Chapter Text
“What the fuck is that?”
The corner of Paddy’s mouth is curled in abject disgust. A crease to his forehead that spells danger and a bright kind of fury in his eyes. His shoulders are tense, solid as if he’s preparing for a scrum. About to put his head down and destroy whoever dares oppose him.
Stirling blinks.
It’s clear he’s confused and - a little wary about the expression on Paddy’s face.
Ambrose feels a modicum of sympathy. Paddy’s threatened him too many times now for the fear to stick, but he can appreciate how the mad bastard might look to other people.
The other part of Ambrose, however, can’t help but feel a certain sense of amusement at the way Stirling visibly attempts to re-calibrate and assess the correct strategy going forward.
“It’s… Lieutenant McGonigal,” Stirling says, slowly, as if Paddy might be a small child. “Like you asked for, Paddy.”
This is not a man used to being called out for his mistakes. Probably got excellent grades at Eton. Silver spoon in his mouth, removed only for a polite nothing and one of those aristocratic chuckles.
Maybe Ambrose is being a little unfair.
Paddy looks at Stirling as if the man’s just spat in his face. Ambrose supposes, by way of his own infernal logic, perhaps he has.
“No, no, no,” Paddy says, starting to laugh as if this is some kind of absolutely cooked joke. His fists are tense at his sides, one of them ripping at a loose thread on the left pocket of his shorts. The deep barrel of his chest rises, inhaling slowly in some redundant attempt to calm himself.
Well. At least he’s trying.
The desert wind blows sand through the open flaps of the tent. Ambrose watches it swirl around Paddy, a physical manifestation of his anger.
Sing to me, O’ Muse, of Paddy Mayne’s rage.
Ambrose blinks and rubs the grit from his eyes.
Jock Lewes takes this opportunity to step in, looking up from where he’s fiddling with paperwork at a rickety table.
“You did ask for Lieutenant McGonigal,” he points out to Paddy. “You were quite insistent about it, actually.”
Paddy runs a hand through this hair, sweaty and blonde and hanging in little stringy bits over his quickly reddening face. A nervous tick he’s had as long as Ambrose has known him.
“Not this one,” Paddy says, pointing a finger at Stirling like he’s the stupid one in all of this. “The other one.”
As the middle son, Ambrose is fairly used to being confused for Richard McGonigal. Dick is the McGonigal boy. The eldest, taking after their father in such easy strides. He can’t say, however, he’s ever been confused with Eoin. Not until now, at least, where it seems his baby brother has made a name for himself by chasing Paddy into the Commandos.
It’s still hard to see that red-cheeked lad as one of Winston’s cut-throat wild men.
Jock frowns. “Goodness. How many Lieutenant McGonigals are there?” He’s got a rather similar look of calm in the face of absurdity that Ambrose often wears.
Maybe he’s also got siblings.
“Well,” Ambrose starts, leaning against the wooden pole propping up the tent, “technically three if you count our older brother Dick. But he’s still back in England, the lazy bastard.”
Talking about looking after the family, making sure their parents are well-cared for in their old age. As if anyone’s got more authority than Ina. Only God himself. Maybe not even then.
The eldest daughter always rules the house. Ambrose isn’t stupid enough to get in the way of all that. If Dick’s stupid enough to get involved - well, Ambrose is unlikely to get leave for the stupid funeral.
Stirling wrinkles his nose.
It’s clear this wasn’t part of his plan.
“Well, won’t this one do?” he asks, gesturing to Ambrose in a way that makes Paddy’s expression darken.
Ambrose sighs. Then he digs into his pocket to withdraw a cigarette. It’s going to be a long argument. He’s trying not to take it all too personally.
There’s an outraged sound from Paddy.
“No, this one won’t fucking do.” He narrows his eyes, grabbing the pile on the table that must be Ambrose’s papers. There’s a very charming image of him in his clean dress uniform. He’d sent a copy to his Ma, and to his darling Patty back at home.
Paddy’s crumpling the paper without much care. The photo distorts. Ambrose thinks he still looks handsome, all things considered. Even with creases from Paddy’s fingers all over his face.
“You could have been more specific,” Jock points out, seemingly unaware of Paddy’s near apoplectic rage.
Paddy swipes at the bottle on the table, whiskey landing on the sand with a thud and thankfully without the shattering of glass. Stirling watches it cautiously, clearly planning to retrieve it as soon as Paddy has left the general vicinity.
“Why,” Paddy says, teeth gritted, “would I want the one that wasn’t at Litani? The one that doesn’t have any fucking commando training? The one who hasn’t even fucking been around for months because he’s been fucking around in Belfast?”
“I had a broken leg,” Ambrose says mildly. Maybe Eoin hadn’t told Paddy that part. He thinks it’s a relatively important detail.
Paddy seizes upon this. “See? A broken leg! Functionally useless.”
Stirling gestures at Ambrose. “It’s not broken now.” Ambrose tries to help the cause, sticks his leg out and wiggles it a bit.
Paddy stares at it like he’s considering breaking it again, right there and now.
Turning back to Stirling, he stands broad-shouldered and with all the authority awarded to a drunken Irishman mentioned in dispatches and court-martialed on multiple occasions.
“You have three fucking days to get me the right McGonigal.”
Stirling raises his hands in a universal gesture of peace and calm. “We’re about to move out, Paddy. We really can’t wait to get approval from the powers that be. Especially not for another officer. You’re just going to have to make do.”
“You know,” Ambrose says, mildly, before Paddy can continue his tirade. “No one’s asked yet if I want to be here.”
After all, the whole commando business was really more Eoin and Paddy’s thing. Which was perfectly alright, of course. It wasn’t as if he’d known Paddy first or anything…
The first thing to learn about little brothers was that they tended to get their sticky paws over everything.
For all his furor and fierce words, Ambrose has played weekend games of rugby with Paddy enough times to know his real issue isn’t that Ambrose is on his team - it’s that Eoin’s not.
Still, this past camaraderie isn’t enough to soothe Paddy’s ire. He's off again, a flurry of curses about Ambrose, Ambrose's bloodline, and Catholics more generally. The sorts of things that would have made even a sailor blush.
But, eventually, he seems to run out of words.
“Are you done?” Ambrose asks, regretting it as Paddy’s cheeks turn red again.
Paddy’s glare intensifies. “No,” he says, snatching up Stirling’s bottle of whiskey from the ground. “I’m going to kill you in your fucking sleep.”
“That’s nice, Blair,” Ambrose says as the man turns on his heel and storms off back into the heat of midday.
Ambrose watches him go, straightening up from where he’s been leaning.
“Was that a threat, do you think?” Stirling asks, amused smile on his face.
Ambrose sighs.
Eoin, he thinks, looking up at the sky. Couldn’t you have had better taste in men?
And, Ambrose adds (while the universe is sending messages between distant siblings, where the bloody hell are you, anyway?
--
It had been a nice idea, Eoin muses.
The whole special forces thing.
To get in and get out, the sharp tip of the army. Guerilla warfare. Rush forwards, wreak havoc, and then be gone before the inevitable backfire.
But as the story of the Commandos had gone, it was a whole lot of hurry up and wait.
For all that the propaganda unit had spun the Battle of Litani River into some kind of win, Eoin was well-aware it had been the equivalent of sending a rugby team to play football.
A contested assault via sea? All in aid of the Australians gaining some ground? What had been the whole point of all those months on the Arran Islands, making themselves into formidable weapons?
Whatever sense of pride Eoin might have had at being chosen to lead a squad knee-deep through to the Kafr Badda Bridge had been soon diminished by the haphazard nature of the operation.
If there was no space in the story of this war for that kind of unit, Eoin would have to find his place elsewhere. So, as Paddy had convalesced with what he had sworn was not malaria, Eoin had agreed to be sent wherever he was needed.
A very noble ambition, one of the higher-ups had told him. Eoin didn't consider there was much noble about Tobruk.
But here he was, knee deep in a trench with (again) a bunch of Australians.
Maybe he should've gone conveniently missing. Another truculent Irishman. He could probably have talked his way out of court martial - kept away from GHQ until Paddy had been well enough to decide what their next course of action should be. He'd said something about going to Burma to help train Chinese guerilla soldiers for their fight against Japan.
Ship me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst.
"Hard fucking yakka, isn't it?" a man says to him, his friendly face tanned and marred with lines that suggest he's at least fifteen years Eoin's senior. His stripes indicate he's a sergeant.
The seasonal rains have turned the sand beneath them to a watery slop that sinks into boots and drags skinny ankles into the abyss like the devil himself.
Eoin just nods.
Then he lifts his leg, ignores the squelching, and re-adjusts his boot before repeating the process to march along to the other side of the trench.
Hold the line, he tells himself. It's that fucking simple.
With any luck, Paddy would turn up soon.
Hold the line.