For the fic title game.... 'For those we have lost' 😁
(leftoversl1ce)
Oooooh, you're making me stray from my Eoin Lives agenda 😭 But I can't help thinking of Bill and Paddy sharing a quiet moment remembering Eoin 💔
December 5th, 1942 is an ordinary day for most of the SAS; training, training, and then some more training. Paddy's rougher, angrier, meaner than usual but the men don't think much of it, used to the Irishman swinging moods. Only Bill knows why Paddy spent most of the day drunk, spitting insults under the guise of training the men.
Everywhere they go, there's the ghost of a tall man, dark curls tamed with too much gel and yet still breaking free in some places, eyes squinting in half-moons around a wide smile, bright and delighted. There's a empty space where Eoin used to be that Paddy's filled with anger and grief with too many teeth and a too short leash.
Bill doesn't grieve Eoin the same way Paddy does but he misses him, too. He loved him, too. Perhaps that's why he's oddly relieved he never had to see Eoin, pale and cold in his bed of sand. He can still remember how the fire casted shadows on Eoin's face from their days in Lamlash village, the way his eyelashes spilled black ink over his cheeks as he blinked. Bill doesn't get to grieve Eoin the same way Paddy does, but he still grieves. There's still a gaping wound in his heart, aching and barbed.
Perhaps this is why Paddy sits next to him after dinner, away from camp, the stars the only witness to this temporary truce. Eoin should have been twenty-two today. In the year and a half Bill has met him, Eoin had always tried to get Paddy and him to get along, to no avail. They're too similar. Looking at Paddy is like looking in a mirror, all fear and hatred for the parts of himself Bill cannot kill. He suspects Paddy feels the same.
But they had both loved Eoin, and that is not something either of them wants to erase. So, while everyone stays blissfully ignorant to what December 5th is, Bill and Paddy sit isolated on a sand dune, looking at the vastness that's taken Eoin. Bill has never asked if Paddy ever found Eoin's grave. Paddy has never offered to speak about it.
Neither of them are much of a talker, let alone with each other. Bill used to talk to Eoin, and Paddy used to talk to Eoin, but without him, they're like two river banks with no bridge. They drink, and they don't speak a word; Paddy is wound tight, quietly seething, and Bill gives him the space to express his grief without asking why Paddy snarls and bites. Perhaps, one day, they'll talk. Of the small two bedrooms cottage they shared in Lamlash Village, of the beautiful they both loved and lost.
Bill doubts they'll ever be friends like Eoin wanted them to. But with Eoin gone, nobody understands him more than Paddy, though he does it with none of the kindness Eoin had. Bill hates that it's still a comfort.
Next to him, Paddy shifts, takes a long sip of the rum he found while he looks at the desert with burning anger and black hatred, and Bill knows Paddy feels the same as he does.
That was lots of fun!! Unedited and sad, but I had a great time writing it 🥰 Thank you so much for sending this in!! <3
Send me a Fic Title and I'll write a snippet based on it <3
