Doyle was considering a faint bleeping noise, the source of which was not immediately evident. Then he gave up on the problem. "No doubt the universe was unfolding - as it should," he thought solemnly to himself, in his usual concerned way. He glanced over at Bodie, who was immersed in a newspaper. The sports page. Poor old Bodie, thought Doyle fondly, embroiled in fantasies of light, controlled movement, the disciplines of bodily fluidity - how must it feel to be built like a tank?

Nevertheless, the large body of his partner sent a shiver through him, and something moved him to say: "Bodie."

"Hmmm?"

Doyle slipped to his knees, his wrists circled with silver, clasped appealingly before him as he said softly, "Bodie, I want you to - take me." He looked up, soulfully, shaking back his curls.

"Uh?"

"Take me," repeated Doyle more desperately.

Bodie didn't look up from his perusal of the soccer scores. "Take you where?" he enquired abstractedly.

Astounded, Doyle stared for a moment, then gave a sigh of frustration, pounding one slim and beautiful hand into the carpet. Alerted to the symptoms of distress close at hand, Bodie threw aside the newspaper, and stared down, his deep, blue eyes exactly like fringed navy nightlights. Doyle was so beautiful, down there on his knees really giving it to the carpet, his bowed head speaking eloquently of rejection.

"Hey, curlytop," he whispered, gently. "Did I say something to upset you?"

"You really get up my nose sometimes," sniffed Doyle, sulking.

Perplexed, Bodie knelt down beside him, saying tenderly; "But you like me to." And he traced a reminiscent fingertip around one exquisite nostril, watching it quiver with excited response.

Doyle brushed his hand aside angrily. "Idiot." The strange bleeping noise caught his attention again and he pricked up his ears, alert as the big jungle cat he was. "What is that?"

Bodie smirked, and proudly produced a tiny device from a pocket. "I bugged George Cowley."

Doyle stared. "What, again?"

"Why not, he's buggered me often enough," said Bodie promptly, with the expectant air of a magician producing a rabbit from a hat. It was his big moment; he waited, almost bursting with gleeful triumph, for Doyle's uncontrollable mirth.

Instead, Doyle looked merely faintly sympathetic, if intensely irritated; and it wasn't an easy mix of expressions. "You got it wrong." When would Bodie give up on this joke? This made the fifth time this week. "He's bugged you often enough," he elaborated, at Bodie's blank stare of non-comprehension. "Not buggered you."

Bodie gave meaningful leer. "Aha," he quipped naughtily hoping to elicit interest and jealousy. When nothing happened, he said it again even more meaningfully - "Ah-ha."

Doyle was neither amused, nor jealous, nor interested. How cool he was! Bodie was moved, as ever, by the togetherness of his partner, and he stared deeply into his eyes, fascinated. "Your eyes are like aquariums," he murmured admiringly.

"Don't you mean - aquamarines?"

Bodie shook his head. "No - aquariums. They're sort of a murky green," he explained. Doyle did not appear uncontrollably flattered by this, so Bodie rushed on, "Ray, let's go to bed."

"Why?" said Doyle moodily, remembering his earlier rejection.

"I'm sure we can think of an excuse." Bodie applied himself seriously to the problem. "Anyone hit you over the head today? No? Well, have you bumped into a door?"

"No... can't say I have," Doyle conceded reluctantly.

Bodie wasn't discouraged. "Never mind, plenty more to go. Let's see - are we pretending to be gay this week?"

Doyle winced, shook his head. "Stay in character, 3.6 - " he hissed, looking nervously around.

"- 7 -" corrected Bodie automatically.

"- 7.6 - this week we're infiltrating the Keep Britain Clean campaign."

"So we are." Bodie's eyes gleamed as a sudden idea struck him. "Tell you what - I bet you a night with George Cowley you couldn't not be turned on by me, and you - "

"No," Doyle interrupted the enthusiastic flow. "That wouldn't work. Lacks realism."

Bodie's eyes dropped to the tight trousers and saw what he meant. "Well, OK then. How about this - we go to bed, and I have a nightmare, or I feel ill, who cares? - and you come in and comfort me, and suddenly our bodies naturally fit together in the unknowing embrace of sleep, and then our eyes flash open and meet, and -"

Doyle made a face. "Nah, hackneyed."

Bodie was running out of ideas. "Are we drunk? I often get carried away when I'm drunk -" "Yeah, I know, and last time it took three of us to lift you." Doyle cast a tetchy eye at Body's solid bodie.

"Ray, I've really got it this time." Bodie was practically hopping with excitement. "We'll play a game."

"What game?" asked Doyle, with cautious interest.

"One I learnt in Africa -"

Doyle was shaking his head determinedly. "No way. Not that game."

"Wait, you haven't -"

"Oh yes I have. You've told me hundreds of times - you didn't like it, but you had to play it so you made sure you won, which you did nine times out of ten and it's that bit that worries me."

"Not that game," said Bodie impatiently. He pronounced, carefully: "Strip Tongs."

"Strip Tongs?" Doyle repeated blankly, searching the phrase for meaning.

"Something to do with fire, anyway," said Bodie, puzzling over it; then brightening. "Anyway, the strip was the important part." He eyed Doyle with hopeful lasciviousness.

"Oh, let's give up," decided Doyle in the end. "Go and find some girls instead."

Oddly, the idea didn't appeal to either of the two lustful, macho agents. "Of course," Bodie suggested, hesitantly, not at all sure how Doyle was going to take this, "of course, we could always..."

"Always what?"

"Well, we could always just admit that OK, we're two randy males and we Just feel like having it off together." He eyed the ground nervously.

"Having it off," queried Doyle, incredulous at the crudeness of the man. "Surely you mean something more like - we leave the tides of reality to commune in a glorious whirlpool of ecstasy as our beings merge at the peak of an unbearably shattering crescendo?"

Bodie visibly struggled to work it out. Eventually - "You mean - we come?" he finally deduced.

Doyle nodded. Bodie gazed at him, wonderingly. "You know, that's what I like about you, Doyle," he breathed. "You're so - priapismic..."

Doyle had to get the punchline. He eyed Bodie with pity. "Mate?"

"Yeah?"

"There's no such word."

-- THE END --