927 words
Originally written for the 20 minute challenge on Tea and Swiss Rolls.
Later weaked with beta by ILWB. :)
Prompt:
Smart
Game
by Allie
"You think you're so smart?"
Doyle threw down a flush hand and rose, crowing. He leaned over the flimsy folding card table that the agents had set up in the rest room and began to rake the cash towards himself, smirking.
Bodie's face went through a variety of permutations. He did shock, surprised, reproachful, eloquently indignant—and then smugly satisfied as he lay down… four of a kind.
"Four kings. Beat that, anybody? I'll just take the cash, shall I?" He pried the money from his partner's sticky fingers and raked it towards himself, stacking the notes to add neatly to his stash. The coins he scraped off the table and put into his pocket, jingling them loudly.
Murphy and Jax took his win in good humour, throwing up their hands. Jax said something about the suspicious luck of the Irish and Murphy said, "Oh, well, what can you do against luck like that? Once Bodie gets on a winning streak… C'mon, Jax. Let's get a drink before we're really skint."
Doyle's mouth was flapping and he kept sputtering, but he couldn't seem to get any actual words out till Bodie had already pocketed the money. Then he pointed a finger at his partner and announced in strangled tones, "You cheated!"
"Oh yeah? Think you're so smart? Prove it!" Bodie leaned forward, grinning, and bopped his partner on the nose with one finger.
Doyle blinked, drawing back—surprised. Then fury overtook him. "I will! Four kings—nobody, and I mean NOBODY ever gets four kings—EVER!"
"Well, I did." Bodie reached for a mug of coffee, turned it around to the side Murphy hadn't already drank from, and slurped down its contents, his eyes amused as he gazed at his partner over the rim.
Doyle was laying out the cards, flipping them all over and going through, trying to find extra kings. Trying to prove that Bodie had added extra ones to the game. Bodie watched his partner sort peevishly through the cards and finally stop in frustration.
"Yeah, well, there aren't any, are there?" asked Bodie.
"So you palmed some, kept them up your sleeve!" retorted Doyle, his head snapping up, and his eyes sharp with wrath. "You think you can lie to me, Bodie, but you can't. I always know."
"Oh yeah? Human lie detector, is he? Then try this one on for size. Cowley said we can have the weekend off."
"You're ly— Did he?" Doyle looked closely as his partner, his face full of suspicion.
"No. Oh, come on, Doyle! You just walked into that one!" crowed Bodie.
"I'll give you 'walked into—'" He started towards his partner with a dangerous look in his eyes.
"Now now, mate, what WOULD Cowley say?" He backed around the couch, grinning. But he'd put his mug down quickly and he'd moved speedily.
"I don't know. Let's find out." He sprang at his partner over the couch, using it as a launching pad—perhaps no wonder the couch was so raggedy—and with a sound halfway between a laugh and a grunt, Bodie fell to the floor with Doyle above him.
"Oh you beast," said Bodie in a camp voice.
Still refusing to take Doyle's annoyance seriously, he laughed and tried to tickle his partner (a sure way to either end the fight and make him laugh, or get a real punch on the nose).
A grunt, a yelp, the sound of scuffling—
"Hey!" said Doyle, in a startled laugh. "Not—"
But Bodie had found his ticklish underarms and was showing no mercy. Doyle rolled away, putting up a loud and laughing protest, trying to shield his ticklish parts…but he was completely ticklish now and Bodie kept teasing him. "Couldn't possibly get four kings—no one could, oh no, only me, mate! Ready to take it back?" he asked teasingly.
The hesitation was all Doyle needed to launch himself at his partner with renewed threats of violence and a great willingness to show practical demonstrations. If he was now grinning, he seemed no less serious, in his own way, to beat Bodie at this impromptu fight.
Behind them, a throat was suddenly cleared. Loudly. In a decided Scots voice. "BODIE! DOYLE! On your feet!"
They sprang up.
He glared at them, surveying their rumpled clothes disapprovingly. "Well? What seems to be the trouble here?"
"Four kings, sir," said Doyle, hesitantly, but unwilling to give in quite yet. He jerked a thumb at his partner. "He got four kings in poker. Said he did, anyway."
Cowley transferred his baleful gaze to Bodie. "Well? Did you?"
Standing very straight and at attention, despite the less than pristine clothes, Bodie said, "Sir! I did, sir!" If there was a hint of a smirk in his face, or his eyes, Cowley may have seen it. He surveyed the two for a long time—or what felt like a long time.
"I think," said Cowley quietly, "that such childish arguments should best be settled by… Macklin. Yes. I'll call him up right now, and you can both head over tonight for a little catch-up training."
"No! Sir! That is—we're—we're fine," gulped Doyle.
"Oh?" asked Cowley in a very calm voice. "Are you certain, 4.5?"
"Yes sir," gulped Doyle. "We're fine. Just—a game, after all."
"Indeed. Now on your bikes. And don't let me catch you messing up the rest room again. Taxpayer pounds pay for that, you know!"
"Yes sir!" called Bodie, sounding a bit gleeful, as he and Doyle fled.
"Still say you cheated," muttered Doyle.
[[[end]]]