MFU Fanfiction: The Touch of Butterflies
Back in February, I posted a couple screencaps on mfu-yumdaily and entitled them Sleight of Hand. The pictures and the discussion they sparked formed the basic idea for a later story, Without a Word. They also sparked a little vignette which I didn't post at the time, one of those inside-Napoleon's-head ficlets set within the context of an episode I like to write from time to time. Thank you to utopiantrunks for encouraging me to edit and post it and for teaching me how to make a banner.
There are slash and het implications.
Word Count: ~700
Rating: PG-13
Episode Related: "The Foxes and the Hounds"
Disclaimer: Don't own MUNCLE and no money is being made!
(Posted also on mfu-scrapbook.)
The Touch of Butterflies
I couldn’t let him do it.
I reached out for the girl. Touched Illya’s hands. Lightly, asking pardon. Making clear I wasn’t competing. We might jest about that, but I didn’t want to compete with Illya. I was very glad he was on my team. My very own team, I hoped, and certainly UNCLE’s, because Illya played to win, and I didn’t want to be his rival. No, I wanted something else from him and…and maybe I had a chance to have what I wanted. But I can’t watch just now. He’s already looked at her. That steady gaze into her eyes, his voice confident and empathetic. I saw her caught in that gaze. Her eyes wide, all her attention focused, on his words, his proximity and looking into his eyes. It’s dangerous when he opens them like that. Lifts the shutters for a moment and allows someone a glimpse. He uses it for interrogations as well. Oh, he changes his posture, moves closer then, too, but it is the glimpse they catch of his intent that makes them cooperate, confess, crumble. Whatever he told them he wanted, they give it then, when they’ve looked inside and seen the cold, dark intent.
He's shown the girl something else. He finds her innocence appealing, he wants to help her help us and to help her escape from her quandary. Frightened to make contact, excited by vague possibilities yet not knowing what to do about them because she’s genuinely timid, not coy. The years are passing and her mother is anxious for her to wed, to connect to the world around her rather than some impossible world in her head. I saw Illya make up his mind, turn towards her, the words already on his lips, his voice pitched differently. But it’s strong medicine and he doesn’t use it lightly. Sees that it’s needed now though, that the girl’s plight is real. When he rose from his crouch and stalked towards her, she froze in the light from those windows he’d opened for an instant.
I reach out to turn her away from him. He can’t kiss her, too. It isn’t just that I don’t want to see his lips closing over hers, his broad hands moving from her shoulders, one sliding across her back pulling her against him. How clearly I can visualise it. He’ll raise the other hand to her cheek. She’ll open her lips and it won’t be in surprise. She’ll want what she saw in his eyes, although she will have closed hers because the light is too bright, too blue, dazzling, it will have left spots behind her eyelids. She'll move forward, slightly ahead of the pressure from his arm across her back, surrounding her, engulfing her. No, it would be hard for her to come back from that. So, I turn her away from him.
I touch Illya’s hands, slide my fingertips down the side of his fingers, touch the soft skin in the fold between his thumb and index finger, ask him to understand that I can’t bear it easily and that I should have understood what was needed sooner, before he had to act to save the situation. I should have understood that what I could do would be sufficient. Skimming as I do just below the surface, just deep enough to flatter, to arouse, but not deep enough to involve the heart - the way a glimpse through those windows does, whether to strike fear into it or to startle it into opening.
I don’t believe she closed her eyes when I did. Her mind was still elsewhere, considering a different view, but her body was reacting to me. I timed it well. Illya and I are both precise in our timing. I let her go, her physical response triggered and not satisfied at all. That would be for the guard to sense. He would respond to that, drawn without realising what had changed so much since the dull exchange of a few moments before.
Mimi’s gone to the door. I glance at Illya and he’s smiling, two smiles at once. The shutters are closed but his eyes say, “Well done.” My muscles relax a bit and I look at his lips. That smile says something else.
There are slash and het implications.
Word Count: ~700
Rating: PG-13
Episode Related: "The Foxes and the Hounds"
Disclaimer: Don't own MUNCLE and no money is being made!
(Posted also on mfu-scrapbook.)
The Touch of Butterflies
I couldn’t let him do it.
I reached out for the girl. Touched Illya’s hands. Lightly, asking pardon. Making clear I wasn’t competing. We might jest about that, but I didn’t want to compete with Illya. I was very glad he was on my team. My very own team, I hoped, and certainly UNCLE’s, because Illya played to win, and I didn’t want to be his rival. No, I wanted something else from him and…and maybe I had a chance to have what I wanted. But I can’t watch just now. He’s already looked at her. That steady gaze into her eyes, his voice confident and empathetic. I saw her caught in that gaze. Her eyes wide, all her attention focused, on his words, his proximity and looking into his eyes. It’s dangerous when he opens them like that. Lifts the shutters for a moment and allows someone a glimpse. He uses it for interrogations as well. Oh, he changes his posture, moves closer then, too, but it is the glimpse they catch of his intent that makes them cooperate, confess, crumble. Whatever he told them he wanted, they give it then, when they’ve looked inside and seen the cold, dark intent.
He's shown the girl something else. He finds her innocence appealing, he wants to help her help us and to help her escape from her quandary. Frightened to make contact, excited by vague possibilities yet not knowing what to do about them because she’s genuinely timid, not coy. The years are passing and her mother is anxious for her to wed, to connect to the world around her rather than some impossible world in her head. I saw Illya make up his mind, turn towards her, the words already on his lips, his voice pitched differently. But it’s strong medicine and he doesn’t use it lightly. Sees that it’s needed now though, that the girl’s plight is real. When he rose from his crouch and stalked towards her, she froze in the light from those windows he’d opened for an instant.
I reach out to turn her away from him. He can’t kiss her, too. It isn’t just that I don’t want to see his lips closing over hers, his broad hands moving from her shoulders, one sliding across her back pulling her against him. How clearly I can visualise it. He’ll raise the other hand to her cheek. She’ll open her lips and it won’t be in surprise. She’ll want what she saw in his eyes, although she will have closed hers because the light is too bright, too blue, dazzling, it will have left spots behind her eyelids. She'll move forward, slightly ahead of the pressure from his arm across her back, surrounding her, engulfing her. No, it would be hard for her to come back from that. So, I turn her away from him.
I touch Illya’s hands, slide my fingertips down the side of his fingers, touch the soft skin in the fold between his thumb and index finger, ask him to understand that I can’t bear it easily and that I should have understood what was needed sooner, before he had to act to save the situation. I should have understood that what I could do would be sufficient. Skimming as I do just below the surface, just deep enough to flatter, to arouse, but not deep enough to involve the heart - the way a glimpse through those windows does, whether to strike fear into it or to startle it into opening.
I don’t believe she closed her eyes when I did. Her mind was still elsewhere, considering a different view, but her body was reacting to me. I timed it well. Illya and I are both precise in our timing. I let her go, her physical response triggered and not satisfied at all. That would be for the guard to sense. He would respond to that, drawn without realising what had changed so much since the dull exchange of a few moments before.
Mimi’s gone to the door. I glance at Illya and he’s smiling, two smiles at once. The shutters are closed but his eyes say, “Well done.” My muscles relax a bit and I look at his lips. That smile says something else.