Spook Me story - Legacy
Edit The betad version is now here, and I owe many thanks to Slantedlight for a thorough but encouraging beta. Also, many thanks to kiwisue for her DVD of Pros vids. Very inspiring. :-) And also, thanks are due to gillyp who inadvertently gave me a hook for some of my monster's behaviour. Lastly, thanks to ozsaur who organised the Spook Me ficathon, and gave me my inspiration of 'boogey man'. Goodness me. Maybe I should also thank The Academy... ;-) The original intro to this entry is below in italics.
Haha! I laugh in the face of deadlines. Otherwise known as 'I got my spook_me fic done! One small problem - it's totally the rough cut, as yet unbetad despite the generosity of the talented byslantedlight. Yes, although the story is complete, I am actually foisting you lot off with a Work In Progress. This version will change as I get it betad, and only at that point do I plan to announce it in any Professionals comms or archives. However, comments are always welcome in the meantime, not least because while I think it works adequately well as a story of things that go bump in the night, I'm somewhat more nervous about how it works as a Pros story. Still, it's good to give things a go, right?
Slash, The Professionals, Bodie/Doyle, Adult rated for sex and violence, 10,000 words approx
Legacy
Bodie left school (and home) at age fourteen. That much Cowley and Doyle both know. Cowley, being the canny director of CI5 that he is, also knows that Bodie's father died a few weeks back, and that Bodie didn't go to the funeral. That's what Cowley and Doyle know.
***
"So who is she then?" Doyle appears by his shoulder, and Bodie flinches when Doyle's hand pulls at his collar. He can't help it.
"Who's who?" he asks irritably.
"This bird who has you so addled that you put your shirt on inside out. Must be a right little raver." Doyle has his 'tell me more' leer fixed firmly in place, but Bodie isn't fooled for a moment. Doyle has a monster with greener eyes than his own sitting on his shoulder. It's been perched there a while now.
"Tall, dark and gorgeous," he camps, "although she could never hold a candle to you, darling." McCabe snorts at this as he goes past. That Doyle and Bodie and their jokes. No joke, though.
"You might want to tell her that a good civil servant needs his sleep. You look knackered. Wouldn't want you falling asleep on an op." Doyle's tone is disagreeable, but Bodie supposes he's fairly pissed off. Bodie's been in seclusion the last month or so. Doyle's noticed it, but Bodie hasn't graced him with an explanation. Cowley's noticed it, or rather, he's noticed the things that aren't happening, the absence of the list of young women bedded and security checked. "S'pose I've been more knocked back by Dad dying than I thought, sir," Bodie explained. Not a word of a lie in it.
The breakroom is empty, thank God. The sloppy bastards that he works with have used up all the unchipped mugs and left them dirty. Bodie pauses a moment to pick out the least ugly cup and runs it under the tap.
Doyle fiddles with the teabags, and the jug, before sitting down and leaning back. He takes a sip of his tea, and shakes his head. "Christ, mate. You look bloody awful."
"I'm my own gorgeous self, thank you, Raymond."
"No you're not," Doyle says bluntly. "What's going on?"
"No kissing and telling. You're out of luck." Bodie makes a silly, carefree face, and sits down with his hand wrapped around the comforting warmth of the mug, wondering how long he can keep this up. After the last month, he'd love to thump something, anything, and he doesn't want it to be Doyle.
"Out of luck, am I?" Doyle stares over the top of his mug. "Story of my life, mate."
Yeah, Bodie thinks. Mine too.
***
His mum's latest boyfriend is getting on Billy's wick. Who wants the bloody tosser hanging around anyway, except for his mum? Embarrassing, that's what it is, Mum and him all loveydovey, and the tosser throwing his weight around. He isn't Billy's dad. He doesn't have any right to tell Billy what to do. Frustratedly he wishes he could get out, and then he realises he does have a place to go - why not try living with his Dad for a while? It's a grand plan and if Billy's dad throws him out, he'll go back to Mum, and maybe she'll appreciate him a bit more for the fright she'll get when she can't find him.
Billy nearly chucks his grand plan away as soon as his Dad's door opens to his knock. His mum never has a good word for his dad. Drunken, useless bugger, she says, but even so, Billy's shocked by the frail, defeated looking man who stares hopelessly at him.
"Dad? It's me, Billy."
His Dad keeps staring, before he swallows and says, "What the fuckin' hell are you doing here?"
Billy looks at his boots. "Bit of trouble at home. Mum's got another boyfriend..." And that's all your fault too, he'd like to say, but policy shuts his mouth just in time. "Come on, Dad, can't I stay? Just for a while. I won't be any trouble."
"You go home," his dad says.
"I can't," Billy whines. "Used up all me cash gettin' here, didn't I?" That's not at all the truth, but Billy can see that he needs bargaining power.
His dad keeps staring and time weighs on until finally he averts his eyes to look at nothing in particular and opens the door a little wider. "Come in, then."
The house is just awful. It's bare to the point of squalor and the paint is stained yellow with cigarette smoke. The smell of cigarettes and booze seems to seep out of the walls like the stench from an open drain. There's hardly any food in the kitchen, and the little yard out the back is stacked high with empty sherry bottles.
"You can't stay long," his dad mumbles. "Not that you'll want to."
That looks likely, but Billy's pride is up. Even if all he does is stay with the old bastard for a couple of weeks, that'll be enough to put the fear of God into his mum. And then he might go home again.
"You've got tall," his dad says.
"Yeah," Billy says. It's good, that is. Makes him look older, despite the baby-face. He's going to be a man, and he's not going to be a man like this stoop-shouldered, skinny tosspot.
There isn't even a bed for him. Instead, he finds some old blankets and wraps them around himself. There isn't a settee or an armchair, just a rickety table and a couple of rickety chairs, and his dad spends most nights sitting up at the table, drinking like a fish and smoking like a chimney.
Billy works his way around the neighbours, but they're a dour lot, and they keep their distance. Snobby bastards, he thinks. Except for the ones who keep knocking at the doors at night, and throwing gravel at the windows. It's a useless house. It seems the whole frame shakes when someone bangs at the door. That's where the noise comes from. Some troublemaker banging at the door, making his dad start and hold his drinks and ciggies to his mouth with shaking hands. Billy goes to the door. He won't be scared of a bunch of trouble-making hooligans; but there's never anyone there, never any sign of anyone running down the street.
He's not bothered to register for school and his dad certainly doesn't mention it. Bored out of his mind, one day he spends all of his money on a transistor radio and carries it exultantly back to his dad's and fills the sad, worn house with noise. Next day he goes out and when he comes home, his precious radio is cracked in bits all over the floor. Billy takes one look and charges down the stairs to his Dad, who's still sitting at that fucking table, never fucking moves from it.
"Why'd you break me bloody radio? Why'd you do it?" he yells, ashamed of the way that his voice cracks. But he'd worked long and hard for the money for the radio, odd jobs for neighbours, and he'd gloated over his cash, and now all his hard work and his joy is spread in pieces of metal and plastic over the dirty floorboards.
"Wasn't me, boy. Wasn't me that broke it."
"Liar. Bloody liar. I s'pose the fairies broke it, did they?"
Even in his fury, Billy can see his Dad's face twitch.
"Yes, lad. Bloody fairies. You go home now. You go home."
But Billy's not going to go anywhere. He's stubborn. He's not going to let the old bugger get the better of him, and he's not going to let his mum and her bloody boyfriend off the hook either. He goes upstairs, tears stinging in his eyes, to pick up the broken bits. Someone is laughing somewhere. He knows it's not his dad. His dad is half dead and too dried up to have that sort of a laugh in him. Sound carries in these old houses and somewhere up the road some lucky bastard's having a better time of it than the Bodies. That's for sure.
***
Bodie knows that the banging at the door is Doyle, bloody, inevitable Doyle, who was miserably satisfied to loftily ignore Bodie when he thought he was having it away with some bird. But now that Doyle's famous detecting skills have deduced that Bodie's in trouble, here he is, banging at the door, and the old besom from the floor below will be making another complaint about noise if Bodie doesn't answer the door soon.
Bodie stands and listens for a moment, struggling to sense the air, the mood, the lay of the land, in a way that belongs to an op, not the supposed quiet of his flat. Everything is strained peace and he goes to open the door.
"Took you long enough," Doyle says, bolting his way in. "Bloody perishing outside, and that hall's not much better."
"Should have stayed indoors then, shouldn't you," Bodie replies, shutting the door again, and setting the locks, the useless locks. Can't keep anything out, can they?
"I'll make myself a cup of tea." Doyle pauses, rubbing his hands up and down his arms to emphasise that yes, it is indeed perishing and yes, he's cold. "Unless there's something stronger on offer?"
"I'm having a one-man temperance revival. Go make yourself your tea. You know where everything is."
"You? Temperance? That'll be the day. Cut off your credit at the off-licence have they?"
Bodie drops down onto the sofa, his legs stretched out, the very picture of relaxation, even though everything in him is on alert.
"The owner has a lovely daughter breaking her heart for me. So he's broken my heart by banning me from the premises."
All nonsense and Doyle knows it, but there's still strung tension in him when he turns his head to look at Bodie. "Somehow there's always a woman breaking her heart for you." He sniffs. "Dunno what they see in you, myself." He strides purposefully into the kitchen, saving Bodie from having to make any answer.
Everything is quiet and normal. The only sounds are the homely ones of Doyle making himself tea. "Do you want one yourself?" he calls to Bodie from the kitchen.
"No, no, mate, I'm fine."
Sounds carries in funny ways, sometimes, or maybe it's just that Bodie is listening so hard, but he clearly hears Doyle say, "Bollocks," and he grins. His life has taken the weirdest, nastiest turn imaginable, but there's still Doyle, with his curiosity and his tea. His grin fades as Bodie wonders for how long.
Doyle comes out with his tea but he doesn't sit down with it. Instead he props his bum on the edge of the table, and sips his tea while he stares at Bodie, who's still sitting on the couch and wishing he had a paper handy. It'd be something to do while he pretends to ignore Doyle.
"Is it anything that Cowley should know?" Doyle's face is still pinched, and his curled fingers rub up and down the mug, chasing the warmth.
"Is what something that the Cow should know?" Bland as bland, that's Bodie.
"Bodie..." It comes out a growl, and Bodie sighs.
"It's all right, Ray. And yes, Cowley does know. My Dad died a few weeks back, that's all."
The mug is hastily deposited on the table and a scowling Doyle looms over Bodie.
"What do you mean, that's all? Christ, Bodie!"
"Don't get your knickers in a knot, sunshine. It's not like I was close to the old bastard or anything. Still, end of an era and all that."
Doyle plunks himself on the sofa, close enough that Bodie can feel the warmth of his body. "Yeah, I can imagine it'd be the end of an era, alright. Why didn't you just tell me, idiot, instead of letting me think..." Doyle's voice trails off, tight with anger.
"Didn't seem important."
"Course not. Not important at all." Doyle's face is shadowed with concern. "I've been seeing how not important it is. Look, mate, I wasn't joking about how bad you look. We're not in a forgiving occupation. Even if you don't want to talk to me," and there's a tiny, tiny shuttering of Doyle's eyes behind their lids, "you should probably be talking to someone. Or going out and getting drunk."
"Or shagging some bird?" Bodie asks, in a mood to see whether this good advice will extend to anything self-sacrificing.
Doyle, damn him, doesn't blink. "If you think it'll do some good," he says waspishly.
"All I need is a bit of peace and quiet. You don't need to be dragging yourself out from your cosy flat to offer me a shoulder to cry on. I'm not the crying kind."
"No, you're the stupid kind," Doyle says with exasperated affection, and his hand cups Bodie's jaw.
Bodie can't help the tiny flinch and Doyle's eyes narrow in angry hurt. It's stupid of Bodie because treating Doyle with anything warmer than neutral politeness is beyond careless right now. Still, knowing that doesn't stop him from resting his hands on Doyle's shoulders, and Doyle relaxes and leans in to offer some gentle, forgiving kisses, like Bodie's some bird who's thrown a tantrum over yet another missed date, some nice girl who just doesn't understand. Doyle's the one who doesn't understand, and Bodie isn't some bird who needs to be cajoled into dropping her knickers.
"Bedroom, Ray."
"If you say so," Doyle says, standing and waiting for Bodie to do the same. Bodie leads the way to his bedroom, his heart sinking at about the same rate as his cock is rising. Stupid, he's stupid, look at what happened with Karen, but, god, he wants to feel warm in his bed again, he wants something strong to hang on to, for just a little while.
Doyle is stripping off his clothes as he goes, leaving a trail behind him of jumper and t-shirt before Bodie grabs him and pulls him close to bury his face in the jointure of neck and shoulder.
"Hey," Doyle says gently, maybe assuming completely wrong things about grief and memories of Bodie's Dad. Bodie makes the point that gentleness is not at all what he wants, and drags Doyle down to the bed with him amid the bouncing of mattress springs and few muffled profanities.
It's quick and urgent. Doyle must be wondering when exactly someone took a shot at them because it's like the first time, except that now it's fucking, instead of a mutual wank. Bodie feels almost normal and definitely good, bloody brilliant even, with Doyle's body blanketing him, until he looks over the edge of his bed. Doyle is going at it like a traction engine, but all that Bodie can register is the eyes that stare up at him with malicious pleasure, dark as a muddy pool. The monster that lives under your bed. Jesus. Bodie jerks and moans in denial, and it's gone. Doyle must think he's coming, because he makes his own drawn out noise before he pulls out of Bodie and collapses onto the rumpled sheets. One hand leans on the back of Bodie's head, stroking gently at his hair before resting warm and firm against Bodie's nape.
"Was good, that," Doyle murmurs.
"Yeah," Bodie mutters, staring out the wall and chest of drawers stowed against it. He thinks he might sleep. There's no sense of frustrated desire - the need was burned out of him by that jolt of adrenalised shock. He does doze for while, held securely under Doyle's gun-callused palm. But he wakes to a yelping sound - the sound of Doyle at a complete and shocked loss. He starts up in bed, and sees Doyle scrambling across the floor to grab at Bodie's gun. His own was left behind for a visit to a friend, after all.
"Ray?" he questions, but he doesn't truly need an answer. He knows.
Doyle's head jerks in a frowning, hushing expression, and, controlled now and looking very, very dangerous for all that he's naked, Doyle approaches the bed, crouches and flips up the covers to look underneath. Stern determination turns to confusion because there's nothing there to see. Nothing at all.
Nothing to see, but Bodie can feel the tension build, and now he's sure that it's not just his own nervousness and disgust. There's something in the air if you're aware enough, and Bodie is now. He's had several weeks to learn to read the signs.
"Nightmare?" he asks pleasantly, and gets up and drags his clothes on, underpants and cords at least.
"I... Something grabbed my ankle when I got out of bed."
"Nightmare," Bodie says again. "Put my gun down, will you? You're giving me the willies." The hair is rising on the back of his neck. He's made a mistake, a bad mistake, in more ways than one. Doyle won't make a panicked exit the way that Karen did. And Bodie's unwelcome guest is likely recognising a genuine threat.
Doyle stands, uncaring that he's naked, and he looks at Bodie like he's still Detective Constable Doyle and Bodie is a very dodgy character indeed.
"I didn't imagine it."
"It's not imagining when you're asleep now, is it," Bodie says. It's weak and it's desperate and it's not going to work. He has a headache, like the barometer's dropping, like lightning's going to strike inside his bedroom. Something's going to go boom. Odds are that it'll be Doyle, who's inexorably advancing.
"I didn't imagine it, Bodie."
"Get your clothes on, there's a good lad." Get dressed, get out, don't be vulnerable here, I'm sorry, I never should have let you in the door, get out...
"I didn't imagine it," Doyle says again, laying his hands on Bodie's shoulders. His eyes are staring, and he's not finding the answers that he wants.
Bodie jerks back, bring his arms and clenched fists between them to shove Doyle's hands from his shoulders. "Just leave it alone, Doyle. Just leave it the fuck alone!"
Doyle grabs Bodie's forearm, fingers gripping to leave a bruise. And that's the point where there's not just the two of them in the room anymore. It's there, looming, stooping down with its hunched back nearly brushing the ceiling. The face, white-skinned and dark eyed, like some leprous chimpanzee, sneers at Doyle. "Just leave it alone, Doyle. Just leave it the fuck alone," it rumbles. It jerks Doyle away from Bodie and takes hold of him by one uplifted arm, as if Doyle's a child being yanked around the shops by an ill-tempered mother, then it throws him aside. Doyle thumps half against the wall, half against the door, and grunts as the door handle catches him in the hip.
Then the monster leans down to Bodie. "Where's your brown trousers, Bodie?" 'Trewsers' it says, vaguely northern in its accent, but still no accent that Bodie's familiar with. "Get him out, out, out, out!" Its voice rises to a shout, and then it's gone.
***
Billy’s Dad gets this strange look on him sometimes, like he’s scared of Billy. It’s a daft notion and not one that Billy entertains very often because it’s unsettling, the way that the increasing noises of the house are unsettling. There are odd bangs and creaks and there are times when Billy feels like there’s something looming over him and casting a long shadow across his face, but when he looks again there’s nothing there. Oddly enough, the more scared his Dad looks, the more that he starts encouraging Billy to stay.
“I’ve got used to you being around, boy. Bit of young life in the house isn’t so bad now. I don’t mind you staying.” And he’ll thrust a grimy note or two at Billy, which is a considerable mark of favour given how much the old man spends on booze and fags. So Billy stays, to teach his mum a lesson and to spend the pound notes impressing a gang of boys he’s taken up with, who give him stick about his Dad but are willing enough to accept his cash and to laugh at Billy’s jokes and stories.
“You should be in school,” his Dad says one day.
“Says who?” Billy ripostes.
“No backchat. You should be in school.”
Billy is prepared to grant that maybe he should be in school. He’s getting bored to be honest. School would at least fill in the time and give more chances for company, but he struggles against the idea just for show, while his Dad waits with a face like worn out stone and doesn’t even really seem to hear Billy until he gets the grudging agreement. That night when Billy goes to his bed (there’s a grotty old mattress on the floor now) he hears that neighbour noise again - the laughing and then a bit of banging, like someone’s having a barney in the house. It sounds a lot like it’s coming from downstairs in his Dad’s front room but that’s not likely.
He wakes up in the middle of the night feeling odd. Sick, sort of, but not like he wants to throw up. He just feels strange, with a sick headache, and the return of that odd sensation of something or somebody nearby. He lies in bed, restless and uncomfortable, and realises that he really needs to go downstairs to the loo. He’s heading down when he hears a noise, a human noise of sheer misery, a low keen like someone’s about to burst into noisy wailing but they can’t quite. It’s his Dad’s voice.
It makes something in his chest go cold. He tries to tell himself it’s just an old, drunken man making unhappy noises in the middle of the night, and it shouldn’t be any trouble to sneak past his door on quiet feet out to the loo and ignore it all.
“Won’t…won’t…” Billy’s dad moans. Billy’s head suddenly goes all light and he thinks that he might faint. He won't though, he won't, he promises it to himself as he leans against the wall, and then, moved by some reckless, angry impulse, he barges through the door to the tiny dingy sitting room. There's his Dad, sitting at his table hugging his bottle of booze to himself like it's a baby, and looming over him is...
Billy can't quite take it all in. At first he thinks it's just a man, a tall, an enormous man, almost bent double with his shoulders hunched against the ceiling. But nobody is that tall, and when it turns to face him Billy stands frozen and hollow with terror. His Dad's miserable noise is entirely comprehensible now, although Billy himself can't make a sound. He can barely even breathe.
The ghastly face splits in a toothy grin. "I've been telling him," and its head jerks toward Billy's father, "about the rules. One at a time. One at a time." Warm fetid breath blows over Billy's face, and he still can't move, even when one enormous finger, capped with a brown, horny claw of a nail, strokes gently across his face. "Your turn is coming. No sharing."
Billy's Dad says with a shaking voice, "You leave him alone." It turns, and Billy sees the pelt of fur on its back ripple, observation strangely detached from the terror that keeps his feet nailed in one place.
"You want him to stay. Not in the rules." Then it lunges back at Billy, to show yellowing teeth in a mouth wide enough to swallow him whole, and Billy screams, like a little kid, the noise forced out of him like the wail of a train whistle through the constriction of chest and throat.
Then the room is empty, except for Billy and his Dad, and his Dad hardly counts. Billy is shaking and the room still smells like the monster is there. Then Billy realises that he's shitted himself. He stares at nothing in particular, hot and cold all over at the same time as appalled humiliation overtakes the memory of terror, and he stumbles away to try and clean himself up, wincing at the mess and the memories. Then he goes to make himself a cup of tea, strong enough to stand a spoon in with the tannin and the sugar. It's hot in his hands, but he still feels cold through and through.
His Dad appears after a while, looking sick and shaken.
"So you know now, boy."
"I don't know anything," Billy mutters, staring at the grimy wall.
His Dad talks on, the pair of them not looking at the other. "Didn't mean to have kids. But your mum told me that she was expecting, and I hoped..." His Dad takes a gulping swallow of booze. "Hoped things would be different. But they weren't."
Billy sips the scalding hot, sickly sweet tea. "Different how?"
"See, it's like a family curse. Follows us down when the man before dies. My dad died and it turned up in the house and your mum couldn't take it. You don't remember?"
Billy had been three. No, he doesn't remember. He doesn't want to remember and he doesn't want to be here.
"No, I don't remember." He takes a shuddery breath around the taste of strong tea. "Think it's time I moved on." He won't stay here. Can't stay here.
Billy's Dad sounds angry. "You run then, boy. Your turn is coming. Better hope that I'm better at holding on than my old man."
Billy throws his cup into the sink, where it shatters. "I'm going and you can't stop me," he shouts.
His Dad doesn't say anything, but only turns away and shuffles back to his sitting room and his fags and his drink. Billy waits for daylight, not sleeping. When he leaves he doesn't bother to say goodbye to his father; he just sneaks from the house in the grey dawn light, aware all the time that something that he can't see is leaning over his shoulder. As he opens the front door, he hears a whisper in his ears and turns like a shot to see - nothing. "Where's your brown trousers, Billy?" and he's off, running down the road like a sprinter.
***
Bodie kneels down by Doyle, who lies crumpled on his side, until finally he writhes and takes in a deep, wheezing breath. He's winded, Bodie realises.
"Ray," he demands urgently, "you okay?"
Doyle winces, his face puckering as he pulls himself up to sit with Bodie's help.
"Think so. Christ. What was that?" Doyle glares up at him in affront. He's been genuinely startled in a way that doesn't often happen to the two of them - ready for anything are the good men of CI5, seen it all. Also, Bodie has been keeping secrets and Doyle doesn't approve of that, even though it's hardly the first time. Bodie runs his hand down Doyle's side. There's already a good bruise forming where Doyle caught the door handle when he was thrown aside like so much rubbish, but there's no particular softness or tenderness that suggests anything worse.
"Bodie family curse, sunshine," Bodie says, all false amusement.
Grey-green eyes narrow. "I'm serious, mate. What was it?"
"I'm serious too. The family curse. The bogey man. The beastie under the bed. Come to haunt me for my sins and my fathers'." His voice is getting more and more bitter as he speaks. He stands and offers a hand to Doyle who stands also under the scrutiny of Bodie's watchful eyes. Doyle winces again and a rueful hand rubs up and down his side; there'll be more bruises and strained muscles when the adrenalin is gone. Doyle leans against the door and takes a couple of deep breaths, rubbing circles on his diaphragm, until he registers his state of undress and walks stiffly to pick up his strewn clothes. He's alert despite the stiffness, alive with nervous attention the way that he is sometimes.
"It's gone for now," Bodie says. "Although I don't want to make any promises about what'll happen if you hang about."
Doyle's head turns sharply. "Leave you with that? You must be joking. Or if it wants me out, you come with me." He's dressing with awkward, pained haste, dragging on shoes and socks without bothering to tuck in his shirt.
"Not a good idea." Bodie doesn't know if it will follow him if he tries to leave it behind for any length of time. He's had odd feelings sometimes at CI5 HQ, a sense of being watched. He has no intention that Ray's flat become the place that he confirms his suspicions.
Doyle rubs his hand across his forehead, which is furrowed up with anxiety and - yes - anger. "I'm supposed to wander home to my bed like a good boy and leave you here alone with that?" His mouth twists in disgust.
"Yeah, that's right, you are, because believe it or not, it'll be much better behaved when it has me all to itself."
Doyle takes two long steps to grab Bodie by his shoulders. "And that's your answer is it? Let it have you all to itself?"
"It is for now. For tonight," he says, trying to placate Doyle, feeling the pressure that's rising in the room again. Somebody doesn't like these suggestions, the idea that Bodie might have answers that don't involve him sitting alone and helpless. "I will talk to you later about this if I have to, Doyle, but not now. For now, you get out."
Doyle doesn't move, and his hands are like rock on Bodie's shoulders. "I don't like this," he declares.
"You and me both, sunshine. But it's time for you to go. Come on, Ray." Bodie plays the ace card and leans in close, one arm gently snugging around Doyle's waist. "Please..." he whispers. Impatience hums in the air about him. Doyle doesn't feel it, he hopes, but his grip loosens in a small surrender. "I'd hate to have to throw you out." Bodie's face creases up in a genuine if sour grin.
"You and whose army?" Doyle scoffs and then twitches his head, as if he's just heard something at the edge of his hearing. "Tomorrow? You'll be okay?"
"Better than you will. Hope you've got some arnica and liniment in your flat."
Doyle is backing away, herded towards the door by a determined Bodie; he's still angry, still confused, but for once prepared to follow Bodie's lead. "Tomorrow, Bodie," he warns.
"Yeah, sure. Tomorrow," Bodie says, and shuts the door on Doyle who has edgily and unwillingly retreated every step of the way. He leans his head against the door, cool smooth wood on his forehead and grates out, "Happy now?"
There's no sound at all in the flat, but the silence is sullen and dissatisfied. The monster is no happier with the promise of tomorrow than Doyle is. Bodie stays where he is, and what he remembers is the feel of Doyle's palm against the back of his neck when he fell asleep.
***
In the morning, there's punishment for disobedience, petty in the way that so many of its punishments are. All over the floor of the living room pages of books are scattered and shredded: favourite books, old ones, one in particular that he carried all the way back from Africa when he'd discarded everything else except the memories. Maybe two pages are recognisable of the old book of poems that belonged to Willie Thomas, who taught Bodie a thing or two in his time. Willie, who was small and stocky and long-faced and familiarly called Pit-Pony by the very few people who'd earned the right, and who was long-dead now. He'd clipped Bodie around the ears a few times when Bodie roundly declared that books were rubbish. Willie's opinion was that books were like anything else that men said or did - to be judged on their own merits.
Bodie can't keep back a noise of dismay when he realises exactly what his Guest has chosen to destroy, but he maintains stiff-faced calm as he gathers up the remnants and stuffs them all into a bin-liner. You don't let it show, not any more than you can help, and Bodie's had practice over the years. But it's still hard, knowing that the monster knows exactly where to hit to hurt the worst, as if it can see into his head. It wants, Bodie knows, to reduce him to the state that his Dad was in, alone in an empty squalid house with nothing of value left to him, and he suspects that it will take a great deal of pleasure in doing it slowly over several years. It's not going to happen. He doesn't know how he's going to stop it, but it's not going to happen.
It's still early in the morning and a sullen grey light is peeking around the curtains but the phone rings anyway. Bodie eyes it and tosses a mental coin as to whether it's work or Doyle. He picks up the receiver.
"Yeah?"
"Bodie?" Tails it is then.
"Bit early for you isn't it, Doyle?"
"Took you long enough to answer. Not devoured in the night then?"
That makes Bodie smile, strangely enough. There is nothing like Doyle being a sarcastic bastard first thing in the morning.
"Entirely unconsumed. And you? Took a good hit there, mate."
"I'll live."
"Right. I can't stand about nattering on the phone. See you in the Cow's office soon enough."
"Bodie..."
"See you soon enough," he says, and puts the phone down. It rings again but he ignores it. The odds are against it being Cowley and if it was that important then the cry of the outraged Scot would be heard over the RT instead.
Cowley's office and a briefing are soothing. There's a boss who knows what he's doing, a job that needs to be done; there's also Doyle, who's bristling at Bodie's side in a way that makes the old man indulge in one of his more penetrating stares. Bodie wonders briefly if Cowley's figured out that his best team (and they are his best team, Bodie doesn't have any time for false modesty) is fucking each other in between the birds that don't matter.
In the car it's a long drive and Doyle is in a mood. Bodie accepts that. He had a hell of a fright last night, and then Bodie shoved him out the door and hung up on him the next morning. Doyle's always so damned surprised and pissed off when he finds out that Bodie has certain things ring-fenced and out of bounds. He risks a look at Doyle's face, sharp in profile against the blur of London running past the window.
"Do you actually know anything?," Doyle asks. "More than what you said last night?"
"Not much more. Turned up one night and made itself at home."
Doyle scrubs at his face. "Christ, it's crazy."
"Yeah, guess it is."
"For your sins and your fathers', you said. So literally the family curse?"
"S'pose so. I know it had my Dad. Never knew anything about my other relatives, although I remember Mum saying that my Dad was a drunken bastard just like his dad before him."
"Don't blame him now if he was." Doyle's eyes look at Bodie, sharp and irritable. "What about you? It's been a month. How long did your Dad put up with that then? Do you know?"
The traffic's slowed. Bodie doesn't really have to give the road his attention but he still stares straight ahead. "Yeah, I know."
"How long then?"
"Nearly twenty-five years, I think." The words drop out of his mouth like lead. He remembers the contempt he had for his Dad, bound up in his adolescent contempt for himself. The old man had more steel in him than young Billy Bodie ever understood, or maybe the monster just left him alone as long as he didn't try to fight.
Old man. His Dad wasn't much past fifty when he died. The worn old man who shocked fourteen year old bloody knowitall Billy Bodie might have been barely thirty-five.
"Jesus. Bodie, you can't..."
"Can't what, Doyle?" he retorts, pulling away from a set of traffic lights with a roar.
"Nothing," Doyle concedes, maybe because he's right about one thing. It's crazy.
***
Pubs are a haven that Bodie doesn't seek out very often because the domestic consequences become unpleasant now, but Doyle insists on it tonight, and Bodie can't say no. He sits down on an overstuffed bench cushion in an overheated room filled with a buzz of noise and a friendly stink of booze and cigarettes which is different somehow to the lonely reek of his Dad's house. The barmaid is busty and flirtatious and if Bodie wanted to he'd be in with a chance there, especially with Doyle glowering away in the background as contrast to Bodie's friendly and engaging manners.
"Jesus, mate, you could grump for England," Bodie says over the bitter.
Doyle's lips thin. "I'm worried about you."
"No need," Bodie says airily, waving his pint in the air.
"Nearly got yourself killed yesterday."
True enough. Bodie's reckless streak has been coming out to play more often recently. He doesn't need Freud to tell him why, although he might have to start coming up with some creative explanations with Cowley making threatening noises about aspects of his recent performance.
"But I was getting you out of trouble, sunshine," he says, with a grin that's more like a snarl.
"I wasn't in any trouble that I couldn't get out of by myself. You're taking stupid risks, Bodie."
Bodie ignores this and takes a long swallow of his beer. He hasn't touched the stuff for a while. He's not ready to drown himself in alcohol yet.
Doyle's watching him still. "How bad is it at the moment?"
"Not so bad. No visitors at my flat makes for a happy bogeyman."
Doyle leans closer. It's normal enough in a noisy pub. You can hardly hear yourself think sometimes.
"Fine. So come back to mine, tonight."
"Not a good idea."
"I watch you every day, mate. You need a decent meal and that's just for starters."
Bodie stares at his drink. Temptation, Doyle is, always has been.
"They do bangers and mash here," Bodie says, enjoying the wait for the inevitable.
"Let me introduce you to a whole new concept. It's called a vegetable."
Bodie puckers his face in a frown. "Does it come in meat flavour then?"
Doyle grins at that. It's about time. "Berk. Come on, then."
He leads the way, opening the door of the car with joking solicitousness that isn't all joking. Bodie ignores that, because that means he can ignore the fact that Doyle has anything to be worried about, and slides onto the cool vinyl seat with a small, tired sigh. He's going to pay for this, for Doyle's company, but he doesn't care.
Doyle gets in, and Bodie gets another one of those looks, and a firm grip on his thigh, just a touch too high up to be platonically matey. A decent meal for starters, and maybe a decent fuck for afters.
Doyle pulls away from the kerb and drives, and Bodie turns his head and watches his partner's face, calm in concentration, frowning when they miss one set of lights and have to wait.
"There has to be something you can do, Bodie," Doyle says, "something or someone that can help."
"Got a suggestion, do you? Nice witch, good exorcist? Maybe the Cow can recommend somebody."
Doyle bites his lip, and Bodie straightens up in alarm. "Oh, for God's sake, Ray, we say anything and we'll both be in the nut house!"
"I dunno. I think Cowley's full of surprises."
Bodie does his best to continue telegraphing complete denial until Doyle drops the idea.
"All right, all right. But it...I hate seeing you in trouble and not being able to do anything useful." 'Useful' is punctuated with Doyle's angry fist on the steering wheel.
"You're going to feed me. That's bloody useful, that is."
"It's not enough." Doyle's voice turns rueful. "And here I am thinking that Africa wasn't the land of wonders that I thought it was. Never met a witchdoctor, then?"
"Not one that wasn't completely deluded. Well, maybe one, but she's dead now."
"There must be a few clergymen who still believe in bell, book and candle in these degenerate days." Doyle's voice is still thoughtful.
"Maybe," Bodie says. He doesn't want to think about it right now. The goal of Doyle's flat, with its beckoning possibilities of food and sex and comfort is enough. Irritation weighs him down, makes his skin prickle. He turns his head to look out his window and feels a cold spike pierce his gut when he's sure that he sees his monster grinning on a corner, looming over some old dodderer in a cap who apparently can't see anything other than the pavement in front of him. It's gone, and they're gone too, powered past the corner by four mundane car tyres on the road. Bodie leans against the head rest and blows out a breath, before he nearly chokes when he sees it again, waving maliciously under the orange glow of a streetlight.
"Think you'd better turn around, Doyle."
"What? You're joking."
"Pull over and let me out."
Doyle's face is stubborn. "Don't be stupid. We're miles from your place by now."
Bodie draws in breath for a fight, and then expels it in one shout - "Ray!" There's a shape on the road right in front of them, scrambling on all fours and maybe if you haven't seen what Bodie's seen recently you might think it was a very large and odd-shaped dog. Doyle has time for the start of a curse before there's a hell of a thump and the car does - something - maybe bouncing off a solid object before it skews and shrieks its way across the full width of the road, barely missing a telephone pole and coming to a jolting halt, half on and half off the footpath.
Bodie turns towards Doyle with focussed, efficient panic, until he sees that Doyle is okay, shaken and holding the side of his face where it must have banged against the car window. "You all right?"
A tiny, pained nod is his only reply, until the space of a couple of breaths. Then Doyle is out of the car, shoving his door open with livid temper and stalking out to gaze across the road. "Bastard!" he curses, before turning to open Bodie's door. "You okay?" he questions, stooping down to look Bodie in the face.
"Yeah."
There are people coming out the houses to see the spectacle, to check that they're okay, and Doyle waves them off with some irritation. Bodie's out of the car too by now and examining the bumper along with Doyle. It'll still get them from A to B but there's damage at the front fit to drive Cowley spare. Doyle says to some concerned Samaritan, "'S all right, I nearly hit a stray dog . We're okay." They get back in the car. "It's up to you, mate. Where am I taking you?"
Bodie knows men and women who would ask that question in the clear expectation of taking Bodie somewhere that would save their own hides. Doyle asks it honestly. If Bodie says that they should go on to Doyle's flat as they planned then that's where they'll go. A sudden fury scours him. "Better take me back," he says. He has his Guest to have a little chat with.
"You're sure?"
"Yeah, Doyle, I'm fucking certain. Assuming your brains aren't too scrambled to drive."
"I'm fine," Doyle grits out, and they take off with a bump and a squeal of tyres that no doubt leaves heads shaking behind them. It's a silent drive back. Bodie opens the door, and Doyle's hand grips his arm.
"You tell me if there's anything I can do. You tell me, is that clear?"
Bodie gives him a mock salute and then, on impulse, a quick, chaste peck on the lips. Daft that is, right outside his flat, but he doesn't care. "Yes, sir!" he snaps, almost joking, before he gets out, squares his shoulders and steps up to do battle.
The old woman from downstairs stops him in the hall. "I nearly called the police, but I wasn't sure if it was you or not." She sniffs, but he can see the nervousness beneath. She's not impressed with the way that odd noises have been coming from the floor above. "You might want to step in carefully. Sounded like there was someone up there."
He nods, unable to muster anything more in the way of thanks. When he opens his door, all looks normal until he gets to his kitchen. Plates are shattered all over the floor, the way that the pieces of his radio were scattered so very long ago. It's a message, and one that he understands perfectly. Ray Doyle might be as broken as these plates are one day, because Bodie belongs to the monster.
The hell he does.
"You leave him alone, you hear me? He's off limits." It's as if the anger in him is a solid thing, spewing up out of his throat into the room, dark and viscous and spreading everywhere. He can feel the anger, his anger, and he can feel a surprise that's not his, and the familiar malicious spite. It's there, bending down to leer at him. He holds his ground. "He's off limits," he repeats, spitting it out like bullets.
"Sergeant Bodie and his brown trousers," it mocks. "I set the rules. I set the limits."
"Fuck you," he says, his voice rough and returning to the accent of his childhood; and is backhanded back through the doorway to land sprawled on the floor for his insolence.
***
It's war, Bodie realises, it always was, but now he's beginning to think about his campaign. Win or lose, he won't go down without a fight. And war needs intelligence.
The fight is daily. He's covered in bruises, and the flat is seldom silent. Mocking whispers pursue him all the time. He finds animal shit left amongst his clothes. But for now, it still permits him enough peace and sufficient belongings that he can function. He knows why. It likes anticipation. You still have these things, it's telling him, for now. But one day. One day...
Bodie sticks it out. That's what you do. He's learned a thing or two about endurance, and about how you find peace in an internal storm. He doesn't always remember them, especially the peace, but he remembers enough that he can hold on. And doesn't it annoy his Guest! He can feel the bafflement sometimes, spicing the malice. It knows him, but increasingly he knows it too.
It's a mad chase through a market one day that sends him where he needs to be. A kid's fairy-tale book lies under his feet, along with the other books knocked off their table, and he clears the mess and races on, frightened shoppers charging out of the way of trouble like startled sheep. Doyle and he catch their trouble maker, truth and justice and the scent of roses and lavender triumph yet again. But the cover of the kid's book stays in his head. It's a book that parents buy for their children, not the sort that kids choose for themselves, all Victorian pen and ink and obviously based on folk-lore.
Later, another day, stiff and sore and tired, he turns to Doyle and says, "Have you ever considered the rewards of registering as a reader at the British Library?" At Doyle's double-take, he says, "Expect you're more a National Gallery sort of fella."
Doyle snorts. "Prefer the Tate," he says and waits, bland amusement overlaying an electric attention, for Bodie to explain himself.
"I was thinking that you and I should do some research."
"For your little pest problem, then?"
Bodie grins. "It's a very historic sort of pest problem when you think about it." Very British, his monster is, with its can't quite be placed accent.
Doyle shakes his head. "Typical. Only the best will do for you, mate. But I s'pose the Library can't be any worse than mouldy old case-files at the Met."
"That's the spirit, Raymond." Bodie vigorously tousles Doyle's hair. "Always knew there was a thirst for knowledge hiding under those lovely locks." It's a depressing mark of Doyle's concern that this blatant trespass receives no more attention than a quick duck of the head and a muttered 'geroff'. An indulgent, patient Doyle is unnatural. That thought sparks bitter amusement. There's a lot of unnatural in Bodie's life right now.
Doyle is also a fast reader and a methodical note-taker, even when surrounded by a pile of books with content as dry as the dust that their custodians would never let settle upon them. Bodie cherishes these qualities, although he can do without Doyle's frustration and occasional pessimism. He has enough of that of his own.
"You can't actually count on any of this," Doyle complains, but very quietly, as he shakes out a cramping hand. "It's like any other witness statement. Bias, people seeing what they want to see and what they think you wanted them to see."
"But there's still patterns," Bodie says, equally quietly, casting his eyes over headings and paragraphs and even, God help them all, diagrams. Doyle is undoubtedly better at reports than he is. Bodie may not take such pretty notes but he's starting to see interesting patterns in their delvings into the folk lore and history of the British Isles. He takes his thoughts on patterns home with him and steps into the quiet of his flat wondering if it can tell what he's been doing, if it bothered to follow him this time, or simply bided its time waiting for him to come back, like a patient spouse assured of possession.
There's piss all over the bed and the mattress, the smell of it rotten-ripe when he opens the door. He bundles the bedding into a bag, and puts it by the door to be washed tomorrow. He'll have to find a new laundrette. He blots and wipes the mattress as best he can. Then he grabs a spare blanket and lies on the couch and stares at the ceiling. Patterns, and where there are patterns there can also be a plan.
***
"It can't be that simple," Doyle protests.
Bodie isn't so sure about that. His monster always has had simple tastes - malice, spite, a petty joy in bullying.
"Simple?" he says. "So say you, mate. Simple's not the same as easy."
Doyle frowns, and shakes his head. "True enough, but still..." Bright, suspicious eyes turn to Bodie's face. "You're not thinking of doing it on your own?"
"Why not? One stout man. That's all it took in the old story."
"Which could just as easily be a load of cobblers. Some old bollocks about the village bully that got turned into a bogey man story all the better to scare the grandkids with." They're alone in a grotty room like a dozen others that Bodie's seen on observation work. He's got one eye on the house across the road, but too much of his attention is on Doyle, who's stood up to pace the small space. Amazing the number of places that can't contain Doyle's energy. Then he comes close, stands by Bodie's side, and Bodie can feel his determination and anger the way that he can feel his body heat.
"You're not doing it on your own."
"It's not that I'm not grateful for the offer, sunshine, but I don't think that I can accept."
Doyle gives Bodie that look, the one that says that yes, he has his good points but that he's currently being a cretinous git.
"What if you lose?" Doyle asks. His voice is low.
"Then I lose. It doesn't want me dead. I'm no fun that way."
"It could maim you, though. Cripple you."
Bodie shrugs. It could do that, if it thinks that he needs to be taught a lesson badly enough. That's what it will have to do to stop him.
"It'd kill you." Doyle dead in the London mud. It doesn't bear thinking of. "It likes its games, but..." He stumbles for words, suddenly tongue-tied and defeated, because Doyle is stubborn, so damn stubborn, and also, Bodie doesn't want to do this on his own. "If I can push it into this, then we're all playing for keeps." No more of this. No more. No wondering where it might go next when Bodie dies, and he's never assumed that he'll make old bones, not with the life he's lived. He's been careful, impressed quite few birds with his willingness to wear a condom, but there are no guarantees. There could be some kid born in some whorehouse situated several places across Africa. He should have stuck to men. He wonders what his monster would make of the climate and the poor little bastard out there who won't know what's coming to him.
"If it's that simple then why not try putting a bullet into it?"
"Not that much cold steel in a bullet, Doyle. And besides...it has to be personal."
"Doesn't get much more personal than beating the shit out of something, that's true." Doyle's face is sceptical.
"Damn it, Doyle, I just know, okay! It gets into my head to find out the best way to make my life a fucking misery, but it goes both ways, mate, it goes both ways."
Scepticism turns to horror. "Christ. Why didn't you say something?" Doyle must think that he looks bad because he's moved those last few inches and has him in a hug, and Bodie must surely be in a bad way because he doesn't protest or shrug off the hold but stands there and takes it. The monster will know. Let it know. It's seen that he won't give in. Let it know he still has defences and allies, and someone solid and strong under his hands, who gives a fuck about him and won't run.
"We're on duty," he says finally. If they've missed anything in those long seconds then Cowley will have their guts for garters.
"Yeah." Doyle steps back and takes a look out the window. His face stays clear. Nobody's unloading a lorry-load of munitions, at least. "Tell me when it's time, Bodie."
Bodie smiles. "Yeah. I'll do that."
"Where?"
"Somewhere out of the way. Quiet little corner of Hyde Park, maybe."
"By the river," Doyle suggests. "Will it come?"
"If I give it enough provocation."
Doyle cracks a broad grin. "Piece of bloody cake, then."
***
Time for a show down, pilgrims. Bodie always did like John Wayne, although the Duke never faced anything quite like this.
"Been thinking, I have," Bodie announces to the deceptively empty air of his flat. "About your rules. Don't think I want to follow them anymore."
Silence continues, but it's a listening silence now. "What about you," Bodie says. "Do you have rules that you have to follow? Compulsions? Geas?" The old Irish word grunts satisfyingly out of the back of his throat.
"Here's the deal. I want you out of here. You and all your little games. So we have a game of our own. Little contest, to see who fights best. And if I win, then you're gone."
"You won't win," rumbles into his ear, even though the place still looks empty.
"Then you don't have to be afraid of playing, do you?"
Just like that, there are stained, horny claws wrapped around his arm, and dirty yellow eyes squinting into his. "Playing games, Billy Browntrews?" it sneers. "Teach you to play games, I will. On your own."
"But that wouldn't be fair, would it now? You being so much bigger than me. Whoever's willing to stand with me, right?"
The fury in it! It goes straight to his head, to his gut, until he feels like he might explode with it, but he keeps looking the monster in the eye. Challenge. Games. They have to play, they have to accept, it's their fucking *rule*. Let that be right. Let Bodie have understood that right.
"Games, little boy. Convince me," it husks, its breath foul in his face like its anger is foul in his head.
"Then you'd better follow me. Done that before, haven't you?" It spits at him and disappears. His legs feel shaky but he ignores it because it's more important to wipe the spittle from his face before he throws up what little is in his stomach. None of that, not now. Save it for after, after he's walked down to his car and looked in the boot where the cricket bat still sits, untouched and undisturbed. Good wood, willow is; strong and light for its size and able to take the good whacks. Able to deal them out too.
Cudgels at dawn. That's what he'd told Doyle and Doyle had rolled his eyes. Needed to get himself a sense of humour did Ray. But he's waiting at the spot, on the scrubby and broken ground demarcated by a line of concrete blocks on one side and the hulk of a disused warehouse on the other. The stink of the river is like the stink of Bodie's abused mattress. And Doyle, damn him, is leaning against the wall like he's waiting for a bus.
"What the hell is that?" Bodie demands, although he can see perfectly well what it is.
"Baseball bat."
"Won't all those nails puncture the ball?" Bodie asks innocently and Ray doesn't so much smile as he snarls. Bodie feels almost light-hearted. It's time for action and he can do that, enjoys it even, as often as not. Doyle... he might not enjoy himself the same way, but he's a great man for fighting the good fight, even with a makeshift mace.
"I know you're out there, you bastard. Come and get me," he shouts into the grey morning. He can feel it circling them, and that gives Bodie wings of happy adrenalin because they have a chance. If it was so sure that it could come and wipe them out it wouldn't hesitate. He just has to encourage it a little.
"Come on then. What about the rules? I'm supposed to be a good little boy and here I am being naughty. Want to teach me a lesson, then?"
Doyle is close beside him, turning warily and watching the ground and the air. He grunts in irritation and then his free hand wraps itself around Bodie's nape. "Maybe it needs a bit more provocation," he says, and he kisses Bodie, that sweet, crafty, cupid's bow of a mouth direct to Bodie's with a lick and a promise before he returns to martial readiness, spoiling for a fight.
"Bet you don't get one of those," Doyle shouts to the open air, and leaps away back from the whirr of disturbed air as a great hand swipes at his gut and just misses. Doyle scrambles back and Bodie takes the chance for a hit across the monster's shoulders that's almost like coming, so great is the satisfaction in it.
It turns to him, teeth showing, lips curled back like the peel of a rotten and half-eaten apple. "Hurt you," it rumbles.
He laughs. "Give it your best shot, then, come on."
It does, damn it, a great clubbing blow that he only just blocks while Doyle takes his chances at it, hitting across the back and shoulders because it knows that stooping is not to its advantage. Which means only that Bodie gets a good chance at its knees and shins. The light gets better, all the better to remind him that this is real, that he and Doyle are fighting a monster. There's blood on Doyle's face, too close to his eyes where it clawed and caught a glancing blow. It snarls and Bodie gets in its way and takes a hit that numbs his elbow and makes his hold on the bat uncertain. But Doyle gives him time, ducks under its reach and deals it a nasty hit upwards between its legs.
The thing doesn't flinch or wince. Its face stays just as furious as it ever was, and Bodie can feel the anger, the sheer fury that its toy is defying it. But he can feel the bewilderment too, the bone deep confusion that this isn't the way it's supposed to be, and he spares the briefest pity for the farmers and miners and factory workers who must have dealt with this thing before him. He scrambles around, feints and dodges while a serene-faced Doyle takes another hit at it. It doesn't show pain, but it seems to be diminishing. It's tall, yes, but not as tall as it was, not as tall as the overshadowing beast in his bedroom.
That's a good thing because this is a long fight. Hand to hand doesn't usually last this long, not a single encounter, but this is different. It's good that they're in with a chance, because Bodie can feel his lungs burn, and shifting his body out of the way is like moving lead. His hands vibrate with the sting of repeated blows.
He takes a hit, across his ribs, and rolls with it. It still hurts like hell, and he stumbles and moves only just in time to avoid a fist like a sledgehammer. But it has to stoop, to lean to reach him, and the length of its arms is not what it was. Doyle moves in behind and he takes a vicious swing which cracks across its head. Doyle's smiling now, in feral satisfaction, and takes another swing, and another. It howls, the first noise that Bodie's ever heard from it that wasn't meant to frighten or demean. That must be his cue to get back on his feet, and give it a good whack across its gaping mouth. It stares at him, smaller now, standing straight and merely looking him in the eye, and the yellow fangs are broken. It stinks, some musky, sticky, beast-like smell that he's never noticed before.
"Go to hell!" Bodie yells, and takes one last swing. The blow lands true and the strong willow wood splinters and cracks, and then Bodie nearly falls as the bat swings on through nothing to hit the ground. There's only him and Doyle, the sound of their heaving breath, and the stink of sweat and the musty dry scent of knocked around soil.
Bodie steadies himself. There truly is nothing of the monster to be seen, and more importantly there's a lightness in his chest and his head. Something that's been sitting there like a dirty weight for weeks now is gone.
"That was something different," Doyle says, in between deep breaths in search of air.
Bodie drops on his arse to the ground. "Yeah."
"You all right?" Doyle staggers over and squats in front of him.
"Bloody brilliant, mate. Bloody brilliant."
Doyle scans around them, one hand still clenched around his bat, the other gripping Bodie's shoulder. "It's gone."
"Yeah, I know." Bodie feels like his grin will split his face. "Gone for good."
"You're sure?"
"Don't be such a fucking pessimist, Doyle. Yeah, gone for good." Bodie lies back on the ground and stares up at the overcast sky. "It's like a weight gone. Like I could float up to the sky."
Doyle laughs at that, with a rich, husky enthusiasm. "Chance'd be a fine thing. You look solid enough to me." His hand grabs Bodie's.
Bodie looks at it, wrapped around his in a sturdy grip. Doyle's knuckles are scraped bloody, to go with the claw marks across his face. Bodie's arms feel like they're about to fall off, and his own body is sticky with blood. He doesn't have the energy to catalogue exactly where and how yet, although there's a warning wetness across the back of his left shoulder.
"You're a mess," Doyle tells him.
"Bloody but unbowed."
"Well, you would be unbowed if you weren't lying on the ground, mate. Up you come, then." He's yanked to his feet, to stand as a completely free man for the first time in nearly twenty years, with Ray Doyle's hand warm and strong in his own.
Haha! I laugh in the face of deadlines. Otherwise known as 'I got my spook_me fic done! One small problem - it's totally the rough cut, as yet unbetad despite the generosity of the talented byslantedlight. Yes, although the story is complete, I am actually foisting you lot off with a Work In Progress. This version will change as I get it betad, and only at that point do I plan to announce it in any Professionals comms or archives. However, comments are always welcome in the meantime, not least because while I think it works adequately well as a story of things that go bump in the night, I'm somewhat more nervous about how it works as a Pros story. Still, it's good to give things a go, right?
Slash, The Professionals, Bodie/Doyle, Adult rated for sex and violence, 10,000 words approx
Legacy
Bodie left school (and home) at age fourteen. That much Cowley and Doyle both know. Cowley, being the canny director of CI5 that he is, also knows that Bodie's father died a few weeks back, and that Bodie didn't go to the funeral. That's what Cowley and Doyle know.
***
"So who is she then?" Doyle appears by his shoulder, and Bodie flinches when Doyle's hand pulls at his collar. He can't help it.
"Who's who?" he asks irritably.
"This bird who has you so addled that you put your shirt on inside out. Must be a right little raver." Doyle has his 'tell me more' leer fixed firmly in place, but Bodie isn't fooled for a moment. Doyle has a monster with greener eyes than his own sitting on his shoulder. It's been perched there a while now.
"Tall, dark and gorgeous," he camps, "although she could never hold a candle to you, darling." McCabe snorts at this as he goes past. That Doyle and Bodie and their jokes. No joke, though.
"You might want to tell her that a good civil servant needs his sleep. You look knackered. Wouldn't want you falling asleep on an op." Doyle's tone is disagreeable, but Bodie supposes he's fairly pissed off. Bodie's been in seclusion the last month or so. Doyle's noticed it, but Bodie hasn't graced him with an explanation. Cowley's noticed it, or rather, he's noticed the things that aren't happening, the absence of the list of young women bedded and security checked. "S'pose I've been more knocked back by Dad dying than I thought, sir," Bodie explained. Not a word of a lie in it.
The breakroom is empty, thank God. The sloppy bastards that he works with have used up all the unchipped mugs and left them dirty. Bodie pauses a moment to pick out the least ugly cup and runs it under the tap.
Doyle fiddles with the teabags, and the jug, before sitting down and leaning back. He takes a sip of his tea, and shakes his head. "Christ, mate. You look bloody awful."
"I'm my own gorgeous self, thank you, Raymond."
"No you're not," Doyle says bluntly. "What's going on?"
"No kissing and telling. You're out of luck." Bodie makes a silly, carefree face, and sits down with his hand wrapped around the comforting warmth of the mug, wondering how long he can keep this up. After the last month, he'd love to thump something, anything, and he doesn't want it to be Doyle.
"Out of luck, am I?" Doyle stares over the top of his mug. "Story of my life, mate."
Yeah, Bodie thinks. Mine too.
***
His mum's latest boyfriend is getting on Billy's wick. Who wants the bloody tosser hanging around anyway, except for his mum? Embarrassing, that's what it is, Mum and him all loveydovey, and the tosser throwing his weight around. He isn't Billy's dad. He doesn't have any right to tell Billy what to do. Frustratedly he wishes he could get out, and then he realises he does have a place to go - why not try living with his Dad for a while? It's a grand plan and if Billy's dad throws him out, he'll go back to Mum, and maybe she'll appreciate him a bit more for the fright she'll get when she can't find him.
Billy nearly chucks his grand plan away as soon as his Dad's door opens to his knock. His mum never has a good word for his dad. Drunken, useless bugger, she says, but even so, Billy's shocked by the frail, defeated looking man who stares hopelessly at him.
"Dad? It's me, Billy."
His Dad keeps staring, before he swallows and says, "What the fuckin' hell are you doing here?"
Billy looks at his boots. "Bit of trouble at home. Mum's got another boyfriend..." And that's all your fault too, he'd like to say, but policy shuts his mouth just in time. "Come on, Dad, can't I stay? Just for a while. I won't be any trouble."
"You go home," his dad says.
"I can't," Billy whines. "Used up all me cash gettin' here, didn't I?" That's not at all the truth, but Billy can see that he needs bargaining power.
His dad keeps staring and time weighs on until finally he averts his eyes to look at nothing in particular and opens the door a little wider. "Come in, then."
The house is just awful. It's bare to the point of squalor and the paint is stained yellow with cigarette smoke. The smell of cigarettes and booze seems to seep out of the walls like the stench from an open drain. There's hardly any food in the kitchen, and the little yard out the back is stacked high with empty sherry bottles.
"You can't stay long," his dad mumbles. "Not that you'll want to."
That looks likely, but Billy's pride is up. Even if all he does is stay with the old bastard for a couple of weeks, that'll be enough to put the fear of God into his mum. And then he might go home again.
"You've got tall," his dad says.
"Yeah," Billy says. It's good, that is. Makes him look older, despite the baby-face. He's going to be a man, and he's not going to be a man like this stoop-shouldered, skinny tosspot.
There isn't even a bed for him. Instead, he finds some old blankets and wraps them around himself. There isn't a settee or an armchair, just a rickety table and a couple of rickety chairs, and his dad spends most nights sitting up at the table, drinking like a fish and smoking like a chimney.
Billy works his way around the neighbours, but they're a dour lot, and they keep their distance. Snobby bastards, he thinks. Except for the ones who keep knocking at the doors at night, and throwing gravel at the windows. It's a useless house. It seems the whole frame shakes when someone bangs at the door. That's where the noise comes from. Some troublemaker banging at the door, making his dad start and hold his drinks and ciggies to his mouth with shaking hands. Billy goes to the door. He won't be scared of a bunch of trouble-making hooligans; but there's never anyone there, never any sign of anyone running down the street.
He's not bothered to register for school and his dad certainly doesn't mention it. Bored out of his mind, one day he spends all of his money on a transistor radio and carries it exultantly back to his dad's and fills the sad, worn house with noise. Next day he goes out and when he comes home, his precious radio is cracked in bits all over the floor. Billy takes one look and charges down the stairs to his Dad, who's still sitting at that fucking table, never fucking moves from it.
"Why'd you break me bloody radio? Why'd you do it?" he yells, ashamed of the way that his voice cracks. But he'd worked long and hard for the money for the radio, odd jobs for neighbours, and he'd gloated over his cash, and now all his hard work and his joy is spread in pieces of metal and plastic over the dirty floorboards.
"Wasn't me, boy. Wasn't me that broke it."
"Liar. Bloody liar. I s'pose the fairies broke it, did they?"
Even in his fury, Billy can see his Dad's face twitch.
"Yes, lad. Bloody fairies. You go home now. You go home."
But Billy's not going to go anywhere. He's stubborn. He's not going to let the old bugger get the better of him, and he's not going to let his mum and her bloody boyfriend off the hook either. He goes upstairs, tears stinging in his eyes, to pick up the broken bits. Someone is laughing somewhere. He knows it's not his dad. His dad is half dead and too dried up to have that sort of a laugh in him. Sound carries in these old houses and somewhere up the road some lucky bastard's having a better time of it than the Bodies. That's for sure.
***
Bodie knows that the banging at the door is Doyle, bloody, inevitable Doyle, who was miserably satisfied to loftily ignore Bodie when he thought he was having it away with some bird. But now that Doyle's famous detecting skills have deduced that Bodie's in trouble, here he is, banging at the door, and the old besom from the floor below will be making another complaint about noise if Bodie doesn't answer the door soon.
Bodie stands and listens for a moment, struggling to sense the air, the mood, the lay of the land, in a way that belongs to an op, not the supposed quiet of his flat. Everything is strained peace and he goes to open the door.
"Took you long enough," Doyle says, bolting his way in. "Bloody perishing outside, and that hall's not much better."
"Should have stayed indoors then, shouldn't you," Bodie replies, shutting the door again, and setting the locks, the useless locks. Can't keep anything out, can they?
"I'll make myself a cup of tea." Doyle pauses, rubbing his hands up and down his arms to emphasise that yes, it is indeed perishing and yes, he's cold. "Unless there's something stronger on offer?"
"I'm having a one-man temperance revival. Go make yourself your tea. You know where everything is."
"You? Temperance? That'll be the day. Cut off your credit at the off-licence have they?"
Bodie drops down onto the sofa, his legs stretched out, the very picture of relaxation, even though everything in him is on alert.
"The owner has a lovely daughter breaking her heart for me. So he's broken my heart by banning me from the premises."
All nonsense and Doyle knows it, but there's still strung tension in him when he turns his head to look at Bodie. "Somehow there's always a woman breaking her heart for you." He sniffs. "Dunno what they see in you, myself." He strides purposefully into the kitchen, saving Bodie from having to make any answer.
Everything is quiet and normal. The only sounds are the homely ones of Doyle making himself tea. "Do you want one yourself?" he calls to Bodie from the kitchen.
"No, no, mate, I'm fine."
Sounds carries in funny ways, sometimes, or maybe it's just that Bodie is listening so hard, but he clearly hears Doyle say, "Bollocks," and he grins. His life has taken the weirdest, nastiest turn imaginable, but there's still Doyle, with his curiosity and his tea. His grin fades as Bodie wonders for how long.
Doyle comes out with his tea but he doesn't sit down with it. Instead he props his bum on the edge of the table, and sips his tea while he stares at Bodie, who's still sitting on the couch and wishing he had a paper handy. It'd be something to do while he pretends to ignore Doyle.
"Is it anything that Cowley should know?" Doyle's face is still pinched, and his curled fingers rub up and down the mug, chasing the warmth.
"Is what something that the Cow should know?" Bland as bland, that's Bodie.
"Bodie..." It comes out a growl, and Bodie sighs.
"It's all right, Ray. And yes, Cowley does know. My Dad died a few weeks back, that's all."
The mug is hastily deposited on the table and a scowling Doyle looms over Bodie.
"What do you mean, that's all? Christ, Bodie!"
"Don't get your knickers in a knot, sunshine. It's not like I was close to the old bastard or anything. Still, end of an era and all that."
Doyle plunks himself on the sofa, close enough that Bodie can feel the warmth of his body. "Yeah, I can imagine it'd be the end of an era, alright. Why didn't you just tell me, idiot, instead of letting me think..." Doyle's voice trails off, tight with anger.
"Didn't seem important."
"Course not. Not important at all." Doyle's face is shadowed with concern. "I've been seeing how not important it is. Look, mate, I wasn't joking about how bad you look. We're not in a forgiving occupation. Even if you don't want to talk to me," and there's a tiny, tiny shuttering of Doyle's eyes behind their lids, "you should probably be talking to someone. Or going out and getting drunk."
"Or shagging some bird?" Bodie asks, in a mood to see whether this good advice will extend to anything self-sacrificing.
Doyle, damn him, doesn't blink. "If you think it'll do some good," he says waspishly.
"All I need is a bit of peace and quiet. You don't need to be dragging yourself out from your cosy flat to offer me a shoulder to cry on. I'm not the crying kind."
"No, you're the stupid kind," Doyle says with exasperated affection, and his hand cups Bodie's jaw.
Bodie can't help the tiny flinch and Doyle's eyes narrow in angry hurt. It's stupid of Bodie because treating Doyle with anything warmer than neutral politeness is beyond careless right now. Still, knowing that doesn't stop him from resting his hands on Doyle's shoulders, and Doyle relaxes and leans in to offer some gentle, forgiving kisses, like Bodie's some bird who's thrown a tantrum over yet another missed date, some nice girl who just doesn't understand. Doyle's the one who doesn't understand, and Bodie isn't some bird who needs to be cajoled into dropping her knickers.
"Bedroom, Ray."
"If you say so," Doyle says, standing and waiting for Bodie to do the same. Bodie leads the way to his bedroom, his heart sinking at about the same rate as his cock is rising. Stupid, he's stupid, look at what happened with Karen, but, god, he wants to feel warm in his bed again, he wants something strong to hang on to, for just a little while.
Doyle is stripping off his clothes as he goes, leaving a trail behind him of jumper and t-shirt before Bodie grabs him and pulls him close to bury his face in the jointure of neck and shoulder.
"Hey," Doyle says gently, maybe assuming completely wrong things about grief and memories of Bodie's Dad. Bodie makes the point that gentleness is not at all what he wants, and drags Doyle down to the bed with him amid the bouncing of mattress springs and few muffled profanities.
It's quick and urgent. Doyle must be wondering when exactly someone took a shot at them because it's like the first time, except that now it's fucking, instead of a mutual wank. Bodie feels almost normal and definitely good, bloody brilliant even, with Doyle's body blanketing him, until he looks over the edge of his bed. Doyle is going at it like a traction engine, but all that Bodie can register is the eyes that stare up at him with malicious pleasure, dark as a muddy pool. The monster that lives under your bed. Jesus. Bodie jerks and moans in denial, and it's gone. Doyle must think he's coming, because he makes his own drawn out noise before he pulls out of Bodie and collapses onto the rumpled sheets. One hand leans on the back of Bodie's head, stroking gently at his hair before resting warm and firm against Bodie's nape.
"Was good, that," Doyle murmurs.
"Yeah," Bodie mutters, staring out the wall and chest of drawers stowed against it. He thinks he might sleep. There's no sense of frustrated desire - the need was burned out of him by that jolt of adrenalised shock. He does doze for while, held securely under Doyle's gun-callused palm. But he wakes to a yelping sound - the sound of Doyle at a complete and shocked loss. He starts up in bed, and sees Doyle scrambling across the floor to grab at Bodie's gun. His own was left behind for a visit to a friend, after all.
"Ray?" he questions, but he doesn't truly need an answer. He knows.
Doyle's head jerks in a frowning, hushing expression, and, controlled now and looking very, very dangerous for all that he's naked, Doyle approaches the bed, crouches and flips up the covers to look underneath. Stern determination turns to confusion because there's nothing there to see. Nothing at all.
Nothing to see, but Bodie can feel the tension build, and now he's sure that it's not just his own nervousness and disgust. There's something in the air if you're aware enough, and Bodie is now. He's had several weeks to learn to read the signs.
"Nightmare?" he asks pleasantly, and gets up and drags his clothes on, underpants and cords at least.
"I... Something grabbed my ankle when I got out of bed."
"Nightmare," Bodie says again. "Put my gun down, will you? You're giving me the willies." The hair is rising on the back of his neck. He's made a mistake, a bad mistake, in more ways than one. Doyle won't make a panicked exit the way that Karen did. And Bodie's unwelcome guest is likely recognising a genuine threat.
Doyle stands, uncaring that he's naked, and he looks at Bodie like he's still Detective Constable Doyle and Bodie is a very dodgy character indeed.
"I didn't imagine it."
"It's not imagining when you're asleep now, is it," Bodie says. It's weak and it's desperate and it's not going to work. He has a headache, like the barometer's dropping, like lightning's going to strike inside his bedroom. Something's going to go boom. Odds are that it'll be Doyle, who's inexorably advancing.
"I didn't imagine it, Bodie."
"Get your clothes on, there's a good lad." Get dressed, get out, don't be vulnerable here, I'm sorry, I never should have let you in the door, get out...
"I didn't imagine it," Doyle says again, laying his hands on Bodie's shoulders. His eyes are staring, and he's not finding the answers that he wants.
Bodie jerks back, bring his arms and clenched fists between them to shove Doyle's hands from his shoulders. "Just leave it alone, Doyle. Just leave it the fuck alone!"
Doyle grabs Bodie's forearm, fingers gripping to leave a bruise. And that's the point where there's not just the two of them in the room anymore. It's there, looming, stooping down with its hunched back nearly brushing the ceiling. The face, white-skinned and dark eyed, like some leprous chimpanzee, sneers at Doyle. "Just leave it alone, Doyle. Just leave it the fuck alone," it rumbles. It jerks Doyle away from Bodie and takes hold of him by one uplifted arm, as if Doyle's a child being yanked around the shops by an ill-tempered mother, then it throws him aside. Doyle thumps half against the wall, half against the door, and grunts as the door handle catches him in the hip.
Then the monster leans down to Bodie. "Where's your brown trousers, Bodie?" 'Trewsers' it says, vaguely northern in its accent, but still no accent that Bodie's familiar with. "Get him out, out, out, out!" Its voice rises to a shout, and then it's gone.
***
Billy’s Dad gets this strange look on him sometimes, like he’s scared of Billy. It’s a daft notion and not one that Billy entertains very often because it’s unsettling, the way that the increasing noises of the house are unsettling. There are odd bangs and creaks and there are times when Billy feels like there’s something looming over him and casting a long shadow across his face, but when he looks again there’s nothing there. Oddly enough, the more scared his Dad looks, the more that he starts encouraging Billy to stay.
“I’ve got used to you being around, boy. Bit of young life in the house isn’t so bad now. I don’t mind you staying.” And he’ll thrust a grimy note or two at Billy, which is a considerable mark of favour given how much the old man spends on booze and fags. So Billy stays, to teach his mum a lesson and to spend the pound notes impressing a gang of boys he’s taken up with, who give him stick about his Dad but are willing enough to accept his cash and to laugh at Billy’s jokes and stories.
“You should be in school,” his Dad says one day.
“Says who?” Billy ripostes.
“No backchat. You should be in school.”
Billy is prepared to grant that maybe he should be in school. He’s getting bored to be honest. School would at least fill in the time and give more chances for company, but he struggles against the idea just for show, while his Dad waits with a face like worn out stone and doesn’t even really seem to hear Billy until he gets the grudging agreement. That night when Billy goes to his bed (there’s a grotty old mattress on the floor now) he hears that neighbour noise again - the laughing and then a bit of banging, like someone’s having a barney in the house. It sounds a lot like it’s coming from downstairs in his Dad’s front room but that’s not likely.
He wakes up in the middle of the night feeling odd. Sick, sort of, but not like he wants to throw up. He just feels strange, with a sick headache, and the return of that odd sensation of something or somebody nearby. He lies in bed, restless and uncomfortable, and realises that he really needs to go downstairs to the loo. He’s heading down when he hears a noise, a human noise of sheer misery, a low keen like someone’s about to burst into noisy wailing but they can’t quite. It’s his Dad’s voice.
It makes something in his chest go cold. He tries to tell himself it’s just an old, drunken man making unhappy noises in the middle of the night, and it shouldn’t be any trouble to sneak past his door on quiet feet out to the loo and ignore it all.
“Won’t…won’t…” Billy’s dad moans. Billy’s head suddenly goes all light and he thinks that he might faint. He won't though, he won't, he promises it to himself as he leans against the wall, and then, moved by some reckless, angry impulse, he barges through the door to the tiny dingy sitting room. There's his Dad, sitting at his table hugging his bottle of booze to himself like it's a baby, and looming over him is...
Billy can't quite take it all in. At first he thinks it's just a man, a tall, an enormous man, almost bent double with his shoulders hunched against the ceiling. But nobody is that tall, and when it turns to face him Billy stands frozen and hollow with terror. His Dad's miserable noise is entirely comprehensible now, although Billy himself can't make a sound. He can barely even breathe.
The ghastly face splits in a toothy grin. "I've been telling him," and its head jerks toward Billy's father, "about the rules. One at a time. One at a time." Warm fetid breath blows over Billy's face, and he still can't move, even when one enormous finger, capped with a brown, horny claw of a nail, strokes gently across his face. "Your turn is coming. No sharing."
Billy's Dad says with a shaking voice, "You leave him alone." It turns, and Billy sees the pelt of fur on its back ripple, observation strangely detached from the terror that keeps his feet nailed in one place.
"You want him to stay. Not in the rules." Then it lunges back at Billy, to show yellowing teeth in a mouth wide enough to swallow him whole, and Billy screams, like a little kid, the noise forced out of him like the wail of a train whistle through the constriction of chest and throat.
Then the room is empty, except for Billy and his Dad, and his Dad hardly counts. Billy is shaking and the room still smells like the monster is there. Then Billy realises that he's shitted himself. He stares at nothing in particular, hot and cold all over at the same time as appalled humiliation overtakes the memory of terror, and he stumbles away to try and clean himself up, wincing at the mess and the memories. Then he goes to make himself a cup of tea, strong enough to stand a spoon in with the tannin and the sugar. It's hot in his hands, but he still feels cold through and through.
His Dad appears after a while, looking sick and shaken.
"So you know now, boy."
"I don't know anything," Billy mutters, staring at the grimy wall.
His Dad talks on, the pair of them not looking at the other. "Didn't mean to have kids. But your mum told me that she was expecting, and I hoped..." His Dad takes a gulping swallow of booze. "Hoped things would be different. But they weren't."
Billy sips the scalding hot, sickly sweet tea. "Different how?"
"See, it's like a family curse. Follows us down when the man before dies. My dad died and it turned up in the house and your mum couldn't take it. You don't remember?"
Billy had been three. No, he doesn't remember. He doesn't want to remember and he doesn't want to be here.
"No, I don't remember." He takes a shuddery breath around the taste of strong tea. "Think it's time I moved on." He won't stay here. Can't stay here.
Billy's Dad sounds angry. "You run then, boy. Your turn is coming. Better hope that I'm better at holding on than my old man."
Billy throws his cup into the sink, where it shatters. "I'm going and you can't stop me," he shouts.
His Dad doesn't say anything, but only turns away and shuffles back to his sitting room and his fags and his drink. Billy waits for daylight, not sleeping. When he leaves he doesn't bother to say goodbye to his father; he just sneaks from the house in the grey dawn light, aware all the time that something that he can't see is leaning over his shoulder. As he opens the front door, he hears a whisper in his ears and turns like a shot to see - nothing. "Where's your brown trousers, Billy?" and he's off, running down the road like a sprinter.
***
Bodie kneels down by Doyle, who lies crumpled on his side, until finally he writhes and takes in a deep, wheezing breath. He's winded, Bodie realises.
"Ray," he demands urgently, "you okay?"
Doyle winces, his face puckering as he pulls himself up to sit with Bodie's help.
"Think so. Christ. What was that?" Doyle glares up at him in affront. He's been genuinely startled in a way that doesn't often happen to the two of them - ready for anything are the good men of CI5, seen it all. Also, Bodie has been keeping secrets and Doyle doesn't approve of that, even though it's hardly the first time. Bodie runs his hand down Doyle's side. There's already a good bruise forming where Doyle caught the door handle when he was thrown aside like so much rubbish, but there's no particular softness or tenderness that suggests anything worse.
"Bodie family curse, sunshine," Bodie says, all false amusement.
Grey-green eyes narrow. "I'm serious, mate. What was it?"
"I'm serious too. The family curse. The bogey man. The beastie under the bed. Come to haunt me for my sins and my fathers'." His voice is getting more and more bitter as he speaks. He stands and offers a hand to Doyle who stands also under the scrutiny of Bodie's watchful eyes. Doyle winces again and a rueful hand rubs up and down his side; there'll be more bruises and strained muscles when the adrenalin is gone. Doyle leans against the door and takes a couple of deep breaths, rubbing circles on his diaphragm, until he registers his state of undress and walks stiffly to pick up his strewn clothes. He's alert despite the stiffness, alive with nervous attention the way that he is sometimes.
"It's gone for now," Bodie says. "Although I don't want to make any promises about what'll happen if you hang about."
Doyle's head turns sharply. "Leave you with that? You must be joking. Or if it wants me out, you come with me." He's dressing with awkward, pained haste, dragging on shoes and socks without bothering to tuck in his shirt.
"Not a good idea." Bodie doesn't know if it will follow him if he tries to leave it behind for any length of time. He's had odd feelings sometimes at CI5 HQ, a sense of being watched. He has no intention that Ray's flat become the place that he confirms his suspicions.
Doyle rubs his hand across his forehead, which is furrowed up with anxiety and - yes - anger. "I'm supposed to wander home to my bed like a good boy and leave you here alone with that?" His mouth twists in disgust.
"Yeah, that's right, you are, because believe it or not, it'll be much better behaved when it has me all to itself."
Doyle takes two long steps to grab Bodie by his shoulders. "And that's your answer is it? Let it have you all to itself?"
"It is for now. For tonight," he says, trying to placate Doyle, feeling the pressure that's rising in the room again. Somebody doesn't like these suggestions, the idea that Bodie might have answers that don't involve him sitting alone and helpless. "I will talk to you later about this if I have to, Doyle, but not now. For now, you get out."
Doyle doesn't move, and his hands are like rock on Bodie's shoulders. "I don't like this," he declares.
"You and me both, sunshine. But it's time for you to go. Come on, Ray." Bodie plays the ace card and leans in close, one arm gently snugging around Doyle's waist. "Please..." he whispers. Impatience hums in the air about him. Doyle doesn't feel it, he hopes, but his grip loosens in a small surrender. "I'd hate to have to throw you out." Bodie's face creases up in a genuine if sour grin.
"You and whose army?" Doyle scoffs and then twitches his head, as if he's just heard something at the edge of his hearing. "Tomorrow? You'll be okay?"
"Better than you will. Hope you've got some arnica and liniment in your flat."
Doyle is backing away, herded towards the door by a determined Bodie; he's still angry, still confused, but for once prepared to follow Bodie's lead. "Tomorrow, Bodie," he warns.
"Yeah, sure. Tomorrow," Bodie says, and shuts the door on Doyle who has edgily and unwillingly retreated every step of the way. He leans his head against the door, cool smooth wood on his forehead and grates out, "Happy now?"
There's no sound at all in the flat, but the silence is sullen and dissatisfied. The monster is no happier with the promise of tomorrow than Doyle is. Bodie stays where he is, and what he remembers is the feel of Doyle's palm against the back of his neck when he fell asleep.
***
In the morning, there's punishment for disobedience, petty in the way that so many of its punishments are. All over the floor of the living room pages of books are scattered and shredded: favourite books, old ones, one in particular that he carried all the way back from Africa when he'd discarded everything else except the memories. Maybe two pages are recognisable of the old book of poems that belonged to Willie Thomas, who taught Bodie a thing or two in his time. Willie, who was small and stocky and long-faced and familiarly called Pit-Pony by the very few people who'd earned the right, and who was long-dead now. He'd clipped Bodie around the ears a few times when Bodie roundly declared that books were rubbish. Willie's opinion was that books were like anything else that men said or did - to be judged on their own merits.
Bodie can't keep back a noise of dismay when he realises exactly what his Guest has chosen to destroy, but he maintains stiff-faced calm as he gathers up the remnants and stuffs them all into a bin-liner. You don't let it show, not any more than you can help, and Bodie's had practice over the years. But it's still hard, knowing that the monster knows exactly where to hit to hurt the worst, as if it can see into his head. It wants, Bodie knows, to reduce him to the state that his Dad was in, alone in an empty squalid house with nothing of value left to him, and he suspects that it will take a great deal of pleasure in doing it slowly over several years. It's not going to happen. He doesn't know how he's going to stop it, but it's not going to happen.
It's still early in the morning and a sullen grey light is peeking around the curtains but the phone rings anyway. Bodie eyes it and tosses a mental coin as to whether it's work or Doyle. He picks up the receiver.
"Yeah?"
"Bodie?" Tails it is then.
"Bit early for you isn't it, Doyle?"
"Took you long enough to answer. Not devoured in the night then?"
That makes Bodie smile, strangely enough. There is nothing like Doyle being a sarcastic bastard first thing in the morning.
"Entirely unconsumed. And you? Took a good hit there, mate."
"I'll live."
"Right. I can't stand about nattering on the phone. See you in the Cow's office soon enough."
"Bodie..."
"See you soon enough," he says, and puts the phone down. It rings again but he ignores it. The odds are against it being Cowley and if it was that important then the cry of the outraged Scot would be heard over the RT instead.
Cowley's office and a briefing are soothing. There's a boss who knows what he's doing, a job that needs to be done; there's also Doyle, who's bristling at Bodie's side in a way that makes the old man indulge in one of his more penetrating stares. Bodie wonders briefly if Cowley's figured out that his best team (and they are his best team, Bodie doesn't have any time for false modesty) is fucking each other in between the birds that don't matter.
In the car it's a long drive and Doyle is in a mood. Bodie accepts that. He had a hell of a fright last night, and then Bodie shoved him out the door and hung up on him the next morning. Doyle's always so damned surprised and pissed off when he finds out that Bodie has certain things ring-fenced and out of bounds. He risks a look at Doyle's face, sharp in profile against the blur of London running past the window.
"Do you actually know anything?," Doyle asks. "More than what you said last night?"
"Not much more. Turned up one night and made itself at home."
Doyle scrubs at his face. "Christ, it's crazy."
"Yeah, guess it is."
"For your sins and your fathers', you said. So literally the family curse?"
"S'pose so. I know it had my Dad. Never knew anything about my other relatives, although I remember Mum saying that my Dad was a drunken bastard just like his dad before him."
"Don't blame him now if he was." Doyle's eyes look at Bodie, sharp and irritable. "What about you? It's been a month. How long did your Dad put up with that then? Do you know?"
The traffic's slowed. Bodie doesn't really have to give the road his attention but he still stares straight ahead. "Yeah, I know."
"How long then?"
"Nearly twenty-five years, I think." The words drop out of his mouth like lead. He remembers the contempt he had for his Dad, bound up in his adolescent contempt for himself. The old man had more steel in him than young Billy Bodie ever understood, or maybe the monster just left him alone as long as he didn't try to fight.
Old man. His Dad wasn't much past fifty when he died. The worn old man who shocked fourteen year old bloody knowitall Billy Bodie might have been barely thirty-five.
"Jesus. Bodie, you can't..."
"Can't what, Doyle?" he retorts, pulling away from a set of traffic lights with a roar.
"Nothing," Doyle concedes, maybe because he's right about one thing. It's crazy.
***
Pubs are a haven that Bodie doesn't seek out very often because the domestic consequences become unpleasant now, but Doyle insists on it tonight, and Bodie can't say no. He sits down on an overstuffed bench cushion in an overheated room filled with a buzz of noise and a friendly stink of booze and cigarettes which is different somehow to the lonely reek of his Dad's house. The barmaid is busty and flirtatious and if Bodie wanted to he'd be in with a chance there, especially with Doyle glowering away in the background as contrast to Bodie's friendly and engaging manners.
"Jesus, mate, you could grump for England," Bodie says over the bitter.
Doyle's lips thin. "I'm worried about you."
"No need," Bodie says airily, waving his pint in the air.
"Nearly got yourself killed yesterday."
True enough. Bodie's reckless streak has been coming out to play more often recently. He doesn't need Freud to tell him why, although he might have to start coming up with some creative explanations with Cowley making threatening noises about aspects of his recent performance.
"But I was getting you out of trouble, sunshine," he says, with a grin that's more like a snarl.
"I wasn't in any trouble that I couldn't get out of by myself. You're taking stupid risks, Bodie."
Bodie ignores this and takes a long swallow of his beer. He hasn't touched the stuff for a while. He's not ready to drown himself in alcohol yet.
Doyle's watching him still. "How bad is it at the moment?"
"Not so bad. No visitors at my flat makes for a happy bogeyman."
Doyle leans closer. It's normal enough in a noisy pub. You can hardly hear yourself think sometimes.
"Fine. So come back to mine, tonight."
"Not a good idea."
"I watch you every day, mate. You need a decent meal and that's just for starters."
Bodie stares at his drink. Temptation, Doyle is, always has been.
"They do bangers and mash here," Bodie says, enjoying the wait for the inevitable.
"Let me introduce you to a whole new concept. It's called a vegetable."
Bodie puckers his face in a frown. "Does it come in meat flavour then?"
Doyle grins at that. It's about time. "Berk. Come on, then."
He leads the way, opening the door of the car with joking solicitousness that isn't all joking. Bodie ignores that, because that means he can ignore the fact that Doyle has anything to be worried about, and slides onto the cool vinyl seat with a small, tired sigh. He's going to pay for this, for Doyle's company, but he doesn't care.
Doyle gets in, and Bodie gets another one of those looks, and a firm grip on his thigh, just a touch too high up to be platonically matey. A decent meal for starters, and maybe a decent fuck for afters.
Doyle pulls away from the kerb and drives, and Bodie turns his head and watches his partner's face, calm in concentration, frowning when they miss one set of lights and have to wait.
"There has to be something you can do, Bodie," Doyle says, "something or someone that can help."
"Got a suggestion, do you? Nice witch, good exorcist? Maybe the Cow can recommend somebody."
Doyle bites his lip, and Bodie straightens up in alarm. "Oh, for God's sake, Ray, we say anything and we'll both be in the nut house!"
"I dunno. I think Cowley's full of surprises."
Bodie does his best to continue telegraphing complete denial until Doyle drops the idea.
"All right, all right. But it...I hate seeing you in trouble and not being able to do anything useful." 'Useful' is punctuated with Doyle's angry fist on the steering wheel.
"You're going to feed me. That's bloody useful, that is."
"It's not enough." Doyle's voice turns rueful. "And here I am thinking that Africa wasn't the land of wonders that I thought it was. Never met a witchdoctor, then?"
"Not one that wasn't completely deluded. Well, maybe one, but she's dead now."
"There must be a few clergymen who still believe in bell, book and candle in these degenerate days." Doyle's voice is still thoughtful.
"Maybe," Bodie says. He doesn't want to think about it right now. The goal of Doyle's flat, with its beckoning possibilities of food and sex and comfort is enough. Irritation weighs him down, makes his skin prickle. He turns his head to look out his window and feels a cold spike pierce his gut when he's sure that he sees his monster grinning on a corner, looming over some old dodderer in a cap who apparently can't see anything other than the pavement in front of him. It's gone, and they're gone too, powered past the corner by four mundane car tyres on the road. Bodie leans against the head rest and blows out a breath, before he nearly chokes when he sees it again, waving maliciously under the orange glow of a streetlight.
"Think you'd better turn around, Doyle."
"What? You're joking."
"Pull over and let me out."
Doyle's face is stubborn. "Don't be stupid. We're miles from your place by now."
Bodie draws in breath for a fight, and then expels it in one shout - "Ray!" There's a shape on the road right in front of them, scrambling on all fours and maybe if you haven't seen what Bodie's seen recently you might think it was a very large and odd-shaped dog. Doyle has time for the start of a curse before there's a hell of a thump and the car does - something - maybe bouncing off a solid object before it skews and shrieks its way across the full width of the road, barely missing a telephone pole and coming to a jolting halt, half on and half off the footpath.
Bodie turns towards Doyle with focussed, efficient panic, until he sees that Doyle is okay, shaken and holding the side of his face where it must have banged against the car window. "You all right?"
A tiny, pained nod is his only reply, until the space of a couple of breaths. Then Doyle is out of the car, shoving his door open with livid temper and stalking out to gaze across the road. "Bastard!" he curses, before turning to open Bodie's door. "You okay?" he questions, stooping down to look Bodie in the face.
"Yeah."
There are people coming out the houses to see the spectacle, to check that they're okay, and Doyle waves them off with some irritation. Bodie's out of the car too by now and examining the bumper along with Doyle. It'll still get them from A to B but there's damage at the front fit to drive Cowley spare. Doyle says to some concerned Samaritan, "'S all right, I nearly hit a stray dog . We're okay." They get back in the car. "It's up to you, mate. Where am I taking you?"
Bodie knows men and women who would ask that question in the clear expectation of taking Bodie somewhere that would save their own hides. Doyle asks it honestly. If Bodie says that they should go on to Doyle's flat as they planned then that's where they'll go. A sudden fury scours him. "Better take me back," he says. He has his Guest to have a little chat with.
"You're sure?"
"Yeah, Doyle, I'm fucking certain. Assuming your brains aren't too scrambled to drive."
"I'm fine," Doyle grits out, and they take off with a bump and a squeal of tyres that no doubt leaves heads shaking behind them. It's a silent drive back. Bodie opens the door, and Doyle's hand grips his arm.
"You tell me if there's anything I can do. You tell me, is that clear?"
Bodie gives him a mock salute and then, on impulse, a quick, chaste peck on the lips. Daft that is, right outside his flat, but he doesn't care. "Yes, sir!" he snaps, almost joking, before he gets out, squares his shoulders and steps up to do battle.
The old woman from downstairs stops him in the hall. "I nearly called the police, but I wasn't sure if it was you or not." She sniffs, but he can see the nervousness beneath. She's not impressed with the way that odd noises have been coming from the floor above. "You might want to step in carefully. Sounded like there was someone up there."
He nods, unable to muster anything more in the way of thanks. When he opens his door, all looks normal until he gets to his kitchen. Plates are shattered all over the floor, the way that the pieces of his radio were scattered so very long ago. It's a message, and one that he understands perfectly. Ray Doyle might be as broken as these plates are one day, because Bodie belongs to the monster.
The hell he does.
"You leave him alone, you hear me? He's off limits." It's as if the anger in him is a solid thing, spewing up out of his throat into the room, dark and viscous and spreading everywhere. He can feel the anger, his anger, and he can feel a surprise that's not his, and the familiar malicious spite. It's there, bending down to leer at him. He holds his ground. "He's off limits," he repeats, spitting it out like bullets.
"Sergeant Bodie and his brown trousers," it mocks. "I set the rules. I set the limits."
"Fuck you," he says, his voice rough and returning to the accent of his childhood; and is backhanded back through the doorway to land sprawled on the floor for his insolence.
***
It's war, Bodie realises, it always was, but now he's beginning to think about his campaign. Win or lose, he won't go down without a fight. And war needs intelligence.
The fight is daily. He's covered in bruises, and the flat is seldom silent. Mocking whispers pursue him all the time. He finds animal shit left amongst his clothes. But for now, it still permits him enough peace and sufficient belongings that he can function. He knows why. It likes anticipation. You still have these things, it's telling him, for now. But one day. One day...
Bodie sticks it out. That's what you do. He's learned a thing or two about endurance, and about how you find peace in an internal storm. He doesn't always remember them, especially the peace, but he remembers enough that he can hold on. And doesn't it annoy his Guest! He can feel the bafflement sometimes, spicing the malice. It knows him, but increasingly he knows it too.
It's a mad chase through a market one day that sends him where he needs to be. A kid's fairy-tale book lies under his feet, along with the other books knocked off their table, and he clears the mess and races on, frightened shoppers charging out of the way of trouble like startled sheep. Doyle and he catch their trouble maker, truth and justice and the scent of roses and lavender triumph yet again. But the cover of the kid's book stays in his head. It's a book that parents buy for their children, not the sort that kids choose for themselves, all Victorian pen and ink and obviously based on folk-lore.
Later, another day, stiff and sore and tired, he turns to Doyle and says, "Have you ever considered the rewards of registering as a reader at the British Library?" At Doyle's double-take, he says, "Expect you're more a National Gallery sort of fella."
Doyle snorts. "Prefer the Tate," he says and waits, bland amusement overlaying an electric attention, for Bodie to explain himself.
"I was thinking that you and I should do some research."
"For your little pest problem, then?"
Bodie grins. "It's a very historic sort of pest problem when you think about it." Very British, his monster is, with its can't quite be placed accent.
Doyle shakes his head. "Typical. Only the best will do for you, mate. But I s'pose the Library can't be any worse than mouldy old case-files at the Met."
"That's the spirit, Raymond." Bodie vigorously tousles Doyle's hair. "Always knew there was a thirst for knowledge hiding under those lovely locks." It's a depressing mark of Doyle's concern that this blatant trespass receives no more attention than a quick duck of the head and a muttered 'geroff'. An indulgent, patient Doyle is unnatural. That thought sparks bitter amusement. There's a lot of unnatural in Bodie's life right now.
Doyle is also a fast reader and a methodical note-taker, even when surrounded by a pile of books with content as dry as the dust that their custodians would never let settle upon them. Bodie cherishes these qualities, although he can do without Doyle's frustration and occasional pessimism. He has enough of that of his own.
"You can't actually count on any of this," Doyle complains, but very quietly, as he shakes out a cramping hand. "It's like any other witness statement. Bias, people seeing what they want to see and what they think you wanted them to see."
"But there's still patterns," Bodie says, equally quietly, casting his eyes over headings and paragraphs and even, God help them all, diagrams. Doyle is undoubtedly better at reports than he is. Bodie may not take such pretty notes but he's starting to see interesting patterns in their delvings into the folk lore and history of the British Isles. He takes his thoughts on patterns home with him and steps into the quiet of his flat wondering if it can tell what he's been doing, if it bothered to follow him this time, or simply bided its time waiting for him to come back, like a patient spouse assured of possession.
There's piss all over the bed and the mattress, the smell of it rotten-ripe when he opens the door. He bundles the bedding into a bag, and puts it by the door to be washed tomorrow. He'll have to find a new laundrette. He blots and wipes the mattress as best he can. Then he grabs a spare blanket and lies on the couch and stares at the ceiling. Patterns, and where there are patterns there can also be a plan.
***
"It can't be that simple," Doyle protests.
Bodie isn't so sure about that. His monster always has had simple tastes - malice, spite, a petty joy in bullying.
"Simple?" he says. "So say you, mate. Simple's not the same as easy."
Doyle frowns, and shakes his head. "True enough, but still..." Bright, suspicious eyes turn to Bodie's face. "You're not thinking of doing it on your own?"
"Why not? One stout man. That's all it took in the old story."
"Which could just as easily be a load of cobblers. Some old bollocks about the village bully that got turned into a bogey man story all the better to scare the grandkids with." They're alone in a grotty room like a dozen others that Bodie's seen on observation work. He's got one eye on the house across the road, but too much of his attention is on Doyle, who's stood up to pace the small space. Amazing the number of places that can't contain Doyle's energy. Then he comes close, stands by Bodie's side, and Bodie can feel his determination and anger the way that he can feel his body heat.
"You're not doing it on your own."
"It's not that I'm not grateful for the offer, sunshine, but I don't think that I can accept."
Doyle gives Bodie that look, the one that says that yes, he has his good points but that he's currently being a cretinous git.
"What if you lose?" Doyle asks. His voice is low.
"Then I lose. It doesn't want me dead. I'm no fun that way."
"It could maim you, though. Cripple you."
Bodie shrugs. It could do that, if it thinks that he needs to be taught a lesson badly enough. That's what it will have to do to stop him.
"It'd kill you." Doyle dead in the London mud. It doesn't bear thinking of. "It likes its games, but..." He stumbles for words, suddenly tongue-tied and defeated, because Doyle is stubborn, so damn stubborn, and also, Bodie doesn't want to do this on his own. "If I can push it into this, then we're all playing for keeps." No more of this. No more. No wondering where it might go next when Bodie dies, and he's never assumed that he'll make old bones, not with the life he's lived. He's been careful, impressed quite few birds with his willingness to wear a condom, but there are no guarantees. There could be some kid born in some whorehouse situated several places across Africa. He should have stuck to men. He wonders what his monster would make of the climate and the poor little bastard out there who won't know what's coming to him.
"If it's that simple then why not try putting a bullet into it?"
"Not that much cold steel in a bullet, Doyle. And besides...it has to be personal."
"Doesn't get much more personal than beating the shit out of something, that's true." Doyle's face is sceptical.
"Damn it, Doyle, I just know, okay! It gets into my head to find out the best way to make my life a fucking misery, but it goes both ways, mate, it goes both ways."
Scepticism turns to horror. "Christ. Why didn't you say something?" Doyle must think that he looks bad because he's moved those last few inches and has him in a hug, and Bodie must surely be in a bad way because he doesn't protest or shrug off the hold but stands there and takes it. The monster will know. Let it know. It's seen that he won't give in. Let it know he still has defences and allies, and someone solid and strong under his hands, who gives a fuck about him and won't run.
"We're on duty," he says finally. If they've missed anything in those long seconds then Cowley will have their guts for garters.
"Yeah." Doyle steps back and takes a look out the window. His face stays clear. Nobody's unloading a lorry-load of munitions, at least. "Tell me when it's time, Bodie."
Bodie smiles. "Yeah. I'll do that."
"Where?"
"Somewhere out of the way. Quiet little corner of Hyde Park, maybe."
"By the river," Doyle suggests. "Will it come?"
"If I give it enough provocation."
Doyle cracks a broad grin. "Piece of bloody cake, then."
***
Time for a show down, pilgrims. Bodie always did like John Wayne, although the Duke never faced anything quite like this.
"Been thinking, I have," Bodie announces to the deceptively empty air of his flat. "About your rules. Don't think I want to follow them anymore."
Silence continues, but it's a listening silence now. "What about you," Bodie says. "Do you have rules that you have to follow? Compulsions? Geas?" The old Irish word grunts satisfyingly out of the back of his throat.
"Here's the deal. I want you out of here. You and all your little games. So we have a game of our own. Little contest, to see who fights best. And if I win, then you're gone."
"You won't win," rumbles into his ear, even though the place still looks empty.
"Then you don't have to be afraid of playing, do you?"
Just like that, there are stained, horny claws wrapped around his arm, and dirty yellow eyes squinting into his. "Playing games, Billy Browntrews?" it sneers. "Teach you to play games, I will. On your own."
"But that wouldn't be fair, would it now? You being so much bigger than me. Whoever's willing to stand with me, right?"
The fury in it! It goes straight to his head, to his gut, until he feels like he might explode with it, but he keeps looking the monster in the eye. Challenge. Games. They have to play, they have to accept, it's their fucking *rule*. Let that be right. Let Bodie have understood that right.
"Games, little boy. Convince me," it husks, its breath foul in his face like its anger is foul in his head.
"Then you'd better follow me. Done that before, haven't you?" It spits at him and disappears. His legs feel shaky but he ignores it because it's more important to wipe the spittle from his face before he throws up what little is in his stomach. None of that, not now. Save it for after, after he's walked down to his car and looked in the boot where the cricket bat still sits, untouched and undisturbed. Good wood, willow is; strong and light for its size and able to take the good whacks. Able to deal them out too.
Cudgels at dawn. That's what he'd told Doyle and Doyle had rolled his eyes. Needed to get himself a sense of humour did Ray. But he's waiting at the spot, on the scrubby and broken ground demarcated by a line of concrete blocks on one side and the hulk of a disused warehouse on the other. The stink of the river is like the stink of Bodie's abused mattress. And Doyle, damn him, is leaning against the wall like he's waiting for a bus.
"What the hell is that?" Bodie demands, although he can see perfectly well what it is.
"Baseball bat."
"Won't all those nails puncture the ball?" Bodie asks innocently and Ray doesn't so much smile as he snarls. Bodie feels almost light-hearted. It's time for action and he can do that, enjoys it even, as often as not. Doyle... he might not enjoy himself the same way, but he's a great man for fighting the good fight, even with a makeshift mace.
"I know you're out there, you bastard. Come and get me," he shouts into the grey morning. He can feel it circling them, and that gives Bodie wings of happy adrenalin because they have a chance. If it was so sure that it could come and wipe them out it wouldn't hesitate. He just has to encourage it a little.
"Come on then. What about the rules? I'm supposed to be a good little boy and here I am being naughty. Want to teach me a lesson, then?"
Doyle is close beside him, turning warily and watching the ground and the air. He grunts in irritation and then his free hand wraps itself around Bodie's nape. "Maybe it needs a bit more provocation," he says, and he kisses Bodie, that sweet, crafty, cupid's bow of a mouth direct to Bodie's with a lick and a promise before he returns to martial readiness, spoiling for a fight.
"Bet you don't get one of those," Doyle shouts to the open air, and leaps away back from the whirr of disturbed air as a great hand swipes at his gut and just misses. Doyle scrambles back and Bodie takes the chance for a hit across the monster's shoulders that's almost like coming, so great is the satisfaction in it.
It turns to him, teeth showing, lips curled back like the peel of a rotten and half-eaten apple. "Hurt you," it rumbles.
He laughs. "Give it your best shot, then, come on."
It does, damn it, a great clubbing blow that he only just blocks while Doyle takes his chances at it, hitting across the back and shoulders because it knows that stooping is not to its advantage. Which means only that Bodie gets a good chance at its knees and shins. The light gets better, all the better to remind him that this is real, that he and Doyle are fighting a monster. There's blood on Doyle's face, too close to his eyes where it clawed and caught a glancing blow. It snarls and Bodie gets in its way and takes a hit that numbs his elbow and makes his hold on the bat uncertain. But Doyle gives him time, ducks under its reach and deals it a nasty hit upwards between its legs.
The thing doesn't flinch or wince. Its face stays just as furious as it ever was, and Bodie can feel the anger, the sheer fury that its toy is defying it. But he can feel the bewilderment too, the bone deep confusion that this isn't the way it's supposed to be, and he spares the briefest pity for the farmers and miners and factory workers who must have dealt with this thing before him. He scrambles around, feints and dodges while a serene-faced Doyle takes another hit at it. It doesn't show pain, but it seems to be diminishing. It's tall, yes, but not as tall as it was, not as tall as the overshadowing beast in his bedroom.
That's a good thing because this is a long fight. Hand to hand doesn't usually last this long, not a single encounter, but this is different. It's good that they're in with a chance, because Bodie can feel his lungs burn, and shifting his body out of the way is like moving lead. His hands vibrate with the sting of repeated blows.
He takes a hit, across his ribs, and rolls with it. It still hurts like hell, and he stumbles and moves only just in time to avoid a fist like a sledgehammer. But it has to stoop, to lean to reach him, and the length of its arms is not what it was. Doyle moves in behind and he takes a vicious swing which cracks across its head. Doyle's smiling now, in feral satisfaction, and takes another swing, and another. It howls, the first noise that Bodie's ever heard from it that wasn't meant to frighten or demean. That must be his cue to get back on his feet, and give it a good whack across its gaping mouth. It stares at him, smaller now, standing straight and merely looking him in the eye, and the yellow fangs are broken. It stinks, some musky, sticky, beast-like smell that he's never noticed before.
"Go to hell!" Bodie yells, and takes one last swing. The blow lands true and the strong willow wood splinters and cracks, and then Bodie nearly falls as the bat swings on through nothing to hit the ground. There's only him and Doyle, the sound of their heaving breath, and the stink of sweat and the musty dry scent of knocked around soil.
Bodie steadies himself. There truly is nothing of the monster to be seen, and more importantly there's a lightness in his chest and his head. Something that's been sitting there like a dirty weight for weeks now is gone.
"That was something different," Doyle says, in between deep breaths in search of air.
Bodie drops on his arse to the ground. "Yeah."
"You all right?" Doyle staggers over and squats in front of him.
"Bloody brilliant, mate. Bloody brilliant."
Doyle scans around them, one hand still clenched around his bat, the other gripping Bodie's shoulder. "It's gone."
"Yeah, I know." Bodie feels like his grin will split his face. "Gone for good."
"You're sure?"
"Don't be such a fucking pessimist, Doyle. Yeah, gone for good." Bodie lies back on the ground and stares up at the overcast sky. "It's like a weight gone. Like I could float up to the sky."
Doyle laughs at that, with a rich, husky enthusiasm. "Chance'd be a fine thing. You look solid enough to me." His hand grabs Bodie's.
Bodie looks at it, wrapped around his in a sturdy grip. Doyle's knuckles are scraped bloody, to go with the claw marks across his face. Bodie's arms feel like they're about to fall off, and his own body is sticky with blood. He doesn't have the energy to catalogue exactly where and how yet, although there's a warning wetness across the back of his left shoulder.
"You're a mess," Doyle tells him.
"Bloody but unbowed."
"Well, you would be unbowed if you weren't lying on the ground, mate. Up you come, then." He's yanked to his feet, to stand as a completely free man for the first time in nearly twenty years, with Ray Doyle's hand warm and strong in his own.