Liquor

by Cord Smithee

©2004

The Man from UNCLE and its characters are owned by someone else, we don't know exactly who, but no one is making any money off this story.

Note: The author of this story does have an email address listed at the archive, however he has extremely limited internet access so is unable to answer comments left. That doesn't mean he doesn't want to see them. :-)

It wasn't his first mistake, trying to get the Russian drunk. But it was certainly his most impressive one in recent memory. The little guy could drink.

Unsurprising, really—he thought, steadying his reeling thoughts like a sailor pitching on the deck of a storm-tossed ship—unsurprising. These Eastern bloc fellows weaned straight off mother's milk on to vodka, after all....

Not that it was vodka they were drinking, whatever the label said. Or whatever the Russian had said the label said; Napoleon didn't read Swahili.

Still, it was traditional, in UNCLE. Traditional enough that even Waverly blinked at it—Hell, Napoleon was half-convinced Waverly himself had originated the tradition—for a new field team, upon successful completion of their first mission, to hole up in a hotel room and get

blind.

stinking

drunk.

And the last man standing—or the last woman, in at least one notable case of Napoleon's very personal acquaintance—rolled the loser into bed, tugged his trousers off, and, traditionally, bought breakfast the next day.

Which, apparently, meant that Napoleon could look forward to eggs Benedict at dawn, because through the alcohol haze he felt his new partner's big hands pulling his glossy black loafers off, lifting his feet onto the bed, fluffing the pillow under his neck. "iiiillya?" The quaver in his own voice made him shiver.

"Right here, Napoleon."

"Never let me do that ag—again. Please."

"Drink that much?"

"Try to drink you under the table."

"I will make it a lifetime's work. Shall I remove your trousers?"

"If it's..." hiccup. ...not too much to ask.

Gentle hands stripped him and pulled the covers over him, and there was a memory there, too, swimming. A weight on the bed, soft hair between his fingers. A pouting lip and a mouth like the memory of heat itself—

Her name had been Gabrielle. He was almost sorry that partnership had not worked out.

Now that he permitted himself to think about it.

Any woman who could out-drink Napoleon Solo was special. A girl who could drink him under the table and then would do what Gabrielle de Montevideo had done to him when he was far, far too drunk to protest, after, certainly had the, the...

..balls

to make a spectacular partner.

And the tongue.

God, it was almost a tactile memory, and his fingers curled as he remembered her touch, the way she'd addressed his helplessness...

..the way her tongue had followed the trickles of scotch she'd poured over his belly, his thighs, his balls...

the hair his hands knotted on wasn't pin-curled, straw-dry bleached-blonde locks, but cropped, dense thatch, slightly wavy, slick as the guard hairs on a wolf's coat, and surely if he'd gone to bed with a woman, drunk or not, he'd remember.

He would.

It was a point of pride. He always knew their names. And he always remembered the names, too. He wasn't a...

God. There were hands to go with the mouth, stroking his thighs, and the room spun when he tried to open his eyes, lift his head. And he would have said he was too drunk, god, too drunk even to get it up, never mind get it in, but she was determined, whoever she was, and

oh

nice American girls just didn't do that sort of thing. Just didn't. French? Was he in France? No, he was in Nairobi, and he didn't...

...usually sleep with whores, and that was all you were gonna find in Africa, whores and married women with four co-wives and seventeen children and on my god—

it was hot, a mouth, tongue and lips and suction, his boxers pushed down around his thighs, just the edge of teeth grazing whatever they grazed, and hands on his hips holding him tight as he arched against the bed, much-laundered cotton sheets against his back, the rough-skinned, powerful fingers pushing his underwear down further, cupping, caressing his balls, sliding across the soft skin of his inner thighs—

No way in hell that was a woman's hand.

He gasped, and opened his eyes, and arched forward to see the Russian's short blond hair knotted in his own square hands like he would never let go, the Russian's mouth distended from the girth and length of his cock, the Russian's sharp blue eyes closed in concentration, his hands back again, locked like clamps on Napoleon's hips and his cheeks hollowed with a suction that flattened his pouting lower lip.

Napoleon opened his mouth to say something, and the Russian's tongue coiled around his cock like the cleverest python on the planet, and he fell back against the pillow, keening between his teeth.

And stop, he should say stop. He should pull with the hands knotted so tight in his partner's hair, instead of pressing, clinging, arching into the touch, and oh

oh

oh, the mouth was gone now, air chill on the wetness it left behind, and then fuck he twisted like a gaffed fish, ass and thighs locked, and it was cold, cold as ice, no it was ice, no—

—the little fucker had a mouth full of not-exactly-vodka, right out of the hotel room ice bucket, cold enough to frost the glass, Christ, it stung, like Betadine, and cold enough to make Napoleon's balls crawl back up inside except that tongue was hot as a furnace where it touched him, the lips were like God, the vodka swirling around him as the Russian swallowed hard, convulsively, the soft soft flesh at the back of his mouth, behind the palate, caressing Napoleon's cock, conforming to it, and he arched into the touch, ice and heat and ice and pressure and rough soft wet silk, the swirl of the vodka thicker than water in his partner's heated mouth, cold as frost against Napoleon's heated skin. He gulped down a shout of pleasure, of surrender—

and he didn't even care that it was a man, his partner, and he was drunk, far, far too drunk to be doing this, because the bright flashes were going off behind his tight-clenched eyelids, and he couldn't remember what he had been thinking a moment before, swimming in the alcohol haze as he swam in the pleasure of that touch—

And silence, suddenly, and he fell back panting, because the mouth was gone, too soon. Christ. Half a fucking second too soon. "No—" all that desperate urgency, and the only word he could wrap his voice around. A plea, a threat–

He, ah, Illya. The Russian. He had to understand.

"No, don't stop, or no, don't do that?" The voice was low, sweet, amused. A baritone verging on a bass, with a velvety hint of accent and the bitter sweet richness of good European chocolate. No compromises.

"No," Napoleon said. "No, don't stop." Eyes shut tight, and with the admission, he was lost, because the Russian's hands were suddenly proprietary, cradling his ass, lifting it off the bed the way he'd lifted and restrained a woman's hips, more than once. Spreading his legs—

nothing could have prepared him for the touch of that tongue, the flicker of its hot, hot tip down the crease of his ass, the way it darted against his opening like a clever, questioning fish—

He stuffed his fist against his mouth so that he wouldn't scream—

—too drunk, too drunk, too drunk—

—and gave himself up to that cool, sharp pressure, gave himself up to the way it eased inside him, teasing, flickering—god. that's his tongue. his mouth. his fingers—

The pressure was irresistible, the slickness, the pleasure something he hadn't ever even imagined, a new and slick and delicate thing, the hand wrapped around his balls, the root of his cock, the strong shoulders pushing his thighs up—

He wouldn't have been ashamed if he screamed. Well, he would have been, ashamed that is, but he wouldn't have been able to guarantee he wouldn't do it again, not with the tongue working black magic on places so private he didn't often think of them himself, with the hair slick between his fingers, slick and hard—"god. oh god."

"I have to—" Hushed, garbled with pressure and flesh and then

it stopped.

He whimpered, mortified, as unable to keep the sound inside as he might be unable to stem a tide. He felt the Russian's body slide up to cover his and flinched away from it, flinched from the taste of liquor and musk on the lips, the tongue that claimed a kiss from his, and then found himself responding, pressing into the taste of his own sweat and heat and pre-ejaculate, all the salt and bitter of his own body and all the sweetness of his partner's clean, hot mouth.

"Say yes," the Russian said against his mouth. Damn you. Say 'Yes.'

And yes, and yes he mouthed it, and yes, he meant it, swimming through the haze of alcohol and unwarranted trust, and he forced his eyes open and to his shock found the Russian, found his partner, found Illya staring into his eyes, never breaking the contact as he worked up saliva and spat into his hand and made Napoleon wet, as wet as he'd been for the slick, wriggling penetration of a tongue, of a finger—

Christ.

Christ.

Christ.

We're really—

—Christ.

He howled, threw back his head and howled, neck arched against the pillow, and then his partner's hand was over his mouth, and he was biting at the thick, callused fingers, biting at the lips that covered his own, at the mouth that told him shhh, shhhh. Shhhh.

"I can stop—"

No. Mouthed against his partner's mouth, a shake of his head because he couldn't hear his own voice, couldn't feel his own breath moving to give the shapes sound, and damn, he wasn't drunk enough to be doing this—

Wasn't—

Was, apparently, because somehow he had lifted his hips, a transparent, wanton invitation, and there was burning and pain but the, God, the sensation, and the Russian was inside him, over him, unreal, fantastic, a phantasm, impossible, this can't be happening and I can't be letting this happen and then the Russian's, no, Illya's thighs pressed his ass, shoulders pressed his thighs, hand wrapped like so much oiled steel around his cock and that touch was all it took, tipping him over into need, into an oblivion that almost didn't notice the way his cry of pleasure and abandonment was met by the straining whimper of another body arching against him, wetness and heat and he never would have believed he could feel it, feel his own orgasm around Illya, in the slick confines of Illya's fist, and then feel Illya coming, deep inside him, deeper, as if he meant to burrow through flesh and bone and, and, and the shiver of that compact body in his arms and the dip of the blond head on that thick, powerful neck left him bereft, breathless, heartsick and heart-whole all at once.

Beautiful, the man said against his neck, mouth moving on salty skin, and slid down to lie on top of him, shivering like a ghost knocked free of its chains.

"Christ," Napoleon answered, and turned his face away. Two ways to handle it. Only two, only two he could think of, and drunk or sober he was the master of the angle.

One. Pretend it never happened, which was tantamount to proclaiming it wrong—

Two.

He lifted hands like lead, curled fingers into that sodden blond hair, lifted that stern, pouting lip away from his neck and nibbled it into acceptance, kissed it until it softened, met the shy, rueful kiss it delivered with a slow, hungry kiss of his own.

"Christ," he said against that mouth. "I'm going to have a head on me in the morning."

And his new partner smiled, curve of his lips in the sweat-soaked bed, in the sweat-soaked darkness, taste of liquor and sex on his breath, and said, "Our very first hangover. How quaint."