Fic: "All the way back home" by jaycat

Title: All the way back home at midnight
Author: jaycat
Format: ficlet (920 words)
Circuit Archive: yes Pros-Lib: yes
Slash/Gen: slash (but just soppy)
Pairing: Bodie/Doyle

Summary: Bodie thinks about love.
Disclaimer: I do not own Bodie, Doyle or CI5 characters. I just like to borrow them and give them back. Unbeta’d, so entirely my responsibility.

8.30 am

Look at you, Doyle, strolling across the caff in my direction, with our tea and bacon sarnies on a tray.  Neither of us got to bed last night. I feel like the creature from the black lagoon, but you – a shower, a shave and a change of clothes, and you’re fresh as a daisy. All ready to get up and at ‘em. That waitress is beaming for once, just because you treated her to your crooked grin.  Could be those jeans you’re wearing, too.

Wonder what it would be like to wake up with you. Not every morning, of course, that would be too cosy and domestic. But just once in a while…

Love? No, I’d have to be a fool to love. It’s lust. I’ve learnt not to confuse desire with love.

3 pm

Bloody hell, Doyle. Carry on interrogating like this and we’ll have a suspicious death in Home Office custody on our hands. Not that you’d lay a finger on him, you’re much too clever for that.

I’ll stand here by the door, unmoving, looking surly and menacing. If you need me to do anything more, you’ll let me know just by your body language.

Hope the poor bugger doesn’t have a heart condition. He’s terrified, but he’s talking. At this rate we’ll have this sordid little operation intercepted and closed down tonight in time for last orders, and maybe even get to bed after.

There’s nothing wrong with your heart, Ray. I mean, the reason you do this job. For some of us it’s just a living. Some get a kick out of bullying and hurting. But for you it’s a quest to make this worn-out old country a better place, to save Mr and Mrs Average from the drugs and guns and bombs. You even feel for the crims and their families. And after all that caring for people you don’t even know, you’ve still got the heart to care about me. You come after me when I run from you, even when I push you away. Still, what does that mean?

That I love you for it? I’m patently not a fool, so I do not fall in love. It’s not the thing for me.

7 pm

I should never have got cornered in this filthy warehouse. Can’t hold off two of them with the ammo I’ve got left and so little cover. One shot, two. That’s Ray’s gunfire, from over by the doorway. One thug down and the other one running for it. Christ, I couldn’t have managed a shot like that, from that distance.

All over now. I can hear the sirens – ambulance, police – on their way. You’re staggering across the dusty space to me. We meet in the middle and I take your arm, look you up and down, check you’re okay.  Green eyes, wide and manic, meet mine and you sway towards me…

Bloody hell, it’s the R/T.

“3.7? Come in, 3.7.”

“3.7 here. Go ahead.”

“Mr Cowley’s orders: When you’ve dealt with the London end, go to Dover. You and 4.5 can help intercept the consignment there.”

“Small problem. Our transport’s been shot up, before we took cover here.”

“No problem, 3.7. Lucas and McCabe are outside. Suggest you go with them.”

“Will do, over.”

A moment ago we were falling over with fatigue, but now the adrenalin kicks in again.

I grin at you. “Come on, sunshine, let’s see if McCabe wants to pick up a couple of hitchhikers.”

You laugh, “Thumbs out?”

“Well don’t show a leg, that’ll put him right off.”

Midnight

Peace at last, and quiet and comfort, sinking deeper into the upholstery in the back seat while McCabe eases through the outskirts of Dover towards the open road and home.

Oi, gerroff, Ray, heavy, you are. Oh, you’re asleep.

You’re sleeping on my shoulder. My left shoulder, in the back seat of a Ford Escort speeding up the A2, seems to be the most natural place in the world for you to give in to exhaustion, put your head down and go to sleep. You trust me that much.

Wish I could turn to see your face, but it might wake you, and Lucas would wonder what I was doing. Oh, he’s nodded off, too, and McCabe’s eyes are firmly on the white lines ahead.  I can just feel you breathing softly. Your lips are parted a little, just like a child tucked up in bed, safe and innocent. Mind you, you’re so mucky if you were a kid your mum would have put you in the bath first.

If I move my arm carefully, put it around you, you’ll be more comfortable. There, that’s better. Still asleep.

Lay your sleeping head, my love, human on my faithless arm…

Auden was queer, I bet that’s about a young man, too.

But in my arms till break of day, let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me the entirely beautiful.

Let’s hope we get there a bit before break of day, but don’t hurry, McCabe. If you want to go the long way, or we have to queue for roadworks, it won’t bother me. We’re fine, here in the back seat. Don’t want Ray to wake up yet, he needs the sleep, and I…

I can deal with lust, admiration, respect, anything but this… this complete and utter trust he has in me. I’d be a fool not to love him.

Note: Inspired by a two-hour drive home along the Welsh border on a luminous Friday evening, with the Pet Shop Boys “Liberation” as the soundtrack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-zR9RVHjmQ

as well as my favourite lines of poetry.