"So where is it, then?" Tommy asked, gazing into the large, handsome, and unoccupied stall with SUNCHASER carved into the gleaming wood.
"It's a he, and he's in pasture. He doesn't like being in the stables at night." Tommy lit another one of the dead man's cigarettes.
"Stay here," she told him, and he looked at up and at her, with his piercing expression, leaning his good shoulder against the wooden wall like he owned the stable and all the horses in it, cigarette in his mouth. She went around the corner and through the open wooden sliding doors, and called to her horse. He was in the nearest enclosure, a small grass paddock, and he was trotting over to her before she had even spoken, whether because he had heard her or smelled her, she did not know. He was always waiting for her before she arrived.
"Hi, baby," she cooed, and he snorted, rustling his mane. His tail swished, his ears pricked forward. "I missed you, too." She patted his strong neck, kissed his soft nose. "There's someone I want you to meet, yeah? And don't worry, if he's rude to you, you have my absolute permission to kick him in the balls."
She opened the gate and clicked to him. He walked out, hooves clopping on the cobblestones, and put his face down at her shoulder, nickering. Her heart swelled. Only Chase knew her completely. Only Chase loved her unconditionally. She walked back into the stable wordlessly, and he followed, graceful head held high and large nostrils flaring when he caught Tommy's strange scent on the wind. He needed no lead with her. She had spent many lonely years training him, having him follow her around the ring, then the pasture, then the barn. It was slightly warmer inside the stable, which she was grateful for. The damp clothes were making her feel shaky and clammy, or maybe that was just a symptom of the night.
"He can smell you, and you still smell like blood, so don't-," She said as she entered the stable, with Chase trailing a bit behind her, and she was going to say "come any closer", but of course Tommy was already approaching her stallion, who had halted in the doorway.
"So this is the horse, eh. Sunchaser." He said as he moved past her. Chase was eyeing him warily. He moved his ears back. Tommy held a hand out, low, palm up.
"Yes," Tessa said, and she couldn't help the spark of pride.
"And what a horse," Tommy said softly, still moving slowly closer to him. He started speaking words Tessa couldn't catch, but it didn't sound like English, or even the French they had made her take at school. Chase's ears swiveled as he listened. She didn't know he spoke another language. She didn't know he was good with horses. All she really knew about him was the color of his eyes and that he could kill a man without flinching. .
"He doesn't usually like men. Or the smell of blood."
Tommy said "Mm," bending over to check one of Chase's hooves. "He was in the war, and he doesn't want to compete for his mother's attention."
"So you can read horses' minds now, as well as people?" She asked. Tommy didn't respond. He was patting Chase's flank, still speaking quietly in those strange words, voice low and deep, and she noticed with slight irritation was that her horse was quickly cooling his normally fiery temper. Traitor.
"He was in the war," She admitted, sitting down on a bale of hay and looking down at her hands in her lap, pale even against the pale green of her dress, "but not for long. His last owner sold him off to teach a lesson to his son when he was caught beating him. He was bred for the races. He was meant to run in the Derby." She cocked her head and looked at her baby. "My father found him in France and brought him home to me as a birthday present. I was fourteen years old and he was two." Chase's head was low, calm. Tommy scratched behind his ear.
"He's big for an Arab. Full blood?"
"Yes," she said. His chestnut coat gleamed. The white blaze down the center of his face shone in the light like it glowed in the dark, as did his four white stockings. "My father told me Chase reminded him of me. Same hair. Same temper."
Tommy responded, but he was speaking to the horse, and in another language.
"You need new bandages," she said. "Don't move."
Tommy said nothing, to her, at least, still having his conversation with Chase, who snorted again.
When she returned to the stables she was carrying an armful of bandages, her father's clothes, blankets, and a bottle of whiskey. The head maid said she hadn't seen any sign of Tessa's father, and she was beginning to worry. It wasn't like him to be out all night without telling her. Although she admitted to herself that it was rather fortuitous that he was out tonight, because she had no idea how she would have explained to him that they were harboring a fugitive in one of their stalls like some kind of fucked up version of Christ's birth. Tommy was sitting on the stable floor with his head back and his eyes closed when she walked back in, cigarette in hand. Chase was munching on the hay scattered on the floor. She was suddenly so exhausted she could hardly stand, especially on her twisted, throbbing ankle. The sun would likely be up in a little over an hour but for now it was the darkest part of the night, as the moon set and the stars blinked out in the velvet sky over the trees. The stable smelled comforting and familiar, like stained wood and leather and hay. The man in the stables, however, was neither of those things. Being around him made her pulse jump, made her body feel like everything was happening faster and slower all at once. She pressed the bottle to Tommy's hand and his eyes fluttered open, cracked open and the ocean spilled out, his hair spilling over his forehead like dark ink. He took one drink, then two, then puffed his cigarette. The whiskey left his lips wet and she wanted to suck it off of them. She cleared her throat to clear her head and crouched down next to him, the proximity only serving to make things worse. Get yourself together, Tessa.
"Sit up," she told him, and began carefully unwrapping the blood and water soaked bandage that crossed over his chest and under his arm. The bullet hole underneath was steadily leaking red, all the stitches torn. His skin was smooth and she stopped herself from touching more of it, from tracing his tattoos with her fingers. She wanted to know what they meant, why he had gotten them.
"Give me the bottle," she told him, and he took another swig before handing it to her. She doused the wound and he grunted in pain, grabbing the torn herm of her damp dress in reflex. Chase nickered.
"Easy. Breathe. Breathe," she told him, and he did, sharply, face tilted up and jawline and profile in sharp relief. She slapped herself mentally, again, because she had a job to do and he was a gangster and had fucking been shot, twice, for christ's sake, and wrapped the new bandages. Her father was a doctor, after all. The wound in his torso was worse. When she sanitized it, or attempted to and hoped the whiskey would do, he hissed, and made a sharp noise that she silenced immediately, without stopping to think, by pressing her mouth against his.
"The maids can't know you're here," she said against his full lips, and she felt him relax a little, and then felt him pull her closer just as she was about to move away, the metallic taste of his mouth sharp on her tongue. Whiskey and blood and smoke. He was intoxicating. She felt drunk.
"Fuck the maids. Fuck the Germans. I've got a gun," He said in between kisses, his mouth a bed of pillows she wanted to dive in.
"Its you and your gun against an entire fucking army, Thomas," she told him, trying to focus as his lips moved to her neck.
"Mmm," he rumbled against her, and she had to restrain herself from sliding into his lap despite the exposed bullet wound. "So be it."
She trailed her fingers along the back of his head and threaded them into his hair like she had wanted to the first time she set eyes on him. It was soft like silk. Every time his lips touched her neck, new shivers raced down the backs of her thighs. He grew impatient, reached out and lifted her onto him, but she caught his hands in hers and leaned back, careful to avoid his shoulder and side, which still needed care. He looked at her, eyebrows raised slightly, eyes so sharp she forgot how to breathe. A challenge. An expectation. The cold, calculated, empty empty empty blue. He slid a hand along her thigh, confident, competent, his fingers strong against her skin, pressing against her leg like someone who knew exactly what he was doing. Tommy always seemed to know exactly what he was doing. She didn't know what the fuck she was doing, ever, at all, but especially now.
"It could help."
His words reverberated, but the meaning took a second to hit home. So that's how he dealt with it, with all of it. She wondered how much there was. She saw the burning car behind her eyes when she blinked like it was imprinted on her irises. She ignored the feeling of him underneath her. She scoffed quietly.
"Sure, Tommy. Sure it could."
He dropped his hand, brought his cigarette up and breathed it. "Have you ever seen a man die before today?"
His voice rumbled through his chest, and through her. She could feel it. She stared over his shoulder at the patterns in the wood grain of the stall wall when she answered. Her skirt of her destroyed dress was draped over the floor and over Tommy's legs like a worn battle flag.
"Yes. My grandfather. My mother. I wasn't there when my brother died, but it's mostly the same."
He didn't answer. He smoked. She was still on his lap and could feel him looking at her. His eyes were magnets, pulling. It was almost intimate, almost, but his face was closed, like she was sharing secrets with the wall. If he was surprised, he did nothing to show it.
"You did well," he told her. She gave him a sardonic smile, but it fell off her face half way. Bastard. As if that was the kind of thing you told someone to make them feel better after a night like this. Fuck her, then clap her on the back and tell her good job for not throwing up when she watched two men die. That was the Tommy Shelby remedy, it seemed. She stood up.
"Chase doesn't take a saddle or bit, so I hope you're a good rider. If you hurt my horse on the way to Birmingham, I'll fucking cut you in your sleep." She turned to look at him, and the beautiful, terrible apathy. "And you owe me some cocaine." He could finish his own damn bandages. Her hands were covered in his blood.