![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
byslantedlight.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
discoveredinaljI am, naturally, on the last minute, but on the bright side - I made the deadline, and I have written Pros fic. *g*
Reality is Easy
by Slantedight
London was shrouded in mist as Doyle tooled slowly through the traffic up the Fulham Road, heading for Bodie’s, riding on automatic, even as he weaved in and out between the cars to get ahead. He’d told Ellie he was going to his old gym, would meet up with a mate and go for a few pints afterwards for old time’s sake, that she shouldn’t wait up for him, and he’d see her tomorrow. She’d smiled as if she understood, but he’d seen that she didn’t really, that she wished he’d be coming home to her, that they’d sleep together for even a few hours that night.
“Nah,” he’d said. “You don’t take Dave Bentley to the pub for just one. You have a quiet night, love.” He made himself grin at her, turned on the twinkle and the charm. “Get your energy back for the night after.”
“Ray!” She was delighted to be scandalised, to let herself be pulled into a long hug and to feel Doyle’s lips on her neck, and her throat and up to her mouth, before he pulled on his jacket, grabbed his helmet, and left her on the steps outside her flat, her figure growing smaller in his mirror until he turned onto the main road, and she was gone.
He couldn’t stop thinking of Morgan; Morgan and Alice, and little Holly, and the next one whose name he’d never even known.
He’d been thinking of them for weeks now, when Ellie kissed him, when she nuzzled against him as they sat on the sofa watching television, and he thought of them sometimes as he sank himself into her, closing his eyes into the sweet peaches-and-cream scent of her, only to see Alice’s accusing eyes as he came. He thought that Ellie should have known, should have felt it somehow, felt him flinch or cringe or turn away, but she just sighed and then pressed herself upwards against him more and more urgently, until she came too, a lonely gasp in the night.
She thought he was worn out from work, long hours at the bike shop and a demanding boss, and it made her more determined to look after him, to tell him things, to connect with him by telling him stories from her past, about her friends. About her job. Her dad’s business.
He listened, and he teased her, and he kissed her, and sometimes he felt so lousy with it all that he really thought he’d have to give it up. He’d turn up one day in front of Cowley’s desk instead of Mike’s Bikes, and do nothing more than shake his head slowly. He couldn’t do this. Instead he clocked in, he fixed BSAs and Nortons and Moto Guzzis, he talked to Mike whenever he could, made himself trustworthy, one of the lads who just happened to be sleeping with Mike’s sister, and he went home to Ellie and let her make him dinner and nuzzle against him, and tell him more things.
Now she wanted to take him home for Christmas with her family, with Neil and Barbara and Mike and the rest of the Wigginses, and he’d heard the old man’s smile when he reported it, even through the telephone, all the way from one side of London to the other.
“Good, Doyle, good,” Cowley had said, had practically purred. “You’re getting somewhere. I know it takes time, but keep at it, man, it’s paying off.” Praising him, cajoling him.
Bastard.
Morgan was dead, but not before Alice’s life had been torn apart, and god knows what it would all still do to little Holly and what’s-his-name.
Ellie had taken him to meet her sister yesterday, had cooed and doved over Sarah’s five month old baby, had insisted that Doyle hold her. He’d done it. He’d held the baby, who’d wriggled at him and dribbled into his shoulder, and he’d let Ellie catch his eye and smile.
They’d been going out seven months now, and she’d all but moved in with him. She was waiting for the next step, and the more he kissed her and listened to her and spent his evenings watching telly with her, the more she was expecting it.
The snarl-up on the road loosened briefly, and he gunned the Norton as hard as he dared, cut up a van that wasn’t moving as fast as it should have been, and turned into Onslow Road, then a right and another one, and then finally, finally he was sliding into a space next to the curb, kicking the stand down and pausing to peer up at Bodie’s flat.
The aspidistra was standing proud in the window, so he was home and alone, thank god – or George Cowley, more like. It had been a couple of weeks since they’d managed to snatch some time together, and that hadn’t been more than half an hour when Doyle had found himself delivering a bike in the area. Bodie had looked – well, Bodie had looked good. A sight for sore eyes, not that he would have said that out loud. He’d been lucky it was the end of the day, cursing that he’d agreed to meet Ellie to go to the cinema after work.
Tonight they’d have all night. He needed all night, maybe then he could go back to the flat and to Ellie and carry on. He’d come too far to give up now.
o0o
Bodie took one look at him and headed over to his drinks cupboard, poured them both a whisky. “Tricia Rannock,” he said laconically, as he handed Doyle the glass.
Doyle stared stonily at him.
“Marina Todd, Joanne Becker, Isobel Janislav.”
Doyle raised the glass to his lips, drank, said nothing.
“All girls…”
“You think I don’t know who they are!”
“All girls,” Bodie went on doggedly, “Who got on the wrong side of Neil Wiggens and lived to pay the price.” Sulphuric acid it had been, mostly in the face.
“And all the others who didn’t live,” Doyle snarled. “I know why I’m doing the job, Bodie! It doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Bodie knew his partner. “Ellie’s getting to you.”
“And you’re surprised.”
Bodie shrugged. She probably wouldn’t have got to him, in fact, but it was no good telling Doyle that. No one had a father and brother as dirty as Neil Wiggens, staunchly supported by his well-connected wife, Ellie’s mother, and knew nothing about it, was entirely innocent.
“It’s a dirty job,” he said instead, placating.
“It’s a lousy job,” Doyle said viciously, turning towards the window before remembering that he shouldn’t be seen here and jerking away again. He helped himself to more whisky instead.
“Report, 4.5?” Bodie asked, since they were here, and because maybe it would nudge Doyle back onto the straight and narrow of the job, their dirty, lousy job.
Doyle swigged his drink, and glared, but he began talking, practical because Bodie needed to know. “Mike’s in it up to his ears,” he began. “We’ll need to get forensics onto the patch behind the garage as soon as we can when it’s over – back left corner. He’s shifty when the lads talk about O’Connell and Pryors, and he can’t keep his eyes off the place. Fielding was over on Tuesday…”
He should probably have turned the mike on, but Doyle had needed to talk faster than Bodie could have got set up, so he filed it all away as best he could, ready to pass on to Cowley later.
“Any news on an arms drop?” he asked at last, when Doyle had wound himself down.
Doyle shook his head. “Nothing unusual happening that I can see. Three weeks till Christmas and nothing fucking happening at all.”
“It’ll happen.” He had to think it would happen, that Ray would be coming home to him sooner rather than later.
“’e’s too careful. Cowley’s gone for the wrong game with him, the wrong way in. Ellie’s not involved.”
“Oh come on, she’s his secretary! Secretaries know everything!”
“Not this one.” Doyle shook his head, drained his glass and headed back for a third. “All she’s got is crumbs – names and contacts, and yeah we could pick ‘em up and shake ‘em, but that’s not going to get us Wiggens!” He gestured at the bottle. “You want…?”
Bodie was there before he could finish, crowding up close and taking the glass out of Doyle’s hand. “Nah. For what I want you need to be nice and sober and able to line up on a target.” He’d been fantasising for what felt like forever about that trick Doyle did where he sat down on Bodie’s cock and then slid slowly up again, and down again, and…
“I can do that drunk,” Doyle protested, but he let Bodie shut his mouth for him with a kiss, with busy hands and the hard press of his body, and then with breath and with whispers in his ear.
o0o
Mike’s Bikes was decorated with red and gold tinsel around the windows when Doyle went in on Monday, there was plastic holly with berries in a vase on the counter, and Mike was sitting at his desk in the office behind reception, looking as festive as his tightly muscled physique would let him in a bright red jumper beside a miniature plastic Christmas tree.
Doyle wasn’t feeling exactly festive, but he felt a lot better than he had on Saturday night, with the memory of Bodie’s irreverent grin and insatiable appetites to keep him warm. “It’ll be over sooner than you think, Ray,” Bodie’d said, arms banding him tightly, as if willing him to believe it. “Home here for Christmas, alright? Not with that mob…” And it had been a nice thought, if unlikely, and he’d fallen asleep on it, and woken to a feeling of well-being he’d almost forgotten existed.
Best thing he’d ever done, taking Bodie up on his challenge of sex and forever, and everything else the great lump had meant at the same time. It kept him going now, through the longest and deepest undercover op he’d ever been sent on, let him slide behind the counter and pause in the door frame to grin at Mike.
“Didn’t know you were moonlighting as one of Santa’s little helpers,” he said. “Did you…”
“Blame that bloody sister of mine,” Mike growled, looking up, all dark hair and eyes and scowl. “She was round here whinging at me all weekend.”
She’d spent most of Sunday making Doyle a home-cooked roast dinner, complete with golden syrup pudding and custard for afters, and he hadn’t left her side until about four on the Saturday.
“Thought you were taking her to that new Italian – what happened to that? Where did you bugger off to, anyway?”
“Next Saturday,” Doyle said easily. “Couldn’t get a table until then. Mate was on at me to try out his gym, and Ellie said she had presents to wrap, so…” He held Mike’s gaze, one man to another - no way am I getting involved in wrapping presents.
Mike grunted and looked away. “You’ve got that Manxman to do today. Parts come in alright last week?”
“Yeah.” Back to work it was, not like Mike – usually it was a good ten minutes of his latest conquest and her assets. Doyle looked a bit closer, surprised a nervous twitch in Mike’s eye when he looked back up. “Everything alright, mate?”
“Why shouldn’t it be alright? I thought you had work to do?”
Apparently the latest conquest was less of a conquest than Mike had expected. Doyle shrugged, rifled the worksheets until he found the Manxman job, and took the paperwork through with him to the main workshop.
o0o
It was three days later that Benny showed up at the bike shop, wanting to talk to someone about the best way to service his gleaming Suzuki. Joe was called out first, the grizzled voice of experience, with a good twenty years on Doyle’s own CI5-solid CV, and came back in bitching about hooligans who didn’t respect their elders. Trevor and Charlie, both anticipating their twenty-first birthdays, smirked behind their carburettors as Mike waved Doyle out to the forecourt in Joe’s stead.
“Where the hell did you get this” Doyle asked first, crouching down so that the bike shielded them from the shop windows. “There’s never a Katana in the car pool!”
“Borrowed it from a mate,” Benny said with a quick grin, dropping down beside him. “Should be alright as long as I remember to tell him tomorrow.”
Doyle slanted him a look. “Hope it’s not the same bloke who wrecked that Ducati.”
Benny shook his head, gestured generally to the bike in case they were being watched, began to speak and then stopped, looking carefully at Doyle. He sniffed and started again. “Look. When you see Bodie, don’t be surprised.”
“You what?” Doyle’s breath caught. What the hell had his partner done now? And more to the point, why did Cowley think he was likely to see him?
Benny stood up and walked around the other side of the bike, so that his back was to the window, and his eyes were on Doyle. “He’s done something not entirely clever on your behalf, and it didn’t work out the way he expected. We’re going to get him out, but it’s going to take a few hours to arrange things so we don’t blow your cover.”
Fuck my cover, Doyle thought. “Get him out of where?”
“So what do you think then? Full service or just a half?” Mike’s strident voice broke in on them, footsteps and Benny turned around and moved further in front of Doyle as the man emerged from the shop, giving him valuable extra seconds to arrange his face.
“Still thinking about it,” Benny said brightly. “I can’t remember what the bloke said it had last time, but I’ve got the paperwork somewhere. I’ll look it up and give you a call.”
Doyle stood up. “You do that. Let me know what you want done and I’ll be there.”
Benny nodded to him, kicked the bike off its stand, and wheeled it away into the street without another backward glance.
“Snotty-nosed rich kid,” Doyle said, watching him go.
“It’s the rich ones pay your wages,” Mike said. “He’d better be back.”
“He will be,” Doyle said. If he wasn’t, and something happened to Bodie… What the hell had Bodie done now?
Mike shuffled around to face him, looked him hard in the eye. “Actually I want a word with you, Doyle. Come and see me at lunchtime, we’ll go and find a pint somewhere.”
“Alright.” He managed to keep his voice even with an effort. “As long as it’s not that piss at the White Horse.”
o0o
Bodie came around somewhere dark and smelling strongly of oil, thought for a minute he might choke on the cloying sweetness of it, closed his eyes again and managed to swallow it down. His head throbbed, and something wet was dripping its way down his face. Blood, he thought realistically, unless it was the bloody oil. He wasn’t tied, which meant they’d locked him up somewhere they didn’t think he’d escape from, but at least it let him turn over and push himself up to his knees – slowly, slowly. Christ he hated feeling sick. Careful breaths, small movements, lift your head…
It wasn’t as dark as he’d first thought, of course, and in fact he could see pinpoints of daylight when he looked upwards, as if there were nails missing in the roof. No ceiling then, so some kind of shed – but where?
He’d been done over too – he mostly felt that as he moved, but he half remembered it too, getting in a good few punches before they’d managed to grab his arms and wrench them painfully behind him even as they got in their own blows to his stomach, doubling him over and then punching him back up again. He didn’t remember a blow to his head – they must have chucked him on the floor. Cement floor, hard and cold.
But if he could smell oil then surely there must be machinery in here with him, something he could use to pry his way out. If the roof was in bad repair then maybe the walls were too. He took another careful, deep breath, and began to stand up.
o0o
“Alright lads, see you tomorrow!” Mike shouted through the workshop door, and Doyle blinked. It was Friday – not exactly half-day closing, and Mike wasn’t exactly the kind of boss to surprise his workers with extra holidays. “Doyle, come into the office!”
“Be right there.” He picked up an oily rag to wipe his hands, gestured to the sink with its huge tub of Swarfega, and nodded. Mike let the door fall shut, and he was on his own, every sense he had crawling with foreboding. He could go out the back way, but that would be the end of everything – and besides, what about Benny’s curtailed message? They’d get him out from where? Bodie didn’t have anything to do with Doyle’s case, but he’d done something on Doyle’s behalf - something to do with Wiggens?
Doyle packed his tools away, slicked off the worst of the grime at the sink, and left his coat where it was on its hook. If Mike was on the up and up then he’d come back for it, but there was something…
Neil Wiggens was in Mike’s office, slim and severe in a black coat and scarf, but no hat on his sharply cut grey hair. He stood behind his son’s desk as if it was his by rights and Mike was his assistant. Mike was standing just behind the door, and he pushed it to when Doyle came in. The shop door was already closed, Doyle saw, and no doubt locked.
“Neil,” he said, playing for time. “You coming for a pint with us?”
“Ray Doyle,” Wiggens said pleasantly. “Ellie’s invited you to spend Christmas with us, I hear?”
“I hope that’s alright with you. She said…”
“Oh, she asked us about it of course. And of course we said yes. You’ve been seeing each other – what, nearly nine months now?”
“Nearly eight,” Doyle said. “But I’m looking forward to the next one.” Was this going to be some potential-father-in-law talk, all if-you-dare-hurt-my-precious-daughter?
“Nearly eight months… You know, I think it’s time you learned a little more of how our business operates.”
Doyle stayed silent, watching Wiggens warily, keeping Mike in the corner of his eye.
“Come with me.” Wiggens turned to the door at the back of Mike’s office, which opened into a disused old workshop, surrounded by empty benches, and with its wide rolling doors boarded over and padlocked from the outside. Doyle had come back to the shop late one night, with a key he’d copied on the first week, and found absolutely nothing.
Not a bad place for a little murder though – the property backed onto a disused warehouse, still crumbling from bomb damage, and not yet knocked down by the owners.
“Hope it’s a brewery,” Doyle managed lightly, giving a shrug and sliding his hands into his overall pockets as he stepped through the door behind Wiggens. It was dark – and then Mike snapped a light on behind him, so that he blinked in the sudden brilliance, and there was Bodie, backed against the far wall, wincing in the light, fists clenched, face blood streaked.
“What the hell?” Doyle turned to look at Wiggens on one side of him, and Mike on the other. Play dumb, he thought, just play it very dumb. “Who’s this then?”
“Not the publican,” Mike said, smirking.
Wiggens frowned at them both. “An intruder,” he said. “We found him skulking around my grounds in the very small hours.” A pause. “He’d fallen and injured himself. We thought it best to bring him here.”
“Shouldn’t he be in the hospital? He doesn’t look too good. Did you call the rozzers?”
“Look very carefully at him, Ray. Tell me – have you seen him before?”
Doyle shook his head. “Who, me? I dunno, is he a customer?”
“No, Ray – not a customer. Go on, take a closer look.” Wiggens gestured him to move forward, and Doyle frowned at him but tried to look casual. “Are you sure you haven’t seen him before?”
It was Bodie’s eyes that warned him, of course, a quick widening, and almost imperceptible glance to the right, so that when Doyle turned, stepping at the same time to the left, the bullet that had aimed for the back of his knees grazed along his shin instead. It still floored him, a sharp burning pain that sent him crumpling downwards, but he managed to roll in case there was another shot, and then scramble back to his feet, braced against a side wall.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he growled at Mike, who was now holding a clearly very serviceable, if old, revolver. “You shot me!” If he could distract them, maybe Bodie could…
“I’ll shoot you again if you don’t shut the fuck up,” Mike said, voice cold, gun steady between the two of them. “If you don’t know this bloke, what were you doing round his place when you should have been with my sister?”
“Tell me who the hell he is, and I’ll tell you…” Doyle began, broke off as Wiggens stepped up close.
“My daughter,” Wiggens said, voice low. “You had your filthy pig hands all over her…” He hit outwards suddenly, a surprisingly hard blow, but then, Doyle thought, even as he pulled out the spanners he’d concealed in each pocket to fight back, Wiggens must have started off as someone’s bully boy too.
“Don’t try it, pig!” Another shot rang out, this one nowhere near him, this one – this one aimed at stopping Bodie. Doyle froze for a moment, looking wildly back to see that Bodie was alright, and then three things happened. Wiggens got in another uppercut, slamming into Doyle’s jaw and knocking him backwards, the spanners flying from his hands; the door to the room exploded inwards and at least two guns were fired; and Doyle’s head impacted with the hard cement of the floor, knocking him out cold.
o0o
It took a week after Benny and his team of agents had burst in to save them to process Wiggens and his son, to interrogate his wife and to explain to Ellie what had happened and send her to an aunt in Jersey. Forensics dug up the far corner of Mike’s Bikes, and found not only Wiggens’ to ex-heavies, O’Connell and Pryors, but also two other bodies. Neither could be traced in any other way to Wiggens, but that didn’t matter, because his son had delusions of a reduced sentence.
It was a long week, of sleeping first in hospitals under watch for concussion, and then in their own separate flats under CI5 guard in case Wiggens’second in command decided to try and make a point, and with no more than a probably-monitored phone line between them. Bodie confessed only that he was in both good and bad books with Cowley at once, and that he owed Susie a tenner because she’d been right about the way it worked out.
And then the rotten Wiggens empire was found to exist in a series of account books, and one very lyrically written book that was apparently intended to be some kind of expose before divorce proceedings, and any support that Wiggens might have had faded far into the background, to the point that Cowley pulled off their watchdogs and pronounced them, at long last, free to go.
Bodie drove them back to his place, claiming the stitches in Doyle’s leg made him a danger to all road users, which earned him a glare and a half-hearted snarl, which were easy enough to ignore. The real danger would come later, when he explained exactly why he’d decided to interfere in an ongoing CI5 operation to the extent that he’d been caught, knocked-out, and used as bait against Doyle. At least he’d be able to balance it with Doyle completely missing the fact that he’d been tailed to Bodie’s place by one of Wiggens’ thugs.
“Drink?” he asked, when they were finally ensconced safely in his first floor flat, doors locked and bolted all around, blinds down and curtains drawn.
“What do you think?” Doyle glared at him again from under long lashes, and Bodie felt his heart lift even further. If Doyle was glaring at him that way… He reached for the glasses and whisky, heard the settee creak comfortably behind him, and allowed himself to relax a bit more.
“Ellie get away alright?” he asked at last, passing Doyle his drink and placing the bottle conspicuously beside the settee, within easy reach, and sitting down beside him.
“Yeah, all safe and… Oh, very good.” Doyle scowled into his glass. He hadn’t been allowed to take Ellie to the airport, but Bodie knew he’d tailed her there anyway, watched her get on the small plane that would put a final end to her dreams of having met the love of her life. The sooner she moved on the better, Bodie thought, and for Doyle too, who was very definitely not the love of her life.
Bodie took a deep breath. “So I suppose you want to hear all about it.”
“Do I?”
What? That wasn’t how it usually went. “Don’t you?”
“You did something stupid and I did something stupid, and we blew the case but it worked out alright in the end so Cowley isn’t firing us. Does that about sum it up?”
“Uh…”
“You can make it up to me by going out to get the Chinese you’re about to order from Ming’s, and stopping at Threshers for a decent bottle of wine. Two bottles of wine – save going out tomorrow night.”
“What’s wrong with the whisky?” It was alright, the Glenmorangie.
“I’m getting too old for the hang-over. And you.”
“Too old for me?”
“Oh, definitely…”
Bodie started to smile, winced as the cut on his lip threatened to split yet again, and reached out to pull Doyle around on the settee, so that they were lying together against its cushion-bolstered arm, facing the television and within easy reach of their drinks on the table. Doyle let him, and that was alright too. “You didn’t believe me though, did you?”
Doyle wriggled further back against him, reached for his drink, and then suddenly seemed to relax all at once. “I never believe you.” He sipped at his drink. “Believe you about what?”
“Told you you’d be home here for Christmas.”
The End
Reality is easy. It’s deception that’s the hard work. - Lauryn Hill
5th November 2020
Title:
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Slash always
Archive at ProsLib: Yes please
Disclaimer: Bodie, Doyle and the CI5-verse do not belong to me, but they're lovely to play with...
Notes: Not exactly my best, deepest fic, but... Prosfic?
Reality is Easy
by Slantedight
London was shrouded in mist as Doyle tooled slowly through the traffic up the Fulham Road, heading for Bodie’s, riding on automatic, even as he weaved in and out between the cars to get ahead. He’d told Ellie he was going to his old gym, would meet up with a mate and go for a few pints afterwards for old time’s sake, that she shouldn’t wait up for him, and he’d see her tomorrow. She’d smiled as if she understood, but he’d seen that she didn’t really, that she wished he’d be coming home to her, that they’d sleep together for even a few hours that night.
“Nah,” he’d said. “You don’t take Dave Bentley to the pub for just one. You have a quiet night, love.” He made himself grin at her, turned on the twinkle and the charm. “Get your energy back for the night after.”
“Ray!” She was delighted to be scandalised, to let herself be pulled into a long hug and to feel Doyle’s lips on her neck, and her throat and up to her mouth, before he pulled on his jacket, grabbed his helmet, and left her on the steps outside her flat, her figure growing smaller in his mirror until he turned onto the main road, and she was gone.
He couldn’t stop thinking of Morgan; Morgan and Alice, and little Holly, and the next one whose name he’d never even known.
He’d been thinking of them for weeks now, when Ellie kissed him, when she nuzzled against him as they sat on the sofa watching television, and he thought of them sometimes as he sank himself into her, closing his eyes into the sweet peaches-and-cream scent of her, only to see Alice’s accusing eyes as he came. He thought that Ellie should have known, should have felt it somehow, felt him flinch or cringe or turn away, but she just sighed and then pressed herself upwards against him more and more urgently, until she came too, a lonely gasp in the night.
She thought he was worn out from work, long hours at the bike shop and a demanding boss, and it made her more determined to look after him, to tell him things, to connect with him by telling him stories from her past, about her friends. About her job. Her dad’s business.
He listened, and he teased her, and he kissed her, and sometimes he felt so lousy with it all that he really thought he’d have to give it up. He’d turn up one day in front of Cowley’s desk instead of Mike’s Bikes, and do nothing more than shake his head slowly. He couldn’t do this. Instead he clocked in, he fixed BSAs and Nortons and Moto Guzzis, he talked to Mike whenever he could, made himself trustworthy, one of the lads who just happened to be sleeping with Mike’s sister, and he went home to Ellie and let her make him dinner and nuzzle against him, and tell him more things.
Now she wanted to take him home for Christmas with her family, with Neil and Barbara and Mike and the rest of the Wigginses, and he’d heard the old man’s smile when he reported it, even through the telephone, all the way from one side of London to the other.
“Good, Doyle, good,” Cowley had said, had practically purred. “You’re getting somewhere. I know it takes time, but keep at it, man, it’s paying off.” Praising him, cajoling him.
Bastard.
Morgan was dead, but not before Alice’s life had been torn apart, and god knows what it would all still do to little Holly and what’s-his-name.
Ellie had taken him to meet her sister yesterday, had cooed and doved over Sarah’s five month old baby, had insisted that Doyle hold her. He’d done it. He’d held the baby, who’d wriggled at him and dribbled into his shoulder, and he’d let Ellie catch his eye and smile.
They’d been going out seven months now, and she’d all but moved in with him. She was waiting for the next step, and the more he kissed her and listened to her and spent his evenings watching telly with her, the more she was expecting it.
The snarl-up on the road loosened briefly, and he gunned the Norton as hard as he dared, cut up a van that wasn’t moving as fast as it should have been, and turned into Onslow Road, then a right and another one, and then finally, finally he was sliding into a space next to the curb, kicking the stand down and pausing to peer up at Bodie’s flat.
The aspidistra was standing proud in the window, so he was home and alone, thank god – or George Cowley, more like. It had been a couple of weeks since they’d managed to snatch some time together, and that hadn’t been more than half an hour when Doyle had found himself delivering a bike in the area. Bodie had looked – well, Bodie had looked good. A sight for sore eyes, not that he would have said that out loud. He’d been lucky it was the end of the day, cursing that he’d agreed to meet Ellie to go to the cinema after work.
Tonight they’d have all night. He needed all night, maybe then he could go back to the flat and to Ellie and carry on. He’d come too far to give up now.
Bodie took one look at him and headed over to his drinks cupboard, poured them both a whisky. “Tricia Rannock,” he said laconically, as he handed Doyle the glass.
Doyle stared stonily at him.
“Marina Todd, Joanne Becker, Isobel Janislav.”
Doyle raised the glass to his lips, drank, said nothing.
“All girls…”
“You think I don’t know who they are!”
“All girls,” Bodie went on doggedly, “Who got on the wrong side of Neil Wiggens and lived to pay the price.” Sulphuric acid it had been, mostly in the face.
“And all the others who didn’t live,” Doyle snarled. “I know why I’m doing the job, Bodie! It doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Bodie knew his partner. “Ellie’s getting to you.”
“And you’re surprised.”
Bodie shrugged. She probably wouldn’t have got to him, in fact, but it was no good telling Doyle that. No one had a father and brother as dirty as Neil Wiggens, staunchly supported by his well-connected wife, Ellie’s mother, and knew nothing about it, was entirely innocent.
“It’s a dirty job,” he said instead, placating.
“It’s a lousy job,” Doyle said viciously, turning towards the window before remembering that he shouldn’t be seen here and jerking away again. He helped himself to more whisky instead.
“Report, 4.5?” Bodie asked, since they were here, and because maybe it would nudge Doyle back onto the straight and narrow of the job, their dirty, lousy job.
Doyle swigged his drink, and glared, but he began talking, practical because Bodie needed to know. “Mike’s in it up to his ears,” he began. “We’ll need to get forensics onto the patch behind the garage as soon as we can when it’s over – back left corner. He’s shifty when the lads talk about O’Connell and Pryors, and he can’t keep his eyes off the place. Fielding was over on Tuesday…”
He should probably have turned the mike on, but Doyle had needed to talk faster than Bodie could have got set up, so he filed it all away as best he could, ready to pass on to Cowley later.
“Any news on an arms drop?” he asked at last, when Doyle had wound himself down.
Doyle shook his head. “Nothing unusual happening that I can see. Three weeks till Christmas and nothing fucking happening at all.”
“It’ll happen.” He had to think it would happen, that Ray would be coming home to him sooner rather than later.
“’e’s too careful. Cowley’s gone for the wrong game with him, the wrong way in. Ellie’s not involved.”
“Oh come on, she’s his secretary! Secretaries know everything!”
“Not this one.” Doyle shook his head, drained his glass and headed back for a third. “All she’s got is crumbs – names and contacts, and yeah we could pick ‘em up and shake ‘em, but that’s not going to get us Wiggens!” He gestured at the bottle. “You want…?”
Bodie was there before he could finish, crowding up close and taking the glass out of Doyle’s hand. “Nah. For what I want you need to be nice and sober and able to line up on a target.” He’d been fantasising for what felt like forever about that trick Doyle did where he sat down on Bodie’s cock and then slid slowly up again, and down again, and…
“I can do that drunk,” Doyle protested, but he let Bodie shut his mouth for him with a kiss, with busy hands and the hard press of his body, and then with breath and with whispers in his ear.
Mike’s Bikes was decorated with red and gold tinsel around the windows when Doyle went in on Monday, there was plastic holly with berries in a vase on the counter, and Mike was sitting at his desk in the office behind reception, looking as festive as his tightly muscled physique would let him in a bright red jumper beside a miniature plastic Christmas tree.
Doyle wasn’t feeling exactly festive, but he felt a lot better than he had on Saturday night, with the memory of Bodie’s irreverent grin and insatiable appetites to keep him warm. “It’ll be over sooner than you think, Ray,” Bodie’d said, arms banding him tightly, as if willing him to believe it. “Home here for Christmas, alright? Not with that mob…” And it had been a nice thought, if unlikely, and he’d fallen asleep on it, and woken to a feeling of well-being he’d almost forgotten existed.
Best thing he’d ever done, taking Bodie up on his challenge of sex and forever, and everything else the great lump had meant at the same time. It kept him going now, through the longest and deepest undercover op he’d ever been sent on, let him slide behind the counter and pause in the door frame to grin at Mike.
“Didn’t know you were moonlighting as one of Santa’s little helpers,” he said. “Did you…”
“Blame that bloody sister of mine,” Mike growled, looking up, all dark hair and eyes and scowl. “She was round here whinging at me all weekend.”
She’d spent most of Sunday making Doyle a home-cooked roast dinner, complete with golden syrup pudding and custard for afters, and he hadn’t left her side until about four on the Saturday.
“Thought you were taking her to that new Italian – what happened to that? Where did you bugger off to, anyway?”
“Next Saturday,” Doyle said easily. “Couldn’t get a table until then. Mate was on at me to try out his gym, and Ellie said she had presents to wrap, so…” He held Mike’s gaze, one man to another - no way am I getting involved in wrapping presents.
Mike grunted and looked away. “You’ve got that Manxman to do today. Parts come in alright last week?”
“Yeah.” Back to work it was, not like Mike – usually it was a good ten minutes of his latest conquest and her assets. Doyle looked a bit closer, surprised a nervous twitch in Mike’s eye when he looked back up. “Everything alright, mate?”
“Why shouldn’t it be alright? I thought you had work to do?”
Apparently the latest conquest was less of a conquest than Mike had expected. Doyle shrugged, rifled the worksheets until he found the Manxman job, and took the paperwork through with him to the main workshop.
It was three days later that Benny showed up at the bike shop, wanting to talk to someone about the best way to service his gleaming Suzuki. Joe was called out first, the grizzled voice of experience, with a good twenty years on Doyle’s own CI5-solid CV, and came back in bitching about hooligans who didn’t respect their elders. Trevor and Charlie, both anticipating their twenty-first birthdays, smirked behind their carburettors as Mike waved Doyle out to the forecourt in Joe’s stead.
“Where the hell did you get this” Doyle asked first, crouching down so that the bike shielded them from the shop windows. “There’s never a Katana in the car pool!”
“Borrowed it from a mate,” Benny said with a quick grin, dropping down beside him. “Should be alright as long as I remember to tell him tomorrow.”
Doyle slanted him a look. “Hope it’s not the same bloke who wrecked that Ducati.”
Benny shook his head, gestured generally to the bike in case they were being watched, began to speak and then stopped, looking carefully at Doyle. He sniffed and started again. “Look. When you see Bodie, don’t be surprised.”
“You what?” Doyle’s breath caught. What the hell had his partner done now? And more to the point, why did Cowley think he was likely to see him?
Benny stood up and walked around the other side of the bike, so that his back was to the window, and his eyes were on Doyle. “He’s done something not entirely clever on your behalf, and it didn’t work out the way he expected. We’re going to get him out, but it’s going to take a few hours to arrange things so we don’t blow your cover.”
Fuck my cover, Doyle thought. “Get him out of where?”
“So what do you think then? Full service or just a half?” Mike’s strident voice broke in on them, footsteps and Benny turned around and moved further in front of Doyle as the man emerged from the shop, giving him valuable extra seconds to arrange his face.
“Still thinking about it,” Benny said brightly. “I can’t remember what the bloke said it had last time, but I’ve got the paperwork somewhere. I’ll look it up and give you a call.”
Doyle stood up. “You do that. Let me know what you want done and I’ll be there.”
Benny nodded to him, kicked the bike off its stand, and wheeled it away into the street without another backward glance.
“Snotty-nosed rich kid,” Doyle said, watching him go.
“It’s the rich ones pay your wages,” Mike said. “He’d better be back.”
“He will be,” Doyle said. If he wasn’t, and something happened to Bodie… What the hell had Bodie done now?
Mike shuffled around to face him, looked him hard in the eye. “Actually I want a word with you, Doyle. Come and see me at lunchtime, we’ll go and find a pint somewhere.”
“Alright.” He managed to keep his voice even with an effort. “As long as it’s not that piss at the White Horse.”
Bodie came around somewhere dark and smelling strongly of oil, thought for a minute he might choke on the cloying sweetness of it, closed his eyes again and managed to swallow it down. His head throbbed, and something wet was dripping its way down his face. Blood, he thought realistically, unless it was the bloody oil. He wasn’t tied, which meant they’d locked him up somewhere they didn’t think he’d escape from, but at least it let him turn over and push himself up to his knees – slowly, slowly. Christ he hated feeling sick. Careful breaths, small movements, lift your head…
It wasn’t as dark as he’d first thought, of course, and in fact he could see pinpoints of daylight when he looked upwards, as if there were nails missing in the roof. No ceiling then, so some kind of shed – but where?
He’d been done over too – he mostly felt that as he moved, but he half remembered it too, getting in a good few punches before they’d managed to grab his arms and wrench them painfully behind him even as they got in their own blows to his stomach, doubling him over and then punching him back up again. He didn’t remember a blow to his head – they must have chucked him on the floor. Cement floor, hard and cold.
But if he could smell oil then surely there must be machinery in here with him, something he could use to pry his way out. If the roof was in bad repair then maybe the walls were too. He took another careful, deep breath, and began to stand up.
“Alright lads, see you tomorrow!” Mike shouted through the workshop door, and Doyle blinked. It was Friday – not exactly half-day closing, and Mike wasn’t exactly the kind of boss to surprise his workers with extra holidays. “Doyle, come into the office!”
“Be right there.” He picked up an oily rag to wipe his hands, gestured to the sink with its huge tub of Swarfega, and nodded. Mike let the door fall shut, and he was on his own, every sense he had crawling with foreboding. He could go out the back way, but that would be the end of everything – and besides, what about Benny’s curtailed message? They’d get him out from where? Bodie didn’t have anything to do with Doyle’s case, but he’d done something on Doyle’s behalf - something to do with Wiggens?
Doyle packed his tools away, slicked off the worst of the grime at the sink, and left his coat where it was on its hook. If Mike was on the up and up then he’d come back for it, but there was something…
Neil Wiggens was in Mike’s office, slim and severe in a black coat and scarf, but no hat on his sharply cut grey hair. He stood behind his son’s desk as if it was his by rights and Mike was his assistant. Mike was standing just behind the door, and he pushed it to when Doyle came in. The shop door was already closed, Doyle saw, and no doubt locked.
“Neil,” he said, playing for time. “You coming for a pint with us?”
“Ray Doyle,” Wiggens said pleasantly. “Ellie’s invited you to spend Christmas with us, I hear?”
“I hope that’s alright with you. She said…”
“Oh, she asked us about it of course. And of course we said yes. You’ve been seeing each other – what, nearly nine months now?”
“Nearly eight,” Doyle said. “But I’m looking forward to the next one.” Was this going to be some potential-father-in-law talk, all if-you-dare-hurt-my-precious-daughter?
“Nearly eight months… You know, I think it’s time you learned a little more of how our business operates.”
Doyle stayed silent, watching Wiggens warily, keeping Mike in the corner of his eye.
“Come with me.” Wiggens turned to the door at the back of Mike’s office, which opened into a disused old workshop, surrounded by empty benches, and with its wide rolling doors boarded over and padlocked from the outside. Doyle had come back to the shop late one night, with a key he’d copied on the first week, and found absolutely nothing.
Not a bad place for a little murder though – the property backed onto a disused warehouse, still crumbling from bomb damage, and not yet knocked down by the owners.
“Hope it’s a brewery,” Doyle managed lightly, giving a shrug and sliding his hands into his overall pockets as he stepped through the door behind Wiggens. It was dark – and then Mike snapped a light on behind him, so that he blinked in the sudden brilliance, and there was Bodie, backed against the far wall, wincing in the light, fists clenched, face blood streaked.
“What the hell?” Doyle turned to look at Wiggens on one side of him, and Mike on the other. Play dumb, he thought, just play it very dumb. “Who’s this then?”
“Not the publican,” Mike said, smirking.
Wiggens frowned at them both. “An intruder,” he said. “We found him skulking around my grounds in the very small hours.” A pause. “He’d fallen and injured himself. We thought it best to bring him here.”
“Shouldn’t he be in the hospital? He doesn’t look too good. Did you call the rozzers?”
“Look very carefully at him, Ray. Tell me – have you seen him before?”
Doyle shook his head. “Who, me? I dunno, is he a customer?”
“No, Ray – not a customer. Go on, take a closer look.” Wiggens gestured him to move forward, and Doyle frowned at him but tried to look casual. “Are you sure you haven’t seen him before?”
It was Bodie’s eyes that warned him, of course, a quick widening, and almost imperceptible glance to the right, so that when Doyle turned, stepping at the same time to the left, the bullet that had aimed for the back of his knees grazed along his shin instead. It still floored him, a sharp burning pain that sent him crumpling downwards, but he managed to roll in case there was another shot, and then scramble back to his feet, braced against a side wall.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he growled at Mike, who was now holding a clearly very serviceable, if old, revolver. “You shot me!” If he could distract them, maybe Bodie could…
“I’ll shoot you again if you don’t shut the fuck up,” Mike said, voice cold, gun steady between the two of them. “If you don’t know this bloke, what were you doing round his place when you should have been with my sister?”
“Tell me who the hell he is, and I’ll tell you…” Doyle began, broke off as Wiggens stepped up close.
“My daughter,” Wiggens said, voice low. “You had your filthy pig hands all over her…” He hit outwards suddenly, a surprisingly hard blow, but then, Doyle thought, even as he pulled out the spanners he’d concealed in each pocket to fight back, Wiggens must have started off as someone’s bully boy too.
“Don’t try it, pig!” Another shot rang out, this one nowhere near him, this one – this one aimed at stopping Bodie. Doyle froze for a moment, looking wildly back to see that Bodie was alright, and then three things happened. Wiggens got in another uppercut, slamming into Doyle’s jaw and knocking him backwards, the spanners flying from his hands; the door to the room exploded inwards and at least two guns were fired; and Doyle’s head impacted with the hard cement of the floor, knocking him out cold.
It took a week after Benny and his team of agents had burst in to save them to process Wiggens and his son, to interrogate his wife and to explain to Ellie what had happened and send her to an aunt in Jersey. Forensics dug up the far corner of Mike’s Bikes, and found not only Wiggens’ to ex-heavies, O’Connell and Pryors, but also two other bodies. Neither could be traced in any other way to Wiggens, but that didn’t matter, because his son had delusions of a reduced sentence.
It was a long week, of sleeping first in hospitals under watch for concussion, and then in their own separate flats under CI5 guard in case Wiggens’second in command decided to try and make a point, and with no more than a probably-monitored phone line between them. Bodie confessed only that he was in both good and bad books with Cowley at once, and that he owed Susie a tenner because she’d been right about the way it worked out.
And then the rotten Wiggens empire was found to exist in a series of account books, and one very lyrically written book that was apparently intended to be some kind of expose before divorce proceedings, and any support that Wiggens might have had faded far into the background, to the point that Cowley pulled off their watchdogs and pronounced them, at long last, free to go.
Bodie drove them back to his place, claiming the stitches in Doyle’s leg made him a danger to all road users, which earned him a glare and a half-hearted snarl, which were easy enough to ignore. The real danger would come later, when he explained exactly why he’d decided to interfere in an ongoing CI5 operation to the extent that he’d been caught, knocked-out, and used as bait against Doyle. At least he’d be able to balance it with Doyle completely missing the fact that he’d been tailed to Bodie’s place by one of Wiggens’ thugs.
“Drink?” he asked, when they were finally ensconced safely in his first floor flat, doors locked and bolted all around, blinds down and curtains drawn.
“What do you think?” Doyle glared at him again from under long lashes, and Bodie felt his heart lift even further. If Doyle was glaring at him that way… He reached for the glasses and whisky, heard the settee creak comfortably behind him, and allowed himself to relax a bit more.
“Ellie get away alright?” he asked at last, passing Doyle his drink and placing the bottle conspicuously beside the settee, within easy reach, and sitting down beside him.
“Yeah, all safe and… Oh, very good.” Doyle scowled into his glass. He hadn’t been allowed to take Ellie to the airport, but Bodie knew he’d tailed her there anyway, watched her get on the small plane that would put a final end to her dreams of having met the love of her life. The sooner she moved on the better, Bodie thought, and for Doyle too, who was very definitely not the love of her life.
Bodie took a deep breath. “So I suppose you want to hear all about it.”
“Do I?”
What? That wasn’t how it usually went. “Don’t you?”
“You did something stupid and I did something stupid, and we blew the case but it worked out alright in the end so Cowley isn’t firing us. Does that about sum it up?”
“Uh…”
“You can make it up to me by going out to get the Chinese you’re about to order from Ming’s, and stopping at Threshers for a decent bottle of wine. Two bottles of wine – save going out tomorrow night.”
“What’s wrong with the whisky?” It was alright, the Glenmorangie.
“I’m getting too old for the hang-over. And you.”
“Too old for me?”
“Oh, definitely…”
Bodie started to smile, winced as the cut on his lip threatened to split yet again, and reached out to pull Doyle around on the settee, so that they were lying together against its cushion-bolstered arm, facing the television and within easy reach of their drinks on the table. Doyle let him, and that was alright too. “You didn’t believe me though, did you?”
Doyle wriggled further back against him, reached for his drink, and then suddenly seemed to relax all at once. “I never believe you.” He sipped at his drink. “Believe you about what?”
“Told you you’d be home here for Christmas.”
The End
Reality is easy. It’s deception that’s the hard work. - Lauryn Hill
5th November 2020
Title:
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Slash always
Archive at ProsLib: Yes please
Disclaimer: Bodie, Doyle and the CI5-verse do not belong to me, but they're lovely to play with...
Notes: Not exactly my best, deepest fic, but... Prosfic?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 06:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 12:33 pm (UTC)Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ (https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=303).
no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 03:28 pm (UTC)I really enjoyed it.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 04:48 pm (UTC)A very nice read on St. Nikolaus morning!
no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 05:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 05:33 pm (UTC)Thank you for this excellent winter's tale, and hooray for bsl-penned prosfic!
no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 09:09 pm (UTC)I loved this - thank you!!
no subject
Date: 2020-12-07 05:18 am (UTC)Season's Greetings!
no subject
Date: 2020-12-07 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-07 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-13 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-20 03:02 am (UTC)