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discoveredinaljI was not expecting to be working today, which means that I'm going to post this wee fic, which was written for Write Time 2023. It's been cold enoough, though, that I could do with some warmer temperatures... *g*
The task was set for writers to include: the word “precipitous”, a building that has significance in the story and sense of time...
Never on Holiday
by Slantedlight
They were, of course, on holiday, a whole week away from CI5, from London, cars and guns, and from the Organisation and plastic explosives, and so neither of them had an RT. Not, Doyle thought, that it would do them any good up here anyway; so far north of Kneesden that they spoke another language, deep in the Yorkshire wilderness, and well away from anything as civilised as a local cop shop.
In the case of the half-dozen men who had driven up and tumbled from the back of a non-descript brown van, that language was heavily accented in Irish. Worse still, their curses and threats as they sauntered loudly down the path to the house at the bottom of the cliff were aimed at the man they pushed roughly ahead of them, hands bound behind his back, eyes blindfolded, mouth gagged.
Doyle recognised him straight away, even all the way up here where he shouldn’t be, through the dim, late summer twilight, and the thick bushes that concealed them.
Jax.
Beside him, Bodie cursed under his breath. “Next year we’re going to Torremolinos,” he said with feeling.
Doyle shook his head, warmed by Bodie’s “we” even as his mind was racing through their options. A stream ran between the house and their tent, clear on one side but thick with bushes and growth on their side, in a wide enough band that they were unlikely to be seen if anyone came out for a smoke or a wander overnight. They hadn’t been able to see the house from their camp, had assumed from the cobwebbed windows and missing slates on the roof that it was long abandoned.
They’d wanted privacy, after all.
On the other hand, it got light early in July, and who knew what they’d do to Jax before then. They’d taken him hostage, which was better than shooting him dead, but it meant they wanted something from him. Jax was tougher than he looked, but that could go either way as well.
He still remembered the look in Benson’s eyes at his leaving do, as he’d tried to smile and josh them that at least now he was finally escaping the Cow’s five a.m. calls to action. There’s gotta be some advantage to losing your kneecaps, he’d said, but he’d lost his girl in the fallout from that op as well, and she’d taken their nine month old baby with her, because he was too dangerous to be around, and now he was trying to cope on his own in a specially-adapted house.
But he’d held out against the Kerschner group, told them nothing.
Lights appeared throughout the house as they watched, casting a golden glow through the bare windows to the front and sides of the building, and showing figures moving between the rooms. There was suddenly no sign of Jax, and Doyle hoped it was just because the place had a cellar.
“Try to get…?” he began, just as Bodie grasped his arm in warning. The door to the cottage had opened again, and a single man came out. He looked small but feral, and he held an AR-10 as if it was a natural extension of his arm. His gaze swept the entire area once, and then again, including their bushes, and then he reached into his jacket, pulled out a packet of cigarettes, and began to patrol from one end of the house to the other as he lit one, with a brief flare from a lighter.
Damn.
Trouble was, the place was just too well positioned: cosied up to the cliff with no backyard to speak of; the stream and brush running down one side, but wide windows for anyone watching out, and the land to the other side empty of any cover. Their guns and RTs were all locked safely in the car, five miles away at the village pub they’d stayed in the previous night, before heading out with their tent and gear to have a go at some of Yorkshire’s famous climbing.
Climbing.
He looked at Bodie just as Bodie looked at him and gestured with a tilt of his head to the sheer rockface, and where his heart was suddenly pounding, there was a mad glint in Bodie’s eyes, a gleeful half-smile pulling at his lips. Doyle gave a small nod, and Bodie’s grin widened. They looked back at the house, watched until the guard had almost reached the other end of the building, and then they turned as one and headed silently back to camp.
Everything was as they’d left it when they’d heard the van’s engine getting closer; the tent, the end of their meal, the bottle of wine that Bodie’d brought them. Shame they wouldn’t get to drink it.
Bodie went straight to where they’d left their equipment, not planning to use it again tomorrow. They’d spent the day climbing from the base of the cliff to the top edge on a route that one of Bodie’s mates had told them about, some two hundred yards east of their camp and the house. They’d abseiled down just before sunset, pausing to watch the world around them re-colour itself, and soften into evening.
Coming down was the easy part, even if they were coming down onto a houseful of Organisation men who were already holding Jax as some kind of hostage. First they had to get up there.
“Half hour to the trail, forty-five minutes to get up,” he said, watching Bodie separate their gear and check they had everything they’d need. “Another half hour to find the right spot - how long to find an anchor? Presuming there is one. Then down.”
“It’d take us that long to reach the car,” Bodie replied without looking up. “And how long to get the lads up here? If we can get a signal.”
“Just making sure we’ve thought it through.”
Bodie did give him a look then. “Top floor entry,” he said, and passed Doyle his harness and rope. “Get in quiet, take out everyone we can, find Jax.”
Doyle grinned at the ex-SAS efficiency. “You missing the old days?”
“Not,” Bodie said with certainty, “in the least.”
Dusk turned to darkness before they set out, and they chanced their torches since they were heading in the opposite direction from the house. The beams jogged up and down in time with their steps, as quick a trot as they could manage without breaking their ankles on the stony ground. The track up was steep but mostly clear, and they took it without pause until they were high enough that the lights from the house were visible in the distance.
They turned their own lights off, slowed. Every step had to be taken with care, one after the other, and Doyle was aware that time was ticking, that time was passing, that Jax was inside that house.
He slid on a puddle of stones, cursed but recovered, and carried on, following Bodie's steady plod. After what seemed half an eternity, Bodie finally stopped and turned with a faint jingle of carabiners, and Doyle looked up to find that they’d reached the top at last. The sky was a splay of stars above them, and below, sprinkled towards the horizon, lay the nightlights of England, patterns of motorways and villages like constellations, like a distant reflection of the heavens.
There was no time to gaze - they turned together, shoulder to shoulder now, and re-trod the path they'd taken earlier that day, torches lighting the way again. After fifteen minutes or so Bodie nudged him and pointed at the boulder they'd used as an anchor. Halfway to their descent point then. Maybe an hour to get to Jax. Go to bed, you bastards, he thought viciously. Leave him until morning.
"There," Bodie said at last. "Must be about here." He dropped to his stomach, slid cautiously to the edge of the cliff and peered over, turning his head back and forth, then he stood up and grimaced. "Overshot," he said. "We passed it."
"They still awake then?" Doyle asked as they walked back.
"Lights everywhere,” Bodie said. “Dirty stop-outs." He moved again to check their position. "Okay, this is it."
There were no boulders here, but there was a clump of windswept trees, and they spent time that Jax might not have securing their anchors and checking for jagged or crumbling rock.
Finally they dropped the ropes down, waiting anxiously for signs they’d been heard, but there was nothing to see but the golden glow of the house.
And then it was finally time, and they were walking backwards into nothing, and then trusting to their harness and rope, gliding through the night air, down the rockface, not flying but falling in slow-motion, just each other and the cliff and the night and…
Doyle was about twenty feet above ground when he came to a sudden stop, the rope no longer sliding through his fingers, all friction gone. He swore softly, reached to check the figure eight and find the jam, and heard Bodie come to a stop beside him.
“Stuck?”
“Nah, fancied a cuppa.”
“Better hope no one looks up.”
“Thanks, friend.”
“Years of experience, that. Here - lock on to me while you clear it, the rope’ll take it. Give yourself some slack, it’ll be quicker.”
It would be quicker, and he clipped his device to Bodie’s, so that they hung together, pressed close enough that he could feel Bodie’s warmth, hear this breathing. The world slowed for a moment, and he could feel Bodie staring at him, then the rope creaked gently, breaking the spell, and he moved again to lock off and free his gear.
And then all hell broke loose in the house below them - scuffling footsteps somewhere around the front, a shout inside, and then gunshots, more shouting. Doyle fought with the jam, fear making him momentarily clumsy, aware that Bodie was swearing at him, that there were cars roaring down the track towards them, and more shouting. A figure tumbled through one of the side windows, began a desperate run into the shadows of the cliff, and then there was someone behind him, another gunshot, and the figure fell.
“I thought I said alive, man!”
Doyle froze.
“How the devil are we supposed to question them if they’re all dead?”
“Sorry sir. Didn’t think, sir.”
“You’re not paid to think, you’re paid to follow orders! Where’s Jax?”
“Here, sir.”
“Aye, well, if you’d taken more care to start with…”
It was like a pantomime, Doyle thought incredulously, as he watched agents suddenly swarming around the house, the gang rounded up and taken away, Jax limping slightly but alive and well. Of course CI5 had come to rescue its own.
It was, inevitably, George Cowley who looked up and saw them, torch sweeping them from head to foot and then returning to spotlight them in all their glory.
“And what do you think you two are doing?” he asked, as if nothing was more likely than his two top agents hanging from a cliff on a single length of rope.
Doyle opened his mouth to say something - anything - but Bodie was smiling brightly at him. “Oh, you know sir - we thought we’d hang around in case we were needed.”
That earned him the frown from their boss that it deserved, and Doyle couldn’t quite repress his own grin.
Cowley turned away without another word, then visibly caught himself, and half turned back. He tipped his head upwards to look at the cliff edge far above them, then back down to stare at them both, hanging there on their rope.
“Aye, Bodie,” he said, and Doyle swore later there was a twinkle in his eye. “I think you’ll find I’ve told you before about being precipitous.”
And on that note he set off towards his waiting car, leaving his agents swinging gently together above the house in the cool night breeze.
Title: Never on Holiday
Author: Slantedlight
ProsLib: Certainly!
Disclaimer: The lads are still sadly not mine, but playing with them is an eternal joy.
The task was set for writers to include: the word “precipitous”, a building that has significance in the story and sense of time...
Never on Holiday
by Slantedlight
They were, of course, on holiday, a whole week away from CI5, from London, cars and guns, and from the Organisation and plastic explosives, and so neither of them had an RT. Not, Doyle thought, that it would do them any good up here anyway; so far north of Kneesden that they spoke another language, deep in the Yorkshire wilderness, and well away from anything as civilised as a local cop shop.
In the case of the half-dozen men who had driven up and tumbled from the back of a non-descript brown van, that language was heavily accented in Irish. Worse still, their curses and threats as they sauntered loudly down the path to the house at the bottom of the cliff were aimed at the man they pushed roughly ahead of them, hands bound behind his back, eyes blindfolded, mouth gagged.
Doyle recognised him straight away, even all the way up here where he shouldn’t be, through the dim, late summer twilight, and the thick bushes that concealed them.
Jax.
Beside him, Bodie cursed under his breath. “Next year we’re going to Torremolinos,” he said with feeling.
Doyle shook his head, warmed by Bodie’s “we” even as his mind was racing through their options. A stream ran between the house and their tent, clear on one side but thick with bushes and growth on their side, in a wide enough band that they were unlikely to be seen if anyone came out for a smoke or a wander overnight. They hadn’t been able to see the house from their camp, had assumed from the cobwebbed windows and missing slates on the roof that it was long abandoned.
They’d wanted privacy, after all.
On the other hand, it got light early in July, and who knew what they’d do to Jax before then. They’d taken him hostage, which was better than shooting him dead, but it meant they wanted something from him. Jax was tougher than he looked, but that could go either way as well.
He still remembered the look in Benson’s eyes at his leaving do, as he’d tried to smile and josh them that at least now he was finally escaping the Cow’s five a.m. calls to action. There’s gotta be some advantage to losing your kneecaps, he’d said, but he’d lost his girl in the fallout from that op as well, and she’d taken their nine month old baby with her, because he was too dangerous to be around, and now he was trying to cope on his own in a specially-adapted house.
But he’d held out against the Kerschner group, told them nothing.
Lights appeared throughout the house as they watched, casting a golden glow through the bare windows to the front and sides of the building, and showing figures moving between the rooms. There was suddenly no sign of Jax, and Doyle hoped it was just because the place had a cellar.
“Try to get…?” he began, just as Bodie grasped his arm in warning. The door to the cottage had opened again, and a single man came out. He looked small but feral, and he held an AR-10 as if it was a natural extension of his arm. His gaze swept the entire area once, and then again, including their bushes, and then he reached into his jacket, pulled out a packet of cigarettes, and began to patrol from one end of the house to the other as he lit one, with a brief flare from a lighter.
Damn.
Trouble was, the place was just too well positioned: cosied up to the cliff with no backyard to speak of; the stream and brush running down one side, but wide windows for anyone watching out, and the land to the other side empty of any cover. Their guns and RTs were all locked safely in the car, five miles away at the village pub they’d stayed in the previous night, before heading out with their tent and gear to have a go at some of Yorkshire’s famous climbing.
Climbing.
He looked at Bodie just as Bodie looked at him and gestured with a tilt of his head to the sheer rockface, and where his heart was suddenly pounding, there was a mad glint in Bodie’s eyes, a gleeful half-smile pulling at his lips. Doyle gave a small nod, and Bodie’s grin widened. They looked back at the house, watched until the guard had almost reached the other end of the building, and then they turned as one and headed silently back to camp.
Everything was as they’d left it when they’d heard the van’s engine getting closer; the tent, the end of their meal, the bottle of wine that Bodie’d brought them. Shame they wouldn’t get to drink it.
Bodie went straight to where they’d left their equipment, not planning to use it again tomorrow. They’d spent the day climbing from the base of the cliff to the top edge on a route that one of Bodie’s mates had told them about, some two hundred yards east of their camp and the house. They’d abseiled down just before sunset, pausing to watch the world around them re-colour itself, and soften into evening.
Coming down was the easy part, even if they were coming down onto a houseful of Organisation men who were already holding Jax as some kind of hostage. First they had to get up there.
“Half hour to the trail, forty-five minutes to get up,” he said, watching Bodie separate their gear and check they had everything they’d need. “Another half hour to find the right spot - how long to find an anchor? Presuming there is one. Then down.”
“It’d take us that long to reach the car,” Bodie replied without looking up. “And how long to get the lads up here? If we can get a signal.”
“Just making sure we’ve thought it through.”
Bodie did give him a look then. “Top floor entry,” he said, and passed Doyle his harness and rope. “Get in quiet, take out everyone we can, find Jax.”
Doyle grinned at the ex-SAS efficiency. “You missing the old days?”
“Not,” Bodie said with certainty, “in the least.”
Dusk turned to darkness before they set out, and they chanced their torches since they were heading in the opposite direction from the house. The beams jogged up and down in time with their steps, as quick a trot as they could manage without breaking their ankles on the stony ground. The track up was steep but mostly clear, and they took it without pause until they were high enough that the lights from the house were visible in the distance.
They turned their own lights off, slowed. Every step had to be taken with care, one after the other, and Doyle was aware that time was ticking, that time was passing, that Jax was inside that house.
He slid on a puddle of stones, cursed but recovered, and carried on, following Bodie's steady plod. After what seemed half an eternity, Bodie finally stopped and turned with a faint jingle of carabiners, and Doyle looked up to find that they’d reached the top at last. The sky was a splay of stars above them, and below, sprinkled towards the horizon, lay the nightlights of England, patterns of motorways and villages like constellations, like a distant reflection of the heavens.
There was no time to gaze - they turned together, shoulder to shoulder now, and re-trod the path they'd taken earlier that day, torches lighting the way again. After fifteen minutes or so Bodie nudged him and pointed at the boulder they'd used as an anchor. Halfway to their descent point then. Maybe an hour to get to Jax. Go to bed, you bastards, he thought viciously. Leave him until morning.
"There," Bodie said at last. "Must be about here." He dropped to his stomach, slid cautiously to the edge of the cliff and peered over, turning his head back and forth, then he stood up and grimaced. "Overshot," he said. "We passed it."
"They still awake then?" Doyle asked as they walked back.
"Lights everywhere,” Bodie said. “Dirty stop-outs." He moved again to check their position. "Okay, this is it."
There were no boulders here, but there was a clump of windswept trees, and they spent time that Jax might not have securing their anchors and checking for jagged or crumbling rock.
Finally they dropped the ropes down, waiting anxiously for signs they’d been heard, but there was nothing to see but the golden glow of the house.
And then it was finally time, and they were walking backwards into nothing, and then trusting to their harness and rope, gliding through the night air, down the rockface, not flying but falling in slow-motion, just each other and the cliff and the night and…
Doyle was about twenty feet above ground when he came to a sudden stop, the rope no longer sliding through his fingers, all friction gone. He swore softly, reached to check the figure eight and find the jam, and heard Bodie come to a stop beside him.
“Stuck?”
“Nah, fancied a cuppa.”
“Better hope no one looks up.”
“Thanks, friend.”
“Years of experience, that. Here - lock on to me while you clear it, the rope’ll take it. Give yourself some slack, it’ll be quicker.”
It would be quicker, and he clipped his device to Bodie’s, so that they hung together, pressed close enough that he could feel Bodie’s warmth, hear this breathing. The world slowed for a moment, and he could feel Bodie staring at him, then the rope creaked gently, breaking the spell, and he moved again to lock off and free his gear.
And then all hell broke loose in the house below them - scuffling footsteps somewhere around the front, a shout inside, and then gunshots, more shouting. Doyle fought with the jam, fear making him momentarily clumsy, aware that Bodie was swearing at him, that there were cars roaring down the track towards them, and more shouting. A figure tumbled through one of the side windows, began a desperate run into the shadows of the cliff, and then there was someone behind him, another gunshot, and the figure fell.
“I thought I said alive, man!”
Doyle froze.
“How the devil are we supposed to question them if they’re all dead?”
“Sorry sir. Didn’t think, sir.”
“You’re not paid to think, you’re paid to follow orders! Where’s Jax?”
“Here, sir.”
“Aye, well, if you’d taken more care to start with…”
It was like a pantomime, Doyle thought incredulously, as he watched agents suddenly swarming around the house, the gang rounded up and taken away, Jax limping slightly but alive and well. Of course CI5 had come to rescue its own.
It was, inevitably, George Cowley who looked up and saw them, torch sweeping them from head to foot and then returning to spotlight them in all their glory.
“And what do you think you two are doing?” he asked, as if nothing was more likely than his two top agents hanging from a cliff on a single length of rope.
Doyle opened his mouth to say something - anything - but Bodie was smiling brightly at him. “Oh, you know sir - we thought we’d hang around in case we were needed.”
That earned him the frown from their boss that it deserved, and Doyle couldn’t quite repress his own grin.
Cowley turned away without another word, then visibly caught himself, and half turned back. He tipped his head upwards to look at the cliff edge far above them, then back down to stare at them both, hanging there on their rope.
“Aye, Bodie,” he said, and Doyle swore later there was a twinkle in his eye. “I think you’ll find I’ve told you before about being precipitous.”
And on that note he set off towards his waiting car, leaving his agents swinging gently together above the house in the cool night breeze.
Title: Never on Holiday
Author: Slantedlight
ProsLib: Certainly!
Disclaimer: The lads are still sadly not mine, but playing with them is an eternal joy.
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Date: 2023-12-02 09:40 pm (UTC)A lovely action-packed story! :-)
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Date: 2023-12-02 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-02 10:34 pm (UTC)Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ (https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=303).
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Date: 2023-12-02 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-02 10:45 pm (UTC)The finest praise ever — thank you! *vbg* Very very glad you liked it!
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Date: 2023-12-02 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-03 02:13 am (UTC)Hee hee.
I like how you called them the Organization, as in canon.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-03 03:36 am (UTC)Thank you for this action and banter. . . wonderful.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-03 03:10 pm (UTC)Waaaahhhh!!!! I love it!!
It´s awesome! So much tension and sooo funny!
Thank you for sharing!
no subject
Date: 2023-12-04 12:19 am (UTC)All that work... but just a tad late to the party. Bodie didn't even get to hit anybody, darn it!
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Date: 2023-12-04 01:31 am (UTC)Aww, I really enjoyed this! Well done! ❤️
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Date: 2023-12-04 08:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-08 01:42 pm (UTC)Such an entertaining, scenario! There are also some fun allusions to the season with 'pantomime' and Bodie's 'jingling carabiners'. :D
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Date: 2024-01-04 07:21 pm (UTC)