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We men are wretched things.
— Homer, The Iliad
The desert shifts with the wailing wind, scorching sand cooling and rearranging itself in preparation for the night.
The men are drunk on rum as usual, chattering in groups. Paddy rests on one of the crumbled stone walls surrounding their new base. He feels like a ghost here, like a dead man walking, as old as the ruin and equally, if not more, worn.
Eoin is gone, swallowed up by the same sands that saw him into Paddy’s heart proper.
It’s a perilous business, loving another man. It’s dangerous in peacetime, and more so in war. Paddy should have known that, should have guarded himself against this ache.
He should have done a lot of things.
Should have kept Eoin away from all this, away from the madness that flows through his veins. Should have at least known a hopeless mission when he saw one, not argued in favor of it.
Should have had courage.
In his desire to stand beside Eoin, in life as well as in the field of battle, Paddy led him to his doom. Protestant or Catholic, no God will ever forgive him for this. Not that he would ask for such a thing. Paddy knows what he is, and where he is going; his only hope now is to drag a shitton of fascists down with him.
The fading of the sunlight makes the world around him dark blue. If Paddy tries hard enough, he can pretend that he’s at sea instead of in the middle of fucking nowhere desert, and that the nausea rolling through him is caused by waves, not loss.
He hears a scraping sound and locks eyes with Stirling. The officer climbs the rest of the way up and settles next to Paddy.
“There’s food,” he says. His eyes are hooded with exhaustion. It might create a softer, friendlier image, Paddy thinks, were it not for the shadows making the cut of his jaw appear sharper still. “You should come down and eat before the hungry bastards divide the rest amongst themselves.”
Paddy averts his eyes and focuses again on the dark sand. Stirling’s gaze leaves his face after a beat, turning towards the earthy waves as well. Paddy wonders if he is thinking about the ocean, too.
They sit in silence for a long while before Stirling reaches out and gives his hand a careful squeeze. He is visibly tense next to Paddy, no doubt unsure whether the touch will be considered a welcome comfort or a punchable offense. Paddy thinks about Eoin’s hand in his, lifeless and cool to the touch the first and only time he dared to hold it right, and finds that he doesn’t have the will to fight.
Not today.
Not when Stirling’s meaning is so clear. He knows what Paddy lost, must have figured it out when he stumbled to the campfire half a man. Or maybe he knew all along.
“How?” Paddy asks, his voice coming out in an uncomfortable rasp. It’s the first word he has formed in what feels like forever.
Stirling shrugs, eyes still trained on the endless horizon. “It was in the way you looked at him.”
Paddy nods. There is no need for secrecy or coded language out here. There is only death, men, and the sand that drinks their blood.
“Were you two –”
Paddy shakes his head. He never told Eoin, never asked.
“I’m sorry,” Stirling says, and sounds it, too. “For what it’s worth, I think he –”
“Not another fucking word,” Paddy growls.
A pause.
Then, quieter, “I don’t think he did. Not in the same way as I.”
The irony of Lewes opening up about his romance woes to him of all people is not lost on Paddy. He had a half a mind to knock him on his arse when the topic was first brought up but managed to restrain himself somehow.
And now… Well, now Paddy mostly just feels sorry for him. Two weeks without a response to his marriage proposal and the man is the picture of misery.
“Could be lost or delayed in the mail,” Paddy says. “Or…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to; the sentiment is already reflected in Jock’s grimace.
He turns his head towards the cloudless sky and sighs. “Suppose she doesn’t love me anymore and thinks me a fool for proposing?”
“It’s better,” Paddy grits out, “to have dared.”
It doesn’t do, for a man to head into battle with a hidden heart. Such a thing is a heavy burden, and the work they do requires of them lightness of feet just as much as it does the sharpness of their teeth.
He is a hypocrite, but there is nothing he can do about that now; no one to receive his soft mumblings or loving words. He will carry the weight until death comes to claim him. Lewes, on the other hand, still has a chance with his Mirren.
Jock watches him for a beat, considering. Then a smile breaks across his face. “Better to have dared indeed.” He motions towards the tent he shares with Stirling. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have a letter to write.”
Paddy does not, can not, know what will become of the pair. His nature tends towards pessimism and heartbreak, but only time will tell the true story.
Later that day, after Stirling’s challenge, Jock grabs a hold of his shoulder. Paddy bristles in an instant, ready to defend the game, but Jock simply gives him a lopsided smile. “Who dares, wins,” he declares before turning around and jogging over to his team.
“That from a book or somethin’?” Paddy calls after him.
Jock waves a hand, not bothering to turn around. “I’ll tell you after!”
For Jock, there is no after. His body lies somewhere on the sands, a husk of meat and bones and ligaments left behind to bake and rot in the sun.
Abandoned as per SAS protocol.
Paddy hangs back and watches as Stirling falls apart in front of the men. It isn’t until he has walked off on his own that Paddy joins him.
“So,” he says, addressing the officer’s rigid back, “only the dreamer and the madman left. Who the fuck is gonna be the sensible one now?”
No reply comes, but it doesn’t matter. Paddy thinks about a careful touch of a hand, and stands his ground.
Over the following days, Paddy’s thoughts frequently return to the matter of Jock’s letters to his sweetheart. He wonders if the words were worth it, if knowing will make the loss easier or harder for Mirren to bear when she hears what has befallen him.
Perhaps pessimism was right, and she doesn’t care for him. Maybe there is little mourning to be done.
He hopes it is so. For her sake.
When the rest of the men head to Cairo on leave, Paddy begins his search.
He lies down on the sand in the place where he feels Eoin’s spirit near, and closes his eyes. He pictures his friend’s face: the laughter lines around his eyes and the concentrated look he got when he focused on a poem Paddy was reciting to him.
Paddy thinks back to their chess games and piano lessons, to teasing words and warm touches, some innocent, some intentional. He remembers his elation at their closeness and his yearning for them to be closer still.
“I miss you,” he says to the night sky, to Eoin. “Thought about joining you but,” he swallows roughly, “didn’t think you’d want me to stand down.”
The wind steals the words from his lips.
The letter is weeks late, courtesy of the goddamned military mail service.
Stirling is the one who finds it. He reads it first, cursing under his breath and darting out of the tent once he’s done. Paddy spends a few minutes simply looking at the discarded piece of paper from across the tent. He stares at the tight cursive and the heart Mirren has drawn on the envelope. He knows he shouldn’t read it, certain that the process will only work to deepen the hollow in his chest, but does it anyway.
Dear Jock,
I received your letter this morning and I danced. I actually danced with the letter in my hand as if it was you I was dancing with. Of course I will marry you, Jock. Of course I will.
Paddy closes his eyes and grits his teeth in frustration. The conversation they had before Jock’s last mission replays in his mind. Suppose she doesn’t love me anymore, the man had said, and thinks me a fool for proposing?
What a fucking joke.
God is cruel, Paddy muses, for bestowing upon a man both his heart and his doubt.