NSFW Alfie/Lucia content! Your wish is my command :D

Two days with Alfie Solomons and Lucia was already staring down the telephone. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy his company. In fact, she had never been happier than when she sat beside him in absolute silence and listened as he'd read his favorite passages from the collection of books in the house. She enjoyed it too much. A comfortable tension settled in the space between the two of them and it was exciting. It reminded her of a long-lost feeling.

At the breakfast table, Lucia stared down the telephone because she knew she should call her children but she didn't want to. If she did, reality would surely come crashing down all around her and all the things she enjoyed with Alfie wouldn't feel like her own anymore. It's what kept her from rising to her feet, walking to the end table, and calling her husband's house in Birmingham.

Alfie pulled her out of her unblinking state. "Why did you want a separation?" he asked.

"Why do you assume it was me?"

Alfie stared absently over his breakfast. "Because Tommy needs you too much." He dipped bread into the shakshuka set before him. With a full mouth, he continued, not minding the sauce clinging to his mustache, "and you came here wanting something." He knowingly tapped one side of his nose.

Lucia hadn't touched the food set before her. Wasn't hungry - hadn't been for the entire visit. "I don't want anything from you, Alfie."

He nodded enthusiastically over his plate but the glimmer in his eyes conveyed his skepticism. "Eat."

"I'm not — "

From his lap, the broad-chested baker pulled out a gun and loudly splayed it across the table. "Eat," he commanded gruffly.

It made Lucia hide a disbelieving scoff behind her knuckles and Alfie considered his job done. If his mouth hadn't been so full, he might have tried smiling back. It never failed to surprise him how easily cheer played on her lips, her eyes, her lovely face. Despite years of dealing with Tommy, Alfie was glad happiness was no stranger to her. He watched her pick at the food directly with her fingers, guiding a bite or two to her mouth.

"If you shoot gulls on Wednesdays, what day do you walk the beach?"

"You want to walk the beach? We'll walk the beach. Yeah." He wiped his fingers clean with a cloth and stood, sending his chair groaning behind him. He gestured to her face. "Wear a hat. Don't want that pretty face getting burnt up."

"You think I have a pretty face?"

Alfie scowled. "Forget the hat. Get burnt. We'll look a matching pair."

Only after Lucia promised that she'd eat her lunch properly did Alfie siddle into his coat, his hat, and take up his cane. He never knew when his old war injury would flare up again.

"You better eat," he muttered. "Won't have you falling over dead, inconveniencing me even more."

"I thought you said you were going to be kind to me." Lucia knotted a headscarf under her chin as she stepped out into the fresh air behind him.

Alfie held out his free arm for her to take. It was mostly for his benefit. Too much time in the sun and he got light-headed, but that wouldn't stop him from taking her out. "Don't want you dead and suddenly I'm unkind?"

From the corner of his good eye, he spotted another effortless smile tease her pink lips. They stopped at the edge of the sand, soaking in the idyllic scene set before them. Waves crept up the pale beach, crashing down in rhythmic roars. Lucia released his arm to kick off her shoes and peel her down stockings. It was left in a neat lump where they stepped off.

To Alfie, Lucia almost looked like a young woman as she stared down at the warm sand crowded over the tops of her feet. She didn't look like a mother, a wife, or an empty woman that had gunned down her mother and older brother. She looked free, awakened. While she ambled along the waves, salt water gathering around her ankles then her calves then her knees, Alfie looked like a great lumbering shadow watching from the dunes. Waist deep now, Lucia braced herself against the beating waves. She grinned up to Alfie.

When she finally met him past the swash zone, Lucia was soaked to the bone. Black hair pressed in long tendrils along her throat and Alfie wanted to reach out to swipe it back behind her ear. He shrugged out of his coat, draping it over her shoulders, and offered up his arm again. He was starting to feel the fatigue of the beating sun. Lucia rose to her toes to press a kiss to his face, discolored and mangled by both the skin cancer and the scar. She took his arm and they continued on.

"Why did you want to separate?"

"You're awfully interested in my marital problems, Alf."

"Well," he began, "I've got you here." He squinted his bluish green eyes against the sun. "Figured I'd try again to seduce you. For old time's sake."

Lucia walked on, staring down as she kicked up sand with every step. She had begun to wonder when he'd speak it into existence. Over the long drive from Birmingham to Margate, she had entertained the possibility that he might coax her into bed with him. That was before she found out about the cancer.

"Like i said, when you sit second to a dead woman and your husband keeps you for business connections, it's time to consider the validity of the marriage." She hoped that would be the end of his questions. The bitterness was floating to the surface again and Lucia had quite enjoyed being happy.

Alfie walked silently beside her. The quiet only spurred her on against her will.

"There's no such thing as divorce with the Peaky Blinders. And with two children between us, a separation is the best I can get. I… I told Tommy what I wanted, got in the car, and was halfway here before I even thought twice about it." Lucia stopped to look out over the horizon, dropping her arms away from him, as though she needed to keep her limbs close so she wouldn't cave into herself. Looking back, she studied the cancerous lesions that crawled up his face around the slashed scar. "I really don't want anything from you, Alfie. But if you tried to seduce me, I wouldn't stop you."

And that's how Alfie pulled Lucia into his room, guided her to the bed, and climbed over her. He didn't look crazed and wild eyed like a predator hanging over a carcass. Ever since the cancer took over, the surplus of aggression had left. Alfie looked down at her and Lucia looked back up at him expectantly. He was gentle with his touch and kind with his piercing looks. And he was the second man in the world who had put her into a bed, who had caressed the curve of her cheek, who had leaned down to flutter his lips against hers.

It felt like a betrayal. Lucia wanted to sit up, jump into her car, and run back to the familiar arms she knew. The familiar arms that called her partner and not wife. When she searched in Alfie's eyes for any falsities, there was none. When he saw her, it didn't seem like he was looking into the face of a dead lover. Recently that would be all Lucia saw when Tommy was on top of her. He looked down at her with so much love, Lucia was sure he was fucking Grace in his head. She wouldn't have minded if it were Greta though. Lucia would have understood. She had loved Greta too.

Alfie wanted to slip a large hand under her head to bring her closer but the strength in his arms was running out. His elbows shook. "I'm not as strong as I used to be," he said apologetically.

"That's fine."

Lucia eased him into the sheets and sat up instead. Gently she climbed on top of him, using one hand to undo the buttons going down his vest then his shirt. Admiring the barrel chested man laying between her legs, Lucia ran her hands up and down his stomach, his shoulders, his arms. His muscles jumped under her skin until she finally guided his hands to her bare thighs. The trousers were pulled off next.

"Christ," she breathed at the sight of his endowment. Lucia braced herself as she climbed back over him.

Alfie should have taken a moment to appreciate the way her eyes widened on first look, but he was more concerned with whether or not she wanted to proceed. The slow process of walking back to the house and trailing behind her up the stairs had excited him enough. For years he had considered this moment and it had finally arrived.

He should have said something crass, but Alfie wanted her to be okay. "We don't have to."

She looked up, determination written all over her face. "I want to."

When she sat back on top of him, one hand holding her dress up and the other palming his cock, Alfie's breath caught in his throat and left him entirely.

"Is this alright?" she asked.

He stifled a moan and nodded, arms folded under his head to prop him up against the soft feather pillows. Above him, Lucia watched his eyes flutter shut and the way air filled his lungs and exited between his open mouth. She didn't know what she was doing, but felt grateful it worked. He was a new body. There was so much to explore and get to know.

She and Tommy had had years of practice. Sex wasn't their problem. If you share a marriage bed with a person for close to ten years with an additional twenty of on and off sinning, you learn a thing or two about what their body responds to. Lucia didn't know a thing about Alfie or his body. Replacing her hand with her mouth, she watched up eagerly for his reactions. Swiping her tongue here and these, sucking softly, and massaging his balls, Lucia experimented with it all. He seemed to enjoy it. Eyes rolling back into his head, Alfie dragged a pillow over his face.

"None of that," Lucia yanked it away. "Won't have you smothering yourself, falling over dead, inconveniencing me."

And Alfie cracked a smile.

His old tin of prophylactics were still in the bedside drawer, abandoned but never thrown out, and Alfie muttered a quick prayer that it would work just the same as he rolled it down his length. When she finally poised his hard cock over her and eased down, it took a few tries to fill up in all the ways she needed. She lifted her body up and lowered it until he was bottomed out inside her.

"Are you sure?" he finally managed to ask.

Lucia raised a brow. "It's too late now."

Alfie furrowed his eyes and turned his face to hide the grotesque side.

"Hey," Lucia reached out gently and shook her head, "none of that either."

Alfie chewed at his inner lip and turned to face her fully, scar and all.

"You alright?"

He nodded.

Lucia guided his hands back to her thighs. "Hold on, yeah?"

He nodded again and she rolled her hips down into him, breathing out at how it felt inside her. When she was sure he gave her all he had, Lucia lifted up and rolled again, this time rocking back and forth. Slow at first to not hurt either of them, Lucia's breaths became more and more shallow and Alfie was watching from under his thick brows, holding on with his large hands, and Lucia never felt more seen.

If a kiss could piece his soul back together, Alfie wondered what this might do to him. He considered cardiac arrest but decided death, the dusty silence of it, would be worth having this woman on top of him.

"Slow down," he grunted. "Not going to last long with you doing that."

"Then don't last long," she cooed before leaning over to scrape her teeth across the sensitive part of his neck.

"It's been a while."

Lucia slowed her movements and looked at him. "Alfie. Let me do this for you."

If Alfie Solomons suspected she meant out of pity or remorse, he didn't have much time to consider it. A moment of clear thinking emptied his mind just before he finished. He always fancied himself a thinker, a philosopher, and an intellect. There wasn't much time where Alfie found his brain completely free, but this was one of those times. His fingers dug into her skin. He stifled the groans of pleasure that pressed against his tightly pursed lips and bounced off the ridges of his mouth until his teeth chattered.

When he finally opened his eyes, Lucia was watching him carefully, ready to do or say anything he would have asked of her.

"Come here," he commanded in a raspy voice, still working his way down from the orbit he had just hovered over.

Lucia obeyed. With her back pressed flush against him and his arm curling across her shoulder, locking her in place, Lucia braced herself. Alfie parted her legs again, using his knees to keep it wide apart. He raised two fingers to her lips and Lucia slicked it down with her spit, sucking and licking at whatever he offered. There was a pinch and a filling sensation that wasn't as nice as his cock, but he had her moaning into the pillows anyway, teasing and curling his fingers inside her.

"You're wet enough as it is," he growled.

She whimpered against him, trying to force her legs closed as the sensation grew, but Alfie was determined. Just as she had been determined. His hand was covered in her wetness, his knee keeping her legs opened wide, and his other arm holding her in place against his body. His forearms burned.

"Close. So close."

Nothing could have prepared him for the sound that came out of her lips. When she orgasmed, squirming and convulsing, bucking to get his fingers deeper in her, connecting her lips to his so hard it nearly hurt, his name was the only discernible thing he heard between the sweetness of her moans. She sounded desperate, grateful, angry all at once and he heard it in the way she said his name. Alfie.

Their tired bodies found support against each other, panting and easing their vision back to reality, Alfie pulled the covers over her body. He kissed her shoulder blades and swore to himself that he'd never forget the way she felt in his arms.

Alfie never thought about sleeping with another man's wife. The idea never tempted him. Now, as he looked up at the ceiling, he could feel Lucia shift under the sheets beside him and he wondered if he should feel more guilt over it.

"Do you want me to leave?" she asked, ready to hoist herself out of his bed.

"Stay."

The pillow was cool against her cheek. From this angle, Lucia had a good view of the scarred side of his face and his pale eye. She tried to remember how he looked before. The first time she met him was with her father when they visited Sabini in London. It was back when Alfie was just starting up his bakery. He was a thin man back then, with brighter eyes and a younger clean-shaved face. It was such a distant memory Lucia hardly recognized the resemblance in the man she lay besides now. This man was broad-chested, with wrists as thick as bars of steel, eyes darkened with age, and the creased wisdom of a man who fought for all he had in life.

"I had a wife." The words parted his lips like a whisper. "Ruth. Don't think of her much. Haven't for a long time."

Lucia adjusted the blanket that had slipped off her bare shoulders. "But you're thinking of her now."

Wordlessly, Alfie nodded.

"What happened to her?"

"Turned to dust."

Under the blankets, Lucia's hand found his. She traced the butt of his palm with her thumb, drawing circles into the warmth. "Were you thinking of her when you were inside me?"

She wouldn't have minded if he had said yes. It was different with Alfie. They found comfort in one another. She wasn't bound to him for life. Lucia would have been happy for him. She would have been happy that he could feel closer to his wife using her body.

"No," Alfie answered.

And, to Lucia, it was the most truthful thing she'd heard in a long time.

Instead of spending the early hours of the morning watching the sun rise, Alfie was hard at work in the kitchen kneading dough and letting it prove just long enough. Lucia was still asleep in his bed, and he hoped to wake her up with the sweet smell of fresh baked bread. It had been years since he had put a dough together and, after decades of running a bakery, it all came back naturally to him.

When Lucia came down she was wearing his shirt and Alfie took one long, parched look at her. If he was a younger healthier man, he'd have lifted her up on the counter and given her another good seeing to but, as it were, he drank her up with his eyes before turning to tap a knuckle against the crust. It cut beautifully, sending bits of crumbs dancing around the blade.

He tore a piece off. "For you," he said.

Before she ate it though, Lucia brought it under her nose first then admired the body. "It's good," she decided after a moment chewing on it.

Gruff as ever, Alfie looked at the load and grunted without satisfaction. "Could have used more steam."

"Do you, uh, always do this?" She knocked on the crust just like he had earlier. "Bed women and bake them bread? If so, I'd be more inclined to…"

Her gaze turned from him, almost shy. Or was it shame? Alfie kept staring hoping the answer would reveal itself on her face. He folded his arms over his chest and waited for the end of the sentence. The sheepish smile on her face told him how the sentence might have ended.

Alfie turned back to the sourdough and gave it another absentminded tap. "What day is it?"

"Friday."

"Ah," he lifted his head as though he'd remembered something of great importance. "Woods gathered on Friday for a fire. Clears my sinuses."

Not quite believing him, but amused just the same, Lucia hung on every word with exaggerated concentration. "So Wednesdays are for shooting gulls, Thursdays are for walking the beach, and Fridays are for fires?"

"See, well, you're not as daft as you look."

"And what are Saturdays for?"

"For rest. It's Shabbat after all."

If Lucia recalled correctly, Alfie had only invited her to stay as long as the Sabbath. She wondered if that was his subtle hint inviting her towards the door and out of his home. Shifting where she stood, completely bare underneath his discarded shirt, Lucia watched him expectantly, bracing herself for the turning away. Alfie must have caught on to her train of thought because he quickly added,

"I usually send out for challah. Tired hands are unreliable. Since you're here, I'll teach you instead." He speared a finger into her face, making her lean back. "You'll do as I say."

Lucia shot him a wicked grin. "I'll have no trouble there."

Hours later, Alfie sat at the table calling out instructions to the kitchen. "Don't touch the yeast!"

"You've told me that four times now!" Irritable, Lucia called back, "I'm not touching it!"

"Do exact measurements! Exactly what's written!"

Two seconds later, Lucia was storming through the little house with a fury, heels pounding even against the carpet, and glared as she came to the balcony. "I'll throttle you! Either you stop shouting and sit in the kitchen or I'll bring everything out here for your gulls to pick at!"

"You don't look pretty when you're angry, mate."

"You don't look so pretty yourself and you're half dead!"

Alfie's lips became thin. "That's not very Christian of you."

Lucia poised two viciously curled hands up towards his throat and pantomimed a furious wringing motion. Between bared teeth, she said, "come into the kitchen with me or I'll come out here."

"Fine!" he scoffed to himself, heaving his tired body up using his cane and stepping into the hot kitchen behind her. "Oh! Come on, mate! What a mess. Move." He prodded her away from the large mixing bowl and resumed the position instead. "Dry ingredients first. Use your fingertips to mix. Not like that! Gently. You look like you're making slop for pigs."

Lucia stepped back abruptly, clearly annoyed, and let him do it himself if he was so pressed. The dry ingredients were mixed, gently, and Alfie quickly eyed the eggs, yolk, and oils before pulling in a bit of flour.

"Get the yeast," he instructed, rolling his sleeves even further up his forearms.

"So I'm allowed to touch it now?" she sardonically asked.

Alfie was about to snap a serious reply but realized just in time that she was taking the piss out of him. "Just get it," he muttered, "great big git."

Using the dissolved yeast, Alfie whisked it into the wet ingredients. "You put this into the dry. The little bit of flour mixed in helps keep the clumps away."

As he spoke, on and on and on, mentioning tips and talking about forming a slurry dough and a shaggy mix… Lucia blinked and wondered if it was a shaggy dough and a flurry mix. Whatever it was she was drinking him up with her eyes. His animated movements were a stark contrast to the gruff man he seemed to be, and it filled her up with something that felt like brimming pride.

Something filthy took housing in the pit of her stomach when he kneaded the dough for ten minutes without rest. It was irresistible seeing a man who could perfectly balance two levels of himself. Alfie was both terrifying and completely endearing. He showed her how the dough should be smooth, soft, and tacky before it's transferred into a well-oiled bowl for proving.

A glimmer of excitement brightened his eyes. "I'll teach you the six strand. Don't look so worried. It's easy."

It wasn't.

"Over two, under one, over two," Lucia repeated under her breath and fumbled with the ropes of dough.

Alfie had quickly explained the concept and returned to the balcony to inhale the sea air. He had the utmost confidence that she could do it - at least confidence enough that she'd manage to braid it down somehow. But Lucia silently, shamefully, slinked to the balcony and stared at him until he looked up.

"I can't do it," she pouted.

With a long-suffering sigh, Alfie followed her back to the kitchen. "Alright," he stood over the dough and got to work with precise hands, narrating as he went along for her benefit, "Carry the right rope over the two ropes beside it, yeah? Slip it under the middle rope, then move it over the last two ropes. It should be parallel to the other ropes. Keep going until it's done. Got it? Ah forget it."

He plaited the dough together, pinched the bottom together, and gently laid it onto a tray. The loaf was blanketed with a cloth and left to sit out. Exhausted, Lucia curled into the chair on the balcony.

"You'd make a terrible baker."

She laughed. "Lucky for me, I was born into a more unsavory line of work."

They sat together in silence watching the water lap at the shore and the sun pull down on the sky. An iron bowl sat between with red embers laid under small bits of wood. It cast a calming smell in the air and Lucia already knew she would love the way it clung to her clothes.

"How did a man like you become a baker, Alf?"

Alfie sat stretched out on his chair. "Ruth," he said with fondness edging along his voice. "I saw her through the shop window and kept coming back. Her father figured it was easier to take me on as an apprentice and look after me. Just an orphan boy, I was, but that man taught me everything I know." The words drifted off into the space between them along with the smoke as Alfie sat lost in his memories. "Blue eyes, black hair, a smile that could make the devil red. She could have had anyone," his voice betrayed him again and he had to clear his throat multiple times before finishing sadly, "but she wanted me."

Lucia moved closer and Alfie couldn't help but reach out and twirl a strand of her hair between his fingers.

"She died and so did our child. There was blood everywhere. More than usual, the midwife said."

The thought terrified Lucia. She had had a hard enough time coaxing Sabine out of her belly for thirty-six hours. Anything could have gone wrong to either of them and she didn't know if Tommy would have been able to handle that loss half as well as Alfie had. Offering out her hand, Alfie gladly took it, gently stroking her knuckles though he was the one in pain.

"You remind me of her." A smile parted his scarred face.

Lucia squeezed his fingers.

"I'll see her again."

He looked to Lucia and she nodded in agreement, trying not to cry for his sake. "Yes, you will." She gave his hand another squeeze. "But not yet. Not yet."

After brushing egg yolk over the loaf and sticking it in the oven, all carefully following Alfie's instructions, Lucia sat out in the darkening night with him again. Before she sat, he gestured her forward and curled his finger under her chin to pull her in for a kiss. Alfie had resolved to kiss her as many times as he could before she left. It healed his bones and filled his soul. The crackling wood filled their nostrils like sweet perfume and so did the smell of the bread wafting up from the kitchen. Her hot breath fanned across his tired face.

"Alfie."

His response was a grunt. He couldn't let her know he was hanging on a precipice, clinging to every word she wanted to say, and didn't want to fall until she gave him permission.

"I don't think I can go back."

Alfie moved his focus over her head, to the sea.

"Ask me," she pleaded. "Ask me not to go and I won't."

"Tommy will come looking. He'll find you."

Lucia kissed him again to drown out what he had said about Tommy. Like the day she arrived, she parted his mouth open with her lips and pulled him in. She hoped he would open his chest and let her step into him entirely. They would sit on this balcony looking out into the ocean each night, the sunrise in the morning, and keep it as an ever-present god watching over them.

"Alfie, please. It could work."

Alfie Solomons cupped her chin in a large hand. His bones were screaming 'stay'. "Luce." He had heard Tommy call her that many times. Luce. It was a sweet taste on his tongue.

The housekeeper stepped onto the balcony and quickly receded back into the room when she saw what she'd walked into. Alfie called the woman back as Lucia stepped away.

"A call, sir," the housekeeper handed him a slip of paper, "from Birmingham."

Dread set in Lucia's stomach again, eyeing the folded paper in Alfie's hand. She didn't even see the housekeeper take one last wary look at the both of them. "What does it say?" When he didn't open it, she took it from his hands and read it herself.

Call from Thomas Shelby. Birmingham. Asks if his wife is here. Requests a call back.

"What will you tell him?" she asked.

Alfie considered it a moment. "You're assuming I have any need to." The paper tore apart between his fingers and burnt to blackened ash in the little fire beside him.

"But, the note, it says — "

Alfie leaned in, so close his beard nearly brushed against her face. "What note?"

AN: I decided to make this a three-parter! Hope you don't mind :)