RESULT OF THE GIVE AWAY for@imaginativecrime who requested a The Man from U.N.C.L.E AU. Here's an aesthetic. We didn't stick a lot to the movie except for the "CIA agent & KGB agent have a romance" part. (lol)
There's a little plot to go with it. Beware of extreme crossover AU, suits, embedded betrayals, manipulation, closeted characters and espionage stuff.
This is set during the Cold War, in 1980.
Leonard (Lenny) Miller is a CIA agent sent to a European country to approach the target, some boss of a big company, under the false identity of a business man. He has to help the target to go West, and hence cut one of the supply lines of the USSR.
Leo Demidov is a KGB agent also sent to Europe, pretending to be an interpret, to kill the same target to avoid his defection, and to make sure the company stays under the control of the USSR.
The thing is that the two agents have met years before during a mission, and didn't expect to find each other again, fact that compromises their mission. They tell their hierarchy. Their orders change : Lenny has to convince Leo to defect and switch sides, in order to have a double agent, and Leo has to pretend that he wants to go West too, and become an undercover agent inside the intelligence service of the United States. Also, to kill the target and pretend that others sovietic agents did it and are after them.
They get closer, first as opponents fighting over the same target then, as Leo begins his approach, as agents playing a double game : Lenny has to extract the target, ensure that the defection of Leo is real and, if that's not the case, use him to give false informations to the enemy. Leo has to get Lenny to trust him, infiltrate the American side and get rid of the target if possible without getting compromised.
They get to know each other (kinda since they are both lying), and to see the other one as more than a plain enemy, a worthy opponent or a mean to an end. At the contact of each other their respective manichean vision of the world shatters, and they eventually question their respective side and ideology. Both men of convictions, they discover other ways to think and to put things into perspective. Their trust builds on real elements just as on made-up ones, made to manipulate each other. They end up falling in love, both feeling it deeply but deciding to use it at their advantage in order to achieve their mission.
Eventually, as they collect more informations and the situation changes, Leo leads Lenny into a trap, using one of their rare moments of sincerity, and the American is captured by the KGB. Lenny hits rock bottom as he is "interrogated" by the soviet agents, his target killed and his love interest an actual enemy. Meanwhile, Leo regrets obeying the orders of his chain of command and realizes he should have told Lenny, but his organization has a lot of ways to ensure his loyalty, beginning by his adoptive parents (Child 44 the book, by Tom Robb-Smith, way better than the movie and full of details and subplot lines, everyone) and can easily get him killed if he betrays them. What he does.
But can he help Lenny to survive and escape? Will Lenny trust him again? Can they get away together from the USSR without getting killed or worse? And even if they do, can they have a future together?
Feel free to imagine whatever end suits you most.
(and yeah the quote is from peaky blinders)