Round Table - Little Things That They Do

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm inspired by the post ssclassof56 put up yesterday for the What's My Line? Challenge. You really need to check that out and get ready to write.  I'm so bummed that we can't actually do the musical, talk about a good time.
Anyway, I got here in a roundabout way, considering my jam preferences for various food situations.  I recently found some boysenberry jam on walmart.com, something I've been looking for but couldn't find here in Kentucky.  Boysenberries are my all time favorite, something that comes from having grown up going to Knott's Berry Farm, where boysenberry is king.  If you've been there (it's currently an amusement park that, in Orange County, is second only to Disneyland), then you've had something made from boysenberries. At least I hope so.
Okay, I digress...
I made some biscuits this morning so I could indulge in the boysenberry jam, which made me think about my preferences for other foods that get a dollop of something.
Banana Bread needs strawberry jam.
Blueberry muffins... more blueberry, so I made blueberry jam.  I also like a blueberry sauce on pineapple sherbert.
Cornbread muffins, honey butter.
It's a list, my list of preferences.
And that, my friends, reminded me of all of the accounts of Illya Kuryakin putting strawberry jam in his tea.  I know it's strictly a fanfic thing, because I don't think we ever see Illya drinking tea.  But we know he would have preferred it, at least in the beginning.
So, what other preferences do we see or read concerning Napoleon and Illya? What are the little details about their behavior that had, perhaps, small beginnings but then grew into Fanon, that set of absolutes attributed to the writers of MFU fan fiction?
What are those Little Things that make us love these guys?

Fic: To earn your wings (Heather McNabb, Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin)

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Couple of links to drop at once with this one, since this is a fic with a bit of backstory. When I offered a fic request in a charity auction a while back, the winner asked me for something centering on one of recurring UNCLE staff girls like Sarah Johnson or Heather McNabb, since the those characters have long been a bit of a pet topic of mine (my original post on their roles and all sorts of behind-the-scenes trivia surrounding them blew up to over 4K words in length). I chose Heather McNabb, a recurring communications girl from the first season.

One of the first things we learn about Heather is that she used to be a stewardess–which I wasn't planning on using as a basis for the story, until it dawned on me that an organisation like UNCLE recruiting stewardesses as espionage agents makes a rather beautiful amount of sense. So that got me sidetracked writing up yet another lengthy post of research and meta about the idea, and how it could fit into the background of other recurring characters like Wanda Townsend (and of course Napoleon, who would have to be on board with the plan).

Or, you could just read the fic itself–which turned into the sort of origin story that happens when you take one line of dialogue from the show and get completely carried away. It's on AO3 at the link below.

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Title: To earn your wings
Characters: Heather McNabb, Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin
Rating: PG
Word Count: 7041
Summary:

Heather McNabb's career as an airline hostess comes to an end in much the usual manner: she meets a man.

(Two men, really, though not at once, and she wouldn't know it until later—but that's getting ahead of the story.)

Huge thanks to Tallihensia for the original request, and to hypatia_66 for betaing for me.

Spring Round Robin - Round 2

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

Tomorrow we have the first entry in our second round of The You Don't Have A Partner Affair, the Spring Round Robin.
We're going to stay with our original order of writers, so as a reminder to everyone, you can see it below.  For anyone still interested but who hasn't signed up, it's not too late to join us for this event.
Please try to not be longer than two days posting your chapter, and as a courtesy to everyone, please message the next writer when you post.
jantojones
glennagirl
alynwa
jkkitty
mrua7
sidhe_uaine42
ssclassof56