Work Text:
1977
Doyle had never been one to celebrate New Year. A family gathering when he was thirteen was the only time he had (after having fallen asleep before midnight the year before) thanks to his grandfather’s insistence. More recently, he’d been working, or sleeping in between shifts, during his time in the Met, meaning this was the first New Year he’d be able to welcome in properly as an adult. And, with him and Bodie stood down from duty after turning in their reports, he had welcome company for the New Year.
They’d gone to Doyle’s local for a couple of drinks, before heading back to Doyle’s flat via the fish and chip shop. More beer, followed by a measure of Pure Malt Scotch to toast the arrival of 1977, was the order of the evening. They were both sure their new leader would approve. They had plenty of good reason to toast the new year, after a few short months together they felt their partnership was going well and had every prospect of lasting, so long as they could keep themselves out of danger. They had spent the evening talking about Christmas, previous Christmases, cricket, Cowley, and Scottish customs and hospitality in general, and Hogmanay in particular, and the likelihood of Cowley ever inviting them to a Hogmanay celebration.
Doyle headed to his bed around 1am, having thrown Bodie a spare pillow and the big sleeping bag and invited him to get comfortable on the sofa. The alcohol had pleasantly relaxed Doyle, and he was soon asleep, dreaming of himself and Bodie playing on the same cricket team. They returned to the pavilion to celebrate their win, where the steward - Cowley - drank their good fortune with Pure Malt Scotch. Doyle woke before he and Bodie could have their glasses filled, eager to quench his thirst with a simple glass of water.
1979
He and Alison made a nice couple, Doyle thought. He’d had his hair trimmed and Alison had washed hers with the expensive shampoo which made her usual short spikes fall softly around her face. And with his line of work (or at least the version he’d told them), surely any girl’s parents would approve? He hadn’t expected them to be allowed to share a bedroom, and of course they weren’t - while Alison was in her old childhood bedroom, he was on the sofa in the study. And he knew that after a drink or two, Alison’s father would start blaming all the ills of the world on the ending of National Service or the Beatles. And so he did, starting with Doyle’s hair.
He had hoped that if things got too unbearable, he and Alison could slip away straight after the christening, say their hasty goodbyes to Alison’s sister and brother-in-law and the baby, and head back to London earlier than planned. But Alison seemed to be enjoying herself - if her latest boyfriend was beyond the pale in terms of suitable husband material, then her family wouldn’t give her the usual earache about settling down before she reached the grand old age of twenty-five.
Instead, he felt rather left out, not knowing anyone else in the party. There were no other misfits like him, no other nervous boyfriends or fiancés hoping for approval from their girlfriend’s relations. Being completely off-duty, he was officially incommunicado - the office (and Bodie) would have his contact details in case of an emergency, but the phone stubbornly refused to ring. Instead, he helped himself to a Scotch and soda, going more heavily on the soda to ensure he would be sober enough to make a quick getaway down the M1 if necessary.
That Saturday night, he lay awake on the sofa, having resigned himself to the full weekend on his best behaviour. It probably isn’t all bad, he decided, after all the sofa was comfortable - more so than Bodie’s. And he’d seen some of the buffet preparations, so he knew the after-service lunch tomorrow would be a good one. He willed himself to fall asleep quickly, hoping a decent night’s sleep would improve his mood. Instead, he dreamed about him and Bodie sitting on that same sofa, Bodie eating vol-au-vents off a paper plate while scattering flakes of pastry on the carpet. He woke the next morning knowing things would never change.
1981
Doyle wondered why he bothered. Valentines Day was approaching, and it was only a couple of months since he thought he’d be making a big deal of the festivities. His relationship with Ann had barely lasted a fortnight, yet at the time his imagination had taken flight, giving colour to the half-drawn dreams he’d had over the years of settling down permanently. He’d decided back then they should have an evening out at a fancy restaurant for Valentine’s Day, he was sure Ann would have a favourite place for a romantic meal. Instead, he was in the office picking at fries from Kentucky Fried Chicken while completing his latest report, while Bodie tucked into the chicken, taunting his partner (“On a diet, are we?”).
Determined to complete his work and head home to forget the day, Doyle turned his back to Bodie. Far from being affronted, Bodie took this as a challenge, commenting on his partner’s svelte figure, his “lush” curls, and his skills in the kitchen (“I bet you’re skilled in other rooms, too, eh Raymond”).
Doyle finished his report and left, dropping it to Cowley’s office on the way. Bodie, having spent time amusing himself teasing Doyle, still had much of his to complete. Doyle was quite happy with this, it would give him some precious time alone to think. Time to think about whether he was ever going to settle down, how and where he was ever likely to find a woman who would understand the particular demands his work placed on him.
She would have to be a police officer, or from a police family, he reasoned, if not directly from CI5. There weren’t many possibilities within CI5 - not Susan (friends and didn’t fancy him), Yvonne (too young), Kimberley (one disastrous date), or Ursula (preferred Bodie). Once home, he dropped two slices of bread into the toaster, watching it slowly brown, wondering if he ought to write all of this down to work out who his ideal partner might be.
It didn’t help. By the time he went to bed, he’d dismissed 28 women he’d got to know through work over the years, including six colleagues from his Limehouse beat days, as unsuitable for a variety of reasons. He turned out the bedside light, giving a grudging thought to the bargain-hunters tomorrow looking for cheap heart-shaped chocolate, wondering if Bodie would be one of them.
That night, he dreamed he was driving Bodie through London in his Escort, both of them smartly-dressed. They parked in a side-street, then walked round to the main road and through the main doors to Kentucky Fried Chicken. He woke the next morning hungry.
1982
By the time Doyle was discharged from hospital, the lush golden autumn was fading to a dark grey-brown and the clear sunny days were noticeably cooler. The nights were definitely colder than before, and having lost some of his constitutional strength, he felt the cold nights keenly. Despite this, he didn’t always mind the cold - on some days, he felt more alive at feeling the cold, knowing he could so easily have not lived to experience those days.
He had lived to see them, he knew, thanks to Bodie. Bodie had saved his life that day. He heard the story from him a week before he left hospital, how Bodie had found him shot and bleeding in his flat. Of course, he knew that without Alex calling Bodie and Cowley when the phone alert was triggered, without the ambulancemen who took him to hospital, and without the hospital staff who treated him he would not be where he is now, but it was Bodie whose actions had been uppermost in his mind since he learned what happened on that day.
Bodie had been given a few days off to see him home safe from hospital, and to make sure he was settled well at home. Bodie had slept on Doyle’s sofa, while spending his days cooking (or, more accurately, heating up convenience food) and tidying. There wasn’t a great deal else to do, except for a trip to the health food store and the launderette, so they had sat and chatted, or sat together reading their respective newspapers, or watched TV in the evenings. It left Doyle feeling contented, and aware he would miss their quiet time together when it was over.
In bed that night, Doyle mused on when this quiet time with Bodie would end. By next week, he was sure - Bodie was due back at work on Monday. He hoped Bodie would stay until then. He’d left the bedroom door slightly ajar, and could hear Bodie settling himself down on the sofa, and wondered if Bodie would be glad to get back to his own flat and his own bed. He understood that he might, but fell asleep to the thought that it would be rather nice if they shared a place together, a nice roomy flat. Unlikely, given CI5’s housing policy, but they wouldn’t be CI5 operatives forever - in practical terms he wasn’t really one now, and might possibly never be one again if his recovery wasn’t a hundred per cent.
That night, Doyle dreamed of him and Bodie sitting on chairs on the balcony of an expensive newly-built apartment, drinking from beer bottles. They both went inside to watch a film, Doyle sipping his beer as Bodie put the cassette into the video recorder. He woke the next morning to a cup of tea, brought to his bedside by Bodie.
1986
Doyle sighed. Bodie always seemed to come home from these trips with more laundry than he set out with. The laundry basket would be full again, they’d need to do another lot of washing tomorrow. But he was glad Bodie trusted him with his laundry now, he recalled when they first knew each other how fussy Bodie was about his clothes. Though he often swore that if he was ironing their formalwear, he could feel Bodie’s eyes burning into the back of his head as though Bodie could tell he wasn’t doing it to the required standard, even when he was out of the room.
It was good to have Bodie home again, and he’d been eager to hear all the news from his trip, which had included a visit to Cowley now he was settled into retirement. Cowley was doing well, Bodie said, writing his memoirs with some serious-name publishers fighting over him. Bodie had taken a gift of a bottle of Scotch, partly to soften the impact of his news that he and Doyle were a couple, and had been for over a year now. Apparently Cowley had been surprised but took the news in good humour, wished them well, and hoped to see the two of them next time they could get up to Scotland.
Aside from visiting Cowley, Bodie’s visit to Scotland had been purely business. As head of recruitment and training, Bodie was responsible for looking out for potential new recruits, talking to various managerial and personnel staff in the police forces and military units to see who might be up for an interesting sideways move. This trip had been particularly fruitful, though Bodie knew not to count his chicks before they all hatched - it could be a year before he’d see any of the newly-spotted talent report for duty.
Everyone was moving on, and CI5 was evolving under its new command. Doyle still saw Susan occasionally, now she had moved back to the Home Office to join their cybersecurity team after getting her degree. Murphy, not so much, not now he’d moved to the diplomatic security team. McCabe, still walking with a limp, had never fully recovered from the ferry incident but was happy spending his days liaising with security equipment manufacturers. Lucas had taken over his father’s car dealership while Ruth was somewhere on the south coast working as a private investigator. And Lewis was apparently giving the lads at an exclusive boarding school hell on the rugby pitch.
As for Doyle, he had found that contrary to his younger days, he and paperwork got on very well. Bodie had laughed at him when he foisted himself on a university for work experience in their library, but he’d learned a lot about information management and archiving that they could put into practice at CI5. He now looked back on the early days, when Betty would pull physical newspapers from the archives when they had to research historical cases, with a smile - now, with the new technology and reorganisation of records he had put in place, the agents would be able to retrieve newspaper articles themselves in seconds.
So, things were very different to a decade ago, mostly in ways Doyle could never have imagined, though he wouldn’t change any of it for the world. He and Bodie had bought a small terraced house together in a not-so-fashionable area and refurbished it to make a modern yet cosy home. They were financially sound, their careers were progressing satisfactorily, their relationship was the best thing that had happened to either of them, and Doyle had even returned to his art.
That night, they toasted George Cowley in a glass of Pure Malt Scotch before heading to bed, where Doyle dreamed he’d been asked to log all of Bodie’s dress shirts in a database by colour, style, and date and place bought. He woke the next morning in Bodie’s arms.