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NS: Of Christmas Present

This is a very short and rather chilly winter tale. And it definitely belongs in the post of Christmas present. I hope you find it warms you!

Of Christmas Present

By Rebelcat

This is not the worst Christmas ever.

The worst Christmas ever would be Bodie, looking in the wrong direction entirely, coming around the shipping crates with his gun drawn and his head turtled down in his coat collar as if he’s anticipating twin barrels of buckshot between his shoulder blades.

It would be not seeing fuck-face – correction, Gerald Darby – coming up behind Bodie with his shotgun raised.

There’s no time to shout, no time to draw a gun, no time to do anything but leap, grabbing Darby around the waist, knocking him off his feet as the shotgun discharges with a deafening crack and boom.

The worst Christmas ever would be doing all that, and still seeing Bodie taken down, just as you know will happen eventually. Unless you're killed first, which you’re ashamed to admit is unquestionably the way you’d prefer it these days.

But not today. Today you hit the dock, rolling with a grunt and a gasp as Darby’s boot lands in your ribs, and suddenly the ground beneath you vanishes and there’s no time to think anything but oh shit a fraction of a second before you hit the water.

It’s cold. Soddin’ hell, it’s cold. It feels like a fist in the solar plexus, knocks the air right out of you and you can’t even scream.

But you can fight. You’ve got to. Fuck-face is wrapped around you like a bloody octopus, dragging you down. Just before the water closes over your head you catch one last glimpse of him, his mouth wide open, his eyes terrified. It’s not black down here. It’s dark green, and endless, and the light is attenuated, filtering into eternity. Bastard’s too heavy...

You hurt him. You break something in his hand and he lets you go. You use the top of his head to push yourself up toward the surface. You’re not feeling the cold now. You’re not feeling anything. You haven’t got a body. All you are is a pair of lungs squeezed in a vice, struggling futilely for air. Your ears are roaring and you realize there’s black down here after all. It’s on the periphery of your vision and moving closer with each passing second.

Then you feel a hand grasp yours and suddenly you’re out of the water, and you realize with a vague sense of astonishment that this isn’t going to be your last Christmas after all.

It might still end up being your worst Christmas, though. Because the air that you craved so desperately just a few minutes earlier turns out not to be your friend. It stabs your lungs with ice cold knives, leaving you on your knees, gasping and retching, forehead pressed to the concrete of the dock. You’re so miserable, you're not even grateful when Bodie hauls you back, saves you from landing face first in your own vomit.

Instead, you decide you hate him. Stupid bastard. Can’t even watch his own back. It’s his fault you ended up in the water. You’d tell him that, too, if you hadn’t just started shaking so hard it’s a miracle you can manage more than a handful of one syllable imprecations.

Git. Berk. Sod.

That last one is hard to say. Leaves you hissing like a tea kettle, and you wait for him to laugh. To say something. Prove what a bastard he really is.

But he ignores you, heaving you up off the ground instead. Before you know it, you’ve been wrapped in a blanket and bundled into the car. You’re vaguely aware of him on the R/T, his voice clipped and impatient, but you’re not interested in the words. The car heater is on now, blowing in your face and it feels like your skin is on fire.

Fire and ice. Outside, the sky is that impossibly bright blue that you only see on the coldest of days, and there are frost crystals forming on the windows of the car. You can see Darby, floating face down just below the surface of the water. Dead. You don't care.

Time telescopes. An eternity of shivering is crammed into the blink of an eye. You watch Bodie giving the coppers their orders. A meat wagon shows up, and then an ambulance. The doctor opens the door of your car, letting in the cold air, and you tell him exactly what you think of that, in small, easy to pronounce words of Anglo-Saxon origin.

He doesn’t take you any more seriously than Bodie did. But he’s got less right, and by the time he’s finished with his examination you’re ready to feed him his own head. When he recommends that you go to the hospital overnight for observation, you flatly refuse. You’re going home to your own dry clothes and your own warm bed. You’re going home if you have to drive there yourself, if you have to walk, if you have to drag yourself by the fingernails...

Bodie interrupts, possibly saving the doctor’s life. He’ll drive you. Instead of being grateful, you growl at him. And instead of getting shirty with you, the way you deserve, he gives you a brilliant smile.

It’s not far, but it’s far enough. Your skin is crawling, your head hurts, your muscles ache, and you finally know what they mean when they say, “Chilled to the bone.” Bodie is still grinning like a fool, and something about his glee must be contagious because you decide that maybe you don’t hate him after all. Just as long as he doesn’t say anything stupid.

Shockingly, he doesn’t.

He stops in front of your flat, and you're concentrating so hard on getting out of the car without falling on your face that you almost miss that moment of hesitation. He’s standing within arm’s reach, poised to grab you at the first sign you’re about to topple over. Your initial impulse is to chase him off, tell him to go home, leave you alone. All you want is to go inside and bury yourself under blankets until you feel better. But something in his face makes you stop.

He’s expecting you to react like this.

That alone is enough to make you change your mind. You’re not just being contrary, either. If anyone has the right...

Without saying a word, you hand him the keys. He unlocks the door, and resets the alarms while you disappear into the bathroom.

You decide a shower would be warmer than a bath. You start the water, step in, and immediately start swearing at the heat, trying to turn it down to something reasonable before your skin is scalded half off. Fucking water heater must be on the blink.

Bodie strolls in without knocking and sticks his hand under the water. He’s laughing as he tells you it’s hardly lukewarm. And then his eyes track down, and he smirks, telling you too that your reputation would be ruined if anyone saw...

Macklin would be proud. You peg him right between the eyes with the soap. Perfect aim. Bodie takes off before you can find any more projectiles to pitch at him.

The shock of the warm water on your frozen skin changes to blissful appreciation as your body adapts to the temperature change. You turn up the heat by slow degrees, keeping it just on the edge of tolerable. The chill in your bones eases, replaced by an exhaustion so deep that you feel like you might fall asleep standing up. You’re actually leaning against the wall with your eyes closed when Bodie comes back to tell you that there’s hot soup waiting.

You’re not sure where you muster the energy to pull on the tracksuit he leaves over the sink. Maybe some of it comes from Bodie, since he seems to have plenty to spare. This is a happy Bodie, a bouncing Bodie, clattering around your kitchen. You’re vaguely aware that there’s something strange about that... but you’re too tired to try and work it out now. You sit down heavily on the chair by the kitchen table and prop your head up on your arm to watch him while you eat.

You don’t remember closing your eyes, but suddenly you're falling. You start awake, and your hand slams down on the table, catching the edge of the soup bowl. Hot soup splashes across the table and you yelp.

You feel ridiculously close to tears. Big, tough CI5 agent – crying over spilt soup… You can’t handle this right now. You’re too tired and your emotions are too raw, too near the surface. But Bodie is there, hustling you out of your chair and into bed before you can make a complete arse of yourself.

Going to bed fully clothed has never felt so good, and the weight of the extra blankets Bodie heaps on the bed is heaven. There’s still something nagging at the back of your mind though, something you ought to know. But your thoughts are muddled, all over the place. The only constant in all the chaos is Bodie.

If only you could work out why.

When you open your eyes again the room is dark. The silence outside makes you think it’s either very late or extremely early. There's a sour taste in your mouth, and a pressure in your bladder, telling you that you’ve been asleep for a long time.

You sit up, groaning. You feel like you’ve been run through a mincer and pieced back together with brown paper and tape. But your head is finally clear for the first time since you fell off the pier.

It scares you half to death when Bodie suddenly asks if you’re okay. He's sitting in the chair by the bed. If you thought about it at all, you thought he'd go home, not spend all night watching you sleep. And from the rough gravel of his voice he’s mostly asleep himself.

It’s the sound of that voice that decides you. Never mind the sofa downstairs. You give him hell for sleeping in the chair, and then order him into your own bed. He must be exhausted, because he doesn’t protest. Doesn’t even joke about sleeping with strange men. Just climbs in and pulls the covers up.

By the time you stagger back from the bathroom, he’s fast asleep. Moved by some impulse you’re too tired to examine, you sit on the edge of the bed and take a good long look.

Bodie is lying on his side with the blankets pulled up to his ears. One hand is tucked under the pillow, and the other is covering his eyes, his thumb resting on his temple and his fingers splayed across his forehead.

It’s a curious gesture. Was he shielding his eyes against the light from the hallway, when unconsciousness took him?

In the dark, it’s easier to see the shapes of things, without all the distracting details. Bits and pieces of the day begin to fit together. The warmth of his hands, when he pulled you up from the cold ground. The way he kept glancing at you on the drive home, and the brilliance of his grin whenever you caught him at it. The flicker of heat in his eyes when he’d interrupted you in the shower...

Yeah, that last. That's it.

You’re not sure what you think about it. Not yet. But you do know one thing for sure. This is not the worst Christmas ever.

It might even be the best.

~end~

Title: Of Christmas Present

Author: Rebelcat

Slash or Gen: Pre-slash, I hope!

Archive at ProsLib/Circuit/Hatstand: Yes, please!

Disclaimer: They ain’t mine.

Notes: Thanks are owed both to Slanted Light who beta’d this, and Izzie who continues to help me sound somewhat less Canadian when I'm trying to write Pros.

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Lovely! The second person and present tense bring a real immediacy to the telling. And I'm a complete sucker for stories of Bodie looking after Doyle.

Let's hear it for Canadian Pros writers. *g*

I second the Canadian Pros writers thingie - yeay!

Thank you! I was getting my h/c fix when I wrote it. It's the comfort I love best of all in that genre, and I think Bodie does it well. :-)

Ah, very nice. A good feeling of the care & handling of one Ray Doyle by WAP Bodie. You could feel the cold and the ache, and the delicious warmth as Ray slowly thaws & figures out what's going on. Thanks!

You're welcome! And thank you for the comment - this was another of those nerve wracking sorts of stories where I wasn't sure if the tense choice would work at all. I'm so glad it was effective for you!

Terrific, it was just like I was there and watched. Thank you :)

Oh good! That's the effect I was trying for. I'm glad it worked for you!

That was fantastic! I loved your depiction of the Lads.

Thanks! Glad you liked it! :-)

Wonderful Rebel, you took an almost impossible grammatical convention - second person present tense -and wound a marvellous fic around it. Really felt the cold - and care - of one Ray Doyle here, and you set up a very sequel friendly vibe here, too. (hint, hint)*g*

One small thing, I think the second 'worse' should be 'worst', the superlative?

Loved lots of bits, but my favourite line was this, you describe the chattering teeth perfectly!

Sod.

That last one is hard to say. Leaves you hissing like a tea kettle,

Ack! A typo! I read it over I don't know how many times, and one pops up right in the second sentance!

Thank you SO much for pointing that out. I've gone and fixed it. :-)

I don't seem to be much good at writing actual sequels to anything. This one started off life as a sequel to "Present Company" - my Halloween fic - and then any reference to the previous story just disappeared. But in my mind, that's what it is!

And thank you also for letting me know that you think the grammar worked (or at least was readable!). It was an experiment in language and I was very nervous about posting it. Slanted Light and Izzie were incredibly reassuring in that respect, but I still wasn't convinced it was really doable like this.

I'm glad it seems to have worked!

Delightful. Bodie all full of glee after near misses or being worried is just SO BODIE (like in Slush Fund, for example, when he picks Doyle up by the side of the road).

I confess to being wary of second person present as so often it falls on its face - but this didn't.

And yeah, Bodie as the 'only constant'. So very much how I see the way Doyle feels about Bodie.

Fun. Thanks!

You're welcome! This was an experiment with language, and I came awfully close to chickening out and making it something more respectable - like third person. But Slanted Light helped a lot in sorting out the beginning where I'd managed to muck up my tenses rather spectacularly, and couldn't quite figure out how to dig myself out of that hole.

Needed my hand held on this one, basically. So I'm really proud of how it's turned out!

And I do love a gleeful Bodie, too. ;-)

I love experiments, and indulge in them a lot... with mixed success, in both my opinion and readers'. Heh. But yeah, a good beta (and Slanted Light is a really good 'un - she did my last one) can be a great sounding board for the more... experimental experiments ;)

The trickiest thing I've edited in ages was, I think one (not Pros)story in... second person FUTURE. With sort-of-flashbacks. That nearly blew both our minds - and both the writer and I are supposedly pro editors *g*. But hey, if nobody experimented it'd be a real shame, I think.

In one relatively new fandom (Supernatural), I'd say a HUGE majority of it is in the present tense, and I'm not sure if this is because of a few writers starting it and others following, or what. From discussion on some Pros forum or other (Pros-Lit? Can't remember) a whole lot of people were convinced it was 'rarely done well'. Maybe because traditionally, I think, relatively few Pros stories have been in the present tense although I seem to be seeing more and more.

And now I'm waffling and avoiding work. There's no bore like an editor getting onto favourite topics like tenses and... yeah.

Um - can I add you to my flist? Feel free to do likewise :)

Oh sure, go right ahead! I've actually never looked at my flist - I'll have to check it out some time. I don't use my journal for anything at the moment.

Anyway, I think tenses are absolutely fascinating! Not boring at all. Second person future, hey? With flashbacks? Wow... Is it online? Even if it's not Pros, I'd still be interested in checking it out purely from a literary pov.

Definitely a cyber pat on the back for this one! It works fantastically well :)

Thanks! :-)

Oh, this is nice; h/c that doesn't go all drippy (well, only in the necessary watery sense - brrr, the shock of that cold). I'm a sucker for this kind of doing-all-the-right-things-without-making-a-fuss-about-it comfort that suits Bodie so well. Not to mention that bouncy, exuberant relief that Doyle's okay. And I like Doyle's very reasonable total absorption in his physical misery and then the dawning realisation of what's going on around him as he starts to feel human again. Nice restrained ending, too. Thank you!

Hee! You said, "Drippy!" :-D

When I originally told my husband that I'd dumped Doyle in freezing water he gave me a suspicious look and said, "And what? Bodie has to warm him with his body heat?"

"Nah!" I say, "He just wraps him in a blanket and sticks him in a warm car. And then he takes Doyle home to have a hot shower."

"And what?" says my husband, again, still frowning. "Climbs in with him?"

"Nope. Just heats up some soup and leaves warm dry clothes on the sink."

"Oh well, that's okay then!"

My husband is a great one for keeping me from getting too drippy! I'm glad you liked how it turned out!

Ha! I think I love your husband!

Ooh, I like thinking of this as a sequel to your "Present Company"--it fits very nicely. They are making progress! *g* This is nice. I like the way we get glimpses of Bodie's reactions--his clipped tone as he reports in, the glee, the simple act of sitting by the bed all night...lovely. This definitely needs a sequel, though! Perhaps the next challenge...? ;-)

Thanks!

I think it is a sequel to Present Company, actually! Slow and steady progress...

I tried writing a proper sequel to Present Company awhile back, but it turned that out forcing the guys to talk was simply impossible. They just wouldn't! OTOH - I could see going from the events of this story to "The Natural Order of Things", right? So maybe it doesn't need another sequel?

Honestly, I think it's one of those things where I just have to be patient and wait for inspiration.

I'm very happy you're enjoying my stories!

Hey, thanks for the pointer to "The Natural Order of Things"! *g* Well, I'm still catching up on all the wonderful stories that have been written in the last couple of years. I liked that--warm and funny and with enough of an edge to be believable. Thank you!

but it turned that out forcing the guys to talk was simply impossible
Oi! On behalf of slash writers everywhere you have to be firm with them! Where would we (and, more importantly, they) be if none of us could get them to talk because they learned they could get away with it? Eh? You must be firm! ;-)

So maybe it doesn't need another sequel?
Oh, no, if you're going to write entertaining stories then you're just going to have to keep coming up with them. *g* And I think you have a nice challenge sequence going here...and I want to know what happens next! Please?

But, yes, when inspiration strikes. ::sly look:: Go watch some episodes!

The Natural Order of Things was the first Pros fic I ever wrote. The personal challenge for me in that one was to write an explicit sex scene without ever mentioning actual naughty bits by name.

In this one... I don't know if you noticed, but there was no actual dialogue - at least none in quotes. That's how I got around the, "They won't talk!" block. I didn't let them! ;-)

I'm not sure how a sequel would go, though... Present Company was third person present tense. Of Christmas Present was second person present tense. I suppose if I wrote another one it would logically have to be first person present tense, wouldn't it? Or else I'd skip back to third person present tense from Bodie's POV and make it a one-two pattern.

Oi, my head hurts!

Just marvelous! I loved this. I'm a sucker for Doyle hurt/Bodie comfort, so this really scratched my itch. I liked your choice of tense; it pulled me right in to the story, made it feel immediate. You brilliantly conveyed what poor Ray must be going through and gave me enough of Bodie to fill in his part of the tale. Very, very well done. Thank you.

Oh good! I had Bodie's POV in the back of my head while writing this, and was concerned that it wouldn't come through at all. I'm glad you were able to get some sense of it.

It's great to know the tense works for you, as well!

Brilliant, as ever! Must say that although this was a Raymond h/c tale my favourite bit was him looking at Bodie asleep ... one hand tucked under the pillow, the other shading his eyes ... oh, so sweet! I love Bodie asleep, and awake, and half-awake, half-asleep and ... oh you get the picture.

Um... I'm getting the sneaking suspicion you love Bodie? ;-)

Actually, that moment with Ray looking at Bodie was where the story started in my head. Everything else was a process of getting there. I'm glad you liked it!

Very nicely written and enjoyable. I tend to be a bit wary of stories written in the second person present tense as so many fail to engage me, but I was involved in your story before I'd even realised and happily carried on reading to the end.

Thank you! That's great to hear - I was quite nervous about how this would be received. But I wanted to try it, at least once.

I agree with

brenk up above that you captured that gleeful Bodie that we see so often in canon whenever Doyle turns out to be okay. A wonderful story, which I didn't even identify as h/c until someone mentioned it, because the hurt was very gritty and real and not drawn-out, and the comfort was not all goopy and ridiculous but very simple and again, what we see in canon (Bodie watching Doyle's apartment all night in "Hunter Hunted").

Also, I like the way you leave spaces in your story for the reader to fill in. In this case, those spaces come after the end. I love the way you hint at something happening but don't actually go that far. Very subtle. Nice stuff!

Thank you! I've been watching the eps again recently with my MIL, and I was struck by how playful and *happy* they are sometimes. In early second season they really seem to be enjoying their jobs. Most of the time - except when Cowley's setting them up.

I'm glad you liked it!

Loved it. My favourite part of it was this:-

Time telescopes. An eternity of shivering is crammed into the blink of an eye.

Dunno why, I just love the sentence.

Thank you so much! I was trying to get across that weird feeling of time going fast and slow at the same time, the way it does when you're in pain.

I'm glad it worked for you! :-)

Bodie's gleefulness is one of the things I love best in Pros. Your portrayal of both seems to be just so in character for both the Lads. Thanks.

You're welcome! I also like the lads best when they're happy, and interacting with each other!

Lovely, very nicely done, love Bodie's practical caring and Ray accepting it, liked the words in small, easy to pronounce words of Anglo-Saxon origin Ray addresses to the doctor when he opens the car door! And how clearly you have articulated that moment when you find yourself falling asleep over a bowl of soup and jerk awake.
Very enjoyable - hope to read more!

Thank you so much! I really appreciate hearing what you liked about the story. I've been getting very little sleep lately, so it was theraputic in a way to write about exhaustion.

oh not just one but both of them in danger. This was just so perfect thank you so much. Yes, I am a H/C girlie myself. And this was just soo them. Thank you again. *sighs*

I had to pause for a second and think, "Both in danger?" And then it hit me - right, of course, Bodie almost got shot in the back. But, you know, as he'd point out, he never was really in danger as long as Ray was on the job. ;-)

You're welcome, I'm really pleased you enjoyed the story!

Absolutely fantastic! I had to read it twice in a row, just to savor it. Thank you.

Wow - thank you! It's wonderful to hear that the story's worth reading more than once. :-)

Great story Rebelcat! I do so enjoy your stories, you know when you think to yourself ‘oh good, a new story from so and so?’ and settle down happily to read? You are one of the authors I do that with (not that I am calling you ‘so and so’ of course!)

Loved this, think you described the action, the cold and the reaction very well indeed. Thank you!

MB x

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NS: Of Christmas Present

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