To quote emo!Tenth: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

If you're not a fan of the Goodies - this probably won't make much sense. If you are a fan of the Goodies and my icon doesn't make you go 'eeeeeeee' - you probably shouldn't read this. If you're not a fan of comedy-fluff-slash - you probably shouldn't look below the LJ cut. If you don't have a secret love of Tim being a really crap feminist - you probably shouldn't go any further. I refuse to take any responsibility for anyone's horror and/or disgust.

Oh, cripes. I can't quite believe I wrote Goodies-slash.

Title: Courting Disaster (1/2)
Fandom: The Goodies
Pairing: Graeme/Tim. I KNOW, OKAY.
Rating: Hmmm, adult-ish. Slash is stated but not explicit.
Word count: c. 11 0000 in total
Continuity: Continuation (of a sort...) of episode 2x10, Women's Lib. I hope all the necessary continuity points will be sufficiently explained - let me know if they're not, I'll correct it next draft.


Courting Disaster: I

“Bill?”

“What?”

“You don’t think we might be being…just a teensy bit hasty? At all? Do you?”

Bill glanced back over his shoulder, found his top-hat blocked any form of peripheral vision, and slung it nonchalantly into a passing hedge. It’d made him look like an exclamation mark anyway. The vicar, who had been running alongside them for the mile or so since they had left the church which had almost been the site of his and Graeme’s double wedding, was beginning to go an interesting scarlet colour.

“Nah,” he shouted back over the noise of the wind whistling past, as the trandem powered down the country lane. “He’s got a good few m.p.h. in him yet. These old models, you’d be surprised how many miles you get per gallon of Communion wine. Anyway, it’s good for him.”

“Good for the skin?” yelled Graeme from somewhere in front, steering a somewhat erratic but generally Cricklewood-bound course.

“Probably,” Bill yelled back. “Look at that lovely healthy glow.”

“Really?” bellowed Graeme. “But it’s quite mild for the time of year!”

“…it’s July.”

“Yes, I just swallowed one too!”

Bill paused for a moment. At least, he paused as far as speech was concerned. If he’d attempted to pause in his peddling, the results would have been, in order: 1) Torn trouser-cuffs; 2) Bloodied shins; 3) The three of them (and, presumably, the Rev. George Throckmorton and St Olave’s and All Angels, Cholmondley) being violently precipitated into the nearest ditch. The trandem was a cruel mistress. “You can’t really hear a word I’m saying, can you?”

“Well, tell him to do it quietly, at any rate!”

“What?”

“What?”

Tim tapped him on the shoulder. “What did Graeme say?”

Bill counted to ten. It didn’t do any good to lose his temper on the trandem. It always won.

“He said he thinks the Vicar will be fine.”

“You fibber!” Graeme shouted.

Bill poked him sharply in the small of the back, making their path homeward for a moment even more erratic than usual. “If you kept your mouth shut, you wouldn’t catch so many flies in it.”

“True, but not very practical,” said Graeme, breezily. “When we get home I’ll start work on a simple oral filtration unit that Tim can use – a bonded polycarbide shell, I think, with an oxygen-exchange membrane – “

The rest of the monologue was, thankfully, sufficiently breezy that it was whipped past Bill’s ears and away.

“But we can’t make the poor man run all the way to Cricklewood!” Tim insisted.

“Why not?”

“Because the chain’s chafing my arm something rotten.”

Bill considered that. “All right, fair enough.”

“Anyway, I don’t much like the look of him.”

“I expect he doesn’t much like the look of you either. Not in that get-up.”

“Ooh, you bitch,” Tim hissed, somewhere in the vicinity of his left ear. “I’ll have you know that this outfit is the height of feminist-activist chic!”

“More like the height of feminist-activist shi-“

“Sir, I would thank you…to moderate you language…in the presence of a…lady!”

Bill looked back again at the perspiring priest, puffing along beside the bicycle. “Don’t you go encouraging him! He’s loony enough already! For one thing, he’s not a lady – “

“I believe…sir…that any member of the…fairer sex…has the right be considered…a lady…until proven otherwise,” the Vicar went on between gasps. “No matter how…unladylike…her demeanour…or how masculine…her attire.”

“Believe me, mate, it’s not nearly as masculine as what she’s got underneath,” Bill muttered.

“Pay no attention to him, Father!” Tim shouted, in as coy and ladylike a voice as was possible under the circumstances, and leaned forward to say over Bill’s shoulder, “At least he isn’t as reactionary and mired in the dictates of the patriarchy as some people I could mention.”

“I am not mired in anything!” said Bill, aggrieved. “I only bathed last week!”

Tim made a little ‘hmmph’ of displeasure. “I still think we ought to stop and let him off. He’s going a very funny colour.”

“You are…too kind…madam,” panted the Rev. G. Throckmorton. “For does not…the Good Book say…that sooner shall a camel…pass through the eye of a needle…than an Anglican priest…shall win the hundred metre dash?”

“Amen, Father,” said Tim, piously.

Bill glanced back again. The priest’s scarlet face was now more closely approximating to puce. “Maybe you’re right. Probably not a great idea to drag a dead priest behind your bicycle through north London. He’d never fit into our parking space for one, and it’s always me who ends up having to pay the tickets. Have you got the key handy?”

“…ah. I wondered if that was going to be a problem.”

The little strangled noise, as of penguin attempting to swallow a stickleback, was all the outward manifestation of annoyance that Bill could allow himself. For the present. But the minute they got back to the office, he was going to start on the best china. Including Tim’s coronation mug.

Especially Tim’s coronation mug.

He leaned forward towards Graeme.

“You’d better stop at the next phone box. Tim wants to get rid of our guest.”

“…and if you could include some sort of acid bath for dissolving the flies, then I think following the example of the Venus Flytrap – what?”

“I said, STOP – “

The arc which the Goodies (and the Rev. G. Throckmorton) described as they flew from the sharply braking trandem into the nearest convenient ditch was the elegant curve of a swallow in pursuit of midges.

“- at the next phone box,” Bill finished, levelly, attempting to extricate himself from a sizeable plantation of goosegrass.

“You should have said,” said Graeme, as reproachfully as could be managed with one’s legs somewhere in the vicinity of one’s ears. “What do you want a telephone for?”

“To call a locksmith.”

“What do you want a locksmith for?”

“To open a lock,” said Bill, through gritted teeth. “Unless you happen to have a pair of bolt-cutters on you?”

“Don’t be silly, why would I have a pair of bolt-cutters?” asked Graeme, reprovingly. “I haven’t needed them since I started carrying my pocket oxy-acetylene torch.”

* * *

“Shouldn’t we have some sort of protection for our eyes?” asked Tim, as Graeme fiddled around with the pressure regulators on the two tubes which ran from the torch’s cutting-head, one into each of his trouser pockets. Tim hadn’t liked to ask where they went after that. It didn’t seem polite.

“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,” replied Graeme cheerfully. “Just keep your eyes shut, you’ll be all right.”

“But shouldn’t you have some sort of protection for your eyes?”

“No need. I’ll have my eyes shut too.”

Tim whimpered, quietly.

The meadow would have been a very pleasant place to spend an afternoon if it hadn’t been for the imminent danger of first-degree burns and, perhaps, disembowelling. Graeme had assured him that if anything went wrong then the cutting flame was so hot the wound would be cauterised instantly, so there was really nothing to be worried about. Tim couldn’t help but feel that he might be missing the point.

“Stop whimpering,” called Bill from where he lay in the shade of the hedge. “You’ll scare the birds.”

“It’s all right for you,” Tim snapped. “You’re not likely to find yourself in two neatly cauterised pieces in the next few minutes!”

“It’s your own fault for chaining yourself to the Vicar in the first place,” said Graeme, examining the steel links. “You could have waited for ‘if anyone knows of any lawful impediment why this short hairy idiot should not be joined to this woman, or this tall dashing genius should not be joined to this computer, in holy matrimony’, like everyone else does. You could just have lain down in front of the brides and started a quick chorus of ‘we shall not be moved’. You could have started a letter-writing campaign. But oh, no, not you…”

“I was overcome by the excitement of the moment,” said Tim, with great dignity.

The Rev. G. Throckmorton was sitting as far away from Tim as the chain would permit, getting his breath back amidst the long grass. The sun was shining. The bees were humming. Whatever birds had not been fast or intelligent enough to escape Bill’s dedicated stalking were singing merrily. All in all this would, Tim reflected, be a bloody stupid way to die, even by his standards.

“I don’t want to die,” he commented.

“We are all in the hand of the Almighty, my child,” said the Vicar, comfortingly, before adding, “I don’t suppose any of you chaps have any oil of chrism about your persons, do you?”

“Whatever for?” asked Graeme, fussing over the cutting torch with a preoccupied and worryingly anticipatory expression.

“Well, I always think that it’s better to be safe that sorry where the Last Rites are concerned. If it turns out that you’re not actually going to die and so didn’t need them, then there’s no harm done, but if on the other hand – “

“I don’t want to die,” Tim repeated, at a rather higher pitch.

“Look, you’re not going to die,” said Graeme firmly. “Now, closed your eyes and sit very still. I’m almost certain this won’t hurt a bit.”

Miraculously, it didn’t. The feeling of a 3000°C flame about a foot or so away from his back was hardly comfortable, true; and the juxtaposition of the roar of the torch, the Vicar’s quiet prayers, Graeme’s occasional ‘Oops’s, and Bill’s cries of ‘Did you see that linnet? Beautiful swooping flight…’ was more than a little unsettling. But it didn’t hurt. Tim obediently kept his eyes screwed tightly shut, and thought very hard of England.

There was a clinking noise, and the heat and noise of the cutting torch ended abruptly.

“Done!” announced Graeme. “Or least I think it’s done. Either that or your chastity belt’s got loose again.”

“Oh, thank God!” said the Vicar, more fervently than was perhaps the wont of Anglican priests.

“Tim?” Graeme enquired, putting his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Tim, can you hear me?”

“My whole life is flashing before my eyes,” said Tim, distantly, his eyes still tightly closed. “Don’t distract me, I don’t want to miss the interesting bits before I’m interrupted by my inevitable death.”

“Fast-forward to the bit with Big Nellie from Cockfosters,” called Bill from his hedge. “That’s about as interesting as it gets.”

Tim’s brow creased, and he opened his eyes. “You know, he’s absolutely right,” he said, puzzled. “Gosh, what a disappointment.”

“That’s what she said.”

“If you would be so good as to excuse me, Madam,” said the Vicar, pushing himself to his feet cumbrously and unwrapping the truncated chain from around his torso. “I will take my leave. If I make good time, I should be back in my parish in time for Evensong.”

“Of course, Vicar,” said Tim, scrambling up from the ground and hastily smoothing the grass-seeds out of his rather rumpled wig. “And – well. Sorry about chaining myself to you. It’s not your fault you’re a representative of the repressive patriarchy. And – well, I think you’ve been jolly decent about it.”

“No need to apologise, my dear lady,” said the Rev. G. Throckmorton, taking Tim’s hand and pressing it in a fatherly way. “I’m glad to see that there are still young people of principle and conviction amongst the younger generation. If you do ever decide to marry, I would be honoured to put myself and my church at the disposal of you and your lucky husband.”

Tim smiled, and blushed, prettily. “You old charmer!” he giggled.

“Reverend, I don’t think you quite – “ began Graeme, before the priest drew himself up with much the same expression as Gideon must have worn before engaging the Hosts of Midian.

“As for you, ‘sir’, I would suggest that you keep a more civil tongue in your head when conversing with such an intelligent, charming and decorous young lady! Good day!”

It should have been difficult to make a dramatic exit from an open field; perhaps the swish and sweep of the cassock through the long grass helped. Bill’s giggling certainly didn’t.

“I don’t know what you’re laughing at,” said Tim, coldly.

“Tim, for the last time – you are not a woman!” growled Graeme, pulling Tim’s second-best wig from his head and tossing it over the hedge, where it was promptly eaten by an inquisitive goat. “You are a man. M-A-N - man. What are you?”

Tim sniffed. “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

He fluffed his own short, fair hair a trifle awkwardly – for some reason removing the wig while retaining the flared jeans and brightly counter-cultural tee-shirt made him feel oddly out-of-character – and sat down again, cross-legged.

Graeme stood over him, arms folded in a manner reminiscent of two pipe-cleaners mating, and looked down on the bowed head and hunched shoulders.

“Anyway,” Tim went on, pulling up a buttercup in a desultory manner, “when I said we might be being a little hasty, I wasn’t really talking about the trandem.” He toyed with the little golden flower for a long moment, and Graeme began to dismantle the cutting equipment. “Charles was quite a good-looking man, wasn’t he?”

“Well, yes, I suppose you could say - what?”

“I mean, he’s older than me, yes, but that can have its advantages. And he’s already got a grown-up daughter, so it wouldn’t really matter if we didn’t end up having any children – “

Graeme stared down, eyes almost as large as his glasses. “But – he’s a man!”

“Yes?”

“And you’re a man!”

“Must you always keep harping on that?”

“It isn’t legal!”

Tim sighed, and tied the stem into a complicated knot. “How can the law alter what the heart dictates?”

“And it isn’t very nice!”

Tim looked up at him, archly. “At least Charles has a pulse, which is more than can be said of your paramour.”

“She had a pulse!” Graeme insisted. “It just happened to be measured in hertz rather than beats per minute! Anyway, I told you – under British law they can’t touch you for touching your computer.”

“It’s still disgusting,” Tim sniffed.

“There, you see! You’re just as prejudiced as everyone else!”

“Perhaps I just think that a mature relationship between any two or more consenting adults, irrespective of technical gender, should be given the recognition it deserves,” said Tim. “That does not extend to carnal relations with items of hardware.”

“Oh, come, that’s prejudice pure and simple!” Bill piped up, lying back on the flowery bank and watching the blackbirds rustling through the branches above. “What a man gets up to with the egg-whisk and the lemon-juicer in the privacy of his own kitchen is his own affair.”

Tim thought about that. “Well, yes, all right. But that doesn’t mean he has the right to marry the hoover. No matter how tempting that may be.”

Bill turned his head to look at Tim sideways. “Upright or cylinder?”

“Now you’re just being silly,” said Tim, reprovingly.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Bill admitted. “You’d never get the dress to fit a cylinder.

Graeme pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes. He had the nasty feeling that he had been outside the lab and in the Fresh Air for too long. Surely it was the surfeit of Fresh Air, full of pollen, microbes, dust and insect-life, which was giving him this rotten headache. “Could we please attempt to return to the matter in hand?”

“Forgotten what it is now…” Bill muttered, closing his eyes.

“I was just saying that Charles is a very wealthy, attractive and charming man, and I’ve got every right to marry him if I want,” said Tim, firmly.

Graeme sat down on the grass, awkwardly arranging his long limbs in such a way that as few bony joints as possible were being attacked by hummocks of grass, tree roots, and occasional rocks. “Look, Tim – even setting aside the wedding night – please God, let’s set aside the wedding night, when even your ingenuity would surely not suffice to prevent your new husband from realising there was rather more to you than met the eye – “ He paused for a second, distracted and filled with a sort of morbid fascination by the mental images, before shaking himself violently awake. “Even setting that aside – not to mention the attendant legal, moral, ethical and sartorial difficulties – you don’t actually want to marry him.”

Tim picked another couple of buttercups, and studied the pool of reflected gold in the palm of his hand with minute attention. “Ho would you know?”

Graeme paused. “Because you don’t like – I mean you’re not – are you?”

“Not what?”

“Well – you know – “ Graeme whistled a couple of cryptic notes, and made strange semaphore signals with his eyebrows. Then he began to gesture in an abstract but oddly suggestive manner. “You know – “

“I’m not sure I do!”

“Not that I think there’s anything wrong with it if you are,” said Graeme, hastily. “I mean – not that there is anything wrong with it. But – well, it would come as a bit of a surprise – “

Tim paused in the act of plaiting a wreath out of buttercups and daisies, and looked over at him with wide eyes.

“No, all right, maybe it wouldn’t,” Graeme went on, each sentence coming out a fraction faster and a fraction higher. “Not that that means anything. I mean, there’s no reason a man can’t make daisy-chains today and go out with his best girl tomorrow. Not that I’m saying that you’re any less of a man if you don’t go out with your best girl, or any other girl for that matter. Or that you’re any less manly if you don’t make daisy-chains. I mean, I frequently don’t make daisy-chains myself. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. Some of my best friends make daisy-chains. Lovely day, isn’t it?”

“Yes?” Tim hazarded.

Graeme laughed nervously, and inserted a finger between his overly tight collar and his neck.

Bill sighed and sat up. “What he means, Timbellina my old son, is – are you gay?”

Tim frowned. “I’m – generally quite cheerful, if that’s what you mean. What difference does that make?”

Bill buried his face in his hands, and began to giggle uncontrollably.

“Bill, come on – give me a hand here!” said Graeme, pitiably.

“Not a chance!” Bill managed, in a rather choked voice. “You can field that one for yourself!”

Graeme push his hands into his hair, as if debating whether to extract a handful or two. “You see, Tim – when a man and a man love one another very much – “

“I don’t mean smut!” said Tim, quickly, going very red. “I mean – remember what you said before, about the soul being more important than the body?”

“It was you who said that!”

“Exactly!”

Graeme opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it again. “I think this discussion is threatening to turn into the argumental equivalent of a Klein bottle. Shall we start again?”

“Why should it matter if Charles and I aren’t – physically compatible?” Tim went on, with passion. “If we can see the beauty of one another’s souls, and meet and mingle on a more spiritual plane – “

“There’ll be no meeting and mingling if I’ve got anything to do with it,” said Graeme, primly. “Anyway, have you ever considered that your husband might not share the same exaltedly Platonic views as you? What then, eh?”

“Then he can jolly well keep his grubby paws to himself! Why should every marriage descend into – “ He lowered his voice. “- rumpy-pumpy?”

Graeme rested his chin on his updrawn knees, and regarded Tim with wonder. “You know, against all the odds, your marriage may yet turn out to be the only one in the country actually approved of by Mary Whitehouse.”

“Our life together will be one of harmony, simplicity, intellectual intercourse – and absolutely no other sort,” Tim stated, with great dignity. “And if that means that I’m forced to take up a life of ease, comfort, fine wines, polo and solid silver dinner-services, then so be it. I’m prepared to make that sacrifice.”

“Ohhh, so that’s it!” said Bill, surfacing from his giggles in time to shake his head admiringly. “You sneaky little swine! This isn’t about a person’s right to marry whoever they want to – it’s about you getting a cushy retirement!”

“Of course, a rotten little Commie like you couldn’t begin to understand the nobility of my feelings,” said Tim, raising his chin loftily. “You have to reduce everything to the level of sordid gain.”

“Come off it,” said Bill, scrambling over to crouch next to Tim and grinning into his ear. “You took one look at the size of his – tracts of land – and got that greedy little gleam in your eye.”

“Oh, and so what if I did?” Tim muttered, his expression of cold hauteur dissolving into a scowl. “I have to think about my future! I’m not getting any younger, you know. How many more proposals like that do you think are going to come along?” He turned his head to sneer in Bill’s general direction. “I’m not intending to work myself to a shadow running around after you two for the whole of my life. ‘Tim, get me a cup of tea!’ ‘Tim, cook my dinner!’ ‘Tim, dust my whatnot, it’s got fluff on it!’ Ohhh no! I’m young, I’m free-spirited, I’m beautiful – stop laughing – and I’m not going waste my youth on you thankless bunch!”

“So that’s all this is about?” asked Graeme. “A retirement plan?”

“Of course that’s not all,” said Tim, standing up and absently brushing the loose petals out of his lap. “Unlike you two, I don’t particularly want to end up old and alone. With Charles, I can imagine a day when we sit around the fire, him a white-bearded old grandfather, me – “

“- a white-bearded old grandmother – “ put in Bill.

“- precisely – “ continued Tim, gazing into the cornflower sky with a hazy expression. “Us and his daughter and our ten or twelve beautiful golden-haired grandchildren playing with the puppies on the floor, all with the fine Brooke-Taylor profile, carrying on the honourable traditions of the name – “

“How do you imagine the children are going to get your profile?” queried Graeme, before an expression of more than mild horror crept over his face. “You can’t mean – “

“Oh, no, they can do wonderful things with adoption these days,” said Tim, gesturing vaguely into the middle distance. “And I shall knit them a new jumper for every birthday, and when at last my time comes to leave this world, I shall be surrounded by those angelic faces, their eyes full of tears – “

“- their fingers in your wallet - ” said Graeme.

“Oh, how could you possibly understand!” said Tim, rounding on him passionately. “You’re a cold-hearted scientist – there’s nothing in your heart but cogs and gears!”

“Thank you,” said Graeme, pleased.

“But look here, Timbo,” said Bill, standing up (and thus making himself almost as tall as Graeme sitting down). “You don’t need to marry Charles to have all that. There’s still plenty of time for you to find the right girl! I mean, I haven’t met Pan’s People yet, and I just know that when I do I’ll have found the five or six girls that are right for me, and then I can think about settling down.”

“Have you both gone out of your little minds?” demanded Graeme, launching himself to his feet with the grace and elegance of a newborn fawn. “I thought we decided that we’re happy to be bachelors gay! Only not in that sense.” He prodded Tim with an accusatory finger. “And what was all that back at the church then – about how it was demeaning for women to chain themselves to a hot stove for the rest of their lives and spend their time bringing up horrible sticky little babies?”

“Oh, that’s only a problem for poor people,” said Tim, cheerfully. “Charles and I will be able to afford staff to do those things for us.”

Graeme groaned. “It’s amazing. You actually have double standards on your double standards.”

“Come on, Tim,” said Bill, grabbing hold of his friend’s elbow and steering him firmly in the direction of the trandem. “Time to go home.”

“But I’m still not sure – “ began Tim, plaintively.

“Look, if you still want to marry Charles tomorrow, then we’ll think about it,” Bill soothed. Then he looked back at Graeme, trudging along behind, and caught his eye.

In unison, they mouthed the word ‘Loony!’

* * *


Part 2

A/N: This is my first attempt at writing the boys. I don't think they're quite right yet, and I don't think I've yet got the hang of writing for such a visual series in a textual medium. Still, practice makes etc etc.

In other news: I'm so, so sorry.