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He’s nothing like his brother—is all that Paddy can think of here in this moment.
These grouse hunting posh toffs all walk and talk like each other and he’s the same in that way. He wouldn’t be where he is if he didn’t act just like the rest of them. But he’s different, his height, his build, even the innate structure of his face separates him from the memory that is his brother. Nothing besides his expectant vowel placement and the shiny toes of his boots would even suggest the two were connected at all.
There is, of course, the warm palm cupped neatly around his cock that separates this Stirling experience from the other entirely.
He doesn’t know this Stirling, not like he knew the one before him, but he must have recognised something of himself in Paddy. How else could they have found themselves like this? Like calls to like, spins him around in a dirty military bathroom and bends him over the sink without a word. For him to assume that this is the something that he saw in Paddy grates on already irritated nerves. That Paddy was already twitching in his trousers the moment a large, warm body crowded him against the cold porcelain is beside the point.
The whole thing is contrived in the most irritating way, a practiced series of movements put in action again and again. No room for the spontaneous, no room to detonate, no air to breathe. It’s a means to an end that Stirling is no doubt familiar with, another facade put upon just to keep the fight going, the clock hand ticking and ticking towards the hour. Paddy is, of course, no stranger to this. A helping hand is no less welcome in the face of war but something about this moment is different.
Paddy won’t look at himself. He doesn’t want to see what sort of man would be looking back at him in the mirror. He doesn’t know if he would recognise this man. Instead, Paddy looks at him—his captor—his assailant—his nursemaid—but he doesn’t look at Paddy either, his head turned to the side with a crease between his brow. He almost looks worried, as if he had a free hand he’d be checking that nice wristwatch of his and fretting over the time. This is the common denominator of the whole experience then, this resolute avoidance of eyes on Paddy.
That suits him just fine, he can’t hurt if he’s not being looked at. It can’t hurt him if he doesn’t look for it.
This is a moment of finality. Five minutes till the hour. Lieutenant-Colonel B.Stirling with the whole of Paddy’s being held in the palm of his own cold hand. This is an intentional ploy and, if Paddy were more willingly inclined to the romantic, he might even call it a seduction. Who told this stern figure how he is to be taken in hand? This isn’t something he should be privy to, shouldn’t be something written in one of those crisp, cream memos of his. Nobody alive should know how it feels to spin Paddy up and up, just for the fun of seeing him go. This is the way he was born, how he came fresh off the manufacturing line. Wind him up with gunfire and explosives and the stinking heat of gasoline on the air and he’ll always be ready. He’ll always be able to shoot where he’s told to shoot and cower when he’s told to cower.
Does this Stirling know how to let Paddy go? He shouldn’t, really he can’t. The other one didn’t know either, didn’t need to before—
The hand steadying him at his side is almost more overbearing than the hand pressed firm on his cock. Searing heat seeps through the thin cotton of his shirt, the skin stinging with the memory of a desert sore left unscrubbed. Hands have held him here before. They were similar hands. Hands with long fingers unabashed in their touch, hands that would press a greeting into his waist whenever he shouldered past, hands that would press their cold palm squarely on bare, overheated skin. Knuckles and skin and bones and blood that he held between him again and again. Those hands won’t be his to hold for a long time, now.
New hands hold him now, offending hands, assuming hands. The hand engulfing the whole, heated palmful of his cock tenses just slightly and Paddy doesn’t like what that insinuates. He doesn’t need his fucking help, Paddy needs no encouragement to get what he wants. He wants and so he takes. This is how it works, this is how it has always worked. He bares his teeth at the insulting reflection behind him and pictures the taste of metal on his tongue. This man, if that is indeed what he really is, can’t change this of Paddy; can’t take away the tick of his knee; can’t take away the itch for knuckle to meet body and body to meet floor; can’t put rest in muscles that do not want to rest. This man is nothing to Paddy but a blank face and a warm grasp.
The heels of his worn boots lift as he tries to get closer, pressing harder into the hand cupping the pulse of his cock. Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Blair Mayne doing all the work, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Blair Mayne hunting for scraps. This is how it has always been. This is how it always has to be. His breath is harsh in his ears, ricocheting around the stone walls like the fire of a Bren gun. He can’t seem to get close enough.
He is all movement, all forward motion. No rhyme or meter to be found in his thrusts. No lilting tune in the grating whine of his chest. He can hear nothing but the thunderous roar of his own pulse, windswept sand beating at traitorous metal. There is sweat damp at his temples and sticking his shirt to the small of his back and for a moment everything is silent. Somewhere a clock stops ticking.
A great, shuddering sound gasps out of him and he is undone; a cup overturned; a handful of gravel thrown at offending mirror; a man and something lesser than a man. As quick as the tension ticked up his spine, Paddy is falling limp against hand-warmed porcelain. Through the bleary prison lights he—prisoner—soldier—tool—can see a dark spot beginning to form on the front of his trousers. Each pull of his lungs seems to heave his whole, human body up towards the monstrous figure behind him. Stirling doesn’t budge. Stirling is a stone wall that he chases up again and again. Stirling doesn’t have a single hair out of order, no flush on those noble points of his cheekbones, he isn’t even hard in that place where they are pressed so tightly together. Paddy is held fast by a hand at his waist and a hand on his softening cock.
He is Ganymede in the claws of the eagle, he is held and nothing more.
(Here the Phrygian hunter is borne aloft on tawny wings, Gargara's range sinks downwards as he rises, and Troy grows dim beneath him; sadly stand his comrades; vainly the hounds weary their throats with barking, pursue his shadow or bay at the clouds.)