Pros fic: What Mattered by JoJo - Pros Bingo 2016 - individual card
The briefest flash of inappropriate hysteria slapped at Doyle as he stumbled over the wall at his feet. The type of hysteria which focus and adrenaline sometimes threw up at all the wrong moments. An echo of comforting fiction behind reality.
You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!
The Victorian brick and plaster had disintegrated. The storage facility doors, too, but everything around it as well. They could have driven a fleet of Austin Minis through the resulting hole. Behind him the bomb squad blokes were probably doing a fandango.
“Oi!” Murphy hissed, hand whacking the back of his shoulder.
The flash was gone as quick as it came. Reality bit back.
Doyle’s eyes burned from the cloud of powdered wall, still settling. It caught the back of his throat as he moved, found steadier footing on the concrete floor beyond the explosion.
There was a peculiar light. Greyish, hostile. The detonation seemed to have blown the interior lights, although the chill of refrigeration throughout the hangar was still sharp, still life-threatening.
Murphy and McCabe had peeled away on the left. Doyle led Anson into the yawning maw of the terrible beast he feared.
And he found his voice at last.
“BODIE!”
The answering silence was just as desperate.
*
What he came up on at the end of the hangar was one of those coloured stills, one of those traumatic images, that would stick forever in Doyle’s head like dead flies on fly-paper.
Bodie in the half-dark, diminished. Crumpled by violence at the foot of a blood-spattered wall. Half leaning, half lying - as if he’d been sitting, or as if he’d been trying to get up. All of a sudden what Doyle had feared all along didn’t matter. The cold, the hours of imprisonment, dousing any spark of resistance. It wasn’t going to be that, after all. What mattered was going to be the blood and the broken bones.
“Fuck,” Anson jerked out and Doyle heard him follow that up with a yell that split the silence, echoing through the vast space. “Over here!”
“Oh no you don’t,” Doyle stuttered out as he landed, knees down. His right hand froze in a cupping motion over one lacerated cheekbone. He sucked in a breath, trying to beat back the chill of his own shock and despair. “No, no, no, no you don’t.”
“Ambulance!” Anson followed up, changing his mind, voice cracked in fright. “Murphy, call an ambulance. Now!”
Yes, now, Doyle thought.
Open your eyes now.
(tbc)
Title: What Mattered
Author: JoJo
Slash/Gen: Slash
Warnings: Violence
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Yes please!
Disclaimer: No money made, no infringement intended
A/n: for the top horizontal line of my Pros Bingo card, to fill the 'Chambers Wharf Cold Storage' square (heh) and the first of three short parts/fills.