A Summer's Outing, and Devices and Desires

Fanfiction
Title:	A Summer's Outing and Devices and Desires
Author(s):	M. Fae Glasgow
Date(s):	1992
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	The Professionals
Relationship(s):
External Links:	A Summer's Outing Devices and Desires
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A Summer's Outing and Devices and Desires are two interconnected slash Professionals stories by M. Fae Glasgow.

They were published in £3 Note Series and are now online as pdfs.

Reactions and Reviews

1992

[A Summer's Outing]: This story is not for the faint-hearted. It is bitter, and leaves an after-taste in the mouth. I felt sorry for, and angry with, both characters, Bodie for being so stubborn and Doyle for driving him away.

These two stories, forming a series, grabbed me. Doyle and Bodie split up and come together many years later. Original characterizations.

2005

[both stories]: I'm going to conclude my tenure [as Crack Van driver] with a story by M Fae Glasgow, whose very internally-focused stories, lush and complex writing, and omnisicient "storyteller" point of view I love. Most of her stories have at least a touch of bittersweet, and - happy-ending-slut that I am - some are too dark or ambiguous for my taste (though even those I often find incredibly, sometimes disturbingly, compelling). But many have hopeful, uplifting endings - made all the more satisfying because she leaves me feeling as if I, as well as Bodie and Doyle, have earned that chance for happiness.

This is one such story - or perhaps I should say two, because technically the story and its sequel are separate, though the two were published together and must be read together; neither stands as well alone, but together they make up an amazingly powerful, and surprisingly hopeful, story. In the first part, "A Summer's Outing," Cowley confronts the two of them with evidence of each one's homosexual indiscretions (not with each other). He's been ordered by the Minister to remove all such "security risks" - but he's persuaded the Minister to permit him to try something other than wholesale firing. To that end he orders the two of them to "come out" as a couple in order to flush out the ring of blackmailers and then to stay "out" in public to prove that "even homosexuals can be good agents."

Doyle, who has been attracted to Bodie for a while but had been letting the tension build and grow at its own pace, is okay with this, even glad to have the excuse for a relationship with Bodie, but Bodie, despite his frequent forays into gay sex, is in deep denial about his sexuality, and he explodes with anger and resentment. Though he agrees to Cowley's terms, he never accepts the situation and denies vehemently and sometimes viciously that his feelings for Ray go any deeper than the desire for sex; meanwhile, Doyle, faced with the shattering of his own dreams for happiness with Bodie and with Bodie's constant denigration of the depth and meaning of their partnership, their relationship, pressures and mocks him mercilessly and utterly refuses to acknowledge his pain and confusion.

The growing tension and bitterness between them is painful to read - even more so because, as usual with M Fae Glasgow, you really can imagine the characters reacting this way, even if you'd prefer not to. And M Fae excels at this, at evoking the incredible pain of their disintegrating relationship, their inability to find common language or common ground, the ultimate irrelevance of love when both are intractible, neither is able to see the other through his own issues. It's excruciating to watch the rift between them grow, watch them treat each other with cruelty and fling furious, vicious words, to engage in wilful self-delusion and wallow in self-righteousness, when we, the readers, know how deep and real the bond between them really is and that this behavior is in large part a defense mechanism, a way of disguising deep hurt.

A Summer's Outing ends with pain and hopelessness - there is no resolution, and Bodie and Doyle go their separate ways. But the sequel, "Devices and Desires," picks up the story ten years later, when the two of them are flung together again by fate - or George Cowley. A decade has wrought many changes in both of them: Doyle, who has tried his best not to think about Bodie for ten years, is finally ready to confront his feelings of anger and betrayal - and to acknowledge his guilt, the role he played in driving Bodie away, as well as the fact that he's never really stopped wanting Bodie. As for Bodie, he's finally worked through some of his own issues and is ready to face himself.

It's painful in a different way to watch the two of them, after so much hurt and sorrow, finally reach out to each other, to the one chance of real happiness either of them has ever had. Painful - but also moving and heartwarming and so incredibly satisfying. You want so desperately for them to have a chance for that happiness - and in this story, M Fae makes you believe that they really do, that the pain has not been all for nought.

This is a story that takes you through the entire gamut of emotions: tearing pain and hopelessness, sadness and loss and loneliness, and then finally redemption, forgiveness, love. It's intense, sexy, gorgeously written, and entirely unforgettable.

[both stories]: Y'know, these are the first stories by M. Fae that I've ever been able to finish. And I only did it because you had given me hope for the ending. Someone said that she does not seem to love the characters (I'm paraphrasing here) and I agree. However, I was intrigued by the entire premise here and especially the setting of the second story. I think that alone will make it unforgettable for me. Bodie's journey through life was so heartwrenching. I loved how Cowley was woven into it all and how he was able to somehow atone for his former actions, which is what sent everything to hell in the first place.

[both stories]: I too think this is an unforgettable story. I'd never have rec'ed it in a million years if not for the sequel - but something about the ending was so ... tender.

I've hears people say she doesn't love the characters too, but I'm not sure I agree (except perhaps as she reached the end of her Pros obsession, when she was clearly pretty jaded). She likes to push the envelope, it's true, and she never makes it easy for them; also, there are *definitely* stories of hers in which I find the characters entirely unlikeable (though never *quite* 100% unrecognizable...), and stories I just can't stand because of their depressing or ambiguous endings. But when I read the ending of something like Devices and Desires I simply can't believe she doesn't love them. After all those years of sorrow - she brings them back together, lets them find each other, makes it incredibly clear that they are the *only* ones for each other. And they're different characters by then, mellower, wiser, sadder maybe but also better able to appreciate what they have. It really gets to me ...

And I too love the Cowley stuff!

2011

[Devices and Desires]: Devices and Desires is the sequel to A Summer's Outing, published in the same zine (...as a £3 note from Oblique Publications), and originally meant as a single, complete story. M.Fae Glasgow is not known for shying away from the harsh side of life, however, and in A Summer's Outing we see the lads on the verge of beginning a love affair, only for Cowley to blackmail them into outing themselves to ensure the security and long term future of CI5 and it's agents (including the lads). In many fics this would have hurried the lads along into bed and they would have woken starry-eyed to realise they each couldn't live without the other (perhaps with a misunderstanding or two along the way, depending on the length of the story). In Glasgow's bolder hands, however, this becomes a psychological tale of how such manipulation coupled with insecurities created by the mores of the time can tear people apart, and send them, as the editor's introduction said, "in dark directions".

But... *g*

...but Glasgow did not after all end her story there, she wrote Devices and Desires instead, which finds the lads again some ten years later. Doyle survived Mae Li without Bodie to save him, but has been sent because since then Doyle has been living as openly gay, a test-case for CI5, and proof that any good agent can live a life of discretion and security. But from the very beginning of Devices and Desires, Doyle is still trying to stop himself thinking about Bodie, because Bodie ran off and left him a long time ago.

Of course Bodie, it turns out, is on the cruise as well - something of a shock, as the reason he left was because he couldn't bear to be "outed", couldn't admit to himself that he was as gay as Doyle. In ten years though, things have changed....

What I like about Glasgow's writing - and perhaps what some readers don't like - is that we feel every nuance of the lads' feelings as we read along. She doesn't just tell us that Doyle was angry, we share with him every stroke of movement as he tries to deal with it, every second of Doyle's breakneck rollercoaster thoughts, just as if they're our own and it's all happening to us. She doesn't write action packed stories, nor what Clemens would have scathingly called dialogue packed" stories - instead... I suppose she writes thought-packed stories - and thoughtful as well, because you can definitely have the one without the other. Her thoughts lead to our sharing the feeling of it all though, and that's what I want from stories - to feel them!

There are painful revelations about what life's been like for the lads, Bodie in particular, who had to cope with alcoholism inherited from his father on top of everything else - Glasgow doesn't forget that our families and our past influence what happens to us, as much as our choices and fears and hopes - and we feel Doyle's solid misery and painful hope all through the story too. She writes lads that exist and live and are influenced by the real world, and that's something else I love her writing for - though again I know it's not every fan's cup of tea.

In the end, though, we get to where we want to be - the lads properly together, talking to each other, understanding each other - accepting each other.

[Devices and Desires]: ...it really is a good story!

- but I don't like it.

You said 'painful'. Yes it is! It even is depressing.

"She writes lads that exist and live and are influenced by the real world, and that's something else I love her writing for - though again I know it's not every fan's cup of tea." But does that make me happy while reading the story and afterwards? Do I sigh happily "Yes that's real life!"? Surely not!

Call me a coward, but I don't want Bodie and Doyle to suffer such an extremely bleak life as they did in this story. It's sombre and at least for Bodie disastrous.

[Devices and Desires]:... I was very diligent for the first couple of pages (and I loved that split second moment when Doyle first senses Bodie’s presence) but then I have to admit I started to skim over the rest....I don’t know quite *what* it is with Glasgow’s writing. I think she writes wonderfully, has written many memorable stories and used to be a favourite of mine (e.g. All You Need is Love) and I still read the shorter stories such as Back Alley and Wish You Were Here, it’s just that nowadays, while still thinking she's a wonderful writer, I don’t seem to have the necessary patience with her writing style. Too wordy? Longwinded? Repetitive? Labours a point? Writing just for the sake of writing? Doing what I’m doing now? ... I love stories where I can feel, hear and see the characters, subtle stories where the nuances are picked up, hinted at and written well, but maybe not over and over again! Depressing? Maybe at times the tone is a bit desolate, a bit bleak. Yes, there’s light at the end of the tunnel but they’ve been through a lot, life has been lonely and taken its toll. I don’t know.....…I didn’t really delve into it enough to reach a decision.

[Devices and Desires]:I came across M Fae Glasgow fairly early on in my mammoth attempt to catch up with 30 years of fic from a standing start; and it's possible that she and the other Oblique writers established my ideas of what Pros fic was about in the first place. I do like the fun frothy stories, and I very much like the long novel-length AUs. But this stuff, the far from fun and frothy... yes, I like it, and I think it follows on from the universe of the programme itself much more credibly.

I'm not sure I read the two as a two-parter initially. If I had read A Summer's Outing, I certainly didn't connect it with this. I read it as a stand-alone, and the gay cruise line business threw me right at the start. I'd be delighted to think I'm wrong, but I didn't believe that this existed - based in Britain, at least - at the time portrayed (although I remember AIDS paranoia and "self-inflicted" very well).So the set-up seemed a bit silly to me. And Cowley the penitent righter-of-injustice seemed only a plot device. A very apt one, balancing the events of A Summer's Outing, perhaps, but still.

The line you quote, about Doyle never thinking about how Bodie'd felt, losing CI5 and Cowley: the way I read A Summer's Outing, it was Doyle who provoked Bodie into running. Bodie could have stayed, yes, but Doyle was the one who really rubbed Bodie's nose in it. I'm not sure she really makes that point: does she expect the reader to draw the link, or am I just reading things in that aren't there?

The questions: do these older lads work for me? Emphatically, yes.I do like fics where they have avoided too much emotional damage and have settled into a steadfast relationship for years; but the cynical side of me says that they're in a brutal job doing brutal things, and are only likely to be brutalised further with time. Bodie's desperate "I'm straight, see, I'm married!" strikes me as likely, as does eventually having to deal with it. Again, coming out by booking a tour on a gay cruise: no, not necessarily credible in the specifics, but in the generalities of something ostensibly irrevocable whilst at the same time not expecting to see anyone he _knows_ (he's not expecting to know anyone, never mind Doyle), yes, entirely credible. The idea of doing something far from where anyone you know will see you, and being faced with someone who really didn't expect: ohhh yes.

Similarly, I don't see anything incredible in anyone in this field of work relying on alcohol, and Bodie's description of the effects on the family looks far too accurate. Can't speak for the details of dealing with it, but it convinced me.

[Devices and Desires]:I have mixed feelings about MFG's stories. The writing is terrific. I like dark, angsty stories and I love it when the lads are 'tortured', mentally and physically. But there is a fine line (for me, anyway) between hard and harsh. MFG and I are on different sides of that line. Bodie and Doyle are hard men, no doubt. But MFG takes them too far - she makes them harsh, and I don't think they would be that, at least not with each other. The scene moonllightmead describes above where Ray brings home his pick-up to hurt Bodie - to me that is just not the kind of thing Ray would do. He might go out and find someone else for the night, but I don't think he'd flaunt him in front of Bodie.

I do like dark, pain filled stories, but for me there has to be a bit of hope for something better. The end of "A Summer's Outing" leaves no hope. Ray watches Bodie walk away. Regret without hope is just, well, depressing! So, like Slantedlight, for me the darkness makes the light all the better. MFG s stories just don't leave me with enough of the light.

This story, while having its bleak moments, does put the lads back together;for better or worse, we don't know. But I did enjoy this story more than its prequel. There were some parts that didn't ring true to my version of the lads - Bodie's "taking a hand" to his wife - I just don't see him hitting a woman, especially one he loved enough to marry, regardless of his drinking problems. Again, just my opinion. But as sad as their lives have been, the reader is left with a bit of hope for them. They won't make the same mistakes again. They seem to be on the same page.

So while I'm not a huge fan of MFG, this story did work for me.

[both stories]: I had read this story previously (but not the prequel) and remembered feeling sad that it had taken ten years before the lads are reunited, and sad also that in the ten years apart both lads had suffered in their own way – Bodie through his failed marriage and alcoholism, and Doyle living with his unhappiness because Bodie had left him.

For this week discussion, I read the prequel first, and then this story again. It made me glad that I had not read the prequel before as "A Summer's Outing" ended with an absolutely bleak ending. At least this story offered a chance for the lads to find happiness after ten years apart.

Like the others already commented before, I too have very mixed feelings when I read MFG's stories because I know she writes such intense stories that do not always guarantee a happy ending for the lads. Many of her stories are full of angst and I know when I read one of her stories that it would most likely have a sad or dark ending.

[both stories]: The first time I read "A Summer´s Outing" it really hit me hard. But that´s what I love about her stories, the lads are real, with all their fears and feelings and clamming up, disregarding the other. Totally human.

And then there was "Devices and Desires" and even though they kinda talk too much, it all feels right and falls into place. This story needs that much talk, and if I like them reading each others minds, it´s just too bad, sometimes things need to be said out loud. That´s a thing they had to learn, and being older lads they did marvellous.

I love to feel and see stories, the voices are important, too, but more in the way what they say. or don´t say. Which is pretty much laid out for the reader with Glasgow´s story because she let´s us see inside Doyle. So yes, it definitely works for me! I like older lads, but I just can´t picture them like that at all, so I pretty much like the way she paints them, even though I still see the younger lads...(Does that make sense?)

Her way of writing the lads is spot on in my opinion. With her harsh way of picturing them, she´s totally canon. And because I can´t start to think of all the ways their love would go, I love reading all these stories, to find as many ways as possible. Ways I can agree with, like here, sometimes ways I disagree, but hey, that´s just me.

Usually I like open minded lads better, when they´re not thinking about being gay or not gay or bi, when they just hop into bed together fuck the consequences, but since I have absolutely no clue how it works in real life, both sides work for me. The secrecy or the carelessness. I can imagine both.

[Devices and Desires]: I absolutely *love* “Devices and Desires”. One of the reasons is that I read “ A Summers Outing” first and found it to be one of the saddest, most depressing fics I’ve ever read, but also (for me) totally believable, and one of those few fics that stayed in my head for weeks after reading it, so it was difficult to try and pretend it just didn’t that the sad ending exist. So, when I read the sequel, “Devices and Desires”, I as so pleased to find a resolution to all that heartbreak that I was happy to suspend disbelief in a few places. I did actually find myself shaking my head and wondering if MFG’s writing was really good enough to have me believing the gay cruise thing, but at that stage I really didn’t care. I can accept people taking liberties with a plot far more easily than I can accept them taking liberties with (my version of) the characters.

“Doyle is still trying to stop himself thinking about Bodie, because Bodie ran off and left him a long time ago.”

I love the way she described how Doyle's life had gone since Bodie left, the emptiness of it, and I also liked how Cowley got to see the results of what he’d done, and how he and Doyle had become friends over time. I found that touching.

“What I like about Glasgow's writing - and perhaps what some readers don't like - is that we feel every nuance of the lads' feelings as we read along. She doesn't just tell us that Doyle was angry, we share with him every stroke of movement as he tries to deal with it, every second of Doyle's breakneck rollercoaster thoughts, just as if they're our own and it's all happening to us.”

That’s what I like best about her writing, the way she can make me feel everything. I need to feel a story and this one actually hurt to read. Much as I love happy endings and fluff there is a part of me that wants an author to pull me through the story with the characters, and when the writing is as good as MFGs I don’t have much choice in the matter, I’m right in there with them.

I thought that both characters were very true to how I see them, and although Bodie’s alcoholism was unexpected she did a great job of making it convincing. I really, really didn’t want to believe that Bodie hit his wife, but unfortunately I did believe it. That bit from “Close Quarters” where he hits Julia is something I’ve taken out of my personal canon, along with the lines about women’s lib and ‘cahonas’ (sp?) on top of the bus in “First Night”. It makes me shudder to hear it and I don’t think Bodie would have said it, so I just pretend it never happened. I remember watching “Everest Was Also Conquered” with a friend in the late 90s and our jaws hit the floor when Bodie made his comment to the effect that it must have been hell for women with those kind of tendencies in those days; it gave me a real admiration for what was under that Macho surface, and I just can’t believe that the same man would then say what he did on the top of that bus. But all that being said, unfortunately I did believe that Bodie was violent towards his wife in this story, because of the way MFG had written his emotional state and his alcoholism. Also, the way he spoke about losing his sons was believable and so very heartbreaking.

[Summer's Outing]: “A Summers Outing” ... one of the saddest, most depressing fics I’ve ever read, to quote ladyhawke2. I believe it was indeed the first fic I ever read - the sensuous opening scene was such a revelation, but after that it got worse and worse. I'm with those who commented earlier who find MFG too hard. (not very thinky, sorry)