Note: in my head it's gen, but it's mushy & not very "blokish"
Not beta'd yet. (I figure I can repost it later if necessary.)
Scroll down to the bottom for spoilers
There's No Sunshine When He's Gone
I touched him carefully, even though he was dead.
Nothing could hurt him now. But now, when it was too late, I couldn't bear to be rough with him.
I stroked my fingers through Ray's hair, untangling some of the curls.
His lips were blue. He lay cold and still on my lap, coated with sand. Just as I'd found him on the beach.
It was too late. I'd tried mouth-to-mouth, but it was too late. I remember weeping.
That seemed an age ago. How long had I held him, protected him and stroked his hair, my legs going numb under me? Talked to him, too, now that it was too late.
"Ray," I said again.
It didn't matter how long I stayed here. Nothing mattered anymore. Nothing but this absolute desolation, and protecting him now that it was too late.
"Bo-die," growled a familiar voice.
I looked down at Doyle, but he was still as if etched from marble, his skin blue, bruised and pale.
"Bodie, wake up!" Something dug into my side, sharp, a very familiar elbow, and I came awake with a gasp, straightening up with a start.
We were in my car, and Doyle was glaring at me. He was very much alive, his hair tousled, a look of evil temper on his face.
"Ray, you're alive." I couldn't help the words; they came out like a gasp for air after coming up from deep water.
"You won't be if you wake me up again—when it's MY turn to sleep! Bloody hell, Bodie! Where's the fire?"
"You were dead." I wanted to reach out and touch him and make sure he was okay, but the mood he was in, he'd probably punch me.
Reality filtered back into my awareness.
We'd been on stakeout too long. Nerves frayed. Tempers worn thin. It had been my turn to watch and let him sleep, but somehow I had drifted off into that nightmare land where the world was beach and cold and sand, and water that had killed my partner.
"Now stay awake! It's my turn to sleep," he growled, and flopped his head against the back of his seat. He closed his eyes, but he was still scowling, still looking pissed off.
I kept watching him instead of the house opposite the street, the one the international drug dealers were using as a drop-off point.
Why would I dream he was dead? Sorrow welled in me at the remembered dream.
"Bodie," he growled, opening one eye and glaring at me. "Watch the house!" Then more quietly he said, "I'm not going to die."
I took a deep, shaky breath and forced my gaze back across the street, squinting in the early-morning vagueness. "Better not. You'd just better not."
I was surprised I'd let him see me in such an emotional state—even asleep—because I'm really not like that. I'm the steady, firm sort. Like a rock, that's me. Doyle's the one to fly into emotion.
Yet he's the one who's acting angry now and closed off, and I'm the one who was practically crying because I thought he was dead.
Sleep makes strangers of us all, I guess. What dreams may come?
But that doesn't explain his reaction. I suppose it's just that I was annoying him. I let him down by falling asleep. Expects more of me, my partner does. That's actually one of the things I like about him, believe it or not.
I kept watch, over the house and over him.
The breakthrough came just before nine, when he was awake and I was hitting that wall where you're really tired, but you know you're going to make it through without sleep even if the world feels grey and there's an odd buzzing in the back of your head.
I needed coffee badly. Since we were out, we were discussing who would go and get it. Then the drug dealers moved.
We called for backup, leapt from the car with our guns drawn and ran for all we were worth.
All I could think of was my dream and Doyle dead. In the grey world of too little sleep for several days and not enough caffeine to keep me going, I felt horribly as if it were going to come true.
You know those senses of premonition you get sometimes? The ones where someone you love is dead? Care about, I mean, I certainly don't love Ray—
"Bodie, duck!" yelled Doyle. Without thinking I obeyed—and heard the whine of a bullet pass quite close by my head.
Doyle's gun barked loudly as he fired back, and I rolled to cover and began firing as well.
"Would you—bloody—PAY ATTENTION?" Doyle yelled at me, not taking a break from his firing.
I couldn't answer back. He was right; I shouldn't be distracted.
Then, abruptly, the firing ceased. Backup arrived. The rest of the dealers were flinging down their guns and coming out with their hands up. Doyle shoved his gun away and frisked a dealer angrily before roughly cuffing him. Ray's mouth was set tight and angry.
I let the others handle the rest and wandered off to get some coffee and try to pull myself together. I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I didn't like it. It was as though the danger of the gunfight had become far, far too real since my dream.
I love guns. I love action. And I'm great with both.
But—
Doyle. Dying.
That dream, it ruined everything. I couldn't make sense of it, and I didn't want to. I just knew it must never happen.
Doyle is not allowed to leave me, ever. Period. Final.
#
"Bodie." He caught up with me in the canteen. I was hunching over a mug of coffee, feeling the ache in my shoulders from not enough sleep, and sleep in strange positions, and from rolling around in a gun battle.
Most of all, I was still feeling that dream and the unaccountable hesitation it built inside me.
I looked up at him warily, expecting to be lit into with a scolding that I so richly deserve.
Instead, he scraped back a chair, turned it round and straddled it. He looked at me. In his eyes I saw a mixture of embarrassment, hesitation and apology. "I'm not going to die, Bodie, so you can stop listening to nightmares."
His green eyes held a promise. And Doyle doesn't break his promises.
The grey day was gone, and I had sunshine in my life again.
For the first time in what felt like years, I smiled.
.
.
.
.
end
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spoilers: Not really a death-fic. Just starts out like one.