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discoveredinaljMade it! And just before tonight's Pros Watch too! *heaves a sigh of relief*
Happy holidays, everyone - I hope you enjoy this. :)
*slinks away to reward herself with the lads on DVD*
Set directly after the ending of ‘Discovered in a Graveyard’. I am assuming that Doyle was shot sometime in mid-October, and so, basing my calculations on what I understand to be the medical practice of that time, he should have been discharged from the hospital sometime mid-November.
It takes him approximately three minutes and twenty-six seconds to climb the stairs to his newly-assigned first-floor flat.
Too winded to stand, he sits instead on the nearest square of sofa. It is green and white and suspiciously floral, and Doyle is almost grateful for the scratchy and under-stuffed cushions. He spends the next seven and a half minutes listening to the rustlings and a muted thud which echo readily enough from the direction of what he guesses is the bedroom, Bodie putting away the clothes recently collected from the launderette.
When he wakes the flat has regained its silent austerity (the print of his makeshift bed is blurred in the dark, and a woollen blanket weighs heavily on his chest and shoulders). There is a packet of fish and chips on the mantelpiece of the disused fireplace; it is tolerably warm and wrapped in crinkles of brown paper darkened with grease stains. It also obscures a note which he almost misses, telling him that his partner had left for the night and will be back the next morning, Have a good rest sunshine, black inky scrawl on blue-lined notepaper.
Their days instinctively fall into a pattern: breakfast in the morning, a wander about whichever place in (and occasionally out of) London that happens to catch their fancy for the day, lunch and breathing exercises that hurt, fried food and takeaway for dinner, an early night. Bodie is on leave for the first week following Doyle’s discharge, ostensibly for a job well done; Doyle rather suspects it is so that his partner can better keep an eye on him. The other man would have been on leave for the second week too, were it not for a nasty bout of flu which ravages the green-papered corridors of CI5. Cowley’s voice had been tinny as it crackled from the cheap white plastic that is Doyle’s telephone, and Bodie had been left volubly swearing.
On Tuesday Bodie catches him toying with the laces of his running shoes, unworn since the shooting and quite forlorn. The man is suitably horrified, vocally runs through the doctor’s recommendations twice, says, “So don’t you even think of it. Really, Doyle, don’t you even bloody dare.” And Doyle laughs and says he wasn’t going to, not really, and Christ how stupid does Bodie think he is? Less than twenty-four hours later they have an argument, over juice that is too sour or toast that is too burnt, he honestly cannot remember (the clattering of the coffee cups had threatened his nerves and he had just wanted to be alone damn it alone). When Bodie finally leaves with a sharp slam of the door, Doyle finds himself carefully removing his running shoes from their dusty nest on the shoe rack; they are soft and white and very much welcoming, and he takes a great pleasure in tying the laces, neat knots, precise, simply because he couldn’t fucking bend last week to do them but now he can.
Later he will think of the morning as a Bad Idea, the sort of thing mothers cuff their sons on the sides of their heads for.
He almost exclaims with relief when he sees Bodie lounging at the entrance of the nearby park, but the sun is painting white halos at the back of his eyes and every breath is a painful stutter-stutter-stop. When his partner finally speaks it is a jovial Can’t leave you alone for a moment now, can I?, and they spend the next hour or so sitting side-by-side on the nearest park bench, sun-warmed wood hard beneath their thighs and Bodie’s hand rubbing firm circles on his back and chest. That evening Bodie casually mentions staying over, Just in case, sunshine, just in case. By the end of the week the pillow and the folded blanket have become somewhat permanent fixtures at the end of the sofa, though neither of them comments on it.
Their nights settle into something of a ritual too, the night of the Incident (as Bodie had taken to calling the morning’s happenings, spoken with a raised brow and in a voice that is not so much patient amusement than a distinct air of I-told-you-so) setting a precedent. The first time it happens, Doyle almost collapses with relief when he abruptly jerks awake from yet another muzzle-filled nightmare to the instinctively comforting fumblings of tea things and, when he had caught his breath sufficiently to investigate, the sight of Bodie in the kitchen, two cups of tea laid out on the worn and pitted surface of the kitchen counter. As it is, and because the floor looks distinctly cold and hard and quite uncomfortable for collapsing, he elects instead to sink weak-kneed into one of the dining chairs and to watch silently as the other man quietly doctors one of the mugs to his partner’s specifications (three sugars and no milk).
Two nights and a corresponding number of sweat-soaked nightmares later he suggests that the consumption of something a little stronger would probably be more effective, maybe, and makes vague references to the whisky kept in the cupboard which is above and to the right of the sink. “Nothing stronger for you, me lad,” is all Bodie says in reply, “Pills, pills, you know, pills.” Doyle tells him to Ger’off and to Shut it, Bodie, but he continues drinking the cups of Darjeeling and of Earl Grey all the same. The tea is always warm, and for all of five minutes Doyle almost suspects it of being freshly brewed. Then he discards this theory, and its accompanying implication that Bodie spends half the night outside his door just listening for him to stir, because frankly, he finds it difficult to imagine his partner doing that. He doesn’t ask, of course, and if there is any information to be shared, Bodie certainly doesn’t volunteer it either.
(One night he dreams of words whispered into his ear, warm little puffs of air, tiny weights, kisses. When he wakes he finds himself quite alone, and when he emerges from his room he discovers that Bodie has made baked beans on toast to go with the tea.)
In December Bodie wrestles a Christmas tree through his door, six feet of natural pine scattering the floor with green needles which they promptly step on. It is two weeks to Christmas, and they spend the evening unravelling strings of tinsel and clasping intricately-tooled glass baubles of jewelled shades and of gold in reverent hands.
After every ornament is arranged to mutual satisfaction and the requisite slights are exchanged, they curl up at the foot of the tree and with each other, elbows and shoulders and knees brushing and fingers cradling mismatched mugs of hot chocolate. Bodie spikes their steaming drinks with healthy dashes of brandy, and Doyle raises his eyebrows, surprised, but the former only takes a swig from the bottle.“For ’tis Christmas,” he says, managing to sound both pious and regal with a benevolent smile inching its way across his face. Doyle, who has been weaning himself off the painkillers much earlier than the doctors had recommended and who has not taken a single such pill in three days, merely replies, “’Tis.”
It takes three much-petitioned swallows of brandy before Doyle suggests that they do something for Christmas Eve.
“We should do something for Christmas Eve,” is what he says. He addresses this to the pair of golden bells hung on the decorated tree at his present eye-level, eyes carefully focusing on the way his mouth opens-closes-distends on the curved golden surface.
“Together?”
“No, you berk, with your grandmother.”
“You’re sure about that, sunshine? Best I recall, she was nasty work.”
Bodie’s thumb which – Doyle only just realises – has spent the last half an hour absently drawing figures-of-eight on his right arm now pauses mid-loop, and the sense of loss its halt inspires is almost disconcerting. On impulse he suggests something he might never have done under normal circumstances – assisting the luckless agent who had been picked by the very complicated process of drawing straws and tasked with organisng the year’s CI5 Christmas bash. “Ol’ Murph’d be needing all the help he can get. Can barely tie his own bootlaces together, that git, never mind the ribbons of all those pressies.”
Bodie’s snort by his ear is audible even over the ring on, ring out drone of Jethro Tull’s ‘Solstice Bells’ piped from the flat below. “He has Susie to help him, doesn’t he? A good lass, is our Susan. ’Sides, I’ve that job in Bristol, remember? Cowley’s orders and all.”
“C’mon, Bodie! The Cow said it’d end by Christmas Eve. Is it a bird? You holding back on me, mate?”
“No birds, Ray. And the Cow didn’t say it’d end by Christmas Eve, he said it might. Two weeks of roughin’ it out, no creature comforts, Mac and Lucas both day and night…” And here a jaw-cracking yawn. “Bloody knackered, sunshine. See you at Murph’s Christmas do, yea?”
Doyle is careful to coax to his lips into something of a smile as he sees his apologetic partner to the door five minutes later; on hindsight he will think it looks more of a grimace. The sudden absence of Bodie’s arm across his shoulders after a night with leaves him feeling oddly naked and exposed, even though he does manage to wrangle from the yawning man a pair of dates of when the latter will be dropping by London to deliver the ongoing reports.
In the end it is Murphy the Hapless Host who proves to be a somewhat unexpected, albeit very much appreciated, source of information. The day before Bodie’s second drop-by date, the taller agent attempts to railroad Doyle into helping with the party preparations and before explaining in the same breath why Bodie is to be spared. A spot of judicious pressing reveals that while it is entirely possible that job at Bristol will extend past Christmas, his unavailability seemed more to do with the fact that Bodie had recently visited Keller in prison twice, once before Bristol and another when he dropped his first report off with Betty, Yes he really did think so, and Oh, Didn’t Doyle know?
Doyle will spend the next three hours feeling strangely ill and out of sorts, until the first buds of a plan begin to unfurl in his mind. (He blames the roiling of his gut on breakfast, toast and tea because Bodie hasn’t been back for four days straight, rendering the putting in of any effort into the meal superfluous, and the bread must have been stale, really, it must have been.) Then he will find himself wishing that he were well enough to shoot on the firing range, if only for the satisfaction of imagining every paper target he fires at to be his damnable partner or an increasingly smug Keller. He had loathed that arrogant bastard from the very start anyway.
The next day it is sunny, if cold. Doyle feels strangely overexposed in the thin blue and white sunlight as he stands at the entrance of the quaint gingerbread five-storey which houses Bodie’s flat, though in actual fact the only eyes watching him are those of a flock of pigeons on a neighbouring roof and a squirrel at the foot of a tree. Almost surreptitiously he produces a key, the one Bodie had foolishly given him months ago and which he has since used to regularly cadge milk and bread and eggs and sugar, not to mention the occasional whisky and butter and beer. The quiet snick in the lock is almost satisfying.
Inside the flat is dusty, its air stale. He moves ghost-like from one room to the other, carefully considering every other inch of space as a potential hiding place before discarding it. Eventually he finds something he suspects might be of use, a telephone number and a 24th scribbled on the back of a Sainsbury’s receipt beside the telephone, blue ink bright against its background of curling white. It takes him all of five seconds to hastily copy it. Afterwards he will feel somewhat guilty, and he will proceed to give his partner’s flat a light cleaning, opening windows to air stuffy rooms and neatening any signs he finds of a hasty packing and departure (a pair of trousers and two polonecks on the bed, a drawer six inches open). At night he discovers that the bed is surprisingly comfortable, cotton crisp and the pillows soft and smelling distinctively of minty aftershave and of Bodie.
Eight o’clock the following morning greets Doyle with a Bodie barrelling through the front door, making him jump. The next thirteen seconds are spent in awkward silence and heavy breathing before Bodie visibly relaxes, air expelling from mouth throat and lungs in a whoosh. “Christ, mate, thought you’d be at your flat or summat, this early in the morning and all. Ran out of food without me to do your shopping for you, eh?”
“And good morning to you too, sunshine. Reckon they don’t teach manners in Bristol. Pity.” This is said over the rattle of the frying pan as it knocks against the kitchen counter and a plate.
“Ah Ray, Ray, me lad. Is this the way you greet yer mates? Wouldn’t know manners if it bit you on your arse.” Then Bodie notices the breakfast fry-up, scrambled eggs and sausages and bacon, and toast, and his eyes go round, a prophet receiving a benediction from the Lord. He says, “Doyle, I think I fucking love you,” and for a moment Doyle’s heart begins to pound so hard he has to sit down for a bit opposite the clink of cutlery on chipped china, and he thinks, he thinks, he may have exerted himself in the kitchen a little too much.
Christmas Eve is cold and wet, the teal-grey sky having confused snowfall with sheets of rain.
Doyle is careful to check the faded lettering of the rain-blurred street sign before he laboriously unbends his body from the interior of the cab, stepping onto the pavement and into an inconveniently-placed puddle with a rather alarming splash. One of his old mates still on the Force had helped him obtain the Southern London address from the telephone number he had copied, and he experimentally inhales three breaths of dust and air before he begins to climb the rickety stairs of the genteel-shabby block of flats.
The door he stops at is no different from the others he has passed, warm cherry wood and gold numbering smudged with the remnants of fingerprints. The knocker, when raised and allowed to fall, produces a satisfyingly loud thunk which echoes down the otherwise empty corridor, abruptly cutting short two sets of muffled laughter (one is masculine and full-bodied – Bodie’s, he thinks – and the other noticeably female but oddly harsh). There is the click of a peephole cover, and Doyle finds himself standing face to face with a frowning Bodie who digs his nails into his arm and all but drags him across the doorway.
Inside, Doyle finds four chairs comfortably grouped around a wrought-iron table, chocolate biscuits on a plate and two cups of milky tea, and an old lady comfortably nestled in a wing-tip chair. “Mrs Keller, this is Ray Doyle, my partner at work,” Bodie is saying; his voice cheerful enough. “I think something must have come up, for him to have come here. Doyle, this is Mrs Keller.”
(Bodie’s voice is also completely at odds with the furrow between his brows, and Doyle finds himself clenching his fists in a bid to resist smoothing the flesh-lined crease with his thumb.)
“Hello, Ray. Are you a friend of Jimmy’s too?” Her voice is hoarse, somewhat trembly, though her smile seems genuine enough. Now that he is nearer, Doyle finds his gaze inevitably straying to the frosted sugar cataracts of her eyes, pale blue-grey like her son’s and with the vacant stare of the blind. It takes him a while before he is able to unstick his tongue and to say something kind, patting her hand gently as she tells him what a marvellous lad William is, really, used to visit her now and then with Jimmy and has just dropped by once again to see how she is doing, what with Jimmy away in Italy and quite busy, sensitive government work you know, mustn’t interfere. Bodie’s fingers are a painful grip-vice on his left shoulder.
They leave the flat together shortly after.
Outside they stand for a moment under the scant shelter of the brick overhang above the entrance to the building. When Bodie discovers that Doyle had taken a cab (his chest still ached sufficiently to make the motions of driving painful) and is consequently without any alternative means of transport he tells him to Get in the car Doyle now please now.
The ride back to Doyle’s flat is a silent one, and uncomfortable, no amount of fiddling able to convince the heater of the Capri to work as it should. It takes thirteen minutes of sitting in an idling Capri at the end of the journey and three not-so-discrete coughs from his partner before Doyle apologises, and Bodie kisses him.
The first kiss is clumsy, as first kisses usually are, and chaste: a tentative meeting dry and chapped lips, a greeting sort of hello, the awkward bumping of noses, ouch Bodie, Christ. The second is an improvement, pink tongue flicking against the white of teeth and the red of a palate, tiny whimpers and a sigh. Doyle tells himself to stop analysing when the third eventually drifts around, and his mind is more than happy to comply.
Bodie’s smile is almost serene when they finally part, blue eyes half-lidded and the corners of his lips curling. “You needn’t have been all suspicious,” he says. “I already knew.”
“Knew?”
“About us, sunshine.” A kiss to his cheek, lips red and pursed and bud-like. “Loyal to a fault I am, I’ll have ye know.”
“Could have told me, you bastard.”
“Oh, but I did.” The tip of his tongue paints a butterfly’s trail to Doyle’s jaw. “Quite a while back too, mind.”
“What did you say?”
“Ah, but it wasn’t what I said.”
It takes another five minutes of staring and some rather breathless persuasion on Doyle’s part before Bodie finally relents, his grin flashing white in the streetlamp-lit gloom.
“Go up, to your flat. In the cigar box, on your mantelpiece.” A nip on his ear now, soft and gentle and loving and warm. “You have five minutes before we head for Murph’s.”
The ghost of Bodie’s hand on his arse follows him to the ground-floor stairs.
This is what Doyle will remember of the next five minutes: There are twelve steps to the half-landing, eleven more to his door, and he climbs each of them with a dusty click of boot heels on worn concrete. It takes him two tries to open his door, the creases of his hands damp. Another seven strides brings him to the mantelpiece, and without thinking he prises the cigar box open and breathlessly tips its contents into his palm. For a moment the key seems strangely heavy for his size, its teeth biting into the tips of his fingers as he carefully curls them around it; Bodie had given it to him when he had moved to his present flat four months ago and Doyle had taken one look at the old Victorian-esque interior and said What a fine place this is, Master Bodie, now where is the mistress of the house and is she going to take our coats? Then he is uncurling his fingers again, tilting his palm this and that; when the metal catches the light of the street lamp it glows faded yellow and pale gold.
********
Happy holidays, everyone - I hope you enjoy this. :)
*slinks away to reward herself with the lads on DVD*
Set directly after the ending of ‘Discovered in a Graveyard’. I am assuming that Doyle was shot sometime in mid-October, and so, basing my calculations on what I understand to be the medical practice of that time, he should have been discharged from the hospital sometime mid-November.
It takes him approximately three minutes and twenty-six seconds to climb the stairs to his newly-assigned first-floor flat.
Too winded to stand, he sits instead on the nearest square of sofa. It is green and white and suspiciously floral, and Doyle is almost grateful for the scratchy and under-stuffed cushions. He spends the next seven and a half minutes listening to the rustlings and a muted thud which echo readily enough from the direction of what he guesses is the bedroom, Bodie putting away the clothes recently collected from the launderette.
When he wakes the flat has regained its silent austerity (the print of his makeshift bed is blurred in the dark, and a woollen blanket weighs heavily on his chest and shoulders). There is a packet of fish and chips on the mantelpiece of the disused fireplace; it is tolerably warm and wrapped in crinkles of brown paper darkened with grease stains. It also obscures a note which he almost misses, telling him that his partner had left for the night and will be back the next morning, Have a good rest sunshine, black inky scrawl on blue-lined notepaper.
=-=-=-=
Their days instinctively fall into a pattern: breakfast in the morning, a wander about whichever place in (and occasionally out of) London that happens to catch their fancy for the day, lunch and breathing exercises that hurt, fried food and takeaway for dinner, an early night. Bodie is on leave for the first week following Doyle’s discharge, ostensibly for a job well done; Doyle rather suspects it is so that his partner can better keep an eye on him. The other man would have been on leave for the second week too, were it not for a nasty bout of flu which ravages the green-papered corridors of CI5. Cowley’s voice had been tinny as it crackled from the cheap white plastic that is Doyle’s telephone, and Bodie had been left volubly swearing.
On Tuesday Bodie catches him toying with the laces of his running shoes, unworn since the shooting and quite forlorn. The man is suitably horrified, vocally runs through the doctor’s recommendations twice, says, “So don’t you even think of it. Really, Doyle, don’t you even bloody dare.” And Doyle laughs and says he wasn’t going to, not really, and Christ how stupid does Bodie think he is? Less than twenty-four hours later they have an argument, over juice that is too sour or toast that is too burnt, he honestly cannot remember (the clattering of the coffee cups had threatened his nerves and he had just wanted to be alone damn it alone). When Bodie finally leaves with a sharp slam of the door, Doyle finds himself carefully removing his running shoes from their dusty nest on the shoe rack; they are soft and white and very much welcoming, and he takes a great pleasure in tying the laces, neat knots, precise, simply because he couldn’t fucking bend last week to do them but now he can.
Later he will think of the morning as a Bad Idea, the sort of thing mothers cuff their sons on the sides of their heads for.
He almost exclaims with relief when he sees Bodie lounging at the entrance of the nearby park, but the sun is painting white halos at the back of his eyes and every breath is a painful stutter-stutter-stop. When his partner finally speaks it is a jovial Can’t leave you alone for a moment now, can I?, and they spend the next hour or so sitting side-by-side on the nearest park bench, sun-warmed wood hard beneath their thighs and Bodie’s hand rubbing firm circles on his back and chest. That evening Bodie casually mentions staying over, Just in case, sunshine, just in case. By the end of the week the pillow and the folded blanket have become somewhat permanent fixtures at the end of the sofa, though neither of them comments on it.
Their nights settle into something of a ritual too, the night of the Incident (as Bodie had taken to calling the morning’s happenings, spoken with a raised brow and in a voice that is not so much patient amusement than a distinct air of I-told-you-so) setting a precedent. The first time it happens, Doyle almost collapses with relief when he abruptly jerks awake from yet another muzzle-filled nightmare to the instinctively comforting fumblings of tea things and, when he had caught his breath sufficiently to investigate, the sight of Bodie in the kitchen, two cups of tea laid out on the worn and pitted surface of the kitchen counter. As it is, and because the floor looks distinctly cold and hard and quite uncomfortable for collapsing, he elects instead to sink weak-kneed into one of the dining chairs and to watch silently as the other man quietly doctors one of the mugs to his partner’s specifications (three sugars and no milk).
Two nights and a corresponding number of sweat-soaked nightmares later he suggests that the consumption of something a little stronger would probably be more effective, maybe, and makes vague references to the whisky kept in the cupboard which is above and to the right of the sink. “Nothing stronger for you, me lad,” is all Bodie says in reply, “Pills, pills, you know, pills.” Doyle tells him to Ger’off and to Shut it, Bodie, but he continues drinking the cups of Darjeeling and of Earl Grey all the same. The tea is always warm, and for all of five minutes Doyle almost suspects it of being freshly brewed. Then he discards this theory, and its accompanying implication that Bodie spends half the night outside his door just listening for him to stir, because frankly, he finds it difficult to imagine his partner doing that. He doesn’t ask, of course, and if there is any information to be shared, Bodie certainly doesn’t volunteer it either.
(One night he dreams of words whispered into his ear, warm little puffs of air, tiny weights, kisses. When he wakes he finds himself quite alone, and when he emerges from his room he discovers that Bodie has made baked beans on toast to go with the tea.)
=-=-=-=
In December Bodie wrestles a Christmas tree through his door, six feet of natural pine scattering the floor with green needles which they promptly step on. It is two weeks to Christmas, and they spend the evening unravelling strings of tinsel and clasping intricately-tooled glass baubles of jewelled shades and of gold in reverent hands.
After every ornament is arranged to mutual satisfaction and the requisite slights are exchanged, they curl up at the foot of the tree and with each other, elbows and shoulders and knees brushing and fingers cradling mismatched mugs of hot chocolate. Bodie spikes their steaming drinks with healthy dashes of brandy, and Doyle raises his eyebrows, surprised, but the former only takes a swig from the bottle.“For ’tis Christmas,” he says, managing to sound both pious and regal with a benevolent smile inching its way across his face. Doyle, who has been weaning himself off the painkillers much earlier than the doctors had recommended and who has not taken a single such pill in three days, merely replies, “’Tis.”
It takes three much-petitioned swallows of brandy before Doyle suggests that they do something for Christmas Eve.
“We should do something for Christmas Eve,” is what he says. He addresses this to the pair of golden bells hung on the decorated tree at his present eye-level, eyes carefully focusing on the way his mouth opens-closes-distends on the curved golden surface.
“Together?”
“No, you berk, with your grandmother.”
“You’re sure about that, sunshine? Best I recall, she was nasty work.”
Bodie’s thumb which – Doyle only just realises – has spent the last half an hour absently drawing figures-of-eight on his right arm now pauses mid-loop, and the sense of loss its halt inspires is almost disconcerting. On impulse he suggests something he might never have done under normal circumstances – assisting the luckless agent who had been picked by the very complicated process of drawing straws and tasked with organisng the year’s CI5 Christmas bash. “Ol’ Murph’d be needing all the help he can get. Can barely tie his own bootlaces together, that git, never mind the ribbons of all those pressies.”
Bodie’s snort by his ear is audible even over the ring on, ring out drone of Jethro Tull’s ‘Solstice Bells’ piped from the flat below. “He has Susie to help him, doesn’t he? A good lass, is our Susan. ’Sides, I’ve that job in Bristol, remember? Cowley’s orders and all.”
“C’mon, Bodie! The Cow said it’d end by Christmas Eve. Is it a bird? You holding back on me, mate?”
“No birds, Ray. And the Cow didn’t say it’d end by Christmas Eve, he said it might. Two weeks of roughin’ it out, no creature comforts, Mac and Lucas both day and night…” And here a jaw-cracking yawn. “Bloody knackered, sunshine. See you at Murph’s Christmas do, yea?”
Doyle is careful to coax to his lips into something of a smile as he sees his apologetic partner to the door five minutes later; on hindsight he will think it looks more of a grimace. The sudden absence of Bodie’s arm across his shoulders after a night with leaves him feeling oddly naked and exposed, even though he does manage to wrangle from the yawning man a pair of dates of when the latter will be dropping by London to deliver the ongoing reports.
=-=-=-=
In the end it is Murphy the Hapless Host who proves to be a somewhat unexpected, albeit very much appreciated, source of information. The day before Bodie’s second drop-by date, the taller agent attempts to railroad Doyle into helping with the party preparations and before explaining in the same breath why Bodie is to be spared. A spot of judicious pressing reveals that while it is entirely possible that job at Bristol will extend past Christmas, his unavailability seemed more to do with the fact that Bodie had recently visited Keller in prison twice, once before Bristol and another when he dropped his first report off with Betty, Yes he really did think so, and Oh, Didn’t Doyle know?
Doyle will spend the next three hours feeling strangely ill and out of sorts, until the first buds of a plan begin to unfurl in his mind. (He blames the roiling of his gut on breakfast, toast and tea because Bodie hasn’t been back for four days straight, rendering the putting in of any effort into the meal superfluous, and the bread must have been stale, really, it must have been.) Then he will find himself wishing that he were well enough to shoot on the firing range, if only for the satisfaction of imagining every paper target he fires at to be his damnable partner or an increasingly smug Keller. He had loathed that arrogant bastard from the very start anyway.
The next day it is sunny, if cold. Doyle feels strangely overexposed in the thin blue and white sunlight as he stands at the entrance of the quaint gingerbread five-storey which houses Bodie’s flat, though in actual fact the only eyes watching him are those of a flock of pigeons on a neighbouring roof and a squirrel at the foot of a tree. Almost surreptitiously he produces a key, the one Bodie had foolishly given him months ago and which he has since used to regularly cadge milk and bread and eggs and sugar, not to mention the occasional whisky and butter and beer. The quiet snick in the lock is almost satisfying.
Inside the flat is dusty, its air stale. He moves ghost-like from one room to the other, carefully considering every other inch of space as a potential hiding place before discarding it. Eventually he finds something he suspects might be of use, a telephone number and a 24th scribbled on the back of a Sainsbury’s receipt beside the telephone, blue ink bright against its background of curling white. It takes him all of five seconds to hastily copy it. Afterwards he will feel somewhat guilty, and he will proceed to give his partner’s flat a light cleaning, opening windows to air stuffy rooms and neatening any signs he finds of a hasty packing and departure (a pair of trousers and two polonecks on the bed, a drawer six inches open). At night he discovers that the bed is surprisingly comfortable, cotton crisp and the pillows soft and smelling distinctively of minty aftershave and of Bodie.
Eight o’clock the following morning greets Doyle with a Bodie barrelling through the front door, making him jump. The next thirteen seconds are spent in awkward silence and heavy breathing before Bodie visibly relaxes, air expelling from mouth throat and lungs in a whoosh. “Christ, mate, thought you’d be at your flat or summat, this early in the morning and all. Ran out of food without me to do your shopping for you, eh?”
“And good morning to you too, sunshine. Reckon they don’t teach manners in Bristol. Pity.” This is said over the rattle of the frying pan as it knocks against the kitchen counter and a plate.
“Ah Ray, Ray, me lad. Is this the way you greet yer mates? Wouldn’t know manners if it bit you on your arse.” Then Bodie notices the breakfast fry-up, scrambled eggs and sausages and bacon, and toast, and his eyes go round, a prophet receiving a benediction from the Lord. He says, “Doyle, I think I fucking love you,” and for a moment Doyle’s heart begins to pound so hard he has to sit down for a bit opposite the clink of cutlery on chipped china, and he thinks, he thinks, he may have exerted himself in the kitchen a little too much.
=-=-=-=
Christmas Eve is cold and wet, the teal-grey sky having confused snowfall with sheets of rain.
Doyle is careful to check the faded lettering of the rain-blurred street sign before he laboriously unbends his body from the interior of the cab, stepping onto the pavement and into an inconveniently-placed puddle with a rather alarming splash. One of his old mates still on the Force had helped him obtain the Southern London address from the telephone number he had copied, and he experimentally inhales three breaths of dust and air before he begins to climb the rickety stairs of the genteel-shabby block of flats.
The door he stops at is no different from the others he has passed, warm cherry wood and gold numbering smudged with the remnants of fingerprints. The knocker, when raised and allowed to fall, produces a satisfyingly loud thunk which echoes down the otherwise empty corridor, abruptly cutting short two sets of muffled laughter (one is masculine and full-bodied – Bodie’s, he thinks – and the other noticeably female but oddly harsh). There is the click of a peephole cover, and Doyle finds himself standing face to face with a frowning Bodie who digs his nails into his arm and all but drags him across the doorway.
Inside, Doyle finds four chairs comfortably grouped around a wrought-iron table, chocolate biscuits on a plate and two cups of milky tea, and an old lady comfortably nestled in a wing-tip chair. “Mrs Keller, this is Ray Doyle, my partner at work,” Bodie is saying; his voice cheerful enough. “I think something must have come up, for him to have come here. Doyle, this is Mrs Keller.”
(Bodie’s voice is also completely at odds with the furrow between his brows, and Doyle finds himself clenching his fists in a bid to resist smoothing the flesh-lined crease with his thumb.)
“Hello, Ray. Are you a friend of Jimmy’s too?” Her voice is hoarse, somewhat trembly, though her smile seems genuine enough. Now that he is nearer, Doyle finds his gaze inevitably straying to the frosted sugar cataracts of her eyes, pale blue-grey like her son’s and with the vacant stare of the blind. It takes him a while before he is able to unstick his tongue and to say something kind, patting her hand gently as she tells him what a marvellous lad William is, really, used to visit her now and then with Jimmy and has just dropped by once again to see how she is doing, what with Jimmy away in Italy and quite busy, sensitive government work you know, mustn’t interfere. Bodie’s fingers are a painful grip-vice on his left shoulder.
They leave the flat together shortly after.
=-=-=-=
Outside they stand for a moment under the scant shelter of the brick overhang above the entrance to the building. When Bodie discovers that Doyle had taken a cab (his chest still ached sufficiently to make the motions of driving painful) and is consequently without any alternative means of transport he tells him to Get in the car Doyle now please now.
The ride back to Doyle’s flat is a silent one, and uncomfortable, no amount of fiddling able to convince the heater of the Capri to work as it should. It takes thirteen minutes of sitting in an idling Capri at the end of the journey and three not-so-discrete coughs from his partner before Doyle apologises, and Bodie kisses him.
The first kiss is clumsy, as first kisses usually are, and chaste: a tentative meeting dry and chapped lips, a greeting sort of hello, the awkward bumping of noses, ouch Bodie, Christ. The second is an improvement, pink tongue flicking against the white of teeth and the red of a palate, tiny whimpers and a sigh. Doyle tells himself to stop analysing when the third eventually drifts around, and his mind is more than happy to comply.
Bodie’s smile is almost serene when they finally part, blue eyes half-lidded and the corners of his lips curling. “You needn’t have been all suspicious,” he says. “I already knew.”
“Knew?”
“About us, sunshine.” A kiss to his cheek, lips red and pursed and bud-like. “Loyal to a fault I am, I’ll have ye know.”
“Could have told me, you bastard.”
“Oh, but I did.” The tip of his tongue paints a butterfly’s trail to Doyle’s jaw. “Quite a while back too, mind.”
“What did you say?”
“Ah, but it wasn’t what I said.”
It takes another five minutes of staring and some rather breathless persuasion on Doyle’s part before Bodie finally relents, his grin flashing white in the streetlamp-lit gloom.
“Go up, to your flat. In the cigar box, on your mantelpiece.” A nip on his ear now, soft and gentle and loving and warm. “You have five minutes before we head for Murph’s.”
The ghost of Bodie’s hand on his arse follows him to the ground-floor stairs.
=-=-=-=
This is what Doyle will remember of the next five minutes: There are twelve steps to the half-landing, eleven more to his door, and he climbs each of them with a dusty click of boot heels on worn concrete. It takes him two tries to open his door, the creases of his hands damp. Another seven strides brings him to the mantelpiece, and without thinking he prises the cigar box open and breathlessly tips its contents into his palm. For a moment the key seems strangely heavy for his size, its teeth biting into the tips of his fingers as he carefully curls them around it; Bodie had given it to him when he had moved to his present flat four months ago and Doyle had taken one look at the old Victorian-esque interior and said What a fine place this is, Master Bodie, now where is the mistress of the house and is she going to take our coats? Then he is uncurling his fingers again, tilting his palm this and that; when the metal catches the light of the street lamp it glows faded yellow and pale gold.
********
Title: On Things They Don’t Really Talk About
Author: Erushi
Gen/Slash: Slash
Disclaimer: Not mine, alas!
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Yes, please.
Author's notes: Many thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
kiwisue and probodie, who very kindly and very thoroughly answered my questions about the rate of Doyle’s recovery post-DiaG and what the recovery process might entail. The polaroid bases used were taken from Regina Spektor’s site.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-21 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 05:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-21 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 05:36 am (UTC)But yay, thank you! I'm glad it worked for you, especially since doing a nice atmosphere seems to be about the only thing I'm able to do well. *g* As for whether that really was a dream... well, I'll leave that up to the reader to decide, shall I?
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Date: 2008-12-21 08:56 pm (UTC)Oh, just gorgeous ::happy sigh:: Doyle gradually getting his head together, and Bodie patiently waiting... I'm going to have to read it again later to make sure I catch all the shades and details. Thank you!
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Date: 2008-12-23 05:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-21 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 06:34 am (UTC)Doyle's recovery post-DiaG has always been something of fascination for me. The next episode shows that he's pretty much his normal top-CI5-agent self, but whatever happened in between? I've my doubts about a person emerging from a shooting like that emotionally unscathed, and how Doyle might have gradually recovered... It was definitely interesting trying to explore that in the fic, and I'm glad it worked for you!
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Date: 2008-12-21 11:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 06:40 am (UTC)I definitely had fun selecting the pictures to go with this fic, even panicking and going on a photography spree when I realised that I didn't have what I wanted amongst the stuff I already had. 'Solstice Bells' was actually the carol given for the 21st, but since the only thing I could think of with a prompt like that was wedding bells, an idea which left me quite stumped, that was my token nod to it.
I'm glad you enjoyed this. Thank you for reading, and for your lovely comment!
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Date: 2008-12-21 11:46 pm (UTC)And I love the pictures interspersing the text.
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Date: 2008-12-23 06:26 am (UTC)Thanks for reading, and for your lovely comment! I'm glad you enjoyed both the fic and the pictures (had quite an interesting time photographing and selecting them too!).
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Date: 2008-12-22 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 06:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-22 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-22 04:10 pm (UTC)It's... lovely and quiet and *deceptively* simple. I have a bit of a thing for stories where the feelings lurk in the spaces between the words, probably why I love Jazz so much too.
The pacing works beautifully as a reflection of Doyle's condition as we're not quite able to draw a full breath either for "fear" of shattering the peace of it. All of this grounded so beautifully in your usual attention to fine level detail.
Thank you Petal! ♥
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Date: 2008-12-23 07:29 am (UTC)I always like playing around post-DiaG Doyle, before he reaches full agent status again in the next episode. I imagine the recovery process must have been some strange sort of limbo, and it was trying to write it was fun, albeit panic-ridden.
Glad you liked this, and cheers for reading and the lovely comment!
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Date: 2008-12-22 05:03 pm (UTC)that Bodie spends half the night outside his door just listening for him to stir
That got me right here.
Thanks so much for this ♥
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Date: 2008-12-23 07:03 am (UTC)I've a soft spot for one of the lads being oblivious while the other's all knowing about it, so writing this was definitely fun despite all the deadline!writing!agony! that had me running about like a headless chicken. *g* Whether Bodie actually does spend half the night standing guard on the other side of Doyle's door, or even whether the words whispered in Doyle's ear is really a dream, shall be left fully to the reader's imagination.
Thanks for reading, and for your lovely comment!
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Date: 2008-12-22 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 08:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-22 09:51 pm (UTC)And I'd say all these things add up to some beautiful writing! Thanks so much for sharing your work.
[And the use of the pictures was an interesting idea - especially the first one - I love angles, lines and shadows].
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Date: 2008-12-23 08:01 am (UTC)(And I'm glad you found the use of the pictures interesting too. Call it an experiment on my part. *g* The first was taken in Canterbury, when I went wandering about parts of castle ruins I suspect I wasn't supposed to wander!)
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Date: 2008-12-23 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-25 01:48 pm (UTC)And a Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones too.
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Date: 2008-12-24 10:24 am (UTC)This was an utterly brilliant read. I love post DIAG stories, there was so much left out in canon. And you wrote it very convincing and realistic to me.
Thank you so much! (hugs)
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Date: 2008-12-25 01:34 pm (UTC)I'm glad you found it so. *hugs you* I love playing with post-DiaG, simply because, as you said, so much was left out in canon, and enquiring minds just want to know! Thank you for reading, and for your lovely comment. And a Merry Christmas to you too! ♥
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Date: 2008-12-24 08:42 pm (UTC)And it was well worth the wait. The photos are a great idea. Perfectly lovely, thank you.
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Date: 2008-12-25 01:32 pm (UTC)Oh, and a Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones as well. *g*
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Date: 2008-12-27 02:12 am (UTC)And you like Regina Spektor! At least, I assume you like her, since you pinched her Polaroid frames. Which is brilliant.
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Date: 2008-12-29 11:00 am (UTC)And heee! Yes, I do like Regina Spektor. *g* I would have pinched her Polaroid frames in any case, so long as I knew about her site, because her Polaroid frames weren't just frames per se, but tilted at various angles and some with sticky tape too, which I just loved.
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Date: 2008-12-28 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-29 11:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 08:49 am (UTC)I loved the way you conveyed Bodie's caring, and Doyle's fuzzy awareness, despite his (perfectly understandable) focus on himself and how he was feeling physically.
And then you added Keller's mum to the mix, to confound things and make Doyle think about what was going on! Lovely touch. Thank you!
PS: one typo, I think In December Bodies wrestles a Christmas tree through his door should be In December Bodie wrestles a Christmas tree through his door.
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Date: 2009-01-06 01:52 pm (UTC)Thanks for reading! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
(And cheers for pointing out that typo. I can't believe I didn't notice it... though by the time I posted this, I was hardly in a state to notice anything. *hangs head sheepishly*)
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Date: 2009-01-07 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 04:24 pm (UTC)I must confess to a fascination where Bodie's and Keller's relationship is concerned. How close were they? Could Keller have had any parents he was still in contact with, and if yes, were they good enough mates that Bodie'd visit now and then? It was that which made me work Keller's mum in.
I'm glad you enjoyed this - thanks for reading! And as for whether Doyle does admit to it, well... that'll be for the reader to guess!
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Date: 2009-01-29 06:52 pm (UTC)Almost surreptitiously he produces a key, the one Bodie had foolishly given him months ago and which he has since used to regularly cadge milk and bread and eggs and sugar, not to mention the occasional whisky and butter and beer. The quiet snick in the lock is almost satisfying.
And then at the end of the story, when Bodie tells Ray to look in the cigar box:
Another seven strides brings him to the mantelpiece, and without thinking he prises the cigar box open and breathlessly tips its contents into his palm. For a moment the key seems strangely heavy for his size, its teeth biting into the tips of his fingers as he carefully curls them around it; Bodie had given it to him when he had moved to his present flat four months ago and Doyle had taken one look at the old Victorian-esque interior and said What a fine place this is, Master Bodie, now where is the mistress of the house and is she going to take our coats? Then he is uncurling his fingers again, tilting his palm this and that; when the metal catches the light of the street lamp it glows faded yellow and pale gold.
So, the only interpretation that makes sense to me, in the context of the conversation they have in the last segment of the story, is that Bodie was saying yes to a relationship, signaling how he felt, when he gave Doyle the key, but Doyle was a bit slower to realize how he felt, and he didn't figure it out at the time. Bodie either knew Doyle kept the key in that cigar box, or Bodie put it there in anticipation of a moment like the one in the car, when Doyle finally figured it all out, and he could show Doyle that he'd figured it out and showed his desire for the relationship months earlier, by giving him that key (is Doyle the "mistress of the house,? lol)
At least that's how I read it.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 01:21 pm (UTC)Thank you very much for reading!
Well I am very late but I always catch up eventually
Date: 2009-01-25 01:51 am (UTC)Re: Well I am very late but I always catch up eventually
Date: 2009-02-01 01:19 pm (UTC)