Arcadia (Professionals story)

Fanfiction
Title:	Arcadia
Author(s):	Sineala
Date(s):	2012
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	The Professionals
Relationship(s):	Bodie/Doyle
External Links:	online here at AO3
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Arcadia is a Bodie/Doyle story by Sineala.

It was written for ci5_boxoftricks 2012.

Reactions and Reviews

This story doesn't have a lot of the things that typically make me want to read a story again: guns, action, hurt/comfort of one/both of the lads, fast cars, a wealth of rapidfire banter. But the first time I read this story, I knew it was a keeper. It takes the reader, plausibly, someplace they might find Bodie and Doyle, deep undercover and tracking the baddies.

This is case fic with an interesting twist. It asks the musical question, how would a 14-year-old boy from Liverpool get to Africa if he wasn't built like a stevedore? And comes up with the answer: bellboy/steward on a cruise ship. A largely staffed-by-gay-men cruise ship. This is followed to its logical conclusion: what's likely to have happened to that teenager, if he weren't afraid of being seen as a homosexual? He might have longstanding friends and former lovers there, even people who care very much for his welfare. But he might, as an adult, have absolutely no desire to return to that life after he'd forged a new one in the military/CI5 if he had successfully submerged that part of his personality.

This, in a nutshell, sets the stage for an alternate rendering to the more common Bodie-backstory of "he swabbed decks and fought his captain over a woman then jumped ship in Africa" that appears in a lot of fanfiction as a precursor to Bodie the hard man. If he ran because he were homosexual, it would make sense that he would stay in a community that accepted him, and sheltered him among relative equals. The twist is that Doyle doesn't know any of this part of Bodie's life, and it is all revealed to him in a sort of 'dance of the seven veils' manner that allows the reader to slowly become immersed in what that younger Bodie's life was probably like just as Doyle is. The heartbreak he felt of being spurned by a callous (married) lover. The role as sexual plaything that meant he was passed around the ship's crew until he got bored and moved on to the next man (somewhat like how he treats women--well, but as transients). The erection of psychic/emotional walls to maintain privacy in a largely un-private world among the crew.

The interesting use of Polari (gay slang) and details about life aboard ship give it a sense of being well-rounded and fleshed out as a story--this one wasn't written overnight. The author's got the background setting done well, right down to the color of the merchant navy sailor's passbook (that makes Bodie's face pale when Cowley explains what the job is, at the beginning). Bodie's ability to slide between roles (one minute: Doyle's partner; next minute: campy gay steward) helps make this utterly charming, for one can imagine in the mind how Lewis Collins would have easily stepped into the role and carried it off with aplomb, had this ever been (so so unlikely) filmed for broadcast.

The whole is seen through Doyle's eyes, and it is from his (limited) point of view that all this unfolds. Like the reader, he has to unlearn what he thinks he knows about Bodie's past and accept a new (proposed) reality. He also has to come to grips with his own altered sense of his and Bodie's sexual preferences. He starts off a stranger to the ship and all its ways, but by the end, he understands its workings and rhythms, and figures out what he must do to save Bodie, as well as love him.

I like the baddie in this one (no spoiler here, not gonna tell you who it is) a bit less than some others who turn up in fanfiction elsewhere, but the person who it is is no worse than some of the 2-D characters who were on the tv show originally. The focus of the case is sufficient to let the action unfold gradually and believably.

I love the spin on Bodie’s past, and the mutual pining as Doyle slowly comes to terms with the things he finds out about his partner. The emotional payoff is so perfect I keep coming back to this story again and again.