Orienteering for Dummies by epicycles (PG)

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Fandom: MAN FROM UNCLE
Pairing: Napoleon Solo/Illya Kurkyakin
Length: ~1600 words
Author on LJ: epicycles
Author Website: Fairly complete fic list
Why this must be read:

This story shimmers with affection: the author's affection for Napoleon and Illya, and Napoleon and Illya's affection for each other. Well, once you get past Illya's pre-emptive grumpiness that is and Napoleon devious plotting, you'll find they're really very fond of each other.

We join the two as Illya uses his compass and maps to find a path out of the wilderness where their plane crashed, while Napoleon makes use of his natural guile to plot a path to a slightly different goal... Clever and funny, but tapping a vein of real feeling, Orienteering for Dummies is exactly what you want to read. Now. Really, right now.

He was so patient, he was a stone. They folded the maps, gathered what supplies they could salvage from the remains of the aircraft, and headed for the river, all in silence.

He even waited while they walked a mile downstream to find the easiest crossing point. He waited until Illya was ankle-deep in freezing water before broaching the subject again; timing, after all, was everything.

"So, Illya."

"No."

Orienteering for Dummies

Comments

[eilidhsd.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't want to read it - or anything else - right now. It is after 11pm and I'm wading through 19 years of paperwork looking for one particular insurance decision. Reading was the last thing on my mind. It is this damned computer. It opens up at these things automatically, without any conscious thought from me, and I was hooked in seconds.
Alluring? Did someone call it alluring? And how she can make the reading of a map so normal and yet so intimate at the one time is a gift, as is the way she sums up feelings in body language - the "mildly annoyed and slightly ashamed hunching."

That was just charming. And I'll still be smiling at it at 9am when the council is still baying for the insurance premium we are not paying them and I still can't produce the written evidence of the change.