[identity profile] byslantedlight.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] discoveredinalj
Some people have already seen this one (but on paper *g*). I know it's nearly all over, but we're nipping back to Christmas...

TogetherAtChristmas(small)Together at Christmas
by Slantedlight


Christmas on duty. Again. Doyle watched silently as yet another Brussel sprout rebounded from the wall and into his abandoned cup of tea.

“I could have been away with Lorna all weekend, if bloody Michaels hadn’t got married this year,” Murphy was saying, looking around the table. A dozen eyes looked back at him, with varying degrees of interest. “It’s discrimination, that’s what it is.”

Bodie took another swig of whatever it was in his mug - neat rum if his breath was anything to go by when he turned Doyle’s way - and looked sceptical. “Discrimination? Against us?”

“Too right it is - single blokes need love too, you know! And Christmases off.”

“And women,” Susan cut in, fishing another sprout from the bowl on the table, and starting to line it up. “Or at least we need Christmas parties and champagne under the mistletoe. And better canapes.”

“And women!” Murphy agreed. “We need women too!” He carried on, warming to his subject, grinning broadly at Susan, who rolled her eyes. “What the Cow doesn’t realise is… is…”

“Is what? The suspense is killing me.” Bodie drawled, and glanced sideways, but Doyle ignored him too. He wasn’t in the mood. The room had long moved from attention to boredom to ridiculous conversations, and it was only a matter of time before someone suggested some kind of party game, on duty or not.

“…what he doesn’t realise is that it’s discrimination, that’s what it is!”

“So what’s the luscious Lorna doing instead of being holed up with you in some festive love shack, then?” Jax asked, getting up to put the kettle on yet again.

“Gone to her gran’s.”

“So how could she go away with you if she’s at her grans?”

“That’s not the point, the point is…”

Doyle tuned them out, half an ear left open in case Bodie needed him, letting the other voices fade to a meaningless buzz. Murphy was right, mind - it would have been nice to spend some time with his loved one at Christmas for a change, just the two of them, curled up in front of a blazing fire somewhere, quiet music in the background, the golden glow of brandy…

There was a violent crash on the table in front of him, as the empty cup beside his was sent spinning down on its saucer. Susan had moved onto the cold roast potatoes, and they’d been solid enough when they were hot.

“We could go on strike,” Bodie suggested. “Form a picket line.”

“Not outside, it’s bloody freezing out there. Have you seen it?”

“It’s not particularly warm in here,” Susan agreed, eyeing the empty dishes with disfavour and subsiding back on her chair, tilting it rashly towards the wall so that five pairs of eyes swivelled just in case it tipped and she went down, legs in the air, skirt akimbo. She crossed her ankles defiantly on the table, sniffed nonchalantly. “And it’s only going to get colder if we just sit around.”

“I dunno why he has so many of us in,” McCabe said morosely. “It’s not as if anything ever happens on Christmas eve.”

“Well not after the shops have shut,” Jax said fairly. “And definitely not on Christmas day.”

“What did we do last year?” Bodie was looking at him again, as if he was going to join in, and he wasn’t, he wasn’t… Bah humbug to the lot of ‘em. Why couldn’t Cowley have just this once given them Christmas off instead of saddling them with this pack of…

Bodie’s knee nudged against his under the table. “Come on professor, guardian of Christmas past - what did we do?”

“Played charades,” Lucas interjected, slapping a hand down on the table in triumphant memory. “And Risk. And strip poker.”

“Well we’re not playing that this year,” Jax interrupted hurriedly. “I’m not playing with her again.”

“Bad loser,” Susan said smugly. “What about strip snap this time? Or you could just all get your kit off now, save messing about with the cards.”

“Hide and seek,” Bodie said suddenly, and Doyle did look up at that, blinked thoughtfully. What was Bodie up to now? “This place is big enough.” And this time Bodie was keeping his eyes on everyone but him.

“Victorian heap,” Murphy agreed. “No wonder it’s so cold, we’d have to be twenty foot tall to find where the hot air’s risen to.”

“Or sit beside you,” Lucas suggested, somewhat predictably.

“No, I know - sardines!” Susan let her chair tip back to the floor, beamed around the table.

There was a chorus of “You what?”

“You know - yes you do! It’s like hide and seek, but when you find someone you have to get in with them and then you both hide. Last person searching has to pay a forfeit.”

“We could huddle together to keep warm,” Lucas said, with a lascivious stare at Susan.

“I’ll be referee,” she replied without pause. “Otherwise no one knows when everyone’s hiding or if there’s anyone still looking.”

“Alright - who goes off to hide first?”

“Draw straws,” Lucas said, reaching back to the matches beside the cooker. Susan took them from him, breaking them efficiently into different lengths and then tucking them into her hand.

Doyle closed his eyes when he chose one, a Christmas wish, not relishing the idea of having to huddle together with half a dozen CI5 agents. As long as he didn’t pull the wrong straw, he might have a chance of finding out what Bodie had in mind. Or maybe he could go off and lose himself searching. Down the computer room with a good book, maybe, that was usually warm, and there’d only be Phillips in… No huddling with him.

There was a chorus of cheers as Jax drew the short straw, stood thinking for a minute, and then headed for the door. Susan began a countdown from twenty, and there was a general scraping of chairs as the others got to their feet and stretched.

Doyle began, reluctantly, to stand with them - they’d never let him sit this one out - felt heavy hands suddenly on his shoulders, and then a whisper, low, in his ear, Bodie’s breath against his skin, rum-scented and warm. “Find me…”

“Oi! No collaborating!” Lucas shouted, raising an accusatory finger, and Bodie backed off, reaching to the back of his chair for his jacket and shrugging into it.

“And nothing outside the building,” Susan said loudly. “I’m not looking for anyone out there, so you’ll freeze to death!”

“Cowley’ll find your wizened hunched up body…” McCabe began.

“Why would you be wizened if you’d frozen to death?” Lucas interrupted him, and Doyle closed his eyes again in despair. What a way to spend Christmas…

“Go!” Susan shouted, and at various speeds, the agents did, Bodie included. Doyle shot Susan a glare as a kind of cover, earning himself a cheerful - and therefore highly suspicious - smile, and followed them.

Find me, Bodie had said. Maybe they’d get to spend Christmas together after all - at least a few minutes of it. Doyle stopped in the corridor, frowning. If he could find him in this warren of a building. Why couldn’t Cowley have moved HQ to a nice modern place, somewhere with central heating and double-glazing…?

He had to think like Bodie - shouldn’t be too hard, it was what they did at work every day, and outside work too. He wandered up the empty corridor, listening absently to the footsteps echoing through floorboards and down walls as the other agents searched. There was a vast draughty staircase at the end - up or down? They were on the first floor - down was the ground floor, with security and the typing pool, then the basement with its long pipe-lined corridors and dusty rooms.

Bodie was wearing new trousers. Brown corduroy, tight in all the places Doyle could have wished them to be tight. Upstairs, then.

Second floor offices, empty rooms, ranks of filing cabinets - no wonder no one else was searching up here. Third floor, completely abandoned - CI5 wasn’t that big. Doyle wandered down the hallway for the form of it, pulling his thick white cardi closer around him. Should have put on his jacket, like Bodie…

Bodie had put on his jacket - but he hadn’t complained about Susan’s prohibition against hiding in the yard… The stairs seemed to end on the third floor, but if you went through the fourth door on the right along the corridor, you were in another landing, dimly lit by a single bare bulb, and only that for security when the night watch wandered around. And in a corner of the landing… CI5 had moved HQ not long after the Parsali case, and Trojan horses had been fresh in his mind, and Bodie’s. They both knew what was up there.

In a corner of the landing there was a hatch up to the attics, low enough to open, though any ladder was long gone, and then there was another narrow but long corridor, with slant-roofed rooms down either side.

Find me

Doyle hesitated a bare moment, listening, but there was only the now-distant calls of the others, the occasional rumble of a vehicle down Christmas-quiet roads. There was no sign that Bodie was up there, but…

Find me

He reached up, pushed the hatch to one side, and then pulled himself up, sliding the hatch closed again and standing in the dark, waiting for his eyes to acclimate. The doors to the rooms stood open, letting in a faint orange glow from the streetlamps outside, enough to follow at any rate. He padded quietly along the floorboards, carefully, not wanting them to squeak, until he could see that there was just one door closed - the door at the very end of the passage. He retraced his steps, pulled the others until they were identically shut, and then leaned close against the final door, its wood cold under his hands.

No sound inside. He was going to look a right idiot if he’d got it wrong.

Find me

He knew he’d got it right as soon as he stepped into the room, even before he saw Bodie, a dark shape in the shadows, behind the door. The room felt like Bodie was in it. And there was a very faint smell of rum.

“Thought you’d given me up for Susan,” Bodie said, voice low in the dark, but his hands were reaching out, and Doyle let himself be drawn into them, let himself be pulled close against Bodie’s solid warmth, let himself sigh just a little and drop his head to Bodie’s shoulder, tuck his face into Bodie’s neck… But that wasn’t enough either, and when he was there, feeling Bodie’s hand slide up his back and hold him more tightly, he parted his lips, let himself kiss Bodie’s skin, even though they were on duty, even though they were at work, even though they were in HQ itself, and somewhere below half a dozen trained agents were roaming the building…

Because Bodie’d said find me, and because it was Christmas, and because at long last they were on their own.

“Well it’s better than charades, anyway,” he said, when he pulled away at last, and Bodie grinned, reached a hand to cup the side of his face, and drew him into a proper kiss, all warm lips and increasingly harsh breathing, and then, when Doyle slid his hands up inside his jacket and began tugging his poloneck out of his trousers, a quiet moan. Doyle thrust against him because he had to, because he couldn’t help it, and Bodie pressed back, both of them hard and wanting, and…

“Here?” he asked, feeling breathless, reaching for Bodie’s zip.

“No.”

What? After all this…

“Over here.” Bodie pushed him away, but took his hand, holding it tightly, led him across the tiny room to the far corner, where there was a window set in the roof - no, in the side of the building - small, the glass old and decidedly not double-glazed. It was set low, but the sill was solid, and Bodie pressed him down to his knees, settling close beside him. Doyle expected to feel hard wood, but there was something soft, a blanket or…

“How long have you been planning this?”

“Since we found it,” Bodie said. “Had an idea it might come in handy…” And in the light from the window, he was smiling, eyes and all, and he was looking at Doyle with pure happiness.

They were far above the rooftops of the nearest buildings, looing out over all of London. Doyle could make out the sinuous writhe of the river, the string of lights that was the Embankment, Blackfriars Bridge, St Paul’s…

“Here.” Bodie reached into his jacket pockets for a moment, then crowded up close behind him, legs spread around his, warm against Doyle’s back, reassuringly hard against his arse, and pressed a flask into one of Doyle’s hands. “Christmas pressie.”

Doyle unscrewed the cap, sniffed - nothing. He took a swig - vodka. Bodie was holding out another flask, and Doyle twisted to catch his eye and grin back, touched the flasks together. “Cheers,” he said. “I didn’t get you anything...” Not here, he hadn’t, but at home he had a blue lambswool jumper, soft and thin, and he wanted nothing more than for Bodie to be wearing it - and only it.

“You did…” Bodie pressed something into Doyle’s other hand. A tube of something. “Thought you might think of something we could do with that…” Then he was fumbling at Doyle’s belt, at the catch of his jeans, at the zip, and Doyle’s breath caught.

Up here, above all London, Bodie taking him in front of the Christmas night… Yes.

He unscrewed the tube of KY even as Bodie was pulling his jeans down, baring him to the cold air, and then, knowing Bodie was watching even as he undid his own trousers, he reached behind himself with the jelly, a good dollop on his own behind, pushing it awkwardly into himself, hearing Bodie release a pent up breath in a long sigh.

“Ray…”

He squeezed more KY onto his fingers, reached behind again, and this time found Bodie, found Bodie’s prick, hard and thick and feeling impossibly big in his fingers, against the palm of his hand, but he wanted it…

Bodie pressed forward into his hands with a moan, then reached out and grabbed Doyle’s hips, and then he was pushing against Doyle’s arse with that prick, and Doyle was guiding him to the right place, and…

There. The world stilled for a moment, for just a moment, as Bodie was inside him, and the lights of London were above them, and everything was just where it should be.

Doyle straightened and turned his neck so that he could kiss Bodie as close to his lips as he could manage. “Happy Christmas, Bodie,” he whispered, and then he thrust back, and Bodie moaned and kissed him, and there they were, together at last for Christmas.



~December 2015~

Date: 2016-01-05 12:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gilda-elise.livejournal.com
I don't think I've ever read this one before, if I have it's been a long time. In either case, it made for a lovely morning's reading. It's always Christmas with the Lads!

Date: 2016-01-05 01:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ali15son.livejournal.com
i'm loving the thought of Bodie in just a Lambs wool jumper and hide and seek with only those two playing really just to snatch a few moments together ..bliss x

Date: 2016-01-05 01:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] miwahni.livejournal.com
There's something about your writing that just transports me (and I'm feeling rather voyeuristic right now as a result!). I could feel the chill from the window, and almost see the lights of London spread out below. Lovely work.

Date: 2016-01-05 02:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jessebee.livejournal.com
Yum, still delicious!

Date: 2016-01-05 06:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cloudless-9193.livejournal.com
Really a happy Christmas. Thanks for the comfort read! :-)

Date: 2016-01-05 11:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] heliophile-oxon.livejournal.com
Now this is a game of hide and seek I would really love to see! *g*
I love it - it's hot and all sweet and tender and hot all over again. And I seriously love the idea of Bodie planning this ages in advance!

Date: 2016-01-06 11:53 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sw33n3y.livejournal.com
Heh, Bodie's strategic brain comes to the fore again. I loved the sense of fun and warmth. Thank you! :D

Date: 2016-01-12 04:37 pm (UTC)
ext_9226: (pros4 - snailbones)
From: [identity profile] snailbones.livejournal.com


I love it - thank you! A proper nice Christmas pressie, even if it's a bit late now when I'm reading it! I love the idea of them finding a private spot with a view... and Bodie in just a sweater? Oh yes!

Thank you again.

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