Napoleon stopped still in the doorway to the kitchen, arrested by the sight. Illya was standing at the counter with a large stoneware bowl before him, stirring something within. A recipe book was open beside him, and various ingredients were neatly lined up on the counter. He was wearing a very frilly apron, scattered with pink flowers.

Napoleon quietly drew out a chair and sat down, putting his feet up on the table. Aunt May would be horrified to see her dear nephew sitting there in his pyjamas with his bare feet on a surface made for eating, but Aunt May wasn’t there. That was why he and Illya were there, looking after her house and about half a dozen needy cats.

This was a far cry from most of the times he and Illya shared an abode other than their comfortable New York apartments. Usually they were in some anonymous hotel room in another American town that Thrush had set up in, or in a rather more characterful place in any number of locations around the globe. Usually they had their minds on their mission, their thoughts naturally tuned to danger. Here the biggest danger was the scratty grey cat Spooky lunging out from a high surface to cuff them around the head for daring to enter her terrain.

When they had arrived Aunt May had politely shown Illya around (Napoleon had visited many times before as a child), taken them to the bedroom where twin beds were perfectly made, with matching towels folded on the counterpanes, and explained exactly what each cat needed each day.

The first thing the pair had done when she had left was to move the night stand that stood primly between the guest beds, and push the beds together. Aunt May would have been horrified.

‘Say it, Napoleon,’ Illya commented after a while of Napoleon sitting in silence at the table. He turned around, and Napoleon grinned at the sight of his partner wearing that absurdly feminine apron that he had only ever seen before on a woman well on the high side of sixty. He was wearing it over his almost regulation black trousers, white shirt, and skinny black tie. His shirt sleeves were rolled up above his elbows, and his hands were covered in flour.

‘Did you – ah – consider wearing anything a bit more casual before you starting baking?’ Napoleon asked, his smile almost splitting his face.

‘I had to drive to the store to buy flour,’ Illya said grimly. ‘Aunt May’s had weevils.’

‘Oh,’ Napoleon replied.

‘You, of course, were snoring your pretty head off up there,’ he said, jerking his head toward the ceiling.

‘Well, a man has to have his beauty sleep, you know. What’re you making, tovarisch?’

‘I am making biscuits,’ Illya replied, turning back to the counter and pouring a generous amount of flour into the bowl on the kitchen scales. He was performing this task with all the intensity and concentration that he brought to every task in his life. He could have been in the lab, running an experiment – except for the frilly apron.

Napoleon tried to suppress a chuckle, and didn’t quite manage. ‘Ah – do you want me to make the gravy?’

Illya turned to him in open astonishment. Much to Napoleon’s delight, he had flour on his nose.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Gravy,’ Napoleon repeated. ‘To go with the biscuits. I mean, I’ve never done it before but I’m sure there’s a recipe in Aunt May’s tome.’

Illya’s eyes widened as he understood his partner’s misconception.

‘No, Napoleon. I am making biscuits. Cookies. I don’t think gravy would complement the chocolate chips.’

‘Well, if you could speak English we wouldn’t have these misunderstandings,’ Napoleon complained mildly. ‘No gravy, then.’

‘I am speaking English,’ Illya retorted. ‘You are speaking American.’

Napoleon harrumphed, but he was enjoying sitting here watching Illya so much that he didn’t labour the point.

‘I’m considering taking a photo,’ he commented. ‘I’m sure the girls in the office would love to see this.’

Illya turned abruptly, with smears of butter on his fingers now and a serious expression on his face.

‘Napoleon,’ he said in a warning voice.

‘Maybe they could give you some tips,’ Solo continued. ‘You know, I think Betty from Translation has regular baking meets. I could get you an in. But I think you might be required to make a dress.’

‘Napoleon, are you suggesting that there’s anything less than masculine in baking?’ Illya asked.

Napoleon grinned at the dangerous tone in his voice. In the frilly apron with a buttery spoon in one hand, he could not say that Illya looked the image of the testosterone-filled, fast-car-driving, gun-carrying international spy. But then, Illya never really did look like that, despite being perfectly able to check all of those boxes, and a lot more besides.

‘I wanted biscuits, and I am making biscuits,’ Illya continued, turning back to his bowl and starting to mix the ingredients together. ‘Can you explain to me how there is anything less than masculine in setting one’s sights on a goal, and achieving it?’

‘If anyone stumbled upon this little scene it might cause them to cast aspersions,’ Napoleon murmured, getting to his feet and coming to stand beside Illya at the counter. He picked up the packet of chocolate chips and threw a few more in, ‘For good luck,’ he said.

‘Napoleon, you’re not one of those wearying hoards who thinks that a man baking equates to homosexuality, are you?’ Illya asked tartly. ‘The only thing that would make my baking biscuits homosexual would be if you were to kneel down in front of me and – ’

‘Ah, now there’s an invitation,’ Napoleon purred. ‘Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.’

He slipped his arms around his partner’s slim waist, beneath the feminine apron. Illya shuffled his hips slightly in annoyance.

‘Napoleon. I am busy.’

‘Yeah, well so am I,’ Napoleon grinned. His fingers found what he was searching for, flicking open the button and slipping down the zipper.

‘Napoleon, we are in your Aunt May’s house!’ Illya said in a scandalised tone, trying manfully to grease a baking tray as Napoleon slipped one hand into the waistband of his underpants.

‘Yeah, well, Aunt May’s in Maine,’ Napoleon countered.

He crouched, swivelling himself so that he was down between Illya and the counter, slipping his dark trousers and underwear down to reveal dusky ginger-blond hair and a cock that was becoming darker and weighty with an influx of blood. Although Illya was now rolling out his dough onto the work surface and grabbing for a cutter, Napoleon could tell that his hands were less than steady. He brought his mouth close and breathed warm air over the stiffening cock, and was gratified to hear Illya groan.

‘You like that, huh?’ he asked, stroking his fingertips over the silken ridged sack below the cock, delighting to feel Illya’s skin crawl in response to the touch. He flicked his tongue over the soft head, and Illya groaned again. He smelt of Aunt May’s lavender soap, of musk, of heat.

‘I have the oven on to preheat,’ Illya said, but there was no heart in his protest.

‘Illya, Illya,’ Napoleon tutted. Then he swallowed the stiffening length into his mouth, tonguing the head, his hand clenched around the root, against the wiry hair. Illya’s moan was long and low, and the rolling pin clattered to the floor.

‘Oh god,’ the Russian sighed. ‘Oh god...’

Napoleon slipped his hands around Illya’s hips, laying his palms on the muscular buttocks and feeling them flex as he began to thrust. How he loved to feel those powerful muscles moving for him. Illya’s cock was thick and hot in his mouth, filling him to the back of his throat as he moved his tongue around it. The Russian’s groans became loud, abandoned, the baking utterly forgotten. His hands moved to entwine into Napoleon’s dark hair, holding his head, pulling it back against his groin when he drew away. The thrusts became firmer, more urgent. Napoleon was hard under his pyjama trousers, and he took one hand away from Illya’s firm buttocks to take himself in hand, rocking hard into his fist as Illya plunged into his mouth, grunting with the effort.

‘Bozhe moi!’ Illya gasped aloud, and slick fluid exploded into Napoleon’s mouth as the cock inside it jerked over and over, while his own orgasm flowed unfettered into the fabric of his pyjamas. He rested his forehead against Illya’s slim belly as the cock softened in his mouth, swallowing over and over and then gasping for air.

After a time, they both moved. Napoleon stood, leant his head against Illya’s forehead, kissed him gently. He led his lover to the bathroom and turned on the shower, listening to the water knock and gurgle as it made its way through the pipes and then suddenly burst out from the shower head. Lovingly they undressed each other and stepped under the spray.

‘I – think you got butter in my hair,’ Napoleon commented.

‘I think you mussed your pyjamas,’ Illya responded with a grin that lit up his entire being. He picked up a bottle of shampoo and started to massage it into his lover’s hair. ‘I do hope Aunt May has a twin tub.’

‘I hope Aunt May’s twin tub doesn’t have weevils,’ Napoleon responded, splashing the remnants of flour from the Russian’s nose.

Giggling in the aftermath of their euphoric release, they leant against each other, clutching at soapy limbs, finally kissing intensely under the spray. It was so good to be together in what felt like utter safety, a condition that they could never quite rely on on missions or even in their apartments back home.

When they finally ventured back to the kitchen the oven was lightly smoking as the remnants of grease burnt from its surfaces. Illya retrieved the rolling pin from the floor and resumed his meticulous rolling and cutting, until he had two baking trays covered with rows of identical round biscuits. Napoleon opened the oven door and let the light smoke drift away, and Illya put the trays in to bake.

Twenty minutes later Illya took the trays out while Napoleon poured boiling water into the French press and set it and two cups on the table.

‘Shall I be mother?’ he asked, laying his hand over the plunger on the French press.

Illya fixed him with a blue stare. ‘Napoleon, after that,’ he said, nodding towards where he had stood at the counter to make the biscuits, ‘I definitely do not want to think of you as mother.’

Napoleon picked up one of what were, to him, cookies, and took a bite. Illya picked up a biscuit.

‘You bake pretty good, my little Russian,’ Napoleon grinned.

‘Well, you pay for the baking pretty well too,’ Illya murmured with a grin of his own.