"What is...." Doyle didn't finish his sentence, the words stripped from him by two sights. One was the biggest bed he had ever seen in his life and the other was the grin on his partner's face. "Where did that come from?" Doyle demanded as he entered Bodie's flat.

"Pixies brought it," Bodie said facetiously.

Doyle fixed him with a look that asked him to get serious.

"Found it under a cabbage leaf?" Bodie suggested, still wearing that entirely too wide grin.

"Bodie!" The warning was louder and the sparks in Doyle's eyes told Bodie that he couldn't push his partner much further.

"I won it," Bodie said happily.

Doyle eyed the bed again. It took up most of the lounge and, in fact, blocked the way to the kitchen.

"You won it?" Doyle echoed, with some doubt in his voice.

Bodie nodded.

"How?" Doyle challenged.

"Remember when we had three days off and took Jenny and Anja up to that little village Murphy talked us into visiting?"

Doyle rolled his eyes and said, "How could I forget?" The village had not lived up to its billing. A pretty enough place, but the night life had been non-existent. The two women had just met them the week before and had not been at the point of jumping into bed, quite. Bodie and Doyle had found themselves sharing one bedroom, and the women the other for the first two days. Of course, that last night....

The first day, desperate for something to entertain the girls with, they had ended up at a village fair. It had been a very small fair, featuring local children's dance groups, ice cream and pie, a fortune teller, and jumble sale to benefit the local parish. There had also been, Doyle recalled, an old woman selling chances to win a quarter of beef or a leg of lamb, among other things.

"It was the tickets you bought at that last booth," Doyle said slowly, as he remembered. "I remember the sign. 'Win the World's Largest Bed' it said."

Bodie whipped out a brochure with the dash and flare of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. "The largest commercially sold bed, the Super Size Diplomat. Nine feet wide and nine feet long. I rang them up today and found out they sell for thousands of pounds." To his surprise, Doyle started to giggle.

"What?" Bodie said, prodding his partner hard enough to unbalance him into sitting suddenly on the bed.

"That's why it's out here, isn't it? Won't fit in your bedroom. You know, the birds are going to look at you funny when they see the centerpiece of your decor is this."

"I just wanted to see how it looked. Besides, it was all over the place anyway," Bodie said, waving a hand at the packing and boxes littering the perimeter of the room.

"Does it come with sheets?" Doyle wanted to know.

"No. And do you know how much the bloody things cost? A hundred pounds!"

"What!"

"Complete set, it says here," he pointed out the paragraph in the brochure.

"It does need sheets," Doyle pronounced. "And bedding."

"Yes," Bodie sighed.

"For something free, it's going to be rather expensive. Other people win the Irish Sweepstakes, Bodie. Not giant beds."

"I know." Bodie sounded half smug, half rueful. He was also willing to look on the bright side. "But think of what a great line it is," he leered in the general direction of an invisible bird and murmured, "I've just won the biggest bed in England--how would you like to be the one to christen it with me?"

Doyle laughed. He could see Bodie using that line, and see it working, too, the sod. "Going to christen it every night, are you?"

"And twice on Sundays," Bodie agreed. He sat down on the edge of it, bouncing experimentally. "Seems comfortable enough."

"Enough for what?" Doyle said, also testing the bounce. He lay back and found the mattress firm.

Bodie lifted his eyebrow to indicate that even Doyle was not that dim. Doyle ignored him.

"Could sleep four easily," he decided. "Going to invite me over for a foursome, Bodie?"

"Won't need you. The three girls and I will get on quite well without you," Bodie assured him breezily.

"Dreamer!"

"Bed's the right place to dream," Bodie agreed, stretching out, his hands laced behind his head. "One of each, don't you think? Blonde, brunette, redhead?"

"Wear your little peter down to a nub, you will," Doyle predicted.

"Not so much of the little, thank you! I'll take the chance," he added, smirking happily at the ceiling.

"It's going to be a bugger to move," Doyle said, changing the subject.

"Eh?" Bodie surfaced from his fantasy enough to realize Doyle had said something.

"Musical Flats. The game we play every few months? How much do you want to bet that the crew won't assemble this beauty for you each time? And what are you going to tell Cowley? Sorry, but I need a bedroom the size of the Queen's?"

Bodie frowned. "Who hired you to rain on this parade?"

"Sorry. It's a very nice bed," Doyle told him in a humour-the-man voice. "Would have killed for one like this when I was a kid." He gave an experimental bounce and then rolled to the center of the bed, his arms outstretched. "Had to share a single with my brother for two years. It was hell," he remembered. "He kicked."

"Robert?" Bodie asked, as that was the one brother he could remember hearing about. Robert was scum.

"Nah. Tad. Robert had to share with Trent. We all were in the same room, though."

Bodie opened his mouth to comment, but then closed it firmly. It would be prying to ask why four boys had to share the same room.

Doyle went on explaining without being prodded, however. "It was only for three years. We lived over a shop while we saved for enough for a house. The house," he remembered, "had five bedrooms. One for each of us. Mum had to sell the house when Dad died, but by that point, Trent was the only one home, so," he shrugged. "Would have been a lot for her to keep up on her own, so I suppose it was for the best."

"Two in a bed, eh? Got up to a few naughty things, did you? Wink, wink," Bodie said.

"Actually, no. Too young, really. What we did to those beds," he said, "was bounce on them. Played wild games, jumping from bed to bed, flailing about with pillows, tackling each other and wrestling on them. Amazing the springs didn't all collapse."

"Jumped on the bed? And you lived over a shop? Must have been a treat for the customers, hearing that lot careering about." Bodie tsked and shook his head. The thought of a young Doyle, all curly hair and skinny ribs, pillow raised, was wonderfully clear in his head.

Impulse moved him. Without warning, he gave a whoop and pounced on his partner. He truly regretted he had not yet brought his pillows out of the bedroom. He fancied himself an expert at the pillow fight.

Doyle yelped, twisted, and proved at once how much experience can count. He wiggled, pulled, and had Bodie both laughing and cursing as they wrestled across the huge expanse of mattress. Rather to Bodie's astonishment, when the dust settled, he was pinned under Doyle. His partner's butt was firmly planted atop Bodie's genitals, so that to buck upwards to dislodge Doyle would cause severe harm to his tender bits. His wrists were held down on either side of his head by fingers which seemed to be made of steel.

The only thing to do was to talk, distract him until the moment when he let up a bit and could be tumbled off. Bodie put on his most charming smile and was going to speak when Doyle beat him to it.

"At last, I have you, my beauty!" he said melodramatically, and then at once added, "Why aren't you Margie? or Ellen? First time I'm in bed with someone in a week, and it's you."

"Not getting our oats, are we?" Bodie asked sweetly, testing to see if Doyle's grip on his wrist was any looser. Not at all, he realized.

"Thanks to Cowley, no."

Bodie fixed a kindly expression on his face and said, "Mustn't blame Cowley just because you can't pull the birds, mate."

"I can blame him for the schedule, and for calling us out of bed Monday night for that stupid cock-up at the docks, and for taking us off standby last night, and for...."

"Come to think of it, he does have a lot to answer for, doesn't he?" Bodie interrupted.

"Yes. And," Doyle had to stop speaking because Bodie had made his move. Unfortunately for Bodie, he had miscalculated Doyle's readiness, and after a flopping tumble across the bed that included contact with the wall, which Doyle used to good advantage to push them back to the middle of the vast bed, they ended up in almost the exact position as before. "Never learn, do you?" Doyle asked, projecting pity and the tone of superiority that Bodie usually assumed himself.

Bodie, breathing a bit harder, still had the breath to joke, "What are you going to teach me, you big butch thing, you?"

Doyle smiled and answered in kind, "What do you want to learn, petal?"

Bodie pretended to give it some thought. "No," he said, shaking his head. "I'm afraid that when it comes to bed, I know it all."

"Oh, do you?" Doyle said, and bounced twice, pushing down on the hefty bundle at Bodie's groin with his hard buttocks. "Everything?"

"Everything," Bodie lied, his eyes growing larger as the multiple meanings of the conversation soaked in. The press of Doyle's body on his groin, the innuendo, the heat and sweat and scent of him, were taking on new meanings.

"You naughty boy." Doyle grinned down at him, and Bodie knew that the reference was to the thickening of his cock underneath Doyle. "I didn't know you swung both ways. What other secrets have you been keeping from me?" As he spoke, he was lifting and then settling his weight again in a smooth, almost imperceptible pattern which caused the most startling reactions in the flesh beneath him. Bodie bit his lip to keep back the whimper which rose in his throat

Doyle didn't seem upset, and in fact seemed to be pleased at Bodie's response. "Since you know everything," Doyle said, smiling down at him, "Do you want to practice?"

Bodie could not believe his ears. His partner was propositioning him, and from the innuendo, was implying that it would not be his first experience in bed with a man. For some reason, that thought did not please Bodie at all. A very primitive feeling of possessiveness flooded him, washing away his inhibitions, his doubts and amazements, and leaving him with a lift of adrenalin which allowed him to surge up and dislodge his partner. For the third time they rolled across the bed, but there was a different quality now, and when once again, Bodie ended up on the bottom, he scarcely noticed, because Doyle's mouth had fastened on his and the resulting kiss was blowing the top of his head off.

Blind with lust and the lances of excitement at the forbidden thing which was happening, Bodie found himself tearing off his clothing, tearing off Doyle's, found his legs wrapped around Doyle's waist as the they drove their cocks together, and their balls danced over each other, slick with sweat and the dampness which leaked from them both. Kisses, bites, frantic hands and heaving bodies, the kaleidoscope of passion peaked all too soon, and the wet heat of Doyle's cum against his belly caused Bodie to spill as well, moaning and clawing at the perfect arse as he tried to get closer and closer to the centre of the universe before it all dissolved away.

For long moments there was only the sound of their deep, hard breaths, and then Doyle whispered, regretfully, "Bloody hell! I wanted to fuck you!"

I would have let you, Bodie thought, stunned. I would have let this man stick his cock up my arse. I wanted to stick my cock up his. Still do...I do....

What he said was, "We christened the bed."

Doyle lifted his head and looked down on Bodie. His eyes were sparking, and as green as spring leaves, and he was beautiful to Bodie, so beautiful that there was a spot in his heart that ached with looking at that beauty.

"We could christen it every day. Twice on Sundays. If you want."

"Yeah..." Bodie managed to say.

"D'you know what, Bodie?"

"What?" Bodie answered, still caught up in the beauty he had never seen before in his scruffy partner.

"Big as this bed is, there isn't any room in it for birds. Do you understand what I am saying?" There was a possessive light in those eyes now, a hard message that Bodie did, indeed, understand. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry as the desert. "Bodie?"

"For as long as I have the bed, there won't be any birds in it," he promised.

"Good." There was a cat-ate-the-canary satisfaction in that one word, something thick with sexual promise with a hint of...ownership?

Why wasn't he upset about it? Bodie asked himself. What had happened? He struggled, for normalcy, for his usual flip attitude. "You'll have to help me set up the bed each time I move house," he warned. Part of him was pleased to be coercing the help out of Doyle. Part of him was thinking of what would happen once the bed was set up again.

Doyle's thoughts were travelling along the same lines. "And then we'll christen it." He punctuated his sentence with a long, deep kiss. Impossible as it seemed, the kiss generated sparks inside Bodie that he would have sworn he was too tired to respond to...and yet.... He reached for Doyle, deepening the kiss, tasting his lover properly for the first time. Another tiny burst of fireworks went off in his heart. Something told him that very soon now, this bed was going to get totally re-christened. He felt Doyle's hand cupping his arse, fingers questing. The fireworks were getting better. Bodie moaned deep in his throat and stopped worrying about it. If the springs could take it, he could.

-- THE END --

Originally published in Old Friends, Chained to the Typewriter Press