Mad as a bleedin' atter. Gawd 'elp the 'Un as gets in 'is way today," observed a tousle-headed cockney fitter.

William read slowly, mouthing the words as he went. Biggles he followed no problem, but the cockney in this one was making his head ache. He put the torch down to scratch his arm and shivered as the blanket slipped a little and his shoulders hit the night air. His stomach growled in sympathy but he knew better than to risk going downstairs. He'd heard the first thump and crash about an hour ago, well before closing time. So no doubt his dad's wages hadn't stretched the week again and his mum was in a fine temper. Food on the table and a son under a blanket were probably the last things on anyone's mind down there. Which was fine by him; much better to have them wear themselves out on the crockery and each other than suddenly remember there was another warm body in the house.

Not that he was exactly warm. He pulled the blanket higher and thought about venturing out for another jumper, but his feet were ice already and he'd rather use the torch for reading than ferreting around in the wardrobe. The electric had run out yesterday and judging from the stumbling and shouting downstairs getting some money out of his dad to fill up the meter had not gone according to plan. Not that much ever did any more. His mum loved him, he was sure. She just hadn't thought about it in a while. Once upon a time, it had been giggles and whispered confidences between them in a shared mission to contain his dad, to get his wages off him and stay out of his way once they did. Not any more. The shared mission seemed to be between the two grown-ups now; who could yell the loudest, drink the most, forget the quickest and slap the hardest. The last had been only one time from his mother. Just once, and her eyes had filled immediately as she'd fallen to her knees in front of him, pressing him close and rubbing her mascara and her sorries all over his school uniform. It was odd how these things worked, since he'd got his favourite that evening, spaghetti hoops on toast, together with enough money pressed into his hand to last him a good couple of days in sweets. But she'd smelt like his father, and he'd known to keep his distance after that.

Like now. Only he had a plan to get her back on his side again, a plan to make her remember that he was the one who took care of her, who made her think about three meals a day and being on time for things. Not that bastard who slapped her and ordered them both around like dogs. He, William Andrew Philip Bodie, was going to run away from home. Not for long and not far--to his gran's probably--but he was going to pick his moment and leave without a word. Or maybe he'd leave a note, he hadn't decided that part yet. A boy in his class had done it. He had disappeared for a whole day and night and then come back to school none the worse for wear, pockets loaded down with gobstoppers and full of tales about his mum crying over him and letting him eat chips in front of the telly.

Another crash echoed up through the floorboards, followed by a bray of laughter and William punched his pillow and thought about how wonderfully sad she was going to be, how she was going to smother him to her, and say sorry again and again... He threw the Biggles that was giving him a headache onto the floor and picked up his favourite instead:

"Remember, you haven't only Bigglesworth to deal with. There used to be three of them; now I believe there are four. They work as a team; and they've been working together for so long that each seems to know by a sort of telepathy when another is in trouble. One never seems to get them together. Get one, and the others come after him. To give the devil his due they make a formidable combination."

What Biggles had sounded like the best thing a man could hope for in life, and one day he'd have it for himself. He'd also have a feather mattress, a thick, thick quilt and all the sausage sandwiches a man could eat after defeating the enemy with his friends.

All he had to do was run away first.

Content with his plans, he switched the torch off and closed his eyes. Christmas wasn't far off and his gran always did a turkey with proper gravy.

---

"Be a love and get a move on, soldier-boy. I'm supposed to be downstairs helping with breakfast, not up here lolling around with the likes of you. You should really-"

Kissing her quiet seemed to be the way to go, so he pushed her back into the pillow and cut off her squeal the best way he knew how. It wasn't even 7 o'clock. He had nowhere to be until 4.30 this afternoon and he'd be buggered if he'd get out of a bed this comfortable for anything other than a national emergency.

He set to nuzzling her neck, gratified to hear a moan by the time he'd reached her ear. He spoke directly into it, low and deliberate. "Oh, I think you're up to a bit more lolling around," he stretched the words out with a slide of his hips onto hers, "don't you?" His left hand went to her breast, trapping a tightening nipple. Letting go of her ear, he kissed his way to that same nipple and stroked his hand down her stomach, to where her legs were already falling open in invitation.

It was too easy, all you had to do was say the words "SAS" and "Africa" and their knickers just dissolved.

"C'mon then, soldier-boy, just... oh yeah...fuck... oh, yeah..."

Like Debbie here. A growling stomach had stopped him at this small pub on his way down to London. Intending to have a drink, a hot meal and climb back on his bike, Debbie's high breasts and warm blonde giggle had lasered in on him, and he had found himself responding. He'd had it in mind to head to London and have a bloke. A hard, fast fuck was always the thing to blow the cobwebs away, especially after a long bike ride and four month's solid soldiering. He knew a club and an alley that specialised. But the wholesome pub grub had settled, warm and heavy in his belly. And then the pub had turned out to be a small B&B, which Debbie's family ran. And she also had use of a large guest room upstairs whenever she was left in charge.

"CI5? What's that, then? More soldiering?"

He'd told her about the interview he had the following afternoon down in London.

"Nah, way above that, love."

"Ooooh, James Bond? D'you get a number and everything?"

He'd put down his pint glass and glanced at her. Pretty, lovely tits, but not too bright. He'd flicked her nose and stifled a yawn.

"Something like that. Now how about showing me that guest room, eh? Tired lad like me's got to have somewhere to lay his head."

So here she was, flat on her back for the second time, eyes squeezed shut and as high and straining as a kite while his fingers danced. Making her wet, making her writhe... a trick taken for granted by some of the African girls he'd encountered, and one that English men clearly had no idea about if the reactions he usually got were anything to go by. She reached out a clumsy hand and he hissed when she found him.

"Fucking stick this in me now, soldier-boy... sweet Jesus..."

He took his fingers away and made her lick them. Another African trick that drove the birds wild. Groaning himself at her sudden voracious, porn-style sucking, he pulled away and braced his arms either side of her. Relishing the hot slick press that clenched him as he entered her, he prolonged the squeeze of it just because he could, and then began pumping hard to bring himself off. He kissed her finally, to drown out her distracting squeals as she did the same.

His heartbeat steadied as fast as ever as he settled on the pillow next to her, content to drift and take satisfaction from the knowledge that he'd earned himself at least another two hours in bed before breakfast, if the muffled giggling beside him was anything to go by.

A pat on his shoulder and a rustle of bedclothes a few minutes later confirmed this.

"I'll bring you up a tray when I'm done, all right?"

He smiled as he turned over and pulled the covers up.

CI5.

Yeah.

Another one for the knicker-dissolving list.

---

Bodie knew he was in trouble the second he opened his eyes - or rather tried to. The same person who'd set up camp with a drill between his shoulder blades had clearly also decided to have a go at gumming his eyelids together. He raised his head off the pillow, winced at the thump behind his temples and lay back down. His neck hit the wet ice of the bed sheet and, as the first shiver hit him, he cursed his luck to hell, Biafra and CIsodding5. Fucking typical. Three bloody years and nothing, and now in a bedsit in the middle of a stakeout at... he raised an arm that seemed to weigh a whole lot more now and squinted at his watch... 7.08am. Shit. He wondered if he could get to a phone before--

"What the hell d'you think you're playing at?"

The door to the room thumped off the inside wall and rattled in its hinges. Then a dark green blur was striding by the bed on its way to the small window at the foot of it, nearly bowling over the tripod and camera set up there.

"Christ, you're supposed to be standing or sitting here, Bodie. Not sprawled over there in a tracksuit, like Lord Muck waiting for his butler!" Said with the usual punch and derision Ray Doyle always had at the ready for him. The curtains were unceremoniously yanked back with a vicious scrape, and Bodie winced anew as what passed for sunlight in Streatham hit him right between the eyeballs. It didn't go unnoticed.

"Oh, that's fucking beautiful. Just beautiful." The venom was deadly now. "Tied one on last night, did you? Stakeout too boring for His Majesty, was it, so you thought you'd balls it up for the pair of us instead. Jesus fucking Christ, Bodie!"

Shame he couldn't see him clearly, hands on hips and pinched breathing in silhouette by the window, because truth be told, he liked Doyle. All prickle and balls was Raymond Doyle. And ethics you could bloody drown in.

"-if Renton's gone out and shot someone while you were down the pub getting loaded, then it will be on your head, you unbelievably arrogant bastard, and I am not-"

"Stop. Shouting."

"What?"

Bodie cleared his throat and would've raised his head if he could. Whether Doyle thought he'd deserted his post or even if he guessed the truth, Bodie had to face the fact in his aching bones that this particular subterfuge was going to be beyond him. He swallowed the hard painful truth and realised it was probably over. Fuck. CI5 had actually been fun while it had lasted. Doyle too, vicious little spitfire that he was.

"I'm not deaf; I'm four feet away. So go be the good little PC plod that you are and go make your report to Cowley. Just stop fucking shouting."

"Head hurts, does it?"

He flinched, or maybe shivered, at the malice he heard, and suddenly wanted nothing more than Doyle gone. So he took the deepest breath that he could and gave it back in kind.

"Yeah, the beer was good and the barmaid even better. Now piss off." He bit his lip to control another shiver, but Doyle had turned away and was glaring at the tripod, checking the settings and fiddling.

"I can't believe you did this, Bodie! Of all the selfish, idiotic things you're capable of..."

Bodie was too weary to wonder at this continued vitriol, at why Doyle was still at the window venting and not contacting Cowley, at why there was something beyond outrage in his voice, and at why it mattered to Doyle so much that Bodie had fucked himself up. He wanted to shrug, brush it off, chalk it up to another exciting chapter in the life of one William Andrew Philip. Instead, his throat hurt and he couldn't even trust himself to speak. So he closed his eyes, tuned the tirade out and willed Doyle to leave, to end this foolish experiment called CI5 with the phone call which, in all fairness he was perfectly entitled to make.

A heavy hand landed on his forehead...

"Christ, you're burning up!"

... and was gone before he could draw breath to react.

The door banged off its hinges again and this time Bodie felt relief.

It was done.

Your new uniform fits badly, if I may say so... Biggles smiled faintly... up and at 'em, soldier-boy, No more sorries, no more crying, your Gran's here, William. Come down for a bit of turkey, pet... Fiddlesticks! Are you suggesting I couldn't get a turkey if I tried? Easy, just take it easy, mate. No one's fiddling anything. 'Cept last night's call in, maybe...

Something cool opened up his eyes and brought him back. The man sitting on the bed beside him came slowly into focus. The relief he felt was from a wet flannel on his forehead. Doyle's arm came across his vision and the coolness soon moved to his neck. Then to each wrist and hand, slowly and methodically. It was, thought Bodie tiredly, the most inexplicably tender thing anyone had ever done for him.

"Ray-"

"Apparently Renton is safe and sound at his girlfriend's. He got happy and spouted enough bravado in her ear to keep the wiretap blokes busy for a fortnight. Cowley wanted to know why we hadn't radioed in that Renton had left." Doyle paused, wrung the cloth out and laid it back on Bodie's forehead. He finally looked him in the eye. "We'll fudge something about a dead battery, which, judging from the state of you, is not that far from the truth. Jesus, Bodie. You can be sick, y'know." The cloth was on his neck again. "You are such a macho prat, always toughing everything out alone. Cowley's not gonna chuck you out because you come down with flu, you pillock."

A moment's silence and Bodie tried to listen, tried to concentrate on something other than the burning in his limbs.

"It's not flu, is it?"

That opened up his eyes again. What to say? This one was a chasm he'd managed to avoid jumping with anyone or anything, even the Paras.

"No," he heard himself say. Least he could do really.

Doyle simply nodded and a few minutes of blissful silence reigned as the thump in Bodie's ears lessened to the continued press of that cool cloth on his skin.

"You telling me, then? Or just suffering all noble and silent?"

Bodie thought about it. He closed his eyes and he thought about the chasm he shouldn't jump.

What the hell.

"Malaria."

The hand removing the cloth stilled and Doyle swore. Bodie managed a sneer.

"Don't worry, it's not catching."

"Berk! That's not what I... Cowley?"

"Doesn't know." It stung to do it, but Bodie kept his eyes open and locked on Doyle's. "Looks like flu, okay? Bad flu. I've had it once since I had it the first time, so I know, okay? Few hours and I'll be up and at 'em again."

Doyle scratched his nose, ran a hand through his curls and exhaled heavily.

Shit, that'll teach me. Here it bloody well comes.

"Are there any pills I can get you? Anything you take when this happens?"

Stunned, Bodie could only blink at him.

"Um... no. Just... just disprin." There were. But Doyle would have to leave to get them.

"What about a doctor? Listen, if you need me to get you a doctor, then you tell me. I know fuck all about malaria, Bodie, not having sailed up half the Congo in my youth. So you put that macho crap in your back pocket for once and you be straight with me. Do you need a sodding doctor?"

If it didn't hurt and take too much energy, Bodie knew he'd be shaking his head and laughing by now. Only Doyle could express concern as if he wanted to thump you for making him feel it.

"No," he managed instead, gratified to see the glare soften a little. "Don't need a doc for this. Honest. Just disprin."

Doyle chewed his lip and ran his hand through his hair again. A nod, finally. Bodie closed his eyes and sank back fully onto the pillow behind him.

"All right then, disprin it is. I'll go ask downstairs."

Doyle made to rise and in a moment of panic he really didn't understand, Bodie grasped his sleeve. When he couldn't follow it through with anything, Doyle raised an eyebrow and simply stared.

Christ, why couldn't he be holed up with a bird, or by himself?

He ground his teeth. "I might go out of me head a bit."

"How will I notice? Be back in a tick."

A squeeze to his fingers and Doyle was out the door.

Fucking bastard.

Bodie lay back, his lips twitching with something other than fever.

Some indeterminate time later, he woke up, soaked to the skin and alone. Light-headed, but a thousand times more with it, he sat up, and was relieved when the room stayed in place. Experimentally, he swung his legs off the bed and downed the glass of cold water on the bedside table in six steady gulps.

"Oh, the monster has arisen from his pit, has he? Mornin'. Well, evening actually. How're you feeling?" Doyle. Of course. Back in the room, and looking annoyingly bouncy and full of himself.

Bodie cleared his throat, and grimaced at how his T-shirt clung. "Fine, I'll just go wring the water out of this, shall I?"

"And the bed, mate." Doyle gestured to the damp sheets behind him. "You sweated up a storm, never seen anything like it. I had to take your tracksuit top off you to stop you drowning." He gestured to where it lay in a rumpled dark blue heap on the floor.

Bodie glanced at the bowl of water and much used face flannel on the bedside table. He cleared his throat again, and then didn't know how to ask.

Doyle threw himself into the armchair across from the foot of the bed and yawned."Not much. Though you said something about Ginger a few times."

"Yeah?" Bodie was intrigued, despite himself. He did seem to remember something to do with flying and a deafening engine noise.

"Yeah. What's that then? Funny name for a bird."

Bodie rolled his eyes. "From 'Biggles', maybe. Used to read the comics when I was a kid under the blanket with a torch. You never did that?"

"Nah, had electricity where I come from, mate."

"You don't say." Said with just the right amount of exaggeration to show the effort he was making. It didn't work and a sudden awkward silence fell. Bodie could feel Doyle waiting for something. He breathed in, relieved it didn't hurt any more.

"Thanks. You could have been a shit and turned me in, but you didn't."

"Too right I could've done, and I bloody well will the next time you pull a stunt like that."

The usual Doyle tact and grace, and Bodie found himself grinning. "No worries there, sunshine. Be about six years before I get that again, and it won't be as bad."

"Yeah, well like I said, just bloody tell me next time. And if you're back in the land of the living, then we're back on curtain-twitching duty at eleven until Jax and Pearson relieve us in the morning. So if you could shower first, I'd be grateful. I'll rustle us up something to eat while you're in there scraping the layers off."

It was while he was under the shower that Doyle's casual acceptance of them still being alive and partnered after six years made him drop the soap.

---

Bodie rolled his shoulders as much as the restraints would let him. He hated having his hands cuffed or tied behind his back, though at least this lot had left his legs free. Not that they should have. Bloody amateurs. He glanced down and nudged the shape beside him on the dirty mattress with his knee.

"You want to sit up and join me, mate? Help think us out of this?"

"I'm thinking. Just leave me for a bit, Bodie. Not as if we're going anywhere in a rush, is it?"

"Oh, I dunno. Thought we might get home for Blue Peter and beans on toast, actually."

Doyle groaned, and Bodie wasn't sure if the pain was his injury or the humour. He shifted so he could see him better.

"C'mon, twinkletoes. Up." Bodie was trying to keep it light, but Doyle had been out for a few minutes and was being a little slow to come round. A bullet meant for Bodie had found the brickwork near Doyle's face instead, ricocheting a sliver of cement across the skin above his right eye. While Doyle's warning and tumble into him had been more than timely, Bodie had been tied to a chair at the time and unable to stop Howards from venting a vicious chop to the back of Doyle's neck on his partner's way to the floor. Twenty minutes later, the pair had been tossed into a van, driven about half an hour, then herded down the stairs of one of the mankiest cellars Bodie'd ever seen.

"I'm up, I'm up, stop poking me. Jesus." They had cuffed Doyle's wrists too, so Bodie kept as still as he could while his partner used him to lever himself upright to a sitting position. Doyle got his legs out in front of him, and then swore. Bodie peered at him. The right side of his face was dark and blood-streaked.

"How's your head?"

"Still there. Where the fuck are we?"

Bodie squinted at the dingy surroundings. Other than the lumpy mattress they'd been flung onto and a couple of empty bookcases, there wasn't much to take his attention. Afternoon light was coming in from a broken window high up on the right, so they weren't completely underground. And by his reckoning, they'd been driven south along a smooth road for about twenty minutes, and a bumpy track for about ten.

"Well?"

He smiled brightly. "Not a clue, sunshine. Horse country? There's a bridle on that wall over there."

Doyle looked at him. "Thank you for that, Miss Marples."

"Marple."

"What?"

"If you're insulting me, insult me properly. No 'es'."

"No...? Are you out of your tiny mind? No one knows we're here, Bodie! We're locked away in a cellar, with no r/ts, no weapons, and with Howards and his mates no doubt up there planning a million horrible ways to upset your plans for Blue Peter... and you think it's the time and place to correct my insults, do you? Well, how sodding thoughtful, I'm sure. Wouldn't want to die not knowing that. Cheers ever so, mate."

The flush of temper colouring Doyle's face, the glare burning Bodie's way and the return to sarcasm was better than a dozen fielded questions. Bodie's smile this time was genuine.

"Yeah, yeah, shoot me tomorrow, sunshine. Now that you're awake and sunny again, let's get upright and see if we can find something-"

"Fuck!"

"What now?"

Doyle was blinking furiously. "Nothing. Just... you get up and go look, this is dripping into my eye."

More wide than deep, it was nevertheless a cruel slice above Doyle's right eyebrow, and one that was clearly still feeling the need to bleed freely down his eye and cheek. Bodie shook his head, enjoying more than he should the fact that only Doyle would make a mountain out of this particular molehill at a time like this. They had a bunch of pissed off, squabbling armed villians upstairs, and the clock ticking on whose patience was going to run out first. Bodie was surprised to find he still had some of his own. He said nothing and waited for Doyle to look at him.

"What? What the fuck're you waiting-?"

"Can't bust out of here with you looking like the bride of Frankenstein." He moved his left shoulder and nodded his head towards it. "Get thee behind me, Satan, and press down on the back of my shoulder for a bit. Should stop the bleeding."

"On all that lovely silk, and after the fuss you made? Cowley's not going to be very happy, is he? He'll never get his refund if I bleed all over it."

Bodie was wearing a very expensive dark red silk shirt, the clothes being the one part of his weapons dealer undercover role he had taken great delight in, and which he had insisted on choosing himself. To the endless amusement of his partner, and the apoplectic disgruntlement of his boss at the size of the expense chit Bodie had then presented.

"Yeah well, your blood's the right colour at least, and Cowley'll just have to be like the rest of us, and learn to live with disappointment. Now, shift your arse, we haven't got all day. I've got a feeling we won't be on our own for long. Those idiots upstairs left a trail even your Miss Marples with an 'es' could follow."

It took a minute or two of manouevring, and a second or two of uncertainty, and then Bodie felt a weight slowly press onto his back, just below his left shoulder. It was warm, heavy - wet - and somehow inifinitely reassuring. He swallowed and could think of nothing to say while Ray knelt behind him and bled all down his shirt.

A minute passed in a strange kind of silence.

"This is the oddest thing you have ever talked me into."

It reverberated through Bodie's bones and made him snort.

"Ow! Don't move."

"Sorry."

He sat quietly for a minute more and tried to feel the urgency to get up, to shrug Doyle off and find something to do ahead of the cavalry strike he was certain was on its way. But the pull was not to get up and act. Rather it was to simply sit on this filthy mattress in this terrible place and soak up the man behind him. And not just through his shirt. He turned his head to try and see.

"Ray?"

"Yeah?"

"You okay?"

"Yeah. Think it's stopping now."

And then Doyle did something Bodie could never have predicted in a thousand years but which, once done, was like the sliding home of a key, of something dropping perfectly into place. Doyle raised his forehead but returned with another press, this time on top of his left shoulder, and this time with the unmistakeable mark of his lips.

Bodie could say nothing, so he shut his eyes and tried to ignore the way his heart picked up speed. Fuck. He opened his eyes and Doyle was still there. He could hear him breathing, feel his curls tickle the skin at the curve of his neck, smell the blood drying on his cheek.

"Doyle..."

A cracked whisper...

"Yeah?"

... returned in kind.

Doyle's chin tucked in, replacing his lips, and Bodie held himself still and his breath in, waiting to see how the heavens would fall.

"One thing I think we'll both agree on, mate, is that my timing's as sharp as ever."

So far from what he'd expected, and yet so typically bloody Doyle, Bodie had no choice but to dislodge him with a shake of his shoulders as a burst of totally inappropriate laughter threatened. He risked another look back and saw that Doyle was similarly afflicted. He watched, mesmerised, while Doyle shuffled around to sit at his side and look at him. Bodie winced twice. First at the sight of all the blood tracked down his partner's face, and secondly when the cuffs bit off his instinct to reach out and smooth it away. Doyle sobered, hanging his head as he spoke.

"Ah, Bodie... I don't know what I'm doing really. I just wanted to... y'know. In case."

The urge to touch became stronger. Instead he got Doyle's head back up with a well placed nudge to his side with his knee. He held his gaze and leaned forward.

"Listen you. There is no 'in case'. Whatever else happens, you and me do not end here, like this. I won't have it. You hear me? I won't have it."

It was a ridiculous declaration, a promise not within his power to keep. Yet even as he spoke, Bodie believed it with every fibre of his being. He let Doyle's eyes search his, flicking from his left to his right.

A nod finally, then in a stronger voice.

"All right, then."

As if on cue, gunfire and feet thumping heavily sounded overhead and Bodie tensed. There was the unmistakeable shout of Murphy calling out "All clear!" and yelling both their names.

The relief shot through him, and he grinned at his blood-streaked partner. He accepted Doyle's weight as adrenaline let his partner go, swearing and sagging against him. It was absurd, but he'd never felt happier.

"See, sunshine? Told you, a trail even Miss Bloody Marple could follow."

Before Doyle could muster a reply, the door banged open and there was Murphy, gun in hand, and silhouetted in some very welcome daylight.

" 'Ello, 'ello, 'ello. What have we here, then? You girls all right down there?"

"Lovely, Miss Marple. No, don't come down. We need keys, we're cuffed. Get them off that bastard Howards, and hurt him while you're doing it, will you?"

"My pleasure, Bodie. And don't call me 'Miss'." He pointed his gun down the steps before he moved off. "Petal."

The nicest thing, which Bodie only realised later, was that Doyle never moved from leaning on him. Not when surrounded by other agents, not when an irate Cowley fumed and limped around the cellar, and Bodie learned that Doyle had broken orders to come after him. And not even when they got to Casualty and Doyle was sitting on a chair, pad pressed to his cut, waiting his turn.

"My head hurts, Bodie."

Bodie looked at the figure slumped morosely against his right side, and tried not to smile. Such a vocal little worry wart at times was his Doyle.

Not caring in the slightest how it looked, he eased his right arm out and stretched it round the man's shoulders simply because he could. He pulled him closer and resisted the urge to turn his face into those blood-stained curls.

His Doyle, then.

---

An elbow in his ribs, a toenail digging in somewhere tender, and even the occasional fist in his face... all part and parcel, it turned out, of sleeping regularly in the same bed as one Raymond Doyle. Bodie had concluded loudly, and in no uncertain terms over breakfast one morning, that Doyle slept like a bloody starfish. And not a particularly friendly starfish either.

Still, he did try to keep his complaints to a minimum. Because for every time he woke up on the edge of the bed with no covers, there was a time when he woke up to the smell of bacon frying and Doyle singing 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in the kitchen. And for every elbow in his ribs, there was quite often a hand on his morning glory, a wicked chuckle in his ear and a wet kiss for the back of his neck.

Which brought him to May, two months since the cellar, and their first Sunday off together since Christmas. That morning there had been no elbows in his ribs. A fact that a tired and slightly bruised Bodie was more than willing to appreciate. He had come off yet another undercover in yet another squat in the early hours of the morning, and while everything had gone like clockwork, he'd still had to chase down and thump someone after three days of crap food and dirty floorboards. Drowsing nicely, and unwilling to fully surface, Bodie put a hand out to find the other side of the bed empty and all he could do was smile the smile of the truly happy. No toenails for him this morning. He worked his face into the pillow a little more, pulled the duvet up to his ears and luxuriated in the knowledge that he was finally--finally--getting the chance to sleep bloody in.

"Oi, you planning on lolling around in there all day, your Majesty? Some of us have had a run, breakfast, worked on the bike, and tidied up your mess from last night. I dunno about you youngsters. No bleedin' stamina."

The wardrobe door banged open and Bodie squinted open an eye, contemplating what was at hand to throw.

"Fuck off." To throw he'd have to stretch and concentrate. Doyle could be told to fuck off with his eyes closed.

"Charming. Well, fine. I'm off to scrape a few layers of bike oil off me delicate skin." The sound of a long zipper being undone as slowly and as noisily as possible grated on Bodie's ears. Then it was the peel and thwack of overalls missing the laundry basket by an untidy mile.

"I will, of course, use all the hot water and leave none for you."

Bodie jumped and opened his eyes fully. That had been right in his ear. A flash of honey-skinned Doyle moved across the carpet in his peripheral vision. Then it was gone and he was alone in the room again.

Only now he had that image of honey-skinned Doyle to contend with. Honey-skinned Doyle getting in the shower; honey-skinned Doyle soaping up and tilting his head back while the water ran down his body, honey-skinned Doyle making sure his balls were thoroughly, thoroughly clean...

Fuck.

Bodie threw off the duvet and put a hand down to his slowly filling erection, which was responding right on cue to what that flash of honey-skinned Doyle was probably up to in the bathroom. He eyed the expanse of crisp, pale blue sheets ruefully.

Nothing for it, this beautiful, wide, empty bed was going to go unappreciated today.

And Doyle was clearly expecting him if the smug look on his face was anything to go by when Bodie pulled back the shower curtain and stepped in.

"Shut it, you." He planted his feet wide--forever grateful that this flat had a cast iron Victorian bathtub--and slid his arms around Doyle from behind, loving the feel of all that wet, warm skin. He nuzzled some damp curls aside and went for his partner's right ear. "Was just about to get up anyway."

"Yeah?" Doyle turned easily in his arms, grinning and blinking water at him. "'S why you've got sleep in your eyes is it, Serpico?"

A thumb reached up to sweep at his eye and Bodie amazed himself by not flinching. The touch changed, became something else, as Doyle's palm smoothed a path down his cheek and onto his neck. There he did flinch.

"You need anything for that, Bodie?"

It was a scrape and some bruising from a fight with a plank and a punk in the squat the previous day. Amazing how territorial anarchists could be about dirty floorboards. He shook his head, bemused, yet to get used to the idea of tender concern from Doyle for things like scrapes and bruises. Doyle nodded, and moved his hand down to Bodie's chest, just above his heart. Green eyes locked onto his and he almost forgot to breathe for a moment. So he changed his mind.

"Now that you mention it, there is something..." He put his right hand out, curved it around his partner's back and pulled them together with a jolt as he took them both a step forward under the spray.

In his life, Bodie had had three women at once in a four star hotel in Johannesburg. He'd been tied up with silk and anointed with perfumed oil by a high-class whore in Amsterdam, and he'd been sucked off by a man with three specially placed piercings in his tongue in an alley in Kensington. But being slow-kissed by Ray Doyle under a warm shower spray on a Sunday morning in Dulwich, while their cocks bumped and nudged together, was about the most sublime pleasure he'd ever known. A bar of soap in both of Ray's hands started a slow up and down on his cock. He pulled out of the kiss with a groan.

"Ray..."

"Just making sure you're nice and clean, can never use too much soap, y'know."

Doyle sucked his neck fiercely, as the attention on his cock stopped and the soap was pressed into his hand instead. Doyle's mouth tongued a trail up to his ear, then growled into it."Now open me up, lover-boy."

Doyle was already turning, flattening his hands on the tiles above the taps and Bodie took a graceless step forward, lust blind, following the heat and siren call of that beautiful arse and back. He let the cooling spray wash down his body for just a second, then leaned forward, resting his head on the back of Ray's. Bodie kiss-bit him all along the right side of his neck, as slowly and as pornographically as he could while he worked two soaped fingers up inside him.

"Bo..." Bitten off when Bodie's fingers found his prostate. Doyle turned his cheek to the tiles, hips sinuously grinding back, "Bodie, Bodie. Ahh... don't... fuckin'... stop... jus'... don't..."

"Shhh..." Bodie snaked his free left arm around Ray's chest, pulling him off the tiles and back against him, impaling him a little more as he did so. Another gasp."Not gonna stop, Ray. Ever. Just want this to last."

Doyle was turning his head, panting, looking for Bodie's mouth. Bodie gave it to him, twisting his tongue in wetly as he twisted his fingers in another notch.

Ray tore out of the kiss and hung his head, his hips still moving. "I feel you in my fucking heart sometimes like this, I swear." He rocked, side to side this time, eliciting a groan from Bodie as his inflamed erection was caught between them. "Now, stop fuckin'... drawing things out, mate... and get fuckin'... inside me now."

Never having to be asked twice for anything in his life, Bodie obliged, the strain of wanting to make it last warring as sweetly as ever with the desire to grind, to fill, to rocket them both to instant oblivion. He reached round, found Doyle's erection and took the pace down, easing them both to a rhythm he would try and manage forever. Because what he wanted, what always took him that one step higher and further, was for Doyle to come first. With a howl and a spasming clench, his patience was rewarded, and a split second behind Bodie was there, white light behind his eyes as he held on and fell home across that honey-skinned back.

A good minute passed before Bodie even thought of attempting speech. Collapsed under now cooling water in a panting tangle with his partner, he shifted only when his bruises from the day before made themselves felt again. He couldn't have cared less. He grinned and pulled Doyle back down, as Doyle struggled to get up and switch the taps off.

"You going to let me have my lie-in, now, you bloody slave driver?"

Doyle loomed above him, grinning and still breathing hard. "Not only that, but I'll join you, you lucky devil."

Bodie's groan as he lay back down in the tub had nothing to do with his bruises.

---

Twenty minutes later and things were looking up. Doyle had apparently had every starfish urge fucked out of him for once, and was lying, compliant and untwitching along Bodie's left side. Bodie squeezed the shoulder he had hold of and got a snuffle on his collarbone, but nothing else. Well pleased, he inhaled the smell of damp, clean curls, closed his eyes, and settled them both back on the pillow.

He opened his eyes again.

He could murder a sausage sandwich.

-- THE END --

July 2008