"What does that prove?" Doyle demanded to an apparently empty room.

It was the continuation of a conversation from the pub that had petered out in a haze of cross purposes round about midnight.

Drugged by alcohol and lack of sleep, he had barely managed to get his eyes open before Bodie had pinched his thigh, muttered something unintelligible but probably outrageous, and slithered under the sheets. Doyle was launched into the day without having to make any effort, and came so quickly he realised he had probably been three-quarters of the way there while he was still asleep. These random acts of generosity made life with Bodie a cut above anything else he'd ever experienced. Speckly lights faded from his vision leaving a tea-and-toast kind of contentment somewhere deep in that hidey-hole on his pelvic floor.

Outside on the square it was Sunday-quiet and there was warm June sunshine spilling across the bedroom because they hadn't bothered with the curtains last night. Doyle poked hard at the mound now moving down towards the end of the bed.

Bodie's head emerged near his feet. "If that's the way you feel about it," he said, "I'll suck your big toe instead."

Doyle waggled it at him. "You said something about proof."

"That didn't classify?"

"Well, I suppose it was up to standard."

"If I could just quote you here...a few minutes ago I think I heard you say..."

"Yeah yeah, alright. Don't know where you get the energy, mate, given the amount of booze you put away last night."

Bodie smacked his lips extravagantly. "Can't taste the booze, just half a pint of best Raymond." Struggling to sit up he made a foolish request. "Chuck us a pillow."

"If you say so," said Doyle, putting some effort into the follow-through. He heard the clang of Bodie's head against metal as the object hit him full in the face. "Whoops...."

Bodie moved one eyebrow minimally, grabbed hold of the pillow with both hands and spun it into the air, giving a slight forward lean at just the right moment so it landed, perfectly placed, as he sat back.

Doyle wouldn't even dignify the trick with a head-shake, although his partner's grinning expression was begging for some reaction. Bodie was already shaping up to need a severe puncture at some point today but Doyle decided later would do. Sometimes he felt ashamed of how much he liked doing it, and how good he was, being able to reduce Bodie from puffed-up to deflated as if he was in possession of some magic, invisible pin.

"No really," Bodie pursued, safe for the moment. He jumped back into last night's abortive conversation, stretching out his legs and feeling Doyle stroke a welcoming hand under his kneecap. "I'm supposed to prove to you that I'm not untrustworthy, perfidious and...what was that other thing?"

"Promiscuous?"

"Nah, there was something else."

"Um .. shallow?"

"Charming. Show a bloke a good time and this is all you get for your trouble. I suppose if I rustled up a nice breakfast that wouldn't be any good either?"

"No thanks, don't fancy coronary heart disease this early in the day."

"I'm a bit of a dab hand with the old muesli and cabbage leaves I'll have you know."

Doyle just looked at him.

"So what then?" Bodie asked, his voice betraying that little touch of real desperation that Doyle had been hoping for. "How can I prove it?"

"Well, there is this thing I used to do with an old girlfriend of mine..."

Bodie screwed up his face. "Not a chance, mate."

"No listen. She was completely and utterly...barmy. You know...insecure. She was always worried we were just some flash in the pan, so she'd get me to do things I couldn't fucking stand just to prove we weren't."

"What d'you mean like?" Bodie asked, sounding more unconsciously scouse than Doyle had heard in ages. "Sex with sheep .. that kind of thing?"

"Bodie..."

"Go on then, I'm all ears."

"Well.... if it was you, say...you'd...dare me to jump out of a plane or something."

"Ha!" Bodie said. "Nice one!" and he laughed as hard as he did at Tommy Cooper. "And then? What would you give me?"

"You," Doyle said, liking the word. "Oh you...that's easy. You'd have to go to an art class, and paint something I could hang on my wall."

Bodie's jaw jutted in a disbelieving laugh at the idea that Doyle might oblige him to do such a thing, even in jest. "You're having me on."

"All right then, if you're not up to it, think of a real one for me."

Bodie sank into a sudden quiet and Doyle felt creeping despair at the foolishness of his momentary bravado. This throwaway conversation was beginning to get out of his control. Odds on that he'd end up in the ring doing six rounds with some barrel-chested army boxing instructor. And then, with his newly-rearranged face, would wait forever and a day and then forever again for Bodie to fulfill his side of the bargain.

"Well," Bodie said, his face creasing into a smile so full of glee that his eyes all but disappeared, "There's this match in a couple of weeks...I can't play. But if you did..."

"Match? You mean cricket match?"

A suitable pause. "Noticed a fucking polo pony in the wardrobe have you?"

"Bodie, I can't bat."

"That's alright, they'll shuffle the order and you can go in at number ten." Unfortunately he was beginning to sound rather excited by the idea.

"I can't bowl either," Doyle said quickly, wishing he'd never brought the subject up. Carelessly lobbing challenges around in the vicinity of Bodie was nothing more or less than rank stupidity.

"Don't worry, they wouldn't be expecting Dennis Lillee to turn up," Bodie reassured him. "Surely even you could manage a couple of off-breaks? Or you could just field, out on the boundary. If you're lucky you'll get a nice suntan."

"Bodie, I hate cricket."

"I know. Isn't that the idea?"

Bugger. That was exactly the idea.

"And your team is who?" Doyle asked dubiously.

"Just some 2-Para boys, and a couple of my old mob. We play in Brookwood, nice little village. Idyllic setting under the downs. Pub on the green. And the teas.... oh, mate...egg and cress sarnies, victoria sponge, lemon meringue pie .. the lot," and Bodie conjured the scene with his hands as he spoke.

"Isn't there a mental asylum in Brookwood?"

"Yes but it's nothing to do with the cricket team." Bodie's glittering eyes glittered some more. "Come on, son...tell me you'll do it."

Doyle knew he had set a trap and then gone and tripped over his own cleverness. "It's just to prove...you know...right?" he said.

"Well it was your flipping idea. What'd your bird want exactly?"

"Oh, she was always...prove you love me...that type of thing."

"Alright then, prove you love me, Raymond. Get all dressed up in white and face a fucking hard ball coming at you around 90mph .."

"They wear helmets right?"

"No, you soft git, that's baseball."

"So if I do this...if, mind.... if I spend one of my precious days off poncing around a village green with some lunatic ex-paras...that means that you'll step up to the plate too? I've got loads of spare paint-brushes and you can take some turps in your hip-flask."

"Well..."

"Bodie..."

"Depends if you actually make it."

"What do you mean, make it? It's just a poxy cricket match. You're not sending me off to fight a pack of drug-crazed mercenaries."

"Weeeell...'s pretty similar actually." And Bodie laughed happily to himself.

Doyle's big toe curled under as he cringed.

---

Two weeks later, adrift on the square leg boundary, he told himself that positively the only reason he was there was to succeed where he was confident Bodie would fail. For the sheer, teeth-gritting, unedifying one-upmanship of it.

Bodie had found some kit and a bat for him yesterday, but evidently neglected to inform the First XI captain that he wasn't turning up, or that a bloke who didn't know his stumps from his bails was. More than that, though. The First XI captain really was a Captain, with a honking voice to match, and a seething will to win that exploded all Doyle's hopes for a gentle stroll-about and chit-chat in the pleasant sunshine.

The fact of the matter was, he grumbled to himself, that Bodie just wanted to crow in that provoking way of his when Doyle crawled back and admitted he couldn't go through with it, which was reason enough to remain here, squinting into the distance at the hazy figure in white who was just about to thump that sodding ballistic missile...Oh fuck. A thousand times fuck.

The bloody bastards were about to yell "Catch it!" at him again. The only good thing was that at least Bodie wasn't here in person winding up assorted, gung-ho members of 1st and 2nd Battalions to remove his teeth with the lethal projectile they laughingly referred to as a ball.

In the end, though, Doyle found the bemused admiration on show rather delicious when he got back, especially so because Bodie opened the door wearing only a towel. His hair was wet and spiky, his face had one little nick under the bottom lip but otherwise smelt of shaving soap, and the hair on his legs was still damp. Doyle, dizzy with sunshine and exercise, could have jumped him there and then.

"You did it didn't you?" Bodie said, with one look at Doyle's self-satisfied smirk out in the shadowy hall. He seemed unaware he was an object of intense desire at that moment, which Doyle felt was something he ought to take advantage of. "You played the fucking match!"

"I did," said Doyle, sashaying in and dumping the bat in Bodie's arms. "For you, mate, anything."

Bodie kicked the door shut, leaned the bat against it and trailed the sound of Doyle's clicking studs into the kitchen. He found him casually tossing a cricket ball from one hand to another. His face appeared intact, which was something Bodie had privately fretted over. He had imagined Doyle carelessly looking the other way as a ball had been thwacked lustily from the meat of some big bloke's bat straight towards him, but there were no signs of damage. Aside from looking slightly grass-stained, the whites seemed almost as pristine as when Bodie had handed them over. Doyle himself had a sun-flush and the hair framing his face had been pushed back by faintly grubby hands once or twice.

"So how'd you get on?"

"Piss off," Doyle scolded him, "that wasn't part of it. I turned up and played the match. That was the deal. Even if I did score the most magnificent century..."

"Raymond...."

"Oh alright, I didn't, I was run out for two." He shook his head fondly in memory of the sporting heroics he had witnessed. "But we won by nineteen runs, a famous victory. Your flipping bonkers team-mates kept going on and on about this bloke .. king of the reverse sweep...out of this world apparently. Took six for twenty-three once, including a hat-trick. And as for his phenomenal close-field catching...well, he made silly point his own, he did. Christ, I thought, this bloke sounds like he needs a good smack in the mouth. Turns out this bloke is you."

"'d they really say that? About silly point?" Bodie asked hopefully.

"Well, they said silly something."

Bodie remained where he was with his arms crossed, an appraising look on his face, just now starting to appreciate what was standing before him. Doyle began to feel hotly self-conscious. He put the cricket ball on the table and said lightly, "Here you are, a souvenir. Of my two runs. And no wickets."

"That get-up rather suits you," Bodie said. "In fact, as Rod Stewart so memorably said..."

"Wait a minute," said Doyle, holding up a finger and shutting his eyes while he ransacked his memory-banks for chart-topping lyrics. "Uh...I know I keep you amused, but I feel I'm being used?" and he cackled so hard at his own brilliance that he had to hold his ribs at the point where a cricket ball had walloped him when he was looking at a weather vane on a house across the green rather than at the run of play.

"You wear it well, dickhead."

"This old thing?"

"Only one detail missing, around about there.... should be a red streak or two."

"Don't like the sound of that," said Doyle, peering down to where Bodie was pointing.

"Let me show you," Bodie said, picking the cricket ball off the table top. "You see, when you bowl swingers...you need to shine up one side of the ball. And you do it .. like this."

Doyle felt the seamless side of the ball being rubbed up and down the front of the whites, just inside his groin. The nascent erection occasioned by the unexpected sight of so much pearly skin stiffened in such a flash that it set off a beating pulse in his temple. "I saw them do that," he said, wanting to laugh at Bodie's absorbed expression. After a bit he heard the ball drop with a clunk on to the kitchen floor and roll under the table. "But I never saw them do that."

The metal hook fastening had been opened with a small snap. There was a swift, light, unfamiliar zipping sound.

"I thought you still had your box in," Bodie said. "But turns out...you were just.... pleased to see me. Very, very pleased."

"Pleased," echoed Doyle, his voice wavering at the look of sheer lubricious pleasure on Bodie's face, the perfectly-pitched pressure and speed of his warm hand, the confident brush of thumb that was enough to send the blood pounding in his ears. Radiant heat on his head all day, victory, and now the feel of those silky, demanding fingertips. He knew he could let himself come there and then, right into Bodie's hand, or even better into his mouth, or even better...

"What am I going to do with this then?" Bodie questioned.

"Oh...fuck, Bodie."

"That an order?"

"No, just....which d'you prefer? Doing a bloke in cricket whites or..."

"No contest, mate," Bodie breathed. "One of me boyhood fantasies you know, being done by a.... it was keeping wicket that did it, you know. All bloody day bent over with me legs spread."

Doyle had got his shoes off already. He pushed himself upright, meeting Bodie's lips in a bruising contact. With one hand round the back of his neck so he wouldn't escape he got Bodie's towel down with a single tug.

---

"Well I'll give you that one," Bodie said airily about twenty minutes later, picking up the discarded cricket trousers and sundry other items from the floor of the living-room and holding his hand out. "I'm very impressed, mate. Never thought you'd do it. Play the match, I mean."

Doyle struggled out of his remaining kit, the cricket jumper and white shirt, and handed them over. Feeling sweaty, more than a little spent, and envious of Bodie's characteristic post-copulation liveliness, he glared at him exiting, naked, towards the bathroom. You could fuck Bodie to within an inch of his life and whatever words of smut and passion he'd ground out at the time he'd still be as breezy as Southend Pier afterwards.

There was the sound of the washing-machine door banging shut, water running and then Bodie came back and sat down opposite. Doyle decided he looked shifty.

"And now it's your turn," he said to him.

"Blimey, give me a chance to re-group..."

"You're going to go to an art class. Aren't you."

Bodie's smile appeared to be an attempt to buy time.

"I know you're going to welsh on this deal, Bodie," Doyle said grimly. "I've known all along."

"Well that's where you're wrong, sunshine."

"Go on then, amaze me. You'll agree to go, but only if there's a k in the month?"

"Oh Raymond. That you lack faith in me is very hurtful. The fact of the matter is that I've already been."

"Already been what?"

"To your painting class."

Doyle's laugh was loud, and hurt his ribs. "Like hell you have."

"It's true."

"Yeah? Prove it."

Bodie sighed sadly. "Dear me, you're as bad as your barmy girlfriend. Prove this, prove that. Very well then, if you insist."

He rose from his chair and went out into the hall, coming back in with a Co-op carrier-bag which he dangled over Doyle's lap. He chewed the inside of his cheek while Doyle arrested its swinging motion and noisily extracted a piece of canvas-board about the size of a small tea-tray, glancing between it and Bodie's expression. Remarkably, all the swagger seemed to be draining out of Bodie's face as Doyle manoeuvred the offering from its blue overcoat. The canvas he now held in one hand bore a small black and white label on the back which was instantly recognisable.

Bolt Court, EC1. The studio on the top floor.

"It's a self-portrait," Bodie said, sounding defensive all of a sudden. "You can have it."

"This...this is..." Doyle stammered, holding the thing at arm's length for a second and then bringing it closer for inspection.

"Yeah, I know," Bodie said, evidently steeling himself for the derision he fully expected to be his lot. "It's rubbish."

"No, I..."

True, it was what you might call...naif in style. Vaguely reminiscent of something on the kindergarten wall, cartoonish even. A riot of inappropriate colour. Hair a few dabs of glossy purplish-black, lips stupendously curved, nose a ski-jump run, one eye a swirl of violent blue, the other an explosion in a paint factory, lashes like Ermintrude's on the Magic Roundabout.... Even though Doyle wouldn't have put it past Bodie to have blagged someone else's efforts, he knew by those lashes that this was all his own work.

"You want it then?" Bodie asked, un-nerved by Doyle's inability to speak.

Doyle nodded stupidly.

"Good. Now go and get in the fucking bath, or you'll be sore all over tomorrow." Frowning slightly Bodie touched two fingers on the cricket-ball-sized bruise under Doyle's right nipple. "Which bastard did that? I might have to get him."

He sauntered off towards the kitchen, swinging an imaginary bat through the air in an open-shouldered cover-drive. Doyle was rooted to the spot, ignoring the fascinating buttocks for a change, lost in the world of his favourite studio on the top floor of Bolt Court, EC1.

Mindful of the need to appear casual about all this, he stuffed the picture back in the bag and plonked it down in a corner. He wanted to go and say something. A glimpse of the familiar, worked-out musculature standing at the kitchen window glugging orange squash out of a pint glass made the whole idea of it even more of a wonder.

The thought of Bodie actually getting himself there -- a location that generations of A-to-Z's couldn't illustrate with any clarity -- and sitting still for a while with a paint brush in his hand, sleeves undoubtedly rolled-up ready for action, but uneasy in the environment, suspicious of everyone around him, then choosing those mad colours for some wild reason of his own, analysing his features with a scowl of concentration, applying his first, tentative strokes...

Doyle wasn't sure if he'd ever get closer to proof positive, no matter how many times Bodie saved his life.

The lump in his throat just would not go away.

Or at least, not until he heard "Catch it!" and the cricket ball came flying out of the kitchen.

-- THE END --

June 2007