Forbidden Afflictions // Alfie Solomons Peaky Blinders

(18) I'll Follow You Into the Dark pt. 2

"What'd you and Sam get up to?" Alfie redirected, furrowing his brows as he joined Freya on the chairs.

"Did some research," Freya replied with disinterest. "Whatever he told you..." she trailed off with a smile, "it wasn't as bad as he made it seem."

Whenever she blinked, her eyes would roll slightly. He would've thought she was tired if he hadn't seen the empty bottle of rum or tasted it on her lips.

"I went outside today," she informed softly, smiling whole-heartedly, finding Alfie's eyes. There was an indescribable pain in the amount of pride she felt for having left the house. She conquered many gangs, did deals with Section D, brawled with a pedophilic priest, shot a man, fucked another in front of generational enemies, and yet burying her heels in the mud of Small Heath was incomparable.

She didn't know if she was going back to anything—anyone. She wasn't secured allies or security. She was alone. It was like dropping a bomb and coming back to the destruction after all the smoke had cleared, only she didn't do anything wrong, and the bomb had been cast by her closest friend—her own blood.

It was a risk going back. A risk she did on her own. She didn't owe that bravery to anyone but herself. She didn't argue for Ollie or Samuel not to come, but she wasn't going to argue when she went to see Polly by herself. Doing that, being there, it took guts, whether anyone understood that or not.

Alfie's belly felt funny when he looked into Freya's eyes now. She had enough liquor in her body to make her sloppy, and yet she seemed more herself now than she did that morning. Her eyes glowed under the firelight, and her smile was so innocent, so pure. She should have been too intoxicated to form coherent sentences. She should have been out of her mind after the day Samuel said they had. She shouldn't have been looking at him like that. She shouldn't have been looking at him with wide, glossy eyes that reflected star-like embers floating in her widening pupils. It was that self-love sort of look he doesn't remember ever seeing on her. How could one person capture such innocence?

"You did more than that, Love," Alfie chuckled lowly, being too enraptured to have let the hilarity reach his voice entirely. He interlocked his fingers together as he leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees to find her face more naturally.  "Sam said you put on quite a show at the public records office," Alfie informed her. "And you got 'im drunk and ran off."

"I gave him some ale to calm the fuck down..." she trailed off with a small smile.

Alfie knew whatever she said now would be the truth. He couldn't see it in her eyes but could hear and smell the truth regardless of how well she held her drink.

"He's always in shambles when you send him my way," she sighed with narrow eyes. "He's a keeper though," she commented. "He was more help than Ollie would 'uve ever been..."

Alfie winced slightly, studying her face and making note of all the freckles she had lost since her captivity. Her face warmed to the fire, making her cheeks rosy, and her eyes warmed to him, making them big and studious against his own.

"Where'd you run off to?" Alfie asked, resisting the urge to fall into her gaze and lay in a pile of ardor and carelessness for the rest of the night.

Freya snickered falsely. The humor found her eyes only because the idea became so funny in a state of drunkenness. In the big wide world, she was worried about a bit of snow. In a world full of war, death, sickness, and hunger, she was fretting from the safety of her lover's Victorian home. She had a modest dwelling in Birmingham and an even more humble number attached to her name if she ever returned to her second oldest  brother. The reasons for her bouts seemed silly in retrospect.