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discoveredinaljHappy New Year everyone! A few people will have read this story already this Christmas, so I hope this doesn't feel too much like cheating, but hopefully I'll make another post later today too. For now...
No Such Thing as Father Christmas
by Slantedlight
Doyle didn’t believe in Christmas. He’d stopped believing a long time ago, sometime around eight years old, when his dad had beat up his mum that last time on Christmas Eve and gone out to get drunk. When his mum had called social services to come and get her son, because she was scared that things would get worse when her husband came home again. When she’d tried to tell him that of course Father Christmas would find him, and had still been trying to hide the bar of chocolate that had caused that night’s problem in the first place. He’d seen her slip it to the woman with the red scarf and the tired eyes, while the man was talking to him about what was going to happen. His mum hadn’t come with him, she’d chosen her husband. He hadn’t believed in Father Christmas then, and he wasn’t about to change his mind now.
His lighter was a hard presence in his back pocket, and except for his gun they hadn’t bothered to search him, so his lock picks were still safely in his inside jacket pocket, and his knife there in his front pocket. None of them would do him any good, because they’d handcuffed him solidly to the thick pipe that ran all around the old cellar about a foot from the floor. One of his arms was jammed awkwardly between the pipe and the wall, his hands cuffed under it, against the cold concrete, so that his slouch was twisted and uncomfortable, and there was nothing in the room that he could reach, let alone use as a weapon. O’Connor had looked down on him and laughed, given him a kick that landed hard on one thigh, and then left, turning off the light on his way out. Some Christmas bloody eve this was.
He’d tried working his way the length of the pipe on his knees, looking for some sort of joint, or bolt or something that he could use to try and force the cuffs apart, and now the bracket he’d been trying to brace against dug into his arm as he rested. He’d have another go in a few minutes, because it was either that or try to break his hand and force it through. O’Connor’s idea of Christmas fun was to let him stew on the idea that he’d run through all the bullets in his gun, shooting him where it wouldn’t kill him, before administering the coup de grâce.
It wouldn’t come to that, he tried to tell himself. They’d been close anyway to finding O’Connor’s hideout, and if he hadn’t been stupid enough to believe that Pete Nibley was actually going to give him useful information this time, if hadn’t come on his own because Pete was harmless, was a mouse of a man – well, Jill’s new computer had narrowed it down to half a dozen addresses. Nah, it wouldn’t be long now and the cavalry would come charging in. He just didn’t want to be trussed like goose for Christmas dinner when they got here.
But it had been a hell of a long wait, and the natives above had been stomping and pacing up and down for the last half hour, building themselves up to something. Doyle had a nasty feeling that they weren’t wrapping Christmas presents.
He took a breath, leaned hard on the pipe to brace himself, and twisted back to kneeling again, ready for another go at the cuffs. Too much thinking, that was his problem. Bodie’d told him, time and again. He’d told himself. Thinking about it – that’s worse than doing it. There was only one doing he could manage right now, and so he found the weak spot on the cuffs again, lined it up, and…
There was a sudden gunshot from above, and he jerked around wildly, his back to the pipes, and listening desperately. There’d been no doors bursting open, no shouts, no rush of footsteps around the house, just O’Connor and his mob getting more and more restless. A falling out amongst thieves? If one of them was dead, that only left three to deal with, but on the other hand if one of them was dead they’d probably want to get out of there fast.
Any hope they’d forgotten him died when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He turned and pulled desperately on the cuffs again, trying to focus pressure on their weak spots, their joins, feeling panic give him extra strength. Whoever it was had reached the bottom of the stairs now, was paused outside the locked door of Doyle’s room, but the metal had given slightly, he’d swear it had, he just had to pull harder.
The key rattled to a turn in the doorlock, Doyle braced his foot more firmly where wall met floor under the pipe and pulled…
“What are you doing down there, Raymondo?”
Bodie, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, and waving his Magnum casually in the air.
The tension fell out of Doyle all at once, and he slumped back down to the floor. “That you making all that racket?” His voice was husky, as if it had forgotten how to work properly.
“Racket?” Bodie flicked the safety and slid his gun into his back waistband. “Not a shot fired and we got every one of O’Connor’s little elves. The Cow is going to be very pleased.” He reached into another pocket, pulled out a handcuff key, and bent down to Doyle’s wrists.
“Not a shot fired?” Doyle closed his eyes, breathed in the scent of Bodie, of faint aftershave and sweat, of the shampoo that he used, of Lifebuoy soap somewhere underneath it all. “You sure about that?”
“Ah, that was your Nibley bloke getting all vengeful when we had O’Connor sewn up.”
“He didn’t…?” The handcuffs came free, and Doyle winced, shook them off and started to carefully drag his arm up from behind the pipe.
“He missed.”
“Ah. Suppose you can’t have everything.” His wrists were red raw and blue bruised at the same time where he’d been pulling on the cuffs for what felt like hours.
“Yeah… You alright?”
“Nothing broken,” Doyle said, but he stayed down all the same, massaging his wrists, not sure that his legs would quite hold him yet. “Clean up?”
“Murph’s team are taking ‘em back to our finest hotel suite, and Lucas and McCabe are on detail. I’m supposed to…”
“Bodie! Doyle!” Cowley appeared in the doorway, eyes taking them in quickly, flicking around the room and over the discarded handcuffs by the pipe, then back up to stare more intently at them. “You seem to have things in hand, Bodie.”
Bodie reached down to Doyle’s arm, pulling him up to his feet, kept one hand around his forearm, the other a comforting presence on Doyle’s back. “Yes sir. Doyle’s fine, sir. Nice and rested.”
Doyle glared at him, let himself lean slightly. “You got them all, sir? Four of them?”
“Five including your informer. I think we need to have a wee talk about protocol, don’t we Doyle?”
There was no bloody protocol about going to see a snitch on your own, and Cowley knew it. He’d called it in… Alright, he’d forgotten to call it in because he’d been on the high street when Nibley’s call came in, and that group of tinsel-clad girls had been staring at him when he pulled out his R/T, and by the time he was somewhere quieter…
“Yes, sir.”
“Well.” He looked Doyle up and down disapprovingly, no doubt taking in the smeared dust and dirt that coated his clothes, the blood that had dripped down his face and dried from where O’Connor had hit him with the butt of his own Browning. “You’re in no presentable state for anyone, 4.5.” He turned to Bodie. “Take him home, get him checked out and cleaned up. I’ll have your reports on my desk by nine tomorrow morning, gentlemen.”
Christmas day. Wonderful.
Cowley retreated up the stairs, and Doyle glanced at his watch, but the glass had cracked and frosted all across the face. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Five thirty-three. If you were wanting the shops, you’re too late.”
“All I want is a bath,” Doyle said longingly. “Hot water, soft towel, something to eat and a warm bed… ”
“I’ve had the central heating and hot water on all day, towels are fresh from the airing cupboard, and this is your lucky night, my little Christmas cracker!” Bodie steered him in Cowley’s footsteps. “Roast chicken, roast potatoes, mash, all the nasty Brussel sprouts your little heart could desire, and I’ve got you an electric blanket under the tree.”
“Under the tree? You’ll be telling me you’ve decorated next…”
“Can’t have Christmas without decorations!” Bodie sounded shocked and gleeful at the same time, and he didn’t take his hands off Doyle even as they climbed the stairs. “There’s tinsel round the window, and cards on the mantelpiece, and…”
Doyle took the steps one at a time, the leg he’d been kicked on reluctant to do more than it had to, and despite the cold, and the forthcoming dressing-down from Cowley, and the reports they’d have to bloody write, he found himself starting to smile. He didn’t believe in Christmas, but he believed in Bodie.
Christmas 2019.
Title: No Such Thing as Father Christmas
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Always slash!
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Certainly. *g*
Disclaimer: Bodie, Doyle and the whole CI5-verse belong to someone else, and I'm just playing for free and for fun...
No Such Thing as Father Christmas
by Slantedlight
Doyle didn’t believe in Christmas. He’d stopped believing a long time ago, sometime around eight years old, when his dad had beat up his mum that last time on Christmas Eve and gone out to get drunk. When his mum had called social services to come and get her son, because she was scared that things would get worse when her husband came home again. When she’d tried to tell him that of course Father Christmas would find him, and had still been trying to hide the bar of chocolate that had caused that night’s problem in the first place. He’d seen her slip it to the woman with the red scarf and the tired eyes, while the man was talking to him about what was going to happen. His mum hadn’t come with him, she’d chosen her husband. He hadn’t believed in Father Christmas then, and he wasn’t about to change his mind now.
His lighter was a hard presence in his back pocket, and except for his gun they hadn’t bothered to search him, so his lock picks were still safely in his inside jacket pocket, and his knife there in his front pocket. None of them would do him any good, because they’d handcuffed him solidly to the thick pipe that ran all around the old cellar about a foot from the floor. One of his arms was jammed awkwardly between the pipe and the wall, his hands cuffed under it, against the cold concrete, so that his slouch was twisted and uncomfortable, and there was nothing in the room that he could reach, let alone use as a weapon. O’Connor had looked down on him and laughed, given him a kick that landed hard on one thigh, and then left, turning off the light on his way out. Some Christmas bloody eve this was.
He’d tried working his way the length of the pipe on his knees, looking for some sort of joint, or bolt or something that he could use to try and force the cuffs apart, and now the bracket he’d been trying to brace against dug into his arm as he rested. He’d have another go in a few minutes, because it was either that or try to break his hand and force it through. O’Connor’s idea of Christmas fun was to let him stew on the idea that he’d run through all the bullets in his gun, shooting him where it wouldn’t kill him, before administering the coup de grâce.
It wouldn’t come to that, he tried to tell himself. They’d been close anyway to finding O’Connor’s hideout, and if he hadn’t been stupid enough to believe that Pete Nibley was actually going to give him useful information this time, if hadn’t come on his own because Pete was harmless, was a mouse of a man – well, Jill’s new computer had narrowed it down to half a dozen addresses. Nah, it wouldn’t be long now and the cavalry would come charging in. He just didn’t want to be trussed like goose for Christmas dinner when they got here.
But it had been a hell of a long wait, and the natives above had been stomping and pacing up and down for the last half hour, building themselves up to something. Doyle had a nasty feeling that they weren’t wrapping Christmas presents.
He took a breath, leaned hard on the pipe to brace himself, and twisted back to kneeling again, ready for another go at the cuffs. Too much thinking, that was his problem. Bodie’d told him, time and again. He’d told himself. Thinking about it – that’s worse than doing it. There was only one doing he could manage right now, and so he found the weak spot on the cuffs again, lined it up, and…
There was a sudden gunshot from above, and he jerked around wildly, his back to the pipes, and listening desperately. There’d been no doors bursting open, no shouts, no rush of footsteps around the house, just O’Connor and his mob getting more and more restless. A falling out amongst thieves? If one of them was dead, that only left three to deal with, but on the other hand if one of them was dead they’d probably want to get out of there fast.
Any hope they’d forgotten him died when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He turned and pulled desperately on the cuffs again, trying to focus pressure on their weak spots, their joins, feeling panic give him extra strength. Whoever it was had reached the bottom of the stairs now, was paused outside the locked door of Doyle’s room, but the metal had given slightly, he’d swear it had, he just had to pull harder.
The key rattled to a turn in the doorlock, Doyle braced his foot more firmly where wall met floor under the pipe and pulled…
“What are you doing down there, Raymondo?”
Bodie, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, and waving his Magnum casually in the air.
The tension fell out of Doyle all at once, and he slumped back down to the floor. “That you making all that racket?” His voice was husky, as if it had forgotten how to work properly.
“Racket?” Bodie flicked the safety and slid his gun into his back waistband. “Not a shot fired and we got every one of O’Connor’s little elves. The Cow is going to be very pleased.” He reached into another pocket, pulled out a handcuff key, and bent down to Doyle’s wrists.
“Not a shot fired?” Doyle closed his eyes, breathed in the scent of Bodie, of faint aftershave and sweat, of the shampoo that he used, of Lifebuoy soap somewhere underneath it all. “You sure about that?”
“Ah, that was your Nibley bloke getting all vengeful when we had O’Connor sewn up.”
“He didn’t…?” The handcuffs came free, and Doyle winced, shook them off and started to carefully drag his arm up from behind the pipe.
“He missed.”
“Ah. Suppose you can’t have everything.” His wrists were red raw and blue bruised at the same time where he’d been pulling on the cuffs for what felt like hours.
“Yeah… You alright?”
“Nothing broken,” Doyle said, but he stayed down all the same, massaging his wrists, not sure that his legs would quite hold him yet. “Clean up?”
“Murph’s team are taking ‘em back to our finest hotel suite, and Lucas and McCabe are on detail. I’m supposed to…”
“Bodie! Doyle!” Cowley appeared in the doorway, eyes taking them in quickly, flicking around the room and over the discarded handcuffs by the pipe, then back up to stare more intently at them. “You seem to have things in hand, Bodie.”
Bodie reached down to Doyle’s arm, pulling him up to his feet, kept one hand around his forearm, the other a comforting presence on Doyle’s back. “Yes sir. Doyle’s fine, sir. Nice and rested.”
Doyle glared at him, let himself lean slightly. “You got them all, sir? Four of them?”
“Five including your informer. I think we need to have a wee talk about protocol, don’t we Doyle?”
There was no bloody protocol about going to see a snitch on your own, and Cowley knew it. He’d called it in… Alright, he’d forgotten to call it in because he’d been on the high street when Nibley’s call came in, and that group of tinsel-clad girls had been staring at him when he pulled out his R/T, and by the time he was somewhere quieter…
“Yes, sir.”
“Well.” He looked Doyle up and down disapprovingly, no doubt taking in the smeared dust and dirt that coated his clothes, the blood that had dripped down his face and dried from where O’Connor had hit him with the butt of his own Browning. “You’re in no presentable state for anyone, 4.5.” He turned to Bodie. “Take him home, get him checked out and cleaned up. I’ll have your reports on my desk by nine tomorrow morning, gentlemen.”
Christmas day. Wonderful.
Cowley retreated up the stairs, and Doyle glanced at his watch, but the glass had cracked and frosted all across the face. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Five thirty-three. If you were wanting the shops, you’re too late.”
“All I want is a bath,” Doyle said longingly. “Hot water, soft towel, something to eat and a warm bed… ”
“I’ve had the central heating and hot water on all day, towels are fresh from the airing cupboard, and this is your lucky night, my little Christmas cracker!” Bodie steered him in Cowley’s footsteps. “Roast chicken, roast potatoes, mash, all the nasty Brussel sprouts your little heart could desire, and I’ve got you an electric blanket under the tree.”
“Under the tree? You’ll be telling me you’ve decorated next…”
“Can’t have Christmas without decorations!” Bodie sounded shocked and gleeful at the same time, and he didn’t take his hands off Doyle even as they climbed the stairs. “There’s tinsel round the window, and cards on the mantelpiece, and…”
Doyle took the steps one at a time, the leg he’d been kicked on reluctant to do more than it had to, and despite the cold, and the forthcoming dressing-down from Cowley, and the reports they’d have to bloody write, he found himself starting to smile. He didn’t believe in Christmas, but he believed in Bodie.
Christmas 2019.
Title: No Such Thing as Father Christmas
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Always slash!
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Certainly. *g*
Disclaimer: Bodie, Doyle and the whole CI5-verse belong to someone else, and I'm just playing for free and for fun...
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Date: 2020-01-01 01:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-01 09:30 pm (UTC)Basically my Bodie and Doyle can't exist without actually being in love with each other - whether they know it or not. *g*
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Date: 2020-01-02 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-01 02:29 pm (UTC)Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ (https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=303).
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Date: 2020-01-01 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-01 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-01 10:36 pm (UTC)My heart! Perfect, perfect, perfect. Thank you for the lovely present!
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Date: 2020-01-06 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-02 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 11:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-02 05:16 am (UTC)Thank you!
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Date: 2020-01-06 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-02 11:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-02 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2020-01-03 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-08 12:42 am (UTC)This is a great read - a hurt Doyle, a rescuing Bodie and their banter is perfect! Everything I look for in a Pro's story.
Thanks for this.
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Date: 2020-01-18 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-13 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-18 02:23 am (UTC)Thank you! *g*
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Date: 2020-01-17 06:22 pm (UTC)Happy new year!
P x
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Date: 2020-01-18 02:24 am (UTC)I''m so glad you liked this - thank you! *g* I had a good break too - can't believe I'm already back at work though...! Happy new year to you too! *g*