MFU Fanfiction: The Touch of Butterflies

[saki101]

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.

Comments

[svetlanacat4.livejournal.com]

I remember the screencaps... Love your Napoleon's POV, the way he watches, imagines, foresees, guesses... He looks like to know Illya so well! A great moment, thanks for this!

[saki101.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That scene is grist for dozens of stories, I think. I imagined this approach and then I went another way and wrote Without a Word based on some of the same ideas.

The tie-in with butterflies was connected not only with Napoleon's light touch on Illya's hands, but also some of your garden photos. I recall ones with a butterfly. I went looking on the internet for other butterfly pictures, because I wanted to use them somehow, but I didn't know how to make a banner until yesterday. It's intriguing how the different stimuli converge. Thank you for all your beautiful photos!

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

I want to be Mimi for that brief moment of anticipation! You see into the most intimate and secret details of a scene, and it's a lovely encounter. Thank you.

[saki101.livejournal.com]

Oh, a lucky girl indeed! And a smart one, too, because she doesn't let either one of them get away at the end.

[snailbones.livejournal.com]

Lovely! So much going on under the surface of the moment. ♥

[saki101.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I wonder what thoughts the actors were channelling to create that scene...

[eilidhsd.livejournal.com]

Wow; that is some opening paragraph, with all that irresistible power hidden behind Illya's eyes but there to be used when he needs it. That is a cracking start and utterly credible. And the twofold continuation - that the girl is better untroubled, with Napoleon's more shallow power; and that Napoleon and Illya have such close unspoken communion.
Oh, you write well indeed.

It was a great scene without your words - now it will be a thousand times stronger.

[eilidhsd.livejournal.com]

Me again. Now going off onto beauty that was too much for ordinary mortals to gaze at directly, like a full-scale IK look, and I wandered past the butterfly-winged Psyche transfixed by Cupid in the candlelight, to the effects on Rose emerging far more than mortal after gazing into the heart of the Tardis. Think that is what might have happened to poor mortal Mimi if Illya had turned his charms on her at full power. It would have burned her up.

[saki101.livejournal.com]

It's a classical theme, isn't it and connected to something strongly rooted in the psyche? (There's Semele killed by Zeus' love-making as another example.) I always liked the Cupid and Psyche myth, it seemed just on the border between myth and fairy tale. It did go rather rough on Psyche though, but she was an active heroine and succeeded in the end.

Napoleon turned Mimi away and avoided detrimental effects, but between the two of them I think Mimi's life is going to take a different turn from then on. She may need to contact Napoleon and Illya before she makes a permanent choice from among the many suitors she will no doubt now attract. Illya can give them the soul-searching look and judge their intentions and if the intentions are up to expectations, they can both put a little fear into their hearts for good measure! Among those deemed worthy, the final choice would have to be Mimi's, of course.

[eilidhsd.livejournal.com]

Yes, even in the episode you knew that Mimi's life was changed forever in that brief encounter with the boys, from timid unworldly girl to femme fatale. Don't know about them helping decide on suitors though - with those two around, who would ever look at another man?

Back for another read today because it was so enjoyable: Napoleon kissing her not because he wanted to, but to protect her from Illya - it is a super twist!

[saki101.livejournal.com]

Yes, others would pale by comparison, so I suppose that's not a viable option especially since Mimi isn't a practical girl who might reason that Napoleon and Illya weren't available.

I am tickled that you wanted to re-read it! She might have been smitten forever if Illya had finished off that intense look with an intense kiss!

[saki101.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much!

I seem inclined to giving Illya supernatural powers. There has to be some explanation for his incredible allure, right? And there were scenes in other episodes where Illya looks at women and convinces them of things, often taking off his glasses before he does so.

[loxleyprince.livejournal.com]

It's rare and wonderful to see the supremely-confident Napoleon so disconcerted by Illya's effect on Mimi. In his own way, Napoleon is as entranced by Illya as Mimi is, but unlike Mimi he is well aware of that fact, recognising his own vulnerability as well as hers (and this bit I really like) and knowing that Illya does too and is accepting of it.

but it is the glimpse they catch of his intent that makes them cooperate, confess, crumble

Such a beautiful description of the immense power of Illya's gaze.

[saki101.livejournal.com]

Napoleon at any of those vulnerable junctures, before identifying his attraction, before deciding to act on it, before declaring himself by word or deed, is fascinating. The contrast with his usual confidence and competence makes him more vulnerable, I think.

I am so happy you like the scene and that line particularly! Thank you!