Discovered in a Valentine
Feb. 15th, 2009 12:01 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
erushi.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
discoveredinaljI'm late, I'm late, even by Pago Pago standards, ack! But seeing as how the challenge hasn't officially been ended yet, and I'm only about an hour or so late, really...
Mid-February finds the house across from them quiet, as it has been for the past four and a half days. It is also raining, wet and dreary and grey, and Doyle is quite annoyed to find that the last of the now-tepid tea in the flask has been drunk.
He makes his grumpy return to their post by the lightly curtained window just as Bodie adjusts the dial of the binoculars three thin silver ridges to the right and one to the left, eyes trained on the lady who has just answered the door, pretty and blonde and smiling. “Florist,” he grunts, turning briefly to record date, time, and description on the sheet of paper conveniently placed by his elbow while Doyle reaches for the camera. “Awful lot of roses, that.”
“It’s Valentine’s,” is the unconcerned reply, shrug explanatory, unapologetic, all-encompassing. “‘Spect they’re from the boyfriend.” He is still somewhat narked about the tea.
His partner’s snort is loud, echoing off the walls (or maybe it’s his imagination) as though to make a point about the ridiculousness of all things Valentine’s, this grand fucking euphemism, such a fuss birds make about it, Christ. Then he frowns. “Wasn’t anything in the files about there being a boyfriend, was there?”
Five hours and an exposed terrorist cell later they stumble back into the now-darkened attic. They have instructions to pack away the surveillance equipment, to steal out of the old council house as though they have never been, but for now they are content to merely grin and grin, eyes bright with triumph and cheeks flushed with victory. There is an old loveseat in a corner beneath the rafters, wooden and sigmoid, Grandaunt Mabel’s, maybe; they settle comfortably enough into its age-worn seats, each man facing opposite sides of the room, shoulders bumping and elbows brushing, hands curled around bottles of red and a bag of chocolates between them (the shop just down the road had placed them on discount, the last of their Valentine’s stock, unsold).
They get so drunk that they begin tossing chocolates into each other’s mouths.
They get so drunk that, when Doyle nearly loses a tooth, Bodie offers to feed them straight into his mouth.
Bodie unwraps foils of silver and of gold with an earnestness only the inebriated can ever achieve before tipping sugar-laden confection after confection past parted lips, dark chocolate and milk chocolate and (oh, vile misnomer) white. His thumb is warm, soft, gentle, and each breath of laughter is a playful huff against Doyle’s ear.
Doyle allows himself to pretend that he is drunk enough that he can catch the pad of Bodie’s thumb with a pink dart of his tongue without either of them noticing. It tastes sweet and milky and perhaps just a little bitter, chocolate-like, and Bodie’s thumb lingers each time on the curve of his lower lip before sweeping softly over its outline and away.
Hello Sunshine,
It’s incredibly dull here. You know how these jobs are: best suits out of pawn, velvet gloves, the Cow breathing down our necks when he’s not gabbing with the foreign types. Nearly ate a bad oyster today, but I spat it out. Murph wasn’t so lucky. He had six, and now excuses himself to the loo every four or five minutes, that lazy bastard. Christ, I’m running out of space already. They never do give enough, do they.
See you tomorrow in London.
-- B
14 Feb 1979
On the reverse is a picture, glossy but for the smudges of fingerprints and careless handling, two apples hanging from a branch, their red-and-yellow jackets bright splashes of colour cupped within a frame of drab greens and browns. Its tips have begun to unravel into layers, each exposed triangle of paper insubstantial in the dim light of the room.
Everything about this kitchen is unfamiliar: the placement of the tap, the alignment of the stove, the handle of the cast iron saucepan which is half an inch in diameter too broad in his grip. He suspects this might have something to do with the fact that it is Doyle’s kitchen, that it is Doyle’s kitchen in Doyle’s new flat, and that he doesn’t cook very often anyway, not really. (He prefers takeaway curries and fish and chips from the chippie just opposite his current abode, salt and vinegar with the chips please, cheers.)
“How is it?” he asks, pausing mid-stir. The sauce is bubbling quite merrily before him, little pockets of air dancing to the surface before popping in a burst of basil and tomato and lamb, and his partner is leaning against one of the few uncluttered spots to be found of kitchen counter by his side.
Doyle tastes the sauce with an imperious tilt of the head and a playful cant to his hips when Bodie offers him the spoon, tongue curling pink and thoughtful on the wooden rim. Perfect, is the reply, green eyes crinkling above the slow curve of lips. The pads of his fingers press pink-tipped white on the counter as he leans forward, and when he eases back they leave translucent whorls on the black surface of polished faux-marble which promptly fade into the steamy seven o' clock kitchen air.
There is a smear by the corner of Doyle’s mouth, reddish-like. Bodie thinks he might like to taste it, and so he does, discovers that it tastes like the pasta they will be having five minutes later, rich and complex (it is the hint of Doyle that does it). They remain like this, for a while, red sauce dripping from the rounded end of a wooden spoon to splatter on freshly-scrubbed linoleum, before he is obliged to save the meal from an untimely charring.
They eat at the table, off gleaming white plates of china and with metal forks which clink, because Bodie wants things to be done properly. Their knees brush in comfortable companionship beneath the linen-draped tabletop, and Doyle has five toes creeping up his calf, his inner thigh.
They never finish their dinner.
The livid scars on his chest mean that he cannot return to full and active duty, not quite just yet, so he paces around Bodie’s living room, heel-toe heel-toe step after step in nine o' clock gloom.
(The other man is away, on an op which appears quite ready to drag into the wee hours of the next morning. Doyle thinks he might like to worry, but he knows that Bodie is good at what he does, that Murphy and Jax and feisty Susan are good at what they do, and he will have to be content with that.)
Eventually he finds the book, or the book finds him, tumbling to the uncarpeted floor in a flurry of paper-rustles and with a thud when a denim-clad hip knocks it off its precarious perch on a well-thumbed copy of Auden, a hard-covered edition of Keats, a tiny cherry wood side table which use he has never quite figured out but which is still rather prettily carved anyway.
Shakespeare’s Tragedies, the cover reads, gilded letters pressed into the tooled faux-leather flashing gold in the rectangle of street-light which spills from the window. There is a postcard nestled between pages 94 and 95; Hamlet has just clapped his eyes upon the skull of a dead court jester, Alas, poor Yorick. He knows that it is his, that it is to him, even though he has never seen it before, because it’s the way Bodie speaks just before he falls asleep and just after he wakes, when he is quiet and trusting and at ease, when they are both tangled beneath sheets and with each other, arms and legs and faces buried in necks. Doyle likes to think, knows, that he is the only person to ever hear that.
(The curl of the tail of the ‘y’ says I miss you, the loop of the ‘l” speaks of loneliness, the stutter of the ballpoint pen on the second curve of the final capital ‘B’ a tremulous affection, love. He flips the postcard around, spends the next twenty seconds or so tracing the outlines of apples with his finger.)
That night Doyle takes the book with him to bed. Bodie will find it spread open on the coverlet at seven o’clock the next morning when he shuffles in, tired and bleary-eyed, Doyle lying asleep on Bodie’s side of the bed with his arms wrapped around Bodie’s pillow. (The postcard is missing.)
Doyle is spread on the sofa, stretched, soft curves and hard planes spread out and bare to the wandering touch of fingers which make him tremble. Bodie mouths the joint where hip meets thigh, the fold behind the knee, breath warm, hot, tongue painting incomprehensible trails slick up the inner thigh. When he tongues the slit Doyle arches up and away from the green upholstery which scratches his skin pink, breath a staccato of inhale-exhale-gasp. Hold your breath, sunshine, an entry which is splitting and smooth, rock-rock-rock-rock-a-bye, shared breath catching at the back of dry throats, rasping. It is all over far too soon.
The next morning they will have an argument about the stain left on the sofa, the merits of cleaning it up weighed against sloth and a lascivious grin. For now, however, they are content to curl up pressed tight against each other, bodies fitting perfectly in the places where the bodies of lovers fit, and to sleep.
Home home home, home is where they are, where they both are, he thinks, suddenly feeling quite maudlin. (But it is six o’clock in the morning, and there is still a while before they must hare down to Cowley’s office for their instructions, so he shall be as maudlin as he wants, ta very much.) Bodie is asleep beside him, each breath gusting sleepy and warm into the crook of neck and shoulder, across the ridge of collarbone. Doyle discovers that he can hear his partner’s heartbeat if he listens carefully enough, ear pressed against chest, quiet now, quiet, hush. He thinks he might want a cup of tea, its scent astringent, two sugars, milk, but he loops his arm around the sleeping man instead and counts the seconds and minutes and ticking clock hands towards dawn.
Title: Six Moments of Valentine's
Author: Erushi
Slash or Gen: Slash
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Yes please.
Disclaimer: The lads aren't mine, alas.
Notes: With thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
byslantedlight for the BritBodie-pick. *g* My prompt was: "A love seat is a wide chair. It was first made to seat one woman and her wide dress. Later, the love seat or courting seat had two sections, often in an S-shape. In this way, a couple could sit together -- but not too closely!"
Mid-February finds the house across from them quiet, as it has been for the past four and a half days. It is also raining, wet and dreary and grey, and Doyle is quite annoyed to find that the last of the now-tepid tea in the flask has been drunk.
He makes his grumpy return to their post by the lightly curtained window just as Bodie adjusts the dial of the binoculars three thin silver ridges to the right and one to the left, eyes trained on the lady who has just answered the door, pretty and blonde and smiling. “Florist,” he grunts, turning briefly to record date, time, and description on the sheet of paper conveniently placed by his elbow while Doyle reaches for the camera. “Awful lot of roses, that.”
“It’s Valentine’s,” is the unconcerned reply, shrug explanatory, unapologetic, all-encompassing. “‘Spect they’re from the boyfriend.” He is still somewhat narked about the tea.
His partner’s snort is loud, echoing off the walls (or maybe it’s his imagination) as though to make a point about the ridiculousness of all things Valentine’s, this grand fucking euphemism, such a fuss birds make about it, Christ. Then he frowns. “Wasn’t anything in the files about there being a boyfriend, was there?”
Five hours and an exposed terrorist cell later they stumble back into the now-darkened attic. They have instructions to pack away the surveillance equipment, to steal out of the old council house as though they have never been, but for now they are content to merely grin and grin, eyes bright with triumph and cheeks flushed with victory. There is an old loveseat in a corner beneath the rafters, wooden and sigmoid, Grandaunt Mabel’s, maybe; they settle comfortably enough into its age-worn seats, each man facing opposite sides of the room, shoulders bumping and elbows brushing, hands curled around bottles of red and a bag of chocolates between them (the shop just down the road had placed them on discount, the last of their Valentine’s stock, unsold).
They get so drunk that they begin tossing chocolates into each other’s mouths.
They get so drunk that, when Doyle nearly loses a tooth, Bodie offers to feed them straight into his mouth.
Bodie unwraps foils of silver and of gold with an earnestness only the inebriated can ever achieve before tipping sugar-laden confection after confection past parted lips, dark chocolate and milk chocolate and (oh, vile misnomer) white. His thumb is warm, soft, gentle, and each breath of laughter is a playful huff against Doyle’s ear.
Doyle allows himself to pretend that he is drunk enough that he can catch the pad of Bodie’s thumb with a pink dart of his tongue without either of them noticing. It tastes sweet and milky and perhaps just a little bitter, chocolate-like, and Bodie’s thumb lingers each time on the curve of his lower lip before sweeping softly over its outline and away.
=-=-=
Hello Sunshine,
It’s incredibly dull here. You know how these jobs are: best suits out of pawn, velvet gloves, the Cow breathing down our necks when he’s not gabbing with the foreign types. Nearly ate a bad oyster today, but I spat it out. Murph wasn’t so lucky. He had six, and now excuses himself to the loo every four or five minutes, that lazy bastard. Christ, I’m running out of space already. They never do give enough, do they.
See you tomorrow in London.
-- B
14 Feb 1979
On the reverse is a picture, glossy but for the smudges of fingerprints and careless handling, two apples hanging from a branch, their red-and-yellow jackets bright splashes of colour cupped within a frame of drab greens and browns. Its tips have begun to unravel into layers, each exposed triangle of paper insubstantial in the dim light of the room.
=-=-=
Everything about this kitchen is unfamiliar: the placement of the tap, the alignment of the stove, the handle of the cast iron saucepan which is half an inch in diameter too broad in his grip. He suspects this might have something to do with the fact that it is Doyle’s kitchen, that it is Doyle’s kitchen in Doyle’s new flat, and that he doesn’t cook very often anyway, not really. (He prefers takeaway curries and fish and chips from the chippie just opposite his current abode, salt and vinegar with the chips please, cheers.)
“How is it?” he asks, pausing mid-stir. The sauce is bubbling quite merrily before him, little pockets of air dancing to the surface before popping in a burst of basil and tomato and lamb, and his partner is leaning against one of the few uncluttered spots to be found of kitchen counter by his side.
Doyle tastes the sauce with an imperious tilt of the head and a playful cant to his hips when Bodie offers him the spoon, tongue curling pink and thoughtful on the wooden rim. Perfect, is the reply, green eyes crinkling above the slow curve of lips. The pads of his fingers press pink-tipped white on the counter as he leans forward, and when he eases back they leave translucent whorls on the black surface of polished faux-marble which promptly fade into the steamy seven o' clock kitchen air.
There is a smear by the corner of Doyle’s mouth, reddish-like. Bodie thinks he might like to taste it, and so he does, discovers that it tastes like the pasta they will be having five minutes later, rich and complex (it is the hint of Doyle that does it). They remain like this, for a while, red sauce dripping from the rounded end of a wooden spoon to splatter on freshly-scrubbed linoleum, before he is obliged to save the meal from an untimely charring.
They eat at the table, off gleaming white plates of china and with metal forks which clink, because Bodie wants things to be done properly. Their knees brush in comfortable companionship beneath the linen-draped tabletop, and Doyle has five toes creeping up his calf, his inner thigh.
They never finish their dinner.
=-=-=
The livid scars on his chest mean that he cannot return to full and active duty, not quite just yet, so he paces around Bodie’s living room, heel-toe heel-toe step after step in nine o' clock gloom.
(The other man is away, on an op which appears quite ready to drag into the wee hours of the next morning. Doyle thinks he might like to worry, but he knows that Bodie is good at what he does, that Murphy and Jax and feisty Susan are good at what they do, and he will have to be content with that.)
Eventually he finds the book, or the book finds him, tumbling to the uncarpeted floor in a flurry of paper-rustles and with a thud when a denim-clad hip knocks it off its precarious perch on a well-thumbed copy of Auden, a hard-covered edition of Keats, a tiny cherry wood side table which use he has never quite figured out but which is still rather prettily carved anyway.
Shakespeare’s Tragedies, the cover reads, gilded letters pressed into the tooled faux-leather flashing gold in the rectangle of street-light which spills from the window. There is a postcard nestled between pages 94 and 95; Hamlet has just clapped his eyes upon the skull of a dead court jester, Alas, poor Yorick. He knows that it is his, that it is to him, even though he has never seen it before, because it’s the way Bodie speaks just before he falls asleep and just after he wakes, when he is quiet and trusting and at ease, when they are both tangled beneath sheets and with each other, arms and legs and faces buried in necks. Doyle likes to think, knows, that he is the only person to ever hear that.
(The curl of the tail of the ‘y’ says I miss you, the loop of the ‘l” speaks of loneliness, the stutter of the ballpoint pen on the second curve of the final capital ‘B’ a tremulous affection, love. He flips the postcard around, spends the next twenty seconds or so tracing the outlines of apples with his finger.)
That night Doyle takes the book with him to bed. Bodie will find it spread open on the coverlet at seven o’clock the next morning when he shuffles in, tired and bleary-eyed, Doyle lying asleep on Bodie’s side of the bed with his arms wrapped around Bodie’s pillow. (The postcard is missing.)
=-=-=
Doyle is spread on the sofa, stretched, soft curves and hard planes spread out and bare to the wandering touch of fingers which make him tremble. Bodie mouths the joint where hip meets thigh, the fold behind the knee, breath warm, hot, tongue painting incomprehensible trails slick up the inner thigh. When he tongues the slit Doyle arches up and away from the green upholstery which scratches his skin pink, breath a staccato of inhale-exhale-gasp. Hold your breath, sunshine, an entry which is splitting and smooth, rock-rock-rock-rock-a-bye, shared breath catching at the back of dry throats, rasping. It is all over far too soon.
The next morning they will have an argument about the stain left on the sofa, the merits of cleaning it up weighed against sloth and a lascivious grin. For now, however, they are content to curl up pressed tight against each other, bodies fitting perfectly in the places where the bodies of lovers fit, and to sleep.
=-=-=
Home home home, home is where they are, where they both are, he thinks, suddenly feeling quite maudlin. (But it is six o’clock in the morning, and there is still a while before they must hare down to Cowley’s office for their instructions, so he shall be as maudlin as he wants, ta very much.) Bodie is asleep beside him, each breath gusting sleepy and warm into the crook of neck and shoulder, across the ridge of collarbone. Doyle discovers that he can hear his partner’s heartbeat if he listens carefully enough, ear pressed against chest, quiet now, quiet, hush. He thinks he might want a cup of tea, its scent astringent, two sugars, milk, but he loops his arm around the sleeping man instead and counts the seconds and minutes and ticking clock hands towards dawn.
=-=-=
Title: Six Moments of Valentine's
Author: Erushi
Slash or Gen: Slash
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Yes please.
Disclaimer: The lads aren't mine, alas.
Notes: With thanks to
byslantedlight for the 
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 01:19 pm (UTC)This was just......too much, sheer self-indulgence on a Sunday morning and I'm feeling quite guilty (not *too* guilty).
And I loved this kind of sharp observation:
Bodie unwraps foils of silver and of gold with an earnestness only the inebriated can ever achieve
I've *been* there!
Thank you, thank you for this delight.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 01:32 pm (UTC)And domestic kink gal that I am, I have to say that my favourite part was the one involving the sauce tasting..Mmmmm.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 01:34 pm (UTC)Quick mod-ly thing - please try to stick to the deadlines, usually there's some reason we've given them, although we're loose with this one, so it's okay this time, but... basically to be fair to everyone else who does stick to them! Cheers!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 02:13 pm (UTC)Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 02:57 pm (UTC)And eep, I'm so sorry! *grovels* Never again, I promise. Feel free to smite me in modly fury the next time it happens - I won't kick up a fuss, really.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 04:50 pm (UTC)Oh beautiful! Everyone else has already said it - soft and gentle and entrancing. I love the image of the apples, and the way you describe the postcard... oh, and Bodie coming home to find Doyle asleep on his side of the bed. ::happy sigh:: Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 05:13 pm (UTC)Thanks so much for sharing it!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 04:38 am (UTC)You made me think of one of my favourite Yeats' poems so thanks for that as well. Are you familiar with The Song of Wandering Aengus? It's the last verse:
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
It's lyrical, as always, beautifully descriptive, as always but as usual, what catches at me is the spaces between what you write, like in jazz, the notes you choose *not* to play. Some how that all comes to play in the postcard.
Thank you, Petal! ♥
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:11 pm (UTC)Thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:18 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for your lovely, lovely, blush-inducing comment. I'm glad this fic worked for you. And there can never be too much self-indulgence on a Sunday morning. Mind, this might be because I was feeling rather self-indulgent myself, spending most of my Sunday reading Pros fics... *g*
I've *been* there!
I think we've all been there, one time or another. Ah, those poor chocolate wrappers, they were never quite the same after being subject to a drunkard's hands. ;)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:29 pm (UTC)And I admit to having a domestic kink too. (Why else do I write so much of it? *g*) The idea of Bodie cooking sauce/pasta even though we generally see Doyle cooking started when
Thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:35 pm (UTC)Thanks for reading. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:37 pm (UTC)The image was actually taken in Cambridge when I nipped over to visit a friend last November. It was between that and a shot of a duck, but I felt that apples were more symbolic. *g*
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:41 pm (UTC)That picture of the apples was actually taken in Cambridge last November. It was between that and an image of a duck, but I figured apples were more symbolic. *g*
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:44 pm (UTC)Glad you liked the image of the apples too. It was between that or an image of a duck (you should have seen me rifling through my store of pictures before I started writing this *g*) but I figured apples were more symbolic. *laughs* I've always loved the idea of Bodie coming home to find Doyle asleep in his side of the bed - I'd always pictured this in those post DiaG days when Doyle couldn't have worked, but never had the oppurtunity to work that into any fic until now.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:48 pm (UTC)I think there's just something about the lads post-DiaG which keeps fascinating me. They've worked together for so long, that surely a scenario where one of them had to go out onto the field when the other was in no position to guard his back had to have affected the incapacitated party somewhat. Never had the oppurtunity to explore that in a fic until now though, so hurrah!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:51 pm (UTC)(Glad you liked the picture too. It was taken in Cambridge last autumn, and I had spent a bit of time debating between that and an image of a duck. Figured in the end that apples were more symbolic. *g*)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 01:56 pm (UTC)I swear you're another one of those people whose comments leave me blushing. The postcard was great fun to write, though I fretted a bit about getting Bodie's voice "right". I'm glad it worked for you.
Thanks for reading! ♥
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 05:18 pm (UTC)I've always loved the idea of Bodie coming home to find Doyle asleep in his side of the bed - I'd always pictured this in those post DiaG days when Doyle couldn't have worked,...
Mmmm - slightly punctured Doyle asleep in Bodie's bed - yep, that's an image that makes me a happy bunny!
I'm glad you went with the apples and not the ducks - such a lovely photo as well. ::beams::
no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 05:29 pm (UTC)And Bodie would wake him with a gentle hand on his shoulder, crawling beneath the covers as well for a quick kip with a warm and sleepy Doyle in his arms... *g*
Very fond of that image? Who, me? *g*
And thank you!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 09:31 pm (UTC)