WARNING: In addition to m/m sex, the following contains elements of multiple-fandom crossover, farce, and foolishness; problematic humour; rampant cliches; split infinitives; editorial asides; writer's presence in the story; songfic, kinda-sorta; mixed metaphors; strong language till hell won't have it; buckets of blood; parentheses; proliferation of adverbs; coyness.... Oh, the list is endless. Reader, You Have Been Warned!

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Led Zeppelin's 'Dazed and Confused' had been playing in his head for weeks, and this morning was no different. Ray Doyle didn't know if it was Freudian or a radio signal being relayed to his brain via his dental fillings. If he'd had to bet, he'd've put a nine-pound note each way. His partner was blowing hot and cold from all points of the compass. Bodie had him in a tailspin. He didn't know how or if he'd manage to pull out.

They'd been contemplating a physical relationship for what felt to Doyle like forever. He supposed they were having a love affair. It was conducted--you couldn't say it progressed--in false starts and missed opportunities that forcibly reminded Doyle of watching jerky old film footage or reading a story rubbed out and rewritten until whole scenes had worn away.

He had lost count of their abortive attempts at a first kiss. They'd seem to be headed that way--confidences exchanged at emotionally charged moments, touches not quite so fraternal or comradely as they once had been, sizzling eye contact: their partnership was palpably fraught with sexual tension. But then Bodie would want to 'discuss' or 'communicate' or--Doyle shuddered at the memory--'explore the possibility of moving our relationship to the next level' and their momentum was gone, all forward impetus lost. Again and again Doyle was left directionless, afire with thwarted passion and unslaked lust.

And then the music would begin. 'Dazed and Confused' was prevalent, but when Bodie wanted to 'share' and 'explore' Doyle often heard phantom strains of 'What Is and What Should Never Be' and 'Boogie with Stu'--even 'Ramble On', which didn't, lyrically, apply but was appropriately titled.

Bodie wanted to talk about having sex. Evidently he didn't actually want to have sex. Doyle did want to have sex, preferably in this lifetime, and he was going spare.

He'd actively encouraged his partner, at first by indirect means...as, for instance, littering Bodie's flat with handwritten slips of paper reading 'For a good time call 4.5', followed by his telephone number. He'd dotted his i's with tiny flowers and his o's were heart-shaped. Bodie hadn't called.

His subtle hints having gone unnoticed, he'd tried to be a bit more obvious, especially in his dress. His jeans had gone from tight to life-threatening. He'd snipped off the buttons from his shirts and taken to sleazing round HQ damn near naked to the waist. So far he'd had offers from Macklin, Murphy, and the entire typists' pool, and he'd caught a chill. Bodie wanted to 'verbalize'. Well, Bodie was a bit thick, wasn't he?

Doyle had unleashed his secret weapon.

It had gone down a treat on the job, though Cowley sent him home to change after the Deputy Minister voiced a complaint, but Bodie hadn't caught on. Doyle knew his partner could read; he'd seen his lips moving as his finger traced over the lines. If the man couldn't fathom the subliminal come-hithery in a tee-shirt emblazoned with the legend DARLIN', LET'S FUCK in six-inch scarlet letters, then Doyle couldn't see how they'd a chance of getting their romance off the ground.

Lead zeppelins indeed. He didn't need Kate Ross and her inkblots to analyse his internal soundtrack.

He'd done all he could and this morning he was finally prepared to admit defeat. Often depicted as a wanton, insatiable, lusty, terminally horny and even (ahem) sluttish sensualist whose motor was always running and who went from zero to full rut faster than a supercharged Capri, he couldn't seem to take the initiative and seduce his partner. He felt oddly compelled to play a waiting game and let the sadly backward Bodie make the running. His toughness rivalled Dirty Harry's, so what the sodding hell was this uncharacteristic timidity all about?

Bodie was a dead loss in the romance department. Time to face it and move on. But did the fault lie in Bodie...or in himself? In a shoddy narrative shortcut, Doyle studied his angelic/devilish/dissolute/fresh-as-a-daisy reflection in the mirror over the basin as he brushed his teeth. Woefully insecure about his appeal despite his artist's perceptions and overwhelming evidence in canon and fanon alike that he inspired thigh-melting sexual fantasies in all ages and genders, he couldn't see his own attractiveness. (Always a lovely trait in a man, and a damned scarce one to boot.)

By clinging to the ravelling thread of hope that Bodie might find his exotic looks and his sirenic aura of sexuality sufficient incentive to stop talking and start shagging, was he deceiving himself? He knew his charming personality didn't win friends and influence people.

The buzzer sounded. Doyle didn't stir to admit his partner. He was fed up with W. A. P. Bodie; besides, the man carried a key to the flat as a plot device and might as well get some use of it.

Sure enough, when he listlessly wandered out to the kitchen, Bodie was there before him, rampaging greedily about in search of toast and tea. He propped himself against the door--he could whip six burly villains with one hand tied behind his back, shoot the spots off a ladybird at realism-defying range, and satisfy any number of voracious sexual partners, but couldn't quite manage to stand straight in a doorway--and watched his tall, dark, handsome, blue-eyed, dark-haired, pale-skinned, adjectivally gifted and (sad but true) somewhat plumpish partner forage.

"Angelfish!" cried Bodie with glee, spying him draped along the door. "Who do I have to suck off to get a cuppa round here?"

There he went again. Doyle didn't even rise, so to speak, to the occasion; what would be the point? The hunger in Bodie's exquisite eyes was not the sort he longed to see there. If he were to grab his partner's balls or climb him like a tree or try to remove his appendix by urgent application of mouth-to-mouth, a grazing Bodie was apt to miss the too-subtle overture completely. If by some miracle he did twig to the undercurrents in the room and realized that Doyle was desperate to get laid, he'd want to 'bare our feelings' or 'expose the inner man'. No other baring or exposing would occur.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. With a protracted sigh, Doyle binned his pure thoughts and good intentions and decided to have another bash at it. "Try me," he glumly suggested, not expecting much. "It is my kitchen."

Bodie, to whom food was of paramount significance, was engrossed in the production of toast and cuppa and a plate of chocolate biscuits. He had quite forgotten his question. By the time he gathered up the threads of the conversation Doyle knew what was coming.

"Can't, we'll be late to work," they said simultaneously, whereupon Bodie smirked in appreciation of the way great minds thought alike and then insisted on doing 'snap'.

Doyle felt as flat as something run over in the road. He heaved another melodramatic sigh. True enough, sex would make them late for work. If they were tardy, the Cow would have their guts for garters, guitar strings, and other useful items beginning with the letter 'G'.

Galoshes, he thought. Garden hose. Gorgons.

Perhaps not Gorgons....

"Doyle! You out of bloody marmalade again?"

Doyle's improbably green eyes widened. He shook back his russet curls (untouched by perm solution, so there!) so that the traces of silver (never grey) at his temples caught the ambient light (cast by the greasy bulb over the worktop) in a fetching manner. He was so adorable Bodie's toes curled.

"Ooh, strong language," Doyle scolded. "None of that today, keep it clean."

Bodie, who hated to be scolded, was never at a loss for witty repartee or snappy patter. "Fuckin' piss right off, Doyle, you prick, where's the bleedin' marmalade?"

"Oh, well done," snapped Doyle. "That's torn it. No hope now of a PG rating."

"What're you on about?" mumbled Bodie, cramming his mouth full of toast and speaking soggily around it. Doyle was disgusted.

"Mannerless hog," he piped in a higher register than was seemly for his hard-man image. Since he had to work like the very devil to maintain that image--people would keep tucking him into chartreuse velvet trousers and lavender unmentionables--he was concerned. Had that bleating squeal come from him?

He worried at his sensually sculpted lower lip with a charmingly chipped tooth. "Did my voice go all high and squeaky just then?"

"Your voice, Angelfish, sends shivers up my spine." Bodie gave him a fatuous leer--tricky, yes, but can be done. "Which'll it be, pet? Your mattress or mine?"

Doyle shot him a look that would have stopped a stampede of Cows. "Naff off, you overgrown twit. Been making promises for weeks, you have, getting me all hot and panting for it, and you've left me hanging every time."

"I-- Really?" Bodie looked stricken. "I haven't come across? Not even once?"

"Not even."

Nile eyes met cobalt and did the accustomed silent-communication, instant-understanding, partnership-functioning-as-a-well-oiled-machine, telepathic drill. Still, Bodie the tough and dangerous and beautiful ex-mercenary, ex-Para, ex-SAS, hard-as-nails CI5 agent revealed an insecure need to verbalize everything down to the nth detail. "Doyle...I'm a priapismic monster. Your priapismic monster, in point of fact. Get me going something fierce, you do. If we aren't doing it at every opportunity, something's very wrong."

"Fuckin' tell me about it, mate. Haven't had this degree of sexual frustration since the Royal Mail was struck, have I?"

---

Doyle was locking his front door, Bodie pressing suggestively near him on the narrow stoop, when 'Dazed and Confused' inexplicably gave way to heroic orchestral strains.

He froze. "What's that music?"

"I don't hear anything," Bodie murmured, his lips very near to Doyle's ear, his breath stirring through Doyle's hair. This annoyed Doyle no end, as he'd got up at five and spent hours on his 'do.

Elbowing Bodie aside, he stepped down to the pavement and glanced up and down the street before winsomely cocking his curls to one side to listen. "Dum, dum...de de DAH.... That's not our theme."

"Doyle!" Bodie hit him in a crunching tackle rather reminiscent of [your fandom here], knocking him arse over elbows in the nick of time, narrowly saving him from certain death by trampling under twenty-eight thunderous hooves as seven men in pseudo-cowboy costume galloped past on some right purty horseflesh.

Bodie ended up on top of Doyle, just for the halibut, squashing the breath out of his (somewhat) smaller partner, who was craning his neck to peer after the retreating riders.

"Angelfish! Golly!" cooed Bodie. "Any bones broken? Bullet holes? Concussion or skull fractures? Lactose intolerance? 'Ere, 'aven't 'urt your 'ands, 'ave you, pet?"

"Nah." Miraculously, Doyle was uninjured, though he'd narrowly missed hitting his artfully tousled head on the kerb, thereby guaranteeing concussion and partial or even total amnesia--he would have done, too, if h/c weren't so exhausting on a Monday morning.

He picked up a dropped 'H' and 'anded it to Bodie, who tucked it into a button'ole. "Who was that 'andsome, er, handsome devil?"

"Which?"

"The man all in black, of course," said Doyle rather crossly; he can be forgiven his impatience because A), Bodie of all people ought to know Doyle can't resist a man in black and B), Everybody Loves Raymond and would forgive Doyle anything.

"Sorry," said Bodie, looking anything but. "Didn't get a look at him. Was busy having a butcher's at the slender one with the curly brown hair and the bee-yoo-tee-ful arse."

"At least your character's consistent, Bodie darling," lilted Doyle. "Mine's all over the effing lot," snarled Doyle. "Get off me, Bodie, I can't breathe," whined Doyle. "You great lard-arse," Doyle added in a loving murmur.

"Shut it, can't you?" demanded Bodie. "I've a headache from listening to you. Goddamn it, Doyle, you turn me on as no bird or bloke has ever done and I seethe with barely controllable lust whenever you walk by and all that, you're cute as a fuckin' button, mate, and I'm ready with the priapismic satyr bit whenever called upon, but I cannot abide your constant clatter. Well, except when you do that dirty laugh, luv--could listen to that all day."

"You keep using that word." A Spanish accent dropped on Doyle from nowhere, the way his scruffy jackets always looked to have done. "I do not think it means what you think it means," he spat.

"Incontheivable," thaid hith partner. "Thay it, Doyle, for pity'th thake, don't thpray it.... What word?"

"The word is 'priapic', you dumb crud. Not 'priapismic'. And you're all talk yourself, with precious little action as far as I can figure, so you're twice wrong."

"The word is 'priapismic', Doyle, an adjective meaning 'pertaining to a lewd act or display'." Bodie didn't speak to the other charge.

"Fine, have it your way, don't pout." Doyle squirmed about in a bit of gratuitous titillation. "And I'll thank you to get your priapium off my priapium."

"Eh?"

"Get off, you dirty great lout, you're squashing me flat."

Bodie got to his feet, his long, thick, lush, black lashes fluttering shyly down to veil eyes so blue they should be illegal--which coquettish display made him look like a simpering prat. He extended a much-speculated-upon wrist and hauled his straight (but, parenthetically, eager to switch-hit) partner to his feet. His hands wandered shockingly as he dusted Doyle off, and lingered over all the interesting bits, which ought to've been a dead giveaway.

"Think I split the arse of me jeans," snapped Doyle in a bad-tempered though husky, sexy, rich, rust-coloured velvet tone.

"Ooh, goody," said Bodie. He investigated and was grievously disappointed to discover the seat of his innocent (but hot-blooded and corruptible) partner's trousers had been equal to the action.

For a hetero hard-man type, nominally straight though no one knew for certain, Doyle accepted his partner's touching him up on the pavement in Chelsea in the broad daylight of a Monday morning with astonishing equanimity. He purred kittenishly and rubbed his damaged (but sexy and inspiring) cheek against Bodie's shoulder in a catlike gesture, then stalked to the car with feline grace. Not bad considering his poncy footwear.

There he forgot all about the ambiguity of his species and contemplated the Batmobile with dropped-jaw dismay. "Where the fuck's the motor?"

"Dunno. Check under the bonnet."

"The Capri, you berk!" Spotting it in the next space along, Doyle headed for the driver's side. So did Bodie. They had a peppery but undeniably witty slanging match over who'd take the wheel and who would sprawl seductively in the passenger seat, strap-hanging and blatantly displaying the goods on offer.

However you look at it, Bodie won.

---

The drive to CI5 HQ was an exciting one. Doyle wailed in terror when Bodie drove in the right-hand lane at three times the posted speed limit. Bodie veered back into the left lane and promptly turned (without signalling) the wrong way down a one-way street, tyres and Doyle shrieking. He misjudged the next corner and piled up the Capri against a dump bin.

"You've done us good and proper this time, Nigel Mansell," Doyle berated him. "We're over budget with eleven months still to go this fiscal, and you've bashed in another motor. Oafish bastard. What're we to do, take the sodding bus?"

"We could steal a car," Bodie suggested with transparent hope. "Operation Su--"

"Don't remind me!"

"I could hotwire a Roller," coaxed Bodie.

"No." Doyle drew a deep breath and said, in the exaggeratedly forbearing tones of an adult attempting to reason with a recalcitrant child, "CI5 agents may be licensed to thrill, but there are limits. Now back us off this kerb and see if she'll go."

She would, in a limping fashion which spoke grimly of a bent axle, and they continued on towards HQ with a tyre squeaking monotonously against a crumpled wing, the punctured radiator dribbling steam every inch of the way.

"Hold it," Doyle directed, and Bodie braked halfway through a turn. Doyle consulted a map while they both ignored the outcry from infuriated drivers all around them. A tailback formed in their unmoving wake. "Wrong turn, mate. HQ's that way."

"Are we north or south of the river?" Bodie wanted to know.

"Hell." Doyle ran his hands through his hair, rendering up his hours of careful styling to wild dishevelment, though it made no visible difference. "Don't you know?"

"I dunno London from a hole in the ground, mate, got all my directions off the goggle box, didn't I? You're lucky I'm driving on the left. Now shut up and lemme turn around."

Suddenly, bewilderingly, they found themselves in the middle of a run-and-fight dust-up with bullets zipping everywhere. Both promptly had stoppages and were dead or as good as, but Doyle scooped up a loaded deus ex machina conveniently left lying about and heroically saved his own life and Bodie's too, several times over.

When all was quiet, the air blue with gunsmoke and reeking of cordite, Bodie picked his way among the gory, bullet-riddled corpses to his partner's side. "Nice shooting, Doyle. You've slaughtered ten or twelve this time--the Cow won't half be wild."

Doyle, his back to his mate, said nothing, and Bodie frowned in concern. "You packing for a guilt trip, sunshine?"

"Sod you, Bodie. 'm looking at this effin' gun. We've good reliable Brownings this series, so what's with all the stoppages?"

"Maybe the ammo..." Bodie diffidently suggested--which he felt was hardly in character, so he tried again. "It's the ammunition, Doyle, you stupid git." Ah. Much better. Satisfying, in fact. Though a bit too Doyle-like for comfort.

Doyle sneered, which was very like him. "We aren't outfitted by Q, Bodie--we have realistic equipment. For the most part." He scowled at their surroundings. "Does this place look familiar?"

Bodie shrugged. "Same sodding boxes we fight in every week."

They returned to the battered silver Capri and resumed their commute. Bodie got lost twice more and once attempted to 'initiate a dialogue'. Rebuffed, he took a shortcut through a play park, bumped over two kerbs, clipped a pillarbox, and screeched into the CI5 car park dead on time. Ignoring the tantrums of the outraged motor pool mechanics over the condition of the Capri, they pelted off to the lift.

Upstairs, they bumped into Murphy. After sorting out the resulting tangle of arms and legs, Doyle coming off much the worst for welts and bruises, they exchanged good mornings.

"You're looking awfully androgynous this morning, Ray," said Murphy.

Indignant, Doyle appealed to his partner. "Bodie?"

"You're the picture of virile, hairy-chested masculinity, petal," Bodie assured him.

"Right. Nothing androgynous about me." Doyle's averral was stout (though nowhere near so stout as his partner).

"Cow wants to see you two," Murphy said. "Double-quick."

Headquarters' geography had altered beyond recognition, and after wandering lost through the corridors, stopping for a cuppa in the break room, reading everything pinned to the notice board, and blundering (several times) into the ladies' loo, they turned up before the desk of CI5 controller George Cowley forty-five minutes late and rather uneasy about it. Only last week they'd been threatened with a week in Records for insubordination, wholesale slaughter, dangerous driving, and unsanctioned swilling of the Cow's single malt. As two-fisted men of action, they of course affected repugnance for paperwork.

Fortunately, their mob was understaffed just now. Several veteran agents were malingering on the tab of the NHS, and it was a busy month for crimes that weren't properly the patch of the Metropolitan Police, such as terrorism, gun-running, blackmail of cross-dressing MP's, and anything else their power-mad, social-climbing guv fancied poking his long nose into.

"3.7, 4.5." George Cowley cleared his throat and, so there would be no dispute over seniority or who was the boss's fair-haired boy this week, said, "4.5, 3.7. Sit down, the pair of you."

Bodie sat, his posture militarily correct. Doyle flung himself into a chair where he collapsed like a wet washrag tossed in a corner. His bonelessness was not limited to doorways.

"Now then." The Cow had eyes in the back of his head and an alertness more natural to a raptor than a ruminant. He favoured each man with a cold stare. No one watching would have been able to say with any degree of certainty which of the two agents was boss's pet. "Your flats are under electronic surveillance."

"What, again? Bloody hell. Who is it this time?" said Doyle.

"By whom, sir?" said Bodie.

Cowley cast his eyes heavenward. "By CI5 as usual, you gormless articles. Though you're chalk and cheese, you're my Bisto Kids, my Double Act, my Top Team--och, the country's in a bad way--and I must have you operating at peak efficiency. You haven't been up to snuff, lads. Your performance in the field is subpar and your behaviour is erratic. 4.5, you've always been a shocking exhibitionist but of late your excesses are a hissing and a scandal. And you needn't smirk, 3.7--your constant calling for group hugs has disrupted the entire A Squad, and that teddy bear you insist on dragging to every stakeout is a disgrace. You're making a fearful exhibition of yourself and this organization. Get hold of yourself, man.

"In an attempt to get to the heart of the matter, I authorized round-the-clock audio and video recording. I've reviewed the tapes and I'm consairned, er, concerned. We needn't go into detail--though I must say, 3.7, the very notion of eating takeaway egg rolls in the nude and using your navel as a plum sauce dipper--"

Doyle gaped at Bodie, who blushed and mumbled, "Didn't have a clean dish in the place."

"Hope you washed, mate."

"Before or after?" asked Bodie.

"--and you, 4.5, trimming your toenails with your teeth--"

"I never!" Doyle yelped.

Bodie turned wondering eyes on his partner. "Hadn't guessed you were so flexible, Doyle. That how you chipped your tooth?"

"Piss off, Bodie!"

"--and the unsavoury tricks you both get up to in the shower--"

The two agents leered at each other. Bodie winked; Doyle blew him a kiss.

"The possibility that one or both of you may be my illegitimate offspring fills me with horror," said the Cow. "However, that's neither here nor there. What's not on those tapes, lads, is more disturbing than what is."

Immediately both agents stopped eyeing each other up and exchanged discomfited glances. While it is, arguably, embarrassing to be secretly recorded while having sex, it is far more embarrassing to be secretly recorded while not having sex for weeks and weeks, especially when you're always on about your prowess and have boasted up a storm.

"Doctor Ross has analysed the tapes--"

Cowley's finest displayed violent reactions: Bodie's lips tightened infinitesimally; Doyle clapped one hand to his heart, the other over his eyes, and uttered a resounding groan.

"Method acting, 4.5?" the Cow nastily enquired. Doyle threw him a vicious glance and desisted. "Now then. Based on Doctor Ross's findings and my own observations of your aberrant behaviour--"

Bodie contrived to look smug; Doyle patted back a yawn.

"--there is only one conclusion to be drawn." Cowley glanced round his office in tight-lipped dissatisfaction. Despite CI5's security, people like that Holly woman wandered in and out without difficulty. The Cone of Silence was a copyrighted device and under control of CONTROL. IMF and U.N.C.L.E. held the patents on most of the other good gadgets. CI5's budget was strained at the seams and wouldn't run to the latest in electronic jamming equipment this fiscal year. There was nothing else for it; he must resort to whispering. "Psss, psss, psss."

"Sorry, sir, didn't quite catch that," chorused his Top Team. Bodie wanted to do 'snap' but cold-hearted Doyle ignored him.

"I said," bellowed the Controller, more bull- than cow-like, "We've a blocked fanfic writer to contend with. She--"

"We should have known," said Bodie. Stoutly.

Oh, please, Doyle thought fervently, let it be slash--Bodie's got me hotter than a pistol. "She, sir?"

"Statistically unlikely to be a he, 4.5. Blocked writers are a curse to an agency like this one. They can't seem to concentrate, keep crossing fandoms, going off on tangents--och, she simply canna keep it togither and she's no' the foggiest notion o' Scots, so I keep talking like a great ninny. Ye'll have tae help her, lads."

"But how, sir?" they asked in unison; the spirits were willing, but the minds were weak, especially Bodie's. (Doyle heaved a martyred sigh, his third thus far by actual count and this one even deeper than the last, but let his childlike partner have his 'snap'.)

"Where do the difficulties lie? Inner conflict? Motivation? Long descriptive passages? Plot holes? Let's hope the woman hasn't written herself into a corner." The Cow's pale eyes narrowed. "If either of you has amnesia, I'm taking my pension and getting out."

Doyle at once considered faking complete memory loss; five minutes later, the same notion would occur to Bodie. "Your audio pick-up must be poor, sir, or you'd know. We, er, seem to be bent. Poofters. Fairies. We're queer. Gay as pink ink. Bodie feels compelled to explore the possibility of taking our relationship to the next level. I just wanna fuck."

"Och!" Cowley made a pained and protesting face. "4.5, that's sickening."

"Sorry, sir, never knew you were a bigot and a homophobe."

"Yesterday," Bodie murmured, "you said you've always known he's a tight-fisted old skinflint."

Cowley snorted. "Not the implied male/male sex, Doyle. Your maltreatment of the Queen's English is what sours my stomach. 'Explore the possibility of taking your relationship to the next level' indeed."

Chastened, Doyle changed the subject. "The scenes never play out, though, sir. Bodie won't do it, he only wants to talk about it. We go round and round in circles and it's damn frustrating."

"Doubtless," the Cow said dryly. "Obviously the writer is conflicted. These poor slashers are tormented by the need to account for canon. She doesn't know how to get round the question of established sexual orientation and she's hanging fire. Not Gay Just Queer for Each Other aka Two Straight Guys in Love; Straight in Canon, Bent in Fanon; Bi and Loving It: there are numerous possibilities. The poor, poor girl. Sad, really, the way she's dithering about."

"Fuckin' slag," snarled the sexually frustrated Doyle, earning a sternly quelling look from Cowley. "There's more, sir. I keep hearing music--"

"Songfic?" the Cow cut in sharply. "This is more serious than I imagined."

"Last night," Doyle admitted, "it was 'Trampled Under Foot', sir. And"--he lowered his velvet voice, which put the shivers up Bodie's back for fair--"'Stairway to Heaven'." He hung his head in abject mortification.

"Good God, man." Cowley shuddered. "It's bloody fortunate we caught this in time. Go out and pick up women, immediately, and, er, do what comes naturally."

Bodie, who had been laboriously following the conversation, said, "Can't, sir."

"Whyever not, 3.7?"

Bodie coloured faintly and, it ought to be said, quite attractively. "Given my rathers, sir, I'd rather come naturally with Doyle."

Doyle experienced a sweet pang in the region of his heart. "'s right," he said softly.

"Subtext." Cowley sucked in a breath; his eyes glittered. "It's not just physical, then? You're romantically involved?"

"Haven't we always been, sir?"

"You have not." Glaring ferociously, the Cow thumped a fist on his desk. Pencils jumped and rolled; a bottle swayed and had to be righted. "Damn it, Doyle, you've both always been straight!"

"Oh.... Well, we dunno exactly what Bodie got up to in the mercs, do we, sir?"

"Mercenaries' goings-on are greatly exaggerated," Bodie put in. "The Game we mostly played was noughts-and-crosses. Cards, on occasion. Bit of chess."

"Actually, sir," Doyle said pedantically, "fanon establishes the relationship. And even canon would indicate a certain predisposition to--"

"Fanon, canon, schmanon!" mooed the Cow. "Damn it all, lad, can't you snap out of it?"

"Don't think so, sir. Won't, regardless. Think it's love, if you must know." Doyle spoke defiantly, but he felt hollow and frail. He had faced trained killers with SMG's and known himself less at risk. Exposed, defensive, and insecure, he avoided Bodie's eyes. (This despite the fact that Bodie had been coming on to him like gang-busters.) Love was a far cry from a one-off. He couldn't be sure what his partner wanted. Uncertain of his own lovableness as he was--and rightly so, the bloody-minded, bad-tempered, sharp-tongued, foul-mouthed bugger--he felt as though he had crawled well out on a limb. At any moment his partner might saw it off next to the trunk.

Bodie said nothing.

"Right, then." The Cow pursed his lips in disapproval. "Nothing to be done about it. You'll have to sleep together."

"Sir?" 'Snap'.

"I know, lads, I know. But if that story isn't finished...." His words trailed ominously off.

"Entropy, sir?"

"Of course not, 3.7, don't be absurd. No, it'll languish unfinished in a drawer, gathering dust, and prey on the unfortunate woman's mind. Yours is not to reason why.... Lie back and think of England, lads, and when the deed is done I'll see to it you have forty minutes off duty next series. On your bikes; off you go."

They leaped to their feet. "Running all the way, sir," said Bodie.

Cowley paused in the act of reaching for the Scotch. "I'm mortally weary o' that, 3.7. You need new material."

Doyle propped himself against the doorjamb. "Any dangers we should be aware of, sir?"

"Aye. Stuffed animals. Kittens. Pressies of any sort. And--hrmmph--psss, psss."

"What's that, sir?"

"Cock rings!" thundered Cowley. "Cock rings, 4.5. And och, och, och...let's be careful out there."

---

"Bit out of character for the Old Man, that," said Doyle as they waited for the lift.

"What, Doyle, now you're a literary critic?"

"Everyone's a critic." Doyle stepped into the lift and pushed the button for the car park. "Can you believe the Cow's sent us off to have sex? Together? Double-think my arse, the old bovine's losin' it. I'm next in line to head CI5, y'know."

Bodie wrapped his arms around his (ever-so-slightly) smaller partner and drew him close. "He sent us off to have sex, but we're going to make love, Ray." Solemn sapphire eyes lovingly searched Doyle's.

Doyle, overcome, lived up to his salacious reputation by turning on like a 200-watt bulb. He returned Bodie's embrace with fierce, steely, ardent, and let's not forget lithely muscled arms.

"Also," said Bodie, smug as a cat chockful of canary, "I believe I'm the heir apparent at the moment."

Ardour considerably cooled, Doyle shoved him away. "In what A/U would that be?"

The lift door opened and they emerged into the car park. Bodie froze, blue eyes clouding with profound dismay. Doyle crouched, hand flashing for his weapon as he followed the direction of his partner's gaze.

His hand dropped away from his gun when he beheld the monstrosity in their parking space. "What the fuck is that?"

One of two loitering strangers--curly dark hair, sparkling indigo eyes, an arse that simply would not quit; appreciably less klutzy than his companion--flourished a hand over the car. "Listen, schweetheart," he said, doing a terrible Bogey in an unmistakably American accent, "this is a 1975 Ford Gran Torino, 460 cubic inch displacement, twin pots, heavy-duty suspension, modified--"

He was interrupted by the other stranger, a coltish blond man with pale blue eyes who didn't seem to know what to do with his hands (other than plaster them all over his friend). "It's a striped tomato."

"It's a fuckin' eyesore," said Doyle, infuriating the first man, who had to be physically restrained by the second. "Bodie, you infantile lummox, look what your hot-rodding's reduced us to."

"It's left-hand drive," ventured Bodie, looking apprehensive. The poor dear had been more unsettled by the drive to work than his testosterone-charged machismo would permit him to reveal, even to his beloved golly, who knew all his secrets--always excepting the most basic facts of his life before CI5 and the real lowdown on his sexual orientation.

"It's bright red, mate, with a dumb-arse white stripe. Christ, the budget situation must be worse than we thought. At least we know the Cow won't be sending us undercover in that. He isn't stupid enough to imagine an operation could withstand it." Doyle's tirade further enraged the first man and now the second looked to be getting pissy. With the supreme arrogance born of knowing they were the toughest sons-of-bitches on the planet, he and Bodie ignored them and set off on foot for the tube station.

Doyle chose his footwear with an eye to the aesthetic enhancement of his taut thighs and the extra inches of his (infinitesimally) taller partner; his boots were not made for walking. By the time they reached their platform he was mincing along on his toes like a member of the corps de ballet, complaining bitterly.

The ride was largely uneventful, though at one point Bodie appeared to be overcome by strange delusions. Declaring himself Immortal, he announced he would draw his sword as soon as they got to their stop and cut off Doyle's head. "There can be only One," he portentously declaimed. "Sorry, pet."

He subsided quickly enough when Doyle called him dim and reminded him that he carried a penknife. "This is a partnership, remember? How're you supposed to handle a double act all on your little lonesome?"

Bodie scratched his head, managing to look simultaneously clue-free and meltingly cute.

Doyle remained unmelted. "Though if you keep hoovering up the Swiss rolls the way you do.... You're well on the road to being a man and a half as it is."

"I know." Bodie glanced around, spoke in a hushed, conspiratorial tone. "Doyle...I'm running to fat and no one ever seems to notice. That strike you as odd?"

"If I looked up 'odd' in the OED, I expect I'd find your picture there. Besides, I notice. 'specially when you sit on me crotch in the public street as you did this morning."

Bodie batted his lashes. "Want to know what I notice about you, lover?"

"Nah, mate, I don't give a hot fuck."

Bodie was stung. "Yeah. That's what all your birds say."

---

At Bodie's flat (he had beer in, and had cleaned Doyle out of groceries that morning), Doyle noticed an illuminated document on the wall. "'Go placidly amid the noise and waste and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof'," he read. "Wait, that's not--oof! Bodie--"

"Come on, Doyle." Bodie manhandled him down the hall, into the bedroom, and onto the bed. "Let's have you out of these clothes, hmmm?" He grabbed for Doyle's belt, then gasped and drew back, slapping Doyle's hands away from his own trousers. "Stop!"

"Bo-die, we're through talking, discussing, exploring, initiating, communicating--"

"No, mate--" He struck Doyle's hands away in a girly panic. "You've lost a good four inches in height and a stone in weight and your ears are pointy.... Wait, Doyle, for Christ's sake. I have a bad feeling about this...."

Trying to reassure his mate and get his trousers off him, Doyle urged, "Stay on target.... Stay on target...."

Another gasp from Bodie. He shoved the insistent Doyle away, hard, bouncing him off the mattress. "Stop it, I said. Now you're unrecognisable! Terrible haircut. And you look the shits in orange, mate--you're puttin' me right off."

Doyle grabbed for him, refusing to take no for an answer. "Use the Force, Bodie."

"Too right I will," said the thoroughly rattled agent. He belted the (marginally) smaller man a good one.

"Ow!" cried Doyle--who, though he didn't know it, had just been paid out for that nasty 'fuckin' slag' remark. He clapped a hand to his abused jaw. "The Force, not force force. What the friggin' hell--"

"You zoned," Bodie babbled. "You were so not here, man, I hate when you pull this stunt. Why is it I get all the freaking weirdos? I mean, is there like a sign on my back or what? Work with me here, Doyle, I'm way amped and a panic attack when we're about to boff like bunny rabbits would just totally suck--"

Ignoring the breathy monologue, Doyle scrambled to his feet and unbuckled his belt. "Nearly did meself a zip injury," he muttered, shimmying out of his own suddenly restored skin-tight, worn-soft, artfully faded, patched-arse jeans. "Oi. Oi! Bodie. Think I found that missing four inches, mate!" He gave his lascivious, wicked chuckle. "This isn't so bad after--oh, sodding bloody hell."

"Doyle! You're back!" Bodie flung his arms around him, clinging like an emotionally stunted sissy and hauling him back onto the bed. "Jesus, mate, you were starting to scare me--hardly even recognized you."

"There, there." Doyle gave him a consoling grope. "Would it 'elp if I dropped me aitches and used a bloody great whack of rhymin' slang and idiom?"

"I vont to sock your blod." Bodie sank fangs in Doyle's neck.

"A-angel?" Doyle racked his brain. "Er...Nick? Lestat?"

A thick Transylvanian accent and his grip over Doyle's carotid artery muffled Bodie's words. "Zey call me ze Count!"

"Wha--? It's the trick cyclists for you, mate."

Bodie waggled his thicket of bushy--bushy?--eyebrows madly. "Zey call me ze Count becoss I lov to count! One! Two! Three! Oh, zis is so motch fon. Four! Fi--"

"Right," snapped Doyle, in a swiftly mounting frenzy of arousal and frustration compounded by the fear that Bodie would count into the thousands in that aggravating accent. "That's fuckin' it!" He shoved Bodie back amongst the Marks & Sparks bedding and kissed him, brought his mouth to Bodie's, sealed their lips, tangled their tongues, invaded him, sought out the deep moist cavern of his mate's mouth, and all the rest of it. In short, they got up to some serious snogging.

As their lips met both men moaned with heartfelt relief, because they were fated to be together and to love truly, madly, deeply, world without end, amen, and knew it.

The writer knew it, too: in the molten instant their lips met she knew she'd been wrong to try to force them into meaningful dialogue. By all criteria save purity, Bodie and Doyle's first kiss simply knocked the spots off anything Westley and Buttercup had managed to get up to. These two were fated to fuck up a storm; all they'd needed was Cowley's blessing. Writer's block melted away like Christmas snow in a Ray of Sunshine. She heaved a gusty sigh of her own heartfelt relief: the end of the B/D fic that would! not! die! was finally in sight. Her fingers blazed over the keyboard too fast for the eye to follow (132 wpm; hunt-and-peckers, eat your hearts out).

In next to no time Doyle was screwing Bodie through the mattress in time-honoured Pros fashion (tops and bottoms sold separately).

Talk? There was no need of it. The lads could talk between the lines, during the adverts, whenever. (Besides, they'd discussed the relationship ad infinitum in her last three efforts.) Backstory was lovely, also, but not necessary. These two were born to PWP each other through the aforementioned mattress, the springs, the frame, the carpet, the floor, and, had she but hard drive space enough and time, into the flat below.

The door burst open and crashed against the wall, gouging out a chunk of plaster. A good-looking green-eyed archvillain with no aitch in his name charged into the bedroom. He ran an assessing eye over the passionately entwined partners and said, "The Russian judge scores a 3.7 for style and a 4.5 for execution." Then he kissed a finger for their silence and crawled under the bed.

What with the energetic fucking and approaching mutual climax, Bodie and Doyle couldn't really do justice to this intrusion.

"3.7--yesyesyes, like that--for style?" Bodie gasped in indignation.

"See?" panted Doyle. "Told you, darlin'.... Everyone's--God--a critic."

Rather soon thereafter, as they lay side by side in the wreckage of the sheets (satin; colour varies) in blissful, sated afterglow, a lanky, Armani-clad man dashed into the bedroom and dropped his gun. "Federal agent! Did a one-armed man run through here? A Russian assassin with eyes to die for and the cutest little nose?"

Bodie pointed to the door to the feller's right.

The newcomer flung open the door and raced through it yelling, "FBI! Hold it right there!"

Bodie lunged from the bed, slammed the door, and wedged a chair beneath the doorknob. "Another Yank," he complained as he slipped back into bed and gathered his bionic golly close. "Must've got separated from his tour.... I locked him in the closet."

Doyle nestled. Predictably, he was an accomplished and adorable nestler, a natural nestler. "What'd he want, then?"

"Looking for The Fugitive."

"Well, he won't find him here." Canonically mercurial, Doyle flew at once into a rage. "Try to bask in a little post-coital bliss--long delayed and well deserved, I might add--and the FBI is swanning through the bedroom? No fuckin' way!" he roared. "I've had enough of this, d'you hear me?"

"Everyone on this block heard you," groused the man now emerging from beneath the bed. "Sorry to intrude. I'll be running along now."

"Bloke that just ran through here," said Bodie, "FBI agent, in the closet?"

"Perennially," sighed their visitor. "What about him?"

"He was looking for a one-armed Russian. Don't suppose...."

Their guest stripped off his black leather gloves and extended two finely shaped flesh-and-blood hands for their inspection. "That arm thing was a typo," he murmured with a mysterious smile. "And I'm not Russian. Das vadanya." He scooped up the FBI agent's gun and slipped out.

"Green eyes..." said Bodie, who was demonstrably partial to green eyes.

"Loved his accessories," gushed Doyle, who swooned for black leather. Still languorous and replete, he curled against his beloved Bodie's well-padded ribs with a contented murmur. Then he pinched a roll of blubber at Bodie's waist. "Can see why you keep this covered up, darlin'. Black's slimming, innit?"

Instead of taking umbrage, Bodie ruffled Doyle's fluffy locks; this is compulsory and was bound to crop up sooner or later.

"Think we helped her?" the (all right, already) smaller man asked.

"I dunno. We sure as hell helped me." Bodie frowned, fingers winnowing Doyle's soft curls. "Ray, this is neither a one-off nor a purely physical relationship but a deep and abiding love, y'know that, right?"

"Course I do, you prat."

"Well, then, don't take this wrong.... Why d'you think she wrapped up the sex scene so quick and sketchy? Ratings?"

"Could be...though we've had strong language till hell won't have it...innuendo...implied male/male sex.... More than implied, too, though nowhere near detailed nor graphic enough.... Don't s'pose she's shy, do you? Nah, must be the rating she's worried about."

"Well, bugger that, mate. Pop down there and suck me off." Bodie groaned as Doyle obliged. "Right," he whispered, well chuffed with himself. "Put that on your needles and knit it, you repressed bitch."

Doyle displayed his rare and, all kidding aside, engaging grin as he slipped from beneath the sheet after Bodie's loud and satisfying orgasm. "I know what it is. She's on a deadline, and a week behind, and has an editor breathin' down her neck. Now that her writer's block seems to've cleared up--"

"Thanks to us!"

"--thanks to us--she has to get out of here quick and put her nose back to the grindstone. Don't think we'll be having male/male sex lovingly described after all, not today."

"How do you know all that?" mumbled Bodie. "I didn't know that."

"I'm--ooh, yes, Bodie!--I'm her favourite, aren't I? Oh...." For once, Doyle didn't scold his partner for talking with his mouth full.

Bodie, who had flailed around until he was in a position to repay Doyle's oral ministrations with interest and had (implicitly) begun to do so in the preceding paragraphs, abandoned his partner's rapidly reviving cock to say, "Are not. Only stands to reason I'd be her favourite, Doyle, you egotistical little bastard."

They fell to arguing. The writer, who was foolishly fond of the lovesome lads--and also awfully alliterative--did not care to admit to having a favourite. Doyle was fantasy fodder, a walking wet dream, sex personified. Beautiful Bodie was less prone to extended guilt trips than his partner, thanks much, and wasn't given to flaming histrionic hissy fits, either, so he was much the more restful of them. Besides, Doyle was right. She was working to deadline, and had indulged in all the procrastination she could afford (and then some). So their voices lagged and their eyes grew heavy. Without further ado she summarily sent them to sleep, each closely wrapped in the other's arms and cuddling all the way, sir.

They dreamed of Starfleet officers and Mac and Vic and Ray and Ray (which was confusing for Bodie and Doyle, especially Bodie) and Mounties in red serge, as well as other fabulous fellas too numerous to name. All were definitely dreamed of, though, so no one ought to feel her fandom's been slighted.

Except by its having appeared in this particular dog's dinner, that is. And if any slasher is offended, she ought not to blame the writer...much. The sad truth is that nary a one of these boys is the property of the writer (the aitchless two-armed Russian fox in fact belongs to Rachel and is used here without permission) and the writer has zero control over any of them.

The writer has damn little control of any sort. Obviously. However, she does promise that, for the purposes of this story, Bodie and Doyle did manage to have that little talk eventually. They made lusty, inventive, graphic love in every advert break, and lived happily ever after.

-- THE END --

April 2001