Third of four parts: follows Getting to Know You and Getting to Know All About You; followed by Getting to Hope You Like Me, Too

---

He swore loudly and rather excessively as the bike bit him.

Withdrawing his hand from the mechanical innards, he inspected the damage--a tear of skin across the top of his hand, red and white, throbbing suddenly. He sucked at it to try and soothe the pain, and threw the spanner at the wall, just for good measure. The crack of metal against wall was forever immortalised in a small, metallic dint in the wallpaper, though he would move on again within a month.

Without missing a beat, he stood and stomped from the oil-spattered hallway into the kitchen, hurling his whole body against the door as he did so. A cheap radio next to the kettle was blasting out a tinny whine at high volume, filling the room with some heavy-beated Kinks song. Hunching down, he threw open the door to the oven, relishing the dry hotness that burned his face as he checked the dish.

Satisfied, he then went to the bedroom--looking neither left nor right, dead ahead as he crossed the corridor which opened out onto the living room. Kneeling beside the wicker basket just inside the bedroom door, he began sorting out things to be washed. He hummed a Beatles song--twining it effortlessly into the song still flooding the kitchen--to stop his mind from wandering... Where it will go, doo doo doo de dooo. He sniggered as he pulled a t-shirt from the neck of a jumper.

He'd been at his job, heart and soul, five minutes--five minutes of concentrated, single-minded sorting, without thinking about anything else, absolutely nothing at all--when the doorbell went.

He swore again, spitting out a pointless curse to the odd pair of socks he was holding--red and black with yellow toes couldn't be right--and, snapping them into the basket, strode towards the door, already fully aware of who it would be.

Surprise, surprise. Wasn't like he had any friends or family to bother him, was it? Likely, he should be grateful for any and all scraps of humanity that came a-calling.

Bodie didn't even have the good sense to look bashful; he stood there, bold as brass, that impenetrable expression firmly stuck back on his stupid face. He didn't look like he'd looked in the warehouse; gone was that look of something impossible--that look so incredibly different to the hard conceit that so regularly graced his countenance.

Doyle took a deep breath. He crossed his arms instinctively, leaning heavy against the doorframe. "What do you want?"

"What you got?" Bodie answered lightly enough, rocking back on his heels slightly. Hands in his pockets, he looked almost harmless--but far too jaunty to be trusted. Doyle was wise to him, now.

"Nothing for you, so hop it," he jerked a thumb down the street and then turned to slam the door in his face.

"Ray," Bodie said, and that one word was apparently enough to bring Doyle to a halt, if a reluctant one.

He didn't turn, but he didn't shut the door, either. Instead, he stalked back through to the kitchen, and put the kettle on the hob, keeping his hands busy. The sound of a clang and a mutter assured him that Bodie had, in falling over the bike bits in the hall, followed him. He swallowed, feeling the imaginary noose beginning to tighten round his neck.

Bodie slipped silently into the kitchen after him, but it was a few moments before he spoke. Doyle knew he was there--could feel him looking straight through the back of his head--and was concentrating on keeping his hands steady as he sorted out the teacups and tidied away the morning's forgotten potato peel on the draining board. He quelled a jump when Bodie's deep voice sounded.

"You're depressed."

So matter of fact, so fucking assured... So very, very wrong.

Doyle sent him a withering look over his shoulder--at least that was what he hoped it was. Bodie was leaning back on the wall next to the fridge, watching him critically. There had been no beatings around or even near to any bushes.

And, in any case, he thought flatly--he wasn't depressed. He forced a laugh.

"Oh, yeah? How'd you figure that one out, then?"

The was a brutal spin set on the word 'figure', accompanied by a furious shake of his curls--Bodie did enough 'figuring' for the pair of them, and Doyle hadn't yet managed to reconcile himself with the outcome of the last interrogation he'd suffered at the hands of his supposed partner.

But Bodie answered smoothly once more, sending a cursory glance down at his boots as he relayed the blank facts. "Simple--seen tons of it over the years, knocking around barracks and the such. You're a hopeless, classic case, mate: temperamental, troubled and far, far too sincere for your own mind."

He nodded with a wry smile--amused, it would seem, that people had such feelings at all. "There's no hope for you, son."

Doyle stopped what he was doing; irritated with himself that he'd thought Bodie had come of his own accord. He should have known it was simply a business transaction: partner needs to be on his toes and out of his own head if he's to watch anyone's back. Once again, that utterly selfish mercenary streak came to the surface--how could Doyle have forgotten that Bodie wasn't human? He had a shot of flint where his heart should be, and more fool you for forgetting, son.

Doyle turned, intending to tear his dear partner a new set of lugholes, when he stopped short.

Bodie's face suddenly didn't look so steely. Though he continued in a slightly mocking tone, his face had changed almost beyond recognition. "And even if I didn't have the superior deduction skills you so admire me for... Anyone'd notice you've got a raw patch on your hand." Bodie pointed at it vaguely with his elbow, arms still crossed over himself.

Doyle's offending hand balled instantly into a fist, covering the red-looking heel of his palm, and he glared at him. "So? What of it?"

Bodie's voice softened unexpectedly, and there was a look in his eyes which Doyle had never seen before. A second ticked past on the kitchen clock, and Bodie blinked.

"Your mind wandered when you were peeling spuds, did it?"

There was an unexpected silence.

Doyle's mind raced as he tried to think of words to spit back at Bodie--words to express all he felt in that single minute; standing in his kitchen, holding a mug, about to beat the shit out of someone he didn't know what to call, on some typically dazed Tuesday afternoon...

But there was nothing you could say in the face of a stark truth... A social worker had once said that to a confused, scared young lad who had just had his face broken open by his old man. And he had never forgotten it.

Doyle's hand throbbed.

Bodie continued, his voice more gentle than Doyle could have ever imagined it could be. "You're wallowing in it, and pretending not to... You can be as busy as you like, sunshine, but you'll have to go into that living room some time."

Doyle suddenly felt very sick and very, very vulnerable. And, as per usual, the red tide of spite clawed up his throat, an automatic reaction of his body to threat.

He banged the mug down into the sink with a sharp, sarcastic laugh. "And who are you? Sherlock fucking Holmes?"

Bodie nodded, his face lacking any trace of derision or mockery. Without that haughty air of pride and disdain twisting it, the face was a pleasant one--though why Doyle should be noticing at a time like this was anyone's guess. His brain had probably collapsed under all the recent stress. His brain was probably just looking for a distraction--anything to distract from the facts, no matter how surreal.

But it struck him, as these things sometimes strike you, that Bodie was actually very good-looking. All cream and sable--a man made-up of opposites and contrasts, light and dark, and all the more striking for it; the paleness of his face made his blank, shark eyes standing out a startling blue, with charcoal lashes so long they looked sketched.

Doyle snapped back into himself abruptly, and felt his cheeks automatically burn as he realised he'd been waxing lyrical about his partner. This, in itself, was not unusual--Doyle had an artist's appreciation for anything beautiful or well put-together, male or female--but for some reason, he felt feverish as he realised he'd been doing it to Bodie.

He covered his brief brain leak by re-righting and filling the mugs with tea, then pouring the hot water, hands quaking ever so slightly. He'd totally lost track of the conversation, and he knew Bodie was deducting marks from him with each passing second--Depression: 548, Doyle: 0--but he couldn't bring himself to be an arsehole.

But he couldn't do anything else, either: had either forgotten how to or just couldn't, for some reason. He didn't like being an arsehole, and yet he was one most of the time because he didn't have anything else to be. So why did Bodie do this?

"Is that what you've come over to say, then?" his voice sounded strangled and strangely low even in his own ears. He prodded the tea-bags moodily with the back of a tea-spoon--and he used to be so good under-cover, too. "That I'm depressed?"

"Nope," Bodie said, his voice rising succinctly back to its lofty normality. "What's that you're cooking?"

Doyle turned, confused, and realised Bodie was looking eagerly at the oven.

"Oi, that's not for you, so don't even try it!" Doyle stood protectively between the cooker and Bodie's watering mouth, his chin jutting out instinctively.

"Little lad like you can't eat all that," Bodie's nose was wrinkling in jest and, after a tense moment, Doyle couldn't help but laugh, himself.

An hour ago, he would have punched Bodie's teeth out for referring to him as a 'little lad'. Hell, an hour ago, he could have killed Bodie with his bare hands for simply existing. Somehow, it all seemed easier when Bodie was actually there, stood being a prat of highest order right in front of you. You could forget what he was actually, properly like... and it was unexpectedly pleasant to do so.

Bodie started moving forward, and Doyle pushed him back by the shoulders, meeting good-natured resistance. "Get off! What if one of my many lady friends was coming to dinner?"

"Bollocks," Bodie said frankly, raising an amused eyebrow at Doyle, his face only inches away. "You don't cook Shepherd's Pie for birds. It's just not done." He tried to force past Doyle again, and chuckled as Doyle knocked him back with a grin. "I could have told you that, had you the sense to ask me."

"What, you being the right little Casanova, eh?" Doyle smiled.

"Course," Bodie nodded, and stepped back, away from him. Doyle felt a small pang of regret that the moment--the little island of amusement in an otherwise troubled sea--couldn't have lasted just that little bit longer.

He coughed. "Alright. Go on through, then, and I'll bring it in."

Bodie paused then, licking his lips, he said, "Into the living room?"

He almost seemed to flinch as Doyle looked at him; but his gaze hardened as the moments passed.

Breaking the stare, Doyle nodded and turned away, walking out of the kitchen and across the hallway to the bathroom.

Once there, he shut the door and came to the sink. Resting his weight on his palms, he leaned forward onto the sink and peered into the cracked vanity mirror of his bathroom cabinet as he tried to control his suddenly erratic breathing.

A very tired, very old, very ugly face looked gloomily out at him. He sighed, inexplicably pissed off with himself all of a sudden. And pissed off with the man standing like a numpty in his kitchen--the one with the piercing eyes. The one who could see right through him without even liking him.

Doyle gritted his teeth, and watched as his nostrils flared. Running the tap, he ran his hands through his hair, trying to calm it. It seemed that his hair went up and down with his moods, and he'd rather it wasn't such a bramble-like tangle in the face of Bodie's sleek, dark half-curls.

He caught himself, and his hands stopped in mid-air. What the sod was he doing? Preening in the mirror like some poncey budgie. And why, even? No ladies about; no one but an awkward bugger with a death wish who'd decided to come to dinner.

Shit, dinner.

Doyle flushed the lav, and strode out of the bathroom. Bodie wasn't in the kitchen, thankfully, so Doyle was able to dole out the dinner in peace. When he'd finally finished he went to the door, plates in hand and tea towel over his shoulder, and took a deep breath. Then he went to the living room. He didn't look at the bookshelf.

Bodie was sitting on his sofa, telly on, looking quite the lord in his manor.

Doyle stopped short, for some reason, and Bodie looked up. Then, something that was almost a flush coloured Bodie's pale face for a split-second, and he stood--great long body unfolding with some difficulty, then drawing up to its full height as if threatened.

"Er... Sorry." Bodie's voice was flat and forced.

Half-amused, half-bemused, Doyle shrugged and set the plates on to the table. He sat in the chair across from the sofa. Bodie, seemingly uncomfortable, hovered for a second, before delving back down onto the sofa and reaching for the plate with gusto, apparently deciding to mask the awkward situation with enthusiasm.

"Ta, you're a brick," he said, comically exaggerating his apparently original accent as he grabbed the cutlery.

Doyle took a mouthful--delicious, but irrelevant. He jabbed in Bodie's direction with the fork. "Is that where you're from, then?"

"Ey?" Bodie looked up as if he hadn't heard, but Doyle knew better.

"I said, is that where you're from, and full-well you know."

Bodie nodded. "Knew I couldn't get nothing past you, Watson." He smirked. "Yeah, it is."

And that was that--after the endless interrogation Doyle had been put through by his partner the evening before, that was all he got in return. All he knew about Bodie was circumspect and speculation, and the bugger wouldn't give him anything else--and Doyle had given him everything. He sighed gustily, stabbing at his Shepherd's pie and caught the irritatingly amused look Bodie threw him.

"What?" he snarled.

Bodie's smirk widened, and he looked away at the telly, lips quirking. "You. You're gonna have to try harder than that."

Doyle thumped his plate down onto the coffee table and glared at him; Bodie, for his part, stopped--fork half-way to mouth--and adopted an infuriatingly innocent look in return. Doyle jabbed a finger at him, knowing he'd seen that expression before.

"That's not fair."

"What's not?" Bodie asked--oh, how stupid he could be when he wanted to.

"You."

"Me?"

"Yeah, you," Doyle's aggression was building.

"Do tell." A mouthful of pie.

Doyle growled. "You're a bastard... You take and take from other people and you never give them a sod in return!"

"Terrible."

"You squeeze everything out of other people just for power, without giving anything away about what you're really like."

"Shocking, that."

"Arrrgh!" Doyle shot to his feet, his hands clutching at his hair, infuriated beyond belief. He stalked across the room, but accidentally stopped short in front of the bookshelf he'd been half-consciously trying to avoid. His hands fell slowly to his sides, and he stared at the faces of the two people who would have given him the whole world, had he had the mind to ask for it. A clutch of sadness squeezed his heart, and he rubbed vaguely at his chest. Back then, blissfully happy with his poor lot in life--only ever pleased at being alive--he never would have asked for anything more than them...

Now, Doyle had to beg for any scrap he could.

He sniffed, and turned away from the remembered smiles. Bodie was looking at him across the darkening living room, one arm slung over the top of the sofa, his face familiarly unreadable. Less haughty, but far more puzzling. Doyle cleared his throat and looked away, trying to compose his features away from whatever they were doing to make Bodie look at him like that.

He cleared his throat again--with a slight, unconscious shake of his head--and clapped his hands together.

"Right. You clearing off, then?"

Bodie looked down at his half-eaten dinner, then back up at Doyle. Lord, but he did look like a guilty schoolboy, sometimes. A couple of years shouldn't make him look that bloody young.

"Actually..." Bodie spoke gingerly, and his tone rang strange in Doyle's ears. "The boys I was supposed to be going out with tonight have been called up; won't be back 'til Tuesday."

Ah, so that'd been why he came round--lack of anything better to do. Doyle felt oddly put-out and uncomfortably like a loose-end. Bastard just wanted to finish his dinner.

"Well, if you think I'm putting you up, you can forget it," Doyle said, and it came out a lot meaner than he'd expected it to.

Bodie's mouth clamped shut, and his face closed up. "Right, I'll be off, then." He stood, setting the plate down on the table. "Cheers for the grub." And he made to leave by the quickest exit, with a flick of two thumbs.

Doyle felt a sudden flare of panic--a strange spark of urgency at the thought of Bodie leaving him alone, and he stumbled forwards, triggered.

"Err..." It was a strangled, inarticulate sound, but it did the trick: Bodie stopped in his tracks. "Well, I've got a few beers in and"--cough--"you're welcome to drain them... With me. If you want to, you know."

Doyle was all too keenly aware of his own body, all it's odd angles and off lines; he shoved his hands in his pockets, and rocked back--nonchalantly, of course--on his heels. "I think there's a cowboy film on the box, later."

He looked straight at Bodie, head up, and the challenge was once again back between them.

Bodie's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and Doyle resisted straightening up underneath the weight of his gaze. It just wouldn't do to let Bodie realise how much Doyle knew about handling him, how easily he was manipulated; sneaky bugger would probably change his strategy just to spite him, just as Doyle was beginning to figure out how to work him.

At the thought of this--and for no other reason at all, mind--Doyle changed tact, the ease of this switch not even noticed in that moment.

"Of course," he said, with a casual wave of his hand. "If you've got a warm bed to go back to... Cup of cocoa, slippers by the fire, snuggly nighty to slip into... then who am I to try and stop you?"

He turned away with a smug smile and open palms, and wandered back over to the sofa, and threw himself onto it with a sigh, opening up yesterday's paper with a rustle. "You bulky fucks need all your rest and beauty sleep to keep up, after all."

After a moment or so, and a slightly scuffled shifting sound, he risked a peak round the paper.

Bodie was sitting next to him, his face a perfect profile up close, watching the telly as if nothing had even happened. But as Doyle watched, those high cheeks and the laughter lines around his eyes lifted upwards as Bodie's scrunched-up smirk appeared, his lips pursing in reluctant amusement.

Doyle chortled loudly in triumph, and folded his paper up, at last satisfied. "Good man," he said, and pushed himself upwards to go fetch the beers from the fridge, clapping Bodie on the thigh as he did so, whistling as he strode into the kitchen.

When he returned, Bodie was flipping through one of the sketchbooks he'd left on the coffee-table shelf. Strangely, Doyle was neither surprised nor annoyed. Bodie was smiling ever so slightly; he brushed a hand over a watercolour of the murky Thames, as if expecting it to still be wet.

"Did you do these?" he asked, his voice betraying the smallest hint of wonder. Or maybe Doyle was just imagining that bit.

He nodded, then realised Bodie couldn't see him from his seat on the sofa. "Yeah... Not much cop, but I enjoy it, you know."

"Too much cop," Bodie retorted, sounding simultaneously impressed and derisive--only bloody Bodie could do that--and turned another page, revealing the image of a would-be urban Titania (had Doyle known who she was and not just sketched his then-girlfriend, Sadie Morrison). Bodie whistled appreciatively.

"When did you learn this, eh?"

"Art school," Doyle said, and sipped his beer. When he tilted the bottle back down again, Bodie was staring at him, frozen in the action of turning another creaking page. Doyle wiped his mouth with his arm. "What?"

"You... At art school?" Glib, glib, glib.

Doyle pulled a face. "Don't sound so fucking surprised--don't have to be born into high society to like art, you know. You ponces can't hoard everything, you know."

"Who's a ponce?" Bodie looked back at the drawings, pausing to scan the one Doyle had done in ink of his ex-partner, asleep at his station with his helmet beside him, face down in a mound of paperwork. Bodie sniffed, "I don't even like art."

"Now, why doesn't that surprise me?" Doyle said, sarcastically. "Anyway, what were you getting at, then?"

Bodie's look was searching, but impassive. There was only a moment's hesitation. "You... you on the... wrong bus into town, then?"

"What?" Doyle said, confused. Then, as realisation dawned, his disbelief rose in a wave of amusement, which flooded any feelings of offence he would have had. "You joking, right?"

Bodie tilted his head, deferring towards the sketch of a traffic warden, eating his sandwiches on a park bench. "I'm just saying... There's a lot of them about. I know enough to know Michelangelo was one... and you're a dead ringer, mate."

"So I look like one, do I? Don't even!"

Bodie had opened his mouth--that mercurial glint in his eye all the warning Doyle needed--but shut it quickly when faced with Doyle's warning finger. He took a sip of beer in an attempt to smother his smile and Doyle laughed heartily.

"Mmmmm," Bodie said, pulling a bog-eyed face which made Doyle laugh again.

And so it was, they settled together. Their chatter--sometimes loud, sometimes quiet; always very, very quick--continued to babble above the western soundtrack to the film flickering on the telly, and neither of them paid a lot of attention to the plot (they would later tell themselves that they'd seen it hundreds of times before, anyway).

Empty cans of beer began to pile around their feet, and the game of scoring points from each other gave way to trying to make one another laugh, a strategy which delivered rather unexpected success on both sides. Neither of them noticed the hours pass; the clock on the mantelpiece was blurred to both men by their tears of mirth.

Eventually, as the night grew old and grey, and their laughter subsided into almost-comfortable silence, Bodie made his excuse and left. And Doyle had never felt more lonely than he did in that instance, watching as Bodie's grinning face disappeared behind the door, and missing it before it was ever really gone.

There was a moment of empty darkness, and Doyle put his beer solidly on the table. Swallowing, he stood and walked over to the phone. A quick glance at the clock--ah, fuck it, these were extenuating circumstances--he rang the number scrawled in pencil on the wall above the telephone table.

A bark greeted him.

"Macklin."

"Oh, hello. It's Doyle... Ray Doyle, from yesterday?"

"I know who you are, Doyle. I'm not so far past I can't remember names and faces, you know."

Doyle winced, unseen. "Ah, sorry... Um, I was just wondering-" He paused, unable to think what he meant to say. Luckily, Macklin didn't have to think twice.

"You want to know if you're welcome to attend my compulsory refresher course at 07.00 hours tomorrow? Despite having had a little flounce off from the proceedings yesterday?"

Doyle took a deep breath, and struggled with his tongue. "Yes," he said, managing to quell the anger beginning to rebuild in his system.

"Of course. Knew you'd come back, agent."

There was something in Macklin's tone--something a little too subtle to be smugness--which set Doyle on his guard, and off his leash as he snapped back. "Oh, I suppose he told you, then, did he? Stupid git, of all the bloody nerve to go over my head and invalidate my-"

"Oh, cool your boots, officer," Macklin said sharply. "Bodie didn't say a word. He just asked me not to tell Cowley you'd done a runner 'til after he'd spoken to you."

Doyle's mouth clamped shut, and he held the phone away from his ear, glancing at it for a second as if someone had replaced it with a bomb or a bunch of bananas.

Macklin continued, and the quiet tone made Doyle put the phone back to his ear.

"And, because I don't know you that well, I gave you the benefit of the doubt--I see the potential in you, boy, I really do... But don't expect me to stick my neck out for you again until you've proven to me you're worth it, alright?"

"Alright," Doyle answered meekly, unable to make his brain function beyond what he'd just been told.

There was a pause, and Doyle sensed Macklin might be about to say something else.

"See you tomorrow, 4.5. And rest assured I shall have forgotten all about how busy I was tonight and the lateness of this phone-call."

"See you tomorrow, sir."

The line went dead. Another night of troubled sleep for Doyle, then.

---

"Sir?"

"What, man?"

"I apologise for the time, but I just thought you should know... He's coming back."

"I see."

"It would appear there's some co-operation, now... A drastic improvement on yesterday, I think you'll agree."

"Yes. Well, if they will spend most of their energies running away from each other..."

"I think you'll find, sir, that it is Doyle who's doing most of the running."

"And don't think I don't know who's making him run, Mack!"

"Not anymore, sir, I don't think. Something's gotten to them."

"Good."

"Better than good: it would have been a shame to let them go to waste... Good little team you've got shaping up, there, underneath it all. When they're on form, their intuition for one another is... well, quite astounding."

"A coy little cliché, but nonetheless: the proof of the pudding shall be in the eating."

"Very good, sir. When are you thinking of trying them out?"

"Oh, I have just the job."

"You'll let me know?"

"Naturally. Good night, Mack."

"Good night, sir.

"Oh, and, Mack?"

"Yessir?"

"Thankyou."

---

Bodie was enjoying himself enormously.

This was the life. No tests of lung capacity or reaction times, no graphs or tables of performance versus time or effort against exertion levels... Just a good, old-fashioned, rip-roaring obstacle course that you had to pelt across, and there was only one simple rule: you finish it all, or Towser got to you.

He looked across at Doyle as they threw themselves up at a 6ft wall--Doyle looked brilliant: his cheeks were red, his eyes were bright, and his teeth were bared. He looked like a jungle cat who'd just heard the hunters' rifle. Bodie laughed suddenly, throwing his head back as he struggled to get his feet on top of the wall for purchase.

A hand grabbed his right foot and put it across the wall, pulling Bodie upright. The same hand then gave Bodie a hard shove on his back, sending him head-first over the wall. He landed on his back, and all the wind rushed outwards from his lungs.

Doyle, sitting briefly on top of the wall, his chest heaving, gave him a wave and then leaped, landing just next to Bodie.

He was pulled upright, and they ran on. They'd been running together all day, following a vague set of markers Macklin had set out for them--they'd been through bush and brush, through farmlands and housing estates, there had even been a lake at one point (Doyle's curls still glistened slightly in the slowing sunshine). The night was dimming the day, but burning muscles were nothing to them--they ran together, each one trying to outdo the other, each one happy to be running at all. They jostled each other, they occasionally tripped one another up; but if one fell, a hand had reached down and quickly righted them again.

Finally, they reached the end of the miles-long obstacle course, in a bit of scraggy, unassuming woodland. The white bandage wrapped around a beech tree was spotted by Doyle, who threw himself with relief and relish onto the ground next to it, panting happily into the evening light.

Bodie didn't throw himself down, but he leaned heavily against an opposite tree, resting his pounding head back against the scratchy bark and trying to get his breathing back under control without anybody noticing.

Doyle groaned, resting his wrists on his forehead. "I'm totally shagged... I don't reckon Macklin can be human, you know." His knees fell open and then closed again as he tried to find a comfortable position on the twiggy ground, his jeans creasing strongly around his thighs with his movements.

Bodie tried to speak, then coughed and tried again. "He is. Just a mean one."

He saw Doyle laugh silently underneath his arm, exhaustion making everything hilarious, but couldn't bring himself to join in: his mouth was suddenly so dry.

But Doyle, it appeared, could read minds, as he jack-knifed upright and began rifling in his bag, still grinning like a loon. "You want some water?"

Bodie nodded, and pushed himself from the tree trunk to go over and sit next to Doyle. He took the water, and relished the clean feeling that cut through the thick, dirty feeling of his tongue as he drank. Doyle's knee was knocking against his, jigging to the beat of some unheard song, and Bodie found he enjoyed the scrape of jeans against moleskin.

He looked across at Doyle, sitting cross-legged beside him, and found he was already looking straight at him--those big, mad green eyes of his warm and searching. His lips were drawn back as his breath still came heavy, showing off the ugly chips in his teeth; Bodie found he couldn't take his eyes off them. The wood seemed to close secretly about them--the thick canopy of sunshine-mottled greenery shielding them from the rest of the world--and the birdsong was muffled all around them.

"You're quiet all of a sudden," Doyle said softly, tipping his head to one side slightly.

Bodie swallowed, and looked away--not down--across at the scrappy ferns which lined a little pattering beck beside them. He shook his head with a wince as he felt his brain smack dully against his skull, "No, just... tired."

He saw Doyle nod from the corner of his eye, saw a hand come to a sweaty brow. "Mmmm... I hear that." He rested his chin on his forearms, bringing his knees up to rest on. "But I would have thought you'd be used to it. Big, strong lad like you?"

He grinned, turning his head on his arms to look at Bodie, "And you an army boy, too--for shame, mate."

Bodie chuckled, despite himself. Then hurled himself backwards in a fit of flamboyance, water arching wetly through the air, to thump back on the ground with his hands behind his head. He was rewarded with an answering thud--as well as slight, high-pitched 'oof'--as Doyle landed beside him... Much, much closer to him than when they had been sitting.

They looked up at the sky beyond the trees, dimming to a golden balm. Every bit of Bodie ached; but it was a good ache, an ache hard-won and much-deserved. Doyle's head nudged him and his hair tickled Bodie's arm through his t-shirt, and he smiled to himself, pulling the limp man close in a quiet hug which came quite out of nowhere.

Doyle's head snapped up, and Bodie looked round in alarm, his arm pulling out from underneath the other man. But Doyle was watching him, now, and Bodie felt himself fidget under the hard look.

And then something quite unexpected happened, and it was hard to tell quite how. Someone stuck their tongue down someone else's throat. Hard to tell who, and Bodie refused to think about it. The images which sometimes slipped from the box he had later built in his brain were full of Doyle, always Doyle. He found it hard to remember these images, but sometimes, late at night or very early in the morning--when his attention shuddered and his mind wandered--they would come, unbidden.

Of Doyle, shifting himself suddenly to lie on top of Bodie; of his hard, bony hips pressing down into his belly; of grabbing endless handfuls of curls and holding on; of the feel of his tongue crashing against another; of trouser buttons being ripped open and wonderfully quick hands wrapping confidently round him; of the smell of victory and shame mingling with his aftershave; of forest-green eyes cautiously watching him from underneath a sweaty, mussed fringe; of running, running and not stopping.

But Bodie always swallowed these images down again, and wilfully refused to think about anything at all.

Nothing had happened.

Nothing.

That sick, scared feeling filling his chest was absolutely nothing at all.

-- THE END --

June 2008