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discoveredinaljBack to Part Two
Marty Martell’s current office was aboard the Woolwich Ferry, and they caught the midday boat from Plumstead with bare minutes to spare. Doyle had been hard to wake, and bad-tempered with it, until he’d been reminded that they had a job to do. Christ but he hoped it wasn’t a mistake bringing him, hoped he’d keep his mouth shut and his eyes open.
There was no chance of Martell appearing until they were at least half an hour into the sailing, so they stood against the railings on the upper deck to try and catch what sun there was, Doyle closing his eyes and letting his face tilt up to it. Bodie wasn’t expecting trouble, but he stood guard anyway, drawn back again and again to the dark bags and shadows that bruised Doyle’s face, to the strange bump that was one cheekbone - must have been a seriously botched surgery, that, what was the story there? - to the way it all crashed together to make him…
To make him what?
Strangely beautiful… He stamped on the whisper. Doyle was a helmet, he might yet prove useful in a scrap, and he was Bodie’s… partner… on this one job, but that was all.
He stared determinedly out across the water, past the last skeletal glimpses of the Old Barrier, almost all gone now, to the drones and flyers constantly buzzing around Wharf Towers. Like flies around a corpse, he thought cynically, not impressed with the money that had been lavished on shoring up the submerged infrastructure. If it’d been on dry land that’d be one thing, but all the way out here? Millionaire’s ghetto, he thought, and he knew he was half jealous.
“Bodie, dear chap, good to see you again.”
Doyle’s eyes snapped open, and his whole body sang tension at the sound of Martell’s voice and his tight black leather look, and while Bodie didn’t entirely blame him, he shot him a quick glare – shut up – before letting Marty shake his hand.
“I like your new offices.”
“Oh well, you know me Bodie – I’ve always felt… restricted in four walls. And walls have ears.”
“And out here they’d need to be big ears,” Doyle cut in, and when Bodie glanced at him, he was looking Martell up and down in… disbelief? Bodie smirked. The leather got some people that way.
Marty eyed him back. “Right.”
“Ray Doyle, my partner,” Bodie said hurriedly, “Marty Martell.”
“Hmmn.” Martell sniffed and turned away, probably miffed at the implication. Hands off – he’s mine. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” He gestured across the water. “Amazing to think that the Vikings used to sail up here a thousand years ago. Raid our cities…”
“Rob all the women, rape all the men.”
Martell looked back at Doyle, and Bodie closed his own eyes briefly, not sure whether to laugh or cry. Shut up!
“If you like that sort of thing…”
“Marty’s one of the world’s leading experts, Ray.” He tried distraction again - and a bit of flattery couldn’t hurt.
“On what?”
“I specialise in handguns and rifles.”
“What, sporting?”
Again that look from Marty - what was Doyle playing at?
“Depends what you mean by sport.”
“So… hunting rifles?”
“If that’s what you want, yes.”
Doyle had straightened himself when Martell appeared, now he relaxed back against the railing once more, arms stretched wide on either side of him, one foot lifted to rest on a rung, hips thrust forward. “And if I want something else?”
Predictably, Marty looked him slowly up and down, a small smile on his face. “Then I think we’d better go into my other office…”
He led them downstairs to the lower deck, then lower still along a narrow corridor. Bodie had made sure he walked between Martell and Doyle, and he watched the conscious sway of Martell’s leathered backside with no more than a roll of his eyes. Bloody Marty… bloody Doyle!
Martell stopped at a door, scanned it open and then ushered them inside. It was small, dimly lit and shadowed, but when Bodie flicked on his phone to check for bugs, it was clean. There was a small bar at one end, and Martell sashayed towards it, picked up a bottle of something that gleamed darkly golden in the half-light, poured them each a glass.
“Remember that consignment of one-eighties you wanted for the Gulf that time, Bodie? Remember the job we had getting them out of there - and getting the money out of the ruler? I hope this isn’t that sort of deal, Bodie.”
“Nope. No deal, not this time. I want your help, Marty.”
Martell eyed Doyle again. “For free, of course.”
“Naturally.” Back off. “Think of it as good will.”
“Oh I will, I will…” He passed around the glasses - whisky, and good stuff. “Well what do you want?”
“What do you know about Newbolt?”
“The minister? He’s a real meanie, you know that.”
“We know,” Doyle said, “We’ve tried him.”
Martell’s eyebrows rose. “You have?”
“We’re looking for one of his dogs,” Bodie said, “Renton. Heard anything?”
Marty looked thoughtful. “Not a whisper - you sure he’s in the same market?”
Bodie shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not - but if he is then he’s crossing Newbolt’s business and yours. And we want him.”
“I bet you do - sounds like he could be bad news.”
Doyle snorted. “Right!”
“Bad for business - not good for our reputation.” Marty seemed to be talking himself around, but he didn’t go any further, didn’t say anything more.
“Doesn’t do ours much good either,” Bodie tried, but Martell did not more than sip again at his drink, run his eyes up and down Doyle again.
“Alright,” he said at last. “Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do.”
And that, Bodie knew, was that. They shook hands again, and he watched with distaste as Martell shook Doyle’s hand too - more slowly, lingering.
He pushed Doyle ahead of him and out the door, back to the upper decks just in time to feel the slight thud as they docked at Old Greenwich, and they joined the queue to disembark. Bugger the expense, they’d get a flyer back to Town - he wanted to get Doyle out of Marty’s range while the going was good.
Doyle, however, turned surprisingly good-natured eyes on him as they stood on the shore, letting the tourists mill around them. “You known him long, then?”
“Long enough,” Bodie said. “And despite what he says, he owes me.”
“Right.” He sniffed, grinned broadly, and turned to survey the Observatory itself. “You hungry?”
“What, here? On expenses?”
Doyle tipped his head to one side. “Why not? Let’s give it a whirl - nice discreet table…”
“Cowley’d kill you!”
“Nah…”
It was tempting - but it was also getting on, and they still had to get back to Town. “Nah -you know what I see for you? Half a pound of charred minced beef, sesame bun, sliced onion, assorted relishes…”
“Eat on the premises, or take away?”
“Oh, on the premises - nothing but the best…”
They wandered towards the flyer stand, chatting amiably about this and that, and Bodie surprised himself by realising that, despite Marty, despite Sarah and Newbolt and Cowley himself, he felt more relaxed than he had in a long time. Doyle was easy to talk to when he was like this.
“So how’d you meet Martell?”
Bodie took a deep breath.
o0o
Twenty four hours passed before anything changed - except that Doyle managed to catch up on both some sleep and some time for the bruises to heal, when Newbolt was publically and very visibly involved in a tour of the Southern Africas. His phone rang as he sat at the hotel bar, waiting for Bodie - but it wasn’t Martell calling with information, but George Cowley himself.
"Have you come across a man called Johnson, Saul Johnson?" Cowley asked him, sounding terse even over the phone.
Doyle waved away a tall blond approaching with a certain look in his eyes, turned his wrist so that it was obvious he was speaking into his mobile - making a tryst, perhaps even on a sex call. "Name's not familiar."
"He may be using an alias. This is the last known footage of him."
Doyle stared at the film as it played across the small screen, too small to see clearly, so he turned casually in his seat, letting his jacket fall open, and projected the image onto the dark lining. Still not ideal, but... "He looks familiar, but I can't say for certain right now."
"Well keep your eye out for him, we've established a link with the Minister and potentially with Krivas."
"Krivas again? I thought he was out of it… What's his link with the Minister?"
"A dead girl," Cowley said dryly, "One Samantha Bevins, Johnson's girlfriend, found murdered in a hotel room last night. We do know that on several occasions, apparently when Johnson was out of the country, she also spent the night with the Minister."
"So's half the City," Doyle muttered, "That doesn't prove much."
"No, but it's our best connection so far - there is also a rumour that Johnson not only knows Krivas, but has worked with him in the past."
"Does Johnson know about the murder?"
"The police are trying to find him to inform him now. He's apparently somewhere on holiday in the Alps, though why he didn't take her with him is a mystery."
"Right... Have you heard from Bodie?"
"He reported in on schedule. Why?"
Doyle frowned. "He's late."
"Aye well, I expect you'll have to be patient there. Do you have anything else for me?"
"Only the latest list of faces I sent you."
"Good, we'll go through them and hope that we can make further connections, particularly with our friend Johnson. Out."
"Out..." Doyle was left saying to empty airwaves. He slid the phone back into his wrist, let himself relax against the velveted armchair. There was no time management in undercover work, he reminded himself, and Bodie was as much undercover as he was, for all it was with his old cronies. With Sarah an invidious voice suggested, so that he had to consciously push it to one side. Focus. After all, bearing in mind that Bodie'd effectively joined the "other side" when he signed on with the army, he…
Around him L'hôtel d'Angleterre was a sea of calm bustle: international suits striding purposefully across the foyer, intent on breakfast or business or both; tourists wafting their way from breakfast room to lift to reception - staffed by an actual human; the occasional discreet courier arriving with files that presumably couldn't be entrusted to the airwaves. Doyle felt himself eyed speculatively by the portermechs and various hotel directors as they went about their duties - this wasn't, after all, the sort of place where love mechas were welcome to lounge around making pick-ups, or even where they could check in independently of a human.
"Why the hell did you choose this place?"
Doyle turned his head as nonchalantly as he could to find Bodie standing just behind him - where the hell had he come from?
"Thought it'd make a change. Besides, I've got this evening off again, he’s back on an all-nighter in the House, and I can't follow him there. Fancied a bit of luxury."
"Too bad you won't be able to take advantage of it," Bodie said, sounding pleased enough that Doyle frowned.
"Oh yeah?" he managed, neutrally. Either Bodie had a lead or he was being a supercilious bastard again, but either way it would have to wait until they were somewhere more private.
"Upstairs. Come on, I'll sign us in then, shall I?"
Upstairs proved to be as lush as downstairs, done out in reds and golds and marbles. The simwindow was a distant misty view of some old palace or other, suitably unobtrusive but exotic, recalling other times, drowned worlds.
Doyle secured the door behind them, scrambling the circuits so that no override could obtain entry, and turned to find Bodie leaning against the bedpost of an enormous, canopied bed watching him, waiting for his attention. "Well?" he asked, crossing the room to the other side of the bed, feeling strangely self-conscious as he started to strip, dropping his clothes onto a chair.
Bodie's gaze followed him. "There's someone I need you to see, might be a connection to the case. He's got a scrambler on him so I can't get footage."
"Who?"
"Dunno his name, but he's tight with Krivas right now, and I’m sure I overheard them talking about a job they’ve got on. He paused, face grim. “Not the job in Russia. He's slippery too, hard to pin down, but he's got a meeting set for nine tonight, and we can be there. Could be Renton.”
"Lucky I wasn't working."
Bodie frowned. "You'd have got out of it for this. Sprung an oil leak." He looked at Doyle, who'd paused with his suit half undone, gaze just a little too low for comfort. "You enjoying that Skin, or what?"
"What," Doyle answered emphatically, letting his trousers slip to the floor, striding defiantly to stand in front of Bodie. "You think this is kicks, you try wearing it."
"Nah." Was it his imagination, or was Bodie's voice softer somehow, a note of understanding, maybe? "Ruin these good looks in something like that?"
Maybe not.
Fingers slid down his back, cool air insinuating its way onto his body as the Skin peeled away, and there was that tingling as Bodie's flesh met his, electricity upon electricity upon electricity.
"Better you than me, old son." And that at least had the ring of honesty about it.
"You're not keen on mechas, are you?" Doyle asked, reaching for one of the neatly folded red dressing gowns on the end of the bed, pulling it around himself. It was warm... concealing. Beneath it his own skin was alive to the fabric, to every movement and brush of cloth. Remnants of the Skin, he told himself, that's all it was.
"Not much. Seen too many of them go rogue."
"Yeah, tell me about it." He stretched. He'd take a shower, get away from the world for five minutes. From Bodie.
"Dunno why people bother with 'em, myself."
"Convenience," Doyle said vaguely, escaping across the room. He turned though, at the door, the devil in him wanting to take Bodie down a peg or two again, wanting to unsettle him. He preferred Bodie unsettled, as he had been when they’d met Martell. He pulled the dressing gown open, let it slip from his shoulders, and hooked it over his finger, lifting it behind him. "Just convenience," he said. He let Bodie see him, all of him, with a half smile and a hard on, and then he turned and vanished into the bathroom.
Bodie had a lead though - and Cowley had a lead, and if he could only make the connection between them then maybe they'd get this thing wrapped up, and he could leave the Skin behind him for good. He refused to think that CI5 might decide he was experienced in its use, that he'd have to choose between staying with the Squad and being free of it once and for all. And Bodie.
Doyle flicked the taps on, turned the temperature as high as he could bear, and stood under the downpour for a moment, feeling the water batter his shoulders, his back. He turned around, so that it fell on his chest, slid down over his stomach. It rained over his cock too, a shower of touches not quite hard enough, not human enough, but so much better than Newbolt’s punishing grip, so that he leaned back, closed his eyes, wrapped a hand around himself, imagined another hand, another body there with him. Bodie...
"No reason to use mechas unless it's something a human can't do."
Christ! Bodie'd followed him in! Doyle's eyes snapped open, and he scanned the taps to cold. The shower door was tastefully frosted, but he could see Bodie moving about, from sink to toilet to basin and mirror.
He hadn't seen, he couldn't have seen. He was rabbiting on about using mechas at pressure, and about making them look human, and...
Doyle shivered, squeezed shampoo into his hand, and took a breath.
"Yeah, but mechas are..."
o0o
The Fair Moon hung huge above Aldenham Park, a monstrosity of a thing, bulging with light and electricity. Somewhere in the stadium the crowd roared in excitement, and Bodie could hear engines revving over heavy rock music. The world at its best and worst, he thought, people together, relaxed but full of energy, entertained and slightly feral with it, lending the night an edge, something alive.
He looked over at Doyle, wanting to share the buzz of it, of being a part of that strange mass of humanity that they both, ultimately, were working to protect.
Doyle was scowling.
"What's wrong?"
"Flesh Fairs give me the creeps."
"Eh? This place?" Bodie looked surprised, "Why? Good old-fashioned entertainment, this!" He emphasised his point by turning to leer appreciatively at one of the scantily clad hostesses.
"Watching people get torn apart for kicks?"
"They're mechas, not people! Hunks of electricity and wiring and plastic - not a drop of blood between them!" Did Doyle really believe that mechas were the same as living human beings? He hadn't argued that strongly this morning. Best not to think about this morning, about the way Doyle had looked in the bathroom, half-hidden by the steam and the shower door... "You're not a sympathiser are you? Want to free the poor mechas from their lives of drudgery, do you?" he asked tauntingly.
"It's not as simple as that!"
"No it's not - you need a mecha for your housework, or to drive you around, or," Bodie looked Doyle let his eyes wander over Doyle's body knowingly, "for sex - and they're there. And they want to be there, because..."
"Because?"
Bodie took a deep breath, looked away. Bloody Doyle. Surely he knew? "Because they know that we'll die and they won't. One day they’ll be all that's left." And they weren't real. For all he did, for all he was, for all he tried to be... He would die. Doyle would die. And they'd still be there, following orders, following their programmes - soulless, conscienceless.
"Yeah well, I'm feeling just a little bit vulnerable tonight..."
Bodie looked at him - a less vulnerable looking man it was impossible to imagine, Doyle was all hard muscle and solid planes underneath the Skin, and... "Fuck."
"It'd bring a whole new meaning to the Rite of Blood and Electricity, wouldn't it?" Doyle said with a quirk to his lips, before looking away, looking around. "Just keep an eye out for anyone with a Scanner, eh?"
Fuck, he hadn't thought of that. Doyle was wearing the Skin, and he'd brought him to a Flesh Fair. There was no time to find somewhere safe for Doyle to take it off - nowhere around that would be safe. "No one has Scanners at these things unless they're part of the show," he said, not sure which of them he wanted to convince. They'd come too far, were too close for it to fall apart now.
"It'll be fine," Doyle dismissed him with a wave, "Just... keep an eye out."
Bodie caught his eye, nodded. There was nothing else he could say.
"Where's your man?"
"They're meeting behind the cages - the place will be chaos, he likes to meet in crowds, it should be fairly simple to get close enough for you to ID him."
"If I recognise him."
"You will." Bodie was sure of it. There'd been something in the way Sarah'd spoken about him, described his connection with Krivas. This bloke wasn't simply a messenger, he was something far more integral to Krivas' plans.
They wandered the fair for a while, trying to look like they were enjoying themselves, though the shine had worn off for Bodie. It was dark, the field was hazed with a mixture of actual fog and smoke machines, lights strobing multi-coloured across them. It would be impossible for anyone to recognise Doyle as a mecha, but all the same he wanted to be done, and he wanted to be away from the risk.
He'd fucked up because he'd been looking forward to seeing Doyle again, to matching wits, to fighting back. To watching him move. He'd fucked up.
At five to nine they wandered casually towards the backstage area, a mess of tents and caravans and storage huts which backed nearly onto the cages, so that the area between the two was virtually a thoroughfare of workers taking shortcuts across the field, and the more curious of the audience, hoping for a final bloodthirsty glimpse of the mechas they were about to see destroyed. Here and there people stopped to talk, to shout, to fight over whether they preferred the Acid Drop or the Four Way Pull.
And there in the middle of it all was Younger, talking to a shorter man with his back to them.
"That's them," he nudged Doyle, pulling up his hood and settling the collar of his coat more firmly around his neck against the chance that Younger would spot him. He took out his mobile, pretended to take a few backstage pictures, looked casually at the previews. The man with Younger was nothing more than scrambled pixels. "That's him," he confirmed, turning around so that Doyle had a clear view.
"Saul Johnson."
"Who?"
"That's Saul Johnson - he's supposed to be out of the country. Cowley's very interested in him. Who's the other bloke?"
"Kid Younger, messenger boy for Krivas."
"Is he now?" Doyle turned back to him and caught his eye for a moment, his face hard. "Then Cowley was right, we've practically got them - Krivas, Younger, Johnson, Newbolt."
"Practically..." Bodie reminded him. This was it, this was the break they'd been waiting for. When he saw Sarah again he'd... well, he'd buy her a drink, anyway.
"I've got the Skin set to record," Doyle said, "There's a chance Cowley's Boffins will be able to descramble Johnson, maybe even filter out the audio."
"In this racket?" Bodie ducked his head as Younger and Johnson separated, Johnson passing close by them as he strode across the field.
"Worth following them?" Doyle wondered, staring after Johnson, his camera presumably tick-ticking away.
"Nah, I can find Younger again, and they've got Johnson tagged down at The Barristers . Let's go home, shall we?"
"Yeah," Doyle nodded, tapped him on the back to get him moving. "I suppose we'd better give L'hotel a miss - stick to the regs."
"Two nights is two nights," Bodie said, "Even if one was barely half a night."
"And that in the day..."
Bodie grinned, feeling lighter again, just as he had at Greenwich. "We could always..." He was drowned out as two of the fair's Hounds approached, bikes glaring and roaring in the night, the riders helmetless now that they weren't out tracking mechas or performing in the arena, although their machines were still tricked out in ferocious guise. Headlights gleamed through grilles, vicious teeth on devil dogs, designed to terrify and to thrill in equal measure. Good bikes though, decent engines underneath all that show. He watched as they circled a couple of giggling girls, revving suggestively.
He turned to roll his eyes at Doyle and froze. One of the Hounds had left his scanner on, and as he circled around it shone brightly through Doyle's leather jacket, through his shirt - but not through the Skin. It had settled on the Skin, a blue-white light that highlighted wires and circuits and chips.
Mecha.
Bodie watched as Doyle looked down in slow motion, as his eyes widened, as he turned his head to look up at the Hounds. The Hounds exchanged their own glances, turning their bikes...
Run. Run! Doyle had already snapped into movement, heading back towards the arena where they could maybe slip away amongst the tents and buildings and crowds, and Bodie followed him, dodging people as best he could, pushing past them when he couldn't. It was almost too late though, he could hear the cry being raised behind them.
"Mecha!"
o0o
The crowd parted briefly in front of them, surprised into moving, but eventually some bright spark would decide to try his luck at winning the approval of the Hounds and a free ticket to the next show by tripping them, or trying to grab them. Doyle ducked under a cordon surrounding the show controls, where at least the bikes couldn't follow, and through a narrow gap between scaffolding and the side of a storage shed, feeling as much as hearing Bodie follow. It was quieter there, the sound of the roaring crowds muffled, so he slowed a moment, but they couldn't stay long.
They edged along the heavy canvas wall of the shed to the gap where it sat alongside something similar. He couldn't hear the Hounds any more, but that didn't mean they weren't there - if they could get to the other side of the Fair, if they could get to the exit… An arm grabbed at him suddenly, and he reared back in surprise, so that Bodie walked into him, but it wasn’t a Hound or even ordinary Security - it was an arm stripped of flesh, a length of rods and wires and circuits that ended in skin-covered fingers, that reached up to a skin-covered face traced with tears.
“Help me, human,” the mecha begged, “Don’t let them…”
Bodie pushed him ruthlessly past, and he kept walking, because it didn’t matter how much he hated the Flesh Fairs, how convinced he was that pain-circuits were ultimately just nerve endings and therefore… well, there his thoughts were fuzzier, but… He caught a glimpse of a boy mecha as they went, looking around as if for the mother he had never had, felt again the heel of Bodie’s hand as he was urged on. No matter how wrong it was, it would be more wrong if he was the one who ended up sandwiched in the Auto Crash, if he didn’t have his own days left to cajole and argue and fight…
Enough he told himself, slowing to a stop as they reached the edge of the cage. They’d ended up closer to the arena rather than farther away, so that he could almost feel the heavy music thumping through the air, the excited roar of the crowd. There was a burst of flame as a hoop was set light, and a couple of the ring’s musclemen turned towards the caged mechas. He pushed Bodie further back into the shadows, and they waited as an old-fashioned, gangling stretch-droid was selected, taken, and manhandled out towards the cannon. If they could skirt the edge of the arena, maybe find somewhere quiet for him to de-Skin…
Flames blazed again as the luckless mecha was sent hurtling from the cannon and through the ring of fire, exploding so that they were showered with its gory shrapnel, a finger hitting the canvas just above their head, falling to lie on the ground in front of them. The crowd roared again, and there was movement beside them as dozens of mechas stepped back in horror.
“Go!” Bodie urged, and he took the opportunity, before another mecha was claimed from the cage beside them, to slip between the next pair of sheds, emerging this time under the audience stands. They could run fairly freely here, crouched low and dodging the occasional semi-clothed and passionate couple, until they emerged on the other side into one of the tunnels lined with food stalls, hawkers crying their wares all around. They slowed, sauntering along for all the world as if they were there for the fun of it all.
A Hound appeared, trolling slowly through the crowd, head turning from side to side, scanner switched on and beaming brightly below its headlight. Doyle ducked casually into the Cornish pasty queue where it snaked along the side of the stall, and Bodie stood in front of him, leaning close as if to whisper secrets, to share a joke. The Hound passed by, but Doyle’s heart was beating heavily and too fast.
“Gotta get out of this,” he hissed into Bodie’s ear, trusting that Bodie would know he meant the Skin rather than just their situation.
Bodie stilled against him for a moment, then straightened suddenly, took a deep breath. “Alright,” he said, “I’ve got an idea.”
“Great, what is it?”
But Bodie shook his head, slanting his gaze sideways to watch the Hound vanish into the distance. “Just follow me.”
“Where we going…?” Doyle asked, but it was too late, Bodie’d turned and grabbed his arm, was pulling him out of the queue and through the crowds towards the entrance to the Fair, its artificial moon glowing distantly with the promise of escape.
Their luck ran out nearly halfway there. Amongst the crowd, the hoards of people laughing and shouting, making their way to the arena or to the sideshows, dancing or wandering or simply standing still, another solitary Hound surprised them - on foot this time, his bike beside him on a stand, the front tyre half-on half-off as it was replaced by one of the Fair’s grease-marked jack-of-all-trades. But the scanner was switched on, and as Doyle dodged around a group of children playing with the scavenged remains of mecha, the wheel swung around, angling across him just as the Hound lifted his head.
They gained bare seconds as the man paused, as his eyes widened in surprise and he moved to turn on the communications link in his helmet and shout instructions, but that was all, he was off after them then, and they were barrelling through the crowds once again, twisting this way and that. Bodie was in front, and for all Doyle was inclined to leave him, to split up and make it easier for them to hide, there seemed to be more than just aimless escape to Bodie’s stride, Doyle would swear there was a purpose, a plan - just follow me.
Their head start meant they weren’t actually in the Hound’s eye - he was following the disturbance in the crowd, and Doyle could hear it swelling and closing and opening again behind them. Ahead of him Bodie ducked to one side, behind and along a string of public toilets, and then, all of a sudden, waited to grab his arm again and pulled him past a patiently waiting queue, and into the flimsy building he’d chosen.
They’d be cornered, they be trapped…
“Get ‘em off, sunshine,” Bodie snarled, shoving him towards a cubicle that had opened to reveal two half-grinning young men emerge, their smug eyes and half-done shirts leaving no one in any doubt about what they’d been up to.
“Oi, wait yer turn,” someone complained half-heartedly, but mostly what Doyle saw behind him, as Bodie whipped him past the first bloke in line, were knowing looks, a lewd grin or two, and then nothing but Bodie, crowding close so that he could close the door behind them.
“Are you…?” he began, but then Bodie was kissing him, and tugging at his clothes, so that his jacket was off his shoulders and halfway down his arms, the buttons on his shirt all but torn off.
“Get ‘em off,” Bodie repeated, separating them long enough to speak, and to move his hands to Doyle’s trousers, to stare hard into his shocked face. “Get it… where’s that skin, sunshine…?”
Skin… On the other side of the door the men had started up a rollicking chant - “Off - off - off - off” - and, between heartbeats, Doyle realised what Bodie was doing. Wriggling free of Bodie’s hands, he heeled off his trainers so that his trousers could be pushed off, let his shirt and jacket finally fall to the floor, and turned around, his hands thudding against the door in his urgency so that their audience clapped and barracked them again. “Give it to ‘im…”
Then Bodie’s fingers were sliding down his back, and alongside the extra tingle of electricity he could feel cooler air suddenly, the freedom of being himself again…
The good-natured shouting outside broke off suddenly, turned indignant, and away from what they were doing, from their cubicle. Knowing what it was, knowing what it must be, Doyle tore the Skin from his face almost before it had loosened, stripping it down his arms and then legs, bending awkwardly in the confined space to finally - at last, at last - pull it from his feet.
“Fucking Hound…” Doyle heard, and then someone was pounding at the door of the first cubicle, amidst more shouts and complaints. He managed to shove his feet back into his trousers, and then into trainers, but his shirt and jacket were somewhere behind Bodie, and he’d dropped the bloody Skin, he’d never manage it all in time…
The door vibrated at his back, and he looked up and caught Bodie’s eye and a glint of the devil, perhaps, because then he was being pulled forward again, and Bodie’s mouth was on his, his waist was being gripped tightly, and… fuck, Bodie’d taken hold of his cock as well, and despite the chase, despite the Hound - maybe, he knew, partly because of them - he was half hard still from the Skin…
It wasn’t Bodie’s fingers he could feel, he realised, lost somehow against Bodie’s lips, the surprise heat of it all, the shock of feeling Bodie as they leaned together jeans undone and hard against his hip, pushing against him, it was the Skin itself, wrapped around his cock as if it was some kinky electronic sex toy. The wires and chips, he knew, would be plainly visible now that he wasn’t wearing it, and…
The door slammed open at last, kicked down, and there was the Hound.
“Can’t a bloke get some privacy around here?” Bodie growled, pulling away from him, and Doyle found himself blushing. He could see past the Hound to the interested faces outside, eyes appraising or appreciative or amused, and there he stood, naked but for his trousers around his ankles, and Bodie’s solid hand wrapped around the plaything on his cock.
The Hound glared at them, then moved on to the last cubicle, empty now. Doyle reached out an arm and slammed the door shut again, sagged for a moment against the cold, smooth wall behind him, and closed his eyes.
He felt, rather than heard, Bodie straightening his own clothes, the rasp of his zip as it was pulled closed again, the clank of a belt buckle, and he made himself move too. He dragged his jeans up, managed to snag his shirt from the floor and his jacket underneath it, and got them on, then looked around for the Skin. It hung, half-tucked, from Bodie’s trouser pocket, and he reclaimed it, tucked it safely away and then took a deep breath, looked up and met Bodie’s eyes.
They gazed at each other for a moment, then Bodie nodded slightly - it’s all clear - and Doyle reached back to open the door again. They emerged into the camaraderie of the queue, endured again the good-natured complaints and taunts, and then they were outside, and they were free to leave.
o0o
They walked back towards the city in a kind of daze, neither of them speaking, and not stopping until they were far from the Flesh Fair and its roaring crowds and gaiety, and then they checked into the first hotel they came across that was still open - De Brown’s, old and famous and discreet enough not to ask questions when they had no luggage, not to question the state of Doyle’s clothes as long as Bodie’s mobile came up with a decent credit check as well as enough to pay for two nights in one of their best rooms.
Their daze took them up thickly carpeted stairs, past soothing pictures and through gentle music, to a room where they could finally close the door on everything but themselves.
Bodie turned, looked up at Doyle as he stood wide-eyed in the middle of the room, and something… something began a long unwinding inside him.
Doyle stepped forward and into his arms as if they’d planned it, as if they’d come here for that very reason, and Bodie let himself be borne backwards, across the soft carpet to the softness of the bed, and down, down…
This time, as they undressed, they did it slowly and carefully and consciously, and there was the time and inclination for lingering kisses in between each piece of pointless cloth and useless strap and buckle. There was time to run his fingers along Doyle’s spine for the pure, clean pleasure of it, to pull him, compliant and half-smiling, into the shower and to stand under heavy jets of water, in the steam of the bathroom, where the night washed even further away from them and slid down drains and pipes to mingle with the rain and the river and the sea.
Bodie soaped his hands with every intention of slicking them across and along and around Doyle’s body, was surprised to find himself being turned and kissed and soaped and caressed, gave in to it anyway.
He thought, as they moved together on the finely threaded cotton of the bed, that he had never felt anything quite like this, that it was the one thing he’d been waiting for, that life, now, must always be like this…
…and then Doyle gasped into his mouth, and Bodie felt him tighten and pulse and he kissed him harder, because there was nothing but Doyle, and Doyle’s movements against him, slower now and sated, but firm and slick, and…
And then there was nothing, for either of them, but the feel of each other’s skin and the slowing of each other’s heartbeat, and the sighing breath into sleep.
o0o
Bodie woke slowly, to soft pillows, soft sheets, a warm body beside him, and a feeling of having come home. He lay quietly, disconcerted, surely still dreaming. A good dream… He opened his eyes far enough to see that the simwindows were playing a gentle sunrise - they’d forgotten to re-set them last night - let them close again, reluctant to lose this feeling of well being. Reality would kick in soon enough, after all, whatever he’d forgotten would surface soon enough. The room smelled of fresh grass and something blossom-y. Pretentious, he tried to think, but he breathed it in all the same, feeling a smile on his lips, another remnant of his dreams…
No - reality - of what had happened last night.
Memory crept gently around him, that it was Doyle’s arm resting on his, Doyle’s hand curled on his shoulder, Doyle’s leg between his... Doyle’s cock, hard against his thigh.
The smile wouldn’t leave his face, the warmth, the… contentment he was feeling.
Doyle… Doyle had run like the wind last night, was as fast as Bodie himself, and he’d been quick to catch on in the bogs too - like he had been with Marty. Brains as well as brawn after all, and not a whiff of your ordinary copper about him, the ones Bodie had known all his life. There’d been chances for him to do it - when he’d gone to visit that sexbot, for instance - but not a bribe, no blackmail, not on the take… He’d paid for Just Jane, had talked about sticking her on his expense claim next month. No, not like an ordinary helmet at all, was Doyle, no wonder Cowley wanted him for CI5, no wonder...
And there, there it was, the other side of dreams and warmth and reality, a side he’d felt before, that had turned on him before, that he’d sworn he’d never let in again. When it took him, it took him hard and suddenly, and he never knew until it was too late and he’d fallen.
He’d fallen in love with Ray Doyle.
“Can ‘ear the data chips buzzing from here,” Doyle said suddenly, voice deep and low, and Bodie opened his eyes properly to see Doyle’s face inches from his, awake and alert and with the same hint of a smile that Bodie had felt, could still feel…
Dangerous, this. He’d better nip it in the bud, stop it before it got any worse, call it a temporary aberration and…
Doyle opened his mouth to say something else, but his eyes were wicked, and he licked his lips first, and Bodie was lost all over again.
“It’s a short circuit,” he murmured back, leaning across those inches so that his lips spoke the last word against Doyle’s lips, a tickling temptation before he kissed him again, as they had over and over the night before, more than he’d ever wanted to kiss anyone before. And this time he took control himself, turned Doyle onto his back and moved down the bed to kneel, to lift Doyle’s legs and bend down to suck his cock hard, determinedly, until Doyle cried out, and came, and Bodie swallowed, tasting him… Then he spat in his hand, not able to wait another minute, and finally let his own cock slide into Doyle’s arse… so tight, god so smooth and tight and… Doyle’s eyes were still closed, his breathing still fast, he gasped when Bodie began to fuck him, head tipping back on the pillow, so that Bodie had to move faster, harder, had to…
He came with a gasp of his own, with Doyle’s name on his lips, wanting nothing else ever but the feel of the man under him and around him and… sleep.
o0o
When next Bodie woke, there was nothing but empty space beside him, the ghost of a warmth, and the sound of running water in the bathroom. He took a deep breath, rubbed a hand over his face, and glanced at the clock beside the bed. Afternoon, and the world was fuzzy around the edges.
What the hell was he going to do? What could he do, but ride it out?
The bathroom door opened, and Doyle emerged, a towel around his waist and another draped over his curls, drying his hair as he walked across the room so that his face was half hidden, just glimpses of it as the towel whipped this way and that, nose, chin, mouth... And then the towel was gone, and Doyle was sitting on the bed beside him, and Bodie realised he’d been staring.
There was a smile on Doyle’s face, small, barely there, but twisting at his lips, and Bodie got ready for defence, martialled his best rejections and rebuttals. Not bad for a one night stand…
“Looks like it’s finally coming together,” Doyle said, the last thing Bodie’d expected. Did that mean Doyle had been planning…
Very aware that he was still sprawled naked and smelling of sex across the creased white sheets, that if only he could see them his body would be marked all over with Doyle’s fingerprints, he lifted a questioning eyebrow, and twisted his own smile back, moving to lie with his hands behind his head. “Oh yeah?”
Doyle smiled properly then. “Yeah, that too. Wasn’t expecting…” he faltered briefly, then tipped his head towards the bed, “…all this. But I meant the case.”
The case.
Maybe Doyle saw the moment his heart froze for a beat, saw it in his eyes, because he leaned forward suddenly, unexpected again, and kissed him. It felt like a kiss that should be fast, should be quick, but it dissolved between them, slowed and warmed, heat growing again, bloody again, he thought distantly. He wanted to fuck again, as if he was eighteen, as if they hadn’t spent the whole night…
Doyle moaned into his mouth, even as Bodie was reaching around and under the towel, beginning to pull them together again, and then Doyle was withdrawing, separating them, standing and catching the towel more firmly around him, though all that did was show how hard he was underneath it, what a bad idea it would be to stop.
“I’ve got to go,” he said, eyeing Bodie so that Bodie stayed right where he was, letting him take it all in, what he was missing. “I’ve got to meet Newbolt, I ‘aven’t got time to go back to bed…”
But he didn’t move, stood staring at Bodie. Bodie felt a surge of… something, and slid his legs to the edge of the bed, stood up and crowded Doyle backwards until he was leaning against the simwindow, outlined against a spring blue sky. Doyle wasn’t going anywhere.
“Then we’ll do it standing up,” he offered, tilting his hips to meet Doyle’s, to rub his cock against the hardness of Doyle’s under the towel, and taking his mouth in another kiss, determined and somehow angry. It melted away as he slid his hands along the back of Doyle’s thighs, displacing the towel again, letting Doyle’s arse fill his palms, his fingers holding tightly, squeezing and holding them together so that they could rub… and Doyle’s arms were around him again, and he was being kissed back, and he thrust almost gently, and again, a lazy frottage, and then Doyle was coming, and god, so was he…
The world was dim, and warm, and it smelled of shower gel and shampoo, and sex, and oddly enough it was starting to shake. Bodie opened his eyes. Doyle’s face was pressed into his shoulder, and he was laughing.
Bodie pulled back properly, lifted his eyebrow again in mute enquiry, which seemed to increase Doyle’s mirth, so that in the end Bodie gave in and grinned back, gave in to the infection of it all, that feeling of having had a good dream rushing back to him all over again.
“What?” he asked at last, “It’s not supposed to be funny, you know.”
“Nah, it’s not…” Doyle pushed Bodie backwards a little, tightened his arms around Bodie’s waist in a quick hug, and kissed him on his neck, then shoved him even further away and held out a hand as if to ward him off. “Feels like being a teenager again, an’ I remember how much trouble that got me into. I’m gonna be late.” He looked down at himself, naked once more, towel on the floor behind him. “An’ I need to wash again.” He grasped Bodie’s arm as he stepped past him, squeezing it gently, and then he vanished into the bathroom again.
Bodie stood there for a moment, then he took a deep breath and followed him, stopped in the doorway to watch Doyle’s shadow in the shower cubicle as it twisted quickly under the water, emerged again and reached for yet another towel, catching sight of Bodie as he did so.
“You stay right where you are,” he said, but there was a smile twisting at his lips again, and… and there was a look in his eye.
Or was he just imagining that, seeing what he wanted to see?
“Don’t go to Newbolt’s,” Bodie said abruptly, barely knowing he was going to say it, knowing that he shouldn’t, he couldn’t…
Doyle’s face hardened, though his words were soft enough. “I’ve got to mate - we’ve come this far.” He finished drying himself, stepped past Bodie back into the bedroom and started gathering his clothes together.
Bodie watched him.
“We need something more solid on ‘im, proof that he knows Krivas, or your blokes last night, or Renton…” Doyle picked up the Skin, stood looking at it, a harmless drapery of black and silver in his hand.
Bodie looked at it too, then back to Doyle, patched here and there in brown and yellow and dull purple, bruised. His fingerprints had been washed away, his come and his kisses and any sign that he’d touched him, but Newbolt was still all over him.
Back to work.
“What’ve you got on today, then?” Doyle was asking, and Bodie blinked, looked up and met his gaze.
“Bodie…”
Doyle was as reluctant as he was.
“Krivas wants me to fly him up north somewhere, special mission he called it.”
“Might be connected?”
Bodie shook his head, let reality flood back. “Doubt it. Probably the Russian gig, he’s booked a flyer for long distance.”
“Maybe you can get him talking, see if…”
“I know how to do my job, Doyle.”
“Yeah.” Doyle was still holding the Skin in his hand as if it was a barrier between them. He flicked it out, turned it around, and began putting it on. “I know.”
Bodie waited until he was almost encased in it, had just the facepiece to smooth on, and then he stepped forward, put an arm around him and pulled him into a hug. Doyle tensed, then relaxed against him, feeling strange in Bodie’s arms, in the Skin.
They had to meet again tonight. For work.
“Take a D and D on you, shall I?” he said, almost into Doyle’s ear, felt Doyle take a deep breath against him.
“Nah,” he said back, pulling away, so that Bodie wondered again if he’d got it all wrong. “Don’t need one. Got a regular date, don’t we?” He met Bodie’s eyes ruefully, tugged the facepiece into place. “Just let me know where and when.”
Bodie nodded at the too-shiny Doyle, grinned suddenly and reached out, ruffling still-damp curls, then he turned to go and take his own turn in the shower, letting the water rush over him and drown out the sound of the door outside opening, and closing.
o0o
To Part Four...
Marty Martell’s current office was aboard the Woolwich Ferry, and they caught the midday boat from Plumstead with bare minutes to spare. Doyle had been hard to wake, and bad-tempered with it, until he’d been reminded that they had a job to do. Christ but he hoped it wasn’t a mistake bringing him, hoped he’d keep his mouth shut and his eyes open.
There was no chance of Martell appearing until they were at least half an hour into the sailing, so they stood against the railings on the upper deck to try and catch what sun there was, Doyle closing his eyes and letting his face tilt up to it. Bodie wasn’t expecting trouble, but he stood guard anyway, drawn back again and again to the dark bags and shadows that bruised Doyle’s face, to the strange bump that was one cheekbone - must have been a seriously botched surgery, that, what was the story there? - to the way it all crashed together to make him…
To make him what?
Strangely beautiful… He stamped on the whisper. Doyle was a helmet, he might yet prove useful in a scrap, and he was Bodie’s… partner… on this one job, but that was all.
He stared determinedly out across the water, past the last skeletal glimpses of the Old Barrier, almost all gone now, to the drones and flyers constantly buzzing around Wharf Towers. Like flies around a corpse, he thought cynically, not impressed with the money that had been lavished on shoring up the submerged infrastructure. If it’d been on dry land that’d be one thing, but all the way out here? Millionaire’s ghetto, he thought, and he knew he was half jealous.
“Bodie, dear chap, good to see you again.”
Doyle’s eyes snapped open, and his whole body sang tension at the sound of Martell’s voice and his tight black leather look, and while Bodie didn’t entirely blame him, he shot him a quick glare – shut up – before letting Marty shake his hand.
“I like your new offices.”
“Oh well, you know me Bodie – I’ve always felt… restricted in four walls. And walls have ears.”
“And out here they’d need to be big ears,” Doyle cut in, and when Bodie glanced at him, he was looking Martell up and down in… disbelief? Bodie smirked. The leather got some people that way.
Marty eyed him back. “Right.”
“Ray Doyle, my partner,” Bodie said hurriedly, “Marty Martell.”
“Hmmn.” Martell sniffed and turned away, probably miffed at the implication. Hands off – he’s mine. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” He gestured across the water. “Amazing to think that the Vikings used to sail up here a thousand years ago. Raid our cities…”
“Rob all the women, rape all the men.”
Martell looked back at Doyle, and Bodie closed his own eyes briefly, not sure whether to laugh or cry. Shut up!
“If you like that sort of thing…”
“Marty’s one of the world’s leading experts, Ray.” He tried distraction again - and a bit of flattery couldn’t hurt.
“On what?”
“I specialise in handguns and rifles.”
“What, sporting?”
Again that look from Marty - what was Doyle playing at?
“Depends what you mean by sport.”
“So… hunting rifles?”
“If that’s what you want, yes.”
Doyle had straightened himself when Martell appeared, now he relaxed back against the railing once more, arms stretched wide on either side of him, one foot lifted to rest on a rung, hips thrust forward. “And if I want something else?”
Predictably, Marty looked him slowly up and down, a small smile on his face. “Then I think we’d better go into my other office…”
He led them downstairs to the lower deck, then lower still along a narrow corridor. Bodie had made sure he walked between Martell and Doyle, and he watched the conscious sway of Martell’s leathered backside with no more than a roll of his eyes. Bloody Marty… bloody Doyle!
Martell stopped at a door, scanned it open and then ushered them inside. It was small, dimly lit and shadowed, but when Bodie flicked on his phone to check for bugs, it was clean. There was a small bar at one end, and Martell sashayed towards it, picked up a bottle of something that gleamed darkly golden in the half-light, poured them each a glass.
“Remember that consignment of one-eighties you wanted for the Gulf that time, Bodie? Remember the job we had getting them out of there - and getting the money out of the ruler? I hope this isn’t that sort of deal, Bodie.”
“Nope. No deal, not this time. I want your help, Marty.”
Martell eyed Doyle again. “For free, of course.”
“Naturally.” Back off. “Think of it as good will.”
“Oh I will, I will…” He passed around the glasses - whisky, and good stuff. “Well what do you want?”
“What do you know about Newbolt?”
“The minister? He’s a real meanie, you know that.”
“We know,” Doyle said, “We’ve tried him.”
Martell’s eyebrows rose. “You have?”
“We’re looking for one of his dogs,” Bodie said, “Renton. Heard anything?”
Marty looked thoughtful. “Not a whisper - you sure he’s in the same market?”
Bodie shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not - but if he is then he’s crossing Newbolt’s business and yours. And we want him.”
“I bet you do - sounds like he could be bad news.”
Doyle snorted. “Right!”
“Bad for business - not good for our reputation.” Marty seemed to be talking himself around, but he didn’t go any further, didn’t say anything more.
“Doesn’t do ours much good either,” Bodie tried, but Martell did not more than sip again at his drink, run his eyes up and down Doyle again.
“Alright,” he said at last. “Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do.”
And that, Bodie knew, was that. They shook hands again, and he watched with distaste as Martell shook Doyle’s hand too - more slowly, lingering.
He pushed Doyle ahead of him and out the door, back to the upper decks just in time to feel the slight thud as they docked at Old Greenwich, and they joined the queue to disembark. Bugger the expense, they’d get a flyer back to Town - he wanted to get Doyle out of Marty’s range while the going was good.
Doyle, however, turned surprisingly good-natured eyes on him as they stood on the shore, letting the tourists mill around them. “You known him long, then?”
“Long enough,” Bodie said. “And despite what he says, he owes me.”
“Right.” He sniffed, grinned broadly, and turned to survey the Observatory itself. “You hungry?”
“What, here? On expenses?”
Doyle tipped his head to one side. “Why not? Let’s give it a whirl - nice discreet table…”
“Cowley’d kill you!”
“Nah…”
It was tempting - but it was also getting on, and they still had to get back to Town. “Nah -you know what I see for you? Half a pound of charred minced beef, sesame bun, sliced onion, assorted relishes…”
“Eat on the premises, or take away?”
“Oh, on the premises - nothing but the best…”
They wandered towards the flyer stand, chatting amiably about this and that, and Bodie surprised himself by realising that, despite Marty, despite Sarah and Newbolt and Cowley himself, he felt more relaxed than he had in a long time. Doyle was easy to talk to when he was like this.
“So how’d you meet Martell?”
Bodie took a deep breath.
Twenty four hours passed before anything changed - except that Doyle managed to catch up on both some sleep and some time for the bruises to heal, when Newbolt was publically and very visibly involved in a tour of the Southern Africas. His phone rang as he sat at the hotel bar, waiting for Bodie - but it wasn’t Martell calling with information, but George Cowley himself.
"Have you come across a man called Johnson, Saul Johnson?" Cowley asked him, sounding terse even over the phone.
Doyle waved away a tall blond approaching with a certain look in his eyes, turned his wrist so that it was obvious he was speaking into his mobile - making a tryst, perhaps even on a sex call. "Name's not familiar."
"He may be using an alias. This is the last known footage of him."
Doyle stared at the film as it played across the small screen, too small to see clearly, so he turned casually in his seat, letting his jacket fall open, and projected the image onto the dark lining. Still not ideal, but... "He looks familiar, but I can't say for certain right now."
"Well keep your eye out for him, we've established a link with the Minister and potentially with Krivas."
"Krivas again? I thought he was out of it… What's his link with the Minister?"
"A dead girl," Cowley said dryly, "One Samantha Bevins, Johnson's girlfriend, found murdered in a hotel room last night. We do know that on several occasions, apparently when Johnson was out of the country, she also spent the night with the Minister."
"So's half the City," Doyle muttered, "That doesn't prove much."
"No, but it's our best connection so far - there is also a rumour that Johnson not only knows Krivas, but has worked with him in the past."
"Does Johnson know about the murder?"
"The police are trying to find him to inform him now. He's apparently somewhere on holiday in the Alps, though why he didn't take her with him is a mystery."
"Right... Have you heard from Bodie?"
"He reported in on schedule. Why?"
Doyle frowned. "He's late."
"Aye well, I expect you'll have to be patient there. Do you have anything else for me?"
"Only the latest list of faces I sent you."
"Good, we'll go through them and hope that we can make further connections, particularly with our friend Johnson. Out."
"Out..." Doyle was left saying to empty airwaves. He slid the phone back into his wrist, let himself relax against the velveted armchair. There was no time management in undercover work, he reminded himself, and Bodie was as much undercover as he was, for all it was with his old cronies. With Sarah an invidious voice suggested, so that he had to consciously push it to one side. Focus. After all, bearing in mind that Bodie'd effectively joined the "other side" when he signed on with the army, he…
Around him L'hôtel d'Angleterre was a sea of calm bustle: international suits striding purposefully across the foyer, intent on breakfast or business or both; tourists wafting their way from breakfast room to lift to reception - staffed by an actual human; the occasional discreet courier arriving with files that presumably couldn't be entrusted to the airwaves. Doyle felt himself eyed speculatively by the portermechs and various hotel directors as they went about their duties - this wasn't, after all, the sort of place where love mechas were welcome to lounge around making pick-ups, or even where they could check in independently of a human.
"Why the hell did you choose this place?"
Doyle turned his head as nonchalantly as he could to find Bodie standing just behind him - where the hell had he come from?
"Thought it'd make a change. Besides, I've got this evening off again, he’s back on an all-nighter in the House, and I can't follow him there. Fancied a bit of luxury."
"Too bad you won't be able to take advantage of it," Bodie said, sounding pleased enough that Doyle frowned.
"Oh yeah?" he managed, neutrally. Either Bodie had a lead or he was being a supercilious bastard again, but either way it would have to wait until they were somewhere more private.
"Upstairs. Come on, I'll sign us in then, shall I?"
Upstairs proved to be as lush as downstairs, done out in reds and golds and marbles. The simwindow was a distant misty view of some old palace or other, suitably unobtrusive but exotic, recalling other times, drowned worlds.
Doyle secured the door behind them, scrambling the circuits so that no override could obtain entry, and turned to find Bodie leaning against the bedpost of an enormous, canopied bed watching him, waiting for his attention. "Well?" he asked, crossing the room to the other side of the bed, feeling strangely self-conscious as he started to strip, dropping his clothes onto a chair.
Bodie's gaze followed him. "There's someone I need you to see, might be a connection to the case. He's got a scrambler on him so I can't get footage."
"Who?"
"Dunno his name, but he's tight with Krivas right now, and I’m sure I overheard them talking about a job they’ve got on. He paused, face grim. “Not the job in Russia. He's slippery too, hard to pin down, but he's got a meeting set for nine tonight, and we can be there. Could be Renton.”
"Lucky I wasn't working."
Bodie frowned. "You'd have got out of it for this. Sprung an oil leak." He looked at Doyle, who'd paused with his suit half undone, gaze just a little too low for comfort. "You enjoying that Skin, or what?"
"What," Doyle answered emphatically, letting his trousers slip to the floor, striding defiantly to stand in front of Bodie. "You think this is kicks, you try wearing it."
"Nah." Was it his imagination, or was Bodie's voice softer somehow, a note of understanding, maybe? "Ruin these good looks in something like that?"
Maybe not.
Fingers slid down his back, cool air insinuating its way onto his body as the Skin peeled away, and there was that tingling as Bodie's flesh met his, electricity upon electricity upon electricity.
"Better you than me, old son." And that at least had the ring of honesty about it.
"You're not keen on mechas, are you?" Doyle asked, reaching for one of the neatly folded red dressing gowns on the end of the bed, pulling it around himself. It was warm... concealing. Beneath it his own skin was alive to the fabric, to every movement and brush of cloth. Remnants of the Skin, he told himself, that's all it was.
"Not much. Seen too many of them go rogue."
"Yeah, tell me about it." He stretched. He'd take a shower, get away from the world for five minutes. From Bodie.
"Dunno why people bother with 'em, myself."
"Convenience," Doyle said vaguely, escaping across the room. He turned though, at the door, the devil in him wanting to take Bodie down a peg or two again, wanting to unsettle him. He preferred Bodie unsettled, as he had been when they’d met Martell. He pulled the dressing gown open, let it slip from his shoulders, and hooked it over his finger, lifting it behind him. "Just convenience," he said. He let Bodie see him, all of him, with a half smile and a hard on, and then he turned and vanished into the bathroom.
Bodie had a lead though - and Cowley had a lead, and if he could only make the connection between them then maybe they'd get this thing wrapped up, and he could leave the Skin behind him for good. He refused to think that CI5 might decide he was experienced in its use, that he'd have to choose between staying with the Squad and being free of it once and for all. And Bodie.
Doyle flicked the taps on, turned the temperature as high as he could bear, and stood under the downpour for a moment, feeling the water batter his shoulders, his back. He turned around, so that it fell on his chest, slid down over his stomach. It rained over his cock too, a shower of touches not quite hard enough, not human enough, but so much better than Newbolt’s punishing grip, so that he leaned back, closed his eyes, wrapped a hand around himself, imagined another hand, another body there with him. Bodie...
"No reason to use mechas unless it's something a human can't do."
Christ! Bodie'd followed him in! Doyle's eyes snapped open, and he scanned the taps to cold. The shower door was tastefully frosted, but he could see Bodie moving about, from sink to toilet to basin and mirror.
He hadn't seen, he couldn't have seen. He was rabbiting on about using mechas at pressure, and about making them look human, and...
Doyle shivered, squeezed shampoo into his hand, and took a breath.
"Yeah, but mechas are..."
The Fair Moon hung huge above Aldenham Park, a monstrosity of a thing, bulging with light and electricity. Somewhere in the stadium the crowd roared in excitement, and Bodie could hear engines revving over heavy rock music. The world at its best and worst, he thought, people together, relaxed but full of energy, entertained and slightly feral with it, lending the night an edge, something alive.He looked over at Doyle, wanting to share the buzz of it, of being a part of that strange mass of humanity that they both, ultimately, were working to protect.
Doyle was scowling.
"What's wrong?"
"Flesh Fairs give me the creeps."
"Eh? This place?" Bodie looked surprised, "Why? Good old-fashioned entertainment, this!" He emphasised his point by turning to leer appreciatively at one of the scantily clad hostesses.
"Watching people get torn apart for kicks?"
"They're mechas, not people! Hunks of electricity and wiring and plastic - not a drop of blood between them!" Did Doyle really believe that mechas were the same as living human beings? He hadn't argued that strongly this morning. Best not to think about this morning, about the way Doyle had looked in the bathroom, half-hidden by the steam and the shower door... "You're not a sympathiser are you? Want to free the poor mechas from their lives of drudgery, do you?" he asked tauntingly.
"It's not as simple as that!"
"No it's not - you need a mecha for your housework, or to drive you around, or," Bodie looked Doyle let his eyes wander over Doyle's body knowingly, "for sex - and they're there. And they want to be there, because..."
"Because?"
Bodie took a deep breath, looked away. Bloody Doyle. Surely he knew? "Because they know that we'll die and they won't. One day they’ll be all that's left." And they weren't real. For all he did, for all he was, for all he tried to be... He would die. Doyle would die. And they'd still be there, following orders, following their programmes - soulless, conscienceless.
"Yeah well, I'm feeling just a little bit vulnerable tonight..."
Bodie looked at him - a less vulnerable looking man it was impossible to imagine, Doyle was all hard muscle and solid planes underneath the Skin, and... "Fuck."
"It'd bring a whole new meaning to the Rite of Blood and Electricity, wouldn't it?" Doyle said with a quirk to his lips, before looking away, looking around. "Just keep an eye out for anyone with a Scanner, eh?"
Fuck, he hadn't thought of that. Doyle was wearing the Skin, and he'd brought him to a Flesh Fair. There was no time to find somewhere safe for Doyle to take it off - nowhere around that would be safe. "No one has Scanners at these things unless they're part of the show," he said, not sure which of them he wanted to convince. They'd come too far, were too close for it to fall apart now.
"It'll be fine," Doyle dismissed him with a wave, "Just... keep an eye out."
Bodie caught his eye, nodded. There was nothing else he could say.
"Where's your man?"
"They're meeting behind the cages - the place will be chaos, he likes to meet in crowds, it should be fairly simple to get close enough for you to ID him."
"If I recognise him."
"You will." Bodie was sure of it. There'd been something in the way Sarah'd spoken about him, described his connection with Krivas. This bloke wasn't simply a messenger, he was something far more integral to Krivas' plans.
They wandered the fair for a while, trying to look like they were enjoying themselves, though the shine had worn off for Bodie. It was dark, the field was hazed with a mixture of actual fog and smoke machines, lights strobing multi-coloured across them. It would be impossible for anyone to recognise Doyle as a mecha, but all the same he wanted to be done, and he wanted to be away from the risk.He'd fucked up because he'd been looking forward to seeing Doyle again, to matching wits, to fighting back. To watching him move. He'd fucked up.
At five to nine they wandered casually towards the backstage area, a mess of tents and caravans and storage huts which backed nearly onto the cages, so that the area between the two was virtually a thoroughfare of workers taking shortcuts across the field, and the more curious of the audience, hoping for a final bloodthirsty glimpse of the mechas they were about to see destroyed. Here and there people stopped to talk, to shout, to fight over whether they preferred the Acid Drop or the Four Way Pull.
And there in the middle of it all was Younger, talking to a shorter man with his back to them.
"That's them," he nudged Doyle, pulling up his hood and settling the collar of his coat more firmly around his neck against the chance that Younger would spot him. He took out his mobile, pretended to take a few backstage pictures, looked casually at the previews. The man with Younger was nothing more than scrambled pixels. "That's him," he confirmed, turning around so that Doyle had a clear view.
"Saul Johnson."
"Who?"
"That's Saul Johnson - he's supposed to be out of the country. Cowley's very interested in him. Who's the other bloke?"
"Kid Younger, messenger boy for Krivas."
"Is he now?" Doyle turned back to him and caught his eye for a moment, his face hard. "Then Cowley was right, we've practically got them - Krivas, Younger, Johnson, Newbolt."
"Practically..." Bodie reminded him. This was it, this was the break they'd been waiting for. When he saw Sarah again he'd... well, he'd buy her a drink, anyway.
"I've got the Skin set to record," Doyle said, "There's a chance Cowley's Boffins will be able to descramble Johnson, maybe even filter out the audio."
"In this racket?" Bodie ducked his head as Younger and Johnson separated, Johnson passing close by them as he strode across the field.
"Worth following them?" Doyle wondered, staring after Johnson, his camera presumably tick-ticking away.
"Nah, I can find Younger again, and they've got Johnson tagged down at The Barristers . Let's go home, shall we?"
"Yeah," Doyle nodded, tapped him on the back to get him moving. "I suppose we'd better give L'hotel a miss - stick to the regs."
"Two nights is two nights," Bodie said, "Even if one was barely half a night."
"And that in the day..."
Bodie grinned, feeling lighter again, just as he had at Greenwich. "We could always..." He was drowned out as two of the fair's Hounds approached, bikes glaring and roaring in the night, the riders helmetless now that they weren't out tracking mechas or performing in the arena, although their machines were still tricked out in ferocious guise. Headlights gleamed through grilles, vicious teeth on devil dogs, designed to terrify and to thrill in equal measure. Good bikes though, decent engines underneath all that show. He watched as they circled a couple of giggling girls, revving suggestively. He turned to roll his eyes at Doyle and froze. One of the Hounds had left his scanner on, and as he circled around it shone brightly through Doyle's leather jacket, through his shirt - but not through the Skin. It had settled on the Skin, a blue-white light that highlighted wires and circuits and chips.
Mecha.
Bodie watched as Doyle looked down in slow motion, as his eyes widened, as he turned his head to look up at the Hounds. The Hounds exchanged their own glances, turning their bikes...
Run. Run! Doyle had already snapped into movement, heading back towards the arena where they could maybe slip away amongst the tents and buildings and crowds, and Bodie followed him, dodging people as best he could, pushing past them when he couldn't. It was almost too late though, he could hear the cry being raised behind them.
"Mecha!"
The crowd parted briefly in front of them, surprised into moving, but eventually some bright spark would decide to try his luck at winning the approval of the Hounds and a free ticket to the next show by tripping them, or trying to grab them. Doyle ducked under a cordon surrounding the show controls, where at least the bikes couldn't follow, and through a narrow gap between scaffolding and the side of a storage shed, feeling as much as hearing Bodie follow. It was quieter there, the sound of the roaring crowds muffled, so he slowed a moment, but they couldn't stay long.
They edged along the heavy canvas wall of the shed to the gap where it sat alongside something similar. He couldn't hear the Hounds any more, but that didn't mean they weren't there - if they could get to the other side of the Fair, if they could get to the exit… An arm grabbed at him suddenly, and he reared back in surprise, so that Bodie walked into him, but it wasn’t a Hound or even ordinary Security - it was an arm stripped of flesh, a length of rods and wires and circuits that ended in skin-covered fingers, that reached up to a skin-covered face traced with tears.
“Help me, human,” the mecha begged, “Don’t let them…”
Bodie pushed him ruthlessly past, and he kept walking, because it didn’t matter how much he hated the Flesh Fairs, how convinced he was that pain-circuits were ultimately just nerve endings and therefore… well, there his thoughts were fuzzier, but… He caught a glimpse of a boy mecha as they went, looking around as if for the mother he had never had, felt again the heel of Bodie’s hand as he was urged on. No matter how wrong it was, it would be more wrong if he was the one who ended up sandwiched in the Auto Crash, if he didn’t have his own days left to cajole and argue and fight…Enough he told himself, slowing to a stop as they reached the edge of the cage. They’d ended up closer to the arena rather than farther away, so that he could almost feel the heavy music thumping through the air, the excited roar of the crowd. There was a burst of flame as a hoop was set light, and a couple of the ring’s musclemen turned towards the caged mechas. He pushed Bodie further back into the shadows, and they waited as an old-fashioned, gangling stretch-droid was selected, taken, and manhandled out towards the cannon. If they could skirt the edge of the arena, maybe find somewhere quiet for him to de-Skin…
Flames blazed again as the luckless mecha was sent hurtling from the cannon and through the ring of fire, exploding so that they were showered with its gory shrapnel, a finger hitting the canvas just above their head, falling to lie on the ground in front of them. The crowd roared again, and there was movement beside them as dozens of mechas stepped back in horror.
“Go!” Bodie urged, and he took the opportunity, before another mecha was claimed from the cage beside them, to slip between the next pair of sheds, emerging this time under the audience stands. They could run fairly freely here, crouched low and dodging the occasional semi-clothed and passionate couple, until they emerged on the other side into one of the tunnels lined with food stalls, hawkers crying their wares all around. They slowed, sauntering along for all the world as if they were there for the fun of it all.
A Hound appeared, trolling slowly through the crowd, head turning from side to side, scanner switched on and beaming brightly below its headlight. Doyle ducked casually into the Cornish pasty queue where it snaked along the side of the stall, and Bodie stood in front of him, leaning close as if to whisper secrets, to share a joke. The Hound passed by, but Doyle’s heart was beating heavily and too fast.
“Gotta get out of this,” he hissed into Bodie’s ear, trusting that Bodie would know he meant the Skin rather than just their situation.
Bodie stilled against him for a moment, then straightened suddenly, took a deep breath. “Alright,” he said, “I’ve got an idea.”
“Great, what is it?”
But Bodie shook his head, slanting his gaze sideways to watch the Hound vanish into the distance. “Just follow me.”
“Where we going…?” Doyle asked, but it was too late, Bodie’d turned and grabbed his arm, was pulling him out of the queue and through the crowds towards the entrance to the Fair, its artificial moon glowing distantly with the promise of escape.
Their luck ran out nearly halfway there. Amongst the crowd, the hoards of people laughing and shouting, making their way to the arena or to the sideshows, dancing or wandering or simply standing still, another solitary Hound surprised them - on foot this time, his bike beside him on a stand, the front tyre half-on half-off as it was replaced by one of the Fair’s grease-marked jack-of-all-trades. But the scanner was switched on, and as Doyle dodged around a group of children playing with the scavenged remains of mecha, the wheel swung around, angling across him just as the Hound lifted his head.
They gained bare seconds as the man paused, as his eyes widened in surprise and he moved to turn on the communications link in his helmet and shout instructions, but that was all, he was off after them then, and they were barrelling through the crowds once again, twisting this way and that. Bodie was in front, and for all Doyle was inclined to leave him, to split up and make it easier for them to hide, there seemed to be more than just aimless escape to Bodie’s stride, Doyle would swear there was a purpose, a plan - just follow me.
Their head start meant they weren’t actually in the Hound’s eye - he was following the disturbance in the crowd, and Doyle could hear it swelling and closing and opening again behind them. Ahead of him Bodie ducked to one side, behind and along a string of public toilets, and then, all of a sudden, waited to grab his arm again and pulled him past a patiently waiting queue, and into the flimsy building he’d chosen.
They’d be cornered, they be trapped…
“Get ‘em off, sunshine,” Bodie snarled, shoving him towards a cubicle that had opened to reveal two half-grinning young men emerge, their smug eyes and half-done shirts leaving no one in any doubt about what they’d been up to.
“Oi, wait yer turn,” someone complained half-heartedly, but mostly what Doyle saw behind him, as Bodie whipped him past the first bloke in line, were knowing looks, a lewd grin or two, and then nothing but Bodie, crowding close so that he could close the door behind them.
“Are you…?” he began, but then Bodie was kissing him, and tugging at his clothes, so that his jacket was off his shoulders and halfway down his arms, the buttons on his shirt all but torn off.
“Get ‘em off,” Bodie repeated, separating them long enough to speak, and to move his hands to Doyle’s trousers, to stare hard into his shocked face. “Get it… where’s that skin, sunshine…?”
Skin… On the other side of the door the men had started up a rollicking chant - “Off - off - off - off” - and, between heartbeats, Doyle realised what Bodie was doing. Wriggling free of Bodie’s hands, he heeled off his trainers so that his trousers could be pushed off, let his shirt and jacket finally fall to the floor, and turned around, his hands thudding against the door in his urgency so that their audience clapped and barracked them again. “Give it to ‘im…”
Then Bodie’s fingers were sliding down his back, and alongside the extra tingle of electricity he could feel cooler air suddenly, the freedom of being himself again…
The good-natured shouting outside broke off suddenly, turned indignant, and away from what they were doing, from their cubicle. Knowing what it was, knowing what it must be, Doyle tore the Skin from his face almost before it had loosened, stripping it down his arms and then legs, bending awkwardly in the confined space to finally - at last, at last - pull it from his feet.
“Fucking Hound…” Doyle heard, and then someone was pounding at the door of the first cubicle, amidst more shouts and complaints. He managed to shove his feet back into his trousers, and then into trainers, but his shirt and jacket were somewhere behind Bodie, and he’d dropped the bloody Skin, he’d never manage it all in time…
The door vibrated at his back, and he looked up and caught Bodie’s eye and a glint of the devil, perhaps, because then he was being pulled forward again, and Bodie’s mouth was on his, his waist was being gripped tightly, and… fuck, Bodie’d taken hold of his cock as well, and despite the chase, despite the Hound - maybe, he knew, partly because of them - he was half hard still from the Skin…
It wasn’t Bodie’s fingers he could feel, he realised, lost somehow against Bodie’s lips, the surprise heat of it all, the shock of feeling Bodie as they leaned together jeans undone and hard against his hip, pushing against him, it was the Skin itself, wrapped around his cock as if it was some kinky electronic sex toy. The wires and chips, he knew, would be plainly visible now that he wasn’t wearing it, and…
The door slammed open at last, kicked down, and there was the Hound.
“Can’t a bloke get some privacy around here?” Bodie growled, pulling away from him, and Doyle found himself blushing. He could see past the Hound to the interested faces outside, eyes appraising or appreciative or amused, and there he stood, naked but for his trousers around his ankles, and Bodie’s solid hand wrapped around the plaything on his cock.
The Hound glared at them, then moved on to the last cubicle, empty now. Doyle reached out an arm and slammed the door shut again, sagged for a moment against the cold, smooth wall behind him, and closed his eyes.
He felt, rather than heard, Bodie straightening his own clothes, the rasp of his zip as it was pulled closed again, the clank of a belt buckle, and he made himself move too. He dragged his jeans up, managed to snag his shirt from the floor and his jacket underneath it, and got them on, then looked around for the Skin. It hung, half-tucked, from Bodie’s trouser pocket, and he reclaimed it, tucked it safely away and then took a deep breath, looked up and met Bodie’s eyes.
They gazed at each other for a moment, then Bodie nodded slightly - it’s all clear - and Doyle reached back to open the door again. They emerged into the camaraderie of the queue, endured again the good-natured complaints and taunts, and then they were outside, and they were free to leave.
They walked back towards the city in a kind of daze, neither of them speaking, and not stopping until they were far from the Flesh Fair and its roaring crowds and gaiety, and then they checked into the first hotel they came across that was still open - De Brown’s, old and famous and discreet enough not to ask questions when they had no luggage, not to question the state of Doyle’s clothes as long as Bodie’s mobile came up with a decent credit check as well as enough to pay for two nights in one of their best rooms.
Their daze took them up thickly carpeted stairs, past soothing pictures and through gentle music, to a room where they could finally close the door on everything but themselves.
Bodie turned, looked up at Doyle as he stood wide-eyed in the middle of the room, and something… something began a long unwinding inside him.
Doyle stepped forward and into his arms as if they’d planned it, as if they’d come here for that very reason, and Bodie let himself be borne backwards, across the soft carpet to the softness of the bed, and down, down…
This time, as they undressed, they did it slowly and carefully and consciously, and there was the time and inclination for lingering kisses in between each piece of pointless cloth and useless strap and buckle. There was time to run his fingers along Doyle’s spine for the pure, clean pleasure of it, to pull him, compliant and half-smiling, into the shower and to stand under heavy jets of water, in the steam of the bathroom, where the night washed even further away from them and slid down drains and pipes to mingle with the rain and the river and the sea.
Bodie soaped his hands with every intention of slicking them across and along and around Doyle’s body, was surprised to find himself being turned and kissed and soaped and caressed, gave in to it anyway.
He thought, as they moved together on the finely threaded cotton of the bed, that he had never felt anything quite like this, that it was the one thing he’d been waiting for, that life, now, must always be like this…
…and then Doyle gasped into his mouth, and Bodie felt him tighten and pulse and he kissed him harder, because there was nothing but Doyle, and Doyle’s movements against him, slower now and sated, but firm and slick, and…
And then there was nothing, for either of them, but the feel of each other’s skin and the slowing of each other’s heartbeat, and the sighing breath into sleep.
Bodie woke slowly, to soft pillows, soft sheets, a warm body beside him, and a feeling of having come home. He lay quietly, disconcerted, surely still dreaming. A good dream… He opened his eyes far enough to see that the simwindows were playing a gentle sunrise - they’d forgotten to re-set them last night - let them close again, reluctant to lose this feeling of well being. Reality would kick in soon enough, after all, whatever he’d forgotten would surface soon enough. The room smelled of fresh grass and something blossom-y. Pretentious, he tried to think, but he breathed it in all the same, feeling a smile on his lips, another remnant of his dreams…
No - reality - of what had happened last night.
Memory crept gently around him, that it was Doyle’s arm resting on his, Doyle’s hand curled on his shoulder, Doyle’s leg between his... Doyle’s cock, hard against his thigh.
The smile wouldn’t leave his face, the warmth, the… contentment he was feeling.
Doyle… Doyle had run like the wind last night, was as fast as Bodie himself, and he’d been quick to catch on in the bogs too - like he had been with Marty. Brains as well as brawn after all, and not a whiff of your ordinary copper about him, the ones Bodie had known all his life. There’d been chances for him to do it - when he’d gone to visit that sexbot, for instance - but not a bribe, no blackmail, not on the take… He’d paid for Just Jane, had talked about sticking her on his expense claim next month. No, not like an ordinary helmet at all, was Doyle, no wonder Cowley wanted him for CI5, no wonder...
And there, there it was, the other side of dreams and warmth and reality, a side he’d felt before, that had turned on him before, that he’d sworn he’d never let in again. When it took him, it took him hard and suddenly, and he never knew until it was too late and he’d fallen.
He’d fallen in love with Ray Doyle.
“Can ‘ear the data chips buzzing from here,” Doyle said suddenly, voice deep and low, and Bodie opened his eyes properly to see Doyle’s face inches from his, awake and alert and with the same hint of a smile that Bodie had felt, could still feel…
Dangerous, this. He’d better nip it in the bud, stop it before it got any worse, call it a temporary aberration and…
Doyle opened his mouth to say something else, but his eyes were wicked, and he licked his lips first, and Bodie was lost all over again.
“It’s a short circuit,” he murmured back, leaning across those inches so that his lips spoke the last word against Doyle’s lips, a tickling temptation before he kissed him again, as they had over and over the night before, more than he’d ever wanted to kiss anyone before. And this time he took control himself, turned Doyle onto his back and moved down the bed to kneel, to lift Doyle’s legs and bend down to suck his cock hard, determinedly, until Doyle cried out, and came, and Bodie swallowed, tasting him… Then he spat in his hand, not able to wait another minute, and finally let his own cock slide into Doyle’s arse… so tight, god so smooth and tight and… Doyle’s eyes were still closed, his breathing still fast, he gasped when Bodie began to fuck him, head tipping back on the pillow, so that Bodie had to move faster, harder, had to…
He came with a gasp of his own, with Doyle’s name on his lips, wanting nothing else ever but the feel of the man under him and around him and… sleep.
When next Bodie woke, there was nothing but empty space beside him, the ghost of a warmth, and the sound of running water in the bathroom. He took a deep breath, rubbed a hand over his face, and glanced at the clock beside the bed. Afternoon, and the world was fuzzy around the edges.
What the hell was he going to do? What could he do, but ride it out?
The bathroom door opened, and Doyle emerged, a towel around his waist and another draped over his curls, drying his hair as he walked across the room so that his face was half hidden, just glimpses of it as the towel whipped this way and that, nose, chin, mouth... And then the towel was gone, and Doyle was sitting on the bed beside him, and Bodie realised he’d been staring.
There was a smile on Doyle’s face, small, barely there, but twisting at his lips, and Bodie got ready for defence, martialled his best rejections and rebuttals. Not bad for a one night stand…
“Looks like it’s finally coming together,” Doyle said, the last thing Bodie’d expected. Did that mean Doyle had been planning…
Very aware that he was still sprawled naked and smelling of sex across the creased white sheets, that if only he could see them his body would be marked all over with Doyle’s fingerprints, he lifted a questioning eyebrow, and twisted his own smile back, moving to lie with his hands behind his head. “Oh yeah?”
Doyle smiled properly then. “Yeah, that too. Wasn’t expecting…” he faltered briefly, then tipped his head towards the bed, “…all this. But I meant the case.”
The case.
Maybe Doyle saw the moment his heart froze for a beat, saw it in his eyes, because he leaned forward suddenly, unexpected again, and kissed him. It felt like a kiss that should be fast, should be quick, but it dissolved between them, slowed and warmed, heat growing again, bloody again, he thought distantly. He wanted to fuck again, as if he was eighteen, as if they hadn’t spent the whole night…
Doyle moaned into his mouth, even as Bodie was reaching around and under the towel, beginning to pull them together again, and then Doyle was withdrawing, separating them, standing and catching the towel more firmly around him, though all that did was show how hard he was underneath it, what a bad idea it would be to stop.
“I’ve got to go,” he said, eyeing Bodie so that Bodie stayed right where he was, letting him take it all in, what he was missing. “I’ve got to meet Newbolt, I ‘aven’t got time to go back to bed…”
But he didn’t move, stood staring at Bodie. Bodie felt a surge of… something, and slid his legs to the edge of the bed, stood up and crowded Doyle backwards until he was leaning against the simwindow, outlined against a spring blue sky. Doyle wasn’t going anywhere.
“Then we’ll do it standing up,” he offered, tilting his hips to meet Doyle’s, to rub his cock against the hardness of Doyle’s under the towel, and taking his mouth in another kiss, determined and somehow angry. It melted away as he slid his hands along the back of Doyle’s thighs, displacing the towel again, letting Doyle’s arse fill his palms, his fingers holding tightly, squeezing and holding them together so that they could rub… and Doyle’s arms were around him again, and he was being kissed back, and he thrust almost gently, and again, a lazy frottage, and then Doyle was coming, and god, so was he…
The world was dim, and warm, and it smelled of shower gel and shampoo, and sex, and oddly enough it was starting to shake. Bodie opened his eyes. Doyle’s face was pressed into his shoulder, and he was laughing.
Bodie pulled back properly, lifted his eyebrow again in mute enquiry, which seemed to increase Doyle’s mirth, so that in the end Bodie gave in and grinned back, gave in to the infection of it all, that feeling of having had a good dream rushing back to him all over again.
“What?” he asked at last, “It’s not supposed to be funny, you know.”
“Nah, it’s not…” Doyle pushed Bodie backwards a little, tightened his arms around Bodie’s waist in a quick hug, and kissed him on his neck, then shoved him even further away and held out a hand as if to ward him off. “Feels like being a teenager again, an’ I remember how much trouble that got me into. I’m gonna be late.” He looked down at himself, naked once more, towel on the floor behind him. “An’ I need to wash again.” He grasped Bodie’s arm as he stepped past him, squeezing it gently, and then he vanished into the bathroom again.
Bodie stood there for a moment, then he took a deep breath and followed him, stopped in the doorway to watch Doyle’s shadow in the shower cubicle as it twisted quickly under the water, emerged again and reached for yet another towel, catching sight of Bodie as he did so.
“You stay right where you are,” he said, but there was a smile twisting at his lips again, and… and there was a look in his eye.
Or was he just imagining that, seeing what he wanted to see?
“Don’t go to Newbolt’s,” Bodie said abruptly, barely knowing he was going to say it, knowing that he shouldn’t, he couldn’t…
Doyle’s face hardened, though his words were soft enough. “I’ve got to mate - we’ve come this far.” He finished drying himself, stepped past Bodie back into the bedroom and started gathering his clothes together.
Bodie watched him.
“We need something more solid on ‘im, proof that he knows Krivas, or your blokes last night, or Renton…” Doyle picked up the Skin, stood looking at it, a harmless drapery of black and silver in his hand.
Bodie looked at it too, then back to Doyle, patched here and there in brown and yellow and dull purple, bruised. His fingerprints had been washed away, his come and his kisses and any sign that he’d touched him, but Newbolt was still all over him.
Back to work.
“What’ve you got on today, then?” Doyle was asking, and Bodie blinked, looked up and met his gaze.
“Bodie…”
Doyle was as reluctant as he was.
“Krivas wants me to fly him up north somewhere, special mission he called it.”
“Might be connected?”
Bodie shook his head, let reality flood back. “Doubt it. Probably the Russian gig, he’s booked a flyer for long distance.”
“Maybe you can get him talking, see if…”
“I know how to do my job, Doyle.”
“Yeah.” Doyle was still holding the Skin in his hand as if it was a barrier between them. He flicked it out, turned it around, and began putting it on. “I know.”
Bodie waited until he was almost encased in it, had just the facepiece to smooth on, and then he stepped forward, put an arm around him and pulled him into a hug. Doyle tensed, then relaxed against him, feeling strange in Bodie’s arms, in the Skin.
They had to meet again tonight. For work.
“Take a D and D on you, shall I?” he said, almost into Doyle’s ear, felt Doyle take a deep breath against him.
“Nah,” he said back, pulling away, so that Bodie wondered again if he’d got it all wrong. “Don’t need one. Got a regular date, don’t we?” He met Bodie’s eyes ruefully, tugged the facepiece into place. “Just let me know where and when.”
Bodie nodded at the too-shiny Doyle, grinned suddenly and reached out, ruffling still-damp curls, then he turned to go and take his own turn in the shower, letting the water rush over him and drown out the sound of the door outside opening, and closing.
To Part Four...
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