When It Is With Your Body
Feb. 14th, 2011 11:13 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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discoveredinalj
I'm hugely cheating here, because - be warned - this fic isn't finished. It's not even close, because immediately I finished my mad rush of second-job, I was attacked and savaged by t'lurghy, completely confounding all my weekend writing plans, and I suspect I'll be off work tomorrow too, which is no fun when you can't even sit upright and write. Though I'm feeling slightly perkier than I have been, hence the guilt and the posting... Anyway,
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heliophile_oxon gave me the above e.e. cummings' poem as a prompt, and I couldn't bear to not post anything at all, so for those of you (most I expect) who won't go near a wip, I'm posting the poem and what I always think is a very inspirational pic of our lads. And for Heliophile, and anyone else vaguely interested - the start of something that will one day properly end with the poem... Erm - happy Valentine's Day?When It Is With Your Body
by Slantedlight
Somewhere beyond the sunrise, on another plane or another world, or in some other thread of life, Doyle dreams. They are strange dreams, memories and might-have-beens and quantum strings of possibilities curling and looping around the Field, tangling and untangling themselves, stretching further, burrowing deeper as they go. He can’t move, restrained at wrist and ankle and head, and by darkness and silence and the tick tick tick of the drugs through his veins – but the drugs infiltrate his dreams too, create darkling shadows on the edge of his heartbeat so that his breath quickens and his body tenses, ever alert. And the wires carry it all back to The Organisation.
Bodie waited patiently while Cowley finished signing the dozen forms it apparently took to get him into CI5, half an ear on the rain outside, pattering against window and street and the rooves of London, listening otherwise to a pair of high heels tip-tapping their way down the corridor outside. Not the brunette who’d shown him in, she was in flats, and not the blonde he’d seen coming out of the agents’ rest room, whose long legs had ended in a pair of bright red trainers. Much more promising, this, high heels boded well for a better class of bird – one who was unlikely to be able to knock him down if she didn’t like the way he phrased his offer. The tip-tap stopped outside Cowley’s door, there was a quick knock and the handle turned. Cup of tea, maybe?
But Cowley was standing up, taking off his glasses, and he wouldn’t do that for his secretary, surely…
She was a looker, when she appeared – tall and slim, another brunette whose hair wafted in gentle waves around her well-formed neck…
“Bodie – this is Kate Ross; Kate this is William Bodie.”
Bodie smiled pleasantly at her, feeling the happy tug of attraction. She held out her hand and he shook it – soft skin, a confident grip. Another agent, then – would they be working together? He’d not worked with a woman before, but he supposed if she was up to the job…
“Kate is our resident psychiatrist and psychologist, with a specialism in…”
His smile froze in place – a bloody shrink? What did he want to meet a trick cyclist for? He nodded along as Cowley let her begin to speak, hoping he wasn’t giving the impression of understanding a word she said.
“…long interval cortical inhibition and the dream state.” She turned back to Cowley, “Have you told Mr Bodie about our project?”
A project? “Look, sir, I wasn’t expecting to be some lab rat,” he said, before he could help himself. His protest faded as he regained Cowley’s full attention, a knowing look from eyes the colour of ice. He relaxed, despite himself. The Major knew Cowley, trusted him, and he’d never known him to be mistaken about someone – or at least not yet.
“Och, if it was a lab rat I wanted, I’d have found someone cheaper,” Cowley said, but there was a twinkle in his eye. “I need a man well-qualified in covert operations, someone who can work in unfamiliar territory, and with impeccable references.”
Impeccable references? He hadn’t been talking to Nairn, then.
“I also need someone who understands me when I say that nothing about this project leaves this room – not one word.”
He nodded, more intrigued now, his attention finally focussed on the op, whatever it would be.
“Right then – let’s go downstairs…” Cowley selected a file from his desk and led the way, chatting in a low voice with Ross. Bodie busied himself counting corridors and stairways, noticed that they turned back on themselves twice, as if he was being purposefully misled. It was a big building – an old school maybe, with its high Victorian windows and flaking slush-green paint on the walls. CI5 obviously didn’t fill it, there were plenty of empty rooms that gaped, their doors open, as they passed.
The basement though, where Cowley paused in front of a guard and signed a book to admit the three of them, was anything but half-abandoned. They were admitted, through a double-locked entrance, to the sterile white glare of a working laboratory, to a stretch of windowed rooms where boffins in white coats bustled around with tubes and wires, and there was a pervading chemical tang to the air.
His eyes widened, and he glanced at Cowley – to find himself being carefully studied, and still that twinkle.
“Much too expensive for a lab rat, Bodie.”
“Yes sir.” He took a breath, preceded Cowley into a room where Ross was already settling herself, and tried to ignore the machinery at the back, lights and cables and computers all surrounding what looked like a rubber-covered bed.
“One of my agents is missing,” Cowley handed him the file he’d brought from upstairs, “And it’s your job to get him back. The men who have taken him are not only ruthless in their determination to uncover the minutiae of CI5 workings, they’re also…” He paused, glanced at Ross. “They’re a new breed, a kind of scientific thug, if you like – but we’re going to play them at their own game.”
Bodie opened the file, a resume of one Raymond Doyle – ex- Detective Constable with the Met, Drug Squad, handgun expert, martial arts… new recruit to CI5.
“He’s not been with you long.” He didn’t make it a question.
“Long enough.” Cowley gestured to Ross, who was making some sort of adjustments to her equipment, and she turned back to them.
“These men have developed a means to plug into the subconscious, to pull information from the observations we all make every day – obviously these are heightened in someone like yourself, or Mr Doyle. I imagine that you could already find your way around this building better than I can – and that your brain has subconsciously made sense of what you barely realise it has even glimpsed. Doyle has been with CI5 for six months, and three in training before that.”
“So change the codes, move the building – you’ll lose one man, but that’s better than fifty.”
Cowley’s look was much less friendly this time. “I said you were too expensive to be used as a lab rat – my men are worth ten of you, and there are far fewer.”
He opened his mouth to refute that pack of lies, then closed it abruptly. He’d wanted into CI5 since he’d heard of it – there was only so long you could happily dangle from helicopters and so much thrill to be had from hacking your way through a jungle at night after all.
“No,” Cowley continued, “I want Doyle back – and I want the men who think they can circumvent the very building-blocks of privacy itself!”
“So how do I fit in, sir? Where’s Doyle being held?”
“We don’t know,” Cowley said, and gestured to Ross again.
“That’s what we want you to find out – and I’m afraid we have nothing to go on but our suspicion that it is indeed these men.”
“These men?” He frowned.
“The Organisation,” Cowley said, looking directly at Bodie. “The Organisation took him.”
“I thought they weren’t active any more – how do you know it’s them?”
“We don’t, not one hundred percent – but all the indications are there. And before he vanished Doyle was targeted by an old enemy - completely unrelated, Duffy was a runner from The Organisation himself, but he brought Doyle to their attention.”
“Alright,” he couldn’t help glancing at Ross’ machine, “What do you want me to do?”
Cowley's gaze didn't waver. “You’re going to sleep, and when you find them you're going to enter Doyle’s dreams.”
There were days, when the bush was hot like this for weeks on end, that he’d give almost anything for the feel of a cold Wirral rain sliding down his face, for the stink of a breeze blowing through Liverpool docks, even for the clammy touch of a sea fog off the Sands. Now and then though, with a job over and money in his pockets, the camp quiet with twilight around him and the sounds of even wilder creatures than they echoing through the scrub, there was something lush about the heat, something that sank through his skin and into his bones, soaking him into pleasant lassitude…
Trouble was, he’d left it down by the river, and he couldn’t leave it there, not overnight, to the jackals and the wildebeest. He'd have to find it, even though it meant leaving the lazy comfort of his tent. Stupid to have put it down, you should never abandon something like that.
Dust puffed about his feet, dark orange in the last of the light, as he trekked along the path to the water's edge. He held his rifle casually over one arm, ready to cock and fire in an instant, but it seemed he had the place to himself tonight, the usual menagerie off to bother someone else's evening. They were out there somewhere, he could hear the distant whoops and whistles and wailings, but they wouldn't bother him.
He had to find... something. He'd left it behind, and he needed it. If he could remember what it looked like...
A noise there - somewhere to the left, back from the water, somewhere in the scrub and thorn bushes... He peered through the gathering darkness, stars pricking the sky above him, crept slowly forward, step by cautious step... He felt... someone was watching him, pacing him in the distance, though he couldn't see them... Branches rustled somewhere ahead, then crackled and crunched as if something had lain down heavily upon them, and yes - a grunt, a human sound surely...
He peered past the trunk of a squat, twisted thornbush, and pale eyes met his, Colbert kneeling over another man, trousers open, cock protruding thickly, impatiently. Colbert held his gaze, pressed himself forward, into whoever it was - Bodie couldn't see, the ground shadowed, hidden. Was that who he'd been looking for? Colbert grinned up at him, triumphant, moving rhythmically, so that the man below him groaned. Bodie's own cock rose as he watched, as if it was he who was thrusting, balls-deep, in and out...
Movement again in the bush, and he looked up, looked away - it was the man who'd been watching him before. Couldn't see him, knew he was there... Colbert and his partner vanished as he stepped forward, concentrating hard to try and pinpoint this new stranger. It was no one from the camp, it was an alien gaze, and hard... But there was a rhythm to his long-legged gait as there had been a rhythm to Colbert's fucking, and as he slipped from tree to tree Bodie realised that he had the direction of it, that if he headed off to the left he could cut him off, if he was fast enough and quiet enough, he could see who...
He caught a glimpse of curly hair, of surprised slanted eyes, and everything changed.
Belfast.
The sights and sounds and the thick smell of it came flooding back - cordite and acrid black smoke, and the rusty tang of blood as it pooled and dried in the aftermath of the explosion. The car was a brilliant torch to the night, flames flashing and flickering with the wind so that the dark husks that had once been two off-duty squaddies - Williams or Kimmeridge or Wallace, perhaps he'd find out later - seemed almost to move themselves. If they did, it was only with the force of the heat, the buffetting of the vehicle. There were others who'd been less lucky - civilians passing by who lay clutching arms or legs, or staring in shock at a slice of bonnet or boot or wing mirror as it pierced their flesh. Some neither clutched nor stared, but their bodies trembled and their faces screwed in pain. A dozen? More? And the bastards who'd done it probably long gone...
But there - there he was, the man he wanted, turning to enter the old factory on the corner, past the grafitti and through the gaping doorway, to the darkness inside... Bodie pushed himself to his feet, away from the girl he'd thrown to the pavement, who sat up after him, looking dazedly around and starting to keen, left her to make her own sense of it all.
He'd lost it, in all the chaos and the sudden terror, he'd lost it and it had to be around here somewhere...
The man knew where it was, why else would he be here?
A building like this could be all booby traps and bloody endings, one car bomb not enough for the death-mongers they fought, but somehow he knew it was safe - the other man wasn't one of them, though Bodie didn't know who he was. He knew he could get around him though - knew that he'd nearly had him before, though he didn't remember where... The hunt came naturally to him, pausing to listen for sounds out of place, for the movement of air that was someone else breathing it, for shadows changing colour and direction...
...and then they turned the same corner, and stood face to face, and there was an intake of breath...
And he was awake, and George bloody Cowley was looking steadily at him, and Kate sodding Ross was scribbling on her clipboard.
Title: When It Is With Your Body
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Slash
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Not yet - it's not finished!
Disclaimer: Bodie, Doyle and the CI5 universe aren't mine...
Notes: Again, apologies that this is totally a work in progress - if you hate those, then I hope you ignored it! And if you read it, then maybe figuring out how it matches with the poem will make up for it not having an ending yet...?
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Date: 2011-02-14 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 11:54 pm (UTC)It doesn't read like a WIP, but part 1 of an engrossing story...
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Date: 2011-02-15 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 12:58 am (UTC)It'll be interesting to see how Doyle's experiencing all this...
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Date: 2011-02-15 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 04:26 pm (UTC)The Other Movie = Inception. :D (And that was the Satoshi Kon Paprika; there's another Paprika somewhere out there.)
Haven't seen The Cell or read the crossover, but I'm *really* loving this. I'm really excited to see where it goes - but I'm a patient person, LOL.
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Date: 2011-02-15 02:22 am (UTC)I love your story; very intriguing. Am reading it as chapter 1 with and looking forward to the rest.
Hope you are feeling better very soon. ♥
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Date: 2011-02-15 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 07:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 08:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 08:04 pm (UTC)When It Is With Your Body
Date: 2011-02-15 09:00 am (UTC)You know, suddenly it looks as if the poem and the photo were meant to go together (mmmmm, now who has electric fur I wonder! Sounds very Doyle to me *g*). Thank you for picking this prompt!
Re: When It Is With Your Body
Date: 2011-02-15 08:06 pm (UTC)And hee - I'm afraid Sappho left me with nothing, but I like e.e.cummings alot, so yeay, that worked!
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Date: 2011-02-15 11:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 03:22 pm (UTC)Oh noes! You've got the dreaded lurgy too. Ack! It really knocks the legs out from under you. Feel loads better soon luv.
I love e.e.cummings, and the poem goes beautifully with the picture. And I love LOVE the fic. I hope you manage to work some more on it, but thanks for sharing that much with us. I'm deeply intrigued - the way you describe both Bodie in the jungle and then the explosion in Belfast have got a gorgeous dream-like feel, and the line The hunt came naturally to him made me squee happily... why yes, I do like this a bit *g*
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Date: 2011-02-15 08:09 pm (UTC)And yeay - I am indeed going to work some more on the story, hopefully even tomorrow!
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 08:11 pm (UTC)And eew for stomach flu - that's horrid. This was just some weird sleeping-sickness-cold-type-thing, and I seem to be feeling more awake today, so yeay. More writing tomorrow, I hope!
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Date: 2011-02-17 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-17 10:34 am (UTC)