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discoveredinaljSqueaking in just under the wire...
A Season of Misunderstandings
He only notices the scribbled address just as he’s setting his cup down the counter.
“It’s Murphy’s,” Bodie tells him as he walks up to him in the kitchen and drapes his arms around Doyle’s waist from behind, torso warm though the back of Doyle’s shirt. “You know, 6.2? The new chap? Picking him up tomorrow to show him the ropes, put him through his paces. Cowley’s orders.”
The address is for a place in Croydon. It is written in black ink, in an unfamiliar, slanting script, on blue-lined paper that’s clearly been torn out of a notebook. Doyle runs a finger across the jagged edge of paper as he sets the note back down. Then he turns in Bodie’s embrace, hooks his thumbs in the belt-loops of Bodie’s trousers.
“Hm,” he offers, and leans in for a kiss.
They don’t bring Murphy up again for the rest of the night.
The next morning, Bodie drops him off outside his flat. Doyle remains outside as he watches the silver Capri pull away from the kerb, and only goes in to pack for his three-day obbo in Birmingham when Bodie’s finally out of view. He manages not to snap at Jax when he greets the man some hours later, but it’s a close thing.
He spends all three days feeling vaguely anxious, even though the dealers they’re keeping an eye on remain uncharacteristically silent for the entirety of their watch, and he nearly upends his chair in his eagerness to greet Lucas and McCabe when the pair arrives to relieve them.
Bodie celebrates Doyle’s return with a large order of Indian takeaway. There’s a brief lull as Bodie pops the caps of two bottles of beer and Doyle divides up the order – his, his, mine, without-tomatoes-his, mine, mine, to-share – and then it’s the scrape of cheap plastic forks against scratched china plates and frantic bursts of conversation between enthusiastic bites of curry, three days, Bodie, three days, and the most exciting thing which happened was when one of them tripped on the front step whilst collecting the morning paper, no idea what the Cow wants me there for, Christ.
“Can’t be helped, mate,” is what Bodie offers when Doyle’s almost through his beer. He sounds somewhat distracted. Doyle attributes this to the fact that he’s occupied with edging his fork towards the carton of mutton vindaloo. “Not with you knowing the most about this drugs business from before. Busy young copper then, weren’t you?”
Doyle snorts. He also shifts the curry just out of Bodie’s reach. “I’ve seen grannies more active than that lot.”
“Better you than me,” grins Bodie, and promptly engages Doyle in a brief but vicious scuffle over the last of the vindaloo.
“So how was it like with 6.2?” Doyle asks, eventually, because he suddenly finds it imperative that he knows. He’s inexplicably tired of his chicken masala, still half-eaten in the carton perched on his lap. “The new chap any good?”
“One of the best I’ve seen so far.” Bodie’s grin widens. “Good instincts, solid training, catches on fast. Reckon even the Cow likes him now. Might be doing a bit of climbing the next time a bit of leave comes about.”
“Hm,” Doyle says, and pushes his masala away.
(He hadn’t been all too keen on it anyway; it had tasted funny.)
Beside him, Bodie looks delighted. “Cheers, sunshine,” he says as he picks up Doyle’s carton up. And he says, too, “You’ll like Murph, Ray. I know you will. He’s a good bloke. Very friendly. Bought us all a round at the pub the other day too.”
Doyle nods, but only after he has heads into the kitchen for a second beer.
The day after Bodie and Murphy relieve Jax and him on their second obbo round in Birmingham, Doyle heads to the firing range, where he spends over an hour in perfect firing stance: feet a touch wider than the width of his shoulders, knees bent ever just so, his gun-arm held straight and gun-hand cupped in his other. He sends the targets up with quick stomps to the pedal, and he fires in rapid succession to the cardboard arm, to the printed chest, to the black-and-white head. He keeps at it until he’s used the last of the cartridges he’s brought and the tension in his jaw is all but gone.
Susan and Judy are in the rest room when Doyle swings by for tea and biscuits. He learns in the time it takes for his teabag to steep that 6.2 had been drawn from the SAS, it’s why Mr Cowley assigned him to 3.7, and small wonder they get along so well, they’ve so much in common.
Doyle turns around and heads back to the firing range, stopping by the armoury briefly to pick up more cartridges.
The case at Birmingham goes down on Bodie’s and Murphy’s watch. There’re the usual bits of chase, and the expected exchanges of gunfire, but the group they’ve been watching turns out to merely consist of small-time dealers in over their heads, and the operation’s practically wrapped up by the time Doyle makes his way to Birmingham with both CI5 and the police in tow.
Jax buys them their first round of drinks that night; Bodie, the second. Murphy buys the third, and that’s when Doyle declines the proffered lager, sits instead by the bar and watches as Bodie and Murphy launch into yet another re-telling of the shoot-out. They have their arms slung around each other’s shoulders as they trade lines, their cheeks tilted just so, side-by-side, and when Murphy lifts his pint and proposes a toast in honour of Bodie’s latest attempt at heroics, Doyle excuses himself.
He drives to Bodie’s flat on a whim.
It’s quiet inside when he lets himself in, dark on account of the curtains which block the orange-yellow glow of the streetlights outside and somewhat dusty after three days of inoccupation. Doyle flings himself on the settee, and tells himself that he won’t fall asleep.
(He does anyway.)
It’s almost five in the morning when Doyle jolts awake. The scrape of the key is jarringly loud in the early-morning quiet, and Doyle heaves himself off the settee just in time to watch Bodie’s frame fill the narrow hallway of the flat.
Bodie, Doyle discovers as the other man steps up to him, smells of pub and beer and smoke. He also smells of something else, and the last makes something in Doyle’s belly clench.
Instead, he balls his hands into fists, says, “You were out for a quite a while.”
“You shouldn’t have waited up, mate,” Bodie tells him. “Leastwise, not here. Heater’s out; you’ll catch your death.” He even sounds concerned, and Doyle finds himself with a sudden, inexplicable desire to yell.
“Thought you might have been back earlier,” he grits out when he finally can. He can feel his fists trembling where they hang by his sides. “Pub would have closed hours back.”
“Yeah. Went to Murph’s for a bit after that, though.” Bodie’s voice is almost placatory. “There were a couple of things he wanted by advice on.”
Doyle snorts. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
“Ray,” Bodie begins. He sounds warier now, and Doyle barely keeps himself from wincing. “Ray,” he repeats, continues, “if this is about us, I promise there isn’t anything to worry ab – ”
“Bodie,” Doyle interrupts, and closes his eyes briefly against the calming cold that sweeps over him. “There isn’t an ‘us’.”
Across him, Bodie flinches, but falls silent.
“You’ve just returned from 6.2’s flat after having spent the entire evening glued to his side at the pub,” Doyle snaps. “You’ve spent most of the past three of weeks with him, and every time we speak, it’s always about good ol’ Murph. I think, in the circumstances, that it’d be safe to say that there probably isn’t an ‘us’.”
Bodie laughs. In the darkness of the living room, it sounds both strange and hollow. “And that’s what you think?”
“Yes, that’s what I bloody well think,” Doyle retorts, and distantly notes the way it comes out strangled and tight.
He leaves for his flat shortly after.
He does, however, try to apologise two days later, the morning they return from their leave. The words feel as insubstantial on his tongue, and he winces his way through them until Bodie cuts him off with a casual wave and a smile.
“It’s alright,” Bodie tells him. “You were probably right, anyway.”
“What about?” Doyle asks.
“Everything,” Bodie smiles. “Misunderstandings happen all the time. Let’s just forget about it.”
“Alright,” he agrees, and escapes to his desk, relieved.
It takes him another day before he realises that Bodie hadn’t been referring to their fight a few days before.
The next two weeks are tense, characterised by awkward gestures and stiff silences, the briefest of interactions fumbling dances that are ever so slightly off-kilter as they sidle past each other in the corridors, smiles polite and stubbornly cheerful.
In the same fortnight, Doyle finds Bodie deep in conversation with Murphy twenty-seven times which he doesn’t count.
He still copes, however. Somehow, they both do.
Doyle’s about to enter the rest room for another cup of tea when he hears Murphy, and he pauses impulsively at the doorway, listens, peeks. “Been asking Bodie for tips,” he hears Murphy say, sees Murphy hand Susan an arrangement of roses. Then he smiles, turns away with his empty mug, and leaves them be.
Bodie’s still at his desk when he re-enters the office, and he smiles when Doyle takes his hand.
Title: A Season of Misunderstandings
Author: Erushi
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Yes please.
Slash or Gen: Slash (Bodie/Doyle)
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,610 words
Summary: In which there are misunderstandings aplenty.
Disclaimer: Not mine etc.
A Season of Misunderstandings
He only notices the scribbled address just as he’s setting his cup down the counter.
“It’s Murphy’s,” Bodie tells him as he walks up to him in the kitchen and drapes his arms around Doyle’s waist from behind, torso warm though the back of Doyle’s shirt. “You know, 6.2? The new chap? Picking him up tomorrow to show him the ropes, put him through his paces. Cowley’s orders.”
The address is for a place in Croydon. It is written in black ink, in an unfamiliar, slanting script, on blue-lined paper that’s clearly been torn out of a notebook. Doyle runs a finger across the jagged edge of paper as he sets the note back down. Then he turns in Bodie’s embrace, hooks his thumbs in the belt-loops of Bodie’s trousers.
“Hm,” he offers, and leans in for a kiss.
They don’t bring Murphy up again for the rest of the night.
The next morning, Bodie drops him off outside his flat. Doyle remains outside as he watches the silver Capri pull away from the kerb, and only goes in to pack for his three-day obbo in Birmingham when Bodie’s finally out of view. He manages not to snap at Jax when he greets the man some hours later, but it’s a close thing.
He spends all three days feeling vaguely anxious, even though the dealers they’re keeping an eye on remain uncharacteristically silent for the entirety of their watch, and he nearly upends his chair in his eagerness to greet Lucas and McCabe when the pair arrives to relieve them.
=-=-=
Bodie celebrates Doyle’s return with a large order of Indian takeaway. There’s a brief lull as Bodie pops the caps of two bottles of beer and Doyle divides up the order – his, his, mine, without-tomatoes-his, mine, mine, to-share – and then it’s the scrape of cheap plastic forks against scratched china plates and frantic bursts of conversation between enthusiastic bites of curry, three days, Bodie, three days, and the most exciting thing which happened was when one of them tripped on the front step whilst collecting the morning paper, no idea what the Cow wants me there for, Christ.
“Can’t be helped, mate,” is what Bodie offers when Doyle’s almost through his beer. He sounds somewhat distracted. Doyle attributes this to the fact that he’s occupied with edging his fork towards the carton of mutton vindaloo. “Not with you knowing the most about this drugs business from before. Busy young copper then, weren’t you?”
Doyle snorts. He also shifts the curry just out of Bodie’s reach. “I’ve seen grannies more active than that lot.”
“Better you than me,” grins Bodie, and promptly engages Doyle in a brief but vicious scuffle over the last of the vindaloo.
“So how was it like with 6.2?” Doyle asks, eventually, because he suddenly finds it imperative that he knows. He’s inexplicably tired of his chicken masala, still half-eaten in the carton perched on his lap. “The new chap any good?”
“One of the best I’ve seen so far.” Bodie’s grin widens. “Good instincts, solid training, catches on fast. Reckon even the Cow likes him now. Might be doing a bit of climbing the next time a bit of leave comes about.”
“Hm,” Doyle says, and pushes his masala away.
(He hadn’t been all too keen on it anyway; it had tasted funny.)
Beside him, Bodie looks delighted. “Cheers, sunshine,” he says as he picks up Doyle’s carton up. And he says, too, “You’ll like Murph, Ray. I know you will. He’s a good bloke. Very friendly. Bought us all a round at the pub the other day too.”
Doyle nods, but only after he has heads into the kitchen for a second beer.
=-=-=
The day after Bodie and Murphy relieve Jax and him on their second obbo round in Birmingham, Doyle heads to the firing range, where he spends over an hour in perfect firing stance: feet a touch wider than the width of his shoulders, knees bent ever just so, his gun-arm held straight and gun-hand cupped in his other. He sends the targets up with quick stomps to the pedal, and he fires in rapid succession to the cardboard arm, to the printed chest, to the black-and-white head. He keeps at it until he’s used the last of the cartridges he’s brought and the tension in his jaw is all but gone.
Susan and Judy are in the rest room when Doyle swings by for tea and biscuits. He learns in the time it takes for his teabag to steep that 6.2 had been drawn from the SAS, it’s why Mr Cowley assigned him to 3.7, and small wonder they get along so well, they’ve so much in common.
Doyle turns around and heads back to the firing range, stopping by the armoury briefly to pick up more cartridges.
=-=-=
The case at Birmingham goes down on Bodie’s and Murphy’s watch. There’re the usual bits of chase, and the expected exchanges of gunfire, but the group they’ve been watching turns out to merely consist of small-time dealers in over their heads, and the operation’s practically wrapped up by the time Doyle makes his way to Birmingham with both CI5 and the police in tow.
Jax buys them their first round of drinks that night; Bodie, the second. Murphy buys the third, and that’s when Doyle declines the proffered lager, sits instead by the bar and watches as Bodie and Murphy launch into yet another re-telling of the shoot-out. They have their arms slung around each other’s shoulders as they trade lines, their cheeks tilted just so, side-by-side, and when Murphy lifts his pint and proposes a toast in honour of Bodie’s latest attempt at heroics, Doyle excuses himself.
He drives to Bodie’s flat on a whim.
It’s quiet inside when he lets himself in, dark on account of the curtains which block the orange-yellow glow of the streetlights outside and somewhat dusty after three days of inoccupation. Doyle flings himself on the settee, and tells himself that he won’t fall asleep.
(He does anyway.)
=-=-=
It’s almost five in the morning when Doyle jolts awake. The scrape of the key is jarringly loud in the early-morning quiet, and Doyle heaves himself off the settee just in time to watch Bodie’s frame fill the narrow hallway of the flat.
Bodie, Doyle discovers as the other man steps up to him, smells of pub and beer and smoke. He also smells of something else, and the last makes something in Doyle’s belly clench.
Instead, he balls his hands into fists, says, “You were out for a quite a while.”
“You shouldn’t have waited up, mate,” Bodie tells him. “Leastwise, not here. Heater’s out; you’ll catch your death.” He even sounds concerned, and Doyle finds himself with a sudden, inexplicable desire to yell.
“Thought you might have been back earlier,” he grits out when he finally can. He can feel his fists trembling where they hang by his sides. “Pub would have closed hours back.”
“Yeah. Went to Murph’s for a bit after that, though.” Bodie’s voice is almost placatory. “There were a couple of things he wanted by advice on.”
Doyle snorts. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
“Ray,” Bodie begins. He sounds warier now, and Doyle barely keeps himself from wincing. “Ray,” he repeats, continues, “if this is about us, I promise there isn’t anything to worry ab – ”
“Bodie,” Doyle interrupts, and closes his eyes briefly against the calming cold that sweeps over him. “There isn’t an ‘us’.”
Across him, Bodie flinches, but falls silent.
“You’ve just returned from 6.2’s flat after having spent the entire evening glued to his side at the pub,” Doyle snaps. “You’ve spent most of the past three of weeks with him, and every time we speak, it’s always about good ol’ Murph. I think, in the circumstances, that it’d be safe to say that there probably isn’t an ‘us’.”
Bodie laughs. In the darkness of the living room, it sounds both strange and hollow. “And that’s what you think?”
“Yes, that’s what I bloody well think,” Doyle retorts, and distantly notes the way it comes out strangled and tight.
He leaves for his flat shortly after.
=-=-=
He does, however, try to apologise two days later, the morning they return from their leave. The words feel as insubstantial on his tongue, and he winces his way through them until Bodie cuts him off with a casual wave and a smile.
“It’s alright,” Bodie tells him. “You were probably right, anyway.”
“What about?” Doyle asks.
“Everything,” Bodie smiles. “Misunderstandings happen all the time. Let’s just forget about it.”
“Alright,” he agrees, and escapes to his desk, relieved.
It takes him another day before he realises that Bodie hadn’t been referring to their fight a few days before.
=-=-=
The next two weeks are tense, characterised by awkward gestures and stiff silences, the briefest of interactions fumbling dances that are ever so slightly off-kilter as they sidle past each other in the corridors, smiles polite and stubbornly cheerful.
In the same fortnight, Doyle finds Bodie deep in conversation with Murphy twenty-seven times which he doesn’t count.
He still copes, however. Somehow, they both do.
=-=-=
Doyle’s about to enter the rest room for another cup of tea when he hears Murphy, and he pauses impulsively at the doorway, listens, peeks. “Been asking Bodie for tips,” he hears Murphy say, sees Murphy hand Susan an arrangement of roses. Then he smiles, turns away with his empty mug, and leaves them be.
Bodie’s still at his desk when he re-enters the office, and he smiles when Doyle takes his hand.
Title: A Season of Misunderstandings
Author: Erushi
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Yes please.
Slash or Gen: Slash (Bodie/Doyle)
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,610 words
Summary: In which there are misunderstandings aplenty.
Disclaimer: Not mine etc.
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Date: 2011-01-06 10:01 pm (UTC)Thank you.