The High Road
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| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The High Road |
| Author(s): | M. Fae Glasgow |
| Date(s): | 1995 |
| Length: | 32 pages |
| Genre(s): | slash |
| Fandom(s): | The Professionals |
| Relationship(s): | Bodie/Doyle |
| External Links: | online here |
Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The High Road is a Bodie/Doyle story by M. Fae Glasgow.
It was published in Bene Dictum #2 and is online.
Story Notes
"Our final Pros piece comes from ther fertile and fevered brain of the Glaswegian. But fear not you Pros fen who would turn from a gut-wrenching tale with a black and bleak ending: 'The High Road' is not such! The setting is Glasgow, the time is Christmas and New Year's, and the problem to be resolved is reconizing the gifts bestowed on one Mr. W.A.P. Bodie..."
Reactions and Reviews
Cowley is on vacation but Bodie and Doyle are required to act as bodyguards when his life is threatened. So the trio head to Scotland – to visit Cowley's mum. And as ever, when we go home on holiday, there are old friends, old photos, cups of tea, nagging and rows. But sometimes there's love too. M.Fae Glasgow – classic Pros.[1]
My recs of how Bodie and Doyle spend holidays end--surprise!--with the final holiday of the year, Hogmonay--or New Year's, as we non-Scots know it. When we join them, Cowley is heading home to Scotland for a brief leave of his own. Because of a security threat, he's been forced to take Bodie and Doyle with him as bodyguards. Neither Cowley nor his agents are happy with this arrangement, but it's particularly bad timing for Bodie and Doyle, who are caught on a cusp of change. Their fraught and angsty situation plays out under the sharp eyes of not only the Cow but the one person in the world even sharper than he is: his mother. Getting to meet Cowley's wholly delightful mum--done justice to as only a writer who's a Glaswegian herself could--is one of the reasons why this story is a must-read. The other is the overt omniscient narrator M. Fae Glasgow employs. In her skilled hands, this narrative device embues an already wonderful story with distinctiveness and flair.[2]
...it's one of my favourite Pros stories - the very best of M. Fae Glasgow, a bit funny, a bit sweet, and very real!The lads have been assigned to guarding George Cowley over New Year, and he's on a trip up north, to see his old mother...
But there's something brewing between our lads, and they know it, and we know it, and there's such a delicious sense of anticipation in wondering just when everything is going to tip over into... well, you know. *g*[3]
A greatgreat story! Can't be recced too often! I need more exclamation marks! :D It was pure coincidence back then that the first Pros stories I ever discovered were the ones in oblique-publications.net, with Sebastian and M. Fae Glasgow. Btw - I really love the way she is using the weather as a not-symbol in the beginning and the end. And Mrs. Cowley is so wonderful, too.[4]
It's quite a tour de force, that one - Cowley and his mum ... *bg* I'm not a great MFae reader for the most part, but there's a lot I like about that one! [5]
Set with Bodie and Doyle visiting Cowley at his Mum's in Glasgow. M. Fae is a Glaswegian herself, as the pseud shows, and the local detail (down to exact and loving use of dialect for the Scots characters among themselves) is one of the strong points of this tale. Slowly, in a novella-length story, Bodie and Doyle are brought to realise not only their sexual but emotional feelings for each other. A technical point: M. Fae can actually use third-person-omniscient POV properly. A bad fanwriter writes this viewpoint so that it drifts around the ceiling. In this story, M.Fae manages the almost Victorian trick of giving the narrator a personality, and it works without detracting from the story.[6]
MFae wrote many Christmas-themed stories, of every sort from pure sex to light-hearted fun to deep angst. This one differs from her others in prominently featuring Cowley. When we join them, Cowley is heading home to Scotland for a brief leave. Because of a security threat, he's been forced to take Bodie and Doyle with him as bodyguards. Neither Cowley nor his agents are happy with this arrangement, but it's particularly bad timing for Bodie and Doyle, who are caught on a cusp of change. Their fraught and angsty situation plays out under the sharp eyes of not only the Cow but the one person in the world even sharper than he is: his mother.Getting to meet Cowley's wholly delightful mum--done justice to as only a writer who's a Glaswegian herself could--is one of the reasons this story is a must-read. The other is the overt omniscient narrator MFae employs. In her skilled hands, this narrative device embues an already wonderful story with distinctiveness and flair.
So, it was a journey then, of physical distance and emotional vastness. A journey, then, for us to watch.
And there they are, making their way along a motorway, their car a red blur on the tarmac, rigid steel cutting them off from the flow of the world around them. But this is a tale, a story, so unlike everyone else in their world, we can see them, the softness inside the hardness. We can come in closer and closer and closer, circling them like hawks with a rabbit, until we are near enough to see their every detail, and nearer yet, until we are amongst them, until we are a part of them: until, at last, we can see through Bodie's bright blue eyes... [7]
I just read MFae's "The High Road" in Bene Dictum Half N Half.
Deep sigh.. and not only for the Scottish country side! Loved Cowley's mum.. oh, yes, the grandma everyone could love. (Ok, she wasn't a
grandma, but you get my meaning..) The pain of their trying to figure out what was going on was so deliciously described. Their coming together was beautiful, and believable. And after spending the last several hours reading fanfic (borrowed 16 zines from Kim and nancy.. gonna have them all read by Sunday night!) it was the first story all day to make me stop reading and go directly to bed. ;) [8]
she's got a lush storyteller's voice, some amusing quirks of style, maybe a few overly emotional dirty tricks, but it's well worth it. [9]
References
- ^ from rec50
- ^ from a 2004 comment at Crack Van
- ^ 2012 comments at CI5hq
- ^ 2012 comments at CI5hq
- ^ 2012 comments at CI5hq
- ^ 2002 rec by Predatrix
- ^ 2010 comments by istia, prosrecs, Archived version
- ^ comment at Virgule-L, quoted anonymously (Dec 30, 1995)
- ^ The Pros recs; archived link