The Professionals Circuit Archive - A Day in the Country	 A Day in
the Country

 

by Barbara Thomas

  
 Doyle leaned over and opened the passenger door and Bodie got into the
car, sliding onto the seat with a curved spine and a sigh of exhaustion.

"I don't believe this," Doyle said. "I really do not believe this! Six
bloody weeks without a break, and then when he condescends to give us a
weekend off he manages to make us feel beholden to him for it. I dunno how
'e does it." He glanced at his partner, slumped in his seat with his eyes
closed. "What are you goin' to do?"

"Go to bed. I'm knackered."

"Whose bed?"

"My own, lover. To sleep. Only thing I'm good for at the moment. The
spirit is willing and all that, but I couldn't raise a smile tonight,
never mind anything else."

"In that respect, mate, you are not alone," Doyle said with feeling.

After several minutes silence Bodie opened one eye. "All right, then, are
you going to take me home or tuck me in right here?"

Doyle shook himself out of his daze of weariness. "I'm not goin' to tuck
you in at all. It's going to take me all my time tucking meself in." He
switched on the ignition and drove out of the car park at a much more
sedate pace than usual. "You fancy a drink on the way? To settle the
nerves?"

Bodie opened the other eye. "You buying?"

"I might be."

"In that case, I'm drinking."

An hour - and two pints of bitter, into one of which Bodie almost fell
asleep and drowned - later, Doyle arrived home. The flat, which had been
shut up tight for the past seventy-two hours, was hot, stuffy, and smelt
stale. There was no hot water for a shower. Too tired to care enough to be
annoyed, Doyle muttered, "To hell with it!" and flung open a couple of
windows, dropped his clothes on the floor in a heap, and fell into bed
unwashed.

What felt like a few minutes later, he opened his eyes to discover that
eight hours had actually passed, it was 5.30am, and despite his best
efforts he could not get back to sleep. Eventually, after much tossing and
turning and some very colourful imprecations, he admitted defeat and got
up.

Showered, shaved, dressed and breakfasted, dishes washed and put away and
the flat tidied, he glanced at his watch. It was still only 8.15.

Right, that did it! Why should Bodie be allowed to lie in his pit snoring
when other people couldn't?

He dialled the familiar number and waited. On the eighth ring the receiver
at the other end was lifted, dropped with a clatter and lifted again, and
a decidedly grumpy and half asleep voice said, "Unnghh?"

"This is Wake Up Calls Incorporated," Doyle said brightly. "It is 8.16am
on a lovely, hot, sunny morning..."

With split-second timing he removed the receiver from his ear, just in
time to avoid a perforated eardrum from the crash with which the one at
Bodie's end was replaced. After a count of ten he dialled again. Fifteen
rings, this time.

"I am going to kill you, Doyle," Bodie said. "What the hell do you want at
this hour?"

"I couldn't sleep," Doyle said plaintively. "I've been up for hours."

There was a short expressive silence, the kind that spoke volumes.

"I think I'll disembowel you," Bodie told him conversationally, "with
blunt knives..." He continued at some length, warming to his theme, before
a pause for breath gave Doyle an opening.

"I thought we might go for a picnic. Out in the country. Get away early
and make a day of it." The silence that greeted this was so long that
eventually he was forced to add, "Bodie? You still there? You haven't gone
back to sleep on me, have you?"

"Chance would be a fine thing!" Bodie retorted. "You mean to say, that
after all we've been through in the past six weeks, the first chance I get
of a lie-in you wake me up at this indecent, god-forsaken hour to invite
me on a picnic, f all things? You've done it at last. You've finally
flipped, mate!"

"It'll be nice," Doyle said persuasively. True, he'd only thought of it
thirty seconds ago, but the idea was growing more appealing by the minute.
"Peace...quiet...nobody shouting or shooting at us...fresh air..."

"What's that?"

"It's what you breathe without ten million other people having breathed it
first. You know the stuff - there're no exhaust fumes in it, and it smells
of grass and trees and flowers."

"And manure, probably."

"Don't be like that!" Doyle protested. "C'mon, Bodie, you'll like it when
you get there, you know you will."

"We'll get piles from sitting on damp grass."

"There hasn't been any rain for nearly four weeks. We're in the middle of
a heat wave, or hadn't you noticed?"

"I've been too busy getting shot and shouted at," Bodie said. Despite his
protests he sounded brighter and marginally more interested. "I'm still
knackered. Why don't you go on this picnic by yourself, and I'll just stay
here in bed?"

"Oh, ha-ha, very funny!" Doyle told him. "I'll be round to pick you up in
half an hour. Be ready."

He hung up, and went to raid his cupboards for plates, cutlery and other
necessities, whistling cheerfully.

A more expensive that expected visit to the Deli down the road dampened
his enthusiasm a bit. However, packing his purchases into the car he had
to confess that the kind of picnic he remembered from childhood,
consisting of soggy sandwiches, biscuits and a bottle of lemonade, would
hardly make much of an impression on a partner whose plaintive cries of
'I'm starving!' and variations thereof were a byword in the corridors of
CI5.

Bodie was waiting, leaning against his front door jamb, immaculate and
looking good enough to eat in grey slacks and pale blue short- sleeved
open-neck shirt. He climbed into the car, and promptly tied himself into a
knot in an attempt to peer into the rear seat.

"So, where is it?"

"Where's what?"

"The grub. Can't have a picnic without grub, y'know."

"I know. It's in the boot." Doyle gazed pointedly at Bodie's empty hands.
"Where's your contribution, then?"

Bodie smiled seraphically. "I'm a guest. You invited me, remember? Guests
don't have to contribute. But just to shut your face, I'll buy the booze,
okay?"

"Okay." Doyle put the Escort into gear and moved off.

Bodie settled himself comfortably. "Where exactly are we going for this
picnic?"

"You'll find out when we get there," Doyle told him, skilfully avoiding a
suicidal dog, and immediately afterwards a Volkswagen Beetle the driver of
which appeared to be either blind or equally tired of life.

"All right then, don't tell me," said Bodie huffily. "Shall I put the
blindfold on now, or leave it till later?" When this sally was not
dignified with an answer, he added, in a sudden change of subject, "You
didn't give me time for breakfast, and I'm starving."

Doyle sighed. Without taking his eyes off the early morning traffic, he
leaned over and opened the glove compartment. "Funny, I thought you might
be. There are Mars bars and various other things in there. Try stopping
your gob with some of those."

Bodie shot him a theatrically pained look that was ignored with the ease
of long practice, and proceeded to rummage in the revealed treasure trove.
Some considerable time, and a lot of contented munching later, he crumpled
a Mars wrapped and chucked it out of the window with a fine disregard for
Keeping Britain Tidy, and commented, "I certainly hope you know where
you're going, sunshine. I've been lost since we came off the motorway."

"You've got as much directional sense as a deaf bat, you know that?" Doyle
said. "How'd you ever find your way around in the jungle?"

"I didn't. I got lost there too," Bodie confessed. "Except when I'd been
told where I was supposed to be going, of course." He raised an innocently
enquiring eyebrow.

Doyle grinned. "Can't bear bein' kept in the dark about anything, can
you?" he asked. Bodie shook his head agreeably. "All right, I'll tell you.
We're going to Upton St. Clement."

During the ensuing silence Doyle negotiated the car around a sharp double
bend and up a steep, winding hill while he waited for the expected
response. It was not long in coming.

"Oh goody! Upton Whatsit, just the place I've always wanted to go to. Now
that you've told me *where*, would you mind telling me *why*?"

Doyle assumed an expression of extreme patience. "But I've told you
already: for a picnic..."

"*Ray*!" Bodie said dangerously.

Doyle grinned reminiscently. "Okay. Because I used to visit there when I
was a kid. Me Aunt Katy married a farmer, and I stayed with them every
summer. They thought I was too skinny, needed fresh air and feedin' up on
good country food. I loved every minute of it. Just like heaven, it was;
all that space, runnin' wild... I 'ad this favourite place, used to spend
all day there sometimes, take sarnies and stuff, go fishing with a stick
and a bit of string and a bent pin. Never caught anything, of course, but
that didn't matter. I thought I'd take you there for the picnic."

There was another long silence. Then Bodie said softly, "Why have you
never told me about any of that before?"

Doyle glanced sideways and found himself being regarded by a pair of blue
eyes as soft and affectionate as the tone of voice. As always, that
expression of Bodie's destroyed him. He looked hastily back at the road
ahead.

"I've told you a damned sight more about my past than you've ever told me
about yours, mate. You're the original clam."

Bodie looked offended. "That's not true! I've told you lots of things..."

"And the stories get bigger every time you tell 'em. If Cowley ever gives
you the boot, you'll be able to make a fortune writing fairy tales. Hans
Christian Bodie, that's you!" Bodie's offended expression intensified, and
Doyle chuckled as he swung the car around a tractor and trailer and two
teenagers on horseback. "Don't worry, I gave up on trying to ferret out
your little secrets long ago. I'll wait until you want to tell me about
them." And then, with a complete change of tone, "Hey! Look, we're almost
there. That's Upton Hill."

"Your Aunt and Uncle still live here, do they?" Bodie asked. "Nah, they
both died a few years back while I was still in the Met," Doyle answered.
"The farm was on the other side of the village, the river side. It wasn't
a very big place, only a few acres rented from the Manor estate. Some
dairy cows, pigs, chickens...pretty small stuff really, but this city kid
thought it was marvellous." They rounded a blind bend and Doyle's mouth
fell open. "Bloody hell! Tell me I'm hallucinatin'!"

"You're hallucinating," Bodie said obediently, and then spoilt the effect
by adding, "About what?"

"About *that*!"

Bodie stared out through the windscreen and tried to figure out what it
was Doyle was upset about. They had arrived without warning at one end of
Upton St. Clement's main - and apparently only - street. Bordered on
either side by houses in a variety of styles - there were a dozen r so
very pretty heavily thatched old cottages, and two or three larger houses
clad in ivy and Virginia creeper, but most appeared to be more modern
bungalows and villas, all surrounded by riotously colourful gardens - it
widened out into a hexagonally shaped area proclaiming itself on a
signpost to be Upton Green, before narrowing again suddenly and
disappearing from sight beyond an ancient stone church.

The Green itself was a large area of smoothly manicured grass decorated by
wooden seats, rose filled flowerbeds and, in the exact centre, a merrily
splashing fountain topped by a statue of Pan playing his pipes. Apart from
the church and another old stone building labelled 'Village Hall, 1750',
it was surrounded by an assortment of shops including a small supermarket,
and other businesses: a saddler, a dentist, a doctor's surgery, a
solicitor's office, an Olde Tea Shoppe, and the obligatory pub whose
swinging sign bore a painting of a very fat, impossibly pink pig
surmounted by an extremely scrawny cockerel which announced to the world
at large that it was 'THE PIG 'N' CHICKEN'.

There were a number of people about, mostly around the supermarket. The
Tea Shoppe had some tables and chairs set out on the pavement and appeared
to be doing a roaring trade. The benches on the Green were also occupied,
and children and dogs played on the grass. There was also a fair bit of
coming and going around the Village Hall.

To Bodie who, admittedly, was no expert on English village life, it all
looked reasonably normal, and hardly the stuff of which hallucinations are
made. He said so, and was rewarded by one of his partner's most ferocious
scowls.

"It isn't the way I remember it at all!" Doyle almost wailed. "It used to
be so quiet and pretty, now look at it! All those people...and a bloody
Tescos...and those dreadful new houses... It's all *changed*!"

"Things have a nasty habit of doing that, sunshine," Bodie said. "I think
it's called progress or something. You know: tempus fugit, and all that
sort of stuff. How long has it been since you were last here, anyway?"

"I was thirteen."

"There you are then!" Bodie said triumphantly. "Nothing stands still.
Nothing stays the same, however much you may want it to." Doyle's scowl
deepened. He brought the Escort to a halt outside the pub, and glowered at
the grass and its occupants. "Used to be a duck pond there," he muttered
resentfully. "I fell into it once."

"Must've been thrilling for the ducks, that."

Doyle treated that remark with the contempt he felt it deserved, and
transferred his disapproval to the pub. "And will you look at what's been
done to the poor old 'Pig 'n' Chicken'!"

Bodie looked. With that complaint he was in complete agreement. He hated
tarted-up pubs, and this one had been assaulted by an expert whose
so-called taste ran to lots of intricately convoluted wrought iron coupled
with glaringly bright primary colours for the paintwork. The sight of it
made his eyes ache, and with the evidence of the outside before him he
shuddered to imagine what the interior might be like.

"It isn't very pretty, is it?"

"Not *pretty*? It's bloody criminal, that's what it is! Whoever did that
ought to be hanged, drawn and quartered."

Bodie stared at him admiringly. "God, Raymond, I never thought you had it
in you to be so vicious!"

Doyle's glare faded into the beginning of a reluctant grin. "Oh all right,
I am going over the top a bit. But it's such a disappointment, Bodie. This
place was so beautiful when I was a kid, and I loved it. I've carried a
picture of it in my mind for years, and I thought... I wanted to share it
with you, but I can't because it's all been changed - and spoilt. I'm
sorry, love."

"It's hardly your fault if things are different from what you remember. I
told you, everything changes." Bodie stretched out a lazy hand and patted
Doyle's knee. "I'd love to have shared your memories, Ray, but I'd rather
have you than them any day."

Doyle's throat tightened. Despite their having been lovers for months now,
it was very seldom that Bodie said anything like that outside of bed,
still preferring to hide his deeper feelings behind the tried-and-true
mask of flippancy. Doyle went along with it but, like now, he treasured
every time the mask slipped.

Suddenly, he realised that the gently patting hand had acquired new
purpose and was beginning a slow, caressing glide up his denim-clad thigh.
He glanced sideways, startled. Bodie's expression was one of cherubic
innocence, but there was a gleam of mischief in the midnight blue eyes.
Doyle cast a panic-stricken look at the passers-by, and clamped one of his
own hands down on the wanderer, curbing its progress. He knew that
expression too well.

"Stoppit! You'll get us arrested!"

"Nonsense, I've heard they're very broadminded out in the country. It's
all that living close to nat... Will you look at *that*!" Tone filled with
reverence, all thoughts of teasing Doyle instantly forgotten, Bodie leaned
forward to peer through the windscreen.

Doyle followed the intent gaze, and his lips twitched. The pub was at last
opening up for business - by a tall redhead whose short, low-cut,
form-fitting dress left very few of her considerable assets to the
imagination. Barmaids had always been Bodie's favourite prey, and his
change of lifestyle had done nothing to diminish his healthy interest in
the species. Chatting up birds was as much a part of him as breathing and
Doyle, who often felt insecure about other things in life but never about
the feelings he and Bodie shared for each other, had neither the intention
nor the desire to try to stop what was essentially a harmless piece of
fun. He knew it, the birds knew it, and Bodie knew it - so there was no
problem.

He settled back comfortably in his seat and said, "All right then
Casanova, go on; go practise your chat-up technique. You haven't used it
for ages so it must be getting a bit rusty."

"Never!" Bodie denied, offended. "That sort of thing is all a part of the
natural charm I was born with, so I don't need to practise." He eyed Doyle
consideringly, and then added with the air of one making a great
sacrifice, "In your case, though... Maybe you should go...?"

"No way, mate!" Doyle said. "I wouldn't dream of it; you saw her first.
Besides, you said you'd buy the booze."

"Skinflint!" Bodie grinned and got out of the car with a theatrical sigh.
"Oh well, once more into the breach dear friends..."

Ten minutes later he reappeared, bearing two six-packs of beer and wearing
an all too familiar self-satisfied smirk that said it all.

"That's a bit of all right in there, sunshine. Could've really scored if
I'd still been so inclined. Just as well you didn't go after all, she
would've eaten someone like you for breakfast."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Needs the touch of a master hand, that one does. Are we going to
eat soon? I'm famished!"

"Must be a record, that," Doyle told the church as they drove past it.
"It's at least an hour since he last mentioned food. Don't panic, mate,
I'll feed you right after I've shown you the farm. Always assuming, of
course, that it hasn't been turned into a dogs' home or something," he
added grouchily.

It had been turned into a small private housing development instead.

Mouth open and eyes huge with shock, Doyle stared at the orderly rows of
red brick chalet-style bungalows, each one only marginally different from
its neighbours. 

"I don't believe this! I really do *not* believe it! It has to be some
sort of nightmare. I can't have woken up this morning; I have to be
dreaming. *Owwww*! What'd you go and do that for?" he demanded, rubbing
vigorously at the spot on his arm where Bodie had pinched him - hard.

"Just checking," his partner said unrepentantly. "Sleepwalking is one
thing, but I don't want you driving me if you're still in the Land of Nod.
Nope, if that yelp was anything to go by you're awake all right."

Well I wish I wasn't! There used to be a bloody great chunk of my
childhood out there under those houses, Bodie. The best part of it. All
those summers when I came down here from Derby meant an awful lot to me.
Now it's all gone, all lost..." 

Bodie's eyebrows drew together at the disconsolate tone. "You really mean
that, don't you? Those visits must have been quite something to make you
feel like this. Why don't you tell me about them?"

"Why should I? You don't want to know."

"I don't usually ask for things I don't want," Bodie said determinedly. He
slid lower down in his seat, propped one foot on the dashboard and closed
his eyes. "Go on, tell me."

"You'll be bored silly..." Doyle was suddenly reluctant to do what he had
planned to do anyway when the idea for the picnic had first occurred to
him.

"If I get bored, lover, you'll be the first to know all about it. I don't
generally suffer in silence, do I? For once in your life don't argue. How
old were you when you first came here?"

Doyle shrugged and bowed to the inevitable. "Seven."

Once started, he couldn't stop. To begin with, Bodie prompted with an
occasional question; then as his presence was forgotten and the stream of
memories poured out more fluently, he just relaxed, listening. Doyle had a
true artist's eye and the ability to paint pictures with words as well as
brushes. Riverside Farm and its occupants, and the summer holidays of the
small boy who had grown up to be his partner and the one person in the
world whom Bodie truly loved, came to life on the inner screen of his
closed eyelids.

The quiet, reminiscent voice continued creating its magic for a long time
before trailing off into silence. When Bodie opened his eyes he found
Doyle staring at him with an expression of irritated embarrassment.

"Thought you were going to tell me when you got fed-up? I didn't mean to
put you to sleep, you know."

"Sleep? I wasn't asleep; I was years away." Bodie pushed himself upright
and regarded Doyle with complete seriousness. "Don't understand what
you're going on about, Ray. All that stuff about losing your childhood is
nonsense. Just because they've built a few houses... All the important
bits are where they really matter." At the other man's puzzled look he
tapped a forefinger gently on the side of Doyle's head. "In here, you
idiot! Memories, sunshine - memories. Nothing is ever really lost if it
isn't forgotten, and you've forgotten nothing. Whatever happens, whatever
changes, as long as you go on remembering the places and people you knew
and loved and the things you did they will always exist. And now you've
told me everything, so there are two of us to keep it all alive, and that
makes it doubly safe."

Doyle swallowed a sudden constriction in his throat. Whatever reaction he
might have expected to his ramblings about his childhood, that had not
been it.

Trust Bodie to surprise him...!

So perfect was the hard-man, don't-give-a-damn-about-anything-or-anybody
public image, that a lot of people who thought they knew him would have
been startled by that piece of Bodie philosophy. Even Doyle, closer to him
than anyone else, was only slowly coming to plumb the depths of the real
Bodie, the caring, understanding man behind the mask, and to realise that
he had joined the ranks of the privileged few who brought it to the fore:
small children, old people - and Ray Doyle. He blinked away moisture that
was blurring his eyesight.

"You've done it again, d'you know that? Just when I start believing I know
what goes on inside that head of yours, you do or say something like that
and I'm right back at square one. You never cease to amaze me."

"Yeah, well...'s my motto, that: always keep 'em guessing." Bodie
retreated hastily from unwanted self-revelation with practiced ease. Old,
long-ingrained self-protective habits died hard and slowly, even with
Doyle. He shied back, startled, when a quick kiss was planted in the
general region of his right ear.

"Oi, now who's going to get us arrested? What'd you go and do that for,
you idiot?"

"Oh, just because you're Bodie. And because there's an awful lot more to
you than meets the eye. And I love you." Doyle smiled, one of those
heart-stopping efforts so different from his usual urchin grin that always
did extraordinary things to the pit of Bodie's stomach. This one was no
exception. "C'mon, let's go eat. And listen, you never know your luck,
mate. The way things are goin' today they may have built a Home for Buxom
Barmaids on my favourite picnic spot. If they 'ave, I'll just go home and
leave you to it!"

"I'll hold you to that," Bodie threatened, chuckling, as they drove off.

Five minutes later, Doyle pulled the car over onto the grassy verge at the
side of a narrow lane and got out. He stretched and took a deep breath,
and then rested his elbows on the top rail of the five-barred gate beside
which they had stopped. Bodie followed, leaning beside him companionably.
The sun beat hotly down on them out of a cloudless blue sky. The air was
still and sweet, and there were no signs of humanity other than themselves
and the distance-muted sound of a car engine.

"This it, then?" Bodie asked.

"As near as makes no difference," Doyle replied. "It's the other side of
the field, where those trees are."

Bodie's gaze followed a pointing finger. The field before them sloped
steeply up in the centre, the far side hidden beyond the rising ground.
The tops of a grove of trees were just visible. "No barmaids," he
commented, settling his face into an expression of massively overdone
woeful disappointment.

"Prat!" Doyle said affectionately, turning back to the car and opening up
the boot.

Bodie peered inside with delight at the revealed treasure trove of two
cardboard boxes packed full of edible goodies and a third, smaller one
containing plates, glasses and cutlery.

"You planning on feeding the five thousand?"

"Only you," Doyle told him, long familiar with his partner's eating
capabilities. He lifted out one of the boxes of food and set it on the
grass by his feet. "Well, don't just stand there droolin', you lazy sod.
Give us a hand, then!"

"I'm a guest!" Bodie reminded him in an aggrieved tone. "Guests aren't
usually expected to fetch and carry for themselves."

"I know one guest who'll get a thick ear if he doesn't," Doyle said. "Come
on, take some of this stuff across. There's a little clearing right on the
riverbank. Even you can't miss it."

"Yes, oh Lord and Master." Still grumbling, more for appearances sake and
out of habit than for any other reason, Bodie liberated the beer from the
back seat of the car where he had tossed it, and balanced both packs
precariously on top of one of the food containers. Doyle hitched a hip
against the open boot and watched with interest the one-handed struggle to
open the gate without dropping anything.

Bodie cast a jaundiced glance over one shoulder. "Don't bother helping,
will you?"

"Oh, all right then, I won't."

"Thanks a bunch!"

The gate finally succumbed to a kick and swung wide open. The topmost pack
of beer wobbled dangerously, but managed somehow not to fall. Bodie
treated his amused partner to a retribution-promising look, and trudged
off across the field. Grinning, Doyle watched until he was nearly out of
sight; then he locked the car, slung the rug for sitting on over one
shoulder, picked up the remaining two boxes and followed.

He had gone barely a dozen paces into the field when Bodie reappeared at
the top of the rise. Doyle's brain took a second to wonder: *'Why is he
coming back?*' and another to add: '*Why the hell is he running like
that?*' before the answer to both queries hove into view: the largest,
blackest, and undoubtedly the angriest bull it had ever been his
misfortune to encounter. Head down, it was moving at a remarkable turn of
speed for such a massive beast, and gaining steadily on Bodie.

One glance had Doyle agreeing instantly and wholeheartedly with whoever
had first claimed discretion to be the better part of valour. He yelled,
"*Run, Bodie!*" at the top of his voice, and turned and fled for the gate
and safety. Once through, he dropped both boxes - with a rattling crash
from the one containing the crockery - and slammed the gate shut with all
his strength and fastened it.

Bodie, arriving mere seconds later, took off in a flying forward
somersault over the top. He was still in the middle of his landing roll
when the bull, unable to stop in time and too incensed to swerve, crashed
full tilt into the obstruction.

The gate shuddered violently, but held - just.

Bodie picked himself out of the shallow ditch on the far side of the lane
into which his roll had deposited him, and glared furiously at Doyle over
the top of the Escort.

"Of all the stupid, unnecessary pieces of advice I have ever been given,
'Run Bodie!' in a situation like that has to take the bloody biscuit. What
the fuck did you think I was doing?"

"Are you okay?" Doyle demanded.

"I'll be fucking fantastic as soon as I've finished having the coronary,"
Bodie snapped. He picked blades of grass out of his hair and dusted
himself down. "You should try losing a year of your life sometime, mate;
does you no end of good. Oh Christ! I've torn my trousers!"

He regarded the three-inch rent in one knee of said garment balefully,
before transferring the murderous glare to the bull, which was glowering,
red-eyed, at them between the bars of the gate and pawing the ground
viciously. Doyle took a deep breath.

"What'd you do to get it so riled anyway?"

"What do you think I did, ravished its favourite cow or something?" Bodie
shifted his glare to his companion. "I didn't *do* a damn thing! It took
one look at me and decided the field wasn't big enough for both of us. I
didn't hang around to argue."

Doyle rested his folded arms on the top of the car and leaned his forehead
on them. His shoulders began to shake silently. Bodie frowned. Surely he
wasn't...

He *was*! The little toe-rag was actually *laughing*!

"*Doyle*?" he said menacingly.

Doyle looked up, face scarlet and eyes swimming with mirth. "Jesus, Bodie,
you should've s-seen your face when you c-came over the hill," he
spluttered. "You were s-shit scared!"

"You're damn right I was! Have you looked at the size of that beast?"
Bodie demanded with manifest exasperation. "And come to think about it, I
don't see what you have to snigger about. You were pretty quick off the
mark yourself once you realised what was happening."

"Yeah, I was, wasn't I? Oh God! Cowley's Finest, run off by a bloody
bovine Goliath!"

Doyle hiccupped and put his head down again, dissolving into another
helpless paroxysm of laughter. His shock and fright beginning to fade,
after a moment Bodie began to see the funny side as well and joined in,
leaning weakly against the side of the car. It was some considerable time
before either of them managed to get themselves back under some semblance
of control.

Doyle sniffed loudly, and wiped his streaming eyes on the back of his
hand. "If only I'd had a camera!"

Bodie winced. "Thank heaven for small mercies! I'm going to have enough
trouble living down the story without having it immortalised on film as
well," he said glumly. "You do intend spreading it all over HQ the minute
we get back, don't you?" 

"The thought never occurred to me!" Doyle denied, all indignant virtue and
somehow managing to look supremely innocent whilst lying through his
teeth.

"Oh yeah?"

"Would I do such a thing?"

"Would you scratch an itch? Is the Pope a Catholic?" Bodie wasn't fooled
for an instant. He glanced around and added, "What happens now, then? Go
home, do we?"

Doyle set his jaw with familiar stubbornness. "I," he said, "came out here
to 'ave a picnic, and a picnic I am going to have if it kills me."

"Try having one in that field and it may well do," Bodie said with
complete conviction. The bull had ceased its apparent attempt to dig
through to the Antipodes, but was still regarding them with a
less-than-friendly expression in its beady eyes.

"Determined I may be, crazy I'm not!" Doyle retorted. "We'll go on to
Pollock's Pool instead. That's where I used to go swimming. It's only a
couple of minutes farther along the lane, and I intended taking you there
later anyway."

He picked up the two boxes resting somewhat drunkenly against one another
on the grass and replaced them in the boot of the car. A quick glance at
the one containing the crockery produced a sigh of relief that nothing
appeared to have been broken by its earlier sudden impact with the ground.
Then he raised an innocently enquiring eyebrow at his watching partner.
"All right, then, what happened to the food and booze you had with you?"

Bodie looked embarrassed. "I dropped everything when that thing started
chasing me. Don't you dare laugh again! Something had to go, and I knew
there was more grub but there's only one of me."

"That there is, lover!" Doyle agreed, schooling his expression to rather
overdone solemnity and earning a suspicious frown. "But you'll be sorry.
That box was the one with all your favourite junk in it: strawberry jam
sarnies 'n' swiss roll 'n' chocolate 'n' stuff like that." He slammed the
boot lid shut, cheerfully ignoring Bodie's anguished groan of
disappointment, and got into the car. "You ought to 'ave hung onto the
beer at least. Now we'll have to make do with the couple of cans of Coke
and the flask of coffee I brought."

"We could always go back to the village and get more," Bodie suggested
hopefully, sliding into the passenger seat.

"No way, my son! You just want another go at chatting up that barmaid, and
I'm not having that. It'd only overtax your strength," Doyle added smugly.

Bodie's voluble and colourful response to that unwarranted slur lasted
throughout the brief drive, and continued unabated across yet another
field - suspiciously and carefully investigated for lurking bulls before
he set foot in it - to the wide bend in the river where the current slowed
and the water deepened under overhanging trees.

Doyle sighed with satisfaction, and took several deep slow breaths. 

"That," he said, pointing a long forefinger at a weed-smothered heap of
rubble on the opposite bank, "is the remains of the Pollock's cottage.
According to the story, there were two brothers, Tom and Jim. Jim fell in
love with a local girl who turned him down so, heartbroken, he went off to
fight in the Great War. Unfortunately, he was so busy thinking about 'er
that he didn't keep his head down, and got himself killed. When the news
came through, Tom was so upset that he came straight out of the cottage
and drowned himself in the river. At least, rumour has it that was the
reason."

"What - here?" Bodie asked, gazing at the peacefully smooth expanse of
water sparkling in the dappled sunlight.

"Yeah, right here," Doyle concurred. He spread the rug and flung himself
down upon it. "'S why it's been known as Pollock's Pool ever since."

"I don't think I like it here."

"Eh? Bodie, the guy killed 'imself sixty-odd years ago..."

"Don't be daft, I didn't mean that," Bodie interrupted dismissively. "It's
just that... Well, there's been something wrong with every other place
you've taken me to today. Makes me wonder what might be up with this one."

"Not a thing," Doyle said, looking around contentedly. "It's lovely, this
is. Just as I remember it."

"That's what worries me," Bodie protested suspiciously. "Doesn't fit in
with the rest of today at all. There has to be something wrong. I know -
there'll be an ants' nest...or poison ivy...or an alligator in the
pool..."

"Don't be ridiculous! Sit down and shut up, Cassandra!" Doyle commanded.
He rummaged in the box of food and produced a chicken leg, rather in the
manner of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. "Here, wrap your jaws
around that, it'll make you feel better. You're probably beginning to
suffer from incipient starvation."

As always, food concentrated Bodie's attention wonderfully, to the
exclusion of all else. He dropped down beside Doyle and the chicken leg
speedily changed hands. "What else have you got in there?" emerged in
slightly muffled tones from around a large mouthful of succulent flesh.

"Lots of things." Doyle slapped away a questing hand. "But I think we
should wait until after we've 'ad our swim."

Bodie paused, mouth poised to take another bite. "What swim?"

"I didn't bring you out here just so you could stuff yourself," Doyle told
him." Can't go swimming on a full stomach, you'll take cramp and drown. I
thought we'd swim first and eat afterwards."

"I'm starving!" Bodie protested. "You said we were going to eat. And you
never mentioned anything about going for a swim."

"Ah, c'mon Bodie! 'S lovely for swimming in, that water is. I used to do
it all the time. It'll cool us down a treat. I'm all hot and sticky from
driving in this heat."

"I haven't brought any trunks."

"Who needs 'em!" Doyle kicked off trainers and socks, and emerged from
pulling his t-shirt over his head to find his companion's public
prudishness rearing its head. He always had trouble reconciling such
Victorian lapses with the other Bodie, the one whose inventiveness and
abandonment in bed made their lovemaking so exciting.

"You expect me to swim starkers?"

"Why not?" Doyle paused in the act of unbuckling the belt of his jeans.
"Don't tell me you've never done it before."

"As it happens, I haven't. And I don't intend to start now. With the kind
of luck we've been having all day, a convent school outing complete with
half a dozen nuns'd turn up as soon as I'd stripped off."

"So what? Give 'em an unexpected thrill then, won't we?" said Doyle,
wriggling out of jeans and briefs, totally unconcerned.

"Exhibitionist!"

Doyle posed, one knee slightly bent, hand on out-thrust hip. "If you've
got, flaunt it, I always say. C'mon, mate, there's no one around for miles
except me, and I'm not goin' to see anything I haven't seen before am I?
If I do, I'll shoot it."

"Oh, ha-bloody-ha!" Bodie said, unamused. "Look, you want to go
skinny-dipping, sunshine, go right ahead. Don't let me stop you. I, on the
other hand, intend keeping all my clothes exactly where they are."

"You know what you are, don't you?" Doyle protested. Bodie remained
adamant. "Oh all right, then, spoilsport! But if you can't be persuaded to
swim, at least come in and paddle. Keep me company - please, Bodie? It'll
be no fun on my own."

Bodie sighed. Nobody could wheedle in the same way as Doyle could when he
set his mind to it, or look so childishly disappointed if he didn't get
his own way. Nobody could be quite as persistent as Doyle, either; when he
really wanted something he would hang in there for ever, And Bodie noted a
gleam in the green eyes that told him without words that there would be no
peace without compromise on his part.

"It's too deep for paddling," he said hopefully.

"No it isn't." Doyle bent over to peer in the water, best asset
prominently on display. Bodie swallowed hard, hands itching to reach out
and touch. "It's only about a foot or so here at the edge, but it gets
pretty deep in the middle. You'll be okay if you stay close to the bank.
And you can wipe that look off your face." 

"Which look?" Doyle straightened and turned. "The one that says you'd like
to have me for lunch. Don't come the innocent with me, mate, I can read
you like a book even with me back turned. If you don't swim with me
there'll be none of that sort of thing. On the other hand," he added
magnanimously, grinning at Bodie's exaggeratedly crestfallen expression,
"if you do come for a paddle, I might just possibly consider allowing you
a nibble or two for afters."

"That's blackmail!"

"You're damn right it is. Well?"

"You," Bodie told him, beginning to remove his shoes and socks with
resignation, "could probably persuade it to snow in the Sahara. Okay, you
can give over. I'll get my feet wet."

Doyle chuckled - one of his plumbing-gurgle specials - and stepped into
the water, wincing momentarily at its cool bite on heated skin. He waded
in until he was waist deep, and then ducked and came up swimming. When he
turned to face the bank again Bodie, a wary expression on his face and
trousers rolled up to his knees, was just stepping in gingerly.

"Owww! This is bloody freezing!"

"*No*?" Doyle said, his tone heavily ironic. He shook sodden curls out of
his eyes. "Quit whinging, for heaven's sake, you'll stop noticing it in a
minute." 

He ignored the pained reception of this callous lack of sympathy, and set
off at a leisurely crawl to explore the limits of the pool. Bodie stood
for several minutes, enjoying watching the lean body splashing about like
a curly-haired porpoise. Doyle was a smooth, strong swimmer who could cut
through the water like a knife if need be; at the moment he was simply
enjoying himself, relaxed and happy. And when Doyle was happy, Bodie was
happy too.

The past six weeks had provided neither of them with any opportunity for
either relaxation or happiness. The assignment had been difficult and
dangerous from the word go, and had been made worse by the fact that they
had been working apart for almost all the time. For the first five weeks
Doyle had been undercover, trying to infiltrate the terrorist group in
which CI5 was interested in order to garner information about their next
target. Bodie had been his liaison, but in the sort of situation where one
tiny slip could have spelt disaster they had been able to make contact
only by brief, carefully staged 'accidental' meetings.

The final few days before the counter-operation went down had been the
worst of all: Doyle unable to pull out, because his doing so might have
engendered suspicions which could have led to the terrorists' plans being
changed or the whole thing being aborted; Bodie up to his neck in a
twenty-four-hour stakeout, and unable to contact Doyle at all for the same
reasons.

Then, there had been the actual operation itself. It had lasted for less
than two hours, but at the end of it four of the terrorists lay dead and
two CI5 agents were injured. That had been followed by non-stop, intensive
interrogations of the surviving terrorists...followed by seemingly endless
de-briefings and written reports...

Because of the change in their relationship the strain on both of them had
been tremendous, even greater than in similar operations in the past.
Working apart had been the killer, the not *knowing* if the other was
safe. When Cowley had finally told them, "Go home. I don't want to see
either of you until Monday morning." the relief of realising it was all
over at last and they were both still in one piece had been overwhelming.

At that moment, all Bodie had wanted to do was put his arms around Doyle
and hold him close and love him and never let him go again. Doyle's eyes
had said he felt exactly the same way. But over-stressed bodies and minds
had had other ideas. On the way out of HQ the exhaustion they had been
holding at bay for so long had fallen on both of them like the proverbial
ton of bricks. They had gone home to separate flats and separate beds, and
Bodie had been nearly comatose before his head hit the pillow and had
remained so until Doyle's phone call this morning. 

Now, however, rested and relaxed and reacting pleasurably to Doyle's
company, his fertile imagination was making plans for later. A nibble or
two for afters, indeed! There would be no quick fumble in the grass if he
had any say in the matter. He fully intended to take Doyle to bed and love
him long and slow and hard in every possible way that imagination could
devise. And since Doyle's imagination was no less fertile than his own, he
had no doubt the favour would be returned with interest.

In fact, if things proceeded as planned, they would both be lucky if they
were capable of standing up on Monday morning, never mind returning to
duty!

"You puttin' down roots and turning into a water-lily or something,
petal?"

Bodie jumped as Doyle's husky, teasing voice broke in on his contemplation
of a very pleasant near future. "Uhh! I was thinking."

"Oh, is that what you were doing? Should watch it if I were you." Doyle
trod water nearby, eyebrows lost in the tangle of wet curls clinging to
his forehead. "That sort of thing can put a serious strain on the brain
y'know, especially when it's not used to it."

"Oh...go dodge a harpoon, Moby Dick!"

It was a very long way from being the wittiest riposte Bodie had ever
made, but Doyle greeted it with another of his chuckles before flipping
over into a lazy backstroke and continuing his explorations. 

Bodie sidestepped swiftly to avoid the miniature tsunami raised by
carelessly splashing feet, and set off on a wandering exploration of his
own along the river's edge. After a while, tired of bruising his feet on
the pebbled bottom and of having his ankles tickled by shoals of
sticklebacks and other, less easily identifiable creatures, he found a
level section of bank and sat down, leaning back on his elbows, feet
dangling just above the surface of the water.

It was just as Doyle had said it would be: peaceful and quiet, except for
birdsong and the sounds of the river itself intermingled with Doyle's
distant splashing, the air sweet and fresh and warm without even the hint
of a breeze.

Gradually, Bodie slipped backwards until he was lying flat on his back,
hands clasped on his chest. His eyes drifted shut. It was so nice
here...miles away from their usual haunts, and the dirty world of cross
and double-cross...

Now, if only he had something to eat he'd be really happy...

"Gettin' past it, are we? Reduced to takin' a nap in the middle of the day
now?" Doyle's intrusive voice startled Bodie for the second time, bringing
him out of a light doze.

"I'm not asleep, just resting my eyes," he denied hastily, opening one eye
and squinting past the end of his nose.

"Could've fooled me!" Standing in the river grinning while water ran in
rivulets down his lean body and his wet curls plastered themselves to his
skull, Doyle shook himself vigorously.

"Give over! Worse than a bloody dog, you are!" Bodie scrambled inelegantly
to his feet.

He didn't quite make it. Several factors combined to create the resultant
disaster, his awkward starting position and too great haste among them. He
was nearly upright when one still wet foot skidded on the grassy edge of
the riverbank and, losing the little balance he had, he stumbled forward,
arms flailing wildly. Doyle had time for only one dismayed yelp before an
all too solid partner crashed into him, and they both vanished into the
river in an enormous fountain of spray.

When the water settled it revealed an irate Bodie struggling to
disentangle himself from his octopus-like involvement with Doyle and stand
up. Succeeding at last, he clambered out onto dry land and proceeded to
make it very wet indeed by dripping all over it like a human waterfall.

"Oh God, I'm soaked to the fucking skin!"

Clambering onto his own feet, Doyle could no more have prevented his
reaction than he could have stopped breathing. Despite Bodie's thunderous
expression, despite the complaints of those portions of his anatomy that
had borne the brunt of his impact with the stony riverbed, he burst out
laughing.

And found himself the recipient of the kind of glare that had been known
to strip paint at twenty paces.

"Just what, exactly, do you find so bloody funny?" Bodie demanded.

Doyle attempted to control himself, failed miserably, and laughed all the
harder. "Y-you..." he spluttered, "you should s-see...you ought...oh,
C-Christ, I think I'm goin' to die...!"

"That can be arranged, if you don't shut your face," Bodie told him
ominously. "This is all your fault!"

"My fault? What do you mean, *my* fault?" Doyle sobered considerably at
the accusation - unjustified, in his opinion. He climbed out of the water
to face his partner, gloriously naked, his clenched fists resting on bony
hips. "It was an accident. You slipped."

"If you hadn't been spraying water everywhere like a Shetland sheepdog I
wouldn't have tried to get out of your way, and if I hadn't tried to get
out of your way I wouldn't have slipped," said Bodie with, to him,
inescapable logic, not to mention a large amount of ire. "And if I hadn't
slipped, I wouldn't have fallen in and got fucking soaked..."

"Oh, all *right*, there's no need to go on about it!" Doyle snapped,
fading amusement rapidly giving way to annoyance. "I suppose if you're
really all that determined to blame me for everything, you'll do it
anyway, no matter what I say and whether there's any truth in it or not.
C'mon, let's go back to where our things are and you can strip off. Your
clothes'll dry in no time if you hang 'em in the sun for a while."

He turned his back on the still muttering Bodie and stalked off along the
riverbank through the close-growing trees. Nobody - but *nobody* - he had
ever known could be as irritating as Bodie could be if he really put his
mind to it. What had happened was unfortunate, in fact the whole day was
turning out to be unfortunate in one way or another, but it was also funny
in a black sort of way. Depended on how you looked at it.

Generally, Bodie's sense of humour, as errant as Doyle's own, would have
had him laughing too as it had done in the case of the bull. Somewhere
along the line, however, it appeared to have vanished, and it was all too
obvious that he had no intention whatsoever of conceding there was
anything even remotely amusing about the present situation.

Doyle flicked a quick glance over one shoulder. Bodie was only a few steps
behind, still wearing an expression guaranteed to sour cream and radiating
an amazing amount of outraged dignity for one in his dripping condition.
In spite of his own increasing irritation Doyle had to fight down an
impulse to laugh again. Another outburst of hysterics on his part
certainly would not be appreciated just at the moment.

No. Self-control, diplomacy, and above all a generous helping of lunch
were what were needed to soothe severely ruffled feathers, and restore the
lost sense of the ridiculous. Talk about the way to a man's heart! Over
the years Doyle had discovered that feeding Bodie's ever-hungry digestive
system was the highway to so much more than just that.

Just then they emerged from amongst the trees into the small open grassy
area where they had left their belongings, and Doyle got a grandstand view
of the latest disaster to strike. Unable to believe his eyes, he halted so
suddenly that Bodie, too close behind, crashed into him before he too
could stop. And then Doyle plunged forward with an ear-splitting yell.

"Bloody animal! Gerroff! Go on - *get out of it*!"

The goat, whose head was buried in the ruins of the cardboard box and
remains of their scattered food as it munched happily, leapt like a
startled chamois. It took one, terrified look at the furious apparition
bearing down upon it and immediately departed at high speed for pastures
new - and safe. Doyle charged after it, still yelling - until he suddenly
came to his senses and realised he was out in the open in the middle of
the field, stark naked, in full view of anyone who happened to pass by in
the lane.

Not that there was anyone there at the moment, and this place wasn't
exactly Piccadilly Circus at the best of times...but considering the way
things had been going from bad to worse all day...

He could almost see the headline in THE SUN: '*NUDE CI5 AGENT IN FIELD
WITH GOAT! WE REVEAL ALL!*'

Cowley's reaction did not bear thinking about.

Consigning the goat - which had vanished - to the lowest pit in hell with
considerable relish, he beat a strategic retreat back to the safe
concealment of the trees and thence to what remained of their picnic site,
where he found Bodie dripping miserably over the ruins.

"Damn thing disappeared through a hole in the hedge into the next field.
Must have been where it came form in the first place." Doyle regarded the
evidence of the goat's depredations in disgust. "God, what a mess!"

"I," Bodie said suddenly in a deceptively calm, quiet voice as he waved a
hand about six inches above his head, "have had it up to here with this
picnic in the country lark. I'm going home!"

"Ah, c'mon, mate..."

"I," Bodie continued as though Doyle had not spoken, "was woken up this
morning at an indecent hour by an idiot on the phone, and persuaded into
this jaunt against my better judgement. I have been chased to within an
inch of my life by a bovine King Kong, ripped the knee out of my second
best pair of trousers, and ruined a perfectly good new shirt by falling in
the river. And then, having suffered a conspicuous lack of sympathy from
the same idiot who got me into all this in the first place, I find that a
bloody goat has *eaten my lunch*! I," he reiterated firmly, "am going
home!"

"It's not that I don't sympathise," Doyle protested, "it's just that..."

Once again his attempt to speak was ignored. "You can stay and commune
with nature if you want to, sunshine," Bodie added as he set off across
the field towards the lane and the parked car. "Otherwise, you'd best stir
yourself or you'll be walking home."

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Doyle asked the retreating back, his
annoyance flaring again.

"Such as?" Bodie glanced back over a shoulder but didn't slow down.

"It's my car and I've got the keys."

"Not any more you haven't. I took 'em out of your jeans while you were
chasing the goat."

"Bloody 'ell!"

Doyle began a mad scramble to get dressed as Bodie continued his
determined trek towards the car. In the mood he was in at the moment, the
exasperating so-and-so was perfectly capable of carrying out his threat
and driving off, and Doyle didn't fancy being stranded miles from home.
Decently covered once more in clothes that clung to damp skin, he gathered
up the rug and the still mercifully undamaged box of crockery, abandoned
to its fate the mess the goat had made, and took off at a run in Bodie's
footsteps.

When he arrived at the car Bodie was already in the driver's seat with the
engine running. Doyle flung rug and box into the back seat and himself
into the front. He barely had his backside on the seat and the door closed
before Bodie had swung the car into a three-point turn and was roaring
back the way they had come. 

Doyle slumped down, clamped his teeth tightly together, and counted slowly
and silently to twenty with immense concentration. Now was not the time to
lose his temper. Bodie had a right to be annoyed and if he, Doyle, were
honest about it he had to admit that, had the boot been on the other foot,
he would not be feeling too pleased with life himself at the moment.

He stole a glance at the mutinous profile beside him, and felt a twinge of
guilt. His spur-of-the-moment plan to visit childhood memories with Bodie
had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Too good, maybe? Perhaps the
possibility that it could all go pear shaped ought to have been expected.
After all, despite his years in Africa, and in the Paras and the SAS,
Bodie was really a big city boy at heart. Anywhere beyond Neasden was like
foreign soil to him, to be ventured into only after language lessons and
Yellow Fever jabs. Dragging him out of his natural habitat had been asking
for trouble, and it had certainly found them!

Doyle sighed. Usually it was he who over-reacted, as he had done earlier
in Upton and at the former site of the farm and, as had happened then, it
was always Bodie who jollied him out of it with a mixture of teasing and
sympathy. Now appeared to be one of the rare occasions when he could
return the favour. Their off-duty time together, and especially this
weekend, was much too precious for them to spend grumping at one another
over trivialities. He could think of much pleasanter activities, had been
thinking about them all day, in fact. 

And judging by Bodie's expression, making peace could be an uphill
struggle; so the sooner he got started...

"Look, mate, maybe it was my fault that you fell in the river, and I
shouldn't have laughed, but I couldn't help myself."

"Oh, don't worry about it," Bodie said sarcastically. "I loved every
minute of it, really I did."

Doyle tightened his lips, breathed deeply, and swallowed another large
slice of humble pie. "I didn't plan on everything goin' wrong, you know,"
he said in a conciliatory tone. "I wanted you to enjoy today, not suffer
one disaster after another. Seems to me, Somebody up there doesn't like
us."

"Doesn't like me, you mean."

"All right, doesn't like *you*," Doyle agreed. "I shouldn't have laughed
at you, and I'm sorry I did - but you know what me sense of humour's like.
And it *was* funny..."

"*I* was not amused," Bodie said in much the same tone as Queen Victoria
might have used. "Even if you were!"

"You ought to 'ave seen your face when you realised you were goin' to fall
in the river and there wasn't a damn thing you could do to stop yourself,"
Doyle said. "C'mon, Bodie, you know you would've found it hilarious if
it'd been me."

"I would not!"

"Yes you would!"

"Would not!"

"Would!"

"Wouldn't..." Bodie made the fatal mistake of catching Doyle's eye, and
was lost. A reluctant grin began to surface, and the atmosphere in the car
lightened considerably. "Oh, all right, I probably would have done!" He
glanced down at his sodden condition and the grin widened. "I just hope
you still think it's so funny when you start noticing the state of your
car. I've been dripping all over it like Niagara."

"It'll dry out," Doyle said carelessly, too relieved that his companion's
mislaid good humour had been restored much more easily than feared to
worry about something as mundane as the state of his car's interior.

Bodie chuckled suddenly. "Talking about faces, you ought to have seen
yours, sunshine, when you realised I was going to fall on top of you."

"Have you taken a good look at yourself lately?" Doyle enquired acidly.
"You're no featherweight, you know, and that riverbed was covered in
stones. I'll 'ave bruises on me bruises tomorrow."

"I'll kiss them better," Bodie offered, and then added aggrievedly, "And
talking about weight - I'm a lot lighter than I used to be. No breakfast,
and no lunch...I could kill that bloody goat! I was looking forward to
something to eat. Oh hell, do we have to go through the village again?"

"It's the only direct route back to the main road and the motorway."

Bodie groaned. He slowed down to negotiate his way around Upton Green and
along the main street, both of which were even more congested than they
had been earlier. Once through the worst of it, he began picking up speed
again.

"I've been thinking..." Doyle began.

"Hurt, did it?" Bodie asked pleasantly, getting some of his own back for
an earlier slur.

"...about your lack of sustenance," Doyle continued, blithely ignoring the
interruption. "When we get back to Town, how does stopping off for a
takeaway from the Golden Dragon grab you? My treat. You can have whatever
you want," he added rashly.

"Anything I want? And you're paying?" Bodie asked carefully, checking.

Doyle mentally reviewed the condition his wallet was likely to be in after
his partner had gone through the Golden Dragon's menu like a dose of
salts, and winced. "I'm paying," he confirmed. "We can go back to my
place. There's a Steve McQueen film on the box, that prisoner of war
thingy... 'The Great Escape'."

"You can't stand Steve McQueen! And you've been dodging 'The Great Escape'
for years!"

"I don't suppose it'll kill me if I watch it just once, will it?" Doyle
said. He didn't sound too certain. "Anyway, I figure I owe you one for
today."

Bodie rolled his eyes skyward and smiled happily. "Oh, Lord, this makes
everything that's happened almost worthwhile. All the grub I can eat, at
your expense, and then getting to watch you squirm through 'The Great
Escape'. I think I may have died and gone to heaven!"

"There's no need to rub it in. The offer isn't written in stone, y'know,
it can be withdrawn at any time. And talking of heaven..." Doyle treated
first the speedometer and then the hedgerows flashing past to a pointed
glance, "...don't you think seventy is a bit fast for this hill,
considering there's a diabolical left-hand bend coming up at the bottom of
it?"

"There isn't?"

"There bloody well is! Slow down, you berk!"

"Oh damn!"

Bodie crashed down through the gears, only to be rewarded by a grating
rattle from the direction of the gearbox. "Where the hell has third gone?"
he snarled, braking hard.

He changed down still farther, with no appreciable result other than more
painfully unpleasant and discordant noises. Doyle grabbed at the nearest
handhold as the bottom of the hill and its sharp left-hander rushed at
them much too fast for comfort, or safety. Somehow Bodie wrestled the
Escort around it and freewheeled to a halt, thankfully still on his own
side of the road.

After a long and expressively silent pause Doyle peeled his fingers off
the dashboard, and ungritted his teeth before saying, much too quietly,
"You complete and utter berk, what have you gone and done to my car?"

Bodie tried the useless clutch pedal and gear lever again, and then
switched off the ignition with a sigh of frustration and glanced at Doyle
glumly. "I think the clutch has gone."

"You think the..." Doyle's voice rose. "Of all the stupid, ham-fisted..."

For the next couple of minutes he demonstrated an astonishing grasp of the
English language, particularly its more colourful invective. Until he
finally ran out of breath and momentum, he did not repeat himself once.
Despite the fact that the tirade was directed against himself and his
driving abilities - or lack thereof - Bodie received it with bemused
admiration.

"I don't believe some of those words. You're making them up."

"You're an ignorant sod as well as the rest of it, you know that?" Doyle
told him. He leaned back and sighed wearily. "All right, then, what are
you waiting for? Go on, call in."

"Me? Why me?"

"You're driving, so it's your breakdown."

"It's your car," Bodie protested.

Doyle fished in his pocket for a coin. "Okay, if you're going to be like
that about it, I'll toss you for the pleasure. Heads!"

"Tails!"

Doyle lost.

To the accompaniment of a distant rumble of thunder and one of Bodie's
smug grins, he unhooked the R/T handset. "4.5 to Central. Come in,
Central."

"Central. Go ahead, 4.5."

"Julie, love, patch me through to the garage, will you?"

"Certainly, 4.5." There was an infinitesimal hesitation, then the radio
officer's voice added with a hint of amusement, "You...umm... haven't
mislaid your car again by any chance, have you?"

Bodie sniggered.

Doyle groaned. He was still trying to live down the embarrassing occasion
when, in the heat of the moment, he had abandoned his car in a maze of
North London side streets to continue a chase on foot and then been unable
to remember exactly where he had left it. Cowley had been less than
pleased, especially when the local Traffic Branch with many snide remarks
had returned it. Everyone else on the Squad had thought it hilarious.

"No, Julie darling, I have not mislaid my car."

"Pity, we could have done with another good laugh; it's been dead boring
here all day. Patching you through now."

"A fiver says it's Bert who's on duty," Bodie offered.

Doyle shook his head and grimaced. "No way, mate. The way things 'ave been
going today, that's an absolute cert, not a bet."

The R/T crackled back into life. "Russell here. What's the problem, 4.5?"

Doyle's expressive eyebrows climbed into a "*What did I tell you?*"
position, and he grimaced again in resignation. To Bert Russell, CI5's
chief mechanic, all cars were feminine and to be treated with the care and
attention most men lavished on their mistresses. To this end he waged a
constant battle with all those on the Squad, from Cowley downwards, who
regarded a car as four wheels and an engine, something that got you from A
to B, preferably as fast as possible. He wasn't going to like the current
situation one bit.

He didn't. When their predicament had been explained to him, he too
demonstrated volubly a comprehensive grasp of the language, combined with
a predictably poor opinion of a so-called skilled driver who got himself
into such a spot.

"I wasn't driving, 3.7 was," Doyle protested as soon as he could get a
word in, cheerfully dropping his partner in it in the sure and certain
knowledge that, were the positions reversed, Bodie would do exactly the
same to him.

"Oh, ta very much!" Bodie muttered, not quite sotto voce, as once again
his driving abilities were called into question and then disposed of, this
time in one succinct sentence.

Doyle scowled warningly at him, just before Russell asked, "Where are you
anyway?"

Doyle told him. The detailed directions were received with a groan. "Why
me, Lord? I suppose it was too much to hope for that you might have done
this a bit closer to Base. Okay, I'll be with you as soon as I can, with a
spare car. Just stay put, for God's sake!"

"Where does he think we can go with no clutch?" Bodie enquired of the
world at large.

Doyle hastily thumbed the R/T off. "Shut up, Bodie! You know what he's
like. We're off-duty, so if you irritate him the bugger's perfectly
capable of leaving us stuck out here for hours, just for jollies." There
was a second grumble of thunder, much closer and louder this time, and a
sudden chilly breeze gusted in through the open window. He peered up at
the rapidly darkening sky. "I think this heat wave is about to break."

Bodie directed his own gaze skywards just as the first large, fat
raindrops pattered onto the roof of the car. "Could be right. Give it a
few minutes and you'll be the only ray of sunshine around here. It looks
like the monsoon's getting ready to set in."

An hour and a half later, when Russell finally arrived in one of the gold
Capri's closely followed by a minion in the CI5 breakdown van, the monsoon
- or a reasonable facsimile of it - had indeed set in. The rain was coming
down like stair-rods and bouncing back off the parched ground, and the
massive thunderstorm that had recently passed directly overhead was still
creating a spectacular son-et-lumiere effect somewhere to the north. The
temperature had abruptly dropped at least ten degrees Celsius, and Bodie
was now cold as well as wet through and in typical Bodie fashion not
suffering in silence. 

Doyle's patience, never very robust even at the best of times, was wearing
exceedingly thin, so the arrival of the rescue party was greeted with
considerable relief.

The transfer from one car to the other was speedily accomplished, the keys
of the Capri being handed ostentatiously to Doyle. This manoeuvre was
treated to one of Bodie's best scowls, the intimidatory effect of which
was spoiled by several shivers and an enormous sneeze. Russell replied
with a scowl of his own which was a perfect match for Bodie's in ferocity.

"Accidents going somewhere to happen, both of 'em!" drifted sourly in
their wake as they drove off in a shower of spray from the spinning rear
wheels, before he turned to the abandoned Escort with a sigh of
resignation.

The journey back to London was completed in record time. Once they were on
the move again, and the heater had been turned up to maximum, Bodie
cheered up slightly. It didn't stop him complaining altogether but it was
at least enough to prevent murder being done. When they eventually pulled
up outside the Golden Dragon, Doyle switched off the engine and turned to
him with a sigh.

"Okay, Moanin' Minnie, what do you want to eat?"

Bodie sniffled and blew his nose. "Everything," he said, voice muffled
behind his handkerchief.

"Everything? Even you can't eat everything."

"I can make a bloody good stab at it. I'm starving! Just because you can
survive on less than an anorexic sparrow at times doesn't mean we can all
do likewise, you know. You did promise I could have anything I wanted, and
I want everything." Bodie fixed him with a challenging blue stare.
"Unless, of course, you've changed your mind?"

For a split second Doyle thought about reneging on his offer, but the
gleam in Bodie's eyes warned against any such thing and he gave up. "Just
so long as you remember I don't print me own fivers, mate."

Back at the flat he relieved his companion of the multitude of containers
holding, if not quite 'everything' the Golden Dragon had to offer, then at
least a large proportion of Bodie's favourites, and nudged him in the
direction of the bathroom. "Go on, then, take off those wet things and
have a hot shower," he ordered. "Can't have you getting sick. I'll put
this stuff to keep warm until we're ready for it."

"Yes, Mum!" Bodie said, good humour completely restored once more by
anticipation of a substantial meal, and the memory of the pained
expression on Doyle's face as he had parted with what he considered an
inordinate amount of money for it. Serve the little sod right! Shouldn't
make promises he wasn't prepared to keep!

In the bathroom he stripped off his chilly, soggy clothing and stepped
under the shower spray, which was running as hot as he could stand it. He
was just beginning to feel comfortably human again when the curtain was
twitched aside, and Doyle thrust a large steaming mug at him.

"Here, drink this!"

"What is it?" Bodie sniffed suspiciously. "Whisky?"

"With hot water and a spoonful of sugar in it," Doyle confirmed.

"Sugar? In whisky?" Bodie was horrified. "Cowley'd have your guts for
garters if he knew about this!"

"My Gran's sovereign remedy for a threatenin' cold, this is," Doyle told
him. "Get it down you, it'll do the world of good."

"A witch was she - your Gran?" Bodie accepted the proffered mug gingerly.

"Amongst other things," Doyle agreed. "C'mon, drink it!"

Bodie took an experimental mouthful and yelped in pain. "It's scalding
hot! I've burnt my tongue to a crisp!" He stuck the injured object out as
far as it would go and squinted horribly in an attempt to see the damage.

Doyle shuddered. "Put that thing back in your mouth, you're makin' the
place look untidy. Go on, that's the whole point of the exercise: you're
supposed to drink it while it *is* hot, not hang about till it cools." 

Bodie made a face, but drained the mug without any further protest and
handed it back. Doyle retreated. The shower curtain fell back into place,
and Bodie resumed his ablutions and consideration of his plans for later
in the evening. Despite his opinion that hot whisky with sugar added was a
nauseating concoction, he had to admit that the warm glow it had planted
in his empty stomach was radiating outwards nicely to meet the warmth of
the shower travelling inwards.

He was beginning to feel much better already. Things could be looking up
at last.

Shortly the curtain was pulled aside again and Doyle reappeared; he too
was naked this time. "When you've quite finished hangin' about in there,
using up all me hot water, I'd like a shower too, y'know. No
consideration, that's your trouble."

Bode settled one lazy and appreciative eye upon the lean, muscular body he
knew so well. "Why don't you just come in and join me?"

For once Doyle refrained from the too obvious retort. "I thought you'd
never ask," he said, and stepped in, using a bony elbow to good effect on
Bodie's ribs. "Shift your carcass and let me at the water."

Bodie obliged. In a very short time Doyle's close proximity and his
twisting, unconsciously sensual movements as he soaped and rinsed himself,
the intermittent sliding touch of skin on skin in the confined space, lit
a small but growing fire in Bodie's nerve endings. He leaned closer and
stroked his hands across Doyle's shoulders, then turned him gently before
letting them drift down Doyle's back to come to rest in the hollow just
above the lean buttocks.

Doyle uttered a thick, husky sound deep in his throat, and moved forward
the scant inch or so until their bodies were pressed tightly together from
chest to thigh. He clasped soap-slippery hands on the back of Bodie's
neck, and stretched the little distance necessary to kiss him deeply and
with great attention to detail. Bodie opened his mouth to welcome the
searching tongue, and the fire spread, centring in his groin. He felt
himself lift and begin to grow, felt Doyle swell against him in response.
Then Doyle was pulling back, his hands loosening from around Bodie's neck
and sliding slowly down over Bodie's chest and ribs to skim with maddening
lightness over his stomach and burgeoning erection.

"Uh-uh! Not now...not here..."

Bodie reached for him again, eyes hazed with rising desire. "Why not?"

Doyle avoided his grasp and stepped out of the shower cubicle and wrapped
a towel defensively around his waist. "Because I don't want to do it in
the shower. Not tonight."

Bodie banked down his arousal with difficulty. "What's different about
tonight? You used to like doing 'it', as you so delicately put it, in the
shower," he said. "Couldn't get enough of 'it' in the shower, if memory
serves."

Doyle grinned at him affectionately. "Give over, you great idiot! I said
don't want, not don't like. I've got plans for later on, and I don't want
them spoiled."

"Plans?" Bodie raised an eyebrow, feeling his blood quicken again. That
sounded very much as though they were both thinking along similar lines, a
not unknown phenomenon in the circumstances. He turned off the water and
emerged from the shower to filch a second towel from under his lover's
fingers. "What sort of plans?"

Doyle sighed. He padded damply over to the airing cupboard for a
replacement towel and began drying his hair. "The sort of plans that
require lots of energy," he said in muffled tones. "Since you haven't
eaten all day, and since I didn't buy all that grub just to have it go to
waste, I think you'd better stock up first. Can't 'ave you flaking out on
me now, can I?"

"Me? Flake out? That'll be the day, sunshine!"

Bodie's stomach chose that moment to emit a loud grumble of complaint and
Doyle poked it ungently with a long forefinger. "See what I mean? I don't
intend taking any chances." He shrugged into his robe and headed for the
door. "Food'll be on the table in five minutes."

By the time that Bodie, dressed in fresh brown cords and a cream shirt,
appeared in the living room the meal had been transferred from its
containers in the oven onto hot plates, and Doyle was opening a bottle of
wine. Bodie stared at him in feigned disapproval.

"You planning to eat like that?"

Doyle glanced down at his robe-clad body. "What's wrong with me? I'm
decent, aren't I? Anyway..." he treated Bodie to a Doyle-special leer from
head to toe and back again, raising goose bumps all the way, "... Putting
clothes on is a waste of time and effort. Only have to take 'em off again
shortly." 

"Oh? How shortly?" A shiver of anticipation ran up Bodie's spine at the
heat of the expression in Doyle's eyes.

"The sooner you sit down and eat, the sooner you'll find out." Doyle
suited his own actins to his words, and repeated the leer - with interest.

His body responding involuntarily to the stimulus, Bodie silently did as
he was told. He knew what Doyle was doing; he had been on the receiving
end of Doyle seductions before, but knowing did not make him any less
susceptible. And Doyle was well aware of that fact. He knew exactly which
buttons to push, and the effect he would get when he pushed them. He often
played on that knowledge, as he was doing now and had done earlier, both
in and out of those skin-tight jeans. Such teasing - and not all of it was
on Doyle's side - was all a part of their relationship, and they both
enjoyed it.

As he ate, Bodie slowly revised his own plans for later to include a
little Doyle-baiting, always a rewarding pastime given the ease with which
he could generally get under Doyle's skin. In fact, it he was any judge of
his lover's filthily inventive mind - and he believed he was - a little
initial frustration would probably work wonders and do the little toad no
harm whatsoever.

When the meal was finished, when the last sliver of meat had been detached
from its bone and consumed, and the last bean sprout and grain of rice
chased successfully around the plate, Bodie tipped his chair back on two
legs and smiled a smile of repletion.

"That was fantastic, mate. I am stuffed!"

Doyle leaned forward with his elbows on the table, and unleashed one of
those heavy-lidded, smouldering, all enveloping looks that Bodie had once
described as being guaranteed to curl the toes of a month old corpse. 

"Oh, you will be, lover, and that's a promise," he said throatily.

Bodie tilted his chin up a couple of inches and looked down his nose.
"Tch, Raymond! That's a very crude remark!"

"Sorry," Doyle said, pseudo contrition oozing from every pore. "I didn't
mean to upset your delicate sensibilities."

Bodie smothered a grin. He pushed back his chair and stood, preparatory to
clearing the table. "That's all right; you didn't, but only because I'm
getting used to that sort of thing where you're concerned," he said
dismissively. "Come on, let's get this lot cleared away and washed up.
Then I'll make some coffee and we can get settled down, all nice and
comfy, in good time for the start of the film."

"What film?"

Doyle's tone was much too innocent, confirming the suspicion that had been
growing at the back of Bodie's mind. He assumed a hurt expression, one of
his better efforts. "You can't possibly have forgotten the second half of
your promise? The bit about the Steve McQueen film on the telly?"

Doyle, who had indeed not forgotten, but had been hoping his intensive
efforts at seductive distraction would make Bodie forget, groaned. He
produced another smouldering look in a last ditch attempt to salvage the
situation. "Wouldn't you rather go to bed with me?"

The husky voice was like warm, soft velvet. Bodie, who was anything but
corpse-like where his partner was concerned, fought to control curling
toes and various other more insistent bodily reactions. Going to bed with
Doyle, and what would happen when they got there, was something which he
had been fondly anticipating all day, but it didn't do to let Doyle get
away with his little games too often.

"You little sod, you're trying to wriggle out of it!" he said.

Doyle had the good grace to look slightly ashamed, and enough common sense
not to try to deny the undeniable. He rose to his feet and came around the
table. He slid both arms around Bodie's waist, and smiled an unconsciously
seductive smile that was all the more effective because, unlike the
previous ones, it was so purely spontaneous. His hands described small
circles on Bodie's back, their warmth searing through the thin cotton
shirt to his skin beneath and sending tiny shivers of pleasure rippling
along every nerve ending.

"Well, what else did you expect? You know that guy gets right up me nose.
Come to bed, Bodie - please? I haven't been putting all of it on just to
get out of watchin' the film; I do want you, you know that, don't you?
It's been so long since we made love - seems like forever! And I've been
dreaming about it ever since I got up this morning...what I'd like you to
do to me, what I want to do to you... I want to screw you right through
the mattress if you must know - right after you've done me. Come to bed
with me, lover. Please? You know you want to."

If there was anyone else alive who could be more persuasive than Doyle
when he set his mind to it, Bodie had yet to meet them. But he had no
intention of allowing himself t be persuaded just yet. At least, not quite
so easily. 

"A promise is a promise!" he protested, preventing himself from
reciprocating Doyle's embrace and giving in to his wheedling only with
extreme difficulty. "You said you owed me..."

"Oh, all right then!" Doyle dropped his arms and turned away, irritably
conceding defeat. Picking up a stack of plates and cutlery, he headed for
the kitchen. "If you're that determined to watch the ruddy thing, then
that's what we'll do. I just hope you enjoy it!"

Bodie followed with the remainder of the dishes, fighting to keep his face
straight. Like taking sweets from a baby, this was. "I always do," he said
smugly. "This'll be the fourth - no, the fifth time I've seen it. Great
film! Soon know the dialogue off by heart, I will."

There was a resounding crash as Doyle deposited his armful of plates onto
the draining board with rather more force than was strictly necessary, or
wise. His reaction elicited a concealed grin from Bodie. Nice touch, that;
got him going perfectly.

"*Who's the priapismic monster now, then?*" Bodie thought, recalling a
certain gibe during the Ojuka affair. Do the little sod good trying to
control his libido for a while. Not for too long, though. Bodie had no
wish to deprive either of them of what they really wanted and needed, nor
complete confidence in his own ability to hold out for any length of time
against his partner. He loved him too much, and Doyle was too appealing,
too damn sexy to resist. Bodie wanted him just as much as, if not more
than, Doyle wanted him, but he did plan on getting at least a little
revenge for the disasters which had befallen earlier, and also on
disabusing Doyle of the notion that he only had to crook his little finger
and he, Bodie, would come running.

That was one truth he intended keeping to himself, for his own sanity if
nothing else. If Doyle ever found out how much control he really had, he'd
be unendurable! Bodie had not the slightest intention of watching *all* of
'The Great Escape', but making Doyle believe he was going to have to sit
through every last minute of it was the whole point of the present
exercise.

The dishes washed and put away, in a somewhat huffy silence on the part of
Doyle, they settled on the couch just in time for the opening credits of
the film, with coffee to hand. Much to his unexpressed surprise, Doyle
found himself hooked from the very beginning. The story caught his
interest early on, and the presence of so many other characters made Steve
McQueen's relatively small role more bearable; he wondered why he had
resisted watching it for so long. His annoyance slowly waned, and even his
desire to get Bodie into bed got put on hold temporarily as he was drawn
into the battle of wits between the prisoners of war and their German
captors and the need to know what happened next.

For Bodie, on the other hand, there was no such problem. Having already
seen the film several times he knew exactly what was going to happen, so
he was free to concentrate on Doyle, and did so without the slightest
compunction.

When he had drained his mug of coffee, he set it down and watched and
waited until the other man was completely engrossed in what was occurring
on the TV screen, then he stretched his legs out comfortably and draped an
arm around Doyle's shoulders. This produced the expected response of Doyle
leaning into the embrace and relaxing in his usual boneless fashion. Bodie
smiled quietly to himself. He gradually strengthened his hold, and some
time and manoeuvring later had carefully rearranged himself into an almost
horizontal position with Doyle tucked awkwardly against him.

"For God's sake, will you sit still!"

Doyle, who had been perfectly comfortable to begin with but now was not,
wriggled irritably and resettled himself, folding his legs up onto the
couch. He ended up half on the cushions and half lying on top of Bodie. 

"Sorry," Bodie lied, resting his chin on the curly head and wrapping both
arms lightly around Doyle's chest.

Having succeeded in getting his lover exactly where he wanted him, with
easy access gained for a roving hand to most parts of the lean body, he
allowed Doyle to become reabsorbed in the film before beginning a slow and
calculated assault. One hand insinuated itself with care inside the
towelling robe. It skimmed with insidious lightness over warm skin, from
collarbone to ribs and back again. His thumb found a nipple, circling and
teasing it to hardness on each slow caress. Doyle uttered a soft,
pleasured noise deep in his throat and flexed his shoulder blades, pushing
up slightly.

Bodie smiled again, secretly. It was always the same; Doyle loved being
touched. He reacted like a cat, almost winding himself around the stroking
hand, always wanting more. And although his attention was still focussed
on the television, his body's subconscious response was exactly what Bodie
had expected.

Bodie's tantalising hand began dipping lower and lower on every downward
stroke. The loosely tied belt of the robe proved no obstacle, loosening
further at only the slightest pressure. His fingertips grazed across
Doyle's thinly fleshed ribs and drifted with exploring feathery touches
down over his abdomen to where a warm softness nestled between his thighs.
Bodie felt it throb and begin to lose its softness as it responded to the
knowing caress of his hand.

Doyle uttered another of those inarticulate, throaty sounds, and shifted
his position. "Stoppit..." he protested, tongue saying one thing, body
another. "...'S getting' to a good bit just now..."

Bodie's wholehearted agreement with that remark had absolutely nothing to
do with the events on the TV screen, and everything to do with his own
body's answer to Doyle's response with one of its own. He retreated
temporarily, his hand sliding upward to rest on Doyle's ribs again. He was
suddenly acutely conscious of the weight and scent of the man in his arms;
aware of the warm, very slightly damp feel of skin-over-bone underneath
his hand and the steady, quickened rise and fall of Doyle's ribcage as he
breathed. Aware too of the sudden, increasing constriction and heat at his
own groin.

All thoughts of teasing or revenge, of who should be ultimately
responsible for getting whom into bed, vanished. All that remained was his
love for this aggravating other half of himself; the love that had been
part of him since long before the day, eight months ago, when he had
finally recognised just what the strange mish-mash of emotions he had been
feeling for Doyle for so long really was. The most astonishing part of the
whole thing, as far as Bodie was concerned, had been the almost
unbelievable discovery at the same time that Doyle actually loved him
every bit as much as he loved Doyle.

Even now, after proof had been piled on proof, he still found that fact
difficult to swallow. Still found himself waking up in a cold sweat in the
middle of the night thinking it had all been a dream; needing to reach out
and touch and hold to reassure himself.

He tipped his head sideways, so he could gaze at the portion of Doyle's
face visible to him. Completely caught up in the action of the film, Doyle
was oblivious of the scrutiny. After a moment, unable to stop himself,
Bodie leaned forward to nuzzle gently with lips and teeth and tongue at a
convenient ear.

"Don't..."

There was no real force or conviction to the protest, and Bodie ignored
it. He added a couple of gentle gusts of warm, moist breath to the
nibbling teeth and exploring tongue. His hand drifted again, returning
with unerring accuracy to that softness he had found before: no longer
quite so soft. He wrapped his fingers around its heat, stroking, and it
began to swell and harden at his touch. Doyle whimpered. A long shiver
rippled through him, and he twisted his head around and looked up.

"Give over, will you?" he said, his breath catching. "I thought...
Aaah...! You said you wanted to see this film..."

"I lied."

Bodie abandoned the now out of reach ear without a second thought, and
took the opportunity offered to lay siege to Doyle's temptingly available
mouth. A very long, very pleasant interlude ensued. When breathing became
absolutely imperative, he came up for air to find a pair of green eyes,
heavy-lidded and hazed with arousal, staring at him accusingly.

"God, but I'm slow on the uptake today. You've been 'aving me on, 'aven't
you?"

Bodie nodded, blue eyes twinkling with amusement in contrast to the
solemnity of his expression.

Doyle groaned. "Would you believe I was actually enjoying the bloody film?
Has anyone ever told you," he asked without rancour, "just what an
unmitigated bastard you are at times?"

"Frequently," Bodie told him. "But you love me in spite of it, don't you?"

Doyle produced one of his deep-throated chuckles. "God 'elp me, I do, and
it's at times like these I worry about me sanity, I really do!" He sucked
in a sharp breath and closed his eyes briefly. "I wish you'd stop...doing
that!"

"Really?" Bodie watched the helpless reaction to his pleasuring hand.

"No, dammit, *not* really!" Doyle groaned. "But if you...don't stop, I'm
not goin' to last long enough to get off this bloody couch and we'll both
be sorry. I want...us both to go together but I can't get at you with
all...those fucking clothes on!"

"Don't worry about it, sunshine," Bodie said, only too aware of his own
condition. "If you were to go over the top this minute, you'd probably
take me right with you every step of the way without a single touch."

Doyle sat up abruptly, and looked and found the obvious evidence of
Bodie's state of arousal that matched his own. He reached down and touched
it with gentle, questing fingertips, feeling its heat and rigidity through
the brown cords. Bodie drew in a ragged breath, his body quivering with
sudden tension.

"You managed to get turned on to that extent just from turnin' me on? Just
from touching me?" Doyle whispered, awed.

Bodie nodded silently, sinking his teeth into his lower lip.

Doyle's eyes were suddenly very bright as he recognised yet again just how
vulnerable to him Bodie had become, and the extent of the power he had
acquired to hurt this man who was so important to him. "Oh, God!" He
caught Bodie's face between both hands and pulled his head down to kiss
him long and deep and fiercely, before drawing back and saying softly,
"Come to bed with me, Bodie. Now! I want to love you like you've never
been loved before - I *need* to love you, and this isn't the proper place
for it..."

"Promises, promises - always chock-full of promises, you are!" Despite the
lightness of his words, Bodie's voice was husky with emotion.

Doyle wriggled free and stood up, pulling the other man up with him.
"Maybe. But this is one promise I can guarantee I'm going to keep, lover."

In the bedroom he shrugged out of his robe in one smooth movement and slid
under the duvet, watching avidly as Bodie undressed quickly. His urgency
did not prevent his usual scowl of disfavour at the high, old-fashioned
bed, nor the familiar complaint.

"When are you going to get rid of this antique? I get a nose-bleed every
time I sleep here."

"I've told you before," Doyle said, "this bed's a family heirloom. Me Gran
left it to me in her will. They don't make 'em like this any more."

"They certainly do not," Bodie grumbled, climbing in beside his lover to
the accompaniment of a cacophony of twanging from the springs, and a
chorus of creaks and groans from the wooden frame. "Quite apart from
needing a stepladder to get into it, this has to be the noisiest bed I've
ever slept in. It sounds like a tone-deaf orchestra trying to tune up
every time we move."

"Listen, mate," Doyle told him, "in the old days people were a bit more
refined and restrained about their lovemaking. They didn't leap about like
bloody great elephants."

Bodie looked suitably offended. "Oi! I haven't noticed much refinement or
restraint coming from your direction either, sunshine. You can do a fair
bit of leaping about yourself, y'know. Speaking of which..."

Doyle reached for him, and then paused. "If the background music is goin'
to be too much for you, we can always use the floor," he suggested with a
grin.

"'S too hard on the knees and elbows."

"Gawd give me strength!" Doyle said with immense affection. "If moaning
was an Olympic event you'd be a gold medallist. Just give over, will you,
and come 'ere!"

Bodie's answer to that demand provoked an accelerated climb of both
Doyle's eyebrows into overhanging curls, followed by a "Tch! Tch!" of
assumed disapproval. "*Now* who's bein' crude?"

Those were the last coherent words Doyle spoke for some time. Not,
unfortunately, for as long a time as he would have hoped or wished for:
both of them were too aroused already, too urgent for completion, to be
capable of much control or to last for long. They met in the centre of the
old bed, and fell upon one another like starving men at a banquet. As they
fought to assuage their urgency, the loving was fast and furious with
nothing gentle about it, and over far too soon for any real satisfaction
except relief from their overwhelming need.

When Bodie's heartbeat had slowed to near normal and he was once again
taking an interest in his surroundings, he found Doyle in his usual in-bed
position: attached to him like an octopus, all arms and legs, head tucked
underneath Bodie's chin and warm breath fanning out across his chest.
Bodie sighed, and settled his own arms more comfortably around the lean
body, running a hand up and over the prominently defined spine. Doyle
wriggled even closer and planted a wet, open-mouthed kiss at the base of
Bodie's throat.

"'M sorry. Wanted to make it good for you, but...was too hot for it, too
quick. I'm sorry."

Bodie smiled indulgently. "Don't be. You weren't the only one, sunshine,
were you? Was pretty speedy off the mark myself. Just so long as you
remember you've still got a promise to keep..."

Doyle rested his chin on Bodie's chest and squinted upwards, green gaze
meeting blue. "Listen, mate, a Doyle promise is money in the bank. Just
gimme time to get me breath back."

"Think you'll be up to it? You sound pretty knackered to me."

"I'll be up to it! Question is, will you?"

Bodie chuckled. "Anytime you are, Superman!"

He tightened his embrace, content for the moment to lie there holding
everything in the world he cared about, and rolled over onto his back,
taking Doyle with him. Doyle, in the process of rearranging the position
of his head on Bodie's chest to his own satisfaction and not expecting the
sudden movement, cracked his chin on Bodie's shoulder and bit his tongue.
Painfully.

He shot upright with a yelp and streaming eyes. "Clumsy great oaf!"

"What's the matter?"

"Made me bite me tongue, you idiot!"

Bodie couldn't help it. He grinned at the peculiar mixture of pain and
annoyance on Doyle's face. "Aaah! C'mere, sweetheart, and let me kiss it
better for you," he said, in the tone of voice normally reserved for
comforting slow-developing two-year olds, and pulled Doyle back down onto
his chest, preparing to do just that.

He was rewarded with a sharp dig in the ribs from an extremely bony elbow,
and an irritated squawk of, "Gerroff! Lemme go!"

Perhaps, considering the sort of day it had been until then and the
catalogue of disasters they had lived through during it, what happened
next ought not to have come as a surprise.

Perhaps it - or something similar - even ought to have been expected.

It was not.

Doyle attempted to pull away again. Bodie held on to him, and the middle
of the ensuing wrestling match was chosen by whichever of the Fates had
been playing with them for the ultimate joke of the day.

Just as the wrestling was beginning to develop into something much more
interesting and pleasurable, Grandma Doyle's bed decided enough was enough
and gave up the ghost. With two sharp cracks that sounded for all the
world like gun-shots, accompanied by a final eldritch yowl from overtaxed
springs, both bottom legs collapsed one after the other, depositing the
occupants in a heap on the floor in a tangle of arms and legs and duvet.

There were several moments of shocked silence and immobility before the
enveloping folds of the duvet erupted, spitting out Doyle, who sat up and
gazed at the remains of the bed out of eyes huge with an expression
difficult to define.

"*Bloody 'ell!*" he said, with almost reverential emphasis.

Bodie sat up too, regarding his volatile partner warily. Damage to, or
loss of, personal property was not something that appeared high on Raymond
Doyle's list of 'Things I Most Enjoy In Life'. His Grandmother's bed had
been personal property of a rather special kind, and it was undeniably
damaged; in fact, written off might be a better description of its current
condition, if Bodie was any judge of the matter. Therefore, if he knew
Doyle half as well as he thought he did, that worthy's reaction to its
destruction was likely to be loud - very loud indeed - and very long.

He was right. Although not in quite the way he had expected.

Doyle blinked, uttered a somewhat strangled version of one of his
bathwater-draining gurgles, fell against Bodie's chest and for the third
time that day dissolved into hysterical laughter.

Utterly bemused, Bodie held him until the hiccupping, snorting and shaking
had ceased, and Doyle looked up at him, wiping his streaming eyes on the
back of his hand.

"C-Christ, Bodie, me ribs don't half hurt!"

"Why aren't you mad?"

Doyle sniffed lushly. "Mad? What should I be mad about?"

Bodie pushed him away to arms' length. "About your Gran's bed being
demolished, that's what! Ever since you first got the fucking thing you've
been bleating on about it being a family heirloom, and how you wouldn't
part with it for the world. Now there it lies in smithereens, and all you
do is have a fit of bleeding hysterics." A sudden suspicion dawned. "Don't
tell me - it wasn't really your Gran's bed at all. You've been having me
on all this time. You really got it from Oxfam or someplace."

"I did not!" Doyle snorted indignantly. "Everything I told you about it
was true." He hesitated slightly, and added, "Well - almost everything."

"Almost?" Bodie enquired threateningly.

Doyle sighed. "Okay, time to confess. I knew it would have to come
sometime. Truth is, I hated the ruddy thing as much as you did; maybe even
more, if you must know."

"So why give me all that crap about not wanting to part with it?" Bodie
demanded. "Why not just admit you couldn't stand the damn thing and get
rid of it?"

"Couldn't," Doyle muttered, looking thoroughly shamefaced and suddenly
acquiring a faintly pink tinge to his complexion. "You started making
snide remarks about it the minute you saw it, so I 'ad to stick up for it,
didn't I? I let me tongue did my own grave and had to keep up the charade
long after it got stale. Besides," he added glumly, "it was Grandma
Doyle's pride and joy and if I had dumped it she would probably 'ave come
back to haunt me. The original holy terror, she was. Could make a rabid
Rottweiler look like a pussycat without even trying."

"Give the wolf in Red Riding Hood indigestion, would she?"

"With the greatest of ease," Doyle agreed, with a small grin. "Know
someone like that, do you? We Doyle's always walked very carefully where
Gran was concerned. I guess the habit clings, even though she's dead."

"If she wouldn't have approved of you dumping it, what'd she think of
this?" Bodie asked, indicating the wreckage around them.

"Not a lot, I'm sure. But at least she can't blame me for it," Doyle said
virtuously, a little *too* virtuously. "'Tisn't *my* fault if the damn
thing was too ancient to stand up to a bit of normal use, is it?"

Bodie stared at him, one eyebrow on the rise as a possibility began to
blossom. Was there really a hint of Machiavellian smugness lurking behind
that suspiciously innocent expression? Doyle had been very insistent on
the 'Come back to my place' routine recently. He had also been even more
than usually inventive in introducing variations of the more energetic
forms of lovemaking, despite his earlier attempt to blame such
carryings-on solely on Bodie. 

All that hardly constituted 'normal use', whatever way you perceived the
meaning of the words, did it?

Bodie mentally reviewed his hard-earned understanding of the way Doyle's
mind worked, and decided the possibility was more likely to be a
certainty. "You devious little sod!" he said admiringly.

"I dunno what you're on about," Doyle told him,
butter-wouldn't-melt-in-mouth expression firmly in place. He kicked the
hampering bed linen away and leapt agilely to his feet. "C'mon, then, we'd
best shift into the spare room. Can't stay here all night."

Bodie's hand shot out and grabbed him by the ankle, almost making him lose
his balance. "Why not? I've already had one bed collapse under me tonight
and tip me out onto the floor, and I don't fancy having it happen again.
Who knows what little delights the spare room may hold in store for us?
I'm here on the floor, and here I'm going to stay>"

"Thought you said the floor was too hard on your knees and elbows?"

"Not if we bring the mattress down, sunshine. Bit of a tug is all it
needs, it's half way here already."

Five minutes later things were arranged on the floor to their mutual
satisfaction, and Doyle was once more doing his impersonation of an
octopus. After a few moments of peace and quiet, Bodie moved restlessly.

"Ray?"

"Mmmff?"

"Seriously - you really certain you don't mind your Gran's bed being
smashed like that?"

Doyle groaned and sat up, using Bodie's broad chest as a prop for his
elbows. 

"Y'know, mate, you get hung up on the strangest things sometimes. I don't
know how you have the nerve to talk about me. No, I really do not mind
about me Gran's bed bein' smashed. Not in the least! In fact, I'm actually
quite pleased me Gran's bed 'as been smashed. It means I can stop feeling
like Edmund bloody Hillary every night, maybe buy meself one of those beds
with drawers in the base and get a bit of extra storage space at last.
Satisfied?"

Bodie nodded. Doyle prepared to lie down again.

"Just one more thing," Bodie said. "Did you *really* set out to...?"

"Oh God!" Doyle muttered. "When you get a bee in your bonnet, there's only
one certain way to shut you up, isn't there?"

He leaned down and smothered the remainder of Bodie's question in a deep,
open-mouthed kiss. An indeterminate and very enjoyable time passed. When
they surfaced again for essential air, warm and gentle fingers were
entangled in Doyle's hair and Bodie's mouth had a soft, bruised look to
it. His eyes gazed up from under heavy lids, the heat in them denying any
claim that blue was a cold colour. Previous curiosity had been superseded
by a more urgent need.

He ran a delicately questing forefinger down Doyle's chest and drew small,
tantalising circles around his navel. "About that promise you made me..."

Doyle grinned. He settled more comfortably on top of the hard-muscled body
of his lover, effectively trapping Bodie's roving hand between they.
"Getting interested again, are we?"

Bodie's heartbeat quickened. "Well, I know I am. How about you?"

"I'm thinking about it."

"Oh goody, I am pleased! Just don't get too cerebral, will you? I like
plenty of action."

"I know exactly what you like, lover, and that's what you're goin' to get.
Every last bit of it."

Luminous green eyes fixed unwaveringly on Bodie's face, Doyle moved the
lower half of his body with careful deliberation and a wealth of
suggestiveness. The reaction it evoked was immediate, instinctive, and
utterly helpless.

His chuckle, as he got down to work in earnest, was one of the filthiest
Bodie had ever heard.

-- THE END -- 

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