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discoveredinalj2006-12-14 02:28 am
byslantedlight.livejournal.com) wrote in discoveredinalj2006-12-14 02:28 am
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Noble Sentiment's Alphabetical Prosfic Quotes Challenge!
And now for something a little more... energetic *g* - a competition for you!
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noblesentiments has put together a Quotes Challenge for us, and there is an actual prize for the winner...
Listed below is a series of quotes, not just carefully chosen, but carefully and alphabetically chosen! You need to guess the authors and/or fic title. In the event of a tie breaker, the most complete answers will win, or if someone remembers an extra fragment of an additional answer - say the title only - then that would tip the balance too.
To enter, post your answers as a single comment below. You won't be able to see them, because all comments will be screened until the answers are revealed at around 21.00 (9pm) GMT on 14th December. Hopefully this will give people in all time zones a chance to go away and think/research/post entries, even people who have to work all day... Around 21.00 GMT we'll reveal the answers, the Challenge Winner, and the prize.
Quotes are all from fic that is available online, to make it fair to everyone. Now, I know what you're thinking - google! Well, you could... but that would be cheating really, wouldn't it? Please try not to, if you can help it... although even googling isn't as straight forward as you might think, not in this case... Oh, and some are Christmas quotes, but not all of them. (And if anyone gets all of them, I'll be well impressed..*g*)
Any questions, do ask below, and of course normal feedback comments for the wonderful job done bynoblesentiments as well - they'll all be unscreened at the same time. And otherwise...
Noble Sentiment's Alphabetical Prosfic Quotes Challenge
Another year, another set of holidays. He hardly marked its passing. Bodie'd learned a long time ago that Christmas came and went like any other day. On the boat, it had meant a single better meal; on the sun-drenched African plains it had meant nothing at all, except another day to live or die.
And now it meant only a warm pub meal, a flood of hot rum to soothe the chill from aching bones, and the fleeting solace of pleasure in a stranger's arms. The women were a blur to him, all so much the same, none allowed an instant's closeness to the buried center of his soul. He'd learned that lesson in blood and anguish, watched them die on city streets. Johannesburg or London, the concrete soaked up blood with equal indifference. Katerina... Marikka - the faces were equally indistinguishable from each other, the wounded cry of shock the same, haunting his dreams. Ghosts of the past and present sitting by his side.
No. He'd never take that chance again…………………
The emptiness of it all struck home…………… cold night air met him hard, his breath misting in a silvery cloud. Church bells clanged in the distance as he sought his car.
Bodie's run became frantic, knees pushing up in rhythm, forcing him ahead. The ambulance's siren was nearer each passing second. Something obscured Bodie's vision as he neared the hangar's main entrance. He scrubbed the back of his hand over his eyes, slowing his pace. It was wet. Cold. Bodie lifted his head to the sky.
Snow. The first daring flakes of snow, slowly falling. He breathed deeply, twice, then entered the dark, huge hangar. His hands were tight around his gun, palms sweating inside the leather, trigger finger slightly trembling. A movement, there, in the corner of his eye, behind those crates, sleeping monsters in the darkness. Bodie whirled and aimed, ready to shoot. Doyle was slumped on the floor, his back against the wall. Bodie lifted his gun, Doyle safely out of trajectory. Eyes slowly adjusting, Bodie took in the two men lying on the concrete floor, and the darker puddles blossoming under them.
Cowley continued to watch as they left. Bodie held the door open and pressed his hand into the small of Doyle's back. It was as innocent and as sexual a public act as Cowley had ever seen, both possessive and protective. It might have told him nothing, but it told him everything. This was not just two highly charged men having it off. Not just bodies were involved here, but hearts and souls are well. This was love - as pure and as real as he had ever seen. He must be losing his touch not to have noticed sooner. Idly he wondered how long it had been going on and who had made the first move.
Doyle obligingly jumped him.
They lazed in front of the fire, sipping eggnog and listening to Mozart, letting the lazing turn to loving, gentle and slow, Mozart disregarded in the background. They chased each other through the rain and plunged into the pool, surfacing embraced. They studied the ocean through misted living room windows, passing the binoculars back and forth, heads resting closer and closer until the glasses slipped unnoticed from Doyle's
fingers, and they saw only each other's eyes.
In the big bed through the long nights they learned each other's
bodies and those few bits of minds and hearts and souls as yet unshared,
holding each other and whispering, sleeping entwined in one continuous
caress.
The gray of Christmas morning was the gray of fog and drizzle. They
woke to the sound of surf and the cries of sea birds, smiled into close,
sleepy eyes.
Eight years, and you've changed, sweetheart. He watched the seated man, his mind cataloguing grey streaks in the ragged hair, a clipped beard flashed with white and gaunt shadows touching the sweater and jeans clad body. He looked enervated, a far cry from the Doyle of old who couldn't even sit still without sparking energy. Perhaps it really had been a tough few days, you certainly look knackered. Watching the slump of the lithe figure he unwillingly acknowledged its attraction, despite the exhaustion which made the well known features drawn and lined. Couldn't have been much of a rest cure, negotiating with the Libyans - four weeks of hell, more like. Grudgingly, with reluctant admiration, he mentally saluted the contrived release of the four Israeli hostages. Whatever else he had become, Doyle certainly could still talk the birds out of the trees, even if the birds were now of a different variety.
Family. Not kids. Not for me. But family of a sort. I want that.
So I had to go and whisper "I love you" like a prat. I lay holding all your strength in my arms, heavier than I thought I could bear, a minute more, a minute more, letting my arm and shoulder go numb rather than disturb that slow, peaceful breathing. I touched that knife scar on your back. When I had to slide you off or risk gangrene, I kissed your hair and whispered my confession into your neatly shaped ear and fell asleep somehow. And now you've gone...
Georgia - red clay, white mansions, green lawns, blue sky - wisteria, willow and white ines, cool pools fed by underground streams - hot, humid days, where the sun beats
down, baking skin till it's the color of the red clay earth
And you - a beautiful tan, auburn hints in curls grown long and lush as the willow - white swim trunks stretched tight over an erection. You lean against me, wistful and
warm, soft curves instead of hard edges. I can't help but smile.
Hot flesh on hot flesh. Anger become desperation.
"Why'd you do it, mate?" Holding him to the wall, forearm across his throat.
Eyes steady into his. Deep. Blue.
"Christ, Bodie, why wouldn't you talk to me?"
Gentle hands raising his arms above them both until he collapsed, leaning on him then, length to length.
Lips to lips.
No coming back from this.
(The following quote was kindly suggested bykiwisue)
It seemed, then, the most natural thing in the word to draw Doyle to him. To breathe in the scent of him, overlaid with pine. Simply to hold him, as he’d never done before, as he’d never though of doing before. And he found that wasn’t enough, after all. So he nuzzled Doyle’s ear, his cheek, his neck. Doyle responded by tilting his head, granting him access. Inflamed, Bodie eased Doyle to the floor.
"Joke's over."
"McCabe'll have my head if you tip off Doyle before Lucas gets squashed."
Bodie dropped the bug in his shirt pocket.
He left by the rear exit, stopped by a few shops, then circled back toward Doyle.
An appreciative whistle greeted him. " 'Allo, sailor."
Bodie stopped in front of Doyle and preened. "You should be paying me. My beauty is a curse."
"Curse of the werewolf, maybe." Doyle hooked his thumb in his back pocket and nodded toward the door. Bodie fell in behind him
(The) kiss was far the sweeter for the knowledge that they should not do it, must not do it, that tomorrow they would wish they never had. It was so dark here, so unreal, a little corner out of time; they were not in the real world at all. And it was Christmas Eve. There had to be magic abroad on Christmas Eve, waiting to paint stolen kisses with the tincture of enchantment as the reindeer arched in the sky across the face of the moon. …………………………………………………….
Wherever he turned his head Bodie's mouth chased his and caught it. Months of wanting, wishing whipped up into the fiercest of fires:
"Go to the car, shall we?" Bodie's voice touched his ear, the slightest of caresses, and it made him shiver. Somewhere a mournful foghorn blew, long and sad, as some trawler dredged its weary way along the Thames' bottom.
Late July: The hour had already gone nine of the evening, but heat from the pavement rose like the humid breath of some vast underground creature, rising stifling and ill-scented to the open first floor window of Raymond Doyle's flat. It was the second day of a so-far remarkably sultry weeks; the forecasters said hope was in sight, but it would be another twenty four hours before cooling showers were anticipated.
Doyle sat by the window, gazing down into the street. There were children playing a ruthless game of kick-can. Their squeals of laughter and outrage had drawn him from his chores in the kitchen, a welcome diversion to the unrewarding process of scraping his broiling pan preparatory to fixing cod for dinner. A long time had passed since the pan had been used, and in the interim it had only been wiped clean prior to packing for the latest move. Sight of it had driven a spoke of reminiscent agony into Doyle out of all proportion to the expenditure of energy needed to set it to rights.
The last time he had used it, Bodie had been here with him. The last time he had used it, Bodie had still been alive.
Mahler 6 on the tapedeck. Moody, tragic, demanding. Perhaps not ideal. But he loved the passion of it. And once into it he could not switch it off before it came to the end, those three masterly hammerblows of fate. Wearing only his jeans, undone, he read the newspaper and sipped at a Scotch and let the music swell his mood.
Bodie, fully dressed, watched TV and drank slowly from his glass. His fine, well-muscled forearms, downed with dark hair, rested on his thighs. He was a very attractive man. Doyle felt conscious, all the time, with every heartbeat, of the brooding, powerful presence, the life and vigour of the man, reined in, ready to surge and overpower him. He was so deeply, intensely absorbed in their own little private world that when the doorbell rang, he jumped.
"Naughty Doyle," came Bodie's low sexy voice, reacting to it. "Nothing like that. The Major's a good and flexible man. He understands that I have to check in every day."
"What are the women like?"
There was another pause. Bodie's voice said: "You remember Sue Jones."
"How could I forget," said Doyle, with verve.
"-- thick blonde hair, big blue eyes, long legs ...?"
"Mmm...." Doyle approved, passionately.
"The women here are along the same lines --"
Doyle grinned, knowing his Bodie, and waited for it.
"... they have big blue lips, thick legs and short blonde moustaches," finished Bodie's grim filtered voice.
That was so -- Bodie. "Charming," said Doyle, through a chuckle.
This was fun.
On her knees in a pool of her brother's blood, Kath watched Will plead. She hadn't known he could. Then he began to threaten, and was more like himself, or her image of him, but none of it brought a flicker of consciousness back to Ray's peaceful face. How utterly beautiful the two of them were! Ray's head was tipped back now, pale throat arched over Will's supporting arm. With a shock – realising it was shock – Kath found herself preparing the canvas in her mind. No figures; she seldom did that any more. Possibly the eye of a whirlwind, or the place where sky met sea in a storm. All the while she held her cramping hand tight to the pad of bloodsoaked cotton and silk, and she heard her brother's breathing start to rasp and lose its rhythm, just as the first sirens broached earshot.
Puzzled, Doyle watched the fortress of stone. As the sun slid deeper behind the mountains to the west, there was a soft, fluttery stir in the air. The sound was muffled at first, growing slowly more powerful, like a battalion of moths battering against a window pane. And then a few ebony darts came from the stone edifice, spit out in the darkening sky like bold arrows. A second later, a cluster appeared, and he heard their high-pitched conversation as they fluttered toward the distant mountains.
"Bats?”……………………
Silently he waited, and suddenly in a steady ribbon of black they appeared, erupting forth from the recesses of the cliff. Thousands and thousands of them, a widening stream that cut into the failing reddish light like an invading army. There was a power and grace in their flight that left him breathless. It was awe inspiring, the incredible black wave that poured from the rifts in the rock, the air filled with the batter of wings and the high register of squeals. And then the jet wave split into perfect whirls of black, separating and moving into an intricate, swirling dance, the beautiful spirals each having a purpose and focus and direction.
Questions he could neither face nor answer pelted through his brain. He let them flow, like interrogation from an enemy agent. The enemy agent within himself.
"Suppose you fall in love one day?" Patricia had asked him. He had been so sure of the answer. He had thought it impossible. And here he was, already in love. He should have said, "It has happened already. I love a man I am already tied to with more ties than marriage, to whom I owe more than I could owe any woman."
He should have said, "Your question is too late."
He should have said, "My heart was damaged, so I never saw what was happening to it. I forgot what love can be."
He could not answer the other questions, the important ones. The questions like: What now?...
Ravaged in the pallid light, it suddenly crumpled, the granite melting away like limestone in acid. Stark and revealing in the brief glimpse I got, it rocked me into realisation of a truth I should have known before. I watched numbly as Doyle's arm tightened around his partner's neck, pulling the face down. How had I failed to understand that Bodie had never been the strong one of the pair? That Doyle's need for Bodie had never exceeded Bodie's for him. That, very possibly, Bodie was even more bereft without Doyle than Doyle was without Bodie. How had I failed to realise the magnitude of the sacrifice Bodie had made in trusting Doyle to the imagined power of my obsessive devotion?
Soldier was gentle, gentle in many unexpected ways and yet strong beneath the gentleness. Ray unravelled nerve from nerve and then afterwards, Soldier knitted him back together and the threads were silk, twisted with barbed wire.
They ignored me, whispering and laughing together, bodies leaned close together. So I took the time to study them closely, as I had never done before, memorizing the lines of muscle, bone and sinew, the way they stood, the way they moved in such easy synchronicity. The panther spoke against his partner's temple, his lips almost brushing a soft brown curl, and Doyle's laughter rang like the chime of a chapel bell in response. Next to his larger partner, he looked almost frail, the jeans molded to his legs, not an ounce of spare flesh clinging to his hips. And the panther...I found it hard to tear my eyes from him. He wasn't really that much taller than his partner, it was the simple solidity of the man that made him seem so much bigger. A thick shaft of muscle rippled in his exposed forearm as he moved, instinctively nudging the drapes aside to give his alert eyes a glimpse of the street beyond, even as he listened intently to Doyle's conversation. He responded, his voice a low burr, the words unimportant, the sound strangely comforting and disturbing all at once. The verbal machismo I'd seen at the inquiry had yet to make an appearance, and I felt as though we'd been stripped all of our masks and left rawly open. I wasn't sure what was left of me, but I knew I was seeing the truth of them.
"Uh," he began, trying not to feel intimidated, "this is to go air-mail."
"On the scales," she barked.
Bodie lost the intimidation battle, meekly doing as he was bid.
"Where's it going?" he was asked.
"America."
"You're too late."
Vesuvius. Sleeping, as it must have slept while this city prospered. The citizens must have seen it every day of their lives, from the temples, the houses, the market place, framed by temple columsn, imprinted as a backdrop against the azure sky. A landmark, a local curiosity, but nothing more…………at Bodie’s side Doyle looked at Priapus weighing his overlarge male organs on a pair of scales and laughed crudely at him.
“Looks like yours” Doyle snorted……………
With a low, throaty moan, Sanjay turned his head, rolling his muzzle back onto Doyle's lap as though it were an old, familiar pillow. The yellow eyes rested for an instant on Doyle's face, that enigmatic gaze seemingly cutting to the depths of Doyle's wounded soul.
Choking around the constriction in his throat, Doyle scraped a finger under the cat's chin, watching gold-lashed lids drift downward until the yellow eyes were hidden. He floated a hand over the tiger's heart; the frenzied leap and shudder of the failing organ had grown more pronounced even in the brief minutes since Doyle's arrival.
Gone away, oh, gone away
(The) Xmas (Ok, gimme a break, will ya?) dinner was on the kitchen table. The dinner was cold, the telly was switched off and Doyle was not in a good mood. The sound of the key turning in the door reached him--just a fraction of a second and he was up, standing, his hand moving towards his armpit, searching for his gun. Bodie was not going to come, was he? As usual. So it had to be someone else. Doyle's hand closed on air, since the gun was safely locked away in the bedroom. Safely for who, Doyle wondered briefly. Safely for Bodie, certainly, Bodie who was looking at Doyle in the half darkness of the room.
"I'm home," Bodie said, switching on the lights. Doyle kept looking at him. Not that Doyle's eyes weren't communicative enough, at least judging by the ample circle Bodie walked around him to reach the kitchen. Just so as to be out of Doyle's reach, basically. And very sensibly. After all, now Bodie had to be more careful about his life. Bodie entered the small kitchen and stopped to look at the table, the candles, and the covered dishes. And the Christmas cake, with all the trimmings, and the crackers.
“You're bleeding like a matron's heart."
Bodie shrugged. "I'll live. Let's take those buggers."
Darkness was their ally. Bodie reached carefully into the Rolls and turned
off all lights. One headlamp of the van still shone dimply into the
snowflakes; the other was smashed.
They walked carefully up to the van from behind, arms bent with both hands
holding the guns. The back of the van might open, with gunfire, like in an
old gangster movie. Or the driver might leap out with guns in each time.
Or it might be a trap. It might be another bomb.
Some people get to sit at home on Christmas Eve, with their mulled cider
and their fireplace and their kiddies. Bodie could, perhaps, be lounging
before a fire with a warm body in his arms, and not a care in the world.
It occurred to him with dazzling certainty that he didn't want that. Here,
with his hair wet with snow and an aching arm covered with blood, with the
cold wind in his face and darkness around him, with a gun in his hand and
Doyle beside him, he was as close to happiness as a man could be.
(The) zoo...
... had been a perfect day; warm sun on their backs, families and kids milling all around them, a thrill in the air. Rude comments about the blue-bottomed monkeys, egg sandwiches at a picnic table. They had ridden in the llama-cart eating ice-cream in a cone; Doyle had perched for a circuit on a camel, but Bodie refused, claiming exemption as the photographer. Doyle's camel-ride remained, however, unpreserved on celluloid; Bodie had been convulsed with laughter as he returned with great dignity, and quite unable to stand, much less speak.
They had been so * happy*. Doyle could taste the echoes of it now, felt the sun on his skin, the warmth of Bodie's smile; the arm slung around his back as the cart jolted and children screamed. And the night still to come.
Here were the remnants of the day: the happiness folded in on it and crammed into a drawer.
noblesentiments has put together a Quotes Challenge for us, and there is an actual prize for the winner...Listed below is a series of quotes, not just carefully chosen, but carefully and alphabetically chosen! You need to guess the authors and/or fic title. In the event of a tie breaker, the most complete answers will win, or if someone remembers an extra fragment of an additional answer - say the title only - then that would tip the balance too.
To enter, post your answers as a single comment below. You won't be able to see them, because all comments will be screened until the answers are revealed at around 21.00 (9pm) GMT on 14th December. Hopefully this will give people in all time zones a chance to go away and think/research/post entries, even people who have to work all day... Around 21.00 GMT we'll reveal the answers, the Challenge Winner, and the prize.
Quotes are all from fic that is available online, to make it fair to everyone. Now, I know what you're thinking - google! Well, you could... but that would be cheating really, wouldn't it? Please try not to, if you can help it... although even googling isn't as straight forward as you might think, not in this case... Oh, and some are Christmas quotes, but not all of them. (And if anyone gets all of them, I'll be well impressed..*g*)
Any questions, do ask below, and of course normal feedback comments for the wonderful job done by
noblesentiments as well - they'll all be unscreened at the same time. And otherwise...Another year, another set of holidays. He hardly marked its passing. Bodie'd learned a long time ago that Christmas came and went like any other day. On the boat, it had meant a single better meal; on the sun-drenched African plains it had meant nothing at all, except another day to live or die.
And now it meant only a warm pub meal, a flood of hot rum to soothe the chill from aching bones, and the fleeting solace of pleasure in a stranger's arms. The women were a blur to him, all so much the same, none allowed an instant's closeness to the buried center of his soul. He'd learned that lesson in blood and anguish, watched them die on city streets. Johannesburg or London, the concrete soaked up blood with equal indifference. Katerina... Marikka - the faces were equally indistinguishable from each other, the wounded cry of shock the same, haunting his dreams. Ghosts of the past and present sitting by his side.
No. He'd never take that chance again…………………
The emptiness of it all struck home…………… cold night air met him hard, his breath misting in a silvery cloud. Church bells clanged in the distance as he sought his car.
Bodie's run became frantic, knees pushing up in rhythm, forcing him ahead. The ambulance's siren was nearer each passing second. Something obscured Bodie's vision as he neared the hangar's main entrance. He scrubbed the back of his hand over his eyes, slowing his pace. It was wet. Cold. Bodie lifted his head to the sky.
Snow. The first daring flakes of snow, slowly falling. He breathed deeply, twice, then entered the dark, huge hangar. His hands were tight around his gun, palms sweating inside the leather, trigger finger slightly trembling. A movement, there, in the corner of his eye, behind those crates, sleeping monsters in the darkness. Bodie whirled and aimed, ready to shoot. Doyle was slumped on the floor, his back against the wall. Bodie lifted his gun, Doyle safely out of trajectory. Eyes slowly adjusting, Bodie took in the two men lying on the concrete floor, and the darker puddles blossoming under them.
Cowley continued to watch as they left. Bodie held the door open and pressed his hand into the small of Doyle's back. It was as innocent and as sexual a public act as Cowley had ever seen, both possessive and protective. It might have told him nothing, but it told him everything. This was not just two highly charged men having it off. Not just bodies were involved here, but hearts and souls are well. This was love - as pure and as real as he had ever seen. He must be losing his touch not to have noticed sooner. Idly he wondered how long it had been going on and who had made the first move.
Doyle obligingly jumped him.
They lazed in front of the fire, sipping eggnog and listening to Mozart, letting the lazing turn to loving, gentle and slow, Mozart disregarded in the background. They chased each other through the rain and plunged into the pool, surfacing embraced. They studied the ocean through misted living room windows, passing the binoculars back and forth, heads resting closer and closer until the glasses slipped unnoticed from Doyle's
fingers, and they saw only each other's eyes.
In the big bed through the long nights they learned each other's
bodies and those few bits of minds and hearts and souls as yet unshared,
holding each other and whispering, sleeping entwined in one continuous
caress.
The gray of Christmas morning was the gray of fog and drizzle. They
woke to the sound of surf and the cries of sea birds, smiled into close,
sleepy eyes.
Eight years, and you've changed, sweetheart. He watched the seated man, his mind cataloguing grey streaks in the ragged hair, a clipped beard flashed with white and gaunt shadows touching the sweater and jeans clad body. He looked enervated, a far cry from the Doyle of old who couldn't even sit still without sparking energy. Perhaps it really had been a tough few days, you certainly look knackered. Watching the slump of the lithe figure he unwillingly acknowledged its attraction, despite the exhaustion which made the well known features drawn and lined. Couldn't have been much of a rest cure, negotiating with the Libyans - four weeks of hell, more like. Grudgingly, with reluctant admiration, he mentally saluted the contrived release of the four Israeli hostages. Whatever else he had become, Doyle certainly could still talk the birds out of the trees, even if the birds were now of a different variety.
Family. Not kids. Not for me. But family of a sort. I want that.
So I had to go and whisper "I love you" like a prat. I lay holding all your strength in my arms, heavier than I thought I could bear, a minute more, a minute more, letting my arm and shoulder go numb rather than disturb that slow, peaceful breathing. I touched that knife scar on your back. When I had to slide you off or risk gangrene, I kissed your hair and whispered my confession into your neatly shaped ear and fell asleep somehow. And now you've gone...
Georgia - red clay, white mansions, green lawns, blue sky - wisteria, willow and white ines, cool pools fed by underground streams - hot, humid days, where the sun beats
down, baking skin till it's the color of the red clay earth
And you - a beautiful tan, auburn hints in curls grown long and lush as the willow - white swim trunks stretched tight over an erection. You lean against me, wistful and
warm, soft curves instead of hard edges. I can't help but smile.
Hot flesh on hot flesh. Anger become desperation.
"Why'd you do it, mate?" Holding him to the wall, forearm across his throat.
Eyes steady into his. Deep. Blue.
"Christ, Bodie, why wouldn't you talk to me?"
Gentle hands raising his arms above them both until he collapsed, leaning on him then, length to length.
Lips to lips.
No coming back from this.
(The following quote was kindly suggested by
kiwisue)It seemed, then, the most natural thing in the word to draw Doyle to him. To breathe in the scent of him, overlaid with pine. Simply to hold him, as he’d never done before, as he’d never though of doing before. And he found that wasn’t enough, after all. So he nuzzled Doyle’s ear, his cheek, his neck. Doyle responded by tilting his head, granting him access. Inflamed, Bodie eased Doyle to the floor.
"Joke's over."
"McCabe'll have my head if you tip off Doyle before Lucas gets squashed."
Bodie dropped the bug in his shirt pocket.
He left by the rear exit, stopped by a few shops, then circled back toward Doyle.
An appreciative whistle greeted him. " 'Allo, sailor."
Bodie stopped in front of Doyle and preened. "You should be paying me. My beauty is a curse."
"Curse of the werewolf, maybe." Doyle hooked his thumb in his back pocket and nodded toward the door. Bodie fell in behind him
(The) kiss was far the sweeter for the knowledge that they should not do it, must not do it, that tomorrow they would wish they never had. It was so dark here, so unreal, a little corner out of time; they were not in the real world at all. And it was Christmas Eve. There had to be magic abroad on Christmas Eve, waiting to paint stolen kisses with the tincture of enchantment as the reindeer arched in the sky across the face of the moon. …………………………………………………….
Wherever he turned his head Bodie's mouth chased his and caught it. Months of wanting, wishing whipped up into the fiercest of fires:
"Go to the car, shall we?" Bodie's voice touched his ear, the slightest of caresses, and it made him shiver. Somewhere a mournful foghorn blew, long and sad, as some trawler dredged its weary way along the Thames' bottom.
Late July: The hour had already gone nine of the evening, but heat from the pavement rose like the humid breath of some vast underground creature, rising stifling and ill-scented to the open first floor window of Raymond Doyle's flat. It was the second day of a so-far remarkably sultry weeks; the forecasters said hope was in sight, but it would be another twenty four hours before cooling showers were anticipated.
Doyle sat by the window, gazing down into the street. There were children playing a ruthless game of kick-can. Their squeals of laughter and outrage had drawn him from his chores in the kitchen, a welcome diversion to the unrewarding process of scraping his broiling pan preparatory to fixing cod for dinner. A long time had passed since the pan had been used, and in the interim it had only been wiped clean prior to packing for the latest move. Sight of it had driven a spoke of reminiscent agony into Doyle out of all proportion to the expenditure of energy needed to set it to rights.
The last time he had used it, Bodie had been here with him. The last time he had used it, Bodie had still been alive.
Mahler 6 on the tapedeck. Moody, tragic, demanding. Perhaps not ideal. But he loved the passion of it. And once into it he could not switch it off before it came to the end, those three masterly hammerblows of fate. Wearing only his jeans, undone, he read the newspaper and sipped at a Scotch and let the music swell his mood.
Bodie, fully dressed, watched TV and drank slowly from his glass. His fine, well-muscled forearms, downed with dark hair, rested on his thighs. He was a very attractive man. Doyle felt conscious, all the time, with every heartbeat, of the brooding, powerful presence, the life and vigour of the man, reined in, ready to surge and overpower him. He was so deeply, intensely absorbed in their own little private world that when the doorbell rang, he jumped.
"Naughty Doyle," came Bodie's low sexy voice, reacting to it. "Nothing like that. The Major's a good and flexible man. He understands that I have to check in every day."
"What are the women like?"
There was another pause. Bodie's voice said: "You remember Sue Jones."
"How could I forget," said Doyle, with verve.
"-- thick blonde hair, big blue eyes, long legs ...?"
"Mmm...." Doyle approved, passionately.
"The women here are along the same lines --"
Doyle grinned, knowing his Bodie, and waited for it.
"... they have big blue lips, thick legs and short blonde moustaches," finished Bodie's grim filtered voice.
That was so -- Bodie. "Charming," said Doyle, through a chuckle.
This was fun.
On her knees in a pool of her brother's blood, Kath watched Will plead. She hadn't known he could. Then he began to threaten, and was more like himself, or her image of him, but none of it brought a flicker of consciousness back to Ray's peaceful face. How utterly beautiful the two of them were! Ray's head was tipped back now, pale throat arched over Will's supporting arm. With a shock – realising it was shock – Kath found herself preparing the canvas in her mind. No figures; she seldom did that any more. Possibly the eye of a whirlwind, or the place where sky met sea in a storm. All the while she held her cramping hand tight to the pad of bloodsoaked cotton and silk, and she heard her brother's breathing start to rasp and lose its rhythm, just as the first sirens broached earshot.
Puzzled, Doyle watched the fortress of stone. As the sun slid deeper behind the mountains to the west, there was a soft, fluttery stir in the air. The sound was muffled at first, growing slowly more powerful, like a battalion of moths battering against a window pane. And then a few ebony darts came from the stone edifice, spit out in the darkening sky like bold arrows. A second later, a cluster appeared, and he heard their high-pitched conversation as they fluttered toward the distant mountains.
"Bats?”……………………
Silently he waited, and suddenly in a steady ribbon of black they appeared, erupting forth from the recesses of the cliff. Thousands and thousands of them, a widening stream that cut into the failing reddish light like an invading army. There was a power and grace in their flight that left him breathless. It was awe inspiring, the incredible black wave that poured from the rifts in the rock, the air filled with the batter of wings and the high register of squeals. And then the jet wave split into perfect whirls of black, separating and moving into an intricate, swirling dance, the beautiful spirals each having a purpose and focus and direction.
Questions he could neither face nor answer pelted through his brain. He let them flow, like interrogation from an enemy agent. The enemy agent within himself.
"Suppose you fall in love one day?" Patricia had asked him. He had been so sure of the answer. He had thought it impossible. And here he was, already in love. He should have said, "It has happened already. I love a man I am already tied to with more ties than marriage, to whom I owe more than I could owe any woman."
He should have said, "Your question is too late."
He should have said, "My heart was damaged, so I never saw what was happening to it. I forgot what love can be."
He could not answer the other questions, the important ones. The questions like: What now?...
Ravaged in the pallid light, it suddenly crumpled, the granite melting away like limestone in acid. Stark and revealing in the brief glimpse I got, it rocked me into realisation of a truth I should have known before. I watched numbly as Doyle's arm tightened around his partner's neck, pulling the face down. How had I failed to understand that Bodie had never been the strong one of the pair? That Doyle's need for Bodie had never exceeded Bodie's for him. That, very possibly, Bodie was even more bereft without Doyle than Doyle was without Bodie. How had I failed to realise the magnitude of the sacrifice Bodie had made in trusting Doyle to the imagined power of my obsessive devotion?
Soldier was gentle, gentle in many unexpected ways and yet strong beneath the gentleness. Ray unravelled nerve from nerve and then afterwards, Soldier knitted him back together and the threads were silk, twisted with barbed wire.
They ignored me, whispering and laughing together, bodies leaned close together. So I took the time to study them closely, as I had never done before, memorizing the lines of muscle, bone and sinew, the way they stood, the way they moved in such easy synchronicity. The panther spoke against his partner's temple, his lips almost brushing a soft brown curl, and Doyle's laughter rang like the chime of a chapel bell in response. Next to his larger partner, he looked almost frail, the jeans molded to his legs, not an ounce of spare flesh clinging to his hips. And the panther...I found it hard to tear my eyes from him. He wasn't really that much taller than his partner, it was the simple solidity of the man that made him seem so much bigger. A thick shaft of muscle rippled in his exposed forearm as he moved, instinctively nudging the drapes aside to give his alert eyes a glimpse of the street beyond, even as he listened intently to Doyle's conversation. He responded, his voice a low burr, the words unimportant, the sound strangely comforting and disturbing all at once. The verbal machismo I'd seen at the inquiry had yet to make an appearance, and I felt as though we'd been stripped all of our masks and left rawly open. I wasn't sure what was left of me, but I knew I was seeing the truth of them.
"Uh," he began, trying not to feel intimidated, "this is to go air-mail."
"On the scales," she barked.
Bodie lost the intimidation battle, meekly doing as he was bid.
"Where's it going?" he was asked.
"America."
"You're too late."
Vesuvius. Sleeping, as it must have slept while this city prospered. The citizens must have seen it every day of their lives, from the temples, the houses, the market place, framed by temple columsn, imprinted as a backdrop against the azure sky. A landmark, a local curiosity, but nothing more…………at Bodie’s side Doyle looked at Priapus weighing his overlarge male organs on a pair of scales and laughed crudely at him.
“Looks like yours” Doyle snorted……………
With a low, throaty moan, Sanjay turned his head, rolling his muzzle back onto Doyle's lap as though it were an old, familiar pillow. The yellow eyes rested for an instant on Doyle's face, that enigmatic gaze seemingly cutting to the depths of Doyle's wounded soul.
Choking around the constriction in his throat, Doyle scraped a finger under the cat's chin, watching gold-lashed lids drift downward until the yellow eyes were hidden. He floated a hand over the tiger's heart; the frenzied leap and shudder of the failing organ had grown more pronounced even in the brief minutes since Doyle's arrival.
Gone away, oh, gone away
(The) Xmas (Ok, gimme a break, will ya?) dinner was on the kitchen table. The dinner was cold, the telly was switched off and Doyle was not in a good mood. The sound of the key turning in the door reached him--just a fraction of a second and he was up, standing, his hand moving towards his armpit, searching for his gun. Bodie was not going to come, was he? As usual. So it had to be someone else. Doyle's hand closed on air, since the gun was safely locked away in the bedroom. Safely for who, Doyle wondered briefly. Safely for Bodie, certainly, Bodie who was looking at Doyle in the half darkness of the room.
"I'm home," Bodie said, switching on the lights. Doyle kept looking at him. Not that Doyle's eyes weren't communicative enough, at least judging by the ample circle Bodie walked around him to reach the kitchen. Just so as to be out of Doyle's reach, basically. And very sensibly. After all, now Bodie had to be more careful about his life. Bodie entered the small kitchen and stopped to look at the table, the candles, and the covered dishes. And the Christmas cake, with all the trimmings, and the crackers.
“You're bleeding like a matron's heart."
Bodie shrugged. "I'll live. Let's take those buggers."
Darkness was their ally. Bodie reached carefully into the Rolls and turned
off all lights. One headlamp of the van still shone dimply into the
snowflakes; the other was smashed.
They walked carefully up to the van from behind, arms bent with both hands
holding the guns. The back of the van might open, with gunfire, like in an
old gangster movie. Or the driver might leap out with guns in each time.
Or it might be a trap. It might be another bomb.
Some people get to sit at home on Christmas Eve, with their mulled cider
and their fireplace and their kiddies. Bodie could, perhaps, be lounging
before a fire with a warm body in his arms, and not a care in the world.
It occurred to him with dazzling certainty that he didn't want that. Here,
with his hair wet with snow and an aching arm covered with blood, with the
cold wind in his face and darkness around him, with a gun in his hand and
Doyle beside him, he was as close to happiness as a man could be.
(The) zoo...
... had been a perfect day; warm sun on their backs, families and kids milling all around them, a thrill in the air. Rude comments about the blue-bottomed monkeys, egg sandwiches at a picnic table. They had ridden in the llama-cart eating ice-cream in a cone; Doyle had perched for a circuit on a camel, but Bodie refused, claiming exemption as the photographer. Doyle's camel-ride remained, however, unpreserved on celluloid; Bodie had been convulsed with laughter as he returned with great dignity, and quite unable to stand, much less speak.
They had been so * happy*. Doyle could taste the echoes of it now, felt the sun on his skin, the warmth of Bodie's smile; the arm slung around his back as the cart jolted and children screamed. And the night still to come.
Here were the remnants of the day: the happiness folded in on it and crammed into a drawer.
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And many thanks to both you and empty mirrors for hosting all of this and doing all the technical bits and bobs and dangly bits, ('bits' not participles) - it *is* appreciated.