Pros fic - Such Stuff by Slantedlight
So short it barely needs a cut - but Prosfic just the same..! In a round-about way, it was inspired by last night's The Madness of Mickey Hamilton Random ProsWatch - thank you cloudless_9193 for permission to include your atmospheric picture of our lads!
Such Stuff
by Slantedlight
You didn’t ask people about their dreams in CI5, for fear they were worse than your own. Doyle knew Bodie dreamed sometimes of Africa, of dusty roads and hot rotting death in jungles, but he would no more say anything about those sleep-light mutterings than Bodie would have talked about the way Doyle scratched and scraped at his arms some nights, eyes closed and not awake for hours, as if they had been bitten by a dozen midges, two dozen needles, were a nightmare of missing veins and madness and vomit and death.
You didn’t talk about the corpses that were lined up behind you, gun-shot, gut-shot, heart-shot, the dreams that you’d snatched from their youthful hopes and certainties, that they had nursed and nurtured and that had come so close, so close as they saw the world, to being true. A life without want, a life without jealousy, without hating the neighbours who had more than you did, a life where you were equal. Or perhaps a life where everyone was equal, where they ruled more fairly than anyone, because their dreams had shown them that this was how it could be, and this was what they had to do to make it so. You didn’t talk about their bleeding bodies, or the hope bleeding from their eyes, or the way they were torn in pain by your bullet, the way you’d aimed so true, your finger on the trigger, the trajectory, burrowing deep into their flesh to stop their heart, one way or another.
You talked about football instead, about chatting up some bird or other, and then sinking into her sweetness again and again, all through the night, not because it kept you awake, but because she was good, You should have seen her, a goddess… You talked about Cowley, and how far he’d gone with Annie Irvine, and whether he’d ever had a woman in the way he should have had a woman, rather than this grim grey country. You had another cup of coffee, made more tea, wondered out loud about your next pay rise, and you didn’t wonder if you’d live to see it.
You complained about how it was late, you didn’t think about how one day it might be too late.
And at night, when there were no women, and no match on the box, and no reason not to talk about things that you didn’t talk about, you reached for him, because his body was strong and it was supple and it was there beside you, where it had been all day, not a dream, not a corpse, not too late. You pushed against it, and you held it down, and you speared it, and you let it spear you, either way, any way, because that kept the dreams at bay, brought the dreamless sleep of exhaustion, and the only sound of it was a moan, a breath, a sigh.
And you knew, but you didn’t talk about it, that it was those nights that gave you dreams to nurse and to nurture and to come so close to. Dreams of bullets that all missed, of a trajectory that was true, that stopped hearts and re-started them, beating together.
You dreamed he told you about his dreams.
Such Stuff
by Slantedlight
You didn’t ask people about their dreams in CI5, for fear they were worse than your own. Doyle knew Bodie dreamed sometimes of Africa, of dusty roads and hot rotting death in jungles, but he would no more say anything about those sleep-light mutterings than Bodie would have talked about the way Doyle scratched and scraped at his arms some nights, eyes closed and not awake for hours, as if they had been bitten by a dozen midges, two dozen needles, were a nightmare of missing veins and madness and vomit and death.
You didn’t talk about the corpses that were lined up behind you, gun-shot, gut-shot, heart-shot, the dreams that you’d snatched from their youthful hopes and certainties, that they had nursed and nurtured and that had come so close, so close as they saw the world, to being true. A life without want, a life without jealousy, without hating the neighbours who had more than you did, a life where you were equal. Or perhaps a life where everyone was equal, where they ruled more fairly than anyone, because their dreams had shown them that this was how it could be, and this was what they had to do to make it so. You didn’t talk about their bleeding bodies, or the hope bleeding from their eyes, or the way they were torn in pain by your bullet, the way you’d aimed so true, your finger on the trigger, the trajectory, burrowing deep into their flesh to stop their heart, one way or another.
You talked about football instead, about chatting up some bird or other, and then sinking into her sweetness again and again, all through the night, not because it kept you awake, but because she was good, You should have seen her, a goddess… You talked about Cowley, and how far he’d gone with Annie Irvine, and whether he’d ever had a woman in the way he should have had a woman, rather than this grim grey country. You had another cup of coffee, made more tea, wondered out loud about your next pay rise, and you didn’t wonder if you’d live to see it.
You complained about how it was late, you didn’t think about how one day it might be too late.
And at night, when there were no women, and no match on the box, and no reason not to talk about things that you didn’t talk about, you reached for him, because his body was strong and it was supple and it was there beside you, where it had been all day, not a dream, not a corpse, not too late. You pushed against it, and you held it down, and you speared it, and you let it spear you, either way, any way, because that kept the dreams at bay, brought the dreamless sleep of exhaustion, and the only sound of it was a moan, a breath, a sigh.
And you knew, but you didn’t talk about it, that it was those nights that gave you dreams to nurse and to nurture and to come so close to. Dreams of bullets that all missed, of a trajectory that was true, that stopped hearts and re-started them, beating together.
You dreamed he told you about his dreams.