(For Linda, who provided the idea by saying, "I'd like to read a story that..." I hope this one fits the bill.)

"How is he?"

Bodie glanced up from his intent contemplation of Doyle's still form as Murphy came quietly into the hospital room.

"Asleep."

"Not serious, then?"

Murphy crossed to the bedside and stood staring down at the dressing above Doyle's left eyebrow, covering the spot where the bullet had creased him.

"Nah. Always said he has a thick skull," Bodie said. "He was all set to go home, but they insisted on keeping him in overnight in case of concussion. He was rather less than pleased about that."

"I can imagine." Murphy was well acquainted with Doyle's abhorrence of hospitals. He looked up at Bodie, noting how pale he was. Nearly as pale as Doyle, whose face and the dressing were almost the same colour. "He was lucky."

"Stupid dumb bastard!"

Murphy tutted in reproof. "That's no way to speak of someone who has just saved your life, my son."

"There was no need for him to push me out of the way. He could have yelled. I would have moved, sharpish."

"Maybe not sharp enough. While your brain was trying to figure out why he was yelling at you and tell your body to do something about it you might have been killed. I've seen it happen," Murphy said grimly, recalling a similar occasion when his own shouted warning had not been enough. Not nearly enough.

Bodie remembered too. "Murph, I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

"'s okay," Murphy interrupted, pushing old hurts back into the past where they belonged. He changed the subject. "You want a lift home?"

"No thanks. I..." Bodie stood up abruptly, and walked across to the window where he stood looking out into the night through his own reflection in the glass. "Doyle asked me to stay for a bit, so I'll just hang around until he wakes up again. Let him know I kept my promise."

"He might sleep through until morning."

"Doesn't matter if he does. I've nothing better to do."

There was a slight touch of belligerence in Bodie's voice, almost as though he expected an argument about it. He did not get one. The picture of Doyle's limp hand being gently cradled between both of Bodie's, and the expression on the customarily shuttered face before his presence had registered was too fresh in Murphy's memory.

He said, "In that case, how do you feel about some company for a while? I'm at a loose end myself."

Bodie nodded. "Thanks, Murph, I'd appreciate it. As you can see, the golly's conversation isn't exactly scintillating at the moment."

Murphy drew a chair up to the bedside and Bodie, after prowling about restlessly for some time, sat down again and for a while they talked softly and desultorily across the peacefully sleeping Doyle. As might have been expected the conversation inevitably wound its way around to the recently completed operation; and with equal inevitability to Doyle's part in it, and the action that had put him where he was.

"That's what partners are for," Murphy said. "To watch one another's back."

"I know that. But watching my back is one thing," Bodie growled, "making a bloody human shield of himself is something else. I still say it was stupid."

"You mean to tell me," Murphy enquired sceptically, "that if the positions had been reversed you wouldn't have done exactly the same thing?"

"Doesn't make it any less stupid," Bodie protested stubbornly. He glanced up. That oddly vulnerable expression Murphy had never seen before had returned to his eyes. "When I saw him go down I thought he was dead. He'd shoved me behind that stack of packing cases, and I couldn't get to him because of the crossfire. When I did he was bleeding like a stuck pig-"

"Head wounds do that."

"I know. But I thought he was dead," Bodie reiterated. "That's the second time in a year, Murph. I can't take..." He stopped suddenly and took a deep, steadying breath. "I was right all along, you know. In this job it's a mistake to get involved."

Murphy's gaze dropped to the bedcover. Bodie had once again, apparently without realising it, picked up Doyle's hand and one thumb was stroking lightly and soothingly over the pulse point inside the wrist.

"Happens to all of us, mate, sooner or later. Unless you're a robot-and I've never been able to really convince myself that you're quite the unfeeling so-and-so you pretend to be."

Bodie followed the other man's gaze down. For a moment the movements of his hand stilled and then he looked back up with the hint of a wry smile.

"You too? I'll have to do something about my acting technique. Ray told me once that I'm nothing but a great big softy inside. I don't think he knows how true he is where he's concerned."

"Anyone can see you care about him."

"Care?" Bodie shook his head. "'Care' doesn't say the half of it, Murph. I love him. He's the most important thing in the world to me."

There was a short silence. Bodie broke it.

"Shocked you, have I?"

"Surprised, not shocked," Murphy said. "I never thought you would actually come right out and say it."

The silence this time, before Bodie spoke again, had a slightly stunned feel to it.

"You knew? I didn't think I was that transparent."

"Don't panic," Murphy told him. "You're not that transparent at all."

"Then how-?"

"I saw the way you were looking at him before you were aware I was here," Murphy said. "I'd've had to be blind as the proverbial bat, not to mention thick as two planks, not to recognise what it meant. It wasn't exactly the kind of look one gives to someone who's...just a friend."

"It's been a very long time since Ray has been 'just' anything to me." Bodie looked suddenly wary. "Does it bother you? The way I feel about him?"

Murphy grinned. "Not in the least. That is, unless you intend starting to fancy me too?"

"Don't be ridiculous!"

Murphy heaved an exaggerated sigh of relief. "Thank God! Because I find you eminently resistible too, mate. And besides, I wouldn't know how in hell to explain it to Diana. She'd never believe you were my type."

Bodie uttered a sound midway between a smothered laugh and a groan. "You still going out with her? Must be all of three months now. You're in danger of getting serious there."

Murphy's grin widened. "I could do worse. She's a nice girl. Puts up with the God-awful hours and everything. Does Ray know how you feel?"

Bodie blinked at the sudden return to the earlier subject, and then looked horrified. "Good God, no!"

"Why not?"

"Ah c'mon, Murph! We both know what the golly's like. I want to carry on breathing a little longer."

"What makes you think he'd react like that?" "Casanova's kid brother? A champion bird-puller like Doyle? You have to be joking!" Bodie's laugh was short and soft and bitter. "I can see it now: 'Thought you'd like to know something, Ray sweetheart. I fancy you something chronic.' 'Oh, that's nice, Bodie. Just what I've always wanted to hear. Let's go to bed and fuck like bunnies.' It would be Krakatoa exploding all over again. If he didn't just kill me before he calmed down, he'd take off for the Antipodes so fast he'd make Concorde look like a snail. Either way, it'd mean the end of everything I've got now. I know him, Murph!"

"Do any of us ever really know anyone?" Murphy asked. "I believed I knew you reasonably well, but if someone had told me an hour ago that we'd be having this conversation I'd've said they were crazy."

"I know Doyle, macho little toad that he is!" Bodie asserted. "Trust me on this, mate. He'd go spare! Took me long enough trying to reconcile myself to the way I feel about him, and I've had the advantage of prior experience."

Murphy's eyebrows shot up. "You mean this isn't the first time...?"

"No," Bodie said flatly. "It's amazing the way things you'd never normally dream of start looking good when you're stuck in the middle of the jungle, miles from civilization, with only a bunch of other fellas for company. It happened. Once or twice. Wasn't like this, though. There was never any emotion involved; it was just scratching an itch that needed relief at the time, that was all. A few people were into some very nasty little games, didn't care whether you wanted to play or not, but that's never been my scene. When I killed one bloke who tried it on and crippled another, they decided I was more trouble than my arse was worth and went after easier meat." He smiled briefly and mirthlessly. "Now, this time I really have shocked you."

Murphy shook his head. "Surprised me-again" You never talk about your past, except when you're telling us those outrageous fairy tales none of us really believe anyway."

Bodie rose unexpectedly again, and crossed the room to the window where he stood looking out into the darkness once more. His back was stiff and unyielding, but even from half way across the room Murphy could sense the effort being made to deal with old ghosts.

"Yeah. Well, the fairy tales are much better than the reality ever was, believe me. There were one or two good times. And even a couple of people I'd call friends, but most of it was unadulterated hell. Not the sort of stuff you'd want to remember, let alone talk about. The past is past and can't be changed, so let it rest, I say."

After a few moments of silence he turned back to face Murphy again. "What I'm trying to say is...okay, you tell me I haven't shocked you, mate, but I sure as hell shocked myself when I recognised what it was I felt for Ray. I couldn't believe it. Refused to believe it!"

"Have an identity crisis, did you?"

"Something like that." Bodie grinned, his first genuinely humorous expression since Murphy's arrival. "So I set out to prove that it wasn't true. Went after the birds like there was going to be no tomorrow."

"Ann Holly!" Murphy said, with the air of one making a great discovery. "After Ray broke up with her there was a while when you seemed to have a different bird every night of the week and two on Sundays. I thought you were trying to show him there were plenty more fish in the sea."

"I wish it had been that simple!" Bodie slumped against the wall and folded his arms. "God, Murph, how I hated her! I was so jealous I couldn't see straight, and I couldn't believe I was reacting like that. All those birds he'd had before-he'd never been serious about any of them until her. I hated her because he loved her and was planning on marrying her, and if he did I would lose him. And I hated myself for being glad when she walked out on him because he was hurting so much, and I wanted to comfort him but I didn't dare in case I gave myself away. He'd hated me when I'd investigated her background, and I couldn't bear the thought of him hating me again. And I wouldn't allow myself to believe that I loved him in that way...wanted him in that way..."

"So you tried to blot it out," Murphy said. "You pulled every bird you could get. And it didn't work."

Bodie sighed. "No, it didn't work. Only made things worse in some ways. I woke up to the truth one night at a most inopportune moment, when I realised the only way I was getting off with the girl I was in bed with was by pretending she was Ray. Discovered I didn't like myself very much for that. I was just using her, like I'd been using all the others, to stop having to admit to myself what I didn't want to admit: that I cold love Ray the way I do."

"Everyone needs to love someone, Bodie."

"I could have handled the fact that I loved him," Bodie said. "There are different kinds of love, Murph. It was the way that I loved him... Wanting to take him to bed, wanting... I just didn't want to have to accept that I could feel like that about another bloke. About Ray!"

"But you had to, I take it? Eventually?"

"Yes, I had to," Bodie agreed. "Eventually. And it scares me half to death, Murph!"

He moved restlessly, pushing himself away from the wall and coming back to the bedside to stand gazing down at the sleeping man. His fingertips brushed gently at the thick fringe of curls lying on Doyle's forehead with such unguarded tenderness that Murphy's chest ached. After a moment Bodie glanced back up.

"You weren't in the Squad when he and I were first teamed. Neither of us wanted a partner. He'd had one shot when he was in the Met; I'd had enough of that sort of thing in the SAS to last me a lifetime. Took us a while to get it together. Chalk and Cheese, Cowley called us, but we're a lot more alike in some ways than he gives us credit for. Ray can be a bad-tempered, aggravating pain in the arse when he puts his mind to it; and that's only on a good day. I can be a right bastard without even trying. So you can imagine how the sparks flew!"

"They still fly at times," Murphy said.

"Yeah, they do, don't they?" Bodie smiled again, and glanced back down at the man in the bed just as Doyle frowned slightly and made an inarticulate sound deep in his throat. His hand, resting on the bedcover, moved as though searching for something. For an instant Bodie froze; then he sat down again and picked up the seeking hand gently in one of his. It stilled almost immediately, the fingers curling around Bodie's.

After a few seconds he looked up again, the blue eyes bleak. "How do I cope with this, Murph? I love him so damned much. What do I do?"

"Tell him," Murphy said.

"I can't! I'm too scared-all the time. I'm terrified of what will happen if he finds out. All my life I've lost everyone I've ever loved. Losing Ray would be...unbearable." The pain in the softly spoken words was an open window on the loneliness Bodie usually concealed so well.

Murphy shook his head again. "The only way you'll lose him is by keeping silent. Tell him, Bodie! Tell him how you feel, the way you've just told me. He won't be disgusted or shocked, he won't hate you, I'm certain of that. He cares a hell of a lot about you too, you know. Nobody throws themselves between a bullet and someone they don't give a damn about-"

"I know that!" Bodie interrupted. "I know he cares about me. But caring like he does and loving like I do are two different things. I know him, Murph! It'd drive him away. What I have now: his friendship, his trust, his caring, is a lot, even if it isn't anywhere near all that I really want. It's a damn sight better than nothing! I can live with that. Just so long as he doesn't pull any more bloody stupid stunts like this one. I can't take the chance of losing what I've got."

Murphy sighed. "You know, I'd never have taken you for a coward, Bodie, but you've been sounding more and more like one every time you've opened your mouth tonight. Someone has to take a chance in any relationship, mate, if it's to go anywhere. Someone always has to make the first move, and everyone is scared of doing it just like you are. Afraid of being rejected, afraid of losing the little they have." He pushed his chair back quietly and rose to his feet and stretched. "It's getting late and I have to get into HQ early tomorrow. I'd best go home to bed." He looked down at the man sitting dejectedly on the other side of the bed. "I'd like to think I'm your friend, Bodie, and Ray's too. Take a friend's advice: tell him. You won't lose him."

Bodie's gaze followed him across the room. "If only I could be sure of that..."

Murphy paused by the door and turned. Over Bodie's shoulder he saw Doyle's eyes open, wide and clear and very much aware. They were not the eyes of someone just waking from a deep sleep.

Murphy smiled. "Oh, I think you can be, mate, I really think you can be. I wish I could be as sure of heaven."

Bodie frowned. "How can you be so certain?"

Murphy's smile broadened. "Because," he said, "I've had this conversation once before. Almost word for word in many ways. A couple of months ago, that time you took the knife in the chest, the one that was meant for Doyle. He didn't listen to me then, any more than you've done now." His gaze shifted to the man in the bed. "Did you, sunshine?"

"No, I didn't," Doyle answered him softly.

Bodie's head snapped around, so hard and so fast that Murphy's neck muscles flinched in sympathetic reaction.

"Ray! H-how long have you been awake?"

"Long enough," Doyle said, smiling.

Wide and warm and filled with infinite tenderness, that smile melded with the expression in the green eyes to say everything Bodie needed to hear, everything that, until that moment, each of them had been too frightened to say to the other.

Instantly forgotten, Murphy went out, closing the door very quietly behind him.

-- THE END --