With profound apologies to Thomas and Samuel


"And after we'd done all that, the Cow had the gall to say--"

"Doyle."

"Eh?"

"You talk too much."

Doyle's face appeared, flushed and indignant, from the towel he had been using to dry his curls. "What's wrong, then, don't you fancy me dulcet tones?"

Bodie propped himself on one elbow, gave the pillow a punch, and grinned. "Why, Raymond, I just adore the sound of your voice," he camped. "But I like it better when you're not actually saying anything."

Doyle crinkled his brows in puzzlement and tossed the damp towel in the general direction of the laundry hamper. "How can my voice sound like anything if I'm not speaking?"

Bodie extended a hand and let it glide down his partner's ribs as Doyle slipped into the bed beside him. "Oh, your voice is a real turn-on once you get past the point of making words. By the time you really get going, it's just 'ooh's' and 'ahh's' and the sexiest little moans."

Doyle sighed softly as Bodie's caresses lit a fire within him.

"Yeah. Like that," Bodie crooned with satisfaction.

"Like it when I make a lot of noise, do you?" Doyle murmured, bending forward to nuzzle the curve of his mate's neck.

"Like watching you lose control completely," Bodie corrected.

Doyle raised his head. "I don't get that wild," he protested.

"Oh, yes, you do. When you're ready to come, you couldn't form a coherent sentence to save your life."

"And I suppose you can?"

"'Course." Bodie preened. "The picture of cool self-control, that's me."

"What, even when you're just about to come?"

"Always."

"Prove it, then."

"Eh?" Bodie looked bewildered.

"I challenge you. Prove you can keep talking coherently right through to the glorious climax."

Bodie gaped. His casual taunts, intended to distract Doyle from a third re-hashing of their argument with Cowley earlier that day, had been turned against him. "What's the bet? Fifty pee, I suppose?" That being Doyle's usual limit.

Doyle considered. "Steak dinner tomorrow night."

Bodie's eyes widened at the prospect. "What d'you expect me to do, then? Recite poetry?"

Doyle cackled at the thought. "You, sunshine? You wouldn't know a sonnet if it came up and bit you on the arse!"

Bodie's mouth jutted into a scowl. "No self-respecting sonnet would do such a thing. Now a limerick, maybe...."

Doyle's laughter redoubled. "Oh, yes! Reciting dirty limericks while you have it off! It'd be even money whether you had to give up for orgasm or laughing your bloody head off."

Bodie drew himself up with dignity. "If I'm going to take you up on this challenge, it'll have to be done right. Real poetry. Let me see...."

Doyle grinned crookedly as Bodie appeared to search his memory. "Something from A Child's Garden of Verses perhaps?"

Bodie shot him a chilling glare and declaimed sonorously, "'The curfew tolls the knell of parting day....'"

Doyle sat up hastily. "'Ang on! We haven't got started yet!"

"Well, I have," Bodie grumbled.

Doyle melted Bodie's annoyance with a sultry grin, casually flicked one finger over Bodie's taut nipples, and attacked his partner's neck with lips and tongue.

Bodie's voice was an interval higher and slightly breathless as he continued: "'The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea....'" To illustrate, he wound his own hands over a pair of conveniently presented hillocks, but the tactile reality distracted him from his oration.

After a minute of silence, Doyle raised his head from the love-bite purpling over his lover's collarbone. "You were saying?"

"Oh! Yes." Bodie cleared his throat and took up the thread again as he continued to stroke Doyle's back and flanks. "'The ploughman homeward plods his wee-wee Ray--'"

Neither of them could say anything for a good fifteen minutes after this. When their hysteria subsided, both their faces were bright red, the duvet had retreated down one side of the bed, their stomach muscles were rigid and aching and their cocks soft and limp.

"Cool and self-controlled," Doyle sputtered weakly, clutching his stomach. "You didn't even get past the first stanza!"

"It was a slip of the tongue!" Bodie protested.

"And a very Freudian one, at that."

"I'll start again--"

"Ah-ah." Doyle slapped away the reaching hands. "My turn."

"What?"

"You didn't think I'd pass up the chance of a free meal? I might last longer than you expect."

Bodie sighed in resignation and lay back against the pillows. "So it's to be dirty limericks after all, eh?"

"Never. And I won't use anything so unromantic as a graveyard elegy." Doyle knelt between Bodie's thighs and leered down at him. "For erotic poetry, I've always rather fancied Coleridge."

Bodie groaned and rolled his eyes. "What, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?"

"Nope. 'In Xanadu did Kublai Khan--'"

"Ugh! Always hated that one!"

Doyle continued, undismayed. "'--A stately pleasure-dome decree.'" Here he cupped his hand gently over Bodie's rounded sac, making his partner gasp in surprised pleasure. Bodie's cock began to take a renewed interest in the proceedings.

"'Alf, da thaykwed wivvah,'" was somewhat muffled as Doyle kissed his way down the line of fine hairs on Bodie's stomach. "'Cabuwnth medderleth to man'" was nearly lost entirely in the tonguing of Bodie's navel. But the poetry continued its unhurried pace as Doyle lifted his head and stroked his fingers "'down to a sunless sea.'"

"That'd be where the sun doesn't shine, I suppose?" Bodie managed breathlessly.

Doyle ignored him. "'Thus twice five miles of fertile ground--'" He tucked his hands under Bodie's lush cheeks "'--with walls--'" He planted a quick kiss on each firm thigh "'--and towers--'" One long sweep of Doyle's tongue up the now-straining shaft made Bodie moan with desire. "'--were girdled round.'"

Doyle continued the poem in the same imaginative vein, wringing every possible meaning from each word and doling the lines out slowly enough to make Bodie's passions boil. He rolled over willingly to let Doyle explore the "'deep, romantic chasm,'" gasping at his partner's interpretation of the words. He let out a low growl when Doyle reached "'a holy place,'" partly because of the pun, and partly because of the pleasure Doyle's fingers were inflicting. By the time the woman wailed for her demon lover, Bodie was similarly desperate, cursing at Doyle to get on with it.

Doyle complied, gritting his teeth for verbal and physical control as he lubricated himself and started his entry. "'And from this chasm,'" he gasped as he slid inward, "'with ceaseless turmoil seething--'" Bodie was giving a good impression of ceaseless turmoil as Doyle began to pump sweetly in and out. He slipped a hand around to stroke Bodie's shaft and matched his movements to the rhythm of the words. "'As if--this earth--in thick--fast--pants--were breathing--'" which both of them were, by now "'--A mighty fountain--aaah--momently--ohhh!--was forced--oh, Christ, Bodie!" Doyle felt Bodie's cock twitch and spurt in his hand, and the pleasure of tight muscles contracting around him was just too much; he emptied his own seed deep into Bodie's bowels with a shout, and they spiraled together into wordless languor.

After a minute, Bodie canted his hips to encourage Doyle to remove the weight pressing on his spine. With a contented sigh, Doyle rolled off and snuggled along his partner's side. "Hmmm," he breathed into Bodie's ear. "Never could get past that 'swift, half-intermitted burst.'"

"Just as well, I suppose," Bodie replied, reaching over Doyle's sprawl for the tissues to wipe himself off. "Not sure we would have survived the whole poem. Still, may have to reconsider my opinion of old Samuel." He tossed the tissues away and sank down into Doyle's embrace, pulling the duvet up to cover them both. "How does that end? 'For he on honeydew hath fed--'" He lifted Doyle's lax hand and licked at the pearly essence that clung there.

"'And drunk the milk of paradise,'" Doyle concluded happily.

"So we both lose," Bodie decided, undisturbed by the prospect.

Doyle pried open one sleepy green eye. "Nah. Thought we'd both won."

Bodie considered this for a while, and his smile widened. "So what about me steak dinner, then, Doyle? Doyle?"

The would-be poet was asleep.

-- THE END --