#oh also i googled and armie hammer is 6'5 but whatever. with shoes i will say illya is 6'6 lol. it was just a better number to work with.

[set-phasers-to-whump]

what partners do

prompt: self-sacrifice (alt no.9)

whumpee: illya kuryakin

fandom: the man from uncle

hi! this fic doesn’t have a lot of background, like idk where they are or what they’re doing or anything lmao. the only really important note is that this takes place early in their partnership, shortly after the end of the movie. this fic only involves illya and napoleon so they are on whatever mission this is as just a pair i guess. that’s all there is to know, hope you enjoy!

Napoleon slowly, carefully turns the doorknob. There’s a clicking sound and he doesn’t even have time to think oh shit before there’s six-and-a-half feet of Russian secret agent slamming into him. The deafening noise of an explosion follows a millisecond later, and Napoleon hits the ground hard. 

He wakes up a few seconds later coughing on smoke, and he rapidly realizes that he can’t quite breathe properly - there’s something pressing down on his chest, constricting his lungs. That’s extremely alarming, and he opens his eyes, which immediately begin to water in the dusty air. 

The source of the pressure is immediately obvious - Illya is on top of him. Illya had tackled him to the ground and had presumably taken the brunt of the explosion and Napoleon would like to wonder why but he is too busy struggling to breathe. 

“Peril,” he says, his voice hoarse and breathless. “Peril. Can you please move?”

There’s no response. Illya doesn’t even stir. 

“Peril,” Napoleon says, more insistent. “Illya.”

Still nothing. Shit.

“Guess I’m moving you myself,” Napoleon mutters. It takes him a little while, but eventually he manages to roll Illya off of him, his body hitting the ground with a thud. As soon as they’re separated, Napoleon takes a wonderfully deep breath, coughs, and then sits up, turning to look at Illya. 

The other agent’s eyes are closed. His chest is rising and falling, a bit too shallowly, but consistently. His face is streaked with black and red and there are bits of shrapnel in his hair and on his clothes, both of which are singed. Most worrying is the large wet spot on his shirt - the black fabric hides the color of the spot, but Napoleon knows it must be blood. To confirm, he reaches out and touches it, nodding in solemn acceptance of the situation when his fingers come away red. 

He carefully lifts Illya’s shirt away from his body, the fabric sticking to the blood. There’s a large bloody gash underneath, but whatever shrapnel had created it is gone, surely knocked out of him in all the chaos. 

Napoleon moves on instinct, shrugging out of his suit jacket, which is already dusty and torn and beyond saving anyway. He presses it firmly into Illya’s wound, and he knows this is painful and hopes that the pain will serve to wake Illya up. 

But it doesn’t. He knows Illya’s breathing, and a quick press of his bloody fingers to the side of the other agent’s neck confirms that he is in fact alive. So why the hell won’t he wake up?

“Come on, Peril,” Napoleon says. “Wake up.” This sentence is punctuated by a fairly light slap to Illya’s cheek. There’s still no response. Despite himself, Napoleon feels a jolt of worry surge through him. 

“This isn’t funny. Wake up,” he demands, slapping Illya’s cheek hard enough to leave a red mark on his already battered skin. 

Napoleon feels bad about this for all of a second, at which point Illya’s eyes slowly flutter open. They’re glassy, and they wander about the room for a long moment before at last coming to rest on Napoleon. 

“Что -” Illya pauses and coughs, badly hiding his wince. After a second, he tries again. “Что...ты делаешь?” He raises a clumsy hand and taps Napoleon’s right hand, which is currently pressing his suit jacket into Illya’s wound in an attempt to slow the bleeding. 

“I’m trying to prevent you from bleeding to death because you decided to tackle me out of the way of an explosion,” Napoleon explains, his tone irritated but his words slow so Illya has time to process them. 

“Oh.”

“How are you feeling?”

Illya groans. He tries briefly to sit up and makes it perhaps a quarter of the way before sinking slowly back to the ground. “Not too bad.”

Napoleon fixes him with a look. “You want to try that again?”

“Fine. Hurts.”

“How’s your head?”

“Dizzy.”

“Anything feel broken?”

“No.”

“Are you bleeding anywhere else?”

Illya has to think for a moment on this question. Napoleon takes the time to look over what parts of Illya he can see. He comes to the conclusion that Illya isn’t seriously bleeding from anywhere else on his front side just as Illya says, “I am not.”

“Do you think you can walk?” He doesn’t see that there’s much of an alternative, regardless of Illya’s answer. They can’t stay here forever, and he (much as it pains him to admit) probably isn’t strong enough to fully carry Illya the entire mile back to their car. 

Fortunately, Illya’s answer is “yes,” though it’s not said with as much confidence as Napoleon would like. If nothing else, though, it’s a promise to try. 

Before they can think about moving, though, Napoleon needs to create a better bandage. Holding the jacket is working fine for the moment, but Napoleon imagines the two of them are going to need the use of both hands. So he takes off his white button-down, which is now more of a gray, and ties it by the sleeves around the jacket, pulling the knot tightly until Illya takes a sharp breath and whispers, “that’s enough, Cowboy.”

After this, the two of them manage to get Illya to his feet. It’s a slow process, full of cursing and stumbling, but by the time it’s over Illya’s standing up and the jacket is still being held firmly in place. Success, Napoleon thinks, and they begin to walk.

For the first few steps, Illya stubbornly pulls away from Napoleon, as though he thinks he’ll be able to walk on his own after going through a goddamn explosion. When he nearly falls for the fourth time in as many steps, Napoleon decides he’s had enough. He’s not risking Illya getting any more hurt just because he’s too stubborn and too macho-spy to admit that he needs help. 

He steps in closer to Illya and slides an arm behind his back, careful not to jostle his makeshift bandage. He expects Illya to pull away and insist that he’s fine, but instead, almost immediately, Illya leans into him. Without Napoleon even having to ask, Illya places an arm around his shoulders to further support himself. 

At this point, Napoleon’s taken on more than half of Illya’s weight, and when they take a step it’s clumsy and slow, but neither of them stumbles. They take another step, and another, and it’s a long way back to the car but they’re going to make it, Napoleon is certain of that. 

They walk without speaking, the only sounds being their own breathing, punctuated by the occasional cough (in Napoleon’s case) and the occasional poorly concealed noise of pain (in Illya’s case). They only speak once the car is finally in sight. 

“Thank you,” Illya says, his voice so quiet Napoleon’s half convinced he hasn’t actually said anything. “For helping.”

Napoleon shakes his head, trying to ignore the growing feeling that he can only describe as fondness. “Thank you,” he shoots back, “for tackling me out of the way of an explosion. That’s - it means a lot.”

“Is nothing,” Illya says, except that it isn’t. “This is what partners do, yes?” 

Napoleon’s pretty sure he is right about that. “Yeah,” he agrees. “It’s what partners do.”

thanks for reading! on a fun me note i am learning russian and consequently i am planning to use it more in my fics for this fandom bc why not. i am not at all good yet so if i mess something up i apologize. but yeah i think it’s fun to combine languages and also i think illya would probably first speak in his native language if he’s waking up confused and hurt, yknow? anyways i hope you enjoyed this fic, love you <3!!