━━━━━━ ༻ 007 ༺ ━━━━━━
" The Great Storm "
WHEN THE RAIN POURED DOWN, time ceased making any sense at all.
Like having been tossed a bucket of water over their heads, both Jackie and Tommy were drenched to their very skin within seconds, the many layers of their clothing be damned. These buckets, however, just kept on being poured on top of them, as heavy as raining could go in these parts. Lightning and thunder cosmetically adjusted the pseudo-night of the dark clouds into a menace unleashing above and in this environment of darkness, Tommy witnessed something truly unexpected: Jackie being afraid.
After plucking a tooth out of a crying man's mouth, after destroying him utterly with the usage of his own employees... Jackie Alloways was shrinking with each loud thunder closer to the ground turned to ashen mud beneath their feet.
It was then, while his mind recalled her car had no roof, that he looked into the distance, at the hill whose climb must have gotten tougher due to the rain, a hill whose outline he could no longer even distinguish, and remembered a part of himself that no longer wished to hesitate, but knew to act fast.
When he looked back at Jackie, bowed over her knees, with her eyes closed and her palms pressed to her ears, he waited for no word of warning to place his coat over her head and take her hand into his. Planning on saving his breath for a run through the rain, through the devastated stands fuming in the aftermath of the fire's purge, he said nothing before taking lead.
With mud everywhere, the place looked like a warzone, so truly, it took no genius to know exactly what Jackie was seeing each time thunder made her flinch and forced her to cower herself into someone smaller and smaller still.
Tommy heard his own heart thundering in his chest, drumming into his temple on the begs of his own lungs burning up between heaved breaths. And though his mind threatened him with slipping into the same mirages of the past that had knelt Jackie before he helped her stand and urged her to run with him away from this cold shower from above raining upon them bad memories and even worse omens, should they care enough to be pious, he kept all the thoughts of barricades and shelling at bay with a single allegory: no one wanted to be trapped on no man's land.
So he ran.
Knees painted themselves in mud in no time. On the slippery climb, his hand gripped hard enough to leave a bruise on Jackie's, whose own hand held as tightly as she could as well, though in all honesty, the frailty of her clinging was an alarming encouragement for Tommy to keep on dragging their climb to the only shelther from the rain in sight. There were treelines much clothes but between making Jacqueline Alloways hide in the mud beneath trees or amongst chicken's hay, the latter sounded much more favorable indeed.
Time was having a laugh with them, but despite the rain dragging them down into infinite seconds, breathless as he was, Thomas had pulled through and help them both reach the shed on the hill side. Met with no resistance from the door, they stumbled in the empty shed filled with hay. A long, pitched ringing lingered in their ears, from the sudden escape out of the loudness of the raindrops that had attacked their skin with thousands upon thousands of taps by then. Almost unconsciously, Thomas released her hand and turned around to slam the door shut behind them, allowing the full extent of the cold not to break through and chill their skin into a display of goosebumps they already had become a canvas to.
Flattened at first across the surface of the door, a conduit for him to rest, lean and catch his breath back to something more stable than the ravaged thing it currently was, Tommy slid his hands down ever so slowly.
Jackie's mind was scattered across the noise of the rain. The fright had sped up her heartbeats an uneasy amount. Even with cold creeping up on her back similarly to how memories spread in the shape grass roots in a favorable soil, the longer she stared at Thomas' back as it shivered through his breaths, the sturdier her anchor to reality got; she stole a glance at the shed in which they were now — a small thing, still smelling of the chicken it held that very morning —, she even took notice of the coat she lowered from over her head to her shoulders — his coat.
Thunder tremored into the ground.
With no control over it, Jackie flinched into closing her eyes, but to her surprise, after that elongated blink of hers, she was brought back by something new. His hands rubbed their presence known on her upper arms, climbing slowly to her shoulders, then reaching out for both sides of her face, a destination towards which they finally hesitated. Her eyes had shot open and she's been watching numbness fight tooth and nail for dominance across his features when they both knew exactly what this was. Not planning to move away from him any time soon, Jackie took her time lowering her eyes: from his hair slick with water dripping droplets onto his cheekbones down to his chin, across his pulse shivering on his neck and falling off of his lifting his Adam's apple, the single giveaway to the physical gulp he had to commit to in order to push down his inhibitions.
Thomas arranged his palms carefully on her face and perhaps exactly that coldness was the final thing Jackie needed to wake up to their current state. "Shit," she cursed, speeding her once over of him and concluding they were in big trouble. "Tommy," she took his hands into her own and held them all the way to lowering them back down. "Take off your clothes," she said, words so blunt they reassembled an order.
"There's usually a bit more kissing—"
Jackie played a slap to his chest, "Get your mind away from that sinful well and think of your health, damn it. Do you want pneumonia, Thomas Shelby?" — his eyes widened — "Of course you don't."
Hearing her answer the ironic question she addressed him with herself was just the delight he needed to brush off the dreadful thoughts that have been awakened by their run. Only as he chuckled, Jackie went on, adopting perhaps an extension of the nightmares the thunder resurfaced for her. Like a true nurse, the back of her right hand touched his forehead. Remaining on her tiptoes to do so, she moved the whole of her palm over it too. "You and I cannot afford being sick and in bed. So take off your clothes and hand over your lighter."
"Quite the arsonist today..."
"Hush," Jackie pouted at his tease, though it fired up color on her cheeks.
Patience was not her virtue, Tommy would conclude only to the privacy of his thoughts, as words surely would fail him in an attempt to speak while, right before his eyes, Jackie started undoing the buttons of his vest, helping him — or rather forcing him — to take it off faster. She went as far as pulling his shirt from his pants, before extending her hand. "The lighter, Tommy. We need a fire to warm up and if you say we can warm up in different ways I will... well, I will probably do something terrible that I haven't thought of just yet."
"Consider myself trembling, Jacqueline," he removed his lighter from his pants' pocket and handed it over to Jackie.
By her lead, in almost no time, a fire was burning in the cleaned center of the shed and Tommy removed most of his clothes, save of course for his undergarments, without which he would have felt the whole ordeal get unnecessarily uncomfortable for both of them. He heard clothes shuffling even as he was done undressing and laying his clothes on hay to dry, so he resisted even the urge to turn around. Though he could bet Jackie was a beautiful woman regardless of what he wore or she did not, a naked body was nothing too out of the ordinary for his retina such that he'd risk the respect of their current partnership for a peak.
Another thunder tremored right above them and Jackie's heart squeezed into a frenzy. "Damn this—!" She stopped herself from cursing any further, hitting instead her right fist into her chest. One hit was insufficient to convince her heart to stop acting out on the whim of its fears, so she hit again. The third attempt to hit her own chest was met with firm resistance as Tommy's hand wrapped around her wrist. Her bottom lip shivered and though far too aware of her own fragility for her liking, Jackie straightened her posture away from slouching and inhaled sharply a few times to calm herself.
"It's just a noise," Tommy whispered right behind her right ear. "There's no enemies out there."
For once, though she could easily argue that by trusting no one, the whole world was an enemy to her, Jackie just nodded along, clinging to relief, to consolation and safety, rather than being right or impressive. "I've... I've never liked storms, but now I downright hate them. They had to lock me in my cabin at sea when storms raged the waves," her attempt was to laugh that shake in her voice off, but her chuckle turned into a horrible copy of what her truer joys were.
"The storm will pass," Tommy reassured her, letting go of her wrist slowly and pressing his palm instead across her chest, over her heart. Beneath his palm, separated only by the thinned and cold material of her dress and her equally freezing skin underneath it, he felt her heart trying to reach out to him, to break through her ribcage and cause a wound that will slip rivers of blood through his fingers. He held it all together, like a dam who dared not press too hard on a skin so alike to porcelain he did not phantom Jackie being anything short of a miracle, capable of holding both extremes of what a woman could be in the same vessel on whose shoulder his chin rested for a second so comfortably.
It was a short second, while his hand was over her heart and with one arm alone she felt embraced by him. His heartbeat tremored on her back and her own frightened organ pumping blood on the whims of emotions found itself trapped between him; his influence was a calming intoxication, so much so that when Thomas eventually slipped his hand away from her chest, right from under her recent decision of placing her right hand over his and brush his knuckles in an invitation to linger, she felt colder.
That chill did not last, however.
Instead, it morphed into a shiver as he walked around her and looked down only at her unfinished worked on the buttons of her damp dress. Jackie forgot how to breathe while watching his eyes climb up her body, work their way across her paled skin until he found her eyes and held his gaze steady. It was then that he took half a step closer, a sufficient distance closed in that he was within comfortable reach of her dress.
A whole barn behind her left Jackie plenty of room to move away if she so wished, but oh, watching Thomas Shelby undo the buttons of her dress so very carefully was a sight she wished to behold and had no strength left to deny herself this rather uncivilised desire, unfit should she ever actually be his business partner.
Once the buttons were all undone, Thomas straightened up and slid his hands under the fabric, caressing over her shoulders in a soft massage. He carried out the motion until his hands have guided the sleeves completely off her arms, not for one second looking away from her eyes. He craved those glimmers and watched patiently for any sense that she found what he was doing appalling, after all, it was all very improper should he ever become as serious of a business partner as she wished him to be.
For that reason, once her dressed was removed and he held it like a damp rag in his left hand, Thomas went no further with exploring a body which, through wet undergarments, challenged the visions in Renaissance times of Goddesses of beauty. To her, looking away from a temptation as clear as back in the Garden of Eden, he offered his hand gallantly.
"We lack the alcohol and the dry cigarettes to make this barn into a cozy stop in our adventure," he explained, though she already took his hand and let him lead her to the spot near the fire, where they could still be close enough to the wall such that they leant back as they sat down.
"Your company will do," Jackie was fast to reassure him, given the fact that she did not mind sitting as close to him as possible. Across the fire in front of them, the presence of that door against which rain hit as mercilessly as the howling winds stirred by the storm was tenebrous; Jackie discovered it was not the gun to her right that helped her breath calm, but not being alone while partially naked that allowed tiredness to seep into her bones.
"I believe this is a good time to return to that question you thought I should ask you...," Tommy trailed off, thoughtful. "What was it? The things you like to do when... well, when you're not running your business, I suppose."
"Obviously, I like to get men naked with me in barns," she taunted.
Though he was glad that his little stunt of affection had indeed helped her relax back into her true self and away from the dreadful terrors of the past, Tommy would do no such thing as pointing it out. Instead, he chuckled along, "Fair enough. It seems I have become your entertainment then, Jacqueline."
"Contrary to belief," she returned to his initial question, "I do love what I do for a living now. It's not always fair and it's not always civil or abiding by my previous vows and conduit as a nurse, but I love it nevertheless. Everything I had in the past was a glimmer mirroring something others have chosen before. Nursing... my mother used to be a nurse too. I enjoy gardens because my grandmother did too and so on, and so forth. But this thing, this business, it's mine. I took all those things left by others and I grew them into something else, something that's mine. Maybe it's not a legacy that I can pass on, but at least it is one that I am personally unashamed to leave behind regardless." All the while she spoke, Jackie stared down into the ground, helping herself into undoing the braid stuffing her hair into its illusion of shortness. By the time she was done talking, her hair returned to its natural form: a wavy mane, partially dampened, the color of the blankets of fallen leaves in autumn, warming the soil of forests bathed in light. Her auburn hair reminded him of fire, of home, of the spice sprinkled in ale.
"But," Jackie sighed her hands back in her lap and looked up at Tommy to discover him already watching her speak, "when I am not conquering the world, I suppose I do enjoy cooking."
"Cooking, aye," Tommy leant his head back, unable to fight a little grin. "Apron and everything?"
"Laugh all you like, but I make the most delightful pies," Jackie rolled her eyes, though bemused as well. "But what about you, Mr. Shelby? Is your favorite past time restricted to striking deals and conducting gambles?"
"Horseriding," he answered honestly. "It's been a passion ever since I was a young lad. But much like you and your cooking, I have had little time to dedicate to horseriding, definitely not as much as I used to. It's alright. The exchange of time is fair and some activities, our lives evolve to outgrow. I love what I do as well... It's a responsibility, a headache, a nuisance sometimes to see how little I am trusted and how little I trust too, but I love it. I love it because I can see the ending."
"Which is?" Jackie murmured her inquiry dreamily from a position she did not wish to flinch herself out of: her head rested on Tommy's shoulder, a position towards which his unexpected but much welcomed longer answer lured her.
"I'll be the richest man in this whole world, Jackie."
This calm and casual ambiance formed between them in a state of vulnerability that would have otherwise dictated a more active stay in the barn, rather than a stationary one, was something Thomas could not deny the pleasant aftertaste of. There was peace in Jackie's soft breath falling gently on his skin, peace in their conversation slowly drifting away into silence and even that very silence was a true rest's joy, where his breath had to fall in pace with hers. In this peace, there was no expectation from either of them to be more or do more.
Under such conditions, his plan of remaining awake until the storm passed was erased from the realm of possibility. He knew only that he had watched Jackie fall asleep using his arm for a pillow, and a distant thunder put a spell of heaviness upon his eyelashes to descend into slumber. Everything beyond that was a loss of control.
Jackie had no knowledge of when sleep had stolen her away from the present either, but she knew it must have been the case that the fright and tiredness got the best of her somewhere amidst the conversation with Tommy. He was telling her about the lengths to which his family tree would go should one actually have the patience to track every one of the branches down. When she opened her eyes again after what seemed like only a truly long blink, the fire had been extinguished and smoke burned through the atmosphere in lingering fashion, as smoke usually does.
The sound of pouring rain had ceased as well, she noticed next. An undistinguishable fear recaptured her heart soon after thar realization: what had woken her up?
The veils of confusion that fall over those freshly out of short slumber lifted all at once on the waves of horrific familiarity. For a single second, Jackie was taken back to that hospital in France, back to a night blended amongst so many others when the groans and moans of pain of a patient in a wing under her care had her running through the beds at night. At least now, there was no running, because the man groaning so horribly tormented was right beside her.
"Tommy," Jackie called, raised now to her knees. Though she hadn't been shy on sound, he didn't respond. "Tommy," she tried again, placing a hand on the right side of his face and rubbing her big thumb in. He wasn't having a fever, so she called a third time, "Tommy, wake up, you're having a nightmare." She tapped from his cheek down to the side of his neck and he flinched, eyes opening to a blurred sight, somewhere between the present from where the touch on his face was comforting and soft, and the tunnels, where he was being brought to the doors of death over and over again.
When his sight clearer out it was on neither of those vision, but on the face of nurse, waking him up from an equally bad dream in the dead of night, in a hospital bed drenched in his cold sweats. "It's alright," a Jackie he had long forgotten talked to him through a memory he didn't know he could remember. He watched as his hand had trembled while she held it, moving it away from her throat. "You're safe here, soldier," he recalled her smile. "You're safe," her voice was all the same in the present too, which he saw once the blink cleared a single tear from his eyes, a tear Jackie wiped away swiftly. "There, you're alright. Just breathe with me."