Waiting for Mr. Sternmacher

Fanfiction
Title:	Waiting for Mr. Sternmacher
Author(s):	Clare Chew
Date(s):	2003
Length:
Genre:	adult slash
Fandom:	Man from U.N.C.L.E.
External Links:	Incognito ezine (offline, archived)
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Waiting for Mr. Sternmacher is a Man from U.N.C.L.E. short story by Clare Chew.

It was first published in published in the print zine Clandestine Affairs #2, then republished in the e-zine Incognito. It is archived online.

Summary

"Ivan the Musician auditions for the role of his dreams."

Reactions and Reviews

I read this story months ago in the zine Clandestine Affairs 2 and loved it. I was really pleased to see that Clare had put it online as part of the Incognito e-zine project.

It's part of an UNCLE agent's job to role-play. They often have to hide who they are in order to convince people that they're someone else. But what if hiding behind a role became the only way you could find to express your true self, your own desires? What if the only way you could allow yourself to have what you wanted is to pretend to be someone else? This is where Napoleon and Illya find themselves. Just how long can you pretend to be someone else without cracks appearing in the facade?

This story has created more than a little discussion on a list or two about what it means and what it says about Napoleon and Illya. Each reader seems to take away a slightly different take on the story, and isn't that what good fic does? And yet, this is also an incredibly hot story. There's sex, sex, and more sex. Good sex. It's a delight to find a story that can alternately make me ponder the inner workings of Napoleon and Illya while also shorting out my brain with hot sex. This makes this a treasure of a story and one I you'll read more than once.

This is one of my favorite stories. It's well-written and subtle and scorchingly hot. I'm thrilled that she put it online. Great story. Great rec! :)

Glad to see this one rec'd. I think it's one of the best in the fandom, and it gets better with every reading.

This is a long story and RL is particularly busy this month for me. So, I've decided to post this in pieces. Here's the first. Probably two more parts will follow, hopefully sometime in the next week or so.

Although I’ve read a number of interesting and enjoyable slash stories positioned between the two extremes, I have to admit that if I imagine Solo and Kuryakin together in a sexual relationship, it would either be a really big deal or no big deal at all. That is, either because they’re both straight, AND/OR because of the culture and era that surrounds them, AND/OR because of their profession AND/OR Waverly’s disapproval, it would be such a big deal that it wouldn’t happen at all.

Alternatively, either because they’re both gay and/or bi, AND/OR because they live outside the mainstream culture, AND/OR because Waverly is willing to turn a blind eye, they would get together so easily, so matter-of-factly, with the sex becoming simply an extension of their partnership and personal relationship, that it would be really no big deal. [ie: You want to fuck? Do we have time? An hour. Oh, sure. We can do it twice.]

Admittedly, neither one of these positions would deliver much of what I think readers are looking for in a satisfying slash story. Of course, there is another possibility: that a sexual encounter between them was either required or forced and that they simply compartmentalize it afterward. With “Waiting for Mr. Sternmacher,” Clare Chew has come up with an ingenious variation of this third possibility ---ie: compartmentalization. In this story, the sexual relationship is such a big deal that they’ve forced themselves to compartmentalize it so that it’s no big deal and it doesn’t intrude into the regular flow of their lives.

Now, the compartmentalization theme is effective because that’s what folks in espionage (even in real life epionage) do all the time, and in order to survive, they’d better have a talent for it. It’s also effective because there’s a sub-theme here that explores Solo’s character. So, even though the story has a lot of sex, it’s actually, to a large extent, about compartmentalization for the guys in general, and for Solo in particular. These are themes that I find interesting myself, so I’m definitely on board. [see link for more of these extensive comments]