The swirl of the wind rattled through the pines. Evergreen blades bending gently to the call of the winter breeze that exhaled softly over the land. Whisps of a soft snow, a mere dusting of crystalized flakes, sprinkling over Arrow House like they could seep past the haunted soil and heal the secrets buried underneath.
December teetered on the very breath of January, the new year approaching on determined feet as the clock drained with the passing of time. It loitered in the last lingering streaks of a pale peony that bled across the horizon.
A timid shade nearly absorbed into the indigo that came to blanket the sky. Like the fading trace of a dying cigarette, the pink brushed across the atmosphere like a plume of smoke. A hazy embrace that stroked the dusk with a gentle hand, a softening touch. One that whispered for those below not to fear the night, but to embrace the slow beginning of tomorrow.
Soft flannel curled around your shoulders, the comforting scent of smoke and faded perfume and the faintest hint of home woven within the threads of the blanket. A fabric that had become worn with age, thinning in places and carrying a fragility you knew one day would finally break through. But it lulled your senses in a breath of warmth that might just have stilled the goosebumps crawling over your flesh, but melted away the cold from the surface of your beating heart.
Licked by the surrounding cold, your fingers curled themselves into the woven fabric like it might just be enough to still the gentle shake that tore through them. Bones rattled with a soft jostle as the wind climbed the notches of your spine, slow and leisurely as a bluster ceased to shiver through the wilderness, but on nimble tiptoes, it ascended your bones just the same.
The bench beneath your seated frame, was nothing more than planks of a sanded wood. Splinters smoothed out and forgotten beneath the trace of paint lightly glossing the edges, a pale stained oak that appeared more like teak, warmth seeping in from the deeper tones that bled through the wood. It wasn't cushioned like most of the furniture nestled within Arrow House and it didn't provide you with an additional layer of heat to keep you from the winter elements.
But there was something about that little wooden bench, the one that had been scrapped together and built by hands that sustained splinters and torn callouses, the one that smelled of raw wood and smoke. The one that had journeyed from Small Heath to be here, just as you had. A little piece of home sitting out amongst an acreage of land that threatened to swallow you whole. It wasn't much, but it felt like home all the same.
"That blanket is fighting a losing battle."
You hadn't heard him approaching through the grass that had long ago turned brown, a slight crunch to the blades that had surrendered to winter. But Thomas Shelby still managed to make not a sound as he strode through the land, as if the trace of his presence was nothing more than a wading spirit in the frigid air.
Your lips twitch softly as his voice finds you, the carrying of his words sounding like they'd been glazed in the surrounding winter chill. But below the frosty surface, his tone held a warmth and a tenderness that only seemed to appear when it came to you. Like a bridge of ice that concealed the waters still running freely below, yet to be touched by the elements.
His silhouette invaded your peripheral, a deep shadow contrasting the last evident streaks of light lingering within the sky behind him. Like an outline, drawn of ink, bleeding richly against a backdrop that strived to keep the darkness from overtaking the sky. But with each passing minute, the light that had guided dusk to the horizon line, slowly began to fade. Indigo creeping closer, as it spread through the frozen atmosphere.
"You'll bloody freeze out 'ere."
Tommy exhales softly as he sits down on the bench beside you, his breath freezing in the space before his eyes. Like a plume of fresh smoke wafting upwards from his lips. But his actions are so effortless, even as his words become frosted in the December chill, that something about it fills your hearth with the simple sentiment. That he was always going to endure the cold for you.
