Tommy held the slim reins lax in one hand, the leather straps forming a cage around Tessa, who was seated in front of him. Chase did not protest the two riders, but Tommy knew the horse well enough to not be surprised. He had carried him for an entire day and night through city streets and countrysides, after all. The horse's back was warm underneath him, and Tessa's sweet, nectary smell kept wafting over him as her hair was brushed by the breeze, tickling his nose. A few inches of her porcelain skin was exposed where her neck sloped down to her shoulders, and he was trying to resist the impulse to press his mouth to it, to see if she tasted as good as she looked. A loudly buzzing bee made Chase snort and jostled Tommy closer to her.
"Easy, boy, easy. Can't be afraid of bugs, now, can we? We're soldiers, you and me," Tommy said to him in Romani, half accidentally. Tessa sucked in a breath that went directly to Tommy's cock and head.
"Where are we going?" She asked from in front of him, threading her fingers through Chase's mane. She was nervous, she had been all day, and thought she was hiding it. He let her think it. He was nervous, too, but much more practiced at keeping it down. He had existed on the scale of fear from nervous to absolutely terrified for years during the war. What was one more day of risks, against all the others he had already taken? Mostly, he was nervous for her. For her involvement. Even for her bloody father, a man he had hardly met.
Everything around them was a swirl of color, so different from the drab scheme of Heath. Green grass and blue sky and old brown fences along the dusty dirt road opened up like a woman's legs, and he wasn't calm, not really. Never quite calm. The voices never quite stopped. But they were quieter, like when he was on opium or had downed half a bottle. He wondered for a moment how long it could last, this peace, and then answered his own question. Less than twenty four hours. Tomorrow, they would be back at war.
Tommy shrugged, took a pull of the cigarette he was holding in the hands that didn't have the reins.
"Away," he said, and she didn't respond but he could feel that she agreed.
Tommy was firm and solid behind her, Chase was comfortable and familiar underneath her. She let herself relax, a little. It wouldn't be a bad last day, after all, she thought. Chase was surprisingly docile in Tommy's hands, usually it was a struggle for Tessa to keep him at under a canter. Perhaps he felt something strange about the day, too. They wandered along country lanes, passing the occasional barn, sometimes a farmhouse and once a little village. It was horrendously quaint and Tessa found the juxtaposition quite amusing, for some reason. Thomas Shelby, trotting along on a horse for hours like a grandfather with nothing better to do than that or sit on a dock and fish.
"Is this what you would do, if you didn't do what you do?" She asked him, brave because she couldn't see his face. "Aimlessly ride horses all day?"
"Less aimlessly," Tommy said, after a second. She was taken aback that he had responded.
"Really?" She asked him, trying not to let her curiosity seep into her voice and push him away.
He cleared his throat behind her, and it rumbled through his chest and against her back. "That was the plan. Before the war." He flicked some ashes off his cigarette. "Trainer. Jockey. Something like that."
She hummed, contemplative. "You would have been good."
He was quiet. Then, after so many minutes her mind had wandered and she had almost forgotten what it was they had been saying, he spoke again, and his voice had its cut edges like metal. "Even then it wasn't enough. I enlisted. Me and me brothers. We all chose it," he sucked a breath in through his teeth, "and I can never stop fucking asking myself why."
Tessa leaned back until she was resting against him, letting herself melt against the walls of iron.
"Sometimes, wars on the outside are easier to fight."
Tommy threw his dead cigarette away. "For both of our sakes tomorrow, let's hope that that's true."
They stopped at the edge of a valley lake to let Chase get a drink, Tessa peeling off her shoes and socks and hiking her borrowed dress up to wade into the water. The black material was startling against her skin, bright like stars against the night. The first lonely planets had begun to twinkle in the purple haze of the heavens, the sun slowly slipping down as it lost its grip on the day. Tommy stretched out on his back on the shore, smoking. It spiraled up against the glowing sky, wafting and then drifting away. She hated how good he looked lying down, the cut of his jaw and the angles of his face on full and audacious display. She hated how good he looked all the time. She splashed him.
"You're too much of a grand, rich man to join me, is that it?" She asked, splashing him again. He held his cigarette out to protect it from her attacks.
"There's mud," he said, without looking at her.
"Not much," she said, inspecting her bare feet through the glimmer of the water. "Come on, Thomas. It's just mud."
She realized what she had said, the importance of it, the meaning, right after she had said it, but she stood her ground. It was just mud. He sighed wearily from the shore. Smoke floated up between his lips.
"Fine. At least share your cig with me, if you're going to be a twat," she said, sloshing her way to the shore and reaching out her hand. He sat up and offered it to her, but she stood stubbornly still. He rose easily, and she wondered about his bullet holes.
"Thank you," she said, reaching for it, but at the last second, grabbing his shirt and yanking with all her might. He didn't quite topple, which was a feat, but he went knee-deep into the water, and lost his cigarette to top it off. Tessa slapped a hand over her mouth to cover her laughter. His eyes were wide and incredulous and brighter than the water, brighter than the sky, his mouth open in surprise and a shocked half smile.
"You fucking-," he lunged at her, and scooped her up like she was a kitten, and admist her squeals and protests, dunked them both into the freezing lake.