"So, it was just a one night stand?"

"Yeah. Thought that was obvious...I mean, we were stone drunk, weren't we? I can't even remember a pretty good half of it."

"I see." Bodie gulped down his pint, and made a face, just as if he was drinking warm water.

"Feel that bad?" Doyle asked in a rush. His own glass was abandoned on the table.

Blue eyes, limpid and dark at the same time, absolute blue, stared at him for a very silent while. "This beer tastes like piss, I tell you."

Doyle saw the white in Bodie's knuckles, the white in his eyes, so shining and absolute, too. So, the beer tasted bad. Doyle glanced sideways, briefly, then his eyes were back on his partner. "Shall we go, then?"

Bodie didn't answer him. At least, not as he used to answer him, with a joke, or more often a heartfelt protest, feigning a laziness Doyle knew wasn't really true. Instead, Bodie just got up, turning to go, hand already holding the car keys, holding them tight, holding them so tight in his fist it must have hurt him, it must have...

...it was a small drop of blood, what Doyle was seeing, wasn't it?

But then, they were already out in the sun, in the first warm day of a mild June, bright and sunny and joyous. The Capri was parked right there, and they were inside the car in no time, and Bodie was already pushing it at impossible speed, and the R/T was beeping and another hard afternoon of work had started.

There was no time to say anything more, and they didn't say anything more.

---

Three days later, Bodie made a choice.

He leaped forward past the brick wall that was protecting him, and stepped in front of Doyle.

The round of bullets hit him full in the chest and throat.

His death came slowly and messily.

---

Bodie's relatives never answered the letter Cowley had sent them.

So, Doyle personally chose the tombstone and what it would be written on it.

The ceremony was short. Bodie didn't have many friends, and most of them were dead anyway.

The tombstone read: "Never a Lover, Always a Friend."

Nobody asked any questions.

---

Five months later, Doyle had to choose a course of action.

Wait for backup, or go inside the mansion where two components of an group of international terrorists were supposedly hiding.

He decided not to wait. There were five terrorists inside the house, he discovered, and two hostages. The hostages died along with a fellow agent, and the terrorists escaped.

---

Two months after that, Doyle decided to resign from CI5.

---

Three months later, one year after Bodie's death, Doyle decided to put the barrel of a .44 Magnum inside his mouth and pulled the trigger.

-- THE END --

9 August 1999