Pros Community Bingo Card 2016 - A Slow Heartbeat Pt I
I'm still working on stuff for my own Bingo Card, but here's my contribution to the Community Bingo Card :0)
Bodie dropped the bag of clothes he'd carted back from the launderette onto the bed. Given his head, Doyle would leave it at that. Whatever creases there were would set and then Doyle would moan about the ironing or moan about the wrinkles. Whereas, if the clothes were simply hung, with a little luck, there was a good chance the creases would fall back out. Minimum effort for maximum result.
His partner could be a vain little sod, but only when the mood took him. One minute it was all tailored jackets and style conscious aviators and the next it was paper thin t-shirts of indeterminate vintage and patched jeans. The sweaters ranged from the sublime to the untenable and as for his hair...Bodie smiled, Doyle's hair was a thing of beauty no matter what he did with it.
Bodie worked deftly putting the clothes away, clothes he knew as well as his own. The woman at the launderette had been a bit sniffy about giving him the bag at first, but she'd become almost alarmingly amenable once he'd returned with Doyle. It was a doddle after that.
Doyle still tired easily and it didn't help that he was back in training. He'd be his old self for a few good hours and then fall asleep. Well, he'd always done that easily enough, but not as frequently and not for so many hours. He was sleeping well at night, but was sleeping in the day too. For a while, he'd spent more hours asleep than he had awake. But his fitness was improving, he'd reached the tipping point and the training was now beginning to boost his stamina instead of exhausting it.
That thought put another smile on Bodie's face. They'd been sharing a bed since Doyle had been discharged from hospital, but it had taken time for Doyle to find the energy to do much more than be present. Bodie had been half afraid to touch him anyway.
The first night they'd spent together had been more Eric and Ernie than Emmanuelle. Doyle had fallen asleep, almost immediately, and Bodie had read a couple of chapters of Wilbur Smith with a very soppy grin on his face.
If he let it, that first morning still had the power to leave him misty eyed. Doyle had opened his eyes and Bodie had smiled into them. Doyle had smiled guilelessly back.
''Mornin', Goldilocks'' he'd greeted Doyle.
Doyle's child-like smile had fallen away and he'd become very solemn. Then he'd pulled Bodie in for a kiss of such aching sweetness that Bodie could still taste it.
When eventually they had parted Bodie had astounded himself by saying ''We should get up, we'll be late.''
But Doyle had only smiled dopey contentment back at him.
''Cowley wants me in place by eight'' Bodie had reminded dutifully ''and you have a medical to pass, sunshine. First of many and you can't afford to fail any of them, not if you want back on the squad.''
But Doyle's dopey grin had stayed mutely in place and Bodie had never heard a more persuasive argument.
''Doyle...'' Bodie had murmured, half in protest, half in surrender as Doyle had moved in to kiss him again and this time they had embraced. Hands gently exploring, eager to learn each other in this new way. Exploring had led to experimenting, a gentle testing of what pleased, what aroused and finally what brought release.
Bodie had been hesitant, unsure of the extent of his partner's healing. But Doyle had only moaned pleasure at him.
Then Bodie had got up, because Cowley did want him in place by eight, and Doyle had returned to the land of nod. A tousle headed angel, asleep on his misused cloud of polycotton.
Bodie had danced on clouds himself that day, but no one had been there to see it. Cowley had had him on some mind numbing surveillance number since pretty much the minute Mayli Kuolo had been pronounced officially dead. Or at least since all the paperwork and loose ends had been tied up.
The Old Man's way of making up for not letting him keep his vigil at the hospital, but the Old Man had been right. He may have wanted to be there, but endless hours of doing battle with recalcitrant vending machines and hanging about in corridors like a spare wheel would have had him climbing the walls.
By the time he had been released to calmer duties, Doyle had awoken, albeit briefly, and the medics had stopped flapping about his partner's bed like so many pied ravens of doom. It was just a waiting game now, while Doyle healed.
For some reason, apart from the usual capricious reprieves, Cowley had him pulling double shifts. Short handed elsewhere probably. With Doyle out of commission, there had been a reshuffling, but he had remained partnerless. Cowley didn't believe in men like him working alone, not unless they were mad, so here he was, on his tod, nicely out of harm's way, pulling double shifts.
But give the Old Devil his due, long though the hours were, they were steady, predictable and undemanding. The closest Bodie had ever come to a desk job, and he was reaping the rewards. He came home at the same time every night. Well, every dawn. The milk on the doorstep by the time he got home. He had his milk delivered now. And a paper.
The cupboards were stocked, everything shipshape and Bristol fashion. Rearranged to meet the requirements of his new existence. He was at home for deliveries, answering the door in his towelling robe like any other shift worker and, although he'd had his nose glued, metaphorically or otherwise, to a pair of binoculars during visiting hours, he'd been there to pick Doyle up from the hospital. The Cow having miraculously honoured his request for leave.
Before Doyle's discharge, he'd only managed one real visit, on the heels of that first awakening. Cowley had accompanied him, but it had been enough. Cowley had left them alone together, while he conferred with the doctors. Doyle had been asleep, so he'd sat by the bed and waited.
Then Cowley had re-joined them, muttered a few regretful words lamenting the cost to CI5, the deprivation of a good man, and Bodie had lost his temper. The way he always lost his temper when the Old Man underestimated Doyle.
''He's still a bloody good man, sir.''
Cowley hadn't sought to deny it, instead asking if Bodie wanted to stay, at least for a little while longer. Cowley could spare him the time, if he needed it. Bodie had accepted the olive branch and stayed with his partner.
It was during this quiet time that Bodie had finally spoken the words he had so long wanted to speak. Words of love and longing that had been closeted away for fear of losing Doyle. Bodie lusted honestly for both men and women, but had found no definitive assurance that Doyle was the same. Doyle's pursuit of the fairer sex was a mirror to his own, but his partner deluded himself that every woman might be the first step on a path which led towards matrimony and away from Bodie.
Matrimony held little appeal for Bodie. It could never allow him the man he wanted. No church would marry them, no registrar solemnise their union.
He'd been walking around with that ridiculous gold ring in his pocket since Doyle had bypassed the encumbrance of the ventilator and improvised a sign for it at him.
Now, in the stillness, he'd taken it out of his jacket and slipped it onto Doyle's finger and Doyle hadn't resisted or made a stupid joke. He'd lain quiet and accepting, as if he had come home. Bodie had kissed him then, gently, chastely, with all the love in the world, so Doyle would know not to worry when Bodie didn't come back. It would just be the job keeping them apart and neither of them worried about that, when there was nothing to worry about between themselves.
Bodie had gone back to his assignment, the ugly red brick building he'd been watching over ever since Cowley had taken him off his other duties. He'd taken up his usual position, in his car, screened by a cluster of garages. Tucked away between one of the side entrances to a park and the long, narrow, inner city gardens of what had once been late Victorian urban sprawl. When the mood took him he left the car and wandered into the park. They locked the gates at half past nine in the evening, but before that he could watch the dull edifice from the tables outside a little kiosk. When the kiosk was open he could buy tea or coffee and something to eat. And there was a public convenience he could use, although that too was locked when the kiosk put up its shutters.
Still, Doyle would marvel at such luxury when he could tell him. Hospital regulations had kept him off the radio and there was no point 'phoning to be told Mr Doyle wasn't allowed 'phone calls, even when he didn't have a tube stuck down his throat. So he hadn't tried.
Anyway, he'd been half afraid of blurting out his surprise. He was living in Doyle's flat, had been since being lumbered with this new duty. Cowley had been surprisingly unfazed by the idea, agreeing that things needed sorting out and that Bodie was best placed to see to it. Another dividend of his partnerless existence.
Of course, still to come was that difficult conversation when Bodie explained that he wouldn't be moving out again. That he and Doyle were now partners in life, not just in CI5.
Cowley could spit feathers with the best of them, but he could also breathe fire. If he accepted the situation, then no one else would be allowed to gainsay it. They'd be secure in a job which they both loved as much as hated, lived as much as they worked.
Naturally, Doyle would fret over that part of his plan. Doyle didn't have his confidence in either the universe or the Old Man. Which is why he hadn't told him. If Doyle was going to fret, he wanted him doing it in their own bed, not some disinfected NHS bunk surrounded by professionally distant strangers.
And Doyle had fretted. Chewing his lip and looking uncertain. All spitfire and insecurity, was Doyle.
He hadn't been wearing Bodie's ring either, which had given Bodie a few insecure moments of his own, but Doyle had just looked at him with that indulgent exasperation he seemed to reserve exclusively for his partner and pulled the ring from his pocket, twirling it round on the tip of his ring finger.
And Bodie could see his point, it made a fine romantic gesture, but Doyle needed his hands. Something less ostentatious was in order.
''We could have it melted down'' Bodie had suggested ''Any jeweller'd do that. Easily make two.''
But Doyle was having none of that, they had to give Cowley room to manoeuvrer and flaunting wedding rings was hardly tactful. So Doyle had suggested identity bracelets, inscribed with something suitably cryptic and made to order, incorporating the precious metal of the ring. Apparently Doyle knew an artisan goldsmith in some co-operative who would be sympathetic to the idea.
''And how d'you know 'im then, constable?'' Bodie had asked ''I thought your past was all junkies and lost kittens.''
But apparently Bodie had been mistaken on both counts. 'He', it had transpired, was a militant feminist whom Doyle had managed to both arrest and charm, by dint of taking it upon himself to let her girlfriend know where she was when the family solicitor had been instructed to do no such thing, and kittens, Doyle had insisted, were the fire brigade's department.
They were still negotiating the nature of the cryptic inscription so the ring was back on the finial of that godawful terrarium, awaiting its fate.
Bodie was in no hurry to resolve the matter. It was a dream of heaven, evenings when he'd been let off duty, lying on the sofa with Doyle in his arms and the stereo playing softly in the background, or the two of them sitting across the kitchen table in broad daylight, in that short time he had after waking and before work, a radio DJ jabbering away heedlessly between the callers and the hits. Bodie sometimes found himself struck anew by the sheer wonder of it. He and Doyle, gently and earnestly, discussing the ways in which they counted their love.
Bodie smiled as he recalled his dismay at finding Doyle without the ring. The casual relegation of it to a pocket. There was nothing casual about Doyle's soft words as he sought to find the perfect way in which to engrave his love on Bodie's heart. Over his left wrist. Finding the same blood vessel it was said the ancient Egyptians believed carried the eternal bond contained in the circlet of the wedding ring to the heart of their beloved.
Bodie was content to leave the ring on its finial and listen to Doyle's softly spoken words of love. The restless man, never quiet in word or soul, quiet at last for him.
Without a care to any noise he might make, Bodie shook out the now empty bag from the launderette as a prelude to folding it. Doyle was usually wakeful at this time of day, so it was unlikely that he'd slunk off for a kip. He was probably in the kitchen making a brew. Bodie went in search of him, but his partner wasn't there, so Bodie put the kettle on and sought his errant Sleeping Beauty in the living room.
Title: A Slow Heartbeat
Author: Fiorenza_a
Category: M/M - (definitely mature, possibly explicit)
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Yes - Anywhere you like really.
Author's Name for Archiving: Fiorenza_a
Disclaimer: Happy to declare that this is a devotional work of fan fiction, based on the characters created by Brian Clemens, without any desire to profit from them. Love not Lucre.
Warnings & Spoilers:
Spoilers for Discovered in a Graveyard
[Click here for Fic Warnings]Death fic: Doyle
Notes & Attributions:
Pied Raven
Eric and Ernie
Emmanuelle
Wilbur Smith
Prompts: Pros Community Bingo Card 2016 - Square 'Based on a Specific Episode' and inspired by some of the tags that were posted to prosficindex over the summer.
Length: A fraction over 9.5k words