Almost a disaster again - I came to post this, and lj was down for planned maintenance! I missed the memo about the schedule, obviously, but luckily it didn't take too long. So here is a final wee thing for the solstice, which is also a wee thing for
milomaus, because it is from her picture prompt a few weeks ago, for which I promised fic... *g*

The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep
by Slantedlight
You could do a lot in three hours. You could get down the gym and work out, have a long hot bath afterwards to wind down. You could blast your way through the gun range, and go for a couple of pints with the lads. You could even take a bird out for a meal, then take her home and still have a good hour left for doing what came naturally. Trouble was, when you were stuck in the middle of bloody nowhere, none of those things were an option. Mind you, the way Bodie felt, as if his eyes were on matchsticks but his body hadn’t caught up yet, still singing on the tension he needed to spot Villiers and his cronies and then act in a second, he couldn’t have concentrated on any of them anyway.
Cowley had no doubt meant it as relief for them, a little time away from the job, when Villiers was spotted fours hours away, his boat trip to this usually quiet patch of the English coast for some reason delayed, but it didn’t feel like a relief. He’d no doubt forgotten that it would take them at least an hour to get back to town, and half an hour to the nearest town with any chance of a free bed at this time of year - if they hadn’t been rushed out so fast that neither of them had either cash or chequebook on them.
Bodie’d regretted his cheerful resignation fifteen minutes ago. “That’s alright, we’ll kip in the car!”
It was getting colder the more light leached from the sky, Bodie’s neck was tilted at an uncomfortable angle, the bottom of the steering wheel pressed into his thighs whenever he moved, and he was sitting on the end of the bloody seatbelt again. Turning his head one way meant daylight shone harshly in on his tired eyes, and turning the other way…
Turning the other way, there was Doyle, lying on his back, open to the whole world, as if he could sleep forever. His neck stretched long over the headrest, his thumbs hitched into the top of his jeans, fingers splayed over his belt buckle, pointing…
Bodie turned back to the grey daylight - and jerked properly awake, hand reaching for his gun, stopping himself just in time… There were two men outside the car, great ludicrous grins on their faces, and one of them had a camera slung over his shoulder. He was outside the vehicle and on his feet in a second, and something in his face sent them on their way with no more than a backward jeer - once they were a safe distance away down the lane. Fucking hell!
“Can’t sleep either?” Doyle’s voice surprised him, scratchy with tiredness, but as awake as Bodie was himself.
Bodie looked him up and down, standing beside the car, one hand holding the roof, the other reaching behind to his back, massaging away kinks. “Thought you were well out of it.”
“In this thing? Not exactly a Posturpedic, is it?”
“It was your idea, mate.” If he couldn’t lie to Doyle, who could he lie to?
Doyle just looked him up down. “Walk?”
“Walk? You’re joking, aren’t you?”
Doyle shrugged. “If we can’t sleep, maybe we should get some fresh air.”
“We’ve got nothing but fresh air! Let’s go wait for that pub to open…” The pub would be warm, there would be beer, and there might be barmaids.
But Doyle shook his head. “You don’t need a pub, sunshine,” he said, and headed off in the opposite direction to the lane, down a footpath that was barely a rabbit track.
Bodie stared after him for a moment, hands on hips in indignation. Like he had nothing better to do than follow Four-sodding-Five into the woods at sunset in December.
At least it wasn’t raining.
He breathed out heavily, stuffed his hands into the pockets of this jacket for warmth, and set off down the footpath. Barely a rabbit track was about right - the bare whippy branches of unrecognisable bushes and thorns slapped and grasped at his cords in turn as he pushed through, and when he finally broke into the woods proper, he was covered in fluff from god-knew-what, and probably the entrails of slugs and maggots and...
And where the hell was Doyle, now he d got this far?
He ducked under a low-hanging branch, it’s bark chocolate dark in the low light, and soft under his hand, and stopped, looking around.
“Doyle?” Nothing. “Ray!”
Shadows blurred into other shadows, a single streak of golden light striped across winter-dead leaves, a stand of toadstools, trees and more trees, the final throes of the day. He glanced at his watch. Ten to four. “Ray?” he called again, but his voice was lower now, night-time low, which was crazy, because…
A low whistle cut through the air, through the woods, weaving its way around branch and tree trunk, and… there.
He looked around quickly, half-frowning and suspicious, but apart from that whistle, and Ray’s jacket swaying slightly from a branch of the big oak further down the path, nothing moved. He reached up and loosened his Magnum in its holster, felt his heart thump faster in this chest. ‘Course there was no one here but him and Ray, it was just some game of Doyle’s to wake him up, but… but it had been a long time since he was last alone in the woods, the English winter woods, earth soft and damp beneath his feet, every step the scent of rotting leaves and winter and the stories his gran used to tell him. All battles and blood, his gran was, Herne and hunters and Norse gods and their ghosts, riding out in the dusk and the winter twilight, set on revenge and sacrifice, and Don’t you set foot outdoors after winter-dark, Billy-boy.
He’d always preferred a good Saturnalia, himself.
So, he rather thought, eyeing the jacket on its branch speculatively, did Doyle.
They were both hunters, him and Doyle, their days were battles and blood, and they had ghosts a-plenty. Bodie stepped across the forest floor, quiet as a ghost himself - or maybe a god. He stopped in the lee of another bare-branched oak, and instead of going straight on, slid left to the shelter of some fallen and moss-covered giant, and then around again and further away, until he had passed Doyle’s tree, could see him leaning against its far side, Ray curved against the tree’s curve, one arm around its trunk the other snaked down his side.
Bodie wasn’t in the mood for battles now. Doyle’s t-shirt, he remembered, was moss-green soft, his jeans worn and old and soft, and the look he’d seen in Doyle’s eyes as he stared over the car at Bodie…
His gran had talked about two blokes, the Oak King and the Holly King, forever either winning or losing, victor or defeated, one up, one down.
It wasn’t like that with Doyle. They’d had their fights, had their competitions even now, but… it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t fighting he wanted to do with Doyle. He was close enough now that he could have reached out an arm, leaned forward, and…
Doyle turned.
They looked at each other for a moment, in the silence of the winter woods, and then they moved, coming together in the holly-entwined, oak-stretching dusk. Doyle’s arms were bare, and chill with the winter air, but they pulled Bodie in, curved around him, at the same time as Bodie’s arms reached to encircle Doyle’s shoulders, and back, and their heads tilted this way, and their lips met, and their breath met, and there was nothing else but to kiss and be kissed, to move and be moved against.
He was mad, Bodie thought, out here in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the forest, in the middle of winter - in the middle of Doyle’s circling, insistent arms. The night was coming on them, and it wasn’t safe, but when Doyle reached between them to undo the button on his trousers, Bodie breathed in to make it easier, slid his own hands down to the flies on Doyle’s jeans, heart and breath and need quickening as they opened to his fingers, as they fell away to either side, Doyle bare against him.
No battle this, but the ease of knowing which way Doyle would move, of being sure that when he turned one way, that Doyle would turn the other, that when he pressed there, Doyle would…
It was too much. He almost fell to his knees, glancing upwards to see Doyle pushed back against the trunk of the oak, head thrown back at the feel of Bodie’s hand around his prick, and then Bodie’s lips on his prick, and then Bodie could taste him, could finally taste him. He closed his eyes, and thought of nothing but taking Doyle as far as he could, of Doyle’s prick between his lips, against his tongue, sliding as hard and as far… and then Doyle was coming, and the smell and taste of him was all there was, and then Doyle’s weight against his hands, his own knees on the damp forest floor, the air sharp around them.
Bodie drew back, opened his eyes to see Doyle, head thrown back against the tree, breathing hard, t-shirt clinging to his body, rucked up slightly, jeans open and pulled down just far enough that… Bodie’s own prick throbbed, and he grasped it quickly, straightening to stand again, to stare darkly at Doyle’s mouth, lips parted as his breath slowed… to catch Doyle’s gaze when he opened his eyes, as his lips closed...
…as he pushed himself away from the tree, leaned in to kiss Bodie firmly, and certainly, and briefly, and then turned around, hands bracing himself against the trunk.
Bodie bent his head to Doyle’s neck first, nuzzling past curls that still smelt of shampoo, herbs or apples or something that was Doyle, opening lips that had been stretched around Doyle’s prick just a moment ago to the warm skin of Doyle’s neck, scratching his teeth against that skin, biting down and feeling Doyle’s cock leap against his hand, spent though it had been, hearing Doyle’s soft cry as he sucked Doyle to him, marking him so that he’d have to wrap a scarf around his neck, so that he’d know, for days more, that he’d remember.
And then he released him, and twisted his face to spit into his palm, and Doyle was saying his name, and pressing insistently backwards, and Bodie’s prick was sliding between his flesh, was searching for that one place… Was inside him.
They stilled, both together, woods darkening around them, and then Doyle took a long breath and pushed back again, and Bodie leaned forward, wrapped his arms firmly around him, around Doyle’s warmth and the life of him, and fucked him. He did it slowly at first, feeling every inch of Doyle around his prick, in and out, and then faster, pulled in again, and again to the place that he had to be, and harder, and more, until finally he came, and he swore later that Doyle came again too, and then they both lay hard against the oak, its skin rough against their skin.
They righted themselves in slow, half-dazed movements, stumbled back along the rabbit path, Bodie following Doyle’s dark shape, reaching out now and then to brush his hand against his back, or his bum or his arm, or anything that he could touch. Doyle slowed when he did that, so that their warmth pressed together for a moment, again, and then there was the car, waiting for them in the black winter’s eve, and they separated, one to each door, and slid inside, to familiar seats, and familiar smells and nearly two hours still before they had to get back to work and the long night ahead.
They slept.

o0o
And because I am forever just a touch pretentious about them, the title is from this poem, because it seemed to fit. Well, except for the snow. And the horse. *g*
The darkest evening of the year.
...
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
(from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
o0o
Title: The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Always slash
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Certainly
Disclaimer: The lads and the CI5-verse are still not mine, but I'm also still playing with them for the love. Theirs, mostly. *g*

The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep
by Slantedlight
You could do a lot in three hours. You could get down the gym and work out, have a long hot bath afterwards to wind down. You could blast your way through the gun range, and go for a couple of pints with the lads. You could even take a bird out for a meal, then take her home and still have a good hour left for doing what came naturally. Trouble was, when you were stuck in the middle of bloody nowhere, none of those things were an option. Mind you, the way Bodie felt, as if his eyes were on matchsticks but his body hadn’t caught up yet, still singing on the tension he needed to spot Villiers and his cronies and then act in a second, he couldn’t have concentrated on any of them anyway.
Cowley had no doubt meant it as relief for them, a little time away from the job, when Villiers was spotted fours hours away, his boat trip to this usually quiet patch of the English coast for some reason delayed, but it didn’t feel like a relief. He’d no doubt forgotten that it would take them at least an hour to get back to town, and half an hour to the nearest town with any chance of a free bed at this time of year - if they hadn’t been rushed out so fast that neither of them had either cash or chequebook on them.
Bodie’d regretted his cheerful resignation fifteen minutes ago. “That’s alright, we’ll kip in the car!”
It was getting colder the more light leached from the sky, Bodie’s neck was tilted at an uncomfortable angle, the bottom of the steering wheel pressed into his thighs whenever he moved, and he was sitting on the end of the bloody seatbelt again. Turning his head one way meant daylight shone harshly in on his tired eyes, and turning the other way…
Turning the other way, there was Doyle, lying on his back, open to the whole world, as if he could sleep forever. His neck stretched long over the headrest, his thumbs hitched into the top of his jeans, fingers splayed over his belt buckle, pointing…
Bodie turned back to the grey daylight - and jerked properly awake, hand reaching for his gun, stopping himself just in time… There were two men outside the car, great ludicrous grins on their faces, and one of them had a camera slung over his shoulder. He was outside the vehicle and on his feet in a second, and something in his face sent them on their way with no more than a backward jeer - once they were a safe distance away down the lane. Fucking hell!
“Can’t sleep either?” Doyle’s voice surprised him, scratchy with tiredness, but as awake as Bodie was himself.
Bodie looked him up and down, standing beside the car, one hand holding the roof, the other reaching behind to his back, massaging away kinks. “Thought you were well out of it.”
“In this thing? Not exactly a Posturpedic, is it?”
“It was your idea, mate.” If he couldn’t lie to Doyle, who could he lie to?
Doyle just looked him up down. “Walk?”
“Walk? You’re joking, aren’t you?”
Doyle shrugged. “If we can’t sleep, maybe we should get some fresh air.”
“We’ve got nothing but fresh air! Let’s go wait for that pub to open…” The pub would be warm, there would be beer, and there might be barmaids.
But Doyle shook his head. “You don’t need a pub, sunshine,” he said, and headed off in the opposite direction to the lane, down a footpath that was barely a rabbit track.
Bodie stared after him for a moment, hands on hips in indignation. Like he had nothing better to do than follow Four-sodding-Five into the woods at sunset in December.
At least it wasn’t raining.
He breathed out heavily, stuffed his hands into the pockets of this jacket for warmth, and set off down the footpath. Barely a rabbit track was about right - the bare whippy branches of unrecognisable bushes and thorns slapped and grasped at his cords in turn as he pushed through, and when he finally broke into the woods proper, he was covered in fluff from god-knew-what, and probably the entrails of slugs and maggots and...
And where the hell was Doyle, now he d got this far?
He ducked under a low-hanging branch, it’s bark chocolate dark in the low light, and soft under his hand, and stopped, looking around.
“Doyle?” Nothing. “Ray!”
Shadows blurred into other shadows, a single streak of golden light striped across winter-dead leaves, a stand of toadstools, trees and more trees, the final throes of the day. He glanced at his watch. Ten to four. “Ray?” he called again, but his voice was lower now, night-time low, which was crazy, because…
A low whistle cut through the air, through the woods, weaving its way around branch and tree trunk, and… there.
He looked around quickly, half-frowning and suspicious, but apart from that whistle, and Ray’s jacket swaying slightly from a branch of the big oak further down the path, nothing moved. He reached up and loosened his Magnum in its holster, felt his heart thump faster in this chest. ‘Course there was no one here but him and Ray, it was just some game of Doyle’s to wake him up, but… but it had been a long time since he was last alone in the woods, the English winter woods, earth soft and damp beneath his feet, every step the scent of rotting leaves and winter and the stories his gran used to tell him. All battles and blood, his gran was, Herne and hunters and Norse gods and their ghosts, riding out in the dusk and the winter twilight, set on revenge and sacrifice, and Don’t you set foot outdoors after winter-dark, Billy-boy.
He’d always preferred a good Saturnalia, himself.
So, he rather thought, eyeing the jacket on its branch speculatively, did Doyle.
They were both hunters, him and Doyle, their days were battles and blood, and they had ghosts a-plenty. Bodie stepped across the forest floor, quiet as a ghost himself - or maybe a god. He stopped in the lee of another bare-branched oak, and instead of going straight on, slid left to the shelter of some fallen and moss-covered giant, and then around again and further away, until he had passed Doyle’s tree, could see him leaning against its far side, Ray curved against the tree’s curve, one arm around its trunk the other snaked down his side.
Bodie wasn’t in the mood for battles now. Doyle’s t-shirt, he remembered, was moss-green soft, his jeans worn and old and soft, and the look he’d seen in Doyle’s eyes as he stared over the car at Bodie…
His gran had talked about two blokes, the Oak King and the Holly King, forever either winning or losing, victor or defeated, one up, one down.
It wasn’t like that with Doyle. They’d had their fights, had their competitions even now, but… it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t fighting he wanted to do with Doyle. He was close enough now that he could have reached out an arm, leaned forward, and…
Doyle turned.
They looked at each other for a moment, in the silence of the winter woods, and then they moved, coming together in the holly-entwined, oak-stretching dusk. Doyle’s arms were bare, and chill with the winter air, but they pulled Bodie in, curved around him, at the same time as Bodie’s arms reached to encircle Doyle’s shoulders, and back, and their heads tilted this way, and their lips met, and their breath met, and there was nothing else but to kiss and be kissed, to move and be moved against.
He was mad, Bodie thought, out here in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the forest, in the middle of winter - in the middle of Doyle’s circling, insistent arms. The night was coming on them, and it wasn’t safe, but when Doyle reached between them to undo the button on his trousers, Bodie breathed in to make it easier, slid his own hands down to the flies on Doyle’s jeans, heart and breath and need quickening as they opened to his fingers, as they fell away to either side, Doyle bare against him.
No battle this, but the ease of knowing which way Doyle would move, of being sure that when he turned one way, that Doyle would turn the other, that when he pressed there, Doyle would…
It was too much. He almost fell to his knees, glancing upwards to see Doyle pushed back against the trunk of the oak, head thrown back at the feel of Bodie’s hand around his prick, and then Bodie’s lips on his prick, and then Bodie could taste him, could finally taste him. He closed his eyes, and thought of nothing but taking Doyle as far as he could, of Doyle’s prick between his lips, against his tongue, sliding as hard and as far… and then Doyle was coming, and the smell and taste of him was all there was, and then Doyle’s weight against his hands, his own knees on the damp forest floor, the air sharp around them.
Bodie drew back, opened his eyes to see Doyle, head thrown back against the tree, breathing hard, t-shirt clinging to his body, rucked up slightly, jeans open and pulled down just far enough that… Bodie’s own prick throbbed, and he grasped it quickly, straightening to stand again, to stare darkly at Doyle’s mouth, lips parted as his breath slowed… to catch Doyle’s gaze when he opened his eyes, as his lips closed...
…as he pushed himself away from the tree, leaned in to kiss Bodie firmly, and certainly, and briefly, and then turned around, hands bracing himself against the trunk.
Bodie bent his head to Doyle’s neck first, nuzzling past curls that still smelt of shampoo, herbs or apples or something that was Doyle, opening lips that had been stretched around Doyle’s prick just a moment ago to the warm skin of Doyle’s neck, scratching his teeth against that skin, biting down and feeling Doyle’s cock leap against his hand, spent though it had been, hearing Doyle’s soft cry as he sucked Doyle to him, marking him so that he’d have to wrap a scarf around his neck, so that he’d know, for days more, that he’d remember.
And then he released him, and twisted his face to spit into his palm, and Doyle was saying his name, and pressing insistently backwards, and Bodie’s prick was sliding between his flesh, was searching for that one place… Was inside him.
They stilled, both together, woods darkening around them, and then Doyle took a long breath and pushed back again, and Bodie leaned forward, wrapped his arms firmly around him, around Doyle’s warmth and the life of him, and fucked him. He did it slowly at first, feeling every inch of Doyle around his prick, in and out, and then faster, pulled in again, and again to the place that he had to be, and harder, and more, until finally he came, and he swore later that Doyle came again too, and then they both lay hard against the oak, its skin rough against their skin.
They righted themselves in slow, half-dazed movements, stumbled back along the rabbit path, Bodie following Doyle’s dark shape, reaching out now and then to brush his hand against his back, or his bum or his arm, or anything that he could touch. Doyle slowed when he did that, so that their warmth pressed together for a moment, again, and then there was the car, waiting for them in the black winter’s eve, and they separated, one to each door, and slid inside, to familiar seats, and familiar smells and nearly two hours still before they had to get back to work and the long night ahead.
They slept.

And because I am forever just a touch pretentious about them, the title is from this poem, because it seemed to fit. Well, except for the snow. And the horse. *g*
The darkest evening of the year.
...
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
(from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Title: The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Always slash
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Certainly
Disclaimer: The lads and the CI5-verse are still not mine, but I'm also still playing with them for the love. Theirs, mostly. *g*
no subject
Date: 2016-12-22 12:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-22 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-22 09:00 pm (UTC)Glorious! I love how you've written the lads alone in the English winter woods! Brava! :-)
no subject
Date: 2016-12-22 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-22 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-22 11:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-23 07:36 pm (UTC)Wonderful words, wonderful feelings, wonderful mood!
You get the Lads always right, it's like you watched them.
Perfect!
no subject
Date: 2016-12-23 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-25 11:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-26 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-31 06:57 pm (UTC)Beautifully done, as you always do. Thank you.