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crack_van2005-08-01 10:16 pm
laughingacademy.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2005-08-01 10:16 pm
Entry tags:
“Masks” by Cord Smithee (NC-17)
Hi there! I’m ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laughingacademy, and apparently I’m a total fandom slut. Having previously driven the crack van for Star Wars: TPM, Sherlock Holmes, and due South, I’ve now clambered though the gullwing door (terribly impractical for those of us who favor miniskirts and go-go boots) and taken the wheel of the U.N.C.L.E. car.
Fandom: Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Pairing: Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin
Author on LJ:cordwainer_s
Author Website: n/a; stories archived at The Chrome and Gun Metal Madhouse
Why this must be read:
I wanted to start my month of recs with a bang. Sadly, this story does not contain any literal explosions, but it has nearly everything else. It opens with Illya and Napoleon escaping from a Thursh stronghold, with the senior agent very much the worse for wear.
From that fraught beginning, Cord spins a longish (120 K) tale of fiendish Thrush plots, disguises, hairbreadth escapes, wonderfully snarky dialogue, incredibly precise and beautiful descriptions, and some of the most astounding sex scenes I’ve ever read. (Hot doesn’t begin to describe them—reading some of these passages is like walking on the sun.) And although our heroes are described as two little boys who never grew up in the brief introductory chapter, Illya and Napoleon do evolve as they grapple with issues of identity, control, the specter of loss, and their feelings for each other.
Masks
laughingacademy, and apparently I’m a total fandom slut. Having previously driven the crack van for Star Wars: TPM, Sherlock Holmes, and due South, I’ve now clambered though the gullwing door (terribly impractical for those of us who favor miniskirts and go-go boots) and taken the wheel of the U.N.C.L.E. car. Fandom: Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Pairing: Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin
Author on LJ:
cordwainer_s Author Website: n/a; stories archived at The Chrome and Gun Metal Madhouse
Why this must be read:
I wanted to start my month of recs with a bang. Sadly, this story does not contain any literal explosions, but it has nearly everything else. It opens with Illya and Napoleon escaping from a Thursh stronghold, with the senior agent very much the worse for wear.
Later, the nightmare task of dragging a limp, nearly unresponsive Napoleon out of the satrapy would be summed up by two lines in his report: "Agents exited the premises with all caution and stealth. Disabled one enemy operative; were not observed."
...Illya wasn't a psychologist, but he could figure the plan out from there, especially given the electrical burns on Napoleon's skin. Brilliant, really, if you had the sort of mind that went in for torture. Hurt a man to provoke him into the withdrawal they were all trained to use under torture, the isolation of mind from body. Drug him to lower his inhibitions, regress him to the womb and bring him back out ready to be moulded into a different sort of man entirely.
Except Illya didn't want a different sort of man. He wanted Napoleon. Sharp, shallow, deceptively pleasant Napoleon Solo, with all his tomcat arrogance and concealed depths intact. He wanted the man who'd been his partner for barely six months, and whom he'd already come to consider his closest living friend, for all Napoleon could be facile and changeable, almost impossible to understand. He'd lose him soon enough, one way or another. For now, he meant to fight for every moment he could get.
...Illya curled against his partner's warm smooth back, and considered his options. He could hurt Napoleon--he didn't want to, necessarily, but he could hurt him, try to shock him out of his withdrawal. Except, if it was pain that had sent him deep in the first place, pain didn't seem likely to prove the key to restoring Napoleon's psyche.
Well, that left one obvious, bloody-minded solution. And a particularly Napoleonic one, if he did say so himself....
From that fraught beginning, Cord spins a longish (120 K) tale of fiendish Thrush plots, disguises, hairbreadth escapes, wonderfully snarky dialogue, incredibly precise and beautiful descriptions, and some of the most astounding sex scenes I’ve ever read. (Hot doesn’t begin to describe them—reading some of these passages is like walking on the sun.) And although our heroes are described as two little boys who never grew up in the brief introductory chapter, Illya and Napoleon do evolve as they grapple with issues of identity, control, the specter of loss, and their feelings for each other.
Masks
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