Briefing Room Fic: Being a Brief Record of Events that Lead to Doyle Giving Bodie Handcuffs
Squeezing this in before the next prompt is given! I blame byslantedlight's post about Bodie having handcuffs on the head of his bed, which joined the plot bunny the prompt picture gave me. And made it grow.


Title: Being a Brief Record of Events that Lead to Doyle Giving Bodie Handcuffs
Author: Erushi
Format: Short story. (1,118 words)
Circuit Archive / Pros-Lib: Yes, please.
Slash/Gen: Slash.
Summary: The title’s quite self-explanatory, I think.
Disclaimer: This is an amateur work written purely for entertainment. No profit is gained from it, nor is any infringement of copyright intended. The poetry used was written by W. H. Auden.


Even though they’ve each been part of CI5 for close to a year and partners for almost as long, the first time Bodie and Doyle get drunk together is at their first CI5 Christmas party. This is held at Jax’s place, and it is barely midnight when both men are rendered barely capable of coherent speech. Jax’s wife, a neat and gentle-eyed woman whose smile has by then taken on a hint of exasperated amusement, firmly leads them to one of the two guest rooms in the house to sleep it off. The mattress is better than any of theirs in their flats, and keeping awake long enough to strip before tumbling onto the welcome bed proves a herculean task.

Bodie awakes to a herd of elephants tap-dancing in his skull and errant rays of sunlight streaming through the partially drawn blinds that make his eyes hurt. He is staring at the grey-faced gargoyle that greets him in the mirror when the reflection of a wriggle behind him catches his eye. That brief glimpse of lightly-tanned skin disappearing beneath the faded denim of worn jeans is to follow him throughout the day, re-surfacing at the most inopportune of moments and only agreeing to an unwilling truce when Bodie pulls that pretty bit of girl, all red curls and green eyes and pert arse, from the pub ‘round the corner.

=-=-=

They are not quite as drunk at the CI5 New Year gathering which is held a few days later at Bodie’s flat, and are thus able, albeit just barely, to blurrily see their guests to the door after a rousing Auld Lang Syne is sung and many a paper cup of cheap red and of whiskey is consumed for the road. When finally alone, what begins as one partner helping the other clear his flat of discarded platters evolves into a school-boy experiment that explores the exact volume of wine a man’s mouth can hold. No conclusion is ever reached, but they are soon stumbling into the bedroom, all clumsy, sticky kisses on flushed faces and swollen lips, all feverishly roaming hands on clothes that suddenly feel too tight and under to skin that feels too hot.

“Is this what you want?” Doyle says, and Bodie inexplicably thinks of the slim of volume of W. H. Auden that is currently hiding beneath the stack of neatly-folded polonecks in his drawer, out of sight from the prying eyes of curious birds and one bionic golly. He pictures in his mind page 67 of 108 that is marked by a dog-ear and has the word ‘Vilanelle’ printed prominently on it in bold type.

If I could tell you I would let you know surreptitiously slips into Bodie’s consciousness, words pale grey and ghost-like, as he mouths Doyle’s nipple through the thin linen-cotton blend of the white dress shirt. They discover anew that night the intricacies of a man’s warm body against cool sheets, charting in their minds the differences between soft mounds of flesh and hard planes of muscle and committing to memory a fresh set of landmarks.

It is only when Bodie cuddles a drowsy Doyle to him, their bodies warm with sweat and sticky with other fluids best left unmentioned in polite company, that Time only knows the price we have to pay joins its poetical sister in his head.

=-=-=

His bedside reading has now moved on to Robert Frost, but it is Auden whom Bodie recalls the sixth time they spend the night together in twice as many days.

Bodie’s fingers stab and curl and twist, broadening the channel that clenches so tightly and feels so right first with one to be followed by two and then by – More, sunshine? and a laugh at the desperate nod and whimper – three. Doyle alternates between writhing on the rough fabric of the two-seater in Bodie’s flat and arching his back, rocking his hip in frantic little circles as he fucks himself on Bodie’s fingers which are both enough and yet not quite. Their groans are raw and harsh in the room that is silent but for the creaking of alarmed furniture, and when the wetness at Doyle’s legs moves from between to in, it suddenly all becomes both enough and too much.

“You always take such good care of me, mate,” a sated Doyle casually remarks much later, loose-limbed and sprawled on an equally-satiated Bodie, and the latter fancies that he is able to make out the piercing green of his partner’s eyes in the darkness of the living room. Because I love you more than I can say trembles at the tip of his tongue, and rather than speak he fuses his lips with Doyle’s. By the time they doze, Bodie is convinced that it has passed unspoken but understood from one tongue to another in the intimate dance that they both share.

=-=-=

It is late when Doyle returns from the funeral of an old friend from his days with the Force. Doyle’s suit is rumpled and his breath reeking of alcohol when he sits at the edge of the bed, and Bodie shifts on the mattress to stare at the troubled visage that is staring blankly at the wall. Bastard asked to be buried with his wife’s ring in his hand is all that passes between them in the otherwise-silent hour that follows. (It is only a month later that Bodie learns that the wife in question had died in childbirth three years before her husband had lost his life to a bullet in the head during a bank raid gone horribly wrong.)

Neither of them has ever asked to be held before; they’re blokes, and asking to be held isn’t quite a bloke-y thing to do. But Doyle asks that night, his voice cracking on please and choking at Bodie. They fall asleep that night fully-clothed, warm under the duvet in a tangle of flannel pyjamas and half-discarded suit and arms and legs.

=-=-=

Morning brings Bodie buttered toast in bed and the coolness of metal placed shyly on his left palm. Doyle fiddles with the breakfast things and tells the steaming cup of tea that he thinks handcuffs are essentially two big rings joined by a chain and they’re partners anyway so Bodie you’re already shackled to me aren’t you.

The mumbled speech has faded into awkward silence when a gentle hand reaches to still nervous fingers that have moved from toying with the butter knife to scrunching already-crumpled cotton sheets. Neither of them remarks on the uncomfortable presence of toast crumbs in the bed, nor do they say anything about the tea that has become tepid by the time it is drunk.