1942, Somewhere in Egypt — You flicked your pen between your fingers, the clipboard in your lap had long been abandoned, notes half-scribbled. Outside the tent, the sun had begun to pull its weight behind the dunes, casting long, amber-stained shadows through the flaps, but inside.. The air remained unmoved. Hot—thick enough to taste

You hadn’t gotten up in over twenty minutes. Not out of idleness, but something closer to patience. You’d learned some time back that when someone came in already acting like they weren’t hurt, the worst thing you could do was meet them with urgency. The man on the cot was a textbook case.

Paddy Mayne.

You've treated him before, and every time it was the same — a full-body performance of indifference. Showing up bruised and bleeding, and still act like you were inconveniencing him by acknowledging it. You didn't expect him tonight, even after the reports. Others had stumbled in bleeding, burnt, or half-conscious, but always came.

He didn’t. Not until he was dragged in by two of his own, one of whom shot you a sheepish look before slipping back out.

That alone told you more than any chart ever could.

"Your friends could've hurt themselves bringing you here; you shouldn't take their efforts for granted," you said as you straightened up.

That was enough to make his head turn, eyes narrowed, bloodshot around the edges. His fingers flexed tighter into the sheet, the white of his knuckles standing out stark against skin gone a shade too pale.

He gave a crooked sort of smile, dry and tired. “I think they liked it, truth be told,” he murmured. “Pair of them always fancied themselves heroes.” You didn’t laugh. But the corner of your mouth might’ve twitched. Maybe.

He watched you all the same, like he was looking for it. Waiting for it.

That’s what this was, wasn’t it? All of it. The biting remarks, the stiffness, the refusal to be helped — it wasn’t that he didn’t trust you. It was that he did.

Men like him didn’t like being seen vulnerable, not by anyone. But especially not by someone they gave a damn about.