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discoveredinaljWay back in (blimey!) 2012, in the Discovered in the Style of... challenge, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hutchynstarsk challenged me to write Pros in the style of P.G. Wodehouse. I thought eeep!, did some preparation reading, came up with an idea or two, and then didn't manage to write the story.
Earlier this year, in the amazingly hot summer in Germany, the subject came up in a chat withfirefly1311, and I somehow ended up starting the story. Not quite as I'd originally planned it, but... I was writing it! And it got to nearly finished, and now it's today and I need a story - so here it is! Happy 23rd December!
What ho, Lads!
by Slantedlight
As most right-thinking people should know, it has never been hard to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a Ray(mond Doyle) of sunshine, but on this particular day, in this particular office on one of the more discreet streets in Whitehall, William Andrew Philip Bodie found himself having trouble. His head swivelled from one to the other of his normally worthy colleagues, mouth slightly open with the effort his ears were making to keep up, and his entire body tensed and ready to move. The moment was very likely to come when he would have to pull Agent 4.5 from the room by the scruff of his slightly reddening neck, and he intended to be ready.
“…how you can expect anyone to work under these conditions!” Doyle finished by moving entirely away from his habitual resting place against the filing cabinet and leaned instead on his knuckles against the edge of George Cowley’s desk. The filing cabinet, to Bodie’s eyes, looked somewhat relieved. The desk, on the other hand, now had an enraged man glaring from either side, and he fancied the varnish was trying to cringe slightly.
“I will decide when you work and when you don’t, four-five,” Cowley replied, “Or do you feel you’re ready to be Controller of CI5 yourself by now? Or perhaps this work that you allegedly do has worn you out entirely!”
Bodie joined the desk in cringing inwardly. He knew what was going to come, because it had come before, and before that, and even before that.
“Fine! I’d rather resign than take another order from…”
“You can’t resign, Doyle, you’re suspended! I’ll not have this insolence, and I’ll not have…”
Cowley continued in this ilk for a good thirty seconds while Doyle drew out his CI5 ID and slapped it on the desk, then went through the rather pleasingly dramatic process of drawing his gun from its holster, ejecting the clip and emptying its chamber onto the rich mahogany surface below. Then he glared at Cowley like a man intent on getting fire from two sticks if he had to rub them into sawdust, throw up his hands in disgust, go away and buy matches from the closest shopping facility, and then trudge back ten miles and eventually set the entire forest alight in order to do it.
Cowley simply looked back with an attitude that seemed to suggest that he had finished with Doyle, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up.
Bodie decided that he had better be that somebody before he found himself joining his partner in the dole queue. Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a CI5 controller who has been scorned by one of his top operatives and can still see him. He tugged discreetly at Doyle’s sleeve, and when that didn’t work he placed a sturdy elbow around Doyle’s neck, nodded pleasantly to Cowley, and withdrew from the room in the manner of a ship withdrawing from stormy waters - that is to say with much careening from side to side, and up and down while said storm fought him every inch of the way.
Only when they were safely outside the CI5 building and aimed for the relative safety of the nearest pub did Bodie let him go.
“I hadn’t finished!” Doyle complained, shaking himself free, and then pausing to glare at the sky in disgust. Being London in the magical yuletide month of December, it was of course raining what some people might call stair rods, and Bodie suspected might be a wet Scottish version of thunderbolts.
“Well what did you want to go and do that for?” Bodie asked, turning Doyle again in the direction of the pub. “One of these days the Cow is going to take you seriously, and then what’ll happen?”
“Peace and quiet,” Doyle muttered, very unpeacefully and unquietly, “That’s what. We’ll find somewhere in the country, a cottage…”
“All roses and lavender?”
“…and turn the garden up for vegetables,” Doyle continued balefully.
“Cow parsley?”
Their speed towards the pub increased suddenly, Bodie barely one step ahead when they crossed its magnificent tiled entrance, but he thought he might have got a half-smile from his aggravating partner as they chased up the street, so that was alright.
Doyle headed straight for the bar, and Bodie turned to gaze optimistically around the denizens of The Old Bedouin. They gazed back at him, each according to their wont. Three old men in a corner frowned at him, bent so far over a game of backgammon that it was almost forwardgammon; the various couples dotted around tables either ignored him or sent out rescue me now signals, and the group of lads by the bar who were bandying words like gorillas bandy typewriters broke into the kind of contemplative silence that did not bode well, and probably had something to do with the fact that the only two single women in the bar both had more curves than a scenic railway, and both looked about to head Bodie’s way.
Bodie sighed, and turned towards the corner by the pool table, where the ceiling had been hung with some rather threadbare lengths of silver and green tinsel, in deference to the season. He picked up a cue and hit the white rather desultorily towards the back edge, before sitting down at a nearby table. It had not, he thought more fretfully than usual, been a good day. Not only had Doyle got them suspended - he overlooked that in fact only Doyle was suspended with the certainty of a man determined to spend all day with his partner, chivvying him out of his current grudge, in whatever pubs were required, rather than sitting uselessly at a desk writing reports - but Terry Sugworth had escaped them yet again and the only information his wife had been able to give them was a list of reasons why she had no intention of ever seeing him or hearing from him, or having anything whatsoever to do with him - or uppity coppers who forced their way into her house and tramped their size ten boots all over her nice clean carpet and asked stupid questions. It had been something of a trying half hour. Without Sugworth there was no way they’d get any of the bigger fish to fry - Sugworth was only small fry himself, but he was the kind of minnow that kept its ear to the ground and… well, and its tail to the wind, Bodie concluded gloomily. He paused for a moment, visions of silver-scaled fish contorted into peculiar shapes too much for him, then shook his head. Batter, that was what was needed - golden and glistening and fresh from a deep fat fryer, and piles of thick chips snuggled close.
“’ere.” Doyle’s voice seemed to come out of nowhere, and Bodie realised with a pang that he’d been wool-gathering so thoroughly that he’d been oblivious to everything else. Not like him at all, he liked his sheep comfortably jumping over fences while he was lying lazily in bed, preferably with one arm slung over something warm and the other arm deciding what part of the warm bit to start doing something interesting with.
Just, he remembered, as Doyle put two pints down on the table in front of him, and then turned around to snag a spare chair, giving him an excellent view of… well, an excellent view, just like he liked his Doyle. Well, not jumping over fences, although come to think of it that wasn’t bad either, as long as Bodie was behind him, but…
A chair scraped into place. “Ordered you a fish and chips too - never say I don’t get you anything.”
Sheep segued back into flapping fish, and for just a moment Doyle was diving in and out of waves, complete with a glistening tail. Bodie paused at that thought too. Doyle wouldn’t be wearing his jeans if he had a tail, and if he wasn’t wearing jeans then where would he put his…?
“Oi, Three-seven - stop your gaping. You with us?”
Bodie blinked at the face across the table, all scowl and stubble and hair and eyes - and lips, don’t forget his lips - and managed a nicely self-satisfied smirk. “I don’t gape,” he said, mock-indignant, “I was merely…” he came to a stop, floundering. Christ - more bloody fish. He focused on what he’d been unconsciously staring at. “I was merely trying to decide which of those beauties I was going to consign to the bargain basement and which one would be coming home with me!” he finished triumphantly, nodding to the right of Doyle, where the two women had settled themselves at a nearby table, and were looking wistfully in his direction.
“After that blasting Cowley gave us, you’ve got energy for that?”
Bodie lifted an eyebrow, mostly while he tried to decide what to say next. If you gave in to a bloke like Doyle you’d never hear the end of it - he’d found that out long ago after the first of those six o’ clock jogs around the cemetery. He’d trotted around obediently enough the first time - and the second and third and every time after that, it was true, but he’d be buggered if he was giving in this time.
“I’ve got the energy if they’ve got the plaice,” he said, raising an eyebrow meaningfully, and taking a mouthful of his pint, then realising what he’d said. “I mean place.”
Doyle glared at him suspiciously, but let it slide, apparently ready to play along. “Alright, go on Casanova.” He let out a sigh that was probably supposed to be desultory, but as Bodie was distracted by the way his chest heaved up and down, its more poignant details were entirely lost on him. “Which one of them do you fancy?”
It struck Bodie then, entirely out of the blue - probably the blue smoke haze that hung heavily over the three old men and then spread in every direction and to every insidious crack in the pub walls - exactly what he had to do to win Doyle, his Doyle, co-scourge of CI5, one half of Cowley’s top team, the other side of Bodie’s preferably chocolate coin, back over.
Make him see what he was missing.
“The one on the left,” Bodie said, eyeing the brunette properly now, and even with a certain amount of appreciation, if not as much as he might have before fate picked him, shook him until his eyes bulged, and pointed a big fat finger at Ray Doyle. The girl was attractive enough - curling hair, big eyes, and long legs. Between all that she looked as if she’d been poured into her clothes, and forgotten to say ‘when’. “But I’ll take both of them on if I have to.”
Doyle had dropped the desultory look, dropped his eyebrows, and was now frowning gratifyingly at Bodie across the table. “You serious? That’s your plan for tonight? Christmas eve?”
The trap was baited, the lure was… right, no more fish. The trap was baited. Now he just had to sneak up closer to him without Doyle noticing, and bash him over the head with the old Bodie charm. “Well,” he said, adding just a dash of pathos, a pinch of sorrow and about half a pound of hard-done-by. “I’d been looking forward to getting the old mistletoe out at home while you cooked us that roast chicken you bought. Maybe playing a bit of how’s-your-father-Christmas while it was in the oven. But it’s not like you’re in the Christmas spirit now, is it? No point getting all excited now, is it…” He let his voice twist slightly into his old Wirral accent, and sure enough Doyle’s frown had relaxed enough that it could almost be called concerned. Almost…
“I thought we’d - ” he began.
“Hello.”
It said a lot about Bodie’s state of concentration on the task at hand, that he actually started in his seat when a husky voice slid over to the table beside him, closely followed by its owner, who had brought her own chair and sat down to join them.
“I’m Merry,” the brunette said. “As in Christmas. And this is Arabella.” Her friend breathed in deeply to squeeze between Doyle and the wall and then stood there waiting. The wall looked entirely interested, and Bodie could hardly blame it. Arabella was… statuesque when she stood up. He found himself automatically passing her his chair.
“You could always sit on my knee,” Merry suggested, and giggled in the manner of someone who had been drinking for the last five hours and expected to be offered another drink at any moment.
Bodie hurriedly hooked a stool from another table, and sat down again.
“Mine’s a snowball,” Arabella was saying to Doyle. “Unless Brian’s got the Babycham out from the back fridge yet. If he has I’ll have one of those.” She smiled at Doyle, in what Bodie could only have called a simpering manner. “To start with.”
“Er…” Doyle began politely, standing up himself, and reaching for his wallet. “Two Babychams then… ‘nother pint, mate?” Doyle’s hunted look was not the hunted look that Bodie had intended for him.
“Er…” Bodie began, and for perhaps the first time in his life when offered a pint wanted to shout No, no - no!.
“Oi! Mary! What the ’ell do yer fink yer playin’ at?”
Saved by the gorillas.
There were only four of them, in actual fact, but they surrounded the table effectively anyway, boxing it into the corner like its own little world. Bodie glanced at Doyle, and saw him looking interested.
“Sod off Michael,” Merry said, tossing her hair. “You ‘ad yer chance an’ you blew it!”
“You tryin’ to start sumfink wiv my girl?” Michael turned his attention to Bodie, leaning forward and looking as threatening as a nineteen year old can look when he’s swaying slightly and has clearly spilled his pint down his front at some point in the evening.
“We were just passing the time while she waited for…” Bodie began, but was suddenly distracted by Doyle again. Not in the same way he usually was, not at all, but in a what-the-hell-is-about-to-happen kind of way that made him push back his own chair and clench his fists. Doyle suddenly had that look on him that made strong men want to climb trees and pull them up after them.
“Michael Meddle,” he said, and all four young men took a half-step backwards. “Right here in front of me on just the right night.” He smiled, and Bodie was tempted to retreat by a step or two himself. “We’ve been looking for you…” And then, giving a roar like a tiger who has been on a diet for days and senses temptation in the offing, he leapt forward.
Things became rather hectic after that. Interrupted with his pint mug in hand, Bodie threw it in the face of one of Michael’s enthusiastic friends, which stopped him briefly in his tracks, but earned him a shriek from Merry, who had been sitting somewhat in the firing line. She sprang from her seat, throwing her arms out wide, which meant that her white plastic handbag smacked Bodie across the face first, but then as she turned to storm off also caught Gorilla Three on the side of the head, startling him enough that he slipped in some of the spilled beer, and was out for the count before Bodie could. Count. He was knocked aside far too fast by Arabella, who seemed intent on getting away as fast as she could, which meant that Gorilla Four, who had paused mid-swing at Doyle in appreciation, was pushed unceremoniously into Bodie. Bodie caught him, pushed him back as if he was a particularly unwanted dance partner, and watched him pirouette his way down to join Gorilla Three on the floor.
In brief, there was something of a kerfuffle.
By the time it ended, with the irritating sound of sirens in the distance, Doyle had Michael in handcuffs, the three old men were barracking him on, and the girls were nowhere to be seen. The other three gorillas were a wincing lump on the floor in the corner, and at some point someone had pulled the tinsel down over them. Bodie surveyed the scene and grinned, then caught some of the fall-out from the bartender’s evil eye, and reached into his inside pocket for his R/T.
They took Meddle back to HQ themselves in the end, shoved into the back of the Capri, driving down roads that were finally dark and deserted now that all the last-minute shoppers had gone home, and lit only by the odd branch of Radio Rentals playing Val Doonican’s Christmas eve whatsit. A very satisfied George Cowley waiting for them, full of the joys of the season and the anticipation of interrogating a minor but key local villain, all ready for him to turn grass.
“Aye,” he said. “You’ve done well, the both of you. I suppose you’ll be wanting the rest of the night off, so we’ll save the celebratory drink until after Boxing Day.” His eyes twinkled in the way that only George Cowley’s eyes could, when there was victory and pure malt in the offing.
Two days off? “Does this mean Doyle’s not suspended any more, sir?” Bodie asked quickly and brightly, as their boss began to turn away.
“Och, if I suspended the man every time he told me to we’d never get any work done!” Cowley scoffed. “And by the way - you’ll be buying.”
Bodie could feel Doyle rolling his eyes, and nudged him sharply in case Cowley should look back. There were worse things than being turned into a pillar of salt, and Bodie had no intention of doing any of them on Christmas eve. The night was ending in victory after all, Doyle was still right there beside him, and those girls would never speak to them again.
“I never did get my fish and chips,” he said gloomily, salt bringing him to vinegar.
“We could always go back,” Doyle suggested, but when Bodie looked sideways at him from under his eyelashes - adding a hint of pout for good measure - there was a light in his eyes, and something suspiciously like a smirk on his lips.
“Nah,” he said. “Me mistletoe’s at home going cold - you’d better come back and see if we can revive it. See where we can hang it if it’s alright.” He let his eyes flow smoothly down Doyle’s body, pausing in the best places, the ones with the best potential for kisses, and then back up again.
Doyle grinned, and tipped his head in a come on then gesture, so that Bodie stepped quickly to walk beside him down the hallway. George Cowley’s gentle Scots rumble floated after them from behind locked doors as they went, and all was right with Bodie’s world.
December 2018
Title: What ho, lads!
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Always slash
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Certainly
Disclaimer: The lads are still not mine, but they're still extremely fun to play with.
Notes: Inspired by the 2012 Discovered in the Style of... challenge
hutchynstarsk challenged me to write Pros in the style of P.G. Wodehouse. I thought eeep!, did some preparation reading, came up with an idea or two, and then didn't manage to write the story. Earlier this year, in the amazingly hot summer in Germany, the subject came up in a chat with
firefly1311, and I somehow ended up starting the story. Not quite as I'd originally planned it, but... I was writing it! And it got to nearly finished, and now it's today and I need a story - so here it is! Happy 23rd December!What ho, Lads!
by Slantedlight
As most right-thinking people should know, it has never been hard to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a Ray(mond Doyle) of sunshine, but on this particular day, in this particular office on one of the more discreet streets in Whitehall, William Andrew Philip Bodie found himself having trouble. His head swivelled from one to the other of his normally worthy colleagues, mouth slightly open with the effort his ears were making to keep up, and his entire body tensed and ready to move. The moment was very likely to come when he would have to pull Agent 4.5 from the room by the scruff of his slightly reddening neck, and he intended to be ready.
“…how you can expect anyone to work under these conditions!” Doyle finished by moving entirely away from his habitual resting place against the filing cabinet and leaned instead on his knuckles against the edge of George Cowley’s desk. The filing cabinet, to Bodie’s eyes, looked somewhat relieved. The desk, on the other hand, now had an enraged man glaring from either side, and he fancied the varnish was trying to cringe slightly.
“I will decide when you work and when you don’t, four-five,” Cowley replied, “Or do you feel you’re ready to be Controller of CI5 yourself by now? Or perhaps this work that you allegedly do has worn you out entirely!”
Bodie joined the desk in cringing inwardly. He knew what was going to come, because it had come before, and before that, and even before that.
“Fine! I’d rather resign than take another order from…”
“You can’t resign, Doyle, you’re suspended! I’ll not have this insolence, and I’ll not have…”
Cowley continued in this ilk for a good thirty seconds while Doyle drew out his CI5 ID and slapped it on the desk, then went through the rather pleasingly dramatic process of drawing his gun from its holster, ejecting the clip and emptying its chamber onto the rich mahogany surface below. Then he glared at Cowley like a man intent on getting fire from two sticks if he had to rub them into sawdust, throw up his hands in disgust, go away and buy matches from the closest shopping facility, and then trudge back ten miles and eventually set the entire forest alight in order to do it.
Cowley simply looked back with an attitude that seemed to suggest that he had finished with Doyle, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up.
Bodie decided that he had better be that somebody before he found himself joining his partner in the dole queue. Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a CI5 controller who has been scorned by one of his top operatives and can still see him. He tugged discreetly at Doyle’s sleeve, and when that didn’t work he placed a sturdy elbow around Doyle’s neck, nodded pleasantly to Cowley, and withdrew from the room in the manner of a ship withdrawing from stormy waters - that is to say with much careening from side to side, and up and down while said storm fought him every inch of the way.
Only when they were safely outside the CI5 building and aimed for the relative safety of the nearest pub did Bodie let him go.
“I hadn’t finished!” Doyle complained, shaking himself free, and then pausing to glare at the sky in disgust. Being London in the magical yuletide month of December, it was of course raining what some people might call stair rods, and Bodie suspected might be a wet Scottish version of thunderbolts.
“Well what did you want to go and do that for?” Bodie asked, turning Doyle again in the direction of the pub. “One of these days the Cow is going to take you seriously, and then what’ll happen?”
“Peace and quiet,” Doyle muttered, very unpeacefully and unquietly, “That’s what. We’ll find somewhere in the country, a cottage…”
“All roses and lavender?”
“…and turn the garden up for vegetables,” Doyle continued balefully.
“Cow parsley?”
Their speed towards the pub increased suddenly, Bodie barely one step ahead when they crossed its magnificent tiled entrance, but he thought he might have got a half-smile from his aggravating partner as they chased up the street, so that was alright.
Doyle headed straight for the bar, and Bodie turned to gaze optimistically around the denizens of The Old Bedouin. They gazed back at him, each according to their wont. Three old men in a corner frowned at him, bent so far over a game of backgammon that it was almost forwardgammon; the various couples dotted around tables either ignored him or sent out rescue me now signals, and the group of lads by the bar who were bandying words like gorillas bandy typewriters broke into the kind of contemplative silence that did not bode well, and probably had something to do with the fact that the only two single women in the bar both had more curves than a scenic railway, and both looked about to head Bodie’s way.
Bodie sighed, and turned towards the corner by the pool table, where the ceiling had been hung with some rather threadbare lengths of silver and green tinsel, in deference to the season. He picked up a cue and hit the white rather desultorily towards the back edge, before sitting down at a nearby table. It had not, he thought more fretfully than usual, been a good day. Not only had Doyle got them suspended - he overlooked that in fact only Doyle was suspended with the certainty of a man determined to spend all day with his partner, chivvying him out of his current grudge, in whatever pubs were required, rather than sitting uselessly at a desk writing reports - but Terry Sugworth had escaped them yet again and the only information his wife had been able to give them was a list of reasons why she had no intention of ever seeing him or hearing from him, or having anything whatsoever to do with him - or uppity coppers who forced their way into her house and tramped their size ten boots all over her nice clean carpet and asked stupid questions. It had been something of a trying half hour. Without Sugworth there was no way they’d get any of the bigger fish to fry - Sugworth was only small fry himself, but he was the kind of minnow that kept its ear to the ground and… well, and its tail to the wind, Bodie concluded gloomily. He paused for a moment, visions of silver-scaled fish contorted into peculiar shapes too much for him, then shook his head. Batter, that was what was needed - golden and glistening and fresh from a deep fat fryer, and piles of thick chips snuggled close.
“’ere.” Doyle’s voice seemed to come out of nowhere, and Bodie realised with a pang that he’d been wool-gathering so thoroughly that he’d been oblivious to everything else. Not like him at all, he liked his sheep comfortably jumping over fences while he was lying lazily in bed, preferably with one arm slung over something warm and the other arm deciding what part of the warm bit to start doing something interesting with.
Just, he remembered, as Doyle put two pints down on the table in front of him, and then turned around to snag a spare chair, giving him an excellent view of… well, an excellent view, just like he liked his Doyle. Well, not jumping over fences, although come to think of it that wasn’t bad either, as long as Bodie was behind him, but…
A chair scraped into place. “Ordered you a fish and chips too - never say I don’t get you anything.”
Sheep segued back into flapping fish, and for just a moment Doyle was diving in and out of waves, complete with a glistening tail. Bodie paused at that thought too. Doyle wouldn’t be wearing his jeans if he had a tail, and if he wasn’t wearing jeans then where would he put his…?
“Oi, Three-seven - stop your gaping. You with us?”
Bodie blinked at the face across the table, all scowl and stubble and hair and eyes - and lips, don’t forget his lips - and managed a nicely self-satisfied smirk. “I don’t gape,” he said, mock-indignant, “I was merely…” he came to a stop, floundering. Christ - more bloody fish. He focused on what he’d been unconsciously staring at. “I was merely trying to decide which of those beauties I was going to consign to the bargain basement and which one would be coming home with me!” he finished triumphantly, nodding to the right of Doyle, where the two women had settled themselves at a nearby table, and were looking wistfully in his direction.
“After that blasting Cowley gave us, you’ve got energy for that?”
Bodie lifted an eyebrow, mostly while he tried to decide what to say next. If you gave in to a bloke like Doyle you’d never hear the end of it - he’d found that out long ago after the first of those six o’ clock jogs around the cemetery. He’d trotted around obediently enough the first time - and the second and third and every time after that, it was true, but he’d be buggered if he was giving in this time.
“I’ve got the energy if they’ve got the plaice,” he said, raising an eyebrow meaningfully, and taking a mouthful of his pint, then realising what he’d said. “I mean place.”
Doyle glared at him suspiciously, but let it slide, apparently ready to play along. “Alright, go on Casanova.” He let out a sigh that was probably supposed to be desultory, but as Bodie was distracted by the way his chest heaved up and down, its more poignant details were entirely lost on him. “Which one of them do you fancy?”
It struck Bodie then, entirely out of the blue - probably the blue smoke haze that hung heavily over the three old men and then spread in every direction and to every insidious crack in the pub walls - exactly what he had to do to win Doyle, his Doyle, co-scourge of CI5, one half of Cowley’s top team, the other side of Bodie’s preferably chocolate coin, back over.
Make him see what he was missing.
“The one on the left,” Bodie said, eyeing the brunette properly now, and even with a certain amount of appreciation, if not as much as he might have before fate picked him, shook him until his eyes bulged, and pointed a big fat finger at Ray Doyle. The girl was attractive enough - curling hair, big eyes, and long legs. Between all that she looked as if she’d been poured into her clothes, and forgotten to say ‘when’. “But I’ll take both of them on if I have to.”
Doyle had dropped the desultory look, dropped his eyebrows, and was now frowning gratifyingly at Bodie across the table. “You serious? That’s your plan for tonight? Christmas eve?”
The trap was baited, the lure was… right, no more fish. The trap was baited. Now he just had to sneak up closer to him without Doyle noticing, and bash him over the head with the old Bodie charm. “Well,” he said, adding just a dash of pathos, a pinch of sorrow and about half a pound of hard-done-by. “I’d been looking forward to getting the old mistletoe out at home while you cooked us that roast chicken you bought. Maybe playing a bit of how’s-your-father-Christmas while it was in the oven. But it’s not like you’re in the Christmas spirit now, is it? No point getting all excited now, is it…” He let his voice twist slightly into his old Wirral accent, and sure enough Doyle’s frown had relaxed enough that it could almost be called concerned. Almost…
“I thought we’d - ” he began.
“Hello.”
It said a lot about Bodie’s state of concentration on the task at hand, that he actually started in his seat when a husky voice slid over to the table beside him, closely followed by its owner, who had brought her own chair and sat down to join them.
“I’m Merry,” the brunette said. “As in Christmas. And this is Arabella.” Her friend breathed in deeply to squeeze between Doyle and the wall and then stood there waiting. The wall looked entirely interested, and Bodie could hardly blame it. Arabella was… statuesque when she stood up. He found himself automatically passing her his chair.
“You could always sit on my knee,” Merry suggested, and giggled in the manner of someone who had been drinking for the last five hours and expected to be offered another drink at any moment.
Bodie hurriedly hooked a stool from another table, and sat down again.
“Mine’s a snowball,” Arabella was saying to Doyle. “Unless Brian’s got the Babycham out from the back fridge yet. If he has I’ll have one of those.” She smiled at Doyle, in what Bodie could only have called a simpering manner. “To start with.”
“Er…” Doyle began politely, standing up himself, and reaching for his wallet. “Two Babychams then… ‘nother pint, mate?” Doyle’s hunted look was not the hunted look that Bodie had intended for him.
“Er…” Bodie began, and for perhaps the first time in his life when offered a pint wanted to shout No, no - no!.
“Oi! Mary! What the ’ell do yer fink yer playin’ at?”
Saved by the gorillas.
There were only four of them, in actual fact, but they surrounded the table effectively anyway, boxing it into the corner like its own little world. Bodie glanced at Doyle, and saw him looking interested.
“Sod off Michael,” Merry said, tossing her hair. “You ‘ad yer chance an’ you blew it!”
“You tryin’ to start sumfink wiv my girl?” Michael turned his attention to Bodie, leaning forward and looking as threatening as a nineteen year old can look when he’s swaying slightly and has clearly spilled his pint down his front at some point in the evening.
“We were just passing the time while she waited for…” Bodie began, but was suddenly distracted by Doyle again. Not in the same way he usually was, not at all, but in a what-the-hell-is-about-to-happen kind of way that made him push back his own chair and clench his fists. Doyle suddenly had that look on him that made strong men want to climb trees and pull them up after them.
“Michael Meddle,” he said, and all four young men took a half-step backwards. “Right here in front of me on just the right night.” He smiled, and Bodie was tempted to retreat by a step or two himself. “We’ve been looking for you…” And then, giving a roar like a tiger who has been on a diet for days and senses temptation in the offing, he leapt forward.
Things became rather hectic after that. Interrupted with his pint mug in hand, Bodie threw it in the face of one of Michael’s enthusiastic friends, which stopped him briefly in his tracks, but earned him a shriek from Merry, who had been sitting somewhat in the firing line. She sprang from her seat, throwing her arms out wide, which meant that her white plastic handbag smacked Bodie across the face first, but then as she turned to storm off also caught Gorilla Three on the side of the head, startling him enough that he slipped in some of the spilled beer, and was out for the count before Bodie could. Count. He was knocked aside far too fast by Arabella, who seemed intent on getting away as fast as she could, which meant that Gorilla Four, who had paused mid-swing at Doyle in appreciation, was pushed unceremoniously into Bodie. Bodie caught him, pushed him back as if he was a particularly unwanted dance partner, and watched him pirouette his way down to join Gorilla Three on the floor.
In brief, there was something of a kerfuffle.
By the time it ended, with the irritating sound of sirens in the distance, Doyle had Michael in handcuffs, the three old men were barracking him on, and the girls were nowhere to be seen. The other three gorillas were a wincing lump on the floor in the corner, and at some point someone had pulled the tinsel down over them. Bodie surveyed the scene and grinned, then caught some of the fall-out from the bartender’s evil eye, and reached into his inside pocket for his R/T.
They took Meddle back to HQ themselves in the end, shoved into the back of the Capri, driving down roads that were finally dark and deserted now that all the last-minute shoppers had gone home, and lit only by the odd branch of Radio Rentals playing Val Doonican’s Christmas eve whatsit. A very satisfied George Cowley waiting for them, full of the joys of the season and the anticipation of interrogating a minor but key local villain, all ready for him to turn grass.
“Aye,” he said. “You’ve done well, the both of you. I suppose you’ll be wanting the rest of the night off, so we’ll save the celebratory drink until after Boxing Day.” His eyes twinkled in the way that only George Cowley’s eyes could, when there was victory and pure malt in the offing.
Two days off? “Does this mean Doyle’s not suspended any more, sir?” Bodie asked quickly and brightly, as their boss began to turn away.
“Och, if I suspended the man every time he told me to we’d never get any work done!” Cowley scoffed. “And by the way - you’ll be buying.”
Bodie could feel Doyle rolling his eyes, and nudged him sharply in case Cowley should look back. There were worse things than being turned into a pillar of salt, and Bodie had no intention of doing any of them on Christmas eve. The night was ending in victory after all, Doyle was still right there beside him, and those girls would never speak to them again.
“I never did get my fish and chips,” he said gloomily, salt bringing him to vinegar.
“We could always go back,” Doyle suggested, but when Bodie looked sideways at him from under his eyelashes - adding a hint of pout for good measure - there was a light in his eyes, and something suspiciously like a smirk on his lips.
“Nah,” he said. “Me mistletoe’s at home going cold - you’d better come back and see if we can revive it. See where we can hang it if it’s alright.” He let his eyes flow smoothly down Doyle’s body, pausing in the best places, the ones with the best potential for kisses, and then back up again.
Doyle grinned, and tipped his head in a come on then gesture, so that Bodie stepped quickly to walk beside him down the hallway. George Cowley’s gentle Scots rumble floated after them from behind locked doors as they went, and all was right with Bodie’s world.
December 2018
Title: What ho, lads!
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Always slash
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Certainly
Disclaimer: The lads are still not mine, but they're still extremely fun to play with.
Notes: Inspired by the 2012 Discovered in the Style of... challenge
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