okay so the overwhelming consensus on my last post was “yes ! please do this ! tommy/alfie can slay my life !” so please have a cuddly grumpy alfie bear as a thank you
A/N:I’m not back, but on account of me being angry at SK in advance, the possibility of war hanging over my smol Polish head, and wanting to let it all out… Here’s a thing. And SK better not make that last meeting between Alfie and Tommy an opium fever dream, I swear to fuck, or I will go up there and shove my keyboard right into his writer’s block.
Summary:Tommy did go to Margate that one time, right before the final countdown with Moseley. But what we didn’t get to witness was the second time he paid Alfie a visit.
Every single time Tommy Shelby even thought of stepping one foot in Margate, Margate awaited him with cold weather and strong winds. For a popular summer destination, it sure was vindictive. He also wouldn’t necessarily put it past Alfie to have orchestrated the winds to be just so entirely on purpose. Come to think of it, he was now in a perfect condition to don an eyepatch and become a pirate. The way Tommy saw it, Alfie should honestly be thanking him for the option.
“Who goes there?” Alfie grumbled as soon as Tommy entered the living room.
Alfie’s maid had let him in, with a scoff and a suspicious look, mind you. It wasn’t late, exactly, but he supposed it was late enough to raise suspicion. Then again… This was Alfie’s house. The only staff Tommy imagined him hiring would be the sceptical kind that refused to bend to anyone’s will, including their employer’s.
“So? Who the fuck’s there?!”
“Tommy—” the click of a gun hammer interrupted him, “—Shelby.”
Alfie huffed and in the dim light of the room Tommy could swear he almost saw him smile.
“Right, the fuck yer doin’, Tommy, botherin’ regular, God-fearin’ folk on the eve of yer grand performance?”
The corner of Tommy’s mouth twitched, dangerously close to a smile, too.
“There was that other matter,” Tommy sighed and sat down in the chair he had sat mere hours ago.
“The other matter?”
“Yes.”
“Right, what—”
“Put the gun down, Alfie.”
“In my own fuckin’ house he came to order me around, right… Nah, mate, no more bloody smoke comin’ from you tonight, right, I’m sick an’ tired…”
“I changed my mind.”
“Oh, did ya now?”
“Let’s have that tea.”
Alfie put the gun down and rose from his chair so fast that for a second Tommy wouldn’t be surprised if he was going to hit him.
“Tea,” Alfie grumbled and went to the kitchen, still muttering under his breath. “Tea!” he shouted. “Right! We got cherry, we got Earl Grey, we got Assam!”
This time Tommy smiled, but nobody could see him now besides Alfie’s numerous books and random trinkets.
After a short while, Alfie came back with two cups and all of a sudden gone was the limp and the hunched back. He walked as swiftly as Tommy had remembered him to and that unexpected reveal was far greater than any declaration of trust in a wedding vow.
“Right, mate,” Alfie stood there and watched as Tommy took the first sip from the offered cup. “Fuck me, right, ‘cause you takin’ that… Fuck me, ya really want to die, Tommy?”
Tommy looked up at him and audibly swallowed. With how dark the room was, illuminated only by the fireplace and a dimly lit lamp in the corner, he could almost interpret Alfie’s expression as concern.
Almost.
“‘Cause ya either want to get poisoned or suddenly trust me, mate, yeah, an’ out of the two I don’t know which one is worse.”
Alfie was still standing there, holding his own cup that looked almost comical in his large hands, watching Tommy take another sip.
“Which one is it?” Tommy asked, looking straight ahead into the fireplace and frowning as if he wasn’t entirely expecting it to be there.
Alfie stayed silent and only looked where Tommy was still staring to check if there wasn’t really something to get concerned about. Tommy’s ghosts he could handle, an assassin might be harder at this point.
“I think ya trust me.”
“Whichtea, Alfie.”
Alfie stayed silent, then he smiled and finally sat down.
“Which tea, fuckin’ hell, yeah, the black one.”
“So you lied.”
“Yeah, so I did, don’t be such a fuckin’ prince, sweetie.”
This time it was Tommy who smiled, but he still looked at that corner of the room and Alfie was honestly tired of it now.
“So. Ya wanna die, Tommy? That it? Ya came back for goodbyes?”
Tommy shook his head and took out his cigarettes. This time Alfie gave his silent permission.
“Which is it?” Alfie drilled him. “Right, ‘cause I honestly can’t say, mate, an’ I’d never in my life call ya stupid. So…”
Tommy finally looked at him and Alfie wished that he hadn’t. There was nothing behind those eyes now.
“Yeah, alright…” Alfie grumbled and put down his cup. It was still full.
Tommy finished his tea, he finished his cigarette and then out of all the things Alfie expected him to do, he took off his jacket.
Now, Alfie wasn’t opposed to a little striptease, never in his life had he remembered a moment when another willing person getting naked in front of him wouldn’t be a welcome surprise.
But this… Nothing could have prepared him for a Tommy Shelby taking his clothes off, slowly and methodically like he would at the doctor’s.
“Mate, the fuck…”
Tommy’s shirt was unbuttoned and he only had his trousers on. But the way he looked at Alfie now was so impatient and so demanding that Alfie didn’t know what to do with himself.
“If you wanted me dead—”
“Naaaah, don’t be so dramatic now, Tommy.”
“Let me finish.”
The way Tommy stressed that last word only made Alfie excited. Tommy must have realised, he must have, but either way he didn’t show it. Alfie smirked and leaned back in his seat. If Tommy pulled out a gun on him now, he honestly wouldn’t even blink. Only then Tommy took off his trousers, too, and there obviously wasn’t any place left where he could have any weapons stored…
Well, perhaps Alfie could think of exactly one.
“Right, Tommy, so ya left your poor wife’s side in bed an’ ya came here to have tea, then ya saw this ugly fuckin’ mug right here an’ thought—”
“You talk too much.”
Tommy’s last piece of clothing was off and for the first time in a long time Alfie was at a loss for words. His eyes darted down from Tommy’s face, then back up, but the damage was already done. Tommy was smiling and there was actually something,some spark there in those big eyes of blue that was previously missing.
“Yeah, I ain’t talkin’ now…” Alfie lifted an eyebrow and Tommy moved closer. “So how ya wanna do this?”
“You’re asking me?” Tommy scoffed and if Alfie didn’t know any better, he’d say he was offended.
“Your bright idea, innit?”
Tommy rolled his eyes, which Alfie personally loved seeing him do, and then did the one thing that Alfie always imagined him doing in all his numerous fantasies. Tommy straddled his lap and kissed him. It was a hard, wet kiss, followed by hair tugging and tongue and a lot of wanting.
Alfie pulled Tommy closer and unbuttoned his own trousers, still not entirely sure there wouldn’t be a gun pressed to his head after the kiss was over.
“I’ll be dead tomorrow,” Tommy murmured into Alfie’s lips and Alfie’s hand hovered for a second before grabbing the other man by the hips and throwing him on the sofa, then covering entirely with his full weight.
Alfie looked at him then, expecting a rebuttal or retaliation, but Tommy accepted Alfie’s hand on his throat and looked him in the eye like he dared him to finally snap and put him out of his opium-hazed misery.
“Like fuck you are,” Alfie finally decided and kissed Tommy again, then moved his mouth lower and bit his neck just because he could.
It took a bit of fumbling with the clothes and then Tommy suddenly decided not to work with him at all. He just let it all happen as if it was happening to him and not with his express consent. That, Alfie decided, was no way to fulfil the one fantasy he still dared to have and so he held Tommy close and licked his palm and edged Tommy’s cock so nice and so slow and so mercilessly that by the time Alfie was close enough to burst, Tommy finally recovered the rest of his bruised, exhausted mind and keened, and:
“Alfie, fuck!”
By the time Alfie was in him and Tommy buckled his hips to give him better access, Alfie realised Tommy’s eyes were on him the entire time, watching Alfie’s every expression, memorising the moment like taking a photograph with your eyes.
Alfie decided to give him something to remember and fucked him long and hard, coaxing the throaty moans and not letting Tommy touch himself even for a second. Alfie hit that bundle of nerves inside him just right, time and again, until finally Tommy’s head went quiet, he let out a stifled scream and squeezed around Alfie like a vice, causing him to spill inside with an equally surprised groan.
They stayed like that for a good while, neither willing to get up and face the music. Finally, Tommy patted Alfie’s arm in a silent ask to let him out of the bear hug.
Alfie got up with a groan and sat down, but unlike Tommy he refused to put his pants back on. He watched Tommy pick up his clothes around the room. The angry expression Tommy had was almost reassuring. That’s exactly how Alfie had always imagined this to end, anyway. Though, admittedly, watching Tommy get dressed was almost as fun as having watched him stripped.
“You can stay the night, you know.”
“I really can’t,” Tommy huffed and then he finished tying his shoes and went out the door without any other explanation.
Alfie finally got up when he heard the car engine roaring. It felt unreal and Alfie was almost disappointed that it most likely wouldn’t happen again—but then he noticed a shiny object wedged between the archmchair’s seat and armrest.
It was Tommy Shelby’s shiny lighter. Right next to the armchair, he had left his cigarettes. Alfie scoffed and went back upstairs in a better mood than ever.
