9 ways to annoy a KGB Agent

1. Stare- She always made a point of looking at him until he couldn't stand it anymore and made eye contact. It was Gaby's version of a staring contest. The longest one lasted 34 minutes, and when he finally looked up, she jumped off the couch and kissed him square on the lips, before running out of the room. He smiled to himself when he knew she was gone.

2. Sing- Gaby was not a particularly good singer, but she tended to hum to herself when she was tinkering on something. Illya was constantly asking her to be quiet when they were on a mission, but when he woke with nightmares and she hummed him back to sleep, he never said a word.

3. Radios- The radio was a tool for the KGB, a way to send information. Music in Russia was elegant and elaborate. Whenever she was annoyed with him ignoring her, she would always turn on the radio a little too loudly. In less than a minute, he was out of his chair. Another minute and the radio was usually off. A minute after that, her shirt was off and he was far from ignoring her.

4. Dancing- She knew he didn't dance, so every time they had a mission in a club, she would make her way to the dance floor. Finding a partner would have been easy, but she didn't want anyone to get hurt. She could feel his eyes on her as she moved. He glared when she caught his eye. He grumbled about everything from the noise to the price of drinks when she finally came to sit with him, but he always went with her, even if it wasn't strictly necessary.

5. Drinking- Every night when they got back to the suite she would fix herself a drink. Sometimes it was a Gin and tonic, sometimes vodka on the rocks, sometimes just a glass of ice cold water. She always offered to make him something as well, but he always declined with a curt jerk of his head. She knew he didn't approve of her habit of self medicating with liquor, but what she didn't know was that he equally hated that hollow look in her eyes when the past caught up to them every now and then. If he had to choose, as he had one night when her hands were shaking so badly that she couldn't fix the drink on her own, he would choose for her to be able to sleep peacefully. Even if it was Stolli that chased away her nightmares.

6. Clothes- As a girl raised as a boy in East Germany, Gaby didn't really care about clothes. Their functionality and stain resistance were her main concerns. When she started her life as a spy, things changed a bit. She saw the necessity of looking the part. Still, if she had her choice, she was happiest in comfortable clothes. A nice breathable cotton was her first choice when she opened a closet. If said cotton happened to Illya's undershirt that fell mid-thigh on her, well that was just the way it went. The first time he saw that she had "borrowed" his shirt, he had raised a fuss, but every time after he had merely rolled his eyes.

7. Food- For a KGB agent food was fuel. They were trained to consume optimized nutrition, and to be able to go without food for days if a mission demanded it. For Gaby, food was a defiance. She couldn't control many things in her life, but the government couldn't take away the enjoyment she got from a piece of dark chocolate, a good beer or a strong cup of coffee. When she ate, it was for the enjoyment of it. Illya was forever pushing her to eat more vegetables, while glaring at Solo who piled her plates with desserts just to watch her face as she ate them.

8. Clutter- The longer they spent together, the more she learned about him. She didn't always do things just to annoy him, but some times she couldn't resist. Annoying him was a way to provoke a reaction without having to pay for a room full of furniture. So when she figured out that he was a bit obsessive about everything being in it's place, she tried to keep her space clean as well, except when she didn't. Like when he said something unnecessarily slighting in front of a mark. She said nothing at the time, but when they got back to the hotel room, she left the lid off the decanter of gin, left her wet towel on the bathroom floor, and her socks balled up by the couch. Then she counted the number of times he glared at said items, before finally cleaning them up. When he turned to say something, she raised a challenging eyebrow.

"I apologize for my rudeness earlier," he said in a measured tone.

"I accept your apology," she replied, with a grin. Who said you couldn't teach an old bear new tricks.

9. Talking (or Not)- KGB Agents are trained not to talk. Many are given a special device to ensure they don't talk. So it came as a surprise to Gaby that her silence bothered Illya more than her chatter. Surely, at first, the opposite had been true, but the longer they spent together, the more he came to rely on her tendency to say whatever popped into her head. Her silence and stiff expressionless face was a sure bet that something was wrong. Very wrong. On the third day in a row she had been almost completely silent he cracked.

"Did I do something, Mllaya Moyna?" He asked nervously.

She looked up at him, clearly confused.

"You are not talking," he explained

When her face dropped to the emotionless mask again, he knew something was truly wrong.

"Gabriella?"

She heaved a sigh. "I didn't mean to worry you, schatz. Yesterday was my Oma's birthday, and I have just been thinking of her lately."

"Will you tell me about her?" Illya asked, knowing that Gaby's grandmother had been one of the few people Gaby could have counted on before her death. She slowly began to tell him about her beloved Oma. When she was done, he shared some memories of his own Babushka. For a man who didn't like to talk about his past, he had to admit that it didn't annoy him one bit, when the one listening was a little german chop shop girl.