#gapollya

[agreeableartist]

Napoleon made them take this picture lol

anyways super rough sketchy thing I made bc I saw a pic of ppl doing this pose and thought of them hihi, also finally drawing Gaby!! wohoo

[h0n3y-c0m6]

I feel like these songs fit Napollya (Napoleon/Illya)

I organized these to this as much as I could (still recovering from wisdom teeth removal, so it's probably a bit messy) but if there's songs you think i should reorganize/add/remove, lmk! I'll gladly hear you out! ^-^

Good Luck, Babe! by Chappell Roan

You've Got The Love by Florence + The Machine

Little Lies - 2017 Remaster by Fleetwood Mac

Damage Gets Done (feat. Brandi Carlile) by Hoizer, Brandi Carlile

Two Birds by Regina Spektor

ocean eyes by Billie Eilish

rises the moon by Liana Flores

Neath the grove is a heart by Yaelokre

Lay All Your Love On Me by ABBA

Jolene by Dolly Parton

Everyday - Single Version by Buddy Holly

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) by ABBA

The Other Side by Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron

Happy Together by The Turtles

House of Memories by Panic! At The Disco

Before I Knew It by Mason Ramsey

September by Earth, Wind, & Fire

WHERE IS MY HUSBAND by RAYE

No Good Deed - From "Wicked" Original Broadway Cast Recording/2003 by Stephen Schwartz, Idina Menzel, Stephen Oremus

Bad Romance by Lady Gaga

Complicated by Avril Lavigine

Inkpot Gods by The Amazing Devil

What Is This Feeling? - From "Wicked" Original Broadway Cast Recording/2003 by Stephen Schwartz, Kristin Chenoweth, Idina Menzel, Stephen Oremus

What We Live For by American Authors

Up on the Roof by The Drifters

Sh-Boom by The Chords

Soldier, Poet, King by Jacob Cook

No Pressure Tags: @justabigoldnerd @pippinoftheshire @prettyboynapoleonsolo @falling-into-peril @heytheredeann @cha-melodius @mybelovedillya @iamscreeming

[heytheredeann]

Safekeeping

Tags: Alternate Universe - Magic, Established Relationship, Introspection, Napoleon Solo Is Bad At Feelings, Napoleon Solo Has Trust Issues, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Illya Kuryakin, Hurt Gaby Teller, Polyamory, OT3

Notes: Helloooo, it's me, back again after ages LOL. Work has been eating away at my soul LOL. This has been sitting in my drafts for a while, I figured I might as well start by editing and publishing some already finished stuff. Hopefully I will manage to get back into actually writing too. Enjoy!

.

Napoleon keeps his heart in a jar, safely tucked away in a pocket dimension only few could force open. It seemed like a sensible precaution, to tear out of his chest the only thing capable of killing him.

(Later, bound to an awful man by magic law, enslaved for years to come, he is all the more grateful for the insurance that he will, one way or another, walk away from this on his own two feet.)

He tells Illya and Gaby less than a year after Istanbul, when they coax him into a kiss and Gaby frowns as she lays a hand on his chest and feels nothing. She is more sensitive to vibrations than anyone else, and he can see the calculations in her eyes, the way she’s trying to match the stillness in his chest with the calmness of the emotions inside him.

(Illya, she told him once as they shared a late night drink and whispered lazy confessions, is never quiet, never still. Everything in him is constantly so much that she recoiled from his touch at first, rattled and overwhelmed. Now, she isn’t sure she could live without feeling the way he cares.)

“It’s not what you think,” Napoleon says, one hand raised in mock surrender and the other playing with Illya’s sleeve, because it’s the closest thing to clinging he will allow himself. Even without being able to feel his emotions the way Gaby can, the confusion radiates off Illya.

(“What am I like?” Napoleon asked once, curious and not in small part frightened. Empty, he was afraid she would say. It wouldn’t be an inaccurate assessment.

“Steady,” she said instead, leaning against his side.

Something fluttered in the empty cavity in his chest.)

“Oh really?” Gaby mocks, her eyes hardening. He can see the betrayal dawning on her, and he can only imagine that she’s thinking he’s some undead creature, smartly hiding his nature from them until he could feed on them.

“Really,” Napoleon says, as warmly as he can manage. Without a heart, emotions are supposed to be muted, present of course, but somewhat distant. He wonders what his fear would feel like then, since it’s eating away at his stomach now.

Under their unwavering gaze, he tells the truth.

(“I don’t understand,” Illya says later, when Gaby is asleep, tucked under his arm, and Napoleon’s head rests on his shoulder.

Napoleon snorts, and it’s just as fond as it is scared. “I know you don’t, Peril.” He can’t imagine Illya choosing to carry his heart anywhere other than on his sleeve. “It’s just for protection.”

“But you are safe now,” comes the answer, so genuine and almost hurt.

Napoleon smiles. “I know,” he says, and he means it. Yet, he does nothing but keep lying there.)

[More on Ao3]

[prettyboynapoleonsolo]

Seven Sentence Sunday

i've missed the last few sunday/wednesday tag games, and im happy to remember it this time! thanks for the tags, @justabigoldnerd and @pippinoftheshire. here's some old crippled spies angst:

Napoleon has bad days, and he has good days. Now, thanks to a lot of work and a healthy number of medications, he has more good days than bad. But that just means when he has a bad day, they’re really bad. Gaby has been trained by now to wake at any change in her husbands’ behavior, so when Napoleon starts convulsing, she jerks awake. On Napoleon’s other side, Illya wakes as well. The seizures are always terrifying, even after nearly a decade of them, because Gaby simply cannot do anything to help Napoleon. She just has to sit there as he convulses, praying to a god she doesn’t believe in that it will be over soon.

no-pressure tagging @too-young-to-fall-in-love @heytheredeann @falling-into-peril @fandom-meet-fanthem @happybean17 @huggiebird @mybelovedillya and anyone else who wants to join in!

[wyrdsistergoldenhair]

I feel crazy for posting this, but I need help locating a fanfic. The author removed it from AO3 years ago because they decided to make it an original work. I could’ve sworn I saved a copy but I can’t find it anywhere.

Fandom: The Man from UNCLE (2015 film)

Pairing(s): I think it was Illya/Napoleon/Gabby but I’m not 100% sure

Premise: The story was still set in the 1960s but the technology was way more advanced. Napoleon was either a robot or a cyborg. It was a long fic and/or had multiple chapters. I vaguely remember it ending with Illya getting hurt and having his hand/arm amputated. 

If anyone has a copy of the fic they would be willing to share with me, I would greatly appreciate it.  

[mybelovedillya]

Cover by @justabigoldnerd. Another thanks for the beautiful, wonderful gift, Mawce!

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo/Gaby Teller, Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin/Gaby Teller, Illya Kuryakin & Napoleon Solo & Gaby Teller Characters: Illya Kuryakin, Napoleon Solo, Gaby Teller Additional Tags: Illya Kuryakin Whump, Sickfic, Snowed In, Winter, Blizzards & Snowstorms, Mutual Pining, Getting Together, There Was Only One Bed, Angst with a Happy Ending, Snow and Ice, Almost Kiss, First Kiss

Summary: After a mission leads them to a safe house deep in the mountains during a raging snowstorm, Illya prepares for a quiet week in while waiting for extraction. However, feelings that refuse to fade and a pesky cut on his side could complicate things. Not to worry, his partners won’t hear a thing about any of that, and nothing will go wrong as a result. Nothing at all.

[cha-melodius]

Guess who rewatched TMFU last night???

I feel inspired to talk about the end of the movie and our favorite spies' first mission as UNCLE. Caveat that these are all just my interpretations/headcanons, and aren't the only ones out there! I've been thinking about this recently because of Hard to be Soft, Tough to be Tender, which I set very early in their partnership. Namely, we get this moment, where they all look, as @heytheredeann always so accurately puts it, entirely victimized by the news that they have to keep working together:

Now this comes not long after this little moment, where Illya allows his fondness to slip out in that tiny smile, and then realizes what he's done and immediately hides behind his glass of Scotch.

They're having a moment here, one where they both let their shields down just a little, precisely BECAUSE they're sure they're never gonna see each other again. There is little risk in letting that fondness show, because the other person is unlikely to have a chance of exploiting that in the future. Then Waverly comes in and says surprise! We're keeping the team together! Which is frustrating to Napoleon and Illya especially because they were ready to go back to working alone and put this whole experiment and these feelings out of their minds. Now they're going to have to deal with them, or more likely shove them deep down where they can't be a problem, and I can see both of them initially closing themselves off again a bit more because of it.

By the end of Istandbul, though, I think we see some opening up, at least on Napoleon's part, in part because of the first of these two photos from the credits:

Obviously Napoleon and Gaby are getting along swimmingly by this point. I may prefer them as besties to romantic partners, but it's clear that they are relaxed and affectionate around each other. I guess you could argue maybe this was a cover for the mission, but the body language speaks for itself. Napoleon has a lot of masks, but for the first time he's letting little glimpses of himself show to his partners.

Now as for Illya's role in these shots: most of the credits photos don't really have a particular mood or feeling, by which I mean they're pretty much just standard covert shots, maybe taken by Waverly (except the one of him, obviously). But these two are so different. I headcanon that Illya took these photos, and probably he didn't intend anyone to see the negatives or prints but him. That one of Napoleon alone is so artistic and practically oozes longing. I can just imagine Illya seeing him there like that and thinking about how beautiful he looks, lit up by the sunset, and needing to capture it only for himself. I guess I see Illya as super conflicted by the end of this mission, maybe aware of his growing feelings and maybe not, and probably actively convincing himself that they're not those kind of feelings either way.

More about how the team relates to each other post-canon below the cut.

As to growing pains they might have as a real team in Istanbul, well, I'd say some are inevitable. I actually think Gaby's betrayal is a much bigger deal for her than it is for the boys. She clearly feels guilty about it in her last scene with Illya, and I imagine that guilt stays with her despite the fact that they don't seem to hold it against her. For Napoleon and Illya, though, I'm pretty sure they forgave her pretty quickly. She may have betrayed them, but she was acting as an agent for another country, and as Waverly says, it was the only way to keep the mission going. (Side note: It took me a while last night to realize that the reason that Gaby had to betray them to stay in the game was because Rudy & Victoria knew Illya wasn't just a Russian architect after he took his anger out on the Italian guys in the bathroom. Smoothly done, Peril, as Napoleon would say.) Napoleon and Illya have been in the spy game for a lot longer, and I'd wager they each spent the entire time in Rome expecting the other one to betray him. Gaby's betrayal was upsetting to them at first because it was unexpected (and, I'd argue, ego-bruising), but as soon as they know she's also a spy, it's understandable to them.

That brings me to Waverly, which I'd been thinking about while watching because of this ask. One would assume the same leeway applies to him, and I think it does, to an extent. I'm going to focus on what happened to Napoleon, because while Waverly all but apologizes to Illya for selling him out, he never says a peep about Napoleon's near-death experience. To Napoleon, I think he'd see this as business as usual. Of COURSE his senior officer would leave him to die. I don't think anyone doubts that Sanders would do it in a heartbeat. Napoleon had to become the CIA's most effective agent to save his own goddamned life. So Napoleon would neither expect any acknowledgement from Waverly about that, much less an apology, nor would he expect one. But that of course leaves Waverly as no better than Sanders, and I don't think many people in this fandom are fond of that idea. I think it takes Waverly a while to win any measure of real trust from Napoleon, and Napoleon is definitely the last of the three to give it. Beyond Istanbul, even. Maybe in Istanbul it starts, Waverly does something unexpected that makes Napoleon reevaluate things, but I don't think he's going to be taking kindly to any figure of authority any time soon. Napoleon is definitely the type to have issues with authority, unlike Illya IMO (the duality of Illya as the Good Soldier who disobeys orders based on his own sense of justice is an essay for another time, though).

What I think is interesting is Waverly's role in the Istanbul mission.

Maybe he's just there smoking hookah and giving them a run down on the mission, like Sanders and Oleg in Berlin, but maybe he takes a more active role. He was in the field in Rome, after all. The idea that this team is a foursome and not a threesome is an intriguing one, though, and not one I can remember seeing explored (though I read almost exclusively napollya fic, so if it's in one tagged with another relationship, I'd have missed it). I feel like Hugh Grant might have had a bigger role in the sequel movie, so it's possible that at least for this first mission they have a different dynamic in that as well.

Anyway, if you've read all of this, thank you for indulging me! And feel free to send asks with headcanons or aus or questions or if you want my thoughts on anything, because I am raring to talk about this movie lol.

[i1lya]