Damaged Goods (Professionals story)

Fanfiction
Title:	Damaged Goods
Author(s):	Meridian
Date(s):	2001
Length:
Genre(s):	slash, Bodie/Doyle
Fandom(s):	The Professionals
Relationship(s):	Bodie/Doyle
External Links:	Damaged Goods
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Damaged Goods by Professionals story by Meridian.

It was published in Priority A-3 #3.

Reactions and Reviews

After Bodie is seriously injured, he and his new lover Doyle attempt to ease into a post-CI5 life together. The issues that face them consist primarily of Bodie's problems in accepting help from Doyle... I found the story curiously flat, with litde emotional engagement despite the significant amounts of trauma with which the characters must deal. As always, other readers might have a different reaction.

A H/C with Bodie as the one hurt, in fact is Bodie really seriously hurt. We see Bodie thinking as he lies there waiting to die, expecting to die. Thinking about him and Doyle and how they had only finally, recently admitted what they felt for one another, but how they couldn't whilst being active agents (hmm, this is a difficult concept for me to buy.) We flash back to them sitting holding hands, this time it's Bodie comforting Doyle.

They talk about getting out of CI5, because then there could be a them. Ray is quite nicely naïve, and says he's never tried being anything more than just friends with a bloke; it's a lovely picture of Ray. They kiss and this moves on to them undressing and a nice, gentle sex scene on the settee and then Doyle decides he has to leave. It's a great credit to the writer, because so far in a couple of short pages she has two concepts that I would find hard to believe, and yet she manages them in a really beautiful convincing way.

Back to Bodie and his capture. Then it's Doyle to the rescue and a super line, "If I'm going to all the trouble to rescue you, you dumb crud, then you damned well better live." Superb and so Doyle.

Bodie comes to in the hospital and Doyle is always there, then one time Cowley is and he tells Bodie that he may never walk again without aid. Bodie takes a decision to 'run' from Ray and begs Cowley for help. He agrees and sends Doyle on an op.

Doyle is back, he goes to hospital, but there's no Bodie and no one will tell him anything. He finally goes to Cowley and after a talk he says the one thing that ensures Cowley will tell him where Bodie is, he tells him they are lovers.

He finds Bodie and after much pushing back and forth and arguing, Doyle convinces Bodie that he is going home with him. Now Doyle is certain about the relationship and Bodie is not. He's really doing the 'if you love something, set it free...' and it is something that I personally believed in totally. I could see this happening, could see that Bodie loves, cares for, whatever terminology you wish to use, Doyle so much, that he would put Doyle's interests and future before his own.

We see the difficulty between them and it does look as though it might drive them apart. The relatively short scenes we see of Bodie's attempted recovery, and the problems between the two men are extremely well done and very realistic, not just for Bodie and Doyle but for anyone in recovery. They are both pushing, and pushing each other, away.

Just as Ray thinks he really cannot stand anymore, Bodie finally turns to him one night and kisses him and simply says, "Thanks." At that moment Doyle knew that Bodie was asking him to stay and that if he's honest, he wouldn't ever have gone anyway, there was no where he could go.

There was an inevitability about Doyle's final thought and a binding so strong that he was right, there was nowhere for him to go. I rather liked the fact that although things were now poised to be happy etc. there was this almost flat note to the happiness. We know that it still isn't going to be all roses and happiness, it can't be because Bodie is seriously injured, and is going to be disabled and both of them are going to have their problems in dealing with it. But they'll do it because they're together.

A very sombre story, with little to lift it really, save the total togetherness and deep, deep, partnership and love that the two men had. Without that emotion and closeness the story would have been almost unbearably sad, but their wholeness lifted it and gave it hope, love and a future.