Noble Sentiments' Christmas Quotes Challenge!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Posted on behalf of noblesentiments -

The Christmas Quotes Challenge!
All quotes are from Professionals Slash stories, and most if not all can be found online. Your challenge is to guess the titles and authors!

There's no prize this year but the glory and eternal joy of knowing that you did it, but do please post  answers here as comments - comments will be screened until midnight lads' time tonight (or somewhere around then!) when the answers will be posted, and the contenders revealed!  Oh, and do post comments to noblesentimentshere too - I can't do the challenge because I've seen the answers, but I adored reading all the Christmas-y bits of lads... *g*

And now on to the Challenge...


Doyle shook his head sadly, as they reached Bodie's flat. "Don't you know about the magic of Christmas, mate?" And the sidelong look he aimed at Bodie stopped the breath in his lungs.

Bodie fumbled with the locks, got them inside, closed the door and reset the locks, then turned to look at his partner in the glow from the lamp in the lounge. Whatever spirit was inhabiting Doyle, it was still upon him. He saw it in glittering eyes, and the half-challenging stance, felt it in the palpable energy radiating from him. And, quite suddenly, Bodie could deny himself no longer.

"Time for miracles, then," he said, latching onto Doyle's scarf. He pulled Doyle to him, willing to pay for this indulgence. His mouth found Doyle's--cool, firm, unresponsive--payment due now, then. But, with a murmur that was almost a question, Doyle moved closer. And the kiss deepened.

 

 

 

Me, thought Bodie, half amused that he wanted so much for this to mean something, to be different enough that he could always point to this point his memory and say, see,  that’s the date, never forget it’s been forty years to this day…….

 

“Me,” he said out loud. ”If we’re going to do anything with Cowley and his mum just couple of rooms away, it’s going to be worth it.”

 

“D’you want to?”

 

“Christ,  Doyle, want?  Want?  I ‘want a cup of tea – I ‘want’ a pint  – you I fucking need.”

 

 
Bodie felt a flush of warmth spreading out from somewhere deep within. "What do you want, then?"

"Someone to get into the car with." Doyle spoke so softly that Bodie held the R/T tight to his ear to hear. "On the long drive back to Town, all I could think of was how good it would feel to have some company--not just then, not just there, but all the time, everywhere I turned around. Someone to laugh with when things are good, someone to hold tight when they're not. Someone to share all the little things with, to help bear all the large things, someone I could watch fall asleep beside me, and wake up to in the morning. Someone I could talk to, not have to talk to, agree with, argue with, someone I could rise to the heights with or go through hell with--all of it, everything, good and bad. I want someone to share my life with, all the way up to the stars, and all the way down to the nails on the coffin." Doyle paused. "But mostly, I just want someone to be with on the long drive home."

Bodie's hand felt frozen on the R/T. He couldn't bring it to his mouth, he had no words to match Doyle's. But he felt an amazing power within him, a strength and a love he had not known possible.

"When I got into Town," Doyle went on, "I rang you up. Because when I thought about who I wanted to do all those things with, you were the one who instantly came to mind, first, foremost, and always." He paused again, and his next words sounded more down to earth. "Pity you weren't about that day."

 

 

And yet sometimes Bodie found that he was watching Doyle, just watching. When he caught himself at it he had to force himself to turn aside, jaw clenched. That sort of thing gave people power. He'd given Cowley power over them and look what had happened. Better to turn away. Until the next time his eyes were drawn, and the pull was ever stronger, and he knew that he wanted, instead of looking, to touch, and to be touched. The power was already there. He thought Doyle knew, he was sure Doyle knew, but if he did he gave no sign. Doyle carried on being Doyle, and that too was a part of the rhythm of Bodie's life.

There came a morning when Bodie awoke to a pricking down his spine. There was something strange about the light. It took him a moment to cotton on, and then he grinned and wriggled a bit further under the blankets. Heat radiated from the other side of the bed, as Doyle slumbered on, and this once he gave himself the treat of moving just a little closer, of letting the softness of the mattress excuse the fact that the knuckles of one hand brushed Doyle's skin, felt it smooth and warm and there. And if he passed his gaze down the hillocks and hollows that were the rest of Doyle, past the end of the bed to the window, he could just make out the thick white snow that was still falling, morning-hushed, and this time settling to stay on the cold ground.

 

 

The wake after the service was as bad as he'd expected. The Christmas decorations in the ready room had been taken down, the glasses lined up ready for the first remembrance speech. Sober and thoughtful at first, before too long the mood became wilder, as the agents celebrated their own survival as much as the passing of one of their own. He stood with Bodie, not participating, just watching. There were others whose moods were out of kilter with the growing bedlam. Susan Fischer and Murphy propped up their own corner of the room, arms folded, not speaking.

 

 

……..Before he could knock, the door opened and there stood Bodie.

For a guy who wasn't really that big, he had a way of appearing more... imposing than reality warranted. Perhaps it was the black poloneck and pants outfit. Or more likely, the enigmatic look in his eyes. Or was that just a slight air of suppressed insanity?

Then Bodie grinned and ruined it. Anson responded with a quick smile of his own as Bodie waved him inside………...

As Anson walked into the lounge, his eyes were treated to the unexpected sight of Agent 4/5 sitting in front of a not-too-tall, but very bushy, fir tree, his arms tangled in a cat's cradle of Christmas lights. The trail of multi-coloured lights fell across his lap and splayed out across the floor.

 

 

There was a purr, deep inside the pressure pads, rumbling from the centre of the mechanism. Cowley felt it (the right leg felt it, anyway, buzzing and humming at what seemed to be a great distance). And two sets of reflexes exploded at that moment, fighting to outrace time-- outrace the bomb-- outrace white-flash death. Two sets of arms-- brawny and wiry-- grappled, each trying to fling the other out of the way. Two bodies collided, rolled, each trying to cover the other in a protective shielding embrace. Protection turned into struggle, which turned into... something else. Just for a moment, straining turned to friction turned to fire. Arms tightened convulsively, bodies twined and writhed. Mouths met in blind hunger and they drank each other's breath, forgetting all else. Every fraction of every moment promised death, finality, and silence... But after those first few amazing, distorted seconds, when they should all have been dead... time stuttered, wavered, and resumed its normal flow.

 

 

All of a sudden, he was in command again; she had tipped him over the edge. With one hard, swift movement he twisted her arms behind her back, staring down at the flushed face below him, his own face cynical, cruel. "You're a bitch," he told her, dispassionately. "A whoring bitch. Don't play with me, poppet. It wouldn't be a pretty game."

He was hurting her but she forced a smile, her tongue between her lips. "I'd like it. Any time."

He stared down, his eyes jet-black, and hard; his mouth twisting. "No, sunshine," he said with black humour, "You wouldn't like it all."

And beneath the mistletoe, he brought his mouth down on hers in a savage travesty of a kiss.

 

 

Cowley welcomed the rush of cold, pristine air against his face as he left the hospital. He paused on the concrete porch, momentarily dazzled by the beauty of the clear firmament stretched above the world like a hint of infinity. He brought his eyes firmly down to the earth, with its limitations and entanglements. He glimpsed the red Ford Granada waiting at the kerb a short way up the road; Henshaw would be dozing at the wheel. Cowley had come in the ambulance. Outside the pool of light cast by the nearest lamp standard, the shadowed car looked as dark as the blood spattered about the farmhouse had appeared; as dark as the stain on Cowley's coat and those on Bodie's hands when they'd reached the hospital. Faintly, in the distance, he could hear a raucously cheerful rendition of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" playing on a radio.

 

 

The party quickly got back into its stride again, most people assuming there'd been a momentary power cut, but Doyle knew better than that. When the pounding of his heart had finally subsided, he looked across in Bodie's direction to find his partner standing on the other side of the room with his arm casually draped round Karen's shoulder, looking as innocent as the day he was born, but to Doyle's shrewd eye his partner was flushed and still breathless, and the dark blue eyes were sparkling mischievously.

And when he looked down he saw that Bodie was twirling a little piece of mistletoe in his hand ...

 

 

Doyle shifted his shoulders and then the sights. Below, at Wakefield Farm, something was moving. He tracked a figure coming out of the main door and kicking at the snow. Even at a distance the shape and flow of movement was so familiar that Doyle felt his stomach squeeze up into a little ball, realising that of course it wasn't Christmas in Derby that had been making him miserable. The big sheepskin jacket flapped open revealing the current favourite khaki shirt. Ah yes ... you can take the boy out of the army, but you can never ... He was wearing hiking boots with their laces trailing on the ground and he had a mug in one hand. Bent over, coughing like a smoker first thing in the morning, Bodie swigged, hurled the dregs across the snow and then dangled the mug from one finger.

 He pinched a fold of the sleeve. “My hair’s mud-coloured. Nothing like this.”

“You don’t see the way the light catches it. I’ve seen... every colour at one time or another. Sometimes all at once. But mostly that. ‘s why I got it.” He leaned forward and touched the jacket lightly, brushing Doyle’s fingertips.

Doyle grasped the hand before it could retreat. “Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

A slight shake of the head. “Because you’re wearing it. You make everything beautiful.”

He blinked down at Bodie, not yet used to hearing him talk like that and obviously mean it. He loved it, but it was outside all his experience. The only answer he could make was to bend down for a kiss, which continued until his back started to ache.

Bodie’s other present from Doyle was a black cashmere pullover


Employee," Doyle snarled unwillingly, since some password seemed to be required, and the guard stepped aside to let him in, eyes raking Doyle from head to foot, clearly most entertained by the vision of a mean-eyed elf in lifesize, a stare Doyle returned full-on. "At least I get to take it off come Twelfth Night, mate. Bet you'll be zipped into the penguin suit for life, eh?" he commented, and tripped tinklingly into the huge, marbled room.


He found his quarry in the poetry section. Tall, dark, casually dressed, with his head buried in a dusty old book. Doyle blinked, rubbed his eyes and decided he was hallucinating. Of all people he would've expected to see in a book-shop, Bodie would not have figured on his list, and the fact that he was also known at this particular shop hadn't gone unremarked. Poetry and Bodie didn't readily mix, in Doyle's mind...


As they turned the last corner before their destination, the night outside became a pageant of blinking lights, flares and floodlamps. A fire engine stood like a huge, misshapen Christmas tree; two smaller ambulances were squarish chunks at its feet, the red stripes making them look like parcels left by Santa. More, smaller shapes of unmarked cars surrounded the scene. Doyle swore and Bodie pushed that little bit more on the pedal. There were no sirens and the ambulances were still; the little people around them moved slowly, blurred little helpers in the wet, rimy night.

They could not really run because of the slippery new layer of slushy frost on top of the older, solid ice on the asphalt, and even if they had, time had taken on that eerie, slowed down quality that made it all unreal. The cold biting them as they got out of the car, the brightness of a floodlamp beam hitting them as they approached, the squeaks from a police radio, people calling orders and signals, and then the red stains on the snow: it all moved towards them slowly, almost gracefully, as if time had been muted by the muffling night.


*Not smooth was an understatement*, was Doyle's first thought as he raised his head groggily. *Surely it didn't have to be quite so rough as all that?* Shaking his head to clear it, he unstrapped himself and got to his feet, one hand reaching for Mrs Sharett while the other hovered near his gun. All his instincts were screaming at him to get the hell out fast, and they were joined now by reasoned argument. *This plane was supposed to have been searched thoroughly. So how did any kind of explosive get missed, unless it was overlooked deliberately -- or planted by the person checking for it?*


Twenty minutes later he was carrying two well-filled plates up the stairs, coffee balanced on the plates and forks tucked into his back pocket. He was greeted with appropriate enthusiasm, and they ate, taking turns watching out the window and talking about the possibility that Froukes would be up and about. Both of them hoped the man would sleep until noon. It was decided that whoever was watching would be the one to follow the man, since it might take too long to wake the other. That settled, Doyle shoved the plates onto the floor and settled down for his turn to sleep. He took a page from Bodie's book and slept with his head near Bodie, near enough for the other man to reach out and run his fingers through his curls. Doyle moved his head enough to press a kiss against the big hand, and then he let himself drift off. Bodie's touch did not disturb him, although he woke a little when Bodie traced a finger down his side and up to his hip. He mumbled for Bodie to stop it and then drifted off.


The weather had turned even colder, sleeting heavily as they drove towards Chelsea. Being the early hours of the morning, the streets were all but deserted. Coloured lights flickered in desultory splendour from windows and streetlights, from cables strung across roads and dangling from occasional trees. In five days it would be Christmas, the season of good cheer, merry gentlemen and peace on earth. Bodie wanted to rip it all down and smash it to pieces under his feet. Just like Doyle had done to his life. "You all right?" Murph asked as they pulled up


Oh, Christ. This he didn’t need. A six-foot-something nutter, complete with skinhead and bovver boots, his ears pierced all around with silver. The man said nothing, but leered down at Doyle, one hand in his pocket pulling out… a blade? Knuckle-duster? Doyle tensed, ready to reach out, to lift his knee, to break that arm across it in a single fluid movement. A five pound note. Doyle felt his own hand grabbed, the money pressed into it, edges of the crumpled fiver sharp against his palm.

"’appy Christmas, mate," the skinhead muttered, gave his hand one last squeeze, and turned away into the night. Doyle looked down at the note, robbed of speech, robbed of thought and in a split second drained of rage. He was aware of Bodie coming out of the shop at last, stopping to stare at him as he stared at the money.


They'd wanted to keep their heads clear for the morning's interrogation, so they'd made their excuses early, leaving the boozy post-op celebration to carry on without them. It had looked like turning into quite a party. Even Cowley had made a brief appearance and stood the team a round in recognition of a difficult job well done. Afterwards, Bodie had bought them dinner at the little Italian place they'd adopted as their local, and they'd come out onto the street at the end of their meal to find themselves in another world. The scruffy little mews was transformed under a pristine bloom of white, and heavy flakes were still swirling down in a slow, hypnotic dance. The night was hushed with the expectant silence that graces a new fall of snow, and the cold and the lateness of the hour had driven almost everyone indoors, leaving them alone in their own private wonderland. It had been magical.


Hungry kiss followed hungry kiss as Doyle drifted down through fields of sweetest cotton candy consciousness to the volcanic explosion which crowned their act of love and incident[al]ly cemented their friendship for the next thirty-five years.

"Was I the first, Bodie?"

"With my looks? Impossible, sunshine. Still, it was a family affair." His blue eyes darkened suddenly with the painful recollection of half-remembered humiliations. "My cousins - the Earls of Bidstone - they were young, strong and foolish. I was an innocent abroad."

"How dreadful for you."

"Yes, it was horrid. What they did buggered all description."

"Beggared, surely?"

"Sadly, no."…………