Special thanks go to Elizabeth O'Shea for Brit Reading this with her extra-special be-kind-to-silly-American-writer-glasses...

---

As usual, the aircraft landed on the tarmac and taxied to the gate. Passengers were given the information that a slight delay was required, and CI5 agent Raymond Doyle boarded to retrieve the passenger from row 27 seat C. Once the transfer was complete, Doyle sauntered off the aeroplane with one Atith Prahn, wanted in connection with the bombing murder of French industrialist Ariel Alphonse, in tow. His mission complete, he reckoned on a trip to headquarters and perhaps a pint or two with Bodie if the stupid man was ready to allow himself back among the living.

Bodie was still missing; probably licking his wounds after the disastrous affair that cost Marikka her life. He was nowhere to be found after the prisoner transfer was completed. Doyle had gone home to bed, and next thing he knew, there was a bang and terrible odour after which he woke up isolated in a fantastically large underground compound intended to keep him from transmitting the disease he carried to the world outside or literally, to kill him if he tried to escape. Not that he would. Even if little else in life was certain, former Detective Constable Raymond Doyle would do nothing to shatter the peace or endanger the lives of the very citizens he'd sworn to protect.

---

Bodie hadn't slept. Not since Doyle had carried out his mission at Gatwick. A simple prisoner pick up, which had gone like clockwork. Show identification, sign some paperwork, and then ferry the man to Cowley. In his own defence he'd been busy with the aftermath of that horror with Marikka, which he'd perceived at the time as betrayal. Bodie shook his head. What he'd thought then was so inconceivably trivial now.

The passengers of flight 1423 had begun dying six hours after it landed.

Cowley faced him across the desk, his eyes magnified by the absurd square-framed glasses he needed to read. "They've demanded the release of Prahn, Shin Vu, and thirteen other terrorists. They insist that as soon as the prisoners are on the plane they will release the antitoxin."

"What the hell happened on that aircraft?" demanded Bodie.

Cowley walked to the slide projector. "Get the lights," he said in a way that caused Bodie to jump. The grainy image showed a woman in a clear acrylic isolation cubicle. She looked perfectly frightful, covered in sweat and gooseflesh. Cowley switched on the reel-to-reel. "Here's what she said."

"Tab," she wheezed. "I asked for a Tab. Where are you?'

"Speaker, Miss Trent. To your left. I'm sorry I can't ask you questions in person." Cowley's voice was gentle.

"S'alright." Her voice seemed to relax. "I asked for a Tab, and the air hostess brought one out from her tray, see. I like it every now and then. I got a taste for it in the States. It's not around as much these days, but they had it on the aircraft." She gave a reedy sounding laugh. Bodie thought she might be delirious and just rambling. He stiffened and started to say something but Cowley forestalled him.

"Wait," said Cowley. "I'd not waste your time, Bodie, you must know that."

"Sorry," said Bodie, settling back.

"Anyway, when she opens it, it's flat, yeah?" She coughed a few times, and groaned weakly. "It's a kind of a light green colour, not right at all. And it's flat."

"Flat," came Cowley's voice.

"Yeah, except..." she trailed off.

"Yes? Except what?"

"It fizzed, like. After she opened it. After a while, because she put it in the bin, the one they use for rubbish. I was looking while she was getting me another. It bubbled all foamy. I remember thinking, 'Glad I don't have to drink that'."

"Are you certain it was a Tab can?"

"Sure. It's unusual, isn't it? That's why I asked for it. Is that what you wanted to know? Does that help?"

"Aye," said Cowley gently. "It's sure to help."

"Well then, I am glad." she said in a voice like a silken spider's thread stretching and growing taut as she drew out the last sound.

"Hush, lass." Cowley's voice bore an unmistakable trace of emotion, although he seemed to try to hide it. "Rest now, best for your body."

Cowley switched off the tape recorder and was already at the lights before Bodie could pull himself together enough to react. "Everyone is on this Bodie. Pymar at Special Branch told me that investigation work has ceased on every single case but this one.

"So far we have 512 people in isolation, 347 of those have various stages of the disease, and the others are on watch and wait, having come into contact with the victims. Right now, it doesn't appear that there are any more cases. All the men and women who currently exhibit the disease came into contact with the aircraft in some manner. The story being circulated is that there was potentially lethal food poisoning involved. I don't want all of England to panic."

"Grateful for small mercies then," murmured Bodie. "Why Tab, do you suppose?"

"Why not? It's completely innocuous."

"But how'd they know it'd be opened? How'd they know that one? Seems like an awfully long chance someone would--"

Cowley looked up and removed his glasses. "Special Branch reckons it wasn't a chance at all. They think one of the air hostesses was told to put that particular can in the bin and open it first."

"Why the hell would the girl do it though?" Bodie leaned forward. "She'd have to know that she'd be putting herself in the greatest possible danger."

"Not necessarily," said Cowley. "I want to show you something else." Cowley switched off the lights, this time to operate a film projector.

The film showed a different young woman in what had to be the final stages of the viral illness that was taking off the passengers of flight 1423 one at a time. Dark bruises circled her eyes and her lips were almost white. The skin on her cheeks was ulcerating. She was thrashing and mouthing words that looked to be--

"What's that she's saying," asked Bodie, leaning forward.

"Our lip reading expert seems to think she's saying, 'I'm sorry, I didn't know', and later, she seems to say 'Edward'."

"That's something isn't it? We could question her further--"

"We can't Bodie, she was one of the first casualties," Cowley sighed. Bodie gripped the arms of the chair in which he sat. The sudden, roiling nausea threatened to overcome him and he swallowed to keep what little he'd eaten down. Minutes passed in which neither man said anything, nor even made eye contact.

"I see," Bodie said finally, clearing his throat. "Now all we need to do is find the correct Edward, suss out his address, dig up who he's working for, find the antitoxin, administer it, and pray it works."

"That's right, Bodie," Cowley went back to his desk after the film ran out. It flipped and slapped against the projector, which hissed a little. Bodie went to turn it off, and then found the light switch. He sat back in front of Cowley.

"Have you got them all, do you think?" asked Bodie, knowing if he couldn't do his job it wouldn't matter. "Everyone in isolation who could possibly spread this thing?"

"Aye, we think so," said Cowley grimly. "But it's rather like closing the barn door after the horses have bolted. There no telling..."

"What about the doctors? Are they any closer?" Bodie asked, and then wished he hadn't. If the answer was no, he didn't want to hear it. The only way he could keep working, keep from succumbing to the terrible dread that clutched his gut, was to remain in motion. Agitated, he rose from the chair. "Scratch that, I've got work to do. I'm not likely to get it done sitting around talking."

"Bodie..." Cowley began. "I'm sure he'd like to see you. You know there'd be no danger; he's completely isolated. You could--"

"I have four more passenger identifications to run down," said Bodie, preempting whatever Cowley had to say. "And a meeting with one of the airline's hostesses who was not on that flight. I'm going to know more about the dead girl and her mate Edward than their own mums before I sleep. I'll be around... How is he?"

Cowley looked down at his hands.

"Tick tock," said Bodie. "Mother of fucking G--". The door slammed shut behind him.

---

Oh Matron!

Doyle was hot, though perhaps not in 'that' way. He laughed out loud at the direction his thoughts were taking. He'd removed what little clothing he had on and rested, lying down on the hospital bed in the one hundred square foot isolation cubicle. He'd begun by pacing, first ten feet one way and then ten feet the other, until he felt he'd wear a hole in the commercial lino flooring. But just lately, perhaps for the last two hours, hot had transmuted into hot and fatigued. Soon, he knew, he would be able to add short of breath.

Currently, he was amusing himself with a deck of playing cards, shuffling and reshuffling them, making patterns on the rough sheet that covered his nakedness. He laid out a game of patience. Eventually his hands would begin to shake too much for this. Relinquishing each thing -- each bit of the life he feared he was about to lose -- with the greatest fight possible had become his new passion.

An aversion to dying, the desire to fight and cheat and tear his way out of it with his bare hands if need be, and his faith in Bodie, were the only things that kept him from sliding into the abyss. Kept him from letting it claim him, because he knew as long as he had even one breath left, Bodie would never give up on him. He owed it to Bodie to merit such loyalty.

Doyle was more concerned, as usual, about Bodie himself. The man was a child, really; a monotone of loyalty and pride and passion, and he wouldn't understand or forgive Doyle for leaving, even if it was by the simple expedient of death. It was up to Doyle to see that it didn't happen, and he had seen to it, hadn't he? Until he'd met an enemy so implacable, so lethal, so silent, and deadly, and disastrous that it had felled him long before he even got wind of it.

Doyle chuckled. Got wind of it. The unknown toxin currently having its way with him, when airborne, was a pathogen so virulent it killed almost eighty-nine percent of its victims within a matter of five days. Children and OAP's of course, succumbed much sooner. Since Doyle was fit, it was assumed that he'd last as long as anyone could without the antitoxin.

Doyle turned a card. Bodie would be suffering. Doyle knew the man would never understand how much he needed a partner until it was too late, and then? He'd feel betrayed. Doyle's hand began to shake, but not because of the disease. Sooner or later, like it or not, the disease would take him. He'd be reduced to an inarticulate mass of pain. If he waited too long to ask for Bodie, it would be too late to say what he needed to say.

Conversely, giving Bodie time to hunt for the men responsible produced the greatest chance at finding, ultimately, the cure. Doyle teetered on the knife-edge of the worst waiting game of his life; he could only call Bodie in when all hope was lost. Which gave him that much more time to worry about what he wanted to say. And how little, in the end, he had to lose by saying it. And how everything had gone so spectacularly wrong.

Doyle turned the king of spades, the card he needed, and won the game of patience he was playing. Felt rather prophetic, that. He laid out another, more difficult game, forcing himself to breathe deeply and evenly as long as he could.

Odds were the job would kill him. He'd known that; they both had. But he'd always thought he'd go down with Bodie at his side, close to hand. Maybe looking in his eyes one last time to say...something. He knew Bodie didn't see much point in thinking beyond death. Doyle closed his eyes. He didn't like to think he'd had his crack and now it was over. He didn't know which scared him more, dying, or dying without telling Bodie that, no matter what, the stupid man would be all right. Without telling him to try to believe in things he couldn't see.

It was an out of character Raymond Doyle that switched the card up to the three of clubs, which gave him a lot better chance of finishing out the game.

---

Bodie waited outside a rough-looking pub while Murphy checked out a lead on the air hostess's boyfriend. He had a paper cone of fish and chips in his hands but wasn't eating it. He was working on 43 hours with no sleep, and had the distinct feeling he was getting a bit too old for such things.

Special Branch was having a look at a French pharmaceutical company outside Marseilles that had, among its chief researchers, one Edward Dinh Nyugen. A French-educated North Vietnamese with ties to certain Khmer Rouge higher-ups; Nyugen had demonstrated a desire to use his skills as a medical research chemist to further anyone's political agenda in the past, for a very high price.

Bodie threw his fish in the skip. Helplessness irritated him, his ego and his pretensions ill suited to inactivity, playing the game of wait-and-see. He'd rather break a few heads first and then apologise later if the situation warranted it. Cowley knew that, and was trying to keep him busy enough that he couldn't slow down and think. Unfortunately for Bodie, he could never be so busy he'd let go of the concept of losing Doyle.

Bodie found a phone box where he picked up the telephone receiver and deposited a few coins.

"Yeah," he told the operator at CI5. "3.7 here, could you patch me through to whatever rock 4.5 is sunning himself on at present? Is that possible?"

"I'm sorry 3.7, I don't have that information." Her voice had the detached air he always wondered about. It made her sound mechanical, almost.

"How about Alpha," Bodie tried. "Can you put me through to Alpha?"

"I'm sorry, sir, at this point Alpha is under radio silence."

"Of course he is," said Bodie, disgusted. "That's why I didn't use the radio, love, now isn't it? Might he be near a telephone?"

"No Bodie," the girl replied a little frostily. "He is not."

"Thank you." Bodie hung up. A commotion behind him captured his attention. Murphy rocketed out through the window of the pub in a hail of glass bits and skidded to a landing on his arse in the street. Bodie grinned for the first time in two days. "And cheers to you, mate" he told Murphy as he dove into the bar looking for something bracing by way of a fight.

An hour later, Bodie was holding a wet rag to his temple and feeling much better about everything.

Murphy was driving. "No," Bodie was telling Cowley, who was finally close enough to a phone to have a radio call put through. "He had a mate from college, a chemist as well, here in London. A Cambodian woman named Chantou Sey. The air hostess's roommate resented it, because it was a long-distance charge to call the girl, and he called her frequently from the girls' flat."

"Did you have the number traced?" asked Cowley.

"I did," said Bodie, "We're heading over to her place now." Bodie waited with poor patience.

"All right," said Cowley.

"Happens she works for a small-scale beverage company. Happens they do beverages in two-piece DWI cans from Crown Bevcan in Carlisle. Happens it is quite feasible to use the available equipment to make look-alike products with lethal pathogens inside, if you knew what you were doing."

"Mother of G--"

"Tick Tock." Bodie interrupted him.

"Check it out. Find out who her friends are, family, any reason she might have for throwing in with Nguyen. It's my experience that expatriate Cambodians aren't all that friendly with the Khmer Rouge. Quite the opposite."

"I know." The radio was breaking up. "Mr Cowley... Interference," he said to Murphy, switching the radio off.

Murphy pressed his lips together.

"What?" asked Bodie irritably.

"Look, Bodie, I just wanted to say I know how you feel--"

Bodie shot him a look that promised pain, "You do not know how I feel, Murphy."

---

Doyle watched as the physician, who looked like nothing so much as an astronaut in his hazardous materials suit, began the process of hooking up the IV Cowley's voice squawked over the intercom in his ear, at least he thought it was really Cowley's voice. At one point, when he was beginning to feel short of breath, he'd thought he'd heard Bodie's own gravelly scouse, telling him to hold fast, but he realised he'd been woolgathering and perhaps even hallucinating. He wished he could do it again.

Everything was up to the two of them now. Doyle didn't think for a moment Bodie'd given up on him, any more than he'd given up on Bodie. Just the kind of man for the last chance charge, was Bodie. He'd have to do the dramatic, and sail in all guns blazing at the very final possible moment, and so far...so far he'd never come even a fraction of a second too late.

Doyle felt a weak smile trying to settle itself onto his lips, as he pictured Bodie's cocky, grinning countenance. How many times had Doyle said, "You'll save me," and sauntered off into something dangerous and stupid, knowing the truth of those words. Bodie would never forgive himself, he thought grimly, if this once, they weren't true.

Last time he'd seen Bodie was when the man had come down from his sniper position after Marikka was killed. Bodie'd given him a scathing look and shoved that rifle against his chest. He hadn't acknowledged Cowley at all. He'd stormed off, leaving the two of them looking after him. He'd probably known at the time their hearts were breaking for him, but that did fuck-all for them now. Now that it was all falling apart.

Doyle willed his heart to slow its pace. If he got ahead of himself now, it only shortened his life when seconds could count. He consciously applied Eastern meditation techniques, thinking again how lucky it was that the situation wasn't reversed. The ever-impatient Bodie would definitely have chewed his way through the walls of this place by now and given himself a heart attack into the bargain.

A smile tried to coax itself onto Doyle's mouth again. He closed his eyes, and focused on his breathing, willing himself to remain as calm as water, seeking its level, placid and cool and deep.

---

Bodie looked across the closed door at Murphy, gun drawn and ready as he silently mouthed the countdown, "Three, two, one. Go!" he called, and Murphy kicked the door in, covering him as he entered the laboratory. They surprised an occupant in the process of throwing papers into a file folder. Two other men opened fire, and Bodie took cover while Murphy charged, dispatching one neatly into a large packing crate against the far wall. Bodie handled the other, drilling a tiny hole into his forehead. He dropped, surprised, at the feet of a diminutive figure who was lifting his briefcase to his chest like a shield.

"Edward Nguyen!" said Bodie from behind the .357 magnum. "It's over. Put down that case and tell us where the antitoxin is!"

"I don't have to tell you anything!" said Nguyen, his accent betraying his origins in Asia. He dropped the case and raised his hands, one of which held a can of Tab. "In case you haven't realized it yet, you're going to listen to me," he added, waving the beverage can around. "Inside this can is a plague you cannot begin to comprehend."

"So sorry," said Bodie. "I'd love to chat, but I haven't the time. I want the antitoxin, and you're going to give it to me, or bits of you will start flying and you'll wish you only had the plague."

"Careful," the man taunted, holding his finger on the ring-pull. "I open this and we're both dead in less than five days, and everyone in the vicinity goes with us. Surely you wouldn't want to lose the chance to get your antitoxin and save the day. Tell George Cowley I will speak to no one but him. Tell him I'll open this if he's not here in an hour, ready to bargain."

"Bodie--" cried Murphy.

Bodie's entire body relaxed and he grinned. "Murphy, go outside and get on the radio to Cowley," he ordered, and Murphy took out his RT. "No." Bodie kept the gun on Nguyen, and said to Murphy. "Go outside, and use the car radio. Outside."

Murphy looked sick. "Bodie--"

"Go!" Bodie shouted and Murphy took off. Bodie looked back at Nguyen as he took out his own radio transmitter, with his left hand, still using his right to train his gun on Nguyen, who looked triumphant.

A grin split Bodie's face. It never got old, that moment just before the other bloke realised his plan had failed spectacularly. Then he shot the can out of Nguyen's hand, splattering its contents all over both of them.

Nguyen gave a horrified scream, trying to wipe the sticky green substance off his face and hands even as it began to fizz. "You bloody idiot!" he cried, "Do you realise what you've done! You've killed us all!"

Bodie shook his head, "3.7 to Alpha do you read me?"

His radio squawked, "Bodie? What the hell--"

"I believe Mr Nguyen, will be more than willing to lead us to the antitoxin now," he raised his eyebrows at the frantic man. Nguyen nodded, clearly unwilling to die for a cause to which he had committed so many other innocent people's lives. "Yes, and we'll need a clean up in comestibles...if you take my meaning."

"Bodie! You had better not have done what I think you did, you--" Bodie turned off his RT before Cowley could warm to his subject. Time enough for regret after the fact. After he'd done everything in his power to find a way out for Doyle if for no one else.

Nguyen stopped thrashing and stared at him blankly. "You idiot. It isn't even a cure! It's just an antitoxin. Even if it's administered there's no way of predicting if we'll survive."

"That's life in a word, if." Bodie shoved the gun in his face. "But here's the beauty part, mate, no matter what, if you don't give me that bloody antitoxin in the next ten seconds? You'll wish very much you were already dead."

---

Doyle's mouth felt ridiculously dry. He'd been thirsty before, but never like this. He thought it might be the fever, he felt it flush along all the capillaries of his skin as though they were bursting like tiny volcanoes, his boiling blood pouring out like lava. It had been some time since the pain relief had stopped working.

The young doctor in charge told him, stricken with remorse, that there was little they could do now but give him auxiliary oxygen and harder drugs for the pain. He accepted the oxygen, but refused the drugs. Every so often, he had cause to revisit that decision but for the most part, simply drifted in a haze of incomprehensible discomfort, waiting.

At one point, there was a tremendous confusion in the isolation units, an alarm went off, and what sounded like hundreds of pairs of feet scrambled around in a frenzy of activity. Doyle drifted beyond it all, past caring, past worrying, past the ability to guage the passage of time as he lay there, holding on. He knew he'd never willingly take his last breath until he had a chance to see Bodie, knew he could hold on that long at least. Doyle only waited now for Bodie, a man who hated to lose, to give up and come to him to say farewell.

From a distance he heard Cowley barking, he thought vaguely, for that's just what it sounded like, a kind of frantic angry tirade that seemed to come closer and closer, until he could hear him clearly...

"I should shoot you myself, you daft idiot," Cowley was saying, "for being the biggest lack-wit, immature, hot shot, bastard...you come back here when I'm talking to you, Booooodie!"

The door to his isolation cubicle smashed open and Bodie walked in, incongruously wearing surgical scrubs. His skin was red all over like he'd been boiled, and raw, as if someone had scrubbed him with a wire brush.

"Hello Petal, miss me?" he said. He came right over to the hospital bed and lowered the side. "Shove over, there's a good lad." He helped Doyle move, gently lifting him and settling him so he could climb up and lie on his side facing the weaker man.

Doyle shot him a faded smile behind his oxygen mask. He had no words. Mysteriously garbed attendants and doctors circled them, working in frantic haste, adding something to Doyle's intravenous line, taking hold of Bodie's arm to inject him as well.

Despite the chaos surrounding them, Doyle gazed into Bodie's eyes, slowly comprehending that Bodie had once again saved the day. The sod. Now there'd be no living with him. He tried to chuckle, but no air meant that was out. He was barely able to breathe as it was.

"Don't try to talk," Bodie told him gently. "I've had worse timing, but not by much. Sorry. Had to have a little scrub down from the Marquis de Sade and then evacuate and burn down an industrial complex before they'd let me come here."

Doyle closed his eyes, which were getting a little wet, he thought, and unmanly looking.

"You never thought I'd let you down, though, Petal?"

Doyle shook his head.

"S'alright then," said Bodie, "Fuck me, I'm so knackered I could sleep for a week..."

Bodie sighed, and by the time Cowley was suited up and bursting into the isolation room to give him a piece of his mind, Bodie was sound asleep with his arm protectively around Doyle. Cowley broke off his tirade as soon as he saw the two of them.

"Well. That's one for the CI5 family photo album." He muttered to Doyle.

Doyle shrugged.

"Get some sleep. His arse will still be there for me to take a huge chunk out of in the morning." Cowley looked at his watch. "It is morning. Well... Whenever."

Doyle nodded.

"Tell him..." Cowley considered them for a long time. He swallowed hard. "Tell him I said good lad." He turned to leave. "And he's a damned bloody idiot."

Doyle tried to smile again, but it was watery and tight and left him feeling like he'd needed to sneeze but at the last second had been unable. He put a hand on Bodie's cheek, just a flutter really, and those blue eyes snapped open. He thumbed Bodie's lower lip. Bodie closed his eyes, but Doyle was certain he'd felt a kiss.

---

Three Months Later...

"What are you going on about," said Doyle as he allowed a warm wave to pick him up and float him to his partner. "I couldn't hear you, I was under water..."

"I've never been this indolent in all my life," said Bodie, the scouse coming through loud and clear. "Like a bloody harem girl."

"I fail to see how a simple holiday..."

"Oh come on, we've been useless these three months," Bodie said, bobbing along, the water and the weightlessness seeming to lift his spirits. He was getting up a fine tease, Doyle thought, frustrated. He'd been brushing against Doyle's limbs like a predatory fish, but never coming close enough to get it just right.

"You just had to go and get plague. Spoilt me beauty, it did."

"What's that?" Doyle asked, as if he hadn't heard it a hundred times.

"Gave me a mark. Right here," he pointed to the corner of his mouth, where he had the tiniest scar from a blister that had healed badly. Doyle cuffed him, and then bussed it lightly, flicking his tongue out as he did so in order to get Bodie's attention.

"What about me?" he said. It paid to point out the obvious to Bodie. "I've got three..." He pointed to his right cheek where three tiny dents marred the already imperfect surface.

"Well...you... You were a gargoyle to begin with weren't you?" Bodie teased. He leaned over and casually caught Doyle behind the neck to bring him in for a long, deep kiss.

"So you say." Doyle didn't mind the teasing, but sometimes it stung a little.

"And perhaps that's why I can't keep my hands off you. You are the Yin to my exquisite Yang."

"Ah," said Doyle, not quite mollified.

"And that brings to mind..." Bodie slipped his hand into Doyle's swimming trunks under the water.

"Ah, Sunshine," sighed Doyle, "You make a very good case."

"I thought you'd see it my way Petal, after all, when in Greece..."

Doyle smiled as his partner's knowing hands roamed over him. "Did I mention a fondness for your frequently all-too-busy mouth?"

"You might have done." Bodie began to swim towards shore. "Did I mention that if I can't have your arse in the next hour or so I'm going to throw you off a cliff?"

"Might have said something sooner," muttered Doyle. "I'd have stayed in the room. But it could be amusing to see you suffer a little, you are entirely too certain of yourself."

Bodie bobbed in place and looked at him. Doyle couldn't tell exactly what was in his eyes. "Do I seem that way to you?"

"A little," said Doyle, carefully. He'd had to tread this path with Bodie cautiously. Since the incident with the pathogen they'd been forged into something entirely new, and he knew Bodie felt it sharply, but didn't really trust it yet.

"Do you.... What I mean to say is, when you were so ill, and I thought I'd lose you, I realised--"

"I do, Bodie." Doyle pulled the stubborn man close, telling the story with his body that he still found somewhat difficult to share with his words.

They allowed the waves to wash over them as they clung tightly to one another.

"Well yes," said Bodie, quietly. "Yes but..."

Doyle rolled his eyes. Bodie was such a child sometimes. "It's true, Bodie, you remarkably stupid man. It's real."

Bodie gave him a radiant smile then, that lit his face and seemed to heat Doyle's whole body from within. "You love me, then." He began to swim once more, for the shore. "Of course you do," he snarked over his shoulder. "Fantastic specimen like me, how could you help yourself?"

-- THE END --

May 2008