(A Sequel to 'If Tomorrow Comes')

"Now that I've done it once, it'll be easier next time."

Why the hell did I say that?

Easy-just another classic case of me and my big mouth. I've often been told it tends to work before my brain gets into gear, and those words only went to prove that.

The moment I'd said them it was obvious that I had hurt him, and hurting Bodie was the very last thing on my mind just then. His face closed up tight and he came back with a smart reply, but he needn't have bothered. I know him too well now to be taken in by the façade any more, and if I can't quite read him like a book yet I'm not really all that far from it.

I've been doing a lot of that recently.

Reading Bodie. And remembering.

Well, when you're lying in hospital recuperating from heart surgery there isn't much opportunity for doing anything else, is there? Almost dying concentrates the mind wonderfully. Makes you see things you wouldn't ordinarily notice; recognise things in yourself and others that you'd been blind to until then.

I can be so incredibly thick at times. Some people don't need two bullets and a close encounter with the Grim Reaper to knock a bit of sense into them, but apparently I do.

Lying there on the floor in my flat, surrounded by scattered groceries while my life seeped out of me into the rug and an inferno stopped the breath in my chest, all I could think of was Bodie.

How distressed he would be when he found me, and the desperate anger he would feel because he had not been around to prevent this...

How much I needed him, and wanted him to be with me...

How desolate it was to die alone. Without Bodie...

And then he was there, pushing the encroaching darkness back. His hands were on me, trying to stop the bleeding, and he was swearing at me, urging me to fight, to hang on, that help was on the way.

I couldn't move, couldn't speak, and could hardly see. I had to struggle for every breath, each one a searing agony, but I could feel him holding me with incredible gentleness and strength, and I could hear his voice: loving me and needing me and begging me not to leave him...

I'd never known just how much Bodie cared until then.

After a time there were other hands and other voices, and darkness and light and strange dreams: Bodie and I meeting for the first time...and a conversation with Cowley...and a cemetery...and being shot, over and over again...

I was so tired, and so sick of it all, and everything hurt so much. It would have been very, very easy simply to let myself slip away into the light that was lurking at the edges of my vision, and be free of all the pain and the self-disgust and the heart-searching.

But I was unable to let go, even though I was tempted. Something-someone-held me back. Bodie was there, calling to me. Bodie had said he loved me and needed me. Bodie could be in danger too; he had to be told about Mai Li.

And I couldn't leave him; not when he loved me.

Especially not when I loved him back.

I remembered opening my eyes and seeing him standing there, and saying his name only to have it emerge in an odd sort of breathless, husky whisper. It was only when I saw his eyes fill with tears that I realised this time it was real, not another of those strange dreams I'd been having.

I used to watch him when he came to visit me. Watch him watching me, trying to be so cool and casual about it all and give nothing away. But I saw him aching every time I ached, and he gave everything away every time he looked at me, every time he touched me. He's always been a toucher, has Bodie: ruffling my hair, patting me on the arm or shoulder or back, even on my bum sometimes, and while I'd raise Cain with anyone else who tried that I've never objected to Bodie doing it. But now there was a subtle difference to the touches, as though he had to keep reassuring himself that I was really there, really breathing, really alive.

Almost as though he didn't quite believe the evidence of his other senses.

It made me realise, if I hadn't done so before, just how very frightened he had been for me.

A couple of times I thought he was going to say something, but he didn't; only spun me a fairytale about having urgent business and took off in a hurry. Once or twice I was tempted to tell him how I felt, just to see that incompletely suppressed expression of miserable longing disappear, but I held back. A hospital ward-even a private hospital ward-is no place for the words I wanted to say, or for the things I wanted to do with him once the truth was out.

Best wait until I got home...

He came to pick me up that afternoon, acting full of the joys of spring: teasing, joking, and playing the fool with the nurses and me. Typical Bodie on a high! And he'd stayed like that until I opened my big mouth and inserted both feet right up to the kneecaps. "Dammit, Doyle, don't you ever learn?" I thought, watching the total change in his demeanour as we made our way back to the car. All that happiness destroyed by a few careless, stupid words! If I'd had a knife handy I'd've cut out my tongue.

"Let's go home, Bodie," I said, sliding into the passenger seat, determining then and there that it was well past time to sort out things between us before I managed to harm him even more than I'd done already.

"Something wrong?" Sudden anxiety was clear in both voice and look.

I smiled at him. "Nah, I'm fine, mate. Me legs are starting to feel a bit like spaghetti, that's all. Haven't been hiking much lately, you see."

"I told you to stay home and let me do the shopping," he grumbled.

"So you did, Mother," I agreed meekly.

He glanced at me suspiciously but said nothing, only switched on the ignition and pulled away from the kerb with the sort of care he'd been using ever since he had collected me from the hospital. No wheel spinning, no 0 to 60 in x seconds; I was beginning to feel like either his old granny or something rare and precious in porcelain.

Back at my flat he reluctantly allowed me to carry in the bag of laundry, mainly because it weighed next to nothing I suspect and he only has two arms and couldn't manage it as well as the groceries. Once past my front door, however, he dumped the carriers in the kitchen and tweaked it out of my grasp.

"Why don't you go and have a lie down," he suggested. "I'll put everything away, and then make some coffee and bring it through to you."

"Don't need to lie down, I'm not an invalid," I protested. And waited for the predictable response.

"Ray, be sensible for once in your life. You're just out of hospital..."

"Oh, all right! Anything to shut you up and keep you happy." I capitulated with enough simulated poor grace to raise a quickly smothered gleam of satisfaction in his blue eyes. He thought he'd got me where he wanted me, but that was a game two could play.

In the bedroom I undressed and crawled under the duvet. I wasn't about to admit it to anyone but myself-and least of all to Bodie-but I did feel more than a little tired, and the scar on my chest was aching. But over and above all that I was apprehensive, my stomach churning with a mixture of anticipation and nervousness. I knew I wanted what was about to happen, and I knew in my heart and in my bones that Bodie wanted it too, but wanting and actually doing it were two different things. I had no experience of this sort of thing; for all my vaunted sexual expertise, I had never made love with another man before.

And not just with any other man: I was going to make love with Bodie!

The thought scared me half to death and exhilarated me at one and the same time, sending a stab of heat down to all my nerve-endings and making my body stir in response.

God, how I wanted to hold him and touch him, and see him react to my loving...to be held by him, and loved by him in return...!

"Ray?"

Out of nowhere he was standing by the bed, clutching two coffee mugs in one hand and a plateful of biscuits in the other, and gazing down at me with a slightly puzzled expression. "You okay? Is something up?"

I sucked in an unwary, startled breath, choked, and had to wrap both arms tightly around my chest as I vainly tried to ease my attempts to get my breath back. Bodie set down his burdens hastily on the bedside cabinet and looked as though he was about to thump me between the shoulder blades. I shook my head at him warningly. He suddenly realised that might not be such a good idea after all, and patted me on the shoulder instead, hovering indecisively.

Something up, indeed! Something certainly was up, only not what he thought. I couldn't very well tell him I was lying there with a hard-on just from thinking about him, could I? Perhaps some time in the future if my plans went well, but not just now.

"I'm all right," I wheezed eventually, sinking back against the pillows as the throbbing ache in my chest began to diminish, and heaving at the duvet to make sure it was covering my embarrassment. "Christ, Bodie, you don't 'alf sneak up on a body!"

"I wasn't sneaking! You were miles away. I didn't mean to startle you. You sure you're okay?"

"Sure I'm sure. Stop looking at me like a whipped rabbit, no harm's been done."

Bodie looked disgusted. "I have never looked at anyone like a whipped rabbit in my life," he denied indignantly. He handed over one of the mugs of coffee, and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Seriously, though-"

"I didn't hear you coming, that's all," I interrupted him. "I was thinking."

"Is that all it was? God, I thought you were having a relapse. Must've been some thoughts!"

"Oh, they were that, all right." I swallowed a mouthful of coffee and went on, "I was thinking about what happened. About you. Me. Us."

"Us?" He sounded guarded.

"Yeah," I said firmly. "Us, as in you and me. Did a lot of that sort of thing in hospital. Well, there wasn't much else to do, was there? Came to a few conclusions I think you might be interested in hearing."

"Oh?" The sudden tension in him was almost palpable across the small distance separating us. He glanced up and our eyes met briefly before he looked away, then back again. That expression of longing had returned, and with it a gathering resolve. "Ray, I..."

I set down my half empty coffee mug, and reached out and took his free hand in both of mine, seeing surprise join the other fleeting expressions on his customarily shuttered face.

"I know," I said quietly. "I know it all, love. You don't need to tell me anything; you said it all after I'd been shot. I couldn't move or speak but my ears were working okay. I heard everything you said to me, and I'm glad you said it because it made me recognise what it was I'd been feeling for you for so damned long I've forgotten when it started. I love you too, Bodie. I've been in love with you for months. For years, I think! I always knew I cared about you, but I never understood quite how much I cared. That's why I'm still here, why I came back. It would have been so easy to just let go back there, and I nearly did, but I couldn't leave you hurting like that. I couldn't leave you at all; not without letting you know how much I love you..."

"Oh, Jesus!"

His mug was set down with a clatter. His hand gripped mine and tightened, tugging me towards him, and I went willingly. It was so good to be held by him in love at last, so good to feel the solidity of him and the leashed strength with which his arms surrounded me. I closed my eyes and buried my face against the side of his neck, winding my own arms around him and drawing myself even closer into the embrace. We sat like that for a long time, just holding one another, content to breathe in scents and share warmth and contact like we'd never shared them before.

For a while that was enough, but eventually-inevitably-we both wanted and needed more. My hands began travelling up and down Bodie's back, revelling in the feel of hard muscles under the fine cotton of his shirt. One of his hands pushed back my hair so that his lips could find my temple and then travel with feather light touches down the side of my face. Keen little shivers of pleasure spread through me from every place we touched, and my breath caught as I moved my head, seeking out his moving mouth with my own.

Our first kiss was... Extraordinary is the only word for it.

In the beginning it was light and exploratory, our lips barely touching in those first few seconds. Then our mouths seemed to fuse together as I opened to him with a groan of need. Heat spread through my body with the speed of a forest fire, going straight to my centre and destroying all ability to reason. Only sensation was left: the scent and the taste of him, the feel of him in my arms, the things his mouth was doing to mine.

When it ended, not because either of us wanted it to end but simply because breathing became imperative, I was lying back against the pillows. Bodie was leaning over me. My hands were grazing fiercely on the smooth skin of his back underneath his open shirt, which was pulled free of his unfastened cords. I had no memory of how any of that had happened. My own body was intensely aroused, and if my eyes and other senses were not deceiving me Bodie was in exactly the same state.

When I got my breath back and my voice into some sort of working order, I pleaded, "Come to bed with me, Bodie. Please?"

Breathing fast and erratic, he gazed down at me out of blue eyes so dark with barely controlled passion that they were nearly black, and asked hoarsely, "You sure about that? Absolutely certain? Because if... I don't think I could stop..."

I managed a shaky grin, and ran a thumb tip lightly over his perfect mouth, swollen now from the effects of that devastating kiss. "If you have to ask that, you must be even thicker than I've always thought. I'll never want you to stop."

Moments later his clothes had been discarded and he was in bed with me, our bodies sliding together, skin on sweat-slick sensitised skin, as though they had been made for each other.

I needn't have bothered myself wondering about the mechanics of it, because instinct took over the instant we touched. Bodie rolled onto his back and settled me on top of him, muttering something about protecting my chest, and trapping both urgent erections between our bellies. His hands slid down my back to close on my buttocks, urging our lower bodies even tighter together and dragging a gasping moan out of me at the surge of fire the closer contact created. I leaned down and took his mouth with mine again, just before all coherent though fled and we began moving frantically together, building sensation in a rhythm as old as time itself, soaring upwards to the edge and falling over it almost simultaneously before spiralling down into blessed release.

Much, much later, after we'd dozed and eaten and talked, and made love again slowly and with infinite care and attention to each other's needs and desires-something that had been lacking in the urgency of our first encounter-I lay listening to the muted traffic sounds. Bodie slept, his head pillowed on my shoulder, an arm thrown across my waist and one leg tangled with mine, but I was wide-awake.

I couldn't sleep. Didn't even want to sleep. I just wanted to lie there and hold him, remembering and savouring every moment of the past few hours. This-this man in my arms and the love we shared, this complete and utter contentment, was worth getting shot and nearly dying for. The knowledge that we had each other was worth all the pain of the past weeks, worth all the uncertainty of the future.

Because there are no guarantees. Not in anyone's life, but especially not in CI5 life. I knew that; after what had happened to me, no one knew it better. I wanted to be with Bodie forever, but Mai Li's bullets had taught me to be certain of only one thing.

Forever might be agonisingly short.

And knowing that hurt, like nothing else had ever hurt before.

Bodie moved, waking. He leaned up on one elbow and smiled that singularly sweet smile he bestows on so few people, then touched a gentle fingertip to the creases between my eyebrows.

"What's wrong? Don't deny it, I know that expression. You worry things to death, you do, like a dog with an old slipper. Tell me. I thought you'd be happy."

"I am," I said. "Happier than I've ever been in my life, Bodie. But I'm scared too; can't help it. Ours isn't exactly the safest job in the world is it? I can testify to that. Not too many of Cowley's Finest get to make old bones, do we? Now that I've found you, I'm scared of losing you. Scared to think of the future together we may not have, of all the tomorrows that may never come for us."

His fingertip traced a line across my forehead and down over my crooked cheekbone to the corner of my mouth. He sighed.

"One of the reasons I love you so much is that you're such a daft bugger sometimes, Ray Doyle, always tearing yourself apart over things you can do nothing about," he said very quietly, his gaze capturing and holding mine calmly, lovingly. "Tomorrow never does come, not for anyone."

"But-"

"There's a song I heard once a long time ago," he continued as though I had not spoken, "a forgettable sort of thing, but a line from it stuck in my memory: 'Today is that tomorrow we talked of yesterday.' It's never tomorrow, always today. Think about it, sunshine. Tomorrow doesn't really matter, it's what we have and do today that counts. Stop flaying yourself about what might happen and enjoy what is happening. That's my motto, and should be yours." He smiled at me again and leaned slowly closer. "Let's you and me just make the most of today, eh?"

Eyes darkening, he smoothed a teasing pattern over my lower lip and then tasted what his finger had outlined.

I groaned and reached for him again, anxieties and fears vanishing in rekindled fire as reasoning once more became impossible. For the moment at least, the future, be it long or short for us, would have to take care of itself.

As Bodie said, now was all that really mattered.

-- THE END --