritation and hurt and so what else can he even do, really, without resorting to his fists?
He never wants to resort to his fists with his partner again.
He almost wishes that this were not the case. It would be easy, and in a way satisfying, to fight. But he wants to be better than that. Better than what he was made to be. And so he yells.
Yells that Solo does not care for anyone but himself. Yells about how he is willing to put the entire mission in danger. That it would have been better for Illya to do the entire thing on his own.
If it had just been the sort of thing that occasionally happens on a mission, it would have been different. If Solo had missed the presence of an alarm system. If there’d been a person there who wasn’t supposed to be there. If they’d split up and Illya had ended up in the worse situation.
These kinds of things happen. If such a thing had been the reason for the blood and bruises covering his body, the slight ringing in his ears, the looseness in his ankle, he wouldn’t have been upset. It’s a hazard of the job.
But this. This willful ignorance of the mission in favor of his own objectives. It is something else entirely.
Illya had already been feeling tired and sore and run-down, although the mission hadn’t been very strenuous thus far, and then in the middle of it–literally in the middle of planting bugs in the apartment of their target’s mistress–Solo had disappeared into the dining room, where they had already been.
He’d returned a minute later, claiming that he’d forgotten to put a bug in a prime location. And Illya had believed him. Why wouldn’t he have?
They’d been finishing up when the men arrived. Just two of them, but unexpected and armed.
Solo had stepped back, protecting his case, and if Illya had had time to think, he would’ve realised even then that something was strange, but he’d been a little preoccupied.
They’d arrived back to their safehouse perhaps ten minutes ago after an utterly silent drive, and Solo had immediately taken his case into his bedroom.
It’s not like Illya had needed him there. But over the past year, he’s grown accustomed to his partner’s presence. His fussing over even the most minor of injuries. His care.
His nose and knuckles had been bloody and he’d been limping and his head hurt and still that whole-body ache had been present and he’d expected–maybe even wanted–his partner’s attention.
And Solo hadn’t even looked at him. Hadn’t said a word. Just disappeared into his room with his case.
Illya had followed, as if in a daze.
He hadn’t even locked the door. He’d been sitting there, on the bed, retrieving the fancy painting that had hung on the wall of the dining room from his case.
And everything had slid into place.
Solo had lied about forgetting a bug to steal this painting. He’d triggered some kind of alarm, and those men had shown up, and then he hadn’t even helped fight them off. Illya’d taken everything willingly, and had gotten hurt–not much, but he’d felt miserable enough anyway–and all the while it hadn’t been an accident at all.
Solo had stolen that painting, jeopardizing the entire mission, and had let Illya deal with the consequences alone.
And so he’s yelling. He doesn’t like to yell. It reminds him of the person he does not want to be. But he is angry and hurting and it needs out.
Solo shoots to his feet, also angry, as angry as Illya has ever seen him. “So you don’t trust me? You don’t trust your own partner?”
The accusation hits him like a bullet to the chest, and he deflates slightly. “That’s not what I meant.”
It isn’t. Solo is the person that he trusts the most. He’s proven his trustworthiness again and again. In Rome. Istanbul. Cairo. Manila. In the north of Spain and the south of Brazil. In London and New York.
He trusts Solo, as much as he is capable of and more than anyone else, and what does his partner go and do with that trust?
Steals a painting. On a mission. Like the mission doesn’t matter. Like UNCLE doesn’t matter.
Like Illya doesn’t matter.
“Then what do you mean?” Solo asks, and the way he says it it’s like he’s looking for a fight. A real one.
Illya does not want a fight. He does not want any of this at all. He feels suddenly small and upset and there’s a pressure behind his eyes that he does not at first register as tears.
It is not that he does not trust Solo, but that Solo does not trust him. Why else would he do this right under Illya’s nose, letting Illya take the punches for it, without telling him about it first?
Or at all, because Illya is pretty sure that if he hadn’t come in here, Solo would not have told him anything at all.
“Why did you do this?” Illya asks. His head is pounding and the drying blood is itchy and his ankle feels like it’s going to give out if he has to stand for much longer. “Why did you not tell me?”
His voice is quiet now. He’s tired. The anger is draining from him. He does not quite know what fills its place.
Solo, for the first time, looks hurt. Illya wishes he could take some comfort in that, but he just feels worse.
“I can’t tell you,” he says, and he sounds like he’s holding himself back from something. Punching Illya, probably.
A laugh that tastes like blood tears its way from Illya’s throat. It’s almost painful. “So it is you who does not trust me.”
The pressure behind his eyes is warm now, and threatening to break free from his control.
“That is not true at all!”
“Then what?” To his horror, a few of the tears escape. He at least manages to choke down the sob that threatens to accompany them.
“It’s complicated.”
Illya is so tired. He wants to sit. He wants to pretend that none of this ever happened.
He does not want to lose his partner.
But they have come this far now.
“Please.”
Solo sighs. For a moment, Illya thinks that this is it. The moment that everything disappears from him.
And then Solo starts talking.