Forbidden Afflictions // Alfie Solomons Peaky Blinders

(24) Oh, Anna

Since Edna was home for the day and Alfie's cousins weren't planning on staying the night, rooms weren't prepared. He and Freya both bickered upstairs about the extra beds as they made up the rooms, but the time alone was spent zealously. 

Feathering the pillows and stretching out the comforters together wasn't something either thought would be pleasant. There was a reason Alfie had a housekeeper and Freya never cared to clean any of the spare rooms in the house in Birmingham. Doing the dressing seemed far from pleasurable; however, with the booze and good company beneath them, they felt they could be hiding a body and be equally as grand. 

"Why don't we visit them?" Freya wondered, reaching the third and final spare room.

"I 'ave," he admitted, throwing the flat sheet into the air, over the mattress, and into Freya's hands. 

"When?"

"On my birthday the year before last," he informed her. "And Anna and Amado came down in September... That's actually the first time I told any of them about you."

The first bed was made and they began pulling on pillowcases as the mood settled in on them. "Even though I wanted nothing to do with you?" She quirked an eyebrow and smirked, eying Alfie mischievously as she kept him so domestically. 

She admired the way he revealed his chest and how the folds of his shirts peaked out from the edges of his dress shirt. She was enraptured by the humanness of him. In any professional situation, she would only see him in suits and vests. She wouldn't see the human beneath the layers. Beyond the tunics, sleeveless shirts, button-ups, and jackets he liked to cover his skin in, beyond the tattoos, hair, and the scars, never would she have been able to see the person she was seeing now. 

"Well, I figured it was this, right: either you 'ang in prison, yeah," he explained, pointing to one of his fingers as he counted. "And I won't 'ave to worry about gettin' on your bad side ever again. Or I aggravate every fiber of your bein' so badly coz of Tommy threatening my arse back at that dump in Yardley, that you'd never wanna see my fat ugly mug anyway. So, seein' as I had very little left to lose, Love, I figured tellin' Anna wouldn't 'ave meant much to you either way."

"Shut the fuck up," Freya giggled, throwing one of the pillows into his chest for him to dress. "You're not fat or ugly. You're such a liar."

In disagreement, he narrowed his eyes and dropped the pillow onto the bed. He put his hands onto the sides of his stomach and patted them with a verbal pft. 

Freya rolled her eyes and withheld her smile from his view. "Don't mellow in your amusement for too long," she reminded him as she moved for the doorway. "I need something from you before you succumb to your rum."

Alfie hummed suggestively. "Yes ma'am," he sang, pulling the cover over the pillow and throwing it into place at the head of the bed. 

"Not that kind of something," she shot back with a smile, turning to catch a smile strung out on his face before disappearing back downstairs. 

In her lonesome journey, she had to admit to the exhaustion of the day. Her body didn't quite feel nice despite the alcohol she was filled with and the location of her documents still bothered her. Alfie was right in saying socialization was a bit much. She put on a front for Alfie's family because she knew it was important to meet them and be present. 

The things she felt would only be temporary and at the end of the day, whatever happened to her things already happened. Whoever stole them would do whatever they wanted with them. She couldn't stop it regardless of speaking with Alfie. Everything she was juggling in her mind was temporary—in the moment—Alfie's cousins wouldn't be there forever and she wouldn't be able to meet them for the first time ever again.