A stream of sunlight broke through the thin gap between the curtains, landing across the face of a sleepy young German woman who no longer lived in Germany – who no longer lived anywhere, actually.

Gaby opened her eyes just slightly, then closed them once again in protest, rolling over to face away from the window. As she attempted to settle back into the light sleep she'd been enjoying, she was hit with the sudden realisation that this wasn't her bed.

Not that she had her own bed. She hadn't for months now. But this was not only not her bed; this was someone else's bed. This was his bed.

She felt herself bolt upright and looked around the room. His hotel room. With a groan, she let herself fall back onto the pillows and tried to remember why she had thought this could be a good idea.

Certainly, when she knocked on his door at two o'clock this morning, she'd never intended to stay. She hadn't really even intended to explain to him why she was there in the first place. Her plan had been to sit in silence with a glass of vodka and the hope that his company would settle the dread that had been preventing her from a good night's sleep for the last few nights.

She hadn't expected that he wouldn't be okay with that, or that he would be successful in drawing an explanation from her.

And when he'd offered to sleep on the floor so that she could take his bed, she hadn't expected herself to accept. She hadn't meant to. But once she nodded her head in response, he wouldn't let her take it back.

He was a man of few words, and it hadn't taken that many for him to convince her. There was something about the look he gave her that made her feel somehow unable to say no.

She could hear the shower running in the bathroom, answering the question of his current location. The fact that she hadn't awoken when he'd wondered past meant that she'd actually been asleep, which was amazing really. She hadn't slept that soundly in weeks.

The next thought that registered was that the shower wasn't the only noise she could hear. And the second noise was coming from the next room.

The front door.

Purely on an irrational instinct, Gaby leapt from the bed and rolled onto the floor, ducking behind it.

What would Solo think if he saw her in here? And why would Solo be at the door? And why would he be picking the lock, rather than knocking?

The realisation that Solo was not their guest had her heart hammering as she lay sprawled on the floor in her striped pyjamas. Taking the only course of action that came to mind at that moment, she scrambled across to the bathroom door, the sound of the shower growing more prominent as she approached.

Her next problem was that he was in there. Likely showering. Should she knock?

The visitor was in the hotel room by now and, thankfully, had not ventured beyond the lounge area. Still, knocking would be foolish.

Gaby pulled herself off the ground and reached for the door knob, hoping that he hadn't been paranoid enough to lock it. She breathed a silent, "Thank you," when the knob turned in her hand.

"Illya!" She whispered loudly when she opened the door, mostly just to alert him to her presence, but also so that he wouldn't mistake her for a different intruder and attack through the shower curtain. She closed the door softly behind her and said his name again, a little louder this time. "Illya?"

"Gaby?" His voice was startled and thoroughly confused. She saw his head duck out from behind the shower curtain. He rolled his eyes when he saw her and disappeared once more behind it. "Gaby, what the –"

"There's someone in the room."

"What?"

"I'm coming in there."

"What? No. No, no, no."

She ignored his protests, grabbed a towel from the railing on the wall and stepped into the tub, rounding the curtain with the towel held up in his direction, shielding him from her view. She felt him yank the towel from her hands and opened her eyes as he wrapped it around his lower half.

"Is this really necessary?" he whispered loudly.

"What else should I have done?" Gaby tried to ignore the spray from the shower soaking through her pyjamas.

"It's probably the American."

"You think I didn't think of that? Why would he have picked the lock, huh?"

Illya considered that for a moment. "Whatever it is, I'll deal with it. Stay here."

"You're going to fight them in a towel?"

Briefly, he glanced downwards, then back up at her, as if he'd just been reminded of his current state of dress. "I'll handle it."

"No, no, no," she reached out and grabbed his forearm, interrupting its movement toward the faucet. "Don't turn it off. I think they are thieves, trying to rob you while you're in the shower. You can't turn it off until they are done."

He seemed to consider that.

"Don't you think if they were trying to kill you, they would have come in here by now?" She could see the tension in his shoulders and fists, feel it in his forearm, from which she promptly removed her hand. The fact that he was half-naked, or really all naked with a towel, suddenly re-occurred to her and she hoped he hadn't noticed the blush that she felt reach her cheeks. She forced herself to push past it. "If you go out there, you'll blow your cover."

"And if they're not thieves?"

"What's the worst they can do? If they come in here, we fight them."

He looked at her pointedly.

"You fight them," she corrected herself. "But if we're not in danger, then you can't blow your cover."

Illya exhaled loudly, a slight growl in his breath. It wasn't lost on her how hard this was on him – hiding in the shower while an intruder roamed his hotel room freely. She was proud of him, actually, for listening to her, and for staying relatively calm in comparison to what she'd seen before.

"Have you got anything valuable in there?" she asked.

He shook his head. "My watch is in cabinet above sink. You?"

"No." Gaby hoped he didn't notice that her eyes had darted to the ring on her finger when he'd asked the question, the one he had given her in Rome that, for some reason, she still wore. It lived on her right hand now, mostly because the woman she was pretending to be at the moment wasn't engaged and a ring on her left hand would be suspicious.

Illya did notice, apparently, because he reached for her right hand with his left and ran his thumb over the ring. "Won't work anymore," he commented, referring to the now waterlogged bug hidden inside it.

"Sorry," she whispered regretfully, though she wasn't sure why. She didn't owe it to him to wear this ring, let alone the listening device he'd deliberately put in there, and she wasn't really sure why she still did. Most likely, she wore it as a way of proving to him that he could trust her.

"Don't be," he smiled as warmly as she suspected he was capable of. "Has not been as hard to keep track of you as I thought." Then, in an instant, his attention flipped back to their current predicament. "Think they are still there?"

Gaby blinked, feeling suddenly yanked out of the oddly pleasant moment they'd just shared. She internally scolded herself for letting herself be distracted. Illya, Solo, Waverly, and several other agents had spent many hours training her and preparing her to be an effective agent. She hadn't been trained for a situation like this.

She somehow let her eyes wander over his chest once again and settle on his concerned eyes. Concerned and then confused.

"Gaby?"

What was the question again?

Releasing a breath of frustration, Gaby forced herself to turn around, facing the opposite direction.

"What are you doing?" he asked, understandably perplexed.

"You are distracting me," she responded, waving her hand in his direction as if to brush him off. When he didn't respond, she allowed herself to look back at him over her shoulder. If she read him correctly, she could have sworn he looked pleased with himself. When he caught her eye, she turned away from him again. "Stop it."

"What did I do?" he defended himself. This whole thing was your clever plan."

He had a point.

She felt him put a hand on her shoulder and turn her around, still holding his towel around him with his other hand, thank goodness. "You stay here," he ordered, guiding her deeper into the shower as he slid past her.

She made a deliberate choice not to complain that he'd pretty much pushed her right under the cascade of water. What did it matter anyway? She was already drenched. "Illya, what are you doing?" she questioned as he stepped out of the bath and onto the tiled floor. "Illya?"

"Shh." He turned with a finger to his lips and stern eyes, then approached the door and pressed his ear to it.

Illya listened closely for any noise coming from the other side of the bathroom door, suddenly struck once again by the absurdity of their situation.

He had been pleased when Gaby had shown up at his door last night in her pyjamas, a fact that had made him chuckle at the time, in spite of his concern. Why she came to him, he still didn't really know, but he thought it at least meant she felt safe with him. And that was a good thing.

Not surprisingly, he hadn't slept well on the floor. The fact that Gaby was sleeping only metres away in his bed had been enough to keep him up. The whole situation was so inappropriate. Waverly would not be amused. The cowboy would be.

But the level of inappropriateness reached by having Gaby sleep in his bed last night did not come close to the fact she had just jumped in the shower with him, even given the fact she'd been thoughtful enough to provide him with a means of covering himself.

He felt a slight grin crack his lips at the way in which she had been looking at him just moments ago. Illya had been aware, for a while now, of the effect she had on him. It was nice to know that this... whatever it was ran both ways. How many times now had he been distracted by her whilst out on a mission? Too many. Even the most innocent of touches somehow quickened his heartrate. If they were undercover together, he was so often distracted by her nearness. And if they were apart, he'd either by distracted by concern for her safety, or jealousy – a raging jealousy – at some of the roles she had to play and the men she had to play it with.

The sound of movement from behind him caused him to turn, arm extended toward the stubborn woman about to get out of the bathtub. "Stay," he ordered, before returning his ear to the door.

Of course she didn't listen. "Do you hear anything?" She leaned in to try and listen and he put his free hand to her waist, a movement intentioned to keep her still, though he was not sure how. "Are they still there?" she whispered again.

Illya straightened and rolled his eyes in frustration. "Quiet," he whispered.

They stood against that door for several moments, Illya trying his utmost not to be distracted by her closeness, or by the fact his hand was still on her waist.

"Get back in the shower," he ordered, ignoring the absurdity of the instruction.

"Why?"

Patience running thin, he wrapped his left arm tighter around her and lifted her into the tub, depositing her on her feet just behind the curtain. Her eyes were wide with a petulant anger he'd become very familiar with, even fond of. "Stay, Gaby."

"Fine."

When he opened the bathroom door, he was met with the silence he'd hoped for. He picked up the gun tucked under his pillow and clasped it in his hand as he inspected the remainder of his hotel room. Someone had definitely been here. Things had been moved. A pair of jewelled cufflinks Solo had insisted he wear were missing from the nightstand. There had not been much else for the thief to take, aside from items already belonging to the hotel. The thief had likely been a member of their staff, he now considered, though one apparently without a key.

"Gaby?" he called into the bathroom, and was amused when she emerged, water dripping from her hair and pyjamas.

"You could at least offer me your towel." She grinned cheekily.

Illya felt himself laugh. "Not going to happen. There's a spare on the rack." He nodded in the direction of the bathroom. "You were right, I think. Just a thief."

"I am always right," she responded as she disappeared into the bathroom.

"I will let you explain this one to Waverly," he called after her.

"If you explain it to Solo."

"Also not going to happen."

She emerged from the bathroom, clutching a towel around herself, not that it would do much good while she was still in her saturated pyjamas. The humour he'd just heard in her tone wasn't present any longer in her expression though. It had been replaced with something else. Gratitude, maybe?

"Thank you, Illya," she said softly, with a small smile.

"For what?"

"For last night. Everything. I don't know." She shrugged. "For being here. I don't know what I would do without you."

Her honesty surprised him and warmed him. He felt the urge to step closer to her, to somehow show her he reciprocated. But he didn't. Didn't know how. So he responded with the only word that came to mind. "Anytime."

And he meant it.

A/N: Hey there! Thanks heaps for reading! Haven't posted anything for a couple years now, but saw this movie recently, loved how cleverly it was written, directed and performed, and I had this in my head. Hope you enjoyed - would love to know your thoughts :)