After fifteen minutes at a brisk pace that made his side and shoulder throb, they heard a car approaching. It was inevitable, and still potentially harmless, but they both tensed like Medusa had struck. Tommy put one finger on the trigger and another on his lips. Tessa nodded like she knew what she was agreeing to. The car was moving at them slowly down the cobbled street. Too slowly. Tommy didn't like it. Coming home late means you're in a hurry to get there. People driving slowly late at night meant they were looking for something. Or someone. Or two someones. The heavy night air slipped in and out of his lungs and his vision slipped in and out of focus but his hand didn't shake. Tessa moved closer to him, perhaps subconsciously. He put his hand back and moved her behind him, and for once she let him. The car was turning onto the street, the noise of its engine rumbling off the side of the buildings, mostly houses. Tommy swore and turned to Tessa, whose eyes were wide and wild.
"Do not fucking fight me right now," he said, and then he lifted her up and slammed her against him.
"Oof," Tessa said, inelegantly, as their chests knocked together. He was leaning up against something, holding her under the backs of her thighs with her legs wrapped around him so that she didn't fall off. She felt rather like a koala, and the only time she could remember being in this position there were quite a few less clothes-
"What are you doing," she hissed, and she wanted to think it was the danger that was making her head spin, but she was thinking a lot of inappropriate and inopportune and just generally unhelpful things, like that she wanted to lick the sweat from the slope of his neck and see if his lips were as soft as they looked and he was burying his face in her neck and his hand in her hair and it was so shocking that there were still things in the world that felt good after the night she had had that she didn't sigh but she would've had to try hard not to otherwise. What insane kind of fever dream am I having Tessa thought and then Tommy said in her ear "Make it convincing," in a voice low and deep and pressed his mouth to her neck as the car swung around the corner in perfect view of their spot in the shadows where the streetlamps didn't shine but the bright moon couldn't quite give up on. He smelled like smoke and she wanted him, despite the black car, despite the German gang, despite that he was an arrogant bastard, despite the razor blades. Or perhaps because of all of those things, a little bit. The moment his lips touched her neck, his mouth soft and warm, there was a clenching low in her belly and the sound she made was quite convincing because she was quite convinced. The car was slowing. She wondered if she could hear the cli-click of rifles being loaded, or if she was imagining things. Maybe she was imagining all of it. Tommy's fingers were tensed on the underside of her thighs, ten pressure points because his gamble meant he had to set the gun down on the box behind him, head ducked down so that the passengers couldn't identify him. His fingers tangled in her hair and he breathed out slowly, across her neck sending shivers down her spine, hips moved slowly, his head was tucked against her collarbone and she wanted to thread her fingers through his hair and pull but she didn't and bit her lip and braced her hand against the wall in front of her instead, rough under her palm. Her other hand was clutching her scalpel and she was holding it so tightly it sliced her two last fingers. The car's headlights swung past, illuminating them for one dazzling, blinding moment, then kept moving. Blissfully, shockingly, thankfully kept driving. Tommy held her there for a second, completely immobile, and their breathing was ragged like they really had been fucking. His body felt hard against her, like the brick wall, like a punch to the face, but his breath was warm and his mouth had felt so, so good. Too good. Tessa's head was spinning like a top. She thought she might want to scream. He then quite abruptly muttered, "Fucking hell," and let go of her all at once. She was about to chastise him for not giving a girl some warning when she saw him clutching his side, darkness seeping through his fingers, the knuckles of which were still split from whatever altercation had caused his other wounds. Right. The bullets. The entire reason for the hospital. Out of which they had just been chased by a German mafia. Which was, in all likelihood, still following them. She breathed out long and slow and tried to make it even. What a fucking night. God, she wanted a cigarette.
He wanted a cigarette. He could still smell her, like he was breathing her in, like she was all over his tongue like good whiskey, even though he was putting as much distance between them as logic allowed, lengthening his stride until she was falling behind, and he could hear the clicking of her heels behind him, a little uneven because of the ankle she was favoring. Fucking Germans. Fucking drunk brothers. Fucking crazy, bullshit, fucked-up situation. Once this night was over, he was putting Arthur's head through a wall. And probably buying her a car. He was worried about cars. He was worried about the car that had just passed them in particular, because he had a feeling it was doing rounds in proximity to the hospital, and if whoever was driving it didn't know to be on the lookout for a couple rather than one man, they would undoubtedly be altered to the change soon. If he saw it again, he would know. If he saw it again, he would shoot. No hesitation.
She wasn't talking. He was glad. The drugs had worn off and breathing felt like inhaling shrapnel. Every step he took his body complained of being a mistake. His lungs didn't want to inflate and when they did it made him cough which made the bleeding and the stabbing fucking pain worse. He wanted a cigarette and whiskey and enough opium to make him sleep for three days.
He breathed in deeply to try to get more air into his lungs and had to stop halfway through so that he didn't pass out from the pain. He changed his mind about talking.
"What's your horses' name?" He asked her.
She didn't look at him. Her pretty eyes trained on the ground. He had stopped on the pretense of letting her catch up, but was really pressing his knuckles to the hole in his side to try and stop some of the bleeding. The pain was everywhere. It could take over everything, if he let it. He could not allow that to happen. She passed him, sparing him the quickest glance. She wasn't shaking anymore, but she was nervously fiddling with the knife in her hands like she didn't know what it was doing there. Tommy had tucked his into the waistband of his black pants, because his storage options for weapons was sadly limited at the moment.
"Sunchaser. Chase." Her soft waves went all the way down her back, stopping just above the spot where her silk dress fanned out. She had more shape than the girls he was used to seeing at the Garrison. A stabbing wave of pain shocked through his shoulder and he gritted his teeth.
"Good name." His breathing was not quite regular, but she would not notice.
"Good horse," she said, and he focused on the way her hips swayed when she walked. Back and forth. Back and forth.
In the distance he heard tires on the road. She saw him listening, suddenly alert, and her head snapped around so that she could listen to.
"Hide," he told her, cocking the gun, and she hesitated. And then she did.
They were almost to the edge of the city, where the houses became larger and farther apart until the estates and the farmland took over. Tessa was crouched behind some bushes, which was not nearly a solid enough defensible position but there was little he could do about that now, and he went to wait behind the large stone pillars set on the edge of the bridge they had just crossed, finger on the trigger, breathing in, breathing out. The same black car was creeping closer, ever closer, and he just caught a glimpse of the driver and the passenger holding a long shiny dark barrel when he lifted the German's pistol, aimed and shot twice, once between the eyes of the passenger, and once right above the heart of the driver. The shots rang out, rang in his ears, kept ringing and ringing, like the steel beams of the bridge had collapsed, and the car, no longer piloted, swerved off the road and into the ditch directly next to the brushes Tessa was behind, hands and dress in the mud. He shouted at her, but she was already moving, throwing herself out of the vehicle's way. The black paint of the vehicle was shiny in the night like moonlight on water and as it careened it made an awful sound too, a groaning, hissing noise when it crumpled against the dirt. Tommy stalked over to it, steam spilling out from under the hood like cigarette smoke, before the two suspended wheels had even stopped turning, still barefoot, his steps silent but purposeful on the paved ground. He did not lower the gun. He did not give himself a moment to recover, to wait for the shots to stop ringing in his ears, for the wheels of the car to stop spinning. Those moments don't exist. The driver, whose chest was already covered in steadily pumping blood, was slumped over the wheel. Tommy reached in, grabbed his lapels and shook him, slapped him to get him to focus. He was wearing a German uniform. He was vaguely aware of Tessa in the background, in the dirt where she had landed, but hardly. This feeling was familiar. Not comfortable. Not safe. Never safe. But simple, straightforward. This was war, and he knew all about war. The man had a generic sort of face, but Tommy knew he would remember it. He remembered all of them.
"I'll give you a choice," he said quietly, like he was conducting a business deal. War is the greatest business of all. "You tell me who you're working for, I can kill you right now. You don't, or you try to fucking lie to me, and I start taking fingers, let you bleed out nice and slow." The man laughed. Blood bubbled out of his mouth.
"Fuck you." More blood came with his words.
"Yeah. You see, that," Tommy said, shaking his head, slipping the scalpel from his waistband and holding down the pointer finger of the man's right hand, "that was a poor choice." As he started to slice, he heard the telltale metallic slither of a gun, and looked up to see the barrel of the long dark rifle moving towards him in the man's other hand, moving to point between his eyes, and for a millisecond he could see right down it, into the darkness, into what he knew he deserved-,
"TOMMY," Tessa screeched from somewhere behind him, and something silver flew right past his shoulder, slicing the man's ear. The gun went off, went down, and shot a hole through the side of the cab, right next to Tommy's knee. Tommy lifted the pistol under the man's chin and fired for a third time, before the man could so much as put a hand up to his bleeding ear where Tessa's scalpel had shorn it off. The shot was so loud in the confines of the car that it deafened Tommy, and he hoped to fucking christ it wouldn't be permanent. Plenty of soldiers had lost hearing in one or both their ears from shooting off in too restricted of an area. Think about that. Think about what you have to do. Don't think about the gun. Don't think about the killing, or the dying, or the death. He closed his eyes, breathed once, twice, opened his eyes again, ducked out of the car and slammed the door shut behind him. He was drenched in blood. The German's, and his own. It was in his mouth. In his eyes. He spat it onto the side of the road.
"Go check the trunk and see if they have any petrol," he called to Tessa, who he couldn't see but could hear moving to the back of the car. So he could hear her footsteps. That was a good sign. He told himself it was good, anyway. He did not like the sound of spending the rest of his life with only the voices in his head to keep him company. He gritted his teeth and pulled the car door open again, dug around in the dead man's pockets until he found cigarettes and a light. He did not look at his face, but it was too late. It was always too late. Tessa appeared by his side, holding two cans. He could see the lights of the stars and the full moon reflecting off her eyes in the dark.
"Drench it," he told her, taking one of the cans from her and pulling the stopper loose. Everything smelled like petrol and everything tasted like copper. And it all felt like France.
She covered the car silently, obediently. Her dress was ruined, its light green silk in tatters. He lit a cig, puffed it, closed his eyes. He took another pull, let it wash over him. Clear his mind. Then he breathed it out, grey smoke that went swirling against the black night sky, and Tessa backed up without him telling her to. He flicked his lit smoke at the car, and up it went.
Against the flames he looked like a reaper. She wondered if maybe he was death, if maybe he was a demon, a god, if maybe he was the devil. The fire cast shadows that looked like they were meant to be there, like they were a part of him. Blood soaked his skin and was splashed across his face, all red, and the cut of his jaw and his cheeks and the dark stock of his hair was all black, and when he lifted and lit another cigarette the orange glow at the end lit up his eyes as he breathed it in and through the night they still pierced her and they were so so blue. She felt like she was looking into the fire while she watched him, like she could gaze into the flames forever and they would stare right back when he looked at her. He said nothing and neither did she and when, after a few moments of him smoking like they weren't watching two bodies burn, he turned to leave, she followed.