Vivamus, Amemus
| Bodie/Doyle Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Vivamus, Amemus |
| Author(s): | Sebastian |
| Date(s): | July 2001 |
| Length: | |
| Genre: | slash |
| Fandom: | The Professionals |
| External Links: | Vivamus, Amemus |
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Vivamus, Amemus is a Professionals Bodie/Doyle story by Sebastian.
"Vivamus, Amemus" was intended originally as a longer story, but the author decided to release it as it was.
Reactions and Reviews
The thing about Sebastian is that she's just bloody good. (This is a fairly detailed discussion of the story, and if you haven't read it already it'll give most of it away.
The opening scene is both subtle and blatant. Condensed is the word I'm looking for, I think. There's a woman involved; she accuses Bodie of not listening to her her, and she's right, though seconds later he lies and says he is; he's watching the sparrow, and what he's thinking about the sparrow is (as we find out) an echo of what his relationship is with Ray.
[...]
The whole story is in Bodie's voice. No other POV, no authorial voice, the whole thing is the way Bodie looks at the world, and this how Bodie sees Doyle...
[...]
Part two leaps in without warning into a Macklin scene, and I think this is the only structural fault in the story; there's not enough coherent linkage between part one and part two.
[...]
Looking at his face, not his naked chest, out of habit; avoiding the nakedness, the scars, but habituated to Doyle's face: this is one of Sebastian's best gifts, showing how someone who doesn't show love, does love.
[...]
And once again, I sort of thought I could guess what would happen -- if Sebastian, using the usual fanfic models, had played them by the usual fanfic rules. By fanfic rules, Doyle -- discovering that another man could find Bodie attractive -- would figure out automatically how Bodie felt about him and how he felt about Bodie.
[...]
Pay-off. Continuation of the hurt/comfort syndrome. Is Doyle uncaring, unaware, or what? Bodie doesn't know. We don't either. All we know is what Bodie knows, in a fumbling sot of way, that he loves Doyle and that he's content, in a particular kind of way, with this payoff: once in a while they meet for dinner, Bodie brings a porn video, and Doyle jerks off. Bodie gets to watch.
And that's the climax and the twist and the ending; the sex scene that (because we're slash fans) we were waiting for through the story, the acknowledgement of love, backhandedly and onesidedly.
Oy, she's good. [1]
stickily, poignantly bittersweet. shocking cold bits in there, though. [2]
References
- ^ from a much longer, very detailed review (by Jane Carnall) with excerpts printed in Discovered In A Letterbox #19 (2001), which in turn was a reprint of a post that "appeared on a discussion list"
- ^ The Pros recs; archived link