paddy lovers club

love, yes, a word known to all men.

[taiscedulcinea]

MASTERLIST

The Empire Club

Chapter 1: The Empire Club

Chapter 2: Nights in White Satin

Chapter 3: Who Dares Wins

Chapter 4: A Jaunt to the Countryside

Chapter 5: Letters | Part One

Chapter 6: Letters | Part Two

Chapter 7: Unmade

Other Works:

The Ghost of Termoli

A Study in Restraint (Teaser)

A Study in Restraint: Chapter One

A Study in Restraint: Chapter Two

From The Archives: Discipline

[taiscedulcinea]

The Empire Club | seven

Unmade

Paddy Mayne x Eoin McGonigal x Fem! Reader

summary: Months had passed since D-Day and you had not heard from either Paddy or Eoin. The days at the farmhouse were beautiful yet felt increasingly alone without the presence of your two lovers. London and work called, and you began to spend most of your time in a small bed-sit provided by your new employer.

A new friendly yet eccentric face becomes a glimmer of light in the darkness of the most intense period of your life, and intel of a disastrous SAS Operation is slipped into your desperate hands. Paris was liberated and you were sent to collect intel, further isolating you from any sense of comfort. Upon your return what you came to least expect stumbled onto a cold London street...

warnings: loneliness, heavy emotional distress, graphic sexual content, jealousy, possessive behaviour, free use, mentions of period-typical bigotry, m/f sexual content, no pnv, m/m sexual content implied, public sex, drunken characters, drinking as a coping mechanism, objectification, implication of emotional and sexual infidelity, drunk sex, degradation, mild dubious consent, spit swapping, come swapping, thigh fucking, face fucking, sexuality crisis/denial, male!OC (two options of face claim see header pic), paddy is gross/unhygenic as a show of dominance (in one instance), no use of y/n, poor attempt at Cockney rhyming slang.

word count: 8.7k

a/n: And... we're back after a very long hiatus! With an absolute doozy of a chapter in store too! Things heat up, (or cool down technically) as we step into the depths of Winter 1944, post D-Day. Paddy is well..., Paddy and Eoin, well, you'll just have to read and see! Let us know what you think, and of our new face! (p.s, i.e. the chapter that killed Horny Joker @novar3ads )

tags: let us know if you wish to be added! @bleedingsunlight @anniemayne198 @thesirenmelusine @h3k3t @shiningdyingmoon @littlemspeachy @matrixfangs @iceemochaa @confetti-cakemix @amaranthine-enihtnarama @faestunna @vcmpbyt @dxmurewrites @markinganx @nimisardenter @gravecleric0900

6 June, 1944

On the day they went out to France the world did not shake with the might of men moving at arms, as your dreams had once convinced you. The countryside that day stirred and meandered into the light of the day like any other.  ‘Lady’ cat was sleeping in the morning sun, strewn across the wooden deckboards and smiling in her own way. You took heed of the bold red colours of the sky; still yet in its own way a quiet but fervent warning from the world as to what would be waged across her surface.

The day moved slowly into itself as you made your way packing your belongings for a brief trip to London, though only after finishing a book Paddy had suggested before they had gone as you sat on the stairs of the farmhouse with your feet touching the damp grass of the field below.  

This trip was the start of a long series of stays.  It was to start at a new print agency, and to, when tasked, provide assistance in collecting the newest correspondence on the front, nothing further advised. No more spying, no more shifting and seduction you had thought, pulling a discarded blouse from across the wickered-backed chair which sat by the window in the farmhouse’s bedroom.  Paddy had sat on the chair on occasion, pipe and poetry in hand as the late afternoons had slipped by till evenings and he was called gently to bed by a calm lilt and the promise of whiskey after sex.  

Your travel case soon stood ready for action by the door downstairs soon enough, yet your attaché case still sat open on the small window-side table as you prepared final clippings and notes to carry. Only one pocket in it remained untouched, this by your own ruling.  Within lay two small notes each from Eoin and Paddy, mundane in nature – just short ‘thank yous’ or ‘don’t forgets’ written in their own scribe. 

These, of course, spoke to their character without speech itself.  You adored each one, one with ink refined, neat and charming in its loops and twists across the page, the other bold from a strong hand forged by an even stronger personality.  You were to leave in the morning, one brief last night shared between just yourself and the dear Tabby which the men both adored (although Paddy denied it).  Of course, she was fine by her own for a brief time, no doubt nothing but elated at the prospect of catching field mice to her heart's content and causing mischief at the neighbours cottage.  

A walk to finish the day was common at the farmhouse when it had been the three of you, stretching your legs for once un-entwined of each other out into the countryside.  As a trio you’d pass brooks and into the small forested hollows not yet claimed by farms.  This time your legs journeyed by their lonesome, and had taken you down the beaten dirt road the farm sat alongside.  Your gaze followed the land to its very end where the churchyard stood surveying idly across the fading light of the country below.

Strolling past the wooded graves, you took note of moss and lichen lurching over their inscriptions, eager to take those buried to further anonymity.  It wouldn’t be such a shame all this you wondered. A quiet, soft death.  

If it were to come to your two men though…, would they rest in a sunny clearing? With daisies rising above their faces, ankles?  As their last thoughts had shared in pleasantry the three of your faces?  It was for certain it would be another, stark kind of death.  One rather filled with fire, smoke, and the screaming twisted faces of men dying around them, sinking into mud and rot of the trenches or township battlefields. 

One of a blood-battle fought not for ‘peace, liberty and all’, but the veracious appetites of men holding the power of the world in small uptight fists lacklustre in both love and kindness.  Your own hand, now clenched into a fist, however, held a small quiet power, one indeed of love, one of closeness, and the neverending dance between two men’s devotion for another and each other, despite your own entanglement between them and forged from within them.

London came and went, and no letters were to come either; not for several months that was.  

Between your newest print houses pigeon-hole or the farmhouses’ lonely letterbox the near constant stream of mail in the past dried right up.  You danced between the farmhouse’s quiet homeliness and the weakened yet still bustling city in England.  You didn’t mind the city really, yet you still kept the farmhouse key in your breast-pocket and reminisced of its creaking floorboards and crackling hearth whilst at the small bed-sit in Pimlico which you had been provided with.  It was above a quaint flowershop, and you could picture Eoin procuring you bouquets with a small smile on his face and Paddy arguing prices in a loud bark at his side.

Keeping any mention of what the SAS were up to, their casualties, losses and positioning was a thorough aim of yours despite the overflow of work reporting on the state of London.  The new V-1 bombs were a terror from the sky, the flying bomb they called it, and they came from dust till dawn.  London suffered, and London worked, and London fought.  Whilst back in Newtownards the time passed like any other, and you found yourself picturing what Lady the cat could be up to in the cold mornings or late evenings where she would creep her way into the farmhouse through a cracked window to rest on the empty bed. 

You thought of where on the front might Paddy and Eoin be now, perhaps huddling for warmth in some blown-out village with snow falling down their coats and aching bodies fighting to push forwards. At nights where your thighs fell open lazily across the arm of the armchair in your bed-sit, and you stared into the softly glowing fire, the thoughts wandered alongside your hands to how your two  would be coping with it all in another manner.

Thoughts arose of the two men sneaking off to a place rarely quiet during war, to revel in each other for a break from it all.  Perhaps they would start a fire in the remains of a house, and Paddy would sink to his knees with a firm hand in his hair, willing him forward onto the eager man before him.   Maybe they’d forget about their days in each other and pose the question of ‘what if she was here to see you like this?’ quietly over and over to tease and test one another.

A particularly enamoured fellow home affairs reporter had slipped in conversation one evening at the French House in Soho.  He had become somewhat of a companion to you, Sid was his name.   Sid was a rather strangely handsome fellow you thought, the type of person who gets more alluring the more you look at them. 

Although he’d made it clear to you that people had found him quite the opposite in passing.  He was elegantly long in the face despite having a cockney prose stronger than a fishmonger to make up for it, like a pretty flower hiding a sharp barb at the centre.  You’d met in the busy halls of Reuters and been quite close ever since, he reminded you of Eoin in a way at times the way he kept you enraptured in conversations.  

Though his hair was lighter, less curly and completely unruly unlike Eoin’s, his height and leanness reminded you of Eoin despite the fact he was without a doubt taller and held a physique of someone seemingly distinctly underfed, running on wine, coffee and cigarettes rather than hardened in the desert.  Despite this, sometimes you brushed away the thought that you could quietly see yourself falling for him in another life. 

He was an odd fellow though, found often walking his shaggy lurcher dog aptly named ‘Baron’ along the Thames or through the heavily-hit streets of Whitechapel in the late hours of the night.  He’d stop wherever to scribble hurriedly in his correspondence journal at passing which he’d pull out of his roughly spun coat with its upturned collar facing the wind.  Sid had a near constant resting expression that he was about to respond to anything wryly, he kept out of trouble in the print houses by mainly writing rather than speaking, and a distinct scar on his lip always caught your eye as his mouth rested in a near permanent smirk when he held his tongue. 

You didn’t quite know how old he was, he still refused to tell you.  Most tended to think he was quite older than he must’ve been.  One time, he’d come into the tea room protesting that he had ‘gotten 40 the other day!’ from a young girl on the street.  Your guesses fluctuated depending on how well-kept or gaunt-looking he was each week you supposed.

Between arguing over the latest dispatches to Normandy the stormy-eyed man pulled his reading glasses off in a hurry, leaning forward away from his open document and almost toppling wine glass to pull you in, pupils adjusting rapidly to the change in vision as he met your surprised eyes.  ‘You’ve heard of the latest SAS moves, have you then?’ He asked, voice hushed as he pulled your own empty glass from your hand, topping it up with the red wine he had somehow smuggled from the barman earlier. The liquid poured smoothly into the glass, almost reaching the top as you tried to gather what you had heard,   ‘That’s certainly enough Sid, quite– yes thank you– I, I must say that no, no I have not,’ you admitted.

‘Well, steamin’ idiots–were, or have parachuted into the Vosges Mountains. If you’d ask me, I’d say that those areas are crawling with Jerry’s.’ He had gotten so close you could almost count the light freckles that sat in number across the pale skin of his strong nose and across his cheeks. Sid always invaded peoples space quite without himself or them realising, though it was always in a gentle manner to emphasise his own devout attentiveness. 

‘’Ave got a whisper that most of the bloody squads gone down, captured y’know.  Most likely off with their ‘eads if you’d ask me. No one’s surviving that.’

Sid tended to become more unintelligible as your nights together went on, Cockney rhyming slang thrown about as he waved his arms and threw various papers from reports at you, he’d often end up falling asleep in your armchair at your bed-sit, cigarette still hanging out of his mouth just as Paddy would do back at the farmhouse.  As you made your way out of the pub, Sid stumbling over himself beside you, the revelation that there was knowledge flowing about the SAS had rightly caught up to you. 

You had left it as wilful ignorance, ‘no news was good news’.  Sid’s briefcase went tumbling from his hand in an almighty thunk, landing at your feet as his cigarette almost slipped from his mouth and fell alongside it.  You took that moment to retest him, picking it up and pushing it against his blue collar shirt, pulling him in.  He looked down at you through widened eyes, face an eerie calm all of a sudden.

‘Sid, please tell me more about the SAS division, anything, please. Are you sure they’re in dire circumstances?’ you asked.

‘I had a butcher’s at the gen, I swear I did–’, he mumbled between a few hiccups and slurred complaints half muffled through the cigarette.

‘–but it’s all rabbit and pork he told me, this diamond geezer. Oh, ‘you can’t trust a word of it down Fleet way I say’ he said.’

He appeared to be forcing himself to keep blinking as he looked at you, he must’ve had nearly two bottles in him.  You pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and finished the drag for him.

In an attempt to smarten himself up, he knocked his hat to a ridiculous angle.  ‘That’s a Hampton Wick I told him, I did Miss, I know what them SAS boys are up-to.’ He tipped to one side, ‘Fuck it, I’m right Brahms aren’t I? Nearly fell off my plate of meat didn’t I.’  He laughed hysterically as he spun back towards you, eyebrows raised and the creases of his smile and eyes painting an absurd shadow across his face. 

You were interrupted when another man brushed you, no doubt a colleague as he shouted upon entering the pub; ‘Sid! What the bloody hell are you doing here?’, the other man stumbled pointing to the ground next to him before stepping over, ‘Well, you see I was over here, like this, but that didn't really work for me,’ he moved back to where he had been leaning against the brick wall, ‘so I thought I'd try over here, but I don’t think there's much future in this one either.’ He said plainly.

The man let out a noise of confused agreement before pushing through the door, the drunk man was now laughing quietly to himself, proud of his own absurdity. 

‘Sid, Sid, please, English.’ you begged, continuing your protest from earlier. 

‘I–er– am English!’ he slurred, ‘Yes, sadly!’ you nodded laughing before gathering yourself, pulling his rough hands into your own.  

‘Name, Sid, my dear, dear friend… what is the name?’ you pressed, lifting his clasped hands up and down with each word. Sid also took a moment before mustering himself, the drunken man perked up, ‘My name?! Well you’d know by now my name is Sidney Turner, at your very service.’ He put on a posh accent and attempted to bow, pulling his hands from yours and lurching over to one side against the brick wall of the pub.

‘No– Sid, no.’ you cried out, laughing at the unintended comic. ‘The codename, Sid, of the mission.’ He shook his head, letting out a series of ‘ooooh’s’ as he huffed searching his clouded mind.  Sid didn’t know about your ‘connection’ to the SAS, though you’d wanted to tell him as such, and maybe you would soon.  

A shoulder to cry on when the seemingly inevitable came wouldn’t be too harsh.

‘Loyton.’ Sid said suddenly, and quite soberly, cutting you from your thoughts.

‘Operation Loyton, Miss.’ 

October 30th, 1944

Loyton was disastrous.  Over 30 men captured, unheard from since.

Paddy was not one of the men to go, it was mostly new men he hadn’t even seen, a new division.  But, he had been sent home nonetheless earlier, injured in a skirmish in Operation Houndstooth, relegated to command from Fairford like a ‘proper “senior officer” must do’ before he would be returned to the fighting in the Low Countries. The news of Loyton crushed him like no other, and unlike the refusal of leave for his poor Da’s funeral he felt not rage but instead immense impenetrable sorrow.

Drowning these sorrows was the only way to quieten the screaming voice in his head that told him it was undoubtedly his fault.  He knew who was on the list of men to send to the Vosges, he had penned it himself.  So many unknown names headed by one name which he treasured like no other.  In that moment he had thought Eoin would of course handle it, as he led men so well in the past, he did not consider quite how anything could go so wrong. He was sure he had signed Eoin’s death sentence.  

Stirling had reprimanded him after assaulting several corporals in his usual manner. A few forced words to ‘clean up his act’ merely touched the sides of Paddy’s misery. The drink called and he had found himself thinking of Newtownards and the lonely farmhouse. He hadn’t known where you were, only that you would be making your own way of course, the smart head-forward thing you were. 

The key was left to you for safe-keeping, and Lady was to be looked after. He knew you were safe somewhere on the shores of England, that was the only solace. Soon enough he had seemingly drunk every pub in Essex dry, and a new placement to London called for further glasses to sink and streets to wander at night wondering what went wrong to lose Eoin.

You had been posted to Paris after it had been Liberated, only a month long affair but enough to miss London and the quiet evenings with your new found friends in Sid and Baron the dog.  Sometimes you cursed speaking French with all your might, though it obviously made you ‘useful’ to GHQ when called.  The boat ride over the channel and home was hellish, squalls stirred swells which lashed the side of the boat and you pulled your scarf closer to you in the cramped dimness of the hull, murmurs of other returning soldiers and personnel creating the only human respite in the vast metal containment.  

Taking the time you swept through the letters from Sid and your family, none still from Paddy and Eoin of recent note.  The most recent from your friend noted in his ridiculous use of rhyming slang once more, ‘moved Uncle Ned, dog and bone me once you get hammer and tack, i’ll give you the rat and mouse. Au revoir.’ he’d not wanted the address to be intercepted clearly, and you weren’t surprised considering his recent delvings into possible war crimes in Oradour-sur-Glane in June.

You smiled at the penned words, despite his unique prose you had to admit the rhymes worked quite well in deception.  Stepping off the boat during the last light of the day wasn’t the relief you had hoped, the chill sinking deep into you as the frozen wind whipped around you.  It took longer than usual for the train to meander into London from Dover.  Soon enough you had made your way down the streets of Charing Cross to a phonebox, willing for Sid to answer the other end even this late at night to provide his address and a nodding head to your stream of consciousness once you arrived, maybe a glass or two of that wine he had as well.  

Your own bed-sit could wait.

The lights and merriment of The Two Chairmen could be seen and heard not far from your perch in the phonebox, no doubt it was filled with returning soldiers willing for a night to forget what they had seen on the front.  Perhaps brimming with information of new efforts and scandals.  Sid soon answered the phone, his voice deep and gravelly with sleep despite its comfort to your ears.  ‘Don’t even think ‘ave to ask who this is now, do I?’ he quipped. You could hear the half-smile in his voice.  You traded a few friendly insults back and forth between yourselves as you attempted to get his address out of him.  He complained of your lateness and tried to push you towards visiting tomorrow when he could hold his head upright only to crumble at a few carefully placed ‘pleases’ from yourself.

‘55 Sans Walk, Clerkenwell–Yes! Yes, near where that bloody prison used to be, though that says nothing about my upstanding character, you here?’ he joked.  You laughed whole-heartedly down the phone as he corrected himself, ‘Near the market, let's just say that instead.’ you agreed.  Taking a few moments, just listening to your shallow breathing down the line before you blurted out. 

‘I missed you.’, hand gripping the handle of the black phone tightly in anticipation of his response. He let out a slow breath behind the phone, ‘Missed ya’ too.’ he followed, a certain frustration to his voice you hadn’t heard before.   

‘Right then, now get going, Baron’s woken up and she’s not happy to see me nabbing to you on the phone than in person.’ You agreed and gave your farewell,  ‘See you soon, love.’ he resigned.  You’d never gotten used to the average Tom, Dick and Harry on the street calling you that despite most of your life spent in the UK, and your heart panged slightly at the thought of your real and truthful ‘loves’, wherever they were.

A great clatter suddenly brought your attention from hanging up the phone on its hook towards the pub's lights.  Four men were tossing another out into the street, a pint glass still swinging from the man's hands.  Despite the danger, perhaps this was an opportunity to collect his frustrations of the war on your way, some fresh information to share once you got to Clerkenwell.  You swung the phonebox door open in a hurry, pace quickening to catch up with the lurching man, clack of your Oxfords echoing around the empty street and bag swinging haphazardly beside you.  The man was not much taller than yourself and his back faced away from you as he moved down the street, though his figure became increasingly familiar as you drew closer.  

‘Excuse me, Sir–’ you began, the man spun around in a burst of coordinated vigour, his fist raised in a sudden lunge. 

‘Get tae fuck–!’ he began before stopping dead in his tracks.  

Despite the dark blonde hair tousled over his face you could see that snarl on his face you had come to know and love. 

Paddy Mayne stared back at you, eyes afire in the dim streetlight.

You had flung yourself into his chest immediately, draping your arms around his neck as he outstretched his own in an attempt to avoid getting the remains of his pint and cigarette ash on you.

‘Easy now, you’re going to knock us both over.’ He huffed. You pulled back, reaching for the glass in his hand and tipping back the contents to his surprise.

 ‘What did you do this time to get sent home, Paddy?’ You questioned, voice full of smug joy knowing that despite his rank he’d prefer to be without fail in the midst of it all in war than on the streets of London. He took a heavy drag of his cigarette not answering before you jabbed him in the rib with your index finger, ‘Didn’t write to me either Paddy,’ You reprimanded him.

‘and where’s Eoin? I haven’t gotten any letters from him either.’ You continued, placing the pint glass on the gutter ledge for the pub to collect later on.  Looking up at him from your stoop you could see the sudden emotion in his eyes, with Paddy it was always rage primarily with an undertone of sadness or other such negative feeling. 

‘I don’t know,’ He admitted.  

Your heart sank as you recalled what you had been told over that table of empty wine bottles before you left for France.

‘Something— it didn’t go quite as we had planned.’ Paddy admitted. Your eyes widened as your hand came to grab Paddy’s own.  He reached into his coat pocket with the other, ‘His ma–she gave me this letter.’  The letter was worn, as if it had been opened over and over again, no doubt in disbelief. 

Dear Mrs. McGonigal:

This letter is to confirm my recent telegram in which you were regretfully informed that your son, Staff-Sargeant  Eoin McGonigal, attached to the airborne troops, has been reported missing in action in Vosges, France since 14 August 1944.

I know that added distress is caused by failure to receive more information or details regarding the matter.

Therefore, I wish to assure you that at any time additional information is received it will be transmitted to you without delay, and, if in the meantime no additional information is received, I will again communicate with you at the expiration of three months.

The term ‘missing in action’ is used only to indicate that the whereabouts or status of an individual is not immediately known, It is not intended to convey the impression that the case is closed. I wish to emphasise that every effort is exerted continuously to clear up the statue of our personnel.

Under war conditions this is a difficult task as you must readily realise. Experience has shown that many persons reported missing in action are subsequently reported as prisoners of war, but as this information is furnished by countries with which we are at war, the War Department is helpless to expedite such reports.

The personal effects of an individual missing overseas may be held by his unit for a period of time but are unfortunately likely buried with the soldier in the case of a death or confiscated by the enemy.

Permit me to extend to you my heartfelt sympathy during this period of uncertainty.

Sincerely yours,

Lt. Col. W. Stirling  

The letter had that manufactured signatory to it that made you grit your teeth, Stirling likely barely even glanced at it as he signed himself away, or better yet, one of his assistants in London forged it away.

The name ‘Loyton’ brushed your lips again.  He was lost, as Sid had told without even knowing it.  

‘I already knew.’ he said aghast, ‘signed them myself…, his orders to lead those men.’ Paddy confessed, he had lit another cigarette whilst you had read, puffing the smoke to the side in a deep exhale, looking up to the scattered clouds in the dark sky.  You reeled backwards, pausing as an overwhelming desire to react physically against the man in front of you arose.  You struck him clear across the face, surprising your own self as much as him before gripping his coat collar as he hissed in pain, the cigarette fell from his lips to the damp ground.  As you moved closer you came to realise just how much he stunk of whiskey and who-knows-what other concoctions. 

Drowning his sorrows no doubt.

‘Are you daft Paddy Mayne?!’ you cried out in his face.  Despite your outrage he almost immediately began to frog march you backwards towards whence you came, a firm hand on your shoulder. ‘How could you– could you not have foreseen the mission was– I don’t know! Impossible? Dangerous beyond even your suicidal mind?’ You blurted out as you stumbled over yourself as the immovable force behind you pushed, voice echoing off the brick walls of the street as he moved you back past the doorstep of the pub. 

‘Aye, we’ll have none of that.’ Paddy said coldly and soon enough you were being pushed through the flown open door of the phonebox, arms only catching yourself last minute against the glass. His demeanour had shifted, from a drunk, clearly emotional one to one of a stone-cold commander.

‘Don’t speak.’ Paddy told you. 

‘Don’t fuckin’ say a word now, just do what I want.’

You turned, eyes widening at his clear intention.  He nodded slightly towards the ground and it didn’t take long for you to sink to your knees, the rough concrete of the phonebox catching on your stockings as you lent your head against Paddy’s thick thighs.

‘I missed you.’ you whispered.

‘I know.’ he replied as the sound of his belt unbuckling filled the cramped space.  It never took much for him to be aroused, he had an astounding virility despite his clear qualms with his own indiscretions.

You helped him to pull himself out of his trousers, taking the heavy weight in your hands as a marvelled look took your eyes as his darkened eyes met your own.  Even after the time passed, the veins and weight of him had imprinted their way into your mind, lips, tongue, and no doubt throat as you brushed your mouth along the thick, familiar length of him.

You took your time in teasing the already dripping thick head of him, popping it lightly from your mouth and swirling your tongue across the sensitive surface, dipping your tongue into the slit of it and watching the way tension seemingly drained from the man above you.   Soon, you relented to his growing huffs of frustration and your nose brushed the patch of hair at the base of him as you took him in your mouth.  

It took some muscle memory to kick in to relax your throat further to allow for his hand to push and pull your head back and forwards on his unforgettably thick length. With a jaw already aching as you shifted on your knees, you moved your fingers to glide gently across the remaining soft skin of what you couldn’t take down.  His head rested against the glass of the phonebox door, eyes closed as he fumbled with his cigarette case from memory and lit one in the small space, smoke flowed from his mouth to cloud the phonebox further as its already fogged glass of the heat from your bodies obscured what was inside.

Paddy relished in your skilled mouth for some time before he interfered, pushing you roughly backwards still buried to the hilt down your throat, hands clasped together at the back of your head stopping from cracking it against the thick glass of the phonebox.  Your knee scraped painfully against the floor and the no-doubt hole ripping in your stocking reminded you quite of the ridiculousness of the situation. 

What might a passerby have to endure?  Your head was bracketed between the glass and his thick thighs still holding the back of your head now with one hand he pulled out, tapping the thick weight of himself against your puffed lips and outstretched tongue before pressing back in. He began to lazily thrust into your mouth, your jaw protested as you stretched it as wide as you could.  You closed your eyes in concentration, trying to control your breathing.  He clicked his tongue, ‘Need those pretty eyes on me girl. Don’t you dare fuckin’ stop looking.’ he rumbled from above as he snapped his hips forward roughly into your mouth. 

You missed the way his breaths would get rough and ragged in these moments, almost like some animal huffing in beastly exertion.  It felt like an eternity before he was holding your jaw open further and pushing deep into your throat as he came.  In your concentration your eyes had slipped closed again as you savoured the heat of him and the salty taste filling your mouth.  You hadn’t paid attention to his face,  now it was obvious that his face was stained with tears as your vision focussed.  The great fearless dog that was Paddy Mayne was a broken man.

‘I’ve got nothing now,’ He spat out, chest heaving as he came down from his high and rubbed his forehead with his hand, mouth twisted in anguish.

‘Hey!, I’m still here!’ You replied, mouth hardly able to form the words as he slipped from it.  Your head was quickly yanked back as he pulled your hair roughly, almost lifting you off your knees from where you knelt. 

‘You know my feelings towards you are still for nothing but to get my cock wet, despite whatever I might say.’ He said harshly.

‘I doubt that, do not act like you neither want nor need me in your life Paddy when you’ve admitted the opposite.’ Came as a brave warning from your slightly trembling lips still wet with spit and the salty taste of him.  You had never seen him in such a state.

You stood calmly and  brought your hand up to gently guide his face to look at your own,  ‘Now. Now, of all times do we need each other most, for us. For him.’ You nodded at the letter now clutched back in his hand, his eyes flared with fury, yet he leant into the touch, like some wounded animal wanting to fight its saviour, and he closed them.  

‘There is no real war left for me to go out in…, no point to it all.’ He slowly began bizarrely as he opened his eyes again. You shook your head, amazed at his clear drunkenness which had seemingly returned, you reached for your briefcase and stood, holding it out to him. 

‘There is most certainly still a war Paddy, this is why I am still here…, though I can see you’re not in the state to read any of my recent reports.’ you replied, frankly embarrassed by his mighty fall from his usual temper.

‘Oh I’ll read, read nought but poetry till the day I die, nothing more,’ he slurred out, hand unintentionally clasping over your own against the briefcase pushed to his chest.

‘But the day I die may be quite soon, aye…,’ He swayed, resting himself leant against the door of the phonebox as he continued, ‘ no point without him fighting by my side.’

‘Paddy now is not the time for half-arsed poetry, you simply cannot be serious, you are needed in Europe. Eoin- he’ you tried to refrain from choking up yourself, ‘He’ll be alright somewhere,’ you said hopefully.

He had fixed his trousers and pushed open the phonebox door, letting a rush of cold air in which refreshed your hazy mind.  You followed him, leaning against the door of the phone box opposite him. 

‘Come on,’ You said, guiding him to the crisp outside air to sober him up.

‘I suspect the troops are greatly disheartened by your discharge?’ You asked, scuffing your heel against the cobbled street knowing reasoning with any man, let alone Paddy in this state would likely amount to nothing.

‘Bill Stirling can command as he wants, the bastard. I was never much of a leader anyway.  I’ve taken up more success in commanding the pints in my own hand than any men lately.’ he waved behind him in the vague direction of the pub.

‘I’ve nowhere to stay.’ he confessed, ‘Only came here to drink expecting I’d make the train back to Gloucestershire, but knowing I wouldn’t.’ he admitted. You squeezed his hand ‘I’ve got a friend we can stay with tonight, he’s closer than my place, I was headed there anyway.’ you adjusted your own coat with the other.

‘“He’s?”’ Paddy asked, eyebrows raised. 

‘Don’t be daft Paddy.’ you replied, a vibrant red flush of embarrassment warming your cheeks.

‘Oh, I’ll be whatever you’d have me tonight just this once, so I will.’ he replied sarcastically. 

The walk to Clerkenwell went by quickly as you attempted to fill each other in on life since D-Day and Paddy thoroughly sobered up, rain began to fall as you neared the darkening bricks of the address you had gotten over the phone.  The black wood door of the building required a shove from Paddy to open and the wrought iron railings of the stairs left a mark on your hand as you made your way to the fourth floor. 

Sid’s hair had gotten even longer since the time you saw him last, reaching almost to his collar in such an inopportune fashion, a ridiculous ensemble of  facial hair messily covered his jaw and above his mouth. 

He smiled so widely as you opened the door, enough to show the gold crown on one of his teeth that he usually tried everything to hide.

Seeing your eyes widen at the sight of him he immediately began to explain, ‘Apologies…, bout’ the state of me that is,’ he muttered. ‘Just been cooped up here working for months, hadn’t even looked at myself– who’s this then?’ He cut himself off and pointed towards Paddy behind you, the torn threads of his black jumper hanging down from his hand.

‘I believe this is a dead man walking Sid.’ you mused, ‘This is Paddy.  He is in the SAS.’ you stated, lacking any sense of covertness.

‘Paddy…’ the man mused, scratching at his head, he jumped slightly soon after with a quick inhale, ‘Mayne?! He’s a sure terror he is, he is? Isn’t that right?’ he asked hurriedly into the space between the two of you.

‘Only when wee’ boys like yourself get in my way.’ Paddy responded for you.  The man on the other side of the door stooped despite his height, bowing his head slightly in nervous acknowledgement contrasting a wolfish grin on his face.  He looked at you, a ‘boy!?’ he mouthed, a mischievous sparkle in his eye shining as if he was rejoicing in the fact he had been referred to as younger for once.

‘Welcome in then,’ he cocked his head. ‘Welcome, welcome make yourselves at home, don’t mind Baron she’s had his forty winks now and a pig's ear to keep her company.’ he grinned.

‘Hate dogs.’ Paddy huffed, brushing past the other man as they filled the doorway in front of you.  You all moved into the space in silence, you were grateful to be anywhere after your marathon of a day, even in the somewhat messy bed-sit with a dog snoring by the coal grate.  The dwelling was practical, homely in Sid’s rag-tag way, with old paintings he’d collected from flea markets stacked in all corners of the room, books and bric-a-brac filling any spare surface. 

It was larger than your own with a set of strangely ornate glass doors with mis-matched stained glass separating the main room from a small sleeping alcove to the left.  The wallpaper was peeling in some parts and stained with coal smoke in others.  A coat rack stood by the door, most of its arms broken leaving one holding the owner's unmistakable wool coat.  The wooden floor had several mismatched extremely worn rugs covering it, perhaps Persian in origin, though Eoin would likely tell you otherwise; no doubt procured from a flea market in Sid's travels in Morocco or some other place he claims to have visited.  Between these were fine scratches in places, of furniture shuffling in the past and fresh ones from the clear sign of a dog's claws.

By the door in the corner was a small kitchenette, a kettle still steaming sat on a small gas ring, above, a couple of cast irons hung from hooks haphazardly plunged into the brick behind. 

You placed your briefcase on a low-table seemingly acting as his work desk.  It was filled with books and papers and a half disassembled well-used Kodak Brownie.  Notably, your friend had always kept his typewriter on the kitchen bench, he’d always said he found the most inspiring words coming to him when cooking or brewing coffee.  

Snapping you from your observations of the room Sid spoke,‘Ain’t you a dog yourself? That’s what they’re sayin’’ He said in his dangerously curious tone, he clearly  couldn't help but continue the conversation from across the room as he still lingered by the now closed door, pointing from his hip at the soldier as he stood by the window at the other end.  

‘Aye, and she’ll have me playing fetch with your mop-head in a minute if you don’t shut your gob.’ Paddy warned, cocking his head in your direction.  Sid turned to you with a faux surprised look on his face as if to say ‘he’s only gone and said that in my own house, has he?’ You waved him off and made your way over to gently pat the fast-asleep dog.

The messy-haired man raised his hands above his head in an exasperated stretch before clasping them together, with eyes closed for a moment in an attempt to compose himself.  ‘Well, it’s just the one room, but I can put a couple of blankets down for you or whichever you’d like.’ the journalist said, smiling kindly. 

‘Or we could take your bed and you can sleep on the floor.’ Paddy said roughly.

‘Or…,’ Sid grinned, ‘I could set the dog on you, and we’d see if you’re really a dog yourself.’ he scoffed, ‘She’d rip the balls of you, son.’ He said darkly.

‘Fuckin’ sayin’ that to me in me own house,’ Sid mumbled, barely audibly, pulling a cigarette from his pocket and placing it in his mouth, ‘ridiculous.’  he muttered.  Your head was already in your hands at the immediate posturing between the two.  The air settled between the two soon enough, and they even bonded over a shared love of some of the romantic poets and Greek epics into the early morning. 

Paddy gradually sobered up once and for all and Sid became increasingly drunk in his harmless manner on gin despite the time, you were dozing off cramped and contorted to fit in one of the mismatched chairs by the window, Paddy sat beside you in the other, eyes falling to the way your long skirt had bunched up to reveal your thighs and worn winter stockings.

Eventually the Englishman, tired of trying to pull any dramatic stories from the soldier, disappeared to the small bedroom to the side of the main room and returned with an armful of roughly spun woollen blankets. He spread them out by the dying fire as the dog had stirred awake and was now roaming nervously between the armchairs, brushing her thick wiry hair against Paddy’s trousers and your hand hanging off of the chair.

‘Right, I’m off then. C’mon ol’ girl, get to sleep in the bed tonight you lucky’un.’ he clicked his tongue in a practiced tone and the dog and she strode across the room to follow the man.

Paddy watched as you slept for a while before corking the bottle of rum he had been provided with firmly. Placing it on the table beside your briefcase he quietly lifted you from your chair.  You stirred awake just enough to be helped from your skirt and stockings, leaving just your long blouse for modesty, Paddy stripped swiftly, uncaring about his nakedness in another man's home as you curled up between the two blankets.  He soon came to realise that lying beside you was the only comfort he had experienced in mouths, and he felt grounded away from the mindset of ‘kill or be killed’ which had overtaken him ever since he had been separated from Eoin, and especially since the news that he was missing had come through.

After a few hours, birds chirping outside and a distant ‘all clear’ siren had stirred you both awake as dim light flooded through the still-open blinds of the room.  Paddy’s arm lay heavy across your side and chest, keeping you flush against his warm body under the blankets, your hips already ached from the hard surface below but you were grateful for somewhere to at least rest your head.

You roused against him, pressing your clothed behind to his crotch in an absentminded test.  Without fail the Paddy you knew was there as after a few moments he roughly grasped your hip.  A hand was brought to your mouth, ‘Spit.’ his gravelly voice commanded quietly.  Your eyes shook awake at that, turning your head over your shoulder to look into his blank face.  There wasn’t much of a debate when it came to doing what Paddy wanted usually, it would happen one way or another.  You moved your head forwards as you still reluctantly gave in, letting a small puddle of spit stream from you mouth onto his hand as your eyes searched his own and face for any emotion.

‘On your front,’ he continued, a gentle hand lightly pushing on your shoulder despite his domineering tone and initial harsh grab of your hip.

‘I’m not going to fuck that needy cunt of yours,’ he said casually still quiet in the small space.  His weight shifted from beside you as he sat up to straddle your thighs, holding the hand with your spit up to his own mouth to spit harshly against your own.

‘Though…, I don’t doubt that she's been begging and dripping for me since you saw my swift exit from that pub.’ he accosted.

You gasped as he smothered your thighs in your shared spit. He began slowly moving against you, hands moving to press on your lower back as he set the pace. 

He pulled out from your used thighs with a slow, drawn out breath.  With a single moment he flipped you over onto your back, taking a moment to reach down and rub your clit with two rough fingers before dipping into your wetness and pulling it across his spit covered length.  With the three liquids gathered on his finger he brought his fingers to his mouth savouring the taste.  Your eyes widened, but he wasn’t finished,  pulling the finger out to reach down, pulling at your own mouth to open he leaned down and let a string of spit fall from his own mouth to yours.  It hit your lip and rolled into your mouth with a taste of a mix of salty skin and heated pleasure. He continued to move downwards, pulling you into a rough kiss to finish the fourth taste he was craving, tasting everything you could give him.

‘Come on Paddy, before he wakes up.’ you whispered against his mouth which had formed a wolfish grin barely touching your own.  He let out a rough noise deep in his chest as he flipped you back over, cock slotting roughly between your thighs once more.

‘Has he had his way with you then yet?’ Paddy said suddenly through gritted teeth against your ear as his full weight pressed you through the blankets and against the hard wooden floor below.  The slick drag of his cock soaked in your combined spit and the wetness now accumulating on your thighs made you impossibly needy.  

Your eyes widened from their blissed out half-closed state, ‘No, no we– not really, I–.’ you whimpered out quietly, ‘Not really?’ Paddy growled, voice raising to a fierce question.  His hand moved against your head to push your face against the rough woollen blanket as he sped up.

Maneuvering his head to your other ear he dragged his tongue across your neck in a rough claim of the sweat-dewed skin there. ‘Is he good? Tell me?’ he began questioning, scoffing at you as you grimaced beneath him.  Your face filled red with embarrassment as you unintentionally squeezed your legs tighter against him.  This to no doubt spurred him on as you felt his sheathed cock heave in a mighty twitch as he paused pressed flush against you.  He waited a moment further for a response, to which there was none you could muster. 

‘Seem’s we’ve an eye for the same sort,’ he cooed mockingly as he started to move at a vicious pace, the sound of his thighs slapping against your own was sure to wake the man next door you thought.  Let alone was the floorboards beginning to complain in a low creak and groan under your combined weight.  

You shook your head, hair failing over your face, ‘Oh…, aye, I think we do.’ Paddy chuckled mockingly.

‘Should I have a ride of him too?...’ he questioned into the air beside you, anger and jealousy flooding into his voice, before gritting his teeth ‘since we’re all fuckin’ havin’ a go, aye?...’ Tears had begun welling in your eyes at the desperation building in you, he was so close to giving you what you wanted, to pounding you into the floor and making you forget about everything that was coming down around the both of you. 

The blankets under your chest had bunched up, the harsh fabric brushing against your sensitive chest as the weight of Paddy rocked against you.  ‘...Since we’re all fuckin’ goin’ about the town whilst your men are away, fighting–, fuckin’ dying in Hell right here on Earth?’ He continued his tirade.  ‘Please, Paddy!’ you begged quietly.

‘Oh, I think I’ve gathered quite well a sense of your true character.’ he mocked.

‘Fuck it,’ he grumbled, sitting up to roughly spit between his own thighs and onto yours with precision.  You stuttered as you felt the liquid hit you, part of your mind relishing in the filthy treatment, the other 

just wondering if this was another quiet outcry for anything to distract Paddy from Eoin. 

‘Would putting my cock in you set you right then? Remind you of the only thing that can satisfy you?’ he asked.

You nodded your head at an attempt of a response to his question as his hand gripped the back of your neck firmly to steady your movements, holding your head face down as your hips and back began to ache at holding your thighs together and arching your back slightly.

The muscles of his back shifted as he completely crowded over you as he returned to his pace.  ‘Just a desperate fuckin’ whore.’ he grunted, ‘No, no, I’m not, I swear–’ you whimpered.  You could tell how much his words were working himself up if anything as he began to ramble against your neck.  Growls and grunts of ‘Aye, oh, you love it don’t you.’ and ‘There’s a girl.’ came tumbling from his parted lips as he reached between the blanket and your body to pinch at your hard nipples in the cold air.  You were in bliss even without him being inside you, just the rhythmic movements of the strong man above blanketing your body and watching him work himself at the thought of you desperate for him was enough to make you squeeze your eyes shut in pleasure.

Paddy soon lost his composure entirely as he sat up on his haunches over you.  He scooped an arm under your knees, shunting you upwards as he and pulled your hips up to access your knickers which had ridden up as he used your thighs. The shine of your skin glistened from the dull blue light filtering through the windows as he marvelled in the sight.  He quickly pulled the thin silk fabric to the side, twisting it inside out as you squirmed at the fabric pulling even more taut around your hips. 

His spare hand had moved along his cock in long pulls in a steady practised rhythm all the while as you tried to squirm against his grip.  You reached your hand backwards to try to grip at his thigh, nails scratching the skin as you moved against the rough blanket below you, trying to get any sense of friction and release of your own.  Paddy, in seeing your desperation let out a low rasp of curses, moving forwards against you to coat the material of your knickers still twisted in his fingers in thick ropes. He released the material with his mess added to your own and it fell back into place between your thighs.

He hunched over you further, trying to control his ragged breaths, ‘You’re going to keep those on just like that…,’ he patted your still aching cunt now with a flat hand.  You jumped as his movement pushed his own hot release against your now cooling wetness.  

‘and you’re going to stand in front of that eejit and not say a word about it.’ he told you. His head fell back as he moved to stand, spent cock still thick hanging between his thighs as he pulled both his hands through his hair darkened lightly by sweat.  You watched as he crossed the room to the kitchen, admiring his strong body in the gloomy light.  He brought a tea towel over which had hung from a low cupboard, kneeling to wipe at your thighs yet leaving the mess beyond the thin fabric above. Returning you watched in disgust as he wiped his hand and still wet cock uncaringly on the towel before returning it to the spot from which it came.

‘It’s still early,’ you breathed as Paddy gathered himself to lie again at your side. ‘Aye, a few more hours of sleep maybe for you.’ You hummed in agreement, uncaring of the cooling mess against your still heated body.

Still coming down from the sight of the man you had missed in his full nakedness despite the depraved act he had just worked out on you, exhaustion eventually took over you again as you tried to slow your mind. The sweat now dewing coldly against your body was quickly wicking into the blanket Paddy draped across you, and your eyes fell shut in satisfaction as sleep took you. 

Paddy began slowly to track his lips against your shoulder once he recognised your breathing pattern allowing him to admit into vulnerability, taking his time to muster the words from deep within he whispering against your skin;

‘I… missed you too…’

[taiscedulcinea]

The way you wrote Paddy’s interactions with Reader’s oblivious father was hilarious, I hope they interact again in future chapters!

He's for sure a character and we'd love to include him again! Maybe we have a few more characters for Paddy to interact with up our sleeve!

[taiscedulcinea]

I’m so happy there will be more Empire Club updates! I’ve really enjoyed reading the series. I hope we’ll get more fluff moments between Paddy and reader, as well as “day in the life” moments between all three

So glad to hear it anon! Certainly fluff will be on the cards in future, but we've got some quite dramatic events tee'd up I hear! They'll get their cute domestic life soon enough I'll hope though...

[jimmythecookiemonster]

SAS: Rogue Heroes (2022)

[taiscedulcinea]

Update!

A little birdie tells me Chapter Seven of the Empire Club is currently in the works! Keep an eye to the ground as we get this one in the books...

What would people like to see happen? What intrigues you the most and inspires you to want more? Let us know below!

[taiscedulcinea]

I keep coming back to this page searching for an update, like my lover has gone off to war, lol.

We'll meet again Don't know where Don't know when But I know we'll meet again some sunny day

In all honesty though, hoping to potentially put together another chapter soon!

[taiscedulcinea]

I just wanted to say that your empire club series is a true work of art. Ive reading it quite out of order but i truly appreciate it and I think that your care about the characters and the story can be felt quite deeply in the writing

Thank you so much! We'd love to write more but our lives are super busy and ideas are few and far between these days!

Be sure to check out our individual tumblrs for musings here and there!

xx

[taiscedulcinea]

The Empire Club | six

Letters | Part Two

Paddy Mayne x Eoin McGonigal x Fem! Reader

summary: A series of letters and correspondence and short drabbles from the perspective of Paddy and Eoin of life-between-wartime with you as their newfound companion. Their usual competitiveness turns usual 'correspondence' into a mark of Paddy and Eoin's growing devotion and obsession. Slivers of a future with the pair slip through as the farmhouse becomes a base of tranquility away from the grinding desert sands or scorching Italian heat. Separated by water, frozen or sweltering earth and desert, the few weeks of leave the soldiers are allowed takes everything from you emotionally and physically as you become inseparable. The distance is somewhat healthy, yet the inability to touch drives them both mad and you along with it as you dream for something more and something which sees you as a trio never separated again.

warnings: explicit sexual content (smut), m/f sexual content, m/m sexual content, sexual-competitiveness / rivalry sex, light BDSM, sexual control / denial, erotic letters, exhibitionism, free use, mutual pining, jealousy, possessive behaviour, physical violence, knife-play, mentions of period-typical bigotry, slight existentialism, degrading, slight voyeurism / exhibitionism, sexuality crisis.

wwii postal acronyms (in order of appearance):

B.U.R.M.A – Be Undressed/Upstairs Ready My Angel

S.I.A.M – Sexual Intercourse At Midnight

word count: 10k

a/n: Here's part two! It's a real meaty one so I hope you all enjoy it and thanks to all that have helped to inspire this series! I wonder where they will go next?

tags: @bleedingsunlight @anniemayne198 @thesirenmelusine @h3k3t @shiningdyingmoon @littlemspeachy @matrixfangs @iceemochaa @confetti-cakemix @amaranthine-enihtnarama @remmicks-salvation @faestunna @vcmpbyt @dxmurewrites @markinganx

And the War Drags On…

9th of July – 17th August 1943: Allied Invasion of Sicily. 

They make it through, the both of them, scarred and exhausted, but alive.  They each had little time to write to you, though Eoin briefly described Paddy’s fascination with the statues of women in the ancient Roman ruins they often encountered, comparing the beautiful, curved lines of their bodies to your own.

13th of October 1943:  Liberated Italy Declares War on Germany.

March 1944: The SAS returned home to prepare for the Allied invasion of Normandy.

20th March 1944

“Paddy.

I was told of what you did with your knife. I mustn't lie, I lost my rag at that, but she said she rather enjoyed it. 

Do be careful with our girl, will you? 

She comes back with a scratch on her, and there will be dire consequences.

The Dublin crew called her back for longer than I thought, some article deadline extended – stayed a whole week longer than she did with you.

Jealous?

E.McG."

Paddy’s previous letter had described exactly what he’d done to you.  Eoin had begun to read it aloud whilst pushing into you from behind at a punishingly slow pace, some cruel bile swirling in him that matched Paddy’s own moods at times. 

He tilted his head, almost murmuring to himself, “....in that situation I would’ve done this instead,” correcting Paddy, he moved to lean his body against you, sliding his free hand to your mouth and pushing one finger, two, past your eager lips as he stilled his hips. Fully pressed against you, he had placed the letter aside, mouth brushing the shell of your ear, “…I think this makes you wetter, colm.” his free hand had lifted your leg by the thigh, raising the angle to an impossibly tight fit.  

Thus, reignited the certain ‘friendly rivalry’ between the two men as of late, which had settled into never-ending letters of Byronic yearning.

7th April 1944

“Major Mayne,

She stalked my bed like a leanan sídhe this past whole week (check the folklore book I gave you, Paddy).

I had thought you’d have maybe kept her unsatisfied? 

Yet, it seems you’ve taught her tongue something unholy; she has caused me to doubt my own faith over and over again.

Made her cry your name one evening last week to ‘thank you’ in all my delight at your kind sharing of skill. 

I had her trembling and spilling all over me last night, have had to throw out the sheets.  I must’ve gotten her into that adorable bliss four times, just a quick one as we had been reading into the early hours together.

Treat our girl nicely, eh?

Much love, 

E.”

“‘Major Mayne,’” Paddy mocked, squeezing up his face in his attempt at Eoin's slightly mixed, lazy-sounding drawl, before looking back to his slim pickings of a breakfast sizzling on the cast iron below him. 

He knew Eoin had been overly military in his reference on purpose in a usual poor attempt at written humour.  

Paddy was to travel again to your father’s estate with you the following week. You had been convinced to be trapped there to celebrate a family member returning permanently from war, but it had also become a secretive neutral ground to exchange information, as Commander Stirling insisted. 

Paddy's ‘meeting' with you there was to discuss the matter at hand regarding ensuring the existence of official, yet classified documentation of the regiment, with emphasis on ensuring utmost secrecy from the public.

12th May 1944, Cotswolds

Eoin,

You’ll never guess where our little dove is now. 

I had told her to B.U.R.M.A for S.I.A.M. on that big fancy bed of hers at her Da’s estate. It’s been proven difficult to write with her clinging to my lap, squeezing around me with that reckless abandon. 

No finishing for her tonight, I took your school of operation, and she was rather disobedient. 

Naughty thing, always touching herself when she knows we’ll satisfy her more than her pretty fingers ever will. 

I’ll let you decide if the punishment should be carried out back home or here. 

The musical sound of her whines in my ear soothes the loss of your voice, a loss we both mourn, I’m sure. Even now, she calls for you sometimes, thinking you’d save her from the consequences of running amok. 

We’ve created a spoiled thing, love, one who claims she can get what she wants from us with a snap of her fingers. 

Let’s prove her wrong…”

One hand rested on your hip as Paddy wrote the letter, his cock still pressed deep inside you in a way that made you feel filled to the brim. Your clothes had been lost hours ago, since he found you on the bed after coming home from a late meeting with Stirling at his own pompous family estate about an hour away, your fingers deep inside of yourself.  Of course, you had been trying so desperately to replicate something only he could give you.

Though you hadn’t even noticed him enter the room, having been caught in your father’s escapades repairing fences once more, even as he returned home late.  Paddy’s clothes remained on his body, save for his pants pulled down only slightly so he could sit you on top of him at his writing desk after toying with you till your thighs felt slick with your own mess. His eyes narrowed as your hands trembled, trying to undo the first few buttons of Paddy’s shirt. His hand left your hip, gripping your fingers on his chest.

“I’m trying to write, wee' pet. You’re being very distracting.” He placed the pen down gently from his last interrupted word.

Your body writhed against Paddy, cunt squeezing him in a way that made Paddy have to bite the inside of his cheek, holding in a groan. 

“You’re so… you’re so mean.” You whined, forehead pressing to his shoulder as your hips shifted, trying to get the friction that Paddy just wouldn’t give you. Letting out a frustrated hum, you wondered aloud, “Eoin wouldn’t be this mean.” 

A smile grew on Paddy’s face, raw and mischievous. He dropped the pen against the desk, both hands falling to the warmth of your thighs, squeezing the soft skin there, spreading you wider.

“Wouldn’t he?”

He would.

"You're going to tell me what you’re doing and ask in favour of what he'd do, and I'll write it in this here letter to him." Paddy commanded, "Since you seem to know my dear ‘friend’ so well," he huffed as he reached for the pen discarded on the desk.

16th of May 1944

“Lieutenant, 

Another quick letter to you.  It appears the mail system is slow at the moment here, on day 3 of my stay here. 

Her Da is the kind, as you know, of whom I don’t as so much wish to associate myself with, but here I am again.

He’s still ‘Stirling-like’.

Though it appears he doesn’t even know there is a War on, at times, he’s so delusional in his pompous Englishness, at least I appear to be posing adequately enough as the ‘courter’ of his daughter once again.

P.S.

'Four'? I seem to recall your last count to be.

Most unfortunate.

Eight last night.

Love, 

Your Paddy.”

The text was written in an especially rough and linked manner; Eoin could easily picture Paddy writing it in his typical quick and cocky frame of mind.  He shook his head, laughing quietly as he read the final letters aloud to himself, yet thoroughly annoyed. 

“Eight? Impossible…well, actually…” he huffed, pausing to stare at the flickering streetlight through the curtains. He didn’t put it past Paddy and his tendency to push forward regardless of discomfort or overwhelming others.

Turning the paper in his hand, he noticed another signature of its own.  A rich red mark of a lipstick-graced kiss bloomed on the paper, just the shade Paddy loved, sanguine and alluring.

“P.P.S – This shade looks fantastic dragged all over my c….” The letters became scrubbed out in a dark smudge of ink.

“Oh, ya’ fuckin’ eejit-dog you, Paddy fuckin’ Mayne,” Eoin swore out.

It didn’t take long for him to be pulled back to your mark.

He quickly pulled the paper to his own lips, gently kissing the thin material where your lips had clearly been. He felt he could almost taste the slight saltiness there, too, as he screwed up his face in abject disgust, yet it was a taste he knew well.

“Dog.” He snarled out, yet not moving from where his lips lay.

He still found himself pausing in consideration of his wild desires before he lightly bit his own tongue, then uncontrollably dragged it in a flat stripe across the paper. “Look what you’ve made of me,” he huffed. “A desperate, desperate fuckin’ thing,” came muttering from somewhere deep in his throat as he put the letter down on the writing desk to stare at the old piano idle in the corner of the room, a tune or two would soon come to him.  

It was a notable time before Paddy received a letter back.

When it did come, the Major gritted his teeth together lightly as he clasped the envelope.  He was sitting in his favourite chair by the roaring fireplace, reading glasses he denied he needed to most slipping down his nose as he struggled to fight to stay awake.

“Here we fuckin’ go then,” he pulled the letter out and began, knowing exactly what reaction his previous letter would’ve uprooted in Eoin, who at the time was soon to have your company after being pent up alone in Dublin for some time. 

However, out with the letter fell something else, the heaped remains of some fabric. 

Reaching down to grab it, Paddy was immediately hit by a faint smell, sex and sweat and slightly tart alcohol, maybe even some blood. 

They were the satin remains of your ivory-coloured step-in; he unravelled them in front of himself, an expression of awe across his face.  They were cut clean in two down the middle with pinpoint accuracy, from in between your breasts to the centre of your pleasure.

“Eoin Mc-fuckin’-Gonigal, you filthy, filthy fuckin’ man.” He hissed out.

The step-in had seemingly become a towel underneath both of you, yet the satin struggled to absorb well, and Paddy couldn’t help himself as he pushed the remains of his two lovers’ passion to his nose in an act of spontaneous oversight, inhaling deeply as he sank deeper into his chair, eyes fluttering closed.

He stayed there for a moment before tearing himself away, the shame of the act not yet present on his face. He rolled his head back, arm slipping off the arm of the chair, and the torn fabric falling to the ground from his hand.

Paddy took a moment before he brought the letter in his other hand into view, “Now, what’s the prick got prepared in this one?” He muttered into the quiet of the farmhouse, with the only sounds being the fireplace crackling lightly away and the cat lapping at a bowl of milk he had placed by the range.

“To the self-proclaimed ‘courter’, ...”

‘Oh, for fucks sake…’ he groaned, rolling his eyes yet unbuttoning one of his shirt collar buttons immediately. 

“...It was very surprising for me to discover last night that our girl couldn’t quite remember not only your rank, but also your name! 

I just told myself I must, must help her out of this poor situation she was in.

In fact, she was so very loud, screaming out some other name instead, I had concerns yet again that the neighbours were going to call in a bloody murder, it’s been twice this fortnight I’ve had to answer the door to a garda.

This ‘Eoin’ bugger she must be seeing must be quite frightful to cause her to scream like that.

Ten, don't be alarmed, we had plenty of breaks.  Almost took her all night, and I was delighted to give her that delight into the early hours.

– took her nice and slow for the last.”

Paddy tilted his head back, breathing heavily through his nose as he pinched the bridge of his nose before he read on.

“P.S. We booked our train tickets today too, for Newtownards.  Though I did have to restrain myself from getting into a certain disagreement with the young stationmaster over his unwanted glances in her direction.  

I worry I will have trouble at the border again, won’t they just act as we act, without judgment or hate?

P.S.S. The poor thing fell asleep like a lamb before I could have given her some more; she would’ve taken it.

Alas, she was so tangled in her own slip after I tried to pull it off her, she kicked and screamed with a great roar of ‘don’t ruin my pretty things’, but oh, how you know I love to ruin pretty things, Paddy.  She let me have my way, and I had to cut them off the poor girl. 

I hope you enjoy the attached item as a token of our warm tidings as we travel next week to you.

Till then, I think I'll have to play nurse for a couple of days, God knows well she’ll like that.

With my best wishes, 

Your great 'friend'.

E”

Paddy tore the letter in half in a seething rage almost immediately.  He balled it up and threw both it and the ruined silken fabric into the fireplace, sending the cat into a fit from where it had now lain by the smouldering remains of the fire and across to the sill of the open window.

“Ah tae’ fuck with it all, sorry Puss.” He muttered, shepherding the cat back from the window it had leapt to.

“Have to keep you safe now till your mam’ comes home.” He turned, staring into the fireplace as the paper curled and the satin ignited, immediately regretting his decision to burn the sweetly scented fabric.

Paddy got off desperately that night, rushed and frantically, thrusting into his calloused hand as he rested it in front of him on his workbench, hips snapping forward relentlessly as his trousers were half-torn off and shirt pulled up and twisted into a knot in his own mouth to stifle his grunts.  

It was a loose, uneven pace of hideously slow, then skull-crushingly hard and fast; one he knew Eoin would’ve scolded him for being so ‘erratic’ in his rhythm.  Most of it was spent trying to recall that precious smell of the step-in and not think about his dearest Eoin’s smug face and teasing voice, reminding him how to fuck, instead trying to replace it with the sound of you crying out for more.

20th of May 1944

Paddy’s last letter had weighed heavily on Eoin’s mind in the weeks leading up to travelling to Newtownards. He had propped it up on the piano and read the lines as his fingers slowly danced across the keys, as if creating tunes to match the clear inconsolable longing the other man had for the pair of you:

“Dear Eoin,

Nothing to report on the state of our ‘bodily entertainments’ here, just the embarrassing thoughts I’ve been having.  Somehow, she has managed to make even the ugliest parts of me beautiful. Her manner of speaking does not befit an animal like myself, but when I am with her, I am inclined to believe the things that come out of her pretty mouth. 

Her compliments, her soft murmurs as I hold her, the unintelligible things she utters in the throes of our shared passion. She has a way of making me feel like I deserve the things that life has bestowed upon me. 

You and her…. My cold heart has never felt as entirely full as it does now. The moon seems brighter here than it ever did. Perhaps that is because the expanse of the countryside greets it as an old friend. 

It doesn’t use its pale luminance to betray the children of the world it orbits.

To answer you directly, yes. I think of you when I see it hung in the sky. And though I enjoyed her talk of the constellations, I still see the stars and trace patterns in them that look like you, like her. 

I’ve created my own constellations from them, and they are of the people whom my heart thinks have hung them in the very night sky themselves.

All my mind, being and soul,

Paddy”

21 May 1944 Newtownards, County Down, N. Ireland.

The train ride with Eoin to Belfast was mostly spent playing intense games of cards, twenty-five, and an alteration on the game called 'spoil five', which you hadn't heard of. Eoin's heated encouragement that you beat him almost made you miss the connecting train to Newtownards as he finally threw in his cards just in time to get off the train and onto the next.

Eoin had been keeping the last letter in the desert from Paddy unopened, the last letter he had hoped to be addressed to the drop-point in the desert and it was so. 

There began a great struggle to contain himself, to prevent any emotion from showing as he began to read. He had known it was going to be quite the ‘interesting read’ as he had remembered just how much he had wound Paddy up at the time:

"To ‘the one that holds the stick’,

I think of you glaring at me like you do, taking me down a notch. Throwing a stick for me, but is that stick our dear girl Eoin?

Should I drag her with my teeth back to the farmhouse, kicking and screaming for me to ruin her as you do me?

Or would I sit outside the door of the farmhouse, howling for you to let me back in whilst I hear her cries under you. 

All that howling after being told so vehemently 'no.'?

I think you know you too well what I want, Eoin.

At night, I imagine your hands as they work on that Enfield of yours. Would you mix that gun oil with your own saliva and attune me like you do those swivels and trigger?

Would you affix that rifle on me, force me on my knees in that hot, coarse sand and employ me to work for my life, to beg and work, work for it with my mouth and hands. 

You'd quite like to, wouldn't you? But you're so far away, Eoin.

So, so far away.

My hand and mind wander equally at night in this lonely farmhouse, Eoin. 

After your raids, think of that to calm the blood and the screams.  

Though I think of that look in your eye after you kill, after you bare your teeth for me and think maybe one day you’d tear me apart like those men in the desert, not before you give me my final taste of you.

My hands and my mind wait for you.

Let your own wander.

P.M."

He quickly stuffed the letter back into the envelope and into his breast pocket, hoping the heat rising on his cheeks and his wide eyes weren't showing to your intrigued ones. 

"What did it say, Eoin?" you asked, flipping a page in the day’s edition of the Irish Independent you had carried all the way from Dublin.

"Not much…," Eoin stuttered, "he'd just missed the gore of it all then I think." he bluffed. The train rattled around you both as you raised your voice slightly for him to hear.

"Really? I thought he'd calm down a notch…" You mused, still idling, flicking through the paper.

"Ah, yeah." Eoin toyed with the loose button on his cuff. "He said something about being taken down a notch," he admitted, looking at your eyes, scanning the words of the paper, unaware of what he could possibly have just read.

So deeply aware, though, was Eoin of the tightness in his pants as he shifted in the seat, and the few minutes left till the station and the jaunt to the farmhouse, where he would perhaps have to face the wrath of a pent-up Paddy Mayne. Eoin remembered sending the soiled step-in that he had cut off your heaving body with a steady hand in London, remembered watching your eyes shift between horror and desire at the proximity of his trusty Fairbairn-Sykes knife, just as Paddy had once done under him.

Newtownards was a quaint place you had grown accustomed to quickly; Eoin hardly remembered anything of it past the lake that sat outside of the farmhouse. Paddy had inherited the place in some lop-sided arrangement for saving the son of the old farmer who used to live there at the Litani River.

 You had insisted on walking from the train station to Eoin’s dismay, challenging him with a “‘Since you’re so desert hardened, I’d thought you could handle a bit of a jaunt up a countryside lane.’” Laughing at his look of sheer disbelief, he tried to hide a smirk.  

Eoin had still obliged, though, tossing his pack over his shoulder and picking up your suitcase and leather briefcases in each hand.

The farmhouse was picturesque to say the least, and the warm air tickled your face with a teasing gesture as you took in the view, the slate roof, no doubt once thatched, leaning heavily to one side yet still holding on; the small chimney bent and twisted from the weather upwards from the dark stone. 

Unsurprisingly, the door was already wide-open as the dust whisked lightly around the pair of you as you approached, Paddy was leaning against it grinning like an idiot at the sight, you could see he had been working in the paddock, hair slicked back with a sheen of sweat, shirt sleeves rolled up to expose his tanned forearms and army issue sunglasses perched on his head.

You couldn’t help but smile from ear to ear. Eoin was struggling to balance your suitcase on his foot as he adjusted his cap. Paddy let out a low whistle from the doorway, “I see you two have worked up quite the sweat,” he called out, and that familiar wolfish grin shone with it.

He sounded, frankly, mad as a snake as he made his way across to you both, rambling something about what you could only just hear as a neighbour's goose and some lines of poetry quickly under his breath. 

“Come on in, let me take your things, it would be my pleasure.” Paddy grinned, Eoin raised an eyebrow, Paddy had that strange, deranged tone in his voice where it felt even, he couldn’t predict what he would do next, let alone the fact of his unusually generous offer. 

“Ya’are saying funny things now, Paddy.” Eoin almost warned, “A strange welcome, really,” he continued.

Paddy stepped forward, arms held out to pull your suitcases out of Eoin’s hands, “Give me those.” He muttered. 

He had gotten extremely close by now, slowly looking up at the dark-haired man next to you, fuming. Eoin looked down with a heavy gaze at him through his slightly sun-blinded eyes…calm he was, always calm. 

“Not fuckin’ your pack, I will, Lieutenant,” Paddy growled out.

“Cut it out, Paddy, have you fuckin’ lost it?” Eoin immediately responded.

Paddy stormed back up the steps, turning halfway back to face Eoin, “Aye, yes, aye, I have since, you fuckin’ sent Missy here’s little slip in that wee’ red post-box behind you.”

“Ah,” Eoin smirked, head dropping to look at his dusty shoes in distraction.

“So that was me pulling the knife, eh?” he grinned back at Paddy.

It took no less than almost two days for you to leave the farmhouse, well, to leave the bed specifically.   Your reporting on the recovery in Belfast from the attack in 41’ were needed to be posted from a larger centre for security reasons, so you had decided to take Paddy to Belfast by train.

Taking a train with Paddy would be a new experience, you assumed him to be unused to any form of transport if it wasn’t a rattly Jeep thundering across the desert, Douglas Skytrain, or heaving hospital ship by now.  Only brief it was to be, just to Belfast, an hour or so.

The train was quaint, like most things around the rural North of Ireland.  A crimson moquette bloomed across the warm, high-backed seats and paired well with the flashes of wood and chrome throughout the train as its low rumble thundered across the countryside.

Paddy had already caused nuisance, teasing, poking, and prodding with needy hands.  With a grin, his voice had lowered to an even more dangerous tone, “I’ve got you squirming, haven’t I?” he grinned.  “Do you miss our dear Eoin that much, that quickly?” he inquired.

“Aren’t you spreading your legs under the table for me now as I talk?” he leaned forward, hand beginning to close the distance between you both. You laughed awkwardly, "Paddy, you know you don't exactly have the most romantic voice." he raised an eyebrow.

"So what? Is that Eoin's job then?" he questioned. You flushed red, looking off to the other side of the carriage in a moment of total embarrassment. 

“...and yet, if I were to slip my poor, shaking soldier's hand like this across this table and under your skirt…” he tilted his head slightly, “I’d find you were not soaked for us?” he continued to press on as a slow smirk grew across his face. 

Your eyes had become locked to whatever you could find that wasn’t the conductor of impending embarrassment in front of you, locking onto the way the ornate lamp fixture by the carriage door shuttered over each break in the rails.

 “Tsk…tsk, what would Eoin think of you?” Paddy’s sly tone crept past your forced distraction as two fingers dragged across your body.  It wasn’t long before he had dragged you up and out of your seat, in between carriages as the train rocked around you.

“Here, in public?” you shot out in outrage at Paddy’s request.

You winced as the train let out a high-pitched belch of steam, the sound rattling through the windows against your back.

“Aye, lift your skirt.”

“Paddy…” You warned, slight panic building in your voice, “Oh, Paddy, no, really… oh, but the conductor? Or another passenger, I mean– we just can’t.” You stammered.

“The conductor won’t come, and if he does, I’ll make sure he doesn’t remember what day of the week it is, let alone if he saw a beautiful woman getting her fill from a soldier doing his duty to his 'fine country'.”

He slowly slid to his knees in front of you, hiking your legs over his shoulder as he bunched the skirt up and over his head.  Your hand immediately grasped out for anything in reach; some copper piping overhead provided a grip as your brain buzzed with heavy anxiety and desire.  Your breath hitched as the valves of the steam locomotive released a sudden burst of pressure just as Paddy’s still grinning mouth latched onto your body.

You'd confessed to Eoin about Paddy's little excursion on the train that evening. He’d said he’d do something about it come morning, ruffling your hair with a smile, yet you registered the absolute fire roaring behind his eyes.

Being stirred awake in the early hours was usually cause for great upset in your past, sounds of grouse shooting as Stirling constantly talked about, or the clattering of pots in the kitchen below your room at the estate.  Yet to wake up to the sounds of a certain Paddy Mayne whimpering and fawning like you in your neediest times was beyond belief, and Eoin rutting against him was a pleasure beyond any soft birdsong or gentle sunrise.

“Sorry, did he wake you?” Eoin smiled, a hand coming up to cover Paddy’s mouth as Paddy’s only free hand shot upwards to protest it. 

“It’s fine...” You answered quickly, honestly, and intrigued. 

“Mornin’ darling, m’really sorry, he gets a bit loud when he’s–“ 

In all honesty, you didn’t mind whatever they did; both showed love in their own ways. 

Right there and then, it was with Eoin on top of Paddy, pushing his cock deep inside as his ill-tempered lover, as he manoeuvred his fighting hand away and turned him around, pressing his face against the pillow as he cursed like a sailor. 

"Thought he needs a bit of a reminding of how to behave with that outburst you let me know about yesterday,"

Eoin’s eyes followed your hand keenly as it disappeared below the little bedspread covering your naked body, “You up for more?” he finally asked, taking his time to watch your hand slowly moving against yourself, watching, waiting, gauging your reaction. 

“Yes, please.”

“You want a turn with him?” he asked again, nodding his head slightly at you, dark hair tousled still from the night before.

Gritting his teeth, he pulled Paddy’s head back roughly by his hair, voice smoothing to a teasing, sickly-sweet tone, “Have you had enough of me, sweet darlin'?” He mocked through gritted teeth as Paddy slumped exhausted against his firm grip.

Paddy must have done something even further to set Eoin off into this mood. Eoin was usually such a gentle soul, but could be overtaken by a roughness to him, yet still always keeping his teasing plentiful.

“Can I keep in him while he fucks you?” he asked. You struggled to understand what he meant as Paddy let out a pining noise into the pillow.  Eoin squeezed sharply at his hip, “Wind your neck in, or you’ll be missing all the fun,” he hissed out, reprimanding the man.

Eoin wrapped an arm under Paddy’s hip, hauling him backwards and up on all fours, his hard cock hanging heavy against his thigh, ready to be put to use despite his predicament. Eoin’s wrist tensed as Paddy attempted to move back against him, holding him in place once he realised the unwarranted moving, “Get under him, you know how nice and pretty you look doing that.  Let me see you while I feel him take you,” he demanded.

You blushed fervently at that, laughing lightly, nervously, and he chuckled back, “Don’t laugh now, Dove, I know you’ll love it.” He smiled, that smile which always warmed you, even when he was in such a filthy position, seated and stilled fully inside the other man.

“Move up for me, he doesn't get you yet,” Eoin told you, though his voice was slightly muffled as he ran his lips against Paddy's shoulder. You could feel his hot breath across your cunt. 

Eoin still held that beaming smile as he shifted forward, pushing Paddy's head down for his mouth to meet you.

Your hands travelled the familiar path into Paddy's hair, that specific sigh that had become such a joy to the Irishmen's ears falling from your lips.

Paddy had learned your body well, how you loved as he lapped roughly at you, then alternated between flicks across your clit, blowing cool across it and sucking lightly. 

Adding to the feeling of Paddy's mouth was the shifting back and forward slowly as Eoin moved, only now gentler, behind him. He buried his strong nose through the dark patch of hair and against your pubic bone as he looked up at you.  The predatory look you were used to when he did this was instead mellowed, glassy-eyed and full of pleasure as he began to fall into slow, lazy upwards glides of his tongue.

It didn’t take long before you were shaking and spilling all over Paddy’s eager tongue, cursing out that you were filthy, and you could handle no more.  Eoin soon squeezed your ankle in a quick reminder of his presence and control. You were finished only when he allowed you to be finished.

"Paddy is going to fuck you," he said bluntly, he tapped Paddy’s lower back lightly.

"Go on, lad," he gave permission, hiking up Paddy’s hips to meet yours as he pushed back in roughly, shunting Paddy against you, flushed red tip of his thick cock hitting your folds wetly.

He swore out as you instinctively reached down to guide him in, gasping at the delicious stretch and the way his cock was already throbbing from his pleasure.

“Oh– Christ, the way he just clinched around my cock, a stóirín.” Eoin groaned lowly, holding onto Paddy with one hand, bringing his other to cover his eyes for a moment, as if the pleasure was blinding even in the dull early-morning light.

"Pull out, let me fuckin' feel it," Paddy growled, reaching to grab at Eoin's forearm roughly where it rested near his side.

Eoin gave in to Paddy's wishes immediately. He pulled back, pulling nearly entirely from Paddy. You could've wrapped his hand around the exposed length, just the flushed tip barely inside. He paused a moment before he pushed back in slowly so that you could feel as Paddy reacted to every inch. And Paddy, with nowhere else to go in you, rocked deep inside you with every thrust. 

Once Paddy was settled inside you, Eoin resumed taking his pleasure from Paddy. You couldn't help but notice it felt different from your usual times lying with either man. By this point, you knew how Paddy's cock felt inside you, you knew how he moved, his pace, angles. But now it felt as though Eoin was controlling Paddy's cock through him. 

In a sense, he was. His movements, which your body had subconsciously remembered, were now being echoed by Paddy's much thicker, shorter cock.  Your legs wrapped tightly around Paddy's hips, and Eoin’s hand gently moved to clasp both your ankles, spreading you wider yet grounding you.  Your mind considered it as though Eoin was toying with Paddy, in an ultimate show of control, himself and only himself allowed Paddy to move, to take pleasure from you still through Paddy. 

"I love to see him like this, Eoin," you groaned, the back of your head digging into the pillow.

"Ah, yes. Paddy… strong, ruthless Paddy..." Eoin drawled.

He squeezed Paddy's shoulder as the Major's head fell limp as he stared, eyes-glazed over at the sheets. "Would'cha look at yourself now." Eoin hummed.  It was a sight to behold, Paddy, now strung up under a man, a man who was your own as he was Paddy's.

You knew this wasn't a new trick between the pair. The way they flowed together, it was with something practised, with something loved. Eoin seemed to know exactly what to do and when to do it to Paddy, and Paddy to yourself. It was a certain harmony in movement which you had felt between them since that night at the small table at the Empire; the finishing of the cigarettes, passing of the whiskey tumbler, glances shot across the table, warning as the other spoke too much or too little.

It was all too much, often you had been tied up in your own head and struggled to focus, but now they were the only things consuming your mind, driving you wild as you came undone.

“Good, good girl.” Paddy groaned against your neck as your body stuttered around him.

His movements also began to stutter, even despite Eoin’s slow, firm glides into his body.  Eoin could sense he was close; he could always do that.

He sighed as he gripped Paddy’s hip, “I want you to look her in the eye when you finish. Look at what you've done to her,” he breathed out, running a hand down the cool sweat beading on Paddy’s arched spine.

Eoin's voice snapped you both out of it.  

In times like these, of pure focus in bed, he seemed to reach in and pull you from somewhere else entirely, his tone shifting into something so firm but calm, one of authority not by rank, and the only authority which Paddy Mayne obeyed, or much so worshipped.

Paddy had sworn out, pulling into the hot space between your bodies as he came, mess landing on your thighs which he had drawn together.  Eoin didn’t need much to follow, making a mess of Paddy in the way he could do forever and never get tired of it.

The War machine continued forward, SAS training was interspersed with short breaks back home and a hazy taste of the feeling of a taste of life ‘after’ war, if that were to ever be reality.

The past few months were eventful with a visit to Paddy and then Eoin, a trip home and then finally together at last as the three of you wished.

The days since arriving went smoothly, a great respite from all the travel and worry of war out in the great distance beyond the shores of Ireland.  A trend of late was for you and Eoin to wake up early, sometimes at the same time.  You’d usually talk quietly at length in the calm silence of the morning, Paddy shifting around, still fast asleep next to you.  

One particular early morning, Eoin had prepared a different morning activity for the both of you.

You stared through half-closed eyes at the pale panes of his back as he shifted up to sit on the side of the bed.  Wincing lightly yourself at the sound of his ribs cracking, you noticed how he remained unreactive.  You knew it was a reminder of an old breakage from the nasty drop in ’41 rearing its head.  He reached behind, still looking forward, placing a hand on your calf as you lay watching him silently, as if to steady yourself after hearing his war-worn body wake.  Always, you had found yourself amused by their lack of caring for privacy or modesty, walking around naked was the norm, gathered from time, especially in the deep interior of the desert, where in Jalo it sometimes felt it was too hot to wear clothes at the best of times. 

He moved silently across the room, stretching his shoulders slightly as he set on slipping Paddy’s Aran jumper off the back of the chair, placing it on the seat, creating a cushion away from the cold wood.  Quietly, he beckoned you over to the desk. Silently, you obliged, steadying yourself for a moment once on your feet, Eoin reached his hand down to guide you into the seat.

Eoin kneeled next to the seat, moving his hand to the other now resting on your thigh. Your eyes widened, and a lump began to grow in your throat as you watched him slowly pull off his rings:

“To continue our little letter-writing correspondence we've been doing…, I’d like you to write a letter of your own to Paddy,” he said quietly.  Off came the gold band he never talked about, the silver claddagh ring that ‘had to’ remain on his right-hand facing outwards, and the worn gold ring he had told you was a ‘mourning ring’ passed down.

"What for? When I can tell him here in person now?" You replied, as he brushed a still slightly damp strand of hair from the night's bath before from your cheek.

"Oh, I know, but I want you to ask him to do things to you that you cannot bring yourself to say aloud to him."  He spoke so softly, even when asking for the most deviant depths of your psyche to reveal themselves.

"I can say most things to him, Eoin, I'd gladly tell him he's a tosser too." You grinned.

He moved your hand towards the pen, swallowing stiffly as you still took the pen in your hand, shifting through the loose paper on the desk to find something appropriate enough to write on.  

Soon enough, Eoin’s long fingers had moved from your hand and were easing their way into you as he held your thighs apart with the other hand.

“Don’t wake him now.” Eoin gritted his teeth, voice low as your breath had begun to get shaky and whines rise in your throat.  

You gasped lightly as he curled two fingers painfully slowly inside you,

“Let sleeping dogs lie,” he murmured, dark eyes transfixed on your body, taking his fingers, head leaning against your thigh. 

Eoin was always one to get such pleasure at providing you with your own, happy to sit untouched, picking you apart till you screamed for him. 

At times, he’d let you know just how worked up he was, times like now.

He let out a ragged exhale as Paddy shifted in the bed behind you both, “Can ya’ hear how you make me feel, Dove? Listen real closely now, can you hear it in my quiet voice?”

He moved his hand holding your thigh apart to lightly circle your clit, watching you jump as you squeezed around his fingers, “God…, just thinkin’ about you gets me so—.”

Smiling, you patted his shoulder lightly, taking in how he had lowered his facade of control to let some of his inner desperation in.

But you hadn’t told Eoin what you were writing.  

You hadn’t let him know you were going to unleash Paddy like a wraith against the both of you, despite the slumbering beast that he currently was.

Getting tossed into the hay was not something you had imagined to be quite so rough compared to how it is described in stories from your childhood.  Paddy had hunted you down like some beast after reading the shakily handwritten letter.

You had left it partially opened on the nightstand, reading glasses slipping off his nose as he sat up in bed, sheet barely covering him. Eoin’s eyes had lingered as he buttoned his shirt in the corner by the dresser, unaware of what you had written, smug at himself and unknowing of what he had just set into motion.

“She’s gone to the market, or shops, or somethin' like that”, he said.

“You’re more attentive than that, Eoin,” Paddy said blankly, already sensing something was not exactly in its right place.

“When she gets back, she’ll know all about that, I suppose, then?” he gestured lightly to the letter eyes following where Paddy’s own were widening at the words printed in your neat hand.

“T’was hardly awake, just saw her perched at the writing desk, pen in hand, words flying, didn’t want to disturb her, so got a few more winks, he smiled kindly.

“Y’know ná hoscail doras na hiaróige and all that.”

“Aye, of course, yes ‘all that’.” Paddy gritted out sarcastically, an obvious fury rising in his throat. He rested the letter on the thin sheet below him.

Eoin hadn’t expected Paddy to fly at him in a flash of heaving muscle, hadn’t expected himself to be pressed against the dresser like he was back at that hotel in Cairo.

Paddy let out a low growl deep from his throat, one beyond warning, one of pure debauchery.

Eoin smirked slowly, his plan had worked, well…, for the most part, he thought.

Paddy pushed the letter roughly against Eoin’s half-clothed chest, “From what I understand, based on this wee letter here, it seems that she’s unsatisfied.” 

“W-what?” Eoin quickly replied, voice in a slight panic.

You didn’t even hear him stalking up behind you. 

Passing the barn and heading for the farmhouse, it took great care to balance two bags brimming with soda bread and a hefty fresh bunch of carrots the neighbouring farmer had insisted you take. A bacon joint bulged the bag and nearly bruised your side as you tramped along the uneven ground, when suddenly he’d rushed you, snatching your arm and practically dragging you into the barn. 

“Pad—Paddy!” you cried out.

You watched with dismay as your bags tumbled to the ground. He redirected you roughly, your back colliding with the rough wood of the barn wall as he crowded you against it, eyes fierce. You frowned in confusion, gently protesting as he gathered up your skirt around your hips and grabbed the backs of your legs, hoisting you up and pinning you to the wall. 

“Paddy! Come off it now!” you cried out, eyes frantically scanning his own, which were filled with both rage and lust.

He pressed a hot kiss into your mouth. Without thinking, you reached for his hair, raking your fingers through the nape. You gasped for air as he broke away, pressing his forehead against yours.

“What are you—”

“Wanted a real ‘Welcome Home’ did you, hmm?” 

Your eyes widened in realisation, and a small smile formed on your lips as you realised, he had understood what you wished for in the letter.

“Oh…yes. Yes, I did,” you stammered out.

“Unsatisfied…” he muttered, “Is that right?” 

You almost spoke, but a gasp came out instead as he pulled you from the wall. His fingers dug into the fat of your ass as he tugged you closer against him, huffing harshly in hot breaths against your neck. 

You clung to him, eyes wandering wildly around the room until Paddy stopped and, in one swift movement, threw you onto a pile of hay. You cried out in surprise, scrambling upright as Paddy unbuckled his pants with one hand in a swift movement, regaling you with a glare that sent shivers down your spine. 

“Turn over,” he ordered. 

With a trembling breath, you obeyed. It wasn’t long until his weight was pressing down on you, as his fingers were digging in your scalp painfully. He snatched your head back, pulling up your skirt and straddling your legs. You whimpered, eyes squeezing shut.

“Paddy—Paddy that hurts—”

“Whisht that pretty little gob,” he hissed. “You’ve said all you needed to say.”

He pressed your face into the prickly hay, tugging your hips up to meet his. Your lips parted, a shuddering gasp against the scratchy surface beneath you as he gripped your hips harshly and ground his cock against your cunt. You were already soaked, your slick coating him as he pressed against you harder. Your head throbbed with the pain of his rough hand tangled in your hair.

“Fuckin’ dripping. You want a real romp in the hay then?” Paddy spat, “We’ll, you’ve got my goat, you fuckin’ do with that letter.”  

He didn’t ease into you; it was a sharp, rough thrust that stole all the air from your lungs. One thrust of his hips, then a second, a third, and you had all but melted into the hay, chest heaving under throaty moans, drool already forming at the corners of your mouth. 

“Oh, you need this, didn’t you?  There’s my girl now, taking it well.” He cooed.  You desperately tried to cling to anything solid within your arm's reach, only to latch onto loose handfuls of hay straw.

“Eoin thinks you’re out still…,” he breathed out, tilting his head to the side slightly.  He began at a punishingly hard pace, not overly fast but bone-shaking in his force.

A mighty smack run out through the rafters overhead as Paddy’s hand crashed against the rippling skin of your ass, “...thinks I’m mucking the hay,” he grunted as he reached to pull your hair, wrenching your head back, uncaring of the tension on your scalp.

“Paddy, please–” you begged, wanton in your moan as he pulled out slowly before pushing deeply back into you, hand pressing hard on your shoulder, making your back lower twinge impossibly.  It was ruthless, all of it.  It shook down any romantic visage of the Major and reminded you of exactly who he was, ruthless through and through, feared, intimidated by nothing or no one.

Another searing strike came down across the thick flesh of your ass, “He doesn’t fuck you like this does he, sweet pea?” Paddy told you sarcastically, rather than asking.  You cried out at the stinging pain, unresponsive to his query, “Is this why your hand was persuaded to beg for it?” Another strike hit you, falling just next to the first mark, sure to welt across your skin. “You couldn’t say it aloud and beg him like the whore you are?” he spat.

“Paddy–” you gasped out, tears streaming down your face reddened with embarrassment, “I’m not a whore, P-Paddy, I love you both, d-deeply, I do, I really do I–” you rambled.

“Aye, that’s it, you’re just greedy.” He teased as he stalled his relentless pace, flattening his body against your back, and you could hear the wolfish grin in his voice at that.

“Best thought I’d teach you both something today,” he announced loudly.  Your body already felt wrecked, ass red raw from just two firm strikes of his palm, used cunt reeling at his pace, and hay straw stuck to your stomach and breasts as you took him on the floor, like something animal.

“The lesson being–,” Paddy began, “that you are but a wee’ plaything.” He pulled out without ease, spitting on his hand and smearing it over his angry cock, “a plaything, here for him, and mostly him, to have fun with and then you are to remove yourself.” Despite their biting message, deep down you knew his words betrayed him.  

You laughed into the hay, “You’re lying,” you replied.

He leaned back over you, “I’m giving you what you asked for,” he snarled in your ear.  Of course, the ‘immersion’ you had described was into a world where the Major did not care for you, where he did not love you, only sought to use you.

At that, he pushed back in roughly, “You think you own our fuckin’ cocks and our minds,” he laughed.

Eoin had told you time and time again he hadn’t known what had come over Paddy, he’d told of a lovestruck look that he remembered himself from the first time they’d met; on that foggy Ballymena morning at the St Patrick’s Barracks in 1940.  

He’d told you he’d seen it again, in that social club in Cairo, perched up high in the second story, surveying the place like buzzards.  

You knew this reaction from Paddy was a lie, a test.  A show of force. 

Just as you had asked.

Nevertheless, more tears pricked at your eyes. You whined, twisting against the hay straw in ecstatic agony as he snapped his hips into you and pressed deeper than you could take. Your back and thighs shook from the pressure. 

“Paddy,” you hoarsely begged, grasping for each breath.

“No, no, don’t cry yet for me, take it like you’re made for it.” His hips snapped in frantic movements against you as he struggled to contain himself.

“Paddy, it’s too much– I can’t,” you whined, hand reaching desperately underneath yourself to try to touch yourself between his brutal thrusts.

“Aye, yes, yes, you can now,” he reprimanded, with a few more thick pulls of his cock, and his hand reaching to pinch at your swollen clit you were coming undone around him, body contracting and vision searing white as you cried.

“There we are, there's my girl,” he chuckled, “there’s my whore.” 

He breathed out slowly as he stilled himself deep in you, your body still shaking after your orgasm, “Been thinkin’ about this way too long, lamb.” he rocked himself deeply

“I’ve to make sure Eoin knows you’re good for it rough now.” Paddy took a moment, as if considering what he was about to say, an unusual thing considering he usually spoke first and considered the weight of his words later,

“Been also thinkin’ about what else you’re good for…” he said hungrily, hips rocking against your still stinging ass.

He pulled out in a slow drag, “But that’s not for today. C’mon now, stand up,” he gestured, pulling at your hips.

“Bloody hell, Paddy, I don’t think I can stand–” you whined, attempting to smooth your dress.

“God, Paddy, I really can’t do any more…” you sighed, head lulling back as you sat with your legs outstretched into the hay, dirt and straw sticking to your sweaty legs and dress wrecked.

“Think you can,” Paddy said as he gripped the base of his cock, standing and moving forward so that the heft of it was close to your pursed lips. You pushed at him lightly on his thigh in rejection.

“Slippery lil’ thing ya’are, c'mon, don’t have to stand and it’ll all be better once you’ve got something in that pretty mouth,” Paddy growled, reaching down to pull at your hair as he bucked his hips, soaking tip of his cock hitting your lips as you gave in, parting them and taking him in your warm mouth.

“That’s it…” Paddy moaned.

“See, you might be done, but I’m not just yet,” he huffed, hands moving either side of your head to hold you still as he began to slowly move against your face, your throat cinching as you struggled to take him down at his own pace.

He began fucking into your mouth at a rough pace, uncaring of your discomfort-filled moans around him and your nails pushing deep into the skin of his muscled thigh as he thrust.  Your jaw soon ached as he continued to use you.

With your free hand, you reached to tease at the patch of hair running from his waistband to the base of his cock.  You could tell he wasn’t winning in staving off from making his own mess of your mouth, his hips stuttering as he moved forward.

With a great heave, you pushed him forwards and from your mouth, reaching to stall him from pushing back in by grabbing the base of his cock and pulling in firm movements all the way up his length, your saliva creating a delicious slick pull.  It wasn’t long before Paddy painted your lips and cheeks in his pleasure, swearing under his breath as he squeezed his eyes shut despite the glorious sight beneath him.

“I’d like to put that somewhere else sometime soon,” Paddy said quietly as he turned and ran a hand through his mess of hair. He was out of your earshot and spoke in a mumbled voice so you couldn’t pick up most of the words.

He was trying to tuck himself, soft and messy, back into his trousers when you spoke, “Paddy, I do think now I’m really too tired to stand up.” You laughed, falling back into the hay in your mess of drool and sweat.

“Good.  Have a lie a bit there then, can’t send you back to Eoin again wanting more,” Paddy replied.  He grinned as he tucked himself into his trousers, “and don’t act like Eoin can’t give you this too, I know he can,” he continued, “just tell him to stop mucking about and fuck you.”

Paddy had continued working on the outdoor bath he had hoped to set up for when he required a bit of nature pondering to calm himself.  Eoin had interrupted him after caring for you for hours; he had gently helped you from the spot Paddy had taken you on the barn floor and helped you to walk back to the farmhouse with two hands holding you.  He spent hours bathing and caring for you, picking up the scattered shopping bags and watching as you slowly melted around his careful hand.  

“She’s up having a kip.  Pub?” he asked, slotting a couple of shillings in Paddy’s hand.

“A wild one, she is then?” Eoin huffed, slumped slightly in his chair.

They had come to an agreement that morning after reading your letter, Eoin devising a plan once Paddy had let go of his throat.  Paddy was to ‘test’ you, test if your words were true in wanting it like that; wanting Paddy as mean and raw as you could get him, wanting him to remove his clouded mind from poetry and love, to treat you like a wedge, an invader to his precious haven with Eoin.

“Aye...” Paddy nodded.

“You know I’ll try marry her first if you don’t,” Eoin said calmly.

“Aye…” Paddy repeated with that growl to his voice, one which came whenever he relented to Eoin, sipping his pint slowly as he stared into the fire crackling in the hearth.

"You know I don't get along with women all that well," Paddy quipped.

"Paddy, how soft in the head are you?" Eoin scoffed, "I thought you'd have it screwed on your shoulders enough by now to know there's not one bit of truth to that." he discretely squeezed Paddy's elbow under the table.

“I thought you were to get your degree first,” Paddy continued.  “That high and mighty job across the water you’d dreamed of.” 

“Ah yea', there is that”, Eoin nodded his head slightly, “but I have to survive you at War in cold, cold mainland Europe first.” He added. Paddy cocked his head as he checked the quickly diminishing contents of his pint, the 'ambitious' head on the pour dissolving.

He gently set the worn glass down, “Remind me again, who has dear Eoin just claimed he will marry after all that 'war'?" Paddy began sarcastically at a loud volume, tapping the rim of the pint glass with his signet-adorned little finger.

The other man took a sharp breath in at that, placing his own raised glass back to the table with a rough 'clink'.  Eoin's voice fell into a dangerously low whisper as he glanced around the room; a few well-drunk labourers and farmers with their wives scattered the place, their snug was a decent distance away, but he didn't like the risk, even whilst the bar was almost closed as the kegs were well-dried despite the small clientele.

Eoin's hand moved from the pint to grip the edge of the table in a frustrated squeeze, his own ring-clad fingers grinding against the wood before he spoke.

"Paddy, you know I would if I could," he admitted.

"'Would' what dear Eoin? Marry who? S'alright to admit you want to marry some lout of a woman, sweet pea." Paddy bluffed, voice lowering slightly before he drank deeply from his pint, emptying it, the foamy remains of the head clinging to his beard.

"You, Paddy." Eoin hissed suddenly through gritted teeth.

"I would marry–" 

He paused, 

"You." 

His voice raised slightly from the quiet pitch into one of low and mellow, sombre finality, eyes looking empty into the depths of the room, fixed on nothing in particular.  It was a heartbreaking confession that he had addressed time and time again in his own mind, but to speak it into existence was ever so crushing.

The days continued to pass fast to your dismay, though the shorter days opened up for longer evenings of drawn-out pleasure, spilling over their hungry fingers and mouths, feeding their relentless appetites as they savoured in you.  Paddy had quietly adored the taste of you on Eoin, combined with the taste of his own release still on his lips, mingling together the three of you to an ever-so-satisfying taste to savour.

Bad dreams rarely had come to you nowadays with them.  On this occasion, one had, pulling you from your sleep and racking your brain with nervousness.  Paddy’s arm was lying heavily across your side, hand forming to the curve of your hips.  It was good to see the Major sleeping for once.  You noticed the missing form in front of you. Eoin always liked to watch your eyes slowly flutter awake in the morning.  The air in the room had cooled lightly, and quiet birds chirping and murmurings of a waking landscape filled your eyes.  You shifted, gently placing Paddy’s hand at his side, as you sat up in bed, you noticed the door to the field open, curtains gently swaying in the breeze.

It took a moment to pull yourself to your feet, body used and weary but deeply satisfied.  

Eoin was sitting on the steps, dressed already, clearly having given up his attempts at sleeping.  A mug of tea sat next to him, steam swirling into the air and chasing the breeze.  He sang softly to himself in a low voice. You listened intently for a moment, catching something of thyme and heathers.

A dull weight sat in a pit in your stomach as you took in the sight for a moment; the purple, hazy light of the sunrise flowed over everything with a soft light.  Your feet padded softly on the aged wooden floor towards the door, crossing the threshold into the cool morning. You smoothed your night gown’s hem as you sat down next to Eoin. He showed no sign of surprise or alarm at the sudden intrusion.  There was a calm mutual silence between the two of you.  You knew Eoin was weighed heavily with something over the past few days as their leave neared an end. Birds had begun to chirp around you both louder, and a cool breeze gently brushed your cheek.

He spoke; voice almost timid, unheard of to you before.

“If we survive, you know,’’ he swallowed slowly, a clear lump in his throat rearing its head through his voice.

“…all of this… I just want you to know, …. either of us…,”

If.

He breathed out slowly, breath visible in the cool morning air.

“We don’t want this to end.” He said, looking across the yard, eyes following a robin hopping along one of the low dry-stone walls.

“I know.” 

You didn’t take any time in thinking over your response; you needn’t. 

He hadn’t looked you in the eye the whole time; he had been staring off into the paddock, eyes fixed on the glowing horizon.

“You don’t think you’ll make it to Berlin, do you?” You asked, less of a question than a sombre fact.

It was less of a question, more of a statement. Eoin breathed a long sigh through his nose and shook his head lightly.

“It’s not Berlin I’m worried about,” His hand came to rest lightly on your knee.  “It’s him. It’s Paddy, and it’s after.” He paused, “I don’t think he can return to normal life. Christ, I don’t think I can return to a normal life.” 

You looked at the ground as he said it, eyes fixed on a small, winged insect trailing its way down the jagged stone steps. 

“No, but Paddy could stay here. He could keep his hands busy in other ways,"

You both laughed quietly for a moment before you tried to continue, shaking your head. "I mean, with his poetry, the cattle and chickens and little Lady the cat, and sure, me.  I’d stay here with him; I'd find work in the local papers.” 

"Wouldn't that be boring for ya'?" Eoin asked.

You mused on the thought of reporting on bumbling farmers and community fairs, gossip and any merry fanfare, smiling lightly as you chuckled at the thought of Paddy and his menagerie of animals, selling a few dairy or beef cows to get by and slowly becoming a published poet, he had dreamed of, with you both his muse.

Shuffling closer to Eoin, your shoulders connected, pushing into each other lightly for much-needed support to you both.  You began in a dramatic tone, “I promise you that I will calm him when the call of men screaming comes beating through that big, lovable head of his, just as you have done, Eoin.” You laughed lightly at the end, coughing slightly against the cold air.

Eoin sighed lightly in an air of release and relief.

“Just as I have done,” he replied in complete sincerity, then smiled solemnly. 

You felt tears welling in your eyes as he pulled you in, turning your head to face him with a finger light on your chin. 

“Damn it, this mess we’re in, dove.” He crooned, eyes finally connecting with yours, brushing a stray hair behind your ear.

“Have I told you I loved you?” You said against his shoulder.

His hand held your side lightly, palm flat against the thin fabric of your borrowed shirt, “Do you need to?” Eoin asked quietly.

“I need to say it over and over until I can no longer say it,” you admitted.

“Shh, there will be so, so much time for that.”  He brushed a hand through your hair, “But for now,” he whispered, “I will tell you, tá mo chroí istigh ionat, always.”

“Can’t you say it in English, Eoin?” you asked quietly,

“It doesn’t quite capture what I mean. But yes. God–, yes.” He pulled your head up with a light tug, kissing you softly.

“I do love you; I love you so much, we love you so much,” he said quietly, and yet it was the loudest sound you had ever heard; no distant artillery fire or mortar blast would come near to it. 

It was the only sound in that field, in that county, in the damned world for all its worth that mattered. 

[taiscedulcinea]

From The Archives | "discipline"

summary: a vignette of domestic life with you and Eoin alone at the farmhouse.

warnings: spanking, erotic asphyxiation, dom/sub (m/f), light degradation, anal play, crying, cockwarming, manhandling, praise kink. 18+. MDNI.

a/n: written by @amaranthine-enihtnarama ; happy gooning! -- motya

taglist: @bleedingsunlight @anniemayne198 @thesirenmelusine @h3k3t @shiningdyingmoon @littlemspeachy @matrixfangs @iceemochaa @confetti-cakemix @amaranthine-enihtnarama @remmicks-salvation @faestunna @vcmpbyt @dxmurewrites @markinganx

Though you were a sweet girl, there were times when certain moods would take you. You would be listless, curled up with a cigarette between your fingers, eyes distantly scanning faraway visions that neither Paddy nor Eoin could get you to speak of. It was like David had prophesied as fate for all members of your trade: empty eyes gazing into the fire. It was like clockwork, and it thrust you into strange antics. Sexual heat.

Paddy had swiftly decided how to handle you, and he did just that—five, seven, ten times a day if need be, but Eoin was different. He considered you; played with his food, so to speak, let you perform for him. You’d be sure to put on a show. You’d keen onto him, purr in his lap, beg ever so earnestly, but Eoin wouldn’t give in. Not because he didn’t want to, god, he wanted to, but because of the dark glint behind your puppy-eyed gaze that told him you thought you had control. He’d skim his fingers over your bare thighs, mouth curling into that sly smile, and he would tell you, ever so benevolently, no.

But this time, you would not take no for an answer.

You had on your warpaint and armour for the battle: red lips and his dress shirt, barely buttoned, nothing underneath. Breath hitched, you peeked around the doorframe into the kitchen, nearly feeling your knees buckle with need. Eoin sat at the desk by the window, leaned back in his chair, long lashes brushing his cheekbones as he rested quietly. Papers and folders were spread out over the meager space of wood and from your position at the door, you could see his right hand stained with ink as he raised it to pinch his nose and sigh, tilting his head back. Your eyes meandered his slender neck as your lips caught between your teeth, watching his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed and straightened up, leaning back over the desk. Your heart raced in your chest—this needed to work.

The shirt brushed against the doorframe, catching the man’s attention, and his face quickly warmed into a smile. Slowly, you revealed yourself to him, watching the smile soften as his gaze wandered up from your bare feet to your plush thighs, the peek of your mound through the split of the cotton fabric, the beginnings of the curve of your breasts that the oversized shirt drooped around, up your clavicle, your lovebitten neck, all the way to your eyes. His lips bloomed into a grin, but he turned to the desk. 

“Afraid I’m busy, dove,” he said, twirling his pen in his fingers. 

Inhaling shakily, you lowered yourself to your knees as he focused his attention back on his papers. You bent over, bracing your hands on the floor, and slowly crawled into the room, hips swaying with each inch forward. Eoin glanced over to see the motion in his periphery, and his eyebrows raised in surprise, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest. Your eyes leered up at him, pleading, desirous, as warmth began to build between your thighs. He chuckled again—something about his amusement, his ease in brushing off your most overt advance yet, only made you need him more.

You rested on your knees as you brushed against his calf, then propped your chin on his leg and looked up at him through your lashes. He watched you quietly, still, but you weren’t daunted by the weight of his dark eyes. You nuzzled the rough fabric of his pants with your cheek, fluttering your eyes shut before softly kissing his inner thigh, leaving a red print on his pants. He took a sharp breath and gripped his pen in his hand. 

“Honey…,” he warned, but you don’t listen, not when you finally have him where you want him. 

You exhaled the weight that had been crushing your lungs as you grabbed the bottom of his chair and move the wheels, turning him so he faces you. You crawled further forward, tugging at the shirt to show off your ass, slowly dragging your nose against his crotch, eyes opening. You held his intent stare as his eyebrows furrowed together, feeling his cock harden beneath your lips as you pressed a kiss against it. 

Your hands skimmed up his thighs before gripping them to push yourself up from the floor, but Eoin stopped you with his pen to your lips. His gaze lingered on them as he led you back down to your knees, tapping the soft flesh for you to put your hands back where they belonged. You perched on your heels obediently but then your eyes sparked. Reaching out for the wheels again, you tugged him closer and lowered your brows defiantly, tilting your head upwards and fixing your teeth on the tip of the pen. He sighed, looking up from your mouth and burning into your eyes.

You were disobeying him, he realized, and you were eager to pay the price. 

“So that’s how it’s gonna be,” he asked, voice low. “Gonna push me, are ya?” 

He moved the pen from your lips, tucking it under your chin and leading you to the limits your fingertips could reach while still connected to the cold floor. Eoin shook his head. 

“I don’t know what gets into you, but you can’t behave like this, doll.” 

Your breath shivered out of your nostrils, his words pushing you over the edges of your restraint. Timidly, your hands lifted from the rough wood of the floor and pawed at his cock before hurriedly fumbling with his tightly strapped belt buckle, but your clammy, trembling fingers couldn’t get ahold of it before Eoin grabbed your wrists firmly, all humor and sultry overtones lost from his demeanor. He tugged you up to your feet harshly, face set in displeasure. 

“On my lap,” he commanded. 

You quickly straddled him, wrapping your arms around his neck and attempting to catch his lips with yours but he leaned back with a frown, dark brows shadowing over his gaze as it averted. He released your wrists and grabbed your waist, pushing you off, making you stumble onto your feet with widened eyes. 

“On your stomach.”

You hesitate as he removes his belt with ease, eyes smoldering as he loops the tongue back into its buckle and fastens it, sighing impatiently. He raised a brow, and you quickly obeyed, laying over the fronts of his thighs and grabbing onto the desk for support. You bowed your head, taking a deep breath and shuddering at the feeling of his body against yours, limited as it may be. His right hand settled on your lower back, slowly pushing the shirt from around your hips and exposing the soft skin of your behind, left hand adjusting his grip on the belt. 

“I’d say you need some remindin’ who’s in charge here,” he muttered, spanning one large hand over your ass and gripping it tightly. “Paddy’s been spoilin’ ya’. Now ya’ think you can get your way.”

You shivered as he traced his fingertips back over your ass and tugged the shirt up further, hand spanning the width of your back. You loved how small Eoin made you feel. Paddy made you feel like a used whore, delicious, but the way Eoin shrank you made a slick build between your thighs just from looking up at him. Your mind had wandered to this when he raised the belt, and the first strike caught you off guard as the metal buckle collided with your ass. 

“Oh!” You shrieked, fingernails digging into the wood of the desk. 

Eoin shushed you gently, spanking your ass again, making you jump in his lap. He sighed as your hip bone ground against his clothed cock, licking his lips before striking the other cheek. The force of it, the hard metal of the belt buckle against your smooth skin made you groan quietly, and Eoin huffed, digging his fingers into the reddened skin. 

“God, you’re a dirty little thing,” he muttered, “Can’t even discipline you without your cunt getting soaked.”

He took the belt and looped it over your head, opening the buckle and tugging it until it tightened around your neck. He fastened the buckle then curled his fingers under the loop and tugged carefully, bicep bulging as he rubbed your stinging ass, eyes mindfully watching your neck as your head reared back and you gasped for air. Without warning, he struck again with his hand, watching as your cheek bounced from the impact and your legs jumped. 

“Eoin,” you finally gasped, voice thin and strained.

“We’re very busy men, you know,” he reprimanded, “Me and Paddy. Can’t always satisfy you. But you’re just so greedy…” 

He spanked you again, and you could feel your slick leaking out over your clit as he dug his fingers into the fat of your ass, eliciting pain that made you whine and try to reach for him. He spanked you harder, your body jumping forward with the impact. 

“Hands on the desk, coilmín.” 

You sucked in a desperate, choked breath as perspiration built on your furrowed forehead, grasping at the desk as you fought for air. With a small smile, Eoin released the belt, letting your head fall forward. You panted, shoulders heaving, pussy throbbing, head spinning simultaneously with a lack and influx of oxygen. He skimmed his hands over your rosy, stinging skin, humming softly. 

“How many times did Paddy fuck ya’ last time you were like this?”

Your head was swimming with delirium and lust. You whispered in response, words barely leaving your lips, and Eoin tugged on the belt again, spanking you harshly a series of times. Your hips wriggled in discomfort as the pleasure turned into pain and your face flushed with constriction, throat closing in on itself as your breath hollowly shuddered.

“Hm? Hm? How many, doll?” 

One hard spank and you were nearly screaming it out. “Eleven! Eleven…” 

“Eleven,” he mused, pushing his straining cock against your stomach with a grunt as he adjusted you. 

“Well, ya’ get eleven then.” 

He released you again, then grasped your neck with his hand. He murmured softly in your ear as you shook, thumb rubbing the leather collar.

“Count for me, yeah?” 

You nodded, nails digging into the wood, but his grip on your neck tightened. 

“Use your words.” 

“Yes.” 

“Good.” 

He released your throat, and suddenly the loop around your neck released and the belt was in your mouth and holding it agape, rendering you unable to speak. Your eyes fluttered shut as you took shaky breaths, crushed under the weight of anticipation as his hands ran over your sore ass, then paused and gripped them, opening you up. You moaned from the movement, a shudder passing through your body as your tongue strained against leather.

“Oh, what’s this?” He asked. 

He smiled at the slickness that poured from your cunt, but tutted his tongue at you, patting it softly, watching your body jerk at finally being touched where it needed to be. 

“Ya shouldn’t be enjoyin’ this,” he disapproved, smile morphing into a grin, “Fine lady like yourself. Ya should have some dignity.” 

Fuck dignity, you wanted to cry out, but instead you tried to push up against his fingers as they grazed and circled your opening, spreading the wetness down to your clit with feather light touches. God, his hands. You could spend all day underneath them; the way they caressed you, worked you, gripped you. The way they held your face as he kissed you gently. The way they caressed your hair as you fell asleep between his and Paddy’s chests. The way one struck your ass so hard, you almost screamed. 

“One,” you whimpered gainst the belt. 

“That’s good,” he encouraged, “Very good…” 

His breath shot out as he put his body into the second strike. Your body buzzed as you groaned, writhing in his lap with need. He pressed down on your back as you counted it, telling you to keep still or you’d earn more. 

A third strike, and you were hyperventilating. Your hands spread out against the table as your head lolled, crumpling papers in your uncontrolled grip. 

“Three,” you lisped out. 

He suddenly slipped two fingers inside of you, making you inhale in a high pitch. Your pussy sucked them in eagerly, gripping his digits tightly as he slowly pumped them in and out, watching your back tremble as you fought to stay obedient to his directions. He dragged on your walls, moving his digits at a punishingly slow pace as he curved them inside you, humming softly at your whimpers. 

Smack. “Ah! Four…”

He sighed as you tightened around his fingers from the impact, pulling his fingers out and tasting you, watching the sweet juices leak out of you as you begged him through disjointed, unintelligible speech to put them back in. 

Smack. “Quiet,” he hissed. 

Your teeth dug into the belt as you groaned  out a five, your body burning for another. Bunches of papers were grasped in your sweaty fists as drool spilled over your lips from being pried open by his makeshift gag, dribbling down your chin and neck. He pulled at the leash of the belt, making your head crane back. 

“Look at me,” he told you, “Look at me while ya’ count.” 

Your eyes strained to reach his. You could only get blurry glimpses until you blinked, realizing tears had formed in your eyes as they rolled down your face. He tugged hard, just to make you whimper, before his hand cracked against your reddened ass.

“Sith,” you choked out. 

Smack!

“Sethen…”

Two more again. You were crying, blinking and forcing yourself to look at him, struggling to speak against the belt tightened against your mouth. Your words were gibberish. 

“Eighh,” you panted out, “Nii…”

“Ah, fuck, I can’t hear ya,” he muttered, releasing the grip on the belt and shifting it downwards, now squeezing on your throat.  

You wheezed as he tugged on it, a wicked smirk on his face as he watched your cheeks flush pink, then, when he held it tighter, red. Your survival instincts kicked in and one hand moved against your will, clawing at your neck as he held it cruelly taut.

“Such a pretty red,” he murmured, “Such a pretty little face.” 

He dropped you, forgiving your slip-up with the hand as it flew back to the desk and ground your nails into damp papers while you sucked in gulps of air. You were floating in ecstasy, your head swimming with hunger, body pushed to its absolute limits of endurance as Eoin pushed apart your ass again, slick fingers skimming your puckered hole. You shuddered weakly, fists clenching so tight you swore they were drawing blood. 

“Eoin,” you breathed. 

You got a harsh slap on your right cheek in return. “What did I tell ya’?” 

“Ten,” you whispered, “I’m sorry…” 

“You should be sorry,” he chided, “Very sorry. Distractin’ me from my work because you can’t handle yourself.” 

 You bit your lips as his finger circled your asshole again, a thread of saliva gently landing on the entrance making you shiver. You tried not to squirm as he pushed in one, then two fingers in, chuckling as you moaned quietly. Your ass felt so full, so stretched by his long, thick fingers that you couldn’t help yourself. You bit into your arm to stay quiet as he took that same cruel pace again, relishing the way your body reacted. Heat, everywhere. Your toes curled. Eoin didn’t notice, he was too busy tugging your head back by your hair to watch your face. 

Your eyebrows creased as his pace began to pick up, and you silently thanked God he was finally going to let you come. He spat onto your asshole and hoisted you further onto your lap, working his fingers in and out earnestly. Tingles began to form in your toes that traveled up your feet, legs, then pooled at your thighs as your breath grew ragged, black spots forming in your sight as you went dizzy. The walls of the room began to close in on you, the air grew thin and scathing, your back arched and tensed as you squeezed your eyes shut in anticipation for your release—

Smack.

“Eleven,” he finished. 

You wanted to cry. He had ruined you completely. You were a shaking, sweating mess for him, and he wouldn’t even let you finish. You had been good. So, very good. But it wasn’t enough to make up for your initial disruption. Tears trickled down your moist, quaking face as he undid the belt around your neck carefully, letting you catch your breath as you went limp, head falling against his thigh. His strong, sure hands rubbed your back soothingly as you wept, breath filling up the silent room as your strength left your body. Both your holes pulsed and ached to be filled, and it only made the crying worse. 

Gently, he lifted you up, sitting you on his lap and stroking away the tears on your face, but they only kept spilling over his fingers. He smiled tenderly, finally leaning forward and placing a soft kiss on your trembling lips, quieting your choked sobs. You swallowed as his lips pressed onto the circular bruise around your throat, starting to feel the stars swirling around your head disappear. Slowly, he began to unbutton the sweat-drenched shirt stuck to your skin, tongue swiping at your pulse, and he delicately grasped one of your breasts. Your breathing caught as he rolled one of your nipples with his thumb and kissed your mouth again. 

“Undo my trousers,” he told you. 

Your fingers shook as they grasped the button and unsteadily wrung it open, quickly pulling down his zipper. He reached down and pulled out his length with a soft groan and you practically salivated, trying to get up to drop to your knees and lick up the precum that was oozing from his beautiful, pink head, but he held you in place. You gave him a look of pure despair, making him chuckle and take your chin in his hand, pulling you in for a lingering kiss. He reared his head back as you tried to taste his mouth, grin pulling at his face as his eyes crinkled, and he turned you to face the desk, hand splaying over your upper back and pushing to bend you over. 

“Look at the mess you made of my work, dove,” he murmured, lining himself up to your pussy, “Just can’t train ya right, can I?”

Your weak legs trembled as he rubbed his head against your hot entrance, emitting a low, breathy moan that felt like salvation. He pushed inside, making you whimper as he slowly lowered you onto his cock, stretching you open and piercing deep inside you with his size.

“Sit on it,” he breathed out, “Just like that…”

Your moans came out in sync as the backs of your sweaty things rested atop his, and you leaned against him, back lazily arching like a cat’s, starting to grind your hips. He stopped you again. 

“As much…as much as I would like to do that, I need to redo these,” he said with a soft laugh. 

His left arm tightened around your hips, fastening you against him as the tip of his sex kissed your womb. Your eyes fluttered shut as he pressed his nose into your neck, inhaling your scent, peppering kisses against the soft skin. 

“You can stay still, can’t ya’?”

Biting your lip, you nodded, tears beading at the edges of your eyes. They made him smile.

“Good girl.”

You sat there for hours, squeezing around him, watching his hands as they smoothed out destroyed pages and nimbly alternated between writing and palming your breasts. Your ecstasy returned, washing over you in a long-cresting wave. Good girl, he would whisper into your skin, making you shudder, such a good girl. 

Paddy fucked you, but god, did Eoin ruin you.

[taiscedulcinea]

The Empire Club | five

Letters | Part One

Paddy Mayne x Eoin McGonigal x Fem! Reader

summary: A series of letters and correspondence and short drabbles from the perspective of Paddy and Eoin of life-between-wartime with you as their newfound companion. Their usual competitiveness turns usual 'correspondence' into a mark of Paddy and Eoin's growing devotion and obsession. Slivers of a future with the pair slip through as the farmhouse becomes a base of tranquility away from the grinding desert sands or scorching Italian heat. Separated by water, frozen or sweltering earth and desert, the few weeks of leave the soldiers are allowed takes everything from you emotionally and physically as you become inseparable. The distance, yet the inability to touch drives them both mad and you along with it as you dream for something more and something which sees you as a trio never separated again.

warnings: explicit sexual content (smut), m/f sexual content, m/m sexual content, sexual-competitiveness / rivalry sex, light BDSM, sexual control / denial, erotic letters, exhibitionism, mutual pining, jealousy, possessive behaviour, physical violence, knife-play, mentions of period-typical bigotry, slight existentialism, degrading, slight voyeurism / exhibitionism, sexuality crisis.

wwii postal acronyms (in order of appearance):

I.T.A.L.Y. — I Trust And Love You or I'm Thinking About Loving You

S.W.A.L.K. — Sealed With A Loving Kiss

word count: 6k

a/n: This the first part of our most beloved chapter, we thought to post this is a slight aside from the normal running timeline of the chapters so far. We hope you enjoy and are so excited to share it with you all. A big thanks to all the amazing writers that put together this chapter to come, but now enjoy the silly exchange between Paddy and Eoin, and Eoin getting himself in a bit of a ‘situation’, xx.

tags: @bleedingsunlight @anniemayne198 @thesirenmelusine @h3k3t @shiningdyingmoon @littlemspeachy @matrixfangs @iceemochaa @confetti-cakemix @amaranthine-enihtnarama @remmicks-salvation @faestunna @vcmpbyt @dxmurewrites @markinganx

Eoin smiled at the sight of the stains from where a tea mug had clearly rested on the closed envelope. It was sealed hastily, yet not without a complete lack of care.  The camp around him had lulled itself into a dull murmur of rattling mess-kits and general merriment of a gentle evening without shells exploding around them. For those who had been in Tobruk in the past weeks, a round of constant bombardment creeping up the coast had been hell on Earth.

It had rained all day, and a coolness clung to the tent, bringing some sweet respite before it turned into a biting cold, darkening early evening. The sweat of the day, which clung to Eoin's sandy curls, had turned to an uncomfortable veil of dampness as he brushed stray clumps of sand out of it with open fingers.

You had returned to England again, citing new information to report to G.H.Q. 's highest level from sources spun in from colleagues in prisons pulling information out of any loose-lipped soldier they could find and smuggling the information out.  Though London was the focus, you had always planned another surprise stop for two weeks thereafter, you knew Eoin was hopefully coming home soon for some short time. The tour from London to Dublin and then up to Belfast and thereafter a quiet trip solo to Newtownards was successful in many ways.

All the stops included a few co-operation meetings with other journalists and agents, some even slipped a few words reassuring you that Eoin was coping in Cairo. You knew he would be as he always was. Paddy Mayne, however, was not. Your mind had already shifted by the time you arrived in Belfast Harbour and jumped on the County Down Railway to relieve one pent-up and injured Mayne at his tumble-down farmhouse. It was quite a shock to hear that Paddy was actually capable of being injured, like some great bastard of a lion refusing to die.

Despite his wounds, he fought you off with great glee, reprimanding you for fussing over him with a wet flannel by candlelight, hiding his wincing as you peeled back the dressings on his side. Paddy Mayne, the fearsome Major, impossibly wounded, and all but giggling like a babe at your quivering hands as you tried to play nurse. In ways, it had bruised his suicidal ego, he who attempted to 'carve through the streets of Tobruk' as he had admitted himself.

The sunset followed the both of you out to the chicken coop, and Paddy soon admitted to something along the lines of ‘thereafter Tobruk, he would be a bit wiser of sniper fire’. Yet despite his wounded side, he was still the Paddy Mayne you were used to, he who still fervently bent you over, against, and on top of almost every surface of the farmhouse, including mud-covered stone walls, ignoring the welling in the corner of his eyes at the tearing pain at his side and your cries about muddied dresses.  

It took little effort to describe the quiet tranquillity of these moments to Eoin by ink and paper:

"I had been tossed in the lake to clean off as Paddy howled with laughter last Thursday evening… that's when I knew our Paddy was ready to go back to fighting the good fight."

Night had settled deeply into Cairo by the time Eoin had sat back against a stack of ammo crates in his and Paddy's tent alone and sighed, eyes falling to the ceiling, to anywhere but Cairo. A calm wave of rare stillness washed over him, though he laughed quietly as he moved from your brief but doting letter to Paddy’s newest spiel. That ever-so inuring voice began to rear its head in Eoin’s own as he read Paddy’s ridiculous prose, like some romance period novelette or Byronic confession:

1st April 1943

“Eoin,

I had arrived at Portsmouth on the 14th, Wednesday, hobbled home on the Sunday and had the sweetest of surprises waiting for me. 

I thanked a Lord that I don’t entirely believe in these days.

It takes a lot for me to let her go back to you after almost two weeks.  I have been broken down in a way I thought not possible since she had the grace to wander into our life, and that’s even without a bullet in my side.  

I write to you with such prose of genteel elegance because you both have weighed on my mind without mercy since I departed from Cairo. She has given me all amounts of fuss over my wounds, in all honesty, G.H.Q. is blind in tying a wounded animal in a cage, but at least the cage has a lovely canary in it as well.

There was a time when I told myself I would never love anyone other than you, especially a woman; I had thought my disposition would never allow me so. Every day, my defences are broken down under her soft hand and quick wit.

New chicks are in the coop, we’d begun to feed them and raise them together, feisty, lovely little things, the both of them.

Village’s quiet, no screams of men or roar of the Messerschmitts.  It makes me restless, Eoin; it makes me miss the cries of infantry and the whisper of your voice to soothe me in the night at my side when I crave more and more. 

The hay shed collapsed in a storm since I’ve been gone, so I will rebuild it whilst she’s with you – the cattle are much unhappy with the spoiled hay.  Though good things have still come of it, a little barn cat has taken refuge in the farmhouse and has been loved greatly between the two of us to my unexpected compassion. 

I'd usually kick any dog or cat to the wayside, but I’ve been softened.

There’s a mist ever-present on the lake. I've been trying to fish but have come to find no rod fits as well in my hand as a rifle or a bayonet, or perhaps something else of yours…, maybe which I hold so dear.  The mist, in its own way, reminds me of that thick heat which sat over us in Cairo.  How I enjoyed those nights in white satin in those hotels with you.

I implore you to travel to Newtownards, Eoin, when you get leave, get out of that cramped, stinking city.

Escape to a hotel of our own making with me.

In the meantime, don’t worry too much, I’ll treat her gently, treat her as the beautiful creature she is.

I.T.A.L.Y.

Maj. R.B.M.”

Paddy’s writing always took a moment for Eoin to read, a hasty and at times almost illegible scrawl, not ugly or showing a lack of intelligence, rather like those Doctors who wouldn’t give him time of day back when he was just a Private when an ache or pain threatened to turn to something more debilitating.  The letter had a small drawing of a lake at the bottom, Paddy's Lake. Eoin smiled as he grazed his fingers over a slightly crudely drawn boat floating empty on the water. A slim pane of pale moonlight had shifted now and pierced through the slit in Eoin’s and Paddy’s tent onto the paper. 

Eoin tucked the letter into his thin shirt, over his heart and close to his crucifix. His Paddy and yourself were to him, a hidden secret, worshipped and holy when he could in the quiet hours of the night, away from the blood and fire of war and the doting eyes of men too nosey for their own good. Home any day now, he thought, just for a bit. 

"Home. To the both of you," slipped quietly from his lips as he clambered and settled into his cot.

To say Eoin allowed himself to fall into Paddy’s snare of prose and create letter writing between the two of them into some sort of pissing contest of Shakespearean or Stirling-esque vocabulary was an understatement.  Though at heart they both genuinely believed the words that poured onto the page, perhaps their own mouths weren’t ready to speak them into existence just quite yet, and might have never been able to in such eloquent ways as their hands could.  So, till then, it passed through the soft parchment beneath their worn fingertips and lumbered along the railways and with the postman’s bikes down country lanes, through the few bustling streets of small Irish towns and waterways to sit deep in the hearts of the other, tempting, yearning, wanting.

8th May 1943

“Paddy.

Don’t worry, a chuisle mo chroí (check that Gaeilge book I sent you) that mist you speak of will bring the brown trout up.

To give in to your poetry… Let it be me placed in your hand instead of any rifle or fly-rod. Know soon, my voice and the roars of gunfire will soothe you again. Don’t become too restless. 

I’ve never been great with any animal apart from you. I wish you more luck than I have had. Fraser’s adopted some Cairo street dog, a real mutt of a thing, and it especially does not like my ugly mug.

I picture you at work on the farm and smile. I can imagine how you would look in this spring heat, sweat dripping off you and sun-kissed for us both, don’t entice me to commit to my fantasies in this reeking tent. 

Though, God knows your untold stubbornness to measure timber correctly always made me truly furious yet entertained all spring in the past.  In fact, I often think of you measuring lengths in such funny ways, I’ve got some at hand, you know, maybe the tongue is a unique approach you could try… 

I miss Dublin in a way, but I miss you in our tent and your rickety, stubborn cot more. I won’t miss the showers in the scorching sun, though. I think the sand has burnt the skin clean off my feet, leaving me stuck here, hoping the sodden Irish ground will allow some dignity back into them.

She arrives tomorrow midday, I will make sure to share your laments of missing her, don’t expect a kiss in return as I fear I may intercept them. To soothe your concerns, know I will care for her and worship her, like you those cairns you built by that lake, of course I will.  

Unless she has the daring to ask for another 'treatment' with me.

Soon, always.

S.W.A.L.K.

E.”

Eoin’s handwriting was beautiful, precise and elegant.  Paddy often traced the letters as he read, savouring the idea of the hand that moved to form them.  The firelight of the hardy wood range flickered across the letter in Paddy’s hand, chair creaking as he leaned his weary, wounded body into it.  Lady – the young cat, you had named her, of course, hopped into his lap and curled into a tight form, purring gently. You had left for London at the beginning of the week, bound again for Egypt for a rather important meeting concerning the further investigation and inquiry into breaches of the rules of war.

You’d helped Paddy change his dressings once more before saying your goodbyes.  Paddy would finally sleep that night, he was sure.  Indeed, he did, his rattled head filled with remorseful dreams of Eoin bathing in golden light and your soft lips against his own.  He hadn’t slept all that much since you left, wandering the countryside at night like some restless ghost, singing tunes of love on distant shores and chanting Yeats’ “The Last Rose of Summer” over-and-over until the words felt stuck in his mouth like malt his mother used to feed him whenever he was ill as a boy.

The fateful words to Eoin had stumbled out from his fingers late into the night as Paddy’s side complained, the wretched aching wound fighting back against the clear over-excursion he had been undertaking, chopping firewood with one arm to distract himself as the sun had set day-after-day:

15th May 1943

"Our dearest ‘friend’,

To say, ‘I am quite well,’ would be a waste of ink and tongue. 

I’m sailing on a sea of uncertainty, I fear, and for this once, and in these fleeting moments, there is one pesky faltering of my character. The character, as much G.H.Q or your magazine friends state, has now overstayed its welcome and now has a flaw. 

This is the only fear in my life.

To say I have something to live for, I would have formerly consider a vile statement. In past, I only reserved these attempts at feeling for spurring along ‘men at arms’, not the love-sick dogs as you and I are.

Lately, I am changed by you both.

I see you everywhere, and I say this with no jest or lacklustre romanticism.

Even in the dim, dark and silent reaches of some frozen hell, you glint and shimmer at me from the corner of my eye, driving me mad.

I thank a God I don’t believe in when my worn and bloodied clothes at night give way to my unworthy skin, you blessed with your touch.

Eoin, I think of you in ways in which would make any nun or battling priest scream blasphemy. 

And so, I write to you

P.  M. 

Thoroughly tamed."

The day of the beginning of Eoin's leave came at a glacial pace, as so did the beginnings of the long journey home. It was as if Eoin had forgotten parts of it in the past months, the city, Dublin, or even some of his memories of growing up in Belfast. Fewer direct memories came to him, rather feelings, moping around Malone Road and staring hopefully across to Queen's University. 

He was born in Dublin, yes, but had only returned for the beginnings of his studies; he did not choose to study in Belfast in the end, though, through Ambrose's penchant for socialising whilst studying there himself, Eoin had met Paddy. Ambrose wished for bigger things for Eoin and had pushed him to begin studying at Trinity, in the city where he had been born, where Ambrose claimed the family had enough ties to get him by. 

Leaving Paddy behind in Newtownards was the hardest thing he had done, but signing up to the Ulster Rifles with Paddy was the easiest.

He missed the flat he had called home briefly in Dublin before leaving, its tall windows and its out-of-tune piano that had been hauled up the stairs no doubt a long time ago. It was not to be his originally to use, but as he had commenced his studies in Dublin, a cousin had offered it to him, saying it had been in the family for years. Those familial ties Ambrose had promised did come to his rescue. It was a quaint, small place, with lots of love and memories in the walls.  Eoin’s new relationship with Dublin was relatively fresh; his time spent in the North had defined him, but in his heart, he thought of the city as where his adult life lay, and those precious memories of youth remained with Paddy in Newtownards. There had to be little room for the memory of the War after it all, he hoped.

His first few days alone back in Dublin went quickly. The days soon slowed, as Eoin realised that there was not much to do without the threat of bombs overhead. He spent too much time getting lost in his thoughts, wandering over you and Paddy, and how he'd be able to spend as much time with you both if they made it through.

The thoughts soon took to paper, and as you arrived one balmy end of spring day, Eoin's letters soon turned to a game of cat and mouse with your missing third, a competition as such, how much he could say and get away with it as you planned to jump between their two lodgings around the mismatched schedules, hoping to reunite wholly soon.

20th May 1943

“Mo rùin,

A quick letter now, as the two of us have been busy exploring Dublin night and day.

Today we visited Trinity College. I had told her I had begun to attend before being conscripted, and we got lost in the gardens and frolicked between the roses. At night, I have been showing her the niceties of us Irish folk, only getting ourselves into the one pub brawl.

The heat has made its way down to us, I have felt it in a very different way to Cairo’s, but thankfully it has brought a blessing disguise, it’s led to our dove stripping so delightfully down into these divine tea-dresses.

Bath tonight for us both, you know I don’t miss the showers of the desert, the old tin bath is wonderful in comparison, I can at least warm the water for her. 

To be frank now before I go, she told me you’ve been growing out your beard, and she needn’t have told me. I could tell by the near rug-burn between her thighs, still after all this time, these new dresses only just hide your marks. 

Did you catch her on the boat home? Don’t worry, Paddy.

Playing the ever-doting nurse you yourself missed, I soothed her with honey and my tongue.

Think of us at night.

tá sí dúnta i ngrá,

See you soon.

E. McG”

Below the signature was another mark, a dark mark of burgundy red forming a perfect shape of the lips the Major craved.  Paddy raised his eyebrow at it, cursing that he couldn't read or understand Gaeilge so that he could place those words flowing out of Eoin’s pen back onto his tongue deep within his mind and cursing yourself for being such a temptress whilst he was at it. 

21st May 1943

"Paddy,

Don’t worry, miann mo shùl, I managed to put her in her place.

We’ve been spending much time outside lately. When hot summer days turn to cool Dublin nights, the stars call to her, and she tugs me along in her pretty dresses, hair brushing her bare shoulders in a way I dream about as she makes her way back to you now.

But this past night, I compelled her to the balcony for some… exercise.

The silver moon above us was nothing in comparison to the glow of her face as I ravaged her. I think the smack of my hand on her behind almost woke the neighbourhood up.  She counted them lovingly, begging and crying all pretty-like.  Even tied her hands to the railings to keep her nice and still and ready for me. 

Only really the beginning of our doves’ punishment, though I think Paddy, I plan to not give her any release for the next few days, you see…, maybe I'll take her back out onto the balcony and tell her to keep quiet while I take her, see if she can keep herself quiet from the drunks or Molly’s below us.

It was quiet there, only the far-off buzz of insects and soft sway of leaves from the light wind, and I could hear every hitch of her breath as she whined for me. She whined for you, too, and I found myself yearning for even your dour voice in the deepest parts of me as well. 

Distance makes my heart and body desire you more savagely; I’m sure the same for her.

We stayed up until the animals quietened too, and I educated her in what little astronomy I recalled from school. Andromeda and Orion sparkled above us, and I wished you’d heard the way she piped up in delight as she found them. 

It was so sweet the way she tried to stay awake. Perhaps she could share some of her newfound knowledge with you.

I wonder how different the sky is where you are. I am comforted that we share the same moon, and I often think of you when I see it illuminating my world. 

Do you do the same?

Much love,

Eoin."

23rd May 1943

“Left this morning, Paddy.  

She’ll hopefully be with you before this letter arrives, had said she was going on a tour of some sights in Connemara before making the journey, but who knows.

I had to stretch the pennies down at Clery & Co. this week, so I’ve eaten lightly this week in some regards.  The poor old bed frame gave out in one sudden final crash on us; we were just resting, of course, Paddy.  

I’ve gotten a larger one for the three of us if you were to visit. I just do hope we don’t break it as quickly, she insisted on contributing to the cost for some reason. 

I find my mind already turning to you in her absence.

The pianos been keeping me great company, but it’s lonely without you peering over my shoulder or having to guide your hand lest you make a flat a sharp.

Better go now, must pack up my things for shipping out again. Think this new regiment means no good, Almonds suggests they have their heads screwed on properly which is quite the shame.

Your Eoin,”

They both returned to Egypt to prepare for the next campaign at the beginning of June. Work was tough, War tougher, and the distanced London was your current base of operations, having been pulled from the active warzone over safety concerns alongside most journalists and informants that couldn't slip through the cracks to remain.  Your journal remained relatively empty bar from counting down the days when you suspected you would see the pair again and they would be granted leave that wasn't injury or bereavement for once.

The circumstances of your reuniting with Eoin at his apartment were quite unexpected. Although Eoin’s apartment was simple and well-loved, you had come to call it a second home away from London, as you had done the same with Paddy’s farmhouse up at Newtownards. It was only small, more or less an entranceway, small scullery, even smaller bathroom, and main room consisting of a bed, settee, old-fireplace and writing desk.  What was most glorious about the apartment was the balcony and its accompanying bay window, where you could watch the city below on gloomy nights like these, or step out into cool summer-nights breezes, but more so, the best part, which you didn’t quite always like to admit, was the resident of the place. Eoin had nice taste, to your surprise, with decor, his most recent edition was a now cleaned small and beautifully patterned rug that he purchased and had curled up under his pack for the trip all the way back from Egypt. 

It sat proudly in front of the old fireplace, candles and a couple of lowly illuminated lamps gave the room a honey-warmed comfort, and a well-used guitar perched in the corner of the room by the bay window next to the balcony. Though the wallpaper was worn and peeling off in some places, it was adorned with paintings of the Irish countryside, all pretty greens and blushing pinks and blue skies; he had amateur painters in the family, he had said. 

When you gazed upon them, their wild brushstrokes reminded you instantly of Paddy, the stormy blue grey of his eyes when he was upset, the brightness of his usually scowl-filled face when he lay peacefully upon his pillow and looked up at you.  When he looked down at you from his perch atop his bent arm, unamused, yet still in love. The frames hung resiliently upon the walls, acting as a portal to another world if the one outside was rainy and grey.  

The apartment was a sweet, quiet place for you to ease away the stresses of life. The day was finally falling to night as you had pulled yourself up the steps and to his door, he had given you a key with little hesitation the last time you had visited and despite a thin sheen of rust across it, it had yet to keep you away from him. Usually by this time, he would have been playing softly on his piano or humming a tune whilst cooking, but the apartment was eerily still and silent as you entered.  You had known Paddy had been staying there for the past few days before he shipped out again to a training; no doubt they had enjoyed themselves, but surely not enough for Eoin to be comatose.

You counted your footsteps echoing down the short hall as it opened into the small room that housed the bed, piano, balcony and settee. 

"Oh," you quietly let out.

Eoin was sitting against the headboard, arms behind his back, clearly bound there to the thin black metal railings. Then there was the long, thin oyster-pearl-coloured piece of one of your silk shirts, one of your favourites, you could recognise it instantly.  It was ripped and tied around Eoin’s eyes, you knew immediately it was not Eoin’s doing. 

He huffed out a laugh, “I’ve gotten myself in a bit of trouble here, Dove, haven’t I?” Your mouth was agape at the sight. He leaned his head back, the pale pane of his neck exposed, arms flexing against where they were bound; he was always quite a thin man, but he was still so nicely muscled from the desert. 

He sighed, “You see, Paddy left this morning, you only just missed him by a couple of hours...” Your eyes followed the facial hair across his jaw as he tilted his head, “and by my current state that’ll tell ya’ that we might’ve had a little disagreement.” He had that lilt to his voice where you knew he had been up to no good at all, or he was planning something in his head, just like when you had first met him at the Empire.

“Y’know, I said, ‘Paddy look, I don’t have time for this at all, at all’, right?" He blew a puff of air, "He didn’t take a word of it as the usual.” he muttered as you placed your bag on the settee and started to pull off your clothes, he couldn't see, but he could hear the rustling, it made the hair on the back of his neck raise, like an animal preparing for attack. 

It was easy to take your time getting undressed, staring at Eoin in a state you’d thought never possible for him to be in, one he'd never allow Paddy to enact on him.  The simple outfit meant for a quick undressing, which soothed the growing ache between your legs, although that could wait till your ego was quite satisfied with Paddy’s little gift.  He continued meandering over his words as he described his day plainly, and how he had been bound naked to his own bed by the man he loved out of spite rather than any bespoke sexual deviance.  Your eyes wandered over him, a sheet barely covering him, scrunching around his hips and revealing the delicious line of dark hair that ran low on his pale, leanly muscled stomach all the way down. You watched his hips shift as he pulled lightly against the rope bonds, whole body straining as he twisted.

You heard his breath hitch slightly as your weight shifted onto the corner of the bed,

“So, Paddy’s left you like that for hours, and me in charge then?” You saw his mouth curl as he felt your weight on the bed, 

“Oh, ya’are now?” He grinned. 

“Aye.” You repeated in a voice mocking Paddy’s. You lightly ran a fingernail down the side of his thigh as you made your way towards him.

Eoin hummed out a sharp “oh” sound, “Wouldn’t be too happy with that behaviour, wouldn’t he? Truthfully?” he quipped. 

“Why don’tcha untie me so I can see that pretty face of yours Dove, I’ve done missed you all day.  Paddy’s ugly mug isn’t much respite.”  He had that soft velvety tone to his voice that could usually make you do anything for him; you just laughed lowly at him and began to slowly palm him through the thin sheet.  He strained “Tá-Fuck-, You’ll miss out on all the real fun if you don’t untie me.” he gritted through his teeth, lurching forward as much as he could.

“You’ve got a lot to say to Eoin already, too much for a man blindfolded and tied naked to his own bed.”  Eoin just cocked his head in response. You had moved to bracket his hips with your legs, sitting right above where his half-hard cock rested against his stomach, silk night-slip pooling onto your thigh and around him. 

“Come on now, come off it,” he sighed, pushing up lightly to brush himself against you. 

“I think our friend is implying that I take my time with you. Is he not?” 

“Oh, I’d like to see you try.” He retorted. Usually, you liked to see those dark desire-filled eyes, but the silk covering them made you focus on his lips and how his mouth moved as he formed every teasing sentence with that sultry tone.

He had obviously already been thinking of you doing what you had quickly planned at the sight of him, made obvious by the tent forming quickly under the thin sheet and the splash of red embarrassment across his chest, neck and face.  

It didn't take much time before you were ready and needing him.  Immediately, the pace was rough, fast and desperate, and entirely set by you.  The thought of coming home to someone who needed you more than anything had dragged a great dull iron of want through your gut all day, all day spent stuck at meetings all day thinking of him back in the apartment alone and available to give you anything you wanted with just one ‘please’, let alone in this predicament; this 'welcome home' present.

 He hissed through his teeth, cutting away your inner reflections, “Fu-ck-, slow down, girl. Easy now.”

“Please… please let me—,” He whined under you, these noises of sheer vulnerability you had never heard such begging coming from such a headstrong person as him.  It drove you forward with your pace, watching his hands strain against the bonds.

“That's it, that’s it Eoin, don’t worry I’ll be done soon.”  You reassured him, hand gripping his thigh tighter, nails biting into the skin.  You didn’t need to give him more, touch him or try any other position of his liking; it was your time to take what Paddy had allowed for you, had gifted you as such. This realisation set off a wave of pure heat across your body, power, control, something you now understood why Eoin enjoyed so much, especially over a man so temperamental as Paddy.

Quick, short breaths of restraint soon came from somewhere deep in his throat as he tried to contain himself.

You dragged your nails across his chest as you slowed, “Shhh, shh, you’re fine, Eoin,” came hushed from your open lips. 

The man below you gasped lightly as you dragged your hands across his chest, “But I wantta’ just taste you, please, tóg go bog é, mura miste leat, let me see you, let me ou–” He was cut off by your hand pressing over his mouth, lightly, too scared to actually be forceful with the movement. 

“Can barely understand you, you're not speaking English.”  You chastised him, he groaned in response, “Am I not?” he stifled out through your hand, his breath was ragged and hot against your skin, and you could hear his eyebrows raised in his voice.  

Stalling at your regained pace, you took a moment not to chuckle at how he had completely lost composure, “Just— just be quiet,” you quipped.

Trying to distract yourself from his protests, you continued to indulge in your own pleasure as he struggled under you, speeding up and pausing to grind yourself down on him deeply. Your hand had fallen from his mouth, and he was struggling to hold back groans soon enough. Feeling your rising orgasm, you threw your head back, taking your fill of him with every roll of your hips. He could feel it too as you tightened up around him and made him grind his teeth in harsh pulls against his lips and tongue.

Closer to the edge you fell, yet as all was coming to a bright, piercing pleasure, suddenly your movements stalled, and the world and your stomach flipped.

A low, breathless chuckle rattled through your fuzzy hearing.

He took a deep breath before he spoke, “Uh-uh, not quite too fast now there, love. Just about had too much of you.”  His voice was strong, unwavering once he did speak, and his hand was on your hip holding you in place; his freed hand was on your hip. Had he been faking his begging and whimpering this whole time?

"Oh no," you managed to whimper out.

His cool rings kissed into your skin where sweat had started to dew with sweat and run in thin beads across your stomach, hips, and thighs.   He shifted upwards, pulling you with him in his lap, the makeshift blindfold still on and flicked one of your nipples with a sharp movement of two fingers.

You stuttered, laughing, confused, but also dangerously worried based on what you had just done to him within your power-trip. Even more so was how he had gotten out of his binds, which had been pulling the headboard towards you both as he strained, firmly secure. They seemingly released their grip almost instantaneously by the time he had enough of playing the part of innocent captive. 

He shifted his mouth to your ear, voice falling lower, “You get so hot-headed when you’re in control…” His mouth then moved down towards your neck, lightly grazing it with his teeth.

A thick silence fell between you as you continued to panic slightly.

“Need some… practise?” His voice lilted between the two of you, breaking the silence in a phoney emphatic tone. 

“You’ve–” You stammered, “How long have you been unbound for?” You asked, he grinned in response. “Oh, for quite a few hours, I've already gotten off a few times thinking about you doing just the very thing you’ve gone and done for me, isn’t that just lovely?” he mocked slightly.

You huffed in response, “Didn’t consider they taught us how to get out of bonds in SAS training, did you?” You draped your arms over his shoulders, laughing in exhausted confusion,

“Silly girl,” he cooed.

“O-Of course I did, I just had hoped Paddy had tied you up enough so maybe I could leave you here till he gets back to handle you himself.” Your tone was hopeful, still bravely teasing as your eyes furrowed, as your ego began deflating even as you spoke.

“You know I’m the only one to handle him and allow him to handle me.” A sly grin peeled across Eoin's face as he cocked his head slightly, pulling back. “There was no fighting or disagreement here, just plain scheming,” he nodded.

“Go on, practise for him on me, you know he’d love this.” he egged you on, lightly pushing his hips up into you in a few short and sharp bursts.

“Show me, c’mon now.” he breathed out, lying back down and bringing his hands together in front of your vision.

“Hold my hands together, don’t let me touch you, though you know how much I want to right now.”  He grinned as you lifted his arms above his head pushing his wrists against the headboard.

“Good.”

“Take your fill, and I’ll take mine when you come back around, yeah?” he said, smiling softly.

[arealshame]

The Empire Club | five: a teaser

"A Strange 'Welcome Home'"

Paddy Mayne x Eoin McGonigal x Fem! Reader

summary: With the War in Northern Africa coming to an end and the main campaign for Europe looming, Eoin and Paddy were allowed a few moments of respite before it all 'kicked-off' once more. Yet, months of teasing via written correspondence comes to a head on the doorsteps of Paddy's Newtownards farmhouse...

warnings: written (letter) sexual content, reference to explicit sexual content (smut), mentions of gun-play, m/f sexual references, m/m sexual references, slight voyeurism / exhibitionism, paddy mayneisms.

word count: 1.5k

a/n: I thought I'd like to post a little small something on my own account as part of the larger chapter soon to be posted on the main @taiscedulcinea (check us/my pinned master-list out if you like it and want to read more!). So here's a little plot-y look into life visiting Paddy in NI.

tags: @bleedingsunlight @anniemayne198 @thesirenmelusine @h3k3t @shiningdyingmoon @littlemspeachy @matrixfangs @iceemochaa @confetti-cakemix @amaranthine-enihtnarama @remmicks-salvation @faestunna @vcmpbyt @dxmurewrites @markinganx

20th of May 1944 Belfast, en route to Newtownards,  Co. Down, North of Ireland.

The train ride with Eoin to Belfast was mostly spent playing intense games of cards, twenty-five, and an alteration on the game called 'spoil five', which you hadn't heard of.  Eoin's heated encouragements that you must beat him only almost made you miss the connecting train to Newtownards as he finally threw in his cards just in time to get off the train and onto the next at the last second.

He had been keeping the last letter from Paddy unopened, the last letter he had hoped to be addressed to the drop-point in the desert. Despite the rattle and roar of the locomotive, much too old for the newer tracks, he was able to block out the great commotion.

There began a great struggle to contain himself, to prevent any emotion from showing as he began to read Paddy’s Byronic mocking, ridiculous prose:

"...I think of you glaring at me like you do, taking me down a notch. Throwing a stick for me, but is that stick our dear girl Eoin?

Should I drag her with my teeth back to the farmhouse, kicking and screaming for me to ruin her as you do me?

Or…, would I sit outside the door of this farmhouse, howling for you to let me back in whilst I hear her cries under you. 

All that howling after being told so vehemently 'no.'?

I think you know too well what I want, Eoin.

At night, I imagine your hands as they work on that Enfield of yours. Would you mix that rifle-oil with your own spittle and attune me like you do those swivels and trigger?

Would you affix that rifle to me?  Force me to my knees in that hot, coarse sand and employ me to work for my life? Make me beg with my mouth and hands on you?

You'd quite like to, wouldn't you? But you're so far away, Eoin.

So, so far away.

My hand and mind wander equally at night in this lonely farmhouse, Eoin. 

After your raids, think of that to calm the blood and the screams. 

Though I think of that look in your eye after you kill, after you bare your teeth for me and think maybe one day you’d tear me apart like those men in the desert, not before you give me my final taste of you.

My hands and my mind wait for you.

Let your own wander.

P.M."

He quickly stuffed the letter back into the envelope and into the breast pocket of his khaki cotton shirt, 

“Oh, the—fuckin’–ah, an striapach diabhalta,” He stuttered, swearing under his breath, hoping the heat rising on his cheeks and his widening of his eyes weren't showing to your intrigued ones. 

"What did it say, Eoin?" you asked, still unwise to his quiet outburst due to the sound of the track joints; flipping a page in the day's edition of the Irish Independent, you had carried it all the way from Dublin nonchalantly.

"Not much…," Eoin mumbled, "but he's missing the gore of it all, I think." he bluffed. The carriage rattled around you both as you raised your voice slightly for him to hear.

"Really? I thought he'd calm down a notch…" You mused, still idly flicking through the paper.

"Ah, sure." Eoin toyed with the loose button on his cuff. "He said something about being ‘taken down a notch’," he admitted, looking at your eyes, scanning the words of the paper, unaware of what he could possibly have just read and the growing sweat on his brow.

So deeply aware, though, was Eoin of the tightness in his pants as he shifted in the seat, and the few minutes left till the station and the jaunt to the farmhouse.  These few precious moments left where he wouldn’t perhaps have to face controlling the wrath of a pent-up Paddy Mayne. Eoin remembered his ‘crime’ as fresh as the day he committed it.  He did not regret sending the soiled satin step-in that he had cut off your heaving body with a steady hand in Cairo.  Forever would he remember watching your eyes shift between horror and desire at the proximity of his trusty Fairbairn-Sykes knife to your perfect skin, quivering in anticipation and fear just as Paddy had once done under him.

Newtownards was a quaint place you had grown accustomed to quickly over your few visits; Eoin hardly remembered anything of it past the lake that sat outside of the farmhouse being full of brown trout at certain times of the year. Paddy had inherited the place in some lop-sided arrangement for saving the son of the old farmer who used to live there at the Litani River back in 41’.

You had insisted on walking from the train station to Eoin’s dismay, refusing a short cab ride or any other kind of offer through the small town to its outskirts.

“Since you’re so desert-hardened, Lieutenant… I’d thought you could handle a bit of a jaunt up a countryside lane with not a trouble in the world!”  You laughed at Eoin’s look of sheer disbelief, though he tried to hide a smirk. He had still obliged, though, tossing his pack over his shoulder and picking up your suitcase and leather briefcases in each hand.  It didn’t take much time for the terraced houses and paved streets to make way for the quaint view of the rural countryside.  Small tumble-down farmhouses lay scattered across the opening landscape, divided by dry boreens, dry stone walls or the odd hedgerow. You smiled as you spotted a few thickets of purple foxgloves with bumblebees buzzing about, breaking up the earthy tones of the landscape with their purple flare.

Paddy’s farmhouse was picturesque to say the least, and the warm air tickled your face with a pleasant gesture as you took in the view, the slate roof, no-doubt once thatched, leaned heavily to one side yet still held on; the small chimney bent and twisted from the weather upwards roof and the unevenness of the whitewashed stone walls of the place held ivy at bay from overtaking the place in a fine balance.

Unsurprisingly, the door was already swung wide-open, and Paddy was leaning against it, grinning like an idiot at the sight of the pair of you lumbering along.  You could see he had been working in the paddock, hair slicked back with a sheen of sweat, flannel work-shirt sleeves rolled up to expose his tanned forearms and army issue sunglasses perched on his head.

You couldn’t help but smile from ear-to-ear. Eoin was struggling to balance your suitcase on his foot as he adjusted his cap as you came to a stop. Paddy let out a low whistle from the doorway, "I see you two have worked up quite the sweat,” he called out, and that familiar wolfish grin shone with it.

He sounded, frankly, already as mad as a snake as he made his way across to you both, rambling something about what you could only just hear as a neighbour's goose and some lines of poetry quickly under his breath. 

“Come on in, let me take your things, it would be my pleasure.” He grinned, Eoin raised an eyebrow, Paddy had that strange tone in his voice where it felt as if both he, and those around him couldn’t quite predict what he would do next.  It was an affront, let alone the strangeness in the fact of his unusually generous offer. 

“Ya’are saying funny things now, Paddy.” Eoin almost warned.

Paddy stepped forward off the cobbled steps to the farmhouse, arms held out to yank your suitcases out of Eoin’s hands, “Give me those.” He muttered. 

“Nice to see you too, lad.”  Eoin quipped, shucking off his own pack and resting it at his feet, pulling his cap off and placing it under his arm, raking a hand through his hair.

Paddy had gotten extremely close to Eoin by now, slowly looking up at the dark-haired man next to you, as you watched on, eyebrow raised.  Paddy was clearly already fuming. He’d barely acknowledged you, though you considered he might have his own grievances with you to address imminently. The younger man looked down with a heavy gaze at Paddy through his slightly sun-blinded eyes, his ability to be unfazed by it all only enraging the Major more…that Eoin, calm, always calm. 

“Not fuckin’ your pack, I will, Lieutenant,” Paddy growled out. He pushed the pack to the side with his foot, it hitting the dirt with a thump, and Eoin leaning over after it.

“Cut it out, Paddy, have you fuckin’ lost it?” Eoin responded, looking up from where he stooped.

Paddy stormed back up the steps, suitcases in hand, turning halfway back to face Eoin, “Aye, yes, aye, I have since, you fuckin’ sent Missy here’s little slip in that wee’ red post-box behind you...”  

“A very good Welcome Home, indeed.”  You declared, following Paddy up the steps, leaving a very confused Eoin behind you…

To say the very least… It took no less than two days for the three of you to leave the farmhouse, well, to leave the bed specifically. 

[taiscedulcinea]

Check out this section from the upcoming chapter Five of ‘The Empire Club’!

[cloudyfacewithjam]

So, the sand of the desert couldn't keep your soul buried, Eoin?

SAS Rogue Heroes - Season 2 Episode 6

[taiscedulcinea]

A study in restraint chapter one has me frothing at the mouth it’s sooooo good, I can’t wait to see what happens next!!!!

check it out!

[taiscedulcinea]

A Study in Restraint | two

Locus Mirabilis

Professor!Paddy Mayne X Tutor!Fem! Reader X Professor!Eoin McGonigal

summary: The argument was not unexpected, really. It had cleared your mind mostly of the scandal with Mayne. Yet, you kept coming back to him, even just in the quiet hours of the day when your thoughts had wandered beyond study. Professor McGonigal's invitation to tour the cemetery was exactly what you needed to both distract yourself and tie your intention of study together. He was acting increasingly strange lately, despite your excited sessions in his office breaking down your topic. Soon, though you were swept back into the office of Paddy Mayne, at his mercy despite your spite for his adulterous, not romantic mindset. However, your thoughts spun to Eoin, if he was okay, what could be ailing him.

warnings: smut, professor/student relationship, voyeurism, obsessive behaviour, jealousy, blood/injury (minor), religious guilt / themes, slight psychological distress, moral ambiguity.

word count 9.2k

a/n: Surprise! How about another round of Professor drama on the house! This one's a doozy, and things are becoming quite mysterious, don't we all love a great mystery though... thanks for sticking round! Until next time, but expect a visit from your favourite paddylovers publishers very, very soon.

locus mirabilis:

‘A wondrous place’

Things had only been getting better as the days went by, you had finally stuck on what you wanted to study as part of your combining interest in Victorian death culture and literature, the graves of Victorian writers to be precise.  A late night walk had brought you to the closed gates of Highgate Cemetery and your eyes had lit up like never before.

Making friends had also come easier than expected, and even a fellow doctoral student had caught your eye, a bookish shy-type, tall, with freckles muttered over his face and unruly red hair; boyish still.  He was gentle and kind, but had shown such nervousness, even when you had asked him out to a local café.  Harry, his name was, and he allowed you to keep your distance from the increasingly seething eyes of Paddy Mayne. He was sweet enough, the kind of boy who’d rather keel over than speak any of the profanities Paddy would say on a daily basis.  He amused you despite being a little younger than you, still too scared to hold your hand or embrace you in his slight frame even after you asked him to one late night in the library. The height of winter became filled with warmth, nights lit by lovely candles by the windowsill of the sharehouse and the soft words of encouragement from your friends and passionate letters of support from family back home brought that much needed light and soft warmth to your heart. 

The separation from Professor Paddy Mayne in the past few weeks was crucial, sparked by a fierce argument which you couldn’t get out of your head.  Even as you sat exhausted at your desk the memory of it was as clear as day:

“Last class will be out in, oh,” Paddy had raised the hand he’d had resting on his steering wheel, checking his watch. “Twenty-five minutes. There better be a good reason for you to be stopping me right now.”

Paddy’s hand had tried to slip into your undergarments as you sat in the passenger seat of his car, you had stopped him with a firm hand on his wrist. You were still in the car park of the university, the setting sun casting a golden light across the sharp lines of his face. When his eyes flicked to yours, the sweet darkness in them made you want to push his hand further in. 

“Paddy,” You started, releasing his wrist and letting him pull it from you on his own. “This, I, I’m- I’ve met someone. I don’t know if we can do this anymore.”

He blinked slowly, only letting his expression falter for a moment, then cocked his head curiously, clicking his tongue. “Oh, and you expect me to believe that so?” still mostly unphased by the confession of the proposed ending to your arrangement so soon.

“Well, I’d expect you to understand how much of a situation we’ve been undertaking for a while, that is all, Sir.” You explained.

“‘A while’,” he repeated, letting out a short noise of dismissal, “Well, I’d only just begun really.” he huffed.  

His hand flexed against the steering wheel, a slight, surrendering squeak of the vinyl beneath his fingers breaking the silence.

“It’s a… precarious situation, you know that Paddy,” you urged.

“Precarious?  The only thing fuckin’ precarious about all this is that you’re not pregnant and I’m not on a  boat halfway back to Belfast with my tail between my legs, and you’re now telling me there's someone else caught your eye?” He said, fire building in his voice usually reserved for other students.  There was a look in his eyes, something akin to jealousy but not quite so angry. 

The corner of his mouth had tilted up like he was enjoying this. He was amused by the lie you told yourself, that you didn’t need him. “What, some teddy boy then is it?”

You narrowed your eyes at him, lifting your satchel onto your lap. You unclasped the latch, pretending to look for your lip salve as Paddy huffed next to you.

“What an awful thing to say, his name is Harry–” you hardly wanted to allow Paddy to have a name to direct his spite towards.

“Is he a Brit?” He scoffed, “Ah, get tae’ fuck, of course he is with that kind of name. British pricks, I know them well aye, pricks themselves and don’t know how to use their pricks the lot of them,” he grumbled. “Sir!” You scolded, trying to remain formal, now that you’d decided to put things back the way they were. “You shouldn’t talk of a student that way.”

Paddy leaned forward, placing one large hand over both of yours that had been rummaging through your bag. The sun had fully set now, and all you could see of Paddy was the shine of his eyes looking directly into yours.

“You ‘Sir’ me one more time and I won’t hesitate to use that title to my advantage.” You heard him swallow thickly, his breath coming out hot against your cheek. “Though I threaten the cane, I haven’t quite used it yet, but oh… how I’d test it on your thick ass first to really christen it mine.”

A startled laugh escaped your throat, your fingers twitching underneath his. It took everything in you to snatch it away from his warm touch in disbelief at his behaviour. 

“What? Do you think you own me like some piece of meat? Bloody hell, Paddy, I thought this was just a bit of fun, y’know, excitement.”

Paddy let out a snort, lifting his hips in his seat slightly to pull his Navy Cuts and lighter from the pocket of his dress slacks. He lit it, inhaling a lungful of smoke and letting it billow into your space. 

“I don’t like to share. And I don’t lose what’s mine so easily.”

You glared at him, reaching down to grab the crank and unroll the window on your side of the car. You wafted the smoke out with your hand, acting irritated by the smell that usually drove you crazy when your face was buried in Paddy’s neck.

“Good. Then you haven’t lost anything at all really. You’re making me never want to look at a man again, let alone touch them…”

“That’s a sudden change of heart and head.  That smart little mind of yours might want that, but that desperate, pretty little thing between your legs will always tell you the opposite.” Paddy drawled, mouth half full of the lit cigarette.

“Won’t it?” he prodded again.

“Is that all you think about Paddy? No romance? No kindness?! Just getting in between my legs?”

He tilted his head, ignoring your outcry.

“What does he study then? Or is he some lout? Paddy continued.

You huffed, accepting quickly that he’d hardly react to you being verbally upset and angry,“He’s studying Law, a Masters student actually.” 

“So did Eoin set you up then?” he quipped.

“Do you have to mention Eoin every time we talk?” you quickly shot back.  There was a moment of silence as you both seemed to consider your options, Paddy sighing as he rolled his head back and stared at the ceiling.

It was still a while before he spoke, “So, your new lad is going to get some fancy job in law, buy you a nice wee apartment to live in, maybe a little doggie? Oh, would he promise to buy you such expensive clothes and let you shop at all the department stores.”

“Do I really have to answer that?” you said, a rising shock at his absurdity in your voice.

Paddy shrugged, “You’d rather me promise, now to whisk you off into the countryside back home to my cottage after we’re both done here,” he had said flatly.

“Do you dream of somewhere nice and quiet with no neighbours to hear you screaming on my cock at every waking hour just so you can say you’ve ‘got me’?” he asked.

You flushed a bright red, “No, Paddy I’m saying we can’t keep goin–” he cut you off,

“No ‘designer clothes’ for you, maybe no clothes at all since I know all you’d want for us to be would be in bed all day… but maybe I'd have to buy you a wee pony too to win your favour, wouldn’t you like that?”

He ashed the cigarette out before continuing through half a mouth-ful of smoke, “...sounds like your ‘Harry’ needs a clip around the ears.” he mused.

“Is that a threat of violence on a student?  That is overstepping the line Paddy.”

“Overstepping the line?” he questioned, pausing briefly after before humming slightly, almost in a low warning.

“My cock most of the way down your throat after every class is no ‘overstepping the line’?” it came out less of a question than a flat statement of annoyance. 

It had ended in a flurry of insults on both sides, and Paddy saying “Don’t let me see you with that boy.” You’d ended up slamming the door as he had laughed and told you he’d see you in class.

Time passed with weeks spent seething, but god how you missed him in a way you hardly felt innocent about; but you had only seen it in the end fizzing out terribly or exploding into something that would mean the end of the both of you. Casually seeking another companion in less of a precarious position was a conclusion you had reached fairly quickly. Yet, Mayne’s firm voice barking commands across the class as you struggled to fight the tension to teach students made your legs shake with nervousness at times, sweat growing on your brow even in a frozen classroom. He had made you angry, made you spit fire at him and swore to never touch him again, to yell at him that you were not be reduced to a body for him to fondle at will, to reprimand him for not bringing romance as you had thought he would’ve, just heat and passion month after month.  The other half of the weeks were often spent with the cool, calm eyes of Eoin McGonigal raking over you as if they were stripping back the layers of you being in entirety with each thesis meeting.

You had laid out your topic in a great frazzle of chalk and words across the small blackboard in Eoin’s office, him watching your fingers work as each word poured out of you.  A big ‘Highgate Cemetery’ circled in the middle stood as the returning point for your proposal.  He sat quiet for a moment before speaking, “It’s a great topic you’ve got there… let’s go there together, at the end of the week. I’ll take you around the place.” He nodded to the blackboard, “keep that up on there, maybe the other students will be jealous of your progress, eh?” he grinned.

Eoin pulled his coat off the seat with one hand, draping it over his shoulder,

“You haven’t been there before I heard you say, right? Trapped at the gate?” he asked quickly, you nodded your head eyes still stuck on the coat and the thought of a frosty morning, there was clearly no polite declining of his offer. 

You had always admired that coat, some thick black woollen affair that looked like it could brave any winter and protect anyone from any element be it wind, snow, hail, whatever any isles could throw at it really.  

Eoin’s voice wandered as he remembered, “––spent quite a bit of time there when I lived nearby a couple years ago doing my clerkship.” Your eyes fell from his hand clasped around the jacket to a lit cigarette in his hand, only now noticing it after it had puffed out some stray smoke he hadn’t chased wafted in front of his face, he had never smoked inside let alone in any way you had been made aware of until now. 

Paddy smoked like those old Victorian chimneys that were still dotted around London, seemingly continuous where it be inside or outside, it lingered too long on your clothes for your liking, too recognisable as his Woodbines.

Eoin’s eyes followed yours cautiously to the crumbling ash beside his fingers, wary, cautious in their gaze.  Yet he continued, 

“I think I spooked a couple people taking my evening strolls there a few times.” He smiled softly, eyes shining despite their dark depths.

“Meet me at Highgate, yeah?  Friday morning.”

Highgate Cemetery 20th January, 1956 A frosty morning…

Highgate Cemetery was a place of sombre rest indeed.  A sort of…well, ‘reserved exhaustion’ fell over the place as gravestones and monuments slumped in scattered clumps amongst growing brush and thick, barely leaved Ivy.  The stone paths remained, and remnant Victorian landposts struggled to fight the gloom away with their dim, ‘upgraded’ electrics.  The gloom was marked with a pale green hue, as if the plants themselves were decaying into the air, spreading what green they had left of the leaves throughout the place, the air was still and with little sound apart from the odd rustle in the brush or squeak of some fox you thought to be hiding somewhere. 

You had walked there in what little morning light there was, sun barely risen though shut far behind the persistent cloud of winter, repelled further by the smog of the city rising to greet the ashy clouds.  The footsteps of your saddle shoes spun impossibly loud against the surrounding foliage and stone monuments of the path.  Eoin  had said to meet near something he called the ‘Egyptian Avenue’, a sort of underpass within the cemetery, a large open gateway of an impressive sight of exotic masonry flanked by withered oaks and the continual beds of ivy.  You paused at the entrance to the passage, staring through to the light on the other side.

Eoin had asked for you early to avoid any ongoing funeral parties or trouble-makers.  Truth is, he didn’t sleep that night, he didn’t sleep many nights lately.  You pulled your tartan scarf tighter around your neck, woolen gloves keeping what little dexterity the cold allowed your fingers.

It wasn’t long before that thick brogue came from your side like honey, slicing through the still, silent air..

“Don’t you feel like there’s some sort of energy here? Some deep, ancient thing radiating out of the soil?” 

You jumped lightly at the sudden intrusion, turning to face Eoin quickly, to which a black-leather gloved hand reached out, patting your shoulder lightly to soothe, it lingered there for a moment, his eyes averting contact before he returned it to his side.

“Hmm, er– I guess so?” you responded to his initial interaction.

“Sorry to sneak up on you there, didn’t mean to give you a fright. He took a step back and discreetly looked you over, the way your thick home-knitted scarf bunched up and almost covered half your face, fighting and winning to be the most weather-proof as your thin jacket could barely cope. “ ‘Morning’, is what I was meant to say.  It’s good to see you here with such vigour about the place, I can see it on what I can see of your face under there.” he smiled softly, gesturing for you to pull down the scarf.

“I figure it means no harm, I’d think it to be comforting, peaceful y’know.” 

Vines like ropes twisting engulfed the place around you both as he stood close for a moment, looking to the underpass in front of you and the light beyond, grey stone bricks resting ahead and descended into the darkness with mats of moss and trapping dead leaves and small plants under themselves creeping along them.

“Quite lovely this time of year, is what I mean to say really.” he hummed, wringing his gloved hands together in the cold. 

“People would usually say it’s off-putting,” you laughed lightly, a puff of steam jumping from your mouth at the movement, his dark eyes following it from your parted lips and the trail that formed from your mouth.

“Do you do this often? –I mean meet up with students to help them with their study?” 

“Yes, of course.  Only last week it must’ve been Arthur and I were seemingly attempting to rouse the dead around Tower Bridge…”

You raised an eyebrow at the suggestioning of such a thing in such a place, he shifted the topic, the uncomfortable thought of the sheer number of dead mere metres away at a time sending a chill through your spine.  You weren’t the complete skeptic but you certainly believed it was wise to give all things supernatural and the undead a very, very wide berth.

“…or with Professor Cohen a couple months ago, I mean she and I nearly almost broke into St Paul’s to view the soot blackening and report on the damage from the Blitz.”  He appeared distracted, mulling over a Celtic cross on a grave with a particularly English name, brushing off some loose moss and lichen.

Distracted yet still somewhat there he continued, “So, yes.  You’re not the only unlucky one to be graced by a tour from yours truly." He spoke sarcastically, corners of his mouth raising.

“I would consider myself rather lucky.” you tested, flipping a page in the journal you had been holding open blankly, penless.

“Is that so?” he hummed, less of a question more a reassurance to himself.

“You’re a great tour guide.” You laughed trying to clear the air, wake him up for whatever academic slumber he had put himself under as he had moved to drawing his fingernails through the delicate lines in a draped urn monument.

“Hm. Good.” he said quietly.

“Though, I’m sure Mr Mayne would give you a very, very exclusive tour.” he said, a rattle of jealousy slipping into his voice.  He hadn’t been told exactly what was going on by his dear friend, but from the encounter at the Quad he could piece together the rest easily enough.  He hadn’t known you were trying to avoid Mayne like the plague as of late.

Yet, to say your blood ran cold at his obvious involvement by proxy, you regretted so casually sauntering up to the pair that morning, though that cigarette did hit the spot.

“Anyway,” he quickly pivoted, snapping into movement, ducking under a low-hanging branch before placing a foot on the edge of the tunnel.

“I was going to ask to meet you by the tomb of George Wombwell. Though, I thought it to be not quite right of me to point you in the direction of a grand statue of a British lion guarding a same man of great wealth.” he chuckled lightly.

“So here we meet, before this veil into the depths of the place,” Eoin said slowly with dramatic flair to his voice.  

You nodded and looked down into the dark underpass once more before back to the Professor. 

“You’ve spent too much time around Mr Mayne with that poetic observation.” you jeered.

“Oh, have I?” he raised his eyebrow, putting aside the dull ache in his stomach at knowing your exact pastimes with Mayne.

 It was hard to choose what to look at, the morbid curiosities before you or the alluring man acting a slight fool in front of you; giddy at the chance to share all there was to know about the place to a fresh mind that would listen perhaps, for once.  Yet he was clearly fighting with some inner turmoil, the poor man couldn’t have handled the scandal of your behaviour at the Quad very well.  Beyond that he was the perfect contrast to Paddy, refreshing in his calm demeanour, smooth honeyed voice and dark eyes rather than Paddy’s swift bark and shifting grey-blues.  His tall lean frame was accentuated by that dark coat you knew he treasured and the collar drawn up against the wind flowed into his dark hair which seemingly had a mind of its own.  Flecks of a few strands of grey in the little light that broke through the space.

“Are ya’ too scared to go down there?” he joked lightly, nodding towards the tunnel.  You shook your head, he stepped forward quickly, strangely. 

“I’ll guide you through, don’t worry.  I wouldn't want you to trip and fall in there or anything like that, have a great deal of trouble on my hands–” he moved to guide you,

“–couldn’t imagine a Professor responsible for a student getting hurt, be the end of them.” He absentmindedly pulled his collar down from where it shielded his neck, white shirt collar now visible. You thought of Paddy’s teeth drawing blood from your thigh in the past, and how the blood had stained his mouth and your slip.  The tunnel had an even heavier stillness to it than the outside air, and the pair of footsteps reverbated around you as you soon passed into the avenue ahead, Eoin had described its vast family vaults and strange Egyptian-like mosaics with lotus-bud columns and ornate vault chamber door decorations.  

“An almost bygone era of fetishism with ancient Egyptian culture…” Eoin murmured.

“Professor, and you don’t have a bit of fetishism with this place?” you prodded, his face dropped,

“Well-I, I have not always claimed to be on the correct side of academia at all times.” he tried to excuse himself.

“I find myself quite comfortable with talking about all that, you know, lonely men of your age making up for lost time and all obsessing over great idols like Boudica, turning them into lustful goddesses...” You had noticed the way he had gripped his own arm through his coat, leather glove stretching tight across the back of his hand,  “...I mean no woman or man is safe really from some of the professors around today and the past thirty years or so.”  You waved your hand at the monuments, “I say let academic pleasure fly.” 

“It’s academic– pleasu–? Academic pleasure…ah,” he breathed out, “Okay….” he said as if the wind had been punched from his lungs. “Let’s just not talk of fetishism.” he said frankly, red flush beyond the effects of the morning cold rising on his cheeks.

He slowed down his pace as he walked, aware of it being your first time actually within the cemetery gates, you spoke hurriedly about how you could piece things together.

It took a while for him to get a word in as you tried to make sense of the architecture and symbolism all around you both, when he did he spoke slowly, as if to stall your racing mind. 

“I just would like you, and you alone to tell me what you wish to study. Just even a few ideas to begin with, just-just make them cohesive.” He said with an attempt at grounding you in his voice.

“After a brief conversation with Mr Mayne some time ago as I hinted at,” he huffed, the direction of ‘you alone’ thrown by the wayside entirely, yet you continued, unreactive to his show of displeasure. “See, I thought it would be best to do a study on the authors of the cemetery.  Well, specifically as I do very much like George Eliot.” you suggested.

Eoin let out a low hum of agreence before saying in a drawl, back facing you,

“Yes, of course– of course. I quote Bede, 1859.” he began,

“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”

The words flowed out of mouth like a mantra, the same fixative tone which Paddy’s rambling undertook, yet every word was filled with deep meaning, feeling; like he was clawing it out of the very pits of his being.

He nodded again to himself, turning his head over his shoulder,“Yes, lovely, excellent choice. Follow me, let's see dear Mary.” he said softly.

Watching his lean frame duck and dive through the high obelisks and under the leaves of hanging oaks you struggled to keep up, legs moving in quick uneven paces at his longer strides.  You thought of

Tolkien’s recent writings, of beautiful elves leading men and women to their deaths or imprisonment through the intoxicating haze of Mirkwood.

He slowly pulled off the leather gloves as he was speaking, tucking them under his arm.  Your hearing chose to avert itself of its purpose as your eyes wandered to his movement, pale hands gently etching the moss covered name of George Eliot on a towering obelisk.

Pulling off your own woolen gloves your hands followed his own as he pulled back, tracing where they had travelled.  To touch what he had touched so delicately, and even so morbid made your hair stand on end and intrusive thoughts.  He stood, gesturing to follow him to the rear of the monument as he fixated on the font use alone.

Your eyes caught what little light reflected off the rings on his hands, three in total, one you hadn’t seen before, a simple thing with some greenish stone.  You had thought it unusual for a man to wear anything more than a wedding ring. Though, you remembered your Uncle’s abhorrent display of too many rings on fingers too many sizes too big for them – they were bursting at the seams like some sort of vulgar chokehold on his well-worked hands.  These rings however sat perfectly on Eoin’s long, deft fingers, accentuating their shape and the pale skin beneath, he had few scars on his hands unlike Paddy, who said he had a habit of putting cigarettes out on his hand sometimes to quell his anger at war or accidentally burning himself with hot rifle muzzles.

Your shoe met the tangle of a tree root with a great ‘clip’, as you moved towards the rear of the stone, sending you forwards towards where Eoin knelt near it snapping you out of your thoughts.  His hand reached to steady you in a flash, gripping your wrist and applying force backwards.  It was cold, strong and firm in his grounding of you from tipping forward, and only there for a moment before he pulled it away quickly, placing his gloves back on with haste. 

“Whoops– sorry, sorry Professor.” you gasped.  Your eyes met his and it was as if he had seen a ghost, his pupils were blown and whites of his eyes full in horror at his gaze at the contact.  You laughed, trying to ease the tension, mist spurting out in short sharp bursts through the air

“S’alright.” he said calmly, his eyes still betraying his tone of voice.

Library – Afternoon

Eoin had walked back to the college with you, a brief appearance of a dull winter sun warming your faces weakly.  He spoke less on the walk back, as though language itself might trespass again into the space in his mind as you did at times. When he did, it was books to read, of pathways forward with your study, practical next-steps, all the scaffolding of his professionalism rearing its head as the excitable prior mood fell.  This ‘head’ of professionalism he wanted to rip away from the base, and instead reach down past its bloodied remains to confess his sins at an altar dedicated to you, one which he knew another man already worshiped at.

And yet, against his suddenly stiff demeanour, each time you stumbled slightly on the frozen pavement, his body shifted, anticipating you falling again and whether or not he could control himself to catch you without embracing you as he had craved since the day Paddy Mayne had done so instead.  The walk seemed endless, but eased into quiet comfort by the end.  The stone of the college had yet to shirk off the dark dampness of the night’s rain before and the towers loomed like great sentries overhead. You always thought the architecture was no doubt wasted on snotty family estate boys, but it suited perfectly the man at your side, dark, tall and with endless possibilities of conversation and unpredictability. You noticed how he lowered his head slightly as he stepped through the doorway to the library, a habit learned early and never quite unlearned, no doubt from the small farming cottages back home he said he was used to. 

“Well that was a great break from the daily schedule,” he said, voice mellow yet an air of satisfaction to it as he lowered it.

“Wait– I’ve had a thought.” he sparked up suddenly, voice rising back again to a very un-librarian level, “Just find a seat and wait there for a moment.” he said as he walked away, his hand gesturing over his shoulder wildly.

You took your time following his request, peering out each window to find a picturesque scene that suited your mood just right, pensive, yet excited. 

“Brought you here to show you some relevant books to look at briefly, but I’m sure you can handle yourself.” he reassured, placing the heavy stack lightly on the small dark wooden desk you had slumped at, feet aching to have kept up with his pace. “But, by God would I be a fool if I didn’t just give you these ones first.” he grinned. 

They were all exactly what you needed to get a start with no doubt, books on Eliot and elaborate graves, Victorian mourning and deep investigations into authors of the time.

Soon enough it was long since the end of the day, the Professor had left you with a quiet ‘thank you’ for the day's excitement and only yourself and the young librarian, an aptly bookish-looking fellow remained perhaps in the entire block.  You had talked to him briefly when he had almost stumbled over your pulled-out chair, explaining in a floaty tone of quaint dread that he had failed to catalogue an entire section of the law journals which were of imminent requirement for the new intake of Masters of Law students.  These of which you knew Mr McGonigal would be teaching, you had heard he became quite fierce when discussing his expertise; he had explained teaching law was his job, teaching history was his life's work.

Dramatic, he could be at the least of times.

Though, unbeknownst to you, Paddy sniffed you out like the blood hound he was.  He had been aware of your ‘excursion’ with the other Professor, and combined with the sight of you and the red-haired boy already having driven him wild over the past months; he was thoroughly fueled by spite churning in his gut and conscience.  He barely lowered his voice as he asked if you had passed through the library to the young librarian.

“Ah, yes Sir, yes– she’s buried herself in the literature biographical section. Best of luck finding her.”

“Good lad,” Paddy quipped.

The last person you wanted to see was Mr Mayne, well, so you had thought.

However, the second he rounded the corner to the section of shelves you felt overcome by something strange, a sudden burning desire as if all your pent-up frustration and annoyance with the Professor had melted away and you had been returned to that first day when it all changed.  None of the shameful, nervous and embarrassed feelings which had grown over the past few months remained in that moment, and what was left was something you had craved since the beginning.

Fresh, delicious and unbridled lust.

Your eyes had widened at the sight, switching between his eyes and his mouth as he spoke, wanting him to only place his mouth around you rather than meaningless words.  His usual woolen jersey was replaced by a light blue shirt with just enough buttons undone to keep the Proctors happy no doubt.

“I’d arranged a meeting.” Paddy said sternly.

You had not wanted to attend that meeting with every fiber of your being until now, until that itch had come back to you like never before.

Paddy held a firm grip on your hip the entire way to his classroom, and your hand gripped his own, fingernails digging in for extra effect.

Eoin had been in his office the whole time, fretting over how to plan for any sort of follow-up on his other Masters students and their own excursions, especially after nearly getting arrested on a couple for trespassing.  The door swung lightly as the pressure shifted in the hall, a great door swinging open at the other end and hurried footsteps.  He listened quietly, as their direction stalled outside the exact classroom belonging to Paddy Mayne.  It didn’t take long for curiosity to overcome his attempt at planning, the hurried pace of the pair of footsteps usually meant some sort of dramatic outing of a student cheating on Mayne’s difficult exams.

Silently he made his way to the exit of his office, slipping his keys out of the small clay bowl he kept by the door and stuffing them into his coat pocket.  Mayne’s door was only a few paces down from his own, door slightly ajar, rush no doubt allowing anytime for privacy, although the late hour of the day mostly granted Mayne that already.

Eoin’s eye followed the stream of light coming from the door through a slim gap, his arm flush against the cold wood of the doorframe.  The first thing he saw was the naked curve of a waist forming into the hip, and what was undeniably Paddy’s ring-clad hand raising to run down the soft lines of skin. 

Paddy’s desk had been cleared of all its contents. The desk lamp lay still plugged in on the hardwood floor, the dim light casting strange shadows of their bodies on the wall. 

Paddy squeezed the flesh of your thighs, cold rings forming indents in soft skin. His nose pressed into your cheek, his tongue running over the pulse point of your neck.

“Could hardly bloody focus today,” He whispered into your skin, one hand roaming up to your ribcage as you pulled at his collar. 

He huffed at the tension against his neck, “Missing you, your pretty, bare legs under the table… Could only think of my face in between them, makin’ you tremble…”

“Don’t know what’s gotten into you today, why’s it's taken you this long to let yourself come back with me?” he hissed.

“Felt particularly sexually inspired by that stairwell did we?” Paddy joked, clicking his tongue.

Your chest heaved towards him as you gasped out, “I-don’t know what came over me I just needed you.  Only you.”

“Aye girl, you’ll have me.” he nodded, teeth nipping at your neck as he pulled your blouse off, buttons popping that he hadn’t already undone.

Eoin caught his lip in between his teeth, stifling a whimper at the way your legs fell open so eagerly at Paddy’s words. He could feel his pants getting tighter by the minute. The only thing keeping him from pulling his cock out right there was the sharp pain of his nails in his palms, grounding him in reality.

“You don’t know how frustrating it is,” Paddy mumbled, one hand snaking up your back to grip the hair at the base of your neck. “To watch you there… unable to touch you, your pretty lips around the end of a pen rather than my-“

“Sounds like you have an issue with focusing, Professor.” You interrupted in a biting tone, and though your back was to him, Eoin could hear the smile in your voice.

“Oh, I have an issue…” he said, “an issue with a lot of the things you’ve been doing.  Galavanting with puny little boys and other Professors.” he growled lowly.

It was hard not to think about what Eoin would do if he were so lucky to be in Paddy’s shoes. He wasn’t known to be a rough man, but you brought out the worst in him. He wanted to flip you over on that desk, press your pretty face into the polished wood, and make you beg God for mercy.  But he was not Paddy. He could only try and ignore the heavy throbbing between his legs as Paddy tugged at your hair with one hand and fiddled with his belt with the other. You were giggling as Paddy finally pushed inside you, the laugh turning into an airy gasp in seconds.

Eoin’s entire face was burning at the sight, his legs beginning to feel gelatinous. Paddy was moving at a rough pace, a laser-like intensity in his gaze as he stared you down. 

If Eoin moved in just the right way, he could see Paddy’s face. The way his hair fell into his face in a way he didn’t usually allow, how his veins travelled down his toned arms. If Eoin looked closely, he could see a vein travelling below his belly button, down to his-

He looked away, eyes staring at the door for a moment. He’d been looking at Paddy for too long, able to see much more of him than he could of you. It was surely just how he pleasured you that was exciting to Eoin, but the way his cock throbbed when he turned back to see Paddy’s face twist in pleasure begged to differ.

He had feared there was something deeper, some sort of realisation rearing its head that had been there all along. Some ugly old thing of deep feeling rearing its head, coaxed at the pretty hands of yourself. 

Memories, they just were. Though they incited some deep encompassing feeling of confusion and dread,  muddied by years of blood and war, the past of light glances at the Rugby clubs, the feeling of being pressed against another man in a scrum back in Newtownards, against Paddy. The way they had written to each other, lost each other and then found again on the docks of Larne. Where they’d embraced, and Eoin had felt the world melt around him. 

For over ten years he had pushed it deeper, swept it aside, tried to distract himself without realising it, focusing on others or nothing at all, like some punitive subconscious oath.  Those days in the sweltering desert, cold nights separated in Norway and Denmark after the end of Germany’s surrender where he had longed for the firm press of a body against his, not any other, just Paddy’s. Years of want, years of guilty desire and time apart all for it to fall apart in a matter of months…

…and it had only taken seeing Paddy Mayne with another melting under him to snap.

Slowly, Eoin slid to the floor, onto his knees. The brown woollen trousers matching the floorboards beneath. One hand reached out to press against the door, and the other over his mouth, careful not to make any noise. 

You had let out a guttural groan as Paddy pushed one of your knees to your chest, allowing him to push deeper inside you. 

The whimper that released from your throat made Eoin sigh into his palm, pulling his hand to the cross necklace he wore whilst his other hand on the door fell down to pull at the taught skin of his side where his large cross tattoo lay, falling further to grip his thigh.   

Surely his faith would allow him to relieve himself of this pain, without acting on it. Surely it wouldn’t matter that his hand slid from his thigh to his groin. He applied light pressure to the imprint in his trousers, and the pleasure that shot through his spine made him shiver.

He felt some sort of cool fury pouring into his blood at the sight, the sound, the very air that breathed from the door.  This wave followed by a rush of what came as sorrow and horror of himself, those years at war, those sights compressed into one, tearing at his very being – like he was ripping himself apart from the inside out.

“Oh.” he let out shaking his head, it was ever so quiet, unheard over the muffled moans and creaking from the well-worn office desk of a man he had known he’d hatefully loved for years.

“Feels good, does it?” Paddy asked through grit teeth. And though Eoin knew he was talking to you, yet he nodded, a silent ‘yes’ falling from his lips as his  hips rose ever slightly to meet his palm. 

Besides, all you could muster were pathetic whines to his question, the thick, hot stretch of Paddy ridding you of your words.  Eoin was lucid, so aware, so full of energy and bursting with need. 

Paddy’s grunts became hurried soon enough and his words mixing into a ramble, “That’s it, fuckin- spread– out f’me.” he demanded, Eoin had turned his head again to the ajar door, watching your arms lean back scattering papers across the desk through hazy eyes.  As you shifted hurriedly, spreading your arms further across the desk where you leaned back on them, suddenly with an almighty hiss you recoiled back up into Paddy’s chest almost instantly.

“–God, fuck, ouch.” you pulled your hand between yourselves, groaning, hissing now in true pain.  Paddy stilled his movements in an instant and reached to cradle your hand, gripping the injured palm as he held your hip firm.

“You alright there? What happened?” his voice descended into concern, “Your fucking letter opener, Paddy,” you hissed out.

“Shit, mind slipped on that one.  M’sorry, less of an opener more of a desert knife.” He lowered his eyes to your palm as the blood welled and started to fall in a light line down your arm. 

“Poor pretty thing, you’ve got a wee cut there you do, are you scared of blood?”  You couldn’t tell if his sweetness was legitimate or not.

He was still firmly inside you as he moved your hand to his mouth, kissing the bloodied wound lightly as his dark eyes still bored into your own, in that moment you felt him twitch inside yourself.

“What the fuck Paddy–” you began,

“Lovely thing, like a wounded Dove.” he murmured.  

With that you pulled your arm down, hauling him almost completely off you with a firm push to his chest, yet he remained still inside you slightly, the thickness of him enough to be noticed no matter how little he was inside.

“First you try to lick my wound, and then, well, matter of the fact is, you keep a bloody knife on your desk?” you spat, anger welling.

“I also keep you spread and wet like this on my desk too, but you have little issue with that.” He pushed aside his concern and strange behaviour for a moment to recoil in one of his usual jeers.  A few drops of blood had fallen down off a thin trail across your palm, and Eoin’s eyes watched intensely, following it as it glided across your skin wishing he could do the same with his tongue, fingers, anything.  Paddy was a deranged man for touching his mouth to your blood, yet Eoin would do the same to both of you without a thought more, and he knew that painfully, sinfully.

“Let me see now, that’s it dove. No playin’ silly buggers I swear.” Paddy’s voice interrupted his gaze.

You huffed, attempting to fight with the internal understanding that of course it would be best to trust a man that had seen countless wounds in war over your little experience with cuts and grazes from wild blackthorn trees and stray wire fences at home.  You allowed him to take your hand back in his own.

Paddy hummed slightly admiring where the pale skin turned to sanguine,“Aye, I think you’ll live.” he grinned, “But let’s give it a wash now, let’s get you some gauze.”

He pulled back, slowly away from your body not to shock you despite your great upheaval prior, adjusting himself back into his trousers despite his still ready and hard cock protesting, securing the slacks with one hand, button and all.  

In the great shifting and clatter of more desk ornaments falling off as you pulled yourself upwards your onlooker slipped away, rising from his knees in an ungainly wobble and shuffling hurriedly down the corridor; face brazen with red as he tried to adjust himself in his pants.

“Just keep some pressure on it. Here–” Paddy said as he gripped your free hand to the wound then pulled your skirt down gently, pulling your ruined underwear away from your ankles and into his back pocket as you glanced unimpressed.  He guided you from his office with a firm hand on your lower back, turning to the left towards the bathrooms.  Before you could reach them the familiar silhouette of Professor McGonigal caught your eye, standing staring at the door handle of his office, keys in hand.

His hair was tousled, he still wore his gloves and coat despite the colleges’ radiators on full blast.

“Oh, hello.” he said hurriedly at your approach.

“Ah, it’s good we ran into you Mr McGonigal actually,” you admitted.  You pulled at your ruffled shirt which Paddy had gladly not ripped from your body earlier with what free fingers you had, barely concealing the wrecked buttons, mind racing to attempt to find an excuse why you were with Mayne alone well and truly past office hours.

“We’d just been discussing for hours–”

“–Aye, hours chatting.” Paddy nodded, a wolfish smile on his face.

You had to blurt something out, something, anything of enough substance,“–L–Let’s join forces to do a joint lecture. What do you say? Something on Irish folklore history, poetry, or deathways?” your eyes lit up at the realisation, you turned to Paddy for agreement, realising just how close you were standing, and how inappropriate that may have been to any other late onlookers.  Of course, your game was already more or less up after the encounter at the Quad, but you had chosen to still play innocent. You couldn’t trust what McGonigal might do at the end of the day, one small slip of the tongue and your great game between Paddy and yourself was up to a proctor or any sort of authority around the place. Hoping the blood wasn’t welling around your fingers you lowered and clasped your hands waist, trying to conceal the wound.

“It’ll draw those intrigued new students in, aye.” Paddy nodded absentmindedly at your side, the only thing on his mind being your underwear in his back pocket and his zipper straining at his front.

The whole energy from Eoin felt off. Strange. After the first frosty encounter at the start of the year he was always one of the most accommodating, engaging lecturers you had interacted with.  

His eyes flickered between you both,

“Just because I am Irish–,” he gestured at Paddy, “–we are, doesn’t mean I am some oracle in all things Irish.” Eoin huffed, pulling his satchel he had thrown in a panic at the bottom of the door over his shoulder.  

“Yes, of course Sir, I don’t mean to make any assumptions about you, well either of you–” you shook your head, shifting on the balls of your feet to try to distract yourself from the stinging pain and focus on not coming across as a folly and creating a believable lie.

“Oh, you can try to make any assumption all you want about me, I’m sure you’ll get it wrong,” Paddy said slowly, “You can both try…” he lowered his voice, nodding slightly at Eoin in some attempt at camaraderie. You glanced at Paddy and noticed his own eyes had fallen to your wound, wary of not pulling the other Professor into your own dramas.

Eoin cut him off before he could explain himself,

“I know… I know that I shared some stories from my childhood to you on occasion after class, but it really doesn’t mean I know everything.” Eoin seemed to be trying to memorise the woodgrains of the door in front of him,  “My expertise is not there, and you know there would be some upturned noses at any mention of ‘paganism’ in these halls; let alone the frolicing in the cemeteries.”  Eoin tried in an attempt to respond adequately, though found his mouth barely moving and his mind spitting out whatever he could to end the conversation.  Whole body and eyes avoided both your own and Paddy’s 

“That’s for private study, your own passion.” he said to you, with an air of desperation to his voice as he fought himself to turn to you.

“Are you alright? Your hand is twitching like nothing else.” you asked, nodding, as it was all you could do to his hand gripping like a vice around his keys still raised as if he was unlocking some invisible door in front of you both.

“Ah, yeah. Yeah. Just, too much coffee y’know.  Too late n’ the day n’all.” he slurred his words slightly.

“Are you on the drink?” Paddy asked at your side. “Eoin, wake up, you're on your feet now, you’re like a dead man walking.” Paddy continued laughing slightly, you noticed with a strange concern he usually reserved for only yourself.

“Christ, do I wish I were dead.” Eoin breathed out, head lifting back slightly as he closed his eyes as he moved to thrash the key around in the lock.  Nothing was gentle round there in the old buildings, and the movements mocked the earlier sight which marred him in a way like no other as your body had clung to Paddy.  Finally, with a crunch the key clicked locked in the door. 

This sudden swift change of mood amused you, he was not usually an emotional person.

He turned to you both, back against the door, you noticed how his height meant he looked down at you both slightly, “Apologies, for cursing like that.  Shouldn’t do such an unprofessional thing in front of a student.” he spoke with his tongue barely restraining what he truly had to say back.

Paddy smiled lightly, mind focused on the fact that knowing that, if he was locking the door, he’d been there for some time.  Sound carries, and of course, in all innocence; Professor Eoin McGonigal always leaves his door open for any concerned student.

You had found needed respite in the thought of a hot bath as you clambered up the Doctoral flats, the frost from the morning still lingering in the corners of your body despite Paddy’s warmth having warmed you earlier.  After the encounter with Eoin you hurried with Paddy to the bathroom, washing the congealing blood down the sink as he reached into a medical cabinet. He’d commented on Eoin’s strange demeanour only briefly before sending you on your way.

It didn’t feel quite right.  None of it.

Thoughts wracked your mind, not entirely complete, just fractures bouncing in and out of the corners reserved for shame, it kept falling back to Eoin, is this desire? Jealousy? Hatred?  To be frank, ever since Eoin had touched you this morning you had felt strange. The way he had looked at you when he had steadied you weighed on your mind, his eyes were like a deers in headlights on a country-road, like something so vulnerable inside him was being barely held at bay.  

His softness, his care in explanation and guidance filled a void you felt had been empty for a long time. The strange frenzy you felt upon seeing Paddy again even if you were frustrated with him for his comments on your own relationships felt so fuelled by something stronger. The ‘meeting’ with Paddy had soothed you for a bit, but after seeing Eoin at his office door moments after you had noticed a flash of a glint in his eyes as they connected to yours in that first moment.  It was as if he knew that silken touch from the morning still lingered for you despite the feeling where Paddy’s rough hands marred the flesh that his fingers had graced, yet only for a brief moment.

Careful to keep your wrapped cut hand from getting sodden you ran your hands along the rails of the bath, sighing heavily as you stretched into it.  The hand you couldn’t get wet instead you soon placed above your head, thinking as if Paddy’s own had secured in there in place, reprimanding you for its wandering.  You couldn’t keep away from him, no matter how much you had cursed at him.  The light fell lower as the blue throws of the twilight fell, the flickering warm lights of a few lit candles supplying what little remained.  Shadows cast in stretched abstract glyphs about the room as you followed the strange lines slowly.

Your mind quickly slipped into thought of Paddy at your side, but he was changed, doting, caring, loving and entirely yours without any institutional scandal marring you both.  He smiled with warm love and honeyed eyes, whispering sweet words of encouragement and stroking your hair as the candlelight licked at his face.  It was an image, a delusion of a devoted man bound to you, something he had seemed incapable of doing lest he be tempted by your body, something you craved.  The thought of hands stroking your hair soon began to shift, uncontrollably, to hands sliding through the water, upwards from your ankles, across your wet thighs. 

Disembodied, yet feeling entirely real.

Your eyes squeezed shut as the feeling overpowered you, it must be light-headedness from the little bloodloss you had thought, I must’ve passed out on the bed, this mustn’t be real.

Hands gripping the edge of the bath tightly you gasped as you felt long fingers start to rub small circles across your clit, another hand travelling to flick at your nipple and pinch at your neck.

“Paddy… I swear,” you huffed out.

“Aww, it’s alright now, pretty little thing.” you could hear a muffled brogue drawl out, as if it was underwater itself.

It felt like nothing else, some force of delusion of great subconsciousness holding you down and dragging out pleasure like never before, you shook in the warm surround of the water.

“Don’t– even– want me for anything– other–than this–” you managed to whine out

“Oh, I’ll come round to you, don't worry.” you heard that muffled brogue again.

It took only a few moments before the darkness of your closed vision went white.  It felt like hours before you stirred into consciousness, spread out across your own bedspread naked, injured hand hanging off the side of the bed like it had been to the side of the bath.

“W-what–” you whispered to yourself, voice hoarse and quiet in the calm silence of your dark room more for reassurance if anything.

It took a while for you to collect yourself and try and process what had happened.  You must have passed out in the bath and ended up on the bed like some wandering soul. Legs unsteady you made your way to the bathroom to the side of your room.

Pulling the thin line that led to the breaker for the small lightbulb in the ceiling you sighed.

The bath was full, the candles burnt out and the floor mat damp as if you had just been there.

You moved forwards slowly, chest rising in still remaining confusion as you reached out to touch the water.

It ripped around your finger as you slowly breached the surface,

It was still warm to the touch.

[taiscedulcinea]

A Study in Restraint | one

Nitimur In Vetitum

Professor!Paddy Mayne X Tutor!Fem! Reader X Professor!Eoin McGonigal

summary: London is ever-changing still. Even now, ten years after the War. The College was everything you dreamt of, but also everything that confronted your small-town, sleep-farm-filled heart; you had no spires or grandeur at home, only the small churchyard and the wonders of rolling meadows. But what was, had been and gone, and you came to relish in the new possibilities which you had worked so hard for.

The Doctoral thesis would come easily –you knew it– the passion for your discipline of history had developed a belief in yourself which could not be quelled or distracted from and a love of literature excited and quelled the fires and sadness within you when you needed it. However, money was still the burden. The suggestion by your coordinator to sign up as an tutor to an undergraduate lecturer was decided upon without question, eager to not only meet this lecturer and your new supervisor, you arrived with haste to your new life, but it is also certain that endless possibilities await.

Yet, you did not quite realise that what, or rather who, waited for you were English Literature Professor Mayne and Historian Mr McGonigal, two men dead set on in the end, being the downfall of both your mind, body, and soul and as a result their own restraint.

warnings: smut, teacher x teacher x tutor/student dynamic / relationship, power imbalance, mention of breaches of academic integrity beyond all limits, dirty talk, petting (touching through clothes), 0 to 100 relationship.

word count 8k

a/n: Just in time for the most wonderful time of the year, here's the first chapter of the Professor Fic! Without giving much away, hold onto your hats ladies and gentleman as this one gets heated, fast!! Mr Mayne is quite the character and Eoin the ponderous, insightful but mysterious fellow. We shall surely get a bit more closer to him soon enough, maybe a bit too close.

Anywho, and now for something completely different...

'Audentes fortuna iuvat'

University College London October, 1955

University College London was beautiful, you did have to admit.  Norwich did you well in the time that you did spend there; however, it was inevitable that you expanded from your hometown to seek furthering of your passions.

It was a short yet winding walk from your new lodgings, of which you had few complaints so far.

To describe the grandeur of the campus would not do it justice, it was like some fortress of pompous academia, one that ashamedly you had to admit, you found yourself admiring.  The thought of becoming ensnared deep in study, protected from the cold within the various thick walls and warm rooms was increasingly appealing, especially on a cold autumnal day.

It took some time to find the building you had been instructed to attend, it was all columns and spires reaching up to great heights of enlightenment, a great door yawned already fought open against the increasingly biting wind.

The hallway was grand, with vast ceilings with deep wood and delicate masonry of reds, greys, and blues swooping overhead and your small heels clicked along in the way that almost gave you a sense of power, of presence.

There was a booth quite strangely deposited in a corner of the room, bending around the mosaics and wood and stone.  A thick mahogany sign affixed by chains that looked as if they had hung for decades, reading ‘Arts Faculty New Enrolments’ soon greater you to your delight. A slightly portly woman with rosy cheeks and glasses, adjacent to all the latest fashion magazines you sometimes perused, sat at the booth’s desk.  

You smiled as you made your way up to her, riffling slightly in your leather satchel to pull your confirmation of enrollment slip.

She smiled wider as she met your gaze.

“Ayup love, my name is Mrs Percy, I see you’ve made yourself acquainted with the way here, well done it is quite a maze at times. I am welcome to meet you as your first port of call for all Humanities faculty enrolment and general queries.” She spoke with a thick Yorkshire accent, one you were ashamed to admit you were surprised to hear in such an institution in some backwards bias.

You handed over your slip watching as it slid with ease across the mahogany boundary between the two of you.

The woman took a moment to read in a vehemently focussed expression.

“I see you have a list of lecturers and a potential thesis supervisor here, wonderful.” She pushed her glasses up from the bridge of her nose.

The nervousness of the unknown personalities of the names on the list had wracked your mind for weeks, and you just had to know anything she could provide in regards to what would be the right way to choose your supervisor, let alone to survive your classes.

You spoke, with a nervous air:

“I don’t mean to be so direct so quickly, so do forgive me, but would you be so kind as to give me an honest account of the staff whom I will be involved with, ma’am?” You requested. 

The woman looked at you slightly like a stunned mullet, “Well- well- I- why yes, of course I suppose.” She laughed in that surprised tone, a great belly-laugh that filled her cheeks and your eardrums causing your own smile, “You know, no one has even asked me that, let alone a transferring Doctoral student…, you’re just lucky I have my ears open quite wide in the staff room!” 

She stammered, “Well, then, let’s see here, er–, yes.”  Her finger ran alongside your name on the paper, “I see here: a Professor Ibbotson, Dr Grimshaw, a Mr Fraser.  Oh dear, all lovely, all lovely, just watch Dr Grimshaw, he has an ability to talk for hours if you get him going on something..."

"and… oh, looks like our two newest additions to the faculty, from...”  

She pulled her head back, glasses dipping and eyes squinting to read the words,” ... Trinity College and Queen’s University, respectively.” 

The paper in her hand quivered slightly as she paused a moment, you were unsure if she was just racking her memory for any account of what you’d presume to be relatively indifferent in their contributions to the faculty as of yet or she had heard something terrible.

Quickly, she pushed her glasses up, her voice lowered and hurried, “Now, you didn’t hear this from me, but.” She looked both ways out of the booth, “Those two are quite the pair…, and I mean that in a number of ways” She gave a quick wink.

"Ma'am what do you mean? Are they co-authors?"

You looked at her, puzzled.

“No, no, but they’ve already made quite the impression, you see.”

“In what way?” You asked with an air of caution,

Her voice fell lower into a whisper, “Erm, well, one of them has already demonstrated by certain reports of a chair being thrown out of E-block’s third-story window!”

She burst into laughter as she shucked the paper back onto her desk, raising her eyebrows at you.

“Poor feller just wouldn’t answer a question is all!” She continued to laugh jollily.  You tried to stifle your amusement at her recounting of the events, smoothing your skirt with both hands.

Her voice quietened again to a whisper; “Professor Mayne can be… quite…, temperamental, shall we say, I would advise treating him with utmost regard and compassion.”  She confessed, fingers nervously tapping against the desk.

“And the other Professor?” You asked.

She cocked her head slightly in thought, “Well, now that I think of it, most complaints have been about Professor Mayne… Mr McGonigal, I have only heard of him as having a firm but still gentle hand in his teaching methods.” She nodded her head lightly, “I suspect it’s because he hasn’t lost his wits-end at newcomers.  Though I do see even the doctoral girls stumbling out of his class, gossiping between themselves about who knows what.” She stood and moved to the filing cabinet behind the small desk, “He doesn’t tend to stray far from his office.”

It was a long time since ‘L-detachment’, and longer since for the Ulster Rifles, their hair had grown in patches of grey and silver which Eoin was adamant was some effect of war.  Paddy’s beard flecked with it and Eoin’s attempt at facial hair dusted; Eoin always walked with that slight limp from his unfortunate accident and Paddy fought the pains of remnant scar-tissue from the lashings at his many interrogations, large scars stretching across the still-strong panes of his back.

Yet, they remained together regardless.  Re-entering academia was the natural progression for Eoin, continuing his studies in Dublin with passion until he reached the pinnacle of them.  Paddy, however, was already qualified and began teaching at Queen’s in Belfast almost immediately upon arrival.  He undertook lecturing akin to how he used to go about conducting squadron raids–everyone was at risk, and everything was a potential weapon to get his point across, regardless of what teaching regulations may say.

You had spent the first week silently hoping the days in which you were to meet the two new professors would not come; a pit rested inexplicably deep in your stomach since the kindly enrolment lady’s warning.

Late afternoon had come quickly as you attempted to locate your Advanced History seminar.

The air was cool as you pushed the hefty door, the plated ring-handle swinging lightly under your hand.  Not in the biting way of the outside conditions as of late, but of the relief of a cool stone building on a summer's day.

The room was mostly shadowed, a high window letting in the darker blue light of the oncoming evening.  Dark wood covered almost the entire space as a few chairs were arranged in a tight-knit semi-circle near a large desk at the centre of the room.  

No large-scale lecture halls, rows of blackboards covered with chalk or stacked classrooms here.

Four or five students sat scattered between the few seats, intently watching the centre of the room where a man stood pacing in front of the desk.

He had a calm air of authority over the room, which Professor Mayne had instead, seemingly from what you had heard, expressed in physicality and threats of violence. 

An off-white shirt was rolled up to his elbows; he wore no tie despite your expected formality for a Doctoral supervisor, the faculty had already railroaded you into choosing him, adding to your nervousness to meet.   A brown suit jacket with a few tear marks lay abandoned on top of some papers on the desk, dismissing the formality of his attire.  It was as if he may have first presented a fine example of put-together dress at the start of the day, but slowly unravelled throughout his meditations on his chosen subject.

You paused in the doorway, taking in the scene, still unnoticed by the lecturer or students.  His voice stood out amongst the scene.

His accent was beautiful; already from the few words you heard spoken, you tried not to smile at the warm, honeyed oaken sound of it.  It was a mesmerising low drawl which flicked and fluttered in the perfect places but dragged out and rolled around in the best of ways in others. 

It drew you to the Romantic notions you had read from books in the darkest corners of old bookshops in the city.  Of women, in some strange objectifying way describing accounts of Gaelic lovers and escaping the fronds of cold British men to greener and more passionate isles.

He cut himself off as your footsteps echoed as you edged into the room.   An even heavier silence added to it quickly as his eyes slowly dragged across the space to you.  

“Welcome, please, sit.” He said simply, expression unchanged.

You watched and listened transfixed for a fair while before a sudden thought snapped you from your concentration, the crucial textbook gripped by the hands.

“With the conquest of the Byzantines by the Ottomans in Constantin–” He brought both of his hands up to his hair to scrape through it, dark curls flecked with silver in some places.  You noticed a few rings of both silver and gold on his hand. You struggled to place his age, maybe mid-thirties, one of the lucky ones to have made it back from the War, you presumed. 

Your mind began to wander, about where he'd been, what horrors he'd had the unfortunate task of seeing and enacting, those poor men and women–

“I’d advise ya’ to pay attention in these seminars, they are crucial in understanding the course.” He said blankly, expression unchanged, but dark-brown eyes holding something you couldn’t quite read in them. 

“Sorry, Sir, I’m just trying to get the textb–” you began to apologise, rummaging with the textbook as if you had just pulled it out.

“My students, even the doctoral students, don't often have their textbooks on the first day…” He said.

“Good.” A small smile sprang across his face; it lit up his otherwise stony expression thus far.  

Maybe he wasn’t too bad.

The room was stifling hot and flooded with sunlight, the complete opposite of the embracing coolness and dim light of McGonigal’s room.

Saying no to the tutoring job in English Literature was out of the question for you, even despite remembering the kind woman's warnings.

It was quite obvious that Professor Mayne was already the ‘active’ educator as he was in the middle of seemingly enacting some sort of Shakespearean play, gesturing in forceful movements in front of a blackboard full of chalk scrawl.  

It was without a doubt that he was some sort of former Major or other commanding officer based on his immediate demeanour alone; you needn’t speculate like you did McGonigal.  He was of a similar age, too, maybe a few years older, still, if he was in his forties, this was young for an esteemed professor.

Through his movements, you tried to get an actual look at the man; he had a swathe of facial hair over his face, a cropped ginger beard flecked with silver that contrasted with his darker brown hair.  It seemed he didn’t appear to subscribe wholly to the expected dress of prestigious lecturers at the college either, wearing a worn cream farmers' jersey; however, he still donned the expected tidy slacks and shoes of a professor.

His accent was quite the opposite in timbre to McGonigal’s; almost a harsh ‘bark’ as if he jumped over and through each word like some obstacle course.  It was certainly one to get used to rather than one that immediately lulled you into an admirable daze.

You surveyed the attendees, about thirty young faces, innocent and yet marred by the annoyances of academia. 

Professor Mayne had been surveying them as well, it appears, as he paused his tirade, dead still, and a wave of suspense hit the air. He hummed lowly in his throat.

“Oh… what do we have here?” He had fixed his eyes on a poor boy slumped, surely too young looking to have made it this level of education, dozing in his seat in the second row from the back.

In one swift movement, he unlatched his belt and pulled it from his trousers, bearing down on the dozing student with fire in his eyes.

He let out a howl of amusement at the shocked students at the ear-splitting sound as he cracked the belt on the table next to the boy's head, the poor boy almost leapt a metre out of his seat.

"Next time I'll use it on ye' like in grammar school."  He suddenly looked up at you as you stood in the doorway, his first acknowledgement of your attendance, grinning in absolute satisfaction. 

“Oh, aye.” He clicked his tongue before turning away from you, slowly dragging his belt back through his trouser loops as he returned to the front of the room.  “This here is your new tutor…” He leaned slowly over his desk as he turned back to you, both hands spreading out against the papers scattered on it.

“Now, she has not done much to disappoint me yet, but don’t”

'Much' to disappoint him yet? I’ve only stood here and never met you before, Sir, how easy must that be then. You thought confused. 

The routine of the year soon settled, your tutoring job was certainly an exciting one with Mr Mayne, switching between speaking on whatever poet of the week he was obsessed with and helping students in the class, sometimes defending them against his wrath.  Your research with McGonigal supervising on the other hand was yet to inspire you, a topic was yet to be solidified until one too many wrong turns had led you to the gates of Highgate Cemetery, and within its beautiful sombre silence and mossy visions – something you decided you must study, its history, its relevance to the city, and McGonigal agreed. 

Two Months Later... University College London December 12th, 1955

Life was unusual, yes, of course – this new life of yours, this quickly changing life.

Some strange tension had befallen you and your time in classes, like some dense, impending fog, rolling over the tables and chairs and thickening in the air.  Though only two of you could sense it.  A part of you knew perhaps what it could be, but you restrained your hubris with great effort.  Yet, this air – air-this thick, thick air…, it drove you to a haze of what you believed was madness swiftly.  The study of Highgate Cemetery you were planning to investigate in the spring as part of the PhD with Mr McGonigal supervising or as he said ‘assisting’ (since he considered you to be already superior to his knowledge in the field) was already looming in obscurity like some impossible monolith in the near distance, but perhaps it was a sign of clarity like some gaunt lighthouse breaching a wall of sea-fog with a pillar of light. 

Mr Mayne had lingered close to you at any occasion, and you found yourself spraying extra perfume in some automatic yet shameful act of flaunting, too came the changing in your own habits of distracting yourself in boring classes; eyes resting on the way the veins in his hand moved and his arm flexed as he wrote on the blackboard, or maybe threw the odd book at a dozing student.  Your mind danced about what he might look like outside of work, alone in whatever likely bedsit he may reside in, alone, yet not vulnerable, out in public, perhaps at a pub, yet not restricted by dress expectations, ‘Sirs’ and ‘Messrs’, or any lenient expectations of his behaviour at all.  He had told you his name. ‘Paddy’, though you doubted it, considering an embroidered ‘RBM’ in patchy red thread on one of his ganseys' collars, revealed itself to you one late afternoon.   You had passed it from where he had thrown it across the room in dramatic, ‘comedic’ fashion at the ‘excitement’ of reaching a study on James Joyce.

‘Paddy’ haunted your day; however, when you closed your eyes late at night, the dark ones of McGonigal followed you through your dreams with some obscure intention to them.  They rested heavily in a pit in your stomach and sat in a fuzzy haze behind your closed eyelids as you wandered through stifling hot wooden halls and strange gardens in your dream states.  He wrote to you in your dreams, some gracious Gaeilge name you were yet to know, signed in blood and desire, whispering things he yearned for in a beautiful hand and voice through the black ink.

Your own writing had matched your shifting perspective, and this dream-version of him, that which remained secret and close to yourself, locked in your nightstand when not in use.   You feared an animal was rising, writhing within you.  It wanted to feast on flesh and sin – to scratch at ‘Paddy’s’ back and bite his wrist in restraint, to cry and howl and hiss like some great cat. Thoughts of Mayne’s Les Chants de Maldoror or McGonigal’s musings on Sekhmet devouring those she loved flashed through your mind at night, haunting and nauseating.  

The rain hadn’t stopped for hours, hitting the window in a rhythmic way that’d made you yawn during Professor McGonigal’s lecture, a rare occurrence. Students giggled as their shoes slapped against the wet pavement and they huddled close under umbrellas together, but yours had been missing from beneath your coat on the hook where you’d left it. The doctoral share house was only a few blocks away from the lecture hall, albeit with some difficult twists and turns; any building, however, was barely visible with the sheets of rain that fell out of the sky at a rapid pace – just some black masses in the distance. With a sigh, you leaned against the wall under the awning of the hall, not yet willing to make the sprint home.

As you settled into the rhythm of the year, your mornings fighting against the bark of Mayne and consoling his stressed students turned into remedial afternoons of intellectual meditation. It seemed at first that Mayne’s classes drew a particularly vulnerable clientele, and you became some sort of guardian angel to his antics.  Likewise, McGonigal became somewhat your own, discussing Mayne’s tendencies in which he admitted you should avoid provoking and quickly becoming a supervisor, you could tell would earn a hefty portion of your acknowledgements from.  The dark oaken highlights of his study filled with filtered light from the high windows, chased by a slightly dusty and bookish smell.  His lilt danced over your ears and dared to whisk you away to some quaint cottage-side town if you allowed it to linger long enough, though he could not help his own charm, like some painfully beneficial curse.

“Sir?” you asked in a moment of comfortable quiet between the few students and the pacing professor, confused by his own statement earlier on the complexities of Mesopotamian Cuneiform and trying to correct himself.

He nodded in his curt manner, but that gentle kindness still sat deep in his eyes. 

“Why isn’t there a focus on Irish pre-history?” 

“Quietly, I think you know which local agenda would see that to not be the case.” He admitted,  

“Our very being has been vilified and beaten and trodden down for so long now it's hard to even imagine a time of freedom and our true traditions and even free use of language, even now," he spoke solemnly.

“Do you speak–?” You began.

His dark gaze grew intense.

“I don’t like to use it lightly,” he began.

“I’m sure you all know of the hatred and bigotry we face.  How this voice, as it speaks a so-called ‘conquered’ by your tongue, is a symbol of a sense of inferiority, even still to some of you Brits seek to enforce upon us and stir within us.”

He drew his hands up to his hair, scraping them through the dark curls flecked with silver with a slight air of annoyance.

“But the language? It tethers me like a string to those who came before me, flowing like some abhainn – some river or stream through us all, despite how much oppression and bigotry can be thrown at us, it does survive in some ways.”

“So lovely…” You found yourself whispering aloud.

“Hmm?” 

“–I mean, you should speak it more, Sir. That’s all,” You admitted.

“Ah now, but, mar sin, is é do mhian go dhoirfeadh mé é ort, arís is arís eile.” 

You smiled at his use of it in a full sentence towards you.

“I’d implore you to investigate teaching the subject, Sir, even if in a brief few optional seminars, maybe Mr Mayne could be involved?  It would surely help some of these ‘Hooray Henrys’ to understand why their sensitive ears struggle with his voice, maybe.”

“I’m not sure the university would take lightly to that considering who keeps their pockets full…” he lowered his voice into a silky timbre, “... and even I struggle with his voice too,” his bright smile crept onto his face as he laughed lightly, an airy sound of genuine joy you hadn’t heard from him before and the few students nodded in agreement.

Before this, the compliments on your writing style on the proposal you’d turned in were still making your stomach turn; he had stated he’d be using it in his next class as an example if that was all fine by you, following it with that typical Irish notion of “that’s grand.” He’d looked so pleased, his smile wide and the fine lines which marked his face in the most intricate ways shifting proudly when he’d shown you the perfect score written in his elegant handwriting at the top of the page.  

He was a lovely man at heart, you could tell, and he broke easily from his falsely cold facade at your first interaction.

It had been a good day. McGonigal had also complimented your writing style on the essay you’d turned in and stated that, with your consent, he’d be using it in his next class as an example. He’d looked so pleased, his smile wide when he’d shown you the perfect score written in his elegant handwriting, as your dreams had shown, at the top of the page.  The spattering of the earlier light showers on the tin roof and thick glass panes gently guided you thereafter into the various landscapes of Gaul, which McGonigal had been describing.  Strangely, the class was followed by no barking interrogational session of tutoring with Mr Mayne, rescheduled to the following week.  His rescheduling was quite peculiar, and you had noticed Professor McGonigal hastily exiting his room and heading in the general direction of Mayne’s following the conclusion of the seminar. 

But now, you were outside in the biting cold and pouring rain, and better yet, to add to your woes, the sun was setting, and you thought of his beaming smile lighting up the sky like some sort of radiant beacon.  

Pathetic, really.  

Strangely enough, a car was parked unusually outside the entrance to the Humanities building, a sleek beauty, all black and streamlined, some new Jaguar in all its prestigious presence.

Paddy soon appeared through the colossal, weathered doors swung ajar, making his way to the car.  The tattered brown briefcase he carried swung swiftly in his stride, and he was unbothered by the driving rain as it landed heavily on his heavy wool overcoat.  Even through the weather, he looked somewhat more flustered than usual, untidy in his appearance as if he had been rustled or tousled even beyond his usual classroom antics.

He popped the sleek boot of the Jaguar, placing the briefcase slowly as the rain followed into the space. You approached cautiously, still impressed by how such a humble appearing professor would drive such a new and status-worthy vehicle of the British gentry; he had complained openly about no less, unlike McGonigal’s more reserved comments. 

“Mr Mayne! Such weather we’re having!” You said loudly through the noise of heavy drops hitting stone, wood and steel.

He looked up from the closing boot, an air of surprise on his expression as he caught your face and figure approaching. 

 “So it is, and I’d expect you’d be washed about by the deluge trying to get home, I suppose?”

You laughed coyly, lifting a hand to shield your eyes, “It’s not too far, Sir, I’m just trying to psyche myself to it, is all”

“Ah, well psyche yourself up in the car then, would you?” He offered.

“–Oh, but I can't, Mr Mayne, I am sure you are not going in the same direction as me, and I don’t wish to intrude.”

“Aye, but intrude you always will, regardless of whether it is or not of your own intent.” He grinned. He dragged his hands through his hair as he moved from the rear of the car, pulling at his coat collar against a gust of wind.

“In,” he gestured, opening the passenger door.

“But –I,” You protested.

“In. Before I get the seats and carpets wet.” 

You frowned slightly at his penchant for the vehicle, somewhat over your sodden state, but you often never knew when he was joking.

The moment of quiet and rain hitting steel before the other door opened felt strange, as if a great storm front was coming, you considered, a pit in your stomach rising.  The heavy door swung shut with a satisfying thud, and you sat in an anxious silence as Mayne made his way around the car. 

“Fuck this,” Paddy muttered as he moved down into the seat, hand gripping the steering wheel. As you noticed a small gold signet ring on his little finger for the first time, despite your focus on his hands so often, you had never seen him wear it until now.  How such an at times brutish man wore such a delicate, fine thing puzzled you.

He sighed as he collected himself, reaching forward, not yet addressing you but rather his desire for a smoke, pulling a packet of Navy Cuts from a compartment under the dash, he reached into his coat pocket to remove a beaten-up lighter, no doubt one of the Expeditionary Forces kinds.

The rain had soaked his hair to a dark slicked-back appearance as he turned to you in the driver's seat as you fixed your shirt.  He grinned as he pulled back to the cigarette now nursed close to his mouth, those wolfish points to his teeth baring themselves to you as you shifted to face up to his invitation.  The air was quickly filled with both his smoke and the humidity of the heart from your two bodies as you sat there, making easy work of fogging the windows and obscuring both your view outside and the view inside, the dark adding to the black car's camouflage in the growing winter night. With the proximity of the car seats, no armrest or partition to separate the two of you, he was so close, and had shifted to face you, almost jamming himself into the corner of the door and the seat as if to survey you like a fisherman his catch.

Paddy’s eyes had fallen to your wet thighs and skirt, which had ridden up thoroughly beyond appropriate length, not that you noticed, nor could you feel the fact that you were soaked. Not until you shifted, thighs rubbing together on the black vinyl, leaving a streak and an embarrassing squeak, did you realise the compromising look.

His eyes were resting in the alabaster sight, a sharp breath and the sucking of his teeth broke the silence, “You’ll catch your death there, girl.” He said lowly, a small stream of smoke flowing from his open mouth.

“--Wet like that.” He followed. Your heart jumped.

“I-uh, well–, yes.” You fumbled, unsure of his tone or suggestion, but the depth of his voice rattled through your already slightly shivering spine. In an attempt to pull yourself together, you found yourself spilling out words not quite known to yourself.

“Yes, quite unfortunate, and with such a nice skirt I wore today, I got it as a gift from a dear friend, it's from Ponting’s”.  You smiled as you fidgeted with the satchel high on your lap.  The mention of your friend brought memories of Summers since past flooding back to you.  When London was a commodity a few hours away to be explored and plundered for its knowledge and taste, when it was a dream in the future, rather than your home now.  It was a constant maze to fight, which made you dream of the countryside again, and even at that, the often dreary one at that, especially in winter.

How it had landed you in the passenger seat of a professor’s car who made your skin itch, and your mind wander was something you, in truth, both thanked and cursed for.

“An acquaintance, eh?” Paddy chuckled, you smiled, clawing at the memories of your friend now distanced by quaint countryside, “Why, yes…, but they are studying elsewhere now, sadly, I do miss them greatly.” You admitted.

Paddy turned from his perch to crank the window, hand pausing on the crank-handle as he sucked in another pull from his cigarette, as a strand of damp hair fell into his face, “...and was he showering you with gifts often then?” he questioned.

“Well, they really enjoy my company and–find my, umm, find my contribution to their days–”

The window rolled down, and the door-card, floor and back of Paddy’s shirt were soon covered in drips of water, so much for the carpet and the seats, he had something else on his mind now.

“C’mon, come off it with this secretive shite.”  He laughed as he ashed the cigarette in the open tray, leaning forward into your space, taking another quick pull of it. “What young man did you have wrapped around your finger, eh?” He grinned again in that wolfish manner as the smoke flowed between the closing gap between both of you.  You coughed lightly at the intoxicating cigarette smell, wafting your hand slightly. He growled a low sound from his chest, “Is it too much for you, dove?” he mocked.

“I don’t smoke, no,” you admitted, avoiding his previous comment.  In truth, the local boys did not fancy you, and your friend hadn’t bought you anything; in fact, she was quite the lovable lout, poor in most regards apart from at heart and mind, she wouldn’t encourage anyone to enter a department store in Kensington High, let alone herself, unless she stole something. 

But he did not have to know.

You were already flustered by the entire situation; it was the closest you had ever been to Mayne.  You pulled at the skirt vehemently, cursing its troublesome but flattering appearance, legs enticing more horrific squeaks from the vinyl underneath.  In a desperate attempt to change the subject, you stumbled over your words; “in honesty, Sir, I think by car you’d have to make quite a detour to my accommodation…,” You huffed, trying to gain composure but failed. 

“Don’t be dense now, it’s no trouble.”

Only. Only if that’s alright, Sir–, if truly–, if this is of any inconvenience to you, please let me walk in the rain. I swear I do not need to be spoiled.”

“Oh…, but your ‘friend’ spoils you….” He began in a strange tone, of an airy jest that almost seemed mocking, but with a deeper sense of a dark intent behind it.

“Or do they?” He asked.

There was a thick silence where you felt the air had reached peak suffocation, the distant campus lights outside became blurry orbs through the windscreen and the humid heat stuck to your face in an unrelenting reflection of your vulnerable position.

Stuck. 

Even more silence suppressed the air as he raked his eyes over you, like some trophy propped up in the seat. The heat felt electric as the tension built before he ashed his cigarette out suddenly and said slowly, 

“Bought and wore that skirt for me, didn’t you?” 

Your blood ran cold, “Mr Mayne, I don’t know what that means.” You followed quickly, like some instant, primal defence mechanism kicking in.

“You purchased that skirt… with your own pounds, shillings, and pennies. Like the very smart girl that you are…” He moved closer, hand reaching up to brush a strand of damp hair that had fallen across your face; bringing his mouth nearer to your ear as his voice dropped into a low drawl, a whisper;

“For. Me.”

He cocked his head, still grinning, “Or was it for Eoin?” He grinned as he spoke, an amusement beyond smug to his voice.  You shivered at hearing the name of the younger man for the first time; you had somehow avoided it as if to keep your lingering glances a formality and not put a name to the man whose voice plagued your head at night.  Of course, the name was lovely, just as you knew he was beyond the initial reserved professional exterior he’d draped over himself.  Now, as the brogue dripped like the sin from the mouth of ‘Paddy’, you knew just what kind of mess you’d gotten yourself in.

“…all in order to show to us just truly, aye, truly, how difficult our job has become this term.” He hummed.

He pulled back into his original observational perch, “Didn’t you? It’s alright, sweet pea, you can say it.”

The game was easily up. No point muttering and scampering around the truth, something had been building for too long, that fog slowly rolling in.

“I did.” You admitted.

He quickly spoke,

“Well, it’d be a shame then, if we ruined it with a little rain by making you walk home, wouldn’t it?” He spoke matter-of-frankly, no tease or sense of stirring to his voice as he twisted the key, the car's cylinders quickly firing into a smooth rhythm.  “...and hence why.” He continued. The vehicle was so distant from your family’s Austin Seven from before the war, or the bone-shaking rattle of the Bedford from the fields, “let’s get you home.” 

You watched discreetly as his hand gripped the gear-knob, tendons twitching as he appeared to grip it hard as a slight breath of release exited his mouth. He shut his eyes briefly, and you both knew that he just might be holding himself back with all facets of his being.

The drive was short in reality, yet it felt like a thousand years of stealing glances and watching his hand shift between the gears, one, two, three, four, back to three, four, overdrive. 

Small talk hardly broke the weight of the conversation just gone, as you stumbled through a few questions about the car, which Paddy was thoroughly amused by; he didn’t answer exactly when you asked how he acquired it.  

“Ah, but what you’re saying is wrong; You should be asking who I got it from, not how I got it.”

“Is that saying you stole it?”

“Well, that’s a conclusion you’ve jumped to quite quickly,” he scoffed.

“Just here, Sir.” You waved to the side of the road below your flats.  The car pulled in smoothly, soft clicking of the indicator and tapping on the roof of the last of the drizzle the only sound for a few seconds.

“You know you don’t have to say Sir,” Paddy said.

“What you are going to tell me though, is if you want me to pull your skirt up or not.”

You swallowed hard, hands scraping across the fabric pulled taught by the seating position of the car.

“Yes. Paddy.” You gave in,

“Please.” 

“Aye.” he agreed, nodding as he got straight to work. 

You breathed a heavy sigh of relief as his hands worked the fabric up, your belt pinching your stomach slightly as your white panties almost glowed in the darkness of the car with their ruffled motifs decorated with flowers.

He didn’t take his time, hands moving to glide over your body and spread your legs in the seat. 

His large hand covered you entirely through your undergarments as you gasped out, pushing up into him, lifting slightly off the seat.

“I’ll give you this and nothing more for now,” he hissed out, “to give my head some peace from you driving me wild just by looking at me.”  You looked at him with wide eyes, glancing down at his hand on you and your skirt shucked up to your belt.

You’d never been touched like this before, so direct and to-the-point, no teasing, just straight to his fingers moving against you.

“Because that’s what you deserve due to your torment, not that it’s your fault,” he laughed lightly before beginning some typical musings of a poet he claimed to be; “A deal with the devil has been struck to give me the most helpful tutor and yet the most tempting one. So, I will restrain myself.”

“Restrain yourself?” you retorted.

“From taking you nice and slow on some soft, warm bed, and watching your eyes roll back and thighs fall wide open.”

You had been trying to focus on what you’d hoped was a dropping temperature inside the car, all new seals, no doubt and the warm interior meant it wasn’t something you could do.  Not like back at home with all the rattles and drafts of the well-used Austin. 

“Ohh, she likes that, doesn't she?” he chuckled, tapping your body through your underwear lightly.  

“But would it put you off if I were to say, instead, should I pull you out of this car and bend you over that fence there in the rain...” he said filthily.

“And the darkness will cover us…” he drawled, your thighs tensed, “and you’ll get what you want.” he smiled as he said it, looking from where your eyes were struggling to stay open as the desire to squeeze them shut at the red embarrassment peaked at your cheeks.

“What I want?” you asked back, in that protective faux innocence which in reality dug yourself even deeper into this mess, voice quivering.

 “You know what you want,” he quickly followed.

“Keep your eyes fixed ahead, out of the windscreen there,” he said, thumb pressed harder as he started moving in rough circles, making you grip the seat in a panicked pleasure.  It was not long until you were staring back at him in defiance, teeth roughly biting onto your lip to keep quiet, even in the privacy of the dark car.

“Look there.” He said, “Focus on the outside, not on me.”  You gave in, looking in the darkness of the street, the streetlamps glowing faintly, the low iron fences holding onto sodden ground, just.

“Is this that you had hoped for?” he asked, his spare hand came to lightly brush your cheek.

You just hummed in slight agreement, "surprised you caved so easily, can see ya’ too sweet for it…”

His hand reached slowly across the top of the back of the seat, snaking up the back of your head to pull at the roots, tilting your head back and holding it there with a dull pull aching in your skull and a slight rush of light-headedness, “...or do you prefer harsher treatment?” You were transfixed, stuck between his hand between your thighs, preventing you from moving, and the hand snaked through your hair.

“Since you can’t keep yourself focused on what I tell you,” he said.

You nodded in agreement as well as you could against his grip as you stared at the ceiling, watching Paddy in class dishing out torments or borderline physical attacks on the other perfectly grown-up and adult who could behave students, regardless of their conformity to his expectations, had brought to the surface some shameful thoughts and feelings which had made your face turn red time over.

“That’s good,” he said in a deliciously syrupy tone.

“I’d be sure to let your supervisor know that wee’ fact,” he hummed quietly into your ear, thinking aloud.  

His movements became more hurried as you pushed against him, a welling, unknown feeling of pressure in your lower stomach building as you gasped up into the thick, hazy air of the car.

Paddy stalled his hand in a quick movement, pushing your head to look out the passenger window as you watched a drunken man stumble by in abject horror and embarrassment.

“Wouldn’t know a thing about the pretty sights in this here car, wouldn’t he now?” Paddy mused, “too drunk to know, too drunk to care even,” he hissed.

“Oh, but I care, I care greatly, and have done,” he continued his movements as you gripped the nearest thing, which happened to be the gear knob, where Paddy’s own hand had tensed in restraint. You now followed, resisting the pressure and pleasure building within your body.

He used two fingers now, one working above the lower positioned one, creating a sense you had never felt, the feeling of someone other than yourself touching yourself below.

“I’m. Not. Going. To. Get. You. There.” Paddy grunted out as he pushed you deep into the seat.

Your vision had almost gone white, between the multiple sensations of his fingers and the pull of your scalp, yet with that, he stalled his movements. 

“Huh, what? Why stop!?” you gasped out.

“Oh, but it’s late...” Paddy said in that syrupy teasing tone again, “And you do have that lesson plan to work on.”

He dragged his fingers from against your clothed body, reaching over you to pull the door handle, popping the door slightly.

“And I won’t let you out,” he said frankly as he grinned harshly, “Because, if you understand what door we’ve both opened, you’d know it’s one I risk my job greatly for.”

“So, I’m not worth risking a job over,” you said, chest heaving as you had almost reached whatever unknown peak of pleasure you were hurtling towards.  

“Ohh, maybe,” he grinned, “But” he pulled back to reach for the keys he had placed on the dashboard,

“We wouldn’t want your favourite professor to get in trouble, would we?”

You were completely shellshocked, hazy with giddy disbelief, yet still eager to push his buttons

“Don’t be so sure you’re my favourite,” you said, smoothing your skirt as you looked down into the car, annoyed that he didn’t give you what you wanted, your wandering thoughts in class having led you to be misguided, thinking he’d cave quickly and give you what you wanted.

He chuckled as if guessing your thoughts, turning the key to the car, it spun into life in an instant, no coughing or spluttering like you were used to.  

“Well, we’ll just have to see about that, shall we?” he said, pushing the car smoothly into gear.

“Goodnight.” he said curtly

“Goodnight, Paddy.”

He nodded, a light and rare smile on his face.

With that, you were left on the side of the road, awestruck and in some dream-state of what in God’s name had just happened.

No lesson planning would be done that night.

A New Year University College London,  ‘the Quad’ 5th January, 1956

Eoin wanted to be looking at you; he did. But his gaze was stuck to the hungry way Paddy’s eyes followed you, tongue running over his bottom lip as you bent down to adjust the crease in your stockings. He looked at you like he was familiar with the curves of your body, knowing just where to look and just when to look away. 

“Is there a reason that yer here so early?” Paddy asked you as you straightened your body, the rising sun settling behind your head. As if you were an angel yourself. Eoin didn’t think he’d need much convincing of that fact.

“I wanted to turn in my paper early, Professor Mayne.” You told him in a sugary voice, looking at him through your eyelashes. Paddy’s body physically opened, hands coming to rest beside his legs on the bench he shared with Eoin.

“I assigned that paper yesterday. Two thousand words.” Paddy’s head cocked at you, a small smirk growing that Eoin knew Paddy thought he would notice. 

“And I finished that essay.” Your hands reached into your bag, pulling out the paper, neat and white. Eoin’s eyes roamed over streaks of ink from the typewriter on your fingertips. 

“Ye’ happen to finish Professor McGonigal’s essay yet?” Paddy asked, nudging Eoin with his bony elbow. Eoin’s eyes finally left Paddy to look at you, if only to see what you’d say to that question. “How long ago did ye’ assign that one, Eoin?”

“Four days ago, I’d say,” Eoin said slowly, watching your feet shift where you stood in front of the two men, with all of their attention on you. “Due in two. Don’t remember getting one from our esteemed student here, though.” He spoke with a distinct mockery in his voice.

“Apologies, Professor McGonigal.” Your body turned toward him, fingers fiddling with the strap of your bag. “It’ll be done soon.”

“Guess that means I’m her favourite.” Paddy hummed in the direction of Eoin, to which he received a light-hearted eye roll in return. He looked over to you, sending a wink that made your ears tinge as pink as the early morning sky above you. “You'd better get to your first class, Miss. 7:30, aye?”

It was hard for Eoin’s jaw not to drop at the sight of you reaching into the pocket of your dress, flipping open a pack of crumpled cigarettes. Same brand that Paddy smoked, pulling with it a lighter, the dark green casing that was etched into Eoin’s memory after seeing it every day for five years. The flame of the lighter glowed against your face, casting orange shadows over the structure of it. 

You took a few puffs, looking across the field to not meet the eyes of either of the men before you. But when you were done, you turned back to look at Paddy and passed the cigarette to him. The soft touch of a cinnamon brown lipstick graced the paper, but Paddy’s lips wrapped around it with no hesitation.

“See you both in class.” You hummed, turning on your heels. Paddy watched you leave with his tongue between his teeth, and Eoin knew.

“... Alright, how long?”

Paddy looked at Eoin, brow furrowing in mock confusion.

“I don’t know what ye’ mean, Mr McGonigal. Was just talkin’ to a student, wasn’t I?”

“By Jesus Paddy…,” He had that distinct tone of warning to his voice that Paddy had grown accustomed to.

“How long have you two been fuckin’?”

Paddy flicked glowing ash to the ground and pushed Eoin’s arm with his free hand. 

“Keep yer voice down, won’t ye’?”

[taiscedulcinea]

soooo when’s that professor fic coming up?👀👀

Soon tehehe 🤭