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❝until the bitter end❞ ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
"I WAS BEGINNING TO THINK YOU'D LEFT ME, THOMAS."
Eleanor's heels clicked on the tile of the new floor at the Garrison, and she absentmindedly adjusted her long sleeves around her wrists as she approached her solemn-looking partner.
He hums, a distant smile twitching at his lips. "Never,"
Brows twitching slightly, she lowers herself down into his lap when he opens his arm for her to do so. He slips his hand up under her suit jacket and splays his hand over her waist, calloused fingertips digging into the fabric of her vest. "Have you got a light?"
He looks up at her somewhat confusedly. "What for?"
Slowly, she grabs the letter out of the inside pocket on her suit, an amused smirk on her face at the sight of his sudden ire. Grace's familiar, looping handwriting had become an entirely unwanted and irritating fixture in his life over the past few years, and he'd grown to practically dread getting Eleanor's mail.
"Another?" His gravelly voice rumbled in displeasure and Eleanor resisted the urge to taunt his jealousy. "That's the second this month."
"I know," She drags her thumb across the writing, sighing at the thought of the deceiving blonde that had nearly ruined everything for her. "Do you think her husband knows who I am?"
Tommy huffed, pulling his matchbox from his pocket. "I can't imagine he'd be her husband if he did."
"I suppose you're right," Eleanor held the corner of the unopened letter out for Tommy to light, and he pulled the crystal ashtray closer for her to drop it into as it burned into nothing.
For a moment they were both just silent, their gazes locked on the ashes of the letter.
Eleanor had read the letters when they first came, but the first time she let Tommy read one it led to an argument neither of them wanted to have again, so she quickly stopped. She didn't care much to begin with as they were empty letters, a last attempt to repair the bridges that Grace had burned during her stint in Small Heath and an obvious ploy to extend their relationship past its expiration date.
Grace's words were written with the feelings Eleanor had never reciprocated, and never would, and she knew that even if she responded to the woman with a letter telling her just that, it wouldn't deter her, so all of her letters since had ended up like this; burnt to nothing.
Their reflective silence was broken by the sound of the door opening, and the couple's gazes simultaneously snapped up as the new presence stepped into the room. Eleanor's eyes widened when she saw Polly stumble in, a sway to her step that said she was drunk again, though she couldn't blame the woman.
