Cold Spring

(Note:  this story is a reject!  I spun out too many plot-lines and got tangled up in my mane, to mix a metaphor.  For this reason it doesn't appear anywhere else online.  But I have an affection for it nonetheless, and ask your patience with its faults.)

April 1983

The warehouse’s high spaces rang bitter with gunshot and the scent of blood.  Making sure his man was down, Doyle glanced back to see:  Murphy poised in the doorway like a big wolf, Anson just behind him covering low, and the old man, too, grey-faced, putting the safety back on.  They’d taken one each.

And that was it;  it was over.  Bodie was straightening up from the bonnet of the car, trying to pull his clothes together.  Unable to move yet, Doyle thrust out a hand at the cavalry and said his partner’s name, his voice to his own ears shockingly ordinary.  Bodie didn’t look up, and Cowley broke rank, touching Murphy and Anson aside.  “Laddie, it’s alright now.”

The voice didn’t do it but the hand on his shoulder did.  Bodie snapped from stillness to a neckbreak hold before any of them saw him move, eyes wild and lost but nevertheless seeking one face, one point of contact between flashback and reality.  Doyle’s paralysis melted and he found himself taking the distance between them at a slow, almost-casual walk.  Bodie’s eyes flashed warning – not too close! – and he stopped at arm’s length.  “Bodie, mate.”  A shudder coursed through the big frame, the corded wrist across Cowley’s throat slackening.  “That’s it.  Let ’im go.  Nobody’s going to hurt you any more.”  Doyle turned his attention to his employer, voice soft and cold.  “Didn’t I fucking tell you to stay back?  Step away from him, slowly.  He’ll let you.”

Expressionless, Cowley edged forward.  Eyes fixed now on Doyle’s, Bodie hardly seemed to notice.  Then he swallowed and said hoarsely, “Ray, what the fuck am I doing?”

“Remembering bad times.  It’s okay.  It’s all over.”  Peripherally Doyle saw that Murphy was steering Cowley out of the way, collecting Anson with a look, too;  backing both of them off.  “Good lad, Murph.”  He hitched a half-smile and put out an unsteady hand.  “Bodie?”

“Remembering - ?”  Bodie put a palm to his brow, brought it down streaked with blood and cold sweat.  “A flashback?  All of it?”

“No.  I’m sorry, no.  It happened, but just at the end there you thought the governor was somebody else.  You’re hurt.  Are you – are you gonna let me come and see to you?”

He waited unmoving, not anticipating permission by so much as a blink.  Then Bodie said, barely audible, “Alright,” and dropped to his hands and knees by the front wheel of the car.

______________________________

March 1983

Spring was late coming that year, and shrewish when she did arrive, a mean skinny version of the girl Doyle had been hoping for.  It was his first winter since getting shot, and he was sick of back-to-back colds, of the constant struggle to keep warm and to hide his failure from Bodie.  Bad enough that his partner turned the Capri’s heating up full every time he got into it, bad enough to have his scarf thrown after him when he forgot it with a flat, reproving, “Oi!”  Made him feel about six, although he knew Bodie was keeping the coddling as unobtrusive as possible.

What troubled Doyle most was that part of him enjoyed it – not the fuss over physical things, but Bodie’s occasional wondering smile, as if the presence of a grumpy and snuffling Ray Doyle in the passenger seat beside him was less a trial than a low-key miracle.  To be looked at like that on a bog-standard weekday morning was too deeply touching to be safe.  No, he needed to be well again, to have Bodie back in that state of affectionate taking-him-for-granted which had kept their partnership on an even keel for five years.  One raw January night, he’d woken up to find Bodie in his bed, curled round him like a big warm cat.  He’d been out of sorts and depressed all day, chilly and stiff with healing scars, well enough to be restless but not to do much about it.  Bodie had astonished him by cooking, then ordered him onto the sofa by the fire, where he’d fallen asleep, barely noticing when his partner hauled him up and off to bed.

Doyle hadn’t minded:  all he’d objected to, in fact, was Bodie’s discreet exit just before dawn, and the cold that came stalking him then, the hungrier for having been kept so effectively at bay.  Put plainly, he wanted him back.  Not a woman, not a quick appeasement of a sexual appetite that flared so sporadically it hardly deserved the name, but Bodie, being nothing but his solid unflappable self.  Hearing, with a plangent and ludicrous ache at his heart, the closing click of the door, Doyle had dragged a pillow down over his head and vowed to reinvent himself, at any cost, immediately.

It was hard, though.  And where the devil was the spring?  Perched on a radiator that was just one pleasant shade off scalding his backside, Doyle gazed out across the uninspiring roofscape surrounding their current HQ and nursed a well-stewed coffee.  “Bloody hell, Bodie.  That’s turning to snow.”  Getting no response, he glanced across the squad room to where his partner was sitting with his feet propped on a table’s edge, and saw with surprise that the sheaf of reports he’d been ploughing through had turned into a brochure for the Greek Islands.  He snorted.  “You rotten sod.  Are you gonna ship out on me?”

Bodie ignored him, flipped through a few more pages, then settled himself still more comfortably and said, “You know, we could have a week on Crete for the price of two nights at that place in Dorset you dragged us to last year.”

“Oh, we could, could we?”  Bodie appeared not to notice his attack on the pronoun.  “You and what bird?”

“The moulty-lookin’ one sat on the windowsill now, if he fancies it.”  Not giving Doyle time to launch a reaction, Bodie uncoiled gracefully to his feet and padded over, holding the brochure out with a page folded back.  “Course, there’s not much open this time of year, and you take a chance with the weather.  Looks nice, though, doesn’t it?  Back in a minute.”

“Where are you going?”

“To sort out some leave.  We can wrap it round a weekend so he doesn’t feel too badly screwed.  Besides, it’s a graveyard around here at the moment.  I won’t have any trouble.”

In fact, he did:  the graveyard was about to turn into a war zone, and although the transition might not take place for days or weeks, the old man wanted his resources at hand.  Bodie listened politely to his master’s voice until it terminated in a refusal, then sat down uninvited and said, “You’ll push till he breaks, won’t you?”

“Nonsense, Bodie.  Doyle’s doing well.  I’ll put him on standby until this operation hots up;  he can rest - ”

“He can’t take a piss on standby without the bleeper going off.  None of us can.  It’s not rest and you know it.”

“Mind your tone, 3.7.  And your language.”  Cowley sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose.  “How long did you want?”

“Five days, including a weekend.  Or I tell you what, let’s forget it.  He’ll catch the flu that’s going round, it’ll turn into pneumonia, land him back in hospital and you’ll lose him for a month.”

Cowley put down his pen, sat back and examined his employee.  Stubborn.  Insubordinate.  A time-bomb in many ways, the damage done in the jungle shoved down too hard for long-term stability.  The only man in the world who could make him wish he’d had a son.  “You drive a hard bargain, Bodie.  And may I ask what your excuse is?”

Scapegrace grin.  “Me, sir?  I’m just sick of the rain.”

______________________________

Agia Thecla in southwestern Crete had one family-run taverna, an olive-grove, and ten miles of stunning untouched coast.  As resorts went, it was the back of beyond, but Doyle reckoned his partner hadn’t steered him out here to do anything more energetic than sit in the sun with an after-dinner ouzo, or several, seeping through his veins.  The evening light was incredible, somewhere between blood-red and bronze, and it was taking him all his time to work out exactly what mix of paints he would need to catch it.  Very pleasant, then, that he’d left all his equipment at home and wouldn’t have to try…

He heard the pad of bare feet on the crumbling, sandy terrace behind him, but the tread was familiar and didn’t oblige him to move.  Bodie, with another half-carafe from the bar.

“What the hell are you trying to do to me?” he enquired lazily, and Bodie, knowing a rhetorical question when he heard one, merely settled into a chair beside him and topped up his glass.  “This stuff tastes like paintstripper in London.”

“Mm.  Nice out here, though.”

“Mystery of nature.”

“Yeah, human nature.”  Both smiled, and that was conversation for the night. 

It was a great luxury to both, that they could share long silences.  Doyle was enjoying this one so much that the entrance of the young backpacker they’d seen arrive earlier annoyed him slightly.  That made three guests in the off-season hotel, and he supposed some kind of social gesture was in order.  But she didn’t seem inclined to disturb them:  said, “Good evening,” as she passed their table and settled at another a comfortable distance away.

A while later, Doyle turned to refill their glasses, and caught dark blue eyes fixed on the girl with familiar intent.  Quickly Bodie looked away, pulled a face of comic apology.  “Sorry.”

“What on earth for?”

“Well, you’re such nice green grass it seems ungrateful to look over the fence.”

Doyle opened his mouth, then closed it again to sort through the twists of what he’d just heard.  After a while he let his smile broaden to a grin and said, “Depends what you want to do on the grass.”

Bodie snorted.  “Daft bugger.”  His attention drifted back to the slim, tanned figure currently propping her feet on a chair nearby and returning him a casually-interested onceover.  “Nice, though, isn’t she?”

Doyle thought about it.  With an effort, he looked at her through the eyes of a healthy male:  Bodie’s, or his own, a year since.  She did look nice:  short blonde hair spiky over her crown, good-humoured and intelligent grey eyes.  “Well, invite her over, then!”

A while after midnight, Doyle leaned on the balcony of his room and considered the strangeness of looking up at the same Plough that had whirled above the raw London streets three nights ago.  Reassuring, and yet somehow parochial, as if no matter where you went, you never got very far.  Out here it was more of a Bear:  he could see the fainter peripheral stars of legs and head, extended in an exuberant gallop.  A greengold crescent moon hung low on the eastern horizon, tracking light across the sea.  Everything alive, and in motion…  Suddenly unable to watch, he turned back into the room.  Too much bloody ouzo:  no wonder no-one drank it at home.  He kicked his shoes off and lay down on the spartan bed, which was of a piece with the room’s other plain furnishings and soothing to him.

Laughter and scuffling in the corridor outside.  He closed his eyes, smiling ruefully:  Bodie and the girl had clicked audibly within three seconds, and once over her plainly-stated apprehension that they were on holiday together, she had flirted amicably with them both.  But Doyle was conscious that Bodie had been putting his social life on hold in order to look after him for months now, and he made a good-humoured exit as soon as politely possible, not having to lie about being tired. 

Resting one hand over his eyes, he tried not to listen, or at least not to put pictures to the sounds.  He heard nevertheless a thump, a giggle, the bump of a bedhead against the wall – then, to his surprise, the click of a door, and moments later a tap on his own.

Bodie was in the corridor, leaning on the door-frame.  He had a hand up to his mouth, and in the moonlight Doyle gradually perceived that this was partly concealing a grin, and a rare blush.  “Lauren says  - ”  He stopped, looked down at the floor, then tried again. “She says we’re an embarrassment of riches to find out here, but she liked it, and would Ray care to join us.”

He broke into laughter, and Doyle turned away, grinning and batting a punch at him.  “Ahh, Bodie, for God’s sake - !”

“I don’t think she means for cocktails, either.”  He sobered, just a little.  “Hey, c’mon.  We almost did this a while back, with that girl from Records.”

“Yeah, almost!  Sanity prevailed.”

“Cowley did.  We were on the dawn patrol.  C’mon, Ray.  Don’t knock what you never tried.”

“Don’t be cheeky.  I’ve screwed all your girlfriends.”

“Yeah, it’s been costing me a fortune.”  He paused, grinning, then murmured, “It’s not like you never thought about it.” 

Doyle frowned, wondering if he should be offended, or issue a denial.  But Bodie had put out a hand to him;  was smiling with such unguarded affection that some hereto-unnoticed core of ice inside him melted.  Head spinning a little, he reached to accept the warm grip.

Perverse or not, insane or not, to watch Bodie with a girl was the most incredible rush.  Doyle sat curled in the corner where the bedhead touched the wall, long-forgotten Catholic training that was nevertheless deeper-laid than a few years of adult freedom trying to persuade him he could not be enjoying it, or if he was, he damn well shouldn’t be.  But all the old inhibitions did was sharpen pleasure to a thrill, and he laid a hand to the yearning ache at his groin.  He hadn’t anticipated this – had turned down the laughing offer made him by his partner and Lauren to go first, fearing incapacity.  He’d felt gauche and awkward, settling to watch, and suspected that without the ouzo in his system he’d have been out the door, but after a sweet teasing kiss the girl had turned her attentions to Bodie with such completeness that he relaxed.

To Doyle’s surprise, Bodie let her make all the running.  He wasn’t normally keen on what he referred to as women drivers, but he’d only smiled and rolled under when she asked to be on top.  His shirt was pulled open, pants down round his thighs, and she had only dispensed with her shorts, underneath which she was naked, skin creased by their fabric in a way Doyle found oddly touching.  Swallowing dryly, caressing himself again, he wondered why their state of half-undress was more arousing to him than if they’d stripped down.  The girl moaned, thrust her lean hips down and forward a few times, then stopped to pull her vest off, and even the sun-gilded breasts thus exposed were less pleasing to Doyle than what he could see of his partner’s chest, heaving under its sweat-sticky shirt, nipples tautly outlined beneath thin cotton.  Bodie’s head arched back on the pillows and he threw out his left hand, a blind reach that landed on Doyle’s thigh.  Blind or not, he did not retract it, and a second later shot him one unreadable look from under long eyelashes.  Abruptly Doyle found the pressure of denim over his crotch unbearable and unfastened his jeans.  The hand on his thigh began a firm caress and he laid hold of himself with a rough little gasp. 

Again to Doyle’s surprise, Bodie used his free hand to rub the pad of his thumb expertly against the girl’s clitoris:  she bucked and cried out and came, head tossing.  The spasm over, she murmured to him in encouragement, but he drew her down to whisper something to her, and she smiled.  “Yes, okay.”

Hypnotised, Doyle watched her raise herself off Bodie’s undiminished erection.  She advanced on him with a predatory eagerness which lasted until his shirt was unfastened, then gave a hiss of purely-human empathy and said, “Oh, God, you’re hurt.”

“A few months ago.  I’m fine now.”

Drawing him out of the corner, she helped him settle against the pillows and carefully kissed the scars.  Doyle, who thought them ugly beyond belief, made a startled noise and tried to back off, but found Bodie’s broad hand on his solar plexus, pushing him down.  “Just enjoy it, mate.”  Doyle stared at him, helpless to do anything else.  He’d peeled his shirt off and was kneeling on the bed, not apparently concerned by his own massive hard-on.  “Let it happen.”

Her mouth was practised and tender.  Thighs spread wide, lost in the sensation, Doyle gave a moan as she lifted up, but it was only for the moment it took to smile and say, “Yes, now,” to his partner.  And when he next looked, Bodie was standing behind her at the foot of the bed, looking directly into his eyes.

He fucked her carefully from behind while she brought Doyle to the brink.  Her throat closed in involuntary contractions as another orgasm shook her, and Doyle tried to sit up, half-frightened at the force of long-delayed climax starting in him.  And Bodie reached over her and took hold of his hands.  “It’s alright.  Come with me.”

He did, and it was like nothing he had ever felt before.  The girl’s body conducted the heat-flash between them, back and forth, and Doyle let loose one cry after another, clinging to Bodie’s hands.  Neither he nor the girl let him go till he was done, beyond done, sobbing and falling bonelessly back onto the mattress, and then she bestowed upon each of them a sweet, tired, satiated kiss, and simply rolled herself out of the way.

Bodie knelt over him, smiling.  “Feel better?”

“I’ll tell you how I feel – one day.”

“Was that too weird for you?”

Doyle looked up at him, eyes wide in the moonlight.  The only thing that could have astonished him more than the intensity of his orgasm was the fact that his cock was stirring again.  “Far too weird.  I still feel – very weird, Bodie.”

Slowly, Bodie leaned forward and took his weight on his arms.  He examined Doyle’s face with some interest.  “How weird?”

“Enough,” Doyle said, but it came out soundless, only a motion of his lips in the dark.  And Bodie lowered his head, dipped down and kissed the side of his neck.

His body raced ahead of his mind, crystal-clear on what it wanted and reaching out.  Without thought he laced his fingers in Bodie’s short, silky hair, guided him shuddering to his mouth.  They exchanged a brief, deep kiss, then Doyle’s brain caught up and he tore out gasping.  “Bloody hell, Bodie!”

“I know.  I know, but it’s okay.  Relax.  God, I thought I’d lost you, Ray!  When I came into your flat and saw you lying there - ”

“Is that what this is all about?”

Bodie froze en route to another kiss.  Their eyes met.  Then Bodie gave a short, pained laugh, eased up and said, “This is a really terrible idea, isn’t it?” 

Doyle considered.  For the first time since leaving the hospital, he could feel the place in his heart where the bullet had lodged.  He lay still and silent, and Bodie went on, “Look, I – need what we have.  I thought we could…  But it’s all going to get very complicated, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”  What else could he say?  The pain rising up from his gut and groin precluded long sentences, forbade reason.  “Yeah, you’re right.”  He gave Bodie’s shoulders a quick friendly squeeze and rolled out from under him.  “Look, I’m going – I need some air.”

“Ah, don’t run off, Ray!  She might be up for more later, and – there’s no law against sharing a bed, is there?”

There is for me.  Deftly Doyle extricated himself from the warm hands trying to keep him in it.  “You stay here.  Don’t worry about – about anything.  It was really nice;  let’s just forget the last bit.”  And if you try to make me stay, I’ll either strangle you or walk straight off that balcony myself.  But Bodie’s smile had vanished and he was looking at Doyle as if the man had turned into an unexploded bomb.  He neither spoke nor moved as his partner left the room.

Doyle did want air.  His chest was heaving as if the corridor held none, although windows were open along its length, white curtains blowing in.  There was a faint fizzing sound in his ears, like the static between radio stations.  In his blood, the alcohol cast off its disguises - sedative, aphrodisiac, buffer against reality – and soured to the toxin it was. 

His bedroom door wouldn’t open.  He struggled with it, palms sweating coldly, until the heavy lock gave.  Leaving the door to bang behind him, he stumbled through to the little balcony and leaned on the outside wall.  The night was cool  He knew they’d been lucky to get such good weather here in March.  He knew he’d had it lucky so far.  Closing his eyes, he allowed his tired body to fold;  slid down the wall and leaned his skull against its ancient chill – human bone to bone of the earth – a strange and painful comfort.  Dispassionately he realised he was crying, the salt of it stinging his sunburn.  He swiped the tears away with contempt but more came, and more.  Lucky so far…

______________________________

At dawn, the beach was a beautiful and lonely place, a world away from the sunburnt mirth of its days.  Doyle found he had gravitated automatically to the table he and Bodie had staked out – territorial animals! – as “theirs”, and he forced himself past it;  went to sit on the steps that led down to the beach. 

All things considered, he felt pretty well this morning.  Post-coital exhaustion had eventually hit him and he’d gone indoors and slept, sprawled face-down on the still-made bed, until birdsong and the air’s first sweet warming brought him round.  He’d drunk half a litre of bottled water from the fridge, had a shower and found most systems functional. 

And you couldn’t really beat the Med, he thought, for a place to be desolate.  In London, the complexities of finding clothing, car-keys and a parking space outside HQ would have beaten unhappiness into a corner by now – temporarily useful, but in the corner it would remain, festering until end of shift.  Here he could simply step out into the great overwhelming peace and get it over with before Bodie showed up for breakfast.

The terrace door creaked, and he released a faint defeated breath.  Well, over with would just have to be now.