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Bodie found it in a drawer. He was looking for cufflinks when the black and white top of a curly head took his attention. He pulled the strip out and yes, there they were, doing the traditional Vs behind each other’s heads, with Doyle licking Bodie’s cheek in the last one and his own face a crinkled up comedy at Ray’s sense of the ridiculous.
He was touched to see that Doyle had kept the photos safely pressed flat and out of harm’s way in...he turned it over...a takeaway menu from 1972. He shook his head. Typical Ray sentiment; the much treasured combined with the absolutely bloody useless.
“Bodie, get a move on. We’re supposed to be at the church by eleven, and trust me, Maude will kill us–well, me–if we’re late. ”
Bodie ignored him, they had plenty of time. “Remember this?” he asked, holding the photos out as Doyle came closer.
Doyle came up to peer over Bodie’s shoulder, and a wave of Old Spice took Bodie right back to the sound of seagulls and a drizzle-drenched pier in Morecambe. “God, look at us, will you? Of course I remember. I’d just had me stitches out and Cowley actually gave us a whole weekend off.”
Unseen, Bodie let his gaze drift to the man peering over his shoulder. Same mess of curls, same sense of the ridiculous, and same annoying habit of grabbing Bodie’s face at inopportune moments.
All dresssed up and smelling as nice as Doyle did, Bodie suddenly wanted to do a little grabbing of his own. Hold Doyle's face still and maybe lick that cheekbone a little. He cleared his throat instead and looked down at the photos, which Doyle was now holding. He thought about where they were going and why - if he could ever get Ray into cufflinks.
“I do, you know. I mean, I would. If I could, like.”
Fuck. Fuckity, fuck, fuck.
Doyle stilled, hand on the photos and Bodie’s cheeks burned with the sentimentality that matching finery seemed to bring out in him. He held his breath as Doyle rubbed his thumb over their blurred black and white images. Bodie found some lint on the rug that needed an urgent scuffing and willed Doyle to move the fuck on from whatever madness had just possessed him. The words were out, he couldn’t take them back, and what with them in tuxes and heading up the M1 to a church in about five minutes, the context was stupidly obvious.
Bodie swallowed. He might have to punch Doyle if he laughed, but he reckoned he could probably handle—
“Yeah? I do too, sunshine. Or would too, I suppose. Though God knows why, you can’t cook and your habits are horrible.” Doyle put the photos back in the drawer and closed it. He squeezed Bodie’s arm on his way to the door. “Come on, you can tie my tie in the car while I give you directions and tell you who to talk to and who to avoid like the plague.”
It took Bodie a minute. He was not used to proposing and being so casually accepted. Still, half-cocked proposals aside, an urgent matter needed sorting.
“Oi!” He shouted after a retreating Doyle. “What do you mean my habits are horrible?”
******