#sasrh

The desert wind whipped sand against the tents of the SAS camp at Kabrit, and you were cursing under your breath as you wrestled with a particularly stubborn flap of canvas that had come loose from the medical station.

Your fingers were raw, your uniform was sticking to places uniforms shouldn't stick, and you were fairly certain you'd swallowed enough sand to build a small pyramid.

"Here. Let me."

You turned, expecting to see one of the other medical orderlies. Instead, Paddy Mayne was standing there, already reaching past you to grab the tent peg you'd been hammering at with the heel of your boot.

He didn't wait for permission—he never did—just shouldered you gently aside and drove the peg into the hard ground with three sharp strikes, securing the canvas as if it were made of tissue paper.

"Thanks," you said, brushing sand from your face. "You didn't have to—"

"Was walking past," he muttered, not meeting your eyes. He was already turning away, broad shoulders rolling beneath his shirt, dark hair falling into his eyes. "Saw you struggling."

You watched him go, frowning slightly.

That was the third time this week he'd materialized out of nowhere to help with something—carrying water tins, fixing the generator, scaring off a scorpion that had wandered too close to your cot.

Always abrupt. Always efficient. Always gone before you could properly thank him.

"You're staring again, love."

You jumped. Bill Fraser was leaning against the ammunition crate beside your tent, arms crossed, wearing that infuriatingly knowing smile he always seemed to have when he looked at you.

"I wasn't staring," you said, perhaps too quickly. "I was just… thinking."

"Thinking about Paddy's shoulders, were you?"

"Bill."

He laughed, a warm sound that made the desert feel slightly less miserable. He pushed off the crate and fell into step beside you as you headed toward the mess tent. "I'm only saying. The man's making a fool of himself, and you're walking around completely oblivious to it."

"Making a fool of himself how?" You ducked under a clothesline strung with sand-caked uniforms. "Paddy's just… Paddy. He's helpful. To everyone."

Bill stopped walking. When you turned back, he was looking at you with an expression caught somewhere between amusement and genuine disbelief. "You really don't see it, do you?"

"See what?"

"The way he looks at you. The way he hovers. The way he nearly took Stirling's head off yesterday for suggesting you might want to join the officers for drinks."

"He did what?"

"Reluctantly put his fist down," Bill confirmed, falling back into step. "Said—and I quote—'She's got better things to do than drink with a lot of pissed officers who can't keep their hands to themselves.'"

You felt heat rise to your cheeks, though you couldn't quite name why. "That sounds like Paddy just being… protective. Brotherly."

Bill laughed so hard he startled a nearby goat. "Brotherly? Christ, you really are blind." He slung an arm around your shoulders, companionable and warm. "Come on. I'll buy you a tea. And I'll try not to be too offended when you spend the whole time watching the door to see if he comes in."

"I don't—"

"You do. It's alright. I'm used to being the consolation prize."

He said it lightly, but there was something underneath—something that made you study his face more carefully.

Bill was steady. Reliable.

The kind of man who remembered how you took your tea and noticed when you were running low on morphine before you did. He was your friend, perhaps your closest friend in this madhouse of a regiment, and sometimes when the desert nights grew long and the shelling grew distant, you wondered if he wanted to be something more.

But then Paddy would walk past your tent at midnight, checking the perimeter, and you'd hear him stop outside your canvas wall.

Just standing there. Breathing.

Sometimes he'd clear his throat and say, "You awake?" and you'd invite him in, and he'd sit on the edge of your cot with his head in his hands, not talking, just needing somewhere to be that wasn't the officers' mess or the firing range.

He never touched you. Not once. Not even accidentally.

"You're thinking about him again," Bill said, nudging you with his elbow as you entered the mess tent.

"I'm thinking about my job," you lied. "We've got seventeen men with dysentery and Reggie's convinced he can feel scorpions crawling under his skin."

"Uh-huh."

You punched him in the arm. He winced dramatically, then went to fetch the tea.

The thing about working in a camp full of elite soldiers was that they had no sense of personal space and even less sense of privacy. By the third week, you were certain every man in the regiment knew your menstrual cycle, your preference for tinned peaches over tinned pears, and the fact that you'd once stitched up Paddy Mayne's shoulder while he sat there like a stone statue, refusing anaesthetic.

"He's in love with you, you know," Stirling had said one evening, watching Paddy shadowbox with himself near the vehicles. "Has been for months."

"Don't be ridiculous," you'd replied, not looking up from the inventory list. "Paddy Mayne doesn't do love. He does whisky and explosives and self-destruction."

"He does love," Stirling had said, oddly serious. "He just doesn't know what to do with it. And he's terrified."

You'd dismissed it. Stirling was dramatic. They all were.

But now, watching Paddy across the fire pit as he laughed at something someone said, you found yourself noticing things. The way his eyes kept drifting to you, then snapping away when you looked up. The way he always seemed to be positioned between you and any potential danger—real or imagined. The way he'd learned your schedule, appearing with coffee exactly when you finished your morning rounds, claiming he'd "made too much" even though he took his black and you took yours with condensed milk.

"He's going to give himself whiplash," Bill murmured, appearing at your elbow with a cigarette he didn't light. "The way he keeps looking over here."

"Stop it," you said, but there was no heat in it.

"I'm not the one who needs to stop, love." Bill's voice was gentle. "I'm also not the one who nearly broke Jock's nose for asking you to dance at the last oasis."

"He didn't—"

"He did. I had to pull him off." Bill paused. "I don't mind, you know. Being the one you come to when you need to talk. Being the one who makes you laugh. But I'm not stupid enough to think I'm the one you look for when you walk into a room."

Your throat felt tight. "Bill…"

"Don't." He smiled, and it was genuine, if sad. "Don't say anything kind right now. It makes it harder." He nodded toward where Paddy was now arguing with someone about the best way to disable a German tank. "Go talk to him. He's been waiting all day for you to finish your shift."

"I can't just—"

"Yes," Bill said firmly, "you can. Because if I have to watch him pine for one more week, I'm going to shoot him just to put him out of his misery. And then where will the war effort be?"

You laughed despite yourself.

Bill squeezed your shoulder and walked away, leaving you standing there with your heart hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird.

Paddy looked up then, as if he'd felt your gaze.

The firelight caught his eyes, and for a moment—just a moment—you saw something raw and desperate there before he shuttered it away, replacing it with his usual careless smirk.

"Nurse," he called out, loud enough for the whole camp to hear. "Come save me from these idiots. They're trying to convince me that Italian wine is drinkable."

You walked toward him, aware of every eye in the camp tracking your movement. Someone whistled. Someone else coughed loudly. Paddy's jaw tightened, but he didn't look away.

"Sit," he said when you reached him, gesturing to the empty crate beside him. It was the only empty seat in the circle, and you realized suddenly that he'd been saving it.

For an hour, probably. Maybe longer.

You sat. Your knee brushed his. He didn't move away.

"Bill Fraser's a good man," Paddy said abruptly, staring into the fire.

You blinked. "What?"

"Good man. Doesn't drink himself into stupors or blow things up for a living." He was talking quickly, the words tumbling out like he was afraid if he stopped, he'd never start again. "You could do worse. Should do worse, probably. Safer."

"Paddy—"

"Just saying." He finally looked at you, and the force of it—those dark eyes, that intensity—made you forget how to breathe. "If that's what you want. If that's who you want. He's… he's right there. And I'm…"

"What?"

"Not good at this," he said quietly. "At wanting things I can't have. At wanting things I don't deserve."

The camp had gone quiet around you. You were aware of Stirling making frantic shushing gestures at the others, of someone slowly lowering their tea mug so it wouldn't clink.

"Paddy," you said carefully, "are you trying to give me relationship advice? About Bill?"

"I'm trying to tell you—" He stopped. His hands were clenched into fists on his knees. "Christ. I'm trying to tell you that I can't sleep. That I stand outside your tent at night because it's the only place I feel halfway human. That when you touched my shoulder when you stitched me up, I thought I might actually die from it. And I know I'm not—I know I drink too much and I blow things up and I'm not steady like him, I'm not safe, I'm not—"

You reached out and put your hand over his fist.

He went completely still.

"You're an idiot," you said softly.

"Yeah," he breathed.

"The whole camp knows?"

"Everyone with eyes."

"And you thought I didn't?"

"I thought…" He swallowed hard. "I thought if you knew, you'd stop looking at me like I was worth something. And I couldn't bear that. So I stayed quiet. And I watched you with Bill. And I wanted to put my fist through something, preferably myself, every time he made you laugh."

"He's my friend," you said. "You're…"

Paddy waited, motionless, like a man waiting for a firing squad.

"You're the reason I look at the door when I walk into the mess," you admitted. "You're the reason I can't sleep. You're the one I want to sit with at midnight when the shelling starts."

The fire crackled. Somewhere in the distance, a generator coughed to life.

"Say that again," Paddy whispered.

"No."

He looked stricken.

"Because," you continued, standing up and holding out your hand, "I'm going to show you instead. Come on."

He stared at your hand like it might bite him. Then, slowly, he unfolded himself from the crate—tall and broad and trembling slightly—and took it.

The camp erupted. Whistles. Catcalls. Someone shouted "Finally!" and someone else started a slow clap that was quickly silenced by Stirling's boot.

"Where are we going?" Paddy asked, his fingers threading through yours with a kind of desperate reverence, like he was afraid you'd disappear.

"Somewhere private," you said. "Where you can tell me again about how you stand outside my tent. Slowly. With more detail."

His laugh was shaky, disbelieving, delighted. "You're going to destroy me, aren't you?"

"Someone has to," you said. "Might as well be me."

Behind you, you heard Bill Fraser raise his tea mug in a silent toast, and you smiled as Paddy Mayne— demolitions madman, the most dangerous man in the desert—let you lead him into the darkness, holding your hand like it was the only thing keeping him anchored to the earth.