(Written as part of a lyric wheel on the Prosfanfic list)

The poster with its yellow writing had been tacked up on the CI5 notice board for weeks, with various agents taking notice, but no-one acting on what it advertised. The idea appealed but they were simply too busy, and with half the squad at either end of the country chasing after the usual round of drug dealers and Russian agents, it was quickly forgotten, and half covered over by other memos pinned thoughtlessly over the poster.

Forgotten, that is, until a certain pair of agents returned from Scotland.

Exhausted, and severely pissed off that a week long stakeout had all been for nothing, Doyle sprawled out on one of the sofas in the Rec room. A nice long weekend to sleep and relax sounded wonderful at the moment, but unfortunately, wasn't likely. Cowley was famous for his quick temper, but that's exactly what it usually was. Quick. An hour long rant about the state of the country and the incompetence of his men, along with a single malt was usually all it took to put him in a good mood again.

But CI5 had been swamped in work for months, most of which had produced little in the way of results. Stakeouts, reports, long afternoons in Records looking for the tiniest whiff of something…all soul destroying work that put everyone in a bad mood. And Cowley had been storming round like a bear with a sore head for weeks now.

The more Cowley shouted, the harder they all worked, and, it seemed at the moment, the less was actually achieved. Doyle wasn't the only one who was exhausted. Most of the alpha squad had been operating solely on short naps taken in the office or out on the road. Even those lucky enough to make it home to bed were normally called back in to work within a couple of hours. Doyle was starting to forget what his flat looked like.

The sound of footsteps made Doyle force his eyes open again, and he muttered grumpily as his partner sauntered into the room. Unlike most of the squad, Bodie seemed as fresh and cheerful as ever, despite the fact that he'd been working just as hard as anyone else. In that split second, as Bodie took one look at Doyle crashed out on the sofa and started laughing, Doyle dearly wanted to hit him.

"What are you laughing at, Bodie?" he growled.

"You, sunshine." With a grin, Bodie perched on the arm of the sofa and ruffled the tangled curls. "You look like something even the cat wouldn't touch. No stamina, that's your problem."

Doyle propped himself up on an elbow and stared incredulously at his partner. "In case you haven't noticed, I've had five hours sleep in the last three days."

"No less than me, sunshine, and you don't see me complaining. When I was in Africa..."

"Put a sock in it." Doyle snapped. Usually he was quite happy to hear Bodie's tall tales as a mercenary - though he suspected few of them were true, they gave him a welcome insight into Bodie's past. But today he was definitely not in the mood.

Trying unsuccessfully to hide a smug grin, Bodie wandered over to the notice board, glancing at the latest roster with one eye while looking for anything interesting. He was pleased to see that he'd been given next weekend off. Definitely a good chance for some female company, he decided. He could give Michelle a call. Or maybe Amy.

A slightly faded leaflet caught his eye, and he scanned the page as he unpinned it, turning back to Doyle in delight.

"Load up on guns and bring your friends."

"What?" Doyle swung both feet down off the sofa and sat up at Bodie's words. He obviously wasn't going to be able to get any sleep with his partner around. He rubbed at his eyes while trying to work out if he'd heard right. "What are you going on about now?"

Bodie waved the leaflet at him, pointing at the yellow words, but moving it so fast that Doyle couldn't make them out. Sighing, he snatched the paper out of Bodie's hand.

"Load up on guns and bring your friends." He read out loud. "The latest craze all the way from America, a chance to show off and get the adrenaline flowing..." At the final line he looked up at Bodie and shook his head. "You have got to be joking."

"Deadly serious, mate. Come on, it'll be fun."

"Paintball?!"

"Yeah. Get the squad together - kind of a work outing."

"I get enough of being shot at here, thank you very much."

"Come on, Doyle. It's not like it's real, and it'd be a chance to see who's the better shot out of the squad."

"I already know that." Doyle replied, smugly. "Besides, there's no way we could get Cowley to agree to giving the whole squad the day off."

"We wouldn't need everybody. Lucas couldn't come, he's got his arm in a sling, and there're a few others who could stay here and man the phones. I could talk the Cow into it."

Doyle started to laugh, then it occurred to him the number of times in their careers Bodie had got away with doing things that would have got any other member of the squad kicked out. It actually wouldn't surprise him all that much if Bodie was able to sweet talk the Cow into agreeing.

He nodded, slowly. "Alright," he said. "If you can get Cowley to agree, I'll help you organise it."

Without another word, Bodie disappeared off to have a quiet word with their industrious leader. Doyle laid back down on the couch and closed his eyes, seizing the chance for a few minutes quiet rest. He kept one ear open, though, listening intently for the moment when Cowley's voice rose in anger, and Bodie was sent out of the office with his tail between his legs.

But everything stayed quiet. After fifteen minutes the door opened, and Betty called down the corridor for Miss Ross to join them in Cowley's office. Doyle frowned. Surely Cowley wasn't handing Bodie over to the shrinks for making such a ridiculous suggestion?

Another ten minutes passed, and still he couldn't hear anything, not even voices.

Eventually Bodie joined him once more, and took the seat opposite with a satisfied sigh. Doyle waited for him to say something, but Bodie remained quiet, until finally Doyle was forced to do a little prompting.

"Well?"

"Well what, Doyle?"

"What did he say?"

"Barring any national emergencies? Two weeks on Saturday."

"You have got to be joking. He agreed?"

"Yep."

"How did you manage that?"

Bodie's grin widened even further, if that was possible. "I just pointed out to him that morale on the Squad was seriously low, and a day out with our little group, doing something a bit different, might be enough to cheer everyone up."

"And what did Kate Ross have to do with it?" he asked suspiciously.

"Cowley called her in to ask her opinion. She agreed. Said that a chance to unwind and 'play act', as she called it, especially as a team, would boost the team spirit and be beneficial to the efficiency of the squad as a whole."

Doyle laughed and shook his head. "I don't know how you managed that." Suddenly Bodie looked a little nervous, and Doyle frowned. "Alright, sunshine, what aren't you telling me?"

"Erm...the Cow thought it was such a good idea, that he wants the two of us to organise it."

"What?!"

"Well, it was our idea."

"Your idea, Bodie. Emphasis on your."

"And we're partners, Doyle. We work together, remember?"

Doyle snorted in disgust. "Don't you think we've got enough bloody work to do?"

"Ah, cheer up, Doyle." Bodie resolutely ignored Doyle's turn of voice, refusing to be distracted from his pleasure at having convinced Cowley. "It'll be fun."

---

Sure enough, two weeks later Doyle found himself sprawled in Bodie's Capri at 8:30 in the morning, driving along the M25 towards Kent, where the paintball facilities were.

After a lot of cajoling, he'd finally agreed to help Bodie organise the outing, and had been surprised at how willing most of the squad were to go along. Cowley had insisted on CI5 at least having a skeleton crew remain back at base, so half the Beta Squad, as well as most of the Typing Pool, had been rostered on to cover. Of course, they had all had to take their R/T's with them, just in case, on the proviso that if the call came in, day off or not, they all went back to CI5 without hesitation.

They'd all worked almost as hard in those last two weeks as they had before, and though the workload had eased off a little, and most had at least managed eight hours sleep every forty-eight hours or so, things still weren't back to normal. More cases were still being screwed up than was usual, and a couple of injuries had knocked morale even more. To the point, in fact, where Doyle had contemplated resigning more than a few times.

He'd thought about it whilst kneeling on a street corner in the middle of Camden, his hands desperately trying to stem the swell of blood that pulsed from Jack Palmer's body as Bodie called in for an ambulance.

He'd thought about it riding in the ambulance as the crew worked to save his life. The bullet had punctured a lung, and he'd sat and watched while Palmer drowned in his own blood, the paramedics only just able to keep up with the blood as it flowed.

Fortunately, Jack had survived. He still wasn't completely out of the woods yet, but he was alive, and things were looking hopeful. It was a shame they couldn't say the same about the bastard who had shot him. Tony MacNamara had disappeared out of sight, and no-one had yet been able to find him. Another case bit the dust, made all the worse because they'd almost lost one of their own.

But the feelings that incident had instigated with Doyle had stayed around long after he'd washed the blood from his clothes. He was tired, and had had enough of watching friends and colleagues getting hurt and killed around him, was sick of starting each month wondering who was going to be alive to see their next pay cheque.

A big part of that, he knew, was the constant reminder that if it was Lucas one day, or Palmer the next, it could be anyone, maybe even himself. Or Bodie. And that, if he was honest, scared him.

Oh, he hadn't said anything to anyone. Mentioning it to Cowley would only mean an unwelcome session with Miss Ross, to say anything to Bodie would be unfair. Doyle didn't want to burden his partner with the threat of things that might never happen, and he knew how angry Bodie would be at the thought of his resignation.

So he'd said nothing, but had been doing an awful lot of thinking over the past few days.

As a result, the last thing he wanted to do when he'd finally been given a couple of days off was get up at some ungodly hour of the morning to go run around in a wood for the day. Especially since he was due back at work the following afternoon and dearly wanted to sleep.

But they'd agreed to go out in small teams, just the partnerships going head to head against each other, and if Bodie was going to play, then, as his partner, Doyle had had little choice.

It was a cold morning, though thank God it wasn't raining. Having to run around in the wood in the rain would have just been the icing on the cake as far as Doyle was concerned. But the heater in the Capri had warmed the air around him quite nicely, and he had no desire to go out into the cold again.

Still, when Bodie pulled into the gravel driveway at the paintball centre, Doyle reluctantly took his feet off the dashboard dragged himself out of the car. The cold wind blew his curls back from his face and for a second took his breath away, and he pulled his coat tighter around him as he followed Bodie into the cabin.

Most of the squad was already there, and two men were standing behind an old mahogany desk ticking names off a clipboard. As Bodie wandered between the other agents, bestowing greetings and good-natured insults indiscriminately, Doyle sat to one side and watched, envying the ease with which his partner was able to switch off from the trials of their job.

It just all seemed so pointless. For every criminal they put away, ten more rushed to fill the empty space, and Doyle felt like he - or should that be they - were fighting a losing battle. Would it really matter if he wasn't in CI5? Was he really making that much of a difference? For that matter, how much would change if CI5 itself closed down?

The standard speech Cowley gave recruits about 'keeping this sceptred isle clean' had become something to laugh at within the squad. Oh, they weren't laughing at Cowley - not nastily, anyway, but it was difficult to reconcile the noble ideas that Cowley had given them at first with the nastier aspects of the job - and most of the agents had learnt to live with the hypocrisy and forget about it. Bodie was a living, breathing example of that. But that was something Doyle had never been able to do, hence the uncertainty he was feeling now. A crisis of faith, if you like. Because what else could you call something that gave you the strength to kill in an attempt to bring order to social chaos? Hell, in some countries, people who did exactly the same thing as he did were called fanatics, terrorists. Just because he was sanctioned by the law, did that really give him the right?

Doyle's reverie was interrupted when one of the men at the table called everyone to attention.

"Welcome to Team Spirit, the first Paintball centre in the country."

One of the squad cheered, and people laughed. Doyle just about managed a grin, still half caught up in his thoughts.

"My name is David, and I'm just going to run through a few ground rules before letting you loose with the guns. First of all, these things don't fire real bullets, but they're still pretty painful if you get hit, so be careful where you aim. No shooting at people's heads or faces, and unless you really don't like the guy, I wouldn't recommend shooting at groin level either..."

Doyle listened as David droned on, followed instructions as David demonstrated how to use the paintball guns, until finally they were all handed green camouflage suits and headed off to change.

Gradually everyone finished changing and paired off ready to begin.

Once everyone had emerged from the changing rooms amid laughter, and Anson teasing Bodie for spending too long in front of the mirror, David joined them with a whistle and a stopwatch.

"Right." His voice was raised to carry over the din, but when they fell silent, dropped back to normal again. "Once I blow the whistle, you've got ten minutes to find yourselves defensible positions - wherever you think you're going to be harder to shoot. Then the klaxon will sound, and the shooting can begin. After that you'll have an hour and twenty minutes. Any questions?"

Silence, except for a low murmuring as people began whispering tactics to each other.

Doyle glanced over at Bodie, who grinned at him, his eyes shining in anticipation of the game to come. For a fleeting second, Doyle wished he could find pleasure in life as easily as Bodie did, then the whistle blew, and the squad headed out into the fresh air, quickly dispersing.

"You're the expert in jungles, Bodie." Doyle began as they jogged. "Where do you think?"

"It's hardly a jungle, Doyle. But follow me."

Doyle followed Bodie as they ran into the thicker part of the wood, where the trees began to weave together above them and the sunlight found it harder to push through. The sound of footsteps around them as the other agents searched for their own hiding places gradually faded, but only when all was quiet except for the rustling of the leaves did Bodie stop.

"Now what?"

"We climb."

"Eh?"

"Simple, Doyle. We need to find ourselves a vantage point, somewhere we can pick off the enemy with minimal risk to ourselves. So, we climb."

Doyle grinned, liking Bodie's plan. But... "Isn't that a bit unfair?"

"Nothing against it in the rules, Doyle. Now do you want to win or not?"

Doyle nodded, and together they started to climb, Doyle seating himself in one tree, and Bodie in the next one along. That way, if anyone did see one of them, at least the other was safe, and could take revenge.

They talked quietly for a few minutes until the klaxon sounded across the wood, when they slipped the safety catches off of their guns and fell silent. Both knew just how much sound carried across open spaces.

Only a few moments passed before they both heard footsteps treading carefully on the forest floor. McCabe soon padded into view, making little sound, his gun raised and alert for the slightest movement. Bodie gestured to Doyle, and he nodded his thanks before taking careful aim. Waiting until McCabe turned to face in their direction, as he pulled the trigger, Doyle noted that at no time had the man glanced up into the foliage.

The paintball pellet found its mark with a quiet thud, spreading red paint across McCabe's front as he cried out and stumbled backwards under the impact. Managing to keep his balance, McCabe searched around for his attacker before finally thinking to look up into the trees themselves. At the sight of brown curls barely visible between green leaves he groaned.

"Doyle. Isn't that cheating?"

"Nothing in the rules, sunshine!" Doyle grinned back, sending an amused glance over at Bodie.

Picking up his gun from where it had fallen, McCabe started heading back for the cabin.

"Have a drink for us!" Bodie yelled, before settling back into his seat, waiting for their next victim.

They stayed like that for a while, safely in the trees while picking off their targets in turn, until the people who came into their clearing began to glance up into the trees more than anywhere else, having obviously heard about their trick from those who had fallen.

They made their unspoken decision to climb down from the trees with one glance, and, having reached terra ferma again, began prowling through the woods side by side, keeping a constant watch for tell-tale movements around them that might be a little more than a fox.

As the time wore on, Doyle kept a careful count of the number of agents they had shot, trying at the same time to work out how many the others may have 'killed', and who might be left.

Coming to the edge of a clearing, the two friends paused, concealed by a tight group of trees. Bodie glanced over at Doyle.

"Alright?" he whispered.

Doyle nodded, and as he did so realised that, in fact, he was. Somewhere in the mornings exercise he had completely forgotten the morbid thoughts that had plagued him on the way up, and become totally engrossed in the game itself. He lowered his gun for just a second, and tapped Bodie on the arm. When Bodie looked over again, he smiled.

"Thanks, Bodie."

Bodie frowned. "For what?"

But Doyle just grinned and moved on ahead, raising his gun again as he walked. Bodie watched after him, puzzled at the strange gratitude. What had he done that Doyle had to thank him for? He shook his head and jogged forward to catch up. Four years together, and sometimes he still didn't understand Doyle.

The sound of a breaking twig somewhere to their left caught both their attention, and as a gun fired, Doyle caught sight of a figure erupting from the low bushes.

"Down!" he yelled, diving to his right as a shot whistled past his ear. The paint pellet exploded as it hit a tree behind him, and he threw himself into a roll, coming up on one knee and shooting back at their attacker. With one eye he saw Bodie on his knees, looking in disgust at the blood red paint spread across his side. With the other he identified the shooter as Murphy, and since his first shot had missed, pulled the trigger again.

But even as he did so, something slammed into his back, ruining his aim and propelling him forward to lie face down on the ground. For a second he lay still as the world righted itself, and then he rolled over and looked up to see who had hit him. Susan walked calmly out from behind the safety of a tree trunk, and as she did so, the klaxon sounded.

Game over.

Doyle let his head drop back down to the ground. Susan. Partnered with Murphy for this exercise just because neither of them had a regular partner. And together, they'd beaten both Bodie and Doyle.

Flushed with adrenaline, Doyle lay on the floor of the forest. Red paint began seeping slowly through his overalls, streaked in mud and with leaves and bits of twig tangled in his hair, Doyle worked to get his breath back - and began to laugh.

Bodie walked into his field of vision, stared down at him for a minute looking puzzled, then extended a hand, which Doyle took as he hauled himself up.

He smiled broadly at the three agents gathered round him, and then as a group they walked back towards the cabin, Bodie talking all the way about how they should have won.

But for once, Doyle tuned his partner's voice out, looking forward to lunch and a few beers.

Maybe they didn't have to win every time. It was the taking part that counted. And if they lost once or twice?

So be it. At least they had tried. It might sound pretentious, but CI5 could withstand a few setbacks. As long as there were people messing up Cowley's streets, Cowley would have people fighting to clean them up.

And Ray Doyle would be right there on the front line.

-- THE END --

---

Inspired by lyrics from Smells Like Teen Spirit, by Nirvana:

Load up on guns and bring your friends
It's fun to lose and to pretend
She's over bored and self assured
Oh no, I know a dirty word
Hello, hello, hello, how low?

With the lights out it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
A mulatto
An albino
A mosquito
My Libido
Yeah.

I'm worse at what I do best
And for this gift I feel blessed
Our little group has always been
And always will until the end
Hello, hello, hello, how low?

With the lights out it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
A mulatto
An albino
A mosquito
My Libido
Yeah.

And I forget just why I taste
Oh yeah, I guess it makes me smile
I found it hard, it was hard to find
Oh well, whatever, never mind
hello, hello, hello, how low?

With the lights out it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
A mulatto
An albino
A mosquito
My Libido
Yeah.