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The first thing he notices is Eve.
Eve who, despite all odds, has seemed to find herself with her heeled feet on the dashboard of a jeep, one ankle elegantly tucked over the other. She looks every bit a silver screen actress in some flick about Italy.
A fine scarf around her hair, sunglasses perched on her nose, and lips painted umber. He’s seen this film a few times and it doesn’t get any less compelling, try as he might.
But there’s someone beside her.
If Eve’s from the movies, this boy is straight from a folktale. An elfin smile on his face, skin glowing like moonlight, cheekbones high in a manner that has always suggested to Bill someone might not be of the mortal realm.
Bill Stirling watches, with growing horror, as the jeep stops half atop the body of a German officer and this long-legged fae of a creature gets out.
And runs straight into the arms of Paddy Mayne.
It’s somewhat akin to watching a dog walk on its hind legs.
Paddy, a genuine smile brightening his face, hands gentle as he tugs this boy closer by the waist, shaping him like a willow to fit against his body. The boy just laughs, lolling in Paddy’s arms like he’s not in the jaws of a beast.
“Well,” the boy says, and his voice has a certain musical quality to it, lilting as Paddy wraps an arm solidly around his hips. “That’s gone better than expected, hasn’t it?”
Bill’s not sure how such a conclusion could possibly have been reached. Termoli is pockmarked with holes, buildings shattered into rubble, and littered with the bodies of the dead.
Paddy is apparently of the same opinion.
“Gone a bit touched in the head, have you?” Paddy asks, pulling back a little to give the boy an incredulous look. “I’m never going to hear the end of it from those cunts.”
Bill’s very clear exactly which ‘cunts’ Paddy is referring to. And he’s the ringleader.
As Paddy looks up from the same pretty face that’s had Bill mesmerised, a scowl appears on his own. Their gazes meet.
“Took youse fucking long enough, didn’t it?” Paddy barks, a proprietary hand curling around the boy and shifting him to the side. “Stop for tea, did you?”
Bill barely resists the urge to roll his eyes, if only because it would be unbecoming of an officer. “We arrived as quickly as we could.”
The boy looks at him curiously.
Paddy’s bristling like a kicked dog.
“All’s well that ends well,” the boy suggests to Paddy and receives a dirty look for his troubles.
None of this has ended well.
“Eoin - let me introduce you to the Colonel,” Paddy starts, fingers still fisted in the fabric of a beige uniform.
Bill knows he’s about to be insulted.
“This is Bill Stirling - David’s less impressive brother. In every way.”
Bill sighs. He’d expected as much.
“Well, he’s better looking,” this boy, Eoin, offers as if it’s some kind of gesture of peace and not a deeply unsettling statement. “Pleasure to meet you, sir.”
Sir.
He’s one of the more polite friends of Paddy’s that Bill has met.
Paddy looks disgusted. Bill can feel heat spreading across his cheeks.
Eoin remains smiling sunnily, as if he hasn’t said anything unusual.
Bill remembers now why the name is familiar. David had written to him, mourning the loss of Paddy’s last remnants of self-control and painting a picture of a devastating tragedy of lost love.
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” Bill asks, and then curses himself for such an insensitive question. Social graces were always more David’s area.
Eoin doesn’t take offence, even as Paddy’s lip curls back. “Just took a bit of a tumble, that’s all,” he says, as if that explains it. “It turns out that jumping from the back of jeeps is not actually particularly similar to jumping from a plane. Forgot to roll."
Paddy’s gaze is dark at the mere mention of Operation Squatter. Bill can’t help but notice he’s kept his grip on this boy as if he might disappear in a gust of wind.
“You probably could have scored yourself a ticket home,” Bill says, frowning a little. There was certainly no need to have journeyed piecemeal from wherever he’d been, trailing after the SAS.
“Aye,” Eoin says. “But Ireland’s dreadfully boring without this one.” He nudges Paddy with his hip and, to Bill’s surprise, draws a soft smile from him.
Bill’s of the opinion that Ireland would probably be dreadfully boring regardless of its inhabitants. But then he realises, as the two men stride off in the direction of where Sergeant Almonds is organising clean-up and hopefully food, that’s he forgotten to tell Paddy when and where to be for the follow-up briefing.
He huffs, curses his own treacherous brain, and stalks forwards after them.
–
It’s actually alright, Bill decides. Having this McGonigal fellow back among the lads. Sure, it’s entirely against protocol for him to have showed up and inserted himself back as an officer within the unit.
But it’s done wonders for morale and the boy’s exceptionally competent.
Further to the point, he’s keeping Paddy Mayne mostly in line. Not because he’s some sort of drill sergeant or moral cornerstone - but more because Paddy’s usually trailing around after him like a loyal hound.
There’s no more pre-dawn tolling of the bells, that’s for sure.
Sometimes, it almost seems as if he’s strangely pleasant. Offering Bill a bread roll over the table in the mess and pouring him a glass of red wine from the rectory, he smiles like a púca.
“Catholic, are you, Bill?” Eoin asks, and Bill wonders if perhaps the wine is strong or if he’s simply lost all of his tolerance for the drink.
Paddy bristles. “Don’t even think about it, boy.”
Eoin ignores him and tops up Bill’s glass.
–
If there had ever been any doubt as to the precise nature of Paddy and Eoin’s relationship (which, Bill reflects, there really hadn’t been), it’s entirely eroded when Bill strides into the room Paddy has claimed as his own and sees Eoin pressed up against the dark timber wall. His pale skin, almost ghostly, makes it clear just how naked he is, though he’s partially covered by Paddy pressed up against his front.
The sight of Paddy’s bare arse is not one Bill hasn’t seen before, but he’s certainly never seen it like this. For one, there’s a slender thigh hitched around Paddy’s hip. The muscles of his arse flex as thrusts up into a keening Eoin.
His hands are tight in Paddy’s hair. The slapping sounds of skin are absolutely obscene.
Eoin's head falls back with a moan and then those heated, dark eyes meet Bill’s.
There’s no panic to his expression. Instead, it’s more like curiosity. Perhaps a tinge of amusement.
“Do you like to watch, Colonel?” he asks, a little breathless.
Paddy’s head snaps around.
His eyes narrow as they meet Bill’s and he watches as Paddy makes sure his body is covering Eoin’s.
“Oh, fuck off, will you?” he grunts, like he’s not just been caught buggering his lieutenant.
“I…” Bill’s not entirely sure what to say.
Paddy’s always been an insubordinate little bastard, but he’s certainly never seen a soldier engage in such blatant sodomy.
“Or you can stay and watch, you bloody pervert,” Paddy adds, and then his mouth returns to the pale skin of Eoin’s throat, and Bill is helpless but to just watch as he resumes thrusting up into Eoin’s willing body, moans escaping the both of them.
Bill’s not completely ignorant to the ways of the world. He’s married, after all. But his wife has certainly never made the kinds of noises Eoin is making, hitching whines and breathless moans like he can’t stop himself from crying out in pleasure.
The anatomy is different, of course. Is that, Bill wonders, why it seems to feel so good? He doesn’t think Eoin is pretending to enjoy it like he’s heard whores do in their tumbles with his men.
“Oh, fuck,” Paddy groans as Eoin tugs him up by the hair, kissing him messily and allowing his mouth to be devoured by those perfect, pink lips.
It’s completely shameless.
It should be revolting.
And yet Bill’s cock is so hard in his trousers that it physically hurts to back away and retreat up the stairs, Eoin’s musical laugh following him out into the cold air of the night.
–
They don’t talk about it.
There’s no fear from them about being reported and Bill briefly wonders if he should be offended at the disrespect for his command.
Then he considers he’s got rather bigger fish to fry in the grand scheme of the invasion of Europe.
It’s just that he can’t seem to get the bloody image of the two of them out of his mind.
Paddy is his usual self. Rude, insolent, and entirely fucking mutinous. If anything, his glare has only gotten harder and more defensive on the rare occasions he deigns to make eye contact with Bill. Eoin, meanwhile, seems all too aware of the effect he’s had. He’s just as mutinous as his fellow countryman - only he hides it better. With sweet smiles and nods of his head, he continues to do as he pleases (and, often, as pleases Paddy).
Bill’s not entirely sure he understands them.
He’s well aware of homosexuals, of course, and their apparent prevalence in the military. Not that it’s a surprise, he thinks. After all, he’s received an excellent education in the classics and the Sacred Band of Thebes had been quite the enemy to contend with.
Until they’d been destroyed by Alexander the Great, of course.
Bill continues to watch them and tries to make sure that neither the SRS or 2SAS go the way of the Thebans.
-
It’s easier said than actually achieved to keep a group of reckless men from doing something so reckless it’ll inevitably end with them all dead and ground lost to the Axis powers.
Especially when the powers that be have decided in light of their resourcefulness that there’s really no use in keeping their detachments properly armed or properly instructed or properly replaced with soldiers to make up for the ones lying in foreign graves.
“Competence is a curse,” Eoin sighs, right before initiating a series of actions that lead to him swan-diving off a bridge they’ve just blown up.
Bill watches, eyes wide, and with growing terror as a far-off speck in the distance hurtles through the air and into the lake below.
He swings his head around, eyes wide, as Paddy appears not to react from where he’s reloading his gun.
When he finally raises his head, he meets Bill’s gaze with no sense of panic. “What?” he says, annoyed, and Bill nods into the distance.
There's still smoke in the air and bits of bridge collapsing into the water.
“Your Lieutenant,” Bill manages, through gritted teeth, when Paddy tosses his head impatiently at his lack of a verbal answer.
“Oh, he’s fine,” Paddy says, rolling his eyes. “Great swimmer, that one.”
Great swimmer, perhaps, but it doesn’t change the fact that that hadn’t been the plan. All their men were meant to have been well-clear of the bridge by the time the charges blew.
They certainly weren’t meant to have stopped to add further Lewes bombs to the other side of the bridge.
It’s careless and incautious, especially from an officer.
When all is said and done, Bill calls Eoin straight into the room that now doubles as his office, a desk shoved against the wall by his bed, and chews him out as thoroughly as he can for his blatant disregard of mission protocol.
Paddy, despite not being invited, watches impassively from the doorway.
Bill tries to ignore him.
Eoin stands straight at attention, curls still wet and dripping from his foray into the lake. It’s been a raving success in terms of objectives. But Bill can’t make himself forget the way his heart had seized up.
Maybe it’s that he hasn’t lost men before. Not in a unit as young as 2SAS. Maybe it’s that he’s scared of what will become of Paddy if he loses himself again. He’s aware that the Paddy he knew in the earlier stages of Italy was a man who’d had time to come to terms with the fact that Eoin McGonigal’s life had been cut cruelly short.
Maybe it’s that he’s sure the world would feel a little less bright in the absence of Eoin McGonigal’s easy smile.
One of the few smiles directed at him these days. And perhaps it’s naive for Bill to think of that smile as anything more than mocking, but it warms him all the same.
“I’m sorry,” Eoin says, not sounding sorry at all.
Bill opens his mouth, finger up and pointed and gesturing to emphasise the point he’s about to make (and this is Eoin, not Paddy, so there’s a chance the lad might even listen to him).
And then Eoin takes a step closer.
Closer until their bodies are nearly pressed together, beige against beige.
Eoin sinks slowly to his knees, the moment dragging on slow and sweet like molasses. Bill should step away. He should flee this room and the madness within. Instead, he watches, all too present in his body as his belt is undone and his trousers slipped down his hips.
“Lieutenant,” he says, voice shaking as he feels the ghost of warm breath against his cock. The room is spinning. He wants so badly, so easily he’s not even noticed until now how hard he is. “This is most irregular.”
Paddy snorts from where he’s standing in the doorway - on guard, as Bill realises now. Bill’s opening his mouth to tell him exactly where he can shove it when he feels a hot, wet mouth sinking down around his cock.
“Oh, fuck,” he groans, losing all sense of himself. It’s even worse when he looks down at sinful dark eyes and a red mouth. His hands twitch uselessly at his sides, unsure if he should be clutching something - a nearby chair? Eoin’s curls? This situation has never really occurred to him before. Certainly not in the middle of a war.
There’s a slick kind of friction and a vulgar gagging noise as Eoin sinks down further on his cock, pleasure arcing up his body in a way he’s not felt before. It’s wet and messy and Bill allows himself the liberty of putting a hand on the back of Eoin’s head. It doesn’t seem to be the wrong move. After all, Paddy’s not killed him yet.
And then Eoin’s hollowing his cheeks and Bill’s quite certain he’s about to pass out, all of his sense leaking from his cock. “Oh, that’s - oh, goodness me,” he gasps out, trying not to thrust forwards into the poor boy’s mouth. It’s a losing game, he’s sure of it.
Eoin pulls back, however, lips wet with spit, and brows raised incredulously.
“Did you seriously just say ‘oh, goodness me,’ while I’ve got your cock in my mouth?” he asks, mimicking Bill’s posh accent and looking entirely offended. This, more than Bill’s hand on the back of his head, seems to have rankled him.
Bill at least has the decency to look a little sheepish. It’s something he seems to reserve for Eoin.
“Well, I didn’t want to… offend you by taking the Lord’s name in vain.” He thought it had been considerate. “You being a good Catholic boy and all.”
“Aye, a good Catholic boy, is he? Giving head to a man?” Paddy barks from the doorway, finally stepping inside and closing the door behind him. He leans against it, making no move to get closer - or to take Bill by the head and wring his sorry neck.
“I kneel before the Father,” Eoin quotes, and Bill would be more horrified by the outright blasphemy if he wasn’t so distracted by a warm wet mouth back around his cock, Eoin’s tongue against the prominent vein, and creating a sensation so overwhelmingly pleasurable that Bill tips his head back against the wall and feels like maybe he has seen God.
“Christ, Eoin.” Paddy’s laughing like the devil he is. “You’re going to make the good Colonel embarrass himself. It’s like he’s never had a mouth on him before.”
The way Bill stills at this comment clearly has Paddy smelling blood.
“Has no one ever sucked you off?” Paddy asks, incredulous. “You’ve got a wife, don’t you?”
Bill is both flustered and outraged. “She’s a proper lady, she doesn’t do that,” he argues and Paddy snorts.
Regrettably, this conversation has also ignited the curiosity of Eoin, who stops what he’s doing to peer up at Bill.
“But what were you doing in boarding school, then?” He seems genuinely curious.
“It was Catholic school!”
Eoin tilts his head to the side like a confused puppy. “Yes?” he says, as if that’s exactly his point.
“Deviants, the lot of you,” Paddy announces as he sits on the edge of Bill's desk and is rewarded with a narrowly avoided smack to the balls by Eoin.
Eoin, for his part, rolls his eyes and resumes his previous all-consuming focus on Bill’s spit-slick cock.
Even if asked to recall the events of that evening, Bill’s not sure he could. It’s all a haze of pleasure and guilt and riding the knife edge of how much he’s allowed to touch Eoin before having his hands removed from his body.
-
Kneeling at the foot of the bed, Bill recites the Lord’s Prayer. Then, for good measure, he also goes into the Apostles Creed.
He can hear Paddy and Eoin whispering to each other where they’re both naked and tangled in the sheets. Of his bed.
“Do you think that’s a bad sign?” Eoin asks, hushed in the space between his mouth and Paddy’s.
“I don’t know, you’re the fucking Catholic. Have you ever wanted to pray after sex?”
“Not if you did it right.”
Paddy snorts and then there’s a wet sound that means they’re kissing again. Then there’s a deep sigh and the sound of the bed creaking ominously.
Bill places his hands on his knees and is contemplating if Hail Mary might absolve him of this sin when Paddy interrupts him, terse and frustrated.
“Stirling. Are you going to shut the fuck up about Hell and come have a cigarette?”
Bill raises his head. He’s fairly sure he’s consigned himself to the depths. The church had always warned it would feel good.
But this good? Even the saints couldn’t have resisted.
“The bed’s going to break,” Bill says, a little out of his mind as he raises himself to his feet. It’s not exactly a large bed - even though he’s chosen one of the nicer houses in the village to serve as his unofficial billet.
“That’s the spirit, sir,” Eoin chirps, then shifts until he’s half sprawled atop Paddy so that there’s room for Bill.
Somehow, it almost feels as if this is crossing more of a line than having Eoin’s mouth on him. Sharing a bed with the two of them. Listening to Paddy Mayne’s breathing even out, his hand resting on Eoin’s lower back.
Eoin smells like sweat and cigarette smoke and something sweet - perhaps the rosemary of his hair pomade. His side is pressed up against Bill’s - all sharp angles and slender limbs and firm muscle packed beneath pale skin.
Bill knows they’re only all in the same bed because it’s his room and Paddy and Eoin can’t be bothered to leave in the aftermath of their own orgasms. But there’s still an intimacy to it all as, despite his best efforts, he falls asleep with his head next to dark curls on the pillow.
David, he thinks to himself as he drifts off. Must you always get me into these messes?
-
Bill wakes up to the sound of kissing above him. Both Eoin and Paddy are propped up on an elbow, wet mouth against wet mouth as he slumbers beneath them.
There’s a sweet, lazy kind of heat to it.
Lovers. None of those other dirty words anyone could ascribe to two men.
Bill gets the distinct sense that there’s something about it that transcends modern morality or religion or norms. Like the Sacred Band, perhaps. A love that exists in poems and tales of heroism and stories about soulmates wrought from the same four-legged body.
He shifts a little and Eoin pulls back, ever-present smile on his lovely face. And then, absolutely confounding Bill’s still drowsy mind, Eoin leans down to ensnare him in a kiss.
It’s one of the most pleasant ways Bill has ever woken up.
A soft mouth on his own, a lithe body pressing closer and the sound of Paddy huffing at the lack of attention he’s receiving. He can’t help his own smile against Eoin’s mouth.
“Go on, then,” Eoin murmurs against Bill’s mouth, before withdrawing. “Aren’t you going to tell him good morning, Paddy?”
Paddy looks over at Eoin like he’s fucking insane. It’s actually a fairly regular look between the two of them. For all that Paddy’s mad as a cut snake, Eoin’s off with the fairies whenever he’s not actively fighting a war.
“No,” Paddy says, and Eoin rolls his eyes.
“Well, that’s not very civil,” Eoin chides, and Bill can’t quite make himself let sleeping dogs lie.
“That’s alright,” Bill says, leaning in and surprising himself when he catches Eoin’s mouth with his own. “It’s not him I want to kiss anyway.”
Eoin’s laughing against his mouth, kissing him back lazily right up until he’s interrupted by Paddy.
“Fuck you,” Paddy huffs out at Bill, before gripping him by the side of the face and leaning in to steal a biting kiss. This kiss goes on for longer than Bill expects. So far, he realizes, he’s only kissed Eoin. Paddy is rather more aggressive in his approach.
He doesn’t kiss Bill like he kisses Eoin. Instead, it’s a lot like their frequent arguments. Each trying to wrest dominance from the other, each ending unsatisfied as to who had won in the end.
It feels like playing with fire. Setting off a Catherine wheel and remaining in its path.
But Paddy pulls back, lips red, and looks at Eoin.
“Satisfied?” he asks, though he can’t hide he’s a little breathless.
Bill tries not to look smug.
“Oh, I’m grand,” Eoin says, and settles back against the sheets.
There’s a realisation, as Paddy meets Bill’s gaze, that this is Eoin’s world and they’re both just living in it.
-
“He’s all yours tonight. You should fuck him. He wants you to," Paddy greets him when Bill walks into their room, apropos of absolutely nothing.
Bill wonders if he’s walked into a dream. Maybe even a nightmare. He’s on the fence about its exact classification.
It’s just that he’s fairly sure he’d come here to tell Paddy something important and now he’s not got a clue what it was.
He hopes it wasn’t a meeting.
Eoin smiles at him from where he’s lounging on the bed, entirely naked, and then he casually looks away and goes back to his book.
Paddy remains in the armchair he’s dragged in from another room, smoking a cigarette and looking out the broken glass of the bedroom window, as if he hasn’t a care in the world.
Like he hasn’t just insinuated Bill might have his way with his….paramour.
Apparently not satisfied with Bill’s stunned silence, Paddy sneers, “Don’t delay, Lieutenant Colonel. There’s only a fucking war on.”
Bill still doesn’t really know what to think.
Eoin hasn’t looked at him again.
Paddy, however, meets his eyes directly. Clicks his teeth with his tongue and leans back in his chair.
“Or don’t, no sweat off my back. Just a fucking disappointment, isn’t it.”
Well. Bill really hasn’t come here for… that.
But he doesn’t relish being called a disappointment, he’s had quite enough of it from various authority figures and from his own internal monologue his entire life. He won’t be letting Paddy fucking Mayne be yet another to add to the list.
He steels himself, tries to ignore Paddy, and steps closer to the bed. Opens his mouth to speak and isn’t really sure what to say.
To his relief, Eoin discards his book off the side of the bed as if he wasn’t even reading it to begin with and rises to his knees. With a grip on the front of Bill’s shirt, he tugs him languidly down into a kiss. Mouth open, so easy and permissive.
Their encounters have been hurried and spontaneous until now. This feels different. It feels planned.
Bill holds Eoin’s face between his palms, traces his cheekbones with his thumbs. He truly is wickedly stunning, dimples and cheekbones and eyelashes all so elegantly formed. Bill has never seen anything like it, on a man or woman.
Before he can be accused of hesitation, he pushes Eoin back onto the bed, kneeling between his thighs and kissing him again, very thoroughly, on the mouth.
“You going to fuck him on his back like he’s your wife now, are you?” Paddy scoffs from the corner.
Bill splutters, heat rising to his cheeks. “I really don’t think Susan needs to be involved in this, if you’d care to leave her name out of your mouth.”
He had momentarily forgotten Paddy was even in the room.
“Go on then, Bill,” Eoin says, drawing his attention back with ease, smiling so prettily and batting those big brown eyes like he’s not a demon sent to tempt Bill from the path of righteousness. He’s freshly showered and he smells somewhat floral, and Bill’s mouth is near-watering at the sight of him spread out on the bed.
His pale thighs are littered with freckles and a few bruises. Between them, his cock is half-hard and glistening at the head. There’s a silver crucifix delicately hanging from his neck.
Oh, Bill is going to Hell.
Holding Bill’s gaze, Eoin slowly leans back on his elbows and spreads his thighs wide.
“Fuck me like you fuck your wife.”
Paddy is chuckling from where he’s gotten up and is pouring himself another drink. He lives to torture Bill. They both seem to.
“We both know Bill doesn’t satisfy his wife, lad,” he says, downing half a glass of whiskey and then refilling it.
“Maybe she doesn’t satisfy him,” Eoin says, tugging Bill closer by his belt loops.
It’s like an enchantment. Bill isn’t in control of his body as he leans down on top of him, kissing that soft mouth and burying a hand in dark curls.
Eoin kisses so sweetly it almost feels like it isn’t meant for him.
And maybe that’s because it isn’t. Eoin is Paddy’s and Paddy is Eoin’s and Bill’s somehow caught in the whirlpool of the two of them.
He runs a hand up Eoin’s naked thigh, feels how the boy shivers beneath the touch, and it gives him a bit more confidence. He’s seen how Paddy touches him - with such an easy sense of belonging.
Eoin welcomes his every touch.
Bill’s other hand comes up the side of Eoin’s smooth torso, holding his waist, and then drifting higher until he can thumb over a rosy nipple. He’s done it to his wife before and she’d seemed to like it. Eoin gasps against his mouth and, when Bill looks down, he’s smiling in delight.
“Do you like that?” Bill asks, ignoring the snort he can hear from Paddy behind him.
“Ignore him,” Eoin murmurs, dragging Bill into another kiss. “I like it. Do it again. Harder.”
And who is Bill to ignore such a request? Groping at Eoin’s flat chest, he thumbs across one nipple and then another until they’re both reddened. There’s no shying away from his touch, no secret to pleasing the boy beneath him.
Emboldened, he dips his head, dragging the flat of his tongue over a hardened bud and listening to Eoin whine.
“Aye, go on. Suck her tits, then. Christ.”
Paddy is egging him on, as if testing where Bill’s boundaries lie. But as Eoin’s leg hitches up around him, bringing his own hips up against where Bill is still clothed, he’s not so sure he cares what Paddy thinks of him. He’s too busy doing exactly what Paddy had suggested, listening to Eoin keen as he closes his mouth around a nipple and sucks.
Eoin’s head tips back and he moans. When Bill glances up, his cheeks are flushed red and his pretty mouth has fallen open.
“See,” Eoin murmurs, breathless. “He knows what he’s doing, Paddy.”
Bill looks over at where Paddy is watching them, fingers curled loosely around his glass.
Their eyes meet. There’s a challenge, as there always is, in Paddy’s gaze.
“Aren’t you going to eat your wife out?”
Bill’s eyes narrow. It’s clear from the hitch of Eoin’s breath how much the idea excites him. And, despite having never heard of one man doing it to another, he knows exactly what Paddy is asking him to do. For all that he’s the less reckless brother, he’s not going to let himself be outdone by Paddy Mayne.
Eoin almost startles as Bill shifts further down his body, thighs spreading to accommodate broad shoulders.
“Oh, you really don’t have to -” Eoin begins, and then cuts himself off with a cry as Bill hitches his hips up with a hand beneath them and buries his face in Eoin’s arse.
He’s only ever done this to Susan a few times and it certainly feels a lot different. But he supposes the general mechanics are the same - Eoin’s just a lot less wet and a lot more tight.
Bill brings up his thumb, stroking it over Eoin’s hole to feel him shudder, and then laves his tongue over puckered skin. He pauses, contemplates the lack of lubrication, and then spits on Eoin’s hole.
“Oh, fuck,” Eoin whines at the sensation, thighs spreading impossibly wider - an invitation that Bill can’t possibly refuse. He wonders how it feels, the hot, wet pressure as Bill's tongue presses against Eoin’s hole, teases around the edges and feels him tremble.
He figures that answer must be that it feels very, very good, based on the way Eoin’s squirming and is tightly clutching the sheets below.
“You know,” Paddy comments, sounding awfully far away when Bill’s got better things to focus on. “It’s a lot easier if you get him on his hands and knees.”
Bill pauses from where he’s been licking into Eoin. He’s trying not to let the image of Paddy with his tongue in someone’s arse distract him.
“Gentlemen don’t fuck their wives from behind,” he informs Paddy, a challenge in his own voice.
“Well,” Paddy says, “I’m no gentleman so I guess I wouldn’t know.”
“Then I’ll have to show you,” Bill condescends, and his mouth is back against Eoin’s and the boy is shuddering beneath him. He can feel desperate hands in his hair now, scrabbling for purchase against his regulation army trim, and then deciding instead to rake over his shoulders.
Eoin’s cock is hard, curving up towards his stomach. Bill hasn’t touched him there. It feels as if it might spoil this strange illusion they’re all participating in.
Still, the sight is gratifying. It’s akin to applause at the end of a performance. But Bill is nowhere near done. He’s not entirely sure what he’s doing, but Eoin’s response when he presses a finger into him is so enthusiastic he’s sure he’s not doing it completely wrong.
He feels something hit him in the side of the head and he gives Paddy a dirty look, even as he picks up the little tub of grease that’s been thrown at him.
“Go on, then,” Paddy says. “Make her nice and wet.”
It’s so wrong. And it really shouldn’t be as hot as it is. But the idea of treating a man’s arse like a cunt is making him ache in his trousers, a wet spot against the seam.
He covers his fingers in what feels like vaseline and then presses two fingers into Eoin’s hole. There’s less give than he’s used to, but Eoin is moaning with every movement of his fingers and he can feel the stretch as he spreads them, the pressure of Eoin’s heel against his thigh encouraging.
“More,” he pleads, and Bill’s certainly never heard such a thing from his actual wife. He leans down, kisses Eoin’s pretty face. “Shush, shush,” he tells him. “I’ll take care of you.”
And then he’s testing if he can fit three fingers into that slick, wet heat.
He can.
Eoin’s shifting and whining like he surely must do for Paddy, like he can’t help it, like he needs to be touched so badly he might die. He’d once thought that commanding men was the truest rush for his ego. But this is something else. Now he understands barroom talk about wanton women, men who brag about how many times they’d make a girl come under their tongue or around their fingers.
Bill crawls back up Eoin’s body and is surprised when the boy kisses him so eagerly, like Bill’s mouth hasn’t just been where it’s been. He’s so pliant and sweet and eager.
Bill wonders if he’s like this for Paddy.
The sound of his belt coming undone feels too loud in this room, shoving his trousers down his hips. It’s as if it cheapens the moment.
“Can I?” he asks Eoin, like he’s a teenager in the back of a car and not a married Lieutenant Colonel.
“Sorry, I didn’t realise this was your fucking wedding night,” Paddy gripes and then curses as Eoin tosses the tub of grease and nails him directly in the forehead.
Eoin is, after all, a founding member of the SAS. All would do well to remember that.
“You’re an excellent shot,” Bill tells him, and Eoin grins and tugs him into another kiss.
“Thank you,” he says, lashes dark and heavy against his cheeks. “And yes. You can.”
The angle is definitely new, but Eoin helps him by tilting his hips up, one leg curled up and over Bill’s own hip. From there on it’s not dissimilar from the first press of his cock into the wet heat of his wife’s cunt.
Except.
Except this is Eoin and he’s so clearly masculine beneath Bill’s hand and, god, everything feels all the better for it. He’s tighter and hotter and the squeeze of him around Bill’s cock is near overwhelming.
Even better is the open-mouthed keening coming from Eoin’s mouth as he presses deeper into him, flush spreading down from his cheeks.
It’s one of the most beautiful sights Bill’s ever witnessed.
There’s a low groan from by the window. When Bill looks, Paddy’s belt is unbuckled. His trousers are open and his cock is out, impossibly hard as he lazily strokes himself.
Just watching. Bill can barely keep his eyes off of him, even as he feels his balls, tight and heavy, pressing against Eoin’s skin.
He’s seen so many of the rawest human emotions on Paddy’s face. Lust, however, might be Bill’s favourite. Lust, even though Bill’s got his boy spread out beneath him. The dark of his eyes, the flush that spreads down his neck.
Paddy looks amused and perhaps a little surprised at Bill’s attention. He watches as Paddy spits on his palm, and then continues to stroke his cock, heavy in his hand as he takes another sip of whiskey.
Bill's been drawn into the games Paddy likes to play before, but it's never had such a thrill as this.
Then he's gasping as Eoin squirms, clenching tighter around his cock and clearly protesting the lack of attention. Bill's not even sure he won't embarrass himself and blow his top any second now.
“Bill,” the boy complains, tightening his thigh where it's hitched over Bill's hip. To hear his own name from that lovely mouth is nearly too much.
“Go on, then, sir,” Paddy drawls, and the honorific has never sounded so sarcastic as it does now. “Or am I going to have to step in and perform your husbandly duties?”
Bill can't help but bristle. Somehow, like most things between them, this has become a battle of wills.
“You, Major Mayne, know nothing about being a husband,” Bill snipes back and Eoin laughs beneath him like there's a secret he's not privy to.
Perhaps he should feel a little more self conscious about the look in those dark eyes. Like Eoin's lived a thousand lives he'll never know about or understand. But there's a sweet mouth waiting for him and he swallows Eoin's beautiful sounds as he rocks his hips into him, starting as slowly as he would with his wife.
Sometimes he'd felt with Susan as if he was fumbling in the dark. Unsure if he was doing it right. If she'd enjoy it, were their marriage full of romance and their sex life anything other than perfunctory.
Eoin leaves no such doubt in his mind.
Hands, marred with calluses borne of holding a rifle, travel from his hair to his shoulders, down his back, and then up again to cup his face. Eoin kisses him like a lover and whines into his mouth, rocks his hips down to meet Bill's every thrust.
There's a lewd slap of skin upon skin and Bill is entirely conscious of the sensation of Eoin's leaking cock rubbing against his stomach.
Bill can't seem to stop kissing him, even as it nearly interrupts his rhythm. Eoin doesn't seem to mind, arching up towards him like a flower turning to the sun.
Then, shifting them slightly, Eoin finds them a new angle and moans so loudly that Bill is looking around in near-panic.
“Don't worry,” Paddy says, amused. He's unbearably smug, lounging in that chair like a king. “The lads know what Eoin sounds like.”
The thought itself nearly has Bill over the edge. That others knew what Eoin sounded like in the throes of pleasure because Paddy let them hear across the silent night of the desert.
“More,” Eoin pleads and Bill's sure he'd burn the world down if only the boy would ask him right now. It's a scary thought. Men turned mad by love or lust. He'd always considered himself more rational.
Bill's helpless but to obey. He shifts his hips to keep the angle right and watches as Eoin falls apart beneath him.
“Tell her how pretty she is,” Paddy tells him. Commands him, really. Unbidden, Bill thinks briefly of Paddy in a maestro’s tuxedo, directing their fornication as if they were an orchestra at Royal Albert Hall.
Bill looks down at Eoin, sloe-eyed and lips reddened by kisses. “She already knows,” he says, and that produces a flash of white teeth and a mouth upon his own.
–
Weeks later, Bill stalks past the Royal Albert Hall and deliberately doesn’t look at it. The comparison of Paddy to concertmaster doesn’t have the right to occupy his mind when he has much more important matters to attend to. The city around him, marred by remnants of destruction, should remind him of that.
He has a full slate of meetings to attend today, and Eve has sent along an invitation to drinks tonight.
Bring your lovely wife. It’s high time I meet the family.
That’s what she’d written in her note, and Bill was regrettably not the one to receive the post this morning. As such, Susan had already taken the liberty of confirming their attendance.
She’d always been punctual and excessively courteous when it came to social events.
-
Afterwards, they gather on the pavement outside.
Drinks had been fine. Some posh place Eve was evidently a regular at, and the type of place Bill and Susan would have frequented in the early days of courting and marriage.
Inexplicably, however, Paddy had also been invited, and probably as a direct result, Eoin had shown up twenty minutes late with no explanation. He’d simply dropped down into an empty seat, kissed Eve on the cheek, and introduced himself to Susan with an utterly charming kiss on her hand.
At this point in the evening, Bill is more than ready to take his leave. He knows he’s lucky to have made it through the small-talk relatively painlessly, and he’s not prepared for that to change when he’s so close to getting away with a meeting between a spy, his wife, and the two men he’d slept with in Italy.
Eve drifts past him and Susan to extend her hand expectantly to Paddy where he’s lighting a cigarette. He eyes her hand as if it has personally offended him, but then huffs and places a cigarette into her waiting fingers.
“Much obliged, Paddy Mayne,” she demurs before sharing a laughing glance with Eoin, who meets her gaze with his own slightly drunken grin. He’s standing near to Paddy, but now he threads his arm through Eve’s elbow conspiratorially.
Paddy is muttering when he digs his cigarette case back out of his pocket to retrieve another. “Any more takers? For fuck’s sake.”
“May I assist anyone in finding a taxi?” The attendant approaches their group where they have gathered beside the street.
“Yes, thank you, two should do it,” Eve replies, then “Eoin and Paddy will wait with me but I expect you gentlemen will want to walk home this evening.”
Eoin confirms this with a nod.
“Thank you, dear,” Susan says to the attendant as he walks away to do his job. “And thank you to all of you for allowing me to intrude. It really is terribly interesting to hear of your work on the front lines. It gets very dull in London some days.”
Bill, who has been watching this strange group of people as though he’s not actually present, suddenly feels mortified that Susan regards the horrors they have witnessed as entertainment.
Something to occupy a housewife while she waits for her husband to return from the effort. He wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her close to him, trying to get her to stop talking. She does not take any notice, and instead directs her attention to Paddy. The war really has changed her.
“Major Mayne, do you have a wife? I’d expect a man with such a title doesn’t stay in the Chelsea barracks while on leave, surely.”
“Ah no, no wife for me, but I’ve got a girl back in the old country.”
Susan’s eyes brighten, desperate for gossip.
“She must be some lady, to have ensnared a man such as you!”
“Aye, she’s quite something. Exquisite, one might say,” Paddy nods, looking contemplative.
Suddenly, Bill senses danger coming. It feels just as it did in the jeep approaching Termoli, terrified of what he’s about to witness.
“Especially when I’ve got my mouth on her.”
Susan gasps, and Bill tugs her away from Paddy’s wide grin on instinct. But Susan devolves into giggles in an instant. Eve, who has maintained her trademark cool and collected demeanor until now, giggles right along with her.
The wives, or rather fianceé and wife, of the Clan Stirling delighting together in such crude humour while standing on the darkened streets of war time London, next to the personification of Bill’s own infidelity.
He almost needs a moment to adjust to the very real fact that war does indeed change everything.
For his efforts, Paddy has evoked Eoin’s dimpled smirk, smug as anything, and no doubt at this very moment imagining his Lieutenant on his hands and knees. Bill certainly is.
No. He left that behind in Italy. The three of them haven’t, and won’t, get another chance to be alone together, especially in London. Bill tightens his grip on Susan’s waist, perhaps his final and last fragile tether to the man he once thought he was.
Eoin’s eyes catch the movement and then keep falling back to where Bill’s thumb caresses her rib cage.
Susan and Eve have moved on to discussing something fashion related. Perhaps Eve’s undoubtedly chic wedding dress she’s planning for David’s anticipated eventual return to London.
Paddy has apparently noticed Eoin’s distraction, too. He meets Bill’s gaze and raises a judgemental eyebrow. Eoin isn’t being terribly subtle from where he stands smoking, eyes glued to Susan’s waist.
Clicking his tongue, Paddy kicks the side of Eoin's boot with his own, a movement that could easily be mistaken for an accident, but Eoin's eyes snap away from Bill’s so abruptly they might as well have made an audible noise.
“Come on, lad, the cars have pulled up. Escort your lady friend into her cab and we’ll finally go on the lash, as young men on leave are meant to do.”
He turns and mock salutes Bill with a cocky grin. Susan finds this delightful, smiling brightly as she drags Bill into the waiting cab.
–
Meetings drag on for weeks. Planning the invasion of France comes with a mountain of paperwork, it turns out.
Bill knows he’s moving around as if a ghost, entering meetings, stoically absorbing all the information given, and bringing it to the next set of meetings. He’s functioning in automation.
That is, until he hears plans for the SAS. They’ll be first on the ground, of course. But thirty-six hours ahead of time. It’s a surefire death sentence. And it means that he must spearhead a new campaign, this one waged in meeting rooms, and against his own side.
He sighs. He sends off a telegram that summons Paddy in from wherever he’s hiding away, no doubt some far flung corner of the British Isles.
With Eoin.
Bill tries not to think about that.
Eoin’s apparent jealousy as Bill had held Susan after their drinks has lingered in his mind.
He can’t make proper sense of it. They’ve made no effort to communicate with him since boarding their voyage home from Italy, and seeing both of them that evening had shaken him so much, he wouldn’t dare be the one to initiate contact. Jealousy, perhaps? Of Susan? Perhaps simply that Bill is allowed to stand here and hold her in the middle of a well-lit street while Eoin and Paddy must disappear in the shadows of the night.
They’re not afield anymore, there are societal rules one must follow. What they had was a mere convenience of circumstance, and Bill would do well to remember that.
He’s trying to.
–
“A rather grand old spy has invited me for drinks tonight, I understand you’re invited, too,” Bill says, over a crackling telephone to Paddy.
“Aye, I got a note. Cocktails at the Ritz. Did the grand old spy say what the meeting is about?”
“No. But I’m guessing it will either be a celebration, fond farewell, or an execution.”
–
Well, execution it was indeed.
“Your wee wife will be thrilled you’re to stay away from the fighting. Aye.” Paddy exhales smoke up into the dark sky, brooding.
He’d sent his crew home on stern orders. They’re shipping up to Scotland tomorrow bright and early. Paddy had only come across Bill chain smoking two streets away by accident.
Or perhaps, Bill thinks, a cruel final twist of fate’s knife.
Bill scoffs. “I should hardly think so. She’ll prefer to stay in London where she finds endless excitement with friends. I should like to retreat to Keir, I think.”
Paddy clicks his teeth. That infernal habit.
“I didn’t mean Lady Susan.”
Bill is momentarily rendered speechless. In his silence, Paddy continues, “He’ll be glad you’re not in danger. You don’t really belong out there… No, you belong in your posh manor, where he’ll imagine you buggering young boys in secret until you’re too old to get it up. And we’ll lay in pools of our own blood, as the fates would intend.”
“Paddy, I-”
Paddy suddenly chucks his cigarette to the ground, and grabs Bill by the front of his uniform, roughly shoves him back against the dark brick wall they’re standing beside.
“Don’t you fucking dare say anything,” he whispers harshly against Bill’s cheek, before roughly biting his bottom lip and then bodily dragging him down into a kiss.
Bill is too shocked to react. He hasn’t kissed Paddy since Italy, and it feels like a lifetime ago.
Paddy withdraws before Bill is ready for him to and pulls back. His grin is shark-like and without any kind of good humour.
“We shouldn’t have ever done any of it. We shouldn’t have-” Bill manages to say, and cuts himself off before he begins to sound more desperate.
“Fuck,” Paddy laughs out, sounding as if it was excruciatingly ripped from somewhere deep inside of him.
It’s always been a strange relationship, theirs. Somewhere it had grown into mutual respect. Somewhere, perhaps, it had even grown into a sort of mutual affection.
Bill’s once again disgraced the Stirling clan in the hierarchy of British politics, lost his job for his efforts, and he’s personally disgraced himself as well. No one is winning here.
He brings his hands up to Paddy’s neck, wrapping around the back of it protectively, as if he might shield him from what’s to come, before pulling him away to look at his face.
Paddy fights it. Hair disheveled, eyes red, and anger burning on his face.
“Go home to him tonight,” Bill says. “And neither of you think about me at all.”
Paddy doesn’t say a word, just meets his gaze head on, his eyes steely. Any warmth that was peeking through hardens and cools until they’re as absent of warmth as the rocky sand beaches of the Aran Islands. Where Paddy and Eoin had been reborn as something more than mere soldiers.
Bill watches as the bars shutter over Paddy’s face, one by one. Cutting him off, cutting him out.
Paddy backs away, smooths his hair
He nods.
“Aye. We won’t.”
Bill steps around him, grasps his shoulder, squeezes once, and walks away.
–
Outside of his London home, Bill gazes up at the clear night sky - so close to turning to dawn. It’s been days of false starts and weather delays.
He knows Paddy and Eoin have already flown above, well on their way to France.
He digs a cigarette out of his pocket and brings it to his mouth digging around for his lighter, before attempting to thumb it into life.
It fails to catch, and Bill distantly notes his hand is shaking, as if it is someone’s disembodied ghostly arm reaching out to offer him a light.
“No Stirlings will participate in the assault on Europe,” he'd written in his letter to David. No Stirlings, but Mayne and McGonigal. Throwing their bodies once again directly into the line of fire.
Dogs sacrificed to the sharp tip of invasion.
Suddenly, Bill has to sit down on the front steps.
Loitering on a stoop is simply not something a gentleman does.
Perhaps he’s not a gentleman anymore.
Maybe he never really was.
He won’t allow the thought to fully form, but he abstractly prays that they survive the jump.
Beyond that, only God himself can help them. The horrors that await in France and beyond will surely change them. Suddenly, Bill realises, it’s likely he’ll never see them again. He certainly will never again know the versions of Paddy Mayne and Eoin McGonigal who climbed onto that plane in Scotland today.
He finally succeeds in lighting his cigarette, and inhales deeply.