The Professionals Circuit Archive

Like Gravity
(True Before We Knew About It)

It had obviously been a while since anyone had washed the windows.

Bodie was a little unsettled that he'd noticed this.

Of course, a two bedroom flat in Camden Town on the CI5 accommodation rota was a different proposition to a hut in some scrub corner of Africa, or a wire-girdled base in Northern Ireland, and of course he knew that his expectations and endurances had changed.

But being reminded of it was odd.

He'd come into a bright, safe, freshly-furnished, sun-filled flat and seen the grime on the windows almost at once, even with everything else that was on his mind.

Frowning a little, he made himself look around the rest of the room properly. The flat was open-plan with wide windows across the length of the kitchen worktops and further French doors and a small balcony on the opposite wall, lining up with the part of the room that was the lounge. Brown tiles predominated, and the carpet was puce, the sofas aubergine suede.

Not the best. Not the worst. Do-able.

The only decoration in the whole place was a dead pot plant on the kitchen windowsill. It appeared to have been dead for some time, which was perhaps why the previous occupant hadn't chosen to take it. Rings of dirty-water residue beside it suggested either that it was the last in a series of failed attempts, or that its companions had effected some kind of escape.

The atmosphere within the flat was hot, stifling. Not enough of the designer windows actually opened, by the looks of things.

Unsurprising, then, that this was a long-brown plant, with desiccated leaves and petals -- but then Bodie would have been unlikely to have been able to identify it even in the first flush of its bloom.

The soil in the pot was dry, covered over with spiders' webs and mummified bluebottles, proof that even above densest London, nature ran red in tooth and claw. Bodie pressed his fingers in to see if moisture lay beneath -- it didn't -- and looked past the decrepit thing and through the window. A maze of houses lay below him, from the council blocks like the one he stood in to the more expensive terraces. Ornamenting the view of endless Saturday-morning domesticity was the odd corner-shop, a wide green patch of park sporting a tennis court and a pond, and cars shading from battered Mark One Cortinas to BMWs.

Life, but not as he knew it.

"Were you ever planning on helping?"

Bodie didn't turn round at the voice -- just Ray, just Ray being Ray. The heat was beginning to irritate him and he could feel beads of sweat running down his sides from under his armpits. He was supposed to be taking Karla for a meal later and his aftershave was probably in the bottom of the last box in the pile, under all Ray's crap.

You weren't supposed to accumulate possessions. Not in this racket. And Bodie had never lived anywhere more than six months at a time since he'd been fourteen, so - fair enough - his view on portable belongings might be more extreme than most, but any fool could tell you not to buy pots and pans.

Ray had though. Two boxes of the things. Le bloody Creuset or some bollocks like that.

"Bodie? Come on, there's tons still in the car and it's three flights of sodding stairs."

"Just looking around, aren't I? Marking my territory."

"Yeah, less of that, thank you. Don't want to spend my first day scrubbing the carpet with Jif."

Ray cleaned, did he? Yes, he probably would. Probably enjoyed it.

For fuck's sake, they'd been here five minutes and already it felt cramped.

"I spoke to Accommodation again," Ray groaned from behind something looking suspiciously like macramé.

"Oh yes?"

"Said it'd be four weeks, absolute minimum."

Bodie attempted a nonchalant shrug. "Well, like I say, I'll move out from here to wherever it is. Takes about ten minutes for me to pack, whereas you...when the hell did you find time to buy that?"

Ray cradled the miniature souvenir Spanish Donkey protectively. "Present."

"Air hostess?"

"Dunno. Yeah, probably. I use it as a paperweight."

"For what paper?"

"Household bills, that sort of thing. I've been meaning to ask, do you want to split each one or shall I pay and then you pay me back?"

Bodie pretended not to hear, crossed the large room in four quick strides and nipped down the stairs to where Ray's car lay waiting, boot open, in the poly-odorous street below. He selected a box and hefted it, using the grunt of lifting to cover his groan of anger.

'Share accommodation for a few weeks, boys, there's been a cock-up at the office, a flat shortage in the latest agent rotation. You seem to live damn near enough in each other's pockets anyway.'

Cowley never phrased orders as requests, but Bodie would have been prepared to try and fight that particular one, if only Ray had objected in any way at all.

But no, he hadn't. Ray had only scratched his head and shrugged like it made no difference, then tried to make a joke. "'S'not been so long since I stopped sharing with my brother, after all, and you fart less than he used to."

Shifting the weight of the box in aching fingers, Bodie stretched to call the lift.

Shortly after that order had come through they'd been in the locker room. Ray had been leaning back against the wall -- an art at which he was an undoubted master -- arms folded and expression that odd half-frown he got when he was watching you.

"I didn't tell you I had a brother, did I?" Ray had asked.

Bodie had tightened his shoelaces with vicious strength. "Nope."

"Don't see him much -- he was in a gang too, for a bit, but he got straightened out by the Salvation Army and he's got all the uniform and everything now. And there's Lisa, my sister, she's married, living in Stoke last I heard. Don't see any of them much."

The information came out oddly flat, and Bodie frowned.

Once, Bodie might have talked then. He might have constructed a sentence to try and hold Africa and The Navy and Leaving Home and My Childhood Probably Wasn't a Lot Like Yours in some simple way that wouldn't trigger more questions.

But this time there'd been an odd feeling like something was expected of him, like Ray was loading him up with his own personal details with the same expectations as shoving coins into a jukebox.

"Deeply fascinating," he'd deadpanned, getting out of the room as if he'd had somewhere to be.

"Do you like fish? I can never remember."

"Fried. Maybe in a pie. None of that steaming bollocks." Bodie fidgeted on the sofa, not looking at where Ray stood with vague purposefulness by the open fridge. Ray had cooked for him before, in some periods as often as twice a week, but being Ray's guest was very different from.... This was all a bit queer, for any and every given sense of the word.

Ray frowned: "Kedgeree?"

"You don't have to make me dinner too, you know."

"I like cooking." Ray shrugged almost apologetically. He'd rolled up the sleeves of his shirt -- it was still far too hot -- and sweat darkened the centre of his chest.

Leaning back on the sofa, Bodie put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. "Suit yourself. Kedgeree's good."

He heard the hailstone sound of pouring rice and later the click of neat jars coming in and out of the spice rack (yet another part of Ray's equipage). A rich and delicious smell edged across the room and he found his mouth aching as it started to water.

"I could get used to this," he said, by means of a truce (he was being a bit of a twat, and he knew it) as he slid in under the kitchen table.

Ray nodded at him. "Good, because the chef never washes up."

"So when you get your ladies over for your famous 'spaghetti' you make them get the old marigolds out, eh?"

"Well, I do like a girl in rubber."

"Oh, scuba-divers, then?"

"Going down, yes..."

They could go on and on with lines like these, and Bodie grinned, shovelling away the fragrant rice mixture with gusto. This felt normal again.

"Of course," Ray said after a while, resting his fork on his lips -- it pressed small dents into the soft flesh - "It pisses off some birds if you can cook. Like their thing's been taken."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't know."

A purple cloud boiled up in Bodie's mind -- Karla, he'd completely forgotten about Karla. She'd be waiting at the restaurant, unless she'd gone already. He'd never been particularly keen to see her a second time -- had only agreed to the date because he'd thought he'd want to escape the flat -- and he felt no especial sorrow at the prospect of never seeing her again.

What depressed him was that he'd let a guaranteed shag pass him by, and if he was starting to let that happen, he must be getting old.

Later, with the meal finished and Ray sprawling on the sofa watching television, Bodie had run the hot tap as hard as it would go. The window had steamed up. The plant wilted even more under the damp air than it had in the dry.

"No pleasing some," Bodie told it.

The little boy starts urinating.

It's a Tuesday in Angola in 1972 -- later Bodie will remember it was Tuesday because Tuesday evenings the liquor arrived, and he's spent the day thinking about that, about precisely how smashed he's going to get.

Some bloody month -- he'll never remember which; it's always the same fucking weather.

The edge of barren land, somewhere between two villages that aren't villages any more. Bodie's behind a scrubby bush, radio in hand, gun before him.

This boy is maybe seven -- looks about three but none of the kids here grow much. Blueberry and burn-coloured skin, only a ratty t-shirt on. God knows what he's seen -- there's a corpse half a mile up the track, for one.

And he's urinating on an ant-hill, chuckling as the creatures panic and drown.

Of all the agents in the canteen, it was as usual only Murphy who approached the solitary Bodie as he went for lunch the next day.

Steak and Kidney Pie. Mixed Vegetables. Gravy. Custard Tart. Water-or-it's-half-price-on-those-cans-of-pop-today-sir.

Since starting at CI5, it had always been Bodie's habit to tuck in fairly well at lunchtime to compensate for the meagre toast-based meal he'd be having for dinner. But that day, just after paying, he looked at the laden plate and recalled that Ray might well be cooking a spread again.

"You look bemused, Bodie," Murphy observed, laughing. "Place food on fork, place fork in mouth, chew, in case you've forgotten."

"You want to know where I'll be placing my fork if you don't shut up?" Bodie replied without malice.

They found a table.

An external observer might have thought the conversation rather desultory, particular if they had only ever seen Bodie eating lunch with Doyle otherwise and took that as their standard of his interaction with others. Murphy, however, did not look as though he was expecting much more than what he was getting.

Bodie saw and understood, therefore, the look of surprise that crossed Murphy's face after Bodie put down his knife and fork (pie half-eaten) and said:

"You've never worked with a partner, have you Murph?"

"I'm supposed to be insurance for if one of you dies." Murphy took a long sip from his Coke can. "Cowley told me. If you or Ray cops it, I fill the space. I wonder if he really sees us all like that in his mind."

"Like what?" Bodie was as untroubled by Murphy's statement as Murphy had been. Reality was reality.

"Numbers. Little plastic figures on a strategy board. Little things that don't relate to each other."

"'S'what we are, isn't it?"

"Is it?"

"I've been working with Ray for five, six years," Bodie explained, letting the thoughts out only because they had been resounding so loudly and so frequently in his mind, circling for days now. "And I don't know anything about him -- who his parents were, who was the first person he killed, he shagged, he... and I never find myself wanting to ask."

"Well, does he ask you?"

"All the time."

"And do you tell him?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Look, Murphy, I'm just making conversation, alright? No need to act like it's Prime Minister's Question Time."

Murphy held up his hands, as if to say 'This is your problem, not mine.'

Bodie might have replied, but it was at that moment that his RT buzzed into life.

"It turns out that Rosita Hernandez never was involved in the smuggling." Cowley spoke in a low, weary voice, standing over the woman's covered body as if delivering some macabre elegy. "She was just visiting her British cousins."

He shrugged, holding out his hands as Murphy had earlier, passing on a problem. "If only they'd told us she was innocent, we could have arranged something."

Ray's eyes flashed. "What, like not shooting her in the head?"

Bodie didn't say anything else. Just sucked it in and walked the few feet to the railings, leant on them, looked at the wide green-grey river.

Already, he was forgetting who the people were and why they'd died, letting it run off his back and into wherever it was going to wait for him.

Ray'd stay, of course. Talk to people and say...things, the kind of things Bodie had never really been able to. Because it was all bollocks, at the end of the day, wasn't it? You didn't make people less dead because you put it in the right words.

But he didn't say that aloud any more. Ray had elbowed it out of him, and he still thought it was stupid but making Ray a little less tense and guilty wasn't just not stupid, at times it was like his bloody hobby.

A seagull, a white and grey streak, detached itself from a guano-ridden lamppost a little way along the path and dived at the water. A tug moved along upriver. Across the way lights went on and off in a tower-block.

Life went on, and they were alive.

But for Ray it didn't compute as easily as that, and so Bodie waited, watching the world in all its unaffected glory until it was time to take his partner by the arm and murmur "Pub" gently and firmly.

And that was life for them. And it went on.

There was no point considering what might happen if it...became impossible. Because he'd just cope, because he always did, somehow.

Ray was important, no argument there. But Ray couldn't be essential -- no one; no bird, no job, no friend, no house -- nothing could be vital. He had to be able to lose everything but himself and still be strong.

Leaping up onto the river wall, Bodie walked its narrow surface for a little way, arms outstretched.

The little boy has probably killed half the ant-colony, and he's still chuckling, leaning forward with his hands braced on his knees to watch.

Bodie shifts his muscles minutely where he lies on his stomach in the bushes.

A woman runs out from the cover some yards away -- for a moment he tenses, gets her in the rifle sights, but she's just running for the little boy.

She calls something, his name probably, and scoops the child into her arms, weeping into the curve of his neck and shaking him even as she holds him tight.

She loves this child so much that right now she hates it for the fright it has given her, and Bodie feels immensely, incomprehensibly angry about that.

"Do you want something to eat?" Bodie switched on the lights as he opened the door, and watched Ray plod over to the sofa to sit, head in hands.

"I never eat much after days like today. Don't have the stomach for it." Something in Ray's tone implied enviousness mixed with superiority over the fact that Bodie clearly did.

"We saved a lot of people today," Bodie replied tetchily, hanging his keys on their hook, peeling his coat off and wondering if there was a decent chippy or Chinese anywhere about. "But if you want to be depressed, be my guest."

Ray looked up, face angry. "Alright, so what do you do? Turn it off? Switch some big dial to 'I don't care' inside? Or don't you feel it at all?"

Just Ray. Just Ray being Ray.

After days like the one they'd had, their custom was usually to go home early and separately and alone. To be forced into association was about as bewildering and annoying as Bodie had anticipated, and yet there was something vaguely comforting about having Ray in front of him, about knowing the silly bugger was safe.

"If I wanted to take up feeling guilty," Bodie said carefully, "I wouldn't start with today, I'll tell you that much. Now, do we have anything edible or is the old wild hunter instinct to be called up?"

For a moment Doyle just stared at him. Then, gradually, a grin broke out across his face and, as always when he really smiled, it seemed that his eyes were shining. Standing up from the sofa, he moved over to where Bodie stood and, with the element of surprise, got him in a headlock and ground his fist over his scalp.

"You do me good, sometimes," he muttered, before Bodie, protesting, broke away.

"Doyle!" Bodie adopted a faux-Dickensian Orphan accent. "What's fer tea? I'm awful 'ungry."

To Bodie it was a return to lightness, and a welcome one. He saw the flash of disappointment in Ray's eyes, but since it made no sense he assumed he must have imagined it.

In any case, Ray turned and flung open the nearest cupboard.

"Kidney beans? We could make chilli."

"Less of the 'we', you're the voluntary branch of Fanny Craddock."

"Well, you can go and buy some mince. Pound or so ought to do it. We should... yeah, we've got the onion."

"Two old bachelors," declaimed Bodie, standing on a kitchen chair:

"Were living in a house
One caught a muffin, the other caught a mouse. Said he who caught the Muffin to him who caught the Mouse,--
'This happens just in time! For we've nothing in the house,
'Save a tiny slice of lemon and a teaspoonful of honey,
'And what to do for dinner -- since we haven't any money?
'And what can we expect if we haven't any dinner,
'But to loose our teeth and eyelashes and keep on growing thinner?'
Said he who caught the Mouse to him who caught the Muffin,--
'We might cook this little Mouse, if we had only some Stuffin'!
'If we had but Sage and Onion we could do extremely well,
'But how to get that Stuffin' it is difficult to OUCH!"

"What have I told you about blank verse?" Ray raised the wooden spoon menacingly again. "And we aren't old. And I'm thin enough as it is, thank you." He continued to herd Bodie with the spoon, laughing with exasperation as he spoke. "And how the bloody hell do you know all this poetry anyway? I've got an O-level and I've never heard of half of it."

"Was the only book in this village I passed through in Africa." Bodie shrugged on his leather coat. "Tore it up to make cigarettes, but I started reading it along the way and kicked the smokes instead."

"Is that true, really?"

Bodie raised his eyebrows. "All my lies are true. I thought you knew that much."

He turned to leave, smirking at his own wit, too quickly to see Doyle's expression.

Red liquid dripped from Ray's hands, and it was tinned tomato. Raw onions glistened in the electric light and the chilli powder stung a previously unnoticed cut in Bodie's finger when he took a pinch to add to the simmering pot.

They destroyed things together every day, and that was partnership enough, but tonight Bodie saw that they were making something.

That was more than just the opposite.

Ray had handed him a fat tomato and a long knife and he drove the edge through the flesh without associating it with anything else.

What happened in Africa stayed in Africa, everyone out there knew that.

Bodie had left parts of himself there -- two pints of his blood soaked in the ground at least, but more than that. His first kill. The night a man in his unit had touched him and drawn him out, and had been the first person to make him come -- not tender but not violent, it had been oddly friendly, and Bodie had felt mildly unclean afterwards, all the more for being sated.

Words had arrived in his life there -- there had been a book, several books, in an abandoned school. A huge pile sent by Christian Aid, ancient things British children had discarded in the 1950s with pencil marks in them. Bodie had read voraciously and the words had taken his mind to other places and more importantly to other people. They created a kind of space inside him in which he could think about himself and what he did, and why and how and whether he was happy about it, and it had taken a while (he'd been young, so very young) for him to realise that almost none of the other mercenaries had that.

The words had saved him from something he might have been, otherwise. And they had strengthened and prepared some part of him, some capacity, that Ray's words and arguments now seemed meant for.

"I think those tomatoes are diced enough, Bodie."

"Got distracted. Don't know me own strength."

"OK Mr Apollo, can you lift them to the pot?"

"Certainly."

"Bodie?"

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry I snapped, earlier."

"That plant seems to have perked up a bit."

"...I watered it yesterday."

"Thought it was dead."

"I'm an eternal optimist."

"Ooh, kinky."

Ray flicked him with a tea-towel.

It was Bodie's habit to have a wank in the shower, just to keep things ticking over, and he tended to feel only a momentary concern over the fact that other people might have to use it, sufficient to ensure it looked clean afterwards.

So it was not concern for Ray that stopped him, that night, from following his usual routine. All he knew was that for some reason he wanted more - more time? - more of something.

Bodie lay back naked on his bed, sweet, erotic lassitude in all his limbs. His cock curved up against his belly without encouragement, he was already turned on, and it felt heavy, the low pulse inside full of promise.

Licking first across his palm, he moved a loose fist slowly on himself, savouring every shiver and unintentional widening of his legs, the small contractions in his thighs and the pooling of heat at the base of his spine.

He wanted a mouth on him. Really, really, wanted a mouth on him, and perhaps that was where this hunger had come from? From the moment earlier when there had been juice trailing down Ray's chin and a sinuous tongue licking it back up into the mouth?

Hissing, Bodie forced himself to slow the pace.

It was too hot and too close in this flat, and his thoughts were running wild. His hand moved faster, his mind raced. Images cobbled together in his mind made sequences he didn't want to see.

Once they'd taken two girls back to Ray's old place, had had one each on the two sofas, and Bodie's had been a bit shy, and so Ray had undressed her friend in front of her, kissing the other girl's neck, suckling her breasts into peaks, licking one long path down the gentle contour of her stomach and into the cleft beneath. She'd clutched his head, her eyes squeezing shut, and Bodie had suddenly felt his girl pressing close him, looking almost alarmed at her own arousal, and Bodie had been desperate to get her onto him, because he'd been hard as...

...he was coming.

Fuck. Yes.

As he was drifting to sleep, the thought occurred that Ray might have heard him.

He felt a minute shift at his groin again, and a sweet, throbbing, dangerous echo.

The woman and the boy who have stirred such anger in him are the enemy.

They live in a village that this week lies within the borders of the opposing force, most of them also foreign nationals.

They are the enemy.

The minefield is there to defend against the enemy.

Bodie has been put in this bush to watch, and take out anyone who crosses the field with sniper fire.

He doesn't have duty, he has no state. He has loyalty, gang-spirit. He has his own self-preservation. He has his fear of what sympathy means, what guilt says about you. He knows what a man has and does not have, feels and does not feel.

The woman has picked the boy up and is setting out with him in her arms, towards the buried mines.

The human body held very little mystique for Bodie. It was not a place of hidden caves or secrets, pleasant scents or soft things. He had seen it roughly dissected, torn and attacked; had seen the insides, the apparatus of the magician. He'd smelt it rotting, from the first cleanly sweet smell of a cut through to the green ends that scour the back of the throat.

He lusted, of course he did. He liked to be touched.

But he didn't value a body, not as more than an ambulatory mechanism for the very few brains he truly liked.

He often caught himself forgetting that Ray had guts, had blood and bones. Usually when he was suddenly seeing them, and the shock was greater than it ought to have been.

Because, seriously, how many casualties had he seen? How many had he caused? He had no business feeling sick any more.

"You bloody idiot! What do you want to go and do that for?"

"Well Ray, possessed hair notwithstanding, I think you do better with a head than without."

"He'd have missed me! He's a crap shot and now the bloody plane's gone! Aaoow! And what was -- argh! -- stop it Bodie!"

"It's in the calf muscle, not the knee at least. Well, pardon me for correcting, but most men tend not to miss at point blank bloody range."

"Cowley'll have you for losing 'em. A hundred deaths, they've caused."

"Not a hundred-and-one, though, eh? Ray? Ray? Can you hear me? RAY?"

"What you're saying, Bodie, is that you let a plane containing five armed and dangerous terrorists fly unmolested from British airspace because you decided it was more important to shoot the sixth man?"

"Who was about to execute Ray, sir." Bodie kept his eyes fixed firmly ahead. Words and ghosts had no power over him and the sentence came with a matter-of-factness born of many such events.

"Yes." Cowley put no feeling in the words at all, but somehow conveyed an implication that he although he didn't approve, the matter was closed.

"How is he, sir?"

"He's in hospital, you can visit, can't you?"

"His bird's with him."

"Oh yes?" Once again the words were loaded with obscure meaning.

"Some girl called Caroline. He won't give me details. Looks like a dental receptionist." Bodie picked a stapler off the desk, looked at it and put it down again. "He always did like ordinary."

"3.7, do you have anything else to convey, or can I get on with my paperwork?"

Bodie looked up to where Cowley, with a questioning, exasperated expression, held a bottle of single malt and a glass.

"No, that's all, sir. See you tomorrow."

He walked through the door, along the uneven linoleum of the corridor and down the stairwell that smelt of onions and old cheese. There was no one in the canteen, just a lingering pall of cigarette smoke and a half a newspaper abandoned where it had fallen in spilt tea.

Up the stairs, more corridors and out of the building. He had half a day, he could do something, he could...something. Phone a girl. See if Murphy wanted to go out on the lash. Get to that exhibition in Chelsea that he was damned if he'd ever let Ray know he wanted to see.

Not wanting to loiter, his feet took him to a small park in a Victorian square. He sat alone on a bench for a while and watched the pigeons.

He can't be essential, an unhelpful voice echoed in his mind.

"I'm getting too old for this." Ray clutched the banisters of the block's stairs, waving away Bodie's attempts to help and his contradictory noises.

"But I'm not old," he continued, eyes fierce as they bore into Bodie's. "I'm not old at all. Just past this being all that my life is."

"I never thought I'd live this long," Bodie observed, casually, and was surprised to see the expression the words provoked on Ray's face.

But it was true. He had no plans, had never had plans, not since the day he'd been on the bus to school and decided, the hell with it, just because every other day of his life so far had been how it had been, that didn't mean it had to continue. He'd gone to the station, caught the train to the docks and got on the nearest ship, all before his family would even have thought he was late home.

"Well, there's this bird, isn't there?" he offered, as Ray attempted the stairs once more. "You could settle down and raise a football team."

Ray shot a sideways look at him. "You know, every other time I've got serious with a girl, you've been all contradictions and reasons not to. So what's different this time?"

Bodie shrugged. "Everything changes."

"You know one day there'll be a headline on you: Britain in Shock as Bodie actually answers question."

Bodie took a swipe at his head. "You know if you don't start moving faster the food'll cook dry."

"You cooked food? You?"

"Doctor said you needed protein, didn't he?"

Ray let out a peal of laughter, eyes creasing up. "I don't think I can wait to see this! Oh, for goodness sake, just carry me up."

"What did your last slave die of?"

"Come on, Mr Apollo."

Bodie raised an eyebrow -- this was utterly new, but it seemed to make sense, and if it didn't worry Ray then it didn't worry him -- and slung the other man over his shoulder in a fireman's lift, racing upstairs two at a time as Ray bellowed and guffawed.

With Ray deposited on a chair, Bodie served up two plates of beef stew and potatoes and brought them to the table. For the three days that Ray had been in hospital, he'd eaten on the sofa, watching television, as was his usual habit.

But already, this felt like getting back to normal.

When your job doesn't let you sleep properly, things get messed around in your mind.

Concentrate on the certainties. Life, pain, reflexes, hunger, empty your bladder, check your ammunition. Your partner, your team, your unit -- someone is there. Only they understand this.

Sometimes, reeling out of some stake-out at three in the morning, or finishing a siege at ten, Bodie just wanted to clout Ray round the ear, because, fuckssake, you bring right and wrong into all of that, you're going to break.

Or maybe, Ray wouldn't?

Before he'd met Ray, he'd always assumed the man -- this policeman, this law-keeper -- would be weaker than him. And initially he'd seen what he thought was evidence of this -- guilt, health-food, cooking, high-maintenance hair and a tendency to ask birds how they felt.

But if Ray thought what he was doing was right -- never mind when he thought he was wrong and what an arse that was -- then he'd kill in a way Bodie couldn't imagine, because then his strength came from something more than self-preservation.

Bodie had swiftly found Ray fascinating.

"That? It was sticking out of a skip near the tube station."

"Is that what you call art?"

"It's what I call free."

Bodie, frowning, contemplated the picture now occupying most of the lounge wall again. "Are they stuck in a giant sleeping bag?"

"That is 'The Kiss' by Gustav Klimt, you uncultured pig." Ray, half-assembled revolver in hand, came to look at his find again. "Popular with students -- someone probably threw it out when they moved out of digs."

"Whereas what you've done," Bodie folded his arms and sighed. "Is accumulated yet more things that you're going to have to drag around on your next move."

"Things help me remember," Ray argued. "Years in the future, I'll look at that painting and think about here, and I'll think about you."

Bodie had been studying the image more closely, and at Ray's words shot a quick look at him, felt a momentary flood of adrenaline that seemed to be fear.

But Ray was walking away, guiding his gun carefully back together.

In his life, Bodie had spent the dawn hours of the morning anywhere from deep in silk and female sweetness to lying cold and soaking on his belly, in the mud, waiting to kill someone. But every time, every way, this feeling had come.

Because a person became stupid with it, tiredness or satisfaction or alcohol or fear, or whatever had kept them up this long. Something shooting round their veins, some chemical from the brain for when you can't sleep but you have to, and you don't.

The windows in the kitchen took in the eastern sky. The dawn came up through them like something that would make you believe somebody up there cared.

Night ends, you see. Night stops and the light comes back.

Once you believe that, once you see that, once you trust that, everything gets better.

And thoughts never make sense at four in the morning, bollocks, cod-philosophy and twaddle, and maybe more than a little alcohol, and Bodie could see from Ray's face that none of this, none of what he was saying was worth the air he was using.

So he grabbed him, hefting him off the sofa, hands tight in his shirt and pulled him over to the window, pointed and said "Watch, just watch it."

Ray did for a while, until the tower block in the distance had gone from pink to golden and the birds had stopped singing. After a time, he chuckled and shook his head. Bodie was about to be pissed off, but Ray raised his face then and he was grinning, broad and sunny and the dawn was catching him, rosy and new.

Bodie realised he still had his hands either side of Ray's chest, standing behind him, keeping him in place.

Ray leant back against him.

And it wasn't like they never leant on each other, it wasn't like they weren't used to scrumming and jostling and pushing each other about.

The morning air was cold, Ray's skin through his thin shirt was warm, and on the warm air the scent of him rose up and it was the dawn making Bodie's heart race.

"I can take you, Bodie," Ray said. The words were ones you'd use in a fight, and perhaps that was what this was, because, bloody hell, Bodie had no better explanations. "Don't think I can't take everything you've got."

Maybe he meant Bodie's ramblings on the subject of dawn and maybe he didn't, for whichever given case, Bodie -- pushing him gently away and sinking onto the sofa, closing his eyes - in no way believed him.

The leader was a guy, a shit, called Dawkins. A man with thirteen year-old girls chained in old crack dens. A man with a drugs empire. A man who'd kill either of them soon as look.

The three bodyguards had been good, but Ray had managed to shoot the first right in the doorway, from an impossible angle, and Bodie had got behind the other two, struck them down before they knew he was there.

The last guy, this Dawkins, he'd shot at them right until they got into the room, shot and shot until they had to shoot him first, Bodie's attempt for the kneecap missing, Ray's for the head arriving on target.

Blood, splatter, fall, silence.

Heartbeat, one second, two seconds.

They were still alive.

It was over.

They were still alive. Ray was still alive.

Ray's eyes met his. Bodie felt the thrill like he always did, felt the grin in his face, the smugness of survival, the joy of getting away with it. Ray looked half divine wrath and half childlike glee.

Bodie's heart never thumped in shoot-outs. He was cool. He didn't sweat beyond the physical exertion.

Ray's hair was plastered down in a few dark curls near his ears. He was panting. He was happy, and Bodie knew full well how much remorse that always brought down later, but when it was going on, fuck, Ray was just...

"Stop it." Ray murmured the words low and threatening.

"Stop what?" Bodie challenged back, stepping closer, testosterone raising every hackle.

"This isn't me."

"It fucking is."

"I'm not this."

"You are." Bodie folded his arms. "You're poncey cooking and Greenpeace magazine and art appreciation and you kill. Better than I do, better than I ever will."

"Why the fuck does that make you happy?" Ray's eyes were narrowed, his posture still defensive. They were very close now. The pulse in Ray's neck was making his whole neck shiver.

"It doesn't. You do."

He didn't mean anything by it but what he thought was obvious enough.

They were almost touching, both with their arms still folded, the stink of blood in the air and half a hint of the lemon they'd made fish sauce with, the night before on the tips of Ray's fingers as they lifted to Bodie's mouth.

"I don't need you," Ray was saying, slowly, like the words weren't what he meant. "A lot of the time I don't like you very much."

Fingertips on Bodie's lips, stroking, along the top, testing or preparing. Light. Gentle. Tantalising. Asserting something.

"But you're here," Ray continued, still like he was protesting, like he was infuriated. "Suddenly, you're just... you're just here." He put his other hand out, placing it on Bodie's chest square and warm.

"I don't care," Ray continued in a growl, as if Bodie had said something. "About the fucking job."

His fingers still rested on Bodie's jaw, and Bodie turned his head a little, nudging them back to his lips and opened his mouth, just, and breathed and closed around the tips.

Ray's eyes closed for a moment, and Bodie wanted his mouth, wanted to press his lips to Ray's with an urge so violent that it still felt angry.

"We could have avoided this."

Ray's eyes opened again. He moved, blinked, frowned, he picked up his RT and then looked at it like he'd forgotten how it worked "We never could have avoided this," he replied, bitterly. "You think I haven't fucking tried?"

Finally switching the button on his RT, he cleared his throat and barked some code words into it, then leant against the wall again and slid down to sit on the floor, running a hand over his face.

Bodie sat down next to him, put his arms round him and held on through the first attempt to push him away, and then Ray leant his head on his shoulder, giving in probably more through exhaustion than anything else and it was a million miles from calming but it felt safe, somehow.

"I saved her." Bodie remarked after a while. They'd been waiting almost half an hour in silence, exhausted by expression, their body heat flowing into the wall behind.

Ray shifted a little -- Bodie had almost begun to wonder if he was asleep. "Saved who?"

"A woman in Angola who was going to run across a mine field. I stopped her. I saved her and this kid she had."

"And then what happened?"

It was because Ray knew to ask questions like that. That was half a reason, right there.

"Two weeks later I had to shoot her."

"And did you?"

There was the other half.

"No." Bodie looked at his hands. They'd been smoother, then. Smoother and a little sweatier -- but that was Africa, that was just heat.

He'd made a decision that day that he'd had to live with all the rest of his life. That he was not going to be everything he could be. That he was not going to send the words and the questions away altogether, and just kill and survive and try and make money from it.

He was not a good man -- of this much he had always been certain, although he didn't believe in goodness, not every day. He merely believed in some part of himself that he thought he would lose if he'd carried out the execution as he'd been told.

"You don't think I'll understand," Ray muttered. "I don't know where the heck you get this idea that I don't already know what a bastard you are."

Outside the house, the CI5 backup cars drew up with a screech of protesting asphalt.

Bodie had to struggle to move his gaze from Ray's eyes, because they were telegraphing understanding and hurt and tiredness, and the extraordinary fact that yes, maybe Ray could take it all, maybe Ray already had.

The journey home through the now-familiar streets was hypnotic. Ray drove, silently, eyes to the front, and Bodie slumped back in the passenger seat and watched him, feeling all the familiar emotions but for the first time really trying to name them.

It wasn't as if his life had made so much sense before, either.

The flat was too hot, the flat was always too hot, but Ray went and cranked the window as far as it went, and Bodie automatically fed the meter to ensure a shower later, and it was like taking a long journey only to discover that you'd been going to the house next door all the time, because nothing had changed at all, only now Bodie knew what it was that wasn't changing.

"This thing is fucked, isn't it?" Bodie said slowly. "This partnership, this whole thing...if this thing is fucked then let's just break it, let's just..."

Ray's eyes were dark, staring into his. Ray's hands were back on him, stroking, tugging at his clothes, Ray's hands were getting faster.

Being in the flat with no lights on felt like trespassing on something. This felt like trespassing, like whistling in church. Pushing the shirt off Ray's shoulders, rediscovering the smooth, lean arms and compact torso beneath as if he hadn't seen them ever before.

A whole army of not supposed to, as Bodie ran his thumbs up the insides of Ray's biceps and then down across his chest, feeling and learning, proving something.

Ray's hands moved, moved up and then Bodie felt the soft surprise of their mouths connecting, slippery and eager and felt himself become fully erect, his cock beginning to ache for attention.

Ray groaned, open-mouthed, into the kiss -- it was a kiss, he was kissing Ray -- and Bodie felt a brief press of heat and hardness against his hip.

Bodie moved his hands then, and cupped both Ray's buttocks, drawing him in closer, and what surprised him most was that once he'd acted on it, he knew he'd had that urge before, and often.

"Bodie," Ray mumbled urgently, his hair brushing Bodie's neck as he worked at both their zips. "Bodie. Bloody no-first-name-Bodie, they told me not to work with you."

"Who?" Bodie kissed him, pushed him back against the wall only to have an answering shove across the room. They wrestled, got a few more clothes off and wrestled again, kissed and slid over each other accidentally, gasping.

"They said you were trouble. They said you'd scared off everyone else they paired you with." Ray punctuated the information with small nips of Bodie's skin, across his stomach and inner thighs and back to his nipples, which made him moan in a way Ray obviously was interested in having repeated. "They said there was something seriously broken in your thick head."

Bodie rolled them over, got on top and tried a thrust into the angle of Ray's hip, and then had to try another because it was more than he could do to stop. "And is there?"

"Does it matter that I don't care?"

You're essential, you fucker. You're essential.

Bodie didn't say it, only kissed Ray's neck and the hollow under it, keeping his skin as flush with Ray's as possible.

Ray reached a hand between them, and then Bodie felt a firm, alien touch to his cock, a grip that was orientated wrong and could never be his own, but from a hand that was still big and trigger-trained.

Men, women, whatever -- just bodies.

This was Ray.

Bodie moved, waiting for the moment when...and he had Ray's cock in his hand, and Ray sucked in a breath through his teeth, which was hands down the most erotic thing Bodie had ever seen, until a few minutes later when -- after panting, hands flying up and down, rubbing and rubbing each other -- Ray threw back his head and came, looking like he was in anguish.

Bodie felt the splashes on his stomach in a kind of awe. Pressed his forehead against Ray's and tried to breathe.

And then thought left, because Ray had struggled them over again, and was above him and then moving down, and had his tongue, his tongue, had his tongue on Bodie's cock, his tongue, moving...

Bodie kicked his heels when he came, because he didn't want to, he didn't want this to stop, he was afraid of it, and wasn't that always what having something meant?

The night was strange. They dozed on the carpet for a few hours, and at one in the morning Bodie was woken by Ray getting up and shuffling to the bathroom. He lay, uncertain, a little longer, until Ray came to shake him and tell him to go to bed.

Bodie duly got into his own bed, teeth clean and mind fogged.

At three, Ray climbed in with him. There was something even more startling about bed sharing, and under the soft, enveloping duvet, Bodie teased and teased at Ray's cock, savouring every curse and gasp, feeling the heat from Ray's body. Ray sucked him properly, later, and Bodie spread his arms wide, opening and closing his fists to try and ride it, laugh-cursing because fuck, because fuck, fuck, perfect...

At four forty-five, Ray's alarm went off in the next room.

"Wha's tha for?" Bodie mumbled. "Idiot."

"So I don't bump into you in the bathroom," Ray murmured. "Naked, you know."

Bodie lifted his head from Ray's chest then -- Ray's hand, which had been idly stroking his hair, moved with it.

Ray lay out in the bed like something from a Hustler magazine, he had a kind of aggressiveness nakedness. Bodie raked his gaze across him, staring at his cock hungrily and wriggled closer again because it was just so wonderful that he could.

At five-fifteen they stopped talking about how they ought to, and actually showered, the two of them in the cubicle together, hands on each other's bodies as if they'd never done it before because in the bright lighting it felt a new kind of real.

Bodie thought that at some point he would step away from Ray. At some point he would manage to be in another room, not seeing him, not touching him.

In the kitchen, when they got to it, there were still the raw edges of the dawn creeping around the blind. Ray shook his head in the daylight like a dog coming out of the water and sighed, looking through the window to the world and the normal people.

"We're insane," he muttered.

"We've always been that," Bodie countered, and Ray paused for a moment, looked at him with an expression edging close to tender, like he heard the words Bodie wasn't saying.

Bodie walked up behind him, sliding his arms around him and placing his mouth near Ray's ear to whisper, "Britain in Shock As Bodie Actually Answers Question."

Ray gave a low chuckle, with something bright shinining through the weariness, before kissing him thirstily. "Well then, I suppose anything is possible."

-- THE END --

May 2008