Raymond Doyle didn't think he'd ever been quite so embarrassed. It had been years since the last time he'd spent an evening out in a pub with his cousin Huw Evans, and now that he was here, he remembered why. His cousin had an embarrassing habit of singing bar songs when he was drunk. Not just any bar songs either. They were the ones he'd been introduced to whilst at medical school. Ray had often wondered if it were the Welsh in Huw that caused him to sing so much.

"If you ever go across to old St Swithins, old St Swithins.
You are sure to hear sweet singing from a far, from a far…"

Ray looked across at Bodie. Bodie didn't seem to be showing the same kind of embarrassment, or maybe he was just hiding it better. He took another sip at his beer. Any hopes of pretending he wasn't with Evans were spoiled by their close proximity to each other and the fact that they looked like they were brothers, if not twins.

"And the students going down behind the bar, behind the bar.
But don't ever go for a massage with the matron.
Nor accept an invitation from the dean
If he has you up for sherry in his study…"

Doyle looked across at the young lady who was sitting at one of the tables looking at them with an air of innocence and felt she shouldn't be introduced to the rest of Evans little song. "Huw." Doyle warned.

"I've forgotten the rest anyway." He admitted.

"I haven't." Doyle countered.

They noticed a free table and headed towards it carrying their drinks. At least if they were seated they'd be less noticeable than when they were standing at the bar.

"So what d'you do at the hospital?" Bodie asked with interest once they were seated.

"Oh all sorts of things. Why?"

"So you don't specialise in maternity then?"

"No. Why do you ask?" Evans asked suspicious.

"Well I've got a pain in my shoulder."

"Oh really?" Evans said with an air of disinterest.

"Yes really."

"You never told me about that Bodie." Doyle broke in with concern.

"Don't worry it's only my left one. Do you think I would risk getting my little golly hurt?" He asked in a teasing manner.

Evans watched the by-play with amusement. He was especially fond of the way Bodie seemed to have an endless list of silly names to call his cousin. It reminded him of some of the things they'd called their older cousin, Alan. Never to his face of course.

Bodie once again brought Huw's attention back to his aching shoulder.

"So what d'you want me to do about it then?" He asked, as if he couldn't guess.

"Take a look at it." Bodie replied as though it was obvious; which it was, at least to Huw, since he was constantly being asked by friends and family to take a look at their ailments.

"It's my day off." He pointed out.

"So?" Bodie asked, with the air of a man not familiar with the concept of days off. Which considering CI5's policies of calling agents in on their day's off is hardly surprising.

"So I deal with sick people at work, not at home. I mean, d'you catch criminals when you're off duty?"

"Yeah sometimes."

"What d'you mean off duty? We're never bloody off duty at CI5." Doyle elaborated.

When Ray returned from the toilets Bodie was just setting the drinks on the table.

"Where's Evans?" He asked.

"I haven't the faintest idea. Didn't he go to the toilets with you?"

"No he didn't. I thought you were keeping an eye on him."

"I didn't realise he required keeping an eye on."

"He does when he's that drunk."

"He's over twenty-one Ray. He'll turn up. Have a drink." Somehow Bodie couldn't convince himself that Ray was likely to follow that suggestion.

"I can't just leave him wandering about on 'is own. What if he has an accident? For all we know he could've been kidnapped by one of our enemies the moment we weren't watching."

"I was only at the bar Ray. I would have heard if he screamed."

"Yeah well they could have lured him away with a couple of pints."

"Alright then lets go."

"What?"

"That's what you want isn't it? For us to drag ourselves out of this nice warm, comfortable, cosy pub and go look for him."

"Yeah, thought you'd put up more of a struggle."

"Never get any peace if I did."

"That's true. What about the pints?"

"Oh we'll drink those first. I don't think they'll have a doggy bag for us to take them with us."

They didn't find Evans until the early hours of the next morning. He was in the process of putting a traffic cone onto a statue's head and an empty beer bottle into it's outstretched hand.

"I always wondered who did that." Doyle said speech a little slurred by all the alcohol he had consumed that night, "I always thought it was students."

Evans was mumbling to himself in a drunken stupor. He looked like he could use propping up so they each took hold of an arm to support him between them.

They wound up taking Doyle's inebriated cousin back to his flat where he proceeded to pass out on his own bedroom floor. Doyle stumbled towards his cousins comfortable looking bed and promptly passed out on it. Bodie looked down at Evans, noting his position on the floor and wondered whether he should try and shift him to the bed. Then he realised quite selfishly that if he did that he'd end up sleeping on Evan's rather uncomfortable looking couch, so he decided to let sleeping dog's lie and deposited himself onto the bed beside Doyle.

Evans awoke sometime during the night with the realisation that he was lying on a hard surface, he was cold and he needed to pee. Deciding to attend to the latter problem first, he leapt to his feet as quickly as his intoxicated body would allow and proceeded to head for the toilet. He happened to look at the bed and noticed that his cousin was wrapped up in Bodie's arms. His fuzzy brain mused on it while he peed. That was something he had never expected. That his cousin was gay and sleeping with a man; he had the impression they were close but hadn't expected them to be that close.

The question remained what to do with that knowledge. Should he let on that he knew about them or should he pretend he didn't know a thing? He smiled as he wrapped himself up in a spare blanket and settled himself onto the couch, then promptly fell into a deep sleep.

When Bodie awoke he discovered that he was cuddling a golly. Curly hair was tickling his chin and he realised that Doyle had his head resting on his shoulder. He lay wondering exactly at what point he'd started cuddling his partner, and decided that his arms must have unconsciously reached out for the other warm body in the bed. After all it had been cold the night before; Bodie rationalised.

He lay there a while not wanting to get up and then his aching bladder grew too much for him. He managed to extract himself from beneath his friend without waking him. As he left the room he noticed Evans lying on the couch wrapped in a blanket.

Once he had attended to his call of nature, Bodie was uncertain what to do. It was too late to start going back to bed now and besides he was feeling hungry. Feeling slightly ashamed at rummaging for food in Ray's cousin's home (for some reason he felt it was reasonable behaviour to ransack Doyle's cupboards), he decided that it wouldn't be quite so bad if he made everyone breakfast.

"Come and get it." Bodie shouted waking both Doyle and Evans from where they had passed out the night before.

"What?" Doyle muttered.

"I've made breakfast." Bodie replied.

"He any good?" Evans asked Doyle.

"No." Doyle replied sleepily.

"Oh that's very nice after I've been slaving away over a hot stove all morning." Bodie grinned and then continued, "speaking of which, bore da."

"Pardon?" Asked Evans confused.

"It's Welsh."

"Is it?" Evans asked slightly amused.

"What you doing up so early for anyway? You fall out of bed or something? Never seen you cooking much either."

"Woke up early didn't I? Nothing to watch on the tele and there was nothing else to do."

"Should have left the cooking to him." Evans said pointing proudly at his cousin, "Make someone a nice little wife one day, he will."

"So what did you make?" Huw asked, as he and Doyle stumbled along to the kitchen where they found the strange combination of odours.

"Breakfast a la Bodie."

"What's that?"

"Just slung a few things together." He placed the plates down on the table.

"Bloody hell, what's that?" Evans asked his voice rising to a slightly higher tone, when he couldn't identify what was lying on his plate.

"I'm not sure, I found it in one of your cupboards."

Evans couldn't think of anything he'd bought that could even resemble some of the things Bodie had cooked up for breakfast. He only hoped it was edible, it certainly didn't look very appetising.

"It's a bit too much for me, mate, I usually only have toast in the morning." Doyle said quickly.

"Yeah me too." Evans added.

Bodie looked at them both with a slightly hurt expression, then down at his concoction and tipped it into the bin.

They were sitting in Huw's living room eating slices of toast and making a mess with crumbs, when Doyle spotted something he hadn't noticed before. It looked like a stuffed ape and it was wearing a hat and scarf.

"What is that?" He asked, pointing at the creature in question.

"That's Muriel, the mascot for the St Swithin's rugby team."

"And what is she doing here?"

"They were getting a new mascot. They said she never brought them luck."

"And why have you got her?"

"No one else would take her."

"I'm not surprised."

"Oh don't be like that. You'll hurt her feelings. Never mind the nasty man, Muriel."

Bodie had been using the slight distraction caused by the discovery of Muriel to steal more than his fair share of toast.

Evans noticed the last slice of toast disappearing into Bodie's mouth and decided that it was the perfect time to act on what he'd seen the night before. "So Bodie, when are you going to make an honest man out of my cousin and marry him?"

Their reactions to his question proved to be very amusing.

The End

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