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ci5hqHere we go - back to the Reading Room!
Like Gravity (True Before We Knew It) by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
halotolerant was posted to the online Circuit archive in May 2008. I remember liking it, because it felt different somehow, although I couldn't decide if that was because it was tinged with the odd modernism.
The lads have been working together for five or six years, and CI5 accommodation has cocked up, and they're forced to share a flat for a month or so. Doyle doesn't seem too bothered, but Bodie is unsettled. We travel through time with them, in vignettes from Bodie's point of view, as Bodie comes to terms with the idea, and with an even bigger idea - that Ray is becoming "essential" to him.
Re-reading the story now, I must confess I'm not entirely sure what I think of it. I find the vignette style a bit jumpy, although the story is progressing, so it's really fine. We get there in the end, and I can mostly see how we did.
I'm not totally convinced that it's the lads - Doyle seems a bit more crass, and Bodie a bit less thoughtful of other people. There's the odd bit of dialogue that reads as more of a modernism to me, and even something that reads as an Americanism - the idea of a bloke grabbing another in a headlock and "grinding his fist in his scalp" - I've only ever seen that on American tv and movies.
Some things properly threw me so that I had to nip out of the story to work it out: - Bodie claims he's been working with Doyle for five or six years but knows nothing about him, and then lists various basic things he doesn't know. Except... in the first series we find out that the lads have been working together for just over two years already, and only two seasons later in Mixed Doubles, Doyle's talking about being a kid. Oh, and in ItPI we find out that Bodie thinks Doyle said he grew up in Derby. And back in the first series we see Bodie pretending to fall asleep when Doyle tells him about "When I was in..." And Bodie tells Doyle about the girl he loved who Krivas killed back in the first series too. So... where has this Bodie come from, who knows nothing and says nothing?
But all that said, I don't dislike this this time - I just have the feeling that maybe I need to read it again to check. Which maybe I do. *g*
So how about you - what did you think? *g*
- is it the lads?
- did they get to the right place at the right time (like gravity *g*)?
Like Gravity (True Before We Knew It) by
halotolerant was posted to the online Circuit archive in May 2008. I remember liking it, because it felt different somehow, although I couldn't decide if that was because it was tinged with the odd modernism.The lads have been working together for five or six years, and CI5 accommodation has cocked up, and they're forced to share a flat for a month or so. Doyle doesn't seem too bothered, but Bodie is unsettled. We travel through time with them, in vignettes from Bodie's point of view, as Bodie comes to terms with the idea, and with an even bigger idea - that Ray is becoming "essential" to him.
Re-reading the story now, I must confess I'm not entirely sure what I think of it. I find the vignette style a bit jumpy, although the story is progressing, so it's really fine. We get there in the end, and I can mostly see how we did.
I'm not totally convinced that it's the lads - Doyle seems a bit more crass, and Bodie a bit less thoughtful of other people. There's the odd bit of dialogue that reads as more of a modernism to me, and even something that reads as an Americanism - the idea of a bloke grabbing another in a headlock and "grinding his fist in his scalp" - I've only ever seen that on American tv and movies.
Some things properly threw me so that I had to nip out of the story to work it out: - Bodie claims he's been working with Doyle for five or six years but knows nothing about him, and then lists various basic things he doesn't know. Except... in the first series we find out that the lads have been working together for just over two years already, and only two seasons later in Mixed Doubles, Doyle's talking about being a kid. Oh, and in ItPI we find out that Bodie thinks Doyle said he grew up in Derby. And back in the first series we see Bodie pretending to fall asleep when Doyle tells him about "When I was in..." And Bodie tells Doyle about the girl he loved who Krivas killed back in the first series too. So... where has this Bodie come from, who knows nothing and says nothing?
But all that said, I don't dislike this this time - I just have the feeling that maybe I need to read it again to check. Which maybe I do. *g*
So how about you - what did you think? *g*
- is it the lads?
- did they get to the right place at the right time (like gravity *g*)?
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Date: 2021-08-28 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-28 11:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-28 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-28 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-28 03:21 pm (UTC)Repeating myself here but this story has all the ingredients I love in a good story such as maturity of style and approach to the characters; ‘getting’ the characters or seeing them as I see them; subtlety; and layers which make you think. But while I love layers ( and the challenge they may pose) at the same time I’m not always sure I understand their significance e.g. I didn’t 'get' the point of the passage with Murphy in the canteen and so felt I was missing something and felt Bodie was unnecessarily hostile towards him. And I'm not sure I see a 'solitary' Bodie lunching in the ci5 canteen. (I'm not questioning whether or not he'd be lunching in the canteen but more the image of him doing it in a solitary way.)
But moving on… Apart from that I feel the author knows our characters inside out and there are some great Bodie lines, I can just hear him say:
"Some girl called Caroline. He won't give me details. Looks like a dental receptionist." Bodie picked a stapler off the desk, looked at it and put it down again. "He always did like ordinary."
No offence to dental receptionists but it made me laugh.
And this:
"Do you like fish? I can never remember."
"Fried. Maybe in a pie. None of that steaming bollocks."
So Bodie but also, worryingly, it actually reminded me of *me* and the kind of thing I might say.
And not to forget the way the author managed to capture Doyle’s own brand of humour which is also one of the ingredients of their very successful partnership:
"Is that what you call art?"
"It's what I call free."
Once I might have seen it as a kind of London humour only neither of them are Londoners...
And they’re very real people:
"I never thought I'd live this long,"
I always think exactly the same and how I’d have taken better care of myself if I’d known I'd live this long. (By the way, that’s not an original line. Possibly Billy Connolly?)
So... coming round the long way to your original questions:
is it the lads?
Yes, largely, though at times I feel the author portrays Bodie as being a bit more Bodie than he really is.
- did they get to the right place at the right time (like gravity *g*)?
Definitely, I love the way they came together!
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Date: 2021-08-28 03:52 pm (UTC)Yeay! *g*
while I love layers ( and the challenge they may pose) at the same time I’m not always sure I understand their significance
Oh, I think that's what I mean when I said I found the episodic format a bit "jumpy" - much better put! Yes, that's what threw me, I think. Some of the vignettes seemed to lead to other ones, at least by showing us something about Bodie, but others just seemed a bit thrown in there. The canteen one is a good example, and I agree, I can't see Bodie being "solitary" in the canteen without Doyle either. They both seem pretty sociable to me!
Bodie picked a stapler off the desk, looked at it and put it down again. "He always did like ordinary."
Ha - I think I saw that from the opposite side than you. Does Doyle really like "ordinary" (any more than Bodie does)?!
"Fried. Maybe in a pie. None of that steaming bollocks."
Loved that line - good call. And rather like something I'd think, although I probably wouldn't be quick enough to say it! *vbg*
"Is that what you call art?"
"It's what I call free."
Ha - yes. And also as per your "real people" comment below too.
at times I feel the author portrays Bodie as being a bit more Bodie than he really is
That's an excellent way to put it - yes, I agree with you again here. Six years into their partnership, I don't think Bodie actually is so solitary and tough and unemotional/uninvolved as we see him in the eps, and I think we could find examples even in the early episodes to prove that he's more than that. It makes me wonder how often the author had watched the eps when she wrote this - or even if she might have written it based on fanfic, which I know a surprising number of authors have done. Or maybe it's just entirely that different-people-different-interpretations thing... but then how do you explain Bodie telling Doyle about the girl he fell in love with in Africa, in Wild Justice, or the lads spending their holiday together in WtHCO, until Doyle is distracted by an old case and Bodie automatically joins him in it rather than going to find barmaids on his own? There's just so much that shows they're quite close even before Doyle says they've been partners for two years and three months!
Sorry I've just seen that you've touched on some of the things I was thinking of e.g. Bodie being a bit less thoughtful to people.
Maybe, but you said it much better than I did, I think! *g*
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Date: 2021-08-28 04:29 pm (UTC)Thank you for such a quick response! I'll try and return later but I just wanted to say Doyle definitely doesn't do ordinary, I mean I wouldn't say a publisher was a typical date for the average bloke. No, I think Bodie's just taking the piss out of Doyle, his usual banter, and being a bit catty. Which made me wonder... is there a male equivalent for 'cattyness' or 'bitchiness'?. It's usually pinned on women but in my life I think I've been subjected to it more from men than women.
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Date: 2021-08-28 10:20 pm (UTC)The scene in the story where Ray is in hospital with his ordinary girl and Bodie is just rattling around the halls of CI5 being sad and lonely and trying to strike up banter with Cowley — sad times.
I know there are more examples, but "Stake Out" comes to mind where Bodie is upset at Fraser's death because he'd just gone out with him the night before. I think Bodie has, if not friends, people he can spend a casual evening with on the squad.
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Date: 2021-08-28 10:23 pm (UTC)No offence to dental receptionists but it made me laugh.
I laughed too and definitely took it as catty.
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Date: 2021-08-28 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-28 06:34 pm (UTC)I enjoyed the deep Bodie POV. As a baby fan, my bar for fic is fairly low: tell me a good story. Anything that goes above that, as in revealing something about the character that I'd never thought of before, or going off in a direction that surprises me, or nailing the banter and on-screen characters so well that I feel like I'm watching an expanded episode—those are bonuses. Like Gravity is a good story. Is it the lads? Or since it's such a Bodie-focused fic, is it Bodie? For me, the answer is yes, partially.
To me, Bodie is very much the "there are two wolves" inside of you meme. He's a goof, an overgrown kid, a braggart, and at the same time, a killer who has seen and done terrible things. The Bodie in my head has fully realized and is comfortable with both halves of himself. I think this fic latches on to that darker version of Bodie and stays in the darkness for a while, following Bodie as he comes to accept the part of him that *is* ok with collecting essential things along the way.
Ok, on to the actual story!
The opening scene of them moving into the new flat resonated deeply with me because I just completed my own move, lol. I was deeply envious of the idea that their move over was just a few boxes (Ray's pots, pans, and art from the trash included). Bodie noticing the dirty windows was a nice way to jump into things. He's Mr. "Glass Half Empty" about this living arrangement. I did get a little confused by the description of the flat. CI5 houses tend to be nice enough, but then their place was also described as being in a council block which made me think of the giant concrete towers of low-income housing. That pulled me out of the story briefly.
So, it's hard man Bodie being irritated by the sharing, by Ray's gracious sharing of personal info (he has a brother, he cleans, he likes to cook, etc.) and only feeling comfortable again when they get back to the normalcy of eating and jokes about women in rubbers. (Again, dark Bodie as the "real Bodie" and the lighter side to him as the facade).
The scene with Murphy was hard to reconcile with my version of the lads. I'm actually not that much of a timeline purist, but byslantedlight mentioned the discrepancy between five, six years together and what we know Ray shared after just two years, I understand why it would pull a reader out of the story. What bugged me is that the Ray we see onscreen likes to talk to Bodie. Six years of chatting can't have all been jokes about women going down. Ray has shared his Drug Squad stories so often that Bodie has a comedic response ready. And Bodie likes talking to Ray. They'd know stuff about each other. Their lives and partnership depend on them communicating.
Maybe the Murphy scene is there to give some sort of outsider POV?
Hardman Bodie/Dark Bodie is back and very cynical over Rosita's death. This scene has a very lovely image of life on the river, life going on, and Bodie hopping on the river wall and walking it.
BBL (have to go to a digital bday party) rewarding and fun that scene is)
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Date: 2021-08-28 09:53 pm (UTC)-Hardman Bodie/Dark Bodie is back and very cynical...
--> Total agreement with both paragraphs. The flashbacks are rather poetic, too.
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Date: 2021-08-28 10:15 pm (UTC)I liked the Angola flashback scenes. I don't have a clear memory of having read this story before but something about the story of mother and child seemed familiar as if I've read the premise in a different fic but with a different ending (Bodie showing restraint at the start, but ending with him shooting and killing the child? This could be me misremembering or muddling some stories.) Anyway, I liked how his anger at the child being essential to the mother parallels how he feels about Ray. The story shows Bodies having these occasional, current timeline flashes of Ray-induced anger.
And then there's a lot of gorgeous prose in the sunrise scene and half-spoken conversations and emotional sketchings.
The reader has to do a lot of the work of connecting the dots towards the end of the story, I think. Not that it's a hardship, mind. We've been following this disjointed narrative and have been imposing our own order on it. Towards the end of the story, things get very literature-like poetic. We go from chili and poems and trashbin art to sunrises and gunshots and philosophic chats on aging as Bodie carries Ray up the steps and over the threshold to finally reach the place where the two of them "know".
It's a wonderful journey to follow. I loved all the imagery of them physically cementing the union and the ending felt well earned.
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Date: 2021-08-29 10:46 am (UTC)To be honest, that's how I do it... *vbg*
the vignette style which is almost the AO3 "house style"
Interesting as part of a completely different discussion! I've definitely noticed writing going in particular patterns, style-wise and content-wise both, in Pros and in the few other fanfics I've read.
And actually, having re-read the story this morning, it's not as "vignette-y" as was my first impression yesterday. The sections are longer, and actually say more than I first thought. I think I got that impression though because several of them seem to jump further than I feel I'm quite keeping up with, so that I had to stop and wonder how we got there. But actually (again, actually!) they jump a bit within the sections too — like the jump I noted above between Bodie apparently making his report but then suddenly playing with a stapler, with no transition written into the scene...
distilling the writing down to the emotions. ... It works to put me directly in the character's head.
I like a nice tight pov myself, and being right in the character's head, but I think I'm always looking for the context around that, and if it's not quite right it throws me, like it did here. Which isn't to say that there's not alot of good writing and thoughts going on too, it's just that I think I'm missing some connections between them. And maybe I'm extra aware of that because I'm often worried about it when I write stories myself - whether I've told the readers enough for them to make the jump with me...
As a baby fan, my bar for fic is fairly low: tell me a good story. Anything that goes above that, ...—those are bonuses.
Lol - I do know what you mean, and it's something I feel a bit sad about losing, actually. I loved so many more stories when I first came into Pros fandom, and I re-read some now, and think oh no... Which isn't to say that my first reading was wrong, it was just from a different perspective... I miss that perspective! I'm so jealous of you, still in the discovering-it-all phase! *g* I can see why some people jump from fandom to fandom, to hang on to that...
I think this fic latches on to that darker version of Bodie and stays in the darkness for a while, following Bodie as he comes to accept the part of him that *is* ok with collecting essential things along the way.
Yes, I think you're right... As I said in my other comment, I think that if it had been set "five, six" months after the lads had been partnered it would all have made more sense, because we see in the eps that he's starting to collect those things.
I did get a little confused by the description of the flat. CI5 houses tend to be nice enough, but then their place was also described as being in a council block
That completely confused me too, to the point that it took me a few re-reads to place what was going on at first. As you say, I can't imagine the lads being asked to move into a dirty house. Maybe a left-behind plant, if it seemed to be doing well and either the previous tenant or the cleaners thought it would be alive for the next tenant (although the dirty rings beside it seem to contradict that), but...
And the council-housing thing completely threw me. Thatcher started selling off council housing with the housing act of 1980 — and it was sold to tenants who had a "right to buy". Sure enough, some bought and then sold to developers to make a quick buck, and the developers hiked the prices massively, and boom, severe shortage of affordable housing for people starting out years down the line. If this is "five, six" years after the lads were first partnered, and we see in CQ that they'd been together two years in 1977, then we must be around 1981-ish. So we're being asked to believe that someone immediately bought their house by putting down a £100 deposit etc., and then the government swooped in and bought it for its own uses instead. Ha - actually maybe that's more realistic than I at first thought... *sighs sadly*
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Date: 2021-08-28 07:51 pm (UTC)But what really threw me was their attitudes to each other. On-screen, we see a snapshot of their lives between 1977 and 1981, so we know they get on well, they like one another and have already told each other all sorts of things about their pasts. The way the characters in the story interacted and what they said just didn't ring true as far as I was concerned.
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Date: 2021-08-29 11:42 am (UTC)But what really threw me was their attitudes to each other....
Yes - that was it for me too! I re-read it again this morning, and I think if they were supposed to have been together "five, six" months rather than "years", it would make much more sense - from still-dark-Bodie to their being unsure about sharing personal background. There's just been too much interaction, and we know too much about what they've shared for this to be them after "five, six years".
It makes me wonder if the story was beta-d at all (which was quite the thing to do in 2008). ... Oh, and I've just found out it was, because I went and found the original story post on livejournal (https://the-safehouse.livejournal.com/323340.html). The person who betad it isn't someone who was familiar to me in Pros fandom (which doesn't mean to say she wasn't in it elsewhere under another name, of course), and she doesn't list any Pros or Pros comms on her lj descriptions, which suggests that she might not actually have been familiar enough to beta Pros as opposed to grammar/spelling etc...
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Date: 2021-08-28 09:30 pm (UTC)Is it the lads?
Well, it's Halotolerant's Lads, and I'm always willing to accept that. They're not overly much like my own mental image of them.
Some Doyle features I can agree with: Doyle having plenty of objects, trying to resuscitate the plant, enjoying cooking, losing his appetite after a bad day, picking up a discarded picture for sentimental value. His "aggressive nakedness": in spite of the typo, very much the way I see him and his relation to his own body.
Doyle cleaning, or calmly accepting the accommodation cock-up instead of complaining: not sure I can see this. The head-locking scene doesn't quite ring true to me either, somehow. Not sure about it being an Americanism, but I just don't see it as a Doyleism. Other than the lift scene in Purging, we don't see Doyle initiating rough-housing, do we? And I definitely can't imagine anybody messing up Bodie's hair without retribution. If it was the other way round, I'd buy it perhaps.
Doyle's chin dripping with juice and him licking it back up –just how long is this man's tongue?
And may I get his number?Some Bodie features I can agree with: his troubled inner processing of his own past. Noticing the dirty window and the plant and being uncomfortable (though not uncomfortable enough to do something about it). Talking to the dead plant, rather than throwing it away. Not having many possessions: it suits my own mental Bodie perfectly, but Canon Bodie does have rather a lot of stuff, from what we see of his flats. Finding refuge in books (even if the poetry bit is a little overlong). Acting out literary voices. "All my lies are true".
Features I can't quite see: Solitary Bodie. His leaving home story. His non-connection with Murphy. Not sure about the bad reaction to sharing a flat with Doyle, as he tends to take all Cowley things rather in stride. Both Lads not knowing much about each other's previous lives: can't see this at all.
"He always did like ordinary." >> Definitely not a fact, as we see Doyle clearly veering towards the rich heiress type; but we know that both Bodie and Doyle are unreliable narrators of each other. So I can buy this line as a Laddism.
The idea of CI5 providing accommodation: I can suspend disbelief because it's useful as a plot device, but I'm never quite sure about just how likely this is. Murphy staying unpartnered because he's insurance in case of Lad death, and Cowley telling him about it, and them discussing it: can't see this at all. The first line in italics: I'll assume that's not supposed to be Cowley's voice, surely?
The scene next to the window. Sexy, evidently, intense, and nice to read, but I'm not quite sure where that comes from. Sort of disconnected.
A cultural gap for me, I guess: "Bodie automatically fed the meter to ensure a shower later". I assume you had to feed a meter to get a boiler going in 70's London? Feed it with what, coins?
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Date: 2021-08-29 12:00 pm (UTC)Yeah, it's very Bodie-focused, and I don't mind that as long as Bodie's focusing on Doyle (*g*), which I'm not entirely convinced he was, because as you say we don't get such a good impression of Doyle. Although there's some lovely thoughts and lines about him, which made me think yes, it's somehow... it doesn't quite permeate the story enough, or something...
it's Halotolerant's Lads, and I'm always willing to accept that
We definitely all have our own views of the lads, which is as it should be. I always think of it as a kind of spider-web of perspectives — there's usually something linking one thing to another, and as long as there is then I can see where something's coming from, and it's a lovely big web that makes sense. But if that link is missing — like the idea of the lads not knowing each other well after being partnered for five or six years — then the web gets all hole-y and difficult for me to navigate, and suddenly I'm not seeing the lads at all... *g*
Other than the lift scene in Purging, we don't see Doyle initiating rough-housing, do we?
That's true. He touches Bodie more than we think — I started a lads-touching-each-other project once (*vbg*) — but actually neither of them do that headlock-roughhousing thing much... the playfight in the lift is kind of unusual. Which doesn't mean it's not one of those off-screen things, like them having sex, but I swear we see them having sex in the eps more than we do roughhousing... (it's in their eyes *g*)
both Bodie and Doyle are unreliable narrators of each other
That's true, both bound up too much in their wants and needs (for each other *g*)
The scene next to the window. Sexy, evidently, intense, and nice to read, but I'm not quite sure where that comes from. Sort of disconnected
Yes — it's that kind of disconnect that made me describe it as written in "vignettes", although actually I re-read it this morning and saw the sections were longer than vignettes really. But there are lots of jumps like this, and I think it's that which threw me off. A few sections before Doyle was reacting badly after an op, but Bodie pulled him out of it. Then there was another scene. Then we're apparently back to Doyle needing to be shown that life goes on etc/the day dawns, and one thing needs to another. Transitions — this story is missing transitions in too many places! They don't have to be big and dramatic, they could be just a few words, but they're missing...
I assume you had to feed a meter to get a boiler going in 70's London? Feed it with what, coins?
Some flats had coin-operated electricity meters, so if it was an electric shower you had to make sure there was enough electricity by paying in your coins, which fell into a locked box. The landlord would come and empty it now and then, and presumably pay the electricity bill with it. I lived in a flat with one once, and it was in the 1980s, although they were getting less common. A friend lived in a flat where the electricity was on a coin-operated meter, but only because that was the kind of meter installed, and they just fed the same coin through over and again to keep it working, and still got an electricity bill as usual at the end. They went out of style, although I've seen a recent move to try and bring them back by some electricity companies. I guess the idea is that people can't run off without paying their bill...
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Date: 2021-08-29 12:12 pm (UTC)The idea of CI5 providing accommodation: I can suspend disbelief because it's useful as a plot device, but I'm never quite sure about just how likely this is.
I've wondered about it over the years, but I think from what we see in the episodes it makes sense. We see the lads in a number of different flats each, and how in the world would they find time (or have reason) to move so often by their own choice. Also, I think there's a hint in Purging:
"Phillips, I want you to get your men to go over every CI5 op's home. If they know this address, they'll know all of them."
Okay, he doesn't say they're CI5 houses, but how would knowing one address otherwise mean they know all the addresses unless there's a central list somewhere?
And then there's Cowley having a key to Bodie's flat in Need to Know — again, not definite, but it makes more sense. Otherwise Cowley would have to go to an awful lot more effort to make sure he has keys to every agent's flat!
Oh, and that we see Doyle's flat is wired up to a CI5 alarm in DiaG. If all agent flats are wired up, then again it would make more sense if they're centrally owned.
Murphy staying unpartnered because he's insurance in case of Lad death, and Cowley telling him about it, and them discussing it: can't see this at all.
Yeah, I can't see this either. Cowley thinking it, yes — Cowley talking to them about it, no.
The first line in italics: I'll assume that's not supposed to be Cowley's voice, surely?
I think it is supposed to be Cowley's voice! Doesn't ring true to me either...
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Date: 2021-08-29 09:40 pm (UTC)I'm enjoying my coffee and re-reading all the comments here and it occurs to me that while we're getting caught up on things like council blocks and gas meters, other things—like sexy interesting Bodie—may have been overlooked.
There is some gorgeous Bodie in this! I'm a huge fan of physicality, describing bodies, making bodies real. There are a few descriptions of mundane stuff like Bodie sweating, his shower routine, a bit of self-loving — omg, I loved reading that!
The bit where Doyle has his fingers on Bodie's face and lips, and Bodie nudges his hand in place — that was incredibly sexy.
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Date: 2021-08-29 11:53 pm (UTC)lads-touching-each-other project --> WANT. Linky?
About the Lads in our minds: yes, precisely that. I don't really mind differences; enjoy them, even. When they clash with my own too much, I skim to the end, or just stop reading, and that's that.
The Murphy thing: maybe influenced by all those rumours/whatever they were about Steve A coming in to replace Martin, if Martin did burn his bridges? It'd be really bad HR management for Cowley to keep an agent free-floating like that, as a spare part. Also uneconomical, dangerous. And it'd mean that B+D are not just A Squad, but some sort of A+ Squad, and everyone else is potential replacements. (Which, fine, is the show-truth, but not very realistic.)
I'll take that first line in italics as "Bodie mentally paraphrasing what Cowley said".
CI5 accommodation: I still don't know. They could have got all the addresses in Purging by hacking the staff records, physically or digitally, and there was proof that the attackers had been at HQ unsupervised. As for them moving so often, it might be a cultural/legal difference again, but over here, when you're renting, it's the most common thing in the world to have to move when your contract's up, usually every 2 years or less. Contracts are very often not renewed. The bit in Need to Know points to the opposite, I'd say --because Bodie objects to it so strongly, so he can't have been used to it as a common practice. The alarm in DIAG, though, does make more sense if flats are centrally owned, because it'd be really expensive to secure random flats for all agents like that. I guess we can't know one way or the other for sure unless we find out what MI5-6 actually did back then, and even so we wouldn't be sure that Clemens actually had done his research properly :D I tend to gloss over the whole thing, myself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The story gets really good towards the end, when things go steamy. I especially like Bodie's sexual reactions: kissing Doyle's fingers like Jinky said, the description of how he feels during the blow-jobs. The use of repetition and parallel structures, the small details like opening and closing his hands, kicking his heels. Hot.
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Date: 2021-08-29 10:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-29 12:02 pm (UTC)As you say, I can't see CI5 flats having coin-operated meters as standard!
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Date: 2021-08-30 06:35 am (UTC)I read it twice through, enjoying it more on the second. It's a harder edged B & D, much like they are.
"You don't think I'll understand," Ray muttered. "I don't know where the heck you get this idea that I don't already know what a bastard you are."
And he likes him anyway, because it takes one to know one. This has a very real feel.
Thanks for the assignment. I'm very glad I read it.
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Date: 2021-08-30 04:15 pm (UTC)I must admit I'm not entirely sure they are "bastards" - while I'm a fan of harder-edge lads, I do think we see enough in the eps to think they do actually both have things they care about, including each other... *g*