InsaneJournal

Who: Padraig and English George
What: House Arrest Blues
When: November, 1920
Where: George's house, London
Notes: Reposted, Started on G-Docs thanks to IJ being down, finished in comments!



Padraig had been George's captive, or in protective custody as George called it, now for nearly four days. And for nearly four days, he had refused to eat a thing. Every time George had brought him something to eat, Padraig had refused to eat it and it had been collected untouched. He had hoped to prey on his brother's sympathy in order to try to get George to release him, but it didn't seem to be working.

Padraig's resolve was waning. Practically the first thing he had done here was vomit everything in his stomach, ensuring it had been empty when he started his strike. He was starving now and George wasn't budging. Padraig wondered if he cared at all.

When the door opened, Padraig didn't even move much, he just turned his face away from whomever had entered.

George came in, balancing a bowl of soup and a plate of bread in both hands. He was determined to get Padraig to start eating today, and that meant serving food his brother would actually be able to keep down after four days of starving himself.

Stubborn ass, George thought with a frustrated huff of breath. He sat the food down on the nightstand near the head of the bed.

"Padraig. You're going to eat."

Padraig turned over to stare at his brother, trying his best not to look at the food. It smelled delicious. "Are you going to let me go?" Padraig asked, trying to sound stubborn and firm and failing just a little bit. There was an edge of desperation in his voice he really had tried to keep out of there.

George sighed and sat on the bed next to Padraig. He was getting more and more worried the longer Padraig refused to eat. He himself hadn’t eaten much since at least yesterday, too busy worrying to bother with making something.

“You know I’m not,” George said, not unkindly. “Now eat. Please.”

Padraig groaned and he shrunk away from George, covering his face with his hands. “George,” he groaned. “I told you I would eat when you let me go. Stop trying to force me into this!” It was said as if George trying to get him to eat something was the worst thing Padraig could imagine in the world.

“This isn’t helping anything!” George said, frustrated. “It’s not helping Ireland, and it’s not helping you!”

He couldn’t force feed Padraig. It would be too traumatic for both of them. Punching Padraig had already pretty much used up any 'violence against his brothers' reserves.

“Please?” he repeated, resting a hand on Padraig’s shoulder.

Padraig didn’t pull away as one might have expected him to. He didn’t have much energy and he didn’t want to waste it. “George?” he asked, his voice low and slightly dark. “Do you want me to eat to make yourself feel better? I told you what you had to do, and you’re refusing to do it. Therefore, I refuse too.” Or he did at the moment. He didn’t actually think he could continue to refuse for long, but he didn’t have to tell George that.

“I want you to eat so you won’t starve,” George said, squeezing his brother’s shoulder gently. It belied how irritated he felt.

He stared at the bowl of soup, still steaming lightly. A thought occurred to him, one that he dismissed at first but then kept coming back to. It wasn’t mature, not in the slightest. It was manipulative, too. But then, Padraig was being pretty damned manipulative all on his own.

“If you don’t eat,” George said firmly, “then I’m not going to either.”

At that, Padraig lifted his head to stare at his brother. That seemed like a fair enough use of his energy. “What?! George-” Padraig groaned and he pulled himself up in the bed, ignoring his swimming head. His brother was damn sneaky. Padraig could pretend not to care and say something like ‘well then you’re going to get pretty hungry unless you let me out of here,’ but the fact of the matter was that he did care. And George knew it.

“Damn you,” Padraig growled at him.

George shrugged. “That seems to be the common sentiment these days, yes. It’s been about a day since I’ve eaten already. I want toast, or perhaps scones. So eat your soup.”

His expression softened. “I’m not going to watch you hurt yourself, Padraig.”

Padraig glowered at him. “I’m not hurting myself, George, you are hurting me! I don’t want to stay here in your disgusting country!” The moment he had said it, he knew it was the hunger talking. He didn’t think England was disgusting, considering he was the only one of the two of them who was originally from England. He did, however, have issues with the English government. That still didn’t make his outburst fair.

George bristled at the insult to his country and bit down an insult about Ireland. Petty bickering wasn’t going to make Padraig eat, and that was what was important right now. Not George’s pride or the stability of the Empire.

“You aren’t leaving,” George said, tilting his chin up. “Not until I let you. So eat, or we’ll both starve to death.”

Padraig shook his head, but he was inches from caving since he couldn’t stand to see George suffer. “George just...explain to me why you won’t let me leave. How long do you expect me to stay here? My country needs me, dammit.”

“Exactly,” George said. “Exactly. Your country needs you to lead this damned rebellion, and I need you not to be leading it. And since you obligingly got yourself arrested, that means I get to keep you here. You’re staying until the rebellion dies down. Until it’s safe to let you go.”

“Until it’s safe for me,” Padraig asked, anger obvious in his voice, “or until it’s safe for your damned government?” He was gritting his teeth, trying not to yell more, since he was too weak to start yet another full-blown argument.

“Both,” George said, knowing it would anger Padraig. But it was the truth, and lying wouldn’t do his brother any good anyway. The sooner Padraig accepted this, the sooner they could start trying to fix things.

It did anger Padraig, even though he had been expecting that. He glared at George for nearly an entire minute before he grabbed one of the pieces of bread from the tray on the nightstand and he shoved it into George’s mouth. Not hard, and not so it would choke him. Most likely he would just be perplexed, but it made Padraig feel better. “Everything you say annoys me,” he hissed at George.

“Mmmph,” George said around the piece of bread in his mouth. He reached up and pulled it out, biting off a small chunk of it to chew. He offered Padraig a small smile.

“That’s a fairly common sentiment too. Now eat, please. The soup won’t taste good at all cold.”

Padraig wanted to continue to refuse and he wanted to keep fighting, but he couldn’t. It felt a little like giving in, but he supposed he couldn’t really consider it a failure to love his brother so much he didn’t want to see him hurting.

Padraig groaned and he reached out to take the soup from George. “I would have continued to refuse, you know,” Padraig grumped at him. “If you weren’t such a manipulative bastard.” He took a bite of the soup and didn’t even bother to contain a slight sigh of contentment. It was good soup, hearty and warm. He had enough willpower to keep himself from drinking the entire thing down, which was for the best. With something in his stomach, it reawakened his hunger, but to eat too quickly would just make him sick. Again.

“And you’re a stubborn ass,” George said, moving to lean against the headboard next to Padraig. Partly to make sure he didn’t eat too fast (George was uncomfortably familiar with the desperation that starving produced) and partly because he wanted to be close to his brother, to reassure himself that Padraig was going to be all right. “I honestly cannot believe that you refused to eat. You’re worse than a mule.”

Padraig snorted into his soup at that, and after a moment of hesitation, he leaned his head against George’s shoulder. “Probably,” Padraig said, taking another bite. “Here, dammit. Eat some bread. You know you make me so angry I could...bite you. Right?”

“Please don’t bite me,” George said, obligingly taking a bite out of bread. “You should see the infections bites from humans cause. It’s disgusting. Arms falling off left and right. I’m sorry I punched you.”

His last words came out in a rush.

Padraig turned to look at George and he swallowed the bite he had just taken. “I know,” he said with a nod. “Not that it makes me feel any better that you did it. I’m more upset you drugged me. I keep thinking...what would I do if the situation was reversed? I probably would have hit you. I might have locked you in a room in my house, if I actually had a house, which I do not. I suppose you probably didn’t know that. It’s not safe for me to have a house. Which isn’t the point. I never would have drugged you.”

“I needed time,” George said, looking to the side. He couldn’t look at Padraig. “To plan, and to figure out what I was going to tell my bosses. How I was going to keep you safe. It seemed easiest for you to be asleep while that was happening.”

He picked at his bread, and said, in a lower voice, “And yes, I know you don’t have a house. British intelligence has a file on you, you know. It’s not a good one, but I can’t sabotage it forever.”

Padraig had known a file on him existed. He knew it was quite thick and there was a twin of the file in Dublin Castle where the British Police operated from in Dublin. He didn't know George gad been sabotaging it. "You what?" he asked, honestly shocked. George, you what?!"

"They don't need to know about you," George said, still looking down at the bedspread. "Not you or Dewi or Andrew. It's better for everyone if they don't know who you really are, or where you came from. Safer."

"George," Padraig held his soup bowl with one hand and he used the other to tilt George's face up to look at him. "You did that for us? For me?"

"Of course," George said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Padraig, it doesn't matter who I'm working for, I'm not going to let them hurt any of you."

Padraig chewed on his lip for a second and then he said, "don't think I'm not grateful, George because...I didn't know you did that and I am grateful, but don't you think it's unfair to say you wouldn't let any one else hurt me, yet you're keeping me locked in one room, and chained up? Is it just you who is allowed to hurt me?"

George picked at the bread a little more, only realizing belatedly that he was spreading crumbs across the top of Padraig's bed. He brushed them over the edge of the bed with a sweep of his hand.

"I'm not--" he took a breath and started over. How would he feel if it was him in Padraig's place? Arguing that Padraig wasn't being hurt wouldn't do any good. "Whatever unpleasantness you experience here is just a blip on the whole scale of terrible things that can happen to people who rebel against the government. You're confined, yes, and I know a gilded cage is still a cage. But Padraig, I don't know that they wouldn't have really hurt you, hoping to hurt Ireland. There are some people in the government, the science and special projects divisions, who have been eyeing me, trying to figure out just how tied into England I am. It's one of the many, many reasons I haven't told anyone I've worked for in the last forty years that saints hear the prayers sent to them. You could well have been a lab rat for them. So this...it lets me accomplish what I want without you getting hurt. And it's selfish, but the truth."

"It is selfish," Padraig nodded. "You're a selfish ass. I would do the same thing, so we can be selfish asses together. George, if I have to stay here, can you at least take the chain off? Even if you don't feel like it now, in a few days when I've proven I'm not going to jump you? Because you know, technically if I was going to do that, having the chain would be of more use. I could use it to choke you." Padraig arched one eyebrow and he took another bite of soup.

Yes. Soup was good.

"That would be very painful," George agreed, leaning against Padraig and closing his eyes. He felt very tired all of the sudden. "I'll take it off tomorrow, all right?"

Padraig nodded, conceding that tomorrow was better than nothing. "Tomorrow's okay. And I wouldn't hurt you, George," though the truth was that he knew he had. The rebellion hurt. But he had been hurt too.

Padraig took the rest of the bread out of George's hands and he ate it quite quickly. "If I have to stay here, can I have a bed warmer for the bed? And some books? And did you mention crumpets?"

"I know," George said with a smile. "And you can have anything you want. I should have a bed warmer around here somewhere, and I know I have crumpets. Er, any requests for books?"

Most of the books lying around George's home were of the trashy science fiction variety, something which he was only slightly ashamed of.

"Anything that keeps me from staring at the walls." And then something occurred to Padraig, and the thought of it made his stomach freeze. "George, who else knows I'm here? No one knows I'm here, right?"

"No one," George said, noticing the way Padraig stiffened. "I told the Director General there was some kind of special magical thing I needed to do in the woods to kill you, so as far as the British government concerned, you're out of the picture for the moment."

"I am not worried about the British government, George, I'm worried about my men coming here to break me out. And don't get me wrong, I don't want to stay here, but I...I don't want you to get hurt either."

"I'll be all right," George said with a shrug. "None of them know that you're here either. They'll presumably be checking the prisons for you, not private residences."

Padraig nodded, feeling both relieved and regretful about that. "Alright, George. Then I'll deal with being here. As long as you keep me company. You said you haven't eaten in a while either, and a bit of bread doesn't count. Do you want to go get something and bring it back?"

George smiled. Padraig was eating, Padraig didn't hate him, and Padraig wasn't actively leading a rebellion against the government. Things were taking a turn for the better.

"I'll do that," he said, getting up and brushing some of the breacrumbs off of himself. "You eat the rest of your soup, and I'll be back with something a little more substantial."

He locked the door behind him as he left.