Subject to Change

Bodie/Doyle Fanfiction
Title:	Subject to Change
Author(s):	M. Fae Glasgow
Date(s):	1993
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	The Professionals
External Links:	online here
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Subject to Change is a Bodie/Doyle story by M. Fae Glasgow

It was published in £3 Note Series #3 and is online.

Reactions and Reviews

A story set at Christmas that is my favourite type: mid-relationship first time--the first time being of the emotional rather than sexual kind. While many fans love stories about the first time the characters have sex or about their getting together, my preference is for stories in which they've been having sex for a while but reach a crisis point when one or both of them acknowledge it's become more than sex. I call these stories "emotional first times". This story is a minor but satisfying story of this kind.

Bodie and Doyle have been having it off for a while, but their relationship was rent when one of them revealed too much in an unguarded moment a couple of weeks previously. Things have been stewing between them since. The story begins in conflict, with the underlying issues being trust and fear: fear of trusting, fear of losing, fear of taking a chance. I enjoy the mix of humour and tension from the get-go, the opening paragraphs setting both the scene and the mood:

"Bloody typical," Doyle muttered for the fourteenth time.

Bodie didn't reply, as he hadn't the last eight times. His lips tightened, his hands flexed, carefully, on the steering wheel, his gaze never left the bright splashing of sleet on the windscreen.

"I mean," Doyle went on, "if I'd known the Cow was going to do this to me, I'd've gone to visit our Joan with my parents."

'This' referred to with such loathing was time off. Paid. Over Christmas. That rarest of gifts, and Doyle was moaning about it. Bloody typical, Bodie thought, for the thirteenth time.

The story wends its way predictably but charmingly to resolution. It's a rare story by MFae without graphic sex. I always enjoy MFae's sex scenes, far more than I do many writers', but this story works perfectly without the sex since it's primarily about the emotional dynamic between Bodie and Doyle. The sex is a vital part of their relationship, obviously, but not the most crucial element at the point they've reached in this tale.