The bright summer day was at odds with Bodie's mood. He stood in Roan Avenue, outside number 47, looking at the house and dreading crossing the doorstep. Mrs. Doyle was at home; he had seen signs of life behind the net curtains, a shadowy shape moving from window to door to television set. And if he had seen her, she probably knew just as well he was there. And why. It had been two years since he had spoken to Janet Doyle, and the parting scene had been -- 'bad,' Bodie thought as he stood looking at the house. It was semi-detached with a strip of garden separating it from the road; red bricks, slate tiles, yellow curtains, white nets between them. A one-time family home, with all its children gone and only a widowed dowager in residence.

The way of all families, all houses. Bodie chewed his lip, knowing he had stood there at the gate too long. The neighbours had seen him; the kids playing soccer down the street had begun to look at him as if he might be some kind of hoodlum, here to burglarise the place.

The idea brought the ghost of a smile to Bodie's lips. He had not wanted to come here, but there had been no choice. Cowley's hands had been tied since the outset. Bodie remembered the CI5 Controller's quiet apologies, thinking back to a scene he would rather have forgotten:

"I'm sorry, Bodie, but what else can we do?" Cowley was standing at the window, the venetian held apart to afford a glimpse into the carpark far below CI5's floor. "You had the same news from Doctor Mawson as I had. There is nothing physically wrong with Doyle. Nothing they can treat. If he wants to hide away forever, there's nothing anyone can do to stop him. We don't even know what he's hiding from."

Bodie knew, but his lips were sealed. Ray had been in hospital for six weeks that day as Cowley stood looking down into the carpark and Bodie frowned at the back of the man's sandy head. There was nothing wrong with Doyle, and yet he slept and would not waken. The blow across the skull he had received in the scuffle had not even given him much of a concussion, let alone caused any damage to his brain that would keep him out this long...

No, Cowley was right. Ray was hiding, and only Bodie knew what he was hiding from. Bodie's mouth compressed into a tight line, symbolic of his silence. He was not about to speak Ray's secrets, now or ever. The less the likes of Kate Ross knew, the better.

"He can't stay in hospital forever," Cowley went on, speaking over his shoulder. "And his mother has already volunteered to take care of him. I thought it would be kinder than sending him to a nursing home."

'Among a lot of terminal patients waiting to die,' Bodie thought with a twist of bitterness. Cowley had intended it for the best. Trust the old man to have Doyle's interests at heart, as he seemed to have the interests of all 'his boys' at heart.

"He'll be taken home tomorrow," Cowley said quietly, turning back from the window at last and looking at Bodie in the room's subdued lighting. Bodie saw his face twist that little fraction, an expression of shock, as he saw the younger man. It was a look Bodie was accustomed to getting lately. He looked... 'rough', he admitted. He had been out of hospital himself only a fortnight.

"I'll visit," he said dutifully.

"Aye," Cowley said thoughtfully. "You'll have the time on your hands... Mrs. Doyle might be grateful for a wee bit of help, if you were inclined. She's not a big woman, and she'll be lifting Doyle's dead weight, remember. She might be happy to have you there."

"She hates me," Bodie said very quietly indeed.

The Scot lifted one brow. "That's a strong word, Bodie. Hate."

"She's hated me for years," Bodie said almost indifferently. Beneath the facade of calm and the level voice, his innards were knotted painfully. Bad old memories came back to haunt. "Since I seduced her green eyed boy. She's... the old fashioned kind. Three kids, two killed in a car smash, and along comes Bodie and seduces the only survivor into a life of sin."

"Oh." Cowley leaned on the back of his swivel chair. "Still, you're on speaking terms --?"

"I don't know." Bodie eased his weight off his left leg and onto his right as he weakened muscles began to cramp. There was a surgical pin in the thigh bone, and he felt a sharp twinge from it. It would come out in another month. He was lucky -- how often had he been told so? After a fall like that, another man wouldn't have walked again. A broken back was as easy as saying good morning. "In fact, I don't even know if she'll let me through the door. It's entirely possible I might never see him again."

The old man's face set into grave lines. "Oh. I didn't know, Bodie. I'm sorry. If I'd known, I would have made other arrangements. There is still a lot that can be done. If Mrs. Doyle proved to be too... shall we say, difficult, we can take her son out of her hands again. There's a clinic in Northamptonshire. His muscles are going to need therapy soon, or they'll be atrophied away with disuse. Mrs. Doyle won't argue that, and at least you'll have access to him at the clinic."

Bodie found some vestige of a smile. "Thank God one of us is still thinking clearly. Look, sir, I'll go over there soon. I can drive now, so long as it's an automatic. One way or the other, I can find out. If she won't let me in -- that's the end of it. Won't know till I try."

He had left Cowley's office as Betty came to the door with the news that the party from Whitehall was ready for business. The walk to the lift seemed longer than usual, his stride shortened, his weight on a stick. His left leg was like a piece of planking, but it was mending, he knew. His back and shoulders were much improved. He had been lucky, and he knew it -- a fall from that height could have killed him. Would have, he knew, had it not been for the stack of empty cartons that just broke his impact.

The moment of the fall haunted his dreams. There was darkness, the cold wind off the river, striking in through the warehouse door, the dizzy height of the catwalks, the slight tremor through the steel framework under his feet, the ringing sounds of his footsteps. The smell of old oil and mildew, the taint of the river... The honk of a barge horn, and the scuttling sounds of feet down below. Doyle was down there, stalking. And Wilson and Palmer were down there, somewhere, among the crates, armed and safe in whatever shoot hole.

The adrenalin had been pumping. He remembered the quick, heavy beat of his heart, oddly, absurdly, like the racing pulse of lovemaking. He went up the steel ladder like a cat, reckoning that with altitude he would see the two men, get a clear shot. But the warehouse was dark as a crypt, and he was as good as blind.

He used his ears instead. Footsteps, a box shifting, the sound of an automatic handgun cocking. He caught sight of Palmer's blond head fleetingly and got off a shot, missing by a hand's breadth. Then there was nothing, just the steel mesh of the catwalk cutting into his right knee as he crouched, waiting.

Then -- movement down below, a glimpse of curly hair, and a muzzle flash, blinding him in the near darkness -- pain in his shoulder as a bullet bit into him -- falling -- impact -- blackness.

He woke later, screaming. It was not that he was in pain, for he was floating in a rose-coloured morphine haze; and it was not that he was really screaming, for his throat was silent while his mind went through the motions of screaming, remembering again and again, Doyle's face, the muzzle flash of that Browning 9mm, and falling.

Ray had shot him. Ray had shot him.

He wandered into and out of the morphine cloud that day, and every time he came close to consciousness the same thought was there again. He hid away from it, plunging back into the oblivion of sleep, grateful when he felt the prick of a needle or heard them shoot some drug into the IV tube. His body was a mess of plaster, dressings, tubes, but that was unimportant. Nothing mattered -- nothing could matter, save one fact. Ray had shot him.

Two days later he woke properly. His throat was like cotton wool but though his skull was aching his mind was clear, and he laughed.

Ray had been standing infront of him, gun uplifted toward him as he saw movement up on the steel catwalk. Behind Bodie there had been a parked fork lift truck -- if he had fallen onto that he would have killed himself. The stack of empty cardboard cartons had been infront of him, between himself and the stalking Doyle.

And the bullet that had knocked him off the catwalk into the cartons, thirty, forty feet below, had come from behind. The bandaged shoulder gave him hell, fiery with the pain of a recent operation... and the scar he would carry was just above the shoulderblade. The bone had stopped the .38 bullet, and he had a bruise as black as his Aunt Flo's cat.

Ray had not shot him.

But Ray thought he had. And Ray was still hiding.

Their backup arrived just as the shots were fired, so Cowley said. The gunmen took fright, not stopping to make sure 3.7 and 4.5 were dead. Enough to blow one man off the catwalk, and hit the other a crack across the back of the skull that knocked Ray into the middle of next week. He would have a king-sized concussion, but Cowley had been waiting for him to come to, wanting his report.

But Ray never woke. A week after Bodie surfaced and laughed at the tricks of his own drug-fuddled mind, he was allowed out of bed. A trip to the loo, like a civilized human being, a wheelchair ride into the hospital garden, for a breath of fresh air... and then, a ride up into the quiet little room where nothing ever changed save the flowers and the linen.

Pale, unmoving, Doyle lay deeply asleep. In the privacy of the room, Bodie took his hand, spoke to him, but there was no response. Doctor Mawson was at the door before Bodie knew it, saw the hand-holding, the stinging tears, and lifted a brow at Bodie.

"Your friend?" He asked, coming into the room and closing the door. "I know you work with him. George Cowley's boys, aren't you?"

"Yes." Bodie released Doyle's lax hand reluctantly, scrubbing at his eyes with his own good hand. He turned the wheelchair slightly to face Mawson, looking up into the doctor's face... Mawson had guessed already. "Is it that obvious?"

"You're lovers, then," Mawson said. "I thought you might be. You kept calling his name, while you were under."

"Did I?" Bodie's teeth worried at his lip. He looked back at Doyle's pale face. Ray looked very young, almost ethereal. They had shaved him and washed his face, and his hair was combed. There was no spring in the curls but at least they were tidy. They framed an angel's face -- there was nothing hard-boiled left about Ray now. "What's the matter with him?"

"He's hiding, I think," Mawson said. He had already told Cowley the same story and gave it to Bodie straight. "I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm a surgeon, but I can tell you, physically, there isn't a damned thing wrong with him. It's as if he's retreated into his own mind to escape something -- who knows what? They koshed him, that might have given him some kind of traumatic shock. As I said, I'm not a psychiatrist, and until he wakes up and is lucid, there's little point sending for one!"

"When?" Bodie asked. "When will that be?"

They guessed a day or two; then revised the estimate to a week; and then admitted the truth, that they had no idea. Doyle could sleep forever, for all they really knew.

For Bodie, the pull up to even half-way decent fitness was a hard slog. He was wheelchair bound for a week and then the physiotherapy began, but the basic health and fitness demanded by CI5 paid off. He was leaving hospital when any normal human being would still have been in fragments. He had lost count of the hours he had spent in Doyle's room, just watching him, listening to his breathing, watching the nurses change the IVs and, when there was an opportunity, talking to him, as if Ray could hear.

But Ray never heard -- or, if he did, the words integrated with his dreams and did not seduce him back to reality. Bodie was given his ticket of leave one sunny afternoon, and packed to go. The physiotherapist came to say goodbye; he pecked her cheek as they called for a taxi. His last call within the hospital was to Doyle's room; it was a physical blow to walk away, leaving him there.

He was back the next afternoon, and the next. Shadowing the place through two weeks while his bruises diminished and the pain of operation sites and broken bones became only nuisance value. Ray was losing flesh now and the hospital needed the room. They wanted to move him out to a nursing home, and it was then that Cowley met Janet Doyle, to make arrangements.

Arrangements that brought Bodie to Roan Avenue, to the gate of number 47, where he stood looking at the polished wood front door, at its big, brass knocker in the shape of a lion's face. Behind that door was a woman who wished him dead, and a man who had loved him for three years. Bodie closed his eyes, trying to forget the scenes there had been -- when? Easter of 1982?

The long weekend, they had planned to go away together, as they had for years. Their gear was packed; wicker picnic hamper, fishing tackle, a couple of suitcases. They had their fishing licenses paid for and train tickets for Wales. It was safer than driving, and less frustrating, both had agreed. The roads were a deathtrap on bank holidays.

The train was leaving at noon, and they should have been on it, having lunch in the dining car on their way out to Caerleon-on- Usk. At ten, when they were wrangling in the kitchen, laughing like a couple of kids as they fought for the last sweet in the bag of Quality Street and then sharing it amid toffee-sweet kisses, the phone rang.

"Yeah?" Ray asked, answering it as Bodie continued to fondle him. And then his whole manner changed and Bodie let the game go. Doyle listened for some moments, his face drawing taut. "Christ. When was this?" The green eyes closed and he rubbed his forehead. Bodie waited.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be there, Simon. Thanks for calling, mate. I owe you one."

Bodie watched him hang up the wall phone. "What was that about?"

Ray sat down on the chair under the phone, face pressed into his hands. "My cousin Simon. There's been an accident. Kath and David."

"Your brother and sister?" Bodie knelt on the rug at Ray's feet, every muscle grabbing in apprehension; cold sweat prickled his skin. "Ray? Ray!"

He seemed to jerk out of some near-trance, lifting his head; his eyes were hollow. There were no tears yet; they would come later. "They're dead, Bodie. There was a smash out by Doncaster. Pile-up, with a truck. The car was jammed between a bus and a lorry. It burned out."

"Christ." Bodie stood, pulling his lover to his feet and holding him. "They want the bodies ID'd?"

"No, Simon did that." Ray shuddered. "They were burned to a crisp... Simon's been throwing up for an hour." Simon was a good man, Bodie knew, a good bloke who did not mind the fact that Ray was living with a man.

"What about your mother?" Bodie asked quietly.

"She's sedated at home," Ray said with an unearthly, unreal calm, as if the truth of matters had not yet percolated through to the part of his mind that could hurt. "Doc Patterson's still with her. I ought to be there till Joanie and Barbara can get over from Leeds."

His two aunts, Janet's sisters. They had married and left years before but they would rally 'round when they were needed. Bodie did not even glance at their stacked baggage in the hallways of the CI5 flat; he gave Ray a push, commandeering the keys, and in five minutes they were on the road, driving over to the Roan Avenue house. The Doyle clan castle.

The doctor's car was still on the kerb when they parked, and they could hear voices from within. A nextdoor neighbour had made a tray of tea and opened a packet of shortbreads; Patterson's bag was just snapping shut, Janet's sleeve was still rolled up while she pressed absently on the shot-bruise. Her eyes were vacant, dark, pupils dilated.

I'm Ray Doyle," Ray said, offering his hand to the doctor. "I remember." Patterson was sixty; he had taken out Ray's tonsils twenty years before. "I'm very sorry about this, Mr. Doyle. If there's anything I can do, just call. I'm still at the old address... Your mother has had something to make her rest, and if you can get her to lie down, do so. There... really isn't much more I can do. I'm sorry."

"I know... and thanks." Ray stood looking down into his mother's waxy face; it was left to Mrs. Stokes to show Patterson out and put a cup of brown paint tea into Janet's hand.

She was sixty, or just short of that, Bodie knew; the hair was still reddish, but showing a lot of silver, and her skin tone was half way gone to wrack and ruin though the complexion was not bad. She had a slender body, still, and when she was in a good mood there was much about Janet Doyle that was still girlish. Today she looked old, no other word for it.

"There you go, love," Mrs. Stokes said as she pressed the cup of tea onto her neighbour. "Get that into you."

The cup was lifted to Janet's lips as if on automatic; she drank, Bodie knew she must have scalded his throat. Then she got up, walking like an automaton, into the bathroom. There were the sounds of retching and then a thud as she fainted.

Between them, Ray and Mrs. Stokes cleaned her up, got her out of her clothes and into bed. She was out like a light with Patterson's drugs, and it was six before she stirred. Then, the shock was past and the grief set in. It had always been Bodie's belief that grief was healthy, and the louder the grief, as a rule, the more quickly it spent itself -- 'the bellowing cow that soonest forgets its calf', as the old saying went.

Janet Doyle's grief was quiet and deep. And somewhere in the throes of it, the hatred began. How long had she known that her son had had a male lover? Bodie, to that point, had not been aware she knew at all, and it came as a rude awakening when the accusations began. Sin, shame, disgrace, seduction, guilt. Bodie closed his ears to it, only wishing that Ray had not had to stand there and hear it also. Ray was torn by the same grief, and Janet's tirade was like a kicking.

They left not long after the sisters arrived. Joanie and Barb were sour-faced as the two men bowed out of the scene, but Ray could not tell them the truth, that having Bodie in the house was upsetting Janet even more than necessary. He could have sent Bodie away and stayed, but Bodie knew, his mother's tirade had hurt him deeply. There was still hurt and sympathy for her, grief for his brother and sister: but there was anger too, for a woman who wanted only to lash out, wound others in the midst of her own pain.

It was the last time Bodie had come face to face with Janet Doyle; and the accident was two years in the past. He stood at the gate looking at that polished doorknocker, oblivious to the passage of time until a jet roared overhead, stirring him from the reverie.

Now or never. The gate creaked on hinges that had begun to rust; it clanged back into place behind him as he limped up the short pathway, and the knocker was cold in his hand as he rapped. Footsteps from inside, carpet-muffled. The sound of a chain slithering away, and a deadlock turning.

She looked tired, he thought. Lines about her mouth, the hair looking less like a hairdo than like a hat, over-permed, sprayed stiff, the colour too dark for a woman her age. She wore pink and yellow, a blouse and slacks. Recognition flickered through Doyle-green eyes as she looked up at him.

"Bodie. I thought you'd come. You took your time."

"I haven't been the best myself, Mrs. Doyle," he said, gesturing with the walking stick. "I was in hospital. They probably told you."

"Mr. Cowley told me." She looked up at him, head cocked to one side. "You were shot."

"The shoulder," Bodie affirmed selfconsciously, knowing what she would see as she looked up at him. He was pale, gaunt, blue rings under his eyes, and the veins in his temples standing out a little. The journey over had fatigued him; he was tired and knew he must look it.

"You survived," she said noncommittally.

"By the skin of my teeth." He looked past her into he house, dropping hints, hoping she would take them.

"You want to come in, I suppose."

"I'd like to... I want to talk to you, Mrs. Doyle. I want to see him."

She stepped aside to allow him into the house. The stick was almost silent on the beige carpeting. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the hall's oval mirror and looked away quickly. He looked like a wraith. "He hasn't woken, if that's what you're thinking," she said defensively.

"Oh." Bodie looked down into her face, trying to read her feelings there, since she was so effectively shutting him out. "I hoped... There's every chance he will wake, you know. Mr. Cowley wants to send him for muscular therapy."

"Therapy? He didn't mention that to me."

"No, but he -- we want him back," Bodie said patiently. His body was beginning to ache. "Do you mind if I sit down? I really will fall flat on my face soon!" Waved at a chair, he sat. "His muscles are going to wither soon, and the therapy will be necessary. As I said, we want him back."

"We?" She lifted one manicured eyebrow at him. "Who's 'we'?"

"CI5," Bodie said, pat. And when she dealt him a hawkish look, he added, "and me."

"When are you going to let to?" Janet asked, an honest question asked in a disturbingly rational voice as she perched on the arm of the sofa. "When are you going to let go, and let me have him back? Christ, he's nearer dead than alive, can't you even let go now?"

Bodie closed his eyes. He wanted to scream -- 'let go? Let you have him? But you can't have him, because he's mine! Mine!' In fact he said, "I think those kinds of decisions are for Ray to make. When he wakes. Whether he stays or goes -- back to CI5, back to me -- it's really not for us to decide. And until he wakes... Mrs. Doyle, we're on the same side, aren't we? Don't you want the same thing as me? To see him wake?"

She looked away. He waited for her to speak but she said nothing. Was she remembering the scene there had been, in this room, that Good Friday? Ray, standing by the mantle, hands in his back pockets, eyes on the carpet, Bodie standing by the window, not offering a word in argument. Janet hardly rational, still doped, shocky, grieving and flinging hate about as if in some desire for company in her pain.

Bodie had taken her son away, and would keep him away; and her other children were dead... Bodie had always understood and had tried not to bear malice. There was only a sadness now, when he looked into her face and saw the same old hurt.

"I... Can I see him?" He asked quietly at last.

The Doyle-green eyes cleared and she stood up. "I'm going out. I have an appointment. I won't be back till six tonight."

"You leave him alone?" Bodie followed her up, taken by surprise as a twist of anger shot through him. "You go out and leave him alone?"

Those Doyle eyes glittered with anger now. "I am alone! Maybe you've forgotten. There's no one left! Besides, he'd know no difference, doesn't know when I'm there, doesn't know when I'm not."

"But he might wake while you're out," Bodie protested. "And be alone!" And then he saw the truth. "You don't believe he will, do you? You don't believe he'll ever wake."

Of a sudden she seemed to age a decade, and turned her back on him. "I had it out with one of his doctors. He's -- they said, hiding. Hiding -- and you know bloody well, Bodie, what he's hiding from!"

Bodie looked blankly at her. "I do?"

"He was confirmed, did you know that?" She asked, over her shoulder, arms folded across her chest, defensive.

Confirmed? A Catholic? Bodie blinked, taken aback. "He never mentioned it -- nor did he ever go to church, or pray, or whatever."

"Alan was the Catholic," she said quietly. "His father. Had the whole three of them off to church. Sunday school, Knights of St. Columba. Ray was confirmed. The church would take him back."

If he confessed the sin of sodomy, and did a year's penance. Bodie's mouth dried. Was Ray really so ridden by guilt over his imagined sins that he was punishing himself this way? Bodie grasped after the woman's logic and then dismissed it. He knew his lover better than that.

"If you want to go out," he offered, "I'll sit with him. In fact, I'd be pleased to sit with him any day you want to go out. Shopping, or to a film, or even if you wanted a few days away. God, you've earned the rest. Have you looked at yourself lately, Mrs. D.? You look like you could use a week at Bournmouth!"

She frowned at him. "That's... good of you, Bodie."

"The least I can do." He shoved his hand into his pocket; it helped to support the weight of the shoulder from which a .38 slug had been dug. "For what it's worth, I... did love him, you know. Oh, maybe it's not the kind of love you would understand, with husbands and babies and mortgages!" But I loved him so much. I never used him, Mrs. Doyle. I only ever wanted to keep him safe and show him a fine time. I like to think I did that for three damned good years. He was happy."

To his astonishment, the woman's eyes flooded. "I know. I --" And then she fled, snatching hat and handbag from the stand in the hallway. "I'm going to the hairdresser, and then on to get some shopping in."

He limped along to open the front door for her. "Why don't you send the stuff back in a minicab? Here." There was a crisp fiver for her. "On me. Make a day of it. Go and see a film. There are some good ones on just now. If you give me bell when you're due back I'll have the kettle boiled for you, and... if you like, I won't be here when you get home."

She looked up at him as if she had never really seen him before. Two years was a long time, Bodie was only too painfully aware of that; and he had changed, he knew that also. Thin, pale, tired, he was not the same bumptious, arrogant Bodie she knew, the man who had muscled in and seduced her Catholic son into debauchery. Sodomy.

"I'll do that." She took the money for the minicab. "I -- thanks. You'll look after him, will you?"

"Of course I will!" Bodie forced a smile. "Good God, if you can't trust me, who can you trust?" He made a joke of it, but it was a painful one. "I may be a faggot but I'm a trustworthy faggot."

The sound of the word made her wince... if Bodie was a 'faggot', so was Ray, and the name was abruptly as cruel and biting as 'nigger'. The odd little witticism found its mark. Bodie saw a flicker in her eyes -- defensive, as if she was thinking, 'don't say that about yourself!'

And then she was gone, and the house was silent. There was the tick of an old pendulum clock on the mantle, the drip of a tap in the kitchen, the sound of a motor lawnmower in the next street, the voices of the kids with their football, just outside. It smacked into the gateway, rattling the ironwork. Bodie heard Janet shout at the lads to be careful, that there would be trouble if they broke a window. She was walking for the bus, and in a minute would be on the corner of Roan Avenue.

He stood at the foot of the stairs, contemplating a climb that looked like the north face of the Eiger. But Ray was up there, and in fact the stairs were behind him before he was aware of them. The house had three bedrooms, and Ray's was at the back, overlooking the long, narrow backgarden.

The curtains were half drawn, the room dim with green, filtered light. And there was Ray, lying on his back, his hair grown very long, his closed eyes turned to the ceiling. Bodie limped into the room, stood at the bedside silently for a long moment, and then cast aside the stick and sat on the side of the mattress. It dipped under his weight, creating the illusion that Ray moved. Bodie knew better.

"Hello, sunshine, remember me?" He asked. Ray's arms were under the quilt, keeping them warm; in his inactivity, he would always be in danger of becoming hypothermic. Bodie burrowed after his hands and brought them out to hold them. They were soft, their muscles gone, their skin almost like the skin of a girl now, after the inactivity. His mother must have been game to shave him, Bodie thought -- his jaw was smooth, still. "Does she tell you you're beautiful?" He asked huskily. "You are. Very. Does she tell you she loves you? I think she does, you know. But not the way I love you... Oh, Ray. I know what you're hiding from. She's wrong, isn't she? It isn't sin and shame, is it? Your father had you brought up a Catholic, but you left that behind when you grew up. Ray? Ray?"

There was no answer, nor had he expected one. Bodie smiled at him and let go one of his hands, touching his face instead. "I know what you're hiding from... You think you killed me, didn't you? You fired, you saw me fall. You thought you killed me." He was stroking the face he loved, and leaned over to kiss Doyle's soft mouth. He tasted orangejuice; once in a while his mouth would be moistened, and if he was propped up, his throat muscles would swallow automatically, so that he could be given a drink. There was no IV, but his arms were bruised, Bodie saw. He would be fed intravenously by a district nurse every morning. A tube in him for two or three hours, putting just enough into him to keep him alive.

Bodie's eyes misted and he flicked out his tongue, parting the soft lips and exploring the shape of his lover's teeth... eccentric teeth, they were, the chipped one fascinating him. Broken by a cricketball when he was fourteen and fielding at Silly Point while his brother David batted his way toward a half century.

"Can you feel this?" Bodie asked against the soft, open mouth. Ray's breath was orange-sweet. "Nobody's touched you in so long, have they? You're as starved for touch as I am, aren't you? Oh, Ray! Can you feel this? Do you like this? Shall I go on?

There was no verbal reply and Bodie sat up. It was as he looked down into Doyle's face that he was sure he saw the closed eyes flicker, just a sudden movement of the eyes beneath the closed lids. "Ray?" And then it was gone again. He bit his lip. That response had been there; it was not just wishful thinking -- he refused to believe that. "You felt me, didn't you? But... did you know it was me? Anybody could kiss you! You have to know it's me." He sat on the bedside, trying to fathom some way to reach into the captive world into which Ray had shut himself. Words would not do it; caresses, even kisses, could be anyone. How could Ray know that there was only one person in the world it could be?

And then Bodie knew. For the first time in what seemed a lifetime, he chuckled. The sound was obtrusive in the empty room. "Oh, yes... You'd like that, wouldn't you? I know I would! Oh, yes. Of course."

He stood up, stripping with a little difficulty. His body was still reluctant, and the pinned left thigh was a bother. The cast on it was temporary now; he took it off to bathe and sleep, put it on when he would be mobile for any length of time. Better than the old fashioned 'pot', that went on and stayed on for ten weeks and let a man's leg wither away to bone underneath it. As it was, the leg was weak and thinned, but it was working as it healed, and the surgical scar was no more than a puckered red line now. The pin would come out, and it would be as good as new.

Ray was wearing yellow pyjama bottoms, and Bodie chuckled as he peeled back the bedding. "How nice and chaste! Let's get these off first, eh? What kind of fun can you have in your pyjamas?" And his groin was padded, a concession to necessity. Bodie disposed of the clean towelling, and the pyjamas. They were light weight linen, and warm, smelling of Ray. He held them to his face for a moment before dropping them with his own clothes and lifting the bedding into place. The bed was only a single; the mattress flattened out to the bedsprings under the weight of two grown men, and they fit with a squeeze.

"Roll over a bit, sunshine," Bodie told him, for all the world as if Ray could hear every word and respond, and then manhandled him around. "Ah, that's better. In fact that's bloody lovely. What would you like?" He kissed the soft, lax mouth again, his good hand roaming over the thin, bony frame, finding nipples and ribs, tickling, pleasuring, before he tucked his hand into the warm nest of Ray's groin and cupped soft, velvet genitals.

The throbbed in his hand, and he laughed. "I always did know what you liked! Is that why you came to me? Is it? I love you. How long since I've told you that? Too long, I know." He was rubbing, pulling, squeezing, bringing Ray's body to life, like that of the sleeper about to have a nocturnal altercation with his glands. It was a sad fact of like that most erections happened when a man was sound asleep.

And Ray was erect. His cock was hard, lifting into his belly, and Bodie shuffled closer, pressing them together, cock to cock. "Do you feel this? Don't you know me? Who else could it be! Ray?" He nipped Ray's ear with sharp teeth, wondering if a sudden little pain would rouse him; a throb rushed through Ray's groin, there was a pulse of pre-ejaculate in Bodie's palm, and he gave the captive cock a companionable squeeze.

"You're going to wake," he whispered. "You're going to know it's me, and you're going to wake. What have we got here?" He was reaching over onto the bedside table. A little bottle of oil stood there, beside the buzzbox electric razor. It was for his skin, after shaving; and for skin elsewhere that would become raw, as a child's wound -- trust a mother to know. Slipping his hand between his lover's legs, Bodie encountered only a rich, warm silkiness of well tended skin. He blinked back painful, useless tears, perhaps for the first time realising how much he owed Janet Doyle.

"You feel so good!" He told his sleeping lover. "On your tum- tum, sweetheart. I'm not the best myself, what with this stupid leg of mine -- don't want to make this any harder than it has to be, do we?" And then, a moment later, "there, how's that? You like this, I know!"

He was stroking the oil into Ray, his fingers buried knuckles- deep, rotating, massaging the tender prostate he knew so well. Ray loved this particular caress; and Bodie was the only person who had ever done it for him... The only person who had ever entered his body. Bodie's own cock was aching. It seemed like years since he had enjoyed the release of lovemaking and now he could barely wait. Ray's cheek lay on the white, cool pillow, and Bodie straddled him with a little awkwardness; the leg twinged but he ignored it, concentrating on spreading Ray's soft cheeks to expose that even softer bud, and press himself home...

"Ah, that's it. Oh, you're hot! You're tight!" He inched in a little at a time and lay still. Beneath him Ray slept on. Bodie tongued deep in his left ear, nibbled its lobe and let his hips begin their rhythm. Ray's body was so utterly relaxed, there could not have been even an instant's pain, and his muscles rolled and clenched with the push-pull, automatic reflexes. Bodie thrust a little harder. "That's good, isn't it?" Another hard nudge, finding his prostate and teasing it. "Oh, you always loved this? Isn't that good?"

And then he froze.

"So... good," Ray whispered into the pillow. "Mm... Whatdya stop for? Don't stop... don't..."

"Ray?" Although Bodie had willed himself to believe that he would wake his lover, the actuality of it almost robbed him of his erection. Only the heat and clench of Ray's body, after such abstinence, kept him hard. "Ray!"

"Don't shout," Ray mumbled into the pillow. "M'not deaf... You going to fuck us, or what?"

"You want me to?" Bodie gasped, breathless, hot, cold, panicking now as he wondered if he should call for a doctor, if Ray was strong enough for this, if he could do himself an injury, or cause a thousand medical complications.

"Oh, yeah." Ray yawned vastly and stretched; Bodie literally felt the knots of his spine crackle. "Don't stop now."

So Bodie began again, push-pull, just gentle enough, just hard enough, to be what Ray wanted and what they both needed. Climax was fleeting, a moment's pleasure before they were just a relaxed jumble of limbs in a ridiculously narrow single bed, and Ray was trying to nod off to sleep once more.

"Oh, no you don't," Bodie said loudly. "Open those eyes!"

"Mm?" Ray yawned again, squirming as Bodie withdrew and groped for a handful of tissues to mop up. He struggled over onto his side, and Bodie watched two rims of green iris appear under opening lids. The eyes were soft and unfocused, and Bodie waited. "'Ullo, love." Ray said at last. "You been on night duty? You look terrible."

For a full half minute Bodie gaped at him, and then laughed. "Where have you been? You can't have forgotten?"

"Forgotten?" Ray lifted a hand to his beard, rubbing his face. "I feel funny."

"I should bloody well think you do! Thirsty?" Ray nodded drowsily. A jug of orange cordial stood on the table and Bodie sat on the bedside to pour a glass. "If I sit you up, can you hang onto this yourself?"

"Can I what?" Ray's brow creased. "What the bloody hell are you on about, Bodie?"

And Bodie told him, a little at a time as he sat against the headboard and sipped the orangejuice. He was waiting for memory to return, and when it did the colour drained out of Ray's face again. "Oh. Now you know."

"I -- I killed you," Ray whispered, eyes closing tightly.

Bodie rescued the glass before it could spill. "Can't have done," he said cheerfully, "unless it was a ghost that fucked you twenty minutes ago! Did it feel like a ghost in you?"

"Felt like... felt like..." Ray's eyes pried open again. "I didn't --?"

"What, kill me?" Bodie shook his head. "Silly question, since I'm sitting right here! No, you missed in the confusion. I got shot, but the bullet that hit me came from behind. See?" He turned to display the healed wound. "There was a bruise the size of your hand. The bullet knocked me off the catwalk into a pile of boxes. There's a pin in my leg here." For the first time Ray saw the red like of the scar, and he winced. "Don't worry about it. I'm down to a temporary cast over my slacks. I've been getting psiotherapy, everything's shipshape. And no, you did not -- repeat not! -- kill me. Got it?"

"But I made the shot," Ray whispered.

"You missed."

"But I pulled the trigger," Doyle repeated. "I tried to... to..."

"You thought it was one of the gunmen up there," Bodie said dismissively. "Except, at the last moment, you knew it wasn't. You saw it was me too late to stop your finger pulling the trigger, but every nerve in your body pulled the gun off line. No way in the world were you going to shoot me."

A master marksman like Doyle knew the validity of the argument. To miss a target by a hand's span, the muzzle of the gun needed to be yanked off line by no more than an eighth of an inch, and nervous reflex would more than account for that. Even though Ray's muscles were committed to pulling the trigger, in that last hundredth of a second he tweaked the gun off true --

And then saw Bodie fall.

"A moment later they cracked you on the back of the skull," Bodie told him. "You were lucky you didn't get a fractured skull out of it! As it was, you just put the fear of God into us all. You never woke up."

"How long?" Doyle asked very quietly. He was looking at the leg that had been broken. "If you're down to a temporary cast on that --"

"It's been... long enough," Bodie told him. "Not for you to worry about, sweetheart. You were in hospital, and the Cowley arranged for you to come home. Your mother's place. I would have taken you, but the old sod didn't even give me the option."

Ray leaned over, tired, weak and wanting to be held. "How did you get past Mum? I didn't think she'd let you in."

"She nearly didn't," Bodie said, exhausted by relief. "But I think she's had the life frightened out of her, along with the rest of us. She's been taking care of you single-handed. She's a bit desperate, and I'm a spare pair of hands, if nothing else. Oh, Christ, you're skinny! But you feel bloody marvellous. Oh, Ray, Ray. You're back!"

"I feel bloody awful now," Doyle admitted. "Like I hardly own my body -- like my arms and legs aren't connected. Like I've had 'flu."

"Bath?" Bodie wondered. "Hot cup of cha? Bacon sarnie?

Watch telly? Cuddle on the settee, like we used to, till your mother gets home and makes me go away."

"Yeah... oh, yeah." Ray stretched, lick-kissing Bodie's neck. "You're a bit on the skinny side yourself, love. Getting better?"

"I am now," Bodie told him honestly, reaching for his clothes. Ray lounged in the bath till the water was tepid. He was physically too weak to climb out of it by himself, or dry himself efficiently. Bodie dared not leave him alone for a second, and sat on the closed loo lid, watching him fumble with soap and washcloth. He was thinner than he had been since he was released after the shooting, in 1980, but as Bodie watched he grew more alert and by the time the bath had emptied he was wide awake.

Bodie had the cast back on his weak, pinned leg, and as he helped Ray dress in fresh pyjamas and dressing gown, they stood laughing at each other. "The halt and the lame," Ray said wearily. "We look like the walking wounded. You sure you're all right, Bodie?"

In fact, Bodie was aching from head to foot, but none of that mattered. There was a sense of complete euphoria that rendered the nag of his hurts meaningless. "I'm wonderful," he said, and meant it. "Let's see if we can get downstairs without breaking our necks. Your mother's going to have a coronary when she gets back from the pictures and sees you up and around!"

The remark sobered Ray. "She gave you a hard time, did she?"

"Oh... not for long." Bodie shrugged it away. "She's had a hard time of it, love. Can't be surprised when she resents me. You're the last fledgeling in the nest and I stole you away. You could have been hers, not mine, with a nice little wife and three kids. That would have replaced the family she lost. Now, what's she got? Two sisters in Leeds, and a son who's gone ginger and lives with a bloke whose guts she detests. Not much to call a family, is it?"

"Well, what have we got?" Doyle said defensively. "I've got a mother who won't look the side I'm on -- two aunts in Leeds, and... you. It's all the same, Bodie. Christ, I wish..."

"You wish what?" Bodie slung his good arm around Ray, propping him up as they faced the obstacle course of the stairs. "I wish we could patch things up. We're all we've got, and all we know how to do is snipe and then ignore each other."

They managed the stairs with care, and Bodie settled his lover on one end of the settee. "Cuppa?"

Ray's eyes were heavy again. He was exhausted, but he looked up with a smile and Bodie limped through to the kitchen to make it. The gas was simple; finding tea caddy and sugar was not. Doyle was asleep when he made it back to the living room, a tray in his good hand. He stood looking at the figure slumped on the end of the settee, heart in his mouth. "Ray? Ray!" But Doyle stirred at once; now, sleep was merely sleep.

Moaning his relief, Bodie set down the tray, and sank into the settee's deep padding beside him. They drank the tea in silence; then Ray wanted to hold and be held, and for a long time they sat kissing while the shadows of afternoon grew longer.

"Should give Cowley a bell," Bodie said at last. "Tell him the good news... he's been waiting for a report from you for weeks."

"Then he can wait a bit longer," Ray said drily. "One dragon at a time. Let's face Lucretia Borgia first. Get that over with."

The nickname made Bodie chuckle. "Nice name for your dear, sweet mother."

"Dear?" Ray echoed. "Sweet? Pull the other one!" He shook his head over the assertion. "We were never close, Mum and me. I spent most of my childhood with my father. Playing cricket, that sort of thing. He died when I was fourteen or so."

"He was a Catholic, wasn't he?" Bodie asked quietly.

"Mm." Ray's head was heavy on Bodie's good shoulder; he spoke as if the question was not an issue, but Bodie was not so easily put off.

"You went to church with him," he prompted.

"Yeah." Ray yawned. "Confirmation, confession, mass, the whole circus." He chuckled a little; his chest was wheezy and Bodie remembered that a person who had been confined to bed for a long time began to congest. The chuckle made Ray begin to cough, and when he spoke his voice was husky. "They were good days, when Dad was alive."

"You never told me," Bodie said quietly.

"Nothing to tell," Ray said indifferently. "He died when I was fourteen, the grief was a long time past when I met you."

"No. I mean, you never told me you were a Catholic."

"Oh, that... I'm not," Ray said, yawning and wriggling comfortably.

"But you were confirmed!" Bodie protested.

"That doesn't make you a Catholic," Ray scoffed. "You could shave your head, it wouldn't make you a Buddhist!" He chuckled again, and coughed. "You have to believe it inside, or you're nothing. Confirmation? It was for my father, he really wanted it. My confessions were just hilarious."

Bodie took a breath. "Like what? Go on, amuse me."

"Bless me, father, for I have sinned," Ray said meekly, and gave Bodie a prod in the ribs. "You're the priest. Go on."

With a little snort of humour, Bodie reached over for the Radio Times and opened it out between his face and Ray's, doubling for the confessional's grille. "Yes, my son, what have you done?"

"I've jerked off six times a day, father, and I've screwed the girl at the Odeon, and I've got nudie pinups under my bed, and I think I caught clap off the girl at the newspaper shop."

Bodie threw the Radio Times away, dissolving into laughter as he pulled his lover against him. "You really said that --?"

"Course," Doyle said blithely. "What else do you expect? Got to have something to confess, and at that age it's expected of boys. What else was I going to confess? Forgetting to pray?

Gambling? Drinking? Being gay? In those days there was nothing there to confess... except for not praying."

"And you never forgot?" Bodie prompted, kissing his nose.

"I never prayed," Ray admitted. "I never believed any of it. It was for my father, like I told you. It didn't cost me anything to make him happy... I loved him enough to do that. And as for old Father Ryan, I think he used to take a vicarious delight in the confessions! Better than News Of The World. You can say what the devil you like in there, it's sanctified or something. You could go and confess to mass murder."

Bodie let him sit up and stretch; his shoulder joints crackled. "You stiff, pet?"

"And weak. It's going to take months to get back into shape." Ray looked back over his shoulder at his lover. "You too... we can work at it together. You back at work yet?"

"No. Go back in a week or two, on light duties while I get therapy. Should be ready for retraining in a couple of months, Macklin and Towser by August. Same for you, I should think. You might even beat me to it. You were never injured, just --"

"Comatose." Doyle stood, trying his feet, feeling for his balance. "That feels funny. Like my arms and legs belong to someone else. But I'm hungry." He rubbed his flat middle and thin ribs. "Wonder what there is in to eat?"

Ham and pickles, hardboiled eggs, sugar buns. They ate at the kitchen table, listening to the news on the radio, and Bodie made hot chocolate, settling his lover on the settee again with a rug about his knees. Ray had begun to protest the care already. "I'm not a bloody invalid, Bodie!"

But Bodie would have none of that. "You are till I say you aren't," he said mock-sternly, hearing the motor of a minicab in the street. It brought Janet's groceries, three bags deposited on the doorstep before the driver was on his way again. Bodie limped out to fetch the bags through, one at a time, but left them on the kitchen table. His eye was on the time even then. "I ought to be going now, before she gets back."

"No." Ray held out his hand, insisting that Bodie take it. "She doesn't want me here when she gets home. I promised I would be gone."

"You promised her, not me," Ray said tartly. "Everything's changed now. When you go, you take me with you. Take me home. Christ, Bodie, this isn't my home! Your place. Or my place -- wherever we were together, that was home. You're not leaving me here, tiptoeing around her, frightened to sneeze in case I offend her delicate bloody sensibilities."

"Meaning?" Bodie prompted, curious at Ray's husky outburst.

"I"m -- I'm queer, and she hates queers," Ray said, disgruntled.

"Queer?" Bodie smiled in spite of himself.

"I love you," Ray amended. "I love a man. In mum's book, that makes me as queer as a three pound note."

"And in your book?"

"In my book --" Ray sighed heavily. "It makes me -- me. And you're not running out on me. And when you go, I go with you. Home. It's not that I'm not grateful for what she's done, but... I'm not what she wants me to be, and it wouldn't be right for me to stay here, knowing she feels as she does. Not unless I was going to change everything about me."

Bodie knew what he was trying to say. "It's not as complicated as that, anyway," he said, sitting on the settee and regarding the temporary cast on his leg with a jaundiced expression. "She brought you home to die, Ray. She never expected you to wake. Apparently she's been going out, leaving you alone, she was so sure you'd just sleep yourself to death." He would not look up. "If you want the truth, we'd all started to think that."

And Doyle sighed again. "I think I might have done, love. So long as I hid I didn't have to face facts. That I'd killed you."

"But you --"

"I thought I did," Ray corrected. "You don't know what it looked like from my angle! I was looking up. Darkness. Bright muzzle flash off the Browning, green spots infront of my eyes, and then you -- falling. I couldn't tell if you were falling backwards, forwards, sideways. And I never heard the shot that hit you, only my own shot, about a tenth of a second after I realised it was you and couldn't stop my bloody finger." He squeezed his eyes shut. The memory was intact, and painfully sharp.

"Hey, shh." Bodie rocked him. "Let go, Ray. Cry if you want to. God knows I did... Must have cried for hours, blubbered like a kid over you. Thought you were dead once and for all. Not quick and clean, but lying there dying one day at a time, while they stuck tubes into you and cleaned up after you, as if you were --"

"A baby." Doyle swore softly. "Mum's been doing that, then."

"Not as if it'd be the first time." Bodie searched for his mouth and kissed him long and hard. "You feel up to it, love? A scene? If I'm here when she gets back, we'll have to have it out."

"Better now than later," Ray said tiredly. "Besides, we've got the element of surprise on our side, haven't we? When she walks through that door and sees me, we'll have her right where we want her."

Bodie wished he was so optimistic. They had time to drink a second cup of coffee before they heard footsteps on the pathway, the clang of the gate and the twist of a key in the deadlock. Ray sat on the settee, the rug tucked about his knees; Bodie stood by the mantle, at a discreet distance, lest Janet Doyle suspect for an instant that the two men had so much as touched one another under her roof. The lamp burned softly, augmenting the twilight; for a moment the woman was a little dazzled, and then Bodie heard her take a gasp for breath.

"Ray? Ray?"

"Yes, Mum... Bodie woke me." Ray was still pale, weak, but the huskiness of his voice was smoothing out and he was wide awake, bright eyed now. "I'm all right, Mum. Had a bath and a meal. Bodie saw to it."

She gaped, first at Ray, then at Bodie; and they watched her crumple into one of the fireside chairs, tears that might have been relief and might have been joy or grief filling her eyes. Bodie stepped forward. "He's all right, Mrs. D., I made sure of that."

"How --?" Janet stammered thickly. "How?"

"How did I wake him?" Bodie shot a glance at his lover, saw Ray's vain attempts to hide a smile, felt his own cheeks warming. A dozen smart retorts leapt to his tongue and he swallowed them all. 'Nobody falls asleep while Bodie's screwing them!' 'Like Sleeping Beauty, only I woke him with a fuck.' "I just got through to something that was still thinking," he said at last. "Let him know it was me, that I was here, and... wanting him."

"He wouldn't wake for me," she murmured, clutching at the collar of her coat. "I tried."

"So did the doctors," Bodie said softly. "And Cowley. I've tried myself a hundred times. Never managed to reach him before today." Never, he added silently, had the privacy to do it right before today. "He wants to come back home, Mrs. Doyle. I expect you'll be relieved to get him off your hands. He must have been quite a handful."

Ray spoke up quickly then. "I'm grateful, Mum. I am, really. But I'd be better off with Bodie." He held out his hand; for the first time in years Bodie felt awkward taking it. Still, Ray made him, twining their fingers together deliberately.

In the chair across the room, Janet looked at their clasped hands and frowned in puzzlement. "You do love, then."

"Of course we love, Mum! What did you think?" Ray sounded vaguely shocked. "You didn't think I'd go to bed with him and do -- all that, if I didn't love him, did you?"

"I..." She stopped, took a breath and covered her eyes. "I don't know what I thought. I only knew he took you away, and there was no one left."

Ray leaned forward on his knee. "Mum, Bodie didn't take me anywhere. I've never been far away. You just -- shut me out. Shut us both out. All right, I'm queer, if you want to call me that. I love him. But I'm still the same Ray. I love you just the same. I'd have been here any time you needed me, if you hadn't shut me out."

"I did, didn't I?" Janet whispered.

"Yes." Ray looked at his hand, and Bodie's, at their knitted fingers. "I thought you were ashamed of me. It isn't all that pleasant, having your family curl up in shame over you, so I tried to stay out of the way. I had half an idea you wouldn't want to set eyes on me again."

With a sudden reflexing of taut muscles, she was on her feet. "I was just angry, never -- never ashamed. Confused, perhaps. How can a man love a man? It's -- well, it seemed silly, then. Years ago."

"And now?" Bodie asked, caught between having to ask and yet dreading the woman's answer.

"Now..." Janet pressed her face into her hands. "The way you are together! Ray, how could you, a good Catholic boy like you!"

Doyle withdrew his hand from Bodie's and sat back in the settee's deep padding. "I thought you knew, Mum... That was only ever for Dad. Just to please him. Make him happy. I never felt any of that. I thought you wanted me to make him happy so I said the words, went along." His voice was a hoarse whisper. How long since he had used it at all, let alone to enter into lengthy speeches?

She was looking at him again, and Bodie saw her eyes brimming although shock had stopped the tears. "You never --? Then what were you hiding from? Why did you sleep for weeks? I don't understand any of it."

And Ray was not going to tell her, Bodie knew. He looked into his lover's eyes, saw the resolve there. "I don't understand it either," Ray lied smoothly. "I just got belted on the head and woke up a few hours ago when Bodie came." When Bodie 'came'. They both smothered a reluctant chuckle for the sake of propriety. "I can't explain it, Mum," Doyle added when he saw that his mother was not about to move or speak. "I'm sorry."

She closed her eyes and sat back in the chair. Tired, Bodie thought, worn out by grief, and then by relief; confused and miserable. "Mrs. D., would you like me to go?"

But before his mother could answer that Ray said, "I'll be going with him, Mum. It's for the best. You can see that, can't you? You can do without an invalid around the place! And I can't pretend to you. Won't pretend. I love him. You think that's wrong... there's nothing I can do about that. I'm sorry."

"So am I." Janet Doyle pulled out a handkerchief and scrubbed at eyes and nose that were quite red. "It doesn't seem the issue it once did. Once, I used to try to imagine your father's reaction to having a queer in the family! That's... an ugly word."

"Say 'gay'," Doyle said quietly. "It's kinder."

"Gay," Janet echoed, feeling for the word as if it were an utterance in some foreign language.

"The way you are together -- you love." She still sounded bemused.

Bodie cleared his throat. "Of course we love! I don't suppose that's any kind of absolution for the sin of it, from a Catholic's perspective, but... it's all we've got, Ray and me. All we've ever had. Eh, sunshine?"

"Yeah." Doyle was stirring fretfully, plucking at the blanket about his knees. He was weak, Bodie saw, white to the lips with exhaustion. "Give us a hand, Bodie. Time we were going, eh, Mum?"

As Bodie helped him up, Janet also stood. "You don't have to rush away."

"It's for the best," Ray said awkwardly. "I mean, Bodie --"

"Bodie could stay over," she said, just as awkwardly. "I can put the sheets on in the other room."

"Mrs. D.," Bodie said, trying for a smile as he held his good arm about Ray to half prop him up, "it's been a long time. I want him with me. You know what I mean. I... want him." It was painfully confessed.

She laughed a little hysterically. "You sound as if he's a second hand vacuum cleaner!" And then the humour faded and she pressed her hand to her mouth. "Of course. I should have thought. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Bodie said gently. "I know it's new, strange, a bit on the -- queer side, I expect!" The levity fell flat and he tightened his grip about Doyle's thin shoulders. "We ought to go, Mrs. Doyle. It'll be easier all ways 'round for you if we do. I can look after him now, and you won't have to worry about the rest of it. Us."

There was an uncomfortable silence in the room for a long time, and at last Ray said, "we can come back, Mum, if you want. As friends."

There was some ridiculously hopeful note in his voice that found Bodie's heart and raked it with claws. He had never known how much the rift between the two had hurt Ray. Ray was too good at hiding things; when he wanted to -- which was all to often -- he was perfectly capable of making himself sound like a callous little bastard. One had to look closer, get past the masquerade, see the pain in his eyes. The way those eyes would brighten with tears that would never be shed. Bodie's insides twisted as he waited for Janet Doyle to respond, and wished he knew how to pray.

"As friends," she said at last. "It's been a long time since you and I were that, Ray." Once, the look she gave Bodie would have been accusing; now it was merely sad. Regretful. "And most of it's been my fault."

"Two years," Bodie thought. 'Two lost, wasted years. How empty they must have been for her.' He stirred, offering his hand, a gesture of peace making, if she chose to accept it. No one was more surprised than Bodie himself when she did. "We'll ring before we come over, make sure it's convenient," he said quietly. "Ray's on the mend now. He'll be fine. Back at work in a month or so, with luck."

There was little more said; there was little to pack -- Ray had been brought here from the hospital days before, and all his belongings were stored in boxes, at Bodie's flat, filling the corner of the bedroom. The flat that had been 4.5's own was occupied by another agent now. No one had expected Doyle to make it. Bodie watched his lover weakening with the effort of just packing a few things and getting out to the car. Ray would get there; he was tough, as tough as they came.

His mother did not come down to the car with them; the curtains twitched aside at the window; she stood there with her hand pressed to her throat, and at the last moment, as Bodie opened the driver's door and put his stick into the back, he saw her wave. The gesture was appreciated and returned; peace? He slid the cast-armoured leg into the car and started up. The automatic was designed to be driven by a cripple, he thought with surprising cheer as he pushed the box into drive and pulled out. Not too many cripples in CI5; not too many automatics in the motor pool. He chalked up a mark to Cowley for arranging his mobility.

Home was as he had left it, the heating turned low, since it was the middle of summer, dinner in the oven, the lamps on. Ray was heavy against him; he had propped him up in the lift and watched him sink into a chair as soon as the door was closed. Bodie stood looking at him for a time before he went to pick up the phone and punch Cowley's private number.

The CI5 Controller answered after a few rings, and Bodie gave him the news. "Yes, sir, I've got him at my place now. He's just tired. Do you want to have Doctor Flemming come over?"

Flemming was CI5's resident, working in the building, in their own private infirmary. How often had he taped Ray's ribs, bandaged Bodie's ankles, stuck elastoplast on Murphy's cuts and scrapes? Flemming was a good lad; Bodie trusted him.

"Yes, I'll ask him to go over tonight," Cowley said, clearly astonished but delighted. "He just woke, you say?"

"Well, there was a little gentle persuasion," Bodie admitted. "Sleeping Beauty was just waiting for the right nudge. We'll expect Flemming tonight then. I'll come into the office tomorrow... is there anything else, sir?"

"No, nothing." Cowley paused and then said," I"m glad, Bodie. For both of us. I get a damned good agent back."

Bodie hung up as the line went dead. "And I get my Ray back," he said to the room. His lover had nodded off to sleep.

The doctor was leaning on their buzzer in half an hour, and came up as Bodie released the door. Bodie had stirred Ray enough to drink a cup of coffee, and stood by the heater to watch as Flemming checked Ray from head to foot. The doctor was a man of sixty, Cowley's age, very much Cowley's demeanor; there was no comment from him as he checked pulses, heart, temperature, reflexes, even pupil response, hearing and eye moisture. At last he stood back, making notes and still frowning over Doyle until Bodie said, "what seems to be the trouble, Doctor? He looks well enough to me, all things considered!"

"He's malnourished, his muscles have atrophied and he's still a little disoriented." Flemming said sharply.

"Like I said, well enough all things considered," Bodie retorted.

And Flemming relented. "Quite. Keep him warm, a little to eat when he can take it. Gentle exercise. Keep in mind he's weak. Bring him in for a full physical tomorrow. Vitamin shots will help put him on his feet." He snapped his bag shut. "I'll expect you at two, tomorrow afternoon. Be there." And then he thrust out his hand toward Doyle. "Welcome back to the land of the living, 4.5. I don't suppose you'd care to tell a poor old village quack what this fiasco's been about --?"

But while Ray shook the man's hand he shrugged. "I haven't a clue, Doc. Last I knew, I was in a warehouse on the river."

The doctor was gone when Bodie said, "stick to that story, mate. You know they'll have to talking to Kate Ross, don't you?"

Doyle's expression was pained. "They'll turn me inside out and upside down, I know, and it starts tomorrow. Flemming's going to do everything in the book to me -- I'll get the works, from the eyesight cards to the enema, for his morbid curiosity." Bodie mouthed a silent 'ouch', and Doyle sighed, resigned. "I'll survive, I expect." He yawned deeply. "Right now, all I want to do is lie down. That ought to be the last thing I'd want, after what I've been doing lately! Look." He held out his hands; they were shaking. "Muscles have gone. Balance has gone. Couldn't punch my way out of a paper bag."

"Poor love," Bodie sympathised. "I'll take you to bed. How's that?"

"Nice," Ray yawned. "Take me to the loo first, will you? The room's spinning like a top!"

"You'll get better. Give yourself a chance." Bodie helped him to his feet and propped him up.

It was ten when the lamp was out and they were cocooned in cool linen, companionable darkness, and each other. For Bodie there was a near euphoria of sheer disbelief... To have Ray in his arms was as near to paradise as a mortal could imagine or hope for, and he said so. Doyle was too weak and unwell to respond beyond a caress, but when Bodie turned on he managed an earthy chuckle and turned over onto his belly. Bodie blanketed him, rubbing languidly in the cleft of beautiful, soft buttocks until the anguished delight peaked and he came in hot gushes on Ray's thin back. Doyle yawned into the pillows and wriggled.

"Nice to be home," he whispered as Bodie mopped them up and threw the handful of tissues onto the floor.

He always did have a gift for understatement, Bodie thought as he pulled the sheet up over their heads and enfolded the thin body. Keeping Kate Ross at arm's length was the main objective now; Flemming was satisfied, Cowley was delighted, but Ross would make a meal out of 4.5's hiding to nothing -- if she got the chance. She would never get that chance, Bodie knew; she might suspect, and she would certainly make some sort of report to Cowley but it would go no further. Ray's lips were sealed tight... save to kisses.

They explored long familiar territory, savouring all they had missed, thought was lost, until Ray drifted easily into sleep. Bodie lay wide awake, content to hold him, breathe in the scents of his body, revel in the firm, solidarity of having him back. There were trials to come, but it was not the doctors, Ross, and later, Macklin and Towser, that worried Bodie.

It was a woman. Janet Doyle, filled with regrets, still troubled by the fact her son loved a man, mystified by the very real love that could take root between men, knowing that the emptiness of her life was her own doing. Bodie's hand was extended in friendship, and Ray literally ached to make his peace with her. Bodie smiled. It would happen, now. In a way, the 'fiasco' that had begun in a warehouse by the river had done them all a service.

Bodie pressed his lips to Ray's sleeping mouth; the soft lips parted, inviting his tongue, and Ray moaned, a sound as much of relief as of lazy pleasure. Softened, weakened arms slipped about Bodie, trying to hold on. Bodie smiled against his mouth and tugged him closer.

-- THE END --

December 1988