Note: Takes place after "The Ojuka Situation"

Midnight Call

by Allie

Doyle fired again. Again, the white African assassin went down—but another popped up beside him, and fired, fired—

Doyle ducked back, waited, and then popped around to return fire.

The phone rang—again, and again. Doyle twisted in his sleep, frowning as he relived the fight, with more enemies each time.

Doyle dragged himself from the lethargy of painkiller-induced sleep to reach for it. "What?" he said into the receiver, then turned it over and said it again, into the mouthpiece.

"Here, 'priapismic,' mate! I looked it up, like you said. Were you saying I have a—"

"Bodie! You woke me up to talk?" Doyle's lip curled. He brought a hand to his pounding head. His wrists still hurt from being burned and chafed, and his gut from every hit he'd taken.

Even if the dream had been nasty, at least he'd been asleep. He fumbled with his light, and stared at the clock.

Midnight.

He scowled. Bodie was droning on and on about the two different meanings of 'priapismic' and how wrong Doyle was on at least one count, possibly both.

"Bodie, if you rang me up to talk dictionaries…"

Bodie fell silent. His phone crackled, as if he were adjusting it. "Well I thought you might be awake."

Doyle resisted the urge to gnash his teeth. "Yeah, and you were going to wake me if I wasn't. What do you want, mate?"

Being wakened from a dream might be better than reliving the gunfight over and over, but it wasn't much better, not if Bodie was going to play mysterious.

The younger man was silent for an ominously long moment. "Couldn't sleep," he said at last. "Started thinking. And then I looked up that word…priapismic. Priapismic monster my arse, mate. So I had to ring up and set you straight."

Doyle scrubbed a hand back through his curls, now slightly flattened from sleep, and yawned a jaw-cracking yawn. "Well you've set me straight, mate. And I'll set you straight tomorrow for waking me. Now why don't you ring off?"

"Only if you ring off first," said Bodie in a teasing voice.

"Right." Doyle smacked the receiver down and eased back down, closing his eyes.

He sighed. His bed felt soft, a relief after the hard day. Too many assassins, plus the restless knowledge, which would take awhile to wear off, that he had been completely helpless, however briefly, and however well he'd held up to it.

He closed his eyes, and saw another quick flash of memory (unavoidable, unexpected and thus something he couldn't brace himself for), a quick slam in the gut and the promise of death not far off (though not as soon as he might come to wish).

It hadn't happened. He'd burned the ropes and freed himself. If he had died, he'd have gone down fighting like a man.

But, he hadn't. He was alive. Alive, and consumed, awake or asleep, with thoughts of blood and gunfire, and the taste of pain.

He flicked on the light again and squinted at the clock. 12:06

Why wasn't it at least morning by now? This night was far too long.

Sighing, he reached for the phone to call the priapismic monster. He should've caught on sooner. Word definitions weren't reason enough to call someone at midnight. You only made midnight calls when you were desperate not to be alone with your own thoughts.

Doyle rang that most familiar of numbers, barely even needed his light to see by.

"Doyle?" asked Bodie sleepily.

"Wake you?" Doyle asked, putting a bit of challenge in his voice.

fin