Napoleon was used to seeing all sorts in his shop: harried office types who knocked back their espressos before grabbing a long black to go, bored housewife types who took their lattes heavy on the syrups and low on the fat, tourists who ordered their coffees topped with whipped cream as they embraced a certain vacation-based joie de vie, college kids simply looking for a cheap caffeine fix while they took advantage of his free Wi-Fi.
Six foot five, blond and leanly muscled, on the other hand, at seven in the morning and with the most delicious jawline Napoleon had seen in days, was certainly a first.
—
Or: The modern day coffee shop AU in which Napoleon makes Illya all kinds of coffee except for Illya’s actual order, and things aren’t all quite what they seem to be.
This started because I had discovered an interesting coffee place near my office two weeks ago, which (naturally, when you’re a fangirl) led to Napollya thoughts along the lines of: “Napoleon tries to woo Illya with coffee. Illya wants something black and simple. Napoleon insists on making him all kinds of fancy drinks to show his ~adoration. Illya despairs.” The original idea was only supposed to be ~1k long. I’m not sure how it became ten times longer than that. While I’m holidaying in London this past week, no less.
Dear. He calls her—what kind of dangerous secret agent is such a softie that he treats little old ladies so gently?
To me, this is a hugely important character moment, because it shows that Illya knows he’s fucking terrifying, and he doesn’t want to be.
As an armed KGB man bursting into a little old lady’s home in the middle of the night, he’d be terrifying even if he wasn’t ten feet tall. And he knows what that’s like, because he was on the other side of it when he was ten and they came for his father.
Furthermore, I read the hotel room scene with Gaby–the drunk-dancing pyjamas scene–much the same way. She’s not really acting like she’s scared, but she probably should be: he’s big enough to break her in half, a representative of an occupying force, and, at least according to his dossier, psychotic, and here she’s being made to share a hotel room with him and pretend to be his fiancee. So he bends over backwards to be as nonthreatening as possible, to the extent of letting her slap him in the face with his own hands. Twice.