Wonderful Tonight

Fanfiction
Title:	Wonderful Tonight
Author(s):	Sebastian
Date(s):	1995
Length:	237K
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	The Professionals
Relationship(s):	Bodie/Doyle
External Links:	online here
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Wonderful Tonight is a Professionals slash Bodie/Doyle story by Sebastian.

It was printed in Bene Dictum #3.

The story won a Huggy Award in 1995.

Some reviewers found Angel in the Dark an (unintentional) near-au version of Wonderful Tonight -- Angel in the Dark is what happens when Bodie and Doyle don't have Kate Ross (the psychologist of CI5) to talk through their messed-up relationship issues with: "In a number of ways ANGEL IN THE DARK could almost be an a/u version of Sebastian's "Wonderful Tonight"....(Or vice versa—I know WT was published first, but they were probably both in progress at the same time.) There are some very interesting parallels between the two works."

It is in Bene Dictum #3 in 1995 and archived online in 2004.

The story sometimes appears on fans' Desert Island lists.

This was the first Pros fic recced at Crack Van.

In 2008, shootingtokill created photo-manip tributes to the story which can be read here, ^{Archived version} now offline and here, ^{Archived version} now offline.

Summary

The story is difficult to summarize. It follows Bodie and Doyle across the series, tying back periodically to events happening on the show, exploring their growing relationship, and how their understanding of relationship changes both men.

As one fan describes it:

It charts the relationship between [Bodie and Doyle], with Bodie in utter denial and Doyle pushing for acceptance. And it's got one of the better uses of the oft-maligned Kate Ross that I've seen in fanfic.

Author's Notes

"Without a doubt my favourite of my own stories: I loved making it tie in with the episodes so it follows loosely the structure of the series, I loved elaborating on the enigmatic Kate Ross and the whole psychological set-up with its opportunities for seeing the Bodie-Doyle relationship through other people's eyes, I loved the freedom to explore alternative sexual practices that arose quite naturally for these two men who love each other with no limits. And I love the upbeat, no holds-barred, exuberant ending. Yes, they do live happily ever after."

Reactions and Reviews

Unknown Date

Sometimes you want someone to break your heart in such a fashion that you don't know it until the end. Well, nearly the end anyway. Sebastian writes Bodie and Doyle so well. I want to be able to write like that one day. (I never said I had reachable dreams.)

1995

Things I didn't buy [at ZebraCon]: BENE DICTUM: NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. I read the editorial. It said clearly, "if you're looking for romance, look somewhere else", so I did. People who have screened it for me have said that I can safely read the Sebastian story, but not the other two stories. Am looking forward to borrowing it. NO HOLDS BARRED #10. Having been disappointed with earlier all-Pros issue #4 and even more so with #6, I let others screen this for me first, too. The reports so far are not in agreement, however. All readers liked Courtney Gray's novella, but I'm getting differing opinions on the other stories, from "Courtney's was the only good story in it" to "most of the stories are okay", so I have no idea what to make of this. Obviously, I'm going to have to take a look, if only for the novella.

Has anyone else read this yet? Opinions?

I have the identical reaction myself. "Bodie and Doyle, smoke pot? I don't THINK so," I say with certainty, then Sebastian writes them talking about it and it's as easy as pie to imagine Bodie getting high... I wonder at my silliness for not understanding that before. I REFUSE TO MESS UP THE STORY FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN"T READ IT, so... "OTHER" things she has Doyle do, or want to do, or whatever... same reaction. Part of me *sincerely* wants to go ICK!!! and instead I think, "Huh" without judgment or discomfort.

Sebastian lets us see men who aren't censoring their behavior for women WHO WE STILL LOVE. She shows us all the things that make them men, without in any way making them unappealing, and that's such a *weird*, unique trick....

TINY SPOILER: I laughed my ass off when Doyle, at one point, said, "I won't come in your mouth."

I just finished 'Wonderful Tonight' from Bene Dictum; Noughts and Crosses.

How can Sebastian do that? She takes most of the yucky stuff that I think twice about reading about and makes it into something so character-revealing and wonderful that I want run around the house crying 'Yes, yes, yes!" I haven't had this reaction since I first discovered slash.

This was a lovely story by one of my favorite writers. Sebastian can do things with words that constantly amaze and astonish me. Primarily from Doyle's point of view (shifts in pov between Doyle and Kate Ross, the other "primary" pov, were splendid), this story gave me "real men", doing believable things, having problems with their lives, girlfriends, relationship--and getting through it. Often in *very* sexy ways.

Sebastian has a real talent: she can "show" so well that she almost never has to "tell". She "shows" so well that I see the picture she's painting with words, and this story was wonderful, in what it showed me. Bodie being Bodie at his best/worst: ("ooh look, Ray, lambs"--says the young too-sweet girlfriend of Doyle's ... "yum yum," Bodie replies, just because he dislikes her, "mint sauce, anyone?"). Doyle being almost... perverse, in a completely believable way-- and *that's* Sebastian's trick. She can permit these characters to do *anything*, without ever losing her grip on their characterization or the believability of their actions. One perfect line amongst many: "...Bodie. I promise I'll do better by you this time." (I *think* that's a direct quote)

VERY HAPPY ENDING, too!!!

I read Sebastian's "Wonderful Tonight" first and it was truly wonderful.

I can't think of any fan writer who can probe and dissect the psyches of B & D better than she can. She always manages to come up with seemingly new and fresh insights into their characters. Even when those insights are somewhat unsavory or even downright uncomfortable, they all seem to fit into a larger, intricate whole that's always fascinating. I think she makes them more interesting and more complex than they ever truly could be. You could read this story many times and discover something new with each reading. "Wonderful Tonight" has an exhilaratingly happy ending, thank god,

because...

I read "The Same River" by Helen Raven next.

1996

[Wonderful Tonight] was wonderful. I oohed and aahed throughout it, and it approached perfection in what like to see in a slash story. Sorry, I can't articulate it more than to sigh happily at the end of it.

This is another story that generated a lot of debate on this list after it came out. Personally I like the story, it does hit my fannish kinks quite a bit, though it leaves some of the characterization holes a bit wide and unprotected, something that I generally don't expect from Sebastian. I can see Ray being blind, but would he be *that* blind? I can see there being the willingness to trust and rationalize, but for *that* long? It basically puts a toe over the believability line for me in the characterization of Doyle, but not so far that I'm unable to enjoy the story. I also like the use of Ross in this and Cowley's half-listening, mostly totally ignoring of her, which we see in the show. I do have to say that while I enjoyed the unabashedly happy ending--which is a good way to end this very dark zine, so you don't immediately head for the medicine cabinet--I wonder about how Bodie-and-Doyleish the very last scene with them is. Especially in comparison with the rest of the story. I did find the 'kinky' scenes interesting and totally believable, but perhaps I wouldn't have noticed the toes going over the line so much if the resolution of the main problem didn't seem to come too easily, too quickly.

In a number of ways ANGEL IN THE DARK could almost be an a/u version of Sebastian's "Wonderful Tonight" (in BENE DICTUM: NAUGHTS AND CROSSES). (Or vice versa -- I know WT was published first, but they were probably both in progress at the same time.) There are some very interesting parallels between the two works.

There are, indeed. Wonderful Tonight frustrated me because I couldn't tell if Doyle was an unreliable narrator, or just stupid. (i.e., too stupid to contradict Bodie when Bodie said something exactly the opposite as something Doyle's POV had noticed earlier...).

This novel frustrated me (or rather, the Bodie and Doyle in it annoyed me) because I was never sure just what either of them thought (even Doyle who, though the POV character, isn't a very verbose or self-aware one). If Katherine wants to play (and I know she sometimes goes a few weeks without reading her email), I'd love to ask her a few questions about what she was trying to say/Doyle was really feeling at times...

1998

Both the Mfae and Sebastian stories....are well rooted in today's CI5 and I enjoyed them both for their realistic portrayal (to me) of Bodie and Doyle working to build a relationship amongst the violence and insecurities of their lives as well as for their writing styles which, at times bordered on poetic. "Wonderful Tonight" was the first full

length story I read out loud to my SO on a long drive. The trip ended before we finished it and he kept pestering me to "tell him what happened.

1999

Haven't read it, don't intend to. From what I've heard, it's not my type of story, and I don't quite believe her characterisations. I'm sometimes willing to forgive her the stretches because her writing is so good, but she often just takes me icky places with them that I don't want to go. Not that they aren't a possible B&D, they're just not the ones that I like to see most often.

Comments: First, it's extremely well written, and has some lovely scenes in it. But on the whole, I didn't really care that much for the story.

During the first half of the piece, I kept wanting very badly to take Doyle and shake him, hard. First, for being so incredibly dense about the gender thing (I mean, it fairly shouts off the page), but mostly for being so damned passive. Bodie repeatedly treats him like crap, and he does *nothing*. Over and over (too many times, in fact, I think, like being hammered on the head) we get this scene: Bodie and Doyle have sex. Bodie says or does something afterwards to make Doyle feel like shit. Bodie feels happy. Doyle feels depressed. Okay. Even when they're not having sex, Bodie says crappy things to Doyle. Not once does Doyle fight back. He never confronts him about it, he never *does* anything--he simply mopes a lot. I had to wonder after a while if Doyle's infamous temper had gone on holiday for this story. What gives here? Did I miss something? A passive Doyle just doesn't work all that well for me.

Things marginally improved in the second half, because they finally got some semi-decent confrontations going, though they always seemed to end too soon, before really getting to the heart of the matter. The main thing that bothered me in this part, though, was the kinkiness. Maybe I have a low "kinky" threshold, but this stuff consistently made me go "ooh, ick", and "oh, *yuck*". Very little of it was in the least bit erotic or even titillating to me, merely unpleasant. And some of it was highly unpleasant. I *was* impressed by what I'd call the "maleness" of the sex scenes--that seemed more realistic than most of what you find in slash. She simply crossed a line for me when she got into the flirting-with-necrophilia thing. Not much, but enough.

The other thing that annoyed me was when Doyle *finally* called Bodie on all the crappy treatment he'd gotten earlier, with a very nice litany of charges, and I was thinking, "Oh, good. At last. Make the bastard face up to it, make him explain himself, at least make him *apologize*." But no. Instead, Bodie brushes it aside with some line about how "it never happened that way." Excuse me? Wait a second--as I recall, we got very clear scenes showing Bodie saying and doing things to Doyle that were extremely nasty--and this never happened? Are we supposed to conclude that Doyle, who has the POV through much of the tale, is a *completely* unreliable narrator/observer? Did I miss something *again*??? I just don't get that. How can Bodie utterly deny that he treated Doyle badly? And how can he later go on to claim that he loved Doyle? When did we ever see any evidence of this? How did he show it? I sure as hell missed it, right along with Doyle. So I guess he *must* have been a completely unreliable narrator. Suffice to say I found this rather confusing. But well, at least it had a happy ending.

Oh, yes, it also really bugged me that she skimped over Doyle's shooting. I did like the way she wove other episodes in and out, and she actually managed to get Ann Holly in there without annoying me, which is quite a feat. But the shooting--when I realized there were only a few more pages left, I thought, "Oh, well, she's going to skip that entirely, as if it never happened in this story, because she doesn't have time to do it in so few pages." And then wham, there it was. Blink a few times and you might miss it. *Tons* of important relationship stuff should have happened as a result. But it's all presumed. Obviously it brought them closer together, but this all happens off-stage. I felt cheated there.

I enjoyed reading it, and was continually being blown away by the quality of the writing, the style, the smoothness, the well-turned phrases, the unexpected words that were exactly right. But at the end, I felt oddly distanced from the story, and from the characters. I read something very polished, very *interesting*, but not involving--it failed to hit me in the gut. Mainly, I guess, because I was waiting and waiting for that big confrontation/explanation scene over Bodie's treatment of Doyle, and never got it. Close, but no cigar.

2003

Why this must be read: for the final, emotional pay off, that makes all the angst-ridden and complex build-up worth reading. For the insights in the psyche of these two trained killers, and the tenderness that can be found in them were you willing to look deep enough and hard enough. For the very kinky, very hot sex :)

For the use of canonical characters in a canonical way, for making you believe this could have happened. For exploring sex and turn-ons but never hitting you over the head with it. For making you want more :)

Holy mother *fans herself*

This is the best story (fic is way too reductive for something like this) I've ever read in any fandom. I'll certainly be going through the others by Sebastian

And the guys are fanta-bloddy-astic.

And you're right, darker and far more complex than any LOTR stuff.

I have to say, I have read stories in other fandoms, and although of course there are great authors and great fictions, still I find that the quality of most writing in Pros is particular. Well, we do have the name of being a *very* harsh fandom that rips stories and writers apart (not true, but we do believe in criticism) and if this attitude gives us writers such as Sebastian, I'm all for it ~g~

I've never seen a single episode of The Professionals, but on the strength of this rec, I read Wonderful Tonight. I am in total awe! This is exactly the kind of story that I love: complex, character driven, and just damn good writing. Thank you for reccing this and I'll be reading the other stories next.

I enjoyed this very much, phantomas. Honestly, the first 15 pages or so I wasn't sure if it was going anywhere interesting, but the payoff was fantastic. Really solid writing, though my only quibble would be the paragraph long POV changes in the mind of otherwise static POV scenes. A very compelling story, though. The men compliment each other beautifully.

2006

Why this particular quote? Well, of all the different versions and images there are of Doyle in canon and fiction this is about my favourite one. With just a few words Sebastian manages to create an image of Doyle who can stay in my mind for days. And this is a Doyle who isn’t feminised, isn't selfish, moody, ratty, or a snivelling-on-Bodie’s-shoulders-type-of-Doyle, but a Doyle who is quietly heroic and totally prepared to face his own death in order to save the life of his partner. And the last bit.........Bodie driving in the night to Doyle's flat where he finds him lying alone in the dark,...... (they) found something which had taken them both by storm - I *love* that bit - and who wouldn’t fall in love with him?

How had it all started?

Bodie was thinking this, looking out along the empty darkened street, remembering the first time.

Routine stuff really: he had infiltrated a ring…….only someone had rumbled Doyle……sentenced to death in someone’s flat by a firing squad of two he had kept up his façade to the end, fighting and protesting to the very moment he was left, blindfolded and tied, against the wall.

Then he had gone quite silent.

Bodie, sweating ice, did not have to imagine what that silence cost him, he was fighting the same battle………so they had sweated on it. Ice and blood.

Eyes on that jeaned figure against the wall, defiant and cold to the last.......Bodie would not have blamed Doyle for breaking down, falling to his knees, crying out for mercy:.........but Doyle had shown the deepest, steadiest courage: he had simply waited, without a word, or a breath. And nothing had happened...........

Bodie had driven then after midnight to Doyle’s flat, found him there awake in the dark. Still in darkness, in silence, they had come together, found something which had taken them both by storm.

Something they had not been able to leave behind."

2010

One of my favourite stories by my favourite writer. Wonderful Tonight is a glorious long account of the complicated journey of Bodie's and Doyle's relationship. It's sexy and hard-edged, but intensely loving, just like the two of them. Angsty and complex like much of Sebastian's mature work, it's one I continually return to, not least because the ending is the pay-off I most desire, giving me exactly what I hope for throughout the long narrative.

This story has one of the best uses of Kate Ross I've come across. She works for me here, as she often doesn't in stories. The insights she provides are obvious, but her speaking them at certain times moves the characters, particularly Doyle, forward.

"Let me get this quite clear," she said at last, quiet and uninflected. "You and 3.7 take two girls away for, what, four days. In that time, you have sexual contact with your girlfriend, twice, and with Bodie, six times."

Put like that--

This typical wryness of Sebastian's threads through the story and adds another level of enjoyment.

2019

It was one of the stories highlighted by shooting2kill in "Visions of Bodie and Doyle. Heroism: the highest and purest form of romance"