crack_van | Save This Dance by Xparrot (PG-13)

Gassed up the tank, fastened seatbelt, adjusted the mirrors... no GPS, but I know this road. Here we go!

Fandom: MAN FROM UNCLE
Pairing: Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin
Length: 9,762 words
Author on LJ:

xparrot
Author Website: Xparrot on AO3
Why this must be read:

Judging by the numbers, this is already a popular story, but it's never been recc'd here and I have a duty to posterity after all :)

A Vienna nightclub and Illya is watching Napoleon and a red-head dance; another mission of course, but it goes badly wrong and Napoleon is shot. It's a gripping set piece, but it's as Illya waits for Napoleon to recover, that the real story takes place. How well these two know each other; but when it comes to the most important thing in their lives, how afraid they are that they don't know each other at all.

Save This Dance is told from Illya's point of view, in a restrained, fluid style that perfectly conveys the depth of feeling hiding underneath that stoic reserve.

The distance between them didn't matter, however chaste it might appear. Napoleon could seduce without the touch of so much as a finger; this much contact was practically cheating. A couple of jokes, a few sincere compliments, an innocent (or not so innocent, depending) suggestion, and this woman would be thoroughly and inescapably charmed. As they always were.

As you were, Illya reminded himself, with a self-deprecating shake of his head. Even if it wasn't really like that, as Napoleon told him, more than once and quite insistently. "This is different," Napoleon kept saying.

Save This Dance