![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
dawnebeth.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
discoveredinaljThis story is a sequel to one I wrote two years ago, Mendelian Inheritance (http://archiveofourown.org/works/5547638). If you don't recall, Cowley announces quite shocking news on Christmas Eve.
This is seconds later...
Thank you so very much to LoxleyPrince who did an edit and Brit pick on literally an hour's notice.
Title:Family Matters
Author: Dawnwind
Wordcount: 3872
Bodie/Doyle
Summary: Cowley's news changes everything, or does it? Can Bodie and Doyle remain lovers after this?
Family Matters
“Wot are you playin’ at, old man?” Doyle stood up so suddenly that the chair behind him crashed over backwards.
Interesting how the rougher accent came out with his fury. Bodie had hoped the elegant veneer of the old boys’ club would lend some reserve to Doyle’s infamous temper, but such was not the case. As it was, he was gripping his own napkin in his lap, not sure how to react to Cowley’s stunning news.
George Cowley was his father.
Had he suspected? More than that, he’d actually had a strong inkling of the truth, long since tucked in the back of faded memories. He hadn’t ever dwelt on the notion, however. As a child, he’d only met the old man once, that he could recall—at his mother’s funeral.
But he’d seen him countless times, out of the corner of his eye. The year he’d won a prize in primary school. The sixth form football match final when he scored the winning goal. In the last row of pews in St Matthew’s church at the mass for his grandmother. The last time Bodie’d ever set foot in a church.
He had suspected Cowley had a connection, however tenuous. Stood to reason. That he was Doyle’s sire was, well, astonishing. They were brothers? He had yet to wrap his head around the notion.
“I’m not listening to any of this shite,” Doyle roared, poking his extended left forefinger almost to Cowley’s nose. He was breathing hard, the jaunty blue tie Bodie had folded into a proper Windsor knot already askew.
Older gentlemen in evening wear peered around their huge leather wingback chairs, frowning at the unruly disruption.
Cowley had escorted them into the club with an air of bonhomie that was quite unlike him. Both Bodie and Doyle had assumed something was up, but the gleam in old George’s blue eyes could be deceptive. He’d sent them on near suicide missions—those so called Susie obbos-- with as much joie de vivre.
“Four-fi---, erm… Doyle,” Cowley said quietly. There was no fight in him, also highly unusual. He sat without moving, looking up at Doyle, the light dimming in his eyes. “I’ll not fight you on this, laddie. I’ve laid it out. Take what you need to find the tru—“
“As if you’ve ever told me a word of truth,” Doyle sneered. He wheeled on Bodie, eyes blazing hot. Blue-green fire crackled.
Bodie had loved him for so long, it tore his guts out to face that wrath. “I believe him,” he said very quietly. To think they’d jokingly referred to him as father when out of Cowley’s earshot.
“Bloody great brown-noser you are, right to the end, is that it?” Doyle sneered.
“Sir?” Cathcart, manager of the club, stood a discrete distance away, looking as if he’d sucked lemons. “The tenets of this establishment state—“
“Sod off.” Doyle shook his head violently, yanked the tie Bodie had given him from around his neck and tossed it into the startled manager’s outstretched hand. “I’ve had enough.”
“Ray!” Bodie stood, preparing to follow.
Doyle skewered him with one searing look. “Not now, Bodie. Not bloody now.” He dashed out of the elegant dining room, the disgruntled members muttering in his wake.
“Mr Cowley.” Cathcart managed to sound both beseeching and affronted at the same time. “This sort of disruption will not be tolerated in the club.”
Cowley had closed his eyes, his face pale. “I regret the—“ he sighed, apparently at a loss for words.
A first in Bodie’s experience. He put a hand on Cowley—his father’s—shoulder. “We should leave,” he said, his voice strained in his own ears. What he really wanted to do was run after Doyle, pull him close, and tell him it didn’t matter.
That they were brothers didn’t matter in the scheme of things. How could it? They’d been lovers for three years. They’d known they were brothers for five minutes. Surely their commitment to one another meant more than—
His brain skittered away from the nasty innuendo now branded over their deep devotion.
“George,” he said firmly, pulling Cowley to a stand. “Let’s go.”
Cowley surfaced from whatever hell he’d been dropped into. He gripped Bodie’s arm as if drawing in strength and straightened, turning into the man who ran CI5 with an iron fist.
“Cathcart, I apologise for my—“ he paused, glancing at Bodie, “associate’s actions. Shan’t happen ever again. We’ll be on our way, and I will advance a sizable donation to the club’s coffers tomorrow.”
“Very generous, sir,” Cathcart murmured with a genteel smile. “I’ll call a car for you.”
“We’ll wait in the foyer,” Cowley said. He walked stiffly, his old war wound rearing its painful head, but Cowley didn’t falter.
Aware he’d been all but dismissed, despite the fact he knew Cowley wanted to discuss the matter further, Bodie trailed behind. He’d understood the look Cowley sent him. Thing was, he didn’t want to analyse their new-found relationship. He wanted to go after Doyle; show up on his doorstep and shut the door behind them. Pretend they didn’t have to start over from scratch because Cowley’s pronouncement had fundamentally changed everything.
Stepping outside, Bodie found his father staring at the half-hearted drifting of snow coming down. “I ought to go after—“
“Will,” Cowley said with the rock solid authority that brooked no arguments.
Bodie hadn’t been called Will since he was barely out of short pants. The name rocked him back on his heels.
“Doyle needs his space, to—“ Cowley paused, glancing over his shoulder, “digest his new identity.”
“He needs a mate, someone to talk to!” Bodie all but shouted. He wanted to accuse, to remonstrate, but he couldn’t. God knows they all needed time to sort this out. He just didn’t want Doyle haring off somewhere unknown. Would he ring? Or hole up, licking his psychological wounds?
“Doyle and I drove together,” he said instead, looking down the road to where they’d parked the Capri. It was—not surprisingly—gone.
“Come in the taxi with me.” Cowley jutted his chin at the black car approaching. “Would you feel more comfortable at headquarters or my abode?”
Noting that Cowley didn’t add Bodie’s flat to the short list, he thought quickly. “Your office,” he decided. Would Doyle show his face there? Probably not. If he went to either of their flats to decompress, with any luck, he’d wait for Bodie.
The short ride to CI5’s current building was quiet. Bodie watched shadows and light pass over Cowley’s familiar face as the taxi moved down the road. His brain was stuffed with questions. Where to start? Clearly Cowley had known about Bodie most of, if not all of his life.
Thinking back, Bodie was sure that he’d seen his father at his mother’s funeral, when he was five. Couldn’t be sure, obviously—he’d been prostrated with grief and confusion in the few days between her death and the service. He had a weird but persistent memory of a man in a greatcoat hovering around the periphery.
Had his gran known? No way to ask her any longer.
He waited until they were sitting in Cowley’s inner sanctum with tumblers of whisky. He’d long since stopped searching the older man’s face for any hint of resemblance—to either him or Doyle.
His brother Raymond.
“How did you find out about Doyle?” Bodie asked finally. “He didn’t even know his aunt was his mum.”
“No.” Cowley contemplated his drink for longer than Bodie had ever seen him stare at a glass of whisky without swallowing any. “I’ve have files on every member of the squad, of course. Very private.”
The r in ‘very’ was pure Scots, almost the rough purr of a cat. This was a morose Cowley, questioning his own actions. It unsettled Bodie even further than the night’s revelations had done. Cowley was the captain of his own ship, and while Bodie had argued with him, and Doyle particularly would rail against his authority, Cowley had the last word in all things.
“You’ve known about me all along?” Bodie drank down his dram as if it were medicine. Burned like peat going down his throat. He was accustomed to the heady stuff and still had to fight the urge to cough.
“Yes.” Cowley followed suit and swallowed his portion neat, then poured himself another fingerful. “Your mother and I had…a wonderful relationship. She was vivacious and private. We worked together at Bletchley Park.”
Another fact Bodie had never known. His mother had worked on top secret military projects?
“You looked exactly like her. Never could see anything of myself in your face.” Cowley frowned as if this troubled him.
Bodie nodded, not sure what he had to add to that.
“We’d never discussed love, nor marriage,” Cowley said stiffly. “I would have married her if…”
“She didn’t want it.” Of that, Bodie was sure. “Gran used to say mum was as stubborn as the year was long.”
“Yes.” He finally smiled. There was a poignant sadness to him, born of loss over many years.
Bodie wondered who else his father had lost. Doyle’s mother? He yearned to find his lover quickly but was equally as keen to hear more about Doyle’s origins. Who had been Cowley’s true love?
“Was there one you loved most?” he asked carefully, cradling his empty glass.
Cowley nodded mutely, refilling his glass and then Bodie’s. “Not who you’d expect, I’d wager.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past you, sir,” Bodie turned the glass around in his hand, contemplating whether he should drink it down. He still had to find Doyle, and he didn’t want to be so pissed he couldn’t see to drive. Not when it was snowing.
“You and Doyle,” Cowley said, catching him in the beam of those startlingly blue eyes, “you’re very close. Not like brothers, but—“
Bodie let the silent question linger far longer than necessary, stunned a second time in the same night. Cowley had known that, too? Admitting such a damning secret was tantamount to assassinating his career. He—and Doyle—would be pariahs, ridiculed. Yet, what was Cowley trying to say, without words? Had he once loved a man, as well?
“I almost wonder—“ Cowley went on, clearly taking the silence as confirmation, “if that sort of thing could be passed along, from father to son, like blue eyes or curls. Yet neither of you looked much like me.”
“Yes,” Bodie finally answered, however vaguely, feeling such an overwhelming pain—sadness or empathy?--in his chest. “You lost someone dear?”
“Lieutenant Jerry Fawkes.” Even the way he said the name was a caress that held grief and wistfulness. “We worked together for many years until he died during the height of the Cold War.” He held his glass up in a silent salute and drank it down quick. Signalling the end of the conversation, Cowley closed his eyes.
He seemed older and wearier than ever before. “Shouldn’t you be going after your Doyle?”
~~**~~
Bodie found him, not in his flat, but his local, to the right of Doyle’s building. He hadn’t even planned to look there but the door had swung open as he walked by, a bird sashaying out. In the brief moment before the door closed again, Bodie caught sight of the familiar mop of curls. He could hear snatches of Christmas music playing on the juke box.
Doyle was hunched at a table two steps inside the pub, staring numbly into a glass of Guinness. Not his usual drink, even when depressed.
“’Allo, ‘allo,” Bodie called out jovially, relieved to find Doyle so easily. The question was—how to broach the taboo subject. Did the usual societal norms even apply here?
“Don’t,” Doyle said tonelessly as if exhausted. The fire had burned completely out, leaving a Doyle Bodie recognized; introspective and morose. This was the Doyle who over analysed their failed obbos and close calls. Who’d find everything wrong about their relationship now that they were related.
He didn’t raise his head when Bodie sat down in the other chair. “Worried about you, sunshine,” Bodie started.
“Don’t,” Doyle said again, this time as if he were a dam with a crack down the centre and barely holding back the water. As if one more word would shatter him into a million pieces.
Bodie nodded, glancing at the untouched glass of Guinness. Guinness for strength, isn’t that what the advert said? “Just needed to know you were safe…” Sounded lame now. Doyle was a grown man, a trained copper and agent. If he couldn’t ensure his own safety, who could? Yet—Cowley’s news had shocked them both. What was that line from the Irish poem? The centre did not hold… That could cause even the most stalwart of people to go off half-cocked.
“Consanguinity,” Doyle said through his teeth.
Trust Doyle to trot out a multisyllabic word when something shorter would have done as well. “What’s that when it’s at home?” Bodie growled, feeling like he’d been put on the spot when it was not his fault.
“Related to each other,” Doyle sounded as if he’d been gutted.
“Ah.” Bodie should have been able to suss that one out, given the circumstances. “Like a character on Emmerdale Farm.”
Doyle flashed him a poisonous look. “Suddenly, my entire life is fiction. I can’t trust a single thing anyone’s ever told me, particularly that old man. How’d you know this isn’t some Operation Susie to fuck with our brains?”
“Because I’d suspected the truth—about myself, since childhood,” Bodie admitted, feeling the weight of that settle into his chest. He had a father. He wasn’t some odd genetic anomaly without a male parent. There had been times in his youth when he’d been taunted and bullied as a bastard. “You, I never suspected.”
“I wasn’t even meant to know I was adopted,” Doyle whispered, white faced. “Me mum’s me aunt.”
“And I still love you,” Bodie said so softly it was obliterated by the raucous version of Jingle Bell Rock from the jukebox. Several bar patrons added their voices in song.
Not sure Doyle had heard him, Bodie touched his elbow. “Going to drink that down, are you?” he asked.
Doyle blinked, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. He shook his head.
“Don’t mind if I do.” Bodie took a long swig. He wouldn’t be driving tonight. They only had to walk a few steps from the pub to the door of Doyle’s building and then up in the lift to the third floor.
Doyle closed his fingers around Bodie’s holding the glass. “Give me some,” he said roughly in the quiet seconds between the last song and the start of Elvis’ Blue Christmas.
Relinquishing the glass, Bodie watched as Doyle put his lips exactly where Bodie had done. For some reason, that seemed powerful, strengthening what they had by more than the blood bond.
Doyle stood, placing the glass very precisely on the table as if he were drunk, which Bodie knew he wasn’t. More like overloaded with too much emotion, too much change. He trailed Doyle out of the noisy pub, into the icy cold of the night.
Snow was falling lightly, shimmering like glitter when it passed street lights but not really sticking to the pavement. Puddles of water testified that it wasn’t quite frosty enough to start a snowball fight.
“What’d they call that thing that causes earthquakes?” Bodie asked when Doyle opened the door to his building.
It was enough of a non-sequitur that it shook Doyle out of his doldrums, even though Bodie hadn’t intended it to be. Doyle frowned with a shrug. “Not following you, mate.”
Ah, a normal response. Now they were getting somewhere. “When continents move,” Bodie recalled the reference. Some scientific lecture by one of Cowley’s experts for an obbo involving geologists.
“Tectonic plates shifting?” Doyle stopped abruptly, catching Bodie’s meaning. “Causes cataclysmic change.”
“But San Francisco still exists.” Bodie put a hand on the lift door to keep it open until Doyle went in. “Rebuilt stronger after damage and fire. He’d watched a repeat of the old BBC documentary “The City That Waits to Die” on the telly when Doyle was in hospital.
“And Alaska,” Doyle said, standing farther away than he usually did in such a small space.
“And us.” Bodie held out his hand, palm up, gratified beyond belief when Doyle placed his hand on top and squeezed. “This changes the past but not the present.”
“You don’t think so?” Doyle sighed as if the contact had revived him. He pressed the button for the third floor, bracing himself against the metal wall when the lift jerked upward.
“Were you planning on having a baby?” Bodie asked conversationally, glad of the sudden inspiration.
“What?” Doyle growled in exasperation.
“Neither of us has the necessary plumbing.” Bodie waggled his finger between the two of them as the lift doors parted.
“Elementary, Dr Watson,” Doyle said over his shoulder, fishing out keys from the pocket of his tight trousers.
It was a manouerve Bodie had always enjoyed watching, those fingers wriggling beneath fabric. “Which is the main reason behind that consang…” He’d forgotten the exact pronunciation of the word. “Guinty?”
Doyle almost chuckled, the corner of his mouth turning up. “Sounds like shanty made of lemon squash and Guinness.” He went into his flat, toeing off his shoes as he walked.
.
“I’d drink that,” Bodie said. He came into the lounge, abruptly unsure of his welcome. Was he still a lover or now a member of the family. Did it matter in the long run?
“I know you would.” Doyle collapsed onto the sofa, plunking his feet on the coffee table. He thrust his fingers into his curls. “As I know that you’d eat Swiss Rolls on a Sunday morning whilst reading the Times. That you smile in your sleep. What you look like after forty-eight hours without sleep.” He sounded as if he were about to weep. “What you feel like after sex.”
Bodie nodded without speaking. All that and more.
“So what do we do?” Doyle whispered. He closed his eyes, not with finality as Cowley had but, Bodie suspected, with acquiescence.
“Go on as we have done.” Bodie sat next to him, taking Doyle’s hand again. “We’re not planning on raising rugrats, we couldn’t marry if we wanted to, and what we do doesn’t hurt anyone.” He felt the fear dissolve when Doyle squeezed his hand. “I’ve taken you to my bed—and been in yours—for these past three years. I’ve known we shared blood for what…a few hours?”
“Since I was shot, more like,” Doyle corrected, opening his eyes. “Cowley told me you donated blood when I was in the hospital. That he was surprised we had the same type.”
“I’d forgotten.” He truly had. He could recall almost every second after finding Doyle bleeding out on the lounge carpet.; the ambulance ride, the waiting, but once Doyle had come through surgery alive, the rest was a jumble of emotion. His clearest memories were when he was at his lover’s bedside.
“Blood brothers no matter how you look at it,” Doyle said, clearly reconsidering all that he’d learned.
“D’you think that’s why Father…” Bodie said it ironically as possible, “Began poking into your background more deeply? To check?”
“Who knows what prompted his scrutiny.” Doyle turned to Bodie, pressing a kiss onto his mouth. “Who knows why the old man does anything.”
“He’s been, for the most part, good to us. Better than many would be.” Bodie surrendered to the kiss, heartened.
“That he has. When he’s not twisting us into mannequins to use for his own needs.” Doyle curled into Bodie, warm and yielding. “Which is what a father does to his sons, I suppose.”
“Yours didn’t?” Bodie asked. He had no experience in such things.
“Mine got drunk, a lot.” Doyle sighed. “Four girls and a youngest son who wasn’t really his. Makes sense that he’d toddle off to the pub, leaving mum to feed us all on half his pay packet.”
Bodie rested his cheek on Doyle’s soft curls. More than he’d heard about the Doyle family in all the time they’d been partners.
“Makes me want to thank her, wish I’d been able to talk to her before she died.” Doyle looked down at his long, slender fingers. “Which part of me is the auntie I barely knew, and which is him, George Cowley?”
“Can’t pick apart what we inherit from our ancestors,” Bodie traced a finger along the length of Doyle’s jaw. They were made of the same skin, the same genes, yet so very different in every way. “Some of it’s from grandparents or farther back.”
“I feel pulled apart!” Doyle erupted from the sofa, stomping around the perimeter of the room. “And rejoined in a manner I don’t recognise! I’m not…” He stopped abruptly, slapping his chest. “I’m not me, the only son of Mary Magdalene and Raymond Francis Doyle but a bastard whelped from Mary Margaret and George.”
“And older’n me,” Bodie added helpfully, trying unsuccessfully to grab at his arm. Was he going to have to force Doyle down and kiss him into submission? “Both bastards, now that you mention it.”
“You…” Doyle turned toward him as if finding the sun, tears glinting in his lashes. The rampant emotions were wearing him down; he looked done in. “You are all I have…”
“Then leave it at that and open yourself to the rest of it when we can get this admittedly odd situation sorted.” Bodie held out his arms, pulling Ray gently to him. “Without trying, we found each other, the family we were supposed to have and now…”
“Spent our Christmas with Father, I stormed off, and unless my sense of smell is amiss, you got pissed with him.” Doyle shrugged in wonderment. “Sounds like a typical family t’me.”
“I am not pissed,” Bodie said loftily, kissing his Raymond on the lips, “And neither of us will ever be typical.”
“Reckon that’s the truth.” Doyle kissed him, long and slow, full of desire. “It doesn’t feel any different.”
“What?” Bodie did. He felt quite loopy, ready for sex, and yet drowsy enough to go to sleep. Maybe he was a wee bit drunk.
“Kissing you,” Doyle said softly.
“Nor should it.” Bodie slid his hands more firmly around Doyle’s slim waist. “I haven’t changed, and you haven’t either. Besides, no-one but the two of us will ever know—“
“And Father,” Doyle added.
“That goes without saying.” Bodie savoured another kiss. The tsunami of change that had altered their perceptions of themselves would take months, if not years, to work out but if they had each other, they’d survive. He smiled. “Father Christmas won’t come until we’re in our bed.”
“Father Christmas already left me a gift,” Doyle said. “Not at all what I expected, but I shan’t be trekking to the shops to make returns.”
Bodie laughed, towing him to the bedroom.
FIN
This is seconds later...
Thank you so very much to LoxleyPrince who did an edit and Brit pick on literally an hour's notice.
Title:Family Matters
Author: Dawnwind
Wordcount: 3872
Bodie/Doyle
Summary: Cowley's news changes everything, or does it? Can Bodie and Doyle remain lovers after this?
Family Matters
“Wot are you playin’ at, old man?” Doyle stood up so suddenly that the chair behind him crashed over backwards.
Interesting how the rougher accent came out with his fury. Bodie had hoped the elegant veneer of the old boys’ club would lend some reserve to Doyle’s infamous temper, but such was not the case. As it was, he was gripping his own napkin in his lap, not sure how to react to Cowley’s stunning news.
George Cowley was his father.
Had he suspected? More than that, he’d actually had a strong inkling of the truth, long since tucked in the back of faded memories. He hadn’t ever dwelt on the notion, however. As a child, he’d only met the old man once, that he could recall—at his mother’s funeral.
But he’d seen him countless times, out of the corner of his eye. The year he’d won a prize in primary school. The sixth form football match final when he scored the winning goal. In the last row of pews in St Matthew’s church at the mass for his grandmother. The last time Bodie’d ever set foot in a church.
He had suspected Cowley had a connection, however tenuous. Stood to reason. That he was Doyle’s sire was, well, astonishing. They were brothers? He had yet to wrap his head around the notion.
“I’m not listening to any of this shite,” Doyle roared, poking his extended left forefinger almost to Cowley’s nose. He was breathing hard, the jaunty blue tie Bodie had folded into a proper Windsor knot already askew.
Older gentlemen in evening wear peered around their huge leather wingback chairs, frowning at the unruly disruption.
Cowley had escorted them into the club with an air of bonhomie that was quite unlike him. Both Bodie and Doyle had assumed something was up, but the gleam in old George’s blue eyes could be deceptive. He’d sent them on near suicide missions—those so called Susie obbos-- with as much joie de vivre.
“Four-fi---, erm… Doyle,” Cowley said quietly. There was no fight in him, also highly unusual. He sat without moving, looking up at Doyle, the light dimming in his eyes. “I’ll not fight you on this, laddie. I’ve laid it out. Take what you need to find the tru—“
“As if you’ve ever told me a word of truth,” Doyle sneered. He wheeled on Bodie, eyes blazing hot. Blue-green fire crackled.
Bodie had loved him for so long, it tore his guts out to face that wrath. “I believe him,” he said very quietly. To think they’d jokingly referred to him as father when out of Cowley’s earshot.
“Bloody great brown-noser you are, right to the end, is that it?” Doyle sneered.
“Sir?” Cathcart, manager of the club, stood a discrete distance away, looking as if he’d sucked lemons. “The tenets of this establishment state—“
“Sod off.” Doyle shook his head violently, yanked the tie Bodie had given him from around his neck and tossed it into the startled manager’s outstretched hand. “I’ve had enough.”
“Ray!” Bodie stood, preparing to follow.
Doyle skewered him with one searing look. “Not now, Bodie. Not bloody now.” He dashed out of the elegant dining room, the disgruntled members muttering in his wake.
“Mr Cowley.” Cathcart managed to sound both beseeching and affronted at the same time. “This sort of disruption will not be tolerated in the club.”
Cowley had closed his eyes, his face pale. “I regret the—“ he sighed, apparently at a loss for words.
A first in Bodie’s experience. He put a hand on Cowley—his father’s—shoulder. “We should leave,” he said, his voice strained in his own ears. What he really wanted to do was run after Doyle, pull him close, and tell him it didn’t matter.
That they were brothers didn’t matter in the scheme of things. How could it? They’d been lovers for three years. They’d known they were brothers for five minutes. Surely their commitment to one another meant more than—
His brain skittered away from the nasty innuendo now branded over their deep devotion.
“George,” he said firmly, pulling Cowley to a stand. “Let’s go.”
Cowley surfaced from whatever hell he’d been dropped into. He gripped Bodie’s arm as if drawing in strength and straightened, turning into the man who ran CI5 with an iron fist.
“Cathcart, I apologise for my—“ he paused, glancing at Bodie, “associate’s actions. Shan’t happen ever again. We’ll be on our way, and I will advance a sizable donation to the club’s coffers tomorrow.”
“Very generous, sir,” Cathcart murmured with a genteel smile. “I’ll call a car for you.”
“We’ll wait in the foyer,” Cowley said. He walked stiffly, his old war wound rearing its painful head, but Cowley didn’t falter.
Aware he’d been all but dismissed, despite the fact he knew Cowley wanted to discuss the matter further, Bodie trailed behind. He’d understood the look Cowley sent him. Thing was, he didn’t want to analyse their new-found relationship. He wanted to go after Doyle; show up on his doorstep and shut the door behind them. Pretend they didn’t have to start over from scratch because Cowley’s pronouncement had fundamentally changed everything.
Stepping outside, Bodie found his father staring at the half-hearted drifting of snow coming down. “I ought to go after—“
“Will,” Cowley said with the rock solid authority that brooked no arguments.
Bodie hadn’t been called Will since he was barely out of short pants. The name rocked him back on his heels.
“Doyle needs his space, to—“ Cowley paused, glancing over his shoulder, “digest his new identity.”
“He needs a mate, someone to talk to!” Bodie all but shouted. He wanted to accuse, to remonstrate, but he couldn’t. God knows they all needed time to sort this out. He just didn’t want Doyle haring off somewhere unknown. Would he ring? Or hole up, licking his psychological wounds?
“Doyle and I drove together,” he said instead, looking down the road to where they’d parked the Capri. It was—not surprisingly—gone.
“Come in the taxi with me.” Cowley jutted his chin at the black car approaching. “Would you feel more comfortable at headquarters or my abode?”
Noting that Cowley didn’t add Bodie’s flat to the short list, he thought quickly. “Your office,” he decided. Would Doyle show his face there? Probably not. If he went to either of their flats to decompress, with any luck, he’d wait for Bodie.
The short ride to CI5’s current building was quiet. Bodie watched shadows and light pass over Cowley’s familiar face as the taxi moved down the road. His brain was stuffed with questions. Where to start? Clearly Cowley had known about Bodie most of, if not all of his life.
Thinking back, Bodie was sure that he’d seen his father at his mother’s funeral, when he was five. Couldn’t be sure, obviously—he’d been prostrated with grief and confusion in the few days between her death and the service. He had a weird but persistent memory of a man in a greatcoat hovering around the periphery.
Had his gran known? No way to ask her any longer.
He waited until they were sitting in Cowley’s inner sanctum with tumblers of whisky. He’d long since stopped searching the older man’s face for any hint of resemblance—to either him or Doyle.
His brother Raymond.
“How did you find out about Doyle?” Bodie asked finally. “He didn’t even know his aunt was his mum.”
“No.” Cowley contemplated his drink for longer than Bodie had ever seen him stare at a glass of whisky without swallowing any. “I’ve have files on every member of the squad, of course. Very private.”
The r in ‘very’ was pure Scots, almost the rough purr of a cat. This was a morose Cowley, questioning his own actions. It unsettled Bodie even further than the night’s revelations had done. Cowley was the captain of his own ship, and while Bodie had argued with him, and Doyle particularly would rail against his authority, Cowley had the last word in all things.
“You’ve known about me all along?” Bodie drank down his dram as if it were medicine. Burned like peat going down his throat. He was accustomed to the heady stuff and still had to fight the urge to cough.
“Yes.” Cowley followed suit and swallowed his portion neat, then poured himself another fingerful. “Your mother and I had…a wonderful relationship. She was vivacious and private. We worked together at Bletchley Park.”
Another fact Bodie had never known. His mother had worked on top secret military projects?
“You looked exactly like her. Never could see anything of myself in your face.” Cowley frowned as if this troubled him.
Bodie nodded, not sure what he had to add to that.
“We’d never discussed love, nor marriage,” Cowley said stiffly. “I would have married her if…”
“She didn’t want it.” Of that, Bodie was sure. “Gran used to say mum was as stubborn as the year was long.”
“Yes.” He finally smiled. There was a poignant sadness to him, born of loss over many years.
Bodie wondered who else his father had lost. Doyle’s mother? He yearned to find his lover quickly but was equally as keen to hear more about Doyle’s origins. Who had been Cowley’s true love?
“Was there one you loved most?” he asked carefully, cradling his empty glass.
Cowley nodded mutely, refilling his glass and then Bodie’s. “Not who you’d expect, I’d wager.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past you, sir,” Bodie turned the glass around in his hand, contemplating whether he should drink it down. He still had to find Doyle, and he didn’t want to be so pissed he couldn’t see to drive. Not when it was snowing.
“You and Doyle,” Cowley said, catching him in the beam of those startlingly blue eyes, “you’re very close. Not like brothers, but—“
Bodie let the silent question linger far longer than necessary, stunned a second time in the same night. Cowley had known that, too? Admitting such a damning secret was tantamount to assassinating his career. He—and Doyle—would be pariahs, ridiculed. Yet, what was Cowley trying to say, without words? Had he once loved a man, as well?
“I almost wonder—“ Cowley went on, clearly taking the silence as confirmation, “if that sort of thing could be passed along, from father to son, like blue eyes or curls. Yet neither of you looked much like me.”
“Yes,” Bodie finally answered, however vaguely, feeling such an overwhelming pain—sadness or empathy?--in his chest. “You lost someone dear?”
“Lieutenant Jerry Fawkes.” Even the way he said the name was a caress that held grief and wistfulness. “We worked together for many years until he died during the height of the Cold War.” He held his glass up in a silent salute and drank it down quick. Signalling the end of the conversation, Cowley closed his eyes.
He seemed older and wearier than ever before. “Shouldn’t you be going after your Doyle?”
~~**~~
Bodie found him, not in his flat, but his local, to the right of Doyle’s building. He hadn’t even planned to look there but the door had swung open as he walked by, a bird sashaying out. In the brief moment before the door closed again, Bodie caught sight of the familiar mop of curls. He could hear snatches of Christmas music playing on the juke box.
Doyle was hunched at a table two steps inside the pub, staring numbly into a glass of Guinness. Not his usual drink, even when depressed.
“’Allo, ‘allo,” Bodie called out jovially, relieved to find Doyle so easily. The question was—how to broach the taboo subject. Did the usual societal norms even apply here?
“Don’t,” Doyle said tonelessly as if exhausted. The fire had burned completely out, leaving a Doyle Bodie recognized; introspective and morose. This was the Doyle who over analysed their failed obbos and close calls. Who’d find everything wrong about their relationship now that they were related.
He didn’t raise his head when Bodie sat down in the other chair. “Worried about you, sunshine,” Bodie started.
“Don’t,” Doyle said again, this time as if he were a dam with a crack down the centre and barely holding back the water. As if one more word would shatter him into a million pieces.
Bodie nodded, glancing at the untouched glass of Guinness. Guinness for strength, isn’t that what the advert said? “Just needed to know you were safe…” Sounded lame now. Doyle was a grown man, a trained copper and agent. If he couldn’t ensure his own safety, who could? Yet—Cowley’s news had shocked them both. What was that line from the Irish poem? The centre did not hold… That could cause even the most stalwart of people to go off half-cocked.
“Consanguinity,” Doyle said through his teeth.
Trust Doyle to trot out a multisyllabic word when something shorter would have done as well. “What’s that when it’s at home?” Bodie growled, feeling like he’d been put on the spot when it was not his fault.
“Related to each other,” Doyle sounded as if he’d been gutted.
“Ah.” Bodie should have been able to suss that one out, given the circumstances. “Like a character on Emmerdale Farm.”
Doyle flashed him a poisonous look. “Suddenly, my entire life is fiction. I can’t trust a single thing anyone’s ever told me, particularly that old man. How’d you know this isn’t some Operation Susie to fuck with our brains?”
“Because I’d suspected the truth—about myself, since childhood,” Bodie admitted, feeling the weight of that settle into his chest. He had a father. He wasn’t some odd genetic anomaly without a male parent. There had been times in his youth when he’d been taunted and bullied as a bastard. “You, I never suspected.”
“I wasn’t even meant to know I was adopted,” Doyle whispered, white faced. “Me mum’s me aunt.”
“And I still love you,” Bodie said so softly it was obliterated by the raucous version of Jingle Bell Rock from the jukebox. Several bar patrons added their voices in song.
Not sure Doyle had heard him, Bodie touched his elbow. “Going to drink that down, are you?” he asked.
Doyle blinked, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. He shook his head.
“Don’t mind if I do.” Bodie took a long swig. He wouldn’t be driving tonight. They only had to walk a few steps from the pub to the door of Doyle’s building and then up in the lift to the third floor.
Doyle closed his fingers around Bodie’s holding the glass. “Give me some,” he said roughly in the quiet seconds between the last song and the start of Elvis’ Blue Christmas.
Relinquishing the glass, Bodie watched as Doyle put his lips exactly where Bodie had done. For some reason, that seemed powerful, strengthening what they had by more than the blood bond.
Doyle stood, placing the glass very precisely on the table as if he were drunk, which Bodie knew he wasn’t. More like overloaded with too much emotion, too much change. He trailed Doyle out of the noisy pub, into the icy cold of the night.
Snow was falling lightly, shimmering like glitter when it passed street lights but not really sticking to the pavement. Puddles of water testified that it wasn’t quite frosty enough to start a snowball fight.
“What’d they call that thing that causes earthquakes?” Bodie asked when Doyle opened the door to his building.
It was enough of a non-sequitur that it shook Doyle out of his doldrums, even though Bodie hadn’t intended it to be. Doyle frowned with a shrug. “Not following you, mate.”
Ah, a normal response. Now they were getting somewhere. “When continents move,” Bodie recalled the reference. Some scientific lecture by one of Cowley’s experts for an obbo involving geologists.
“Tectonic plates shifting?” Doyle stopped abruptly, catching Bodie’s meaning. “Causes cataclysmic change.”
“But San Francisco still exists.” Bodie put a hand on the lift door to keep it open until Doyle went in. “Rebuilt stronger after damage and fire. He’d watched a repeat of the old BBC documentary “The City That Waits to Die” on the telly when Doyle was in hospital.
“And Alaska,” Doyle said, standing farther away than he usually did in such a small space.
“And us.” Bodie held out his hand, palm up, gratified beyond belief when Doyle placed his hand on top and squeezed. “This changes the past but not the present.”
“You don’t think so?” Doyle sighed as if the contact had revived him. He pressed the button for the third floor, bracing himself against the metal wall when the lift jerked upward.
“Were you planning on having a baby?” Bodie asked conversationally, glad of the sudden inspiration.
“What?” Doyle growled in exasperation.
“Neither of us has the necessary plumbing.” Bodie waggled his finger between the two of them as the lift doors parted.
“Elementary, Dr Watson,” Doyle said over his shoulder, fishing out keys from the pocket of his tight trousers.
It was a manouerve Bodie had always enjoyed watching, those fingers wriggling beneath fabric. “Which is the main reason behind that consang…” He’d forgotten the exact pronunciation of the word. “Guinty?”
Doyle almost chuckled, the corner of his mouth turning up. “Sounds like shanty made of lemon squash and Guinness.” He went into his flat, toeing off his shoes as he walked.
.
“I’d drink that,” Bodie said. He came into the lounge, abruptly unsure of his welcome. Was he still a lover or now a member of the family. Did it matter in the long run?
“I know you would.” Doyle collapsed onto the sofa, plunking his feet on the coffee table. He thrust his fingers into his curls. “As I know that you’d eat Swiss Rolls on a Sunday morning whilst reading the Times. That you smile in your sleep. What you look like after forty-eight hours without sleep.” He sounded as if he were about to weep. “What you feel like after sex.”
Bodie nodded without speaking. All that and more.
“So what do we do?” Doyle whispered. He closed his eyes, not with finality as Cowley had but, Bodie suspected, with acquiescence.
“Go on as we have done.” Bodie sat next to him, taking Doyle’s hand again. “We’re not planning on raising rugrats, we couldn’t marry if we wanted to, and what we do doesn’t hurt anyone.” He felt the fear dissolve when Doyle squeezed his hand. “I’ve taken you to my bed—and been in yours—for these past three years. I’ve known we shared blood for what…a few hours?”
“Since I was shot, more like,” Doyle corrected, opening his eyes. “Cowley told me you donated blood when I was in the hospital. That he was surprised we had the same type.”
“I’d forgotten.” He truly had. He could recall almost every second after finding Doyle bleeding out on the lounge carpet.; the ambulance ride, the waiting, but once Doyle had come through surgery alive, the rest was a jumble of emotion. His clearest memories were when he was at his lover’s bedside.
“Blood brothers no matter how you look at it,” Doyle said, clearly reconsidering all that he’d learned.
“D’you think that’s why Father…” Bodie said it ironically as possible, “Began poking into your background more deeply? To check?”
“Who knows what prompted his scrutiny.” Doyle turned to Bodie, pressing a kiss onto his mouth. “Who knows why the old man does anything.”
“He’s been, for the most part, good to us. Better than many would be.” Bodie surrendered to the kiss, heartened.
“That he has. When he’s not twisting us into mannequins to use for his own needs.” Doyle curled into Bodie, warm and yielding. “Which is what a father does to his sons, I suppose.”
“Yours didn’t?” Bodie asked. He had no experience in such things.
“Mine got drunk, a lot.” Doyle sighed. “Four girls and a youngest son who wasn’t really his. Makes sense that he’d toddle off to the pub, leaving mum to feed us all on half his pay packet.”
Bodie rested his cheek on Doyle’s soft curls. More than he’d heard about the Doyle family in all the time they’d been partners.
“Makes me want to thank her, wish I’d been able to talk to her before she died.” Doyle looked down at his long, slender fingers. “Which part of me is the auntie I barely knew, and which is him, George Cowley?”
“Can’t pick apart what we inherit from our ancestors,” Bodie traced a finger along the length of Doyle’s jaw. They were made of the same skin, the same genes, yet so very different in every way. “Some of it’s from grandparents or farther back.”
“I feel pulled apart!” Doyle erupted from the sofa, stomping around the perimeter of the room. “And rejoined in a manner I don’t recognise! I’m not…” He stopped abruptly, slapping his chest. “I’m not me, the only son of Mary Magdalene and Raymond Francis Doyle but a bastard whelped from Mary Margaret and George.”
“And older’n me,” Bodie added helpfully, trying unsuccessfully to grab at his arm. Was he going to have to force Doyle down and kiss him into submission? “Both bastards, now that you mention it.”
“You…” Doyle turned toward him as if finding the sun, tears glinting in his lashes. The rampant emotions were wearing him down; he looked done in. “You are all I have…”
“Then leave it at that and open yourself to the rest of it when we can get this admittedly odd situation sorted.” Bodie held out his arms, pulling Ray gently to him. “Without trying, we found each other, the family we were supposed to have and now…”
“Spent our Christmas with Father, I stormed off, and unless my sense of smell is amiss, you got pissed with him.” Doyle shrugged in wonderment. “Sounds like a typical family t’me.”
“I am not pissed,” Bodie said loftily, kissing his Raymond on the lips, “And neither of us will ever be typical.”
“Reckon that’s the truth.” Doyle kissed him, long and slow, full of desire. “It doesn’t feel any different.”
“What?” Bodie did. He felt quite loopy, ready for sex, and yet drowsy enough to go to sleep. Maybe he was a wee bit drunk.
“Kissing you,” Doyle said softly.
“Nor should it.” Bodie slid his hands more firmly around Doyle’s slim waist. “I haven’t changed, and you haven’t either. Besides, no-one but the two of us will ever know—“
“And Father,” Doyle added.
“That goes without saying.” Bodie savoured another kiss. The tsunami of change that had altered their perceptions of themselves would take months, if not years, to work out but if they had each other, they’d survive. He smiled. “Father Christmas won’t come until we’re in our bed.”
“Father Christmas already left me a gift,” Doyle said. “Not at all what I expected, but I shan’t be trekking to the shops to make returns.”
Bodie laughed, towing him to the bedroom.
FIN
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2017-12-14 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-15 10:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-14 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-15 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-15 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-15 10:33 pm (UTC)What an idea
Date: 2017-12-15 09:38 pm (UTC)lbc
RE: What an idea
Date: 2017-12-15 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-16 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-16 01:12 am (UTC)