Discovered in the Yuletide Spirit - Day 21 - The Case of the Missing Gun by Slantedlight
The Case of the Missing Gun
by Slantedlight
"Look at that." Doyle gestured out the window at their view of the snow-covered street with his cup of coffee. His back was to the room, but Bodie knew he had a face like thunder. "And you know - you know - Cowley's going to have us right out in it, any minute now."
"Mmmn." Bodie was busy looking, at the way Doyle's holster stretched across his back, supple tan leather against the denim blue of his shirt, disappearing over his shoulder and under his arms. He imagined Doyle’s Browning, heavy and solid, slightly warmed from Doyle’s body heat.
"Coldest bloody December for years, and we're stuck on duty!"
"Stuck," Bodie echoed obediently. If he unbuttoned Doyle's shirt when he was still wearing his holster...
Doyle turned abruptly. "Bodie - gimme the binoculars. A car's just pulled up outside Phelan's door! I'm sure I've seen it before..."
"Eh?"
"Bo-die!" Doyle leaned towards him, reached out, and pulled the binoculars out of his unresisting hand. "Wake up Bodie! It's like living with a zombie, being on obbo with you. You finally fallen in love or something?" He turned back to the window as he was speaking, so he didn't see Bodie's startled look.
Probably wouldn't have made any difference, Bodie thought sourly, not to Mr Bloody Oblivious. He got up from his armchair and moved to stand behind Doyle at the window, crowding close, just to be perverse. He was so close he could smell Doyle's hair, and soap and… summer. Memories of summer.
They paused, both of them stilled, and Bodie wondered if Doyle was remembering too, and then Doyle turned, binoculars falling from his eyes, and tilted slightly away from him, from Bodie's breath on his neck. "Now what are you up to?" he asked.
It made Bodie want to lean closer, so he did, close enough that his chest was pressed against Doyle's back. It was a single window, tall and narrow, so perhaps it wasn’t so strange. "Looking for Phelan, what do you think I’m doing?"
“Berk.” Doyle shrugged one shoulder, nudging him away, and held up the binoculars so that he could take them. “False alarm.”
“How’d you know?” He raised the binoculars to his eyes, leaning one arm casually against the window frame, blocking Doyle in where he stood.
“Well unless he’s got his old mum visiting him in his lair…”
Bodie tracked across to the elderly lady shuffling her way along the street towards the shops, then back to check the windows at Phelan’s place again. All was still.
“He’s not in there to start with,” he said, feeling the warmth and the tension that shimmered off Doyle as they stood there. “He’s shacked up with his bird in Tenerife - pound gets you a penny.”
“Even more fool us being here in the cold.” Doyle scowled again. “Shift yourself, mate…” He pushed past Bodie’s arm, back into the room. “What the hell’s Cowley playing at?”
Bodie shrugged. What was Cowley ever playing at? Some game with rules known only to him. “He wants Phelan.”
“Alright, but why us? Why here?”
Moments like this, moments with Doyle being so Doyle that Bodie could scream, they were the hardest. Alright, it hadn’t worked with them for some reason, but…
Not worth it, not worth it, not worth it. Not to ruin what they still had left.
Bodie didn’t turn, but he could hear Doyle shifting moodily about, pacing from one side of the room to the other. He’d left his coffee on the window sill, fogging the pane of glass slightly in front of it, a dark and bitter scent rising on the cool air. He shifted the binoculars from one side of the street to the other, then back again, and then he froze.
“Doyle.”
“What?”
“We were both wrong. Phelan’s just come out the bloody door.”
“Shit…”
Bodie waited just long enough to hear their own door open, then dropped the binoculars. “He’s turned left!” he called down the stairs after Doyle, grabbing his jacket from the rack and pulling it on as he took the steps two at a time, sheer momentum keeping him upright until he practically slammed into the door as it was closing. He yanked it open and turned left up the street himself, weaving his way between the mums with kids and prams and the elderly Christmas shoppers, catching a glimpse of Doyle ahead, and beyond him Phelan’s unmistakeably tall figure and thick pale blond hair. He grimaced. It was just an ordinary high street on an ordinary December day, and if Phelan panicked and decided to take a hostage…
His feet crunched on the gritted pavement, puddles splashing up behind him as he ran to catch up, ignoring the cries of surprise and indignation as they all three passed. No point getting his gun out, not when it was as busy as this, and it felt naked to run without it in his hand. He lost sight of Doyle for a minute, faltered himself, then caught him again as he cut sharply right across the road in front of a white panel van that slewed to a stop in the slush and honked its horn loudly. Bodie banked behind it, catching the end of the driver’s gesture after Doyle, and slowing down to negotiate a pile of dirty snow at the edge of the pavement. He skidded slightly, spotted Doyle moving carefully down a walled alley off to the side, gun out now, and followed him down, drawing his own magnum.
Doyle glanced around once, and waved an arm to hold him back.
The snow was thicker here, not cleaned away or gritted, and the alley obviously wasn’t used very often. It stretched the length of the shops on either side, surrounded by high brick walls and ended in a back road wide enough for a single car, or the bin men on their weekly rounds, and walled on the opposite side.
“Which way’d he go?” Bodie asked quietly when he was close enough. Doyle was being too careful for someone who’d seen his prey getting away, and sure enough, he shrugged and shook his head.
“No idea, he was gone when I got here.”
“Could be waiting for us,” Bodie suggested needlessly, and Doyle glanced sardonically at him and then back away again. Phelan was not known for his love of government, and he was known for being a fine shot when he had one of its agents in his sights. That, as Cowley would no doubt have reminded them, was why he was wanted so badly in the first place.
“Could be,” Doyle said. “You want to nip up and see?”
They were almost at the end now. They could each take a side and peer carefully around to see if Phelan was there - but if he was, then one or the other of them would be dead, a smoking hole where their forehead had been, and Phelan away again. Foolish to show themselves, but if they went one at a time, and were quick enough… He was about to push them into action, when Doyle dug an elbow into his ribs, gestured at the wall beside them, and then pointed upwards with one finger, tucking his gun away with his other hand.
Bodie nodded, cupped his hands for Doyle to step into them, and gave him a boost up. Doyle paused at the top for a moment, looking around, then dropped over the other side. Bodie inched further along again, waiting impatiently for Doyle to appear on the back wall, hopefully somewhere above Phelan, or else signalling the all-clear.
Instead there was the sudden screeching of a cat, the sound of bins being thrown around, and Doyle’s roaring shout. “Phelan!” Then a gunshot - not a Browning - footsteps, and then nothing.
Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck… Bodie gave up caution and threw himself around the corner and against the wooden gate in the back wall. He bounced back, and went at it again, kicking out this time, and the wood splintered around the door latch and then gave.
Thomas Phelan was lying slumped against the back steps of the building, blood bright red against the dirty London snow.
Doyle was lying on his back on the path at Bodie’s feet, Walther clutched in one hand, his other hand lifting slowly to his head. He groaned.
Bodie’s breath came back to him in a sharp intake, huffed out again in something that felt like laughter.
Doyle was alright.
Bodie left him for a moment to check on Phelan, scooping up the man’s gun from where it had fallen, and feeling for a pulse, then he turned back to Doyle.
“Cowley won’t like it, you know,” he said, holding out his hand, and feeling Doyle clench him solidly around his forearm. He pulled, so that Doyle came to his feet, and then he just stood there, waiting, and letting him sway and catch his breath.
“Won’t like what?” Doyle asked eventually, predictably, slightly unevenly. But he always asked, did Doyle.
“You - lying down on the job again.” He beamed cheerfully at Doyle’s wincing frown, then looked him up and down. “You’ve wet yourself and all.”
“Bo-die…” Doyle was holding the back of his head, his clothes were soaked from top to bottom where he’d slipped and ended up lying in the puddled slush, but his eyes were glinting pain and impatience, not concussion. He nodded in Phelan’s direction. “Dead?”
“Considerably.”
“You called it in yet?”
He was still grinning as he pulled his R/T from his jacket pocket. “3.7 to base…”
o0o
The light was leaching from the sky by the time the ambulance had been and gone, and explanations had been made to the couple who owned the electrics shop that suddenly had a dead terrorist in its back yard, and it was well and truly gone when they’d finally finished turning over Phelan’s place. They’d found a stash of guns under the floor boards, the workings for some rather unpleasant explosives, and Phelan’s surprised brother-in-law, who’d been waiting patiently for Phelan to return with a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a six pack of lager.
Cowley’s Granada drew up just as they were seeing McKinnerty off to base with Davis and Andrews, and he gave the man an unimpressed glare as he swept past.
He stopped in front of them, looking just as unimpressed. “And he’s dead, you say?” he asked, without preamble.
“Uh - yes, sir,” Bodie agreed quickly, before Doyle, whose temper hadn’t been improved by his last three hours in dirty wet clothes, could say anything. “Was him or Doyle, sir.”
Cowley looked as if he wasn’t sure he had the better end of the bargain for a moment, a pinch-mouthed look up and down them both, but then he glanced down the hallway of Phelan’s house, brightly electric in the December evening, and full of torn up floorboards and the forensics team, and his expression relaxed. “Aye well, I suppose we can’t have everything.”
“Do you want us in to interrogate?” Doyle asked, and Bodie hoped Cowley couldn’t hear the reluctance in it - it would be just like him to insist it was them if he thought they didn’t want to.
“McKinnerty?” Cowley sounded surprised. “Och man, I don’t think he’ll need much interrogating, do you? He’ll not say boo to a goose, let alone you two. No, I think Friars can handle him.” Again, he looked them up and down. “Doyle, you’re a disgrace man. Get home and tidy yourself up. We have standards even in CI5.” He turned away, stepped towards the house, and then turned back as if in afterthought. “Reports on my desk tomorrow morning, if you please, gentlemen.”
“Tidy myself…?” Doyle began, breaking off when Bodie grabbed his arm and began to drag him back to the flat they’d used for obbo across the street. They’d clear the room and get themselves home. Doyle’s place, Bodie decided for both of them, and a curry from the Tandoori Palace round the corner, and he’d get some beers from the off licence while Doyle was cleaning up.
He didn’t give Doyle a chance to question it - he didn’t question it himself, because that way lay bad medicine - just rushed them from one chore to the next until they were packed up and locking the door to the flat, and well on their way back home. In the end he drove quietly, but surely, and when Doyle got out of the car, expecting to say his goodbyes and be off, Bodie got out too, and followed him up, until they were both safely inside, lights and heating on.
“Suppose you want feeding, do you?” Doyle asked grimly, heeling off his trainers and starting to unbutton his shirt. “You’ll ‘ave to wait. You heard Cowley.”
“Disgraceful,” Bodie confirmed. “I always said so.”
Doyle said nothing, watching Bodie warily for a moment before finally pulling his shirt off and heading to the bedroom with it. A moment later he emerged, naked, and stalked into the bathroom, closing the door behind him, and Bodie heard the electric fan start up, and then bath taps come on, gushing loudly.
Perfect. He swiped Doyle’s keys from his jacket pocket, and let himself out into the street again, and the hundred yards to the main road with its brighter lights and tinsel-clad shop windows. There was a feeling of snow in the air again, and the office workers had their heads down against the wind as they hurried home past Radio Rentals and Freeman, Hardy and Willis. He nipped into Victoria Wine first, and came out with a clanking carrier bag, then went to get the food. Even the Tandoori Palace had a Christmas Tree on the counter, and on a whim he paused at the corner shop as well, and picked up a Radio Times.
It had started on the couch, in front of the box, that summer as well.
The bathroom door was open when he got back, the sound of a hairdryer loud in Doyle’s room, and Bodie got some plates, arranged everything on the coffee table, including a couple of bottles of the Becks. He was just wondering about dishing up the Rogan Josh and starting when Doyle’s door whooshed open again, and Doyle stood there, blinking.
Bodie wasn’t going to give him time to think now, either, at least not about things he didn’t want Doyle thinking about. There’d been too much of that.
“It’s getting cold,” he said. “I got you a madras. What happened to your Browning?”
“Eh?” Doyle strode over, plonked himself down on the sofa beside Bodie, and picked up his beer.
“Your Browning,” Bodie repeated. “You had it the other day.”
“Sight’s off. Took it to Cole before we came on duty. Bodie…”
That was it. That heart-stopping moment, and all because Doyle had dropped his bloody gun again somewhere.
Too late to stop now, his heart had re-started again.
“You remember last summer?” Bodie asked casually, around a mouthful of naan. “That day down by the Thames?”
“When we were supposed to meet the girls and they didn’t show up?”
“Yeah.” He put his fork down, picked up his bottle, and took a mouthful of beer. They’d been drinking Becks that day too, the girls’ share as well as their own, because they weren’t going to waste a weekend off, and they’d already paid for the boat. It had been Doyle’s idea to go anyway, just the two of them, the sunshine pouring down on them. They’d let the river take them where it wanted for a while, then sculled over to a patch of riverbank shaded by cool green willow trees. The sun had dappled across them as they ate the lunch they’d brought, and drank more beer, and lain in the boat perhaps closer than they might have on any other day.
And that night, when they’d got back from the river, drunk with the beer and sunshine, and lazy enough to collapse in front of the box, some late night film that Bodie couldn’t remember now, that night…
“Yeah,” said Doyle “I remember.”
It had faded away, their affair, with a sudden surge in bomb threats from what seemed like half the terrorist nutters this side of the world, and somehow it had never started again. It had just… gone, with the summer.
“Thought you had your Browning today,” he said again. He was no good at this sort of thing, never had been. He could charm the birds, every bit as well as his reputation suggested, but when it came to this… Even his mum had told him once, puzzled and uncertain when he’d said he was leaving. You’ve never said you love me. Not once.
They’d never been words that would come.
“Bodie…” Doyle began, and stopped again.
They should have had more beer first.
“Shame it’s too cold for the river,” he said instead, glancing beside him to find Doyle staring at him, and looking back down at his curry, fast. The snow had started to fall again just as he got back to Doyle’s.
“Bodie…”
“Central heating’s not the same, is it…” Christ, how had he ended up there?
“Bodie!”
He looked up, startled, fork halfway to his mouth.
“I didn’t see Phelan’s car this morning.”
“What?” This whole thing was going…
“This morning. At the window. Knew it wasn’t Phelan’s car.”
At the window. When Bodie’d gone over to see.
“Ah.” Bodie felt something deep inside relaxing again, something as wide and warm as summer.
“Central heating’s alright,” Doyle said, and he was still staring at Bodie, consideringly honest, as only Doyle could be. “Keeps the cold at bay, anyway.”
And suddenly Bodie was smiling again. “What cold?” he asked, and he dropped his fork, and reached out for Doyle instead. “You’ll be telling me its snowing, next.”
December 2019
Trailer
Title: The Case of the Missing Gun
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Always slash
Archive at ProsLib: Certainly
Disclaimer: Bodie and Doyle and the CI5-verse still aren't mine, but they're still fun to play with
Notes: Thanks to milomaus, shooting2kill and macklingirl who all offered prompt-sentences for this. And sorry milomaus, I just realised that I didn't fit yours in after all. I owe you one!
by Slantedlight
"Look at that." Doyle gestured out the window at their view of the snow-covered street with his cup of coffee. His back was to the room, but Bodie knew he had a face like thunder. "And you know - you know - Cowley's going to have us right out in it, any minute now."
"Mmmn." Bodie was busy looking, at the way Doyle's holster stretched across his back, supple tan leather against the denim blue of his shirt, disappearing over his shoulder and under his arms. He imagined Doyle’s Browning, heavy and solid, slightly warmed from Doyle’s body heat.
"Coldest bloody December for years, and we're stuck on duty!"
"Stuck," Bodie echoed obediently. If he unbuttoned Doyle's shirt when he was still wearing his holster...
Doyle turned abruptly. "Bodie - gimme the binoculars. A car's just pulled up outside Phelan's door! I'm sure I've seen it before..."
"Eh?"
"Bo-die!" Doyle leaned towards him, reached out, and pulled the binoculars out of his unresisting hand. "Wake up Bodie! It's like living with a zombie, being on obbo with you. You finally fallen in love or something?" He turned back to the window as he was speaking, so he didn't see Bodie's startled look.
Probably wouldn't have made any difference, Bodie thought sourly, not to Mr Bloody Oblivious. He got up from his armchair and moved to stand behind Doyle at the window, crowding close, just to be perverse. He was so close he could smell Doyle's hair, and soap and… summer. Memories of summer.
They paused, both of them stilled, and Bodie wondered if Doyle was remembering too, and then Doyle turned, binoculars falling from his eyes, and tilted slightly away from him, from Bodie's breath on his neck. "Now what are you up to?" he asked.
It made Bodie want to lean closer, so he did, close enough that his chest was pressed against Doyle's back. It was a single window, tall and narrow, so perhaps it wasn’t so strange. "Looking for Phelan, what do you think I’m doing?"
“Berk.” Doyle shrugged one shoulder, nudging him away, and held up the binoculars so that he could take them. “False alarm.”
“How’d you know?” He raised the binoculars to his eyes, leaning one arm casually against the window frame, blocking Doyle in where he stood.
“Well unless he’s got his old mum visiting him in his lair…”
Bodie tracked across to the elderly lady shuffling her way along the street towards the shops, then back to check the windows at Phelan’s place again. All was still.
“He’s not in there to start with,” he said, feeling the warmth and the tension that shimmered off Doyle as they stood there. “He’s shacked up with his bird in Tenerife - pound gets you a penny.”
“Even more fool us being here in the cold.” Doyle scowled again. “Shift yourself, mate…” He pushed past Bodie’s arm, back into the room. “What the hell’s Cowley playing at?”
Bodie shrugged. What was Cowley ever playing at? Some game with rules known only to him. “He wants Phelan.”
“Alright, but why us? Why here?”
Moments like this, moments with Doyle being so Doyle that Bodie could scream, they were the hardest. Alright, it hadn’t worked with them for some reason, but…
Not worth it, not worth it, not worth it. Not to ruin what they still had left.
Bodie didn’t turn, but he could hear Doyle shifting moodily about, pacing from one side of the room to the other. He’d left his coffee on the window sill, fogging the pane of glass slightly in front of it, a dark and bitter scent rising on the cool air. He shifted the binoculars from one side of the street to the other, then back again, and then he froze.
“Doyle.”
“What?”
“We were both wrong. Phelan’s just come out the bloody door.”
“Shit…”
Bodie waited just long enough to hear their own door open, then dropped the binoculars. “He’s turned left!” he called down the stairs after Doyle, grabbing his jacket from the rack and pulling it on as he took the steps two at a time, sheer momentum keeping him upright until he practically slammed into the door as it was closing. He yanked it open and turned left up the street himself, weaving his way between the mums with kids and prams and the elderly Christmas shoppers, catching a glimpse of Doyle ahead, and beyond him Phelan’s unmistakeably tall figure and thick pale blond hair. He grimaced. It was just an ordinary high street on an ordinary December day, and if Phelan panicked and decided to take a hostage…
His feet crunched on the gritted pavement, puddles splashing up behind him as he ran to catch up, ignoring the cries of surprise and indignation as they all three passed. No point getting his gun out, not when it was as busy as this, and it felt naked to run without it in his hand. He lost sight of Doyle for a minute, faltered himself, then caught him again as he cut sharply right across the road in front of a white panel van that slewed to a stop in the slush and honked its horn loudly. Bodie banked behind it, catching the end of the driver’s gesture after Doyle, and slowing down to negotiate a pile of dirty snow at the edge of the pavement. He skidded slightly, spotted Doyle moving carefully down a walled alley off to the side, gun out now, and followed him down, drawing his own magnum.
Doyle glanced around once, and waved an arm to hold him back.
The snow was thicker here, not cleaned away or gritted, and the alley obviously wasn’t used very often. It stretched the length of the shops on either side, surrounded by high brick walls and ended in a back road wide enough for a single car, or the bin men on their weekly rounds, and walled on the opposite side.
“Which way’d he go?” Bodie asked quietly when he was close enough. Doyle was being too careful for someone who’d seen his prey getting away, and sure enough, he shrugged and shook his head.
“No idea, he was gone when I got here.”
“Could be waiting for us,” Bodie suggested needlessly, and Doyle glanced sardonically at him and then back away again. Phelan was not known for his love of government, and he was known for being a fine shot when he had one of its agents in his sights. That, as Cowley would no doubt have reminded them, was why he was wanted so badly in the first place.
“Could be,” Doyle said. “You want to nip up and see?”
They were almost at the end now. They could each take a side and peer carefully around to see if Phelan was there - but if he was, then one or the other of them would be dead, a smoking hole where their forehead had been, and Phelan away again. Foolish to show themselves, but if they went one at a time, and were quick enough… He was about to push them into action, when Doyle dug an elbow into his ribs, gestured at the wall beside them, and then pointed upwards with one finger, tucking his gun away with his other hand.
Bodie nodded, cupped his hands for Doyle to step into them, and gave him a boost up. Doyle paused at the top for a moment, looking around, then dropped over the other side. Bodie inched further along again, waiting impatiently for Doyle to appear on the back wall, hopefully somewhere above Phelan, or else signalling the all-clear.
Instead there was the sudden screeching of a cat, the sound of bins being thrown around, and Doyle’s roaring shout. “Phelan!” Then a gunshot - not a Browning - footsteps, and then nothing.
Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck… Bodie gave up caution and threw himself around the corner and against the wooden gate in the back wall. He bounced back, and went at it again, kicking out this time, and the wood splintered around the door latch and then gave.
Thomas Phelan was lying slumped against the back steps of the building, blood bright red against the dirty London snow.
Doyle was lying on his back on the path at Bodie’s feet, Walther clutched in one hand, his other hand lifting slowly to his head. He groaned.
Bodie’s breath came back to him in a sharp intake, huffed out again in something that felt like laughter.
Doyle was alright.
Bodie left him for a moment to check on Phelan, scooping up the man’s gun from where it had fallen, and feeling for a pulse, then he turned back to Doyle.
“Cowley won’t like it, you know,” he said, holding out his hand, and feeling Doyle clench him solidly around his forearm. He pulled, so that Doyle came to his feet, and then he just stood there, waiting, and letting him sway and catch his breath.
“Won’t like what?” Doyle asked eventually, predictably, slightly unevenly. But he always asked, did Doyle.
“You - lying down on the job again.” He beamed cheerfully at Doyle’s wincing frown, then looked him up and down. “You’ve wet yourself and all.”
“Bo-die…” Doyle was holding the back of his head, his clothes were soaked from top to bottom where he’d slipped and ended up lying in the puddled slush, but his eyes were glinting pain and impatience, not concussion. He nodded in Phelan’s direction. “Dead?”
“Considerably.”
“You called it in yet?”
He was still grinning as he pulled his R/T from his jacket pocket. “3.7 to base…”
o0o
The light was leaching from the sky by the time the ambulance had been and gone, and explanations had been made to the couple who owned the electrics shop that suddenly had a dead terrorist in its back yard, and it was well and truly gone when they’d finally finished turning over Phelan’s place. They’d found a stash of guns under the floor boards, the workings for some rather unpleasant explosives, and Phelan’s surprised brother-in-law, who’d been waiting patiently for Phelan to return with a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a six pack of lager.
Cowley’s Granada drew up just as they were seeing McKinnerty off to base with Davis and Andrews, and he gave the man an unimpressed glare as he swept past.
He stopped in front of them, looking just as unimpressed. “And he’s dead, you say?” he asked, without preamble.
“Uh - yes, sir,” Bodie agreed quickly, before Doyle, whose temper hadn’t been improved by his last three hours in dirty wet clothes, could say anything. “Was him or Doyle, sir.”
Cowley looked as if he wasn’t sure he had the better end of the bargain for a moment, a pinch-mouthed look up and down them both, but then he glanced down the hallway of Phelan’s house, brightly electric in the December evening, and full of torn up floorboards and the forensics team, and his expression relaxed. “Aye well, I suppose we can’t have everything.”
“Do you want us in to interrogate?” Doyle asked, and Bodie hoped Cowley couldn’t hear the reluctance in it - it would be just like him to insist it was them if he thought they didn’t want to.
“McKinnerty?” Cowley sounded surprised. “Och man, I don’t think he’ll need much interrogating, do you? He’ll not say boo to a goose, let alone you two. No, I think Friars can handle him.” Again, he looked them up and down. “Doyle, you’re a disgrace man. Get home and tidy yourself up. We have standards even in CI5.” He turned away, stepped towards the house, and then turned back as if in afterthought. “Reports on my desk tomorrow morning, if you please, gentlemen.”
“Tidy myself…?” Doyle began, breaking off when Bodie grabbed his arm and began to drag him back to the flat they’d used for obbo across the street. They’d clear the room and get themselves home. Doyle’s place, Bodie decided for both of them, and a curry from the Tandoori Palace round the corner, and he’d get some beers from the off licence while Doyle was cleaning up.
He didn’t give Doyle a chance to question it - he didn’t question it himself, because that way lay bad medicine - just rushed them from one chore to the next until they were packed up and locking the door to the flat, and well on their way back home. In the end he drove quietly, but surely, and when Doyle got out of the car, expecting to say his goodbyes and be off, Bodie got out too, and followed him up, until they were both safely inside, lights and heating on.
“Suppose you want feeding, do you?” Doyle asked grimly, heeling off his trainers and starting to unbutton his shirt. “You’ll ‘ave to wait. You heard Cowley.”
“Disgraceful,” Bodie confirmed. “I always said so.”
Doyle said nothing, watching Bodie warily for a moment before finally pulling his shirt off and heading to the bedroom with it. A moment later he emerged, naked, and stalked into the bathroom, closing the door behind him, and Bodie heard the electric fan start up, and then bath taps come on, gushing loudly.
Perfect. He swiped Doyle’s keys from his jacket pocket, and let himself out into the street again, and the hundred yards to the main road with its brighter lights and tinsel-clad shop windows. There was a feeling of snow in the air again, and the office workers had their heads down against the wind as they hurried home past Radio Rentals and Freeman, Hardy and Willis. He nipped into Victoria Wine first, and came out with a clanking carrier bag, then went to get the food. Even the Tandoori Palace had a Christmas Tree on the counter, and on a whim he paused at the corner shop as well, and picked up a Radio Times.
It had started on the couch, in front of the box, that summer as well.
The bathroom door was open when he got back, the sound of a hairdryer loud in Doyle’s room, and Bodie got some plates, arranged everything on the coffee table, including a couple of bottles of the Becks. He was just wondering about dishing up the Rogan Josh and starting when Doyle’s door whooshed open again, and Doyle stood there, blinking.
Bodie wasn’t going to give him time to think now, either, at least not about things he didn’t want Doyle thinking about. There’d been too much of that.
“It’s getting cold,” he said. “I got you a madras. What happened to your Browning?”
“Eh?” Doyle strode over, plonked himself down on the sofa beside Bodie, and picked up his beer.
“Your Browning,” Bodie repeated. “You had it the other day.”
“Sight’s off. Took it to Cole before we came on duty. Bodie…”
That was it. That heart-stopping moment, and all because Doyle had dropped his bloody gun again somewhere.
Too late to stop now, his heart had re-started again.
“You remember last summer?” Bodie asked casually, around a mouthful of naan. “That day down by the Thames?”
“When we were supposed to meet the girls and they didn’t show up?”
“Yeah.” He put his fork down, picked up his bottle, and took a mouthful of beer. They’d been drinking Becks that day too, the girls’ share as well as their own, because they weren’t going to waste a weekend off, and they’d already paid for the boat. It had been Doyle’s idea to go anyway, just the two of them, the sunshine pouring down on them. They’d let the river take them where it wanted for a while, then sculled over to a patch of riverbank shaded by cool green willow trees. The sun had dappled across them as they ate the lunch they’d brought, and drank more beer, and lain in the boat perhaps closer than they might have on any other day.
And that night, when they’d got back from the river, drunk with the beer and sunshine, and lazy enough to collapse in front of the box, some late night film that Bodie couldn’t remember now, that night…
“Yeah,” said Doyle “I remember.”
It had faded away, their affair, with a sudden surge in bomb threats from what seemed like half the terrorist nutters this side of the world, and somehow it had never started again. It had just… gone, with the summer.
“Thought you had your Browning today,” he said again. He was no good at this sort of thing, never had been. He could charm the birds, every bit as well as his reputation suggested, but when it came to this… Even his mum had told him once, puzzled and uncertain when he’d said he was leaving. You’ve never said you love me. Not once.
They’d never been words that would come.
“Bodie…” Doyle began, and stopped again.
They should have had more beer first.
“Shame it’s too cold for the river,” he said instead, glancing beside him to find Doyle staring at him, and looking back down at his curry, fast. The snow had started to fall again just as he got back to Doyle’s.
“Bodie…”
“Central heating’s not the same, is it…” Christ, how had he ended up there?
“Bodie!”
He looked up, startled, fork halfway to his mouth.
“I didn’t see Phelan’s car this morning.”
“What?” This whole thing was going…
“This morning. At the window. Knew it wasn’t Phelan’s car.”
At the window. When Bodie’d gone over to see.
“Ah.” Bodie felt something deep inside relaxing again, something as wide and warm as summer.
“Central heating’s alright,” Doyle said, and he was still staring at Bodie, consideringly honest, as only Doyle could be. “Keeps the cold at bay, anyway.”
And suddenly Bodie was smiling again. “What cold?” he asked, and he dropped his fork, and reached out for Doyle instead. “You’ll be telling me its snowing, next.”
December 2019
Trailer
Title: The Case of the Missing Gun
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Always slash
Archive at ProsLib: Certainly
Disclaimer: Bodie and Doyle and the CI5-verse still aren't mine, but they're still fun to play with
Notes: Thanks to milomaus, shooting2kill and macklingirl who all offered prompt-sentences for this. And sorry milomaus, I just realised that I didn't fit yours in after all. I owe you one!