Discovered on a Silent night--Jan 4, 2015
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discoveredinaljMoor and Mountain
By Dawnwind
“Field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star~”
We Three Kings of Orient Are
Doyle drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, attempting to rein in his temper with only partial success. Outside the car, the Yorkshire moors were a dark, featureless landscape stretching out in every direction. The two lane road the Capri had stalled on was the only visible evidence of twentieth century development.
“You were supposed to fill the tank with petrol at the last village,” Doyle said as calmly as possible. He couldn’t actually see Bodie’s face in the gloom but he could easily hear his angry intake of breath.
“I couldn’t very well do that with our prime suspect coming out of the loo, now could I?” Bodie shifted noisily in his seat. “The old bloke manning the station was slow as a tortoise. He hadn’t got to the pump before we had to scarper.”
“Just that…” Doyle fumed. No use continuing with the aborted sentence. No use reiterating that he’d thought Bodie had at least put some petrol in the tank before he’d leapt back into the Capri to hide his face from Keith Wallace. They’d been following their prey since midday when Anson alerted them that he was getting into a white Volvo. The Volvo had disappeared into the mist as the Capri ground to a halt minutes ago.
“We’ve lost him, anyway,” Bodie said gloomily.
At least he hadn’t pointed out that Doyle had been the one driving. Doyle stared out the windscreen again. There must be some village nearby. Some picturesque hamlet with a working telephone and a pub to drown his sorrows in. They were out of range for the r/t and no one at CI5 knew where the hell they were.
“We could as well be on the moon,” Bodie continued. “I’m beyond peckish, all the way to famished and soon will be ready to gnaw the leg off the closest lamb.”
“With the wool still on?” That struck Doyle as inordinately funny, what with flocks of sheep wandering around on the heaths. He laughed, imagining Bodie’s angry expression. Instead, he heard reluctant chuckles coming from the other side of the car.
“Serves us right, yeah?” Bodie sighed. “Never should have made New Year’s Eve plans.”
As if he’d forgotten.
“Now I’m depressed.” Doyle smacked the arm he could only vaguely see. He hit his target full on if Bodie’s “ooff” was anything to go by. “Reservations at L’Ecole De Cuisine,” he mourned. According to the London Times food critic, their risotto with truffles and parmesan was sublime. He and Bodie had arranged to have the entire night off. The newest man on the squad, Sloan, was getting married and bartering for a week in March to take his wedding trip. “And you realise that now young Sloan is sat waiting for the call to relieve us--“
“Which is never going to come.” Bodie harrumphed.
“How long do you figure it will take for someone at HQ to send out a reconnaissance team?” Doyle asked.
“What time is it?” Bodie responded.
Doyle peered at his watch, but he’d never got one of the pricier glow in the dark sort, so he couldn’t see the face. “Can only just make out the big hand on the eleven—“
“Eleven o’clock,” Bodie deduced before he’d finished. “On New Year’s Eve. Stuck on the moors. Won’t even get an invite to Wuthering Heights to dine with Cathy and Heathcliff.”
“That would be a depressing evening, wouldn’t it?” Doyle snickered, leaning against the back of his seat. If he had to be stuck on the road side, miles from anywhere, there was no one he’d rather be with than Bodie. Despite the rapidly cooling temperature, the lack of food and bollixed assignment, this wasn’t half bad.
“Hated that book,” Bodie agreed. “Mind you, this area is more All Creatures Great and Small. You know, that programme where Doctor Who was the vet’s younger brother.”
“I know that!” Doyle retorted with a bit of heat. As if he hadn’t read James Herriot’s famous work. He hadn’t watched the programme, although he would never admit to Bodie that he liked the current Doctor.
“Thought you were more for Dostoyevsky and Kafka, with some Proust and a soupcon of Martin Luther or Emmanuel Kant,” Bodie said in affected Oxfordian.
Doyle couldn’t deny he had a fondness for lofty thinkers. “Those books are for a quiet night with a glass of wine. Adventure novels and English remember whens are for the airport waiting for a flight.”
“Which begs the literary question-“ Bodie sighed, “what would James Bond do in a situation like this one?”
“James Bond would never be stranded on the heath,” Doyle told him. “He’d have rocket launchers or some other gizmo Q had concocted in his tuxedo pocket. Without kit like that, I strongly suspect we’ll have to leg it.” Having unconsciously made the decision, Doyle tugged at his jumper. He didn’t know the temperature, but it looked bloody cold.
Above the moors, the moon was nearly full, gleaming like an old silver coin on an lake of spilt ink. There were millions of stars, pinpricks of light like fairy lights surrounding the moon. Gray on midnight blue clouds coiled on the edges of the heavenly bowl like a frame. A prize-winning photograph from some National Geographic article on the constellations, only so much more real. Doyle stared up at the vast expanse in rapture, feeling a sudden rapport with the ancestors who’d navigated by the celestial bodies.
He shoved open the car door, climbing out to stand under the amazing panoply of ancient light.
“Are you off your rocker?” Bodie tumbled out after him, shivering as a brisk wind tugged at the sides of his unzipped jacket. “It’s near to freezing out here.”
“Look up, Bodie, what do you see?” Doyle inhaled, the cold air painful in his throat and lungs, but for reasons he couldn’t explain, he was happy. When did he ever get to see a display like this one? A natural wonder hidden behind the overly bright lights of London. He raised a hand, almost sure he could run his fingers through the sparkles, rearrange the star clusters into his own creations. “You’d have to pay money to go to the Royal observatory to see this, and here it’s free for the taking.”
“You take it.” Bodie hunched into his jacket. “I’d prefer a large stout and a ploughman’s lunch, even the scotch egg.”
That did divert Doyle’s attention from star gazing. Bodie hated Scotch eggs. “All right, which direction to you propose?” he asked, winding his tartan scarf firmly around his neck. He wasn’t going to admit out loud that he was freezing, too. “North or south?”
“Whichever way gets us to shelter quickest.” Bodie look back at the direction they’d just come. “The petrol station was a few miles before that village—“
“That barely qualified as a hamlet.” Doyle recalled racing past two tumbledown structures and what had possibly been the ruins of a medieval church, but he’d been pursuing Wallace with no time for sightseeing. “The church was most certainly not in use.”
“We don’t always understand the ways of these country yokels,” Bodie said with a vaguely professorial tone, as if lecturing a classroom of bored students. “Their customs are foreign to us, and full of strange ritual.”
“That star—“ Doyle pointed to the one riding in the north, “will show the way.”
Bodie clasped Doyle’s arm, his woolly gloves warm on Doyle’s bare hand. “Then, lead on, McDuff, and damned to what lays behind us.”
“You’ve got it wrong, you know,” Doyle pointed out, allowing Bodie to tow him along. “It’s “Lay on—“
“Like to lay on you, but I don’t…” Bodie hummed the Beatles’ tune slightly off-key, “do it in the road.”
“Cretin,” Doyle said with a grin, glancing over his shoulder at the Capri. He’d angled it off the side of the roadway—sort of—so that other drivers would not smash into it in the fog. He still felt like he was abandoning a faithful steed, or some such nonsense. “Forward, then.” A plume of white illuminated his breath, like a speech balloon in a comic strip.
They walked in silence for a time, keeping to the paved road so that they didn’t tumble into an unseen bog or step into a deposit from a roving animal. Occasionally, Doyle could hear a sleepy bleat from the shadowy lumps of sheep dozing in the damp. Otherwise, nearly midnight on the moors was a lonely, desolate place.
Shivering slightly, he kept his eyes on the stars which steadily guided them onward to who knows where. Felt like they were having to rely totally on faith alone. What a curious notion. He preferred an agenda, knowing—at least partially—what lay head.
Doyle hadn’t told Bodie, but he’d attended midnight mass the week before, with a curious nostalgia for his youth when the stories of the Bible represented something comforting and good. Adventures where there were black and white lines of demarcation between right and wrong. Murder and theft were bad and being kind to strangers and neighbours was the thing to do. That was so different from his current life. He’d killed—for his Queen and country. He’d lied, stolen and been part of operations that had weighed heavily on his conscience.
Somehow, standing in the darkened church, lit by dozens of candles, the boys’ choir singing familiar hymns celebrating a baby’s birth, had lightened the load. He wasn’t quite sure he believed in God any more. Jesus had been relegated to the same place where Father Christmas resided: a lovely fantasyland of joy and goodwill. What had surprised him most were the tears in his eyes during the final carols. Had he been mourning his innocence? The Christ child’s innocence? Or just a longing for something more, something sweet and pure?
The lyrics to one of the old songs came to him then, the elegant, somber tune exactly right for their chilly trek. Doyle didn’t consider himself much of a singer, and he hoped Bodie wouldn’t comment. “Star of wonder, star of light, star with royal beauty bright…” He stared up at the North star, watching tendrils of clouds drift past, playing hide and seek with Polaris and the rest of Ursa Minor.
“Westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light—“ Bodie joined in with his rich baritone. “Heard that one on the telly at Christmas.”
“Queen was singing carols?” Doyle snickered in spite of himself. The image of Elizabeth, with her little hat, proper handbag and corgi by her side, belting out a song up at Balmoral was hilarious.
“Watched the service at St. Paul’s Christmas eve,” Bodie said without sounding in any way ashamed.
That was even more astonishing than Bodie willing to eat a Scotch egg. Doyle stopped in the road, staring at his partner. Where was the cynical ex-SAS officer? “I was there,” he said softly, his breath a frosty cloud.
“In church?” Bodie asked as if confused.
“At St. Paul’s,” Doyle clarified.
“I thought I saw a head of curls in the audience.” Bodie guffawed, slapping Doyle’s shoulder. “Pull the other one, sunshine.”
“Snowflake, more like,” Doyle commented, glancing at the sky again. The clouds were moving faster, obscuring all the stars in the northern sky. “I really was at St. Paul’s. Went out for a stroll that night and ended up there.”
“Couldn’t find a pub?” Bodie kept walking, but slowly as if making sure Doyle was keeping up.
Doyle shrugged, walking more quickly. He really couldn’t explain why he’d slipped in the rear of the crowded church. It had not been necessary to actually go in—he’d been able to hear the singing from outside. But something had compelled him into the beautiful cathedral and he’d emerged in the wee hours of Christmas day feeling renewed.
“Think it will snow?” Bodie asked, gazing upward, too.
“Likely, but I’m hoping not in the next hour,” Doyle said. “Freezing out here, innit?” He shivered involuntarily, closing his fingers into his palms. His hands were icy, his fingertips beginning to ache.
“Should have dressed more warmly.” Bodie pulled off one glove and slipped it over Doyle’s left hand. “Where’s your common sense?”
“Didn’t expect to be roaming through the gloamin’,” Doyle approximated the tune from the Brigadoon signature song. The glove was wonderfully warm, but now his left fingers hurt even more as the blood pulsed back in.
“Some operative you are,” Bodie chided, pulling Doyle into a clench and tucking the edges of his leather jacket with the fur collar and lapels around them both. “Always be equipped for any eventuality, Raymond.”
“Like attack from predatory partners?” Doyle teased, leaning into the fur. It tickled his cheek, and he turned his face, seeking something even warmer.
Bodie’s mouth met his, their tongues touching as if reaching out to one another. It was pure and real, exactly what Doyle needed. There in the road, as if belaying what he’d said earlier, Bodie shoved the palm of his bare hand up under Doyle’s jumper and shirt, pressing it against his flat belly.
“Bloody hell!” Doyle gasped, inhaling so rapidly he had to jerk back or swallow Bodie’s tongue whole. “Your hand is freezing.”
Bodie chuckled wickedly, grabbing a quick kiss so that he could tuck his cold hand into the front of Doyle’s jeans. “Who lent you his glove, then?”
Doyle shivered violently, gooseflesh pebbling his arms under his jumper. Even the inch of skin open to the air from his clothes pushed up was making him colder. “Bodie! We need to find some place indoors or we’ll be two frozen lollies soon enough.”
“You’ve got no spirit of adventure. Why, when I was a para, we’d—“ Bodie began, extracting his hand with a pout.
“Shut it!” Doyle snorted, putting his Aran jumper to rights. He hunched into his tweed jacket, with his chin buried in the folds of the tartan scarf. Where as when they’d set off on their trek, his breath had only been intermittently visible, now every exhalation was candy floss sculpted in ice.
Glancing around the dark and barren landscape, Bodie nodded, far more serious. “Must be some kind of shelter around here. At the very least, a shepherd’s hut.”
“With a hearth, I’d hope.” Doyle walked up the slope. Clouds had drifted over the moon, intensifying the dark night, and bringing with them icy blasts of wind. Doyle couldn’t see his feet, much less what was farther along. It felt a bit like he was going straight into the starry sky, as if, like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, he would launch off the earth and fly. Very weird, and he wondered if the weather was getting to him. To take his mind off the temperature, he reached back to clasp Bodie’s bare hand. Grateful, he stepped closer to his partner, love suddenly filling his entire being.
Odd how the littlest things could mean so much. He and Bodie had always slipped into each other’s bed between meaningless birds. Bodie was his guiding star, Ann, Bodie’s Mariska and all the rest were temporary stops along the way. He sometimes wondered if he and Bodie used the women to buffer their own intensities. He wanted Bodie all the time, saw him all the time, on and off the job, yet once in a while, they needed to separate. It seemed to make their coming together all the more precious. Both recognised how dangerous what they did was, and that each minute could be the last.
“No repeats of A Christmas Carol on the telly last Tuesday?” Doyle asked lightly, grabbing Bodie’s shoulder when Bodie nearly tripped on an unseen obstacle in the road.
“You mean, why’d I watch a religious service?” Bodie responded, stopping long enough to get his balance. “Turned on the Beeb and heard the music. Wrapped the bottle of whisky for Uncle George and your spanners whilst the vicar said his piece. Then turned up the volume when the boy sopranos sang Silent Night.”
Doyle grinned, remembering tearing paper off the box of spanners. Bodie did listen to him. Exactly the brand and type he’d asked for.
“You ever think about—“ Doyle stopped himself. There was little sense bringing up what lurked in the back of his mind. Not here on this lonely stretch of frozen—if not tundra, then miserable, bleak landscape.
“Us and Him?” Bodie asked, cresting the apex of the small hill a moment ahead of Doyle.
Doyle stepped up beside his partner. Didn’t have to ask what he meant. As if able to read Doyle’s mind, Bodie had hit the nail square on the head.
Neither of them were religious any longer—if Bodie had ever really been. Doyle had gone to a Catholic school as a small boy, but the family’s many moves, not to mention his father’s aversion to the Church, meant he’d only lasted two grades under the nuns’ watch. As he aged, he’d simply drifted away from attending mass. For many, many years, he’d avoided it altogether. Too many inconsistencies, both in the Church’s teachings and his own divided soul.
If he was honest with himself, it wasn’t just the ugly view of humanity he saw in his work; it was his relationship with Bodie. How could he align himself with—believe in-- a God who viewed he and Bodie as an aberration?
“Yeah,” Doyle said at last, his heart hammering against his ribs. “If we’re…what we do is so wrong, why does it feel—“
“Like love?” Bodie whispered.
Doyle wasn’t sure he would have heard Bodie, except that the frosty plume that came from his lips alerted him that there were actual words. It was the very first time Bodie had ever said love. Sent chills down Doyle’s spine, but in a very wonderful way. Conversely, he suddenly wasn’t cold at all. “I’ve loved you for a very long time,” he admitted to the wilds, afraid to look directly at Bodie. Couldn’t really see his face well in the dark, anyway. Doyle very much wanted to stare into those blue, blue eyes and see himself reflected in the depths.
“No one else, Raymond.”
Bodie came up close, so close Doyle had to turn into him or lose his way. Their kiss was heated, passionate this time. Not a renewal of what they already had, but a vow for the future. Doyle wanted it to go on and on. His body was so flushed, it took more than a minute to realise that his cheeks were actually cold—and wet.
“It’s snowing!” Bodie exclaimed, looking up.
Individual snowflakes were almost impossible to pick out until they hit the ground, clustering with their brethren. The road already had a thin dusting of white leading down the hill to a valley. It was very dark without the stars or moon to provide a minimum of light, but Doyle could make out something down in the dell; a black shape slightly different than the occasional low, dry stone walls, sheep and windswept trees.
“Do you see that?” Doyle pointed. A sharp gust caught the ends of his scarf, ripping it from his neck. He grabbed the tartan and knotted it more tightly. His cheeks were almost numb in a few minutes. The weather had gone from chilly but clear to frigid and stormy in less than an hour. “Looks like a shelter of some kind.”
“Even if it’s a three sided lean-to, I propose we take it,” Bodie shouted over the increasing noise of the gale whipping from the north. “Looks like this will be a white New Year!”
Holding hands, Doyle and Bodie dashed down the incline, the wind pushing against their chests like a barrier. Slivers of ice seemed to be cutting into Doyle’s lungs, slicing his breath to ribbons. He coughed, ducking his head.
Bodie stumbled, falling to his knees and almost dragged Doyle with him. Digging his heels in, Doyle hauled back on his partner. They both went onto their arses in the snow. Stunned, Doyle sucked sleet into his mouth.
“Bloody hell,” he said breathlessly, spitting out slush. His heart was hammering hard against his ribs. They were done for if Bodie couldn’t get up. “You hurt?”
“Not a bit of it.” Bodie pushed himself to a stand impatiently and wobbled, cursing.
Doyle recognised that foolhardy self-confidence. Bodie was injured—possibly his leg? He clambered to his knees, glad of the single woollen glove when he planted both hands in the snow. His jeans were wet, plastered to his skin. Standing, he grasped a handful of Bodie’s jacket to keep them both upright. “Let’s be more specific,” he shouted in his partner’s ear. The howling of the wind snatched at his scarf, tangling his curls into knots. “Can you walk without falling down?”
“Course I can!” Bodie said brashly, taking a step. Even without the wind shoving at him, he would have looked like a drunken sailor.
“Course you can,” Doyle repeated under his breath. Sodding great idiot. Unable to see Bodie’s face well enough to judge his level of pain, he was going to have to go on…faith. He glanced up at the sky, but Polaris was hidden. No matter, they had a destination, and Bodie seemed able to move, if not at his normal pace.
He hooked an arm under Bodie’s elbow as if he were the one who needed aid and lead them into the onslaught. The ice pelted them, apparently determined to insert itself directly into every bare patch of Doyle’s skin. It hurt to breathe and his eyes stung. He felt Bodie start to shiver long after he was already shaking from the extreme cold.
Visibility was down to zero, so Doyle basically rammed a knee into a large rock before he saw it. Bloody hell, that hurt.
Without his support, Bodie jerked away from Doyle gasping in pain when he must have stepped wrong on his already injured leg.
Just brilliant, now they were both cripples, Doyle thought irritably, and put his hand out in front of him. About a foot away from the rock was a very solid wall. Not a three sided lean-to at all but a real structure.
“Found the house!” he shouted at Bodie. He could just see Bodie nodding, frost collecting on his eyebrows.
Holding hands, they navigated to the corner of the building, finding the door on the eastern side, where it would face the morning sun. It was—naturally—locked.
Partially blocked from the wind by the house, Bodie leaned against the rough stone wall and blew on his fingers to warm them. “Got something to pick that with then, snowflake?” he asked with a puckish grin.
Aggravated by Bodie’s usual cockiness in the face of danger, Doyle snarled at him and pulled two slim screwdrivers from his jeans’ pocket. The small tools had been designed to keep the screws in the earpieces of glasses but Doyle had immediately recognized an alternative use. However, his fingers were so stiff he could barely bend his joints to manipulate the bits of metal.
“Ever tried to lick a metal pole in freezing weather?” Bodie asked genially, standing so that he was shielding Doyle from the worst of the snow flurries.
His concentration divided between getting out of the storm and wondering how bad Bodie’s leg was, Doyle bit down on a sarcastic reply. He rotated the screwdriver in his right hand and gave the one in his left a careful twist. Feeling something inside the lock shift, Doyle turned the doorknob. The door opened.
Thank, God.
Without reflecting on the sudden, heartfelt prayer, Doyle stood back momentarily to left Bodie proceed him. He wanted to see how badly his partner was limping.
Bodie all but hopped over the doorjamb, barely putting weight on his right foot. So, it was fairly serious, Doyle surmised, or Bodie wouldn’t be pretending so hard that it wasn’t.
An artic vortex howled through the open portal, knocking over an umbrella stand in the porch. Doyle had to exert all his strength to shove the door closed. He leaned back against it, panting. The room was—naturally—very dark.
“Think there’s electricity?” Bodie asked, flipping a light switch.
Amazingly, a lamp sitting on a table next to an overstuffed chair shone brightly. After an hour out on inky blackness of a moors night, Bodie and Doyle blinked in unison, shading their eyes from the glare.
“I’ll grant you, I expected a rundown cottage or a barn…” Doyle visually inspected the room when he could see. It was a very nice place. Well appointed with all the latest cons in the kitchen, a lounge decorated in browns and moss greens, the walls lined with book shelves: Keats, Shakespeare, Kant and Luther spine to spine with Maeve Binchy and Ian Fleming. Most importantly, however, Doyle spied a telephone. “This is someone’s holiday cottage.”
“Won’t mind being holed up here in the least,” Bodie said gleefully, his wet trousers dripping onto the wooden flooring. “Especially if the larder is well stocked.” He tapped the phone. “If our luck holds.” He took a cautious step and hissed in pain.
Rubbing his arms to increase circulation, Doyle shivered. While the inside of the house was decidedly warmer than being out in the snow, it was still extremely cold. That and Bodie’s injury made him very surly indeed. “Siddown and shut it,” he said crossly. “I’ll light a great bleedin’ fire and then make sure you aren’t bleedin yourself.”
Bodie stared at him, damned arched eyebrow peaked above his left eye. A sly smile curved his lips. “Love you too, ratty old son,” he said very softly and sat down in the overstuffed chair.
The simple acquiescence touched Doyle’s heart but he wasn’t quite ready to forgive the world for this colossally fucked up assignment. It was abundantly clear how dangerous their lives were when what had looked on paper to be an ordinary tailing of a suspect could be cocked up that quickly. What the hell would have happened if they’d perished there on the side of a road on the North Yorkshire Moors without anyone knowing the better? They’d have died, that’s what. Plain and simple. Going to heaven, he wasn’t as sure about, but…they would have been together.
He glanced back at Bodie, once again flooded with gratefulness. God, George Cowley, or whomever it was who’d partnered he and Bodie had known what he was doing.
“I thought you were going to start a fire,” Bodie said archly, peeling off his outer layer to reveal a Norwegian cardigan and the pale blue Egyptian cotton dress shirt Doyle had given him for Christmas. “Like an icebox in here, it is.”
“Yeah, and you sit there like the manor born, ready to be waited on,” Doyle retorted, his better nature returning. This is how it should be. Safe as houses.
There were logs in the wood box and a package of matches beside the brass fire iron. Someone kept their holiday home well supplied, and yet, the place didn’t really look as if it had been inhabited for some time.
Gathering kindling and a couple of logs, Doyle had the fire laid quickly. He’d never been a Boy Scout nor had camped rough but he had a few necessary survival skills up his sleeve. “We should leave some money, pay for what we used,” Doyle said, the adrenaline subsiding the longer they were out of the storm. He lit a match, watching the wood catch fire. The rush of warmth was sublime.
“Haven’t had my dinner yet. I’ll pay the house once I’ve eaten.” Bodie leaned forward, curving his palm around Doyle’s head and threading his fingers through the curls. “What’s going on in that noggin of yours?”
“Rats running around in a maze, feels like.” Doyle turned enough to lay his cheek against Bodie’s wrist. “Conflicting thoughts, unravelling social consciences. What do we…do we matter?”
“You think too much, Raymond.” Bodie flicked his ear like a school master.
Doyle glowered at him but made no effort to move. His right side was almost too hot but he loved the feel of Bodie’s hand caressing his scalp. If only he could massage the guilt and remorse away. Doyle could have curled up right there and slept, he was that tired. The questions that plagued him—how could what he and Bodie had—what he wanted to hold onto for the rest of his life be so wrong? Everything about a relationship like theirs was viewed with suspicion and prejudice. He could still remember his father, drunk as a lord, haranguing on about those fancy boys, poofters, prancing around on the High Street like they had a right to their perverted ways.
“I have this…desire to do some good—I don’t know, to make up for all the chaos. Maybe atone?” He shrugged, love for Bodie and desperation that their love would never be recognised warring inside him.
“Fancy feeding the homeless or adopting a baby coming down from his mum’s heroin?” Bodie snorted. He unwound Doyle’s tartan scarf and eased the tweed jacket off his shoulders, stroking Doyle’s neck gently. “There’s a point where this existential guilt goes on too long, you know,” he said, pressing on a particularly sensitive place just under Doyle’s left scapula.
Doyle groaned, arching, the pain sending a rush of blood to his head and nearly cramping all the other muscles in its vicinity. “Blimey, that’s the spot…”
“In answer to the question you asked…” Bodie pointed up at the mantle clock. “Last year—“
One hand was on the twelve, the other already ten minutes into 1983. Doyle hadn’t even noticed the classic Ormolu timepiece. Why would anyone keep something that expensive—that rare—in a country retreat?
“If you want to believe in God, no skin off my teeth,“ Bodie continued, running his fingers along Doyle’s shoulders. “However, Jesus never said a single word against two men sharin’ a bed.”
Startled that the conversation had swerved around so completely, Doyle looked up at him. “How the hell would you know?”
“Not much else to read on a merchant ship bound for Africa. I think I memorised the Bible back to front. Makes you think—“ He shrugged, surprisingly serious. “About all manner of subjects. Seems t’me that Love thy neighbour is one of the important ones.”
“Yeah.” Doyle had to concede the point, visualising young William Bodie on the deck of a tramp steamer reading the Bible. Boggled his brain. “Doesn’t specifically state who thy neighbour is, does it?”
“Nor what that love should entail.” Bodie grinned at Doyle, continuing in the broadest Cockney, “there ain’t nuffin’ wrong wif the two ov us, me dove. It’s them that judges got it turned ‘round.”
“Git,” Doyle said reaching out to either box his ears or hug him, he wasn’t sure which, when he bumped Bodie’s right leg.
“Bugger!” Bodie gasped, going white.
“Does hurt, eh?” Doyle asked uncharitably. More solicitously, he got up, pulling a footstool over. After easing Bodie’s foot up onto the footstool, Doyle unlaced his shoe and pulled it off. There was no mistaking that his ankle was quite swollen, straining the weave of his black sock. “The cold out there must have kept the swelling down,” he declared.
“You reckon?” Bodie grimaced, breathing fast through his teeth. “Leave it be and find us something to eat. I’ve been hungry since last December.”
“An hour, possibly three since the sweeties I saw you tucking into as we left the bed and breakfast where Wallace was staying.” Doyle walked into the kitchen, opening cupboards at random. There was quite an odd assortment of tins, including one containing—if the label was to be believed—rattlesnake meat from Arizona in the States. Also black truffle sauce from France, herring from Denmark and tomatoes from Italy. “Our host has traveled all over,” Doyle called out, spotting a more familiar label. Ahh, more like it. Bachelor’s soup. “Minestrone or chicken noodle?”
“Minestrone would hit the spot. Any vino di casa?” Bodie asked, craning his neck to see.
There was—a German Riesling, as well as tea. Good old English PG Tips. While their meal was heating up, Doyle chipped built up ice out of the freezer for a cold pack to put on Bodie’s foot. He even located paracetamol in the cabinet in the loo.
“All the comforts of home,” Bodie sighed in contentment when he had a bit of soup in his belly. “And I’ve got a plausible reason so’s the Cow won’t scold for losing a wanted felon.”
“Injured in the line of duty.” Doyle saluted with his wine glass. He hadn’t thought of that. He’d been too wrapped in the semi-comic way Bodie had declared his commitment in them, “there ain’t nuffin’ wrong wif the two ov us, me dove” to think of much else. “You’d best make the phone call to HQ. If I’d have to guess, Wallace’s gone to Whitby by now.”
“Once more into the breach, dear fellow,” Bodie said with false bravado, reaching for the phone. He got through to the operator immediately.
“Must you forever get your Shakespeare muddled?” Doyle chuckled, drinking the last of his wine. His wet jeans were steaming in the warm air. He really should take them off to dry properly.
“Shush!” Bodie waved him silent. “Young Sloan, is it?” he asked into the receiver, nodding when Sloan must have replied. “I’ve banged up me ankle and taken refuge in a cottage on the moors because of this storm.” His eyes widened, listening. “Inclement there in London, is it? Then Wallace will have to be rounded up from the other end, yeah? Have we got contacts in Whitby?”
“Paulson!” Doyle recalled suddenly. Why hadn’t he remembered the operative earlier? “Paulson lives up that way, he could be there in a tick.”
Bodie relayed the information to Sloan and rang off. “They’d already heard of this freakish storm blowing in over the moors and didn’t expect to hear from us.”
“Doubt the Cow will be so forgiving,” Doyle said with a frown. “Luckily, he’s gone to his club tonight for a private whisky tasting.”
“Which gives us time to revive our evening,” Bodie said with a wicked smile.
“At this late stage?” Doyle glanced down at Bodie’s puffy foot. The bruising was already setting in, his toes like round, fat sausages. “We’ve no transportation and who knows when the owner will return.”
“I’m beginning to wonder what I see in you.” Bodie rolled his eyes, beckoning Doyle over. “Sloan said he’d start out in the morning to fetch us. Once he’s seen the Capri, he’ll be in r/t range and can locate us.”
It sounded logical, and Doyle couldn’t resist Bodie’s summons. He knelt next to Bodie’s chair, caressing the smooth cotton of his new shirt. Doyle had liked the shirt in the shop, especially the subtle pale blue satiny stripes, only visible when the light hit them just so. He’d known the colour would be perfect with Bodie’s eyes.
It was.
The shirt would be even more perfect off. Doyle worked the first button out of the button hole, letting a small portion of Bodie’s chest show. Bodie inhaled with a smile, surging forward to catch Doyle’s lips. They kissed full force, all the love and relief of once again surviving another year coming through.
“I can unbutton,” Bodie said desperately, grappling with a few more buttons. “But you need to get those wet jeans off pronto.”
Doyle laughed. He loved when Bodie looked at him like that, needy and longing. He could feel the weight of Bodie’s eyes on his skin, even when he wasn’t facing his partner. That connection, the hold they both had to the other. Almost without thinking about it, he sent God a word of thanks, taking down his zip and struggling to peel off the damp denim.
“Much better.” Bodie applauded, tossing his shirt onto a nearby rocking chair. “Once you’ve divested yourself of that tatty jumper and the t-shirt from Oxfam’s undoubtedly underneath—“
“I’ll have you know this is a designer shirt!” Doyle pranced back and forth like a model on the catwalk, pulling his cable knit jumper up just enough to show off the Aubergine tee he was wearing, and then yanking the jumper down low enough to cover his pants, too. “By the great Vivienne Westwood. That singer, from the Sex Pistols, is wearing her creations.”
“God Save the Queen,” Bodie said sarcastically, chuckling. “And you her own operative, charged to serve and protect. I wouldn’t boast about wearing Sid Vicious’ cast offs, mate.”
“Can I boast about this?” Doyle shoved off his pants, his cock and balls springing free. He was already stiff, his cock standing up against his belly. The banter was his favourite type of foreplay.
“Ahh, the main attraction. Very nice, very nice.” Bodie looked down at his own trousers in mock consternation. “I fear, alas, that I’ll need aid in removing my armour. My ankle is throbbing quite fiercely.”
“Can’t do anything about it here.” Doyle crossed his arms, surveying his partner. They both wanted to play, but would not both fit in the confines of the comfy chair. “You’ll have to hobble over to the bedroom. If we’re going to abuse our host’s hospitality, we’d best trash every room.”
“A man with a plan.” Bodie nodded triumphantly, pushing himself onto his left foot. He winced but didn’t seem otherwise in great pain.
Doyle gathered him in, hugging him tightly enough to feel their hearts thumping simultaneously. “Come on then,” he whispered, supporting Bodie as they wobbled across to the darkened bedroom.
Without turning on the lamp, Doyle got Bodie under the sheets. The linens were chilly to the touch, but warmed deliciously with two large men grappling each other. Doyle took Bodie’s trousers off in no time. He planted a kiss on Bodie’s firm abdomen, a thrill going up his spine when Bodie thrust his tongue into Doyle’s ear.
“Feels like we broke in to have an affair.” Bodie ran his fingers down Doyle’s hips, trying to grab the dangling bits.
Doyle laughed and moved out of reach. “Isn’t that what we did?”
The spill of light from the lounge wasn’t enough to cut the darkness in the bedroom. As in the car, Doyle couldn’t quite make out Bodie’s face as well as he’d like; he used his fingers to explore. It was oddly sensual to rely on other senses, hands, mouth and nose, to rediscover his partner. He could smell the lingering aroma of the wine on Bodie’s mouth when they kissed, and the familiar scent of his sweat. Despite how cold the room was, Bodie’s skin was warm to the touch, his hair as sleek and soft as a cat.
Bodie caught at him, shoving Doyle’s clothes up to get access to his torso, caressing and tweaking his nipples. Laughing, Doyle twisted away, wrestling for the upper hand. In the mock battle, his brushed his fingers across his partner’s chest.
Bodie’s nipples were peaked, stiff and irresistible. Doyle bit down hard enough to make Bodie howl and then suckled away the pain. He straddled his partner, feeling Bodie’s cock push up against his arse as if it wanted to gain entrance. The air was freezing on his bare butt and he was glad that he’d kept the jumper on, with the duvet bunched around them in drifts like cotton snow.
Held against the mattress, Bodie tried to arch up but couldn’t shift Doyle’s weight. “And here I thought you were nothing but bird bones and sinew,” he said, kissing the knee closest to his cheek. “You must have put on a stone with that Minestrone.”
“Wasn’t the soup.” Doyle grinned down at him. “Seems as if me willie has doubled in size all on it’s own.”
“It has!” Bodie went deliberately cross-eyed peering at the thick rod in front of him. “Some sort of affliction, do you think?”
“I fear it could be permanent.” Doyle bounced slightly on Bodie’s belly, wringing groans from his victim. “D’you know of a doctor who specializes in such things?”
“You’ve come to the right place, my good man. I’m a…” Bodie spoilt his performance by giggling, “Pen-olo-gist.”
“You aren’t!” Doyle snorted with glee, attempting to keep in character. “Perhaps you’d be so kind as to cure what ails me?”
“There are two methods involved.” Bodie anchored Doyle’s hips with both hands, clearly calculating the mechanics involved. “Since I was wounded in the great war and cannot walk far distances—I require something from you.”
“Anything, Doctor—what’d you say your name was?” Doyle reached out to touch his whiskery cheek, needing to touch Bodie.
“Randy Wanker,” Bodie said as pompously as one could when half naked and being sat upon.
“I’ve heard of you!” Doyle declared. This was so much fun he wouldn’t have cared if the owner had walked in on them. Well, he would have cared, but wasn’t all that worried about it. “What do I have to do?”
“I’ll do a—“ Bodie wrapped both hands around Doyle’s cock, “manual adjustment if you could insert a specific body part into—“
“Oh, I’ve sussed it out,” Doyle agreed. “I’ve repaired a motorcycle or two in my time. You want a exhaust pipe seated tightly into the…” He had to think fast to complete the analogy, “-- muffler.”
“Precisely!” Bodie cried, already beginning to work his magic on Doyle’s anatomy.
“Nothing to grease the way, mate,” Doyle said with regret because under normal circumstances, he welcomed Bodie penetrating his arse. He exhaled quickly, trying to focus as Bodie slid both fists down Doyle’s cock, initiating vibrations deep in his core that skittered outward to all four limbs. “That’s brilliant!” he whispered, finding it difficult to concentrate on anything else but the motion of Bodie’s hands against his sensitive skin.
“I came prepared.” Bodie removed one hand to gesture at his trousers on the floor.
“Why’d you--?” Doyle wailed, his coiling arousal abruptly halted. He shivered with the loss of warmth, as well. He was the one who’d tossed the trousers aside, but he could barely make out the dark lump in the dim light.
“In my pocket—all we need, and hurry!” Bodie insisted.
“You really were a Boy Scout!” Doyle swooped down to kiss him, lingering when Bodie bit gently on his bottom lip, keeping him in place. He reluctantly climbed off his comfortable perch to go through Bodie’s pockets. Located a slightly squashed tube in the left rear by feel alone.
“I’d tucked the lubricant away, anticipating our evening. Then Cowley called on the way to his club that Wallace had made his power play, and as a result, wrecked our plans.” Bodie tugged on Doyle’s arm impatiently. “Come on, I’m freezing here.”
“Why’d you think Wallace decided to--?” Doyle started, slicking his fingers with the greasy ointment. He dropped the tube onto the floor and climbed back on the bed, his hip hard up against Bodie’s. He adored being skin to skin with his partner, yet not doing anything else. It was so familiar, comfortable. Would this be how it was if they lived together always? And where had that idea come front?
“I don’t give a farthing’s worth for that tosser,” Bodie growled. “Get back here and---ahhh.”
He trailed off when Doyle anointed his stiff member with a large dollop of lube. Doyle loved having Bodie seated inside him, but preparation was essential to enjoyment.
“Enough! Ease on down—“ Bodie coaxed with a long sigh, panting with need.
Doyle heard the desire in Bodie’s voice; made his voice higher pitched than normal. Doyle liked it. As he knelt to straddle his partner again, Bodie bent his good leg, creating a backrest for him.
“How’s the ankle?” Doyle asked first.
“It smarts a bit, nothing more,” Bodie said honestly, trailing a finger under Doyle’s legs to his perineum. “Ready, steady, go…”
That felt exquisite. Doyle was keen to get going. His heart rate increased, intensifying the need to go as fast, but that wasn’t possible under the circumstances.
“It’s so dark, you’re going to have to guide me,” Doyle murmured, sparing a moment to listen to the wind battering against the window glass. The cottage was sturdy and safe. They’d done as much as they could to alert other operatives to Wallace’s whereabouts. This time was for he and Bodie alone
Spreading his butt cheeks with both hands, he settled gingerly on the rigid pole directly below.
“Steady on,” Bodie encouraged, rubbing Doyle’s thighs and pressing a kiss on his hip. “That’s it…” His voice shook as if he was holding his arousal in strong check, waiting for the right moment to let loose.
Doyle totally understood. He hitched a breath when Bodie’s cock punched against his tight sphincter, shoving through more forcefully than he’d expected. His internal muscles protested, a shearing burn spreading through his groin. Pain, yes, but nothing he’d hadn’t expected. He exhaled slowly, waiting for the sweet perfection of Bodie sliding into home.
“Love—“ Bodie whispered, thrusting once again. He grunted and rocked back for the final push.
That was it. Doyle let himself breathe, feel, absorb. Yes. God, yes. This was life, this was all that mattered, the only thing that made any sense whatsoever. The brief pain was gone completely, incredible energy spiraling through him like champagne bubbles. He raised up carefully and then sat down, his buttocks smacking Bodie’s pelvis hard.
“I could stay like this all…” Bodie began, moving his hips up and down, increasing the inner friction.
When he clamped onto Doyle’s penis with both hands, Doyle thought his brain would shoot right out the top of his head. He’d never survive, and yet he yearned for it to happen again and again.
“More, more,” Doyle chanted. He really didn’t want to spare breath for talking when his entire body was being transformed into something magical. He and Bodie, connected by the oldest link there was. God had to have forged such a thing. True love was honest and didn’t make mistakes. Mankind’s blunders had messed with the most basic emotion on the planet.
“I love you,” Doyle shouted as he trembled with the force of his orgasm. He grasped Bodie’s wrists, feeling him shudder and buck as Bodie climaxed. In sync—as they always were.
Bodie shifted enough for Doyle collapse beside side, head on the pillow. He managed to pull the duvet up over them both and surrendered to sleep, one hand still holding onto Bodie.
~*~
There was no sound. None at all. No buses trundling past his flat. No honk of car horns, no old Mrs. Greeley setting out to the shops with her grandson in the pram with the squeaky wheel.
Doyle settled closer to the bulk that was Bodie. He didn’t have to open his eyes to recognise his partner, but bloody hell the flat was cold. He’d need more coins for the heater…
Wallace. Snowstorm. Bodie’s ankle.
Doyle sat up abruptly, the duvet slithering off.
“Hey!” Bodie cried, shivering. “What’re you on about?”
“It’s morning,” Doyle said. The details of the room they’d made love in but never seen swam into view. A nice room, all in shades of blue. Soft blue wall paper with a repeating fleur de lys pattern. A large wooden armoire, antique unless Doyle missed his guess. A huge mullioned window showing nothing but glistening white snow stretching out for a mile across the icy heath. Icicles like shimmering diamonds adorned the winter bare branches of a lone tree. Bright sun streaming through the glass as if there had never been a blizzard of mammoth proportions.
“Come back to bed, we were up all hours,” Bodie said grumpily, tugging at the bed linens.
“We were busy.” Doyle flopped back onto the pillow, not at all surprised when Bodie used his proximity to rub his own cock against Doyle’s morning wood. He could easily get used to this. “But I could wait a bit for a cuppa.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Bodie said, increasing his frottage. “This will wake you up good and proper.”
That was when they both heard the sound of a car engine stopping outside the cottage.
FIN
Title: Moor and Mountain
Author: Dawnwind
Slash
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Sure
Disclaimer: No money made here only love
.
By Dawnwind
“Field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star~”
We Three Kings of Orient Are
Doyle drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, attempting to rein in his temper with only partial success. Outside the car, the Yorkshire moors were a dark, featureless landscape stretching out in every direction. The two lane road the Capri had stalled on was the only visible evidence of twentieth century development.
“You were supposed to fill the tank with petrol at the last village,” Doyle said as calmly as possible. He couldn’t actually see Bodie’s face in the gloom but he could easily hear his angry intake of breath.
“I couldn’t very well do that with our prime suspect coming out of the loo, now could I?” Bodie shifted noisily in his seat. “The old bloke manning the station was slow as a tortoise. He hadn’t got to the pump before we had to scarper.”
“Just that…” Doyle fumed. No use continuing with the aborted sentence. No use reiterating that he’d thought Bodie had at least put some petrol in the tank before he’d leapt back into the Capri to hide his face from Keith Wallace. They’d been following their prey since midday when Anson alerted them that he was getting into a white Volvo. The Volvo had disappeared into the mist as the Capri ground to a halt minutes ago.
“We’ve lost him, anyway,” Bodie said gloomily.
At least he hadn’t pointed out that Doyle had been the one driving. Doyle stared out the windscreen again. There must be some village nearby. Some picturesque hamlet with a working telephone and a pub to drown his sorrows in. They were out of range for the r/t and no one at CI5 knew where the hell they were.
“We could as well be on the moon,” Bodie continued. “I’m beyond peckish, all the way to famished and soon will be ready to gnaw the leg off the closest lamb.”
“With the wool still on?” That struck Doyle as inordinately funny, what with flocks of sheep wandering around on the heaths. He laughed, imagining Bodie’s angry expression. Instead, he heard reluctant chuckles coming from the other side of the car.
“Serves us right, yeah?” Bodie sighed. “Never should have made New Year’s Eve plans.”
As if he’d forgotten.
“Now I’m depressed.” Doyle smacked the arm he could only vaguely see. He hit his target full on if Bodie’s “ooff” was anything to go by. “Reservations at L’Ecole De Cuisine,” he mourned. According to the London Times food critic, their risotto with truffles and parmesan was sublime. He and Bodie had arranged to have the entire night off. The newest man on the squad, Sloan, was getting married and bartering for a week in March to take his wedding trip. “And you realise that now young Sloan is sat waiting for the call to relieve us--“
“Which is never going to come.” Bodie harrumphed.
“How long do you figure it will take for someone at HQ to send out a reconnaissance team?” Doyle asked.
“What time is it?” Bodie responded.
Doyle peered at his watch, but he’d never got one of the pricier glow in the dark sort, so he couldn’t see the face. “Can only just make out the big hand on the eleven—“
“Eleven o’clock,” Bodie deduced before he’d finished. “On New Year’s Eve. Stuck on the moors. Won’t even get an invite to Wuthering Heights to dine with Cathy and Heathcliff.”
“That would be a depressing evening, wouldn’t it?” Doyle snickered, leaning against the back of his seat. If he had to be stuck on the road side, miles from anywhere, there was no one he’d rather be with than Bodie. Despite the rapidly cooling temperature, the lack of food and bollixed assignment, this wasn’t half bad.
“Hated that book,” Bodie agreed. “Mind you, this area is more All Creatures Great and Small. You know, that programme where Doctor Who was the vet’s younger brother.”
“I know that!” Doyle retorted with a bit of heat. As if he hadn’t read James Herriot’s famous work. He hadn’t watched the programme, although he would never admit to Bodie that he liked the current Doctor.
“Thought you were more for Dostoyevsky and Kafka, with some Proust and a soupcon of Martin Luther or Emmanuel Kant,” Bodie said in affected Oxfordian.
Doyle couldn’t deny he had a fondness for lofty thinkers. “Those books are for a quiet night with a glass of wine. Adventure novels and English remember whens are for the airport waiting for a flight.”
“Which begs the literary question-“ Bodie sighed, “what would James Bond do in a situation like this one?”
“James Bond would never be stranded on the heath,” Doyle told him. “He’d have rocket launchers or some other gizmo Q had concocted in his tuxedo pocket. Without kit like that, I strongly suspect we’ll have to leg it.” Having unconsciously made the decision, Doyle tugged at his jumper. He didn’t know the temperature, but it looked bloody cold.
Above the moors, the moon was nearly full, gleaming like an old silver coin on an lake of spilt ink. There were millions of stars, pinpricks of light like fairy lights surrounding the moon. Gray on midnight blue clouds coiled on the edges of the heavenly bowl like a frame. A prize-winning photograph from some National Geographic article on the constellations, only so much more real. Doyle stared up at the vast expanse in rapture, feeling a sudden rapport with the ancestors who’d navigated by the celestial bodies.
He shoved open the car door, climbing out to stand under the amazing panoply of ancient light.
“Are you off your rocker?” Bodie tumbled out after him, shivering as a brisk wind tugged at the sides of his unzipped jacket. “It’s near to freezing out here.”
“Look up, Bodie, what do you see?” Doyle inhaled, the cold air painful in his throat and lungs, but for reasons he couldn’t explain, he was happy. When did he ever get to see a display like this one? A natural wonder hidden behind the overly bright lights of London. He raised a hand, almost sure he could run his fingers through the sparkles, rearrange the star clusters into his own creations. “You’d have to pay money to go to the Royal observatory to see this, and here it’s free for the taking.”
“You take it.” Bodie hunched into his jacket. “I’d prefer a large stout and a ploughman’s lunch, even the scotch egg.”
That did divert Doyle’s attention from star gazing. Bodie hated Scotch eggs. “All right, which direction to you propose?” he asked, winding his tartan scarf firmly around his neck. He wasn’t going to admit out loud that he was freezing, too. “North or south?”
“Whichever way gets us to shelter quickest.” Bodie look back at the direction they’d just come. “The petrol station was a few miles before that village—“
“That barely qualified as a hamlet.” Doyle recalled racing past two tumbledown structures and what had possibly been the ruins of a medieval church, but he’d been pursuing Wallace with no time for sightseeing. “The church was most certainly not in use.”
“We don’t always understand the ways of these country yokels,” Bodie said with a vaguely professorial tone, as if lecturing a classroom of bored students. “Their customs are foreign to us, and full of strange ritual.”
“That star—“ Doyle pointed to the one riding in the north, “will show the way.”
Bodie clasped Doyle’s arm, his woolly gloves warm on Doyle’s bare hand. “Then, lead on, McDuff, and damned to what lays behind us.”
“You’ve got it wrong, you know,” Doyle pointed out, allowing Bodie to tow him along. “It’s “Lay on—“
“Like to lay on you, but I don’t…” Bodie hummed the Beatles’ tune slightly off-key, “do it in the road.”
“Cretin,” Doyle said with a grin, glancing over his shoulder at the Capri. He’d angled it off the side of the roadway—sort of—so that other drivers would not smash into it in the fog. He still felt like he was abandoning a faithful steed, or some such nonsense. “Forward, then.” A plume of white illuminated his breath, like a speech balloon in a comic strip.
They walked in silence for a time, keeping to the paved road so that they didn’t tumble into an unseen bog or step into a deposit from a roving animal. Occasionally, Doyle could hear a sleepy bleat from the shadowy lumps of sheep dozing in the damp. Otherwise, nearly midnight on the moors was a lonely, desolate place.
Shivering slightly, he kept his eyes on the stars which steadily guided them onward to who knows where. Felt like they were having to rely totally on faith alone. What a curious notion. He preferred an agenda, knowing—at least partially—what lay head.
Doyle hadn’t told Bodie, but he’d attended midnight mass the week before, with a curious nostalgia for his youth when the stories of the Bible represented something comforting and good. Adventures where there were black and white lines of demarcation between right and wrong. Murder and theft were bad and being kind to strangers and neighbours was the thing to do. That was so different from his current life. He’d killed—for his Queen and country. He’d lied, stolen and been part of operations that had weighed heavily on his conscience.
Somehow, standing in the darkened church, lit by dozens of candles, the boys’ choir singing familiar hymns celebrating a baby’s birth, had lightened the load. He wasn’t quite sure he believed in God any more. Jesus had been relegated to the same place where Father Christmas resided: a lovely fantasyland of joy and goodwill. What had surprised him most were the tears in his eyes during the final carols. Had he been mourning his innocence? The Christ child’s innocence? Or just a longing for something more, something sweet and pure?
The lyrics to one of the old songs came to him then, the elegant, somber tune exactly right for their chilly trek. Doyle didn’t consider himself much of a singer, and he hoped Bodie wouldn’t comment. “Star of wonder, star of light, star with royal beauty bright…” He stared up at the North star, watching tendrils of clouds drift past, playing hide and seek with Polaris and the rest of Ursa Minor.
“Westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light—“ Bodie joined in with his rich baritone. “Heard that one on the telly at Christmas.”
“Queen was singing carols?” Doyle snickered in spite of himself. The image of Elizabeth, with her little hat, proper handbag and corgi by her side, belting out a song up at Balmoral was hilarious.
“Watched the service at St. Paul’s Christmas eve,” Bodie said without sounding in any way ashamed.
That was even more astonishing than Bodie willing to eat a Scotch egg. Doyle stopped in the road, staring at his partner. Where was the cynical ex-SAS officer? “I was there,” he said softly, his breath a frosty cloud.
“In church?” Bodie asked as if confused.
“At St. Paul’s,” Doyle clarified.
“I thought I saw a head of curls in the audience.” Bodie guffawed, slapping Doyle’s shoulder. “Pull the other one, sunshine.”
“Snowflake, more like,” Doyle commented, glancing at the sky again. The clouds were moving faster, obscuring all the stars in the northern sky. “I really was at St. Paul’s. Went out for a stroll that night and ended up there.”
“Couldn’t find a pub?” Bodie kept walking, but slowly as if making sure Doyle was keeping up.
Doyle shrugged, walking more quickly. He really couldn’t explain why he’d slipped in the rear of the crowded church. It had not been necessary to actually go in—he’d been able to hear the singing from outside. But something had compelled him into the beautiful cathedral and he’d emerged in the wee hours of Christmas day feeling renewed.
“Think it will snow?” Bodie asked, gazing upward, too.
“Likely, but I’m hoping not in the next hour,” Doyle said. “Freezing out here, innit?” He shivered involuntarily, closing his fingers into his palms. His hands were icy, his fingertips beginning to ache.
“Should have dressed more warmly.” Bodie pulled off one glove and slipped it over Doyle’s left hand. “Where’s your common sense?”
“Didn’t expect to be roaming through the gloamin’,” Doyle approximated the tune from the Brigadoon signature song. The glove was wonderfully warm, but now his left fingers hurt even more as the blood pulsed back in.
“Some operative you are,” Bodie chided, pulling Doyle into a clench and tucking the edges of his leather jacket with the fur collar and lapels around them both. “Always be equipped for any eventuality, Raymond.”
“Like attack from predatory partners?” Doyle teased, leaning into the fur. It tickled his cheek, and he turned his face, seeking something even warmer.
Bodie’s mouth met his, their tongues touching as if reaching out to one another. It was pure and real, exactly what Doyle needed. There in the road, as if belaying what he’d said earlier, Bodie shoved the palm of his bare hand up under Doyle’s jumper and shirt, pressing it against his flat belly.
“Bloody hell!” Doyle gasped, inhaling so rapidly he had to jerk back or swallow Bodie’s tongue whole. “Your hand is freezing.”
Bodie chuckled wickedly, grabbing a quick kiss so that he could tuck his cold hand into the front of Doyle’s jeans. “Who lent you his glove, then?”
Doyle shivered violently, gooseflesh pebbling his arms under his jumper. Even the inch of skin open to the air from his clothes pushed up was making him colder. “Bodie! We need to find some place indoors or we’ll be two frozen lollies soon enough.”
“You’ve got no spirit of adventure. Why, when I was a para, we’d—“ Bodie began, extracting his hand with a pout.
“Shut it!” Doyle snorted, putting his Aran jumper to rights. He hunched into his tweed jacket, with his chin buried in the folds of the tartan scarf. Where as when they’d set off on their trek, his breath had only been intermittently visible, now every exhalation was candy floss sculpted in ice.
Glancing around the dark and barren landscape, Bodie nodded, far more serious. “Must be some kind of shelter around here. At the very least, a shepherd’s hut.”
“With a hearth, I’d hope.” Doyle walked up the slope. Clouds had drifted over the moon, intensifying the dark night, and bringing with them icy blasts of wind. Doyle couldn’t see his feet, much less what was farther along. It felt a bit like he was going straight into the starry sky, as if, like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, he would launch off the earth and fly. Very weird, and he wondered if the weather was getting to him. To take his mind off the temperature, he reached back to clasp Bodie’s bare hand. Grateful, he stepped closer to his partner, love suddenly filling his entire being.
Odd how the littlest things could mean so much. He and Bodie had always slipped into each other’s bed between meaningless birds. Bodie was his guiding star, Ann, Bodie’s Mariska and all the rest were temporary stops along the way. He sometimes wondered if he and Bodie used the women to buffer their own intensities. He wanted Bodie all the time, saw him all the time, on and off the job, yet once in a while, they needed to separate. It seemed to make their coming together all the more precious. Both recognised how dangerous what they did was, and that each minute could be the last.
“No repeats of A Christmas Carol on the telly last Tuesday?” Doyle asked lightly, grabbing Bodie’s shoulder when Bodie nearly tripped on an unseen obstacle in the road.
“You mean, why’d I watch a religious service?” Bodie responded, stopping long enough to get his balance. “Turned on the Beeb and heard the music. Wrapped the bottle of whisky for Uncle George and your spanners whilst the vicar said his piece. Then turned up the volume when the boy sopranos sang Silent Night.”
Doyle grinned, remembering tearing paper off the box of spanners. Bodie did listen to him. Exactly the brand and type he’d asked for.
“You ever think about—“ Doyle stopped himself. There was little sense bringing up what lurked in the back of his mind. Not here on this lonely stretch of frozen—if not tundra, then miserable, bleak landscape.
“Us and Him?” Bodie asked, cresting the apex of the small hill a moment ahead of Doyle.
Doyle stepped up beside his partner. Didn’t have to ask what he meant. As if able to read Doyle’s mind, Bodie had hit the nail square on the head.
Neither of them were religious any longer—if Bodie had ever really been. Doyle had gone to a Catholic school as a small boy, but the family’s many moves, not to mention his father’s aversion to the Church, meant he’d only lasted two grades under the nuns’ watch. As he aged, he’d simply drifted away from attending mass. For many, many years, he’d avoided it altogether. Too many inconsistencies, both in the Church’s teachings and his own divided soul.
If he was honest with himself, it wasn’t just the ugly view of humanity he saw in his work; it was his relationship with Bodie. How could he align himself with—believe in-- a God who viewed he and Bodie as an aberration?
“Yeah,” Doyle said at last, his heart hammering against his ribs. “If we’re…what we do is so wrong, why does it feel—“
“Like love?” Bodie whispered.
Doyle wasn’t sure he would have heard Bodie, except that the frosty plume that came from his lips alerted him that there were actual words. It was the very first time Bodie had ever said love. Sent chills down Doyle’s spine, but in a very wonderful way. Conversely, he suddenly wasn’t cold at all. “I’ve loved you for a very long time,” he admitted to the wilds, afraid to look directly at Bodie. Couldn’t really see his face well in the dark, anyway. Doyle very much wanted to stare into those blue, blue eyes and see himself reflected in the depths.
“No one else, Raymond.”
Bodie came up close, so close Doyle had to turn into him or lose his way. Their kiss was heated, passionate this time. Not a renewal of what they already had, but a vow for the future. Doyle wanted it to go on and on. His body was so flushed, it took more than a minute to realise that his cheeks were actually cold—and wet.
“It’s snowing!” Bodie exclaimed, looking up.
Individual snowflakes were almost impossible to pick out until they hit the ground, clustering with their brethren. The road already had a thin dusting of white leading down the hill to a valley. It was very dark without the stars or moon to provide a minimum of light, but Doyle could make out something down in the dell; a black shape slightly different than the occasional low, dry stone walls, sheep and windswept trees.
“Do you see that?” Doyle pointed. A sharp gust caught the ends of his scarf, ripping it from his neck. He grabbed the tartan and knotted it more tightly. His cheeks were almost numb in a few minutes. The weather had gone from chilly but clear to frigid and stormy in less than an hour. “Looks like a shelter of some kind.”
“Even if it’s a three sided lean-to, I propose we take it,” Bodie shouted over the increasing noise of the gale whipping from the north. “Looks like this will be a white New Year!”
Holding hands, Doyle and Bodie dashed down the incline, the wind pushing against their chests like a barrier. Slivers of ice seemed to be cutting into Doyle’s lungs, slicing his breath to ribbons. He coughed, ducking his head.
Bodie stumbled, falling to his knees and almost dragged Doyle with him. Digging his heels in, Doyle hauled back on his partner. They both went onto their arses in the snow. Stunned, Doyle sucked sleet into his mouth.
“Bloody hell,” he said breathlessly, spitting out slush. His heart was hammering hard against his ribs. They were done for if Bodie couldn’t get up. “You hurt?”
“Not a bit of it.” Bodie pushed himself to a stand impatiently and wobbled, cursing.
Doyle recognised that foolhardy self-confidence. Bodie was injured—possibly his leg? He clambered to his knees, glad of the single woollen glove when he planted both hands in the snow. His jeans were wet, plastered to his skin. Standing, he grasped a handful of Bodie’s jacket to keep them both upright. “Let’s be more specific,” he shouted in his partner’s ear. The howling of the wind snatched at his scarf, tangling his curls into knots. “Can you walk without falling down?”
“Course I can!” Bodie said brashly, taking a step. Even without the wind shoving at him, he would have looked like a drunken sailor.
“Course you can,” Doyle repeated under his breath. Sodding great idiot. Unable to see Bodie’s face well enough to judge his level of pain, he was going to have to go on…faith. He glanced up at the sky, but Polaris was hidden. No matter, they had a destination, and Bodie seemed able to move, if not at his normal pace.
He hooked an arm under Bodie’s elbow as if he were the one who needed aid and lead them into the onslaught. The ice pelted them, apparently determined to insert itself directly into every bare patch of Doyle’s skin. It hurt to breathe and his eyes stung. He felt Bodie start to shiver long after he was already shaking from the extreme cold.
Visibility was down to zero, so Doyle basically rammed a knee into a large rock before he saw it. Bloody hell, that hurt.
Without his support, Bodie jerked away from Doyle gasping in pain when he must have stepped wrong on his already injured leg.
Just brilliant, now they were both cripples, Doyle thought irritably, and put his hand out in front of him. About a foot away from the rock was a very solid wall. Not a three sided lean-to at all but a real structure.
“Found the house!” he shouted at Bodie. He could just see Bodie nodding, frost collecting on his eyebrows.
Holding hands, they navigated to the corner of the building, finding the door on the eastern side, where it would face the morning sun. It was—naturally—locked.
Partially blocked from the wind by the house, Bodie leaned against the rough stone wall and blew on his fingers to warm them. “Got something to pick that with then, snowflake?” he asked with a puckish grin.
Aggravated by Bodie’s usual cockiness in the face of danger, Doyle snarled at him and pulled two slim screwdrivers from his jeans’ pocket. The small tools had been designed to keep the screws in the earpieces of glasses but Doyle had immediately recognized an alternative use. However, his fingers were so stiff he could barely bend his joints to manipulate the bits of metal.
“Ever tried to lick a metal pole in freezing weather?” Bodie asked genially, standing so that he was shielding Doyle from the worst of the snow flurries.
His concentration divided between getting out of the storm and wondering how bad Bodie’s leg was, Doyle bit down on a sarcastic reply. He rotated the screwdriver in his right hand and gave the one in his left a careful twist. Feeling something inside the lock shift, Doyle turned the doorknob. The door opened.
Thank, God.
Without reflecting on the sudden, heartfelt prayer, Doyle stood back momentarily to left Bodie proceed him. He wanted to see how badly his partner was limping.
Bodie all but hopped over the doorjamb, barely putting weight on his right foot. So, it was fairly serious, Doyle surmised, or Bodie wouldn’t be pretending so hard that it wasn’t.
An artic vortex howled through the open portal, knocking over an umbrella stand in the porch. Doyle had to exert all his strength to shove the door closed. He leaned back against it, panting. The room was—naturally—very dark.
“Think there’s electricity?” Bodie asked, flipping a light switch.
Amazingly, a lamp sitting on a table next to an overstuffed chair shone brightly. After an hour out on inky blackness of a moors night, Bodie and Doyle blinked in unison, shading their eyes from the glare.
“I’ll grant you, I expected a rundown cottage or a barn…” Doyle visually inspected the room when he could see. It was a very nice place. Well appointed with all the latest cons in the kitchen, a lounge decorated in browns and moss greens, the walls lined with book shelves: Keats, Shakespeare, Kant and Luther spine to spine with Maeve Binchy and Ian Fleming. Most importantly, however, Doyle spied a telephone. “This is someone’s holiday cottage.”
“Won’t mind being holed up here in the least,” Bodie said gleefully, his wet trousers dripping onto the wooden flooring. “Especially if the larder is well stocked.” He tapped the phone. “If our luck holds.” He took a cautious step and hissed in pain.
Rubbing his arms to increase circulation, Doyle shivered. While the inside of the house was decidedly warmer than being out in the snow, it was still extremely cold. That and Bodie’s injury made him very surly indeed. “Siddown and shut it,” he said crossly. “I’ll light a great bleedin’ fire and then make sure you aren’t bleedin yourself.”
Bodie stared at him, damned arched eyebrow peaked above his left eye. A sly smile curved his lips. “Love you too, ratty old son,” he said very softly and sat down in the overstuffed chair.
The simple acquiescence touched Doyle’s heart but he wasn’t quite ready to forgive the world for this colossally fucked up assignment. It was abundantly clear how dangerous their lives were when what had looked on paper to be an ordinary tailing of a suspect could be cocked up that quickly. What the hell would have happened if they’d perished there on the side of a road on the North Yorkshire Moors without anyone knowing the better? They’d have died, that’s what. Plain and simple. Going to heaven, he wasn’t as sure about, but…they would have been together.
He glanced back at Bodie, once again flooded with gratefulness. God, George Cowley, or whomever it was who’d partnered he and Bodie had known what he was doing.
“I thought you were going to start a fire,” Bodie said archly, peeling off his outer layer to reveal a Norwegian cardigan and the pale blue Egyptian cotton dress shirt Doyle had given him for Christmas. “Like an icebox in here, it is.”
“Yeah, and you sit there like the manor born, ready to be waited on,” Doyle retorted, his better nature returning. This is how it should be. Safe as houses.
There were logs in the wood box and a package of matches beside the brass fire iron. Someone kept their holiday home well supplied, and yet, the place didn’t really look as if it had been inhabited for some time.
Gathering kindling and a couple of logs, Doyle had the fire laid quickly. He’d never been a Boy Scout nor had camped rough but he had a few necessary survival skills up his sleeve. “We should leave some money, pay for what we used,” Doyle said, the adrenaline subsiding the longer they were out of the storm. He lit a match, watching the wood catch fire. The rush of warmth was sublime.
“Haven’t had my dinner yet. I’ll pay the house once I’ve eaten.” Bodie leaned forward, curving his palm around Doyle’s head and threading his fingers through the curls. “What’s going on in that noggin of yours?”
“Rats running around in a maze, feels like.” Doyle turned enough to lay his cheek against Bodie’s wrist. “Conflicting thoughts, unravelling social consciences. What do we…do we matter?”
“You think too much, Raymond.” Bodie flicked his ear like a school master.
Doyle glowered at him but made no effort to move. His right side was almost too hot but he loved the feel of Bodie’s hand caressing his scalp. If only he could massage the guilt and remorse away. Doyle could have curled up right there and slept, he was that tired. The questions that plagued him—how could what he and Bodie had—what he wanted to hold onto for the rest of his life be so wrong? Everything about a relationship like theirs was viewed with suspicion and prejudice. He could still remember his father, drunk as a lord, haranguing on about those fancy boys, poofters, prancing around on the High Street like they had a right to their perverted ways.
“I have this…desire to do some good—I don’t know, to make up for all the chaos. Maybe atone?” He shrugged, love for Bodie and desperation that their love would never be recognised warring inside him.
“Fancy feeding the homeless or adopting a baby coming down from his mum’s heroin?” Bodie snorted. He unwound Doyle’s tartan scarf and eased the tweed jacket off his shoulders, stroking Doyle’s neck gently. “There’s a point where this existential guilt goes on too long, you know,” he said, pressing on a particularly sensitive place just under Doyle’s left scapula.
Doyle groaned, arching, the pain sending a rush of blood to his head and nearly cramping all the other muscles in its vicinity. “Blimey, that’s the spot…”
“In answer to the question you asked…” Bodie pointed up at the mantle clock. “Last year—“
One hand was on the twelve, the other already ten minutes into 1983. Doyle hadn’t even noticed the classic Ormolu timepiece. Why would anyone keep something that expensive—that rare—in a country retreat?
“If you want to believe in God, no skin off my teeth,“ Bodie continued, running his fingers along Doyle’s shoulders. “However, Jesus never said a single word against two men sharin’ a bed.”
Startled that the conversation had swerved around so completely, Doyle looked up at him. “How the hell would you know?”
“Not much else to read on a merchant ship bound for Africa. I think I memorised the Bible back to front. Makes you think—“ He shrugged, surprisingly serious. “About all manner of subjects. Seems t’me that Love thy neighbour is one of the important ones.”
“Yeah.” Doyle had to concede the point, visualising young William Bodie on the deck of a tramp steamer reading the Bible. Boggled his brain. “Doesn’t specifically state who thy neighbour is, does it?”
“Nor what that love should entail.” Bodie grinned at Doyle, continuing in the broadest Cockney, “there ain’t nuffin’ wrong wif the two ov us, me dove. It’s them that judges got it turned ‘round.”
“Git,” Doyle said reaching out to either box his ears or hug him, he wasn’t sure which, when he bumped Bodie’s right leg.
“Bugger!” Bodie gasped, going white.
“Does hurt, eh?” Doyle asked uncharitably. More solicitously, he got up, pulling a footstool over. After easing Bodie’s foot up onto the footstool, Doyle unlaced his shoe and pulled it off. There was no mistaking that his ankle was quite swollen, straining the weave of his black sock. “The cold out there must have kept the swelling down,” he declared.
“You reckon?” Bodie grimaced, breathing fast through his teeth. “Leave it be and find us something to eat. I’ve been hungry since last December.”
“An hour, possibly three since the sweeties I saw you tucking into as we left the bed and breakfast where Wallace was staying.” Doyle walked into the kitchen, opening cupboards at random. There was quite an odd assortment of tins, including one containing—if the label was to be believed—rattlesnake meat from Arizona in the States. Also black truffle sauce from France, herring from Denmark and tomatoes from Italy. “Our host has traveled all over,” Doyle called out, spotting a more familiar label. Ahh, more like it. Bachelor’s soup. “Minestrone or chicken noodle?”
“Minestrone would hit the spot. Any vino di casa?” Bodie asked, craning his neck to see.
There was—a German Riesling, as well as tea. Good old English PG Tips. While their meal was heating up, Doyle chipped built up ice out of the freezer for a cold pack to put on Bodie’s foot. He even located paracetamol in the cabinet in the loo.
“All the comforts of home,” Bodie sighed in contentment when he had a bit of soup in his belly. “And I’ve got a plausible reason so’s the Cow won’t scold for losing a wanted felon.”
“Injured in the line of duty.” Doyle saluted with his wine glass. He hadn’t thought of that. He’d been too wrapped in the semi-comic way Bodie had declared his commitment in them, “there ain’t nuffin’ wrong wif the two ov us, me dove” to think of much else. “You’d best make the phone call to HQ. If I’d have to guess, Wallace’s gone to Whitby by now.”
“Once more into the breach, dear fellow,” Bodie said with false bravado, reaching for the phone. He got through to the operator immediately.
“Must you forever get your Shakespeare muddled?” Doyle chuckled, drinking the last of his wine. His wet jeans were steaming in the warm air. He really should take them off to dry properly.
“Shush!” Bodie waved him silent. “Young Sloan, is it?” he asked into the receiver, nodding when Sloan must have replied. “I’ve banged up me ankle and taken refuge in a cottage on the moors because of this storm.” His eyes widened, listening. “Inclement there in London, is it? Then Wallace will have to be rounded up from the other end, yeah? Have we got contacts in Whitby?”
“Paulson!” Doyle recalled suddenly. Why hadn’t he remembered the operative earlier? “Paulson lives up that way, he could be there in a tick.”
Bodie relayed the information to Sloan and rang off. “They’d already heard of this freakish storm blowing in over the moors and didn’t expect to hear from us.”
“Doubt the Cow will be so forgiving,” Doyle said with a frown. “Luckily, he’s gone to his club tonight for a private whisky tasting.”
“Which gives us time to revive our evening,” Bodie said with a wicked smile.
“At this late stage?” Doyle glanced down at Bodie’s puffy foot. The bruising was already setting in, his toes like round, fat sausages. “We’ve no transportation and who knows when the owner will return.”
“I’m beginning to wonder what I see in you.” Bodie rolled his eyes, beckoning Doyle over. “Sloan said he’d start out in the morning to fetch us. Once he’s seen the Capri, he’ll be in r/t range and can locate us.”
It sounded logical, and Doyle couldn’t resist Bodie’s summons. He knelt next to Bodie’s chair, caressing the smooth cotton of his new shirt. Doyle had liked the shirt in the shop, especially the subtle pale blue satiny stripes, only visible when the light hit them just so. He’d known the colour would be perfect with Bodie’s eyes.
It was.
The shirt would be even more perfect off. Doyle worked the first button out of the button hole, letting a small portion of Bodie’s chest show. Bodie inhaled with a smile, surging forward to catch Doyle’s lips. They kissed full force, all the love and relief of once again surviving another year coming through.
“I can unbutton,” Bodie said desperately, grappling with a few more buttons. “But you need to get those wet jeans off pronto.”
Doyle laughed. He loved when Bodie looked at him like that, needy and longing. He could feel the weight of Bodie’s eyes on his skin, even when he wasn’t facing his partner. That connection, the hold they both had to the other. Almost without thinking about it, he sent God a word of thanks, taking down his zip and struggling to peel off the damp denim.
“Much better.” Bodie applauded, tossing his shirt onto a nearby rocking chair. “Once you’ve divested yourself of that tatty jumper and the t-shirt from Oxfam’s undoubtedly underneath—“
“I’ll have you know this is a designer shirt!” Doyle pranced back and forth like a model on the catwalk, pulling his cable knit jumper up just enough to show off the Aubergine tee he was wearing, and then yanking the jumper down low enough to cover his pants, too. “By the great Vivienne Westwood. That singer, from the Sex Pistols, is wearing her creations.”
“God Save the Queen,” Bodie said sarcastically, chuckling. “And you her own operative, charged to serve and protect. I wouldn’t boast about wearing Sid Vicious’ cast offs, mate.”
“Can I boast about this?” Doyle shoved off his pants, his cock and balls springing free. He was already stiff, his cock standing up against his belly. The banter was his favourite type of foreplay.
“Ahh, the main attraction. Very nice, very nice.” Bodie looked down at his own trousers in mock consternation. “I fear, alas, that I’ll need aid in removing my armour. My ankle is throbbing quite fiercely.”
“Can’t do anything about it here.” Doyle crossed his arms, surveying his partner. They both wanted to play, but would not both fit in the confines of the comfy chair. “You’ll have to hobble over to the bedroom. If we’re going to abuse our host’s hospitality, we’d best trash every room.”
“A man with a plan.” Bodie nodded triumphantly, pushing himself onto his left foot. He winced but didn’t seem otherwise in great pain.
Doyle gathered him in, hugging him tightly enough to feel their hearts thumping simultaneously. “Come on then,” he whispered, supporting Bodie as they wobbled across to the darkened bedroom.
Without turning on the lamp, Doyle got Bodie under the sheets. The linens were chilly to the touch, but warmed deliciously with two large men grappling each other. Doyle took Bodie’s trousers off in no time. He planted a kiss on Bodie’s firm abdomen, a thrill going up his spine when Bodie thrust his tongue into Doyle’s ear.
“Feels like we broke in to have an affair.” Bodie ran his fingers down Doyle’s hips, trying to grab the dangling bits.
Doyle laughed and moved out of reach. “Isn’t that what we did?”
The spill of light from the lounge wasn’t enough to cut the darkness in the bedroom. As in the car, Doyle couldn’t quite make out Bodie’s face as well as he’d like; he used his fingers to explore. It was oddly sensual to rely on other senses, hands, mouth and nose, to rediscover his partner. He could smell the lingering aroma of the wine on Bodie’s mouth when they kissed, and the familiar scent of his sweat. Despite how cold the room was, Bodie’s skin was warm to the touch, his hair as sleek and soft as a cat.
Bodie caught at him, shoving Doyle’s clothes up to get access to his torso, caressing and tweaking his nipples. Laughing, Doyle twisted away, wrestling for the upper hand. In the mock battle, his brushed his fingers across his partner’s chest.
Bodie’s nipples were peaked, stiff and irresistible. Doyle bit down hard enough to make Bodie howl and then suckled away the pain. He straddled his partner, feeling Bodie’s cock push up against his arse as if it wanted to gain entrance. The air was freezing on his bare butt and he was glad that he’d kept the jumper on, with the duvet bunched around them in drifts like cotton snow.
Held against the mattress, Bodie tried to arch up but couldn’t shift Doyle’s weight. “And here I thought you were nothing but bird bones and sinew,” he said, kissing the knee closest to his cheek. “You must have put on a stone with that Minestrone.”
“Wasn’t the soup.” Doyle grinned down at him. “Seems as if me willie has doubled in size all on it’s own.”
“It has!” Bodie went deliberately cross-eyed peering at the thick rod in front of him. “Some sort of affliction, do you think?”
“I fear it could be permanent.” Doyle bounced slightly on Bodie’s belly, wringing groans from his victim. “D’you know of a doctor who specializes in such things?”
“You’ve come to the right place, my good man. I’m a…” Bodie spoilt his performance by giggling, “Pen-olo-gist.”
“You aren’t!” Doyle snorted with glee, attempting to keep in character. “Perhaps you’d be so kind as to cure what ails me?”
“There are two methods involved.” Bodie anchored Doyle’s hips with both hands, clearly calculating the mechanics involved. “Since I was wounded in the great war and cannot walk far distances—I require something from you.”
“Anything, Doctor—what’d you say your name was?” Doyle reached out to touch his whiskery cheek, needing to touch Bodie.
“Randy Wanker,” Bodie said as pompously as one could when half naked and being sat upon.
“I’ve heard of you!” Doyle declared. This was so much fun he wouldn’t have cared if the owner had walked in on them. Well, he would have cared, but wasn’t all that worried about it. “What do I have to do?”
“I’ll do a—“ Bodie wrapped both hands around Doyle’s cock, “manual adjustment if you could insert a specific body part into—“
“Oh, I’ve sussed it out,” Doyle agreed. “I’ve repaired a motorcycle or two in my time. You want a exhaust pipe seated tightly into the…” He had to think fast to complete the analogy, “-- muffler.”
“Precisely!” Bodie cried, already beginning to work his magic on Doyle’s anatomy.
“Nothing to grease the way, mate,” Doyle said with regret because under normal circumstances, he welcomed Bodie penetrating his arse. He exhaled quickly, trying to focus as Bodie slid both fists down Doyle’s cock, initiating vibrations deep in his core that skittered outward to all four limbs. “That’s brilliant!” he whispered, finding it difficult to concentrate on anything else but the motion of Bodie’s hands against his sensitive skin.
“I came prepared.” Bodie removed one hand to gesture at his trousers on the floor.
“Why’d you--?” Doyle wailed, his coiling arousal abruptly halted. He shivered with the loss of warmth, as well. He was the one who’d tossed the trousers aside, but he could barely make out the dark lump in the dim light.
“In my pocket—all we need, and hurry!” Bodie insisted.
“You really were a Boy Scout!” Doyle swooped down to kiss him, lingering when Bodie bit gently on his bottom lip, keeping him in place. He reluctantly climbed off his comfortable perch to go through Bodie’s pockets. Located a slightly squashed tube in the left rear by feel alone.
“I’d tucked the lubricant away, anticipating our evening. Then Cowley called on the way to his club that Wallace had made his power play, and as a result, wrecked our plans.” Bodie tugged on Doyle’s arm impatiently. “Come on, I’m freezing here.”
“Why’d you think Wallace decided to--?” Doyle started, slicking his fingers with the greasy ointment. He dropped the tube onto the floor and climbed back on the bed, his hip hard up against Bodie’s. He adored being skin to skin with his partner, yet not doing anything else. It was so familiar, comfortable. Would this be how it was if they lived together always? And where had that idea come front?
“I don’t give a farthing’s worth for that tosser,” Bodie growled. “Get back here and---ahhh.”
He trailed off when Doyle anointed his stiff member with a large dollop of lube. Doyle loved having Bodie seated inside him, but preparation was essential to enjoyment.
“Enough! Ease on down—“ Bodie coaxed with a long sigh, panting with need.
Doyle heard the desire in Bodie’s voice; made his voice higher pitched than normal. Doyle liked it. As he knelt to straddle his partner again, Bodie bent his good leg, creating a backrest for him.
“How’s the ankle?” Doyle asked first.
“It smarts a bit, nothing more,” Bodie said honestly, trailing a finger under Doyle’s legs to his perineum. “Ready, steady, go…”
That felt exquisite. Doyle was keen to get going. His heart rate increased, intensifying the need to go as fast, but that wasn’t possible under the circumstances.
“It’s so dark, you’re going to have to guide me,” Doyle murmured, sparing a moment to listen to the wind battering against the window glass. The cottage was sturdy and safe. They’d done as much as they could to alert other operatives to Wallace’s whereabouts. This time was for he and Bodie alone
Spreading his butt cheeks with both hands, he settled gingerly on the rigid pole directly below.
“Steady on,” Bodie encouraged, rubbing Doyle’s thighs and pressing a kiss on his hip. “That’s it…” His voice shook as if he was holding his arousal in strong check, waiting for the right moment to let loose.
Doyle totally understood. He hitched a breath when Bodie’s cock punched against his tight sphincter, shoving through more forcefully than he’d expected. His internal muscles protested, a shearing burn spreading through his groin. Pain, yes, but nothing he’d hadn’t expected. He exhaled slowly, waiting for the sweet perfection of Bodie sliding into home.
“Love—“ Bodie whispered, thrusting once again. He grunted and rocked back for the final push.
That was it. Doyle let himself breathe, feel, absorb. Yes. God, yes. This was life, this was all that mattered, the only thing that made any sense whatsoever. The brief pain was gone completely, incredible energy spiraling through him like champagne bubbles. He raised up carefully and then sat down, his buttocks smacking Bodie’s pelvis hard.
“I could stay like this all…” Bodie began, moving his hips up and down, increasing the inner friction.
When he clamped onto Doyle’s penis with both hands, Doyle thought his brain would shoot right out the top of his head. He’d never survive, and yet he yearned for it to happen again and again.
“More, more,” Doyle chanted. He really didn’t want to spare breath for talking when his entire body was being transformed into something magical. He and Bodie, connected by the oldest link there was. God had to have forged such a thing. True love was honest and didn’t make mistakes. Mankind’s blunders had messed with the most basic emotion on the planet.
“I love you,” Doyle shouted as he trembled with the force of his orgasm. He grasped Bodie’s wrists, feeling him shudder and buck as Bodie climaxed. In sync—as they always were.
Bodie shifted enough for Doyle collapse beside side, head on the pillow. He managed to pull the duvet up over them both and surrendered to sleep, one hand still holding onto Bodie.
~*~
There was no sound. None at all. No buses trundling past his flat. No honk of car horns, no old Mrs. Greeley setting out to the shops with her grandson in the pram with the squeaky wheel.
Doyle settled closer to the bulk that was Bodie. He didn’t have to open his eyes to recognise his partner, but bloody hell the flat was cold. He’d need more coins for the heater…
Wallace. Snowstorm. Bodie’s ankle.
Doyle sat up abruptly, the duvet slithering off.
“Hey!” Bodie cried, shivering. “What’re you on about?”
“It’s morning,” Doyle said. The details of the room they’d made love in but never seen swam into view. A nice room, all in shades of blue. Soft blue wall paper with a repeating fleur de lys pattern. A large wooden armoire, antique unless Doyle missed his guess. A huge mullioned window showing nothing but glistening white snow stretching out for a mile across the icy heath. Icicles like shimmering diamonds adorned the winter bare branches of a lone tree. Bright sun streaming through the glass as if there had never been a blizzard of mammoth proportions.
“Come back to bed, we were up all hours,” Bodie said grumpily, tugging at the bed linens.
“We were busy.” Doyle flopped back onto the pillow, not at all surprised when Bodie used his proximity to rub his own cock against Doyle’s morning wood. He could easily get used to this. “But I could wait a bit for a cuppa.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Bodie said, increasing his frottage. “This will wake you up good and proper.”
That was when they both heard the sound of a car engine stopping outside the cottage.
FIN
Title: Moor and Mountain
Author: Dawnwind
Slash
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Sure
Disclaimer: No money made here only love
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Date: 2015-01-04 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-04 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-04 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-04 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-04 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-04 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-04 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-04 03:34 pm (UTC)And the ending was *perfect*.
Thanks very much for sharing!
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Date: 2015-01-04 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-04 04:23 pm (UTC)That was a lovely read, thank you. Full of atmosphere and gorgeous descriptions - you made me desperately want to see the stars at night on a lonely moor, you made it sound so beautiful.
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Date: 2015-01-04 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-04 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-04 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-04 08:38 pm (UTC)No tweaking necessary - this is a beautiful story just as it is. The descriptions of the night, the stars, the snowy landscape in the morning are very vivid. And Doyle's questioning life and religion and his and Bodie's place in it all was perfect in characterization. Well done!!
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Date: 2015-01-05 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-04 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-05 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-05 07:41 am (UTC)I particularly liked the atmospheric descriptions of them making their way through the moors landscape.
Well done! :D
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Date: 2015-01-05 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-05 11:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-05 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-06 10:35 am (UTC)