discoveredinalj | Discovered in a Christmas Stocking, Day 30

melanieathene.livejournal.com posting in

I hope everyone's having a wonderful holiday season and that you are all enjoying the lovely pressies which have turned up in the

discoveredinalj stocking as much as I am.

My prompt for today was "a plastic toy" – which did manage to work its way into the fic, although it was not the little bag of plastic animals I think it was supposed to be. Hopefully, you'll enjoy the story anyway. :)

~*~

It was just a joke. A silly, spur of the moment joke.

Leave it to Bodie to turn the joke around...

They were lurking outside the chemists: Doyle hidden behind a newspaper, comfortably ensconced on a handy bench inside the welcome shelter of a bus stop; Bodie slouching against the wall, casting impatient glances at his wristwatch and the big glass door. Both men were trying hard to appear casual and inconspicuous, though the longer they remained in position, the greater the risk of someone – more likely than not the wrong someone – arriving at the conclusion that they were on surveillance. Which they were. And the man they were tailing was taking his bloody time about reappearing from the shop across the way.

“How long does it take to buy a pack of ciggies anyway?” Doyle's disenchanted voice wafted from behind The Guardian.

“How long does it take to catch a bus?” Bodie countered, pretending to mask a yawn with his hand. “Three have passed you by. You're going to have to join the rest of us poor buggers out here in the snow.”

A heavy sigh accompanied the rustle of a folding paper. Doyle sauntered out of the bus shelter and ambled inside the chemist shop, making a beeline for a bank of vending machines just inside the door. A quick check of his pockets produced a single coin. He popped it in a machine and cranked the lever around, mouth watering in anticipation of a treat. Cherry-flavoured would be nice. Or strawberry. In fact, anything but one of those awful liquorice gum balls would do.

He got his wish... in a manner of speaking. It wasn't liquorice. On the other hand, it wasn't gum either. It was one of those little plastic bubble spheres. With – oh god no! – a gaudy plastic ring rattling around inside. 'Silver', with a big chunk of glass precariously glued on top.

“Oi! Ray! He's made us!” Bodie shouted.

Doyle absentmindedly pocketed the useless trinket and quickly pounded down the sidewalk after his partner, dodging a plethora of Christmas shoppers and splashing though puddles of slush.

'Tis the season, he thought, launching himself into a determined tackle.

~*~

“And then,” Bodie chortled, his face flushed with amusement and the coffee he held in his hand in danger of sloshing over the rim of the mug, “Raymond the Red-nosed Reindeer goes flying through the air and knocks poor old Father Christmas arse over tit. Our man runs himself into a post, looking back over his shoulder, gaping at the sight. All I had to do was cuff him.”

“Would have had him if I hadn't slipped on the ice,” Doyle muttered darkly. “And why the hell Saint Nick chose to come ringing his bell around that corner at that moment, I'll never know.”

“Fate, mate,” Bodie waved a dismissive hand.

“Cheer up, Ray,” Murphy grinned. “At least you had a nice, soft, padded landing.”

“Soft, my eye. The bony old coot was all knees and elbows. Gave me a bloody nose.” Doyle sniffed and rummaged in his coat pocket for a hanky, but feeling only slivered shards of plastic instead of the expected cloth, grinned mischievously. “He nearly broke your present too, Bodie.”

“He what?” Bodie's head lifted from its investigation of a biscuit tin.

Doyle withdrew the plastic ring from his pocket and waved it enticingly. “I was going to save this for Christmas, but I may as well give it to you now. Will you marry me, my darling? Say 'yes', and make me the happiest man on earth.”

Murphy rolled his eyes.

Jax snorted so hard he blew bubbles in his tea.

Bodie's eyes assumed the same glassy texture as the twinkling faux stone as Doyle seized his left hand and theatrically tried to slip the ring on his finger. Of course, Bodie's fingertip was too broad a fit. Undaunted, Doyle moved over a digit and managed to squeeze the ring almost to the first joint of Bodie's pinkie finger.

“What do you say, love?” he beamed.

“Yes,” Bodie said, so quietly that Doyle could scarcely hear the word.

Doyle blinked. “I beg your pardon?” he asked.

Bodie cleared his throat and tried for a louder voice. “I said yes, Ray. Yes.” Turning his hand to Murphy and Jax to better display the ring, he squeaked, “Look lads, we're engaged.” Grabbing the gobsmacked Doyle's face between his hands, he planted a wet and sloppy kiss full on his partner's lips.

Doyle fled the room, his undignified retreat accompanied by thunderous applause and howls of laughter.

~*~

If Doyle thought that was the end to it, he was sadly mistaken. More than a week after his joke misfired, catcalls still followed him down the hall as he made his way towards the ops room.

“When's the big day, Ray?”

“Don't expect the bride will be wearing white, will he?”

“Are you registered at Harrods?”

“Does he put out, now that he has his diamond?”

Doyle growled “sod off” under his breath and lengthened his stride. Where were all the terrorists when you needed them? Tucked up in their little beds with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads apparently. The streets were dead quiet. Paperwork was his only refuge. If only the old man would stop being such a Scrooge and grant his merry band of bored agents leave for the Holidays. But Cowley was convinced chaos would erupt the moment he did. And so they all sat around and waited, and looked at Doyle and sniggered up their sleeves.

It didn't help matters any that Bodie, the daft sod, was still wearing that bloody ring. And just the other day when Kelly, the new girl, asked him out, in front of God and the entire secretarial pool, he quite seriously replied, “Sorry, love, I'm taken.”

A joke is a joke, but this is carrying it too far, Doyle fumed.

“'Morning, Ray,” Murphy smirked, as Doyle stomped through the door and flung himself into a protesting chair. “Where's your better half?”

“Fuck off, Murphy.”

“Now, now, Ray-dear, don't be like that. Didn't your mum ever tell you that you'll catch more flies with sugar?”

“Don't want any bloody flies.” Doyle buried his nose in a file.

“Morning, 3.7,” Murphy offered a few minutes later as Bodie sauntered in, looking sleek and handsome and – yes, Doyle noted with a fierce scowl – still wearing that god-awful ring.

“He's all yours, mate,” Murphy grinned, wisely taking himself out the door in search of friendlier climes.

“For better or worse,” Bodie drawled. “For richer or poorer. For as long as we both shall–”

And that, as Doyle saw it, was the proverbial straw that broke the fucking camel's back.

Bodie found the ops room door slammed shut and himself pressed back against it before he had the time to draw another breath.

“I,” Doyle said, in a deceptively dulcet tone, “have had enough. I'm through taking shit from you, Bodie. There's no one here now for you to play to. It's just you and me, sunshine.” Gently he trailed his index finger from Bodie's nose to his jaw, then slid his hand around to cup his partner's head and draw their faces even closer together. “You and me,” he repeated, narrowed green eyes locked with widened blue. “And I am calling your bluff.”

For an instant, the lips he held trapped beneath his own went rigid with surprise but, then, abruptly they softened and parted as Bodie returned the angry kiss with a passionate fervour the likes of which Doyle had never known. Despite himself, he moaned and leaned more heavily against his partner, grateful for the strong arms which instantly wrapped themselves around him, drawing him closer still, their support the only anchor in a world gone suddenly mad. And still the kiss went on, impossibly deepening. Eager hands began to wander: stroked and caressed, teased and promised...

“Bodie!” Doyle gasped, reluctantly wrenching his mouth free of Bodie's as sparkles from lack of oxygen danced before his eyes. Panting, his heart pounding as if fresh from a torturous bout with Macklin, he rested his forehead against Bodie's shoulder and tried hard to remember how to breathe.

Gentle, tentative fingers combed through his hair.

“How long, Bodie?” Doyle whispered finally, lifting his head so he might read his partner's face. If this was a joke, there was nothing remotely funny about it. But Bodie didn't so much as crack a smile. In fact, he looked every bit as thunderstruck and lost at sea as did one Raymond Doyle. But, gradually, as the silence lengthened, his face became transformed, at peace with the decision he had reached. And then he did smile, and the raw, open love Doyle saw shining from his normally closed off partner's face was like a physical blow to the stomach: it made him gasp out loud, left him dazed and breathless and ever so slightly giddy with a deep-blossoming, rising wave of unspeakable emotion.

“Weeks. Months. The better part of a year.” Bodie's lips nuzzled at Doyle's temple, and Doyle shivered at the touch, his head dropping back down to rest on Bodie's shoulder.

“Bloody hell...”

“Yeah, I know. It hit me the same way.”

“I don't know if I can do this.”

A velvet tongue teased from one curl covered ear to the corner of Doyle's mouth and Bodie's chin nudged his partner's cheek around to join their lips together in a gentle, yet no less fervent, kiss.

“You don't know if you can do this?” Bodie prompted long moments later, his pelvis rocking lightly against a matching thrust, hardness answering hardness.

“I don't know if I can do this... but I know I want to try. But not here. Not like this. Dinner tonight. My place. 7:30. You bring the wine... okay?”

Bodie smiled a beatific smile. “Okay,” he quietly agreed. Efficiently, he straightened Doyle's rumpled clothing, and set his own twisted garments to rights.

“Oh, and Bodie... The ring has to go. It's turning your finger green.”

Bodie slipped free of the offending object and placed it in Doyle's palm. Tenderly, he folded Doyle's fingers around the ring, and brushed a kiss across the knuckles of that hand.

“Christmas is coming, and I've always been partial to silver, mate. Matching bands, perhaps?”

“And what do I get in return, you Greedy Gus?”

“Me,” Bodie replied.

It was just a joke. A silly, spur of the moment joke.

Leave it to Bodie to turn it into a lifetime of shared joy and laughter.

Title: With This Ring
Author: Melanie Athene
Slash or Gen: Slash
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: yes
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, they're not mine, though I like to borrow them now and then.
Warnings: None.

Thank you hugs to my beta,