(no subject)
Visions of Bodie and Doyle: 'Hey baby, I'm your telephone man...'
More variations on a theme.
(Inspired by an old favourite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MahswYBewb0)
He swallowed hard, picked the receiver up, and held it to his ear. The number? Oh, God, it had been a year and a half. He’d thrown it away. And it wasn’t listed. Bodie had said.
No. Don’t panic. He closed his eyes. Picture his flat. Picture the ‘phone in the living room. And the card in the centre of the dial. Read it. And he could.
The ‘phone was ringing. Still ringing.
“Ooah.” A cough. “Three seven.”
Doyle’s knees buckled.
“Hello.” Another cough. “Who is this?”
The receiver clattered back onto the hook.
Nothing in his hard-working imagination had prepared him for the effect of hearing Bodie’s voice. Not a memory. Not a dream. Now.
He wanted it again. Now. The river could wait.
He picked up the ‘phone again...
“Look, who is this? What do you want?”
“Bo...die?” Heat Trace:Helen Raven
The phone box almost smacked him in the nose. One moment it had been all the way down at the other end of the street, and the next it had dashed forward and planted itself right under his feet. Bloody thing.
Deeply suspicious, Bodie checked the interior before stepping inside. He wasn't enamoured of trapping himself in a box, but there weren't many other options if he wanted to use the phone.
It turned out to be a more difficult than he'd anticipated. He dropped half his change on the ground, trying to fish it out of his pocket. The numbers on the dial were playing silly buggers, swapping places with each other. Four and five in particular appeared determined not to accept the dictatorship of the Roman numeral system.
"H'lo?"
Bodie almost dropped the phone. He'd been expecting to hear the mechanical click and whirr of HQ's switchboard.
"If you're another sad bastard who gets his jollies breathing heavily into phones..."
A Widening Gyre:Rebelcat
Murphy sat quiet as a priest, listening to Bodie’s confession, waiting until the spate had abated. They’d been through this before, he and Bodie, had suffered through the maze of emotions, hammering at it time and again until they had found the only two paths out..
"D’you know, when it all went wrong yesterday, the first thing I thought was what a rotten fucking shame it was that I had to let the Wombat go? That was it, Murphy. Didn’t care about the wife and kids inside - not at first. Didn’t care about all the innocent by-standers. Wasn’t until those pricks lobbed that bloody grenade at us that I even started to think about it again...”
Murphy waited tensely, knowing that this was the moment of truth. Something was coming, as obvious as clouds harbouring rain. So he waited, looking like his usual placid, phlegmatic self, while his heart raced and the breath caught in the back of his throat and the blood pounded in his ears.
“I tried to fuck Ray last night.”
Murphy's Law: LA Scotian
He picked up the phone.
"Doyle."
"Ray, it's me."
Ray's face softened, his eyes warming...
"Bodie. Hello, mate. I'm in conference; just about have the security worked out for the concert. Think it was the bloody PM, not some pimply faced rock star. Remind me not to take any more projects like this one. I mean the money's good, but Christ..."
"Ray..." Bodie interrupted and Ray could hear the strain in his partner's voice.
"Bodie? What is it?" He could hear Bodie pause. Inhale. Exhale. Silence. Then there was breath again.
"Cowley's gone and offed himself."
Sunshine After Rain:Elspeth Leigh
“Hello.”
“Mr Bodie?” asked a man's voice.
“Yes?”
“I thought I'd do you a favour,” the voice continued. “Save you any more embarrassment and warn you about your new friend Ray...”
The hairs prickled on the back of Bodie’s neck. “Who is this?” he demanded.
“He gets bored easily, you see, and likes to play games. Take today, when you rang him at lunchtime? You interrupted us. So all the while he was talking to you and arranging to meet, he was looking at me, smiling at me. It adds to his pleasure, provides a little extra frisson and I don’t mind indulging him, every now and then...”
As the man on the phone proceeded to tell Bodie what he had been doing to Doyle while he arranged their meeting for tonight, an instinct was urging Bodie to hang up. But a more perverse part of him was unable to do anything but listen, as the man described how they spent the afternoon in bed... An Island Affair:Angelci5
In the December darkness of Doyle's flat, a telephone began to ring. His mind on the past, Doyle heard it only as a nuisance, nothing that concerned him. Nor did he notice that the flat was cold, because he hadn't bothered to turn on the heat... He didn't care.
A telephone was ringing.... Maybe it was Cowley, with another one of CI5's endless emergencies.
Maybe the memorial service was tonight, and they wanted to ask why he hadn't turned up... He had raged, alone in the dark. He had wept. He had punched the wall and screamed. He had curled up in a ball, and tried to stop the memories.
None of it cured the lump in his throat that did not go away. Nothing reached the searing pain of being alone, without Bodie… He had sought oblivion in sleep, but it did no good. It offered relief at first, but it led to nightmares. Images of water, of imprisonment in water, of drowning in a metal cage as Bodie must have drowned, alone in the dark.
And now it was he who was alone in the dark.
Silent Star:Fajrdrako (Elizabeth Holden)
Aware that his next priority must be to establish a concrete background for himself if he wished to join the British army, Bodie decided he had earned a few days' rest. He was in no doubt who he wanted to spend them with.
It was only when he picked up the telephone, disconcerted to find his palm damp and his hand unsteady with nerves, that he realised he didn't know how to contact Ray...
His sense of loss so acute it was almost a physical pain, Bodie stared blankly at the telephone... mentally castigating himself for being stupid enough to imagine a male hooker could mean anything but a good fuck.
Five hours you knew him. No one can fall in love with a perfect stranger in five hours. He's a whore. One in a long line you were, mate...
Rainbow Chasers:hgdoghouse
"Yes?" a curt voice growled.
"It's me."
"Doyle? You're late!"
"I know. Couldn't get away; I was following Moore. He led me halfway round the city before he came here. I'm at the Gunslinger, down by the docks... This is where the drop will be, I'm sure of it.... Have you found out anything about that other matter?"
"Which matter? Oh, the man you asked about. We've found one Bodie in London that matches your description. He's SAS."
"What?" Doyle's jaw dropped. "Why the hell is he hanging out with Derek, then? Christ, SAS aren't investigating this lot too, are they?"
"I should hope not! It's hardly in their jurisdiction. No, I think you should be careful of this Bodie fellow. He has a shady past. Used to be a mercenary and a gun-runner. He could well be doing some smuggling on the side. Watch out for him..." Learning Trust: Russ
Doyle caught Bodie's elbow outside Cowley's office. "Okay, who's the bird, and when's she due?"
Bodie shook him off. "Don't know what you're talking about."
"The one on the phone. Last night, and this morning!"
"Nothing important. Told her not to call again..."
Doyle was having none of it... "Do I know her?"
"No."
He was smashing himself futilely against the impenetrable rock cliffs that were Bodie.
"Then, who died?"
Astonishingly, a portion of the rock face crumbled.
"My father." Brethren of the Coast:Rebelcat
"Sir?" he said into the phone...
"Aye, about time."
Bodie rolled his eyes. He'd answered on the second ring. "Sir."
"You're both on a week's leave."
"A week?" He watched Doyle smile beside him, staying quiet for the mouthpiece, barely breathing, containing an immediate joy.
"You'll report in this time next week - and I do mean seven a.m."
"Yes sir! .... A week - surely time enough to sort this out, to show him.
"Oh and Bodie, there will be someone into the flats to remove the surveillance devices." The call ended with a clack and a buzz, and Bodie hung up slowly.
Surveillance devices ...
The High-Up Singing and Alive Fruit:Slantedlight
"The Major a soft touch then? Letting you use his phone. Bet you're his blue-eyed boy, him being a friend of the old man and all," he said with deliberate, happy provocation.
"Naughty Doyle," came Bodie's low sexy voice, reacting to it. "Nothing like that. The Major's a good and flexible man. He understands that I have to check in every day."
"What are the women like?"
There was another pause. Bodie's voice said: "You remember Sue Jones."
"How could I forget," said Doyle, with verve.
"-- thick blonde hair, big blue eyes, long legs ...?"
"Mmm...." Doyle approved, passionately.
"The women here are along the same lines --"
Doyle grinned, knowing his Bodie, and waited for it.
"... they have big blue lips, thick legs and short blonde moustaches," finished Bodie's grim filtered voice.
That was so -- Bodie. "Charming," said Doyle, through a chuckle.
This was fun. Adagio:Sebastian
Bodie was delightful to look at. His teeth weren’t perfect, but his smile was boyish and infectious. He tended to pout, which was an endless source of amusement - and teasing - for Doyle. His eyes were a striking shade of dark blue, thickly lashed, and wonderfully expressive. They could be chilling, sarcastic; they could show gut-wrenching anger and frustration, they could sparkle with humour, or shine with warmth and affection. As the months of their acquaintance went by, and developed into friendship, Doyle saw that look of warmth more often, and what was more, it was directed at him. They bickered and sniped at each other just as much, but when Doyle thought of Bodie - fellow recruit, colleague, friend - it was the warmth he remembered.
Measuring Scars:Maddalia (Proslib CD)
The pills settled like a prickly lump. Oh. What had he done? Bodie. That laughing face, by his grave-not laughing now. How would he ever forgive Doyle?
Selfish. He was the most selfish person who’d ever lived. Hadn’t even left a proper note. He’d gone through five, all now in the bin. He grabbed for the phone-twice-and dialled clumsily, the number he knew by heart. He could feel himself going, but he had to, this was the most important thing he’d ever done.
What if he wasn’t there? Bodie.
“Bodie.”
“What? Hullo?”
“I’m sorry, Bodie. I’m sorry.”
One Phone Call:Allie
Doyle's eyes were an indeterminate green. They went to grey-gold in certain lights, in the grip of certain emotions. His inner conflicts played themselves out there for anyone to see who had the knack of reading them. All these years partners, eight months lovers, and Bodie could only guess at what was colouring those eyes now.
What did he know of his partner, really, after all this time? Only what he could see, and he sometimes feared that, like everyone else, he saw only what Doyle elected to show him. Stingy with his details, Doyle was. Bodie knew little of his life before CI5--a word here, a word there, a few stories from his days with the Met.... What he didn't say ought to be as revealing as what he did--would be, with most men. Not this one. Bodie'd spilled his guts, mostly, but Doyle had never been similarly forthcoming. His partner had been raised by wolves, for all he could say different.
The conceit pleased him, and he played with it in his head. Doyle as lone wolf... The Met, CI5: by nature, he was as much a pack animal as Bodie - more, maybe. But Doyle was less domesticated than he'd claim to be; his partner was housebroken but by no means tame, and far too prone to biting to be safely fed from the hand. Like the wolf on the fold...Doyle, his wolf in idealist's clothing. Werewolves of London:Rimy
He picked up the receiver with a brisk but quiet “hello”. There was a moment of eerie hissing static then a dense silence before a voice echoed from the receiver.
“Will? William Bodie?”
Bodie’s breath caught in his throat. The voice was almost indistinct, crackling over the line as if from a great distance in time and space. But he would know it anywhere and what it could mean.
“Thought you’d probably died long ago,” he said, his own voice cracking slightly, although whether from lack of use or his screaming nerves he couldn’t be sure.
“I’m not good enough to die young, you know that.” There was a pause before the voice came again. “It’s good to hear you, Will. It’s been a long time...."
"I’ve found him, Will,” the voice continued.”
A Mercenary's Tale:Fictionwriter
Ray made for the still-ringing phone himself. Given that Bodie had only just moved in, the call was most likely work, which might be very important. There would not have been time, even by Bodie’s standards, to give the number out to any girls in bars. Or to, Ray supposed, well, to... anyone not a girl who might be in a bar.
He didn’t think Bodie gave out details to anyone else.
He walked into the bedroom and picked up the receiver, barking in a brisk “Hello?” and waiting for the caller to identify themselves, his mind still more than half in another place.
“Hello,” a male voice answered - a posh, businesslike tone. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, Mr Bodie...”
“I’m not...” Ray began, but not quickly enough, his reactions slowed as his mind tried to focus.
“I’m one of the doctors at the James Cook Hospital in Teeside” the man continued, steam-rollering over the objection, “where I’m sorry to say your wife has just died.”
This Week It Rained:halotolerant
"please, tell him Anne-Marie called. The number is-"
"Hold on, hold on, I need something to write on." Bodie knew he sounded truculent but didn't care. He yanked out one drawer and found nothing but household odds and ends. The drawer below it yielded a biro and a folded sheet of paper that he grabbed and laid on the counter.
"Yeah, go on, give us the number, love." He wrote it down and ended the call, belatedly realising he might have written the number on something important. He put the biro down, picked up the paper and unfolded it.
It took a moment for his brain to make sense of what his eyes were telling him. When comprehension finally kicked in, he leaned against the wall near the phone, legs suddenly too shaky to hold him up by themselves. In a mind-numbing flash, his worst fears were realised.
What he held between trembling fingers was Ray's letter of resignation from CI5. It was concise, undated and made no mention of his partner... Mended Hearts: Veronica
Bodie sat hunched over by the radio, images and words tumbling over and over in his head, reliving memory after memory… it was unthinkable that he could walk away from a mission without Doyle beside him, laughing and joking, or quiet and retrospective… Brothers forged by the heat of the fire, living or dying side-by-side...
Without thinking, Bodie slammed his fist into the table, making the radio jump as though frightened. If this had been any other hostage situation he would know what to do; try to talk the kidnapper down, stall for time, plan a counter-attack. But somehow his brain wouldn’t let him focus on anything else than the knowledge that it was Doyle in there, that it was his partner’s life that hung in the balance... they were haggling over his friend’s life like he was so much meat to be argued over... he realised with a jolt that it was almost an hour since he’d discovered that Doyle was the hostage. It felt more like a lifetime.
Negotiations in a Graveyard:YnitOcelot
More variations on a theme.
(Inspired by an old favourite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MahswYBewb0)
He swallowed hard, picked the receiver up, and held it to his ear. The number? Oh, God, it had been a year and a half. He’d thrown it away. And it wasn’t listed. Bodie had said.
No. Don’t panic. He closed his eyes. Picture his flat. Picture the ‘phone in the living room. And the card in the centre of the dial. Read it. And he could.
The ‘phone was ringing. Still ringing.
“Ooah.” A cough. “Three seven.”
Doyle’s knees buckled.
“Hello.” Another cough. “Who is this?”
The receiver clattered back onto the hook.
Nothing in his hard-working imagination had prepared him for the effect of hearing Bodie’s voice. Not a memory. Not a dream. Now.
He wanted it again. Now. The river could wait.
He picked up the ‘phone again...
“Look, who is this? What do you want?”
“Bo...die?” Heat Trace:Helen Raven
The phone box almost smacked him in the nose. One moment it had been all the way down at the other end of the street, and the next it had dashed forward and planted itself right under his feet. Bloody thing.
Deeply suspicious, Bodie checked the interior before stepping inside. He wasn't enamoured of trapping himself in a box, but there weren't many other options if he wanted to use the phone.
It turned out to be a more difficult than he'd anticipated. He dropped half his change on the ground, trying to fish it out of his pocket. The numbers on the dial were playing silly buggers, swapping places with each other. Four and five in particular appeared determined not to accept the dictatorship of the Roman numeral system.
"H'lo?"
Bodie almost dropped the phone. He'd been expecting to hear the mechanical click and whirr of HQ's switchboard.
"If you're another sad bastard who gets his jollies breathing heavily into phones..."
A Widening Gyre:Rebelcat
Murphy sat quiet as a priest, listening to Bodie’s confession, waiting until the spate had abated. They’d been through this before, he and Bodie, had suffered through the maze of emotions, hammering at it time and again until they had found the only two paths out..
"D’you know, when it all went wrong yesterday, the first thing I thought was what a rotten fucking shame it was that I had to let the Wombat go? That was it, Murphy. Didn’t care about the wife and kids inside - not at first. Didn’t care about all the innocent by-standers. Wasn’t until those pricks lobbed that bloody grenade at us that I even started to think about it again...”
Murphy waited tensely, knowing that this was the moment of truth. Something was coming, as obvious as clouds harbouring rain. So he waited, looking like his usual placid, phlegmatic self, while his heart raced and the breath caught in the back of his throat and the blood pounded in his ears.
“I tried to fuck Ray last night.”
Murphy's Law: LA Scotian
He picked up the phone.
"Doyle."
"Ray, it's me."
Ray's face softened, his eyes warming...
"Bodie. Hello, mate. I'm in conference; just about have the security worked out for the concert. Think it was the bloody PM, not some pimply faced rock star. Remind me not to take any more projects like this one. I mean the money's good, but Christ..."
"Ray..." Bodie interrupted and Ray could hear the strain in his partner's voice.
"Bodie? What is it?" He could hear Bodie pause. Inhale. Exhale. Silence. Then there was breath again.
"Cowley's gone and offed himself."
Sunshine After Rain:Elspeth Leigh
“Hello.”
“Mr Bodie?” asked a man's voice.
“Yes?”
“I thought I'd do you a favour,” the voice continued. “Save you any more embarrassment and warn you about your new friend Ray...”
The hairs prickled on the back of Bodie’s neck. “Who is this?” he demanded.
“He gets bored easily, you see, and likes to play games. Take today, when you rang him at lunchtime? You interrupted us. So all the while he was talking to you and arranging to meet, he was looking at me, smiling at me. It adds to his pleasure, provides a little extra frisson and I don’t mind indulging him, every now and then...”
As the man on the phone proceeded to tell Bodie what he had been doing to Doyle while he arranged their meeting for tonight, an instinct was urging Bodie to hang up. But a more perverse part of him was unable to do anything but listen, as the man described how they spent the afternoon in bed... An Island Affair:Angelci5
In the December darkness of Doyle's flat, a telephone began to ring. His mind on the past, Doyle heard it only as a nuisance, nothing that concerned him. Nor did he notice that the flat was cold, because he hadn't bothered to turn on the heat... He didn't care.
A telephone was ringing.... Maybe it was Cowley, with another one of CI5's endless emergencies.
Maybe the memorial service was tonight, and they wanted to ask why he hadn't turned up... He had raged, alone in the dark. He had wept. He had punched the wall and screamed. He had curled up in a ball, and tried to stop the memories.
None of it cured the lump in his throat that did not go away. Nothing reached the searing pain of being alone, without Bodie… He had sought oblivion in sleep, but it did no good. It offered relief at first, but it led to nightmares. Images of water, of imprisonment in water, of drowning in a metal cage as Bodie must have drowned, alone in the dark.
And now it was he who was alone in the dark.
Silent Star:Fajrdrako (Elizabeth Holden)
Aware that his next priority must be to establish a concrete background for himself if he wished to join the British army, Bodie decided he had earned a few days' rest. He was in no doubt who he wanted to spend them with.
It was only when he picked up the telephone, disconcerted to find his palm damp and his hand unsteady with nerves, that he realised he didn't know how to contact Ray...
His sense of loss so acute it was almost a physical pain, Bodie stared blankly at the telephone... mentally castigating himself for being stupid enough to imagine a male hooker could mean anything but a good fuck.
Five hours you knew him. No one can fall in love with a perfect stranger in five hours. He's a whore. One in a long line you were, mate...
Rainbow Chasers:hgdoghouse
"Yes?" a curt voice growled.
"It's me."
"Doyle? You're late!"
"I know. Couldn't get away; I was following Moore. He led me halfway round the city before he came here. I'm at the Gunslinger, down by the docks... This is where the drop will be, I'm sure of it.... Have you found out anything about that other matter?"
"Which matter? Oh, the man you asked about. We've found one Bodie in London that matches your description. He's SAS."
"What?" Doyle's jaw dropped. "Why the hell is he hanging out with Derek, then? Christ, SAS aren't investigating this lot too, are they?"
"I should hope not! It's hardly in their jurisdiction. No, I think you should be careful of this Bodie fellow. He has a shady past. Used to be a mercenary and a gun-runner. He could well be doing some smuggling on the side. Watch out for him..." Learning Trust: Russ
Doyle caught Bodie's elbow outside Cowley's office. "Okay, who's the bird, and when's she due?"
Bodie shook him off. "Don't know what you're talking about."
"The one on the phone. Last night, and this morning!"
"Nothing important. Told her not to call again..."
Doyle was having none of it... "Do I know her?"
"No."
He was smashing himself futilely against the impenetrable rock cliffs that were Bodie.
"Then, who died?"
Astonishingly, a portion of the rock face crumbled.
"My father." Brethren of the Coast:Rebelcat
"Sir?" he said into the phone...
"Aye, about time."
Bodie rolled his eyes. He'd answered on the second ring. "Sir."
"You're both on a week's leave."
"A week?" He watched Doyle smile beside him, staying quiet for the mouthpiece, barely breathing, containing an immediate joy.
"You'll report in this time next week - and I do mean seven a.m."
"Yes sir! .... A week - surely time enough to sort this out, to show him.
"Oh and Bodie, there will be someone into the flats to remove the surveillance devices." The call ended with a clack and a buzz, and Bodie hung up slowly.
Surveillance devices ...
The High-Up Singing and Alive Fruit:Slantedlight
"The Major a soft touch then? Letting you use his phone. Bet you're his blue-eyed boy, him being a friend of the old man and all," he said with deliberate, happy provocation.
"Naughty Doyle," came Bodie's low sexy voice, reacting to it. "Nothing like that. The Major's a good and flexible man. He understands that I have to check in every day."
"What are the women like?"
There was another pause. Bodie's voice said: "You remember Sue Jones."
"How could I forget," said Doyle, with verve.
"-- thick blonde hair, big blue eyes, long legs ...?"
"Mmm...." Doyle approved, passionately.
"The women here are along the same lines --"
Doyle grinned, knowing his Bodie, and waited for it.
"... they have big blue lips, thick legs and short blonde moustaches," finished Bodie's grim filtered voice.
That was so -- Bodie. "Charming," said Doyle, through a chuckle.
This was fun. Adagio:Sebastian
Bodie was delightful to look at. His teeth weren’t perfect, but his smile was boyish and infectious. He tended to pout, which was an endless source of amusement - and teasing - for Doyle. His eyes were a striking shade of dark blue, thickly lashed, and wonderfully expressive. They could be chilling, sarcastic; they could show gut-wrenching anger and frustration, they could sparkle with humour, or shine with warmth and affection. As the months of their acquaintance went by, and developed into friendship, Doyle saw that look of warmth more often, and what was more, it was directed at him. They bickered and sniped at each other just as much, but when Doyle thought of Bodie - fellow recruit, colleague, friend - it was the warmth he remembered.
Measuring Scars:Maddalia (Proslib CD)
The pills settled like a prickly lump. Oh. What had he done? Bodie. That laughing face, by his grave-not laughing now. How would he ever forgive Doyle?
Selfish. He was the most selfish person who’d ever lived. Hadn’t even left a proper note. He’d gone through five, all now in the bin. He grabbed for the phone-twice-and dialled clumsily, the number he knew by heart. He could feel himself going, but he had to, this was the most important thing he’d ever done.
What if he wasn’t there? Bodie.
“Bodie.”
“What? Hullo?”
“I’m sorry, Bodie. I’m sorry.”
One Phone Call:Allie
Doyle's eyes were an indeterminate green. They went to grey-gold in certain lights, in the grip of certain emotions. His inner conflicts played themselves out there for anyone to see who had the knack of reading them. All these years partners, eight months lovers, and Bodie could only guess at what was colouring those eyes now.
What did he know of his partner, really, after all this time? Only what he could see, and he sometimes feared that, like everyone else, he saw only what Doyle elected to show him. Stingy with his details, Doyle was. Bodie knew little of his life before CI5--a word here, a word there, a few stories from his days with the Met.... What he didn't say ought to be as revealing as what he did--would be, with most men. Not this one. Bodie'd spilled his guts, mostly, but Doyle had never been similarly forthcoming. His partner had been raised by wolves, for all he could say different.
The conceit pleased him, and he played with it in his head. Doyle as lone wolf... The Met, CI5: by nature, he was as much a pack animal as Bodie - more, maybe. But Doyle was less domesticated than he'd claim to be; his partner was housebroken but by no means tame, and far too prone to biting to be safely fed from the hand. Like the wolf on the fold...Doyle, his wolf in idealist's clothing. Werewolves of London:Rimy
He picked up the receiver with a brisk but quiet “hello”. There was a moment of eerie hissing static then a dense silence before a voice echoed from the receiver.
“Will? William Bodie?”
Bodie’s breath caught in his throat. The voice was almost indistinct, crackling over the line as if from a great distance in time and space. But he would know it anywhere and what it could mean.
“Thought you’d probably died long ago,” he said, his own voice cracking slightly, although whether from lack of use or his screaming nerves he couldn’t be sure.
“I’m not good enough to die young, you know that.” There was a pause before the voice came again. “It’s good to hear you, Will. It’s been a long time...."
"I’ve found him, Will,” the voice continued.”
A Mercenary's Tale:Fictionwriter
Ray made for the still-ringing phone himself. Given that Bodie had only just moved in, the call was most likely work, which might be very important. There would not have been time, even by Bodie’s standards, to give the number out to any girls in bars. Or to, Ray supposed, well, to... anyone not a girl who might be in a bar.
He didn’t think Bodie gave out details to anyone else.
He walked into the bedroom and picked up the receiver, barking in a brisk “Hello?” and waiting for the caller to identify themselves, his mind still more than half in another place.
“Hello,” a male voice answered - a posh, businesslike tone. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, Mr Bodie...”
“I’m not...” Ray began, but not quickly enough, his reactions slowed as his mind tried to focus.
“I’m one of the doctors at the James Cook Hospital in Teeside” the man continued, steam-rollering over the objection, “where I’m sorry to say your wife has just died.”
This Week It Rained:halotolerant
"please, tell him Anne-Marie called. The number is-"
"Hold on, hold on, I need something to write on." Bodie knew he sounded truculent but didn't care. He yanked out one drawer and found nothing but household odds and ends. The drawer below it yielded a biro and a folded sheet of paper that he grabbed and laid on the counter.
"Yeah, go on, give us the number, love." He wrote it down and ended the call, belatedly realising he might have written the number on something important. He put the biro down, picked up the paper and unfolded it.
It took a moment for his brain to make sense of what his eyes were telling him. When comprehension finally kicked in, he leaned against the wall near the phone, legs suddenly too shaky to hold him up by themselves. In a mind-numbing flash, his worst fears were realised.
What he held between trembling fingers was Ray's letter of resignation from CI5. It was concise, undated and made no mention of his partner... Mended Hearts: Veronica
Bodie sat hunched over by the radio, images and words tumbling over and over in his head, reliving memory after memory… it was unthinkable that he could walk away from a mission without Doyle beside him, laughing and joking, or quiet and retrospective… Brothers forged by the heat of the fire, living or dying side-by-side...
Without thinking, Bodie slammed his fist into the table, making the radio jump as though frightened. If this had been any other hostage situation he would know what to do; try to talk the kidnapper down, stall for time, plan a counter-attack. But somehow his brain wouldn’t let him focus on anything else than the knowledge that it was Doyle in there, that it was his partner’s life that hung in the balance... they were haggling over his friend’s life like he was so much meat to be argued over... he realised with a jolt that it was almost an hour since he’d discovered that Doyle was the hostage. It felt more like a lifetime.
Negotiations in a Graveyard:YnitOcelot